The Return of Blaugust 2021

That time of year is upon us, the month of August, traditionally a slow time for many thing, video games included, when we get together to celebrate, focus on, and write about blogging.

It is time for Blaugust!

Once a bit of a hardcore event… the 2014 goal of the first Blaugust was to publish a blog post of some minimum length every day for a month… oh, and gaming blogs only… the whole thing has relaxed over the years (and sort of absorbed the Newbie Blogger event we used to have) to be more of a reflection and discussion of blogging, even for blogs that are not about video games.  It is a reminder that we have a community of bloggers.

The calendar for the event has been posted, which covers the suggested topic for each week of the event.  The topics are purely optional, but it is often interesting to see how multiple people approach each of them.

The 2021 Calendar

These days you don’t even have to have a blog to join in.  You can use the sign up form and designate yourself as a “supporter” and just come hang out on the Discord server if you like.

Which isn’t to say the event lacks any push to post.  It is still focused on blogging and promoting interaction between blogs and bloggers, and there are still badges to be earned for different levels of participation.  For 2021 they are:

• Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You created a new blog and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up
• Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the Month of August 2021
• Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the Month of August 2021
• Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the Month of August 2021
• Rainbow Diamond Award – You did it, you posted 31 or more posts during the month of August 2021

So if you are an old school blogger, a new blogger, want to start a blog, or just want to talk about blogging, this is an event for you.  The range of participants generally runs from brand new bloggers to grizzled blogging veterans, all of whom seem to have opinions on blogging platforms, style, topics, and the trivia of the blogging process.

Belghast of Tales of the Aggronaut, who runs the who thing, has all the current details up in a blog post on his site, so go check it out and get ready for the coming of Blaugust 2021.

The Minecraft Nether Update

I meant to write about this when it came out last month, but I wanted to first get a peek at some of the new features in person.  And then the war in EVE Online ate almost all of my gaming time and, well, here we are.

Well, the war there and that quirk of Minecraft where, when they add new stuff, it doesn’t necessarily appear in any world you already have running.  You have to run off to some unexplored area of your world to generate fresh chunks to have a chance for something things… warm oceans, and such… to spawn.  It can be some work.

And this update is no different, save for that it involves the Nether.  This would have been easy if we hadn’t been to the nether in the new world Skronk created a few months back, but of course we’ve been.  There are nether portals in our two main towns connected by a nether highway,  taking advantage of that 8:1 distance reduction you get with nether travel.

But I wanted to see some of the new stuff… and if you look at the wiki there is a lot of new stuff, new mobs, new blocks, new structures, and new nether biomes… so I set out a bit to explore.

The population of the nether has been adjusted, with new mobs added.  I was able to spot one right away, the Strider, which are in the Nether Update graphic I made above.  They wander around in the lava seas of the nether.

The larger screen shot with Striders

Then there are the Piglin.  Once there were just Zombie Pigmen living generally in the nether, with the occasional critter or ghast, but that has been changed.  Now there are the Piglin, a humanoid pig race, and the Zombie Pigmen are now Zombified Piglin.  They are still passive, becoming hostile only when attacked, and they still wander all over.

The Piglin, however, are hostile.  I wasn’t particularly interested in the Piglin, being keen to see one of the new biomes or structures when I went down to explore.  But the Piglin can be a problem as they blend in with the Zombified Piglin in the low light of the Nether.

Mostly Zombies… but not all

The Nether is already a dangerous place when compared to the overworld.  There are plenty of sudden ways to die, and you don’t have to wait until night time for something to attack you.  I don’t listen to music or podcasts in the Nether, because you really need to hear the sound of that ghast that just spawned behind you before it starts shooting fireballs at you.

Possibly my favorite Minecraft video of all time is Screw the Nether, which first sings the praises, then sings the perils of being down there.

So exploring was already a challenge of terrain, lava, and occasional hostiles, but now you can add in the Piglin, who can blend in with the passive zombie crowd if you are not watching carefully, but who will run right at you and attack if you get too close.

