Blog Features Archives - Page 60 of 283

Regularly Playing: September/October Edition

March 7, 2025October 3, 2016 by Belghast

Once again I have let a bit of time pass since my last one of these posts. As a result I am going to do a combo post since I think I can for the most part predict what the next month will bring gaming wise. The general idea is that every so often I “true up” my sidebar, and bring it into alignment with what I am actually playing on a regular basis. Some of these might be an every day occurrence, but they represent a regular rotation of games you are likely to see me talking about. Since I am apparently unable to do these monthly, it might just be a sort every other month thing. Originally I admit this was designed as easy to conjure up content, for when I was struggling to think of anything to write… and somehow became something more in the process.

To Those Remaining

World of Warcraft

At this very moment this is sort of my gaming “main squeeze”. It feels really strange to once again be enthralled by WoW after it teetered on the brink of being removed from this list for so long. Legion was extremely good, as were the events leading up to it. The only slight problem I am having is that my army of alts is seeing far less love than they did in Warlords. Right now I have two characters to 110 the new level cap, and in truth I could probably never alt again and still have plenty of things to do. The catch there however is that I once again want access to tradeskills that my army of alts had. The first alt I pushed to 110 was done for the fact that I wanted access to mining… not necessarily because I wanted to play that character. In fact once I hit 110 I have tried really hard to shift that character to DPS mode after largely leveling as a tank, because I am not sure if I really like tanking as a Paladin. Paladin tanking just doesn’t feel anywhere near as good as Warrior tanking does right now, and as a result when I tank instances for my friends… I find myself missing Belghast. Instead I am trying to focus on being a Retribution paladin, which works well enough given that the bodyguard for Paladins is a tank. In any case… I could rattle on at length about this game but chances are you too are playing and have your own stories. Legion was the expansion where Blizzard learned so many lessons and I believe in some small way started transitioning the game to an interesting future.

Final Fantasy XIV

This game is barely holding in there and I wrote about my feelings at length the other day. There is just something about the game that isn’t clicking with me, however over the weekend I found out that the story line is leading to apparently a pretty interesting place. That means that over the course of this week I will be popping in and consuming locust-like the new content patch in the hopes of being able to talk about it on next weeks AggroChat. For this reason more than any others I am leaving it on the list, in the hopes that wherever they are going with the story will rekindle my fires of caring about the game. For the time being however it teeters on the brink of removal, knowing that even if I do… it is certain to make its way back eventually. Final Fantasy XIV is one of those games that I truly love… even if I don’t necessarily want to be playing it at the moment.

Rift

Rift is also teetering precariously on the precipice of being removed from the list. The only reason being because I just simply am not playing right now. I have too much other stuff that is keeping me engaged and at the moment my “rift time” involves logging in every day to collect rewards and then logging right back out. That said I know that Starfall Prophecy will be coming soon and with it a number of changes that sound like they are going to be excellent for the game. For the moment however I am collecting the pre-launch currency and seeing just how many I can end up getting before things go live.

To The Returning and New

Destiny: Rise of Iron

I knew this one would not stay gone long from the list, especially with the impending release of an expansion. I’ve talked about my thoughts on Rise of Iron, and while it seems strange to call it an expansion… it is definitely a return to amazing Destiny fun. The more time I spend in the plaguelands the more I love them, and it seems like right now it is fitting this role of wanting to play something… that doesn’t require much of me. I end up booting it up quite often when I first get home from work, or if I am trying to wind down before going to bed. It lets me get in… kill some baddies and walk away with some loot… some of it is actually usable. There are some interesting things going on, namely that engrams seem to upgrade in quality way more often. I opened two legendary engrams last night and got exotic items from them for example, and while blue engrams seem to be light locked at 340… they are upgrading into legendary items pretty often as well. I am definitely enjoying myself again and looking forward to being able to hit the light levels that will allow me to do group content once again.

