Tempering Expectations with the Diablo II Resurrected Beta

Since Burning Crusade Classic launched there have only been two titles in my sights for 2021, both of which are also remakes/remasters; Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl and Diablo II Resurrected.

I am sure it makes some game dev sigh deeply that I am only really on board to replay titles I was playing actively twelve to eighteen years ago, but that is where I am at.  But when they announced Diablo II Resurrected at BlizzConline back in February I was hyped.

The return of the classic

So of course I jumped on board when it was announced that there would be an early access event for the open beta.  I wanted to see what was going on with Diablo II right away.  So I downloaded the 30GBs that make up the beta client on Friday night and gave it a look.

And I was almost immediately underwhelmed.

Seriously, my first thought was, “That’s it?” as I walked out onto the Blood Moor with my first character.  I just couldn’t figure out WHY that was my response.  It was an emotional response and perhaps the natural reaction of the build up the game has in my head, though I played the original through less than a year ago.

I had to stop and consider that for a bit.  I am sure some of it was just too much build up and the weight the game carries in the titles I have played over the years.

But when thinking about it, the game is just kind of dark, especially in the beginning.  Oddly, though people went on about how dark Diablo II was when we started seeing previews of Diablo III, the remastered graphics are even darker.

Thanks to the magic of the remaster, which lets you hit the G key to swap between original and remastered graphics, I could see how much brighter things were in the old days.  I was down in the first set of caves with an amazon and the original graphics looked like this:

Amazon fighting a zombie

That still seems pretty dark, especially when compare to Diablo III.  That is just a crop of the middle of the screen, which fades off into an inky blackness in all directions outside of the pool of light around my character.

That same amazon with the new graphics

It isn’t really darker, but the brightness of some of the items, her armor, her hair, her skin tone, are all much less vibrant and flashy.  The world is even more subdued and, I suspect after some of the bright and flashy demos they were showing, I was expecting things to be brighter rather than following the darkness vibe.

Once I figured where I was coming from, I was able to get into the new look more readily.  And I will admit that in a lot of places it does look very good.  The animations of movement and combat are especially good when compared to the roughness of the original.

I flipped back and forth between original and remastered graphics quite a bit when I started off.  Both fill up my monitor in full screen mode, though the remaster only goes to 2560 x 1440, shy of my ultra-wide monitor’s 3440 x 1440 resolution, but the boarders fade to black, which works well enough in Act I.  That might be a little more stark in contrast when I get to the desert of Act II.

The original graphic don’t even reach out to 2560 in pixel width due to it being done in 4:3 aspect ratio back in the day, but it too fades to black as it gets out to the edges.

Eventually I kept playing with the new graphics, popping back into the old once in a while just to remind myself what one mob or another looked like.

And the other thing I… and anybody coming to the game for the first time… should remember is that this is a remaster of twenty year old title.  There are a few niceties that have been added… some shared storage across your characters and that you can pick up gold just by walking over it now… but it is otherwise trying to be true to the original.

I did not get a ton of time to play this past weekend, but the real open beta starts this coming Friday, so I can return for another look.  What I saw so far makes me keen to play, though it was not without problems.  I didn’t run across anything game breaking, but the animation and sound were excellent… except when they fell out of sync.  There were a number of times when I would swing, see the blow hit, see the loot drop, hear the blow land, then hear the loot sound.

I am not sure if that was Battle.net lag… a constant problem back in the old days… or that they just haven’t gotten things screwed down tight enough, but there is clearly a bit more work to be done.

I’ll see how it looks next weekend.  They have until late September to get it ready for prime time.

Six Weeks of World War Bee

The war carries on in the game, on Reddit, and in other media.

I mentioned Fountain Frank last week.  Well, there was more news on the Fountain Frank front as Brisc Rubal managed to track him down and interview him on the Meta Show.

At last you can get the real word on the war situation.

The Northern Front

In Fountain PandaFam has completed taking all of the ihubs in the region.  They own all the space now.

