Diablo 3: Having Fun Prior to Reaper of Souls

Posted on March 19, 2014 by keithyw

With Reaper of Souls just 6 days away from release, some friends and I have really gotten back into the game and have been enjoying the current patch. I was one of the first of my friends to experience the patch when it came out and immediately noticed the quality of the game improve dramatically. In the current state, I would say it’s where Diablo 3 should’ve been right from the start.

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World of Warcraft: Boosted 90s Implications

Posted on March 19, 2014 by keithyw

So with the boosted 90s, one of the major impacts that occur in the game is further degradation in grouped situations. For the boosted 90, they might see their situation as being “easily” carried via better geared/skilled players. However, for the skilled/experienced/geared players, they end up having to deal with the frustrations of people who either lack knowledge in their class or cannot produce the required output for a certain situation. Obviously, this aspect of the game really isn’t that new but surprisingly Blizzard seems to be content about this situation and we should figure out ways to handle it.

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World of Warcraft: Boosting, Is It Worth It?

Posted on March 17, 2014 by keithyw

Since I pre-ordered Warlords of Draenor, one nice little perk was being able to receive a boosted level 90. I debated whether to create a 90 on my friend’s server or just boosting an alliance toon on another server I occasionally play on. What ended up happening is that I figured that since my friend rarely is on World of Warcraft recently, it made far more sense to just boost an ally to 90 from level 1 since I never had a max level alliance toon. This would allow me to potentially hang out with a few streamers that I follow and give me a feeder class to the other allies I have on that server. Not to mention getting the Double Agent achievement. As the rest of my toons are all level 90 and fairly reasonably geared, it made far more sense to just boost on Alliance toon rather than having a redundant Horde character. However, after doing this for myself, I decided to ask a broader question: Is boosting worth the money?

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World of Warcraft: How Blizzard Needs to Improve Siege of Orgrimmar LFR Immediately

Posted on March 5, 2014 by keithyw

This one is written especially for the Blizzard developers and needs to happen ASAP, especially before Diablo 3 comes out. So currently, Siege of Orgrimmar LFR still has MAJOR issues. It’s far too long at this current stage and too frustrating. What is most striking though is that only part 1 seems to have a reasonable queue compared to the rest of the instances. Parts 2-4 have an average wait time for 1 hour. That is ridiculous for anyone to endure and a complete waste of time. Also, this demonstrates a failure by Blizzard to address issues with Parts 2-4 despite numerous nerfs. As a result, I am going to propose the following to make it doable:

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World of Warcraft: Trick for Ordos on PVE Servers and Raid Finder

Posted on February 18, 2014 by keithyw

So I play on a PVE server and in using the Raid Finder tool for Ordos I have a little trick I want to share. Occasionally, you’ll have people who will port you to a PVP server. Some will have unbalanced populations which may cause chaos for your Ordos raid. If you’re on a quiet server like mine, what  you can do is go up into the Ordos Sanctuary and wait near the entrance. At that point, list yourself. Continue reading →

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World of Warcraft: Back in the Game (Again)

Posted on February 17, 2014 by keithyw

After a hiatus and dealing with the drama of my dead gaming rig, I finally have managed to settle things enough to where I can start playing again. The last two weeks have been some intense gaming sessions where I’ve been hitting the LFRs pretty hard along with focusing on my toons in getting their legendary cloaks. At the moment, my hunter is the latest toon to receive his legendary cloak and I should be completed with the Secrets on my Shaman this coming week.

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What Makes A Good Streaming Game

Posted on February 17, 2014 by keithyw

If you’re thinking about getting into the livestreaming business as a gamer, you might ask yourself, “What is a good game to stream?” Most people probably will go with a game that is popular just to get into the rankings. However, what makes a game popular? Or more importantly, what makes a game attractive to stream?

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World of Warcraft: Free or Paid 90s? Why the Hate?

Posted on January 28, 2014 by keithyw

So Blizzard is doing something pretty controversial with the whole boosted level 90 for Warlords of Draenor. Currently, it might even be out prior to Warlords of Draenor as it’s being tested in the PTR as of patch 5.4.7 and is part of the in-game store. What’s more interesting is the loads of typical complaints from people calling it p2w. Right now, I find it intensely amusing to see this backlash in the rise of the paid model but I want to examine this situation a little more.

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World of Warcraft: Should Heroic Raids Even Exist (as We Know Them)?

Posted on January 28, 2014 by keithyw

I enjoy the controversial discussions on whether or not LFR should exist. But the real question is whether Heroic Raids (or what will become known as Mythic Raids) really exist? Some numbers came out recently about the latest decline in World of Warcraft and I hope to analyze the cause behind what is another drop and the relationship between these drops, the priorities of where Blizzard sees the development of raiding content and high end raiding.

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Twitch TV, Social Media and Stickiness

Posted on January 25, 2014 by keithyw

Currently, I am working on a social media type of project and one of the things we constantly are discussing is the “stickiness” aspects of the way the application should work. For those who do not understand the concept of “stickiness,” it’s simply the idea of how users of an application consistently return and use it. Typical examples of “stickiness” in an application are comments, reviews, likes and other interactive elements. When I look over towards Twitch TV, I feel that certain people do understand this concept but most people struggle with growing their channels because they lack proper examples to engage and re-engage their audience.

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