Tag Archives: Heroes of the Storm

New Year, New Theme

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I figured it was time to throw a new theme on my blog. The one I had was nice but it didn’t really give me many options in relation to the header and for some weird reason it wouldn’t let me choose where to place images in my posts. This is reflected by the fact that everything that wasn’t a fullscreen sized screenshot just defaulted to the left, something that annoyed me very much. So now I have a fancy new theme with a fancy picture of my FFXIV character at the top (I really love that screenshot of her) and I’m hoping I can take my blog in a more active direction with this. I also really want to start posting more screenshots on here, especially now that I’m getting a new PC on Thursday… I should be able to snap some pretty pictures.

I’ve been trying to make notes in my planner every day with the activities I’ve done for the day. Be it gaming related stuff, reading, watching TV or simply just sleeping a lot. I do this so I can have a look of all the stuff I actually do during the week and what are really bad days for me to plan things because I know I will be super sleepy or unmotivated to do things. So far I’ve been making some progress in various areas when it comes to games, reading and watching shows.
I’ve done the entirety of Tomb of Sargeras in Looking for Raid in WoW on Sunday on my Warrior. Kil’jaeden wiped our group three times before we got to finish him off and I was rewarded with the epic cutscene where Illidan basically transports Argus to Azeroth, or was it the other way around? I’ve also dabbled in Antorus but I feel like I should finish off the story on Argus before I move on in that raid. It would probably make more sense to do that so I’m hoping I can stick to that plan. I’ve also been doing my Honor dailies every day. This has accumulated in me only needing 2 more ranks until I hit Prestige rank 2 and finally unlock that damn skin for my weapons. Especially the Prot Warrior skin is cool for PVP so I definately want to unlock it as soon as possible.
I’ve not really touched my Paladin yet this month, focusing completely on my Warrior for the time being. This is also due to time restraints and the fact that I’ve been taking care of a lot of IRL stuff instead of gaming.

In FFXIV I took to finishing the Heavensturn event. It’s a cute little quest and on my alt (pictured above) it’s the fifth consecutive Heavensturn I’ve participated in. I was a little disappointed with the rewards this year, two dog helmets and a stuffed dog housing items, but the quest was short and charming and a little perverted as usual. I’ve ressed a few people doing the Mochi Pounding FATE who didn’t figure out fast enough what they were supposed to be doing so there’s that. I’ve also dinged my Botanist level 70 earlier and am slowly working my way through the 61-70 part on Miner. After that I guess I’ll have to figure out what the best way to earn Yellow Scrips is so I can atleast replace my main hand weapons with more decent ones than I have right now. All in all I’m enjoying a leasurely pace in FFXIV and it’s suiting me well. I get to make up my own little goals and work towards them and this is something that makes me extremely happy.

As for other things. I’ve watched a few more episodes of “Lie to Me” and have finished season two which leaves me with only season three left. I also got some time into watching Black Mirror. Even though I enjoy the episodes and they get me thinking about stuff I’ve noticed it’s not really the show you want to watch when you’re already in a negative mood, something I had a little exchange on Twitter about with Jaedia. So instead I’m focusing on watching Lie to Me and reading “The Wise Man’s Fear”. I’m already halfway through that book aswell. As it stands right now my e-reader is my faithful companion to and from work every day and it’s astounding how much reading you can get done in about 15 minutes time. The story is still gripping me and I’m severely disappointed that the third book is taking so long to come out. Then again I’m also still waiting on the sixth book of A Song of Ice and Fire so meh. If all else fails I can fall back to the Gentleman Thieves series which I enjoy a lot aswell.
I also managed to grind out the remaining rewards of the Winter’s Veil event in Heroes of the Storm yesterday evening. Inviting a friend and just battling the AI on Beginner level was something I really needed. It makes the game light and easy and you can try your hand at champions you’ve never played before to see how their kit works and how they handle in general. I played a few games as Sylvanas, Zagara and Li Ming. Mostly to get the level ups but also because of quests and, in Li Ming’s case, because I really enjoy playing the character. This resulted in me going to bed a bit later than I had planned but atleast I had a fun evening.

