Tag Archives: Gaming

We do a little travelling and gaming

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As the summer is nearing it’s end and the days are starting to grow shorter I realise how fortunate I am to be able to live my life the way I want to. I’ve discovered a passion for travelling and have completely fallen in love with Budapest over the past three years. So much so that I’m actually going there every year and I plan to do that for the forseeable future.
I came back home from Sziget on Monday evening. Last year the festival was an absolute blast, but this year it felt less. There were considerably less acts that were performing, the food was disastrous and the prices of everything went through the roof. I understand we are living in a time where there is a cost of living crisis, but expecting me to pay €15 for a plate of reheated (IN THE MICROWAVE) fries and onion rings is beyond absurd. So I turned my back on the festival for the most part and enjoyed Budapest as city. I climbed up to the Fisherman’s Bastion and the Castle to take in the amazing views of the city from up high. I ate good food and melted away in the city parks because it was 30 degrees Celsius during the day in the shade. I still got to see the acts I wanted, most notably Yungblud and David Guetta, and I managed to turn what was a very disappointing experience into something I could still enjoy.

Next to travelling I’ve also been busy with and in games. For some reason I finally caught the “I want to tackle my backlog” bug and with the release of Final Fantasy 16 I knew I had some epic game times ahead of me, and boy I wasn’t wrong.
In the past 2 months I’ve finished three games and I’m working my way through the fourth and fifth as we speak. I managed to get the platinum trophy in Horizon Zero Dawn and play through the DLC. After that I picked up Final Fantasy 16 and completed the game in a little over three weeks time. No platinum trophy there though because I’m just not up for another playthrough right now. After that I picked up Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart which I finished last week, and platinumed. Finally I’ve started playing Horizon Forbidden West right before I flew out to Hungary and I’ve been playing Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D on my 3DS during my Budapest trip. I’m going to try to platinum Horizon Forbidden West but I don’t know if I want to get all the collectibles in DKCR yet, I guess I’ll see how I feel once I reach the final boss. I’m only in the second world as of right now so I still have most of the game ahead of me.

In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve been raiding with a static for the final raidtier of the expansion again. We have killed P9/10/11S and are currently staring down P12S. I hope we can kill it sooner rather than later but seeing as we’re still in phase 1 of the fight I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon. My Dancer is completely kitted out though and apart from a weapon upgrade and the final tomestone upgrade token I’m completely in best in slot gear. Something I’m actually pretty proud of. I’m also not doing too badly on the DPS rankings, parsing greens and blues when I’m not being a derp and dying and all in all I’m having a good time. I’ve also been steadily working away at leveling all my alt jobs, I just finished Summoner/Scholar to 90, and I’m catching up on some beast tribes that I’ve neglected. Finally I’m pursuing all the relic weapons of this expansion, seeing as how they’ve decided that the only grind there will be is the tomestone grind it’s not as hard as previous expansions.

All in all I feel like I’m in a good space when it comes to spending time on games and finally tackling all the games I’ve purchased over the last 10 years. I’m really enjoying sitting on my couch and playing stuff on my PS5 as well as grinding away in FFXIV for the time being. In a few weeks we will also get a new patch for Disney Dreamlight Valley and of course a new season pass so I will put some time into that as well.

As far as other aspects of my life go… I’m picking up my training routine again after letting it slide for the past few months. I bought a few nice brand jeans on sale and I want to fit them properly so that is the goal for the next month or two. Eventually I want to get down to 65kg, but babysteps. Work is stressful but manageable and I already know when my next holiday will be so that helps to keep my sanity in that department. Hopefully once I get a good work/sports/gaming/social life routine figured out I can tackle more things but for now that is the aim and I hope to be able to do it in the remainder of this year.

