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THE ANCIENT GAMING NOOB
VENI, VIDI, SCRIPSI
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NOTES FROM HALLOW’S END IN WRATH CLASSIC
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Going back and doing some of the holiday events has definitely been part of the
WoW Classic experience, and especially the Wrath Classic experience, since Wrath
is when achievements came in. Achievements give you something like a definitive
path through an event and, with the meta achievement, reward you with a title so
you can say, “Been there, done that, got the title” and never worry about
investing much effort going forward.
Given that sort of “been there, done that” attitude, there are a number of
events I haven’t done in a long long time, so this is also sparking a bit of
memory. And then there are the problems. I’ll get to the problems.
Also, if you want the real details on all of this, WoW Head has a nice guide to
the event and details on all the achievements.
The Required Achievements for the Title
The requirements for the meta achievement always set the goals for me for a
holiday event in this era.
What you need to finish up
Chasing Candy Buckets
There is a jack-o-lantern at selected inns throughout Kalimdor, the Eastern
Kingdoms, and Outland that you need to visit in order earn achievements that
roll up to the Tricks and Treats of Azeroth achievement on the list above.
This nice part is that if you did any of it last year, that rolls over to this
year. No need to start over. As it turned out, I did all of the Outland inns
last year. I did not, however, do many of the old Azeroth locations, so that
became the biggest travel effort. Still, an evening of traveling around while
listen to podcasts and an audio book was all it took.
Also, this is a good one to do with alts not at the level cap because, with
Joyous Journeys still up, each inn is worth almost 5% of a level.
South Shore Clean Up
Was the Rotten Hallow achievement really this small back then? I recall a
version where you actually go bomb the other side or something. That must come
later.
The effort here is going to find the Wickerman outside of the Undercity. There
is a round trip involved. But you just show up, get the update, and go back to
Southshore. Beware the guards around the Wickerman. They are level 60, so at
level 80 they won’t pose a threat, but they went and one-shotted my then level
44 rogue who went to do the achievement as well.
Meanwhile, the cleanup aspect of the achievement is just waiting for some stink
bombs to appear then using the quest item. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Fight Fires in Dun Morogh
The easiest way to finish the Savior of Hallow’s End is to show up after
everybody else has done the work, click on the pumpkin remains of the Headless
Horseman, then be on your way.
It will just wait for you
If that isn’t a possibility then, if you’re on the alliance side, go to Kharnos
in Dun Morogh and do the event with a few people.
Seriously, I caught up with Ula at the Goldshire version of the event and tried
to help her and, even with about a dozen people throwing water, even after
forming bucket brigades, we blew the event.
Then the three of us, Fergorin having joined up, went to Kharnos and did it
without any problem. The fires there start in two locations, don’t spread very
fast, and with some strategic placement, can be wrapped up in about 2 mins.
And then the Headless Horseman shows up and you sneeze on him at level 80 and he
falls over dead.
Collecting up those Wands
The one achievement that will take a real group effort is The Masquerade, which
requires you to be transformed by all seven of the wands found in trick or treat
bags. You cannot, as I recall, just do drive by transforms with them, they only
work on people you’re grouped with.
The Headless Horseman
This part is actually pretty easy, and a big endorsement for the return of the
Dungeon Finder. I queue up every morning with all five of my level 80s to run
the instance event. This is especially quick since three out of five of my
characters are arguably tanks, so I put them in for tank and DPS roles.
Wilhelm is absolutely a tank
You queue up, jump in, click the pumpkin, then let the DPS with 5K+ gear scores
who are putting out 3.5-4.5 DPS burn the horseman down, then the head, and
repeat until the loot appears.
It’s not much, but it is honest murder
Of course, the loot I want is his mount. So far I have seen, across my
characters, both brooms, all three rings, the Baleful Blade, the hallowed helm,
and the Sinister Squashling… the next topic is about that pet in particular.
I have yet to see the Horrific Helm and the mount, which are naturally what I
really want. But there are still many days to go and I get five chances a day.
The Broken Achievement
Finally, there is probably the reason I won’t get the meta achievement and the
title, as one of the achievements is broken. I cannot get the second half of
its requirement.
The achievement
Well, “broken” is the wrong word probably. You can get it. But you can only
get it with ONE character on your account.
The problem is that with the new combined pets and mounts UI that came in with
the Fall of the Lich King patch, you can only claim a pet or a mount ONCE per
account in Wrath Classic. And this achievement doesn’t simply require you to
obtain the Sinister Squashling, but also to claim it. But you cannot claim it
if you have collected it on another character already.
The unclaimable pet
I realized this too late as I figured it would be like some of the other
achievements, where collecting in on one character would count for all
characters. But no, while every character on my account got the Albino Drake
for having 50 mounts, only the first character that collected the Sinister
Squashling got the update.
Without that I cannot get the meta achievement.
Now, maybe Blizzard will fix this. I have seen this issue reported multiple
times in both the US and EU forums. I have also opened a support ticket about
the issue, though the canned response told me I should go check the forums or
WoW Head if I am having problems with an achievement. I do hate canned
responses that indicate that the company hasn’t bothered to read your issue
description. But at least I was able to re-open it with a further comment about
what was actually going on… not that my first message was anything but a
detailed description of the issue.
We shall see. My confidence in Blizzard being able to address an issue is low.
They have a demonstrated history of being deaf to player issues in the past.
Still, they have fixed a few bugs here and there in Wrath Classic, though others
still remain. (You can, for example, still fall through the world doing
Boneguard Commanders. I saw one go under ground this past week.)
And maybe this won’t matter. Maybe I won’t get zapped by all the wands. But it
is a pretty big blocker if I get everything else done.
This entry was posted in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft, WoW Classic
and tagged Hallow's End on October 23, 2023 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
BINGE WATCHING INTO YET ANOTHER AUTUMN
8 Replies
The summer has passed. We’re past the false autumn and the last gasp of summer
heat, the mornings are cool, there is some occasional fog, and it is time to
start thinking about closing the window in the bedroom at night.
