I feel like I need to be apologizing since you are not getting an awful lot out of me this week.  I am still recovering from whatever crud I seem to have caught, and my wife appears like she might be coming down with it too.  All this time I thought it was just super bad allergies but maybe it really did end up being some sort of a summer cold.  Regardless we ended up heading to bed around 9 last night because we were both sitting there fighting sleep.  That means I did not spend an awful lot of time playing last night, but I did managed to finish up the main story arc of Zuldazar which was very cool.  The only negative is there is a lot of stuff happening that doesn’t cleanly get resolved so I am expecting that once again the raids will act as finishing off bits of story.  It gives the players that would not normally run the raids a hook to go do them…  but at the same time it is a bit annoying that you are essentially forced to do them to see the end of story lines.

I got called out by Grace that she had not yet dinged 120, but I am going out on a limb and saying that she dinged last night.  I mean she said as much, but I also remember he saying as much the night before.  Basically at this point I cannot trust my brain because apparently whatever crud I have is effecting my memory as well.  I think I also said I was 117 going on 118…  which is not true as I dinged 117 last night.  It is little wonder that I had trouble following some of the story line throughout Zuldazar a bit.  It is my hope that this weekend I can push forward and ding 120 so I can start doing end game shenanigans.

The real hope however is that I start to feel like a normal human being.  Yesterday was my first full day back at work since Monday, and it took an awful lot out of me.  This weekend also probably means we are going to run a lot of errands as my wife realizes things she needs for the classroom given this is her first day back with kids.  It is going to be busy… and I realistically need to be back a normal operating status in order to do all of the things that need to be done.  I’ve not done any of the Developer Appreciation Week posts but my hope is to do a few of them over the weekend.  This is really not a great time to be sick, so hopefully I get over this nonsense quickly.

This morning I am doing considerably better than I was yesterday, but I am still not quite in fighting form.  Whatever crud I have has kicked my butt and I only managed to make it about three hours yesterday before tagging out and heading home.  What is annoying the most is that I feel just generally drained and awful and unable to enjoy pretty much anything I am doing.  I spent a good chunk of yesterday trying to catch up on Jessica Jones Season 2 and I think I made it to episode eight before giving up for the day.  The only negative about this is that I was probably not paying anywhere near as close attention to World of Warcraft as I should have.

I reached this point where suddenly there were Mogu everywhere and I am not sure how we got there exactly.  I’ve since pieces together some of the details but I have a feeling there is a quest somewhere in the chain where I simply wasn’t paying anywhere near enough attention.  It is around this point that I realized just how damned spoiled Elder Scrolls Online has made me.  It is very easy for me to glaze over a wall of text presented with a quest, but significantly less easy for me to ignore a character that is actively talking to me.  Voice acted content makes me forget that I am effectively just doing a fetch or a kill ten quest, and instead the character I am interacting with becomes intimately more “real”.

I still largely look like a toddler that dress themselves for the first time… all I am missing is the inexplicable scuba mask and tutu.  I am trying to do this whole no transmogging thing…  but every night is a struggle.  It is funny that I am realizing how much of my enjoyment of my character is the way that it looks.  Right now I look like hot garbage and it is by reference making everything I pick up feel like it is utterly useless and disposable since it will make me look a brand new kind of awful.  It seems that there is way less loot as a whole from quests, and I think in part this is because of the upgrade-able items, however I have yet to find a weapon with Heart of Azeroth talents on it.

Ultimately this is meaning that I don’t have any gear for an offspec because each time a new weapon rolls around it is a significant upgrade to what I was wielding before and not something I can pass up for sake of balancing out my characters options.  I like the upgradeable gear, but right now I seem to keep getting the exact same three slots so I am presented with a series of lateral choices rather than building out a full set of gear.  That has always been one of my big complaints about World of Warcraft and leveling, is how piecemeal the gear ends up being and how you always have a few slots that are languishing with no direct upgrades.

I legitimately thought I was nearing the end of Zuldazar, but some events transpired that have effectively thrown me into a “world two” sort of scenario.  Quest destinations that I thought I had finished now suddenly are springing up with brand new options.  I have a feeling that before the end of this I will have arrived at every destination twice…  which makes me realize just how damned bad I am at following main story quests.  The events that shifted everything into motion…  came from quite literally the last quest I had showing on the board.  I thought I was heading towards the end conflict of the zone…  not opening up a whole new one.

Tonight in theory I should be able to push through the end of Zuldazar.  I am artifact level 10 and about 1/5th of a level away from 117, so I am sure I will wrap that up before shifting to swampland.  Grace has of course already dinged 120 because she is better at not getting distracted by shiny objects… and by shiny objects I mean mobs that look at me funny and I have to charge into.  We did run a dungeon last night and that was pretty fun.  I have a feeling though it is not going to be super popular given that there is a functional repeat of the Blackrock Depths Torch Room in it.  I feel like every set of dungeons has an Oculus, and unless there is something more heinous hidden in the dungeons I have yet to run… I am guessing that this expansion it will be Temple of Sethraliss.