Benie's Games Blog

Been doing a few things in the beta today. Not going to list what. Anyway, got bored again. Made a list of what I should do while waiting ’till November.
It’s mainly to test solo the remaining Cata dungeons and raids that I can’t do on Live or the PTR. The other is to actually go into the PTR and check out the new Blasted Lands Pre-WoD questline.
And lastly, checking on Live if I can still solo UBRS and MC before they make them WoD content. I have a feeling they still are Level 90 soloable(even Level 80 I can do it). Just… what they said in BlizzCon last year worried me, how “you’ll have a sneak peek”, but I believe this won’t happen ’till nearing WoW’s 10th anniversary.

Going back to the point of this blog post, I went back to YouTube, and saw a video about “No flying confirmed in WoD”. It was four months ago(back in June). Curious, I watched it. And the guy was acting like …. we’re never going to be able to fly. Even when the 6.1.0 patch hits. One person in the comments mentioned how Blizzard ‘may’ add flying in 6.1.

Excuse me? May? MAY?! It’s bad enough that I won’t be able to fly when I hit Level 100(if I do decide to go on and preorder this October)…but the bastards thinking we don’t need flying even further than that?!?! I…URGH!!!
Look..I get what Blizzard is trying to do. They want to bring back old school WoW, when we couldn’t fly in Vanilla. Yet none of us even thought of this. I personally never did. Having a 100% epic ground mount was enough to get around, and it was fun to travel from zone to zone on foot.
Now… flying mounts are like a drug. Can’t stop taking it. Like how I was with WorldEdit in Minecraft. I see the advantages of flying mounts. Being able to fly over areas I don’t want to deal with. Go directly from Point A to Point B. Not having to worry about mountains in the way. It’s fun. It really is. And to have that fun taken away in Draenor, SUCKS!

I don’t fucking care about my world feeling alive! I’m a soloer! I fly alone! I don’t need a fucking Guild. I don’t need anyone! I’m anti-social and proud!
Yet you could ask “Then why play an MMO, if you like being alone? Play a Single Player game then.” I do my best not to think of this. The entire reason I even played WoW is I wanted to play something different. I was sick of TSO being so ‘2D’.
TSO; The Sims Online, was an MMO. Was the first ever Multiplayer game I played.

My point is, I don’t HAVE to play with friends. I can play my way(within the ToS) and Blizzard won’t bitch at me. And I’ve been doing this way for 8 years. Sure, I was in Guilds in the past, with the first one teaching me everything I know about the game.

.
I’m just going end it with this:
If Blizzard refuses to add flying in WoD, even after Patch 6.1… then that’s it. I’ll be done. They can kiss my subscriptions goodbye. Not like that’s going to scare them, but at least I won’t have to deal with their “this is supposed to be an MMO! Be social, damnit!” bullshit ever again.
If this is going to be their answer why they choose none of us being able to fly, and we can’t do shit about it, then… so be it. May it be the day that WoW dies, and all there will be left, are the World PvPers.

This is somewhat “late” news as it was mentioned yesterday. Yet I already have a beta post about it here. It also covers about the latest beta build.
So, I originally thought when I saw this, that this could possibly mean the end of beta testing. Not true. Infact, it’s happened before. They say it happens before every expansion launch. Yet I’ve never seen it since I’ve been occupied with other things.
The only times I remember being on the PTR, were before and after Cata. I can’t remember the exact reason of the first time, but I can remember the second.

I think it was to test the Darkmoon Faire, as Blizzard’s way to prove that Deathwing’s re-arrival doesn’t mean the end of the world… of Warcraft.
This one, is the Pre-Release content of what we’ll be doing before entering the Dark Portal; fully explaining the “why”, that we’re going to Draenor. Just… not explaining the “how” and “what”, as in how is this happening and what is causing it. The only answer you’re given is “Who the fuck CARES?! They’re here! You’re the hero! Do your job and kill them! Save Azeroth!”
Of course, this isn’t the answer we’re looking for. Especially ones that never read the War Crimes novel. I’m still cautiously optimistic that they will give us the answer we seek, in the form of a cinematic.

