Gamings...
Well, let's see...
[Long]
WoW is still in a little bit of a lull overall. We did raid Saturday, and managed a successful run through most of Firelands - even got Elly her firecat-form staff from Staghelm fiiiinally. That puts us approximately 3 FL runs and a Ragnaros kill away from having a Dragonwrath. Well, that's not going to happen before MoP comes out next week, but it's still an attainable goal. Though our last attempts on Rags went poorly, if we can get all the essences from the other bosses out of the way, we can focus just on him, which would help. It'll be interesting to see what effect leveling has if we keep poking Cata raids - numbers will go up, but the conversion from ratings will tank.
The Theramore's Fall scenerio was released Monday, a day earlier than I expected. I have mixed feelings. As an introduction to scenerios, it works okay: they're 3-person instances that can have various objectives and can be run without the usual group restrictions, sure (though any scenerio released first would work as an intro to them). As a pre-Mists of Panderia event... well, they say it wasn't really meant as that, so I'll be nice and give Blizzard a pass on that. As the in-game representation of a major lore event, it's an utter and total failure. The developers have admitted as much. I get not wanting to rehash everything that's done in detail in a tie-in book, but if you're going to portay a major event in-game, this is the wrong way to do it. There's no real lead in, no explanation, no denouement - nothing.
Alliance layers see a cinematic of a goblin airship dropping a bomb on Theramore, then zone-in on a ship at the docks to go fight through several parked Horde airship crews to make their way to Jaina and defend her while she gets ready to take the Focusing Iris (even after a summary of the book, I'm not sure how the Horde got that) away. The scenerio does relate that 1) the Horde "nuked" Theramore and 2) Jaina is pissed about it and has a different look after it. I think that's absolutely everything. It raises tons of questions. While "buy the book for more insight" isn't always a bad answer, there's so very little provided by the game that it is bad here.
I'd also argue that the neutral factions really ought to be put off by the Horde by now, though we know those consequences can't come to pass. It gives me some IC justification if I decide to do any PVP with my paladin, at least. Heh.
I went ahead and downloaded/played Mass Effect 3's Leviathan DLC. My verdict is: short, but not bad. It raises some questions about what makes Shepard so special. It expands some of the origins of the Reapers and the Crucible core in a way that is not bad. Some of it does strain coherency a little, but it feels like it fits without too much shoe-horning.
GW2 play continues at a reasonble pace. I'm up to level 65, I believe, with my thief. I hit a quest bug that stopped my progression through the personal story in its tracks, but notes imply that might have gotten fixed a day or two after, so I have to give credit for their work on hotfixing things.
The personal story as a whole is losing its luster for me, though. After the (spoilery) incident with the Battle for Claw Island, things haven't drawn me in any more. I did watch a Vigil player go through it, and that is only a tiny bit more believable to me, but mostly plays out the same.
In the following phase of your character's personal story, he/she becomes second in command to a sylvari rallying people against Zhaitan. As a narrative, this works okay, but suddenly being second fiddle disrupts immersion for me. In raising the stakes and expanding the scope (both fine things), the focus feels like it's slipped off the player (not so good).
Also, fighting wave after wave of Risen opponents gets annoyingly repetitive.
Overall, the game is still pretty good. The explorer/completionist in me feels a little bit compelled to pick a zone and finish it out - all the hearts, points of interest, etc. - and the game seems built to favor that (though bugged quests are a pain), so it works out.
I got a chance to run a dungeon with some guildmates. Ascalonian Catacombs is the first (ie. lowest-level) of the dungeons, set at level 30 for story mode. The story that plays out there isn't bad, though not a lot stands out either. Ghosts rage against the living, Rytlock rages against the ghosts, Eir tries to get him to calm the f- down. Gotta love the Destiny's Edge drama.
This was my first real group play experience. And I'm not altogether impressed, to be honest. The most interesting mechanics came into play in one boss fight where there are boulders to throw to interrupt the pair of bosses, and keeping the two apart prevents them from increasing in power. Some of the problem was just a lack of coordination on our part, but it turned into an exercise in frustration, wiping maybe half a dozen times before succeeding. The final boss didn't do anything super special, but the zones of badness were tricky to get out of and I went down more than once to... uhh... something that seemed to one-shot me with no warning. We won that final fight "easily" mostly by zerging the boss from a waypoint. This is not interesting or fun gameplay.
Also, while I sort of like the idea of going without a dedicated healer or tank, I spent an inordinate amount of time either downed or reviving someone else. And, of course, when you're reviving, you have to try to make sure you don't get whacked in the meantime, which makes it difficult. This, again, is not particularly interesting or fun gameplay.
But the run as a whole wasn't a bad experience. It just wasn't especially good either, and I can't imagine doing that with strangers and even less coordination. The boss-dropped specific loot is level-fixed to the dungeon, though other random drops are scaled to characters' actual levels, which felt a bit strange to me.
I've also been trying to keep a character active on the MUCK, which has been a challenge. Plenty of drama in the RP there, which ultimately I think is good. Sure, there's such a thing as too much drama, but without some sense of conflict, there's no victory or loss - and thus not much of a story.
