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Having Snapped

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For the past months I’ve not been in a good place on World of Warcraft. My current guild, which I’ve been in for about 4.5 years now, has become a place where I no longer really wish to hang out.
I came into this guild when it was in it’s dying breath (although I did not know that back then) and have always stuck by it, through good and mostly bad times.

Early on when I entered one of the last active officers left after a big fight that actually involved me. I won’t go into details but let’s just say couples in guilds are often toxic when one of them is in power and the other is abusing this power. After this, this was during Cataclysm, I stepped up in recruitment, raidleading and generally smoothing out the raidteam and making raids happen. After the raidleader also quit I was responsible for everyting fulltime and it was very draining on me… In the end I managed to get us to clear a lot of heroic Dragon Soul before Diablo 3, the Summer and patch fatigue shut down the guild untill Mists of Pandaria.

In Mists I managed to get a raidteam together for a few weeks after launch and then everything basically fell apart, at which point I decided to throw in the towel. I had to focus on my education and could not handle a fulltime involvement with a guild where I was the only one in charge left. The GM who promised me to be there decided he didn’t want to play Mists afterall, leaving me to fend for myself. I suffered major burnout then and didn’t really come back to the game untill Siege of Orgrimmar came out.

Around that time a lot of “old garde” people came back and I was interested in atleast killing Garrosh Hellscream before Warlords of Draenor would launch so I hopped into a few raids with them, got my kill and didn’t really care too much. As WoD was approaching I was helping out the “leader” then who, in all honesty, isn’t that good with the administration side of things. I helped him put together the raidroster, set up a poll for the raiddays and offered to fulfill the healer role I picked up at the end of Mists. This was not necessary and I decided to play Shadow Priest for the upcoming expansion.

Fast forward a few months and I end up levelling and gearing Shadow… Only to be asked to roll Holy. Less healers were showing up than they hoped and I was the only one who had the right class and experience as healer. Even though I was not feeling well mentally, and I didn’t really want to switch speccs, I said yes and we continued raiding in Highmaul. A few months later I broke. There was too much going on in my life to handle stress from raiding and dealing with our raidteam, which was filled with bad players. I snapped and stopped raiding for a while to focus on myself, instead of giving so much to others. In hindsight I heard my officer “friends” were trying to get rid of me then for not feeling well, something that hurt me beyond belief. I came back to raiding and just figured I’d focus on myself and getting enjoyment out of the game my own way. I asked to be demoted to Raider down from Officer because I did not feel comfortable in Officer chat anymore. I was in there with three guys who would just ignore anything I said or bitch at me. I didn’t and couldn’t deal with that well so I got the demote I wanted.

And now we are in the present. Raiding through Hellfire Citadel, which has not been a very smooth ride, and my frustrations with raiding and the group have been at an all time high. It’s become more and more apparent to me that it matters what position you hold in this guild. If you are buddies with our raidleader you can get away with everything without punishment, while the rest of us get scolded. Add to the fact that some “friends” who I have always treated well suddenly feel the need to treat me like shit and I just more or less snapped.

So today, with a lot of heartache, I have decided to stop raiding whatsoever. I need and want to focus on my own happiness right now and I don’t want to deal with such a big frustrating factor in my life. I feel betrayed, used and generally drained. After 4.5 years I’m more than done with this guild and the people in it. I hope for them that they get Archimonde Heroic down before the new expansion hits, but for me this is the end of my raiding career for now. I might log in casually just so I can get enough gold to buy a WoW token to keep my sub active. But I might just let it all run out and see.

Terror

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I want to start this blogpost off with a few words from me personally about all that has happened in the past 24 hours or so.
First off, the attacks on Paris have made me sick to my core. It’s in times like these that you realize how close you actually are to a city like that (it takes me about 4 hours to travel from my house to the center of Paris by train, let that sink in) and how frighteningly close terrorism has actually come to a continent that is supposed to be safe to live on. The general feeling here is that these terrorists are trying to take away our feeling that we are safe in our own countries and it’s damn well working. Events like these only make me want to avoid the big cities in Europe like the plague, scared that something will happen.
So many innocent people’s lives have been taken by a few that by all means are no better than savage animals. They murdered… no butchered innocent people in one of the busiest places in Paris, people like you and me, that go about their daily lives and never get involved in politics or global scale things to begin with.
For me there was an added layer of terror in knowing that one of the people I love and care about most in this world not only lives right ontop of Paris, but could very well have been present in the Stade de France watching that friendly football match. I got very early confirmation that said person was actually unharmed and safe at home, but still. Everytime I see it slip by on the news I get cold and think of all the people who have not been this lucky and have lost a loved one last night.
Whenever you see on the news that there is trouble in the Middle East or Israel it doesn’t make that big of an impact for me because it’s so far away and I don’t actually know anyone there. But with all the recent happenings and knowing France (and Paris) have been the target of multiple attacks over the past year everything is suddenly much closer to home, up to the point that I’m actually dreading Monday since my friend will have to go back into Paris for work then… And I can only hope and pray he is safe and nothing will happen.

