I’ve been slowly picking away at my dailies in World of Warcraft. Overall I feel like Mechagon is easier than Nazjatar but I’m starting to see some progress on both sides. I’m sitting on 7.6/12k towards getting Revered with the Waveblade Ankoan right now and roughly at 5/12k towards getting Revered with the Rustbolt Resistance. It’s not fast going at all and I don’t do everything I should be doing every day but I’m slowly getting there nonetheless. If I keep this up I may actually unlock flying before Classic launches!
I’ve been really trying to make this grind less painful. It’s just doing the dailies every day plus Worldquests gets really boring fast. Catch up mechanics in WoW suck so bad compared to Final Fantasy XIV that it’s not even funny. When I was actively playing WoW I could log in and play for 30 mins to get my stuff done and log back out. Maybe a bit longer if I wanted to do Looking for Raid or a dungeon or battlefront. Now however I’m spending 1.5 to 2 hours per evening just poking away at quests and it’s just not that fun. I know it’s worth it in the end because it means I will unlock flying for all the characters on my account and I will have a much less painful time leveling alts like my Warrior, who I’ve put off leveling because I want flight. So I know what the cake is at the end of the road but I’m really resenting Blizzard for making the road a viking race where I’m way behind the rest of the group.
Honestly there’s nothing much else to write about. My WoW dailies are on track. I actually fixed my sleep schedule, yay and life goes it’s normal way.
I’m starting to find it increasingly hard to keep writing a blog post daily. Mostly because I’ve come to the point that I simply don’t know what to write about. I know I can turn to other people’s blogs for inspiration, but right now I’m just not in the mood.
I’ve been struggling with the “schedule” I set for myself for during the week. Mostly because I come home and am really tired. Work is slightly soul destroying at the moment and the only thing I want to do when I get home is sit infront of the TV and vegetate or just straight up head to bed. Most of my gaming “plans” are falling through because of this. Logging into Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft seems like a chore, unless I actually sit down and start playing. Then it’s fine. It’s more the whole having to sit down and actually start playing part that is bothering me. I have the same when it comes to single player games. A few months ago I managed to (finally) finish Kingdom Hearts 3. The reason I managed to do it was because I forced myself to just sit down and start playing. The moment I did that I had trouble putting down the controller and would clock in 6-8 hour play sessions at some point because I just wanted to see where the game went. But just sitting down, starting up my Playstation 4 and start playing for some reason just took me so much effort… And I may think I have found the cause (besides the obvious being too tired to want to do anything).
I’ve been stretching myself a bit thin when it comes to gaming and gaming goals. Not only am I trying to actively keep up with two MMO’s right now, WoW and FFXIV, I want to casually get back into Guild Wars 2. I want to play two single player games at the same time and am actually playing a third on my way to and from work (Final Fantasy IV on my modded Gameboy Advance). Not to even start about the shows I’m trying to keep up with and the reading I’m trying to get done. Every time I try to decide what to do I’m kind of overcome with this “decision anxiety”. Because if I do my dailies in WoW I probably won’t have the time to do anything else for the rest of the evening. The same goes with pursuing leveling in FFXIV or GW2. When I pick up FFIV or Spider-Man I won’t get any progress in anywhere else, especially my MMO’s. As you can see I’m going in circles. I do X and then I can’t do Y. It’s why I try to set up goals for myself on a monthly basis and then need to step away from said game. Right now I’m doing this with FFXIV. I’ve gotten my crafters to the level I want. I leveled my Black Mage to 80. I’m not touching any new crafters for the time being. That leaves me with doing ex-roulette five times a week and half an hour of leves on my Botanist/Miner when I get round to it. If I want I can just set aside a day and powerlevel those to 80 in an afternoon, reducing the time I need to spend on FFXIV even more. I’m working hard to get into this mindset, that it’s okay to roulette in and out of games. It’s okay to put things aside once I met my goals for the month.
I guess it’s still a small part of me that struggles with MMO addiction in a way. I kind of envy the people who just play one game and are perfectly happy doing so. At times I curse the day I got introduced to WoW because it’s sucked me in to a gaming genre that just consumes so much time… And it’s caused me to grow my backlog of single player games significantly. I’m still trying to find balance in these things and although I’m much better at it than a few years ago, I still feel like I’m quite far off the mark.
