Syp’s gaming goals for January 2023

December 2022 in review

• Hey! It’s the first post of 2023! Welcome to the new year, y’all, and thanks for reading Bio Break!
• December was a typically crazy-busy real life month still had time for a lot of gaming here and there.
• While I expected World of Warcraft: Dragonflight to be the main attraction, it was more like a sideshow that I got around to every so often. I leveled up to 65 into the second of the four new zones.
• Lord of the Rings Online continued to be an excellent game-and-chill journey as I took my Hobbit Lore-master through Cardolan and finished up the mini-expansion’s new storyline.
• I got quite hooked on New World, leveling up my hatchet-wielding adventurer into the mid-20s and saving up enough to buy her a starter house.
• I continued to be entranced with Marvel Snap, wrapped up my Chrono Cross series, and started in on The Outer Worlds as a blog playthrough. I also slowly crept through Shadows Over Loathing.

January 2023 goals

• I know that one of my overall gaming goals for 2023 is to maybe throttle back a bit with MMOs and spend more time going through the heap of adventure games, RPGs, and indie titles on my ever-growing list. I guess my theme of the year is “adventurous gaming” — getting outside of my routine to try out some untouched realms. In my head, I’m considering a balance of two active MMOs and two non-MMOs during a given month to juggle.
• I have decided, at least for the month, to back-burner World of Warcraft and New World. WoW because I’m not feeling the “sticky” factor of the expansion at the moment (although it is solid), and New World because I can’t seem to find and connect to a community.
• So I’m going back to Elder Scrolls Online after a long break from that game. See if I can’t ramp up interest heading into the new year and whatever expansion is next. My goal will be to start a new Necromancer and reconnect with my Warden. Maybe start in on a new house or reclaim my old one. I forget how these things work.
• I want to get my LOTRO Lore-master up to 45 (or 50) through missions and re-join the epic storyline leading into Moria.
• I’m quite enjoying The Outer Worlds and will keep on going with that blog series. One new “zone” a week seems like a good cadence. The whole thing’s going to take me a few more months, I estimate. At least until the end of February.
• Also in non-MMO play, I’ll be moving on from Shadows of Loathing to Pentiment, which I got during the Steam sale.

2022 in Review: Syp’s MMO journey

One of the benefits of doing my monthly “Gaming Goals” article is that I can keep track of what I played when I look back at the end of the year. And as I did last year, I created a simple chart to show what MMOs I ventured into during which month of the year.

So there you go: About 16 MMORPGs, depending on your definition, that I touched in 2022. Some of these were much briefer stays than others. For example, Embers Adrift, Tower of Fantasy, Lost Ark, Diablo Immortal, and Crowfall were first-time expeditions that didn’t really take with me. A couple others — SWTOR, Fallen Earth, Guild Wars 2 — were return visits that also failed to be “sticky” in the way I was hoping.

That leaves us with the streaks — the MMORPGs that I invested a good amount of time into. Lord of the Rings Online is the most obvious, with an uninterrupted 12-month play. I’m a little surprised I didn’t take a break in that time, but hey, I like this game!

I didn’t recall spending five (!) months in Elder Scrolls Online, but I guess I must have. I keep thinking that this is a title to revisit sometime soon.

Wrath Classic got a couple of runs there, mostly bolstered by the incoming Wrath Classic (and then defeated by general apathy toward that expansion when it did come out). I jumped back into retail WoW in the last quarter of the year and had a pretty OK time there.

RIFT and DDO were titles that I spent a nice chunk of time in this year. The former was a big splashy return to an old favorite MMO, while the latter was picking up my character and going through another expansion. And then there’s New World, which only recently got its hooks into me after its revamp and fresh start servers.

I should point out old MMOs that I didn’t touch at all this year, which include FFXIV, Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter.

All in all, it was a good year full of variety. I don’t plan or map these games out in advance, so it’s more like seeing where the wind — and my whims — take me. Maybe 16 titles signal that I was too full of wanderlust and wouldn’t settle down, but I think LOTRO provided my “home base MMO,” so to speak, that allowed me to venture out into other territories.

