Re-introductions

 

I hadn't looked in several year, but this blog was started 14 years ago in May 2012.  If you look at my introduction, you'll see I was looking for a way to play MMOs casually and I guess that is still true today.  I started with the first Newbie Blogger initiative, initiated by Syp or Justin Olivetti of Massively and Bio Break.  When I just went looking for the image above, Google first reference was at Tales of the Aggronaut from back in 2012 when Belghast posted about it.  That seems meaningful in this year we are celebrating Belghast and Blaugust, Belghast's initiate to fill some of the role that the NBI played back in 2012-2013 among other goals when he started it in 2014.

I started playing MMOs with the World of Warcraft beta, joined a guild, and was there for go live in 2004. I never was as dedicated as some players and my time went up and down over the years, including some full stops, but at one point I decided I wanted to find a way to play casually that made me comfortable and I thought there were likely other MMOs that would meet that need better than WoW.  I tried Star Wars the Old Republic when it came out in 2011 but I didn't play it for long.  In 2012, when NBI start, I decided to use this blog to get some recommendations and document that experiment.  What I have come to accept is that, at least for me, MMOs require a larger intial investment and, since I already made my investment in WoW, it works better for me to play it even though it does require a subscription.  Now I just use my blog as a periodic journal of what I'm playing and my reactions to it.

I'm not sure when I started reading Bio Break and Tales of the Aggronaut and TAGN and Inventory Full but I am pretty sure I have read every post they have made over the last 14 since I started blogging. It is something I enjoy for a few minutes every day. It is a one sided relationship, with me reading their writings, but their thoughts have become part of my day-to-day life and now part of that is missing with Belghast's departure.

Belghast would talk about how sometimes he would post without publishing about them.  As someone who read every post through subscription, I read them all.  I haven't been publishing my posts for a while since I'm not posting often and they are generally just for myself now, but I do think I'll publish this one as a tribute to what I have gained through reading these bloggers and lost with Mark's absense.

Blaugust begins and July Check In

 

Zul'Aman working towards completion

Happy Blaugust!  I likely would have skipped this year except, like many, I would like for Belghast efforts to encourage blogging to continue after his death.  I started blogging with the earlier Newbie Blogger initiative and, even though this primarily for me now (maybe it always was), I believe blogging is a great forum for sharing similar interests.  

More about that later, but I'll start with my July gaming check in.  I was able to have a few World of Warcraft Midnight sessions and have now made it to level 84.  Yes, that's just under a level a month since the Midnight release in early March but I'm not concerned about getting maximum use out of my subscription.  I do want to complete the main questline and get to level 90 on my main.

After that, we'll see.  Reading Shintar's post about completing the Midnight Professions achievement makes me think this might be a reasonable goal.  I would have to level several alts, but not that many levels except for my miner, since my main will do the gathering for herbs, fish and cloth.  He's level 73 and then I have one other alt in her 70s and another 2 alts in their 50s.  Inscription might be an issue since she's only level 30 and I've never tried to level inscription, but at least the herbs shouldn't be an issue.

I hope everyone enjoys Blaugust.  More about my goals and background in future posts.

May/June Check In

Silvermoon City

 Yes, it's well into June but I started this post in May.

Three months since my last check in and really not much to report.  I have made a little progress in World of Warcraft. My house is now level 4 (thanks to my guild's endeavor more than me) and I've reached level 82, leveling up with the main quest sequence.

I just haven't been very motivated for gaming recently.  Still playing Logic Town daily and mindless games on my phone.  Now, with the World Cup on TV, I've been spending a lot of my free time on that.  Also, just generally tired recently.

Just wanted to provide myself a quick update.  I'm sure this will change with time.

February Check In

My House in World of Warcraft

 

My monthly post has now gone three months, partially because there hasn't been a lot to post about in my time gaming.

World of Warcraft added housing in December and I joined on the first day to grab my plot.  I acquired enough furniture to get the house to level 3 and then pretty much stopped playing.  I still have catch up to do to finish the end of the World Within Story and the Midnight pre-patch has arrived, with it a new set of quests along with the ability to level my alts more quickly to level 80.  We will see how much of it I get done before Midnight arrives in March.

The major change in my gaming life was the addition of a Playstation Portal for Christmas.  This is allowing me to play all the Playstation games I haven't played without needing to be on the television.  With many games available, the one I ended up playing first was Unicorn Overlord, which is one of the last games I finished on the Switch.  Since it's turned based, it's ideal to play remotely since performance isn't an issue.  I've been playing both from the Cloud and with Remote play from the PS5 and both work well.  There were some cloud performance issues during a storm but otherwise it's been great.  I completed the game after more than 100 hours and only had three achievements to reach my first PS5 or PS4 platinum.  One just took a few seconds (unlock all the unit slots, I only used 8 out of 10).  The last two were treasure hunt related so I looked up what would be involved and decided to visit one of the five nations daily until it's done so I'll probably be done within a week.  The achievement for 10 treasures unlocked after the first nation and I finished the second nation today.

