Cerulean Mornings

Yeah...so yesterday I encountered a huge bug with the changes in levels that WoW implemented in the past few years. They basically shrunk everyone's levels from 110+ to 50+ again, and in doing so, there are some quests that're just insanely bugged. The mobs are way too strong for the level! I was a level 19 baby Pandaren monk doing the starting quests in Pandaria. Well, there's a quest boss I have to kill to advance, and he basically just one-shots me. That's not supposed to happen, obviously. I think Pandaria's original level was 90+? So the level did not shrink right. I ended up asking in the newbie chat (yep, there is one now, and it's actually quite helpful) for someone to partner up. There were some phasing issues, but we ended up getting it to work. They're level 41, and even they almost died! That quest is so bad, I got mad at playing it so I quit for the rest of the day.

But today I feel slightly better and wanted to continue playing haha. I made a brand new Alliance human warlock. Might slowly play her through everything. Or almost everything. I'm fairly sure I never want to see Shadowmoon Valley ever again. Holy crap what shitshow that area is (my s.o. even said everyone called that place cancer. I concur!). I have yet to make a decision about what to do there. My monk, however, will probably hit 50 before I even get out of Jade Forest. So I might go experience lock her at 49 (that's recommended level, apparently, for maximum gold profits) and do one more area (most likely Kun-Lai Summit) and then just stop. And then I'll relearn how to play Shadow Priest on my beautiful little troll, and we'll go on to Draenor. But for now, some alliance questing, perhaps?

Been a while since I updated, but my WoW character is doing pretty okay. She reached level 58 and I thought I had to go through Burning Crusade but lo and behold, nope, they changed it so I can go straight to Northrend. Oh my f-ing god you don't know how excited I am about that! So I'm now in Northrend doing the Borean Tundra stuff and swimming along. The only downside is that I can't eat a lot of the food because it's level 70+ (makes sense, yeah? Considering it was a lv 70-80 expansion) and a lot of the Cooking and Fishing dailies I can't do either. Oh well. At least I never have to set foot on Outlands ever again if I don't want to. Barring being a completionist and wants the Outland fishing and cooking recipes or whatever later.

It just occurred to me that I probably should give my character a nickname on here. For anonymity I don't want to say her actual handle, but she is a demonology warlock (for now), and so I figure Dewa is a good shorthand (like my arcane mage before, which I named Arma. I'm not sure I talked about it on this journal - probably not?) Anyway, Dewa is almost 65 and bored to death of Borean Tundra already haha. So I'm just selling stuff on Auction House and doing random quests like Nat Pagle and Darkmoon Faire and such. The scaling aspect makes everything pretty sweet - so glad WoW decided to go this route now. When I get to the actual appropriate level and can eat the food I'll do more updates. I've been taking a lot to fishing because it's so relaxing, which is as good time to spend as any, I reckon.

Well, all that controversy with Hong Kong aside (let's not get into politics about this, please), Blizzard announced a bunch of new games "in the works" today at Blizzcon. I have to admit that I'm pretty excited. The cinematics for all of the games are so pretty, although I'm only interested in two games - Diablo IV and the next WoW expansion - Shadowlands. It's crazy, because, uh, when this new expansion drops I'm going to be 4 expansions behind, man! That's what I get for not playing the game for 5 years...ehe...but hey, I'm slowly and steadily moving forward, you know? Just, might be another year before I come anywhere near level 120, just in time for the level cap to be raised again and we get to the next story phase. Yikes!

I'm pretty stoked for Diablo IV. I'm actually going to try to play this when it's not like, two years out haha. (This is why I'm definitely the demographic of the denizens of r/patientgamers.) I missed all the Auction House brouhaha, for better or worse, and just enjoyed the campaign story mode. So when the trailer dropped and it looked cool af I was instantly sold. Perhaps I'll buy it on release this time? Or maybe a month after when the first major patch comes out and all the initial bugs got ironed out? Either way I'm excited, and Lilith had always been one of my favorite biblical characters, so she being the 'big bad' is especially awesome to me.

As far as where I currently am in WoW? Well, my warlock just reached level 40 yesterday, and I'm debating between either going to Desolace or Southern Barrens to continue leveling. I did NOT enjoy Stonetalon Mountains I can tell you that, which is a shame, because I remember pre-Cata I really liked Stonetalon. Now it's just...a mess, even worse than Ashenvale, which I never liked and post-Cata does not make it a better place. Should've gone to Azshara instead. Anyway, I got through that area, and the point is just to get my character past Cata and into the newer expansions which I missed out on jfc. I got to as far as the middle of Pandaria before getting bored and quitting. Hopefully this time around I'll push through. Oh, and it took me like 30 hours to get here. (I...uh...explore and read quest texts a lot, so yeah I level like a snail, but it's for relaxation, okay?) My s.o. did a rudimentary calculation and was like, dude, it's going to take you 120 hours to get to where you were before - and probably another 90 to get through Battle for Azeroth - you'll never finish before getting bored and quitting again. And I was like, nuh-uh, before I wanted to do "current content" and treated it like an obligation. Now I just drum out an hour or two every day as stress relief - that's different! And he was like, okay, whatever. So I guess we'll see who's right six months from now.

(He's probably right. But I'll enjoy it as I get there nonetheless.)

Uh, yeah, I'm playing World of Warcraft again. After not touching it for 5 years. Well then. 

Stress makes one binge on weird things. I'm not in the mood for Sims right now, and all the (negative) Blizzard coverage just reminded me how relaxing it was to play WoW and so yep, dove right down to the rabbit hole and resubbed. Also bought the latest expansion at a discount due to I assume Blizzcon. Eh. 

I started a brand new character on a brand new server, because why not? I know I could also go play WoW Classic but man, I've played Classic, and it was...terrible. The grind was unreal, so no, I'm not going to do that. Plus I have like 3 expansion packs of content to go through, PLUS I needed to apparently grind for Zandalari tribe rep because, get this, there're now these "Allied Factions" I can roll a toon with, and one of them is the Zandalari trolls, and goddamn are they not the most kickass beings I've ever seen. They're what trolls are SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE, imho; bigger hair, better skintone, meaner face, and the most important, bigger tusks for females. I was all gung-ho about wanting to roll a female Zandalari troll druid, AND THEN of COURSE learned that to unlock them I need to get through a huge grind. What the fuck, seriously? I hope WoW stays a few more years because it'll be at least a year before I can get anything, at the rate I'm playing. So for now I just got myself an orc warlock, and she's pretty dope, so there.

So, yeah, back to WoW lol. Stress relief, definitely. I'm just slowly solo-ing my way through the world and ignoring any and all guild invites and whispers - the antithesis of MMO haha. Now I also need to find an appropriate icon for this journal. Yep, this is definitely turning into a gaming blog, and I'm perfectly alright with that.