Slowing Progress in WoW

Because of some real-life happenings, my progress in WoW has slowed significantly since my last update 3 weeks ago.  Since the previous update, we have relocated the middle Joarling to an apartment in Nashua, New Hampshire, for an internship he's doing in Lowell, Massachusetts.  That involved approximately 28 hours of driving back and forth between Ohio and Massachusetts.  And of course, the youngest Joarling had an out-of-town swim meet that same weekend.  

Things have also been getting busy at work, and I've had to spend a lot more time in the office than usual.  

So now that you've heard all the excuses, here are the updates.  I did finish up the Enhancement Shaman, which, with those temporary leveling bonuses, was the fastest yet from 50-80, coming in at right around 6 1/2 hours total.  I've now started on character number 27, which is an Alliance Fury Warrior, and have him sitting at around level 75 right now, so not much farther to go.  He only completed a portion of the 50-70 pieces with the old leveling bonuses in place, so I think the 70-80 portion will take quite a bit longer.

I haven't played much at all in either Elder Scrolls Online or Guild Wars 2.  I will probably jump back into GW2 for a bit next week when the last portion of Janthir Wilds releases.  But beyond that, I will probably stay pretty focused on Warcraft, at least for a bit.  

The new ESO content is also supposed to be dropping at some point in June, so I'll be hopping into a bit of that as well.  Also coming in June will be the 16th anniversary of my blog, so it's probably good that there will be more content for me to write about.

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Halfway There in WoW

Yesterday, I managed to get my 25th character to max level, which officially puts me halfway there.  The last one was the rogue, which had a bad played time from 50 to 80, probably for two reasons.  First, I don't really enjoy playing rogues very much.  Honestly, I haven't since they got rid of the combat spec.  Second, my random decision to start out at level 50 playing in Blade's Edge Mountains was a bad one.  It's not tuned as well as some of the more recent zones and expansions, so the time to get from 50 to 70 was a LOT longer than usual.

With 25 characters to go, if my average played time to max for them is 9 hours and 30 minutes, it should theoretically be very doable to get the rest of these to max level before the end of the year, assuming I'm not playing much besides World of Warcraft.  Of course, that isn't likely the case, so it will likely slip into 2026, but that seems like that's probably fine as well, given the current game cycle.

I also haven't considered the recent leveling bonuses in these calculations, so my broader average may come in below that 9-hour and 30-minute level.  The thing I found with the rogue is that the mysterious satchels probably helped more than anything, keeping me much more caught up on gear than I otherwise would be, and by extension, making stuff die faster and the leveling process much smoother.

I'm now working on my Alliance Shaman, and am playing him as Enhancement.  That seems to be going smoothly enough so far.

In Elder Scrolls Online, I continue working my Templar through map completion.  I finished up Bangkorai and all the Blackreach cavern stuff, and have now moved on to Blackwood, which has a bit more to knock out, although I had quite a bit of it complete already. I think Clockwork City will be up after that.

Cheers,

Joar

Missed a Month: Updates on WoW and ESO

I missed posting on my blog for an entire month.  The sad thing is, it wasn't a particularly busy month for me personally; I just didn't feel like I had much to write about.  You have to go back to 2021 to find the last time that I missed a month of posting entirely, and I did it twice that year (September and December). That's the only other time in the soon-to-be 16-year history of this blog that I've missed a month.  Shame on me.

I did manage a trip down to visit the Grand Joarling last weekend, and other than some flight issues getting back home, it was a wonderful trip.  I really don't get down there enough, and it sucks having them 9 hours away.

From a play time perspective, I managed about 41 hours this past month - 30 of that was dedicated to World of Warcraft, 10 of that to Elder Scrolls Online (almost all of that in the last 3 days) and 1 hour on Guild Wars 2, finishing up the last bit of the latest content drop.

On the World of Warcraft front, I finished all of the original War Within renowns on my main, and I'm only two spots away from having the Undermine renown done, so likely only one or two more weeks for that.

I also managed to get two of my level 50s up to 80 and have the third one sitting at level 77.  After I finish this one, I think another druid is up next.  

I've also jumped back into playing Elder Scrolls Online.  My eldest had bought Oblivion Remastered, and I was playing a little bit of that with him during our visit, and it made me want to play ESO again.  I've still been working on map completion on my main.  I'm taking them alphabetically just for easy tracking, and I'm only on Bangkorai, so I have quite a way to go.  But it's fun.  I also picked up one of the new companions, Zerith-Var, and enjoy working on leveling him up as I go.  

Finally, I thought I'd go back and try Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood again on my Nightblade, but after an hour or two of messing around with that, I remembered that I don't like the stealth stuff all that much.  The lore, story, and idea of a Ninja criminal character sounds cool -  it's just not my playstyle.

That's it for now.  I will try to do a better job of posting during May than I did during April.

Cheers,

Joar