Hi! I’m an old reclusive Gen-X software developer who writes about games or projects I’m working on or what’s happening in the world. Not AI-generated since 2012, despite what ZeroGPT says. Except the images. :)

The 2023 Baldur’s Gate 3 Playthrough Index

Monthly Recap – April 2018

658 words.

_I’m altering the format for this post a bit. Previously I just recorded the games I’d been playing, for no discernible reason. Now I’m going to add in a bunch of cross-media promotion so people have an even bigger reason to skip it. _ My ESO Nightblade in Glenumbra - another example of how screenshots look awful during most games' night cycle. Games Played Elder Scrolls Online, 24 hours. The surprise winner this month. (658 words.)

Weeklies – Oligarchgate (The One About Daybreak)

861 words.

Not much gaming to report this week. I’m on a Secret World Legends break. I’ve mainly been dabbling in Elder Scrolls Online (trying to record the Orsinium storyline; much like with Morrowind, I messed up and have to restart it). Since @Sypster has been talking up Dungeons & Dragons Online for a while, I thought I would check it out again myself. I’ve played DDO before, and enjoyed it, but I haven’t had it installed in years (computer forensic evidence suggests since 2015). (861 words.)

ESO – Morrowind Story (Spoilers)

1,841 words.

I finished up the Morrowind storyline in Elder Scrolls Online last week. I liked it. With the usual ESO caveats. Because even living gods who can levitate moonlets need someone to run errands now and then. I’m not entirely sure what to call Morrowind. Is it DLC? Is it an Expansion? It’s not big enough to deserve the title “Expansion” if that’s what they are calling it, but it’s also a distinctly different entity from the DLC that is normally in the Crown Store, because you had to buy it separately. (1841 words.)

GW2 – LW4, Ep 2, A Bug In The System (Spoilers)

1,365 words.

I finally finished Guild Wars 2’s Living World Season 4, Episode 2, “A Bug In The System” on Friday night. So here’s the quarterly post where I yell at Guild Wars 2 again for making me incredibly angry when I play it. This scenic overview looked better in the game than in this screenshot. It was the most disjointed episode I can remember, but I’ll concede it was probably because of the way I played it. (1365 words.)

Weeklies – ESO, SWL

302 words.

Yikes, April is almost over already. I finished Secret World Legends’ Red Sun, Black Sand and left Egypt behind. I’m taking a break for a while. This past weekend I decided to try to play through the Morrowind content in ESO. It took four tries, but I finally got past the first meeting with Vivec and into the rest of the story. (I had a hard time finding a character I wanted to play. (302 words.)

FFXIV – End Of Life?

689 words.

I haven’t logged into Final Fantasy XIV for a couple of months now. I hadn’t logged in for a couple of months before that, too. Most times I try to log in, I stare at the screen for a few minutes, then log out. What’s up with that? To be honest, I think I’ve reached the point I get to in every MMORPG’s lifetime when I’ve consumed all of the endgame content that I’m interested in. (689 words.)

Weeklies – SWL, Anti-PAX, Batteries

790 words.

It’s been a slow week. City of the Sun God, near the Houy Sentinel. My primary game is still Secret World Legends though I didn’t play as much this week. Now that the Morninglight content is already out, I don’t feel any more pressure to “hurry up.” Also, Egypt is a bit dull, particularly the City of the Sun God, which is just a long series of tasks that don’t seem to have much story relevance. (790 words.)

Kingdom Come: Deliverance Completed

2,436 words.

I’ve been holding off on writing about Kingdom Come: Deliverance until I was done, but finally, after 86.7 hours according to the save game file, and 108 hours according to ManicTime, between February 20 and this past weekend, April 8, I finished the game. An interior in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Spectacular scenery and lighting is common. I say “finished,” but what I mean is that I reached the The End screen, the point at which the developers believe your characters’ story has ended. (2436 words.)

Weeklies – Haven Week

470 words.

New title! “Weeklies?” Get it? Like Dailies, but Weeklies! I was actually planning to stop doing these but then Bhagpuss had to go and say that he enjoyed them. :) I’ve been very distracted this week by re-watching the complete Haven series, because @MissByx reminded me that I had not yet seen past season 4, so I started it again from the beginning. I could write volumes about this show but I will try to refrain. (470 words.)

Games Played – March 2018

138 words.

Secret World Legends, Sign of the Times March was an odd month, both in gaming and life. Even the weather was weird. March doesn’t usually feel like the dead of winter where I live. Secret World Legends - 57 hours RIFT Prime (and RIFT) - 48 hours* Kingdom Come: Deliverance - 38 hours Project: Gorgon - 11 hours** EverQuest - 8 hours Final Fantasy XIV - 3 hours Guild Wars 2 - 3 hours Black Desert Online - 2 hours Life is Strange - 2 hours * ManicTime seems to have difficulty distinguishing between RIFT and RIFT Prime, so I’m not entirely sure how much time was in RIFT and how much was in Prime. (138 words.)

Besieged by Kevin Hearne (Audiobook)

229 words.

Published by Del Rey. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by Random House Audio. The ancient gods are alive and well in the modern world in this hilarious, action-packed collection of original short stories featuring Atticus O’Sullivan, the handsome, tattooed, 2,000-year-old Irishman with extraordinary magic powers from Kevin Hearne’s New York Times best-selling Iron Druid Chronicles. Listen time: 8 hours, 46 minutes, between 1/26/2018 and sometime in February or March? I finished listening to this a while ago, but forgot to write about it. (229 words.)

MMO Roundup #11

508 words.

_These post titles are killing me. I hate titles that don’t mean anything. I don’t know about anyone else, but I almost never click through to read an article if the title doesn’t interest me (my feed reader also shows the first sentence, so that is also a factor). I assume everyone else is the same. But here I am, doing the exact thing I hate. “Generic Post #11.” I might as well call it, “Don’t bother reading this one. (508 words.)

Why Self-Publishing Might Be A Mistake

1,515 words.

Recently I saw a tweet from someone contemplating self-publishing some of their writing. They didn’t sound confident about it. It prompted me to write this post. I’ve thought about this for years, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to self-publish Lute of the Sparrow on Amazon. It was an informative experience, true. But the only thing I really gained from it was the first-hand knowledge and experience of formatting a book for e-publishing. (1515 words.)

Secret World Legends Revisited

642 words.

It’s another week, so of course it’s time to abandon the last game and switch to another! This time we’ve landed on Secret World Legends in the Great MMORPG Weekly Roulette Wheel. (RIFT Prime and EverQuest were the previous winners.) Not many screenshot choices to pick from because SWL seems very selective about actually saving images to the hard drive. I started SWL with everyone else when it launched, and made a character very similar to my old The Secret World character-a shotgun/hammer Illuminati guy. (642 words.)

MMO Roundup #10

306 words.

A weekly diary of MMO news and observations. Secret World Legends, the League of Monster Slayers tree house In my last roundup I said that Secret World Legends wasn’t The Next Big Thing. This week I made a new Templar Sword/Elementalist and now suddenly the game looks fresh and interesting and exciting again. It just goes to show how much a tiny change in play style can make a huge difference in one’s perception of a game. (306 words.)