Before I run out of weekend I just wanted to post a really quick update to my last WoW Journal post. No sooner had I posted that than I logged into WoW and turned in a quest (I’d already completed the work but I sometimes like to quit just before a quest turn-in to get that boost when I start my next section) and it turns out it was the last quest of the main campaign.
So Dragonflight is completed though I’m guessing maybe there is a Raid or something to put the absolute final period to it because the Dragon Queen mentioned there was one more rock to be activated but didn’t ask me to help.
Anyway with the quest line completed WoW now unlocks something they call Adventure Mode which as far as I can tell is similar to what classic used to be. You are now free to move about the cabin. World quests unlock, faction quests/collecting seems to unlock. It’s now a matter of going out and doing what you want.
I pretty much IMMEDIATELY started having more fun. Did some world quests, did a Follower Dungeon (which I love and which maybe deserve their own post) and did some “little guy” quests which I often find fun and charming. At the top of this post is a screenshot from the last quest I did this weekend. These two little Tuskarr (walrus-people) kids are trying to befriend a lost, starving gnoll pup and they needed some fish to befriend him with. So I went fishing. And the gnoll cub got a new home. Hope that all works out for them.
But I enjoy these kinds of street-level heroics.
Anyway, that’s it. Just wanted to say that for me at least, WoW gets WAY more interesting once you finish the campaign. I’ve got about 15 levels to get through before I can move on but I suspect they’ll go quick. I made I think 5 since I posted earlier today.
It’s been nearly a month since Part 2 of this journal. I bet you thought I’d given up on it, or given up on World Of Warcraft. I’ve come close a few times, but not yet. Having pre-paid for 3 months of time has done what I’d hoped it would do and kind of convinced me to keep going.
The reason I’m back writing is that finally, just in the past couple of days, I’ve really started to enjoy myself. My character is about level 50 now and around 23 hours old.
So in my last journal I talked about how WoW hadn’t really been grabbing me and as mentioned, that continued to be the case up until just recently. I think I’ve finally figured out why and it is partially self-inflicted by FOMO and partially just the way Dragonflight is structured. (Maybe all the expansions have been structured like this but Dragonflight is the first I’ve played (almost, so far) all the way through.)
So quick refresher, I started a new character, and did Exiles Reach to get to level 10. That was fine and fun and really short. Then I wound up in Stormwind and from there headed off to Dragon Land. The fact that I have no idea what the correct name of Dragon Land is, and that I can’t name a single zone there, is our first clue.
I first started playing Dragonflight the same way I used to play what we now call “Classic WoW.” I took every quest I saw and got ready to grind levels. But there are a LOT of quests and what I really wanted to be playing was The War Within which folk kept sharing stories about. I also heard from friends who’d hit level 70 in Dragonflight and then just got shunted over to The War Within against their will.
I figured if I was going to invest in Dragonflight I wanted to see all of it before level 70 happened so I stopped doing side quests and just did the main campaign quest. That started a whirlwind tour of Dragon Land. I moved through the various parts of the island so quickly that I had no sense of place and no connection to the land or the story. Once I got a flying mount, I just took to the skies and flew from quest giver to quest location, did some super trivial content, and flew back.
The story so far is…there are dragons and they come in various colors and some are good and others are bad and we’re helping the good dragons fight the bad ones. I’m not sure why the bad ones are bad exactly. There are 6 limbed dragons (4 legs, 2 arms) and 4 limbed dragons (4 legs, no arms.) I’m not sure why. And there are dragons that we just ride on and they seem to just be beasts? The 4 limbed intelligent dragons are only dragons sometimes, other times they take on the form of one of the WoW races though I’m not sure why. I guess to get arms? The main characters are… I have no idea. I can’t name a single one. There’s a queen and her I recognize because she is WoW-hot and then some dudes with multi-syllable names that go in and out of my head like the wind. Our goal is to awaken some stones which I think then awaken more dragons? I have no idea.
Myself and a 6-limbed dragon watch a 4-limbed dragon doing something nefarious
There is very little challenge to the gameplay and I’ve never had to grind at all, or do side missions to keep my level up. I guess they’ve moved all the challenges to the dungeons, which I haven’t done. New gear is granted from doing quests. I at first struggled with trying to put together some kind of “build” because there are a lot of talents to pick from, but then someone pointed out there’s a built-in build system you can follow so I’ve been letting the game tell me what to pick. There are random buffs that you get just from being in the zone to make things even easier.
So essentially for the first, I dunno, 30 levels of Dragonflight, it kind of all felt like an elaborate game of solitaire. Something kind of mindless to do to kill time.
