Ugh, I had so hoped to not fail the Blaugust challenge. I was really looking forward to blogging everyday. But due to circumstance I managed to miss two days in a row. Bah!
Friday as I came home from work I was just completely exhausted. I crawled into bed after dinner with League of Legends on and basically watched that while half asleep… Before finally falling asleep at 22.00
Saturday has just been a blur for me. I had to pick up supplies for my best friend’s babyshower in the morning and headed off to Amsterdam after that to see a friend who has hit a rough patch. I ended up staying there till about twelve, drinking beer at the Irish pub close to where she lives and generally having a good time. I wasn’t really home until 1.00 AM and immediatly crawled into bed then aswell.
And today there was the babyshower and no real time for me to sit down and do anything untill I got home an hour before dinner.
So there you have the reasons I didn’t really have the time to write anything at all this weekend. I’ve been superbusy and as consequence supertired aswell. But I finally managed to sit down now and discuss the things I’ve been doing.
Gaming Goals Progress
I managed to unlock the first wing of Naxxramas in Hearthstone today. Apparently I had won a 100 matches on my account across all types of games and that awards you with 300 gold. Which pushed me right over the 700 you need to open up a wing. So I did and ventured in to battle Anub’Rekhan, the first boss. Seeing as I’ve chosen to focus on two decks only (Druid and Priest) I picked my priest and prayed my healing spells would carry me through. Luckily I found it an easy boss to defeat, so I’m staring at the Grand Widow now.
Atleast I can scratch that goal off my to-do list!
As for the rest of the goals. I’ve barely logged any games this week. I’ve been absolutely shattered whenever I got home after work. So I’ve mostly sat around watching streams and series and not gaming at all. Which means that no I didn’t get my Esoterics cap on Final Fantasy again and that my WHM is still poking about at level 45. I should really be playing now, but there is…
League of Legends Playoffs
My favourite game to watch: League of Legends. I basically root for two teams. One in EU (Elements) and one in NA (Counter Logic Gaming). Elements unfortunately had a bad season and didn’t make it into playoffs, but CLG did and played their semifinals last night. It was a 3-0 and I could cheer for my team and had a great time watching it. The finals should be next week, and you can bet I’ll be watching again. I really hope they win, it would be the first big prize they would get and I really think the team deserves it this year.
Anyway, I hope I can get back to posting everyday again this week. I hope work will leave me less exhausted and with more time to play than it does now. I really want to get my WHM to 50, so I’ll probably make that a big aim this week, aswell as getting my Esoterics Chest on my Dragoon. But we will see.
Today I need to vent some issues about my new job. I’ve only been working for three days, but there’s already some irritations that can turn into big issues in the long run if they don’t get nipped in the butt.
My job is a temp one. It’s basically based on a company needing people to complete a project before a deadline. In this case it’s adding data to a google spreadsheet for articles from a big supermarket chain in my country. We work with a certain set of rules. What things need to be mentioned and where and we have a minimum target of articles to handle every day. We work most of the day on entering data into the spreadsheet, either adding data from scratch based on having the physical product or a picture of it. Or we correct data that has been entered by the producers of said products. The last 2-3 hours of the day are spent on cross checking all the articles we added for the day and erase mistakes that might have slipped in here and there.
What’s really important to note is that we won’t get to leave for the day untill all articles have been checked. We aim to be done at 17.00, but the first day we didn’t finish till 17.30 and I’ve heard stories from people who worked on similar projects that it sometimes can get much later.
Our group of colleague’s exist of 7 temp workers, of which I’m one, and a few people from within the company. On average we have 9-10 people working on the project every day. Some people are fast, some people are slow and some people only help out for an afternoon or a morning so they don’t really count.
From day one I have been having “issues” with one of the people who comes from the company itself. She was more or less selected to do this work, whether she liked it or not, and seems to not enjoy herself at all. She complains about a lot of things. How no one is talkative, how much she still has to do, that she wants to go home at five. You name it, she complains about it. Not to mention that I personally believe that her tone towards our supervisors is disrespectful, but that is just a matter of opinion I guess. Up untill this afternoon she referred to me as “person sitting across from me” while she’s heard my name often enough the past three days to know what I’m called. It just pisses me off and if I didn’t know she would more or less be out next week I probably would have complained about her at some point. Because her negativity and work attitude is bringing everyone who sits at her table down aswell. It’s distracting, it’s annoying and I can’t really shut her out. This makes me enjoy my work less and be less motivated to do stuff aswell.
