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Computing Gaming Rants! World of Warcraft

Quitting World of Warcraft

Onto New World and FFXIV

I triggered my WoW subscription cancellation last night for only the second time since 2006, I have been playing since 2006 mid-vanilla (I had a 9 month break in WoD where there wasn’t anything to do than jump around your garrison before I returned for Legion after a work colleague was telling me how good it was) 

I realised im paying £120 a year for a game that I can barely stomach to play at the moment, it has little to do with the recent sex scandals that have taken place at Activision Blizzard more to do with multiple issues with the game that I cannot look past these days, its impacted my enjoyment of the game and ill list those reasons below for you to see why I can’t face the game anymore, the enjoyment has been sucked out of it for me.

  • Complexity of rotations for certain classes – I was playing with a RL friend and rerolled to join him on CoA-EU, I was struggling when levelled then to get above 3k on my shadow priest, despite it being 220 ilvl geared it had a massively complicated rotation where any deviation on rotation means that you tank your DPS, this is not fun and even feels like a fun tax in the game, especially as I was reading three different sites on how to max and spending absolutely ages on the target dummy trying to improve but still being low dps despite my gear to the point where I was getting abused for it as being “carried” through a 10. Swapping to Shaman was the same as Elemental, if your timing is off your DPS blows hard I found, it just shouldn’t be this hard to do average to decent DPS for your class, its more catered for theory crafters than normal players I feel because of this with lots of classes having overly complicated rotations.
  • Toxicity of the player base at large – this has deteriorated very badly over the years, I levelled a paladin as a tank and started gearing it for Mythics through heroics, pulling “non-standard” routes which I was unaware of as a thing was painful and off-putting, even explaining that I hadn’t tanked in about 5 years got me abused, pulling extra packs to create a bit of room around the edges of a boss and being cautious got me booted from groups a couple of times too and further abused because of that. Wipes will see people leave groups, pulling “non-route” trash will see people leave.
  • Boosting and Pay to win – This has gone out of control in the game now and is detrimental to the fun of the game, it fills chat channels with the adverts, it fills the group finder with them also which is a painful process to clear down then and search for groups, when you have a boosted player into your group its detrimental at times as they do not know how to play their class either as they have just been a tourist and carried through it also feeds into the games toxicity quite a lot.
  • Formulaic nature of the grind in game – Mounts/Item Sets/Dungeons/Raids/Parasitic or “borrowed” Power Systems and rinse and repeat per expansion isn’t exactly inspiring stuff and its hard for me to get through it here now, even alt levelling is horribly not fun because of this, I’ve been logging in and not wanting or having the energy to face doing anything in the game at the moment because its just a massive grind to even get to an entry level for raiding or Mythics.
  • Content Drought and splitting it over multiple media – Shadowlands – the nature of this as an expansion feels flimsy to me and lacking in a lot of places, you don’t feel invested in any of the story line or the character development to me and that all feels quite flimsy and non-existent at times the storytelling even compared to BFA before it, especially when they are pushing the narrative down other media revenue avenues which you don’t partake of such as books, when they ignore those books in game then it leaves massive plot holes to overcome.  Suramar was the last zone I generally remember working through the entirety of on my DH in legion and thinking, wow this is actually a massively full zone of activity within a huge encompassing storyline that took a good few weeks to get through, whereas nothing in BFA/SL has any sort of similar feeling to it, the zones feel small and the factions struggle to make you care about them at all in any major way as their leaders all seem to be as dumb as a bag of rocks unwilling to change their operation in light of the obviously bad situation unfolding around them all and just yet again maintaining the status quo of a bad situation until the player intervenes.
  • Playing on dead or dying realms – I rerolled onto a RL friends realm and it was fun with a good bunch of people in the guild initially, but attrition for the game and how its content is severely lacking means that it has died off rapidly now, more players went on breaks and left the game after the opening few months of each raid instance, the guild finished off after HC clears on Nathria and went into hibernation and did the same again now much quicker after Sanctum, there isn’t the high enough amount of people or interest on the realm to clear mythic raids and the guild has repeatedly died because people take breaks to play other games or nothing at all which is a big problem for the game as I see it, if you were like me where you were a little late to the party and wanted to not pug with randoms instead of guildies a KSM achievement then basically you were seeing people raid logging or not playing at all and dropping off more and more until it stopped raiding so you become the only person active online in a guild regularly which is dead then and depressing.  Blizzard needs to merge a lot of the lower population realms now, not link them up, but actually merge them fully together and delete the realms to repurpose them later.
  •  Tanking and Healing are just not fun anymore – Mythics have drained the fun out of these largely and the points I made earlier have helped to make it less fun to carry out these tasks because of the stresses involved in doing these roles, if your a tank and you wipe you will get abused and blamed, same if your a healer and you wipe, it really detracts from the roles at the moment with everyone being squishy too. The fact that our guild tanks find mythic raiding less stressful than mythic dungeons is not a good sign at all either in my opinion.
  • Stinginess of loot and the loot system – I repeatedly ran dungeons at Mythic level and for 45 minutes of work, the game rewarded me with no gear at all and even a paltry low amount of anima power, not an item of any kind, just a minute bit of currency (it was even a dead currency when Korthia landed but still being rewarded everywhere), they have dropped loot levels very low now in the game (it seems about 1 item per dungeon if your lucky) and the “specialisation” system means you have to pick a spec type to get a chance of corresponding items for that spec, there’s no “any specialisation” option and there needs to be one, if I’m playing a druid with 4 possible specs, I’m happy to take any loot, but it still needs me to select a possible spec on each boss to try and channel the loot down to it, its another fix to a problem that no one really had that’s made life a bit harder in the game, its default shouldn’t be set like this.
  • Parasitic Power Systems/Lack of QoL/Alt-Friendliness and attitudes to the players from the Dev Team – This is a factor in removing the enjoyment from the game for me, the covenant system means you cant play all three specs on a character without changing between the optimal ones for that spec, its been pointed out in the beta through to live and ignored until the backpedal position taken by blizzard in the light of the recent legal troubles at the company and its absolutely wrong and should never have happened. The dev teams stubbornness and refusal to implement a lot of persistently asked for QoL systems is becoming too frustrating in the bloated nature of the game and each new expansion bringing another power grind format isn’t exactly setting the world on fire in terms of making me enthusiastic about enjoying the game anymore.  I even rerolled to a more populated realm in a last ditch effort here to be in a more active guild, I levelled a druid and just couldn’t face a renown grind/gear grind and multiple legendary grinds on top it, the games got far too much of that now and none of its fun at all.
  • Classic Loot Rules – This broke a facet of the game I really enjoyed for no real reason with blizzard, It was a fix no one asked for to a problem no one had, it was just mean spirited bullshit from the Dev team I felt and it was the tipping point where I realised they really didn’t like or give a shit about the players anymore, I used to really enjoy farming old instances to pick up the transmogrification sets and weapons, but they brought this nonsense in and changed it to remove guaranteed piece drops off certain bosses to instead offer entirely random loot off their tables, so prince in karazhan no longer guaranteed a headpiece after clearing through it for 30-40 minutes, I couldn’t fathom why they would do this in all honesty, as a fan of the game I wasn’t going anywhere and their already low drop rates meant I had to run some instances repeatedly to get pieces anyway as its still on a time gated lockout for the old content, it was introduced I felt purely to troll the player base even further at the time and should not have been in place at all.