The League Project

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

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

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

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

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

2021: A Brighter Future Thanks To Goals

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I guess I’m a bit late to the party, but I would like to talk about my goals for 2021, both on a personal level aswell as gaming related.
I had a bit of time to think about it the past week, seeing as I finally had some time off, and I think I’ve managed to formulate some decent goals to work on. The focus this year will be mostly on personal non-gaming related goals, but as always some gaming has snuck it’s way in because it’s my biggest hobby.

So what do I want to achieve in 2021?
I think the most important overarching goal is get to a better physical and mental health level. Both of those have suffered considerably in 2020 and I don’t think I can sustain how I’m living right now and come out good at the other end. So I’ve set a few goals to help me get back on track. In no particular order they are:

  • Establish a healthy sleeping pattern
  • Exercise every day
  • Work on losing weight, dropping below 70kg is the goal
  • Take better care of myself personally, both inside and out

I was on track with these goals at the start of 2020 but the pandemic threw me back a lot. I’m at my heaviest point right now and I’ve had weeks where I would barely leave my house. It’s been very unhealthy and it’s been causing me both physical and mental issues. As such I really want to take better care of myself. Get myself on a healthy sleep schedule so I’m not exhausted at work every morning and feel like I need hours and hours of sleep once I have a few days off. I’ve noticed that getting some sort of exercise in every day helps with sleeping at night, so I’ve been making an effort to go for a walk every day. Atleast 30 minutes but I’m up to 45-50 most days now. When the weather is bad I’m planning to use my Ring Fit Adventure that I bought on release but barely used. I just need to keep my body moving and this is the perfect way to do it.
Next to exercise I also want to take better care of myself in other aspects. I’ve been very lazy when it comes to some personal hygiene and care and need to fix that. Stuff like picking up flossing again instead of only brushing my teeth. Take better care of my skin. Keep an eye on what I eat, meal plan in advance and stick to it. I’ve been eating way too much junkfood and need to get to cooking more healthy things. No more skipping meals. No more eating breakfast 3 hours after I started working. Just keep a healthy food rhythm going.

Additionally I want to establish/achieve the following:

  • Plan my weeks every week and stick to my planning.
  • Get a cleaning routine going in the weekends
  • Learn to cook more/healthier dishes

Next to not really taking care of myself properly on a personal level I’ve also let my house cleaning slide. I don’t want to say that it’s unliveable here, because it’s really not, but I notice I get lazy and then don’t clean for 2-3 weeks at a time. I let the laundry pile up, and dishes, and I don’t think I’ve cleaned my windows in months. That’s going to change. Sunday is my designated chores day and I’ve made a list of everything that I need to do weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. On Saturday morning I look at my list and plan my chores accordingly for Sunday and actually do them. I started doing this last weekend and I notice that I feel much better once my house is decluttered and cleaned. It also massively helps with my allergies so that’s an extra bonus.
Setting structure in general is going to be important to me, aswell as sticking to said structure. I have a weekly planner that I’ve started using to plan what I do in my weeks outside of work. This covers weekly meal planning, task planning, when to blog, when to call people to make appointments and what games I want to play on which days. It helps me with not just lying down on the couch after work and then doing absolutely nothing but wallow in misery all night. I don’t plan everything into detail but I do write down the things I want to be doing during the evening and try to stick to it. It’s been working so far.

Finally I want to learn to cook more dishes than I currently do. There’s so many things I can experiment with and especially during weekends I have a bit more time to do so. I will probably use that to create some posts on here. Speaking of the blog… I’ve currently planned three days a week for blog posts. I have enough content to write about the coming months, as I will describe in my gaming goals bit, and I just need a steady outlet for the chaos in my head. Right now I have blog posts planned on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Let’s see if I can stick to that shall we?

Of course a goals for 2021 post wouldn’t be complete without writing down gaming goals. This is mainly a gaming blog after all and throughout the pandemic I atleast haven’t stopped playing games so there’s that.

What are my plans for gaming in 2021?

