When is Final not so Final after all?

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Saruya

I recently picked up a couple of new 360 games, to play during those times when WoW gets a bit dullish. Wet by AM2 and Final Fantasy 13 by SquEnix.

Wet’s a good giggle, bit frustrating at times mind, but really fluid to play and any game that gives me a fit woman wielding a big fuck off katana is alright by me :D

FF13 is not bad. Bit slow to start off with, and I’m about 5 hours in, and it’s still only really getting through the introductory phase. In comparison I think Wet’s intro phase lasted about 3 minutes :P

It is, however, undeniably the most gorgeous looking 360 game I’ve played yet. The CG cut scenes at times are jaw droppingly sexy looking, and the ingame graphics are beautiful too. Long gone are the days when you’d get a lovely CG intro scene then get stuck with 75 pixels to represent your character ingame :)

The story as well is a bit weird for the first hour or so, until I actually read the manual and found out wtf Fal’cie and l’Cie were :P

But it’s a nice change of pace, both from WoW and from previous FF games. The last FF I played was FFX (I have had FFXI (the mmo) sitting in a box for about 3 years and never once installed it), and as usual the whole storyline and cast are pretty much the same, but this is by far the most Sci-Fi FF game yet. It’s also very much stripped back to basics which is refreshing, because FF had been getting to the point where it was stupidly and unnecessarily complex. There is no levelling up involved at all (!), but you do advance your characters’ growth through a system called the Crystarium. This is a nod back to the stupid design of previous FF games (It’s a 3d branching environment where you have to reach various nodes to access new powers and abilities), whereas a simple 2d text menu would have sufficed tbh.

And unlike previous FF titles, you only control 1 character in fights. The other 2 (sticking to the classic FF combat trio setup) provide support according to what way you have your team set up via templates called Paradigms. Paradigms allow you to set yourself up as a DPS, one as a tank and the other as a healer. Or all three as DPS etc. You can switch between the various templates available on the fly during combat, so if you’re taking a bit of a pummelling while DPSing, you can switch out to a more defensive & healing Paradigm until you’re back up to strength.

It’s a great system, and ensures most fights are winnable, even if they do turn into battles of attrition at the end of the day and all you’re waiting on is the enemy’s health bar slowly ticking down to 0.

But overall so far a good game, with strong characters and some typically Japanese (read: really cheesy) dialogue. Well worth a punt for the £25 I got it for (Wet was £10!), and with what appears to be the winding down of raiding with Thunder for the summer as the World Cup approaches, something to fill the long hours of summer with, levelling alts aside!

Speaking of alts, I’ve begun a Draenei Huntard by the name of Tótty. Pretty fun so far, but even easier than the druid or Pally. It really is beginning to look like I unknowingly picked the hardest class to solo level to 80 (maybe bar a non-shadow priest) with my Mage, because with the Hunter you set your pet to attack your target(s) and stand a good bit away and attack yourself (by which I mean attack the enemy yourself, not stand there and self harm like some mentally ill Emo-space goat), while trying to not pull aggro. Reminds me of levelling a Vanilla WoW Warlock back in the day, but good fun, and comes with an awesome looking heirloom Bow :)

As for Arthasshole (Lich King), he’s not dead yet. But we are making progress, slowly but surely. Not helped atm because we’re only really getting 1 night a week on him (oo-er), but we’re getting him into phase 2 regularly now, and starting to deal with Defile & Valkyr’s. We’ll get there though, and hopefully before 3.3.5 hits with Ruby Sanctum…

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More Progression. More Responsibility

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Saruya

Shortly after making the last post I was appointed as the 4th member of the Thunder guild Council.

That now means I’m one of the people responsible for the day to day running of the entire guild!

Eep!

In other news, I re-started the progression team in 10 man ICC raiding, and having plugged away at Sindragosa for 2/3 nights we finally managed to get her down! :D

That now means we only have the Lich King left, and once he’s down we can open up the heroic versions of the bosses in 10 man.

