The League Project

I have alluded to this project in my 2021 year goals post but I guess it’s time to spill the beans and fill you guys in on why I suddenly have League of Legends related goals on my yearly list, what exactly it entails and how it’s been going so far.
So let’s start at the beginning…

Renewed interest in playing League of Legends
Somewhere during worlds, I think at the beginning of October or at the end of September, I stumbled across a LoL stream of a pro player that had made his debut casting as guest this year. The last time I really followed individual streamers on Twitch has been years ago but this guy had something about him that made his streams very nice to watch. I kind of got sucked into his Discord community and, because I was enjoying the content so much, I decided to sub to his channel. He was experimenting with coaching subs on his channel and after he announced not being a pro for the next split he decided to set up a program via Patreon to coach amateurs in LoL solo queue.
At first this didn’t interest me. I hadn’t played LoL seriously in over 7 years, my last ranked game being somewhere back in 2013. I didn’t know if I had the time, and energy, to commit to grinding solo queue. Being on his discord though had reignited the will to at least try. Not in last place fueled by a small Discord tournament that was held, in which I participated, and where I managed to reach the “finals” with our roughly thrown together team. So I signed up on a whim to see if he could give me some tips to get started again and then we would see what happened from there.

Sessions and struggles
So what happened next? Well I signed up for his Patreon in December and managed to get two coaching sessions in. Basically these coaching sessions entail that I play a game of LoL in ranked solo queue and he watches and comments. Afterwards we go over the VOD of the game together for more tips and tricks and additional questions that I may have. Next to that I’m free to DM him with any LoL related questions as well as having access to tier lists per role and other content on his Patreon.
We both recognize that I’m basically a beginning player again and even though I may know a lot about the game by just following the e-sports side of things for years that doesn’t mean I’m automatically good in solo queue. He coached me through my very first placement match in 7 years and then another session where I was slowly climbing out of Bronze tier in pre-season. Both games were a bit of a stomp but I got some nice pointers nonetheless. Learning to work with the map and watching what happens in teamfights. Where to place down wards. When to engage and when to back off. It was fun and he’s a very good coach.
I’ve taken what I’ve learned so far with me into solo queue and even though I’m back in Bronze after season start, I managed to climb my way up to Silver 3 in pre-season, I feel like I’m already leaps and bounds ahead of where I was at the start of December when it comes to certain in game things. However I’m also noticing that there are things I struggle with. A lot of it will probably get resolved with playing the game more and getting more practice in on various champions but there are other things that I would like to discuss with him in our next upcoming session.
Due to solo queue being solo queue there is no perfect coordination with your teammates. You do what you can in game but it’s not the same as having everyone on voice chat and arranging things that way. As such I had to make a very big mental adjustment when it comes to losing games. I would get really upset and frustrated at first but I’m at the stage where, even though I still can get frustrated, I learn to accept a loss and move on. I’m mostly struggling with expanding my champion pool, I’m only really comfortable on two champions right now, and what to do when my lane falls behind. I’m also trying to find a schedule to play since I have a fulltime job and especially during the week finding the time to play is a struggle.

So where am I heading with this?
After a lot of thinking the past few weeks I realized that I don’t want to do something like this on a whim. I have shied away from many opportunities and commitments in life because I’m afraid to fail. It has led to some of the biggest regrets about things that I unfortunately can’t change anymore. So I want to use this project to break that cycle. I want to commit fully and wholeheartedly, not just to prove to others that I can do it but to also prove to myself I can do it.
I have a notebook in which I’m writing stuff down. I’m planning to download some VODs from games to analyze. I’ve been scheduling nights/days to play LoL and just grind. I take regular breaks tough and if I lose two games in a row I shut down the client and go do something else for a couple of hours or the rest of the day so I can shake it off and start fresh again later.
I have a clear first goal I want to reach, getting to Gold Tier, and I want to expand on that further once I get there. Because I know I will get there with time and coaching help.
I also really want to keep my readers involved in this journey with me. The successes, the frustrations. I plan to use Sundays to give a League update, whether or not I had a coaching session, what rank I currently am and anything I may have been struggling with the past week. I’m excited to tackle this the coming year and I hope it will help me break out of a vicious cycle I’ve found myself in since my teenage years.

For now it’s back to the grind. I’m currently in Bronze 2 but I have my eyes set on getting back into Silver. Let’s see how that goes shall we.

