What Exactly Is the Point of Professions Now for Casuals?

Since the last update, I have finished getting that Gnome Death Knight to max level and also a Night Elf Druid.  I've also started working on my Dwarf Paladin.  I was initially going to try to level the Paladin as a Healer in the Timewalking dungeons, but I gave up trying to figure out how to get a decent weapon, so we're going to go the normal Ret path.  I'm unsure if Paladins are decent healers this expansion anyway, so it is probably a better choice.  That makes 19 done, with only two left to go of all the characters I got to max level in Dragonflight.  Then, the real slog begins.

One of the questions that keeps popping into my head as I do my regular monthly Darkmoon Faire profession quests for the free levels is that I'm not sure there's a point to professions for the casual player anymore.  I used to routinely get every profession to max level during every expansion, just because there was usually some value in it, and it was generally fun.  Looking back, I think the last time I did it was in Battle for Azeroth, and looking back over my blog posts from back then, I was unsure of the point even then.

In theory, the new system with crafting orders and things like that should make the game feel more interesting and engaging, but those never seem to be all that worthwhile to complete.  If I did want to max them all out, that doesn't seem to be the easiest path to go, but I'm not sure what that will get me if I do.  There were always interesting gadgets and recipes that were worth having before, but now it seems like gear is easier to get other ways, and cosmetics and things like that are available everywhere.  There is so much unique stuff available in the game, nothing really feels unique anymore.  When you have 550 or so mounts, what's the point of one more.

I have seriously considered switching all of my characters to gathering professions just for the extra income that would generate. Still, my concern is mainly that I have recipes and things from back in the day that I would lose if I did that, which I'm not sure I'm willing to give up - the old engineering helicopter mounts, for example.

Also, I don't have any big use for the extra income anyway, so I will likely continue to contemplate and leave things as they are.  

In terms of continued plans, once the Paladin is done, my Human Shadow Priest is the last character on my alliance server that's sitting at level 70.  I have a Druid at level 60 that I think was a boost from some purchased expansion, and then I'll be into a big slug of level 50's.  I'll continue working through this Alliance Server, then switch to my 2nd Horde server.

Cheers,

Joar

All Classes Done

Since the last update, I managed to finish up the monk, warrior, and shadow priest.  With the monk, I didn't do timewalking dungeons at all but instead focused on world quests and doing all the delves in each zone and the story quests.  Leveling time ended up much longer than the regular approach of mixing in timewalking dungeons, clocking in at around 6 hours.

Then, on the warrior, I got lucky with a good group that wanted to keep chain running TW dungeons with big pulls, and ended up doing the whole 70-80 process in just 2 1/2 hours.  

I continued a heavy emphasis on timewalking dungeons with the shadow priest but didn't get as lucky with queues and groups, so it ended up being more like 3 1/2 hours.

I've now started on my Gnome Death Knight, who I'm leveling as unholy, just because I haven't done that in a while.  So far, it's been super fun in dungeons!

All of that has brought me up to 17 total max-level characters with only four to go before I finish the ones that I got to max level in Dragonflight.  After that, I'm coming up to a huge batch of level 50 characters, and it remains to be seen how long those are going to take.

In Guild Wars 2, I've continued working through the Icebrood Saga on my Machinist.  I remember very little of this from when I ran through it the first time, so I am enjoying it quite a bit.  

I'm also coming up on a bunch of travel for the next few months for swim meets and vacations, so my play time may be more limited than usual, at least for the next few months.  The pace of blog updates may suffer as well.

Cheers,

Joar

Warcraft Leveling Progress

I have managed to get 4 more characters to max level since the beginning of the year, bringing my total to 14.  That is despite having no playtime at all last week because of a work trip.  I've finally also hit two classes I haven't really enjoyed leveling for this expansion - my Evoker and my Rogue.  Rogue has been a class I haven't enjoyed leveling since they got rid of the Combat specialization, which, at least for me, made that class much more fun.

I tried Subtlety instead of Outlaw this time, but that didn't help my enjoyment level.  When I get around to my alliance rogue, I'll probably go back to Outlaw.

My played time from 70 to 80 on all of these is in the 4-5 hour range, depending on how many timewalking dungeons I incorporate into the process.

Next will be the monk, warrior, and priest, which will complete my set for every class on the Horde side.  I'll then start working my way through my alliance server.  I only have a handful on the alliance server before I start getting to some of the characters that are sitting at level 50, so that's the point where I should get more data on how much time those are all going to take because there's a pretty big batch of those.

I've been horsing around a little bit in Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online, but there is not anything significant at this point.

