The Sword and Laser discussion
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Wow Mists of Pandaria
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Overall I think it's much better than Cataclysm. You are sort of overwhelmed with choices of stuff to do each day so I haven't gotten bored yet.
Not to mention the leveling process is much better with a connected continent rather than disjointed zones.
Finally, I really enjoy the art with all of its Chinese influence.
I'm having fun too, but I've never really had a break longer than a few weeks since Vanilla :P
Love it. It is nice to have a lot of things to choose between, even though the first weeks felt a bit overwhelming with all those dailies. Now that most of them are done on my main I can enjoy the lore more and level up alts at a slower pace. Have played since vanilla with a few breaks here and there. Started raiding a bit as a back up in LK and am now a main raider since cata release.
Monks and pandas where a nice add to the game and the lore and look of pandaria is wonderful.
I also succumbed to the 50% off sale this week. I'm leveling a monk and haven't tried the higher levels yet so now its just the same old grind to level cap. I haven't been able to PUG a toon over 42 for a while now. Too many jerks.I also forgot how to move my character around. I'm like Neal Stephenson as I play an MMO by myself mostly. ;) Raiding and PVP are too stressful. But, I still miss Karazhan.
Also quite happy with Pandaria. I am especially fond of the fact that exploring the world is interesting again! There are so many hidden gems out there, starting with the lorekeepers faction, continuing with the many rare mobs and finally some honest to good hidden miniquests and bosses (like the summonable crab god that you unlock by finding the rare crabs around the world). My only problem is that my guild and server have shrunken so far that we struggle to even get 10 man raids going, but as I can see all the raid content in LFR anyway, that is only a little gripe.
Enjoyed the PVE part of the expansion, but PVP makes me want to bash my face into my keyboard until my teeth replace the keys. Damage just seems so overtuned. I know the beginning of any xpac is a bit rough while people relearn their abilities, but ouch... getting leveled in two or three globals with full pvp gear makes me feel like everyone else knows something I don't (but then I burst someone else down and I feel good about myself again). Feral Druids FTW :)yes, I'm a girl who plays WOW *readies sponge for drool
Haven't played much recently (though I did get the latest expansion), most of my time of late has been spent trudging up the learning curve of marketing one's work. Hope to get back to it eventually, however. I miss playing with my wife as she cries, "Look at me!", while leaping off some random mountaintop to her death prior to my preparing yet another resurrection spell.
Haven't bern through all the content but this is my favorite expansion in awhile. The quests and rewards are diverse and the regions are so different than the usual post-destruction landscapes.
I've resisted going back to.Wow for now 3 years.I used to be in a heavy raid guild and we would.raid 5 days out of 7 per week.
The last time I played was during WotLK.
I didn't leave because of issues with the game but more because of turn around a lot of the people I had been raiding with for 2 years were gone. Well that and the fact that Wow was eating all my gaming time and I had to pass on a lot of others good games. Since then I have become a heavy console gamer but I mainly play single player games and I have to admit I miss my old Wow guild.( probably one of the few hardcore raiding guild with so many people not in college (I am 40).
Rob wrote: "I've been playing it. In fact raiding on Tuesday and Thursday is a large part of why I haven't finished Cold Days yet.Overall I think it's much better than Cataclysm. You are sort of overwhelmed ..."
When you aren't playing socially you should try audiobooks + wow. I honestly can't play without a good book anymore outside of raids that is.
Multitask ftw
I listen to audio books during gathering and questing. Makes it more less boring for sure!
I don't think I could manage Audiobooks + Wow :S I don't have the multitask gene (and whoever said that 'all women can multitask' can bite me :P)...
I actually have trouble reading now audiobooks have ruined me.I have to play something mindless or draw or something to occupy my hands but WoW started it. It's made me much more active and much more antisocial but on the bright side my to read pile has gotten much smaller.
Mod
It is addicting! I used to raid a lot but then my beloved guild blew up and I just haven't found a nice new guild. Not so into the idea of healing raids anymore but I miss the social aspect.
