Gracie Status Update

Blaugust 2015, Day 22

Just taking a quiet moment to myself.

For as much as I’ve been sharing my adventures here, I’m actually a pretty introverted person. Sometimes I just need to step aside for a little while and do something by myself to recharge my mental batteries. As weird as it sounds, MMOs are great places to be alone. Sure, the whole point of these games is to have giant worlds full of people, but there’s tons of opportunities to get some alone time while still feeling like part of the world.

Are you really alone when these guys are with you?

Solo instances like shiphands, Omnicore 1, and the Drusera ones are obvious ways to get some time alone. These are my go-to choice if I really need alone time since they are sealed off from the rest of the world. Sometimes instead I will just go exploring on my own, or farming for annoying rare cooking mats. These activities at least let me see other players.

All my friends are dead. This did not end well.

Very strangely, I find that I can feel pretty alone in battlegrounds. Often if people are being abusive or annoying in chat I will turn off my chat box and just play. I get the challenge of fighting something more interesting than AI, but get way less of the stress of dealing with people.

What do you do to relax or recharge in-game? Do you seek out solo time, or prefer to be around other people?

Blaugust 2015, Day 21

Farside is so very photogenic.

This week I somehow got motivated to level my engineer. She had been languishing at around level 31 for months. I still log into my alts regularly, they farm low-level mats and act as auction house mules mostly. The urge to level this one came partly from being finished with my weekly quests a bit early, and partly because I got sick of not being able to mine some of the higher level nodes that appear on her mining plug. It also didn’t hurt that she was the highest level alt I had laying around.

One year ago if you had asked me what order I would level my alts, I would have probably said esper, then medic, engineer, stalker, and finally warrior. I definitely would have thought that I’d have at least one or 2 of them at 50 by now. That it has taken so long is partially a testament to how happy I’ve been just doing the end game content, and partially because WildStar hasn’t been my only MMO for the past year.

Your first introduction to the Strain.

The best part of this process has been the realization that I get to do all of the Drusera story instances over again. I was super excited to unlock the first one at level 35. When the next one became available at 37 it surprised me, I had forgotten how many there were and when they each unlock! The first one is your introduction to the Genesis Prime, while the second instance is the first time we see the Strain. It reminded me of how excited I was when I saw these last year, and how grossed out I was by the Strain. It has been so much fun following Drusera around again, although I may have some snarky commentary for her now that I know the events of Blighthaven and the Defile.

Even if I get this alt to 50 before the next drop, I probably won’t do too much yet. So many things are changing that I don’t want to invest too much effort just to have it all reset. For now I’m just having a blast leveling her, shooting enemies with a really huge gun, and watching the silly faces the engineer bots make!

Blaugust 2015, Day 17

If this looks like anything other than an utter nightmare to you, you might enjoy PvP

I’m a pretty big fan of WildStar’s contract system. It took me a little while after they were introduced to really understand what they were and how best to engage with them, but now I’m hooked. The system has been a great way for me to fill in some gaps in my gear, make a ton of money, and even get some sweet pets and mounts. Up until this week, though, I’d been leaving out half of the system: PvP contracts.

These 2 status updates pretty well sum up my experience

All that changed a few days ago, with the combination of my curiosity and a mini guild premade getting thrown together. I had done a bit of PvP in the leveling bracket, with my medic and stalker especially. But I hadn’t touched PvP in months, and had barely ever done any on my spellslinger or at max level. I walked in with no PvP gear and no PvP spec and it turned out about as well as you’d expect that to – I got murdered a lot. It turns out that very lopsided matches are fairly common, since the best geared, most experienced PvPers tend to form premades.

The real reason I want to PvP

In the end I had a fun enough time to keep going back for a few contracts over the past few days. I build myself a PvP action set and earned enough prestige to buy some gear so I occasionally get a kill or two in before my untimely death. I even had my first winning match, a Halls of the Bloodsworn that we won against all hope with about 15 seconds left on the clock. I think this might become a permanent addition to my daily “stuff to do” rotation, at least until I finish getting those sweet sweet PvP costumes and pets!