Monthly Archives: September 2018

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I suddenly realized that it’s been 9 days since my last blog post. This has mostly been due to me focusing on other things, mostly games, and also because I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about. Well I do now!

First off, my two weeks of freedom. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to get myself motivated enough to join the gym again. I’m just way too insecure right now and I’m scared that if I go people will laugh at me. Instead I’m opting to cancel my gym membership for the time being and start/continue working out at home. We have a crosstrainer in the attic, I have weights to use for my arms and there’s a mat which I can use to do my exercises in general on. With the weather turning sour aswell this means I won’t have to brave the wind and rain to get to a gym but instead move up a staircase and do my routine there. I’ve printed out some stuff I can do by myself at home and I’m hoping some results will be showing in the coming weeks.
The other thing I wanted to do was eat more healthy and that has been a major success. I don’t have any junkfood in the house anymore and have been eating way more healthy things. I’ve started taking my own lunch to work again and now I’m just scouring a proper container so I can bring some yoghurt with me aswell. Dinner has been veggie filled almost every evening, even the nacho dish I made last night, and I honestly have started feeling much better physically now that I’ve banned all the high fat and sugar foods out of my life.

Unfortunately most of my free time has still been dedicated to playing games although I did make a tiny bit of progress reading my book. I’ve also been cleaning out my room vigorously getting rid of everything I no longer need and just making sure it’s very clean so that my allergies don’t bother me as much as they normally do. I still plan to take up my cross stitching again, maybe this week when I don’t feel like logging into my games.

On the gaming front I’ve actually been making good time on my September Gaming Goals. I’ve ticked off all the World of Warcraft ones except getting my reputations to Exalted and maxing out my Professions. In FFXIV I’ve finished leveling my Machinist and started to level my Black Mage while also doing dailies to get my Weaver up.
The solo game is still a thing I need to work on but I have maybe figured out a way to start tackling my massive backlog. What I’ve been doing is making a top three game list for all my consoles that I really want to finish and then pick one of those three to start working on. Once I’ve gone through the top three I can pick a new top three and just keep on going through my backlog like that.
My top threes currently look like this.
PS4
1. Crash Bandicoot “NSane” Trilogy
2. Horizon Zero Dawn
3. Final Fantasy XV

Switch
1. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (excluding the Torna DLC).
2. Kirby: Star Allies
3. Octopath Traveler, alteast one chapter 4.

3DS
1. Professor Layton and the Mask of Wonders
2. Dragon Quest VIII
3. Epic Mickey

PC
1. Mickey’s Castle of Illusion
2. Tomb Raider
3. Rayman Origins

As you can see I’ve been trying to mix up RPGs with other genres. Doing RPGs back to back will definitely exhaust me as gamer so I’m trying to break them up as much as possible. As it stands now I’m playing the Professor Layton game on my 3DS during my commute to and from work. This gives me about 30 mins of play time per day, which is actually surprisingly enough time to make some serious strides in a game like this. At home I’m switching back and forth between Xenoblade and Crash Bandicoot, kind of depending what I feel like playing. Even though I’ve only obtained Crash recently it’s one of my top games to finish purely because of the nostalgia hit it provides. As far as the PC games go. I should be able to finish Mickey’s Castle of Illusion pretty fast. It’s a short game so an afternoon and an evening of playing may actually have me finishing this game. Tomb Raider isn’t that long either compared to some of the other RPGs I have on my list, especially Dragon Quest and Xenoblade.

All in all it comes down to me managing my game time better. I block hours to do certain things at work, I may need to start blocking hours for games aswell to get done what I want done. I’ll see. September is slowly crawling to an end and I have about 7 days to work on some of my goals still. See you next post!

Two weeks of freedom?

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As I sit down to write this blogpost I’ve had a really long tiresome day. Having barely slept last night I could only think of my bed when I was at work but now that I’m home, and it’s actually time to sleep, my head is a bit too filled with random thoughts to really settle down and snooze. So instead I’m just going to write down what’s going on inside this messy brain of mine today and see if that will help me clear it.