Gaming and Work
I’ve started my new job last week and am in the process of learning everything involved… Causing me to come home extremely tired and irritable. The only thing I want to do after dinner is head to bed and catch up on all the sleep I feel like I’ve been missing.
Because I’m forced to think about priorities it’s also becoming more and more apparent to me that I need to take a step back from World of Warcraft. The struggle there is becoming more and more intense for me and it’s pulling me under. People who I thought were nice turn out to be not so nice and I’ve lost respect for a lot of others… I don’t really know what to do with this. Mentally I’m just exhausted with that part of my life and the only thing I would want is to retreat from the raidteam and focus on the aspects of the game that still make me happy, instead of logging on frustrated and emotional because of everything that has been, and still is, going on.
It’s hurtful for me on a personal level because I feel like I have given my all for this guild over the past four or five years and I never got anything in return. My heart and soul went in there, I was officer/GM/raidleader for a while, I helped setup the new raidleader, handled things like roster balancing, raidrules, lootrules and everything that came with maintaining a raidteam. I assist our current raidleader with tactics and calling things out while still needing to be focused on keeping people alive on my Priest. It’s all a bit too much, especially when you get zero respect and acknowledgement for what you are doing, it just feels like a spit in the face.
Add to that the fact that I’m already exhausted when I come home after work now and you just get a very volatile mix that can explode any minute. My heart is bleeding over this situation and right now I’m not sure of anything anymore… Only that I no longer find any enjoyment in logging onto the game.

Instead I have been playing a lot of FFXIV again since patch 3.1 came out. I’ve been steadily leveling away on my Ninja, who will probably hit level 40 before the weekend is over and am doing the new beast tribe dailies on my Bard, who is halfway to level 52. I’m really enjoying the game again, especially now that a lot of the lagg issues have been resolved. I really think I will make this game my maingame again and will probably devote most of my time to getting my Ninja to level 60 and geared up, while also slowly plowing away on my other classes.

Next to Final Fantasy I’ve seen a ressurection in my Heroes of the Storm play. I’ve been playing atleast 3 games every day and have been enjoying myself immensely. I’ve picked up Johanna on my alt account and am currently wrecking face on Jaina on my main account. It’s so fun to play different roles and feel like you’re actually good at them. Whenever my team wins a game by good communication and gameplay I’m just super happy and feel like I’ve achieved much more than whenever I killed a new boss on World of Warcraft. I’m saving up for the next champion to buy and I’m very much leaning in the direction of Leoric, Butcher or Artanis. I’m sitting at 7k gold right now so it shouldn’t take too long to get that 10k gold together to buy either one of them. Especially since I picked up doing my quest with a fever. Sometimes I will do them on Quick Match on champions I’m comfortable on, sometimes I will choose to play vs AI because I either lack time or need to play a role I normally don’t play (warrior/specialist). Either way I make sure quests are getting done and gold is getting earned. I really want to own all the champions in the game, so I guess I still have some work ahead of me!

Taking Steps

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Even though my head is killing me I felt the need to write a blogpost today since a lot of stuff has happened over the past week.
Let me start with the big news: I landed a fulltime job for a longer time. This means my days of scavenging the job market are more or less over and it takes a huge weight off of my shoulders. I’ve been looking for a steady job for over a year now and have not been very lucky so far. I had some temp jobs that were fun, but never lasted longer than a few weeks so the disappointment after they ended was often big. It also meant I was never financially stable enough to actually spend money without worrying about it.
I’m starting this new job next week (the 12th) and it will run for atleast 6 months but probably closer to a year. I won’t be getting a world star paycheck, but it should be enough for me to get some financial breathing space and start saving up to buy a car or maybe look for a place to live.

