Nogamara

2022 in review

Another year has passed, so it’s time for a review post!

What I played a lot:

  • World of Warcraft
  • EVE Online

Other games I played:

  • Final Fantasy XIV
  • Minion Masters
  • Guild Wars 2

Gaming expenses in 2022:

  • WoW: 196 EUR for 10 months
    • 1x 66 EUR for a 6 month subscription
    • 1x 50 EUR for the Dragonflight expansion
    • 1x 80 EUR for an 8 character transfer offer
    • 4x 0 EUR for 4 months of sub with WoW tokens for gold
  • EVE Online: ~270 EUR for ~17 months (+70 EUR prepaid for next year’s subs)
    • 2x 96 EUR for 2x 6 months sub
    • 1x 12 EUR for a single month
    • 2x 50 EUR for two discounted Platinum packs
    • 1x 40 EUR for a 3 month sub
  • Final Fantasy XIV: 69 EUR
    • 5x 13.80 EUR for subscriptions
  • GOG, Steam, Epic, Humble: 0 (Actually one Humble Ukraine Bundle, but my wife paid that one)

Summary:

  • Amount of MMOs played: 3
  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid: 10 (WoW) + 5 (FFXIV) + 17 (EVE) = 32, so nearly 3 per month
  • Amount of games purchased: 0
  • Amount of MMO expansions purchased: 1
  • Amount of money for ingame/services stuff: 80 EUR, plus an unquantifiable amount from the EVE packs
  • Amount of games I got for free and didn’t play: a ton
  • Amount of games I purchased and then didn’t play: 0

The total this year is around 535 EUR, that’s 45 EUR per month. Another very cheap year, even if I’d take the prepaid sub months in, then it’s around 50 per month. Quite ok for your main hobby.

Unfortunately my plan of buying and playing more indie games did not pan out at all.

I did manage to look at a few games in my backlog (most of them I got for free) and write about some of them, no AAA titles this year.

2022 in review Read More »

Small steps in Dragonflight

So, Dragonflight is… ok, I guess? Something feels a little odd, but I can’t put my finger on it. I leveled 3 chars to 70, one is ready to raid (we’ll probably only start on Jan 8th though), and the second one should be there shortly. I ran a few M+ (it was fine, and fun), but I’m not really excited. It’s fun but I’m not blown away, but maybe I’m just not in a real WoW hype mode right now. I want to raid but for some reason we put it off until after the holidays. Also still unsure if I’m going Fury or Enhancement, that’s why I want to get the Shaman to around iLvl 370 in the next 10 days.

As I have one each of Plate, Mail, and Cloth – I’m now pondering to use my last prepaid character transfer on my Human Rogue (the only Alliance char on my original Vanilla server, whereas my other Alliance toons were on it’s connected sister realm, from where I transferred most of them off now anyway…) to my current server. I do have a Gnome Rogue there (who is also kind of old) but I like this Human Rogue. Maybe I should just do it and then level her, it’s not like I’m planning to really play on the other server a lot anyway.

While I am totally still trying to avoid to redo the slight burnout I had from Shadowlands launch, I have spent some time on my Warlock, but not excessively trying to gear her (no more gear treadmills for me this time, thank you very much) – but I guess if you want to play at max level, you kinda have to do a little with WQs and farming rares and so on. Leveling is relatively quick and fun though, so maybe getting that fourth armor proficiency class up is actually good enough. I don’t crave leveling more toons right now, but I just can’t not have a Rogue.

Small steps in Dragonflight Read More »

Addons in Dragonflight

Back in June last year I thought about my (maybe excessive) list of addons – no, I didn’t count, but because of the complete Default UI revamp in Dragonflight I actually started fresh. Made a backup of my WTF folder and my Addons, then deleted everything. Of course it was clear from the start that I don’t want to play with zero addons, but the list should be a lot smaller now, so let’s have a look.

  • Prio 1: UI and the absolute basics
    • BugSack
    • Bagnon + BagBrother
    • Prat
    • SexyMap
    • WeakAuras
  • Prio 2: Raiding and still very important
    • BigWigs (not yet installed, but will grab it for raids)
    • Details (Damage Meter)
    • HandyNotes
    • Masque
    • Quartz (replaced by WeakAuras on some toons/specs)
    • Scrap
  • Prio 3: I’d hate to lose this
    • Altoholic
    • Bazooka
    • TomTom
    • WorldQuestTracker (the default UI for WQs is just bad for a quick look, so many clicks)
  • Prio 4: Not strictly necessary
    • Astral Keys

So that list is quite a bit shorter already. The big addons I eliminated (for now) are PitBull Unit Frames, Bartender 4, MoveAnything, Mapster and several “Mission Table” addons. I use a WeakAura instead of 2-3 XP display addons, I got rid of some StatBlocks

Stuff I probably need to add again are BigWigs (as mentioned above), SimulationCraft, and MythicDungeonTools/MythicRaidTools or whatever they are called

The small things I am missing at the moment are Examiner and SavedInstances. I’ve managed to level just fine with the default UI, but a few things are impossible to move, which isn’t so bad, but on the other also aggravating because we were nearly there. I did not need MoveAnything or PitBull or Bartender, but maybe I need one or several of them now after all because it’s only “nearly there” and not completely fine. Then again maybe my take is from a (even if only a little) competitive point of view, with Heroic raiding and M+ on the horizon, it was perfectly fine for leveling and Mythic 0.

