Field Report #31 - End of an Era, Again

About a month ago I decided it was time to quit World of Warcraft, again. This time it happened without too many emotions and fanfare however. In all honesty it all just sort of fizzled out. The final couple of months of my play time I noticed I was only logging on a few times a week to do a raid here and there, and the urge to do pretty much anything else in the game was completely gone. I used to love leveling alts for instance but couldn't even muster the energy to do that. That was a big sign that it was time to move on.

It was difficult to justify the fairly high subscription cost for what in the end turned out to be very little play time. And with the "new" expansion (Mists of Pandaria) coming up the thought of leveling my characters to the new max level didn't entice me at all. I just sort of realized that I had gone bored with World of Warcraft. But it had been another fun run, a fair few years of the usual Guild drama and highs and lows. Overall I really enjoyed that they brought classic back and I don't doubt that I will get back into World of Warcraft in the future again. 

So what do I fill my days with now? Well, as I mentioned I had lost interest in most things in WoW even before I finally pulled the plug and as I have a huge backlog of games to get through there is never want for things to fill my time with. Some of these things I have posted about on this blog. Right at this moment however I am mostly playing Yakuza 0 which I am having tremendous fun with. Yakuza has turned out to be a series of games that seems fully suited for my likes and I enjoy every second of it. Yakuza 0 has turned out to be the most lecherous part in the series so far, an aspect of the series that I've always giggled at more than I've fully enjoyed it. For the first time I might be feeling that they've actually taken it too far but fortunately most of it is optional content.

Summer vacation has just started for me and the rest of my family with the regular challenges of agreeing on what to do. Me and the SO agree on most things  - we enjoy the same nerd culture (Pokémon, Godzilla, certain manga/anime, certain video games, martial arts movies and B action movies from the 80's and 90's to mention some) and we both love being outdoors in the forest. The rest of my family doesn't share my passion for board games and no one shares my SO's passion for Dragon Ball, but no one is perfect.

My kids couldn't be more different however. My younger one is outgoing and loves running, dancing, singing, sporting, playing with toys. The older one hates all of that and pretty much only enjoys video games. So there is a real challenge trying to find something that everyone will enjoy. Most of our days include a bit of both if possible. First a few hours doing something outside, and then playing some sort of video game together afterwards. That usually works well for everyone. It gives us old folks a chance to dig out some gems too, playing things like Bomberman on the SNES, Golden Eye and Mario Kart on the N64 (Golden Eye has become a real favorite among the kids, Diddy Kong Racing was a disaster), Pokémon battles and Tetris on the Game Boy to mention some.

My older kid loves playing almost any game, I would say that is a trait I really like about him. Doesn't matter if the game is 30 years old and in black and white, he will play the hell out of it if he gets the chance. He is completely open-minded when it comes to video games. My younger one has no patience with video games at all, so if we want to play something together we have to choose something where she can get some sort of special treatment or handicap (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is good for this, and in Golden Eye she can get +10 health).

In a few weeks we're going hiking for a week and then all we'll have to entertain us with is a deck of cards. We'll see how that goes.

Field Report #28 - I Finally Made It Out

Yeah, I finally made it to Outlands. I am sure you've all been wondering, crying yourself to sleep every time you realized there wasn't a new post from me. Ok maybe a bit too much hyperbole.

Let's just say I panicked a little when TBC Classic was announced. I didn't feel anywhere near done with Classic WoW and I hadn't even gotten a character up to level 60 yet at that point. I had been taking my sweet time and that meant missing out on all the end game content of Classic WoW all over again (because that was pretty much what happened the first time around). 

I know I could've stayed around. I was also pretty sure few others would, regardless of what gaming news articles were trying to tell me. The ones who would were probably some really dedicated people that would demand more of me than I could offer. I required the general public to be around, and the general public were going to move on. And so I needed to as well, sheeple that I am.

It did help that I absolutely love TBC of course. I am hyped about it, I was always looking forward to it. Just not yet. But it's ok, here it is and I couldn't stop it. Now I needed to get a character to level 58 to enjoy it.

I did get my warlock to level 60 some week or so before the launch, but for some reason I really wasn't feeling it. I remembered TBC being where my love for tanking first started and I felt an urge to get back to that again. Too bad my warrior was only level 46 or so. I realized waiting for and tanking groups probably wasn't the fastest way to go at it, so I decided to respec. Again. It is getting costly now. 

But now I am a fury warrior and I started to hit questing, hard. I mean as hard as anyone could when you've got some 1,5-2 hours game time in the evening at best. It took me about two weeks but now I finally made level 58 and got to Outlands. For the time I am going to stick with fury so that I can quest somewhat decently, and hopefully tank decently enough as well. I tanked a few Zul'Farraks for which I was quite overleveled at the time, and other than that I've never actually tanked in dps spec before. It'll be an interesting experience.