Archive: 2016

112 entries. 78,991 words.

January, 2016

  • ARK – Another Chance In The New Year. 2016-01-04 12:00 AM.
    • Gaming
    • Reviews
    • Survival

    With the start of the new year, I decided to give ARK: Survival Evolved another chance. So many people rave about this game, in streams, podcasts, and blogs. I had a lot of bad feelings to overcome, but I figured it was possible that I was the one who was wrong about it. So on January 1st, I fired up a single player game, determined to play until I “got it.” I ended up playing about 18 hours over the holiday weekend. What I call my Beach Base on the northern edge of The Island. 807 words.
  • 2015 Winter Steam Sale List. 2016-01-22 4:00 PM.
    • Musings
    • Steam

    This was a post I intended to publish somewhere near the beginning of January. I bought a lot of things in the 2015 Steam Winter sale, but I kept all of my purchases to 7.99 or less, so I consider that a relative success. I even installed some of them. :) Undertale. 7.99. It didn’t look like my kind of game, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. I installed and played it briefly … but it isn’t really my kind of game. At least in my current frame of mind. 692 words.
  • Looking At Unity 5 and Unreal 4. 2016-01-23 4:00 PM.
    • Development
    • Reviews

    (I totally stole this image from depaul.edu.) One weekend I got the idea that it would be simple for me to write a hit video game, make tons of money, and leave my day job*. I’ve dabbled at writing games now and then since I first learned programming back in the 80s, so this is nothing new (I have yet to actually complete a game, though). Anyway, I started reading up on popular 3D game engines. From what I can gather, there are basically two choices: Unity 5 or Unreal 4. 817 words.
  • ARK – So Good Yet So Bad. 2016-01-25 6:00 PM.
    • Musings
    • Survival

    If anyone looks at my YouTube channel*, you can tell I’m still playing a fair amount of ARK. I’m in a very “I want to be by myself” gaming mood right now and toodling around by myself on a giant island of dinosaurs is a good fix. Thanks to a suggestion from Aywren I’ve customized my server settings to make the game a little more palatable. I haven’t altered it much, just a few tweaks to GameUserSettings.ini to minimize the annoyances: 1,537 words.
  • Star Wars and X-Files (Spoilers). 2016-01-28 1:36 PM.
    • Media
    • Musings

    Star Wars: The Force Awakens Apparently the moratorium on spoilers for Star Wars is over, although personally I don’t think it should end until a film is released to streaming or rentals. The theater experience is not as good as my house, even though I don’t have an especially great television or sound system like I used to. Movies in theaters are generally awful experiences. There are very few movies that would get me to go to a theater anymore. Not any of the comic book movies, not The Martian, not Interstellar, not any of the upcoming nerdy movies coming out this year, pretty much nothing … except a new Star Wars movie. A Star Wars_ sequel_. With the original cast in it. 1,435 words.

February, 2016

  • Don’t Feel Bad About Getting Bored. 2016-02-03 4:00 PM.
    • Advice
    • MMORPG
    • Musings
    • Responses

    I recently saw a farewell post on My Life in Azeroth. I’m sorry to see anyone stop blogging, and I hope they resume someday, but the tone of the post got me thinking. It seems like a lot of WoW players sound apologetic or guilty when they discuss leaving that game, like they are somehow letting Blizzard or the community down. I’ve seen it in blog posts, and I’ve seen it on Twitter. Like they are admitting some deep, dark secret that they didn’t want to tell anyone. Like they are revealing some deep personal flaw in themselves. 307 words.
  • Punishing PvP Activity In PvP Games. 2016-02-05 4:00 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Musings
    • Responses

    I was reading the Albion Online State of the Game and came across this part: Red zones will be full loot PvP zones that do not contain any claimable territories. Red zones will be subject to a crime and reputation system that makes sure that killing peaceful players - in particular, if they are zerged down - has more consequences for the attackers. No part of that makes me more interested in Albion Online. 263 words.
  • Snap Judgment – The Division Open Beta. 2016-02-21 1:00 AM.
    • Pre-Release
    • Shooter
    • Snap Judgment
    • Videos

    The Division isn’t for me. It’s a very beautiful-looking game. The graphics are fantastic, and the urban environments are very realistic and detailed. Unfortunately I didn’t see anything new or innovative in the gameplay. The whole time I was playing, I kept thinking, “This plays just like Defiance, and Defiance is free.” The only thing The Division has is the cover mechanic. And the fantastic graphics, of course. I also couldn’t help but notice that there were very few other people around in this alleged MMO game. Perhaps that’s why they keep talking up the Dark Zone-because that’s the only place that has any people in it? 115 words.

March, 2016

  • Black Desert In Tweets. 2016-03-07 11:29 PM.
    • Blog

    Since I am too lazy/don’t have time to write a coherent post about Black Desert I thought I would take the very simple route of pasting a bunch of my tweets about it into a post. Boy was that a mistake. It turned that it wasn’t easy at all, and this post took far longer to create than I wanted it to. This is a big problem because I just got the “Learning Higher Processing Skills” quest from Ficy in Heidel, which opens up the “Pure Water for an Experiment” quest from Flaviano, which then allows you (I think) to heat Melted Copper Shards into Copper Ingots, a task I’ve been wanting to do for some twenty or thirty hours of game time now. 127 words.
  • Black Desert Cash Shop. 2016-03-10 4:00 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Responses

    On the subject of the Black Desert cash shop, I agree that it’s a little steep. Or perhaps I should say that you don’t get enough in-game value for the money you spend. I’ll get to the specifics later. First I want to highlight something I think is good about the BDO cash shop: They don’t shove it in your face in every window that comes up. There’s no popup window when you login that shows you all the sales and exhorts you to “Go buy stuff now!” If I didn’t know there was a cash shop, I might have totally overlooked that Pearl Store button in settings. That alone is worth the $30 admission. 1,136 words.
  • Black Desert Online. 2016-03-11 4:00 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews

    TLDR; I’m enjoying Black Desert Online, and I think it’s worth $30. If you like crafting, it’s well worth $30. It’s not your grandfather’s MMORPG, though, and it takes some time to get used to it. I mentioned on Twitter that I didn’t understand why people were drawn to The Division, and it occurred to me that I should explain why I’m drawn to Black Desert Online, in case anyone is looking at the BDO hype and scratching their heads. 1,190 words.
  • Goodbye EverQuest Next. 2016-03-13 2:49 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Opinion
    • Responses

    I don’t have much to add to the EverQuest Next wake that hasn’t already been said, except for this possibly controversial thought: I’m kind of glad they cancelled it. Wait, wait, let me explain. We’ve known all along that Landmark was the prototype for EverQuest Next. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was dreading the day that they released Landmark with Norrath assets and called it EQN, because Landmark is not a very good game. There’s no doubt in my mind that EQ1 and EQ2 fans would have hated it. 125 words.
  • Finally, The Debate Is Settled. 2016-03-17 2:18 AM.
    • MMORPG
    • Musings

    I’m so glad this debate is finally settled, so we won’t need to go over it again in any future MMORPGs. 21 words.
  • WildStar’s Doom. 2016-03-17 3:00 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Responses

