WoW – Page 71 – A Pixel Nomad

Still Collecting Pets

This weekend I finally completed the 150 Draenor pet battles required to purchase the T3 pet home for my garrison. I had been procrastinating for quite some time, for whatever reason. Probably because I was just burned out. I updated my pet collection this morning and that brings me to 530 unique pets, 80 of those are level 25. I still have a long way to go in terms of leveling and in terms of pet quality. Now that I have a few characters at level 100 it makes things a bit easier as they can each do the garrison dailies, but of course then there’s the chance that I’ll burn out and just stop all together. Thanks to the Pet Battle Teams addon from Curse I just create a team for every fight, and it makes things much smoother. I don’t have to guess at who I need to use to defeat the team of the day.

My gear has slowly been improving, too. I spent a lot of time in Tanaan Jungle so that I can work on my factions, and this has resulted in me being able to buy the apex upgrade item for 20,000. I also looted one off of an encounter yesterday which I didn’t know was a thing. My ilevel is still not over 700 yet, but I feel more confident with it sitting around 685. I’m still sticking to my priest as my main, but I also have a level 100 paladin, and a 97 hunter that I’d like to level up eventually. There’s always so much to do that I never really wonder about what I should be doing or what I want to do.

I’m slowly working on the navel battles. Once servers reset today I should have my first 15 battles completed. I’m hoping this opens things up a bit because so far they’re incredibly boring and I just don’t understand why they were even added. I suppose we’ll see.

Holidays are almost here! Time for families and food and lots of gaming. I hope everyone has an amazing week, and happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Working Towards Flight

Things have settled into a nice routine in World of Warcraft. My ‘main’ character is still my priest, and while in the past I would spec her as a holy / shadow combination in Warlords holy is sort of .. not that great, so I’ve just been focusing on shadow and going with DPS. I ran all of the raids except the very last one over the course of the week / weekend, and got a few pieces of 685 gear, including a new staff. I upgraded the staff with valor, and next I’m going to try to get the flight ability because I really dislike running around, especially while everyone else is flying. There’s a very easy way to see what you still need for this achievement here. I need to complete ‘Securing Draenor’, Master Treasure Hunter, and Tanaan Diplomat. I’m going to try to get the treasure hunter portion done today since that’s pretty easy, just running around collecting treasures that are marked on my map, and then I’ll work on securing Draenor and Tanaan Diplomat.

I also have a level 100 paladin, and I have a retribution spec there but I’d also like to create a tanking spec and maybe give tanking a try. I’d rather do this with friends, so I may try to ping some over the weekend who are playing horde and see if anyone is brave enough to group with me. The paladin is just wearing 640 gear, so there’s a lot of upgrade potential.

Next up is my level 96 hunter. She’s been stalled there for quite some time. I’d like to reach at least level 98 because that’s when she can unlock the next part of her garrison. I tend to procrastinate and haven’t gotten anywhere with her in quite some time, though I do log in daily for crafting purposes.

Trailing behind is my 91 deathknight, and 90 monk. I have barely played either character since WoD released, though they do both have a garrison started. Once the hunter is at 100 I may start leveling them up, but I’m unsure. I’d also like a shaman, but mine is 97 and on the alliance side which I haven’t visited in quite a while, along with my warlock.

I certainly can’t say that there isn’t anything to do. Between leveling, questing, trying to get flight, and pet stuff alone my game schedule is nice and full. That doesn’t even take into account my ‘other’ interests like collecting pets, mounts, and recipes. I’m still delving into EQ2, EVE, Wurm Online, and even a steam single player game from time to time. It’s nice to be a gamer.

Just Trying to Fit In

Playing video games in a lot of ways is still like high school to me. There are cliques everywhere, and being the awkward introvert that I am, I find it really hard to fit in any place. I know a lot of people, but don’t dig down into personal stuff about myself, and we (“we” meaning the folks I know on various social media platforms) never seem to play the same game, and when we do, we never play at the same time. Then there’s the whole “I’m awkward” thing. I don’t really feel that I fit in and I never have. People used to ask me if I wanted to do stuff, but me being me, after so many declines they’ve stopped asking. Trying to find a guild to fit in is a futile effort. I normally end up creating my own guilds with a tiny selection of ‘closer’ friends. Eventually we all move on to other games, having never grouped up or done anything together.

There are exactly three steady played games of mine where this isn’t an issue. One is Wurm Online. I’ve been in the same alliance for years now, and we get along pretty well. People come and go, but the core always remains. Today someone who merged with our alliance mentioned in chat “you guys are weird” – and I said yes, we were, but that I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s completely true, too. My Wurm Online alliance is completely comfortable, and I really treasure the people in it.

The second game is EVE Online. I’ve been in a guild there for about two years now if I recall correctly. I don’t play as often as I’d like to, and my time doesn’t always (ever) match up, but when I’m on and members of the fleet are on I feel comfortable. I don’t end up grouping up very much – but the fleet is alright with that, and they haven’t kicked me out. I like that. I like that they understand.

