An Ode to Dailies

Can I just say how much I actually love dailies? Being able to have something fun to do with myself that’s not too repetitive tasks that give me rep, valor and gold that I can then use on other awesome stuff.  Not to mention mounts! I love mounts.  And a farm! I looooove my farm.

I know most people don’t like it because they feel the need to do everything, always, forever and what not.  But for me, it’s the perfect pace of content.  I do about two different ones at any time and work my way through exalted.  Do I valor cap? No.  But I really don’t NEED to.  I gear up through dungeons, scenarios, and now LFR (Finally.  And loving it by the by.)  Valor stuff I buy when I have enough and there’s something I can use.  So ultimately it just gives me something fun to do every day I log in that short enough that it doesn’t take forever (Eyes on you Belsavis TOR dailies. Ugh.), and I honestly don’t feel like I’m doomed if I skip a day because I’m not feeling it.  Because hey, dailies are always there.  Even at level 135, these dailies will still be there. So get to them whenever.

But in the wake of so many people talking about how they DON’T like dailies at all, I decided to compose a silly little ode to them that makes me smile.  Maybe it’ll make you smile too?:

~~~

Dailies here. Dailies there! Dailies can be found most anywhere!

In pagodas and on the steppes, do your dailies to grind those reps!

Help stop mogu in the Vale, roll down the spine and fly off the rail.

Train your serpent amongst the Jade, hunt for eggs before they fade.

So many dailies you can do! So many you’ll start to rue. Don’t forget farmers, fishers and gods. They need your help to get along.

Help preserve the August Celestial brand and fight in temples across the land.

Farm and fish, fish and farm – but remember you won’t make friends if you wish them harm!

And unless we forget there’s those nice bugs too, the Klaxxi are your friend until they eventually decide to turn on you.

And now we have a war going on. Sheildwall and Dominance are here to play along. (Just don’t upset the King or Garrosh, or else you might end up with your head cut right off.)

So many dailies you can do! So many you’ll start to rue. With even more in five point two!

(But remember you must cap that valor, yes you do – or else we’ll raid without you!)

Of Death and Ironmen

Honestly, I’m still completely shocked that the completely silly Ironman Challenge idea that we brewed up on Twitter all those years ago is still kicking around.  Now we’ve got our brand new level 90 Immortal Ironman.  For those who haven’t visited the OddCraft Archive’s Ironman page, the Immortal Ironman is the much, much, much, much, MUCH more well-known No Deaths variant of the challenge that the World of Warcraft Community came up with months after the original rules were posted.  (No, I’m not still sore about this all. I swear. I’m NOT! Stop saying it.  I do not protest too much.  And I’m not a lady, bub…   Sorry about the bub comment, Ma’am.)

But I was thinking about the Immortal Ironman version of the rules, and the past World Firsts that made it with no deaths, and I realized that there was an aspect of that whole challenge that really bothers me.  Something I think kind of undermines at least what I personally sought to see with the original Ironman Challenge and one of the reasons I didn’t WANT a ‘No Death’ rule in the game.

It makes you play it safe.

The 85 Immortal Ironman? Dinged doing level 80 dailies.  The 90 Immortal Ironman? Questing in Hyjal.  Are you kidding me?  I mean, yes. You did something amazing, hardcore, bad ass, all that. But come on people.  You can’t even do it in the current expansion’s content?  You could just do damn dailies over and over until you ding.  That’s…  borderline cowardly!

In my mind, Ironsally did it right.  Ironsally went into Hyjal and Deepholm and did battle against things that were compared to trying to solo raid bosses.  That is awesome.  And yes, she died.  But survival wasn’t the goal.  Conquest – VICTORY – was the goal.  And victory she achieved.  She killed them.  She waded into hell wearing her skivvies and emerged bloodied, beaten and victorious.

