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baronvontribble · 5 years

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Classic WoW tips and tricks

There's a lot of guides popping up lately about how to make money in classic WoW. How to be good at classic WoW. How to be successful in raids or lategame content. But there's a lot of things that i haven't seen those guides mention. And more often than not, when I watch videos about big Youtubers playing Classic WoW, they're getting a lot of things wrong about how things used to work.

So this is going to be a nice, helpful list that will provide a second opinion on some of the things I've noticed Youtubers getting wrong, whether they're doing it as they play or as they make their own nice, helpful lists. Because Classic WoW matters a lot to me, and I'd like it if y'all went into it being as well-informed as possible so you don't instantly ragequit over something that someone else said was totally a feature.

1. Enough with the advice about two complementary professions on the same character. You know what there were a lot of back in the day? Farming alts. Crafting alts. You wanna min-max? Put Engineering and Enchanting on your main, have an alt that does Tailoring and Alchemy, and then another alt that does Herbalism and Mining. You'll have all the raid potions and enchants you'll need on your main - plus goblin jumper cables - and all the bags you'll ever need on all of them. And after everyone's kitted out, all you have to do is sit back and sell infinite shirts on the auction house until you frustrate everyone else into abandoning the shirt market, thus being able to set your own prices. Capitalism!

2. No, you can't switch gear in combat. Just weapons. Sorry. Yeah, I saw this one in some dude's vid and it really bugged me. So consider this one a general PSA more than anything.

3. Need money for your first mount? I know just the place. So, outside every dungeon in Classic, there were always elite critters just itching to eat you. And they had a tendency to drop more of whatever their less elite cousins dropped, while still spawning at about the same rate that other things might. As such, they were very easy to farm. Now, what do humanoids drop? Well, generally speaking it's mainly cloth and money. But since they're elite, they drop even MORE cloth and money. Pro-tip though, do this on either a warlock or a hunter so you don't spend more on repairs than you end up making. 'Cause yeah. That's a thing. Oh, and speaking of which...

4. REPAIR BILLS SUCK. Listen, Classic is going to be a very different place than modern WoW. It is basically a pre-inflation market. And early on before you've found any dungeon success, you are going to essentially be stuck in a horrific cycle of liquid assets until you manage to either find a rich guild to sponge off of, or dig yourself miraculously out of the hole. You have to pay for EVERYTHING. New skill levels, new patterns, weapon proficiencies, you name it. And you'll want to avoid those early costs associated with death as often as possible. So go ahead and roll that BM hunter farming alt first, and accept that their sad proletariat-level gear will always make them look like a clown vomited on them, because you do NOT want to be a priest main stuck in a debt-hole. Seriously, take it from someone who's been there.

5. Roll Horde, damn it. Okay, so there's actually some fun facts to back this one up. Statistically speaking, pre-Burning Crusade, the Horde had a pretty severe population problem. It was so bad that if you were Alliance and queued for a battleground at the time, you'd end up with a nightmarishly long queue time as you waited for enough Horde players to show up to match you. The Alliance also had flooded markets, horrendous lag in their cities, lame pre-60 mounts, and a black dragon in their throne room because Anduin was like 5 at the time and Varian was off being feral. If you roll Horde, you will not have to deal with these things. You will have cool technicolor undead horses and dire wolves. You will have short queue times and markets that are easy to manipulate. You will have less lag and a leader who's both debatably sensible and not 5 years old. So go Horde. Make the run to Orgrimmar and max out your rep so you can have a pupper. Embrace the short queue times. Who needs to be pretty? Not you. You'll love it, I promise.

6. You need to be okay at listening to instructions. And navigation. Back in the day, they didn't show you on the minimap where your quest was. You had to find the critters or the objects to pick up all by yourself, based on clues given to you by the text. Sometimes along the way you'd find even more quests, giving way to organically chained events and surprising little easter eggs as you went. But all this assumes that you're able to navigate based on things other than a minimap, something you might be a bit rusty with. And that's okay! It's alright to be rusty. This isn't a skill anyone's really had to use lately. Just be aware of it, alright? Don't feel bad if you need to explore a place to get your bearings. On the bright side, a lot of these classic WoW zones are actually really easy to navigate by sight alone because of how distinctive they are. No random mishmash of vivid colors and shapes here; one part of old Azeroth is not going to look like another part of old Azeroth through sheer visual clutter alone. It'll just take some getting used to, that's all. And now for a few short ones, such as...

