I am Done... For Now

Boy, I bet you know the subject of this blog.

    I have been out of school and theoretically having more free time than I had for about a month now, and I have run into an issue.

     I still don't have the desire to play much World of Warcraft.

     I hop on, do a couple quests here and there and I am working on leveling a few characters in my off time, but even that is very sporadic at this moment.  I am more focusing on other games, I still haven't beaten Diablo IIIs expansion, I have my free copy (thank you Origin) of DragonAge Origins I never really got into playing, and I am putting a stronger focus on getting some writing done.

    So even though school is over for now, my playtime has not increased.

    I am not unsubscribing anytime soon, I still enjoy little jaunts here and there, but I am just not playing in a meaningful way at this point.

    Therefor, for the immediate future, I am closing this blog.

     I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read through my mindless ramblings and opinions on the game over the last several years.  I built up to over 200 posts here, went through a few changes and had a pretty good run.

    This site with stay for now.  I may pick this up again someday.  World of Warcraft isn't going anywhere and in a year or two I might feel like hopping in whole hog again.  When that happens I might have more to write about, more opinions etc.  For now my focus is elsewhere even more.

     I may see you in game.  Feel free to say hi.  I'm am still thankful to all the people I have raided with and played with over the years.  I have some fantastic memories and experiences to draw on and as silly as it is to be emotionally tied to a game I am.  World of Warcraft and the players have a special place in my heart.

    I am not giving a long goodbye here.  I am not going to poor my heart out for pages of writing.  Of course that has never been my way in the first place.

So thank you again for all the good time in game,

Yours Truly,
Lag.  A.K.A. Ben Marble

   

Falling Behind.

As you can tell, with the frequency of my posts, I am not playing much still.

     But hey, I just finished my Project+ class, meaning that I am taking a little time off of school, which is going to be nice and relaxing before I hop back in and go for my BA.  I may do some Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm as well.

    I have tinkered around on the Broken Isles and so far I am not hating or loving the experience.  I know everyone is in love with this, as it has brought the better mechanics from Tanaan Jungle, and the Timeless Isle together.  It has some good changing world quests tied to it, and the story is progressing nicely through it.  The dungeon it introduced was interesting and had me raising my eyebrows at the end.  By all accounts I should be in love with this...

    However, I do not like the fact that after you build one of the buildings, (My realm had the Mage tower up first) it is only so long before that building falls and you have to start from scratch again.  I would rather have a progressive zone like in Firelands, Suramar, or the Isle of Thunder where you slowly accomplish something and the zone changes to reflect your accomplishments.  I hate the feeling of watching something being built, then going back a couple days later and it's rubble again.  I understand that this is to give us something ongoing, but I feel it kind of shortchanges the area in the long run.  When we are here in two or three months, is anyone going to care enough to work on the buildings, leaving them as permanent rubble eventually.

    I also have not figured out the purpose of a few things.  I get crystals and can create demon portals.  Great!  How does this benefit me?  I can see killing the slog of demons that come out for items, gold nethershards, etc.  Why do I care about this, more than going to one area or another to mow down the mobs there? I am sure the answer is a high rate of nethershards being dropped, but it seems like more headache than it's worth to me.  Maybe I have gotten lazy in my old age, but sitting there smacking mobs as they spawn and hoping they don't overwhelm me is not interesting to me.

     I do like the invasion events.  So far I have been able to do High Mountain and Aszuna.  The feeling of doing four different spots then having a quest/scenerio to top everything off feels good.  My only wonder is with how often they happen, how long will it take to do all of them.  It might be a bit seeing that Blizzard removed doing all four from the Pathfinder II achievement for Legion Flying.

     The mix of world quests on the broken shore have been nice.  I enjoy the fact I end up in all sorts of areas, including in the water, and that it makes me explore the whole area.  I have never wanted Murlocs as a playable class until I saw the fel Murloc with the big bat wings.  That was completely awesome.

     I don't like the fact that both of my weapons classes seem semi-impossible right now.  I checked wowhead.com and it seems very few if any folks are managing to finish these fights.  I do think they should take some work, but the difficulty is kind of crazy right now.  That might be the point though, as you have a weapon appearance gated behind those quests.  If it was easy it wouldn't be as significant.

    How is everyone else feeling though?  Are we enjoying the new content?  What are y'all loving, and what not so much?

    How off base am I on some of this.

Happy playing,
Lag.

If you would like to support Ben Marble and his Love of Burning Murlocs, please consider purchasing one of his short stories at Amazon.com.
 

A Nice Return.

I finally stepped into a raid this expansion.  And yes, it's been a little while.

    On my rogue I had a chance to step into the Emerald Nightmare on Heroic.  She has stepped over the guild "Screaming for Vengeance" on Zangarmarsh/Hellscream realm.  I am keeping the Horde side Fear Itself guild intact, but as no one has really logged onto it recently and there are no resources in the bank I'm holding it for the name only.  I might do something with it in the future, but have debated deleting it completely.