Then finally things started to change. Right around the time you (finally) get to the Dragon home city (and can finally access your banks and optionally leave the Dragon Island to go do other things if you wished) I started having to do a few quests in the same region, which meant I was fighting the same kinds of enemies more than once and learning which ones did what and how best to combat them. And I was getting a sense of place. It still was damned easy but at least it felt a little like exploration.
Then that whole questline seemed to stop and I was shunted over to a time travel questline which I understand is eventually used to go back and play through earlier expansions. But THAT was fun and interesting. There were some boss fights, the story was neat, we visited different times in WoW history and learned some lore about the world. This section was over all too fast. I did learn that Chromie the Gnome is actually a dragon. Apparently they’re everywhere hiding in plain sight.
So that brings you up to speed. I’ve probably played more in the past 2-3 days that I have in the rest of the month since I was finally getting interested in the world. I think I’m almost done with the Dragonflight campaign and it looks like I’ll need to make up some levels somewhere before I can move on to The War Within. Presumably I can go back and do side quests or move back to the mainland. Whatever I do I’ll pick a spot and focus on it because my nature is more completionist than fast-tracker and being fast-tracked through this content hasn’t felt super fun.
Really looking forward to getting to The War Within and finally feeling like there’s no rush and I can just work on what I want, when I want. Hoping to get there soon.
Last Tuesday (9/17/24 for Readers From The Future) the defining feature of the Milepost Zero update finally launched: the caravan system. I’m going to be honest and admit I haven’t engaged with it heavily since it has been quite the work week and gaming time has been in short supply, but I did get it started and wanted to go over the basics and why I’m actually excited about a system that adds infinite escort quests to the system. I mean don’t we all hate escort quests? I usually do, but so far not here.
First let’s talk about the meta a little bit. The basic idea is you send out a “caravan” (which is a single brahmin, at least at the start — brahmin’s being the 2-headed cows in the Fallout world) and it follows a path while attracting a ton of enemies that you have to kill to keep the brahmin safe. The brahmin basically does it’s own thing but you can interact with it to hurry it along which makes it run for a bit. I’m not yet sure if there’s a downside to using that too often.
The brahmin has a health bar and if it dies, the caravan fails and you have to start over.
So thing 1: a while back the devs changed the Medic affix (we call them affixes now, right?) to be a straight up healing effect. It used to be (I think, I can’t remember for sure) that having a Medic weapon increased the effectiveness of stimpacks and other incoming heals. Don’t shoot me if I’m wrong about that; I just remember that whatever it did, it was of no interest to me, the solo player. But speaking of shooting, what it now does is heal friendly players/NPCs. I have a legendary Medic’s shotgun that I held onto for no particular reason, but now I can use it to shoot my brahmin to heal it. It’s nice to have a use for the Medic’s affix.
Thing 2: When you start a caravan, it becomes a Public Event for that server that works like any other Public Event. Folks can teleport to you and help you protect your brahmin. That’s good both because more public events means more fun playing with others, but more importantly is that this Season the devs have added a post-Season Level 100 task where you get bonus Season XP when you complete 3 public events, and this task is repeatable (I’m told, I haven’t gotten to 100 yet). So this means folks wanting to grind the season pass past level 100 are going to want to do lots of Public Events and having a steady stream of them via the caravan system should help a lot with that.
So I kind of like how caravans pull together the Medic affix stuff and this new Season pass task. OK enough, let’s talk about the caravan system itself.
So the basic idea is you get involved with someone running an outpost that sits at the very south edge of the Shenandoah region that was added last June. You hire on as help and for every successful caravan you run you get paid in a new currency called “Supplies.” You can then spend Supplies to upgrade the outpost, hiring and upgrading workers who… I don’t know what they do yet, I only have one so far! I guess they make things more efficient/convenient? Eventually, as I understand it, you’ll take over the outpost and can decorate it and such; it becomes another base for you. From the very start it has some crafting stations and stuff so is a nice place to hang out anyway.
I’ve been a bit bored with Fallout 76 after maxing out my stats and getting good gear and putting together a build that could kind of take on almost anything aside from nuke-spawned world bosses. But the first time I ran a caravan, I died! It was awesome! The routes are somewhat dangerous just in the number of enemies, at least at first. I am still trying to suss out how many of the enemies spawn due to the caravan and how many are just there and are attracted to it (the point being the latter might not have respawned if you run a 2nd caravan immediately). It isn’t that any one of the baddies are particularly challenging, it’s just that there are a lot of them and you kind of have to get stuck right in if you want to keep the brahmin safe. No more leisurely picking baddies off one by one from a distance.
There’re also some Legendary enemies mixed in so you get some decent drops from doing them, which is always a plus and more so with the new Legendary Crafting system.
