Last last month, I received a direct message on @gamewhims (my gaming Twitter account) from @EchoBazaar, letting me know of the Festival of Endless Actions: two days in February where the daily action cap would be removed temporarily. I’d been thinking on and off about EBz for a bit before this, and this prompted me to check in and see what had changed.

(I would like to say that I looked at recent news and changes, to see if the reasons why I quit on principle before had been changed. I would like to say that, but honestly, after reading a few blog posts, I said, ah whatever, and jumped right back in. Ahem.)

And so I went back to Fallen London.

A not-so-new-face in Fallen London

Aside from the new content, which would have been a given since I had been out for more than a year by that time, there had been a couple changes. New mechanics, a “subscription” option, and subtle UI changes. For some reason, I had quite a bit of Fate–enough to become an Exceptional Friend–and so I gave that a shot. Exceptional Friends get two candles (or, 20 actions at a time) and double the daily action limit (50 to 100), as well as a few storylets in the House of Chimes. I wanted it more for the two candles, to be honest–I’m impatient.

And so, armed with a whopping 20 actions per sitting (cough), I went on my merry way in Fallen London. I had a blast during the Festival, as well. I ended up ‘shroom-hopping during the last day of the Festival (they extended it an extra day! woo!) and had a blast. I had to sleep, and I had to work (I know, both are for the weak, but what can I say, I have bills and health to consider), but it was fun.

Just earlier this week, though, I started to feel like, okay, so what now? What do I do with my actions? Back to a limited pool, I started feeling (again) that I needed to be really prudent about using them. During the festival, I gave almost everything a shot–did some of the older arcs to remember them, tried various paths even if they didn’t seem like the best idea. I discovered things. I wandered around Fallen London. But now–I only have so much! No, I should save them for things that count.

And so, last Tuesday, after exhausting my actions, I thought, meh. It’s probably time to go now and leave Fallen London again. Don’t get me wrong, I like strategizing the best and most efficient way to do things in the games that I play. But it just felt a touch alien in a world like Fallen London: sprawling and full of hidden mysteries, the unexpected and the exciting peeking just around the corner. I wanted to wander but I felt out of place strategizing my wandering for the most efficient returns. I mean, I already work out my day that way. Don’t tell me I have to do that here, too?

And then, barely an hour later, they announced they were doing away with the action cap. The actual change happened the next day, but when I first read their announcement, I didn’t understand it. Huhwhat? They’re having another Festival? Until eventually, it dawned on me–endless actions for good!

HUZZAH!

Forever and a day

Of course, it’s not all happy bunnies and rainbows. You do essentially have an action cap–with the refresh rate adjusted to one action every ten minutes, you have a max cap of 144 actions, if you played nonstop. It’s still a far cry from 50 actions, and definitely encourages people to keep coming back to the website as opposed to a full stop for the day once they’ve reached the cap.

I’d also like to commend the team in experimenting and giving endless actions a trial run. I’m impressed.

It feels like this has come full circle. Having played Echo Bazaar way back when there were no hard caps, and then to the time when there were hard caps, and back again–it’s such a sweet feeling, faintly nostalgic with a dash of exultation. The Echo Bazaar I fell in love with has come back.

Dust off your Neathglass Goggles and greet your Fairly Tame Sorrow-spider: it’s time to go a-wandering.

I enjoy the games, although Bakery Story is the most interesting for me. My bakery is called the Chocoberry Cafe, and I bake according to a theme: if a recipe has chocolates and berries (of any kind) in it, I make it. This means I always juggle between recipes that have long cook times, but higher yields, and recipes that are quick but have lower yields (except for Brownies and Blueberry Muffins, because they are too quick and I can’t afford to babysit the cafe). Given the theme of my bakery, it’s fairly important to me to keep the food stocked up and displayed on the counters. After all, the food is the reason why my cafe is named “Chocoberry Cafe”. They are part of my “decoration”, if you will. So whenever a food item dips to less than 5,000 plates, I could be in danger of “losing” that item, which is something I’d rather not happen. (It also messes up with whatever arrangement I already have with the food items, since you don’t really have any control where the food gets served once you serve it.)

Yesterday morning, I saw a message on my wall from one of my neighbors, saying that she was gifting brownies now (instead of the “standard” cappuccinos) due to changes in the game, and that they are now the highest-profit items. Dumbfounded, I went and looked it up–and it’s true.

