The Grand Finale – Blaugust day 24

The grand finale. It’s been a race, it’s been a marathon, but the last day of August (and thus Blaugust) is here.
It has been a hell of a crazy month for me. I landed my first real fulltime job (that will probably end this friday), I’ve had a really busy social life and I’ve had to re-evaluate myself and some of the goals I set while under pressure of time.

I have realized that my heart still belongs to World of Warcraft, even though I might critique and say goodbye to the game every now and then. I have started a crazy Heroes of the Storm project, that I do want to see through! I’ve gotten better at Hearthstone and have enjoyed playing some Super Mario Bros. on my 3DS again. I have evolved from a hardcore “I want to do it all” player to a more casual one with gaming taking up a much smaller role in my life for the time being. And surprisingly enough I’m more than fine with that.
Looking back to the start of the month, I might have set a bit too ambitious gaming goals for myself. I’ve barely been able to keep up with most of them and I’ve really only done the WoW and Hearthstone ones and I’m cool with that. I will re-evaluate my goals for September in my next post, probably being a lot less ambitious, and strive to complete as much as those as I can. Some will be a repeat performance (like getting rank 20 on Hearthstone), others will be new… But I won’t spoil just yet.

Next to my own gaming and blog adventures I have discovered a lot of new blogs and new people. It’s been a blast reading all of you. Even if I couldn’t actually read ALL of you. You are all amazing people and keep on doing what you’re doing!

I am a bit sad that I didn’t make blogging all 31 days of August. I missed out on exactly seven days. However the reasons that I have been unable to blog all bring smiles to my face and thus it was worth it. Daily blogging might not really be my thing, but I have enjoyed blogging regularly and, by some of the really kind and positive comments I have gotten throughout the month, I think you readers have enjoyed my blog aswell.
I like to keep going strong and blog regularly after the Blaugust madness is over. I really don’t want to fall back to only one or two posts a month, I have way too much to say for that.
For now though. Goodbye Blaugust!

Dance, Dance, Dance – Blaugust day 23

I’m writing this post feeling super tired. There was a really big dance festival near where I live yesterday and I went there with a good friend of mine and we literally danced the day and night away. I think I’ve been on my feet for about 9 hours, counting the walk to and from the trainstation aswell. I haven’t been this tired in ages and I haven’t felt this great in ages.
The atmosphere was fantastic, the people were great and the music was good enough to keep you on your feet constantly. Which isn’t that hard seeing as there were about 6 stages to choose from. We were really lucky with the weather aswell, it was nice and sunny, not too hot and not too cold. No wind. Barely any clouds. There was beer, there was good food. All in all it was just a great day.

The funny thing is, after everything was over and done and I was laying in bed, the only thing I really wanted was to go home and spend some time behind my PC. Check out the new Diablo 3 season, play some Hearthstone and/or Heroes or just chat with some of my online friends, which I haven’t talked too that much since getting my job. I really needed a day to wind down and just relax with some of my comfortable games. After writing my previous post, and the kind comments I’ve gotten on it, I realized that I’m still able to do all that I want and I should just stress less about everything. It’s not horrible if I miss out on an evening of games because I’m tired. It’s not horrible if I do other stuff. Gaming doesn’t define me, but it’s still my favourite pastime.

Seeing as I’m out of the house/on the road more often I’ve been playing a lot more mobile games. I’ve had the Simpsons Tapped Out installed on my phone since forever and ofcourse there is Hearthstone which I can play on the go. But I also installed Fallout Shelter (and am sucking horribly at it) and the Final Fantasy portal app which comes with a Triple Triad game for free! It has really helped me get better at Triple Triad and I hope I can use those skills to finally get into it in FFXIV.
Speaking of FFXIV. I have utterly failed at all the gaming goals I’ve set there. My WHM is level 46, my DRG doesn’t even have enough esoterics yet to buy her chestpiece and I’ve barely touched the game at all. I guess I’m just a bit turned off by the time that it consumes when the only thing you want to do is run one or two dungeons. I really  need to figure out how to do this without me getting so annoyed with the game that I want to quit permanently, because for that I like the game way too much.

For now though I’m going to get a good night’s sleep and get to work bright and fresh in the morning. So that I can zombie my way through heroic Hellfire Citadel in the evening.

