Diablo Franchise Archives - Page 35 of 54

Regularly Playing: November 2019 Edition

March 7, 2025November 8, 2019 by Belghast

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last Regularly Playing column. The idea behind this is that I throw out and update once a month talking about what I am playing and what has faded away. It also serves as an opportunity for me to “true up” my regularly playing widget in the sidebar of this blog. However had I updated at the beginning of October you would have largely just seen a single entry for Destiny 2. I was in a pretty unhappy place with Blizzard and it really made me not want to spend much time writing about what I was doing other than Destiny.

However we have a new month and with it comes some new perspectives. I’ve allowed myself to step back from that precipice even though I feel like a bit of a fraud for doing so. I was making myself unhappy by dwelling so much on the bad feelings. I am back dipping my toe into Blizzard things, but I am still largely feeling awful for doing so. However lets get to the list so I can start talking more about each one of them.

To Those Remaining

I’ve been playing an excessive amount of Destiny 2 and if you have read my blog over the last month or so you will have noticed this. Destiny is in a truly amazing state right now and the Cross Save functionality has created this hotbed of players on the PC platform. Over night it seems that PC went from the lowest population platform to the highest as folks are taking advantage of just how much better the experience is on the PC as opposed to the aging console generation. I still only have a handful of people regularly playing but it helps greatly to have Thalen who is also going through a similar renaissance. I’ve more or less given up on most of the AggroChat crew understanding or even latching onto how great this game.

This game was periodically off the menu… but as soon as I eased up on my stance regarding the Blizzard/Hong Kong situation it was one of the first things I logged into. With all of the news about Diablo 4 it has renewed my interests in playing some Diablo 3. I more or less failed miserably at this season but I did managed to knock out the cosmetics for it. I am hoping to get back on track with the new season starting soon and return to semi-regularly playing this with Grace.

This continues to be a nightly thing that I play as I am winding down from the day. I am not super active in it, but generally speaking I play enough each night to knock out the daily objectives. I am not sure what it is about this pattern that I find relaxing but generally speaking as I am wrapping up the last few things I am finding myself fighting to stay awake and can lay down the tablet and slumber peacefully. The release cadence as I have said before really is the piece that keeps me engaged, and the fact that I get a gacha summon pretty often through simply playing the game normally. They are not getting money from me, but they are getting a bunch of active usage.

I’m leaving this one on the list but I have to admit it is hanging by a thread here. I initially stopped playing Classic over the Hong Kong incident as I stopped playing any Blizzard games. However upon resuming play I am finding it exceptionally hard to get back into the slower pace of this game. I’ve become used to the run and gun pace of Destiny 2 and my brain is sorta fighting back against this. I had some experience with this when I came back to Classic after the launch of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep. In theory I probably need a bit more time to figure out how to slide back in and resume my path to 60.

To The New And Returning

While I am in a bit of a holding pattern thanks to activity in Destiny 2, I eased into The Outer Worlds a few weekends ago and am looking forward to maybe getting in and playing some more this weekend. This is pretty much the perfect logical successor to my favorite of the Fallout series, New Vegas. It is a weird remix of Fallout, Firefly, Bioshock and Mass Effect and were I not as addicted to Destiny as I currently am it would have become my primary game. I am sure I will get back in and play some more, hopefully prior to the podcast on Saturday.

This is one I did not expect, but after my ceasing of hostilities towards Blizzard… I am finding myself playing a lot more of Retail than I am of Classic. I got in the other night and did the 15th anniversary quests, but I am also finding myself just running around on the Demon Hunter a bit. The other thing I found odd was that I attempted to log into my Alliance characters and found myself turning my nose up at them because they just didn’t feel right. I guess I made a legitimate transition over to The Horde at some point? I blame Grace.

To Those Departing

I am sure I will pick this game back up at some point but I have had another things on my mind. In truth I will always be more of an MMO player than I ever am a purveyor of Single Player games. This one will get attention because I still have yet to beat it. I just haven’t been in the mood for it of late.

I am sorry Shadowbringers… you suffered a cruel fate at the hands of WoW Classic and never quite recovered. I know there is a new patch, with new content to experience… but I am also not exactly finding myself rushing back to play it. I am not exactly sure what it is with this game but I go through this cycle after the release of an expansion. I play it hard and heavy for awhile… level two characters… and then disappear. It happened to some extent with Heavensward but absolutely both Stormblood and Shadowbringers saw me in exactly the same pattern. Once the overarching story was completed, my desire to keep playing dissipated.

