#skorpyron

[belghast]

Nighthold and Senpai

Nighthold and Senpai - 3 bosses down and Senpai @warcraft account notices us :)

Last night I managed to pull myself out of my recent funk and actually get more than a modicum of excitement about the prospects of raid night once again.  On Tuesday The Nighthold opened and since we are a Wednesday night raid we hoped that any weirdities would be resolved by then and we could simply get in and start working on clearing new and interesting things.  Thankfully that was the case…

[servillas-blog]

Killed mythic Skorpyron with the guild tonight and even got mythic Chornomatic Anomaly to 47%. Kudos to Legionary-Draenor

[boingo]

the falcosaur mounts are pretty cute!

[robbyodom-blog]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SugVNIZFTPY)

[snowsparx]

[resurrection-raid]

Here is the valiant Nils, after having killed Skorpyron by himself! Ok, so maybe no one else stayed around to pose for a screenshot. Either way, congrats to Resurrection! We are on our way into the Nighthold!

Guild First Kill Skorpyron – Normal! was originally published on Resurrection

[dreamingdolls]

FFXIV, and why it’s unlikely I’ll ever return to WoW

So, inspired by my friend @luniil (who isn’t very active here but does occasionally write down some thoughts on gaming topics), I wanted to try my hand at writing a post about why I’ve grown to love FFXIV as much as I do, and reflect a little on how things were in WoW in comparison.

To preface this; I am not a Final Fantasy player. Nor Warcraft for that matter -- I had not touched that franchise until The Burning Crusade was in the middle of it’s lifespan. I play MMOs, and that’s what led me to both games. I’ve played WoW, Guild Wars, TERA, WildStar, ESO and FFXIV, but only two games on that list have kept my attention for any extended period of time.

I don’t want to spam people’s dash so, yknow.

General Gameplay

Let’s start this off with a flaw of FFXIV -- I’m not going to be sitting here saying the game is perfect. XIV does a horrible job at luring people in with it’s gameplay.

At the earlier levels, you barely have any abilities even compared to what an early WoW character will have. On top of that, the 2.5s Global Cooldown (as opposed to WoW’s 1s) means you won’t be hitting buttons too much early on. This has definitely been the cause of a fair few people giving up on the game early on.

However.

Once you press through that, your list of abilities is far more interesting than anything WoW will offer you. Positional requirements, utility spells, varied rotations and a huge amount of flavor is carefully woven into the class design. While WoW frontloads you with a fair amount of stuff but then doesn’t give you much to add to that in the later levels, FFXIV starts you off slow then gives you the more complex things when you’ve had time to get familiar with the game. By the time you reach level cap, you’ll easily have about 20-30 abilities to use at least semi-regularly, as opposed to WoW usually not going much further beyond 15 or so abilities.

The longer GCD will suddenly start to make sense, too, as a good deal of your abilities are off the GCD, and the gameplay essentially becomes a case of weaving on and off GCD abilities together.

I absolutely love how XIV handles alt classes as well. In essence, you are able to level every class on a single character if you so wish. Instead of levelling your character as a whole, you level your class. So say I’m on my level 80 Red Mage and equip my Dancer weapon, my level will be reduced down to the level I have on my Dancer, and my action bars will simply switch over. I personally adore this system, even if it does mean alts are a lot less commonplace.

Not all classes are available from character creation either. You actually get to unlock classes out in the world, which is a very neat concept.

Story

OHMYGOD THE STORY. Where do I start?

I’m not going to be going into any spoilers here, more so how the story is written. Whereas WoW’s story tends to be written more in chapters that don’t really link together all that smoothly, XIV’s story is an ongoing thing. Information you learned in your first few levels is still relevant today, at level cap, three expansions later.

This allows the characters to have personality. Growth. Whereas in WoW it’s not uncommon for characters to be used as plot devices rather than, well, characters. How many times has there been a discussion on wether Illidan, or Garrosh, or Sylvanas, or who have you, is a villain or a good guy? Well the shocking answer; they’re both. They’re whatever Blizzard needed them to be at the time, for that chapter, and that creates a very jarring experience.

That’s not to say FFXIV’s characters are clear-cut on their allegiances either, however their grey areas happen in a far more natural sense over the course of the story, as opposed to switching back and forth with every patch release.

