Benie's Games Blog

The second and final Live WoD Q&A hosted on their Twitch channel before the expansion launches, is now over. And I got one of my questions answered!! 😀
It was the first question I asked; “Will there be more Level 100 soloable content in the future?” Their answer was “Yes…?”, with a laugh. It doesn’t take much to find my question being as smart as some of the questions asked during BlizzCon. As in…, idiotic. 😛
Seriously, I should had asked “Will we eventually be able to do quests with our followers in the future?”
I guess it was a test from myself to Blizzard to see if… they actually care for soloers. Their answer: Yes. Yes they do. Again, though.. soloing isn’t supposed to be my main goal to play WoW. It’s supposed to be a “I raided with my friends, they’re all asleep, I need to do something!” way of doing content. Just like crafted items and weapons, they’re a form of “filler content” for something to do after or before raiding… not as the main source of gameplay.
That’s what made my question utterly stupid, and I feel like a total idiot for asking it.

Anywho… they continued with their answer to me, with me being a grinning fool (seriously, it felt awesome having my name being picked). Anyway, they said after the chuckle, that “outdoor quests will replace dailies”(I assume talking about the optional missions that I saw on the beta), and how “there’s still tons and tons of soloable content”.
They kept saying about how soloers can do this and that (namely talking about Garrisons), and that’s pretty much it. It’s what I already know from playing the beta.

I should had expressed my question better to add that I was on the beta or something, but the fact there was a 40 character limit, I had to make it short. Though it seems not everyone read this, yet they still read the long questions that were a lot better than mine.
I’ll keep this in mind the next time they do something like this.

My question would had been if it wasn’t for the limit; “I hit Level 100 on the beta and I was bored. Did all the soloable content. Is there more planned in the future?”, though I would imagine I’d get the same answer: “Yes”. So that will be good.

Speaking of other questions that were better than mine, someone asked if we’ll have to download anymore pre-patches before WoD’s launch, and how will WoD launch. They say we got everything we need. All we have to do is wait. And the time of launch, it will be painless.
They’ll just flip a lever and your content will be active. No need to restart your client. So that’s great!

They also mentioned that Patch 6.1, coming December 2nd, will be a story content patch. Hopefully the same patch will give us the right to fly in Draenor. I imagine we’ll be able to test said patch on the PTR around mid or late November via the PTR.

Characters have been leveled. Gear has been upgraded(except for my Monk). Dungeons have been solo’d. Gold has been acquired.
All there’s left to do now is wait for 3:01am tomorrow morning. I’m debating if it’s worth going through once the expansion activates(hopefully there won’t be a forced restart of the client like back in Cata).
Going through is fine. Shutting down the Dark Portal, won’t be a problem. It’ll be the actual killing that would be. Maybe I should had attended that stress test during the beta, just to see what it’ll be with a shit-ton of people.

My biggest concern, isn’t for myself to get through the intro; but for my Monk. I’m going to try to do a dual-solo, like I was going to attempt with MoP. But the fact there was so much “hands on” work and no real place to rest, it would be near impossible.
The fact I’ve done the intro twice on the beta, I know what to do and how to do it. As long as we watch our backs, I think we’ll be fine.

This is a random post. Watching the clock for WoD’s release. Just one more day. Anyway, AlChestBreach, the “king” of Fallout New Vegas, did a playthrough of a Skyrim mod today. It’s called “The Wheels of Lull”, and its plot is quite interesting. It’s like as if Warcraft’s early lore was in Skyrim, with these guys being the Titans(yet in a much smaller form).

They mention how several of these “towers” are getting disabled, except for two of them. But one of them is the most critical. If it falls, it’ll literally be the end of Nirn(which is the planet the Elder Scrolls universe is on). It seems even Alduin and his quest to make mortals the slaves of dragons wasn’t the greatest threat.

