Finally Turquoise

A Stronger Message

Yesterday various things happened, and it left me feeling like I needed to present a slightly stronger message about my feelings regarding issues.  I still stand by my statement earlier in the week that everyone simply needs to be excellent to one another, and that would go a long ways in fixing issues.  Since then some things have happened and I feel like I need to make a blanket statement about a few things.  First off I support equality and diversity in gaming and in pretty much everything else in life.  I tend to think of myself as a Humanist, and I would like to think that I give everyone out there an equal shake.  I believe human beings are infinitely wonderful things, and that we should treat each other with respect.

Similarly I like that gaming is slowly becoming a more inclusive place.  I am almost 40 years old at this point, and I’ve watched gaming come in and out of acceptance several times and I figure with the influx of mobile devices, it isn’t much more different than every family owning an Atari 2600 or a Nintendo Entertainment System.  Gaming has no less meaning today than it did when those events happened.  So I feel like there is room in gaming for anyone who cares to pick up a game and play it.  As such I totally support all sorts of games, even the games that folks have been calling “non-games” like Gone Home an Depression Quest.  I come from an era when games didn’t have graphics, so I don’t see something like Depression Quest being all that different from a text based adventure game like Zork, and without it… and MUDs you all would not have the games that you likely love today.

Finally I feel like this most recent controversy is a deeply confused situation.  I feel like there are most definitely people who in earnest believe that this is a fight about journalistic integrity.  The problem is there is so much *ism being thrown into the discussion by folks supposedly supporting the cause that any sane and cogent discussion gets pushed out.  So far the best run down of the entire issue is in this topic, where someone interviewed a bunch of members of the movement trying to find a thread of commonality.  I highly suggest you give it a read, because I found it informative and coming out of it I have a better understanding of the intent.  The problem is based on a huge informational dump that came out today…  the noble members of this movement apparently were in fact being played by the very same folks they claimed not to support.  It seems as though the woman for whom their outrage started this entire thing, really was a Social Justice Rogue… and I use that term with ultimate respect in what she managed to pull off.

#IStandWithGanondorf

Finally Turquoise

ffxiv 2014-09-05 18-20-18-962 Now that I got my statement out of the way, and feel that I have underlined and bolded my views on the situation.  On to really important things like the fact that I finally… after spending like 60k buying fruit and then growing my own batch and using almost all of it… managed to get to Turquoise.  I have to say it is absolutely glorious to behold, and now I just need to either farm Leviathan for a barb and collect all the mats to get the Tidal Barding crafted… or hope the market prices go down to a place where I can afford to buy it.  It does make me exceedingly happy to scamper about on the mount while grinding FATEs for my atma bits.  At this point I have three more zones left:  Middle La Noscea, East Shroud, and North Shroud.

The method that finally managed to get me there was in fact the spreadsheet.  The problem is the method is not infallible.  I think this is in part due to the fact that you get slightly randomized bits of color per fruit fed.  So instead of hitting Turquoise green on the first try I hit Apple Green.  I used the sheet to figure out the colors I needed to add to that to get to Turquoise and then BAM! I finally worked.  Generally speaking there will be a 2-4 fruit spread where the sheet will “guess” that you will arrive at the color you want.  Initially I was feeding the bare minimum to hit the color, but it seems safer to overfeed a fruit to hit more in the middle of that range.  If you don’t play FFXIV and the chocobo dyeing game… this all sounds like madness… and more often than not it is.  I hit my goal color and am supremely happy for the time being.

Nightmare Tides

I have not really played much rift for the better part of a year now, but once again it is expansion time and I find myself eyeing the game.  Storm Legion more or less was a bust for me.  It featured a couple of extremely interesting early zones, and a whole slew of extremely grindy later zones.  I realize this is odd to hear me complaining about grinding when I am so happily grinding away for an Atma weapon.  The problem with Storm Legion however is it felt much like the Veteran ranks in Elder Scrolls Online feel…  grinding without purpose and progress.  It took an immense amount of time to push through the levels from around 56 to 60, and while I have made it through on two characters… I have lacked the drive to do it again on either my Cleric or my Mage.  This expansion however drops the 10 level grind to a 5 level one, and I am hoping that it becomes more manageable.  I know I will likely be playing this, as I am far more interested in it than I am say Warlords of Draenor.

