When we last talked about this subject when it comes to Legendary armor dropping in the game "World of Warcraft" I had talked about the random number generator and the bad luck protection. Well it has been about one week and I still haven't received my first drop on my test character.
This last week I have put an additional ten hours into the game. During this play time I have done some things that increase my chances at a drop and some things that didn't increase my drop rate. I have been working on my "Pathfinder" achievement for Legion which allows flying in the current expansion. The achievement requires you to explore all zones by foot, complete 100 different types of world quest, raise all expansion base reputations to revered, and fully complete the story line in every zone within the expansion. Once this is complete you acquire a faster ground mount speed and the chance to earn "Pathfinder Part II" which does allow flying.
You may be wondering why flying would be important in a legendary seeking experiment. Well some of the drop chances are tied to world bosses, world quests, and Legion invasions. These activities are spread all over the questing zones which makes a lot of your playtime spent traveling around the map, flying just seeds the travel time up just enough to cut yor daily playtime by a few minutes. And we all know that every minute counts when time is limited. These reasons are why I am choosing to grind towards completion of all zones this expansion, it is time to finally see what the game has to offer.
As far as activities spent working towards s a legendary drop this week, I had already cleared the highest tier raid so I was forced to do other activities. I capped my rated player vs player conquest for the item level 915 drop, during which I opened around 5 battle chests. I also completed 5 world quest chains and 2 legion invasions. These activities took my drop chances up to 62, with a zero drop so far.
Legendary 1: 0/62 or 0% drop rate.
Next week we will look at some of the other achievements in the game as well as give another update to how this experiment is going.
We all come to a point in our gaming lifespan where it seems that everyone is better than you, that the random number generator is favoring those around you while leaving you to your own devices. Well that has hit me. In World of Warcraft: Legion legendary armor is distributed by a random number generator which as the community managers present you have a bad luck protection. The longer you go without a legendary the chances of getting a legendary increase. I have three characters at max level not including the mage that I just boosted and still have no legendary armor among any of my max level characters. I wanted to see how long it takes for a drop to happen, this means that I will only play my new boosted character and keeping track of how long it takes for that magic number generator to finally fall in my favor, by the way I should never gamble as me and random number generators do not mix very well.
Baseline:
Every Hour I play at max level I will count as one try.
Every Raid boss kill will count as one try.
Every Dungeon boss kill will count as an attempt.
And, Every emissary cache opened will count as one attempt.
I will count all of these up after every playing session and keep track of how long it actually takes for my mage to gain access to a legendary piece of armor. You can find this series every Monday right here on the blog as I keep you all posted on how long/ how many attempts it actually takes to make the random number generator finally go into my favor.
Starting stats:
Hours played at max level: 16 hours
Raid bosses killed: 15
Dungeon bosses killed: 4
Emissary caches opened: 5
Total attempts: 40
Legendary #1: 0
For those that have played the entire expansion and still haven't gained a legendary piece of armor know that you are not alone. Some of us also have bad luck too.
I recently purchased my pre-purchase for Battle For Azeroth (BFA). I am saying this because like every expansion that comes out I smile to myself as I try and convince myself that I have an exit strategy, that the time has come to explore different games, and that the age of WoW has ended. Well like every expansion I come over to the dark side, dust off my keys and try and get back into the game. This expansion was no different, Legion kept me entertained and I had fun but quickly shoved it aside as I finished leveling one character and then played some simulation games (my first true love). I had moved on, ready to tackle the game a bit at a time depending on whether I had somebody to play with or not as I would not be playing by myself.
I made the mistake, not really a mistake as it was on my bucket list, of going to BlizzCon 2017. After a whirlwind of emotion and fun I came back and jumped back into WoW. The trailer gave me such joy that I had to try and level up some characters that I wanted to play in the new game. I leveled up two more characters and played at least an hour a week between BlizzCon and when I pre-purchased the game. I got sucked into the vortex of WoW once again, and I love it.
As I write this review I want to tell you all that I have only played through the second patch of Legion, which means I never went to Argus and haven't played through any of that content. I used my token for a 110 boost on a Fire Mage, not my YouTube Mage, on the alliance side. One of the points of this purchase is that you can start to build your alliance and get the new races, but you have to complete the Argus quest line as well as gain exalted with the races you are trying to recruit. So I guess what I am getting at is a quick look at boosting a 110 character without playing through the current expansion, the quest line, and ultimately how to go through the work and gain your reputation as quickly as possible.
Review:
The difficulty of Argus:
I know that World of Warcraft has gone more casual in the recent years but this end of expansion zone is one of the most difficult that I have played. The mobs (monsters and other npcs that try and attack you) boost their skills to match your current gear score (ilvl). This makes them hit hard no matter how much raiding you do or how much gear you are lucky enough to secure. I bring this up because this is one of the hardest parts of boosting a new character, unless you are a tank you will die a couple times as you get used to a class that you don't play very often.