Next to this the job is really “mistake” prone. Things have to be added in certain fields and the restrictions are very precise. Seeing as I don’t want to be correcting mistakes untill the end of time I just ask my supervisors everytime something is unclear or if I don’t understand something. Problem is, I’m the only one who does. Which leads to the fact that people either keep on making mistakes because they just guess and fill in or people asking a question that I actually can answer (because I know, because you know… I asked) to which I get the “how do you know?” reply. It makes me feel like some sort of goodie two shoes because I’m not afraid to just ask stuff. It’s earned me some side-eyes already and it’s making me uncomfortable.
It’s also making me feel like I’m compensating for people. I’m already one of the people with the highest “performance” every day, but now I also have to be the one who knows everything? It’s a bit too much and I notice it when I’m home. I’m so tired I can’t even enjoy a game anymore. All I want is to eat dinner and head to bed.
Thing is, I really want to show off my best side on this job. I’m hoping this might lead to either a job at the company or a good referral that will lead to other jobs. So it pisses me off that I’m made to feel bad about something that isn’t. About something they all should be doing, so that we don’t have to correct all the damn mistakes that are being made now.
From all the people with an university degree I certainly expect better. But then again, people are stupid. And working a job only proves that more.
Seeing as my brain is very tired today I decided to make use of a writing prompt from the Blaugust nook, instead of coming up with my own subject.
Is there any particular game series that you will always be attached to? What is it that makes the series as a whole compelling (as opposed to just a certain game in the series)?
I have thought a bit about this question seeing as I’ve played through very few series. I didn’t play all the Final Fantasy’s. I didn’t play all the Kingdom Hearts. And they are a few of my favourite series. I think the answer will be Pokémon though.
I have played (and own) Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow; Gold, Silver and Crystal; Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald; Firered (and Leafgreen but gave that to an ex boyfriend as bday present); Diamond and Pearl; Black; Hearthgold; X and Alpha Sapphire.
So yeah, I guess you can state the Pokémon series are my favourite. Pokémon Blue was the very first game I owned on my Gameboy and I nearly finished it. It was one of the few games that got me hooked as a kid and I’ve been a fan ever since, getting one of the new Pokémon games as it comes out everytime. There has been one notable exception though, I never touched Black and White 2 since I found that concept ridiculous.
I’m not sure as to why I feel this series to be so compelling. I am a collector at heart, seeing the amount of pets and mounts I own in both World of Warcraft and FFXIV, and Pokémon fills my collecting need. Add the fact that there is ever more Pokémon to collect and the game is right up my alley.
I also like the challenges posed in the games in the form of legendary Pokémon. Finding and catching those always gave me a little adrenaline rush. I remember fondly the first time I caught the three legendary birds (Zapdos, Moltres and Articuno) in Pokémon Blue with Ultraballs. It was just as exhilarating to me as catching Kyogre with an Ultraball was in Alpha Sapphire.
It’s also a lot of childhood nostalgia, playing the games reminds me of playing the very first one when I was 9 years old. I’m still having as much fun in it today as I had back then.
All of this probably makes me come back to the games time and again… Unless they do something really weird to it.
And ofcourse I want to be the very best, like no one ever was!
In today’s blog I want to talk about the Night Elves. There has been some discussion on my Twitter feed about Tyrande and Shandris and the roles they should play in the coming expansion… And it has rekindled my Night Elf fangirl lore fire.
The Night Elves have always been (and still are) my favourite race in World of Warcraft. I felt very much attracted to a society that seemed to be matriarchal and where the women were the warriors (sentinels in this case) and leaders. After reading Knaak’s War of the Ancients I fell in love even more with the race.
Not only are they the ancestors to the Blood Elves and consequently Sylvanas, they are also a big part of the reason Azeroth is shaped as it is today. And even dating back to the time of War of the Ancients it was a female dominated society, with the most respected members being the Priestesses of Elune next to Queen Azshara herself.
