An All New Plan, An Even Better Plan

I’ve spent many hours since Friday night in the Burning Crusade Timewalking Dungeons.  I now have a level 110 Paladin and a level 110 Fire Mage.

My Mage!  Somehow she is my second favorite character in all of WOW, despite the struggle of eons as a Frost Mage which played ok, then played awfully, over and over.  She’s my girl!  She really held her own in those dungeons.  So proud of her.

I’ve always liked the Burning Crusade dungeons.  There were even many times in the past where any character who could tank ended up tanking because the tank poofed.  And it was fine.

I hate to say, but I think I liked them because they were straightforward and EZ.  Now, seriously, they’re tough.  A single Warrior tank from all day yesterday was able to play the old pull-the-room way and we didn’t all die.   Another single one did pull the room and everyone died.  He was gone pretty fast.  Every other tank pulled smaller groups.  Pulled groups into hallways.  Was mindful of the bosses.

I’ve been reading the forums this morning and there is lots of angst about the new difficulty.  Not enough xp. Takes longer to do the dungeon.  Don’t feel like you’re doing much damage anymore.

Personally, I’m just thrilled by the whole thing.  Dungeons that you could do in five minutes are now interesting.  You actually need to take out the healers and casters as soon as you can so they don’t fear the smithereens out of everyone.  It’s like the dungeons have been re-designed completely, yet they’re completely familiar.  So cool.    (Note in the picture below, this is my Elf!!! Mage in the Black Morass below, somehow turned into a gnome with the most repulsive gnome hairdo available, agh.  Could not turn it off.)

Everyone in the group is working together.  This is what the experience should be.

When I run dungeons, I’m also always questing in between.  My experience bar is moving along fine.  I’m getting good armor rewards.  Lots of artifact upgrades in these Timewalking dungeons. 

My Rogue is currently up and I’m expecting her to get 110 by days end.

My new WOW plan is to get my Blackwater Raider characters all to 110 in preparation for the expansion.  After my Rogue, I have a 105 Warlock, then the rest are spread in the 80s and 90s with just the level 72 Hunter.  Doable!   I’m not looking forward to the slog parts ahead for the 110s, but for the two I got to 110 yesterday, it felt like a bunch of stuff opened up for them, with new cool uberness.

World of Warcraft The New Patch

Level Scaling:    I didn’t think I’d appreciate it through the entire world, but it’s fine.   I’m going to be happy to not outlevel every area so fast, at all levels.

What I love is skipping the Cataclysm areas Hyjal, Vashj’ir and Deepholm.   I’ve been through Hyjal so many times because the other two are just painful.   I had one single character make it all the way through Vashj’ir and vowed never to send another.   I skipped a level 83 Priest and a level 80 Rogue straight to Pandaria.   Thank you thank you thank you Blizzard!

A Hunter at level 72 who was already in Northrend could choose between there and Outland.  They’re both ok, but I’ve always run right past most of their content via dungeons.   The Great Thing here was that I could choose random dungeons for either Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King.   I love Burning Crusade dungeons.

That said, my level 83 Shadow Priest was in Throne of Tides last week and it was good, I felt like she contributed really well to the group.  Yesterday, the same character in Throne of Tides was with a group that wiped over and over.  She felt like she had no dps at all.

My Hunter today in Sethekk Halls was also in a recurringly dead group.    Then again, the tank pulled the whole room.  Over and over.

Bad luck, or have they been made tougher?  I’ll run others of other classes and levels too, and we shall see.

Everquest 2 Goals for 2018

I’m currently subscribing, and one goal will be to play enough so that I know if a subscription is valuable for the way I play the game.

For as much as I’ve dabbled in the game over time, I feel like I know almost nothing.   This week I was in Qeynos, wondering why I couldn’t find where some of the quests even were, ones I’ve been looking for for awhile, and I come upon a travel bell sort of thing that is specifically for travel within Qeynos.  

So with no indication at all I ever saw, I’m supposed to think that there is a portal to the areas where many of the beginning quests are.  And there’s no other way to get to them.   I just can’t think of a game where there are these “bottle areas”. 

On the other hand, the game reminds me very much of Action/Adventure RPGs of the type I always loved.  Quests tell stories.  I appreciate that.  There’s much to like that isn’t offered anywhere else.  Great adventures await.

World Of Warcraft 2018 Goals

In a game where you can have 50 characters, it’s hard to narrow down what might be worked on in a given year.

Currently, I’m backtracking to get all the Loremaster Achievements I don’t have.  Whoo hoo, Un’ Goro Crater.   I dislike the intense green of the place.  The dinosaurs are cool.  It’s a big bowl and it gets claustrophobic in short order.   I looked through characters I thought had done much of it, but nobody really had much.