I don’t really plan on having a big rallying cry to get folks into the game.  Quite honestly I would prefer if everyone stuck in Final Fantasy XIV and playing it happily.  I want to stay playing FFXIV regardless of away missions out into Destiny or even Rift.  I am of the opinion that had I not worn myself out doing NaNoWriMo I likely would not have left Final Fantasy XIV in the first place,  and never ventured back into World of Warcraft.  That might just be my brain revising the facts of the time, but it seems reasonable.  I remember very much being unable to get into the game after a night of writing hard and fast to hit the goals.  Anyways in any case…  I would prefer Final Fantasy XIV to be my base of operations, and not Rift.  That is not to say however that I am not intrigued by the content.  I still have a whole bundle of good feelings about the game and the company behind it.  I guess time will tell if I plunk down the money to play it, but I feel like October 8th the announced release date will be here before we know it.  Also I feel like it is pretty damned brave to be releasing against the Warlords juggernaut.

#Rift #FFXIV

Pairing Down

The Struggle

One of the biggest challenges about this whole “blog every day” concept is that some mornings there is just nothing at all in my head to talk about.  When I am sick like I was yesterday, I tend to turtle and pull my head up inside my shell, disconnecting me from the interwebs and all of you fine people.  Unfortunately when my biggest source of inspiration is gone, I can get a little bit of writers block.  It is mornings like this that I feel outline the importance of just allowing yourself to write whatever happens to pop into your head.  It might not be epic and exciting, but it is staying true to the mission as a whole.  Unfortunately we are well based the NBI 2014 initiative, otherwise I would spin this into some sort of an inspirational post about struggling through.

This is not a slight in any way to the previous NBI groups, but I have been really impressed with just how tenacious the Class of 2014 has been.  Generally speaking there is a significant drop off the month after the initiative as folks take a massive breather after having survived being the focus of so many folks attention.  When the spotlight fades a bit, it is rough to keep posting when you inevitably notice fewer people are reading.  However this group either is blissfully oblivious to the existence of blog statistics, or they really are writing for themselves, because they seem to still be going strong.  A few of the “newbies” are among the most prolific posters in my blog reader, and I am amped to still see them enjoying the whole experience.

Pairing Down

WoWScrnShot_061314_062051Right now I have come to realize that I am playing entirely too many MMOs to feel like I am making any significant progress in any of them.  Over the last two months I’ve played Warlords of Draenor, Rift, ArcheAge, Wildstar, Star Wars the Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, Defiance, Everquest II, Landmark, The Secret World, Diablo 3, Lego Minifigures Online and Trove.  While I embrace the whole polygamerous thing, I think even for me this is a bit too much especially when you throw in League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm on top of those… and occasionally some Hex and Hearthstone.  Mostly I think I need to drop some of the games that feel similar to me from the rotation, or at least games that scratch the same itch.

rift 2014-02-13 06-28-10-40 I feel like I have to keep testing Warlords of Draenor in part out of remembrance for River, and him being so damned excited to have gotten into the alpha process.  While I won’t be playing with the same wide eyed amusement that he would have, I am trying my best to enjoy the experience in his honor.  However I can safely say that I will not be playing the actual live World of Warcraft anytime in the near future.  I think maybe WoW has run its course with me for awhile, and Wildstar has stepped in to take its place in my heart without me really wanting it to.  Wildstar really is a much better version of WoW, and I am just embracing that fact.  As a result Rift and SWTOR are also losing out, because to me they still fill the same “wow-like” niche.  As a result I won’t be renewing my patron account in Rift.

