Tuesday, August 12, 2014

FFXIV: Still Good!

Quick post/Update


Still having a ton of fun FFXIV. There is a lot to do within the game and none of it 'is quick'.

Want to level blacksmith in WoW? Could do it in like 5 hours with the new game 'quick leveling'.

Leveling blacksmith in FFXIV takes days of effort. And its not 'grindy', its like leveling up a combat class. There is depth to your choices, to how you craft, to what abilities you use.

But like a standard class, its not over then. Because blacksmith , like all crafting classes, nets you a few unique crafting skills. But in FFXIV you can poach abilities from other classes, so now suddenly you may want to level up your Culinary to get access to a power to help your blacksmithing...cause you might need that power to reach the highest difficulty of crafables (1, 2 and 3 star recipes). 

And this is just crafting. This idea of depth and enjoying the journey, and making the 'end' truely feel rare exists throughout.

Let me give you an example: You hit max level in WoW. How long until you are LFR geared?
How long until you are normal geared?
How hard it it to get some heroic gear?

In FFXIV this process takes longer, but there are more 'steps' in the path, so it is not that you feel like your not progressing, the ladder simply has more rungs.

And of course I would debate that each rung is more enjoyable, with better quests and experiences designed around it, but thats more an issue of taste.


Exalted
After a very very long stint not running games I will be doing just that very shortly. Exciting times.

Gen Con
Sad we didnt go this year. Hoping to return to the great con again starting next year. 

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

A Return to Eorzea

So fucking long...

I rejoined WoW in February, after a stint in FFXIV where, despite enjoying myself, ended cause I felt I had done all the content there was to do and issues in their end game model.

I went to WoW, had my fun; did Garosh in LFR, then in Flex...then normal and now trying to pursue him in Heroic. In that time there have been no new dungeons, no new raids, no new dailies. The game is exactly as it has been since I joined as resources are focused on the future WoD expansion.

Taking a peak at developer tweets and alpha streams, the game is a long way off from release, with fundamental system changes still taking place. It is for lack of a better work, very frustrating to imagine that even after I exhausted content about a month ago (if not longer) that its still another 3-5 months before a new set of content will be released. 

So what to do until then?

WildStar
I played in the Alpha and the Beta for months..and the game never really struck a cord with me. I did not like guild wars and other 'limited action bar' kind of games. I like having lots of buttons and powers to my class personally. More over the art style of the game is sometimes GREAT....most of the time though its just -too- much. It feels cluttered, clashing, like everything is trying to grab your attention. UI was terrible, leveling felt incredibly grindy...

Path of Exile
I love this game. Its great, that said no one I know plays it and in the end, without a social element its hard to spend hours playing a co-op dungeon game.

Diablo 3
Was fun, but short. Better than initial release certainly, but after you have done your rifting and gotten most of your gear, its rather dull. Rifts are really kind of limited affairs, nothing like Path of Exiles maps which add unique rules and 'affixes/suffixes' to the monsters in a map and the map itself, which you can reroll (harder mods=higher % chance of nice items dropping). This is more interesting than the torment system, which just inflates numbers for the most part. Secondly there are barely any legendaries, and for the most part many are boring as hell (no unique passives) while some are SUPER overpowering and requires for 50% of all builds (looking at you Cindercoat)

So what then?

A friend suggested I look into FFXIV. At first I fought the idea; FFXIV had a terrible and limited end game, the classes were so limiting, there was nothing to do.

After some talk I decided to see what FFXIV had done since I left. I'm something of a patch notes junky so I was going to 'review' and make a decision. Let me start off by saying one of the reasons I did leave was my perception that Square-Enix being a Japanese company meant it would take foooooreeeever for patches to come out, and that most patches would be small affairs with real content few and far between (a constant complaint I heard from friends about FFXI). 

So I took to the internet and looked. 

My jaw right about fell out of my mouth. In the same time span where NOTHING had come out in WoW FFXIV had put out dailies, tons of dungeons, new raids, new item tiers, pvp etc etc etc.

Now a lot of this might sound underwhelming, but what must be realized here is the level of polish. A quest line in FFXIV will include cut scenes, full animation, lots of detailed writing (its an FFXIV game, so the plot is quite good). Similarly the dungeons are beautiful affairs, the monsters in many cases being custom models (vs say, in WoW's MOP dungeons, how many non boss models are custom? Hell boss models themselves are generally used again and again (How many "Sha's looked exactly the same?")).

