Games – What’s Going on in August
stargrace 
Despite what the past week or so has shown, I DO tend to write about video games here, so let’s do a little update on that.
World of Warcraft – I’m “playing” but not really. I haven’t kept up with content or story, instead I do some pet battles and marketing bits. As much as I love World of Warcraft, and I do, the game is old and it shows. It’s comfortable, but there’s nothing innovative and I always get a little bored mid way through expansions. It happened with Shadowlands and I’m not exactly surprised that it’s happening in Dragonflight either. Don’t get me wrong, I think DF is an amazing expansion (compared to previous ones) and I’ve had a lot of fun, but it doesn’t seem to last.
Wurm Online / Wurm Unlimited – I’ve been cautious about playing much WO because I’m not exactly convinced that the ‘new’ CEO won’t completely change the game that I love and adore, so to scratch some of those WO itches I’ve been playing a bit of WU, where the Sklotopolis server is my home and I have a small deed there I’ve been working on. WO has done some great QoL changes over the years that I really wish WU would be able to pick up on, but the Sklotopolis server developers have done well given their restrictions. They can only do server side changes with the way things currently are.
FFXIV – My husband returned to this game sort of out of the blue, because two of his RL friends are playing. I decided why not, and my little bard is mid-way through Endwalker and level 86. Most of my time is still spent crafting and harvesting, but the game is lovely. I’d like to get more into housing (so far I only have an apartment) and I’m learning the markets. Having 40(60) sale slots has been an interesting restriction that I’ve been having fun working around/with.
Baldur’s Gate 3 – Like a lot of others, I picked it up just before release and then held off playing so that progression wouldn’t have to start over. I have a 4 person campaign with some friends, and a 2 person campaign with my husband. I’ve been having an absolute blast, and while I know there are some issues that hardcore D&D players take issue with, I’ve just been relaxing and enjoying the narrative. Combat did take some getting used to, but now that we’re no longer in the tutorial and we’ve been adventuring together for a bit, it’s much more fluid. I play a wood elf druid in my group campaign, and a human paladin with my husband. Probably one of my favourite games this year.
Cook Serve Delicious 3 – When I don’t want to be around people this is the game I head to. I enjoyed the previous two versions of the game, and the third one follows a pretty dark apocalyptical timeline that I wasn’t expecting, but still enjoy. I appreciate that they have a ‘chill’ mode, and it’s just been a great little game to escape to.
School (and thus homeschool) will be picking back up in September, and this time I’ll have my 7 year old son and my 5 year old daughter so spare time (and thus gaming time) will go down as I do lesson plans and all that other fun stuff. I’m also trying to dedicate a bit of free time to hobbies, so games that I can get into (and out of) quickly are usually the winners. Baldur’s Gate 3 is (right now) Tuesday / Friday nights for 2h, and everything else I just sort of rotate around. Hopefully I can continue to balance it all, but we shall see. Life doesn’t always listen to me when I ask things to go a certain way.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
