Benie's Games Blog

It’s officially a month since the release of WoD. On the forum, there’s a few threads going over this, asking people if they still like the expansion.
Some do. Some don’t. Me? …You know my opinion by now.

Today, I was hoping to finally.. just finally put away my differences about WoD and actually give it a shot for what it’s worth. I was greeted by the realization that the Tier 3 Inn upgrade sucks monkey balls.
Basically, I took one of my high leveled alts and sent him to Ashran while I stayed in my Garrison, and with the power of dual clienting, be able to finally get a real comparison from the Tier 2 to the Tier 3. And what I see, minimal changes. There’s a bedroom where a third of it is chopped off to make room for another bedroom next to it.
And that’s not the half of it. Turns out, no one gives a fuck about it. I asked in the forum of why do they want the Tier 3 Inn. It wasn’t the fact it was an achievement. It was mainly to get the treasure missions. Which are just extra Garrison Resource missions. Why would I fucking care about those, when I won’t even be able to use them?
A few people were shocked I actually care about what my Garrison looks like, and even one says possibly the most stupidest thing ever: “People that care about looks are women and idiots”.
To say I have lost faith in the human race, is an understatement.

The second thing, I was willing to finally use the profession buildings; give work orders a chance to feel they have a point. I was willing to drop Mining for Leatherworking. But first I had to ask, if they made it easier to level up a production prof.
As it stands now, it’s… I dunno. I dunno if I want to take that risk. Basically, I’m hearing how I can “craft everything at Level 1”, and “getting to 600 is trivial”. Yet going from 600 to 700, relies on work orders.
So, that would be something to look into. That is, if I really needed to. The whole reason I was going to give them a chance, was for that Inn achievement. But seeing how it’s now a joke…

I’m thinking of just giving up on WoD and consider myself being bored. And I really am. Nothing, just like MoP is interesting me. Don’t need to gear, as there’s no need.
Considered going back to the MRT Server, even though I said I was “done” with it a few months ago. But the only reason I may come back, is I can’t get my mind off of how beautiful the Northwest quadrant was with that dense forest. Plus the way the MRT tracks were laid out.. it felt so real.
Plus, I could just be one of those “so I work and have a life, and just visit now and then to say hi to my friends. Yet I don’t wish to contribute to the server. Just being on is good enough” people.
To just stop caring about doing roads, and focus on actually being on the server for once. That’s all they ask for; me without the heavy, drama-filled baggage I bring.

I also thought of going back to Skyrim. But I said this before; it doesn’t like my computer. Or, maybe an addon doesn’t. I’m still pointing fingers at Immersive Creatures(even though the author says the mod isn’t responsible). But I have no desire to even check to see if it is. I’ve done so many playthroughs, it would make your head spin.
I wonder if I could find a save file that has already completed all the expansions, in Vanilla. And just use this to get me set up to do mod crash testing.

Whatever I do, I got to get my mind off of WoD until Patch 6.1. This means, through New Years. This also means, to stop browsing the WoW forum. When 6.1 is unveiled, Twitter will let me know.

Been three weeks since the release of WoD, and late last night, it has exploded in player outrage over how Blizzard blows, Garrisons are boring, this and that. Good to see more people are waking up.
But I think this is because of four things;
1. The two interviews with Ion and Kris(two WoW devs) with nerfs all across the board for tomorrow… hitting Warriors hard and Shamans up the ass.
2. The lie that “‘we didn’t know’ there would be no flying in 6.1” coming from Ion(how can you fucking not know?! Seriously!).
3. “No flying?… I WARNED YOU, BLIZZARD! I QUIT! FUCK YOU!!!” posts.
4. Blizzard’s customer service is bad. Hearing tickets being deleted even though the issue never got solved.

Overall, the “honeymoon phase(aka OMG THIS IS AWESOME!!! phase)” is over, which is making people feel less confident in Blizzard handling WoD. And there’s even people that understand what I’m going through, with my deep depression to just not feel like doing anything.
All I want to do when I look at my screen, and see these posts, raise my fists up and yell “GO! GO! GO! We’re not going to take this crap anymore!”

Which is funny, since I was about to think about going back to WoW. Had a nice post all written up about how I was going to try to work around the annoyances. But this is changing those plans.
I hope these threads continue in intensity and more people unsubscribe, to the point Blizzard has to say something about it to keep more people from leaving. I don’t feel sorry about unsubbing now. Yet I’m willing to still give them a decent chance to make some of the things that anger me, more tolerable.
Such as, I’d shut up if they give us a Commander’s Quarters, that is customizable. They did mention how there maybe “hidden updates” planned for Garrisons in future content patches, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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Update: 12/9/14
It’s getting a bit worse now, as I hoped. Getting to the point where now there’s a thread about “Your customers are losing faith in you” and demanding Blizzard to respond.
This is coming from the highly questionable buffs and nerfs of yesterday’s hotfix. Hunters alone, BM Hunters.. Kill Shot got nerfed by 10%. That stings.

