If there are any regular readers of my blog, it will be obvious that I have not been playing any World of Warcraft lately. My last WoW post was back in January, just before the last major content patch which introduced the Battle of Dazar’alor raid. Shortly after my last WoW post, I wrote on my guilds forum that I will be taking a break and that I have every intention of coming back to the game eventually.
I have had a lot of time on my hands recently and decided to try out the game again to see if it was time to return and further my progress. I decided to focus on a number of lose ends I have in the game, I still want to reach level 120 with my mage and want to level up my relatively new warlock, Khorium, who I introduced back in December.
Part of the idea of levelling up Khorium was to complete a number of quest achievements. I think I made good progress by completing Cape of Stranglethorn, Western Plaguelands, Eastern Plaguelands (and associated full caravan) achievements which in turn gave me the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms achievement. While completing these achievements Khorium had exceeded level 60 so I made my way to Outland and completed ‘On the Blades Edge’ achievement. This achievement took what seemed like forever and I really struggled to stay motivated.
In addition to playing Khorium, I also levelled my mage from 112 to 115. I did this by completing invasion world quests and the odd dungeon.
While I did have some fun (Blades Edge Mountains aside), I think now is not the time for me to make my return to World of Warcraft. There are many gaming personalities out there who will tell you all about the problems with the game right now and, for the most part, I agree with them. World of Warcraft is just not fun anymore, it has great potential though and I hope Blizzard can turn things around again like they did with Warlords of Draenor into Legion.
I love World of Warcraft, I always will. There is so much history and so many memories in each and every corner that I will never completely abandon the game. I just hope that either I get the bug to play again regardless of the current state of the game or, better still, Blizzard starts to listen to the right people and make some drastic changes to their game.
The developer of Snooker Nation, Cherry Pop Games, have not yet released another patch for their game. This left Jason and I playing the old 2016 version of Snooker Nation because we feel the online multiplayer aspect of the game is unplayable since the last ‘wash up’ patch. You can read about this in my previous Snooker Nation post.
We played a best of 7 which Jason won 4 frames to 2. Jason played really well, at one stage he was going to be ahead 3 frames to 0 but missed the last pink by a very small margin, thankfully allowing me to get back in to the match. He also scored a century of 104 in the final frame but again missed the final pink denying him an additional 13 points, not that it mattered. Other than missing those pinks I do not remember any significant mistakes other than being unlucky and accidentally potting the white. This has given Jason a 3 week win streak, something I will be looking to break next week.
I really hope Snooker Nation gets patched soon, we were both saying during our conversation that it’s a bit annoying knowing that new content is available but we can’t sensibly use it. What’s worse is that we can’t roll back just 1 patch when it was working quite well earlier in the month, before the ‘wash-up’ patch.
Over the course of the last few days, not only have I for the third time tackled my anxiety by playing some Starcraft ladder games, but I have played 27 ladder games as the Terran race!
I watched professional streamer and Starcraft 2 caster Benjamin “DeMusliM” Baker use a very simple but effective opening to get ahead in one of his games. I tried to copy it and found more often than not that it would result in me winning the game, just by using his opening strategy. I further adapted it by making it an all-in strategy which guarantees short games, to help with my anxiety. If it works, I win quickly, if it doesn’t I surrender the game unless I did enough damage to justify trying to carry on. Using this strategy I earned 341 ladder points and, for the moment, I am top 8 of a platinum 3 division.
I will almost certainly lose this top 8 position unless I continue playing, and that’s fine. It’s just good to know that I can win games and be somewhat successful in this beautiful game. When I take a look at my match history, I can see that my strategy has improved over time, as has my win rate.
Any regular readers of this blog must be tired of reading about the few Starcraft games I have played and about my ladder anxiety. It’s just hard to keep quiet about something I am so enormously proud about. I don’t think I will play any more Starcraft games, at least for a while. The next time I do play I will need to decide to stick with it and play it hard, writing about every 75-100 games or if I get a significant promotion.
As mentioned in my previous Starcraft post. If there are any readers who are interested in getting in to Starcraft, feel free to get in touch. My offer remains open, even if I am not playing it right now.
This weeks game of Snooker Nation was disappointing to say the least. I was looking forward to playing the new mechanics and physics as mentioned in my previous Snooker Nation post but it didn’t turn out as well as I expected.