Getting that out of the way, this patch is fun. You finally get to take the fight to the Legion, which means invading their home planet and trying to fight them on their own turf. I would say that the story this expansion is one of the best and I look forward to it every day I log in to find a new angle to write about.
My advice would be to log in and start the campaign on Argus. It is a little difficult but the story makes up for it and the trial by fire mentality is very helpful in learning your new class.
Raiding:
Your brand new level 110 character will have a base ilvl of 870 and weapon ilvl of 900. This means that you cannot do the last raid of the expansion in LFR (Looking for Raid) but you can go through all wings of the previous raids. I found jumping into LFR to be another avenue to learn your new class as well as experience some of the content that I had missed. The encounters aren't that difficult and the biggest thing is that you don't stand in stupid during the fight. My advice to the newish raider is to just pull up the map and click on the boss portrait when you get there. This will pull up a brief synopsis of what to look out for and what to do so that people don't rage during the encounters.
PvP:
Your gear is awful but with the base stats this expansion for PvP you should do alright. If you are new to the game I would recommend getting used to playing your new character before you jump into player vs player combat. I'm not saying this because you will be bad, which you will, but because I love PvP so much and I want you all to enjoy it too. The learning curve for PvP is huge, and because the encounter changes every time you queue up it can get disheartening to always feel like you are losing or dying all the time. Do yourself a favor, go quest a bit, get used to your keybinds, practice on training dummies, find a sequence of keys to push that make the training dummy scream for mercy, and then enter the fray. When you enter be prepared to have fun and make new friends in a sometimes old and dry game.
Allied Races:
I have not had the opportunity to unlock any of these races so I can't comment on the difficulty or the ease of the scenarios to unlock them, I will say that once I get them unlocked I'll do a quick blurb about the scenario and how it was to unlock them. Who knows maybe I'll go and record the scenarios so you all can see second hand how not to do them, or what they entail. I will put spoiler warnings on them if you do not want to see them for yourself.
Overall:
I have enjoyed the presale of Battle for Azeroth a lot. It has breathed new life into a game that can sometimes stagnate, and gotten me to want to complete the current expansion because I mostly want to get it done while it is fresh content. For those of you coming into the game hopefully the pointers I added in my review will help you at least know what to do, and for those of you that have played through the entire expansion let me know what you think of the pre-expansion so far either in the comments here or on my google plus page.
It is 2018 and time for new technology and games to come out. This post is all about where we are going with this community, our YouTube channel, and our social media. Instead of our normal written format we will look at it in a more concise bullet format. 😀
Blog:
At least one post per week
Reviews, releases, and video game news
YouTube videos embedded for your enjoyment in one place
Community building exercises
Books, Pop Culture, Video Games, and Exercise
YouTube:
We are limited by technology so we will be playing games a little older than the newest of new titles.
Come on over and relive some memories at Wylesco Gaming (add a hyper link here)
Current Series:
World of Warcraft Leveling
Stardew Valley Exploration
Next up:
Banished
Twitch:
As soon as I have a microphone for XBox we will be streaming different games for that system at one to two hour blocks
Current games that I am playing
Battlefield 4
Farming Simulator '15
Social Media:
You can stay updated at any of these handles, well any except SnapChat because I don't use that one much.
Facebook
@Wylesco
Twitter
@Wyles_co
Instagram
@Wylesco
SnapChat
@Wylesco
Feel free to add me on any of these for up to date information. I will add my Twitch handle once that gets going.
I look forward to building this community with you all this year and for many more to come.
Before I launch into my review of Ready Player One I want to launch into a quick recap of day 1 of fitness for gaming. I made it home from work and set the timer for 52 minutes. I spent that 52 minutes harvesting canola in Farming Simulator 15 for the X-Box. I'm not sure if it is working but my weight is down to 213.6 lbs so I'm going to make it.
Now onto the review:
Plot: Future Society is broken outside of a computer simulation. The creator of the computer simulation passes away and launches a scavenger hunt within the simulation to take control of it. Our hero Wade works with friends and against an evil corporation to make sure the simulation stays free.
Review:
This is the second time I've read this book and I love it for what it is, a retrospective longing for a time long past. I loved the pop culture references, from video games to music this book was like a walk down memory lane. I am an avid gamer and have been known to get lost in a different world in order to escape my own. As I read this book I found myself day dreaming of a time when I could plug myself into an imaginary world and actually live there.
The deeper I got in the book the more I got swept up in the story of friendship, loyalty, and what happens when an honorable person is faced with unimaginable odds. I loved the underlying themes more that the story itself. I especially loved the theme of honor, as honor should be what everybody strives for.