Its hard to convey this, but one quest line for instance had me (whom, despite enjoying comedy, seldom laughs) in stitches. At other points I appreciate that its a far more adult game, with murder, rape and other concepts spoken about in the plot, or shown (murder here, not rape!) in cutscenes. Its not in your face by any means and the game is generally fairly light hearted, but its a few 'steps' closer to mature than I feel WoW is (which is a bit more mass market after all). 

There are a lot of boss fights in FFVIX, a lot of dungeons, a lot of 'daily' activities that seem quite rewarding. They seem to be focused on adding interesting looking gear and custom effects. Its little details that win you over; do a new quest that came out in 2.1, and you can earn a new dance for instance. Other games might have a 'barber' in town, but in FFXIV this became a plot line quest with a ridiculously amazing hair stylist whom had lost his memory until you find his him comb and scissors then he goes through a rather humorous transformation.

In the end, FFXIV seems to want to entertain you, and its hard to not appreciate how well it does that (which can be really great). 

Does it have problems?
Yes. The combat is in general, very unresponsive and slow. For someone used to 'fast tanking' this means I decidedly cant approach things the same way, and have to plan out many seconds ahead of what might happen. In general I dislike that aspect of the game, as I prefer very active play styles (something happens, i react, or can adjust as needed). Until I really -really- get used to this in end game, it means I will for some points kind of suck at my job (tanking).

Secondly is the lack of secondary jobs for most classes. This was something promised early on so I'm a little disheartened to see that a new class/job (thief/ninja) is coming out before existing classes get secondary jobs. This isnt to say they SHOULDNT have done this, but I like adding depth to existing classes.

Fun factor varies wildly between classes, with some being very strategically enticing (Monk, Scholar, Summoner, Warrior, Bard) and others being rather mundane and boring (Black Mage, White Mage, Dragoon, Gladiator). As a note, the last two here are the glaring problems in FFXIV, Dragoons are simple to the point of painful (and despite this seem to attract the stupidist players. No offense if you play a Dragoon, although chances are your worse at the game than I'm) and Paladins are the most limited class in the game.

How many 3 level combos do you have? 1. Warriors by comparison have 3.
Your a paladin though right; you can heal. Not really, ANY damage interupts, and your a tank AND its a slow to cast spell. There are times you can eek out one or two, but since your not stacking piety as a tank, expect 300-400 heals (when you have 7K+ health, and auto attacks from bosses are 1.5K+, 3-5 heals throughout an encounter is negligible).  What you do have are some of the best cooldowns for a tank..and thats about it really.
That said, can it be fixed? SURE. The fact you have very 'fun' classes, like Monk, means Square can make REALLY fun classes. But at the same token WILL they change it is a question? 

----random tangent----

I dislike intentionally 'easier' classes than others in any game. I feel, personally, all classes should have great depth as well as easy to understand aspects. Easy to learn, hard to master is a saying I enjoy in any game, the idea I can have fun day one and continue to perfect and learn a year later. That said in my experience in MMO's this is fairly rare. For one, I do not believe this exists for the most part with the DPS role in a PvE game. I raided as a rogue for 3 years in WoW and returned to it periodically, and while the most 'complex' of most DPS specs (intense management while at melee range as the 'squishiest' of melee dps classes) it was still a game of blinders; you did your dps job, figured out how to perfect it, and executed.

I spent the later half of Ice Crown as a healer in raids (and did some during TBC whenever we were down a healer). This was more interesting, having to anticipate boss mechanics, but in the end it became a game of managing hit boxes and mana. Keep everyone alive =win. This was more interesting than dps (where its you and the boss) as now you were contending with everyone elses decisions and reacting to them. 

Tanking has varied based off the class. I tried Warrior during the later days of Cata and felt it was rather dull. Like DPS it was 'me and the boss' and nothing else really; it was also a very passive mitigation game, which made it felt even more boring. It was worth noting that I had tanked throughout TBC and WoTLK as a Paladin (paladin in guild 1, rogue in guild 2) and enjoyed it, but felt in general it was kind of boring. I enjoyed tanking but felt at that time like it was still an 'easy' job, although more critical than DPS (if you fuck up as a tank=wipe, vs as a dps=o well).

In comes MoP and the Protadin re-imagining...

So what I feel in MoP is while tanking and content is still rather easy, Protadins felt so active.