Ofcourse I had to celebrate this milestone in my life so I went and splashed some money that I had saved on a tablet. I picked the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, which is probably the best tablet in it’s segment together with the iPad Air 2. Only a lot cheaper than said iPad. So far I’ve been very happy with my purchase… I ordered a case for it so it won’t scratch and I’ve been using it already to just stream or play some Hearthstone in bed in the evening.

Gaming wise I’ve picked up FFXIV again after the big server overhaul that Square Enix did for the European Data servers. I actually have a better connection on my PC than my PS4 now (only marginally though) and I’ve been happily chipping away leveling my Rogue/Ninja on Moogle and my Machinist on Cactuar. I notice the ping difference a lot. On Moogle everything runs smoothly and I’ve discovered it’s only a 22ms ping, whereas I have a 500ms connection to Cactuar…. It really shows in gameplay.
In WoW it’s the same old story with my raiding group. I’ve mostly been focussing on making a lot of gold so I can keep on paying my sub with WoW-tokens. Seeing as they are slowly going up in price I’ve had to adjust a few things in my garrisons… But seeing as I make about 1,5k gold a day without any issues I should be fine with gold for a while.

I’ve turned my back a bit on Destiny and Wildstar. Not because I don’t like the games, but more because I just can’t find the time to play. Add to the fact that my Playstation Plus also expired and I feel less and less the need to log into Destiny at all.
For Wildstar it’s mostly the “where is my time” thing. I’ve been working on a temp assignment for the past two weeks and when I get home I’m just tired and want to relax. Since Wildstar is a very engaging game to play I often just cannot get into the mindset needed to play. Seeing as I will start working fulltime soon I will either have to figure out a play schedule again or just push Wildstar a bit to the back. Trying to keep up with 3 MMO’s isn’t as easy as you think it is!

On the other hand I’ve been playing a lot of Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm. Heroes mostly because I want the pumpkin portrait, Hearthstone because by all means it’s a slow paced game which I can play on my phone (or now on my tablet) without having to turn on my PC. I can just sit, relax and game and that’s what I really need at the moment.

In the health department I’m managing to go to the gym more frequently. I was supposed to go today, but since my head feels like someone has smashed it into a wall I figured being on a treadmill is one of the last things I would want to do. To help me reach my goals I ordered a Fitbit Flex (since I’m spending money anyway…) to see how much exercise I actually get during a day and how my sleeping pattern is. I really hope this will motivate me even more to be more aware of my health, especially how much time I spend on “burning calories”. I do start to feel better already and I’ve lost 2 kilograms (about 1 pound?) of the 15 I want to lose atleast.

All in all I’ve had a very positive week. A lot of stress has disappeared now that I’ve gotten my job and am more motivated to do stuff in general. Now I just need to turn my attention to actually finishing school and then I think I can finally start living life the way I wanted to: stressfree and happy.

On Wildstar Bugs and No Betas

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I have been struggling with Wildstar over the past weeks. The attention it has gotten after it went free to play a few weeks ago is enormous and the company is still trying to process everything, which I can understand.
Both Entity and Jabbit still suffer from tremendous lag spikes for me every now and then, but it’s something to be expected and something I can essentially cope with. What has been bothering me the last week specifically however has been the ingame store and it’s currencies… Specifically Omnibits.
Let’s start at the start. On Wildstar EU and NA servers had traditionally been separated and crossover play was not possible. With the f2p launch this barricade fell away and I could make a character on NA to play with some of the folks from Twitter. I had been playing both my EU and NA characters and was earning Omnibits (one of the currencies used for the ingame store) separately. Both were around 120 of them when the Halloween event dropped and Carbine added a few holiday only items to it’s store.
Thrilled to see purple, orange and black dyes I bought the Dye set on my EU char and got deducted the 115 Omnibits it had cost me. I figured I wanted to do the same over on NA and logged there… Only to find out I lost 115 Omnibits there aswell without seeing the Dyes in my inventory. After making a ticket about this the Wildstar support staff decided to grant me the Dyes on my NA character aswell but not refund the Omnibits.
I logged in to pick them up.. Only to see that I had suddenly no Omnibits at all anymore on my Engineer! This quickly resolved itself after I relogged to EU and back and now it seems that both my EU and NA character are working towards the same number of Omnibits.
However this has cost me a lot of them since I’m fairly sure the earnings were separate at the start. So now I’m back to sitting on about 35 Omnibits after a lot of hassle instead of the about 200 I should be sitting on instead. Ohwell. Atleast they granted me my Dyes! Now to see if I can get my Top Hat of Souls restored somehow aswell…
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a major thing in the game and I’m sure the developers are still figuring out how to arrange everything. It just feels like, when crossplaying, the Omnibits system kind of bugged out at the start and started counting separately while it should have been adding all the Omnibits to my account, regardless of region. I’m just a bit salty over losing a lot of Omnibits this way, but it’s not gamebreaking in the sense that I will now stop playing Wildstar. I just wish things were clearer and more functional.
Another major thing that has happened is the overwatch beta.  Unfortunately i didnt manage to get in and i am honestly quite salty about it. I feel like the invites have mostly gone to people who have a large fanbase so they can show off the game on their stream of social media. So here i sit with no beta. I guess i will find some other way to spend my time…

