Stumbling Into Hellfire Ramparts

When we got together this past weekend for our first run after the opening of the Dark Portal the question came up as to where we ought to go.  There had been some talk of staying pure and not going to Outland until we had finished up the remaining Azeroth instances.  That was our idealism speaking.

But with shiny new content just on the other side of the portal we ended up deciding to go through to give the first instance a try.

On the way to Honor Hold

We had all done at least a couple of quests in Hellfire Peninsula and had upgraded a piece of gear here and there… I had a new shield and new pants, both of which were basic first quest green gear that were markedly better than the dungeon blue gear they replaced… but were mostly going in with Azeroth gear and our new group composition, with which we still had some learning to do.

But we didn’t really talk about all of that, we just wanted to try the first five person instance, Hellfire Ramparts.

The first thing we had to do was find the place.  I did what I expect we did last time, which was go out to the wall where the instance is, ride up the wrong set of stairs, and then wander around for about 20 minutes until I finally thought I had found the right place.  There was a crowd there, so I just asked.

This looked like the right crowd

I got an affirmative.  It turned out that I had ridden past the ramp that goes here to go up onto the wall.  I’m pretty sure I’ve made that mistake before.

Once we had assembled at Honor Hold we rode on out to the instance.

Crag Boars Assemble!

Our group for the run was:

• Ula – level 60 gnome mage
• Wilhelm – level 60 human paladin (protection)
• Fergorin – level 60 human paladin (holy)
• Beanpole – level 60 gnome warlock

We managed to navigate successfully navigate to the right spot and, once inside, found ourselves facing the first encounter.  Two mobs.

There they are

We managed those two without issue, and then managed to nearly wipe on the next pair.  To be fair, a patrolling group came around the corner and the wheels came off… and we only “nearly” wiped because the exit was a short distance from the fight so once I went down people were able to run for safety.

Down already

We were still getting used to the new group composition and learning things about our classes.  Beanpole’s Felguard took some getting used to.  The Felguard is a big part of his damage output, but it has some quirks.  He has to be careful about when the Felguard gets sent in, as its first attack is always a charge with a stun, which can be awkward when I am trying to pull a mob back to a safe place to fight.  The Felguard also has an AOE attack that goes off every so often that will break polymorph if the mob is too close.

So we used that run up to the first boss to hone our play.  We tried to work it so that I would pull the main group away from whichever mob got sheeped so it wouldn’t get whacked by the Felguard… and so I could use consecrate to help build up aggro when I needed it across multiple mobs.

There were a couple more deaths before we made it to Watchkeeper Gargolmar, the first boss, but we made it.

Watchkeeper Gargolmar wanders

That fight wasn’t so bad.  He doesn’t hit too hard and you just have to kill his two companions first, as they heal him otherwise, and then it is on to him.  He called out for heals, but none were coming for him.  He also dropped a very nice item, the Light-Touched Breastplate, which arguably should have gone to Fergorin, but which was such an upgrade over my chest piece that I got it.

Past Gargolmar is the tower up to the next level, where we had more problems than we did with the boss fight.  There is a group of four casters and a melee mob at the top of the ramp which brought back bad memories from runs long ago.  We ended up wiping on that group, but not before we had taken down three of them, so the clean up afterwards was easy.

At the top of the tower a doorway leads out into an open area with patrols and groups standing around.  A bad pull on my part got a patrol and a group, which led to another wipe.

Down again

During the fight Ula was knocked back and landed behind some barrels, where she was stuck until she died.  We were able to spot her skeleton once we were all back.

A gnome sized skeleton

After that though, we were able to clear around the open area and make our way to the next boss, Omor the Unscarred.

There he is

This fight was a challenge.  I expect if we had either spent time gearing up in Hellfire Peninsula or if we had brought a fifth person for some additional DPS, this wouldn’t have been as much of a challenge.  But we were on the hairy edge of being able to handle this with only two DPS, our gear, and our skill set.  We wiped a few times.

Dead on the ground

Three times we came back and were still willing to give it another go.  We were close on the second and third tries.  On the fourth we were very close as well, but this time on the right side of victory.  Fergorin and I were left standing after the fight, but we had done it.

We took a victory shot with the fallen foe, thinking this might be the pinnacle of our run.

