Friday, September 20, 2013

What is There to Write About?

I normally feed on things to complain about and am sitting an a real loss right now. While there are a lot of things I can complain about, like not being able to loot rares on the island while in a raid group and collect coins or reputation, it just does not seem worth it.

For the first time in a while there is nothing I feel especially grumpy about.  I might need to change my name.  Maybe I could complain that I have killed all the rare pet dropping rares on the island upwards of 30 times each so far and have yet to see a pet, but I will get them, they will be there forever, hopefully.

Why is grumpy not all that grumpy?

There could very well be a few reasons for that but one is actually a little interesting if you try to read deeper into it.  Which of course you know I will.

For the first time since the expansion came out I did not cap at least one of my characters on valor for the week last week.  This left me with an open ended game play where I did not feel forced to cap as soon as the week started.  Same for this week, I paid no marked concern to where my valor was for the week.  I figured I will just cap as the week goes along, and I did this week as a matter of fact, I capped during the raid last night.  Without even trying.  So of course there is no reason to complain.

Not capping on valor is not because it does not matter to me, not even in the slightest.  It still matters a lot because each 500 is another 8 item levels to a piece of gear and that does add up.  It is also not because I have not been winning things to upgrade because to my surprise I have been.

You could say that I have so far experienced the most luck I have ever had in this game in my entire life.  Even if the rare spawns refuse to pass along their young to my loving pet battling care, gear has not been stingy thus far for me.  I managed to get 4 burdens on my main, which one day might get me a nice critical / haste ring but has not yet.  I have won one tier piece, one war forged piece, and three pieces from flex including the weapon and the trinket I wanted.  So there have been plenty of uses for valor.

All my level 90 alts now have almost every slot in 496 or better thanks to the timeless island and their over abundant drops which means that even my slacker characters and my baby alts are LFR ready.  They even have a 535 piece and that is without a doubt the highest piece I have on most of my alts, so it is not like they do not need valor either, they do, but I am not stressing getting it.

Speaking of the LFR there was no new LFR the first week, that is enough of a reason for me to be happy. No LFR means no temptation to do the LFR and no running into bad players, bad people, long waits, longer secondary waits because a tank dropped, and the multiple issues we all love about the LFR.

Even in week two when the LFR opened I popped in when I first got home, got an instant queue, and I do mean instant as in it popped up the second I pushed to enter queue.  I had not even moved my mouse away from it yet. 

I got a group that was mostly filled with people that have never done it yet which means people that were not even capable of flex.  Usually this is not a great sign for day one but I explained every fight and more amazingly the people listened to me.  When I told the tanks to move they did it as if I were a drill Sergent and they were afraid that if they didn't they would be put on potato peeling duty for the next 2 weeks.

We ran thought there like a group of 90s running through tempest keep for a mount run.  We just destroyed everything, one shot all bosses, did not even see people dieing to the avoidable.  I think I probably had the greatest LFR group ever that was filled with people that did not know the fights.  Usually smooth runs like that are reserved for people that are in guild groups or all experienced.  Most of these people had never seen this content, never watched a video, they just listened to me and did fantastic.  

Many people said in raid chat after it was done that it had to be the smoothest LFR they had ever been in and were amazed that a patch day LFR could be like that.  I even got three whispers.  One was surely meant for humor.  I hope.  Two thanked me for helping make it a smooth run and a third said it was an amazing run and I was so great with the people that she wanted me to father her babies.  I did get a laugh out of it and being I did not get any strange whispers from a level one after I left I am 100% certain I did not pick myself up a new stalker.  Been a while since I had one of those.

I even decided to do the LFR on my rogue, as it is close to moving along in the legendary quest line and while the queue was much longer than instant, it was not dreadful thanks to being able to keep myself busy skinning like a mad man on the island and killing rares.  Even if I did get into an already in progress run on the last boss, which I would normally complain about, there were no stacks of determination and we one shot it.

So my LFR experiences seemed to be, as limited as they were, much better than those of patch day release LFRs since, well, ever.  No patch day have I ever seen fights go so well.

I've got so many characters I have not even decided on what to do with my burden yet.  Might do chest pieces on the ones I do not use often because that piece usually has the best stats so it would surely be the biggest boost.  A few of my characters could use trinkets so they will make their way over to the shado-pan assault some day to buy the reduced priced valor trinkets.

I've been having a blast using the gliders around the island flying from rare to rare.  I got to play my lesser used characters and actually feel like I was moving them forward without needing to be in the LFR or wait in a queue.  I could mine, skin and herb on this new island unlike the previous one.