Toxic Fans: The Dark Side of E-Sports

League of Legends: Worlds 2020 Group Stage draw to take place September 15  - Millenium

Worlds. The biggest tournament in the year for the League of Legends franchise. Every team aspires to qualify for this tournament during the regular season of their respective region. Only 24 tickets to give away. Some regions are more fortunate than others and get more tickets. Some regions will never get past the play in stage or won’t qualify at all. With all World Championships a lot is at stake for the teams. Who will crown themselves king for a year? Which region can “brag” at the end of the day? And for who has all the hard work paid off the most?

I look forward to Worlds every year as an avid LoL fan. I cheer for the European region first and within that my “allegiance” lies with G2 Esports. The League of Legends seasons are long. The year is usually divided up in two splits, Spring and Summer, that start somewhere in February and run all the way up to the end of August. Inbetween splits there usually is a Mid Season Invitational for the top teams of every region to compete against eachother and from the end of September untill the beginning of November the World Championships are held. Then there is All-Stars after that, which is a bit more of a for fun tournament but which nevertheless taxes the players who get nominated to go there. As player there is virtually no time “off”. They are living and breathing League of Legends for most of their teenage years (from 16 or 17) untill their mid twenties. This game isn’t just a game anymore, it’s their job. And where we as normal people can clock out after an 8 hour work day these players can play LoL for up to 14 hours a day honing their skills, playing competitively or just practicing against other teams, something called scrims. It’s a lot to take on when you’re still a child. Because let’s be honest, the players who are new to the Leagues are often in their late teens and in no way adults. I can’t imagine how it must be to lead the “pro” life and I really think that the current generation of players has a much better team surrounding them than say 5-6 years ago. It must be exhausting and stressful having to perform week after week, your whole life revolving around this one single game. To quote G2 Perkz from the G2 documentary “Chasing the Dream” (go watch it, it’s good content!) about how he just wants to feel human again after having to perform for so well for so long strikes me through the heart everytime I hear it. We can’t understand how it is to live that life, and honestly I wouldn’t want to trade.

Which brings me to the actual point of this post. For the past years LoL has been steadily climbing in popularity. Viewership is very high as more and more people tune in to one of the biggest e-sports we have right now. With all the growth and attention there has also been a staggering incline in the amount of toxicity in the community. Not only in the game itself, which is why I rarely play more than their “fun” modes, but also among the fanbase. Like with traditional sports there is always a core of fans that will tear teams down when they perform badly. How many times haven’t we seen here in the EU that people call for a coach or player to be fired or benched in football? The same trend is showing up in e-sports. This is obviously to be expected but what makes this so bad in e-sports are two factors:

– The average player age is much younger than other professional sports. Imagine having to play Champion’s League football full time at 16-17 years old, week after week. You’ve gone from your parents’ house to a player house where all your focus is on you playing the game the best you can. Learning to deal with the outside world isn’t a big thing. These are still kids who are growing and learning and whose brain is still in full development phase. It’s so easy to take everything to heart and to get down and depressed from whatever negative feedback you see online.
– Which brings me to my second point: unlike professional sports teams where individual players don’t interact with their fans through social media platforms, they do in League of Legends. Almost all players have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit accounts. Their social media is managed by themselves and it’s a way for them to interact with fans. It also means that they see every single negative comment that is thrown their way, unless they block all social media interaction. It’s one of the things that I personally like about LoL, because the players don’t become these distant unreachable superstars, but it has a definite negative downside. Especially to these young people who just don’t have the mental capacity yet to distinguish the important messages from the noise.

MAD Lions LoL English on Twitter: "We're going to #Worlds! Our next #LEC  series is vs @Rogue on Sunday!… "

This year we as European region have sent four teams to compete at the World Championships. Three teams advanced to the group stages immediatly but the fourth team has to battle their way through the play-in stage to get there. This team is the one shown above, MAD Lions.
It’s a young team. They have one player who has more than one season of experience of playing in the highest league and the rest are all rookies. This is their first real tournament outside of Europe and I can’t imagine how incredibly happy they must have been that they qualified. Going all the way to Shanghai to compete for the biggest prize after one year of playing isn’t something to take lightly.
They looked incredibly dominating for most of the Summer split, with an unfortunate slump at the end of it during play-offs. Nevertheless they made it and we as Europe have hyped them up a lot, with unwavering confidence that they would make it through play-ins. Maybe it isn’t smart to put such expectations on these players but it has happened and I’m sure it has boosted their confidence. However so far they have been struggling, losing two out of the three games they played. It happens. Life isn’t a fairytale and there can only be one winner or loser. The opponent team was simply better and, of course, they made some mistakes that they could and should learn from. Remember that these are rookies. It’s all new to them and it must be hard to not live up to expectations in the first place.

