Author Archives: sandrian

Gaming Goals June 2019

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Seeing as how April and May have been really weird months for me I refrained to do anything gaming goal related for those months. But June is rolling around and with it I will have access to my PC again so I feel like I can start writing up some goals again for me to attain.
I have pre-ordered Shadowbringers and it comes out at the end of the month so once that date hits my focus will probably be completely on FFXIV and getting through the first few weeks of the expansion. However we are still four weeks off when that happens so in the meantime there’s a bunch of stuff I hope to achieve!

FFXIV

  • Level Goldsmith to level 70 and Alchemist to 50 (atleast)
  • Finish off leftover quests

WoW

  • Get up to speed with latest content
  • Play Classic beta?

Other games

  • Make significant progress in Kingdom Hearts 3
  • Beat Kirby Star Allies on the Switch
  • Make significant progress in Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee on the Switch
  • Make significant progress in Paper Mario: Color Splash on the WiiU
  • Pick a game to play on 3DS

Hopefully I can get really far with leveling my crafters in FFXIV. I will try to keep up with the job quests as I level up but I’m not too bothered if I let it slide. I can always finish those up later. If all goes well I’ll only need to level 4 more crafting jobs past the Ixali dailies by the end of the month, hopefully to never return to them again. I’m quite looking forward to getting my character to be an “omnicrafter” and I’m planning to definitely push up my gathering and crafting jobs to level 80 early on in the Shadowbringers expansion.

With my PC back in the fold I’m definitely going to resub to WoW and play my Paladin or Mage and continue leveling my (Void Elf) Hunter for the Heritage gear. Next to that I hope I may get a Classic beta invite so I can get a chance to sniff the flowers when it comes to that. I’m not actively seeking to play Classic but I might stick my nose in and see if I enjoy it. I’m not 100% sure what class I’ll be rolling. I’m having major doubts between Nelf Druid and Human Warlock. I’m not interested on playing Horde side for now.

I’ve set some really ambitious goals when it comes to non MMO games. There’s just so many games that I’ve started over the years and never finished that I feel like it’s time to carve out blocks of my week to work on that. My main focuses are the games that I’ve been playing in more recent times and complete those, after that I can start reaching further into my backlog and pick up other games to play. I’ve left Monster Hunter World off this list for now, even though I am playing it in bits and pieces. The game hasn’t really hooked me fulltime yet but I do enjoy it for what it is.

All in all I feel these goals are definitely obtainable throughout the month. With a 3 day weekend coming up aswell as having a bit more structure in my evenings it frees up game time, that I definitely eagerly will grab.

Gaming Irony

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After having had two weeks off to get settled in my apartment and being back at work for the past two weeks it really changes my perspective on how lazy my life actually was while I was still living at home with my dad. He cooked all the meals, even though I didn’t always enjoy what he’d cook. He did laundry and did groceries while I was working my 40h work weeks. Now I have to do everything on my own and it’s been a real adjustment. Not that I want to complain, I like having this freedom and I wouldn’t want to go back to living with my dad. I just had to rethink how I spend my evenings now, where to shop for my groceries and how much time it takes me to clean my apartment.

With all of this and working 40 hours a week (meaning I’m away from home from 8-18 every day) my gaming time has been limited a lot. Yet when I had all the time in the world to game I didn’t. I watched a lot of TV, I did a whole lot of nothing but I barely touched my games. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle. I want to game more when I have less time but when I have more time I game less. It is a very ironic thing and it’s something that I hear from some of my gaming friends. I’m not sure how to qualify this. I don’t necessarily have a gaming burnout but I do find it difficult just to sit down and start playing a game sometimes, even though I have nothing else planned for that time and I really want to game. I also notice that I’ve been drifting away from the long RPGs and into puzzle and platform type games. That probably has to do with the fact that platformers and puzzle games generally don’t really rely on telling a story but just let you complete levels, like the good old SEGA days. It’s probably the reason I still haven’t finished Kingdom Hearts 3, even though I try to make progress here and there. I’m still in the Monsters Inc world and even though I really enjoy the game and the gameplay, starting up a session takes a few hours out of my day due to the multitude of cutscenes that need to tell the story. I do want to finish it sometime in the coming few months but I’m not sure when this will happen exactly. Maybe I just need to carve out a few hours on the weekend, dedicated solely to that game. Saturday or Sunday morning would be perfect for this because I’m usually up around 9ish anyway and I don’t really do anything else during those mornings except shower and have breakfast. It would be an ideal time to just sit down for 2-3 hours and play the game untill lunch, after which I can focus on other things like having people over or going out into town.

