Returning to Old Haunts

This is one of the last screenshots that I took from World of Warcraft around the launch of the Shadowlands expansion. It is dated 12/9 of 2020 and represents the last time that I played World of Warcraft in either Retail or Classic varieties. It was shortly after this that I canceled my subscription and started the longest period of time I have ever not played WoW since the launch of the game. While I spent some time helping with the alpha testing of Dragonflight, I’ve been gone from the game for roughly three years and in that time a lot of things have changed. Honestly, I am not sure if it was the Shadowlands expansion, the game as a whole, or my general dissatisfaction with Blizzard as a company. So much came out to tarnish those memories I had built up over the first decade of Warcraft and I was not really certain I could ever get back to the state of joy that I found in the game in those heady days prior to the launch of Cataclysm.

When I tested Dragonflight, I remember saying that the game felt better than it had during Shadowlands and that while I never got to see it start to finish… testing was divided up into little single-zone vertical slices without any music or cutscenes… that I thought it would be a much better World of Warcraft expansion than we had seen since Legion. The thing is… as good as it seemed it just was not enough to get me over the hump of angst that I felt towards Blizzard as a whole. I never would have played Diablo IV had someone not graciously gifted me a copy of that game, and my good friend Ace has still not played the game since its launch. I had said though that if Bobby Kotick finally left the company, I would take that as a sign to lay down my pitchfork and torch and give World of Warcraft a proper revisiting. I had heard enough from friends at the company that the culture did in fact seem to be changing bit by bit… but I wanted the figurehead gone as well before I would feel like maybe things COULD change permanently.

Bobby Kotick’s last day at ActiBlizz was the 29th, and on the 30th I was firing back up World of Warcraft. I took advantage of one of the bundles that purchased The War Within expansion and included a copy of Dragonflight as a result. Since I had been gone so long… I decided to give the game a shot with fresh eyes on my BC/Wrath raid main… the original Belghast, my Human Warrior on Argent Dawn US. This is still the character that I identify with the most in Warcraft and it seemed like the best option for a comeback. I’ve grown to love The Horde, but it never felt as true for me personally as playing the Alliance did. I love my Horde family however, and now that factions really do not matter in the least I figured it didn’t really matter which side of this server I played on… since Argent Dawn and Scryers are connected and all of my Alliance characters are on AD and all of my horde on Scryers.

House Stalwart is a guild in World of Warcraft that I founded with some friends on November 23rd, 2004. I will always regret the fact that our guild charter no longer says that date because I got hacked in the middle of Wrath of the Lich King and said hacker nuked the guild before transferring me off the server. I still think it was a personal attack, to be honest, but I have no clue who it might have been. While my time in Stalwart represented some of the best times I had in this game or in gaming in general… I also suffered quite possibly from the worst depression I have ever had while trying to lead this guild. I feel like I have been running away from it for years, scared to touch it for fear that it brought me back down to those deeply negative lows. While suffering… I made decisions that I am not proud of and struggled with the need for the guild to transform and change without me. The thing is… this group of folks never forgot who I was and even have this dumb note calling me out as “The Real GM”.

I need to forgive myself and realize that my downfall was not caused by the guild or any of the people in it… and that I have grown a lot since that time. I am hoping coming back and commiserating with the same folks will help to close those wounds a bit and maybe let them scab over. I apologize to Elnore, Rylacus, and Kylana for not always supporting them fully… and in the case of Elnore outright attacking her for the decisions she felt needed to be made. I should have fully supported your decisions when I stepped down, and been less of a flake when I picked up the mantle again during Pandaria. So similarly I apologize to Rylacus for unceremoniously dumping this mess in his lap. I apologize to Kylana for never really supporting him fully or telling him how much I appreciate the way he just ran with the guild and tried his best to keep the same sort of spirit. I also apologize to House Stalwart as a whole for never really being there for them even though they have offered me nothing but support through all of the bullshit phases that I have gone through over the years. They’ve always welcomed me back… even though there are I am certain a lot of people now who have zero clue who the hell I even am. I was always so careful to keep one foot out the door so I could run away again… and that was not cool.

This blog post has somewhat developed a life of its own. This happens sometimes when I start writing and is if nothing else proof that I really don’t script these ahead of time. I was going to talk about my adventures and instead, I have devoted this post to dealing with the anxiety and depression of the past. Talking about why I am enjoying Dragonflight and why I still really did not enjoy Shadowlands is a topic for another day. I hope you all had a great holiday break if you managed to get one. Today is my first day back so I need to wrap this up and actually start with some proper work. To any Stalwart folks that might be reading this… thanks for being chill and not overwhelming me as I start trying to figure out how the hell this game works. Huge thanks to Errya and Bleddwen for trying to welcome me back and letting me know that I was more than welcome to join in the activities. I appreciate you both greatly, but I am not quite there yet to where I can even think about doing any sort of activities, I might start joining yall on voice every now and then. I also appreciate Kylana for warning folks that I might be showing up once the deed was done, because that seems to have halted a lot of the “whoa, what the heck” moments.