I think now’s the time to find other games, that hopefully have confident, reliable game developers. This is worse than SCS Software and their backwards work of the 18WoS series. Though they have redeemed themselves in my eyes, with Euro Truck Simulator 2.
Hopefully they will continue to do so, with American Truck Simulator. If they do, I’ll have my wallet wide open, shouting “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!”

However, I do want to say one important note(to myself). To blame Blizzard for my.. game depression, is stupid and childish. They’re just one of the many game companies that don’t seem to care for their product anymore.
EA is hell of a lot worse than Blizzard. I got to remember this. Just because Blizzard isn’t doing so good with WoD, doesn’t mean all game companies are shit.

Games like Space Engineers, and Rodina. Their game devs care for their customers and always willing to listen to feedback to improve their game. Of course, these two games are Single Player. They don’t involve class balancing and shit like that.
Class Balancing has always been a hot topic in WoW, and very hard to do. “AHH dude I keep getting owned in PvP! BUFF MEH!!” *patch later* “AHH dude I feel like any other class now!”

I recently discovered that MMO Champion has its own results from the Blizzard AMA, and this one has a lot more questions that were answered compared to Wowhead.

Sure, they still say there won’t be flying in 6.1. This is fine. Yet it seems they have “rewritten” the thing about how they want to focus on dungeons instead of the Garrison.
They’re saying this, to make me feel the Garrison is NOT being placed on the back burner in favor of dungeon/raid content.
It could be possible, as a response to my slightly pissed off tweet to @BlizzardDevs.

Basically, what started this… someone asked if there’s going to be any race-customized Garrisons. Like huts for Tauren, Gilnean housing for Worgen.. things like this. I personally would love to see this. It would give my Worgen chars a purpose to have the Garrison(to me).
They say on this one, they “thought this is a good idea”. An idea.. ok. Hold. This… “idea” was a feature that was going to be planned for the Garrison before the release of WoD. So, why say “we think this is a good idea”, when it was their idea from the start? Or maybe I read it wrong.

Anyway, they say to make 13 separate Garrison structures for each tier and playable race, would take way too long, and they wouldn’t be able to focus on content for the core players(the dungeoneers/raiders).
THIS is what they meant. They had no intention on not working on Garrisons. They never meant it as a way to piss me off.

Also, a new question showed up that wasn’t on Wowhead.
The person asked, if we’re going to see a Tier 4 Garrison soon. Now, I had thought with this whole “they’re throwing Garrisons on the back burner” thing, meant I was never going to see player housing.
Well… Blizzard answered with a positive note. They said there might be a Tier 4… just not in 6.1. It might be in 6.2. Again, they emphasis on ‘might’.

Finally, a last question. Someone asked how will the Garrison fare for future expansions. A lot of people questioned this.
Blizzard’s answer, they seem to have somewhat of a handle on the situation. They say they have ideas of how they could work future expansions around the Garrison. And it might even involve ‘Garrison 2.0’.

Though, my question about if Apexis Gear will ever be a full set, no one ever asked this. I still feel like kicking myself in the ass for not making this my primary question, when the Q&A rolled around the day before the release.
I do have a chance to get that question answered, once again. There’s now a thing on that page, that FatbossTV(the Youtube channel) will be asking questions to a few of the Blizzard Devs. And to click on this link if you want your questions answered.
It’ll be tomorrow when it’s done. Doesn’t show the time, though. But it got me to make a quick account to post my question, as it seems they’re ignoring it through Twitter.

I also asked if it’s possible to replace the Tier 3 Inn achievement to something less punishing. I also subbed to FatbossTV on Youtube.

Yesterday evening, Blizzard did their first AMA on Reddit. And the results… they are not promising for my WoW future, and make me question if it’s time to finally make my leave.

Going over the list on Wowhead, I clearly see they’re taking WoW to be more community and less solo. Not that soloing isn’t an option anymore, they’re making it for the social-starved community as their primary focus(aka, dungeons/raids). That is fine.
However… what they said about Garrisons; how it’s unlikely they’ll be doing anything major for them in 6.1.. or even the entirety of the expansion, is not fine. They even went as far as to say, that another expansion is required… SERIOUSLY.. ANOTHER FUCKING EXPANSION?!?! They couldn’t do it during the beta… after all we said?!
We don’t even know how the Garrison will fare for the next expansion! And it’s not even mentioned if it’ll be free content!

What upsets me about this, that these things will never happen;
-Changes to dailies. Not even a change to Apexis gear not being a full set.
-Faction-customized Garrisons. I’m surprised more people aren’t pissed about this.
-Tier 4 Garrison. Heard this was in the beta, but before I showed up.
-A House building for true Player Housing. …This is what made me unsub.