It’s Halloween!

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It’s kind of funny how I get excited over an event that isn’t even celebrated officially here in the Netherlands. But seeing as all the games I’m currently playing have some sort of Halloween event going (except Destiny), I can’t help but feel a little envious when it comes to my US friends who actually get to celebrate this holiday for real.
It’s really interesting to see how every game has it’s own take on the holiday and celebrates it differently. (Warning, spoilers ahead!)

In FFXIV this year the developers have chosen to do a simple questline for All Saint’s Eve, as the holiday is called there, which rewards you with a nice glamour set, a pet and a mount. If you so choose there is also Halloween themed furniture to buy for your house or FC room. This time it’s paid with Gil whereas last year I remember having to farm currency from FATES to get things from the vendor.
Personally I enjoyed the little questline in FFXIV. It took me about 30 minutes to complete and I’m really happy with the rewards. And the fact that they actually offer a permanent kickass looking broom mount is something some other MMO’s can look at and learn from.

Speaking of other MMO’s. WoW still has it’s tried and true Hallow’s End with the Headless Horseman to defeat in the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard and a ridiculous amount of Trick and Treat bags spread out across the entirety of Azeroth. The core of the holiday event hasn’t changed much over the years, but they have been adding stuff like pets and toys and, this year, a costume for Pepe.
I have obtained all of the pets that this year’s event had to offer, but I have yet to see either of the toys drop for my Priest. I really hope I get lucky soon because it would be a huge disappointment I would miss out on stuff due to RNG.

Wildstar has it’s first real ingame event aswell this year: Shade’s Eve AND a hoverbord event that only lasts for 5 days. Unfortunately I have not arrived in Thayd yet with my Engineer or my Spellslinger, so I won’t be able to comment on those events just yet. But don’t worry! I will when I get there.

Lastly I managed to grab a special Heroes of the Storm portrait for watching the official stream with my Battle.net linked to my Twitch account. And they announced a special Halloween event ingame there aswell! So I’m seriously planning to get that.
Speaking of Heroes of the Storm, I am moving my project over to my main account. I don’t really play that much and I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of resources on my main account by not playing it. So I will continue to go for 100 games on Valla on there (I only need 31 more) and then I’ll pick out a new hero. Probably Jaina or Kharazim, but I’m not sure yet which of the two I prefer.

On The Wrong Side

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This week I once again vented my frustrations on Twitter over living on the wrong side of the globe. It feels like Europe is being regarded as a second or third class continent when it comes to games and gaming merchandise.
I’d love to get my hands on some of the stuff from the Blizzard Gear store, however since they have removed the EU version of the store I have lost all interest. All products are bought from the US which means paying a shitload of import costs that are often more than the item I’d want to buy. It’s seriously ridiculous.
Not to mention that a lot of the toys and merchandise that is more or less easily available in the US as a whole through certain shops is almost impossible to get here. I’m in an extra dire situation since Amazon offers a lot of stuff that I would want… But we don’t have a Dutch version of it. Leaving me to import via England or Germany which brings troubles of it’s own. Sometimes I’m able to find merchandise via obscure game shops but mainstream toystores don’t really sell anything interesting. Hell even Funko! Pop figures are hard to come by here. I have one on order in my usual game store, but when it will arrive is a mystery.

