Atheren’s June Gaming Goals

As you may guess, Don’t Be Dead heads the list.

My May goal was basically to get my Death Knight, Holy Priest and Warlock to level 75. Both the Priest and Death knight were a few boxes away when the glorious Joyous Journeys returned May 23.

I meant to keep the three together level wise, but my Warlock was already 2 levels behind, and I was able to get in a few dungeons with my Death Knight, so she soared ahead to level 80. Now my Warlock and Priest are on level at 76 each, and I’m certain they will reach 80 by June 20th when Joyous Journeys ends.

I’ve been resistant dropping down to level other characters, except, I’ve been loving my Retribution Paladin and pop down to play her sometimes, mostly to get dungeons when none are open in the regular Northrend finder.

She’s at 66, and I’ve just decided to power her to 68 and start Northrend. That will leave a Hunter, Druid and Retribution Paladin heading into the Icy Wastes to the west and rolling Hills to the east.

I’ve come to despise Borean Tundra and Dragon Blight and Wyrmrest Temple as questing areas. So everyone new will be doing Howling Fjord (which is ok) and Grizzly Hills which I’ve come to love.

Look who’s there! Our old friend from Westfall. He fondly remembered working with my Priest and Warlock in Westfall but didn’t know my DK at all.

I love the music in Grizzly Hills. After a rough day, you just close your eyes and let it play, la la la.

I also to my surprise like Zul’ Drak even more. I’ve actually never played through this area at all. The quest lines are really interesting. I even like the spiders for some reason. And I hate spiders.

Dungeons

My Ret Paladin got talked into Tanking Slave Pens. Never again. The Mage and Enhancement Shaman could not stop running out and pulling everything, then they complained I was going too fast for the healer. Brain explodo. Thus.

Class Clowns in Your Dungeon:

Mages who think they’re tanks.

Enhancement Shamans who think they’re tanks.

The Best Tank Classes

Paladin always number one. Even over the years in live servers, things have never gone south with a Paladin tank.

Bear I’ve seen some bad bear tanks in live, but in this era of the game they’re really good in general.

The Worst

Warrior Good grief. Charge, charge some more! Pay no attention to those lowly Mana Feeders.

DK I had forgotten somehow that people just pop in and start these (now with no restriction of having leveled any character ). There are some DKs that know the class, but if you’re doing Utgarde, like as not you’re getting a fresh off the Death Knight’s home utter bozo.

Dungeon Finder

I’m now at odds with myself thinking I’d like real dungeon finder just to get groups formed in less than an hour, but then, with the Finder as it is, you can see what classes are in the queue, and if there is some obnoxious wretch you don’t want to group with again, you can just drop back out.

Hmmpf.

Atheren’s May Gaming Goals

I peek into the live servers now and then. Usually this happens when I get so frustrated with the inability to get in dungeons in Wrath Classic . In the modern era, you are usually right in the dungeon, no waits longer than 5 minutes. Boom! You’re in! Whap, whap whap you’re through! You’ve got money, new armor, and maybe a whole level, just that quick.

I don’t last long playing these characters, oddly enough, because it is too easy. The rewards are foolishly abundant and feel unearned. The game is a forced slide from level 1 to current content as quickly as possible. Nothing along the way matters. You can try to make it matter, but anything you do relentlessly propels you forward.

Now I get to whine about Wrath Classic. Here, once you get to Northrend (or so it feels to me), you are in a pool of mud and the xp you get during a session barely fills one xp box. Again, this is how it feels to me. If you do manage to get in a dungeon, you might fill half your bar. Whoa whoa.

The other areas of the game don’t feel like such a slog at all. I have three characters leveling in Northrend. Holy Priest, DK, Warlock. My main character, Atheren, a druid, got to 80 in like a week, during Joyous Journeys. I wasted the rest of the Joyous Journeys putzing forward characters of all levels. I swear if they turn it on again for ICC I will get those three to 80 and then move my three Outlanders forward if there’s time.

I grew up on Sony’s Double XP weekends, and they were a thrill. I do not feel guilty at all when extra xp is offered, unlike some die hard WOW players.

Goals for May, Wrath Classic:

Northrend characters all to 75.

Outlands characters just live and breathe to get Netherweave Cloth and Potion Ingredients. Sorry guys.

My main Blacksmith and Retribution Paladin is almost at 54. I’d love to get her to the Outlands. She has been much more fun to play since level 40.

Live Server Goals

Earthen Ring Engineer: I want her to get her Engineering skills to the appropriate level, and get her reputations all up to level Get all the recipes!.

Rescue the rest of my Blackwater Raiders characters from the horrors of Ardenweald. If I ever hear another squeaky fairy voice……

Elder Scrolls Online

I was playing my Khajiit Templar regularly till late March, when I felt like I had to stop and craft her some potions and foods with my main craft character.

