Author: Lunnainn

So, I finally managed to get my hands on a couch.

Or well, it’s more “finally got around to buy a new one”. I have looked around for a used one for a good while, fairly clean, cheap and close by, but it’s like this triangle – “chose two, cannot chose three”. I’ve actually found some couches that’s really clean and for free – as long as you pick them up yourself – but they’ve all been like hundreds of miles away. Or there was a really clean one that one of the neighbours had up – for three times the retail price. One couch I found that was just a few miles away, pretty cheap one, running something along the lines of $50, but it was crusty, torn, one of the seat cushions were missing half the filling.. The absolute worst couch I saw though, were one dirty and torn couch that the seller wanted several hundreds for – almost close to retail price – and they demanded that you came and got it yourself. The kicker? “Because of the pandemic, they didnt want to let you in, so they’d carry the couch out to the sidewalk for a fee.” How large a fee?

The same as they wanted for the couch. So if I wanted that type of couch, I could literally buy a brand new and buy the option of delivery, and still spend less money.

So I did.

It’s actually really comfortable – atleast according to my youngest two kids. It’s been a fort, a hurdle to climb, they’ve used it as a trampoline.. Almost anything but as a couch.

I have yet to sit in it myself, and my oldest haven’t got a clue it’s even here, so it’ll be fun to see that reaction!

As a result, I’ve redecorated here, so my bed is back by the windows again, and the TV – which basically act as a PS5 monitor and Alexa TV-unit – is back in the corner of the room. Now I’ve almost paid off an expensive monthly payment too, so I’m on the verge of getting a new TV bench and bookshelves too!

It’s “just” $950, not including the delivery. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make that within half a year or so. Maybe a year. Though, when I buy these, I will have to redecorate again, moving the TV back to where I have the bench, swap places with the couch and PC desk, and bed back to where I just had it. The shelves I have now I have to get rid of, so I can fit these in.

I’m also contemplating getting a furniture for a sort of “coffee island” too – get a kettle, coffee brewer, a can of hunny, a box of tea, mugs, glasses, a cold-water dispenser and a bunch of other stuff related to it. Like a coffee-bar, but as a “kitchen island”, in the living room. It would be cool, but I feel like I would never leave the living room if I do that – bed, PC, PS5, TV, coffee – it’s all there! I only need a minifridge for snacks and drinks, and I’ve got a studio apartment inside my actual apartment!

I haven’t gotten much time playing Demon’s Souls for a while, so I haven’t finished it yet. In the first world, I actually only have King Allant left, and I have the entirety of the Archstone of the Chief left, the Valley of Defilement. Although, I can definitely see how this game is considered by some to be the best of the soulsborne games!

Instead, I’ve actually bought Vampire Survivors, a $3 game or so. It’s still in early access, so it’s not too much there yet, but it’s fun as heck! I’ve done all there is to do now, all achievements, played all the characters, unlocked all the maps, used all the various weapons.. I cant recommend it enough!

So, I know it’s been a good while since I wrote, but I have an excuse – just let me think of a good one.

I actually got my hands on a PS5 this christmas, and let me tell you, it’s been a BLAST! I’ve played both Jedi Fallen Order – not a game I recommend, to be honest, but had it been a TV-series I would’ve recommended it, the story was actually that good, gameplay not so much – and a bit of Dark Souls 1 and 3. But I also got to play Demon’s Souls finally. Funnily enough, I pre-ordered the game over a year ago, before the PS5 even came out, because I thought I’d just save up a bit of money and get the PS5 just slightly after launch. I did not expect that the PS5 would be this hard to get.. but over a year after the launch, I finally got to play it.

I tried to play Demon’s Souls on the PS3 a couple of years ago, but the clunkyness, the slow loading times, the fact that it was a PS3 when I had a PS4 and gotten used to the games on that one.. and the fact that the game was so damn dark that I couldnt make out many details.. I didnt even play past the first boss – the actual first boss, not the tutorial one. I’ve also seen a bunch of streams playing this game, like Happy Hob, LobosJr, and a few more, but since it’s a game I havent played yet, I decided to not pay that much attention to it – I’ve seen some bosses and how Hob cheeses a few of them, I’ve seen the general tone of some areas, like the tunnel levels, but I have made sure to not look at too much, like where items are, the layout, where you have certain NPC’s, etc. But yeah, things to stick over the years, so it’s not a completely blind run I’ve had. But with the PS5, I’ve been having the time of my life.

While I know of the mechanics of World Tendencies and generally how they function, the basic idea of how miracles and spells are separated and so on, most things were new to me. I purposefully had not paid attention to the routes, so finding my way around these areas were just great. I did cheat at one point, I had completely missed a wheel turning on an elevator in the second level, and after a couple of hours worth of searching I actually looked it up – I was just blind, since the wheel to turn on the outside elevator were just beside the door. I still think that it has been mostly a blind playthrough – I had nothing major spoiled before, like hidden enemies, world maps, where you find important items such as keys, and so on.

Which is also why I was so caught off guard by an NPC that I met.