But the reasoning for this thread isn’t to talk about the mod, it’s to talk about Al’s playthrough. During Part 2, he was killing ghosts and all the sudden his game crashed. I happened to be counting the time he went from the door to the ghosts… and it was within 5 minutes. The same time it has taken for my own game to crash.
If it was caused by the same issue, is hard to tell. The screen just suddenly went blank. It wasn’t a freeze, or a popup stating that .NET Framework crashed.
However, it also happened only once. On really bad times, my crash can happen right after I talk to a guy, or even during the dialog. But if he’s having similar issues…

He also has Immersive Creatures. For months I had thought this was the culprit. Maybe I’m not alone in this madness, and Skyrim is just overly buggy with mods. Yet I can’t forget the “I got 200+ mods and I’m not having problems!” people.
Anyway, I dunno. I guess the only way to know is to ask him directly. Yet I’m being told that Al doesn’t like Skyrim. Which is why he was nearly shitting all over the lore of the game during the sixth(and what seems to be the final) part.
I’ve never known for Al to like lore in any games. Even Fallout New Vegas. He just creates his own lore.

The road to Draenor is almost upon us. And it seems Blizzard is taking pity on people with the Virtual Ticket during BlizzCon that couldn’t get their questions answered during the WoW Q&A.
They’re going to do another Live WoD Q&A session this Wednesday at 2pm to 3pm EST, similar to the one they did early last month(and the very reason I signed up for Twitter). This is for all people! Not just people that had attended BlizzCon. WatcherDev and Kris Zierhut will be answering your Warlords of Draenor questions.
Submit your questions via Twitter with hashtag #WarlordsQA, or post your questions as a reply in this thread on the WoW Forum.

Questions will be answered on their Twitch channel, here: http://www.twitch.tv/wow

To make them count and have them possibly answered, they encourage you to make your questions 40 characters or less(1/3rd the size of a tweet) and have them submitted before 3am Wednesday morning.
I’ve sent four tweets to WarlordsQA. I hope at least one gets responded;
1: Will we see more Level 100 soloable content in the future?
2: Could we have a Private Home option for Garrisons in the future to have true player housing?
3: Will Apexis Gear be a full set instead of “filler gear” like it was on the beta?
4: Why was it WoD was never announced to “have gone gold” after beta ended?

Day 2 began at 1pm EST, with the WoW Live Raid happening at 2:05pm. It pitted two guilds of Heroic Highmaul, to give people a taste on what raiders will be able to play with.
The two devs that were a part of the two factioned guilds, said these two have been practicing a few times, but haven’t been doing it for months.
There was no wipes. Though there was a close to wipe on the final boss of the final phase, they got him down, but barely.

After the raid, there was a half-hour of another mini-Q&A with one of the devs of WoD and people sending in their questions through Twitter. I asked if there’s going to be more soloable content in the future. It hasn’t been answered yet.

Next, was the making of Overwatch; the new game announced yesterday. Who the characters are, and why Blizzard made the game. They showed early concept art of the heroes and the maps, and also early concept art of the trailer.
After, they did a Q&A for the game. They mention that there’s even more heroes than they showed. That’s quite interesting.
Someone asked if Overwatch is similar to Team Fortress 2. They say “To compare Overwatch to TF2 is a compliment. We love that game. But when you play, you’ll see that our game is different.”

After that was a boring area ’till 5:15pm. The WoW Arena Champ Semifinals and Finals. Played WoW at this time and then ate Dinner.
Finally, 5:15pm came. They showed the making of the Intro Cinematic and the Lords of War videos. They explained how they’ve working on this since early 2013. That’s about it.

At 6:30pm, came the WoW Q&A; questions that aren’t just about WoD. A 7 year old kid was the first one asking about Doomhammer, if who would claim it or whatever. Barely understanded him. We even got Red Shirt Guy with one of the devs saying “Oh shit” when he saw him, and everyone cheering the guy on.
Some of the questions were based around lore; things like the Old Gods if they’re really the bad guys. Another guy had a really good question about friends visiting eachother’s Garrisons. I was hoping he would push for “will there be any changes to simplify this?”, instead, asks about Guild Garrisons… bah. They say they would have to change a lot of stuff to make a Garrison as a Guild Garrison.
There was a random question that most people liked, asking “when will we be able to make bacon?!” This turned into a mini-meme.
Also, someone asked a really… really stupid question, asking “how long is it supposed to take to fly from North to South?” Really? Stop wasting the dev’s time! At least ask if there’s going to be flying in 6.1!

