Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Blast from the past: pre-BC Mage video

Ooo look what I found: footage from my past life as a Mage in pre-BC WoW.

The first video is of the Arathi Basin (5-node capture the flag) scenario. A shitty Alliance premade had captured all the nodes and pushed the PUG Horde team I was with back to the spawn point. At this point the PUGs started whining and crying about how we should just let them win so it would be over quickly. This pissed me off greatly and I thought hell no. No way I'm going to sit back and let sucky players get an easy win. So, I snuck off to the Gold Mine to flip the node to delay their win (and hopefully annoy them). I find a Rogue there defending solo. I cap the flag, the premade responds with excessive numbers (noobs) and I work for a kill before I am vaporized:



Here's the 2nd video with some Magey action in Warsong Gulch:



Sorry for the poor video quality. I didn't have a great rig back then, so these were the only 2 videos I Fraps'ed. Thinking back about it, it's a shame that I don't have any videos showing the crazy honor grind. This was way back when honor decayed and everyone on the server had to compete against each other to advance in rank. I have some sweet memories... especially from the epic fights that happened when two honor-grinding premades slammed into each other.

After a crazy (stupid) grind, I got to the rank of Warlord, and felt a (masochistic) sense of achievement. The grind involved running a rag-tag group of PVP-ers consisting of outcasts (WoW was still very much a PVE game at that time so PVPers were often shunned by guilds). Us outcasts tended to hate PVE, and PVP was our main source of fun in the game. We didn't have the fancy, rare and powerful gear that the PVE'ers had. We made do with greens, and whatever we could get our hands on through PVP. We were often outgeared by our opponents, but we made up for it with experience, teamwork and our burning desire to win. The grind was weeks (months?) of savage killing and methodical and efficient winning. All we cared about was getting maximum Honor in the minimum amount of time. Often, scenarios would start and end with barely any killing, because killing was unnecessary. We would win many games with superior CC and teamwork alone. So much so, that we'd sometimes take a break and fight naked, just for laughs. Sometimes the humor would rub off on our opponents, and they'd respond with a dance party at their spawn. As much as I detested the grind, they were good times. I made many good friends (as you would anytime you compete with a team). And I had many good fights.

Then Blizzard announced the Burning Crusade expansion. New levels! New gear! It was a slap in the face to my Mage. He was made obsolete instantly. They let us keep our rank, but it did not mean anything more than just a title over our heads. Random green gear from trash NPCs were better than my Warlord PVP gear. Stripped of my rank and my gear, I quit the game and never looked back.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Aion closed beta #4

RL stuff kept me occupied this weekend, so I only managed to get from level 19 to 21. Unexpectedly, there was some PVP action outside the Abyss. Something about rifts opening and Asmodians and Elyos ending up in the same place at the same time. I was caught by surprise while I was PVE-ing and had no clue how it all worked or where the baddies were coming from.



It was a confusing weekend for me. It felt awkward playing the Spiritmaster at this level. It's as if I'm growing out of my old "generic Mage" skin but I'm not quite a Spiritmaster yet. E.g., the only CCs I have are root/snares, which means it's still a pissing contest against casters.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Video compilation (Zealot RVR)

With no game to play, I decided to make a movie as a tribute to the Zealot. I selected a couple of my videos, stitched them together to have some semblance of flow, sped gameplay up by 5% and picked some tunes to go with it. The product: a compilation of solo/duo/trio and RVR prowling action from my "project" to find some fun away from WAR's horrible endgame.

Warning: the video ended up pretty long (1 hour) despite some edits, and pretty large (800MB) despite messing around with quality and compression.



Links
Download: Part 1 of 2 and Part 2 of 2; or as a single file in lower quality
Warhammermovies.com (Woo! Featured movie of the day! Pic)

Contents
00:00 - BW + BW + SM
04:13 - WP --- Engi
05:44 - SM
07:22 - BW
08:03 - Engi
09:45 - WH
11:26 - (Zealot + Sorc) WH + Engi
12:19 - (Zealot + Sorc) Engi + WH + SM
13:33 - (Zealot + Sorc) WP + Engi + WH
14:23 - prowling
15:26 - evading SM + WL
16:55 - stalking the zerg
17:08 - WH + IB
18:07 - IB
19:39 - Engi
20:35 - BW
23:34 - scouting
23:47 - stalking the zerg
24:02 - hunting stragglers
26:29 - IB + WL + AM + IB
33:00 - (Zealot + Sorc) Engi + WH
33:33 - (Zealot + Sorc) KoTBS + Engi
34:35 - Slayer + AM
35:30 - ninja stealth hiding in tree
35:38 - (Zealot + Sorc) SW + KotBS + Engi + AM + WH + SM + SW + WH
39:45 - SM
40:15 - fishing WL + WL + KotBS
41:30 - fishing WL + WL (2nd attempt)
41:50 - (Zealot + Sorc) BW --- BW --- BW + WH --- SM + SW --- BW + WL + WH + RP + Slayer
43:30 - BW
46:12 - (Zealot + Chosen) WP + AM + SW + BW --- + KotBS + RP
54:33 - (Zealot + Chosen + Sorc) SW + RP + SM + WP + KotBS
57:15 - BW + IB + WP --- + WL + WP + WH
1:02:19 - WH --- BW + WL + WP --- WH
1:04:54 - AM + BW
1:06:36 - gear/spec