The Non-WoW Itch

ARCHEAGE 2014-05-08 20-13-50-11It was fun trying to get into Defiance, but the problem is I got into the Destiny alpha… and it was pretty much everything I had hoped Defiance would be.  So I won’t be spending much more time trying to get into that game when I know there is something I will like much better coming later this year.  ArcheAge I want to like, but it has without a doubt the worst community of griefers I have experienced anywhere.  So unless Trion comes out and announces there will be a co-op server… it is pretty much a nonstarter for me and no sense really spending much more time on it.  Landmark on the other hand has an amazing community, but right now there just isn’t much game there for me to play.  They have built this amazing crafting sandbox, but without combat it isn’t all that interesting to me past the initial build phase.  They have added caves so I figure at some point I will poke  my head back in, but exploration without combat just sounds boring to me.  I’ve officially allowed my claim to be repossessed at this point.

EverQuest2 2013-10-02 06-37-39-56 I still have a special place in my heart for Everquest II, and I can’t say I won’t return to it in the future… but for now I think there are just too many other options.  EQ2 was one of those games where I hated the combat system but loved everything else about it.  Wildstar with its systems within systems is really filling the niche that EQ2 always did, which might be why it is feeling so sticky considering it is replacing both EQ2 and WoW for me.  The Secret World is one of those games I love to remember fondly, but never seem to have a desire to log into on a regular basis.  I know there is a bunch of storyline that I have yet to participate in, and I keep thinking that some weekend I will play through all of it.  That weekend just has yet to arrive, and lately the only time I seem to log in is when I get new hardware and want to test how it performs.

The Also Rans

Diablo III 2014-03-06 22-07-06-52 Diablo 3 is enjoyable, and at some point I would really like to get a crusader to 70…  hell I would like to get my monk to 70.  I just struggle to find any drive to play it when my own personal internet zeitgeist… aka the folks I hang out on voice chat nightly, are not also playing it.  It was really fun up until the release of Elder Scrolls Online and then boom we all vacated the premises.  For the time being I am pretty much crossing it off my list until there is another upwelling of desire among my friends to play it.  Trove is similarly really fun, but without a lot of people that I know playing it on a regular basis I have fallen back out of love with it.  I will likely continue to poke my head into the game irregularly but when I do play… so much has changed that the experience feels very off-putting.  The game is in a pretty much constant state of flux, which is awesome if you are devoted to this game, but confusing if you are a “sometimes” player like me. Play 2014-03-14 10-12-29-25 League of Legends will be a permanent fixture in my gaming rotation so long as I have friends who are devoted to playing it.  I don’t necessarily love the game, but I enjoy playing with my friends.  I personally like Heroes of the Storm so much better, but the problem is with it being in a limited release “technical alpha” state there just are not enough people around regularly to play with.  The MOBA genre is really only fun for me if I am playing with a group of friends, and in this scenario League wins out every time.  That is not to say that I won’t keep poking my head into Heroes especially as they add new waves of players.  As far as Hearthstone and Hex…  I am back playing Magic the Gathering in real life with friends at lunch time…  so the draw of these games is minimal right now.

Those Who Made the Cut

WildStar64 2014-06-20 22-30-01-908 So after spending all of this time culling games for this or that reason, I figure I should talk about the games I am deciding to keep in the rotation.  Warlords of Draenor I am actually enjoying when I do manage to get in and play it.  So yes I am partially doing it in honor of River, and his desire to be in the Alpha, but there is something charming about the new content.  I don’t feel like it will be enough to keep me in WoW, but for the time being I am enjoying it while I can.  Wildstar has pretty much filled the corner of my heart that desire to play a theme park MMO, and it really is the most glorious theme park of experiences once you give yourself over to it.  I feel like I have barely scratched the surface on what it has to offer, and I am intrigued at the schedule they have put out before us.  I really like that they are choosing to put in “hardmode” single and small group content before augmenting the raid game.  That says a lot that they understand that they need to focus on both going forward to keep players.

