Gaming Round-Up: What I Played Over the Holidays

Posted on January 2, 2026 by Tyler F.M. Edwards

Time for another recap of what I’ve been playing lately.

New World

I played a bit more of New World, though I am starting to wind down. With most of my goals completed and no content on the horizon, I imagine it will become like The Secret World: a game I’ll always love but only revisit every now and then.

I did start that latest alt. Haven’t entirely locked down a build yet, but right now I’m using a musket coupled either a rapier or greatsword depending on my mood. Since I’ve been on a kick of learning about indigenous cultures lately, I decided his backstory is that he’s an Andean native who mugged a conquistador and hitched a ride to Aeternum.

I was a little sad he wound up in Windsward. Nothing against it; it’s a lovely zone. But my nostalgia for Monarch’s Bluffs is so much stronger. Might have to make another character to revisit Monarch’s Bluffs…

Overwatch

Played a lot of Stadium — maybe a bit too much — to get my free loot boxes from the winter event. I’m still holding strong on Brigitte, Juno, and Pharah as my top played characters, but I have tried (and re-tried) a few others on the side.

I copied a build off reddit that uses De Kuiper’s Thesis to make Sigma (nearly) unkillable, and I’ve been having a lot of success with that. Bit worried this build is likely to be nerfed at some point, though. It’s a bit nutty.

After giving up on Mei early in my Stadium career, I’ve given her another shot and managed to claw my way above a 50% win rate, however tenuously. I do quite like the Coulder playstyle, though. Be the ball.

Also gave Freja another chance, with even more tepid results. She’s very hit and miss, quite literally. I’ve gotten some huge multi-kills with her bolas, but most of the time I just kind of flail around without accomplishing much. Not sure I actually enjoy playing her that much, either. She kind of feels like the answer to the question, “What if Pharah was super clunky?”

She does have a very satisfying ultimate line, though. NU VANKER DER.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Moira lately. I had trouble wrapping my head around her at first, but now that I’ve got the hang of it she’s very low stress. Hard to believe I ever struggled with her. A surprisingly high number of players don’t seem to bother getting out of the way of her damage orbs.

Part of the reason I’ve been revisiting older characters is I was pretty disappointed with the new offerings for Stadium this season. Only two characters is underwhelming to begin with, and I didn’t enjoy Doomfist or Wuyang at all. I’d heard there was evidence Illari and Symmetra were in production for Stadium, and I was really hoping to get one or both of them this season. They’re definitely my most wanted new characters for Stadium right now, Illari especially. Love her personality.

Road 96

Hot off the heels of my recent post waxing nostalgic about it, I decided it was time for my third (and final?) playthrough of Road 96.

Having already done the pro-democracy and apolitical routes, this time I went for the “burn it all down” approach. While my first two playthroughs yielded radically different endings, this one felt a bit like an awkward mash-up of the other two.

A little disappointing, but if there was ever a game that embodied the principle of the journey mattering more than the destination, it’s this one, and it was still lovely to revisit. Again, worth it for the music alone. Steam shows me with 23 hours logged in Road 96, and I’m pretty sure an hour or two of that is just sitting around vibing to the music.

Also, can we appreciate what a good dude John is? It really hit me on this playthrough how he really is the best person in the cast. Just a truly decent (fictional) human being.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

When I played Expedition 33, I skipped most of the act 3 side content because I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the story too much. However, since then I’ve popped back in here and there to slowly clean up the rest. I think I’ve now done pretty much everything, including the Verso’s Drafts zone recently added in their free “thank you” update.

When they announced a free DLC, I was hoping for something to further flesh out the lore of the wider setting. This was… very much not that, but still a mostly fun romp all the same. Can’t complain about the price, either.

The one notable thing I still haven’t done is kill Simon. I made one attempt and decided that life is too short to deal with that level of difficulty. Simon can keep on doing his thing; I’m not gonna hassle him any further.

WoW

I’ve just recently reactivated my World of Warcraft subscription, though I did play a bit of the free version in December to get a head start on Legion Remix (or Region Lemix, as I keep accidentally calling it).

