Agent White

No putting words in my mouth, please.

It's not bad that it's not new, but Massively already had an article detailing the trial from back when it was -announced-. I just don't see a point to repeat the same information the same site has already had. Hawk isn't bringing any new perspective to the trial that wasn't already discussed -on the same site-. It's great that the company is working with gaming sites to get the word out. I just don't feel repeating the same thing on the same site is a worthwhile endeavor. Maybe it's some sort of warped shotgun logic that if you say the same thing over and over you'll hit new people.

Then again one has to question the logic of why anyone would think a single end game trial would be impetus for someone to join the game when it's a pretty long slog from 1 to 50 for a newbie, DFBabies an exception. It's more likely to pull in people that have played the game before as a new shiny. I mean I don't really think people join up with the 900 lbs gorilla int he room because they saw how OMG COOL YOU GET TO FIGHT WITH DOZENS OF OTHERS TO TAKE DOWN A DRAGON (if you manage to get through the other 6 bosses before it and the long dungeon crawl before them) Etc.

So yeah advertising is great. It doesn't have to be new stuff but maybe you could at least talk about the old stuff in new directions? I dunno cuz again, this article was just parroting what's been said before between the same site and other devs. Another perspective is cool when it's different, this isn't and I don't think anyone is fooled that this is some attempt to pull in new gamers.

Honestly this just feels like a rehash of previous articles. There's only so much that can be said about a trial and I think the Devs have said it to death, on massively and elsewhere.

It's there but not unlocked yet. Current speculation is it'll go live on Tuesday when they update the market and can start selling it like all the other SSA episodes.

So, what do you all think so far?

I'm... kind of half and half on this issue. Where I22 had so many OMGNEWSHINIES this one has.. less so. Night Ward is neat, but not a ton of my characters will be running it (Though it's nice to have a new 30-39 option). And the trial is okay, if tedious to do 5 times to get hybrid (The runs were fun! But I was flagging by the 3rd run). But that's about it. For a majority of my characters the game hasn't really changed all that much.

Still looking forward to the Yin TF though, and never having to deal with the Psyche TF again.

So yeah, what's there is pretty good, it just doesn't feel like all that much is there.

Even so, they could still give us the option to use our bases. I'm fine with the tunnel system, but I wouldn't mind using my base teleporters either.

kinda hard to when you've got Vanguard and the Carnival of Light watching the things like hawks

It's possible. The 5 alignment contacts in First Ward are essentially newspaper missions, each contact only hands out about 3-4 misions, 1 of which is just a 'go kill X amount of Y group". Though their level range is strictly 20-29. At 30 they move to Inactive Contacts

And the level range for Trilogy and Fireball (And the Drudge? Which I think is a villain contact) are 30-50.

Yeah, the first day they introduced The Really Hard Way, beta teams were pulling it off first try.

Not a cake walk no, but not "OMG SO HARD".

None of the badges lends itself to be very easy 'standard run' material, and a -lot- of the challenge in the trial is locked up in going for the badges. otherwise it's a fairly standard tank and spank up to the Tyrant fight, who is just hard to tank because of the lightning strikes o' doom.

I will say it requires everyone 50+3 tho. Attempting it at less than that is just folly. This is the War finale for a good reason.

I couldn't even do that. I just did it via ST attacks. Because when I mapserved, I'd wait about 20 seconds then it'd kick me back to log in

And they put out a patch that was supposed to fix it, but it was apparently completely ineffective (and was reported as such). So I honestly can't say why it got pushed to live completely as is.

Yes. Everyone is having this problem. The mission just doesn't work.

My personal pet theory is there's just too many mobs crammed into too small a map. Everyone on it gets massive lag. Trying to use an AoE when more than like 4-5 enemies are active (not even -hitting- them) mapserves you.

Just seems like the simplest solution to try would be to cut the mob count down and see if that helps it. But to my knowledge it was never tweaked as such on beta.

The other thing to note, you don't actually have to drop him to 0%. At 10% the battle is over and he shifts to his 54-8 phase.

[redacted]

Woo. Full day of dinking about with some of the new toys. Boned myself a little with night ward tho, parking my Beast MM at 29 instead of pushing to 30. Was able to do Mistress Maria and, of course, Hellewise, but blocked at Montague til I'm 30. You think he could've been 29 too since Maria is so short there's little chance of bumping up. Oh well.

Night Ward is pretty, all the groups are really neat looking and have enough tricks up their sleeves to actually be kind of challenging.

Ran the Belladonna arc. Not bad, though frankly it just felt rushed. most of the missions are very short yet seem mostly like tedious busy work, a lot of the objectives are just "Kill Spud A". Seemed like more EBs than any of the DA arcs, but running it on a 50+3 it was a breeze.

The Personal Story for Cole still mapserves when using any of his AoE powers against the Arachnos army. Frankly, I think it's just the problem of having too many enemies crammed into too small a map. I get it's trying to feel epic, but it's causing -massive- lag and seems like the mapserve happens whenever you try to do an AoE attack on more than a small handful of enemies at a time. I'd really suggest just cutting the mob count in half and seeing if that helps. Neat story otherwise though.

Also did a marathon run with the usual Victory crew, got Hybrid unlocked. It's a total slog. The trial itself isn't that bad and the badges are actually pretty challenging, in a worthwhile 'this actually requires some thought and strategy' kind of way without feeling like it comes down to dumbluck on someone not screwing up. However, having to do it a minimum of 5 times to unlock the slot is pretty much the height of tedium. Not something I'll be doing in 1 sitting again for a -long- time and frankly I have no desire to do that again on any of my other characters. My main has it unlocked and slotted, I'm happy enough with that. I'll likely run it with my other 50s, but in a more incidental 'oh they're running magisterium' than "Ok, time for Run #4! Almost there" kind of way. It's a pain that there's no way to buy the Advanced iXP. I'd be fine with even a 10 threds to 1% conversion or something.

And later on when I can sit at the comp more I'll try out Penny Yin's TF. but so far I'm enjoying the I23 goodie bag.

On a full league, he's not that hard to take down normally.

Trying to do The Hard Way? Very hard, in fact in the 5 runs I was able to do before getting pulled away, we didn't pull it off. The other badges we were able to, but not that one. To not even speak of The Really Hard Way.

Yeah I like the scenes m'self.