Their lore is rich, with them being among the oldest races on Azeroth, and their people used to be many, with long healthy lives and a society of relative peace.
With Legion I really hope to see Blizzard rekindle some of that Elven lore. They already revealed to us that we will be seeing Queen Azshara in the next expansion in one way or another. Personally I hope she will be getting her own big story arch, and a bossfight, since this is one badass lady. During her time as Queen of the Night Elves she was probably the most powerful being on Azeroth that wasn’t a God or a Demigod. Even Mannoroth did not dare to lift a finger to her when he was working on the invasion during War of the Ancients. Forming a pact with the Old Gods, which eventually turned her and her followers into the Naga, may have only made her more powerful. Powerful enough anyway to kidnap Neptulon, God of the Seas and doing god knows what to him while she has him captured. We can only assume she has been biding her time, plotting how to change Azeroth into her own private utopia.
With the reveal of the Broken Isles zones we already heard we will get a chance to explore Suramar, the ancient Night Elven capital, and see for ourselves how Night Elven society would have been if the War of the Ancients never happened.
Another big protagonist this expansion is Maiev Shadowsong. Ex head of the Watchers, Captor of Illidan Stormrage and Warden to the Night Elves since the times of the War of the Ancients. A lot of crazy things have happened to Maiev. She may have been a little too obsessed with capturing Illidan and she may have gone a little crazy after being betrayed by her own folk. But she is back now and we will see how much of a part she gets to play. I won’t be surprised when her story arch will mostly evolve around Illidan again, but I guess we will wait and see.
Tyrande
The one big Night Elf character we have essentially heard nothing about is Tyrande. Actually Tyrande has gone into a some sort of non-existant state ever since Blizzard reintroduced Malfurion to the game. Which, in my opinion, is a huge shame.
Not only has Tyrande led the Nightelves (against her will) for thousands of years, she is the chosen of Elune and a pretty badass fighter on top of it all. She is also responsible for murders on the Watchers so she could get Illidan out of jail, probably not her finest moment.
And yet she seems to be forgotten. Malfurion has been leading the Night Elves since Cataclysm came out, and has played a pretty peaceful role while doing so. Which comes as a bit of a surprise since the Horde is slowly chewing their way through Ashenvale, destroying much of his beloved forest.
Maybe it’s time that Tyrande had a fit and chose her people over her husband. Since really, she has been the one to lead them for thousands of years. She has seen them suffer, losing their immortality, getting pushed back by the Horde in Ashenvale and the Naga in Feralas. Especially now that Azshara might come to the forefront again, maybe it’s time Tyrande picked up some of that murderous intent again and turn it into something worthwile.
I would love to see her leading the charge for her kin. Travel to the Broken Isles and settle the score with Azshara once and for all. Make Night Elf women what they used to be and what they are supposed to be again: badass fighters.
The last day before I start work, and definately don’t have as much time for games as I normally have, I decided to play some FFXIV. And with some I mean a lot. And with a lot I mean I’ve spent about 5-6 hours just playing FFXIV today alone. Why? Because I had to catch up on the weekly Esoterics and Alexander grind! I’ve been neglecting that for weeks now and even this time I won’t make the cap. I’m about 100 esoterics off but well, it can’t be helped. Seeing as I’ve been a bit unlucky with winning drops in Alex turn 2 today I’ve spent quite some time of my life looking at this screen.
Luckily for me I managed to win the Pedal (boots item) after four or five runs or so, saving me the headache of having to run it over and over and over again. I was luckier in Alex turn 1 and 3, where I won the items I wanted immediatly thus giving me atleast the boots this week and, if I’m lucky tonight in turn 4, the gloves. That would also give me a bit of an item level boost (I’m currently sitting on 183) and would leave me almost done with Alexander Raid Finder. I can only get the accessories, legs and chest from here on and seeing as I’m planning to buy the Esoterics Chest next reset it leaves me with very little incentive to return to this lovely place. That is untill my group starts running Savage Mode.
After my friend had to run for a while I decided to do my low level roulette on my White Mage. So I ended up doing a lot of healing… And a little bit of dancing.