The Fountain ihubs all in PandaFam hands

Some hay has been made on Reddit about this being accomplished in under six weeks while it took the CFC of old eight weeks to evict TEST back in the Fountain War of 2013. (A timeline post here of that war.)  The missing bit is that after eight weeks TEST had to evac to low sec while we still have our main line of defense still in Delve.  Oh, and there is the whole Keepstars in Fountain thing.

Attention has now become focused on Upwell Structures in Fountain. There are still a string of structures that belong to the Imperium in the region.  That includes some Keepstars.  PandaFam has blown up three Keepstars in the region so far.

Three Keepstars Down

The remaining three Keepstars, located in O-PNSN, KVN-36, and Y-2ANO, are the next big targets.  My post yesterday was about the successful defense of the Keepstar in Y-2ANO when PandaFam failed the armor timer and had to start their attack over again.  More than 4K people were involved, with the balance well in the attacker’s favor.

Local during the fight

Now they have to do it all again.

With their supers and titan still sitting idle down in FAT-6P in Catch, the attackers have been depending on fighters from carriers to do the heavy lifting when attacking structures.  The Imperium response has been to configure fleets to kill fighters in order to make any structure fight as slow and painful and costly as possible.  Fighters are not only pricey, but I am told they are logistically awkward to bring forward to a staging system far from home… and all the more so when the supply lines get interdicted.

PandaFam started to show some reluctance to lose fighters.  A couple of Fortizars were saved when they just pulled back their fighters rather than let the Imperium take its toll.  Saturday’s Keepstar fight saw the attackers completely avoid sending fighters to the structure until it became clear that their plan to keep the timer paused with a fleet of Ravens wasn’t going to work.  Those Ravens were wiped out in two bomb runs.  Only then did they send fighters, though it was too little too late.

Both sides will no doubt draw lessons from the fight at Y-2ANO and we will see how things turn next time.  PandaFam seems back on board with using fighters and absorbing the cost as they set the first timer on the O-PNSN Keepstar yesterday.  That is the furthest one from Delve, so is more difficult for us to get to and defend.  They also managed to kill one of the Imperium Fortizars in Y-2ANO, but did not set the timer for the Keepstar.  The ISK war went their way though, and they blew up a lot of Feroxes.  They have not let the loss on one Keepstar timer phase them.

The Southern Front

I was looking at the Querious map and was surprised to see how well Legacy had done over the last week… and then realized I was looking at TCUs and not ihubs.  Once I switched to the ihub view I was reconfirmed in my belief that TEST and Legacy are not doing much at all.

I have, in the past, implied, sometimes strongly, that TEST seems willing to let PandaFam in the north do the heavy lifting.   But given the past week I am just going to say that is pretty close to being an established fact.  They do distract us, keep us busy at times, and win their share of skirmishes, but they aren’t really bringing it to us the way PandaFam has been so far.  They are more “annoying neighbor” than “hostile invader” most days.

The situation brings to mind a bit of propaganda from the 2013 Fountain War.

Independence

The same allies are keeping them in play seven years later.  Time is a flat circle, or something like that.

Back to the ihub map of Querious, it shows that Legacy continues to struggle with the systems in eastern Querious they were so proud to have taken previously.

The Querious flood plain – Aug 16, 2020

Their ihub count is 21 as of this writing, down a few from last week, representing about a quarter of the 95 systems in the region.  Legacy did use the distraction of the battle in Y-2ANO to reinforce a bunch of ihubs, and some are in play even now.  But they have some work to do to even get back to their high water mark of 41 ihubs they held back at the end of week four.

They also continue to thrash about trying to grasp some sort of foothold in the west of Querious or Period Basis.  Delve seems pretty safe from them so far.

Meanwhile, when the Imperium forms up and when Legacy won’t fight, we go into their space to cause problems.