    At the risk of sounding pessamistic, WildStar’s probably going to close soon. I’m not sure whether to jump in and play as much as I can before it closes, or just let it go quietly into the night and remember fondly that one month I played. Okay, let’s be real, it’s going to be the latter, because I’m playing Black Desert now and Dark Souls III hits Steam on April 11, and that will be that. I suppose it’s possible WildStar could survive another year in maintenance mode, but knowing NCSoft I kind of doubt it. 359 words.
  • Is Black Desert Online Alt-Friendly?. 2016-03-22 1:17 AM.
    • MMORPG
    • Musings

    I’ve been thinking about alts in BDO. I saw a lot of comments early on about how alt-friendly it is, but I disagree. When I think of an alt-friendly game, I think of a game where each alt has a different gameplay experience. So that if you get tired of playing with one character, you can log in with another to see or do something completely different. The most famous example of that is, of course, WoW, where every race has a different starting zone and their own storyline for 20 levels or so. SWTOR might be an even better example, since those class stories go all the way up to level 50 I think. Rift is very alt-friendly to me because of the wide variety of playstyles you can put together with the soul system. 338 words.
  • The Weight of Black Desert Online. 2016-03-23 12:14 AM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone’s accounts of their adventures in Black Desert Online, mainly because I feel like I haven’t done much “adventuring” in the game yet (by which I mean exploration). I’ve spent most of my time with my head down, running and riding back and forth between NPCs to finish “Life” quests. It’s a bottomless pit if you follow that route. I don’t think the quests ever end. And they are all essentially tutorial quests, teaching you how to make more and more stuff. Don’t know what this is but it doesn’t matter because I need ash tree sap and pig’s blood. 437 words.

April, 2016

  • Low Energy Gaming Week in Review. 2016-04-09 11:24 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status
    • Steam

    The past couple of weeks have been really trying at work. I’m in the process of training other developers, writing documentation, and frantically trying to tie up loose ends before moving to another project in May. It involves spending pretty much all day every day doing things that I’m not particularly good at, i.e. interacting with people, leading, making decisions, and generally trying to be a role model for everyone who stares at me with big round eyes wondering what to do after I’m gone. It feels a bit like acting in a play. 611 words.
  • Dark Souls III. 2016-04-12 3:54 PM.
    • RPG
    • Single-Player

    Fantastic game and a worthy sequel. Nothing new or radically different, mind you (except a mana bar), just more of the same, excellent quality gameplay in different yet somehow familiar settings. Visually it resembles the first game more than the second one, in my opinion, but at the same time it’s got its own bleached-film style. My only complaints so far are that I seem to get stuck on terrain a lot and sometimes the camera is more wonky than I’d like. The new FireLink Shrine. 257 words.

May, 2016

  • Dark Souls III First Playthrough Complete. 2016-05-10 1:58 PM.
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    • Steam

    I finished my first playthrough of Dark Souls III Sunday morning. I think it took around 84 hours and 87 levels, using a Knight build based mainly around strength and vitality. All bosses defeated solo, although I almost cracked and summoned help on the Twin Princes. (After the rather dismal experience I had with the Dancer of Boreal Valley, and when it looked like I might be heading in the same direction with the Twin Princes, I did summon help twice, but both times I died very quickly, which I took as a sign that I should stick with my original plan to get all the bosses solo on the first playthrough.) 496 words.
  • New. 2016-05-16 5:59 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Musings
    • Single-Player
    • Status

    I am writing this post on my phone while I sit in my new cubicle at my new job, which is not so much new as it is different, in that I have only moved about 15 yards away from my old cubicle which I left Friday. I moved from an old and dying project where I constantly had to deal with the world collapsing around me to an equally old but at least stable, funded project where I will only be responsible for a straightforward set of requirements. 584 words.
  • Overwatch Snap Judgments. 2016-05-17 2:22 PM.
    • Pre-Release
    • Shooter
    • Snap Judgment

    I finally have a chance to talk a bit about Overwatch, which I played for roughly an hour or two during the open beta. My first impression was horrible, because I played it on a Sunday night, which is usually my least favorite time of the week, considering that it’s the time when I’m forced to face the reality of going back to work the next day. Last week was a particularly onerous week because it was my last one on the dying project, so I was anticipating a horrendous week of panic and anxiety from me and everyone else who would be left behind after I’m gone. 1,207 words.

June, 2016

  • NBI 2016 – Thoughts On Blogging. 2016-06-02 11:17 PM.
    • Advice
    • Community
    • Writing

    The first rule of blogging is not to blog about blogging. However, June is the Newbie Blogger Initiative here in the game blogging community, so this is the month where we throw out all the rules, talk about the craft of blogging, and try to recruit and encourage new bloggers. I technically started blogging in 1998, when I put some random notes up on my first ever web site, unless you count some Quake match updates I posted on the clan’s page in 1997. I didn’t really start blogging with any regularity though until about 2002 or 2003. The point is that I’ve been at this hobby for a while now, so I have at least a little sense of the landscape. 1,099 words.
  • NBI 2016 – Kill Hippy GIFs With Fire. 2016-06-07 2:15 PM.
    • Blog
    • Musings
    • Opinion

    The topic of animated GIFs came up in the NBI Discord this morning so I thought I’d write a little bit about it. I hate animated GIFs. That is all. No, really, I hate them. I lived through the 1990s World Wide Web, so I have vivid memories of the days when every advertiser put obnoxious blinking animated GIFs in every web ad, making every web page into some crazy dystopian night-time Las Vegas scene with blinking neon signs in every direction. (There was an early Futurama episode that captured this very well-I think it was A Bycyclops Built For Two.) It was horrible. It was so bad it birthed the entire ad-blocker industry. 514 words.

July, 2016

  • A Post-by-Email Test. 2016-07-05 6:14 PM.
    • Blog

    Today I am trying to enable posting by email on my blog again. 13 words.
  • Egad Turbine. 2016-07-08 1:07 PM.
    • MMORPG

    Turbine is refocusing on free-to-play mobile games?? For the last couple of months I’ve been trying to force myself (unsuccessfully) to play LotRO with the sole intention of leveling my 51 Hobbit Hunter (my only character over level 20-something) through Mines of Moria and the rest of the story content I keep hearing so much about. I’ve been trying to do this because I-like I’m sure a lot of other LotRO players-worry that Turbine isn’t going to renew their Tolkien license in 2017 and the game is going to shutter. I didn’t think that was likely to happen, but it was a possibility. 250 words.
  • Snap Judgment – Riders of Icarus. 2016-07-11 1:39 AM.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Snap Judgment

    Welcome to another installment of Snap Judgment, where I fully evaluate every nuance of a game after playing it for less than an hour. I downloaded and installed the latest malware … I mean, Asian import MMORPG … Riders of Icarus. I kid, I kid. But it asked me to reboot to finish the installation, which makes me wonder just what kind of rootkit it put on my system. Not to mention the extremely suspicious Nexon anti-cheat monitoring software that runs in the background. But I guess that’s the standard for Asian games now, because ArcheAge had one, and I think Blade and Soul, and maybe some others I can’t remember. I assume they’re all capturing my passwords and sending them to China, and not doing anything to prevent cheating. 254 words.
  • Unscheduled Move and Stranger Things. 2016-07-26 3:44 PM.
    • Status