So, I first played through the first level, got a couple of great weapons and armor pieces – I decided to kill Old King Doran, mostly because I found the area and they were hard-hitting and I assumed they would give me lots of souls, so I just decided to make sure they died – looked everywhere for every secret I could find, killed the first boss, got through the next area and fought the tower knight and realized that the next area would whoop my delicate bee-hive.

So I tried out some of the other areas. Got into the fourth map, and realized that I remember that Hob often finds his main weapon there, quite early. I knew it was up the stairs, to the left and then out on the ledge, so.. yeah, if it’s good enough for him throughout the game, it’s good enough for me. I found it and actually cleared out large parts of that map, killed the first boss and unlocked some guy as a vendor, Bilge. His Soul Remains got me through the next part down to the next boss – which I decided against doing. I then switched to the second world, which I cleared out in one single run – from first archstone to last boss. By that time, I had enough health, enough damage on my falchion and still the Old King Dorans armor, so the boss I believed was the hardest – Flamelurker – was actually very simple. Then I decided to play through the prison area, so I played through the prison, got up to the towers, cleared that out and realized that the next area is a swamp area… yeah, no, I dont feel like doing that right now. Oh, I also remember that Lobos always kills this one guy in a prisoncage that acts like an elevator, so I did too, and realized that I had actually found an armor that was way better than the one I had. A little heavier, a little less defense at some parts, but resistances against poison and plague were just awesome.

So I went back to the fourth map, went through the catacombs and cleared out the entire fourth map, last boss and all. So, now back to the first map, and played through after the Tower Knight.

Searching through the first world after the Tower Knight, I realized something, and that was that I had made the right choice. Everything hurt a lot more past Tower Knight and took more of a beating – even with an upgraded Crescent Falchion and my stats upgraded as much as they were, I barely three-hit basic enemies. Dont misunderstand, it’s great that I dont just breeze through enemies and maps, it’s still fun to have a challenge, but if I were trying out that area before the other two maps, I would’ve had a hard time.

I cleared out every nook and crannie I found, killed every enemy, unlocked shortcut after shortcut, found keys, items, weapons, and kept going. I found the next boss, “The Penetrator”, and basically instantly died to him, and I mean.. yeah, that’s kind of expected. But during that run, I had found a couple of keys, and I remembered I had run into a couple of locked doors, and there had been other areas I could see but not reach, so I figured I might as well look into that instead. Sure enough, eventually I found this small prison with an enemy there, killed him and started opening cell doors and found this one guy sitting there, Biorr. I wasnt sure at all what he was all about, but he seemed gentle, merry, friendly.. I decided to let him live, he reminded me a bit of some of the other NPC’s in later Dark Souls games, so he was just great like that.

When I had explored through the entire map again, I decided to run to the boss and just homeward-bone after I picked up my soul-patch again, there was about 30 000 souls there. True, I had a bunch again after having cleared out the map, but I figured I might as well, and then use all those souls to level up. So I clear out the stairs, prepare to bone home, enter the fog gate, and out of view to my right, I just hear in my headphones, a deep, friendly voice calmly says – “Do you need some help?”.

Caught completely off guard, I just turn around and sure enough, there’s Biorr. Standing inside the boss room, waiting for me to get there. He then continues, “By the honour of the good knights! This demonic folly shall be stopped once and for all!”, and just charges the boss. So, yeah.. I had planned to just find my soul-patch and bone home, but this guy starts wrecking the boss, so I’m just, “Yeah, I guess we’re doing this.”

And he just tears through the boss, but at one point I’m a bit worried because he gets pierced and lifted into the air and I see he just has about half health left. Finally we bring the boss down to almost nothing, I back off to heal a bit, and Biorr, the absolute badass he is just shaves off the last centimeter of life the boss has left, and I just hear him roar of laughter.

I got goosebumps from that, he was just a badass through and through.

Things like that in a game, taking me completely by surprise, is the best. It’s a shame I never played the game before this, but I’ve got to say, it was completely worth the wait. I’m still not finished, I still have the final boss in first map, the rest of the prison map past the swamp, and the entire valley of defilement, but honestly.. in the entire Soulsborne series, I actually believe that Demon’s Souls – the remake, atleast – is my new favorite. It used to be DS1, then DS3, then DSR, Bloodborne, and DS2 – but DeS just picked the first place above DS1. And I still have lots left to play.

And since I got the PS5 for myself this christmas, I actually gave my oldest the PS4 as a hand-me-down, and created a PS-account and started to buy a few games on there, so there’s still use for the PS4. It just changed owner.

As I said, it’s been a while. I didnt play that much WoW in the end, I dont think I played more than a week more after last post. What I did do, however, was play in the various Beta’s for New World. I’m not sure how much I can talk about my different experiences and discoveries though – not because I’m under any NDA, but because they’ve been Betas; it’s bound to be changed until launch.

Which, by the way, have been pushed up a couple of times. In the end, the launch is September 28th – or so they say so far. I hope that they dont change it, but then again, there was a good amount of bugs in the last Beta that they need to squash, so it’s not impossible that they need more time anyway. Which is understandable, but annoying. At this point, I’ve played through the games opening that many times I feel almost burnt out on it. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was by my own choice to create more characters, but all these wipes after a Beta is wearing me down a bit. Why play if all my progress gets deleted with frequent and irregular intervals? The open Beta this summer had a two week window, and I got pretty far, had loads of fun – but the last Beta were only spanning four different days. Atleast there’s only ~two weeks left until launch now.