\o/

It’ll be good for guild morale if we can do this and re-invigorate our members, as a lot of guilds on Kilrogg have now done it, and it would give some of us a reason to do 10 man raiding, as a lot of us gain nothing from raiding in normal difficulty – no challenge and no upgrades for gear.

Heroic mode would up the level of gear available in drops but most importantly increase the challenge provided by the first half of the raid content, as everything up to and including the fights immediately prior to Sindragosa are face-roll easy these days, especially because of the Hellscream’s Warsong buff, which currently at 15% will rise to 20% in just under a week.

And finally, I was out at an awards ceremony in work last night where I was nominated for an award due to the amount of work I did in getting our new Waste Collection routes implemented and planned out. And I won! It was a surprise tbh, as there were 15 other people and teams in line for the award. It’s just really nice and touching to know that the work you do day in day out is appreciated by the people you work with and for.

But getting up on stage in front of over 300 people, including Councillors and going up to meet the soon to be ex-Lord Mayor to collect the award was frigging nerve wrecking. The whole thing is a blur atm, but it was a good night overall, and the department I work in managed to collect most of the awards up for grabs!

Posted in Gaming, Saruya's WoW Life | 2 Comments

Progression and Responsibility

Posted on May 2, 2010 by Saruya

Things have moved on in Thunder over the past couple of weeks.

First off, we’ve begun recruitment to fill the gaps left by the people who left. It’s gone well so far, and we’ve got 5/6 new people in.

Unfortunately Shill has left Thunder, in order to server-transfer to play with some real life friends from the Isle of Man, so best of luck to you mate, hope it all pans out :)

And it’s Childrens’ Week in WoW this week, and I’ve already managed to polish off the achievements I hadn’t picked up last year. The most frustrating one being to Capture the Flag in Eye of the Storm. A hard achievement at the best of times for a cloth wearer, but I managed to get in on a decent group and managed to pick it up! So only a handful more achievements between now and Halloween will see me get my Violet Proto Drake :)

Other than that there has been a promotion for me in guild, and potentially one in real life!

I’ve been appointed Mage CM for Thunder, which means looking after and advising the rest of the mages in the guild is now my responsibility :)

And IRL there’s a possibility that my job may be re-graded, but which will also mean I have to re-apply for it, with the possibility that I may not get it and be out of a job!

It’s a calculated risk, but one I’m willing to take, especially if it means a pay-rise of about £7,000 p/a! :)

Posted in Saruya's WoW Life | 7 Comments

Frustration and Retribution

Posted on April 11, 2010 by Saruya

Sigh.

Life’s a pain in the arse sometimes. You toddle along, thinking everything’s going grand, then all of a sudden the rug gets pulled from under your feet and you have to pick yourself back up again and get on with it.

A week ago Thunder were fine. We were making progress in 10 man on Lich King and 25 man was very slowly, but steadily progressing.

Then 2 players left, which was a huge blow. Then another one. And another 2. Then another one, and another one after that, followed by another one.

In the last 24 hours another 3 players have left, including our Mage class master, Rosey.

At this point in time, the prospects for Thunder progression in 10 man is looking dim. 25 man progression is a complete no no. And even getting a 25 man together is looking dicey. If we do it’ll be a farm of the first 4 bosses every week followed by wipes and more wipes on night 2. It’s very frustrating, especially as all bar 1 person left Thunder for another guild, Haribo.

In hindsight I don’t blame any of them. They wanted to progress in 10 and 25 man, and that, for them, just wasn’t happening with any great speed in Thunder. I can understand their situation, because I was hoping we were going to be killing the Lich King in 10 man very very soon, which would open Heroic mode up for a play about with.

More frustrating because Wednesday night’s 10 man run saw me spend the last frost emblems I’ll need to for major upgrades. My average item level is now well above the item level of gear in 10 man normal (average of 256 vs 251 gear in 10 man ICC). My Gearscore (bleh, I know ppl hate it, but I find it useful) is about 16 short of 5,800, which is pretty damn high. And I’ve started regularly hitting 8,500 DPS against the likes of Festergut, who is used these days as a DPS check.

As for the Retribution in the title?