7. Dismiss your pet before you jump down. You will wipe your entire group if you do not do this.

8. Bubble-hearthing is a thing, but Please Don't. I'm sure you think you're hilarious, but you're almost certainly the only one who thinks that.

9. Remember to keep food around for your pet if you're a hunter. This one's self-explanatory.

10. Don't kill yourself with your own spells. Remember when that was a thing? Yeah, y'all gotta actually be careful on your warlocks now. And you have to actually trade healthstones to people!

11. If you're a mage, you're gonna make bank on portals. Charge for that shit. You earned it if you've leveled high enough to make 'em.

12. Alliance players, buy every kitten you see and throw them on the neutral auction house. You will make bank doing this. If you ignored my earlier "go Horde" statement or just have an Alliance alt to see what the other side's like, then this one's directed at you. Cats on the Horde auction house are worth their weight in gold. You can set the price abusively high and we Horde players will still thank you. Because cats.

And that's the list! Hope it helps. <3

#world of warcraft #world of warcraft classic #classic wow #vanilla wow #no one cares andy

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ittybittyria · 6 years

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yet another processing post

So sometime during my first year of college someone told me that Christian communities are where you find the friends that become family. Four years later and I think that was one of the biggest pieces of bullshit I bought into.

Don't get me wrong, I've experienced A LOT of growth in the Christian communities I've been a part of and met great people, but I've also experienced an immense amount of judgement, shame, and hurt.

First off, college. LOL I say this all the time and I truly do mean it, college was probably the worst season of my life. On top of family brokenness, struggling with academics, and learning to manage several mental disorders, I had to deal with bullies, racism, sexism, rumors, exceedingly high expectations, never ending judgement companied with unwarned suggestions from several people who knew nothing about me on how to live my life, shaming, and several other things from my Christian fellowship. I think my broken idea of what family is alongside believing that Christian communities are where you find friends that become family made me think that this was okay. It literally took a complete breakdown, losing several friends / mentors, and ending up in the psych ward for me to realize that it was such a toxic environment. But, being in IV did impact me in a lot of positive ways such as personal & spiritual growth, meeting several slightly older folks who became positive role models and influences in my life, new opportunities for me to explore passions, and meeting people outside of UCD that deeply touched my heart. If I could do college over again, I'd still join IV, but I'd just do things differently. I would tell my college self to not lose yourself in the midst of all these leadership trainings / discipleship meetings / staff meet-ups, don't listen to people when they tell you who or what to give your time to because that's up to you, and that God's voice is the most important.

Looking back on college, there's really only one person I met in IV that has become family, and most of our friendship grew outside of IV considering she stopped going LOL There's others that are still friends / acquaintances that I talk to every now and then, see on social media, etc. These positive relationships that really do mean the world to me because they've really help shape me to who I am now. Being led by Victoria, being mentored by Alexi, sharing a friendship with Lily, being encouraged by Robert, etc. are things I treasure. Some of those friendships are still active on social media and it's always a reminder that college wasn't all pain. And then there's a lot of relationships that ended in hurt either through hurtful actions or fading away cause the friendship wasn't worth fostering to them. Those I still treasure for the positive moments and the season they were present in my life. But it's hard to look at those and smile because there's still a lot of hurt I have yet to move past. All in all, my college experience in a Christian community didn't showcase "friends becoming family." Rather it was a mix of meeting great people that challenged me and inspired me, and meeting people that made me lose myself and cause a deep amount of hurt.

As for post-grad, welp. It's been a journey. There's everything with Bayside Davis, which has been negative for the most part. Then there's my small group, which has been a difficult mix of both positive and negative. Positive because I genuinely love my small group. I enjoy our biblical discussions, I feel challenged and encouraged by them, we've shared a lot of laughs, and they're just great people overall. I just feel myself growing with this group and I enjoy the presence of each person. But negative because we aren't really a community LOL All we do is see each other on Thursday's and sometimes at church, and all we ever talk about is from the guided discussion at SG. We've had like four hang outs, three of which I've attended, and they've either been barely anyone or really short or no good chats about getting to know each other. So it's been weird to be in this group and feel growth personally and spiritually, but not in community. It's kinda weird heh.

