World of Warcraft: from the Wrath of the Lich King to Legion

World of Warcraft is a truly massive online roleplaying game.  It's servers first went live in 2004 and the game still persists today.  For several years, this game was a large part of my life.  I played the original WoW trial the year it came out, and decided it was too large a scale for me to get involved in at the time.  My trial character was a Tauren, and their starting zone, Mulgore, was HUGE.  Having no one to teach me how to navigate such a massive game at the time, I did not subscribe.

A few years later, I was with my boyfriend (future husband), who had played since vanilla, and their first expansion, The Burning Crusade, was releasing at midnight.  We stayed up late, at a Gamestop, waiting outside, to get his special edition boxed set.  I still did not play.

Style Savvy & Style Savvy Trendsetters

Style Savvy, called Style Boutique in Europe and Girls Mode in Japan, is a retail management simulator focused on women's fashion.  It was released in the US in 2009.  Around that time, I had my very first personal console, a Nintendo DS.  Being an avid fan of dressup games, I had to have it.  Though it's not really a dressup game primarily, it does allow you to dress up your character with inventory you buy to sell at the fictional clothing shop.  It boasted over 10,000 fashion items for you to obtain, but 90% of them were repeated recolors.  It was a very ambitious new idea and many young people picked up the game.  It's very easy at first, but as time goes on, gets difficult because repeat customers expect you to remember them and what styles they want, or worse, they want you to guess what style they want based on what pixelated mess they're currently wearing.  Between this, and painfully limited shop inventory slots, it becomes a surprisingly difficult game.  A guide book was published, but it completely lacked the most important part, notes on what each customer wants.  Yes, I wasted money on that book.

Style Savvy Trendsetters, called Style Boutique 2 in Europe and Girl's Mode 2 in Japan, came out for the Nintendo 3DS in 2012.  At it's core, it's the exact same game as it's predecessor, but with vast improvements.  The more powerful hardware of the 3DS allowed for much better graphics, and bigger screens made everything easier to see.  And Syn Sophia, the developers of Style Savvy, took full advantage.  The 3d models in SST are so much easier to look at.  The clothes look a hundred times better too.  They didn't reuse any assets from Style Savvy, it's all new and improved.  The cover boasts an extra 2,000 items more, but I'm pretty sure that's for the menswear section they added to the game.  In SST, you get to assist and sell to male customers too!  I like this a lot.  Another improvement I could tell pretty quickly, was the shop's inventory space wasn't nearly as limited.  It starts off nice and big and you unlock more space as you go too, such a relief!  Sometimes clients make you guess what style they want, but they are a lot easier to see what they're wearing, and if you're really stumped, other players have contributed to a customer guide here!  Thank goodness for the internet coming through this time.

Style Savvy Trendsetters was so successful, that a third and fourth installment were made before the end of the 3DS era.  Style Savvy Fashion Forward, also known as Style Boutique 3 or Girls Mode 3 was released in 2016 and it is very difficult to get a hold of.  The last installment, Style Savvy Styling Star, is only available on the Nintendo Eshop.  Sadly, it did not get a physical release in the West, and has to be downloaded.  As of this moment, there is no evidence of Syn Sophia making a Style Savvy for the Nintendo Switch yet.