Endgame Viable

Note: The following ragey invective was written after dying a number of times during the GW2 Living Story 2 instance Fallen Hopes which I had hoped would be a fun way to kill some time while waiting to go to a doctor’s appointment. It was not. However, I have since completed it and moved on with my life. There is not much room to maneuver in here, and Marjory and Kasmeer are NO HELP AT ALL. (322 words.)

I’ve been experiencing a lot of drama at work lately, so vegging out with WoW has been pretty awesome. By the time I get home I’m not in any mood for challenging gameplay. I tried the Death Knight for the first time and couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to use all those weird rune resources or whatever. So on we go toward level 90 with the Hunter! I was going to spend a little more time in the Twilight Highlands to see what happened with the dwarves, but then I noticed that my experience bar barely moved after I turned in a few quests post-85. That was when I realized how many XP were required to get from 85 to 86 and I dropped everything to start the Mists of Pandaria quest line in Stormwind. (593 words.)

Status of my WoW death march to 90: My Hunter is at level 85. I finished the Deepholm zone which was quite enjoyable; it was colorful and weird and gigantic (although strangely devoid of pets to tame). I had just started the Twilight Highlands, which the “Altoholic” addon told me was where I should go next, when I hit 85. It’s not as colorful but I love the way the dwarves go on those little raids to retake their little villages. Major props to Blizzard for improving the “look and feel” of their zones with every expansion. (514 words.)

I cancelled my WildStar subscription*. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that I don’t feel like playing it any more. My Esper has remained largely static between levels 20 and 30, with no noticeable improvements in abilities, so I fully anticipate it will just be a repetitive chore to get from 30 to 50, at which time I would enter the cesspool of toxic behavior that I keep hearing about. Don’t fret, though, I’m sure I’ll be back someday. (383 words.)

It’s been a while since my last writing update, so I will now write one. Ha-ha. Get it? Write a writing update? So funny I am. Let’s see. Where was I? Hold on a moment while I read my last post from March. Oh yes, I was writing 50-100 word summaries of each scene that would be in Sovereignty. That did happen, sort of, but I never actually finished an outline that I felt comfortable with. There are still holes in the plot that I can’t fill in. Still, I wrote about 1,000 words of a new first chapter. Unfortunately I was not happy with it. I just can’t find a “hook” for that story. It remains tantalizingly out of reach. (507 words.)

Since I’m the boss of my own blog, I’m going to declare myself on summer vacation and blog less for a little while. For one thing, I’m playing a bit less than before, and what I’m playing is mostly thoughtless grinding, so I don’t have a whole lot to report. Secondly, I decided I’m going to do Camp NaNoWriMo for July, so very soon I’m going to need to concentrate more on writing fiction than writing blog posts. I’ve fallen way behind on my dreams of becoming a best-selling author and I need a spark to get going again. (If you haven’t done NaNoWriMo before, I highly recommend it.) (130 words.)

There’s WildStar to play, right? So of course I spent a big chunk of time over the weekend playing … wait for it … World of Warcraft. I have about ten days left on a subscription so I figured why not use it. I leveled my Hunter from level 72 to 75 with plain old PvE questing. It now seems quite plausible to level up to 90 before WoD comes out. Especially when it seems like everything you touch fills up 5% of your experience bar. In other words, leveling in the WotLK zones feels a lot faster than it was in the BC zones. (But then I’m making no attempt to finish all the quests I find now.) (346 words.)

Not much to talk about, so here’s a non-WildStar MMO status report! ArcheAge. I’ve only logged in to pay the taxes on my measely 8×8 farm, and occasionally grow aspen trees. I don’t expect to play this any more until after it launches. The Secret World. I have logged in every few days to grind through a mission or two in the City of the Sun God zone. I’m attempting to collect AP and SP so I can fill out my skills better, which will better prepare me to go back to the Besieged Farmlands and continue the main story quest, which will then eventually allow me to get to Tokyo perhaps sometime in 2018. (421 words.)

Yesterday I said that WildStar’s dungeons are too hard for PUGs, so today I’m going to solve that problem. Okay, I don’t really know how to solve it. But I have an idea: PUG Attunements! Or as I like to call it, “Stuff you have to do before you can queue in the dungeon finder.” In order for a PUG to even have a chance at success, you need each member of the group to know how to dodge and interrupt. You also need the tank to know how to maintain a little bit of threat, and you need the healer to know how to heal people who are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. (683 words.)

Quick status report: My mood improved a lot over the weekend, and I had a mostly-enjoyable time playing WildStar. As of this writing I have a 25 Esper, 15 Spellslinger, 15 Warrior, and 15 Engineer. I spent a fair amount of time leveling up three alts so I could experience adventures/dungeons with some other classes. (Getting from level 10 to 15 is pretty brutal the third and forth time.) So dungeons. Man. Those two level 20 dungeons are serious PUG-killers. This is the first MMO where I’ve wondered why they bothered to include a LFG tool. Unless you’re a total masochist like I am, I would strongly advise you to join a guild to do dungeons in some kind of cohesive group. For reasons I’ll explain below, PUGs are going to be terrible or deserted. (1139 words.)