2014

Well, another year is behind us.  It went pretty quick too.  Overall, for me, it was a decent year.  I don't think there are any major achievements for me to speak of, on the blog or in life away from the keyboard.  That's ok, not every year can be crazy.  Sometimes, no bad news is pretty good.

Ever since Google Reader and Warhammer Online shutdown, the blog has been suffering a bit.  It is 6+ years old, so the audience has dissipated.  How much?  I'm not sure.  I don't really keep track of numbers anymore.  I make content because I enjoy it, and hopefully those of you that still visit do too.

As for games,  I mostly played SWTOR and ESO this year.  SWTOR being the majority of my time.  It was a good year for the game with Galactic Starfighter, Galactic Strongholds, and Shadow of Revan being released.  Honestly, I'm not sure how they can top that with this coming year.  They really don't get enough credit for how much they actually did.

ESO has been on the back burner, but I am still subscribed.  My policy is to subscribe to 2 games at a time.  I've been letting the game mature a bit.  I still really like the solo experience, so I am looking forward to returning to it soon.  I am a little sad that they have not really added any solo content since launch.  I don't need it, but I would feel better knowing Bethesda had plans for it.

As far as non-gaming projects went, most of my time was spent developing Social Questing (Sites with Benefits).  It's a fun distraction which still gets used from time to time.  I'm pretty surprised how hard it is to get people to take advantage of it, but oh well.  I did it for me mainly.  My new project is with the Forge.gg guys.  I am really excited to help out with this because I think it is pretty awesome.

I think that about sums up 2014 for me.  Hope you all had a good year and see you in 2015!

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Shadow of Revan Finished

Last week, on one of my days off, I finally managed to finish the Shadow of Revan expansion.  It took me a few weeks to do, mainly because I did things in bite sized chunks instead of long gaming sessions.  There will be some minor non-story spoilers in this post.  At the end, I was at level 59.5.  I figure I'll run some dailies to get this to 60 when I feel like venturing into PvP again.

The final fight with Revan was really cool.  It was great to fight alongside of the characters you dealt with throughout the expansion.  They had different effects, animations, and things to say.  Sure, the fight was never really in doubt, but it was fun none the less.  And the story, I was pretty satisfied with how it ended.

Overall,  I was very pleased with the Shadow of Revan expansion.  It was well worth $20.  If BioWare could somehow do this multiple times per yer, I'd gladly pay up.  I know that is just wishful thinking though.  While I was happy with it, the expansion was not perfect.  I'll go over this in another post though.

So for now, I will be visiting some other games.  I've been playing SWTOR solely for months, so I am looking forward to switching things up a bit.  Onward to The Repopulation and Elder Scrolls Online!  It won't be long before I am back in SWTOR PvPing though.

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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you!  It was pretty successful around the Werit household.  The kids got a lot of gifts, including a Nintendo DS.  I got some neat stuff to, especially a Logitech G930 wireless headset.  I'm really looking forward to setting that up.  Sadly, one of my daughters is sick today so that pretty much sucks.  I think she is still having fun though.  Hope all is well with you all!

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Impending Holiday

Wow,  how is it almost Christmas already?  So my company has a new policy this year, which effectively forces me to take a week and a half off from work.  This is pretty much a first for me, so I have no idea what I am going to do with all of that time off.  I suppose I could play games, but that is a lot of gaming.  I don't quite have the stamina anymore.  Maybe I'll go see a movie, American Sniper looks good.  That's assuming we're allowed to show it.

Coming up with a Christmas list this year was especially tough.  I did ask for a few gaming related items though.  The big ticket item would be a set of wireless headphones/microphone.  The pair I have works fine... but who wants a wire?  I also asked for Amazon gift cards, which I plan to use to purchase Cartel Coins for SWTOR.  The only game that I asked for was Far Cry 4 for the XBox One.

