While I haven’t played Diablo III for a over a week, today will officially be my last day playing Season 23. It feels like I achieved a lot since my previous Diablo III season 23 post, most notably I have beaten my personal best of completing a tier 81 greater rift which I set during season 17. My new record is now tier 95 set by my Demon Hunter and I should add that I also beat it by completing a tier 83 greater rift with a Barbarian. My only regret might be that I didn’t beat it with my wizard which ultimately only reached level 62 as you can see in the bellow screenshot.

Another thing I wanted to beat was my seasonal paragon level personal best. In season 23 I reached level 841 which is 41 levels more than my season 17 record and 10 levels more than all of my hardcore paragon experience put together. It’s worth mentioning that I leveled a Crusader, Monk and for the first time a Necromancer to level 70 but didn’t achieve much else with them. I realize these achievements are nothing compared to what many other players can do, with paragon levels in the thousands, but I am still pleased with myself and had around 111 hours of thoroughly enjoyable playtime.

It wasn’t all good however, season 23 claimed the lives of two of my hardcore characters including a Barbarian which I remade and a Demon Hunter. To be honest the Demon Hunter death was planned as I was attempting a tier 97 greater rift which I knew was high risk, but I wanted season 23 to go out with a bang and as such I recorded my attempt below.

I am not sure if there will be a time where I will play more Diablo III or immerse myself in another season. With Diablo II Resurrected and Diablo IV on the cards, it is much more likely that I will spend my time playing those games. In addition, for WoW Classic The Burning Crusade will launch tomorrow which will consume a lot of my time, at least in the short term.

Having lost 2 of 3 Snooker Nation matches this month, I find myself on the back foot entering the final month of season 4. There are a potential of 4 matches in June, all of which I will need to win to guarantee victory. If I lose 1 match I will need to try and win on frames won of which I am 10 frames behind. If I lose 2 matches there will be no way for me to win. It’s safe to say the odds are not in my favour, but I will try my best.

08/05/2021 – Match 128

I can’t help but feel disappointed with my performance in this match, especially in Frame 3 where I attempted a silly shot early on without even looking at it properly which Jason used to punish me by clearing the table and scoring 141. This was the only terrible shot I remember, but I did get unlucky at times, one example of this was that I potted a red and black in frame 5 which Jason went on to win. It looked like I might have suffered a white wash but in frame 6 I managed to a break of 114 and then 105 in frame 7. As well as 141 in frame 3 Jason scored 113 in frame 2 and finished the match with 139 in frame 8, winning 6 frames to 2.

21/05/2021 – Match 129

A pretty good match for me winning 6 frames to 3 and ending Jason’s win streak. For the most part each frame was smooth, annoyingly I ran out of position on the 1st frame with a break of 96, narrowly missing a century with 2 reds on the table. I also missed a century in the 8th frame when I ran out of position on the final yellow. The only scrappy frame was the 2nd where both Jason and I missing an easy shot each, but it wasn’t too bad. In the following frames Jason got pretty unlucky on at least 3 occasions, the worst being when Jason potted a red and the blue when the pink ball hit and deflected it. Because of my narrowly missed centuries I only bagged one of 128 in frame 4, where as Jason secured 129 in frame 3 and 112 in frame 7.

28/05/2021 – Match 130

Almost every frame this week could be described as scrappy. Both Jason and I didn’t play very well and each missed multiple easy shots. For every shot Jason missed however, I must have missed 2 or 3 and as such Jason won 6 frames to 1. There was 1 century break for Jason in frame 2 of 111 which is the only frame I could describe as being smooth. It’s not that either of us were unlucky this week, it’s just we played poorly. I am not sure if I even got a break higher than 50, which really is rock bottom.

Season 4 (January – June 2021) statistics

About a month ago I decided to buy the PlayStation 1 game Destruction Derby 2 which was pre-owned for £9.55. The game arrived in near perfect condition, including the case, which I have seen sell for around £10 when new. I am of course delighted with my purchase, it’s a welcome addition to my small collection, but it’s a bit of a shame because the condition suggests the game might not have been enjoyed much by the previous owner.

