Gaming “Chores” and Moving Preparations

On the gaming front:

In WoW, I’ve been <afk> since before Nobelgarden till last night. I was sitting at 40% on the trading post bar and decided to bang it out on my Moo Shaman. Yes, his xmog is mostly the same mog since BfA (the Heritage quest changed the helm from Headdress of the First Shaman to the heritage helm and the hidden back to the heritage totem):  Ancestral Chieftain’s Headdress, Pauldrons of the Chosen Dead, Ancestral Chieftain’s Totem, hidden chest/shirt/tabard, Earthfury Bracers, Gor’s Re-Inforced Gloves, Firearrow Belt, Orgrimmar Leggings, Earthfury Boots, Fury of the Stonemother (enhancement artifact magma-mace appearance), The Highkeeper’s Ward (elemental artifact flame-shield appearance). Unless there’s a tier set that makes me all squirrelly, I don’t see his appearance changing that much in the future. I finished filling the bar in a couple hours and got him a level and a half out of it.

I still haven’t done the Forbidden Reach content. I was toying with heading over there on my main and at least getting the glyphs, but didn’t feel like putting forth the meh-ffort to do it. I’ll get there at some point. /shrug.

In FFXIV, I’m current with all of the MSQ, but all I do is retainer ventures/market-board and stable/train my chocobo (and train any chocobos in the apartment’s stable). Occasionally, I’ll go fishing and fill out some more fish in my fishing log.

I’ll probably be more focused on gaming once my living situation is stabilized. In the meantime, I’m glad there’s something that can get me logged in to both games and make me feel like I’m doing things. How meaningful the things are is completely irrelevant to me.

On the moving front:

I took the bike to the shop yesterday for tires, brakes, and a full inspection to make sure she’s good for the trip from Portland to Denver. Should be picking her up today with a clean bill of health.

Jo and I will be riding to Denver over Memorial Day weekend. It’s approximately 1300 miles. She wants to do it in 2 days so we can go to a festival on Memorial Day. That puts it at about 650 miles a day, which is doable for only 2 days. She’s used to LOOOOOOOOONG rides in a car, so the time isn’t the issue with her. It’s more the physical whooping you get on a bike that I’m worried about. I’ll be bodily blocking most of the beating up, but it’s still going to be very different than in a car. I’m hoping to put the bulk of the time in on Saturday so that we can have a leisurely ride home on Sunday and rest up for Monday.

It’s been about 2 decades since I’ve done an interstate trip with a passenger. She’s up for long bike rides, so I’m hoping it’s not another 2 decades before my next cross-state-lines trip with a passenger on the bike.

Upcoming Journey and Gaming Hiatus

Once again, I find myself in transition. Six years ago, I was preparing for my relocation from Florida to Oregon. This time, I’m heading in the opposite direction. However, I’m not heading back to that shithole swamp. I’m heading to where I should have stopped when I was heading west. I’m headed to Colorado, where my chosen family is.

The difference between this transition and my prior transitions, is I am able to play WoW and FF XIV during the transition period. I just find myself not wanting to. Our guild has had some issues recently (combination of real life and other external forces) that have made progression a problem. We’ve decided to halt our progression so people can handle life. I’ve logged in to both games recently (multiple times) and I find myself just sitting there with no drive or direction. I loved chasing KSM the last 2 seasons. I even helped others chase it too. This season, I’m 500 io away from it and I couldn’t care any less. Maybe I’ll feel more of an urge as season 2 is announced. We’ll see.

In the mean time, I’ll likely be posting more about the scoot ride that will be happening over Memorial Day Weekend. That will be my final transition to Colorado.

Helloooooooooo Meh-ffort

Yeah, I said I wasn’t gonna do it, but it was nagging at me.

Down for Maintenance, but for how long?

I’m trying to reconcile my feelings on WoW at the moment and I’m hard pressed to want to log in. I feel a little disconnected from all aspects of the game and the community.

Some of the disconnect centers around my anxiety and social awkwardness, some of it from the unnecessarily complex intermingling of systems within systems on top of other systems, some of it from the toxicity and “meh”-ness from fellow players, and now there’s the lawsuit mucking things up.

At this point, I log in every once in a while on my 2 faction mains and do their table and check in on my jewel crafter to see if the Cataclysm rare is up where I parked her (the out of the way one in Vashj’ir which few people ever look for because of how out of the way it is). I’m not farming my Chore-ghast. I’m not motivated to try the M+ climb. I might log in sometime this week on the mains and get the 3 renown and next chapter of Korthia done. Then again, I might not. The apathy with WoW is strong at the moment.

Time Killers

Random thoughts that bring up songs is always a big amusement for me. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures. With that said, I give you Time Killer (aka what is an MMORPG after all) by And One.

