Guild Wars 3, Evercold and Another Try

Guild Wars 3 and FFXIV's Evercold have both caught my interest. I've played both of their predecessors, although my relationship with FFXIV is a little more complicated at this point. Guild Wars 2 is still a game I enjoy hopping back into. FFXIV is one I've tried to return to without managing to make it stick.

Dawntrail was the expansion that made me stop playing, and I still can't entirely put my finger on why. I've tried to write about it before, but I haven't arrived at a particularly satisfying explanation. I can identify the expansion where I stopped. Explaining what changed for me has been harder.

I've tried coming back at least once since then. On the last attempt, the issues with catching up pretty much killed it. That makes Evercold a harder sell. A new expansion can get me interested in what's ahead, but there's still the question of getting from wherever I left off to the part I want to try.

I haven't followed everything being announced for Evercold, so I don't have a detailed opinion on its features yet. It's currently scheduled for January 2027, and I'll probably at least give it a try when it releases. Apparently, even having trouble explaining why I left doesn't prevent me from being curious about coming back.

There's also Beastmaster, the new limited job that arrived with patch 7.56. That has caught my eye too. I haven't tried it yet, but it's something I'd like to take a look at. Whether that turns into another serious attempt at returning to FFXIV is a separate question.

Guild Wars 3 has a more straightforward appeal for me. I've been playing Guild Wars 2 off and on for a few years now, and I still enjoy it when I go back. I'm not entirely caught up on the latest two content installments, but that hasn't stopped it being a game I want to return to.

My history with it wasn't quite that simple at the beginning. I played at launch, but it didn't stick then. I didn't really come back until much later, around Path of Fire, if I'm remembering correctly. Most of my time with Guild Wars 2 has therefore been with a game that had already had quite a while to grow.

The chance to start fresh with a new Guild Wars is attractive. I like the idea of giving the next one a try from the beginning, with the benefit of knowing that its predecessor eventually became something I enjoyed. Of course, I was there at the beginning of Guild Wars 2 as well, so launch attendance apparently isn't the whole answer.

There's still a wait ahead. ArenaNet's announcement points to a Guild Wars 3 beta in fall 2027. In the meantime, I still have Guild Wars 2 content to catch up on, and Beastmaster is already there if I decide to take another look at FFXIV.

For now, I'm interested in both. Evercold has some work to do to bring me back, while Guild Wars 3 offers a fresh start in a series I still enjoy. I'm curious to see where each of those goes.

Cheers,

Joar

Loremaster, Two Tier Pieces, and then Nothing

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

August Month In Review

August came in at 2 hours and 24 minutes.

That number is wrong and I want to say so before anybody gets attached to it.

Here's what the tracker gave me. 1 hour in WoW. 56 minutes in Guild Wars 2. And then 28 minutes filed under something, somewhere, doing who knows what. I have no idea. It's a rounding error with a mystery attached.

The real number is more like 10 to 15 hours, and almost all of the missing time happened in Vancouver.

We went up for Junior Pan Pacs. Jake was traveling with Team USA, which means he was with his team and I was a guy in a hotel room in a foreign country with a laptop and a lot of downtime between sessions. So I played. More in that week than I'd played at home all summer, actually. And apparently almost none of it got recorded, because I forgot to update the app, and then the new patch also updated the game, and I don't think I ran a new scan.  Whether being outside the country made it worse, I honestly don't know. Seems like the kind of thing that could matter.

So there it is. A guy who spent an entire career on the quality of reported numbers, publishing a monthly figure he doesn't believe, in the same month he wrote thirty-one blog posts about the game he apparently only played for an hour. Beautiful.

Speaking of which. Blaugust. Thirty-one posts, thirty-one days, all of them up.

I have never finished Blaugust before. Not once, and not close. I've started it plenty of times and always trailed off somewhere in the second week when life got loud. This year I got all the way to the end, and doing it for Bel is the only reason I made it. I'm still a little surprised.

In terms of the play itself, I ran through all the new content and the new zone.  It's interesting, but I'm not sure I'll be doing a ton more of it.  Seems a bit grindy to me.  I also finished up Loremaster for Midnight on Joar, which is something I'm always proud of.  I like to see all the quests and side stories.  

The brief excursion into Guild Wars 2 is because I'm not fully current on the content there, so I did a little bit of that and unlocked some new areas and things.  It had been a while, so I'd forgotten a bit about where the story left us, but I'm getting back up to speed.

September should be a normal month, whatever that means anymore. Back to a weekly-ish posting schedule, back to the warlock, and back to a tracker that I will now be checking before I start playing rather than three weeks later while writing one of these.

Cheers,

Joar