And today, well, today made cry...a lot. A few days ago I texted my SG being real about how holidays are hard because my family and I go to different churches (it's a lot more than that but I wasn't get too deep into it over text lmao) and I tend to go alone and I was open with them and said that I didn't want to spend Easter morning at church alone and I was hoping to be with community. I asked which service they were going to and if I could join them. Only Elvira responded and she let me know that her and Kevin were serving at the 9am, but that means they don't get to sit during service. No one else responded and I assumed they'd gone back to their hometowns to be with family or just weren't going to Midtown. So I cried last night because I really just didn't want to go church alone. But I woke up this morning feeling good. My window was open, birds were singing, the sun was rising, and I just felt good. I was reminded that I was going to church alone, but I wasn't alone. I went to the 9am service, sat by myself, and loved every second of it. Could it have been better shared with community? Hell yeah, but I was still filled with joy. When I got to my car, someone from SG texted asking where people were sitting and they sent a picture and lookie there, my SG was all together for the second service. I just sat in my car trying not ruin my make-up with tears. I fought them back for a solid 30 minutes.

What got me was that there's a guy in my SG who I've known all through college. He's seen me through a lot and I've opened up to him. He knows the issues with my family and I've talked about how hard holidays are for me. And he couldn't even text me to tell me what service he was going to. I'm like 10x more angry and frustrated with him than the rest of my SG. I literally save him a seat every regular Sunday and his ass walks in late with a donut and coffee every time. Like he couldn't just respond and say 11am. It takes less than a minute to type and send that. And hearing all my family problems and the pain I carry along with it, he just couldn't fucking do it. Y'all I cannot even put into words how unloved I felt today by him.

And even my SG. I was honestly disappointed. I've planned all our hang outs, I've missed TWO small groups (one for a car problem and the other because I wanted to support a friend at her performance). They even said I get the award for best attendance cause I've probably been to the most SG's and YP events. I take time every weekend to pray for their prayer requests and if God brings something up when I pray, I text them. I don't do this to get anything back, like I promise I don't. I genuinely do this because I love my SG, I want the best for them, and I care about them. But I am hurt that no one could just say "11am" when I asked what service. Like...where are the friends that become family?

When I look at the people in my life and I see the friends that have become family, I didn't meet them jn Christian communities. I met them in HS (which was a catholic HS but it doesn't count cause it's totally different lmao) and through those HS friends. They've become family and most of them don't even fucking live in the same city as me. I've seen us travel miles on miles to celebrate birthdays, support each other at performances, be there at graduations, welcome people back at the airport, etc. I've seen us stick up for each other when racism and/or sexual harassment as come up, challenge each other to be better, call each other out on shit we do, etc. I've seen us laugh and cry all in the same hour, be vulnerable and share our stories, listen well and honor the stories we hear, etc. I've seen us go above and beyond to be good friends to each other and these are the friends that have become family.

I don't expect Jessica to fly to celebrate my birthday with me and I don't expect Luis to tell a guy to go away and leave me alone when he's been harassing me and I don't expect Holly to feed me chips outside the club when my drunk ass is hungry. I don't expect these of them and I'd never ask this of them. But a fucking text back when I send you a long message about why I'm thankful were part of my 2017 and how I hope you have a full and joyful 2018 would be nice. Like a thank you. Or you could even just heart the damn message. Or John could just say "I'm going to the 11am service" when I ask our SG which Easter service their going to so I don't go alone. Or even a "thanks for saving a seat" on Sunday's. But nothing. I don't even expect my friends friends to go above and beyond. Like I'm fucking living when they text me saying they also like Enlightened more than they like Halo Top and "OMG did you smell the easter bath bombs at lush? I think you'd like it." Honestly being friends with me really isn't hard. Like my biggest things are initiating every now and then, stick to your word and show up when you say you'll show up, and fucking texting back. Those are the main things and I really don't think they're that complex / difficult. Yet it seems like the only people that can do that in my life are Sabrina, my HS friends, and the friends I met through them. And relating back to what I was originally processing, Sabrina is the only one I met through a Christian community. Goes to show that the whole "Christian communities are where you meet the friends that become family" didn't happen for me heh

It's hard cause I have to remind myself that not everyone wants a friendship with me. But at the same time, don't ask me to plan SG hang outs or show up late to church cause you wanted Starbucks and you know I'll save you a seat or ask me for a ride somewhere when you don't plan on being a friend to me. Don't sit their receiving the benefits of a friendship with me without being a fucking friend to me. Recognize that you're taking advantage of it and either fucking stop or be a friend. Cause it hurts from this side of the situation.

