Author Archives: sandrian

November Goals?

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I realized that I’ve basically already written a bit of a masterplan of goals for the rest of my year so I was unsure if I really wanted to write a November goals post. But maybe I should, because it will explain a lot of things that happened in October and why I’ve made the shift to FFXIV.

Normally I’d take a look back at my goals of October and how much I’ve actually done of them, but I’ve failed all of them so miserably that I’m not going to bother.
At the start of October I was still heavily invested in WoW. I’d found a raid group to run with and had tons of banter with friends. However I noticed that my general interest in the game was already starting to wane. I’ve made no attempts to finish up storylines on my Paladin on Horde side, because I really wasn’t interested in the stories. World Quests were beginning to feel like a chore and the raiding as Retribution slowly got to me (I don’t enjoy the spec). One of my best friends announced halfway through the month that he would let his subscription lapse and another one followed suit last week. This has only reinforced my own drifting away from the World of Warcraft. I’ve bought a six month sub and I’m definitely going to keep it running if I feel the need to play more but for now WoW is going to take a permanent backseat as I focus back onto Final Fantasy XIV.

Next to this I’ve been in a gaming funk in general. I do enjoy running stuff in FFXIV because it’s low effort and I can do most of it without thinking plus a few of my friends are more active over there again so I have people to chat with. For the past two days however I’ve simply just been so tired that I had no energy to log into any game at all. I’ve been going through some crazy changes at work, which will still linger for a few weeks, so going to bed early has been a priority over any nightly entertainment. This is also the reason I’m not really wanting to commit to any goals besides pushing up jobs in FFXIV this month. Real life is just getting a bit too crazy and I really need more hours of sleep because of it.

I am wanting to post more progress updates, and more blogposts in general, so look forward to those instead of a static list of goals for this month.

End of Year Goals

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As October is drawing to an end I find myself back in the world of Eorzea. World of Warcraft is slowly going on the backburner. I raid, I do my Emissaries but that’s it. My interest in the game is at an all time low and I mostly keep playing because of friends. One of whom is quitting at the end of the year himself and the rest are slowly burning out on the game aswell. So as my interest in one MMO wanes the other one waxes. I feel the motivation to level so much that I’ve managed to push my Black Mage from level 60 to level 63 in a single day. I’ve done every single roulette available, did my beast tribe dailies, caught up on all the job quests for Black Mage and dove headfirst into the Hallow’s Eve event.

All in all it feels good to be back in Eorzea. Good enough to set a rather ambitious “end of year” goal for this game. As you may have seen throughout the year I’ve been leveling my classes on and off. Right now I’m only missing seven more battle jobs at level 70, six of which are melee/tanks and one caster (the Black Mage in question). My goal for the end of the year is to have all of them at level 70 so that I can finally get rid of any sub level 70 gear from my bags. It’s a rather ambitious project seeing as I’d almost have to level a job per week to get this far. Add to that the fact that five out of the seven jobs I’d still need to level hover around level 50, meaning I’d have to do 20 levels instead of 10. The one big advantage is that I’ve saved my Tanks for last. They have the fastest queues thus probably the easiest time leveling out of all the jobs. As it stands I’m planning to level via Roulettes, Beast Tribe dailies and Palace of the Dead/Heaven on High. It’s the most reliable way to get experience fast and I should have the time to do this six out of seven days per week. I’m raiding in WoW on Wednesdays so that evening is kind of off limits.

Right now my progress is as followed:

  • Black Mage: 63
  • Dragoon: 60
  • Monk: 53
  • Warrior: 53
  • Paladin: 50
  • Dark Knight: 50
  • Samurai: 50

This is also the order I’m planning to level these classes in. I hope to have my Black Mage to level 70 somewhere next week so I can start working on Dragoon, which I’ll probably mostly play on my Playstation aswell as Monk. For some reason they just play better on a controller than on keyboard+mouse. As for my tanks, I’ll probably switch that up between PS4 and PC since I don’t really mind playing them on either. Samurai is going to be dead last purely because it’s the only job I’ve not properly played thus I will probably have to figure out how it works when I start leveling. I already apologize to the random groups that get my Samurai slotted in, I’m probably going to be terrible at it. Just like I’m slightly terrible at Black Mage, hence I just want to get that job out of the way as soon as possible. That it will also grant me the “Goddess of Magic” title is, of course, a bonus.