The developer for the game, Cherry Pop Games, released a wash up patch of sorts which in the patch notes include:
This patch has in my view rendered the online multiplayer aspect of the game unplayable. The first thing I want to mention is that the old bug of Snooker Nation being written over the table cloth for the player not hosting the match is back, this time with a vengeance and is even worse than before.
This I could live, what makes the game unplayable however is there is a 3-5 second delay between shots and everything seems to move in slow motion. I thought at first there might be some crazy setting to have things move slowly but there does not appear to be anything like that. Jason and I, through perseverance, managed to play just 1 frame.
Thankfully we were able to roll back to the 2016 version of Snooker Nation and decided to play a best 5 because of time lost. At one point I was down 2 frames to 0 with Jason at the table. Somehow however, I managed to turn things around and win 3 frames to 2. It was a disappointing victory though as I really wanted to invest my time in the new version of the game. To add insult to injury, neither of us secured a century break either.
In the patch notes, Cherry Pop Games have promised another patch which I am sure will address these issues. I hope it is delivered soon, until the game-play is fixed, Jason and I will have to stick to the 2016 version or, if push comes to shove, find a different game to play.
Today I fought my anxiety and played another 6 Starcraft 2 ladder games as Protoss, and I feel really good.
A little over a week ago, I wrote about playing 5 Starcraft 2 ladder games and that Starcraft caster Maynarde and current world champion Serral inspired me to play. That was when I was playing as random and that each game I would, at random, be given any of the three playable races. Today I decided to play my 5 placement matches playing the Protoss race.
The results were very similar, I lost 3 and won 2 of my placement matches which placed me in a gold league 1 division, then, just like before, I decided to play 1 more game which I won and immediately got promoted to a platinum 3 division.
All of the games were nice for the most part. This one person thought they would complain when I beat them in my 4th game, which was annoying. You can see from my screenshot below that either that person doesn’t like Starcraft 2 because I won or he/she didn’t like our particular match because of the way I won. I played a cautious game, but what really won it for me in the end was their lack of unit upgrades, my opponent had 1-1-1 (1 attack, 1 armour, 1 shield) upgrades where as I had 3-3-1, giving me a huge advantage.
I really should stop playing league placement matches. A professional player would suggest that I pick a race and stick to it, at least for a while, and keep playing the ladder. If only it was that simple, if only I could put this anxiety aside and play the ladder all day and write about the 20-30 games I played rather than just 5-6.
I am proud of what I have achieved but, for most people, these achievements are laughable and require no effort at all. I am happy for them, I wouldn’t wish these highly illogical anxiety feelings on anyone. For now, I will take what I can get and will keep trying, even if it means playing placement matches.
If any reader would like to play Starcraft with me, do get in touch. It would be nice to not face these ladder anxiety demons alone.
Over the past couple of days I have been trying out Path of Exile, a free to play RPG (role-playing game) developed by New Zealand based company Grinding Gear Games.
Path of Exile was released in 2013, I remember briefly trying the game out a number of years ago after Kripparrian, a successful streamer and Youtube personality started playing it. To this day Kripparrian speaks very highly of the game and still plays it on occasion.
Like Diablo, Path of Exile is a dungeon crawling game, where you pick and play a character in order to complete quests, explore dungeons and obtain loot. What makes Path of Exile arguably better than other dungeon crawler games is that your character and the items it uses are highly customisable. There is a huge skill tree in which you add points as you level your character, making it more powerful each time. This system reminds me of the sphere grid in Final Fantasy X, it even looks the same.
As well as this there are gems which you socket in your weapons and armour. These provide spells and abilities and will level up becoming more and more potent with each level. This reminds me of the Final Fantasy VII materia system. Like with materia in Final Fantasy VII, you can even link the gems together, providing additional benefits. Assuming the armour or weapon has slots which are linked.
The world is broken up in to acts with way-points to fast travel to different zones. This is very similar to Diablo II and III, as is having scrolls to identify items and open portals to take you to town where there are vendors and a place to keep a stash of items you’re not currently using.
Path of Exile is probably the best free to play game out there, assuming you have a taste for dungeon crawler RPG’s. I even think it is better than EVE Online when it comes to being free to play, which is hard for me to say. There is a micro transaction system in Path of Exile, but as far as I can tell, it’s only for cosmetic items and is not used as a ‘pay to win’ or even a ‘pay to get an advantage’ game, unlike many others which are free to play.