eso 2014-02-23 12-41-25-63 I still feel like I have so much more that I want to do in Elder Scrolls Online.  I want to finish the Aldmeri Dominion content and see the Ebonheart Content, as well as spend time exploring Craglorn.  I love this game even though I am not playing it much, and I can’t see dropping it from the rotation anytime soon.  I realize that not many players feel the same way about the game as I do, but really for me it is like the best possible version of Skyrim.  I have been out so long at this point that I feel like I am going to be extremely rusty.  There game has problems, namely it is awkward as hell to do anything as a group other than Cyrodil.  They really need to fix this, and I hope that the good folks at Zenimax are looking into things like mentoring.  Right now it is a really awesome single player experience, but gets cludgy when you start adding in more people.  That said it still does have amazing dungeon design, and there are so many of them that I have yet to experience.

LMO 2014-06-23 06-41-14-037 Last but not least is a game that has come in and taken my heart by storm.  Lego Minifigures Online is absolutely adorable and I love everything about this game.  Last night this was the only thing I actually played, and grouped up with Rae she managed to catch me up almost to her level in experience.  Right now we have a vastly different set of mini figures, and it is really enjoyable to group together.  We have both opted to get memberships, and the pocket dungeons are awesome… some of them ending up extremely challenging like the Dragon’s Lair dungeon with I think five different boss fights in it.  I’ve already gotten more than my moneys worth of enjoyment out of it, so this is definitely going to be in my weekly rotation for a long while.  It basically scratches the itch that Diablo 3 did, and cashes in on my absolute love of all things Lego.

So there you have it, going forward I am mostly going to be focused on Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online and Lego Minifigures Online.  I of course reserve the right to change my mind and undo all of these in the blink of an eye.  That said I do have a ton of single player games that I want to play through, and both the PS3 and PS4 ready to stream content.  I spent a good chunk of the weekend playing Assassin’s Creed 4 for example… and I am absolutely horrible at it, but enjoying myself quite a bit.  As far as online games, I am going to try and limit myself to just these games above for the time being.  I know in September I will be digging into Destiny and playing that online with friends quite a bit, but it doesn’t directly conflict with the types of games I chose above.  Maybe with this abbreviated list, I won’t constantly feel overwhelmed when I sit down at night and try and figure what exactly I am going to do.`

Uniblade Get

Scrounging for Copper

Landmark64 2014-06-03 19-20-49-284 The above picture pretty much accurately represents the last several times I have played Landmark.  Generally speaking it is on a Tuesday evening when I realize that my claim upkeep will be running out shortly.  So I log in and make a mad dash around the area surrounding my claim to scrounge up enough copper to pay the upkeep for another week.  Generally speaking I only spend just enough time in game to gather the 4800 copper I believe that is required to unlock another 8 days of upkeep.  It really wasn’t until last night that this process started to grate on my nerves, and I began to question what exactly I am trying to protect.  In theory I could get my claim repossessed and be free of this burden…  but as of yet I have not wanted to give up my “prime real estate” next to the spires.

Landmark64 2014-06-04 06-14-48-975 I guess the thing is I haven’t been super into the game since the end of Alpha and the wipe that lead into Closed Beta.  My previous claim I was extremely happy with, this one I am not sure quite what to do with it.  It is this hulking monstrosity that I have zero desire to decorate further.  I have reached a point where Landmark just isn’t that fun for me right now, or more so there just isn’t enough “game” there yet.  What they have is this great rules driven building game, but after a point building stuff becomes stale.  I look at all the harvest time I would have to sink in to be able to build the things that I would want to build… and I simply am unwilling to devote the time.  I feel like maybe once combat goes in, that the game might be more tangible for me, that it might feel like there is a purpose to what I am doing.  It was amazing just how strong of an incentive “protecting against monster attacks” was to spur on my building sprees in Minecraft.  For the time being however I am seriously considering harvesting up all of the stone and other resources used on my claim and just letting it get repossessed this week.  That way I could mark one game off my list until it becomes interesting again.