We have a midyear evaluation at work and I had mine today. I tend to get the same comments every evaluation: you’re not professional enough and you lack some communication skills. So far I’ve taken the criticisms as they come but there has never really been a follow up to them. I tend to get told that I’m a bit blunt which may come across as me being bitchy at times but I don’t really see it that way myself. It may come with the fact that the moment I step foot into the office people start asking me questions within two minutes of me sitting down. I get a bit annoyed by that sometimes because I really would like the first ten to fifteen minutes of my work day for myself to make a planning, look at what kind of mails I have and just settle down before the questions are fired. I’m already not a morning person by any means so stuff like this just tends to get me irritable, which I then show in my answers to people. It’s not something that is completely concious but it happens nonetheless.
My manager has offered me to work with me on my professionalism and my communication skills and I’ll gladly take any chance to grow as a person at work. I’m just seriously curious what exactly I should do to make strides and grow, but I guess I’ll see in a few weeks when we have our first “session”.

In other news my dad and his girlfriend departed for Spain this afternoon to enjoy a two week holiday over there, leaving me alone in the house untill the 28th. I have to say that I’m kind of happy to have this time to myself because I was getting irritated a lot by them lately and I just really needed some space. I do hope that I can use the coming two weeks to start getting into the habit of going to the gym again. My weight has been bothering me for a very long time now and now that I’m able, for two weeks atleast, to spend my time the way I want to I kind of want to use to start setting up a gym routine again. Working out is healthy and even though the first few weeks tend to be tough I also know that it gives me energy and stamina, which translates into a better mood overall for myself. I may use the topic of gyms and workouts for my blogposts the coming weeks but that is yet to be seen.
For now though I want to reserve some time on the weekends, probably in the morning, and weekdays after work to go to the gym for 30 mins – one hour. I realise that I have to start from scratch again but that’s okay. I’m not setting the bar extremely high for myself. I just want to make sure that I’m going again and build a steady rythm of getting myself to go before actually pushing hard for weight loss goals.

Tied into the whole gym thing I also want to cook healthy for myself these two weeks. I have one pizza in the freezer for emergencies but as far as I’m concerned I want to cook myself healthy meals every day if I can. This probably means a lot of rice and veggies since that is what I enjoy. I’m also stocking up on stuff like yoghurt and fruit so I can take that as a snack during the evening/weekends instead of candy or crisps and I want to make sure I’m taking fruit with me to work every day. I have a new backpack incoming and an insulated lunch bag which means I could cut myself some fruit in the evening and put it in a plastic container in the fridge so that it can go into the insulated bag in the morning, keeping it more cool and fresh than it would be otherwise. I could also try to do something with the yoghurt that way but for now I’m a bit hesitant because it’s dairy and already kind of sour so I don’t really want to take it with me where it’s not properly cooled, because I probably can’t taste if it’s gone “sour” that way.

As far as games are concerned I  want to cut back on time on those and spend that time on my gym stuff and some other hobbies instead. I am probably going to tackle Trine 2 with a friend and I will still be playing WoW probably on a daily basis but that will probably be it. During the weekends I will have a bit more time to do some more and branch out to other games like FFXIV or a single player game of my choosing but for the week nights it’ll be WoW exclusive.
I want to get back to reading my book and tackling an embroidery kit that I’ve started a few years ago but never finished. I also really want to build one of the Toy-Cons from the Nintendo Labo kit I scored for cheap a while back, probably the motorcycle one since I can use that with Mario Kart for fun and giggles. I will make pictures during my building process to post for my blog so definitely stay tuned for that!

At the end of the day though my plans for the coming two weeks are hopefully a foundation for a change that is more lasting. I want to step away from constantly gaming and work on my health. I also want to pick up some of my old hobbies and make myself less reliant on my PC/PS4/Switch for enjoyment or relaxation. The biggest thing is that I want to start having a more structured life where I am more calm and capable of getting things done. As for right now I feel like I’ve gotten off my chest what has been going on in my head, which means I can close down the house and get ready for a good night’s sleep.