I’ve also found myself simply not logging into Magic the Gathering Arena. This is a game that desperately needs a tablet friendly version. If that existed I would spend way more of that “before bedtime” tablet gaming playing Arena. As it stands when I am at a PC there are just other games I would rather be playing. I’ve also not felt nearly as connected with either War of the Spark or the Eldraine expansions as I have with previous themes. I loved Ixalan, and I think it might go down as probably my favorite non-Dominaria plane we visited. Return to Return to Ravnica felt weirdly watered down as though it were a subject that had been just spread too thin. I am sure I will return at some point but for right now it leaves the list.

You just never had a chance did you Iceborne. You launched at a bad time for me when my attentions were drawn elsewhere to WoW Classic. Then you announced the release of the PC version and I more or less decided to wait. The PC version really is the best version of the game and I found myself just struggling to get used to using a controller again. I am sorry that we just couldn’t come to a workable arrangement. I will see you in January.

Summary

Hopefully I can get back on the wagon of keeping this updated at the beginning of each month. We have a lot of familiar faces on the list in spite of a few of those exiting. I am sure for example I will play through the new patch content in FFXIV at some point, but that point is not now and it is not even really on my radar. My goal is to finish up The Outer Worlds and try and ease back into WoW Classic. However I have a bad habit of abandoning my goals.

Regularly Playing: September 2019 Edition

March 7, 2025September 6, 2019 by Belghast

For those who are new to this blog, I run a semi-monthly column of sorts where I track what I have been playing over the previous month. This does a few things but largely it allows me to track over the course of the years what I have been into at a given time. My blog serves as a bit of a record to jog my memory and help me firmly plant when certain events are happening. Also it allows my readers a window into what I am up to and what my thoughts are about a thing in short form. I also generally try and use this moment in time as a point to “true up” my sidebar widget.

To Those Remaining

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – PC / Switch

This one is sorta hanging on by a thread at this point, not for want of desire but more for lack of time. I have however booted it up and made a bit more progress over the past month as well as starting the Switch version. Word of warning, I would say if you are ONLY going to buy a single version of this game, maybe don’t buy the Switch version. It has some slowdown issues and the graphical fidelity are not up to snuff from what I have been used to with the PC version. As it stands I own copies of this I believe for every platform… largely because I want to support the hell out of this title and see more games in this series released.

I have been playing considerably more of Destiny 2 than I had in the months leading up to now. There is a bunch of exciting stuff happening not the least of which is the enabling of Cross Save. I can now play my guardian on every single console platform in addition to the PC and have gone through the process of moving my character from Battle.net to Steam. I am super pumped about the launch of Shadowkeep coming up in October. Of note if you have ever played the PC version then it would behoove you to go through the process of moving your character from BNet to Steam because after October 1st it will not longer be accessible through the BNet client.

I legitimately thought this one would be leaving my list this month. A new season started at the tail end of August and with the impending launch of World of Warcraft Classic a few days later, I fully expected to just skip out on this season. However I found myself once again logging in on a Friday night for the ritual Grace and I have maintained for the last several seasons. It is enough of a thing that it felt weird NOT to be playing Diablo 3 on an opening night. I had a lot of fun and we ran Demon Hunters just to make the season a little easier to complete. I’ve made it as far as unlocking the seasonal rewards and I am not sure if I will push any further.

This one is going to likely maintain a permanent slot on my list. Unfortunately I don’t really have any new screenshots because I no longer play on my phone where it is super easy to take screenshots. On my Galaxy Tab S4 I have to do a complicated volume down and power button to take a shot so I never do it. On my ZTE Axon 7 phone it is a 3 finger gesture to take a shot, and I am wondering if there is a way to restore that functionality to the tablet with an application or something. This game keeps my attention because they keep rolling out new events, with either brand new or revisiting boss encounters for me to play with. I pretty much play enough each night to complete the daily objectives and then head to sleep.

I went from hot and heavy to barely at all on this one. I got in, completed the Shadowbringers story and leveled the Warrior to 80 and my Samurai to 80 as well. Then I disappeared once again because other things released that pulled away my attention. I will continue to play this it fits and spurts for the remainder of this month I am certain, because my attention is being funneled super hard away from almost everything else that I have on my plate. I would really like to level a Magic DPS and a Healer so that I can see all of the Shadowbringers role quests. Still a great game I just am waiting on more story content to drag me back into it.

My attention span for this game has been limited this month, but with the upcoming release content for Throne of Eldraine and the Brawl event happening right now I want to poke my head back in. I have to say though I would play this WAY more if I could play it from my Tablet. My winding down and bed routine would probably include a quick rush through Dragalia dailies and then a few matches of MTGA. I feel like they are missing out on a lot by not having a tablet client, though I guess in theory I could stream this from bed with Parsec. I should investigate how feasible that really is. I sorta wish that I could configure Parsec to work in a sort of console friendly mode where instead of my desktop I am presented with a board of icons of applications to launch.