As expected levelling via the guildhest and low level roulettes is fast enough. I was getting a level a day from them up untill hitting 41. Right now I’m sitting about 20% off level 43 which is fine. I’m saving up all my hunting log entries for when I’m 49 so that they are not only easier to kill but it will also speed up getting that last big hump to 50.
I’m still undecided as to what I’m going to do after that. A part of me wants to level my WHM up to level 60 so I can sit back and relax while running dungeons. Another part of me wants to get every other class/job to 50 first. Which is quite a task. Seeing as I won’t nearly have as much time to play the coming weeks as compared to now I think it’s better to just stick to WHM for the time being. This allows me to switch up some of the max level content aswell, instead of constantly sitting on my Dragoon, who is just grinding Esoterics for the time being.
As for now I’m waiting for my friend to return to do Ex-roulette and hope and pray that my first day of work tomorrow won’t be too exhausting… Or I won’t be gaming at all!
I want to say I have hit something of a writer’s block but that’s not the case. I know what I want to write and want to talk about on my blog. I even had a post prepared on my laptop, but for some reason I didn’t feel like using that material right now. My head feels a bit heavy today, I’m having one of my headache days, and not drinking enough isn’t helping either.
Looking at Twitter there is enough going on in the big world of gaming today. There was the WoW Dev Q&A that I missed which was apparently very uneventful. There is League of Legends playoffs which I’m having on in the background. I could catch up on some Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone tournament VOD’s or look at Method winning Frostmourne. This is all stuff that I watch rather than play though. My motivation to start up a game is on an all time low today. I managed to get my mandatory Tavern Brawl win in on Hearthstone and played two games of Heroes of the Storm with a friend, but I’m just not feeling it.
I can’t say I feel restless, I rather feel tired. Physically and mentally. My head is just empty today and my body desires nothing but laying down. I refuse to give in to it though, using the time instead to clean out my bedroom, the bathroom and vacuum the entire upper floor of the house. Oh and do some laundry aswell. I wish I could just start up a game and lose myself in it for a few hours, but meh. I guess today isn’t really a gaming day and in a way that’s okay aswell.
Lara Croft
One of the PS Plus free games this month is Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris. Unlike the Tomb Raider games this game isn’t very much an RPG but instead a top down action/adventure game. You can play it with up to 4 people and your goal is to resurrect Osiris to stop Set.
I got to play it a bit with two friends yesterday and had a blast. I managed to claim Lara (she is a very contested character) and proceeded to die a lot, but that didn’t matter.
The game is made up out of a main objective: defeat a Map’s endboss and claim a piece of Osiris’ statue, and a lot of side objectives. For instance there are 5 red skulls hidden throughout every map which you can find for extra loot. There’s “beat the timer” challenges and “get x amount of points”. Running with more than one person allowed us to get up to difficult places with good teamwork. It was also very fun to place bombs and blow my friends up with them, although I’m sure they disagreed.
There are a lot of fun mechanics to advance in maps and if anyone who owns a PS4 is searching for a fun game, which isn’t too complicated, to play with friends I can heartily recommend this one. It will keep you busy for a few hours and you won’t feel bored whatsoever.
I still need to discover how the game is solo, but I want to stripe of more of my gaming to-do list before I add this one.
It’s a bit of a slow day today for me. I went out to visit a friend and we went shopping. Or well I went shopping and dragged him along haha. Gaming wise I didn’t do much today. I took my 3DS with me, since I had to be underway for about an hour, and played through the first world of Super Mario Bros!
Another thing on my gaming to do list to scratch off. The problem I have with the Mario Bros game is that you don’t really complete it by just finishing the game. You see every level has three big star coins hidden throughout the level that you need in order to unlock secret bonus levels. I have not been collecting all of them, I’ve been more focused on just playing through the game, but I intend to go back and grab all of them and “finish” the game that way aswell. Some are really impressively hidden so I’m sure it will take me some time to actually find all of them.
And then there are hidden worlds you need to unlock via special cannons… I’ll probably read up on that after I played through the main storyline. Because unlockable content is cool!