Oh, here he comes

I did find out, a few deaths into my exploration, that if you wear a piece of gold armor, the Piglin are no longer hostile.  I ran back to town to fix that.

A new gold hat

So I am setting our in the Nether to find some more of the new stuff, though even with the Piglin no longer hostile, there are still plenty of dangers.

A wither skeleton coming to get me

I ended up dying yet again to get that screen shot.  He had a friend.  Sometimes being the tourist doesn’t pay off.  And, in running back, I realized that I didn’t have my gold helmet on, so ended up getting chased around again by hostile Piglin once more.  At least they don’t chase you too far.

But the skeleton wandered off before I got back, so I was able to collect my stuff and continue on my way.

More Nether to explore

We shall see if I end up finding anything.  Dying in the nether is a pain, as I currently respawn in the over world and have to run all the way back to where I fell.  I need to look into the respawn anchor block, as beds cannot be used in the Nether.

Summer Movie League – Stuber Stumbles, Crawl Bawls

Week six of our Fantasy Movie League carried on the trend of new films failing to meet expectations.

In this case, the two new films for week six, Stuber and Crawl, both failed to hit the somewhat modest expectations set for them, keeping the summer theme going.

Stuber was expected to get in the range of $17 million, but ran out of gas about half way there, clocking in at $8 million.

Crawl was pegged at around $15 million and, while it didn’t fall off as badly as Stuber, it still came up short with $12 million, making it a less than ideal pick.

But I was fairly sure those were both bad anchors when I saw them.  And shortly after last week’s post went live the box office predictions began to sag dramatically, confirming that feeling.

That left Spider-man and Toy Story 4 as likely anchor candidates.  You could get 1x Spider-man and 1x TS4, or 3x TS4 before you had to start working through the filler.

Po, myself, and grannanj went with 3x TS4. while Bhagpuss, Hamster, and Cyanbane anchored on 1x Spider-man and 1x TS4.

With the Saturday and Sunday estimates, Cyanbane had the perfect pick, as he went with all Men in Black for his filler, which looked to be the best performer.  However, when the final numbers came in, Avengers: Endgame stole the best performer title, making the perfect pick 1x Spider-man, 1x TS4, and 6x Avengers: Endgame, and leaving the final scores looking like this:

1. Too Orangey For Crows – $85,834,456
2. grannanj’s Cineplex – $79,899,938
3. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $79,610,550
4. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $78,930,155
5. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $78,396,66
6. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $77,051,493
7. Goat Water Picture Palace – $62,691,728
8. Conical Effort – $61,416,139
9. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $56,409,113
10. Joanie’s Joint – $47,641,960

In the end, 1x Spider-man and 1x TS4 or 3x TS4 seemed to be on par as anchors.  The top six positions alternate between the two.  The key was filler, and Bhagpuss took the week because he had 3x Avengers: Endgame in his.

Seventh and eighth position were both anchored on 4x Crawl, which put them behind the pack, while ninth and tenth were both anchored on 4x Stuber.  Those two positions were revived a bit because Stuber got the worst performer bonus of $2 million per screen, making them $8 million better than they otherwise would have been.  The bonus for worst performer might be the best thing about this season so far.

That left the season totals looking like:

1. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $570,994,029
2. Too Orangey For Crows – $510,045,355
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – $495,685,430
4. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $480,480,754
5. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $479,074,658
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $468,431,378
7. Conical Effort – $426,754,991
8. Joanie’s Joint – $426,127,611
9. grannanj’s Cineplex – $421,966,622
10. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $377,948,475

I managed to keep my lead, while Bhagpuss’ win this week, and Goat’s misfortune, had them swapping places.  Likewise, SynCaine and Joanie’s decisions to anchor on Stuber cost them in the overall ranking.

The alternate scoring looks like this at the end of week six:

1. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – 49
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – 41
3. Too Orangey For Crows – 38
4. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – 34
5. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – 33
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 28
7. grannanj’s Cineplex – 28
8. Conical Effort – 20
9. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 18
10. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – 16

I kept my lead going, though this week’s rankings put Bhagpuss and Goat in contention.