Caravans come in 3 sizes, small, medium and large. I’ve only done Small & Medium so far and honestly they didn’t feel that much different to me. Your first caravan of the day (?) is free if you go with small or medium. Subsequent caravans cost you caps to spawn, more caps for bigger caravans and the price increases with each subsequent run. While this might sound like a bad thing, Fallout 76 has a cap limit of 40,000 caps and I’m always near it, so spending a few hundred to a few thousand caps to run a caravan doesn’t seem like a big deal. I would guess the system is there to prevent folks from chain-running caravans for 48 hours straight, maxing out their outpost, and then complaining that there wasn’t enough content in the new system.
So overall and at first blush, I’m pretty happy with the new caravan system. We’ll see if it holds up as an entertaining way to spend time after I’ve dug into it more. It’s just really fun to have an open world event that brings in a variety of enemies (who, by the way, sometimes start fighting each other, allowing you just to hurry the brahmin along and out of range). For a filthy casual like me it appears that it’ll take me a while to get the outpost fully staffed and upgraded, and you know how I love progression systems!
This weekend there’s an open beta (details on getting into it in that link) running for New World: Aeternum, which is a kind of re-launch of New World. To be honest it’s all a little confusing to me but as best I can tell, owners of the PC version who have not purchased the expansion can access the early areas of Aeternum for free. Owners of New World and the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion (currently $30 on Steam) get the whole Aeternum kit & kaboodle for free. It sounds like your existing characters carry over but I may be mis-understanding that. On console, of course, it’s a new game with a full new game cost ($60) which honestly feels a bit steep to me, but then there’s no subscription or anything so maybe I’m just getting cheap in my old age. There is cross-play but not cross-progression, so if you decide to buy on console and PC you’ll have 2 separate accounts, which is unfortunate and odd since you will be playing with folks from other platforms.
This is what quest dialog’s look like. Just to be clear that’s me facing the camera
I’ve played New World on PC, but not the expansion, and not for a long while and if I understand it things have changed quite a bit. So I decided to try out the Open Beta and chose to do it on Xbox.
I was, honestly, pleasantly surprised. The game played nicely with a controller; for me it was arguably more fun than when I used to use mouse and keyboard. When you create a character you pick an archetype which seems to just set your starting equipment. I picked one that uses a big-assed sword and a blunderbuss and that was quite an enjoyable combo. The intro is quite a bit different; a lot more cinematic and it feels more like an RPG than a straight-up MMO. But in the open beta at least you could definitely see that it was an MMO because the world was PACKED full of people to the point where doing quests was a challenge since mobs were dying as fast as they were spawning. And the chat was totally toxic; first order of business was to mute all the channels.
Apparently surviving that shipwreck wasn’t all that hard; I’m not exactly the sole survivor!
The basic game loop was what I remember: gather materials, craft a skinning knife, hunt boars, make food. Same first steps as it used to be. Then hunt zombies. Your character levels up but so do your weapon skills. All of this will be very familiar if you played the original game. I don’t know if the strong guild-based gameplay is still there, where a realm will hold territory and have to level up crafting stations and such. I’d need to research that since it was one of the reasons I quit playing as a primarily solo adventurer. But Amazon is billing this as a game you can play solo so maybe that stuff is gone?
Honestly I didn’t spend a huge amount of time playing. I installed the beta to re-assure myself this wasn’t a game I needed to pay attention to, but that backfired and I actually find myself having fun and thinking maybe I will pick it up, or if I go PC pick up the expansion. I’ll probably play again later in the weekend once the initial mob moves on so it isn’t quite so crowded. Heck maybe I should install the PC Open Beta while I’m at it and see how that feels. $30 for the expansion is a lot better than $60 for the whole game on Xbox or PS5!
But yeah, if you’re curious I’d say check out the beta, which is why I’m chucking this rough-draft of a blog post out into the world. I want it out asap so folks still have time to try it.
I DID play in the closed alpha on Xbox and that was pretty horrible (I was under NDA so didn’t say anything) but they’ve made a LOT of improvements since then, which is quite encouraging. And as I mentioned I found combat using the controller was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to playing more at some point.
I have to admit I’ve not really been playing World of Warcraft as much as I had anticipated, but I do pop in now and then. I’m not sure why I don’t play more. There’s nothing about it that bothers me or anything. I mean partially it is just due to playing so many games at once, but it’s partially that it hasn’t REALLY grabbed me yet. I am not playing through The War Within since I don’t have a level 70 character. I’m playing the last expansion, Dragonflight.
So far it has been a pretty chill experience, and maybe that is actually part of the issue? When I log in I play for a while and then I tend to get a little sleepy and so I log out. Mind you recently almost everything can make me feel a little sleepy (I need to talk to my doc about tweaking my meds so I’m not borderline narcoleptic). I started out doing every quest I saw but then decided instead to focus on the main questline to see how far that would take me and to see what it will unlock.