Re-evaluating me – Blaugust day 22

As I started this crazy Blaugust journey I set some high standard Gaming goals for myself. I did these before knowing I would get a job that would get me out of the house for 4 days a week (and even 5 days next week). At the time I had all the time in the world to do what I wanted, I even felt bored and restless because I just couldn’t find ways to fill my time and it was eating away at me.
Fast forward three weeks and I’m looking at myself in a completely different light. Now that I am finally entering the adult world of working I realize how much of my gaming is actually tied to me being bored. Now that I don’t have the time to game as much anymore I feel much less of a draw to do so. When I come home I just want to relax, sit down, maybe head to the gym and watch some streams and that’s it. I don’t feel like picking up or opening any game whatsoever and it scares me.

I have identified myself as a Gamer Girl for about 10 years now, I’ve always had time to game with my school schedule being easy and never actually working for more than 8 hours (a saturday) a week. I had time and space to get into games, to not feel tired and to do whatever the hell I wanted,
But not anymore.
And now that I don’t have that anymore, I’ve discovered that I’m not really that much of a Gamer Girl as I’ve always thought I was. I don’t want to spend my weekends infront of my PC or console, just mindlessly grinding away at some game. I want to go out, see people, do things, enjoy life. I feel like I want to date again, to meet a great guy that I can spend my time with doing all kinds of things and not hang behind my PC anymore.

The weekend is my only real free time now and I don’t want to spend it alone indoors. I’m an extrovert by nature (and a really extreme extrovert at that) and I’m always wanting to meet new people and do and see new things, challenge myself and be excited. Gaming doesn’t really do that for me anymore and I’m seriously doubting more and more whether I should keep on logging onto my MMO’s and other games. Ofcourse they are still a great pastime for the evenings when I’m tired and don’t really want to do anything but sit on my ass. But even then I struggle to log in and be really engaged with anything I do.

Ofcourse all of this could also just be an initial rush of getting a job and suddenly have the freedom to do many things that I couldn’t in the past. I’ve been saying yes to a lot of things because I have the money to do stuff now and I’ve been enjoying my time away from home. I haven’t really settled into the job life yet (heading to bed on a fridaynight at 10pm because I’m exhausted kind of illustrates this) and I won’t always have to fill my weekend with stuff to do.

Right now I just feel really at odds with who I am and what I want in life. A part of me is still that hardcore gamer that wants nothing more than to sit at home and play games all day. But a bigger, stronger part of me just wants to go out and enjoy the world and the wonderful people living in it. And games? Well, they will come around. Eventually.

Hearthstone Arena Run – Blaugust day 21

Today after a very long time I did an Arena run on Hearthstone again. I picked up a Paladin deck and, with the help of Heartharena.com, managed to put together a fairly decent aggro deck.
I haven’t dabbled in Arena for a very long time. I’m still struggling to learn all the classes in Hearthstone (Paladin being one of few decks I have no experience with) and I’m still not very good at knowing what to do on what turn and when. I have a tendency to either go face too much or clear minions too much leaving me usually with an empty hand or an empty board. This results into many losses on my side.
It’s one of the reasons I choose to focus on Priest and Druid since those are the two decks I’ve been playing the most and feel the most comfortable on. I really wouldn’t know what a good draft is for any other deck, but this week I had no choice since all three champions were ones I wasn’t comfortable on. So I consulted a friend, picked Paladin and went through a pretty long draft phase while tabbing back and forth to Heartharena to see which cards I should pick up. I did that all on Wednesday evening after the raid so I could focus on actually playing the Arena tonight.

The same friend who helped me discover Heartharena has also guided me through this particular Arena run. He is a good player, albeit a little inexperienced with Paladin, and he has been helping me out here and there. With his guidance (and me making misplays here and there) I managed to get this deck to a 4-3 arena run, which is about a 200% improvement over anything I ever did on my own. I got a nice TGT card pack and 75 gold as rewards and overall I feel a bit more confident in playing Arena as a whole.
With my friend guiding me I’ve gained a bit more knowledge on when to trade, when to play certain cards, when to go for face and that brainfarts are seriously bad.
All in all I’m pretty happy with the result though and I think I might want to try my next Arena run on my own. With enough practice I should be able to get a good result eventually right?

