On the Liebster Award

Blaugust Post #8


Grace called it a blogging disease, I think of it as more of a chain letter. Either way, thanks for the Liebster award!


Here are my 11 random facts:

  1. I am the youngest person on the regular cast of Aggrochat.
  2. I’m a decent ice skater, and used to play hockey.
  3. However, if you put me on roller skates, I just fall down a lot.
  4. I will admit to liking a single song by N’SYNC. Said song is produced by one of my favorite EDM artists.
  5. I was given my first computer (a laptop the size of a briefcase) when I was 4. I could barely carry it.
  6. I have beaten Mega Man 8 more times than I can count. While in school, I beat it every time I came home, which meant about twice a year.
  7. WoW was technically my first MMO (and like Grace I didn’t play before Burning Crusade), but before WoW I was in the beta for Wish.
  8. I have an irrational love for shapeshifter characters. This has manifested in me playing a Druid whenever it comes up, but it isn’t limited to just that.
  9. I buy rulebooks for Pen and Paper RPGs I’ll likely never play, just to see what’s interesting in them.
  10. As far as food goes, I believe that cinnamon makes almost everything better.
  11. Despite claims to the contrary, I’m not a robot.

And here are Grace’s Questions:

1.Why do you blog?
I blog to get my thoughts out to whoever might be interested in reading them. In some ways the podcast serves as this, but the blog helps for more long-form thoughts.

2. What was your favorite childhood cartoon show?
The answer to this question depends on how you’d like to define “childhood”. I remember really liking the Powerpuff Girls when I was younger (It premiered when I was 7). Later, I was part of the Toonami generation, and really liked Dragonball Z.

3. Fantasy or Sci-Fi?
Fantasy, full stop. Exceptions are made for Sci-fi that’s really just pretending to not be Fantasy, like Star Wars or Mass Effect.

4. What’s the most amazing place you’ve ever been? I was too young to gamble (or anything else, really) when I was there, but I really loved Las Vegas. It’s just an amazing spectacle, and I haven’t seen the like anywhere else.

5. Pizza: Chicago or New York?
In general, Chicago Pizza is better than New York Pizza. However, it’s nearly impossible to actually get good Chicago-style pizza outside of Chicago while a bunch of places do a decent imitation of New York-style pizza around the country, so in most locations the opposite is true.

6. If you could only pick one game genre to play for the rest of your life, what would it be?
I’m a big fan of Action-RPGs. If I can stretch that definition far enough to fit Diablo, Kingdom Hearts, and Elder Scrolls under the same umbrella, so much the better.

7. What inspired your character name?
This one’s easy. There’s some more story there, but that’s the name I took for my Druid in WoW when we started playing Horde-side, and it ended up sticking.

8. What is your greatest gaming moment or achievement?
I like soloing ridiculous content, and every so often I drag other people into it. I managed to solo the first boss of AQ40 at level 80 (it required a silly amount of Nature Resist gear), but I’m more proud of getting enough people in to clear the instance. I’d previously had groups that even at level 80, could not get past Twin Emperors, so doing it with a few guildies was a pretty awesome experience.

9. Do you share your love of games with your real-world friends and family, or keep it to the internet?
I keep a Pikachu Amiibo on my desk at work, so my love of games isn’t exactly a secret. I’ve gotten into discussions about games with family and co-workers, but a lot of my current co-workers play World of Tanks, which I don’t have a lot of interest in.

10. Have you ever had a really weird pet?
Nope. I had a dog once, and when I move somewhere that allows them, probably will again.

11. What is your favorite type of environment/biome in-game and IRL?
I’ve always been a big fan of forests. I grew up in a location where nature trails were readily available, so I spent a decent amount of time walking and riding through shaded areas in the summer. In games, forests (but not jungles) tend to be relatively quiet and mysterious, but they sometimes have the “twisty little maze of passages” thing going on. My tolerance for that trope depends on how much you’re expected to rely on trial-and-error.


And 11 more questions:

  1. Why do you blog? Yes, I know it’s a repeat. Deal with it.
  2. What’s the first game you remember playing?
  3. Dogs or Cats?
  4. Do you have a favorite villain?
  5. What are your thoughts on escort missions?
  6. Borrowing from the “stereotypical interview questions” list, What would you say is your biggest weakness? (I did actually get this question a lot last year.)
  7. What character archetype do you find yourself playing most often?
  8. Other than games and the means to play them, do you own any gaming-related items?
  9. Because I know who these questions are going to, I can ask this one: What’s your favorite system for Tabletop RPGs?
  10. What upcoming games (if any) are you looking forward to?

