As the title of this blog post suggests, I have decided to quit playing Classic World of Warcraft. Before I go into the reasons why I am quitting, I want to briefly talk about my time in what has been the best gaming community I have ever been a part of. When I created my first two Classic WoW characters back in August 2019 I did not think that more than 2 years later I would still be playing the game. I thought that I might reach level 60, do a few dungeons and generally soak up the nostalgia for a few months. This changed when joining a guild called Inspire, now known as Inspired.
It all started in Tanaris, one of the zones in the Kalimdor region within World of Warcraft. I was sad and lonely so decided to put general chat on to see if anyone was interested in doing the Zul’Farrak dungeon which is situated in Tanaris. At that time I did not remember that I should join the looking for group channel, but regardless of this I did see a paladin was asking for help with an escort quest called ‘Rescue OOX-17/TN!‘. I had already completed the quest but decided to help anyway and found that this person was quite nice and verbally invited me to join their guild. I declined the invitation but the seed had been planted. A couple of weeks later, in December 2019 I decided to ask and join that persons guild (who turned out to be one of the guild rogues, Kathrynn) and messaged Dawn who invited me to the guild as a social member with the understanding that I may not be able to attend many raids.
Even though I never really expected to be invited to take part in any of the raids, I signed up for them thinking that I would be benched in favour of raiders, veterans and officers. I hoped that maybe I could join one now and then, perhaps even get lucky with a piece of loot or two that nobody wanted. As it turns out for whatever reasons I was actually invited to nearly all of the guild raids and quickly accumulated loot. I was given some advise from Dawn on how to be a better player, everything from using a better rotation to hotkey management and targeting all improved with his help. While I have never thought of myself being any good at playing World of Warcraft, he helped me become good enough to hold my own. Everyone was friendly, helpful and I noticed little to no drama, certainly none which involved me.
Since I joined, the leader of the guild has changed from Bacon to Dawn and Noparentsguy to Pallydude and now Bubbel. With their leadership the guild has conquered all of what Vanilla Classic WoW had to offer and the guild seems set to do the same with The Burning Crusade. To them and all of the officers past and present, including Kyra, Tsun, Simpleman, Ealenduil, Mexcoo and more recently Nessia, Lotimar and Bahamute. Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to make Inspired a great community of WoW players, thank you for all of the fun times I have had for close to 2 years. As for everyone else, thank you for being part of the community and remember how lucky you are to have found Inspired on your World of Warcraft journey.
Now for the reasons why I am quitting World of Warcraft, unfortunately for me it’s because I am unable to continue to make the sacrifices that I have making to play the game the way I want to. I really don’t want to go in to specifics, this blog has always been about my gaming rather than my personal life, but suffice to say that I need more time to focus on health issues of my own and of a loved one. There are also other reasons, such as the need to buy and move in to a new, smaller home which is closer to my work place and arrange somewhat large maintenance projects for the home of my loved one. For me to finish work and to immediately spend 3 hours playing World of Warcraft 2, 3 even sometimes 4 times a week just isn’t possible for me anymore, not to mention the necessity of preparing before any given raid. I could simply not raid and become a social member of Inspired and log in as and when I want, but this isn’t how I want to play the game, nor is it how I wish to be seen and remembered by the community.
I am going to miss many people in Inspired, I am not going to try and name everyone because invariably I will miss somebody important. Not only has the Inspired community made me a better gamer, but the people of Inspired have given me memories I will cherish to the end of my gaming days and have helped me discover many things about myself, most importantly, that I do not need to play games alone anymore.
Moving forward, because I am still and always be an avid gamer, I will avoid MMO games in general. Instead I will try to play games which I feel as though I can pick up and put down at anytime, without it potentially infringing on more important real life issues.
Phase 2 of The Burning Crusade which included the release of Serpentshine Cavern and The Eye has been quite challenging. I have attended most of the raids my guild has hosted for these so far but I have been unable to attend them this past week. My personal progression in Serpentshrine Cavern is currently 3 out of 6 bosses defeated which include Hydross the Unstable, The Lurker Below and Leotheras the Blind. Last week however my guild successfully managed to defeat Fathom-Lord Karathress and Morogrim Tidewalker to bring the guilds progression to 5 out of 6. We have raided The Eye (Tempest Keep) much less, as such progression there is currently just 1 out of 5 bosses for me, having only defeated Void Reaver. My guild however has also defeated Al’ar. As I mentioned in my previous WoW update, there is now lot more loot available and I now have a new ‘wish-list’ which includes a couple of items I have been awarded already.
