Tag Archives: WoW

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.

Gaming Goals: January 2018

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First off all I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope that 2018 will be 100% better than 2017 for everyone. I spent my New Years eve celebrating with one of my best friends. It was a day and evening filled with games, good company and nice food. Ofcourse I went to bed a bit too late which means I’m going to bed nice and on time tonight to be well rested for work tomorrow. I’m also happy I decided to clean my room before leaving. I’m now home and have a bed with freshly washed sheets and an empty desk to look at, which makes me happy.

Now before I want to start talking about my plans for January I want to look back at December and what I’ve accomplished.

  • In World of Warcraft I managed to get my Paladin to level 110 and completed the Class Hall Campaign pre Legionfall. I decided to stop there and focus on gearing up and clearing out the remaining quests that I had before pushing on to Argus and eventually my Class Mount. She’s sitting on ilvl 850 now and I’m slowly whittling down my quest log. I’m quite happy with the progress I made considering I was sick in bed for an entire week. I really have to mention that I enjoyed the Paladin Class campaign like no other campaign so far. I like how it tied in with the Priest one and how everything played out. Next to working on my Paladin I’ve also picked up my Warrior again. I finally finished the Legionfall campaign, got Exalted status with them and got my Class mount. I’ve decided to slowly work through Argus on her and do some LFR to experience the story of Tomb of Sargeras and Antorus but that’s it.
  • In FFXIV I managed to get my Astrologian to 70 early on in the month and had my Miner ding 61. I’ve stalled on my Botanist however, she’s currently sitting around halfway to level 68. I do want to make the push towards 70 asap on that and my Miner so I can clear gear from my bags and maybe so I can start making some money. I’ve also casually been leveling my Machinist, it’s 61, and I’m quite happy with that. Ofcourse I’ve also done the christmas Event on both my characters so I now own my very own flying bear!
  • In non MMO games I’ve not made that much progress. I’ve played a bit of Xenoblade Chronicles, some I am Setsuna and Puyo Puyo Tetris but otherwise I’ve not really touched any games. It’s a bit disappointing but inbetween the stress from work and buying a house and feeling sick it really can’t be helped. I did manage to level another hero to level 5 in HotS so there’s that.
  • On the non gaming front I read the book I wanted to read in less than a week. I really enjoy this series by Patrick Rothfuss and I’m planning to read the rest of the series aswell. In series country I just couldn’t get into the Punisher. I don’t know if it’s just Marvel overload or if I just can’t watch another action packed series but instead of watching that I’ve delved deep into the serie “Lie to Me”. I’m currently halfway through season 2 and I’m sure I’ll watch the rest by the end of January.

Looking ahead to January I still want to keep my goals small. I will have a very tough month ahead of me work wise and I’m still not quite over my cold so I don’t want to plan too much while I know I probably won’t be able to do what I said I would. But this is what I’d like to accomplish the next month.

  • In WoW: Get Prestige rank 2 on my Warrior, finish off Argus on my Warrior and clear out any remaining quests that linger in my questlog. Do Tomb of Sargeras and Antorus for story on both Warrior and Paladin.
    On Paladin, push through the Legionfall and Argus story and get my Class Hall mount.
  • In FFXIV: Level my Botanist and Miner to level 70. Fiddle around on Machinist, no real level goal there, if I make it to 70 it’s nice, if not then no harm done.
  • Other games: play more Xenoblade Chronicles. Any progress is nice but I’d like to see a considerable part of the story before the month is over.
  • Non-gaming: Read “The Wise Men’s Fear” by Patrick Rothfuss. Finish watching “Lie to Me”. Watch the new season of “Black Mirror”

All in all this should be obtainable goals for the month. I have many more planned for the rest of the year and I’m planning to do a “goals for 2018” post somewhere this week. I don’t have big “real life” things to consider this year except for getting my apartment built so nothing should interfere with finally playing some of my backlog and having fun in MMO’s in 2018.

Things go faster than they seem

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It’s funny how much stuff you can get done in limited time. If you plan well and stick to your planning you can get miles ahead on what you thought you’d be doing.