I have the new (?) dragon flight system that gives you skills to boost speed and height and a stamina bar. That’s pretty fun. And of course the area is new to me, though I’m not sure I appreciate it as much as some might. It is clearly intended to nudge you towards using the new flight tools since there’s a lot of vertical movement, but it’s also your typical fire and brimstone type biome. All lava and barren rock. At least the part I’m in now is. I honestly tend not to use mounts in games too often; I kind of like running around taking my time. And while I think you CAN get anywhere in this area by running to it, you’d spend a LOT of time circling spires looking for staircases.
I also don’t have any history with the characters so even though they talk about the years we’ve spent fighting side by side, I have no idea who they are. Without any context it’s a little hard to care about them.
I feel like a lot of this comes down to me becoming refamiliarized with the game and the lore to some extent. This should get better as I build some history with the NPCs I’m interacting with. There is nothing in the plot or the gameplay that I can point to and say “I’m not playing because I don’t like THIS.” It is all fine. It’s just not super compelling yet.
Huh, I didn’t intend to write such a ‘down on WoW’ post. OK not ‘down’ on it but maybe apathetic? Anyway, in fact I wanted to write this post because of something I really did enjoy! I did my first Dungeon yesterday using the new “Dungeon Diving with NPCs” system (not the actual name) that I think was added with Dragonflight? It was Neltharus, a Dragonflight dungeon, anyway. This NPC was loitering about outside the dungeon and offered to help. I said “OK let’s go” and the game asked me what role I was going to fill. I said DPS and bam, there I was inside with 4 NPC companions including a tank, a healer. a DPS and honestly not sure what the last was. Support? I dunno. [I of course forgot to take any screenshots.]
You can choose to lead the party or you can ask an NPC to lead. I did the latter and Captain Garrick, one of the NPCs and someone I know from Exile’s Reach, bellows “I’ll keep you safe” and takes off running. I have to say it was really just like playing with a PUG but without any attitude. Garrick ran from boss to boss. I struggled to keep up and follow everything that was happening, so just like playing with people! I felt awkward and dumb but I kept reminding myself “these are NPCs, they don’t care” and that was pretty nice. And at any time I could click a button to take back the lead and everyone would stop and wait for as long as I needed. No judgement from the NPCs!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE! this system. I let the NPC lead this time, but I might go back and do it again with me leading. The fight wasn’t really challenging at all but I definitely need practice with targeting and resource management and getting back the knack of watching the enemy, the party, and my own skill bars all at once. Being able to practice this without worrying that I’m irritating other people is amazing. And my assumption is that if I was playing with a friend, we could do the same thing and just get 3 NPC companions? I am not 100% sure on that, but Gwyn in case you are reading and are thinking of going back to play with Glo! (Though my understanding is this system only works on some of the newer dungeons.)
I know it’s a little weird to choose to play an MMO and then be delighted that I don’t have to play with other people, but that’s me in a nutshell. FF XIV has a similar system and I remember loving it there, too. I like being able to actually take my time and look around and appreciate the work that goes into these dungeons!
Got this 2-handed mace — they call it a mace, I’d call it a maul — as a drop during my first visit to a dungeon
For my trouble of doing the dungeon I got a couple of nice gear upgrades, so it was worth it from that point of view too. I’m looking forward to doing more of these and generally it made me excited to get through this content and into The War Within where I know they’ve really leaned into this system.
Meanwhile I hit level 25 with my new character, putting her at the same level as my once-upon-a-time level-capped pre-smush characters.
So I continue to push forward. Once I get these dragons sorted I look forward to going to fight the mole men or whomever lives in the bowels of the world in The War Within!
Today is the last day of the current Fallout 76 Season which started back in June. (I think it was June 12th.) Tomorrow we all start back at 0 (after re-downloading the entire game this patch — the devs are trying to make the client smaller which is requiring a complete re-download). I haven’t watched any data mining videos this time out so I’m not sure what is in store for the new season.
To recap how season progression works (or at least, how it worked this season) in Fallout 76, you gain season experience by doing various daily and weekly tasks, and you earn 25 “Season Tickets” per season level. Every few levels from 0 to 100 a new page of prizes unlocks and you purchase whatever looks interesting with these tickets. Level 100 is considered “Complete” and then you get into “Bonus Levels.” Nothing more unlocks until level 150 when you get a selection of purchasable “consumable” style items, and you can buy these over and over as long as you have the tickets. These are things like Atoms (for the cash shop), Lunchboxes (which offer buffs when consumed) and Perk Points (used to level up Legendary Perks).
