Blaugust – Keep up with the news via RSS

/ / 5 Comments / About this blog, Blaugust

People are different, so of course browsing habits are different as well, some preferably use their smart phones (I don’t), some use laptops or desktop machines. I suppose people playing video games are still mostly in the last camp although I’ve seen some impressive gaming laptops recently. But I digress, some people have a list of links to blogs they click through daily or weekly, some just type in the URLs, but many people use so-called RSS-Feeds to keep up with new posts on various websites, very often blogs.
To quote Wikipedia:

RSS (Rich Site Summary; originally RDF Site Summary; often called Really Simple Syndication) is a type of web feed which allows users to access updates to online content in a standardized, computer-readable format.

There are several RSS readers for desktop and mobile use, and a lot of websites that do this, for example Feedbin or Feedly or many others. I use Tiny Tiny RSS that I host on my own server.
Anyway, should you be interested in following all the participants of Blaugust Reborn this year, I created an OPML file (explanation) that you should be able to import into your feed-reader of choice. I will try to update it every few days at least, so you might want to add the latest participants manually. There’s also a plain TXT with the feeds.
If this doesn’t make sense at all, feel free to hit me up on Discord or comment for further explanation and how I can persuade you to love RSS 🙂

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Blaugust Prep Week

/ / 1 Comment / About this blog, Blaugust

Maybe you shouldn’t take advice from someone with an average of two page views per post, but then again this is not a highly promoted blog.
I also don’t have a lot of advice, that others didn’t put more eloquently, but there’s a few things I want to mention.
 

The name your website/blog versus your domain name

See, this blog is hosted at armagon.wordpress.com – but nowadays I’m mostly going by Nogamara, except my twitter handle is still @Armagon – it’s not hard to google where the name came from, it’s also kinda an obscure reference, and I still have a toon in most MMOs by that name, but as it wasn’t original enough, I chose to mostly go by Nogamara (I also have that twitter handle) – but I won’t change the blog name. This might be a bad idea, but I don’t care. So my advice: Unless you plan to stick to your nick/handle for ages (and I do mean ages, I’ve used one nick at age 15-17, one from 17 until 27 and another one since then, and this is all just outside of gaming circles…) circumstances might change and either you want to be well-known and findable on the interwebs or you want to hide your juvenile mistakes by changing nicks at some point 🙂
Anyway. In ancient (for the internet) times Tim Berners-Lee (yes, that Tim Berners-Lee) wrote “Cool URIs don’t change” and because I’m an old fart I’m still sticking to that. So I’d rather change not change my domain name. If you want to, that’s your choice of course. Remember that it’s your website, your blog, your content. Unless someone’s paying you, do what you want unless you’re in other people’s faces. I’m just trying to encourage you to leave your old website (especially if it’s still relevant content like game reviews, guides, etc.) online (that’s where a free web host comes in handy) and not delete it. Yes, do as I say, not do as I do. I now (nearly 9 years later) wish I had come up with a cooler name. My original WoW Rogue blog was called “Vanish!” – also very narrow, but not totally off. Not a great name for a general blog either.

Interaction with other people

This is not my first blog and probably won’t be me last. On this one I’ve only had like 99% positive interactions with people, so apparently I was either flying under the radar, not posting very opinionated content, or something else. Keep in mind you might at some point write something controversial and then it gets linked on Twitter or Reddit and some Trolls are coming your way. Don’t let them drag you down. Don’t hesitate to moderate and block them or at least ignore them. Feel free to discuss but don’t take any attacks personal.

Commitments

If you want to blog a lot, go ahead! Blaugust is cool because you have other people around and it can be encouraging to read more posts, participate in discussions that take place in long form content instead of comments, and get to interact with other bloggers. If you don’t feel like posting, don’t despair though. If you signed up ready to try to get 31 posts going in August and feel you can’t make it – it’s fine. The Gold(25), Silver (15), Bronze(5) and Newbie (just starting a blog) Awards are fine, too. Do it for fun! Sure, you can take some of the bloggers who are writing daily or every week day as an example, but it takes practice for some people. It’s absolutely not the norm to be able to come up with a post every day. I certainly can’t sustain this for very long, I just have a chatty phase the last 2 weeks. I can absolutely not predict how long it will last, so my goal is Bronze and I’m overjoyed if I reach Silver. Sure, I could’ve just saved some of my last 10 posts for August, but this is my blog and if I write for 11 days until the 31st and then stop I’m a good target for ridicule – but I’ve been writing these last 2 weeks because I wanted to.

