MMORPG

563 entries. 356,398 words.

June, 2012

• The Secret World. 2012-06-29 9:08 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’ve had a burst of gaming enthusiasm in the last month or so, ending my streak of playing basically nothing since Christmas. As usual, I tend to gravitate toward RPGs and MMOs. The last MMO I played before my break was Star Wars: The Old Republic, which I found enjoyable, but not enough to keep playing past the free month. Then recently, on an impulse, I bought TERA, which boasted a totally fresh new action-based combat system, but again, it didn’t keep my attention past the first month. After that I played LOTRO again, which is a bit dated now but still one of the best MMOs around. 283 words.

July, 2012

• The Secret World, Likes and Dislikes. 2012-07-02 2:08 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Here are some of my impressions from playing The Secret World for a weekend of beta and a few days of the head start. Likes: The “investigation” quests are awesome! You can Google the answers, of course, but trying to solve them without is a trip. We’re talking old school adventure-style puzzles and riddles here. (Make sure to turn off General chat if you don’t want to see spoilers, ‘cause, you know, people are lazy.) You can die. You don’t really know how powerful new mobs are until you attack them. (In fact, as it turns out, sometimes you have to die to complete quests, because the ghost world can be explored too.) It’s pretty painless—all you have to do is run back to your corpse, just like WoW. Almost every quest is repeatable daily, so you never have to grind on mobs. (Though it is still fun to shoot zombies at random.) Having an out-of-combat sprint toggle is great for getting around. It’s sort of like riding a mount, and you can do it from the beginning. I wonder if you can increase the speed later on? The flexibility of creating your own “backpacks.” You can carry 50 things, but they can be organized into any number of bags of any size, which you can pin to the screen or not. For example, I made one to hold crafting supplies, another for things to sell, and another one pinned to the screen for healing drinks. Humorous NPC quest givers and great voice acting (which you can easily skip if you’ve seen them before). Dislikes: 836 words.
• UltrViolet in The Secret World. 2012-07-07 2:22 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Stories
  • Theory
  
  This is what my main character looks like in The Secret World. He makes me laugh whenever I look at him. I just wish I could have made him with a pot belly. FYI combining shotgun and sword seems like a bad idea, now that I’ve already committed to it. I was going to use the shotgun for AoE attacks and the sword for single-target attacks, but there’s no compelling need to split them up like that. Both shotgun and sword have plenty of AoE and single-target attacks. 88 words.
• Maybe Some Other Time. 2012-07-08 12:40 AM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I was going to write up a bunch of hints for The Secret World’s investigation quests, but then I realized that 1) I don’t really have the time to do that, and 2) I don’t really want to do all of the SEO to get them into search results. So, if you were dying to see spoiler-free hints for The Secret World, sorry. :) 64 words.
• Down the Rabbit Hole. 2012-07-17 1:59 AM.
  • Dungeons
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  • Theory
  
  I’m a bit surprised to say this but I don’t think I’ll be playing TSW beyond the free month. In fact, I stopped playing long before the free month ended. I’m still glad I pre-ordered it, though, because it deserves to have a chance. But I realized that I don’t feel much of a sense of character advancement while playing. You don’t get new weapons very often, and you don’t really get new powers very often, either. Like I said before, as your character advances, you get more choices of powers, but you don’t really get more powerful powers like you might expect. So often times, when you gain new abilities, you find there’s no reason to change what you’ve already been using. The only things to look forward to are new NPCs telling new stories, and maybe a new piece of clothing now and then. 1,371 words.

August, 2012

• Guild Wars 2 Head Stop. 2012-08-25 1:58 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Well I thought it would be a nice Saturday. I’d get up, log into the Guild Wars 2 Head Start along with the rest of the entire Internet, and have a nice morning of adventure. But nooooooo. It’s been down for two hours now. Not just intermittent connectivity issues; we’re talking 100% dead. And the information coming out of ArenaNet is somewhat lacking. About once an hour we get something like, “We’re looking into connectivity issues. Thanks for your patience.” 80 words.
• Guild Wars 2 Head Start Weekend. 2012-08-27 2:23 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  • Status
  
  The hype is finally over and Guild Wars 2 is out (if you pre-purchased it, that is). After being down Saturday morning, GW2 worked flawlessly for the rest of the weekend. Usually the hype far overshadows the actual game. But in this one rare case, it’s possible that the hype was justified. Let’s talk about Guild Wars 1 for a second. I never got into it. Certain things just bugged me. Mainly the lack of a jump. I’m not one of those people that bunny hops everywhere, but I never realized how often I jumped until it was missing. The other thing I couldn’t get past was left-clicking everything instead of right-clicking. 410 words.
• Necromancer Daggers. 2012-08-28 1:59 PM.
  • Classes
  • MMORPG
  • Theory
  
  Whoa.. I knew that Necromancer had melee-ish capability when you equip daggers, but I didn’t realize until last night just how much raw damage it puts out. I’ve been using a Staff or Axe/Dagger combo, but last night I decided to try out Dagger/Dagger again, and holy crap I was suddenly killing stuff super fast. I’m still not really happy with the Necro’s AoE capabilities. I haven’t found any decent AoE damage spells (compared to the Elementalist at least); it’s mainly AoE debuffs, which are not terribly useful in PvE events. I mean they are useful, but everyone just blasts AoE damage so debuffs aren’t necessary. By the time the debuff spell finishes, all the mobs are dead anyway. 170 words.

September, 2012

• Pointers in Games. 2012-09-17 2:06 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Opinion
  
  Guild Wars 2 is an awesome game. But there is one thing about it that drives me insane. In fact, I have the same problem with almost every game that has a pointer. You can’t see the pointer! This is a major problem in GW2 because many of your abilities are ground-targeted spells, so you need to be able to point to the spot where you want to cast it. (I use the option that automatically casts wherever you are pointing.) If you’re out soloing it’s not a problem, but many times you’re in an epic battle with fifty people pounding on a boss and there’s flashing and fireworks and dazzling spell effects going on all over the place. Picking out the pointer in those situations is near impossible for me. Even when I wave the mouse around like I do on the desktop, it can still take a long time to find the damn thing. 214 words.
• Greens and Blues. 2012-09-17 7:55 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Am I crazy or did GW2 make green items better than blue items, which is 100% the opposite of every other MMO in history? Did they just arbitrarily pick the colors or is there some logic to it? Somebody “on the Internet” said blue < green < yellow makes more sense because it follows the color wheel. But, like, green < blue < purple follows the color spectrum (ROYGBIV). 69 words.

March, 2013

• Beta Signups. 2013-03-09 1:00 AM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve signed up for three betas: Neverwinter, Elder Scrolls Online, and just now I signed up for Defiance, a sci-fi shooter MMO (or something like that) from Trion Worlds, the same people that did Rift, so I assume it won’t suck. 41 words.

May, 2013

• Tera. 2013-05-23 12:12 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I pulled out Tera again for a bit. Tera is a really a great game for playing a melee character. My main right now is a berserker, and I just love that class. The combat is so visceral and engaging when you can block attacks. Also, each encounter is an epic battle. It’s not like most MMOs where it takes less than a second to kill most things. Fights in Tera go on and on, even against regular mobs. 91 words.
• Neverwinter Open Beta. 2013-05-23 2:21 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I discovered that Neverwinter is available in what they’re calling an “open beta.” Rabid fans will tell you that you should only play if you are willing to test the game and that you should expect bugs, but in truth, this is not a beta in the software development sense. It’s beta in the Google sense. It’s live, and there will be no character wipe at the end of it. 1,293 words.
• Defiance Beta Results. 2013-05-24 6:33 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  From the unpublished archives: I tried out the Defiance beta. It was “kind of” fun but it’s not really my kind of game. MMO shooters never seem that great to me. Lag plays a significant factor in being able to hit anything. Also, maybe my expectations are wack, but I thought all TPS (Third Person Shooter) games were supposed to have cover mechanics. This one didn’t. One thing that drove me crazy was the complete inability to see enemies and players in the environment until you’re standing on top of them. I hate that. The landscape, NPCs, and players are all shades of brown. 143 words.
• On the Control Wizard. 2013-05-29 1:49 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I got my Control Wizard to 60. It’s really easy to level in Neverwinter, by far the easiest game to level in I’ve seen (after WoW, of course). I think it literally took two weeks (maybe it was three). Admittedly I played a lot in that time, but still, pretty fast. Side note: What is the deal with the class names? Why is it “Control Wizard” instead of just “Wizard?” Why “Trickster Rogue” instead of “Rogue?” What other kind of rogues are there? None, that’s what. At least not yet. 438 words.
• On the Devoted Cleric. 2013-05-31 6:10 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’d been hearing a lot about how threat is “broken” in NW (Neverwinter) and that cleric healing generates too much aggro. I’d also been hearing that DCs (Devoted Clerics) need to be more versatile than simply healing. I’d also heard that DCs get into dungeons a lot faster, since nobody plays them (because of the first two items). Well, I wanted to see all of that for myself, so I started a Devoted Cleric. 913 words.
• Neverwinter Forums. 2013-05-31 7:45 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  When I read the Neverwinter forums, I get the feeling that the only people posting have either a) never played anything but PnP D&D, or b) never played any other MMO, or c) have never played in PUGs before. I can understand some people fitting those criteria, but *everyone*? It’s like nobody has ever seen a “need or greed” loot system before, and they think they are the first people to notice it’s not a very good system. Yeah, no kidding. It’s been terrible ever since it was invented. But it sure beats the first come, first served loot system. And people have survived all the other MMOs that have implemented it. I ran dungeons a lot in Rift and got all the loot I needed without any fuss. Doing the same in NW. It’s easier in NW actually, because each boss only drops like 2 possible things. 148 words.

June, 2013

• Anticlimatic Nevewinter Feats. 2013-06-01 3:37 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  About those Neverwinter Feats. Is it just me, or is it really hard to get excited about spending points that only increase your damage/whatever by 1%/2%/3%? I mean, statistically speaking, there isn’t much difference between a 3% increase and a 0% increase, right? It seems very … anticlimatic. Two clerics side-by-side, one with 3% increase, and one without - you won’t be able to tell the difference. “Woohoo, I leveled up after all that work, now I get to increase my damage from 500 to 505 points! That’ll make all the difference in future combat!” 154 words.
• Lair of the Mad Dragon. 2013-06-03 3:31 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve read and heard a lot about how difficult the Lair of the Mad Dragon is (a level 34 5-man dungeon in Neverwinter). I’ve attempted MD five times in PUGs now, twice as a cleric and three times as a GWF (Great Weapon Fighter), so I have some thoughts of my own. For comparison, MD is the third dungeon as you’re leveling. The first is the level 16 Cloak Tower, which is simple enough that anyone can do anything and still get through it. The second is the level 24 Cragmire Crypts, which is noticeably harder but still requires little strategy. 1,089 words.
• Chortlefax Fail Number 6. 2013-06-04 2:35 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Failed again in Lair of the Mad Dragon with a PUG. (I think that was the 6th failure in total.) Group composition was a guardian, cleric, GWF (me), and 2 rogues. No control wizard, but it seemed like a balanced group that should have had the tools to tackle Chortlefax. Unfortunately we struggled through most of the dungeon. I’ve noticed that the only people who queue for Chortlefax are people who seem like they haven’t done it before. The guardian was only 30, and the rogues were 32ish. Me and the cleric were 35, but the cleric acted like he had never experienced that level of madness and was still under the illusion that he could throw out heals like candy. 331 words.
• Why Chartilifax is so Hard. 2013-06-04 4:18 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I forgot to mention my theory for why Lair of the Mad Dragon is so difficult. I think it’s to get people to buy resurrection scrolls, plain and simple. When you’re sitting there dead on the floor, there’s a button that says “spend X zen to get life scrolls!” I expect that if everyone could rez after every death, the dragon would be a lot easier to defeat. That being said, I do expect them to nerf Chortlefax at some point. The difficulty increase from even the previous boss in the Lair to Chortlefax is just ridiculous. 97 words.
• On the Great Weapon Fighter. 2013-06-05 5:17 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  My current favorite class in Neverwinter is the Great Weapon Fighter (GWF). This came as a huge surprise to me, because when I sampled the five classes, the GWF was absolutely godawful in the first four newbie levels, and for a supposedly DPS class, it had terrible, horrible damage output. Even the Guardian Fighter did better, and tank classes are traditionally pretty terrible at damage. Perhaps partially because of the challenge of it, I went back to the GWF to see what it could do. I wanted a pure DPS character for dungeon delves and honestly the Trickster Rogue (TR) gets on my nerves. For one thing, everyone plays it, and for another, it is so ridiculously overpowered at first that I found it insulting to my intelligence. Because it does such ridiculously high damage early on, it has to get worse as you level, right? Whereas the GWF does terrible damage at first, so it has to get better toward the endgame. Such was my thinking anyway. Also, the GWF seemed to have more skills for hitting more than one target at once. 403 words.
• Which Difficulty is Artificial and Which Is Real. 2013-06-06 5:59 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I see a lot of people on Neverwinter forums complain about the “artificial difficulty” added to boss encounters. The argument they use is that bosses aren’t difficult to kill, but the adds that spawn make it difficult to focus on the boss, so this was a cheap and lazy way for Cryptic to “artificially” make boss encounters hard. This logic makes no sense to me. Most of my instance experience comes from Rift, but I’m led to believe it is typical of what you might find in other raids and dungeons like from, say, WoW. Usually there is a boss which has some “mechanic” that makes it more difficult than just standing there pouring DPS into it. For example, it has a big cleave that will kill anything in the way, or it will drop a bomb that must be focused or the group will wipe, or there are lasers on the ground that you have to avoid, or sometimes you have to stop DPS so it doesn’t reflect back on you, or something like that. 510 words.
• On The Throne of Idris. 2013-06-06 6:06 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  My GWF dinged 36, so I can’t queue for Lair of the Mad Dragon anymore with him. Instead, I queued for the Throne of Idris, which I think is a level 38 dungeon. Idris is a bit easier than MD, in that it is actually finishable. I’ve done it twice, and finished both times (though it took two tries on the last boss both times, too). And it’s very short, which is awesome. (I hate long dungeons. No gaming event should ever take an hour. 20 minutes tops, I say.) However some parts, including the final boss, have something that no previous dungeon encounter has: It matters how you pull the monsters. There are places where you should tackle a few monsters at a time instead of charging into the middle of the room - mainly, the final boss, which is a dude surrounded by 500 smaller monsters. 286 words.
• Neverwinter's First Major Update aka. Launch Day Coming. 2013-06-07 1:46 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Word has come down that Neverwinter’s “launch day” (June 20) will bring major balance and gameplay changes. This coincides with the 1-month-after-launch massive patch that every MMO always does to address issues that arise after launch. To me, this also seems to be the time when the developer actually implements a lot of the feedback they got from their beta period. They hardly ever change anything but major breaking bugs between beta and launch. 897 words.
• Every MMO Forum Thread. 2013-06-07 6:38 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I just love how every single MMO forum thread goes something like this: A. I don’t like this aspect of the game. B. No, I think you’re complaining about nothing. A. What are you retarded? Learn to read! I didn’t say I was complaining! You’re a total moron! You’re a scrub loser with a pathetic gear score, and you’re stupid! Can’t you even read? Rage rage rage. B. Did you even bother to read my post? God you’re stupid and your post count is pathetic. You’re pathetic. Your mom thinks you’re pathetic. Rage rage rage rage rage. 136 words.
• Grey Wolf, Pirate King, Frozen Heart, Spellplague. 2013-06-10 4:43 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I have to say that the dungeons are my favorite part of Neverwinter. Everyone on the forums whines constantly about how poorly designed the bosses are but I find them rather fun. You don’t have to memorize any strategies beforehand - you just jump in and play your class and your role well, and chances are you’ll do fine. If you don’t play your class well, chances are you’ll get schooled and then have to go to the forums and whine about it. 433 words.
• Spellplague Caverns Death March. 2013-06-11 2:57 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So I hit level 52 on my GWF and decided to try Spellplague Caverns again for a Dungeon Delve event. That turned out to be a huge mistake. Do not ever go into this dungeon. Ever. It is just not worth it. There’s no way the loot justifies the time spent. We had a GWF (me), cleric, wizard, and two rogues. At first. Somewhere before the first boss, one of the rogues disconnected and someone had the brilliant idea to kick him and get another from the queue. Except that once you go beyond a certain point in a dungeon, it bugs out and doesn’t pull in new people from the queue anymore. It would have been much better to wait for the disconnected person to come back, because they usually do. So we only had four for about 98% of the dungeon. And no tank. 579 words.
• Back to Rift For A Bit. 2013-06-13 6:49 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I think I’m going to lay off of Neverwinter until the big upcoming patch. I find that I have little interest in doing anything in that game except running dungeons, but since it is nearly impossible to get through a queue after level 50, I just stand there doing nothing most of the time. I’m rather hoping that the next patch will make the dungeon queue work a lot better. If not, then I doubt I’ll play it much more until they make some changes. 335 words.
• Fresh 60 In Rift. 2013-06-18 2:57 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Well the “big patch” for Neverwinter came a week earlier than I expected. Guess what? No changes in queueing - it still takes forever. So I’ve basically given up on Neverwinter, so it’s all Rift all the time for me! My mage reached level 60, so now I’m a “fresh 60.” I’m not sure how long the total journey from 50 to 60 took, but it took a little over a week to get from 55 to 60. I’m now remembering just how much stuff there is to do in Rift, with dailies and crafting and fishing and so forth, and how much fun it is. Zone Events are tons and tons of addictive fun. There’s a World Event going on now that I haven’t even seen yet. There are not one, not two, but *three* level 60 zones to run around in! 720 words.
• Weekend Rift Accomplishments. 2013-06-24 4:04 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I finally got to Grandmaster Runecrafter (375), one tedious point at a time. Then I realized I could have been buying recipes from the Runecrafter Vendor all along … I never scrolled down below the 375 recipes heh. Speaking of professions I bought a fourth profession slot for Artificer, because I had removed it from my cleric to make him a pure gatherer. At the time I thought I would level it up and be able to runebreak the artificer items I made to get to grandmaster, which is still a sound theory, but I hit Runecrafter 375 before I even got to Artificer 150. I still want to get Grandmaster Artificer though because it is such a pain to find things to runebreak. 579 words.
• A Game’s Most Important Features. 2013-06-25 1:43 AM.
  • MMORPG
  
  All this hubbub over the Neverwinter cats and the 7-hour rollback has got me thinking something I’ve believed for a while. It seems to me that the most important thing that an MMO developer should focus on during their game development is … not the game at all. They need to focus on logging and tracking functionality. They need to focus on being able to “undo” any item in the system. They need to be able to rollback individual characters, and in so doing, rollback all of the transactions that character has done in that time frame, which means they need a complete transaction history for each item. (Perhaps only keep such transactions for blue or purple items, common items aren’t important enough.) They need to be able to see alerts whenever unusual activity occurs. They need to see when a character’s gold increases dramatically over the course of a day. They need an automatic freeze on any character who receives more than a set amount of gold, so that someone can manually investigate it. Someone needs to be sitting in front of a big monitor with realtime alerts on it, showing a big map of the game world, with blinking red dots everywhere there’s suspicious activity. 238 words.
• Low-Level Tanking. 2013-06-25 1:41 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve got MMO fever pretty bad right now - sorry IRL. :/ So I’m getting ready to start tanking RotF on my new Defiant warrior, and since I’m stuck at work for a while I thought I’d go lookup some up-to-date “low level tanking” guides first. Except there aren’t any. I found where someone asked for one on the forums, but the basic response from the tankerotti was, “Just do anything. The low level dungeons are so easy it doesn’t matter.” 648 words.
• Mentored Healing Attempts. 2013-06-26 2:45 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I queued for healing twice with my mage last night. I ticked the “Mentor” checkbox and a Random Normal dungeon, because I’m a chicken, and wanted to see if I remembered anything at all about Chloromancer. So first I got into Storm Breaker Protocol, one of the SL dungeons. First I hit as healer, then someone refused, then I hit as a DPS. When I arrived, the group had just gotten beyond the mech suits. The other four guys were all guildies, and I assume they were all talking on some kind of Ventrillo thing because they were otherwise silent. 939 words.
• Drama Queen Tanks. 2013-06-26 4:14 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So I tried to get in a random expert with my mage, something I try to do at least once a day. It was Archive of Flesh, and right away the support guy says it’s his first time. No problem, it’s the right thing to say that up front and actually pretty ballsy because most people don’t admit it. :) For a while, he did basically no DPS so he was actually trying to play a support role - normally not required unless the healer requests it, but no big deal to me. As long as we clear the dungeon in a reasonable time frame (which to me is maybe less than 45 min), I don’t really care how it’s done. 1,267 words.
• Tanking Realm of the Fae. 2013-06-26 5:05 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So I tanked Realm of the Fae on my level 16 Bahmi warrior for the first time, using a Reaver/Paladin/Tempest build. (Technically you can queue for it at 15, but I waited until 16 so I had an AoE attack.) I was pretty nervous beforehand - tanking is stressful for me, and I had not seen RotF in about a year, and who knows what they might have changed for Storm Legion. But as it turns out, RotF is just as easy as all the guides say it is, and nothing’s really changed. In fact, it’s actually not a good place to learn tanking, because you can do just about everything wrong and still survive. 684 words.
• Newbie Tanking Realm of the Fae (Normal). 2013-06-27 3:46 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Guide
  
  I now present my newbie tanking guide for Realm of the Fae (Normal). I am roughly two years late in writing this guide, but it’s actually hard to find a guide like this that isn’t written by a theorycrafter who is used to max level tanking. You can queue for RotF at level 15, but it’s probably better to wait until level 16 so you can bring an AoE attack ability with you. 678 words.
• Healer Meltdown. 2013-06-27 4:16 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I did one random expert 60 last night with my mage and got into Golem Foundry, which is one I know fairly well now (thanks to many previous PUG wipes). Everything went fine until the tank accidentally needed on a green dimension item before the last boss (the aptly-named Manslaughter) and for some reason the healer had a complete meltdown about it. None of us even noticed (including the tank) but the healer took it as a personal insult or something and we had to kick him because he stopped healing the tank. (I should point out that the tank *said* it was an accident - maybe he was secretly plotting and maneuvering to get that green dimension item all along - though I highly doubt it, since he offered to give it to the healer - who refused.) So there’s another one for the ol’ ignore list. 473 words.
• Stranger Guildies. 2013-06-28 5:54 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  It was a light, ordinary evening in Rift. I did a blissfully un-dramatic random expert SL dungeon (Archive of Flesh) with a good tank/healer duo and ended up with a nice purple mage dagger at the end, which is probably the best I will ever see until or unless I start raiding. So I’m in this guild, right? But it’s one of those guilds that basically takes anyone, no-questions-asked, so it’s got thousands of random people in it, so I see a lot of fellow guildies out in the wild even though I don’t know any of them. It makes it somewhat awkward. Sometimes I’m grouped with a guildie in a dungeon but I don’t know if I’m supposed to say anything or not. Like, “Hey guildie who is a complete stranger that I’ve never seen before, what’s up?” Am I supposed to greet them? I usually opt for silence when in doubt. 704 words.

July, 2013

• Rift Mage Maxed Out. 2013-07-01 1:24 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Hrm. Over the weekend I started to realize that Rift is actually not as much fun as I thought. My mage is 60 and has a bunch of expert dungeon gear, so the only way left to advance that character is raiding with the guild, but the thought of setting up ventrillo and signing up for schedules and all that crap is not very appealing. Even the expert dungeons are kind of painful. It takes so long to get into a dungeon queue as DPS that by the time it pops, I have no interest in playing anymore. I only got into two dungeons. One was Storm Breaker Protocol, and everyone left before the first boss because nobody likes that dungeon. The second was the Tower of something or another, which I’ve only done once before, and I was so irritated at having to navigate those stupid jump pads at the beginning that I just left. (They wouldn’t have had trouble getting another DPS.) While waiting for queues, the only meaningful thing to do is Zone Events, and those happen infrequently in the 60 zones. Other than that, all I can do is quest in the Dendrome, which provides no real rewards for my character. Most of the time, I get bored long before the queue pops and switch to another character. 283 words.
• Newbie Tanking Iron Tombs (Normal). 2013-07-05 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Guide
  
  Again, it is hard to mess up Iron Tombs on Normal. My Bahmi warrior uses a Reaver/Paladin build, with more points into damage abilities than armor/endurance abilities for better threat. I also now have a Cleric that I tank with, for which I use the standard tank preset. When you start, first determine if people need the quests. If they don’t, you can skip a lot of side stuff. The trash mobs are straightforward all throughout. Run to the mobs and hit your AoE builders. That’s basically all there is to it. Occasionally a mob will run off toward the healer or a DPS, but not as often as in RotF. Use your lure abilities to grab them back. Pull casters to you with the Warlord Sergeant’s Order ability if you have it. 566 words.
• Newbie Guide to Dungeons. 2013-07-09 5:22 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I am writing this newbie guide because there are a surprising number of people who go into the first couple of normal Rift dungeons without knowing these basics. Perhaps they have never played Rift before, or they have never played an MMO before, or they have never played in a group before. General Do remember that playing in a group requires different skills than soloing. Do avoid using tank pets because they interfere with the actual tank. 342 words.
• Rift Is Too Easy. 2013-07-09 7:36 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Since there are a lot of new people flooding into Rift, there have been complaints on the forums from the usual suspects about how easy it is to level. I can confirm that yes, it’s really easy to get from 1 to 50, and it’s now easier than ever. It used to be harder, but even back when it was hard, it was still pretty easy for a veteran gamer to get to 50. If the last MMO you played was EQ1 or vanilla WoW, you’re not going to be challenged. But if you’re coming from almost any other modern MMO, it’s about the same. 514 words.
• Newbies in the Lowbie Dungeons. 2013-07-09 7:50 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I spent most of the holiday weekend queuing for lowbie dungeons with my new collection of lowbie Defiants. I’ve realized that I don’t like tanking with a warrior … dealing with the builder/finisher mechanic interferes with focusing on the tanking. Maybe I just need to forget about finishers. Anyway I generally prefer the cleric tank, where you don’t have to really do anything but spam the AoE attack. (I say that knowing full well that you almost never see cleric tanks in raids or expert dungeons. I wouldn’t ever want to be a raid tank anyway.) 360 words.
• Healers and Tanks are like Cats and Dogs. 2013-07-12 7:02 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I got into a couple of particularly bad Rift dungeon groups all in one night, and they both basically came down to a fight between the tank and the healer. “You’re a terrible tank” vs. “you’re a terrible healer.” One group was in Realm of the Fae. The tank was a dwarf warrior who clearly didn’t have a tank soul setup, and played with a two-hander generating no threat whatsoever. He didn’t attempt to gather any mobs that got away from him either. He was not good. And the healer not-so-subtley let him know, too. “So we’re going with a two-hander, then?” he said, at the start. But it was RotF, so it didn’t really matter. You can get through RotF with no tanking whatsoever, and we basically did, until we wiped on Twyl at the end and then all the flaming really got started. “I’m so sick of people who don’t know what they’re doing!” yells the healer. For god’s sake, it’s the very first dungeon. Chill out. 839 words.
• Firefall Founder By Accident. 2013-07-22 1:55 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I played a fair amount of Firefall over the weekend, which they are still saying is in Open Beta, driven mainly by boredom with everything else I’ve been playing. After you go to an Internet guide and read up on what it is you’re actually supposed to *do* in the game, it’s a bit more fun. Of course, that means the game itself is not providing any bread crumbs for the player, which one could argue is poor design. Previously I would log in and play around with battle suits during character creation, then it would set me down in the starting zone of Copacabana and I’d think to myself, “Okay, now what? Nobody is giving out quests.” Then I got bored running around looking for somebody to give me something to do and exited. 403 words.

