Rants about WoW and Overwatch

I’ve been playing WoW on and off for about a year now (more off than on). Mostly because of long days at school, but also because I lost interest after a while. Battle for Azeroth was fun in the start when everything was new and there was so much to explore, but I don’t have many people to play with and not much time to play, so it became repeating and I stopped logging on and let my game time run out. I feel like I need more time and have to play more often to be able to keep up with everything that goes on in the game.

But I want to follow the storyline in Battle for Azeroth to see what happens, so I’m not quitting. Actually, I might pay for another month now that the holidays are here. One thing I’ve been wanting to do for a while is to use my boost on an Alliance character and see what it’s like to level up on the other side. I don’t want to go back to just logging in to sell stuff at the auction house, do daily quests or feel like I have to do this and that to get an item or whatever. I don’t want the game to feel like a routine or chores I have to complete every day, I just want to play what I think is fun and for that reason alone. What do you do for fun in WoW and how do you keep the game from becoming a routine? What else should I try when I get back? Something that doesn’t require me to play every day or doesn’t require high item level to enjoy.

So I haven’t played WoW in a while, but I have played Overwatch a lot lately. I feel like Overwatch is much easier to just jump into and join a game whenever I got some time, so I’ve been playing when I needed a break from school and all the stress. Sure, Overwatch can be quite stressful, but it’s also a lot of fun. My favorite game mode is Total Mayhem, which has to be the most stress-filled mode there is because it is so intense. But I love it. My favorite heroes are Moira and Lucio, but I’ve been getting a feel for Roadhog and I play Orisa sometimes too. I should find a damage hero to master too, but I’m not sure which one. Soldier 76 used to be a favorite because he was easy to learn. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to play a hero which requires a good aim cause my aim is terrible!

I love Moira because she can both heal and do pretty good damage, get away from stuff quickly and she doesn’t require good aim. Lucio is awesome because he moves around quickly and can knock people away from objectives and payloads, or off the edge of the map. I love to knock people around on Total Mayhem. His ultimate is also a lifesaver. I started playing Roadhog cause I always found him so annoying, how he can pull you in and kill you faster than you can blink. He requires a bit of aim, so I’m trying to practice. His ultimate can also knock people away which can be very fun, and he can heal himself which is useful if I overextend and almost get myself killed. I wish I had friends who played Overwatch cause I play alone most of the time, with randoms, so please let me know if any of you play on EU and would like to join me for some games, no skill required.

Infinite Timereaver and Primal Flamesaber

I got two new mounts in my collection last week!

The first one was the Infinite Timereaver that drops from bosses in timewalking dungeons. I’ve always wanted it because it looks awesome and I like dragon mounts, but I’ve never really liked timewalking dungeons so I refused to farm for it.

Fickle and savage, these drakes slip in and out of time until they find a worthy rider

The second mount I got was the Primal Flamesaber. It’s part of the “For Azeroth!” event in Heroes of the Storm and requires you to play 15 games as a Warcraft hero while in a group with a battle.net friend. You can play versus A.I. so it’s very easy. The event was supposed to end last week but it has now been extended, so you still have untill March 26 to get your mount! More info here.

The Legion is coming

It has been a month since I renewed my subscription and came back to World of Warcraft after a six month long break. This patch has been highly anticipated with the class changes, new transmogrification system and now the Legion invasion and demon hunters.
I’m very happy with the changes to balance druid and resto shaman but it feels like I don’t have any abilities left to use, my bars have never been so empty. I’m especially happy with the balance druid changes because I really disliked the playstyle in PvE in Warlords of Draenor. The only thing I don’t like is that Starfall is so expensive and that you have to place it on the ground, might take me a long while to get used to it and learn how to master using it. I used to just pop Starfall, pull half the world, kite and dot everything to death, have to find a new way to do that now.
One more thing that’s annoying is that I can’t take good screenshots when using Blessing of the Ancients because when I zoom all the way in I still see the stars and smoke effects from the spell in the middle of the screen.

I almost forgot that I had to buy the Legion expansion to play the demon hunter so I bought it the same day as they became available. It wasn’t exactly cheap, 44.99 euro for the standard edition and 59.99 euros for the digital deluxe edition. I decided to buy the digital deluxe edition because I think the stuff you get is worth the extra 15 euros, I just think the standard edition should have been cheaper because you only get the game.
I’ve been looking forward to playing the demon hunter because I never tried them on the beta. The story and the quests were very interesting though it was kind of what I expected it to be. I’m not sure if I ever could be a real Illidari demon hunter by heart because the story in the quests made me think that Illidan might be insane, I don’t agree with everything he’s done, but I still chose Kayn over Altruis because I think that’s what an Illidari demon hunter would have done. Havoc is a fun spec so I’m planning to play it more in the future, but I don’t know yet if demon hunter will become one of my favorite alts.

The pre-expansion events are always fun, so I was of course looking forward to the invasions and everything that came with them. I have completed the invasions in all of the zones and I’m now trying to collect all the different transmog gear sets.
Today I finally got the It All Makes Sense Now achievement which requires you to collect all the 12 different pamphlets from the Doomsayers in your city. The Pocket Fel Spreader toy haven’t dropped for me yet but I haven’t killed that many Dread Infiltrators. I joined a group to farm it but we looked for hours without finding a single one, so I might just buy the toy at the auction house instead of wasting my time like that again.
I started crafting and selling Tomes of Illusions and Tomes of the Clear Mind to earn some gold. So far I’ve earned at least 80 000 gold over one week. I don’t farm all the materials, so I spend some gold to buy parts of what I need, but I only sell if I get a good profit. I need to earn gold so I can buy WoW Tokens and use them to pay for my game time.