Then I decided to play her a bit (Nightblade Archer) and I hated how she was in fights. So used an Alcast template to redo her skills from scratch. Then I got caught up in her crafting skills, and decorating, creating furnishings for the various inns and houses where I have residence. Then I thought I should play this character a bit, and that one. It was a deep morass of things to do. It was not at all the pleasant adventuring I had been doing with my Baby Khajiit.

Back to Baby Khajiit, I got her Cooking and Alchemy. Back out onto the roads leading everywhere.

My goal for her is just to go everywhere, do everything. Become the main character she would like to be.

Happy Year’s End!

As a note, I have access again to all of my Google based blogs, but, I don’t trust them and will likely not write much there if at all.

Wrath of the Lich King Classic

Is there anything else? I got my live server Atherne on Blackwater Raiders to the shore of the new area. I bought Fishing for an insane ten gold. (Though Atherne has loads of money, I’m in Classic money sensibility, always.) I’ll be getting back to Dragonflight sometime.

In Wrath Classic, ah, it’s all magic.

Now that my main character is at 80, I’ll have her complete all quests she hasn’t done. Make money, be the lead character she was meant to be.

There are two other characters in Northrend: my level 70 Death Knight, and my level 68 Priest. I just got the Priest there late last night. The fights are a bit tough, but she’s surviving them, and that’s all she needs to succeed. I think I will wait for her to get to level 69 before healing dungeons. I want to gear her up and assure she’s ready to save the world, as she does.

In the Outlands are my Destruction Warlock, level 67, Hunter level 64, my second Feral Druid level 64.

I have some lowbie characters, and wanted to share my tiny level 11 Prot Paladin soloing Hogger, her greatest accomplishment so far.

For some reason lately, I’ve been considering what happens if they discontinue Classic instead of moving forward, or do something like wiping and re-starting. My babies!

Filtering into my Wrath-y brain was that ten character slots are added on live. There is now a Priest clone there. For safety!

Even better, you’ll note my live server main character is Atherne. Someone stole my Atheren name, that I made up myself, grrr, lo those many years ago. That person wisely killed off the imposter, and real Atheren now exists on Blackwater Raiders.

Dungeon Finder Notes

I thought at first the hardcore Anti-Dungeon Finder crowd was just about power. Power to demand they get their way. Power to let you in groups or not.

Power to choose the makeup of each group. I think this is a bit true, and for reasons of liking or not liking certain tank or healer types, or even specific classes wanted. I think sometimes there is a desire to not have competition for loot. Who knows.

Right now, groups forming are mostly for Naxx 10 or 25 or Heroic versions of Northrend Dungeons. You can get a group for other dungeons, but it’s not easy. At the low level there’s an endless chain of requests in LFG for Deadmines and the Stockades. After that, you’re in trouble.

Dreamily, there is always LIVE where you can select every single dungeon in the game and get a run through it.

I will say people forming groups do look at the Dungeon Finder list as their main starting point to get a group. People do talk to each other in the dungeons. I think if they do add real dungeon finder, they should keep it for your own Realm. They could even make you go to the entrance, ooohhh. The tool needs tweaking, that’s for sure.

Flying

Flying is expensive if you have alts. So much money goes to skill training. Buying bank tabs, personal and guild, empties the pockets fast. I actually only have two characters who can fly. My main Druid Atheren, and my Priest. Of course now the Priest is in Northrend, she’s hoofing it again. Such is life in WOW.

I must add I’m a Grumpy Player now who thinks Flying should never have been introduced in the “Old World”. Ack, people flying in like gnats and stealing your nodes. Or just being there like giant wasps. So cranky, here at year’s end.

To Northrend!

Wrath of the Lich King Quality of Life Updates

I’ve been noticing updates to the game and I’m just going to keep a running list of them here. Watch this space! Crowds in Stormwind once again.

Stormwind Harbor now exists! It gladdens my heart.

This is now the way to get to Auberdine, Kalimdor. Take the ship at the far left The Bravery. The Menethil Harbor ship to Auberdine no longer sails.

Cooking

For “old world recipes” you no longer need to purchase spices for your recipes.

You can now place a campfire almost anywhere you’d like one, and you don’t need Flint and Wood.

Mailboxes

There are now mailboxes all over Stormwind, where previously there were only three. Still no Auction House, Tavern or Bank in the Dwarven District.

Dungeon Finder

I’m going to keep working with this. It doesn’t seem as bad as everyone has said, in their vague way.

You Choose Your Preferred Role or roles for the dungeon. The dungeon list will show which dungeons you are eligible for, and what all the dungeon levels are. This is a huge enhancement, as nobody ever seemed to know what levels could be in any given dungeon.