Yesterday I came home from work and felt exhausted. This is nothing new for me on Fridays. For some reason they hit me harder than any other day of the week and often I find myself sleeping my Friday night away. Normally I would be pissed at myself for falling asleep but by now I’ve recognized that I need that to preserve my energy so I just let it happen. This allows me to wake up relatively on time on Saturdays and start getting stuff done.
Did I mention that I got a new curtain fitted and that my room is dark again at night? Holy moly it has done wonders for my sleep. I can’t even describe the feeling of not waking up the moment the sun rises anymore. I’m lucky that it’s winter and that sunrise is relatively late but still. Not waking up early in the weekends is a blessing and I’ve noticed my sleep improving by leaps and bounds.

What I really wanted to talk about in this post is how fast the progression of the goals I’ve set for myself seems to be going. My Astrologian is just shy of level 69 in FFXIV. I’ve finished my book. My Miner and Botanist are both sitting above level 60. My Paladin is level 103 soon and steadily advancing all her quests aswell. I’m five hours into Xenoblade Chronicles and I’ve been watching some Punisher again. It’s really nice and smooth sailing.
As it stands now I predict my Astrologian to hit level 70 somewhere this week. I’m so close now that I really just want to get it done with. The real question is, what am I going to do afterwards. A part of me wants to keep pushing up new classes but I’m really wondering which ones. I’m obviously going to focus on both Miner and Botanist but if I keep going the way I do they should both be 70 well before the month ends. I want to get the Goddess of Magic title in FFXIV and as such I’m eyeing my Summoner/Scholar already. The class is level 58 and would be a logical choice to level up after I’m done with Astrologian. However I’m also feeling very partial towards Monk right now and I’m pretty sure I can use the diversion from playing healers/ranged to a melee again. Mostly so I can pick up my Ninja easier as well. Another thing that’s been eating at me is the scope that FFXIV has as an MMO. I’m already considering what I want to do when I get tired of leveling and gearing. There is so much to do in this game. I’ve barely touched Gathering and Crafting as it stands. There is the Chocobo racing, the card game and the Pokémon wannabe minion battles. A part of me wants to dabble in all of it and a part of me warns me that I don’t really have the time. It’s a struggle and one I want to put off untill next year. I mean, I’ve kept my December goals to a minimum for a reason.

In WoW I’ve been spending the time I have on my Paladin. I’m noticing that after an hour or so of playing I tend to get restless and shut down. I’m not forcing myself to do anything anymore and an hour of play is fine for me. Obviously it slows my whole level proces down but it’s surprising how much you can get done in an hour. I’ve picked up the quest to get the Protection Artifact weapon and I’m planning to go do it the moment I unlock Halls of Valor in Stormheim. Having to queue for dungeons as DPS is really shitty and I enjoy playing Prot Paladin so there’s that. I remember doing the quest on my Draenei and I remember it being a huge pain in the butt so I’m curious to see how well I fare on my Bloodelf. I should also do the quest for my Holy weapon but it’s not really on my radar yet… Even though it is a barrier that must be overcome if I want to advance in my Class Hall quests.

I’m also noticing that I’m much happier just doing my own thing and not being constantly asked to do stuff by guildies. I’m having a real “einzelgänger” phase now and I just want to be left to my own devices when I’m online. I guess in a way it’s lucky than that I’ve not pledged myself to any groups outside of my FFXIV raidgroup. Maybe this is also why I can finally enjoy some single player games again. No one bothers you when playing them and I can get really submerged, even if it’s only for an hour or so. This has made it much easier to sink some time into Xenoblade Chronicles. I know I’m still only 5 hours in but I’m really enjoying myself. The system is a bit complicated and the quests are hard, after dying 3 times I realized that I probably should makes some more way in the mainstory before I could complete a certain sidequest, but the entire game so far has been amazing. I love JRPG’s and I feel like I can finally sink my teeth into one and finish it.

Another reason for me to sink my teeth into games that I have is that I’m finally making preparations to move out of my Dad’s house. I got a call from a real estate agent about one of the projects I entered. Apparently someone fell through on financing their appartment and I was next on the list. I’m meeting with them next Thursday and then I can start getting my own finances in order. It’s a project that is due somewhere in 2019 so I’ll have an entire year to get the stuff I need for moving. This also means that I have to take a look at my current expenses and start cutting where I need to cut. On the gaming front it’s no more new games. I’m quitting my gym membership (seeing as I’m not going anyway) and no longer have to pay for University as I’ve finally graduated. This leaves me with my travel costs to work, phone bill, the monthly pay I make to my dad and my two MMO subs. All those costs come down to about €300 a month. I’ve reserved about €100 more for work lunches/other foods so that leaves me with about €1200 a month I can deposit into my savings account for my house. I have a big expense in January seeing as I am going to replace my PC (it’s just not working for games anymore) but other than that I should be fine saving up a storm. I’m really excited about this and feel in no way sad that I have to stop impulse buying things. I have everything I need and if I have to play all the games I own back to back I’m pretty sure that would satisfy me for a year anyway.