Perhaps it’s time that I start planning things more regularly in my life in general. I’ve been noticing that I’m “wasting” a lot of my time being undecided about what I want to do during the day or evening after which I simply regress to doing nothing. I know Monday evening is always a bit hard since it’s the first day of work and I tend to get home tired. The same goes for Fridays so I want to keep those nights free to just watch tv or read and not really engage in activities that require either physical or mental efforts.
Tuesday through Thursday are ideal nights to play MMO’s. It’s reset day in FF on Tuesday and in WoW on Wednesday so if I want to get any group content done, those are the days to do it. It’s also easier to just get a few things done during the evenings and still feel like I’m making some progress while doing so. On the weekends my time really depends on the plans I have made. So far I’ve either gone out or had visitors atleast one of my two weekend days. I also need to take into account that I mostly need to use my weekends to do stuff like clean, get groceries and do laundry related things. All of this obviously take time, time that I can’t spend on other stuff.
For now though the weekend mornings tend to be relaxation time and I’m planning to use that time to get sessions in on a few games, starting with Kingdom Hearts 3.

I’ll let you all know how this pans out. Let’s hope it will push me to finish off a few games this way atleast!

A weekend of wrapping up

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The past week and weekend I’ve been solely focused on finishing off a lot of things. I’ve been making a ton of progress in FFXIV, I’ve been playing my Switch again and I’ve been reading on my e-reader more than I have before.

My first “big” achievement is that I’ve finished off the main objective in Yoshi’s Crafted World. I gathered all the gems and defeated Bowser Jr. who made a pretty interesting end boss. It took me a bit over 10 hours to get this done with me pushing through the levels and ignoring all the bonus stuff for the final part. I really enjoyed some of the levels and world and overall there were only one or two levels that I didn’t really enjoy. With having seen the credits roll I’ve opened up a few new things aswell. First off there’s the bonus levels which turn out to be really hard on normal mode. After dying a ton of times on the first level I decided to throw in the towel and go down to easy mode just to get through the level. I’m quite happy with the fact that I just pushed through and finished off the main thing though since I usually don’t even do that. I’m planning to play through the bonus levels atleast so I can get to the secret end boss. I also want to leisurely go back to levels that I’ve completed and do flip sides, get all the red coins and any flowers that I’ve missed. Again I’m probably going to do this on easy mode so it’s easier to find all the collectibles and to keep it a relaxing experience.

In FFXIV I’ve finally finished off the level 70 Weaver quest, something that has been in my quest log for a very long time. I’m also done with the 65 Carpenter quest, my Carpenter is at 67 as we speak, and the 40 Goldsmith quest, who is level 41 as we speak. All in all it’s nice progress on multiple crafters and I’m still planning to push them up untill the expansion comes out. I don’t think I can get all my crafters up to level 70 before Shadowbringers, I simply have too many in the level 30 range, but I want to make an honest effort to get as many up as I can. I’m hoping to get my Carpenter to 70 by the end of the week and then my Goldsmith should be close to 50 aswell. Which means I can move that one up to Moogle quests and use my Ixal quests on Alchemist, which I want to level up next. It’s a long journey, with tons of irritating Ixali dailies but eventually I’ll get there.