Yet despite this knowledge people still think it’s okay to absolutely shit on these players and the team over social media. Horrible comments on Twitter aimed at specific players, to the point that other players from other teams speak up on Twitter to tell “fans” to back down. I can’t understand why people would do this. Who in their right minds thinks it’s okay to absolutely tear someone down over a lost game. And remember they’re not tearing down a fully grown adult who doesn’t bat an eye, they’re tearing down what are essentially still children. What is the point of being so toxic on the internet? Do people think it’s okay to talk to people like this in real life aswell? Or is it the relative “anonimity” that the internet provides that makes people think it’s okay to behave like this? Do people have no empathy anymore? Are people incapable of putting themselves in other people’s shoes anymore? Imagine getting torn a new one if you made a mistake at your job to the point that people you’ve never met tell you you should’ve never chosen your career. There is no way that happens. Yet it seems that it’s the norm after every game lost. Fans don’t even enjoy cheering for their teams anymore, instead only focusing on the bad. It’s a toxic cesspool that I wish didn’t exist, but unfortunately it does. And it makes me sad and angry. If you think it’s okay to behave like this, I sincerely suggest that you may want to take a look at your own life and then kindly fuck off.

There are lines and they are being heavily crossed, yet it seems impossible to shut up the toxic underbelly of the internet. I’m afraid that it will eventually lead to a complete social media blackout from all pro players and instead we will go the route of “normal” professional sports where individual voices aren’t heard and everything is heavily moderated for the players, and that they themselves won’t interact with the general public anymore. It would be tragic if that would happen, since I feel it would cost LoL a lot of it’s “charm”. Maybe mandatory social media training should be part of playing for a pro team, but I’m not sure how feasible that idea is at this point and where the focus would need to lie exactly.

For now the only thing we can and must do is speak up against the toxicity and cheer for our teams and hope that in the stream of horrible comments they’re able to pick out the ones that support them no matter what. We are out there, I can only hope they’ll hear us.

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: FFXIV Galore, August 30th 2020

Newest Yo-Kai mount

Whew. A lot of stuff has happened over in MMO country the past few weeks. The new MMO from Amazon is being tested as we speak but for me the focus always lies on my main two MMO’s, so those are the only things I’ll focus on in my blog posts. I mean, I can’t write about something I have no interest in, right?
We have gotten a release date for Shadowlands in World of Warcraft, October 27th. Final Fantasy XIV had patch 5.3 drop, aswell as the Moonfire Faire and Rising events and the Yo-Kai watch event renewed.
Since I’m more or less on a break from WoW, after basically gaining all the stuff I wanted to before pre-patch would hit, I’ve gone straight back to playing a lot of FFXIV. It also helps that my WoW guildies have more or less moved there aswell for the time being so I have more people to play with again but I’ve always kept up with FFXIV on the side, especially when the newest patch would hit. So this was no different with 5.3

First thing’s first: I finished the 5.3 mainstory. I’m not going to spoil anything about it here because I would hate to get spoiled myself so I won’t do it unto others. The only thing I have to say, once again, is damn you Square Enix for getting me to care about this world and the characters inhabiting it. On more than one occassion FFXIV has managed to make me cry and the latest patch has not been an exception to that. What kind of tears they were I’ll leave up to you to find out yourselves if you play the game and have yet to go through this part of the story.
Next to the mainstory there were a plethora of other things to unlock, with the most important for me the new “beast tribe” in the form of the Dwarves. It feels kind of weird to see them as beast tribe since they are basically the mirror race of Lalafells but in a way it makes sense. I’m in love with the music that plays in their little area in Lakeland and I can’t wait to unlock the mount you get from them: an actual battle tank. It’s also helping me to level up my crafting jobs since I bounced kind of hard off of the whole Ishgard restoration. I’m not sure why but I just really didn’t enjoy it. Maybe I’ll get into it again at some point but for now I’m happy to level up my crafters with these dailies and so far it has gotten my Carpenter to level 80 and my Weaver to level 75.
I have yet to unlock the new 24 man raid, Puppet’s Bunker, but I’m sure I’ll get around to doing that next week.