    I don’t remember if I’ve written about this before, so here’s a quick backstory: The lease expires for the house I’m renting at the end of August, so I bought a new house. The closing for the new house was in June, which was about two months earlier than I planned for, so I’m currently living in a stressful chaotic limbo between two houses. I had planned to put off moving until closer to the end of my lease expiration, but when quite a few consecutive days of 95+ degree heat rolled through my un-air-conditioned rental house, complete with 219% humidity that felt like wearing clothes made out of a boiling wet sponge, my dog and I bailed out early and moved to the new place for good on Monday. 763 words.
  • Moving Old PC, Building New PC. 2016-07-29 1:35 PM.
    • Status

    I drove back to the old house after work Wednesday to pick up some things to improve my camping experience in the new house, and while I was there I unplugged my PC and a monitor and threw it into the car. (Not literally. But close, because it’s still frickin’ hot as hell, and after less than a half hour of moving around in the old house, sweat was pouring off of me in rivers and I felt like I could barely stand up from the weight of all the humidity pressing down on me. It’s possible I’m not in the greatest of shape.) 639 words.

August, 2016

  • Dipping Back Into LotRO. 2016-08-01 7:46 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    Between trips to the old house and trying to figure out what kind of blinds to put in the windows of the new house, I finally sat down (ie. collapsed in a blob) and spent a few hours playing LotRO over the weekend. I’m continuing my overall quest to see all of the game before LotRO closes down*. The character I’ve chosen for this task is my Hobbit Hunter, my highest level character at level 52. (All other characters are in their 20s.) It was around the time that the servers merged when I started this quest in earnest, when I decided to abandon Angmar (because the Epic story at that point was basically impossible for me to solo) and take the plunge into Mines of Moria at level 49. I spent about a week going through the initial Eregion and Moria quests, getting from 49 to 52, and since then my Hunter’s been idling in The Great Delving. 767 words.
  • That New Jersey Guy Suing Niantic. 2016-08-03 1:26 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Musings

    I wrote the following on July 20: With all of the talk about Pokemon Go, I started to wonder: Do I own the virtual space on my private property? I just bought a house on 3 acres of land. I have legal ownership of that physical space (at least until the government decides to take it for whatever reason). But if Niantic goes and puts a Pokewhatsis on my map coordinates, shouldn’t I own that too? Shouldn’t Niantic have to get my permission before it can do anything with my map coordinates? With anyone’s? 504 words.
  • Firefall's In Trouble?. 2016-08-05 7:57 PM.
    • MMORPG

    Imagine my surprise one morning when I was listening to the MassivelyOP podcast on the way to work and heard Justin and Bree mention that Red 5 had laid off their whole studio (or something like that). I completely missed this news. That’s the Firefall guys! Wait, I’ve played Firefall! I like Firefall! There are basically three MMORPG-style shooters that I play, and they are Defiance, Planetside 2, and Firefall. I don’t play them often mind you, just like, once every couple of months. If that. But the icons are always out on my desktop, waiting patiently for me to click on them. 370 words.
  • LotRO – Back to Angmar and Evendim. 2016-08-10 1:29 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    In my continuing quest to see all of LotRO before it (possibly) shuts down, my Hunter reached level 53 over the weekend. You wouldn’t think gaining a single level would be cause for celebration, but in LotRO it kind of is. I don’t know if I’ve ever written this, but I feel like LotRO is one of the last of the “old school” generation of MMORPGs. By which I mean the generation of MMORPGs where the world is actually massive (ie. it takes a long time to run from one side to the other). (That, by the way, is what I’ve always thought the “massive” in MMORPG meant-not the number of players, but the size of the world.) 826 words.
  • Doom Impressions. 2016-08-12 3:26 PM.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    • Steam

    I bought Doom when it was half off on Steam a while back and have been playing it here and there. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. On the positive side, it’s a beautiful game, and it runs beautifully on my new gaming PC. It’s suitably fast and violent and hard on Ultra Violence. The chainsaw had me giggling like a kid when I found it. (Remember how the world thought the original Doom was over-the-top gruesome? Pretty funny to think about now.) 311 words.
  • Legion Pre-Expansion Invasions Are Fun. 2016-08-15 2:36 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Status

    I had fun with the WoW Zone Events aka. Invasions over the weekend. But first, the biggest news from my weekend was that I finally moved all my furniture from the old rental house into my new house. I achieved my goal of picking the hottest day of the entire year to move. I believe it was upwards of 95 degrees Farenheit with a heat index of 105. (Google tells me that’s 35 and 40.5 Celsius, but that doesn’t sound nearly hot enough to me.) The temperature reading inside the old house was 92 by the time we left. Since I am not currently dead, I must have stayed sufficiently hydrated. 845 words.
  • Legion Ordered. 2016-08-17 8:12 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    I went ahead and ordered Legion. Why not? I had fun with the last expansion. For a little while, at least. And a level 100 boost is worth a fair chunk of change to me, considering it normally takes me years to get to the level cap in WoW. (Although I confess I have yet to use the level 90 boost I got in the last expansion.) My second-highest level character in WoW is a Gnome Mage at, now, level 77, thanks to a handful of Invasions. This was also one of my original characters from back in 2006. I hear the experience gain from Invasions has gone down so I guess I won’t quite get the free ride to 100 that I’d hoped for. Still, I picked up four levels a lot faster than I would have through questing. And as it turns out, maybe fast leveling isn’t such a blessing for this character. 571 words.
  • LotRO Volume I, Book 10, or A Lot Of Running. 2016-08-19 1:42 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    I’m continuing to make slow progress on seeing the rest of LotRO*. Since I was on a roll, I’m continuing with the Volume I Book 10 epic story over in Evendim (rather than returning to Moria). I’m glad that I went and subscribed to the game, because I noticed that I was missing out on rest experience. Hopefully that will speed up the leveling curve a little bit. (But I still finished all of Book 10 without reaching level 54.) 653 words.
  • WoW Invasion Level Tally. 2016-08-22 5:26 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    WoW leveling tallies from the Invasion events so far: Mage from 73 to 87. Warlock from 50 to 60. Priest from 34 to 52. Druid from 23 to 32. My goal is to get the Priest and Druid to 60 before the end of the event. That will give me three choices from which to pick my two level boosts (one to 90 and one to 100). (My understanding is that if you boost from 60 it will also boost your professions too.) 636 words.
  • Dark Souls Character Loss. 2016-08-24 6:12 PM.
    • Single-Player
    • Steam

    You might be wondering why I’ve been playing WoW and/or LotRO instead of continuing my re-plays and re-re-plays and re-re-re-plays of Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3, the greatest three games in the history of the universe. (Not to be hyperbolic or anything.) It’s because I setup and moved to a new gaming PC. Guess what? You can’t move your characters from one installation to another with the PC version of Dark Souls 2 and 3. So all my plentiful characters remained on my old PC, which is kind of a bummer. (I was able to copy my Dark Souls 1 characters though.) 204 words.
  • Melee Classes in WoW. 2016-08-26 6:14 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Musings