There are some upcoming titles I’m keenly interested in, but as for other MMOs that I might return to in 2023, I have only the loosest of notions. DDO is always a good bet (I think it makes for fun blogging, but that could just be me), and RIFT/EQ2 could take over for that WoW fix if and when I leave retail WoW. I feel like LOTRO and New World are going to be a good bet for a while now, and ESO probably will suck me back in around expansion time.

Syp’s gaming goals for December 2022

Syp’s November 2022 in review

• ‘Twas quite the month of gaming, in ways both expected and not. For starters, I spent the first week not gaming at all but on vacation. However, the rest of November made up for that gap.
• New World’s fresh start servers flickered on, and I created a new character to go through Windward. I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed my time with this revamped lowbie experience, but even so, I wasn’t fully sucked in and pouring hours upon hours. As a result, I merely crept forward in progression rather than sprinted.
• Lord of the Rings Online’s mini-expansion was delayed until the middle of the month, but when that happened, I took my fledgling Hobbit Lore-master down to Swanfleet and started to explore the new zone and quest lines. Had a good time, knocked up in levels, and didn’t stress about the speed of it. LOTRO is a game best enjoyed at a chill pace.
• About all I really did in World of Warcraft was take advantage of the pre-expansion event to gear up three of my characters to full strength for Dragonflight. Oh, and I bought the expansion and four months of game time (I like to buy game time vs. subscribe if I can).
• In retro gaming, I continued to push forward in Chrono Cross. It’s going well, but I started to feel ready to be done with it before boredom crept in.
• Two gaming surprises happened this month: I got utterly addicted to Marvel Snap and then had to impulse buy Shadows Over Loathing when it released out of the blue.

Gaming goals for December 2022

• Clearly, Dragonflight will be the centerpiece of the month in a lot of ways, and I’ll be spending some good time evaluating WoW expansion and finding my footing in it. I’m not going to make a “I want to be 70 and raiding” sort of goal, but I will be focusing on just my Death Knight for the first month.
• I’ll continue on in Lord of the Rings Online, hopefully wrapping up the two new zones by the end of the month. After that, the plan is to use missions to get to 45 and then settle into the Volume 2 epic storyline while continuing to use missions to supplement XP.
• I’d love to be more “stuck” on New World too, but that’s only going to happen with a good amount of additional play and finding a good guild. Both of those are on my to do list.

Syp’s gaming goals for November 2022

October 2022 in review

• October was a really odd month in that the theme here was “waiting” — as in, waiting for all of the big content drops and unlocks to happen in November. So I had to amuse myself through a variety of means, including jumping around to sample different MMOs and pursuing some interesting side projects.
• In LOTRO, I took most of the month off in anticipation of Before the Shadow, but toward the end I did roll up a Hobbit Lore-master, took her through the Shire, and created a bunch of fun outfits for her upcoming journey.
• While I anticipated Wrath Classic to be my jam this month, I ended up fizzling out in that early on — and switching over to World of Warcraft retail instead. Mostly I’ve been getting my characters shaped up for the expansion and doing a lot of solo raid runs for transmog.
• I dabbled a bit in Embers Adrift and Tower of Fantasy — one hardcore, one WildStar-lite — but both didn’t have much to offer me in the long run.
• I also briefly visited RIFT and Fallout 76, but no great advancement there.
• In non-MMO gaming, I dived right into my Chrono Cross playthrough, enjoyed some American Trucking Simulator, and played Detroit Become Human from start to finish.

November 2022’s gaming goals

• I don’t think I’ve pre-planned a month as hard as I have this one, at least not for a long time. But it’s good to know in advance what I’ll be playing and when — and what I want to accomplish.
• In LOTRO, I’ll be taking my new Hobbit Lore-master into the two new zones for a top-to-bottom playthrough — deeds, quests, epic, and all. That means that by the end of the month, I want to have finished out the mini-expansion and be in my 30s.
• World of Warcraft will see me refining my character roster in preparation for Dragonflight. This includes getting everyone to 60 and geared up with the invasion event — and figuring out builds. I also want to settle on a main character for the initial month or so of the expansion.
• I’m psyched to be heading into New World on the fresh start servers and get a new proper journey going. My goal here is to really take my time, soak in all of the sights, work on professions, comb for lore and quests, and start building a good foundation for a long-term character.
• Apart from that, a whole lot more Chrono Cross! No idea right now how long this playthrough will take, but I anticipate it being done by the end of the year.