I’m not as enthusiastic about Legion’s Remix as I was for Pandaria’s. Legion was a lot more recent, and I played a truly disgusting amount of it at the time, so my burnout never really fully wore off. I’m also not really on the “Legion was the best expansion” train that most people seem to be these days. It was a good one, to be sure, but I wouldn’t put it at the top.

I also don’t love that we’re back to gear drops instead of upgrading gear. Theoretically I can understand the logic that it might feel bad to choose between spending bronze on gear upgrades versus cosmetics, but in practice it was trivially easy to get enough bronze for both, so it doesn’t really feel like a problem that needed solving, and it was so nice not to have to constantly replace and re-transmog my gear in Pandaria Remix. Lemix’s QoL feels much lower, and in general the Remix specific progression systems don’t feel nearly as exciting this time around.

However, the flood of rewards is still nice, and I was eager to try the heroic world tier. So far I haven’t found it particularly game changing, but a little more challenge for a little more reward is a nice option to have.

I’m playing a death knight because I remember them having the best class hall campaign, and because I figured a DK’s survivability would help in heroic world tier. I made a Blood Elf; since I’m still not really enjoying playing my hunter, I decided to just cosplay a dark ranger on this death knight and get my Warcraft III nostalgia fix that way.

It’s certainly an odd relationship I have with the death knight class. Historically it’s been one of my less preferred options, but I definitely have more DKs than anything else on my account at this point. When the Lemix one is finished leveling, she’ll be the third DK on my account to ever reach a current level cap and the second just in War Within. To say nothing of the many other low level DKs sitting around near the bottom of my character list.

Despite my alt addiction, I almost never make multiple characters of the same class in the same game, and even more rarely fully level them. The only other examples I can think of are my two paladins and two shamans in WoW (though I’ve never played both of either in the same expansion), and that second Jedi consular that I leveled in SWTOR for reasons.

I have always loved the flavour of death knights, and I’m gravitating toward them more simply because Frost DK is perhaps the only spec left in the game with a nice, simple builder/spender rotation. It scratches the itch rogues used to before Blizzard mangled them into their current cooldown-juggling mess.

I just wish I liked the aesthetics of Frost better. I’m admittedly not sure what exactly this would look like, but I’d prefer a “chill of the grave” vibe to “Frost mage but melee.” I prefer the more necromantic stylings of the other DK specs, but their gameplay isn’t nearly as smooth, so Frost it is. “Cold death” was one of the attack lines for dark rangers in WC3, I suppose.

Fan Fiction: Light and Wonder

Posted on October 31, 2025 by Tyler F.M. Edwards

When I quit WoW at the end of Legion, I wrote a fairly self-indulgent fan fic to say goodbye to my warlock/demon hunter. Since my unexpected return to the game, I’ve been thinking I needed to do another fic to explain her return to the adventuring life.

It took me longer than expected, but with Midnight looming and all eyes on the Blood Elves, now felt like the right time.

* * *

Light and Wonder

She donned her armour.

It was not a simple process. Like all the works of her people, it was almost excessively intricate, a work of art as much about making a statement as it was about practical purpose. Every layer, every material, carried with it the crushing weight of meaning and history, both of the ancient lineage of the Highborne and of her own painful life.

Layers of bright red silk. The red of blood. The blood that been spilled in the futile defence against an unstoppable enemy, the blood of the loved ones they had lost.

She remembered the slaughter of her friends, the erasure of her family. Nearly everyone she had ever known gone in a matter of days. In many cases she had never learned how they had died, but from the deaths she had witnessed, she knew none of them had been merciful.

Those losses had broken something inside her, something that would never heal. She saw that same aching pain in the eyes of every one of her people. It was their burden, and their bond. No one could understand them as they understood each other. No one else had lost so much.

They were Sin’dorei. They were the Children of Blood.

Interlocking sheets of black leather. The black of mourning, of the grief that defined everything her people did.

For her, grief had not just been a matter of tears. It had burned within her as a furious rage, a quest for vengeance that had led her across worlds. It had led her to cross almost every line, to pollute her soul with the dark hunger of the fel, to turn herself into a living weapon of unbridled destruction. No price had been too high to pay if it brought her family’s killers to justice.