For whatever reason I am finding the game way less social. You do what you have to do for the week and then you do something else. I just remember some of the earlier expansions feeling way more Immersive.Don't get me wrong I love the way they did the raid content this time but I raid 9 hours a week with my guild and then a few things a week to prepare for next week and thats all. Seems like once your done gearing out and do a few dailies and cap your valor I just feel that I'm done for the week. This xpac isn't alt friendly unless you want to poor a ton of time into them.
Nekroskop wrote: "My only problem is that my guild and server have shrunken so far that we struggle to even get 10 man raids going, but as I can see all the raid content in LFR anyway, that is only a little gripe."Ditto.
How are y'all enjoying the pet battling? I was super into it the first few days and have gotten completely burned out on it since.
I did just get my Brawler's guild pass, which I've been enjoying so far.
Katrina wrote: "How are y'all enjoying the pet battling? I was super into it the first few days and have gotten completely burnt out on it since."Right now that's almost all I do. Login, do all of the grandmaster daily quests, and then spend time leveling rare quality pets to 25.
I burned myself out on rep dailies.
Katrina wrote: "How are y'all enjoying the pet battling?"Not got overly into pet battles and usually forget that they exist. Mostly working on getting #4 to 90 for the Double Agent achievement, in between raids and gearing up the two alts I've got to 90 so far :)
I haven't been able to make myself do the alt thing this xpac. I dabbled a bit with a few but never much past jade forest. I had pretty much at least one of each class last xpac but most of them are sitting at 85 with a few at 86. I mostly play for my guild now and don't do all that much outside of raids.
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I had planned to level up some pets/do some achievements while working on archeology which has been sitting at level 1 skill since last expansion. It's supposed to be a lot less painful now.
Instead I leveled my mage. I don't know the issues with alts this expansion since my mage is a pvp toon. The rep change they added in 5.1 was nice because I got my mage exalted with cloud serpents in 3 days, but I haven't bothered with any dailies/pve on him otherwise.
Most of my non raid time has been focused on getting pvp gear for my mage. Now that I'm pretty much out of honor gear to buy, I may level my druid if for nothing else so he can fly around and mine ore to level his jewelcrafting. Having to buy/beg gems for 2 toons is getting awfully tired.
I am still a regular player, and al always, we have trouble getting a raid going in our guild. But we have finally beaten the Stone Guardians in Mogushan, yay ^^My girlfriend is heavily invested in pet collecting/achievements. So much that I took her on a tour of the old world raids where they installed some unique pet drops. While this is a nice idea to get people to visit old content, the drop rate is awful. We nailed all 12 bosses and exactly one pet dropped...
I like to retro raid sometimes, but making it a regular activitiy is annoying.
The Operation: Shieldwall quests and story line is quite interesting. Even though I hate the dailies in the mines already. Navigating multiple level caves is awful for me.
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Not that I'm some kind of hardcore raider, but I thought that was the hardest fight to learn in the instance. Its certainly the one we wiped the most on before finally beating it.
I think the next one we beat after 1 night or less of trying. Then we had a bit of trouble on the 3rd boss, before easily getting past the 4th.
The 5th isn't hard, just a dps check.
As melee, I hate the final boss with a passion. I know how to dance. I'm just awful at it. It's not very forgiving, you start running the wrong direction even for a second and it seems like you're screwed. We've only been at it for one night though.
The holidays and a slow start have really put us behind on raid progress.
I have the same feeling - after wiping for an hour on the stone guardians we took 2 tries at the next guy and had him in phase 3 by the 2nd try. I hope it will progress smoother from here on.I am veeeery afraid of the last boss. I know him from the raid finder, and even after training, videos, etc, I still fail there and actually stick to the adds (as it doesn't matter in RF)
THe main pincher is that we simply don't get together regularly. We have to skip so many raids as my guildies are just not that motivated anymore. We are getting a raid togther every 3 weeks or so, so everything learned from the last tries is forgotten.
Ah well, enough bawling - even so ther is more than enough to do, especially with scenarios.
Mod
We lost one priest, and replaced him with another. He's sort of our 3rd healer/flex dps person. I think the replacement is better than the original though.
Our biggest problem is we haven't had more than 1 night a week most weeks unfortunately.
That makes progress hard, unless extended our locks, but people still need gear, especially the tanks. Unfortunately we keep getting/DEing the same crap every time.
