Mount Farming

I don't always play World of Warcraft. I played it when it was new, didn't much care for it. Many years passed. Didn't think much about it. Some friends of mine played, and I would hear about it usually rolling my eyes.Then sometime in 2012 a close friend of mine gave me an account with a  fairly large amount of playtime on it. I began to play, and found something in the game that interested me; mount collecting. 

So I saw the end of the Cataclysm expansion, and the beginning of Pandaria. The account ran out of time, and I didn't return till right before the next expansion would hit. This is where my mount collection got much bigger. 

The expansion, Warlords of Draenor, had two things about it that made it very friendly for my hobby. One it was a very friendly expansion for making new characters and getting them to max level. It was also a very easy to farm gold in due to the addition of Garrisons. So once a character was at max level you spent 5 min doing your garrison stuff, and then had free time.

So between lots of easy gold, and lack of much else to do, I was able to acquire most of the available mounts at the time. Mounts from old raids that have a 1% drop rate, not to hard to get when you run the old raid 10 time a week with all your alts. Mounts from 5 man instances, there again no problem, but even faster because you can run those every day. And of course the ones that you can just trade between players, that is where the garrison's gold comes in. It was a wonderful time. 

Then Legion came out. It was not friendly toward alternate characters. Nor was it a great from gold. So again I left. Came back just last month, friend gave me some time. Not sure if I will stay.

MMO Guilds

I have played more than a few MMORPGs in my day. One universal truth of the genre is that at some point in the game you will need a larger group to accomplish something. As picking up random people is rarely a recipie for success, this will lead you to join a guild. A "guild" might gi by another name is one game or another, but the idea is the same, a group of people with goals helping one another in said goals. Raiding usually being one of the biggest aspects of a guild. However, there are many other reason you might be in or even form a guild. Questing, group finding, trade skills, company, etc.

However not all guilds are created equal. Goods ones deal with an even hand. Bad ones generally work by having "haves" and "have nots". It should be noted. that you might be a member of a guild only to find out that the goals of the guild and yours do not line up. Some games have ways to research guilds, some do not. Here I want to talk about my worst, and best experiences with guilds.

My worst guild experience was with the first guild I was ever a part of, in the first MMORPG I ever played. The game was Everquest, the guild went by "Free Norrath". I joined because several real life friends I was playing with joined. This guild talked a lot about working together, and being more of a family than a guild. That should have been a warning sign to me, but I was new to this and maybe a little naive. Frequently there was talk of doing big events, such as raiding, and these would generally not happen. If you went on their forum to ask about what happened, you would be told "you shouldn't be complaining, we are not a serious raiding guild". Which is fine, but when you schedule and event, it is reasonable for members to expect it too happen. There was also a lot of members that expected people to drop everything to help them, but would never return such favors. Also, voicing any dissenting opinion was meet with harsh reprisals This included most of the officers. This left a very bad taste in my mouth. I eventually found a good guild by the name of "La Catena". It ended poorly, but that is a story for another day.

The best guild experience I ever had happened on World of Warcraft. It was guild named "Red Ribbon Army", which I joined only because of liking the Dragon Ball reference they were making. When I joined, I joined only to have one character with the tag on them, mostly for my own amusement. I soon found that they were all very nice people. Almost all willing to work toward goals, and have a good conversation while doing it. Events that were scheduled always happened, in one form or another. If something did get canceled it would be made known in advance. You could voice your thoughts without fear of anyone trying to stump it out. Easily the best guild I ever spent time in. It is a shame that this guild came to an end. Not because of drama in game, or real life tragedy. No it came to end due Blizzard, and their apathy toward making worthwhile content. While I don't really miss World of Warcraft, I do miss the people of the "Red Ribbon Army".

There are many other guilds I have been a member of, even a few I have been an officer in. No need to go into all of them. At the moment I am without an MMO to play, and not really looking to find one. If I do, I hope to find another good group, but that is hard.

Improving World of Warcraft Part 2

NO TIME!!!

JOB INTERVIEWS AND STEAM SUMMER SALE EATING ALL OF MY BLOGGING TIME!!!!

World of Warcraft bring flying back... I win.

Stay tuned!!!!

Improving World of Warcraft

Things I miss.

Well I miss them, maybe you do too.

Arcades. Paying quarters to play some games.

When kids could get in fights at school. Now there is this "zero tolerance" bullshit. Sometime kids need to "work things out" between themselves.

Every woman I have ever shared an evening with.

The word "retard". For some reason this word is treated as offensive. Why? Its a medical term. Does "pregnant" need to go on the list too?

Square and Enix being two separate companies. Seems like the games were better back then. Well... the Enix franchises are about the same really (amazing). The Square side of things have been on a rather steady decline.

The Prime Rib burger. It was around in 2008, it was delicious. In the 6 years since it has never been heard from again. Carl's Jr, you are starting to piss me off.

I miss when Warcraft was a RTS (real time strategy) game. Have to go back to the first two games in the series. They were good game, but certainly show their age at this point. There was a third game, but it was more RPG(role play game)  than RTS. The third one had some very superficial RTS dressing on it, but that really wasn't enough. Then World of Warcraft came out, and it is a big massively multiplayer RPG mess. Been 10 years since a new game, seems like a good time for one.

Having new and original ideas for this blog. Really miss that.

Success Does Not Equal Quality

For whatever reason thing that aren't very good become popular from time to time. Sometimes this is temporary and a backlash happens, and whatever it was is seen for what it really was all along. Others seem immune to any kind of backlash, and continue to make money for years. It is the successful low quality products, and the makers thereof, that are getting some attention today.

McDonald's might be the most successful restaurant on planet. It can be found in many countries around the world, and the company as a whole makes millions of dollars a day. That is all great for them. However, the food leaves much to be desired. The food is rather bland, is objectively bad for you, and the quality of the ingredients are a subject of debate. While no "fast food" is great, some of it is better than others, so why does one of the worst remain at the top? It is cheap, it is familiar, it is everywhere. How it got to this point is hard to say, one might assume they were better in the past than now.

Blizzard was great back about 15 years ago. Now they seem to be completely devoid of any original ideas, or even the smallest amount of innovation. They seem to be getting rather lazy, as if they think their brand alone is enough. Two releases of this company make me question the quality of there work. Both are extremely popular, but this popularity seems grossly undeserved. The releases in question are World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2.

The first is World of Warcraft, the Fisher Price of the MMORPG world. It is a very simple game, that seems to almost play itself. When it came out in 2004 it had almost nothing in the way of innovation. It was then, and is now, a much oversimplified game. Nothing is ever really a challenge, and therefore you never feel as if you accomplished anything. While simple design can be a wonderful thing, when you are paying a monthly fee to play, one comes to expect something more. Everything in the game comes with so little effort it never really feels like you are out of a tutorial. However most World of Warcraft fans don't expect more, and are happy to pay for the worlds longest running game tutorial. 

The other release that seems lacking is Starcraft 2, but for very different reasons than World of Warcraft. Starcraft 2 came out 12 years after the first game, the first game being mind blowing back in 1998. When Starcraft 2 came out in 2010, it had a somewhat interesting single player campaign, and multiplayer that was almost unchanged from the first game.  After over a decade of time it is time for something new, not just an old game with better resolution. If the multiplayer should have offered something new, something that would be as mind blowing today as the original was in 1998.

In the end we will never know why lazy and low quality products sometimes become grand successes. it is a matter of taste to some degree. Like the old saying goes "there is no accounting for taste". However, when the something lack luster makes money it leads to more of the same coming form others sources trying to emulate that success.