At this point, I’m not sure what I want. On one hand, I want them to postpone the game for as long as they actually need to, finish the game to where the bugs arent gamebreaking atleast, polish everything up – but dont give us a date that will need to be pushed up, constantly. This is what I feel they’ve been doing so far, and I’m fine with it – except the constant date-to-push-up deal. On the other hand, I kinda want them to release the game, and let us play, and let us keep all the progress we do, delete the griefers and exploit abusers progress – perhaps banning them – and update the game as they go. I expect them to do that anyway, but I feel like this wouldn’t be that far off from what they’ve been doing so far – except for the progress wipe.

I dont know. There’s so much going on behind the curtains that I dont know about, I really dont know which is more probable or even realistic. I just know two things – I want to play now, and I want to keep my progress instead of having it wiped constantly. That’s why I decided to stop participating in Betas, because at actual launch, I want to be able to immerse myself completely, instead of going two-three levels deep and just feel mehh.

Going on other details – Diablo 4 hasn’t really come out with much. Besides the three confirmed classes they’ve had, they added the Rogue. I’ve also been under the impression that the game was fairly close to launch – within a few years from when I heared about it, so say 2022? I’m now under the impression that it’s more like they went out with the disclosure that they were doing a D4 game when they decided to start working on it, for PR fixing, which means the game might not even be out until 2025. Perhaps later. All the other updates they’ve had on their Diablo 4 page has instead been all about Diablo 2 remake. Like.. yey.

A game I never played back in the day, a game I’m not interested in, a game I did try to play a few times but never got the compability to work. I tried the remake Beta a bit, I tried the Amazon class – which by the way drew a lot of complaints on how they rendered her – and honestly… I mean..

Yes. Sure. It was a lot better than I expected it to be – the classic graphics were pretty darn close to the actual classic game, I give them that, and the updated graphics made the game a whole lot easier to see and identify what was going on. I own the original games, and as I mentioned I always had issues to get the game working on PC – old games isn’t really compatible with new PC’s, and compability mode hasn’t really worked for me. I only got the game working if I didnt use fullscreen – and I refuse to play games in windowed mode, especially when said window is only a third of the actual monitor. I am still not interested in playing Diablo 2 remake.

Had I stumbled upon the remake before I tried to play D2 before, I might have been more interested, but at this time, I’m simply not interested. D2 Remake is a good…”ad” for the game, but not good enough that get your interest from zero to actually-interested-enough-to-buy. Atleast not my interest.

So, when it comes to Diablo news, I guess the latest is “hey, we’re still working pre-alpha stuff and we’re working hard because D4 was just announced out of the blue as a PR stunt, and while we wait 3 months between infodumps we also make D2remake and instead of dumping info about D4 we’re going to dump D2 info! let us work in peace until we’ve come far enough to actually announce D4 in the first place, then we can pretend it’s something we were actually working on!”. I hope I’m wrong, but that is what it seems like – to me, that is.

Kids got their schedule changed, by the way, the two youngest that is. Their mother hangs out with them a bit every day, and that means that she mostly helps me with dropping off and picking them up at daycare. So, the kindergarten talked to her and recommended her that the boys changed their schedule from three ours a day, five days a week, to three days a week, five hours at the time. The reason they gave her, was that the youngest one might need it, because it’s more of a disruption for him than anything else – he doesn’t have time enough to get comfortable at the daycare before their time is up and he’s going home, so they thought that maybe, if he gets more time each day, then he might finally settle in time before he’s picked up again. Seems reasonable enough – but that only adds to my suspicion that he, just as I, have a diagnosis. There’s always been small tells, which I’ve brought up with them at the kindergarten, and they’ve so far agreed to having seen those tells. I think I should try to open up an investigation about that at some point. Anyway, since they asked her about it, she said that they should call me about it – they haven’t, so I haven’t heard their reasoning or details myself, so eventually she went ahead and made the changes. I’m not adverse to the changes – but it does bother me a bit that noone seems to have asked me, that noone seems to have checked in with me about this. While I and her talked about it, noone else talked to me about it. Which is a but funny – and not in the haha-funny way. I don’t have beef with her now, but I wonder how much they will allow her to make changes on her own that affects me and the kids, without ever talking to me. That is the unsettling part.

As for myself, I’m slowly moving on to new territories. Because of the plague – if I’m allowed to use that word – everything goes so slowly. The Wheels of the Machinery turns very slow due to that, so everything gets old before next step comes along. It gets tedious, but it is what it is.

Oh, by the way – Wheels of Time on Amazon seems to release November 19th! I am so excited!

Yeah. I fell pretty much immediately for that trap.

Listen, it’s not as bad as it sounds, but I think it’s probably still iffy. The entire weekend I’ve been playing my orc Hunter in Classic Burning Crusade, and I even managed to lose track of time, ending up spending the entire night between saturday and sunday playing it. I did eat, sleep and such, so it’s not as that one summer many, many years ago, and I allowed myself this because the kids were all with their mother this weekend. But it’s an iffy trend, and I know of atleast one who will be looking out to see if there’s a timer-addon or similar for Classic WoW. I need to have something going off, telling me it’s time to log off.