Closing the Account

I am really sorry for the rant nature of the post I made here, but I think my biggest beef of all now is that I can see that the game has completely lost its lustre for me because of all of the numerous bullshit things done to the players by the devs teams and blizzard and what they introduced in recent years and its actually heartbreaking to me personally, this game was really special and a class leader game of its genre for so long with a massive amount of lore and history that made it much more special than all of the competitors and helped get me through some really rough times in my life.

I am lucky in my long time playing before I quit that I have enjoyed some real achievement highs and friendships in this game going back to 2006 when I started as a complete noob in a small vanilla guild and we graduated to having finished vanilla with us having cleared ZG initially progressing properly further in TBC through to downing the LK and beyond, its sad that friends have dropped off in that time as we have gone onwards to a point that there’s just myself and that RL mate who were still playing after all this time together with a newer bunch of people who have no real idea of what the early vanilla/tbc/lk version of wow was and why its revered.

Legion did a lot of good work and recaptured that to a point but its been on a downhill slope since then with worse expansion after expansion to the point where I no longer have any fun or enjoyment from the game anymore, everything feels like a massive ball busting grind now which is off-putting to the extreme, I levelled a hunter to 50 last week but just could not face having to plough through the maw again and all of SL, then have to grind out Torghast again for legendaries and renown to get it mythic ready, it was the final straw that iced the cake containing all of the above.

