Game Recluse Community Streaming on Twitch.tv

Got a schedule posted and set in stone (or some other kind of semi-pliable stone material that can be changed if need be). It's more like a huge stone that we can chisel the face off of if there needs to be another surface for engraving a new set of scheduled time slots. Anyway, the schedule looks something a lot like this:

Twitch Scheduled at 3PM - ?pm PST or 8pm-10pm PST

Moba Mondays - Heroes of the Storm

Lootin Tootin Tuesdays - Diablo 3

Hump Day WoW Day - World of Warcraft

Thurs-Person Shooter - Loadout

Payday Fridays! - Payday 2

Shomer Shabbas Saturdays off - We sure as shit don't fuckin roll!

Tubes Topical/QA - Youtube Vid every Sunday

At this time it's only Thursday on the first week of the schedule. Done an hour or two in order to test the waters some. So far so good. The most popular stream day so far has been MOBA Monday by far, which I attribute to the game being in closed-Alpha and is pretty decently sought after by the community. Heroes of the Storm has all the MOBA players chomping at the bit to get into. MOBA for those who don't know is an acronym for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, and is considered a sub-genre of the Real Time Strategy game genre. Basically a lot of clicking and strategic movement around the map, but not very high action feeling (to me at least). It's not my forte, but one of my main colleagues of the stream really enjoys those type of games so we're dedicating a day to getting in on that action. 

It's also hard to compete with such a lively streaming community when there are live feeds and reels going around from this year's E3 convention, which is one of the largest gaming events as well as biggest reveal times for major labels in the entire year. We chose this time in particular to launch because there wouldn't be many people popping in to check out the streams as the kinks get worked out and some of the edges can get nailed down. It's kind of disheartening streaming to a more or less empty room, but hey, got to start somewhere. With the E3 Coverage there's also a lot of game news buzzing around this week which will make doing Sunday's proposed sum-up of the week video easy to pick topics for. It's all strategy here, all the time! 

The character breakdown for the primary stream activities are as follows and with pictures! 

MOBA Monday slot goes to my new support character Tyrande from World of Warcraft.

Support Character who possesses a Healing ability which heals the target and Tyrande in one action, a attack that launches an owl in a straight line, revealing the map and damaging enemies it passes through, and an AoE stun. Her ultimate abilities include either a group stealth (if the allies are close) or a large AoE damage ability that strikes erratically in the area which you cast. As a kicked in ability she has Hunter's Mark, which can affect one enemy at a time and increases damage dealt to that hero while the mark remains. Not a bad hero for someone who likes support such as myself.

Lootin Tootin Tuesday's session goes to my main Diablo 3 character named Echuta, the Witch Doctor. An all time fave of mine.

Echuta is a powerhouse of a character with entirely too much utility. From having an army of pets that skitter around him, to unbelievable "oh shit" buttons. Echuta remains king of my Diablo Experience. His build is as follows.

1. Soul Harvest - Vengeful Spirit

2. Spirit Walk - Jaunt

3. Gargantuan - Wrathful Protector

4. Mass Confusion - Paranoia

L-Click:  Piranhas - Piranado 

R-Click: Plague of Toads - Rain of Toads

Passives - Midnight Feast, Grave Injustice, Fetish Sycophants, and Pierce the Veil.

You can also click right here to link to his profile page. As a brief description of how he works is that he casts Piranhas into a vantage point which gathers up all the baddies. Then runs into a group of enemies - blows Mass Confusion so the enemies attack each other and take more damage, uses Soul Harvest to up his intelligence and do a decent portion of damage to the group, then he runs out of the group (using Spirit Walk if necessary, but usually holding onto that for when massive damage is deal to him) most of the time totally unscathed. His pets create a nice barrier for him to run to safety behind most of the time as well, which he then rains down toads on the remaining group of enemies from the safety afar. For really big baddies he'll use Gargantuan when he's in the fray... but it's reserved for pretty badass mobs. For being overly safe as well as overly badass, the Witch Doctor is #1.

Hump Day WoW Day also gets my main character slot over in World of Warcraft. The Blood Elf Hunter named Velgrim. 

I won't get too much into what Velgrim does aside from saying he's got a Spirit Bear named Bjorn that follows him around and helps destroy his enemies close up. Meanwhile Velgrim rains down shit in the form of arrows, glaives, and other summoned woodland creatures that pile on the poor target and make short work of whatever life they have once Bjorn is done. The long and short of it is, Velgrim is a badass, and if you don't know how hunters work in WoW yet, you've either been living under a rock or have just connected to the internet for the first time. You can find more about hunters here or more specifically if you'd like to see Velgrim's gear and rap sheet you can find it right here.

Thurs-Person Shooter Day was rounded out with the all time crowd pleaser named Dirt Dog, from Loadout. The customized T-Bone character model.

This underwear clad gentleman is a force of nature. He has two primary weapons, in two different sets. His primary "big boy pants" set is called Big Dick's Big Shits - and carries a 1 shot rocket launcher called "Daddy's Little Goomba", and a secondary lightning beam rifle (like a protopack gun from Ghostbusters) called "Da' Giggle Stick". These two being his favored set, he also uses a support set called Da' Mad Haterade which features a 6 chamber firebomb rocket launcher named "Internet Hate Machine" and a nice healing beam rifle which he refers to simply as "Jamaican Herbs and Spices". Delicious. Mayhem never looked so good.

Friday Payday! - Tomorrow holds in store one thing - masked men and heists. Wolf is my character of choice, and I shall dawn the infamous Gold Tooth Grin he has had since launch.