Ongoing game issues
Being almost fulltime (and fullitme next week) at work has shown me how utter impossible it is to keep up with two MMO’s and a bunch of other games without some planning. Monday and Wednesday are my WoW nights since I raid then. Tuesday and Thursday should be my FF nights since I plan to coil then. This leaves me with only Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the rest of my games. Which is actually really sucky. It feels like my days and evenings fly by and I can’t get enough time into games for it to be really satisfying. It doesn’t really help that I go to bed at 23.00 every night, but I really can’t stay up longer or I’ll be a zombie at work.
It’s messing with me and making me slightly cranky. I used to have all the time and freedom in the world to do what I wanted and that is gone now. I guess I really need to start planning my nights better or give up on raiding in one of my MMO’s. And I really don’t want to do the second…

Gaming at work – Blaugust day 20

Seeing as I have been and will be super busy these weeks, I’ve decided to put some time into playing Hearthstone while at work.
Seeing as I work “too fast” anyway it’s not biggie if I take a few 5-10 min breaks playing it. Not only is this better for my general wellbeing (staring at a spreadsheet all day gets kind of exhausting), it also helps me rank up in the game and get rewards, all while getting paid.

It’s a bit tricky though. I have my phone logged in on my secondary battle.net account at the moment and I have no cards whatsoever there. I don’t remember why I logged that account, maybe because I thought it would be fun to get stuff on two separate accounts. I’ll probably switch later tonight. But even on my main account I heavily lack cards. I don’t really play as much as I should (I don’t even have all my classes to level 10 yet) and I’m not really that good at the game, but it’s a nice way to get through the day.

Right now I’m mostly focussing on playing Priest and Druid, which are also two of the shittiest decks to play when you lack cards. They are both control decks and require a sick amount of legendaries to work. Which I don’t have. I hope by battling and unlocking wings in Naxxramas and Blackrock Mountain I will start getting a bit more on par with the rest of the playerbase.

Aslong as I can battle my way to rank 20 every month I’m happy. I love the monthly card backs that Blizzard designs and from rank 20 and up you also get a chest with goodies starting this month! I’m really curious to see what it nets me, although Blizzard already spoiled it a bit by saying they contain gold cards and dust.
I’m not sure if I should focus on another deck instead. I’ve had some experience with Paladin and Mage aswell… But I guess I have more than enough time at work to figure that out!

Heroes Heroes and more Heroes – Blaugust day 19

I’ve only done two things this weekend. Farm games on Heroes of the Storm and watch the LCS finals weekend for both EU and NA. I’ve cheered my heart out for Origen in the EU finals but alas it was not enough. However I’m more interested in the later game of today, which is CLG vs TSM. As a huge CLG fangirl (Doublelift forever!) I really hope they will finally win a split and qualify for worlds. I’m not sure if I can stay up and watch all of the games, but I do plan to watch atleast untill 1 AM!

As far as Heroes of the Storm goes. I swear the general population on that game is getting more and more dumb. People have no idea how to play together and often wander off solo… Getting themselves killed. It really boggles my mind in what universe you think it’s OK to take on five other poeple by yourself, but I guess in their minds they are invincible and thus should be easily able to do this.
As far as champions go. You can see what is the f2p rotation this week. I’ve had Anub’Arak, Malfurion and Nazeebo in all my games so far. All strong champions if played correctly but unfortunately there’s a lot of people still learning the game right now so I see a lot of horrible misplays… On both sides.

I do notice I get kind of complacent from playing Valla. I’m so used to being in the ranged role that having to play a Melee champion requires me to do a complete mindset switch. Right because of this I’m seriously considering picking up a Melee champion after I get my 100 games on Valla. Looking at the strong champions right now, and not wanting to pick up another Assassin, I will probably get either Leoric or Kharazim. They are exceptionally strong in the meta right now and both look ridiculously fun to play. I still need to play 90 more games on Valla however. She is level 6 now, my account is level 9. One more level should net me a 7 day stimpack aswell so I will definately use that to my advantage.
All in all I’m still massively enjoying myself in this game, even though I encounter a ridiculous amount of bad players. It’s nice getting the tactics down and being able to direct a game and win. Close defeats are more fun than crushes, mostly because you get more experience for your account and hero the longer the game goes, but it feels so satisfying aswell to battle it out untill the bitter end.

So far I have zero regrets starting this project. I do need to figure out however how to balance my job, my heroes time and my MMO’s.. And that’s something I’m saving for a next post!