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Blaugust Reborn 2018

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As I wrote last week Blaugust is happening again and now I gave in and finally joined – 5 minutes ago. This is the ninth post in a row (one daily) without really trying very hard. You may judge for yourself if a 5min description of me playing for a few hours is worth your time, but this was never a blog to try to get famous or woo the masses 😛
TAGN has a nice post with a list of the first 55 participants, although it should be around 70 already.
If everything works out as it usually does, this will absolutely be my last post for half a year and I won’t even begin with Blaugust. Morale ist still high though and I even have a single draft ready, although I tend to just forget those.

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Six down, two to go

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My plans for this sunny Saturday were partially scrapped and partially moved to tomorrow, so something happened.

After Powertech, Juggernaut, Scoundrel, Sentinel, and Sage – a Level 70 Trooper, already on Command Rank 5 and having finished Ziost.
So for level progression that’s zero at Command Level 300, six at Level 70, and two at Level 50.
 
Now let’s look at story progression:

  • 1x finished Knights of the Eternal Throne
  • 1x Chapter 5 of Knights of the Fallen Empire
  • 2x after Ziost, just before KotFE starts
  • 1x between Yavin IV and Ziost
  • 1x between Makeb and Shadows of Revan
  • 2x between the original story and Ilum (the 2 Level 50 characters)

 
I’ve also been busy with Professions (damn you, completionism) and the current state is:

  • 600 Biochem, Bioanalysis, Diplomacy, Treasure Hunting, Underworld Trading
  • 550 Artificer, Synthweaving, Scavenging, Archaeology
  • 530 2x Scavenging, Armormech
  • 500 Cybertech, Armstech, Investigation

Still some stuff to do, but I see everything besides the Command Level 300 being moderately to very fun to tackle and not a chore.

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Picross, Nonograms, puzzles

/ / 1 Comment / Completed, Games, Mobile / ,

I might have mentioned it in the past, but Mario’s Picross was one of my favorite games on the Game Boy Classic (although I got my own copy only in early 2003 and played it on a GBA) and I’ve solved these nonograms on paper in puzzle magazines, and played through quite a few games. It never seems to get old.
Currently I’m playing “Picross Fairytale – nonogram: Red Riding Hood secret” and it’s one of the hardest ones I’ve ever played. (The music is nice, too, but the “story” is a bit thin and gladly skippable”. It seems to be free to play still, so go get it.
There’s also InfiniPicross (played for 27h, got 22/22 achievements) and Picross Touch (played for 99 hours, 17/18 achievements, including one for 1000 puzzles done, yikes). Also both very good.
On Android I played Picross Luna and am playing Picross Luna II right now (but I don’t like their near-endless engame with like 100 puzzles that form a complete picture) and Two Eyes. All of them are pretty cool.

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Come on over have some fun

/ / 2 Comments / SW:TOR

So for some reason I really like Shadow of Revan and Rishi is my favorite zone ingame. Maybe it’s because places like Hoth are so dull, KotFE is a little too much railroading for me and I’ve done all the sub-50 zones nearly 9 times now.
I’ve just started my fifth journey through Rishi (all this year, although the expansion was released in December 2014) and I’m looking forward to it, despite having completed 2 or 3 playthroughs just this past month. I somehow love the scenery, the quests, and it’s a relatively nice step between some mandatory instances (boo, despite solo mode) and Ziost, which was awesome the first time and already a little annoying the second time. Maybe it’s also because I can do some quests in the order I like, because the non-story quests are actually close by, I get to pretend to be a pirate.. I don’t know. Anyway, my Trooper is on her way to 70 as well now, at 65.5 now after doing a few Rishi quests

Arrrrrr, I'm a pirate!
Arrrrrr, I’m a pirate!

Not all is positive though, I’m trying to get the Conquest done on my freshly dinged 70 Jedi Sage (did some Hoth dailies yesterday) and I can’t get the Ilum Heroic daily. I did it once on Tuesday after the Conquest reset for the week and it’s been in “You completed this recently, come back later” for the last 46-48 hours. So I’ll probably have to do even more Hoth daily heroics… but at least I’m already at ~7500 of 15000 points.

