Benie's Games Blog

I’ve been getting some emails stating how they’ve decided to stay unsubbed from WoW because of the bad taste WoD has given them. And from what I’ve been saying about Legion, it seems I’m convincing them to stay unsubbed.

This is good. It pays to be informed. I’m glad this website and its words are finally having an affect on the gaming community. But this also had me thinking after watching this video(which is Karma with a channel name of ‘Give It Thought’).
It’s possible that WoW’s Warlords of Draenor, and No Man’s Sky could be alike in the way they were delivered. Both had their developers get their customers on the hype train, and both fell flat on them. However, there is one major difference between Blizzard and Hello Games. And that is Blizzard had the balls to finally apologize (and also proved they were sorry with Legion).
Though the endgame of Legion is still a grindy mess (and forced group content), they apologized. Hello Games, has yet to do so. Most say the company turned tail and ran off with their money. The CEO has yet to say anything. He has been silent since the release, and all forms of contact are ignored. This is the kind of shit you just don’t do.
Yet another thing that unfortunately does separate the two, is Hello Games lied so..so much about certain features and never delivered. Blizzard..they admitted they overhyped. However, don’t get me wrong. Blizzard still tried to hide things from us (such as their declining subscription numbers) and two-faced.

But the main reason why I say both NMS and WoD could be alike, is that linked video claims a developer who’s trying to make another space game in the shadow of NMS(that looks similar to Space Engineers BTW).. his business could face collapse because of people feel “this is just going to be another No Man’s Sky”. The game has poked a black eye on the genre and could possibly kill it off if this path continues.
These people, like I had with WoD (and in ways still do) feel the genre cannot be trusted to make a game that will undo the damage of NMS. Some people say that it’s all up to Star Citizen to come through “or the genre is fucked”.
And it was the SAME fucking exact way with WoW, that we needed Legion to come through. For most people, it has. So hopefully Star Citizen will save their genre.

This has caused people to wake up and not preorder games as much. And hopefully this path will continue. I however, still haven’t gotten over it. I keep feeling “what will be the next game to disappoint their playerbase with overly-hyped content?”
The content creator feels that we need to not be so scarred over it (but it is just his opinion, and I do respect it). I’ll admit that I, too, need to get over it one of these days.
But I dunno. Feel free to keep those emails coming of your opinion about this, and also consider subscribing to Give It Thought‘s channel, as it’s pretty informative.

P.S. I’m not affiliated with or sponsored by Give It Thought in any way. So please don’t send me emails about that.

Been busy with WoW news, that I have to push out news coming from 21,000 light years from home. Tomorrow, we launch from WP8. Well, most of us do. Some have already ‘completed’ the expedition, while others have already been to Jaques to sell their expensive exploration data.

With the 2.2 patch coming out this Tuesday, this is good news for us still heading towards the core. Having less plot lag to get to our legs is all good. Plus, seeing the beauty of Neutron Stars and their ‘FSD Superhighway’ potential, will increase their value (not financially, sadly).

As for me of tomorrow, I had debated of selling my data once I reach Jaques. But I’ve chosen to wait ’till I eventually get back to the bubble sometime next year. It’ll mean an even bigger payout. Plus, you know me..I don’t even care about credits anymore, since I got my ‘Conda.
That tune could change, depending on how much the fighter bay is (and buying fighters and hiring pilots). I personally hope these new fighters will replace how annoying (and buggy) SRVs are when in a high loaded instance of CMDRs. Plus, to use them as scout ships for areas my ‘Conda is too fat to traverse (such as pinpointing LZs, or POIs).
Plus, if I sold the data there, I would lose the chance of selling it to the Engineers back in the bubble (and eventually unlocking the others). This is the only way to ‘undo my fuckup’ (sort of speak) of selling my data of the ole CNE route to the wrong Engineer.

Once I eventually get back to the bubble, I still want to try and get the Sol permit. I would have had it if I hadn’t ran out of time before the launch. Didn’t have enough time to switch back to my tradeconda build to do the delivery.