As the expansion is coming to a close, I’m finding myself being less interested in finishing up 8.3 items and more into mindless amusement of random time killing mechanisms.

What do I want to finish up on 8.3? Or at least, think about possibly finishing up or not. Or maybe, I just put this on my Shadowlands lull list. Who knows?

• Do enough heroic visions on my DK to get the corrupted mementos mount. I’m over the half-way mark. I could probably just make it a weekly routine at this point. At reset, buy as many vessels as I can with the 2 currencies and run Horrific Visions until I’m out. Then do assaults and World Quests as I want to farm currency.
• Get my druid to Exalted with the 8.3 reputations (he’s my reputation mule, so it’s strange to me that this late into the expansion there are reps that he’s not exalted with yet).
• Finish up the remainder of the 7 day Bumbles achievement. I honestly can’t recall if I’m at day 2 or 3.
• Pick a toon and do the month-long 8.3 bug mount acquisition.
• Farm an alpaca or 2.
• Do the Pterradax quest line on my Shaman. I did the Bee mount quest on the allie side, so it’s only fitting that I get the Pterradax too.
• Farm some more gold so I can purchase the remaining faction mounts.

What have I actually been doing instead of the above?

• Working on acquiring the hidden artifact appearances. I’ve got 30 of the 36 spec base-appearances. I will say that the disparity on acquisition of some appearances is appalling. For the hunter, you can simply buy 2 of the appearance. For others, you have to pray to RNGeesus and attain exalted reps. Or, you have to jump through ridiculous hoops and then pray to RNGeesus. I will get them all, and I will hate Blizzard a little more because of it. Regarding the Dungeon/WQ/PVP tints, I’ve got a smattering of them across many classes.
• Fight club… er… I mean Brawler’s Guild. I got to rank 8 and did the amusing murder mystery quest line. At current gear levels, many of the Brawler’s Guild fights can be cheesed. However, even cheesing it, there’s some fights that are a major pain in the butt. Mechanics matter even at iLvl 465 with 145 corruption.
• Random transmog runs. Molten Core and Black Wing Lair sets on a couple of classes to name a few.
• Playing Fall Guys and Animal Crossings. After completing Carrion, I wanted another easily playable time waster to saddle up next to Animal Crossings. Fall Guys is great. Plus, it is freaking adorable (and infuriating too, but endearingly so).

Honestly, I had grander ideas for this post. I just am having a hard time putting much effort into writing about WoW or gaming in general. Between the pandemic curtailing most of the activities I enjoy in my off-time and my state (as well as the neighboring states) being on fire and making the air-quality hazardous, it’s just really hard to get excited.

8.0 aka Holy Shit, I missed so much.

Life upending, relocating, roommate drama, etc… well, I’m way behind in everything this ex-pack.

Still have 4 classes I need to do the class mount quests on.

1. Horde Shammy is probably a few quests away from the mount.
2. Horde monk needs to do a fair bit of artifact, class hall, and legionfall campaigns.
3. Horde pally is level 107, so needs everything.
4. Horde mage is level 103 and still needs everything.

I’m pretty confident I’ll get all done before BfA.

Mage tower challenges. There were only 2 skins I cared about. Guardian druid and to a very lesser extent feral druid. I tried for many hours, but couldn’t do guardian. I tried last ditch effort and burnt through all my nether shards. It still didn’t happen. So I’m resigning myself to no mage tower skins.

I did finish Balance of Power on Aes. So I’m happy to have at least that out of the way.

PVP changes in 8.0. REEEEEEEALLY looking forward to them. I can never settle on one PVP toon, so flip between Druid, Hunter, DH, Warrior, and Monk. Between all of these toons, I’m prestige 6+. On individual toons, one is prestige 3 – honor 30ish the rest are varying degrees of shy of prestige 2. Very pleased I’ll have the skins unlocked.

Aestalas and Deigratia in Vale of Eternal Blossoms

Mostly, looking forward to 8.X with my g/f. There will be many more pictures like these with me and my honey throughout the game.

It’s the little things

I’ve been absent from Azeroth quite a bit lately. Some has been due to traveling (4 weeks so far this year for the job, 1 week with friends). Some has been due to my girlfriend traveling to visit me (2 weeks there, but damn how I wish it was longer). I’m back again for a while.

Mounts, Toys, PVP, and Happiness

There’s a lot to say, so I’m just going to brain dump. I’ve been busy at work lately and recently been thwacked by the love mallet. So, blogging has been towards the back of my priorities.

Aes’ Prestige 2 Resto appearance

I’ve gotten back into PVP in a big way, thanks to my girlfriend. I haven’t PVPed since the legendary cloak quest in MoP. She got me back into a BG and I remembered how much I enjoyed it.