Destruction Derby 2 was released for the PlayStation 1 in 1996 and was later made part of the ‘platinum series’ of games. Quite a few years ago I gave away my PlayStation 1 along with a lot of games, but I have never owned Destruction Derby 2 until now. I did however have a demo CD which featured Destruction Derby 2 along with several other games. For those that don’t know, a demo CD was usually sold with a PlayStation or PC magazine and would contain games or software with limited access and would usually compliment an article in the magazine itself. When I used to buy them back in 1997 – 2000 it would cost around £5 which, to a kid, was quite a bit of money back then. It was however an ideal way to ‘try before you buy’ or in my case ‘try before you ask for’ games. While I did like the demo of Destruction Derby 2, there was always something else I would rather have and as such I never got it.

Part of the reason this game appeals to me is that I have always said that I am terrible at playing racing games, something I mention in my Gran Turismo 3 post. The whole point of Destruction Derby however is not necessarily to win the race by being the fastest but to avoid taking damage while causing damage to other drivers. The only way I would win a Gran Turismo 3 race against my friend Jason for example would be to try and crash into him on a corner to somehow slow him down more than myself and repeat that process several times which is not the way the game was designed to be played and only worked maybe 1 time in every 20. In Destruction Derby 2 this is exactly the way the game is designed to be played and is encouraged. There is even a ‘race mode’ called Destruction Derby where there is no race but a game of trying to survive and keep your car intact for as long as possible which I attempt to demonstrate below.

The game is not all good, as you can see the graphics are pretty bad, even by 1996 standards. The commentator quickly becomes annoying saying the same 5 or 6 lines and while the metal soundtrack is pretty awesome when playing, it’s awful on the main screen when selecting what you want to do. It’s as if it belongs to a completely different game. The game also features a replay feature which can be saved to a PlayStation 1 memory card. Each save takes 1 ‘block’ out of 15 so you can’t save many, but it’s a cool feature which I used to record my video.

Moving forward I intend to play Destruction Derby 2 a little more and will probably break it out from time to time to have some mindless carnage fun. I will also keep an eye out for more modern games which are like Destruction Derby 2, such as Destruction Derby Raw or Demolition Derby.

World of Warcraft Vanilla Classic will soon come to an end with the pre-patch for The Burning Crusade Classic due for release in a matter of days. As such this will be my last post regarding my Vanilla Classic journey which began back in August 2019 when players were encouraged to create their characters early. Since then I have written another 32 blog posts (including this one) covering my experiences from reaching level 60 with my rogue (the maximum level possible), joining a guild, clearing all of the ‘end game’ content the game has to offer and amassing over 75 days and 22 hours of total played time on my rogue.

Blizzard Entertainment (the developers of World of Warcraft) will introduce a character copy service where players can pay to have their character copied and will exist on a permanent Vanilla Classic realm. Players who do not pay will have to choose whether their character will be on a Vanilla Classic or Burning Crusade realm, but it will be free. For the purpose of nostalgia, I am going to pay and copy my main character (Mithril) to exist on both realms. I doubt I will play much on the vanilla classic realm, but I will at least have my character and her items memorialized. I will then with a clear conscience clear out all of her hard earned Vanilla Classic items on the The Burning Crusade realm, knowing that I can still access them on the Vanilla Classic realm.

I have tried to select a few screenshots to supplement this blog post to try and sum up my Vanilla Classic journey, but there are so many. I have some good memories defeating bosses, completing raids, the guild acquiring the Scarab Lord title and mount, Thunderfury, Swift Zulian Tiger from High Priest Thekal and much more. I have settled on a screenshot of Inspire defeating Viscidus for the first time in Ahn’Qiraj followed by a screenshot of an evening of trying to find shortcuts in Molten Core which is when most of the raid died trying to jump down to where Golemagg the Incinerator resides (we never tried this again). Finally I couldn’t resist sharing a screenshot of when we as a guild finally got our first Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, something we deserved much sooner.

Raiding has been considerably reduced as people prepare for The Burning Crusade. I have however received Kiss of the Spider which was on my wish list and Iblis, Blade of the Fallen Seraph which I did not especially want, but it is an upgrade and is worth having at this late stage of the game since there is virtually no chance of me doing any better at this point. This time last year my Classic World of Warcraft adventure was in full swing, judging from my screenshot it looks like I had a combination of tier 1 and tier 2 set items, had just reached exhaulted with Timbermaw Hold and had helped find the right hand Bindings of the Windseeker for the guild’s main tank.