So yeah. There’s lots of things I’m working on and looking forward to. I really hope I can keep up my motivation to get both my real life and gaming goals done. Untill then I’ll update my blog regularly with news from my gaming adventures and probably also news about my first very own home.

Some progress to report

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Loading screen Paladin Class Hall

As I write this post I’m feeling much better than I did before. I finally have Thursday off again and the stress of work has left me completely. There’s still some things that need addressing on that front but for now I’m enjoying my free time and working on some of the goals I’ve set for myself at the start of this month. On a side note, it’s really unbelievable that it’s already December. 2017 has flown by and I’ll be happy to go into 2018 with a clean slate.

So what I wanted to talk about.
I’ve been making steady progress on my Paladin. I’ve landed in Legion and did the first few of my Class hall quests and started off in Stormheim as my first zone of the expansion. The choice to dive into Stormheim first basically came down to two factors. Overall it was probably my least favourite zone to navigate without flying mount and I want to get it out of the way as quickly as possible so it made sense to tackle it first. Secondly I’ve never done this zone from Horde perspective and I was really curious how the whole Sylvanas/Greymane story looks like from the other side, so there’s that. By the time of writing this post I’ve made my way to level 102, gone through the Exodar scenario and am neck deep into my Class hall lore. I have to admit I’m pleasantly suprised by the Paladin Class hall. The only lore I’ve actually finished has been Warrior, Hunter and Druid (and almost Demon Hunter) and nothing feels as organized and military driven like the Paladin story.  I like that I have Lady Liadrin as follower and seeing all these familiar faces from the past 10 years I’ve been playing WoW. The only character to fall out of theme for me is the Tauren Paladin representative simply because Tauren Paladin are still new to me and I’ve never experienced their lore.

Exodar Scenario

I’m also more fond of my Ashbringer than I realized I would be. I know that in Vanilla it was a thing (especially corrupted Ashbringer) and it’s one of the really fabled weapons in World of Warcraft lore. To me it’s just a really pretty sword and it suits my Bloodelf just fine.
Just as a sidenote, I’m using Retribution mostly to level. I am planning to go Protection for dungeons/mythics/LFR and the like. I’ve always been a Protection Paladin on this character, going so far as to tank Icecrown Citadel and I really enjoy the specialisation moreso than I do Retribution or Holy.
All in all I feel like I’m on schedule in my WoW adventures. If I poke in my head a few hours a week I should be level 110 in no time. Then it’s mostly gearing, making my way through the story and Class Hall stuff and eventually get my awesome Class mount.

Another thing I did today was finish reading “Name of the Wind”. I was pleasantly surprised by the book and found it hard to tear myself away from it’s contents. I’ve been reading a lot during the evenings and on the train and took a few hours today to finish up the last part of it. It’s a really well written book with an extraordinary story. Some things may be a bit annoying to grasp, the currency system still doesn’t make sense to me at all, but it’s a good fantasy novel. It has a form of magic, heroes and villains, and mystical creatures. The choice to bring the story in the form of the lead character telling his own history makes things interesting aswell and I’ve laughed out loud and teared up at some points in the book. All in all it means that it’s terrific to me and I can’t wait to start the second book “The Wiseman’s Fear”. However I didn’t plan on finishing so fast and now I’m a bit stuck with a hole in my planning. I still need to finish watching Punisher though and I’m sure I can use the extra time to make some progress in Xenoblade Chronicles or Pokémon.

As far as FFXIV goes, I’ve been running around on my Astrologian getting her to level 67. Only three levels off the mark now and I’m noticing that I’m mostly fine with taking an hour or two to play and then drift off to something else.  There’s not really much to tell there since the level routine mostly exists of doing my beast tribe dailies and some roulettes. It’s a bit boring and grindy but it’s also a nice distraction when I feel a bit down.