    I had the opportunity with this guild, as I had the week off of school after passing my Security+, to go in and fight a few bosses.  We downed the Nythendra fight, then the Dragon's of Nightmare, and ended on Ursoc, but not without getting him down to 10%.  We were running the dungeon on Heroic, and while I haven't talked a lot to this guild yet, they do seem to be starting their raid team so I am happy with what was done.  So far they seem a group of nice folks, and I look forward to hopping into things with them here and there.

    My own performance was somewhat lacking.... I could see some of the rust on me as I died more than once to stupid mistakes.  My DPS was good, I actually placed closer to the top of the charts than to the bottom. As it is said though, dead DPS do no DPS, and I went down more than I should have.

    What else would one expect though after not raiding for a while, and not DPSing for an even longer period of time.

     Otherwise, life is good but slow.  I am still logging in sporadically and enjoying the game at my own pace.  I am learning and working at my new job with inContact and loving it here. I am a IT Asset Tech. Which means I am in charge of ordering and maintaining equipment and I do some good helpdesk/IT crossover.  Kids are healthy and energetic and my wife as always is wonderful.  Oh, and I have officially graduated from DATC.  Next it's on to work towards my Bachelor's degree.

     There is also Fear Itself.  I am happy that when I log in there are still some familiar faces online.  Some don't see often either.  I knew there were all sorts of possibilities when I stepped down.  I knew there might be a mass exodus from the guild, or that things might fall apart.  I hoped they wouldn't, and so far things look like they are mostly together, but time will tell if things will still be there when I am ready to full time raid again.

     Of course, I'm pretty sure I don't want to go back to being a raid leader at this point.  I am done with that part of my Wow experience.  I leave it open to anyone in Fear Itself who wants to raid lead and rebuild things in that area, but it won't be me.  I just don't have a time and energy for the stress anymore.  Even were I to finish school tomorrow I don't think I would go back to it.  I will raid, I will participate as much as I am able, but I am done being the raid leader.

     I still love this game, I still love my guild and my guildies.  It's just time for me to do something else.  The major part of my heart is still in Fear Itself and I plan on always having a presence there.  Objectively though, I don't have the time and effort in me to push raiding or guild events at the moment.  If others do, let me or Gwyndolynn know.  We will give you the resources and support to build your own raid team etc...  More than happy to.

    See you in Azeroth,
Lag

If you would like to consider supporting Ben Marble and his clubbing of baby murlocs, consider purchasing one of his short stories at Amazon.com.
   

 
   

Your Place in the World of Warcraft.

I was reminded of why I love this game this weekend.

    World of Warcraft seems to have a niche for every single player.  There is opportunity for players who just want to log on, see the story of the expansion and log off.  There is room for those who want to run dungeons, raids, and PVE content all day long.  If you like to level characters, and play different classes to keep your experience more fresh, there is a place for you as well.  Even those of you who like to PVP and cut your teeth against other players can log into the world, shed some virtual blood and log out.

    And we can all experience this on the same platform, generally without having to worry about what the folks in the other bubbles are doing.  There is of course a lot of crossover.  Some people like to touch all aspects of the game, others like their own little corner and there is nothing wrong with either approach.  I prefer light PVE and leveling myself.

    This weekend I tanked a couple of Mythics for the first time.  (Well there was that one other time...) I really hadn't dipped my toe in yet, and was pleasantly surprised to find out they weren't all that bad.  Of course we were going for level one, no stone, so it was roughly equivalent to heroics in the last couple of expansions.  Haven't not done much of this however, I found it rather enjoyable and will be looking at tanking some more soon.

    This once again makes me wonder about what my particular role is right now.  I have not been playing consistently with much focus.  My horde rogue has actually gotten more attention lately than the rest of my characters, but I have tried not to ignore my Pally.  With the time investment required by artifact weapons, I don't see myself working seriously on another toon soon.  I do want to finish the class hall campaign for my demon hunter however, though I have fallen slightly out of love with her.  Which is kind of sad to me, because it's the class I've wanted forever but I find it somewhat lacking, but I can't explain why.

     By the end of the expansion I would like to find the time to play through all the different class hall campaigns.  (I probably won't but a guy can dream) I want to see the story wrapped in each and see how it effects the overall layout of what is going on. I want to experience the changes in all the classes and the specs I like to play.  Blizzard was wise to give each class it's own story this time around.  It makes people want to play multiple classes despite the new hurdles to doing so.  It makes a bit of the leveling experience different each time.  Which is good, because leveling multiple characters otherwise feel repetitive through each zone.

    What is your role in World of Warcraft and how do you play?  What drags you to your keyboard and into a virtual world?  I know I eventually want to get to raiding again.  I don't know if I will raid lead after this point, but I do miss the team dynamic of taking things down together.  Heck, one of my big frustrations is that I have to do some normal raids to go further into my artifact weapon quest line.  Gate like that are frustrating when you don't have the time to commit to a regular raid team, and if it wasn't partially a lore thing I wouldn't care.  But as it furthers the story I find it highly annoying.

    What do you all think?

Lag.

If you would like to support Ben Marble and his devious plans to teach penguins to polka consider buying one of his short stories at Amazon.com including his new short, "The Trap."