Mostly though I’ve enjoyed being outside today, let my skin soak up some vitamin D (ofcourse with sunscreen on) had some nice munchies and generally relaxed before work starts on Tuesday. I have gotten my roster and boy am I in for a treat! I’m starting earlier than expected so I guess I’ll have to get used to getting up at 7, instead of 9.30-10.00 that I’m getting up now. Atleast I’m rostered for 32 hours a week so the pay should be nice. I don’t think I will get much done in the way of gaming though. I expect to be seriously tired and will probably go to bed around 22.00 the first week because I will lack sleep otherwise.
To end the evening, and before heading to bed and completely passing out, I’ve played through some Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris with a few buddies. It’s a 1-4 player game and it was free through Playstation Plus this month. We quite enjoyed ourselves. I might write about it in a bit more detail today. For now I’m heading to bed.
I know I’m about an hour too late with posting this officially for Blaugust. But it’s still considered to be my post for the 8th!
So today I managed to stripe two goals of my August gaming to-do list! I finally finished off the last few Garrison campaign quests on my Priest and I levelled my newbie Hunter on Draenor to level 30.
I think the Garrison Campaign was one of the few lore bits that Blizzard did right this expansion. I loved being sent on new quests after I had dinged max level and how the story unfolded after I worked my way through all the zones. Luckily apparently Alliance got the better end of that trade as our Garrison campaign had a bit more depth to it than the Horde one did, but overall the experience and idea of it was good. I managed to complete the latest quests, the ones that came with 6.2, today and it showed some interesting stuff. Mostly how some of the bosses of the Hellfire Citadel raid came to be there. I liked the bit of extra lore and was also saddened that Blizzard didn’t do more of this throughout the expansion. Let’s hope they will make up for it with Legion ™.
The Hinterlands
So I had been levelling up my baby hunter Aylanna mostly on quests and had arrived in Arathi Highlands at level 25. Of all the zones left devastated by the Cataclysm, Arathi has been one of the few that has remained relatively untouched. It’s still green hills and farmland, crowded with Raptors and Spiders.
Running around here makes me think of the Scottish landscapes from Highlander.
The ruins of Stromgarde are also still left standing. It’s one of those quest hubs that you keep being sent back to. And again. And again… And again. I guess it’s one of the few things that are annoying to me when it comes to Warcraft questing. Just give me the follow up quests as I complete them, instead of making me run back and forth all the time!
Even the layout inside of Stromgarde hasn’t changed. One part is being occupied by the Syndicate. One part by Ogres and the last part by the Alliance, trying to hold on to one of the last remaining Human Castles in the North.
Ofcourse there has been a little adjustment to the zone. They have added a small Forsaken camp next to the wall separating the Highlands from Hillsbrad Foothills. But other than that Blizzard didn’t deem it necessary to fiddle around with this zone too much, for which I’m glad. Seeing as they did their best to completely destroy Hillsbrad and make it a Forsaken/Horde zone. (Really Blizzard, did you have to destroy Southshore like that?). I was a bit sad that the zone itself didn’t last that long for me. Due to having Heirlooms leveling just goes so fast. It makes you miss out on some interesting quests. Maybe I’ll go back to it when I’m max level, just to see what more is out there in the zone.
And ofcourse the little emo-themed Forsaken camp can’t be missing!
Final Fantasy
As I expected I’m having a hard time motivating myself to do my ex-roulette every day. On the other hand leveling my White Mage is going faster than I thought. Doing guildhest and low level roulette alone, coupled with some Hunting Logs, I’m now sitting well into level 40, which means I only have 10 levels to go for that goal! For now it seems doing my roulettes gives me a level a day, so if that keeps up I will be 50 in ten days. Yay for me! I will get to do more crossing on my to-do list AND I will have the healer of preference at the point I wanted it before the xpac came out. The only thing I need to decide then is if I want to keep on leveling that to 60 or aspire to bring all my classes up to 50 first. That would mean leveling my Warrior, Monk and Ninja… And the three new jobs: Dark Knight, Astrologian and Machinist. For now I’m leaning towards leveling my White Mage to 60 and use it as queue booster. But maybe I will change my mind. We shall see in the future!
