Another Return Post

As you may have noticed there is a considerable gap between the dates of my last post and this one, that is unfortunately because I haven't really had much to write about due to the things that I was mainly doing. That being World of Warcraft, Employment, and Shopping. Well actually now that I think about it, all of those would make for good short topics so I'll see what I can do.

Shopping - As many people know there's definitely a area for gaming entertainment now days with how easy many video streaming services have made it for people to just download a program and fire away, however that still does have a technology limitation and I haven't been able to do it. I went shopping originally for a computer that would allow me to play Star Wars : The Old Republic well, as due to me finding out a different way, my current computer didn't cut it. However at the same time with a new computer doesn't just come a new game, it comes pretty much a whole new experience, and as a side benefit I am now able to produce more interesting forms of content as well as probably playing The Old Republic, which I haven't tested well, but I'll be doing that soon enough.

World of Warcraft - Alice and I have had a few ups and downs with World of Warcraft in the short time that we came back to it. The general game experience was very fun, however at the same time it was very easy, and the community still hasn't improved much at all. I would in fact say that the community degraded further, but in any case going back to something that we have a considerable amount of experience with, I've been playing since release, and Alice during the end of the initial release as the game was moving onto The Burning Crusade, was exceptionally fun. We estimated about 6 months of being away from World of Warcraft, and pretty much everything about the game felt new again but at the same time old, another plus to that was that we were playing new classes that we both had experience in from being former mains or alts but not much real long lasting experience that we could depend on. So while we both knew what the classes were capable of, we were free to explore and enjoy all of the changes to the classes that happened while we were gone. Another plus to that end was that we were playing on the Horde side whereas we were formerly Alliance on our previous server. While we both have Horde experience in previous expansions, it was our first time seriously playing as a member of Horde after The Shattering. Basically that meant we had completely new quests to play through up until the Outlands, which was fun for us, but we both don't like the Outlands after the Burning Crusade was over, as it just wasn't really fun to blaze through, but it was fun to level normally in; that therein lies the problem, pretty much everyone in the entire world will want to blaze through content they've already done in a game, and we're no exception.

While questing was fun, that wasn't the only thing that we participated in during our return; the others mainly being Instances and Battlegrounds (BGs), those two kind of led to a problem for me. Starting with BGs as that is the lesser culprit between the those two; basically I had no problems with BGs as they were largely the same as I remembered them even at low levels, at the same time however there was basically a deal breaking problem that we quickly found out, and that was Heirlooms. Most BGs consisted of both sides having an excessive amount of heirloom equipped players making them harder to kill than they should have been, but honestly I didn't have much of a problem with that, I did have a problem with it at the same time though because the people who really went all out on gearing themselves out with heirlooms have the fact to show off that they're basically not only invincible but also can do an abnormally high amount of damage. Basically in short it depends on how geared out a player wanted themselves to be, and in most cases as with everything in multiplayer RPGs, the answer is as much as possible. Even so with that said, there still wasn't that much of a threat from the majority of heirloomed players, I would say in most 10 versus 10 BGs, you'll see maybe 1 or 2 really geared out people, and  5-9 or even more, people with just one or two pieces of heirloom equipment. In short, heirlooms broke any sort of chance for people to go into BGs without heirlooms and have an enjoyable experience, because no matter how you are, if someone can one or two shot you, you will end up short.

Dungeons are a whole different story, I generally liked and hated the dungeons at the same time as we did. Starting off with the likes, I loved the dungeons put simply when everything goes off without a hitch; I've always loved clearing dungeons as fast as possible regardless of how difficult it is, and being able to practice my group skill as a Protection Warrior. Obtaining upgrades is also another bonus of course with participating in Dungeons, and more often than not, when a Plate item dropped, as I was the only Plate wearer, I got it; things weren't as easy for Alice most of the time, but we still managed to get a majority of the drops that we wanted to get. Finally the fact that all dungeons at least pre-Burning Crusade received a make over to allow them to be shorter and more linear if they were not, really made it feel like a completely new experience, for example I've done Maraudon plenty of times and have gotten lost in it just as many, but with the aid of the Looking for Group and new Dungeon Systems, you start off at one of the entrances like you always have when doing Maraudon, however Blizzard has moved a few bosses around to make for a more suitable length between trash monsters and bosses. They've also done that for another reason, because they've effectively divided Maraudon into 3 parts, while it has always been that way due to the player base creating it as so, Blizzarrd has aided by making a sort of an invisible wall, not a literal one though, but in the sense that there is a boss that is very hard to miss and when you kill him, you receive the "end of dungeon" reward that you receive for clearing a dungeon out normally. That essentially meas there's no reason to continue forward unless your group wanted to do it, and it shortens the length of a "full" run by two thirds. Blizzard has also added more or new quest dialog to the dungeon quests as well as making them nearly impossible to miss, being that a majority of quest givers will be right at the start of the instance, inside of the instance, I personally like reading quests, so that was another plus for me. After saying all of that, you might think how could I dislike anything about it? well that'll be because of the other group members that we were forced to go with.

I am not someone who would say that all random group members are immediately bad, however at the same time, I am someone who would want to not group with them so I wouldn't have to deal with that possibility, because more than not, it ends up being true. In honesty however I would say bad groups only consisted of 10% of all of the dungeons Alice and I did while we were playing World of Warcraft. 10% however when speaking of things that could possibly ruin a 20 minute to an hour or more long experience, is still a very high number, and while I might be overstating it, regardless of how high the actual percentage is, it was a problem that was hard to remedy. Even with the voting system in place, people tend to not want to kick other people unless they have a reason to directly dislike them, even if the offender is being trouble for another person in the group, and that makes getting rid of poisonous players hard. So, basically when we had a problem with a group member, we just ended up leaving the instance, because I didn't want to deal with hitting my head against a wall in a pointless argument against them. Even so, the aftereffects of having to deal with such a player is the opposite of what I consider fun in every way, and while I thought about listing off a few of the actions the players that I dislike did, I think this part of the post is already negative enough, so if anyone wants to know, message me and I'll talk about it.

With all of that said, even if a 10% is a lot for negative players, 90% is still much greater, and generally I enjoyed tanking and burning through the dungeons of World of Warcraft. Oh, one thing that I've neglected to mention because it doesn't fit in either category of like or dislike, is that the dungeons basically are excessively easy. In terms of getting as much XP as fast as possible it's a godsend, however in terms of actually improving people's skills, it really doesn't help at all when you probably could clear the dungeon in a timely manner with all damage dealers using auto attacks, and the healer using a renew or some sort of healing over time spell. Also while that example might be overkill, it isn't too far off from the current difficulty level of dungeons, although that may be because I was playing a warrior tank, and with multiple enemies hitting me, and thus increasing my attack power, I'm able to contribute a very high amount of damage to all normal "trash" pulls. Thus getting through the instance very quickly, but I can't imagine it's too different for the other types of tanks since everyone has their own form of powerful area of effect spells, just for the occasion of being able to hold threat on multiple enemies during a pull.

Last but not least there's the topic of me being employed, but as of right now it's not much to talk about, and I can't figure out what to write, but I will be posting somethings up about that later on.

Anyways, this is my returning post as well as the start of new things that I'll be trying to do for the blog, I still haven't registered a domain name which I should get on soon, but due to the circumstances I now find myself in, I'll be able to provide more interesting things to not only read, but watch soon as well.