Hey, hey, gang! Look! I actually had time on Sunday to post a Sunday Brain Dump! HOORAY!
Topic 1: Valeera — again
I had to do it. I had to download an addon to mute her stupid ass. It’s called Mute Valeera (Delves) by Italistqt. It’s phenomenal. I was halfway through my first delve after installing the addon and I was like… this is awfully quiet. AND IT WAS AMAZING. Here’s the link:
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/mute-valeera-delves
Topic 2: 90 — again. Again.
I’ve really only been concerned about getting Kurn up to 90, which I did ages ago. For the other toons, I’ve been herbing and mining my way there, slowly but surely. And for the first time in a very long while, my second character to max level was not either my paladin or my shaman. For years, it was my pally — my raiding toon, Madrana. It hasn’t been her for a long time, though. The regular toon who usually makes it to max second is generally my shaman, who is both an herbalist and a miner. So I just go out on him and go to town farming.
But this time? This time it was my mage, who is a miner and a tailor. I’ve been farming mobs for Sunfire Silk and Arcanoweave and as I do so, all kinds of ores spawn, so I’ll take a break, let mobs respawn, mine a bit, then go back to it. So now my mage is 90. Hilarious. I am SO BAD at my mage. I still think I’m potentially worse at my shaman, though.
Anyway, the shaman is at like 87 now, but the druid just dinged 86! Beware, shammy! Druid’s gonna catch ya!
… and let us not forget that many of my toons have been 90 before. And 100. And 110. And 120. Like, yes, I know, we cannot be at level 300 or anything like that, that’s way too daunting for a fresh player on a new toon. But like, Kurn would be something like level 160 at this point. 90 in MoP, then figure 10 levels each for WoD, Legion, BfA (all of which happened), but then ALSO for SL, DF, TWW and now Midnight.
What’s kind of neat is the warband mentor thing, so like, my levelling is going to start skyrocketing soon, becaue for each toon you get to 90, the more bonus experience you get on your other warband toons.
Topic 3: Skinning
I can summon the Grand Beast in Voidstorm!
Hilariously, I still have some crappy RNG on the majestic skinning bits. Better than it was, but not great by any means. Still, I’m pleased to have that checked off and I can sell a couple Majestic Hides here and there.
Okay, that’s it for me for now. What are you up to? Do anything interesting this week? What do you want me to talk about next week?
I’m curious. How are you feeling about how the game is for you right now? (Valeera notwithstanding.) I realize you’ve got some really strong reservations about Blizzard, but I do wonder whether things are going well enough that you can see yourself playing for some time to come.
As for me on the Anniversary servers I’ve decided to slow down my leveling a bit by not focusing on one toon but instead do what I did on the Vanilla part of the Anniversary servers and level several toons at once. I just don’t want to get swept up into the rat race, trying to compress everything (including raiding) into one toon, when I’m mainly playing WoW to relax.
An interesting question! Now that the start-of-expansion rush is over, is there enough of this game to keep me playing?
I definitely enjoy my professions and patron orders and crafting orders in general and I really do enjoy making money. I really enjoy farming, particularly herbs on my druid (so OP), and I like challenging myself in delves with Valeera while on Kurn.
The story is not particularly interesting to me at the moment. Some things are a bit of a grind (instead of fishing up ALL my fish for my majestic lures, I’m maybe fishing up half of them and buying the rest). But the wonderful thing about it is that I don’t need to do any of it because I’m such a casual player.
So what keeps me playing? It’s not the story, it’s not the content, it’s not the people. I suspect part of it is the familiarity of it, part of it is that I do get some joy out of it. And probably part of it is a little bit of dopamine when I kill a nightmare prey or find a Nocturnal Lotus or open chests at the end of a Bountiful delve. For a long time, a lot of stuff within this game rewarded so many parts of my brain. It does it less often now, and the rewards are smaller. I was just telling someone the other day that sometimes I miss the team aspect of my old raiding days. But I hate people too much to think about committing to any kind of schedule at this point in my life. hahahaha.
What I learned after Cataclysm is that you really can’t go home again. You can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice. I enjoyed my raiding in Cata — a lot. But as time went by, the people for whom I’d returned to Eldre’Thalas, for whom I’d reformed Apotheosis, had stopped raiding for various reasons. Without them, it was an okay hobby, but I didn’t get most of the rewards I had habitually been after.
