Classically Progressing

My Druid is level 10, my Warlock 9.  I’ve logged in all my characters to try them out.

Hunter seemed pretty great once I stopped jamming auto attack. It’s natural for me to have a rotation, even with only one skill, so having your only ranged skill be auto-attack…zzzz.  Plink…fingers off till it’s in melee range, then one slice usually does it.

I nicknamed my Mage 3 Shot Shirley.  Downing mobs in three shots with no mana loss, comparatively.  This was just a quickie skill tryout.  She may be wriggling by the roadside starved for mana before I know it.

Still have not played my horde characters.  Likely to concentrate on Alliance ones first, getting each to ten to get a feel for how they play.

There’s all the time in the world, no need to rush to 60 and then what?

I’m completing every quest in every area.  The additional quests fill in the story much better than the streamlined modern areas.

Oops on not paying attention to levels this evening.  I noticed too late Prowlers and Young Forest Bears were three levels over my head.   I’d killed a couple before realizing it, and somehow, once I noticed, they killed me like nothing.  Luckily a group saved me from many slow deaths.

On my Warlock, my kingdom for any instant cast spell that lets me tag things faster.  Competition remains fierce for everything.

My Imp has a glass jaw.  He’s down every two seconds.

Blah blah all the talk about Retail.  I finally figured it’s a private server mentality using that term, which Blizzard itself has bizarrely picked up and uses too.   You’re paying to play now, my friend, so everything is Retail.   I prefer to use the terms Classic and Current game, which is more descriptive, I think.

Even with the mob tagging issues, and the troll meisters in General chat, I’m loving the game and really enjoy seeing so many people running around everywhere.

GameNotes August 27, 2019

And we’re live!  I did some last minute torturing over what class and character to play, and decided to go Feral Druid as my lead instead of a Warlock lead character.   I had read all kinds of disparaging commentary on the Feral Druid.  I’m just used to the class, and the only thing I notice so far is that, as with every other character, I run out of mana after about three hits.  Whack, whack, auto-attack, and then there’s enough mana to finish off the mob.

The druid is at level 8 after this evening’s play.   11 silver in her pocket!  I was merciless in killing things, particularly humanoids, who often have armor, coppers in their pocket, or other sellables.   Always out of inventory space in my backpack, I just kept running back to sell my stuff.

I bought no weapon skills, because I’m just not sure what the best choice is for my character.   I’ll get that information, and train accordingly.   The first skill I did buy was Moonfire, which put me way ahead of the game tagging mobs fast and from some good distance.

I confess I beat a few Hunters to the prey, and I was pleased to beat them out.   Hunters are a favorite class, but, dang, that range and quickness can be annoying, if you feel like you could go to get a cool one from the fridge while your caster drags out a slow spell.

The general chat wasn’t all warm and fuzzy as the stress test chat was.  I kind of felt like I was among the people who post on the official forums all the time.   Maybe it’s just the Night Elf area.

I’ve liked the scrolling out of quest text in the Tests, but I found that two quest givers turned away and closed out the quest box to respond to another player over and over- Denalan and Zenn, in the Night Elf area.   Of course there was also the annoyance of waiting till Zenn turned from frog to whatever he is.  He always had a crowd around him.    I don’t recall anything like that in the Human area.

Ha! There was also a quest on a timer, where you had five minutes to get a cure to an NPC.  I haven’t seen anything like that in ages.

I played my Warlock just to level 2.  It was still dodgy getting Kobold Vermin, later in the evening, but I managed pretty quickly.   For all the time my poor Druid suffered with inventory overload, and she never got a bag as a quest reward or drop, my Warlock got a 6 slot bag from the third Kobold she killed.   I’m sending it to my Druid.  Though I created the ten characters you can have on a server, I’m thinking I’ll concentrate on those two.  I didn’t get a chance to try out the Troll hunter I created, but I loved that we could create characters early today.  That helped so much, as a stress reliever, and to just go in and play.

