Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The Community At Large

So, reading around today I ran across the on going fight in D3 about legendaries.  I don't really care which side of the fence you are on this one, although its going to seem like it.  First off, I love WoW, but the people that want to leave that game to come play D3 and try to apply their expectations of WoW to D3 need to go fuck off.  Its not the same game, stop expecting it to be.

But that's not the main issue.  There has been a change in the community from what they used to be to now.  It reminds me of little children, who use the logic, if we bitch enough we will get our way.  Used to be, if you didn't like a game, you said you didn't like it, why, and left.  Just don't play it.

Now, everyone throws bitch fits, as if they are entitled for the developers to go back and redo their hard work to make your childish little ass happy.  Their not, this is their game, their story, their hard work, you are privileged just to be allowed to even play it.  If you don't like it, too fucking bad, go somewhere else, we won't miss you, you already paid for the shit anyway.

I'm not saying that you don't have to make a good game to make money.  You do.  But Blizzard has already stated that legendaries are not intended to be BiS.  They are lore style weapons, as are the sets, intended to represent a part of the story behind Diablo.  The rares, the magicals, if they have the correct stats on them, are going to be the best stuff.  That is intentional, according to Blizzard, there is nothing to fix, no bug.  Quit throwing your temper tantrums and either play or don't, just shut up.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Updates

Finely hit level 20 on LoL, still not quite enough AP to have twin disciplines up at the start of a game, very close though.

Played a witch doctor to about level 15, kinda fun, but I think zombie dogs need more survivability than they currently have.  Also got my demon hunter to level 40, just hit the sewers of act 2 on nightmare.

No progress on Putridus on Wow.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

LoL Patches

Not much today.

Seems like every time I log into LoL they are pushing a patch.  I know that anything more major than adding a champion is gonna have issues but damn.

Also, it forces me to change a setting somewhere every time to keep the UI from going haywire in game.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Assorted Wanderings

A couple different little tidbits today, not a lot, but something to munch on.

Even on nightmare, Leoric to stupid easy for me.  May be just because I am a demon hunter and I don't have to get in range to kill him, but still.

New LoL patch pushed today, brought a lot of quality of life changes, along with the new champion.  The graphics upgrade was nice, even if it caused a couple of issues on my end.  Not impressed with the new champion.  Haven't played him but went up against him today and face rolled him.

Still stuck looking for Putridus, of all the rares to be left with, never though it would be him.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Sorry Guys

I got nothing today, I have spent the last two days out of the house, running errands, which makes coming up with interesting stuff to talk about near impossible.

In case you haven't seen, the next LoL patch got pushed back.

Hopefully more for you guys tomorrow.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Finished Diablo 3

So I finished my first pass of Diablo 3 this weekend, on normal.  From start to end it took about 17 hours.  I pushed hard for it this time, I'm going to take my time of future passes, work on getting achievements and the usual.

A big nod to Blizzard on this one.  Despite launch day woes, and everything that went off, they delivered a product that was no less than expected, the story line was phenomenal, the movies were standard setting as usual, and the whole game pulled together in a awesome way.  I will probably sink some horrible amount of time into this, much as I did for the first two.

On other notes, I'm working on Frostbitten, and all I have left is Putridus, which is odd, I didn't expect him to be the last one left.  Does make it easy tho, log in, if NPC scan goes off, YAY, if not, go do something else.  I'm sitting Icecrown and have had that go off all the way down in Borean Tundra as I zoned in before.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Friday Video

In an effort to give me more to talk about through out the week, Friday Video


Thursday, May 17, 2012

Flailing

So, I'm going to leave off on them after this, because things were a lot better today with Diablo 3 than they have been.  But I think this article sums up the misgivings I have about the way Blizzard handled the Diablo 3 launch rather well.

I don't have a lot to talk about guys, I have been spending all of my time playing Diablo 3, so nothing on the League or WoW front, although the new LoL champion looks nice, as well as some of the new skins coming out.

I don't want to throw out any spoilers, but damn, I just finished Act 1, and they aren't holding back.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

More D3 Woes

So I am completely enjoying the game at this point, the effort that went into it is obvious.  Between class mechanics, story line and simply the environment, there was simply an astounding amount of work that went into the game.  And I love it.