Syp’s gaming goals for October 2022

September 2022 in review

So something very interesting has been happening organically in my gaming life over the past few months that relates to blogging. I’ve been getting more and more into the habit of creating running posts for different games and projects, adding on to these posts as I play during different sessions, then publishing them when they get full enough or I hit a milestone. And what I’ve noticed is that there’s been a kind of unintentional “reset” switch hit every week around Friday where I schedule posts, clear the slate, and then start up a new batch. Around this time, I might decide to pick a different game or character from the week previous and focus on that instead.

So what this has gelled into is a gaming pattern where I pick three or four projects for the upcoming week — rather than a whole month in advance — while giving myself permission to swap out games and various projects when the next week’s reset comes around. It’s allowed for more flexiblity in play and writing without making me scattershot. Thus, I’m going to be going with this format in the future.

Anyway, here’s the month in review:

• With the hype building for Wrath Classic, I jumped into the prepatch and finished up Netherstorm on my Shaman. I also took a Death Knight through the intro zone and worked up mining and engineering professions to 375 on my Shammy in prep for the expansion.
• I kind of bounced around different Lord of the Rings Online projects, trying out a Hunter for a bit, working on a lowbie Beorning, and revving up my mid-tier Minstrel that I brought over from Anor.
• In RIFT, I worked into the 30s while wrapping up Iron Pine Peak and heading into Scarwood Reach. My momentum’s slowed down considerably, so I may be taking more breaks with this MMO.
• I also kind of, sort of returned to Guild Wars 2, first spending a week with a new Ranger, then with a new Mesmer.

October 2022 gaming goals

• Wrath Classic is expected to take up a chunk of my time and excitement. I’m not in a rush with this one, so I’ll be playing tourist with lots of screenshots and getting a start on Northrend mining and engineering (while also saving up for cold weather flying).
• If I am to stick with Guild Wars 2, I need to settle on a character and map through a few zones to see if the old magic is there — or if I shouldn’t bother.
• I’m probably going to throttle way back in LOTRO, mostly just taking my Minstrel through Gondor quests and biding my time until I can both make a Hobbit Lore-master and take her through the upcoming mini-expansion starter experience.
• With this new weekly pattern, I have so many other games I’d like to visit. New World will get me back when the improved newbie leveling experience goes in this fall, and I’ve been weirdly eying Wizard101 and the new Tower of Fantasy as candidates. No matter what I pick, my goal here is to enjoy more variety in play — and to get some entertaining blog posts out of them.
• I’ve also been strongly considering getting back to doing a retro JRPG blog series — maybe Final Fantasy VI or VII? Or Chrono Cross? You let me know what you’d like to read on this!

Syp’s gaming goals for September 2022

August 2022 in review

• With Blaugust, two funerals, a visit from my parents, and loads of work stuff, my August ended up being the busiest and most stressful month of the year by far. I had much less time to game as a result, and many of my plans fell apart because of it. Hey, it happens.
• I wanted to finish up Burning Crusade Classic with my Shaman, but ended up retiring it instead whilst in the middle of Netherstorm. Wasn’t feeling the motivation to charge into Wrath Classic as I had anticipated. So that got sent to the uninstaller.
• Didn’t get to No Man’s Sky at all. Played a couple sessions of New World but not as much as I wanted.
• However, made some good progress in RIFT: Finished up Silverwood, Gloamwood, Scarlet Gorge, and got most of the way through Iron Pine Peak on my Cleric (who got to 30).
• LOTRO saw the most of my activity. I transferred over all of my Anor characters prior to the shutdown, most notably my level 96 Minstrel. I got her back in questing shape, but paused to focus on finishing up Gundabad with my Captain first. With the most recent expansion completed, I have one character who’s fully done with the current game.

