This Week in MMOs

[DasBroot]

Come on, little Radeon 5870.  You can do it.

[Pattern Ghost]

Nighthawk event started today in Champions Online. Working on unlocking the Night Avenger AT on my second account.

[Pattern Ghost]

WoW Patch  7.2 dropped today. I'm still not too enthused about going back to the Legion grind, but might reactivate. I have until the 3rd left on my CO time card, so the timing's about right. I'm holding off on TSW  until they get their relaunch or whatever done. They still haven't made any official statements as to what it'll entail.

 

Edit: I may wait for them to fix this. (Nutshell: They've introduced item level scaling for mobs, so they gain health as you get higher ilvl. But it's currently broken.)

[Christopher R Taylor]

It looks like they haven't quite got the balancing act down right, but I understand what they are trying to do.

[Pattern Ghost]

Found out a bit about the Secret World relaunch. Apparently, they're splitting it into a new FTP online action RPG called Secret World Legends, but keeping TSW intact as its own thing. Speculation is that TSW is going into maintenance mode. Link.

[Pattern Ghost]

Looks like they've already tweaked the scaling. Link.

[Pattern Ghost]

FoxbatCon is running in CO. Inventor AT is up for 650 Foxbat creds.

[Nolgroth]

Star Trek Online has decided to "rebalance" (read: Nerf the site from orbit) all of their combat mechanics. Just after I dumped a bunch of resources into optimizing my builds.

[Pattern Ghost]

Slightly annoyed today by CO.

 

My game card time ended today. So, my status went from Gold back to Silver.

 

I ground out the 650 Snake Bucks needed to buy the new Gunslinger AT during the High Noon at Snake Gulch event, and bought the AT.

 

Now that I'm Silver status, it's not letting me convert my Gunslingers and is showing me as not owning the AT.

 

I'm sure that this will rise from slight annoyance to major peeve by the time they sort it out.

 

I restarted WoW a few days ago. More demons. More portals. Still boring as hell. (For me, anyway.) I'll probably let it expire again when the token runs out. Maybe the new version of TSW will be up by then.

 

EDIT: This morning, Cryptic support asked me for a screenshot (why? no idea), then promptly escalated the ticket. That's actually pretty good for Cryptic support. Mildly pleased. Will be shocked and amazed if the next tier of support actually fixes the problem in a timely manner, but still, this is an improvement.

[Pattern Ghost]

Well, it only took them two days to resolve the bugged AT issue. They ended up putting enough zen in my account to buy the AT, since it didn't unlock properly. That's a huge improvement over past tickets, so I'm happy.

[Nolgroth]

Congrats! 

[Enforcer84]

GW2 New Expansion will bring Mounts to the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Including a Giant Bunny. 

I'm sold. 

[Pattern Ghost]

Interesting! I wonder if you have to have the first expansion to get the new one...

 

Also in the news, Patch 7.3 is supposed to be dropping today in WoW.

 

I really need to pick some more flowers before heading to Argus, though. Token prices are still a bit inflated due to Destiny release.

[Cygnia]

It did drop.  Annoyingly, no flying in Argus.  And I really want to kick Illidan in the junk for being a petulant brat.  I get what they're trying to do, but there are troubling holes in the writing, especially when it comes to other characters.

 

New pets though!

[Christopher R Taylor]

So far Argus is not... great.  Kinda boring and aimless, and it doesn't feel like there's any movement toward a plot or story. And Illidan is a douche

[Pattern Ghost]

I haven't done anything in it yet. Are they trickling out the content like Broken Shore?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its even slower.  It seems like they are putting out quests over time so you can finish everything you can find, then come back later and there are more quests.  But it doesn't feel as progressive as, say, the Tanaan Jungle or previous efforts of this type did.  I know they are trying to slow things down and make the content last longer, but it just feels... meaningless.

 

They've slashed the requirements of many quest chains before this as well.  All of the places in Suramar you had to get to a certain faction to get more quests are removed.  Most of the requirements for getting your class hall mount were lowered (only need 3 chests now, for instance).

[Cygnia]

I'm grinding out the new Family Familiar for Argus -- and the consensus is perhaps Blizzard did not test them thoroughly before rolling them out on live.  There's one left I may not be able to finish until two weeks from now and that's so I can buy one of the MoP Timewalker pets. (Draconic Destruction against Snozz for those in the know)

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I don't think they tested the pet battles at all.

[CptPatriot]

2017 PAX West Superhero Panel Discussion

 

They talk about Ship of Heroes, Valiance Online, and City of Titans

[Nolgroth]

It wasn't a particularly epic battle, as far as epic battles go. In fact, it was spectacularly not epic. I queued up for a Red Alert versus the Borg. It used to be my go to activity for Star Trek Online and I always seemed to enjoy it. But before I go any further, let me go back a bit.

