Blaugust

Cadwell’s Gold

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I thought I would start off with a brief Blaugust update since while we are still roughly 15 days away from the official kickoff… we already have a bunch of activity.  For those interested please take a moment and fill out the form that I am using for tracking this event.  Also we have a discord that is starting to become active that we have a good number of the participants in so far.  On day what… negative 16…  we had a bunch of people sign up and I fully expect before we will get the event rolling we will have even more sign up.  However I did want to take a quick moment to recognize all of the “first!” crew who signed up almost immediately.

Mentors (so far)

Blaugustans (aka participants so far)

Super huge thanks to all of these fine folks for signing their name on the dotted line…  or in our case a google form.  I did want to say a few more things about Blaugust.  This is a festival of blogging, but that could take a bunch of meanings.  If your thing is not writing a bunch of words about gaming then that is absolutely cool…  just do whatever works for you.  If you would prefer to do a travelogue sort of blog where you explore, take a bunch of pictures and then write a little bit about each of them…  then that is a really cool blog.  If you want to do some sort of creative en-devour and show off the things you created in the process… and talk a bit about what you were thinking or any challenges you had while creating it…  then that also is a really cool blog.

Say you want to instead challenge yourself to do a daily vlog or a daily twitch stream…  that you then paste links to in a blog form…  then that absolutely is also within the spirit of this festival.  Blaugust is about creating content and preferably getting yourself in the habit of doing it in a regular manner.  The idea is to turn the once a month blogger into a couple of times a week blogger giving us more content to consume and broadening our community.  A lot of the traditional blogging activity has moved from the dedicated blogs into the social media space…  which is an area we are finding we have no control over.  I feel like maybe it is time to start clawing those posts back to places you control and staking out a place for yourself on the internet.  There is still plenty of time to decide if you want to participant in this years running of Blaugust however.

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On to gaming talk… last night I accomplished something that has been my goal up until this point in Elder Scrolls Online.  I finished Cadwell’s Gold or as I have often referred to it..  New Game++.  For the uninitiated Elder Scrolls Online launched with three separate factions and an interesting mechanic that allows you to keep the gaming going by venturing forth into the other two factions after you finish the one you started in.  So as a Daggerfall Covenant player, my first “New Game” mode was to venture forth into the Aldmerri Dominion.  I stalled out in that area for a really long time… given that the game released four years ago.  Once beating that main story quest…  I achieved Cadwell’s Silver and moved forth into Ebonheart Pact, where I have been spending my time lately and wrapped up last night.

For my troubles I got a necklace that I will likely deconstruct… and a cosmetic helm that is Cadwell’s infamous “helmet”.  I am effectively “finished” with all of the content that was available at the release of Elder Scrolls Online…  effectively 150 levels worth of story.  By the time I beat it I was sitting at 285 champion points… which becomes the post game progression system.  I was really weird about the content in ESO because I wanted to beat the effective New Game++ before starting any of the DLC or expansion content.  Now I have accidentally done one of the Thieves Guild quests because I simply thought it was “just another quest” in Windhelm, however I have not properly dug into any of it…  that is until last night.

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I officially started Orsinium…  with my trusty helm equipped.  Firstly I have to say… if this is the scale of their DLC content… I am damned impressed and find myself wondering what in the hell their Expansions look like since they make the clear distinction between the two concepts.  Wrothgar is huge and so far the questing has been excellent since I have been looking forward to doing the deep dive into Orsimer culture.  The fact that Orcs in the Elder Scrolls setting… are “Elves Gone Wrong”…  has always appealed to me greatly given my general distaste for elves in most games.  That said I do love the Bosmer… and quite a bit of Dunmer culture as well…  so maybe it is just the Altmer aka High Elves that I ultimately have problem with.  The Thalmor in Skyrim are one of those things that I will go completely out of my way just to kill one walking down the road.

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If you have not gotten the impression yet…  I am freaking having a blast in this game and I am super glad E3 made me want to dig back into it.  Effectively prior to E3 I had been stalled out in Stonefalls…  which is not a good zone.  It doesn’t help that it is one of those zones we beat the shit out of in alpha and beta with focused testing…  so it just bores me to tears at this point.  However as soon as I managed to push my way through it…  the rest of Ebonheart Pact was charming and interesting and the gaming equivalent of a “page turner”.  Now I am almost giddy thinking about experiencing all of this expanded content that I have heard so much about.

 

 

Blaugust Reborn

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What Was Blaugust?

