Gracie Status Update

What I’m Playing: August 14, 2016

by

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.

What I’m Playing: August 14, 2016

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!


Bugs and Dragons

by

Bugs and DragonsLast night was our weekly foray into raiding in FFXIV. I admit I was dreading it a little bit, not because I don’t enjoy our raids, but simply because I’ve been so engrossed in Diablo 3 that I didn’t want to tear myself away. Luckily, only a few moments in raid reminded me how much I love FFXIV and my awesome raid team, and all thoughts of hunting demons were driven from my mind for a few hours.

We started the night working on Ravana EX, which we had attempted a little bit at the end of last week’s session. We had an amazing first pull that almost killed him, then a little bit of stumbling, and then finally we murdered the big bad bug. It was a classic first kill, with folks dead and the remaining people desperately trying to finish him off in the final seconds before he enraged. This win was so satisfying, because this is where we left off back before everyone wandered away from the game last time. I can’t wait to keep pushing our way through ever more ridiculous dances.

Speaking of ridiculous dances, after we murdered the bug we went all the way back to Final Coil so we could complete those fights for a few folks who had missed out on them last time around. Hardcore raiders who did these fights when they were current were probably weeping somewhere while we flailed our way through most of the fights without remembering the mechanics, trusting our unsynched gear and crying healers to carry the day. It was an absolute blast, and I was so glad that we managed to clear the whole thing last night, even if we did go over our raid time by a few minutes. It was totally worth it!


Blurry Weekend

by

Blurry WeekendDiablo 3 Season 7 is off to a pretty fantastic start. I’ve had relatively bad luck with my gear this time around, but it doesn’t seem to matter in the slightest. All the classes seem to get a huge power spike once they get their 6 piece set bonuses, but demon hunters always seem to feel it more in my opinion. I am currently farming TX rifts with no problems, even though I still don’t have either the weapon I need or the cubed weapon I need for my set, and at least one of my rings is still level 61.

My biggest concern for now is simply whether I will even bother with the rest of the season at this point. I got the pet and 2 of the portrait frames, but the stash tab is still a long way away. If I stop now this will officially be my shortest season ever. There’s quite a lot left to do and if other games weren’t about to become incredibly distracting I would definitely have a few more weeks at least of Diablo fun left ahead of me. This season’s conquests are pretty reasonable, and I know from experience I can manage greater rift 45 without set bonuses and leveling 3 gems to level 65. The season journey this time around is asking for quite a bit in the way of upgrading ancient legendaries, which means spending a lot of time grinding even more gem levels for this recipe. Grindy, but not difficult.

Not only is the journey not too difficult, but what’s left is mostly doable solo just in case the crowds die down tomorrow when WoW’s demon invasions start. Maybe this will be the season where I do a slow casual burn over the next couple months, and still get things done before the end.


What I’m Playing: August 7, 2016

by

Hooray, I made it through the first week of Blaugust! WoW has definitely been my main focus, but some other games have still been on my radar too.

World of Warcraft: This is where I spent most of my time this week. I got my legendary mace on my forsaken priest, but otherwise have mostly been playing alliance side. It makes me frustrated and sad, because I just plain like the horde races and story better, but at this point absolutely all of my friends are playing alliance so there’s no escaping it. Once again I find myself really wishing WoW would just add cross faction play already, even if it were tied to battlenet friends or something. I already have prepared myself for the inevitable point in Legion where I get sick of being alliance and go back to level my horde mains all alone. I guess it is a good thing I like alting.

What I’m Playing: August 7, 2016

LFR gets a (mostly deserved) bad rap, but sometimes you luck out and it’s nothing but Gamon and rainbows as far as the eye can see.

Anyway, I’ve been doing a little LFR on my druid and wandering around on my baby spacegoat mage and enjoying it. I’ve been using the baby mage as a chance to really see the low-level alliance quests, and to knock out some of the individual zone loremaster achieves that I never did. I got the overall loremaster achievement and title back before Cataclysm, so there’s a lot of quests I’ve never seen before. See yesterday’s post from Felwood for just one example.

FFXIV: I want to be playing this more, but WoW is really taking up too much of my time and attention for me to bother. Over the past week I’ve logged in for raid and pretty much nothing else at all. Don’t get me wrong, raid time was amazing and probably more fun than all of the time I played WoW put together, but we only raid 2 hours a week. I had been hoping that raiding on a schedule again would reignite my drive to log in more and upgrade my gear and such but it didn’t work out that way.

WildStar: I’m going to come clean and admit I hadn’t logged in to WildStar in a couple months. That just felt wrong, so when WoW got hit by a DDoS attack a few evenings this week I logged back in to WildStar. I didn’t do anything new and exciting, just a couple of expeditions. It still felt amazing and comfortable, like nothing had changed. I will be trying to spend at least one night a week poking around in this game again, because it remains my favorite MMO of all time.

Diablo 3: Season 7 started on Friday! The response to this season seems to be very low compared to all of the previous ones, but I’ve still been playing and having a great time. On Friday I got to play with some friends that I haven’t hung out with in way too long, and had a blast leveling together. This season was the first time in a while that I didn’t get to 70 on the first night, but that was all on me because I decided to get some sleep instead. I hit 70 and completed the first 5 chapters of the season journey yesterday, which included the cosmetic rewards and the full free class set of gear (after chapter 4). Since that was my entire goal for this season, I don’t know if I will stay invested or not, especially with the pre-Legion WoW event coming on Tuesday. A lot of the goals for the stash tab this time around feel easier, but also grindier, and I’m guessing I’m not going to bother when there are new shiny things to distract me in other games.