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Oh yes! I almost forgot. While in Jaques, a challenge has been issued. And that challenge is to go to the ‘KYLOALKS DL-Y G17 IV’ system and land on a planet as fast as you can without crashing.
So you might say “Pfft.. really? That’s it?!” The catch is, this is nearly a 10g planet. Yes. Crushing gravity. It’s 9.90g. That is INSANE! That is twice as strong as the highest g planet (Arcunam 3 or something like that). WP9 is going to be 1.52g, and that’s going to be tricky to land (let alone pinpoint the LZ). But I feel as long as I keep my bottom facing the ground at all times (where my strongest thrusters are), I should be fine.
Just put full pips on SYS while landing to keep my shields (and hull) intact when landing. I can do it. I have faith in my CMDR abilities.

But as for that nearly 10g monstrosity? … Ehh, I’ll respectfully pass. I’ll still watch, though. The person doing the event says the winner will win a paint pack of their choice. Heh. Unless the person gives a badge that you could see ingame that says “I survived landing on a 9.90g planet and all I got was this lousy badge”, then it would be worth it.

With Legion’s patch 7.1 only a few days away from going live, it’s time to go over what you’ll be able to get your grubby little hands onto. So here’s a breakdown and my thoughts.
Note that this doesn’t really cover the small things. Blizzard themselves will likely go over the fine details on patch day.

-Karazan gets a complete overhaul, yet still remains as a 9 boss mega-dungeon. This worries me even more that the current Karazan won’t be soloable anymore.
Though I wonder if this revamped Karazan is to celebrate Halloween this year. Possibly why it’s being released before the infamous holiday.
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-Coming two weeks after the release of 7.1 (and BlizzCon), the ‘Trial of Valor’ raid opens up. It’ll be a 3 boss raid, in Stormheim. I find that quite odd, with only having three bosses. I also feel it isn’t going to be enough content.
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-Two new World Quests, with one I assume would be similar to the Horde only raptor mount in Un’Goro Crater (starting from a hatchling and growing up to be a ground mount). Very interesting.
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-The Suramar questline will be extended with one questline opened up every week for 10 weeks in total. This includes two Mythic-only dungeons. Not sure what I feel about forced Mythic only. I still remember Cata’s endgame had Heroic-only dungeons.
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-‘Blood of Sargarus’, due to how easy it is to acquire, will become a currency in exchange for trade goods in Dalaran. This does worry me, as I saw an image of trading the blood for Ore. This means ores will lose value on the AH, and it’ll be pointless to acquire in that form.
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-The ‘action cam’ which was part of Legion but then removed, is being brought back in 7.1. I hear there will now be a feature for better control when doing dungeons or raiding.
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-An island in Kalimdor will be revamped to include elite only enemies. Rumors are spreading that this is possibly going to be in favor of Hunters, to be able to tame robotic creatures (after they get the required trait to do so).
It is unknown at this time if this island will have a questline behind it.

Lastly, I hear rumors that gearing could be getting easier in 7.1 (insert “catering to casuals” comment here). It’ll be based on a BIB(Best In Bags) system, and have a green up arrow to any piece of gear that is a potential upgrade to your current spec.
I saw this rumor from the patch notes of Pawn(which currently uses weights from AshMrRobot.com), who will overwrite this to make gearing up somewhat easier. This means more people should be doing engaging PvE content (dungeons/raids).
It mentions this is completely optional and can be disabled (for the elitists).

And that’s about it. Some say that this patch has more content than all of WoD. I’m just glad it wasn’t another pointless update.

Lots to talk about today. First off, some breaking benies-blogs.com news.