Deathmantle Helm
Deathmantle Shoulderpads
Bloodsea Brigand’s Vest
Vambraces of Ending
Deathmantle Handguards
Belt of One-Hundred Deaths
Deathmantle Legguards
Boots of Effortless Striking
Band of the Ranger-General
Ring of Lethality
Tsunami Talisman
Warp-Spring Coil
Arcanite Steam-Pistol
Talon of Azshara
With all of the progress raiding some tempers have been frayed and there has been a loss of focus. When spending pretty much 3 hours of your evening constantly dying, seeing no loot and consuming items which has taken time to acquire between raids is frustrating. But then when someone has perhaps lost focus and does something stupid and you end up dying to some trash it can be easy to lose your temper in the moment. In an effort to try and motive my guild mates and myself I have recorded and uploaded a couple of YouTube videos of the first time we defeated Void Reaver and The Lurker Below. It’s been a while since I have done any of these, I hope it helped.
There has been some progress for my ‘to-do’ list. I somehow reached exalted with Cenarion Expedition when helping out some members of my guild. I have also worked towards getting reputation with Kurenai and The Consortium but it’s a work in progress as they are both still quite far off exalted. Now we are in phase 2 I should also work towards getting attuned for the Hyjal Summit and Black Temple raids so have added these to the list.
Raise fishing to 375
Raise bows skill to 350
Raise guns skill to 350
Raise crossbow skill to 350
Get exalted with Keepers of Time
Get exalted with Cenarion Expedition
Get exalted with The Consortium
Get exalted with Kurenai
Get exalted with Sporeggar
Hyjal Summit attunement
Black Temple attunement
It seems a little crazy to me that this is my 3rd WoW: October update, the first featured a level 32 rogue in 2019, the second, last year, I was preparing for the arrival of Naxxramas. That’s one of the things I really like about my blog, the ability to look back, see how far I have come and remember the achievements and activities I have documented.
Moving forward I hope to progress further with The Burning Crusade phase 2 raids and also to raid phase 1 content with my warlock a little. Now that my guild mate and officer, Tsun, has completed his Atiesh staff quest, I don’t really want to attend any more Naxxramas raids which he continues to host over the weekend. I wanted to help Tsun, but beyond that I think it is important to have ‘rest’ days from WoW so as not to burn out.
Disaster has struck while playing ‘Hardcore’ Diablo II Resurrected. My sorceress which I wrote about in my Diablo II Resurrected Launch post, died level 56 in act 3. This means because I was playing hardcore, the death is permanent. In addition, all of the items she was using are lost. To say I am disappointed would be an understatement, but I think I am taking it quite well. Partly because I am able to use my blog to document what has happened which somehow makes it feel like not a complete waste of time. Below is a screenshot showing her final level.
Another reason I am not too devastated is that all of the items I found and stored in the shared ‘stash’ including useful runes remain where they are. This should make it easier to create another hardcore character, perhaps even another Sorceress. I have however decided to focus a little more on a ‘softcore’ character which is where if it dies there is little consequence. This is a far more laid back and casual way to Play Diablo II. While I do not enjoy it as much as hardcore, it is still fun and rewarding. As I write this my necromancer is level 53, has completed the game on ‘normal’ difficulty and is about half way through ‘nightmare’ difficulty. I also found an ‘um‘ rune which is quite uncommon, especially when not playing ‘hell’ difficulty. If I can acquire another one I can produce the ‘Bone‘ rune word which would be ideal.
While it is true the death of my sorceress is my fault, I have found on two occasions this weekend the Diablo II Resurrected servers to be a little unstable. To lose a hardcore character is one thing, but to lose one because of some kind of server glitch would be really upsetting. Because of this I think I will refrain from playing hardcore for at least little while longer!
It has been a little over a week since the launch of Diablo II Resurrected and to say I am happy with the game would be a bit of an understatement. The launch itself was a bit of a let down, it was difficult to create characters and then impossible to create an online game. After a few hours however Blizzard (the developer of Diablo II Resurrected) fixed the issue. My guess is either they did not expect the launch to attract so many players (although they should have known) or there was some kind of configuration error. What I found worse however were some of the comments of players who, like me, were unable to play the game online. Blizzard are on thin ice with me for a variety of reasons, but for years now I have found people too unreasonable when it comes to some of the mistakes Blizzard make. In this case it really wasn’t the end of the world, after a few hours the game was available for play and hasn’t faltered since.