In Icecrown, her rage had burned its way into the cold heart of death itself. On Argus, she had turned the demons’ own power against them, bringing doom to the ultimate architects behind the evil that had despoiled her homeland.

Then, at last, when every monster involved in the ruination of her people had tasted the pain of true death, the anger within her had guttered and died. And she had found that without it, there was nothing left. She had become an empty husk, without purpose, gnawed constantly by the hunger of the fel and the grief that no amount of screaming vengeance could soothe.

Plates of strong steel, enamelled in brilliant gold. The gold of the light of the Sunwell renewed, of the eternal sun that guided them still.

Following the last battle in Antorus, she had retreated from the world. She had taken up residence in an isolated corner of Eversong Woods. Alone, without love nor purpose, the pain had threatened to swallow her whole. Then, at last, the tears she had longed denied had come, flowing until they threatened to drown her.

The hunger for blood and violence was with her always. It would never leave her, not through all the long centuries she had still had to live. The knowledge had almost broken her. She had turned herself into a weapon, and that could not be undone.

Slowly, as the years passed, she had learned to live with the pain. It never left her, but she gradually came to learn she could fill her heart with other things as well. She began to see the world around her – really see it – for the first time since undead had taken everything from her people. She heard the birds sing in the morning, and saw the way the light shone through the crimson leaves of the trees. She smelled the perfume of spring flowers, and felt the cool waters of mountain springs upon her skin.

Then had come the visions, the Radiant Song. And then, at last, she had realized that there was still something to fight for. Not to avenge the past, but to safeguard the present, and the future. It had taken her so long to see the beauty in the world again, and the love for it filled with a purpose as urgent as the searing hate she had once felt.

She had made herself into a weapon, but a weapon could be used to protect as well as destroy.

She had rejoined the world, had seen the wonders and the terrors of Khaz Algar, and now she had returned home again, as darkness came to Quel’thalas once more.

Her intricate armour in place, she stepped forth into the streets of Silvermoon City. Her name was Dorotaya Duskfury, and she was ready to fight for her home.

The sky above was dark. No natural clouds these, they flickered with violet and azure lightning, the touch of a power beyond this reality. An unnatural chill beat down from that otherworldly sky, like some cruel perversion of the sun’s heat.

The streets buzzed with activity as other Sin’dorei joined her in making their way to city’s battlements. There were mages and warlocks, who like her had risked wielding powers that might consume them. There were Farstriders, sworn to defend the fragile remnants of the forests that even now still healed from the wounds of the Scourge. There were sombre Blood Knights, sworn to honour the memory of the god they had murdered.

Among such company, Dorotaya could walk free of judgment. They saw the horns upon her brow, the cracks in her skin that crackled with green fire, her lank hair and sickly skin, and they did not look away. None among them had not made desperate choices in the years following the fall of Quel’thalas, and now they were united in purpose, all making the same silent promise: We will not let it happen again.

She ascended the battlements of Silvermoon, joining the ranks of her people in their resplendent amour, so much like hers. The red of what they’d lost, the black of the grief that weighed heavy on their shoulders, and the gold of their spirit unbroken. She looked south, and saw the growing darkness in the sky, the fathomless hungry evil that came to take everything from them once again.

But she also saw the forests below, the trees with their leaves of red and gold. She saw the faces of her people, some hopeful, some terrified, all determined. She saw all they had rebuilt in the last few years, the glorious monument to triumph over impossible grief that was Silvermoon itself, and her heart swelled with a love she had long feared she was no longer capable of.

Her mind went back to her time in Pandaria, to words spoken by one of that land’s gods. She hadn’t understood their meaning then. She hadn’t been ready to hear it. But now, she felt the true depth of them.

“Someday, you may also be called upon to defend all that is dear to you. When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.”

A cry of defiance, of joy, rose from her lips. “Anaralah!” By the light.

The cry was taken up across the battlements, becoming a chant as dozens of Elven voices joined as one. “Anaralah! Anaralah! Anaralah!”

A cold wind struck her face, and she greeted it with a smile.

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: Warcraft

Gaming Round-Up: What I Played Over the Holidays

Fan Fiction: Light and Wonder

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