Settling into a rythm

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I figured it was time I sat down and wrote a blog post again about my adventures in the World of Warcraft. I know it’s probably not super interesting to read my babbling about this game a lot but since it is the only game I’m currently really active on it’s also the biggest inspiration for my blog posts. So I will keep on writing about it a lot for the time being.

As of yesterday I completed the War Campaign on the Alliance side. It’s been a hell of a ride with killing a San’Layn blood prince and sabotaging the Zandalari fleet. All in all I enjoyed this questchain a lot more than I thought I would. Especially the involvement of the Void Elves was amazing. Their portals to suck up enemies are hilarious and I used them happily. Because you know, who wouldn’t want to suck entire armies straight into the Void?
I’ve also peaked into the Warfront on my Rogue before the Horde filled their bar up and was quite surprised with how the setting actually is. There were enough people around to do the quests with and to farm rares with and ofcourse you have the World Boss that drops loot. It may not be something that you zone into every day but for a day in the weekend it’s fine content. I’m trying to queue up for Island expeditions here and there aswell, mostly so I can unlock the next tier of research on my ship. Finally I’ve also been chiseling away at all the reputations and am Revered with everything except Champions of Azeroth and the Tortollan seekers.

With a ton of new content unlocking this week I hope to do my four Mythic dungeons, dive into LFR and grind a bit more rep overall on both my characters. On my Rogue specifically I’ve already found a routine where I just make sure to do my Emissary quests every day and do the Champions of Azeroth/Tortollan Seekers ones aswell. On my Paladin I’ve finished the zone story in Zuldazar and am now only one quest away from unlocking the King’s Rest dungeon. I did the Warfront scenario before Blizzard hotfixed it and I’ve been gearing up to tank Mythic and Mythic+ over the weekend.

I’ve also found myself settling into a bit more of routine for my weekdays. Since I’m limited in the amount of time I have to play I make sure that I get my Emi’s done on both my characters. I then also make sure to do the CoA and Tortollan quests on my Rogue. When I’ve done all that and I have time left I either work on my Professions, queue up for a Dungeon/Island Expedition or grind out some extra World Quests for gear or I tackle some leftover quests in my questlog. It’s nice settling into a routine like that, even though it slows me down a bit. I just don’t really  have the time during weekdays to commit to much more so for then I tackle smaller things like Reputation, Fishing and a random dungeon/expedition/battleground. All the small bits still work towards my greater progress goals so even though I get to unwind I am also getting stuff done. Which is nice.

Lastly I want to take the time in this post to finally take a look back at Blaugust. I managed to nab a gold award this year, meaning I’ve posted atleast 25 posts. I’m pretty proud of myself for posting that regularly during the month of August. And even though I didn’t make it to the rainbow badge I proved to myself that I can actually put out more content if I want to. I just need to carry it over to the rest of the year.

BfA: The Landing

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Bwonsamdi and Rezan

With Battle for Azeroth out for a few weeks now I figured it’s time to start writing down my thoughts on the expansion so far when it comes to the things I have experienced, what I like and what I dislike. I could write an entire essay about this but for now I want to focus on three points. The best thing of the expansion, the okay/good stuff and the major disappointment so far.