The Heroes Project – Blaugust day 18

Before I get to the real point of this post, I need to have a little rant about mothers, kids, and social media.
One of my best friends has a kid. I love the little spawn to death (number two is on the way by the way) and she posts a lot of pictures of her on Facebook and over Whatsapp. It’s not a daily occurrence but often enough to make me roll my eyes a little. But I bite my tongue. There are parents who post much much more pictures of their spawn, often to the annoyance of a lot of people around them.
Now, posting pictures of your 3-4 year old kid is adorable. However making your 3-4 year old kid an own facebook account is where I go “What the hell?!”. Obviously the kid itself is too young to decide on this and knowing who is the mother.. it’s just a way for mommy to whore some more attention. And I feel sick by it. That you whore for attention on your own account is one thing. Don’t use your kid to “ask” for even more. Kids that young have no place on social media and I don’t think it’s healthy for the kid in question to be known on the internet by first and last name on that young of an age. I can only see this go wrong, but I hope that won’t be. Otherwise I’ll feel even more bad for the kid in question…

The Real Subject
Right now that I have that off my chest. Heroes of the Storm. I finally managed to sit down and play for a bit on my main and my project account. Unfortunately I had an unlucky evening with a big losing streak. Out of 7 games played I only won 1. Usually after losing 3-4 games in a row I just call it quits. Losing streaks are never fun, especially when playing ranked games.  Most of the ones for this particular evening were caused by people just being terrible at picking working team compositions and then being even more terrible at the champion they pick. And in Heroes this is as much of a problem as in the other MOBA’s. However where you can more or less carry a game solo on League of Legends if you’re good enough this is just not possible on Heroes. The game is way too team and objective oriented and once you start getting behind it’s really hard to get back and win. Especially on maps like Blackheart’s Bay.
I decided I will do the quests given on my project account, simply to rack up the gold it gives. Which means I will have to deviate from only spamming one champion. I’m still planning to play atleast 100 games on Valla before focusing on a new champ, but I will take some “side trips” to other champions just to get my dailies done.

Speaking of Valla, I’m on 5/100 games now.
I’m still of the opinion that she is a great champion to play, albeit somewhat squishy. Her kit is good and I’m very fond of champions who have ways to escape when things get tough. I do notice the meta changing. With the latest three champions all being melee/warrior oriented I feel like Valla is in a tighter spot than she has been. Both Leoric and Butcher have a way to stick to champions aswell as the newly released Monk Hero: Kharazim. Right now I think they are all a bit broken in the sense that they all have a really great kit for getting in range of champions and they all have ways to have incredible self sustain, which makes them almost impossible to deal with. It also means that support champions are a bit obsolete healing wise. I guess Tyrande can really shine at the moment with her stuns, since the only way to stop these new champions is by CC’ing them…
It also makes me think about maybe picking one of them up after I do my 100 games on Valla. I’m usually not too fond of melee characters (Illidan being the exception) but I think I owe myself to atleast pick either Butcher, Leoric or Kharazim up. Just because they seem like powerhouses right now and a musthave for anyone who wants to play Heroes seriously.
With the weekend infront of me I should have some more time to play all my games, so this naturally includes Heroes aswell. I hope I can get up to 20/100 games on Valla. I’m not gonna set it as goal, but it is what I’m aiming for right now.
I’ll keep you guys updated!

Ska time! – Blaugust day 17

Every now and then I am in a silly mood and I need to listen to some British Ska. I really love the genre for it’s wackyness and am heavily disappointed I wasn’t around when it was a big thing. So for tonight I’m just putting on some Ska and have a happy evening. Which also includes Hot Butter – Popcorn, which seriously cheers me up after having a few crappy days.

All sillyness aside. There has been so much drama in my WoW guild the past week that I’ve lost all the will to log onto anything at all. People are annoying and take things the wrong way, and it’s causing all kinds of crap. Add to it that I’m tired from work and all I want to do in my free time is lay down and sleep.
It’s bumming me out. It’s getting in the way of my plans and it’s frustrating me. The only game I get some stuff done on is Hearthstone since I play that at work during offtime. This week’s brawl is amazing btw but that’s something different.
So yeah. Gaming wise everything has been slow. I’ve only been raiding with my WoW guild and other than that I’ve mostly been vegetating infront of my PC watching streams and random Youtube movies.
Before I descent into melancholy I will leave you all with one of the most brilliant comedians to have graced this world in the past 40 years. I hope my next post will be better!

Raidleading… Again! – Blaugust day 16

Yesterday evening I found myself once again in an awkward position. I seem to attract that a lot. Maybe because I can’t seem to keep my nose out of stuff that’s not entirely my business. I just really don’t like it when I’m a part of something that doesn’t work because of people being stupid.
We have basically two leaders in our guild at the moment and they can’t stand eachother. They are usually fighting and bitching and it influences the raid massively. One is a rager (he has a really bad temper) and will shout at everyone including himself. The other one is slightly autistic and not fit to be leader material in my opinion. I used to be the third leader, but due to circumstances I shed the officer mantle and just went back to being a raider.
Now, yesterday evening we had the usual attendance drama. People accept calendar invites and then either show very late without notice, or don’t show at all. This has been an ongoing issues in our guild and yesterday Leader number 2 was sick and tired off it and logged off. After a lot of talking back and forth I got him to log back on again, albeit very grumpy.