    While leveling my alts in WoW, it occurred to me that I don’t ever play any melee characters. I have a Warrior-two of them in fact-but I just don’t like Warriors in WoW. My very first character in 2006 was a Warrior, who I leveled to about 20-something and gave up on because I kept getting killed by those stupid Defias (or whatever they’re called) guys in Westfall. (Back in those days if you ever got jumped by 2 mobs you were basically dead-at least I was-hence my switch to a Hunter.) 807 words.
  • ShareX For Uploading Screenshots. 2016-08-29 7:39 PM.
    • Advice
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews

    A while back I asked on Twitter if there was a way to automatically upload screenshots taken from games to some kind of online repository: Is there a tool/app/process that makes it easy (ie. automatic) to upload my game screenshots to some cloud repository? — Endgame Viable (@endgameviable) August 24, 2016 It turns out that ShareX has this capability. You can’t actually take the screenshots using ShareX, because it doesn’t support full screen applications, but it has a feature where it will watch certain folders and upload any new files to wherever you want. (It defaults to imgur, but there are a zillion different options.) This is exactly the kind of functionality I wanted. 215 words.
  • LotRO Volume 1, Book 11: The Search for Narchuil. 2016-08-31 12:21 AM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status
    • Stories

    For the one or two folks out there looking for non-Legion posts, over the weekend I completed another book in LotRO: Volume 1, Book 11. (Spoilers ahead if for some reason I’m not the last person in the world to do these quests from c. 2007.) LotRO is a great game to play in the morning with your coffee when you don’t have anything pressing to do for a few hours. The music is really good and it’s nice and relaxing to crank up the tunes* and wander around in the scenery. This time I even paid more attention to what was going on (since I planned to eventually write a post about it). 848 words.
  • Early Legion Impressions. 2016-08-31 9:18 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews

    So far Legion is … well, just like playing WoW. On your mark, get set, … I only played for about an hour and a half last night. I stopped right after I got my Mage Artifact staff Ebonchill. Obviously I haven’t seen all there is to see in Legion, but it starts out with … quests. Just like you’ve done in WoW for the last 50 bazillion years. 801 words.

September, 2016

  • Why I Can’t Follow WoW’s Story. 2016-09-02 3:30 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Musings

    I hadn’t had a chance to play much WoW since Tuesday, so I logged in Thursday night to continue my adventures with my Mage and his new Ebonchill gizmo. I hadn’t done much of anything since he obtained his Artifact. When I logged in, I had a quest to turn into the Great Alakazam, or whatever his name is. (I can’t quite make it out in the picture below.) I clicked him and turned in the quest, not really paying attention to what it was. I vaguely remembered this guy was supposed to find more mages to bring into “my” class hall. 1,012 words.
  • WoW Legion Status: Almost Done. 2016-09-08 9:14 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    Since my last WoW post, I’ve finished the first four zones, and leveled my Mage to 106 and my Hunter to 110. Total WoW time played since August 30, according to ManicTime, has been 55 hours. (It was a holiday weekend.) So yes, basically I’ve been playing nothing but WoW. I intended to play my Mage all the way to the end, and started out going through Azsuna, then Stormheim, ending up at level 106. (By “finishing” zones, by the way, I mean I did all the quests I found and completed the final dungeon in the zone’s story which gives you the foozboozle piece you put in that Hall of the Guardian.) 892 words.
  • WoW Legion, Last Impressions. 2016-09-12 5:00 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Status

    In this post I will share my thoughts on the new features found in Legion. This will probably be the last time I talk about WoW since, barring a last minute change of heart, I’m planning to let my subscription end today, the 12th. A brief character status update: In case you’re wondering, the brick wall hits in Suramar, the fifth zone. That’s where the grind begins and you’ll start wondering why you ever came back to WoW. This is the exact quest that did it for me: 2,200 words.
  • FFXIV – Importing Settings From Another Computer. 2016-09-13 3:00 PM.
    • Advice
    • MMORPG

    Documenting this with better search keywords so it’s easier for me to find next time. I re-installed FFXIV on my new PC and of course all of my settings were gone. I dimly remembered running into this before, but it took a while to dig it up. To copy your FFXIV settings from one machine to another, copy Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn to the other machine. I left out the “screenshots” and “downloads” folders. 78 words.
  • FFXIV – Sohm Al Completed At Last. 2016-09-14 3:00 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss Legion already. There is something very comforting and familiar about playing WoW, even though I don’t have any of the nostalgia that most people have. You run around colorful scenery, click on things, and watch impressive numbers fly around the screen. It’s almost hypnotic. To head off the withdrawal symptoms, I thought I’d try to get back into FFXIV and get something going there. (I’ve had an active subscription to FFXIV forever.) 593 words.
  • Bonding With Characters. 2016-09-15 2:00 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Musings

    It’s only been two days and I already regret changing my main FFXIV character’s gender. Who is this total stranger running around in Eozera now? What happened to the free-spirited girl who rode to Gridania in search of fame and fortune, and ended up conquering titans and dragons? This new guy is an imposter. He hasn’t earned the right to be there. Imposter! You don’t deserve to be in that grand company! 381 words.
  • FFXIV – New Abilities and The Aery. 2016-09-21 12:00 AM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    I switched Tya back to her true form, and changed her hair again. She looks a little older and wiser now, maybe even a bit world-weary after all of her trials and tribulations. I changed her voice too, but the new “hiyah” when she’s firing arrows isn’t much better than the old one. (It would be nice if you could preview that when you’re selecting the voices.) Halfway through level 54, it finally dawned on me that I was due for a new Bard ability, so I went searching for the Bard quest giver. This turned out to be more difficult than I expected, because I had no memory of who I was supposed to talk to, and there wasn’t anything in my quest log about it. I ended up using Google to track down the guy. Oddly enough, the guy you have to talk to is carrying a big spear. I don’t remember why that is. It’s probably been about a year since I last talked to him. 856 words.
  • On The 2016 Election. 2016-09-26 8:01 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    A very two-sided view of the 2016 election. 2,042 words.
  • The Vault, The Whale, and Some GW2. 2016-09-28 12:13 AM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    I’ve slowed down a bit, but I’m still making progress in Heavensward. I made it to level 57 and got through The Vault after putting it off for half a week. The last boss with all the chess pieces (or robot horse-men as I call them) was actually kind of fun. The post-dungeon cut scenes were less fun. Sad kitty is sad. After The Vault I was sent back to another part of the Sea of Clouds, and shortly thereafter I was asked to fight a big whale in The Limitless Blue. Thankfully 8-man trials are less intimidating than 4-man dungeons. I was going to do it Monday but of course FFXIV was down for maintenance, so I ended up completing it tonight. The first time through everybody kept dying for some reason and people dropped from the group (I don’t think it my fault), but the second time we got through it on the first try. 508 words.
  • On The First Debate. 2016-09-28 11:50 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    A few thoughts on the debate, and things that made impressions on me. 608 words.
  • On The First Debate. 2016-09-28 11:50 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    I don’t even know what to say about that debate. In the first five or ten minutes, I thought for sure that Trump was going to be the next president. Clinton started awkwardly, and Trump killed. Then the rest happened. I’ll be honest. Monday night was the first time I watched either candidate in action. Previously, I had only read reports about them, or seen the occasional clip on a news or comedy show. 608 words.
  • Three Albums. 2016-09-29 3:00 PM.
    • Musings
    • Responses

