So my modem died on Monday which was a bit of a downer since it died too late to get it fixed the same day. It was kind of sudden, it was working fine and then suddenly connectivity problems and after a restart it was just completely broken. This put a bit of a damper on my ability to do mythic+ since I only had my mobile internet available and that proved very unreliable especially later into the evening—was working decently early on with just one disconnect in a couple of hours. Only did a couple of lower keys to help some friends get geared due to that, those went fine considering the circumstances.

Luckily on Tuesday I was able to get a replacement, though it did take a few hours of back and forth due to me not having the necessary documentation and later finding out that I could actually get a free replacement if I brought my old modem in which I naturally didn’t have with me since I had thought I’d just be buying a new one. So by now everything is working again which is nice, though I am slightly disappointed in the capablities of the new modem and might end up having a router behind it again and just using it as a “dumb” modem instead of the modem/router combo it is which feels unfortunate since it in theory should be able to do the things I want, it’s just the UI that’s too locked down.

Beyond that though, last week went pretty nicely with regards to mythic+ and we got some decent keys in though nothing spectacular—to be fair, I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular with those affixes, the pulls need to really sit for things to run well with fortified and teeming. And this week also started really nicely, with us almost clearing everything in one day even though we had buyers present—Argus ended up living still which surprised me since we had more than an hour time when going in so there must have been something going really wrong or maybe just many small mistakes. But as said overall the raid went really well, which is amusing since as said we had a buyer there, even two in the beginning. I guess that got people to play more properly and not expect them to be carried themselves.

It was really nice to see people raiding “properly” again.

So this past week—WoW wise at least—has been rather nice. We managed to reclear in decent if not good time—two days instead of the one day we managed two weeks ago. This was in nice contrast to last week where we actually ended up not clearing, primarily I suppose because people are quickly losing their motivation—also, our raid leader wasn’t present, but one person really shouldn’t make that difference. This might happen next week again, if we raid at all since the sign-ups are rather weak so far.

But beyond that, there has been a lot of decently successful mythic+ going on especially considering it’s a tyrannical week. We managed to play several high-ish keys and even do some improvements on previous keys which feels a bit surprising, though todays tries in Seat of the Triumvirate were unfortunately very unsuccessful. The first two the tank just couldn’t manage the first boss—I suppose I learned my lesson there in being pickier with which tank to pick—and in the third run we unfortunately had one player disconnect at the third boss which killed any chance of completing it. It was rather close and might even have been possible to do in time, which makes it extra unfortunate.

I’m hoping we can carry this momentum forward tomorrow and keep pushing keys, though next week I feel is rather less appealing than this one even with tyrannical gone since we’ll have: teeming, quaking and fortified. Teeming and fortified will make the trash annoying to deal with, especially in places like Maw of Souls or Halls of Valor which have bad trash to begin with and quaking can make some bosses much harder to play since it will keep breaking the Prydaz shield which is necessary to survive some big hits—examples being Lady Hatecoil in Eye of Azshara as well as General Xakal in the Arcway. Both of those bosses have big AoE hits that Prydaz can help with dealing, but unfortunately the quaking damage is more than the Prydaz shield meaning one will probably not have the shield up when the hit comes. Especially since quaking hits more often than Prydaz refreshes.

Which means it unfortunately looks like there might not be a significant amount of pushing going on until three resets from now, when we get fortified again along with bolstering and skittish. Sure, those both make trash take longer but they’re a lot better than what we have in between. I’m still looking forward to doing more mythic+ though. I’d also like to play some more Magicka—there’s been a distinct lack of that with Easter and what not, will have to see about remedying that as soon as possible maybe even tonight still depending on who’s online.

So last weekend we—along with most of Europe I believe—changed to summer time. Now while this is a change that would seem minor for me since I don’t have that many things in my life that are dependant on being somewhere at a specific time, it still has somehow managed to make me feel a bit more tired than before and caused me to sleep longer as a consequence—which feels slightly ironic, since I believe one of the purported benefits of summer time is that one has more daylight hours available. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll end up adapting soon enough, though the transition period is always annoying.

There is an ongoing effort to abolish summer time in the European Union which would be nice, but I think it will be a while until that goes through if at all. From what I remember the reception has been rather lukewarm so far, with no one opposing the change but not really giving it any direct support either which I find rather disappointing. Hopefully something ends up coming out of it before next year, so we don’t have to suffer through the change too many more times but knowing politics it’ll probably take longer than that.