I think this week we'll only have 1 again. Last week we finally did some progress because we actually had 2 nights of raiding for a change.
I always forget about scenarios. I haven't done any of the 5.1 scenarios yet. I did all of them on a Saturday for the achievement/title then didn't bother again.
I got burned out on dailies so I'm not doing much of them, even though I don't have the rep with the new faction.
Mostly I pvp on my mage doing 2s with my buddy on his druid and some random BGs, then raid twice a week (if we're lucky), do 1 LFR and that's it.
I guess I am in the minority. I quit playing. Mists just felt like more of the same. I will probably come back. I was burnt out for a while but I was locked in the pay for a year and get Diablo III for free. I was never much for raiding and that probably didn't help.Started playing Guild Wars 2. Really liking the way it is set up. Plus since there is no monthly fee I don't feel guilty not playing.
Neil wrote: "I guess I am in the minority. I quit playing. Mists just felt like more of the same. I will probably come back. I was burnt out for a while but I was locked in the pay for a year and get Diablo ..."I'd say don't feel bad about quitting - the worst people in game for me are the ones that seem to feel that they HAVE to keep playing but keep telling those who are enjoying it why they shouldn't be :) A happy ex is far better than a crap relationship and all that jazz...
That said, I love DIII and have it now as my go to 'feeling anti-social ' game instead of the Sims :P
Emy wrote: "Neil wrote: "I guess I am in the minority. I quit playing. Mists just felt like more of the same. I will probably come back. I was burnt out for a while but I was locked in the pay for a year an..."I like DIII but I am not sure it was worth locking myself in for a year of WoW. I should have just bought it. Try GW2 it is really a nice change from WoW.
Guildwars has never really drawn me - no particular reason. I think my husband will probably play and I may watch over his shoulder, but probably won't play myself beyond making characters...
I raid 3 days a week for a couple of hours with a group of friends I've known over 5 years. If it wasn't WOW then I'd be playing poker with them at one of their houses I'm sure. I don't feel a requirement to play. I've often had my login time out when I've left the computer to go and work on things around the house. Considering people waste much more time watching bad sitcoms in front of a television, I don't feel bad playing a video game on a computer where my mind at the very least is actively participating as opposed to passively engaged in watching.
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Nick wrote: "I raid 3 days a week for a couple of hours with a group of friends I've known over 5 years. If it wasn't WOW then I'd be playing poker with them at one of their houses I'm sure. I don't feel a re..."This. :D
I agree with the sentiment "should have just bought D3 instead of locking myself in for a year with WoW." My year was finally up in November and yes I am playing Mists, too. My little guild is raiding, but we're missing a few people here and there and are mystified at the difficulty we are having pugging this expansion. We can't find any DPS! So strange.
I can't do the audiobooks thing as I don't like being read to. I am burnt out on the rep grind and once I got to revered for most and got what I wanted (gear or recipes), I fizzled.
DPS do seem to have gone into hibernation! It's so WRONG to be borrowing dps alts from the other raid team... /boggles
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Most of us have been playing together for so long there is little desire to add in new people we don't know.
We also don't have a good alt pool. It's hard to find people willing to be an alt for those nights when we need an extra body.
When we had enough for running 2 raids, we'd often grab someone's alt to fill holes and that worked pretty well.
A few things... I'm playing and generally like it. But I think LFR is hurting normal raids, esp casual 10 man and trade channel PUGs. It used to be that if you didn't want to or couldn't commit to a regular raid schedule you'd PUG. Now, you can LFR and get much of the experience with fewer wipes and in less time. An example: I was running some heroics last night to help a friend who just hit 90. One of the other friends in the group had just geared enough to LFR so we asked if he wanted to see it. Over the next 2 hours we ran MV. Now, we got jack for loot... but if I can hop into LFR so easily on the spur of the moment, what's my motivation to run regulars when most casual raids will wipe a ton on Stone Guards, etc.? If I have friends who are in the raid, there's that, but if it's just a bunch of guild people who I don't have a deep relationship with (online or off)... not much.
Rob - while I get your issue (it's kind of my guild's issue too), you can't complain about attrition, not recruit because new people and then say "Gee, we don't have enough people." New people become online friends only if you let them.