So now we get to see what week seven brings.  The lineup is:

1. Lion King FRI – $481
2. Lion King SAT – $399
3. Lion King SUN – $341
4. Spider-man: Far From Home – $177
5. Toy Story 4 – $126
6. Aladdin – $49
7. Crawl – $43
8. Stuber – $33
9. Yesterday – $30
10. Annabelle Comes Home – $23
11. The Art of Self-Defense – $18
12. Midsommar – $16
13. The Secret Life of Pets 2 – $13
14. Avengers: Endgame – $11
15. Men in Black International – $8

What week seven mostly brings is The Lion King. That gets split into three days which, along with the addition of The Art of Self-Defense, pushes Rocketman, John Wick 3, Child’s Play, and Godzilla off the list.

The Lion King is the latest in Disney’s effort to remake their entire animated back catalog into live action pictures.  It may also be the final $100+ movie debut of the summer. (It: Chapter Two, the next big thing on the horizon, opens on the first week of the Fall season.)

Whether or not you feel that the beloved 1994 animated version needed to be remade, this title is well known and being advertised heavily.  Long range forecasts are calling for as much as $200 million currently, which seems a bit crazy. FML, by their pricing, seems to be closer to $165 in its guess.  And even if it falls a bit shy of that, you will have to be pretty contrarian to not anchor on at least one screen of it this week.  Even critic comments like this:

…a well-rendered but creatively bankrupt self-portrait of a movie studio eating its own tail…

…will probably not bring the movie down.

And then there is The Art of Self-Defense, about which I know little.  The Wikipedia entry on it uses the terms “dark comedy,” “off-kilter,” and “thriller-esque,” but I’m still at sea on it.  FML pricing, a dubious thing on which to hang your hat most weeks, puts it at less than half of Crawl, and Crawl is probably going to drop by 50%,  so maybe $2 million in box office over the three day weekend?

My Monday night gut pick, straight from the FML Cineplex Builder, is FRI, SAT, 1x Aladdin, 2x Midsommar, 3x TSLOP2.  That used up my whole budget, so it must be a winner.  We’ll see if I hold onto that until Thursday night.

If you want to bet against The Lion King, then anchors on 5x Spider-man or 7x TS4 are possible, as well as mixes of the pair.

Anyway, there we go.  The league locks tomorrow night, so get you picks in now.

Blaugust 2019 is Coming

Belghast’s annual blogging festival, Blaugust, is nearly upon us.

For the month of August the call is out for bloggers to unite.  New bloggers are encouraged to join in, faded bloggers asked to revive their sites, and those of us who run off at the keyboard regularly try to energize the event by sharing what keeps us going.

Bel has a post up with all the information you will need to join in on the event.  There is a sign up form, a link to join the Discord channel where we hang out, and various versions of the event artwork as part of a media kit that you can use on your site.

There is even a schedule of events.

Blaugust 2019 Schedule

The schedule is optional of course.  Nobody will tell you what to write, how to write, or when to write.  But if you are somebody who wrestles with the “what should I write about?” issue, this bit of structure can help organize your approach or narrow your focus.

Focus is my problem.  I never have a problem thinking up things about which to write.  I have a text file full of topics I hope to get to some day.  My problem is time and motivation and deciding what I am going to spend time writing about today.

But if ideas are an issue for you, the second week is dedicate to thinking up topics.  There is also a channel in the Blaugust Discord dedicated to writing prompts.

Anyway, if this at all appeals to you, I encourage you to go check out Bel’s post about the event.

Unlike early versions of Blaugust, there is no longer a push to post every single day over the course of the month… unless you’re just into that sort of thing.  We would rather you write a few fulfilling posts that burn yourself out trying to meet an arbitrary goal based on quantity.

And the event is not limited MMORPG blogs, or gaming blogs, or even blogs.  Your blog can be about other topics or you can jump in if you do video logs on YouTube or if you have a regular show on Twitch or whatever.

Anyway, it all kicks off next week.  Be prepared.

Summer Movie League – No Chance for Ants

Week seven of our Summer Fantasy Movie League is now in the books.