October, 2013

• Red Alert. 2013-10-07 1:52 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  No, not the game. I don’t know anything about Red Alert the game. I’m talking about Final Fantasy XIV, A Realm Reborn. It’s a relic of the past: A new subscription-based MMO. Although it’s apparently been out since 2010, it’s just that they recently re-released a version that actually works and that people might actually want to play. Anyroad, it’s cheap so I got it and have been playing it, and it’s actually kind of fun and not terrible and most importantly, not boring. It’s extremely Asian in flavor, though, so you have to get past that vaguely unsettling over-emphasis on cherubic youth. Everyone in the game is either a child, a perfect semi-androgynous beauty, or a hideous monster. 133 words.
• FFXIV. 2013-10-09 6:45 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So I’ve been sucked into Final Fantasy XIV. It’s all the fault of Gamers With Jobs, just so you know. They generally liked it, and I usually like things that they like, so I had to try it. Especially since it was only $30 for the first month. They’ve stolen one idea from me. In the MMO that I want to design and write but of course I never will, you could advance in three different areas: PvE, PvP, and crafting. So you don’t have one level, you have three different levels. FFXIV stole this idea and took it a bit farther: You can level up any of a bunch of adventuring, gathering, and/or crafting classes. It basically means you only need to create one character and eventually you will be able to do everything (I think). Once you get to around level 15, you can unlock everything and essentially change classes on the fly, by simply changing your equipped weapon. The possibilities are endless. (There is a significant delay before you can use your abilities after you switch, though, so don’t be thinking you can switch fifty times in the middle of a battle.) 592 words.
• Things That Are Different In FFXIV. 2013-10-16 6:23 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve played quite a few MMOs in my time, including a few that I thought were sort of JRPG-ish in nature (Aion and Tera come to mind), but I have to say, FFXIV in some ways is a brand new world to me. It is freakishly weird how quiet the general chat is in this game. I can’t recall the last time I played in an MMO where the general chat wasn’t filled with a constant stream of random subhuman noise. Even paid subscription games. One time (only once!) I saw someone trolling general chat by posting something like, “Obamacare is great isn’t it?” In a typical game, that would result in two solid hours of rapid-scrolling yelling back-and-forth in general chat. In FFXIV, it was met only with silence. The only explanation I have is that a lot of FFXIV players are on the PS3, which suggests a significant number of people are playing the game without a keyboard. 1,621 words.
• Can Rift Really Be Fading Away?. 2013-10-17 4:21 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  TAGN wrote* that the Happy Time for Rift is over. Meaning that its resurgence in popularity after it went F2P is over, and now it has nowhere to go but down. It’s hard to disagree since when I last logged into Hailol up in the Dendrome, it was a ghost town. He also had a fair number of negative things to say about Rift going F2P, saying that he immediately unsubscribed when he heard about it. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I think it’s pretty naive to think that AAA MMOs aren’t going to have cash shops from now on. Anyway, I hadn’t been playing Rift for a while, so it was nice to have an excuse to get back into it. At the time, I remember a lot of people were offended that every vendor suddenly had a huge interface window and direct access to the cash shop. I just shrugged and said, “Whatever.” I can’t remember ever being in an MMO and thinking, “Gosh, I really love this vendor window, I hope it never changes.” Honestly most of the time I think, “This vendor window sucks, can’t anyone ever spend some development time to make buying and selling a pleasant experience?” (They did not in FFXIV btw, the vendor interface sucks, as usual.) 637 words.
• What Is EQLandmark?. 2013-10-18 7:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I read on Inventory Full (still an awesome blog name) about this thing coming out called EQLandmark. I do not know what it is, but it sounds like some kind of new game in the EQ universe. Bhagpuss then mentioned something about making a Heroic character in EQ2, and I got sidetracked. Because I have some EQ2 characters too, and I figured I’d better log in and make my own Heroic characters, too. Because everyone’s doing it apparently. Well, one person is. I don’t know why I needed one, because I haven’t played EQ2 in years, and found it only a fair game while playing it, and I don’t even know what a Heroic character even is, but if somebody else is doing something in an MMO, obviously there must be something cool going on there that needs to be checked out. MMO players have a herd mentality, and they are perpetually looking for “the next new thing.” 707 words.
• FFXIV Opening Movie. 2013-10-19 7:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I had to stick a link to this movie in my blog. I think it’s the best opening sequence for an MMORPG I can recall seeing, and also a really fantastic computer-generated short film in its own right. Even if you have no clue what an MMORPG is, you might like this. Updated the link. 55 words.
• Tequatl’s On The Juice. 2013-10-20 7:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I usually stick to one MMORPG at a time, play it until I get bored, then move to the next one. This week though I’ve been firing up a different one every night. The latest one was Guild Wars 2. I got sucked into this session right away. I had last logged out in Sparkfly Fen on the beach where Tequatl attacks. I went there to see the new-and-improved Tequatl event I keep hearing so much about, but it wasn’t running when I got there, so I just logged out. Well it was running this time, and damn. 309 words.
• Warhammer Online Comes To An End. 2013-10-21 7:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I found out from all the gaming blogs that WarHammer Online is shutting down in December. WAR ran for five years, which seems like a pretty decent run for any game. I was there at launch, struggling through the bugs and lack of content with everyone else. The biggest problem I remember was not being able to play for several days because my pre-ordered copy of the game was late and I couldn’t put in my game code. Other than that, I thought it was a pretty good MMO, but it was heavily focused on PvP, and that’s not really my thing, so I drifted away from it. 429 words.
• Whoa, Elder Scrolls Online Character Creation. 2013-10-22 7:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  From what I can tell, the two most anticipated MMOs “coming soon” are WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online. WildStar I can only assume because it’s made by some former WoW developers, and ESO because, well, it’s Elder Scrolls, man, come on. Anyway, a video was recently posted showing ESO character creation options, and wow, it looks pretty awesome. I’m not sure why I thought this but I figured ESO would be a lot more graphically simplified than Skyrim, but it actually looks pretty similar. It does appear that there are fewer customization options than Skyrim, which to me is actually a bit of a relief. I’m not fond of fiddling with hundreds of sliders to get cheekbones exactly right. I’m fine with broader adjustments. 124 words.
• WoW, Relaxing Trinquility. 2013-10-23 7:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Perhaps as a result of a post on Inventory Full and a post on Herding Cats, I found myself playing WoW over the weekend. It was not one of my better weekends in terms of getting productive things done in my life, but I choose to think of that as the cause of playing WoW, rather than the effect. Anyway, I made a number of observations about WoW as compared to more modern MMOs. 657 words.
• FFXIV Tab Targeting. 2013-10-24 6:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Can we talk about the tab targeting in FFXIV? And when I say “talk” I mean “rant” and when I say “we” I mean “me.” The tab targeting in FFXIV is the worst I have ever seen. It makes absolutely no sense. When I hit tab to switch to the next target, I expect the “next” target to be somewhere in the same vicinity as the first target. But for some reason, when you hit tab, suddenly you’re targeting some monster a mile away from everyone else who isn’t even attacking. Then you have to hit tab fifty more times to get to the mob you want to hit, and you usually overshoot it because you’re tapping the tab key really fast because you’re in a hurry, and then the whole thing starts over again. By then you’ve usually pulled fifty new mobs into the fight by accident. This is especially annoying in FATEs where you have monsters attacking in packs. 240 words.
• Rift Server Merges Meh. 2013-10-24 7:08 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Rift completed server merges. I didn’t notice any change, personally. I logged in for a few minutes, decided I still had no interest in the Fae Autumn Festival thingy, then logged out again. It kind of sucks that nobody is playing it anymore. Where did everyone go? FFXIV, the newest shiney? Or back to some other game? 57 words.
• Book 3, Chapter 5, Part II of III. 2013-10-25 6:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  When I logged back into LotRO for the first time in a long time, I remembered one of the main reasons I stopped playing: On the outside looking in... It was Book 3, Chapter 5, Part II of III. I’ve probably been stuck on that quest for well over a year. It says you can do it solo, but I was facerolled every time. Lies! The Elf-stone's inspiration is no help at all. 288 words.
• WvW Season In GW2. 2013-10-28 7:42 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I saw an announcement recently about the start of the Guild Wars 2 World versus World “season.” I personally have never gotten into the WvW thing in GW2, so I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about a new season. Conceptually I like the idea of jumping in there, zerging around for a while, and leaving, but it never seems to work out that way. First of all, I’ve never been a fan of PvP in any MMO, because it’s inherently random. Two opponents of equal skill level should theoretically play to a 50/50 win/loss ratio over time. However, thanks to the random factor, you might go higher or lower than that ratio due to forces beyond your control. I just find it irritating to get killed by a random crit. Therefore I never go anywhere alone in PvP settings. 369 words.
• WoW Doesn't Take Itself Seriously. 2013-10-29 1:25 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Playing WoW again recently, it dawned on me why it’s been so popular. It’s a good game and all, and it’s more addictive than blue meth, but I think that one of the main things that pushes it over the top from niche game to mainstream hit is: It doesn’t take itself seriously. Most people would probably be embarassed to admit that they play a game involving elves and dwarves and knights and dragons. Society tells us that those things are for kids, or hardcore D&D nerds, and those guys are weird. (At least they were when I was growing up.) WoW said to the world, hey all that stuff is stupid, right? We’re going to make fun of that in our game. We’re going to put in quests with ridiculous characters who say silly things and make meta jokes about pop culture and anything we can think of to keep this from being a serious fantasy world. Our trolls are going to be Jamaican stoners. Our Undead are going to be necrophiliacs. Our dwarves are going to be Scottish highlanders. It’s all just going to be a big silly cartoon. So nobody will have to pretend that they’re really playing in a fantasy world, and it’ll be okay for normal people to enjoy it. (Normal as in not a D&D nerd.) 358 words.
• FFXIV First Month Ending. 2013-10-30 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  My first month of FFXIV ends on Nov. 1 so I need to decide whether to subscribe or not. I think I will, because it is definitely the “freshest” MMO I’m playing right now, although perhaps not right away. (I’ve also been on a weird WoW kick lately, but that’s another story.) There is an endless number of things to do in the game if you bounce between adventuring, gathering, and crafting, particularly since you can change classes at will. Bored with archer? Switch to pugilist for a totally different gameplay experience! It’s a lot like Rift in that way. 236 words.
• Halloween in the MMO. 2013-10-31 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Autumn (aka. Halloween) celebrations are a staple of modern MMORPGs. Ye gods what is that? (I was going to put another picture captioned “It’s always Halloween in Kingsmouth!” but I couldn’t find my screenshot.) 34 words.

November, 2013

• Tower of Nightmares. 2013-11-01 1:34 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I stopped by GW2 and discovered a big ol’ patch had happened, and when I logged in to see if there was any chance of defeating Tequatl, I had mail telling me to go to Kessex Hills to save the world again. I could describe it, but Inventory Full did a nice summary already: http://bhagpuss.blogspot.com/2013/10/next-stop-kessex-hills-all-change-here.html I haven’t played GW2 seriously in a long time but I was able to get through the initial Tower of Nightmares instance. (That’s one thing I like about GW2-it’s really easy to pick it up again after you’ve been gone, because there aren’t any complex “rotations” you need to know. Just target something, hit your main attack, and off you go.) I almost got facerolled halfway through the last boss fight when those four adds appeared right when my health was almost gone. I thought I was a goner but it turned out if you just run far enough away from them, they stop chasing you. It gave me time to recharge before coming back to take them out one at a time instead of all four at once. 354 words.
• Maybe It’s Time For A Break. 2013-11-04 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  Herding Cats has an interesting post up about how we, the gaming community, may have shot ourselves in the foot by telling MMO developers to limit cash shop purchases to cosmetic items so that the game won’t turn pay-to-win. But she argues that when you play an MMO only for cosmetic items, a cosmetic cash shop is pay-to-win. I’m one of those people who unofficially agreed that cosmetic items are fine in cash shops, because I personally don’t care that much about cosmetic items. I mean, if I run across a neat-looking item, I’ll be all like, “Yay, that looks cool, I’m glad I found it!” But I don’t often set out on any adventures with an objective of getting a cosmetic item. I just pick them up if I “happen” to come across them in the normal course of playing. 464 words.
• When WoW Tanks Go Rogue. 2013-11-05 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Tanking
  
  I had an odd, somewhat amusing experience in WoW recently. I’ve been playing a lot of dungeon instances lately, partly because I’ve never actually done any WoW dungeons before, and partly because I wanted to level a mage without going through the hassle of soloing. Almost every instance has been an enjoyable, workmanlike experience … until this tank decided to be an ass. So the random dungeon selector came up with the Scarlet Monastary. Or maybe it was the Scarlet Halls. I can’t remember. They all run together. It was the one that starts out with those piles of corpses and zombies which most people just run around, but the second we stepped into this instance we were beset by flaming zombies and fighting for our lives. That usually happens when somebody doesn’t circumvent that first area, so I figured somebody was trying to do a quest I didn’t know about, or somebody was panicking, or somebody just didn’t know what was going on. 667 words.
• Is WoW Leveling Really That Fast?. 2013-11-06 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So my WoW mage has Enchanting as a profession, and he’d leveled way past the point where he could disenchant the magic items he picked up at the measely skill level of 15. I had a couple of other characters in the 25-30 range that I could have used to farm items from dungeons, but I didn’t think those items would be any better. So I got the brilliant idea that I would level another character to 15 and just keep doing dungeon instances and send all the excess low-level magic items that I picked up to my mage. 483 words.
• GW2 Tower of Nightmares and Story in MMOs. 2013-11-07 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I saw a lot of negative reactions around the blogosphere to the GW2 Tower of Nightmares update. Surprisingly, the main criticism seems to be that people aren’t interested in the new story. It isn’t engaging enough. This is puzzling to me for a couple of reasons. First, I didn’t even realize there was a story in the new GW2 update, and second, I didn’t realize people judged new MMO content on the new storylines brought into the world. 715 words.
• Rift Song of Dreams – Where Is It?. 2013-11-08 4:24 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I got an email from Trion saying that the Rift Song of Dreams patch 2.5 was live, so I eagerly patched up and logged in. What I saw was … nothing. Nothing looked different in Tempest Bay, so I checked my mail to get what I was sure would be a nice invitation to participate in the cool new Mini-Saga and … there was no mail. I knew all the action was supposed to happen on Ember Isle so I took the nearest porticulum over there and … nothing was happening. Nothing was coming out of the ocean, nobody was running around in zergs, nothing changed on the map, no new quest indicators, nothing. Okay, well, Rift is f2p now so maybe I have to buy something to get started on all the fun, so I looked in the store and there was … nothing. All this new content would be right on the front page of the store, right? So there’s no way I could have missed it. But there was nothing there but a dinosaur mount. Next I thought maybe a “Mini-Saga” is something like a Chronicle, so I checked my list of Chronicles and found … nothing. (Though I did find a couple I hadn’t done before.) 273 words.
• GW2 Thank God I’m Not An Achiever. 2013-11-08 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I was reading a post on Why I Game which talked about lackluster enthusiasm for GW2, and I started to feel really bad for him. I cannot imagine what it’s like to feel such a compulsion to obtain achievements that you’re willing to log tons of game time doing things that aren’t fun. I certainly agree about the lack of enthusiasm for GW2. This Tower of Nightmares update is more of the same. Log in, kill lots of stuff, get some achievements, log out. Really nothing to look forward to except watching your achievment progress bar go from zero to full, and that’s not fun for me at all. I mean I guess there’s loot too, but I’m 80 so what do I need loot for? A new “finishing move?” I’m not doing PvP and it’s not like there are any raids to do. 485 words.
• Achievements – The Journey Is Part of The Reward. 2013-11-09 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  Lots of talk about achievements. Are they good? Are they bad? MMO Gypsy hates them (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RagingMonkeys/~3/UCUa6ra8IUg/achievement-hate-exploration-and-mystery.html), Herding Cats defends them (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/machiavelliscat/xgUW/~3/EBQ0bOGdQLk/), and CuppyVille relies on them (http://cuppyville.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/in-which-i-defend-achievements-in-mmos/). Me? I tend to ignore them. It’s true that I’m an Explorer on the Bartle test, so you might think I’d be siding with Syp in saying that achievements have destroyed the MMO genre. Well, first of all, I don’t think the genre has been destroyed at all; I think it’s far better now than it’s ever been. Also, I don’t feel like the Bartle Explorer fits me very well. A Bartle Explorer sounds like someone who will divert from a quest line to wander off into the jungle to see what’s there, because he saw a funny-looking knot on a tree, and then he’ll cross the river past the jungle, and then climb the mountain across from the river, and so on. Totally A.D.D. in other words. I do that occasionally, but these days I rarely go out into the jungle unless there is a quest telling me to. 760 words.
• LotRO Mithril Coins Rule. 2013-11-11 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I know that the Mithril Coins are just a way to force people to buy from the shop, but I still cheerfully bought a big bagful of them. Being able to zip back to quest givers is an incredible time-saver. Way more worth real money than, say, a fancy cape or horse or whatever. (Actually, I had a trove of Turbine Points sitting around so I didn’t need to spend any (more) real money.) 74 words.
• Is Chain-Pulling Harder?. 2013-11-12 2:41 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Tanking
  
  I was in a dungeon recently with a chain-pulling tank, and it got me thinking. I’ve always associated the chain-pulling tank behavior with a more advanced tanking technique, but is it really harder to chain-pull? Chain-pulling, if you don’t know, is where the tank runs at full speed pulling mob after mob after mob without stopping, until he gathers a big group of them together, and then he takes off again before the group is even dead. So he gets a big train of mobs following him around, and the rest of the party has to run full speed to keep up with him. 224 words.
• MMO Pinball. 2013-11-13 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  
  Just so you know, I have been a veritable pinball of MMO playing lately. First FFXIV leveling an Archer/Bard to level 30. Then WoW leveling a Mage from around 17 to 50, and leveling some other characters. Then GW2 to check out the Tower of Nightmares. Then LoTRO leveling my hobbit Hunter from 38 to 45. Then Rift to check out the Song of Dreams patch. Even a little bit of Neverwinter and TERA and (gasp) Aion thrown in there between. 106 words.
• Flying Mounts In WoW. 2013-11-13 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  The Burning Crusade has been out since January 2007, which makes it nearly seven years old. Since that time, there has always been a contingient of people on every new MMO forum who scream, “Where are the flying mounts? I keep getting hit by mobs!” I, like most everyone else, always scoffed and thought, “Just run around the mobs. Jeez. We don’t need no stinkin’ flying mounts.” Flash forward to today, when my Hunter finally bought a flying mount on the Hellfire Penninsula. I’ve been slowly leveling him since I first started playing WoW, which was, coincidentally enough, somewhere around 2007. (Actually I think it was 2008.) Anyway, he’s 64 now and I still occasionally break him out and grind through some quests to inch slowly forward toward where I can enter the second oldest expansion area. One day I found myself standing in front of the flying mount vendor with 225 gold burning a hole in my pocket, so I bought a white griffin. 408 words.
• WoW Dungeon Guides Are Terrible. 2013-11-14 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  There is one area where WoW is woefully far behind other games like Rift and FFXIV. That is: Normal dungeon guides on YouTube. Good ones, I mean. They don’t exist for WoW. Or maybe they do exist, but they are so deeply buried within the noise that you can’t find them. I don’t want to see some guy rambling about nothing for twenty minutes of unedited game footage. I want a little intro telling me what the trash mobs are, then I want to see the first boss and his special mechanics, then the second boss, and so on. I don’t even need to see the whole boss fight. The whole video should be five minutes or less. And I don’t want to have the in-game dungeon guide read to me, either. I want to know in five words or less what I need to worry about. 167 words.
• Rift Song of Dreams Mini-Saga Completed. 2013-11-15 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  It took me a while, but I finally found the new content for Song of Dreams. Looking at the map around Ember Isle, I noticed there was a shaded area off to the west of the island that looked new, so I started running that way and found a little island at the extreme western edge with new stuff! (If you think Ember Isle looks like a reverse Pac Man like I do, it’s in the mouth.) 573 words.
• GW2 Go Blackgate!. 2013-11-17 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Oh hey, according to the mid-season WvW report, Blackgate is winning. Go Blackgate! When I randomly chose Blackgate to play on, I picked a winner! (Actually it wasn’t random. It was a choice between Blackgate which was the “coolest” sounding server, or Yak’s Bend which was the “funniest” sounding server, and in the end I went for coolness.) My only contribution to the war effort was capturing one empty Ruins and escorting one yak. 289 words.
• WoW Warlords of Draenor Impressions. 2013-11-18 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Here are some first impressions of the newly announced WoW expansion Warlords of Draenor. I’m not a hardcore WoW player but recently I’ve been playing more than I usually do, so I have more of an opinion than “meh, whatever.” New Character Models. It’s about time, I say. I can’t believe anyone would oppose this. I found it rather annoying that they made these nice, smooth panda models and animations for MoP but left everybody else with like fourty-seven triangles and six frames of movement. 508 words.
• Making Sense of EQ Landmark. 2013-11-19 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m trying to wrap my head around this EQ Next/Landmark thing. If I’m understanding this correctly, what we’re buying in Landmark is the toolset that a game developer would use to create an MMO game world. SOE must have looked at their tools and said, “You know, these tools are so fun and intuitive to use, maybe we could polish them up a bit and sell them, because people really seem to like building virtual things.” 349 words.
• The Delicate Balance of Beta Testing. 2013-11-20 2:36 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I think it’s safe to say this: I got an invitation for this weekend’s TESO beta test. I assume it’s okay to say that because they made a big public announcement that they were sending out the invitations. I had to accept a rather harsh-sounding NDA though so I don’t think I’ll be able to say much of anything else. Beta testing is a delicate balance. On the one hand, it’s super exciting to see a new shiney and possibly shape the course of its future (though to be honest, in my experience, beta reports are largely ignored unless it is a game-breaking bug), but on the other hand, you don’t want to play so much that you burn out before the game even launches. Not to mention all of your progress is going to get wiped anyway. So it’s like, “Yay, I’m in the beta!” Followed shortly by, “Crap, this could ruin the game for me.” 157 words.
• Trove Triggers 8-Bit PTSD. 2013-11-20 8:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Trion Worlds is working on something called Trove. Now when Trion does something, I tend to take notice, because Rift is hands down the best themepark MMO out there right now. Any arguments you might have against my statement are invalid, because I said so. (Defiance, on the other hand, was a bit meh.) I anxiously looked at the screenshots for Trove and … drooped with disappointment. Really? 8-bit crap graphics? Really? People are still into this? What is wrong with people? 289 words.
• Black Desert?. 2013-11-21 7:01 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  We all know that blockbuster MMOs EQ Next/Landmark (the minecraft one), WildStar (the cartoon one), and The Elder Scrolls Online (the D&D one) are “coming soon.” But a while back some posts I saw about a Korean-made MMO called Black Desert caught my eye. I hadn’t heard of it before, so I did some investigation. ( That means I went to Wikipedia .) Wikipedia says it’s a “sandbox-oriented” MMO, but I’m not entirely sure what that means. The Black Desert site itself says it will be “focused on Sandbox Features, PvP and PvE.” Again, that’s about as vague as it gets. I’m not even sure it’s going to be available in English-speaking countries. I’ve got to think that since they made an English web page, they’re planning an English version of the game. 160 words.
• On the Removal of Leveling. 2013-11-22 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  With the announcement of Warlords of Draenor, there was a bit of buzz around the MMO-sphere about the role of the leveling process. I was struck by a post on Healing the Masses suggesting that it’s time to remove the leveling game entirely from MMOs so that we no longer segregate the players into groups that can’t play together. … an ideology that is slowly dying, an ideology that never really belonged much in the first place in this genre. 585 words.
• LotRO Helm's Deep Skill Trees. 2013-11-23 1:52 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  After a patching process that seemed to take hours (possibly because I was playing another game while I waited), I spent a couple of minutes in LotRO to see the class changes in Helm’s Deep. (I am only 45 so I am nowhere near seeing the content of Helm’s Deep.) It looks like all they did was integrate industry-standard “skill trees” into the game, so you have to choose one of three specializations for your character. For my Hunter, I got to pick from a Jack-of-all-Trades tree, a Ranged DPS tree, and a Traps-base tree. I don’t mind the change but I do think it makes LotRO gameplay a bit less unique. Not something I would rage quit over, though. Who knows, maybe it will bring in some new players. 130 words.
• EQ2 Status Report, 43 Warden. 2013-11-25 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I thought it would be fun to write a series of posts talking about where my characters are in various games. Lately I have been bouncing back and forth between MMOs, so I’ve touched base with a lot of them recently. At the time of this writing, my main character in EQ2 is a level 43 Wood Elf Warden (one of the many classes of healer, if you don’t know). After a recent spate of playing, he moved from the clockwork-kobold-infested Steamfont Mountains to the icy island of Everfrost. 885 words.
• WoW Tanks Are Top DPS??. 2013-11-26 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Tanking
  
  I realize nobody wants to read about WoW, but historically I haven’t played it much, and about 90% of it is still new to me. Well “new” isn’t the right word exactly-it’s more that WoW’s implementation of familiar MMO tropes is new to me. For example, I’ve made a shocking observation in my low to mid-range dungeon runs: The tank almost always does the most damage in the group. Sometimes by a very large margin. 339 words.
• Rift, Great For Introverts. 2013-11-27 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve been trying to pinpoint exactly what it is that I love(d?) about Rift, and I think I figured it out. It was perfect for an introvert like me who enjoys solo play, but also wants to do group activities without a lot of hassle. Rift’s dynamic rifts and zone events fulfilled that requirement perfectly. You’re out doing quests to level your character, enjoying the scenery. Then a zone event breaks out, and you rush to the spot marked on your map and find a big group of players there. Ten seconds ago you were by yourself in the middle of nowhere, then in a flash you’re part of a group working together toward the same objectives. You can heal if you want to, you can tank if you want to, or you can just sit back and pew-pew if you want to. You don’t have to spam a chat channel with “lfg” for an hour, you don’t have to sit in a dungeon finder queue, you don’t have to manage a bunch of personalities, you just run to a spot and you’re automatically part of a like-minded group working toward the same goal, without any sense of commitment. When you’re done, you just go back to your quest. It worked beautifully. (You could even ignore the event completely if you wanted to be left alone.) 388 words.