Magicka is a good game. And so is Magicka 2.

So I got the chance to play through Magicka 2 through as well and it quite enjoyable. At the start I was skeptical about some of the changes, for example the magicks now having a small cooldown for all of them—as in, you can’t chain cast magicks as fast as you can tap them in. It is slightly alleviated by the new hotkey system, where you can bind four magicks to just a single key which then have their own cooldown and a smaller shared cooldown.

But with that, there were also several changes I found good. Among them, shield now lasting a lot longer but only working for spells not physical damage as well as mobs now clearly showing when they were resisting or weak to a certain element. This made the usage of different elements feel much less random and more considered. The mages also can stand a bit more damage and aren’t quite as squishy as in the first game, which also made it much more enjoyable to play along with much faster feeling combat in general. Animations also got an update and are much nicer in the sequel.

All of this added up to really nice and surprisingly different yet familiar game experience. But I think for me, just getting to play more Magicka with slightly nicer graphics would’ve been enough to think it was a good game so them managing to actually change some things that ended up being for the better—for I was sceptical of some of the changes, namely Magicks having a cooldown, at the start—I find rather impressive.

There were also some less interesting changes implemented though I think they might make a potential second playthrough more enjoyable—namely, the artifacts. These change some rules of the game, for example: either increasing or decreasing the damage of certain elements; changing the graphics style of the game; or simply adding more humor—haven’t tested that one yet, but it seems interesting. They do have one unfortunate property though, namely that they—along with alternative robes and the like—need to be collected through playing the game and finding secrets. While they certainly are optional and only there to add flair to the game, it feels a bit unfortunate that they need to be unlocked first since I really after the first playthrough couldn’t see any obviously interesting combination to do. I think increasing the damage of some elements would be the most interesting thing to do, since that would increase the chaos factor of playing with others but that remains to be tested since I can’t do it for all elements yet—though that might not be possible at all, since I believe there are fewer artifact slots than there are elements (5 and 8 respectively).

In conclusion, Magicka 2 is a good game, would recommend playing it through though the last boss is a bit frustrating.

As an interesting sidenote, I ended up playing some more Magicka (the original) again since another friend of mine had gotten the game and it actually gave me a greater appreciation for Magicka 2 strangely enough—as in, I started to appreciate some of the changes Magicka 2 had made more after playing the original again since the second one just feels a bit better to play than the original. I’m not sure if this is mostly down to just the updated graphics or if there is something else to it as well, but playing the second one just feels a bit smoother somehow.

So if that isn’t an endorsement for the second part I don’t know what is.

In the recent Q&A, there was some talk of Blizzard considering removing the option for (Guild) Master Loot in current content raids with the release of Battle for Azeroth. And I’m still somewhat undecided on the matter though leaning towards it being a negative change.

On one hand, I can kind of see and agree with the argument being made—Master Loot was primarily used to allow people to complete their tier sets—but on the other hand Master Loot was used for more than just that. It also enables the guild to distribute gear according to need, based on for example secondary stats or usefulness of certain procs, these things being especially important for trinkets, rings and necklaces the moment.

Additionally, even with sets being gone, there will still be the Azerite bonuses on armor that will probably mean that different pieces are better for certain classes. To be fair, the Azerite pieces specifically will be a smaller problem since they can’t titanforge, but especially early on in the raid it might be still frustrating to see pieces that are an item level upgrade go to classes that might not choose to wear them due to the bonuses.

I also to a degree fail to see the benefit this change is supposed to bring. One might argue that on average it will be more fair, since everyone has an equal chance for loot but at the same time maybe that loot isn’t an upgrade and one still can’t give it away due to item level and that is simply frustrating as it’s the same as the boss having simply dropped gold. Maybe it reduces the administrative burden of leading raids a bit and the time required for loot, and even then I feel more time has generally gone to trading loot acquired through personal loot than has been neede for Master Loot.

So the whole situation at the moment just kind of feels like either an unecessary simplification or trying to reduce split runs which is only a concern for a very small number of guilds and then directly harms others.

I am hoping time proves me wrong on this one and it won’t be the end of the world even if not, but it still just feels kind of bad at the moment.