Tag Archives: World of Warcraft

Communities, Dailies and Destiny

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

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

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

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

Relaxing Games

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

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

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

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

Discoveries

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

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

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

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

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

Trudging About

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raiding Attitudes

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At this point in time I consider myself a veteran in not only MMO’s but also raiding in said MMO’s.
I started playing World of Warcraft in 2007 and was into raiding not long after. Starting out at 10 man Kharazan to eventually joining the best guild on the server at the time for progress in Sunwell Plateau. I have competed for realm firsts in Wrath of the Lich King and was raidleader for a significant portion of Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria.
In FFXIV I was raidleading together with our Paladin Tank (since we were the only ones who actually prepared for encounters) and this got us to Turn 9 of Coil when it was current content. Unfortunately our group ended there due to the sheer badness of two of our players which we just couldn’t carry anymore then.
In Destiny I’ve taken a backseat when it comes to the raiding. Shooters aren’t necessarily my strong point and I’m too focussed on actually hitting stuff that I’m able to call out postions or dps targets when needed.

In all these years of raiding I have noticed a trend that seems to be getting worse and worse. It could also be the people I raid with, actually I strongly believe it IS because of the people I raid with, but nonetheless… In the last years raids have become easier to organize (you need less people to actually form a good raidgroup, 6 man in Destiny, 8 in FFXIV, 10 minimum in WoW). Although tactics have become very intricate on some bosses in World of Warcraft with the acces to content before it’s live now there’s usually guides out there that will help you with new encounters, thus giving everyone a “headstart” on the raid before you can actually enter.
This has led, in my opinion, to a very elitist attitude among some of the people found in guilds. Not just the big guilds like (ex) Method, but also the smaller guilds who have different goals. I definately see it in my guild. We have a few veterans who are simply not used to guiding newer people anymore and don’t feel the need to do so either. Instead they get grumpy and hateful in private chats (this time it was our raidleading channel).
This, to me, is an extremely destructive attitude to have when it comes to raiding in general. With the flux of players and people taking a more casual stance to gaming and raiding overall I think a bit of flexibility is needed. Have a bit of patience with newer players, especially ones who have never done heroic content or are used to different tactics than your group uses. Everyone once started from the bottom and being elitist jerks (ha!) to them is not helping in any way.
But, one may argue, if they keep it to private channels… That shouldn’t be too much of an issue right? Well actually it is. Even in private channels. Being elitist and rude and condescending about your fellow players breeds resentment and a sort of segregation of players in a team where co-operation is crucial. It’s the perfect soil for burnout to grow upon and it’s a huge problem when it exists in a raidgroup. I really hope our group can get through it, but as it stands now I need to pray for a miracle because people’s attitudes are getting worse every time we raid.

Movies. Watch them!
Which brings me to another point. A lot of the people raiding with us right now have the same mentality to raids as they had in Vanilla WoW and Burning Crusade. You don’t have much prior knowlegde to fights and are mostly left to figure stuff out on your own… So you just head in blind.
This might have worked back then. But now it’s just really not an option anymore. There is so much going on at once in a lot of fights (Iskar I’m looking at you) that watching a movie or reading a guide or even the Dungeon Journal is almost mandatory. It’s impossible to go in blind and handle all the mechanics perfectly from the get-go. Unless you are extremely talented.
This leads to people making mistakes that wipe the raid… Which are completely unecessary if you had taken 5 to 10 minutes of your time to read or watch a guide on the fight. I can’t count the number of times I had to bite my tongue on Teamspeak or Raidchat when people made mistakes like these. It’s really annoying having to explain tactics over and over again to people who are just too damn stubborn to watch a movie themselves.
Especially in a raidteam where people are at most average I think it’s a MUST to atleast know a fight before you head into it. But apparently I am wrong and people should do as they please.
Which is fine.
But don’t start crying when we clock over 100 wipes on a boss…

The Motivation Proclamation

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Since it’s 2am and I’m not getting a wink of sleep, I feel the need to write up a post which is meshing up every area in my life right now.
A lot of stuff has happened over the past few weeks and my brain can’t really keep up anymore. Seeing as I have this blog I might aswell write it down here to make sense of it, or not. Most of all I just need to get some things of my chest.

When real life mixes with games.
Right now I’m in a very awkward position when it comes to World of Warcraft. If I have to write down everything that happend in my guild and the people in it I probably could fill a novel so I’m going to go with the extremely short TL;DR. The GM of my guild is also my ex who I still have feelings for and who has been my best friend for the past 4 years. We had a huge fallout in January resulting in a very damaged relationship of which we are still recovering bit by bit. This isn’t much of an issue on it’s own and has nothing to do with the guild itself BUT he has become more and more inactive as time went by. And a guild where the control is in the hands of someone who has lost interest in the game is a guild that will fall apart. Which is what is happening right now.
The two officers who run the show have therefore decided to give our GM an ultimatum. Either he gives up being GM… Or they will leave and take probably the entire raid team with them to form a new guild when Legion launches. Knowing my ex, he will probably never give up his GM position for personal reasons so it will be most likely that we will form a new guild.
This however puts me personally in a very awkward spot. I don’t want to hurt my friend or bring more damage to our already fragile relationship by “backstabbing” him that way. Because I know him well enough to know he will perceive this as betrayal. Now I can’t really prepare him for any of it since it is not my message to deliver. But I don’t want to feel like this puts me in a compromising spot.
So far I have decided to stay out of it and go the way of “let it happen and see how he reacts” but I’m superscared he will take it badly, and take it out on me. And I don’t know how to handle it. Not that I finally have made some effort to log into WoW and make the game fun for myself again.