Victory over Omor

And that was a pretty accurate estimate.

The final boss pairing, Nazan & Vazruden, turned out to be a bit too much for us.

The pair of them are an event where you start off with two guards, then Vazruden jumps down off of Nazan, his dragon mount, and you fight him.  Nazan shoots fireballs while you’re fighting him, and you have to move away from them.  Then Nazan lands and joins the fight.  That was the point where things went bad for us each time.  Nazan pretty much one-shotted me with his breath attack three times running.

Nazan burninating again

After the third run at him I was red paper doll on about half of my gear, so we were about done.  Later on we read up a bit on how to fight Nazan, but that was going to have to wait until next time.

While we didn’t finish the final boss, we learned quite a bit about how our group works now and we got a few nice drops along the way.  Still, we need to upgrade some of our Azeroth gear for Outland gear before we go back.

Death on the Stairs with Sergeant Bly

It had been almost a month since we had our last outing in Zul’Farrak.  There was just too much going on for a few weeks for us to find the time.

The Tanaris area of operation

But this past Sunday we finally got online together with the time to return to the instance.

Meet up in Gadgetzan

The line up for the day was:

• Moronae – level 49 night elf druid
• Viniki – level 48 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 48 dwarf priest
• Ula – level 47 gnome mage

We did a quick check on quest status for everybody and found that Moronae, Skronk, and Ula all still had Screecher Spirits.  However, Moronae still had to go to Feralas to get the drops while Ula and Skronk just needed to turn the quest in for the next stage.  We ran over to Steamwheedle to do the update for them.  It seemed likely that Moronae would have another shot at finishing the quest down the road.

The Steamwheedle Waterfront

From there it was back past Gadget and on to ZF, dodging past the elite mobs that guard the outside of the instance.

A fireball chasing us to the zone line

Once into the instance we buffed up and started clearing mobs, which was nice as it gave us a to warm up a bit on some easy stuff after the time off.

There is, however, a lot of trash to take out, but we managed it, even clearing around the fountain without too many accidental pulls.

The fountain area has plenty of walkers

From the fountain we turned left again, both to pick up the quest objectives for Ula and Skronk for the Screecher Spirits follow on quest and because we totally missed a boss that lives off the path that direction.  As we approached his lair, none of us could recall having ever done this fight.  But we spotted his cave easy enough.

The cave of Antu’sul

Since none of us could remember the fight, all of the details and surprises seemed to get us, like the fact… which I read up on later… that you don’t have to attack Antu-sul, or even get within casting range of him, you just have to get within a reasonable distance of his cave and he comes running out to get you.  Surprise!

Oh, and he quickly summons some elite helpers for the fight as well.  Surprise!

Oh, now he has friends

And he doesn’t just do that once… he keeps doing it as you kill his helpers off… and he keeps rooting everybody as well as dropping totems and healing himself every so often.  We were quickly in over our heads and I was scrambling to remember some warrior skills to help keep me alive.

Somehow we managed to keep going… nobody died… and we got Antu’sul down, which stopped new adds from showing up, and we made it through.

For all that he dropped the Lifeblood Amulet, which was a bit of an upgrade for me, adding +3 stamina over what I had.

From there we moved on, picking off Theka the Martyr for the quest update for Ula and Skronk, avoiding any scarab entanglements, and then heading to the graveyard.

The graveyard again

This is, of course, where we got surprised last time.

We did this again, the right way, digging up all the graves first, then going after Witch Doctor Zum’rah.  All I can say is that there are way more graves in that area than there needs to be to make whatever point some Blizz dev was trying to make.  But we could use the xp and the undead trolls dropped the troll temper for one of the Gadgetzen quests, so there was some upside.

The witch doctor himself wasn’t so tough without the zombies, though he does still summon some help on his own.

He dropped Zum’rah’s Vexing Cane, a staff that I thought might be up for contention between Ula and Skronk.  However, it didn’t seem like much of an upgrade to the Illusionary Rod from Arcanist Doan back in Scarlet Monastery, something we picked up in our low 30s in December, though there was some uncertainty whether the bonus to healing/damage casting was worth the sacrifice of 10 spirit and 5 intellect.  Ula decided to try it out, though the fact that it looks like somebody glued a door knob to the end or a broom stick did not endear it to anybody.

