Plans for Azeroth

Real life has been a bit busy and weird the last 2 weeks, so I’ve not done much besides playing WoW when I have time and so I forgot to finish that last draft.
I’m still doing my Emissary Quest on both chars every day and finishing the War Campaigns as I unlock the rep steps. Well, actually I just finished the Alliance 8.0 one.
It’s still fun, so I’ll stay for at least another month for now.
I did have a lot of alts on max level after Legion, 7 in total, but only 2 of them Alliance. While I loved the Demon Hunter in Legion I didn’t want to level this class again right now, also because it’s a lot less fitting to Kul Tiras. Legion was perfect. So first of all I dusted off my 61 Dwarf Hunter who had been left in Hellfire Peninsula at the start of Legion (I guess) and been using up the rested XP. He’s at 67 now and has Heirlooms en masse.
But I really wanted to push for another max level character. I had made a Worgen Druid at some point, standing in Gilneas at Level 1. Screenshot, delete, remake as 110 class trial, finally use up the boost. Bam!
This time I tried to stay clear of all the non-main story line quests and just followed the main story. I’m 117 now and finished Drustvar and Tiragarde Sound. Let’s see how this works out in the end, including starting the War Campaign at 118.
Sorry Horde chars, but as long as I stayed unsociable in SWTOR I really like Guild Chat after all and so I need to stick to Alliance for now.
Immediate plans are:

  • Get Druid to 120
  • Finish the Horde War Campaign
  • 3 Garrison rare naval missions and ~100 normal ones :/
  • Unlock the four Allied Races in BfA: Kul Tiran Humans, Zandalari Trolls, Dark Iron Dwarves, Mag’har Orcs – I’ve given up on the 2 Argus ones
  • Get Hunter to 90, maybe 100 – then think about whether to upgrade Heirlooms
  • Look at LFR this expansion

Not so immediate plans are:

  • Maybe push for all Exalted reps on the Rogue, need Honorbound and Zandalar anyway
  • Maybe take up Suramar rep grinding again for the Nightborne, but my character with the highest rep (Shaman) is still 110.
  • So maybe level Shaman first?

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120 again

Oops, this was supposed to be posted on the 29th already.
Yesterday I dinged for the second time, on my Horde Rogue (main of 8 years), as I had leveled both in parallel to take advantage of rested XP. Still took 19h, apparently I’m slow. And also regularly porting back to the garrison to finish those 1000 naval missions ateone point. Still a bit curious where I lost so much time, surely it can’t be reading all the quest text?
Overall I liked the Alliance story/experience a little better. Zuldazar and Vol’dun were great, Nazmir was a bit bleak. But I’ve never been one to enjoy dark sceneries, except when it’s also magical and awesome, like Drustvar.
I’ve also never been a fan of Sylvanas and Blightcaller is horrible anyway, whereas Taelia and Flynn are fun.
Maybe I don’t want to be the bad guy either? In the first few expansions I saw the Horde as not inherently bad, but this time.. meh. Talanji is ok, so helping the Zandalari is cool, but I wonder if I missed any reference back to Zul’Gurub, I’m exalted on that char after all?

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Blink and you’ll miss it

So I played a little more WoW after my few days away from home and dinged 120 on Friday, yay. 18h is a bit slow (mostly rested) but apparently I took all the time to smell the roses on the way and didn’t hurry at all. Also I cleared 2 zones completely with side quests instead of moving on quickly.

 
Thanks to my awesome guild who dragged me through a few Timewalking dungeons (and a Mythic0) and told me what to do to get gear, just last evening I was already sitting at iLvl 330 and then after finishing up some stuff I’m now at iLvl 347, finished Timewalking, my first Warfront and the Islands weekly. Right now I’m continuing the War Campaign, gated a bit by 7th Legion rep.
All in all it’s super fun and a nice diversion from SWTOR (where I still log in most days) and the questing flow is really awesome. Also the early gearing path is nearly a little too quick, with World Quests and dungeons and various one time things instantly providing such good gear – but I won’t complain. I put the Rogue a bit on the backburner for now, as I wanted to get one char “done” and experience some early endgame at 120 first.

 
 
 

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Random gaming bits

I’ve not been home for a few days and thus didn’t have a lot of (or any, really) gaming time planned. But having a laptop with me and a stable, fast internet connection at the hotel for once I actually could download and play a little.
Monaco – it looks cool but again I stopped after the first tutorial mission, sneaking around top down doesn’t appeal to me at all it seems.
Templar Battleforce – again I gave it a second try but again it didn’t click.
Kingdom Classic – this is a weird game. The soundtrack is awesome but I gave up after two tries. The gameplay is innovative but annoying for me. Read up a guide and of course I had done most things wrong, making it less interesting.
Shadowrun Returns – as I loved the game back then I downloaded it again and grabbed a new story (Silver Angel, Seattle 2050) from the workshop. Played a good 2h. The music and art style are so cool.