8pm, finally they did their “Looking For Group” presentation. It’s to show that WoW is more than a game; it’s a community. Though that has really no meaning to a soloer. It’s also, the fact I don’t really have that freedom to go to BlizzCon IRL to celebrate with the devs.
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But… holy WOW! That presentation was AMAZING!! I.. I was blown away. It actually had me in tears. It went over Blizzard’s history and the reason Warcraft exists.
They explained the history of Blizzard, and say that WoW was inspired by games like EverQuest. That’s quite awesome as I played that game. They also showed one of 17 server rooms, and what a server looks like. They also explained why they call them “realms” instead of servers.
Later on, they had someone expressing the same pain and hate for Deathwing for wrecking Thousand Needles. I’m glad I’m not alone. I’m more glad I got my revenge.
And during when they were talking about WoD, they mentioned how they “mass sent out beta invites for everyone to be a part of the development process”. Aka, how I got in the beta. They even showed proof that the devs WERE reading our posts during the beta!
Knowing this, I can’t wait to see what Blizzard does in the future.

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And now we’re counting down to the close of BlizzCon 2014. Where Metallica is going to rock the house!
L90ETC rocked the house, then had issues trying to become L100ETC. First it was L95ETC, became L00ETC, then L001ETC. Damn Goblins and Gnomes playing Hearthstone instead of fixing the screen!
Finally, they defaulted to just being called ETC. Hope this affects the Darkmoon Faire next month. Soon, Metallica will be rocking all the way ’till the wee hours of the morning.
They also did a new Alliance-themed song after playing Power of The Horde, called “Alliance Will Never Fall”. I couldn’t fist pump high enough as it felt epic!

Now Metallica is rocking the house and rocking it hard. Me? I really don’t like their music. Too much random music and lyrics. Though they did play four songs I got on Pandora, so that’s cool.
So, it “ended” later than it said it would. But the crowd cheered “ONE MORE SONG!!”, and they delivered.
And now BlizzCon’s finally over. Ended at 12:35am. About 35 minutes after they said it would. But still, the final song was an awesome finisher!

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And now it’s time to talk about what I liked about this year’s BlizzCon. I really enjoyed this year, as I did back in 2011 when I paid back then. To say I’ll pay for 2015’s BlizzCon, it’s unsure.
My favorite parts were the unveiling of Overwatch(signed up to be in the beta), and the Looking for Group thingy. The Goblins VS Gnomes Hearthstone EP is also pretty cool, but not really my thing.

Day 1 started as planned. I was ingame before it started on one of my alts, and Heol’s telling me it’s possible they should announce the next EP. I told him that it’s not possible as WoD hasn’t been released yet.
So far of this year’s BlizzCon, I was right. They did announce a new expansion for Hearthstone, coming next month. It’s called ‘Gnomes Versus Goblins’. And it looks like a lot of fun.

They also announced a new game to the Blizzard franchise. A game they’ve been working on for 17 years; Overwatch. It looks like another FPS team-based game, but has amazing graphics and the characters look really interesting.
Sometime next year, it’ll be available for beta and urge everyone to sign up and try their game out. I… I’m going to. From what I saw, blew me away. But mostly why I want it, it’s balanced combat. As in, it’s based on skill and not gear.
You can sign up for the beta here. This doesn’t mean you’ll get invited.

The rest of the first day of BlizzCon was as boring as I thought it would be. I watched a few hours of Hearthstone and WoW Arena championship panels while waiting for the next panel to come up, which explained about the future Warcraft Movie.
The movie, they never showed any clips or even a scene. All they spent doing is talking about how they are trying to bring Warcraft and WoW into this movie. They did show props, though.
They talked about who’s going to be the voices of the movie. So yeah, this is going to be an actual movie we’ll be able to see in Theatres. It’ll be coming March of 2016.

