Gracie Status Update

Cheesy Achievement

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There’s this long-term goal I’ve been working on for a while now. It started a bit by accident, then when I fully realized it was possible I started actively pursuing it. It is one of the Legion meta-achievements, and even rewards a fancy new mount for completing it! I’m talking about “Free for All, More for Me” PvP achieve. It requires you to do each of the four free-for-all PvP world quests in Legion 20 times each.

Cheesy AchievementIf you know me at all, you might guess that doing FFA PvP is near the bottom of my list of “things I want to do, ever”. It’s somewhere above “have spinal surgery” but still well below “clean the litter box when my cat is sick”. I dislike PvP, and those quests seem to bring out the worst in people. However, I have a backup plan. Many of the class halls have an option that lets you auto-complete one world quest ever 18 hours. I have alts of many classes. You might see where this is going.

I started out haphazardly completing these quests on multiple alts whenever I remembered to do it. Then I discovered that the achievement is not account-wide. That meant that doing 20 darkbrul arenas on my mage didn’t count toward the progress on my pally, who had completed more of the quests overall. Oh well. It didn’t make the process any more difficult, it just slowed me down some.

Cheesy Achievement

Anyway this week I finally completed it. Darkbrul was the one that took the longest, mostly because of the way the quest timing works out. That one is more likely to be up early in the morning in my time zone, rather than in the evenings when I usually play. It doesn’t help that the PvP quests get overwritten by the invasion events when they are up, which has also messed up the timing for me. Lately I’ve been checking the Legion app in the morning before work, and if it is up I’ll go complete it.

I have this weird sense of satisfaction about getting this achievement in this incredibly cheesy way. Take that, developers who tried to encourage world PvP! Now I can go back to using my free WQ completion for more useful things, like honor tokens and armor appearances I am still missing!

Blogaversary!

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Blogaversary!

I got congratulated by WordPress recently on my 6-year anniversary. That didn’t seem right. Long-time readers (you’re both awesome, by the way) might note that I started this blog just before the launch of WildStar. I did some digging and was embarrassed to discover that I’d forgotten an aborted attempt at blogging during my SWTOR days. I’m not sure I ever actually went live with it, but I was planning a blog called “The Disgraceful Jedi”. I suppose it was due to unspoken peer pressure from my time with the Snark Side folks. That guild was overflowing with bloggers. I still count a couple of those guildies among my dearest friends, so I must have been doing something right even without joining all of their nonsense.

In any case, I did start blogging eventually, as you can see. It took WildStar’s awesome housing system to get me excited enough to do it. My first post here was in May 2014. During that time when I was madly in love with WildStar I was was writing tons of commentary and guides.

By 2015 I was still playing heavily, but I was blogging less. I had months-long gaps between posts here. I did participate in Blaugust that year though, and wrote my serious of shiphand / expedition guides. Later that year WS went free-to-play and my branching out to other games became more common.

In 2016 WildStar was becoming “inexplicably unsatisfying” to me. I played a lot of Diablo 3 and various solo games like Subnautica and Stardew Valley instead. That year I did at least manage to write something here every month. The launch of WoW:Legion sucked me back into that game and provided plenty of blog fodder. August 2016 was also when I started my reading challenge. On the one hand, it’s depressing that I still have so far to go to finish that list of 100 books. On the other hand, I’ve really been enjoying the process so who cares how long it takes?

By 2017 I was consistently writing “monthly goals” posts. It has helped me prioritize my gaming, and has the added benefit of letting me remember more clearly what I was working on back then. That year was a bit overwhelming with tons of great game releases. Between Horizon Zero Dawn, FFXV, Diablo 3’s Rise of the Necromancer, Destiny 2, and FFXIV: Stormblood, my dance card was very full. I somehow also managed to make time for some random completionist projects too. I cleared all of D3’s set challenge dungeons, and got all of the class mounts from WoW: Legion.