The week brought us into the post-blockbuster part of the summer, where the films expected to garner $100 million or more on their first weekend were in the rear view mirror and the league was going to have to duke it out in a battle between smaller new releases and the residual power of the big launches. The lineup for the week looked like this:

Hotel Transylvania 3       $523
Skyscraper                 $394
Ant-Man and the Wasp       $387
Incredibles 2              $201
Jurassic World             $174
The First Purge            $111
Sorry to Bother You        $74
Sicario 2                  $45
Ocean's 8                  $40
Uncle Drew                 $38
Won't You Be My Neighbor   $30
Tag                        $21
Three Identical Strangers  $16
Whitney                    $14
Deadpool 2                 $11

At the top of the anchor list was the new Hotel Transylvania 3, which was expected to top the box office over the weekend and vie for the kids market with The Increcibles 2. But it also came with a fairly steep price. You could have one screen of that. It wasn’t so expensive that your couldn’t mix and match, but you couldn’t depend on just it.

Next, trying to score on the action adventure from was Skyscraper, where Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson battles a burning building that has taken his family hostage… or something… I’m not sure, really. That is the impression the trailer left with me. Whatever it was, I wasn’t buying it.

Then there was Ant-Man and the Wasp. It did not do as well as hoped its first week out, but it still seemed a viable choice if only it could keep to about a fifty percent drop in revenue.

After that we have The Incredibles 2 and Jurassic World battling it out. Last week they were in nearly a dead heat, but The Incredibles 2 lower price point made them the pick. This week it looked like the situation could be reversed.

Then we get into the filler, which ranged from the expensive end with The First Purge was down to Deadpool 2.

For an anchor I went with four screens of Incredibles 2 for my Monday hot take pick, making it the fifth consecutive week I went with the film in at least one of my leagues. I couldn’t get behind Hotel Transylvania 3. I just don’t like the franchise, which makes me believe the worst when it comes to box office. Skyscraper seemed like a risky bet. The trailer was muddled, as noted, and not compelling at all, unless you have to see every picture The Rock makes.

I considered Ant-Man for a bit, but the buzz was that the movie was going to suffer a serious second week drop off. Which left me down with Jurassic World and The Incredibles 2.

In the end I wasn’t shaken from my streak when it came time for the TAGN League to lock. I went with 4x The Incredibles 2 and 4x Sicario 2, a double quad sequel pick.

Unfortunately for me, Jurassic World was the anchor to go with. For not much more than my 4 screens of The Incredibles 2 I could have gotten five screens of dinos. Again, when the estimates started coming in the two movies were neck in neck for revenue, which meant spoils for the cheaper of the two.

There was a stretch of time during the estimates when Three Identical Strangers had the best performer bonus, but in a no bonuses league that didn’t make much of a difference. In the end the league results for the week looked like this:

1. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $89,719,218
2. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $86,544,778
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – $86,217,724
4. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $86,217,724
5. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $83,686,706
6. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $83,625,423
7. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $81,544,984
8. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $80,575,792
9. Kraut Screens – $74,997,493
10. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $72,506,522
11. I HAS BAD TASTE – $72,506,522
12. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $72,169,038
13. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $72,143,824
14. aria82’s Cineplex – $66,907,804
15. Joanie’s Joint – $64,160,163
16. grannanj’s Cineplex – $61,162,190
17. Too Orangey For Crows – $61,162,190

SynCaine was the only one to go with 5x Jurassic World, so he won the week. He didn’t have the perfect pick, but he was still out in front by over $3 million.

After SynCaine there was Corr, Goat, and Pak who all went with Hotel Transylvania 3 and three screens of Jurassic World. Then Vigo, Ben, and Darren were a step behind them, anchoring on Hotel Transylvania 3 but without dinos, so it seems like that franchise was a reasonable choice for anchor. After that, mid pack, came me and my four screens of The Incredibles 2, $9 million back from first.  I was the only one all-in on Pixar this week.

