Moonshine Mansion

Blog Posts from Grace on Moonshine Mansion website.

It’s never over

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* stumbles in, mumbles something to the Newbie Blogger Initiative newbies about never worrying about taking a break, just hop back in and keep going and everything will be fine *

Did you miss me? I’ve been working my butt off doing SCIENCE and traveling across multiple time zones to tell people about it. I’m exhausted but happy, and I’m finally home and playing games again. Since it is the end of the month I thought I’d just take a quick stock of what I’ve been playing and what my plans are for July.

Chroma Squad

This was the Aggrochat game of the month, and I had to rush to play as much as I could after getting back from my trip. It is a funny little tactical RPG with some tycoon elements, all about being the Power Rangers cast of a super sentai show. I never liked the Power Rangers much as a kid, but this game is funny and endearing. I only got through one “season” before we recorded the podcast, so I’m hoping to finish the game in July without the time crunch. I don’t think I will love it as much as some of the other Aggrochat folks, but I’m definitely enjoying it.

Diablo 3

The season is winding down and so is my enthusiasm. I had been toying with the idea of fully completing the season journey this time around but I’ve lost all my motivation at this point. I’ll be content with my stash tab this time around, and look forward to season 7 instead. I’m really hoping that with Overwatch out and Legion almost ready, that Bliz will start making some more noise about this franchise this fall.

Stellaris

I was spending hours engrossed in this game right before my trip. I have yet to hop back in at all since I got home. I know they just released a pretty nice patch, but I will want to make a new game to see everything and starting from scratch is not appealing right now. Except for the part where I would really like to try a multiplayer game, and if I can make that happen this game will probably move up my priority list.

Destiny

Through encouragement, curiosity, and outright bribery from Belghast, I’ve gotten sucked into playing Destiny lately. It has been many many years since I’ve played much in the way of first person shooters, and I was pretty awful at it for a few days. Lately I’m feeling more comfortable with a controller in my hand though, and have been greatly enjoying the game. I’m not thrilled about doing pvp or dungeons strikes much, mostly because I know I’m still pretty terrible and don’t want to have people rage at me. Every day I’m getting a little better and a little braver though. It helps that I have voice chat turned off so I don’t have to hear if people are yelling at me.

FFXIV

Speaking of people raging. My last post had lots of super positive things to say about FFXIV. Almost immediately after that I healed a random dungeon with some tank who heaped abuse on me, and any enthusiasm I had for the game went straight out the window. It is funny how fast one bad experience can sour an entire game. I’m sure there’s folks out there who will say I should not let it get to me, grow a thicker skin or stay out of MMOs but frankly, F*** that. I used to be the kind of person who would just let trolling or abuse roll off me or even turn around and criticize back but at this stage in my life I’d really like to enjoy my hobby without having to tolerate or participate in the toxicity that sometimes comes with it. I think it makes me extra angry because FFXIV is a game that is notable for having a far better community than almost any other MMO I’ve played. I’ve still had some fun doing old content for mounts with friends or seeing some of the new story and dungeons, again with friends. I haven’t seen any more abusive people and things have been mostly enjoyable. My sub expires in just a few days though, and I don’t think I can justify renewing for maybe one night a week of fun.

WoW

WoW is in a weird place for me right now. I am subbed basically because I can do so without paying any real money, and use the time to prepare for Legion when I might actually want to play the game. I’ve been logging in almost exclusively to do my wizard chores on 9-15 alts (depending on how much I care about my secondary servers on any given day) and collect free gold, with a tiny bit of old raid farming for transmog/mounts on the side. WoW isn’t a game to me right now, it is a holding pattern, it is a chore. I am simultaneously trying to squeeze every ounce out of the free gold machine while gleefully anticipating the day when I never have to look at my garrison again. It is a matter of giving up any enjoyment I might get out of the game now, in favor of putting myself in a better position to enjoy the game when the expansion comes. To those who say I am playing the game wrong, and should be enjoying myself right now I say: No. This system is available and I will participate in it so that I can get rewards I’m looking forward to down the road. It is no different in any way from the grueling torture of the Insane achievement, months of agonizing repetitive tasks, more “fun” activities given up in favor of a longer term goal. This is a method of play long supported by Bliz, the systems have changed but the underlying carrots and horrible horrible sticks are still there.