My only criticism of this book is the ending. The story was so well built up and had my full attention. I was sucked into the story and the build up was so good I was expecting a great show of completion. Unfortunately at the end of the book the story just stopped, there was no concise conclusion and there was no cliffhanger either. I will not ruin the book by talking about the ending but I will sum it up with one word, revived in the book itself, lame.
Overall I love this book. On Goodreads I give it 3 of 5 stars for the sole reason that the ending left me wanting. I do love this book, I wish for the technology i this book to become a reality, and I do look forward to the time when immersion rigs are as commonplace in the world as our cell phones. Maybe when we reach that point I will look back at this book, smile, and remember the way that I wanted it to be a reality.
The next book that I am reading is Love Your Life, Not Theirs by Rachel Cruze. I will work through this book and review it upon completion.
Today my goal is to build compassion in some way. Our world has become too divided, we are too busy worrying about ourselves to stop and help another person. I challenge myself and all of the small, but growing community, to choose to listen to a fellow human. Include a fellow in your life some way, and reach out to anyone that may be in need of help on that day.
Every day try to live your life in a way that brings joy to others. Go out of your way just one time a day to lift another up. This could be as easy as holding a door for a busy person with their hands full, or as complicated as volunteering in a soup kitchen or some other community outreach system. I would guess that the bulk of us don't even take the time to look up from our daily lives to reach out to somebody in need.
Fitness Action Plan:
I bought a fitness tracking watch that counts my steps over the holiday. After rereading the novel "Ready Player One" I wanted to take the lockout program from the novel, the one where Wade has to workout before he can unlock the Oasis, and apply it to my life. I created a program where every 100 steps equals one minute of game time. Also every minute of exercise equals one minute of game time. This will keep me honest and through the use of "Alexa," Amazon's smart home device as a time I have to earn my play tie. So far it has worked only in theory as I only implemented it yesterday and spent the day working on the computer and playing games. I will make the best of it and see how far I can go down this fitness journey.
Hello and welcome to my blog, the special place where I talk about the goings on of myself and all that I do. Since I wrote last a lot has happened. I have had the blessing of getting married to my girlfriend of 10 years, which has been both fun and a bit of a problem as we are still trying to figure out how to live together. I know I'm strange as I did not live with her before marriage, but it is making the actual process of trying to get to know each other a lot more fun. I also had the opportunity to go to BlizzCon which was a lot of fun, and may have been a once in a lifetime opportunity. I got to play some of the new expansions, saw some panels, and got to watch some of the e-sports. A couple of weeks ago I got to go to Las Vegas for Christmas and Phoenix for New Years. We had a lot of fun exploring the two cities and preparing for the new year and going back to work this week.
Together with my new wife I have developed some goals for 2018.
1. YouTube- I have no goals of growing an income from YouTube, but I do enjoy making videos so I have started to upload a weekly show as I get ready for the next World of Warcraft expansion. This series follows a young mage as he discovers who he is, who he was, and where he will be going. I have been trying to increase the vocalization patterns that I utilize by reading the quest texts in different voices in order to try and make it almost like a read along series. It has been a lot of fun, and I have learned a lot as I have practiced the different voices.
2. Presence- I have always had a problem with either living in the past, or day dreaming. It has led to some problems in my personal, professional, and interpersonal life. My goal this year is to try and be more present in all that I do and make sure that I am able to do all that I need to do while not getting lost in the emotional flailing that I tend to go through.
3. Money- This year is the year that I get out of debt and start to learn how to make my money work for me. I heard that true monetary success is when your money works harder than you do, and I look forward to learning more about finances.
4. Fitness- I have two goals this year. I want to travel, through cardio equipment, a total of 2,018 miles. It has been fun so far and I look forward to seeing if I can do it. My second fitness goal is to try and get into good enough shape to compete in a jiujitsu tournament some time this year.
5. Blog- I would like to use this blog as a way to grow my internet community. I want to use it as a sounding board for good, and a way to make a difference in an indifferent society. I plan on posting at least once a week, but hopefully I will be posting more often.
Now I would like to talk a little bit about what this blog is going to look like. I will be doing personal blogs where I just talk about life, liberty and my pursuit of happiness. I will also be doing fitness updates, where I talk about the workouts that I do and how they are making me feel and any progress I may feel. The last type of post will be Video Game, Book, TV, Movie reviews where I discuss the good, bad, and ugly of the games and things that I enjoy. I will also use this to give you all a look at what is going on in my life through games and how I am getting on.
I look forward to this 2018, as it will become one of the best years of my life. I will be working hard to hopefully bring entertainment and knowledge to you all. Best wishes this new year and let's go on a journey together.