Turns out that the 2.2 patch for Elite Dangerous will be released…on the same exact date as Legion’s 7.1 patch (the 25th). That is pretty cool. That also means, I’m going to have my hands tied checking out two forms of content on the same day.
However, ED’s new content will likely be first, as Blizzard will very likely do maintenance on patch day (as they usually do).
So that means for ED, we’ll very soon have ship-launched fighters (which will be very useful to me for scouting missions), the new Beluga-class ship will be released along with new passenger hauling missions. And for explorers, there will be geysers on planets and moons where its data says they’ll have them. And lastly (which from what I heard is still up in the air), we were going to have a 3D view of scanned planets. But FDev decided to go back to what it is currently (possibly due to whining about how “it’s too easy”).
The last thing is unfortunate, but…what can you do?

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And now we move onto something I had sweared to a lot that Blizzard is deliberately doing, and that’s forced dungeon content. However, I’ve reached a conclusion. Maybe it’s not as much of being “forced”, as it could be “encouraging”.
Or… it could be the fact I JUST DID MY FIRST EVER MYTHIC DUNGEON!! 😀

See, Kalygos came to the Order Hall last night to send me a message; to meet him at where the last of the Blue Dragonflight are in Azsuna. I didn’t really recognize him at first. He’s now named ‘Archmage Kalac’. So clearly what Alexstrasza said at the end of Cata of “we must now see through mortal eyes”, he’s doing. He’s obviously retired as the new leader of the Blue Dragonflight. And this was his way of reminiscing of the good times of being a dragon.
Anyway, Senegos tasked me to recover an artifact from the Eye of Azsuna dungeon. The trick…was I had to do it in Mythic difficulty. I felt I was fucked as there’s no way to queue for a dungeon. Checking Wowhead, I found a way via the Premade Group Finder.
This, including wiping for… 10+- times on Serpentrix(I seriously lost count), were the major hurdles I had to face. There was one time I felt I was done and had to try tomorrow. Yet praise Elune for giving me a solid enough group that knew the fights. And we DID IT! 😀 I got the artifact and completed the dungeon, on Mythic! I also got my first Mythic Keystone.
And before you ask.. NO! I am NOT doing that shit again on Mythic+! I went through pure hell. I think I burned through 1/3rd of my gold just on repair bills. What made the fights tough, was this annoying wind mechanic that forces you to think while casting (it pushes on the group, forcing them to counter it). It was especially hard on the healer.

So, to say “dungeons are ‘forced’ on the player”? …I dunno anymore. It encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone and try something new. And that’s always a good thing.
Good going, Blizzard. You just might make a raider out of me yet.

I honestly didn’t know how to title this one, or not to make this post sound like one big QQ rant. Lots have happened, and lots need to be shared.
But first, some good news!

I’ve been doing Legion’s dungeons. Yes, I finally manned up. But I actually had some help in the form of a person who I haven’t spoken to since Cata. It took awhile for him to know me.
Basically, he used to be part of Goldshire (but is still a friend of ‘Bigbossofgs’). Yeah, that guy still plays and hasn’t hesitated in still oddly bugging me by saying “oh benie”. Would had thought he would had gotten bored by now. Seems not.
Anyway, back to this other guy. We actually did this dungeon to get this stupid item I need to continue (and complete) my class questline. We joined the queue with him. I still had the dungeon difficulty set to Heroic (as I was soloing WoD’s dungeons in Heroic), but he was all “just leave it there, you can do it”.
So I did, but we weren’t getting in and it was a half an hour. He decided to switch to Tank..and we got in just like that. And we did it. That was pretty cool.
Gave the stupid thing to the guy and I completed the Hunter questline. The final fight confused the hell out of me; died three times due to being overwhelmed by Felhounds.
But once I understood the fight, I was able to get it done without anymore deaths. Yay. And I got my gun infused to where it looks badass with a scope and an extended barrel.
Doing that one dungeon, gave me the courage to do the others. It erased all my anxiety. And I never got yelled at over my DPS. I love it! 😀