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Blood Hunt Bosses

Last week, when I entered the Blood Hunt Flashpoint (Solo), I recorded the boss fights.  They are usually the most interesting parts of an instance, so I thought why not.  The Mandalorians and Torch were pretty fun fights with good audio.  I actually died during the last fight, which is shown in the video.  The creature fights were just ok.  Overall, it was a pretty fun instance.

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New Opportunity

Some big news on the Werit front.  Well, sorta big.  I am now the Community Evangelist for Forge.gg.  What is Forge?  It's an always-on streaming service with a built in highlight editor.  Don't worry, it only records game footage, not your whole screen.  It sits in the background and streams whenever you start up a game.  When you are done playing, an editor pops up where you can make highlights.

It is sort of like Twitch, but not really.  There is no extra software like XSplit or OBS needed.  The interface is much better, in my opinion.  It's also less focused on personality, and more focused on games.  I consider it casual streaming.  As someone who loves to watch streams, but doesn't want to 'be a streamer' it is right up my alley.  So I am really excited to be involved.

What does a Community Evangelist do?  Well, a lot of what I do now anyway.  I'll engage with the community, talk about Forge and games, write some blogs, do Twitter stuff, and help where I can.  It should be fun!  I don't expect much to change around here as a result.

Forge is still in Early Access, but if you want to try it out I can help with that.  Just let me know!

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SWTOR Q&A Questions

Last week, I started to gather questions from Reddit to pass on to BioWare.  Overall, the response was pretty good.  A lot of questions were asked, but I could only take the top 10 based on points.  This, of course, caused some angst among some of the community who wanted different questions asked.  That is pretty much unavoidable though, so I won't let it bother me.

Below are the questions which I sent to BioWare.  As it is the holiday season, we probably won't get the answers until after the New Year.  Once the responses come in, I'll post them to Reddit and then on here.

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1)  When will 12x return, and in what form?

2)  Right now the collections, achievements, and crafting windows are all sorted into collapsible categories. This would be great, but the fact that the menus always start fully expanded is very frustrating. Why was this decision made and is there any chance of this changing?

I would like to see, in order of preference, remember what I had open/collapsed last time, start with all collapsed, or have a collapse all button. Are there technical limitations preventing these from being implemented? It would be a HUGE QoL improvement for crafters and completionists like me and I think most people would like to see improvements to collections.

3)  What is your favorite feature added post launch?

4)  What can you tell us about the costume system?

5)  Are there any plans to backport [SOLO] mode to the older flashpoints in the game?

6)  Can old operations and flashpoints be "scaled up" into level 60 content in a way that still allows level 50/55 players to experience the original content while providing more options for end game content at level 60? (Similar to SM/HM except you would select the level first then the difficulty.)

7)  Can we get the ability to search for COMPANION GIFTS please? Like a heading for them, and then sub menus for type (military, cultural, trophy, etc) and also possibly rank?

8)  Gameplay wise, Treek is basically the best universal companion there is. Between having on demand tanking/healing capability from level 1, smart cc, heavy armor and the ability to be kitted out with legacy gear, her skillset and usability are simply superior to any other companion.

Now here's the question: Will we ever see a companion who is as good as that but not an EWOK?

9)  What's the road map for Operations? We had a full year of DF/DP and even with NM mode added during the summer months the content got stale pretty quick. Can we expect new Raids (not-NM versions of existing content) in 6 months? 1 year?

10)  When can we expect to see the Nar Shaddaa Nightlife event again?

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Battle of Rishi

Over the weekend, I finished up Rishi with the Battle of Rishi flashpoint (solo mode).  The premise of the instance was pretty cool.  It was pretty critical for the story so I had high hopes.  I was especially pleased with Blood Hunt coming into this.  Sadly, I ended up being pretty disappointed.

There was nothing really special about the setting.  It was nice, but felt generic.  In fact, nearly all of it takes place leading up to the cool objective, instead of inside the cool objective.  The sky was filled with a space battle, so that was cool.