LOL wow this post took a turn. I went from talking about buying into the bullshit that Christian communities hold the best friendships you'll have to just friendship in general to getting really fucking mad at people. I think the turn this took is a sign that I need to spend some time in prayer and with God cause there ain't no room in my heart for this bitterness.

Okay I'm tired now and I want to watch Grey's Anatomy to let my brain just stop thinking for a bit and I also need to go pray cause yeah, bitterness ain't cool n shit

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darkarm66 · 7 years

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Final Fantasy XV review-Please drive off a cliff

10 years. From planning to execution, the journey for Final Fantasy XV to get here was turbulent, to say the least. But it was finally finished and released. And this is probably as nice I'll be about it. Game making is very hard work and it becomes probably 100 times more intense for one of the biggest franchises on the market. So I don't envy the task the FFXV dev team undertook getting this game out. I envy the people who ended up playing this because this game is just a damn mess. From story, combat, and pacing, there were some great ingredients to make a great game that just never mixed properly.

To be fair, its getting a lot of high praise because there's an open world. A huge, sprawling mix of deserts, hills, forests, mountains, rivers, motels, and small towns....that are barely populated with any sort of interactivity. There's actual work to actually find an enemy to fight or find someone to talk to. It makes you wonder why it needed to be as big as it is. And as big as it is, nothing stands out or has its own distinct look. As beautiful as this game can look, its baffling lack of visual diversity can make a person feel like they're retreading the same places over and over.

Ultimately, FFXV's foray into open world shows that they've got some ways to go. Navigation feels too constricting. You're forced to carry around this damn car that apparently goes fast enough. You have to use it because the world is just too damn big to walk through, which isn't a problem by itself but when controlling the car is so bad you're glad to let Ignis do it, this was a feature that could've been scrapped. Worse, this car is restricted to the road, so getting around means driving until a location is found and stopping on that road. There's no shortcuts, no hidden paths, just long, torturous scenic drives from point A to point B and back. Backtracking severely murders any joy you can have exploring these places.

What truly kills exploration is the fast travel. IT IS SHIT. SHITE. It is unbelievable how user unfriendly this fast travel system is. If you're in one place and you need to get to another, you just can't warp there, even in a game where the only avatar you can control has access to powerful weapons due to magic crystal, you cannot warp to the place you need to get to. You have to either go back to the car and select a spot to pay to go back to a spot you already discovered. It gets worse if you're in a dungeon, one of the few highlights of this game. You have to warp back to the entrance. Either the car or the last spot you rested, which could be on the complete opposite side of the map. AND YOU HAVE TO REPEAT THIS SHIT FOR NEARLY EVERY QUEST YOU DO.

And on the chance you find one of these hidden dungeons in plain sight, good luck playing them because the earlier ones you find aren't that bad. Then the high level dungeons really puts the screws to the player due to a horrible map, fussy door switches, and terrible platforming due to some design overkill. Some treks can take hours (and you can't save inside of them) because nothing in the design or UI gives any clue on what the player should do. Ironically, despite evidence that some content was cut, these dungeons can really feel like padding.

The quest themselves aren't all that bad: collect this or kill that. Which is pretty much standard RPG stuff. The exploration tedium, however, kicks back in doing hunts because you can only do one at a time, even when starting a new one leads you back to the same area you were just in! And this tedium bleeds into the other parts that are actually fun. Like combat. Sometimes in a game, you just want to see an enemy just get bludgeoned with a shiny weapon you have and this game delivers. But due to its day/night cycle, whereas you have to rest your characters and eat recipes to get temporary boosts, you can get caught into long, time consuming battles because you're scrambling to find a nearby place to rest or camp.

The combat system proves that FF13's hate was a bit unjustified. Each battle became about actually trying to find an enemy's weakness and actually exploit it. Here: you're just spazzing from enemy to enemy, hoping to avoid damaging, praying an attack can be blocked long enough to parry. in 13, you can actually see teammates not be loads and in 15: shit just happens when it comes to Linkstrikes and chains. there's nothing that actually triggers them but sheer luck. All you can hope is to find enough equipment to just overpower enemies. Except in boss battles and some monster hunts. Because the lack of depth and simplistic whack-whack-whack flow of combat can lead to some lengthy fights, mainly because you'll just whack away until a bar fills up to use a special technique for your partners to use a technique that can make it go faster. Battles are just purely attrition. What makes the combat more tedious is that your levels ultimately mean dick because you will still get into long fights, no matter how stronger your characters became. Towards the end, I was level 73 and yet, taking down level 20 trooper scrubs felt like it did at the beginning of the game. You and your party doesn't progress or grow. Fights are just....here.