Actually I don’t have that many big plans for gaming in 2021. Or maybe I do, but they’re condensed to less games, making them seem smaller. For now though these are the main things I will be working on gaming wise in 2021:

  • Climb the solo/duo queue ladder in League of Legends. I want to get to atleast Gold tier, but climbing higher is the aim.
  • Keep up with content in Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft
  • Finish atleast one single player game per month

Only three goals. So small and yet so big. I think the most important one for me will be the League of Legends one. I guess some elaboration is needed and that will come in a future post but let’s just say that I’ve been completely sucked back into LoL since last Worlds. I’ve been following two streamers and am active within their communities. On top of that I’m dabbling in a bit of coaching related stuff to get me better at the game. Again I will detail this more in a coming post but this project will probably dominate a lot of 2021 for me.
Keeping up with the two MMO’s I play will be a standard thing aswell. I’ve been struggling with Shadowlands in WoW and am currently taking a break from raiding for a myriad amount of reasons, but I do want to keep up with the lore and renown cap every week. I’ve been taking a small break from FFXIV, mostly due to Shadowlands launch, but want to pick that back up again and keep up with the content there aswell.

Finally I’m once again going to try and tackle my backlog. I’ve not bought that many games last year and I have actually been slowly pouring more time in single player games over the past few weeks. My aim is to complete one game a month, this can be a long game or a short game, as long as I see the credits roll. As always that is my main goal with playing games, any time I spend extra on it is a bonus.

So yeah. These are my goals for 2021. I feel like I’ve made a good start on them this week, now I just need to grit my teeth and follow through. For now though I’m pretty happy with what I’ve set to achieve for myself and I will keep you updated on how things develop.

Blaugust Promptapalooza #28: Content Content Content

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Wow, I can’t believe the Blaugust Promptapalooza is almost at an end. We are currently on day 28, since we started one day early, and it’s my turn!
If you’ve missed it, yesterday’s prompt was hosted by Telwyn over at GamingSF where was discussed which piece(s) of technology would be the hardest to live without.
For a full list of participants please head over to aggronaut.com.

So today it’s my turn and Bel thought up an interesting topic for me, one that I’ve been pondering over since last night:
What are some of the things that you wish you knew before you started creating content?

When I first started blogging, way back in I think 2010? I don’t really remember but it was around Wrath of the Lich King in WoW, I kind of rode the hype train surrounding the World of Warcraft Blogging Community. I was a college student at the time with way too much time on my hands and after reading a few other people’s blogs, most notably “The Barrens Chat” and “Righteous Orbs” I felt like I could do the same and write about a lot of things that were WoW related. I don’t think I have the blogs from my beginner days anymore but I do remember kind of hitting the same wall that I’ve been hitting untill today: lack of consistency. Which is the biggest thing I wish I would have prepared for when I started blogging.

I’m sure that Mr. Peril over at Contains Moderate Peril has mentioned this in one of his posts about blog writing but if you want to build and keep an audience that will keep on reading your blog one of the key things is being consistent and being predictable. Have your posts come out on the same days. Choose a layout for your posts that is easy to read and in this way build familiarity for your reader base. And have them coming back to reading your blog every time you post something.
I’ve been inconsistent in both ways from the start. I can go weeks on end without posting a single blog entry, mostly because I’m a really bad planner and I just simply forget to put blogging in my weekly “to do” list. I’m also inconsistent in the layouts of my posts, although I do try to start most of them with a screenshot from one of the games I’m playing. The one I’ve used for this post is in no way affiliated to the topic but I just wanted something to look at besides a wall of text. Which is also something I’m inconsistent with, remembering to take screenshots from the games I’m playing. Usually I’m so immersed in whatever I’m doing that I completely zone out and forget to take screenshots which I then can write my posts around… Can you see the cycle I’m in?