AI generated televisions out enjoying an Autumn day
It isn’t quite time yet for the leaves to fall, so we can sit on the couch and
watch some more TV before having to get out the rake. And what have we been
watching.
AHSOKA – DISNEY+
My reaction to this series is no doubt a sign that I am not really a Star Wars
fan. Here we have a Star Wars show, a spin off setup in The Madalorian, with
some recognizable characters and a framework that should be appealing and… I was
bored. Sure, maybe I don’t care all that much about Ahsoka and I didn’t watch
the cartoon that led into this so few of the other characters resonated with me,
but there was Thrawn! I’ve written about Thrawn. If he was the bad guy surely
they wouldn’t mis-use him. Alas, I watched the whole thing and found it flat,
predictable, and lacking in any engaging qualities. Thrawn? More like Yawn!
Not as dumb as The Book of Boba Fett, but still dull.
LOKI – DISNEY+
Here is the flip side. I have no investment at all in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe. There are maybe three movies out of the whole lot I would watch a
second time. So I was prepared to be bored. Add in the fact that the whole
thing feels like they saw Umbrella Academy and said, “Hey, let’s steal that idea
for the MCU and make Loki the star!” and could barely be bothered to hide the
fact. Then I actually quite enjoyed it. Granted, it is almost entirely carried
by the performances of Hiddleston and Wilson, but sometimes that is enough. Can
they carry it into season 2? I don’t know, but season one was fun.
THE WALKING DEAD: DARYL DIXON – AMC+
Where can we take The Walking Dead franchise next? How about France? Is France
good for you? Daryl ends up on a boat to France for reasons then gets thrown
overboard or something and washes ashore in… France. And they have zombies in
France, because they are everywhere, but they’re late season TWD zombies where
they only show up when the plot needs a jump scare. The real lesson, as always,
is that people are the real monsters, even if they all speak English with a
French accent. I honestly think one of the show runners just wanted to go see
Jim Morrison’s grave. So op success on that front. I didn’t care for it, as it
didn’t add anything new to TWD and it world vie, but my wife pines for Daryl and
Carol to get back together, so we’ll have to watch the next season I am sure.
THE WHEEL OF TIME SEASON 2 – AMAZON PRIME
I think I am the ideal viewer for this series. I’ve read all the freaking
books, but long enough ago to have forgotten all but the major story lines, so a
mini-series treatment that hacks off huge useless hunks of a bloated story…
works for me. I enjoyed this season as it blazed through the tale and look
forward to the next. The Seanchan were dealt with, Matt blew the Horn of Valere,
and Dragon Reborn was declared. I think we’re into the fourth book by this
point. Robert Jordan purists… well, I know their pain, it is what I feel when I
watch the Lord of the Rings movies, but nobody cuts me any slack. Suck it up.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER – NETFLIX
I like this show. First, it is not literally a series based on the titular Poe
short story. Rather, it is a result of taking the works of Poe, blending them
in with the family dynamics of Succession, and using the whole thing to indict
the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, the company that brought us the opioid
epidemic through outright lies, which means it has plenty of fun gothic imagery
and there is a whole “which Poe work is this bit in reference to?” side game
along with it being pretty much spot on when it comes to the whole topic and
what some people might richly deserve. Good stuff, would watch again… though if
I have to hear another Philistine say they thought it was about the rapper I
might scream.
This entry was posted in entertainment, Television and tagged Ahsoka, Amazon
Prime, Disney Plus, Fall of the House of Usher, Loki, Netflix, Paramount+, The
Mandalorian, The Walking Dead, The Wheel of Time on October 22, 2023 by Wilhelm
Arcturus.
GM WEEK RETURNS TO EVE ONLINE AND THEY HAVE RUN OUT OF BOTS TO BASH
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GM Week is one of the annual traditions of EVE Online where the GMs get out and
do events with the players, and it is back for 2023 with an odd change.
GM Week 2023
One of the highlights of GM Week… for me at least… is the Yulai Bot Bash, where
GMs summon in capital ships from accounts that have been banned for botting so
that players can blow them up. I have a couple of posts from past events with
pictures of the fun.
The Leviathan recovering from the doomsday shot from another bot
For 2023 the GM Week announcement includes this paragraph:
> Traditionally, one of the most popular activities of GM week has been the
> super fun Whack-a-Bot event, where pilots have gotten the chance to bring
> their wrath down on bots in Capital and Super-Capital ships. In a whopper of a
> first-world problem, Team Security has been so effective of late that the pool
> of bots to whack is now virtually non-existent. As such, the Whack-a-Bot event
> will be laid to rest and replaced with ships populated by Game Masters, old
> and new, giving capsuleers a chance to score some juicy loot and even juicier
> corpses!
The war on bots is working I guess. There is some skepticism about that claim,
but that is what they are rolling with.
On the bright side, there will still be a Whack-a-Bot event on Monday, October
23rd at 16:30 EVE time. But the post does not mention where. I ASSUME it will
be in Yulai as usual, but the post lacks that seemingly critical bit of
information. It could be in Jita for all I know.
There will also be the GM & ISD fleet roam on Thursday, October 26th at 17:00
EVE Time as well as orbital stashes to find, the scavenger hunt, the armed
pinata hunt, and other contests.
So get ready for GM Week starting on Monday. I don’t know where the Bot Bash
replacement will be, but I will keep an eye out. And if I find my way to the
event, expect some more screen shots.
Related:
* CCP – GM WEEK RETURNS
This entry was posted in CCP, entertainment, EVE Online and tagged GM Week,
Yulai on October 21, 2023 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
DIABLO IV LANDS ON STEAM AND… CAN YOU GUESS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
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I have to admit any time I show a bit of interest in Diablo IV something happens
to wave me off. Not that I pay extremely close attention to the title. I think
the success of Diablo II Resurrected filled my every five year need to revisit
the franchise. But I do keep an eye on it, if only by virtue of the fact that I
keep an eye on Blizzard in general.
Diablo IV
So I did catch the news that Diablo IV was being released on Steam. You can
find it there now, and it is even 25% off until October 24th.