The high point of the week in that regard was when GSOL flew into Esoteria, TEST space, and dropped around 70 Athanors in the A-CJGE system, covering most of the 82 moons there.  When Legacy drops structures in Period Basis or Querious, we’re very aggressive at hunting them down and blowing them up as they anchor, and we anticipated they would do the same.

We formed up a bomber fleet and some Slippery Petes to be ready when TEST formed up to shoot the structures as they anchored, their most vulnerable time, as you can simply kill them without having to go through multiple timers.  We thought maybe some dreadnoughts would show up as happened previously.

However, TEST and its allies were only able to form a small bomber fleet which killed only two of the anchoring Athanors before retiring.  There ended up being about 68 live, fueled structures in their space which they now have to take down in three separate operations per structure.

They have killed a few more since, but when I visited on Friday there were plenty alive and active with no timer set.

The list of Athanors in the system

We could set them to pull moon chunks and have a mining op I suppose.

This is not the way successful invasions generally work.

My Participation

I managed more than a fleet a day last week.  Not all of them were combat operations.  I did a couple where we were just ferrying various ships here and there to prepare defenses.  I am 22 PAPs up on the month so far.

Being out and about meant some more losses.  Only two, a Ferox in the big fight and a Sigil during an entosis op.  I am surprised I didn’t lose my Sabre during the shield fight at the Y-2ANO Keepstar, but somehow it lived to return home.

My ship loss count for the war so far now stands at:

• Ares interceptor – 8
• Atron entosis frigate – 5
• Drake entosis battle cruiser – 3
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Bifrost entosis command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Purifier stealth bomber – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Ferox battle cruiser – 1

Overall

The Keepstar armor timer fight did see quite a turn out, with more than 4,000 capsuleers counted on the battle report… you only get counted if you’re attached to a kill mail somehow… plus all of those on standby or doing peripheral tasks.

It helped that the timer was set for a Saturday at a time when both US and EU players were likely to log in.

The peak online user count for the day hit at 16:38 UTC, during the fight, when 34,544 accounts were logged in. Not a bad count for a Saturday.  But 30K of that number were involved in other space business.

And Sunday was still the high water mark for the weekend, with a peak of 34,974, even though there was no huge battle going on.  That was about where it was last week, when it hit 34,855, but still down from the start of the war when it hit 38,838.

So it goes.

I am now waiting for the July MER to be released.  CCP used to manage that early in the month, but they have been running late on it this year.  I want to see what the impact is on the markets, total destruction, and ratting and mining.  With the war focused on the southwest of null sec, those living elsewhere are likely free to mine and rat without bother.  I expect to see PandaFam regions doing very well.

Addendum:

• INN – World War Bee: Week Six
• New Eden Post – Y-2ANO Becomes the Bloodiest System

Quote of the Day – How to get Your Industry Regulated

A Kinder Surprise Egg does not collect your data. The Kinder Egg does not learn more about the person buying and opening the Egg, such as his or her preferences for its contents. The Kinder Egg does not adjust its contents according to an algorithm based on population data. People do not link their credit cards to Kinder Egg vendors. Kinder Eggs are physical and can be given away or traded, unlike virtual items.

-Dr Daniel King, quoted at GameIndustry.biz

I like this quote because it gets to something I think people miss when it comes to the lockbox debate.  I often see people go straight for the idea that randomness equals gambling and therefore lockboxes should be banned.

Not gambling

And, while randomness is an element of gambling, it is not the sole defining factor.  That something like Kinder Surprise Eggs exist and are sold legally in many countries tends to indicate that randomness is not the only thing we should be considering.

Randomness is not necessarily bad.  And while I tend to discount when devs tell us people enjoy opening up lockboxes… I am sure the payday loan industry would tells us that people like getting money from them as well… you can find players who enjoy the randomness of loot drops and such.  Bhagpuss, one of the sources that pointed this quote towards me, is on that team.