That's the update for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Gaming Goals for 2024

My last few years of gaming have felt disjointed, hopping around to a lot of different games.  Focusing almost exclusively on leveling alts in World of Warcraft for a solid decade, my recent lack of commitment to a particular game or achieving goals within that game has been a bit unsettling.

For a while, I thought I'd found that new home in FFXIV, and I spent a lot of time getting every single job to the max level over the course of Shadowbringers and Endwalker.  While I can't point to anything in particular, the launch of Dawntrail has significantly curbed my passion for the game.  I've been considering canceling my subscription to that one and moving on, but I may give it one more expansion before making that decision.

That brings me to where I've been lately, which is bouncing around between Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and World of Warcraft.  With the recent announcements about the way new content is going to be released for Elder Scrolls Online, it feels like that game is heading for a sunset period, so I'm also debating whether it's worth investing much more time in it, which would leave me with basically just World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2.

I'm satisfied with my level of engagement on Guild Wars 2 right now.  I've got two characters that I'm playing actively, and if I hit a wall on both of them, I always have my Ranger that I can go back to.  Or even picking things up with another class.  

On World of Warcraft, I would love to get all of my alts to max level before the end of this year.  As of right now, I've got 12 that I've managed to get to the max level.  I've got 39 more to go.  Nine of those are at level 70, so it wouldn't be too bad.  There is a massive chunk at level 50 left over from my leveling binge during Battle for Azeroth, and then there are 4 or so in the teens that are Allied Race characters that I didn't do anything with.

I have no idea what the leveling time would be from 50 to 80 in the new setup and whether the amount of time involved is feasible.

Last year, I had around 420 total hours of game time.  If I estimated that it would take an average of 6 hours each to get those remaining 9 characters to level 80, and then maybe 9 hours to get the 26 level 50 characters that I have and 10 hours to get the four in the teens done, that's 328 hours, which seems reasonably doable.  Of course, I have no idea if those estimates for the lower-level characters are correct, but I will definitely have better data soon enough.

I'm not ready to call that a goal yet, as there will be shiny new things during the year that take at least some of my attention, primarily new end-game content in both Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft.

Since my last update, I managed to get two more characters to max level in World of Warcraft, bringing the total to the above-mentioned twelve, the most recent being another Warlock and then my Evoker.  As of this post, I've started on my Horde mage and have him sitting at level 73.

My game time for the next week or two will be limited.  I'm traveling out of the country for work next week and will have only one day of potential playtime.

That's the update for now!

Cheers,

Joar

2024 Year In Review

A lot was going on with most of the games I played in 2024, so there was a lot of activity and a lot of hopping around between games depending on the particular content that was fresh at the time.

I started the year with 9 max-level characters in World of Warcraft Dragonflight, basically every role at max level in FFXIV, and one max-level character in both Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online.

January and February saw me mainly focused on Elder Scrolls Online as I started leveling a character of each class to max level in that game.

I continued that process in March and also ran through some of the new chapters released in Guild Wars 2.

In April, I finally finished getting a character of each class to max level in ESO.  With that done, I returned to World of Warcraft to finish knocking out some Dragonflight renowns and start leveling alts again.

In May, I managed to get a character of each class in World of Warcraft to max level, something I hadn't done since Battle for Azeroth.  I also started working on professions in Elder Scrolls Online and got quite a few of them knocked out fairly quickly.  I also leveled a character to max level using the MOP Remix.

June saw the 15th anniversary of this blog and a lot of drifting back and forth between games without accomplishing much.  

Dawntrail dropped for Final Fantasy in late June and became my primary focus until early August. I managed to get my Summoner, Machinist, and Samurai to max level before losing focus with FFXIV.  

In August, I finished getting my DOH / DOL jobs to max level and started using Radiant Echoes to level many of my alts in World of Warcraft.  I ended up with a total of 21 characters at max level using Radiant Echoes before War Within dropped.

September and October had very little play time because of college recruiting trips with the youngest Joarling, who ended up verbally committing to swim for Texas A&M in mid-October, although the play time that I did have was pretty much all focused on World of Warcraft.  

In November and December, I took some time away from World of Warcraft to run both my primary alts through Janthir Wilds, which I very much enjoyed.  

So, at the end of the year, I'm sitting with 8 max-level characters in World of Warcraft (unless I get the paladin that I'm working on to max before the end of the day tomorrow, in which case it will end up being 9).