To The New and Returning

I am a sucker. I did in fact buy this on the PS4 to be able to play it now… when I would way rather have just waited to play it on the PC. The PC version is so superior to the PS4 version for my purposes… however for some reason Capcom is maintaining a staggered schedule of releases. I still love the game and as a result they are getting two purchases from me. I am what is wrong with games and I know I should feel ashamed. I am honestly not sure how much time I will have to devote to this but I really want to poke around and try and get used to a PS4 Controller again.

This is the grand daddy of all things on this list and is consuming the most of my time. As of last night I hit 28 on my Undead Warrior and am about halfway to 29. I have plans already made to run Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Deep tonight with guildies, and this game is dominating my headspace at the moment. I cannot fully explain why it feels so good but god does it feel good to be back in Vanilla WoW. I knew I would be playing it because Grace had never gotten to experiment, but on some level I fully expected it just to be the two of us running around and doing nonsense. Instead we have a legitimately large guild full of friends all seemingly digging this experience. Long live House Kraken!

To Those Departing

This one largely lost focus somewhere around the Earth Shrine. I probably will return to it because I really like the idea of legitimately playing this without the Four Job Fiesta rules. That said on some level I agree with Ash on this one that the rules actually improve the game. Right now I feel like I need to do all of the things to min-max my characters, whereas playing under the rules dictates my actions. It limits the scope of what is available and causes me to focus on specific strategies. That said now that I know this is a reasonable option I might sign on next year for the Fiesta from my tablet. I just wish this version synced with any other version of the game so I could pop between playing on the PC for example and the tablet. Everything should have cross save.

Summary

The last several months have been pretty stable to be honest with not a lot of changes happening. Mostly a few things shift into focus as a few other things fall out of focus. I expect this month will be about World of Warcraft Classic with a side dish of Monster Hunter World Iceborne and a little bit of Destiny 2 especially as we get closer to the launch of Shadowkeep. Destiny has made me wish that literally every game had cross save if not cross play. I am mostly fine with having to buy a client for each platform, but I would love to be able to carry my characters over to it. There is no reason why Diablo 3 on the switch couldn’t have connected to Battle.net for example, and I have zero excitement over Overwatch Switch as it stands because I fully expect that it will not be connected to Battle.net either. I want more ability to play with my friends on the characters I have already spent time building, because quite frankly I don’t generally have enough bandwidth to level something new.

Regularly Playing: July 2019 Edition

July 3, 2019 by Belghast

For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing” where I attempt to update the sidebar on my blog. This is the second month where I am trying to do this at the beginning of the month rather than remembering to do it towards the end of a month. June was a pretty stable month as far as game playing, and effectively there is really nothing much changing in the mix. However I am still going to go through the actions of this post to keep myself in the habit.

To Those Remaining

I am completely in love with this game. I’ve written so much about it recently, but effectively this is as thought you had sat down immediately after creating Symphony of the Night and just kept going on and adding in all of the features you ever wanted in the game. The experience is flawless, and while I am hearing there are issues with the Switch port, I am too busy making my way through the PC experience to care. They have all the time in the world to fix that. I have gotten the “bad” ending, and now am trying to work on better endings.

I went on a brief binge of playing this game and then once again got distracted by something else. I want to return to playing on a more regular basis, but I am going to have to burn down some of the other games I am working on to free up the mental bandwidth. Bungie is doing a great job of stewarding the game into this new era and I am looking forward to some of the changes that are coming with the new expansion. The game is in a great place, so well worth checking out.

This is still very much in the rotation because I have more objectives to accomplish during this season. I’ve completed one conquest which can be seen in the above screenshot, involving collecting a 50 million gold streak. The next up is going to be doing a bunch of GR55s as multiple classes. I still have yet to master any set dungeons so I should probably knock that out soon as well. Essentially I got distracted but I still very much want the penultimate reward this season.

This game is effectively my night cap. I crawl into bed and spend 10-15 minutes playing this on my tablet before eventually closing the lid and going to sleep. Dragalia Lost lives in this weird place where it is just engaging enough to keep me playing on a regular basis… and not engaging enough to keep me playing it constantly to the point of burning out. In part the later part is in thanks to its mobile mechanics which favor short bursts of play rather than extended play cycles. Whatever the case going on two years I am still doing this thing.

I am playing nowhere near as much as this game deserves but I am still periodically logging in to move the needle forward. Right now I am deeply distracted by all of the other games that are on the market and calling my attention. I will return to you at some point when a lull happens to continue adventures in Morrowind proper.

I am completely back on my bullshit folks… and loving it. Just prior to the launch of Shadowbringers I found a way to get re-engaged and as a result I think the expansion thus far has been all the more meaningful. I am not sure what else I can really say about this that I have not already said in a bunch of recent blog posts. Final Fantasy XIV is a lovingly curated game experience, and I am enjoying the hell out of the ride.