This makes the gambling argument feels like a dead end to me.  You either have to change the laws to widen the definition of gambling (wait for the push back on that) or go the Belgium route and make a special exception for a specific set of circumstances, which leaves people with the question about why this one outlier is special.

Fortunately, the quote nicely brings up how randomness isn’t the sole factor that makes lockboxes odious to so many people.  There is the virtual nature of any prizes, the persistent reminders and offers from the cash shop, the fact that you have to pay to for a random chance to get things otherwise not obtainable in game, the manipulative practices, and the suspicion that the whole thing is rigged just to get you to spend more money.  Another quote:

“The ‘not forcing anyone’ argument is undermined by the fact that many of these games appear to employ systems that are designed to present constant in-game purchasing opportunities,” says Dr King. “The promotions and solicitations are unavoidable in some cases, and the game may have design elements that make it very frustrating to players unless they spend money.

“Our review suggests that there are some emerging designs that aim to capitalise on player data to present individualised offers that the system ‘knows’ the player is more likely to accept. So it’s not about being ‘forced’ — it’s about the game anticipating or making the best judgement about what the player is likely to accept.”

And while some people would be on board with the suspicion that things are rigged no matter what, the game companies have helped feed that paranoia themselves.  Further down in the article there are some patents game companies have filed for mechanics designed to get people to spend more.

Activision had an especially good filing back in 2017 for a system that would deliberately match players with people have superior gear from lockboxes to make you feel you need the same gear in order to compete.

Randomness is not bad in and of itself and we appear, as a society, to be okay with gambling, but when you start targeting people based on their behavior and rigging the system against them on the fly, all algorithmically and invisibly behind the scenes, we have strayed into what some might label as predatory practices that strikes against a basic sense of fairness.

Going down that path in pursuit of the most effective lockbox scheme is how you end up with legislators and regulators taking a close and person interest in your industry.  It has all been rather haphazard up to now, but momentum is building.

So it was probably no coincidence that there was a press release from the ESA about how various companies are now committed to displaying the odds of obtaining items from lockboxes on the very day that the US Federal Trade Commission was holding a workshop about industry practices around lockboxes.

The ESA isn’t dumb.  They know they need to do something as any regulation is going to hurt them.  They know they need to get in front of this issue and make some concessions before laws or regulations force them to back off their lucrative lockbox schemes.   And so they have a grand announcement.

And posting the odds somewhere would be a big step forward.

Of course, the ESA isn’t saying where the odds have to be posted, if they have to be in-game, or even linked to in game.  Posting them on some dead end path on their web site might be what they have in mind.  And how often do the odds have to be brought up to date?

This is the problem with something as empty as a “commitment” to something like the ESA has announced.  They want to sound like they are doing something good for the consumer without actually being bound to follow through in any reasonable fashion.  With no laws or regulations in place, what are you going to do if half of those committed platforms fail to follow through while the other half does so in the least helpful way possible?

Companies don’t go out of their way unless it is in their best interest.  Right now I am sure the ESA sees their problem as a few loudmouths that need to be appeased so they can go back to business as usual.  There will need to be a lot more government scrutiny before the ESA follows through.  But follow through they will, if the pressure gets high enough.  I remain convinced that the ESA will do the minimum amount needed… pinkie swear promises and strategic campaign contributions… to stave off regulation at least in the US.

And, in a final twist to the comparison in the initial quote, Kinder Surprise Eggs are not allowed in the US.  It has nothing to do with gambling or manipulation and everything to do with the FDA not allowing you to sell candy with toys embedded inside.  So we only get the Kinder Joy eggs, sans surprise… and given how rare they are here, few seem to buy them just to eat.

My Horde Battle for Azeroth Boost Plan

As has been a thing with the last few expansions, I was wondering how I should use the level 110 boost that came with the Battle for Azeroth expansion.  And, as I suggested in that post, I decided to go the Horde route.

I already had a level 110 Tauren druid, but wasn’t happy with the druid thing in Legion.  The only class with four specs and still I wasn’t happy, eh?