Now on Steam
Not that there was much news to catch. It was a pretty low key launch. You
would have to dig a bit to find where Blizzard even mentioned the fact. It
certainly isn’t on the Diablo IV web page under the news heading or anything.
In fact, the first actual bit of news I saw was a mention of the completely
predictable outcome of Blizzard putting the game on Steam; it was being review
bombed.
Mixed reviews
I feel like I need to repeat that this was completely predictable.
I will grant you that the situation is not as bad as Overwatch 2, which was a
reflection of how poorly Blizzard handled that situation. People are not going
out of their way to slam Diablo IV… though it is also not a free to play title
anybody can download and review either.
Overwatch 2 on Steam… 9% favorable
And the Diablo IV situation has gotten marginally better. Since I took that
screen shot the number of reviews has almost doubled and the favorable reviews
have climbed all the way up to… 53% of the total. Better, but still not great.
This was, and I cannot commit to this being the last time I say this, completely
predictable… so much so that back in August after the Overwatch 2 fiasco, I was
pretty sure that Blizzard would put off moving any more titles to Steam. I was
clearly wrong.
Which leaves me at a bit of a loss to explain why Blizzard would do this.
This Steam launch didn’t get the trumpets blaring press announcement, the title
is only a few months old so we’re not really into the zone where a game goes to
Steam to try and pick up some incremental revenue… usually by way of a deep
discount come the holidays.
I mean, we had the announcement that Diablo IV was the fastest selling title in
Blizzard history, earning $666 million in just five days. What was the
motivation to bring it to Steam in light of its current controversies and the
memory of how Overwatch 2 was received?
For me there is no logical reason to do this… unless it was something to do with
the Microsoft acquisition.
In addition to having to make all sorts of flimsy promises about how they won’t
make Call of Duty an XBox exclusive, it is quite possible that they feel the
need to not look entirely monopolistic when it comes to the Microsoft Store
built into Windows 10 and 11.
Microsoft went kind of big on their built-in store in Windows 10, no doubt
trying to fulfill a long time wet dream to get a cut of all software revenue for
their operating system. Also, they saw Apple do it and there isn’t anything
Apple can do that Microsoft won’t try to do in a tangibly worse way. Apple can
get away with that because it is a niche player [edit: In the PC operating
system market] relative to Microsoft, and because it didn’t go completely hard
core and try to drive people to its store for everything.
And I am not even going to start digging into the XBox game app store thing in
Windows, which short of having to listen to Tim Sweeney speak (read: lie) about
anything, is one of the biggest reasons to use Steam.
So I wonder if this is a bit more of Microsoft trying to show it plays nice with
competitors, even competing software store fronts, even video game store fronts
that go head to head with their own XBox store front.
Or maybe this is Bobby’s revenge. I don’t know. But Diablo IV is up there on
Steam and things are playing out in a… once again… completely predictable way.
Related:
* Steam – Diablo IV Store Page
* Steam Charts – Diablo IV Activity Page
This entry was posted in Blizzard, entertainment, Steam and tagged Diablo IV,
Microsoft, XBox Games on October 20, 2023 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
RETURN TO THE FORGE OF SOULS
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With the release of the final installment of Wrath Classic it was time for the
instance group to get back together and face the final three dungeons.
As foretold, the fall of the Lich King
Once we got all got patched up and addons updated and online, it was time to
head off to the first of the final three dungeons of the expansion which came in
with the last big patch, the Forge of Souls.
There was actually a quest giver in Dalaran who sent us out to the instance,
though it was actually finding the instance that was the trick. The quest
turn-in is inside the instance, so you don’t get a nice marker on the map to
guide you.
I remembered it was somewhere off to the side of the main structure of Icecrown
Citadel, but it took a bit of flying about before I finally found the right path
in.
It is kind of there, at the upper right
I was ahead of the pack and got there, then tried to describe how to get there
with some difficulty. I did manage to get Potshot to the right place, though it
was difficult with Beanpole because he was in a different phase than us. I
suspect the Argent Tournament dailies, which cause you to enter a different
phase in that area, were to blame.
We solved the phasing problem with Beanpole by jumping into one of the
instances, though there are three to choose from around the summoning stone.
They all have gates blocking them, but none of the gates were locked. Were some
locked back in the day? I don’t recall.
Anyway, the Forge of Souls is the one on the left as you face them.
Once there we were able to summon Ula.
At the summoning stone… Forge of Souls on the left
Once inside, there was Jaina Proudmore, ready to accept our quest turn in, hand
us a new quest, and monologue for a bit.
Jaina telling us about the situation
She kept going on even as we set about to the tasks needed to get ready for the
dungeon.
Don’t mind this Jaina, we’re still listening, we promise…
Once setup, we headed on into the instance, which is kind of neat looking, being
made up of metal grate ramps and in curves and loops and all.
Into the main part of the instance
But it also isn’t a very big instance.
Forge of Souls map
You can see both Questie objectives and the new built-in quest objectives that
came in with the last patch marking up my map.
We had no problem with the trash mobs along the way up to the first boss,
Bronjahm, who is a tribute boss to James Brown. Who else would be in the Forge
of Souls besides the Godfather of Soul?
Anyway, we made it to him and, willing to just roll with it, we said “There he
is, get him!” and went in after him.
There he is, up there
That did not start off very well. Bronjahm has a big AOE attack that he sends
you fleeing through and the ranged DPS, which is all of our DPS, ended up
standing in the AOE damage and dying pretty quickly, leaving only myself, the
paladin tank, and Fergorin, the paladin healer, left in the fight.
We just got right up on Bronjahm and started chipping away at him, getting
feared every so often but then just running back.
Bronjahm and his attack
We just stood on him and kept ourselves healed up and slowly but surely wore him
down. I did end up using lay hands towards the end of the fight as mana and
health was starting to dwindle, but that is what it is there for. I completely
forgot about… as usual… Divine Plea, which restores mana and reduces damage
taken. Somehow we got through it and defeated Bronjahm.
Then, once we had restored the rest of the part to life, checked out the loot.
Bjorid, our hunter, got the mail bracers that dropped and we all rolled on the
bad that came with the loot. But we were not all that impressed with it.