It’s not just Blizzard that does this. It feels like all major gaming companies have their focus first on the US market… While the EU gaming market is atleast equally as big. Riot Games has tried to appeal to their EU customers by offering all their merch in Europe aswell as the US but they are one of the few and also hella expensive. I’m not gonna pay €25 for a figurine that’s the size of a mystery mini from Funko that costs €10.
It’s also not just the merchandise that seems to be US focused. Apart from Gamescom in Germany all the big gaming events take place in the US. Look at the various PAX get togethers, Blizzcon and a ton of other Con events that happen over there where there is no EU equivalent for. It’s frustrating and saddening for someone who would love to go to one of these things but will never be able to afford doing so. I feel like Europeans, and especially the Dutch since we have hardly any gaming related stuff going on, are just getting screwed over left and right. It’s making me grumpy and resentful towards the companies that I’m supposed to support. Ofcourse there are the IEM events that are held in Europe and you see a bit more things come to life with the growing Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and League of Legends scenes. But it still feels like we’re running behind. And that sucks.

Hallow’s End, Shade’s Eve and various other stuff.
In World of Warcraft the event for Halloween (Hallow’s end) has officially begun with some new stuff to get this year. I managed to find Pepe in his scarecrow costume and was promptly rewarded with an item to make him appear like that on my head. It’s seriously cute as hell. I’ve never looked into Pepe before, but I’m happy to have the little birdie tagging along for now.
As for the rewards for Hallow’s End this year… There are three new pets and two new toys to get. I’ve already obtained the item to spawn the pets, now I just need the toys. One of them can drop from a spectral spider that patrols your garrison after you use the appropriate decoration to summon it. The other one is a random drop of the skeleton mobs that you have to kill for your dailies. Neither toy has dropped for me yet, but I still have a while to get them.

At the same time the Halloween event for Wildstar is going on and I’m quite curious about this one. I’ve never seen any ingame event for Wildstar so I don’t know what to expect, but I guess I’ll find out over the coming weeks. I hope it may reward us with a new costume to use in the Holo Wardrobe or maybe a mini pet. That would be the coolest rewards anyway.
I haven’t seen any announcement for FFXIV and their Halloween event yet, but I’m sure they won’t stay behind.

Speaking of mini pets… I managed to acquire Terky the Murloc today. Apparently Blizzard has hidden his egg in Borean Tundra with the latest patch. As I went down there to gather it I was certainly not alone, the cave where you can find it was crowding with people. If you want to know how to get this pet, head on over to MMO-Champion, seeing as it is on the front page. For now I have another murloc friend atleast!

Communities, Dailies and Destiny

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Every now and then I realize how friendly and heartwarming community on the internet can be sometimes. I have a bunch of friendly people on my Twitter that I follow and that are also part of the dedicated positive blogging community. Some of their blogs are featured on mine, mostly the ones I actually read the most and would recommend to anyone trying to find their way in the big world of gaming.
Ofcourse there are a lot of others that should get the same recognition and maybe I will get around to that at some point. Some people might not be in my sidebar but that doesn’t mean they don’t produce great content and I poke around on their blogs every so often. Alas I only have so much time in the world and I wish I could feature and follow every single one of them more often, but that would leave me with little to no time for myself or my own blog.

With this post I just want to take the opportunity for a shoutout to a very awesome community. You all know who you are. Keep doing what you’re doing!

