Hearthstone: Druids Suck and STOP CONCEDING!

Yes, I'm still talking about Hearthstone.  I haven't picked up NBA 2k14 yet and since I don't raid the last WoW patch gives me, pretty much, nothing to talk about.

I've had a pretty good time playing Hearthstone.  Last time I talked about leveling the different class decks.  It isn't always the most entertaining thing to do, but it is something that needs to get done.  I am still powering through getting them leveled.  Warlock and Paladin are all I've got left.  My latest conquest has been the Druid.

I don't think I've seen a shittier set of cards that are more all over the place...  I played the WoW TCG and enjoyed it, hell I've got a ton of cards and would actually enjoy still playing.  The TCG pushed you into a spec to get certain abilities so that your deck wasn't constructed with no real focus.  You know, kind of like specs in the game.  Sure, an Enhancement Shaman can heal, but it isn't gonna be super awesome.  The bonus for specs was a couple of very power cards and specific things that helped to flesh out a focused deck.    You could obviously have several different decks and utilize things differently.  Hearthstone does not have that.  I think it needs it, badly.

The Druid starter deck is terrible.  Beyond that the starting cards are all over the damn place.  I feel like any of these cards would be awesome if applied to another deck, but this class is spread far too thin.  I understand that the Druid is a jack-of-all-trades, but this is pure silliness.  It took me nearly 3 hours to muster two wins while trying to level the deck and complete the daily quests for a few extra gold.  YIKES!  I'm no pro, but I'm not terrible.  Druid is obviously not going to be my go-to deck, and honestly it is the class I see represented the least.  I feel like Blizzard may need to step in and make some changes to the class to help bring it up to par as other classes.

Gross.  It's just gross.

Now, when I'm not playing Druid decks I have seen a very annoying trend both in rated and unrated play.  Conceding.

STOP IT!  I have 11 damage on the board that I am going to deal, you have 7 HP and no taunt.  You know it's over.  Just take the loss.  Why would you concede to end the game 10 seconds faster?  It makes zero fucking sense.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen people give up halfway in, because their hand sucks.  I've seen people play the wrong card or end their turn before doing something and just concede.  I don't get it.  I had a Warlock play a Void Terror tonight that would have ended me, decidedly, on the very next turn.  When you see a 16/14 beast in front of you that seems like a good time to concede.  I don't concede.  EVER.  I can stare that loss in the face and let them hit me and get it over with.  I drew my card and managed to pull out a win with MOONFIRE.  I had a Murloc Raider on the board, Savage Roar and Claw in my hand.  I drew the Moonfire card.  The Warlock had 10 HP.  I pop Shapeshift, play Savage Roar and Claw.  I've got 5 attack now, the Murloc has 4... Moonfire is, literally, the difference.  I almost felt bad for the guy.  It was pure RNG luck.

It isn't over until you're at zero.  A single mistake can cost you the game, but that doesn't mean that you need to give up and find another game.  Maybe you'll pull great cards, you don't know.  If you are one hit from losing, JUST FUCKING TAKE IT, PUSSY!

Hearthstone: Leveling Decks

I've been putting most of my focus into Hearthstone.  The little time I've had has been dumped into getting the basics down and working on building out decks.  One of the features of the game is that the class of your deck levels with you.  I've been trying to work through leveling these decks.  Slowly, but surely.

Let's say for instance that you wanted to give the Warrior deck a go.  You select Warrior and you can use the default deck of you can build a custom deck.  The customer deck gives you options of cards you have available, however some cards are unlockable.  This being the case, that means that you'll need to level to get some of these.  So far I've only seen that class cards are unlockable, so I am unsure if any of the other cards are.  As you play games you get experience.  Experience turns into levels and every two levels up to 10 you gain a new card (you get two of them, though).  For some classes this is AWESOME.  As a Warrior the card I got at level 8 was amazing for the build I was going for.  For a Rogue Assassinate seems killer.  The class-based cards that you get as you level are pretty nice.

I am trying to get everyone to 10, get all of the basic cards fleshed out and then decide what I want to do.  I haven't opened any expert packs because I am trying to hold out for as long as possible.  I am trying to avoid the "pay to win" stereotype for the moment.  Every card game is pay to win, so I understand that I can't avoid it forever.  So far I've been doing unranked matches with random decks when I get the chance and giving my Warrior or Hunter deck a whirl in the ranked world.  Yeah.... not doing so hot there, but without a better card selection I don't feel too bad.