All in all I feel like I’m making some decent progress on the goals I’ve set for myself. I may even expand and do more than I originally planned to do, but we’ll see. Work is still being a major bitch with a lot of free days and people taking the holidays off. I’ll be working extra and even though it earns me some extra money to spend I feel like I can do with all the free time I can get right now to replenish my energy and start working on being healthy again.

Settling

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It’s odd how much peace of mind you can get from finishing something that has been looming over you for literally 3 years now. I feel like I can think again and function again like a normal human being. This allows me to set goals for other stuff easier and plan my days better now that I have no more obligations to anything than work. And ofcourse I leave that behind at 17.00 when I start clearing out my desk to go home.

Right now I feel like the two major MMO’s I’m playing are in maintenance mode for me. In FFXIV we’ve basically stopped raiding except for the weekly savage clear. As group we’re not attempting unending coil simply because we are not going to make it anyway. Part of that is on me because I’m nothing more than an average ninja who, for some reason, fails to perform in raids yet again. It’s probably due to me not playing as much as I should but well, there’s not that much to do in game anyway. When it comes to WoW I’ve ceased raiding after we killed Gul’dan almost a year ago. Right now I don’t feel the need to get back into raiding either so I’ve decided to set some different goals instead and just take things casually. I can see myself focusing on leveling one character of each class over the coming months and go through all the class related lore because that’s what I really enjoy.

This mindset has caused me to start breaking up my week into planned days for certain games. I want to shove FFXIV to Tuesday evenings because it’s reset day there and play WoW on Wednesday because also, reset day. I am probably reserving my Friday nights for Heroes of the Storm and I’ve decided that Mondays are now used for reading and watching series. Obviously if there are raids happening in FFXIV they get precedence. If I can stick to this planning it’s nice to not really have to think about what I want to do each given evening. I tend to get overwhelmed with all the stuff I want to be doing and then just crawl into bed and do nothing… Which isn’t helpful at all. The December goal thing has already given me some guidance, breaking it up into certain evenings only adds to that.

So with my four working days settled I have the weekends and Thursdays to branch into other things. I don’t really want to assign anything to those days either simply because I never know what mood I’m in when I have time off. For instance yesterday I was feeling rather unwell and spent my time in bed for most of the day, thus not really getting anything done. Today has been mostly filled with chores. I find that I have a better start on Mondays when on Sundays I clean out my room. The lack of clutter makes me happy and helps me be more productive overall. Although I did manage to squeeze in som FFXIV time in the morning, finishing off my beast tribe dailies on my Astrologian and making the final push for Miner to hit 60 (yes I can actually already score that goal off!). Other than that I settled down and made a good start in reading The Name of the Wind.

It does feel odd to set goals for stuff like games that should be used for relaxation. But with so many games coming out these days and MMO’s taking up a lot of time it’s nice to just have something to aim towards and enjoy the process in doing so.

What I’m going to do for the rest of the day is unsure. I could throw in a load of laundry and I should probably put some stuff back on the attic but I’m feeling a bit lazy and unwilling to do to much in the way of chores. With vacuuming, dusting and putting away all the junk in my room I’ve done enough for today. All I know is that whatever it is I pick to do will be a nice relaxing experience and something that’s not riddled with “but I should be doing something else”.

Still in Eorzea

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Seeing as I’m having a mellow day today, I didn’t fall asleep untill 4 am last night, I figured I’d talk abit about my progress in FFXIV and how much hype I have for the stuff announced at Blizzcon.

So first up: FFXIV
I’m still firmly planted in Eorzea for the time being. My static has the Savage content on farm and we may be looking at doing Unending Coil, although the mere thought of having to go in there is already giving me anxiety. Not because I don’t think I can do it, but more because I’m worried it might kill my static alltogether… Although this is something for a different blog post.
When Stormblood launched I had set the goal of getting every possible class up to 70. I’ve never had everything max level before and I don’t plan to quit for most of the expansion like I did in Heavensward so here I am on the leveling bandwagon. With the addition of the Alliance Raid roulette and the new Kojin beast tribes it’s actually not very complicated at all to level your battle classes up these days. Especially when you’re focusing on your healers and tanks that get instant queues for everything… I’m pretty sure I can get a character from 60 to 70 every 2 weeks or so. So far I’ve brought up my Ninja, Bard, Red Mage and White Mage and my Astrologian is currently sitting on level 66. I’m really enjoying healing again and just casually running stuff as healer somehow feels very relaxing compared to doing it on a DPS. I really want to get the “Goddess of” titles and seeing as I only have Summoner/Scholar and Black Mage left after I finish leveling Astrologian I will probably go for the “Goddess of Magic” title first. After that I’ll have to see. I’m really enjoying Monk again so I may just want to pick that up, even if it means having to spam Palace of the Dead to get to level 60 first. The only downside to leveling DPS is that queues for roulettes are quite a bit longer than for healers and tanks but I can live with it.