Behind me was a group who either anchored on Ant-Man or who went with Hotel Transylvania 3 but sank themselves by betting on Whitney. That got the worst performer nod this week, dragging down an otherwise solid anchor. Whitney was in 17th place in the overall box office rankings.

And, finally, there were the final four who bet on The Rock only to find that Skyscraper seriously under performed, the bottom two who also bet on Whitney, for a double whammy. Ouch.

All of that left the season scoring looking like this:

1. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $683,641,387
2. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $676,893,229
3. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $663,451,223
4. I HAS BAD TASTE – $660,325,535
5. Goat Water Picture Palace – $653,427,734
6. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $651,729,082
7. Kraut Screens – $643,798,519
8. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $637,656,707
9. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $628,872,961
10. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $624,110,761
11. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $621,961,128
12. grannanj’s Cineplex – $594,509,349
13. aria82’s Cineplex – $579.687,945
14. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $568,115,307
15. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $546,096,525
16. Too Orangey For Crows – $550,949,081
17. Joanie’s Joint – $542,749,314

I managed to hold on to the top spot despite a mid-pack finish, but Corr is closing in on me. SynCaine also benefitted from his clear victory this week, moving up a bit. But with a lower scoring week the ability to make drastic changes was diminished. That leads us to week eight and the choices we have.

Mamma Mia 2               $526
The Equalizer 2           $403
Hotel Transylvania 3      $334
Ant-Man and the Wasp      $210
Skyscraper                $167
Incredibles 2             $149
Jurassic World            $135
Unfriended 2              $103
The First Purge           $61
Sorry to Bother You       $42
Sicario 2                 $29
Ocean's 8                 $24
Leave No Trace            $23
Uncle Drew                $21
Won't You Be My Neighbor  $20

With four new films making the cut, four older ones are dropping off. Week eight says good-bye to Tag, Three Identical Strangers, Whitney, and Deadpool 2.

In their place we have Mamma Mia 2, The Equalizer 2, Unfriended 2, and Leave No Trace.

Mamma Mia 2, or Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again to give it the name on the title card, is the sequel to the 2008 movie which was based off of the 1999 musical that involved taking a bunch of ABBA songs from the 70s and early 80s, and trying to weave them into a story. The original movie made bank so it seemed likely that somebody in Hollywood would try to force a sequel, so here we are. They managed to secure most of the key cast and even have Cher on board. The long range forecasts for the new film have it hitting about $35 million for the opening weekend. The original only hit $27 million its opening weekend, but it was up against The Dark Knight, just to put into perspective how far back that was. Mamma Mia 2 doesn’t have to compete against Batman this time around, so I suppose the real question is whether or not there are any ABBA songs left that didn’t make it into the first movie.

Opening up against Mamma Mia 2 is The Equalizer 2, the sequel to The Equalizer from 2014, which itself was based off of the late 80s crime drama of the same name. But hey, it has Denzel Washington in it. The first movie opened to about $34 million four years back, but the current film is tracking closer to $27 million, putting it a little shy of the “85% rule” for sequels.

Unfriended 2 is down in the filler tier and is, of course, a sequel. Ten out of fifteen titles this week are. And people complain about video games being mired in sequels. Unfriended, a social media horror story (as if that isn’t reality every day now) was a Blumhouse production, a company that specializes in low budget films, hoping to strike it big with an occasional big success. (There was a Planet Money episode about how they work.) The original brought in over $60 million on a $1 million budget, so with name recognition a sequel was a natural. Unfriended 2 is not directly tied to the original and tracking puts it at just $7 million for the weekend. But as low budget films sometimes bring big returns, so do low priced FML picks.

Finally there is Leave No Trace, which should have been on the list last week since it did better than Deadpool 2 or Whitney. This will be its fourth week of release and I am not sure if it is expanding its theater count this week. In the bottom end $20 to $24 pack it feels like the least likely one to pick unless it has some card to play I am not seeing.

So there we go.