That brings us to this year. So far I’ve felt a bit adrift. I have a couple small projects going in WoW, but my play time there is pretty small. I’ve dabbled in D2, FFXIV, Monster Hunter, and D3 but nothing has been very sticky. Sometimes I’ve had more book posts here than game ones. Also I’ve been spending a lot more of my time and energy on my Creative Thing activities. I’m hoping that the next WoW expansion will bring some focus, but I am finding it hard to get hyped since I actively dislike the faction conflict premise.

I’m glad I have been writing here the past four years. I’ve met some cool people, and had interesting dialogs with commenters and other bloggers. I also have this record of what I’ve been up to for the past few years. Ultimately I guess I keep doing this because it is fun!

May 2018 Gaming Goals

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Another month has left us, taking the tattered ghosts of all my well-intentioned gaming goals with it into the ether. Let’s see if they come back to haunt me in May!

April goals in review:

WoW: Complete all the priest transmog sets up through Cata. Nope, but not for lack of trying. I ran everything on two priests every week, but I’m still missing one piece from Dragon Soul.

Get my new mage up to 70. Nope. 67 is pretty close though! The new leveling experience is slow. It doesn’t feel great.

Participate in my friend Belghast‘s M+ nonsense. Yes! I missed last week due to family stuff, but otherwise I’ve been enjoying this.

Monster Hunter World: Finish the story. Nope. I checked out and fell down a Night in the Woods -shaped hole and then never came back.

May Goals:

WoW: Keep playing in the M+ nonsense group. I don’t know if we will get to +15 before BfA arrives, but we will have fun trying.

Finish all the priest transmog sets up through the first tier of MoP. This seems like a minor goal since I’m almost done with Cata, but the MoP raids have 3 sets each. Plus I think some of the difficulties are mutually exclusive in terms of loot.

Level the new mage to 75. I’m keeping this to baby steps because leveling just feels bad right now. I hope there’s another leveling catch-up bonanza like the Legion invasions as part of the BfA pre-launch.

Destiny 2: Check out the new expansion. I’ve essentially quit playing D2, but since I’ve already paid for this expansion I might as well see what it has to offer, right? Hopefully it will give me a reason to come back.

Stardew Valley: Try multiplayer. A beta version of SDV with multiplayer just got released. I haven’t played in ages but this seems like a good excuse to fire it back up and mess around with a new farm.

That’s it! Another month with very modest goals because real life is still kicking my butt.

Legion Bucket List

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The big news today is that WoW’s Battle for Azeroth expansion will be released on August 14. That’s a bit sooner than I expected, given the September deadline they gave themselves in the preorder fine print. I’m always excited to have new things to see and do in game, even if the concept of this expansion is not one that thrills me. But what is still left to do in Legion and can I finish it before the expansion gets here?

Honestly, there’s not much left in Legion that I care about. Or at least, there’s not much that won’t still be here during content lulls next expansion. Maybe I will regret not chasing after things like the mage tower artifact appearance, but I doubt it. I like collecting armor sets much more than weapon skins. I’ve at least seen all the dungeons in some form, and all the raids in LFR at minimum. I have a vague hope that I can snag the equivalent of a friendship moose from Antorus, but if not I won’t be too crushed. I’m just starting to work toward some M+ progress, but that’s mostly for entertainment value rather than any specific goal. Some of the things I want, like a few achievements or transmog sets, are actually better off done with the extra levels and gear another expansion will give me.

So what goals do I have left before August 14?

  • Get the mount from new Karazhan
  • Do a mythic +15
  • Get at least one artifact maxed out in the netherlight crucible
  • Cap my professions
  • Get all the First Aid achievements before it disappears
  • Save up some gold
  • Level at least one of my allied race alts to 110

It’s a pretty modest list, and every single thing on it is perfectly achievable if I keep playing WoW between now and August. I’ll be curious to see if I actually do all of them or if I end up taking a break!

Do you have anything you’re eager to do before Legion is over?