Back in April of 2013 I started this thing I referred to as the Grand Experiment, where I attempted to force myself to write something… anything every single day.  Prior to that I had been a very infrequent blogger to say the least, having an entire year pass between posts.  Any time I lapsed there would be this wall of pressure and anxiety that would build up that kept me from starting posting again, feeling like when I came back I needed to make some spectacular re-entry worthy of the length of time I had been gone.  The daily posting things did a lot for me and my confidence and also the level of my life I was willing to share with my readers.  For me personally… it was a good transformation and while I only kept with the daily posting for three years I have since settled into a more comfortable routine of only posting during the week days.

In 2014 I had already noticed a change in the way I wrote and how I felt about blogging in general and to some extent wanted to share that with the rest of the blogging community.  So in my infinite wisdom I decided to create an event where I challenged other bloggers to go one entire month without missing a post.  In my head I rammed together a bunch of sounds until I came up with Blaugust…  only to find out later that it was already a thing and that a bunch of Aussies had been doing a blogging festival thing for years.  My version however focused on the rigor of posting every single day and being super hard core about keeping track of who was and was not still in the race.  While entertaining this was really not healthy for the blogging community.

One of the side effects that I found is that many blogs that were started for Blaugust or were fledglings going into it…  went into massive periods of not posting anything at all as a sort of recovery period.  Similarly as the years went on those same blogs never really seemed to recover, and it is my fear that Blaugust wound up killing more blogs than it wound up helping.  Each year I tweaked the formula a bit until 2016 was my attempt at creating a kinder gentler Blaugust, and then last year I just couldn’t muster the oomph to make it happen at all and instead promoted something my friend Grace was trying.  I had this overall feeling that I harmed the community with the event, and this was only reinforced in my mind by the constantly shrinking pool of active bloggers.

What Was the Newbie Blogger Intiative?

The thing is… at the time of the inception of Blaugust it was just one of many events that the community did during the year.  The grand daddy of them all was the Newbie Blogger Initiative that ran most often during the month of May.  This was an idea originally spawned by Syp of Bio Break and he realized that game blogging was a thing that was on the decline, and the only way to keep it alive was to set out to “grow our own” as it were.  The first year was 2012 and had a flood of participation that you can see summarized here, but it helped more than anything to build a sense of community to the folks out here blogging as independent island nations floating in the internet.  There are lots of game blogging communities that gain cohesiveness through shared love of a specific product…  the World of Warcraft community for example has always been fairly tight knit and recursive.  However those of us nomads that jump around from game to game have never really had a similar family…  that is until NBI came along and crafted a sense of shared community.  Unfortunately the last running of NBI was also in 2016…  because quite honestly the tail end of 2016 and all of 2017 were extremely rough to struggle through.  There were events that happened in the real world and events that happened in gaming that caused people to fear for their own safety and sort of batten down the hatches.  All of this was an unfortunate blow to our already shrinking blogrolls.

What is Blaugust Reborn?

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The idea is simple…  lets take the best features of both Blaugust and the Newbie Blogger Intiative and sorta ram them together into one festival of blogging.  It isn’t necessarily that I feel like I am qualified to do this thing…  but it is something that someone needs to do.  Over the last few years those of us who are out here posting regularly has shrunk to a pretty small pool.  There was a time when I could never actually read down my blog roll, because by the time I got through with a day new posts were flooding in over the top of the dam.  Now I pretty regularly read down to the equivalent of “inbox zero” while taking pretty huge breaks between reading.  The world has changed and it isn’t as exciting to be out here blogging your thoughts and ideas the way it used to be, also there are a million other streams of information dividing our attention.  I still feel however that blogging creates a place for yourself in that stream if information and gives you a presence that cannot be taken away by “promoted posts” or “interest based sorting algorithms”.

So what I propose is a month of mildly structured posting and developing a strong mentorship community among those of us who are still out there doing it on a regular basis.  Lets help grow that next generation of bloggers and help them get started in a journey that honestly has meant more to me than I can adequately put into words.  I love feeling like I am part of something bigger than myself and I think we all do to some extent.  Let’s reignite the fires of this dwindling community and help to firmly affix the torch into the hands of a new generation of bloggers.  While gaming is very much in my wheel house… it isn’t even a game blogging festival but more one about creating a place for yourself and showing off whatever it is that you want to show the world.  You could create a blog to share your latest recipe creations or one to catalog your experiences as you start a new job.  You could share your awesome screenshots and write some notes about how you felt when you took it or what you were thinking at the time.  You could do your “daily blog” as a series of livestreams that you record and post later as a VOD or exported to YouTube.  The core concept is to create a community around the creation of new “stuff” and a sense of us all working together in the same shared space.

What About the Awards?