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Moving on, there was one time I felt I once again had so much to do. And now…now I’m reminded why I left WoW. This time gating is driving me up the wall. And as much as I want to plead with Blizzard to think of alternatives (and how this is not engaging content, it’s manual labor)…it’s just going to fall on deaf ears.
That is trying to go for the Pathfinder meta achievement in both WoD and Legion. I can do everything, but get all factions to Revered. Because that’s where the time gating is. That’s where I feel Blizzard saying “if you want it bad enough, you’ll stay subscribed for months and work your ass off!”
So here’s why this isn’t engaging content. For Legion, not only do you have to do 100 World Quests, but do up to 4,000 of them(what I read on Wowhead). Now I don’t know if all 4,000 is to get one of the factions to Revered, but that is an INSANE amount of grinding!
If you were to do like 10-20 a day, it would take you weeks..if not months of non-stop questing. Also, there is usually 6 or so WQs for that faction in their specific zone.
Blizzard may think this is ‘engaging content’, as you’re engaging with the world. They are wrong. “Engaging content”, is doing what you should be doing in an MMORPG — engaging with the community. Dungeons. Raids. PvP. THAT is ‘engaging content’! Yet you look at this, and doing these things does NOT give rep with their factions! It’s ONLY with World Quests!

And then there’s… ugh. WoD’s Pathfinder. This is somewhat similar, requiring finding 100 treasure chests and doing all the Garrison missives. All of these are trivial now for being Level 110 and having somewhat good gear. And then it too stops with getting their three factions to Revered. This is done, through mob grinding. I keep reading on Wowhead that the best way is to have a Level 3 Trading Post, Guild perks (actually have members in your Guild that aren’t all your alts spread out between two accounts) getting the ‘WEEE!’ buff for using the Merry-Go-Round for a minute at the Darkmoon Faire, and so on.
There was also a similar thing that helped boost rep increase, but it’s gone since Legion’s launch. But yeah, grinding an unspecified amount of mobs is the only way to rep up? Dungeons? Raiding? Nope! Apparently it’s “too easy” to gain rep by working as a team!
I mean, I can understand now due to being able to solo all dungeons (with some reasonable difficulty of course). Soloing WoD’s raids ain’t going to come ’till the next expansion and I’m Level 120, though.

Personally, just get rid of flying altogether (but refund the time, effort, and gold we all put into our mounts) if this is the only way to fly now. Sure, I would be pissed, but also glad this retarded achievement is gone.
It’s not fun. It’s not engaging. It’s grinding. It’s a time gate to trick players to keep paying for their product.
I rather prefer they would just keep us on the ground. Infact, give us a boost to our ground speed. Give us better alternatives!
But no. It seems mindlessly grinding is Blizzard’s form of ‘engaging content’. Not to mention, it’s an ‘alt killer’. Not because that by doing this content on your main won’t be account wide (it will), but you’ll be so fucking SICK of the content that you’ll be uninterested in utilizing your alts.

Yet, the people that support this madness are all “good, that leaves more kills for us. Keep whining and stay on the ground while we go fly!”

So I just got done watching Heelz’s latest ‘AZCHATS’ video, of him talking about if Patch 7.1 is “coming too soon.”
For me personally, I have no idea what this patch will have in it. Clearly it’s about going back to Karazan (as raiding is WoW’s main focus). But according to Heelz, there are two more things. The first is a continuation of the Suramar questline, and the second is more World Quests (with another mini-faction). Hopefully it’s the Blue Dragonflight. That would be awesome.

Going over the first thing, the continuation of the Suramar questline, I hear that this is attached to…three raids and two dungeons. So if I have to do them to ‘catch up’ intime for the 7.1 patch to go live… nah. Fuck that noise. Suramar City can go die in a fire for all I care.
I also hear from Heelz (which does make perfect sense), the continuation will open to ‘raid 3’ (while ‘raid 2’ is still unreleased). And that makes no sense. How they balance it, it’s possible they’ll use time walls. And I’m already burnt out from the Hunter questline of the Hunter Honor Hall (having to wait two days to collect something that I could do in 20 minutes or so).

