Reaction to the Lich King Kills

If you haven't heard, both the 10 and 25 man versions of the Lich King have been downed. The first 10 man kill was by the US guild Blood Legion of Illidan on Tuesday night only hours after the patch went live on the servers. The first 25 man kill was by European mega-guild Ensidia who has a number of world firsts and is the result of merging the top two Burning Crusade progression guilds. Both of these kills have erupted in controversy in the official forums and elsewhere on the internet. Below is my take on this.

Let's start off with the 10 man kill. Blood Legion is a guild that normally does 25 man content, meaning that they had gear from the 25 man version of ICC. In my mind, this really diminishing their accomplishment. Blizzard has attempted to defend them by saying that the gear had very little to do with it and that it's a huge accomplishment skill wise. I'm going to have to call bull-shit on this though. Now I'm not saying that skill had nothing to do with it as I'm sure it did and I'm sure that Blood Legion is a very skilled guild, however, claiming that the fact that the better gear from ICC-25 had nothing to do with it is simply ludicrous. I honestly think that there should have been some kind of function to deny players wearing ICC-25 gear from taking on the Lich King until after he had been downed by a straight up 10 man guild.

Moving on to the 25-man kill. This has actually been revoked as of this morning as Blizzard says that Ensidia exploited a bug in the encounter in order to make the encounter easier. They have also received a 3 day ban and had all of their loot taken away. Ensidia claims that they were simply using the same mechanics and rotation that they have always used. Again I think that Blizzard screwed up on their handling of this matter. In this particular instance I'm inclined to believe Ensidia as from what I can gather from the info I've found, it would have been really hard for them to determine what they were doing that was actually bugging the encounter. At the same time Ensidia says that the bug only happened on about half of their encounters and they didn't start or stop doing what what causing the bug in any of them. I think what Blizzard should have done in this instance is revoked the achievement and the loot, and reset Ensidia's raid so that they had to do the Lich King again without the bug in order to get the achievement.

So now that the specifics are out of the way I'll move into general comments on the ICC raids. First off the fact that the Lich King fell within 2 days of release is simply ridiculous. While I appreciate that Blizzard is trying to make raid content accessible to those that aren't in hard core raiding guilds, this is not the way to do it. Now a lot of people are going to say it doesn't matter because hard modes are the true end game now days. I agree with this statement, but at the same time having the major boss fall within 48 hours of release just screams to me that the content is under leveled at this point. These guilds weren't even using gear from the first two bosses in that wing of ICC when they made those kills which in my mind really should be the difference.

Changes to the blog coming soon!!

Since I have a lot of WoW downtime ahead of me, I'm taking the time to focus on finish up the new website. The first project is going to be to integrate this blog into the site. To do this, we will be creating a new url for the blog. The blog will still be run and hosted by Blogger, but we will be using our own domain name to access it. The new URL will be blog.adventknights.com and will have the same look and feel of as our own website. I'll keep you posted with all the juicy details when I am further along.

-Draok

Review of Mass Effect 2

Having been a huge fan of the orginal Mass Effect I had really high hopes for the sequel especially after seeing the trailers that BioWare released leading up to it. I am delighted to say that my hopes have been met, and very possibly exceeded. BioWare took the best parts of the original ME, stripped out the fluff, and added in some cool new features. The game isn't perfect, but if this is what they accomplished with the second game in the series, the third addition will be even more amazing.

I think one of the best and at the same time most annoying decisions that BioWare made was that in the PC version of the game they allow you to import your character from Mass Effect 1. This is an absolutely awesome idea as it gives even more continuity to the storyline from a player's perspective. At the same time, those people who no longer have their save games or play the game on a console for whatever reason are locked out of this cool feature. A couple of days ago Penny-Arcade had reported that Chris Priestly, BioWare's community manager, said that there was going to be what amounted to a decision tree during character creation so that you could recreate your ME1 character without replaying the game. Unfortunately this feature did not make it into the release version of the game. I honestly don't know why they would have left that feature out if it was already coded. It is my hope that they eventually patch the game to include, or create a standalone program that allows you to generate a save file with the choices you want. In the mean time however, MassEffectSaves.com has a repository of characters who have made different choices. This is the route I went. I have a character from ME1, but my favorite was from when I played through on the 360 so I didn't have that file to use.