No More Loot Boxes

rift 2014-05-08 06-09-17-50 Another decision I have made is to drop my Rift patron status.  I’ve subscribed to this game for pretty much all of the time it has been out on the market save for about three months.  There is so much that I still like about Rift, but at the same time I just have no drive to play it.  I have a ritual of logging in every Wednesday to collect the weekly patron gift, opening it… seeing if I get any cool armor and then logging right back out.  Since I have geared both my Warrior and my Rogue in this fashion… and I have faltered at leveling my Cleric, I just can’t justify keeping up the patron status for a game I really have not played much at all in the last year.  I have 90 days left of patron status, so I might in that time change my mind, but presently I just don’t have enough people to play the game with to make it worth my while.

One of the things that worked out differently than I had hoped with Patron status is the way that loyalty and cash shop currency accrued.  That first year when I picked up a year long subscription, I had a massive amount of loyalty and a ton of cash shop currency to blow through as part of the free to play conversion.  I made the mistake of assuming that the same thing would happen when I picked up this past years patron status.  One of the things I expect out of a free to play “subscription” plan is a month allotment of cash shop currency.  Since this isn’t a thing in Rift, I really don’t see much benefit in keeping up the Patron status.  Additionally I expected another huge boost to my loyalty level from subbing for another year, and that didn’t happen either.  For the time being I will simply play the game like a free to play player does until they give me reason to subscribe again.

Uniblade Get

WildStar64 2014-06-03 22-27-28-614 The last several days in Wildstar have been about one thing and one thing only…  trying to get to level 15 and trying to accumulate enough currency to buy a mount when I ding.  As a result I have completely ignored the crafting system and sold everything I could possibly sell in an attempt to buy my precious mount.  Was it worth the effort?  Well the jury is still out on that one, but I do like the looks of my Uniblade.  I figured this was the obvious choice for a Chua Engineer, especially since the “Hamster Ball” mount just did not feel dignified.  Right now the mount feels a little lackluster since it is only a 15% boost.  However it is cool that you can still sprint on a mount and that feels awesome as your engine revs up and such when you do it.  The physics of the Uniblade are a little weird, and I have to say I would have honestly rather had the Exiles Grinder mount instead… but all in all I am happy.  One bug I encountered is that apparently in order to buy the mount you have to have enough currency to cover the undiscounted price.  This means instead of the 1 gold 15 silver price listed you actually have to have something like 1 gold 65 silver to be able to cover the full price…  even though it will still only charge you the 1 gold 15 silver.

WildStar64 2014-06-03 22-49-08-220 Now that I have obtained my goal, I am going to be far more interested in random grouping.  I kind of wanted to meet up with people last night and group, but I was so focused on grinding out my level and trying to get as many saleable items as possible.  This meant doing much lower content than I should have been doing, since it rewards less experience but I was more likely to accumulate a lot of saleable items in the process.  One of the interesting things about Wildstar is that unlike World of Warcraft, you only seem to gain guild experience while grouped with other guildies.  This means that in order to unlock all of the perks like the guild bank, we are going to have to group together and go do content.  Now that I have level 15 I am really looking forward to trying the first dungeon… and I am imagining that it rewards a ton of guild experience.  My next goal is to find a decent weapon, as I am still using some random drop green.  My hope is that whatever dungeon quests exist I will maybe get a blue weapon from them.  I also need to do some research into which tanking abilities I need to do a dungeon.

Wildstar Groupage

Since we are taking the night off from Elder Scrolls Online my goal tonight is to get some Wildstar grouping going.  The goal is to resume the Cyrodil nights next Wednesday, and I hope to play quite a bit over the weekend as well.  I still want to see so much in Elder Scrolls, but face it… this is launch week for a new game, and for the most part folks are going to be playing it.  Tonight I want to focus on getting a group going with some Alliance of Awesome guildies and trying to gain lots of guild currency.  Zero clue what we will actually be doing, but here is hoping we can find another world boss like we did the other night.  If we have enough people it would be awesome to pop our heads into a dungeon.