Last weekend a friend asked if people were interested in farming some of the Heavensward primal and raid mounts. I jumped at the chance and said yes because I still miss quite a lot of mounts from that expansion. Other people said they’d come as well and in the end we had a party of 4-5 people to tackle old content with. We did both Alexander part 4 Savage mode and part 12 Savage mode and killed it as often as was needed to get everyone their mounts. This didn’t last that long luckily since for both wings the mount is a guaranteed drop when you kill the boss. There were a few one-shot mechanics that we needed to deal with but once we figured out those it wasn’t to difficult to get some kills in.
Next to the savage Alexander raids we also tackled a few primals and I walked away with the Bismarck ex bird (dropped at the first kill and I was the only one who needed it) and the Sophia ex bird (again dropped on the first kill). We kept farming Sophia and Zurvan ex for mounts for other people but unfortunately nothing else dropped for the evening. All in all I only need two more bird mounts from Heavensward primals now: the Nidhogg ex one and Sephiroth ex. Maybe we will do another farming party later on this week or in the weekend and be a bit more lucky with mount drops from people.
In other news I’ve managed to crank my Culinarian up to level 50 yesterday and I will probably get my Alchemist to level 70 tomorrow after reset. I’m also fully decked out in Eden healing gear for my White Mage so I can start rolling on tokens for caster gear. It feels like I’m getting my goals in Final Fantasy XIV completed much faster than I do in World of Warcraft. I guess because the grind is a bit different and I’ve figured out an optimized route to do most things with. As it stands now I’m going to take a bit of a break from the Ixal daily quests for the coming week and probably only do ex-roulette and some leves to get my Botanist and Miner leveled up. The rest of my evenings will be spent in WoW doing all the dailies to unlock flying.
Speaking of WoW, in about an hour and a half you can start reserving names on the Classic servers… I’m going to roll Alliance on the EU Mirage Raceway server so if you want someone to talk to when Classic hits you can find me there!
When I decided to go back to World of Warcraft somewhere at the end of July I figured I’d sit down for a couple of nights and just grind out the whole flying thing. You see, I’m so used to the Final Fantasy XIV way of doing things that I may have completely forgotten how utterly annoying it is to unlock flying in WoW. I much prefer the system that Square Enix implemented where you sort of organically unlock flying for all the new zones of an expansion as you do the main story. It gives you access to easier travel way earlier on and makes things like Hunts, FATE farms and the like much more beareable.
Cue Blizzard and their approach to unlocking flying. As they’ve done since the Warlords of Draenor expansion flying is tied to achievements. Before that you just had to obtain enough gold to buy flying from a vendor. Now it’s tied to a grind that comes naturally as you keep on playing the game, especially the achievement part, but can be quite frustrating when you are a returning player. I was lucky that I finished off the first part of the achievement pretty early on after expansion launch so I just have to focus on the two new zones now, but I don’t want to think about what a nightmare it would be if I still had to grind out starting Battle for Azeroth reps on top of the new ones. I would drive me quite insane I imagine.
So far I’ve managed to more or less keep up with doing dailies in both Mechagon aswell as Nazjatar. I find Mechagon to be a bit more doable due to it being a smaller surface plus, if you’re lucky, you can pick up a jetpack on certain days that allows you to fly for 20 minutes at a time. This is huge to someone who hasn’t unlocked flying yet because it means I don’t have to pull half the island to get to something and instead can just fly over it. Unfortunately Nazjatar doesn’t have something similar but I have unlocked all the flying points there, allowing me to cross from one end to the other end of the zone pretty “fast”. Still it’s pretty annoying to have to cross all of it on a ground mount. As Rogue I can dismount and stealth past a lot of the mobs but that slows me down even more.
Nevertheless according to my calculations I should be hitting the flying unlock right before WoW Classic goes live. You get around 1-1.5k reputation per day per faction if you do all the dailies and world quests. I need 11k untill I’m Revered with the Ankoan Waveblade and about 17k untill I hit the same with the Rustbolt Resistance of Mechagon. If I manage to find time to do the dailies every day, without it hampering too much time for other games, it will take me a maximum of 17 days to get flying unlocked. Obviously I hope that it will be sooner than that, especially since the Ankoan are on the roulette for WQ completion bonus, which in itself nets 1.5k rep alone. Plus if I can drop having to do dailies in Nazjatar and only have Mechagon left it’s much less time spent so there’s that. All in all I’m still on track to unlock flying before Classic so here’s keeping my fingers crossed!