Yesterday I managed to complete Diablo II Resurrected on ‘normal’ difficulty, using the sorceress. This isn’t difficult and is something I have done many times before in the original game, however I completed the game using the ‘hardcore’ setting which means if my character were to die I would have to start again and lose that character and the items they were using. I am quite proud of this achievement and is something I do not think I did back when I was playing Diablo II back in 2000 – 2003. What’s cool is when you complete the game you’re given a title, for softcore (the setting where your character can die with little consequence) the titles are ‘Slayer’ for normal, ‘Champion’ for ‘nightmare’ difficulty and either ‘Matriarch’ or ‘Patriarch’ for ‘hell’ difficulty. They’re different for hardcore, for completing the game on the normal difficulty setting the title given is ‘destroyer’.
It feels right to add Diablo II Resurrected to my list of completed games since I started this blog but this is by no means the end of Diablo II for me. There is still a lot that can be done and I predict I will be playing the game consistently for at least a few months, but we shall have to wait and see. For now I will try and complete the game on nightmare difficulty and perhaps try another character or softcore for a more casual approach. The updated graphics and visuals are amazing, Blizzard really did an excellent job in modernizing the game without forfeiting much (if any) of the classic experience. While I have remembered a surprisingly large amount of stuff about the game, I have seen that there is a lot of new YouTube and website content available which will help remember the best places to farm specific items or character experience depending on my character level. This content will be especially helpful to any new Diablo II players.
Before I finish this post I feel the need to correct something I wrote in the Aliens: Fireteam Elite post I made last month. I said that the last time I bought and played a game on the day of release was for Perfect Dark, I have since remembered that I did this for Diablo III back in 2012 and World of Warcraft Classic in 2019. Now of course I have done the same for Diablo II Resurrected.
It’s been a rather short month of Snooker Nation. I have not been feeling well this month and because Jason and I currently live in different continents with different time zones, I have been forced to cancel some of our weekly games. Both of us have been playing well and are making few mistakes, we are however both still chasing a maximum break of 147 for season 5 and we seem to be just falling short of century breaks quite often.
Once again it has been a good start to the month for me in terms of Snooker Nation, winning 6 frames to 2. Jason and I have noticed that for this season when I win it always seems to be 6-2 but when Jason wins it always seems to be 6-5. It’s a bit of a strange coincidence but it does mean my frames won difference is quite high and naturally therefore my centuries difference is high. Ultimately of course these statistics do not matter unless we tie the season in matches won. There were 5 century breaks in total this match, I scored 4 in a row, 117 in frame 1 followed by 101, 112 and a 142 which levels me with Jason’s high break the season so far. Jason scored 107 in the 6th frame so he can at least walk away holding his head high.
I am disappointed to have lost this match 6 frames to 3, I have been leading in matches won this season for some time now but Jason refuses to let me run up a significant lead. There were 3 century breaks, Jason scored 138 in the 4th frame and 113 in the 8th frame. Coincidentally I also scored 138 in the 5th frame. Each frame was smooth, neither of us played badly, the exception might be in the final frame where Jason was able the pinch the frame after I missed a relatively easy shot. While I am disappointed to have lost, I am happy the mantra of winning 6-2 or losing 6-5 has ended.
Season 5 (July – December 2021) statistics
| Played | Won | Frames Won | Centuries | Highest Break | |
| Copper | 9 | 5 | 48 | 17 | 142 |
| Jason | 9 | 4 | 36 | 12 | 142 |
Since my August WoW update I have taken a bit of a step back from World of Warcraft and decided to play a few other games, most notably XCOM 2, Kerbal Space Program and Aliens: Fireteam Elite. I declined a few raid invitations but made sure to log in daily to check my mail and open lockboxes for my guild mates. Overall however I have attended most guild raids in the last month and have even found time to finish leveling up a new character, a warlock, which is something I did not think I would do.
What’s unfortunate is that I have received no loot from raiding, with the exception of a Pit Lord’s Satchel which is kind of handy. This bad fortune could change in the coming weeks and months with the launch of phase 2 which opened Serpentshine Cavern and The Eye raids. This means there is a lot more loot available and will mean a completely new wish list in next month’s update.