I really don’t want to diminish the victories of those who decided to undergo the Ironman Challenge with the no death rule.  It’s still an amazing accomplishment.  But in my mind, to play it safe is the undermine the true goal of the challenge.  To face the forces of darkness with nothing but barest of essentials.  To see if you could do it.  To see if you can even HIT or KILL a level 85 monster at level 84 with nothing but your underwear and a wooden sword.  That’s where I was going in my mind when the initial conversation on twitter took place, that’s still where the REAL challenge is in my mind.

But that’s not what the community wanted.  They made the challenge they wanted.  They took our framework and modified it.  That’s fine.  They have their champions, we have ours.  But if they want a challenge.  A REAL Ironman, best of the best, Ironman challenge.  Allow me to offer one additional rule to pair with their hardcore ‘No Death’ one:

14. No Daily Quests.

I’m asking you to show me how ‘Iron’ you are. I’m saying drop your safety net.  I think we’ve shown that Ironman is doable and Immortal Ironman is doable.  Now I’m upping the ante.  Show me what you have, WoW community.  I’m eager to see how tough you are.

Reassemble – Chapter One, Part Two

My sincerest apologies about this post being a day late from its scheduled Saturday posting.  Time has a way of getting away from me and I had a lot of random stuff drop on my lap yesterday.  So here it is, part two of my short story…  (Sorry!)

Vrykerion inked out a rough sketch of each piece that lay before him on the desk.  He drew lines and notes of how each one would potentially fit with others.  He didn’t need too.  He had done this many times before and would likely do it many times in the future.  He knew the design by heart but still went over it again and again.  It may have been in part to the time he spent studying and working with gnomish engineering.  Their desire to tinker and go over every detail hundreds of times to ensure that every bit was correct and in place.  But he knew that wasn’t about knowing how things went together, but understanding why.

—

“We’re proud of you, son.”  Kitarin Dawnshatter said, slapping Vrykerion on the back, “It might not be a Spell Breaker like your brother was, but being accepted into the Blood Knights is nothing to laugh at.”  Vrykerion just nodded a bit.

Vrykerion was wearing his blood knights’ tabard, a depressing mix of black and red – a reminder of what his people had to endure in the wake of the Third War.  He was dressed in his best chain mail from the graduation ceremony with Lady Liadrin, though in all honesty he had worn it for someone else.

“Just think! A few more years and you might be able to help pull this family out of Murder Row and back up into the Exchange! Or even the Court of the Suns!” Vrykerion’s father continued to prattle, causing Vrykerion to slightly roll his eyes. There was nothing like a reminder that his father’s crimes and the task of their family’s redemption was riding on his and his brother’s shoulders.

“But I want you to have something, my boy.  Something your Uncle got back during the Second War. He originally gave it to Herio, but he didn’t really want it.  I think he thought it would tarnish his reputation with the other Spell Breakers after we joined the Horde. Not that he’ll need it now.” Kitarin dropped something into his son’s hands: a small gold pocket watch. “It’s a gnomish design, ya see.  Tried to pawn it over in the Bazaar but no one in this Nether blasted town is willing to take it with those knuckle dragging orcs’ banners flying everywhere now.”

Vrykerion’s armored fingers traced over the designs on the back of the watch. “Gnomish,” he muttered for a moment before looking up, “You shouldn’t speak of the other races like that.”

“Those brutes killed your brother, you cowardly green skin boot licker!” Kitarin shouted throwing a bottle of wine at Vyrkerion and missing him, turning his back dismissively at Vrykerion and walked back to his hookah, “Don’t you have some rich noble whore to go visit or something, boy?”

“Yea.  Calowen is waiting for me at the celebration.  Tell Mother that I left her a gift when she gets home from work, will you?  Please don’t sell it this time.” His father puffed on the tube, inhaling the thick fumes of bloodthistle, and waved his hand, dismissing Vrykerion without a word.  Vrykerion sighed and left into the streets of Murder Row and up towards the Court of the Sun.