And unsubscribe I have. It took guts, but I did it. I also had a guarantee I’ll still be able to play ’till March 22nd, 2015.
This doesn’t make me feel any better, but I do hope that served as a slight wakeup call to Blizzard. Any type of wakeup call is all I want to see, that I’m not taking their BS anymore.
They had MONTHS… YEARS to get this right. But it seems they were busy high on Vodka while working on this. This is how they can lie through their teeth during BlizzCon, when they say they care about the community. They don’t care. If they did, they would had listened to us during the beta. It’s all bullshit.

Someone did make a thread explaining about how he’s going to EverQuest 2, and what he said really interested me. He said “it’s like WoW but better”. As in, it has player housing. But sadly, the thread got deleted by Blizzard’s crack dick team of stupid moderators, who can’t stand fun.

…they still have trouble after maintenance. I didn’t feel like writing this post as it just felt pointless. Been through this before. No difference. All the bitching at Blizzard isn’t going to speed them up to fix whatever problem’s causing this.

What caused this? This isn’t even classified as a patch. It’s a raid. This day, I was hoping would be the day 6.1 would be released(and I would decide if it was time to quit WoW forever due to the BS, or stay). This is why I really don’t give a fuck what happens, because it won’t change what I dislike about WoD. It’ll just give raiders something to do, while the rest of us twiddle our thumbs waiting for our Work Orders and Follower Missions to complete.

People are still pissed, though(mainly because “WTF BLIZZ THIS MI RAID TIME!! QQ”). Others are enjoying their tears of anger. Some can’t believe Blizzard doesn’t know how to deal with these things. Others are threatening to leave.

As for me, I just said my peace. They’ll get this fixed eventually. May take ’till late tonight and/or early tomorrow morning, but they’ll get this. If they want our money, they’ll get this to work. If they don’t care about our money, they’ll say it and kill their own game. That’s not going to happen, unless they feel suicidal.
They need us to survive as a company. That’s all.

I’m not even pissed at them(about this). I know they’ll get this. They have to.

On a lighter note, as part of Blizzard’s holiday sale(before it ends tomorrow morning at 3am), I managed to buy Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its EP(The Frozen Throne). Been told it works with my OS(Windows 7 64-bit). Just wanted to try it out, even though I’m a complete n00b at RTS games.
But mostly because of Wowcrendor’s Warcraft III series, which got me interested in it.

In the WoW forum, I’m seeing more and more people finally waking up and stop kissing Blizzard’s ass. I… I am so happy to see this. This proves, I am NOT alone!
More people are saying Garrisons are boring. More people are saying the Iron Horde is pathetic. Even some doubting WoD’s future! Just.. wow. Fucking FINALLY!! 😀

*stands on a box, overlooking a crowd of players like myself* WAKE UP, people, and RISE UP against your Blizzard Overlords!!! Together, we will make them PAY for a crap expansion! WHO’S WITH ME?!?!?

I’ve never been this happy since I got the beta key. Though I’m not happy as in thrilled, I’m happy as in people are seeing what I have seen during the beta. They’re seeing the bullshit and not going to take it anymore!! You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this.

The more people do this, the more Blizzard’s going to fucking wake up too and see they did wrong, and hopefully do something about it in 6.1!

It’s called the “Steam Exploration Sale”, going on from now to December 2nd. Nearly everything in their store is on sale, one way or another.
However, I’m not seeing any major discounts. Wolfenstein: The New Order is only half off($29.99). I wanted to see an 80% off deal.
Other games like Viscera Cleanup Detail, is only 20% off. It’s $7.99. Combining this with Santa’s Rampage(the game they showed off last year during Christmas) which is $1.61 currently, that’s $9.60. Really not bad of a deal.

You also got games like The Forest, the horror survival game. It’s on sale 15% off at $12.74.
Lastly, the beautiful stories of Broken Age, is on sale 40% off, at $14.99. To be honest, not much of a savings.

That’s pretty much it. I think I’m going to go for Viscera Cleanup Detail + Santa’s Rampage, and get The Forest. But I hope for deeper discounts for Wolfenstein.

6.1 might not come out soon
The PTR was updated again, for some strange reason. I was thinking Blizzard’s been secretly updating it for 6.1. Yet when I logged in, I found people RPing and shit.
When I went to ask where the hell is 6.1, it showed how toxic the community really was. The PTR hasn’t been changed since it popped up since the beta. Everyone’s still Level 90.