The news also mentions three exciting changes for my dungeon soloing career. The Dragon Soul raid and ICC are soloable as a Level 90! I personally wouldn’t attempt to do these ’till Level 100. Higher level = Less risk of utter failure.
But to have the Dragon Soul raid…the thing I worked my ass off for to be a part of, soloable? To finally have me land the killer blow on Deathwing, and be the savior of Azeroth? … I dunno. Since I already killed the black bastard, I don’t know if I want to do that again.
That was a… mildly-disturbing era in my WoW history(getting my dragon form, fearing the world would end if I didn’t act, etc), and I don’t wish to relive it. Why I haven’t even solo’d any of the Cata dungeons on the beta.

The final change, is something that annoyed me greatly when soloing Uldar as a Level 100 on the beta. The “I remember you… on the mountain” guy will no longer reset when he drops down into the arena. Thank god for that!
Though I do wish they fixed the zeppelin encounter in ICC. Maybe they don’t see it as broken on their end, and something I caused? Interesting. Maybe I should try it again.

Anyway, this is all that’s all the PTR. Meaning, beta testing will continue to go on. I’m glad, as there’s still a shitload of content not yet added(especially in Gorgrond).

Since I’ve been so wrapped up by the beta, I never went back to Euro Truck Simulator 2. Seems they got a new patch. Not sure if ProMods will work with it.

But what I wanted to talk about, I saw a video that was done about 6 days after my birthday (August 26th) of DaSquirrelsNuts and Keralis(famously known for his godlike Minecraft house tutorial videos(the houses themselves, not the videos)) playing Multiplayer in Euro Truck Simulator 2. It looked amazingly fun, and reminded me of this video of Dan and his father playing it several months ago. It’s still AI-less, and it also showed what I didn’t see from Dan’s video; how at times the server can go unstable and disconnect you.

Squirrel explains this as a concern in his ETS2 Multiplayer setup tutorial video(done yesterday) when out on the highway, to keep the same distance as you would IRL if it was raining. You never know when the guy infront of you will just suddenly stop and you’ll be ramming right into the back of his trailer in mere seconds.

Another thing to note, you can’t use mods. They will not work. Period. Don’t even try. Also, you have to had bought the game from Steam and not Retail. And you have to make sure your Steam profile is public. Both of these reasons is for the multiplayer’s authorization thingy. Lastly, Steam must be ran as an Administrator for the Multiplayer to hook correctly into your game.

You can get the Multiplayer mod (yes, a mod. Not made by SCS, so you’ll have no support from them) from ES2mp.com. It is extremely important to note, if you want to remain virus free.. ONLY get the download from THIS SITE! Do NOT trust any other site!
I mentioned earlier that SCS won’t support you. Well, you’re in luck as this site includes a forum dedicated to the ‘helping you out’ part.

I personally… I think I’m going to try this. But if I remember, I’m still on a job in the ProMods part of the game world. Somewhere in Finland. Got to deliver that and then backup my profile, and have a copy of it with all mods disabled.

Another “bored with the WoD Beta” statement. A few days ago, I decided to try out Hearthstone. Mainly because it’s a free to play game.
When I first started, I had an issue trying to connect to battle.net. “Playful sprites” were messing things up and told me to wait “a few” minutes. I ended up waiting 10, and was able to finally get in.

There’s no ingame tutorials for this game. You have to look online and also know what the fuck you’re reading. I find it funny how it says that it’s made for “everyone to play”. What they don’t add onto this is “everyone that didn’t fail in school and Math to play”. Aka, not me.
I have tried my damnest to learn how to play this game. I know about the whole Mana Crystal mechanic, what are Minion cards and what are Spell cards, the different rarities of cards, who can attack and who can’t. Things like this.

But my biggest problem, is… ok. So I got Thrall, and I wanted to do the ultimate battle and go against Garrosh, to say “this is what happened during the climatic that they don’t show you. They played Hearthstone!”
Yet, I keep on running out of Minion cards. And my only cards are useless spell cards(like Totems) to buff minions that I don’t even have on the board, allowing Garrosh to outnumber me every fucking time and pwn me.
I tried doing my own deck. Yet again, I keep getting bad cards. Or if I get a good card, Garrosh’s minions will easily destroy it. I don’t even know what fucking cards I need to win!