As I’m easing back into WoW the two new zones, Nazjatar and Mechagon, kind of highlight the major difference with endgame grinding in WoW and FFXIV for me. As we all know FFXIV endgame is based on running dungeons for tomes, raiding and ex-primals. This is all group content. Once you’ve played through the Mainstory and completed all the sidequests you’re basically out of quests to do. Of course there’s the challenge log which I kind of count as “weekly quests” and of course we have daily quests in the form of beast tribe dailies but most of the endgame stuff revolves around group content. I’m not going to tackle crafting and gathering here as I feel those systems are so resoundingly different in both games that they deserve their own post.
In WoW however a lot of “endgame” content revolves around doing quests. Nazjatar and Mechagon emphasize this even more than usual. To unlock flying and to move through the story you’re required to do a ton of questing. This involves one time quests that advance plot points, world quests that were newly introduced in Legion that give you items and rep with factions to now a ton of daily quests to again advance your reputation and level up your companions. Dungeons are fun to do and WoW has it’s own challenges in the form of Mythic+ dungeons and high end raiding where, on both occasions, you pray for a piece of loot to drop. Therefore you’re reliant on way more sources to gear up and tackle more difficult content than just running dungeons over and over. Also when it comes to unlocking features like flying you’re basically confined to doing dailies and world quests otherwise you will never get the reputation needed to unlock this among other things (like recipes and items).
A lot of people don’t like this questing to progress. Especially people who are more into raiding than anything feel like that being forced to do this many quests to unlock stuff is a damper on their fun. Personally I can see the positives in tieing progress to more solo oriented and quest content as opposed to raiding and running dungeons. It gives people like me time to sit down, unwind and do stuff on my own pace that doesn’t necessarily need the involvement of other people. I don’t mind doing quests. I just sit down and get into the zone and grind away.
Conversely I also don’t mind the current endgame progress in FFXIV. I do my ex-roulette every day untill I’m capped on the newest tomestones. I do the 8-man raid so I can get gear upgrades on normal mode and when I feel like a challenge I will pug an ex-Primal or, when I’m feeling exceptionally well, a Savage raid. I don’t mind having to group up with other people to get stuff done and in the FFXIV community I’m much happier to be running dungeons than everywhere else. Usually people are quiet outside of saying “hi” and we have a fast and efficient run. Sometimes you get more talkative people. Sometimes you get a bad player. But overall the FFXIV dungeon and raid (non Savage content) experience is quite relaxed and doesn’t feel like a chore at all.
All of this has put me in an interesting decision state. Do I want to kick back in WoW with some quests and minimal social interaction as I work towards my personal goals? Or do I pick up my controller, nestle on my couch and start up FFXIV and embrace the social experience as I queue up for various dungeons, trials and even raids? It all depends on my mood and what goal I want to attain. Both have their pro’s and cons. Both represent a grind in some form. And I’m perfectly happy with the difference that’s there.
As stated in my Gaming Goals post from August 1st I want to get back into WoW and work my way through Nazjatar and Mechagon and unlock flying. Like Syp over at Bio Break I’ve been on a hiatus from the game, although not quite as long as he has been. I think the last time I’ve actively played was when I was still living with my Dad and right before I moved so that would be the end of March. I’ve touched the game briefly here and then after that but nothing that really warrants the label of a fulltime return to form. Now that the FFXIV expansion hype has slightly died down and I’m settling back in a less time consuming routine there I can devote my time to WoW again, among other games.