For my Monday night hot takes I went with 6x The Incredibles 2, because how often do you get to anchor on the same film six weeks running, mated with a screen each of The First Purge and Sicario 2. Still, by the time I need to finalize picks for week eight I might swap to Jurassic World because the two films have been so close in revenue the last couple of weeks and dinos are cheaper again this week.

Make your picks soon. The league locks in less than 24 hours after this post goes live.

Addendum: Or, since I accidentally published this early, you have more than 24 hours.  Once again I hit the publish button instead of the save button.

WoW and the End of Legion

We are in that transition time.  The World of Warcraft 8.0 patch lands today.

This heralds the start of the run up to the Battle for Azeroth expansion launch in the middle of next month.

From the Blizzard site

With Blizzard planning a world-wide simultaneous launch, we’re actually going live mid-afternoon of August 13th here on the west coast of the US.

It is also the official end of the Legion expansion for the game.

WoW Legion farewell tour

It isn’t as though Legion is being purged from the game. If you have a character that levels up into the expansion’s range you can still get your artifact weapon and run through all the zones and dungeons and what not. If you haven’t purchased Battle for Azeroth you can hang around at level 110 and work on faction and unlock flying just like many of us did before today.

However, Legion will no longer be the focus of the game. The bulk of the player base will be moving on. Right now the pre-expansion events will start taking people away, and once the new expansion itself hits Argus and the Broken Isles will be much more quiet. Using LFG for dungeons may take some time, and LFR for the expansion raids will likely be untenable. Class changes coming with BfA will also alter the Legion experience. And, of course, some achievements and events will no longer be accessible. The Legion experience is over and the game is moving on.

So I am going to take a bit and reflect on Legion in its first moments of being part of WoW‘s past rather than present.

Zones

I still think it kinda looks like Outland…

I liked the zones. Each of the initial four had their own flavor. I think I liked Stormheim the best. After that Suramar was an adventure in and of itself. The stealth/disguise game play could be a bit much after a while, but it gave the zone its own dimension. Moving beyond that, Broken Shore wasn’t anything special, but Argus was good, in its own no-flying sort of way.

World Quests

I liked those, at least as a variation on the standard daily quest mechanic. The Emissary Quest aspect of it gave a nice, compact set of daily quests to do without burning yourself out griding. The Kirin-Tor quests were perhaps the most problematic. At least the ones where you had to teleport around, though they became incredibly easy once you unlocked flying. And I was happy to have pet battle world quests available.

Dungeons and Raids

I don’t have much to say on this really. Lacking a regular group with which to run the group content I had to rely on the Dungeon Finder. That tends to be an unsatisfying experience to me. Groups are focused on getting the dungeon done and moving on as fast as possible, while I like to stop as see what is going on. You can’t do that when you’re chasing a tank who is running at full speed to get to the last boss and get out. But I wouldn’t be able to do the dungeons at all without LFG, so there is that.

Raids I am less concerned about. I have never been a raider in WoW. They tend to be slower anyway, and I am only there in LFR in full on tourist mode, so things work out.

Still, I ended up not doing much group content during the expansion.

Artifact Weapons

I was okay with the artifact weapon idea. As a player I am not very good at keeping my gear up to level, but my weapon is always the exception. I want the best I can get and will hunt down upgrades or stalk the auction house. The artifact weapon meant that I didn’t have to keep track of that even.

Some of the artifact weapons looked good… or would have if they hadn’t been literally everywhere.  I transmoged my Ashbringer to a Mists of Pandaria model that looked about the same shape just to see if I could confuse anybody.  Other weapons were pretty bland.  I wasn’t keen on my hunter weapon.  I had a pile of transmog options that looked better than any variation of Titanstrike.

Flying

Blizz is still firmly on the fence about flying. You can’t have it to start with. You have to run through the expansion without it. Then at some point they unock it and then you and your alts can fly, but not in every zone. This time around there was no flying in Argus.

However Blizz giving us that whistle that let us recall to the nearest flight point fixed a lot of the drudgery aspect of not being able to fly. You have to be on the ground to do the quest, fight the mob, collect the thingies, or whatever. It is just getting back to the nearest settlement or on to another one that concerns you most of the time. Especially when you’re doing world quests in order to unlock flying! This made the lack of flying much nicer.

