So last weekend I had big plans for this week. Lots of stuff to do in FFXIV and try to make some progress in Pokémon Blue. Let’s see what became of that shall we?
Level Monk to 35
Level Machinist to 35
Level Armorsmith to 20
Level Blacksmith to 20
Complete Scholar Zenith Relic (2.0)
Get to and defeat the second Gym in Pokémon Blue (this will be my train game!)
As far as levelling went, I had a very succesful week. Both my Monk and Machinist made it to level 35 (and quite a way into 36 aswell) and I managed to get my crafters to level 20 aswell. I haven’t really had the time to pick up the Scholar Relic quest, but seeing as April isn’t technically over yet I could just start and maybe finish it tonight.
I did make some progress in Pokémon aswell, just not as much as I had hoped. With the arrival of both Tides of War and Illidan I’ve been reading much more than I have been playing games and thus booked less progress than I had hoped.
However tomorrow starts a new month, and as I’m happier when I have stuff scheduled to do I think I’ll make goals for the month of May and see how many I can actually achieve.
Goals for FFXIV
Level Monk to 50
Level Machinist to 50
Level Alchemist to 30
Level Armorer to 30
Level Blacksmith to 30
Level Culinarian to 30
Level Goldsmith to 30
Level Leatherworker to 30
Level Fisher to 30
Level Miner to 30
Finish Scholar 2.0 Relic Zenith
Finish Monk 2.0 Relic Zenith
Goals for Blizzard Games
Get rank 20 in Hearthstone
Finish second wing of League of Explorers
Unlock third wing of League of Explorers
Finish Diablo 3 chapter 4 for the season
Play Overwatch! (I got early acces to open beta)
Other Goals
Both Gaming and otherwise related, I want to do all of this aswell.
Finish reading Illidan
Finish watching Gotham season 1
Defeat second and third Gyms in Pokémon Blue
Play through two additional worlds/mission clusters in Ratchet and Clank
Wrap up some personal stuff related to University.
As you can see I have quite a list for May. Luckily for me a lot of these goals are “easily” attainable. For instance all the crafters in FFXIV I want to level are already above level 20, which makes me confident I can get atleast a few of them up to level 30 aswell. Rank 20 in Hearthstone is something I aim for every season aswell, so nothing new there. I really want to get a bit more time in on Ratchet and Clank though and also on atleast one handheld game, hence I picked Pokémon Blue.
At the end of May we’ll see how far I’ve come with all of this. I hope quite far! I do really love ticking things off my list…
As I find myself playing Hearthstone and League of Legends (and to an extent Heroes of the Storm) again I feel like I’m getting sucked in the “free to play” controversy. I know a lot of people have opinions about how “free to play” certain games actually are and I’m probably somewhere in the middle stance wise.
When it comes to a game like Hearthstone, the buy to win is a relatively simple one: throw in cash, get way more cards than someone who doesn’t pay a dime and play good decks very early on. It’s a way to get a head start over everyone else who doesn’t want to put money in the game and makes sure you always have the newest cards. Be it from a newly introduced Adventure or from an Expansion set like the Old Gods one that is launching this week. Yet for Hearthstone that is kind of where the advantage stops. You’re able to get a headstart on people yes, but if you have all the cards that are around you will eventually be caught up on by people just playing a lot. Trump (Hearthstone streamer) has done many series about how he’s able to rank up with a random deck without spending a cent and just funneling all the ingame resources into building a good deck for one class. That’s also immediatly the restriction you have to work around: at first you are only able to really focus on building one good deck if you want to be able to compete with others.
In Heroes of the Storm and League of Legends the “buy to win” is a bit more complicated. In Heroes of the Storm it’s mostly being able to buy Heroes with real money, thus building a big roster early on which guarantees champion versatility and earlier acces to ranked play. Other than that money buys purely cosmetic rewards which boils down to just having a cooler mount or a cooler skin for a champion.
