I got congratulated by WordPress recently on my 6-year anniversary. That didn’t seem right. Long-time readers (you’re both awesome, by the way) might note that I started this blog just before the launch of WildStar. I did some digging and was embarrassed to discover that I’d forgotten an aborted attempt at blogging during my SWTOR days. I’m not sure I ever actually went live with it, but I was planning a blog called “The Disgraceful Jedi”. I suppose it was due to unspoken peer pressure from my time with the Snark Side folks. That guild was overflowing with bloggers. I still count a couple of those guildies among my dearest friends, so I must have been doing something right even without joining all of their nonsense.
In any case, I did start blogging eventually, as you can see. It took WildStar’s awesome housing system to get me excited enough to do it. My first post here was in May 2014. During that time when I was madly in love with WildStar I was was writing tons of commentary and guides.
By 2015 I was still playing heavily, but I was blogging less. I had months-long gaps between posts here. I did participate in Blaugust that year though, and wrote my serious of shiphand / expedition guides. Later that year WS went free-to-play and my branching out to other games became more common.
In 2016 WildStar was becoming “inexplicably unsatisfying” to me. I played a lot of Diablo 3 and various solo games like Subnautica and Stardew Valley instead. That year I did at least manage to write something here every month. The launch of WoW:Legion sucked me back into that game and provided plenty of blog fodder. August 2016 was also when I started my reading challenge. On the one hand, it’s depressing that I still have so far to go to finish that list of 100 books. On the other hand, I’ve really been enjoying the process so who cares how long it takes?
By 2017 I was consistently writing “monthly goals” posts. It has helped me prioritize my gaming, and has the added benefit of letting me remember more clearly what I was working on back then. That year was a bit overwhelming with tons of great game releases. Between Horizon Zero Dawn, FFXV, Diablo 3’s Rise of the Necromancer, Destiny 2, and FFXIV: Stormblood, my dance card was very full. I somehow also managed to make time for some random completionist projects too. I cleared all of D3’s set challenge dungeons, and got all of the class mounts from WoW: Legion.
That brings us to this year. So far I’ve felt a bit adrift. I have a couple small projects going in WoW, but my play time there is pretty small. I’ve dabbled in D2, FFXIV, Monster Hunter, and D3 but nothing has been very sticky. Sometimes I’ve had more book posts here than game ones. Also I’ve been spending a lot more of my time and energy on my Creative Thing activities. I’m hoping that the next WoW expansion will bring some focus, but I am finding it hard to get hyped since I actively dislike the faction conflict premise.
I’m glad I have been writing here the past four years. I’ve met some cool people, and had interesting dialogs with commenters and other bloggers. I also have this record of what I’ve been up to for the past few years. Ultimately I guess I keep doing this because it is fun!
If you know me at all, you might guess that doing FFA PvP is near the bottom of my list of “things I want to do, ever”. It’s somewhere above “have spinal surgery” but still well below “clean the litter box when my cat is sick”. I dislike PvP, and those quests seem to bring out the worst in people. However, I have a backup plan. Many of the class halls have an option that lets you auto-complete one world quest ever 18 hours. I have alts of many classes. You might see where this is going.