Hearing there will be more World Quests, has my interest. Already, I’m doing repeats of quests I just did a day ago(yet getting different rewards). It’s gotten to the point where I’m all “blah blah blah, just fucking pay me” when they thank me for completing it. Thankfully, this has not fallen to death ears as Blizzard is well aware of this being a problem (according to the Q&A). Yet the way they explained it was trying to prevent specific World Quest hubs from overlapping (such as the ‘Oh Nuts’ one in Val’sharah).

And…that’s it. That’s really all I heard. Maybe that’s why they’re releasing it so early, as it doesn’t have a lot of content. And that’s never good with the game’s current age (and the bitterness of returning players from WoD).
But what are raiders going to do when they burn through this content? Who knows. And that’s a problem. Since raiding is the ‘bread and butter’ of WoW, it should be focused on more, to produce the most content.
However, the reason I feel they’re releasing it is to try to ‘trick’ the community that they’re being super active with us and want to keep us as long as we can. Clearly with the time gating of the class questline of Honor Halls, it feels like trickery to keep the community paying their subscription fees….and it’s working. I hate to say it, but it feels worse than the WoW Token BS they tried to pull.
Heelz promises a future video (possibly as early as this week) to talk about the time gating.

Let me just say here. Blizzard releasing content early, there’s nothing really wrong with that — especially if it’s good content for all types of players. But I feel this is too little, too quick. Not only will some players feel a bit overwhelmed (as I felt when I hit endgame, but it was a good feeling(to me)) to push themselves through 7.0’s content to get right to 7.1 (to help their raid buddies and what not), that there’s not going to be enough content for raiders ’till Patch 7.2 (which hasn’t been announced yet).

As for me, I doubt anything will change when 7.1 hits.

Made it to WP8. Halfway to the waypoint (and as I headed back up into the galactic plane), the sky filled with stars. This even showed up on the Galaxy Map, of my view being blocked by a fuckton of stars.
So yeah.. “It’s full of stars!!”
Eventually I was within plot distance of WP8. When I did, it took I would say about 10 minutes. This was literally a taste of what’s to come as we near the core by WP9.
So if Patch 2.2 is going to drop by ‘mid October’ as they claimed, it better do it very soon. Though a few say possibly by late October, as the Beta is still ongoing.

If it doesn’t release by the time we prepare to leave Jaques, this is bad news indeed for the future of the expedition. But this was also to be expected. The only way to get around it is to limit the distance we travel (to decrease the studdering that happens when it plots).
There is a formula out there to calculate. But to the ones who don’t wish to beat their head into a wall, a fellow player, CMDR Cartherium, has made(the link is safe) a small program to help calculate the optimal maximum distance for navigating in (and around) the core (to minimize studdering).
For me, it doesn’t really work. It told me 953Ly is the optional distance (based on my current jump range and range to Sag A*), yet the distance to WP8 was 901Ly. And again, it took quite awhile.
Another time, I had to reroute to the correct WP system which was just under 200Ly away…that too nearly took 10 minutes. I told them about this, and they say it’s to be expected; that it can’t properly adjust the distance (due to the buttloads of possible routes the plotter can use).

This will be fixed in 2.2, which is why I wish it would come out sooner than later. But, you can’t rush good development. Just going to have to deal with slow plot times, for now. It’s not really a gamebreaker.

I missed half of the stream due to posting the previous blog. Thankfully their archives are now up. It seems the show didn’t start for 14 minutes after it said it would. And even at that, had issues with no sound until around 16 minutes in.
…Sadly, my question never got seen nor answered. So it’s still up in the air if I’ll ever get an answer of why Spirit Bond sucks. It feels very frustrating.

Because of this, I won’t be ‘live blogging’. I’m too damn annoyed they didn’t get to my question (it was very important to me). At the end, they didn’t even say “thanks for all of your questions, and sorry if we didn’t read them all”. If they had least said that, I wouldn’t mind much.
I will however link the two videos on Twitch (sadly I cannot inline link them), in here. So enjoy them. And congrats to the ones that actually got their questions answered.