The druid was boring in the end. Too slow in the DPS department at low levels, and shifting form constantly was a drag.

So I’ve rolled up a Retribution Paladin! :)

I’ve logged, so far, 33 hours on her in just under 3 weeks, and she’s already sitting at level 37!

There are several things about the Paladin class that make this such an enjoyable experience so far:

Survivability: LOL! How about taking on +5/+6 mobs and not even breaking a sweat? Groups of 5/6 mobs simultaneously, and all above your level? Easy!

Downtime: Eh? What’s that? Paladins have spells and abilities that not only cause damage, but replenish health and mana. Coming out of a fight, if I have less than 95% health then it’s a bad thing. Very frequently I’m back at 100% health & mana before I finish looting the body.

Travel: You also get the journeyman riding skill for free as part of your training, with a free mount, plus talents that increase your on foot and mounted speed by up to 15%. Again, less downtime and more time crushing skulls!

So I’m having an obscenely fun time with her. I’ll get her to 80, as the intention was always, and will be to have her as raid backup should I need to play a tank or melée DPS. We’ve been in need of both recently, and with the recent departures from the guild we have a spot (or two) for one. Hopefully I’ll be able to get her to 80 within the next 6 weeks or so, and it won’t take me long to get her ICC ready after that.

The reason for the quick levelling has everything to do as well with the Heirloom gear I’ve decked her out in:

Polished Spaulders of Valour

Polished Breastplate of Valour

Bloodied Arcanite Reaper

Altogether that gets me a bonus 20% experience, which soon stacks up and the levels fly by!

So having a ton of fun on the Pally, and a return to melée after playing a Regen Scrapper in City of Heroes. \o/

Posted in Gaming, Personal, Saruya's WoW Life | 4 Comments

Bearback Mountain

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Saruya

Mama Bear

And now I’m a bear! \o/

So yeah, I’ve started a Druid alt, to level in the times in between raids when there’s naff all to do on my mage.

To be honest, it’s pretty much EZMODE. You have your tauren caster form, then at level 10 you have to do this pain in the ass quest chain to get your Bear (tank) form, as you can see above. Other shapeshifting forms include Aquatic (for speedy travel in water), travel (cheetah), cat (dps) Moonkin (laser chicken DPS. Bwark!) Healing Tree (caster heals) and finally flight form, which saves on buying a flying mount tbh.

The good thing is you can collect herbs while still shapeshifted, so nipping about in flight form collecting herbs in Northrend will be a damn sight quicker than on my mage. So I’m dumping Herbalism on the mage, and switching to engineering on her, purely for the haste buffs engineering can give you. And I need more haste. If they sold it on street corners, I’d be there, gaunt faced, with a well used fiver in hand, looking for a hit.

As for the EZMODE comment – Fire off a couple of DPS casts in tauren form, and when the mob approaches instantly hit bear form and tank the mob the rest of the way to 0hp. Piece of piss. And you can self heal. Easier than a mage tbh, who can’t tank whatsoever, and has to be constantly on the move kiting mobs. Which is a contradictory play style to the mechanics of playing a mage, who, for the most part, needs to be stationary to cast.

As for the guild, we’ve finally managed to get to the Lich King in 10 man.

Note I say get to, not kill. That’s still a bit off as yet, but we’re getting there!

So 25 man tonight, and we’re off to Valithria Dreamwalker. Another boss I’ve never downed in 10 or 25. But most of my time raiding seems to be spent in progression fights – last 10 man was Putricide progression for a lot of people who’d never been to him before. I think I’ve maybe had 3 nights farming since I began raiding last month. I don’t mind, but I am still trying to get a lot of my level 232 gear shot of, and replaced with more level 264 gear via Frost Emblems. Better gear = easier & faster progression.

Either way it’s still fun! :D

Posted in Saruya's WoW Life | 4 Comments

ME2: Mission Accomplished.

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Saruya

Mass Effect 2 – Complete.

Overall impressions are that it was a good game, albeit weaker than the first game. Story line and game mechanics were less impressive this time around, but it does set up the third and final game in the trilogy fairly well. Unless you managed to get Shepherd killed off at the end. God knows how that save game will play out in part 3…

But some parts of the game were infuriatingly stupid.