Yesterday I also decided to start working on atleast my gathering classes again. My Botanist is currently sitting on level 58 and my Miner is level 56. The goal is to get both of them to 60 atleast over the coming two weeks and then hopefully do the final push to 70. Even though it’s quite tedious to level these gatherers, especially when you go the Levequest route as I am doing, it’s nice for when you feel hungover and don’t really want to think about playing much. It’s relaxing and you can just stop and take a break and do something else for a bit and come back and do the next Levequest without worrying if you might miss out on a queue pop or anything else. After I get my Miner and Botanist to 70 I may want to look into some crafting classes but I’m not sure yet how I’m going to tackle those. The majority are still below level 30 and spamming leves isn’t my favourite part of the game. But if I want to get into the crafting game I need to bite the bullet at some point… So we’ll see how it goes.

WoW BfA logo

Now to the second part of my post: the future of World of Warcraft.
I have to honestly say that I wasn’t very thrilled about Blizzcon this year. My interest in WoW has been waning for a while and I’ve not been subbed for a long time. I returned for 2-3 weeks to see the Argus content but after that I drifted back to FFXIV again with no real intent to return. After seeing the announcement for a new expansion, and the vanilla servers, I can’t say I feel motivated to return anytime soon. I think ideally I’d want to return at some point just to see Legion through to it’s end. I’m still a sucker for WoW lore and I do want to know how stuff ends so I will probably purchase atleast one month of playtime at some point to live through the final moments. After that I don’t really know. I’m not a proud player on any faction although I heavily favour Alliance and the whole Alliance vs Horde story doesn’t appeal to me much. The only thing I am quite pissed about is that they’re destroying Teldrassil. Night Elves are by far my favourite race and they better come up with a damned good incentive to why this happens.
As for the vanilla servers. I never played true vanilla WoW and I don’t think I could go back to something that has been dubbed a “grindfest” time and time again by the people who did play in that era. I feel like the nostalgia pull is very strong but only for the people who actually played back then and even then I think some caution is adviced. All the QoL stuff that we’re used to won’t be around there and I think that’s a harder pill to swallow for many people than they realize right now. If anything I’m staying away from the vanilla server alltogether unless they end up making it a sort of progress server after a while. I would like to live through the different expansions again, but for now I’m not hyped.

All in all this has pushed me even deeper into playing FFXIV, even though I can feel the burnout slowly coming there aswell. I need to start playing some other games because spending all my time in an MMO has proven to be bad for me before and I don’t want to quit and not come back for a year again. I am planning to start playing Horizon Zero Dawn, even though I’ve been saying this for a few days now, just to break up the leveling grind in FFXIV. Another game I want to play is Xenoblade Chronicles on my 3DS. This is mostly due to XC 2 coming out in less than a month and I do plan on picking that up at some point… It would be nice if I atleast knew what the story and setting is about before I commit myself to the sequel of a game that I’ve never finished in the first place.
Then there’s Pokémon Ultrasun coming out next week and I’m definitely picking that one up aswell. Luckily I don’t have to invest that much time into Mario anymore, now that it’s just the grind to get all moons and coins, which leaves me with an “open slot” for atleast one single player game. I just really need to learn to plan my time to accomodate all of this!

It’s… March?

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Wow. I’ve been bad with gaming this February.
I’ve put so many goals on my list and I’ve only managed to knock off three, in a game I actually wanted to play less. Go figure. It doesn’t really help that I was effectively knocked out with the flu the last week of February so that took a lot of time away from gaming aswell. Trying to get anything done with a fever is almost impossible. I’ve not raided in WoW since I’ve gotten ill either. I just feel terrible when I try to focus on a screen for longer than 45 mins at a time. Still I’ve dusted off the blog a bit to talk about what I did do last month and what my plans are for March.