Next to gaming I’ve also finally finished reading the Liveship Traders trilogy. It was interesting although I found the story to hit a slow stretch somewhere in the second book and I had to struggle to keep reading. All in all I’m happy I’ve finished it and I can move on to the next trilogy in the series: The Tawny Man trilogy. Robin Hobb has created a wonderful world and I’m really excited to see where the stories in that world go.

So all in all I’m quite happy with myself. I’ve finally finished another game. I’m making steps in FFXIV, I’m reading again… Now I just want to pick up some of my other hobbies again and start figuring out a workout schedule. It’s baby steps but just being able to finish a game again in an enjoyable manner has been a huge step for me and has motivated me to do more. With my dining table coming in next week I will also finally have access to my computer again and I hope I can start blogging in a more regular manner again aswell. For now though this week will be focused mostly on work, cleaning, people coming over and a bit of gaming on the side.

Physical keyboard again!

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For the first time in a couple of weeks I finally have a physical keyboard to work with again so I figured I might aswell pump out a blog post. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures for this one so you’ll just have to do with words.

I’ve had a two week hiatus off work where I settled into my new home and tried to find a new rhythm for life in general. It included a bunch of gaming, watching TV shows and movies and reading books. It also included a lot of anxiety about leaving home, lots of cleaning of the new place and getting adjusted to life on my own. All in all I think I’ve done a decent job so far. The only things I need to work on now are making sure that I eat properly during the evenings and start up my workout schedule again. I have taken the first few babysteps to achieve this by going out for a walk after dinner every night. For now the walks are only about 30 minutes long but I hope to go up to an hour. It’s a great way to digest my food and clear my head, especially now that I’m back at work with all the chaos and stress that accompanies that. I don’t take my phone with me on these walks, just my iPod with some music and my house keys and that’s it. I really hope to expand on this by going to the gym during the weekends but I’m not there yet.

As far as games go. I’ve been spending a lot of my time playing FFXIV. My Carpenter is currently sitting on level 63, my White Mage has gotten a nice weapon and is sitting around ilvl 375. I have collected all the items from the crossover event with FFXV and I’ve picked up finishing off all the ARR relics again. Right now I’m in the middle of the questline on my Warrior and once I finish that I only need Scholar to be done. For now I’m focusing mainly on completing these quests and leveling my crafters. I’m sure my Carpenter will be level 70 before the month is over and I have already started doing Ixal dailies for my Goldsmith which I want to bring to 70 next. For the rest I’m just waiting out my time untill the new expansion launches. I’m planning to level my White Mage first through the story but I’m also really interested in picking up Dancer.
As far as other games go… I’ve made some decent progress in Yoshi’s Crafted World. I have collected 3 out of 5 gems and make sure to get as much collectibles as possible during my first playthrough of a level. Of course I will need to go back to the flipsides to find all the Poochy Pups and collect all the flowers and other things but for now I’m focusing on getting through the worlds and claiming all the gems. I have to say that the level based on a Haunted Mansion is my favourite so far, I’m hoping there is one that can top it.

Against all the deals I made with myself I picked up a new game aswell: Monster Hunter World. I’m really interested in the franchise and I need something to do besides the classic MMO. After messaging Belghast on Twitter whether it would be a good time/deal to pick up the game now I just went ahead and purchased it. I don’t understand most of the systems yet but for now it’s nice to be able to drop into quests that complete fairly fast and see immediate progress as result. I’m sure that things will pick up in difficulty soon but for now I’m enjoying myself and taking a really relaxed approach to the game.

I do notice that I miss my computer in more ways than one. I miss playing WoW and I may want to take another stab at GW2 but unfortunately I won’t have access for another 3 weeks or so. In that time my main gaming will come from my consoles which isn’t too bad considering I can play on a comfy couch while watching a nice big screen now.

In non gaming related news I’ve finally gotten round to watching some films and series. I watched Avengers: Endgame in the theatre two weeks ago, great movie by the way, and I watched The Social Network last weekend. Next to that I’m watching Lucifer on Netflix and of course Game of Thrones. Only one more episode to go and honestly I’m really disappointed with this final season. Everything is super rushed and it feels really underwhelming. I don’t agree with all the story line endings and I really hope that if the books ever get finished they’ll be better than this hot mess.