Courtesy of TempusGameIt, I can also look at my total playtime across all my games for the year, with a tiny exception.  My total play time was 17 days and 9 hours, divided across 5 games.   The most significant play time was World of Warcraft with 7 days and 22 hours, followed by Elder Scrolls Online at 6 days and 11 hours, then Guild Wars 2 at 2 days and 6 hours.  

Now, here is the caveat to this.  At some point, I had to move my install of Final Fantasy XIV to a different drive on my machine; I completely spaced doing a Tempus GameIt rescan when I did that, so I essentially missed counting pretty much all of my Dawntrail playing time.  Based on my typical weekly average, I suspect I'm missing around 80 hours of playtime there.  My estimate is probably around 3 days and 16 hours of playtime for FFXIV during the year.

Next week, we'll talk about gaming goals for 2025.  

Cheers,

Joar

Back to More Warcraft

I completed Janthir Wilds on both my Reaper and Mechanist in Guild Wars 2.  I'm spending a little time working my Mechanist through all of the old storylines he missed.  I'm halfway into Icebrood Saga now, so there's not much further to go.  

In World of Warcraft, I've gone back to alt leveling and am almost done with my Demon Hunter, who is currently sitting at level 78. I've been mostly questing even though I know timewalking dungeons are quite a bit faster, but general questing fits better with my style.

I also did the latest installment of the campaign quest and unlocked Siren Isle on my main.  So far, Siren Isle is a lot like most of its predecessor zones, which were mostly about killing rares and participating in various events.  Not really much of a story to it at this point, but it's certainly fine for what it is.  There are also dailies that seem to reward Renown with the other various factions, so that's handy.

There is some nice catch-up gear that can be helpful if you're also trying to gear up alts.

I may switch to leveling some alliance characters to mix things up as I continue to move my 70's to level 80, before starting on a very large batch of level 60 characters.

That's it for now!

Cheers,

Joar

More Aimless Wandering

I wrote back in April about how I was wandering aimlessly between games these days, not making much progress on any of them.  At various times in the last six months, I've wondered whether the issue may be that I'm just losing interest in video games at this stage of my life.  I feel like I'm just waiting for some interesting new game to come out that I can bury myself in for a while, but I have no idea what that might be.

Right now, I'm bouncing back and forth between World of Warcraft, FFXIV, ESO, and Guild Wars 2.  With all the professions finished and no new content out, ESO is getting the short end of the stick from a playtime perspective.  After that, FFXIV probably has the 2nd lowest amount of playtime.

I did go back and do the new MSQ material, but I have not unlocked or tried the new alliance raids.  

In World of Warcraft, I stalled out in the middle of leveling my Demon Hunter.  In theory, the way renown works now should encourage me to do weeklies and world quests across more of my alt army.  In reality, I'm not motivated to do them at all.  

The most play time lately has definitely been going to Guild Wars 2.  I finished the main story quest for the new expansion on my Mechanist and have been working through it on my Reaper.  I've also gone back and started to work on getting my Mechanist caught up on the other story quests.  I also decided to go back and work on unlocking the Roller Beetle since it's the only Path of Fire Mastery I have left to do, and I'm earning POF experience as part of catching up the Mechanist.  Right now, I'm stuck on the saddle on the part where you have to kill the Ley Line Anomaly world boss because I can't seem to manage to get to it before the stupid thing ends up dead.  I was trying on the Friday after Thanksgiving, where there may have been a ton of people playing, so I will give it a few more tries during a period that's likely to be a little bit more dead.

Of course, I'm already on Dragonfall on the Mechanist trying to finish up Puff the Purple Crystal Dragon, so I don't have that much Path of Fire experience still to go.  Oh well.  I think Icebrood Saga is up next, which has its own mastery tracks, none of which I recall as being particularly interesting.  

I'll also work on unlocking the turtle mount before I start the Mechanist through End of Dragons, and after that, he'll be all caught up.  At that point, I can go back to finishing up the post-Tyria world completion stuff on my Reaper, at which point it will probably be time to switch to something else.

I feel bad for not using the anniversary event experience boosts to level alts like crazy in World of Warcraft, but I'm not exactly sure what the point is now, anyway.  It is a good reminder to go back and grab the Darkmoon Faire profession boosts for this month since it's time for that.

That's the update for now!

Cheers,

Joar

Diving Deeper Into Guild Wars 2

I have had minimal play time over the last couple of weeks because things have been pretty crazy at work, but when I have had the chance, it has been very focused on Guild Wars 2.  I recently completed the original release version of the main story and am now working through the new pieces of content that came out in the last couple of weeks.  

I'm enjoying this expansion a lot.  I am still completely unable to decide which character I want to focus on, so I'm just switching between my Mechanist and my Necromancer / Reaper.  