When I can play it.

I understand everything Blizzard is trying to do with make us log in.  But it looks bad when a game is not just unstable or hard to get into on launch day, but offline for a vast portion of its launch day.  I know Blizzard is bad about this but they have had plenty of experience to make it work right.  I just hope from here out my game in online so I can play it.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Highly Impressed

So, I make no secret that I expect a lot out of Blizzard.  They have been in the business long enough to put out nothing but Grade A games.  They have always had great games in my experience, so I cut them no slack in presentation, story, performance, etc.

Diablo 3 had been on the table for 4 years now.  The last Diablo expansion came out 9 years ago.  They are popular games.  Blizzard has dealt with the particular form of DRM that they market before, with SC2, they stress tested ahead of time, so they could get an idea of the load they would be dealing with when the game went live this morning.

So I was highly disappointed when I spent 30 minutes trying to log in before I gave up this morning.  They have dealt with releases of this scale and bigger before, there is no excuse for the crap that went on this morning with everyone trying to log in.  While no, you would never need the scale of log in servers a week from now that you needed to handle last nights volume, they did last night.  They should have had extra servers set up to handle the loads until everything died back down and they could scale back down to normal operating loads.  Because not everyone is going to be trying to log in at the same time after this.  A lot of people are just trying the game, since they got it for free with the Annual Pass, others, well, everyone will log in when they want to play, not all at the same time to experience what they have been waiting so long for.

But, that is behind us.  It is over and done with.  On to the game.

Granted, I haven't had time to get as far into the game as others yet.  I'm just after Leoric on Act 1 yet.  But so far the game has been spectacular.  The biggest improvement for me is just the control system.  Away from the clunky controls of Diablo 1 and 2, now everything that you are going to use already has a key-binding, appears on your screen, easy to use at a moments whim.

The story so far is engaging.  Instead of the random quest like in Diablo 2, they constantly have an objective you are moving towards, always throwing rewards your way.  It isn't over blown with story, where you spend more time talking than fighting, but you always know what your doing and why.

Over all the game so far is amazing, more to come I am sure as I get farther into the game.

Monday, May 14, 2012

Diablo 3

Well guys, not a whole lot today, Diablo 3 goes live in just a few more short hours.

Have fun playing everyone, I am looking forward to installing and playing as soon as I get home from work, all I have thought about this weekend.

See you tomorrow with a better post, probably about the wonders of Diablo3.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

New Thoughts on Account Level Achievements

So I have done close to an about face on account level achievements now that Blizzard and Ghostcrawler have deemed fit for the masses to have some information on how they are planning on having them run.

I still don't like the idea in general, but it is a moot point at this time, because they have found a way to accommodate just about everyone.  With the fact that you will have an account level summary of all the achievements you have earned, it allows everyone to keep all of their achievements from toon to toon.  This satisfies most of the screaming masses (which, remember, doesn't always mean the majority of people), and allows somethings that I am not complaining about.  There are some achievements that are just god awful for one reason or another (see WoW Insiders list of evil achievements).  This means you are not doing them repeatedly on multiple toons, it also makes life easier for people with a lot of alts when holidays roll around.

But, you will also get a toast if you complete the requirements again on a separate toon from the ones that have completed it already.  For most people this is the achievement side of it, the pop up and ding plus the chat spam that goes out for it.  It doesn't add to you achievement score, you got the achievement already, remember.  But it does acknowledge that you got the achievement again.  Which is good for the people that make alts just to do it all over again.

Its not going to change my plans of just going for a complete achievement list using multiple toons, but it is nice for Blizzard to concede to the people that would like to be able to do achievements again on another toon.

Note: Sorry about the miss yesterday, completely forgot.  Also, if you guys want to hear about anything, I am always open to suggestions in the comments.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Break

Taking a break today guys, combination of brain dead and personal reasons keeping me from being able to think of anything to talk about.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Monday Afternoons

Well guys, I'll be honest, wasn't really looking forward to coming back to work today, laziness and all that.  I don't really think it is all that funny that before I head in I can think of a million things to write about, then once I get here my head goes empty.

Since I seem to have forgotten what I had planned to write about, I'm going to make an observation that just came to me today, and I think is going to alter my play style when it comes to WoW.