Even though I’ve had an absolutely terrible day at work I feel happy to come on to this blog and write about gaming related stuff. It helps me take my mind off things, even though I technically don’t have anything interesting to say and most of my posts seem like rambling. I just don’t want to have a constant negative mood and writing always helps. I really hope I can take more screenshots from now on and tell more stories as to why and how they were taken. It’s just a real shame I can’t take screenshots on my 3DS since it seems to be my favoured system to play on outside of my PC. I’m really deep into Yo-Kai Watch and am enjoying it way more than I thought I would. I may actually finish it before the month is over… But that is something for another post.

Free to Play & Buy to Win

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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

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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.

 

Work Work

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Work has been terribly busy this last week. I’ve wanted to blog a bit sooner, but after I got home I was just too tired to do anything but either mindless gaming or heading to bed. We’ve been really overwhelmed with stuff to do and ever since we had a teamday on Friday there has been some friction between colleagues.
I won’t go into details but there’s one woman who I just don’t get along with and tensions rose quite high yesterday… That I have never been so relieved to have  the day off today. I really have issues working with her, especially on days where it is extremely busy and yesterday was more or less a culmination of well, everything.

Thyrus Zenith

Today though has been a really nice day so far. I’ve gone back and forth to the dentist, did some groceries with my dad and then proceeded to plant my ass infont of my PC (after starting a laundry) figuring out what I want to do first.  The only real downside is that I feel extremely cold. The weather has been odd here over the past weeks, Dutch climate sucks, so I’ve been cold often and today is one of those days. So I’m wrapped up in a big vest, comfy pants and a blanket. I feel like a burrito… But at least I’m sort of warm.

On the gaming front it has been uneventful the past few days. I’ve mostly been logging into FFXIV to do my roulettes and get my beast tribe dailies done, all working towards advancing my Dragoon relic. I’ve been partying up with a friend of mine a lot and we had a few good laughs while tackling the dungeons together.
Levelling up classes has gone by  mostly unnoticed. My Astrologian dinged 40 yesterday and my Bard dinged 57 today, so I’m slowly but steadily working towards my Gaming Goals for FFXIV. I also managed to grab my White Mage 2.0 Relic (Thyrus) so I only have three of those left to do.
For the rest I have decided to cancel my WoW subscription for a while. I’ve only been logging in to do some Garrison missions every day and then log back out again… It’s not really something worth paying money for. So my sub will end the first of March and I don’t think I’ll renew it untill I know what the release date for Legion is. I hope Blizzard can push it out sooner, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t see the new expansion untill September.

With me dropping WoW, I hope to have more time for my other games, mostly Heroes of the Storm, but also a lot of the single-player games I have lying around that I still want to finish. I’ve really gotten back into Pokémon X again and I’m picking up a special anniversary Mew tomorrow for both my Pokémon X and Alpha Sapphire, so I’m really happy about that.  I just hope I can stick to the game for once and actually play through it properly… Instead of giving up somewhere past the second gym.

Settling On A Routine

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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.

Yoshimitsu Zenith

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.

Valentione is Here!
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.

Li Ming the Star Princess

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.

Where Did My Time Go?

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It’s a weird feeling for me. I am so used to doing nothing all day, and basically having way too much time on my hands, that actually getting cut down in time is harder for me than I thought. Especially on the weeks where I work 32 hours it feels like I just don’t have enough hours on the days I have off. Especially since I tend to plan a lot of activities in my free time, so getting rested is not really anything that is happening for me.
And unfortunately this is coming to bite me in the ass on the few days where I do try to rest and relax. I slept for about 9-9.5 hours last night and it has left me in a state of drowsiness and a nice headache on top of that. I guess I slept too long, or too deep, but it’s not really something I can influence since I actually slept all those hours. It wasn’t like I woke up after 7 hours, decided I could sleep in and rolled back over just to find myself waking up even more sleepy than I went to bed. So today I had a lot of things planned and didn’t do any of them, simply because my head was bothering me.