1) GCD's down to 1 second. Given the 2+ seconds in FFXIV, this is night and day. I can hit buttons very fast in WoW and get a reaction, where in FFXIV the GCD + the net code being so slow for west coast players (many MANY posts and vids showing this) I always feel 'behind' in the game, playing catch up.
2) Active mitigation sure..but I can heal people. Hell I can with a word of glory take most raid members from 20% health up to full. Of course I also have hand of protection, sacrifice and lay on hands to pass out as well. What that means is I'm KIND of playing the healing mini game as well. If I see someone drop low suddenly, BAM lay on hands. Slow consistant damage to raid? Devotion Aura (sadly going away in WoD from my spec).  I have 'tools' to give out to the raid to bring them up, so now im suddenly monitoring both the raid health and the boss mechanics and to me, this is challenging and fun. Sure I could ignore the raid health and just focus on the boss but suddenly I'm neglecting a very strong aspect of the Paladin (WoW version) class. Its this 'duality' of focus that I enjoy.

In FFXIV tanking as a Paladin is strictly me/boss; if I'm getting shit kicked in, pop cds. Admitedly Warriors are similar but they have more interesting mechanics with how to cope, and in an ironic turn, much better self healing than Paladins doe as its built into their tanking methods (rather than Paladins whom only receive healing from cross class abilities).

------End Tangent-----

So all in all, I'm enjoying FFXIV. It might have some great staying power, given they just put up their 2.3 trailer which most people expect out soon (this will mean FFXIV would have had a game release AND 3 major content patches in the time. WoW by comparison has had the 5.4 patch out since late September and will be pushing almost 1 year (presuming WoD comes out in September) without any new content. Eck.



Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Banner Saga, WoW, Wild Star, D&D and other news

Damn its been over a month! With the holidays I kind of forgot about this...ok where to start.


Banner Saga: I begin with this.

Play this game.

Play it right away. Its amazing. Its a story based game...its cruel..its beautiful, it...is heart wrenching in fact. It is probably the best game I have played in quite a few years.  Game is available on steam:

http://stoicstudio.com/

I'll just say this; I've never felt the need to cry after a video game (notably only one or two VERY depressing books have made me feel that level of emotion and maybe 3 heart jerker movies have made me tear up when I wasnt expecting it. This is after a life time of loving drama and sadness, so generally feeling pretty prepared to endure it).


World of Warcraft: Having a lot of fun in this game. Don't know what it is about Panda Land but I enjoy it, despite how much against it I was. I still hate the Panda race, but the world is lovely (gorgeous even), the content is very fun and the combat is the best its ever been. Looking forward to Warlords of Draenor and seeing the character model updates.

Wild Star: Admittedly I have not been in the beta much, cause of WoW. What I saw seemed promising although I still don't like the Guild Wars 2 feel I get from it, it is far more polished/nicer than GW2.

D&D: This is a bit of a rant..


Fuck fuck fuck..fuck fuck..fuck 5th edition/d&d next. I started D&D with the tail end of 2nd edition and never enjoyed the system. When 3rd came out I adored the customization, and when 4th came out I really enjoyed the tactics and builds. I for one never thought it was a systems fault that groups could not learn how to roleplay, and the idea that 4th edition somehow inhibited RP even today baffles me. The reality is that 4th edition brought in a lot of new players cause it looked fun and not as intimidating as 3rd edition and those players were not taught proper RP by their DM's. Also lets be clear about another thing; D&D was never a good roleplaying game, it was a good rollplaying game. It took a good group to make the game work as a story telling method. So the idea that going BACK to more simplistic rules to appease the 2nd/3rd edition crowd is a bit insulting to me. 4th edition could have easily have been updated with more content to flesh out non combat options, with more worlds and 'things' to explore but it failed for a few reasons:

1) Books were bad. Most of them were poorly laid out, poorly written and relied to much on filling up the page with large blocks of powers and reprocessed feats. Compare the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms guide to the 4th edition version; no real comparison here which one feels better as a DM.

2) Books all became player supplements. Few books targeted the DM and helped them enrich their game, instead I feel the vast majority of them were going after players with one or two new backgrounds or rules, and the rest of the book was fairly dull and uninspired.

3) Online tools were too little to late. Compendium was nice, and the builder eventually got to a good place, but the other tools were either too buggy (monster builder), too late (open table), or too little (dragon/dungeon magazine content).