That said, I played through Ashenvale and relived all my old memories from years ago – even though it’s on the opposite faction now – went down to The Barrens, cleaned out Stonetalon Mountains, played through most of Desolace and wiped out everything in Thousand Needles except for the Shimmering Flats. I emptied out Hillsbrad Foothills, half of Alterac Mountains and quite a good chunk out of Arathi Highlands. I even played through a few instances, such as soloing Wailing Caverns, where I actually intended to upgrade my hunters pet to a higher tier Wind Serpent to get an upgrade on the lightning breath tier one, to a lightning breath tier three. I aim for a tier six in the end, but that requires a higher level than my hunter is, at the moment.

For the moment, I’m clearing out Stranglethorn Vale again, hunting through Hemet Nesingwary’s expedition missions is actually still a thing for me, since it’s a questline over faction borders. I’m thinking of going down from Grom’Gols base camp down to the pirate coast soon, see if I can find a Hyacinth Macaw again. Perhaps I will even sell some, if I find more than one. When I’m done with this area, I’m actually considering going to Burning Steppes through Searing Gorge, doing Molten Core so that I can tame a Core Hound. I’ll keep my Panther I named Memnoch – this time around again – and my Wind Serpent that I named Alba, so I’m going to have to buy a new stable spot.. they’re not cheap, but they’re not terribly expensive either. I should have managed to set some gold aside by the time I can tame a Core Hound. I mean.. there’s Core Hounds at my level right now, but I rather not try to take on the Shadowmoon Valley in Outland already, nor run around Molten Core at the moment. I’ll deal with it when I’m closer to 45, I think.

It’s a slow leveling though. Classic levelling is slow though, compared to retail – meaning the current live version with all the expansions that has come out – but also compared to many others playing Classic. I did have a lot of time to sink into the game this weekend, but now I will only have sporadic time over the next two-or-so weeks, because I’ve got the kids to look after. I cannot let myself lose track of time and play through an entire night again, because while I will be able to stay awake and take care of the kids and the household, I’m going to be completely wiped that evening if I do. And that’s not a fun experience. I rather play a bit on the evening, sleep the night, stay awake and manage to play some on the next evening, so I end up play the same amount of time, but end up not being as tired.

That’s where the timer-addon comes into play during those twelve days I have the responsibility over the kids. The timer-addons use when they’re at their mothers? To not have me play through the entire night so that I can wake up early the next morning and play the entire day instead. Atleast try to be more tactical, Lunnainn.

So I’ve been playing WoW Classic now for a while, and I ended up revisiting an old area; Ashenvale.

When I was playing my Nightelf so long ago, I spent tons of time in this area. I had forgotten a lot about it, and playing on the Horde side now made it take a while to recognize.. but once I did, once I went past the eastern area, it finally hit me.

I had to make sure, so I visited the area north of it as well, Darkshore, and sure enough. These were my first areas, outside of the starting zone of Teldrassil, Darnassus. These were the areas that made me actually fall in love with the game.

The sounds, the music, the area, the feel of everything being alive.. and then the demonic scourge that plagued the area, how irrationally angry I was, almost as if I took it as a personal affront that these demons invaded my territories.

The nostalgia hit hard this time around. I guess that the reason it didnt when Vanilla came out, was because I played Undead, Horde, and stuck a lot of my time over there, in Tirisfal Glades, Silverpine Forest, Hillsbrad Foothills, and then just ported over to Orgrimmar which was another big city I barely had visited before. Running around in Durotar, The Barrens and Mulgore probably took its toll because they’re vast areas with almost nothing to do, they’re empty, steppes-like. There wasnt anything to keep me there, old empty ruins of human civilizations and the savannah.

But the living forests of druidic culture, night elf lore, the living, breathing, colourful vegetation, the sense of danger from actual wildlife, the music, the local animal life sounds..

I was reminded why I love this game. Now it’s almost a shame I’m a horde character, opposite faction from these beautiful areas.

So, a few weeks ago, it turned out that quite a few employees on the local kindergarten were sick in Covid, so they asked all the parents with kids for a certain amount of hours per week to have their kids stay home. Having been sick themselves, my boys have now been at home for about a month, and only just tonight I noticed something. Last week, when I kept them at home like usual, were the first week they were allowed back to kindergarten.

So they’ve been home for an entire month and climbing the walls and tearing down the frontyard playground, missing their friends and been stuck eyes first to the TV, because I completely misread the information that welcomed them back a week and a half ago.

I love my kids, I really do, all of them. However, they’re not as fond of me, being forced to stay at home and going to the playground and visiting mom and watching TV and taking walks, when they could’ve been playing with friends that whole time.

Atleast I know of two happy boys when they realise where they’re going on their morning-walk tomorrow. Hopefully they will get enough stimulation so they stay the heck asleep that night! Last few nights both of them have been waking up every few hours, and this morning, the older of them, four years old, decided that it was “day-time now!” at four in the morning, and not only that, he woke up his baby brother to force me to let them stay up to watch TV. Those little terrorists..