Moving forward there is very little I can do but prepare for the expansion, the best thing would be to try and make some gold, grind some reputation, or tie off loose ends. It’s also worth giving the game a rest for a while so as not to risk burning out before The Burning Crusade launch. Some people will be working hard on new characters for the expansion, but that’s not something which interests me. Once the expansion is live my main focus will be to reach level 70, along with everybody else. From there if memory servers me it will be important to reach revered status with 4 factions for heroic dungeon attunements and work on getting attuned to the various raids on offer, starting with Karazhan. Once I find my feet with the expansion, I will try and produce a checklist of things to do for my next update and figure out what my character’s best in slot items are.

I am worried that my time playing The Burning Crusade Classic could be short lived, it really depends on how well Inspire guild survives the transition. I fear that a guild which consistently musters 40+ people to raid will find it difficult to appease everyone when the maximum raid size is either 10 or 25 people. Some people are leaving or have stopped playing, where as others are starting playing again ahead of the expansion. There has been talk about players wanting to raid to multiple characters and that there will be multiple raiding teams to accommodate everyone. While this might work if there are people dedicated to playing more than 1 character, it will take time for a player to be in a position to play the end game content on 2+ characters. However one unfortunate thing I have found playing World of Warcraft for all these years is that people are impatient and will want everything to happen right away. I seriously hope the core group of people which make Inspire the amazing guild it is remain active and (selfishly) I hope they can find a place for me to play with them. Without these people who I have come to like and respect, The Burning Crusade offers very little to me.

It’s been over 4 weeks of Diablo III Season 23 and I feel like I have made some excellent progress since my initial start. I now have a level 70 (the maximum level) barbarian, demon hunter, crusader and necromancer in addition to my wizard and have reached paragon level 700 which is just 100 away from my season 17 personal best. I also decided to play through and complete Diablo III in story mode which was something I did a long time ago shortly after the game’s release. I wanted to delve back into the story and watch the cinematic cut scenes again but also add Diablo III to my list of completed games since I started blogging.

Perhaps more important than my paragon level or roster of characters is that I have completed a tier 70 greater rift with my barbarian. This is important because completing a tier 70 greater rift solo unlocks the possibility of finding Primal Ancient Legendary items with my season 23 hardcore characters. Primal Ancient items are the rarest and most powerful items in the game, so far I have collected 5 but none of them are particularly helpful to any of my characters right now. The recording below is me completing a tier 70 greater rift for the first time this season.

Since the recording above, I have completed a tier 75 greater rift with my barbarian, a tier 62 greater rift with my wizard and a tier 45 greater rift with my demon hunter. Moving forward I will be wanting to improve all of these and possibly add a record for my necromancer and crusader. Ultimately however, my main goal is to beat my personal best of tier 81 which I set during season 17 with my wizard. I am confident I will accomplish these goals with the time I have left of what could be my last Diablo III season.

This has got to be one of the best months of Snooker Nation for me having won 4 out of 5 matches and scoring a maximum break of 147 after nearly a year since the last one. I enter May behind by just 1 match, with up to 8 more matches for the season, there is everything to play for.

02/04/2021 – Match 123

Both Jason and I continue the theme of playing well. There was only 1 ‘scrappy’ frame where I missed a colour twice in the 3rd frame but was still able to win it after Jason missed a relatively straight forward red. Jason kicked off the centuries in the 1st frame with a break of 131 after an excellent pot to the middle pocket. Jason also scored 138 in the 5th frame and 132 in the 8th. I had two centuries of my own, 105 in both the 4th and 11th frame which helped me win the match 6 frames to 5. Although I am happy to have won, I am disappointed with my break of 105 in the 11th frame because I was 1 red away from potentially scoring a maximum break of 147.

09/04/2021 – Match 124

This was a match of two halves, Jason and I started playing it well, scoring century breaks, but then it turned pretty scrappy. I felt a bit hard done by in the 1st frame, Jason had missed a red which ended up hovering over the pocket but I just couldn’t hit it, even off a cushion. Eventually I tried an ambitious plant which failed. In the second frame I scored 103 but left a potential break of 145 after missing difficult black, the third frame I scored 120 but couldn’t pot the blue which could have resulted in a break of 138. Jason cleared the table in the 4th frame scoring and impressive 141, the new highest break of the season so far. From then on each frame was really scrappy, both of us missing multiple shots and making a real hash of things. Ultimately however I won 6 frames to 4, giving me a 3 match win streak.

