It feels somewhat ironc writing this at the moment, since we have had a two week break from the game due to real life getting in the way, but recently I have been really hyped up to get to playing Dungeons & Dragons again which is a refreshing change. I mean, I've always enjoyed the sessions we have had, but now I am once more excitedly planning and looking forward to the next time we play as well as seeing how they tackle the challenges I set before them.

I am, however, at the moment somewhat unsure what exactly that challenge will be but I have some ideas that I can refine and more importantly I feel like the time has come to start giving the players some more interesting magic items to play around with as well as encounter in their fights. It's actually been really fun so far seeing them interract with the magical things in the world that they have already encountered since they are first-time players and as such have no real expectation of what's in front of them making the reactions they have really unexpected. The best example of this so far was their encounter with an alchemical jug, where one of the players (or their character) assumed it was filled with some sort of invisible liquid instead of being merely magical in nature and consequently (unfortunately for them) ended up destroying the item during their experimentation.

This feeling of not knowing what will happen is what makes me really excited to have them encounter something like that in a combat situation, since they will have to think even more on their feet and prepare a response to such a strange circumstance in a hurry, and the coolest part of course is that once combat is over—should they prevail—they will have the opportunity to confuse their own enemies with such magical items in the future.

The other thing that I find myself really looking forward to again is the whole collaborative storytelling aspect of the game, especially since the players' actions can sometimes throw rather big curveballs to me as a DM which makes the whole thing that much more interesting along with giving me ideas on how to implement things in the future. I think the best recent-ish example of this was a player simply deciding that they picked up a glowing stone while they were out adventuring, and gave it to the dwarf in the party since they are experts on stones and stonework. This all lead to a somewhat interesting dream-like adventure at a later date that I don't think the players expected, but that interaction between the two players was the catalyst for it all which I find really cool. That does remind me, I need to try and encourage such creativity from the players more somehow, since as mentioned they are first-timers and I quite often get the feeling that they are somewhat unsure of what exactly they actually can do and it all feels a tad bit safe, though the two above examples are definite counterpoints to that feeling. Still, giving the players even more opportunities for those interactions is definitely something I want to enable, so need to keep that in mind more in the future, maybe a note or the like somewhere?

Having written this, now I just hope all the more that we actually do get the opportunity to play in the not too distant future and that we have the chance to put real life aside for a bit, and I think next time is actually looking rather likely so fingers crossed!

It doesn't feel like that long ago since I last completely changed the design of this blog, yet recently I have for some reason started thinking about changing it up a bit again, strangely enough because the current design feels a bit dated even though that is exactly the point.

I don't as of yet have any concrete ideas of where to go with a potential new design, so it's all mostly just thoughts in my head that I decided to put down for my own amusement, but here we are.

I still in a sense want to keep the current general feel of the blog, though perhaps with a few more modern touches like enabling me to if I so choose to pick some of those nice featured images for a post, and perhaps in general being a bit more friendly towards media in my posts. At the same time, using more images and media is something I've wanted to do before as well, yet it is something that almost always just ends up being something I want to do instead of something I go through with since I find it somewhat hard to find fitting places for images and don't necessarily partiularily enjoy the process of finding the fitting imagery for a specific post or point.

This all isn't really helped along by the theme of the blog currently being very heavily World of Warcraft inspired, yet a lot of the content not necessarily having that much to do with the theme so it feels like there is a certain conflict between the presentation and the content itself which would only be made stronger were I to use things like featured images which exist to give a bit more, shall we say, punch to an article yet might look completely out of place with the theme. I suppose this is why the trend is towards quite a bit more "generic" looking sites with simple and sleek designs, and while those can look really nice I do still enjoy the somewhat oldschool feel that the current theme has.

Another problem becomes that were I to choose to also go that route, it would in a sense become that much more difficult to make the site memorable to potential visitors since it feels like it would then look just like every other blog currently in existence making it all that much more forgettable. Sure, one can argue that just means that the content is more important in those cases, but presentation matters just as much as content.

In the end though, all of these problems and pros and cons are somewhat irrelevant though, since this all is about me expressing myself and not truly writing for any specific audience and consequently the only presentation that matters is the one I myself am comfortable with and the impression it leaves on anyone else is secondary—especially since, let's be honest, nobody is reading all of this.

All of that is a really long way of saying, I'm thinking about changing things up a bit, and somewhat excited by the idea, but it will probably all end up going nowhere (at least on any reasonable timescale).

In the process of gearing and playing my new rogue, we ended up doing some arena as well mainly for the essence since I never ended up getting rank three of it on my priest. This was a rather interesting experience since arena was something I hadn't particularily enjoyed up until this point, I'd participated in it at times when friends asked me and didn't really mind playing it per se since I was playing with people I enjoyed playing with, but it also certainly wasn't my favourite part of the game.

