My four days off went better than they usually do in that I actually took four days off.
I was technically at work until about midnight on Wednesday working out why these new (for work) Fanvil IP phones wouldn’t do VPN. Once that was resolved, I spent Thursday through Sunday either doing the food coma thing or playing World of Warcraft.
The holiday lunch/dinner/leftovers for several days went off without a hitch. There was ten pounds of bone-in glazed spiral-cut ham, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, diner rolls, and a chocolate mouse cake for desert. I still have probably three pounds of ham, and most of the cake left.
The cake was amazing, but I’m not much of a sweets person and one slice was enough to sate me for another year. And I’m about ham’d out — I’ve had ham, ham sandwiches, ham cheese and crackers, ham and baked beans… I’m done.
I tend to set out a pretty big spread for the final two holidays of the year as I want to make sure I have plenty in case anyone I know doesn’t have anywhere to go. But with zombies and all this year, where the “Guestapo” has been breaking up family meals because of the lockdown mandates, it was just me and the roommate.
The rest of the time off was spent plumbing the depths of the afterlife in World of Warcraft’s latest expansion.
“Shadowlands” has been pretty good so far. I really like the look and feel of Ardenweald and Bastion, and accordingly that’s where I’ve spent most of my time. My Tauren Paladin is working with Ardenweald and my Draenei Mage is teamed up with Bastion, and both are level 60 and working on the “Torghast” quests to get access to the Runecarver.
As I surmised with the Endless Halls maze for the “Lucid Nightmare” mount, the Endless Halls was a tech-demo for procedurally generated dungeon content… And Torghast is, quite literally, the end-game for that tech demo.
Ultimately Toghast is pretty ‘rinse-repeat’ and I can already tell I won’t be spending a great deal of effort on it. For now though it adds enough variation to the theme to allow me to slog through it for specific quests.
Of the two characters I think the Mage is having the easier time. While the mage dies quite often and the paladin has yet to be killed, the improved damage output of the mage just improves the overall flow of the game.
Also the storyline for “Shadowlands” has been quite good; at least the two small slices I’ve seen so far have been. Ardenweald wins the contest though with one deft storytelling move; bringing back a beloved character in a well constructed non-cringe fashion.
WoW, as a game, has had a few deeply emotionally impactful quest elements over the years, such as “Crusader Bridenbrad”, and the death of Ysera in the Legion expansion. You can now add the return of Ysera in Shadowlands to that list.