Not the best bag
By this point Ula, who has tailoring and enchanting as trade skills, had us well
supplied with 20 slot bags, so one more wasn’t much of a boon. Looking at the
loot table, you can also get Papa’s Brand New Bag, which is 22 slots. That
would have been more impressive.
So would the weapon he was wielding in his model.
Nice scythe
That got us on a side discussion about mobs actually dropping things that they
appeared to be wielding, something that hasn’t been the case since early
EverQuest… and even then it wasn’t true most of the time.
From there it was on to the next boss, the Devourer of Souls. The trash in
between didn’t slow us much, so we were there pretty quickly.
There he is…
As with the previous boss, we decided to just have at it and see if we could
figure it out as we went.
We did not do nearly as well this time. Treating it like a tank and spank, max
DPS fight ended up with us all dead on the floor before much time went by.
Beanpole was the last to go
That meant getting everybody back to the instance, which involved some
navigation to get us all to the right spot in ICC again.
That also meant a trip to the web to see what we were facing. There were
attacks we needed to avoid by moving, such as that bright beam in the screen
shot above, and times when we needed to stop our damage output because it was
being reflected back onto one of us.
I had to make sure that my cast bars addon was running, so these incoming
attacks were visible on my screen in large enough letters for me to read, then
we went at the Devourer of Souls once more… and won.
The achievement
The loot was the Sollerets of Suffering, some plate boots that were an upgrade
to my tanking gear. (As opposed to my PvP gear.)
Meanwhile, Jaina and a bunch of alliance troops showed up just as we were done
to pat themselves on the back for having helped. Jaina even got in there with
our team for our group picture.
She is our pal now, but will she remember us later?
We also turned in the instance quest with her and got the quest for the next
instance, the Pit of Saron. These last three dungeons are able to be run as a
chain, with a portal being opened up at the end of one that will take you
straight to the next.
However, we had hit time for the day, so we put off the next dungeon until
later. But we have one down, so two more to go.
This is actually the first time we did the Forge of Souls… or any of these three
dungeons… as part of Wrath of the Lich King content. The last time we did it,
Cataclysm was already done and Mists of Pandaria had already arrived (it was
November of 2013), so we were doing it… at close to level… as a warm up for the
new content, so had whatever class changes… and likely a few gear upgrades… from
the new expansion.
That time we did the first two of the dungeons in one go, then came back later
for the third.
This entry was posted in entertainment, Instance Group, World of Warcraft, WoW
Classic and tagged Forge of Souls, Wrath of the Lich King on October 19, 2023 by
Wilhelm Arcturus.
THE RETURN OF HALLOW’S END AND THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN AGAIN
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I am not sure that Hallow’s End is my favorite holiday in WoW… I’m not sure
which one is really my favorite… but it is certainly the one I have spent the
most time working on. And it has arrived, both in retail and in the various
flavors of WoW Classic now available.
Hallow’s End is here
Some of that is because there are a number of events and achievements to run
down, and another aspect is that some of the event makes for decent xp for
alts. Right now, with Joyous Journeys running in Wrath Classic, a full measure
of blue bar, and 10% xp boosting heirloom chest piece, my rogue… Chadwicke of
the “Sun’s out, guns out!” theme of early WoW Classic… is rolling 5% of a level
with every pumpkin candy bucket he hits. Not bad at all.
Chad and another Hallow’s End pumpkin
But the primary reason I have spent so much time with Hallow’s End is due to the
headless horesman… and more specifically, his mount. For nearly 15 years now I
have been attempting to get that mount.
201 mounts, but not HIS mount
And now it is time again to try. This time, however, I will be trying in Wrath
Classic. I don’t have the current expansion in retail and I am not enthused to
play there honestly. The UI is bizarro world now for openers. But in Wrath
Classic, with the Icecrown Citadel patch, we now have the dungeon finder back,
which means I can queue up all five of my level 80s every day in an attempt to
get that mount.
Dungeon Finder is Go!
I have already been in my first group. People were up early to have a go. And,
on my first attempt, no mount.
The horseman down but just some emblems of frost… hrmm…
Will the RNG favor me THIS year after denying me for so many? We shall see I
suppose. But I have until November 1st to try.
Blizzard has a list of the things going on in retail at the link above, but for
the Wrath Classic version you can go to WoW Head for the list of events.
This entry was posted in entertainment, World of Warcraft, WoW Classic and
tagged Hallow's End, Headless Horseman on October 18, 2023 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
NINE YEARS OF REAVERS
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Once again we have landed in the middle of October and another Reavers
anniversary has come and gone. October 15th 2014 was the founding date of the
Reavers SIG, which seems like a long time ago now. It was certainly a different
world.
Reavers forum bee
And once again I do not have much to report. I clicked on the Reavers tag on
the blog and the last post so marked was the Eighth anniversary.
Lacking anything specific to look back on, I suppose I can always fall back on
the null sec influence maps to show what has changed over the last nine years.
Oct 2014 vs Oct 2023
On the right is null sec after the collapse of the Russian alliances in the
Halloween war after the victory at B-R5RB, which saw 70 titans destroyed, an
unprecedented amount of destruction in its day, only surpassed by the two
battles at M2-XFE in 2020/2021.
Largest Battles by ISK Destroyed
By October 2014 the east had been consolidated into a vast rental area. Rental
empires were the thing, and even the Imperium had some rental space. Null sec
is divided into two spheres of influence, running in a line from about 1 o’clock
in the north to 7 o’clock in the south.
In 2023 things have shifted. There are a lot more entities on the map. The
Imperium is in the southwest rather than the north, and a lot of new entities
are popping up in the southeast, which was declared open by an agreement between
the major powers in order to allow new alliances to come to null sec.
Now we’re in a more quiet era. A small war is still brewing in the north. But
it is something of a stalemate.
But it is enough to keep Asher busy, along with everything else going on.
As I said last year, it was hard enough for Asher to find time for us as a SIG
when he was just the Sky Marshall of the Imperium, directing the military might
of the coalition. But since he has take over as the leader of the Imperium,
well now he has to sit in meetings about finance and gets reminded that he needs
to talk about PI production at the weekly fireside.
