Last week I upgraded my computer and AMD was nice enough to let me choose between The Outer Worlds and Borderlands 3 for buying a Ryzen CPU. I took Borderlands 3 because I’m not into solo RPGs right now and if I was, I’d play Mass Effect Andromeda first, or continue with one of the Witchers. Or play Pillars of Eternity.
Hello, Lilith
Anyway, it’s fun. A typical Borderlands game. I liked BL2, but I found some things a little annoying. Maybe because it’s a shooter. So this time I’m playing on easy mode and I’m already not sure if Zane was the right choice but I’m having fun – in moderation, playing one story mission a day. This seems to be the sweet spot for not being turned off. Oh, and it’s pretty. And some funny things.
When I moved this blog off wordpress.com 8 months ago I was only 90% happy with my new theme, trying very hard to preserve the old basic look I’ve had since 2009. My CSS skills are a bit rusty and I really wasn’t in the mood to fiddle with everything endlessly, but I was getting less and less happy with something I couldn’t express 100%.
Something annoys me here
Inspired by Rakuno’s post I instantly noticed what was bugging me most, the author blurb/posted on/meta part.
The meta information about the post is in one line
So as I had a little time I went digging for a theme where I could do this better after spending half an hour fiddling with the CSS on the old theme and overwriting 20 rules. It was close, but not perfect and then I noticed 2-3 other things..
Yes, much better.
Long story short, now I have a new theme, Astra, and I only had to override one thing with CSS and the rest can be configured. Awesome. Let’s see if I stay happy with this evolution of the basic look.
An interesting topic I saw going round: How much to spend for games? Paeroka wrote about it, Naithin did, and Krikket started it.
I’ve been summing up my gaming expenses in the end of year posts since 2014, that post isn’t due for 2 months but the current state for me seems to be that I have allowed myself to pay 3 MMO subscriptions at the same time, maybe for the first time ever. I can justify that because I don’t think I bought any game this year, with the exception of FFXIV’s Shadowbringers expansion, if you want to count that. I resisted any sale and I’ve been busy enough to not be lured in by any new release of any games coming out this year. The only things on my current “I really want to play that” list is Horizon: Zero Dawn and Beat Saber (and I’m certainly not buying a PS4 or VR gear for those). Also the Switch sounds nice, but I suppose I should play all my XBox 360 games first before buying another console.
That average playtime figure is oddly high
Compared to the others I linked above my number of games is ridiculously low, and I still played only half of them, but I think I can also pull the bundle excuse – for example the complete idSoftware-Pack. I did play those games, before I bought the bundle, even have some of the CDs somewhere. And I have zero regrets for that purchase, as an example.
Does anyone I know have a lower value here? 😛
So the final tally is still out and I’m too lazy to do the math now, but I guess I’ll come up with the same ballpark as every year, roughly 30 EUR per month for games, which is 1 EUR per day – quite cheap for a hobby that takes up a major part of my spare time.
And yes, overall I feel quite bad to always just buy games on sale and only support MMOs that seem to do well anyway, but I don’t really see why I should hand out money for games I’m simply not really interested in playing. Sometimes I get the urge, but nothing but MMOs seems to really stick in the last years. There simply wasn’t a major release that has me pumped and excited in a way where I could reasonably guess I’d even spend 20 hours on a full price game for 60 EUR. Maybe Cyberpunk 2077 is the first one in years. Maybe.
And in conclusion, maybe I should look up my /played times of various MMOs, that would certainly justify being subscribed there. Marvel Heroes said just shy of 65 days, that’s 1554 hours.
Still sick at home so I played a little more WoW. My Dwarven Hunter is now 120, which makes 19 max-level toons. He got the full Benthic treatment and again I’m missing rings (268+284), was a bit lucky with Trinket WQs (360+370), which makes him sit at 371 iLvl (370 MH Bow as well).
Dwarf Hunter at 120
For some reason I was fed up with bag space on several toons today, so I made a spreadsheet of all 27 (19 110+ and 8 lowbies) non-bank toons on my main server and thanks to the Altoholic addon I could quickly jot down who has which bag and size, without having to log through them all. To my surprise I didn’t grab the free 28 bag from a Tiragarde Sound Rare (Totes) on most of them, and a few were also missing the free 26 slot Legion bag from Addie in Highmountain. Interestingly WoD didn’t seem to have one, as the next fitting one is the 24 slot Grummlepack from Pandaria’s Kun-Lai Summit. So I killed Totes roughly 13 times, did the Addie quest like 5 times, handed out some 30 slot Netherweave bags I’ve been dutifully crafting and then most of it looked fine. Found enough non-BoE/BoP 16 slot bags to shuffle them around to all the ones who didn’t have all their bank slots unlocked and so on. I didn’t write down the exact numbers but I think most toons gained 4-10 slots in their bags and also in the bank. The only problem was still my Rogue main who didn’t benefit from the upgrades (gonna get the 28 slot at some point, but he’s on all 26+ already anyway) and was still at 0 free bank space. Yes, I’m keeping too much shit since Vanilla. In the end I managed to sell 10 armor pieces, throw out 5 bogus buff items and move ~15 Tier armor pieces to the Void Storage, which is also 3/4 full. But in the end even he reclaimed 29 slots. This took like 5h in total but it’s worth it. I also managed to redistribute some stuff and overall this will save time. But I still have like 60 greens to disenchant.