I've enjoyed the story so far, and it's been nice having a mix of old and new characters joining us, including someone we haven't worked with much in a while.  They've also done an excellent job of tying things in a little bit with the last expansion.

Once I get the content done on both, I'll probably finish all the main story content on my Mechanist and then finish all the post-Tyria map completion on my Necromancer.  That way, I can continue to switch back and forth without feeling weird about it.

I love the new Warclaw mount.  I know it's been in the game for a while for WvW, but I'm enjoying having it out in Open World and some of its new functionality. It's also nice how they incorporate some of that functionality into the story.  

I'm also enjoying my Homestead, although I have yet to invest much energy in decorating it. I was surprised to see that it's shared cross-character, which is pretty nice.

I'm curious to see where this story goes, but I'm enjoying my time in Guild Wars 2.

Cheers,

Joar

Adding Some FFXIV and Guild Wars 2 Activity, Plus an Update on WoW Leveling

I've interrupted my near-constant run of World of Warcraft lately to work on a couple of other things.  First, there's a new content patch for FFXIV, so I've started working through the MSQ on that.  I've gotten through the new dungeon (what the heck was that?), so I think I'm pretty close to being done.  

Then, since there was maintenance on Tuesday, I decided to go ahead and get the new Guild Wars 2 expansion and start working on that.  I've been using my Machinist for the last few expansions, but I think I've decided to return to my Necromancer for this one.  

I have yet to get very far, so it's too early to draw any significant conclusions.  But I should have more play time tomorrow, so I hope to get further along.

In World of Warcraft news, I finished the Paladin and the Shaman that I started afterward.  I leveled the Shaman primarily through Timewalking dungeons, and it was about 2 hours, or 25% faster than the regular questing leveling approach I've been using.  The Shaman was my 6th max level character so far in War Within.  

I also got the hunter pretty much fully geared, so I've switched to doing weekly stuff on the Death Knight to get him geared up.

Things may be slowing down a bit at work, which may give me a bit more play time over the next few weeks, so hopefully I can make more progress across all of these fronts.

Cheers,

Joar

More Leveling Progress

My play time continues to be limited, and as a result, very much focused on World of Warcraft.  I did manage to get both my Druid and my Death Knight to max level.  The Druid took about the same amount of time as the Hunter.  The Death Knight ended up being about an hour faster.  

For the Death Knight, I did go back and start knocking out a lot of the side quests that I had skipped the first time, particularly in Hallowfall, just to get the renown points from most of those.

I've started the Paladin next, and my plan there is to knock out the rest of those side quests, which are now mostly in the final zone.  After that, I'll probably just go back to leveling via Main Story Quests.  Queuing for normal dungeons tends to be too much of a shit show these days and my Brann isn't a high enough level to make leveling via delves as easy as I'd like it to be, making the xp per hour from those lower than just questing.

After the Paladin, I will probably do Shaman next and then Demon Hunter, which will give me all the professions available, although I can't remember the last time I actually leveled all the professions to max.  Note - going back and checking, it appears that Legion was the last time I did it completely, although it looks like I got fairly close in Battle for Azeroth and then got completely distracted by FFXIV.

Finally, in ESO I've continued doing the daily Enchanting Writ whenever I'm actually playing.  I'm probably only 2-3 days away from having it finally to max level.

That's the update for now!

Cheers,

Joar

War Within Updates

As mentioned in early September, my travel schedule with my youngest and a fairly busy work schedule has really limited my game time, so there has been little to report in this space.

I did manage to get my Hunter to level 80, and my Druid is sitting at level 78, so I've made decent progress on the alt front.  I'm continuing to move things along with gearing up my Warlock, although I'm mostly just enjoying doing weekly quests and knocking out increasingly higher-level delves.  I'm not super aggressive with that, either, though.  

I'm continuing to enjoy this expansion so far.  Once the Druid is done, I'll likely start working on the Death Knight next, followed by the Paladin.  

On leveling time, the Hunter was significantly faster than my Warlock, which is not unusual.  I'm still not sure what the quickest leveling path is going to end up looking like.   Delves provide a significant chunk of experience the first time through.  I've also been looking at how follower dungeons impact my xp per hour levels.  

I'm still logging into Elder Scrolls Online every day just to knock out a daily enchanter writ to continue to level up that final job.  I'm now at level 48, so getting close to being done with that.

I haven't looked at the new expansion for Guild Wars 2 yet, although I'd like to get to that eventually.

That's the update for now!

Cheers!

Joar