From what I see around me the general opinion of Battle for Azeroth seems to be a mixed bag, as is usual the case with newly released content. People either seemed to love it or hate it from the get go but as time goes on opinions get more nuanced and as hyped up as people may or may not have been there are most definitely elements that are done good and bad in the game. So let us start with what in my opinion is the selling piece of this expansion launch:

The Lore
For me the story of the expansion so far has been overwhelmingly positive. I like how Alliance and Horde get their own continent and their own stories. It encourages people to take a look “over the fence” to see how the other faction fares because if you don’t you’ll miss out on roughly half of what Blizzards’ lore team has created so far. Obviously some things could have been done better, like the dungeon introductions for opposite factions. So far though the zones have been great with Drustvar as the big standout to me. That was just the perfect zone story with the perfect zone vibe. The only one coming close is Nazmir but it just misses this bit of oomph that Drustvar has for me. The only zone I feel is a bit disconnected in a way is Zuldazar, but that has more to do with not really following a “road” through the zone but instead getting sent all over the place.
As far as the whole Horde vs Alliance narrative goes, it’s less present than I thought it would be. Then again I opt to play with Warmode turned off. The War Campaign itself is rather interesting, especially since we get to team up with some people that deserved more spotlight like Lilian Voss and Shandris Feathermoon. All in all I’m liking where that story is headed aswell so the lore is the one aspect I’m absolutely positive about.

The okay
So Blizzard opted to take a few things from Legion and implement it in BfA. I’m okay with most of it. I prefer doing World Quests over dailies and the Mythic+ system is really nice aswell so I’m happy they have brought this along. There are still some tweaks to make here and there, like also implementing the paragon reputations again, but overall I’m happy that these elements remained in the game.
I’m also quite pleased with how the dungeons look. Even though some are a bit more hectic than others, Blizzard undeniably succeeded in making some dungeons to remember, again. One of the best ones in my opinion is Freehold, simply because one of the bossfight encounters starts out with having to catch a greasy pig and it’s hilarious. Underrot is at the bottom of the barrel for me, but that’s mostly because of the aesthetics of the dungeon itself. I can’t comment on the raid yet because I’ve not stepped foot in it, but I will definitely poke my head into LFR as it comes out just to experience the story.

Machinist lvl 70!

I’ve purposely inserted a picture of me getting my Machinist to level 70 in a post about WoW? Why? Because I’m going to discuss the final point I mentioned earlier: the big disappointment.

Alting
I could have picked numerous things here because I’m also disappointed with Island Expeditions and the Warfront stuff but my biggest disappointment of the expansion is once again how people who like to play multiple characters are treated. The biggest selling point FFXIV had for me was that I could play every available job and have every available crafting and gathering profession on one character. In WoW this means having to level alts. And where in Legion there was an incentive to level alts, because of the Order Hall stories, Class Mounts and Mage Tower challenges, in BfA I’ve already found out that I don’t feel like leveling anything besides the two characters I have at level 120 right now. Even though I miss my Warrior and miss my Hunter and even want to poke my head back onto a Demon Hunter, the idea of having to work my way through the zones again and then stall out on the same World Quests I’m already doing with the same endgame grind to get gear and to get your Heart of Azeroth leveled up is just the biggest turnoff ever. And I do realize it’s only a few weeks into the expansion and I will probably level something up at some point when I’ve done the big “start of expansion” grind it just feels so lackluster compared to Legion it’s not even funny.
I sincerely hope Blizzard will implement something that will want to make me level more than the one Horde and Alliance toon I have right now, besides Allied races and their associated achievements, or I will see myself walking away from WoW again sooner rather than later.

As I said at the start there are more things I want to nitpick on than just the stuff I mentioned here. Warfronts, Island Expeditions, Azerite Gear. It’s all things I think could be improved one way or another. Even though the faction fantasy is okay I miss the class fantasy from Legion and I miss my Artifact weapons and the quests associated with them. All in all though I’m still having more fun than frustrations so I will keep on playing for a while to come.

What do you guys thing about Battle of Azeroth so far?

My first BfA Mythic + A new Gameboy!

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After Siege of Boralus meeting

I realize just now how many screenshots I’ve posted that have been taken at night, thus making them a lot darker than the daytime versions would be. Alas it is how it is because I play this game mainly during the evening so dark screenshots will have to make do.