The game starts off with a really well done cutscene. The only complaint I have is the interactive part in the middle of it is really unnecessary. I'd have rather seen them simply take the cutscene straight through to it's conclusion instead of making me interact with it as the interaction really has no value. After the cutscene you have the ability to customize your character including both appearance and class. This is huge because if you grab a file from the site above and don't like the look or the class of the character you're not locked into it, you're free to change it. Following this is the tutorial part of the game which is decent, but not spectacular. It does a good job of teaching you everything, but by the time I had gone through it the second time I was really wishing for a skip button.

Once you get into the non-linear part of the game it really takes off. Just like ME1 and all BioWare games since KoToR you're in charge of what you do when. The game gives you hints of where you should start, but you are free to ignore those if you choose. I actually did choose to ignore what the game said because I wanted to check out what they had done to the Citadel, though as soon as I was done there, I did go back to where the game suggested.

I would have to say the strongest part of the game is definitely the writing. The dialogue writers especially deserve some awards for the absolutely amazing job they did. The dialogue in ME1 was good, but ME2 puts it to shame. A word of warning though that the dialogue does get explicit so if you have kids around headphones are highly recommended. The explicitness is not overdone however, and is added in such a way as it seems very natural.

The combat system is probably the next feature that stands out. I always liked the idea behind Mass Effect of combining a shooter with an RPG and ME2 really steps up the shooter portion of it. The combat is much faster paced this time around and I don't find myself using the pause feature to setup attacks nearly as much. Enemy AI probably isn't on part with a top grade first person shooter, but it's definitely greatly improved over ME1 and I find that I'm having to be more tactical in the firefights than I was in ME1 where you could basically run it with guns blazing, throw some biotic powers around and everthing died.

Unfortunately there is one aspect of the combat system that I feel they went backwards on and that is the need for ammo. I really think the system from ME1 where your weapon overheated if you fired too quickly was a much better fit for the game than the new system that requires ammo for all of your weapons. At the same time, they've removed the on the fly weapon and ammo modifications. I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed by this as I really enjoyed being able to change things up to suit different situations. It looks like there are ways to upgrade your equipment once you acquire the right people however so I'll reserve judgement on this aspect until I see what my choices actually are. As a benefit to the no weapon mods though there is no longer a ridiculous inventory management system. In fact there's no inventory at all which removes what was really a tedious aspect of the original game.

Powers also got a major overhaul and I have to say that when I first saw it, I was really annoyed at it and saw it as a dumbing down of the game. However, after playing with the new system some more I think it really was the right choice. You no longer have to train your weapon skills while the training for tech and biotic skills have been significantly streamlined. One baffling thing to me personally is why they felt the need to rename lift to pull when lift described the power better. The also renamed throw to push so I imagine the former change was simply for symmetry. One minor change that I find minorly annoying is that biotic powers now seem slower in reaching their targets. In ME1 it wasn't quite instantaneous, but it was a lot faster from the time you hit the button to the time the power took effect. The other annoyance is that using one power puts all of your biotic powers on cooldown. What I'm afraid this is going to do is restrict me to basically using only a single power for much of the game except for specific situations where another would work better ie. using push to throw someone off a cliff.

As I said earlier as soon as I took control over my destiny I headed straight for the Citadel to find out what changes where in store this time around. I was sadly disappointed. The place that was easily my favorite zone and seemed so inspired in the original Mass Effect now seems almost like an afterthought. Now admittedly when I went there not everything was unlocked and I realize it's not supposed to be the center of the game like it was in ME1, however, I still found the fact that it seems to be a shadow of what it was to be disappointing.

Overall I think Mass Effect 2 is superior to the original and I can't wait to delve into the rest of it. If nothing else the story and the dialogue will make me want to finish the game regardless of the little things I don't like. This is an easy game to recommend to shooter fans who aren't really into RPGs as I think they would enjoy the combat aspect of it enough to at least put up with the RPG portions of it though I think most people would get drawn into the story and the characters. On the other hand it is really hard to recommend to those people that like RPGs, but don't play shooters. You have to have some ability to play what amounts to a twitch shooter in order to progress through the combat portions of the game. For those people who are like me and enjoy both aspects the game is easily worth the money even for the three to four hours I've put into it so far.

Cryptic Shits on it's Champions Online Community Yet Again!

What was a pretty good game late in beta and pre-release, quickly turned to shit on launch day. Champion's Online was poised to greatness before they pulled the rug out from under it's community with a sweeping patch. This release day patch essentially brought turned every "super hero" into a chump. It was a huge blow to a community that was behind that was cheering the songs of greatness to Cryptic. You would think that after that whole debacle, they would have learned their lesson right? Right!? Sure they did...

