I finished Loremaster for Midnight, picked up my first two pieces of tier, and then stopped playing entirely. All inside about three weeks. Let me back up.
The patch dropped while we were in Vancouver for Jake's meet, which meant I was in a hotel room in another country with a laptop and a lot of downtime between sessions. Best possible timing. I played more that week than I had all summer sitting at home with nothing stopping me.
Loremaster got done while I was waiting on week two to unlock, and that one actually felt like something. I don't chase many achievements anymore, but Loremaster is the one I still go after every expansion, and knocking it out on Joar at eleven at night in a hotel room was a genuinely good couple of evenings.
On the patch itself. I liked the story for the most part. What I did not like is what a production it is to get out to the new zone. Every single time. There's no reason that should still be a chore.
The new Vaults area I'm just not a fan of. I did everything there the first two weeks, looked at what week three wanted from me, and decided I was done. It's another grind in a new hat. We have all played this one before.
The two new delves in the zone are good though! Really good. Delves are still the best thing they've added in years and these two hold up with the better ones.
And I've got two tier pieces now, which is a little ridiculous for a guy who has played roughly one week of this patch. Delves doing the heavy lifting again.
Mining and herbalism are fine. The switch works about how I hoped, gathering is low-commitment in a way modern crafting absolutely is not, and I can do it in ten minute chunks without planning my evening around it. I also still regret dropping the crafting a bit, and I don't think that regret is going anywhere. I'll live.
Now the part I didn't plan on writing when I sat down.
I have not logged in once since we got back from Vancouver.
It isn't a time problem. There have been plenty of open mornings and evenings. I've sat down at the computer with nothing scheduled and no reason in the world not to play, and I just wasn't interested. And it isn't only WoW. I haven't wanted to pick up anything at all. Not Guild Wars, not anything else sitting installed and waiting on me.
I don't know what that means yet. The obvious guess is that gaming filled a slot in my old life that my new one doesn't have. Which is backwards from what I expected, because I distinctly remember thinking retirement was going to mean more hours in Azeroth, not fewer. Apparently the hours were never the constraint.
I also noticed that, despite my efforts to post every day for 31 days and filling out the self-reporting form, I didn't get credit on the final Blaugust awards for my efforts. I was upset at first, but then I realized that my blog name showing up on a list wasn't really why I was doing it anyway, so that quickly faded. I know the folks that are running that now are busy and overwhelmed by the participation, but it was still a little disappointing. Neither of my blogs got mentioned at all.
Anyway. Loremaster done, two pieces of tier, and a warlock standing in a capital city exactly where I left him three weeks ago.
Cheers,
Joar
No comments:
Post a Comment