After speaking to my good friend Jason, I have decided to change how I post our Snooker Nation results.

I noticed that a large proportion of my blog posts are about my weekly Snooker Nation game with Jason. While I do enjoy Snooker Nation, I feel the frequency of which I make Snooker Nation posts is excessive and quickly over shadows posts about other games which I have, more often than not, put much more effort in playing and producing content.

Starting immediately, I have decided that my Snooker Nation posts will now be monthly and will contain the results of all matches Jason and I play in that given month. This has meant that I have deleted the post Snooker Nation Week 34 of which the content of will be used in a new post, Snooker Nation June 2019. This will be released either at the end of June or beginning of July.

Furthermore, from the beginning of July, I will be adding statistical data at the end of each monthly post. This means in July I will include a table for matches played, matches won, match points (3 points for winning), frames won, number of century breaks and highest break. After 6 months I will reset the data and will declare the season champion before starting a new season in January.

This will reduce the number of Snooker Nation posts from a potential of 4-5 a month to 1 a month. Each post should also be more interesting and content rich rather than just 1-2 paragraphs containing just a few sentences.

I feel like this is a good evolution for my blog and that it will even make the game more fun. I hope that other posts about my different gaming activities will be given more exposure as well.

Since starting Diablo III season 17 again after my newly max level demon hunter died after an hour or two of playing the end game content, I feel I have made some good progress.

At the time of writing this, my season 17 hardcore paragon level is 501 and my new demon hunter still lives with greater rift record of level 50 (torment XI). For those readers who have not played Diablo 3, or have but from before the launch of Reaper of Souls back in 2014, after your character reaches maximum level, in this case level 70, you start to gain account wide paragon levels. Paragon levels give you points to spend and make your character stronger. There is no limit to how high your paragon level can become, however if your paragon level is very high, it will take quite some effort and time to gain more. Greater rifts are big part of the end game content. The higher the greater rift level, the more rewards you can expect for completing them. Eventually greater rifts become so difficult that it is nearly impossible to complete them and will always offer a challenge to the most elite Diablo III players.

Surprisingly for me, I decided to level a second character, a wizard. While I have found the demon hunter more fun to play this season, my wizard seems to be much stronger and I have a greater rift record of level 57  (somewhere between torment XII and XIII).

The reason my wizard is so much more powerful is partly because I have traditionally played wizard as my favourite Diablo III class, but also because I have a good sense of direction as to what my build should be. In Diablo III it’s usually a good idea to find and use items which compliment specific spells, making them more and more powerful. It’s fine to change the way you want to play your character, but it usually involves finding a new set of items to make it highly effective.

Moving forward, I hope to make 4 or 5 improvements to my wizards set of gear which I hope I can use to get to greater rift level 70. I found out that you must complete a level 70 greater rift solo before any primal legendary items will drop (Primal legendary items are the best items you can find in the game and are very rare). Doing this on softcore was relatively easy, it didn’t matter if I died, just as long as I completed the rift on time. On hardcore however, it’s a completely different story.

I don’t know why but I am enjoying Diablo III season 17 even more than I enjoyed season 16. It’s nice to play something so passionately again. I really hope this continues.

Earlier this week I wrote about my Diablo III season 17 disaster in that my newly levelled hardcore demon hunter died pretty much as soon as I started playing the end game content. This was through overconfidence and general stupidity on my part. This meant my levelled up character was gone and that I would have to level up a new one to continue my season 17 journey.

I must have a strong urge to play Diablo III right now because yesterday I completed levelling up another demon hunter on hardcore mode. Either that or I just couldn’t bare to let the season end like that.

To be honest levelling a new demon hunter was not much bother, especially since the crafting materials and status of the crafting traders are not lost when your hardcore character dies. This meant I was able to craft new items every 5-10 levels or so to make the levelling easier and faster.

Over the next couple of days I will be trying to further my season 17 progress. I just hope that I don’t die in the first hour or two of playing. It’s not that I mind dying and losing my character, if I did I wouldn’t play hardcore, it’s just how my character died last week and how little time I had to play. This time around I would like to gain at least 100 paragon levels and push a good greater rift record. Who knows, I may even find one of the new primal ancient legendary items.