All in all it’s been a very busy couple of weeks and being back at work where it’s just a gigantic chaos isn’t really making anything much better.

Vacation moods

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Seeing as I’m not near a pc and thus a physical keyboard for at least another week I am once again typing up this post on my tablet. So again I am probably going to keep it relatively short.

I have had the first week of my vacation fly by. I’ve gotten a lot of things done and feel like I am slowly settling into my new home. Right now I am spending a lot of time cleaning and buying all the stuff that I come across that I lack. I have mentioned it on Twitter but my house is super dusty and I am vacuuming almost every day because of it.

In gaming land I have been spending a lot of time on FFXIV. I have finished the Hildibrand story line, I have done the FFXV crossover event and bought the car. My carpenter is about to hit level 60 and I have finally gotten my weapon upgrade on my White Mage. I’m also working on getting a full set of 390 gear on that and gearing up my alt classes with the tons of Mendacity tomestones that come with the grind. The few things that still linger are the 24 man raids and finishing off the Omega raid.

I have also been spending a bunch of time playing Yoshi’s Crafted World. I have obtained the second gem and am working  my way to a third. Some of the levels are actually quite challenging, especially when you want to find as much items as possible in your first run through. It’s still fun and I can see myself finishing the main objective in the game this week. After that it kind of becomes a collection game and I wonder how long that will keep my attention.

As for the rest this week… I will be watching the new game of thrones episode tonight and the big Ajax football match later this week. My uncle is coming to visit and I still need to do a ton of cleaning so I think I am set for the rest of the week.

 

Still kicking around

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It feels a bit weird, typing this post on my tablet. I just want to get a quick one out though to let you all know that I am still alive and breathing.
I have been extremely busy with moving house and I can say that I have finally moved over past Sunday. Yesterday internet and tv have been installed so I can finally access some stuff again.
I haven’t had time to game that much unfortunately but I have two weeks off right now so I am investing some time in my backlog. I have picked up kingdom hearts 3 again and advanced to Monstropolis. I have tackled more levels in Yoshi’s Crafted World. I’m also working on stuff in FFXIV again but I will save that for a future post.
In any case I’m back on the gaming grid and I hope I can start writing more blog posts again.

Gaming Goals: April 2019

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March has come and gone and April has started a week ago. So of course it’s time for another gaming goals post!
April is actually going to be a rather weird month for me since it’s the month of me finally moving out on my own. This means that a lot of my time will be spent on the moving from one house to the other, whilst also still having to go to work. I expect to get less game time in this month than I normally would and this is also the final bit of time I will be spending on WoW for the time being.

Before I kick off April though let’s look back at the goals I set for myself in March and how I’ve done in that department.

  • WoW: Level my Nightborne to 120 (currently 114) and catch up to current content
  • WoW: Level my Void Elf to 110 (currently 47) and unlock Heritage Armour
  • WoW: Attempt to get the Onyxia mount, the only mount I’m missing for my achievement.
  • FFXIV: Complete Little Ladies Day on both my characters
  • FFXIV: Level Alchemist and Leatherworker to level 30 and complete their job quests
  • FFXIV: Level Carpenter to 50 and complete all job quests
  • FFXIV: Gear up WHM and catch up to current content
  • PS4/Switch/3DS: Complete a game of choice
  • Steam: Play atleast one game from my library

First off WoW. I managed to get my Mage to 120 and am currently sitting on ilvl 350+. I’ve finished off the War Campaigns on both Alliance and Horde side and apart from a few missed quests here and there I can confidently say that my Mage is up to speed. Of course I’m not done with gearing up yet but I’m on the brink of being able to do the latest raid in LFR mode and honestly that’s all I’m after. Unfortunately I didn’t get as much time in on my Hunter as I would’ve liked. I started up at level 47 and ended it on 65 this month. I really want to push her to 110 though so I will spend a bit less time on the Mage and a bit more time on the Hunter the coming few weeks. As for the Onyxia goal, I literally got bored after two days of grinding for the mount on 5 different characters and then let it fall to the wayside. I may pick it back up at some point but not now.