July

I don’t have a list of small, specific goals for July like many other bloggers do. I want to get better at Destiny, finish Chroma Squad, see more of the Arcterra content in Wildstar, and make as much gold in WoW as possible before they nerf garrisons. These seem reasonable, and vague enough that I will probably meet them and get to feel good about myself for it!


It’s never over

Gracie’s Gaming Rollercoaster

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The last week has been full of highs and lows in my gaming world and I thought I’d share some here. I’ll get the disappointments out of the way early so I can get on to the happy stuff! The big one is of course I did not get into the Legion beta. A friend asked me why I even care since playing the beta means burning out on Legion faster. Long gone are the days where I wanted to play the beta so I could practice leveling and dungeons and make a run for server firsts. Instead, I’d like to see the beta to poke at the new systems, see how the classes have been changed, and just gawk at the new world at a time when WoW is getting really stale.

The other disappointment also comes from the Blizzard front. I got the chance to play Overwatch both during the stress test weekend and the open beta. I was excited, but it turns out that I really do not like competitive shooters and that’s all Overwatch is. Yes, it is polished, beautiful, with a really interesting cast of characters, but if you don’t like shooting squads of strangers with a group of friends or yet more strangers, then this game probably won’t change your mind. The world seems so interesting, though. I’ll add my voice to the chorus that would love to play a PvE shooter in this universe, where I could take time to explore it better.

Enough with the bad, let’s talk about the good stuff! I’ve been playing the Ratchet & Clank reboot game and loving it. It makes me want to dig out my old copy of the original and see all the similarities and differences. I love this series of games so much, and I think part of why I enjoy WildStar as much as I do is because the style and humor very frequently remind me of Ratchet & Clank. Sadly the movie isn’t playing in any of my local theaters, so it looks like I might have to wait for it on Netflix or make a special trip to civilization to see it before it disappears.

My D3 season 6 is moving along nicely. I still need to set aside the time to work on a set dungeon mastery so I can move forward with the journey, and I still haven’t seen any of the new pets or wings drop for me, but otherwise I’m pretty happy with my progress. We’ve reached the point in my circle of friends where the truly hardcore folks have already finished their goals and moved on so it is harder to get carried, but it also means I can set my own pace from here on out. My plan to be slightly more social has also been working well, and I’ve played with quite a few old friends in the past week that I don’t usually get much chance to hang out with anymore.

The big surprise of this week is that I went back to FFXIV for a bit and had the most amazing possible time. I’m not sure exactly when I stopped playing, but the last time I talked about FFXIV much on this blog was during last Blaugust when we were working on the Ravana EX fight. We never did murder that bug before I left, so I’m guessing I’ve been away 7 or 8 months. My triumphant return started out a bit rocky, since I logged in to the bane of MMO nomads everywhere: cluttered bags full of stuff I had no idea what to do with. Once that was taken care of I also had to rebuild my UI and all my macros, which took the better part of an evening.

After all the frustrations of those activities I took a break for a couple days and came back ready to heal butts. I threw myself into duty roulette for some old and some new content and got reminded that I really do still love healing in MMOs, or at least in this specific one. I danced the dances and healed the butts and even occasionally did some DPS too and had a surprisingly good time. My fancy top hat definitely helped improve my mood too. The icing on top was I got to tag along with my Free Company’s pony farm night and won 2 new pony mounts. It’s like the game is trying to bribe me to stick around, and it might just work!


Gracie’s Gaming Rollercoaster

Accepting Help

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Last week was quite the rollercoaster around here, with a few very excessive ups and downs. The downs are personal so I’m not going to get into details, but they had me sad and anxious and stressed for a lot of the week. The ups were 100% due to the awesomeness of my friends in ways I cannot completely explain on this humble blog.