[Long]
WoW is still in a little bit of a lull overall. We did raid Saturday, and managed a successful run through most of Firelands - even got Elly her firecat-form staff from Staghelm fiiiinally. That puts us approximately 3 FL runs and a Ragnaros kill away from having a Dragonwrath. Well, that's not going to happen before MoP comes out next week, but it's still an attainable goal. Though our last attempts on Rags went poorly, if we can get all the essences from the other bosses out of the way, we can focus just on him, which would help. It'll be interesting to see what effect leveling has if we keep poking Cata raids - numbers will go up, but the conversion from ratings will tank.
The Theramore's Fall scenerio was released Monday, a day earlier than I expected. I have mixed feelings. As an introduction to scenerios, it works okay: they're 3-person instances that can have various objectives and can be run without the usual group restrictions, sure (though any scenerio released first would work as an intro to them). As a pre-Mists of Panderia event... well, they say it wasn't really meant as that, so I'll be nice and give Blizzard a pass on that. As the in-game representation of a major lore event, it's an utter and total failure. The developers have admitted as much. I get not wanting to rehash everything that's done in detail in a tie-in book, but if you're going to portay a major event in-game, this is the wrong way to do it. There's no real lead in, no explanation, no denouement - nothing.
Alliance layers see a cinematic of a goblin airship dropping a bomb on Theramore, then zone-in on a ship at the docks to go fight through several parked Horde airship crews to make their way to Jaina and defend her while she gets ready to take the Focusing Iris (even after a summary of the book, I'm not sure how the Horde got that) away. The scenerio does relate that 1) the Horde "nuked" Theramore and 2) Jaina is pissed about it and has a different look after it. I think that's absolutely everything. It raises tons of questions. While "buy the book for more insight" isn't always a bad answer, there's so very little provided by the game that it is bad here.
I'd also argue that the neutral factions really ought to be put off by the Horde by now, though we know those consequences can't come to pass. It gives me some IC justification if I decide to do any PVP with my paladin, at least. Heh.
I went ahead and downloaded/played Mass Effect 3's Leviathan DLC. My verdict is: short, but not bad. It raises some questions about what makes Shepard so special. It expands some of the origins of the Reapers and the Crucible core in a way that is not bad. Some of it does strain coherency a little, but it feels like it fits without too much shoe-horning.
GW2 play continues at a reasonble pace. I'm up to level 65, I believe, with my thief. I hit a quest bug that stopped my progression through the personal story in its tracks, but notes imply that might have gotten fixed a day or two after, so I have to give credit for their work on hotfixing things.
The personal story as a whole is losing its luster for me, though. After the (spoilery) incident with the Battle for Claw Island, things haven't drawn me in any more. I did watch a Vigil player go through it, and that is only a tiny bit more believable to me, but mostly plays out the same.
In the following phase of your character's personal story, he/she becomes second in command to a sylvari rallying people against Zhaitan. As a narrative, this works okay, but suddenly being second fiddle disrupts immersion for me. In raising the stakes and expanding the scope (both fine things), the focus feels like it's slipped off the player (not so good).
Also, fighting wave after wave of Risen opponents gets annoyingly repetitive.
Overall, the game is still pretty good. The explorer/completionist in me feels a little bit compelled to pick a zone and finish it out - all the hearts, points of interest, etc. - and the game seems built to favor that (though bugged quests are a pain), so it works out.
I got a chance to run a dungeon with some guildmates. Ascalonian Catacombs is the first (ie. lowest-level) of the dungeons, set at level 30 for story mode. The story that plays out there isn't bad, though not a lot stands out either. Ghosts rage against the living, Rytlock rages against the ghosts, Eir tries to get him to calm the f- down. Gotta love the Destiny's Edge drama.
This was my first real group play experience. And I'm not altogether impressed, to be honest. The most interesting mechanics came into play in one boss fight where there are boulders to throw to interrupt the pair of bosses, and keeping the two apart prevents them from increasing in power. Some of the problem was just a lack of coordination on our part, but it turned into an exercise in frustration, wiping maybe half a dozen times before succeeding. The final boss didn't do anything super special, but the zones of badness were tricky to get out of and I went down more than once to... uhh... something that seemed to one-shot me with no warning. We won that final fight "easily" mostly by zerging the boss from a waypoint. This is not interesting or fun gameplay.
Also, while I sort of like the idea of going without a dedicated healer or tank, I spent an inordinate amount of time either downed or reviving someone else. And, of course, when you're reviving, you have to try to make sure you don't get whacked in the meantime, which makes it difficult. This, again, is not particularly interesting or fun gameplay.
But the run as a whole wasn't a bad experience. It just wasn't especially good either, and I can't imagine doing that with strangers and even less coordination. The boss-dropped specific loot is level-fixed to the dungeon, though other random drops are scaled to characters' actual levels, which felt a bit strange to me.
I've also been trying to keep a character active on the MUCK, which has been a challenge. Plenty of drama in the RP there, which ultimately I think is good. Sure, there's such a thing as too much drama, but without some sense of conflict, there's no victory or loss - and thus not much of a story.