December, 2013

• Impressions of Wizardry Online. 2013-12-02 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Has anyone seen Wizardry Online? It’s free-to-play, and another one of those hardcore old school MMORPGs that SOE seems to like. It’s clearly Asian in origin, but it’s weird because it’s an Asian vision of standard European medieval tropes like elves and dwarves. The graphics are odd as well. It looks a bit like everything is a low-contrast sepia-toned image. WO seems to be one of the “hard” MMOs that everyone clamors for (but never actually plays). Some games are hard now simply because the controls are foreign (like EQ and AC-playing those two now is like trying to type on a Dvorak keyboard). WO is hard even with a modernized input system. There are no (well, few) sparklies showing you where to go. Supposedly it is permanent death if you die. (I haven’t died yet to test that out.) Supposedly it is open world PvP and anyone can PK you. (I haven’t encountered any PKs yet.) It’s got an odd combat system where you lock onto targets to fight with them (it’s a bit like Dark Souls if you’ve played that). There’s no renewal of health or mana so you have to drink potions or cast spells to heal. It’s got very limited inventory so you have to really choose your equipment wisely (things that you wear still take up space in your backpack, a super old school concept). You can’t see how tough monsters are until you fight them. You have to identify magic items to see what they are, and you have to go back a place to level up after you’ve gained enough experience. It’s … you know, hard. 361 words.
• LoTRO Status Report, 45 Hunter. 2013-12-03 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  When I last left LotRO (Lord of the Rings Online) a couple of years ago, my highest level character was only a level 38 Hunter. I stopped playing largely because of this one Epic quest that kept defeating me, and nothing will drive me away from a game faster than a required quest that keeps killing me and/or requires a group. I discussed that quest in another post. When I came back this time, I got past that quest, so progression could resume. 822 words.
• Aion – Surprise, It's PvP. 2013-12-04 6:40 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  In playing Aion again, I made a shocking* discovery: It’s open world PvP! I had no idea. I always thought the PvP was voluntary. But nope, I found out the hard way when I was out in Morheim. I got killed by some guy on a skateboard in like four shots. I didn’t even realize it was another player until I was almost dead. Well that sure puts a new spin on things. 262 words.
• Slumming in EQ and AC. 2013-12-10 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I did something odd over one weekend. I installed and played both Everquest and Asheron’s Call for a little while. Everquest is free-to-play now, if you didn’t know. You can download the client and log right on in there, and there are a surprising number of people who apparently do just that. The little newbie cave must have had a dozen people in it wandering around trying to figure out how to play. 608 words.
• Re-Using Character Names. 2013-12-11 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  I’ve been thinking about character names. Normally I make up new names for all my characters, but I know a lot of people carry over their names from one game to another. You always see people trying “get their names” when a new game launches. One day on a whim I decided to re-use a couple of names from Rift characters for some EQ2 alts to see what it was like, and I found it very weird. 149 words.
• Trove Alpha Impressions. 2013-12-12 2:09 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I was moderately shocked last night to receive an email from Trion with a code to get into the Trove Alpha. I was even more shocked to discover a complete lack of an NDA. Although, if you think about it, I did actually pay $20 (or whatever it was) to see this alpha, so it would be weird for them to restrict me. There are very few options in the game right now, which I found surprising. (I just didn’t expect that game options would be added so late in the life cycle of a game.) The only in-game option is to pick full screen or not. If you’re an invert mouse person, you have to edit your Trove.cfg file and set InvertY = true. If you’re not a WASD person, you’re out of luck. 640 words.
• Mortal Online – Travel Back to the 90s. 2013-12-13 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So you say you wish you could play an MMORPG like the ones in the old days? Something like UO maybe? Well get yourself a copy of Mortal Online and experience what MMORPG life was like in the late 1990s. Previously, I thought that Wizardry Online was a pretty old school, hardcore MMORPG. But WO is a total cake walk compared to Mortal Online. Here’s the first thing you need to know about MO: You’re going to die and lose everything. 3,464 words.
• WoW Progress Report. 2013-12-16 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I bought a 3-month subscription for WoW when I suddenly got interested in playing again. Now that I’m running out of interest, the subscription will be expiring in January. It’s obvious that game developers are not doing subscriptions anymore, but I have to say, it’s pretty awesome to play a game where you aren’t bothered with cash shops or gems or other alternate forms of cash-based currency. Anyway, my highest-level character in WoW is a 66 Night Elf Hunter. I rolled him back in Vanilla WoW when a Hunter was just about the only way to go around soloing without spending all of your time either dead or healing between encounters. He’s still the guy I do all my solo questing with, but now it’s trivial beyond belief. I just mow down all the mobs in the Outlands like cutting grass with a butter knife. Or cutting butter with a scythe. Or something. It’s actually not very fun. I typically log in with him, finish a handful of quests, and then log out. 493 words.
• Invert Mouse Forever. 2013-12-17 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  Why doesn’t everyone use invert mouse? I simply cannot comprehend it. Yet informal polls show that only about 30% of people use invert mouse. I choose the invert mouse setting because I want to mimic the controls of a flight simulator, which is pretty much the de-facto standard 3D environment control scheme. In a flight simulator (and presumably a real airplane), you push the stick forward to go down, and you pull the stick back to go up. So clearly when using a mouse, you should roll the mouse forward to aim down, and roll the mouse backward to aim up. 170 words.
• FFXIV Free Company Housing In 2.1. 2013-12-18 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Wow. I just read an article on Massively about the pricing for Final Fantasy XIV guild housing. It’s rather high, and it has enraged the FFXIV community. At least according to the article. For myself, I’m not into housing on a good day, but I’m definitely not into housing if it’s going to cost me a bazillion jillion gil for a starter house. Before we get to the housing, I’ve got to say, Square Enix knows how to put out some friggin’ patch notes. The FFXIV 2.1 patch notes are the most detailed patch notes I’ve ever seen, to the point of obsessive compulsion. It’s a complete encyclopedia of patch information that must have taken an enormous amount of time to put together. Kudos to them. 331 words.
• Bye Warhammer!. 2013-12-19 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Bye Warhammer! I wish I’d been able to log into you before you left, but your publisher apparently can’t manage simple things like letting people easily login and play you, even when you’re free. Gotta think that might have something to do with your departure. Anyway, you weren’t a bad game. Certainly better than EQ1 or AC which are inexplicably still running approximately fifty years later. Warhammer Online is the first MMORPG I’ve played a significant amount that shut down, and only the second MMORPG from which I’ve lost significant characters. (I lost my original Asheron’s Call characters when Turbine moved from Microsoft to their own servers.) 116 words.
• Fallen Earth Impressions. 2013-12-23 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Fallen Earth is one of the sort-of kind-of AAA-ish quality MMORPGs that I haven’t ever played, so being generally bored with all other games, I recently started playing it. The key word there is “started.” This is actually the second time I’ve started it up. The first time I made a character and took one look at the 1990s-era graphics and promptly uninstalled it. This time I am deliberately overlooking the weird graphics so that I can evaluate the game itself. (The graphics aren’t that bad but they are primitive compared to recent titles. It reminds me a lot of the style of Fallout 1 and 2, perhaps intentionally.) 598 words.
• GW2 Winter Wonderland of Doom. 2013-12-24 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I ducked into GW2 to check out the Christmas event. As usual, there is nothing to gain from doing the events except some cosmetic fluff, because god forbid you actually get to advance your GW2 character in any way. But I set aside my anti-horizontal-progression Scrooge-like sentiment for a bit and did the events anyway, and they’re kind of fun. Most of them, anyway. There’s a dungeon which I skipped because I didn’t want to deal with a group. (Naturally most of the achievements revolve around the dungeon.) I did the snowball fight which is just a PvP Capture-the-Flag kind of game that doesn’t let you use any of the class abilities you’re used to. The bell-ringing event was interesting although I had to re-bind my keys to have even a remote chance of getting anywhere with it. (I use TRGVBH instead of the normal 123456.) 866 words.
• Mortal Online – Why is this Fun?. 2013-12-26 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m at a loss to explain it, but I’m digging Mortal Online. When I’m staring at my desktop full of MMO icons trying to decide which one to play, MO is the one I usually click on. I’d be hard pressed to tell you why this game is compelling. I log in. I run out to the Graveyard and kill some undead to make some money and practice my blocking and swordfighting. I gather some plants and chop up some trees. I tame donkeys and horses and ride around. I cook up some food to feed myself and my animals. I make myself some leather armor from pig skins. I practice swimming in the ocean. I read books to train skills. 976 words.
• WildStar Gushing From MMO Reporter. 2013-12-27 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve been hearing more and more about people’s WildStar beta experiences lately. Apparently they lifted some of the NDAs. They pretty much gushed about it on MMO Reporter Episode 152, and what they described sounded like a solid themepark MMO with action-oriented combat, and how can anyone not like that? No word on the endgame yet, though. I like The MMO Reporter podcast, by the way. It’s one of the best ones if you like a more “casual” style of podcast. This was the funniest part: At 19:30, when Harry was complaining about WildStar controls: “If you have your right hand on the mouse and you have your left hand on the WASD and you have to keep moving to avoid enemy telegraphs, try to hit the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 buttons at the same time.” 211 words.
• 2013 MMOs In Review. 2013-12-30 3:11 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  I hate these year-in-review kinds of posts. So what do I do? Write one, of course. Because everyone’s doing it. This is my review of 2013. 2013 began with GW2 fizzling out because of its lack of endgame progression. I still popped in now and then throughout the year to look at the Living Story but it’s just an occasional diversion. I played in one of the last betas of Defiance before it came out in April. I wanted to like it, but I wasn’t hooked. I’m generally not a fan of shooter MMOs. (Late in the year, however, I bought the game and played a little bit more.) 407 words.
• 2014 MMOs Coming Soon. 2013-12-31 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  I hate year-end posts, so here I am writing another one to talk about MMOs I’m looking forward to in 2014. Rift 3.0. I haven’t seen a release date, but they’re talking about releasing it in stages anyway, so I expect we’ll see the bulk of it in 2014. I hope to get a month of entertainment from the new stuff, maybe not contiguously though. WildStar. I’m planning to pre-order and play at launch, because I suspect everyone and their mother will be playing it and I don’t want to miss out. :) I anticipate at least a month of entertainment from it, and hopefully more. 482 words.

January, 2014

• GW2 – They Had Personalities?. 2014-01-02 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  After reading over this article on Massively by Anatoli Ingram, I am stunned that the author can even remember the names of those four GW2 Living Story characters, let alone come up with a thousand words of an article analyzing their personalities and backstories. My experience of the last year of Living Story was something like this: Oh there’s this cool new Living Story! Oh there’s nothing to actually do, but I got some achievements. Oh now there’s another patch, and now there’s this guy, and he helps with this instance, and he’s Eir’s son, and I got an achievement. Oh there’s this Charr, and she’s an outcast, and she helps with the other instance, and I got another achievement. Oh there’s some time where I didn’t play and missed some stuff. Oh now there’s a ditzy blonde porn star and another woman standing on a hill investigating a Tower in Kessex Hills for some reason, and I’m tired of doing this stuff just for achievements. Oh I missed most of the Tower story, but now I need to help the porn star and the other woman inject a thing into another thing so the thing blows up and I can get back to Kessex Hills. Oh now the Tower’s gone and it’s Wintersday so I’m going to Lion’s Arch to get some more achievements. 455 words.
• Returning to EVE Online?. 2014-01-03 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Continuing my adventures in finding an MMO to get hooked on before the new ones come out in 2014, I turned to venerable EVE, the best-or at least the most popular-game I’ve never paid for. With reckless abandon, I bought 3 months of time and downloaded the client. I haven’t played EVE in five years, when I played for a week or so during a free trial. Surprisingly, my character from the free trial was still there. I have no idea what “level” he is or if EVE even has a measurement for that. I didn’t get very far past mining with him. 763 words.
• A Freshly-Formatted PC. 2014-01-06 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  I recently reformatted my PC and reinstalled Windows 7, so of course I had to re-install all my games. But instead of re-installing the seemingly hundreds of MMOs I previously had, I decided to limit the number of MMOs installed so I could try to cut down on this MMO ADD I’ve been experiencing. So far I’ve installed WoW, FFXIV, LotRO, SWTOR, EVE, and Mortal Online. (Well, and Steam, obviously.) By sheer coincidence, I happened to have active subscriptions for those games as well (except MO). I typically buy 3-month blocks of sub time and then cancel; the order that the subscriptions will expire over the next 3 months is: FFXIV, LotRO, EVE, SWTOR, then WoW. 213 words.
• The Diefication of Star Wars Galaxies. 2014-01-07 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  I’ve been “into” Massively.com a lot lately, listening to their podcasts and watching their streams, and one thing I’ve noticed is that some of them have a total love affair with Star Wars: Galaxies. They talk about SWG like most other people talk about Everquest 1: They diefy it like it’s the greatest thing there ever was or ever will be. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that not only did I never play or even see it, I never even knew it was an MMORPG. 279 words.
• WoW Battle Pets FTW. 2014-01-09 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  This is it. It’s all or nothing. My marmot is almost out of health. He won’t survive another round, and he’s the last one. I throw the box. I watch with breath caught in my throat as it teeters … totters … and falls down on the frog. I got it! I pump my fist and celebrate the capture of a new battle pet in WoW. My gnome jumps for joy on the screen, too. For this is not just any captured battle pet. This is a blue. A blue frog, to be specific. Not blue in skin color, mind you. Blue in rarity. That means it’s a special frog with lots of health and survivability. You don’t see blue battle pets out in the wild very often, so you try to grab them when you see them. 303 words.
• Not Cool, SOE. 2014-01-10 2:51 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Yeah, so we’ve been waiting for Everquest Next Landmark, right? We all thought they would start in January, right? We all bought an alpha or beta package even though we don’t want to admit it because it’s stupid to buy beta access for a free game, right? So what do you think goes through my mind when I get an email with a subject that looks like this: Ultrviolet, you’re invited to play EverQuest Next Landmark! 196 words.
• Early Access MMOs and Character Wipes. 2014-01-10 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  There are a lot more “early access” games now than ever before, thanks to Steam and Kickstarter. Basically what this means is that some random, poor game developer can release what amounts to a semi-playable demo of their game and then ask people to buy it for a (surprisingly minor) discount, hoping that they’ll raise enough money and interest to fund the rest of the game development. In a lot of cases that is as janky as it sounds, because some Steam developers think it’s okay to put out crap that is buggy and unplayable, but I think it’s a concept that can work well for the MMO genre, since MMOs are almost always in constant flux even after their official releases anyway. MMO players as a whole should be used to bugs and change. 535 words.
• FFXIV Followup On Guild Houses. 2014-01-13 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m all-in on FFXIV at the moment so get ready for wall-to-wall FFXIV posts this week! Last time I wrote that Square Enix wouldn’t do much about their guild housing prices unless people didn’t buy them. After I wrote that, they backed off a bit on their ridiculous prices, but not by much. Out of curiosity, I snooped around the guild housing areas to see just how many of the plots had been bought up already, because I assumed people would buy them no matter how much they cost or how much mindless grinding they had to do. 185 words.
• FFXIV Heavensturm Event. 2014-01-14 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Like just about everything in Final Fantasy XIV, seasonal events are kind of weird. I’m not really sure they should be called “events” at all. They are more like, you know, regular quests. In most games, a seasonal event is a big deal. There’s a big gathering of people. There are games and activities and daily event quests. There’s a special dungeon or a special boss to defeat. There are special mounts and costumes and occasionally some meaningful gear as rewards. 439 words.
• FFXIV ARC or BRD (Archive or Beard). 2014-01-15 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  My main (and only, since you can play any class with the same character) in FFXIV is an Archer. (Or “ARC,” as they like to abbreviate class names to 3 letters for some reason - I still have trouble translating those - ARC looks like Archive to me - why is it hard to add three more letters to make “ARCHER?”) Archer is a straight-forward, low-stress ranged DPS class that’s fun to play. 472 words.
• FFXIV The Return of Adolescent Jerkiness. 2014-01-16 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  When I first started playing FFXIV sometime around October 2013*, it was extremely quiet. Very few people made comments in the general chat. I’m sure we’re all used to a more-or-less constant scroll of adolescent jerkiness going on in MMO general chat, so it was weird and kind of nice that there was none of that in FFXIV. Most of what you saw, to be honest, was gold spam. Now, however, I see a lot more activity in the general chat. And by “activity” of course I mean adolescent jerkiness. 271 words.
• FFXIV Around Dragonhead. 2014-01-17 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  If I’m to complete a full week of FFXIV posts, I need to think of one more topic to write about. I thought I would describe a typical play session. This one happened on a Thursday night. I login with my Miqote Archer. I’m semi-embarassed that I’m still playing the adorable cat girl with the squirrel tail that I made on a lark back when I started, but I’m stuck with her now because I’m not going back to level up another character now. Maybe someday I’ll use my change-appearance potion but I’m not sure if it will let me change my race/gender, and I’m pretty sure it won’t let me change my distinctly female-sounding name. 1,052 words.
• Life Without MMO Guides. 2014-01-20 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  Have you ever wondered why there are so many MMO guides out there? Step-by-step walkthroughs and so forth? I think I know the answer. It’s because without Internet guides, most MMO game players would simply stand in one place and stare at the screen, paralyzed and unable to figure out what to do or how to do it. You can tell this from watching the global chat of a game that is in closed beta. It’s filled with non-stop questions that one might conceivably fall into the “duh” variety. How do we find this or that? How do we solve this puzzle? Where do we find this NPC? Where do we get crafting materials? How do we get past this monster? There are no handy guides to turn to, and obviously reading the quest text or any of the in-game hints are out of the question in this fast-paced, go-go-go world we live in. 234 words.
• How Long Should Dungeons Take?. 2014-01-21 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve been trying to figure out the optimal length of a dungeon run. There’s a point beyond which the dungeon goes from “this is really fun” to “oh god I can’t escape and this is never going to end.” It’s usually a hard line, too. It’s never a gradual process. One minute things are great, and the next minute it’s a life-draining death march from which you can’t escape. For me I think that mark is around 30-35 minutes. That’s about the maximum amount of time I can stay focused and alert in a dungeon run. After that I just want it to be over. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never particularly pushed myself to do a lot of raiding. (The other reason being it’s hard to find guilds that are serious enough to complete raids, but casual enough not to be elite jerks about it.) 368 words.
• FFXIV Miqo’tes at Studio 54. 2014-01-22 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  My Miqo’te archer is closing in on 50. With the crazy ridiculous bonus experience gained from a Low-Level Duty Roulette, she should get there tonight, Friday the 17th. (I write most posts in advance, by the way.) My archer has been going through some seriously odd fashion phases in the last ten levels. Everything was fine at first. She had a suitable outfit that reflected her spunky, squirrel-tailed, no-nonsense, tomboy attitude through most of her leveling. 189 words.
• Rift – What’s It Going To Take?. 2014-01-23 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I read a fluff article on MMORPG.com about 5 Things Rift Must Do In 2014, which got me thinking. What would it take to get me to play Rift again on a daily basis again in 2014? Well, the answer is pretty simple: Give me an expansion with new zones and more levels. (Alternately, if I totally ran out of stuff to do in other MMOs I’m playing, I would probably play Rift.) 497 words.
• GW2 The Hidden Origins of Madness. 2014-01-24 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Due to a devastating blizzard of perhaps a half an inch of fine powdery snow, I had 2 extra hours one morning to look at The Origins of Madness, the new Living Story content for Guild Wars 2. I patch up, log into my Necro, and I have mail telling me to go to Lornar’s Pass. Naturally it’s one of the places my Necro hasn’t been so I can’t fast-travel there, so I get out my Norn Ranger, who has been all through those wintry mountains. I go to lookup the location in Lornar’s Pass again, only to find that the mail was not sent to my Ranger. Nice. 1,056 words.
• Changing the Holy Trinity. 2014-01-27 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Discussion
  
  I read Scree’s A Snapshot of Pantheon, an excellent summary of the things that Brad McQuaid wants to do with Kickstarter MMO Pantheon: Something of Something. I’ll save most of my comments on Brad’s game vision for another post, or never, because I don’t think it will get funded. The part about changing the Holy Trinity model is what stood out to me today. Apologies for quoting so much of this: 914 words.
• WoW – Who to Boost. 2014-01-28 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I am blatantly stealing TAGN’s post subject here, which is the question of who to boost to 90 for Warlords of Draenor. My situation is a lot different than his though, because I only play WoW when I’m really bored with other games, and my highest-level character has only recently broken into the Wrath of the Lich King era of the game. Hunter? This was the second character I created when I started WoW in 2006, and my second-oldest surviving MMO character. (The first oldest is a warrior that I never play and should delete, but, well, he was my first WoW character.) He’s around level 72 now, having just left Outland for Northrend. It would be interesting to bump him up to 90, but then I would probably never experience any of that solo content between 72 and 90. I think I’ll pass on him. 508 words.
• Bye Vanguard and Wizardry Online. 2014-01-29 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m sure you’ve all heard the news about SOE closing down Vanguard, Wizardry Online, and two other MMOs. Vanguard is a game that I always wanted to play more, but I could never seem to keep it on any kind of daily schedule. I always thought of it as a “crutch” game - I knew if there was absolutely nothing else to do, and I didn’t want to spend any money, I could always fire up Vanguard and be entertained for a little while. It had its faults, though. Mostly I think it suffered a lot from a slow, laggy combat system. But one thing I will always credit Vanguard for is introducing me to those deck-building card game thingys that everyone but me seems to play. After playing with Vanguard’s Diplomacy, I suppose I now understand why people go nuts for games like Magic and Hearthstone and whatever fifty million other card games are out there. 227 words.
• FFXIV – Learning The Endgame. 2014-01-30 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I reached level 50 in Final Fantasy XIV and entered “the endgame,” that fabled zone where only the elites live. Now I can evaluate FFXIV’s version of what some vehemently insist is “the only real game.” As with any MMO (except GW2), the FFXIV endgame is a gear grind. Your basic goal is to increase the “average item level” of your gear. This in turn allows you to unlock more and more difficult instances, in which you can acquire gear with higher item levels. 735 words.
• FFXIV – Endgame Life. 2014-01-31 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  In another post I wrote about your basic objectives in FFXIV endgame and what there is to do, but in this post I’m going to talk more frankly about the more practical experience of what the endgame is like when you’re not in a big Free Company with lots of people available at your level. It’s like sitting around waiting in a queue for a long time. Again. And again. 372 words.

February, 2014

• Landmark First Impression. 2014-02-02 1:35 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Apparently the NDA was lifted, so here’s my first impression of the game: It doesn’t have invert mouse yet, so it’s a major, major chore to play it. It literally boggles my mind that devs don’t include this in their alphas, or even their finished games. I mean, surely it must be a built-in feature of the game engine somewhere, right? Even if it’s a stupid registry key somewhere, show me where it is! 80 words.
• LotRO – Left Angmar For Eregion. 2014-02-03 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Due to a heat pump failure, my normal schedule of writing scintillating posts (ha!) was totally borked. But lucky for you, I found some posts that I have previously rejected as being totally lame and irrelevant, pulled from the dregs of the barrel of mediocrity. My LoTRO Hunter reached level 48. Normally a level like “48” doesn’t seem like that much of an achievement, but in LoTRO I feel like it takes an eternity* to level, so each new number is a major milestone. Asian grindfests TERA and Aion are the only two games I can think of that level slower right now. 457 words.
• WoW – Outlands Completed, Or At Least Left. 2014-02-04 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Due to a heat pump failure, my normal schedule of writing scintillating posts (ha!) was totally borked. But lucky for you, I found some posts that I have previously rejected as being totally lame and irrelevant, pulled from the dregs of the barrel of mediocrity. My WoW Hunter has finally reached the level cap! Of Burning Crusade, that is. Which means he is now Level 70, a mere twenty levels and five years behind where everyone else is. I spent a weekend burning through quests (ha, get it?) in the Blade’s Edge Mountains and Netherstorm, and when I was nearing the end of level 69, I suddenly realized that it was pointless to finish the questing in the Outlands because the very first quests in Wrath of the Lich King would probably give me ridiculously awesome gear, higher experience, and more money. So I dropped everything and left. 447 words.
• FFXIV – Conjurer, Part 1. 2014-02-05 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Healing
  
  During the time I’ve been waiting in FFXIV endgame queues for my Bard, I’ve leveled all my other adventuring classes to 15 through a combination of FATEs, levemetes, and hunting log completion. (You’d think leveling to 15 would be easy, but in reality the time it takes to get from level 10 to level 15 seems endless.) My goal was to get all the classes to 15, then pick one to dive into and level the rest of the way to 50. At the time of this writing, the winning class is Conjurer, which I have gotten to 27, mainly in dungeons. 459 words.
• FFXIV – Conjurer, Part 2. 2014-02-06 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Healing
  
  With such slow casting times, you’d think that the optimal way to play a Conjurer would be to spam Cures on the tank so he’s always full. That’s what I did in Rift, more-or-less, with the Purifier class. (Prior to Storm Legion, at least.) Welllllll, see, there’s this thing called ’threat.’ I may be completely wrong, but in my meager experience so far, I feel like healing generates a lot of threat in FFXIV. At least in the early levels. That means you can’t just keep blasting Cures all over the place unless you want every mob running straight toward you. (It reminds me a lot of the early days of Neverwinter.) So there’s a balancing act of casting just enough Cures to keep the tank alive but not enough to pull threat from him. Which leads to some uncomfortable waiting, knowing your tank is taking damage, but also knowing you can’t cast a heal on him without commiting suicide. If I’m in doubt, I cast the heal anyway and hope that the tank is aware enough to pull the mobs off of me before I get killed. Most of the time that works. Mostly. 589 words.
• Landmark – Paying For Alpha. 2014-02-07 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  On the issue of paying for Alpha access, I’m having a hard time getting worked up about it. On the surface it seems like an outrage, but the more I think about it, the more it sounds conceptually identical to pre-ordering. It’s long been a trend that if you pre-order an MMO, you get “early access.” I remember this was the case way back with Warhammer Online. It’s just that now, instead of 5 days of early access, you get 5 months of early access. Or more. 481 words.
• Rift – Dreamweaving In 2.6. 2014-02-10 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Don’t get me wrong, I am ecstatic to see Rift adding new “stuff” to the game, but unfortunately Dreamweaving-a crafting profession for enhancing Dimensions-is way far down on the list of things that interest me. Dreamweaving allegedly allows you to craft thingys and gizmos and whatsises for your Dimensions, but I have yet to do much of anything with my Dimensions, except dump in all the Dimension items that keep filling up my inventory. My Dimension space (which is so unattended that I don’t even know its name) looks like an episode of Hoarders. 402 words.
• Landmark – Now With Inversion. 2014-02-11 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Last Wednesday, SOE patched Landmark with a pretty significant list of bug fixes. The only part that mattered to me, of course, was the addition of an invert mouse option. Yay! I can play! I’m still not going to build anything complicated, though, because … well, it’s going to get wiped. Either accidentally or intentionally. So there’s no point in wasting the effort. So basically all I’ve done so far is run around and chop down trees or dig holes in the dirt. 399 words.
• FFXIV – Titan Hard Mode, The Impossible PUG. 2014-02-12 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  In FFXIV, one of your endgame tasks is to follow the Relic Reborn quest line in order to build your “relic weapon,” which is one of the better weapons in the game (but not the best, of course, because that would be too easy). I’ve been pretty lazy about it because statistically the Artimes Bow doesn’t seem that much better than the Garuda Bow I’m currently using. But anyway the final step of the Relic Reborn quest (at least I think it’s the last one) involves retrieving some primal materials by defeating the three Hard Mode Trials. 1,003 words.
• Landmark – Copper Found, Europe Bound. 2014-02-13 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Landmark continues to be a relaxing gathering experience. Remember when I said I couldn’t mine anything but Dirt, Stone, Tourmaline, and Agate? Well it turns out I had been running around all this time in a Tier 2 zone with a Tier 1 pickaxe. Doh! I have no idea how I got to Tier 2, but to get back I had to run to the central hub thingy-which probably has a cool name but I don’t know what it is-and click the big crystal hanging up in the air. I was then able to select a Tier 1 zone/place/island/thingy/whatever. Once I was in the right place, I found all kinds of copper to mine. There were orange spots on the ground everywhere! 520 words.
• ESO – Speculating on Zenimax. 2014-02-14 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Zenimax is getting a lot of flak for their strict NDA, and I thought I would speculate on why they might think it’s a good idea to keep it in place, when other early games don’t. Which is not to imply that I think it’s a good idea, or a bad idea, or anything in between. I’m not a games journalist, so I couldn’t care less whether it has an NDA or not. (Usually journalists complain the loudest about NDAs because not being able to write a story means lost eyeballs.) Average joe gamer probably doesn’t care either. 665 words.
• ESO – Impressions from Beta. 2014-02-18 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So apparently Zenimax lifted their NDA a day after I speculated why they hadn’t lifted their NDA. Neat. Anyway, now I can post what I wrote about ESO mainly after the second beta weekend I was in. Fair warning: The maximum level I have achieved is 7. That’s a couple of hours of gameplay. I have absolutely no idea what the endgame is like; I don’t even know what the maximum level is. 801 words.
• ESO – It’s About The Horse. 2014-02-19 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Yeah I pre-ordered the $79 Imperial Edition of ESO. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it? I didn’t do it for the Imperial race, which I don’t care about. I fully expect Zenimax to make that available for purchase later anyway. I didn’t do it because I’m an Elder Scrolls fan boy and I think ESO is awesome. (I tolerate TES and I merely think ESO is better than average.*) I mainly bought it for the horse. Because I happen to remember how much gold it took to buy those things in the beta, and I was able to calculate the amount of time it would take to buy one based on the rate that I was accumulating gold. (Hint: Infinite.) 671 words.
• FFXIV – Thaumaturge Dirge. 2014-02-20 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  When I was leveling the Archer/Bard, I often looked at Thaumaturges and Black Mages and wished I were them. They always seem to do more damage, and they just have cooler spells with their fire and ice and whatnot. And even more importantly, they actually have a useful Limit Break. (I would not wear the silly Gandalf hats, though.) Then I actually played a THM through level 15, and quickly changed my mind. It’s not often that I actively dislike a class, or find it so annoying to play that I actually wish harm upon the developers who created it. But THM was definitely one of those classes. It was very aggravating to solo with, because every time you move out of an enemy telegraph, you stop casting. And the casting times are really, really long, so by the time you’re ready to get another spell off, the enemy is forcing you to move again. Once I got to 15 I was glad to park that class. It will probably be the absolute last class I ever get to 50. 490 words.
• GW2 – Escape from Lion's Arch. 2014-02-21 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Still wanting to want to play GW2 more, but falling short. Here’s a summation of the new GW2 content: Same chaotic zerg fights, different location. I will give them credit for blowing up Lion’s Arch though. That’s cool. But the stuff you do in the blown up zone isn’t enough to pull me away from FFXIV. I still have no idea who Scarlet is. Or why Lion’s Arch got blown up. Only in this last update was I able to put a face to the name, because it’s the first time I can ever remember seeing Scarlet. At least I assume that was her up on the ship looking diabolical in the cut scene. 223 words.
• FFXIV – I Said It Couldn’t Be Done. 2014-02-25 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Amazingly, I completed Titan Hard Mode in a PUG! Finally. It took around three weeks of trying. I stubbornly refused to use the Party Finder because, since I had spent so much time attempting it in a PUG, I wanted to finish it in a PUG. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make much sense. :) He's gooooone!! Yay! So I finally got my Relic Weapon. And I upgraded it, too. Yay. 83 words.
• FFXIV – Ding! 50 White Mage. 2014-02-26 3:15 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Hrm, well, this is the first day I haven’t had a workday post scheduled in advance in a long time, and I can’t find anything among my Drafts that is both finished and interesting. I can report the fascinating news that I reached White Mage level 50 in FFXIV last night. I had been buying Darklight Healing gear for a while, so I was able to quickly jump from around item level ~40 to item level ~60 in a span of moments. I only need to buy the Darklight robe to complete that set, then it’s off to Crystal Tower to farm iLevel 80 gear. 270 words.
• WoW – $60 Seems Reasonable. 2014-02-27 7:49 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I don’t have a problem with Blizzard’s $60 for a level 90 character. It’s within reach, but high enough to keep it from being an impulse buy (for me, at least). I think I would only pay to level a brand new character. It seems like a waste of money to take a mid-level or higher character up to 90. If you’re a person who can play all day and night, I could see where $60 seems high, because you can probably level a character to 90 within a month of subscription time, which is $15 I think. Even I could probably level a character to 90 in less than four months, which is $60 of subscription time. (Not counting 3-month discounts.) 312 words.
• FFXIV FATEs Versus GW2 Zergs. 2014-02-28 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  This thought occurred to me one night while I was running around in a FATE group in FFXIV: Why am I enjoying this zerg but when I play in a GW2 zerg in Escape from Lion’s Arch I want to gouge my own eyes out? When I’m in a FFXIV zerg (or Rift, or most any other), I have a feeling of control. I’m filling a specific role, and when I execute my part of the plan, the whole group experience is better. I feel like I’m part of the team, one of the people working together, following some unspoken telepathic plan to reach the collective goal of loot and experience. When the enemy is killed, I have a sense of a job well done. 280 words.