As mentioned there were also a few events going the past few weeks and I’ve partaken in all of them. The Moonfire Faire has gotten me a lovely outfit, as seen in the screenshot above. The Rising gave us the Wind-up Ardbert and the Yo-Kai event came back with a vengeance with new minions and weapons to get for the classes added in Stormblood and Heavensward and, after getting all of those, a new mount also pictured above. I decided to try and get this done as soon as I possibly could seeing as the first two weeks of an event like this the FATE farm trains are going strong and the longer you wait the bigger the chance that it comes down to having to solo the lot which isn’t something I would recommend.
It’s really nice just getting these things done, especially events like the Rising that come with a message from the development team every year. For now though I will have to wait untill the next event which will probably be in October around Halloween.

Level 80 Dark Knight ding

Next to doing the new 5.3 content and the various events I also doubled down on leveling up the last remaining battle jobs I have left. As of this morning I managed to ding level 80 on my Dark Knight, as pictured above, and now I only have Gunbreaker left. I unlocked the job and did the level 60 beast tribe dailies aswell as the level 60 job quest so far. I have to get used to Gunbreaker a lot after playing Dark Knight. There’s more buttons to press for damage since you basically have two single target and one AoE rotation with their respective cooldowns. Then there’s the whole ammo mechanic that I’m still learning but all in all I can see how people like this class and I can’t wait to get it to level 80 and finally get that coveted Amaro mount afterwards. If I keep on playing FFXIV like I’ve been doing for the past weeks I won’t have any doubts that I will get to that level 80 within the next two weeks.

Together with getting level 80 on my Dark Knight I also finished off the final 15 FATEs that I needed in the Tempest to hit rank 3 FATEs with all the zones. I now have access to all rank 3 vendors in the zones aswell as the special vendor in the Crystarium. I see that they sell a lot of stuff that I still want and for that I will need to farm more FATEs, but for now I’m content with not doing any untill my Gunbreaker gets into Shadowbringers content. It’s been quite a dull grind and I’m happy that I was able to complete it. Another notch on my belt so to speak.

Other content consumption
Next to dedicating a lot of time to FFXIV I’ve also been busy with consuming other types of content.
Lucifer dropped the first part of season five last week and I’ve been slowly going through that. I only have about two episodes to go now untill the mid season break and there have been a few interesting plot points so far. Tom Ellis is putting on a top notch performance and I’m happy to see it back on screen and I hope the second half will come out sooner rather than later.
I’ve been reading a lot of Robin Hobb books, that centre around the realm of the Elderlings, the past months and I’m finally down to the last book of the entire series. This means that I’m basically on book 16/16 right now. It’s been quite a ride and honestly the worldbuilding she does is amazing. I really want to know how the series ends but also don’t want it to end at the same time. It’s quite a conondrum. Right now I’m reading 2-4 chapters per day and I’m about 1/3rd of the way into the final book.
Finally my time has been consumed by watching a lot of League of Legends. All of the big regions are in play-off mode right now and I feel like my TV has been on with LoL for the past 48 hours. I’ve been catching games from Europe, North America, China and Korea. It’s a great way to spend time but also nice to have on as “background noise” while doing other things. Next week are the finals everywhere and I can’t wait to see how things play out in both Europe and North America specifically.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the progress I’ve made in FFXIV and I hope I can continue this streak next week. Maybe I’ll hop back into WoW again aswell, even if it’s just to clean out inventories in preparation for the pre-patch and maybe run some old raids now that we’ve not all been scaled down to level 50 yet. I guess we’ll see. For now though the match between Rogue and Mad Lions is only 30 mins away from starting and that will probably keep me occupied untill well in the evening.

Sandy’s Sunday: November 10th 2019

A lot has happened since I posted my November goal post. Blizzcon has come and gone, patch 5.1 has launched in Final Fantasy XIV and I’ve made the decision, and started the process, to buy myself a car. I’ve been pretty busy with real life stuff so gaming has gone onto the back burner a bit right now. Having said this, I still managed to find time to churn through tons of crafting dailies and take advantage of the hefty experience boost that Square Enix has implemented with the latest patch. As such I’ve gotten both my Blacksmith and Armorer to level 70 and my Leatherworker is currently somewhere in the 40-50 range. I’ve also managed to get my Monk to level 80 the past week so I’ve been dutifully working through my FFXIV goals. Instead of picking up Samurai straight after I decided to level my Paladin instead, purely because I want to see the tank story line from Shadowbringers. As a friend of mine put it I’m “bumrushing” the process and am currently sitting at level 73 after two days of doing the new Pixie beast tribe dailes, a ton of FATE’s and roulettes which provide me with very nice instant queues. I may even push to 74 after this post goes live and I do Mainstory roulette.

