Gaming Lifestyle: Who We Are

My darling spouse, yeah he’ll get that, pointed out last week that the blog failed to ever do an “about us” piece and that it needed a “lifestyle” column.  Admittedly he was right, I said it in a public writing dear, and so this morning I’m going to rectify that oversight.

Who are the crazy 40-something's behind Gaming Couples?  We are Valhakar and Stitchersflock (or Val and Stitchers for short), happily married and residing in the warmth of the desert.  Unfortunately we weren’t blessed with children so that joy is missing from our gaming life.  Val works insane hours sometimes but luckily he still has time for gaming and goofing off.  I am the luckiest wife around because I’m blessed to stay home and not have to deal with the corporate grind.  We have a house full of dogs, a cat, and a Severe Macaw that keeps us on our toes constantly.  Ever tried gaming while a parrot is nibbling your earlobes?  Let’s just say it’s made for some interesting pick-up groups over the years!

Valhakar has been playing computer games for almost as long as they have been around.  His MMO adventures began in Ultima Online and carried on until Everquest was released.  He has played almost every AAA release at some point but has definite preferences.  He isn't a huge fan of Guild Wars and at this point WOW makes his skin crawl.  He was eagerly awaiting the release of The Secret World in June 2012, and was incredibly frustrated with Funcom when the game released.  Right now, Val is looking forward to the open beta of MechWarrior Online and has a WOW subscription because his wife does.  He also pops into Rift fairly regularly for PvP battles.

Stitchersflock, aka the blog’s primary author, is relatively new to computer gaming.  Valhakar had a devious plan in mind when they got married way back when and eventually his plan succeeded.  *Hey there’s a blog idea … how did the devious plan work and could it work for you?*  It backfired to some extent though, since I’ve developed a fondness (aka I actually READ quest text before running off to kill ten kobolds lol) for games with story lines.  Guild Wars was my first MMO, even though Val calls it a baby-MMO, and then I moved up to WOW.  Since then I’ve played Everquest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Aion, and several of the free to play games out there.  Like Val, I looked forward to the release of The Secret World and my disappoint was far closer to anger than any other emotion.  Currently, I’m being blown away by the Mists of Pandaria expansion in WOW and I still regularly pop-in on Rift and Everquest 2.

Time will tell if this becomes a semi-regular column but it just might.  But for this morning, I need that first cup of coffee and then I am going to go work on my Pandaran Monk! 

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World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria First Impressions

We went to bed at normal time last night, and so thankfully I think we missed a lot of hysteria in the opening couple of hours of the expansion.  However, the dogs woke me up early to go out and I decided to stay up and I must say I don’t regret it even if I’m a little sleepy as I type this up. LOL

First impressions are all very positive.  I made my monk and rogue characters and logged in to start rested bonus on all of my other characters.  I’ve been playing my monk, she’s currently level 5 and a blast.  The artwork is stunning, the environment is beautiful, and it is incredibly peaceful.  A couple of tips: no guild invites until you’ve chosen a faction and no mailboxes until you’ve chosen a faction.

There has been controversy since the game launched in Europe.  Most European servers were slammed  with queues, random disconnects, log-in issues, and players swarming quest NPCs.  It appears that those issues have stabilized and are returning to status quo.  However, the biggest controversy of all is that the World First Level 90 was achieved in under four hours of the expansion going live.  However, it appears the player has had his level rolled back and the achievement taken away.  My only commentary on this is quite simple, how sad is your real life when you have to cheat at a video game for achievement points and recognition?

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World of Warcraft: The Wanderer’s Way

From the mouth of babes, from the opening lines of LiLi’s Journal:

Entry One: Back to the Basics
                   
       I decided to explore my home using the Wanderer's Way, a philosophy that Uncle Chen has written a lot about in his missives. Basically it means to take each journey one step at a time, observe everything around you, speak to everyone you meet, and soak in all the details.

How prophetic that one small, child NPC accurately summarizes all that drives me batty with WOW.  Honestly, it is the one thing I am determined to avoid this expansion.  I am not rushing to the end game nor am I giving my new characters heirloom gear; heck I’d even turn off guild experience bonuses if I could.  I want to enjoy the story, the scenery, the experience without rushing to max level and then sitting there for years regretting the decision. 