Guild Wars 2

Now in the “games I never thought I would be adding to this list” category we have Guild Wars 2. I have a bit of a sordid past with this game, so much so that I don’t even think I have an existing sidebar graphic for it. However this month thanks to Tam latching onto it… it is seeing a bit of traction among the AggroChat crew. As a result I am begrudgingly playing it much the same way as Tam is begrudgingly playing World of Warcraft. We still have yet to run a dungeon, which is something we need to remedy and the next time the folks are doing content in this game… I really need to log in and join in. For the most however any time I would spend in this game is getting gobbled up by the Legion machine. I really need to give it more of a fair shake… in spite of not quite feeling like I want it to feel.

To Those Parting

Pokemon Go

This one is leaving not entirely of my own choice. For quite awhile now this has been my go to boredom mobile game and a huge motivation to get out into the world and walk. However recently they released a patch that has effectively locked me out of the game. For whatever reason my phone shows up as it has been rooted… even though it is not. This is a problem that is happening to a ton of people playing this game, and I have a feeling that it is caused by the fact that there is an update that fails to patch into my phone. I’ve gone so far as to wipe the phone and take it back to a factory rom and still run into the problems with one patch failing to load past 28%. As a result I am barred from participating in this game, and it is leaving the list. I keep hoping that at some point they will remove this patch and I can get back to catching pokemon, but I highly doubt that.

Diablo 3

This season was a bit of a struggle because at the same time it launched… the pre-launch event started up in Legion. Any time I would have been spending in Diablo 3, got gobbled up by World of Warcraft. Grace and I however made it through the season journey, or at least in my case far enough to unlock the cosmetic items. There is no way I am going to be spending enough time to unlock the stash tab this time around, and my support structure in this game is also devoting 100% of their time to WoW. So for the time being I am removing it from the list until next time a season starts up.

No Mans Sky

This one never really stood a chance. It launched at a time when I was super devoted to a bunch of other games… and quite honestly I just have not given it the time needed to really sink its teeth in. The bit I played I enjoyed, and I could see myself spending hours playing it. The big problem however is it is not a game I am playing with friends… and felt super lonely. There are times I need this sort of game, and I am sure when I get into one of those extended funk periods I will break it back out and roam the lonelyverse.

Regularly Playing: July/August Edition

March 7, 2025August 14, 2016 by Belghast

I just realized the other day that it had been a long while since I had done one of my regularly playing posts. The general idea is to true up my sidebar list of games and bring it into alignment with the games that I am actually playing on a fairly regular basis. Some of these might not be every day occurrences but they represent the regular rotation of games you are likely to see me talking about. At some point however I fell off the wagon and went the entire month of July without any form of an update. As a result I am doing this to cover both July and August and get me up to date.

To Those Remaining

World of Warcraft

I am legitimately playing World of Warcraft more actively than I have in years. More than likely this is the most seriously I have played since before the launch of Cataclysm. I am really enjoying the game, and the changes to the various specs… and even enjoying the Legion launch event more. Over the last few days I have been using this event as a bit of a springboard to help level up some of my sub 100 characters because every two events you participate in seems to be roughly a levels worth of experience, even in the 90s. So I took my Shadowpriest last night for example from 92 to 94 in two full rounds of the event. As far as the rest of the game there is still a ton of stuff I want to do, that mostly centers around running older content and collecting appearances. To say I am looking forward to the Legion Launch is a bit of an understatement.

Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV on the other hand has fallen a little bit by the wayside. It is that game that I am logging into only to raid… which ironically is traditionally my stance with World of Warcraft. I am loving the Monday night raid team, and we are now starting to do more serious content. I still have little to no drive however to level or gear, at least until the content we are doing requires it. That might be a thing that happens soon because we have pretty much defeated all of the “easy” end game content and are now starting down the path of the more difficult stuff. However it feels amazing to have “the band back together” and doing raids together as a team.

