It seems like each weekend we have attempted to tackle one big thing. While the options are limited due to the fact that we are still very much sheltered in place, we have done a fairly decent job of finding something meaningful to do. Before the wider lock down happen we made a trip out to Garden Ridge, or whatever that store is currently called and found new outdoor rugs and throw pillows that have been sitting in the garage waiting on us to open the back yard officially. We’ve had a very cold and wet year thusfar and as a result we pushed this back further than either of us would have liked. However our little backyard oasis is officially open for business… or at least open to the two of us.
In theory we should be opening the pool within the next week, which will be nice because I think given the amount of time we are at home I might actually start using it every day. We need to figure out some sort of clothes line or something for swim suits and towels. The last step will be getting flowers, and from what I can tell our favorite greenhouse is open for business. We are trying to avoid leaving the house when possible, but I think at some point we will risk a trip out to get flowers. The flowers and the ritual of watering and care will start making things seem more normal, even though we are largely stuck in stasis.
As far as Friday’s post goes, I want to thank everyone for their comments. It seems like every so often I need to get one of those sort of posts out of my system and once I have I can move on with life. It is like I am putting all of those thoughts onto the written page and sending them out into the world where they develop a life of their own. However the process of exorcising them from the recesses of my mind helps me to get on with life and stop dwelling on them. I could just as easily write them on a piece of paper and then wad the paper up and toss it into the trash can, but at least on some level I think it is helpful to let those around you who are also struggling know that they are not necessarily alone.
On the gaming front, I managed to hit 120 on the Dino Druid. I actually dinged a few minutes into the podcast on Sunday evening and have since gotten his gear up to around 380 in a few days of World Quests. What I need desperately is a weapon upgrade, and I might actually target some of the LFR options that I have open to me trying to get a polearm or something similar. I’ve been spending some time working on factions on the Alliance Paladin, and managed to unlock Dark Iron over the weekend. The next target is Kul Tirans, which requires me to keep doing daily quests… and there are probably a few zone quests that I could also do to help speed that process up.
That is me and leveling four 120s in very rapid succession. Rather than start with another lowbie and run it all of the way up, I feel like I should probably finish off my Warlock as it is sitting at 113. I could in theory finish it off in a few days and would at least make me feel like less of a slacker for leaving it sitting in BFA level ranges for so long. All of this is oddly soothing because it gives me micro objectives to play towards without really having to think much about it. I know that is not exactly everyone’s idea of fun, but for me it is helping me bring order to chaos. Special thanks to my wife for providing a picture of the bedroom patio, since I failed to take one over the weekend. I hope you all have an excellent week and that you find peace in the midst of the nonsense times we are living.
A “Shootycow” in World of Warcraft
This is probably going to end up being an odd post because I am essentially going down a rabbit hole that was inspired by a comment I received from yesterday’s blog post. In it long time reader and regular commenter Mailvaltar noticed something about my post.
I can’t help but notice that you used the word ‘grind’ an awful lot in this post. In contrast, there’s only one instance where you speak of enjoyment, and that’s the last paragraph where you talk about the fact that the boost kinda ruins said enjoyment (of leveling characters).
I don’t know…maybe just let it all go and play something else entirely…?Mailvaltar
This has lead me to think about it probably more than was intended, but I guess at the end of the day I find grinding to be enjoyable. Sure I didn’t specifically talk about the enjoyment I was having, because for me at least grinding can be relaxing and enjoyable. Like I said at the beginning of this recent string of posts about World of Warcraft, I started playing it again because I needed a game I could more or less shut my brain off while playing it. Living in the time of pandemic has been an extremely stressful thing for me on a personal level. Not only have we not left the house much in the last six weeks, but we have had to figure out how to both be fully functional working adults without stepping on each others toes all the while trying to juggle a completely new skill. I’ve had to learn how to manage a team of sixteen people efficiently without actually having any face to face interaction with them, and my wife has had to figure out how to teach a classroom to a group of students that may or may not have stable internet connections.