So far I’ve also not grabbed an excessive amount of WeakAuras, but some things are simply so small and nice, or provide everything for a spec/class in a nice package. Guess I’ll ramp up a few there as well.

Overall: Nicely done Blizzard, this should cut down the amount of “basically mandatory” addons for basic tasks like moving Action Bars or Unit frames a lot for the baseline player doing Quests and Instances.

Addons in Dragonflight Read More »

The road to 70 and first impressions

While I wasn’t (and am not) really *enthusiastic* about Dragonflight, I’m having fun. Took my time to level, went for a little bit of gear (still pondering to run a few M0 tonight before the reset), started leveling an alt, also got that one to 70 last night.
Either I’ve missed it or we don’t have a plan about raiding yet (as in, when does it start, how to prepare) so everything is chill and I’m certainly not repeating the manic prep grind that I had when Shadowlands launched.

Been taking a week off EVE and just played as much (or as little) WoW as I wanted. I like it.

Apparently everyone was quicker than I was but here are my numbers, including reading all the quests, doing as many Dragonriding courses as I felt like (only did Gold after hitting 70 though, and need to work through the Advanced courses now). Dragonriding is pretty fun.

  • 60-61: ???
  • 61-62: 1:14h
  • 62-63: 1:30h
  • 63-64: 2:00h
  • 64-65: 2:00h
  • 65-66: 1:13h
  • 66-67: 1:42h
  • 67-68: 1:54h
  • 68-69: 1:44h
  • 69-70: 2:00h

That’s about 16h, my alt (with a spec I have no clue about) took around 17h despite not reading quest text. Guess I am slow.

The road to 70 and first impressions Read More »

Dragonflight launched

So I did buy the Dragonflight expansion on the day before the launch to get the preorder pet, but I didn’t log in at midnight to play.

Today is the end of the 2nd evening after launch and I just dinged 65 on my Warrior. 1:15h to 2h per level and Dragonriding is fun!

I’m still not really in hype mode, but I’m leveling at an enjoyable pace – but I mean I spent around 8h on the first two nights, so it seems to be good, right?

We’ll see how this evolves, sub is running out in 1-2 days but I have a WoW token prepared already. Maybe I just need some time to get back into the groove.

Also while I’m not a fan of Twitch drops, just leaving it on in the background for 4h for a mount, while stupid, is nothing I’d refuse just out of principle. I got it, I redeemed it, now I just need to find out how I will get it.

Dragonflight launched Read More »

The end of Shadowlands

I’d nearly forgotten that there was a prepatch/launch event, if I hadn’t been pinged via WhatsApp to help with an achievement and thus logged in.

Not that levels mean anything anymore, but this is the final tally of 36 Level 60 chars:

  • Rogue x5
  • Warrior x4
  • Paladin x4
  • Hunter x4
  • Warlock x3
  • Death Knight x3
  • Priest x3
  • Shaman x2
  • Druid x2
  • Monk x2
  • Demon Hunter x2
  • Mage x2

Renown 80 on 17 of them, and I think I maxed out every profession at least once.

All that is left now is grabbing a few transmogs. And actually buying the expansion – not very hyped up at the moment, I have to say.

The end of Shadowlands Read More »

A blogging lull

My month in Eorzea ended recently, quite uneventful. I managed to get my Relic Weapon, the bow for the Bard – but I even forgot the name. It’s iLevel 615 and looks ok.

Other than that I’m hardly logging in to WoW, basically trying to earn a little money with missions and waiting for the expansions, rarely leveling my last 4 chars – but I have 2 weeks left, even a little more.

My time is spent mostly with EVE, but not much to write about.

A blogging lull Read More »

One hundred ten million

And again time has passed and I had an EVE subscription, my main is now at 110 million skill points. (Last post in February).