Gas giants orbiting their sun at half the distance Earth orbits the sun (aka an Astronomical Unit, or au) once every 25 days? Seriously? That thing must be whipping round its sun so feckin fast that it’s egg shaped. Not to mention temperature and the fact that its atmosphere should have boiled away almost instantly…

One among a slew of niggles that, while certainly not enough to ruin the game, certainly went some way towards taking the sheen off of the experience.

Next on the list to complete is Dragon Age. Bioware’s other big recent release. There are niggles there as well, more related to the game’s DLC. But that’s another post for another day…

 

And yes, I have been making more of an effort to post recently, as you have no doubt noticed. Made a fair bit easier by installing a WordPress application on my HTC Hero, which means I can write posts from anywhere at any time.

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Hellscream’s Warsong – Sing along now!

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Saruya

So the new ICC zone buff went online last week, and with it everyone, for the moment at least, gets a 5% buff to health, damage and healing.

Now that it has been implemented, Blizzard state that they can increase it at any time, and indeed it has been stated that it can go as high as 30% incrementally in 5% notches. But for the moment it’s only 5%.

So the question remains, with it being an optional buff (you can opt to play without it on a raid wide basis) do you take the help, or do it “naturally”?

IMO everyone bar the hardest of the hardcore should be using it. Why the hell not? Why make life difficult for yourself otherwise? We downed Festergut in 10 man on the day the buff went live, and it’s the first time, despite number beyond measure of attempts in both 10 and 25 man, that I have been involved in downing him.

Did the buff help? Undoubtedly. We took him down on the enrage timer thanks to a DOT effect, as the raid had wiped when he enraged.

Did we care? My Frost Emblems don’t care. The new bits of gear I’ll be picking up certainly couldn’t give a monkeys. Why the hell should I?

Sure, we only managed to do it because of the Warsong crutch. But caring otherwise would just be, as a wise man once said, “Pride fuckin with ya”.

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Wow Free Days.

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Saruya

I think I’ll do this more, take a holiday from Azeroth.

Haven’t logged on at all today, and feel much the better for it. So I managed to get quite a bit further into ME2 and also played Trine for nearly 90 minutes. Really nice game, with a good mix of puzzles, platforming and combat. One to get a bit more playtime into I reckon.

So one more mission or so to clear up in ME2, then it’s off to the Collector homeworld. No idea how close to the end of the game that puts me, but it can’t be a million miles away.

To be frank, it hasn’t been as good a game as ME1. Some of the design decisions are completely nonsensical to me. Weapons for one. You’re living in a galaxy where weapons use no ammo, and you only need to stop them overheating in order to use them indefinitely.

So why in the name of good fuck would the entire galaxy decide en masse to start using ammo in the two years between games? If you run out of ammo (the game tries to state it isn’t ammo, but clips for the weapon’s cooling systems – and then tells you in a loading screen to remember to reload often, as you don’t want to run out of ammo mid-fight! Nnnnngh!) you’re basically fucked.

Would the enemy forces not just stick with the old system of weapons design and fight ground battles on an attritional basis?

No! Apparently they were all invited to this big secret meeting and all agreed to play fair at blowing each other’s brain matter out.

Sigh.

Listen Bioware. It’s an RPG, not Gears of War. Sort it out for ME3. Pretty please?

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Time for a change…

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Saruya

Thought I’d change the theme, the old one’s been up a while and it was starting to look a bit samey.

So new theme, new year (erm, nearly – chinese new year good enough?) and a new post!

God I am slacking at the post writing recently…

Anyway, things have been quiet on my end, as if you couldn’t tell already. Can’t believe I’ve only made 3 posts in the past 5 months! Time to start writing more again methinks. Yeah, I know I say that all the time, but it’ll happen sometime right?