#Landmark #Rift #Wildstar

Too Many Games

I’m a Cheater

Once again I am doing what I consider cheating… which is writing up a post at night that I intend to post in the morning.  Basically tomorrow is another one of those “ride in together” days, because directly after work we have a big end of school cookout thing to go to.  So I simply won’t have much time to do my faff about verbally thing tomorrow morning.  As such I am staging a post tonight, and doing the same thing everyone else… but for whatever reason I feel like I am somehow betraying the ritual by doing.  Today’s topic I have been kicking around for awhile, so I figure this is as good of a time to spring it on my adoring readers…  look I like to pretend I have adoring readers okay.

Too Many Games

Right now things have reached a sort of critical mass with me, and there are entirely too damned many games right now that I want to be playing.  This could not have hit at a worse time considering how busy the tail end of school is combined with the fact that we have weddings and graduations and such to attend.  Normally I feel like I can reasonably juggle three to four games at a time bouncing back and forth between them.  The other day I posted saying that multi-gaming was even an awesome thing to do… considering it kept you from getting bogged down in the decisions a game company makes that you don’t necessarily agree with.  However for me, I am spreading myself super thin with a ton of different activities that I want to be doing.  So today I am going out outline each of the games that I am playing and lament the things I would love to have time to do in them.

Elder Scrolls Online

eso 2014-05-23 19-34-45-037 Right now I still consider Elder Scrolls Online my primary game.  At roughly two months since headstart I am still very much loving this game.  It has some problems, namely with difficulty of grouping, but as far as the game itself goes I dig it massively.  I’m working my way through Auridon and slowly creeping up on Veteran Rank 2.  I have so much that I still want to do in this game, but lately my schedule has limited my time in it.  This is the type of game that I can only really play if I am fully focused on it, and this is doubly so with the veteran content.  Shit can go wrong in a heartbeat if you are not doing all the right things, so it means on the nights I am not feeling all that… I end up playing something else.

Wildstar

WildStar64 2014-05-14 17-55-10-794 This game is the new hotness it seems and it launches tomorrow, at least for the headstart folks.  I mostly preordered this game in case I decided I was in love with it, and I wanted to make sure I secured the preorder bonuses.  I really dig the pre-order house, and I did not care for anything in the Collectors Edition pack… so I went with the normal.  I am still so up in the air about this game… there are things I like and things I don’t like.  Right now I am simply not sure who is going to win out, however since everyone is playing it, and it scratches the same itch that World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic do… going to give it a good college try.

ArcheAge

archeage 2014-05-13 21-43-39-052 Speaking of games I am conflicted about…  welcome to ArcheAge.  I find so much about this game intriguing and repulsive at the same time.  It is this fusion of one of the most interesting games system wise and class wise… combined with one of the worst communities I have experienced.  This game has invented new ways for you to grief your fellow players… and this is the sort of thing I have zero interest in.  That alone would be enough to make me go running and screaming into the night… but the class system is so damned interesting to me.  I love the concept of “Rift without Restrictions” and that is pretty much what the open class system seems like.  It reminds me so much of the way the class system for Horizon worked… and that is a great thing.

Heroes of the Storm

Play 2014-03-14 07-51-05-19 I want so badly to be playing this game right now… but I also want so badly to not be playing this game with strangers.  The MOBA thing is one of those things that I really only enjoy if I am queuing with people I know.  That said supposedly the queue times are greatly improved with the new client.  If you are in the HoTS alpha… please let me know!  I need more people to queue with, and I feel horrible for being in this game when so many people want in… and not playing it much.

Defiance

Defiance 2014-05-29 06-30-42-873 The last few nights I have been playing this game again and really enjoying myself.  The whole shift in how I approach it has really helped quite a bit.  I would love to see more people playing it because I think it would be far more enjoyable to run around as a group.  I still have yet to really scratch the surface of any of the story content, and feel like I should do that.  Really enjoyed the first season of the television show, and would love to get caught up on the in game content before the next season starts.

