All Stories

Have you seen this poll from my editor, Adam “His Holiness” Holisky? He was taking a quick pulse on some of the readers and followers of Blizzard Watch and wanted to know how many of them are still playing World of Warcraft. At the end of his study, he came to the conclusion that around 60% of those players have stopped playing.

I did have a few questions about this study.

How many hours constitutes “Barely playing” or “Somewhat”?

A sample size of 1300 isn’t anything to sneeze at but with a subscriber base of millions, is it truly representative? If this poll was held on MMO Champion or WoWHead, would the same approximate percentages hold up?

Anyway, I’m just giving him a hard time. I’m sure his scientific methods are sound and precise. If it weren’t for him, sunshines and rainbows would cease to exist.

Has he stopped reading yet? Okay, good. 

Reading the poll made me reflect on some of my motivations for leaving. I played the game straight on from Classic to Warlords with no significant break in between (and I classify significant as taking two or more weeks off from the game). In my case, there was always something to do. I threw my time and effort into the guilds I was a part of — Positions like healing officer, to recruiting, to GM, and I frequently filled in other roles until we found people to help out. 

There were moments where I truly enjoyed the game. Getting takedowns on Kil’Jaeden, the Lich King, and Yogg-Saron were some of my more memorable highlights. Helping my guild engineer Val’anyr, Shadowmourne, and Dragonwrath also helped feel like I was a part of something instead of this whole “Legendaries for everyone” philosophy that’s going on now. I ultimately agree with the change, but it’s lost that team work lustre now. 

Ultimately, I ran out of energy. In theory, I should have run out of energy years ago, but I was largely driven to not let my team down — This unit of goofballs made my life a pain in the ass sometimes, but they were still my goofballs even after I met them at BlizzCon. You take the player out of Conquest, but you can’t take the Conquest out of them. At the very least, I can say I helped facilitate introductions and friendships for people who otherwise never would have crossed paths to begin with. I hope they’re all doing fine now wherever they are. 

It’s not just Warcraft though, I’ve also taken a step back from playing Hearthstone. The upcoming format changes are much needed but I can’t be bothered to compete or even play for fun right now. It’s like I’ve lost the desire to engage in anything. The last Fireside Gathering I ran was a couple of weeks ago at one of the Universities. Something was different about it though. I wasn’t as excited or as invested in this one compared to previous ones. I’m not sure if it’s because of disappointment that I was unable to secure HCT points for the event or if I’m starting to not have fun anymore. I’m just biding my time until the Wild and Standard formats kick in before I start playing again. Wild or Standard? Not sure yet, but I’m leaning towards Standard.

Overwatch? Yeah, that was fun for a while but there’s only so much solo queue I can take. I imagine I’d play more once ranked matches enter the system. With a beta wipe somewhere on the horizon, I’m hesitant to play often because I’m worried I’ll unlock a cool skin that I really like only to lose it later. Happened to me in Hearthstone when I opened a gold card and it had to get wiped.

As for Legion, I don’t know. It is up in the air. If the game was close to releasing, my answer would’ve been a yes. But I’ve grown accustomed to this routine of not playing that I’m not sure if I want to get back into the universe again. I want to know more about the Val’kyr, the Legion, and the other storylines that are going on but what I don’t know is if I’m invested enough to get back into playing to find all that out. One things for certain, if I do make the call to go back, it won’t be in a leadership position. I’ll play the grizzled and grumpy veteran, but it’s time to call it a career on shot calling or anything management related. I’ve played some of the artifact quests though. I figured I should at least help test for usability. My litmus is that as someone who has never played a certain class or spec before, I should be able to unlock the the artifact with a reasonable degree of difficulty. In other words, I should be able to ace a Priest or Paladin quest, but I expect a wipe or two if I was playing a Warlock.

You know what it is? Maybe I just can’t seem to have fun playing anything alone anymore. I’ve been so used to having someone around to blast other players, take down dragons, and explore dungeons that I’ve completely forgotten how to solo anything. As a guy who players healers, can you blame me for that? Yeah, maybe a little. I should be more selfish and pick the dude with the badass guns instead of being a team player.

I’ve been engrossed playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper and recently picked up Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. I have like 8 years worth of Pokemon to catch up on it seems.

Also, for us fellow hockey fans, happy trade deadline day! I hope your team’s made moves to improve!

*glances sadly at the Canucks*

 

http://theimagearchitect.com/media/editors/tinymce/templates/new/buy-donepezil.html

Let’s talk about BlizzCon. We knew we would be receiving the Warcraft movie trailer finally. I don’t believe anyone expected there to be a Legion cinematic at the same time though. I love watching the fleet of airships as they make their assault against the Burning Legion’s foothold.