I really do not know if I will be putting aside the time to play Path of Exile fully, but I do intend to give it at least another day or two of my time, just to see where it takes me. The only problem I am faced with now is what to play it on? Path of Exile is available for the PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One but is not cross platform compatible, which is a great shame.
After not speaking to my friend Jason last week, it was good to play a game of Snooker Nation with him, or rather, Snooker Nation Championship 19.
It seems that after nearly 3 years, the developer for Snooker Nation, Cherry Pop Games, decided to release a content patch for Snooker Nation and have changed the name to Snooker Nation Championship 19. This, without a doubt, is a planned response to the release of Snooker 19, a game which Jason tried shortly after the games release a few weeks ago.
I have mixed feelings about the patch improvements, but for the most part I am fairly pleased. The main change is in the mechanics and physics of the game, which now uses the latest unreal engine. There is a black disc which indicates where the cue ball will end up, assuming it does not come into contact with any ball other than the target, which we have called ‘the black hole’. It’s harder to judge the power you are hitting a target ball, which we both like, it’s good to be given a new challenge and mix things up a bit. We can also strike the ball much harder than we used to and can even make balls bounce or go off the table. I am not sure if the new physics is necessarily better or worse but they are certainly different, which is welcome.
In a best of 7, Jason won 4 frames to 3, breaking my win streak. We both played what would ordinarily be terrible shots, but considering the changes, I think we did pretty good. Jason adapted quicker than I did which in part earned him his victory. Unfortunately however, neither of us managed to score a century break.
I finally did it, I have managed to briefly overcome my Starcraft 2 ladder anxiety and played 5 1v1 ladder (ranked) games. I am both overjoyed and relieved.
Back in November I wrote about how inspired I was when Serral (Joona Sotala) won the Starcraft 2 WCS (World Championship Series) for 2018. Shortly afterwards I decided to play 5 placement matches which would determine which league and division I would belong to in Starcraft 2. I played my first match and won with ease, yet, for whatever reason, the anxiety got the better of me and I just could not hit that play button. Later, I wrote about my Starcraft journey to date and ended with where I was with my anxiety issues.
Today I saw that Starcraft 2 caster Leigh “Maynarde” Mandalov produced a youtube video showing how to get into Starcraft 2 and once again I was inspired to hit that play button and complete my placement matches. Because I had already played 1 game in November, I had 4 more to play of which I won 2 and lost 2. This, combined with my win back in November, placed me in tier 1 of gold league.
At this point I was just happy to have played enough games to be placed in a league and that I didn’t lose every game. Because I was so close to league promotion, I thought I would play 1 more game to see if I could win and maybe get promoted into Platinum league, which I did!
To say that I am proud of myself would be an understatement. I have decided to stop while I am ahead having won 3 out of 5 games today. I don’t know if I will be playing any more games, I know I should, but until a time comes where I can play without this strong sense of ladder anxiety, I will probably just stick to a few games when I feel the time is right.
Thank you Maynarde and Serral for inspiring me to once again try my hand at playing this amazing game.
A little over a year ago I was looking for something different for my friend Jason and I to play. Years ago, I had enjoyed playing the zombie survival mode in the game Call of Duty and thought a game like that would be fun for us to play together. I found that Killing Floor 2 was offering a similar experience so went ahead and bought it from Steam and asked Jason if he would too. Unfortunately, after trying it a few times, the game wasn’t for him, which is a shame. While the game does have an offline single player mode, I think it’s more a game 2-4 players would enjoy.
There are several game modes but the general Idea is to survive as long as you can against waves of enemies known was Zeds. They start relatively easy and are slow, zombie like creatures which take 1 or 2 shots before they’re down. As you progress, the enemy waves increase in size and get harder each time until eventually you fight a boss with special abilities and a lot of health.
What makes this game particularly cool is that there are a number of character classes or ‘perks’ to choose from. You can for example choose to be a commando who is good at using automatic rifles, a gunslinger who best uses handguns, a sharpshooter which uses single shot rifles and many more. As you play, the various perks level up and obtain different abilities to choose from.
I really like Killing Floor 2, even when playing single player. After a long day or a frustrating gaming session, Killing Floor 2 offers some mindless yet oddly satisfying fun shooting stuff up while listening to the heavy metal soundtrack. Having played it today, I can see that the developers, Tripwire Interactive, have so far actively patched and updated the game which is very nice, to say the least.