And while I thought about something new, like maybe a monk, in the end I copped out and went with a class I knew I would enjoy.  So now I have a level 110 Blood Elf paladin.

My new pally out in Uldum

Even the name was less than original.  I was running through names to see what I get and I put in the name of a friend who still plays on TorilMUD… and that name was available.  So now I have Nilan the Blood Elf pally.  I’ll have to apologize to the original if he finds out.

I had started working on a different pally with an eye towards getting to level 60 so I could get the trade skill boost along with the level boost… but then I found out that the trade skill boost went away with the 8.0 patch, when they redid how profession skills are distributed.  I was bummed on that.

On the other hand, during my nosing around to figure that out I ran across a suggested plan for how to boost a character.  Apparently if you roll up a fresh character and use the option to try it out at level 100 and then boost from there, you get more stuff.  An extra set of 22 slots bags is always appreciated, but better still you get a level three garrison in Warlords of Draenor if you go that route, with some key buildings already setup and a suite of followers.

This, and the changes to professions so that they are now served up per expansion rather than as one long, 800+ point single continuum, made up for the lack of trade skill boost.  The only reason I wanted the boost was to be able to make some 30 slot hexweave bags.  I am pretty much on track for that now.

All I need are the materials and I am set

Covered on that front I, ran him through the pre-expansion events in order to see them from the Horde side then, when the expansion actually hit, I ran off with Vikund, my alliance paladin and the oldest character I still play, and went to Kul Tiras with Jaina.

Having gotten stuck into that a bit, and impressed with the lay of the land, I decided I wanted a peek at Zandalar.

There are some spoilers about the Horde starting event past this point.  Not a lot of details, but key events are covered.  If you want to stop here, just know that if you’re going to run them both and you want to do them in chronological sequence, you should do the Horde first, then the Alliance.

That starts off the same way on the Horde as it does the Alliance.  You have to run off to Silithus to wrap things up and get the Heart of Azeroth so you can play with azerite.

Still looks like a magic pocket watch to me…

Then you’re back to Orgrimmar where Sylvanas has a new task for your.  She wants you to go on a raid to Stormwind to break out some prisoners from the stockades.

In the Stockades you visit Saurfang who, like many players, is still bitter about what happened during the pre-expansion events.

In Saurfang’s cell

He won’t escape with you and talks on about honor and seems prime to be the resolution to the Horde Warchief problem at the end of the expansion.

Also on the list of prisoners of interest are a couple of high ranking Zandalari trolls.

They don’t stand out at all in Stormwind…

Sylvanas wants the Zandalari as allies, just as Jaina went to Kul Tiras looking for allies, so these two were a bargaining chip.

As we broke them free we were discovered and ended up in a running battle with the 7th Legion, who dogged our every step as we tried to slip down to the docks where a boat waited to carry us off.

Eventually even Jaina stopped by to say “Hi” to as as we tried to get to the docks.

Not the Jaina I remember from Kul Tiras

However she had other fish to fry… or fires to put out.  It seemed that Stormwind was having a flammability issue.

Seriously, is there anything the Horde won’t try to burn down?

That gave us the breathing room… sans smoke inhalation… to make it on to the boat and set sail.  However the locals set out in pursuit of us.

Stormwind Navy is in hot pursuit…

However, as we sailed through a fog bank and closed in on Zandalar, we met their navy.  They made short work of the Alliance ships, with only one surviving to escape.

The Zandalari open fire

This I recognized from the Alliance starter story.  As you speak to King Anduin Wrynn he is interrupted by a report from the surviving ship about what happened here.  This is what sends the Alliance looking for allies in Kul Tiras and has Jaina back home with her very unhappy mother.

So yes, as I noted above, if you want to do this in chronological order, you should do the Horde starter first, then the Alliance.

After that I was into Zandalar and… and… it was everything I hoped for.

Welcome to Zandalar!