First off:

  • Get my Arms artifact to 35
  • Work through the Illidan quesline
  • Work through the Artifact questline

I’ve been busy in World of Warcraft. All the goals I’ve set for this game have been met and then some. I finally got the “Balance of Power” achievement meaning I have now unlocked 3 out of 5 possible skins for my Fury Artifact weapon (I have 4 out of 5 for Arms thanks to the hidden appearance). The only ones I can still get are the PvP appearance and the hidden appearance. Seeing as I’m not a big fan of PvP I don’t see that one coming anytime soon and the hidden appearance requires me to grind Halls of Valor in hopes of a drop from God King Skovald.. Something I’ve not yet been able to motivate myself to do.
I’ve also leveled my druid to level 110 and am currently working on finishing the class campaign so I can unlock my 3rd relic slot on her. I’m happy to have a max level healer again and I do plan on playing her for Mythic+ content, but for now I’m slowly tackling content. I’ve yet to finish all quests in Highmountain and I’ve not even looked at Suramar yet so enough to do there! I have reached ilvl 815 so far so I hope to be slowly able to build that up to a level where I can start running some LFR and higher Mythic+ content. I guess we’ll see.

As for the rest of my February goals… They’ve all failed. I have not been spending much time on FFXIV at all, only really leveling my Dark Knight a bit (she’s level 35 as we speak!) and picking up the rewards from the fanfest stream that I bought. I’m not that enchanted with the High Summoner attire, but that can also be due to low resolution on my PC. I used my Au’Ra to model since I just happened to log in on her to pick up the pieces to begin with.

Looking Ahead

Looking ahead to March I’m unsure how much gaming time I can actually get in. I’m still feeling rather unwell and there are a lot of things happening this month. My free days aren’t actually that “free” so most of my gaming will happen during the limited free time I do have and during the evenings after work.
That being said I’m shoving aside FFXIV and any other game but WoW for raids after March 17th since that is my birthday and I’ll be getting The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as a gift (the WiiU version). I’m really excited about this since it looks to be a very awesome game. Especially since it’s a gift from my dad and I’ve not gotten a game from him since childhood I really want to make this special and enjoy it to it’s fullest. I do realize it’s a huge open world game and it will take me a lot of hours to actually complete it. Nonetheless I want to play it as much as possible.

Other than that I don’t really want to make goals for this month mostly due to being too busy to actually get major stuff done. I might put some effort into leveling some more alts in FFXIV and probably gearing my Druid in WoW but that’s it really.
I do hope to write a bit more on the blog, especially when I receive Zelda, but I can’t promise anything.

Druid Shenanigans and Destiny Time

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I’ve been searching as to what I want to do with my free time lately. I’ve been watching the Good Wife religiously next to going to the gym four times a week. This means that my Tuesday and Wednesday evenings are taken, as are my weekend mornings. I tend to not really feel the need to game during those weekdays, so I either play some Mario on my 3DS or just lay in bed watching Netflix untill it’s time for me to sleep.

Mondays and Thursdays are my regular raid nights for the moment. We’ve been pushing through heroic Nighthold and are close to downing our fourth boss: Krosus. I’m kind of getting the hang of Fury properly now, especially on single target fights. I do however need to improve on add fights, but that’s something I want to tackle later on. I’m done with my Arms weapon for now, after having reached rank 35 and I’m not really interested in persuing any additional points in my Prot weapon either so I can finally devote all my AP to Fury again. I’m currently on Artifact rank 39 so I still have some way to go. I guess not participating in that much Mythic+ content or pugging stuff seriously hampers your AP gains, but well. I kind of decided that I don’t want to make that big of an effort.
In the meantime I felt that familiar itch that something was missing. I have always had a max level healing character throughout every expansion, mostly it’s been my priest, but I don’t really enjoy playing Holy right now so I’ve looked around to other classes. Mistweaver Monk is quite a pain to learn. It’s completely different from any other healing specialization I’ve played and seeing as she’s Horde on top of that I quickly dropped that option. Not enjoying Shaman healing in general and not really knowing if Holy Paladin would be a viable option for just running Mythic+ content I decided to transfer over my little Druid and level her instead. I’ve always enjoyed playing Resto and the playstyle itself hasn’t changed significantly over the years, which is a plus. When I transferred her over on Friday she was level 91 and yesterday night I dinged 100 by just casually going through content. I picked up the Resto artifact first so I can start filling that up and taking a leisurely pace to 110. I enjoy healing again so I hope to get her to 110 in the not too distant future so I can tackle some content on her. We are really lacking healers for our Mythic+ runs so it’s going to be nice to be able to fill that slot. As long as I’m having fun doing it.