This isn’t Kansas anymore

As early as January 17, players have noticed the change and have put forward their thoughts and complaints. TeamLava has responded only to say that the change is “to ensure that the game is enjoyable as possible — not just for current players, but new players as well…to balance out the game”. Based on what I’ve read, the changes that have happened include:

1. Normalizing selling price per food plate to 4 coins. This raises the profit for stuff like Brownies (initially selling for 1 coin per plate) and lowers it for stuff like Red Velvet Cake (initially 12 coins per plate, though I may be wrong–this used to be my biggest earner, though).
2. Lowering yield per bake. I have no comparison data for this, but it’s been reported.
3. Lowering cost of recipes to bake. This was communicated later on, but again, I have no comparison data.
4. Blocking the door to stockpile food does not stop sales now; there have been reports that once you unblock the door, the food that you should have sold while you were stockpiling all gets sold immediately.

These changes make counters harder to stock, whether you’re a new or older player. I’ve noticed this myself, but shrugged it off initially and thought maybe I was just imagining things. Less yield means that if I try making an item that takes a number of hours to make, if my baker stays open the whole time, by the time I get to serve these new food items, there is nothing on the counter anymore. Empty counters at any point of the game means unhappy customers, and unhappy customers bring your popularity down, and popularity affects the number of customers coming into your bakery (lower than the measly 30-or-so customers we’re already getting). I have some stuff stocked from before the change (now selling at a loss, since they were baked with a higher-priced recipe than now, and selling for much lower), but new players don’t have the 16 appliances I have: how are you supposed to keep counters stocked with only a handful of ovens that you’re limited to due to your low level? Why, spend $4.99 to buy gems to add one extra appliance, of course! Worse, you can’t even block the door to stockpile, now. The only way I got through those lower levels was to stockpile. I don’t see how this change will help new players.

These changes make it slower to earn money. I used to spend a lot of bake time and coins to bake the ones with high yield and high profit, because I knew that once that batch sells, I will have reached a coin goal and I can get x item, or expand, etc. as opposed to waiting and waiting and waiting for my lower (therefore slower) items to sell. And yes, the recipes cost lower to make: but you bake more (and therefore spend more) in order to keep your counters stocked, so the point is moot. I’ve noticed it’s harder to earn money: it’s been a while but I’m having a hard time trying to break 2M (for my 4M goal, which I need to expand) when I need to keep baking to keep food items on counters.

Also, it removes the strategy element: if everything is normalized, then it doesn’t really matter what item you bake. I enjoy just making the food items that fit the theme of my bakery, but I want to make other items too, but right now, I can’t afford to do that (time-wise) because wait, my Chocolate Cake is getting dangerously low, I need to stock up on that first. So I just never end up making these other items. It becomes mindless, which kids probably don’t really care about, but as an adult, it was part of the draw of the game. If I wanted a mindless game, there are a lot of action arcade games made for the iPhone, on other consoles. I’ll go play that instead.

And an extra dash of salt to wound:

No warning nor formal announcement on these changes. They were just rolled out and it was the users themselves who noted it and started asking questions, who are understandably confused and worried if there was a bug. They have responded with an official statement after a while, but continue to largely ignore the strong user sentiments on the changes. And other people have noted that TeamLava’s wording–that they have “legions of super-passionate fans” sound almost insulting. I don’t think it’s wise for TeamLava to ignore these “legions” of “super-passionate” gamers that they are alienating. New users are great, but those who TeamLava might classify as “super-passionate” are the ones dropping significant hard-earned cash for the game.

A time for all things to end

I do like spending cash now and then on freemium games–I just did recently with Bakery Story. Paying for stuff like gems is good because it supports these smaller game houses and I like thinking that I’m doing my bit to keep them going. I stopped Bakery Story for a while, but then had my account ported over to my new phone just to be able to keep going. But this is unacceptable. Poor communication with the community and user base, shady decisions that doesn’t look like it’s going to change–I’m not going to continue supporting games by a company who does this.

I’ve been thinking it’s time for a break–and maybe it really is time to say goodbye to TeamLava and the Story series. Goodbye, Chocoberry Cafe and my beloved chocolate fountain.

Diana (apricaught.tumbler.com) drew her for me, and she is such a cutie :D For those who don’t get the reference, “tala” is one of two (as far as I know) words in Tagalog for “star”. It is such a teenyboppery name, I know, but it suits her well as a space goat! ;)

And of course, now she has a use for those horrid ponds on her shoulders–a place to put soapy bubble liquid in!

Earlier this week, I realized exactly what kind of play style suits me. Planning suits me. Pre-strategizing fights and what I do in them suits me. That’s now evident in the specs and type of play I like: I prefer PVE to PVP because I like being able to plan what to do and when, discipline healing is basically “pre-healing” by mitigating and absorbing damage, and arcane play style relies a lot on how well you plan and sync up your burn phases.

