May 2018

BfA – Professions to 800 First

There’s a profession change coming in Battle for Azeroth that I am not a fan of – but it makes perfect sense and one of the reasons I’m not fond of it is simply because it’s not how things have been going for the past two expansions. For the past two expansions you could level a profession from 1 to the cap of that tier using materials ONLY from that expansion. Just picking up crafting for the first time in Legion? No longer do you need to go into the vanilla world any more, you can do it all in Legion zones.

In the next expansion this (from what I’ve seen / heard) changes, and instead you will be required to level up through that tier using materials from that expansion. This is how (IMO) it should have worked the entire time. It keeps old content relevant and people who are leveling up actually have a market for their older goods instead of just the top tier being the only viable tier. Still, change is change, and I tend to be leary of it until I see it in action.

That’s why one of my main goals is to get all of my characters as close to 800 in their professions as possible, before BfA comes out. So far I’m at a grand total of ZERO characters being at 800. Not a one. While I have always been able to blow through most leveling adventures, the fact that Legion requires you to quest and do dungeons to unlock recipes has been a huge deterring factor in leveling. I also find skill points rare and far between, relying instead on Darkmoon Faire for easy skill ups (5 a month.. woo). I have 11 characters, and with none of them even close to reaching 800 in their professions this is going to mean a lot of time and work in order to get them up to snuff for BfA. I love crafting in WoW, I just haven’t had any enthusiasm at all with the latest systems. I’m hoping this changes.

We’ll just have to see.

Getting my RTS on

Progressing through my pregnancy has left me just as I remember from the last one – little desire to actually sit at my computer chair, and fingers too swollen and sore to do much elaborate movements. Still, I love to game, so I’ve found other ways to combat these issues. This week, I dove into some RTS games (real time strategy) and got my gaming fix that way.

I started off playing a game of Civilization, as Brazil. I lost, horribly. I started out strong and was taking over the cities of my closest neighbours but then had a change of heart and wanted to play nice, except everyone already hated me and I lost due to some diplomatic something or other (I also had the game set to 500 turns which ran out, so maybe technically I didn’t lose so much as I wasn’t the winner). It was still a lot of fun, I love Civilization (I’m playing 6, the latest version, with Aztec DLC and none of the others because I don’t own them).

Next I downloaded and loaded up Age of Empires II, a game I’ve owned for a while but had not played in a very long time. Of course I had completely forgotten what the goal was and what I was supposed to be doing, so my farmers, lumberjacks, and builders were no match for the mounted cavalry that came charging in to wipe us out. Hey just because I like playing RTS games doesn’t mean I’m any GOOD at them.

Third up – Warcraft III. I’ve actually NEVER played Warcraft III before. Ever. Thanks to having a bunch of bnet balance I picked up the game for $12 (CAD) and jumped right in. Having been an avid player of WoW, it’s neat to see the story lines presented from the Warcraft III perspective (which came first, after all) and thrall and his grunts are happily smushing things. Unfortunately I forgot to run the game in comparability modeĀ  so I missed out on all of the opening cutscenes, but it should be fixed for future campaigns.

Finding games that I can still play with my particular issues of late has been fantastic. It’s nice not to have to give absolutely everything up, and RTS games allow me to quickly step away and tend to life.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Nomadic Gamer