Weekly Character Update

Vice Admiral Zombee
            So started on the new Rep, Species 8472 Counter Command. Made it to Rank 1 already and working on rank 2. Also ran the new FE, Surface Tension, enough times to pick up all of the awards. SO will not be running it any more. Also working on the last bit of the Romulan Rep Space set for the USS Curren, the captains yacht. After that, I will just max out the Undine Rep and then park him till the next special event comes out. Also have finished every Storyline mission for him. Including the remastered Undine vs Borg Story Arc. The game will not let me run the new starter missions for the Feds so that is the only series that I cannot run on this character.

Vice Admiral Danic
            Continued to run up the reps for all of the current reps but the Undine. The Undine Rep will be worked on once Vice Admiral Zombee can buy the commendation and hand it over to him. I also have run the FE once and plan on running it three times to get all of the rewards. I also have completed all of the missions that I have built up on the character as well as the remastered Undine/Borg Story Arc. Danic will continue the Rep grinds, but with being Tier IV on all of old ones, it won't be long till he reaches max level and gets parked.

Lieuntenant General Sisteric, Lieutenant General Torc and Vice Admiral Grell
            These guys have played through the FE once and then have been parked as I get the Rep Grinds and missions completed on a one by one basis. Once Danic is done, Grell will be next, then Sisteric and then back to Torc. Once I have Torc done is when I will make a new character. A new Rommie will be next. Probably make a Reman Tactical officer next.

               As a thing that is being planed for my characters, All tactical captains will have the latest Rep gear. My engineers will be themed towards a particular foe and tanking. And my Sci Captains will be more medical mode and probably Fleet geared. But I will make more choices as I get all of the captains created.

       Well that will be it for now. Till next time, Enjoy!

Weekly Character Update

Lieutenant General Torc
     So I got him to Level 50. Yay!!! and picked up several more ships and veteran rewards. But I am only part way through the Cardassian storyline. So I will continue to finish the story line for him when I can. But with Season 9 now released, I don't think I will have that time for a bit. Even so, I will be doing the new content with this before Lieutenant Sisteric will for the KDF.

Vice Admiral Danic
     I ran through the Nimbus story arc for this character after Torc had reached maxed level. Now he has to complete the missions gained from the reps. Then Season 9 came out and now I have to do the new "remastered" missions for the Borg and Undine with all of the characters. I did nothing else because I have not played this guy since Season 9 went live.

Vice Admiral Zombee
      So Season 9 came out. I logged in with this. First thing I had to do was adjust the default video settings. Then I had to select all of my Species and Rep traits. And then I went off and did the the new FE. And it was AWESOME. The timeline has been advanced. Space battles over Earth and Qo'nos. Ground Combat on ESD. And all against the Undine. With a special appearance of some alien race at the end. Lots of plot holes filled while new mysteries were opened up. And, as a Fed point of view, this was very well written. I am going to do this on Torc, for the Klingon version, and on Grell for the Romulan version to see how the dialog changes. Also started the new Undine rep on this character and ran an Undine STF for the purpose of getting the marks to start the mission. Was nice that I only needed to run the mission ONCE to start the rep projects. Can't wait to have the time to do this for all of the characters.

      So that is what I did with my characters this week. I hope you are having fun and liked the progress. Enjoy!

Weekly Character Update

        STO Characters all did the Academy Event this past weekend. They each got the special DOff. Then Vice Admiral Zombee, Vice Admiral Grell, and Captain Torc all did the scanning events to collect the particles to get the purple DOff's.

        Captain Torc is now level 30 and picked up his Android BOff. I let my eldest daughter design this BOff's appearance and called it Emm Daa Saa, and Engineering Bridge Officer. Off to Nimbus now. With the double XP, I am going to Get Torc Leveled fast and then work on the left over missions on all of the current maxed out characters. If I get all of that done before April 22, then I will start on my second Rom Republic character.

    So that's what I have done so far. Off to the next week and you all Enjoy!

Weekly Character Update

Airholen the Explorer
      Once again tried to get gear from Ordos and The Celestials. Once again I got only gold. And this really is why I am losing desire to play WOW. No control over my own gearing and destiny in the game. I am totally at the whim of some random number generator. This isn't fun. This isn't even interesting. It is only frustrating and disheartening. Take RNG out of Gearing is the only way to solve this. But they cling to this antiquated system for reason that defy any logic that I can see.

Dreadwind of the Nightfall
      Decided to try and get him leveled up. By Airholen's situation has me so disenfranchised with the game that I just couldn't stay on task. So I quit playing him after only an hour. Still not 88 yet.