Because Thalen hasn’t beaten me to it, Tamrielo and Kodra, have fun with this one.

#Blaugust Day 8: Legion

So the news that everyone who's still playing or at least following World of Warcraft was revealed a couple days ago. The new expansion will be titled Legion, and will presumably be chock-ful-o-demons. I don't think this came as much of a surprise to anyone; it's been clear for a while that the player base has tired of orcs, orcs, and more orcs and the Burning Legion are the go-to bad guys that haven't been focused on in a while.

He's still out there
(As an aside, I considered doing a joke post where I pretended to misunderstand all the talk about Legion as being about the X-Men character. Really though, I think I have one reader who would find it hilarious, a few more who would actually get the joke, and everyone else would just be confused. I still may write something about that character in the future though, because he's amazing.)

#Blaugust Day 8: Legion
I think the hair is his secondary mutation
It's been interesting watching the reaction. It seems pretty muted on the whole, but that may just be because of the section of the Internet I hang out in. Most of my gaming friends aren't playing WoW anymore either, so I think for a lot of them their interest is just a matter of curiosity and nostalgia. I'm sure if the excitement is higher than I think and subscription numbers go back up or even level off, Activision/Blizzard will let us know.

On the whole, I think this mostly just drives home to me that my time with WoW is truly done. I played for 9 years and enjoyed it for most of that time, but after nearly 2 years out I don't really feel any desire to log back in. I don't hate the game, and I have no desire for it to get shut down or anything like that. The World of Warcraft has moved on without me, and I without it.  And really, that's a good thing.

Screenie Saturday: Scorchwing

Blaugust 2015, Day 8

Screenie Saturday: Scorchwing

The bird itself

I spent a lot of time last night sitting around waiting for Scorchwing to spawn so I could kill it for my daily contract. There’s almost always a crowd, especially on contract days. I love the atmosphere, it gets pretty festive and silly, which inspires lots of screen shots.

Screenie Saturday: Scorchwing

Waiting for the flaming chicken to appear

After we had killed it I looked back through my screen shot folder and realized that I probably have more images of Scorchwing than anything else in the game. The earliest, like the one at the top of this post from last July, are of Scorch. The long time it took to kill it meant waiting around when it spawned so you had enough people.

Screenie Saturday: Scorchwing

Sometimes you find kindred spirits

The later images are all about the community silliness of waiting for the spawn. I like the Scorchwing fight as far as world bosses go. And I like that it brings big groups together and helps remind me how vibrant a place my server is.

Screenie Saturday: Scorchwing

So many people engaged in poultricide

Still, waiting around for a random spawn timer isn’t really engaging gameplay. I wonder if all the changes coming with F2P will standardize Scorch’s spawn to bring it more in line with the other daily contracts. If so, I’ll be glad of the time it saves me, but a little sad if we lose this weird excuse to have a party in the middle of Blighthaven.


On Revenge

Blaugust Post #7

I still don’t take enough screenshots.

FF14 recently added an option where you can go into dungeons as an “undersized party” which is the only way to enter with fewer than the required number of people, and also skips the level sync portion. In all honesty I’m not sure what the intent is, but we’ve used it for two things: Entering level 50 raids at 60 and soloing old content.

Into Darkness

Before I even properly leveled anything, one of the first things I did was go into Dzemael Darkhold on my warrior (at 50) and see if I could solo the thing. DD is a level 44 dungeon, and at the time I needed a relic drop from there and was quite tired of running it at the proper level.Turns out that except for the final boss, not only is it possible, it’s easy. The final boss is also possible, but considerably less easy. I always liked doing similar things in WoW, so I think this got me hooked on trying to solo things here.

On Revenge

Further Endeavors

Fast Forward about a month, and I have a level 60 Paladin, ready to try my hand at some tougher content. Still needing Relic drops, I decided to start with Amdapor Keep, one of the “starting” level 50 dungeons. This took a bit more doing than Dzemael Darkhold, especially because the final boss has a healing debuff. I’ve been working my way down the list since then. I haven’t had any success with Copperbell (Can’t keep up DPS on the boss and do mechanics), or Lost City (The first boss just eats you, which is fatal with no party members). I did manage to solo Wanderer’s Palace and Halatali. I still have quite a few to go, so we’ll see where the brick wall is. I suspect that if I run into issues as a tank, I could always come back as one of the Arcanist classes once I get to 60.