On Tuesday, Cryptic dropped a bomb on their game, and it wasn't the kind of bomb with cheers of joy, streamers and champagne. This bomb stunk like a fresh pile laid upon the earth by your next door neighbor's French poodle on a hot summer day. This massive patch, dubbed "The Kitchen Sink" is a laundry list of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and changes. Unfortunately, when Cryptic released the patch, they decided to not just drop a patch that wasn't ready, but decided to smack their community in the face with a kitchen sink.

Lemuria (Lagmuria) was to get a zone wide fix for it's poor performance and lag. The fix was included in the patch and it actually made matters worse. Players are reporting to be stuck in the zone with no way to log into their characters. Not only that, but game wide lag has become prevalent through out the game. Even the fixes to the crafting system was an epic fail as now players are reporting losing not only the items they are crafting but the material used to make the item.

Something else baffling with the patch, is their insistence of changing powers that require a free retcon. Only to give the players with those power sets the free retcon in an "upcoming" patch.

Lastly, and what I call "Lets take a shit on our community" announcement by Daeke that their upcoming filler content patch is a going to be a paid for expansion! First the game hasn't been out a year, and their already going to charge for an expansion? The real kick in the teeth is the fact that they are just adding more content to the level 37 to 40. Most, if not all Champions Online players will agree that content was already extremely lacking that level, forcing people to either roll up a new character, or force them to do repeatable quests to hit the end game. No matter how you slice it, this is a smack in the face to players, who should have that content already in the game, for free anyway.

It's clear Cryptic in no way, shape or form has learned anything from it's launch day debacle, and continues to keep me away from a game I wanted to love playing. With the upcoming Star Trek Online, I can't help but avoid that game, as Cryptic continues to show it's lack of thought and care for it's own community.

-Draok out

Website Update

Tonight Nykk and myself got a lot accomplished on the new website. Nykk installed our new forums, and while I worked on the main site. The main site is now up and available though we don't have much content yet. Images have placeholders and definitely nothing to read. Just take in the nice visuals thus far. We'll keep you posted on the changes when they happen. 

http://www.adventknights.com

-- Draok/Grexis out

Advent Knights Forums Now Active

We now have the Advent Knights forums active at http://adventknights.com/forums. This is where we will likely be posting things such as raid strategies as well as hosting our discussions of raiding and the Cataclysm relaunch. Head on over and check it out and register an account so that you can post and get into the rest of the forums.

If for some reason you register an account name that's not something that I know you buy shoot me an email at nbrownksu@gmail.com with the account name you registered under as well as your normal character name so I can keep everyone straight and know who I'm authorizing.

Raid Update

A few updates on the raid team. 

We now have our raid healers worked out, Katie and Devandra will be our healers. This will move Nykk into the tank role.  I will be moving to off-tank/dps once Nykk feel's he is ready. Now the most important part, will be the variable roles both tanks will be able to take in the raid. Nykk's specs are Prot/Holy, and mine is Prot/Ret. On those fights where one tank is necessary, we will be able to switch up. Giving us more dps or more healing and should prove to make for some interesting strategies or flexibility.

-Grexis out

Raiding Update and Cataclysm

I wanted to update you all on our plans to return to raiding and to give the new members info regarding our raid. It's official that we will go with Saturday and Monday @ 7pm as our raid nights though this may be subject to change. So keep on your calendars that Feb 27th will be our return to raiding.

Below is who we have definitively for our run.

Raid Leaders
Grexis
Nykk
Kirathis
Geeon
Squea - On hiatus


Confirmed for the raid.
Grexis tank/dps - Raid Leader (class role subject to change)
Nykk tank/healer - Raid assist strategist (class role subject change)
Kirathis dps - Raid Master Looter
Modon dps
Mackash dps
Geeon dps - Raid Enchanter
Dratss dps
Katie healer or dps (class role unspecified at this time)
Devandra healer

Tanks and Healers
Should Katie decide to bring her priest for healing, Nykk will be moved to Tanking/off-healing. If not, Nykk will remain in the healing post, and Burlie/Omik's alt's will be asked to fill in the tank spot.  Katie, if you could please let me know by Sunday which toon you intend to run. This will give us an idea of who needs to be working towards what gear and if randoms are in order.