And when I say, “everything I wanted” what I mean is something like a Blizzard homage to The Emperor’s New Groove, one of my secret Disney favorites.

I mean, it isn’t blatant… and the city is amazing and beautiful… and it takes itself as seriously as an Azeroth setting can.

With King… and I am not making this up… Rastakhan

But the city is also very over the top, with stairs and giant carvings and images, and when the possibility of the King throwing me out the window came up if he was displease, I will admit I laughed.  It is very much an Andean civilization setting in its way… only with dinosaurs.

Even flying dinosaurs

Anyway, you get yourself setup in the city without the inconvenience of having to escape from jail or anything.  Portals are opened to the Horde cities so you can get back home, you get a tour of the location and can check in with the profession trainers to get the current starting level for the expansion.

Then it was time to choose a zone to start in.  As with Kul Tiras, there are three zones on Zandalar to choose from.

The zone choice map

I did not make a choice yet, though there is a story for each zone.

This is the reason I wanted to boost a level 110 Horde in a class I enjoyed, so I could see all six of the initial zones and run through the stories within.

Of course, it turns out that just because you’re Alliance it doesn’t mean you won’t be running around on Zandalar.  Vikund had already been for a visit.

Warning: Heart of Darkness references ahead…

But that is a tale for another post.

Adding Up a Year of Pokemon Go

I was a bit late to the party.  While Pokemon Go kicked off in July of last year, I did not jump on the bandwagon until a month later.

It wasn’t so much a matter of not wanting to join the rush on day one… even if that meant experiencing all the day one issues… as it was the lack of a device.  I only joined the smart phone set in August of last year, having held onto my LG “it’s just a phone” for long past its expected life span.

But while I was late to join, I have hung in with the game longer than most, judging by the numbers.

My sticking with Pokemon Go has likely been for a few reasons.

First, I do love me some Pokemon, so I am definitely in the target audience.  Being able to go outside into the real world and catch Pokemon… or sit on the couch and do so, since they show up in our neighborhood… was an immediate draw.  It isn’t quite like the core RPG games, but it is close enough.

Second, like a lot of phone games, it is pretty low impact.  I do not spend hours a day playing.  If I have a free moment I might pull out my phone to see

Third, it probably helps that I live in a pretty target rich environment when it comes to Pokestops and gyms.  The campus I work on has five Pokestops and a gym along a half kilometer circuit that I walk during the day.  There are two parks near our house with Pokestops and gyms as well.

Fourth, the change that added the daily bonus for catching and getting a Pokestop sped up the leveling process just as I was hitting the steep slope in the game, taking the edge off of that.

Fifth, the change to gyms and how you earn coins has also boosted my activity.  I challenge a lot more gyms and earn a lot more coins these days.  In fact, I earn so many more in a week compared to the old gym style, that I wonder if Niantic has erred on the side of generosity.  I went from maybe 10 coins a week to 100-200 a week, even with the 50 coin daily cap.  Of course, having something of a captive gym at the office that I can hold for a day a couple times a week might make me something of an outlier.  Some times I want people to take it from me so I can collect the coins and start again.

Sixth, the game keeps all sorts of statistics, and I love me some useless stats!  I’ll get to those below.

And finally, my wife still plays as well, so it is something we talk about and do together, much to the annoyance of my daughter.

Of course, not all is sweetness and light in the land of Pokemon Go.  A year down the road I do have some gripes.

The game still sucks battery life like no other.  When out and active, it sucks down at least 2% of your battery every minute pretty reliably.

The game does not reliably count steps/distance walked unless it is up and active.  I can’t just walk, I have to have the game up and going and in my hand.  At least you can set it to black the screen out if you invert the phone, which reduces battery usage a little.

The variety of Pokemon in any given area is pretty limited.  I was all excited when we went to visit my aunt one day and discovered her location was a hotbed of Magikarp.  Unfortunately, we were visiting her to help her move, so I have no reason to visit there again, and it is an hour’s drive, so I am not wandering up there just for Pokemon.