From there it was time to decided whether or not to attempt the stairs.

The stairs loom in our future

We cleared our way to them and decided to give it a shot.  As with other fights, our memories were vague at best and we didn’t stop to look up a strategy, preferring to have at least one go in as raw a state as we could manage.

Up at the top we met the Sandfury Executioner who attempted to live up to his name.

Execute! Execute!

He dropped the key to the cages where Sergeant Bly and his companions are.  Opening those up starts off the big event on the stairs.

Standing with Sergeant Bly

Down below the trolls formed up.

That is where we are headed

The trolls then start coming up the stairs.  Most of them are not elite, but there are a few elites mixed in every so often.  We tried to focus on the elites to burn them down.  Bly and his crew seemed pretty able to care for themselves otherwise.  It was chaotic and nearly got out of hand a few times when healing pulled aggro onto Skronk and there were shouts of “Get the combat ress ready!” but we seemed to get through each crisis.  The Bly wanted to start moving.

Bly gives the command

It was at the bottom of the stairs that things got out of hand.  There are two named mobs that spawn, and we ended up pulling them early, while we were still mixed up with the greater trash at the bottom of the stairs.  We lost control, people started dying, and the last I saw of Sergeant Bly he was in a mass of trolls holding his own until he was polymorphed into a frog and beaten down.

Corpses around as Bly gets pounded

Once that was settled out, we released and ran back to the instance.  Since Bly and his crew were dead the event could not be run again and the remaining trolls were too many and packed too close together to try and finish them off.  So we decided to save the stairs for another time… after some research… and finished off the quest Ula and Skronk had.

That meant clearing out some of the area around Gahz’rilla, and since we started on that, we finished clearing around and then used to Mallet of Zul’Farrak to summon Gahz’rilla again.  This time we fought him from the water so when we got tossed in the air we had a soft landing.

We waited in the deep end of his pool

That worked out well and Gahz ended up being a pretty easy fight.  He doesn’t drop anything we need, but it all sells for coin and we all need more of that.

From there we mounted up and tried to ride on out of the instance, out running the various patrols and respawns between us and the exit.  We almost made it too, but Ula took a big hit right at the zone line.  We went back in and Skronk ressed her.

So close you could feel static off the portal

We got Ula back up on her mount and we road out and back to Gadgetzan for quest turn ins and such.

For next time we need to get Moronae to Feralas for his quest update as well as looking up some tips for the fight on the stairs.  I think I know some of what we did wrong, and we know better what to expect, but after one run winging it I’d like a little more info.  And we can managed that we can get to the final fight and finish off ZF.

CSM14 Elections Start Today

The day has arrived and the polls have opened, you may now go forth and vote for your favorite candidates for CSM14.  If you’re in a rush, I believe the official candidates page is also the voting site as well, once you log in.  Voting closes on the 17th, so don’t let the time slip by.

A new CSM gets a New Logo

My long held opinion on electing player representatives, that it is a bit silly and more for show than anything else, remains unchanged.  However, if this is the system we have it isn’t going to get any better by not participating.  I vigorously oppose anything like a “none of the above” option on the ballot.  Voter turnout, such that it is, and who gets elected, ought to be enough to send the message.

There are 44 candidates on the ballot and Nosy Gamer has done a good job of listing them out in a post on his blog because, if nothing else, it doesn’t change order every time you go look at it.  I understand why CCP does that on their ballot page, but that doesn’t make reading the list any easier.

Anyway, go look through that post for candidate summaries as well as links to their pages on the CSM Wire site, which in turn links to their various campaign posts and interviews.

As with last year, there are seven incumbents from CSM13 running to be on the CSM again.  Suitonia, Jin’taan, and Brisc Rubal all declined to run for another term, so the returning candidates are:

• Aryth – Goonswarm Federation
• Innominate – Goonswarm Federation
• Killah Bee – Northern Coalition
• Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation
• Sort Dragon – Darkness
• Steve Ronuken – Fuzzwork Enterprises
• The Judge – Goonswarm Federation

Most of them seem well placed to return.  The Judge might be an outlier for null sec, unless he appears on multiple bloc ballots or is able to buy votes from the injector farmers again.