Dailies
I’ve been steadily plowing away at doing dailies on my Priest to get my reputation up with the various Tanaan Jungle factions. Yesterday I managed to get Exalted with Hand of the Prophet and scored this adorable fel-tainted Boar. It’s the same theme as my fel-tainted Dreadhawk so I will have matching mounts for my Shadow specc and I love it.
The thing I don’t love is Blizzard once again forcing dailies upon us as the only means to get rep with factions. I remember back in Mists of Pandaria it would literally cost me one or two hours a day just to open up and then do all the dailies associated with all the different factions. It was mind numbing and, in my opinion, a horrible way to go about getting reputation. They have returned this practice for two of the factions in Tanaan Jungle and I will be more than happy once I can scrap that part off of my to-do list. The other side of the coin is that for all the other factions various grinds are necessary and I’m not really keen on doing that either. But the repetitive nature of the dailies, and the fact that they take about 45 miutes to get done, make them boring fast.
It’s unfortunately a system that has carried over into the few other MMO’s I’ve played so far. Beast-tribe dailies in FFXIV is probably the one that comes closest to the WoW system and, eventhough I worked through them, I didn’t like finishing them up at all. It was more to fill time and acquire mounts and pets that I did them but otherwise I would not have bothered to do them at all.
The same goes for me grinding out those reputations on WoW I guess. There’s not much else to do in the game so I try to set goals for myself. For now I can drop atleast a few dailies since that faction is done… And I should be done with Order of the Awakened in the next few days or so. This leaves me only with grinding rep with the Saberstalkers and then I will probably turn my attention to the Steamwheedle Preservation Society. They involve turning in various items from Nagrand, which ofcourse need to be farmed, but atleast they don’t rely on dailies…

King’s Fall
I’ve been poking about in Destiny aswell over the past few weeks and yesterday evening I finally managed to join a clan raid. They had a savepoint at Golgoroth and we managed to take that boss down in 2 tries. He dropped me new gloves and a legendary helm engram… Which turned into a very nice exotic helm. After that we had some tries on the Daughters of Oryx but didn’t get to kill them because our leader had to go. All in all it was a nice bit of raiding. The tactics on the bosses in this Destiny raid are not impossibly hard but they do require proper handling. There is no way to cheese your way through a fight and mistakes are punished… But it’s a serious amount of fun. I think Bungie did a great job with this raid and with the hardmode coming out next week I hope it will keep people busy for a while.
In the meantime I’ve been working on acquiring my Exotic Sword. Right now I’m on the part where I have to gather 10 specific materials, which are a rare drop from regular material nodes on the Moon for me, and kill 500 enemies with Solar abilities. I picked up the Solar sword for my Warlock because I figured I would never play Sunsinger so I wanted a sword in one of the elements that my abilities are not. It also seems that the Solar sword is quite rare and in my clan I think I’m the only one wielding it… Which could give me an advantage in raids.
Other than that I’m tieing up the loose ends of quests I still have in my quest log. I know where I can get a few more quests and gear upgrades and once I finish off my Sword I will probably turn my attention there. For now though I’m mostly content with shooting stuff in dailies and strikes and some general faffing about.

Relaxing Games

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The last week I’ve been steadily plowing away at my reputations in WoW. If my calculations are correct I should be full Exalted with both Hand of the Prophet and Order of the Awakened by next weekend, which leaves me with just The Saberstalkers. Luckily for me that is the one reputation you can actually advance by farming so I will probably get that to Exalted quite fast aswell.
I’ve arrived at a nice rythm where I take about 30 mins to do my dailies on my Priest in WoW after having breakfast in the morning, which frees up the rest of my day to do what I want. I’m also trying to get in some Heroes of the Storm games every evening before going to bed and it has advanced my Valla on my project account to level 8 and sitting over 30 games played.
I took the time to clean up my Twitch account aswell, adding a customized banner and customized buttons to my channel and setting up a streaming schedule… Which I’m not really sticking to right now since LoL worlds is still going and I find watching that more fun than streaming. Sorry guys! There’s also been some issues with my microphone and graphics so I’m still sorting through that stuff aswell. I have done some test streams, one of which I only had music, and I will probably do a few more short streams in the next couple of days.

I’ve also been enjoying my new Animal Crossing game more than I thought I would. It’s a nice game design where you unlock something new every day but are not pressured to play. I can decide what I want to do, design a new house, design a new facility or visit an old client and redo their house? So many choices! And it doesn’t matter what you pick to do, you will always be rewarded with new furniture and other stuff to use as you advance in the game.
I’ve unlocked the Happy Home Network this morning which allows me to share my room designs with other people playing the game, so that is nice aswell. It also lets me look at other people’s designs and I’ve already gotten some great ideas for new houses!
This game really allows me to relax, think a bit about what I want to do and feel satisfied whenever I finish something. There’s no pressure, no expectations, no other people involved. It’s nice and easy and I find myself picking up my 3DS every morning or evening to design a house when I’m lying in bed.