On the other hand I have been having real struggles motivating myself to log into FFXIV. The coil group that I had started with one of my friends isn’t really happening, partly because I just stopped logging in. I didn’t like the Alexander LFG and grinding the same two dungeons over again has really dampened my fun of the game. I also somehow don’t like having to play on my PS4 either. I can’t really raid on my PC due to intense ingame lag (which for some reason I don’t have on my PS4) but I prefer playing on PC because it’s just easier going. I can sort through my inventory faster, can just use my mouse to navigate through stuff and all of that.
I have logged yesterday after installing the base game on PC and ran around levelling my Machinist a bit, which was fun. I just really don’t know what I want to do with this game right now and if I feel any desire to keep on logging in. I’m not sure what it is about. Maybe it’s because I’m not very happy with some decisions people I know ingame have made recently or that I don’t feel at home in my FC anymore. Maybe it’s just a mix of everything of the above. All in all I don’t know if it’s worth keeping my sub anymore untill 3.1 launches atleast. I’ll have to seriously think about this the coming week.

When the bed is too comfy.
Next to having ingame struggles I’m also struggling with real life again at the moment. The job I had was a temporary one and ended two weeks ago and I’ve been home again since. I still have volunteer shifts at the hospital but lately I can’t motivate myself to go at all. I don’t feel comfortable there and I wonder if it’s worth going when you’re not missed when you’re not there.
Add in serious bad weather (it’s been raining non stop here for the past 7 days) and my mood is getting more depressive by the minute. I can’t get myself to do even the simplest chores anymore (like vacuuming my room) and I’m restless in everything I do. Gaming isn’t really a distraction and if it is I can’t play something for more than an hour. The only thing keeping my attention lately is Destiny, but since the shiny newness has somehow subsided I find myself not really logging that anymore either.
Instead I find myself taking more naps during the day or staying longer in bed in the mornings, essentially “wasting” my day away. I’m not really sure if this is just a temporary thing or if I need to seriously kick this mood in the butt before it gets worse and I don’t get anything done at all anymore.
Because if this keeps up, I’ll be right back in the same dark place I was about 10 months ago and I don’t want to go back there anymore.

I Am Legendary (Spoilers!)

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A bit of screenshot spam today. For anyone still on the quest MAJOR SPOILERS! Right. 
So I finally managed to finish off my Legendary Ring on my Priest after failing the damn ship mission 4 times and being 3 tomes short for the past two resets. I decided to bite the bullet and do a wing or two in Looking For Raid and hope I’d be lucky enough to get the remaining tomes I needed. Luckily my RNG pulled through and I got a tome from all three bosses of the first wing of Hellfire Citadel.
I really liked the dialogue with Cortana (who had fallen evil unfortunately) telling her HELL no when she wanted my ring. And the little ceremony Blizzard put in for the Alliance side is seriously well done with the spirit of Velen speaking to you. You also get a nice little glow buff for 10 mins. 
But mostly I’m just super happy I managed to complete the Legendary quest chain more or less on time. Now I can benefit the raid with an extra healing ring!

The Loner Syndrome

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Every now and then I get a bit of madness in my head and all I want is to just be left alone. I want to be able to log a game, play it and not have to deal with any social interaction at all. I don’t feel like talking to anyone then and I get very grumpy when people try and talk to me.
Right now I’m having a few of those “Loner” days where I just want to be able to log a game (preferably WoW or FFXIV), do my thing and not have to worry about people. Be it friends, guildies or random strangers… I just don’t want anything to do with you.

I’m not really sure where these moods come from. Usually I’m a very social person, outgoing and slightly annoyed when I have no one to talk to in my games. But I guess sometimes it just gets to be a bit too much and I just want to retreat in my own little world, playing my own games.
The thing is that in MMO’s you’re never really alone and people will bother you, whether you like it or not… And I’m not sure how to deal with that. In groups for dungeons I tend to just stay quiet and go about my business, be that healing, tanking or DPSing. When you have friends online however and they start talking to you… It’s not easy to tell them that you just need some time for yourself.

I think it’s one of the reasons I’ve been avoiding logging FFXIV for the past weeks. Seeing as we want to start up the raiding group to run Alexander and whatnot I feel pressured to play. And once I feel pressured I lose all interest in playing. Which is a real shame because I love FFXIV to death. I just really don’t feel like socializing too much right now. Even raiding in WoW has become a task for me seeing as I’m one of the people calling out stuff on TS…
I just feel a bit socially exhausted I guess.

Blogging, blogging, blogging
Tied in to being socially exhausted I’m also in a bit of an awkward spot with my blog. I get ideas to blog at stupid times (like when I’m going to bed) and then try to put them off untill the morning… Only to completely forget about them again. I have too many things to write about… And not enough. It feels a bit weird. Maybe it’s mostly because a part of me still thinks that no one is interested in what I’m writing here anyway. Which shouldn’t be an issue because I started this blog for myself, to be able to write down my opinion about things, rant about silly stuff and be excited for upcoming games. And yet I want to be able to “deliver” to my audience. It’s a strange conundrum and one I’m seriously struggling with.
Add the fact that Blaugust may have exhausted me a bit… I just really don’t want to go back to only posting a few times a month.

A New Rythm

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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

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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!