Gracie has thoughts

Little things to love

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Some BfA spoilers here.Little things to love

This post is dedicated to some of the little things I’ve enjoyed about Battle for Azeroth so far. I already mentioned Dolly and Dot, and the adorable alpaca song, but there are so many other charming little moments in this expansion. For example, in my screen shot above, you can see Spitzy, the adorable sea slug I’ve adopted and who rides on my head. Who needs a bird when you can have an adorable sea slug friend? I never got into all the hype about Pepe, but Spitzy here? We’re friends for life.

Little things to love

Next up is this quest chain. I love the whole “science vs. voodoo” aspect, and the ending is sweet. The extra cool thing about this chain was getting a letter in the mail after finishing it, letting me know the whole “experiment” was successful.

Little things to love

Another fun quest chain here, helping out skeletal pirate trolls. Or pirate skeleton trolls? Troll skeleton pirates? Whatever they are they were great!

What have been some of your favorite little moments so far?

 

Dungeons on Day 1

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I played a ton of WoW yesterday, exploring the new zones and slowly working my way toward the new level cap. When I got my first “go run this dungeon now” quest I was excited to see it. Sadly the character I’m leveling is in a solo guild, and the few friends I have that are actively playing wanted to wait until they finished their zone story before running the dungeon. I’d rather see this stuff with friends, so I waited.

When I eventually leveled up a bit more a new dungeon unlocked. THE MOTHERLODE!! There’s not really any story leading up to this one other than a quick conversation with Gallywix. I was a bit too eager so I decided to take my chances and pug it.

Other than on my “pug story” leveling priest, this is the first time I’ve healed a dungeon as disc in forever. Luckily the practice I got from pugging vanilla dungeons seemed to be enough for me to figure things out. In fact, healing this dungeon was a breeze. It was probably because the tank was 120 and had obviously already been chain running dungeons for a while by the time I healed them.

I don’t have any screen shots of this dungeon to post here because of course the tank chain pulled so fast I could barely keep up. The healing was easy because of their level and gear, but it was frustrating anyway. I had no clue where I was going. I didn’t have any time to look around at the instance or at the map. Nobody explained anything about the boss fights (at least they were pretty straightforward). I expect this kind of thing to happen eventually, but on literally day 1 of a new expansion I guess I was hoping for a different experience.

We all survived, and nobody was rude or anything, so I guess I should just count it as a win. Still, I want to be able to take some time, take some screen shots, and enjoy the newness of the expansion while it lasts.

Battle for Azeroth: First impressions

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Battle for Azeroth: First impressions

Last night might have been the most chill expansion launch I’ve ever experienced. I hung out in Discord with just a couple friends and we explored on our own while chatting with each other. Nobody was racing to get to 120. I stayed up until around midnight, and got to 112. Both friends had left long before that. It was nice to take my time to read quests and watch cutscenes without feeling like I was getting left behind.

And oh, there are a lot of cutscenes this time around! When it launched, Legion felt like the most cinematic expansion ever, and BfA is already blowing it out of the water on that front. In the few hours we played last night, several comparisons were drawn to FFXIV and its frequent cutscenes. I hope they continue to find a good balance with them throughout the expansion. Cutscenes give more story and flavor, and they help you feel connections to the characters you are meeting. Too many cutscenes, however, can lead to boredom and frustration when you are on a roll and trying to level.

Battle for Azeroth: First impressions

I’m not going to talk about the story too much since I haven’t even finished one zone yet. I am relieved and not too surprised that, at least at the start, we’ve left the faction war behind and are focusing on local concerns for the Zandalari. If I could just wander the continent with Meerah and Dolly and Dot, solving problems and fighting monsters with no horde vs. alliance conflict in sight forever I’d be pretty happy.

So that sums up my first evening with BfA. What do you folks think so far?

 

Blaugust: Get to know each other!

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Blaugust: Get to know each other!Belghast has kicked off this week of Blaugust by reminding us that it is “get to know each other week” and sharing a bit about himself and his childhood. I don’t usually share a lot of personal information about myself here because I prefer to focus on the gaming. Today I’ll make an exception so I can join in the Blaugust fun and games.

I talked a bit already about my earliest introduction to games with my uncle’s Atari. I never had a console of my own until much later, when I saved up my allowance and got a Nintendo (NES). In between, however, we had something that fundamentally set me up for both my favorite hobby and my eventual career. It was a well-loved, hand-me-down Commodore 64.

I don’t really know how my parents got interested enough to obtain it. I certainly didn’t have anything to do with that. My mom did a lot of typing for newsletters and things. She had a nice typewriter and eventually a word processor, so maybe she wanted the computer so she could use it for writing. Or maybe my dad just wanted it to mess around and see what all the fuss was about. It is my dad that I remember using it the most. He taught himself BASIC so he could program a simple hockey game on it.

That silly little game was a revelation to me. I played lots of games on that old C64, either shareware passed along by my many cousins, or ones bought from the clearance bin from the computer store in the mall. Seeing my dad make his own game made me realize that was something people could do. Games didn’t just appear fully formed on a floppy disk; somebody made them up and wrote all the code that made them work.

I learned how to program from my dad and by copying code from computer magazines. I never made anything very complicated, but the process opened up a path for me that I’ve followed the rest of my life. Today I leave making games to somebody else, but I do still use my coding skills. I’m lucky enough to get to do science using a ridiculously powerful supercomputer for a living, all thanks to that humble C64 and a dad who unknowingly helped me get started on my true path.