So, I actually picked up WoW this time around. I mean, I’ve been playing a bit before, but I decided that while I wait for New World to come out, I’m actually going to get my MMO itch a scratch, and what’s better than playing “the best at its prime”?

Many years ago now, summer of 2009, I decided to try out WoW. My then father-in-law and my sister-in-laws were playing a bunch and had recommended it, several other people I knew were into it.. but me being a complete newbie into MMO’s had no idea what to expect. The fact that the population were divided into realms (servers) were new to me and something I didnt expect, so when I decided to start playing I just picked up a RPPvE-server, because I thought that was a tag for my character, not a tag on the servers. Mind you, I thought that everyone in an area played together, so everyone in the EU were on one gigantic server, etc., so these tags I thought were for the way you intended to play, in a way signalling to others that you were not PvP’ing much. The whole idea of populations sectioned off into separate islands, sort of, werent intuitive for me. It is now, ofcourse, but back then.. it was the first time I came into contact with the principle. Anyway, I wanted to roleplay a bit and be somewhat immersed and play with people who had “good” names, and not just “Tank1” or “DroopDog” or something stupid, I wanted to check out the lore, do some questing, fight alongside others in dungeons, so PvE sounded like my sort of tea. So RPPvE server with as high population I could find without having to wait around for hours to log in seemed like a good idea. Thus, The Sha’tar was the realm I started with.

I remember picking up the Nightelf faction, got a hunter there (he’s still around today) and just doing every quest I could find, reading every book, note and scroll I could. In the end I felt like I knew Nightelf lore like the back of my hand, and I loved it! I spent weeks playing this, it didnt matter to me that there’s entire expansions out for the game that I never touched – by this time, there wasnt just WoW “vanilla”, but also The Burning Crusade that had added The Outland, as well as Wrath of the Lich King that had Northrend added. I loved the slow-playing of discovering each new area, doing every quest, realising new mechanics for the Hunter-class I had chosen. I remember taming different pets (the first one being a black sabretooth I named Memnoch which is still around today), I remember constantly going back with a full inventory of stuff to sell – mostly garbage, because I didnt know about the existence of addons that told you the worth of stuff, or any addons for that matter. My daughter was born at this time, but she and her mother had moved cross-borders for a job, leaving me home alone with nothing to do. This was months on end, meaning I was basically living all alone with more time to kill than I knew what to do with, so losing myself in WoW was probably the best way I could spend my time. I mean, there’s probably better ways, but it was the best way to make time flow, so that I didnt have to feel so alone. But I loved it, every second of every day. I dont remember much of the days as such, I know I installed the game around June, and in between cross-border phone calls, sleeping, eating and going to the bathroom, everything is a blur until they came back home. It was only WoW at that time, my entire life was WoW.

It probably sounds dangerous, and in some ways it most definitely was. Had this continued unsupervised for long enough, I probably would’ve gotten sick. I barely ate – just enough to keep hungerpangs away, I barely slept – just decided to go to sleep whenever my eyes werent able to read anymore and as soon as I woke up I started playing again. I had moved the computer into the bedroom, opted to lift one of the two matresses out of the frame and put my computer-dedicated table there, so that I could sit and play in my own bed and just lie down when I was going to sleep, I had moved my coffeemaker and teapot inside the frame onto another small table, and I had a one litre of bottle I had water in, that I refilled every time I went to the bathroom. I dont know how often I ate every day as I didnt have a set dining schedule. Several times I noticed I was screamingly hungry and decided to make food and it was in the middle of the night, others it was broad daylight. There were no days, it was as if time didnt really flow. It was dangerous unsupervised for sure, and thinking back on it I realise how bad it was. There were no days, there was only the west coast of Kalimdor. There was only WoW, and how I loved it.

Even so, I progressed slowly, I took my time exploring as much as I could – the fact that there was two entire expansions were something I knew, but I wasnt done getting to know the game – besides, I didnt own Wrath of the Lich King yet even if it was out, I only owned the Battle Chest, which meant the basegame and the first expansion. I had all the time in the world to go check out both Outland as well as Northrend. Once I was done with Kalimdor I was going to check out Eastern Kingdoms and when I did I found Stranglethorn Vale. It was at this point I finally got the urge to gain levels, because I couldnt fight the pirates there, and talking with people in the chat I realised that there were companions in the game. Pets, not fighting pets such as the hunters pets, or warlock minions – actual pets that were only there to “keep you company”. And I decided to kill enough pirates to get some of those pets, but that meant leveling up enough. I forgot how long I was playing around there, but I farmed those pirates into oblivion until I got my macaw and a few more that I tossed up on the auction house for a dozen of thousands of gold each or so, then I was ready to move on. I did get them all sold, by the way. I guess that was the start of how I decided to be a collector as well. I poured more gold and time into getting those mounts and pets, companions, than in clearing levels and getting gear.

By this time, I was also using the Battle Chest Guide-books that came with the game (this was during a time where you bought physical copies of games, actual CD’s/DVD’s, and with them came books that told you lots of stuff about the game, such as maps, points of interest, the basics of dungeon groups, etc). So I knew a bit more what to expect, where to go, where not to go if I wanted to avoid getting killed on sight..