Jason and I played yet another game of Snooker Nation, this time a best of 7 which Jason won 4 frames to 3, continuing his winning streak.

I have made so many disappointing mistakes lately. For whatever reason I just can’t seem to play well like I used to. All credit to Jason capitalising on some of my mistakes and scoring two century breaks, 101 in the 4th frame and 110 in the final frame. Unfortunately Jason could have ended on 137 in the final frame but he missed the yellow, not that it matters. The only good thing I can say about my performance this week is that I was at one stage down 3-1 but managed to win two scrappy frames to make it 3-3.

I don’t like playing Snooker Nation single player, especially against the really bad AI, but perhaps I need to set aside some time to practise if I want to win next week.

The first time playing my newly levelled up hardcore Demon Hunter for Diablo III Season 17 has ended in utter disaster. Without taking my own advice in my previous post, I got over confident and died with just 28 paragon levels under my belt. When a hardcore character dies in Diablo III, a screenshot is captured, almost as if to rub salt into the wound.

I do at least get to keep my 28 paragon levels and collected crafting materials. The profession traders also remain levelled up should I decide to level another character from 1-70.

To say I am disappointed with myself is an understatement, I jumped 3 difficulty levels and completely screwed up on the fight that killed me. I was going to stop playing season 17 as soon as my character died. It would be a shame however to stop when the season has only just begun. I will have to give it some thought and see if I feel like starting another character in the days ahead.

Last Friday Season 17 started for Diablo III and I got started straight away. This time however I am playing the hardcore mode, something I really liked in Diablo II.

For those of you who do not know about hardcore in dungeon crawler games such as Diablo, Path of Exile and Torchlight, it’s a where if your character dies, it will not be resurrected. You will permanently lose your character and the equipped items. For some this makes the game more fun, giving a sense of risk, something to lose if your character dies. Other than that the game is no harder or different, but you must be careful not to let your concentration slip or get too over confident.

While watching WCS Spring 2019 I levelled up a Demon Hunter to level 70 which is the highest level obtainable in Diablo III. At the time of writing this, I also have a very modest paragon level of 15.

This is an ideal start to my season 17 and I will be looking to increase the paragon level, get some nice items, and hopefully achieve a reasonable greater rift level before either dying or stopping for the season.

I have traditionally played wizard in Diablo III to date. I have a feeling it will be fun to get to know the Demon Hunter class better and come up with some cool and effective ways to play.

This past weekend has been great. Not only did season 17 start for Diablo III but it was the weekend for a major Starcraft 2 tournament, WCS Spring 2019.

SPOILER ALERT

While I have been playing Diablo this weekend I have had WCS Spring live streamed on my TV and I have to say, it’s been an excellent tournament with so many epic games and close matches.

It has been great to see some talented young players take part in the tournament. I have been especially impressed with Croatian Leon “goblin” Vrhovec and Frenchman Clément “Clem” Desplanches. Both of these young men got pretty far and won a lot of excellent matches. If I were looking to recruit Starcraft 2 players for my team, I would most certainly be considering inviting these two who will most certainly be a big part of the future for Starcraft 2.

To see WCS 2018 winner Joona “Serral” Sotala and Juan Carlos “SpeCial” Tena Lopez in the final is hardly surprising. It was good to see Serral get revenge against Riccardo “Reynor” Romiti in the semi final after Reynor defeated Serral in the WCS Winter 2019 final 4 games to 3.

What was surprising and a little disappointing to see was how Serral completely dominated SpeCial in the final, winning 4 games to 0 in a best of 7.

Other than the fantastic games, I have to say the production and casting of this event has been excellent. I have enjoyed every moment and am really looking forward to the next event in July. It was especially nice to watch one of my favourite casters and Starcraft streamer Kevin “RotterdaM” van der Kooi cast this event along with Benjamin “DeMusliM” Baker and Leigh “Maynarde” Mandalov, all of which have been a source of inspiration for me recently.

