Nomadic Gamer

2022

Gaming

Xbox Game Pass – Contemplation

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I like playing new games, but I don’t always end up enjoying them / want to pay $50-100 for the newest on the market. There are a lot of games in my steam library that I haven’t even played before. Since they’re all digital, it’s not like I’m ‘collecting’ them (or maybe I am?) – anyway, long story short I decided to give the xbox game pass a go. The first month only came to $1 and had at least two games I was interested in (Dungeon Boyfriend, and Two Point Campus) which I imagine will at least surpass my $1 cost, so why not. After that each month is $12, and I figure instead of paying $50 a month for each new game that releases that I end up not playing, maybe I should give this a try. I’m not a huge fan of subscription based services because there are SO MANY out there these days, but I asked around, and everyone seemed to be in agreement that even if you’re a PC gamer (we don’t own an xbox) it has great value. We might pick up a console in the future (someone mentioned the xbox series S) but it has been some time since either myself or my husband have been console gamers. Nothing wrong with that, to each their own, it’s just that the kids normally commandeer the television with their nintendo switch.

Anyway, I’ve signed up for now and I’ll probably continue. There should be at least $10 value each month for games I want to play, and I see they’ve also teamed up with EA, which is another bonus for me. Anyone else out there using the xbox game pass and enjoying it? Let me know in comments!

DailyCreative Real Life

Blender? Let’s Learn Blender

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For a few years now I have been following some 3D artists who use Blender to render World of Warcraft scenes – and I have wanted to do exactly that. I love the idea of making a scene with all of my characters, or just creating little scenes for friends. Or just on a whim. The problem is it involves using a handful of programs that I know NOTHING about – the biggest one being Blender. I’ve been meaning to try to learn it for a long while, but I never made time. That’s the biggest downside to having so many interest and hobbies, finding / making time.

I am working out a schedule where I can dedicate two days (evenings) a week to this, and hopefully I’ll make a little progress. I’ve downloaded the programs required and started with the YouTube video above, and joined a discord owned by the same person. I know it won’t be a quick learn, but I feel like this is a natural progression from my digital art that I’ve been working on. OK maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but at least I’m hoping it will be interesting.

Gaming

Addicted to Statistics

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There is a website called DataForAzeroth.com that I am addicted to. It takes statistics from your account and pits you against others on your server, ranking you. It’s silly and fun, and for people like me who absolutely love statistics, it is a neat way to find motivation and inspiration when it comes to finding ‘stuff’ to do. Especially at the end of an expansion, like we’re facing right now.

You can see I lead the ranks on Winterhoof for alts at level 60 (I have 21 of them, soon to be 22 I hope). I’m also pretty far ahead on pets, but I know there’s still a lot I haven’t done. What surprised me was the high score on recipes (for Winterhoof at least, we’re joined with Kilrogg, and they have far more). This motivated me to work on my blacksmith and collect some recipes that she was lacking. Now that crafting has their own ranks per expansion, it’s much more difficult to level, and much more expensive. Finding Outlands materials cost me around 50k. Next? Northrend. It takes a lot of materials to level through that one, so I’ll be a while.

I like having these little goals and blips of things to do. That’s what keeps me playing (psst, Blizzard, add player housing, that’ll keep me playing too) when we’re at the tail end of things to do. Of course I’m also working on making gold in between all of these things, but they sort of go hand in hand. Are you a statistic buff in your game of choice? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Season 4 Musings

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I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Season 4, I rarely ever check out the PTR to test things out unless they’re gold making related, and we’ve been so focused on the auction house merge (9.2.7) that most of the changes were a pleasant surprise. The first thing I did was queue for LFR – they’re fated, so we did Castle Nathria. At the start, they were also under tuned, and VERY simple. We were clearing the LFR versions within 5 minutes of entering (this has since been fixed). My paladin (who was healing) managed to pick up a handful of 265 gear, and completed the requirements for vault. Then I took those pieces over to ZM, placed them in the giant machine, and turned them into set gear. I had no idea I could even do this.

Next it was time to take down the world boss, who apparently has a higher chance at dropping loot now – just not for my characters. I’ve completed it on almost all 12 of my alts and the loot has so far evaded me. On the plus side it was nice anima, something I can always use more of.

Blizzard also recently mentioned they’ll be changing how /follow works in the future and into Dragonflight. This is another step in preventing / slowing boosting. Right now, if two people use a weak aura one can send a /follow command and the second account will follow. I use something similar when I multibox. Blizzard will be disabling this feature so that you have to manually type follow or hit your macro or whatever other means that has a physical input from the follower rather than the person being followed. This is both good and bad. Bad because it does harm visually impaired gamers who use the follow API as it was intended, especially in raids. Good, because it does target boosters. The thing is, I think Blizzard is taking the easy way out, again. Instead of targeting boosters directly, they’ve found yet another ‘easier’ solution that makes it LOOK like they’re targeting the right people. You can read all about it in this thread, and why it’s an important accessibility issue.

Real Life

Streaming with Anxiety

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I started streaming after a 3 year hiatus back in June, playing World of Warcraft and doing gold making. The problem is I have incredible anxiety and it’s easy to talk myself out of streaming when at the end of the day I’m exhausted and I just have nothing left to give an audience.

I want to stream. I enjoy it. I think it could help with my anxiety issues – but taking the plunge and sticking with a schedule is something that I just have such a difficult time with. I recently set up an AirPlay server on my PC so that I can stream my Procreate art to OBS and perhaps do some art streams in the future too. I keep meaning to get some sort of system set up to stream my spinning, or my sock knitting machine, but end up doubting myself and just end up doing nothing instead. It’s frustrating. I’m frustrated.

I had written out this enormous post about navigating depression and anxiety but deleted it because what is the point. People don’t like to hear about that stuff, and I don’t like to promote it. Blah blah blah words and stuff the end.

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