September 2022 gaming goals

• For LOTRO, I’m definitely going to be focusing on my Minstrel and take her through Gondor. I may visit my level 130 Lore-master as well, although I’m not sure if I want to dive back into Gundabad again so soon. If I do, I’ll probably just do the epic with her and eschew the side quests.
• I’m also contemplating what I’m going to be doing later this fall when the race/class combos widen and the new 1-32 leveling experience arrives. A new character is certainly in the cards, but what that character is, I’m not sure. Don’t have to figure that out now, however.
• WoW Classic has a 50/50 chance of pulling me into the Wrath Classic hype. Sometimes it’s fun to get swept up in the excitement, you know?
• And in RIFT, hitting level 40 is a good goal as I continue to meander my way through the vanilla game.
• I have come up with a list of other titles I want to dip into in the coming months, but that list is in flux right now, so I’m going to wait until the next gaming goal post to say.
• I don’t think there’s much coming out this month I really want to play right away. I’ll be happy sticking with a trio of MMOs and finding good balance there.

Syp’s gaming goals for August 2022

July 2022 in review

• While I didn’t exactly stick to my plan to play New World, Sims, or WoW retail this month, I was pleased to settle into a very nice routine juggling for MMOs and consistently working on blog posts for each. It’s made scheduling posts a lot easier so that I’m not scrambling each Friday to fill out the next week.
• With that out of the way, the games! The big surprise this month was going back to RIFT, one of my all-time favorite MMOs. I created a new Cleric, found a guild, and got busy questing my way through the introductory zones. This easily became my most-screenshotted game of the month.
• I kept up with my plan to bounce back and forth between my Minstrel and Captain on a nightly basis in Lord of the Rings Online. My Minstrel’s in her mid-60s in Mirkwood, while my Captain hit the level cap of 140 and put down another Gundabad zone.
• I signed up for a couple of months of WoW Classic, and after puttering around with a handful of new characters, I resumed questing on my level 60 Shaman. She pushed through more Burning Crusade content, finishing up Blade’s Edge Mountains and into Netherstorm.
• And finally, Fallout 76 sent me on many enjoyable (but familiar) early quests while also prompting me to accomplish challenges to get those SCORE rewards.

August 2022’s gaming goals

• I wanted to make some time in my schedule to give No Man’s Sky another go. With so many patches and improvements, this game deserves another shot. I would very much like to fall in love with it, if I can only “get” it.
• And while I failed to devote space to New World last month, I’m going to try again in August with a new character. Blunderbuss, here I come!
• I’ll be playing WoW Classic just to save up gold for my epic flying mount, but I’m going to throttle back in this quite a lot. Once I hit 5,000 gold, I’m shelving this until Wrath arrives.
• In LOTRO, I want to get a really good chunk of Mirkwood done on my Minstrel and hit level 65. I also want to finish up Gundabad on my Captain so that I can free up that character gaming slot for the Hobbit Lore-master in September.
• And as for RIFT, simply questing through zones and doing the puzzle for each will make me happy. My goal is to finish up two zones by month’s end.

Syp’s gaming goals for July 2022

June 2022

• June was a little more unfocused in gaming than I would have liked. Getting the whole house to myself for a week resulted in a glut of gaming time, which I spent playing through the entirety of the excellent Life is Strange: True Colors. It’s rare that I go on a start-to-finish gaming adventure in the span of a few days like that.
• Most all of my MMO gaming was spent in Lord of the Rings Online. I half-heartedly worked my Minstrel through Lothlorien while dabbling with many different alts — some new, some more established. By the end of the month, I settled on alternating gaming nights between my Minstrel and Lore-master on the Treebeard server.
• Speaking of full adventures, I went through a five-chapter campaign in Wildermyth. Good times and weird mutations were had by all.
• I tried and was largely unimpressed by Diablo Immortal.
• I had some fun with a new character in Fallout 76 but didn’t quite get the steam that I had hoped. It’s something to dabble with, I suppose.
• And I wrapped up Blackwood (finally) in Elder Scrolls Online, moving on to Dashaan.

