Another year away from WoW, but I still haven’t forgotten you, my friends. I hope the Fourth finds you all happy and free.
Happy Holidays!
Happy Holidays to all my wow friends. Whatever you may celebrate this holiday season, I hope you have a good one.
Happy Veterans Day
Happy Veteran’s Day to all of our veterans. Thank you for your service and welcome back. I’m glad you made it home.
On the WoW front, cool cinematic for BfA, but so far I’ve seen nothing in trailers/previews that would convince me to come back. I hope everyone is having a good time. Miss you all.
Best wishes,
Barley
Happy Independence Day!
Hello all my American friends! I hope you’ve enjoyed the food, family, fun, and fireworks today. And to my non-American friends, I hope you had a good day, too.
Checking In
Hello, everyone. This is just a post to let you know that I’m still alive and well and doing just fine, thank you for asking.
Naturally, there are many things I miss about my life in WoW. I miss my friends and guildies. I miss making my YouTube videos and interacting with subscribers. Heck, at times I miss playing the game itself. It was fun. All of these things contributed to a sense of community that I miss dearly. You guys meant a lot to me and I think about all of you on a daily basis.
To be honest about it, I have to admit that I gave some serious thought to coming back. Aside from all the people and other things that I miss, I’d love to see and experience all of the new zones, quests, raids, and dungeons. I’d even love to take a crack at the new Mythic Plus system. I really miss the thrill of conquering higher-difficulty content. It was always a real charge. Things like that make me want to give it another try.
The thing is, when I think about it some more, nothing has changed. The colossally bad decision about flight still hasn’t been corrected and I loathe being chained to the ground. The overly grindy nature of the world quest system has not changed and I easily tire of busy work. Alt-friendliness is at an all-time low because of the artifact weapon system and I simply can’t tolerate being limited like that. Yes, yes, I know: all of these things will be fixed Soon™ but I tire of promises of the next patch fixing everything. After nearly a decade of broken promises I just don’t believe Blizzard anymore.
Oh, and all of that is without addressing the logistics of returning mid-stream and being behind in the gearing and AP grinding, and having missed out on an entire tier of the raiding experience. As much as it would be great to be able to come back, it just seems like it would be too much effort to make it work, and in the end that’s all it would be; making it work, forcing it to fit. I don’t really want that.
No worries, though, my life is doing just fine without WoW. I’ve channeled my energies into other projects. At the risk of sounding like a braggart, my culinary skills have progressed to a point where I never knew food could taste so good. I’m sure that I still have much to learn, but everything I make rivals the quality you’ll find in local sit-down restaurants, and fast food has kind of been ruined for me (it just doesn’t taste good to me anymore). I’ve also gone back to my long-neglected habit/hobby of writing. I’m in the world-building process right now, but I hope to be into the story-writing stage in time for NaNoWriMo (if not before) and publishing through Kindle by next year. I’m really very excited about the prospects. I probably won’t make more than a few bucks here and there, but hey, you never know, right? Maybe my stuff will catch on.
Anyway, that’s enough about me. If any of you guys are still around, I’d love to hear about you all. I often wonder which achievement Askevar and Venoym are plugging away at now, or what Zank and Kirova are up to, or how George and Tarii are doing, or well, all of you guys: Miri, Grem, Tall, Eth, Dal, Braydenn. Or even my non-guild friends, Lala, Dan, Werf, Rizzy. I feel like I’m forgetting some people, in which case I am sorry. If any of you are still around or know how these folks are doing, please drop me a line.
Until next time, and with warmest regards, Barley.
Having a Great Time
I really thought I was going to struggle with replacing WoW, but so far I’ve been really enjoying my WoW-free life. Sure, I miss my friends and guildies, but I’m putting all that extra free time to good use.
Diablo 3 is a pretty good game, albeit with some terrible design decisions, but it’s way less of a time sink than WoW (which is a definite plus). I’m organizing and expanding my video collection, learning lots of new things, working on other things (like improving my cooking skills), and the house is cleaner than it’s been in a long time. Sure, those are all long-term projects, with lots of work to be done on all fronts, but I feel like I am making tangible progress in every field at a very pleasing rate. Who knew that quitting a game could be so much fun?
The Search Continues
The search for a WoW replacement continues. I don’t think I’ll find the answer from a Blizzard game. I’ve tried out Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm. Heroes of the Storm is mediocre at best, and Hearthstone is terrible. Pay to Win games just plain suck and there’s no way around it. I’ll play around with Diablo 3, since I got a free copy anyway, but my hopes aren’t high. As far as I’ve seen, Blizzard hasn’t turned out a quality product in almost a decade. It’s sad, really, because they used to be so good. Now? Well, now my launcher was closed for 3 or 4 days and I didn’t even notice.
ROFLMAO
Um, so I got trolled by Lore on Twitter today. Lore posted some REALLY bad logic in defense of the invasion XP nerf.
And then goes full-on Troll.
So I point out how terribly flawed the logic is. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a bully.
I’m not sure why Lore couldn’t follow the exact 1-for-1 logic of the analogy, but here it is in simple terms: An entity lowers the compensation for an identical amount of work, but offers additional units of work to “make up” the difference and calls it a raise. That’s 100% the same in both scenarios. Oh, but here’s a shocker: rather than address the actual point, he trolls me, too.
And people honestly wonder why Blizzard is developing a bad reputation with its customers? This is a guy whose sole job is to interact with players on Blizzard’s behalf and this is his behavior? LOL. Sad.
Challenge Mode Golds
I managed to PUG my way through Challenge Mode Golds in just 3 days. Whew! That was tough, but also fun, and now I have those sweet, sweet transmogs.
Before the Patch
With the Legion Pre-Patch, a few things will be going away or nerfed. I’ll add to the list as I find out more.
- Bag of Smuggled Gold (contains ~15g for 50 garrison resources): gone.
- Follower Weapon/Armor Tokens (vendor for a decent amount of gold): sell price nerfed.
- Challenge Modes: find a group or buy a carry NOW, you don’t have long.
Cathedral of Tainted Souls 