Final Fantasy 5

VisualBoyAdvanceM 2014-05-22 21-56-13-507 At this point I am behind my friends in this game, and quite honestly I am struggling to get the oomph to play it.  That said I feel like I should really finish this game as part of the FF5 draft thing we did.  I feel like I would be a horrible person if I didn’t finish it.  That said I also know I am going to get talked into doing the Four Job Fiesta in a month…  so not sure if I will finish before then either.

Trove

Trove 2013-11-25 16-57-34-42 There is something about this game that makes my inner child squeal with glee.  Things are just so damned much fun, and the mob design is amazing.  That said I have been out so long and so much is changing on what seems to be a near weekly basis that I feel hopelessly lost.  At some point I need to resort to reading through all of the patch notes starting around the time I last played in the hopes of understanding how things have changed.  The combat in this game is just enjoyable, I only wish I could play it with a controller.  I guess in theory I could use one of the keypad mappers but I have been lazy.

Landmark

Landmark64 2014-04-13 22-04-40-22 Oh Landmark… how I love you and am completely bored with you at the exact same time.  Right now it is less a game and more a toybox for you to build in, with a ruleset wrapped around it.  This was really fun while I had giant things to build… and while I was progressing through the ranks of collecting the next best mining pick.  Now that I have topped out, and have fleshed out most of what I wanted to build… I log in pretty much only to mine copper and pay my upkeep.  What I need to make me care about this game is the combat system.  Here is hoping I will fall back in love with it when I can run around the world killing things.

Diablo 3

Diablo III 2014-03-29 19-54-54-44 I still don’t have a character to 70, and I feel like I have somehow failed for not doing this.  Basically this released way too close to the launch of Elder Scrolls Online… and I never gave the game the attention it deserves.  At some point soon I really want to work on leveling my crusader, since I have technically beaten the game on my Monk.  I am struggling with the desire to simply grind the last two levels to ding 70.  I figure at some point I will have a renaissance of caring about d3… but it might be awhile before I cycle around to it again.

Rift

rift 2014-05-08 06-09-17-50 The new souls were released and I have yet to even check them out.  I really would like to level my cleric to 60 before the 3.0 patch hits, but I have no clue how long that is.  Right now I am logging in on a weekly basis to get my patron gifts and that is about it.  I thought it would be really cool to do a streaming series where I try and remember how to tank, and do a public service of tanking elites.  I’ve heard the queue times are absolutely insane, and I know personally I have waited over two hours without getting a DPS queue.  I still love this game, but at the same time don’t really know what I want to do in it.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

swtor 2014-05-05 22-32-57-22 A few weeks back I was playing the hell out of SWTOR and enjoying myself.  While I have let my subscription lapse again… I would love to pick back up on my Sith Juggernaut and see what happens after Balmorra.  I have never actually made it off this planet imperial side, but I was really damned close to doing this when I was last playing.  The real challenge will be if I can manage to play the game without subscribing… or will I re-up again only to cancel a few weeks later.

World of Warcraft

Wow-64 2014-03-25 07-16-07-71 Finally there is good ole World of Warcraft.  Once upon a time I had a grand idea of getting everyone to 90 before the expansion.  I have failed miserably at keeping up with this ambition, but who knows if I will actually do this or not.  Right now all I have left are the Priest, Monk and Warlock… all of which are over 60 at the least.  The Warlock and Priest are both in Pandaria content, but at the very beginning.  I might get a wild urge to play again and push these guys across the finish line.  Either that or I might completely abandon this until the release of Warlords of Draenor.  In any case the account is still active, because I pop in periodically to dink around with stuff for the guild.

Nothing at All!

Tonight I will be playing…. nothing more than likely.  We have an end of school cookout and by the time we get done there… we will likely crash, or walk… or walk then crash.  If anything I launch Wildstar and create my characters.  Right now I am planning on having my Chua Engineer and an Exile Warrior of some sort… just not sure if that will be Human or Granok.  In any case I have nothing exciting to report about my master plan for the evening other than hanging out in the real world and eating some good food.