Standby
Burlie (May move to confirmed if his schedule change is in time to start raiding.)
Tathall (Will take Burllies place if his schedule doesn't work out. Otherwise standbye)
Shay (Only Available on Saturday's run)


Unavailable until Cataclysm
Goroxx
Squea

Unfortunately we ended up with more than we could accommodate. Unfortunately who gets to go vs those who don't is always a tough decision. Especially with all the great players we have among us. The way I give permanent spots on the raid is 1. Raid role priority 2. Seniority 3. Stand by 4. first come first serve.

Shay's work schedule prevents her from being available both nights. Tathall has stated he is available as standby and possibly full time but before we knew Tathall was back Burlie was already approached to join us. Burlie's work schedule is in conflict at the moment with our raid time, but he is actively trying to get it changed to a normal schedule. He is also pressing them to get it changed in time for the raid. If he can get his schedule fixed a week before the raid, he will have his spot. Otherwise Tathall will take his place if the schedule works for him as he has a tight schedule as well.

Squea and Goroxx have both stated that they may be able to return for Catacysm but at that time we will cease to raid, some of us will begin starting out on a new server, guild, at level 1. I will explain this more in-depth soon.

Since we have new players involved in our raid, I would like to explain a bit about how we do things. It may or may not be how your used to running.

The use of alts and dual specs.
The use of alt characters is strictly forbidden, unless it means the life or death of our raid. We do not allow toon swapping for gear, and only in specific strategic points in the raid, allow switching specs. 

Loot handling Rolls and dual specs
Our master looter, Kirathis, will be handling all loot rolls. Players will have 30 seconds to roll on the item. Need if it's for your main, greed for your off spec, otherwise pass. It will be helpful to know what loot drops off which boss so you can be prepared to roll on the item you need.

For those who use dual specs, you are in the raid as your main spec and loot will be distributed based on your chosen main spec first and foremost. For example, your main spec is tank, and you fought as dps. You roll on loot that is for your tank. Gear will only be distributed to off specs when main specs do not want or need the item. Otherwise they will go to Geeon for the enchanting bank.

Enchanting Bank
Geeon is our enchantment banker. He handles all of our enchants and disenchanting. Enchants are free of charge and subject to availability and ONLY available to main spec gear only. Off-spec gear will be subject to raid leaders approval. Any loot that is not picked up for main/off spec will go to Geeon for the enchantment bank. It is suggested, but not required, that unless you do a lot with your off spec you pass on loot to help keep the enchanting bank stocked for raid members. This will greatly help in ensuring the best enchants are available free of charge to our raid team.

Required Addon's
I am loosening the requirements on this. The only mod I am recommending everyone stay up-to-date on and run is Deadly Boss Mods or some other boss alerting system. The raid leaders will reserve the right to make it a requirement if the lack of this mod or any other is becoming detrimental to the progression of the raid.

Attendance and punctuality
Attendance is important, was ask that if you cannot make it to a raid, please do your best to notify us at least two hours before the start time. Our raid start time is 7:00 PM server time. This means we start pulling at 7:00pm. So it is important that you show up early and ready to go. As we only raid for 2 hours, the sooner we start the further we all will get. Continuous no shows, or holding up the raid can and will result in being asked to leave the raid. We do cut people some slack due to real life, getting of work late, kids going crazy. All we ask if your late or can't make it, please let a raid leader know ahead of time.

If you have any questions or issues please feel free to contact the raid leaders.

Starting over in Cataclysm
Many of us have been playing Wow for a few years. Some of us, including myself have been playing for over 6 years. That means some of us played in beta, and alpha testing.Luckily with the new chat system Blizzard is implementing, chatting with my friends on other servers and factions will no longer be a problem. We will even be able to chat with those friends who are not in WoW but playing Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2.

So to celebrate the Cataclysm expansion and to explore all the changes from level 1 to 85, we will be starting a new guild, on a new low pop server. Not all of us will be joining immediately but will join us later. However we won't be racing from 1 to 85, we won't be rushing to raid. I for one won't be the in the top 5 people in the guild to reach max level like I was in WotLK or TBC.  We will be working on having fun playing the game, taking our time to explore all the changes, instances and new lore of the game.

I'm expecting in the fall of 2010, Cataclysm will be released. Anyone is welcome to join us and if you know anyone who would like to joins us. Please let me know so I can keep them up to speed on what happening. All is welcome to experience the game from the beginning with us, and experience a level playing field of a new guild.

Thank you all for helping get this raid off the ground again, and I look forward to kicking Arthas' ass when we get to him.

-Grexis out