The other day saw one of the biggest MMORPG* events on the Internet that I can recall in recent memory: Bungie’s Destiny 2 Gameplay Reveal Event. Since some of us have to work, I didn’t actually see it, but almost everyone in my timeline was watching it and commenting on it. It had the feel of an Apple event. I never played Destiny, since I don’t have any of the new generation of consoles. (331 words.)

Last weekend I rented The Accountant on Verizon VOD. It was decent, but not quite good. I felt a pretty strong connection to Ben Afleck’s character because I can identify with many of the symptoms he reeled off about “high functioning autism.” I’ve never been diagnosed but I’ve always assumed I’m on the Asperger’s spectrum somewhere, enough to be recognizable, but not enough to be debilitating. The plot that went on around him, though, wasn’t all that interesting to me (corporate accounting woohoo). (310 words.)

I complain a lot about a lack of gaming news (to myself, at least) but I completely overlooked the recent announcement of a new MMORPG called Wild West Online (WWO) from new studio 612 Games. It will be set in … wait for it … the Wild West. Taking a cue from Wilhelm here and screen-capturing their web site. :) Initially I understood it would be a PvP game. But before you groan and click away, there seems to have been some miscommunication and MassivelyOP’s interview indicates PvE players will get their own play area as well. (358 words.)

Grimdark TMNT from [1d4chan][1]. Artist unknown. A tweet caught my attention Friday and I thought about responding, but it was a topic that would fill a lot more than a couple tweets and I was looking for something to write about anyway. i'm never going to understand why people keep writing grimdark shit all the time. the world is miserable enough as it is. don't add to it. — Runesael, Archfey of Humbug (@Runesael) May 12, 2017 The gist: Why do people keep making that icky grimdark stuff? (994 words.)

I needed to use up some Audible credits, so I picked up an audiobook called Off To Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer. I found it by looking up the works performed by Luke Daniels, one of my favorite audiobook readers, ever since I discovered him from listening to the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. (If you like the Harry Dresden books, you might also like IDC. It’s the same sort of thing, but with an Irish wolfhound. (819 words.)

I don’t know how many people know this, but I used to play a lot of Quake CTF with Crayola Clan in the 1990s. Back then, “eSports” were community-run tournaments with no stakes and no prizes and barely any organization. We played mostly NetQuake, QuakeWorld, and Quake 2. We played a little bit of Quake 3 Arena but I personally never liked it and by then gaming started to get commercial with sponsors and cash prizes and it was more work than fun and it was all too stressful to deal with. (707 words.)

Continuing my pseudo-regular new series on television shows and movies I’ve watched recently, because … well, it’s something to write about. These are not “reviews” per se, but merely thoughts and observations. You can assume, though, that if I’m writing a post about a thing, it’s notable to me in some way, either especially good, or especially bad, or otherwise relevant somehow. Today I’d like to talk about a little show called The Shannara Chronicles. (1277 words.)

Here’s an oldie from Drafts… and I didn’t even have to find pictures for it! Here are some screen shots that didn’t fit anywhere else. I quested for quite a while in Hellswamp without being accosted by anyone. Reds and greens wandered around doing their own thing for hours even while the zone was in conflict. Me and the puppy questing out in Hellswamp, not getting ganked. Apparently if you harpoon the bottom of the ocean you can make your Clipper fly into the air. (390 words.)

This is another in my recent series of posts that I’m calling, “What in God’s name can I possibly find to schedule for publishing today.” I saw some folks on Twitter talking about the Farseer books by Robin Hobb, and since I’ve been looking for new stuff to consume, I bought the first book on Kindle, Assassin’s Apprentice. I almost used an Audible credit on it, but I have some complex rules about whether to get books in text format or audiobook format, and this one came up as text format. (836 words.)

Here’s a timely post written about six months ago, which sat in my Drafts folder lacking not only a picture, but also some links. I started playing the Battlefield 1 single-player campaign on a Friday evening, and finished it the next day, on Saturday night. There were six missions. I recorded 12 videos, averaging about 35 minutes each, for a grand total of about 7 hours of gameplay. Let’s be extremely generous and say I cut out an hour of video, so let’s round it up to 8 hours. (2016 words.)

This post sat in my Drafts folder for nearly two months waiting for me to add that picture… I’m hearing reports (from my super secret source known as “the Internet”) of a game called Rend revealed at PAX East 2017. Rend is a self-described “hybrid survival game” from FrostKeep Studios, a studio I’ve never heard of, but which supposedly has a good pedigree. It’s largely being reported as a “survival sandbox” game like ARK or Conan Exiles, but MassivelyOP also compared it to Crowfall and Camelot Unchained. (332 words.)

This one should be pretty simple. Mass Effect Andromeda - 97 hours … and that’s literally it. (17 words.)

After Two Episodes I have seen a number of people on Twitter talking positively about the new Netflix show 13 Reasons Why, so I watched the first two episodes last night. I expected it to be a touching drama about a teen suicide, but it appears to be more of a tense psychological thriller, somewhat in the vein of I Know What You Did Last Summer (except that we, the audience, don’t know). (2963 words.)

Blatantly stolen from their web site. I feel like I should write something about Ashes of Creation’s successful Kickstarter campaign, although to be honest I don’t have much to say about this game yet. Wilhelm’s post on it is actually a great summary of my thoughts, and I should probably just link there and call it a day. I’m not on the hype train by a long shot. Not that I see anything particularly wrong with the game, it’s just way, way too early to even think about commenting on it. (699 words.)

Not a Movie Night picture! Instead a random frame of video from early in the game. I declared myself finished with Mass Effect Andromeda on Saturday, April 29. I finished the Priority missions and basically everything else except the sillier busy work under the Tasks section. ManicTime shows that I played for 99 hours. I reached level 59 in the end, and the save page showed I completed 92% of the game. (3078 words.)