Next, I saw the Hearthstone Fireside Chat. They talked more about Hearthstone as a whole, and also some of the new cards that’ll be available when the expansion is released.
To get the deck, you got to pay real money or not play the game in Single Player to use ingame currency.

After that, they explained a bit more in-depth about the class and item changes of WoD(and the current patch on Live) and how they’re not as bad as people think. They mentioned how you’ll be able to still solo content, and I could see myself being the only one in the audience cheering. They also had a Mini-Q&A section, but it was only about this kind of topic.
Someone actually had the guts to ask a question about “Hey, as a Mage, how come I can’t solo Boss Y when a DK can?! That’s not fair!”
Blizzard’s answer was pretty ‘duh!’ obvious. They said how “you’ll be able to eventually solo anything with time. Some classes and specs might need more gear than others to do so.” They also stated the obvious how they can’t just change classes to allow everyone to be able to solo old content at the same pace.

Another question asked, seemed to be pretty much saying “Stop tailoring to casuals, Blizzard!!” Their response seemed fair to me, but I’m sure wasn’t accepted by everyone.
They seem to have three answers to this;
1: “You want a challenge, play a challenging class!”
2: “We want to make sure all types of players, even ones that haven’t played in a long time know what they’re doing.”
3: “Look at your talents. If you want a challenging class, re-arrange them to not give yourself an advantage.”
Though I do love how the guy when he finished off the 3rd answer acted when he tilted his head to the right, as in “Ugh… stop whining!” Quite funny.

And that is pretty much it for Day 1. Day 2, they discuss the WoD Climatics, and have the final Q&A about WoD before the release. Also at 8pm Eastern, is the special “Looking for Group” WoW’s 10th Anniversary special, showing behind the scenes of how you connect to WoW(the server rooms, including my server).

Blizzard released a video today, showing a sneak peak of what will be seen during this year’s BlizzCon. They want to show the 10 years since 2004 to now, even though I didn’t pop on ’till late 2005.
So, they’re going to show a behind the scenes first time ever look of the making of WoW, and what it takes to make sure people get on their servers with little issues. They even showed a glimpse of the server room. It even showed a screen of colored dots, indicating when someone logs on and what time. That is so cool.
Another part of the video, what actually happens when Tuesday Maintenance hits.

But the one thing they seem to be trying to get out to the public, that the World of Warcraft is more than ‘just a game’. Some people see it as a second home, where others have met new friends(RL friends) and even gotten married because of WoW. Hence why they titled this teaser; “Looking for Group”.
You already know my answer to this, and it’s not at all positive. I don’t see WoW as a social event, I see it as a game. Nothing more. A device, to help keep me unbored.
Like Rexxar(and as a fellow Hunter), I work alone. And look what happened to him. He became champion of the Horde in Warcraft 3. His only friends were his pets.

If only I could do more solo scenarios in WoD. Maybe in the future. Anyway, since Blizzard is throwing this mini-10th anniversary party during BlizzCon, on December 30th, will be a new post explaining how I came into WoW. As it will mark 9 years since I showed up. 9 years of enjoying the game my way.. as a soloer.

12 days until the release(and the day to set our clocks back an hour). Blizzard is in crunch mode, getting as many hotfixes and class changes from the Beta into Live as possible.
Most people are getting so hyped for it. Myself? Having played the beta, I want to see what the future holds for this expansion. If it’ll bring flying to Draenor or not, I don’t really care at this time.
What I do care, is to see more Level 100 soloable content. And not grinding mobs to get Apexis Crystals and rep.

BlizzCon 2014 and WoW’s 10th Anniversary are also coming this month. So yeah, the month’s pretty busy WoW-wise.