The grind now is absolutely awful which is sad really as I don’t think I am going to be coming back this time to the game as I have done before, thats sad considering the longevity of playing this game I have under my belt playing since 2006.

The only way I see WoW improving now, would be get the actual fans and players involved in the direct running of the game, not the corporate suits and career company men of current times who run with theory crafting, elitism and just ignore the feedback or opposition to the choices they make and brute force upon the playerbase.

New World

I have started playing this recently after watching some twitch videos of it in the beta and it is very appealing to me in a different way to WoW, its visually stunning as an MMO and pretty open ended in terms of a pvp path or craft experience through the game and im enjoying it at the moment with another work colleague as I make my way around Aeternum, the combat is both very simple and engaging with no massive amounts of rotation involved, My character name is Hargen and my home is Tir Na Nog in EU at the moment if you would like to join.

It has the one thing that WoW doesn’t at the moment – Potential for Greatness and freshness

Same for FF14 too, im playing the free version of that so far and it also understands fun without massive grinds.

Categories
Computing

Long time no posting

Its no lie looking at the page here and seeing the last post was in 2017, thats because there’s been a fair amount of stuff drafted but not posted by me in the recent times, this is largely because I still haven’t found a proper way I am happy to post a blog or what it means to me, some of it was worse than the limited stuff I have let through so far too, not that I am any way a decent writer in the making.

What I did think though in all of this was to make a a recap of things that have gone on within the years in absentia from blogging.

I lost a work colleague in 2017 (bright young lad who was unfortunate enough to be lost to an incident with ecstasy in a nightclub) it was profound as I had been enjoying working with him and help him develop in his second proper IT role of his career. The team I work with has since been bolstered and made a lot stronger with three very able IT professionals alongside me as the department where I work has expanded out nicely in the time here.

I have also managed to complete 2 new IT certifications, one for my role and one for my personal certification renewals.

The work related one I was sent on for my role was the little trumpeted Axelos Resilia certification, which was quite interesting and features a framework for all manners and forms of cyber resilience and security in the modern IT age (it’s the ITIL for cyber-resilience and security)

The second was the completion of the CCDA to renew my Cisco certification this year, I slacked off a bit more than I would have wanted too before starting to study, though I figured that I always wanted to learn network design properly and didnt fancy just redoing my ICND2, it was quite an interesting subject and gave me a better insight into some of the routing protocols and Cisco tech that I have had fairly limited interaction with so far (BGP/EIGRP/Wifi) as well as a good base in pretty much all avenues of their tech. It was quite a painful exam as Cisco tend to make them and took a lot of effort and study to get it down, so I was relieved to pass it with a higher margin than I expected after a tough exam, then I was doubly relieved on leaving the exam to find my car intact as it was the roughest place I have ever taken an exam to date in Newport.

Categories
Computing

One year out (and in)

Its been a few months since I blogged I realised the other day, sorting   out a dns issue for the site.

Also its the anniversary just passed of me switching jobs and leaving local education authority employment to join a medical manufacturing company, one year in and I know without question the right choice for me was made, I find myself working in an environment where its a lot wider and varied, even working away again which can be enjoyable and I realised soon in its nice to be in a place thats not strangled by severe funding issues, political protectionism and keeping stuff together with a wing and a prayer, the only thing missed is the people as the saying goes.

I have decided my next course of study personally, I am going for the CCDA as I need to have a better understanding of the design of a decent network and thats only going to help me with challenges ahead of me.

 

 

Categories
Computing

Field and Project Work

Its been a busy couple of weeks, involving supporting the company at a major trade show in England and on the back of that then, its nice to be at a good stage within the major part of a project I am carrying out – a company wide email migration from Hybrid to true cloud based environment with O365.

Planning and implementing a project on this size while ensuring theres no  downtime is daunting thats for sure, but actually taking the time to plan the majority of the work properly has meant that out of just under 300 accounts, all bar one is migrated over at this point now, with minimal fuss or issues, Phase one completion is looming tomorrow with one account to go on getting the mailbox aspect to the cloud.

Next comes a week of sorting out all the stuff using the server as a relay internally to use accounts and authentication, followed by a left period before pulling the hybrid environment out of operation and switching to pure cloud based email.

All in all its been a fun and interesting couple of weeks so far and high tempo which is always good.

Categories
Computing Networks

Decisions, Decisions…

Since passing the CCNA, after initially being relieved and elated to pass it, I have been wondering as to what next and where do I go from here, initial thoughts were to have a break from it, but on the other hand I think its time to look to the next certification I aim for within networking and buy a book again and start trawling the web for videos.

