The Summer Is Magic

Posted on August 6, 2016 by sandrian

After a more personal post yesterday I want to return to games and gaming today, I mean that’s the whole reason I’ve started this blog in the first place anyway right?
Today’s topic covers a magical summer filled with all sorts of lovely events taking place in many of our favourite games. I’ll start off with FFXIV and the second big event that’s taking place in Eorzea next to the craziness that is Yo-Kai medal farming.

I present to you the official art for the Moonfire Faire of 2016! This time Square is preying on our nostalgia and introducing the Power Rangers into our Eorzean lives. I’ve personally not started the quests yet, but I know you can obtain armor, emotes, furniture and an orchestion scroll. I’m absolutely planning on completing this event on both Sandrian and Sarella but reading about a lot of bugs going on right now I think I’ll just wait a few days before throwing myself into the fray. Atleast there will be enough to do next to Yo-Kai farming, my weekly Crystal Tower raids and trying to cap Lore. I already did Weeping City and Void Ark for this week luckily, so I don’t have to worry about those.
Next to that I’m slowly levelling up my alts with all the FATES that I run for the Yo-Kai medals and doing Crystal Tower on my level 50ish characters. So far it’s netted me one level on my MCH, one on my AST and one on my MNK. So I’m slowly heading to 60 on everything!

Next to events in Eorza there’s also a lot of things happening/about to happen in the Blizzard universe. The Legion invasions will start somewhere this coming week so I’ll be on WoW a bit more, soaking it up and experiencing all of it. I have the game pre-ordered, but not via Blizzard so I can’t dive into the Demon Hunter experience yet, and that’s fine with me.
Next to WoW shenanigans a new season has kicked off in Diablo 3 aswell. To be quite honest, I’ve not touched D3 in a very long time and I don’t think I will spend any time playing this current season. I’ve fallen out of love with that game a while ago, mostly because the people I normally play with have all quit… And the constant grinding of the same stuff over and over is starting to get really, really boring. Even the seasonal rewards don’t have me coming back to the game. So unless Blizzard is going to make a major announcement at Blizzcon about Diablo, I think for me that’s a closed chapter for now and I won’t be returning to Sanctuary for a long time.

An event that has caught my attention is the summer games event in Overwatch.
I’ve not played Overwatch that much since launch, but I can never pass up goodies in a game, especially since I can earn them for free! So I’ve strapped on my Overwatch boots again and have about five games under my belt today, and opened a few loot boxes that made me very happy. I got one of the valkyrie skins for Mercy, who is by far my favourite champion, and one of the Summer Games highlight clips, more specifically the one for Tracer. I’m really enjoying myself playing Overwatch for now. Although I end up mostly playing supportive characters like Mercy and Lúcio, I also know my way around on Soldier 76 and Tracer. I hope I can play enough to unlock lots of lootboxes and earn lots of the Summer Games stuff before the event ends on August 22nd.

The last big thing going on is the new Adventure for Hearthstone. Apparently we are getting a partied up version of Kharazan to dawdle around in and I’ve been slowly saving up gold so I can start unlocking the wings as they come out. Blizzard made a tiny prologue to the adventure that is free to play for everyone, so I’m curious to see how that turns out. aswell.

All in all August is going to be a busy month with plenty events, releases and other stuff going on. And I haven’t even mentioned No Man’s Sky or the actual Legion launch yet!

Setting Examples

Posted on May 1, 2016 by sandrian

Blizzard made a very good move with the release of their new Hearthstone expansion: Whispers of the Old Gods. Next to introducing another new set of cards (134 in total to be precise) they have launched a new mode of play: Standard. Standard mode will only use cards from the last two years of the game, meaning that older expansion and adventure cards will not be used in this format anymore. It will also be the new official tournament format, something I actually quite cheer on. For someone like me having a format where I don’t actually have to catch up on hundreds of cards is a huge deal. For new players it’s also very nice since it’s easier to create “good” decks due to limited use of cards plus there are some mandatory cards that are rendered more or less useless now (I’m looking at you Dr. Boom) giving people much more freedom in deckbuilding. It will also allow for a more shifting meta, all to keep the game fresh.
Ofcourse for the people who are disappointed and have a really big collection of cards there is a game mode called “Wild” where all old cards are still usable. And there will be some Wild mode tournaments going on as well, meaning all the money people may have put in their collection will not feel like a “waste”.