On the flipside there is the World of Warcraft where I’ve basically stalled out the moment I got my Mechagon rep to Exalted. Right now the 15 year celebration is going on ingame and I will probably poke my nose in and get the nostalgic raids done, purely so I can get the mount and then scoot out of there again. I may also do the PvP event but I’m not sure about that yet. As far as other WoW news goes… I’ve seen the trailer that announces Shadowlands and I should be hyped but for some reason I really am not. I guess Battle for Azeroth kind of soured my enthusiasm for WoW and I’m pretty skeptical about what is going to happen next. Sylvanas being the big bad isn’t surprising but I really wish Blizzard didn’t go that route. I will most definitely get the expansion, seeing as I’m still a big enough fan to play the game but I’m noticing that I’m enjoying myself more in FFXIV right now than I do in WoW.
In related fashion I’m also not terribly hyped for Diablo 4. I mean, I poured a lot of time into Diablo 3 when it launched and through all the changes and the expansion and DLC but for some reason I just can’t seem to get back into the game on my PC or my Switch. The “looter” genre isn’t really appealing to me right now so maybe when we get closer to launch I start feeling a bit more hyped but for now I’m not even sure if I want to get the game to start with.

As for my blogging right now. I’ve not really felt the urge to write or read anything for the past few weeks. My Feedly is kind of exploding with unread posts but I’m mostly just scrolling through them and not really reading what they say. I’m not sure why it’s like this and it’s probably a temporary thing but for now I’m not that engaged with the blogging community as I would like to be. I’m also a bit sad after seeing the League of Legends World Finals today. G2 has been the team I’ve been rooting for the entire season and it seemed like they were well on course to grabbing that very sought after World Cup. Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. I can’t imagine how devastated these players must be feeling right now and I can only hope the team will take this as a learning experience and come back stronger next year.

Next friday the new installment in the Pokémon series comes out, I hope that will trigger my need to blog a bit because I will probably be all over that game. Untill then… Stay tuned I guess?

Zuldazar Sightseeing

Zuldazar: The Great Seal

When taking my second Horde Character through Battle for Azeroth content I specifically decided to tackle Zuldazar first. It was the zone I had up last for my Paladin and therefore I never really finished it. I was 120, I wasn’t that interested in the Horde side of the story and I felt the Horde zones all had to bow to Drustvar which, in my opinion, is the best zone in Battle for Azeroth so far. I still stand by that opinion, Drustvar is just perfect in zone story, atmosphere and level paths. It is by far the zone I enjoyed the most so far and if I could just do Drustvar only and get from 110 to 120 that way I would. Alas this is not an option and definitely not when you play Horde. So this time around I decided to pick up the zone I didn’t get to finish last time and boy am I happy I did.

Zuldazar on it’s own is a beautiful zone. I really enjoy the whole ancient Mayan thing Blizzard has decided to go for and even though Dazar’alor is a real tough cookie to navigate I think it’s very pretty and perfectly designed when it comes to aesthetics. It really is the golden city and the views of the city and anywhere from the city are spectacular and all of them screenshot worthy. So since I’m not really paying attention to the quest text this time around I really opened my eyes to the zone that is Zuldazar and I’m enjoying the view. The dinosaurs, the jungle, the beaches. They’re all extremely gorgeous and I can just run around for hours without getting bored. Unfortunately I finished off my final sidequest chain of the zone today so I will have to say goodbye to the exotic jungle and hello to the creepy swamp.

I sing praises to this zone but there’s also a lot of issues with Zuldazar. It’s a zone with a lot of vertical content, like Highmountain was in Legion. This means it’s kind of annoying and hard to navigate. I think once flying becomes available this zone will be much easier to navigate and it will be much easier and much faster to level that way. This also goes for the troll capital itself which is very vertical and hard to navigate. Although the totems of Gonk, which give you movement speed, help a lot it’s still a rather big pain in the butt.