One of the things that has traditionally come with Blaugust is a series of made up awards that are granted to those who participant.  So far they have shaped up to look a little something like this…

  • Newbie Blogger Award – You did it, you created a new blog and by god we are going to sing your praises for doing it!
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the Month of August 2018.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the Month of August 2018, go you!
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the Month of August 2018, you are a badass!
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You did it, you posted every single day during the Month of August 2018 and deserve accolades.

Occasionally in the past various sponsors have mysteriously shown up during this event, and if that happens… awesome I will share the bounty.  If not I am going to make nifty blog sidebar thingys for each of the various award categories.

Mentorship

One of the keys to making this work is that we need a bunch of you amazing bloggers out there to sign up as mentors.  Ultimately I feel like mentors should have roughly two years of blogging experience under their belt to be able to gauge the ebbs and flows of content creation in front of a live studio audience.  This isn’t necessarily meant as a gate keeping mechanism, but I want any participant to feel like they can turn to any mentor for sage advice.  I sure as hell am not sure if I have anything resembling sage advice, but I have quite a bit of experience in dealing with the nonsense that comes up while trying to keep a regular publishing schedule.  The mentors will all be clearly marked as such in Discord since that tends to be the thing that ultimately replaced forums for the gaming community.  I will be doing my best to be hanging out there often myself to answer questions as they arise.

Structured Format

I mentioned this above that I wanted to attempt a bit of a structured format… which is of course optional but provides us some general content areas to focus on while the event is going on.  This also helps to revive another tradition that was Developer Appreciation Week and embed it as part of this larger blogging festival as well.  So right now the weeks look a little something like this.

  • July 25th – July 31st – Blaugust Prep Week – posts about the technical details of getting started in blogging.  Tutorials, advice, tips for naming your blog… that sort of stuff to get people ready to hit the ground on August 1st running.
  • August 1st – August 7th – Topic Brainstorming Week – posts about ideas for topics that the participants can then mine for the rest of the month.
  • August 8th – August 14th – Get to Know Each Other Week – hanging out and meeting other people in this new fledgling community and hopefully gaming together a bit!  Also highly support doing some sort of collaboration on shared topics!
  • August 15th – August 21st – Developer Appreciation Week – post about the things that you really appreciate in gaming or any other community… because chances are there is a developer or designer behind the things you love.
  • August 22nd – August 28th – Staying Motivated Week – tips and tricks that you might have to stay motivated and keep creating content against the tyranny of a blank screen.
  • August 29th – August 31st – The Final Stretch: Lessons Learned – as a way of getting us across the finish line, talk about some of the experienced you had during the month and maybe things you learned about yourself.

The Details

  • The sign up form for Blaugust Reborn 2018 can be found here
  • The invite link to the Blaugust Reborn Discord can be found here
  • When you share your content please use the hashtag #BlaugustReborn for tracking purposes
    • Also share your content in the “share-your-content” channel on Discord!
  • Mingle with your other Mentors and Participants
    • Maybe even use the “gaming-together” channel on Discord for play games together!
  • Have a great freaking August!

 

 

 

Plate Dress

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You would think a work week with only two days in it would be a breeze to get through.  You would be wrong, or at least I am struggling with it.  There is something about being off work for five days in a row that really resets your mental clock.  While I had not deviated terribly in my sleep patterns…  I did deviate massively in my pants wearing patterns.  What is making this experience weirder is the fact that I represent the only management team member for my side of the office, and as a result I have people I don’t normally manage coming up to me and asking advice on issues.  However we push on because it is in fact Friday… the harbinger of another respite from work.  That said I know that come Monday morning everyone will be expecting the entire office to be firing on all cylinders so I am trying to take advantage of this lull in people actually being around the office to catch up on things.

On the blog front… I am working on some details for Monday where I talk about the return of Blaugust.  Yes that is right I am doing it again this year because I feel like the community needs something to rally around.  I do intend to shift things up a bit however and make it less about posting every single day and more an amalgam of the various events that we used to do as a community but have let slip by the wayside.  Expect a few elements of the Newbie Blogger Initiative to be thrown into the mix as well to broaden the sort of folks involved.  I will have charts and graphs and all measure of adult looking representations of my thoughts for Monday morning (I am only slightly kidding) but it isn’t quite ready for primetime yet.