    I saw Liore’s post on #3AlbumsThatChangedMyLife, and I started to think back on my own impressionable youth and the albums that affected me. I was raised in a somewhat musical family, but I didn’t become “interested” in music until let’s say my mid-to-late teenage years. Prior to that most pop songs went in one ear and out the other and I never owned any albums. (Okay I did buy a single of M-M-M-My Sharona, a song that was entirely inappropriate for my then-age.) In high school I started to learn to play guitar (again) and really started to buy, collect, and “study” music. Since then I’ve dabbled in writing songs and home recording and all manner of audio things, which now manifests as an occasional YouTube upload. But I think my musical senses really peaked in my late teens and twenties, which is reflected in this list. 1,227 words.
  • Amazon’s New World Reveal. 2016-09-30 1:54 PM.
    • MMORPG

    The following is a very cycnical screed about Amazon’s New World, fueled mostly by yet another rainy day and the constant barrage of Internet commenters acting shallow and uneducated about the election. And I have a headache. Please look away if you’re excited about this game. I am reacting only to the one paragraph of information shown in MOP’s reveal article, which is the same information shown on the Amazon page. 482 words.

October, 2016

  • FFXIV – Palace of the Dead Discovered. 2016-10-03 6:44 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    Most of my gaming over the weekend was preempted by other media consumption. First it was Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, which I could not put down between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon, until I reached the third part of the book and had to have a break. (It’s a convenient stopping point, the reasons for which should be fairly obvious upon reading the table of contents.) And then Sunday night I noticed that Deadpool was on HBO prior to Westworld, which I hadn’t yet seen. It wasn’t that funny, since surprise is essential for comedy and most of the gags were predictable, but I thought the serious parts were pretty good. (I have zero knowledge of the comic book on which it’s based.) I found it somewhat amusing to see Collosus in the movie, which was a character I played a bit in Marvel Heros, seemingly a million years ago. 577 words.
  • On The Veep Debate. 2016-10-05 11:15 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    A few observations about the veep debate Tuesday night. 793 words.
  • On The Veep Debate. 2016-10-05 11:15 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Tim Kaine is a known quantity for me, since he was my governor and now he’s my senator. Granted I didn’t pay much attention to what he did, but that’s the kind of politician he is: He doesn’t make waves unless you’re into hyper-partisanship. I’ve always seen him as your basic run-of-the-mill politician, stamped out of the politician factory, with the party switch set on “Democrat.” So my main interest in the veep debate though was sizing up Mike Pence, who I imagine we might be seeing run for president in 2020 or 2024 or both. (I mean, who else is there?) Pence is white and handsome and likable and articulate and funny … and very conservative … and lacks a southern accent. He’s the complete package. If the alt-right adopts him we’ll probably be seeing him again. (I actually don’t know what Trump supporters think of Pence.) 793 words.
  • On The Newest Trump Scandal. 2016-10-09 2:52 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Thoughts on the latest scandals and the general trends in political discourse. 759 words.
  • On The Newest Trump Scandal. 2016-10-09 2:52 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about the election, but here I go again, talking about everyone’s favorite emotional trigger. Twitter exploded Friday night and Saturday with a new controversy over Trump saying some terrible stuff about women in a video from 2005. My first reaction: I guess I’m confused. Didn’t everyone already know Trump was a horrible person and still nominated him for president? I mean, it wasn’t a secret. His very un-electability is exactly what appeals to his supporters. 759 words.
  • On The Second Debate. 2016-10-11 11:00 AM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    More rambling about politics, because what else is there to talk about? 1,014 words.
  • On The Second Debate. 2016-10-11 11:00 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Trump did better than expected in the second debate, better than the first debate, in my opinion. I’d probably call it a draw, in the sense that neither candidate wiped the floor with the other. Trump’s still struggling, but everyone expected (hoped, perhaps) he would implode-and he didn’t. When I watch the debates, I’m purposefully trying to look past the surface stuff and see things that will get buried later. The media tends to focus on the more sensational things that happen, but I guess I’m more interested in the boring stuff. 1,014 words.
  • “Revolution”. 2016-10-12 1:01 AM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    This is exactly what I’m worried about: “No, no, no,” @mike_pence said when a woman suggested "revolution" if Hillary Clinton is elected. "Don’t say that.” https://t.co/IjOzsTSkPm — Jason Noble (@jasonnobleIA) October 12, 2016 Good on Mike Pence for challenging it. Kind of. Using divisive rhetoric to win support is kind of double-edged sword. Pence can’t exactly say to the crowd, “I know we’ve been *saying* that demons will erupt from the earth to devour your children if Hillary is elected, but you guys know we’re only saying that so you’ll vote for us, right? We don’t actually *mean* it.” 99 words.
  • “Revolution”. 2016-10-12 1:01 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    This is exactly what I’m worried about: “No, no, no,” @mike_pence said when a woman suggested "revolution" if Hillary Clinton is elected. "Don’t say that.” https://t.co/IjOzsTSkPm — Jason Noble (@jasonnobleDMR) October 12, 2016 Good on Mike Pence for challenging it. Kind of. Using divisive rhetoric to win support is kind of double-edged sword. Pence can’t exactly say to the crowd, “I know we’ve been *saying* that demons will erupt from the earth to devour your children if Hillary is elected, but you guys know we’re only saying that so you’ll vote for us, right? We don’t actually *mean* it.” 99 words.
  • Doom’s Problems. 2016-10-13 4:03 PM.
    • Shooter
    • Status

    I haven’t played very much lately. Over the last few weeks I’ve been putting time into reading up on World War I (research for what I hope will be a historical fiction story for NaNoWriMo), reading Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, listening to Stephen King’s 11.22.63 audiobook, and even playing with composing some music in Renoise. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say the frenzy over the 2016 election has turned into a really entertaining Jerry Springer episode. A carefully un-cropped screenshot of a video player. 438 words.
  • Hopes and Predictions for New World. 2016-10-14 4:55 PM.
    • MMORPG

    Based on the video, this poor fellow is apparently the only person working on New World artwork. :) Since Amazon was kind enough to tell us they were working on an MMORPG without telling us anything about it, I thought it might be fun to throw out a wish list for it, and also try to predict what they’ll actually do.* Check back in two or three or four years to see how well I did! (Actually it probably won’t take that long to find out I’m completely wrong.) 1,906 words.
  • Audiobooks, NaNoWriMo, and other Miscellany. 2016-10-18 10:54 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    This is one of those rambling posts about everything and nothing, because I don’t have much to say. Just writing for the sake of writing because I was bored at work. I’ve been listening to audiobooks again, trying to use up my credits. I recently finished Stephen King’s 11.22.63, which was beautifully read by Craig Wasson. He’s the actor who played the lead in that weird 80s movie Body Double. Now I’m listening to Stephen King’s End of Watch, which is beautifully read by Will Patton. Later I might listen to Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, the beauty of which I know nothing. [Editor’s note: I spent a lot of time wording and re-wording that last sentence, and I still don’t think it’s right.] 800 words.
  • Battlefield 1 and (not) Civilization 6. 2016-10-21 9:09 PM.
    • Single-Player
    • Status

    Fridays are the worst days of the week for me, in terms of being bored. Usually half of the workforce is gone on Fridays, so it’s abnormally quiet and I have to spend eight solid hours trying to entertain myself in library-like silence. Using only my phone, mind you, because god forbid we have access to anything “fun” or “entertaining” on our work computers. The most interesting thing I can manage on my work computer is reading Wikipedia articles. My personal favorite is the On This Day page. 506 words.