They say to learn the game, just keep playing. I have tried. I have failed. I have ragequitted. I have asked for help. I’ve watched dozens of tutorial videos. And I went WTF trying to understand what I’m looking at!
This is why I fail at playing any class in WoW, correctly; because I fail at Math. This game proves it. I just pick a spell and keep attacking until they die. That’s it. Yet this game, you really have to know what the fuck you’re doing at all times, and also know ahead of time, what the enemy will do; be them a real player or an AI player. And also know what to do with the next card.

I do not have this intelligence. And it punishes me for it. This game is too much like those Japanese-themed games like Yu-gi-o and others. Never liked trading card games. Guess you have to be a special breed to understand them.

Not something I ever did before, but this time, I’ll be participating in it to hopefully get a no BS assessment into the reason for the expansion.
It starts at 1pm EDT, and already over 2,000 people are watching it. I would assume this number will jump to about 20,000 or more by then. That many people, I’m going to also assume it’s going to be hard to get my questions answered in the order I post them. This is my first Live Twitch thing.

EDIT: It’s now over. Lasted for 43 minutes. Just over 22,500 people watched… and I didn’t get any of my questions answered. Mainly because, I didn’t read the fine print. You have to use Twitter, to submit your questions… and I don’t have an account with them. So I had to scramble and make an account and then learn how to tweet very quickly, to send them my questions. Finally figured it out… yet it was too late as they never got answered.
Doubt I’m the only one that didn’t. Seriously, I expected to see a chat window that I could just copy/paste in my questions, and they’ll just choose randomly. They did the whole “choose randomly” part, alright.. just not through a chat window.

Really, though. It was mostly what I already knew from playing the beta. Except for one thing. They mentioned in the next beta build, we’ll be able to deactivate followers we don’t want instead of dismiss, and have to pay 200g to get them back. Can only do this once a day or something like that.

They also talked about the new daily system for once you hit Level 100. That whole bar thing that I hate so much and I’m not the only one. They claim it’s supposed to feel “new” and “fresh”… bull.SHIT!!! They are the worst idea I have ever seen in WoW! It’s not something I would do.
All those crystals are for is getting better gear. Not worth it, unless you love to dungeon or raid.

Well, I don’t think all is lost of my questions. With Twitter, I can tweet right to the main devs and ask them these questions.
The folks over at MMO Champion have a list of what was discussed during the Q&A section, right here.

Since there’s really nothing else to do in the WoD Beta(for me), and hearing about these delightful new updates for Space Engineers(cameras, Warheads can now have a countdown ’till boom to give you time to get out of there), I decided to reinstall and try it out.
Lost my save games, since I’m no longer using the Steam Cloud service (as it likes to do stuff without my consent).
Spent a few hours trying to re-learn the complicated, keybind-restricted controls. Finally figured out the proper Use key to access a cockpit. Then I went to work rebuilding my ship, to see how fast it’ll be destroyed by a Military Escort cargo ship.

Did manage to secure a Business Shipment ship. Only to see “Access denied” everytime I tried to loot. This damn faction system is fucking me up. Finally learned that you have to “hack” them, by grinding them to get them below the blue line, and then re-weld to make it accessible.
Went back to the new spawn platform and saw that conveyer system, and thought to myself that it should be as easy as just adding a Connector to the back of my cargo containers and connect with this. But the way I did it was the same reason I uninstalled.
Things that connect to eachother, cannot seem to grasp the though to NOT DESTROY MY FUCKING SHIP IN THE PROCESS!!! … Sorry. Let me say this in a much less angered way. It either likes to pull or push on the hull of my ship, either damaging it or destroying it every single time, forcing me to swing by with a Welder and fix the fuckups.

The reason of this, is I believe due to the collision mesh is larger than the object. And I have Military-grade hull here and it breaks it like a toothpick. Plus, I can’t get the connector on my ship to extract the loot I got from the ship I pillaged. I bet this is because of this damn pointless to be in Single Player.. faction system.
Before and when I was setting up my weapons, I had to set them to be mine. And all the sudden, they think everything that’s not mine is an enemy, including the spawn platform and all the ships. What a stupid system.