Achievements are going account wide, along with mounts and vanity pets, most of which will soon be used for the Pet Battles.  On initial look at this, I hate the idea, still do, but it allows me to do something that I love to do but have been holding off on in favor of making progress on a single toon.  See, I am a completionist and achievement junkie.  After hearing about the couple of players that managed to get all of the achievements in game back during Wrath, I determined I was going to do that as well.  But I love to play a lot of different classes and specs, each one feels different, behaves differently.  In all reality, each spec is a separate class, even if it does share a few similarities with others.

So how do you satisfy both sides of that, get all the achievements and play a lot of classes at once.  Up to this point, you have a couple options.  Focus on one toon to the exclusions of all else, get the achievements and start over.  Or, take time away from a main to play separate classes, slowing progress on achievements.

Now, that's not a problem any more, you can play multiple toons, and all of your stuff is account wide now, no matter what toon you are on, your making progress towards the achievements.  So, this is what I am going to go forward with, playing multiple toons but still able to make progress on getting all the achievements done.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Diablo 3

Well guys, we are at 10 days till Diablo 3, since it should be green light for install at midnight the morning of the 15th.  I for one will be starting the install the minute that I get home from work, probably staring at my screen like a fiend waiting to be able to play.

I am however, thoroughly disappointed at the buildup to the event on their reveal website.  New videos on each class with a little more info on how they work is nice, although the fact that the last of it ran after the open beta is slightly pointless.  But each of the reveal points but one has been developer diaries, which is great if you want to know behind the scenes.  But not so much when you just want info on the game.

Tidbits of info on the game that everyone have been waiting on for almost a decade would be a great way to get everyone fired up for your game.  Meandering interviews by the people that made the game on the process that caused it to take so long to get here, not so much.

Don't get me wrong, I love the approach that Blizzard used to take, where they would throw their own deadlines and release dates out the window in favor of having the game as close to perfect as possible when it did come out.  That is something that you don't see as much these days, when even console games usually have a day one patch to fix things that they couldn't be bothered to get to till after they had printed the discs.

But I don't care why the game has taken this long, I just want the game, and I want it to be all that it should be when it gets here.

Edit: The wallpapers posted today are nice though.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Dead Days

Another dead day for me, not a clue what to talk about, so while I think, get signed up for League of Legends. I'll see if I can get you guys something to read later.


Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Full Spectator Mode

Full Spectator has went live now, even if it did drop without the new champion, and while most of the people that I talked to didn't seem to think that much about it, I think that it is a great addition to the game.

Sure, game play wise it doesn't change anything.  I probably won't even use it to spectate my friends, unless I am waiting for them to finish a game.  But it also allows you to watch live games of high ranked players.  They are right there are your main screen, just a click away.

These are the people that have fought their way up the rankings, that know how to play the game.  What is a particular prize is if you can find someone playing those games as your main champion, then you can watch them play, pick up on tricks that they use to make themselves better.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Account Wide Achievements

Haven't really posted anything on WoW, due to not really having anything to say, but yesterday I was reminded of a new "feature" coming with MoP.  There was a discussion started of at WoW Insider about peoples thoughts on achievements being shared across your account that got me back on that subject.

I hate the this idea.  I understand there are a lot of people for it, so I am willing for there to be a compromise on it, mainly because the people I have talked to that are against it, are so for personal reasons.  I love playing alts, but one of the main reason I love playing them is I like going back and experiencing the game again from a different perspective, class/spec/role.  All of it, every nook and cranny, achievement, farm, everything.  I'm not a hardcore raider to spend hours every week working on raiding, the same goes for PvP.  I spend enough time on everything to cap, then I am done.

So by making everything account wide, you are gutting the vast majority of the game for me.  That means most of what I would be doing with an alt is leveling.  This is the complain that I see out of a lot of the people that are against the change.

I understand why people want the change, I understand the nicety of once you have earned something, you have it, you don't have to work for it again, just because you switched toons, felt like trying something else.  But that is not for me.  Blizzard talks about how they want everyone to feel like they have something to do in the game, but they yank away some peoples method of doing so.

But i think there is a middle ground here, have the option to switch account wide achievements on/off.  Just a little bit of extra coding and you could make everyone in the equation happy.