My ambitions for FFXIV don’t stop here however. Next to having my Armoury Chest cluttered with various sets of battle gear it’s also filled to the brim with gathering and crafting gear of different levels. That will be my big goal for the New Year: level up all my remaining Crafting and Gathering jobs. I have Botanist, Miner and Weaver at 70 so I can cross atleast three of the jobs off my list already. What remains is scattered between level 21 (Alchemist) and level 44 (Fisher). I’m planning to level up my Crafters simultaneously, meaning I want to get them all to level 30 and then all to level 40 and level 50 and so on. Ofcourse once I hit level 50 and can start doing Beast Tribe dailies and handing in deliveries things will speed up quite a bit. I’ll be quite happy to get to that point though, because the pre-50 grind is still agony.

For now though it’s running Roulettes and hoping I don’t get shitty fights on my Black Mage.

Getting Exalted

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I’ve been dutifully slaving away at my reputations on my Rogue the past month and it has finally paid off. I’m now officially exalted with all the Island Reputations in Battle for Azeroth AND the 7th Legion. Which means I’ve unlocked all the magnificent horse mounts Alliance gets and the Dark Iron Dwarves as playable race.

The Dark Iron scenario was fun. I got sent to Blackrock Depths, Molten Core and Firelands and the story surrounding that was okay. I don’t want to spoil much more than that because other people may still need to unlock this particular race. I also immediatly made a Dark Iron Shaman to play, although I don’t think I will be leveling her anytime soon. It’s nice to see she’s there on my character list though. Even though I don’t particularly enjoy the Dwarves as a race the Dark Irons are a bit more badass and thus I’m okay with leveling and playing one at some point in the future.

With these reputations maxed out I’ve been making a few big steps on my goals for this month. I only have the Tortollan Seeker and Champions of Azeroth reputations to go, for both I’m about 6000 reputation away from Exalted. Again I’m in no real rush to see this finished purely because getting those particular reputations to Exalted doesn’t net anything extra. My Paladin is doing well. We’ve been slowly pushing our way through heroic Uldir and are now sitting at 5/8 bosses cleared. Zul proves to be a real pain in the ass though so hopefully we can get some progress on him next week. Other than that I’ve not really made major progress in WoW. I’ve been cutting down on the number of hours I play the game and instead am opting into reading more and watching shows on Netflix.

All in all I’m starting to notice that my interest in WoW in general is slowly starting to fade. I still play and I still raid but I notice that my interests are declining. Battle for Azeroth isn’t as fun as expansion as Legion was with little to no incentive to level alts and no real endgame besides grinding Mythic+ and doing your Emissary quests. I’ve noticed that farming transmogs is being made difficult by the Legacy Loot mode system and farming anything else just takes up way too much time. Right now I’m mostly logging in to just get my Emissaries done and that’s it. Maybe it’s just a temporary slump untill I figure out what exactly it is I want to do in this game. Maybe it’s a build up to a longer break where I step away from MMO’s in general. I guess only time will tell.

My Own Plan

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Looking out over Tiragarde Sound

It’s been a bit of an odd week for me. I found myself slipping back into casual raiding on my Paladin. At the same time I’ve been trying to take a bit more distance from WoW and immerse myself a bit more into FFXIV, single player games and making sure that I have a healthy sleep schedule. I’m aiming to be in bed by 23.00 every night except Saturday because obviously I have a bit more time to sleep in over the weekend and as far as things go I notice that It’s having a good effect on my general mood.

The lack of clear focus in my MMO’s has me reconsidering what I want to do in them for the rest of the year. In FFXIV I’m quite certain that it boils down to leveling as many classes as I can. I’m slowly bumping up my Black Mage, while also catching up on gear with my White Mage. Unlocking Heaven on High, the Stormblood version of Palace of the Dead, will help me a lot with my leveling ambitions and will provide me with decent weapons for all my jobs. Being able to tick of level 70 on my remaining jobs will be very satisfying and I’m not really looking into doing anything else there right now.
Well that’s not completely true. I’m also busy unlocking any content that I may have missed from this patch and the last while supporting Doma with the rebuilding of the Enclave. Seeing that city grow and getting all the cutscenes has been very fun and satisfying. Plus it’s a gil income that I can definitely use.

In WoW my focus is slowly shifting away from traditional progress (raids and dungeons) and more to personal progress. I’m working on getting the BfA reputations Exalted on my Rogue while also completing the Battle for Azeroth achievements that are easy to obtain. This means I’m wandering around the world a lot looking for items, treasure chests and creatures to kill. I’m also slowly picking up the transmog farm again and have been running the T11 and Wrath of the Lich King raids to complete or start working on transmog sets. This has led me to discover that the Legacy Loot rules are atrocious and I’d much rather Blizzard reimplement the old way of running outdated content with group loot and a need/greed system for when you buddy up. Nonetheless I’ve been able to obtain a complete T11 set on my Paladin and one of the pets from the Raiding with Leashes IV achievement. I’ve stated earlier that I want to make an effort to level up one of the Allied races but for now that’s a weekend only project. I want to narrow my scope to my Paladin and Rogue mostly so that I don’t get overwhelmed with content and to make sure that I don’t spend too much time playing this game when I could be doing something else. This also means putting my Mythic+ ambitions on the backburner, but honestly with how the game plays right now I’m alright with that. Trying to get a weapon upgrade for my Protection spec has been atrocious and I’m not really content with the whole way Azerite Gear works either. So I don’t want to put too much energy into it where I can use it on things that are more important.