On top of the conveyers not working after several attempts to get them to, I tried removing both of them and re-adding, then trying to merge the two together. This not only put a good-sized hole in my ship, but destroyed the connector. This was when I was all “Fuck this shit I quit” and ragequitted.

I keep forgetting this game is still in Alpha. It’s not going to let me do what the hell I want it to, and how I want it done. I regret reinstalling. This game has officially turned to Multiplayer; but that’s what “everyone” wanted. Everyone but me, anyway.

BlizzCon 2014, scheduled for November 7th and 8th and 5 days before the stated launch of WoD, is now available to get the Virtual Ticket for $40. It is currently unknown what the new ingame pet will be for attending this year’s event.
Since I “missed” last year due to a certain Minecraft server, and also was tired of WoW at the time, I will definitely be buying my ticket. I bought it back for the 2011 one and loved every minute of it.

And with WoD to be released soon by that time, you know there’s going to be a last minute Q&A section. But it won’t just be about WoD. There’s going to be Hearthstone that is getting very popular(and I heard talk of new cards or something), and of course talk about their other games(Starcraft 3, and Diablo 3).
They’re being hush hush about the band that’ll be playing during the closing ceremonies. It’ll probably be sometime in mid to late October, close to Halloween, once they unveil them.

Yes, finally a non-WoD Beta post. I wanted something else to do while waiting for the next beta build, and thought of this awesome game that Dan showed a video of.
Rodina is a unique 1st/3rd person Space Simulator. The only one of its kind with no loading screens. Soon as you hit the Play button and pick a difficulty level, you’re in the game. It’s that quick.

The game does have a plot, and a purpose. But the fact this game is in early Alpha, it hasn’t been fully developed yet. Basically, you’re the lone survivor of a great capital ship called the Vanguard. You don’t know what happened or even where you are, but then you see a green dot over the horizon. Your instingt is to walk over to it.
Tracking the green dot to its source, you see a ship. Yes! Your ticket off of… wherever you are!
You enter the ship and go through its airlock, and you see the interior. It’s quite nice. And what’s better? It’s customizable! Yes. You can build your own ship interior! …Yes, I said “ship interior” not “ship”. It’s one of the alpha features. But what it’s capable of, impresses me. You don’t have to know things like Blender or whatever to make interiors. All you have to do is just delete everything in this ship, and make your own interior. Note, the shape has to follow the exterior of the ship, which is quite big. Lots of customization options.
You also pilot in 3rd person. This was the same thing with Space Engineers when it came to building a Big Ship before they had better cockpits.

You first start by being able to go around an asteroid. You have to locate white +’s to indicate wreckage left over by the Vanguard. To do so, you have to land the ship. The game gives you a tutorial on how to switch gears. Your main ones are Combat Speed, and Landing Speed.
You get Cruising Speed, which will help you explore all the asteroids orbiting around the star. These may or may not have a red dot on them. These are enemies. They’ll start as pesky but quick fighters. You’ll encounter harder enemies(some with homing missiles, and even a capital ship) that are orbiting around planets.

To be able to access planets, you need a drive core; aka a crystal to power a special drive. This gives you warp speed. There are four known planets in the game as of now. They’re spotted with a white “?”. All four planets have a shit-ton of enemies swarming around them, but they have a lot more of those wreckage areas.

One of the coolest aspects of this game, is burning through the atmosphere. But the insane camera shaking made my stomach sick. Thankfully, there’s an option to turn off planet re-entry shaking. You got to make sure your angle is perfect. If not, you’ll come in too fast and be unable to slow down once you hit terminal velocity. Or, there will be a fire inside your ship.
Fires are bad, and need to be taken care of very quickly as they can literally burn your ship health down. You can only deal with them if your ship has landed or is in outer space. To deal with them, you need a fire extinguisher. Yes, a wall-mounted 20th century fire extinguisher. No sprinkler system. You have to use a fire extinguisher.
In a later update, the developer gave the option of starving fires of oxygen, which eventually does extinguish it(as fire cannot burn without oxygen). But in doing so, will suffocate you (or even throw you out the airlock).