If you’ve made it this far in the post thanks for reading, and thanks for always being here for me as well no matter what level of nonsense I am getting up to. If you are reading this and from Facepull my Horde home… I still love you all and I am certain my next character with be a Hordie. I just needed to stretch my legs this time on the original Belghast.

Week in Gaming 12/13/2015

Blogging is Hard

KnightsOfTheOldRepublicComicjpgI’ve been in a bit of a relative funk this week, and found it extremely hard to get started writing most mornings.  It is like for whatever reason my will to put fingers to keyboard and make important sounding things happen… has been drained out of me.  At this point we are a few months away from going three whole years worth of blog posts, and I guess in a way it is having its toll on me.  At this point I have far more regular readers than I have ever had at any other point in the blogs history, and that is freaking awesome.  The fact that I have so many supportive people with my back…  is ultimately the thing that keeps me moving forward on days like today.  We recorded this insanely huge podcast last night where we took the normal crew of myself, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen…  and included some other friends InkyBrushes, Nephsys and Pizzmaid.  Sadly we were missing Ash but he had his own version of a really rough week.  Combined we focused a single topic… and recorded for over two hours…  which compressed down to just under it.  The problem being… by the time I did even the most basic editing pass…  it was around one in the morning.

I’ve been fighting what I think is largely sleep deprivation most of the week, and it has ended up with me falling asleep as early as 8 pm on a couple of the nights.  Well granted I went to bed at 8pm… and read comics on my new kindle but still I ended up drifting off to sleep about 30 minutes to an hour later.  I have been getting a lot of use out of my Marvel Unlimited account, and largely using it to read the backlog of awesome Star Wars comics.  At first I went through what was available of the modern series, namely Star Wars and the Vader series.  I started on the Princess Leia series but struggled with it, mostly because I simply was not a huge fan of the art style.  Recently though I have been running back through and reading the Knights of the Old Republic series from the start.  I am maybe a dozen episodes in at this point and I am loving it…  this totally feels like I am consuming comics in the same way I binge Netflix shows.  I just wish the lag between print and them showing up on Marvel Unlimited was not quite so great.  The latest issues of the modern Star Wars comic to show up are from August of this year, but what I am really hoping is that they release the issues on a semi-monthly basis just with that lag.  I can totally deal with reading comics late…  I just want to be able to read them with a certain regularity.

World of Shipyards

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This week has largely been about reconciling my differences with the Shipyard system.  I commented last week that they were essentially a worst possible version of the Garrison system…. and in many ways I don’t have a significant change in that opinion.  What did change however is that I realized that after so many of you told me about it…  the Garrison addon I was already using had built in functionality to automate a good deal of the shipyard bullshittery as well.  The end result is that I have somehow managed to learn to live with the Shipyards and they have rewarded me well for my blind submission.  At this point between the three characters that have them…  I have earned a hippo mount, a bunch of hellfire citadel gear caches,  and more left sharks than I could ever have a use for… I seriously have three sitting in the inventory of my MooCowAdin.  The problem with all of this of course is the fact that I now need to feed the beast that is the shipyard, and the only reliable way of doing this… is schlepping out to Tanaan jungle and completing the daily mission.  Now some of my characters have been stockpiling oil from Garrison missions for along time now and won’t really have this problem… but Belghast is constantly struggling to pay his daily upkeep.

Other than this I have been slowly inching up my gear levels on Belghast and Belgrace, and attempting to run the Timewalking event on my alts… that can actually benefit from the 660-675 gear that they can drop.  The funniest part of the week however has been learning that I don’t simply remember the BC era content as being significantly rougher… that it actually really is.  PUG groups are simply not prepared for mobs that crowd control and fear the hell out of players… and are in no way ready for just how hard everything hits.  There have been more wipes from the party finder than I have had in ages… and I am really enjoying every minute of it.  The alliance side…  has been a colossal mess of chain group joins and splits until finally we push through the dungeon.  Horde side on the other hand.. people just buckle down and pick themselves up after a wipe and keep pushing forward.  I guess when you have to wait through a thirty minute dps queue… you are significantly less likely to abandon ship at the first sign of trouble.  Alliance will always be my first home because that is where my army of alts lives…  but I have to say Horde is growing on me really quickly.

Fabian Strategy Lives

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I know I spent a good deal of my post yesterday gushing about the new and revised Fabian Strategy… but seriously I am in love with this gun.  It had been roughly a month since I had seriously spent much time in Destiny, and yesterday I poked my head back in.  Apart from being woefully out of practice, I am still amazed at just how fun the moment to moment play is in this game.  I spent a bit of time yesterday trying to play Battlefront, and the gameplay just doesn’t hold a candle to just how good Destiny feels.  Now that I have this weapon that allows me to abuse all of my instincts, I can see myself really settling on it as my main gun.  Now I have said that numerous times… and I know I said it recently with the Xhalo Supercell…  but seriously….  this gun is amazing.  I will always be a Titan at heart, because I want to play like a tank in most games.  This gun makes me FEEL like a tank, because the chance of regeneration upon kill ends up firing a lot more frequently than I think most people realize.  There have been several strikes that I survived entirely because of this weapon constantly triggering my shield regeneration.  It is my goal this week to pop in periodically, and not go quite so long between play sessions.