Continued Adventures in Other Games

I have mostly been poking about in other games while waiting for more meaningful World of Warcraft content to come along, which seems like it is on about the same schedule as a vaccine and normal life.

On the SWTOR front, having finally finished gearing up my Jedi Guardian, I've been able to use gear drops since then to quite rapidly gear up my Smuggler Scoundrel as well.  At this point, I've run out of things to do.  I could level another 6 characters up to the full level 75 max from where I left them after completion of the story lines, and I may still do that with a character or two, but I haven't decided on that piece yet.  I'm also still working on hitting the max level on all of the crew skills, and having the remaining toons at max level would certainly help with that, but I'm making good progress even without that.

I also took another shot at GuildWars 2, but similar to previous efforts, also pretty quickly lost interest.  I'm not real sure why I've just never connected with that game.

I have been spending a lot more time on Final Fantasy XIV, which I've really been enjoying.  The story has been pretty engaging so far, and the prospect of being able to level all of the various classes and jobs on a single character is pretty interesting.  

I've gone ahead and upgraded from the trial account and subscribed, as I was getting to the point where some of the content that I was coming to was inaccessible while still on a trial account.  My main character, Evistra, an Arcanist, is now sitting at level 31.  There is some kind of experience boost available for characters under level 70 as a catch up mechanism, so I've pretty far outleveled the main story quest sequence at this point.  I'm really enjoying it, and I'm thinking it will keep me pretty well occupied until a worthwhile Shadowlands patch comes up. 

I'm also thinking that for the next Warcraft expansion I may just focus on my core base of characters - my original Horde server, and not worry about having quite so many alts at max level.  We will see how that goes, but that is at least the current plan that I'm considering.  

Cheers,

Joar

How I Started In Content Creation

I quietly passed my 11 year anniversary of blogging about my adventures in World of Warcraft back in June.  Interestingly enough, I had one single blog post in June and it was actually on my exact 11 year anniversary, but I didn't even notice.  The post at the time was how I was finished with the new 8.3 reputations and would be taking a break for a while.  I've been on that break ever since.

Back to eleven years ago, I started this blog to talk about an idea I had about trying to level a whole bunch of alts.  In my early days of playing Warcraft, I had a few guild mates that had 3 or 4 different toons that they played current endgame content on.  Not necessarily raiding, but at least running dungeons on those characters on a regular basis (this was before group finder).

It was amazing to me that was even possible.  Keep in mind this was back in the days when it could take from 4-6 days played time to get to max level versus the fast and streamlined version that we have today.  I decided I wanted to build a stable of alts and I thought it might be interesting to start blogging about my plans.  The original plan was even more ambitious than what my friends had done.  My plan was to have a character of each class at max level, which back then was level 80, and had only been so for a few months.  The blog really was about tracking those plans, talking about different leveling paths and strategies and providing updates on where I stood with making the goal happen.

For me, creating this content is more about telling my story, and maintaining a history of what I'm doing in game.  I'm glad when I can provide some content or some views that others might find helpful. I felt like had a chance to add more value back in the day when differences in approach could make a difference in leveling speed and there weren't huge boost methods available.  

I've also explored a few other games over the years in the pages of this blog - RIFT, Wildstar, SWTOR, GW2 and more recently Final Fantasy XIV.  I like to talk about what I find interesting in those games, particularly when long content droughts in Warcraft seem to force a lot of us to find other distractions.  I even started a second blog to cover a similar process in SWTOR, one that I actually just recently finished in the current Warcraft downtime.

There was also a period of time when I was publishing some analysis on Activision-Blizzard's quarterly earnings announcements, back when those used to contain useful data about World of Warcraft.  Now Blizzard has so many successful properties, that they no longer break out any data about World of Warcraft specifically, so it stopped feeling necessary.  

I don't get much traffic on my blog, and that's fine.  My second ever blog post, laying out the dream of a level 80 of each class, is still my my most read post ever.  My second most read is a fairly random post about how I'm enjoying leveling my Death Knight during Cataclysm.  Weird.

I enjoy blogging though.  I'm never going to be a video or streamer guy.  I'm frankly probably too old for that, and don't have a whole lot of personal interest in that medium anyway.  My kids do though, so huge props to those of you that are good at it!  The blog for me is really more of a gaming diary that I let other people read.  It gives me a way to maintain some history and see what I've been working on from time to time.  It's also a good collection of data on the progress that I've made over the years.  And it's sometimes fun to look back to see where things used to be and how they used to work (farming for Justice Points gets some discussion for example). 

For those of you that enjoy the written word, I strongly encourage you to give it a try.  You'll be pleasantly surprised the avenues that it opens for you and some of the discussions that it can prompt, as well as the vibrant community that you'll be joining.  

Cheers,

Joar

Trying a Few Other Things

 I have been trying a few other things lately given the continuing content drought in Warcraft land.  There's been basically no progress in Warcraft land for the last several months.  I haven't even logged on to do the Darkmoon Faire profession quests each month, because I still fail to understand the point of having professions maxed.

I've been playing quite a bit of SWTOR and have another blog devoted entirely to what I've been doing in that space.  You can find that here:  https://swtoraltaddiction.blogspot.com/

I also briefly downloaded and tried playing Final Fantasy, but had a hard time getting into it right off the bat, so I put that one back on the shelf, at least for now.

I also went back and played a bit more of Guild Wars 2.  I tried that a few years ago, and had a really hard time getting into it back then.  I managed to get a little bit farther this time, but still struggling with it.  It is definitely improved, and so far I'm not finding myself in a spot where I feel like I've got no options other than grinding to level, but it still feels very confusing sometimes finding the correct path, particularly if you're switching zones.  I've been playing a Sylvari Ranger, which seems to have a nice easy play style.  I'll keep at it a bit, at least until the Warcraft pre-patch drops, and I may go back and give Final Fantasy a second try as well.

But I'm finally approaching the point where I may just go back to playing WoW again.  I do have a few pet achievements that I can finish up before pre-patch, and there is always the ability to make just a little more gold before the next expansion kicks off.

Cheers,

Joar