I have also started playing Claire Obscure, a birthday present in January, but I'm only at the beginning.  It'll be interesting to see how it works on the Portal.  I also played a little of The Last of Us Part II and it seemed to work ok on the Portal as well.

November Check-in: Slow going in K'aresh

 

Begining K'aresh in September

It has been two months since I have finished Undermine(d) and I have finally gotten through chapter 3 of K'aresh and acquired the Legendary Cloak. At this point, I'm thinking I have too much hope for what Housing will offer on December 2nd and, although I look forward to completing the War Within, it is more of a waypoint than a destination.

It initially I was intending to alternate between my main character, Kanter and alts that I have.  I did this a little but there doesn't seem to be much experience benefit between levels 70 and 80 and there will be a faster way to do it with the patch on December 2nd.  I still might try to get two more alts to 70 so I will have 4 alts that I can pretty quickly get to level 80 and have access to most of the professions.  I'll be interested to see how they tie professions in with housing.

I've been looking for something else to play on my Playstation and Switch and nothing has been motivating recently. I briefly started Unicorn Overlord again but a replay didn't capture my attention either.  I am still playing Logic Town daily, which I'm enjoying and I may try to find another similar game, possibly Einstein's Cats, that I can enjoy in short sessions.

So on to December!  Unless I'm very motivated by some change in my gaming, my next post will probably be my first impressions of World of Warcraft housing.

World of Warcraft Undermine finished

 

On to Ghosts of K'aresh

So a couple quick notes on the new area.  What does it mean to have a apostrophe after a single consonant.  Is it pronounced ka-aresh? Or do they just think it looks cooler to add an apostrophe.  Second, the first quest is the normal learn the area and do menial tasks quest but at least they are honest about it in the quest text.

As I mentioned in the last post, Undermine isn't my kind of zone, urban areas being one of my least favorite types in MMOs.  I must abmit I'm glad for it to be behind me though I don't think the execution was bad, it just wasn't for me.  I'm not very good about taking screenshots but I believe I took only the one for my last blog post and, looking back, I'm not sure there were any great opportunities.  For atmosphere, I like all the other War Within zones better.

One quick call out for how they handled the raid. I really like the addition of Story mode raids with the War Within.  I think it is a good thing that the raids and dungeons don't just exist by themselves but in the context of the greater story and now with follower dungeons introduced with Dragonflight and Story mode raids with the War Within, casual players like myself can experience them without having to worry about skill or gear or insults or people rushing past the story.  Yes, if you want better gear you should participate in the true raids (though now Delves are another solo option) but I don't care about the gear.  I'd rather see it within the game by myself than watch a video, the only option we used to have if we didn't want to participate with others.

End of Blaugust, More World of Warcraft

 

Undermine, not my favorite kind of zone

Blaugust is ending tomorrow so I'll make this my last Blaugust post.  My goal was to post twice a week except for the week I was on vacation.  I probably missed that by two posts but I'm fine with 5 posts which is the Bronze award.  That's all I was expecting though it would have been nice to have one or two more posts like I planned.  I had two posts related to the weeks including a music post that I thought about doing for a while and was nice to get done.  This has been the first year that I've been going to concerts in a long time and there have been great ones within about a three hours drive though none of the bands I want to see have been local.

I did the next set of Undermine campaign quests which reinforced that I don't particularly want to spend extra time in this zone.  I don't think I've done any of the dungeons or raids so I'd probably like to do them either as they come up in the campaign or at the end just to fill in the story.  Undermine as a zone is fine in terms of quest density, I would just rather do quests in an area that seems more rural than urban.

I went back to Kantro to do some more quests and realized he isn't getting any bonuses right now other than the 5% of having a character at level 80.  I moved him to the zone where I plan on seeing some of the quests I haven't seen rather than repeating the campaign quests and did some mining which gave him some experience and will allow him to level his blacksmithing.

As a final World of Warcraft note, I really am looking forward to housing.  I think I only paid full price for one expansion after Burning Crusade, but early access to housing will get me to do it even though I realize it won't be fully implemented.  I've been in the same guild since beta in 2004 it has to be close to my 21st anniversary.  The original forum has been down for a while and the guild itself is pretty quiet both online and in the Discord but I still feel a lot of fondness for it and I'm hoping it can be a way we can feel more connected.

I hope everyone who participated had a great Blaugust.  I've only really added two blogs to my regular reading at this point, but I will still try to look at some of the new ones and add them to my list.