Achievement hunt

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


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

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

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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Leveling along in SWTOR

Still enjoying my renewed interest in SW:TOR, also the 2nd month of subscription kicked in. I wrote about Legendary last time, I’ve managed to get some more levels since then.

  • Bounty Hunter: Command Level to 97, Item Rating to 231
  • Scoundrel to 70, but that might have been before Legendary
  • Jedi Sentinel to 70
  • Jedi Sage (my main at launch) to 65, just finished Rishi, on to Yavin 4
  • Commando to 61
  • a fresh Jedi Shadow to 33
  • unchanged:
    • Sith Assassin at 50
    • Operative at 50
    • Sniper at 17

So it looks like I want a few more 70s, ticking off some achievements along the way. Command Level 300 is another goal, but as I wrote grinding Dailies at max level.. meh. I’m speeding up the leveling by cycling through toons who have rested XP and that I feel like playing.
I got a little more into Galactic Strongholds (Housing) and in addition to my basic apartments on Dromund Kaas and Coruscant I now own a small palace on Nar Shaddaa which isn’t fully unlocked yet, but I do have the 65% points bonus for Conquests. I also finished 2 of those already, which I hadn’t even tried before.
On a side note, WoW’s Battle for Azeroth expansion is supposed to hit in 3 weeks and I usually subscribed a month before expansions if I wasn’t playing at the time – not sure how to proceed now. On the one hand, one MMO is usually enough at a time for me, and SWTOR is fun. On the other hand.. it has been a while and I’m kinda keen how WoW plays… I might hold up until September or October when the weather gets worse and I have more time to play…

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Legendary, a bit late

As I wrote at the end of last year I was trying to get my 8th Level 50 character in SW:TOR for the Legendary flair, and then I kinda stopped playing. Didn’t really play anything the last 3 months, and only a bit of Diablo 3 before that.
But around 2 weeks ago I started with SW:TOR again, first just to try if it’s fun again, then I resubbed quite soon. Anyway, my Zabrak Trooper is Level 50 now, I am legendary, and Zabrak is unlocked as well, yay. Played the Rattataki Sniper for an hour or two as well, so that’s the next project – or maybe continue playing the Trooper for a while. It’s been long enough that I did Makeb, so maybe I should. Or just continue to grab a few more Command Levels on my 70 Powertech, but as usual the endgame grind isn’t really for me 😐

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Diablo 3 – Season 13

Oh boy am I glad that I skipped a season, at least I think that’s one reason I was excited all week until Season 13 would start and this is the first time ever that I’m not only happy with my progress, I actually am further than I expected. I don’t know exactly when the Season started on the EU realms on Friday, due to RL I could only start playing at 22:30 – so of course Level 70 was out in the first night. I think I got to Level 20ish, then managed to get to 68.5 on Saturday night before having to quit early because I felt sick and was too tired to play. Doozing off mid rift, not fun. But I felt a lot better after 11h of sleep and quickly went for 70 before lunch. Since then we’ve been duoing as usual and after 18h 45 of /played (with some afk) I just finished Slayer (for the 2nd time ever, I think) and I’m pretty happy. OK, it helped that the Invoker’s Set Dungeon is ridiculously easy compared to some of the other ones.

2018-02-25 19_04_33-Diablo III
Female Crusader with Thorns of the Invoker

Diablo 3 – Season 13 Read More »

2017 in review

The year is nearing its end and so it’s time for a new round of “what happened?”.
What I played a lot:

  • WoW: Legion
  • SW:TOR
  • Guild Wars 2
  • Marvel Heroes
  • Ragnarok Restart
  • InfiniPicross, Picross Touch & Picross Luna

Completed:

  • Mass Effect 3
  • Fallout Shelter (146h, 34/35 achievements)
  • InfiniPicross (it’s infinite, but 27h and 100% achievements have to count)
  • Picross Touch (“completed”, 60h, 13/18 achievements, 550+ games played)

Played a bit:

  • Party Hard
  • Project Highrise
  • Crypt of the Necrodancer
  • Rise to Ruins
  • Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
  • WildStar
  • EVE Online
  • TESO (The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited)

Gaming expenses in 2017:

  • SW:TOR: 3x 11 EUR
  • WoW: 4x 13 EUR
  • Diablo 3: 15 EUR for Rise of the Necromancer
  • WildStar: no idea, website says zero
  • Xbox 360: 0 EUR
  • GameBoy Advance: bought some used cartrdiges at a retro fair, 20 EUR iirc
  • Games on Steam: ~36 EUR – Templar Battleforce, InfiniPicross, Party Hard, Submerged, Cities: Skylines, TESO, Rise to Ruins
  • Games on GOG: ~14 EUR – Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Project Highrise, Pinata(Deadlight, meh)
  • Games on Bundlestars/Fanatical: 1 EUR
  • Hardware: 17 EUR for a SteamLink + Game bundle
  • Marvel Heroes: 30 EUR for ingame currency, via Steam
  • Guild Wars 2: 80 EUR for the expansion

This means: 298 EUR in 2017, at ~25 EUR per month. (I actually needed to doublecheck this, it seemed awfully low before I added GW2).

  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid for: 7
  • Bought stuff in the shop: Marvel Heroes
  • Full price games: 1 (GW2: Path of Fire) (and a D3 expansion, which was not full price…)

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This is gonna be legen -wait for it- dary

After my last post I was pretty busy playing and levelling in SW:TOR but Christmas has taken its toll and I think yesterday I logged in for the first time in 2 weeks.
My most important in-game goals are still finishing the KotET expansion (and so the “main” story minus the latest patch I guess) and getting the “Legendary” flair for having levelled one of each base class to 50, including finishing the story line of the original game.
On KotET, I just started Chapter VI (of 9) and hope to finish it in the next week, as I’m not sure I’ll renew. It’s not that I’m opposed to the game in any way, but it lost momentum and I’d rather have an official break for a few weeks now.
Regarding the Legendary thing, I’m only missing a Trooper class at 50.

  • 70 Cyborg Powertech (Bounty Hunter, check)
  • 70 Chiss Sith Juggernaut (Sith Warrior, check)
  • 55 Mirialan Jedi Sage (Jedi Consular, check)
  • 52 Miraluka Jedi Sentinel (Jedi Knight, check)
  • 51 Twi’lek Scoundrel (Smuggler, check)
  • 50 Sith Pureblood Sith Assassin (Sith Inquisitor, check)
  • 50 Human Operative (Imperial Agent, check)
  • 26 Zabrak Commando (Trooper, y u no 50 yet?)
  • 14 Rattataki Sniper (Imperial Agent, take two)

And *of course* I’d be interested in playing a Mercenary, Sith Marauder, Jedi Shadow, Jedi Guardian, Gunslinger, Sith Sorcerer, and Vanguard as well. ARGH.
Also, maybe I should go into detail which classes I liked most. Powertech is still a lot of fun and after starting again in October this is my main, no questions asked. Jedi Sentinel was ok, but not my favorite. Sith Juggernaut was better, more Charge – AoE – Continue than slowpoke hitting things. Stealth is always good when soloing, but I think I liked Operative less than Scoundrel and Assassin. But maybe I also just really love my Twi’lek Smuggler a lot more.

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