I had already cleared my questlog and dove into the first tiny bit of Nazjatar earlier but yesterday I sat down and played the zone, and Mechagon, in earnest for about two hours. In that time I discovered the dailies/world quests system that make up these zones and was I reminded that I would need to put in a bit of work if I want to unlock flying in earnest. The whole idea of having a buddy in Nazjatar is nice and I’m happy that I’ve immediatly gone and explored the entire zone since it rewarded me with various flight points that I can take as shortcut to get stuff done. I think the zone itself is nice and I can’t wait to advance in the story and work my way up to the inevitable raid. I also really like the Benthic gear system and how it allows me to catch up gear and itemlevel wise to other players. My Rogue, who I’ve picked to take through these zones, was hopelessly behind on gear but with the Benthic gear I already managed to drag my itemlevel up to 370. Not anywhere near the current “good” itemlevel but it’s a start at least.
Thematically I enjoy both Nazjatar and Mechagon, although I enjoy Nazjatar a bit more. The elven ruins littered here and there and all the outlandish underwater creatures mixed in with the overwhelming naga presence really sets a good atmosphere. The part where there are still elven ghosts has an amazing soundtrack. Everything really sets the stage for whatever big thing Aszhara has planned and I love it. I’m happy it’s not a truly underwater zone, like the Vashj’ir experiment back in Cataclysm, but I do think that Blizzard kind of missed an opportunity for some underwater content.. Maybe in the way that FFXIV has succeeded, but only with the ability to fight underwater. A girl can dream right?
I’m still settling into all the new stuff they’ve added, like the overhauled Heart of Azeroth system and both the new zones aswell as just getting reacquainted with playing WoW in general. I need to get used to my keybindings again after playing almost exclusively on a controller for the past month, aswell as the combat system and my UI. I also need to remind myself that the looting system is different and the community is very different from FFXIV and I have way more casual goals here than I do in FFXIV. I’m not really scared that I will get sucked back in again seeing as I have no active raiding group and none of my friends really play anymore so my ties to WoW have gotten significantly weaker compared to a few years ago. The real big elephant in the room is that I hope to have my flying and all content done before Classic WoW launches towards the end of the month. I really want to peek my head in there, I will probably roll a Human Warlock, and I’m sure that I won’t have the “stamina” to play both Classic as modern WoW at the same time. This sets me on a bit of a timer to get stuff done so once my Black Mage dings level 80 tonight I will probably dial down on the playtime in FFXIV and up my playtime in WoW at the same time so I can get done what I want on time. I’ll keep you all posted how that works out.
So we’ve finally made it to what is offically the first day of Blaugust this year! July has been a bit of a wild ride for me with time off, Shadowbringers launch and hosting a friend for a week. It’s the reason why I didn’t really want to tie down on a “goals for the month” post. However August should be calmer and thus I feel like I can actually devote some time to setting goals for the month.
MMO Goals
Cap weekly on the new tomestones in FFXIV and get healing gear upgrades
Level my Black Mage to 80. Level my Red Mage to 80
Level my Alchemist to 70. Level my Culinarian to 50. Level my Botanist and Miner to 80
Poke away at the ARR Relic chain for the White Mage weapon. I really want more transmog options… I’m currently at the Atma step.
Play through Nazjatar and Mechagon content in WoW and unlock flying
Play some GW2
Non-MMO Goals
Play through and write about FFVIII, not necessarily finish it though
Play through and write about Spider-man on the PS4
So as you can see for August my main focus will still be on FFXIV and getting stuff done there. Otherwise I want to put some time in the new WoW content and some time in general playing Guild Wars 2. Finally I already announced I wanted to be playing FFVIII and Spider-man so I will be doing just that. I’m hoping to finish Spider-man this month, I’m not aiming to finish FFVIII but I do want to make some decent progress.
All in all I think all the goals I’ve set are doable, I just need to be smart with planning my game time to achieve all of them.
Today the first day of the Blaugust schedule started and we are calling it prep week. I know it’s not officially August yet but nonetheless it can’t hurt to start a few days in advance laying out what I’m planning to do for Blaugust exactly. Writing a blog post every day isn’t necessarily as easy as it may sound, especially when you don’t have a variety of topics to write about. So today I’m going to talk a little bit about how I want to tackle the every day blog posting and what kind of posts you can expect from me over the coming five weeks.
FFXIV progress posts. This will probably still be my main game over the coming weeks. With the new tomestones out on Tuesday and me wanting to atleast attempt to do some Savage content next to leveling up my jobs I will probably have enough to write about for a decent amount of posts. Most will probably be just a quick insight of where I’m standing at the moment progress wise but I may write about a questline or encounter here and there that I feel needs some spotlight.
