WoW: They don’t make em like this anymore

Posted on November 13, 2014 by SynCaine
Original model

Original model

Hello good looking

New model

Posted in World of Warcraft | 6 Comments

I’ve officially quit WoW again

Posted on November 12, 2014 by SynCaine

Title of the post is just to continue things for folks who apparently only read titles and go directly to comment.

There was a lot of nostalgia when my old raiding character, an orc warrior in full T2 wielding the original Quel-Serrar, first loaded in near the bank in Ogrimmar. That nostalgia was pushed further when, about 5 minutes in, I had a few people whisper me about my gear. Some things never change.

Looking over his bank content was like viewing a trophy room of past accomplishments. Items from MC, BWL, AQ40, Nax40, PvP tiers, and others. In his bags I still had the server-first Spinal Reaper that I crafted, though sadly it no longer has the text of who crafted it (thanks Blizzard). I got a chuckle out of all the flasks in his inventory, and the two full bank bags of gems and other crafting materials. Even little Diablo, the original collector box pet, came out to say hello.

Nostalgia aside however, WoW does nothing for me at this point. The game looks beyond dated now, with the graphics long since having move from ‘stylized’ to just plain ugly. In 2014 EVE looks like a 2014 game. In 2014 WoW looks like a 2004 game. Then there was everyone else around me; the dozen or so ridiculous mounts that would make the most asian of MMOs blush, the drab yet at the same time silly looking gear, the stupid-even-by-WoW-standards pets. While even in vanilla WoW had some ‘immersion breaking’ stuff, today it’s just full-on clowncar nonsense.

The UI is also something that looks like it has a few (dozen) too many mods going for it. Just stuff all over the place, which I’m sure once you get use to makes sense, but is EVE-level of shocking when first glanced at. I’m almost tempted to get my wife to give returning a shot, only to see how she would react to the UI, especially as we are playing FFXIV (which, now more so than ever, I fully believe is just a better version of what made WoW great in 2004, brought up to 2014 standards)

And so SynCaine the orc warrior went back into retirement in the same spot he did so many years ago. The world around him has changed, but he won’t be tarnished by it.

Posted in MMO design, World of Warcraft | 20 Comments

CoC: Supreme Cream! vs ZoooWalanD SUG 11/09/2014

Posted on November 11, 2014 by SynCaine

(Editor note: Stats and writeup provided by Delpez as always. Also while we are currently at the cap of 50 players in the clan, a few spots are alts so if you would like to join us, please drop me a note here or via email and we can make room. Any level/experience welcome, just need to be active and willing to learn.)

Supreme Cream! vs ZoooWalanD SUG

Supreme Cream

Enemy

Average TH Level

7.32

7.62

Score

126

134

Total Attacks Used

82

82

Total 3 Star Attacks

35

43

Total 3 Star %

42.7

52.4

3 Stars Against Same Level

28

19

3 Star % Against Same Level

45.9

46.3

3 Stars Against Lower Level

3

19

3 Star % Against Lower Level

42.9

61.3

TH4,5&6 3 Stars

8

3

TH4,5&6 3 Star %

50.0

50.0

TH7 3 Stars

13

12

TH7 3 Stars %

50.0

66.7

TH7 3 Stars (same level)

10

6

TH7 3 Stars % (same level)

71.4

75.0

TH8 3 Stars

11

25

TH8 3 Star %

35.5

55.6

TH8 3 Stars (same level)

9

9

TH8 3 Star % (same level)

33.3

45.0

TH8 Ave Stars / Attack (same level)

2.1

2.2

TH9&10 3 Stars

3

3

TH9&10 2 Star %

33.3

23.1

TH9&10 3 Stars (same level)

2

1

TH9&10 2 Star % (same level)

33.3

14.3

TH9&10 Ave Stars / Attack (same level)

1.67

1.14

This was a tense war, which we unfortunately lost by a slim margin. However, one can learn more from these close defeats than from any number of easy wins. So what do the stats say?

Purely based on TH level, our opponents were a lot stronger than us. The difference equates to 15 TH’s, meaning if we line up the clans by TH level, 15 of their guys could attack down. Activity was similar; we had four inactive players and a number of our clan did not use their second attack. I don’t think it would have made a difference though, since there were very few easy bases left to hit. Their victory was based upon a superior 3-star percentage (52% vs. 43%). Numbers are very similar for same level bases, but they scored many more 3-stars against lower level bases (19 vs. 3). This once again reflects the fact that they had more high level bases.