Oh, and you know how I mentioned I had never played a Final Fantasy game before this? No problem! Each FF game is kinda it’s own game. There are elements that are in every game such as creature design, but as far as the actual story goes you don’t need any prior knowledge of the other games. And even while there are cameos that I’m sure would be that much more fun had I played the source game, they are done in such a way that you can follow things as a complete newbie to the franchise as well. It’s not like you’ll be running into Cloud every few levels (Which, I’ve been told, is rather shocking as Square seems to love milking that character. Anyway, that’s not my rant to make).

Group Content

This is an area where, while there is definitely some overlap due to the nature of MMOs, there’s also a fair few things that set XIV apart from WoW for me.

First off, group size. Groups in XIV tend to be much smaller than they are in WoW. Regular dungeon groups consist of a 1/1/2 tank/healer/dps set up. Raid groups are a mere 8 people with a 2/2/4 setup as opposed to WoW’s massive 20-30 people raid groups. XIV’s equivelant of LFR, which I’ll come back to in a bit, is the only thing to come close to that at 24 people, grouping three raid groups together.

Now in terms of raiding... WoW wins in quantity. XIV wins in quality. While WoW has more fights, let’s be real; who is going to remember fighting Skorpyron?

XIV definitely gets smaller raid content, with each tier only having four bosses. However, we also get a bunch of extra single boss fights sprinkled inbetween. In addition, it’s LFR equivelant isn’t merely a tuned down version of each fight either -- it’s a completely seperate instance with unique bosses *specifically designed* for a LFR environment. To make a list of what you can expect in XIV in terms of raiding;

- Trials (single boss fights) with a regular mode and an extreme mode - Raid tiers consisting of four bosses for 8 player groups, with a regular mode and a “savage” mode. - LFR raids tuned specifically for a 24 player group, usually giving each of the 8 man groups in there their own tasks. - Very rarely, Ultimate fights. These basically are the tip of the iceberg in terms of challenge. I’ve not gotten to see them myself, but from what I hear, they can literally take like an hour for a single pull. They’re definitely meant to be *the* highest challenge.

Group content does not stop there either, though. There’s treasure maps that can lead to little treasure vaults to run with people. The game’s equivelant of World Quests, FATEs, rewards *anyone participating*, giving the whole zone a shared progression bar instead of doing your own quests. This tends to mean that hey, people will actually go and help each other out in the world!

Misc

Here be a bunch of random stuff that I couldn’t really dedicate a specific part to.

- THE MUSIC IS INSANELY GOOD - There’s player housing, and you actually are in a neighbourhood with other players rather than being locked away in your own seperate area. It’s quite cozy. - Most mounts have their own music theme which very nicely adds to their flavor, such as a raid drop mount playing that fight’s soundtrack. You can disable this if it’s not your thing, though! - Oh yeah. Raid bosses have their own soundtracks. - You can customize the very first mount you get with bardings, different colors and even a name, and it can fight with you in the open world. - You can get married ingame which is insanely cute. - There’s this like, Las Vegas-esque place in game with a bunch of minigames and it’s just a lot of fun? Think Darkmoon Faire but not time limited and way bigger games.

Why I Likely Won’t Return to WoW

This bit will get somewhat personal so if you were only interested in the game comparisons, feel free to skip this.

Honestly? Purely from a game standpoint I didn’t enjoy WoW for the last few years I played it. The trap with MMOs is so often the friends you make. They keep you playing even if you aren’t that into the game anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing with my friends still, but had it not been for them I’d have left WoW long before I did.

Warlords of Draenor is often agreed upon to be a poor expansion, but truthfully? I didn’t feel Legion was all that great either. It was better, sure, but the story was still a fair bit of a mess and the gameplay, well... I can only stomach seeing Eye of Azshara so much, you know?

On a more personal note, leaving WoW has been good for my mental health too. I was being harassed and even blackmailed there and it caused constant headaches and drama, let alone making me feel unsafe in what was supposed to be an escape. That’s simply not really a world I’d like going back to.

I’ll never say never, but I will say likely never.

[voidwardenalex]

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[lady-starshadow]

Fran’s Adventure in Nighthold

Guild leader: This is going to be fun, I bet!

Fran: Hahahahaha, yesssss!

Fran: Alright. Time to do what I can!

GL: Try not to stress out TOO much, and you'll be fun!

Fran: PFFFFFT

Fran: Easy peasy!

