“The Grind”
With Wrath of the Lich King arriving last week it only made sense to jump into the new content “Lich King” style. Although we had initially reacted to the beta, playing the final content was much more fun with all of our guild and friends to play along.
It only took a few hours to get my new Death Knight to level-58 beyond the starting area and into the real world of Azeroth. Upon reaching the main city (Ogrammar as we’re horde) I picked up two new professions to make me a bit of dime: mining and skinning. This is where the beauty of the Death Knight fell apart…
A level-58 character has a few options open for exploration with the Burning Crusade content being the most desirable starting point. However, quickly it became apparent that my professions of mining and skinning were useless in Hellfire and other Burning Crusade areas. Why? Professions start with a value of 1. The last expansion requires your professions to be roughly 300 before you can utilize them.
My level-58 Death Knight has no experience in the ways of skinning and mining, what has he been doing all his life? Apparently killing innocent people in small villages throughout the Eastern Plaguelands. My anticipation with leveling my Death Knight died knowing I’d spend the next few days hunting mines and killing animals as if I where a level-10 toon.
There I was, a high level character trolling Crossroads and Thousand Needles hunting for copper and tin and skinning all the low level creatures I could find. Why didn’t Blizzard consider this when they allow you to create a level-55 character on day one? If we don’t go off and grind our way to a profession level of 300 we might as well not even pick professions at all.
I was not alone in these findings, along my path I found several Death Knights with skinning knives and mining tools looking for open opportunities to cut into the earth or the dead animals skins all around them. Sure, we can kill a cat in seconds flat but the “grind” is what we wanted to avoid, this is what characters spend their first twenty levels doing!
After three sessions of mind numbing grinding I’ve managed to reach a skill of 340 in skinning and coming upon 200 in mining. Mining is still too low for high level game content so I must whisk myself away to noobville every so often to catch a few mythril nodes and pray for a gold deposit along the way.
This may not be a bug in the Wrath of Lich King expansion but it sure is an annoying design flaw.
If youtube would have an easy way to get to the mp4 file they host, I could whip out some hosting/customized audio player/podcast feed thingies.
I mean they [youtube] do provide a good API for their player, I can do an app that you’d just right click on an MP3 and say “Publish”. But when it comes to doing a podcast feed, I’d need to link to the mp4 file, and that is not yet allowed by them.
@Yoshida: PlayStation Vita sales are below expectations
Erm, did you really expect something else? Not enough devs, you say? Really? Here’s my thought:
“And what do we have here? A PS Vita? It has a game pad, a back touch screen and a price that is too damn high”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqHZWdFVyyQ
Yessir …
@DICE giving away Battlefield 1942 for free on Origin
I did play BF1942.
Funny how a simple thing, such as password recovery page can have quite an impact on the number of customers. So yeah, bad web programmer, no twinkie.
— edited —
Their password recovery system is working ok now. He he he, forget what I said.
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Jordan, you do recall it right, but I think it was 1943, for BF3 (thanks Jonah for confirming).
@“lower-case aaa” games where the industry should be heading
You know, I am starting to hate the use of financial rating system with games. What would be rated as a Baa game?
As for ‘async MP as a core component’ … I think the writer went a bit outside of what was sane advice: “cut the costs and make good games”. Leave the game design decision to the game makers, please.
@Microsoft and 343 Industries taking hard stance on sexism
Really? Ban players for sexism? And you think that THAT will stop it? Really? On planet Earth?
Oh, and did I mention about this automatic censoring system that censored “glass” because of the “ass” part?
The same person who’s a sexist is not sexist just in Halo 4. Fix the bigger problem, with the real world, and the little one will not exist.
@QOTW:
Plenty of SP games that can be played. Plenty of software development that can be done without Internet. Most likely pull apart my for-repairing-and experimenting-with binoculars, see if I can’t do anything to improve it.
Just an update on my offer to help out moving the podcast to youtube:
If a feed like this is OK for an iPod, then I can implement the thing during the winter holiday:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/UploadsByClarkeanddawe
@Yoshida: PlayStation Vita sales are below expectations:
orly? is that so? perhaps one of the main reasons is, i dont know, YOU ARE STILL GIVING FULL SUPPORT FOR THE PSP?
seriously?
@DICE giving away Battlefield 1942 for free on Origin:
seen it, got it, played it, AWESOME.
even for 2002 graphics, the intro still gives me the chills. the gameplay is fantastic, simpler and still giver dozens of ways to play the game your way (i know it is a slower paced than now-a-days shooters, but who cares?) the sad thing is, in the first day there were thousands of players. today there were only about 300. the game is good, it was a great deal by EA, but unfortunatelly, is dying soon.
@Microsoft and 343 Industries taking hard stance on sexism:
sexism, racism, and anti-gay…ism are very real issues and deserve to be treated like so. i’m glad she (whoose name had escaped my mind right now) is taking the 1st strike against such issues online game wise, even if it is, officially, only on sexism.
@QOTW:
when the power is out i spend most of my hours trying the lights on my house *click* *click* *click* *click* until the power comes back, and when i have no connection i do what any sane person would do: SPAM F5
so, seriously, out of power, i TRY to do something productive, always fail. always end up on some kind of deppressive state of “what should i do now”?
no internetzz: i play single player games, or campaign mode or watch some series/movies i have on my external HD, while spamming F5 each 5 or 10 minuter appart.
@Asian Civilizations
Haven’t played Civ since 3 so this won’t affect me. It makes sense to release games aimed at the eastern audience. The East has a very different culture from the West. If something gets popular, pretty much everyone gets involved. Lots of dosh to be made there. But it doesn’t make sense to bar the rest of the world from it. I hate it when I can’t play a game cause my eyes are too big.
@DICE free Battlefield
Got it. Played it. Dated but still fun.
@Microsoft, 343 Industries and all that
The man behind Halo 4 was a woman?!!! Despicable!!! I will take out my frustration by traveling to the Large Hardon Collider to smash my copy of Halo 4 into a copy of Call of Duty to merge them. Oh no. Wait. 343 Industries already done that for me. Still can’t believe that the assault rifle I used for the past 10 years now sounds like an M60 machine gun. And “press B to crouch”. Seriously? This is why we can’t have women do man things.
On a more serious note, I tend to play on-line games with my friends in a private party chat. I dislike joining game chat parties because I hate trash talk. And singing 10 year olds. That’s my advice to anyone. You don’t want to be subject to abuse – don’t expose yourself to the low intelligent common rabble. If you find yourself forced to mingle with the simpletons (i.e. no party chat in Counter Strike: GO), just ignore them. Remember: Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
@QOTW
I read books. A book is an object which is imprinted with letters that form words that form sentences which form Harry Potter. It causes no strain on your eyes and has a positive side effect of raising your intelligence, granted you are not reading Twilight (in which case you are a lost cause and should DIE). I always have a book around. It’s a great way to pass time while my brain is rebooting for some more gaming action.