Our lower level bases scored eight 3-stars at the same percentage as our opponents, which is a good return. I’d like to highlight a very innovative attack by Kobea Thris on a TH7 (second attack of the war). As a TH6 he basically used balloons, giants and wizards (no healers) to 3-star a TH7 base. It was a flawed base to be sure, but he saw the flaw and was not afraid to use innovative tactics to exploit it. Well worth watching! At TH7 their 3-star percentage was a lot higher than ours, but against same level bases it was basically the same. Once again, this was because we had to attack up (especially towards the end of the war) while they attacked down.

TH8 is where they hit us really hard, both in number of 3-stars and 3-star percentages. Most of their 3-stars were against lower level bases (16 of their 25), but they also had a higher 3-star percentage against same level bases. This was because a number of their TH8’s were very advanced, while a lot of our TH8’s are newly promoted. Also, a clear learning from this war is that a dragon army struggles to 3-star a maxed TH8 base. We had some good attacks against their top TH8’s, but the result was usually a 2-star.

Our TH9&10 bases did quite well, but we don’t have enough of these bases (yet) to swing the war if we’re losing against the lower bases.

Some lessons and points for discussion:

Dragons have served us well for a while now, but they seem to struggle against maxed TH8 bases. However, I’m not sure if there are many other options before TH9. A decent dragon attack against a strong TH8 is still a safe 2-star, which is a good result against a powerful base. For example, our opponents couldn’t manage any 3-stars against our top six TH8’s. If 3-stars are critical (like towards the end of this war), mass Hog Riders might become an option. From reading up a bit it sounds like they can smash a high TH8 base, but their chance for a blow-out is also higher (Giant Bomb).

Having said that, mass dragons are probably still the safest bet for TH7&8’s. Tactics can vary, depending on the defending base. Personally I’ve found ten dragons, three rage spells and balloons in the clan castle to be the best setup to take out tougher bases, but opinions may vary. However, it is NOT a good idea to drop all the dragons in one spot. Firstly, it increases the chance of all the dragons flying around the perimeter, and secondly high level wizards can murder them when clumped together (just see this war for some examples). It’s better to drop half the dragons in a line; when they’ve taken out the perimeter the outside dragons may start skirting around the base, but the centre dragons will core inwards. Now the rest of the dragon can be dropped behind those dragons that are inside the base.

Something I’d also like to bring up is our choice of defensive clan castle troops. The Valkyrie is awesome against ground attacks, but most of the effective TH7&8 attacks come through the air. Also, most TH7&8 bases should be able to defend against ground attacks in any case (from same level bases). Is it not an option to stock max wizards in our TH7&8 bases? In this war they were sometimes very effective against our dragons, and they’re not useless against ground attacks either.

Finally, we seem to run into supply issues with our attacking clan troops. This is understandable, since most people want max balloons, dragons or healers and we only have a small number of players (three or four?) able to supply those. I also imagine that it puts a lot of pressure on the likes of Dot and Syc to fill all those war orders. Isn’t it an option to only ask for max troops when planning to attack a tough base? For example, attacking a TH7 base with dragons surely don’t require a max dragon (or balloons) in the clan castle? Even asking for one level below max (5* loons, 3* dragon, 3* healer etc.) allows a lot more people to contribute towards the war effort. Why is this an issue? Because people sometimes miss their attacks while waiting for troops, or by the time they get the troops they’re out of profitable bases to hit. Obviously this will become less of an issue as we get more players to TH9&10.

In any case, lots of numbers and random ideas – I’d love to hear your comments!

Posted in Clash of Clans | 27 Comments

I’m officially back in WoW!

Posted on November 10, 2014 by SynCaine

Little note: If you are going to smash your face into the keyboard over and over again in blind rage, at some point you need to move past believing in clickbait and actually answer why financial numbers submitted to regulatory authorities don’t line up with what you want to believe. The conversation is cute in that ‘debate on the internet’ kind of way, but once it reaches “because that’s god’s will” logic, I’m out.