He still keeps an eye on our channel in Mumble though. My sole contribution to
the SIG now is to remind people in our channel that another anniversary has hit.
Live from Reavers Mumble
Maybe we’re not doing much as a group any more… though we do get invited to the
Black Ops SIG and their deployments still, which is not nothing. But for now
Reavers is more memories of good times and fun deployments than going out and
doing anything these days.
There is a lot of history there and quite a few systems that I know associate
with Reavers events. And I can always flip through my past anniversary posts to
see what was happening.
* A Year of Reavers
* Two Years of Reavers
* Three Years of Reavers
* Four Years of Reavers
* Five Years of Reavers
* Six Years of Reavers
* Seven Years of Reavers
* Eight Years of Reavers
Next year it will be a decade.
This entry was posted in entertainment, EVE Online, Null Sec and tagged Asher
Elias, Reavers on October 17, 2023 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
THAT LAST GOBLIN BOSS AND GETTING BACK TO THE DRUID GROVE IN BALDUR’S GATE 3
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When last we left the attempt of Potshot and myself to co-op our way through
Baldur’s Gate 3, we had managed to defeat the second boss in the goblin halls,
Minthara the drow, and had liberated Halsin the druid, who likes to go around in
bear form and kill goblins, a posture that worked for us.
Baldur’s Gate 3 splash screen
That left us with Priestess Gut, the third and final boss we needed to slay. We
had a run-in with her last time, which did not end well for us.
This does not end well
Priestess Gut is in a large hall with an entourage of goblin helpers who were,
as a group, too much for us to take on. Even with the addition of the level 5
bear druid, I wasn’t sure how well this would go, so I went to Google to see
what the internet suggested for Priestess Gut. This consensus was:
> Use parasite persuasion to get her alone and assassinate her in private.
Cool. I could see that working… had we not had an open brawl with Dror Ragzlin
a couple of posts back that turned all the goblins hostile to us.
We were now kill on sight, so sauntering up to have a polite conversation was no
longer an option. The optimum path is apparently to get her done first. Having
blown that and not being at all keen to save scum our way back to when the
gobbos were all friendly and chatty with us, we went looking for a way to
control the tactical situation in order to keep the goblin numbers from simply
overwhelming us. Our last run was on some open area that allow the hostiles to
come at us from three sides and burn us down quickly.
So we decided to make our stand on a wooden bridge just around the corner from
the room, wooden bridges having worked out so well with Minthara last time. I
realize now, once again, that I did not take very many screen shots of this
fight. But I have a mini-map image that gives the tactical situation.
The cunning plan
We set up on the wooden bridge, which is only wide enough to allow creatures or
characters to stand two abreast. Two individuals can block the bridge, so our
more powerful melee characters could stand up front with the casters and ranged
behind for support. Also, Marcos, our rogue, had more bottles of grease and
some special arrows ready to make this tough on the goblins. This was going to
be great!
So we set up to do that, then sent Lae’zel out with bow and arrow to take a shot
at Priestess Gut, then run back to our lines.
Sniper Time!
That part worked fine. We got the whole room aggro on us and they did, indeed,
follow us up the steps and to the start of the wooden bridge. Marcos threw a
bottle of grease onto the bridge as Lae’zel passed and we were rolling.
There was, however, a problem getting everybody into their final position. We
had the casters and the rogue up front and the bear in the back to support
Lae’zel in the initial phase of the plan to keep her alive, but then the whole
thing turned into a “Three Stooges all try to walk through the same door at the
same time” situation as I tried to get Marcos the rogue back from the front line
while getting the bear up to maul some goblins. This was something that
probably would have gone more smoothly with a single player doing the
positioning, or even in co-op if we had announced our intentions aloud… but
somehow we muddled through and got everybody into their place.
Things were still not quite going to plan. The goblins seems reluctant to walk
out on the grease coated bridge and, when Marcos threw another bottle of grease
to coat where they were standing, we found ourselves coming up short on ways to
set the whole thing alight.
Then the explosive arrows that Marcos was counting on turned out to be of the
AOE knock-back variety, which was fun, but they neither blew up the bridge nor
set the grease on fire. Our plan was not coming together as… well… planned.
And then there was Priestess Gut, who took an aid and decided to run around the
back way to hit us from the rear. Fortunately that was a bit of a hike, so we
were able to fumble our way into a re-adjustment. We started falling back to
the door at our end of the wooden bridge, which finally enticed the goblins to
step our onto their fully greased end, at which point Shadowheart finally landed
a fire spell and set them all on fire. Good for a laugh.
Then Lae’zel and the bear made it to the doorway just in time to have Priestess
Gut come down the ladder into the room on that side. With Fergorin the cleric
they managed to close with Priestess Gut and take her down fairly quickly.
More like Priestess Guts, amirite?
Quest complete! Now we just had to live long enough to reap the rewards.
Priestess Gut’s companion was on the other side of a wall with a gap through
which spells could be cast, but which a player could not pass. So I sent
Lae’zel up the ladder to the platform between the two rooms and set her to
sniping with her bow. The aid was a caster and I thought this might end up
being a ranged duel. But no, the aid was keen to close ranks with Lae’zel and
came up the ladder on his side only to get the heave-ho with a well placed
shove. Still the best feature of the game for us. He tried that a couple more
times until the fall damage finally did him in.
Meanwhile, Fergorin and the bear had returned to the bridge front, the bear
finally squeezing past everybody to start mauling goblins. In the end, there
was a big mess on the bridge and no goblins left alive.
The goblin ranks dead on the bridge
Time to save! Then we went out to loot the field and get everybody patched up
with a short rest. There was a pair of big spiders in a cell beneath Priestess
Gut’s throne and I started to try and communicate with them… but then realized
we had places to be and wasn’t sure if I wanted to pooch our success by getting
tangled up in spider business. We let the spiders be.
Halsin, meanwhile, was very happy with us, thanked us, promised us rewards, then
said he would see us back at the druid grove then disappeared like every escort
quest mob ever.