July’s gaming goals

• The aim this coming month is to kick my gaming habits in shape — be more organized, more purposeful. This is in part due to a change in my schedule where I’m going to cut down on my nightly gaming to squeeze in an hour of walking.
• So with LOTRO, I’ll stick with this alternating nightly pattern between Minstrel (Treebeard) and Captain (Landroval). My goal isn’t so much to get to a certain level or zone clear but to stick with this pattern and see how it works over the course of a month. I’ve wanted to get back to doing at least a bit on a normal server just in case Treebeard poops out in the future or if there is additional high level content coming that I’ll want to play. Getting Gundabad finished by the end of summer would be great.
• After some deliberation on a different MMO to play, I’m going to go back to New World this month to check out the changes, roll up a new character, and see if I can find a friendly community there. If I can get to level 20, I’ll feel like I’ve done an honest day’s work.
• I’m also leaving the door open to return to World of Warcraft (retail), start up a fresh character on a server I’ve never played, and just pursue my own objectives. It’d be nice to have an MMO on my Macbook.
• And I’m going to work on a new Sims 4 project, perhaps as a recurring blog series. Been a while since I’ve played and I need something cozy, relaxing, and creative to enjoy. This should hit the spot.

Syp’s gaming goals for June 2022

May 2022 in review

• When the great annals of gaming history will be compiled, what it’ll say for Syp’s gaming in May of the year of our Lord 2022 is, “it was fine.” There was plenty to do this month, and I even kicked off a couple of projects, but I also hit a restlessness that needed a juicy and exciting game to really get me on fire. Still looking, folks.
• Lord of the Rings Online was the title I played the most, as has been the case lately. I finished up anniversary content, scoring a bunch of housing decor and cosmetics, and then I turned my attention to doing all of Yondershire. I also worked on leveling my Lore-master into the 40s by finishing Evendim and then doing a bunch of missions.
• I wrapped up a chain of Dungeons and Dragons Online Menace of the Underdark quests and then quietly put the game back down for a while. Yup, time to take a break.
• I finally did a dive into Project Zomboid over several sessions, ultimately dying a whole bunch and being somewhat put off from the title.
• One unexpectedly delightful return was to Wildermyth, where I started up a new campaign with a new crew. I’m excited to share this with you.
• I started a retro gaming series on Baldur’s Gate 2 and then paused after writing up a post and a half because I’m not entirely sure if it’s worth committing ~100 hours to covering this huge CRPG. So I tucked that into my drafts folder, I’m just saying it here to note that I played about three hours.

June 2022 goals

• As I said up there, I’ll be working on getting through a five-chapter Wildermyth campaign and blogging about the whole journey here.
• Diablo Immortal is launching, so let’s see what we’ll see with that.
• I may expend some effort to finish Menace of the Underdark in DDO, but right now I’m in a holding pattern with that game.
• For LOTRO this last month before Treebeard goes to Mirkwood, I’m going to solely focus on my Minstrel by going through all of Lothlorien.
• I’m definitely going to pick up High Isle in Elder Scrolls Online and going through that expansion zone.
• I may also dip back into Fallout 76, perhaps with (of course) a new character. It’s been a while.

Syp’s gaming goals for May 2022

April 2022 in review

• Overall it was a chill month of gaming without much in the way of variety and juggling.
• Primarily, I devoted most of my time to Lord of the Rings Online. My minstrel dinged level 60 (current cap) on Treebeard, caught up on Bingo Boffin, and maxed out her virtues. She’s in good shape for Mirkwood. Then after trying out a variety of classes, I ended up dusting off my lore-master and worked on leveling her up. I also did a bunch of scavenger hunt quests for the anniversary.
• I tried, more or less, to do a Dungeons and Dragons Online quest every day. I actually did fairly well here! The whole month I spent on the Forgotten Realms quest chains, and I got many of them done and organized into blog format.
• I dropped WoW Classic for now out of a lack of current interest and spent a few sessions wrapping up Elder Scrolls Online’s Blackwood zone.

May 2022 gaming goals

• I snagged Project Zomboid at a discount a few weeks ago, so I’m going to be diving into this survival title and doing some blogging about it.
• In LOTRO, I want to finish anniversary content, play through the new Yondershire zone on both characters, and at least get my lore-master to level 50 with her LIs. That way she can finish Moria in June before the Mirkwood unlock.
• In DDO, I want to finish Menace of the Underdark and then move on to a new expansion.
• I’m very much open to adding a third MMO to this month outside of my same-old, same-old. The thing is, as of the time of this writing, I haven’t settled on something yet. I may even do some Sims 4 instead, get my housing on. I’m going to have to test the waters and see where my interest lies. Stay tuned!