Mostly I’m trying to spend my times in games the least stressy way I possibly can. When I’m on Destiny I tend to team up with a friend so I don’t have to solo my way through a lot of shitty missions and on Wildstar I’m mostly focussing on leveling right now. Which is going slowly (my engineer dinged level 10 today) but steadily. I really don’t want to feel rushed and want to take the time to enjoy this game, explore everything it has to offer and in general just enjoy myself.
I managed to score a Fancy Pants Jacket from a code on Twitter so I look even better now. My Twitter profile picture should give a nice indication anyway. I also unlocked a few more dye colours from Boom Boxes… And I’m not that far off of being able to buy a pet or mount from the ingame shop. I really want that hoverboard or the kitty pet, not really sure just yet. The people from Black Dagger Society (my guild on Entity) have all been really nice so far and I’m enjoying the friendly atmosphere. Alas I don’t think I’ll be able to raid with them due to time differences… But I’m not too fussed about that really.

In real life things aren’t looking so sunny. I’ve been having some health issues which I attribute to the fact that I haven’t had any physical exercise for the past 2-3 weeks. Sitting around playing stuff or watching streams or reading is seriously detrimental for my body. It’s gotten so bad that I actually have a muscle ache from biking back and forth to the store for 10 minutes. So I need to pick up going to the gym again, because this is seriously not a fun state to be in.
Mentally I’m trying to retreat from a lot of drama going on. I have a friend that is using me as some sort of complaint wall about stuff he does himself aswell and it’s exhausting me. Add to that there’s some serious fucked up mindgames going on in my WoW guild right now… I just need to not get involved. I feel more stable than I have in a long time and I don’t want it to get ruined by random drama from “people from the internet”. So I’m not online as often and when I am I avoid most interaction. When someone talks to me I answer, but that’s about it.
Instead I’m focusing my attention more on my IRL friends and hanging out with them more often. Especially now that I’m an auntie again… I need to spoil two little girls now!

Discoveries

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As I was going about leveling my Engineer yesterday I suddenly noticed the crazy amount of detail that has gone into the little holograms that accompany my character. At first I thought this was an Engineer only thing… Untill the lovely Chestnut informed me that this was our Guild crest. It looks ridiculously good and I also instantly made the connection why I had never seen it before on any of my characters: This is the first time I’ve ever been in a Guild on Wildstar. And I think I picked a really great one.

It’s finding out little things like these, and getting back into the crazy combat system, that made me realize why I picked up this game when it came out. After a lot of ups and downs I think Carbine has produced a great game and I’m more than willing to invest my time in it.
It seems like other people have had the same idea. The influx of new and returning players is huge and they have had to open additional servers to be able to handle it all. I really hope people can get past the inital laggyness and queue times. I’d love for this game to have a strong, big community.

Right now I’m mostly jumping about on my Engineer. Jabbit lagg is still fairly high and Entity seems to be nice and quiet during the day. It’s also giving me a chance to discover this class, that relies on pets instead of dealing direct damage. I have to say, being followed around by a little robot is insanely cute, especially since it’s main job is to help me destroy my enemies. And then there’s the thing that I can electrocute stuff… Which I find hilarious.
I think that after I’m settled on that Engineer and I’m comfortable enough to play it without having to think too much about what I have to do I’ll start tweaking my UI. Right now I’m just running with the standard stuff that Carbine provides with the game, but I’m already annoyed at how my quests are displayed and I feel the UI is very cluttered overall.
Luckily I have installed Curse Client so fiddling around with various addons should not be an issue.

That Other MMO
In the meantime I’m still working on getting my reputations Exalted on WoW. As Shadowpriest I’ve noticed that I can fairly easily solo a lot of rares. Getting my T18 2set is helping me with that since I can summon my Shadowfiend much more often now. Pair that up with Fade having a relatively short cooldown and I have a nice little creature to tank stuff for me so I can heal back up or just unload damage.
As I was working through soloing the weekly Fangri’la quest I suddenly got company from a Deathknight who had one of the best looking Transmogs I’ve seen so far. I complimented him/her on it and couldn’t resist snapping a picture.

Thanks for the help AND the transmog inspiration my DK friend!
My own Priest is currently dressed up as official Karabor Priest. You could buy the box that holds the entire attire from Hand of the Prophet the moment you get revered with them. It’s a really plain look, but I like it so far. I’m not of the sexy transmogs for my Priest. Mostly because I don’t think it fits the class archetype but also because I’m too lazy to farm the components I would need. So for now I’ll just go with what I have.