I finally tackled Siege of Boralus, the Alliance Mythic only dungeon, yesterday. I really wanted to see through to the end of the Kul Tiras story and I felt comfortable enough item level wise to start tagging along with PuGs. Due to most of my friends playing Horde I will be probably doing most content on my Rogue in PuGs but that is okay. It gives me time to get to know the dungeons and improve my Rogue play while chilling out to some music in the background. All in all the dungeon itself was fine, even though my dps sucked a bit and I went into mega brainfart mode on the last boss and got myself killed, but I did it to get closure on the Kul Tiras story and man closure I got. I really enjoy the scenes with Jaina and having Kul Tiras officially join the Alliance again was a very satisfactory end to the Alliance story for now.
All that is left for me on my Rogue when it comes to the bigger story is finishing off the War Campaign, something I hope to do this month.

On the Horde side of the fence I’ve been slowly gearing up my Paladin and trying to tank the odd dungeon here and there. It’s quite unnerving to step into dungeons you don’t know that well yet and having to take the lead but so far I feel like I’ve been doing mostly okay. I hope to be able to tag along with friends when the Mythic+ shenanigans open up tomorrow as soon as possible because I really want to take part in that Mythic+ season! Also I’ve heard that people actually got caches on accident so I’m kind of hoping that Blizzard will roll those back or it would be terribly unfair for the rest of us.

Now for the other part of my title…
My custom Gameboy Advance arrived yesterday! I’m very happy with my purchase. The console itself looks as good as new and the backlit screen really makes a difference on these retro games. Even though I loved my SP to bits and played a lot of hours on it the shape of the GBA coupled with the backlit screen has made it my favourite Gameboy hands down. The first game I popped in to play was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. According to my old save file I was almost at the end as a kid but seeing as I have zero recollection of the game I had no issues starting anew and saving over my old file. I’ve been mostly playing it on the train to and from work so far but the game does stand the test of time. It has an average playthrough of about 10 hours so I’m quite confident I’ll finish it this month. It’s also become the single player game I will be blogging about for this month so there’s that atleast. I have another handful of games itching to be played on the Gameboy but I’m taking them one at a time. Further updates will follow together with some pictures of the handheld in action and maybe a few pictures of the games I am planning to play/finish on it.

Birthdays, books and bringing down the chaos

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As I sit down to write this post another weekend has gone way too fast. Granted it’s “only 19.30” as I’m writing this and I still have a few hours of evening to fill. However it feels like the two days respite you get inbetween the five days of hard labour seem to last shorter every week. Somehow the more stressful work is the faster the weekend goes. Normally I could attribute my short weekends due to sleeping in late but not this time. I woke up around 9.00 both yesterday and today and I didn’t really stay in bed for long after waking up either. This has caused my mornings to be filled with World of Warcraft and consequently freeing up my afternoons for other things.

Yesterday the weather was nice and I really needed to get my eyebrows back in shape so I decided to go into town to walk around a bit, poke my head into the “Used Products” shop we have and get my eyebrows done. I probably should have picked a different Saturday to do this because this weekend was the last holiday weekend for the country before schools and normalcy starts up again. Our city center was absolutely crawling with people and there were lines for everything. Success was had though! I bought a used copy of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” for the Nintendo DS for only €10. I remember owning that game for my computer back in the day and even though I may still own the disc, I doubt I can get it to work on my current PC. The DS however is still going strong so I figured I would pick this up and enjoy it 13 years after release date. I also managed to get my eyebrows plucked and cut, after an hour wait, but decided against getting my hair done due to the fact that it was already late and I had to be home on time for the big event of the evening: My uncle’s 50th birthday!
I’m not sure how big of a deal this milestone is in other countries but here in the Netherlands we celebrate it in a big way when a man or woman turns 50 with set traditions and usually a very big party. So that’s where I spent my Saturday evening, dancing with my family and generally having a good time. A lot of my coming weekends will look like this since September seems to be the birthday month. It drastically cuts down on my time but it’s nice to see my family and friends and celebrate life.