I was determined to get to level 150 and spend my tickets on Perk Points to level up those Legendary Perks and I did it. (That’s the final page of the season pass at the top of this post.) In fact yesterday I hit level 200. I’m past where all the Legendary Perks that I use are maxed and I have tickets to spare. Trying to decide what to spend them on. I could bank Perk Points in case I decide to switch my Legendary Perk cards, or I could spend these tickets on one of my alts. But 200 seems like a good stopping point so I am NOT logging into Fallout 76 today, for the first time since June.
I have some personal struggles around becoming obsessive about things and chasing these season levels has become something of an obsession. For the past month or so I’ve never really played Fallout 76 for fun. I’d just to log in, do the Daily & Weekly Tasks as efficiently & quickly as possible so as to max that Season level, then I’d go play something else for enjoyment. That’s how I ‘broke’ Fallout 76 for myself. On the one hand there’s a certain level of satisfaction in having hit this goal but on the other hand… why?
My character now is so OP that not much in the game makes me break a sweat. There’s group content I can’t solo because it requires doing several things at once, but in terms of combat only the world bosses that result from dropping nukes even offer a challenge. Bethesda says they are aware of this and they intend to add more challenging content soon.
But even without challenging enemies I could be playing for fun. Doing quests and content I haven’t done, trying new builds, or working on my CAMP to make it cool. But by forcing myself to do those tasks every time I log in, Fallout 76 has become just another chore for me to do every day, and I’m really sad about that.
This next season I’ll be aiming to hit 100, at most, and that only if there’s something really interesting on the level 100 unlock page. And I know that hitting 100 is pretty easy, if I could hit 200 this time, so I won’t sweat missing days now and then.
There’s also a new crafting system to explore and I’m going to burn through a TON of Legendary Items I have been saving which is going to empty my stash and my backpack so I won’t have to deal with being over-encumbered all the time.
Basically the promise I am making to myself is that, for this coming season, I’ll play Fallout 76 for the fun, not for the metrics or the challenge of hitting some arbitrary number.
OK OK, total clickbait title. I am so very, very far from completing all the content available for Guild Wars 2 and even if/when I do that, can one ever really beat an MMO?
So here’s what really happened. In a convulsion of actual humanity, someone at my company decided to close our offices at 1 PM on Friday in celebration of the 3-day weekend. And against all odds I was actually free by 1:30 or so (usually there’s 1 tryhard somewhere in the company that insists on continuing to work and who needs support). That meant I had a few hours to myself with no chores to do and no obligations to partner or doggo, which doesn’t happen too often. And I had one mission left in the “My Story” part of Guild Wars 2 which, I THINK, was the ‘end’ of the tale when the game launched.
It’s fortunate I had those hours too, because it was a LONG mission; it took about 90 minutes start to finish. I’m not sure what would have happened if I’d been forced to stop part-way through but I’m hoping it would have ‘checkpointed’ my progress so I wouldn’t have had to start all over again when I came back. So was it worth doing?
In terms of story and characters, yeah it was. I’ve grown fond of this band of leaders of the world’s different factions. The story itself was fine but for me it was the characters that I really enjoyed. Even the ancillary characters who’re hanging around in the background can be amusing to watch and listen to.
Her: So tough guy: How’d a high profile swashbuckler like you get into the Order of Whispers? Him: I’m good at what they do. I may not fit their recruiting profile, but I get results. Him: What’s your excuse? A vivacious lass like you joined the uptight and straight-laced vigil? Her: Ha! That makes two of us that “don’t fit the profile.” Let’s have a drink and see what else we have in common.
In terms of rewards, well I got a level 80 Exotic helm, something I’d been about to buy off the trading post, so yeah definitely worth it for the rewards.
In terms of gameplay it was kind of a mixed bag. The straight-up battles were fun but there was a bit too much ‘gimmick’ fighting in it for my tastes. I don’t want to get into spoilers but it was one of those cases where you, the player, has to do several things at once while your ‘allies’ stand around and watch you. I get why they do this: so you can be the Big Damned Hero, but logically it bugs me. Like we’re saving the world, maybe get off your lazy butts and help!? 🙂
But I was really glad to finish, 12 years after buying the game. In terms of hours spent on this character, it was around 55 but of course I was doing a lot of stuff besides story missions.
So what’s next? Living World Season 1, which I almost immediately dove into. Haven’t got far yet but the bump in challenge is pretty welcome. From the very start the fights have been more interesting and there’s this little side story where one of your companions is being followed around by a baby creature and it is just so darned adorable. I hope nothing happens to it!
What I’m wrestling with now is whether to push on with my current character or try a different profession for a while. There’s a LOT of content yet to do and while I like my Warrior well enough maybe there’s a profession I’d like even more. Still pondering this…
If you asked me a few weeks ago if I was thinking of trying World of Warcraft again I would’ve told you a very firm “NOPE” but here I am.