March, 2014

• Landmark et al – Take My Money!. 2014-03-03 4:07 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Here’s my feedback to SOE regarding Landmark’s proposed monetization plans: Hey can I just pay you and not get spammed with advertising for potions and costumes? That would be super. Oh, and by the way I already paid you. Maybe factor that into your plans, too. Also, are you ever planning to increase the percentage of your game that is finished? It’s been at 60% now for a month. (Okay, that probably wasn’t fair. But I still think it’s ridiculous to claim that Landmark is anywhere near 60% finished.) 209 words.
• FFXIV Crafting. 2014-03-04 5:34 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Just once I would like to play an MMO where it is easier to level a crafting profession than it is to level your character. Often it seems pointless to level a crafting profession because the equipment you make lags so far behind the level of your character. FFXIV is better than most games, but I’m experiencing it again. I wanted to meld my own materia for the level 50 Relic Reborn quest, but guess what? You need a level 50 crafting profession to do that. 335 words.
• GW2 – Loot Rains From The Sky. 2014-03-05 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m a little annoyed with the loot in GW2. Loot basically rains from the sky in that game, filling your bags in mere seconds. I never thought I would say anything like this in an MMO, but: For the love of god, stop giving me so much loot! You can’t take a step without getting some kind of trophy bag. And when you open that bag, out spills two or three or six or ten more pieces of loot! 500 words.
• Bye End of Nations. 2014-03-06 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m not sad to see End of Nations go. The “MMORTS” genre did not inspire me to want to play that game, and when we later learned it was to be reshaped into a “MOBA” my interest plummeted even farther. (I simply do not “get” MOBAs - so much clicking.) Instead, I’m ecstatic to see Trion devoting more resources to Rift, Trove, Defiance, and particularly ArcheAge, a game that I am still looking forward to seeing sometime within my lifetime. 170 words.
• ESO – What Does Floaty Mean?. 2014-03-07 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Today I am pondering what it means when combat feels “floaty.” This is one of the most common criticisms I’ve seen about ESO: “The combat is too floaty.” I’ve seen this criticism leveled against a lot of games over the years, actually. But what does that mean? I don’t know about anyone else, but when I was swinging my dual daggers in the ESO beta, at no point did my Argonian begin to float away into the sky*. His feet stayed right there on the ground where they belonged. His weapons did not levitate out of his hands, either. So what in god’s name do people mean when they say combat is “floaty?” 389 words.
• ArcheAge RU – Foreign Invasion. 2014-03-10 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  In a burst of ambition, I installed and played the Russian version of ArcheAge for a little while. You have to sign up for a Mail.ru account (which I guess is the Russian version of Google Mail) and then you can download it. At least you could over the weekend, I don’t know if it still works. I used these handy instructions: http://www.mmocast.com/featured/archeage-ru-account-registration-guide-english-patch/ Not being able to read or speak Russian hampers the experience a bit, but not as much as you might think. If you’re an MMO veteran you should be able to figure out which buttons to press. The only thing I wasn’t able to find was an invert mouse feature, which served to remind me again that I should strongly consider re-training myself not to need it. I play shooters and MMOs a whole lot more than I ever play flight simulators. 690 words.
• Rift – New Souls in 2.7. 2014-03-12 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  When last I was playing Rift a lot, somewhere around 2.3 I guess (just before and after the F2P transition), I was super excited to hear they were going to (evenutally) add new souls so that every class could play every role. The idea of a tanking mage was too awesome for words. Even from the very beginning of Rift 1.0, I thought it would be really cool if you could tank dungeons with an Elementalist pet. 328 words.
• Trove Is A Better Landmark Than Landmark. 2014-03-13 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve been dipping into Trove a bit more lately, because it’s become quite stable. I don’t know how to say this politely, but it’s a much better game than Landmark. :) Trove plays a bit like what we’ve been told Landmark will be. That is, you can explore, fight monsters, level up, find resources, craft stuff, and build stuff. The thing about Trove is that after about three months of alpha, all of those things work. In Landmark, after a bit more than a month of alpha, most of those things don’t work, we haven’t seen many changes at all, and we only have promises of future deliveries. 364 words.
• WildStar – No Need For Impressions. 2014-03-14 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Everybody’s giving their impressions of WildStar now that the NDA is down, but honestly I saw enough in the hours and hours and hours of livestreams that were going on way back in December to decide that I was probably going to get it. Even if it wasn’t a game that looked fun, I’d still want to at least see what everyone was talking about, and I expect it to be the MMO everyone will be playing in the second half of 2014, with a brief distraction for the new WoW Expansion. 263 words.
• ArcheAge RU – Growing On Me. 2014-03-17 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Note: Apparently you’re not supposed to be able to play ArcheAge RU from the U.S. anymore, but for some reason I’m still able to. ArcheAge is growing on me. I feel like I was too harsh on it in my first report. The graphics actually aren’t bad at all, and better than Fallen Earth, at least color-wise. (The first time, I had played AA after FFXIV, which has drop-dead gorgeous graphics, so my perception was probably skewed. This time, I did not.) 971 words.
• FFXIV – Teetering On The Edge Of Burnout. 2014-03-19 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I feel like I’m at a crossroads with FFXIV. I’m teetering on that line between “it’s fun to play” and “it’s work to play.” If I try to push myself much more I’m almost certainly going to burn out. Right now, when I log in each night after work, I have a to-do list of things I want to accomplish: I want to level at least one gathering class. I want to level one crafting class (I often skip that in favor of gathering right now). I want to do a Low-Level Duty Roulette for my Dragoon class. And then I want to do one or more instances of Crystal Tower with my White Mage class to collect WHM gear and mythology tokens. (I know it’s not the most efficient way to get myth tokens, but it’s the easiest if you are lazy like I am.) If I don’t accomplish all of those things, I feel like I’m “falling behind.” 300 words.
• WildStar, ArcheAge, and Landmark. 2014-03-21 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Some random news bits. I pre-ordered WildStar, which now allows me to finally play in the beta. By the way I did sign up for the beta many, many long months ago, but they never invited me. They thought they could keep me out, but who’s laughing now? Trion is apparently hoping to get ArcheAge out this year (2014). That would be super. I hope it’s after summer, though, so that I can be sufficiently bored with WildStar before it comes out. http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/03/16/trion-cm-confirms-f2p-archeage-says-earned-and-crafted-items-a/ 162 words.
• Claustrophobic Endgame. 2014-03-24 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I figured out what is missing from my daily FFXIV experience: Soloing. I realized this when I logged into Rift and picked up my Dendrome quest line where I last left off months and months ago. There’s something fundamentally satisfying about toodling around by yourself, chipping away at quests and turning them in. You can stop at any time and fix yourself a drink, or make a sandwich, or whatever. You can get up and go to the store, leaving your character standing right out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody will be waiting for you. There’s no pressure to perform at peak efficiency. You can watch Netflix while you play. You can listen to an audiobook while you play. There’s almost limitless freedom when you’re out soloing. 357 words.
• Rift – Re-thinking the Solo 53 Warrior. 2014-03-25 6:31 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I thought maybe I could use this time before ESO launches to level another character in Rift up to 60. The lucky winner of my attention is a Dwarf Warrior, who is currently at 53 and wandering around the depressing, sickly, bruised blue-and-purple landscapes of Seratos. It seemed like a great idea until I remembered that almost every single encounter ended with my health nearly depleted. I read once that the Storm Legion zones had been nerfed, but they don’t seem all that much easier to me. If I run a DPS build, I take so much damage that I have to stop after every encounter to heal. If I run a tank build, the encounters take so long that I still lose most of my health from being exposed for so long. The point is that I really miss soloing with the Harbinger-Chloromancer build which self-healed so much that I never had to stop - I could go from mob to mob at a dead run. 270 words.
• WildStar – Trying Out The Classes. 2014-03-26 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Having pre-ordered, I used my first beta weekend in WildStar to figure out what I’m going to play at launch. I think my first character is going to be either a Warrior or an Esper. Probably Warrior, because it was the most fun. Those are the only two classes that “clicked” for me in the first three or four levels. So far, ranged combat feels weird to me with the telegraph system. I didn’t think I would like any ranged class but the Esper felt tolerable I think because it actually forces you to stand still when you cast. It is no match for the fun of the sword-wielding Warrior class, though. (I didn’t try the Stalker but I assume it would also be fun.) 257 words.
• Rift – Tempest For The Win. 2014-03-27 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I spent most of a whole weekend playing … Rift! Man that game is awesome. Have I mentioned that? It’s the best WoW-clone of all the WoW-clones. Definitely more better than WoW itself. I leveled my Warrior from 53 to 57, using a combination of quests and Instant Adventures. Mostly IAs. I used up three 160% Experience potions that I had from some Trion gift or another, and then I got a 30-day Patron status so I could use the daily 40% Experience bonuses for the rest of the trip to 60, which will probably occur during the week. 365 words.
• GW2 – Feature Pack. 2014-03-28 1:06 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  My reaction to the upcoming GW2 Feature Pack: Why the heck did we have to wait until after the Living Story to get these things?? Most of what I’ve read falls into the category of “it probably should have been like that in the first place.” The Wardrobe and Dye changes sound awesome. I have occasionally tried to figure out what to do with all the various “skins” I’ve picked up, but I don’t have a clue. I’m afraid I’m going to accidentally delete them or apply them wrong somehow. I don’t have very many, and they’re all mismatched pieces from various sets anyway. Having this Wardrobe system will make it way easier to deal with that stuff. (I hope.) 207 words.
• ESO – Almost Here. 2014-03-28 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Holy crap, ya’ll! The Early Access for ESO is almost here! It’s a 5-day head start, and that’s just a couple of days away! I’m trying to think back to the last MMO I played at or before the actual launch day. Was it Rift? Maybe it was Guild Wars 2, but I don’t think so. I think it was Rift. That was like 2011. Good lord. That was ages ago. 198 words.
• ESO – Something New And Shiny!. 2014-03-31 5:59 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  As you’re reading this, I’m undoubtedly playing ESO. (Actually I’m probably at work, but I’ll be playing it when I get home.) I’m enjoying that magic time in every MMO when you don’t yet know all the things that make you want to quit playing. I won’t bore you with my impressions of ESO because a) I’ve already posted them, and b) you’ve already got it because it’s a new MMO and you know you can’t stand not playing a new MMO that everyone is talking about, no matter how many bad reviews you’ve seen or how much you oppose a subscription model on principal. 367 words.

April, 2014

• ESO – Early Days. 2014-04-01 2:45 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Super fastly-written thoughts on ESO. It’s awesome! Even more awesomer that I thought it would be! That’s probably just first-day excitement talking though. But still, it’s pretty good. And new. Anything new is good, if you ask me. At least for a couple of days. Smoothest launch ever. No network-related problems. No queues, no lag, no disconnects. None, zero, zip. Got in five minutes before 7 AM without issue. Many problems I had from beta were fixed. For example, I no longer get launched into the air as if from a cannon when I walk up stairs. I no longer get stuck in NPC dialogs. 671 words.
• Landmark – The Dreaded Cobalt Pick. 2014-04-02 4:16 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Last week I had some generally negative things to say about Landmark, so I thought I would balance it out with some positive things this week. And then follow it with something negative again. I spent a big chunk of time on Saturday playing Landmark the first significant time I’ve spent in the beta. It occurred to me that Landmark is essentially an endgame gear grind from the moment you step into it. 600 words.
• ESO – First Patch. 2014-04-03 5:06 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Still enjoying ESO. I was pleased with the first patch yesterday. It addressed almost every problem I had encountered. Finally I could capture Balreth’s soul and continue the main storyline, which, as I expected, unlocked a whole string of other quests in the zone. Based on just this one patch, I feel like Zenimax is going to release larger patches farther apart, rather than push out small patches frequently. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Their patch notes were not terrible, but I feel like they weren’t 100% complete either. (I am completely spoiled by Square Enix patch notes, though.) 655 words.
• ESO – First Time in Fungal Grotto. 2014-04-04 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  When the ESO servers came back up after the inexplicable pre-launch downtime, I threw caution to the wind and jumped into the Fungal Grotto dungeon to see what it was like. I was level 14 and would soon out-level it, so I figured I probably wouldn’t have another chance. I picked the DPS role because that’s always the least stressful way to explore how dungeons work in a new game. Also, I didn’t have much in the way of tanking or healing skills. (Although as it turned out, I had to do both healing and tanking in the dungeon.) 813 words.
• Landmark – Ancient Rootstocks Found At Last. 2014-04-05 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  A quick followup to the Cobalt Pick debacle: The last Landmark patch fixed the invisible Ancient Rootstock trees. They are still rare, but now it’s more like 1 in 50 trees instead of 1 in 50,000,000 trees. That’s an acceptable level of rare-ness for me. It’s rare enough that you feel a small thrill of victory when you find one, but not so rare that you want to quit playing. 70 words.
• ESO – The Good and The Bad. 2014-04-14 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Lucky you. Because I can’t seem to post by email during the week any more, you get to read an epic novel of a post put together over the weekend. Falls-on-Steps. Yeah, I made an Argonian even though I played one in beta. It’s actually been kind of nice that I haven’t been able to post. I’m having so much fun playing ESO that I don’t want to analyze the game very much, because then I might start to wonder if I’m really supposed to be having this much fun or not. Perhaps I’ve somehow been “tricked” into thinking the game is fun when it’s really not. 2,012 words.
• ESO – When Zones Look The Same. 2014-04-15 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  The technical difficulties seem to have fixed themselves. Shrug. I have one more criticism about ESO, although it’s not exactly a “criticism” so much as it is merely an “observation of the way ESO does things.” Most of the zones look the same. Stonefalls, near the beginning of the Ebonheart Pact starting point. Not exactly the same. Some of them have jungle trees and some of them have deciduous trees. Some of them are more rocky and some of them are more grassy. Some of them have oceans and some of them have swamps. 534 words.
• FFXIV – Two Point What Now?. 2014-04-16 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I never got a chance to write my impressions of Final Fantasy XIV’s 2.2 patch, so I will do so now. I only had about one day to look at it before ESO came out, so there are some gaps in my knowledge. Like, for example, how I didn’t look at any of the new dungeons or trials. I did get a chance to sort-of look into Glamours, but it appears that you need Tailor, Leatherworker, and/or Armorer classes to create those glamour crystals, and of course I do not have those beyond level 15. 213 words.
• GW2 – Dreading Logging In. 2014-04-17 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I was interested in checking out the new GW2 Feature Pack until I read Zubon’s warning. Apparently you have to re-do and re-learn all your characters after you login. I suppose I should have expected it, given the complete restructuring of the trait-lines. But facing the cold, hard reality of having to re-learn your class from the ground up is pretty daunting. Especially when you haven’t thought about GW2 traits in ages. 293 words.
• H1Z1 – You Have Got To Be Kidding Me. 2014-04-18 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So. H1Z1. Another zombie game. That’s already enough to make me not care about it. Zombies were old when The Secret World came out. (Yes, TSW is already an MMO with zombies.) Zombies are now so old that you can’t help but roll your eyes whenever you see another zombie game. “But wait, in this one the zombies can breakdance! See how relevant we are!” No. Zombies are dead. Pun intended. They are like elves in a fantasy MMO. Except there are no other races to distract you from the elves. 350 words.
• Landmark – Listening To Players?. 2014-04-21 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I have to disagree with MJ at Massively when she writes, somewhat defensively, that SOE is doing a good job providing what the players want in Landmark. I like MJ and all but SOE has definitely not listened to any of my feedback. Like for example when I keep asking for them to turn it into an actual game. If they are listening to anyone, they must only be listening to people who just want to build fancier houses and role-play in them. Because the only things they’ve added to the game since the beginning are more and fancier parts with which to build things. 483 words.
• ArcheAge RU – Flailing Around. 2014-04-22 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I thought I would do a quick update on my progress in ArcheAge RU. I have made it to level 12. Update complete. Thusfar I have still not been able to enjoy any of the vaunted sandbox features of ArcheAge, because I still can’t read Russian*. I have sort-of puzzled out how to grow vegetables from seeds, and how to make food from the vegetables. (I don’t precisely know what happens when you eat food - you get a buff but it only lasts about 30 seconds.) Recently I also learned how to make potions from some of the plants I’ve gathered. 574 words.
• GW2 – Feature Pack Survived. 2014-04-23 3:00 PM.
  • Classes
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  I took the plunge and jumped into GW2, post-Feature Pack. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The meaning of the traits came back to me as I was looking over them, and I dumped points into things that sounded familiar. I haven’t done anything even remotely close to min-maxing in GW2 so it probably doesn’t matter. Also I don’t do dungeons or anything competitive, so my lack of optimization won’t affect anyone but me. 272 words.
• ESO – The View From 30. 2014-04-24 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  My Templar has reached level 30, and I’m starting to notice a few long-term trends in ESO gameplay. First, my character hasn’t really changed very much. I expected that having more skill points available would allow me to make significant changes to my gameplay style over time, but I am still using basically the same set of 5 skills that I started with. And to be honest, the newer skills available to me don’t sound very interesting or helpful. Consequently I have a surplus of skill points while I wait for something better to open up. (And that’s after spending many points on crafting.) 478 words.
• ArcheAge – Founder’s Packs, Resisting Temptation. 2014-04-28 3:00 PM.
  • Advice
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  As announced on Trion’s live stream Thursday, ArcheAge Founder’s Packs are now available. They are expensive. $149.99, $99.99, and $49.99 for Archeum, Gold, and Silver, respectively. Archeum gets you into the game right now, playing until launch day, otherwise you only get to play in beta “events” starting in June. So let’s discuss. With myself. My first Russian glider! I think they are fair prices. Based on the laws of supply and demand, it makes perfect sense that it costs $150 to get into the ArcheAge alpha. If you’ve seen any of Trion’s live streams, you know that the hype and demand for ArcheAge is through the roof. I can’t remember the last game that I saw such blind, ravenous hunger for. (I’m not quite sure it’s justified but that’s another story.) People will do anything to play this game. It’s more of a cultural phenomenon now, I think. Like waiting in line to buy the first iPad. 874 words.
• ArcheAge – It’s The New Black. 2014-04-29 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Remember how I said I talked myself out of buying the ArcheAge Archeum Founder’s Pack? That only lasted through Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday. Then I bought it Sunday. I hadn’t even published my post about how I wouldn’t buy it before I bought it. Stupid peer pressure. Stupid ArcheAge RU not being in English. Stupid ESO not being addictive enough. Warning: I didn’t feel bad about spending the money because I already knew that I liked the game. If you’re not sure, and you want to try the game before spending $150, I highly recommend finding a way into the Russian version. Or the Korean version, for that matter. 520 words.
• ESO – Public Dungeon Boss Bots. 2014-04-30 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  Massively wondered why public dungeon boss bots are so hard to stamp out in ESO. I thought I would answer this in a blog post, because any comment I posted would be lost in the noise. I don’t have any first-hand “inside baseball” knowledge but from what I’ve pieced together from years and years of developer posts about how bots are dealt with, this is my guess on why they can’t just snap their fingers and make all the bots in public dungeons disappear: 392 words.

May, 2014

• ESO – Decision Time. 2014-05-01 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Okay I’m just going to say it. ESO is not holding my attention. I keep logging in and thinking to myself, “You know, I don’t particularly feel like playing this.” I’ll go through a quest or two and then log out again. It’s a major factor in why I went ahead and dropped cough cough dollars on ArcheAge. And yet I can’t think of anything wrong with ESO (well, except for inventory management - it’s really a pain). 404 words.
• ArcheAge – Hello World, The Trade Run (Updated). 2014-05-02 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  UPDATE: This post was written during the Alpha, and only applies to Humans and Elves. (I haven’t played any Eastern races yet.) As of the Western ArcheAge launch, the first trade run quest is no longer Strawberry Jam. It’s Solzreed Dried Food which requires 50 Trimmed Meat (made from e.g. butchering chickens) and 35 Grapes (made from e.g. harvesting grapevines). And the certificate, of course. The cash reward is apparently greater now, as shown below. 1,185 words.
• ESO – Sub Cancelled For Now. 2014-05-06 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I went ahead and cancelled my ESO subscription. I’ve got a few more days left but I suspect my Templar will stay at level 36. I think I will wait two or three months and return to see what changes have been made. I like the direction I’m seeing in the roadmap; I’m just itching to do other things right now. Go to the light! In the meantime, I’m planning to play Rift 2.7 when it drops on May 7 until the WildStar head start. I have created a Defiant mage and leveled him up so that I can start him tanking in Realm of the Fae and Iron Tombs. I haven’t seen anything about how the mage tanking soul works yet so it should be interesting. 249 words.
• ESO – The Power of Looting Barrels. 2014-05-07 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  When I first started playing ESO, I detested the idea that every barrel, box, and urn had something in it. That was one of my least favorite parts of Oblivion and Skyrim: Picking up cheese and vegetables in every barrel. You didn’t have to, but the healing from a big stack of corn could save you in a pinch, because it was too expensive to buy health potions. The possibilities are practically endless! 379 words.
• Rift – Trying Out The Arbiter in 2.7. 2014-05-12 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  • Tanking
  
  I tried out the mage tanking soul Arbiter in Rift 2.7 on Thursday night. Overall I was pleased with its performance in Realm of the Fae, but I’m a bit worried that it will be “complicated” to play at higher levels. Take that with a big grain of salt though as I am far from an expert tank, and I have only seen low-level abilities. The "Arcanist" preset with the Arbiter, Stormcaller, and Warlock soul trees. 533 words.
• ESO – Complete One-Eighty On Subbing. 2014-05-13 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  • Tanking
  
  So, yeah, I changed my mind and subbed for one month of ESO. I did it after I played the Arbiter in Rift for a night, and realized to my horror that there was no way that I would be able to fill all of my gaming time between now and the WildStar launch with Rift tanking. I sort of forgot to factor in my terror of tanking high-level dungeons in PUGs. There are only a handful of low-level dungeons that I’m comfortable with, so it won’t be very long before tanking becomes a hellish, stressful nightmare, regardless of what I think of the soul. 210 words.
• WildStar – Are You Sure It Gets Better?. 2014-05-14 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  According to my site statistics, I should be writing about ArcheAge and nothing but ArcheAge. But since I’m no slave to the SEO system, I’m going to write about WildStar instead. (Because everyone else is.) The skinniest hero in the land. I’ve already pre-ordered, but lately I’ve been forcing myself to play in the open beta anyway. I use the word “forcing” deliberately, because I’m having a hard time getting excited about this game. 559 words.
• ArcheAge Stream – On the Road to Cinderstone Moor. 2014-05-15 12:51 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Streaming
  
  It occurred to me that I should probably post the YouTube videos of my streaming “shows” here on the blog. (I am nothing if not a consummate professional broadcaster.) So here is the first episode from Thursday, May 1, showing the long journey to Cinderstone Moor to find PvP. Others to follow. Link updated. 54 words.
• FFXIV – Trials, A Cheat-sheet For Ranged DPS. 2014-05-16 3:00 PM.
  • Advice
  • Dungeons
  • MMORPG
  
  (Resurrected from my Drafts folder.) Trials in FFXIV are cool little instances that consist of a single boss in an arena-like setting. The normal ones require four players, and you queue for them just like a dungeon. (Or if you actually know real humans who play games, you can go in with a pre-made party I guess.) I find them quite fun. This is an 8-man Titan Hard Mode trial, but you get the idea. 607 words.
• May, The MMO Crisis Month. 2014-05-19 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  May has been an MMO crisis month. I can only stand to play ESO for a quest or two at a time. There’s nothing wrong with the game (except the horrible inventory management and dungeon grouping tools). I accept full responsibility for my lack of enjoyment. At level 41, my stupid Two-Handed Templar build feels weak and ineffective, and it has almost no AoE damage capability. Everyone around me in public dungeons is burning down big groups in seconds, but I have to wack on mobs one at a time. 535 words.
• Black Gold Online Closed Beta Impressions. 2014-05-21 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  I happened to get a closed beta key for Black Gold Online from an MMORPG.com giveaway (I think) a while back. I was super excited, because I thought I was getting a Black Desert key. But alas, Black Gold is not Black Desert, so I forgot about it until I tried it out in a fit of boredom over the weekend. It seems that there is no NDA so I guess it’s safe for me to post this. 566 words.
• PvE, PvP, and Racing. 2014-05-23 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • PvP
  • Responses
  • Discussion
  
  The topic of discussion from the NBI Talkback is whether or not PvE and PvP mix in MMOPRGs. At long last I have some time to write about it, now that everyone else has moved on. The answer is no, they don’t mix. Thanks for reading. But seriously, we’ve all seen the sharp divide between the PvE and PvP communities within any given MMORPG. In my opinion, it’s not because of the games or the players. The problem to me is that PvE and PvP require two entirely different competitive mindsets. 1,298 words.
• On Hardcore Raiding. 2014-05-27 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  • Discussion
  
  After I listened to Massively’s latest podcast featuring an interview with WildStar developers, I realized that I hadn’t said anything about Carbine’s hardcore raiding philosophy, which is a topic of some mild controversy. One of them raid thingys, blatantly stolen from the WildStar site. If you aren’t aware, WildStar raids are supposed to be really hard like the old school raids of yore. They are taking the stance that their raids are meant for hardcore guilds and players only, and they won’t be dumbing them down over time like most other games do. Here is their video on them: 895 words.
• Age of Conan – A Fun Diversion. 2014-05-28 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Indicative of my continuing disinterest in ESO, I downloaded and installed Age of Conan and played for a good four or five hours over the weekend. Enough time to get my highest level character, a Dark Templar, from level 55 to level 57. (I honestly do not remember what role the Dark Templar is, but I have a sword and shield.) Also enough time for me to remember why I don’t play AoC all the time. 369 words.
• ArcheAge – Austera Trade Run. 2014-05-29 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  • Stories
  
  As an elf, in order to get your 16×16 farm design in ArcheAge, you have to complete four Trade Run quests. I’m assuming it’s the same for humans, and basically the same pattern if you’re one of the Eastern factions. (I don’t know of any other ways to buy these scarecrow plots … I have seen people with multiple plots but I don’t know how they got them. I haven’t been able to find them for sale on Mirage Isle.) 1,681 words.
• ArcheAge – PvP Jamboree. 2014-05-30 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  • Stories
  
  I got a chance to experience a little bit of large-scale PvP during the ArcheAge Livestream: Beyond Bloodlust a while back. They invited everyone to go to Halcyana to fight it out while they talked about PvP. Since I’m not feeling terribly witty or verbose, here are some screenshots to commemorate the event: The battlefield. Tab, shoot, tab, shoot, tab, shoot. Returning to the battlefield after getting killed. The inevitable result of all PvP in every MMORPG. 77 words.