I did that for a few weeks again, until I finally reached Outland. I decided to try to knock off as much “important” things in Outland, such as the profession skills, riding skills and so on, didnt want to spend too much time there, partly because the area was somewhat confusing and most people were found in Northrend which was the new expansion, but also because the area besides professions felt outdated. There wasnt much reason to slog through old content alone when noone was there to teach you or play with you, when they were all away doing the fun stuff. But mostly because I for some reason had seen the area Northrend was, finally. I hadnt looked it up on youtube before, but when I did… it was an ice area. Snow, ice, mountains, chilled streams of water. Now, that looked like my sort of place, so now I felt the urge to get up there, to play that content, to run those mountains, to fight those beasts. Unfortunately, I needed the profession skills, riding skills, the gold, and the levels to “be relevant” to Northrend. I made sure to reach those parts, then I bought Wrath of the Lich King – though I have no idea where from, but it’s a physical copy so perhaps from one of the retailers in town – and I had such a great time of my life. I was playing with people again – actually participating in raids, dungeons, I was part of the economy with my gathering professions, I made bank selling all those skins and herbs. I LOVED playing WoW. I lost count on how much time I eventually spent playing, but I do still own seven “pre-paid card”-packages and I know I lost some, and eventually I just started to buy the game-time digitally. I must’ve played as much as I could for years.

Cataclysm came out in 2010 and I was still playing at this time. I bought it and by this time I had bought a couple of other stuff, like themed mousepads, in-game pets, authenticators, and a very expensive subscription magazine that they cancelled after 5 magazines (I still have all of them, read, but otherwise great condition) and replaced with PCGamer magazine for a few years. They’re all unopened, still in their plastic wrapping, except for a few that had some promotional game codes for games I later played, Neverwinter I believe. Looking around some sites for codes, I saw mentions to promotional codes for pets, items, and such in some of the very magazines I owned, so I opened those up to use the codes, that’s all I had those magazines for. I was so dissapointed in that whole debacle I honestly didnt care about the PCGamer stuff, but I still kept it. I was dissapointed, but getting the Kwurky plushy along with the magazines were good enough I told myself. Paying as much as I did to get only 5 magazines of the stuff I wanted, and then years of worth of stuff I didnt want… that was a bummer to say the least. Atleast I got a Murloc plushy.

When I googled more about it, because I’ve forgotten a lot of details regarding this, the first issue apparently came out early 2010, despite being announced an entire year earlier, and it was often late and simply not enough material in the magazines to warrant the price according to many. I’m partially inclined to agree, especially since they only gave out 3 issues the first year and then discontinued it after issue 5. Though, I must admit, they were gorgeous and the presentation was on point, the page quality was superb and there was no advertisements. Such a shame it sank. I was especially bitter that I got a PCGamer subscription instead. Just for the fun of it, I actually looked it up on eBay and Amazon, and the magazines goes for basically nothing – even if they’re first prints – but the plushy goes for $70/€58/£50. Not selling, by the way, but that’s what I gave for the two-year subscription to the magazine that gave me the plushy, excluding the shipping. Basically, I paid for a plushy, and got five awesome magazines and a couple of years worth of paperweights for the same cost the shipping and handling were. While the plushy wasn’t what I was going for, I still call that sort of a win, now that I’m thinking about it.

Back to the topic – Cataclysm came out in December 2010, the entire world changed. Both literally and figuratively, as not only did the world of warcraft change basically every map it had, but that’s also when I moved out the first time with my kid. Being a single parent alone with a kid, I didnt have much time to play anymore, so it kinda got shelved. I didnt play at all the entirety of 2011, despite having bought Cataclysm on release. All in all, I got very little playtime out of this expansion, playing for about 2 weeks on launch, and nothing more between that and April 2012, which was when I got a three month subscription to play, which if I remember correctly, I hardly ever used. I know I did play some, just not enough to get three months worth out of it. Looking through my email history of the time, I was really busy with CNC-training and the unemployment office, and I believe I had the idea that WoW would be a great winding down-tool, which..it apparently didnt function as, since I hardly played.

