Time to Loot Journal: July 2021

This month I restarted my Final Fantasy XIV journey in earnest and discovered just how remarkably close I was to the turning point in the story. If I had just pushed even a little bit harder when I was last playing, I would’ve been through the patch collectively known as The Horrible Hundred. I found ARR’s story itself to be not bad. Not amazing, but not bad. It was really the sharp increase in go-hither and go-thither fetch questing which got me down in the early post-patch content.

This was all before the benefit of 5.3’s streamlining, too.

But I was almost there! The 2.4, 2.5 and 2.55 content was fantastic. So if you’re still in that stretch between ARR and Heavensward as well, you can do it! And yes, it is worth it. So glad I managed to close this chapter off though and get into Heavensward- which, incidentally, I don’t think I’m too far off finishing. Certainly close enough that I’m going to make it my goal for August, after taking a break from goals in July.

On the other side of the MMO fence… There was the whole Blizzard lawsuit debacle, a shit-cake iced with tone-deaf responses from the business and sprinkled with personal exec (and ex-exec) responses that at first seemed to be better until they were put under the microscope of individual accounts of letting these people know exactly what had been going on and still having the problems going ignored, unresolved and in the worst cases- retaliation levelled against the victims.

I won’t go over it all again here. I put my initial, rather raw, thoughts here and included a list of every response (I was aware of) at the time here.

Looking Back

One Year Ago

• I went on holiday with the family, albeit just a local one, what with all the international borders still closed on account of COVID. Still; it was a nice getaway and we did some pretty awesome activities while there, including a tree-top adventure course.

Two Years Ago

• I took my first first-hand sneak peak at Lost Ark. I bought myself a Korean beta account, got myself setup with a VPN and the unofficial English Patch and off I went. It cemented my desire for this game to hurry up and get a proper Western release. Now, two years on, for some definition of ‘Western’ this is actually coming to pass! But for folk like myself in New Zealand or in Australia, or a number of other select excluded locations in the EU… *sigh*
  
• I completed the main 2.0 Final Fantasy XIV story, and shortly afterward jump into The Horrible Hundred, the post-release quest stretch spanning the gap between ARR and Heavensward. This stretch of questing saw me leave the game for two years, to the month. I came back just this July to finish off this stretch and get started into the much, much better Heavensward.

Gaming Goals

July’s Goals

I took a break! There wasn’t any.

In retrospect, I could’ve set finishing Post-ARR content and getting into Heavensward. But I hadn’t really jumped both feet into FFXIV yet last month, so I can see why I didn’t.

Now though…

August’s Goals

• Finish the Heavensward expansion.
  Yep! At least all the 3.0 content. I don’t have any inkling how long the post-HW content is, but I’ll mark completing that too as a stretch goal.

I think this will be perfectly achievable, certainly the base 3.0 content. As noted- I have no idea how long the content that sits between HW and Stormblood is but I’ll be aiming to get that done too.

To achieve this goal though, I’ll take it just as long as 3.0 is done. :)

Games Played July 2021

A relatively restrained list for me!

Forza Horizon 4 started the month as my main game, a bit of a carryover from discovering it near the end of last month. But it rather quickly fell away in favour of FFXIV making a return, and then MHS2: Wings of Ruin coming in alongside that.

I did give the New World beta another try — but I kept my time in it down, since I don’t want to go through and do everything I’ve already done all over again when it comes out properly.

Books Read July 2021

I read and reviewed Queen of Storms, the second book in Raymond E. Feist’s Firemane Saga series.

I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the first and I’m glad it was already out, ready-to-read off the back of finishing the first. It made the experience of reading the two books collectively better for it.

I am now having to wait for the third book — Master of Furies — but I’m invested enough to want to pick it up when it’s available now. Which, I suppose, is a bit of a double-edged sword.

Still; after Martin and Rothfuss, waiting for this should be easy.

I finished that book earlier in the month though, and since then have gone back to Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle series. It isn’t often I put down a series I’m in the middle of — but I’ll absolutely make an exception for already known, favourite authors if they release anything new. If I remember rightly, I put this series aside initially for the latest Stormlight Archive books from Brandon Sanderson.

In any case, I’m reading book 4 in the series at the moment, The Skull Throne and I’m almost done. So a review on this one won’t be too far away. Then I’ll pick up book 5 and get this series done once and for all!

The Blog

14 posts published in July (inc. this one). This brings the overall total up to 440 published posts on Time to Loot. Perhaps — especially with Blaugust on the horizon — I will hit the 500 posts milestone this calendar year after all! :D

Last month I noted I might drop the Humble Choice content entirely. I still might, but I did end up doing a post for July. This doesn’t mean that Humble Choice is safe, yet. I still may end up putting it on pause more frequently than I was, or outright cancelling.

We’ll see.

Most Viewed Posts

Just going to go ahead and skip this, this month! It’s a full-stack of Humble Choice posts again. (If you’re curious: May, April, then July, March and February).

…Maybe I’ll just skipping these posts when considering this going forward in general.

For July though, signing off!