November, 2016

  • Starting Ashes of Ariandel DLC. 2016-11-01 1:11 AM.
    • Single-Player
    • Writing

    Over the weekend I tapered off of Civ 6 to push through to the end of my umpteenth Dark Souls 3 playthrough so I would finally have a character ready for the Ashes of Ariandel DLC. It took a total of about 18 hours to go through all the bosses and all the areas (over the course of a couple weeks, not two days :). I had to make a new character because, if you didn’t know, you can’t transfer DS2 or DS3 characters from one PC to another. That’s really annoying, From Software. All those high-level characters I have on my old PC are now worthless unless I want to play the DLC on that old PC, which I don’t, because old PC is old. The aptly-named Snowfield 368 words.
  • IntPiPoMo: Friede and Bugs. 2016-11-02 12:56 AM.
    • Single-Player

    I thought I would try IntPiPoMo this year, because NaNoWriMo didn’t seem like enough to do in November! Since I’m currently playing Dark Souls 3’s Ashes of Ariandel, most of the screenshots for now are probably going to be from there. That is Friede on the right. She seems nice, right? It’s just a room with blood and corpses and giant flying insects. 63 words.
  • An Election Day Tale. 2016-11-09 12:04 AM.
    • Politics
    • Stories
    • Writing

    This is a long tale of my voting experience this morning. I tried to keep it entirely non-partisan and focus on what I saw, heard, and felt, but if you don’t want to risk it, feel free to skip. (But in return, you have to read every other one of my posts for the rest of time! Just kidding.) I wrote this fairly quickly by my standards, and normally I would spend about four years editing something this long, but I wanted to post it before the results started coming in. 5,364 words.
  • Post-Election 2016. 2016-11-10 3:24 AM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Long rambling reactions to the election. 4,169 words.
  • Post-Election 2016. 2016-11-10 3:24 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    This post has taken days to work on, and it’s not finished, but I gave up and you’re just going to have to deal with it because I’m ready to move on now. I’m aware that people feel very passionately about this election, so I will warn folks on both the left and the right that there might be some triggers below. I’m still a centrist, and I view this election and this country through a fairly dispassionate moderate filter. Still, even I’m feeling overwhelmed by all the anger and fear and disappointment I’ve seen after the election. Most of my Internet circles experienced this election result quite like another 9/11. So it might be better if you wait a while to read this. I don’t want to throw gasoline on any fires here. 4,169 words.
  • Deep Breaths Please. 2016-11-10 11:32 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I’ve been watching Trump *very* closely since election night. He hasn’t said more than a handful of words since his victory speech. He hasn’t gloated. He hasn’t blustered. Everything is going very well. Extremely well. Shockingly well. Everything is proceeding exactly like the peaceful transfer of power should go. Everyone in Washington appears to be conscious of the nation’s fears and taking deliberate steps to calm things, despite all the reporters trying their best to rile things up again. Frankly this transition so far appears to be going better than the one from Bush to Obama, which I also thought went very well. 892 words.
  • Deep Breaths Please. 2016-11-10 11:32 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    I’ve been watching Trump *very* closely since election night. He hasn’t said more than a handful of words since his victory speech. He hasn’t gloated. He hasn’t blustered. Everything is going very well. Extremely well. Shockingly well. Everything is proceeding exactly like the peaceful transfer of power should go. Everyone in Washington appears to be conscious of the nation’s fears and taking deliberate steps to calm things, despite all the reporters trying their best to rile things up again. Frankly this transition so far appears to be going better than the one from Bush to Obama, which I also thought went very well. 892 words.
  • A Slight Correction. 2016-11-11 12:45 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    I made a semantic error in my last post that I need to correct. 597 words.
  • A Slight Correction. 2016-11-11 12:45 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    I was thinking about this and I want to issue a slight correction to what I wrote in my last post: On those Electoral College hopes: Again, I understand. Nobody in your circles wanted Trump to be president. You’re seeing some bad things spreading like wildfire all across social media, and you’re panicking. The nightmare might be coming true. Trying to convince electoral college voters to change their votes before it’s too late sounds like a great plan. But it’s illegal. It’s unethical. It’s sinister. And I’m sorry to say this, but it’s UN-AMERICAN. 597 words.
  • Safety Pins, Fun Protests, and Yet More. 2016-11-12 10:50 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    More from the “random post-election thoughts” bin: I don’t think I ever documented this, but Clinton won (or “is winning” I should say) Virginia 49.60 to 44.56 with 99.88% of precincts reporting. (I was going to round that but I suddenly realized I have no idea how you’re supposed to round election results. Normal rounding? Truncation? One up, one down?) It’s a bit outside the range I guessed (I guessed that if Clinton won by less than 3-4 points the election would go to Trump) but Trump still won. 1,041 words.
  • On The Third Debate. 2016-11-13 4:50 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Note: This was written, well, after the third presidential debate, but I never actually published it until now. Some of the things I wrote are kind of hilarious with the hindsight knowledge of how the election turned out. Where to even start. Chris Wallace was the best moderator of the three debates, at least in the sense that he asked the best questions. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to keep the candidates on track any better than the others, or keep them from cross-talking or keep the audience from cheering. He also seemed really nervous. (Not that I blame him.) 1,359 words.
  • Another Correction. 2016-11-13 5:04 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Once again I woke up thinking I needed to correct and expand upon my earlier post. Regarding the safety pins, I completely forgot to mention that I fully support the idea of making minorities feel safe. Even if I don’t feel like I can participate myself, I applaud others for doing so. In my real life activities, based on past experience, I don’t think it’s likely that I would encounter any bad situations, but if I did, I’d like to think I would try to intervene if I could. It’s not really my forte, though. 186 words.
  • Hitler Versus Trump, A Game Of Points. 2016-11-13 12:45 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    This is a very simplistic examination of Hitler’s rise to power compared with Trump’s, and what Trump might have to do to assume the same level of dictatorship that Hitler had. I’m distilling most of this from the excellent Wikipedia articles on Hitler’s rise to power. If you want the full story, go there. Then find some books because Wikipedia doesn’t make much sense sometimes. I’ll be trying to keep this a bit light, but don’t take that to mean I don’t take this seriously. 2,648 words.
  • Passive-Aggressive Protests. 2016-11-13 1:28 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    I saw this story about a crazy guy driving into #NoDAPL protesters and shooting a gun. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but it doesn’t sound like the guy has been arrested or anything either. I’m on the fence about the #NoDAPL thing personally. After cursory review, I understand the outrage, but it also looks like the proper due diligence was done by the Big Evil Corporation. But that’s beside the point. The part of the story that struck me was this quote by a protester: 277 words.
  • The Swamp. 2016-11-13 9:28 PM.
    • Blog
    • swampip.com