This month I have not spent an awful lot of time playing, but it is still on the list of things that I dive into when I want something more quiet and contemplative. I am not entirely certain this one is ever really going to leave the proper rotation, at least not for the time being. The pace of magic sets being released really reinforces the need to keep popping ones head back into the game every so often. Yesterday Core 20 was released, so I need to pop in and check it out.

To the New and Returning

For the very first time in the history of this column of sorts… I don’t have any new games being added to the mix. I reached a point of stasis this month and for the time being it is a pretty great mix of titles to be engaged in.

To Those Departing

Once again… nothing to see here. I didn’t out and out stop playing anything this month but continued largely playing the same things.

Honorable Mentions

This one is sliding in as an honorable mention and not something new… because quite frankly I don’t think I will be spending any more time with the game. Wizards Unite released for mobile platforms and represents an attempt to capture the same magic as Pokemon Go… but with the Harry Potter IP. I feel like they have failed to do that, and as a result have created a fairly cumbersome and often times unfun experience. It is worth mentioning, but only just.

A lot of my bandwidth was taken up by watching the E3 coverage unfurl, and as a result I am giving it an honorable mention as well. It was not a great show, but there were several gems. The new Commander Keen game is not really ones of them, but I am just in part happy see ANYTHING to do with that IP. It was probably a toss up between Microsoft and Square for who had the best showing, and then everything else falls down significantly after that.

Avarice and Guns

June 14, 2019 by Belghast

Over the course of this week my blog has largely been devoted to E3 show coverage, or at least that thing that I call coverage where I talk about the things I personally cared about. In the background it has also been a pretty crazy week with a good deal of my time going to trying to catch up all on things E3 instead of actually playing games. This was only complicated by the fact that Tuesday night I went to the rebroadcast of RiffTrax live which is all sorts of wrong name-wise. Then on Wednesday night we met some of my in-laws for an early Father’s Day dinner. Which largely left Monday and last night free… but Monday I more or less spent the night cobbling together the footage needed for the Tuesday post.

Over the weekend I finally reached a point where I was ready to make a run at the Avarice Conquest. For the uninitiated this conquest requires you to hit a 50,000,000 gold streak which means every couple of seconds you need to be looting more gold to keep it active. There are a few ways to do this in game, but the most sure fire method requires copious amounts of farming. Since this takes so much time I absolutely went for the overkill method and gathered up a vault and a half worth of stuff… or in my case 8 rows of 7 caches equally 56 bounty caches.

Now the gotcha here is that a bounty cache retains a memory of what difficulty it was looted on and I started banking the caches when I first became able to farm Torment 13 and quickly worked my way up to 15 and 16… and had not really been paying much attention as to which difficulty I got them on. The key to doing this is to dismiss your companion and dismiss your pet… then stand beside your stash and be ever so careful to not touch anything until you are ready to go. I started by loading every bounty I could fit into my inventory and then reloaded the rest without moving at all. For sake of my own sanity I held down the Shift button while opening the Stash to make sure the game would not accept a movement input from me.

The real challenge however… was doing the cleanup. What you see above is somewhat of a lie, because each one of those items actually represents a stack. At this point I had completed a Solo Greater Rift 80 which I believe took my blood shard capacity up to 1300, and I am pretty sure I made twenty trips between Kadala and the bloodshard pile before I finally farmed those down. I probably crunched over a hundred legendaries and I have no clue at all how much I had in the way of crafting materials. Which is good because I also needed the various Kanai’s Cube related achievements as well. I am essentially in a point with Season 17 where I have knocked out a good chunk of most of the remaining steps, but need to spend some time playing clean up and actually start finishing them. I need two more conquests, and I have not even set my signs on what those are going to be yet.

The other game I have spent a bit of time in lately is Destiny 2 and I am largely working on getting my light level up enough to be able to feel like I have some semblance of choice weapon wise. Right now I am largely just using whatever trash happens to drop with a higher level because I do not have a great stockpile of infusion materials. Now the interesting part of this is that I have picked up some weapons that I have found I actually enjoy and probably never would have played with otherwise… like the submachine gun I am current wielding in my primary slot.

I still find it very hard to get into the Crucible, and whereas I played Gambit constantly it feels like the queues for standard gambit are extremely long. I am however trying to plug away at the various tasks that will give me “powerful gear”. Like I knocked out the planetary quest last night and did a heroic adventure… then plugged away a bit at the crucible related bounties. I will say it is really odd getting to the activity tracker off the map screen because I keep wanting to see it on my inventory. Quite honestly I would prefer if they put that tab in both places, because it takes a lot of retraining to stop looking for those items in my inventory. Still having an awful lot of fun in Destiny 2, but I probably should be playing Final Fantasy XIV and prepping for the impending launch of Shadowbringers.

What have you been playing on regular rotation? Drop me a comment below.