Say what?

This realization came about due to two things:

First, I ended up raiding at 5fps, because we had no healer cover for that night, and I did not realize that the Mumble overlays were wreaking havoc on my FPS (I realized after the raid. GG). I have never been more thankful of my mitigation that night: blind shielding+hasted Prayer of Healing can just about make it, although it won’t get one very far (overshooting mouse turns and running past stack points will get you killed, folks).

Second, I bit the bullet and changed Eilonwyn’s secondary spec to fire, because the number of frost instants just isn’t ideal for my latency. Initially, I thought that maybe since I was doing alright with my shadow priest spec, I can go fire now with its DOTs and all and work that out–right? WRONG.

It’s not like shadow priest dots, where you refresh them just before they run out, and cast other stuff on cooldown. I was even better with the mage frost spell priority, with its multiple instants; the problem I was having with fire is, how to align the goddamn DOTs for Combustion, y0. I set up my auras and everything, and I know I just need a bit more muscle memory to get it all down pat, but when you finally get the insta-Pyroblast and have the dot up there, Ignite or Living Bomb or freaking both might be down to, what, 2 seconds before they run out, but you need to hit combustion now now now!!. *dies*

Arcane is great for me. Arcane rewards the prepared: knowing when the best time to burn is, shifting your rotation according to your mana levels. It sucks for mobile fights, though, totally. Can we get Firestarter for arcane, please? On the move but hit less, maybe? Kthxbye.

So what now?

I’m a big believer in enjoying the game. It’s a game, you should play the way it’s fun for you. No one should ever feel forced to raid if they don’t feel like it, just because it’s “expected” of them. In the same way, I don’t want to play a spec I get a lot of frustration from (I think I’m a bit too obsessive-compulsive to hit Combustion while all three dots are not up). Sadly, arcane is the weakest mage DPS spec at the moment, and I don’t feel comfortable asking for a raid spot when I’m going with the weakest DPS spec. I know that arcane still puts out well for certain fights…but those fights are a minority. :/

Gearing for healing, I’m finding out, is a largely personal/individualistic in nature. If you don’t have enough spirit, get more spirit, but too much and you’re wasting it according to the content that you’re running. I don’t know what the gearing priorities are for holy either, but in general I am working with intellect upgrade is an upgrade as long as it has spirit, or sometimes a non-spirit item may be good enough for reforging (your mileage may vary).

So my list contains mostly spirit gear, with an option for a high-level non-spirit gear (if available), and haste/crit/mastery choices. I also added any BoEs or craftable items. I don’t include Valor-purchasable items, although any BoE pieces are available.

Head

Neck

Shoulder

Back

Chest

Wrist

Hands

Waist

Legs

Feet

Finger

Trinket

Two-hand

Main Hand

Off-hand

Ranged

Hope this helps! :) I’m nearly there, thanks to a couple of really lucky guild runs. Hopefully soon I’ll be well-clothed enough to try raiding again!

While torturing myself with the Air, I looked for posts and reviews about the performance of World of Warcraft on Macbook Airs. I’ve seen a really good review last January about it which started my “serious” Air obsession–it looks like it was playing WoW better than my Macbook (I play on Low/custom settings, at 20-30fps)! It was a surprise, although it shouldn’t be: Airs have solid-state drives, and these new babies should certainly be more advanced than my 2-year-old Macbook.

Rcently, I went on another hunt to just see if anyone else had more to say about it, and came across a Battlenet post about it.

Look at how a shocking number of posters (maybe even the majority?) claim that the original poster was a troll.

Seriously, what? It’s devolved into a PC vs Mac war, which I suppose is rather inevitable, but honestly, the guy was just sharing his experience playing WoW on an Air! It’s definitely useful for other people. I get it, Macs are more expensive than built PCs, and they can get to 100+ fps or something. That’s fine, good for you.

But not everyone uses computers to primarily play games. I don’t. I want my machine to play the computer games I play well enough for my playstyle, but I am not going to buy a computer whose sole purpose is to play games.

I’ve built PCs before. I’ve pored over price charts and built CPUs accordingly. Oh, yes, they’re cheap and they’re powerful. But, uh, they were a pain, too. I’ve had hardware issues that required bringing it in for fixing once a year, at least. And being the “only techie” in the family, that meant I needed to do all the grunt work for that. And the ease of upgrading–oh my. I needed, just needed, to have that really cool new video card, a bigger memory, better drives…and so on and so forth.