If there are any regular readers of my blog, it will be obvious that I have not been playing any World of Warcraft lately. My last WoW post was back in January, just before the last major content patch which introduced the Battle of Dazar’alor raid. Shortly after my last WoW post, I wrote on my guilds forum that I will be taking a break and that I have every intention of coming back to the game eventually.

I have had a lot of time on my hands recently and decided to try out the game again to see if it was time to return and further my progress. I decided to focus on a number of lose ends I have in the game, I still want to reach level 120 with my mage and want to level up my relatively new warlock, Khorium, who I introduced back in December.

Part of the idea of levelling up Khorium was to complete a number of quest achievements. I think I made good progress by completing Cape of Stranglethorn, Western Plaguelands, Eastern Plaguelands (and associated full caravan) achievements which in turn gave me the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms achievement. While completing these achievements Khorium had exceeded level 60 so I made my way to Outland and completed ‘On the Blades Edge’ achievement. This achievement took what seemed like forever and I really struggled to stay motivated.

In addition to playing Khorium, I also levelled my mage from 112 to 115. I did this by completing invasion world quests and the odd dungeon.

While I did have some fun (Blades Edge Mountains aside), I think now is not the time for me to make my return to World of Warcraft. There are many gaming personalities out there who will tell you all about the problems with the game right now and, for the most part, I agree with them. World of Warcraft is just not fun anymore, it has great potential though and I hope Blizzard can turn things around again like they did with Warlords of Draenor into Legion.

I love World of Warcraft, I always will. There is so much history and so many memories in each and every corner that I will never completely abandon the game. I just hope that either I get the bug to play again regardless of the current state of the game or, better still, Blizzard starts to listen to the right people and make some drastic changes to their game.

The developer of Snooker Nation, Cherry Pop Games, have not yet released another patch for their game. This left Jason and I playing the old 2016 version of Snooker Nation because we feel the online multiplayer aspect of the game is unplayable since the last ‘wash up’ patch. You can read about this in my previous Snooker Nation post.

We played a best of 7 which Jason won 4 frames to 2. Jason played really well, at one stage he was going to be ahead 3 frames to 0 but missed the last pink by a very small margin, thankfully allowing me to get back in to the match. He also scored a century of 104 in the final frame but again missed the final pink denying him an additional 13 points, not that it mattered. Other than missing those pinks I do not remember any significant mistakes other than being unlucky and accidentally potting the white. This has given Jason a 3 week win streak, something I will be looking to break next week.

I really hope Snooker Nation gets patched soon, we were both saying during our conversation that it’s a bit annoying knowing that new content is available but we can’t sensibly use it. What’s worse is that we can’t roll back just 1 patch when it was working quite well earlier in the month, before the ‘wash-up’ patch.

Over the course of the last few days, not only have I for the third time tackled my anxiety by playing some Starcraft ladder games, but I have played 27 ladder games as the Terran race!

I watched professional streamer and Starcraft 2 caster Benjamin “DeMusliM” Baker use a very simple but effective opening to get ahead in one of his games. I tried to copy it and found more often than not that it would result in me winning the game, just by using his opening strategy. I further adapted it by making it an all-in strategy which guarantees short games, to help with my anxiety. If it works, I win quickly, if it doesn’t I surrender the game unless I did enough damage to justify trying to carry on. Using this strategy I earned 341 ladder points and, for the moment, I am top 8 of a platinum 3 division.

I will almost certainly lose this top 8 position unless I continue playing, and that’s fine. It’s just good to know that I can win games and be somewhat successful in this beautiful game. When I take a look at my match history, I can see that my strategy has improved over time, as has my win rate.

Any regular readers of this blog must be tired of reading about the few Starcraft games I have played and about my ladder anxiety. It’s just hard to keep quiet about something I am so enormously proud about. I don’t think I will play any more Starcraft games, at least for a while. The next time I do play I will need to decide to stick with it and play it hard, writing about every 75-100 games or if I get a significant promotion.

As mentioned in my previous Starcraft post. If there are any readers who are interested in getting in to Starcraft, feel free to get in touch. My offer remains open, even if I am not playing it right now.