I had a long discussion with my spouse at one point during the week about giving and accepting gifts. We have so many cultural hang ups about accepting gifts in part because there are so many situations where “gifts” come with an expectation of some sort of reciprocity. It can be disarming to receive a gift, freely given just to make you happy or to help out when you needed it. This weekend I was getting carried a bit in D3, and I can sort of justify accepting that help because I know that once I get my character built up I’ll turn around and carry other friends later on. But in the middle of the silliness of being dragged through TX rifts I got a whisper from another friend inviting me to a WoW friendship moose run. In that case there’s no way I could repay that kindness. I’ve stopped raiding in WoW, all my characters are barely in Tanaan gear. I actually had to spend a WoW token to join the moose party because I had been distracted enough that my subscription had lapsed. I took my completely undergeared kitty druid into that raid and I ate the floor like a champion and walked away with a moose and it was amazing. There’s no way for me to repay the folks that made that possible other than to thank them profusely, and maybe try to pay it forward in some way when I am able.

Here’s the thing: happiness isn’t a zero sum game. Gifts don’t have to be transactional. Doing silly things for your friends can feel pretty great, so being on the receiving end of help shouldn’t feel weird. Life can be pretty crappy sometimes, so embrace happiness when it is offered and do your best to spread it around when you can. And to all the friends who made my week better last week, thank you.


Accepting Help

Company and Misery (and also Fun!)

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I’ve been playing WildStar and WoW mostly solo the past few weeks, and have recently resolved to at least make an effort to be more social again. So when I saw my buddy Lonomonkey (sorry for revealing your WoW shame, friend!) had logged into WoW for the first time in a year or so I grabbed him for some legacy raid silliness. Not only was I being social for a change, but it also kept both of us from just sitting around in our garrisons being bored and boring. I had been meaning to try soloing Elegon for the fancy celestial cloud serpent mount, so I dragged him along to pandaland to try it together. There were a few missteps due to him being out of practice and me playing a mage I hadn’t taken out of the garrison in a few months but we eventually killed Elegon and unsurprisingly there was no mount.

This is the moment where the afternoon started going off the rails. We decided to keep going to kill the last boss because neither of us was sure we had ever finished the place outside of LFR. Unfortunately between our lack of gear and our rustiness with our characters we just couldn’t get it down. Having resolved to be more social, I decided to reach out to Belghast to see if he could come help finish this fight with us. The three of us were more than a match for it, and killed it easily on the first try. Delirious from our victory, we decided to move on to Dragon Soul, which Lono had never completed on any difficulty. Since that raid was 2 expansions ago you’d think it would be a piece of cake, and it was…except for Spine of Deathwing. That fight has way too many needlessly fiddly moving parts, and is one of those sad circumstances where soloing it is easier than doing it with a couple friends because of the way the mechanics work. We died an awful lot, and there were a few way too close attempts where the last person standing got rolled off before they could finish the encounter. At this point I’m regretting my social attempts because after this everyone is about to murder each other. We did eventually win, no thanks to my squishy mage who ended up dying almost every attempt. Killing the final boss in that place always feels so anticlimactic after the stress of Spine.

Now in a flash of utter stupidity I decided that the best thing to follow that up with is a quick jaunt to ICC to get my blood infusion, a part of the legendary quest line from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion that my paladin has been sitting stuck on for forever. It required a lot of silly antics with mechanics again, and poor Lono had to keep dying multiple times each attempt on his warlock. It took fewer attempts than Spine of Deathwing, but felt even worse since this time my friends were dying for a silly quest for me. I’m so grateful that they both stuck around until we succeeded. After we won everyone seemed to disappear very quickly, I think we were all really eager for a break after so much frustration.

I still think that my social attempt was a success though. It is funny how even doing something kinda awful with friends was more fun than soloing dailies in WildStar or rotating through a dozen garrisons all day in WoW. I certainly wouldn’t want to make a habit of this exact choice of activities or we all might not remain friends for very long I think.

P.S. Speaking of social, don’t forget that the Diablo 3 season 6 is about to start this Friday evening! Leveling is way faster and more fun with friends, and I’ll be rolling around in a ball of murder with various folks all night until I get to 70. Are you excited about Season 6 too?


Company and Misery (and also Fun!)