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

WoW – My Favorite Addons

909 words.

I started this post in November 2014, and TAGN’s recent post on addons reminded me that it was still sitting in Drafts. So I thought I would finally post it. Addons are a fact of life when you play World of Warcraft. You can play without them (I’ve done it), and most of the gameplay basics are there, but Blizzard has consistently refused to put in any of the quality-of-life enhancements that we are all used to from every single other MMO released in the past ten years. (909 words.)

State of Decay Is A-OK

282 words.

In January, I went through a phase where I wanted to play some survival-type games. The first game I pulled out was State of Decay, which I already had on Steam. I’m probably the last person to discover this, but State of Decay is pretty cool. I had played it before, somewhere back when it first came to the PC I think, but it didn’t really “click” with me the first time. (282 words.)

Improving Screenshot Technology

455 words.

Dear MMO Developers: Sometimes I want to take screenshots. Almost all of you are really great at providing a “take screenshot” key. Most of you even put it in the proper place, which is the “Print Screen” key if you don’t know. (Why some of you still insist on forcing us to use F12 or F9 or F10 or even F11 still boggles my mind, but I can let that slide. (455 words.)

Daybreak Firings

329 words.

I wanted to believe SOE being bought out might be-well, if not good news, then at least not bad news. But now I guess it’s okay to officially start with the doom and gloom over Daybreak. I hope everyone affected by these layoffs finds another place soon. (I’m going through my own job placement stress right now so I feel for anyone with any uncertainty about their job.) While this news doesn’t affect me personally the way it does others-I don’t have the nostalgia for EverQuest that most people do (I was an Asheron’s Call guy and hardly ever played EQ)-based on the dour mood around the blogosphere it’s easy to see that this is a tremendous blow to the spirit of the genre. (329 words.)

The Forest, A Visual Feast

756 words.

In January, I went through a phase where I wanted to play some survival-type games. I’ve been intrigued by The Forest ever since I first saw it show up on Steam, but I generally try to resist buying Early Access games, particularly from unknown sources. Until one day when I was bored out of my mind with my current games and wanted to look at something new. And hey, it was only $15. (756 words.)

Things I Do And Don’t Buy

490 words.

Bio Break had a great post a while back: Six ways that MMOs can get me to spend money on them. Being the shameless copycat that I am, here are some things I will happily buy in an MMO, roughly in order of priority. More Inventory Space. Shuffling my inventory slots around is not a fun gameplay element for me, so buying inventory and/or bank slots is usually one of the first things I buy. (490 words.)

How To Survive (A Game, Not A Guide)

671 words.

In January, I went through a phase where I wanted to play some survival-type games. Perhaps I was inspired by the news that H1Z1 rushed itself out the door too soon came to Steam Early Access. I already had TUG and Don’t Starve, but they never really grabbed me. (I keep hoping TUG will improve.) I have a bunch of these kinds of games on my Steam wishlist, but as I’m sure you know, 99% of them are still Early Access (including TUG), so I tried to find something else. (671 words.)

Crowfall Sounds Like A PvP MMO

437 words.

I’ve been interested in the dribble of Crowfall information that has been coming out over the last weeks. I liked the art style, and the initial bits on character creation looked interesting. That is until they started in with The Hunger Week. Now it’s starting to lose me. I’m on board with the idea of a periodic “reset.” I actually like the idea of starting over now and then, but then I’m sort of an altoholic, so it fits my playing style. (437 words.)

Massively Overpowered Kickstarter

72 words.

Just boosting the signal. Massively Overpowered Kickstarter Page{.green-dark} I feel like I’m sounding like a total fanboy but I think they’re doing this exactly right. Ie. Kickstarter for initial funding followed by Patreon for ongoing funding. (I mean, short of going to another corporate sponsor, that is.) They clearly aren’t joking around here. Although I do kind of wish they would use some of that Kickstarter money to hire another logo artist… (72 words.)

February Status Report

372 words.

Perhaps if I update my blog more often, it will inspire me to do more writing, so that I’ll have more to talk about in my blog. So… As February begins, I’m still working on my post-apocalyptic novel that I started in NaNoWriMo 2014. I’m up to about 70,000 words, so you can probably figure out that I’m not writing very fast-typically I only put down about 500 words a night, somewhere around four a five nights out of a week. (372 words.)

GW2 – Heart of Thorns Initial Reactions

608 words.

I’m pretty sure I will buy the GW2 expansion Heart of Thorns, however I’m not sure it will hold my attention for very long since it appears there is not going to be anything new to do for existing endgame characters except collect more achievements. Masteries. “We’re reimagining progression with our new Mastery system.” I’ll need to see this before I can make a final judgment on it, but initially it sounds like more grinding, to be honest. (608 words.)

Something Witty Like: SOE’s New Daybreak

565 words.

Breaking News! (Not.) SOE is turning into Daybreak. I don’t read as much doom and gloom into this news as SynCaine does, but if Daybreak intends to take a more cross-platform stance, it could mean EverQuest Next will end up a lot more controller-friendly than we PC MMORPG gamers might like. You can already sense it with Landmark actually. You’ve got a left button ability and a right button ability and that’s about it. (565 words.)

Hello MassivelyOP

143 words.

I knew they’d be back. :) The web site isn’t live yet but it’s going in my feed reader the second it does. I was really honored to see my page mentioned on the last Massively post. Thanks guys! Reading over all of the finale posts on Massively this past week reminded me of something I forgot to mention in my earlier post, which was that all of the contributors are really top-notch writers, too. (143 words.)

What Does Buy-to-Play Really Say About An MMO?

499 words.

ESO* is going Buy-to-Play. Yay! I’m looking forward to playing it again. (Holy jeez those guys make awesome cinematics. I wonder how much of a AAA studio’s game development budget goes into those.) But philosophically speaking, I wonder what the Buy-to-Play model says about an MMO. After having experienced it in GW2, B2P seems to imply something that’s not a very good thing. The game company seems to be saying, “Here’s our persistent world game, but there’s really only about a month or two of fresh gameplay for you to look at, and we’re probably not going to update it very much, so don’t make any long-term plans to stay in our game. (499 words.)

Goodbye Massively

1,149 words.

So yeah, there was a post recently in the MMO blogosphere that basically trashed Massively. I guess they’re entitled to their opinion, but it didn’t make any sense to me. I liked Massively for the exact reason that this other blog trashed them: They didn’t take themselves too seriously. I always felt like there were human beings behind their articles and podcasts. Real people doing the best they could with clearly limited resources in a super fast-paced environment. (1149 words.)