Check the boxes for the dungeons you want.

Once you do that, you can click List Self at the bottom and you’re added to the list of people wanting those dungeons. Grr. I didn’t notice that DPS is automatically selected. So I listed as a DPS Priest. To the dismay of the Shaman forming the group. I have not played Shadow in Classic at all, nor do I like playing Shadow. I offered to leave but we worked things out.

With this list, you can just invite people to form a group from those who also chose your dungeons. I didn’t try to form the group myself, but the group did form fast, so I thought the “finder” was workable. Then of course everyone needs to make their way to the dungeon. No insta-transport to the entrance. No queue, just a list of people also wanting to get in the same dungeons as you.

Dept of Not Such A Quality Update:

If you make a Dwarven Female, you can’t get the pretty gold color of hair in Wrath Classic my Rogue has:

Will add a pic, but on the good side: Plants and interactable objects sparkle, making them much easier to see in grassy and dark places.

Atheren 9/14/22

Blaugust 2022 Wrapping It All Up

Yay! The last day of August. I made my goal of 31 posts in 31 Days. I decided to take part in Blaugust this year because I was feeling very low, and hadn’t been able to write most of the summer. I thought writing here, far away from the real world, I could get over my writing block.

It has worked. I am back to writing on my regular blog, except…our Internet provider did some network maintenance, and I’m blocked from all gmail accounts and blogs attached to Google accounts. (Sigh). I had gotten disgusted with Word Press, for a variety of reasons, and had gone back to Blogger blogs. All for naught. Lesson learned. Don’t remove your various blogs on various platforms, you may need them again.

Some ideas for future posts here I jotted down:

But….I Just Don’t Understand What’s Going On!

When you have been away from a game for a long time, or never played it from the beginning, you can be so confused about all the little details. I want to look at these three MMOs in particular and figure out All The Things I Don’t Understand:

Lord of the Rings Online (been away way too long)

EQ2 I like it but it always seems almost arcane in it’s complexity, coming into the game way late in it’s lifetime.

Secret World Legends As I plunged into this game again, I kept thinking I should stop and see how to upgrade armor and weapons, craft, make sure I’m fighting efficiently. But I was just carried away bouncing from quest to intriguing quest and running over and swamping little piles of gnawing zombies to stop and look anything up.

Why Isn’t There A Wowhead for Every MMO?

No apologies. You’ll recall I said I was a dirty rotten cheater. Oh yeah. I want the kind of detailed guides and quest help for LOTRO and EQ2 in particular that Wowhead gives World Of Warcraft. Just freaking tell me how to complete this quest. Tell me where to even go for the quest. Maybe they’d branch out. They should branch out.

Those Old Game Inspirations

There were some early influences in my early thinking about games and their design. Once I started posting on the Galaxies forums and was trying to understand why they made the decisions they did, I read lots of blogs and sites which delved deep.

Terra Nova

Fires of Heaven

Quarter to Three

RPG Roundtable

Moar Thrilling Screenshot Saturdays

What’s not to like? Great games, great stories.

Blaugust has been a blast. Thanks for stopping by. See you in the Funny Papers.

The Blaugust List of Forgotten Things

Remember that first thrilling day of Blaugust when the month seemed as if it would stretch on forever, and you’d be able to play so many games, write so many intriguing posts? It was going to be your best blogging month ever.

As the month buzzes along, life intrudes, you’ve no time to play or do anything you’d want to share. But it’s Blaugust, and sometimes you just blow out the corners of the map and talk about whatever the heck you want. That is great! It’s so much better to read about the person behind the player some days, so you know who you’re adventuring with. Know thy companions.

That is an exceptional thing about Blaugust. It brings a huge variety of people together for these few weeks as companions, and as a community. You have my sword, my bow, and my axe!

These are the things I wished to share in that dreamy first week that I have not done.

Get everyone’s blog on my sidebar. I will still go back and add these. There were many new great voices this year. I am a fish and just use Inventory Full’s nice blogroll with snippets to read things most days. So I’ve enjoyed lots of new writers though I was a slug adding them to this blog.

No Dungeon Run Posts. Just did not have the time to run them.

Oof. I’ve fallen off the wagon leveling and writing about Shadowlands WOW. How can you enjoy the true torture of leveling through Ardenweald if I don’t whine about it?

No LOTRO play time at all this month.

Very little ESO and I didn’t want to write about High Isle till I got a bit further into it. I’m loving Blackwood though, and am glad I re-subscribed.

I meant to purchase the Tomb Raider Anniversary game and play through that. A game I did not get far in at all, originally.

Promptalooza-I did pick one of these out for a post but got nowhere. Maybe next time.