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On a side note, it’s been officially announced that WoD Beta Testing will end on Monday at 6pm EST. So yeah. Survived from having my beta chars wiped! 😀
If you go on my Beta Blog, I’ll be posting an end of beta recap of what I’ve enjoyed and what I didn’t of WoD.
At 5pm EST on the same day, Blizzard’s going to do an ingame event to thank their beta testers. Of course, I’ll be there. I hope it’s going to be amazing, and full of mayhem for everyone(not just raiders and PvPers).
Example: having Grom Hellscream and the rest of the Iron Horde leaders show up in your Garrison and pwn everyone.

This is probably the final content patch before the release of WoD. Though it’s not exactly a content patch. It’s more of bug fixes and the like. Servers are scheduled to come back up around 7pm. They were scheduled to come back up at 4pm, but apparently they’re having issues trying to push the patch and the servers are unstable.
Two changes of the patch notes have my interest;
-Characters that have completed the Iron Horde Incursion event can now visit a vendor near their faction’s respective beachhead to purchase replacement quest rewards.
Replacement quest rewards? So, we have the ability to “get a bonus loot roll” if we’re unhappy with what we got doing the questline? Interesting.

-Razorgore the Untamed received a buff to increase his survivability.
Hopefully, this just made BWL more soloable(by me at least). I’ve got to try this out.

That’s all I can see of potential worthy updates(that affect myself in good ways). Do hope I can finally do Uldar10N(sometime this evening) and defeat the final boss this time, without him “bugging out” on me. Basically when I tried three times, I killed all the fakes in the room. Yet, there was an invisible wall protecting his brain from being attacked. Unfortunately, this isn’t in the patch notes.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I forgot one. Though I could’ve sworn I got them all.

Wowhead has been nice enough to show an extensive guide on how to survive Patch 6.0 and beyond, for BM Hunters. It goes over the basics, to rotations. And there’s things I didn’t even know that have been screwing me over for years!

Such as, when to not use Arcane Shot which is my primary DPS ability… or so I thought. It’s to be used as a way to spend excess Focus, not as a DPS ability. :/ So…
It also says not to use it when Kill Command is available. Which of course, makes sense. Gotta have the Focus for that ability.

It also mentions what enchants to get for BM Hunters when hitting Level 100(wonder if these are available of your Garrison’s buildings), and the main stat to focus on when hitting Level 100. It’s ‘Mastery’. Not Multistrike. And for going on the road to Level 100, it also mentions that Agility is no longer what one should really be focusing on when gearing. Now, it’s Haste and Critical Strike. As both are needed to increase the DPS of your bullets or arrows.

And hell yes, I WILL be getting my hands on Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah, as it removes the fucking annoying dazed effect! 😀 Holy hell, that’s going to be awesome.

Wowhead also has a guide on Monks. Sadly, it doesn’t explain the changes. Don’t think it’s been updated to 6.0 yet. The guide feels like a mess right now, and I hope it eventually shows a solid foundation to help people like me who are trying to re-learn their class, and new players.
Currently, all I see is “this ability can be used for this!” Just one big mess. No explanation.

Monks have a shitload more buttons to remember what they do and when to push them at a moment’s notice, than Hunters. With Hunters, it’s just going ‘pew pew’ with your gun while your Pet does all the Melee work.
Which makes me question, how in the fuck I got my Monk to Level 90 without help!? I think it was the near 100% XP boosts.
This guide feels useless to new players, especially ones that get the free Level 90 boost to get into Draenor, without the work leveling up.

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Moving on, another reason why I’m talking about classes and abilities, is Blizzard released several videos called ‘Crash Course: Class’. Each video explains every class in WoW, and is tailored to help players that used the boost to Level 90 instead of leveling from Level 1. The one about Hunters seems to cover only Survival. That’s weird. Why not all specs?

There is a one about Monks. And much to my favor, its about the DPS spec. It gives me an idea of what to do with the many, ominous buttons. Get rid of 7/8ths of them and start basic, and gradually re-learn my class’ abilities.
This is the only way I see it working.