The end goal is to play and have a good time.  So far I've had a really good time and even though I haven't put a lot of money into it, I think I could.  I could see myself investing 50 bucks into it every couple of months or so.  That would get me 40 packs at the current price, which would yield me plenty of cards.  Considering that I'm skipping the current generation of blockbuster FPS games and the WoW expansion is probably a year away, I don't have much to spend money on.  NBA 2k14 just came out, but I'm going to give it a chance to get some solid PC reviews in before I buy it.

With the present system and the way that you accumulate cards I can see Blizzard making changes over time.  Allowing the ability to unlock a card through leveling or giving the winner of a ranked match a chance at "loot".  I know that Arena already offers decent stuff, but I'm not pro enough to get into Arenas just yet.  I've gotta work on my deckbuilding skills (and the fact that RNG fucking hates me) before I take a stab there.

Slowly, but surely.

Hearthstone, finally!

I finally managed to get into the Hearthstone beta.  I've been in for about a month and could have been in longed IF I HAD CHECKED MY TABS IN GMAIL!  Ugh.  Apparently this was a promotion, according to Gmail.  At least that is what it decided to file it as.  LAME!

I haven't had a lot of time to play it because I have been working a lot of overtime.  SOOOOOO... I gave it as much time as I could.  Unfortunately, there was an impending wipe (which just happened) and none of the progress I had was saved.  No big deal, it's beta.  I got the general idea behind gameplay and got to play around with some deck building.  Generally, I'm not great at this stuff.  I have an idea and concept, but the RNG always fucks me.  Always.  Over the first month before the wipe I was able to get a grasp on what Blizzard is trying to do... and I really like it.  The look, the feel, the flow.  It's great.  It is a lot of fun.  I feel like there is a lot more they can do with it and a lot more that can be added, especially if they pull from the TCG.  I've got an absurd amount of TCG material (okay, well maybe not absurb... but a lot) and it's excellent.

The way that the game plays is really great.  The ease at which you can get a match or your ability to create a deck and go directly to different difficulty levels of practice mode to try it out before hitting a game.  OH MAN!  It's a breeze.  The original UI was kind of lacking, but they have cleaned it up pretty well.  Going from one screen to another is fairly seamless and the entire design of the game is very basic.  Yes, basic.  You know, Blizzard's version.  That means that it is stripped down to essential working parts, but they are all very stylized.

The look of the game isn't anything super amazing.  Yes, there are some cards that have sweet animations.  Yes, the game doesn't look like dog shit.  This however is not a game that needs striking visuals to pull it off.  The menus look fine and at 1920x1080 I have no complaints about how it looks or performance.  I was actually kind of shocked that my machine didn't chug a little more, especially based on early reports of laggy interface on nicer machines.  The feel, like I said, is very stylized.  You can tell you are playing a Warcraft game from the moment you start it up.  It does a great job borrowing from the cards in TCG, as well as adding it's own flair with a lot of cool cards.  The flavor text is still there and it is still a lot of fun.

The game, obviously, has a lot of variation.  You are going to be going up against other players with different decks as well as RNG.  I had a lot of success with a low-drop Mage deck prior to the wipe.  That same concept is not working after the wipe.  I did rather poorly with a crappy Hunter beast buffing deck, but have found that it has been a lot better in practice than before.  My next goal is to go for a Shaman Murloc deck and be a low-drop dickhead and swarm people to death.  It's gonna happen.  I'm still trying to figure out AOE and board control against some classes, so I've still got some work to do.

The game will be "pay-to-win".  You can buy packs of cards and then fill your class and neutral needs with them.  Your extra cards can be "disenchanted" and you can use that dust to either create new cards of your choice or to make your current cards "gold".  Gold cards are basically foiled versions of the original with a cool animation, like I mentioned above.  While you can buy more and more cards,
you can't buy the dust.  That being said, you can open packs to get gold cards AND you can disenchant those cards, too (they give more dust, too).  The more you invest the better your odds at being successful will be.  This is with anything like this, though.  It happens.  The game is fun even without a huge investment.  I spent 3 bucks to get two packs and ended up getting several packs for completing quests and then a few more by doing MORE quests.  Sure, the gold didn't come super quick, but the more I played the more I got.

Overall, the game is very fun.  It is something that I hope my friends pick up and something that I hope I get to play with them.  I haven't had a chance to test the features of playing with your buds, because I don't have any buds who have this game.  Hopefully I will see a couple of people trickle in soon.  Until then, I've gotta keep working on my deckbuilding and finish unlocking all of the basic cards for each class.