Discussing about combat now. A word of warning. Enemies have been seen swooping down into the atmosphere and attempting to loot the wreckage areas. They will kill you on sight. And with that number of enemies, you best have some good Descent-style reflexes. Sometimes the ole circle strafe doesn’t always work.
Unfortunately, at this time, there’s no way to rid a planet of these annoying red dots. But the dev is working on a patch within a few weeks, to give an option of not having them respawn.

Overall, I really like this game. It has a lot of potential and the dev more than knows about it, and will fully take advantage. It’s $15 on Steam, and I say it’s worth it. $15 is the perfect price for this free roaming space simulator.

I’ve gotten a few emails of “Benie, you don’t need to spam your blog with countless “WoD Beta Testing” posts. Just make one post with all of your testing in it!”. Well, even that would be too big.
But I had an idea. I’m going to use Blogger to move all of my WoD Beta posts, and link new entries into this post. Look for the links below this thing here.
Enjoy reading, without the clutter. 🙂
WARNING: By clicking on these links, you are aware that they may contain quest spoilers of the WoD Beta. If you don’t wish to be spoiled, don’t click on them! Thank you.
Update: Beta Recap of what I’ve seen so far has been posted.

Day 1, testing begins:
http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-1.html
Day 2,
http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-2.html
Day 3: http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-3.html
Day 4: http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-4.html
Day 5: http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-5.html
Day 6: http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-6.html
Beta Recap: http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/beta-recap.html
Day 7: http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-7.html
Day 8(FINAL, until the next beta build): http://beniewodbetablog.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-8.html

One HELL of a birthday present
Prepping for my birthday. Got a pizza and a cookie from Papa Johns. Checked Thunderbird to see when it’ll show. Getting lots of “Happy Birthday” emails from several websites that think my birthday is today.
One email stood out. It was from Blizzard, titled “Warlords of Draenor”. At first, I thought it was spam(as in “It will be released at so and so time! Preorder NOW!”), especially when Thunderbird thought it was spam. But I viewed it and read it, then suddenly my eyes widened when I saw “you’ve been selected to participate in the beta test of World of Warcraft®: Warlords of Draenor™!” I then jumped out of my seat, squealing like a pig and yelling “OH MY GOD!!!! I GOT A WOD BETA KEY!!!!“.

YES, I’m NOT dreaming!! I even pinched myself! Holy FUCK I’m so happy! No more will I have to watch WoD Beta videos! I’ll be able to finally see the content MYSELF! 😀
I just changed my plans for tomorrow. 🙂 Originally, it was either going to be attempting to do an LFR of Siege of Org, or hanging out with Ter and Heol in Goldshire. THIS.. changes that. I will test WoD. And the first thing I will do, get to The Dark Portal, do the ‘suicide mission’, and all the other quests leading up to doing Garrisons! I’ll also figure out why you’re called a ‘Commander’ instead of ‘Champion’ or ‘Hero’. And I’ll be typing in every little thing I see into blog posts.

This… makes my evening. I feel like I won the lottery. This is the first Beta test I’ve been in since AOL 7.0, many years ago when I still had a 56k modem.

This whole thing bears a question, though: why was I selected to beta test WoD? I’m not YouTube famous. I’ve never been to BlizzCon(except the live stream of 2011). I’m just a soloer. Maybe they saw it was near my birthday and gave this to me as a way of saying “Happy Birthday! Now go have fun building a Garrison and talking all about it in your blog!”
Whatever’s the case, I got it and I feel honored, and I will use it to my advantage, check out everything I always wanted to, and report bugs. And, I also take back every mean thing I said to Blizzard for the past 9 years… without being a fanboy. 😛

Enter the Monk
Before I was blessed with this wonderful birthday present by Blizzard, I got Benie and my Monk on and proceeded to re-train how to be a Level 90 Monk by dueling myself, and Benie’s pets.
The training went as good as Blizzard on patch day(damnit. I said I wasn’t going to say anything mean about them!). I’m mashing every button in the hotbar, hoping one of them has high DPS. But, I think my Monk is ready, and got them to the Timeless Isle to begin gearing up for WoD and finding any remaining Mail gear for Beefhunter.
This is a first for me. A melee class, doing the Timeless Isle. The place is made for Hunters in my opinion (especially those troll tigers that love to Pounce on you constantly, stunning you).

I hope I can handle it. I really do. It’ll be, interesting to say the least.