Anyway, consistency basically requires making the time to blog on a regular basis. Like all other activities in life it’s best to set aside some time each week, dedicated to writing a blog and then actually sitting down and writing it. I’ve always been bad with planning and sticking to planning and it has been the bane of my existence as blogger but also as functional human being to begin with. Creating content, or in my case blogging, is best not done on a whim like I seem to be doing. Instead being aware and making time on your schedule for content creation is key and one of the big things I wish I had known before I dove headfirst into the fray.

Maybe someday I will get the hang of planning my blog posts and pushing them out on a more consistent and predictable basis, who knows. But to anyone thinking of creating content I will tell you this: schedule it. Make the time, stick to it, be consistent and the world will be your oyster. And that’s all I have to say on this topic.

Tomorrow’s promptapalooza post will be hosted on Endgame Viable by UltrViolet, don’t forget to follow the train to it’s next destination!

Chasing Completion

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I’ve alluded to it multiple times but I feel like I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to do in the World of Warcraft. As such I’ve been trying to come up with new things to keep me occupied in the game, rather than taking an (extended) break. So when all else fails, or better when I don’t want to do challenging group content, I return to my completionist roots and start working away on earning achievements again. One of the more notable ones that I was close to was to get 100 reputations to Exalted. I think I only needed 5 more before the weekend. I found out that I could get two “free” reputations to Exalted by going back to Desolace and finish a, for some reason, resetted questline involving two centaur clans. After completing said questchain I got awarded with both their reputations being set to Exalted. The next reputation that I managed to get up, with the help of Timewalking, was the Sha’tari Defense reputation from Warlords of Draenor. For some reason though that one didn’t count towards my 100 so I had to think of other reputations to grind.
And that’s how I spent two to three hours of my Sunday grinding out Gadgetzan, Ratchet and Everlook reputation by committing pirate genocide in Tanaris. I got lucky with another player seeking to do the same and we grouped up, making the farm twice as fast. At the end of that grind I walked away with all those reps to Exalted, the achievement completed and a mount and title earned. There’s not many reputations that I’ve not touched now. I think three PvP ones are most notable, Silverwing Sentinels from Warsong Gulch, League of Arathor from Arathi Basin and Wrynns Vanguard from Ashran. I doubt I’ll ever get those to Exalted since I’ve not been interested in running battlegrounds for a long time now.
As far as PvE reptutations go… I still have Ravenholdt on Neutral and if I really wanted to I guess I could go for Insane in the Membrane, but I’m not that crazy yet. There’s Chromie rep to get and a variety of fishing reputations aswell as Draenor Garrisson bodyguard stuff. Nothing that is very appealing to me right now. I’m also still steadily working away on getting Exalted with the Rajani, I’m done with Uldum Accord, but that rep is limited to the assaults and dailies that I can do. I’m currently sitting around 17.5/21k though so I think I should be done with them around the weekend.

I’ve also started to do achievements that are specifically tied to Battle for Azeroth. Killing all rares in the various zones. Finding all treasures. Read scrolls and ride rickety planks or find grey items that are hidden in plain sight, if you know where to look. Eventually I’ll get to the harder to get ones and back to Nazjatar and Mechagon meta achievements, if I can keep interested until that.
There’s also some older “group” achievements that I’m eyeing to do. They mostly evolve around raid/dungeon achievements that also give a mount and I see that I’ve basically stopped doing them around Mists of Pandaria. Since that is all outdated content now I’m going to try to do as much as I can on my own and maybe ask a friend or two to assist me with the rest. That should keep me busy for a while atleast.

I’m also maybe planning to casually level up some Allied Race toons, if only to unlock their respective heritage armours and get those achievements out of the way aswell. Leveling is pretty braindead right now and fast enough to keep me entertained while also getting reasonable progress when I play for an hour or so. I’ve been poking around on a Lightforged Draenei Paladin and a Zandalari Troll Monk. Seeing as how I play tank and healer respectively I get pretty fast dungeon queues and when I don’t feel like doing dungeons I can just switch to a dps spec and quest my way up. By no means is this a big time consumption for me and I’m not going to make it some sort of “must do” goal but it’s nice to sometimes play a lower level toon and not have to think about too much.