What makes the launch of this expansion so good, in my opinion, is that Blizzard compensated the reduced usage of cards with “free” Old Gods packs. Some earned simply by logging into the game now that the expansion has launched, others earned by winning a grand total of 9 games in the new Standard mode. All in all this earns you 13 WotoG card packs, giving you a nice boost in deckbuilding with the new meta in mind.
Unfortunately the cards from my free packs haven’t been that amazing, but I managed to gather enough Dust from disenchanting old unused cards that I run a decent Shaman deck for Standard mode now and I am enjoying myself very much doing so. It feels much easier to make a decent deck this way and the Old Gods cards themselves are interesting. Add up the fact that next to the 13 free card packs you also get a free Legendary card, C’Thun, and two basic cards to use so you can buff C’Thun. The how and why of this I won’t explain in this post, but it helps new, returning and old players build new decks easily, something the game desperately needed.
As added bonus, it also makes it easier to decide what Adventure one wants to unlock first. Since Adventure cards are rotated out aswell, it’s wisest to always go for the newest one. The downside to this is that not only are the Adventure cards rotated out, old “unused” Adventures are no longer available to be played to new players. Only the players who have unlocked atleast one wing of Naxxramas are able to unlock and play through the rest. Anyone who starts playing now will not see the Adventure at all, and that kind of makes me sad.

All things considered this expansion caused me to promote the game among my friends, telling them that NOW is the time to get playing because the game technically got a soft reset. It also made me want to play more again and be more serious about climbing the ladder (and consequently get better rewards at the end of the month).
And when a game company achieves that with me, they have made a very good move.

Now, will YOU be inspired to play with the Old Gods?

Recap and Goals for May

Posted on April 30, 2016 by sandrian

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…

Free to Play & Buy to Win

Posted on April 24, 2016 by sandrian

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?

End of April – Gaming Goals

Posted on April 23, 2016 by sandrian

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.

What Blizzard Does Best

Posted on March 20, 2016 by sandrian

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.

Settling On A Routine

Posted on February 4, 2016 by sandrian

After a crazy week last week, I’m trying to settle down in my normal work routine. I don’t have that much IRL appointments coming up so I can start putting some more time into games again.
I am hitting a wall in the sense that first off I really need to unlearn the habit of lying on bed after dinner. I often fall asleep for an hour or two, causing me to wake up groggy and deciding to either go to bed completely at a very early hour or it makes me awake for the rest of the night which causes me to have issues falling asleep later on. I also feel like I’m wasting my evenings doing this and I have so much to do in so many games that I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting even a minute of my time.

Last weekend I’ve been mostly consumed with playing FFXIV. I pushed through my Ninja 2.0 relic quests and obtained the Yoshimitsu Zenith in about two hours of work. Immediatly after I picked up the White Mage quest for Thyrus, which I plan to complete today. It’s really not that much work to do and it gives me a sense of completion, so I’m happily ploughing away at the quests again. It also helps there’s an achievement for getting all the relics done, and seeing as I’m a completionist… It’s right up my alley.

Next to doing the old relics I’ve been doing some work on the new relics too. I’ve tried my best to do my beast tribe dailies every day, which makes me able to obtain a few more of the items I need today. I tend to skip FATE dailies though because either they aren’t up or people do them so fast I can’t even participate to get the item I need. The “spare” quests this leaves me with I’m using to level to the last rank I need with the Ixali… Which in turn benefits my crafter levelling. It’s a nice routine that I’m easily able to keep up after work. Doing all the beast tribe dailies takes me about 1-1.5 hours, it’s relaxing and rewarding and it doesn’t involve me having to wait in queues for god knows how long.

Events Everywhere
It’s that time of year when most games turn their attention to Valentine’s day, and the Valentione Event has come around on Eorzea again aswell. I don’t remember previous years, but this year requires you to party up with someone to complete the quests, which is both fun and mildly frustrating. On Moogle I have a friend I can party up with to do the quests, on Cactuar however not so much… And I want to complete the event on both my characters. I could probably make a Party Finder party for it and complete it that way, but I’ll see what I do over the course of today or maybe the weekend.
I decided that the best times for me to do these events, or anything not daily related, on any of my games is during the days I have off. Then I don’t have to rush stuff and can focus on one thing at a time without feeling so tired. I hope to atleast finish the Valentione event on Moogle today, as I do like the rewards that are obtainable.

On another Isle in MMO land, Blizzard has released the Lunar event for Heroes of the Storm this year. It comes with being able to obtain a special ingame portrait and a 50% chance to spawn an Elder Monkey every game, that drops an envelope with 100 gold if you kill it. It’s a nice little way to get an extra 100 gold every day and I’m always a sucker for obtaining new portraits, so I’m definately partaking in the event this year. Coinciding with the Lunar Festival, Blizzard has introduced a new hero: Li Ming the Wizard from Diablo 3. She came with an awesome skin/mount bundle… And I caved and bought it.