Legion. The 6th expansion of the World of Warcraft. And most likely the final one?
A bold statement. I know. But I will go into detail as to why I think this is supposed to be the pinnacle of the World of Warcraft game.
Lore
From what the initial panel showed us, Blizzard is trying very hard to make up for the absence of lore in Warlords of Draenor. Not only are we continuing the fight against the Burning Legion, which will apparently be a bigger invasion than the War of Ancients was, we are also going to explore the Emerald Dream/Nightmare, have a run in with Azshara AND finally find out what happened to Alleria and Turalyon.
It’s almost like a lore overload. A tiered cake of lore. You want more lore you say? Here we shall add another tier, and another, and… another. It feels rather overwhelming to focus on that many “big” stories at once. May I remind people that there have been rumours of an entire Emerald Dream expansion instead of the “addon” we get right now?
And Aszhara. She has been surrounded with so many mystery. She made a short cameo in Cataclysm if you played through the Darkshore story quest. She was once the most powerful being on the planet. Anyone who has read R. Knaak’s “War of the Ancients” knows that even Mannoroth could not do anything against her. That makes for a pretty damn powerful woman. I had hoped she would get a bit more attention than just a sidezone in an xpac, but we don’t know what Blizzard has planned yet.
And then there’s the brief mention of Alleria and Turalyon. People have been wondering for ages what happened to them. They went into the Outlands only to disappear and never be heard from again. What has been their story? Can Blizzard do right by them?
And ofcourse there’s the Burning Legion arc, which is a direct continuation of the story so far in Warlords of Draenor. We will be dealing with the biggest invasion ever, and might even get to deal with Sargeras himself? Who knows!
So yeah. What I mostly see here is Blizzard’s attempt of knitting together a lot of loose ends that have been created throughout the years in the Warcraft universe. Lore that people have been yelling for, for years. The question is, will they succeed in doing this?
I see two scenario’s played out here:
1. The expansion is an utter piece of shit. Lore is treated badly. The new gimmicks of Artifact Weapon and Class Halls suffer the same fate as Garrisons do now and people are disappointed. Sub numbers keep dropping and Blizzard will eventually either pull the plug from the game or decide it to go f2p. After 10-12 years it has served it’s purpose, it’s time to look to the future and focus on a different project.
2. The expansion is amazing and truly the pinnacle of the World of Warcraft. We finally get a lot of answers, if not all, to all our lore questions. The newly implemented features are great. PvP is finally in a good place. Sub numbers rise again and people are happy. The question is WHAT THEN?! Since it looks like they are tieing all loose ends in this expansion will people be open to new stories? New adventures? Or is this the end to the Warcraft story, which is good, and will Blizzard make it like Final Fantasy XI, it will still be around but there won’t be any new content added. Instead we are groomed towards a new MMO, a better MMO. Warcraft 2.0?
So yeah. These were my first thoughts to make it to my blog on the newly announced expansion. I will probably write more about it when the dust has settled down a bit and more details are being brought out.
As parting words I will only say: OMFG DEMON HUNTERS! DIBS! ROLLING THAT!
After reinstalling Mickey’s Castle of Illusion on Steam I was happy to find out that Steam actually saved my progress in the cloud! Which means I didn’t have to work my way through the first world again and could immediatly dive into the second world (or act as it’s called in game).
Act 2-1: Angry toys everywhere!
It was a blast from the past. I have actually played my way through Mickey and Donald on my old Sega (which also included toy like levels) and Mickey Mania, but never got Castle of Illusion. I’m so happy I picked up the remastered version during the Steam Summer Sale this year! It’s taking me all the way back to when I first got my Sega Mega Drive when I was about 6 years old. Back then they had the better graphics compared to Nintendo and I remember a childhood filled with playing Sonic and Disney games. A feeling that this particular game brings back.
I love how they only remastered the sound and graphics and left the gameplay itself be. It’s still damn hard at some points, just how I remember the old platformers.
This is one of those games of my gaming-to-do list that I’m happily tackling, because honestly it’s just too much fun. I’ll keep you updated as I progress through the game, but to give a little more info (and a feel of what I’m doing in there) I have added the official launch trailer below. If you like what you see, go get it via Steam!
