10 years ago, Soforah and I started Spacewocket but we’ve been blogging for much longer than that…
When we’ve met, 22 years ago, we started to write a blog called Darkheaven. However, after a few years, our enthusiasm for gothic culture faded. Since then, we’ve had all sorts of blogs but only Spacewocket lasted, probably because we’re very passionated about the main topics of the blog: playing WoW and watching horror movies.
10 years ago, we decided to move to Brussels to minimise the commute times. Despite our best efforts, we never managed to feel 100% in this place but Spacewocket was always there for us, our corner of the world.
So, here’s to a place on the internet, far from grey cities, electric scooters, autotune, hobos, drug addicts, alcohol, boring jobs, overheated summers, sunburns (don’t ask), soccer, sports on TV, politics, noisy neighbours, bad plumbing, contractors, internet dances, influencers, huge eyebrows, whitened teeth and photo filters. A place where people still believe that pizzas, video games and horror movies are the ingredients for a cool life.
I’m getting dangerously close to turn 50. I remember when I was 17, people of that age looked boring and lame. I only hope to never become an old fart who only talks about football and adult stuff.
However, realising that nowadays 17 years-old kids were babies when The Burning Crusade was released makes me feel ancient.
And now, I’m going to rest a bit before the dinner…
With Dragonflight, we’ve entered what Executive Producer Holly Longdale would call the Third Era of Warcraft.
For more than 15 years, we were used to play a certain way, we would gather all the daily quests from an area, complete them to increase our reputations. Upon reaching exalted, we would then visit the quartermasters and buy the pets and mounts with our gold.
Now, the world quests are scattered across the maps and they reset twice per week (instead of daily). There are hourly events happening across the entire expansion, each on a different timer and rewarding renown with different factions.
It doesn’t seem like much but, trust me, it has completely changed our way to play WoW. Before, we would just log in the game, fly to a zone and let the dailies tell us what to do.
The new system is more chaotic and requires planning. Starting my gaming session by first deciding which zone to visit and which event to attend keeps me from wondering what to do next.
On top of that, there’s a ton of pets, mounts and appearances to collect, each one purchasable with a different currency, you got to keep track!
I’m not gonna lie, the launch of Dragonflight was pretty brutal for us. We’ve stopped playing after two weeks and only came back recently.
However, we’ve managed to change our habits and we’re much more organised than before. We use Obsidian to keep track of objectives, currencies and event timers. We make notes about pretty much everything and it has greatly helped us bringing order to chaos and enjoy the game again.
I still don’t like Dragonflight and I don’t think that I ever will. It’s a patchwork of new systems, stitched up together by a mediocre story (which was so sliced up and gated behind renown that I completely lost track of): “There is an Island with Dragons, some are good and some are bad. Let’s unite so we can defeat Fyrak, the evil one.” I’m also shared about Dragonriding, which feels more like riding a glorified kite than a dragon. I can’t believe that people criticise Shadowlands when everything was better then, even the protagonist. The story of the jailer was much deeper than “I’m a bad dragon” Fyrak. Korthia was much more enjoyable than Zalarek Caverns and Zereth Mortis was definitely better than the Dream Grove with that horrible Superbloom event (whoever green lit that thing obviously didn’t try it himself). I still think that the zones were very well designed, they were just not that fun.
Changing WoW as much as the devs did for Dragonflight requires guts. When other companies try to provide the same experience with each iteration of their franchises, Blizzard didn’t hesitate to rock the boat and have us adapt to their vision. In the end, the community followed but it was a risky move to change so many things, all at once.
We’re now days away from The War Within’s pre-patch and weeks from the official release. I love World of Warcraft, and I play it first and foremost to be part of that fantastic universe and goof around with my wife and the other players. I’ve been waiting for over a decade to see more sharing between my characters and it seems to happen with the Warbands (don’t screw this up, Blizz!). I’ve also been waiting a long time for a solo end-game content that would reward us with real end-game rewards and it’s finally happening with the Delves (don’t screw this up either, Blizz!). So, despite a disappointing last expansion, I’m eagerly waiting for The War Within. I’m sure that the return of Chris Metzen will help with the quality of the story.
To conclude, I’d say that we’re far from our days running around Dark Shore, levelling our first characters and Dragonflight brought this to the next level. However, WoW remains, to me, the best game ever made and I know that by trying to content the many different kind of players that constitute its community, Blizzard is fated to create expansions that can’t satisfy 100% of the player base but it doesn’t matter because, as Ion Hazzikostas wisely said, you can do anything in WoW, you just can’t do everything.
A cryptic phone call sets off a dangerous game of risks for Elliot, a down-on-his-luck salesman. The game promises increasing rewards for completing 13 tasks, each more sinister than the last – IMDb
The only reason I’m mentioning 13 Sins is to remember not to watch it again. The only terrifying thing about this movie would be to forget about it, and then end up watching it again some day. The beginning may have looked promising, but it became tedious before the middle and ended up in a boring snore fest. It had absolutely nothing likeable, not even one character.
TLDR: this movie is a 1h 33m waste of time, not worth it!
There’s probably a short answer. However, this question is a trigger to my complicated self.
The last 15 years have been a complicated labyrinth created by a back and forth between solo games and World of Warcraft. Would I have known what I know now, it would have been much easier but, most of the time, us humans have to learn by trial.
I’ve been collecting games since I was 11 years old. From my C64 and my Amigas (500 & 1200) to my PCs, I must have owned several hundred (if not thousand) games. However, I only hooked on a few of them: Maniac Mansion, Zelda – Link’s Awakening, Quake 2, Diablo 1&2, Animal Crossing and Life is Strange.
However, it’s in April 2006 that I discovered World of Warcraft. It was as if I had found the game that I had been looking for my entire life. Little did I know that it would change my life forever.
From a hobby, gaming became a passion. I wasn’t just filling my free time anymore, I was creating time to be in Azeroth. I was reading everything about the game, watching every video I could find (Athene still makes me laugh), it was perfect!
I first played a resto druid and I will never forget the day that my guild was the first guild of the server to kill Ragnaros. Then Burning Crusade came out and I rolled a combat rogue. There too, I had my moment of glory when I killed 3 times in row Achrono one-on-one in the middle of Alterac Valley. Wrath of the Lich King was an absolute blast, mainly because Soforah joined me in the game and we’ve been playing together since then.
However, the following years have been quite different. I’ve been jumping out of World of Warcraft only to be disappointed by solo games and jumping back in… Since we didn’t really hook on the last expansion (Dragonflight), we’ve been trying as many games as we could: Diablo 4, Grim Dawn, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, The Division 2, Enshrouded, Stardew Valley, Elden Ring, AC: Valhalla,… However, I felt exactly the same as I felt before discovering WoW: alone.
To me, the greatest revolution in video games isn’t how big the open worlds have become or how incredible the graphics are (not that incredible, even on ultra with an RTX 4090). What baffled me during my first week in WoW is still what I find amazing nowadays: playing with people and I don’t think that I’ll ever come back from that.
People say that WoW‘s community is toxic. Honestly, they’re the best people I know! They can be rude and even sometimes nerve wrecking but I’ll take any Goldshire creep over of a fake romanced character from Stardew Valley or Cyberpunk!
So, sorry for the entire history of my gaming life but my answer to the question “What game do I play?” is the same as it’s been during the last 18 years: World of Warcraft!