Maging it up
One of the few things I did manage to do today is obtain the staff transmog I wanted for my mage. I run around in Tier 6 (because I like purplez) and I needed a purplish/pinkish staff to go with it. I have always loved the look of Velen’s staff and decided to take the plunge and make my way to Shadowmoon Valley to complete the quest that awards that awesome looking staff. It’s the only way to get the model in the game next to killing Doom Lord Kazzak in Hellfire Peninsula. It took me about two hours to get there, the Cipher of Damnation and all it’s prequests are very exhaustive, but I’m super happy with the end result.
So I’m rocking item level 660 on my mage, with a Tier 6 transmog and that staff and life is good. Gold is flowing, and I’m having fun running content on a class that for once is not a hybrid.
On the Horde side of things I’m also leveling a Mage… But on my alt account. Sometimes I just really need to step away from the people I know. They are nice enough but I have times where I just want to do things for me and not want to be bothered and that’s when I retreat to my alt account. My mage on there (a very sexy Bloodelf) is now level 92 and I’m hoping to get her to 100 somewhere next week. This account is very much a fresh one when it comes to WoW and for once I would love to focus on only one character, so that Mage is the only one on there. I have to re-earn all my achievements, pets, mounts, toys and tabards but that’s something I’m very much enjoying. It feels fresh and new and challenging again, and way more fun than only hanging around in my Garrison on my main account.

FFXIV
I’m still leveling Ninja on Final Fantasy and she is close to hitting level 52. Due to me working I’ve not really had the time to run a lot of roulettes… But I am religiously doing the Vanu Vanu beast tribe dailies and the lowest level Hunts. Add that up everyday and levelling goes fast enough. I’m also slowly working my way through the Ninja relic weapon as a sidequest. I should put a bit more time in, but seeing as I’m still getting used to my schedule and how to divide my time it’s taken a bit of a backseat to playing World of Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm.

Speaking of the latter… I managed to obtain Cho’Gall via a friend. The champion is very interesting and fun to play with two people. Personally I think I’m better off playing Cho with that particular friend, mostly because I’m just better with map movements and lane movements in general. I know when to extend and when it’s overextending and I know how to be where I need to be. I’m not sure if this champion will see much competitive play. It takes very good coordination to work well and it technically takes a champion off the map. But he is definately a beast to play and very strong if built and played well. I hope I get to play some more… Assuming there are some people to play with!

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!

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.

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!

(Bad) Habits

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So I did a little overhaul with my blog today. And I have to say I’m quite happy with the result. I felt like it needed a change (especially my header image) and I’ve always been fond of dark themes over light themes… So I took the plunge and this is the end result!
I hope you all like it aswell, I will probably tweak a bit more in the coming weeks (I need to find out how to add social media buttons without it looking horrible) but for now I think this is the style I want to roll with.

The Heroes Project
Is still very much alive actually. I’ve been getting some games in on Valla today and having a blast fiddling around with different builds for different maps. I really like the Hungering Arrow into Giant Killer build for the Eternal Conflict map. Poking out enemies as they are trying to kill one of the Immortals is a really nice thing to do on Valla and makes her an invaluable asset to the team. Whereas on other maps like the Dragonshrine and Garden of Terror it’s much better to roll with a Multishot build seeing as there is much more teamfighting and teampushing involved and you want to hit as many target as possible as hard as possible.
Then ofcourse there are other things to consider. For instance the type of champions you get matched up with. Is there a healing support? Are you sure he/she can keep you up during teamfights? Will there be warrior (tank) heroes that can take the damage for you? Will you land in a scenario where you will have to solo lane OR where you have to duel a lot? This all influences the build on Valla, more specifically if taking selfhealing talents like Hungering Arrow and Vampiric Assault are worth getting or not.
All in all I’m learning more about playing this champion and getting even more skilled at her than I already *cough* was. Or atleast I like to assume so.

(Not) Going to the Gym
As I may have mentioned before… I’m immensly struggling with my weight for the past 2 years. I’ve gained and gained and gained and it’s gotten to the point that I don’t fit into half of my clothes anymore. It sucks and it’s really dragging me down mentally… 
But I guess I’m also to blame myself. I have a gym membership, but it rarely sees any use. I just can’t motivate myself to go often. I go maybe once a week or once every two weeks and that’s it. Usually I use excuses like having a headache, feeling like it’s too late on the day to go, being to “busy” doing other things. You name it, I’ve come up with it. While in reality I’m just being lazy and really  need to get my act together and go. I will have to if I ever want to fit back into my pants. I’m really out of ideas to motivate myself though. Rewarding myself didn’t seem to help. Setting goals doesn’t really seem to help. 
I just really need someon to kick my ass to go every day. And that seems to be my biggest problem.