We cleaned up a bit more. Marcos picked the lock on Volo the bard’s cage.
Nice roll, lots of bonuses
He too was effusive in his praise, promising a song for the ages to tell the
tale of our heroic efforts, then dipped out like Halsin with a “see ya!”
Another quest complete.
So there we were, op success, just needing to get back to the druid grove. We
did what seemed natural to us and headed for the front door to start our walk
back. We had cleared most of the goblins it seemed. We ran into some on the
inside of the front door… two guards on the main floor and three ranged guards
up high on either side… and managed to take them out.
Battle inside the front door
We were not sure what kind of reception we would get on the other side of the
front door. I mean, there was a chance that they hadn’t heard anything, that we
might just walk past them, maybe brain tadpolling somebody at need… or it might
end up being a fight. Either way, we got ready, saved, then stepped out.
Then things went really bad. Yes, everybody outside had received the word that
we were to be slain on sight and we never made it off the front step before we
were not much more than a pool of red mush on the slabs.
Front door melee time
We fought it out to the bitter end just to see how many we could take down
before that ogre simple stomped us. The answer was zero. We managed to kill
zero.
So Potshot restored the game while I went to Google to see how others had
managed to get back to the druid grove after having defeated the three bosses.
I was imagining that maybe there was a back door to the place me might sneak
through or some such.
But no, the answer was, “I just used the waypoint and teleported back to the
Emerald Grove.”
“Waypoints? What are these waypoints?” I was thinking. We you play a game in,
at best, once a week sessions, sometimes the mechanics slip your mind. So once
we were back into the game and standing there inside the front door, I opened up
the map and, sure enough, there at the upper right were some waypoints.
Places to go
We picked the Emerald Grove Environs and insta-traveled out of there.
We had to poke around a bit to find our way back into where the druid were, but
once we found our way in we were able to turn in some quests, which got us all
up to level 4, and hear some of the back story and prep for our next tasks.
Halsin, in particular, was not happy about how things had been going while he
had been away.
Halsin tearing a new one on continuous loop
We got ourselves settled in, update a few things, then saved for the evening to
pick up again next time.
The Story so far:
* Jumping into Baldur’s Gate 3
* Push Comes to Shove with Dror Ragzlin in Baldur’s Gate 3
* Burning Bridges with Minthara in Baldur’s Gate 3
This entry was posted in entertainment, Other PC Games and tagged Baldur's Gate
3, Forgotten Realms on October 16, 2023 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
THE GREAT DIAL TONE DROUGHT OF 96
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Dial tone is pretty simple in concept. It is… or was… a sound that the central
office switch broadcasts over the line when you pick up your phone that lets you
know that the phone and line are operative and the system it ready for you to
dial a number.
Things that come to my mind when I hear the phrase “dial tone”
I say “or was” because it is something that only exists for phones physically
connected to the public phone network by a pair of copper wires. It is not
something that makes any sense in regard to your cell phone or a voice over IP
(VoIP) situation, though many devices will actually play the familiar (to old
people) sound we grew up with. I had a Pingtel VoIP desktop phone that would
play a looped .wav file whenever you picked up the handset. It had nothing to
do with the phone being ready to do anything. It was more an acknowledgement
that it was plugged in and powered on.
For a long stretch, dial tone was an incredibly important aspect of the post war
phone system, especially in the United States. The end of the was and the
beginning of a 20 year run of economic growth and prosperity meant everybody was
going to want and eventually be able to afford to have a phone installed in
their home.
The pre-war phone system, which depended on an army of operators to route calls
by physically making connections on a switchboard. That was a system that
absolutely would not scale. So a grand strategy was devised to automate most of
the system. I wrote previously about area codes and what they meant.
All of this started to be put together in the late 40s and had come to about 80%
fruition by the late 60s. Bell Labs had come up with new technologies,
including the T-carrier technology that, through the magic of time time division
multiplexing, could carry 24 to 672 simultaneous phone calls on a single trunk
line. They laid trunk lines along the railway right of ways because the
railroads were happy enough to get a little bit of cash and that was easier and
cheaper than putting up new poles or towers or trying to bury trunks elsewhere.
Phone switches across the country were slowly updated and upgraded, and the dial
tone was the tip of the spear for this transition, the sound that told you that
the phone was good to go once there wasn’t an operator always at the other end
of the line ready to connect your call.
By the 70s most of North America was wired up, with only some rural outliers
still needing to get operator assistance for things like long distance calling…
my grandparents farm being in one of those areas… and things were going good for
AT&T, which owned the phone lines, rented you the phone, and sent a monthly bill
to most US phone customers.
There were still some enhancements coming in the 70s. Touch Tone dialing, which
was initially sold as a premium, extra cost service to customers even though it
benefited AT&T greatly, showed up and began to spread as did the local area
calling plan.
The local area calling plan was a flat rate monthly fee that let you call,
without toll, phone numbers within a specific radius of your location. Or, more
accurately, within a specific radius of the phone switch at the central office
to which you were connected. In most places, any call that was within your
central office or an adjacent, directly connected central office, was no
additional charge, but bouncing further than that incurred a per minute
connection charge.
It was fairly generous and cheap enough that most people bought it, yet
profitable enough that it benefited AT&T the way a subscription plan benefits an
MMORPG: It makes for nice, predictable income and most of your users barely
access the system enough to make the price worthwhile, so it is a win for the
company.
By the 90s, after the chaos of the breakup of AT&T, the long distance wars, and
the beginning of the reformation of the monopoly through the mergers of the
regional bell operating companies (RBOCs) that were the successor businesses to
AT&T, things were humming along pretty well.
As I noted in my post about starting a BBS, the connectivity to the system had
been modularized and the local phone companies were happy, even anxious, to add
another phone line to your house, apartment, and business. The built-in phone
services, referred to as Centrex commercially, gave the RBOCs lots of add on
services to sell, including voice mail at the phone switch so you could ditch
your answering machine, along with things like call waiting and such.
It was a golden era for them.
