Thursday 5th November 2020

While the count from the US election is continuing, I’ve decided to take myself away and bury myself in videogames.  I’ll return to writing and catch up on NaNo, when my head is in a better place.

So I’ve been doing a bit of Twitch recently.  It started as a way to practise speaking to camera ahead of some video projects that I want to do.  But, I realise that I use videogames – particularly Warcraft – as a way to disengage with the world.  That’s been really helpful with dealing with a lot of the stresses of this year, but there’s a danger of slipping too far.  Twitch is a way to stay connected, whilst also disconnecting.

The last two weeks were originally intended to be my staycation.  Shadowlands would have launched and I would have been busy playing through the new content.  But that’s been delayed a month and even the prepatch events have been delayed until next week.

So I’ve been using the time to level a bunch of alts.  I have a strategy for Shadowlands to use a bunch of alts to help with mount runs and raw gold farming, so given that the 9.0 patch brought us faster leveling, now was always my planned time to be getting a lot of my old alts up to max level (was 120 now is 50).  If nothing else it’s a way to keep occupied during these trying times.

For the most part I’ve been speed leveling.  I’ve been using different leveling paths to get all these characters up to 50, getting to experience old content for the first time in years.  I’ve used macros to aid rotations on classes I’m not familiar with.  I’ve used other add-ons to auto turn in quests and direct me on fastest available quest paths.

But there was one part of Warcraft that was still virgin to me, and that was the BFA alliance experience.  I never really started playing BFA heavily until lockdown so whilst I have an alliance character I leveled through Legion, I’ve never taken them through BFA.

But it looks like some old guildmates are on a new server and forming a raid team for Shadowlands.  I used to love raiding but it was more about the company.  The new guild is supposed to be pretty good, so I’ve decided to level a new alliance main on their server.

And because of the revamped leveling experience I am able to level them entirely through BFA.

But I decided I wanted to do this slower and it made perfect content for the stream.  Usually, even when I’m not speed-leveling, I scan quest text for the objective and click accept.  It means I miss out on a ton of lore and story.  It feels like a mini-series you’re half watching as you check social media on your phone.

So I’m reading all the quest text aloud as I level this character.  And, of course, that means silly voices.

I have no idea whether the content will prove popular, but as I said, I’m streaming to Twitch for my own reasons rather than necessarily trying to build an audience.

I did a mega stream today, and it was fun, if only for my bad accents.  It helped lift my spirits on what has felt an incredibly dark week.

I plan to do another one again tomorrow, and plan to continue streams into next week.  I’ve always found I work best when having Warcraft as the procrastination activity to my writing and the long term plan is to progress them both.

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Past Years: 2019 – The Year of Soldiering Through | 2018 – The Year of Priorities | 2017 – The Year Of The Offensive