Two more things.
First, they do promise more Q&A’s in the future (after BlizzCon of course).
And second, the final question was asked of what will 7.1’s release date be. They started with their usual “SoonTM” response (stating they don’t want to rush it), and then suddenly gave a possible release date (that they’re looking at right now) of October 25th(or the week of it), saying it’s nearly done. It’s also on the PTR (and has been for awhile now). So go test it if you wish.

Right, so. Here’s the videos. Enjoy. Also took the liberty of setting the links to where they actually start talking.
Part 1: https://www.twitch.tv/warcraft/v/94901992
Part 2: https://www.twitch.tv/warcraft/v/94908250

Going to say this out front: I’m bored with Legion now. Less than two weeks after I came back, and I’m bored. I’ve left the ‘Goldilocks state” where everything was new. Yet why, when I said how there was “so much to do”?
I’ll tell you. Because of the Honor Hall campaign, and because of the limited (even forced) ways to get artifact power.
It’s all based on one thing… time walls. “This will take 8 hours. This will take a day. THIS will take a WEEK!”; all in real time. Something to block progress for a lengthy amount of time, to encourage the player to keep playing (and subscribing).
It really is dirty.

The Hunter questline, I just ended spending a few days waiting for 5 ‘Unforeseen Help'(something like that) missions (as I was told to do). After that, did have a lot of me running around. I did like that…and then it goes back to the missions wall at the Honor Hall to do a 12 HOUR mission.
I’m supposed to get my allies to help me, yet I’m stuck behind another time wall instead of physically going out into the world and getting this ally to help. Why? I could had assisted my ally without a fucking time wall in my face!

And that thing about bringing Illidan back to life? It’s only a three quest thing. And to go from Quest 2 to Quest 3, requires you to get your artifact knowledge (AK) level to 5. And this alone, takes a lot of time. Going from Level 0 to Level 1? Took three days. And I swear its timer doesn’t reflect game time (bet it pauses when I logged out), as it said once that it’ll be done in 8 hours. So I assigned an 8 hour mission. It completed, and the AK thing STILL wasn’t done.
Plus I read how this can take longer as you increase the knowledge… possibly taking months to complete. I’m not shitting you. That’s ridiculous.

World Quests, eventually run out of useful quests (Artifact Power or Gear upgrades) to the point they’re either pointless profession quests, PvP, or Gold. I don’t even see a need for gold when it comes to this expansion. I haven’t seen a need since MoP. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right places. I feel like I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted in terms of mounts. It just doesn’t excite me anymore when I get money. Infact I have 51k right now, and I feel that I have no need to spend it on anything.
Maybe because Gold can’t buy happiness. Well, it can. But it can’t buy sustained happiness. It can’t buy better gear. It can’t buy a guarantee I won’t look like a n00b when I do dungeons with others. It can’t buy lessons of being a better player that I won’t just push aside, saying “fuck that”.

Treasures, they seem to have no purpose anymore. Their artifact weapon power doesn’t reflect with AK level increases. I get as little as 25 power in some chests. Really wish they would reflect (at least half of your level of AK(Artifact Knowledge)).

There’s also soloing old content. I just did that; solo’d every dungeon in WoD last night (in Normal difficulty). Grimrail Depot was probably the hardest to do (due to the second boss’ second and 3rd stage of the fight). Never died once in any dungeon, but mainly because every mob had a ‘Demoralized’ debuff (to make them soloable).
Feels good to solo content that the main bad guy of its expansion, hasn’t been dead for 4+ years.

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So what’s there left to do of the game’s current state? I guess do the Pathfinding thing to eventually fly in a future patch.
From what Wowhead tells me, the requirements aren’t too mindnumbing (compared to WoD), and nothing about being forced to go into a dungeon/raid.
Here’s my current progress, by the way.

But that’s all to do in Legion’s endgame. This is literally the truth.