Classes

I ended up with seven characters at 110 in Legion, so I guess I ought to have some opinions about classes. Paladin and Hunter remain my favorites, though the spec split for Hunters didn’t do much for me. I was excited about the split when they announced, then stayed with beast mastery the whole time because ranged weapons and pets are what the Hunter class is all about for me.

The Death Knight and Warrior classes also worked well for me.  I am good at running up to things while wearing a pile of metal and beating on them.

I am not so good with squishy stuff.  I leveled a combat Rogue from 1 to 100 during Warlords of Draenor, then struggled to play him during Legion.  I boosted a mage to 100 and then died so much I leveled him to 110 via pet battles.  I helped my druids, one Alliance and one Horde that way as well.  The Alliance one still isn’t 110 yet.

And somehow I never quite got around to working on my Demon Hunter.  I rolled him up early in the expansion, yet he is still in the starter story.  Never finished it.  No gliding about for me.

Order Halls

An attempt to fix/refine the problematic garrisons of Warlords of Draenor. It was tough to pretend you were anything special when you’re running around in an area with a lot of people all wielding the same “unique” weapon as you. How many Ashbringers are there?

I’m with the bland

Still, having only a few followers and missions available removed the follower management mania of garrisons. I never felt order resources were as critical as garrison resources.  I did run down all my class quests for my Pally, but never felt the need to do it with alts.

I liked the Paladin order hall the best.  It was likely the easiest one to get around.  It was certainly the one I spent the most time in.  But for travel to and fro, nothing beats the Warrior order hall.  When I told my daughter that you simply jump into the sky to get there she thought I was kidding.

Trade Skills

Again, after Warlords of Draenor pretty much made trade skills pointless by giving everybody access to everything in their garrison I know they had to do something.  But I guess there was no going back to the harvest and grind.  Instead they went forward with quests and multi-level recipes and what not.  When I found I had to do dungeons in order to advance trade skills lost interest, even with my Paladin, who is an engineer and who I always max out.

Here is what I did for trade skills during Legion.  I sat my tailor in his garrison after he hit 110 and had him make hexweave bags, so now all my characters are loaded up with 30 slot storage.  And then I did Darkmoon Faire.  I suspect I advanced more via the latter than I did in the Broken Isles.

Overall

A while back I tried to quantify which WoW expansions I enjoyed most based on factions as a metric.  The theory was that the more time I spent doing something like grinding faction, the more likely it was that I enjoyed the expansion.  It was probably as good a metric as any.  In that list I worked the number so that Wrath of the Lich King, my gut favorite expansion, came out on top, with 8 of 11 major factions exalted, or 86%.  Now it is time to look and see how I did with Legion.

Legion Faction Count

I guess by that metric I have a new champion.  Unless there was some major faction I missed, I am 9 for 9, which gives me 100%.

Now there were some special circumstances.  I had to get revered with six of those in order to unlock flying in the expansion.  And, later on, I had to get revered with four of them to unlock the four pre-BfA allied races.  Still, I did do my bit for grinding, largely thanks to world quests and the emissary quest system, which put it all into daily bite size pieces.

By another measure, time spent playing, Legion is only average.  I spent about a year playing Legion out of its near two year run.  I played WotLK from its launch to the launch of Cataclysm, the only expansion I stay with for the full term. So, as it goes, Legion is likely mid-pack in my favorites; behind WotLK and Mists of Pandaria certainly.

Now a days for somebody like me who doesn’t have a regular group, who doesn’t raid, who doesn’t do any PvP… I know there must have been at least one new battleground introduced with Legion, but I couldn’t tell you the name…, who did a bit of Time Walking, but who mostly plays solo and does some pet battles and works on some alts, there is about a years worth of content in a WoW expansion.

Which is fine.  Taking a break is good.

Anyway, tonight is probably the last night for the Legion login screen.

One last look

When I get home tomorrow it should be version 8.0.x and have the Battle for Azeroth logo.  But what that brings is another story altogether.