Netherblade Chestpiece
Nightfall Wristguards
Girdle of the Deathdealer
Skulker’s Greaves
Edgewalker Longboots
Ring of a Thousand Marks
My ‘to-do’ list has once again not seen much progress. All of these things require me to log in between raids and engage in some of the more boring and grindy content Classic World of Warcraft has to offer. By taking a step back and by raising a new level 70 character, virtually all of the things listed below have seen no progress. I can say however that I have completed ‘The Eye’ attunement, which is very important.
Raise fishing to 375
Raise bows skill to 350
Raise guns skill to 350
Raise crossbow skill to 350
Get exalted with Keepers of Time
Get exalted with Cenarion Expedition
Get exalted with The Consortium
Get exalted with Kurenai
Get exalted with Sporeggar
Complete The Eye Attunement
My guild (Inspired) recruited 2 new officers to help organize the guild, they are Nessia and Lotimar. Both of these guys are nice and I have found Nessia a more than capable raid leader. I do not know if Lotimar will be raid leading but he seems to be doing things behind the scenes and is approachable. I thought about ‘applying’ for an officer role but kept thinking how sometimes I get overly angry and/or annoyed with certain guild members. Right now I can ignore them and I even mute one person on Discord during raids, something I couldn’t do if I were an officer.
Over the next 4 weeks I hope to help my guild clear some (or maybe all) of the new raids, but would also like to play my new warlock character from time to time. Recently there have been some extra raids organized for people to bring alternative characters which could be a fun opportunity for my warlock. I also want to go back to Naxxramas to help a fellow guild mate and officer Tsun complete his Atiesh staff quest. Diablo II Resurrected is due to be released soon so I will probably take even more time away from WoW between raids, but do still plan on achieving everything on my ‘to do’ list eventually.
For the first time in I don’t know how long I have actually purchased and played a modern game, Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Not only Did I purchase and play the game the same year it was released but also the same month and day of release. The last time I did this was probably when Perfect Dark was released for the Nintendo 64 back in June 2000. Unlike with Perfect Dark however I did not anticipate the arrival of Aliens: Fireteam Elite but noticed it had just been released when browsing for a new game to play as part of my ‘break’ from classic World of Warcraft after feeling heartbroken by Blizzard Entertainment’s actions in recent years.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite is primarily a survival co-operative game for 2 or 3 people who take on wave upon wave of aliens. There is a campaign with 4 missions broken down into 3 checkpoints (giving us 12 levels) which get progressively harder. I am happy to say I have completed the campaign on the standard (normal) difficulty setting so have found it fit to add Aliens: Fireteam Elite to my list of completed games from when I started blogging. It wasn’t at all easy though, something I think I have demonstrated in the recorded game play below.
There is some ‘end game’ content available in that players unlock more difficulty settings and a ‘horde’ game mode once they have completed the game. Horde mode is where players face endless waves of enemies and try to survive as long as possible. Players are also encouraged to level up each of the playable classes, Gunner, Demolisher, Technician and Doc while unlocking a variety of items.
I don’t think I will be playing any more Aliens: Fireteam Elite, but it feels good to have picked up a new game and completed it from start to finish and blog about it. It’s as I mentioned in my last blog review, that I would like to play a wider variety of games. I think this is a step in the right direction.
It’s been a while since I have played the semi-popular sandbox game Kerbal Space Program (KSP), the last time back in April 2019. When I last played KSP I had quite a successful career crash landing on the ‘mun’ among other things. With my new KSP career however I seem to be doing better with a more successful Mun landing which I was able to record and upload to YouTube.
KSP is first and foremost a sandbox game, allowing players access to everything to do whatever they want to do within the confines of the game’s physics. One slightly more interesting way to play KSP however is through the career mode where players are encouraged to complete missions in order to earn resources and conduct scientific research to unlock parts and upgrade the various buildings at the space centre. It’s actually a really good way to start playing KSP starting with a limited number of parts and slowly unlocking more as you progress and learn.
With almost exactly the same craft used to land on the Mun, I was able to do a ‘fly-by’ of Minmus followed by a bit of a crash landing. I found that the gravitational pull of Minmus is much less than even Mun, which makes sense as Minmus has much less mass and no atmosphere. As such it was pretty difficult to slow down enough for a smooth landing, but I found that it was very easy to upright my space ship after it had landed on it’s side.
