Back in World of Warcraft for Dragonflight and other Gaming

 

Side content in World of Warcraft Dragonflight

As has been my pattern, I bought the latest World of Warcraft expansion once it came at a discount (and I've been posting very little when not playing it).  This time, it was 30 days of game time rather than dollars off the expansion, but it comes to the same thing.  I bought it just before Christmas when it went on sale (in addition to three free days that you could play a Dracthyr (the new 'sort of' dragon characters).  They start at level 68 and the introductory story was fine (didn't seem quite as elaborate as the Pandarens (race), Death Knights (class), or Demon Hunters (class), that were previously introduced.  But I was ok with that.  Nice to get an extra character that I can use in the new zones.

I think I played for two days and reached level 61 and decided I wanted to play Kanter, my first character, a hunter, so I went ahead and purchased the expansion then.  It was nice to know I was going to have a good long break where I could explore the game when I wasn't working.  My break ends today as this is posted (on 1/4) though I have now caught COVID so my work will be limited tomorrow.

I thought the first zone, Waking Shores, was very good.  I did all the quests to get the two achievements and it seemed like pretty much the perfect length and kept me interested.  Scenery was very nice as well.  However, that immediately changes with the second zone, Ohn'ahran Plains.  One sign of how uninteresting I found it was there is a point where they send you on quests about the four tribes of centaurs and then they ask you questions about them.  I had no idea, even though I had read the quest text.  I looked them up without any remorse since I'm really not interested.  There has only been one dragon so far in this zone and I'm ready to get back to the dragon stories.  I'm not sure why they decided to do this but it feels like filler.  Maybe it can't be all dragons all the time (though it might have been better that way).

I'll wait to fully judge the zone when I'm done with it (I'd guess I'm half way at level 66) but I'm already looking forward to the next zone or at least when we get back to the green dragons (ostensibly why I'm there).  My hunter seems like easy mode as usual and I'm definitely ok with that.  I know I've died through inattention but nice just to be able to play the game and not worry about min/maxing.

In other gaming, I bought one of my daughter's who will be going to college next year her own Switch which meant I could play Animal Crossing on the old one.  I'm finding it very relaxing, just playing it a little bit every morning.  Reading some things online, it seems like people tried to find the shortest way to get things done but I'm glad to take it at a relaxed pace.  I was able to visit my daughter's island, which was nice as well.  Gathering iron for the next quest is taking some time but the game doesn't penalize you for just playing a little bit every day.   However, it was quite fun to have a house and the museum on the same day a few days ago.

I'm a little stuck on what to play on our PlayStation 5.  I was primarily playing Ghost of Tsushima.  I think the game so far has been great but it seems like it would take forever to finish it, particularly since my primary objective is to visit all the fox shrines.  Really good ideas in this game but I just don't have the focus for it now.  I stopped playing Horizon Forbidden West pretty early in the game and I think I'll go back to it but there are also so may free games I have available on the PlayStation through Plus Extra that part of me would just like to dabble in them (tops are probably the two Spiderman games, the three Mass Effect games, and the Bioshock games but there are many).  I was also really enjoying the original Borderlands game with my two daughters and it would be nice to go back to that.  Right now they are focused on Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.  It's been nice having Pokemon be a annual Christmas tradition for the two of them and, now that we have two Switches, there is more they can do together.

Thanks to anyone still reading my blog after my many breaks.  I hope all is well.  I believe COVID will be a relatively short disruption (I'm very glad to be fully vaccinated).  I do enjoy writing when I'm actually playing and MMO.  Not so much otherwise.