So… what the fucking hell is with the updates?! Plus, why is Beta still an option? I went to ask these questions to the Customer Support forum, since they handle launcher and account-related issues.
My answer was… fragmented. It wasn’t from Blizzard, it was one of their MVP’s.
First, the person said how “the license is still active”, and hasn’t been removed yet. Then they said “you can delete the beta folder, it will stop the updates”.
Basically, my first question never got answered, but the second did. Beta isn’t the problem here, but it does explain why it’s still an option.

I asked again in a bit of a shock the person didn’t get my first question answered(which is WHY is the PTR up, and why is it being updated if it’s not in 6.1), and I got another MVP, and their answer was quite technical.
Which I unfortunately do not understand. I think they’re saying *insert complicated words here*. So yeah. A reasonable explanation.

Over-reacted much? Yup
Second thing. I’ve mentioned before how I felt soloing was pointless, due to feeling how Garrisons were ruining the economy. Actually… they’re not. I got it only half right. See, I made a really, really lengthy thread in the afternoon, hoping like-minded people would see this and… feel sorry for me. :/
That didn’t go as planned, as it got completely ignored by the community. Bumping it didn’t help either. More ignoring. What pissed me off, is I spent a good hour preparing that thread, only to have it ignored. I mean, can you blame me?
Much later, I made another. Not so long. Again, it went to Page 2. At this time, I felt I haven’t just lost my confidence with Blizzard, but its community. Though fortunately, I finally got a response without bumping.
The person says the usual “it’s not fun if you feel it’s not”, then says how there’s another thread about this. It made me feel I’m not alone, and hopefully Blizzard knows about this and are working on a fix to make gold not pointless.

Got a few more replies, and the final one was basically on the lines of “Dude, chillax. The economy is fine! There’s still high-priced goods on the AH.”
Another one adds on, saying that selling them as vendor trash also isn’t going to give you much of a profit as I had thought. They also said, doing Apexis grinds gives you more money than selling Ore and Herbs. This proves gold is not pointless.

On top of this, as I’m typing this, Blizzard made a new hotfix that claims to control how much ore you get from nodes in your Tier 2 or Tier 3 Mine. Also, the Mining Carts now have Primal Spirits and Arch Fragments. So that’s awesome(especially having Arch Fragments. A good alternative for people that feel Arch is now pointless due to no flying).
See? Blizzard IS listening. They DO care about their customers. If they didn’t, they would had done nothing. They could had laughed in our faces. Gotta think about this the next time I get so pissed off at Blizzard.

And so… what’s my excuse now that I won’t solo dungeons? Because I can’t use “gold is pointless” against Blizzard anymore. It’s pointless to me, not the community. That’s not something Blizzard can help with. It’s a personal problem.
So now it’s mainly because, there’s nothing really out there for me. Got all I want. The other things require me to have a profession I’m not interested in(Engineering mainly).

Unwanted people
The last thing, was a mixture of emotions(odd, funny, and depression). I finally logged in on Live, and noticed two female Night Elves near my bed, and they were RPing. Of course my first reaction was “WTF?! Get out of my house!”
Going downstairs, I saw more Night Elves in similar clothing. A few of them were telling me to leave after I told them to. One said how they discovered this house since TBC, that this is their house. My heart is already aching over being utter depressed due to what has happened to me, and I so didn’t need this in my life.
But I decided to wait it out, thinking they’ll get bored and leave. The minutes turned to hours as they kept at it. It was about this “marriage” of this one Night Elf not wishing to marry this other guy due to inheritance and… wow. So all of these Night Elves were from Kargath, which is an RP server.
Somehow, my server, Alexstrasza, is merged with theirs. So now, technically, I’m on their server, and they’re on mine.

I decided to tag them like bees to honey, and follow their every move. But I needed someone who can stealth. I needed my Rogue. So I quickly got him on to have him sneak around, figuring where these other RPers ran off to as a few of them went out the door.
I went dragon and flew around, trying to locate the others. About a half an hour later passed, and they were preparing to do this “wedding” of theirs, and ran out to the old watermelon patch and the overhang to do the wedding.

I had my Rogue to go over and play a joke on them, waiting for the “if anyone has any objection” part, he would /yell “I OBJECT!!!” while going Worgen, and scaring the shit out of them! 😀
Unfortunately, I think they knew my Rogue was stealthed, and the one that was going to get married refused and ran off. So, that took the fun out of that.
So one thing lead to another, and finally they left the house and went through a portal to the Shrine on their server. Now they’re out of my hair, and my house is MINE again! 😀

I think what made them give up, is my extreme persistence of being there, to push them out of the house. Though I can’t say they won’t come back.
Though it also has me thinking, and causes me to be depressed once again. If I could only kick followers OFF the second floor of the Inn, I would be happy to call the Inn my temp home until they hopefully do something in 6.1.
Though, I CAN (try) to fix this by going after the Tier 3 Inn blueprint. Going by the external shots of Tier 2 and Tier 3, I see a major upgrade. Maybe I should re-think this.