10s are also hard to do - you don't want 15 people who all are ready and wanting to raid because you're sitting too many. You ideally want 11 or 12 but that cuts it closer esp if a tank or healer can't make it.
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Yeah, I know. It was more of an explanation of our issue.
I'm not an officer in the guild, so recruiting isn't my responsibility. Then again, I don't think the guild has has recruitment Officer since WotLK when it used to do 3 10 mans and a 25 man.
I used to run a 4-guild/200+ person raiding alliance for about 2 years in original wow days, and that was more than enough for me.
Now I just show up on time ready to raid. Assuming there is a raid.
I hear that Rob. I've done the officer/RL thing and it's one reason I LFR now. I'm unsure if I'll ever raid regularly again. Some friends are talking about doing it but I really only want to raid with people who are reasonable good (not hardcore, but also not 'ohh fire, I'll stand where it's warm' types either) and committing to a schedule is harder. For me, it's really this - I can play 6-8 hours and clear LFR versions of MV, HoF and Terrace. Or I can play a similar time and raid normals. If I do the latter I need some reason - the encounters are more fun, the people are friends, etc. But if it's a) commit to certain days and time, b) wipe a lot more and thus see less content and get less loot and c) Do it with people whom I don't really know... eh. Hence my theory that LFR is killing the decent but not great casual raiding scene - the people who are maybe 6/6 MV and 1 or 2/4 HoF, etc.
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I think LFR has allowed Blizzard to tune Normal raids to be challenging for the casual raiders like me.
But really it comes down to the people. When they quit, I'm done with WoW I'm sure.
Same here - I have actually become RL by default, as all the others have quit.My motivation to go recruiting is also minimal - currently what we are doing is inviting 1 or 2 Pugs (so it stays a guild run) and if they can bear our wiping schedule we ask them if they'd like to join our raiding pool.
I do agree with the LFR dilemma. While I like the possiblity to see all content, it really lowers the motivation to commit to entry level raiding. We were always casual raiders, but some people don't want to learn anything anymore.
One of my guidlies last time actually asked "Why can't this be like raidfinder?"
I'll have to drum up some motivation my self to go out recruiting or get some of my RL friends to join in a cross realm raid.
For me, LFR is for when I want it easy/easier or for when I want to run / gear an alt. Normals are much more fun because I have to think, figure out the strategy that works for us, etc. I miss 25 mans sometimes although I'm glad I'm only a co-RL for 10s - 25s = herding cats >.<
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I may level a 3rd toon from 85, or use time I had been giving to WoW to play the huge backlog of stuff on Steam I bought.
You guys should exchange IDs and hook up in game. Unless of course you are from different factions. ;) I'll be quitting soon. My back/shoulder(and waist)can't take it anymore.
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That's not a bad idea. I think my battletag is Thranduel#1414 if anyone cares to add me. Just put a note who are on here or I'm likely to ignore it. lol.
Mostly Horde and on EU servers but will provide a tag if anyone else in S&L is playing over here... :)
I'm Alliance EU, so with the usual timeshifts etc. it's probably quite hard. Will post my battletag when I'm at home, I can never remeber the numbers.BTW, anybody else thinks it is high time they should let us make combinded horde/alliance raids/dungeons, at minimum from friendlists? Even lorewise most raids are a combined effort, and it would be so much easier for me to get groups together.
Any idea why they still keep this separated? Is there a technical reason (i.e. money) that keeps them from implementing this?
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Any idea why they still keep this separated? Is there a technical reason (i.e. money) that keeps them from implementing this"
This expansion they are pushing the horde vs. alliance
story once again. I don't really think it makes sense to allow that from a Lore perspective.
With real ids/battletags at least you can talk to you friends across faction now. That was something that always annoyed me.
I see that they pump the conflict again, but le's face it - in the Raids, each side is killing the same baddies forthe same reasons. In the end we will even both kill Garrosh. It wouldn't threaten my suspension of disbelief that we, the super special heroes, are the only ones to overcome the enmity between horde and alliance to work together. You know, like they do in every comic/novel ever released for WoW...
Anybody else playing it, what do you think?