September 2012 however, Mists of Pandaria released, and this time around I actually bought the Collectors Edition. I have no idea from where I bought it, I own the physical edition, but it doesn’t show up on my order history of either websites I would’ve bought it from, nor in my email. I have legitimately no idea from where I got it, but I played enough to join a guild eventually. I changed my main character from the Nightelf Ledorion, to Garnam the Pandaren Monk, and the guild I eventually joined was Immortalis. According to my purchase history on Blizzard though, I had a race change in January on one of my characters, and in April a paid character transfer. I dont remember what the race change was, because there’s no characters I have that I remember being something else at one point. In all honesty, it could even be a Dwarf I remade into a Pandaren, because Garnam sounds more like something I would name a Dwarf. In April, Immortalis made the move from The Sha’tar to Argent Dawn, and after a bit of thought I joined them. They were lovely people, they helped me get started in Pandaria. From what I remember, I bought Pandaria, shelved it after playing a few weeks, picked it back up in January and just kept playing for a while. I did drop the game before Warlords of Draenor though, that was November 2014. By this time I’ve moved back in with the mother of my children, and I guess I just didnt play as much because I had too little time to invest in an MMO, as well as having other games to play, that didn’t consume as much time. I was a stay-at-home dad by this point after all, with school to balance on top of it all. August 2016 had the Legion expansion released, and I contemplated on starting, but viewing the game on Twitch..the game just didn’t look fun at all anymore. Warlords introduced so many new mini-game mechanics that didnt interest me and everyone used both those and the new artifact mechanic, as well as were playing the new “overpowered” class Demon Hunter. I can’t really say that it was like that, but the game felt diluted and cluttered with pointless stuff and to compensate for that they introduced a bonkers class that were basically “spam buttons to get high damage and dont think, just spam”. Battle for Azeroth in August 2018 just reworked everything, and by that point I knew I wouldn’t be able to “get back into it” without some serious time investment just for understand what was going on – not to mention doing dungeons, raids, any sort of PvP.. Then in November 2020, with the expansion Shadowlands, they just reworked everything again, brought back max level from 120 and all it’s inflated numbers, down to 60 again, which was the original max level.

I looked around my account and found my Garnam, the monk I’ve been maining mostly during my last visit, and noticed they had introduced a transmog system – basically reskinning your gear. Apparently, auction house prices had changed alot over the years as well, so I managed to snag a couple of things off the auction house that I have had my eyes on for a while, the few things I actively worked towards when I was playing, and that was a couple of “mega bags”, profession specific large bags with 36 slots each, a couple of mounts that could carry other players, shops and a transmog station, as well as a very expensive mount. There’s loads of resources needed for that mount, and a specific profession was needed to craft it, but in turn you became the mount and could carry a teammate on your back. Behold, the Sandstone Drake, from the Vial of the Sands.

That’s me. I’m not sitting on the back of it, that thing is me.

That drake wasn’t the only thing I got, though, I got a couple of other mounts as well, one that looks like a hovercraft, another one that is a cold-looking version of Aladdin’s flying carpet, a couple of yaks, two mammoths and a lizard?

Anyway, as much as I’ve digressed, I’m going to try to get to the point. Since New World is releasing in a few months, and as much as I would love to play the closed Alpha, it doesn’t seem like I will be getting a key. So, my thoughts were that I was going to play a bit of WoW instead. Not the game like it is now – even though I did check in and got a few stuff and “became done” with all goals I had set for myself – but the classic versions. WoW have been plagued for years by pirate servers, basically people joining and playing old-school WoW on their own servers, which Blizzard hasn’t been too happy about, so eventually Blizzard caught up and got the idea that, yeah, maybe they should re-release the old-school WoW to let players play it. In August 2019, they actually released the original WoW, they picked a few patches that were “good” and decided to run the re-run of WoW off of those patches. I actually played a fair bit of this, according to my purchase history I paid (not necessarily played) for a 3 month subscription back in September 2019, just to experience some of the old school WoW. I didnt have an enjoyable time..but I did level a few characters up a bit.

In case you dont know why, games like this often get patched, re-balanced and have stuff added or removed, changed or stability issues corrected or something like it, and each fix comes in update patches. These get labled, so for instance, a complete fresh release would be 1.0 or something like it, but after enough patches, they get to, say, 1.12.1 which is the launch-patch for the August 2019 re-release. After a new expansion, version 2.0 will come out, etc, bringing the latest retail patch up to 9.0.5.38556 (yes, that’s actually the patch number). Desciphering it, it basically means that it’s the 8th expansion (original+8 expansions=9), and it’s a bunch of small and larger fixes that has come out since Shadowlands’ release.

Anyway, this re-release of the original WoW is now up from patch 1.12.1, to 2.5.1.38892, and with it’s patch update June 1st, I decided to finally pick the game back up for real. Atleast until New World comes out. And if you have been paying attention to the last part I wrote, then you’d understand that the Classics is now up to..indeed, The Burning Crusade. The first expansion, set in Outland, the broken homeworld of the Orcs, Draenor. The expansion that I’ve heard been called The Best Expansion of WoW.

So yeah, the last few days I’ve been playing a bit of WoW. I’ve been having a blast in Outland, leveling up, crafting, exploring, fighting. I’m contemplating changing server though, because the one I’m playing on now is almost empty of players and the few there is is trying to grief other players. But either I’m levelling up a new character on a different server, or I’m paying $30/€25 for a transfer. And honestly, I’m not sure which one I’m going to do. I dont look forward spending all that time leveling up a different character, but then again, that’s so much money.

I’m being as careful as I can for this not to be turned into another summer of 2009, since I’m now a single parent of three kids that I actually have custody of, and not as last time, when I was a parent but living alone with no responsibilities other than to keep myself alive. But oh boy, the nostalgia kicks in, let me tell you.

As some of you may know by now, I’ve got three kids who lives with me full time. That means that every other weekend, the kids goes to visit their mom, and this weekend is that weekend.

I love my kids, they’re all wonderful, even if they’re rousey sometimes, but having a complete silence in the apartment where I can sit and relax and just do whatever I feel like…that’s golden.

However, what’s not golden is the fact that it takes about 2-3 hours before I start missing them.