Also the 15 year anniversary event started today and it gives a nice +15% exp and rep buff for the next 2 months. I took advantage of that and also cleaned out some WQs and Emissaries (it’s also +50% bonus WQ rep). And I finally brought some Nazjatar allies to Rank 3 to get the Necklace bonus trait on the toons who are Azerite Level 55 already. Also finally cleaning out the quest logs.
With the Hunter at 120 – what’s next? My 3rd Rogue will be put on the backburner now, she’s at 390 iLvl and in a state I can absolutely see her as “finished”, being on the remote server and all – I already put in ~10h more at max level than originally planned.
110 Blood Elf Demon Hunter – my last missing Horde class, tempting
70 Draenei DK – with Horde being so lonely I kinda prefer my Ally guild right now, also tempting
72 Kul Tiran Mage – leveling only in Random Dungeons so far, could be pumped up a little
73 Worgen Priest – pass for now I think
82 Mag’har Orc Rogue – staying with Random Dungeons I think
42 Nightborne Priest – Random Dungeons it is
34 Zandalari Troll Paladin – more Random Dungeons
34 Dark Iron Dwarf Monk – guess what? Random Dungeons!
I’ve not done a lot of interesting things the last 2 weeks, mostly because of a nasty flu that didn’t so much knock me down to bed but more made my head completely dizzy and unable to concentrate on anything but a few dailies and grinding. I didn’t even dare to login to Classic because I found the questing to be too hard. Yay.
I’m still trying to catch up all the professions from Legion, and some from Draenor (mostly Alliance) so I was busy gathering some mats, at the same time doing some Broken Isles WQs and Emissary Quests. And a few Mythic 5man solo dungeon runs because those are a joke at 120.
Legion Mining seems to be a pain and my Human Rogue is lacking most of the points, Draenor Inscription seems to be fine with 1-2 points per day if you remember. On the other hand Mining will fuel my lackluster Legion Jewelcrafting which seems to need a ton of Ore to prospect. Kinda glad I don’t even have a BS on alliance side. Overall there seems to be a reason that despite playing a few toons in Legion I never have been so sloppy with professions, because they were horrible. BfA is better, but not by a huge margin – but I at least have the gathering ones maxed on nearly all toons and am well beyond 100 on some crafting ones.
Draenor Cooking is mostly mailing the correct staple of mats around and maybe buying a few things at the Garrison. Horde has been done for a while but I only have 2 Alliance garrisons, and need the last 5 points of Draenor Cooking on the 7th Alliance toon.
And lastly I’m grinding out Legionfall, Argussian Reach and Army of the Light rep on the Rogue and do a few Broken Isles Emissary Quests on the Shaman, my Legion Horde main who is progressed most. Need to tick those checkboxes 😛
While it’s been a while since I played SW:TOR I absolutely don’t have the time right now. I did login quickly to have a peek. Some observations:
Not subscribed, so only 1 char “active” right now, my Commando
The character window is different
The Valor bar is still? buggy and flickering
I only have 3 currencies left: Tech Fragments/Dark Side Tokens/Fleet Commendations
I still have 2 Command Crate – Tier 4 in my inventory (this is in the patchnotes)
The Renown Stash is still full 9/10 😛
I have 350k credits + some in escrow, as expected
My Legacy bank still shows me all my millions of credits
The Combat Proficiencies window is still the only one that won’t close via the Esc key 😛
There wasn’t a single pop up “new quest! new expansion! go here!” – weird. Do I have to subscribe? Should be big on the website or the patch notes or did I just miss this? Aha. Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ – Onslaught is coming October 2019, free to all subscribers – ok, missed it 🙂
And I basically also logged in because a friend just said he logged in for the first time in 2 years and was overcome by “OHMYGOD BAGS FULL” instantly. I was curious… and yep, it’s a thing. Makes you want to log off straight again.
It’s been 2 weeks already with the whole Blizzard kerfuffle and while I don’t feel the need to justify why I won’t boycott Blizzard in the form of cancelling my WoW subscription, I did want to write down some things. I think the boycott is a good idea, I also don’t agree on what they did and how they did it. The problem is just that the game’s too important for me right now.