Anyway, before this post turns even more rambly that’s what I’m mostly up to in WoW these days and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. I’m also still playing FFXIV and leveling my Dark Knight there now, but that also limits itself to doing the pixie dailies and a random dungeon when I feel like it. I feel like summer is kind of taking away my will to game and instead I’m trying to be more outside. Be it in an active way or just lounging on my balcony while reading a book, it feels good to be in the fresh air and about instead of staying cooped up in my apartment the entire day. Especially now that my vacation is over and I’m back to work I feel like I need to make use of my free time to get away from my house, before the walls start closing in on me.
And inbetween that I’m satisfying my completionist urges. Let’s hope those can tie me over untill the Shadowlands prepatch.

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: May 24th Tomestones Galore

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A still of Thordan fight

It’s been a rather eventful week in MMO land for me. We’ve had some guild drama, which I’m not going to expand further upon but it happened, the Moogle Treasure Trove event started in Final Fantasy XIV and Blizzard announced changes to Corruptions, Visions and Cloak leveling. Especially this latter news was music to my ears. Getting my cloak to rank 15 on my Warrior suddenly became a much more obtainable goal and one that I plan to grind out before reset because we’re currently on the vision of Orgrimmar… And that’s the easier of the two.

As for last week. I kicked my ass into gear when it came to farming tomes in FFXIV. I’ve chosen to mainly focus on making sure that I run the Main Scenario Roulette every day since it can either contain the Praetorium or Castrum Meridianum which are good for 10 or 7 tomes respectively. So far I’ve been “lucky” and I’ve been getting the Praetorium constantly. Sure it takes a while to complete but afterwards I get out with 10 Tomestones and a big chunk of experience towards my next level. With this tactic I’ve managed to push my Machinist to level 80, finally, and started working on my Warrior next. I know I was planning to do Dark Knight but for some reason I felt like picking up Warrior and I need to level both anyway so it doesn’t really matter which one I pick up first in that regard. So far I’ve managed to get my Warrior to level 72 and I picked up the Susano Ex mount, the first one of the dog mounts that I own. I remember lightly farming it in Stormblood together with the one from Lakshmi Ex but I never managed to obtain them. So now I’ll just grab it with this event! The next mount on my list to get is the Ixion mount and after that I need to see what else the Moogle has on offer with it’s Tomestones. I may pick up some Orchestrion Scrolls or alternatively some MGP cards so I can start getting mounts from the Gold Saucer. Anyway I’ve been dutifully running this content and I’m quite happy so far.
In other news I’ve also been pushing FATEs like a madman last week. I managed to finish up the Rank 3 FATE step in Ahm Araeng and am halfway through finishing the Rank 3 FATE step in the Tempest. Which means I’m 30 FATEs off of doing the lot. Not that bad for a week of gaming!

In the World of Warcraft it’s been a lot of the same stuff I’ve been doing the past few weeks. I’m still ranking up Essences on my Warrior and I’m still doing dailies and still raiding and attempting to do Mythic+. For some reason though I’ve gone into a bit of an alt frenzy because I want to experience something else than just Protection Warrior tanking all the time. So I rolled up a new Demon Hunter on my server and I picked up my Paladin on the Horde side again to see if I can get a kick out of that. Otherwise I’ve been poking around on my Hunter, getting her cloak ranked up and running Mythic+ with friends who play tanks themselves. I’m starting to do some mean damage on said Hunter and I’m really enjoying the gameplay. I also realized it was a pretty overpowered class to run Visions on and I’ve been pushing it to the limit when it comes to cloak upgrades. I’m only on rank 6 but I can comfortably do two bosses and kill Thrall with no real issues. The more I rank up, and unlock usefull skills with Mementos, the more I can push on that character. If this keeps up I will probably be able to solo the 5 mask stuff on my Hunter easier than on my Warrior. But we’ll see when the time is there.