In FFXIV I’ve made a ton of progress. Carpenter is 50. I finished off the MSQ for this expansion on my White Mage. I leveled all my crafters to level 30+ and I even got in a few levels on my Fisher. I also did Little Ladies day so all in all a succesful month there.
Other than that I’ve not really played much outside of my MMO’s. This will probably change with my move since I won’t have access to my PC but I will have access to my consoles. Maybe I can finally work on some of my backlog then!

Now as I mentioned before I predict I won’t have too much time to game in April. Yet I do want to set a few goals for myself that should be obtainable in WoW and FFXIV. So here’s the list of gaming goals for April!

  • WoW: Level my Void Elf to 110 (currently 65) and unlock Heritage Armour
  • FFXIV: Level Carpenter to 70 and Goldsmith to 50
  • FFXIV: Finish off the Hildibrand questline and the Beast Tribes questlines.
  • PS4/Switch/3DS: Complete a game of choice

So yeah. That’s the only concrete goals I want to work towards. I’m keeping it light but I do want some progress to happen. I’m guessing I’ll be spending more time in FFXIV than in WoW but all in all this should be doable.

Yoshi’s Crafted World: First impressions

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There’s a handful franchises of Nintendo that I really enjoy. Mario is the prime one followed closely by Kirby. However since Yoshi’s Woolly World I have to add the Yoshi franchise to the list aswell. In light of this information it should come as no surprise that I picked up Yoshi’s Crafted World aswell when it came out this week. Unfortunately the Switch screenshots aren’t always that good so my apologies for the one heading this post, I just wanted to give an impression of how the game looked.Anyway I’ve played for a few hours now and wanted to give my first impressions of this game and the things I have discovered so far. I am giving a fair warning now, I am going into some detailed things that I’ve found over the first 2-3 hours of playtime so if you want to stay spoilerfree turn away now!

“Story”
The story like in the previous Yoshi entries is a simple one. The Yoshi’s live happily on their island with the Sundream Stone who makes all their dreams come true. Ofcourse Kamek and Baby Bowser caught wind of this and try to steal the sun stone, breaking it in the process and scattering all the Dreamstones across multiple worlds. You are tasked to find the stones and make the Sundream Stone whole again. Throughout the game you are being thwarted by Kamek and Baby Bowser but you also meet new friends and come across some familiar ones!
All in all it’s  a simple setup, nothing too fancy. It’s a very kid friendly story but that’s something I’ve come to expect from the Yoshi franchise thus far.

Gameplay and levels
The gameplay for this game is the standard Yoshi gameplay. You swallow enemies with B and create eggs with most of them which you can then aim and throw at almost anything in the world. Yoshi’s still flutter when you press A for jumping a bit longer and Yoshi has a ground pound. There’s nothing too fancy about the gameplay, I guess to keep it simple for the kids aswell.
Right at the start of the game you are asked if you want to play the game on “Easy” or “Classic” mode. From what I’ve seen Easy mode doubles the amount of eggs you create when swallowing an enemy and it will let you know when a flower, one of the many collectibles in the game, is nearby. I’ve opted to play on Classic mode myself since the game is simple enough as is so I don’t need it to be even easier. You are free to chose the colour of your Yoshi, there’s 8 total, and you can switch colour any time. As seen on the above screenshot I’m currently playing with the purple variant but I’m thinking about switching to Orange or Lightblue next time I start up the game.