As he turned the corner into the fountain square, he was met with a pair of arms wrapping themselves around his neck.  Vrykerion panicked for a second, his instincts from his years living in the shadiest neighborhood in the city kicking in.  But his nerves eased when a familiar and curvaceous body followed the arms and pressed up against him in a hug, “Congratulations!”

He wrapped his arm around Calowen, “You too.  Excited for our deployment tomorrow?”

Calowen nodded, nuzzling her head in the crux of Vrykerion’s neck, “A bit nervous too.”

“You’ll do fine.  If you can drag me to graduation, I’m sure you could take on the entirety of the Scourge all by your lonesome.”

Calowen chuckled softly, never lifting her head, “I can see my extra lessons in ‘sense of humor’ have served you well.”

Vrykerion smiled.  It was one of many ‘extra lessons’ he had enjoyed with Calowen during their time training to be paladins, “Are you ready for the celebration?”

This time she shook her head and her soft voice got quiet, “I actually thought we could go somewhere else.”

Vrykerion raised an eyebrow.  Did she really mean? His answer came quick in the form of her lips pressing deeply into his, her soft warm skin contrasting the cool metal of his armor.  And as the night went on the cold feeling of armor vanished piece by piece, and the warmth spread more and more.

—

Vrykerion’s hand trembled slightly as he drew a small 14 toothed cog.  He stopped and set the parchment down.  He allowed himself a moment of reprieve to glance out the window and to let the blood drain from his flushed face.  Blue Child hung low in the night sky.  For a brief moment he wondered where the sun had gotten off to.  The process of rebuilding was long and sometimes very hard on him.  Still, he knew that he had to continue.  He had to press on or else finishing and thus understanding, would never come.  He would simply run away again.  So Vrykerion sat back down and took his quill in hand once more.

A Short Prediction for MoP

“Garrosh has become corrupted and has been doing some really nasty things beneath Orgrimmar.” – MMO Champion

“Sha: Lethal dark energy—absorbs hateful emotions and easily corrupts those who are unsuspecting” – WoWHead

Garrosh has become corrupted – Sha … easily corrupts

GARROSH CORRUPTED – SHA CORRUPTS

Gee, can we guess what happens to Garrosh this expac?

The Thing With the Sixes?

In case this is the only gaming/cartoon/WoW/SWTOR/I like cookies/rant blog you ever read (and we are very thankful for that. See! You even get the royal ‘We’ for it!) you may have not noticed this new fangled meme involving the number ‘six’ going around.  As far as I can tell it was originally started by Gnomeaggedon.  It goes something like this:

• Go into your image folder
• Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.
• Publish the image! (and a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couln’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own).
• Challenge six new bloggers.
• Link to them.

Simple, yes?  I have no clue where the idea to use the number six came from.  Maybe someone is hoping that all these related posts will grow and become sentient becoming Six from Battlestar Galactica? Or my personal favorite six: Cybersix!  Ah who knows. Let’s just kick this thing off.  Let’s see here, ‘Go into your image folder’.  Well, dangit. Which one?  I have one for WoW screenshot and one for SWTOR screenshots. So I guess I’ll just post one from each? That can’t hurt, right?

From the WoW folder…

Well… uh… that’s pretty uninteresting. Isn’t it?  It’s just a pretty picture of Deepholm.  I took this picture to use as a wallpaper on my computer actually.  There’s just something about the textures for the environment in Deepholm that just made it look gorgeous.  I actually have quite a few pictures from down there, and it is hands down my favorite looking zone from Cataclysm.  I would routinely just fly loops around it while chatting with my guild, just for the great visuals the zone provides.  The story there wasn’t bad either.  It definitely served as a good follow-up to Hyjal in terms of ‘heroic deeds’.  First, you become the Herald of the Ancients (That would have been a nice title, Blizz.) and usher their return to the world to push back the forces of the Firelands, and then you descend into the Plane of Earth, to gather the various forces against the Twilight Cultists and rebuild the World Pillar.  If they had opened up the order you can do all the pieces in, it would have probably been my favorite zone of the expansion.

