Blaugust – Page 24

All the Fel

August 15, 2016 by Grace

My garrison was feeling left behind so I brought the demon invasion to it.

When the 7.0 patch hit I was surprised how much I still stayed in my garrison. There was cloth to make and missions to run to stock up on resources so I could buy fur so I could make more cloth…it was still almost as tedious and exhausting as it was before the gold missions got nerfed. I was starting to worry that I’d end up spending Legion still hearthing back to my garrison just so I could keep working on professions and making bags to sell. Fortunately last week’s demon invasions have thoroughly cured me of my garrison addiction. When I bother to check in on them, my garrisons are full of resources and waiting for me to restock everything. In between, I’m not thinking about them at all and that’s 100% fine by me. My baby mage is 92, she’s going to hit 100 this week, and the stretch from 60-100 will have been fueled largely by invasion events instead of questing. I’m going to squeeze all of the leveling goodness out of this that I can because I know it is going away at the end of the month. The only other question is, can I level another alt to 100 before it goes?

What I’m Playing: August 14, 2016

August 14, 2016 by Grace

We’re almost halfway through Blaugust and I’ve managed to keep up with things so far, woo! This week my play time has still been pretty focused.

FFXIV: Once again the only time I played FFXIV this week was during raid. Once again, the time I did play was phenomenal. This game’s raiding is so fun and satisfying, and even old content still requires some thought and attention. I’m just too distracted by other things right now to give it the attention it deserves.

Steven Universe Soundtrack Attack: I almost forgot to mention this one, but I was talking with the Aggrochat folks about it last night before we recorded the podcast and figured other people might want to know about it too. I’m playing this fun little rhythm game on iOS. I like it because you can create and customize your own new gem (mine’s a Ruby!), and it has music from the show. Unfortunately it moves pretty quickly from “hey this is fun” to “furiously mashing at the screen not being able to keep up.” Maybe that’s a thing this type of game does? I admit I’ve not played any other rhythm games on my phone. Some of the songs are even sped up a bit from the show. I suspect it is because they want you to watch more adds and buy powerups that let you slow down the songs. Also not all of the levels are songs directly from the show, a lot of them are instrumental tracks, so don’t expect to hear all of the songs from the show right away when you start playing. In any case it is a fun enough little game and worth checking out for yourself if you are interested, just don’t expect a lot of depth.

Diablo 3: I’m still working away at my seasonal character. I’ve completed GR60 and the view ahead is all grinding for tiny upgrades and praying for ancient legendaries with good rolls. I have no idea if I will stick around long enough to finish another chapter of the season, but I’m still having fun for now.

WoW: Once again this is where I’m spending the bulk of my time. The demon invasions have gone from fun distraction to pretty great way to level, so I’ve been trying to hit them on my baby mage whenever new ones are up. between invasions and dungeons I’ve gone from 60 to 77 while barely setting foot on outlands or northrend. I actually like both of those expansions just fine, but it is pretty neat to have an alternate leveling pathway open up like this, even if it is only temporary. I suspect I’ll have at least one more character to 100 by Legion at this rate!

Are you watching Steven Universe?

August 12, 2016August 12, 2016 by Grace

I didn’t get as much time as I would have liked to play games last night, but I did get to watch a few episodes of Steven Universe that were sitting on my DVR. I started watching the show a bit late, and I admit I was pretty baffled by the outspoken love for this show on my social media radar. The show is about a young boy named Steven and his alien gem friends/caretakers who protect the planet earth. It is a fairly normal-sounding premise for a generic kids cartoon, but luckily the delivery is anything but generic. Steven Universe does so many amazing things I wish I had seen on TV when I was a kid. Almost all of the main characters are women and girls. It has perfect beautiful normal flawed queer relationships. I realize it is 2016 and I should be taking things like this for granted by now, but it is still amazing to me for a cartoon to step forward and say “these people love each other” without being either so subtle about it that it could be overlooked or so awkward that it is meant to be a lesson not a relationship. Likewise, the show covers some pretty grown-up sounding themes like consent in a straightforward honest way without ever having to mention sex, and without sounding like an after-school special. To top it off it packages it in a cheerful fun art style and some of the most amazing catchy music I’ve ever heard on television. If you haven’t seen it yet, I really recommend you give it a try. Start from the beginning if you can, because the series is definitely telling a story. The most recent episodes pack a real emotional punch for fans, but might just be 15 minutes of confusion for someone new to the show. I was hooked within the first 5 or 6 episodes, and if you make it to episode 12 (Giant Woman) and aren’t completely sold then I think you can probably walk away safely. At this point the show has become enough of a cultural touchstone among my social circles that I couldn’t imagine being without it.

Demons Galore

August 12, 2016August 10, 2016 by Grace

SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE BROKEN SHORE YET The Legion invasions have officially started in WoW, and have been surprisingly fun! I fully expected to barely be able to log in last night, but somehow there were no server crashes and no DDoS issues, only smooth demon hunting as far as the eye could see.

As one person on my server said, “even the demons hate Barrens chat.”

First thing I did was hop on my forsaken priest, my character with the most history and achievements, and set off to do the broken shore quest. I knew what was coming, story-wise, but was excited to see how it played out. I was expecting a solo scenario, and was a little surprised and worried to see I ended up in a group of 20 people. Luckily everyone was just excited and nobody was a jerk, and the way things were constructed I felt completely free to watch the cutscenes when they arrived. I liked that there were both a horde and an alliance group doing the scenario at the same time, and the way the combat with the end boss went with friendly banter between the factions. At the end, I was a bit disappointed that Vol’jin got mortally wounded in such a mundane way, while Varian got to have his epic heroic moment before exploding. After watching the later cutscene it was clear that it happened that way so that Vol’jin could make it back to Org and choose the new warchief himself instead of letting the Horde fall into chaos without a clear succession. Then I got to fangirl out for a while, seeing Sylvanas take up the mantle of warchief. For all her faults as a character I still can’t help but love her. I hope she gets the chance to do a good job, and that this isn’t the setup for making her a raid boss down the road. I liked her rallying cry to avenge Vol’jin, and just seeing all the horde races mingling together and cheering in a unified way instead of each being off in their own racial divisions.

I love seeing so many people out in the world again! “Do these zeps have a weight limit?”

Once the juicy story goodness was finished, I set myself on a mission to do the legion invasions. The new tech here is incredibly sweet. Zoning into an area with an active invasion smoothly put me into an instance with plenty of other people, and usually at or near the very beginning of the event. Only once or twice did I arrive at the start of phase 2, and usually that was because I had zoned in while on a flight path and it took a minute for me to arrive and land in town. I even tried out the scaling tech on my baby mage, and at level 60 the demons were all level 60-61 for me and I had no problem helping to take them down. Honestly this was the highlight of the night for me, because I think it is huge for the game going forward. I can’t wait to quest through the broken isles with this tech in place, and I hope that they go back and apply it to all the old zones too. It would make leveling an alt a completely new experience, and revitalize so much old content. Between a few characters I managed to get most of what I wanted from the event already, and I’m kind of relieved. I got the pet, a warglaive for my future demon hunter, and 2 of the 4 sets of cosmetic gear. I even managed to get the last zone I needed for the achievement this morning before I ran to work. That means I can focus on the invasions just for the characters that could use gear upgrades, and maybe try to get some of the weapons for transmog. It isn’t much of a grind and that means hopefully I won’t burn myself out before Legion even gets here at the end of the month. If this is what Legion is going to be like, then I can’t wait!