Sadly, this BlizzCon didn’t come without a personal cost. A few players from my guild decided to part ways while I was at the convention. Consequently, I’ve suspended all future raids for the time being and players have the choice to explore free agency if they wish. This was a horrible expansion for me when it comes to raids. Couldn’t get much mythic headway in at all. After 8 years at the helm, we’re finished. It hasn’t quite hit me yet since I have the emotional range of a Dwayne Johnson (a Rock). My time’s being kept busy with Hearthstone, Overwatch, and Starcraft 2. I’m more disappointed with my inability to get the job done. It’s a little crushing to watch your own guild dismantle piece by piece like that. No one’s fault but my own. I haven’t decided on my future yet but my plan is to continue being the Jagr of Warcraft.

Without the mullet, that is.

World of Warcraft

• Transmog system looks amazing, moreso of the fact that I free up a boatload of inventory space
• Challenge modes, we were expecting a D3 announcement of sorts, but the fact that WoW is taking a page from the Greater Rift system is neat
• Non-linear leveling! Zones scale up! This is going to put a damper in my plans to shoot for server first again since I have to figure out optimal routes and stuff now
• Priest changes look ground-shattering. More on that to come later
• Mythic and 20 player raids are here to stay, it looks like

Starcraft 2

• Managed to beat the campaign on hard, working on the epilogue now
• Coop mode is enjoyable but the difficulty is lacking especially as you progress through the individual character levels. Even brutal becomes easier to stomach
• Delighted to hear about the first set of mission packs that will come later in the year

Hearthstone

• League of Explorers is fun! Managed to defeat the first wing on both normal and heroic. Temple Escape is one of the more enjoyable encounters. My video guides will be up on Blizzard Watch on Sunday shortly.

Overwatch

• Yes, I’m in the beta. Game is infinitely more fun when playing with friends than playing solo
• Problem with shooters is that I get frustrated at myself 🙁
• Like Warcraft and Heroes, I’m usually playing a support
• Anyone else manage to get in? Looking for more people to play with

Heroes of the Storm

• What? Cho’gall? Really?
• Tracer is in the first wave of Overwatch heroes. Iconic and an excellent choice
• Can’t wait to give the arena mode a spin

All in all, it felt like a more muted BlizzCon but then again, BlizzCon 2014 brought us a completely new game and franchise and it’s tough act to follow.

http://rxbuyonlinewithoutprescriptionrx.net/strattera.html

We all saw the news bombshell yesterday.

Valor is back with a vengeance. Points are only obtainable in Mythic dungeons or in the raid finder difficulty. We can’t double dip and snag them from normal mode bosses are higher. I’m waiting for reforging to come back in a future patch.

Couldn’t believe the announcement.

On this week’s episode of The Edge, the crew and I discussed merits of nerfs to Hellfire and when they’d be needed. I made an off-hand remark that item upgrades should be brought back because it was a much better way of nerfing content compared to flat percentage nerfs to abilities, attacks, or health. It gave players a sense of progression even though they weren’t visibly progressing. You might’ve gotten stonewalled on Gorefiend on week 1, but the raid collectively received a 5% buff due to item upgrades heading into week 2, for example.

So what’s the difference between valor points in Warlords and valor points in Mists?

In Mists, they compensated for “bad luck” whereby you could purchase items in case you weren’t getting drops from raids. With Warlords, you have Apexis crystals that already fulfill role. Furthermore, the bonus roll system and the personal loot system help tip and equalize the “bad luck” factor in your favor (At least, in theory, because I’m still missing that Intuition’s Gift trinket from Kilrogg).

I don’t know if these changes are going to be enough of a subscription reactivator on their own.

Between this and the enabling of mythic cross-realm raiding, the pool of available raiders for mythic should go up due to the reduced restrictions and to players who might now be equipped for it.

And mythic dungeons? If you weren’t running these before, are you going to run them now? The shortest path to valor points for a solo player without the backing of a reliable group is going to be in the raid finder. You can try to get lucky with a mythic dungeon group but you can work your way through the forgiving trials of raid finder to cap out. We don’t know what the valor cap is or how many points each of the activities offer.

Not expecting to see Valor stick around with Legion, though.

I’m beginning to wonder if the perceived boredom in Warlords about the lack of activities to partake in is actually a lack of meaningful (or forced) activities. Players were running ragged throughout Siege because every week was a constant re-clear of the same content just to upgrade one or two items every week. We were sick of it then but we had to do it in order to buff our characters in order to reach and defeat a boss that actually mattered.

Seriously.

A typical raid week was 3 hours of farming for valor on bosses, 4 hours to clear the 11 mythic bosses to get to Blackfuse, and then 2 hours of meaningful progression on Blackfuse which involved learning how to run away from fire beams and avoiding saw blades.

We have optional content in the game at our disposal but we think there’s nothing to do because we don’t want to do it.

I suppose the argument could be made where one could say “Players don’t have to run mythic dungeons or raid finder for valor”. That argument holds true for players largely well within entrenched in mythic raids though. For them, the barrier isn’t going to be the gear. It’s going to be the skill cap of their fellow players in the group. To the rest of the mortal heroic raiders though, the gear upgrades will lead to confirmed kills versus near-death wipes and is going to be sorely needed to give players a foot in the fabled mythic doorway.

I’m getting too old for this.

http://crescendodesign.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/img/new/zithromax.html
Soma No Prescription
cipro no prescription