I am still reeling a bit from a dream I had over night. I guess in theory you could call it a nightmare, where I ended up leaving my current job and ending back under the yoke of the one boss in my work history that I hated working for. I’ve always been one of those people who tended to naturally get along with bosses. Pending they are coming from a place of logic, I get why they want the things they want… and especially now as a “boss” myself I get how orders that seem disconnected from reality end up having to be passed down. This boss however was petty and vindictive and gave me nothing but a constant stream of conflicting information. If I did what I thought was right… he would rail on me for not doing it however the hell he wanted me to do it. If I stopped and asked for directions in how he wanted me to do a thing… he would rail on me for not taking initiative. In the end it was two and a half years of the lowest point in my career that did some serious damage to my psyche that I am apparently still sorting out.
On the gaming front however I have been playing quite a bit of World of Warcraft, mostly because I want to unlock the two Allied races that I have yet to. Let me take a moment to talk about how much bullshit the way these races are unlocked is. Primarily that it is grossly unfair that two races for a single faction are unlocked by doing content that has been in game more or less since the launch of Legion, and the other two gated behind the newest content and honestly the most frustrating to do. So I have the two horde races of the High Mountain Tauren and the Nightfallen unlocked and a monk and rogue create respectively. Now I am working on the frustrating rep grind that is roaming around Argus and doing daily quests barely watching the needle climb at all.
Argus just feels bad and was only slightly improved when I got the reputation to unlock the improved flight whistle. Why in the hell this was not a default thing makes zero sense to me. I get that they rushed this content out the door and did a lot of visual tricks that are easily dispelled the second you lift off the ground. However the constant tug of war of achieving flying only to have it arbitrarily taken away from you is maddening. We experienced this with Pandaria and then suddenly losing the ability to fly on the Timeless Isle and Isle of Giants and in both cases it felt horrible. Having a speed bump in the form of Argus still feels horrible… but I am gritting my teeth and dealing with it for the sake of racial unlocks. As to why this suddenly matters to me now? I have no clue… it could have been simply spurred on by having access to the races in Alpha.
The other game I have been playing a significant amount of lately is Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on my new pokeball edition 2DS XL. Unfortunately the shut down of MiiVerse and the lack of having any sort of a native screenshot functionality will keep me from actually capturing any shots of my gameplay. However this has sorta become my evening retreat as I chill out doing some monster hunter from bed before finally heading to sleep. I find having some sort of a wind down activity helps a lot and at least thus far this fits the bill nicely. I do however have a USB to 3DS charging cable at work so I might start taking this with me and playing a little over lunch now that I am getting into some of the more exciting activities.
I’ve not made it terribly far but at this point I have taken down two monsters: Velicidrome and Seltas… both of which I need several more parts from. I have the mission to hunt the Great Jaggi so I am likely to attempt that next because I need a single hide to upgrade my current sword and shield. Not sure why I have not broken out my beloved Longsword yet, but for the moment I opted to stick to the starter weapon. In truth in Monster Hunter World, the Sword and Shield is probably my second favorite of the weapons so I am in part using MH4U as a way to get more familiar with its quirks.
How quickly I have taken to this game in the relatively short amount of time I have been playing it… tells me that Monster Hunter World is not necessarily a fluke for me. Sure it was this amazing gateway into a very complex game… but the core mechanics are ultimately the thing that is keeping me there. I’ve had similar experiences with Generations, but I feel like 4U does a much better job of easing you into the game and giving you some semblance of a story to care about. At some point I fully expect to return to Generations and push a little further given that I have yet to actually get to a single real monster there.