I haven’t sent my Macbook in for repairs, ever. Oh yes, it’s expensive. My machine right now is running straight from the power socket because the battery is alarmingly bloated but I’m too much of a cheapskate to buy a new battery, because it’s expensive. It’s also difficult to almost impossible to get upgrades, but that’s fine with me–I don’t feel the need to get the biggest and the best anymore, because what I have works just nice.

And on the subject of “30 fps is unplayable”–really? I play on 20 fps in raids and I am doing very well. Unplayable is 7 fps. I’m a casual raider–I’m certainly not on par with the top raiders in the game, nor do I want to be, and unless I’m in that level, I don’t think 30 fps is going to gimp you so much. It’s not ideal, of course–ideal would be to have 60fps+ in Ultra–but I’m willing to make that trade off because World of Warcraft and other games is not the biggest part of my life, even if it’s big enough to warrant a dominant section of my blog.

I play on a Mac because it makes sense to me and what I use my computer for. I play on a Mac because I’m not someone to have multiple machines when one will do just fine, thankyouverymuch. I play on a Mac because specifications don’t matter to me as much as my experience of the output of those same specifications and the aesthetic, no-fuss quality of Macs.

You have your powerful, amazingly-modded computer. I have my Mac. To each his own.

But yes, I’ve started playing again. :) As with most things, once you complain to The Internets things improve or change for the better ;) so I decided I’d give WoW another run. Instead of going straight for Eilonwyn though, I decided I’d go for levelling Tala, for a couple of reasons:

1. Arcane right now sucks for anything that needs DPS to be mobile and for multiple-target DPS, and I’d been feeling it as 84 in dungeons like Vortex Pinnacle. The mana required was also crazy. Maybe patch 4.0.6 will help with the latter for mana, but it seems the bigger problem is still there. My second option, frost, is bad for latency- and/or lag-challenged players, due to the number of instants you need to react to. I’ve never been able to get the hang of DoTting, which is why I’m not very keen on playing Fire, although it’s certainly the best if we’re talking about latency or lag spikes (your dots are still ticking even if you lag a bit).
2. I want to raid! I was watching kill videos last week, and I got caught up in the memories of raiding with my friends. Going with a healer does not only mean a better chance at a spot in a raid, but possibly faster gearing as well (shorter queue times).
3. This is very superficial, but I feel like I like “Starcaller Tala” more now because of her having a Filipino name, and a title that goes well with it ;)

So I decided, well, what the hell, I’ll see how Tala does. Right now I have a Shadow offspec (the Spirit to Hit conversion is fantastic!!) for questing, which is what I did when I started off. I was nervous about healing, because of the purported mana problems, of the difference in healing as discipline. It also meant I needed to change my bindings, which is HORRIBLE. As DPS, if you change your bindings, you do low DPS for a while until you get used to your bindings. As heals? I forget the binding for Penance and end up using the slow Greater Heal, someone will die.

Well, that’s what happened :( I fumbled along at Throne of the Tides (why!! why not in Blackrock Caverns where I know the fight better!!), wiped once, died another time a few seconds before the boss did.

I considered calling it for the night. It was too stressful. I had two spirit items ninjaed off me as well by the DPS, while I passed on the hit items (which were upgrades for my healing!), but I couldn’t be huffy because, well, I kind of sucked.

But, well, okay. I queued again and finished a couple quests while waiting, staying in my disc spec and just smiting. They take a while longer to die, but it wasn’t so bad. (I still remember the days of hitting frostbolt… waiting for the cast to finish, then hitting it again… then hitting it again… ah, the days when you didn’t know about spell queuing.)

Well, I finished two more dungeons that night (one was just the final boss) and I feel better about my healing now. There are still times when I think, omg what modifier is Penance again? but muscle memory is starting to kick in. In the last dungeon for that night, Blackrock Caverns, the tank and I actually finished Rom’ogg alone because the DPS did not move away from Rom’ogg after the chains, and they were all one-shot (they started listening to boss strat after that). Last night, dungeons also went well, no mishaps, although WoW inexplicably hung on me twice on trash packs–good thing the druid Tranquilitied <3

The leveling trek is crazy now, though :( I’m still rested, but two dungeons and I’m not yet at 50% to 83, with questing while queuing. Oh well, it’s plenty practice for more difficult dungeons…which I should be trying tomorrow :( (specifically, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle).

Good luck to me!

GASP! SHOCK HORROR! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

But yes, I haven’t. Eilonwyn is stuck at 84, and Talá hasn’t even started anywhere. I’ve said time and again to friends that yes, yes, I will log in tonight, alright already, sorry! and yet I have not gone online.