They should have had a 4.5. Would have been an excuse to sell books, fix rules en masse and pull back in their old crowd by catering to them a bit more. Essentials was a good step for D&D but the fact is they had too much going on at the same time , and they needed to consolidate options for players a little more.


Thursday, December 5, 2013

WildStar; It's good!

So I cant break NDA, but I'll say this.

I'm in the WildStar Beta
I was not happy during the stress test a few months ago.
I'm very happy with what I see now.

The amount of polish and improvement is down right remarkable. Cant say specifics, but I'll say this; I found myself smiling a lot while playing. Been a long time since an MMO has done that.



In other news, having a lot of fun playing WoW with Dave and a few other friends. Doing Raids, PvP and more is a great pass time and its made me remember the social aspect of gaming that has been missing since I have spent so much time in the single player area.


Short blog, barely that. Will write something more profound tomorrow. 

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

FF14 patch news, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft & Some ranting on Blizzard

Where to begin.

Final Fantasy 14
The dev blog for ff14 is out, it indicates that the 2.1 patch is coming out December. Game came out in August and did not debut with any dailies, pvp, and limited end game. 5 months from launch to the first content patch to put them 'at level' to what I feel most other MMO's debut with seems really sad. This confirms something for me that would have driven me nuts with FF14; their dev life cycles are very very slow. This is likely a hall mark of the ff11 slow development times and not something I want to be part of, so I can't see myself returning to ff14 any time soon. Maybe a year from now or something.

WoW
So I'm playing a good deal of Panda land and having a lot of fun. I transfered to an RP server because, well, I'm a huge geek and love to rp. That said I have been enjoying LFR (have completed everything so far and now completing my LFR raid set, then will start poking into finding a consistent 10 man raiding group). PvP is also very fun, I changed over to Ret spec for it and had a blast. LOTS of numbers! Ret is unlike any other pvp spec I have played in that (Maybe similar to the old POM Pyro Mages) it can go from 'meh' damage to "WTF HOW DID I JUST DIE" levels of damage instantly by popping three cooldowns in conjunction. That ontop of some natural tankyness and the fact you deal holy damage exclusively (lulz warrior armor) makes it pretty nice.

Path of Exile
No news here; I play it nightly, its the shit. Really probably the most fantastic game I can recommend.

I guess there is news though; new patch came out. Lots of great stuff. Honestly I cant imagine what Blizzard can do to match these guys. They are a small lean and quick company. They talk to their community daily and put out content patches it seems every other week. While Reaper of Souls looked good at Blizz Con, its not something even being talked about until after March 2014 (after the Auction House Changes). At about two 'significant' patches a month thats  about 10-12 PoE Patches from now. Given how much the game has changed and improved in the past 5 months, another 5 months just seems insane.

This gets me to a criticism I have about Blizzard..

Blizzard
You make good things, but holy christ your slow!

REALLY SLOW

Star Craft 2 and then the multi year pause until Star Craft 2 Heart of the Swarm. Wtf? For those that know me, Star Craft 2 was something I played when I lived in Michigan, and Heart of the Swarm came out this past Spring/Summer. Diablo 3 vs its xpac is not taking as long but then again most people LOATHED Diablo 3 and Blizzard has to try to save that IP. Hearthstone has been in a closed beta for so long that people are losing interest cause they cannot play with their friends. The only game that has a steady clip of development is WoW; every other game franchise has large periods of time where not much is being released. In years passed this was ok, but now a days I'm not so sure. Many indy devs (like Grinding Gear Games) are showing that you can come out with as good if not a BETTER product in less time but keeping the teams small and agile.

What Else?
Going to Dreamforce in San Fran next week, so wont be online much or blogging. I will be online in the evenings in WoW or PoE, so hit me up there;)

Monday, October 21, 2013

FF14 News & Exalted! Some WoW

Hello Readers (all..two of you?), here are some updates in my world.


FF14
So....I'm thinking I will probably quit this game, at least until they have some content patches.
There just is not much to do. A lot of people have fun leveling alts, and I really have never been big into leveling alts. To me leveling an alt I do not intend to raid with is an excuse to waste time because the MMO did not have enough content. No I don't expect that I should be bemused by a game at all times, but FF14 missed a lot of necessary content at release that occupies my time generally in games outside of raids, those being:

  • PvP
  • Dailies
  • Some Rep Grind
  • Leveling Crafting
  • Upgrading My Gear
FF14 does not have the first 3, and the last two are a bit pointless. Let me explain.