Sure, there were these mobile phones showing up, but they still had to connect…
and pay to connect… to the public phone network. They were also rare, being
both expensive and awkward to deal with. They were referred to as “car phones”
for a few years because you needed a car to power them reliably. The
alternative was a “mobile” phone the size and approximate weight of a brick due
to the battery technology of the time.
And then came the internet.
At first that was no big deal. The phone company was happy, as mentioned, to
install a new phone line for you and the population of modem users was small.
They were also seen as outliers, because a business that needed a data line
would pay for a leased line, a pinned up connection between two points that
would be dedicated to and certified for data transmission, though the extent to
which a leased line was better, much less different, than a normal phone line
could boarder on dubious in some circumstances. But the phone company said it
was better, and in some cases required, if you wanted to do data transmission
over the phone network.
Online services, while growing during the 80s, did not tip the balance. The
phone system had been built and honed to near perfection from the view of the
phone company, which meant it had been sized on decades of user data that
indicated that most people didn’t make long phone calls. Or very many phone
calls. For every teen annoying their parents by hanging on the line for hours
with their friends saying, “no, you hang up first” there were a lot of people,
hundreds to thousands, who averaged less than 2 minutes per call.
The system was built on that data, predicated on the idea that we didn’t have
much to say and that we would say it quickly and move on. And that was not
perturbed by the slow increase of modem users for quite a stretch.
To paraphrase Hemingway, online and internet users of the phone system showed up
slowly, then all at once.
In 1994 when services like AOL were growing and connection to the internet was
part of their appeal, there was no real problem. By 1996, in Silicon Valley on
a weekday evening, you could pick up your phone handset and expect to wait from
20 seconds to several minutes to get a dial tone. The solid, reliable phone, a
staple of your life, was suddenly not there for you on demand. Picking up a
handset and not hearing the dial tone… was just weird.
This was no longer a few nerds hogging the home phone line and getting mad when
a parent or roommate pick up the handset and broke their modem connection. This
was, according to the New York Times (article not pay walled for once), an
“Immediate Threat” to the phone system. From the article:
> The sudden shift in use, phone companies say, means that millions of ordinary
> callers — who have come to regard instant access to the phone network as a
> birthright — are facing busy signals or long delays in getting a dial tone.
>
> Growing Internet use “poses an immediate threat to the capacity of the public
> switched telephone network,” concludes a recent study from Bellcore, the
> research arm of the U.S. regional Bell operating companies.
>
> The study predicts ominously that callers and Net surfers alike have not yet
> begun to experience the worst of frustrating delays. Over the next five years,
> Bellcore said, the volume of Internet traffic carried by the local phone
> network will jump to two to five times current levels.
The post-war equilibrium was falling apart and Bellcore, which among other
things published all those expensive blue bound manuals that dictated all the
specifications for the public telephone network, said things were bad and were
only going to get worse.
At the time I was living by myself in a two bedroom apartment in Mountain View
(rent then, $750 a month, rent now $6,000 a month) around the corner from where
the Netscape balloon was inflating rapidly due to all of this interest in the
internet and web browsers. I would get home from work, boot up my computer, dial
into my ISP (Best.com,carefully chosen because they were hosted in the same
central office as my phone line, which meant I might actually get that 28.8Kbps
connection modems were promising) once I got a dial tone, and stay logged in
pretty much all evening because who knew if I could get connected again if I
signed off. I would be playing TorilMUD or reading web sites or sending email
or arguing with people on UseNet.
And more and more people were doing what I was doing. Obsessions with checking
email and all of that was driving more and more people to stay online all the
time.
Disaster was looming.
Yet it never really appeared. Part of that was the phone companies, fearing the
gaze of regulators, something explicitly mentioned in that article, actually
dipped into their huge profits and began upgrading their networks. This went
surprisingly smoothly because many of the upgrades had been sized and planned,
but then put off because why spend money now when things are fine?
Also beginning to show up were alternatives to the old phone network. In 1993 a
mobile phone was a brick-like device. By 1997 the Motorola flip phone… the
first one, not the retro re-introductions… was making mobile phones more
manageable and more affordable. They were still comically large even when
compared to the Nokia candy bar phones everybody had a few years later, but they
were viable and serious one the road sales people… like my soon to be wife…
began carrying them in greater numbers.
Then there were the alternatives to modem beginning to arrive. Cable TV based
internet connectivity showed up, offering fast and always on connections. And
the phone companies themselves started to offer things like ADSL, which still
used their phone network, but which didn’t tie up phone lines and which, best of
all, could be sold for more than a phone line.
In the end, two years down the line people barely remembered that there was ever
a problem. We all still had land lines, and many still had modems… 56K modems
by that point… but the crisis had passed, the way it often does here in the
states. We’re bad and doing anything even a minute before we have to, but once
we set our minds to it the task gets done.
But there was that stretch of time… barely remembered at this point… when the
old reliable dial tone suddenly wasn’t reliable any more.
This entry was posted in entertainment, In Person and tagged Telephone,
Telephone Tales on October 15, 2023 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
THE DEAL CLOSES AND MICROSOFT BUYS ACTIVISION BLIZZARD FOR $69 BILLION
3 Replies
The deal closed yesterday, seemingly moments after the UK gave its final
blessing to the deal, and Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard. I used the
pending acquisition as a frame for a bullet points bit in yesterday’s bullet
points post about Blizzard. Today a bit about the deal itself.
XBox plus Activision Blizzard equals something
Though, really, at this point, what is there left to say? I am sure I’ll find
some words, but an actual conclusion will likely elude me.
It has been a while coming. Microsoft announced its intention back in mid
January 2022. The FTC and the UK’s CMA made some fleeting attempts to hold back
the merger, which gave us a glimpse of the contempt for regulating bodies that
large companies have before they made their token gestures, empty promises, and
no doubt made sure the right people got paid behind the scenes. Stories about
regulators who get lucrative jobs at the companies they regulated after leaving
government service are so common as to be not worthy of coverage.