Trudging About

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I’ve been spending the majority of my gaming time messing about in WoW again. Being so familiar with this game I find it easy to set goals… And actually accomplish them. It’s also the game I keep coming back to anyway and, with a lull in FFXIV and Wildstar being almost impossible to play, I feel like WoW is just the stable factor I need right now. So I’m trudging along, setting goals for myself to obtain. I have gotten my legendary ring and, last week, I managed to unlock Draenor flying aswell. It took me a while! But atleast I got it done. The moment I unlocked flying I also had 150k Apexis Crystals and could by myself this beautiful mount from the Order of the Awakened. I really like the colour palette on it and it looks absolutely amazing coupled up with a Shadow Priest.

Gaming Goals September
Looking back to September I have gotten some stuff done and some stuff is still up in the air.
As far as Blizzard games go I managed to get my Legendary Ring on my Priest in WoW, unlocked the second wing of Naxxramas in Hearthstone and got my Seasonal Crusader to level 70. My Hearthstone rank is still stuck on 20. For some reason I’m just not interested enough to battle my way to a higher rank and this one awards the card back and the rank 20 chest so for now I’m fine with that.
I haven’t been able to purchase the second wing of Blackrock Mountain. Instead I have been doing some Arena runs for additional cards.

My heroes project has seem to come to a halt a bit. I’m not sure where and how to find the time for it right now. It’s still something I would love to do and I’ve been thinking of streaming my sessions, but for now I just can’t seem to schedule it in.

As for non Blizzard Games…
My time has mostly been swallowed by Destiny on the PS4 and not much else so I haven’t been playing FFXIV or FFX at all. The only thing I managed to do on FFXIV before my sub ran out is get my White Mage to level 50 so there’s that.
I haven’t been playing Mickey’s Castle of Illusion either. Again, scheduling problems.
Setting goals like these each month doesn’t really seem to be working out for me. I tend to set goals for games I don’t really play and I feel like I need to change the way I approach things… So instead of setting monthly goals I’ll just make a post every now and then what I’ll be working on for the coming time and when I’ll finish it. My gaming goals page will become more dynamic aswell this way. It may sound a bit fuzzy but you’ll see what I mean over the course of this month.

What I’m Aiming For
Right now I’m working mostly on stuff in World of Warcraft. After getting my Legendary Ring I thought it was time to unlock flying for all my characters. Now that I’m done with that I’m turning my attention to getting all my reputations Exalted on my Priest starting with Hand of the Prophet, Order of the Awakened and The Saberstalkers. These are all tied to Tanaan Jungle and thus easy to manage. As you can see I’m further with some than with others… I suspect Ordere of the Awakened to take the longest here. Especially since I have no trading post.

Next to this I’m also remodeling my Garrison on my Priest. I’ve done away with the Dwarven Bunker since I have geared up all my followers and it’s not worth keeping for just the one seal per week. Instead I have reinstalled my Stables and am planning to do the achievements related to that building so I can unlock two more mounts. I’m also planning to replace my Inn with a Trading Post… Even if it’s just to gain that extra experience while rep grinding. I guess I should also pick up Defender Ilona again as bodyguard during my dailies and grind rep with her.

One of the other games I’ve been playing and focussing on a lot is Destiny. I’ve decided to just stick to one character on there for now and am slowly working my way through the quests I have left over. Unfortunately some require me to raid, which I haven’t been able to yet, so I’m focussing my attention mostly on the quests that I can solo. Namely the Sword quest and the special Redbull questline. This will probably keep me busy for a while yet since both of these chains require copious amounts of grinding.
I’m also still trying to log Wildstar regularly and really want to experience the endgame. For now I’ll just advance whatever character is playable at the time. I think my Engineer is level 6 or 7 and my Spellslinger is level 5 so I’m really at the start of the game still.
Lastly, like I mentioned in my post yesterday, I really want to finish my Kingdom Hearts game on my 3DS. It’s perfect for when I don’t want to turn on my PC or PS4 and just want to sit/lie down, relax and game.

So yeah, that’s the stuff I will be working through for now. It’s games I all actually play and I’m not really giving myself hard deadlines on any of this. I found out it helped me reach my goals in WoW so far and thus I will try to apply this to all the games I am currently actively playing.