Let’s compare the “Cosmetic Look” features of Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft, as well as the banking, battle and party loot features and see what that can tell us about game philosophy.
Starting with Wow, let’s look at Transmogrification.
Ok, I admit it. I need a guide to level up. I used to use Xellerated guides – which cost actual money. But after all these years, they are gone or changed their name. And there are lots of guides in the Curse catalog. I did a little looking and chose this one: Wow Pro Guide. This one looks like it has lots of other features – profession leveling, achievements, etc. – that I’ll look into, but I got going right away with the leveling guide and with TomTom which it requires, it works very nicely.
It’s been a while since I’ve played anything but the “Starter” which I check out every few months. But I’ve decided to Re-Up my subscription and get back into it. After all, with no upgrade I can go as far as Warlords now. My highest toon is 87, so there’s a long way to climb to hit the top of Warlords.
Things have changed, mostly for the better.
I’ve been playing a Berzerker recently after playing the new Valkyrie. This is a Zerker that’s been sitting for a year or more at about level 40, and I’ve played it recently for about 10 levels, so the equipment it currently has is based on the recent changes that reward tokens for Vanguard Requests.
My issue is that after all this time, the older classes, like the Berzerker, have not been updated to the new standard of DPS shown by the other classes.
Starting with Reaper of course, the recent classes have all been overpowered, but Blue Hole studios has never gone back to update the previous classes to the same DPS standard that these new classes enjoy.
Having recently played 3 Valkyries – on three servers – up to 65, as well as all the previous overpowered classes, I’m very familiar with the DPS done by the newer classes, and the recent upgrades to the classes that the Battle Solutions and Token gear provides as one levels a character. As I play this Berzerker it is readily apparent that this class is lagging both in DPS done and in survivability because of vulnerability during skill wind up times. In spite of the fact that the Berzerker is wearing plate armor, compared with the Valkyrie Leather armor, the Valkyrie is more survivable – takes less damage – because it’s attacks occur much more quickly and often cause stuns.
When you reach 65 as a Valkyrie, you can open your Level 65 Reward Box. I’m not clear if this is always going to be given to levelers, or whether it’s a reward from the “Event” for the introduction of the class. But it’s got some sweet gear in it. Level 65 toons are given class specific Idoneal Gear, which is Tier 4. This reward box contains “Slaughter” gear Tier 9 gear including a Masterwork +12 weapon, and a full set of Armor. Well, you don’t get the armor, but you get enough Undercede currency items – 225 – to buy the full set of armor and accessories.
I’ve got a couple of my Valkyries to level 65. With all the buffs and XP Boosts during the event, it’s not that hard. The trick is to run a couple of dungeons though. I ran the Armory twice on one character and the Armory and the Catacombs each on the second character. With both of them I reached 65 before going inside the fortress for the final battle with Dakuryon. Things were a lot easier at the higher level, even though you don’t get a better weapon and I didn’t bother going back for the better armor.
Of course there is the new Valkyrie class. She’s a babe with attitude, but that’s no different from all the recent class additions. All female, all gender / culture locked and all over-powered. I’ve been away from Tera for a while doing other things. Guild Wars 2, Wow Private Servers, and Guild Wars 1. I left Tera back a while ago when they nerfed Guilds. Took away the guild bank unless you had lots of dedicated players, so the guild bank was locked away from family or multiple account players. But I’ve come back to try Valkyrie and found a few things had changed.
They seem like minor changes and they simplify the game, but some of these changes appear to have had unintended, or at least disappointing consequences.
Update: Pics of Level 53 Armor
Well it’s certainly not ugly. But these folks have not been paying attention. While the game looks great, the developers are stuck in a game design from years ago.
What’s wrong out of the box? I know that the modern way to review games with with a Youtube video where I shout at the screen while I deal with the frustrations of the game. But here is the old style blogging review. Here are my first impressions after a couple of hours with Revelation Online Open Beta.
There are a few rules if you want to gold farm in Guild Wars. These are completely different from the rules in Guild Wars 2.
First you need to remember that the drops are divided among the members of the party, even heroes and mercenaries. So, the fewer members of the party there are, the better. There are “leechers” which are members of the party that stay far away from the action, and allegedly improve the drops. But they aren’t helping you kill mobs. So if you are solo farming, they aren’t useful. Do you have friends who don’t want to play, just stand around?
Second, you can employ pets and spirit helpers with no loot penalty. So a Ranger / Ritualist or a Ritualist/ Ranger seems like a good build to use for solo farming. Here’s the build that I use.
Update: What you really want to do however, if you are level 20 with strong heroes, is vanquish the area in hard mode. See below. But back to our story in Normal Mode.
So Walmart had their WiFi crockpots on sale for $30. Seems like they are getting rid of them. Reviews on Walmart’s website shows that they have problems – mostly connecting.
But think about this. A Crockpot is a reasonable price at $30, so the WiFi stuff is all free. That means that WiFi control, and the little ARM SOC [System on a chip] that it takes to do this is pretty cheap too. And that’s probably right. After all, low end smart phones are $30. And this application has no battery and no large screen.
Looks like some folks are selling this WiFi Crockpot for a lot more.
And here’s the App on the PlayStore.
But what about my Pellet Stove, which costs about 100 TIMEs what this crockpot does. Yep, pellet stoves are about $3000. So doesn’t my Pellet Stove deserve a WiFi enabled computer controlling it. Ok, so my Pellet stove was designed about 10 years ago and it has a really dumb controller.
Windy Weather 