It’s all good though, if I start missing them too much, I know I can go visit their mom for a little bit. She’s not opposed it, in fact, she has suggested it herself on several occasions, but while I do miss my kids, I also treasure the little precious time I do have to myself – and getting some alone time with their mom without me is something I think is good for all three kids. It’s easier to visit now as well, because their mom moved closer, so it’s just minutes from me deciding to go there, if I want to, til I’m inside her apartment.

Not sure what I’m going to do today though. I’ve already played some games, streamed it even, and I do have some cleaning planned. Doing the dishes and clean out the bathroom, but after that it’s.. not much else to do. I’m thinking about making some lunch and watch some anime though, “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” has released another episode that I haven’t watched yet. I could go rewatch “No Game No Life”, too..

Hm.. I think I’ll wait with the dishes, go clean the bathroom quick and then go binge some anime.

Lots of stuff have happened since, but I’m still here. So far.

I still live with my kids alone, despite anonymous calls to the government agencies. I’m not 100% sure I know who did those calls, but I have my suspicions. Also, so far I’ve had my apartment lease on temporary trial, which I hope will change to a permanent this month. I havent seen the apartment go out on their website again so far, so there’s that.

As for everything else.. It goes swimmingly. I’m enrolled into some services to get help, which due to Covid is a bit delayed, but I manage. I’ve also bought some stuff for the apartment, like a rug, a couple of footstools that doubles as inventory storage, a couple of paintings, etc. It actually feels more like a home now.

The kids seems to be doing fine, honestly. The two youngest are still going to Kindergarten and have a lot of fun, and the youngest are even up and running permanently now. Not only does he walk now, which he barely did before the move, but he also runs! The oldest have started to hang out with friends now, and is even asking me to go out into the forrest for long walks. I think they’ve all became a lot happier. I do think I’ve overdone it with food though, because all three have started to gain a bit too much weight. Not to worried though, as it’s not harmful, but if I keep doing this much, they’re probably going to count as overweight soon enough. Then again – stuffed kids are happy kids!

So, the new apartment, new life deal is going pretty good. The money is flowing in as it should, going out basically the same pace. Kids are back to kindergarten and they’re loving it, and I’m getting some much needed time for myself in the mornings. That’s all good, and even their mom is making use of her spare time, which I’m all for. Unfortunately, one of the things she decided upon carries a risk of this whole disease thing, so.. for the next ~2 weeks, I’m alone with the kids, no visits, no nothing. Going straight from visiting basically every day and hanging out with the kids, to nothing. I dont mind for myself and I’m happy for her, but the kids have already started to ask about her, crying because they missed her today, and such. And that is going on for another ~2 weeks because of safety measures due to incubation, etc. I’m worried the youngest will shy away next time they see, and I worry the three-year old will be screaming in the end.

Balls.

I’ve been getting more and more into Path of Exile again, I’ve currently have two characters going, one up to mapping with one of the strongest builds in the game at the moment, as per my understanding, Detonate Dead. I dont really have the gear for it at the moment, but I did manage to get the correct spectres for it! Or more accurately, someone invited me and let me copy their desecrate, so I didnt actually get them myself. The other builds is almost a more hilarious build, it’s basically me running around waving a wand around shooting streaks of level 1 spells, that causes loads of fireballs cover the entire screen in mere seconds, that turns into seek and destroy missiles. That’s still a leveling process though, and nowhere near as powerful. My next character I’m contemplating between a Righteous Fire build, where I’m basically running around with a giant burning aura and shooting a large flame at enemies, and the other being a ballista user. For anyone wondering and being a bit more knowledgeable, it’s the Scion class, using Bleed Explosive Arrow Ballista Totems. How hilarious wouldnt it be to just run around planting entire ballistas everywhere?

I’ve also found out the launch date for New World! Atleast the date they’re seemingly are aiming for as a launch date – everything can happen til then. May 25th seems to be the date, and I hope to be able to sneak in a few hours between the 25th and 28th, because 28th-30th is the weekend the kids are going to visit their mother. And I’m going to play so hard that weekend!

Oh, also – I know it seems as if I’m praising Amazon at this point, but I’ve also found out that Amazon is producing a TV-series that probably will start airing this year; a TV-series adaptation of The Wheels of Time. Yes, that one. By Robert Jordan. The massive dozen of thousand pages long book series. I’m already drooling. Whenever that is releasing, you know I’m going to be benched infront of that TV-show.

Nothing really new about Diablo 4, it’s still in pre-alpha, basically. It’s probably going to be years left before we see anything we can play. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to get into the beta of Diablo Immortal, the mobile game, since it’s supposedly pretty good. So far no luck. Although, it’s probably a higher chance that I make the beta of Diablo Immortal, than it is for me to ever get my hands on a PlayStation 5. I mean, they’re about as rare as a unicorn. And I want to play Demon’s Souls.. preferably, like, already beaten the game. But that’s the problem, either paying double-to-tripple the amount to a scalper (No, thank you, not even if that’s the last place to actually find a PS5), or wait for Sony to make new ones and hope I get the chance to book one before scalpers buy out all of those again. Scalpers, bottom of the filth, all of them.