While I had stopped playing WoW as my bread and butter login daily MMO in 2014 (when I stopped raiding) and have only come back as a 3 month tourist for WoD and Legion, I have been subscribed for quite a while and it’s the game I play most right now and not much else provides fun. But that’s not the main point, the main point is that I’m finally playing Classic with friends who never shared a server with me in Retail. I started in Vanilla, they started when WotLK launched. I visited them on their server a few times for a bit (even did a cool thing once), but understandably never stuck around – so Classic is the first time we get to really play together, not just talk about WoW (which we have been doing IRL for over 10 years now).
Speaking of said guild group in Classic, we all hit 43-44 and had an Uldaman run scheduled when one had to take an extended break for an unspecified amount of time. Because we were only 5 people at level to begin with (still waiting for our Rogue to come back at all), we decided to put an official halt on this group until he returns, just maybe level to 45.
The good news is that we do have some alts and so we started converging on the same level and already did Ragefire Chasm on the weekend. 17 Warrior Tank, 15 Hunter, 15 Feral Druid Healer, 13 Affliction Warlock. Went pretty good for a 4man run. Next step is Wailing Caverns at 20, we’ll see if we 4man it again. Also the guild has 9 people in total, so we might pick up some of the others on the way – we’ll see.
Last tuesday I dinged for the 17th time – my Blood Elf Retri Paladin and last night for the 18th time – my Gnome Sub Rogue. Paladin was kinda smooth, relaxing, and easy again, the Rogue was stressful and died a lot. Really not sure if it’s me or the class this expansion. But it’s my only Gnome and I wanted the heritage armor.
Immolation & Sin’dorei gear mix very well
Too cheap to transmog yet, need Benthic gear first.
So now I have the heritage armor for Blood Elves, Tauren, Gnomes, and Dwarves. Getting my 120 Worgen Druid to Exalted is probably next, as the Goblin is 86 and on the wrong server and the Allied Race chars all still way below that level.
10 years ago I posted for the first time on this blog (back at the URL it had for 9.5 years).
I was still studying (but already working part-time) and in my spare time I was mostly playing WoW (in that years-long stretch where I didn’t play a lot of other games, sometimes none at all). Wrath of the Lich King was the current expansion and I was raiding. The Crusader’s Coliseum and Onyxia’s Lair had been released in the months before and Icecrown Citadel would hit live 2 months later. I posted about my latest Level 80 char (a shaman) that would go on to be the only toon that ever would see me healing heroic raid content.
I would stop blogging after 6 months for a 3 year hiatus. I’m not sure why, maybe because working full time changed something. I’m pretty sure I didn’t play and raid less. Then the blog would go on with a post every 1 or 2 weeks on average (with a few bursts of activity) from 2014 to 2018, when I cranked up the posts just before Blaugust and apparently I was more active since then – averaging more than one post per week. Not very prolific, but I’m not trying to build an audience here. Thanks to all of you who did and do read from time to time.
As I had finished up the Broken Shore rep to Revered a few days ago I wanted to take a look at Argus and maybe progress far enough into the quest line so I could do the gated emissary quest that popped up today. There are 2 Allied Races to be unlocked after all
So off to the Exodar I went, got myself ported to the Vindicaar and then… I somehow misclicked and was in Dalaran again. Now how to get there again? Relog to Alliance, ask the guild: “There’s a portal near the Dalaran flight master.” Nope, no portal. Checking the internet: there really should be a portal. Also, if you manage to not hand in the first quest there you’re out of luck and have no portal – I’m not the first one with this problem. Great. I didn’t want to abandon the quest for fear of something going wrong. Do I have to go back to the Exodar? To Orgrimmar? Dalaran? No idea how the original quest was called and where I got it. Risky.
So I don’t have a lot of BattleNet friends in general, and nearly all my former Horde guildies have stopped playing or started new toons that I didn’t have on my friends list, but I was lucky. One guy who wasn’t even in my last (actually current, but dead) Horde guild and with whom I’ve kept in touch over the years – and he has a Warlock at 120! So I sent a tell around noon and waited. I was in luck as he came back to the Blizzard app a few hours later, logged in the Warlock, had actually gone to Argus before on that toon and was willing to summon me. Now we just needed to find 2 people who could also go there and click. To my dismay (and surprise) I only saw 10 people in Dalaran in the 5 minutes I spent asking in general and then whispering every single one of them. Nobody even answered. OK, maybe some didn’t see it or were afk. He was more lucky in Argus and could actually recruit 2 people to summon me there. I handed in my quest and set my Hearthstone to there. Haven’t checked yet if I have the portal in Dalaran now, but I hope so.