So yes, no secret, I am not a fan of mergers and acquisitions. That is mostly
because far too many of them are handled badly and end up with a whole of less
value than the independent parts. It is a symptom of the Wall Street “If you’re
not growing, you’re dying” mentality. Companies that stall… which often means
they have a decent, sustainable business… buy companies to simulate growth due
to the perverse incentive structure of Wall Street where, if you buy a company,
it is automatically assumed to be an asset worth exactly what you paid for it,
but if you put more money into R&D that impacts margins and your stock gets
punished.
I’ve been through a few of those mergers, where a company gets acquired solely
to take their customer base or bring in a new product for a price that is
cheaper than developing from scratch. Some times it works out. More often it
does not… but even when it doesn’t, Wall Street gets paid. Those playing the
meta game, the people who couldn’t even tell you what a given company actually
does as a day to day business beyond a generic category, they are the bank in
this game of Monopoly. They always get paid. The house always wins.
I started out in college, where my major was business accounting and finance,
thinking that Gordon Gecko was just eliminating the inefficiencies of the
system. More than 30 years down the line and nearly a dozen such deals later, I
know that the only efficiency being sought is a speedier path for money to flow
into the hands of the already wealthy, usually at the expense of the people
actually doing the work. I am a product of my environment, and Silicon Valley
is an incubator, always at the head of the pack in new ways to consolidate value
into the hands of the wealthy. Anyway, we’ll get to some of that in my
Telephony Tales series of posts pretty soon.
So the deal has been closed. Microsoft issued an announcement with Phil
Spencer’s name on it, which he might even have read before it was posted, about
how important we, the gamers who play their products, are.
There is also a happy video about how wonderful the acquisition will be.
Totally not Microsoft trying to secure a monopolistic position in yet another
market… this is for the gamers.
All the IPs are exploited to send that happy message.
So what happens next?
Nothing. Nothing for a few months. Every company that knows how to do an
acquisition, that actually values the company they have purchased, first and
foremost does not want to screw up their new asset.
So there will be a time of “just carry on as before” while everybody is moved
over into the main payroll system, hooked up with the right email address, and
is signed up for all of the usual things that every new hire has to go through.
And then the layoffs will come. The obvious redundancies will go first.
Executives not listed as critical will get their golden parachutes and will
depart with deeply ingenuous farewell messages. I am sure Bobby Kotick’s will
be a doozy. I hope that one gets leaked, because it will be a comedy of lies.
But at least he will be gone come January 1st. Other execs will stick around,
usually due to an incentive structure to keep them around for six months or a
year in order to maintain continuity. Mike Ybarra will probably be sticking
around for a while I bet. But once the payout hits, we’ll see who Microsoft
really feels they need
The accounting people will be let go once payroll is settled. They’ll need a
few who know the business, but that will probably be under a dozen individuals.
They might keep a local HR person, a familiar face that knows the local staff,
but everybody in a supervisory position will be let go. Groups will be folded
into the main organization, and more redundancies will be remove. Then, as
leases run out, teams will move to new locations. Who needs those Activision HQ
buildings up in San Mateo when Microsoft has open office space in Mountain View
and Sunnyvale?
My point in all of this is that in any such deal there are always winners and
losers. That Bobby Kotick will be the biggest winner will stick in the craw of
many. Take solace in the fact that at least he’ll be gone. Meanwhile, the
losers in such deals are almost always employees and consumers.
Still, it will likely be the happiest, softest sort of merger, if for no other
reason than Microsoft has the money to do it right, values the asset they
purchased, and because Activision Blizzard was reported to be a crap place to
work. For those that remain, life will likely be better.
For consumers the jury is still out. It would be cool to have more games on the
XBox game pass I am sure. But we don’t know what we’ll actually get.
And then there are the games themselves, the place where we will now interact
with Microsoft. For me, that is WoW in particular. Even in its diminished
state WoW is still between 25% and 50% of Blizzard’s revenue. It might get
overshadowed when something like Diablo IV launches, but it delivers that
subscription revenue every quarter. When there was only one set of footsteps in
the sand… that was when WoW was carrying the whole company because it had
nothing else going on that quarter.
So WoW was a big fish, an important asset, for Blizzard, one they needed to keep
producing to be viable, to be able to fund all their other projects. I always
laugh when I see somebody suggest that Blizz should let WoW go, be done with it
and move on. WoW is literally the central pillar of the company. They will
never willingly let it go.
Now, however, WoW is in a much larger pond, with owners for whom Candy Crush is
a more important part of the deal, where Call of Duty is much higher on their
priority list than yesterday’s MMO news. Somebody is going to look at how many
resources are dedicated to keeping Azeroth relevant and start comparing it to
many of the other games in its stable and what resources they need. Maybe WoW
will remain worth the investment, or maybe somebody’s spreadsheet will indicate
that resources would be better applied to some other title. We don’t know. We
won’t know for some time. But it is a different world now and WoW is no longer
an obvious crown jewel for its owners. In the overall Microsoft business line,
XBox is maybe 10%, well behind the Azure cloud services, Office, and Windows
units. And WoW will just be a small slice of that XBox business. We’ll never
see WoW or Blizzard on a quarterly report again… except maybe as color on a side
bar.
Anyway, just some rambling thoughts to mark the occasion. The deal is done.
Now we wait for the results to come in.
Related:
* Microsoft – Welcoming the Legendary Teams at Activision Blizzard King to Team
Xbox
* Game Informer – Every Activision Blizzard Game Franchise Xbox Now Owns
* Massively OP – Microsoft’s Activision-Blizzard buyout is official
* Game Dev – Activision Blizzard joins Xbox after Microsoft completes seismic
acquisition
* Game Dev – Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick won’t lose his job before the
end of 2023
* Ars Technica – Microsoft completes $69B Activision Blizzard deal, its biggest
merger ever
* WCCFTech – Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick Will Depart the Company on
January 1st
* WCCFTech – Original Xbox Co-creator Mocks Activision CEO Bobby Kotick
* GameIndustry.biz – Finally, the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard acquisition
saga is over
* Techdirt – Microsoft, Activsion Blizzard Announce Completion Of Acquisition
This entry was posted in Blizzard, entertainment and tagged Activision,
Microsoft, Rambling Detected on October 14, 2023 by Wilhelm Arcturus.
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