Collectability is a big thing in this game. The levels themselves aren’t hard and you can probably rush through them in two or three minutes but that’s not where this game shines. It shines in the collectibles and replayability of the levels themselves.
On your initial playthrough of a level there’s a few things to collect:

  • Flowers. Flowers are hidden throughout all the levels and it’s up to you to find them and obtain them. Some levels only contain five flowers but I’ve already had a level with ten aswell. Flowers are also the main currency needed to open up new sub zones within worlds, so if you lack them you need to go back to your previous levels and collect more of them if possible.
  • Hearts. Yoshi starts off with about half a heart bar. If you play the level right you end up with a full hearts bar which in turn awards you with a flower.
  • Red coins. Red coins, like flowers, are hidden throughout the level. There’s 20 to obtain each level and some of them can be really well hidden. If you obtain all 20 in a level it awards you with a flower.
  • Gold coins. Gold coins are scattered throughout the level and easy to obtain. When you meet a certain amount required per level you will be awarded with a flower. Next to collecting them for flowers Gold coins are the currency needed to obtain costumes.

Yoshi train costume

So far the collectibles have been quite standard. They’re all known from previous Yoshi franchises and shouldn’t surprise you in any way. However in Yoshi’s Crafted World there are myriads of ways to obtain collectibles and they’ve added a few more things to collect outside of the items I’ve already mentioned.

  • Costumes. Costumes are essentially “armour” that Yoshi can wear as you play through the levels with him. There’s three tiers of costumes, with the golden type being the most rare and awarding the most extra armour. Costumes are obtained from a gumball type machine at the end of each world that you need to feed Gold coins. It’s 100 Gold coins per costume and there’s ten costumes to get per sub zone. Luckily for us you’re not dependant on RNG, you can only get each costume once. You can switch between costumes freely and they are registered in your Scrapbook tab in the menu.
  • Crafts. Crafts are another collectible you can find in the levels, once you have initially played through them. You get assignments to find certain crafts within the levels and if you find (all of) them you get a flower for each turn in. They also register in your Scrapbook.
  • Poochy Pups/Flipside. Once you get a few levels into the game you run into an old friend. With this help an extra layer is added onto the levels: the Flipside. Basically it’s playing the original level in reverse. In the Flipside you are tasked to find Poochy pups and if you do that within a certain time limit you get extra rewards. Again the rewards here are flowers. Once you open up the Flipside of the levels you also get more tasks to find Crafts. The normal levels are then called “Front side”. As sidenote, it’s not possible to collect coins or flowers in the flipside of a level, only Poochy pups and Crafts.

Taking all of the above into consideration it makes the replayability of the levels high. Essentially you are sent back to a level multiple times to gather all the collectibles there are to gather. It’s not necessarily needed to complete the game but it adds an extra layer to the simplistic gameplay that is the Yoshi franchise. It also has you actually look at the levels in more detail than you normally would. Lots of things are hidden in the back (or fore) ground and especially Crafts are sometimes hard to spot. It helps you appreciate the amount of detail the developers have put into the game and it also “trains” your brain in a way because you are constantly looking for things.

Graphics and music
As I mentioned before the screenshots don’t really do it justice but the game is gorgeous and top notch as we’ve gotten used to from Nintendo. The colours are vibrant, the structures are pronounced. I can see how the Yoshi’s, who are made of felt, are in stark contrast to the cardboard world. There’s a lot of detail that has gone into each level so it’s a joy to watch and discover everything as you play through. Even the use of focus/blurring is done very well and makes for a natural flow as you move from the front to the back of a level and vice versa.
The music is cheery and simple like in most games. I like playing with the sounds and music on, it doesn’t grate on the ears so far. I’ve only played through four levels though so the music variety hasn’t been super big but so far I’m enjoying it. The sound effects do add this extra touch to the game that I think would be very bland otherwise. Hitting cardboard structures makes cardboard sounds, Yoshi itself sounds very cute and so far the enemy sounds have made sense aswell. It so far has not made me want to turn my sound off so that’s a big win.