Yes, we will miss out on the out-of control prices and price gouging on the Auction House as gear and raw material prices skyrocket.  But then again, so what?  Gold isn’t all that difficult to earn and it surely beats the competitive drive to try and obtain a realm or world first.  I’m going to go at my own pace. 

What am I looking forward to when the expansion launches tonight? 

• Lorewalkers: Seriously story driven faction is what I’m all about
• Order of the Cloud Serpent: mounts, pets, and Jewelcrafing mounts all require their faction which has me super intrigued
• End game content driven by progressive story
• Chubby characters in the form of pandas – the pandas are cute but it will finally be SWEET to see characters who aren’t emaciated or super skinny
• Scenarios – although after the debacle that was Fall of Theramore I hold out very little hope that these will be nothing more than zerg runs for Valor Points and not about telling a story and taking content at a reasonable pace to experience said stories – but I am more than open to Blizzard proving me wrong
• New and truly awesome hunter pets to find, tame, and add to the stable … BTW, WANT TO BUY MORE STABLE SLOTS!

Just a couple of things to look forward too at our, and your, own pace.  So, relax and follow LiLi’s advice and explore Pandaria and the environment while remember to stop and have a life outside of Azeroth. 

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Star Wars: The Old Republic: Quality of Life Improvements Coming

Star Wars: The Old Republic has been awash in change lately.  This week, Tuesday to be precise, server consolidation happened.  Low population servers were merged with high population servers.  The list of consolidated servers can be found here, and all characters will be moved to the new server.  If you have more than 8 characters involved in the move, don’t panic.  The maximum character limit per server has been increased to twelve and in case the consolidation involved more than 12 characters all of them will be on the same server.  You will, however, not be able to create new characters over and above 12 characters per server.

Patch 1.4 will see even more quality of life improvements to the game:

• Group Finder will now teleport you back to the point you zoned out of when you zoned to the operation.
• 2 hour limits are being implemented to bind on pick-up and bind-on legacy gear.
• Facial mood expressions are coming!
• Companion character customization – finally remove their helmets and color unification!

So time to dive back into SWTOR with full servers and improved game play options.  Also coming this Fall: a new operation, a new warzone, a new companion, and free to play.

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Lord of the Rings: Changing the Endgame

We know how I feel about “endgame” content.  Today’s Developer Diary from Lord of the Rings Online is another breath of fresh air regarding “endgame”. 

Hytbold is solo endgame content in which a player gets to rebuild a destroyed village.  The player’s instanced village will be phased and will consist of rotating daily quests to aid villagers to rebuild their destroyed homes and shops.  The rewards are class specific, trait line specific armor sets with raid level set bonuses that are bind to account. Upon completing the village, players will be able to take part in a capstone experience that culminates the storylines of Eastern Rohan.  Upon successful completion, the player will be named as Thane and considered an honorary noble of Rohan. 

Riders of Rohan will use the Open Tapping system which means that if you do damage to a monster or heal those damaging the monster, you get credit for the kill.  Credit isn’t determined by the amount of damage you’ve done nor are rewards determined by the damage you’ve done, so long as you’ve damaged or healed then you get credit and rewarded as if you solo killed.  If you are in a group, you will get credit so long as you deal damage or heal your group members.  Standing there doing nothing while your group does everything will reward you with the effort you put forth.

Remote looting is now implemented for all zones in Riders of Rohan.  Remote looting means no more rolling on loot, loot is generated for every player that contributes to the kill individually.  It also means no more looting gathering from corpses.  All loot generated this way goes into the Pending Loot list.  You must click on the Pending Loot icon to receive your shiny new loot!  Remember the Pending Loot List has a life of one hour and can only hold 50 items at once, so click that Pending Loot icon often.

Riders releases next month and the more tidbits the developers release, the more interesting the expansion becomes.