 

A few years in fact. I joined Star Trek Online about the first anniversary celebration (maybe the second). Q was giving away a big, beautiful ship called the Odyssey. That was my mainstay for many years until the Tier 5 ships were released. Reluctantly I gave up my dream boat to pilot something else. Don't get me wrong, the new ships were cool in their own ways and I had fun with them too, but I was saddened by the loss of the Odyssey Cruiser. For years I gnashed my teeth and then they released the Odyssey T5 ships onto the Zen Store. So I did the whole grind thing. Along the way, I learned a few things about building DPS boats and I switched over to smaller, escort ships. I saved up my Zen (acquired through selling Dilithium) through the short-lived T-5U phase and onto the T6 ships. Then, when I had enough, I bought whatever the name of the Tactical T6 variant of the Odyssey is and changed the skin back to the original. I was in heaven.

 

I played around for months and finally got around to maximizing the build for my lovely Firestorm. I followed the advice on STO Builds and spent a small fortune in Dilithium, Marks, and Energy Credits to make that ship the most competitive I could sans spending Zen to open every single lockbox I could find. I was doing well, all things considered. Then Cryptic (or whatever they go by now) "re-balanced" the space combat and completely nerfing everything (I mean EVERYTHING) that I had invested in to make my ship the best that I could. Discouraged, I left the game and moved on to others. I had a lot of fun in Star Trek Online and I always considered going back once the pain of the sting wore off. Tonight I took my first tentative steps back into Star Trek Online

 

I logged into my primary and flew around a bit. I engaged some ships in a Romulan sector and noted how long it took to kill them. It wasn't a great start, but at least I manhandled them sufficiently that I wasn't completely miffed. I wasn't exactly excited either. So I went to Earth Spacedock and perused my other ships. I used a highly optimized escort to do my first borg run and it was sort of fun. I felt like I contributed to the combat. Still, I felt apathetic about the game. So I logged into each of my alts, hoping against hope that interest would strike me. In the end, I stood staring at the screen as the realization that Star Trek Online was simply not interesting anymore. In a fit of near inspiration, I decided to go out doing what I had loved, in the ship I loved the most. So I hopped back in my Odyssey and set out for one last Borg Alert.

 

The first group of Cubes went down under a combined barrage from me and two other ships. I turned to get the next group and noticed that somebody else had killed another group (out of five). I had just started pounding on the next group when the other players knocked out remaining three groups. Obviously I was with a group that had high DPS scores. The cut scene for the Unimatrix vessel played and I turned to the big bad and went at it. By the time I arrived, I got two shots before the DPS monsters killed it. It was my last battle and it played out, for me, with all of the apathy that I was feeling. I felt a little cheated but at the same time, I knew that the Star Trek Online I had played for so long was no longer my game. It was appropriate that there was no big send off. No big drama. Like my previous love for it, the game just sort of fizzled out.

[Vanguard]

For those of you that are still playing and/or interested in play SWTOR again just found out that you can get Rise of the Hutt Cartel, Shadows of Revan and a free speeder.

 

For Cartel and Shadows redeem code: REVANRETURNS

 

For the speeder: KOTOSPEEDER

 

Both codes expire on Nov 6th.

 

PS: I don't feel bad about including them here because A) They were sent out as an email so most of you that played before probably already got it and the codes are in this thread on the SWTOR forums.

 

PPS: if anyone knows how to disable the POS bitraider streaming client, lemme know. I've tried follow the instructions in one of the threads but so far no joy.

[IndianaJoe3]

I've been playing SW:TOR and I like it a lot.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its a really fun game with some great ideas, but once you run through the storyline once each character, it doesn't have anything to offer, really.  They're so bound into their story and the companion stories that they didn't put much other content in.

[Nolgroth]

I liked SW:TOR for quite some time. After I finished the storyline for one of my characters, I realized what a grind the last bit was and was too tired to run more of my characters through. They still sit in an indefinite limbo while I decide whether or not to continue on with them. As far as other content, SW:TOR could learn a bit about space combat from STO. It is a pretty good space combat game that, for all its flaws, is lightyears better than the clunky space combat in SW:TOR. Thanks for the links Vanguard. I probably won't be using them, but it's always nice to get little tips like that.

 

Right now I am sort of poking at Neverwinter. My biggest hurdle is figuring out how to get Astral Diamonds without going through a ton of group only content. Most other games I've played are relatively transparent about that, but I literally have no clue what to do or where to go. The biggest advice the game offers is to do group content. I know it is an MMO, but I don't typically play with other people. I like my own little sandbox to go kick ass in. Most of the offline advice may as well be written in Greek. The information seems to be presented with the assumption that you already have some sort of basic knowledge and the tutorial is just helping you fine tune it from there. Frustrating. If anybody is playing Neverwinter currently, any tips would be greatly appreciated.