In League of Legends it’s the same principle. but with a twist. They have a runepage system which requires you to buy runes with the ingame currency. You could argue this is fair for everyone, however. You can buy boosts to that ingame currency with real money, thus making it easier and faster to earn said currency. This allows people to be able to get good runepages faster and more of them to boot.
It boils down to the same thing as it does in Hearthstone. It gets you a headstart on the people who do not want to pay anything for a game, but eventually you will be caught up on.
You may argue that you can buy an experience boost in both Heroes of the Storm and League of Legends, but again, this is only in getting a headstart. You are max level faster, your heroes are high level faster. At some point you don’t level any further and there goes the advantage.
Does this affect me? The short answer is no. The long answer is a bit more complicated. I’ve only zoomed in on the games I personally play that make use of real money to get ahead. I know in a lot of games the “buy to win” is very real and damaging to the playerbase. League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone provide the exact same gameplay experience to buying and non-buying players. You dont unlock additional content from funneling money into them that can’t be accessed otherwise. You don’t obtain a fast advantage over the non-paying users, especially over time when these people catch up.
The only thing you really earn is a headstart and, in all three games, cosmetic items that can only be bought by money.
So for these particular games I am of the opinion that people can throw money at them all they want, for whatever reason they want. It does not affect me or how I experience the game.
And that’s really the way it should be no?
We are almost 5 months into 2016 and I’ve decided to look back at the Gaming Goals I’ve set in January and how far I’ve come so far.
In FFXIV I’ve been making steady progress. I’ve leveled up my Bard to 60 and have turned my attention to some other classes aswell. Most notably my Astrologian made it up to level 52 and my Monk will probably sit very close to level 35 today after I’ve done my level and guildhest roulette.
In the old relics department I only really need Scholar. Monk and Warrior done still, which isn’t much at all. I’m planning on picking up Scholar somewhere this week and then it just depends on which classes I level up first to get those last two relics.
Next to my battle classes I’ve also leveled up my Botanist to 52 and I’m slowly but surely leveling up my crafting classes. I expect all of them to be atleast level 20 by the end of the weekend, with currently only Armorsmith and Blacksmith sitting sub level 20. Ixali dailies help a lot with this!
In Blizzard games I’ve opened up another wing of Naxxramas on Hearthstone and I’ve been commited to getting all the card backs for this year, not having missed out on one so far!
I’ve been barely playing Heroes of the Storm though and am unsure if I can make the goal of battling up to rank 1 (or as close as possible).
As far as all the other games go, I’ve only made real progress in Donkey Kong and Mario on my 3DS with finishing the first world in both of those games. All the rest have more or less fallen off the radar since I’ve been purchasing new games that have drawn my attention, like The Division and Ratchet and Clank.
So, what’s in store now?
For this week I really want to finish up a few things on mostly FFXIV. As said in my previous post I want to get both my Monk and Machinist up to 35, but seeing as that goes a lot faster than I thought I’m adding a bit more gaming goals for this week to close out April with a bang! So here’s a small list of the things I want to work on this week:
Level Monk to 35
Level Machinist to 35
Level Armorsmith to 20
Level Blacksmith to 20
Complete Scholar Zenith Relic (2.0)
Get to and defeat the second Gym in Pokémon Blue (this will be my train game!)
As you can see, enough to do, but not too much for a week. I really hope I can accomplish this all before May 1st, but seeing as I expect to be able to level both the Monk to 35 and the Armorsmith to 20 this weekend it should be more than doable.
I have played World of Warcraft since 2007. I remember exactly how my adventure started: on a crappy computer making a mage on my ex’s account. I could barely play for 5 minutes straight without everything freezing up, but I played and I loved it.
Since then the Blizzard franchise has grown enormously, I got into playing Diablo 3 when it was released. And I knew about Starcraft (although RTS really isn’t my genre). Now next to those classic three titles we also have Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. Blizzard’s empire grows.
One of the things that Blizzard has refined to an art is crossgame rewards. I don’t even know where it started exactly, but right now it’s perfectly normal to get items for all of your Blizzard games when you buy a Blizzcon ticket or a Collector’s edition of one of their games. Sometimes they will do promotions, and one of the last ones was getting a new hero portrait in Hearthstone for dinging a new character level 20 in World of Warcraft.