I even started to do something I have never done before in as long as I have played this game.  I log out wherever I happen to be.  I always had this obsession that I needed to be at an inn, even at max level, or in a safe place.  But no, the island is different, log out wherever you feel like logging out.  I have my monk logged out by where the crystal spawns, my lock by leaf mender, my hunter by garnia.  I have characters all over the place because that is just where they happened to have been when I was done playing with them at the time and I kind of like that.  I dislike the stupid 20 seconds to log out thing and think as long as you are not in battle when you log out it should be instant, but I can live with it.

I am actively seeking groups, even if I do not need them, and running around with people on the island in a small pack all the time.  I am grouping with people in guild I rarely if ever played with because they are not raiders and thus not really on my radar for the most part.  It is making the guild a better place and that is always a good thing.

I am seeing people being more helpful over all and not only those in my guild but all over the island.  It is funny when the pet rares spawn, because as a guild we always have someone online so there is always someone keeping a timer on them.  When they spawn there is usually at least 12 or 13 of us from guild there and we kill it instantly and move along to the next one scheduled to spawn.  Great team work.

We even have a late nighter set up for tonight where a lot of us are planning on staying on longer than normal and we are going to go rare hunting in a pack, groups of 5 of course because you can't loot in a raid, and I can see it being a lot of fun.  When do you ever remember making guild events just to run around and do nothing but kill stuff?  I don't, ever.

Even when I accidentally get flagged for PvP I don't kill what I can and then when I die either not revive until my flag is off or run to find a safe place.  I just pop up and go back out in the world, if I get in a fight, so be it, I fight, and I have been doing pretty good kicking some ass.  I am actually enjoying a little PvP here and there even if I am not liking that I keep accidentally getting flagged do to my own error or game error, who knows, and who cares.  What happened happened.

But that care part, the I don't care part more precisely, is the one thing that has me worried.  Maybe I just have nothing to complain about because I have reached that phase of I just do not care.

If anyone remembers a post I made a long time ago explaining why people complain it shows that people complain because something matters to them.  It is human nature, if someone cares about something they complain when there is something they do not like about it.  So my lack of having things to complain about, even if I did mention more than a few things that bothered me in this post, has me wondering one thing.

Do I have nothing to complain about because for once things are just going well or have I finally reached the point where I just don't care any more?

At the moment, I think it is just a case of, I am having some fun, not pressing myself, doing my own thing, so for once, at least for the time being, I really don't care.  I am just doing my thing and I am going to enjoy it as long as I can.  So very rarely do you hit a phase in your game play where you can still enjoy the game and not care at the same time.  I'll soak it up for as long as it lasts.

6 comments:

  1. I haven't really had anything to complain about because I haven't logged in all week...

    I should try to do LFR tonight but I'm just not really feeling compelled to do it...

    I think I'll just log on in the morning and screw around on the isle and see what happens.

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    1. I had a good run through the LFR but from what I hear it is not all rainbows and sunshine most of the time. I got lucky, the exception, not the rule. Expect for failure and you will not be let down.

      Rare killing can always be fun, if you are into that sort of stuff.

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  2. Perhaps you should start playing (also) on EU servers, plenty of technical issues to be grumpy about :P

    For example, since 5.4 with all its Scaling and VR-preperations (atop of CRZ and the already existing Scaling) first Instanced content like BG's and Raids and now servers as a whole (esp. since Saturday) are simple DC you left and right, Technical is overflowing with complaints.

    Perhaps the apparent disabling of the forums a few hours ago has to do with it as well.

    Grumpy Go Global :P

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    1. I do not think it is possible for me to play on an EU server. Someone had made a post about it a while back thinking it should be allowed and many replied they tried and it did not work.

      Give it time and I will be grumpy again, just had a good couple of weeks and knowing my luck that will not last long.

      Lots of tech problems US side as well. We had a few wipes while raiding the other night to server lag for the entire group. Not fun, but when it comes back quick, not exactly game breaking either. Just annoying. I think I have experienced everything you said as well. Even spikes in personal latency into the 7K range from time to time. I too believe it is all the crap they have running in the background for VR. I do not think it is ready for release if it is causing this many problems already.

      I noticed staying away from the forums makes me happier. Maybe I just should stop reading them all together.

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  3. 1000+ queue, even after midnight. Can I complain about that?

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    Replies
    1. Go for it. It deserves being complained about.

      I don't have that on my empty server. Heck, this weekend I had the island all to myself. Got to test how far a hunter can go solo.

      Note: A hunter can solo every rare on the island, no problem.

      Don't worry. Soon I too will have to complain about that, because blizzard doesn't understand that people do not like that so it is going to throw all servers together until we all have a wait to log in.

      Another Note: One I need to wait to play the game, I stop playing. They game is not good enough to wait for.

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