Just to recap the journey up to now. First played WoW in the Friends & Family Beta when the only race you could play were the Undead. Or Forsaken? I can’t even remember the race name. The skeleton characters. Played at launch heavily up to the release of the Burning Crusades then quit. For a while I’d go back to try new expansions, and whichever one the Blood Elves were in was the last time I spent any amount of time at all playing.
At some point post-Cataclysm I tried again but, not knowing any better, I treated it like “Classic WoW” and just went to Northshire Abbey then Goldshire then Westfall just like I’d always done. I leveled so fast and gameplay was so easy I didn’t stay long. Maybe tried the same thing for Night Elves? Then I tried Classic but that was too far the other way, if you know what I mean. I’d done those first zones so often they just felt tedious and THAT leveling was too slow! All this stopped quite a few years ago. 3? 4? 5 maybe? A long while ago.
OK that brings us up to now, and if you’re playing WoW this will all be stuff you already know. I’m writing this more for friends who, like me, haven’t played in a long time.
I rolled a new character (because of course I did) and ran through the new starter zone called Exiles Reach. (You do have a choice of starting in your racial staring zone). I liked Exiles Reach because there was a nice group of characters from various races there which was a good reminder to me that this was “New WoW”. If doesn’t take too long to run through even doing everything (I think I did everything) and when you get out you’ll be about level 10 and you get ported to your race’s main city, in my case Stormwind. Good old Stormwind. It was kind of nice to learn I still knew my way around it without much trouble, aside from that new-fangled Harbor zone. When did Stormwind get a harbor?
Then I had a few choices. The game nudged me towards two, one of which was Dragonflight, the last expansion (this was before The War Within had launched) and the other was, I THINK, the ‘pre-patch’ zone that I’ve heard friends talking about and which didn’t look super interesting from what I’d seen. Seemed just a place to grind up levels, but I could be wrong and maybe that wasn’t even what choice #2 was. They don’t make it very clear (though once you decide on a ‘campaign’ they make it pretty hard to get lost). And if I didn’t want to do either of those I could’ve headed down to Elwynn Forest or something, but I knew I didn’t want to do that, at least not right away. There are also ways to go back and play earlier expansions but I think you need at least one high level character before you can access that system. I’m not sure how interested I am in that, anyway.
It’d be pretty hard to get lost in the campaign. If you forget to accept a quest the game will remind you, and while it is hard to see here, there’s an icon on the map showing exactly where you need to go
In the end I went with Dragonflight, a zone I’d never been to in a game that was both familiar and very alien. I feel like the narrative is much heavier than it used to be, which I’m enjoying. Not only do we get some cut scenes but also there are NPCs with conversation bubbles over their head. When you interact with these it kicks off a discussion between a few NPCs that you just eavesdrop on. I’m eating that stuff up.
There’s now a metric sh*t ton of stuff to collect and a lot of it is account-wide. I was over the moon when I checked the Mount collection and my Nightsaber mounts that my old main used to ride were in there. And you can ride immediately. [That’s Petra riding a Frostmane at the top of the post, though next to Cadet Sendrax both she and the cat look tiny!] Remember when you had to hit level 40 before you could even use a mount? There’s a ton of systems I know nothing about, but I could still take skinning so I can skin my kills and sell the leather, so that felt really familiar!
There’s now the Warband stuff where all your characters across all servers are part of an extended family. Aside from showing a group of them on the login screen I’m not sure what real impact that has. There is a shared bank vault for anyone in your Warband but it costs 1,000 gold which seemed crazy until I saw how fast gold accumulates in “new WoW”. So that’s something fun to work towards. I guess in the newer zones you can set things so that quests that you’ve already done on other characters are hidden which will be handy if I start running alts.
Like collecting things? There’s 48 pages worth of “Toy Box” items to collect.
And 42 pages of appearance items!
As for the actual minute-to-minute gameplay, that still feels like good old WoW to me. I’m playing a Paladin which I’ve played before. There’s now a specialization system (3 per class I guess) and you get skill points to spend as you level up. I honestly cannot recall if that was in vanilla WoW or not but it seems like another alt-friendly system. I THINK you can switch specializations at will, but I’m not sure.
I’m playing on a low-population server and noticed a lot of other characters had an * after their name. According to Google this means they’re from a different server. I’m not sure exactly how that works…did they choose to come play on Kirin Tor or does the game just magically move them to balance things out. Not sure. To be fair I’ve not interacted with anyone anyway. Even chat is quiet, to the point where I wondered if some channels defaulted to off but it didn’t seem that way. There’s a lot of odd things that don’t unlock until you get a few levels (like area looting unlocked at level 8 or something) so maybe the game is protecting me from “Barrens Chat” as we used to call it.