The bosses in this instance were also underwhelming.  Two of the fights centered on the theme of Republic/Empire traitors working together.  That can be interesting, but there was not any cutscene or even good audio for them.  So the fights really didn't have any personality.  The last fight involved a walker, which was cool.  There is some decent audio and interesting things going on in this one.

Overall, the instance was trivial.  I understand why it has to be easy, but they could raise the difficulty a little.  I'd like to see not paying attention punished at least.  I'm still a fan of how these Flashpoints are integral to the story though, even if this one wasn't up to the Forged Alliances/Blood Hunt standards.

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Pilgrim's Shadow Packs

After a short hiatus,  I am back with a video.  This weeks showcases the Pilgrim's Shadow Cartel Pack.  I opened maybe 5 of them, with decent results.  Sadly, I did not get any Revan Reborn gear from the packs, I would have sold that on the GTN :)  I also talk a bit about the expansion.  The video takes places on the wonderful planet of Rishi, where I have spent the last week and a half.

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Cutscenes are Overrated

One of the criticisms levied against the Shadow of Revan expansion is that there is not enough voice over/cutscenes.  The main story is full of cinematic sequences, but the side quests are not.  Instead, you get a traditional window of text along with some spoken dialog.  In the base game, almost every side quest had a cutscene.  In Makeb, the side quests were usually just a datapad which consisted of just text.

I think they found an excellent middle ground with SoR.  The dialog the side quests include is usually pretty good.  It's often times a mini-story and not a single statement. It's also pretty high quality, which we have come to expect from BioWare.  I actually don't miss the cutscenes at all.  Sure, they are great for the main quests, but I don't need them for every mission.  They just get tedious after a while.  Instead, save them for the important moments.

I've seen a number of people saying how this is just another example of them moving towards a WoW system.  I'd have to disagree.  If WoW had quality voiced dialog with every quest, I might actually be interested in doing their quests.  Overall, I am pretty pleased with the side quests in Shadow of Revan.  Keep up the good work BioWare!

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Reddit SWTOR Q&A

I will be doing another Q&A with BioWare about SWTOR soon.  This time, I want to change things up a bit.  I'll be taking the questions from the SWTOR subreddit, instead of making up my own.  I think this is a great way to get the community involved.

The way it works is simple.  I'll take the top 10 questions, per points, and submit them to BioWare.  I'll then post the answers on Reddit.  We likely won't get answers back until after the new year.  Want to participate?  Head over to the link below.  Be sure to upvote the questions you like :)  I'll gather the questions on 12/15.

http://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/2onkns/swtor_qa_call_for_questions/

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Blood Hunt

My gaming goal yesterday was to do the new SWTOR Flashpoint, Blood Hunt.  One of the nice things about the expansion is that the flashpoints are now a part of the story instead of being one off adventures.  As such, they have a solo mode.  There is some scaling going on and you get a super droid to help you out.

So I got to the point in the Rishi story where I was sent into Blood Hunt.  Basically, I had to question a famous Mandalorian.  You just don't ring the doorbell, of course.  Mandalorians are a feisty bunch, kind of like Klingons.  So I had to fight my way to some answers.

Overall, I thought the flashpoint was fantastic.  The setting/environment was very well done.  It had a dark hunter's preserve feeling about it.  The first few bosses were all animals.  They were pretty easy, and nothing too memorable.

Then we got to the Mandalorians.  This is where things started to get interesting.  The fights were a lot more fun and the voice overs were great.  To be fair, the whole experience was pretty easy.  I did actually die during the final fight, but the 2nd time around it was no sweat.

So great job BioWare.  I am really looking forward to the next one, Battle for Rishi.  Heck, I'm even tempted to try out the group version now that I know the fights.

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Razer Gear Giveaway

The folks over at Noobist.TV, who I partner with, are holding a big holiday season giveaway.  They are giving away a Razer mouse, keyboard, or headset.  Whichever one you want, up to $80.  It's a pretty sweet deal!  The winner will be drawn on December 10th.  They are using my Social Questing system, so entering is easy.  Do as many quests as you want to better your chances.