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EA Strikes Again aka the Impending Death of Bioware

When we first got married, hubby was the gamer.  He was passionate about games like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights.  Then Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic released and he had the very first hook for gaming that drew me in.  I watched as he played Jade Empire on the XBox after work and eventually got brave enough to give it a go myself.  But nothing beats my first Bioware game KOTOR and the special place it holds in my heart to this day.  Bioware was THE standard for RPG gaming.  They managed to tell compelling stories, have interesting game play and always seemed more concerned about was the game fun and ready for release than meeting corporate goals just because those goals existed.

Then Bioware was bought by EA and everything changed.  Way back then, hubby predicted that EA would be the death of Bioware.  And slowly, and I loathe to commit the following words to print, he was being proven correct with each new game release.  The nails in the coffin, so to speak, were Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect 3.  Both games, while having their strong points and decent stories, showed strong evidence of being rushed to market and a dramatic decline in the powerful story telling EA is capable of.

Today, Bioware announced the death of the company although it was in the format of a blog posting concerning the retirement of it’s founders, Drs. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.  I am seriously bummed.  I wish them both the best in all their future endeavors, but I dread any new titles being released.  I don’t trust Bioware after the tragic, horrible, “what the hell was THAT!?!” ending of Mass Effect 3, and that was with the doctors still at the helm of the company but under EA’s thumb.  I’m sure that EA will continue to push Bioware to publish crap games to make money at the expense of game play, story telling, and players.

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World of Warcraft: Disappoint Abounds in Theramore

The Fall of Theramore scenario released this afternoon, a day early.  The whole thing was a complete waste of time and completely failed in telling a story or getting deeper into the lore.  As defined by Blizzard:

Scenarios are short, instanced adventures for three level 90 players of any class.

Unlike dungeons and raids, scenarios present you with a number of goals you need to achieve in order to progress and will reward you with Valor points as well as random loot bags containing rare quality items.

So, by short, instanced adventures they mean incredibly poor story telling, easy mobs, and what rare quality items are they talking about?  Oh wait, would that be the FIREWORKS I received to celebrate the destruction of Theramore and Jaina Proudmoore’s home being decimated?  The required gear score is far too high, three people are not needed, and this would have been far more fun and challenging with just one other person.

The whole thing was horrible.  There was no story at all.  You get dropped into the instance to see a Goblin zeppelin captain dropping a bomb on the mage tower in Theramore.  Then you are unceremoniously dumped on the docks and then you just randomly kill mobs to complete stage goals.  There’s no dialog, no cut-scenes, no REASON why you are there!  Jaina doesn’t ask for help until the very end.  The mobs are easy and there is zero challenge.  Once the expansion is live, these scenarios are just going to turn into zerg rushes to farm Valor marks.  If you are like me, and assuming the other scenarios have actual story content in them, you won’t ever get to experience the story because it will turn into what dungeons are now, a rush to the end to move on and get out.

Hubby watched over my shoulder this afternoon and based on what he saw, he won’t be rushing out to buy the expansion.  What reason is there?  So far, first impression of the expansion isn’t positive.  Ghostcrawler promised there would be story content and it’s lacking abysmally based on what I saw today.  Yes, there is still a slim margin of hope based on Li Li’s travel journal but part of me is terrified that hubby’s pessimism is right and Li Li’s journal is just a device to promote book sales.  I’m going to choose to bury my head in the sand for another week and believe that Blizzard hasn’t completely forgotten how to tell brilliant stories.

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Rift: Tempest

Rift revealed the new warrior soul yesterday afternoon:  Get ready to be a Tempest Warrior!  This is a ranged warrior build, dealing lighting based attacks from melee weapons.  Their up-close and personal melee abilities and damage is greatly reduced.  The reveal video contains a wealth of information and the highlights include the following:

• Tempest: AOE Build, 30+ meter DPS range, Stationary invisibility
• Warlord: DPS soul with tank/survivability utility talents added,
• Void Knight: Magical Mitigation tank
• Riftblade: DPS souls, self-heals and elemental attacks added
• Reaver: Tank soul with mitigation lowered and DPS increased
• Beastmaster: Support role through DPS, pet usage and now has all former Warlord abilities
• Champion: DPS soul with focus on AOE
• Paragon: DPS soul with single target focus
• Paladin: Physical mitigation tank

Overall, the class changes and the new soul have me very interested in trying out abilities when the expansion launches on 13 November 2012.