So yeah, having fun so far. Love learning about these dragon-people, which I didn’t know existed. New cultures with new lore is always fun. The old routine of grabbing 1 ‘big’ quest and then 2 or 3 ‘kill ten rats’ quests that happen in the same spot is both familiar and still enjoyable. Nothing like running back and handing in 3 or 4 quests all at the same time and watching the experience bar move! As I mentioned I’m really digging the heavier story telling.
So that’s where I’ll leave things for now but as I learn and experience more stuff I may be back with more WoW Journal Entries. While everyone else is talking about The War Within you can listen to me yammer on about Dragonflight!
The last time I talked about Guild Wars 2 I was in a bit of a slump after being my own worst enemy and basically turning the game into a chore to get through rather than a journey of pleasure. I took a few days more or less off which helped to clear my mental palate, and over the weekend jumped back in.
This time I went back to playing the way I favor which is, yes, to follow the “My Story” quests but to travel from one to the next on foot, allowing myself to be constantly distracted by events and vistas and whatever else pops up as I slowly uncover parts of the map. I really enjoy this style of play and I am not looking forward to having the whole map revealed, but I guess I have a ways to go before that is a problem.
Found an anniversary chest in my bank vault and got these cosmetic skins from it so Petra is no longer a pirate. Also note to self: Turn off my own name in the UI!So far I had one fight that was really tough (one fight that I should have been able to do on my own, I mean…clearly there are PLENTY of group fights that kick my butt) and for that one I needed to sleep on the fight, think of new ideas (and the game gave me hints along those lines, I just wasn’t listening) and then try them. Doing that I beat the fight the next day and it was really satisfying. So more of that, please.
If I AM going to have a real issue with Guild Wars 2, it might be due to what many people see as the game’s strength: the horizontal progression aspect. Right now my character is level 80 but her gear is not. Some of it is. Some of it is lower level than that. Then there’s the question of tier quality. The game pushes you towards having Exotic gear in each slot and I’m not there yet. The top 3 gear tiers are Exotic, Ascended and then Legendary but everyone says Legendary offers quality of life improvements but not better stats. So level 80 Ascended gear has the best stats in the game. And I’m already being urged to equip level 80 Exotic, which is just 1 tier down.
Thing is, I actually like the gear grind and farming for better gear and making my character more powerful. I have a ways to go before I have all level 80 Ascended gear, unless I watch one of the many “How to gear up fast” videos and follow along. But I DON’T want to go the trading post and just buy gear that some other player has crafted or found; where’s the enjoyment in that? Getting your gear is half the fun of MMOs for me!
So I was kind of in a dilemma and then Stargrace shared a game-changing tip with me. (PixelOne had told me about this earlier but it went right over my head because stuff goes in one ear and out the other with me.) There’s an item in the shop called the World Boss Portal Device. It costs 400 Gems ($5 US assuming you buy them for cash) but OMG it is awesome. You use it and it tells you what world bosses are close to spawning and it will portal you to their location. And just to make it even greater, you can set it up so it notifies you in text chat 10 minutes before a boss spawns, too.
For guildless, friendless players like me, this is a game changer. I used it to do two boss fights in a row and my only “gripe” is then I had to spend a bunch of time sorting through all the loot that I got from doing them! Most of it was salvage or trading post fodder but I did get a couple of upgrades from it, and that was from just 2 bosses and maybe an hour of playing. So now I know that whenever I want to change things up and work on getting some good gear “drops”, I can use this device to jump in a zerg attack on a world boss. Super fun stuff! Oh and it just so happened one of the bosses was Tequatl again, and this time I was actually contributing thanks to having a rifle in my bag.
The only “downside” to chasing world bosses is inventory management!
I still worry a bit about what will keep me engaged once I DO get all my gear, but that’s really just borrowing trouble because it’s a long way off and I do still have a bevy of alts to level up and gear up. I feel like I’m happiest in Guild Wars 2 when I just do my thing and don’t worry about the future, though that can be tough for me. I’m a born worrier.
So yeah, still enjoying myself now that I stopped fixating on getting through the content as quickly and efficiently as possible. We’ll see how long I can balance Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft but honestly if I AM going to play 2 MMOs at once, this feels like a good pair since they scratch different itches. Guild Wars 2 with its more action-y combat and vast world that is about ‘go do whatever, whenever’ and WOW with its tab target combat and strong quest lines to follow along (and yes, it’s lovely gear treadmill).
I tell you what, there are worse problems than having TWO games you’re currently enjoying!
Well I did it. I subscribed to World of Warcraft for the first time in I don’t know how many years. And my first hour or so was just WEIRD.
First strange thing is, just a few weeks ago I started a new character using the “Free until level 20” system and I played him for maybe 10 minutes before thinking “Nope, this isn’t for me.” This time I once again started a new character and enjoyed it. What changed? I guess my mood, or maybe it was because that first character was an ugly human male and this time I made a more attractive human female. Maybe I really AM that shallow!