Being the collector that I am, I dusted off my World of Warcraft account and created a Warlock. It’s one of those classes I barely touched, and seeing as it was only level 20 I just picked up something new to keep the flavour fresh.
I think I started levelling on Thursday and I just dinged 20 about 10 minutes ago. It was fast and easy and it felt nice running around on Azeroth again, but it didn’t make me want to renew my sub.
I am happy with my reward though. Lady Liadrin is kickass and I much rather look at her as Paladin hero than Uther. Not to mention you unlock her as golden, animated hero which I just love to bits and pieces. This might actually make me play Hearthstone again, although right now I don’t really see where I can find the time to do so.
I really hope Blizzard keeps doing these types of cross-promotions. It attracts new players to some of their games, or makes old players come back. It’s nice that you can earn stuff like this without having to pay for it (level 20 character is doable on a WoW starter account, meaning you play for free) and for someone like me who likes to collect and finish everything it really scratches a certain itch.
The next crossgame goodies I get are the ones that come with the Overwatch release… And I really can’t wait to get my hands on some of them.
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!
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!
So. Belghast did a nice tally on his blog yesterday and I came out of the bus as one of the Blaugust Survivors. Which means I’ve written atleast 15 posts during Blaugust. I’m pretty happy with it. I had hoped I would make it to the full 31, but as I explained before my real life got in the way of things and well that was that. Even then, posting 24 posts on a blog that normally sees only about 7-8 posts a month is pretty amazing in my book, so I’m pretty happy with myself.
September Gaming Goals
As promised, here’s the actual purpose of my post. My gaming goals for september!
Blizzard Games:
Finish Legendary ring on Sarelly in World of Warcraft
Battle my way to the highest rank possible in Hearthstone
Unlock wing two of Naxx and BRM in Hearthstone
Get my Seasonal Crusader to level 70 in Diablo III
Continue Heroes Project. 100 games on Valla. Pick up new hero.
Other games
Level WHM to 50 in FFXIV
Finish off act 2 in Mickey’s Castle of Illusion
Play through FFX on PS4 (as far as I can).
As you can see, a much shorter list than my previous ones and it’s mostly evolving around Blizzard games. I seem to spend most of my time there anyway so I guess it’s only logical.
I think the biggest challenge from these will be finishing off my legendary ring on Sarelly and leveling my Seasonal Crusader on Diablo. My motivation to do either is very low at the moment. I’m half and half burned out on WoW (I really only log it to raid these days) and Diablo is on and off for me. I log for an hour or so, do some bounties or a rift and log back off again. I don’t really feel the need to play with anyone either (seeing as that will only turn into boosts atm) and I’m mostly grumping and sulking my way through the game. But I really want the seasonal rewards so I guess I’ll just have to suck up and level at some point.
Another thing I really want to start doing is play through one of my many console games. I bought FFX/X-2 remastered and barely touched it. The same goes for Thief, FF Type-0 and Destiny. Seeing as I’m in a bit of a solo mood I figured I’d pick one of the Final Fantasy’s and just start playing from there. I really want to start finishing off games before I invest into new ones. This goes for my PS4 and PC equally since I have a Steam Library filled with games I barely touched as well. And there we land at the Mickey game. I really wanted to finish Act 2 last month, but I guess I’ll have to do it this month.
I’m unsure why I’m so fussy about playing solo/offline games. I really like them, I just can’t seem to focus my attention on playing any of them though.
The big spend
I really, really, really tried to keep my spending to a minimum this month. I wanted to build up a reserve with all the money I earned from having a job… But when I saw this Animal Crossing edition of the new 3DS XL I caved and pre-ordered it.
I still have an old 3DS (the first version actually) and although it works fine I notice that it’s aging. It’s slow, the games take longer to load, the internet connection is slow and the screen isn’t as clear as the newer versions. So yeah. I caved, I preordered and it cost me a bit of money… But it’s too damn cute to let slip!
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.
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.
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.