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Guild Wars 2: Umm, What?

From the world of Guild Wars 2 developer’s blog, “In the past, we’ve talked about how in Guild Wars 2 we designed the game to avoid a common problem in many MMOs: grinding through chunks of boring, repetitive content to get to the occasional pockets of fun.”  Ummm, what?  Do they play their own game?  The entire game is nothing but grinding through boring, repetitive chunks of content with occasional fun.  Honestly, feed my cows and kill wasp nests is fun, non-grinding, non-boring game play?  I freely admit that after that opening content, quoted above, I stopped reading.  My view of their game is diametrically opposed to their own.

In other Guild Wars 2 news, according to a forum posting from Colin Johnson, ArenaNet game designer, “We do appreciate that you’d like to buy lots of new content, but we’d prefer to give a lot of it to you for free, cause that’s what we think a responsible MMO company does!”.  The post is toward the bottom of the first page of the forum thread.  So, I guess by his own words, ArenaNet was irresponsible for charging for expansion to Guild Wars!  The hubris of the ArenaNet team continues to amaze me. 

 

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World of Warcraft: AMA Reddit and Our 100th Post

When Cataclysm released in 2010 and I first got a glimpse of the camel mount, I instantly had to have it.  Well, today was that day!  I am now the proud owner of both camels and my grin was just a large as the grin on the camel’s face.  Yes, I realize it probably means nothing to anyone else but it made my morning today!  And my day only got better when my priest started doing heroics and she wasn’t at the bottom of the meters.  Of course, I got into the End of Time and was completely clueless about what was going on.  Time to do some reading on all those instances I haven’t done.

This post is our 100th since launching the blog and website in April this year.  It’s been an interesting adventure so far.  When we started the blog and website we didn’t anticipate that I’d be playing WOW again and he would be dabbling in a couple of games.  There have been two great disappointments since April, The Secret World and Guild Wars 2, but luckily these have been offset by pleasant discoveries like Rift and familiar games like Everquest 2 and Lord of the Rings Online.

Yesterday, a cast of developers held an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit.  WOW has posted a transcript of the question and answer session.  There are many interesting answers and I will let individual readers pull out what interests them most of all.  I know for me, the answers solidified my interest in Mists of Pandaria.  Not because I’m dying to play a chubby Panda bear monk, but rather because it seems to be a return to lore based questing and the importance of story.  Although, I will roll three Pandarean characters: a monk, a rogue, and a yet to be determined Horde class.

Yes, I was incredibly disappointed with Cataclysm when it released two years ago.  It was my first expansion for WOW and the story seemed to take a back seat.  There were and are interesting stories to be found in Cataclysm quests, but they are sometimes very disjointed or occur so late in a zone that you have out-leveled the quests long before you acquire them.  I’m not getting my hopes up the Mists will be “perfect” but I anticipate a better questing experience than Cataclysm.

I’ve made a decision about Mists.  I’m going to level at my pace.  I’m planning on enjoying the story, the scenery, and the factions.  I’m not interested in the treadmill gear grind.  The get-it and replace-it game is never ending and doesn’t hold my interest.  I would much rather play my way and enjoy myself.  Yes, I know it is unfathomable that people play WOW for the story but I’m one of those oddities.  In fact, that was one of my favorite tidbits from yesterday’s Reddit, the next novel will be released for patch 5.1 and will focus on Vol’Jin. 

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Rift: Patch 1.10 Calm Before the Storm

Today, Rift released the Calm Before the Storm patch.  Patch notes can be found here and highlights follow:

• Guardian and Defiant characters can now conquer the planes of Telara together
• Guilds are now non-faction restricted
• Flagged PvP characters are restricted to grouping with their native faction
• Instant adventures, groups, raids, dungeons, trade, mail, and queues for warfronts are no longer faction exclusive
• If you love a Guardian, no worried your Defiant can now marry across faction lines
• New Instant Adventure added in Scarwood Reach
• New World Event – Autumn Harvest has arrived
• Improved weather and fog graphics have invaded Telara
• All callings now have access to resurrection ability at level 1

Those are just the highlights of the pre-expansion patch for Storm Legion and announced today, the new warrior soul will be announced on Friday September 14th at 2:30 PM Pacific Daylight Time.  Also announced this coming weekend, play, try, and return to Telara for free and experience the new patch content for yourself.  So come, jump into Rift and pick your soul and play the way you want!