Although Krikket had kindly invited me to join her on her server, I ended up rolling on good old Kirin Tor which is an RP server. I take it that what server you are on doesn’t really matter these days and I doubt anyone still role-plays but JUST in case, I wanted to play on an RP server. Not that I RP much but back in ye olden days I used to enjoy watching role play while acting almost like an ‘extra’ in whatever drama was going down.
Then finally I started playing and there were a lot of things I’d forgotten. Little stuff like, to open your inventory you don’t hit I, you hit B, for Bags. When you loot a corpse I’m not seeing a “Take all” option but I figure it has to be in there somewhere; maybe I need to check the options or something. With stuff like this, I don’t know if things have changed or if back in the day I had keys rebound or mods to help. But it felt slightly awkward and I was happy to be playing a new character, who is in a zone I’ve never been in before which sorta helps my brain process changes better. If I was at the Northshire Abbey I’d be hella confused.
There’s a lot of other little things I don’t understand, like some characters have an * after their name. Some NPCs have 3 dots over there head. I THINK that means they’re waiting for you but I’m not sure. There’s now a Newcomer Chat channel and folks were actually being helpful in it! Stranger still, I had questions!
There’s now the Warband stuff that gathers all (??) of your characters under one umbrella. For me it’s a little odd since I’ve used the same name over and over on different servers so I had several characters with the same name appearing on my login screen. Finally figured that one out: the characters you have tagged as “Favorites” show up on that screen so I shuffled some low level alts up there for the screenshot at the top of this post.
I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t find my old “Main” character from Vanilla WoW, but then I remembered the “level smush” they did a few years back. I’d heard about it but never experienced it. Turns out that very handsome level 25 hunter named Meglivorn on the left in the screenshot up there is my vanilla WoW level 60 hunter. I have several Meglivorn characters which is why I didn’t put it together right away, then I noticed his Warg Companion and blank tabard and realized THAT was him. I’ll have to wake him up eventually.
[Vanilla WOW trivia: Back when I was in a guild Meg the Hunter would be who pulled the boss in several dungeons. Imagine if a DPS pulled today! But he’d pull the boss and kite him for as long and as far as possible while the rest of the group burned down any sub-bosses or other riff-raff, then they’d give me the word and I’d have Meg Feign Death to drop the aggro. The boss would then turn and walk back to his starting point where the rest of the party was all set to pound him.]
In for a penny, in for a pound. I signed up for a 3-month subscription just to try to incentivize myself to stick with it, AND I pre-ordered The War Within. So we’ll see how this goes. I only stopped playing last night because it was getting late, so that’s a good sign, I guess! As to the cost, it struck me that with virtually EVERYTHING going up in price these days, a WoW sub costs the same as it ever has, which makes it feel like more of a bargain than it used to. That 3-month sub cost me about the same as what we spend on a fast food dinner for 2 and a movie rental on a Saturday night, and it’s for 3 months. So not so bad, really. Maybe I’m just justifying… 🙂
The default positioning of UI elements on a widescreen seems a little inefficient since I have to look back and forth so much
Next step is to ask around to see what mods are hot these days because of course even if I could remember the UI mods I used to use, that doesn’t mean they are still supported. I also may need some tips on the best/most efficient way to play on a widescreen. I feel like some important data is now out of my central viewing area, if that makes sense (see screenshot). And I need to read up on what exactly this Warband stuff is for. I do know that some quests told me that another member of my warband had already completed it (presumably the other alt I’d rolled up a couple weeks back). And I think I’ll go through and delete some of these alts because I have a ridiculous number and many of them are VERY low level (like under 5). So there’s some tidying to be done.
And here is where I was going to share the “Warcraft Story” for one of my old mains, but none of them seem to be findable, probably because they haven’t been logged in for years and I’m not really ready to deal with logging them in yet since I know a cascade of random pop-ups will happen when I do. My new character, Petrarav (did you know WoW doesn’t allow spaces in names? Her name SHOULD be Petra Rav, which is the name of my Guild Wars 2 character, Petra being a character in both Destiny 2 and Horizon Forbidden West, and Rav being a shortened version of Ravach, a name I often use for male characters — particular those that lean toward barbarian or boisterous cultures.) doesn’t have a story yet either, presumably because she was just born.
So that’s my WoW story for now. With trying to play Guild Wars 2 and Diablo IV and World of Warcraft AND Fallout 76…well obviously either something has to give or I just won’t make any progress anywhere, but as I said the other day, I’m just feeling rather self-indulgent right now, and I’m gonna play what I want, when I want, at least while this PC gaming honeymoon period is on-going. I’m not in any guilds anywhere or anything so if I just vanish from some of these games, no one but me will notice.