All in all, pretty smooth except for a few early World Downs.   As fun to actually play and make progress in as I hoped.   For a game I’ve played for over ten years, there’s a lot to learn and know and explore.  It’s pretty great.

 

GameNotes August 20, 2019

Elder Scrolls Online

I’m working through the Mages guild and Fighter’s Guild Quest Lines, finally.   The Mages Guild quests dealing with Sheogorath are just terrible.  I kind of didn’t mind him as a cat (adorable) in Elsweyr, but these, gack.  He is so annoying.  Those icky eyes.  His sense of humor leaves everything to be desired.  I don’t like his flunky, either.  As much as I loved Oblivion, I hated the Shivering Isles Expansion.  I wish the quests here and in the Fighter’s Quild were like the ones in Oblivion.  It would make more sense for them to send people out to find antiquities, or complete contracts for the guild.

The Fighter’s Guild at least has a mystery to solve.

 

World of Warcraft

Just another week and we’re in!  No more you can only get to level 15, do not pass go, don’t knock, cause you can’t come in.  Logging in will be a blowout.  The Stress test logins were really to give you practice staring at not much for two hours, nothing else.  They didn’t expect all the population on Herod, though, and had to issue cranky warnings so everyone there can prepare for LoginOfDoom.

Once things settle down, it should be amazing.  All the warnings from jaded types to Retail Babies, ha, we’ll be just fine, thanks.

Meanwhile, in the dungeons this week…

I’m wondering if some returning folks are playing through dungeons to get a feel for the game again.

In Halls of Lightning, the tank was pulling everything right off and people died right off.  Somehow he pulled General Bjarngrim all the way back to the dungeon entrance where he killed killed killed everyone over and over.  A few people slunk out the entrance.  He finally went away, and back in we went.   He blamed everything on the healer, and tried to boot her.  It didn’t pass.   She died to one of his big pulls at about the mid point and he just kept going.  “Does he not know I died? she said.  He replied she wasn’t effective and wouldn’t be missed.  I was having a bad day anyways, so I told him it wasn’t the healer, it was that he was a terrible tank. Then I left.   I’m questing away when I notice pink text in the chat.   “Great DPS, bro”.   I am no Bro, thanks.

Later, another tank is pulling, pulling.   The healer dies.  Couldn’t save herself or anyone else because “I was busy trying to heal Tanky Boi.”

Oh Tanky Boi  (very roughly to the tune of Danny Boy)

Oh Tanky Boi…the mobs, the mobs are calling

From dungeon start, to dungeon’s end

Healer’s mana’s gone, and all the players are falling

It’s you, it’s you must stop pulling

and we must stay alive.

GameNotes August 13, 2019

Wow Classic Character Name Reservation

There I am, the realms lists come up 20 minutes early.  Watching the clock, fingers poised. 5:00. nothing.  Then servers Locked! Then realms are up, mine shows “low”.  Logging into realm…bammo! You’ve been disconnected.  It now wants my email and password.  Brain has left the building.  Type it in, get in a long queue, wait it out, name taken!  I had a list of three second choices.  Babbling all the while, I create my character with a secondary choice.  I get my other two character names.  Then I notice they’re all warriors!  Noooo!!!!  Delete, create, three times each during the process.

Later, reading the forums I see people got bounced to servers they hadn’t checked.  Nah. But I looked and they were all on Mankrik!   More bad words.  delete, delete.   Two of the names available on the server I actually wanted.   I honestly thought none of these things would happen, and it would be all smooth.

Ever hopeful, maybe the characters we already created today can just zoom into the world and get started without horrible things happening.  A few dozen kobolds to kill, sure, but doable.  Running up to the beasties jamming your auto attack is the way.