    This blog contains all of my “controversial” writings. I was inspired to start writing about politics and current events again, as you might guess, by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. There was such an incredible explosion of fear, outrage, and yes, gloating, that I just had to say something. I try very hard not to deliberately offend people but of necessity these are going to be the “hot button” topics that make people mad. Please note that I have disabled comments for most of these posts because I simply don’t have the time or energy to debate this stuff. 101 words.
  • It’s A Lock, Oh Wait…. 2016-11-13 10:51 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    I thought it would be funny to point out what I wrote after the third debate: Anyway, at this point I would say the election’s a lock for Hillary, unless something really, really strange happens in the next few weeks. Or, you know, nobody shows up at the polls except Trump supporters. Or if there’s a secret conspiracy by Trump supporters to answer poll questions incorrectly. (I think that would be cool actually. I think it would be fun to teach kids in school to always answer poll questions with a blatant lie.) 158 words.
  • New Place For Commentary. 2016-11-13 11:22 PM.
    • Politics
    • thomaskrehbiel.com

    Hey guys, I’m moving my dumb political commentary to a different site. Maybe someday I’ll tell you what it is! I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but have been too lazy. It just doesn’t seem wise to put too many opinions online under one’s real name anymore. In the old days, nobody knew how to do anything on the Internet, and the only people who would ever find you were people you’d never, ever see in real life. Now real people in real life know how to Google people’s names (no doubt thinking that they’re “computer hacking”), not to mention every potential employer is going to Google your name. 150 words.
  • Trolling Begets Spray-Painting. 2016-11-14 12:25 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Given the culture of trolling the Internet has created, is it really surprising to see people spray-painting churches with swastikas and the like? 23 words.
  • Just Don’t Call It Trumpcare. 2016-11-14 1:11 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    If whatever Trump does to Obamacare turns out to be called Trumpcare, I’m gonna start throwing bricks through windows. Because then we’ll be right back here again in eight years, with the Democrats having spent eight years blocking progress on it and promising to “repeal and replace” it, when in fact all they’re going to do is tweak it and change the name. The point is, don’t put a president’s name in the law, even in jest. 93 words.
  • Priebus and Bannon. 2016-11-15 1:12 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Trump named Reince Priebus as his Chief of Staff and Steve Bannon as his Chief Strategist. Priebus seems like an uncontroversial, safe pick and I have nothing to say about it. Bannon, on the other hand, has made the left lose their minds, since he’s the man behind Breitbart “News.” They call him a racist, anti-Semite, a “white nationalist” (whatever that is-I guess it’s a new political code phrase I need to learn). Twitter is urging people to call their representatives and tell them to oppose Bannon, providing scripts and everything. 195 words.
  • Protests End In Richmond?. 2016-11-15 5:14 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Richmond’s election protests seem to have stopped on Saturday the 12th. At least they haven’t been big enough since then to warrant a news story. I didn’t think they would last long here. They didn’t seem to be fueled by any specific election outrage, just the general anarchy most people feel in college. 53 words.
  • Deportation Plans, What Do They Mean?. 2016-11-15 5:26 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    In Trump’s interview for 60 Minutes [I can’t find a legitimate source for the actual video], which I’m pretty sure was recorded several days before it was aired, we heard that Trump plans to immediately deport 2 to 3 million criminal illegal aliens. Or undocumented workers. Or whatever you’re supposed to call them. But what does that mean? What is he actually planning to do? The sinister view is that he will do what he says: Round up 2-3 million Latinos and drive them out of the country in trucks. One can imagine scenes of terror as jack-booted thugs kick down doors and drag fathers away from their crying wives and screaming children. It’s possible that a small percentage of Republican voters may also be imagining exactly that, but I’m going to give them the overall benefit of the doubt. 444 words.
  • At Least They Aren’t Planning Secession. 2016-11-15 5:42 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    In case anyone forgot, after Obama was re-elected in 2012, there was a petition in every single state to secede from the Union. So yes, poor sportsmanship after an election loss is a bi-partisan phenomenon. It just manifests differently. Liberals march in the streets, conservatives try to secede. 48 words.
  • Runner-Up Word of The Year. 2016-11-16 10:44 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    “Post-truth” was named the Oxford international word of the year. The runner-up should definitely be “normalize.” *ducks* I kid, but I have seen the word “normalize” used so often in the past week that it’s normalized itself beyond any significant meaning. Warning people not to normalize is the new normal. 50 words.
  • A Fantastic Read. 2016-11-17 11:23 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    You should read this: You Are Still Crying Wolf by Scott Alexander If I had unlimited amounts of time, it’s something I might have written. It does the thing that is almost always missing from every Internet article and news story: It puts numbers into context. 46 words.
  • Snap Judgment – Novus Inceptio. 2016-11-18 12:46 AM.
    • Pre-Release
    • Single-Player
    • Snap Judgment
    • Steam

    I should be really excited to play Rift: Starfall Prophecy but to be honest I couldn’t care less about any MMORPG right now. I’m just in one of those moods. Instead I installed one of the many games on my Steam list that I’ve never tried so that I could bring you another (cue huge reverb and echo) … Snap Judgment! .. judgment .. ment .. nt. Novus Inceptio is yet another Early Access survival sandbox game. You gather materials and craft things and explore. Currently it appears to only have a single-player mode, but multi-player is supposed to be coming. 249 words.
  • Three More Roles Filled. 2016-11-18 10:51 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    We’ve got three more administration picks from Trump to scrutinize. (Real ones, not speculative ones.) Adding to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, we now have: Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R) as Attorney General. Florida Congressman Mike Pompeo (R) as Director of the CIA. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor. I know nothing about any of those names. Based on the level of Internet outrage from the left, one might assume that three serial killers were nominated. (I think we can safely assume that the left is going to oppose everything Trump does, no matter what it is. Expect to hear the phrase “Trump derangement syndrome” make a triumphant return to discourse from the right.) 266 words.
  • Trump Twitter Wars. 2016-11-19 8:29 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    The Hamilton story blowing up on Twitter today isn’t really worth commenting on. (Fun fact: I haven’t seen or heard Hamilton.) It’s The story is blown way out of proportion (on both sides). https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/799972624713420804 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/799974635274194947 Just my two cents but I think Trump enjoys making the Internet dance to his puppet strings whenever he tweets something. And the Internet appears perfectly willing to dance for him. I’m sure his team is glad to know it will be really easy for them to distract people from any policy mistakes made over his term. 192 words.
  • Timeline Updated. 2016-11-20 3:47 PM.
    • Blog
    • swampip.com

    I updated the Post-Election Timeline. 5 words.
  • Media Template. 2016-11-20 5:22 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    I’m inclined to agree with Trump that the media is a joke. I’ve seen these patterns repeated quite a lot in the past week: Intereviewer: Thank you for joining us, Important Person Joining The Trump Administration. Did you mean that outrageous thing you said or did in the past that nobody would ever in a million years acknowledge on television? Important Person: Of course not, that’s silly. Interviewer: Do you think that other guy joining the administration meant it when he said or did that outrageous thing in the past that nobody would ever in a million years acknowledge on television? 147 words.
  • Starting Rift’s Starfall Prophecy. 2016-11-22 10:43 PM.
    • MMORPG