As for today I decided to slowly start getting rid of stuff I don’t use or wear anymore. I wanted to start small so the thing I’ve tackled today was my jewellry box and my rack of earrings. There was a period of time where I owned over a 100 pairs of earrings. After getting rid of everything that wasn’t real silver, I’m slightly allergic to “fake” silver earrings, I’m now down to a total of 20 pairs of earrings/earbuds and I’m happy where I am. I’ve also gotten rid of a lot of cheap, bulky bracelets which in turn opened up some space to store my watches. All in all it was a very satisfying task and it will save me the headache of having to do it when I move out next year.

Finally I managed to get started in a book again for the first time in a few months. Last April I discovered Robin Hobb as writer and the amazing books she has written. I’ve bought the entire Farseer Trilogy and am currently a little over halfway done in the second book. I’m really hoping to finish it off in September and start reading the final book in the trilogy after. It atleast gives me something to do that doesn’t involve a screen and reading also improves my writing so it’s a win/win situation overall.

As for the rest of my Sunday though. I still have one or two chores to do and I really want to get atleast the Beast Tribe dailies done in FFXIV so my Machinist will gain a bit more experience. Otherwise I predict some more time in WoW to get the emissary quests done on my Paladin and an early night so I can be fresh for work tomorrow.

Gaming Goals: September 2018

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Hovering meditating paladin World of Warcraft

I’ve not done one of these posts in a while. So I guess I’ll bite the bullet and try to set down a set of goals for September. Most will probably involve Battle for Azeroth but who knows what I come up with as I write this post! Seeing as my Paladin just hit 120 aswell I can scratch out any leveling goals in WoW for now and focus completely on endgame content.

World of Warcraft

  • Finish off the remaining quests on my Rogue. I’ve gone through all the zone stories and I’ve done about 90% of all sidequests but my questlog is still quite full. I want to focus on tackling everything I can find and finish it up, even if it’s a “Wanted” quest in the middle of nowhere in Vol’dun. I also still have my War Campaign to finish off but that one ties in to my next goal.
  • Get my BfA reputations to Exalted on my Rogue. I will only need Revered to get the count in for the Pathfinder part 1 achievement but I want to aim for Exalted purely so I can unlock the sweet mounts and Dark Iron Dwarves
  • Finish off the last remaining zone story on my Paladin. I’ve finished Vol’dun and Nazmir so far which leaves me with Zuldazar. I’m not planning to tackle every single sidequest here just yet but I do want to do the story arc in the zone so I can unlock the Mythic dungeon at the end.
  • Gear my Paladin and get her ready to run Mythic+. This was a goal for BfA to begin with so I’m sticking to it. Luckily I have some friends who can help me get started with the gear grind so I should be okay there.
  • Get Alchemy and Engineering to 150 BfA skill. I’m pretty sure that Alchemy will go a bit faster but I’d love to get my Engineering leveled up a bit more aswell, I need to have the goggles!

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Level my Machinist to level 70 and do all job quests. This goal is slightly cheating because I’m already level 69 but it’s going on the list regardless.
  • Level my Weaver to level 70 and do all job quests. The Namazu beast tribe will hopefully help me with this and I really would love to have atleast one crafter at 70 to begin with.
  • Pick another Battle class to level and pick another crafting/gathering job to level after completing my first two goals. This one should speak for itself. I’m leaning towards leveling Black Mage after I’m done with Machinist so that I will have all ranged jobs at max level (and it will give me the Goddess of Magic title). As for the next crafter/gatherer I’m doubting between Carpenter, so that I can start decorating my house, or Fisher so that I will have all gathering professions maxed out.

That would be my MMO goals for this month. I’m trying to keep them small and doable because I will have a busy month ahead of me with lots of birthdays and a ton to do at work. I’d like to add a final goal to my list which would be:

  • Make progress in a single player game and blog about this. I’m not sure what game it will be yet but any game will do at this point. I really want to start tackling my backlog and setting this goal will hopefully have me start doing that while also providing material for my blog.