Steve Ronuken could also be at risk if other non-null bloc candidates erode his long time base.  There are some other well known players running for that position.

As of my writing this I have not seen the Imperium ballot yet, nor have I seen any leaks from other null sec coalitions, but I expect that null sec bloc candidates will take at least six and possibly as many as eight seats on the council.  This is due, in large part, to their ability to organize and get out the vote. (I’ll append the ballots to the end of this post when they get leaked.)

If they succeed in getting the vote out in a big way and take eight seats, I expect it will be the top two from the Imperium ballot, the top two from the Legacy Coalition ballot, two from NCDot/PanFam, and possibly one each from Dead Coalition and Fraternity.

That leaves between two and four seats open to non-bloc candidates, and those who have built up an independent constituency, or who have ingratiated themselves with the null sec groups, seem most likely to get in.  My guesses on who might fill those seats include:

• Steve Ronuken – Incumbent, represents industry and 3rd party interfaces
• Mike Azariah – Runs the Magic School Bus to help new players
• Manic Velocity – Popular EVE Online streamer
• Matterall – Talking in Stations show
• Olmeca Gold – Popular anti-null sec conspiracy theorist

I might not have included Olmeca Gold, except that it is rumored that he might get on some null sec ballots, which could give him enough trickle down to win.  Likewise, Matterall has been out horse trading endorsements to get on null sec ballots, which may make you then question his Independence.  If you fly in null sec and are on null sec bloc ballots, can you then be independent of that?   We shall see how that works out.

There has been a conspiracy theory about, alleged to have started with Doomchinchilla on Twitter, that the Imperium attack on Tribute was planned so that the Imperium would have the maximum number of subscribed accounts… because people come back to play when there is a war… when the election hit.

The Mittani, responding to this on the weekly coalition fireside, said that was a great idea and he wished he had thought of it.  So now I suspect there will be a late spring war every year to coincide with the election.

There is also another side conspiracy theory that CCP is trying to get more people to vote by literally giving away Omega time.  There is currently a Twitch Prime offer that does just that.  If you have Amazon Prime, you link that to your Twitch account to get Twitch Prime (Amazon owns Twitch), then you claim the offer and link it to an EVE Online Alpha Clone account and, boom, you have 15 days of Omega Clone time and get to vote.  I know I get one more vote this year because of this.

There were 29,417 votes cast for CSM13, and 31,274 cast for CSM12.  There have never been fewer than 20K votes cast (early CSM votes were low, and CSM11 has just 22K votes cast) and the peak amount of votes cast was for CSM7, when nearly 60K accounts voted.

Number of Votes Cast – CSM 1 through CSM 12

We will see if either of those things end up in a rise in voter participation in this election.  Noizy has a poll up on Twitter if you want to take a guess at voter turn out.  I suspect it will be up this year, but that will translate into more null sec votes.

Anyway, the vote is on.  If you need to read up on the candidates, I will point you once again at the CSM Wire.  When you are ready to vote, the official candidate page can be found here.

Addendum – Ballots I have seen so far.  If you see any others let me know:

Imperium Ballot

1. Aryth
2. Merkelchen
3. Innominate
4. The Judge
5. Vily
6. Dunk Dinkle
7. Sortdragon
8. Killah Bee
9. Steve Ronuken
10. Xenuria

TEST Ballot

1. Vily
2. Cornak Firefist
3. Dunk Dinkle
4. Innominate
5. Killah Bee
6. Matterall
7. Gobbins
8. Steve Ronuken

Pandemic Horde Ballot

1. Gobbins
2. Killah Bee
3. Arrowspeeed Bounty
4. Dunk Dinkle
5. Olmeca Gold
6. Matterall
7. Vily

One Day Left to Vote for CSM 13

The polls for CSM 13 election will close at 12:00 UTC on June 11, which is 24 hours from when this post goes live.

Space election ending soon…

If you wish to vote you do not have much time left.  Instructions on how to vote are available in a CCP news post.

I listed out the candidates in a post when the elections opened up, but if you want deeper details there is the CSM Wire site.  However, you have one less choice at this point as Creecher Virpio has been removed as a candidate by CCP.