16/04/2021 – Match 125

An unlucky match of Snooker Nation for Jason, after potting the first red in frame 1, he ran out of position and snookered himself which I was able to capitalize from and score a decent break of 132. In the 2nd frame I played a very poor safety shot but almost immediately Jason potted the white putting me back on the table. To make things worse, I almost scored a century in the third frame after Jason potted a red and black at the same time. At one stage I was winning 4 frames to 0 and it looked like it might be a white wash. Thankfully Jason was able to dig deep and win 3 frames including a break of 109 in the 7th frame. Eventually however I was able to win 6 frames to 3, giving me a 4 match win streak.

23/04/2021 – Match 126

For the most part this was a pretty clean and straight forward match, the second frame was a bit scrappy after I played a ‘lottery shot’ which is where I hit the pack of reds with the cue ball as hard as I can with a lot of top spin to try and pot one by fluke. Other than that I scored 104 in the 3rd frame and 112 in the 4th frame which could have been 139 if I hadn’t missed the final yellow. Jason scored 115 in the 8th frame but I was able to win the match 6 frames to 4. I have for the first time equalized with Jason in matches won this season. Hopefully I can take the lead next week.

30/04/2021 – Match 127

This has got to be one of the most crazy Snooker Nation matches this season, perhaps even of all time between Jason and me. In the 1st frame Jason had a break of 134 and only needed to pot the pink and black to secure a maximum break of 147. After potting the blue however, Jason’s position on the pink wasn’t that good and he narrowly missed the pot. In the 2nd frame Jason had another pretty good chance at getting getting a 147 with just a few reds remaining but, in frame 4, I scored the maximum break of 147 which, for readers who are unaware, is the ultimate achievement in the game of Snooker. Between the two of us, this is the 7th maximum break, the last one was almost a year ago in May 2020. Perhaps more surprising than this is how bad the 3rd frame was, after Jason almost scored a maximum break twice and before I actually scored a 147, we played the worst frame of Snooker Nation ever. To say it was a scrappy frame would be an understatement, we both missed multiple easy shots and it was as if we just started playing Snooker Nation and were learning the controls. Other than that the rest of the match was fairly clean, I scored 110 in the 8th frame but Jason ultimately won 6 frames to 3 and ended my win streak.

Season 4 (January – June 2021) statistics

It has been a slow and somewhat dull month of Classic WoW for me with no progression to speak of. Because of this I have delayed writing the update for this month by a week in a hope to have something more to report. I have been consistently clearing Naxxramas and Blackwing Lair with my guild mates in Inspire, I am however finding these raids, including Naxxramas, too easy. We have cleared Naxxramas quite a few times and have almost cleared it in a single 3 hour raid. I have not been awarded any loot for quite some time now but my priority rating is quite high. This by no means guarantees me loot, but the next time something drops which I really want, it will probably be awarded to me. For now however, my wish list remains the same as last month.

Desireable
Drake Fang Talisman
Jom Gabbar

Best
Shroud of Dominion
Bonescythe Ring
Band of Unnatural Forces
Slayer’s Crest
Kiss of the Spider
Gressil, Dawn of Ruin
The Hungering Cold
Nerubian Slavemaker

With the exception of a few hours over one weekend, I have done very little else in Classic WoW. I have been considering trying to get into PvP again which is what I was doing last year as highlighted in the video below which I made almost a year ago. But with so little time left of Classic WoW, I think the best thing to do is to prepare for The Burning Crusade by clearing out inventory, making some gold and trying to tie off as many lose ends as possible.

I am still not sure what I will be doing when The Burning Crusade is launched. To me it’s a huge emotional and time investment which could be better spent on playing other games to give my gaming life and blog the greater variety I have always wanted. On the other hand I struggled for years to find a gaming community I could engage with, something I have enjoyed with my guild mates for over a year now.

For the last 3 months, since writing about unlocking the mastery pass for the Zendikar Rising Set, I have been playing Magic: The Gathering Arena on a daily basis with the new card set, Kaldheim. As before, I waited until I reached the maximum level, in this case level 80, before unlocking the pass mastery with 3,400 gems (an in-game currency) to claim all of the rewards at the same time. Part of the reward was 1,200 gems, so the mastery pass only really cost me 2,200 gems which is easily obtained just by playing the game on a daily basis as I have.