From the SWTOR folder…

This image is probably the first “odd” from SW:TOR that I stumbled upon.  If you can’t gather the subtext from the text box, essentially one of the customers is in on the hustle and their duping the other customer into buying the adrenals he’s trying to sell.  Honestly, what really sold me on this little scene (one of MANY you can find in the game if you just wait around for them) is that it’s never made explicitly clear that one of the customers is in on the scam, unless you have seen or heard about this kind of scam before.  Not that it’s exactly rare.  It’s been played out in dozens of films, TV shows, etc.  But I do like that it’s not explicit, it just makes it feel more… I dunno. Real?

Also, you may now point and laugh at my keybindings.  My secret-not-really-shameful-shame hast been revealed!

From my Pictures Folder…

Oh! Finally something that actually has sub-folders!  Now let’s see.  This photo is… oh.  Oh no.  Oh science, this is gonna be painful.

Yeeeaaa… this is gonna require A LOT of explanation I imagine. This is actually an old project from college.  It was supposed to be a “metaphorical self-portrait”.  Cheesy as that sounds, I had fun doing it.  Although now that I’m looking at it, I can’t really recall what I was going for with most of this.  I dunno the face card style figure with the happy & death faces is supposed to be a reference to me being bipolar.  The words in the background are…  barely readable. No clue.  I’m pretty sure most of this probably had a deep significance to me seven years ago, when I was back in college and still cared about things having a deep significance. (Film school & Shakespeare classes killed that. I don’t care about what deep metaphorical message Orson Welles was going for by putting the moon in the upper-right corner, or why Shakespeare used more p’s & g’s in one half of a sentence than the other.)  Still, in the end, I think it’s a pretty cool picture for messing around in Photoshop for a few hours.

Well, those are my images for this thing going around.  Now my task is tag some more to pass this crazy thing along.  I have no idea who has already been tagged or not, so I’m just gonna tag people who I haven’t seen post one of these things yet.  So pardon me for any redundancies! Regardless, these are some awesome people. Definitely check out their stuff!

• The Snark Side
• Hawtpants of the Old Republic
• Inquisitor’s Roadhouse
• Dora’s Log
• Aaaand anyone else who wants to do it.  Really, at this point, this thing has been so spread out I don’t have a clue who has and hasn’t done it.  So just go for it. Feel free to link your ‘Sixth Meme’ post in the comments here if you want! I’d love to see them!

 

I’ve Got Me The Wanderlust!

So I’m sure you can probably tell from either my twitter feed or even here on my blog that there’s been a definitive shift in attention to other things – Non-WoW things.  Well, there is a reason for that.  I’m not currently playing WoW.  Oh yes, my subscription actually lapsed in late November, and I didn’t really bother to renew it.  Oh I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking “Vry, didn’t you ragequit the game not even a year ago at the start of Cataclysm?  Are you really quitting again?”  Well, allow me to answer you, Imaginary Blog Reader.  The answer is yes and no.

This isn’t a ragequit.  Not in the least.  Not a single character was deleted.  All 11 of my darling toons are still sitting there.  No, the reason is really that I just ran out of things I was interested in doing.  Cataclysm itself has been an underwhelming game in a number of regards but mostly in the one that interests me most – story.  The story just seems so disjointed.  I’ve spoken about it here before.  I kinda get that they want to establish a number of hooks that they can come back and explore further down the line, and that answers may come in an expansion or two but that really doesn’t give me incentive to play now. Honestly, all I had to look forward to was the end of the Deathwing story arc that I found personally underwhelming.  Believe me, I’ve followed every bit of news about 4.3 and other than the once-a-month Darkmoon Faire and kupo-ing (transmogrification – and if you don’t understand the reference you are a bad nerd and should hand in your nerd card now) there REALLY wasn’t anything I was jumping for joy about.  Nothing bad really, just nothing I was looking forward too.  So I said, “Self, is this game currently worth $15 a month to you?” and I replied, “No. Not at the moment.” So I didn’t renew.  Now Mists of Pandaria?  If everything pans out they way they pitched it at Blizzcon, I’d be very interested in coming back to see how that it is.

