Grinds Are Not a Spectator Sport

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I feel like I thoroughly squandered my evening in a delightful manner, as I have done for most of the recent nights. The problem with grinds is that they don’t exactly make for exciting reading material. I closed out the night just a little ways into 57 on the Red Mage. I am still somewhat shocked and amazed that I am enjoying the class as much as I am. However I really have not found a single class design in Final Fantasy XIV that I did not enjoy at least on some level. Probably the ones that I like the least are Ninja and Monk, in part because they also seem the most “fiddly”.

Then again I have not touched either of them since Shadowbringers and I probably owe it to myself to do that. Dragoon used to be on the list of fiddly classes, but the recent changes have greatly improved the flow of combat for that class. Maybe Monk and Ninja got similar tweaks… but I have a feeling that I will still have to memorize a bunch of attack patterns on the Ninja to keep from getting a bunny on my head. Possibly the least fun to play in Deep Dungeon content is the Summoner which generally speaking throws up dots on something and then gets to do nothing with them because it dies instantly to some melee dps.

I am in this weird mode where I just sorta want to level all of the things. I am greatly enjoying the flow of Deep Dungeon, and by that I mean both Palace of the Dead which will take you from 1 to 60 with relative ease and Heaven on High which picks up at 61 and drops you off neatly at 70. The only thing I can really relate it to is Diablo, because it occupies a very similar space in my brain as that of doing Nephalem Rifts or Bounties. I pop in and focus on something largely mindless while being treated to the always amazing soundtrack of the game. It is the perfect level of mindless engagement that I need to clear away a day worth crap from my brain.

All of that said… I am also keeping my eye on the horizon. I know that around August 27th the gates open on World of Warcraft Classic. I’ve more or less stopped playing the beta in preparation of the eventual grind to come. There is no sense in leveling characters that will ultimately just go away when that leveling process is anything but trivial. Right now the target is to level up an Undead Warrior, in part because I know my friend Grace will be leveling something Undead and that makes life a little easier on the connecting and running content together side.

Quite frankly due to the wild success of Shadowbringers I have no clue how many other people we will have with us along for the ride. Had Shadowbringers bombed or largely been a forgettable experience, I figure everyone would have jumped on the Classic boat just for something to do. On a similar note I am not entirely certain how much time I will be devoting to the experience myself. I figure I am going to need a little something less hardcore to keep swapping over to in order to sorta dull the pain of the grind.

I guess at this point… I am curious. How many of my readers plan on going down the dark path that leads to World of Warcraft Classic? I’ve already decided for the purpose of tracking, I am going to treat WoW Classic as a separate game from World of Warcraft given that it will be a vastly different experience. Right now for example I am not touching WoW Live at all and have not been for honestly longer than I realized. The last time I played WoW Live with any regularity was in November some seven months ago. Hell that alone probably is one of the longer lapses in gameplay I have experienced since Cataclysm.

Once again I am posting the most up to date version of the list. There have been a few people who have signed up since yesterday and our totals are up to 41.

Here is a quick summary of the Blaugust 2019 Links as well.

2 thoughts on “Grinds Are Not a Spectator Sport”

  1. I am probably among the 6 people on Earth who has no intention of checking Classic World of Warcraft. XD

    I played it back when Wrath of the Lich King was yet to be released and there was much hype about it. Got my fun from the game then quit and moved on. Since then there hasn’t really been anything strong enough to interest me in the game again. 🙂

    • Welp, I’ll make it 2/6 then in the camp of not planning to try it out.

      But while not planning on it, I’m also not ruling it out entirely. There are a couple in my general gaming group who maaaay want to, and if they do I’ll go along to test it alongside.

      Even if that happens though, I don’t imagine it will be for very long.

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