I tried her out a bit last night and my god is she fun to play. Her gameplay reminds me a bit of Lux in League of Legends. She has a talent that makes it so that one of her damaging spells “marks” people for extra damage. Like Lux’ passive. And would you look at the amazing skin? I literally get to play as Sailor moon. I love it so damn much and she’s so much fun to play that I see myself spending more time in Heroes of the Storm than I have been spending for a long time.

World of Warcraft will swing around with their usual Lunar and Valentine’s event. I don’t think they added anything or much new to these, so not going to discuss that in detail. What I do however want to bring up quickly is the recent Hearthstone changes that have been announced by Blizzard.
Personally I can see the pro’s and con’s of Standard Mode. For someone like me, who has been playing catch-up since last year, it’s nice to be able to “skip” the old adventures now. I don’t have any of the OP cards like Dr. Boom anyway so I really don’t care that much that they are leaving them out. On the other hand I can empathize with the people who feel like they are pulled out of their niche decks and that they will become impossible to play, even in Wild Mode. Assuming Blizzard will no longer balance the old cards with the new, it feels like a lot of people will have invalidated collections which they may have paid a lot of money for. And it sucks for them. I guess we’ll see how it works out when it actually goes live. For now I’m still truding through the Adventures, purely for completionist purposes.

A New Rythm

Posted on September 1, 2015 by sandrian

I’m trying to find a new rythm that works for me blogging wise. I’ve figured out that when I postpone my blogging to after dinner I’m often either too tired to blog or I’m being taken up by some sort of game that will last untill I go to bed… Prompting me to forget to blog again.
So today I’ve decided to take the 30 minute window I have untill dinner is ready to blog instead. Seeing as I type fast and I usually know what I want to blog about in advance this should give me plenty of time to put out a post AND make sense.

Evaluating August
First off I want to start with evaluating August as a gaming month for me. I have set some goals and I have attained a few of them:

Get rank 20 in Hearthstone. I did this one on two accounts actually. It’s a quick and easy goal and I have to admit that it only took me one evening to do this.
Unlock first wing of Naxxramas in Hearthstone. I have defeated all the bosses by now and unlocked some really nice cards. The only thing left open is the Druid Class Challenge which I have some issues with figuring out.
Finish the Garrison campaign on my Priest (Sarelly) in WoW. I basically took one evening to just grind out all the quests that were still up in Tanaan. So an easy goal to attain.
Level my Draenor Hunter (Aylanna) to level 30. Again, I just put a nice relaxing evening of levelling in and was level 30 before I knew it. I think I’m actually sitting on level 35 right now, without putting in a lot of effort.
Finish World 1 in New Super Mario Bros. 2 for my 3DS. Did this one while travelling to a friend. It’s fun to play on the road and I was done with the world before I knew it!

The goals I didn’t attain:

All my FFXIV goals. I have barely played FFXIV the past month. I will probably set some new goals for this game, but not as many as in August.
My GW2 goals. The moment I got a job I completely stopped playing Guild Wars 2. There’s just not enough hours in the day. I might pick this up when my schedule has a bit more room again.
Mickey’s Castle of Illusion Act 2. Same story as GW2. Didn’t look at it at all!
Level to 30 on Destiny. I haven’t actually touched my PS4 at all in the past few weeks. I feel so sad! But time is money and all that stuff. Just didn’t really have the time or energy to work on Destiny on top of everything else really.

Project Heroes

I really want to prioritize this project in September. I want to finish up my 100 games on Valla (I’m somewhere around 15 at the moment) and pick up a new champion to master. It will probably be Kharazim, but I’m not 100% sure. For now I will probably make friday night my Heroes night since I have other obligations during the other evenings of the week. Other than that I foresee my schedule getting a bit more room the coming few weeks so I will have a bit more time to play Heroes overall.

Blogging involvement

Another thing I want to try to do is read more blogs. I’ve really only got 3 on my Feedly at the moment and click on a few posts here and there that interest me, but I would like to get more involved into the blog-o-sphere. There are a fantastic bunch of people involved there and I would really like to be a part of it more than I have been so far. So I will probably be more active on Anook, Twitter and Player.me

As for now I’m wiping my to-do list clean and starting over for September. On which I will post more tomorrow.

The Grand Finale – Blaugust day 24

Posted on August 31, 2015 by sandrian

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

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

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

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

Hearthstone Arena Run – Blaugust day 21

Posted on August 27, 2015 by sandrian

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

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

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

Aeternus Gaming

Tackling an evergrowing backlog of games. But I'm also just an MMO junkie.

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