CCP Guard also did a Reddit AMA about the CSM and the election if you want more details and can stomach a trip to Reddit.

Landmark Goes… Live

I almost forgot, today is the day that Landmark goes live.

After the long road from the SOE Live of 2013 where Landmark was something of a footnote in the EverQuest Next story to it becoming its own game and early access and the usual long drought of information then the death of EverQuest Next to reach today and the actual launch.

The website is now unlocked, and Lumeria awaits! What's YOUR story? #LandmarkLaunch https://t.co/GK0mi9fWR7 http://pic.twitter.com/GYiRFxaC9v

— Landmark (@LandmarkGame) June 10, 2016

The servers are up, the official site has been updated, the “early access” disclaimers have been removed, and the game is listed as a new release on Steam.

Also new, WildStar…

I am not sure what qualifies it as “popular” rather than just a “new release.”  When I checked the Top Sellers list it was on page 7, putting it somewhere between the 151st and 175th most popular game on Steam at the moment.

Meanwhile, over at Daybreak, the server status page isn’t exactly showing the game is on fire here at launch.

Server Status: Low

Is everybody off watching the Warcraft movie tonight?

Or is this what a launch day is like when a game with a modest fan base to start spends more than two years lingering in “early access,” changing companies, changing designs, and changing payment plans all before a dwindling live studio audience?

What would sell people on Landmark here at launch day?

Friday Bullet Points for Internet Spaceships

Another Friday with some items in my notes that I can’t be bothered to make a full post out of.  And they are all about EVE Online this week.

Shadow of the Serpent Event

CCP has announced a new in-game event will go live with the June update on the 28th of the month.  Called Shadow of the Serpent, The Scope will be offering capsuleers challenges to help suppress the Serpentis menace.

Serpentis Menace

In order to make sure people know about the event… because people ignore the launcher, the release notes, the dev blogs, the forums, blog posts, news sites, and Reddit… CCP will be using some of the real estate on the character select page to highlight the event and what is available to do.  My guess is that somebody will still complain that CCP did not promote the event widely enough.

CCP calls for Videos

CCP has a call out for videos for the next O7 Show, which is coming up on June 26.

CCP is also looking for videos to beef up their current Flight Academy series on YouTube.

Learn to fly, learn to fight

So if you are interested in making videos that are entertaining for the O7 Show or that might be helpful for new player, CCP has a Dev Blog for you.

Eight Overview Tabs

In one of those “little features cause big excitement” turns, CCP slipped a line item into the upcoming changes list for the June release that has people cheering.

Increased max overview tab count from 5 to 8

This is a boon.  The overview is this often mis-understood, overly complicated window that can mean victory if used right or defeat if you are looking at the wrong settings.  The overview is destiny.  I have such a long list of overview tab pre-sets that the list scrolls off the window… so long that finding the right pre-set while in combat is not a winning plan.  I like to have tabs setup before the fight, but sometimes… well, almost all the time… I want more than five.

And soon we will have eight.  I am sure that still won’t feel like enough, but I still welcome tabs 6, 7, and 8.

Death of DX9

CCP to players:  Stop checking the DirectX 9 checkbox.

Due to the pain that is backward compatibility support… and I know the feeling as, I swear, some of our corporate customers would still be running IE6 on Windows XP if we didn’t stop supporting it… CCP is yanking DX9 from EVE Online.  You have until June 26 to figure out what you need to do.

May Monthly Economic Report

One of my favorite monthly posts from CCP, the economic report, came out for May.  And there among the charts, I again rushed to find my favorite, the ISK sinks and faucets.

May 2016 – ISK Sinks and Faucets

We are starting to have enough of these to begin plotting trends and tracking behavior related to changes in the game.

For the second month running, more ISK was drained out of the economy than went into it.  Last month there was a big boom in blue print purchasing with the release of the Citadel expansion that contributed to an 8 trillion ISK reduction in ISK in the economy.

This month almost 13 trillion ISK was removed from overall player holdings, and the big jump this time around was in broker’s fees, which were raised with the Citadel expansion, expanding that particular sink from under 5 trillion ISK in March to 7 trillion ISK in April to 18 trillion ISK in May.  Will this drive people to trade in citadels?

Anyway, that is what I had for today.