I suppose it’s only fair to confess that I’ve been disillusioned with Blizzard’s storytelling a bit since Blizzcon.  I may play it up for cheap laughs but I really spent a lot of time thinking and theorizing about that snake in Gundrak.  Heck, I even went to the trouble of lining up the maps and figuring out that it led into that big closed up temple, not to mention all the different ideas about the unified troll empires and what that might mean for this.  Or the connections behind each of the troll empires seemingly having a powerful serpent-like god at the head of their pantheon (Ulatek and Hakkar).  But to hear that all that thought, all those potential theories, were all the result of “The art team stuck that in there. No clue what it is. HA HA HA.” was a bit disheartening.  How many other storylines or interesting things are there in the game that I am passionate about are nothing but “It’s neat and that’s all”? I suppose we can’t all be right about things like Rades.  I guess you could say I’m a bit cynical about the story of World of Warcraft now.  So for the moment, there’s something else in my sights.

Ah yes.  Star Wars: The Old Republic.  I’m not going to sit here and speak of it like it is some holy grail of MMOs, that it will push the envelope and break us through to other side or anything like that.  It is WoW with a few new enjoyable mechanics, a different setting, and a whole lot more story.  But that’s where it hooks me – THE STORY. If I had to attribute one thing to keeping me playing through all of Wrath of the Lich King without burning out, despite watching two guilds dissolve around me, it was that I was completely enraptured in the story of the expansion.  Cataclysm? Not so much. Mists?  Yet to be seen.  But from the beta weekends with SWTOR?  Oh sweet evil jebus, yes the story hooked me.  Almost every class I played had something about it that made me sit up and go “Oh, I want to know what’s next!” Even the trooper! (On the other hand if I hear “It looks like you need a soldier” one more time, I’m going to punch my screen. So we’ll wait a bit on that class.) What can I say? Despite whatever glitches and bugs or ‘uninspired terrain’ *coughdragonage2cough* I’ve encountered through my treks through Bioware’s games, I’ve always been willing to work through or around them because dangit, they tell an enjoyable story.

So what does that mean for this blog?  Nothing.  It’s one of the reasons I switched to ‘Land of Odd’ instead of ‘Oddcraft’.  Because I knew there was a good chance that despite my desire to write, I might not always have the desire to play World of Warcraft.  I’ve still got a big stack of silly WoW pictures and weirdness to talk about, I’ll be posting more on SW:TOR, and I’ll continue to rant and rave about any other geeky things I come across. Be they D&D, cartoons, anime, SW:TOR, WoW, or any other video game.  This blog will continue to be about weird rantings, strange observations, and me just being a nerdy weirdo talking about stuff he enjoys and occasionally hates.  In the merry old Land of Odd, we do-as-we-please and we hope you continue to enjoy this insane ride with us.  And by us, yes I just mean me.  It’s the royal we.  Cause I’m the king here. And as king I say…  that this metaphor is becoming needlessly bloated. Yeesh.

Lowered Expectations

Today, I feel like giving advice.  I rarely do this, and people often ignore it or get offended that I am doing it.  This is not some ultimatum, just some random musings culminating in an explanation that reinforces a viewpoint that may or may not cause you to go “Huh.”  You have been warned.

So recently I’ve been spending a lot of time flipping through the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums.  I can see you shaking your head in disheartened disgust.  Regardless of what you may think about the “Bioware Community”, they are indeed just as bad – if not worse in some regards – than the World of Warcraft forums.  While the Bioware forums proper demand nothing short of perfection from every Bioware title (Don’t believe me? Trying going there and complimenting Dragon Age 2.  See what kind of reaction you get), the Old Republic forums are full of bristling debate over simply what kind of game the Old Republic will be and the firestorm that discussion – a term I use lightly to describe the battle of enraging ki that encircles many a thread – leaves in its wake.  Exaggeration? Perhaps.  I find calm, civilized and cheerful discussions quite often on the Warcraft forums but that doesn’t seem to barricade anyone from bursting forth with the idea that the site in its entirety is a den of villains, thrice damned abominations and trolls.

