Big Level 75!

WoW - I hit the big landmark level 75 with the Death Knight, Phoenixian, last night. In FFXI, that would actually be a big thing. WoW, however, will soon have a level cap of 110, so in fact I'm still just a no-name schlub working my way through Northrend quest by quest, zone by zone, dungeon by dungeon. I still find the problem of not needing all this runway to achieve my takeoff. I'm not even fully through two zones and I'm halfway through the Wrath leveling curve.

I guess I shouldn't complain; but if there's all this world out there to explore, and most of it is rapidly becoming rather pointless to do so in, I'd prefer to have some kind of guidance about what the best parts of it are. Maybe instead of just following the quest breadcrumbs around from place to place I should actually hoof it around the zones finding the most interesting or attractive locales, and then choosing to do the quest chains in those areas. It's not like I need to pay any attention to what the gear rewards are at this level. And anyway, running dungeons will keep me outfitted as well as I need to be.

This week saw the release of the big pre-Legion patch 7.0.3, which streamlined a lot of stuff including character attributes, specializations, and talents. The big impact for my Frost spec Death Knight is the loss of a few talents now siloed into the Blood and Unholy specs, the gain of a few new ones for Frost, and being forced into dual-wielding for as long as I remain thusly specialized.

I have no real end goal in mind for this game, other than perhaps getting to 100. At that point maybe I would go ahead and buy the expansion and carry on up to 110. I am still enjoying the game, though, so I suppose I'll continue on for now. I can see myself wrapping up Wrath content, or at least hitting 80 and moving on from it, at the very least.

Xenonauts - I decided to get back to the backlog thinning mission by playing a game whose title begins with an X. Xenonauts was a Kickstarter-funded game, one that I backed several years ago. It was an X-Com remake before Firaxis remade X-Com, and hews much, much closer to the original game than the official reboot. It's good, and well executed, but I think I prefer the more modern take. Even that one, though, doesn't hook me like it does other people. I put a couple of hours into this game before deciding that I'd seen enough. At least it's there in case I ever decide I do want to go back and play the original X-Com, but made more modern and user-friendly. It does stand well apart from the official reboot.

King of Dragon Pass - I'll mention this game because even though I play the iPad version, it does have a PC version which is pretty much the exact same game, as I understand it. KODP is a role-playing game in which you lead a tribe or clan of settlers newly relocated to the titular geographical area. You are a leader, and have to administer your people's hunting, farming, diplomacy, warmaking, religious practices, and so on. The object of the game is to survive and thrive for ten years and be made king. It plays out like a text adventure or Twine game, just menu after menu, choice after choice. It's interesting, and you can kind of pick it up or leave it at any point, like many Civ or grand strategy titles, with little or no commitment to the actual victory conditions.

Out-leveling Outland

I've only played more World of Warcraft over the last week. It's nice and relaxing, which feels good in this relatively hectic time for me.


I've managed to hit level 67, only progressing very far into two zones of Outland so far, Hellfire Peninsula and Terrokar Forest. I finally had to ditch quests in the latter zone so I could move on and see more zones before over-leveling my character. I'm going to Nagrand next, which looks like a pretty nice place to grind out some XP.


I've been using the dungeon finder a lot, too, which is a pretty great addition to the game. Through its magic I'm able to see more places and more of Blizzard's encounter designs in the game with very little effort. A plus, in my book, and another factor contributing to making the game a relatively frictionless joy to play. I'm not too concerned with my gear, especially while leveling, but I have a few pieces found in dungeons that I wouldn't, otherwise.


I'm more interested in specializing my Death Knight appropriately. Frost is probably the spec most suited to my path-of-least-resistance play style, but I think I may want to change to Unholy going forward, which is probably more in keeping with my character Phoenixian's inspiration, the Phoenician, Fulgrim, Primarch of the III Legion Emperor's Children in the Horus Heresy. Then again, the Blood spec might align more with Fulgrim, and Unholy with Mortarion, Primarch of the XIV Legion Death Guard. Maybe I should go Blood; I'm not quite sure, yet.


How much longer with this tour through Azeroth last? I don't know!