Speaking of Blizzard, and recent surprises from customer service following my Comcast interaction, over the weekend I reached out to them to get my ancient Battle.net account back (rolling my face across Hearthstone as we speak, and we seriously need a new term than dumbed down, because yikes!). The account is so old WoW was never linked to it, and I went into the whole thing 50/50, part of me thinking the account with the associated email was lost forever.

My first attempt was through email, but that ticket was rather quickly closed with the advice to do this over the phone. Bad start, but on some level it made sense, plus filling out a form with your phone number isn’t all that painful; it’s not like you are sitting on hold waiting.

In the 15-20 minute estimate that was given, someone called me. They spoke English and sounded human, so we were already off to a very promising start. After some basic info was provided, the agent found my old Battle.net account. Success. He then tracked down my long-since hacked WoW account to link together. The funny thing about that? Even though the account was hacked and linked to some random Battle.net account, it wasn’t looted since I didn’t have enough ‘stuff’ for the hacker to bother adding time to loot it. WoW inflation helping me out, who knew. As a final nice (I think?) gesture, my old WoW account has 15 days on it, so I can check out all the recent (since TBC) changes. I guess I should?

By contrast, my ticket with SquareEnix for my FFXIV account still sitting in limbo days later. (I recently reformatted, tried to reinstall FFXIV, used the Steam key, and the game says the Steam key has already been used (by me, duh) Any ideas?).

Posted in Final Fantasy XIV, Random, World of Warcraft | 22 Comments

SW:TOR – Hotbars sales not so hot

Posted on November 9, 2014 by SynCaine

And the good news just keeps on flowing.

Isn’t it strange that this wasn’t reflected on fictional table generator Superdata’s info? I wonder why that is, those guys seem so well informed about everything else…

SW:TOR getting put out of its misery in 2015 is looking like a solid bet at this point, though I think the real question now is which will go offline first, this giant disaster or LotRO?

 

Posted in Mass Media, SW:TOR | 12 Comments

Trion being Trion: Player taking down servers at will

Posted on November 8, 2014 by SynCaine

Oh Trion.

On the plus side, this guy taking down the servers is ultimately doing humanity a great service by helping everyone else get off this failtrain.

What great adventure will Trion take us on next? Perhaps ‘accidentally’ leave GM-mode on for a few hours without a rollback?

Posted in Trion being Trion | 9 Comments

We finally know why Titan was cancelled

Posted on November 7, 2014 by SynCaine

Answer? Because it was looking like this little derped-up TF2 clone. Let the “but how dumbed down is it?” speculation start now.

Silly Blizzard interns, get it together already will you? Or is what’s left of real Blizzard working on Warcraft 4? Because if that’s the answer, I’m OK with letting the kids put stuff like Overwatch and HotS together between snacks and nap time.

Posted in Random | 25 Comments

Trion being Trion: RNG land grab

Posted on November 5, 2014 by SynCaine

Editor’s note: These are far more enjoyable from afar rather than having to suffer through them hoping Trion eventually figures out how to run an MMO. Spoiler: they won’t!

You know what would make a guild-based land rush limited to just four claimable castles even more fun than spamming the log-in button after a patch hoping you and your entire guild get one? If that patch randomly decided most people can’t play, while others can! Truly next level trolling from Trion here, just awesome incompetence to throw directly at your most dedicated and important social structures. If there was ever a perfect case for “I’m quitting and taking my entire guild with me!” forum posting, this is it.

And to think, I was expecting the major focus of outrage to be the new Hasla weapon tiers that further invalidate crafting.

Edit: The official forums are currently at ForumFall-levels of entertainment.

Posted in ArcheAge, Trion being Trion | 9 Comments

Games I’m playing these days

Posted on November 4, 2014 by SynCaine

Little roundup of what I’ve been playing recently, because this is info you need to know.

Clash of Clans: “Supreme Cream!” has hit 50 clan member, although a few are alts as we are holding two spots for former members taking a break. Wars have been interesting and really fun, though we haven’t had a real nail-bitter in a while. We got smashed by a clan with way more TH9s and 10s during a recent war, but otherwise we have been rolling everyone rather consistently. Good times. I’m at TH9 now working on upgrades, and really enjoying the added depth at this level. Very much looking forward to TH10, although that’s still a few months off at my current farming pace.