Earning candies to evolve Pokemon that do not spawn in your area is a big pain.  I have only managed to evolve one of the three initial starter Pokemon to its final form.  And I am still 135 candies away from evolving a Magikarp into a Gyrados.

The candy mechanic in general doesn’t jibe with the core Pokemon RPG expectation that you just need to catch one rare and then you can train it up.  You need to catch many rares in order to evolve and train up your Pokemon.  But if they’re rare, you won’t be catching very many.

5km eggs are just shit.  Nothing new has ever hatched from one for me.  When I have a bag full of 5km eggs it is demotivating.  A 2km or a 10km egg will get me to walk extra laps at the office.

As much as I like the new gyms, and even the mechanics for catching the raid Pokemon, actually defeating and catching anything rare requires more people to show up than I have ever seen.  If my wife and I cannot take a gym raid down, it just isn’t going to happen.

No trading, no playing against friends (or spouses).

I still can’t reliably beat a CP 2800+ Blissey.  If I see one in a gym, I just keep walking.  And, of course, I am jealous that *I* don’t have one.

Anyway, a year has gone by, the game has mostly evolved for the better, and I still enjoy playing, so I will likely keep going for now.

Statistics

After a year of playing, this is where I stand.

• Level – 29
• Total XP – 1,791,678
• XP to hit Level 30 – 208,322
• Pokedex – 186 unique caught
• Pokedex – 219 unique seen
• Kanto Pokedex – 126 caught
• Johto Pokedex – 60 caught
• Total Pokemon caught – 3,389
• Most often caught – Pidgey, 485 times
• Highest CP Pokemon – Vaporeon, CP 2574
• Total Pokemon evolved – 429
• Pokestops visited – 3,053
• Distance walked (with the app open) – 358.5km
• Eggs hatched – 152
• Gym Battles won – 237
• Hours of Gym Defense – 352
• Berries fed at Gyms – 74
• Trained at Gym – 26
• Gym Raids won – 3
• Pikachu caught – 56

Types caught

These are the types of Pokemon I have caught, types being the key to the rock/paper/scissors aspect of Pokemon battles.

Pokemon can be of two mixed types, so if I catch a Hoothoot, I get credit for both a Normal and a Flying type.  As such, the numbers below add up to more than the total Pokemon caught/hatched listed above.

• Normal Type caught – 1,740
• Flying Type caught – 1,128
• Poison Type caught – 699
• Bug Type caught – 510
• Water Type caught – 411
• Grass Type caught – 292
• Fire Type caught – 219
• Ground Type caught – 196
• Psychic Type caught – 172
• Electric Type caught – 117
• Fighting Type caught – 103
• Fairy Type caught – 90
• Dark Type caught – 71
• Rock Type caught – 66
• Steel Type caught – 26
• Ghost Type caught – 20
• Ice Type caught – 16
• Dragon Type caught – 2

The two dragon type were a pair of Dratini I caught as a passenger driving through Oakland when we were stuck in traffic near the Bay Bridge.  As with the Magikarp, another situation I am unlikely to find myself in any time soon.

So that is the game a year in.

Pondering That Legion Level 100 Boost

We just entered the second week of pre-Legion events.  I have been running through them just to make sure I do not miss anything.  Last week’s, the opening of the invasion, was pretty fun.  This weeks seems to mostly involve listening to Khadgar talk.

Have shovel, will… listen to some old guy talk and talk…

Okay, it wasn’t all talking.  I had to travel to Dalaran’s new location… though it is still in its old location as well, though I am sure somebody will tell me the lore says that there are not two Dalarans… and there was something about retrieving and overdue library book.  It was hard to tell, as Khadgar is not voiced, so his monologue is all in the chat window in a yellow/tan colored font that blended right into the background colors, rendering it illegible to me.  I could only really follow when people were shouting… and people did shout… though I felt like I missed something in between shouts.  However you just have to follow Khadgar around, click on whatever sparkles, kill whoever is red, and you are about set.