For the first time, I have reached Platinum Tier 4 by playing ranked ‘constructed’ games using a custom black and white 60 card deck featuring angels. To be honest, I am quite sure this deck has lost more games than it has won, but because I enjoy playing it so much I kept at it until I ranked up. My two favourite cards in my deck are Firja’s Retribution and Rampage of the Valkyries, both of which are part of the Kaldheim set.

According to Magic: The Gathering Arena stats, since Kaldheim was released I have opened 102 packs of cards, played 539 games of which I have won 238 constructed games and green is my favourite colour of magic. The new set, Strixhaven: School of Mages does not hold much appeal to me so I will more than likely stop playing Magic: The Gathering Arena for a while but will probably return for the Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms set due later this year.

Diablo III season 23 started last Friday at 4pm BST and so far everything has gone quite well for me. As with season 22 and season 17, I have decided to play the game in hardcore mode which, as a reminder, is where when a character dies it is lost forever along with all of the items it was using. I decided to start season 23 with a wizard and casually leveled to 70 (the maximum character level in Diablo III). For the remainder of the Easter weekend I spent time running rifts and greater rifts to get my first set of legendary items and gather much needed resources for crafting. I reached paragon level 200 and have so far completed a level 42 greater rift in 7:27.750.

These are by no means impressive achievements, even by my standards, but it’s a pretty good start after less than 16 hours play time and has given me the foundations with which I can build a successful season portfolio. Unlike many players, I approach Diablo III as a marathon run rather than a sprint so as not to burn myself out but to also to enjoy the content at a sensible pace. Others prefer to rush through everything as quickly as possible, probably with the help of friends. As of today some players using a wizard have completed greater rifts over level 120 and have a paragon level of more than 1200. While I am impressed with what these people can accomplish in such a short period of time, this way of playing the game is not for me.

Moving forward my ultimate goal is to beat my personal best of season 17 where I completed a level 81 greater rift and obtained 800 paragon levels. Other secondary goals are to improve or set my personal best greater rift level with other character classes and, for the first time, play the Necromancer in Diablo III. It would also be nice to obtain at least a few more primal legendary items (after I have completed a level 70 greater rift). To help me achieve these goals I will be using the Maxroll website which is a collaborative resource put together by some of the pros. I have found it quite helpful so far and have just scratched the surface.

For a while I thought this was going to be another white wash month of Snooker Nation, with Jason winning every single match as he did in January. This month however I was able to win 1 match, preventing Jason from running away with a huge lead. Overall the quality of our game has been pretty good, there have even been a couple of opportunities to score a maximum break of 147, something Jason and I have been chasing for quite some time now.

05/03/2021 – Match 120

This week both Jason and I played very well. There were 4 century breaks in total, I scored 100 in the 1st frame, 102 in the 4th frame and a whopping 136 in the 9th frame. Jason secured one of his own of 128 in the 8th frame and, despite me having more century breaks to my name, won the match 6 frames to 5. There was a memorable moment in frame 4 with Jason on the table potting the black which was on the blue spot. He played it with quite some pace so that the cue ball will go into the pack of reds but in doing so pocketed the pink as well as the black. This foul put me on the table and allowed me to almost clear the table with my break of 102.

19/03/2021 – Match 121

The best word I can use to describe this match is ‘flakey’. There were periods where Jason and I played well but then there were some really scrappy frames where we frequently missed easy shots or ran out of position. Overall a pretty disappointing performance but we did manage to bag a century break each. I had 118 in the 4th frame and Jason had 100 in the 10th frame which ultimately won him the match 6 frames to 4.

26/03/2021 – Match 122

Overall the standard of this match was much better than the previous one. The first frame is usually pretty scrappy, probably because we both need some time to settle into the match, but this week it was unusually clean. Following this there were 3 century breaks, Jason scored 120 in the second frame while I scored 132 in the 4th frame and 128 in the 5th frame. While there were no more century breaks beyond the 5th frame, the match continued to be reasonably clean and I was able to claim a 6-4 victory.

Season 4 (January – June 2021) statistics