June, 2014

• WildStar – Headstart Screenshots. 2014-06-02 3:00 PM.
  • Dungeons
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Just some random screenshots from the WildStar Headstart weekend. I started out playing a Spellslinger, thinking I would play an easy-mode ranged DPS class to tour all the dungeons, but I realized at level 8 that I was bored and disgruntled. I switched to an Esper, and started to have a lot more fun. It also helped to choose the Everstar Grove zone which I had not seen in beta. 194 words.
• WildStar – Before and After Launch. 2014-06-03 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Before I’m writing this on Friday before the WildStar head start launch. By the time you read this, I’ll have already been playing for a while. I’m anxious to start playing, but I don’t feel nearly as much excitement as I did for the ESO launch. Part of it might be that I saw a lot more of WildStar in the beta than I had seen of ESO in beta. I feel like I know how everything works in WildStar. (I probably don’t, but I feel like I’ve seen most of the game systems.) I don’t feel like I’m going to encounter anything radically different in the gameplay mechanics after level 10. 1,110 words.
• Weekend Versus Weeknight Characters. 2014-06-04 3:13 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  It just occurred to me that I am a completely different MMO gamer on weekends when compared to weekdays (weeknights, actually). For me, weekends are about exploration and discovery and lore, but on most weeknights, I just want to “grind” and avoid a lot of mental engagement. This WildStar launch weekend has given me a great example of the distinction. On Saturday and Sunday I spent a fair amount of time reading lore and quest text (or trying to, with that microscopic, reader-unfriendly font) and looking around at things. 258 words.
• WildStar – Adventure Difficulty. 2014-06-06 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  I thought I would expand a little bit on my experience with the difficulty of group content in WildStar. But first, I don’t agree with Herding Cats that the overland quests are difficult enough to encourage grouping. They don’t seem inordinately challenging to me, at least through level 16. (Though I suppose it depends on which other MMO you compare them to.) They are not a cakewalk, mind you, and you will die if you slip up or get overwhelmed (or stumble into one of those stupid red-outlined mini-bosses), but if you pay attention to your surroundings and go through the mobs methodically there isn’t much to worry about. (However, the quests that are marked for 2+ people usually are too difficult for one.) 755 words.
• WildStar – Monday Screenshots. 2014-06-09 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Just some amusing WildStar screenshots. Flying cows! Err wolves. Err ... whatever alien animals those are. I made the college football team! Got a toxic wasteland in your ear canal! (Styx reference? Kilroy Was Here? Get it?) Wait, I wanted fries with that Quarter Pounder. 45 words.
• WildStar – More Chore Than Game?. 2014-06-10 2:43 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Over the weekend I had a depressing realization: Playing WildStar is already becoming a chore. How can this be? I said before that questing is not inordinately challenging in WildStar, but I don’t know if I made it clear that the difficulty is higher than average. (Solo questing that is.) It takes some time and patience to thread your way through the packs of mobs out in the world without pulling too many. Up around level 20, you can’t just run around jauntily shooting everything in sight and expect to survive for very long, especially if you miss a telegraph. In other words, it’s work. 453 words.
• WildStar – Addons I Use. 2014-06-11 3:00 PM.
  • Advice
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  I’ve seen some others reporting the WildStar addons they are using, so here are mine.Overall I feel like WildStar addons are going to allow people to do “too much.” I mean, there’s an addon to automate the Simon games. Really Carbine? You put that in your API? I would not be surprised if we see aimbots very soon. But in the meantime:Active: 324 words.
• WildStar – Those Attunements Again. 2014-06-12 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  For some reason, the topic of WildStar raid attunements seems to be nearly as volatile as sexism in gaming, but hey, it’s something to write about, so here it is. To summarize the story so far: Some elitist jerk guild made an infographic showing the 12 hardcore steps you need to complete before you can raid in WildStar, and various bloggers have commented on it, with viewpoints ranging anywhere from “That’s insane!” to “That’s awesome!” 582 words.
• Friday Blues. 2014-06-13 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Status
  
  Today I’ve got the blues. It’s been a generally lousy week. I was going to skip posting today because I didn’t have anything queued up and in the broad spectrum of life, who really gives a crap whether one blog out of a billion misses a post. Instead I’m going to attempt to rid myself of this funk by writing a little bit, because it’s Friday morning and my workplace is dead as a doornail on Fridays so I have eight full hours to kill. 476 words.
• WildStar – Dungeons Are Too Hard… For PUGs. 2014-06-18 3:00 PM.
  • Dungeons
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Quick status report: My mood improved a lot over the weekend, and I had a mostly-enjoyable time playing WildStar. As of this writing I have a 25 Esper, 15 Spellslinger, 15 Warrior, and 15 Engineer. I spent a fair amount of time leveling up three alts so I could experience adventures/dungeons with some other classes. (Getting from level 10 to 15 is pretty brutal the third and forth time.) So dungeons. Man. Those two level 20 dungeons are serious PUG-killers. This is the first MMO where I’ve wondered why they bothered to include a LFG tool. Unless you’re a total masochist like I am, I would strongly advise you to join a guild to do dungeons in some kind of cohesive group. For reasons I’ll explain below, PUGs are going to be terrible or deserted. 1,139 words.
• WildStar – PUG Attunements!. 2014-06-19 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Yesterday I said that WildStar’s dungeons are too hard for PUGs, so today I’m going to solve that problem. Okay, I don’t really know how to solve it. But I have an idea: PUG Attunements! Or as I like to call it, “Stuff you have to do before you can queue in the dungeon finder.” In order for a PUG to even have a chance at success, you need each member of the group to know how to dodge and interrupt. You also need the tank to know how to maintain a little bit of threat, and you need the healer to know how to heal people who are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. 683 words.
• Mid-June MMO Status Report. 2014-06-20 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Not much to talk about, so here’s a non-WildStar MMO status report! ArcheAge. I’ve only logged in to pay the taxes on my measely 8×8 farm, and occasionally grow aspen trees. I don’t expect to play this any more until after it launches. The Secret World. I have logged in every few days to grind through a mission or two in the City of the Sun God zone. I’m attempting to collect AP and SP so I can fill out my skills better, which will better prepare me to go back to the Besieged Farmlands and continue the main story quest, which will then eventually allow me to get to Tokyo perhaps sometime in 2018. 421 words.
• WoW – Yeah, You Read That Right. 2014-06-23 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  There’s WildStar to play, right? So of course I spent a big chunk of time over the weekend playing … wait for it … World of Warcraft. I have about ten days left on a subscription so I figured why not use it. I leveled my Hunter from level 72 to 75 with plain old PvE questing. It now seems quite plausible to level up to 90 before WoD comes out. Especially when it seems like everything you touch fills up 5% of your experience bar. In other words, leveling in the WotLK zones feels a lot faster than it was in the BC zones. (But then I’m making no attempt to finish all the quests I find now.) 346 words.

July, 2014

• Ditching WildStar for WoW. 2014-07-02 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I cancelled my WildStar subscription*. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that I don’t feel like playing it any more. My Esper has remained largely static between levels 20 and 30, with no noticeable improvements in abilities, so I fully anticipate it will just be a repetitive chore to get from 30 to 50, at which time I would enter the cesspool of toxic behavior that I keep hearing about. Don’t fret, though, I’m sure I’ll be back someday. 383 words.
• WoW – 85 of 90 – Death March Continues. 2014-07-08 3:08 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Status of my WoW death march to 90: My Hunter is at level 85. I finished the Deepholm zone which was quite enjoyable; it was colorful and weird and gigantic (although strangely devoid of pets to tame). I had just started the Twilight Highlands, which the “Altoholic” addon told me was where I should go next, when I hit 85. It’s not as colorful but I love the way the dwarves go on those little raids to retake their little villages. Major props to Blizzard for improving the “look and feel” of their zones with every expansion. 514 words.
• WoW – 86 of 90 – Jade Forest. 2014-07-11 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’ve been experiencing a lot of drama at work lately, so vegging out with WoW has been pretty awesome. By the time I get home I’m not in any mood for challenging gameplay. I tried the Death Knight for the first time and couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to use all those weird rune resources or whatever. So on we go toward level 90 with the Hunter! I was going to spend a little more time in the Twilight Highlands to see what happened with the dwarves, but then I noticed that my experience bar barely moved after I turned in a few quests post-85. That was when I realized how many XP were required to get from 85 to 86 and I dropped everything to start the Mists of Pandaria quest line in Stormwind. 593 words.
• GW2 – Gates of Magoo Can Bite Me. 2014-07-14 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Note: The following ragey invective was written after dying a number of times during the GW2 Living Story 2 instance Fallen Hopes which I had hoped would be a fun way to kill some time while waiting to go to a doctor’s appointment. It was not. However, I have since completed it and moved on with my life. There is not much room to maneuver in here, and Marjory and Kasmeer are NO HELP AT ALL. 322 words.
• WoW – 87 of 90 – Jade Forest Continued. 2014-07-17 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Since I’m now pretty sure I’m going to hit 90 well before Draenor comes out (I’m guessing it will be late Fall at the earliest, but I hear mutterings that it may not even make it out by December), I no longer feel the need to rush to maximize my leveling. So I’ve stuck around in the Jade Forest doing “low” level (85) quests so I can complete the whole zone, rather than rushing ahead to the higher level zones. Still, I hit level 87 before I completed the entire Jade Forest. Has anyone noticed that leveling is really fast in WoW? 422 words.

August, 2014

• WoW – 88 of 90 – Valley of the Four Winds. 2014-08-06 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  July was a rough month for me, professionally speaking. To make a long story short, I’m unemployed now. Consequently I’m forcing myself not to spend any money on games, so I cancelled my WoW subscription and I’m sticking to bought-but-unplayed Steam games. But before I did that, I made it to level 88. Ding! Valley of the Four Winds was kind of a weird place. Lots of giant mutant vegetables and Monty Python-esque cute, furry, dangerous creatures. 99 words.
• Warlords of Draenor Launches Nov 13, 2014. 2014-08-14 10:56 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  I don’t really have anything to say about it, though. I just wanted my cleverly-crafted post title to draw you into my blog lair. Ha-ha! I social-engineered you! (I’ve been reading about copywriting and headlines today. Sorry.) I will say, though, that I’m a little surprised Warlords of Draenor is shipping so early. I figured it wouldn’t be out until December. I haven’t heard anything but “it’s not ready” from beta testers. 72 words.
• WoW: 10 Years, 10 Questions, 10 Answers. 2014-08-19 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Responses
  
  Alternative Chat is asking everyone 10 questions about WoW for a documentary. Most answers that I’ve seen have been coming from semi-hardcore WoW players, but I thought it would be fun to give answers from a non-hardcore WoW player. Plus, it’s good material for a blog post! 1. Why did you start playing Warcraft? I started playing in 2006 after I saw the infamous Make Love, Not Warcraft episode of Southpark. I had had a WoW trial CD (yes, a CD!) sitting around for a long time prior to that from (I think) a video card purchase. I was scared to try it, though, because I had previously played Asheron’s Call way too much and I was a little worried I would get sucked into WoW in the same way. (Turns out I didn’t.) 1,006 words.
• ArcheAge – It’s Not A PvP Gank-Fest. 2014-08-20 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Responses
  
  UPDATE 10/24 - Before you run to the comments to disprove me because of that one time you were ganked in a situation where you probably should have expected it, let me explain the purpose of this post. I’m not saying that ganking is impossible in ArcheAge, especially after level 30 (though I would argue that “ganking” is the wrong term to use after you’ve reached level 30). What I’m saying is that it’s extremely rare if you stay in safe zones, and you’re not going to lose anything if it happens, so there’s no reason not to try the game. You can level all the way to 50 in ArcheAge without ever leaving a safe zone, and maybe without ever engaging in combat. (One could argue that it’s actually faster to get to level 50 by farming and trading than by questing.) Also, your mileage may vary depending on which server you play on. The “original” servers like Kyrios and Naima and Kyprosa are probably more populated with people who came to ArcheAge just to gank people. Now back to your regularly scheduled post. 1,143 words.
• Neverwinter – Scourge Warlock First Impression. 2014-08-21 3:00 PM.
  • Classes
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  By accident I noticed that Neverwinter released a new update called Tyranny of Dragons, in which they added the very cool-sounding new class Scourge Warlock. In terms of gameplay, however, I found the SW a little on the “meh” side. I feel like they might have borrowed a lot from the Control Wizard because it felt very similar to me. (My first level-cap character was a CW.) The main attack is the same kind of triple-bolt spell that the CW uses. 363 words.
• What’s The Best Subscription-Only MMO?. 2014-08-29 3:00 PM.
  • Advice
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  What’s the best subscription-only MMO out there right now? If you could only pick one to maintain, which one would it be? (By the way, the possible answers are: WoW, EVE, WildStar, ESO, or FFXIV.) This is pretty easy for me to answer, actually: Final Fantasy XIV. Hands down. No need to even talk about it. It’s beautiful, it’s fun, there’s a lot to do, it’s updated often, it does every MMO mechanic (that matters) exactly right, and it’s cheaper than the others at $12/month. The only down side is that replayability is low if you ever want to make a second character. (You don’t need to, though, since you can play any class.) 328 words.

September, 2014

• FFXIV – Okay There’s One Bad Thing. 2014-09-01 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Status
  
  To be fair, here’s one thing that FFXIV doesn’t get right: I just re-installed it, subbed up, and jumped in again. (I went crazy and got a 3-month sub because I have some money coming in again heh.) I’m installing it on a different PC from when I last played it, so maybe you can guess what happened. All of my settings, keybinds, and HUD configurations were gone. Even the character-specific configurations like my gear sets were gone. 201 words.
• Landmark’s Combat Update. 2014-09-08 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  • Status
  
  Is something I know very little about. I re-downloaded the game and eagerly logged in. Combat was here! Finally something to do besides dig up ore! My claim was long since gone, which was fine because it had nothing on it except some crafting tables. I ran to the crystal hub thingy in the middle of the map-an object that I still don’t know what to call-and found the right table to craft a weapon. I made a sword. I equipped it. 499 words.
• FFXIV – Crafting My Way Back Into It. 2014-09-12 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’m getting back into the swing of FFXIV with my slightly embarrassing, adorable Miqu’te that looks a bit like a porcelain doll in the game. Rather than jumping back on the gear treadmill, I’ve spent most of my time on relaxing activities like gathering and crafting. Unlike most MMOs, those things are quite engaging in FFXIV and there are a whopping eight crafting and three gathering classes to level, so there is plenty to do. (By which I mean it would be impossible for me to max them all out without spending the rest of my life in the game.) 706 words.
• ArcheAge – Head Started. 2014-09-16 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  ArcheAge continues to top the list of most popular posts and search terms on my blog for some reason, so I feel like I should say something about the head start. Suddenly player collision doesn't seem like such a great idea. Make way! Coming through! I played a bit over the weekend, but not as much as you might think. For one thing, I kept getting disconnected due to the persistent server issues, and for another, I didn’t particularly want to spend all of my time staring at a queue screen. (Eventually I figured out I could leave ArcheAge on the queue screen and fire up FFXIV at the same time.) 511 words.
• ArcheAge – Calleil Diary, First Five Days. 2014-09-26 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  (Updated with the rest of the screenshots I meant to include.) If memory serves, Trion brought up the NA Calleil server on Sunday afternoon (Eastern time). Since the queues on Naima were horrible at the time, and there was little or no chance that I would ever find a place for a house or farm there anyway, I decided that I would make a character on Calleil to see how fast property disappeared. 1,070 words.
• ArcheAge – Calleil Diary, Next Four Days. 2014-09-30 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Continuing my diary of ArcheAge on Calleil, the newest, emptiest North American server. To make a long story short, it looks like most of the land in safe zones was gone about a week after the new server came up. So if they start a new server and you want some good land, get ready to sprint for it. (The really prime spots.. those cool lone houses up on hills.. are probably gone within 24 hours. A really dedicated player can probably collect the 15 Gilda Stars from the main questline to buy a house design in under 2 hours.) 1,862 words.

October, 2014

• ArcheAge – Calleil Diary, Water-Faring Days. 2014-10-03 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Previously on Calleil Diary: First Five Days, Next Four Days. Calleil Day 10, Tuesday After I got home from work, I built my Harpoon Clipper ship! It took about 1700 Labor in total, by the way, which was just about everything I had at the time. Oh also I believe it cost 10 gold just to set up the dry dock, which was an unexpected cost. The order of packs you need to use is Lumber, Iron, then Fabric. And then for some reason there are three steps of simply spending 25 Labor Points each. 1,677 words.
• ArcheAge – PvE After Level 30. 2014-10-11 4:37 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  I’ve been dinged in comments for not having experienced the PvE game after level 30 and misleading everyone about ArcheAge. While the game might be rosey for people under level 30, they say, the “real” game begins at 30, and after that milestone, they say, then the game turns into a PvP gankfest. Well as of this post I’m level 40, and I’ve spent many hours questing in Cinderstone Moor and Halcyona, and sailing around on the ocean. Naturally, I don’t think to take screenshots while I’m in a PvP situation, so I have nothing to illustrate this post. 953 words.
• ArcheAge – What’s Wrong With It. 2014-10-17 5:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  I feel like I’ve been giving the impression that ArcheAge is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it isn’t all sunshine and roses. I’m mainly playing it just because “it’s the new thing.” And I do enjoy the fact that you can progress by doing “non-standard” MMO things. But pretty soon, Rift’s Nightmare Tide is going to be “the new thing,” and then a bit later, Warlords of Draenor is going to be “the new thing.” Anyway, here are some things I don’t like about ArcheAge. 755 words.
• Ping-Ponging My Way To Nightmare Tide. 2014-10-23 5:41 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I took a little break from ArcheAge and it turned into an unintentional gaming ping-ping-a-thon. Don't worry, I still log into ArcheAge to gather the fruit from my trees a couple times a day. Also, I finally destroyed my Scarecrow Garden to make a Farmer's Workbench. I hated to do it, though. I wish I could rotate my house to face a different direction. FFXIV First I dropped back into Final Fantasy XIV again because I had an active subscription. I didn't really have a goal but it turned out that there was a Halloween event going on so I went through that quest line. Seasonal events in FFXIV are very quick and easy, so it didn’t take more than an hour and I ended up with some neat-looking scary barding for my Chocobo. (I think it's the only barding I've gotten so far.) The rewards this year were far better than the silly ghost costume we got last year. 870 words.
• WoW – Level Cap At Last!. 2014-10-24 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I haven’t mentioned Bragtoberfest yet because a) I haven’t really had anything to brag about and b) I’m not a very braggy sort of person to begin with. I’ve never been one of those people that parade around banks riding high-end mounts and wearing raid gear to make everyone jealous. I usually wear rag-tag outfits that don’t match. But this is undoubtedly the braggiest thing I will accomplish this month so: I dinged 90 in WoW! First time I’ve gotten to the level cap in WoW since I started in 2006! 385 words.
• Rift – Nightmare Tide. 2014-10-31 9:11 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  • Status
  
  I’ve been playing nothing but Rift since the expansion came out.* If you even remotely like the game, you should definitely check out Nightmare Tide. I’m a little biased though, since I think Rift is the best themepark MMO out there, far surpassing WoW in every possible way. (Except in the amount of available content and player population.) A nice vista in Goboro Reef. Good things about Nightmare Tide: 975 words.

November, 2014

• A November Kitchen Sink Post. 2014-11-11 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Status
  
  Hi! You may remember that I used to write blog posts. At least occasionally. Unfortunately this month two things have happened: Rift Nightmare Tide and NaNoWriMo. Those two things, particularly the former, are way more interesting than writing blog posts. But I thought I would take a break and quickly write down some stuff about things. Chatting with Arak near the end of Draumheim. Overwatch. Blizzard is making a role-based shooter (cough Team Fortress cough). This is probably a great idea that will make bazillions of dollars. I personally have less than zero interest in yet another shooter in a crowded, stale market. The only way I could possibly become interested is if they find a way to solve the ridiculously unbalanced gameplay that usually occurs between casual newbies and hardcore veterans. Most shooters are not fun unless you decide to dedicate your life to them and start on day one. I can’t tell if they are addressing any of that from the information I’m seeing, but I’m guessing that if it’s Blizzard, there will be progression in it, so they probably aren’t addressing it. 709 words.
• Rift – Nightmare Judgments. 2014-11-22 4:44 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Reviews
  
  One thing I’ve noticed in Rift’s Nightmare Tide is more pressure to spend money. I don’t mean in terms of a sales pitch; I mean in terms of making the game less tedious. Losing my head over Nightmare Tide! (Not really, it's a Halloween costume mask.) For example, two new things in Nightmare tide are Earring Slots and the Planewalker “attunement” which allows you to wear some of the new gear. Each of these costs 100,000 Void Stones (the new zone event currency) in the Rift Store. The Planewalker attunement is account-wide, but the Earring Slots must be bought for each character. It is technically possible to grind out the Void Stones to buy those two important things without spending cash to unlock them, but keep in mind that there is a limit of 35,000 Void Stones you can collect per week, so you have to grind zone events for a minimum of six weeks to get both of those items for one character. 824 words.
• Rift Enthusiasm Waning, Bring on Draenor. 2014-11-29 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  November is nearly over, which means NaNoWriMo is almost over for another year. As of this posting, I have some 1,500 words left to do before validating. (The story is nowhere near done, and I expect I will need to add another 40,000-50,000 words to actually finish the novel.) I’m growing a bit tired of Rift. I finished the main story and got my main Mage to 65, and my Rogue, Warrior, and Cleric are all sitting at 60. I still enjoy playing Rift and sending out Minions, but it’s prohibitively time-consuming to farm Void Stones from 61+ Zone Events to upgrade one’s gear, and I’m not really in the mood for dungeons right now. 370 words.

December, 2014

• Bloggy Xmas Day 7: Community and Me. 2014-12-07 5:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Sitting down to write this, I can’t help but wonder why on Earth I signed up to write about community and gaming. I’m pretty introverted, so the idea that I might have anything to say about being a part of any community seems laughable. And to top it off, I don’t much like the Christmas season, either. But the nature of community compels me to write anyway. Despite my own anti-social nature, I still feel like I’m a part of a gaming community-a collection of people who share a common enjoyment of gaming, particularly the online multiplayer variety. 839 words.
• ArcheAge – Post-Mortum. 2014-12-11 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Opinion
  
  I’m determined to sit here and write a complete blog post. Inspired somewhat by j3w3l’s recent post, I’ve been thinking about ArcheAge. Thinking, that is, but not playing, because my work schedule has been ramping back up and ArcheAge is not a game you can play when you only have a little bit of time to play it. Not to mention the possibly-related fact that I’ve lost interest in it. I still log into ArcheAge once or twice a week to make sure my taxes are paid and to stockpile more tax certificates, but that’s about it. (Why they changed it to let you pay taxes with labor points I’ll never know.) I slaughtered my geese and haven’t planted any new fruit trees after they mysteriously disappeared one day. (I’m not entirely sure that someone or something wasn’t messing with my geese, too-I logged in several times to find them in various stages of fed/unfed/starving/recovering, and I’m quite certain I didn’t do any of it.) 808 words.
• Massively’s Best of 2014. 2014-12-21 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Responses
  
  I was looking over Massively’s choices of the best MMO launched in 2014. That’s a terrible list. Of those, I consider only two of them to be “legitimate” candidates: ESO and WildStar. And of those two, ESO wins because it is the more innovative of the two. (Only one of the Massively people agreed with me.) It’s sad to note, though, that I only played those two games for two months and one month respectively. Both suffered from the same flaw: You get most of your skills early in the leveling process and they never change much, which makes leveling somewhat pointless because your character doesn’t appear to get any more powerful. You’re forced to keep making alts to experience variety in gameplay. 253 words.

January, 2015

• Year End 2014. 2015-01-01 4:00 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Status
  • Steam
  
  In most Steam sales, I have a fairly strict cut-off point of avoiding anything unless it is under $10. Over the past year or so, I’ve rarely found anything meeting that criteria that I don’t already have, so I was a bit surprised to find myself buying nine games in this Winter Steam Sale, including Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, The Walking Dead Season 2, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Democracy 3, Contagion, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Dominions 4, Thief, and Transistor. All less than $10. 488 words.
• Elite: Dangerous Opinions and Advice. 2015-01-10 4:00 PM.
  • Advice
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Elite: Dangerous is a neat game, however right now I see it mostly as a single-player game. I play it entirely in the “Solo” mode, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything without other people around. Thus I wouldn’t consider it a contender for 2014’s MMO of the year, despite how bad the other choices were. From what I can surmise, there are only two possible outcomes that can happen if you encounter another person: Either they can a) ignore you or b) try to shoot you down. (I suppose some weirdos might try c) start a conversation.) As far as I know, there are no group objectives to go after yet (such as world bosses), so there is nothing to “team up” with other spaceships for. So if you’re not a fan of Open World PvP I would suggest just sticking with Solo play. For me, Star Wars-style space battles aren’t what I want from a space game, so I just play Solo. (I’m not sure what I do want from a space game, but I know it’s not space battles. At least not with other people. It takes long enough to kill the AI pilots-it would probably take a good half hour to kill another person in an evenly-matched battle.) 931 words.
• MMORPGs Aren’t Dinner Parties. 2015-01-14 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Responses
  
  I recently read this Soapbox article on Massively: Of course I care what you’re doing in MMOs. (Contains Moderate Peril also read it.) It’s a soapbox article, so I’ll grant that it’s supposed to be controversial. Jef sets out to refute what he calls this misconception he read on a forum: “Why do you care what other players do in an MMORPG? It doesn’t affect you.” I didn’t write that, but it’s something I might have written. So I was genuinely interested in hearing the reasoning behind Jef’s belief that it’s a “misconception.” 418 words.
• H1Z1 – Early Access Already?. 2015-01-15 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  So apparently John Smedley of SOE called PvE players “disgusting carebears” on Twitter. (Covered by TAGN, BioBreak, and Clean Casuals.) It’s yet another example of how executives should never attempt to be funny in public. More interesting to me was the sudden news (to me, at least) that H1Z1 is launching on Steam today (January 15). (Well, I say “launching” but I really mean “crowdfunding” because it’s an Early Access game.) This surprises me because I thought it would be a long, long time before we saw this game. 227 words.
• H1Z1 – Dumb Question. 2015-01-17 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  This is probably a dumb question, but if these Airdrops are such a fun element of the game that everyone enjoys, why aren’t they building it into the game as random spawns like Trion’s Rifts and Arcfalls? Why would they make someone pay to spawn a fun event for everyone? That makes no sense. It’s like making people buy world boss spawns. (Don’t get any ideas, game developers. That would be terrible.) 193 words.
• Arbitrary Mid-January Status Update. 2015-01-19 7:33 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’m in a “bouncing around between games” mode at the moment, now that I’m done with Elite: Dangerous. I’ve been logging into two or three or four different MMOs a day, looking for one to capture my imagination. Level 100! WoW. My WoW subscription runs out on the 20th, and I won’t be renewing. WoW is a fun game, but I always tire of it pretty quickly. I did manage to reach level 100 with my Hunter and upgrade my Garrison, though. I have enjoyed my time in the game, but I simply can’t comprehend how people think the story in this expansion is the best ever. I guess I’ve never “gotten” the lore in WoW. (WoW might be the only game that I care less about the quest text than ArcheAge.) I thought there was supposed to be time travel in here somewhere but at no point do I remember anyone saying that I traveled back in time. (Except one quest to kill Banthar in Nagrand that sort-of referred to it, some five zones into the game.) There are Russian space goats and angry orcs everywhere, but then I was in a place with a bunch of bird people and giant crow gods or something. *shrug* I feel bad for people who will feel obligated to spend the next two years playing this expansion until the next one comes out. It’s okay to play other games, guys. You really don’t have to live in one game your whole life. :) 1,043 words.
• ArcheAge – Patron Status Waning. 2015-01-20 10:32 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  • Status
  
  Ruh roh. No more soup for you. Or land. I logged in quickly to see what, if anything, changed. The only immediate change I noticed was that my Labor Points plummeted from 5000 to 1000. My house and land are still mine, but they are only “protected” until the 28th, after which I believe they will decay in a week. I went to the web site to see how much it would cost to resume my Patron benefits, and realized I had never redeemed my Patron Compensation thingy, so I went ahead and did that to extend my time another 5 days. For no particular reason. 271 words.
• Comparing Played Times. 2015-01-21 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  I found an old, old screenshot of my main Asheron’s Call character from near the end of my playing time: What MMORPGs looked like when they were more work than fun. There’s some interesting things to note there. First of all, my /played time was 17d 11h 26m 22s. I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing that game… it seemed like my entire life was spent in that game for about a year. (I was playing AC when everyone else was playing EverQuest.) Yet I only reached level 35. In AC, your character “level” wasn’t much except a measurement of how much you had played-your power level came from your skills. Level 35 seemed like an impossibly high number to me back then. I knew people in their 40s and I couldn’t imagine how anyone could get there without giving up sleep entirely. 402 words.
• AOL Sucks. 2015-01-29 9:26 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Responses
  
  If this rumor that AOL is going to shut down Joystiq-and by extension Massively-is true, then I’d just like to say that AOL sucks. Massively is basically the only gaming news site that I read, and their podcast is one of the few that gets a regular weekly listen from me on my morning commute. I hope everyone at Massively and Joystiq lands on their feet. 66 words.

February, 2015

• What Does Buy-to-Play Really Say About An MMO?. 2015-02-03 2:10 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  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.
• Hello MassivelyOP. 2015-02-05 1:00 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Responses
  
  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.
• Something Witty Like: SOE’s New Daybreak. 2015-02-05 7:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Responses
  
  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.
• GW2 – Heart of Thorns Initial Reactions. 2015-02-06 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  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. Hang gliders are a cool concept (I loved them in ArcheAge) but if I have to grind before I can get one, that’s a lot less cool. 608 words.
• Massively Overpowered Kickstarter. 2015-02-06 8:45 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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.
• Crowfall Sounds Like A PvP MMO. 2015-02-07 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  • Responses
  
  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. I realize that not everybody would like that though. 437 words.
• Things I Do And Don’t Buy. 2015-02-10 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  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. This is probably where I spend a good 75% of my money in free-to-play games. 490 words.
• Daybreak Firings. 2015-02-12 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Responses
  
  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. Besides that it just generally sucks to see people losing their jobs for no apparent reason. 329 words.
• Improving Screenshot Technology. 2015-02-16 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  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. And there are even a few of you who think that saving your screenshots in a format other than JPEG is okay, but I won’t name names here.) 455 words.
• WoW – My Favorite Addons. 2015-02-20 4:00 PM.
  • Advice
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  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. (I’m thinking of Rift in particular here, which put in just about every quality-of-life improvement you could have ever wanted in an MMO UI.) Thus you’ll probably want some addons for WoW. Here are my favorites, not so much to recommend them but more as a handy index for later when I inevitably lose them all after a reformat. 909 words.
• Storybricks and The Nature Of The Internet. 2015-02-23 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Responses
  
  More alarming news about SOE/Daybreak/EQNext. Speaking as a gamer, even if EQNext had launched with the Storybricks AI (and I use the term “AI” loosely) included, it almost certainly wouldn’t have been as impressive as it sounded (see this demo), and it probably would have ended up being a non-factor in the game like that UO “artificial life” thingy. I’ve been very skeptical of SOE’s claims of “emergent behavior” ever since they first started talking about it. 231 words.
• Crowfall And Much Rambling On Game Types. 2015-02-27 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Pre-Release
  
  A number of people are questioning whether Crowfall is asking for enough money to make their game. I don’t really care about that. (But I think they know what they’re doing.) My main worry is that they’re making an MMO that I won’t like. And they know it. I suspect that’s why they are crowdfunding like this: Real investors wouldn’t support making a game intentionally targeted at a small niche market that doesn’t include mostly-casual PvE players. 845 words.
• Progression Report – February. 2015-02-28 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • Status
  
  I think I’ll make this a “thing” and do a monthly progress report of all the MMOs I’m playing. I started running a time tracking program* called ManicTime so I can actually record precisely how much I’ve played every game now. FFXIV (22 hrs)**. I unlocked most of the new 2.5 dungeons and World of Darkness, however I haven’t actually gone into any of them yet. (To this day I’ve only done one level 50 dungeon-Amdapor Keep for the Relic quest.) In other news I leveled my Rogue class from-you might want to sit down for this epic achievement-10 to 15. 1,168 words.