I did the quest in Dalaran with Khadgar which was interesting but much shorter than I thought it would be. It was fun to go back to Karazhan because I have so many good memories from that raid, it is actually one of my favorite raids.

 

What do you think about the Legion pre-expansion patch, demon hunters and invasions?

Back in the game for patch 6.2!

I have reactivated my account with a WoW Token after one month break. Been playing Diablo 3 a lot lately so it felt weird to be back in WoW and I thought it would take me a while to get used to the controls again. But I jumped right into it and joined a rated battleground group. The controls and everything came back to me very fast. It wasn’t the best group I’ve seen as most of them were poorly geared alts but we won 4/7 games so it was fun enough.

I actually got my Veteran of the Horde achievement which gives a Veteran of the Horde title and the Vicious War Wolf mount.

My plan now it to run through Blackrock Foundry, which I haven’t done yet, for some upgrades and just to have seen it and ready up on the patch notes. I’m not sure if I want to PvE on my druid at all cause I didn’t think balance PvE was very fun last time I played it and I don’t want to try a different spec either. But I do want to play my resto shaman in PvE, so maybe I’ll just stick with that and have the druid as a PvP character. But nothing’s set in stone, so we’ll see what happens.

Gaming slanguage

I recently read a post about gaming slanguage over at Blizzard Watch where A. K. Hamid asks:

Have you ever unconsciously used gaming slanguage with real life friends/family, and had to explain what it meant to them?

Yes, many times. My boyfriend and I both play games like WoW and Diablo 3 so we use gaming words all the time. I think it’s a bit different for us non-English speakers, I speak Norwegian and my boyfriend speaks Swedish (very similar languages so we can easily understand each other).

We use loads of English words every day. Words which we most likely started using while gaming. Some are just normal English words but very common words in gaming like “fail”, “fake, “epic”, “pro”, “win”, “bug” and a bunch of other words and sentences/one liners like “noob”, “leet”, “pwn”, “nerf”  etc. Those of you who have English as your primary language might not find those words strange at all. But non gamers here would most likely not use them because they would use the Norwegian or Swedish words. We even mix some English gaming words with our own language so for example “to raid” would be “raide” and “the guild” would be “guilden”.

Then there are the abbreviations we use like ATM, BTW, CBA, FTW, IMO, NVM, Inc, LF, WTB, WTS, IRL, NP and TBH. I use most of these when writing, not so often when speaking. I don’t think we even notice it, even when talking to or writing to non gamers, because we’re so used to it. Most of my friends and family wouldn’t know what any of those words mean. So there have been times they have looked at me, asked what it means or why I’m not using the Norwegian word. And times when I’m about to say/write something to someone and I have to stop and think to find the correct Norwegian word for it.

Sometimes I use references to gaming and WoW in my daily life. Like jokes about how nice it would have been with a hearthstone instead of 30 minutes on the bus, how I wish I had a mount, or what if I could just slow fall or use Goblin Glider to get down from that mountain, how some tasks are like quests you don’t want to do but the reward is really good so you just have to do them, when you call someone a ninja when they take something before they were allowed to, when you’ve been shopping and tell people to check out your new loot, you say ding when it’s your birthday and GZ when it’s someone elses birthday or they got/won/achieved something etc.

Most of the times I’m with my boyfriend when these things pop into my mind so it’s ok to say them. He usually thinks its funny and laughs cause he comes up with some jokes like that sometimes too. But there have been times when I’m with someone else and I almost say things like this but then I stop because I know they wouldn’t understand a word of it and it wouldn’t be fun if I had to explain.

I remember back in the days before I started playing WoW when I had some class mates who played. They talked about WoW every day in class and I didn’t understand much and it wasn’t from lack of trying because I tried to pick up the meaning of it all but it was impossible. It was like they were speaking a different language, which they kind of were, a mix of WoW, gaming, Norwegian and English. Now I’m just like they were.

I know most words used in games can be translated. It’s not very Norwegian to call a big monster for “boss” because “boss” means “garbage”. Most Norwegian blogs and websites who write about games usually translates almost everything to Norwegian which is super weird to read. It might just be because I’m used to everything being in English, so it just feels wrong, almost like in the Norwegian versions of the Harry Potter books where they translated most of the character’s names so they became completely different.

I can’t imagine how it would be to translate WoW to Norwegian. I have no idea what words I would use. So I hope they never have to translate all of it and that those who write articles in Norwegian keep some English words because those who read the articles will be players who understand the words so there is no need to write “ridedyr” and “utvidelse” when you can use “mount” and “expansions”.

I’m actually a person who loves languages, dialects and accents and I think it’s important to keep and take care of your dialect because it’s a part of who you are and where you’re from. So I’m trying to keep my language and dialect as clean as possible, but I think there will always be some slang words from games, movies, other languages etc.

Do you use gaming language, words, abbreviations or references when you speak or write to non gamers?