A shame because the creature designs in here are exquisite. There's amazing detail and form to a lot of the monsters you get to fight. These are just exquisite creatures that you actually wanna gawk at.

I don’t wanna say too much about party because the game sure as hell didn't. They're just....there. Swap out two of the guys for one of the more pleasant female characters (Iris and Aranea, represent!), the story is told the same. At least with Aranea, she actually had some damn motivation. But the character development getting cut off at the knees is more to do with Square's insistence on taking a game's huge scope and chopping it up into smaller pieces and letting you put it together. Been that way for a while, especially in 13's case. Only one of them as an ability worth using, there's only one conversation worth giving a shit about, and during combat, you can't control them not to get killed, leaving you in the position of healer, even though one of them is a bodyguard. Like, how?!? Everyone in love with these characters love them for 'pretty' they are and think of the kissing they want to happen. There's zero depth to your party. And the moments that happen just feels thrown in. Like, they realized something needed to happen to these guys. You see cutscenes, brief snippets of the guys talking, but this is just a mirage.

Now for the camps: you actually have to rest to level up and earn AP. And you get to see photos, which highlights the biggest reason I hate this game in spite of wanting to love: I have to stop playing and enjoy the game presenting itself. You're not allowed to actually play this game because you have to see how pretty everything is. Allegedly, your party is supposed to bond over a road trip but that actually happens in cutscenes. The battle camera is so chaotic, you can't know how stylish the combat is until you see a photo of it. When going into a dungeon, you have to see the characters crouch and move cautiously through it. There's even a cutscene of them pumping gas! Who needs that?

The vague plot wastes the amazing soundtrack, forcing the music to create the emotional resonance this game just doesn't earn. It wants you to feel the emotions the characters go through, yet doesn't do any build up or reconciliation. It's just moments.

Which is why I don't mind they stop cutting the pretense and just made everything linear as fuck towards the end. They're gonna make you enjoy their visuals and cutscenes and anguish, playability be damned! This isn't just hand-holding to guide the player through, this game is a crazy ass aunt dragging you through the store when you already know what you want to buy. Yet, in its conclusion I just had one question: why they did I stay in that godawful, empty ass country if nothing I did there matter? Nothing, no theme, plot or character detail is told through gameplay? No sidequest I did made anything better for that world I spent hours in. Not even the conclusion gives a rat's ass about the world that was saved yet it made sure that it was saved. This divide in priorities is heartbreaking considering how much this game comes alive when the player is left to their own devices and actually making choices about how to proceed. And the end game content, frustratingly kept behind the final boss, is proof that if they built this game around some gameplay and made a world to actually exploit that, this could've been a belter.

And for all that was cut out of the game, what they left in was just baffling. Chapter 13 is just excessively boring and painful to look at. That stealth sequence in that building is just wasted geometry. My time would've been better off if Noctis just sat in a chair while text showed me what happened. The vague plot wastes the amazing soundtrack, forcing the music to create the emotional resonance this game just doesn't earn. It wants you to feel the emotions the characters go through, yet doesn't do any build up or reconciliation. It's just moments.

Add in some wonky AI and the fact you can't save in certain places, I'm shocked that critics were barely that critical of it. But shout out to y'all claiming this is better than 13 because the reverse happened: a long open world segment with a linear conclusion vs a linear progression and brief open world part that didn't throw away all the shit you learned hours earlier. People who liked the combat in XV are just bellends who just love to play shit simplistically. In spite of all this, I did put 80 hours into this. And that's not even counting the post-game content, including the new dungeons and that flying car (don’t use it). But most of that time was spent getting to a place, doing a quest and coming back to complete it.

So, for all the high points, there are some severe low points. Even the things that work on its own barely qualifies as functional. It's shit as an open world game, it's horsefuck as a story, the combat is montonous, this is exhausted mouthdrool as an RPG. Had this been an other RPG, maybe I'm not as harsh. The much ballyhooed lengthy dev time and rebrand from Versus XIII to XV has long been publicized. And yet there didn't seem to be an actual cohesive vision present in the game. It's all in the different movies and anime shorts. Problem with this approach is that you're well exhausted beyond the point of caring if you invest in these. And even then, nothing is concluded, wasting your time in the process.

This game will delight fans of pretty boys and running around. It will infuriate fans of well thought out game design. So it's definitely a Final Fantasy game after all.

#review ffxv

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