I really hoped to finish a game during the month as an extra challenge for myself, but Bendy, Bendy, Bendy.

What this really means, is, I have lots of fodder for upcoming posts. See you on the other side.

Blaugust 2022: Lessons Learned Week

I’ve been really pleased with this year’s Blaugust. I enjoyed writing every post. It has been fun. As I might have mentioned in the very first post, this blog is all about Play.

” To engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.” Oxford Languages

I play games for much the same reasons I read voraciously. To relax, escape, become immersed in other lives or lives I could never really live. To problem solve. To overcome challenges. To be the heroine I’d like to be. In my head, of course.

Writing about these things allows me to tell stories of my adventures. There are few things more enjoyable than having adventures and then sharing them. Thanks to those who have stopped by this month and read about those adventures, and also to those who have shared their own. Pure magic.

Blaugust Week Four In Review

My goals for the week were:

Post every day

Stay on the theme

Stay Motivated

Play something new from my Steam Library, and something old.

Listen to Podcasts and Watch some Streams (Not this week)

I hoped to squeeze in some Elder Scrolls Online and LOTRO play. (Not this week)

My Priest in TBC was supposed to do the Sunken Temple. (Not this week)

Finish Bendy and The Ink Machine (Nope, Boris is gone, and I’m trapped without him. I think only one save is showing up, so I might have to start again from scratch.)

We leave town on vacation Tuesday of next week, so the rest of the Blaugust posts will be pre-written. Luckily, slinker that I am, I came up with three post topics for the Lessons Learned theme for the final week. Writing them in my prescient way after I schedule this post.

Screen Shot Saturday Blaugust Finale Edition

As there are only four Saturdays in August, this is the last of the series. I certainly didn’t get in as much play time this week as I’d hoped, but I am really pleased with the games I’ve been playing. I usually am writing these the night before, and playing what I right about, so you get Friday night’s selections: Monster Bash and Half Life 2. I also hoped to make progress in Bendy and the Ink Machine, but it looks like I’m stuck and will have to return to a previous save.

Half Life 2

One of my goals was to advance in Half Life 2. I was able to play considerably more smoothly. I even got so I was shrugging off the constant rain of bullets from the local security forces.

This time I made it to the roof of the apartment building and made my bullet ridden escape along the rooftops.

Finally help arrived, as Alyx helped me escape.

Suddenly doors opened in walls at her behest, and we were snug and safe in Dr. Kleiner’s lab.

Time to grab that iconic orange suit and escape the city.

Ready for those head huggers now, but you have to be nice to Kleiner’s pet.

The escape from the city will be via a newly completed transporter. Alyx goes first.

Unfortunately when you get in, you’re sent to several other places, kind of, alerting the powers that be Gordon Freeman is in the city. Looks like you’ll need to make your way through the sewers. Your best friend Barney tosses you your beloved Crowbar.

The only thing better than a crowbar is a wrench. Once I had that crowbar in hand I wasn’t afraid of anything.

I did pick up guns that I’d wrenched away from the Insectile guys. Yes, I unloaded them on said Insectile guys. Even so, is there anything better than a crowbar to the noggin? Nope!

I might be a little twitchy with my crowbar. My first thought when I saw this man and his alien friend was to whack the alien. We’re friends, though, now, and he’s sharing his green something or other below.

So, yeah, so far I can do this on my own. I’m diving into those dark places with confidence. Running up on bad guys or putting plugs in them. I got this.

Monster Bash

My goal here was to complete the first level. Ta da.

I took a peek at level two which is much trickier, both in the jumps you need to make, and navigating through lots of skeletons and snakes. That level is going to take some doing.

Half Life, for Real this time.

It’s been a busy week. Soooo the previous Half Life pics and post were for Half Life 2, doh. We actually did not finish that one. Might have been the helicopters? I will finish it. I’m really liking it. I went back and changed my previous post to say Half life 2. Poof! Mistakes begone.

I purchased the real Half Life game for my Steam library, from 1998, and it does still look good, except faces are a bit blocky (while people still have them).

There’s my game! Down down to Black Mesa Research facility.

All of the perky little scientists hate their ties!

Gordon Works in Anomalous Materials so he needs that orange suit.

The test lab is impressive.

Things go bad quickly.

There’s an explosion as well, and outside the lab is death and chaos.

As I make good my escape, two of the scientists ask me to make my way to the surface for help. The first head hugger appears. Sort of innocuous looking in this older version, but he does quite a bit of damage before I run away, as I’m unarmed.

Next thing you know, I’ve got the crowbar! Muahaha. I head back to show that thing my moves.

It didn’t go as well as I hoped. I think it’s on my head and I don’t remember how to get it off. I hear little warbling noises…so yeah, Googling how to remove them.