The game does not bolster the best graphics, but now and then there some really nice scenes like the one below of my space capsule about to re-enter Kerbin’s atmosphere. If you look closely you can see Mun in the distance as well as the Sun (Kerbol) and curvature of Kerbin.
This is about as how far I got with my last KSP career. I would like to think I can try and build bigger and better things to hopefully orbit or even land on other celestial bodies. Another planet perhaps? Eve is the closest planet to Kerbin but like Venus it might not have the most hospitable environment.
August has been a good month of Snooker Nation for me having won 2 out of 3 matches. What’s more is that my victories have been more convincing, giving me a pretty good lead on number of frames won and centuries which at this point doesn’t mean much but could become vital as the season comes to a close in December. I feel like I have been playing quite well all in all but have started to make pretty bad decisions towards the end of the month. It goes without saying that I hope to improve on this in September and see similar results.
Another good start to this month’s Snooker Nation matches for me, winning 6 frames to 2. There were 4 century breaks, 3 of which belong to me, 110 in the 1st frame, 139 in the 3rd frame which sets a new highest break for the season so far and 100 in the 4th frame. Jason scored 1 of his own of 120 in the 5th frame. For the most part the match was pretty smooth with the exception of the 6th and 7th frame which was slightly scrappy with several mistakes made. For the first 4 frames I pretty much didn’t miss a shot and only ran out of position close to or after scoring a century break, propelling me to 4-0 up at one stage making it difficult for Jason to make a come back.
Once again it has been a pretty smooth week of Snooker Nation for me, winning 6 frames to 2. I ran out of position for a century in frame 1 and also missed the final black in frame 7 but managed to bag two centuries of 107 in the 6th frame and 117 in the 8th. There were a few scrappy frames, I feel like I didn’t play as well as I have been, giving Jason a few opportunities which thankfully he wasn’t to capitalize. For some reason Jason was not putting enough power into a number of his shots, much to his annoyance.
Jason has broken my win streak winning 6 frames to 5. The first 4 or 5 frames were pretty scrappy but from frame 6 onwards both Jason and I played quite well. I scored 128 in frame 9 but Jason scored an impressive break of 142 in the 11th and final frame, giving him the new highest break of the season so far. One thing which bugs me this week however is that at the start of frame 9 the cue ball was touching a red ball, but when I played it away to settle behind the blue ball to snooker Jason, the referee said it was a foul and gave him a free ball. The free ball rule allows the player to pot any colour ball as if it were a red followed by another colour. I disagreed with what the game did, I honestly believe that there is some kind of bug where when the cue ball is touching a red it doesn’t always remember it after the shot is played. What’s more is that because of this at one stage Jason had a break of 5 with 146 points left on the table, which in my mind shouldn’t even be possible.
Season 5 (July – December 2021) statistics
| Played | Won | Frames Won | Centuries | Highest Break | |
| Copper | 7 | 4 | 39 | 13 | 139 |
| Jason | 7 | 3 | 28 | 8 | 142 |
As part of taking a little break from World of Warcraft, I decided to play through XCOM 2, the first time since beating the game in December 2018. This time however, I wanted to make it easy on myself and played through it using the ‘rookie’ difficulty setting on the PC. I did however use ‘ironman’ mode which finalizes every decision, removing the ability to load a save to try again and make different decisions.
This time around I found that XCOM 2 has a pretty big modding community. Fans have produced everything from adding more nationalities for soldiers to completely re-working the dynamics of the game and have created a ‘long war’ mode which extends and expands the XCOM experience. I gave a few of the more popular mods a try but found myself longing for the classic XCOM 2 game. While I applaud anyone who creates mods for their favourite games, for me I quite like the simple turn-based game that XCOM 2 is, rather than something more complicated and in-depth.
Here are a couple of screenshots of what I consider to be the most interesting end of campaign statistics.
Ever since playing some of the early turn based Final Fantasy games, I have always been interested in turn based games. I wish there were more single player turn based strategy games like XCOM 2 with a sense of customization, a good story and science fiction background. Statistics like those shown above are also a huge bonus for a nerd like me. I will shop around and put some thought behind playing more games like this, but if any reader would like to make a recommendation please leave a comment or contact me. I could really use the inspiration right now.