Rift

At the very least right now I am logging in every day to participate in the Starfall Prophecy launch event, which is namely collecting prophecies that I can then later turn in for rewards. The pre-order bonus means that we will get access to some awesome stuff like the artifact finding mount, and I want to make sure I don’t miss out on any of that. Otherwise I need to really hunt for a group of players that are more active. I don’t want to disband the House Stalwart guild or anything, but I might consider moving Belghast off to another guild, because I would like to see Comet of Ahnket before the expansion lands since the lore seems like it will give me a headstart into understanding what is going on. Additionally I want to spend a sleepy afternoon at some point doing more Intrepid Adventures. Those things are just absolutely fun as hell and it is a style of “LFR” that I wish more games would look into implementing.

To The Returning and New

Diablo 3

As stated when I originally removed it from the list, I knew that it would be a limited time thing. With the beginning of this month came the launch of Season 7 of Diablo 3, and a return of several of us to actively playing again. This time around we do not have nearly the throng of players that we did with season six, but myself, Grace and Thalen are all fairly active. This time feels a little cheap though because we all seemed to opted for the fastest possible clearing class… or at least our view on that. The Demon Hunter is a powerhouse and one that you can get up and running insanely quickly. By the time we dinged 70 we were already pushing content hard and fast, and after roughly a weeks time I am now clearing greater rifts in the 50s like they are a cakewalk. The only question now is just how serious I am going to be on trying to get that extra stash slot. Right now there is so much going on, that I am afraid Diablo 3 is going to fall by the wayside.

Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go is something that did not even exist on my radar when I did the last “Recently Playing” and has been something that has dominated my life since. I have gone through the stages of grief with this game, and have reached a point where I continue to play it without really understanding why. I wrote the other day about some of my frustrations, and they are very real. However still… anytime I leave the house I check for nearby Pokemon each time I stop and get out of the car. As the heat starts to chill the hell out… and we no longer have 100 degree days I will probably start resuming my evening pokestrolls. However when it is 100 degrees at 9pm at night… it is just too damned hot to go out roaming too far. I hope this game gets some much needed changes, because the ones thusfar feel like they are taking it in the wrong direction. Niantic Labs still does not seem to understand that they made a MMO.

No Man’s Sky

This one is seriously brand new… but I have a feeling that over the coming weeks it is going to be a new obsession for me. I called it Interstellar Skyrim, and it invokes the same sort of feelings in me. The problem being… all of this is pending you can actually get it running on your machine. There are lots of problems ahead of this title before it reaches serious mass adoption, and I hope that in the coming weeks they can push through them. To say it has performance issues is the understatement of the century right now, and I am questioning my original plan to get this on the PC. That said I am committed at this point and still very much enjoying the experience.

To Those Parting

Destiny

I have so much love for Destiny, but for whatever reason I have drifted away from it in the last few weeks. In both the month of July and August I have not really played much, so I am temporarily removing it from the list. I know without a doubt in Mid-September when Rise of Iron hits, that I will be back and actively playing it again. In the meantime however I feel like I have gotten it out of my system for the moment. However if my friend Grace suddenly decides to start playing again, I will likely be right back there with guns a blazing. I think a huge part of it is that I really have not been spending all that much time up in my office where my Playstation 4 is, and instead hanging out on the sofa playing on my laptop. Much like when I remove Diablo 3 from the list… this is absolutely going to change in the coming months and I am sure I will have yet another resurgence.

ArcheAge

I feel like ArcheAge is a casualty of simply too much other stuff going on right now. At the beginning of July I had a bit of a renaissance with this game and managed to push through to fourty six… and then the content seemed to dry up a bit. The quests are still there, but they seem to be generally less plentiful, and the progress I was making felt a bit bogged down. As a result this sort of just fell by the wayside, and I am sure at some point I will reignite my fires for this game because at the end of the day I still very much like it. The biggest thing that came from this last journey is that I realized that PVP isn’t as big of a hurdle as I was expecting. I have technically spent the last dozen or so levels in pvp enabled areas… and really did not run into a single issue. Flagged players avoided me, and I avoided them and we continued questing along happily. At some point I am sure I will return, but for the time being I am removing it from my list of “active” games.

