Hearthstone babble and other random gamesFollow

Furthering the liberal agenda.

Ehh... there are plenty of gold sinks in the game still. Of course, legendaries are now BoA, so it'll limit the trade market quite a bit. I think they could have made things work with a gold AH still, but I'm not really complaining. I definitely prefer the new loot system and no AH to what we had. I'm curious as to how much Blizzard ended up making off the RMAH, though.

Here's my Update:

I've been reinvigorated in Middle-Earth. I'm still growing my Warg in the PvMP, but I can only handle 1/2hour or so of roaming the Moors (unless I find some serious action).

I started a Guard and am really enjoying the old content again. I've been almost obsessed with getting to the next area that i can just sort of remember from my first trip through Middle Earth (that was with a Minstrel). I hit 45 this weekend and even joined a Kinship yesterday. Funny thing, I can't for the life of me recall the name of it.

Anyways, after playing some of the other newer rpgs and mmos I'm grateful for LotRO's graphics machine. The game still looks good and plays good (though Turbine did have a glitch with their bandwidth provider this weekend - it was short-lived). and has a lot of distractions to offer.

Following up on Rust, I've been playing on a small private server and no one has hassled me although I expect that the "newbie" period is about over (which is fine). One mitigating factor to getting killed/raided is research. You can find a shotgun, use a research kit on it and then be able to make shotguns in the future from the raw materials (metal ore, wood, etc) in the game. So if you have some decent recipes under your belt you'll never quite fall back to "dirt farmer" for long and have something of a head start towards rebuilding.

Having spent a few days now in it, the game feels very Alpha (which it is, of course). Besides silly stuff like all animals dropping "raw chicken breast" there's tremendous swaths of the geography populated with nothing. Roam too far from the core area and you can easily get lost in a vast wasteland of dirt, mountains and trees with no animals, resource nodes, buildings, etc. And good luck finding your way back home before you starve with no in-game map or compass. When this happened to me, I finally realized it made more sense to suicide and start over than waste the hours trudging across nothingness and praying to relocate "civilization". I wonder if part of the brutal newbie curve can be alleviated by populating the rest of the map and thus spreading people out. Keeping most of the old civilization structures (radioactive factories and stuff where you find the best loot) in the center to give people a reason to congregate and potentially fight over the treasures there but making it also practical to live in the hinterlands and scratch out a life there. Perhaps adding some scattered buildings with useful but less desirable loot than the center complexes hold. The game is interesting but I couldn't recommend it to anyone who wasn't willing to essentially play a tech demo (unlike say Kerbal Space Program which I understand is very playable as its intended).

Probably giving away a bunch of free games from bundles.

Edit: well there was a whole bother page I didn't see

Edited, Mar 6th 2014 1:33pm by TirithRR

South Park, the Stick of Truth, entertained me for a few days. I pre-ordered it & applied a discount from GmG, so I'm not super disappointed in the pay/play time ratio, but may have been if I paid full retail.

I played the PC version & had no bugs a crashes at all, which some reviewers seem to be having. The game play, while relatively simple, does present challenges on occasion.

Its the closest to playing an episode of South Park you could ever get. If you like South park, you'll like this game.

The biggest issue I had with it, besides how short it was, was that unlike the episodes (that have a point they want to get across), all the offensive humor is there...but it isn't actually saying anything. Its like they went out of their way to make the most offensive game possible, which they succeeded in, but without anything to say it just comes across as crass. For example: I repeatedly failed a QTE event where my character was pretending to be a doctor in the abortion clinic, Randy was pretending to be a female patient, & I had to prove to some men-in-black types that I really was a Doctor by giving Randy an abortion.

I didn't actually read the prompts (as I was clicking through them), so I messed up a bunch of times & kept aborting Randy's balls. Later on in the same scene, you fight aborted fetus **** zombies. Then its on to the next scene.

While I haven't kept up with the last 5 or 6 seasons, I have watched the occasional episode & pretty much every character in South Park history seems to at least make a cameo. It was fun & funny, but ultimately unfulfilling. What I don't really get is how they got away with actually mentioning Facebook, Taco Bell, & "the Dragonborn" so many times & didn't get sued...

Canada was pretty funny, though.

Like I said, it was a fine game. And while the twist at the end was good for a chuckle, there was no "OH, THAT'S WHY THEY DID THAT!" moment in the game that gave a point to the shenanigans, unlike the TV show.

I mean, they even reference it. "Aren't **** Zombies overused?" Yup, so now we're going to give you aborted fetus **** zombies!

I would expect this from a Family Guy game. I expect South Park to step up their game a bit.

Edited, Mar 8th 2014 6:16pm by Omegavegeta

O.o Maybe you've just gotten reeeeeeally unlucky. Playing on my DH on PS3, almost everything has DEX on it. I was dying for a long time for a decent STR weapon for my Templar follower. Useless drops can be used in crafting. You really should be getting decent stats on them.

The PC and console versions have different systems; they're not exactly intended to be mirrors of each other. That said, the console version was launched with many of the loot changes that are in the PC patch. Of course, since the patch dropped on PC, I'm back to preferring the PC version. I'm assuming that the ability adjustments and stuff will come to consoles when the expansion comes out.

Edited, Mar 8th 2014 7:31pm by Spoonless

What level are you? Looking through some loot after a quick run, I'm seeing all the blues with random stats, with the yellows and legendaries mostly having class-related stats.

I have some legendaries I could give you, but I think I salvaged most stuff under 60. Also, I'll run some Inferno stuff with you whenever. I think I have a bow and a couple crossbows (I know there's at least one with 1400-some odd damage and a socket you could have) you could choose from, and some rings and maybe gloves and bracers. I still need to work on my Barb, too. I need the tier 13 Amethyst plan; it never seems to drop, which is annoying. I kind of want to make a dual wield build with a bunch of LoH and just tear through everything. I could give you some high level gems, too, if you'd like. At least a ruby for +EXP.

I'm pretty sure I could do Inferno on Master II or III without a ton of issue on my DH. I usually just run Master I because I don't have to pay a lot of attention. I don't really get upgrades frequently anymore on the Inferno characters, but I don't remember ever really having an issue finding decent stuff.

Edited, Mar 8th 2014 8:12pm by Spoonless

Oh, OK. You're probably still getting mostly blue drops? Anecdotally, that would explain the poor stat distribution, given my own experiences.

I don't think I have much that level range. Maybe the level 22 crafted legendary shield. I think my follower had that for a while. I should see what other characters I have. I also want to clear Inferno on a HC character, but I won't be doing that in a public game.

I really enjoy the directional dodge.

Hearthstone is fun so far. Have to really work on my deck-building.

Druid was super weak when I last played, I think. At least, it seemed fairly established as the weakest deck when I was playing. Whether or not that was fair is another story.