As for next week there won’t be many changes. I’m still raiding on my Warrior and I will still be pushing for Tomestones on FFXIV. I hope I can get my cloak to rank 15 sooner rather than later and I hope my Warrior will be a lot closer to level 80, if not there, by next weekend. After that I need to start thinking about my MMO goals for June and how I’m going to let them exist next to my Summer of Platformers challenge. For now though I’ve got a whole week of MMO madness ahead and I can’t wait to dive back in.

Summer of Platformers

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I am an avid Reddit browser. I enjoy the petty drama over at some subs and I think some of the gaming subs are okay aswell. As such I can keep myself entertained for hours on end just scrolling through hundreds of posts in the evening. It’s also the reason I shouldn’t take my phone to bed with me anymore because this is simply what keeps me up at night.
Anyway. On the Nintendo Reddit someone wrote a post about wanting to do a Summer of Nintendo challenge where they would tackle their Nintendo backlog this summer and it would span every Nintendo console they owned. This looked like a really good idea to me but looking at the games I own for all my Nintendo consoles (WiiU/Switch/3DS) I would never be able to fit all of that in a single summer. I have multiple long RPG’s to play through and those alone would take me forever to finish. Case in point me taking months to finish up the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

However I did want to start tackling my backlog and as such I was suddenly inspired to tackle one of my favourite gaming categories: Platformers. I own a lot of those. It was what I grew up with on my SEGA when I was little, and I enjoy the genre till this day. I have numerous platform games both physically and digitally and for now I want to focus on completing my physical games. There are some that I have completed (and with that I mean I have seen the credits roll) and as such I have excluded them from this challenge. I purely want to focus on all the games I haven’t completed yet and bring those to a credit roll. Again, I’m only tackling my physical games for now since they’re just easier to keep track of than all the stuff I own digitally. So without further ado here’s a picture of all the games I’m planning to tackle.

This may not seem like that many games but according to Howlongtobeat completing all these games will take me roughly 200 hours in total. For this estimate I’ve used the metric of Mainstory + Extra’s since I do like to go off the beaten path and grab all the extras in a level when I can. It’s not a priority and I’m not going to go back specifically to get coins or crystals or whatever when it takes too long or is too frustrating but I do like to find most of the hidden stuff when I can. My main objective in all of these games is to defeat the “final” boss and see a credit roll. For some games it means that the game actually ends there but for some games it means bonus worlds are opened up to conquer afterwards. Depending on how much time that takes and/or how difficult it is I may tackle those aswell.

For now the plan is to start going through this backlog once I’m finished with the FF7R. I expect this to be somewhere in June which is also when summer starts. My goals is to get through all of these by the end of summer, which is September 21st. All in all this would mean I would have to complete a game per week. With the average game time per game being somewhere around 12 hours that’s not actually too bad. Furthermore there are a few games here that I already started to play and, if I still remember enough of the game, will pick up where I left off. Most notably these are Yooka Laylee and New Super Mario Bros U. Thus shaving off a bit of gametime there. For the rest I will probably start fresh and work my way from there.
Together with playing the games I will also aspire to make a blog post about every game I’ve beaten. They probably won’t be professional type reviews but mostly posts about what I thought of the game and if I enjoyed it and how long it took me to beat it. So I will have something to look back on later!

So yeah, this is my plan for this summer. Let’s see how it turns out!

Scheduling The Daily Grind

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Trying to keep up with multiple games at once can be quite a challenge. Especially when juggling MMO’s. I have the utmost respect for anyone who manages to do more than two at a time since that is my absolute maximum and even then I’m struggling hard to not put too much time into one thing that will take away from something else. MMOs tend to suck you in, especially at endgame level, and then when you look up you realize that you’ve been playing this single thing for the entire day or evening while you wanted to do more or different things instead.
So to combat me spending all my time on a single game I’ve been trying to set up a bit of a schedule when it comes to my playtime and the activities that I do in my games. I have reserved certain days for certain games and I have spread out my gametime a bit more to include the morning before I start working and my lunchbreak somewhere in the middle of the day. This is also helping me to kind of not go insane with working from home all the time so that’s another plus!