He's both the subtle breeze and thunderclap. The flowing stream and raging river! For on the fly mission utility he's a ghost for those stealthy jobs to which he wears a simple black suit and silenced weapons. When the plan is to go in guns-a-blazin, he puts on his heavy suit of armor and picks up his shotgun. No words need be said. This build's mantra is "Say Nothing; Or say something REALLY LOUD"! 

Just a little look into the main players of the weekly stream and how they work, should you care to involve yourself with any kind of mechanics behind the man. Looking at the breakdown I suppose I am mostly a support player that relies heavily on ranged as well as making allies the brunt of the enemies' targets. All the while I can sit in the back lazily taking pot-shots and swoop in to crush enemies at the precise time needed! Support is King, and Utility is his Prince.   

Gamer Cred - MMOs

As promised, here's a little look a bit deeper into my MMO gaming history. Starting around 2001 I got into the MMO Scene a little bit late, considering Ultima and Everquest had already struck oil pretty big and made a name for the genra. At the time I was too young to have money for the subscription fees, so I stuck mostly to console gaming an non-subbed multiplayer games online. My favorite around pre-MMO game of the time was easily the Diablo series when I wasn't glued to a console. I was still playing it pretty heavily around 2001 when Dark Age of Camelot launched, though I was getting a little bit more into the big-boy games and subscription fees.

When I realized I found more joy spending money earned on a months worth of gaming for the price of a nights worth of pizza, I started subbing to games regularly. Dark Age being my first and easily one of the most unique and engaging PvP experiences in any game, even to this day. Dark Age of Camelot stole my attention for a good couple of years and was fun each step of the way. Having dabbled a little bit in other MMO titles, and backtracking into EQ and UO to see what they were about, but DAoC was the mainstay of mine until "the next big thing" came out. The next big thing for me, being Star Wars Galaxies. Combining my love of the Star Wars universe and a singular character development sandbox experience (meaning you only got 1 character per server, so the name you made for yourself stuck unless you rerolled - or unless you unlocked a Jedi slot which enabled you to have a secondary force sensitive character on that server), this game had me hooked to say the least. I spent countless hours every day grinding new character builds and exploring the world of SW:Galaxies. I'll end up posting more about my love of this game and how it tied into landing a job working for Mythic Entertainment at a later point, lets get back to my other game credentials.

I played Galaxies until it breathed it's last breath in 2011, but had side MMOs as they launched during it's life span. World of Warcraft was among them, which at the time didn't impress me during it's vanilla days. I quickly realized that the MMO genra was just something that I clicked with. I ate up everything I could get my hands on that was considered an MMO. I played everything that I could find that had a new theme, perspective, or game feature. Does it have player housing? PvP Focus? Sandbox or Theme Park? Medieval, Modern, or Futuristic? It didn't matter. If it was something different, and a massive multiplayer I wanted to be a part of it from ground zero. I played everything from Lineage to Dungeons and Dragons Online, Warhammer:Online to STO, EVE Online to Lord of the Rings Online. I've played most current MMOs to date even if only for a month or two. Tera, Rift, Aion, Guild Wars (which some debate is an MMO or not).  Hell, I even played The Matrix Online in addition to Age of Conan as well as Tabula Rasa. My theme was, simple: Is it different then what i'm currently playing? Does it have a feature or focus I've not seen before? If the answer was yes, I was there. 

Along the path I paved, others started to notice that "MMO's are kind of his thing", and some opportunities started to arise that let me work more closely with them. From a very obscured and quite frankly, dumbass lucky opportunity, I was able to get my foot in the door of the then Mythic Entertainment working as a lowly In Game Support for Dark Age of Camelot - See how we come full circle? I worked there for many years, and was in the CSR Pit (what we referred to the customer support area as), when EA decided they wanted to gobble up the company's next big project. The project being Warhammer Online. Around this time alot of changes had been made to the way we operated there at work. Being absorbed by a Goliath such as Electronic Arts, of course there were changes to be had around ye-olde-Mythic Studios. More responsibilities to the CSR Pit, such as learning Ultima Online as well as Warhammer Online at the same time, while still supporting Dark Age's clientele. Supporting three games isn't bad, and that's not my complaint at all. It's that we were given little to no time to do so, and when going back in time to Ultima Online, having minimal staff to learn the archaic tools used to support the game, as well as the new modernized systems of WAR, it was just a lot of information to absorb with a very high standard of expectations set. I digress. So I worked to support customers, in title, but ended up doing QA work and some developmental things along the way during my tenure in the company. 

Fast-Forward to Warahammer Online tanking pretty hard and the inevitable downsizing that came along with a floundering game. This left me without a job, and bitter to game companies themselves, but nevertheless passionate about MMOs. On the horizon I heard that Bioware (one of my favorite companies at the time) had pulled the trigger on a project I had been following for years prior. Star Wars: The Old Republic promised to fill the gaping hole in my soul that Star Wars Galaxies had set so many years before. Elated by another Star Wars title hitting the MMO scene, I was chomping at the bit to have a taste of the new lightsaber laden game world. When it released I played it avidly for years until it unfortunately tapered off due to lack of endgame content and falling short on promises made. It started losing subscribers at which point I decided that since there were a lot of really great things happening over at Blizzard instead, I would return to the one true champion of the gaming industry and throw my dollars towards their screens. This is where i'm parked today - Blizzard fan-boy and MMO aficionado.