Hello, readers, and welcome back. I'm going to make a few more posts here before I decide to give up. Today I'm just going to write about the games I've been playing lately. This is kind of a spinoff of something I put in one of my journals called "Now Playing" where I list the videogames, TV shows, books, and music that I've been engaging with at the time. I often look back on eras of my life and think of them in these terms. "Yeah, that was when I was really into that anime." "Those where the days, when that music artist was new to me and listened to their albums on repeat."

This is a place where I can just write whatever I want, and not really worry about catering to any audience. If you think the stuff written here is pointless, don't read it. I'm going to keep indulging my pedantry and special interests. I can't honestly imagine that anyone would read it, so I don't really know why I'm putting it out there. But here we are. Maybe there are other people who share my interests that I could interact with? But then, I have no method of audience interaction right now. Whatever. Here we go.

World of Warcraft: The War Within

The main game I've been playing is the latest expansion for World of Warcraft. I really enjoy playing this game. Mostly alone, but I do interact with strangers. I always try to bring a sunny, optimistic attitude to the people I'm playing with! But I don't really feel like the commitment that comes with playing alongside a consistent group of players in a guild.

I play slow and steady, at my own pace. My favorite part of World of Warcraft is always when new areas of the world are released, because I just like to explore and do all the side quests. I like talking to the NPCs and learning their stories. The beginning days of this expansion are some of my best experiences in the game so far. I love the new zones and cultures, like the conspiracy among the Kaheti Nerubians and the beauty and terror of Hallowfall. There are a number of really engaging stories in this expansion that fulfill the roles that only fantasy can: exploring the experience of cultures that don't exist, the experience of peoples defined by a fictional biology.

And, of course, I also really enjoy the gameplay. I typically heal in group content. Since the last expansion, Dragonflight, I have really liked the Dracthyr race and their exclusive Evoker class. Some people really don't like the way the Dracthyr look, but I love it. I love reptiles and have two as pets. I have always liked dinosaurs and dragons. My one and only complaint is that you don't get to have full customization of your character's outfits when they are in dragon form. Playing dress up is a vital part of any RPG (many players won't call it dress up, but that's what it is)!

Evokers can specialize in Devastation for playing alone in the open world. You get to shoot fire and blue lasers out of your mouth... it's pretty great. With the new Hero Talents I've gone for Scalecommander which lets you use your Deep Breath ability more often and steer it. With this spell, you take flight and breath fire in a line over your enemies, damaging and stunning them. Then, as you're using your other abilities, you can call down bombardments from other Dracthyr to damage all enemies in an area. It's also durable, because you still have a lot of healing buttons.

In group content, I play Preservation Evoker. In this specialization you use time and regenerative magic to heal your allies. You can set up Echos on you teammates, which replicate the next healing spell you cast. Using this, you can set yourself up for massive healing. You also get to keep some quintessential damage abilities including Fire Breath, Disintegrate (the blue laser), and Deep Breath, though they aren't as strong and you don't get to use them quite as often. Preservation Evoker is considered one of the harder healers to play, which I don't like. I would prefer something simpler. But the gameplay is just so fun, I don't care that I'm not doing it optimally. World of Warcraft has a wide variety of difficulty for all its content. I don't push into the hardest stuff, so I don't really care that much about my performance.

I've also been playing other classes. I leveled up a Priest, and I like healing on them. My issue with that class is to play in the open world you typically have to switch to Shadow Priest. It's a cool specialization that summons void creatures and black holes to damage people, but it's just not vibe. It's not what I sign up for when I play as a Priest. I also have been playing Mage, mostly Fire Mage. I have a lot of fun with this because you just get to shoot out massive fireballs all the time. My only issue that it's pretty fast paced, so sometimes I don't think I keep up well enough to perform at the level expected in group content. Also, Mages don't have a specialization that let's them heal, so that's not as interesting. I've been working on leveling up a Monk too. I like the vibe and class fantasy of Monks, but their healing specialization, Mistweaver, doesn't really play the way that I like to play.

Overall I've just been having a great time with this game. I'm taking my time, playing how I want to play. I'm trying to get into crafting professions, but it takes a lot of gold (in-game currency) to level up those skills and I'm just not that rich! I did my first raid of the season on my Evoker last week and had a blast, though we couldn't get to the final boss. I'll probably keep doing Mythic 0 dungeons on that character too, and maybe pushing into the more difficult Mythic+ dungeons later on if I really feel up to it. For me, Mythic 0 is pretty difficult.

Beyond that, I'll keep up with the story, fish and cook, keep playing the new solo Delve content, and maybe get into a Roleplaying group again.

Age of Mythology: Retold

The other game I've been playing a lot of lately is Age of Mythology: Retold. This is a remake of an old game that can out when I was a kid. I played it all the time, especially with my sister. It's a strategy game where you control the economy and military force of a civilization, but also get to summon heroes and mythical creatures from that culture's real life legends by worshiping different gods from their ancient polytheistic faith. There's also a fictional culture in the Atlanteans, but they still pull from real Greek myths and legends. It can be a difficult game because you have to manage all your buildings, villagers, and soldiers at the same time while making strategic decisions. It's fast past and complex.

I've been playing as the Atlanteans under the god Gaia, who is a real titan from Greek mythology. Playing as Gaia, you focus on growing a big economy so you can just have more and better soldiers than your opponent. There's a lot of practice that goes into getting good at the game. You've got to decide ahead of time what you'll do at the beginning of the game to get your economy and military started, typically as fast as possible. This is sort of a preset list of actions you take called a build order. After that? The game opens up massively. You've got to react to your opponent's strategy and take control of the map. You can play defensive to beat back your opponents aggression, focus on your economy and expanding to control the map if your opponent is playing too defensive and cloistering themselves in, or be aggressive and cripple their economy if they're spreading too far too fast. I love experimenting with the different gods, myth units, and god powers.

My sister and I have been playing together some. We team up and play versus the computer. Right now, we can narrowly win against one hard AI and one moderate AI teamed up. We're going to keep getting better until we can take on two hard AIs teamed up!

Honestly, when I play this game, I get a big adrenaline rush. It's so fast and active it's like I get a runner's high! But there's also another way of playing that's a classic for my sister and I... using cheat odes. You can start a match with against a really difficult computer and use unlimited god powers and resources to just sort of mess around. I used to use cheat codes and the scenario editor to set up situations and play with the characters basically like dolls, telling some kind of story with them. It's a super nostalgic game that's been brough back to life with modern graphics, gameplay conveniences, and balance changes in the remake.

Other Stuff

I've also been playing Bloons Tower Defense 6 with a friend of mine and keeping up with a new incremental game called Idle Space Energy Particle Simulator (ISEPS) on my phone. I'm trying to read Pride and Prejudice. It's genuinely good, but not as engaging as some fantasy books, so I'm not sitting down to read very often. I'm thinking about starting another book at the same time... For TV, I'm desperate to finish Bob's Burgers. There's so many episodes! I like to have it on a second monitor while I do something like playing a videogame. I'm also keeping up with the new episodes of Futurama as they release on Hulu. Feels like they're not as good as the old ones, but maybe that's just the nostalgia. I'm keeping up with the classics in my music, but focusing a lot on listening to albums from beginning to end. A lot of Green Day, Daft Punk, and other groups I've listened to my whole life just because they've always been there so they're familiar and comfortable. Also tons of Chappell Roan and future funk. Just having a good time.

Well, thanks for reading all the way through this blog post which exists for no real reason. I hope to make some more content soon about World of Warcraft since that's where my head is at right now. See you soon.

Sincerely,
SunWisp