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On the gaming front  I am still very much engaged with Elder Scrolls Online and looking forward to Update 19 that comes with the Wolfhunter DLC.  If I had to guess this will probably land sometime around Quake Con that is coming up August 9th through the 12th.  The main reason why I am super interested in this update is that apparently we are finally getting single line respecs…  only five years after asking for these in alpha.  I’ve always been way more into being a Hunter than a Werewolf or Vampire…  so the whole Van Helsing style outfit they are showing off is definitely in my wheelhouse.  Speaking of outfits however… I keep playing with the wardrobe system and creating my very own “plate dress” ensemble.  You can absolutely blame World of Warcraft and the Judgement set for hooking me on this appearance, but unfortunately at this moment the only skirt option I have available to me is one that is Daedric themed, so I am just sorta rolling with that appearance as a whole.

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I’ve been playing with some different combinations of pieces for the Arms and Shoulders…  the first image in this series is what I am currently wearing but I am thinking seriously of going back to this combination shown in the above image.  I think it blended better together and I dig the uncovered hands better than the various gloved options.  I also seem to have settled on running around with the adorable wolf cub as my companion as opposed to the wide variety of violent critters I also have access to.  At this point I am a few quest chains deep into The Rift and still loving the whole encountering people I interacted with in the past.  This time it was someone who dates back all the way to Bleakrock…  which makes me wonder if I had chosen differently in Bal Foyen if I would have had a different interaction.  I am guessing that would be the case, but I absolutely think I chose correctly this time around.

Anyways…  time to get to work.  Have a wonderful weekend and tune in Monday as I begin unrolling the nonsense that is to be this years Blaugust.

Long Time Coming

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Bug Squish

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At the launch of Heavensward we absolutely wrecked us a Sky Whale, but struggled a bit with Ravana.  It was a combination of insane amounts of incoming damage, mixed with the fact that we consistently failed at Final Liberation.  As we all faded away and off into other games, the one big regret many of us had was that we never actually managed to take down a bug.  Last night we finally set that record straight, and defeated Ravana.  In true fashion for our group however, the kill was a complete mess.  In fact I managed to get knocked off right before we finished the fight, because some random roofer was knocking on my door.  In Oklahoma our version of ambulance chasers are fly by night roofers looking to repair “hail damage”, and this guy had an equally questionable name to go with it.  So in my somewhat distracted state I was just a bit too close to one of the attacks that knocks you off the edge.  Ashgar somehow managed to survive alone until we finally pushed him over the edge at the last possible moment.  There is a final final liberation… and we probably killed him as the bar passed the O and was creeping up on the N…  aka seriously the last moment before we all died a horrible death for our hubris.  Of course like is usually the case no axe was dropped… but instead we did manage to pick up a pretty spiffy looking book that reminds me of a strange armored butterfly.

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After downing a bug, we set our sights on Final Coil since a few of our modern assemblage were not with us when we managed to take this down the first time.  We started off with Turn 10… and honestly had to relearn fights as we went.  So much of this happened so long ago… that we maybe partially remembered a mechanic here or there but had largely forgotten the bulk of them.  We outgeared a good deal of the mechanics, but in truth what this really meant is that we could simply chain resurrect players when they died instead of dealing with the proper mechanics.  Ashgar and I attempted to think on our feet and deal with this as best we remembered them…  the primary example of this being the giant metal clad hydra that serves as the boss of Turn 11 who happens to have an attack that will straight up oneshot the current tank if it is not taunted off.  Traditionally we have a firm cut off time of 10pm CST but we went over a little bit.  Tam called our final attempt on Bahamut for the evening, and that happened to be the attempt we pushed across the finish line and got the win.  I am so happy to have been able to come back and take on these fights for the folks who had never seen them.  While I want to keep progressing into content that I have not seen, it is always good to go back and do the stuff we have, just to remember how far we have come.

Legion Lock

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In other news I managed to push across the finish line in a completely different sort of fight.  For whatever reason I have had a fire lit under me to level a bunch of my stragglers up to level 100.  I pushed the Rogue from 92 to 100, Druid from 95 to 100… and then started on my Warlock that happened to be sitting at level 75.  As of last night I managed to nudge him across the line to 100 and even got in a quick LFR before the FFXIV raid.  I was honestly shocked to find out that you could queue for Highmaul LFR at item level 615, and I absolutely did just this.  I am not sure why I am enjoying my warlock so much.  It is just a style of game play that I have never really spent much time doing… and this represents the first “finger wiggler” I have ever legitimately leveled to the current cap.  I’ve had a Priest and Mage temporarily at “cap” but in both of those cases it was a boosted character so it really does not count.  I think part of it as well is that I really want a proper character to start farming transmog items for all of my cloth wearers.  I also want a tailor that I don’t mind grinding cloth on, because the Shadow Priest is absolutely not that character.  Now with the launch of Demon Hunters tonight, I fully expect to be attempting to do that madness…  however in the meantime I am really looking forward to exploring the world with my army of demon buddies.