Skill category             Points     No. of skills
===================================================
Spaceship Command         33,551,562  63 *
Gunnery                   17,810,068  42 *
Drones                     9,658,434  22 *
Navigation                 8,606,589  13 *
Missiles                   8,390,514  23
Engineering                6,842,040  15
Subsystems                 4,096,000  16
Fleet Support              3,843,169  12
Shields                    3,496,158  12
Electronic Systems         2,863,220  14
Targeting                  2,575,530   8
Armor                      2,547,805  11
Scanning                   1,899,374   7
Resource Processing          902,450  10 *
Neural Enhancement           778,275   5
Rigging                      679,060  10
Science                      502,275  13
Social                       434,510   6
Planet Management            394,040   4
Trade                        359,530   8
Production                   276,743   4
Structure Management         135,765   1 *
Corporation Management           250   1

* = changes since last time

Skills at Level 5:   125 (+6)
Skills at Level 4:   122 (+1)
Skills at Level 3:    47 (+6)
Skills at Level 2:     2 (-3)
Skills at Level 1:    24 (-2)
Skills at Level 0:     1 ( 0)

And my alt also reached 60 million (forgot 50m, last post in May 2021 at 40m).

Skill category             Points     No. of skills
===================================================
Spaceship Command          17,392,801 53
Gunnery                     9,166,860 36
Missiles                    6,093,279 21
Engineering                 5,919,060 14
Drones                      4,597,475 17
Navigation                  3,284,080  9
Subsystems                  3,253,020 16
Shields                     2,260,080 10
Electronic Systems          2,054,120 13
Armor                       1,602,413 10
Targeting                   1,521,805  8
Neural Enhancement            738,275  4
Rigging                       679,060 10
Fleet Support                 527,530  2
Science                       483,690  3
Planet Management             394,040  4
Scanning                      184,000  6
Resource Processing            24,250  2
Structure Management           24,000  1
Social                         23,072  4
Trade                          12,244  3

Skills at Level 5:    81
Skills at Level 4:   112
Skills at Level 3:    32
Skills at Level 2:    10
Skills at Level 1:    11
Skills at Level 0:     8

One hundred ten million Read More »

No WoW news

WoW is completely on the backburner at the moment, I’m only logging in a handful of chars once or twice per day and spend 2 minutes for the table, trying to make some easy money with the covenant missions.

I still have these 4 chars I have started to push through Shadowlands (57, 56, 56, 54), but I had actually forgotten about them momentarily and only thought about them again yesterday. Maybe I’m in the mood to work on them again in a week or so when their rested XP has filled up.

But overall, I’m done with the expansion – there were a few achievements I wanted to do and maybe I will, but right now I’m not even sure. Basically a wasted last month of my 6 month subscription, but at the time we didn’t really have a release date or knew how S4 would pan out, bummer.

WotLK has also not managed to interest me, at all. I tried to login once and there was a queue, and that was that. Oh well, I got EVE at the moment, so I’m not bored. I’m half-heartedly following news and updates as people prepare their Dragonflight TODO lists and tips, meanwhile I’m not even sure which character and spec I want to play. I guess waiting until the last moment has worked out fine several times for me and just because right now I can’t even imagine leveling up and raiding… it’s 6 more weeks and I don’t want to write off the expansion launch yet.

No WoW news Read More »

Hello again, Eorzea

With WoW being in a real lull (we officially stopped raiding and we kinda stopped M+) I took the liberty to get at least a month of FFXIV in and catch up a bit.

Resubscribed a week ago and the first thing I did is empty my 2 free retainers of all the glamour gear. The next day I paid for retainer number 3 and 4, so I could empty at least number 4 and cancel that one for the future. My glamour dresser is now at around 680/800 – not bad, as I’ve collected quite a bit of Endwalker gear already, so this should at least be ok until the next expansion.

I managed to do all of the 6.2 MSQ very quickly (it was really good), including the trial. I noticed I had done 6.1 already just before unsubscribing at the start of the year, just the one 6.1 trial is missing.

As usual it took a bit to get acquainted again with all the currencies and what to do, but I already traded in my old tomestones, bought some 610 crafted gear on the market board (Bard is 594 now, just as WAR was with raiding Savage in 6.0) and started trying to cap the 450 Tomestones of Causality for the week, and it has worked out for both resets. Not sure what to buy yet. For now I’ve reverted back to my old main job, Bard, because I didn’t want to tank the new stuff last night, but already healed some Alliance Raid stuff, we’ll see.

WHM and RPR are at 571 iLvl, so there are some easy targets for gear and spending my old 6.0 tokens.

Main priority after grabbing some tomestones was SMN/SCH – which I had left at Level 87 – and then there’s a ton of content I need to check if I’m interested in doing.

Was a bit surprised to find this draft from day 2, so I had to rewrite parts of it. SMN/SCH was 90 pretty quickly and the last week I’ve been doing a duty roulette or two most days and got Red Mage to 67 already. My main focus is the Hildibrand quest line now, and I have finished the ARR part.

Overall it’s fine but I’m not having awesome fun. I didn’t touch the new Deliveries, I have not checked Tataru’s quests and I only briefly visited the Island Sanctuary. It’s an ok use of my time but I’m not desperate for a second month at the moment. I’ll see that I progress the things I care about but not overdo it. I guess it’s my typical way of needing goals, I can’t just subscribe to an MMO and look at the sandbox and find spontaneous fun.

Hello again, Eorzea Read More »