Crafting:
Building your own gear is for the mostly pointless. By end game you can invest about an hour or so per piece of gear (About 4 for chest/legs) to get your 'pre raid' items (Dark Light). The total time investment is a long for your first good 'max level' item set but not terrible. You COULD craft a better set but the time investment is rather immense. It requires leveling a whole new class, a large investment of Gil (or grinding the same instances that provides the prior mentioned Dark Light Gear) and a Materia and a bit of luck. It ends up becoming a rather excessive amount of effort and the end result is gear that is actually at best subjectively better than the aforementioned gear. In effect, crafting your gear is something you do to really pass the time, there is no benefit to doing this yourself. 

Upgrading My Gear
On Materia..this is final fantasies 'enchant' or 'geming' system, however almost NO quest gear can be modified with materia and infact, none of the dark light or raid gear you get can be adjusted. This means you can go the entire game and never use materia once! This makes gearing yourself very dull. In WoW (by comparison) you are geming, enchanting and altering states commonly to ensure you reach certain stat caps without going over. This is actually a little fun, although its not as deep and detailed as I would like, but the lack of any decisions in FF14 is killing me.

Combat

Combat is also really very boring as a Tank. A Paladin in this game has very few options; one combo (a set of three attacks done in order) and a few cooldowns I can pop for added survivability. Thats combat is combat as a Paladin: hit three keys in order, hit a macro or two to trigger some other powers, throw up cooldowns as you expect to/start taking significant damage.

On the flip side something I LOVE in FF14 is the telegraphed AOE's and how you can move in and out of these to mitigate lots of damage. This is the most interactive part of the game but it is also soured for me because as a West Coast gamer I'm forced to connect to a Canadian east coast server. No problem right? Not so.

Right now I'm playing on a east coast WoW server and my connectivity is at 35 ms of ping. Things happen pretty much immediately, no noticeable input lag. I can throw an interrupt on a target a moment before they finish casting a spell and it will interrupt. In FF14 I have tracked my ping against the server between 130-240 MS. Add to this that FF14 seldom has true 'instant' off GCD attacks as effects coincide with their animation (which for many abilities take a full second or more to fire off) before taking effect. The result is I can throw an interrupt the moment a 2 second cast appears on my screen and have a 50/50 chance of actually stopping it. The same applies to escaping telegraphs. On a number of fights I will move the moment a telegraph appears, escaping it well before the monster stops casting its ability (in FF14 the time where you are 'hit' by a spell is based on the cast bar of the monster, not the animation of the effect) and again still get hit 50% of the time despite being many 'yaums' (yards) away. Some nights I have stopped bothering and its very disheartening because the telegraphs right now are the best part of the ff14 combat.

What does all that amount to? I think FF14 is a great game, has great potential, but I think Square Enix has a lot of work to do to get the game into a position where its truely satisfying. I think a lot of the fan base (FF11 players) are not experienced playing in what I would consider a proper end game and are more apt to consider these aspects of the games part of its charm and somehow spin them into positives, and they are welcome to that. I believe until patch 2.1/2.2 comes out I will look for other pastures. 

EXALTED

So last night I ran the second to last game in my Pathfinder arc. My players are ascending the tower of a vile necromancer in the midst of a ceremony seeking to bring back an ancient evil (which they are only dimly aware of, unless they read this blog..in which case SURPRISE!). Was a good game but MAN do I loath Pathfinder. Combats take long, are generally pretty boring and heavily penalize players. Want to charge? Good luck with that. Fire a ray into a melee? Good luck, without two feats your at a -8 to hit most times. I really dislike the system in which 3/3.5/Pathfinder are based on and really wished some of my players did not cling to it so tightly and dislike 4e on basic premises which I think are false. "Its like an MMO" seems a strange allegation to me. Healers heal in Pathfinder and do so in 4e, they just heal AND can damage in 4e. Damage dealers do damage in both systems, its just more interesting in 4e since you can move creatures around, stun them and apply other effects. The only thing remotely like an MMO is that in 4e Tanks have a way to 'encourage' enemies to fight them instead of their allies, although point of fact this was something introduced late in 3.5's life cycle and was a common complaint of every 3.5 tank I was are of because at a certain level when monsters could teleport/fly/burrow they could avoid the hard to hit tank and butcher the tasty healer and if they didnt it was generally the DM not playing up to the intelligence of most of the monsters they threw at the party (Honestly why would a Red Dragon waste 5 rounds attacking a fighter getting healed and NOT just take out the healer and the rogue sneak attacking them for 6d6 added damage every hit?).