The Iron has Risen
I’ve been doubting to get back into Destiny for a while now. I know Destiny 2 is coming and I feel like I need to “finish” up the first game atleast before it comes out. So after a bit of a hassle I was able to buy the Rise of Iron expansion and reinstalled the game on my PS4. I had gotten a level boost with the xpac which I used on my Hunter. I’ve played Warlock throughout most of the game, but I feel like it’s time for something fresh. I used the previous level boost on a Titan (the one that came with Taken King) so Hunter was really the only character I hadn’t levelled yet. So with that I want to start the game anew, with a fresh character and a fresh outlook. Hunter time it is.
I’m not really sure where to start and I’m not really sure how much time I can devote to Destiny as a whole, but I do want to experience this latest expansion and all the things that have changed since the last time I’ve played the game. With the Rise of Iron book though I atleast have some goals to work towards. And I had a nice exotic helm at the ready for my Hunter so I’m all ready for that progress to max light level, while also finishing up the many questchains I still have left.

January Wrap Up and February Goals

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We’ve entered February so I thought it was time to look back at January and see what I’m happy with and what I need to improve.
I’ve had a few odd weeks where I’m trying to fit my life around a new schedule. I’ve been going to the gym 4-5 times a week and it has been heavily impacting my time spent behind the PC or any gaming device really. I don’t really mind that much because I find my health to be more important than the games I play, but it’s gotten me into a bit of an awkward position where I really have to plan everything I intend to do. On top of that I’ve been having some issues surrounding finishing up my master’s degree. Things have gotten a bit complicated and I am forced to redo a part of my thesis again thus delaying my graduation. I’m working hard on this though, but it means even less time to devote to games in general.

Now let’s look at my gaming goals for January:

FFXIV

  • Gear up AST with Lore gear
  • Level MCH to 60
  • Gear up NIN with Scripture gear
  • Do the Heavensturn event on Sandrian and Sarella
  • Work on Ninja relic

I’ve gotten a few of my FFXIV goals done. I managed to gear up my Astrologian really fast and she’s now sitting on 232 ilvl. I did the Heavensturn event on both my characters so that’s nice and I’ve managed to get 3 parts of scripture gear for my Ninja aswell as the first 10 Umbrites needed for the relic. All in all some decent progress. Unfortunately my Machinist is stuck on level 57. A loss of game time combined with a lot of real life obligations meant I couldn’t spend as much time on FFXIV as I would have liked.

WoW

  • Level up Arms Artifact weapon to level 34 on Warrior
  • Max out Fury Artifact weapon on Warrior
  • Max out MM Artifact weapon on Hunter

Unfortunately only one goal that I have been able to cross off. I’m really close though with my Arms artifact sitting at rank 32. My MM hunter artifact is rank 35 and I think I kind of want to stop it there. I’m happy with the 5% extra damage that it gives me but I think I want to focus on bringing up Beast Mastery now since it’s gotten a lot of love and seems to be doing better damage wise. As far as my Fury artifact goes, it’s almost rank 39. Again RL hindrances have kept me from playing so I’ve not really been grinding AP.

Other Games

  • Finish Pokémon Moon

To put it blunt: I’ve not played Pokémon at all this month. I just couldn’t put myself to playing it. I’m unsure why, maybe it’s because I’m a little bit burnt out with everything that’s going on that I just can’t seem to find the time to play an RPG. I did however make my way through the first regular 8 worlds of Super Mario 3D Land and have found myself really enjoying the game so I might switch my focus to finishing off that one. I’m currently at Special 3 and I’ve only missed 2 coins in all the levels so far, which isn’t too shabby.

Now.
Looking ahead to February there is a few game related things that I still want to do.