Part of me wonders if it’s just because I’ve learned too much about the game. There was a sense of awe and even fear when wandering through LBRS for me, the first time. I was 53. Way too low to be in there, tbh. I was level-pulling all kinds of crap.
But now, I know that place inside and out.
And I don’t really have the desire to learn other places the way I knew most of the classic dungeons (well, the higher-level ones). Part of my joy in learning those places was the people with whom I learned them. I did my first Hellfire Ramparts run in Outlands without a tank. Me on Kurn, my brother on his rogue, plus our friends a holy priest, a warlock and a mage (Majik). That’s ridiculous. But we did it. And it was fun!
Meanwhile, I look back at some old posts here about dungeon runs with randos and I’m like “oh sweet lord, I remember that one” and then remember why I don’t run dungeons pretty much at all anymore… hahaha.
So, yeah, is this expansion keeping me playing it? For now. I suspect when I get closer to 3 million gold (I’m at 1.5 million now), it’ll depend on what, if anything, I’m getting out of the game. The thing I hate about not playing for chunks of time is feeling consistently like I’m behind everyone else — and I would be, if I stopped for a bunch of time. Those profession knowledge points, man, they’re like gold. I know that the patron orders are supposed to help with making up for time when you didn’t play but the thought of having worked hard on these knowledge points for the last couple of months and then having to work even harder At Some Point In The Future is depressing.
And, oddly, is another reason to stop playing.
But for now, I’m here. I have a token sitting in my bags, ready to use come Wednesday, I think it is.
The grasp is there, but it’s getting more and more tenuous as time passes.
But I hate people too much to think about committing to any kind of schedule at this point in my life. hahahaha.
I totally get this.
After a long multi-month “winning streak” of good pugging groups on the Anniversary servers, I had multiple encounters with a griefer and several toxic puggers this past month. It’s kind of a reversion to the mean, I suppose. And given that the ending of my progression raiding career really left a sour taste in my mouth, I’m really reluctant to get back on the rat race for gear or raids that are only current for 3 months at best. If I’m going to do raiding content, it will have to be on my terms and with the realization that raiders come and go at the drop of a hat.
But hey, if you still find it engaging, that’s good. It also keeps you blogging, which is fine with me.
ooooof, so sorry about the griefers/toxic jerkfaces. It IS, unfortunately, a reversion to the mean. And re: 3-month raid content, I totally get that. At least when we were in Dragon Soul or Icecrown, wayyyyy back in the day, those lasted a year! haha. I didn’t love trudging into either of those instances for so many weeks in a row, but I feel like 3 months is ridiculously short. Why bother?
And yep, I feel that the shortened cycle leads to even more turnover.
WoW used to have, IMHO, pretty tight social bonds. I’m sure some guilds still do. But the turnover of raiders leads to fewer strong social ties. The turnover of raiders is due in part to, IMHO, shorter content patches. I don’t mind getting a lot of new content, I just think they may have gone overboard on the timing. No one wants to sit in the same raid for 12 months. Or 8 months. Or even 6 months. But like 4-5? Maybe.
But also, no one wants to go back to how it was in Vanilla and BC (to an extent) where catch-up gear was non-existant. That showed up in BC with the Shattered Sun Offensive and such. And it solved a huge problem for people attempting to break into raiding — they would actually be useful in a raid of 25 people. Back in Vanilla, you had to sweat through MC before BWL. BWL before AQ40. AQ40 before Naxx. I think that’s part of why so many people struggled to get to the raiding point — herding 40 cats is ROUGH, and making sure they all have appropriate gear, specs, consumables? Ridiculously difficult, back when no one understood the game mechanics.
I expect it’s better on anniversary/Classic/etc realms, but probably still harder than it is today in retail.
But then, I raided with so many people I got attunements with (and for!), so many I got gear with. We got a resto druid in Vanilla to join us after a BRD attunement to the core run! He was just that impressed with us! So like, even now, 20 years later, I remember him and the others on that run. That just doesn’t happen these days and I think the game is worse off for it.
To be fair to Blizz, it’s a very, very difficult balance to strike between transient groups and solid groups, too frequent releases of content versus not frequent enough, no gear catchup mechanics or “welfare epics” as they used to call it all.
But I don’t like where it’s at now. And I still hate people too much to group very much. :D