So since the last post, Shill has joined Thunder on his Shadow Priest, Cesc, I have continued gearing up, begun raiding on a regular basis in Icecrown Citadel (finally!) and generally having a laugh. I did recently complete a fair old grind to get the [Reins of the Onyx Netherwing Drake], which is a funky looking flying mount. Took about 4 weeks of daily quests to get from hated to exalted with the Netherwing faction, whereupon you get one drake for free, and you can buy the other 5 or so for 200g a pop.

Glad I stuck with it tbh, because most players fly about on Proto-Drakes, so it’s a bit different, because not all players are willing to put in the time and effort to get to exalted…

This weekend is a free re-activation weekend on City of Heroes, so I popped on to see if any of the old faces were still knocking about, and to see how the old Supergroup (guild) were doing.

It was desolate. The SG is completely defunct – 2 players other than me have even logged in during the past 3 months, 1 that day and the other 18 days ago. The server, Defiant, is virtually empty. I went on originally at 1:30am this morning and there were only 74 players online. Back in the day, at that time on a Friday night/Saturday morning, there used to be 300-400 players still online. Not these days. I called back on about 10:30 this morning, and the population was only marginally higher at 94. So it looks as though the old saying, you can never go home, applies equally to MMOs.

Out of interest, it had been 524 days since I last logged on, which is nearly 18 months. So I checked to see, in the 2 years I played, how much time I had racked up on my main toon, Sar. Now bear in mind I’ve been playing my mage for just short of a year now (two weeks or so), and in that time I have amassed about 780 hours played on that single character. I did a check on my main CoH character: 506 hours.

Man, I play waaaay too much WoW. 150% of the time /played in half the time (1 year) is 3 times as much spent playing WoW than I ever did in CoH. Hell I’ve spent 200 hours at level 80, and I only dinged 80 on January 2nd. Half the time logged in 2 months that I spent playing CoH on my main there. Sheeeeeit bitch.

I really need to see about conquering the games-mountain I have built up atm. Off the top of my head I have:

  • Mirror’s Edge
  • Mass Effect 2
  • Assassin’s Creed 2
  • X3: Gold
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum
  • Dragon Age: Origins
  • Colon: The Revenge: Part 1: The Attack of the Colons: !

Ok, that last one is made up, but that’s just the immediate list. There’s plenty more on top of that, for instance:

  • Torchlight
  • Grid
  • Guitar Hero 5
  • Braid
  • Trine
  • Left for Dead 2 (borrowed copy)
  • Maybe a bit of Quake Live!

They all need some attention as well, because while playing WoW, I tend to either not play any other games at all, or just play one or two for a bit and go back and do something else in WoW.

So perhaps I should resolve to play WoW during the week, and at the weekends try and give some of the other games a bit of a go, because they ain’t gonna play themselves…

Infact, I think I’ll go play some ME:2!

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Level 80 – To Icecrown!

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Saruya

The Lich King awaits…

This has been a while in coming this post.

I hit 80.

About 3 weeks ago infact :)

After months of playing, about 530 hours of lazily levelling and farting about, I finally saw the final yellow ding glow in Utgarde Pinnacle with my guildies running in a 5 man dungeon.

Since that I have managed to massively upgrade my gear, so much so that I think I’m about ready for the hardest and highest level raids in the entire game: Icecrown 10 and 25 man raids.

I also spunked 4,000 gold on epic flying, which really hurt my wallet, as all I had was 4,181 gold :p

But I made up 1,000 gold in a couple of days through selling my alchemy produce and grinding out quests, so back up to respectable levels, although each new piece of gear needs re-gemmed and re-enchanted, which runs into hundreds of gold per item.

So thought is being given to dumping Herbalism, especially as the ability to find Frost Lotus for Flask of the Frost Wyrm is extremely low and taking up mining again or maybe jewelcrafting, as alchemy will allow me to produce the raw gem through transmutation, which I can then cut and socket myself. Saving me thousands of gold potentially, especially if I’m going to level another character to 80 (which should be a lot faster this time round!).

So I’m finally at the level cap, at least until Cataclysm hits, which looks to be in November of this year.

Posted in Gaming, General World of Warcraft, Personal, Saruya's WoW Life | 2 Comments