In FFXIV

  • Work on Ninja relic
  • Gear up Ninja with Scripture, Dun Scaithe and possibly Alexander gear
  • Clear Alexander normal
  • Kill Sephirot, Sophia and Zurvan (all non-extreme)
  • Level MCH to 60
  • Level MNK to 50
  • Level DRK to 50

I will still keep on working on gearing up my Ninja and her relic so I will devote all my Loretomes to that. I have a sufficiently geared offclass in my AST now that I can switch to if I want faster queues or if I want to play a different class. Next to that I can run Dun Scaithe for gear plus I want to clear Alexander normal and they drop items that can get me gear aswell. I also want to clear out my questlog and some of the quests remaining are the ones to kill the Warring Triad. I really want to clear them so I will focus on that. I also want to level more classes before Stormblood hits, so I will put Machinist back on the list together with Monk to 50 (I’m 46), DRK to 50 (32) and Warrior to 50 (35). It should be doable if I just focus a bit more time into FFXIV as a whole.

In WoW

  • Get my Arms artifact to 35
  • Work through the Illidan quesline
  • Work through the Artifact questline

I’m really close on my Arms artifact, currently sitting at rank 32 and about 80% to 33, so this should definately be doable. Ontop of that I’ve been slacking on two big questchains that I do really want to finish so I will probably focus on that. Our guild is making their way through Nighthold heroic aswell right now so I will also spend some time theorycrafting and trying to obtain all my BiS items.

Other Games

  • Finish Super Mario 3D Land
  • Get all the coins in Super Mario 3D Land
  • Finish 3rd island in Pokémon Moon

I really want to finish Super Mario 3D Land. The game is really interesting and well made and I hope to be able to get it done by the end of the month. I also want to get all the coins in all the levels which means I will have to go back to atleast two right now. That should be fine though. As for Pokémon. I really feel like I should make some progress in there. However instead of wanting to finish I want to play through another island. It’s a more realistic goal with my current time schedule and maybe I will get hooked again and play more after.

A Decline of Interest

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With patch 7.1.5 dropping yesterday and Nighthold on the horizon I’ve not had such a low point of interest in WoW since the launch of Legion. I’m only logging on to stay up to par for raids with flasks and food and to make sure I get my emissary quests done on my Warrior and that’s it.
Obviously it’s not really helping that Blizzard managed to utterly destroy the only other class I was interested in playing this expansion so far. I’m probably one of many that is joining the outrage of the Hunter community in WoW. I really don’t understand what the devs were thinking with this last round of class “balancing” but next to basically decimating the numbers of all three Hunter speccs they’ve also made Marksmanship totally unplayable. I had issues with the specc since the start of Legion, it’s never been this dull and clunky to play in the almost 10 years I’ve played Warcraft, but this patch is just a slap in the face. Beast Mastery is still a laughable specc. The many issues surrounding Hati have still not been fixed and the DPS, even with all the buffs, is still abyssmal. Don’t even get me started about Survival. I play a Hunter because I like the archer type in games. I don’t feel the need to equip a spear, stab monsters up the ass with it while tracking about 8 skills while doing so, making the specc uneccesarily complicated. No thank you. If it was godly on the DPS meters I would have considered it, but even with all the complications that come with the specc you’re still only pulling bottom tier DPS. Not really something you want to invest your time in.

Speaking of alts. I don’t think I’ve had a worse time with alts than during this expansion. Even though Blizzard has introduced a lot of QoL improvements, especially on the Artifact front, it’s still tedious to level any alt. The Class Hall story, even though interesting, gets old fast. Doing the same zones when leveling constantly gets boring. Oh and don’t get me started on the silly grind that is profession quests. All of this is fun if you do it once or twice. But after the third time you wish professions quests weren’t a thing anymore and you could just go back to buying all the recipes and be done with it. Especially the Alchemy questchain has been a lesson in patience. And I’m still not done with that one.

All in all it just makes me want to log less. Only play one character. And not put any effort into anything else. I’m not sure if there’s other factors at play next to a general loss of interest. Work has been demanding so I prefer to spend my time less on games when I’m off and more on just relaxing. I’ve spent many an hour in bed watching Netflix on my tablet instead of starting up any kind of gaming device and I’ve been perfectly fine with that. But I think logging into the game and just feeling like there’s nothing to do besides running dungeons and trying to fill out my Artifact weapon is turning me off logging into the game at all.

Maybe with the Nighthold release, some actual fresh content, I’ll get my interest back. It’s the first raid with actual tier content. It continues the Suramar story. It’s just something interesting again.
I guess only time will tell.