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The War Z: So You Want a Hard Core Game with Consequences …

The fine folks producing The War Z firmly believe in consequences upon player death.  As detailed over at Gaming Blend, death has consequences in the post-apocalyptic first person shooter MMO.  When you die, you lose whatever is contained in your backpack at the time.  Be warned, that will include real world money items purchased in the games cash shop.  The developers want there to be consequences upon death and this is definitely one way to ensure that philosophy.  The game is currently in closed beta.

Source

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World of Warcraft: What WOW Could Borrow from Other Games

Well, I finally got around to claiming my Spectral Gryphon … thanks Honey, I know how much you wanted to resub to WOW.  But all my characters look awesome on her so I will always smile when I fly around on her.

So, all of my characters are 85 except my druid who is at 84, half way to 85 though.  I wanted them to all be able to queue for the Theramore event when it starts a week from tomorrow.  I haven’t picked up Tides of War yet but next time we are out and about running errands I will be picking it up.  Although I might just go ahead and pick-up the e-book instead. 

As I’ve leveled the last couple of weeks, I’ve realized that WOW could really benefit from borrowing a couple of ideas from the competition.

Mentoring: While leveling in WOW isn’t difficult or necessarily time consuming, it would be extremely nice if mentoring were possible in WOW.  Then friends and couples who play together but don’t have equal play time, could stop worrying about out leveling friends.  Everquest 2 and Rift have both implemented mentoring seamlessly into the game.  No NPC intervention required, just adjust your level to your parties and off you go to experience content together.  Everquest 2 also has the brilliant self-mentoring option which does cost gold, but allows you to mentor down to experience content without being capable of wiping out the entire zone. 

Instant Adventures and/or 2 Person Instances: Rift has both of these and both are brilliant, alternative ways to level.  Instant adventures automatically party up and mentor higher level characters to the appropriate level for the content.  It offers rewards based on “quests” completed and that are appropriate for the natural level of the character.  Two person instances are great for people that solo or prefer not to be a member of a huge guild.  It is especially nice if you only have a couple of hours to play at night and don’t want to hang around waiting for a pick-up group that may or may not successfully complete a five man instance.  Scenarios are a good step in the right direction but from what I’ve read recently they are going to be very difficult and I still will need another person if hubby and I want to try a scenario. 

Armor Dyes: Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, among other games, have the ability to change the color of armor.  Doesn’t sound like a big deal but it is something I really, really wish WOW would put in the game.  I am so very, very tired of brown, drab armor that may or may not have some muted colors tossed in.  It is nice that they have implemented Transmogrification but I’m still stuck with the same drab armor as others.  It may be the armor of my choice appearance wise, but it is still drab in color.  Honestly, I’m a girl I want armor that has some color to it! 

I’m not complaining and I don’t think WOW needs to revamp itself entirely to emulate the competition and new games.  I do think that it can reinvent itself over time and keep itself revitalized and interesting.  It’s time to realize that gamers aren’t all in our teens and twenties, thinking raiding is the ultimate accomplishment, or that “catering” to the “casuals” is a bad thing. (Personally, when any game has scheduled times where you must show up for events like raids then it is no longer a game and it has become a job.) 

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Guild Wars 2: Biggest Disappointment of the Year?

Guild Wars 2 is the most hyped game release of 2012 and rivals, if not surpasses, the hype over the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic last year at Christmas.  There is a huge difference though, the fan base for Guild Wars 2 is far, far more forgiving of ArenaNet than players and non-players were (and are) to Bioware.  Is that justified?  In my opinion, it is not and for two very simple, basic reasons: the auction house system and game forums.