Overall first impression
So far I’m quite happy with my purchase. Although the game is on the easy side there’s enough challenge in it to make the purchase worth while as fan of the franchise. The game is beautiful and vibrant and lifts your spirits as you play through it. The replayability of the levels is high due to the massive amount of collectibles that are present in the game. It’s the perfect game to relax to for an hour or two after work ór when you’re feeling a bit glum and need cheering up.
Is it innovative? Yes in some ways and no in others. Did Nintendo lift the franchise to a new level? Maybe, I think it’s on the same level as Yoshi’s Woolly World when it comes to visuals and gameplay even though they’ve put in some interesting gimmicks in this one and added even more reasons to replay levels.

Would I recommend this game? If you want a relaxing experience and if you think hunting for collectibles is more fun than challenging levels this is the game for you. I fear however that the game is “too easy” for the more veteran gamers who will be done with most of it in a very small timeframe. This is a game you don’t want to rush but that you want to enjoy and take your time on. For a Yoshi game it’s an excellent entry in the franchise and a day one/week one pick up for fans. If you’re on the fence about this game however I’d advise you to wait untill it eventually will be discounted and pick it up then.

Another level 120 reached

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Darkshore black moon

Ding! Another level 120 done in World of Warcraft. This marks my third character hitting 120 and my first Allied race to max level. I took it really slowly leveling this character up, not spending that much time on it during the weekday evenings. However since it was the weekend and I had more time to play I figured I’d push my way to 120. It helped that an invasion spawned in Zuldazar which netted me half a level yesterday morning. From there it was finishing up the main Nazmir storyline and claiming the final outpost in Kul Tiras that pushed me over the edge to maximum level.
Ofcourse I immediatly hopped into Darkshore to experience that zone story from the Horde PoV, something I hadn’t done on my Paladin yet, and all in all I have to say it’s really disappointing compared what you get storywise as Alliance. I did get two nifty new toys though so there’s that.

Now the big “catch up to current content” road begins. I’m obviously still in rather shit gear having just dinged max level and everything so my priority right now is to try and get my itemlevel up as much as possible. There’s a million roads that I can take to do that though so I’m just going to go ahead and see what works best for me personally. I’ve opened up World Quests, I can do the Arathi Basin battleground, there’s dungeons to do, World Bosses to slay and entry level LFR to achieve. I’m not going to push myself very hard to get geared but I would like to just catch up to a reasonable itemlevel and maybe do some Mythic Dungeons or casual raiding when I have the time.

This also means that I’m turning my sights to my Void Elf Hunter and start pushing that up to level 110, purely so I can get the Heritage Armour. I’m not sure if I want to push that character further up though since I’m already noticing that I’m getting slightly burned out on the whole leveling thing. That’s probably caused by me playing my Mage a lot over the past week just to get her up to 120.

Over at the FFXIV front they’re dropping a new content patch tomorrow, which continues the main story scenario, the Hildibrand questline and a questline to unite the Beast Tribes of Stormblood. Since I’m a huge lore junkie I’m definitely going to spend my night in FFXIV to see what happens next in the main story atleast. I may even be able to squeeze in the Hildibrand quests aswell. This may also be the kick in the butt I need to gear up my White Mage properly so I can experience a few of the content things I haven’t done yet. I did spend some time leveling up Fisher over the weekend, who is now sitting just shy of level 48. Out of the three gatherers it’s by far the most obnoxious one to level so I’ll be happy to get it to 50 at least. I’m also slowly picking my way through some Ixali dailies again so I can get my Goldsmith leveled up, but I’m in no rush since the majority of my attention and focus here will be on “endgame” content for now.

All in all I have enough to do the coming week so I hope I can make some decent progress in both my MMOs.

A Divided Society

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I logged onto my blog today to see I suddenly accumulated a ton of fews over the past two days. Apparently my post about me obtaining the Zodiac Zeta Dragoon weapon was referenced on Reddit and it’s kind of exploded my viewers numbers for two days. It’s a nice surprise to wake up to, considering the subject of the post that I’m actually going to write.