It’s not that I don’t miss the game, that is is not interesting to me anymore. I actually still check out the feeds I follow, and look at new stuff, and feel wistful at world firsts.

I do, but it’s kind of difficult to get back into the game after being out so long. This seems to be a common thing for a good number of people I know: take a long enough break, and suddenly it doesn’t feel as compelling to go online again. Some people say it’s because wow, I have a lot of free time now as opposed to when I was raiding full time! but it’s not that; I don’t think I’ve really done anything very significant with the “free time”.

It’s more about getting left behind. To be sure, I had no plans to take a break: I brought my gaming mouse with me on my vacation, and was looking forward to reaching 85 by Christmas. Maybe not geared up, but getting there. Sadly, I had not even been able to get my mouse out of my luggage! The two weeks without the game, stretching onward and onward…well, it’s not pretty. I’m still 84 while my friends and peers are likely kicking butt at raids; and I don’t begrudge them that, I don’t expect a raiding guild to wait around on people.

The 84-to-85 stretch, as well as the long hard trudge to get raiding-ready: HOW? Just, how? I started taking stock of the gear I needed, the reps I needed, arcanums and shoulder enchants, spending boatloads of gold for gems and materials, training up to max level professions for the perks. (I do not have the boatloads of gold, by the way. It would actually be a lot more fun if I had. Well, that’s what we always say, life is so much more fun if we have boatloads of moneys.) Just thinking about it, that long hard road…it’s not very fun, not when everyone else and their mother is raiding (literally). It’s a bit hard to stomach going from prime DPS to catcalls of “noob!” (Good-natured and all in jest and good fun, but it’s still not nice to hear.)

I don’t know when I’ll be coming back; I only know that I will, eventually. When I won’t feel too strongly about being left behind, and I can just carry on merrily and enjoy my largely solitary game, most likely.

*give or take a few days

Hello. I am a mage, also known as The Vending Machine. You know I can chug out food and drinks for you guys, after all, you guys even request it of me randomly while I’m hanging out in Dalaran.

I bring down a table in every instance. It’s there, nice and shiny and floating magically. It also has an annoying shimmering sound whenever the table is there. You can’t miss it. You also can’t miss the clicky portal you just saw appear in front of you, too; you might have even helped summon it in from the Twisting Nether.

I expect you to take a stack or two of food, at least. Yes, even you, dear melee DPS who do not have blue bars. I expect you to take some stacks and EAT THE DAMN STRUDELS.

Why?

Because your poor healer is going OOM. I don’t care if you don’t have a blue bar and thus don’t need to drink. Strudels are also for eating. The healer needs to drink between pulls and YOU need to eat to TOP YOURSELF UP. Each time you stand there idly with 50% health while your healer drinks up, I want to smack you. Hard.

The table is for you, too.

Love,
Eilonwyn the mage

For example, I’ve played (and learned) a number of tabletop/board games during the last lap of 2010. I’ve always liked board games, and always keen to give any sort of tabletop game a try; it’s just difficult to get folks together for it, especially in this age of computers and gaming consoles. My old favorite has always been Cluedo, and I’ve played a good deal of Settlers of Catan and Citadels while I was in the Philippines (along with the family staple Cashflow).

In addition, in 2010 I bought myself a Sony Playstation 3. Honestly, I actually wasn’t looking for a gaming console. I was looking for a DVD player. I was looking for cheapo DVD players, and reviews told me to get ones that can get close to HD, and then eventually I started thinking, well Blu-ray is backwards compatible, and wouldn’t it be cheaper in the long run to get a Bly-ray player? And then the PS3 Slim is among the top Blu-ray players (#2 according to CNET)…

(Cough.)

So I got myself a PS3 Slim. :p

All that doesn’t mean to say that WoW has not been a staple for me in 2010. 2010 has been an interesting year in WoW for me; I’ve fluctuated between being really into the game as a raider, before getting worn out and disillusioned, and then coming back on and “struggling” with not letting myself get too caught up again. I bought a gaming headset, and a Razer Naga. I followed theorycrafting, planned my loot. I raided regularly, gave up loot for guildies, maxed out everything, even tried raid leading (raid leading with guildies = stressful; raid leading with pugs = who the hell cares, they don’t know you so you can actually get shit done). I spent countless hours gearing up. I loved my guild, I became an officer in my guild, I got stressed with my guild. I got my Cataclysm Collector’s Edition.

What a long, strange trip 2010 has been.

This week is recap week! Stay tuned for piecemeal recaps of how 2010 went for me.