Payday 2: Started playing this little gem again recently and loving it. All of the new additions are great, and the devs (Overkill) do a really good job of mixing free content updates with new DLC releases. Currently my favorite loadout is a heavy with two shotguns, as the new weapon and ammo options give you more flexibility while still retaining that ‘shotgun’ feel.

Civ:BE : The more I play the more I’m thinking that this game would be a blast multiplayer, but I haven’t been able to line that up just yet. Coming off the wealth of options and systems in Civ V with all expansions/dlc, Civ:BE does feel a bit too limited to play single player over and over again. Still worth the cost to play a few rounds IMO.

Endless Legend: I’m enjoying this one more than I expected, but its on the back burner right now as I do run into some slowdown on larger maps, something I expect the new machine (Xmas gift) to solve. Another title I think would absolutely shine with a second player in the game.

LoL: Season 4 has just about come to an end, and I’ll finish it in platinum in the solo queue. Watching the world championships on a big screen TV in the living room with the wife thanks to a wireless bluray player was pretty great. Speaking of Aria, she is going to finish solo queue in Gold, meaning we both moved up a tier since Season 3. Doubt I’m going to hit diamond in season 5, but you never know.

FFXIV: Subbed but not playing due to time constraints. Expecting us to get back into this in a big way after Xmas when we have two machines capable of running it maxed out. Been somewhat keeping up with the news on this game, and the new additions of late sound good.

EVE: EVE Offline’ing my main. 40 day skills never felt so easy.

Posted in Civilization Series, Clash of Clans, Final Fantasy XIV, League of Legends, Random | 3 Comments

So dumbed down its just dumb

Posted on November 3, 2014 by SynCaine

There is a good post and fun comments thread over at K&G about Blizzard’s upcoming League of Legend’s clone (get it), Heroes of the Storm.

Here is Keen’s basic statement of the game:

Heroes of the Storm is, essentially, a dumbed down version of other mobas at least where mechanics are concerned. There isn’t last hitting or denying. There are no items. Experience is shared across your entire team. Everything is super basic, but remarkably it works.

My initial reaction to reading this is “so what exactly do you do?”. Obviously you fight the other team, but the above sounds like an extremely simplified version of LoL’s ARAM game, which itself is already a really, really dumbed down version of LoL you fire up to kill some time, but if it was the main game, I’d have quit LoL years ago. Go even further and remove items from that equation and yikes, wtf are we even doing here?

But that’s not the real point here; the real question/speculation is how well will HotS ultimately do. LoL is, by a wide margin, the most popular game out right now (outside of Asia, because :Asia:), and DoTA2, while only being a 1/3rd of what LoL is, still ranks in the top 5. Blizzard being Blizzard clearly wants a piece of that pie and has fired up the cloning factory, but what slice are they aiming at is the current debate.

Blizzard cloned EQ1 to make WoW, they were taking a successful niche product and smoothing out the rough edges to make something that would appeal to more people, but the key here is they were starting with something that was complex and difficult to get into, with design flaws begging to be fixed. LoL is the WoW to DoTA1’s EQ1. A dumbed down WoW is Farmville, and once Zynga was forced to stop their shady/illegal practices, they went poof. HotS sounds like the Farmville of MOBAs, and that’s not a good thing IMO.

As I said over at K&G, Blizzard could get 10m+ free accounts out of people if they produced a grass growing simulator. But 10m active players is a blip on the LoL radar, especially if that 10m doesn’t stick around for years and years. A lot of LoL’s success is not only that Riot made DoTA1 easier to get into and fixed a lot of the core issues (no hyper-carry, very limited snowballing), but that they retained the depth and growth potential that kept people playing DoTA1 for so long. Combined with the best implementation of F2P going, along with top-tier talent that continues to improve, and the result is an industry juggernaut.

2014 Blizzard isn’t the Blizzard that made Diablo 2 or even vanilla WoW. 2014 Blizzard is the studio that released Cata/MoP and Diablo 3. To say they have lost some talent is a rather large understatement, and now they are going to compete not with SOE and EQ2 (lulz), but Riot/Valve and LoL/DOTA2. It will be interesting to see what ultimately becomes of HotS, but I’m betting the under.

Posted in DoTA, League of Legends, PvP, Random | 42 Comments