- It begins -

Fran: O god

- Skorpyron fight begins -

Fran: O god

- Chronomatic Anomaly fight begins -

Fran: O god

- Trilliax fight begins -

Fran: O god

- Spellblade Aluriel fight begins -

Fran: O god

- Star Augur Etraeus fight begins -

Fran: O god

- High Botanist Tel'arn fight begins -

Fran: O god

- Krosus fight begins -

Fran: O go

Fran: SWEET JESUS ITS HIM

- Tichondrius fight begins -

Fran: O god

- Elisande's monologue -

Fran: Oh hey! It's Jennifer Haleeeee-

- Elisande fight begins -

Fran: O god

- Raid over -

Fran: PHEW

Raid leader: Let's do Gul'dan!

Fran: Fine with m-

- Gul'dan begins -

Fran: OH GODDDDDDDdddddddd

- Later -

GL: That was fun, right?

Fran: YEAH

[fancy--tuna]

Calling all WoW raiders!

Hey everyone! I’m doing a research final for my Analysis of Gameplay course, and the topic of my paper is the effect age has on a person’s ability to perform in PvE content. Unfortunately, right now I’m so stuffed with other projects that I’m struggling to find the time to gather my data. 

If anyone would be willing to pitch in, please throw me an ask/message on tumblr telling me you’re allowing me to use your most recent data on warcraftlogs.com for Normal Skorpyron, and also provide your age, character name, and realm. This isn’t going to be published so my professor doesn’t care about how formally I retrieve the data (he’s pretty chill), but if I could get any folks on here, that’d be great.

Also, if you have multiple toons, feel free to shoot me any/all of them! The ones I’m looking for the most are:

All Warlocks

All Rogues

Havoc Demon Hunters

Guardian Druids

Protection Warriors

Holy or Discipline Priests

Restoration Shaman

But I’ll take any and all class/spec combos! Those just make it easy for me to round up. Boost this if you can! My final’s due in two weeks so it doesn’t need a million notes but a good chunk of data would be really appreciated.

[servillas-blog]

Our Mythic Skorpyron kill! (Legionary - Draenor)

[fitzefitcher]

gul’dan pls

skorpyron // toxic - britney spears listen I know the scorpion isn't actually poisonous on account of it being made of crystals, but listen, ok, listen: fuck you

chronomatic anomaly // time is on my side - kai winding so many puns, so little time

trilliax // whistle while you work - adriana caselotti you what's interesting is that snow white does exactly zero whistling during a song that's supposedly about whistling

spellblade aluriel // boys wanna be her (tommie sunshine's brooklyn fire retouch) - peaches while you were being heterosexual I studied the blade

high botanist tel'arn // FROOT - marina & the diamonds "Careful not to singe the buds as you burn!" high botanist, indeed

star augur etraeus // E.T. - katy perry entropy is inevitable

tichondrius // everybody loves me - onerepublic "if you want something done right you have to do it yourself!!" proceeds to summon help for 2/3 phases of the fight

krosus // london bridge (oh shit) - fergie with how much he screams about destroying the bridge you'd think people would move quicker but here we are, with five people dead within the first minute of the encounter because they couldn't be assed to move

grand magistrix elisande // victorious - panic at the disco she has some regerts

gul'dan // genghis khan - miike snow you know it's a little weird that khadgar didn't help out more w/ that last fight since him and gul'dank are #rivals but you know it's whatever

the legion returns // we are number one remix but by the living tombstone - the living tombstone oh good, our ""savior"" has returned : ))))

listen to it here: [8tracks] [playmoss]

[huntinghim-blog]

warmcngerer replied to your post: warmcngerer replied to your post: ...

what a weak end–patch raid holy hell but if you’re 100% i’m so down

the first 4 or so bosses are weak as hell. goroth is just skorpyron with no adds. inquisition is also simple, && it gets even simpler if you decide to take 3 tanks. harjatan you can just brute force the mechanics as long as the tanks know what they’re doing. sass’zine looks like she has a lot of mechanics but they’re just a mishmash of other ones we’ve seen before, && are fairly easy to get through on normal. sisters is a little more complicated, but can be brute forced on normal. host is when it gets a little more tricky.

then you get to maiden && wipe a million times because nobody knows the difference between green && gold.

[erazon]

a commission for a guildie of my warlock and their paladin, following their crushing defeat on the logs after I kicked skorpyron’s ass to hell and back :p

[ashadowstone]

Apparently the 2nd group world kill of Mythic Guldan took 350+ attempts. Guldan is apparently a 10 minute fight. Even if *half* of those attempts didn’t get close... Fuck. That. Noise.