I changed all of my Frost Mages to Fire after getting one to level 40 on a newer one.   My current favorite is my 108 (?) now Fire Mage.   I still wish she had some built in heal, but she’s doing incredibly better than she did as a Frost Mage.

Random Notes for Overall Goals:

The game itself should break the silence barrier between Horde and Alliance.  Hate it.

New In Our Board Game Pile

I love playing board games.  For the last year or so I’ve been looking for board and card games that can be played by two players.  Spousemeister and I used to play board games like fiends.  Now, around Christmas/New Years and till the snow melts, it’s a good time to play.

We haven’t tried any but Dominion yet, but it was really cool, and I could see for the first time the appeal of a deck building game–I think it’s accurate to call it that.

Dominion

Mysterium  Supposedly “Clue for Adults”

Quiddler   I love Word games.   My husband, who is the Math Guy around here likes Word games where he can drag out his unabridged dictionary to find fiendish words to defeat the enemy (me, the Word person).

Jaipur   Somehow you simulate a bazaar and mercantile trades.  Came up like mad for two players.

Kill Doctor Lucky   (I think my husband doesn’t appreciate this title much, but I love mysteries and it seems to have that element.)   “A family board game of cold-blooded murder!”  What’s not to like?

Gamespot’s 20 Biggest Games To Play In 2018

In keeping with my resolution to look at the wider gaming world, I’m looking at some of the games coming out in 2018.   There are many lists, and maybe not so many I’d like to try, but it’s a start.

https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/the-20-biggest-games-to-play-in-2018/2900-1704/

From the list, I am interested in three:

Sea Of Thieves   Pirates, Yo Ho!

Detroit: Become Human    Androids seek human status.   Hmmm?   Blade Runner-ish?

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire    Did not finish the first game, but here’s motivation to go back in.

Interested, but…

A Way Out   from the makers of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.  Again you have to control two characters at once.  That did not go well for me on the iPad, though the game and story itself was cool.

Anthem      From Bioware, which can mean good things.  I like the explore planets part.  Maybe not so much the multi-player part, which inevitably means some headcase will be trying to kill you or steal from you.  Not the adventure I’m looking for.

The Inpatient    Looks pleasantly scary, but it’s VR.   Nah.

Kingdom Hearts 3   This franchise always sounds good, but maybe I wouldn’t like it at all.  Bring it to PC and I’ll give it a try.

Red Dead Redemption 2    When the original came out, it looked sort of interesting, but maybe grizzly for my tastes.  I’ve seen so many bloggers who like the same games I do sings its praises though.   Maybe the original is worth a look.

2018: Let the Games Begin

I’m oozing into the New Year, but, I’m ready to kick things into gear.

Listening to last week’s MassivelyOp Podcast, I was inspired to look at my 2017 and think ahead to a better year in games.   I love that they had everyone on!  I wish they’d do it more often.  Once a month, even.

Looking back at 2017 I developed a nice game rotation.  There was even a month or so where I wrote a short synopsis of the play session after I played.  I liked doing that, but I’m usually playing pretty late at night and writing up a session at 1 am isn’t ideal.

I liked the idea enough that I put the same rotation along the top of my 2018 calendar for January.  Now I think, I need to narrow a regular rotation down to the MMOs I love best.

World of Warcraft
SWGEmu
Elderscrolls Online
Lord of the Rings Online
Rift
Everquest 2

While not giving up on Secret World Legends or Guild Wars 2, I’ll just keep the games updated and saunter in now and then rather than trying to make any real progress.

In separate posts, I’ll try to make some goals for each game.

Overall game goals for 2018:

Play a greater variety of games.  Games remain in my Steam queue and on my iPad that I could make some progress on.

Pick a character in each MMO to be my main.  Get them to max level.   My Alt-itis will never go away (hugs to my Alts!), but in order to really know a game, making your way all the way through the world really helps you connect the dots.  See what the heart of the beast is for good or ill.

Since it is an overall goal for me in the real world as well, I’m going to try to be more social.  Ack! Imagine!   We’re talking reading and contributing in more forums, we’re talking voice chat and the ever finky Discord.  I hate my voice, and I should be able to master push to talk so you don’t hear me swearing.  Oops.

I’d like to be more well informed about games like I used to be.   I reactivated a gaming Twitter account.  I need to remove some old, bratty posts.  Need to read the latest posts for the games I’m interested in.  Read more of the game sites I used to pour over.

Blogs!  Read more (up to the letter “G” stealing blogs from Biobreak), comment more.   I love reading blogs, even for games I don’t play.

Play more Board Games and Card Games 

Noble goals, are they not?

Happy Gaming 2018!