March, 2015

• Low-Energy Gaming. 2015-03-15 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Single-Player
  
  Real life’s been kicking me in the teeth lately-I’m adjusting to a new work role/schedule and of course there was the annoying end of Daylight Savings. So my MMO gaming (and writing, and overall mental attitude, and almost everything else) has suffered. Oddly enough I’ve landed on Path of Exile as a mental tonic, a game which I had previously rejected as uninteresting all the way back in its nearly-perpetual beta. Now I see that it has one very compelling feature: You can play it one-handed. 297 words.
• ESO Unlimited Arrives. 2015-03-18 2:00 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  ESO Unchained or Unlimited or whatever looks pretty good to me. I patched up and logged in for a few minutes to check it out. Six pets seems like a rather small selection. The cash shop is very unobtrusive-about the same as GW2-but it’s also very empty… I didn’t see anything I might be tempted to buy, like for example, the only thing I really wanted-more inventory space. Also, the 800 crowns I was given wasn’t enough to buy much of anything but health potions or maybe a pet. 125 words.
• On The Radar For 2015. 2015-03-30 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Pre-Release
  • Predictions
  
  Last time I did this. Note that some games aren’t on the following list because I have either a) forgotten about them, or b) never heard of them. MMORPGs I’m Looking Forward To These are games that I’m still anxiously awaiting the opportunity to play, because I haven’t yet seen or heard anything to wreck my enthusiasm. Black Desert. I keep seeing good things. Skyforge. I keep hearing good things. 799 words.

April, 2015

• Progression Report – March. 2015-04-01 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • Status
  
  March was definitely a low point in my 2015 MMORPG activity, but don’t panic. This is normal for me. There’s usually one or more months during the year when I end up watching television instead. Still, I accomplished a few things. In Rift, I continued to log in every few days to collect Minion rewards and send them out again. My bank and inventory is bursting with useless junk. In Final Fantasy XIV, I forgot to mention that I joined the cool blogger Free Company on Cactuar. Unfortunately every time I log into FFXIV I stand around feeling like I don’t have any goals to accomplish. I do have goals, but none of them are interesting to me right now, which is a shame because it’s awesome to see so many other people *cough* finally *cough* getting on the FFXIV bandwagon. 639 words.
• Star Trek Online – Delta Recruitment. 2015-04-06 3:00 PM.
  • Advice
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’ve enjoyed Star Trek Online quite a bit over the weekend. I’ve tried to play STO several times in the past but I could never get into it, but for some reason (boredom, probably) I’m “getting it” now. My heavily-armed away team takes on time-traveling bad guys from blue space. Perhaps it’s because they just started this Delta Recruitment event at the exact time that I began playing again. I abandoned my two previous characters (who were no higher than the STO equivalent of level 1 or 2) and made a new Star Fleet “Delta Recruit” dude. I don’t have enough STO experience to know exactly what’s different but I gather that Delta recruits level a lot faster and get bonus loot to help you along the way. I seem to gain one level (or “grade” I think they’re called) after each story mission I complete, which is pretty cool. 636 words.
• FFXIV – Ramping Back Up. 2015-04-15 3:00 PM.
  • Dungeons
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’m starting to get back into the swing of FFXIV. Over the weekend I played more than I have in ages. I finally got a chance to play a bit with the guild which was a lot of fun. My first priority is finishing the Main Scenario, what with the expansion coming and all, so I picked that up again. I had stopped at Thornmarch (King Moggle Mog or whatever) because, given my last experience with PUGing Titan (Hard), I had no wish to enter another impossible Trial, so I kept putting it off. Then over the weekend I decided to buckle down and finish it. I watched a guide but I couldn’t really follow what was going on, so I decided to leap headlong into the middle of a PUG and experience it firsthand. I figured I would learn what I could, and when the PUG fell apart, I would ask the guild to see if there was anyone around who could help. 642 words.
• FFXIV – Where I Hate Dive Bombs. 2015-04-20 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  It’s been a big week in FFXIV. I finished out the 2.2 and 2.3 main scenario quests, getting through both the Leviathan and Ramuh trials with relative ease. Both PUGs beat them on the first try despite me not knowing what to do when Ramuh tethers you to someone else (hint: pick up 3 blue orbs like Pac-Man). Over on the Dragoon class, I finished the first relic quest to get my Zenith Gae Bolg spear, and also picked up the Onion gear set from Labyrinth (well, all but the belt, but you can’t see that). It’s nice to have a dragoon set that doesn’t make me look like a terrifying robot. 845 words.
• FFXIV – Ding, Ding. 2015-04-29 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Last Wednesday was a rough day at work* so I was too beat to try Turn 5 again, but Saturday the guild was kind enough to re-run it for me and we breezed through it like it was nothing. Thanks everyone! The previously-hated Dive Bombs were no sweat this time. Now I have the Second Coil of Bahamut unlocked for future escapades. (One of these days I’ll have to go back through Turns 1-4 just to see them.) 721 words.

May, 2015

• Progression Report – April. 2015-05-01 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • Status
  
  Oh crap, I forgot to write one of these for April. Well, it’s not hard to figure it out. I started out playing mainly Star Trek Online and made it to, I don’t know, 30something I guess, and then I was bitten by the FFXIV bug again and spent the rest of the month there. Final tally: STO 34 hours, FFXIV 127 hours. (Though I’m sure at least 25% of those FFXIV hours were AFK time.) 125 words.
• NBI Talkback – Early Access. 2015-05-14 3:00 PM.
  • Community
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • Responses
  
  Early Access and Kickstarter – Do you support unfinished games? This question is worded a little ambiguously, perhaps intentionally... what does "support" mean? I certainly support the development of new games, by which I mean that I always want people to try to make games. As for financially supporting unfinished games, sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I've been refining my criteria (see below), but it depends on the situation. I have not supported any game projects on Kickstarter, however I have purchased about a half dozen Steam Early Access games. I have also "bought into beta" a few times too (ArcheAge and Landmark are the biggest examples). 704 words.
• FFXIV – Who Is Bogatyr Anyway?. 2015-05-17 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Experts Unlocked. With some help from the FC, I finished all three of the Expert dungeons so I can finally do the Daily Expert Roulette. Now the Poetics will really start rolling in! Ironworks Magitek Bow. I had finished two books of the Animus relic upgrade quest but at the rate I was going it would be another ten years before I would be able to upgrade the Artemes bow again. So I went on a Poetic Tomestone farming blitz (as much as a DPS can blitz queues) so I could buy an Ironworks bow. After spending all my Poetics on the new bow, I took a trip to Hyrstmill to upgrade it to a shiny new 130 Augmented Ironworks Magitek bow. It’s the first time I’ve held something different than the foldable Bard bow since, oh, I don’t know-I can’t even remember when. 536 words.
• FFXIV – UI Wish List for Heavensward. 2015-05-27 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Pre-Release
  • Wish List
  
  With the Final Fantasy XIV expansion Heavensward coming soon (June 23), I thought I would put together a list of all the nagging UI issues that I hope are addressed in 3.0. It’s a testament to how good the game already is that I have trouble coming up with any significant gameplay issues to complain about-only these nitpicky UI faults. (Knowing how good Square Enix is at patch notes, I could probably go somewhere and find a detailed list of exactly what’s going to be in Heavensward, but let’s just assume there’s still some doubt about the feature set. And also that I haven’t seen much of anything about Heavensward except what I’ve seen in FC chat and that benchmark.) 1,015 words.

June, 2015

• Progression Report – May 2015. 2015-06-01 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • Status
  
  With the exception of a few interminable days at a work conference, I spent the entire month of May playing nothing but FFXIV. That clocks in at 180 hours or an average of 6 hours a day, which is pretty much the maximum amount that I can play any game in a month. (Many of those hours were spent AFK, in case you’re wondering-I tend to leave FFXIV online because it’s a pain to log in with the security token.) I should probably back off in June or I’m going to be completely burned out when Heavensward hits. 504 words.
• Finding Heavensward. 2015-06-19 10:52 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  
  Normally everything related to FFXIV is an absolute pleasure to deal with, but getting into the Heavensward pre-order early access has been quite an unexpected challenge. FFXIV was down all day Thursday for the big 3.0 patch which I downloaded Thursday night. I had absolutely no idea that I would have to do anything special to see Heavensward. I just assumed the patcher would know I had ordered it, it would download it, and it would magically appear the next time I ran the game after the servers came up. 688 words.

July, 2015

• Progression Report – June 2015. 2015-07-04 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • Single-Player
  • Status
  
  There were only two games I played any significant amount in June: Final Fantasy XIV (28 hours) and The Witcher 3 (18 hours). The latter is not an MMORPG, but since it feels exactly like an MMORPG I’m going to count it in my progression report. In FFXIV I started in on Heavensward, but to be honest I’m still a bit burned out from all the catching up I did in May, so I haven’t played that much into the expansion. I’ve only managed to level my Bard class from 50 to 53 52, and completed the first dungeon Dusk Vigil. It’s a great expansion… 228 words.
• Why I Didn’t Buy H1Z1 For $10. 2015-07-06 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  • Steam
  
  H1Z1 is one of those early access games that I have a mild interest in playing, if for no other reason than that it looks pretty. In the recent Steam sale, it was discounted 50% to $9.99, which is under that magic $10 mark where I will buy just about anything in any condition. I hovered over the Buy button… But then I started to think. I wondered what my reward would be for buying now-what cool stuff I would get after the game launches. How many “credits” or “gems” or “zombie points” I would get, what costumes or guns I would get, what titles I would get, etc. Because obviously there should be some tangible incentives for me to buy a game that’s buggy and broken and not finished. 215 words.
• Skyforge 2-Hour Scorecard. 2015-07-19 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  • Status
  
  I spent a few hours with Skyforge. I didn’t buy any of the founder’s packs or anything so this is the totally free-to-play experience. Business casual is the way to go in Skyforge. Character Creation: Okay Lore: Meh Dialog: Meh Visuals: Good Performance: Good Sound: Okay Music: Meh Voice Acting: Okay UI: Fantastic Customization Settings: Minimal Ads: Subtle, except for the launch window Free-to-play disadvantages: Less “sparks” so I guess you advance slower Classes: Okay (3 to pick from initially) Combat Style: Action, Button Mashing Difficulty: Surprisingly challenging for a game these days Progression Style: Skill Tree, Gear Upgrades Crafting: Unknown Endgame: I doubt I’ll ever see it World: Small zones and instances that you travel to from a hub, like Neverwinter Costumes: Plentiful Appearance: Change anything at will (only the first one is free) Things that stood out: 254 words.

August, 2015

• Progression Report – July 2015. 2015-08-02 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • Status
  
  Blaugust Day 2 July was a quiet gaming month for me. Work continues to be hectic, and I’ve also gotten it into my head that I might try to take a Microsoft exam so I spent a lot of time reading and studying. It was around the end of July last year that I lost my job-not from anything I did, but from a contract changing hands to a different company. Fortunately nothing like that is going to happen this year. I’ve since resumed working on that project, but everything is different and more chaotic now as the ripple effects from the contract change continue to permeate everything and everybody. 362 words.
• Rift – The Primalist Announcement. 2015-08-07 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Of course the big news Thursday from Gamescom was Trion’s announcement of a new Calling-the Primalist. I can’t say the name jumps out at me as being the coolest name for a calling ever, but then it’s hard to follow up the likes of Mage, Cleric, Warrior, and Rogue. I mean there’s not much left after those four. Bureaucrat? Astronomer? Primalist is as good as anything. Although it doesn’t quite sound like something that channels animal spirits. 268 words.
• Skyforge – Sound Design Matters. 2015-08-08 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  I duck into Skyforge now and then but it’s rapidly losing its appeal for me. Part of it is because Dark Souls demands my attention right now, but I think I figured out another reason yesterday: The sound effects, or lack thereof. On my 2-Hour Scorecard for Skyforge I marked the Sound as “Okay.” Now after five hours I’m going to downgrade it to “Bad.” When my Cryomancer is out in the world defeating bad guys and such, throwing out these huge AoE whirlwind spells and dropping comets from the sky (or whatever that ability is), you would think that my speakers would shake and rattle everything on the desk with the sheer magnitude of it. 304 words.
• The Elite: Dangerous Expansion And Value. 2015-08-09 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Responses
  
  Elite: Dangerous has an expansion coming out and you’ll never guess what happened after the announcement: People on Reddit got mad. In a related story, the sun rose and set today. I admit I’m just an average guy who doesn’t grasp all this new-fangled math the kids use, but I have never understood the “it’s not fair that if someone buys it today they’ll get a better price than someone who bought it before” logic when it comes to games. Of course now that I’m writing it out, I can’t think of the right words to explain why that doesn’t make sense to me. But here goes. 560 words.
• Reactions To WoW Legion. 2015-08-10 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Pre-Release
  
  World of Warcraft is so far off my radar right now that the announcement of the new Legion expansion* is about as interesting to me as a deer tick. Even that horrible analogy was more interesting to me. It’s not that I don’t like WoW when I play it. It just doesn’t hold my attention for very long. There are two things I just don’t understand about WoW fandom: The first is how people can look around at all of the MMORPGs out there and decide that WoW is the only one they want to play, and the second is how anyone can follow any of the lore that happens in WoW. 674 words.
• Project Gorgon – The New Black?. 2015-08-15 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  • Reviews
  
  About a year ago I installed Project Gorgon and played around in the starter cave. It was mildly interesting but of course it wasn’t finished, the graphics were terrible, and there are so many other things to play. So I put it away again, filing it in the back of my mind. Now suddenly everyone is talking about Project Gorgon. And by everyone I mean MassivelyOP which apparently has turned into the all-Gorgon-all-the-time site. :) Not that there’s anything wrong with that I guess-it’s not like Project Gorgon is a multi-billion-dollar corporation. It’s just a guy and his wife. At this stage in their development it doesn’t bother me to see them getting a media spotlight. And besides, it’s such a niche game that a thousand suns of media spotlight couldn’t possibly make it a mainstream hit. 418 words.
• ArcheAge – Server Merges aka. Evolution. 2015-08-16 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  ArcheAge is merging servers, and of course all of the ones I play(ed) on are affected: Naima and Calleil. (Of course those two aren’t merging together, so I’m still going to end up on two different servers: Kraken and Hanure.) So it looks like if you didn’t stick with one of the very first full servers with all-day queues, you’re getting merged. Out of curiosity I logged in to see what the game looks like now. It’s still on my to-do list to finish leveling my Elf from 48 to 50, which probably wouldn’t take more than a day. Oh, actually I guess it’s 55 now. Or is it more now? Clearly I haven’t been paying attention. I dread trying to play again, though, because as with most MMORPGs, I fear the re-learning curve. It’s probably not that bad with ArcheAge, but still, it was a dangerous world out there at level 48. 582 words.
• Pay-to-Win. 2015-08-18 11:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  I don’t think I’ve written about pay-to-win before, mostly on purpose. Frankly I think most of the outrage is entirely manufactured. But I posted a brief comment on Jef Reahard’s controversial MassivelyOP post to the effect that “pay-to-win” is one of those emotionally-charged terms like “climate change” or “gun control” that evokes instantaneous knee-jerk, black-and-white responses, so it’s a dangerous road to travel as a blogger. Because in reality it’s a very complicated subject with many shades of gray, and it requires us to sit down and think long and hard about our gaming goals and values and who’s got time for any of that? 371 words.

September, 2015

• Progression Report – August 2015. 2015-09-03 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • RPG
  • Single-Player
  • Status
  
  August was a very easy month to summarize gaming-wise: Dark Souls, Dark Souls, and more Dark Souls, for a total of 132 hours. My Knight is about halfway through NG+ at the moment, and I can still see myself playing this game for a long time to come. I want to finish with my Sorcerer and my Thief, then try a Cleric and a Pyromancer. In the MMORPG space, my second and third most-played games in August were FFXIV and Skyforge, for a whopping one hour each. I would like to get back to leveling in FFXIV, SWTOR, and possibly even STO. SWTOR has that 12x experience thing that I don’t want to miss (for subscribers only though I think). I might have already missed the super-fast leveling event(s?) in STO. The Rift Primalist is on the horizon as well. And through my hazy Dark Souls fog I think I heard that Heart of Thorns now has a release date, which means maybe I should try to finish that cursed Living Story. 182 words.

October, 2015

• Progression Report – September 2015. 2015-10-03 11:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • RPG
  • Single-Player
  
  September’s report is again pretty easy: No MMORPG progression, however quite a lot of Dark Souls progression. I started Dark Souls II on roughly the 5th and as of this writing, I’ve completed the main storyline and have moved on to the post-launch DLC content on my first character. I’ve been posting a video series of my play-through on YouTube for those who might be inclined to watch. I’m starting to get a little tired of the Dark Souls rabbit hole (the Dark Souls II DLC content is getting pretty frustrating), so I might finally get back to some MMORPGs soon. SWTOR is still beckoning with that 12x experience thing that is probably going to end when the expansion launches on October 27th, so I don’t have much time left. Of course I still have much to accomplish in FFXIV, but there’s no time limit there. Rift and Star Trek Online both have new stuff coming soon. 157 words.
• The Light, It Burns. 2015-10-19 3:11 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • RPG
  • Single-Player
  • Status
  
  Now that I’ve finished Dark Souls 1 & 2 I’m slowly emerging from the rabbit hole back into the sunlight. Mostly to read about Dark Souls 3, but still, it’s something. I managed to gain a handful of levels in SWTOR, but not nearly as many as I wanted. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, every RPG now seems like a kid’s game compared to the Dark Souls experience. It’s like I’ve been through a religious rite and seen the Face of God. I’ve climbed to the mountaintop and seen the vast expanse of the universe laid before me. How could anything ever be as good? 221 words.
• GW2HoT – Obey The Zerg. 2015-10-29 9:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Somewhat to my own surprise, I bought and installed Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns on Saturday. The first thing I did on my Necromancer was spec the Reaper thingy and train the ability to use a greatsword. That was pretty cool. I enjoyed the greatsword on my Guardian so it’s nice to have it on the character that I actually play the most. The game was nice enough to give me an exotic Reaper’s Greatsword of Air to play with, too. 894 words.

December, 2015

• GW2HoT – That Was Fun. 2015-12-04 11:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  To follow up a bit on Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns, I played it a lot right up until the day that Fallout 4 came out, and I haven’t logged in a single time since. Which suggests that I was deluding myself for those few weeks I was playing it and having fun. Okay, that’s not true. I got my money’s worth. It felt like the good old days after GW2 launched when it seemed like this game had re-invented MMORPGs and changed everything. I really enjoyed leveling a Revenent from 1 to 80 (well, 30 to 80). The Revenent is fun to play. I liked playing through the old zones again. I liked the smaller-scale dynamic events and hanging out at the huge 500-man circular-firing squads where it took seconds to down the world bosses. 324 words.
• SWTOR – Bring on the Hutt. 2015-12-14 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Roughly four years after I started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic right at launch, I finally hit level 50, what once was the level cap. I hit 50 somewhere in Corellia. Just two and a half years after the release of Rise of the Hutt Cartel, I rolled into Makeb to face the Regulators. Or Hutts. Or whatever. I’m not following the story super closely. SWTOR is the MMORPG that I find most comfortable right now. I really don’t have to think very much when I’m playing it. Especially since they made the change to allow any companion to play any role-I set Kira to heal and blow through everybody without stopping to rest, watching the pretty lights and sound effects as my guy whips his lightsaber around. That’s about the complexity of gameplay that I want in my MMORPG right now. 164 words.
• Getting Back Into MMORPGs. 2015-12-16 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’m having a hard time getting back into some MMORPGs I used to play. FFXIV. First of course is FFXIV, the game that I have an active subscription for that’s draining my money while I avoid logging in. Every time I try to get back into it, I keep running into this roadblock-Heavensward is hard. Well, maybe hard isn’t the right word. More like tedious. I’m mired at level 53 in the Dravanian Forelands where it takes an hour to run from one side to the other for quests since I don’t have flying unlocked there yet. 423 words.
• WildStar PSA – Password Length. 2015-12-20 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Status
  
  I finally figured out why I couldn’t log into WildStar. This little saga has been taking place over the weeks and months since the game went free. Originally there was the fact that I’d completely forgotten that I’d setup the Google authenticator, so it kept rejecting me for leaving out that code. That took a while to figure out. (Admittedly I wasn’t looking very hard for the solution.) Next I had to reset my password, because I’d forgotten it. Possibly I’d reset it somewhere during the time I was figuring out the authenticator problem. Of course it wouldn’t let me set it to the password I wanted to use because it doesn’t let you use any of your previous passwords, so I had to make up a new one. This time I made a pretty long one and typed it into the web page and everything was fine. 335 words.
• Games Of My Year 2015. 2015-12-26 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  • RPG
  • Single-Player
  
  Here’s my year end “Best Of” list, because if you’re on the Internet, you have to do a year-end list of some kind. It’s the law. 2015 Contenders After studying my Steam purchase history and searching my memory, I’ve come up with the following list of new games that I purchased and played in 2015. These are only games that were released in 2015, not every single game that I purchased or played in 2015. In other words, this is the pool from which I’m going to pick my games of the year. 597 words.
• More End Of Year Charts!. 2015-12-29 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  • Status
  
  Everyone is making a chart of their gaming for the year (Belghast, Liore, and Wilhelm at least), so I thought I’d see if I could get ManicTime to export something into Excel. After judicious flipping, coloring, and rearranging, this is what I got: My data only starts in February, so January is missing. It probably might have had some WoW in there, but definitely more SWTOR and FFXIV. I’m a little disappointed to see that ManicTime is dead wrong about some of the times it recorded. For example, I played a lot more Witcher 3 than it thinks I did-Steam reports 134 hours. Steam also reports that I played 295 hours of Dark Souls II. Ditto Fallout 4, which should be 110 hours. I don’t know what ManicTime was thinking. Maybe I need to look for another tracking program. 205 words.
• On The Radar For 2016. 2015-12-31 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Predictions
  
  Last time I did this. Note that some games might not be on the following list because I have either a) forgotten about them, or b) never heard of them, or c) dismissed them as not MMORPGs. This MassivelyOP Betawatch post helped me a lot, too. * Games marked with a * can be bought and played now in some early access form or another. (I think. Don’t hold me to it.) 904 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.

March, 2016

• 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.

May, 2016

• 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.

July, 2016

• 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.

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

November, 2016

• 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.
• 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.

December, 2016

• 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.
• 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.

January, 2017

• Returning to Elder Scrolls Online. 2017-01-01 1:36 AM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve been dabbling in The Elder Scrolls Online again. Last time I played it for any length of time was in the two months after it launched, April 2014. It’s one of the better MMORPGs if you didn’t know, undoubtedly in the Top Five. (Obligatory warning that it does not in any way resemble the single-player Elder Scrolls games.) Visually, I would probably rank it second behind Black Desert Online for the best-looking MMORPG out there. 1,158 words.
• On The Radar For 2017. 2017-01-01 3:16 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  
  Here’s my annual summary of MMORPGs that are on my radar for the new year 2017. Here is last year’s post. I am only considering “classic” style MMORPGs in this list, not things like MOBAs or brawlers or Diablo-clones or whatever else people call MMOs these days. If it’s not on this list I either forgot about it, don’t know about it, don’t count it as an MMORPG, or haven’t heard enough good things to bother investigating. Unless otherwise noted, I have not backed or bought any of these games yet. 1,451 words.
• FFXIV – Unexpectedly Hard Dungeon. 2017-01-04 7:06 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Last night I only had time to play one game, so I decided to play some FFXIV again, as part of my as-yet unannounced goal of catching up with the Main Scenario before the expansion arrives. I was stuck at a point in the Main Scenario where the next quest requires level 58, but I was only at about 57.8. So I thought I would do a few quests to start getting a feel for my character again. 496 words.
• Daybreak Closing Landmark. 2017-01-06 5:59 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Snap Judgment
  
  In the most shocking news heard since WildStar announced they were going free-to-play, Daybreak revealed they will be closing down Landmark in February. I bought one of the $99 Founder’s packs. I don’t exactly remember why, but I remember seeing that video showing them digging holes in the ground and thought that was pretty dern cool. It turned out to be the most ill-advised game purchase decision of my entire life to date. To this day it informs my Early Access buying decisions. Thanks to Landmark, I made a rule that I won’t take a chance on an unknown Early Access game unless it sells for $10 or less. 795 words.
• LotRO Volume 1, Book 12 – Rescuing Laerdan. 2017-01-08 1:57 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Turns out this was the only screenshot I took. As part of my continuing efforts to catch up in LotRO, I played through another Book in the Epic Story. In the last book, we were looking for a ring called Narchuil, which is pronounced quite differently from the way it looks, according to not-Ian McKellen Gandalf in the voiceovers. (It’s something like “Nar-wheel.”) 692 words.
• FFXIV – The Level 58 Slump. 2017-01-11 12:39 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I’m a little miffed that I’ve run out of level 58 quests in the Dravanian Hinterlands only about halfway to level 59. Alphinaud and [redacted] stopped talking to me about the Main Scenario almost immediately after I ascended to level 58 and entered Idyllshire, which is apparently the new Mor Dhona. They now want nothing to do with me until I get to level 59. So I did every level 58 quest I could find around Idyllshire and the Hinterlands, mostly involving the gobbies’ loony adventures building their city government. After that, I followed two racist refugees from Uldah in their misadventures of gobbie mistrust. I thought for sure that somewhere in those quests I would unlock Saint Mocianne’s Arboretum, which is clearly marked as a dungeon on my map, but nope. That blue dungeon icon is still there, and I guess I’m supposed to pretend I can’t see the rather obvious entrance. 442 words.
• LotRO Volume 1, Book 13 – Snowpocalypse. 2017-01-12 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  I completed a second Book in LotRO over the snowy weekend. Last time we rescued Laerdan and found half of that elusive ring Narchuil. After Laerdan stormed out of the council meeting, Elrond asked me to talk to him. Laerdan believed the rest of the ring could be found in the (presumably dead) hands of a captain whose ship sank somewhere in the north. He asked me to meet a dwarf friend of his in Forochel, because he wanted to stay and patch things up with the Elves. Typical. I always have to do the work. 960 words.
• FFXIV – Finally 60. 2017-01-17 11:49 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  It was a weekend of big achievements in Final Fantasy XIV. When last we left our intrepid Warrior of Light, she had run out of level 58 quests halfway to level 59. I ended up doing some Clan Hunts, some Battle Levemetes (a word which I still do not think is a real word), and thanks to suggestions from Aywren, a handful of Beast Tribe quests for the Vath and Vanu. That got me to level 59, faster than I might have expected. (I also noticed that Beast Tribe reputation gains in Heavensward are about 10 times faster than … uh … non-Heavensward. What do we call non-Heavensward anyway? Surely not Vanilla FFXIV. I guess ARR or 2.0.) Beast tribe quests got me to level 59. 935 words.
• FFXIV – 3.0 Main Scenario Complete. 2017-01-20 2:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  A while back I said I was playing ESO again.. welllll, I sort of lost interest. (I think it’s because I find the quests very depressing, and it also seems like everywhere you go and everything you do is basically the same as what you did before.) So it’s mostly FFXIV and an occasionally foray into LotRO for me these days. I finished the Aetherial Research Facility. I got a nice group with a very “professional” tank, who explained the mechanics concisely and non-judgmentally. Indeed it turned out to be much easier than I feared, and kind of fun. It was another one with a lot of AoEs to dodge, which I like. It’s sort of like a puzzle game, trying to figure out where to run so that you don’t get caught by overlapping or moving AoEs. They’re usually predicable enough that you can plan ahead, but random enough that you still need to think on your feet. 817 words.
• FFXIV – The Road To Void Ark. 2017-01-24 11:31 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Thanks to a bunch of tips, I learned that what I should have been looking for as a Crystal Tower-replacement is called Void Ark, not Alexander. It took me a little time to figure out how to unlock it, because the quest that takes you to it starts out in Foundation with some random guy on the street who doesn’t look like he would ever lead to anything good. I found him from the 3.1 Patch Notes. 801 words.
• FFXIV – Void Ark and Weeping City. 2017-01-31 9:57 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  First there was Void Ark. I watched a guide on YouTube but I didn’t understand much of it, so I just jumped in. (It’s easier to learn mechanics first-hand.) It turned out to be fairly straightforward to get carried through there. Just like the Labyrinth of the Ancients raid at 50, everyone is so over-leveled that you hardly even see the mechanics, and mostly all you have to do is follow along, avoid AOEs, and pick up the loot. I got most of the Bard 200 gear (except the belt) and moved on to the next tier. 545 words.