When SWTOR released, Bioware had completely functional forums and the Galactic Trade Network (auction house) was viable, stable, and functional from the first day of head start.  ArenaNet has yet, almost two full weeks from the official launch date and less than 14 hours from two weeks post head start, to have a functional Trading Post (auction house) that is stable and consistently up and available for all players all the time.  Players, fans, and most media outlets for some reason are giving ArenaNet a complete bye on the fundamental aspect to the game, the game economy, and the player experience.  It makes no sense, unless they are blinded by advertising money and/or “handouts” to keep quiet about the flaws in the game.  The fans have no excuse for continuing to praise ArenaNet for their failures to correct the problem. 

Game forums are like bread and water to a starving man.  They provide a place for gamers to go to discuss the game, builds, strategy, and a centralized location to receive communication from the developers.  SWTOR, for all it’s launch issues and headaches, had fully functional forums from beta through launch and currently.  Those forums, especially the customer service forums, sometimes had answers which frustrated or down right pissed off customers but there was clear, concise, and direct communication with customers via the forums. 

That is just blatantly not true for Guild Wars 2 players.  Forums, in limited fashion, opened this week.  Communication is spotty at best and doesn’t seem to help ArenaNet when they do speak to their players.  From my brief time in their forums this morning, there is no negative comments or grumbling.  It is extremely odd for forums to be all happy and perky which tells me that ArenaNet is policing their forums and removing all negative comments.  While they have every right to do that, it is a sign that the corporation is very fearful of the truth and does not want to hear it.

SWTOR had launch difficulties, queues and too many servers, but it does not get credit for the many things it did successfully at launch: functional Galactic Trade Network, forums, direct forum communication from developers, and actual story lines to follow.  GW2 is a failed launch in almost every respect.  The game is still unplayable for thousands of people, they have closed digital sales on their own website because their servers cannot handle any new players, forums are not completely open, trading post is not stable, functional, or reliable, but by golly, that cash shop works 24/7! 

So, why are you still playing Guild Wars 2 and not something else?

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World of Warcraft: Trade Prince Gallywix is up to something …

Flying around Azshara today trying to finish leveling my Archeology on my Alchemist, I came upon the carved face of Trade Prince Gallywix in the side of a mountain.  Behind his large carved head, is a mini-golf course with level 90 guards roaming the grounds.  The whole scene peaked my interest in what the Trade Prince is up to, I might just might go work on leveling one of my Horde characters this coming week.  No promises though since I’m enjoying my Alliance characters far too much. 

I took my level 85 Warrior out for a spin today.  I haven’t played her since coming back and she did impressive damage.  I hadn’t yet completed the Thrall quest in Mount Hyjal on her.  You know the one, the love story quest which I think is one of the most beautifully written pieces of lore in any game.  She completed the quest without incident, which I don’t think would have been possible prior to Patch 5.0.4, well not without a lot of potions and bandages.  She is now proudly sporting her Mantle of Fury.  The class hasn’t been my favorite over the years, for a variety of reasons ranging from the rage mechanic to horrible low-end DPS.  Now however, her DPS wasn’t horrible in comparison to my casters and her self heals were more than sufficient to keep her alive.  She will no longer always be at the bottom of the character rotation. 

Yeah I know, how sad Mantle of Fury is my warrior’s favorite piece at this late in the expansion.  However, I don’t really raid and haven’t tried Raid Finder since coming back.  I hate the constant thought of gear chasing and gear replacement, just seems pointless.  I’m a quester at heart.  I might, just maybe, try the Raid Finder in the weeks to come. 

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Guild Wars 2: Account Insecurity

Like the picture above, there is a fog hanging over Guild Wars 2.  Plain and simple, accounts are not secure.  They have repeatedly said as much, and it has been experienced here: unauthorized login attempts from unknown locations attempting to obtain the account password.  ArenaNet is still refusing to open their forums and is strictly talking to their customers via third party sites like Twitter and Reddit.  The Trading Post was briefly functioning last night but upon login this morning it was once again down for maintenance and as usual, the cash shop was up and working. 

Don’t get me wrong, the game is fun and you can progress without using the trading post.  However, are you willing to continue to play and leave your account vulnerable to potential hackers?  Why hasn’t ArenaNet implemented mobile authenticators, or a series of security questions to protect account security? 

Technorati Tags: Guild Wars 2. GW2,ArenaNet