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Thinking about alts again

After so many years of playing WoW I’ve amassed a number of characters, of course the goal was to have one high-level class per faction – but a few are missing.
So clearly I’m missing an Alliance Warlock (played a male Gnome one through Boralus in the BfA trial, ready to receive a 110 boost, but undecided), an Alliance Druid (got a 44 one on my other account), an Alliance Monk, an Alliance Death Knight (got a 70 one my other account), and a Horde Demon Hunter. Those 2 on the other account are quite low, so no use transferring them, as I don’t think that account will ever be reactivated. Thanks to the starter edition I just checked the 2 bank chars and they have like 600 cloth and 600 leather and a few random items. There’s also a 4x Alliance Paladin that I already had restarted and the new one is nearly 120 right now. 😛
The third Rogue, second Warrior, and second Shaman are on a German server where some friends used to play. The third Hunter is on Argent Dawn where the blogger guild <Single Abstract Noun> played, many years ago. The Death Knight and third Priest are on the server where I had transferred my main to raid. Finally the third Warrior is on another German server where some friends played – all the others here are on my main server, or on it’s merged partner. This is really good, so I can mostly keep Horde and Alliance separate, only the second (Alliance) Rogue is old enough to be on the main server, the rest is on the other server.
There’s also a distinct lack of Rogue favoritism, they’re only a few levels in the lead over the Warriors…
Also it doesn’t help that I stopped playing regularly…
 
 
 
 
I’ve also thought about the Allied races for a while.

  • Void Elves: Moderately interesting. Progress: Never been to Argus. Effort: High
  • Lightforged Draenei: Hardly interesting, still Draenei. Progress: Never been to Argus. Effort: High
  • Dark Iron Dwarves: Very interesting, although I’m just now playing a Dwarf. Progress: Not started the War Campaign: Effort: Medium to High?
  • Kul Tiran Humans: Quite interesting. Progress: Not started the War Campaign: Effort: High
  • Nightborne: Moderately interesting. Progress: 14900/21000 and mostly done Suramar on one char. Effort: Medium to Low
  • Highmountain Tauren: Moderately interesting, not different enough. Progress: Exalted and Started the quest in TB. Effort: Low I hope
  • Zandalari Trolls: Relatively interesting. Progress: Not started the War Campaign, halfway through Zuldazar. Effort: Medium to High?
  • Mag’har Orcs: Hardly interesting, I like normal Orcs. Progress: Not started the War Campaign. Effort: High

So in summary I’ll try to unlock the Tauren soonish, then I’ll have a look at the two War Campaigns anyway. Maybe I’ll revisit Suramar, I was not a big fan.
Oh, and I also still have that Level 100 boost. Useful targets could be: Alliance Druid, Alliance Death Knight, Alliance Shaman on my main server. Demon Hunter would start at 98/100 anyway and I’m not sure I want to try Monk again. My least favorite class, followed by DK.
So much to do, so little time 🙂

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Less SWTOR, more WoW

No, I’ve not abandoned SWTOR completely, just put it on the backburner a little. I’m still busy in Rishi, fighting pirates.
I also haven’t started the Conquest this week, but I hope to get some time in on the weekend and finish it at least once, but it’s not one of the three I’m missing.
But I’ve also finished this finally, 5th class to Command Level 300 – gotta love that weird weekly handin. I’m mostly doing this to get better (healing) gear, but these last 14 boxes (10x T3, 4x T4) were a little meh.

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Finished with Drustvar

I’m really glad I started WoW. Maybe it’s because enough time has passed or because BfA evokes a lot of memories of the good old times, but I’m enjoying it immensely.
As I wrote I started in Drustvar. I finished it on my second night and got to 114 in the progress. It is hands down the best zone in an MMO I have seen in more than 5 years. Maybe more. The music, the setting, the quests, everything was awesome. I like that it’s a bit slower than I remember leveling in WoW, but I might be mistaken. I took some screenshots and didn’t fiddle around in the AH, so I can give a number of hours played when I am done.
Yesterday I started playing my old main (Orc Rogue) in Vol’dun and it wasn’t so awesome, but still immensely fun. The writing was still good, I liked the scenery (despite it being a desert) and the NPCs. I haven’t finished the zone, but I’m close.
The only downside I’ve noticed so far is hardware-related. My graphics cards used to kinda switch off every few weeks – sound continues but everything goes dark and I need to shutdown and restart, reset doesn’t help either, neither did any of the driver updates. For the first time this was reproducible, when going into the cave in Drustvar to kill Mother Whatever. After failing three times I just switched to potato mode and turned down all graphics settings. That worked. Still a bit annoying – but at least I now know how to temporarily fix it. Maybe it’s some sort of texture or graphics effect. So overall, not so bad and not WoW’s fault, it has happened in multiple games already.

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Back in Azeroth – 2019 edition

Yes, I did it. Last night I came home from work and instead of logging in to SWTOR (or making dinner, like a reasonable person would) I went to the website and subscribed to WoW for a month. As I had already purchased the Battle for Azeroth expansion at the Black Friday sale and had patched up last week I could start 5 minutes later. Quite a nice experience.
Sadly my Horde guild of many years seems to be even more dead than in Legion (last login of anyone else: more than a week ago) I chose Alliance. Also because I wasn’t in the mood of sorting out bags. And I want to see both story lines anyway, so might as well start in the guild – because the Alliance guild is big enough that I was sure they’d still be around – just as they were back in late October.