This didn't exactly change while playing the rogue—as in it's still not my favourite part of the game—but it did feel a lot less frustrating than when playing as a priest and more specifically healer, and I think I can even say I enjoyed it, which came as something of a surprise; not a complete one mind, since I did actually have a period during Warlords of Draenor where I did a somewhat significant amount of PVP, mostly battlegrounds, also with a rogue, meaning the precedent was definitely there for me enjoying rogue PVP.

It feels like this somewhat re-iterates the value in playing multiple characters and specs, since it allows one to find new places to enjoy the game that perhaps didn't feel that fun before. It has also increased my desire to keep several characters relatively well maintained in Shadowlands, especially as mentioned before that is looking a lot more doable than it was in Battle for Azeroth. Being able to hop on the rogue and shank some faces in arena will be a really nice change of pace from progressing the latest mythic boss as a healer on the priest which I think will go a long way to helping the new expansion keep fresh.

Speaking of the new expansion, I am slowly starting to get somewhat hyped for it, what with all the changes coming to shadow along with the removal of things like corruptions that while really fun on a well maintained character are really frustrating while playing a new character since it feels like one is just perpetually behind and never really able to catch up. It's a bit of a strange feeling, since I'm not generally one to get really hyped for new expansions, I think the last one for wich that was the case was Cataclysm, and tend to actually have a bit of a case of, well, mourning the passing of the previous expansion in advance. This even happened with Warlords of Draenor, since even though it wasn't really my favourite expansion while playing it there were some really positive changes to the environment in which I was playing which made me have fond memories of the end of it along with a dread of what was to come with Legion. These fears ended up being rather unfounded of course with Legion ending up my favourite expansion, but still they were there. Going into Battle for Azeroth, the fear ended up being whether or not the expansion could live up to its predecessor (spoiler: no, it could not) along with once again shifting guilds which always comes with some uncertainty even if that ended up being a really good thing in the end and I am really enjoying where I raid at the moment.

Yet now, I'm just looking forward to putting this expansion behind me and "getting" to play more characters on a competetive level without the somewhat silly amount of effort that required in Battle for Azeroth along with getting to see the new content. Sure, there are as always the worries around balancing and raid spots that accompany every new piece of content, but it feels like even were it the case that those worries come to pass I would have a better time of it than I would have had during Battle for Azeroth and that I'm more prepared for that outcome. Still really wary of how the Covenant-situation will end up, but nothing I can really do about that so nothing to be done but wait and see and enjoy the ride.

Lately, I have had a renewed motivation to play World of Warcraft, yet with the next expansion knocking around the corner the primary forms of content I tend to participate in are in a somewhat of a cooldown period and consequently I've ended up doing some leveling and gearing of new characters, most recently a rogue.

It's actually been kind of amazing to see how quickly it is possible to level at the moment, even barring aside all of the "cheesy" things one can do and just going for the pretty straightforward path toward max level, though to be fair we did do some trickery with party sync since we had a couple of people that were a bit behind so that enabled us to douple-dip into the bonus objectives in Warlords of Draenor that remain one of the more ridiculously quick means of leveling in that range and allowed us to basically completely skip leveling in Legion.

As for gearing, well that's a bit more interesting, since we took something of an "expansion launch" approach to the whole thing where we ended up just gearing through dungeons as opposed to the usual fare of having some guildies help us out with mythic+ keys, and while the progress has naturally consequently been quite a lot slower, it's been quite fun dragging it all out a bit and having a longer span of time where I have a reason and motivation to play a new character. It does also present more of an opportunity to get to know the class and spec in a more appropriate environment, which hopefully means that once Shadowlands launches—or more accurately, the pre-patch hits—I'll be a lot more prepared for the class changes that come with it.

Speaking of Shadowlands, one of the reasons I decided to do some leveling was rather unsurprisingly preparation for the new expansion, since I am hoping this time around will be somewhat more conducive to actually playing several characters on a reasonable enough level without too much of the grindy things that has bogged down creating several characters in the past couple of expansions, and from what I can gather from other sources, this is indeed the case.

One of the other considerations for a new character was simply the opportunity to explore playing damage dealers a bit more again, since I usually tend to mostly stick with healers and even more so mostly tend to just stick with my priest for most types of content, so getting to explore more parts of the game once again was a welcome change in these times where there doesn't really seem to be all that much to do in-game. It really also helped that rogue is a class (like hunter) that I've been interested in playing more for a long time and actually did dabble in back in Warlords of Draenor, and having the time once again to get to know the class better in anticipation of new content has been a treat, sneaking around is a lot of fun.