The Grind
One of the goals I have set for myself is to get my Esoterics cap on FFXIV every week. This means having to do ex-roulette every day. Which, honestly, I kind of hate. There are only two dungeons available for this roulette currently, Neverreap and Fractal Continuum, and I’m not a fan of either. Fractal takes a bit longer and has more trash. Neverreap has the most godawful endboss that I’ve seen in a dungeon so far. It’s safe to say I’m not really looking forward to doing this. Add in the horrible DPS queue times and you get a grumpy Sandy.
Next to this I’m rather frustrated with how my FFXIV raiding group has turned out. Ofcourse it’s summer and holidays are in the way. But still, we aren’t doing anything as group and grinding most content solo is boring as hell. It feels like a venture doomed to fail, especially since we have one more DPS spot to fill. Queue tremendous sigh.
I also wish I could show off more of the stuff I do from FF. But since I play on the PS4 it’s actually kind of a hassle to get decent screenshots. I wish I could just somehow connect and copy/paste stuff but I’m being forced to use a USB stick, not the most elegant way. I’ll try to add a bit more pictures, but don’t pin me on it!
The WoW Thing
By now most people have seen (Activision)Blizzard’s announcement about their financial Q2 and the tumble that the WoW subs took. Sitting on 5,6M currently it’s a number that we haven’t seen since Vanilla! All of which is due to the horrible lack of content that Blizzard provided with their latest expansion.
Queue some big names leaving in the past year or two aswell (Ghostcrawler and now Bashiok) and I wonder what is left of the old Blizzard core. Yes I do realize that those two had completely different roles within the organisation, but they were people that were out there in the community.
Everyone has had their opinions on WoW lately. I remember writing a post a few weeks ago that for me it was just done. I had my reasons. Cataclysm was the last really active expansion for me. I was an officer by the end of the xpac and the sole person keeping our tiny guild going, it drained me and the moment raiding didn’t happen in MoP I decided to take my leave of the game entirely. I did not like the setting of Mists of Pandaria, was not enamoured with the Panda’s as a playable race (I only made it to max level on a lvl 90 boosted Panda Monk) and the Daily grind for rep was… Horrible.
I came back every three to six months or so and started raiding again casually at the end of it, ready to come back fully for Warlords of Draenor which looked to be promising..
For the first few months it actually was. The leveling was much better in design than it had been since Wrath of the Lich King, there was enough content to keep you going for a while, the raids proved to be challenging enough. The only downsides for me were the horrible Garrison chores and the utter lack of decent PvP. Realizing that if I wanted to make gold or be self sufficient in any way would mean I had to run Garrisons on multiple characters was a nightmare and a huge turnoff in the end.
When patch 6.1 hit I was majorly disappointed. Instead of delivering more promising content we were stuck with a SELFIE camera, Twitter integration and a Garrison music box. Out of the three I think I’ve used the music box the most. I think I can count the amount of WoW selfies taken on one hand. Next to some newly added pets that was all the content we were going to get. And it sucked.
Queue 6.2 after barely logging in for a few weeks (we had killed Blackhand and had all done our Legendary quests) and again a huge disappointment. You got a second mission table, this time for ships, and an island that was even worse in design than the Timeless Isle. I hated doing the dailies the moment they appeared and haven’t touched a single one of them solo. The few times I did do them were with a gaming buddy, but we both quickly grew wary of them. What grinded my gears even more is that Blizzard locked the Legendary profession behind your little ships table. A whole world of frustration that I can’t even begin to describe right now. Let’s just say I’ve lost enough epic ships to more or less want to shove the whole idea through the throat of the devs who came up with it.
So yeah. Blizzard dropping sub numbers like no tomorrow has come as no surprise to me. Ask my guildies, but I’ve been complaining about the lack of content since January. And Blizzard has done nothing about it. If they want to keep their game going steady, or want to get people to come back to the game they really need to do something special with the next expansion. Pump out way better and way more content. Listen to your playerbase. Communicate with them again. Otherwise I predict the giant that was once World of Warcraft to plummet down to f2p status. And I’m not sure if the game will survive that.
