“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 you’re a Netflix subscriber and own an Xbox 360 you’ll be able to watch the entire library of Netflix programming on your console. This deal, recently announced at E3, puts Microsoft in a great way in terms of being the console to buy for multi-media entertainment against its Rival Sony.
Great episode of Politacast guys (It’s a joke Dan Q would get.)
@Microsoft buying Mojang: A lot seems to have happened or at least gotten confirmation of since the last comment I made. I am glad that Notch sold the company to a buyer that is likely going to do as Jonah mentioned “You go do your thing over there and just make us money”. I remember people having similar reactions to Disney buying Marvel “All our characters are going to be ruined and Disneyfied”. From what I have seen they seem to also be doing the “You do your thing and just make us money”. Microsoft has a confirmed money making game, I don’t think they will ruin that recipe.
One of my friends had suggested that Notch just should have released the source code of the game to the public and turn profits over to charity. My thought on that was that might be “morally” right for Notch but then puts all of Mojang out of a job, which to me is worse than “selling out”. I have no doubt in my mind that Markus cares very much for his Mojang staff and has insured their continuance to work in this deal with Microsoft. I think that Jeb, Dinnerbone and the rest are very passionate about minecraft and want to continue it’s development.
Speaking of passionate Phil Spencer put on a minecraft theme on his twitter page (probably a PR thing but I’d like to think he really is into Minecraft). He’s also stated in twitter that the Youtubers doing videos of Minecraft will be allowed to continue doing what they are doing. I also do know the feature updates will continue as well. He also released a video that stated how important and valued their audience is for the game and that they will listen to said audience. So I’d like to think he really does care about the game and it’s audience and not just the dollar signs.
The thing though I’d like to ask you guys about is people are concerned about Mods and if the game will switch to different programming code than the current Java based one it is on now? People feel if it switches to C++ they won’t be able to do their total conversions of the game. It’s a minor thing to me but I know it’s a major thing to others. Microsoft doesn’t seem too against modding in general since I can find mods for Halo and Fable.
@Conservatives: Politicians really need to keep their noses out of the gaming industry. People seem to love to scape goat as Paul pointed out; everything has been blamed except for the actual causes of these problems. They don’t seem to understand the issue and rather point fingers or sweep it under the rug. The fact that we have Cosplaying women get assaulted at cons, to Youtubers getting death threats means we have a problem here. It’s not the games it’s how we are behaving as a Society as a whole. So yes I pity this woman for not having enough self-reflection on what’s going on around her.
@Violent video games for Ice cream: What do they think we’re all 8 or something? Again another story of a group of people not really fully aware of the situation and what’s causing the problems.
@Game streaming: I don’t much like this idea either I agree that having a feeling of ownership over the game is what I like.
@QotW: So long as bonus content is small stuff like sound tracks or some character skin, it’s fine. A lot of times these pre-order bonuses are never attainable other wise and I’d had the feeling of an incomplete game if I am missing out on a feature. I also don’t like the piece meal feeling of it all being diced up. I just got the full Wasteland 2 and the start-up screen has a joke about DLC with this robot thing and $60 for it.
@Microcraft
I don’t really see a problem here. It’s just successfull business. I think Microsoft knows better then to mess with the much loved brick-stacking formula and will just throw money it’s way. As for Notch, the guy should be respected. It takes a real leader to care for his employees.
@Back to the Stone Age
For fear of choking on my own malice, I will restrain myself from writing too much on the subject. The woman has a belief and has every right to express it. But attacking other groups for their beliefs is politics, undermining her claims. Telling women not to play games is much like saying to an African-Caribbean football player subjected to racial abuse to leave sports (a huge European issue). I disagree with her opinion.
@violent games will make you cream
This initiative would be good in UK, as the price of Ben&Jerry’s here is atrocious. Still, I don’t see the point of their argument. In a country that is proud to send its young men to shoot foreigners, attacking violent video games sounds hypocritical. And pointless. It’s not like it will prevent the young from being exposed to the violent medium.
@QOTW
I pre-ordered quite a few games in my time. Mostly multiplayer games. But I never let bonus DLC dictate where or how I order them. I get the game where it is cheapest or most convenient. I don’t bother with any fancy special editions, as to me the disk is what’s important and extra feely tat is not worth my limited resources.