I think Zuldazar is a perfect example of how much developers can do for an aging MMO. World of Warcraft may not be the best MMO looking out there, the underlying code is simply too old for that. Visual bugs are common and textures aren’t as pretty as they are in say FFXIV. However the developers still craft amazing zones that you can completely lose yourself in if you want to. I really hope that the future patches that bring new zones are just as gorgeous as the initial BfA zones have turned out to be.

Next to poking about in World of Warcraft almost every weekend I’m ready and perched to watch the LEC and LCS which are the European and North American League of Legends leagues respectively. I’ve purchased tickets to go watch the Spring Split European Finals in Rotterdam with a friend and I hope it’s as good as it was last time we went. We probably have a bit better seats this time and maybe we can meet up with some of the players and casters after the games, provided they don’t go on for too long. I’m a huge League of Legends fan and even though I don’t play the game myself I enjoy watching it and cheering for my favourite teams. This year it’s Misfits for Europe and Team Liquid (I’m a Doublelift fangirl) for North America. With Europe getting better and better as region I really hope we have an even better chance the coming World Championship. But a lot can change in six months so who knows. It’s a nice way to get through the weekend evenings though as I struggle sometimes with making my nights meaningful. These days I just make sure that I have League on and even though I may not actively watch it, it makes sure that I stay out of bed and engaged with something I enjoy. I get a lot of things done with League in the background and the games I want to see provide a nice break from whatever I’m doing at the time. So next to following my teams it also makes sure that my room is cleaned, that I make progress in games and that I relax where need be. It’s basically the perfect distraction when I’m at home alone to make sure I get through the evenings in a good way and to make sure I don’t sleep my time away instead.

Free to Play & Buy to Win

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?

The Big Wildstar Reboot

This week Wildstar went Free To Play. A huge turnover for any game. Sometimes it works out (looking at SWTOR), sometimes it doesn’t.
Personally I’m happy with this change. I’m not too comfortable when it comes to finances and maintaining more than two subs a month is not really doable for me. I have let my FFXIV sub run out because of this reason aswell. I was simply not playing the game and it’s a waste of money to resub then… When you don’t know when you’ll be coming back to the game.

A Fresh Start
So with this reboot I decided I needed a fresh start. I never really got to endgame on Wildstar, mostly because I was way too busy playing other games and working and going to school… So I don’t really have any far developed characters yet. I made an Aurin Spellslinger on Jabbit (shown in the pictures), a class I had a brief flirtation with, but never played seriously.

The water in Wildstar is still amazing…

As far as launches go, I think this was one of the more “troublesome” ones. The megaservers weren’t used to the huge influx of players coming their way I guess so there has been a lot of emergency maintenance… Jabbit still remains somewhat unplayable 3 days later (lagg issues are persisting) but Entity seems to be playable for me since I play during off hours on that. Oh yeah, I mentioned it on Twitter already but the regional restrictions have been lifted so everyone is free to play on whatever region they want! I didn’t know this or I would’ve made my Spellslinger on Entity. Instead I chose to go with an Engineer there.

I really do love the Mordesh ladies!

For now I’ve been switching between the two servers. I chose to go the Everstar Grove > Celestion rout on my Spellslinger whereas I sent my Engineer to Northern Wilds. They both made it out of the starting area, lagging all the way through. Right now I’m mostly fiddling around with my skillsets. I know Engineers have the ability to be tanks and I have received a quest to actually train me as one… I’m just not sure if I want to go that route. I know absolutely nothing about Engineers, except that they use robot and electrocute people. I don’t know if DPS Engineer is viable at all or if I am better off going tank.

Right now I just want to focus on leveling up, working my way through zones beyond level 20 and enjoy the scenery and lore. I’m absolutely not worried about crafting or housing stuff yet. I just want to see the game first.
The Hype Has Started!
Today is also the start to the League of Legends 2015 World Championship. The show has literally started a few minutes ago and I’m so very happy it has kicked off again. This is probably on the same level as the World Championship Football for me. And as a Dutch person this says a lot. So I think I will be gaming very little the coming days. Or atleast not very focused and there will be a LoL stream in the background constantly.
Now if you’ll excuse me. It’s time to start cheering!

Heroes Heroes and more Heroes – Blaugust day 19

I’ve only done two things this weekend. Farm games on Heroes of the Storm and watch the LCS finals weekend for both EU and NA. I’ve cheered my heart out for Origen in the EU finals but alas it was not enough. However I’m more interested in the later game of today, which is CLG vs TSM. As a huge CLG fangirl (Doublelift forever!) I really hope they will finally win a split and qualify for worlds. I’m not sure if I can stay up and watch all of the games, but I do plan to watch atleast untill 1 AM!