Long Time Coming

August 9, 2016 by Belghast

Bug Squish

ffxiv_dx11 2016-08-08 20-43-42-52

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.

ffxiv_dx11 2016-08-08 21-56-46-46

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

Wow-64 2016-08-09 06-00-10-36

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.

Weekend Rusty

August 6, 2016 by Belghast

Demon-Huntering

I promise that I had every intention of getting up this morning and writing a blog post immediately following breakfast. However the world had other plans… or more truthfully my friends Grace and Sol had other plans. Last night was the beginning of the Diablo 3 Season 7, but unlike so many other season starts I had other plans. Firstly yesterday was the birthday of my amazing wife, and I ended up taking off a half day to go out to lunch and then to a movie. We saw Ghostbusters, and I have things to say about that movie but it is probably going to be a discussion for another day. After that we came home briefly where my folks came over and brought a cake, and then it was off to a semi-monthly dinner with some of my wife’s siblings. By the time we got home it was after nine and after sitting down to start working on a character I found that I was fading extremely fast. So I only managed to make it to around level 25 before crashing, and during all of this… I forgot to take any screenshots for the blog. As a result I popped in early this morning with the purpose of taking a few screenshots and logging right back out. However this is the one where Grace and Sol invited me to a group… and when I joined and explained that I was only online to take a screenshot or two… they both “noped” and proceeded to drag me up in levels a bit.

As a result I am getting a late start to this whole weekend posting thing, which is not terribly surprising given that I have always had trouble staying on focus during the weekends. Something about getting up and milling around the house causes the morning to lack a clear sense of purpose. I think the key to the week days functioning at all is the fact that I get up and take a shower the moment I crawl out of bed, which serves to wake me up completely. This whole leisurely getting up, having breakfast, and nestling into the couch with my laptop business is a recipe for slacking off. Regardless I am blogging now because Grace decided to go out for coffee giving me a nice break in the leveling process to knock out this post. Firstly I am not nearly as pumped about D3 this season as I was in previous seasons. Right now there is just too much stuff going on that I want to be participating in. Namely at the moment my seeming fresh re-addiction to World of Warcraft. Tuesday we can start rolling Demon Hunters, and I figure that will pretty much be the end of my Diablo 3 season experience. Additionally I still have my Warlock that I am enjoying leveling, and I want to continue pushing it to 100 as soon as possible. At the moment I am knee deep in Talador around level 94, but once again I am doing the method of leveling where I jump zones as soon as possible so as soon as I hit 96 I will be shifting to Spires of Arak.

This feels very much like a scattered post and I guess in a way it is. I am so very not used to doing this weekend blogging thing. This is the first weekend post I have made since breaking my streak of blogging every single day in May. These couple of months have been more than enough to push me out of the habit. In truth I think I enjoy not blogging on the weekend because there is nothing really hanging over me. That isn’t strictly true I guess because I still end up having to edit and get posted the AggroChat episode each Sunday morning, but that at least gives me Saturday to be relatively carefree. From a standpoint of our lifestyle it has been pretty huge as well because it means that my wife and I can get up and around and go out and do things, without having to wait for the inspiration to hit me… and a blog post to mysteriously appear on the page and get posted. So while I am doing this for Blaugust I absolutely expect to return to posting week days once the month of August is over. I am a prime example of trying to find a livable schedule to blog on, and this is a huge part of why I decided to do the more chill version of the initiative. Sure we can push ourselves to come up with thirty one blog posts, and it is an interesting exercise… but if the end result is resentment towards your blog or blaugust in general then I think the overall mission of promoting blogging on a schedule has failed. For the time being however I am returning to my games and calling this post to a close.