I recently wrote about playing EVE Online for free as an Alpha pilot and created a new character. Since then I have periodically been logging in to check on the progress of my new character and complete the odd mission or two.
While the Algos ship I used was fit for purpose, I have invested in a Vexor which is a cruiser class ship and one step up from the Algos. The Vexor is so versatile and can complete so much of the PvE (Player vs Environment) content that this has been my most used ship over the years. Fitted and piloted properly, in high security space the Vexor can easily complete just about any combat site and escalation. This, in my view, yields high reward for low risk. Also, if searching for combat sites is not your thing, it can complete level 1, 2 and 3 missions with ease. It can also do most level 4 missions but I believe these are inaccessible for Alpha pilots.
The fitting and ethos I use is much the same as with the Algos in that I simply kite the enemy NPC’s (Non player characters) and let my drones do all of the work.
Low slots
Drone Damage Amplifier I x3 – The Vexor is primarily a drone combat ship, these are to boost the damage output of your drones as much as possible.
Omnidirectional Tracking Enhancer I – This enhances the range and improves the tracking speed of all drones.
Damage Control I – This is a passive boost to how much punishment your ship can take should it run into any trouble.
Mid slots
50MN Microwarpdrive I – This will give massive jolts of speed in order to get away from enemies and kite while your drones take them out. You can also use it to zone in on loot quickly but be careful to not use all of your capacitor.
Adaptive Invulnerability Field I – To compliment your shield resistances across the board, it will need activating and will use capacitor in small amounts. It can be left on indefinitely assuming you manage the microwarpdrive properly.
Large Shield Extender I x2 – In conjunction with the resistance boost from the invulnerability field and damage control modules, two of these will help you tank a lot of damage and will give plenty of time to get into a kiting position or warp away if necessary.
High slots
Core Probe Launcher I – To scan down cosmic signatures in order to find combat sites suitable for the Vexor. If you take a mobile depot it is also possible to swap out a mid slot shield extender for a data or relic analyser should you scan down data or relic sites. One thing to note is that while most combat sites will allow cruiser class ships to enter them, some only accept smaller frigate and destroyer class ships.
Drone Link Augmentor I – This will increase the control range of your drones. With low character skills, your targeting and drone control range should be about 60km.
Rigs
Medium Drone Durability Enchancer – While drones are inexpensive, it’s worth having, especially if and when your character can use more expensive tech II drones.
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I x 2 – All of the above fittings use a lot of your ships CPU (Computer Processing Unit). These rigs increase your CPU output so you can equip all of these fittings.
Drones
Hobgoblin I x9 – These deal thermal damage which is good against Serpentis and rogue drone targets.
Hammerhead I x5 – Slower than the Hobgoblin but pack a better punch and are ideal against enemies in cruiser class ships or bigger. They also do thermal damage and are medium drones.
Ogre I – Just one of these. They are very slow but are durable and are good at hitting the largest of ships. This too will do thermal damage and is a heavy drone.
Note: Swap out drones depending on the type of enemies you will be facing. Thermal damage is not so good against Angel Cartel for instance and you should take drones which do explosive or kinetic damage. If you do take the wrong drones, it’s not the end of the world, it will just take longer to kill them.
Charges
Core Scanner Probe I x16 – These are the probes required to operate the probe launcher and scan down cosmic signatures.
The ship including all of the modules, drones and charges currently costs between 11 and 12 million ISK (The in-game currency). This may sound like a lot but it really isn’t. It would take anything between 10 minutes and 2 hours to earn this much with the Algos detailed in my previous EVE Online post.
Best of all with the Vexor, and this way of fitting, is that everything can be upgraded. This is the platform which you can build upon as your characters skills develop and your in-game wealth increases. You can upgrade the ship to Vexor Navy Issue which is the same ship but better statistics. You can upgrade most of modules to tech II rather than tech I, making them more effective. Use tech II drones and even use the most powerful and expensive drone, Gecko. You could literally start with a 12 million ISK ship and end up, without changing the build or ethos of the ship, having a 400 – 500 million ISK ship, capable of dispatching enemies quickly and efficiently.
For me, this ship really is an all rounder and a workhorse. I would encourage any player to use all kinds of ships and fit them in all kinds of ways. Ultimately however, if you just want something which works and is easy, the Vexor is by far one of the best options which you can increase in power as you grow in the game.