Steam: 1, Microsoft: 0. WTF Internet?

Steam came forward and released information about a new family share feature they are adding.  This all sounds really great.  I'm kind of excited and look forward to the feature.  I know it may take a while to roll out of beta and make it to everyone, and I'm cool with that.

The baffling thing about this announcement is how the internet responded.  They fucking loved it.  Most people though it was a great idea, others thought it was the best idea ever.  And... well... then there is me.  In response to this, all I have to say is: Fuck you, internet.

Microsoft and Xbox came to you months ago and told you about something they wanted to do that was almost the fucking same.  THE.  FUCKING.  SAME.  It was actually kind of better.  Sure, you didn't have access to the game, but you could let your buddy borrow it and enjoy it until they finished... not just until you decided to show back up and force them to log out.  Microsoft got skewered because they told you that you'd need to be on the internet, because they wanted to track some things with DRM to make sure we all aren't just stealing everything.  The internet is a fucking up beast.

Steam is being bathed in praises, Microsoft was looked at like some kind of monster.  Sure, there were other things that Microsoft was a little weird about, but this was solid.  The fact that people either didn't understand or forgot about it that fast is fucking insane.  Again, I want to reiterate, I love the idea.  The idea is solid and I am a fan of both Microsoft and Steam.  My disappoint lies in the "internet".  The way people freak out and bitch about one thing, just to turn around think the others are innovators and geniuses.  IS VALVE THE APPLE OF GAMING?!

Have internet users become so indoctrinated into the huge, hulking games giant that they lose sight of what others are trying to accomplish?  I fancy myself a very proud PC gamer, but I don't let that blind me when console makes are taking the initiative to implement great stuff.  I will be the first to bash a console for it's lack of power or awful UI, but I think we have finally stepped over a boundary that I am no longer comfortable with.  I feel like the internet really got it wrong on this one and I hope more people open their eyes and we see articles like this, instead of blind fanboyism all over the place.

Guild Wars 2... again.

Just over a year after the game's release I am ready to go back and give it another shot.  Hopefully this won't be another awful letdown.

I got GW2 the day it came out.  I went and picked it up in the BOXED version from GameStop at midnight.  I was kind of excited.  I looked forward to it.  I brought it home, went through the steps and installed everything and fought with my account.  God forbid an account you've used for half a decade and the previous game actually work with this one, that'd be too fucking easy... right?  Once I got online it was everything I had hoped for... only slower.

I played during the beta weekends and just played enough on a couple of classes to get the basics.  I stomped around in a couple of "zones" and enjoyed the look and feel of the game.  I took in the differences between it and the original game and then the things it had in common with other games that have been successful since then.  The original game was fantastic, but was easily overshadowed by the huge behemoth of a mega-hit that is WoW.  I took in the world and was pleased.  I didn't get all crazy and put in a ton of hours, I wanted some mystery and majesty left when the game release.  And then.... the game released.


I don't know that I've been more disappointed in a game in a very long time.  I loved the idea of dynamic questing.  It was great in Warhammer and it really helped to break up the boring quests.  The quests, however, were important in progression.  Not only in terms of experience, but also in gearing.  The quest system has been used and done will for nearly a decade now, we don't need to break away from that system and hope that this new dynamic system works.  Mostly, because it doesn't.  I found myself quickly bored of the game.  By the tender age of level 15 I had maxed all of my weapon skills on my Assassin/Thief/Rogue/generic agility or dexterity based class.  The only thing I can hope to do from NOW UNTIL LEVEL CAP is to make abilities more powerful.  How lame is that?  I don't get new abilities.  I have them all.  I can do all the sweet moves, I'm just gonna add some flavor to the mix.  OH BOY!

I gave a couple other classes a shot, but quickly got bored.  The lack of actual direction in the world and the fact that on my original character I had to go to another continent to try and find quests to do because I had outleveled where I was and was too low to move forward.  It was boring and brutal.  SUUUUUUURE, I got to explore the world, but at what cost?  I was now sick of the game and quickly losing interest in everything it had to offer.  Trading gems for gold or gold for gems made me even angrier.  Watching people very literally pay to get some of the better gear or make a mockery of the trading channels in the game with real life money.  Ugh.

My brother has expressed interest in playing on the weekend nights when he stays up a little later.  I am going to give it a shot.  I really hope the experience is more magical this time around.  If not, it's not a big deal.  It isn't like I've never spent 60 dollars for a game that ended up being a huge disappointment.  I'm looking at you Battlefield 3.