So I dusted off my Dwarf Retribution Pally, abandoned nearly all Legion quests, put my stuff in my bank (not full already on this toon), disabled all addons and off we went. Halfway through the intro I remembered I had already done it in October. The Fall of Lordaeron scenario is pretty nice for the first time, ok for the second time 2 months later.. but I guess I’ll skip it from now on unless there’s a year between new toons. Anyway – a quick web search told me Drustvar is the place to start, so I did. And didn’t feel the need to stop or get up for 4 hours. This was pretty nice. It’s fun, I love the zone – some of the quests made me smile or laugh and in the end I was Level 111 and a half and can’t wait to continue playing.

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Podcast update

I wrote about podcasts in the past and not much has changed.
The one I’m looking forward to every week is AggroChat and I’ve listened to every single episode.
Lately I’ve come back to the Massively OP Podcast and I’ve listened to 24 episodes out of the last ~35. It’s a bit heavy on current stuff, so there’s not so much use going through the backlog.
Battle Bards is an alltime favorite and I need to listen to those 13 episodes (excl the latest) I missed (out of 135 + 14). I did not listen to it for the first half of 2017 and just haven’t caught up.
Unfortunately none (except one) of the SWTOR podcasts I tried [0] have really clicked with me. For some of them the hosts seem to be talking over each other all the time, sometimes it’s just a little long-winded, some I enjoyed a few episodes of, then it didn’t work out. Sometimes it’s as simple as me not liking the hosts’ voices. I know that’s petty but I used to say I’m not a big fan of podcasts – and I’d still say it’s true. If anyone involved is reading this, I’m sorry. It’s definitely me, not you.
I sampled a lot of them (not just SWTOR) and the ones above are the only ones I’ve been sticking with for a few years. There are only 2-3 more in general I ever stuck with. The one I did like was State of the Old Republic – but that’s not so surprising as I did listen to the Hunting Party Podcast back when I played WoW, despite never maining a hunter. But it’s pretty short, which is fine unless you need more material 😛
But I finally managed to watch the rest of the Pugging with Shintar episodes of Season 2. Too bad I am absolutely not good with remembering tactics anymore. The explanations would be helpful enough… I know this is not a podcast, but I watch it on the second screen while playing. It’s mostly audio and a little less watching for me.
I exclusively listen to podcasts while playing games (MMOs or puzzles) – and never when I’m interested in the story (like in SWTOR), that means not with new content or content I haven’t done in a while – mostly while killing mobs or while spacebaring through stuff I’ve really seen 10 times (Hello, Makeb!). I think for this limited scope managing to be caught up on this amount isn’t too bad. I’m just glad I don’t have this fear of missing out – I am absolutely happy to ignore all the podcasts about topics I’m interested in if I don’t instantly love it (and I still give them a fair chance, usually).
[0]: Shintar has a list in her sidebar that I’m too lazy to copy, one currently (indefinitely?) on hiatus (Corellian Run Radio) is missing. I think don’t know any others, but I’ve not yet explored a lot – checking 7 new ones was already some work.

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Last week’s goals, updated

I wrote about some goals a week ago and despite not being at home for a few days I managed to check a few things off the list. But tomorrow (in like 9h) work starts again and things will slow down. Also I managed to do some of the easy ones, pfff
 

  • DONE Harlow Ricks’ daily on Light Side Empire chars
  • Get Commando to CL 300 (at 265)
  • Missing 4 3 conquest events: Emergency Operations, The Dread War, Total Galactic War, Flashpoint Havoc
  • Missing 2 1 strongholds: Yavin 4 and Umbara
  • Companion Achievements:
    • Recruit: M1-4X
    • Refuse: Broonmark, Ak’ghal Usar, Sgt. Rusk, Skadge, Lokin
    • 1000 kills:
      • Andronikos Revel: 815
      • Talos Drellik: 417
      • Lord Scourge: 444 0
      • Sgt. Rusk: 885 675
    • Search cantinas for Paxton Rall
  • Leveling/Quests:
    • Finish Ziost on Merc
    • Finish Ziost on Sentinel
    • Get Marauder to 70 (at 57)
    • Get Guardian to 70 (at 58)
    • Finish Makeb on Marauder
    • Finish Makeb on Juggernaut (low prio)
    • Finish KotFE/KotET on Operative
    • Finish Ilum on Operative
    • Finish Ilum on Assassin
    • Finish Ilum on Shadow (low prio)
  • Have a look at the Ossus dailies – normal / heroic

So that’s only one of twelve chars not having done Makeb and one of twelve not having done Ilum. But seven sitting with “Battle of Ilum” in their quest log and one with “False Emperor” – so that’s the cutoff point for my willingness to continue the Ilum story arc.
 

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