February, 2017

• Revelation Online’s Stealth Launch?. 2017-02-28 6:21 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Stolen from their web site because I don’t have any pictures for a post about this game. As I was catching up on MMORPG news story titles in my feed reader, I noticed that Revelation Online had started Early Access on February 27. For all intents and purposes, this is what we would normally call a game launch. You have to buy a Founder’s Pack to access the game “early,” but supposedly there will be no more character wipes, which sounds a lot like a launch to me. Certainly plenty of other MMORPGs have made a huge deal about this kind of event (eg. ArcheAge). 360 words.

March, 2017

• The Repopulation Worries. 2017-03-03 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  _Rescued from the drafts folder…_ Blatantly stolen from therepopulation.com because I don’t have any screenshots. I was initially glad to hear that The Repopulation will be coming back. I splurged in a moment of weakness and bought it for $20 on Steam back in February 2015. I don’t remember why I bought it. I think I had heard some positive feedback about it, and I had heard also it described as being heavily inspired by Star Wars Galaxies, and I was curious to see what a SWG-like game looked like. (I’ve never even seen SWG, let alone played it.) 465 words.
• LotRO Volume 1, Book 14 – The Sloggiest Journey. 2017-03-06 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Status
  
  Another post rescued from my drafts… Book 14 begins with Laerdan preparing for a journey south. He asked me to collect a bunch of gear for him that he left strewn around Eriador, because the hero’s journey always involves fetching stuff. It was a lengthy, boring scavenger hunt. When I returned to Rivendell, Laerdan was gone. In a note, he said he sent me away so I wouldn’t interfere. I spent all that time collecting his gear for nothing. But I wasn’t bitter about it. Much. 628 words.
• Amazon’s New World, Part Two. 2017-03-07 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  From a draft written somewhere around October 2016… I finally got around to watching Amazon’s teaser video, thinking that it would erase my earlier skepticism and soften my opinion about their upcoming games, and maybe even start to get excited about the possibilities. Unfortunately it only pushed my skeptical buttons even harder. “What if a game was built for Twitch,” wonders a voiceover 12 seconds into the video. Instant buzzkill. The video goes on to mention Twitch about five times in the first 60 seconds, before anything about games. If we go with the assumption that what they put into the very beginning of their video is the “hook” and therefore the most important message they want to deliver, we have to assume that Twitch integration is the most important part of their design philosophy for these games. And if Amazon making games to target Twitch viewers is not a corporate-synergy-driven game design, I don’t know what is. It’s as if they accidentally put the video meant for their shareholders out to the public. 317 words.
• Snap Judgment – Revelation Online. 2017-03-08 3:31 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Yes, that’s a miniature panda on my head. Last night I took a look at Revelation Online for the first time. I played for about 45 minutes. I don’t have much to say about it, except I didn’t particularly care for it. It’s a solidly average anime-style MMORPG that takes no chances. It’s an Asian version of a WoW-clone. (A Lineage-clone?) I saw nothing that advanced the MMORPG genre in any way. 692 words.
• Snap Judgment – Shroud of the Avatar (Free Trial). 2017-03-13 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I read on MassivelyOP that Shroud of the Avatar was having a free trial “test” (whatever that is) so I downloaded the game and tried it out last weekend. I’ve seen increasing buzz about the game and I was curious to see if there was anything to it. I only played for about an hour, and while I can’t say I was dying to play more, I did find it interesting enough to leave it on my games to continue watching. It had a number of things you just don’t find in traditional MMORPGs. 1,012 words.
• Secret World Legends Announced. 2017-03-29 3:13 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Totally ripped off from https://secretworldlegends.com/ There is some interesting MMORPG news out! Well, “shared-world” news, that is. Some time back, Funcom mentioned in an investor report that they were planning to “re-launch” The Secret World, and Internet speculation ran rampant. Nobody knew what that actually meant. Today, we found out. Funcom is planning to launch a new free-to-play game called Secret World Legends (the official acronym is apparently SWL, judging from my Twitter feed). This game will be a “shared-world action RPG.” You can read all the announcement information yourself on their site. 333 words.

May, 2017

• Ashes of Creation – Mandatory Post. 2017-05-05 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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. I’m glad they got their funding, but this game is still years away from being playable. I would be amazed if they have anything but a barely functional alpha by the end of 2018. 699 words.
• ArcheAge – Random Screen Shots. 2017-05-12 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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. 390 words.
• Wild West Online Announced. 2017-05-18 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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. :) 358 words.
• Destiny 2 Gameplay Reveal Event. 2017-05-24 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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. (The newest console I own is a PS3, which has remained unplugged and in a box for several years. The only hope it ever has to see the light of day again is that one day I plan to buy and play Demon’s Souls.) 331 words.
• Why Solo MMORPGs. 2017-05-30 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  Another one rescued from my Drafts folder, from February 2016… I’m in the camp of people who primarily play MMORPGs solo, so I guess I can speak a little on this topic. I wouldn’t say that I “demand” solo content from MMORPGs, though.* And it’s not that I’m against group content. I just prefer games where I can log in and do interesting things without having to form or join a group all the time. Because if I had to do that, I probably wouldn’t log in very often unless I had the time to idle a lot. 925 words.

June, 2017

• Stormblood’s a’Comin. 2017-06-08 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  FFXIV’s Stormblood expansion is arriving on June 16 for head start players, so I figure it might be a good time to talk about it. I pre-ordered it a long time ago, but I haven’t commented much about it. I did at one point write a post about some of the early feature announcements, but naturally, I never got around to publishing it, and it’s super obsolete now. When last we left our intrepid main character back in January, she was sitting at ilvl 224, having just geared up with ilvl 230 items from The Weeping City. She was avoiding the Antitower dungeon in the Heavensward Main Scenario, and wondering if there was an easy way to upgrade her pathetic bow beyond ilvl 210. I’ve logged in for maybe a grand total of 15 minutes since then (just long enough to keep the game client updated and verify that it still works). 589 words.
• Cryptic’s New MMORPG. 2017-06-15 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Literally a screen capture of the web page, since there’s nothing else to look at. Last Wednesday, Cryptic announced they are making an MMORPG based on Magic: The Gathering with help from Wizards of the Coast. As yet it apparently doesn’t have a title. That’s basically where my interest ended but in the name of thoroughly documenting the event and making a more appropriately-sized blog post, I’ll add some more thoughts. 443 words.
• Fractured Announced. 2017-06-16 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Blatantly stolen from fracturedmmo.com In addition to the bizarre announcement of an MMORPG based on Magic: The Gathering, last Wednesday we saw our first news about another new MMORPG called Fractured. (Not to be confused with The Repopulation’s survival spinoff of the same name. Seriously, do people never even look at the names of other games anymore?) Once again, it’s way too early to say anything good, bad, or indifferent about Fractured. It’s going to be a sandbox. But better than any other sandbox. For reasons. Reasons that will certainly work out exactly the way they are planning them, because games never change in response to early player feedback. 358 words.
• Stormblood Very First Impressions. 2017-06-17 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Glad I got the memo about the dress code here. It’s here! Well, if you pre-ordered. Upon first logging into Stormblood, I was greeted by this very prominent window explaining the new Song Gauge for the Bard job. “Here we go,” I thought, sighing heavily. This was exactly what I was afraid of: Huge changes to my class that will require mental energy and work to learn. The FFXIV equivalent of a talent point respec. I skimmed the window but didn’t really absorb any of it, so I took a screenshot, closed it, and hoped that, by ignoring it completely, it would magically go away. That didn’t work, so a bit later I decided to bite the bullet, picked a spot in the world, picked some random mobs, and started attacking them. 1,207 words.
• FFXIV – Finding Fun Without Instances. 2017-06-19 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  You’ve probably heard that there were one or two significant technical issues with FFXIV’s Stormblood early access over the weekend. Aywren summed it up pretty well. Even outside of the Stormblood content gate where I am, most times I tried to venture into an instance of any kind (dungeon, job duty, anything except PotD for some reason), I was disconnected from the server and couldn’t log back in with that character for up to an hour because of the dreaded Error 90002. This happened to me three times I think. 1,322 words.
• FFXIV – Antitower and 3.2 Finished. 2017-06-20 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Sunday afternoon I finally completed something I’ve been putting off for about six months now: The Antitower. I wasn’t planning to, it just sort of happened. I had just gotten back from the grocery store Sunday afternoon. I sat down to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. My mood was better than usual for the waning hours of a weekend, and I was wondering if instances were still broken (I had heard they weren’t but I suspected they might go bad again as server congestion ramped up), so as an experiment I queued up for my nemesis The Antitower. The stuff of nightmares. This … thing … was waiting at the end of The Antitower. 1,802 words.
• FFXIV – Sohr Khai and Palace of the Dead. 2017-06-21 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I started Monday evening with what I thought would be a quick trip through the level 54 job duty for the Samurai. I failed it three times. Apparently I haven’t learned nearly as much about playing the Samurai as I thought I had. The instance first has you fighting a lot of opponents simultaneously. They hit you for a lot of damage, too. Of course our fearless samurai trainer from the East just stands there and watches while you struggle. Somebody threw a regeneration heal on me, though, because I noticed my health going up occasionally. (Maybe that was the “Echo” bonus you get for subsequent tries.) 1,540 words.
• FFXIV – Stormblood Launch Day PvP. 2017-06-22 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I was dragging most of the day Tuesday so when I got home I stuck to simple, low energy tasks on Stormblood’s official launch day. Being launch day, I first had to enter a code on my account page to activate the game again. Square Enix somehow continues to have one of the worst systems for activating your game account in the history of the universe. You have to enter a code to get into the early access (two of them, in fact), then you have to enter another code to get in on launch day. It’s craziness. It’s hard to believe that average game consumers put up with it. It’s a process that takes a relatively high degree of technical saaviness to get through. (Maybe this is why people play it on console instead of PC.) 1,104 words.
• FFXIV – Heavensward, What Happened?. 2017-06-23 2:30 PM.
  • Blog
  • MMORPG
  
  Still bumping around doing miscellaneous tasks of little import in Stormblood. But lately I’ve been thinking about Heavensward, the previous FFXIV expansion. I pre-ordered it early and was in there on early access launch day, but looking back on it two years later, I didn’t play it very much at all. (Yet for some weird reason, I remained subscribed the whole time.) In FFXIV ARR (2.x), I leveled all of the following jobs to 50: Bard, White Mage, Dragoon, Black Mage, Miner, Botanist, Carpenter, Weaver, Alchemist, and Leatherworker. I had no jobs below level 15, and most jobs at least 25. Heavensward provided plenty of great screenshots, if nothing else. 687 words.
• Secret World Legends, A Quick Look. 2017-06-27 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I spent a little bit of time Friday evening checking out the head start for Secret World Legends. I was actually surprised how many people on Twitter were downloading it. I don’t remember seeing more than a couple people express much interest in The Secret World on my timelines before. Let me be blunt, like a politician: It’s the same game. It has slightly more action-y combat, in that you no longer have to hit the tab key to select targets. Instead, you point at the target you want to hit. (And when you point at a target, it “highlights” just as if you had tab-targeted it.) In my opinion, this does not fundamentally change the game at all. The animations are the same, the models are the same, the movement is the same. 942 words.
• FFXIV – Heavensward Completed. 2017-06-29 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m going to squish my entire FFXIV weekend into one post. The short version is that I finished all of the Heavensward Main Scenario Quests so I can begin the Stormblood expansion. This required completing all of these instances: Final Steps of Faith. A mostly-FC group got me through this trial pretty easily, except for one flashy lightning thing that zapped me dead in the second half. I’m not sure but I think Aymeric was hitting on the Warrior of Light. 756 words.
• FFXIV – Stormblood Begins!. 2017-06-30 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I officially started the Stormblood Expansion on Monday night, by which I mean that I’ve finally started into the Stormblood Main Scenario Quest. I’m trying something I’ve never done before: I’m recording my MSQ adventures. I very rarely record MMORPGs, because frankly I find MMORPGs are among the least interesting kinds of games to watch. I constantly wonder why people stream them. (Most of what you see on the screen is just the UI.) The only thing I can figure is that there is so much idle downtime that it leaves the streamer plenty of time to chit-chat with the audience. New zone is new! 1,063 words.

July, 2017

• FFXIV – Stormblood In Pictures. 2017-07-04 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Too busy playing to write anything. As of now I’m about 3/4 of the way to level 65, plugging away at the Main Scenario Quest in Yanxia. (See YouTube for excruciating detail.) Here are some screenshots. This anonymous lalafel photobombed my shot of the Kugane market. Arriving in the underwater village of the Kojin (I call them ninja turtles). 120 words.
• FFXIV – More Stormblood In Pictures. 2017-07-05 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Still too busy playing to write anything. I’ve reached the Azim Steppes and level 65. Here’s some more screenshots. :) The picturesque part of The Fringes. Not sure if floating or crucified. There is a very tall stack of rocks in The Ruby Sea. UFO sighting in Yanxia. 87 words.
• FFXIV – Stormblood Snippets. 2017-07-07 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I won’t try to summarize the entire Main Scenario-I’ll just say that I’m completely hooked and invested in the story as of level 66 in the Azim Steppe. The hokiness and stiltedness of the FFXIV-style cut scenes that most people complain about are completely unseen by me. If canned emotes and stoic nods-essentially the 3D equivalent of a puppet show-is what they have to do to deliver quality storytelling at a consistent pace, I’m fine with it. 573 words.
• FFXIV – Responding To Criticisms. 2017-07-10 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I see a lot of people on Twitter and at least one person on a certain MassivelyOP podcast mention that they keep trying to play FFXIV but they just can’t get into it. I consider myself a pretty jaded MMORPG player, and I can certainly understand the reasons people don’t like FFXIV. But I thought I would try to document here how I personally overcame the biggest criticisms people have with the game. 3,029 words.
• FFXIV – Even More Stormblood In Pictures. 2017-07-11 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Puffy sheep with rat tails! Wait I thought there weren’t supposed to be any horses in Eorzea? Wait is Eorzea a continent or a planet? I don’t know this game very well apparently. *scratches head, looking puzzled* 134 words.
• On Side Quests. 2017-07-12 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I didn’t intend to weigh in on @Sypster’s post about side quests, but apparently I did. :) In An Age and GamingSF also had some good responses. I think the basic argument Syp made is that side quests distract him from the main story, so he would prefer to eliminate them and boost the experience gained from the main story. I can understand that perspective. I’ve forgotten what’s going on in the main story of MMORPGs plenty of times. (In those cases I might argue that the main story isn’t worth remembering, though.) Syp didn’t mention which games were problematic for him, but I’ve had trouble keeping up with the main story in the later expansions of Rift and of course WoW, in which I never have a single clue what is happening story-wise. ESO used to have a main story issue, at least prior to One Tamriel, when you could only do one piece every 5 levels. 750 words.
• Solving Long DPS Queues. 2017-07-13 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I saw someone somewhere (FC chat maybe?) mention that they wished FFXIV would make their dungeons 5-man instead of 4-man so that DPS queues would go faster. (Belghast also recently lamented over the problems of leveling DPS.) It’s an interesting idea but I don’t think going to 5-man would significantly help the problem of slow DPS queues. I’m quite sure the ratio of DPS to tanks and healers in any given MMORPG is probably something like 25 to 1, if not 100 to 1. They would have to make dungeons into 10-man affairs with 1 tank, 1 healer, and 8 DPS to have any significant effect on DPS queues right now, in my opinion. 404 words.
• FFXIV – Stormblood Story Complete. 2017-07-18 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I reached Bard level 70 Sunday afternoon. Yay! But that’s not all that much of an achievement in FFXIV. You can’t do much of anything with the endgame until you finish the Main Scenario Quest. And… I finished the Main Scenario Quest Monday night! After reaching level 70, you need to do the Ala Mhigo 4-man dungeon and the Menagerie 8-man trial. I finished Ala Mhigo with a relatively uneventful PUG Sunday night. Then I tried a PUG for the Menagerie, which immediately follows-this has become a tradition of sorts in FFXIV. A final 4-man dungeon followed immediately by a final 8-man trial. I think both ARR and Heavensward ended this way. In those cases, the final 8-man trial was a pushover. You just showed up, dodged a few AoEs, and won the game. Roll credits. 1,042 words.
• LotRO – Mordor Is Here Too Soon. 2017-07-20 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Standing Stone Games started taking orders for the Mordor expansion in LotRO, which is “expected” to release July 31. $40 for the no-frills version.* The moment is finally here. The moment I’ve been dreading for so long: The moment when everyone else will get to experience the MMORPG cultural event of the decade, while I sit on the sidelines, peering longingly through the cracks in the fence, trying to catch a glimpse of the prize at the end of the rainbow. Or some metaphor or another like that. 927 words.
• FFXIV – Collectables Grokked. 2017-07-24 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m going to try to document here what I’ve figured out about gathering collectables in FFXIV, because there is almost a 100% chance that I will forget this someday and a future version of me will need to re-learn it. Collectables are similar to the Grand Company Provisioning missions you can do once per day, which look like this: Collectables are a bit better, though, because you can hand in a lot more every day. (By the way, my spellchecker insists that I should be writing “collectibles” but the game spells it “collectables.”) 1,157 words.
• Shelf-Life of an MMORPG. 2017-07-25 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  “Remember when we used to talk about Three-Monthers? Ah, those were the days!” -Bhagpuss That quote from Inventory Full made me chuckle, because I had recently been thinking that it took me precisely three weeks to play through the Stormblood expansion story. And that was going slow, recording everything, talking to everyone around the quest givers, and reading all of the unvoiced text out loud for the video. I could not possibly have done it any slower. 561 words.
• FFXIV – Bard 4.0 Thoughts. 2017-07-28 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I posted a comment on Aywren’s blog that made me think I should write a short post about what I’ve learned about the Stormblood Bard job. Then I wrote a way too long post about it, because that’s what happens when I’m bored for long periods of time. I’ve leveled a Samurai from 50 to 55, but other than that, I’ve been playing the Bard almost exclusively in Stormblood. I’ll admit the new abilities were a bit tough to grasp at first, but fortunately it wasn’t an impediment to playing through the content. I got through the whole MSQ story without doing much of anything with the Ballads, and it wasn’t until after I got to 70 that the new stuff started to “click.” 1,139 words.

August, 2017

• Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire Announced. 2017-08-01 5:22 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Since I’m home this week (see tomorrow’s post :) I had a rare opportunity to actually watch the Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire expansion announcement live today. (Those things are usually timed so that only the unemployed can watch them.) Not only that, but I could write a post about it and publish it with a screenshot all in the same day! Path of Fire is scheduled to release September 22, 2017, less than two months from now. 475 words.
• FFXIV – Latest Adventures. 2017-08-02 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Healing
  
  To make a long story short, I left my old job and will be home all this week before starting a new part-time job Tuesday. (Technically it’s in the same building.) Being home is weird. I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. I haven’t had a full week off of work since the last time I changed jobs, which was in July 2014. That means I’m writing this post on Tuesday morning on my gaming PC, which is a very strange situation for me. Most of my posts are written in a text editor when I’m bored at work, so it feels very strange to be “working” in the place I normally reserve for goofing off. 1,183 words.
• FFXIV – Thoughts On 1.0. 2017-08-03 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I mentioned a Let’s Play series showing Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 in my last post: Out of intense curiosity, I’ve been watching this series for a while, trying to take some notes about what I like and dislike about 1.0. The YouTuber showers praise on the game while he plays, more than it deserves-to the point where I wonder if Square Enix actually paid the guy-but he’s at least enthusiastic. He is more of a talented radio-voice-guy than a talented gamer though. It’s very humorous to listen to him talking about mining like it’s some kind of exciting baseball game. (Also, I don’t want to brag, but I did way better at reading quest text in my Stormblood videos. :) 1,443 words.
• LotRO – The Road To Mordor, A Tweetstorm. 2017-08-05 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I haven’t yet bought the Mordor expansion (I probably will, despite the hype-destroying trailer), but it dawned on me that LotRO is one of those rare MMORPGs where you can actually explore the world without having to unlock zones by completing quests. So I decided that I wanted to run my 95 Runekeeper as close to Mordor as I could get. I made it all the way to the Black Gate. 217 words.
• LotRO – Mordor Expansion Thoughts. 2017-08-07 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I did indeed buy the $40 edition of the Mordor Expansion, and boosted a Hobbit Minstrel from level 24 to level 105 so I could actually play said expansion. (Folks on Twitter seemed to think Minstrel was a good solo class to play.) Once again the gear you are given looks awful, like a suit of white underwear. I guess they really want people who use level boosts to look like total newbies compared to the people have been playing all along, which I suppose isn’t entirely inappropriate. At least this time they gave me a neat-looking pony, though it is literally only like 5% faster than the blond sorrel pony I had at level 24. 914 words.
• LotRO – Mordor to Moria. 2017-08-09 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I was having some fun in the Mordor expansion, bopping up to the Black Gate, talking to Gandalf … pardon me, Mithrandir … meeting those four “adventurers” with different personalities. It seemed like they were setting up those four folks as characters we might see again throughout Mordor, following their adventures so to speak, and it seemed like a good story idea. They all had their different reasons for going into Mordor, and it was the hook I needed to get interested in the zone. I wanted to see how they fared. 324 words.
• GW2 – Path of Fire Demo, The Rage-Quittening. 2017-08-11 8:21 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m going to try really hard not to sound bitter, angry, and resentful as I write this. :) I’m home today so I logged into GW2 to try out this Path of Fire demo thing. At first I had no idea how to even participate. I logged into my Necro, who I had left in Orr outside of the Zhaitan dungeon. Last time I played, I tried to do that last personal story mission to kill Zhaitan. Hoo boy what a mistake that was, but that’s another story. The point is that when I logged in, I was in the middle of one of those Orr events where everything in the area is trying to murder you and I got killed over and over and over again before I could even run far enough away to teleport away from it. So that was a great start. 867 words.
• GW2 – Path Of Fire Demo, Take Two. 2017-08-12 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  This morning I tried the Path of Fire demo again, and it went much better. Thanks for the encouraging comments on my last whiny post. :) In fact, the second time through, I got all the way through the burning village and killed the two Veteran Forged Warhounds without dying. Then … the client disconnected. That was disappointing, to say the least. So I had to go through it a third time. I got through it all again without dying. I put out all the fires in the village, got the Raptor mount, met what’s-her-name and what’s-his-name, and got out into the city. (I actually saw the city before, because if you rage-quit the episode like I did yesterday, it drops you into the city.) 397 words.
• LotRO – Hunter Level 58!. 2017-08-14 12:34 AM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  
  I just wanted to announce that my Hunter made it to level 58 in Moria. Gaining another level in LotRO (when you’re not subscribed or anything) is a major accomplishment. I am not really sure what is going on with the epic story here. I am on Volume II, Book 4, Chapter 3 as of this writing. The dwarves are just sort of rooting around looking for chambers and relics and books and stuff. I’m not paying that much attention because none of the characters have much personality. Dwarves are all the same-loud, bombastic, and either Scottish or Russian. :) It’s really difficult to capture the scale of how massive the Mines of Moria is. 137 words.
• GW2 – HoT Progress and Thoughts. 2017-08-14 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  
  Progress! I mentioned going through Heart of Thorns and the Living Story Season 3 in my last post, so I started working on that again. At least until I got to Heart of Thorns, Chapter 12, “The Way In.” This requires a Nuhoch Hunting Mastery before you can access it. Boo. And people complain about FFXIV locking content behind a Main Scenario Quest! I had previously completed up through Chapter 8, “City of Hope.” In that post, I predicted it would take six months to get to Chapter 9, but in fact it took about eleven months. 1,413 words.
• GW2 – Rangering In HoT. 2017-08-15 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I saw Bhagpuss mention an easy-mode “Bearbow” build in one of his recent posts, which made me wonder if I would have any better luck with my Ranger. By coincidence, Aywren was looking for feedback on the Ranger as well. I had a lot of fun playing the Ranger leveling from 1 to 80, but that was back in the months after GW2 launch. Since then, my Ranger has largely been parked, as most of my GW2 characters are when they hit 80. (My most fun experience with Heart of Thorns was leveling a Revenent from 1 to 80.) 765 words.
• GW2 – HoT Chapters 12-14. 2017-08-16 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Contrary to expectations, I was able to get my Nuhoch Mastery point and continue to chapter 12 in record time (one day). I got the Mastery point while I was running around on my Ranger, incidentally. My mastery level is now at the earth-shattering level of-you might want to sit down for this-10! I returned to my Necro for the story. He’s been my main guy for all these years and I have a decent feel for the class-as best as I’ll probably ever get in GW2, at least. I abandoned the Greatsword and went back to Axe/Warhorn and Staff. 603 words.
• GW2 – HoT Chapters 15-16. 2017-08-17 9:57 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Just a brief GW2 update, mainly to keep up my streak of daily posts this month: I completed HoT chapter 15, which went okay, despite the AI bugs and random weirdness that always goes along with GW2 story instances. (My crew ran across an invisible bridge to join a fight on the other side of a chasm, so I glided over to follow them, but the fight was just for show and I couldn’t actually kill anything. Turns out I was supposed to stay on my side of the chasm and free Zojja, which whom I never even saw the first time.) 373 words.
• Random Friday Tidbits. 2017-08-18 4:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • Progression Report
  
  Another brief post just to post something today. GW2. I did in fact retry Chapter 16, “Hearts and Minds,” and beat it after two more attempts Thursday night, which took another hour. If you leave the instance for any reason, by the way, you have to start all over. So take my advice: Don’t rage quit if you die to the last boss. :) I’ll probably start Living Story Season 3 this weekend although I’m kind of burned out on GW2 already. 298 words.
• LotRO – Level 59 and Khazad-dûm. 2017-08-19 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  
  My Hunter reached level 59 and the famous Bridge of Khazad-dûm yesterday-what’s left of the bridge, at least. I was following the side quest of a dwarf Svanr who was on some kind of pilgrimage to see all of the Mines of Moria, and we got to the Bridge. Then my character took his first steps back outside in seemingly forever. It’s surely been over a year of real time since before my Hunter entered Moria. Spent most of my time searching for these. 280 words.
• Dimrill Dale and Eclipse Jealosy. 2017-08-20 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  One thing that happens when you make a conscious effort to post every day is that half of your blog posts turn into diary entries. “Dear diary: Here’s what I did today. Well, yesterday.” Yesterday I completed the Moria Epic Story and officially returned to the world under the sky in Dimrill Dale, attaining level 60 in the process. I got to revisit the Watcher in the Water deep in the bowels of Moria. Volume 2, Chapter 5 ended with having to complete three different skirmishes where you defend various places in Moria from Orc invasions. They were ridiculously easy to the point of tedium. In the end, the dwarves got their precious mithril axe Zigilburk back so I guess they are happy now. (That’s a terrible name for a legendary axe by the way.) 596 words.
• Getting Lost In MMOs. 2017-08-23 3:11 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  A recent MassivelyOP Daily Grind asked the question: “Do you like being lost in MMOs?” My answer is generally no, I never want to my progress to be impeded by not knowing where to go. But it depends on the situation and/or the game. Here are two recent examples: When I think about my experience playing through the remainder of the GW2 Heart of Thorns story, I was lost a lot in the Maguuma Jungle, and it was aggravating. The flat 2D map helped little because the world was extremely 3D and while the map might show you standing on top of your destination, in reality it might be way above you or below you with no discernable path to reach it. 350 words.
• FFXIV – Stormblood Story Deep Dive. 2017-08-24 4:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Here’s another post I wrote a long time ago but never published because I forgot that I wrote it. Previously I gave a high-level summary of the Stormblood story, but now I want to dive deeper into more detail. There will be huge, massive, unbelievable, mind-shattering spoilers here that go far beyond anything that was in the previous post, so you’ve been warned. The biggest plot problem I remember: There was one point in the story when our heroes had to watch while Yotsuyu terrorized some villagers. Gosetsu was going to charge into the fray to help the villagers, but of course Lyse and Alisaie objected because it would be suicide (allegedly). That made sense. But then a minute later Alisaie said, “Wait, no that sounds like a great plan, Gosetsu, you go get captured and try not to die as a diversion.” That was a terrible plan! The worst plan ever! How does it help anyone to let Gosetsu be captured or killed? It would have been far better to keep him with the group! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing there. 2,087 words.
• Comfort MMORPGs. 2017-08-25 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  Here’s another post based on a MassivelyOP’s Daily Grind: What’s Your Comfort MMO? I find this to be a somewhat odd question, because I generally like to have a constantly-changing game experience, as opposed to an experience that is always the same. I am the kind of person who likes to learn and try new things all the time (within the boundaries of crippling anxieties, of course). This is why I try out most new MMORPGs if I can. 513 words.
• FFXIV – The Rising Event. 2017-08-27 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Hard to believe it’s been four years since The Calamity. I don’t normally care that much about these anniversary or holiday events, but when I saw the wind-up Gosetsu I knew that I had to have him. Not that I ever take out minions in the game or anything. It’s just the principle of the thing. I had it in my head that The Rising wouldn’t be starting until after the Tuesday patch, but this morning (Sunday) I logged in and everybody was talking about it, so I went to Ul’dah and sure enough there was the NPC. It was a brief event, as all FFXIV events are, and the word jumble password thing was fairly annoying, but at the end I got my precious Gosetsu wind-up! 220 words.
• Ashes of Creation Combat. 2017-08-28 4:31 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I was looking around for something to write about today and stumbled on this MassivelyOP post about Ashes of Creation combat. I clicked on the video and started watching with no real interest until this one combat mechanic caught my attention. But first, I don’t know who that Ziz guy is, but if he’s not a paid content creator for Ashes of Creation, I’ll eat my hat. He’s way too excited about this game not to be getting paid. It’s a huge turn-off. 472 words.
• Lockbox Expectations. 2017-08-30 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  While the rest of the world is probably posting about the Destiny 2 open beta today, I’m going to post about lockboxes, because I wrote this yesterday. I think it was Roger that said we bloggers could get a lot of good topics out of MassivelyOP’s Daily Grinds, so here’s another one: What Do You Actually Expect To Get Out Of MMORPG Lockboxes? This particular Grind was inspired by Bhagpuss boldly claiming to like lockboxes (in a way). 436 words.