Indecision.

I have been talking to a friend of mine about trying to "move in together" and create an actual site.  I think I'm scared.

I've always wanted a place where I could put my stuff for other people and share my opinions and thoughts.  However, sometimes I am very abrasive.  Sometimes when I don't like something... I call it a huge fucking piece of shit and pretty much spend 1000-words talking shit about how it could have been great, but some lazy fucking developer would rather cash-in on shit work instead of making less and providing a better experience.  This goes for apps, games... pretty much everything.  I am not sure if this is something that I can maintain.

HOWEVER, I do want to do stuff.  I want to go to GamesCom, I wanna visit QuakeCon, hell I want to go to DragonCon and have a good fucking time and read about all of the cool new shit that is happening in our world and being made better by and/or with technology.  There is more to life than my cell phone.  Laptops are making drastic changes to what they were.  Ultrabooks are on the rise, Netbooks are dead, tablets are taking over the world, the PC hardware race is a constant see-saw.  I love it.  I love ALL of it.  I don't know how to focus what I enjoy.

I want to make sure that I can do three things, but I'm not sure I can do them all well.  I love gaming.  I wanna talk about it.  From top to bottom and back again.  I love hardware.  I'm huge tech nerd and have a fucking raging hard-on for GHz.  The more the better.  Who needs 4TBs of storage?  Probably me.  Why? BECAUSE I WANT EVERYTHING!  I just love it.  I'm old school enough to remember single-digit MHz PCs that I had and hard drives that were less than 25 MBs.  Huge, loud MFM drives that were the size of 2 5.25 drives.  Shit, I remember 5.25 drive and not even the high density ones....  These are things I love.  I am great with mobile tech and I really enjoy it, but I don't want to give up on things I truly love and enjoy.  Can I do it?

I know that I want to and I know that my buddy wants to.  I could easily pull my brother on board and I've got another good friend who would love to contribute fingerwords to whatever I did.  I think this is something I am capable of, I just want to make sure it is something that I can commit myself to.

The Galaxy Note Tablet (2014 edition) is the tablet that was designed for me.

As soon as I saw it, I knew.  I knew I had to have one.  I cannot afford, but I fucking want it.

The new Galaxy Note tablet is a thing of magnificent beauty.  It does all of the things that the Note 3 does, but it is a tablet.  Cataloging and saving videos, pictures and notes into folders for things, multiple apps on the screen with windows, geo-tagging, cross-device cloud storage and file sorting, notes on the go, NFC-enabled actions.  OMG!  I have been waiting for a big boy tablet from Android for a long time and this is finally it.  The size, resolution and impressive spec sheet all lend themselves to how awesome this device will be.

Sometimes we freak out about the next big thing in mobile and forget that tablets are just as mobile.  You can take them anywhere and everywhere.  The iPad has long sat among the top as the kind of the tablet.  It is flexible and works well.  I admire how well Apple has managed to take advantage of it's position as king of the hill for tablets.  The day is coming, though, when Android is going to show up and bring something to the party that makes you re-think mobile all over again.  The Nexus 7 has shaken up quite a few things, but for people like me... it isn't big enough.  I need something big.  I need something that feel nice and expensive and like some real R&D went into it.  This is that tab.

Between specs and features I just can't get over how awesome this tablet is.  I am not a fan of Touchwiz or all of the gimmicks, but they find a very nice niche here.  Taking notes on a tablet makes sense.  Watching videos and and combining notes and videos actually makes sense here.  Using that split screen to work on two apps at once is useful in this form factor.  So many things come together so perfectly.  It is hard to see this tablet doing great things, but I think that if enough people tried it... they'd love it.  I assume the price tag is going to be rather hefty.  Part of what made the Nexus 7 so successful is the availability of the device.  This device will carry a price that is much closer to what Apple would charge, and it should, but that doesn't mean it will land it in a lot of hands.

I have been considering for some time getting a nice, big tablet and a Chromebook as a laptop.  Something I can put down and use as a real laptop that does things specific to my productivity, but without all of the weight and load times of a typical laptop.  Then I could use a tablet for entertainment.  Watching videos, playing games, goofing off.  It makes sense.  I could ditch a traditional laptop and use both of these items, pay about the same amount and get a much higher return.  Sure, a traditional laptop might stay more useful for a longer period of time, but Moore's Law never stops.  By the time that 18-36 month mark is upon me, I'll be ready to dive into the next things.

I want a Note tablet.  Bad.