WoW/GW2 posts. Now that I’m wanting to dedicate less time to FFXIV I can dedicate a bit more time to the other two MMO’s that I have installed on my PC. In WoW I’m mostly planning to explore the 8.2 content and earn flying aswell as catch up to the raid content that I’ve missed so far. In GW2 I want to continue leveling my Elementalist and hopefully push past the level 25-30 barrier that most of my characters seem to end up stuck on and hopefully be able to turn the adventures there into some entertaining posts about how much I suck at this game.
FFVIII and Spiderman posts. As I mentioned before I intend to play through FFVIII. I’ve never finished a mainstream Final Fantasy game and so I figured it was time to pick one at random and just work my way through it. Apparently I picked the one with the most convoluted battle mechanics out there but I’ll make it work. I’ll be taking notes and screenshots as I play through the game so I can make more indepth posts about the story, how far I am and what my opinions of the game are so far. I intend to do the same for Spiderman on the PS4, although that is a much shorter game so I’m probably not going to post about that one a lot.
General topics. I have a few gaming and non gaming related topics that I want to talk about aswell. I’ve taken the habit of writing my ideas down and then sitting down at a later moment to turn them into proper posts.
Next to topics I’m also working on a “posting schedule” so that I can sit down and write a blog post around the same time every day. I’ve also taken note of days where I won’t be able to post on my scheduled time or at all so I need to make sure I have a few extra posts lined up to post during that time. The big problem that I’m facing with here is that I’m horrible at sticking to schedules. Something I’ve been struggling with for a big part of my life and something that I’ve been meaning to change forever. So I’m using the Blaugust opportunity to do so and create some new, healthier, habits for myself so my days will maybe go a bit smoother and more enjoyable than they are going now.
All in all I feel like I’m more prepped this year to participate and succeed in posting every day than I have been in previous years, so let’s aim to make it work!
I really wish I could spend post after post telling everyone how happy I am with my own home and how I’m finally feeling like I can live my own life after living with my dad for so long. I’m truly settled in now and I’m slowly getting into new habits now that I have to do everything by myself. So far things are working out nicely. My house is tidy and clean, I try to not leave stuff lying around and I make sure I get all my chores done. My fridge and cabinets are stocked with food and drinks and I always am prepared for guests coming over. It’s nice having the freedom to decide when to come home and having the freedom to be able to write this blog post and watch football on a proper tv at the same time.
All in all I notice that I’m much happier now than I’ve been in a long time. I feel better mentally, I have less stress and I feel less depressed as a result. Not having to live with people that annoy me is helping me so much I can hardly believe how I managed to hold on for such a long time. The only thing I need to start working on for real now is my physical wellbeing. I need to lose weight, I need to start taking care of my teeth better and I need to get a healthier eating pattern. The one thing I am quite pleased with is how I’m handling my skin and keeping it clean and moisturized. I basically don’t have any flaws anymore in my face and it shows. No more pimples means a super confident me.
Anyway, enough about my personal life, I’m also here to talk about me settling into my trusted MMO’s again. I’ve been playing FFXIV throughout the time I was PC less because I have the game on PS4 aswell so it was my go-to MMO for the past few weeks. It’s helped me make a ton of progress there when it comes to leveling my crafters and getting other stuff done. I’ve picked up doing deliveries again and that has netted me the 350 Weaver main hand weapon and the 330 offhand. I’m working on getting the same for my Carpenter now as that is my only other max level crafter at the moment. My Goldsmith hit 53 yesterday and my Alchemist is sitting at level 34. I have pre-ordered Shadowbringers and I’m in a free company with people that are nice enough, that don’t require me to be very social with them when I don’t want to be. I’m plotting my own course and I don’t see myself committing to any raid or dungeon groups for the time being.