Right now my pattern looks something like this:

  • Mornings before work on weekdays
    Log into FFXIV and do my beast tribe dailies and Trial roulette for leveling
    Play a bit of Animal Crossing, mostly digging up my fossils and harvesting fruit/plucking weeds etc
  • Lunchbreak on weekdays
    Log into WoW and do my BfA Emissary Worldquests. Do Nazjatar Ally dailies and/or Mechagon dailies.
  • Weeknights:
    Monday = whatever I feel like playing
    Tuesday = FFXIV reset so time for Eden and some extra playtime in general
    Wednesday & Thursday = WoW raid nights
    Friday = whatever I feel like playing

This gives me one night specifically for FFXIV and two nights specifically for WoW during the week. It helps me structure my weekdays, since I have things to look forward to, and it helps me get the more grindy daily stuff out of the way earlier on the day, freeing my nights up for other activities in both my MMO’s. In theory atleast. In reality I’m spending almost every waking minute on WoW playing catch up on my Warrior because there is just so. much. to. do.
Right. I hope that will slowly settle down and that I can actually incorporate some of my single player games into the weeknights instead of keeping those for the weekends.

As for the weekends.. I’m trying to figure out a schedule for that. I’m still reserving my mornings to get dailies done, only this time I do both FFXIV and WoW. After that it’s a random free for all to be honest. Seeing as the weekends are (normally) for socializing and doing chores, playing games kind of takes a second seat here to everything else. I do try to reserve a few hours per weekend to work away on whatever single player game has my fancy at the time so that I don’t forget where or what I was doing and, more importantly, actually finish damn games instead of throwing them on my anxiety inducing backlog pile.

So roughly the schedule for my weekends looks like this:

Mornings: Do WoW and FFXIV dailies.
Afternoons: Play single player game untill dinner time
Evenings: whatever I feel like playing/doing.

So yeah. It has some rough edges and I’m sure that my schedule will change over time I’m pretty happy with what I’m doing right now. Of course there is always room for improvement and of course some things that take up a lot of time right now will probably stop taking up that time after certain grinds come to an end.

How do you handle playing multiple games? Do you schedule them or does it come more natural? Let me know!

Five Favourite Game Series

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There’s been a bit of a topic going around the blogosphere about what people’s favourite game series are, started by Krikket over at Nerd Girl Thoughts. Their top five to be precise. It’s an interesting subject because it kind of forces one to think about what a game series really is. Do they have to be successive? Is two a series, or is it three or more? Is it a game series if it’s just the same character in the lead all the time (like Mario or Sonic)? Interesting things to think about when talking about game series.
Personally I don’t actually have that much difficulty picking a top five, so here’s mine!

1. Pokémon
I’ve actually played a game of every generation starting at Blue. I can even say I’ve finished the main objective in every game except Black 2. I became the champion every time and usually also finished off the post game stories, however flimsy they were for every iteration of this game. Currently I’m just waiting for the DLC to hit for Pokémon Sword.

2. Picross E
So I’m seriously addicted to Picross games and on the 3DS there’s the Picross E “series”. I think they’re up to number 7 or 8 now and I’ve bought and finished every single puzzle in all of them. The games provide somewhere between 10 and 15 hours of entertainment and I tend to finish them in a week.

3. A2 Racer
Ok so hear me out. Back in my childhood years there was a Dutch development company called Davilex. They developed a few games that were very popular at the time and one of them was the A2 Racer series. The first one was pretty straight forward and was basically racing down the A2 highway modeled like the actual Dutch highway without getting caught by the police and also while avoiding other cars. After that came more installments in the form of racing in England and Germany, racing with speedboats and racing with campers, trailers and caravans. I’ve played every single installment they released up until the developer shut down. Also, consider trying an amazing online racing game like Drift Hunters. Good memories.