 

System Shock 2

System Shock 2 is being remastered by Nightdive, who are also working on bringing System Shock 1into the modern era.   Rock Paper Shotgun has a fascinating article called  “No one Knows Who is Patching System Shock 2”    https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/08/12/no-one-knows-who-is-patching-system-shock-2/

It goes into the history of Nightdive getting the rights for System Shock 2 from an insurance company (?) and mysterious patches that were made available from some unknown party that made the job of remastering much easier.   It fits the game, this shadowy backstory.

World of Warcraft Classic Stress Test, Final Version: The Setting is the Same, The Story Is Different.

I had planned to have a Human Warlock and Undead Hunter as my main characters.  You cannot have an Undead Hunter, only Orcs, Taurens and Trolls can be Hunters on the Horde side.  For some reason, I really like the Undead characters and area so I’ll be running an Undead Priest in the background, just because I liked how she played over the weekend.

If not an Undead, I wanted an Orc, who I liked also.

 

For some reason I started reading about Trolls being better with their Bow Specialization and Berserking abilities for PvE and I switched to a Troll Hunter.  I still want my Orc so I think she’ll be a Warrior.

I’m only doing three characters on Horde and Three Alliance till my alt-mania kicks in.

On Alliance, Human Warlock, Night Elf Druid, Gnome Rogue is the current plan.

“Fig A”  How a Real Gnome looks

When it seemed the stress test was just a day, it was quite a swarm in the human areas.

Can you spot the Mages?

 

Later, Warriors entered the scene.

 

There were plenty of Warlocks too, just not the big groups that Mages and Warriors had.

More than once while playing I thought “I love this!”.

I was exactly that person to put on any gray armor that my character could wear as it dropped, just for any added protection.

The Frayed Brown Robe you always sell as Vendor Trash is sartorially fine, and it is 8 Armor!

Auto attack is my new friend.

I got desperate and pulled more than one mob a couple of times, just to grab them.  Didn’t die, but should have.

The Hunter only having a bow as the auto attack but no actual bow bugged me.   On the plus side, if you had the mob at enough range you could auto attack away most of his health before he got in melee range.  On the other, no bow.

My Warlock more than the priest I started with ran out of mana like mad.   I came to adore my Refreshing Spring Water, that most lowly of things in the live game.  I had dreamy thoughts about food or drink that would restore both health and mana.  I have never appreciated that as I should have.

Once the weekend was underway, I had to train in all the crafts.  Training price for Fishing and Cooking One Silver each! Insanity!  It was only ten copper each for Tailoring and Enchanting.  25 copper for Refreshing Spring Water, whoa.  Then there’s the skill trainer.   It all adds up fast.   My strategy will be to kill everything I can to get as many coppers in my bag as possible.

Someone was in Stormwind selling Linen six slot bags for six pieces of linen cloth (you provide) and 1 silver each.  Outrageous!   Wish I’d had the money to get even one.  Spent it all above, though.

Kobolds and their famous You No take Candle have truly been robbed in the modern game, because the little beasts did in fact drop candles, which stacked in groups of five.  I thought I read somewhere this week some poor class actually can use those.

Here’s hoping I get my names on Monday.  Good luck reserving your names!

 

World of Warcraft Classic Realm Names and Server Types

The realm names and server types for Classic have been announced.  Data Centers are apparently in Chicago and Los Angeles if that’s a consideration.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/wow-classic-realm-names-and-types/246645

 

I personally think the realm names are pretty awful, except for a couple, but I’ve picked out my first, second and third choices in any case.   It’s going to be a huge scramble on Monday.

GameNotes August 6, 2019

Ready, Set, Stress Test!

There’s one last stress test for World of Warcraft Classic this Thursday.  They’re asking people to log in if they can during the initial two hour window to see if they can bring down the house, or perhaps, just open their doors.

Excitement about Classic continues to build.  Note I put all the World of Warcraft Classic sites I’ve found so far on the sidebar.

I’ve picked out my three names, I hope they open things up early so I can get in there and grab them.  I thought the date was originally August 12, though I’ve seen people using the 13th, and it is indeed the 12th, a better day for me.