In WoW I’m settling in to playing my Mage again. I’m going through all of the quests that I’ve not completed yet on her and I want to start running LFR aswell, seeing as I still haven’t done the Zuldazar raid. It would be nice to get that done before Nazjatar is launched so I can go into that fully updated on the story so far. I think I also want to start leveling my Void Elf Hunter again and get her out of Outlands and into Mists of Pandaria. I did Cataclysm on the last character I leveled so going to switch it up and go to Mists again for this one. I don’t have a specific goal in mind for her, I just want to get an hour of gameplay in here and there, get settled on playing the Hunter again and slowly push her up to 110 to get the Heritage armour.
The final MMO I’m settling into again is Guild Wars 2, as said in the last post. I made an elementalist because I honestly don’t know where I am story wise on any of my other characters. She’s a Norn, which in my opinion is the best race in the game, and currently sitting at level 7 as I am making my way through the Wayfarer Foothills. Here I’m not really aiming for anything either. I’m just doing the hearts, discovering the points of interest and vistas and try to 100% the zone in general before I move on to the next one. I know that at level 10 I can start playing through my personal story so for now the goal is to get to that and move on from there. I’m not really aiming to get into crafting or gathering just yet. For now I just want to quest and level up and stick my nose into zones and dungeons that I haven’t done yet.
I hope I can settle into a nice MMO routine where I get to play all three and make progress in all three. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that yet and it’s probably something that ties in to my mood. I notice that when I feel a bit down I tend to turn to WoW because it’s like comfort food to me. FFXIV is my MMO of choice and I play that the most and GW2 is when I’m bored with both and need something else to play entirely.
As usual I’ll keep you updated. For now though I’m going to watch the ending of the football game and then head to my very comfortable and big bed.
After waiting on my table for 10 weeks it finally got delivered last monday. This means that I now have a proper place to eat aswell as having a desk for my pc. As I was setting up my PC I realized that I didn’t have a network card installed that could handle WiFi. Seeing as how I really wanted to use my computer as soon as possible I ordered a WiFi adapter and had it delivered yesterday. At first it seemed to work fine but once I logged into World of Warcraft to play around a bit I noticed that I was getting frequent disconnects. At first I thought it was the adapter itself losing connection but then it seemed that my USB port was intermittently cutting power to the thing, thus causing my internet to disconnect.
After poking around a bit I realized my front facing USB ports seem to be the culprits. I’ve since moved the adapter to the back of my PC and it seems that has fixed the problem for now. I’ve not had a disconnect since so let’s hope that it will be working flawlessly for now.
Eventually I will probably get an onboard WiFi internet card but in the meantime this adapter will have to do.
What this all does mean however is the fact that I have my PC back in action and thus I can get back into Azeroth, something I immediatly did as you can see in the picture above. Unfortunately I seem to not be one of the lucky people to get access to the Classic beta so the goal of me playing a bit of it this month will probably go out of the window, unless I find an invite in the mail somewhere in the coming weeks.
It feels nice to be back and picking up my characters again. For now I’m going to focus on the Mage and getting her up to speed with all the new raids and other content. It’s really funny how, after almost 12 years, I feel like I’ve come full circle playing Mage now. It was the very first character I created when I got my hands on WoW and even though I found it to be extremely squishy, I always really enjoyed Mage throughout the time that WoW has been around. I’ll probably forego rolling one once Classic is out, I just can’t deal with the Vanilla squish but nonetheless I’m more than happy to play it on the regular servers.
Next to getting back into WoW I’ve also reinstalled Guild Wars 2. I’m not really sure why, I think it’s mostly to do with the morbid curiousity about the game that seems to surface every now and then. When I bought Guild Wars 2 I really enjoyed it for what it was but after a while I started to miss the standard MMO tropes that came with being a WoW player since forever. Not really having the whole tank/healer/dps setup was odd and the lack of dungeons and raids (at the time) was really frustrating aswell. The story was compelling, but just not compelling enough to keep me coming back. Over time I’ve reinstalled the game a few times and even though I would always tell myself that this time I wanted to stick to it longer and level up more I never did.
This time though I’m just gonna dedicate a few hours a week to just playing the game and make some progress towards higher levels. I may even pick up the expansions when I get towards the end of the “vanilla” content, but I’ll have to get there first.
All in all I’m quite content to have my PC back, mostly so I can sit down and use my own keyboard and mouse instead of a silly laptop plus it’s giving me incentive to sit down and blog a bit more again. So expect more posts to come!