I’ve been walking around with the idea of this post since Wednesday after the results of the latest elections in the Netherlands. Waking up to the latest Final Fantasy XIV keynote and people’s reactions to it all over the internet has spurred me on even more to write down my thoughts on a subject that’s been becoming more and more apparent over the recent years: society is getting more divided and harsher. I find this a very worrisome trend and it fills me with a certain unease in regards to the future. Even though I tend to keep my political and societal views to myself and even though I want to keep this blog more focused on games I felt the need to write a political tinted post. Even if only to get the words out of my head and onto a screen.

I consider myself in the political center when it comes to politics. Dutch politics work a little different than the two party system that a lot of countries worldwide adopt, instead we have a fractured political landscape with 10+ political parties that are scattered from extreme left to extreme right on the political spectrum. I’m sure some of you may have heard of “Geert Wilders”, a well known right politician that is anti-islam or maybe the new rising star “Thierry Baudet” who is on the same side of the spectrum but uses a different angle to get people to vote for him. Especially this latter politician is described as the Dutch version of Trump and for now it seems he has the same “surprise success” factor that Trump had in the US elections a few years ago. On the other side of the spectrum we have the rising stars of the party of “GroenLinks” who identify as being rather extremely left and also very environmentally engaged. They have had their history of extreme left hiccups and, like the parties on the right side of the spectrum, it’s an ideology that I keep myself very far away from. I guess it’s a sign of times and a changing society that these more extreme parties were the winners in our elections on Wednesday. It outlines that our society is getting more harsh and more extreme. The gentle center road with compromises to either side seems to be walked less and less and instead people rally around extreme figures on either side. I don’t think our country has ever been divided this badly and I wonder if it’s a rift that we can somehow heal. Us Dutchies used to be known as being a sober bunch with a clear outlook on the world. We may be considered rude when we tell things how we see them but we are honest and compassionate. Right now though I don’t see these qualities at all anymore. Instead I see a society that is bitter and divided, angry about many things and rallying behind whoever words their woes the best. We don’t want to understand why our neighbour votes the complete opposite of ourselves anymore, instead we condemn eachother and widen the breach, damaging close relationships in the process.

I see the same thing happening in general when I look at online and especially gaming communities. The best example being the decision made by Square Enix to make gender locked races in the new FFXIV expansion. I myself find myself in a position where I wouldn’t have cared either way. I’m happy playing my Miqo’te so the chance of me rerolling to any new race were slim to begin with. A lot of people are enraged though and think this whole gender locking thing is ridiculous. This ofcourse spurs another group to tell them to “stop whining and accept it”. Once again I don’t see that much people voting their neutral opinion. Maybe because they think it’s no use or maybe it’s the people who usually keep their mouth shut and just enjoy/accept what’s coming their way. It still means that the overall tone of debate grows harsher and more people feel unhappy because they feel like they’ve been done an injustice. I feel this has been a long time coming. With the boom of the internet and the ability for people to express their opinons anonymously the overal tone of debate has gotten more toxic. We have gotten more vocal as society, we want to be able to express our opinons and be heard. Social media has made this possible and unfortunately this also means that you get a platform for opinions that people usually kept to themselves because of their content. All in all it’s making the internet an unfriendlier place to be in for all participants, something that is slowly bleeding over into “real” society. As someone who tries to befriend anyone it’s a rather unsettling place to be in. I really hope that at some point we will realize that we are going in a wrong direction in our online and real communities.

I’m no exception to this, we all have things we need to work on. I’m not perfect. I’m unhappy with many things in my life. Some things I can change, some things I can’t. I vocalize some of these things where I probably shouldn’t. It’s a thing I need to work on. I try to be more understanding of people who don’t share my opinions. I try to learn. It’s a bumpy road and it causes friction along the way. Right now though  I just really dislike the intense debate that goes on without people trying to understand the other side of the coin. And I think this lack of understanding may eventually be society’s downfall. I’m just hoping I won’t get to see that in my lifetime.