Go here to participate:

http://www.socialquesting.com/site?id=37fb4a8d-6c2f-4ede-a9d5-5a17c58abc2e

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Shadow of Revan Impressions

I've been playing SWTOR's Shadow of Revan for a couple of days now, so it is time to write a bit about it.  I would have done it yesterday, but work had other plans for me and I forgot :(  So I am still on Rishi, and still level 55 after 2 days of playing.  Of course, I only play an hour and a half at a time.

Opening.  The intro cinematic was pretty awesome.  It was great that some of my companions got new dialog.  It set the stage well.

Rishi.  Rishi, and Raider's Cove, looks really nice.  The world design team did a good job here. It doesn't feel like any of the previous worlds.

Red Hulls.  The whole Red Hulls story was pretty funny.

Disciplines.  With the new Disciplines system, my Gunnery Commando feels the same as he did with the skill tree system.  Only difference so far is that I have a new button to press.

Story.  The story is pretty good so far.  I like it better than Makeb.

Lag.  It's been a lag free experience for me.

Side Quests.  There are not too many of them, and they have struck a nice balance between text and voice-over.

Lore.  There feels like more lore (codex entries) to read on Rishi than there was on Makeb.

Security Chests.  They have quite a bit of credits in them.  I've gotten 30k a few times.  Plus, they respawn fast.

So far I am enjoying it quite a bit!  I'm really taking my time.  I have not even used a mount yet, instead I'm walking everywhere and taking it all in.

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Shadow of Revan launches!

Today is the day!  SWTOR 3.0, Shadow of Revan, goes live.  I was tempted to take some sick time today and immerse myself in launch day shenanigans but work had other plans for me.  Instead I am working from home, giving me a bit more time to play today than I normally would have.  I'll let you in on a little secret, I have been in the closed beta for SoR for a while.  That's about all I can say about it.

I only have a few goals for my playtime today.  Hopefully it all goes smoothly and I can actually get some time in the game, of course.

Disciplines.  With the new skill system, I need to get my Trooper sorted out.  I am going to stick with Gunnery for the time being.  I'll also need to get my hotkeys setup since some skills are going away.

Crafting.  I can't forget to pick up the next tier of crafting skills.

Rishi.  I hope to at least do a quest or two on Rishi.  I'm sure it will be crowded, so I am not going to rush things.

Those are my goals for launch day.  I am going to leave things like the new Cartel Packs for the weekend I think.

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SWTOR Gets More Solo

SWTOR has always been a solo friendly MMO.  You can do your whole class story without needing to group with anyone.  Grouping was only necessary for Flashpoints and Operations.  This led to a bit of a disconnect.  In 2.0, we saw Operations become the ending points of storylines, like in the Dread Palace for the Dread Masters arc.  Players could experience the lead up to it on Oricon, but unless they grouped that was as far as they got.

In 3.0 they aim to fix this issue and more.  The two new Flashpoints will have solo modes, using droid assistants.  So all players will get to experience them without having to group.  Operations will NOT be solo, but they have gone a different route.  The Revan storyline can be finished by players without completing the Operations.  The details are still hazy, but players can choose a solo route or to do the Operation.

Overall, I am pretty happy about this new philosophy.  I would do Flashpoints just once so I could experience them.  Now I can do them at my own pace instead of dealing with a group.  I also don't do Operations.  It would have sucked to play through the Revan expansion but not get to see the ending.  Now, I'll be able to which is great.  It will be interesting to see how this philosophy plays out over the coming year.

Is this good for the health of the game though?  Will it lead toward longer queues, less guilds, less end game competition?  I'm not sure.  I think it will just remove people like me who just want to do things once to see the story.  That's probably a good thing, as I'm just a dirty tourist in raids :)

Tomorrow Shadow of Revan launches!

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