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Achievement hunt

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I was a very keen achiever in WoW and really tried to get a lot done, in SW:TOR, not so much. Been collecting most of the Datacron and doing “the last 10%” here and there. Oh, and I also switch companions regularly to get the 1000 kills each, but that’s not really effort as just “not deliberately ignoring it”.
But yesterday my Conquest was 60min on cooldown and I didn’t feel like leveling so I wanted to try something new – finish a few of the planet achievements. I picked Alderaan as it was the first in list (how exciting!).
So, exploration: Grabbed all Datacrons, found all bestiary and normal lore objects, unvovered the whole map, and I had already done all the Story and Heroic Missions for both sides. I ignored all the “Kill X” quests as this will either be remedied by leveling more characters, or not in the near future. Not a fan of grinding and I only do it if it suits a purpose, like in a Conquest.
In the end it took more like 2 hours, but choosing a stealthy character (Scoundrel) was a good idea and if I feel in the mood I might do this again some time, probably on Balmorra.
I’m at 12745 points now, fwiw.

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Living Legend

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SW:TOR launched at ~7:00 my time in December 20, 2011. At the time when I managed to get my Legacy to Level 50 it was 6 years, 7 months, 3 days and 16 hours later.
I’ve not boosted any character, but I don’t know the formula for Legacy XP and whether they changed it in the years – but it took 4x 70 (Command 97,11,5,1), 1x 68, 1x 63, 2x 50, 1x 41 and 1x 17 to get there.
My Jedi Sage started KotFE today and is in Chapter 5 (my second time), but the XP sucks – so I think I’m gonna switch to Ziost or Section X dailies tomorrow, or whatever the Conquest tells me makes sense. Trooper just hit 64 but is out of rested XP now.

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Still trying to resist

/ / 3 Comments / Blogs, WoW

This blog lay pretty much dormant for the last half year, apart from a little talk about SW:TOR and a little Diablo 3, and I actually didn’t play much from January until July. No special reasons, I just didn’t enjoy any games except Picross on mobile while waiting for stuff.
But for some reason or another I started to play SW:TOR again like 5 weeks ago and now I’m playing too much again – every minute I’m not at work, or sleeping, or outside basically.
WoW’s Battle for Azeroth expansion is drawing closer and every day I’m feeling the pull getting stronger. It also didn’t help to join another Discord where people are excitedly talking and blogging in preparation of the new expansion.
That Discord… Belghast restarted Blaugust planning for 2018 already and while I have written about it in 2015 I haven’t ever taken part. But all the excitement is pretty infectious and maybe I’ll give in and do start. I actually thought I was part of NBI in some year, but I might be misremembering. (It’s a shame really, I just found a dead .com and a dead forum url for it, would’ve been a nice trip back in time, but I’m too lazy to scour the web archive now…)
Or maybe I can resist and neither join Blaugust nor jump into BfA, although there aren’t really any good reasons to skip either…

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Ranking WoW’s races

/ / 2 Comments / WoW / , ,

Yeah, I’m a bit late, but I wasn’t in town when I read Grace’s post which in turn linked Syp’s post about the core races in World of Warcraft, and it’s something I have an opinion about 😛
First of all, I can’t really rate them the same way, most of the time I don’t agree on the Male versus Female versions, so I kinda need to make two lists.
Female characters:

  • Really like: Orcs, Tauren, Dwarves
  • Like: Humans, Night Elf (but only Warriors), Gnomes (mostly Rogues)
  • OK: Blood Elf (Paladin and Warlock, not so much Warrior, Mage or Priest), Pandaren
  • Don’t like: Undead (except Warriors), Troll,
  • Meh: Draenei, Worgen, Goblins

Male characters:

  • Really like: Orcs, Trolls, Tauren
  • Like: Dwarves, Undead (only a few face options)
  • Don’t like: Gnomes, Pandaren, Goblin, Worgen, Blood Elf
  • Hate: Night Elf, Humans, Draenei

So first of all, the scale of female chars goes from say 1-5 of 6, the scale for Male chars goes 1, 2, 4, 6 with 3 and 5 missing.
I don’t think I can articulate my thoughts about the races as well as the 2 linked posts above do, but I don’t care much about lore in WoW in the sense of “what am I playing?” – I like to read up on it and the NPCs are part of it, but I am the player, the center of the world, I am not to be judged what my forefathers did 🙂
So just some quick points:

  • Draenei: Space squids, ugly, space ship story doesn’t check out
  • Undead: Too mopey and earnest, but overall ok.
  • Orcs: Totally overused in the greater WoW story, I hate Garrosh
  • Trolls: a bit over the top with the Jamaican thing and cannibalism, otherwise total <3
  • Blood Elves: snobs
  • Night Elves: “One day I’m gonna make a NE hunter and call her ‘Stereotype'”
  • Dwarves: Boring (but solid) run-of-the-mill fantasy dwarves (plus gadgets, like in Warhammer maybe, less than Gnomes at least)
  • Goblins: should’ve stayed neutral
  • Pandaren: shouldn’t have been playable, were awesome as MoP NPCs
  • Worgen: nice starter zone, meh models (high quality, don’t enjoy)
  • Tauren: used to be too big in Vanilla (PvP etc)
  • Humans: boring, but also solid, I hate Varian
  • Gnomes: weird limbs, too much armor clipping, overall fun

So on the one hand that means I straight out refuse to play certain races as male characters and to the best of my knowledge when I did try.. I deleted them all before Level 10, something I don’t do often in MMOs… on the other hand I’ve made some questionable choices in the past that I wanted to remedy but didn’t want to spend money on.
Also my view on certain combos have changed a lot over time. I didn’t like female Dwarves at the start (like vanilla to WotLK?), wasn’t a great fan of female Orcs and Tauren, I liked Blood Elf males when TBC launched. I liked male Goblins when they were introduced. I didn’t like Undead, period.
So much for the general view on WoW races, now some personal history of poor choices:
First is my female Blood Elf Warlock. I made her when TBC hit and Blood Elves were the new shiny thing (didn’t play Alliance at the time…) and she was awesome. OK, the Frozen Netherweave Tailoring gear was maybe a little overpowered, but hey, why not top damage meters on a fresh alt? I imagine I was just really good at Warlocking! For now I’ve made my peace and as a (practicing and at heart) Pen&Paper roleplayer I hate to retcon characters… Next is my female Blood Elf Paladin. Only Blood Elves could be Paladins, so it had to be Blood Elf. When race changes were announced I really wanted to make her a cow (and it was a less-played alt, so the RP thing wasn’t as bad..) but then I was too tightfisted to really do it, then I played her a ton more and then I collected T2 armor and it looks really, really good so.. no cow. Then my male Blood Elf Priest. Started as a duo with a female Blood Elf Priest and in the end.. he doesn’t bother me so much that I *need* to race-change. I still might, at some point, but it’s only “I made a mistake.. but I can live with it.” My male Pandaren Monk. Oh boy. I liked the male Pandaren at the start, they had this laid back Baloo/Yogi bear feeling to them but as I leveled to 80, 85, then 90 – maybe it was also because Monk was the first class that was decidedly unfun from Level 20 up to when I stopped.. I just don’t feel that character anymore… maybe if it was a female Pandaren which I at least find adorable with the right hairstyle.. meh. I also have a lowbie (<90) male Goblin Warrior on another server which I don’t hate, but as my first real (Blood Elf) Warlock, he was only levelled to experience the new starter zone and race, then played catch up in friends’ guild.. Never properly played, no real connection. On the other hand I still have some characters I like a lot better, and to a certain degree I think the race/class combo does matter: 81 male Troll Hunter, 100 male Undead Death Knight, 74 female Pandaren Priest (all wrong server again).
For all that moaning about races and classes, for all I can tell (been inactive in WoW for a while), I’m 100% or at least 90% happy with all the choices of characters I ever dubbed my main, main alt, or pet project (that female Dwarf Shammy I leveled up just for the Algalon achievement, that 3rd max-level Rogue at Level 90…).
Wow, that’s been a long post, but I quickly want to touch on the Allied Races. I only read about them and am a bit dismayed you have to do so much to unlock them. Especially as someone who had played for 10 years and stopped just before they were announced. We’ll see if I will play BfA and if I will try to have a look at some of them. I also don’t know if you can do a paid race change to one of them, I might investigate that. Not sure I want to level anything up again from 1, I did that often enough…
Some of them look quite interesting though, first and foremost the Dark Iron Dwarves and Zandalari Trolls. Also the Kul Tiran Humans as far as I have seen. Void Elves look ok (but only a Blood Elf reskin? Also the Lightforged Draenei?) Highmountain Tauren look cool as well. Not a fan of the Nightborne or Mag’hart Orcs.
Update: Another take on the matter, even if I vehemently disagree on most points 😉

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