4. Final Fantasy
I own almost every game in the Final Fantasy Franchise, except for the original VII and the XI MMO. I’m playing through the remake of VII now though so I guess that’s fine. I love Final Fantasy, I think Square Enix has done a great job with the games over the years. Once I’m done with the VII remake I will probably go back to XV to finish that.

5. Spyro/Crash Bandicoot
Okay, these are technically two game series but they were the staples of my childhood and I immediatly jumped onto the remakes when they were released over the past few years. Both iconic series in their own right and both victims from falling out of favour after their glory years on the PS1 and PS2.

Bonus: Kingdom Hearts
Oh Kingdom Hearts. Probably one of the most confusing game series every created but so good nonetheless. I’m listing it as a bonus here because even though I’ve touched/played most of the games in this series I actually only really finished Kingdom Hearts III. I probably should go back and play through all the other games of the franchise…

I’ve played many more games that I could consider part of a series but these are the ones where I have the most fondest memories of. Let me know what your top 5 is!

This post was the 4th of Blapril 2020

Extensions and Expansions

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Yesterday Blizzard announced they’re extending the 100% bonus experience buff untill the prepatch for Shadowlands. A lot of people were really happy with this since it meant they could invest a bit more time in getting up the classes and races they wanted, mostly to unlock Heritage Armours but maybe also to try something out they haven’t played yet.
Personally I’m not that excited about it. I’ve leveled enough for now and am focusing on catching up on Battle for Azeroth things on my Warrior instead. That’s why I was happier with the other announcement Blizzard made, that they were doubling reputations gains for a month with Legion (meh) and Battle for Azeroth reputations. Seeing as I’ve been playing my Rogue for most of this expansion my Warrior is woefully behind on every reputation. Which means this 100% buff to all reputations gained is actually something I’m very welcoming of. It gives me the time to level up all the reputations twice as fast as I’m doing now so that I can unlock more mounts and other stuff! The only reputations that are excluded are the ones that they added with the latest patch, which isn’t very strange since it’s current content and still relatively new.

Our raid team for Shadowlands is slowly starting to take shape. I will be one of the tanks together with a friend who will be playing a Deathknight. Maybe it’s not ideal to have two plate wearing tanks but we complement eachother on resistances, with me being a bit better against physical damage on my Warrior and him being better against magical damage. I’m not really looking at all the stuff that is being datamined and gained through the Shadowlands Alpha right now, mostly because I want to go into the expansion and the story fresh. I know that the Covenants will be a thing and for min maxing you probably won’t really have a choice when it comes to that. But I’ll tackle that once I’ll get there. I really like the look of the Kyrian armours though, so I’m kind of hoping that they will be the best Covenant for Protection Warriors. I guess we’ll see.
For now we’re trying to tackle a bit of normal Ny’alotha and hopefully some heroic aswell before Shadowlands hits. I’m also wanting to do a bit more Mythic+ and maybe get a +15 in. Warriors seem to be OP for Mythic+ dungeons this expansion and especially the Night Elf variety thanks to their Shadowmeld ability. I just need to get a group together and start tackling it, which is easier said than done. I still have some time for this though so I’m not too worried.

All in all I’m quite happily settling back into Azeroth. I’m doing my dailies on my Warrior and Warlock. I’ve transferred over my Priest from another server and turned her back into the Draenei she originally was. I’m poking about in world PvP, especially when there is an assault up and I’m running content I haven’t run in a while like Island Expeditions and raiding. It’s been fun and relaxing and also taking my mind off the whole COVID-19 situation. With a group of people to actually play with now I think I’ve found my MMO home again for the time being. And it feels good to be back.

This post was the third one of Blapril 2020