Diablo 3 Seasonal Nonsense
The stress has made it to the point where I just really need something soothing to play at night, and in many ways a familiar grind offers an awful lot of solace. You have to realize I am also the guy who gleefully starts a brand new seasonal character in Diablo 3 effectively every three months to grind from scratch and ultimately throw that character away later when I “rebirth” it in another season. There are certain kinds of grinds that just set my mind in order, because I am effectively working entirely on muscle memory. There are kinds of grinds however that I do not find enjoyable, and probably part of the confusion is that I rarely give much effort to explaining what makes one fun and another not so fun.
I think the mindset I have at the time ultimately is what changes things for me. If I feel like I am forced to do something that I don’t really enjoy… see PVP requirements in games like Destiny 2 gating some weapon that I want or grinding for faction in a zone I hate like Nazjatar or even the relatively frustrating methods of leveling alternate jobs in Final Fantasy XIV. Those are grinds that can wear me down and make me want to walk away from a game for an indefinite period of time. Leveling a brand new character through questing and roaming around the world doing bite sized world quests for faction… those are both the sort of grind that sets my mind at ease and allows me to just go with the flow of the game ultimately relaxing me.
My favorite zone in Destiny 2 for mindless grinding
My favorite activity in Destiny is doing public events and patrol missions, because it is the sort of bite sized repeatable entertainment that allows me to just zone out and enjoy myself. Similarly I think the main reason why I have never gotten into Warframe is that there isn’t really any equivalent to that sort of self directed engagement. Everything in the game is mission focused with an objective, and I seem to always avoid doing things that put me on someone else’s schedule. I hate anything that happens on a timer, or anything that involves leading or following another NPC away, because it forces me into a rhythm of game play that is not my own. Those kind of grinds are ones that I am forced into and not one that I choose on my own.
The problem for me at least is that I find it extremely hard to predict ahead of time if a grind is going to be one that I find personally fulfilling. On some level there needs to be some goal that I am working towards to keep me engaged. The goal needs to feel reachable, so like 2000 kills instead of 20,000 kills, but there also needs to be a chance of me having something interesting happen in the process. There needs to be enough friction to keep me interested, but not so much that it knocks me out of a flow state while grinding. Like I said before it needs to be an activity that I am participating in mostly from muscle memory and not really requiring much in higher order thinking. Finally and most importantly I need to find the moment to moment game play mechanically enjoyable. It needs to feel good for example when I charge into a new pack of mobs and drop my first few attacks on them. Charging in as a Warrior and dropping a Thunderclap just feels good, and is probably never going to reach a point where it feels stale.
The games that filled this niche for me growing up were the various JRPGs that I obsessed about, probably none more than Final Fantasy VI. This is not my screenshot because I played on the Super Nintendo and don’t have any images from 1994. However I spent countless hours roaming around aimlessly killing whatever monsters I happened to encounter. I spent weeks trying various things in the Colosseum in the World of Ruin, or trying to steal stuff with the Genji Glove. It allows me to play for a very short amount of time or hours at a time. I think I put off beating the game for as long as I possibly could, because I have always hated when something I am super into ends. I am not sure if I have ever beaten any RPG, without grossly over-leveling and out-gearing the content. I guess you have to understand that I am never chasing “challenge” but instead a mindless state of blissful escape where I turn off my brain for awhile and just become one with the experience. This is what the grind is for me.
For the last few days I have been in a cycle of pretty much playing nothing but World of Warcraft. Now I am not entirely certain why it is suddenly the most important thing for me to be playing. However I have an idea that it is more or less tied to FOMO. Right now the leveling in the game is insanely fast and I know that I have a server full of lower level characters that I would love to catch up. I’ve played on Argent Dawn since the game launched in 2004, but primarily on the Alliance side of the fence. When The Scryers was merged into the server in 2015 I set forth to separate my Horde and Alliance characters so that all of my Alliance stayed on Argent Dawn and I either moved or created new characters on The Scryers.
During the normal course of the Battle for Azeroth expansion, I managed to level both a Demon Hunter and a Warrior. More recently I finished leveling a Paladin Alliance side and leveled a horde Paladin and Hunter as well and have been working on leveling a Druid. This influx of leveling is all thanks to the “Winds of Wisdom” buff that was put into place as a bit of a boon to those folks who were sheltering in their home. Recently it was announced that this buff would in fact stay in place until the pre-expansion patch later this year. This has in turn triggered a strong desire for me to level all of the things. Back during the pre-release events for Legion I managed to pull all of my Alliance characters up to level 100, and I guess in some way I am hoping to do something similar here on the Horde side. I do have a level 120 boost sitting waiting there for me, but I figure more than likely I am either going to use it on my Mage… which is traditionally the character I am least likely to level on my own… or make a Death Knight since I already have a high level one sitting on another server Horde side.