Anyhow...EXALTED

So with the end of the aforementioned arc we return to Creation with a brand new Solars campaign. My intent here is to get a game going with a circle of Solars that will transition into 3E when its released. So far I understand Jill will be playing a Night caste and twin to Trisha's Zenith caste (God Help Me). One of our new players, Michael has opted to play a Twilight caste and James is interested in a Dawn caste. Why is it no one ever picks Eclipse? That anima banner is insane, and Fae cannot attack you unless provoked (super awesome!).

For system we will just use the 2.5 errata and not my custom house rules because while I adore my house rules, I would rather not worry about tweaking them so close to 3e.


World of Warcraft
Hit max level with my Paladin, doing content. Pretty fun. Man do they give you epics easy now, but it seems that something being purple does not mean as much anymore as the iLevel difference between the 'free epics!' you get shortly after hitting max level and the stuff I see from raids is pretty significant. That is good to know! Game still looks like shit but its fun.

EVE Online
Thinking I might resub. Hrm...


Thursday, October 17, 2013

Path of Exile, WoW, FF14

Greetings 3 people that read my posts on the internet. How are you?

Actually my page has gotten 40 views?! Either someone is hitting refresh a lot or about 6 of you are reading this crap! Anyhow on to stuff.


Path of Exile
Is finally getting its release. Its like, this week basically (if im not mistaken). It includes a crazy amount of updates. Act three is being extended significantly with a number of new zones, mini bosses and a new end game boss (Piety was intended to be a 'mid act boss', similar to Brutus in Act 1). Other cool stuff?

  • New Class (Scion) who appears in the center of the passive tree
  • Speaking of the passive tree, its been entirely redone, allowing for more builds, new passives, etc.
  • With that, EVERYONE is getting a full free respec (WOOHOO)
  • Lots of new skill gems. Check this guy out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrJjbLBZkk
  • New proc skill gems. You can link something (like say, Molten Shield) to a proc gem that works when you take damage and theres a chance when you take damage that a weaker version of molten shell is auto cast on you. There are a number of new proc types including offensive ones (when you crit, when you kill an enemy, when hit). In general the % to trigger seem better for melee characters (whom in general take more risks).
  • Speaking of risks, all two handed weapons (melee, bows, staves) are getting  buffs to compensate for the lack of a shield (Shields are amazing in PoE). With risk comes reward!
  • Probably other shit I forgot about.
World of Warcraft
So I got my Tauren Paladin to 89 last night, probably 90 tonight. Its pretty enjoyable so far. Theres lots to do. The graphics are poo, and theres no impact to the combat (it feels like your punching the ocean..) but the mechanical complexity is pretty enjoyable. I like the class definitions there, especially between the tanks (<3 paladins!). Not sure if this makes any serious contention vs ff14 (read more in the ff14 section). 

I joined some random guild but at this point will either see if they have some voice communication (They seem pretty quite in chat despite having 50+ members online) or seek another guild that will satisfy my need to ramble for hours about dumb shit.

FF14

So I like this game a lot, but per prior posts....theres not much to do when you hit level 50. At least for me there isnt much to do. You can level other classes, level crafting (which seems awesome), but you have very few options for end game PvE. What exists is fairly good, just very thin. 

Now when patch 2.1 comes out (late november, early december) it will introduce a ton of stuff. You got new dungeons, new raids, new missions, dailies, arena pvp, etc etc. But realistically I'm not going to wait around to then. So what I think I will do is continue to log in to do my raid, and spend the rest of my time either in WoW, PoE or maybe EvE online.

Speaking of that...

EvE Online

HOLY SHIT THEY BUFFED THE SHIT OUT OF MY GOLEM! 

I lost some drones and some mild amount of tank but WHO THE FUCK CARES. I now have a reinforced siege mode that makes me an ultra tank for a period of time and extends my missile ranges significantly. It also makes you IMMUNE to electronic warfare while enabled! They also gave battle ships a new launcher that does less damage than normal launchers but can rip apart smaller ships! 

Tempted to go try this in action.


Star Wars: Edge of the Galaxy
New RPG system that looks really interesting. Totally ordered it!
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=232