The third game would be World of Warcraft, and this isn’t because I already have a well established guild or friends playing. Nope, this is because of the LFR mechanic. Blizzard doesn’t let me feel left out of anything. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something because I’m too awkward to fit in with a crowd. I did join a guild, but they’re completely anonymous to me and go about their own thing. They also never kicked me while I wasn’t playing, which I appreciate. I see friends on my bnet list doing their thing, and I sometimes wish we could all group up and play together – but I know that’s just not how things go for me. I’m always going to be that socially awkward girl who declines invitations but still secretly wishes she got them.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Do You Need Combat in your Games?

Spurred on by a conversation on twitter with Belghast and Adrel I started thinking about the games that I play that I enjoy more than others. Two immediately came to mind, Wurm Online and the Sims franchise. Both are games that (due to my play style) have very little if any combat – and I love that about them. Yes, arguably you can combat as much as you want in Wurm Online but that’s not how I tend to spend my time. In the Sims games there’s almost never any combat, not in the traditional sense. Of course there are ways to encourage combat if you want (you can make enemies and start fights) but for the most part the game is pretty peaceful. Then there’s all of the visual novel games that I enjoy playing, games like If my Heart Had Wings, and Dandelion – Wishes brought to you. Mindless games I enjoy just because like Cook, Serve, Delicious. Building games like Cities: Skylines. These are the sorts of games that entice me the most and I suppose until I sat down and looked through my games it’s not actually something I noticed before.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy combat in games, too. I do. Diablo 3 is pretty much nothing but blowing things up. The thing is I get very bored of those games very quickly – just like Belghast tends to get bored of games that don’t have combat in them (per our conversation earlier). I think that in the majority of games I play I spend my time equally between combat and no combat depending on the game. EVE Online is a good example. There’s combat, and I do combat via missions, but a lot of the time I’m running delivery missions or I’m mining or I’m doing industry things that don’t involve any combat at all. The same can be said for EQ2 and WoW, sure, there’s combat, but a lot of the time I’m harvesting, decorating, or crafting and none of that (at least for me) involves any combat at all.

Do you have a preference or are you about equal in terms of combat vs. non combat gameplay? Would you tend to fall asleep if one or the other aspect was missing from your game of choice? Let me know in comments!

Lost, Again.

Remember how just last week I was talking about video games that do a poor job at introducing you to what you’ve missed while you’ve been away? Well, World of Warcraft is another game that I’ve recently returned to – and I have no idea what I’m doing. I mean, I know how to play my character, I understand garrisons, that’s not the issue. I was around for that stuff. The issue is what I do with everything else going on.

So lets start with what I know. So far I know that they’ve added navel battles since I last played. These are like garrisons – on water. Plus you can lose your ship, and you can gear them up so of course when you lose them you lose all their stuff, too and then you have to start all over again. When you do the tutorial they do a great job of explaining about how much you suck. Thanks Blizzard!

The next thing I discovered was Warlord’s version of Timeless Isle – except it’s not as much fun, it’s much more pressure, meaner, and harder to get around. With that being said, I did get a pair of 675 shoulders last night, so that was swell. When I quit I was wearing 640 gear, and the new stuff is a big upgrade, plus I can upgrade it twice more. I haven’t figured out how that works yet, but I’m sure it’ll be revealed in time. The zone is awkward, the roads are narrow, and my map is FULL of stuff going on. Unfortunately most of it happened to be complete before I got there, and unlike Timeless Isle where people usually helped one another out, this place seems like a complete free for all.

Then there’s the Timewalking dungeons. Those reward various 660 pieces of gear, and for barely anything I was able to upgrade almost my complete set of gear to 675 from the vendor in Shattrah. I’m on my way to doing 5 dungeons, I just need one more. They’re fairly painless but not a complete cakewalk, one of the ones I went through ended up needing three replacement tanks since none of them were able to control their aggro. Happens, and I didn’t vote anyone out, but the rest of my group was less patient than I. Speaking of patience, the NPC who sells the Timewalking gear is currently completely covered by players in mounts with vendors, on purpose to be obnoxious so you can’t purchase anything. Isn’t that fun? There’s a quest to complete 5 timewalking dungeons, and so I did that and managed to get an ilevel 695 robe, yay! Now my ilevel is 666… that seems.. appropriate?

That’s where I’m currently at. I imagine I’ll do some LFR before too long, maybe on the weekend (though that has always been a poor day to do raids from my experience, best day is typically Tuesday when they re-set) and continue working on being able to fly in Draenor. If you want to group up or just add me to battlenet, you can find me as Stargrace#1783 – I’m playing horde these days, my alliance characters over on Argent Dawn have taken a back seat, and I’m playing over on Area 52.

What else do I need to know about recent changes? Have any tips / hints / tricks / guides to direct me to? Go ahead and leave them in comments as always!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.