Ultimately, the problem is one of expectations.  Many are gripping on to their title of choice (Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect 3… what have you) and wishing that their every desire will be fulfilled by that one title as if it were some all-powerful djinn with the cheat codes turned on.  Those who wish to herald of the days of yore when games were brutal and only the best of the best would claim the shiniest toy on the mound that they can lord over the unwashed masses will find any quote and smidgen of information to reinforce that this game will be their ideal world.  While those who arm themselves with communist ideals that all should be able to claim the shiniest toy should they desire will do the same.  It’s not just loot either than fuels these festering mosh pits of heated debate.  Everything from game play mechanics to who has the marginally more interesting story line can be fodder.  People expect things to be the way they want them to be, and not the way they don’t want it to be and they’ll will fight with self proclaimed righteousness to convert those with dissenting opinion.

Honestly, it is hilarious from an outsiders point of view.  Will TOR crash and burn for sticking to the Trinity?  Will Guild Wars 2 usher in a renaissance that will wipe the MMO playing field clear so a new world can be forged in its place? Does the Horde really get the best story lines and Blizzard just hates the Alliance with a passion?  I read these thoughts and laugh.  Because I know that the real answer is probably going to land in the middle, and thus begins a new cycle of hatred and bickering over failures and incompetence of the developers to satisfy what each person views as the majority opinion – that just so happens to align with their personal beliefs – of what should have happened.

So what do you do?  Well, I can’t say.  That’s for each to decide for themselves when the time comes.  I can however tell you how I have routinely been able to find pleasure in many a game over the years:  Keep your expectations simple.  If I told you the entirety of my expectations for The Old Republic was to have an interesting story and a neat crafting system, do you think I would find myself disappointed come December?  My only expectation for Brutal Legend was I was expecting to laugh because it’s a Tim Schafer game and that man is hilarious.  I have replayed that game about four times to date and am seriously tempted to do it again.  Actually, probably my first mistake with Cataclysm was expecting something massive.  A whole new Azeroth to explore! Everything is different now!  Yea, no.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have several issues with Cataclysm – ones that if Mists of Pandaria delivers what was proposed should remedy hopefully – but I don’t think I would have crashed and burned to the point of deleting my characters and saying “Screw it all!” a mere month a half in, were I more level headed about what to expect.

The only time everyone will be happy with something is when you only have a small handful of people to deal with, and even then it’s not a guarantee.  Companies like Bioware and Blizzard have to deal with an audience of millions.  How do you do that?  I can barely wrap my head around it, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a million anything.  The only thing that keeps coming back to me when I lie awake, staring at my ceiling, and thinking about all of this is ‘compromise.’  Compromise is how you make the most people happy.  They’re probably not all going to be ecstatic, possibly not even elated, but maybe pleased.  Pleased enough to pay and to keep paying.  The problem with compromise is that those who are hoping on this being the messiah they patiently waited for, that will do everything right in their book, may become bitter and discontent.  They become disgruntled trolls who might see themselves enlightened amongst the drooling mouth breathers who didn’t see the promise of absolute satisfaction and throw their money at it instead of rising up as one and saying “No! Do better!” and thus the cycle begins a new.

So my advice – hidden cryptically through the words of this rant – is to lower your expectations.  Not to the ground, mind you.  You should have some self respect for what you enjoy. But if you’re seeking what you feel is perfection and then condemn something for not living up to your personal demands, you will rarely – if possibly ever – find satisfaction.  Then again, if you are anything like one of my relatives, your disgruntled rage may be the fuel that keeps you going through life. So, uh…  kudos?