So far I seem to be leaning towards Cloud, Wireless or Design, though cloud is a large undertaking with two exams, similar to the CCNA it seems, although it does align with my work a fair bit.

Categories
Computing Networks

Mission Accomplished – CCNA Completed

Absolutely chuffed to be blogging after what seems like a long break, I have basically been concentrating on the ICND2 for the last month and getting my CCNA completed, finally passing it today after nearly a year plugging away at it with self study, with a lot of help from one of my friend’s who’s already plugging away at higher cisco certifications and working in industry with them on a day to day basis (something I didn’t have access to in my previous role) and also thanks to my loving wife in releasing me from the nightly care of the children and their bedtime routine to allow me to get work done before tiredness puts a stop to learning for me.

Its still the most enjoyable and daunting IT thing I have done in years as it something outside my comfort zone, I got my ICND1 in April on the first try scraping it and not knowing what to expect, this time around though I managed to fail my first attempt at the exam after basically double guessing myself and letting doubt set in when working through it, so it proves that it can happen to anyone at any age (I’m 36)

ccna_routerswitching_sm

This time around though I let it stand when it came to answers, worked methodically through the questions and kept my nerve to pass, without altering answers on a whim, it was quite an elated feeling seeing the pass at the end, it returned on my investment in a small lab gear no end and many many hours of setting up semi complex networks on Packet Tracer to get it up and running the various switch technologies.

Especially as this is now the third professional IT qualification/accreditations that I have picked up within the last 12 months.

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Computing Networks

Whip is cracked – round 2

I took the same step again for my ICND2 and booked a date for the exam to whip me towards the CCNA, fair play my wife was the one who started cracking the whip to get this done, its made a bit worse for this one as the clock is ticking until they retire the examination announced about a month after I sat ICND1, so I have a window of three months before it effectively retires the exam and I have to start from scratch on the new material, so a crack couple of months study ahead.

I have a bit of a better help this time around, because of the switch of jobs I now have the opportunity to actually access and use Cisco switching in my day to day role, its something thats no longer locked off from my usage in my current job which was the frustrating case previously, so I am getting real first hand experiences finally of setting up VLANs on a network and CLI practice.

Hopefully it will help me pull into shape and get it sorted out in time.

Categories
Computing Networks Personal

Epic times ahead

Its been a busy few weeks for us, so I haven’t got around to updating in a while, first and foremost I have an exciting new job in the offing, its a private sector based job and I am stepping away from local government employment for the second time in my career.  Something I am relishing with my career plan and the new challenges it will bring.

I also passed the 100-101 Cisco exam I had been studying for, which has given me the first half of my CCNA so I am now Cisco CCENT certified to cap off an excellent couple of weeks, following an intense period of revision and study in the run up to the exam.  It was extremely rewarding the feeling of passing it and it was not an easy undertaking as a self study topic and trying to cover everything, but I have it down now to hopefully help me turn it into a full CCNA within the next 3/4 months with a  bit of effort on my part.ccent_network_sm

Onwards and upwards now to 200-101 now for the full CCNA and finish my notice period heading to my new role.

 

Categories
Computing Networks

Countdown to CCENT Exam

I made a leap and booked my ICND1 exam last week, a good friend of mine suggested a while back to get the date booked and give myself a target, so I have done that and have a little under a month to prepare now, I have a few CBT Nuggets videos to finish off with some practical labs on ACLs/NAT and IPv6 and the rest of the course guide book to get through (currently a third of the way through it)

Its given me focus I will give it that and I have also invested in a month of VCE Exam Simulator to get to grips with the question format, I wasn’t far off 50% on my first bash at an exam on there, which isn’t too bad considering theres topic areas which I just don’t have under my belt yet.

Interesting and scary three weeks ahead now 🙂

Categories
Computing Rants!

iOS 9 iPad mini woes

I have realised since the last iOS9 update that both mine and the wife’s iPad Mini (version 1) have both been crawling along horribly slowly and crashing out largely because of adverts on the devices when web browsing on the device.

It happens on Safari and Chrome and its made equally frustrating by the fact that Apple appear to be putting the device out to a legacy footing now, as its an older 32 bit device and apparently you can’t get adblocking software for the non-64 bit devices from my web searching relating to it, which may help the experience.

It seems a new iPad will have to be gotten for me and the wife at some point in the year when it becomes super unbearable, I am betting the next update to iOS9 here now.