    I grudgingly embarked into Rift’s Starfall Prophecy over the weekend. I wasn’t excited about it, but I needed an excuse to postpone writing for NaNoWriMo. I’m trying to catch up from a huge deficit, so it’s important to put things off as long as possible. Anyway I pre-ordered Starfall Prophecy, so I figured I might as well play it. The dreaded Tuathe’de, who don’t ever turn around I was very thankful to see that you still get tokens for logging in. I would have been about five short of buying the squirrel mount if they’d stopped that upon launch. So yay! I bought the squirrel mount. It’s silly and I will never use it. I took a screenshot, though. 1,605 words.
  • Trump And The Media. 2016-11-23 1:30 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    I read an interesting article on The Guardian today about the media’s role in Trump’s election. These kinds of articles are pretty common now, but this one seemed more thoughtful than usual. Essentially they wondered if maybe Trump had been playing the media for chumps the whole time, and maybe they didn’t do a good job covering him. To which I can only respond with, “Duuuuuuuuuuh.” It was incredibly obvious that the media was covering Trump more than any other Republican primary candidate. It was stupifyingly obvious that the media was covering Trump more than Clinton after the conventions. It was mind-numbingly obvious that Trump was taking advantage of all of it. I mean, stunningly, staggeringly obvious. 289 words.
  • My Precinct. 2016-11-23 11:50 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Incidentally, as a followup to my Election Day Tale, this is how my precinct voted, as of 11/23/2016: (Graph from vpap.org.) 21 words.
  • Devil Daggers. 2016-11-24 12:35 AM.
    • Single-Player
    • Snap Judgment
    • Steam

    I saw Devil Daggers on Steam when it first came out and thought, “What an odd-sounding game.” I saw the “Too long, didn’t play” guy on Gamers With Jobs call it “punishingly hard,” and use it as the benchmark for measuring hard games ever since. I put it on my wish list. I laugh at hard games! Ha! Recently it went on sale and I bought it for $2.99, along with some other stuff I might play some day (including another one of the Batman games-I have them all now but haven’t played any of them yet). 417 words.
  • Rift – This Thing Is Hard Yo. 2016-11-28 11:46 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    I broke down and bought 15 days of Patron status in Rift. The amount of extra XP gain is very large and noticeable and I would say almost mandatory, at least if you want to keep your sanity while leveling. Before continuing with my Mage, in a fit of rage over being so under-powered in the new zones, I got out my Primalist and started leveling him. I made a Primalist back when they first came out but only got to level 9. This time, I discovered the Hammerknell Instant Adventures, which I’d never done before. 919 words.
  • What Is He Even Thinking?. 2016-11-29 3:07 AM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    Here’s the basic problem with the Trump presidency so far: Twitter. He really needs to stop talking on Twitter. You see, every time he tweets, I lose a little bit more respect for him and inch a little bit closer to thinking, “Okay, yeah, let’s just get Mike Pence in there. We’ll go to war with Russia pretty quick but at least he’ll keep all his back room political dealings secret like the Founding Fathers intended.” 690 words.

December, 2016

  • NaNoWriMo 2016 Post-Mortem. 2016-12-01 2:50 AM.
    • Advice
    • Writing

    I like to write up a post-mortem about my writing projects after I’m done with them, so here are my thoughts on my NaNoWriMo 2016 draft. For reference, it’s an untitled historical fiction set in Belgium at the beginning of World War I. It’s about, you know, people, who like, do stuff. The hook might still need some work. I validated my (exactly, as it turned out) 50,000 words about 8 PM on November 30th. 1,571 words.
  • Xarth and The Post-NaNo Blues. 2016-12-02 4:32 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Writing

    Last night I welcomed on old friend back into my life: The post-NaNoWriMo blues. I’ve written about this before. Here’s me from December 2011: “The act of creation is so thrilling and stimulating and awesome that when it’s over, there’s nothing left inside but a black empty void of nothingness. For me, it generally manifests as a fervent desire to stare at the walls and feel useless all day.” I remember writing much more colorful language about it, though. Ah, here it is, from 2012: 511 words.
  • Not Much To Get Excited About. 2016-12-14 2:00 AM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    I sort of lost interest in Rift when I got to level 68. Xarth Mire is not very pleasant to run around in, what with the lack of safe roads, the rather high mob density, and the frog tongues that constantly pull you to them no matter how much you want to run away from them. But mainly I drifted away from Rift because I started playing Fallout: New Vegas. I played it for about 8 hours last year, then put it away when Fallout 4 came out. Recently I installed New Vegas again and my old saved games magically appeared, so I was able to pick it up right where I left off. It’s quite good. I dare say it’s as good or better than Fallout 4, at least in terms of story. 300 words.
  • Morrowinding. 2016-12-20 1:23 AM.
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    • Steam

    I was sick a lot last week, so I’ve spent a lot of time in the world of Bethesda games lately. First it was New Vegas, but I got a little burned out on it so I turned to Morrowind and now I’m totally into that. Morrowind is enormous. I thought Oblivion and Skyrim were pretty big, but Morrowind seems to dwarf them. (Admittedly part of that could be because the movement speed is so slow it just feels bigger.) 484 words.
  • Trump Outrage Fatigue. 2016-12-20 12:21 PM.
    • Politics
    • swampip.com

    FYI I am suffering from Trump Outrage Fatigue, meaning that I’ve seen so much manufactured outrage over the past month about Trump that it’s blurred into one big mass that I can’t even make sense of any more. Sure, there are things to be concerned about, but overall I think “the left” (a gross generalization that I wish I didn’t have to use) is overly worried because of so-called “fake news” that is biased, premature, unsubstantiated, or otherwise lacks sufficient context. (Not even counting news that is made up out of thin air.) 93 words.
  • LotRO, DDO, Turbine, Standing Stone Games. 2016-12-20 7:03 PM.
    • MMORPG

    Did I get all the keywords in there? Random LotRO image from my hard drive I’m sure you’ve heard that LotRO and DDO will be leaving Turbine for a studio called Standing Stone Games. The fate of Asheron’s Call is uncertain, but I tend to agree with Wilhelm that we won’t be seeing it much longer, which is a major bummer to me personally since it was the first MMORPG to make a real impact on me, and I think its character development system (skill-based) has yet to be matched. And while I haven’t played it since the 1990s (except for like twice), it’s always been nice to know it’s there. 401 words.
  • The Prestigious Endgame Viable Awards 2016. 2016-12-22 4:00 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Single-Player
    • Steam

    It occurred to me that the end of the year is approaching, and it’s time to do one of those year-end posts that bloggers love to do. Unfortunately I kind of hate doing them. It’s a lot of work. You have to actually look things up and think and count and multiply and divide and things like that. That goes against my normal principal of blogging by “just typing words into a text editor.” 690 words.
  • Most Played Games In 2016. 2016-12-29 4:13 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Status

    It took a little more effort to calculate my most-played games in 2016, because I changed PCs in the middle of the year. But the results are now in, and the number one positions were just what I guessed they would be. (This data was gathered on December 24, 2016. I’ve pretty much only played Morrowind since then, although I played a couple hours of Elder Scrolls Online as well.) 363 words.