In real life I’ve gotten some very good news from my job. Up untill now I’ve been working as a “temp”. The rules are a bit confusing here in the Netherlands but it boils down to whether the company you work for wants to hire you on their own or via a temp agency. A lot of companies work with the latter because it’s easier to fire people that way and because it’s limited. You can only work a maximum of five years for a company via a temp agency after which you’re usually dismissed and have to look for a new job. I’m in my third year right now and didn’t have that much hopes on obtaining a normal contract but my boss surprised me last Friday with the announcement that they are working on it. This means a much better contract for me with a lot more vacation days that I have now (45 vs 20), a bonus that’s decided on how much profit the company makes, an extra month of salary paid with a 1099 nec form generator. Seeing as my current temp contract runs until April 1st next year I’m hoping they’ll transfer me then which would be perfect because it lines up with me moving to my new apartment around that time aswell.

All of this has inspired me to pick up the slack in other areas of my life. I’m eating more healthy (no more candies and crisps) and trying to be more active when it comes to exercising. I’m picking up the courses that I started ages ago again and I’m generally in a more stable and happy mood than I’ve been in a very long time. I’m also trying to be less chaotic at work with how I do my job and be a bit more organized in my private life aswell. I’m going out more and planning a lot of fun things for the coming few months. I’m not quite where I want to be yet, I’m still full focus on losing weight, but my life finally seems to come together slowly. I can’t wait for 2019 and all the amazing things it will bring. I just need to make my own plans and stick to them and I’m positive that things will then work out in my favour.

Gaming Goals: October 2018

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Before I start about what I want to do in October, I want to look back at September first.
I did really well on my goals this month so I hope to be able to push that further!

World of Warcraft

  • Finish off the remaining quests on my Rogue. Done! I have one dungeon quest left and one regular one which I’m not attempting for now.
  • Get my BfA reputations to Exalted on my Rogue. Nope, I’m stuck on Revered on all of them but it’s a work on progress.
  • Finish off the last remaining zone story on my Paladin. Done!
  • Gear my Paladin and get her ready to run Mythic+. Done!
  • Get Alchemy and Engineering to 150 BfA skill. Nope. Stuck on 125 Engi and 118 Alchemy.

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Level my Machinist to level 70 and do all job quests. Done!
  • Level my Weaver to level 70 and do all job quests. Done part one, still need to do 70 job quest.
  • Pick another Battle class to level and pick another crafting/gathering job to level after completing my first two goals. Done! Started leveling my BLM and am going to pick up Carpenter.

Make progress in a single player game and blog about this. Nope unfortunately.

Next to these goals I’ve also started to seriously level an Allied race in WoW with a friend. I’m currently sitting on level 53 on a Nightborne Mage. Even though I’m not in a rush I would like to keep on leveling this character and maybe start leveling another one just so I can unlock all those sweet Heritage Armors.

Now looking forward, what are my goals for October 2018?

World of Warcraft

  • Keep hammering away at the reputations on my Rogue. As you can see in the above screenshot I have them all on Revered atleast and I want to really start getting things to exalted.
  • Clear heroic Uldir on my Paladin. I have a raidteam now so I can see it happening soon.
  • Keep pushing Mythic+ on my Paladin. Not a set goal but I want to start getting higher than +2 and +3.
  • Level my Nightborne Mage. Not sure to what level but I want to keep pushing her up.

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Level my Black Mage to 70 and finish all job quests.
  • Level my Carpenter to 70 and finish all job quests.
  • Work on gearing my WHM
  • Finish up opening up all the content I still have to do.

Other Games

  • Finish one of the three games in the Crash Bandicoot N’Sane Trilogy
  • Make progress in Xenoblade Chronicles 2
  • Make progress in Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

Again I’m trying to keep my goals decent. The biggest challenge will be leveling my Carpenter in FFXIV since it’s only level 37. I’m pretty sure that once I hit 50 I can easily level it up with collectible hand ins and beast tribe dailies so once I hit that golden mark I’m good. In WoW I’m mostly putting my Rogue on the backburner when it comes to any content but reputation. I’ll probably just make sure I do my Emissaries every day and see from there. I should be able to make it to a few reputations exalted atleast.

 

Loading Update…

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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.