From that point I decided to take up the raidleader mantle again. Our guild just needs someone to speak up on Teamspeak, to coordinate the group and the invites and to just make sure raiding is being done in a decent atmosphere.
I think I succeeded in that last night where there was for once no drama or bitching. We downed the five bosses we are familiar with, even getting someone entirely new to four of them through. People got loot, we wiped a few times, there were some laughs and it was all fine. But only because I once again decided to step up and step in. No one else in the guild can be bothered to do so and I hate it when there are minor issues that would prevent a raid from happening.

Our GM (who is retired and no longer counted amongst leadership) was already mocking me for stepping up again. Saying “I never change” and he is probably right. However I wouldn’t have to step up if we had competent leaders who would do their job properly. But I guess I’m once again going to be the officer without an officer title. Simply because I just can’t sit idly by watching needless drama happen.
And because when I lead, there is no drama, no shouting, no crying and no grumpyness. I feel like I can make a raid fun to be in, even for myself, and I guess that’s what matters in the end. Right?

An Ambitious Project – Blaugust day 15

I made it halfway! Even if I’m two days behind, I’m now officially halfway through Blaugust. I hope to make another post later today, to catch up more, but for now I want to share with you an ambitious little project I want to start up. I hope I can actually commit to this, since I have really wanted to for a while and the familiar itch is once again itching so yeah.

Let’s start off with the story so far. At some point in time I made a second battle.net account due to circumstance. I was in a bad place, fighting with a lot of people and I needed to be able to play my games anonymously. I was still very much into WoW at the time and decided to buy the base game (which now includes up untill MoP) for €5. It gave me a month of free play aswell and I was happy. Over time I forgot about this account as stuff went back to normal. I didn’t really have a reason to play it anymore and shoved it on the shelf.

Since launch many more have been added ofcourse!

Fast forward a few months. I’m playing Heroes of the Storm quite a bit on my main account but feel like I’ve once again have made the mistake of just getting too many champions off the bat. I really only play Valla and Tyrande and battled my way to 40 on them mostly. I log in to do my daily quests to unlock more champions, but I really don’t play any of them.
I consider myself a decent player, decent enough to carry a game on Valla or Tyrande if I have to and if my teammates aren’t complete idiots, but I feel like I’ve “wasted” too many gold on this account. I bought a bunch of champions that I never play and thus am not good at and I feel a bit stuck.

Enter account number two. It’s a fresh account. There are no bought champions on it yet and I haven’t spent any money on this account, apart from paying that €5 for a WoW license. An idea begins to form in my head. What if I have an account where I can just focus on only the champions I really want to play? Spam super many games on them? Stay anonymous and solo and just battle my way up to max level and then through the ranks? So instead of owning a whole pool of champions I don’t play, I just focus on mastering one at a time on this alternate account. Which I can then use on my main account aswell. It’s safe. It’s anonymous and I can spend as much or as little time on it as I wish.

And thus Project: Heroes is born. I want to pick up one champion at a time and master it. Spam 100 games in a row atleast. Learn the ins and outs on an account that nobody knows of and translate those skills into my main account. So that I can “carry” games better, get a better understanding of the game and it’s different roles and hopefully master more champions than I have been doing now.
I really want to share this project on my blog because I really want to go through with it for once and instead of just having it in my head I am now making it public. And maybe it will help me make this happen.

I’ve already chosen the first champion of my Project..

Valla!

She is also already more or less my “main” champion on my normal account but due to me putting emphasis on my dailies I hardly get to play her. And getting a hold of her in Ranked games is very hard when you’re not one of the first picks. So yeah. I’m planning to play 100 games on her. Just get to know her kit, experiment with her builds and get better than I have been so far. Maybe at the end of the 100 games I will buy a Master skin with gold (assuming I will be level 10), seeing as I feel like I’ve earned it then but I’m not sure yet. I’m not picking up another champion untill I’ve completed my 100 games on her.

I will add my progress of this project under the “gaming goals” page and will try to update about it in my blog posts aswell. I really hope I can stick to this! Because I’m sure it will help me get better at the game.
And before I get the obvious question: Why not do this on your  main account? I feel like my main account is a bit of a mess. I also feel like I can’t really play anonymously or whenever I want since I have a big friends list and there’s always someone online who I’m chatting with. I just want to focus on this, with a clean slate and no disturbances from anyone.