As far as Heroes of the Storm goes. I swear the general population on that game is getting more and more dumb. People have no idea how to play together and often wander off solo… Getting themselves killed. It really boggles my mind in what universe you think it’s OK to take on five other poeple by yourself, but I guess in their minds they are invincible and thus should be easily able to do this.
As far as champions go. You can see what is the f2p rotation this week. I’ve had Anub’Arak, Malfurion and Nazeebo in all my games so far. All strong champions if played correctly but unfortunately there’s a lot of people still learning the game right now so I see a lot of horrible misplays… On both sides.

I do notice I get kind of complacent from playing Valla. I’m so used to being in the ranged role that having to play a Melee champion requires me to do a complete mindset switch. Right because of this I’m seriously considering picking up a Melee champion after I get my 100 games on Valla. Looking at the strong champions right now, and not wanting to pick up another Assassin, I will probably get either Leoric or Kharazim. They are exceptionally strong in the meta right now and both look ridiculously fun to play. I still need to play 90 more games on Valla however. She is level 6 now, my account is level 9. One more level should net me a 7 day stimpack aswell so I will definately use that to my advantage.
All in all I’m still massively enjoying myself in this game, even though I encounter a ridiculous amount of bad players. It’s nice getting the tactics down and being able to direct a game and win. Close defeats are more fun than crushes, mostly because you get more experience for your account and hero the longer the game goes, but it feels so satisfying aswell to battle it out untill the bitter end.

So far I have zero regrets starting this project. I do need to figure out however how to balance my job, my heroes time and my MMO’s.. And that’s something I’m saving for a next post!

Busy Little Bee – Blaugust day 14

Ugh, I had so hoped to not fail the Blaugust challenge. I was really looking forward to blogging everyday. But due to circumstance I managed to miss two days in a row. Bah!
Friday as I came home from work I was just completely exhausted. I crawled into bed after dinner with League of Legends on and basically watched that while half asleep… Before finally falling asleep at 22.00
Saturday has just been a blur for me. I had to pick up supplies for my best friend’s babyshower in the morning and headed off to Amsterdam after that to see a friend who has hit a rough patch. I ended up staying there till about twelve, drinking beer at the Irish pub close to where she lives and generally having a good time. I wasn’t really home until 1.00 AM and immediatly crawled into bed then aswell.
And today there was the babyshower and no real time for me to sit down and do anything untill I got home an hour before dinner.
So there you have the reasons I didn’t really have the time to write anything at all this weekend. I’ve been superbusy and as consequence supertired aswell. But I finally managed to sit down now and discuss the things I’ve been doing.

Gaming Goals Progress
I managed to unlock the first wing of Naxxramas in Hearthstone today. Apparently I had won a 100 matches on my account across all types of games and that awards you with 300 gold. Which pushed me right over the 700 you need to open up a wing. So I did and ventured in to battle Anub’Rekhan, the first boss. Seeing as I’ve chosen to focus on two decks only (Druid and Priest) I picked my priest and prayed my healing spells would carry me through. Luckily I found it an easy boss to defeat, so I’m staring at the Grand Widow now.
Atleast I can scratch that goal off my to-do list!

As for the rest of the goals. I’ve barely logged any games this week. I’ve been absolutely shattered whenever I got home after work. So I’ve mostly sat around watching streams and series and not gaming at all. Which means that no I didn’t get my Esoterics cap on Final Fantasy again and that my WHM is still poking about at level 45. I should really be playing now, but there is…

League of Legends Playoffs
My favourite game to watch: League of Legends. I basically root for two teams. One in EU (Elements) and one in NA (Counter Logic Gaming). Elements unfortunately had a bad season and didn’t make it into playoffs, but CLG did and played their semifinals last night. It was a 3-0 and I could cheer for my team and had a great time watching it. The finals should be next week, and you can bet I’ll be watching again. I really hope they win, it would be the first big prize they would get and I really think the team deserves it this year.

Anyway, I hope I can get back to posting everyday again this week. I hope work will leave me less exhausted and with more time to play than it does now. I really want to get my WHM to 50, so I’ll probably make that a big aim this week, aswell as getting my Esoterics Chest on my Dragoon. But we will see.