I assume next week we will have a new chapter in the pre-Legion events.

My daughter was doing the invasions with a low level character once she discovered that they scaled to your level.  She was out there with a level 32 paladin fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with level 100s and everything worked perfectly, plus the exp was huge, allowing her to level up.  So Blizzard nerfed that.  The cynic in me says that you can’t have people catching up too fast when you want to sell level 100 boosts.

Which brings us to today’s pondering.  When the WoW Legion expansion finally arrives at our home, it will include a level 100 boost as part of the package.  As I wondered what to do with the Warlords of Draenor level 90 boost, now I wonder what the upcoming level 100 boost.

The choice ought to be easier this time around.  I already have five level 100s here at the eve of WoW Legion, compared to just three level 90s before Warlords of Draenor.  So I can drop the following from the list:

• Paladin
• Hunter
• Druid
• Deathknight
• Rogue

Add in the fact that I will also get to roll up an effectively level 100 Demon Hunter and that will be six characters ready for Legion covering half of the available classes.

Which leaves the following to choose from for the boost:

• Mage
• Monk
• Priest
• Shaman
• Warlock
• Warrior

At this point, with half the classes at level cap currently, I have to start wondering which class would even add anything to my play experience.  I have rolled up all of the classes and, aside from the warlock, played them up to at least level 40.

My gut is to go with the warrior, another plate wearing melee class, which is more my style for solo play.  I haven’t really enjoyed the cloth wearing caster classes in WoW over the life of the game.  That would leave Monk or Shaman as alternatives, though the Shaman has always been a strange bird as well.

On top of all of that, we just had the WoW 7.0 class revamp patch a few weeks back that made some people unhappy.  I am certainly unhappy with my Hunter, and doubly so because I was looking forward to having three viable Hunter specs.  Instead I feel like Blizzard just wants people to stop playing Hunters.

I am also a bit cranky still with my Paladin.  I have gotten somewhat used to the retribution spec at this point, but it still feels awkward.

On the other hand my Druid(s), at least in feral spec, seems to play just fine.  I like being able to cast moonfire… along with a bonus healing touch now and again… when in cat form.  Works for me!

So I might have to throw out what I know about some classes and ask which of them actually got better after the 7.0 patch.  I have noticed  of late that in any group, the top damage output always seems to be some arcane missile throwing Mage.  But I have also heard people bitching about the Warlock changes.

And then there is the wildcard in the equation for me.

When it came to the Warlords of Draenor boost, I eventually went with a Deathknight, mostly because he was over level 60 and so also got me trained up on a pair of primary professions with the boost.  However, given the state of crafting in Draenor, that was less of a bonus than I thought it might be.  I did play him through to level 100 and I did get him a level 3 garrison, but I didn’t do much else with him.  He hasn’t built a shipyard or been to Taanan Jungle or anything.

In hindsight, however, I feel as though I made an error.  And not just an error in choosing a Deathknight, but an error in choosing which faction.  After my third or fourth time through Draenor as an Alliance character, I began to wonder if perhaps I ought to have gone with a Horde character so I could at least play through their version of the story line and maybe play with their (pointy) version of a garrison.

In fact, one reason I did not boost a Horde character is that the ones I have are all still in their 60s and one of the things on my long term “To Do” list is to play the Horde side of the story in… basically all the expansions.  And I haven’t done that yet.

So I am thinking that this time around I will boost a Horde character… and get back to the previous expansions at some later date.

Of course, that just throws the gates wide open on class choices.  If the difference is going to be storyline, it doesn’t matter so much if I do it with another Druid of Paladin I suppose.

And then there is the question as to what server I should roll up my new character.  Again, without a guild or any Horde pals, I am not exactly tied to Eldre’Thalas.

So I have a couple weeks to figure that out.  What are you doing with your level 100 boost?  And what would you do in my position?