As I suspected they must, Blizzard will release server names “later this week”.  Maybe Friday after the Stress Test Server goes down to maintain momentum?

Bornakk

272 posts

Community Manager

Character name reservation for WoW Classic opens next week on Monday, August 12 at 3:00 p.m. PDT. Players with an active subscription or game time on their World of Warcraft account will be able to create up to three characters per WoW account and have the name(s) reserved before WoW Classic releases worldwide on Monday, August 26 at 3:00 p.m. PDT.

We will release details regarding realm names and realm types later this week so you can coordinate with your friends on where to begin your adventure. If there are high numbers of players congregating on individual realms during the name reservation/character creation process, we will post warnings about the potential for long queues on those realms, giving you time to choose alternate realms. Also please note: Character creation will be limited to only one faction per realm on PvP realms.

After release, the number of WoW Classic character that can be created per WoW game account will change to the following limits:

• A maximum of 10 characters per WoW Classic realm.
• A maximum of 50 characters across all WoW Classic realms in your region.
• Only one faction per realm on PvP realms.

There is no overlap regarding character limits with World of Warcraft, so if you have 50 characters in Battle for Azeroth you can create 50 more characters in WoW Classic.

WoW Classic’s worldwide release is almost here so it’s time to get started organizing and planning your path to level 60!

 

WOW Character Hopping

I logged in all my World of Warcraft characters this weekend.  So many great characters.  I’ve mostly been working on my BWR characters, gearing them up with World Quests.   I swapped my Paladin for my Druid to work in Nazjatar.  My Druid is backtracking and working from the west coast of dreaded Stormsong to the east getting the rep and quest completion needed for Pathfinder, which I hadn’t worked on because zzzzz, I always hate the grind of it.  She’s the best candidate, with her item level and stealth to bypass stuff she doesn’t need to stop and fight.

On other realms, I have characters working on areas like Outlands and Northrend I’ve always blown past while running dungeons and questing, then hopping to the next area.  There’s quite a bit of the game I haven’t played all the way through.  My lower levels are taking their time and getting all the quests and exploration.  I’m also trying to get all the recipes I may have missed, and hunter pets, and mounts.  The game is pretty rich if you take your time to enjoy all it offers.

 

In other news:

 

Den of Geek interviewed Cameron Tofer on the making of the original Baldur’s Gate, and the enhanced editions of it and other classic titles.

https://www.denofgeek.com/us/games/pc-gaming/282565/baldurs-gate-legacy

 

Without the beard, of course!

 

 

Coming In September, Blacksad: Under The Skin is a noir detective game starring a cat who is all but human.  There’s just the trailer so far, but I really like what I see.

Blacksad: Under the Skin

 

 

The Outer Worlds

I saw of tons of playthroughs and impressions of The Outer Worlds this week.  It continues to look great, though in the IGN video below the NPCs are rather rough looking.   The armor in the game is out of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and the World itself very much like Bioshock.   Looking forward to this one in October!

https://outerworlds.obsidian.net/

 

Last Chapter’s Robot City Wordsearch Answer

Last Chapter Cryptogram Answer For The July 28th Puzzle

Here’s the last Cryptogram puzzle answer for the Last Chapter.   Thanks as always for stopping by!

 

W LJTFSOCOB VSQV CXI OWFCP VWXSFTJSTO MWK FDJPCJCP AE W ITXZXTJSH WKKWKKSO HWXXCP BVC QVTKB TI BVC QJCCO. ADB BVCJC FWE AC FTJC BT BVSK HWKC BVWO FCCBK BVC CEC.

 

A PROMINENT HIGH ELF NAMED HALIMORION WAS MURDERED BY A FOLKLORIC ASSASSIN CALLED THE GHOST OF THE GREEN. BUT THERE MAY BE MORE TO THIS CASE THAN MEETS THE EYE.

From Old Wounds, Summerset