Vice Admiral Zombee, Vice Admiral Danic, Vice Admiral Grell, and Lieutenant General Sisteric
      Did the last of the Founders Day and Mirror Events. No new events till next weekend. So I am parking them till Season 9 releases and puts in the new Reputation System.

Commander Torc
       Torc had made it to level 21. He is a Commander now. My BOff's positions are all filled out and DOff's are doing work as I continue through the story line with him. Most of his BOff's are actually Klingon's, with one Nausicaan and one Gorn. The First Officer is a purple guy, so now my efforts are to get more purples and replace first the green's and then the blues.
       The Klingon Story Arc that they created for starting Klingons was very fun and embroils you in Klingon Politics and traditions. It gives you a grounding in Klingon Culture basics and connects you to why you are working for the empire. They did a very good job on this, as I have seen so far.

    SO that's my character activities for the week. I hope you all had fun too. Enjoy!

Fantasy News and Views

World of Warcraft

                A lot of things have been released about Warlords of Draenor. I am going to touch upon the things that I think are interesting.

                Crowd Control

Silence will get removed from any ability that also interrupts. Silence will still exist as a separate ability. So now, you either silence a target or interrupt a target. Not both.  This change is only good for PVP. But for PVE this will cause more anger as soloing will get incredibly harder since you can’t stop and turn off a fight mechanic for any period time. The uphill fight for some classes this creates is so great that it may make some classes unable to solo some content at all. Keeping mages from casting spells is a mainstay for non-spellcasters and non-healers to solo content.

Disarms

No more Disarms. All of them are gone. It is the titular ability that I use on my rogue and the one ability that I center a lot of my playstyle with. Disarming was a very fun mechanic to me, and the reason why I used it so much. With it gone, I feel that Asmodea my see less game time overall. And I wonder what they are going to give rogues to replace the loss of that ability.

DR Catagories

Reducing the number of Diminishing Return groups. Grouping will be Roots, Stuns, and Incapacitate (which includes Horror). Charges that create roots are not part of the DR. This will clean up the DR groups and make PVP that much harder. It really doesn't have that big of impact on PVE and shouldn't really effect solo play.

Cast Times

The removed all ways to make CC’s instants with cooldowns. This is very bad plan for Soloist. This means that unless you have a pet, you will probably never get your CC’s off. Cast times for solo play will hamper their ability to manage encounters and successfully get through content. Casting times with groups is alright as there is always someone out there that can take the agro off of you so that you can get the spell off. And for PVP this will balance the playing field greatly. Good teams will know how to interrupt their opponent while also protecting their casters. And bad teams will get pounded that much faster till they work it out. The tactics changes and new depth to planning this does should make PVPers very happy.

CC Spell Pruning

Many CC spells will be removed. The rest will have increased cooldowns and increased restrictions on others. This is just vague enough to keep me from being sure what to think. SO I will have to wait and see what is exactly done. Pets CC will be limited, if not outright removed. This sucks for those classes (Hunters) that rely upon those pets to be a viable class. Making a primary ability that is relied upon to go away without any way to overcome it will so totally destroy Soloing as a hunter that people will wonder why they even have pets as a hunter. And, I think, this will reduce the useful toolkit that Hunters can bring to the game that they not be brought along at all. And my main is a Hunter, so this can be a long term problem for me. I am really scared about my ability to Solo play with the Airholen in WoD now. Other changes will include Cyclone being dispellable and fears being shorter in PVP. Also, PVP trinkets will protect from reapplication of effects from persistent abilities. All of these changes are good changes, especially the PVP ones.

Heroes of the Storm

                I received an Alpha technical access to this game. Having tried League of Legends for free one time, I wouldn't consider myself a knowledgeable person on this subject. But so far, it has been fun. I could see myself playing this when I want to do something different than WoW. Hopefully, I will get some more time into it and try out the other characters but I have only been playing the Demon Hunter Vala. I like her style of play.

                So that is the news for now for Fantasy based things. I will be back with more news in the future, but for now, Enjoy!

Weekly Character Updates

         I am sorry folks but I did not play any WOW this past week. I have only had eyes for STO and the special event that has been going there. All of my characters have completed the 14 turn ins to get the big reward for the special Mirror event and now just trying to get all of the bonus marks and dilithium from the event. Upcoming is the special event centering on Founder's Day for the Federation. More on that later. I have also started on a new character in STO, Lieutenant Torc is level 5 right now. He is an Alien (Avalonian) in the KDF and part of the science branch. This is the first KDF guy I have made since they revamped the starting levels for KDF characters. After this guy is leveled I suspect I will do a Romulan Republic Tactical Officer and then come back to my Final Federation character then. We will see how it goes.
         I am looking to carve out some time to write up my thoughts on the data released for the coming expansions for the games that I do play, so we will see. But to you all, Enjoy!