That reminds me, so far I've mostly been playing Outlaw since it seemed to be the most sensible spec for leveling as much of it was done in dungeons and the spec seems to have the most AoE available to it, but truly go for that sneaky feeling it does not so maybe I need to take another look at the other two specs, Subtlety in particular since it feels like that might be the spec that fits my idea of a rogue the best. To be fair, going all pirate especially after having rewatched all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies recently has also had a rather nice feel to it, so I truly haven't minded playing the spec, especially since I've mostly been ignoring its biggest drawback: the randomness with the rolls. Trying to get better at the spec though, does mean I need to start considering those rolls more so maybe my enjoyment of it will change in the near future.

I'm noticing a certain pattern in my desires lately—writing, playing D&D, small forays into creating some digital art, more programming—and they all end up being outlets for me to in some form be creative and well, actually create something. This realisation doesn't come as a complete surprise since these are all things I've wanted to be good at for a long time yet kind of always felt I wasn't good enough to do, a common dilemma it feels for aspiring artists, but it still feels a bit interesting and somewhat scary to potentially start thinking of myself as a "creative type"—whatever that means in the end.

It's also putting me face to face with my difficulties with, well difficulties and the failure that will inevitably rise from those and that one has to push past. I'm noticing a certain trend in myself of getting really excited about the concept of something, spending a small amount of time getting a very rough familiarity with that concept and then the surface level knowledge within an area—recent example being digital art—and after it gets difficult and I need to start actually practicing and refining my skill I kind of give up. I get the sense that anything for which I don't notice something of a natural talent for, I subconciously categorize as too difficult and give up on it without giving myself the time to actually learn the subject at hand. Maybe it's the age old thing of "everyone wants to know a foreign language/how to play an instrument/paint but nobody wants to learn how to do those things" at work, but at the same time in the realm of actual language learning I am doing somewhat well so obviously with the right conditions the capability and persistence from my part exists I just need to figure out how to channel it into other things.

In addition to this, also touching on the subject of motivation which I've discussed in other posts, I'm finding it a bit difficult at times to actually refine the concepts and ideas when it comes to things like D&D that I am already working on and are ongoing. Now I've mentioned it before that I have often felt that I was somewhat underprepared when going into our sessions and that had caused some level of anxiety for me going into those games, and though that anxiety has definitely lessened and I'm much more eager to get back to playing I still have the problem of having some very loose ideas where it is all going to go forward yet not really taking the time and doing the research necessary to actually feed those ideas until they are more solid as well as being able to present them properly.

Now in this instance there are of course a couple of caveats, namely that overpreparing can actually be somewhat harmful since in the medium in question telling the story is a group activity and if I try to prepare and solidify and predict too many things I might end up railroading the players to an unecessary degree which I don't think is fun—I want to have the opportunity to be very surprised during our sessions too—and secondly, from the presentation standpoint, I'm actually doing well and don't need the extra pressure and anxiety I'm causing myself, even if a desire to improve isn't a bad thing either.

This all also becomes painfully obvious to me with my dream to write a novel, where I got really excited about the start, the initial concept, the rough sketch, yet I haven't even managed to actually put a paragraph on (virtual) paper yet and actually started writing. I haven't even started fleshing out those concepts, coming up with the world, the story or the goals, all I have so far is the start of a story. Now, to be fair, that is the general approach I take to e.g. these blogposts, where I have some very rough idea of what I want to write about and then flesh it all out as I go along and don't look back, but I don't think this is a sensible approach for the more longer form writing that a novel would be, possibly still appropriate for a short story or the like. Though, perhaps, why actually not? Why can't I just start writing and discover the story myself as I go along, exploring the world I am creating while I am creating it? Editing is something very doable, if at a later date something doesn't fit it can be removed or adapted, and then if nothing else it served as inspiration for what was to come. Why am I expecting myself to basically write the whole story out before actually, well, writing it? I don't really need all of those tools that generally are there to make the writing process more efficient since I'm doing it really for nobody's benefit but my own, so the pace of it all doesn't matter in the least. I mean, I do hope to actually be done with it at some point, but that still a lot longer than even the slowest writing process I could conjure up would take for the task I have in mind.

So, I guess, even in this case, the thing keeping me from even getting started is the fear of not finishing it or it not being what I hope or dream it would be, either to me or others. Yet at the same time, if I keep so vehemently refusing to take those risks and actually working on things I want to see get done, none of those things will with certainty become what I want them to become, I'm not even giving my ideas the chance to flourish if I don't execute on them. Maybe writing all of this down, once more, is a step towards actually starting to realize more of my ideas?