Catch-up

Whoops! I can’t believe it has been a couple weeks since I’ve posted anything. Lately my free time has been devoted more to creative things than to gaming. This has the positive effect of spending more time with my spouse, but the negative effect of feeling quite out of the loop with my online social circle.

I have been playing tiny bits of WoW, Diablo 3, and Destiny 2. Diablo isn’t doing much to hold my interest right now. It’s just something I log in for if I only have a few minutes and need to blow off some steam killing demons. WoW is doing a slightly better job of distracting me. I’ve given up completely on keeping up with current content in any way. Since I finished my “every class mount” project I’ve been drifting around, running old raids and chasing transmog and mounts and pets. Although I’m a little sad not to be running dungeons and/or raids with my friends, I’ve been enjoying myself in the most relaxed way possible. I might even finish leveling my horde-side monk soon, if I can muster the will to push through WoD.

On the other hand, Destiny 2 has been very hit or miss for me recently. I bought the first expansion but haven’t played it enough to finish the story yet. That’s a far cry from my enthusiasm when the game launched just a couple months ago. I’m planning to run through the story together with my spouse and hoping that will pull me back into the game. I really enjoyed leveling with a companion through the main story and am looking forward to doing that again. I have played just enough to get my first masterwork item. Sadly it was a sidearm, so it is completely useless to me. Hopefully I have the chance to earn something more useful soon.

Finally, I am in full-on nerd hype mode about Star Wars. I saw The Last Jedi last night and I’m pretty sure I need more time for my brain to finish processing it but I still loved it. I have a lot of feelings and opinions, but I’ll save them until the movie has been out a bit longer. No spoilers here.


Catch-up

December 2017 Gaming Goals

Another month has come and gone, so it’s time to reflect on what I’ve been up to and what my new plans are.

November Goals in Review:

WoW: Get the warrior to 110. Done! I got my class mount too!

Destiny 2: Try the raid. Done! I haven’t completed it yet but I have at least seen it a few times.

Diablo 3: Finish the last Necromancer set mastery I’m missing. Nope. I did get the set farmed up on my seasonal necro, so I’m closer than I was before.

Complete the baseline chapters of the Season 12 journey. Done!


December Goals:

WoW: Decide on a new long-term goal. A goal to set a goal? WTF? Well after finishing up the last class story and mount, I realized I was flailing around with no direction. I need a really long-term project to chip away at every month, and I have no idea what the next one should be. It doesn’t help that what I really want to do is level a new alt to try out the new low-level zone scaling tech, but we’re not sure exactly when that patch is coming.

Destiny 2: Explore the new expansion content. I somewhat object to them calling these “expansions” but whatever. There are going to be new things to do and new gear to get. My excitement over D2 has died down but I at least want to see the new stuff.

Diablo 3: Complete the last Necromancer set dungeon. No excuses left at this point, I just need to sit down for an evening and knock this out.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete the new DLC. I had this preordered and I just haven’t had time to sit down and dig into it. I want to do that ASAP because I absolutely love this game and can’t wait to explore new parts of the world.


November was surprisingly productive, considering my play time has been dramatically lower than normal. Here’s hoping my December goals go well too.

 


December 2017 Gaming Goals

Accidental Achievement

Accidental Achievement

Whoops. I accidentally got the Mountacular achievement, for getting 250 mounts. How was it an accident? Well, over the weekend I crafted a few of the jewelcrafting panther mounts that I was still missing. Today I happened to swap over to my paladin alt, and was greeted with the achievement when I logged in. I guess those panthers, on top of the original paladin mount and the one from the argent tournament were enough to push me over 250 once I logged on. What a happy surprise!

The felfire hawk reward is quite pretty, I love the color. I figured Wrath-era players might get a chuckle out of me posing here. Back before flying was enabled over old Dalaran, you could stay mounted if you could land in just the right spot on the well. That combined with the prime real estate in front of the bank made it a hot spot for showing off. Anyway, getting this mount was a fun distraction that really brightened my day!


Accidental Achievement

Reading Challenge #85: Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Part of the reason I’ve been reading other books is because I have read Anathem before, and I was dreading this re-read. Not because it is bad, but because it is long and pretty dense. You know you’re going to be in for a treat of a read when a novel opens with definitions from a fictional dictionary. In fact the whole book is like this, peppered with strange words and dictionary definitions and just-different-enough-to-be-annoying turns of phrase. Yes, there is a reason for it, but it made my head hurt. There are some interesting philosophical ideas and social commentary in this book, but you have to excavate them from the constructed language and tumble them around in your brain for a while for them to clean up enough to be understood. I’m going to try to spare you from this as much as I can in my descriptions.

The story is told by Erasmus (Raz), who is a sort of monk who lives in a monastery for people who want to be cut off from the rest of the world and just think about things. They’re not religious per se, rather they focus on understanding things through study and debate. Different subsets avoid contact with the outside world for anywhere from 1 year to 1000 years at a time. Erasmus’ particular home is only open to the rest of the world for 10 days once every 10 years.

Around the time of one of these opening events, one of Raz’s teachers notes something unusual in the sky. The monastic authorities block off all use of the telescope facilities for a few weeks. It’s obvious something strange is happening but the powers that be want to keep them from investigating it. The teacher conspires to use forbidden outside technology to keep up his study, and soon he is expelled from the order for it.

This book is so long it is hard to sum up the whole plot succinctly, but after the teacher is expelled suddenly lots of the monks start getting called to leave the monastery to solve the mystery of the unusual thing in the sky, which is an alien spacecraft. Raz undertakes a long journey with many high and low points including nearly dying a few times. He finds his old teacher out in the world, only to lose him again. He gets up close and personal with an alien ship and some aliens. Only they’re not aliens, they’re from alternate universes.

In a normal book this process might be exciting and action-packed. Here there are action sequences, but the bulk of the words are dedicated to long thought exercises and philosophy lessons. The concept of the multiverse is an interesting one and the ideas the author puts forward are fun to think about. My main issue is that for large chunks of the book he is lecturing, through philosophical dialog between these monks, rather than showing through any kind of action.

The plot pace picks up considerably in the last quarter or so of the book. It was right about the time when I was thinking “I must have stopped reading partway through when I originally bought this novel a few years ago.” I couldn’t remember any of it past the point where the monks left their monastery. Then suddenly when they were drifting through space trying to board a spacecraft from an alternate universe I started remembering things again. I guess my brain just blanked out all the philosophical dialog in-between.

This novel gets chalked up in the column reserved for “I understand why people voted for it, but it is definitely not for me.” It raises some interesting philosophical questions. It has an interesting story idea. It was just too much to dig through all of the slow, boring, lecturing, jargony bits to get to the good stuff. I suspect I would really enjoy this novel if it was about 400 pages shorter and written in plain english.

TL;DR: Alternate-reality monks talk about philosophy a lot and eventually save the world. Cool idea but boring execution.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Rating: 3/5 stars

Verdict: Neat idea, interesting story beats, but waaaay too much lecturing. Would only recommend if you’re already a Stephenson fan.

Next up: The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart


Reading Challenge #85: Anathem by Neal Stephenson