Yesterday the game changed however, and a brand new buff was introduced and it has me shifting around a bit. I’ve not unlocked any of the new Allied Races on the Alliance side, and I really would like to be able to roll Dark Iron Dwarves. The Impressive Influence buff gives you bonus reputation in the Broken Isles, Argus, Kul Tiras, Zandalar and Nazjatar… or essentially this is a way for you to catch up on the last two expansions Pathfinder buff relatively easily. Essentially in order to unlock those Allied races I am missing, I just need to get a bunch of factions to Exalted, which seems considerably more reasonable when I am getting double faction. Were I a smarter man I would have leveled one of my humans and used it to grind out those factional gains.
So now I find myself in the unfortunate place of being split between loyalties of grinding out a bunch of new characters on the Horde side, or using the faction buff to catch up Alliance side and unlock those new races. As of right now I am splitting time between the two. So for example last night I ground through all of the World Quests available that would give me the reputations that I cared about, and then finished the night out working on my Druid. I have a feeling this is going to be what the flow of my game play will look like for awhile. Maybe at some point I will figure out what exactly I want to do with that boost, but for the time being it is sitting there mocking me. I really do actually enjoy going through the process of leveling characters, and as a result the boost sorta always feels like I am ruining that experience.
This is one of those mornings when I contemplate not writing anything. I am just not feeling it, and as a way of pushing through I tend to post a few photos of whatever I happen to be playing and chat about it for a bit. There are going to be days when you just aren’t feeling it and as far as I am concerned you have two options. The first option is of course to just say you are not going to be posting anything that day and come back the next day renewed. However more often than not I tend to take the second avenue which is to just start writing until a post magically appears before you. Granted with option two you are not always guaranteed that the post is going to be interesting or even worth reading.
So this morning I am going to talk once again about the ridiculous speed of leveling in World of Warcraft right now. For those that are unaware there is currently a +100% buff to experience gained and this seems to stack with all of the other sources of buffs like heirloom gear and the darkmoon “whee” buff. However in my case the only additional buff that I have are the heirloom slots which add up to I think an extra 65% experience gain or something like that. At the beginning of the night last night I was sitting at level 47 in Tanaris, which admittedly is ONLY the second zone I have been in on my Druid. At the end of the night I had wound my way over to Ungoro Crater and closed the evening at 54. The pace of leveling was greatly impacted by the amount of travel time between objectives, and because of that it felt like I was completely flying through the levels.
I’ve more or less been focused on pushing up as many of these Horde characters as I can until either the resolve of purpose or my desire to be playing World of Warcraft fades. At the same time I am still cycling through my 120 characters to see if there is any World Quest upgrades that I can snap up easily. This more or less is my ideal way to play WoW because I am focused on the casual stuff in the game, and don’t get so bogged down in my frustrations. I have a mountain of frustrations with World of Warcraft, because honestly you can’t play anything for almost sixteen years without finding the things you find maddening. The game is exceptionally good at giving you something amazing… but also sorta making one or two aspects of it horrible. I have long joked that Blizzard can’t give you anything that is just universally good for the players.
However saying that… this buff seems to be one of those occasions when it is just good and as a result I am soaking up as much of it as I can while it is still in place. I remember the crazy leveling elevator that was the pre-Legion launch events, and during that time I managed to get every single character Alliance side that I had up to 100. I would love if the buff stayed in place until the launch of Shadowlands, because then I might manage to get all of my Horde characters up to 120… and maybe even a few more Alliance for good measure. I am nowhere near close to unlocking the BFA Allied races for the Alliance and I would rally love to play through the game as a Dark Iron Dwarf of some sort. I just can’t seem to bring myself to grind out the reputation on my single 120 on that side of the house.
… and there you have it. I somehow willed a post into existence. I wanted to take a pass on actually writing something today but I knew that once I started typing I would begin to find a bit of a groove. At the very least I would find enough traction to begin and wrap up a short post. I hope you all have an excellent day and that you are happy and healthy out there in pandemia.