September, 2017

• FFXIV – Yo-kai Grinding. 2017-09-06 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve had a Yo-kai Watch in my inventory for a while, but I never knew what it was for or where I got it. I remember finding it in my inventory, and I kept looking at it, thinking, “What the heck is this thing for?” Well it turns out that I must have accidentally done the Yo-kai Event quest in 2016. I have no memory of that, but when I went to find the Yo-kai quest-giver in Ul’dah the other day, he/she/it was nowhere to be found. I went to the Gold Saucer, followed the crowd of people, and found the Yo-kai vendor, which I must have already talked to in 2016 too. I even had the Yo-kai Medallium book, and one Yo-kai Medal on one of my Retainers. 403 words.
• Elite: Dangerous Horizons. 2017-09-20 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m currently uninterested in any game on my hard drive, but I had a sudden flash of inspiration and re-downloaded Elite: Dangerous. I impulsively paid 20 pounds for the Horizons expansion, which sounded cheap until it turned out to be 27 dollars in real money charged to my credit card. After a somewhat lengthy downloading and installation process I was back in the game that I last played for about a month after it’s initial launch at the end of 2014. 847 words.
• GW2 – Season 3, Episode 1, Out of the Shadows. 2017-09-25 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  I bought the Path of Fire expansion on Friday morning, about four hours before launch time. Not that it matters, but I hope that my purchase was late enough that it doesn’t “count” in the video game industry’s pre-order shenanigans. It was early enough that I got the bonuses, though. (Not that I’ll ever use them.) When I logged in around 11:30, I realized that I had not yet started the Living Story Season 3, and I remembered that I had planned to finish that before going into Path of Fire. (I actually meant to finish it before buying Path of Fire, but I forgot about that part.) 691 words.

October, 2017

• GW2 – Season 3, Episode 2, Rising Flames. 2017-10-04 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Bhagpuss recommended that I skip the Living World Season 3* and go right into Path of Fire, which by all accounts is far superior, but I’m stubbornly persisting in my efforts to complete the whole season first. Partly it’s because I’ve been recording this adventure, so I’ll have videos of it all. And partly it’s because I want to experience it “as it was intended.” I see a lot of people using their new mounts to get to places which seems like cheating. :) 544 words.
• GW2 – Season 3, Episode 3, A Crack in the Ice. 2017-10-06 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Episode 3 of the Living World Season 3 takes us to Bitterfrost Frontier, another new map north of Frostgorge Sound. The episode begins with some “challenges” in Tarir to train baby dragon Aurene how to be a good dragon. I cringed at first but it turned out the challenges were fairly benign, if somewhat tedious. It seemed like filler material to extend the length of the content, to be honest. 311 words.
• GW2 – Season 3, Episode 4, The Head of the Snake. 2017-10-08 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Episode 4 is entitled The Head of the Snake, and by the end, I was hoping someone would cut off my head to put me out of my misery. It began innocently enough, with a party at Divinity’s Reach with Queen Jennah. It reminded me of another story instance I vaguely remember from the distant past, perhaps in another Living Story, where you had to walk around talking to party guests. This time, White Mantle forces crashed the party by attacking Divinity’s Reach, which miraculously created a new map right next to the city where we’ve never seen one before. (Or was that little space there the whole time? If so, did they plan to put a map there all along?) 1,226 words.
• GW2 – Season 3, Episode 5, Flashpoint. 2017-10-09 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  For the record, I’ve finished Living World Season 3 and started into Path of Fire. As of Monday morning, I’ve just gotten to the second map, Desert Highlands. It’s a far better expansion than Heart of Thorns already, although I just ran into a story gate that isn’t obvious how to open. Now back to the past… Living World Season 3, Episode 5, Flashpoint, starts off with a trip to Taimi’s lab, where we find Kasmeer chastising us for not inviting her to join Dragon’s Watch yet. As usual with Asura, there is a slight diversion as we fight back the experiments (hasn’t anyone learned yet to keep Asura far, far away from technical gadgets?). 1,038 words.
• GW2 – Season 3, Episode 6, One Path Ends. 2017-10-14 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Apologies for the delay, but my SSD drive failed and caused all manner of random crashing issues for four days. PC problems have a way of pushing all other concerns to the background. Once I finally determined it was the SSD (not so easy, since all tests indicated it was perfectly fine), I installed an older, smaller SSD from an old laptop and reinstalled Windows, so I’ve now got a blank new machine for all intents and purposes. This is the first time I’ve ever seen an SSD fail, but it’s only the third one I’ve ever owned, so I have to conclude they don’t have a very high success rate. 738 words.
• GW2 – Path of Fire Story Completed. 2017-10-17 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Well, that didn’t take long. But before I talk about Path of Fire, in news that no blog reader cares about, I’ve uploaded the videos I recorded for Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns to my YouTube channel. (Cross-promotion!) I’m enjoying Path of Fire a lot. It’s very much like playing the original game again, which was the best part of Guild Wars 2. It almost feels like an “apology” for everything that’s been released since the original game. I spent time completing the first three maps to 100% before moving on with the story, something that has literally never happened since entering Orr roughly five years ago. 1,852 words.
• FFXIV – 4.1, The Legend Returns. 2017-10-19 12:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  I dragged myself away from Guild Wars 2 for a little while to play through the FFXIV 4.1 Main Scenario Quest, “The Legend Returns.” I’m so happy to be caught up with FFXIV and be in a position to play these patches when they come out, instead of rushing to catch up later. I didn’t even have to get any new gear. This is probably the first time I’ve ever been so caught up in any game. 821 words.
• FFXIV – 4.1 Features. 2017-10-21 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Last time I only talked about the story, but this time I want to talk about some of the new features in Patch 4.1. Royal City of Rabanastre The new Rabanastre Raid is typical for an alliance raid. Lots of mechanics and most of them try to kill you. By now I’ve learned that it’s pointless to try to watch a guide beforehand for these things, so I just jumped in totally blind. (The guides out in the first week aren’t that great anyway. Video guides just drone mechanics at you in a monotone with background video that may or may not be related to what is being said. That means you, MrHappy. :) Thankfully I recognized many of the mechanics from previous instances. But some of them are brand new, especially on the last boss, and some explanation is needed. That first PUG wiped three times I think. (Though honestly I don’t remember dying on the last boss even though I had literally no clue what to do.) 1,223 words.
• GW2 – Fun While It Lasted?. 2017-10-23 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  I hate to say this, but once I finished the GW2 Path of Fire story, I found that my drive to keep playing rapidly dwindled. I think I understand now why they didn’t put very much of the story on the final two maps. They are less fun to play on. Bhagpuss alluded to this early on in his first first impressions post. There is a very noticeable ramp up in difficulty from Elon Riverlands to The Desolation. I have to admit I chuckled at his nailing the exact difficulties that I routinely experience in Heart of Thorns in his description of Path of Fire: 702 words.
• FFXIV – Raids ‘n’ Things. 2017-10-24 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  That’s the World of Darkness minion. I started to write this as a comment on Aywren’s post about Alliance Raids, but it was getting too long. I agree completely about using the Alliance Raids to level from 50. My testing shows you get 200-250k experience per run (tested at level 58 and 59), not counting rested experience, and Roulette bonuses, which add that much more. That’s a crazy high amount of experience-per-instance, bested only by dungeons, which usually take longer to get into and finish. 1,135 words.
• Passing on PC Destiny 2. 2017-10-25 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  The-guy-that-Nathan-Fillion-voices from the open beta. Soon you will probably see a lot of talk about the launch of Destiny 2 on the PC. I’m trying to be more discerning with my game purchases these days, so I have no plans to pay full price for an over-hyped, mediocre shooter whose main attraction seems to be a large cult following. Maybe if it goes on sale I’ll take a look at it, but who are we kidding, this is Activision/Blizzard and it’s never going to go on sale, so I’m probably never going to buy it. 311 words.
• FFXIV – Loot Window Screed. 2017-10-27 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  I’ve been doing a lot of Alliance Raids in Final Fantasy XIV since 4.1, so I’ve seen the loot window a whole lot lately. This is a 3000-word screed on everything that’s wrong with the UI in this window. This is probably not unique to FFXIV, by the way. But it’s the one I personally see most often. First let’s go over how it works in case you haven’t experienced it. At the end of the raid or dungeon or whatever, after defeating the Big Bad, someone finds and clicks on the shiny loot chest (an unnecessary and antiquated step in the process, but let’s just go with it). A window then pops up on everyone’s screen that shows what’s in the chest. You then have an opportunity to choose whether to “roll” on each piece of loot in chest. The game then randomly selects a “winner” for each piece. It’s pretty standard for an MMORPG, though I might argue again that it’s a bit of an antiquated system. 3,106 words.
• GW2 – Doing Dailies. 2017-10-30 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  What’s this then? A ley-line anomaly guy? Now that I know GW2 dailies give out gold, I started doing them. They aren’t very fun to do. :) Talk about mindless busy work. No wonder I’ve been ignoring them. I’ve never been a big fan of “doing dailies” in any MMORPG, and I usually leave a game for something else when I get to the point where that’s all there is to do. So it takes a lot of mental energy to push through these completely arbitrary, meaningless tasks. 813 words.

November, 2017

• WoW – Battle For Azeroth. 2017-11-06 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  
  From the media assets on the Battle for Azeroth web site. In general, I don’t think about WoW very much, but when Blizzcon comes around every year, Twitter explodes with chatter about this game. Even more than the moderate level of chatter that persists year-round. It continues to amaze me how many people seem to live completely inside a Blizzard bubble. 595 words.
• GW2 – Story Over Time. 2017-11-10 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Remember Checkhov’s gun here? I didn’t either. Still waiting for someone to use it. Guild Wars 2 posts do fairly well for some weird reason (but not as well as Dark Tower posts, go figure), so here’s another one. If you aren’t caught up with GW2 there might be some accidental spoilers below. I mentioned before that I’ve been re-playing the Living World Season 2. Eventually I’ll be uploading them to my YouTube channel, because hey, why not. “Pivot to video” and all that. I actually got six whole views on one of my Path of Fire videos! 679 words.
• GW2 – Living World Season 4 Announced. 2017-11-15 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  
  I’m in another “there is nothing to blog about”* mood so this is a brief update to tell you that I finished the GW2 Living World Season 2 again. It was more entertaining the second time. Except for every combat encounter, of course. But it felt considerably easier the second time through, and I only remember wanting to punch my monitor on two of the bosses. That’s an overall smaller monitor-punches-per-episode rate than Living World Season 3 was. (I used my Revenent character.) 237 words.
• Catching Up – CCP, Gazillion, etc.. 2017-11-17 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Literally my only screenshot from Marvel Heroes. I mentioned that there was nothing to blog about. Then I started catching up on all the things I’ve missed in the MMO landscape over the last month or so. CCP VR Layoffs. Apparently CCP decided they didn’t want to be a pioneer in VR after all. Presumably this means they’ll need to figure out how to increase revenue from EVE, a fourteen-year-old game that new players run screaming from. (Incidentally, I keep meaning to try out the free version.) 321 words.
• WoW – What I Thought In 2006. 2017-11-22 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  In light of the announcement of World of Warcraft Classic, everybody’s abuzz with WoW nostalgia, so I thought it would be fun to re-post my very first thoughts about WoW Vanilla from 2006. From blizzard.com - I can’t find any screenshots prior to 2014. World of Warcraft October 10, 2006 Inspired by the recent episode of South Park, and being bored with FlatOut2, I finally installed my trial version of World of Warcraft yesterday, which I’d gotten with a video card about a year ago I think. I’ve been trying to stay away from MMORPGs because, as South Park indicated, you really can’t play them competitively unless you’re willing to join some kind of guild and give up your life, and really, what’s the point in playing a game if not to win? :) But I’ve heard repeatedly that WoW was particularly good for so-called “casual gamers” and people who liked solo adventuring, so I gave it a shot. 1,565 words.
• Guild Wars 1??. 2017-11-24 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Since I’m done with Guild Wars 2 until November 28th (I got bored with dailies), I had a crazy idea a few weeks back to re-download and play Guild Wars 1 to have a look at the story. I’ve always heard it’s good. I own this game. So why not play it? I’m not entirely sure, but I think I own all of the available GW1 content. I originally bought it somewhere around 2011, and later I think I bought all of the expansions sometime after Guild Wars 2 came out when I saw there were some achievements and titles that you could get from linking your accounts or something. 585 words.
• Writing versus Story. 2017-11-27 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Bhagpuss said something interesting in his last comment: In general I think the idea that GW1 had good writing is fanciful. Much though I like Prophecies, the writing is pretty shoddy. I think when people praise the writing they are mainly talking about the plotting, which is fairly coherent. The dialog is mostly stilted and unconvincing, often risible. First, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word “risible” in my entire life. It means laughable, as in, “It’s risible that I’ve never seen the word risible.” 380 words.
• Social Jumping. 2017-11-29 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Shadow added in post to enhance the illusion of height :) I’m not going to write about how thoroughly exhausted and beaten down I was last night after completing the epic ~45 minute death march of a fight in the first chapter of the first episode of GW2’s Living World Season 4. Instead I’m going to keep it light and talk about jumping. I saw a remark somewhere in passing about jumping in MMORPGs (apologies but I can’t remember where) which inspired me to write this. 643 words.

December, 2017

• GW2 – Living World Season 4, Daybreak. 2017-12-04 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  This seems like a decent non-spoilery picture for this post because I have no idea what it is or when I took it. I finished up the Living World Season 4 episode Daybreak over the weekend. This post is going to contain story spoilers, so if you haven’t finished it yet, look away! 2,502 words.
• The Blogosphere Strikes Back. 2017-12-06 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Responses
  
  Image stolen from Wookiepedia. And, you know, that movie. Tobold recently declared that the MMO blogosphere was dead to him (paraphrasing slightly), so I suppose it’s my duty to point out that we’re still here, sort of. Tobold was one of the first, if not the first MMORPG blogger I read, way back in the olden days when he talked about Vanilla WoW all the time. He was one of the original models for how I thought a blog should look. Then he sort of lost me in the last five years or so when he started panning every single new MMORPG that came out and embraced the jaded “everything used to be better” schtick and moved into pen-and-paper games. I haven’t read him much since then, but I see most of the titles of his articles going through my feed reader, and it’s hard not to notice one that reads, Is the MMO Blogosphere Still Alive? 743 words.
• Snap Judgment – Kritika Online. 2017-12-08 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  • Snap Judgment
  
  I alluded to trying out Kritika Online in my last post, so I thought I would write a bit about it. For one thing, I want to have a post to link to later in the year for my “Game/MMORPG of the Year” post, and for another thing, Friday is looming, and I don’t have anything to post yet. I downloaded and played Kritika on November 22nd, the day before Thanksgiving. I uninstalled it the same day. 914 words.
• Endgame Viable Awards 2017. 2017-12-29 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  It’s time once against for the prestigious Endgame Viable Awards for 2017, posted a bit early because the 31st is a Sunday. Hopefully I won’t play any new games over the weekend to skew these results. 2016 Awards 2015 Awards I give out three awards: Game of the Year, MMORPG of the Year, and MMORPG Expansion of the Year. In my warped worldview “Game of the Year” sort of implies Steam game of the year and excludes traditional MMORPGs. 760 words.

January, 2018

• On The Radar For 2018. 2018-01-03 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  
  Here’s my annual summary of PC MMORPGs that are on my radar for the new year 2018. (Here is 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014). I am only considering “traditional” style MMORPGs in this list, not things like MOBAs or brawlers or Diablo-clones or whatever else people call MMOs these days. Actually, since I find out about these from MMO sites, and most MMO sites now cover things that aren’t traditional MMORPGs, some of these might in fact not be traditional MMORPGs. But I try to weed out things that are obviously not MMORPGs, like, say, Conan Exiles. 1,409 words.
• Single-Player Holidays. 2018-01-08 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • RPG
  
  The last thing I mentioned playing was Divinity: Original Sin. I sort of gave up on it. It’s a great game and all, but it’s just too exhausting. I went through two boss fights in a row (SparkMaster 5000 and Radagoth) and both times, luck was the determining factor for success. That’s just not fun. I don’t know how all the people who play tabletop games do it. :) 781 words.
• MMO News Roundup. 2018-01-19 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  I’m trying an experiment here: A list of MMO news that I found noteworthy during the week. I’m trying this slightly retro blogging format because, to be brutally honest, for most MMO topics, I have a lot of trouble summoning up more than a few sentences of commentary, which results in a glut of unfinished blog drafts and a paucity of published posts (ha!). The challenge here will be finding a picture to use. 799 words.
• Rift Prime – Too Late?. 2018-01-22 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Looking longingly at the place where level 69 players-or patrons-can go. I suppose the announcement of RIFT Prime deserves its own blog post, rather than an offhand remark in a news summary. Like most of the other reactions I’ve read, I’m tentatively interested, but I’m certainly not jumping on the hype train yet. See, here’s the thing. I’m probably only going to subscribe to one game at a time. Historically the main reason is that there are precious few games out there worth subscribing to. But in more practical terms right now I have drastically reduced disposable income and it would be pretty reckless to throw money away on something that isn’t amazing. I’m no longer working at a job where an hour of cubicle work time offsets months of subscriptions on mediocre games I forget to even play. 845 words.
• MMO News Roundup 2. 2018-01-26 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  I found this Moonshade Highlands library in Rift for, I think, the very first time this week. Weirdly I got to it from Sanctum. I have no idea what it’s for, except to give me a little bit more experience as I level up. 636 words.
• FFXIV – 4.2 Rise of a New Sun Patch Notes. 2018-01-29 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  They aren’t too concerned about spoiling things from the previous patch, are they? Roughly 75% of the 4.2 patch doesn’t interest me, but there’s a few cool things in there. This cracked me up: You won’t be able to skip the cut scenes in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium anymore. If I were a new player, I’d be glad about that, because I’d hate to miss them (I honestly don’t remember if I watched them the first time or not, or if I ever have). I don’t understand why they didn’t do the same in other Main Scenario instances though. The social pressure to skip cut scenes in instances is immense (even if nobody asks you to), and to this day I can’t understand why they keep putting cut scenes, even very short ones, into group instances. 1,382 words.

February, 2018

• MMO News Reactions 3. 2018-02-02 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  Gloamwood. I played a new character through the first two zones in Rift to imagine what Rift Prime might be like. _A series of short reactions to the week’s MMORPG stories, otherwise known as “just about giving up on blogging” because I can’t be bothered to write long posts lately. 641 words.
• MMO News Reactions 4. 2018-02-09 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  _A series of short reactions to the week’s MMORPG stories, otherwise known as “just about giving up on blogging” because I can’t be bothered to write long posts lately. _ Nexon laid off some people. I don’t think I play any Nexon games. Forbes interview on WoW Classic. I don’t think I mentioned this at the time, but while Blizzcon made it sound like WoW Classic was right around the corner, I secretly thought it sounded like they hadn’t even started on it yet. This confirms that it sounds like they haven’t even gotten out of the “memos around the office” phase of this project yet. How many years away will this thing be? Will Star Citizen be out before WoW Classic? 165 words.
• RIFT Leveling Anew. 2018-02-12 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Opinion
  
  With all the buzz about RIFT Prime, I wondered if I could recreate a nostalgic experience for free just by starting a new character on plain old RIFT Normal. I wanted to check two things: To see if experience points were withheld from free players at the beginning of the game just like at level 68, leading to hard road blocks that could only be made up by endless grinding or spending cash. Secondly, I wanted to speculate on what RIFT Prime might deliver to me that would be superior to what I was experiencing completely for free. 1,409 words.
• MMO News Reactions 5. 2018-02-16 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  A series of short reactions to the week’s MMORPG stories, otherwise known as “just about giving up on blogging” because I can’t be bothered to write long posts lately. Sorry about last week’s post. I was scrolling through Twitter last Friday and much to my own surprise I found that I’d posted something to my blog without even looking at it or setting a header image or anything. This time I will refrain from scheduling this to post right after creating the draft!_ 318 words.
• FFXIV – 4.2 Rise of a New Sun Completed (Spoilers). 2018-02-19 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I put off FFXIV for a couple of weeks while I finished my Fallout 4 obsession, then I jumped in and completed the Main Scenario Quest for the 4.2 Patch. It took two whole days, maybe three total hours. I’m glad to have finished it. I had basically zero interest in playing it, to be honest, but I know from experience that no matter how much one doesn’t feel like playing the MSQ, it’s far better to stay up-to-date than to have to catch back up later. (Ask anyone who’s come back to FFXIV after any kind of absence, like, say, me. Go play the MSQ immediately!! Drop everything!! Do it now!! It’s the one inescapable dependency from which literally every other feature of the game inherits.) 627 words.
• That Ashes of Creation Live Stream. 2018-02-21 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve worked on this post for a very long time. I’ve added stuff. Then I’ve deleted stuff. Then I’ve added other stuff. Then I’ve deleted other stuff. I don’t even know what it reads like anymore. If this were a novel, it would certainly be abandoned. Bhagpuss asked me what I didn’t like about the Ashes of Creation video. I actually try not to be this negative anymore, because it doesn’t do anyone any good to complain about something that other people might like. And it’s not like anyone is consulting me on how to make games. But you asked! :) 2,523 words.
• Kitchen Sink Post #6. 2018-02-23 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  _I’m still tinkering with the formula for this weekly “bullet post” thing. Now I feel like I should include news items and any interesting progress I’ve made on games I’m playing. _ ESO… always seems better in screenshots. I started the week playing some FFXIV, trying to work on improving my gear with Rabanastre runs and Omega 4.0 runs. Then I started playing ESO, trying to find what it was that everyone keeps saying that they love about that game. I was determined to level my original launch Templar from 44 to 50, hoping that’s when everything would suddenly click again. I got to 47, but I remain baffled. I’m working on a post titled, “Why can’t I get back into ESO?” I hear what people say about how they think the questing is some of the best storytelling in MMORPGs, but I just stare blankly wondering if we are even talking about the same game or speaking the same language. 318 words.
• Why Is It So Hard to Get Back Into ESO?. 2018-02-26 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Coldharbor, a painfully long slog through a very depressing blue landscape. If I had to guess which MMORPG was most popular right now based just on my Twitter feed (discounting WoW of course), I would guess that ESO is probably a strong contender. I used to love ESO. I played for about two months when it launched. I enjoyed it a lot. It was such a fresh take on the genre. It has fantastic graphics, sound, and music. It’s clearly a high quality game, well worth the purchase price. 1,160 words.

March, 2018

• MMO Roundup #7. 2018-03-02 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  Not only am I still trying to find a formula for this weekly bullet post, but I am also still trying to find the right formula for the post’s title. A hilariously anachronistic priest in a supposedly historical game. I have played nothing at all this week except Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and am now over 60 hours. I almost rage quit when I met the first boss and died a hundred times, but after I eventually beat him mostly through luck and potions, I realized it was actually really easy and there was no need to quit. :) 330 words.
• MMO Roundup #8. 2018-03-09 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  Now I’m trying to work out why WordPress keeps using old images when it posts these things to Twitter. I think it’s because I was using a “Clone Post” plugin to make these posts. So I’m making this one from scratch. Seeing as how there is a game-breaking bug that prevents me from continuing to play it, I’ve abandoned Kingdom Come: Deliverance until whichever decade Warhorse decides to release the 1.3 patch for the PC. 415 words.
• RIFT Prime – The First Week. 2018-03-12 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  2 plat 50 gold for that horse so you better believe it gets a screenshot! I mentioned briefly that I jumped into RIFT Prime, because of course I did. Everybody was talking about it, so as an MMORPG player, it is part of the rules that you have to join in on whatever the newest, shiniest thing is, especially if there is even the slimmest of possibilities that it might actually be fun. 3,391 words.
• Project: Gorgon Acquired. 2018-03-14 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Project: Gorgon launched on Steam Early Access Tuesday at $40 with a 25% sale, bringing it down to $30 for the first week, which is precisely the price that I hoped it would be. Unlike all the other Early Access games that expect you to pay $30, I know exactly what I’m going to get with Project: Gorgon, and $30 seems like a decent price point to play around with it. 1,031 words.
• MMO Roundup #9. 2018-03-16 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  A weekly diary of MMO news and observations. The Bane Bard 330 outfit, mostly. The boots don’t match! It’s been a very unusual multi-game bonanza lately. Normally I stick with one game at a time, but I’ve been all over the place. This is not a good thing. It means that none of the games I’m currently playing are all that interesting to me, and I’m in that mood where I’m searching for The Next Big Thing. 681 words.
• EverQuest Coirnav Diary, Complete (Probably). 2018-03-19 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I rolled a Human Druid on the new EverQuest Coirnav progression server Friday. Wilhelm (and many web pages) said I should roll a Necromancer if I wanted to solo, but then I read about Druids on Keen’s page and it sounded more interesting to me. I entered the game. I was first assaulted by that wonderful UI that’s clearly made for someone who has played EverQuest for nineteen years straight, and not someone who has, for all intents and purposes, never seen the game before. Much like my memory of the game from 1999, the UI covered about half of my view. 2,429 words.
• MMO Roundup #10. 2018-03-23 2:30 PM.
  • Administration
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  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.
• Secret World Legends Revisited. 2018-03-26 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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. 642 words.
• MMO Roundup #11. 2018-03-30 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  _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.” Not even mentioning the SEO implications of a worthless title. Not too many people are going to search for “Generic Post #11.” 508 words.

April, 2018

• Games Played – March 2018. 2018-04-02 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  
  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. I don’t think I spent more than a few hours in RIFT Normal, though. 138 words.
• Weeklies – Haven Week. 2018-04-06 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  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. The show has almost no connection to the novella it’s based on (which was a noir crime drama, not supernatural in any way), but it captures the spirit of Stephen King’s other supernatural works very well. It is also a textbook example of how building likable, relatable, grounded characters is the most important thing in genre fiction (for me, at least). The style and tone of the show changes quite a lot over the course of its six-but-they-call-it-five seasons, but it still resonated very strongly with me all the way to the end. (The video game tie-in is this: The show’s lead Emily Rose also voiced Elena Fisher in the Uncharted games, and fellow Uncharted actors Nolan North and Claudia Black also appeared in Haven.) 470 words.
• Weeklies – SWL, Anti-PAX, Batteries. 2018-04-13 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  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. Other than the cut scenes, most of your minute-to-minute gameplay is mindlessly standing in front of monsters, pressing the left mouse button over and over again with little or no danger of dying. (Just like Kritika Online!) It’s a far cry from the Egypt of the old The Secret World, which was a constant (albeit annoying) struggle to survive. 790 words.
• FFXIV – End Of Life?. 2018-04-16 3:46 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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. Previously, this has happened in RIFT and … well, that’s it, I think. I’ve left every other MMORPG from lack of interest rather than lack of content. 689 words.
• Weeklies – ESO, SWL. 2018-04-20 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  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.) I knew reports had indicated it was short, but I was still a bit surprised to finish the entire Morrowind expansion story in 5 1/2 hours*. As per usual, I recorded everything and it will probably end up on my YouTube channel. I’m also working on a post about it. 302 words.
• GW2 – LW4, Ep 2, A Bug In The System (Spoilers). 2018-04-23 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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. The episode consists of five “chapters.” I played the first three chapters all in a row (because you have to, grumble, grumble) back in March. I started into the fourth “chapter,” the one where you have to wander all over the new Sandswept Isles map and destroy shield generators, but I stopped in frustrated disgust (because I really did not care for the maze-like, mob-packed map or the lack of clear directions about where to go) and left the game for a month. Then I went back into the game and finished the shield generator bit over several non-contiguous days last week, and played the final chapter on Friday night. 1,365 words.
• ESO – Morrowind Story (Spoilers). 2018-04-25 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  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. Oh, here it is: They call them “Chapters.” 1,841 words.
• Weeklies – Oligarchgate (The One About Daybreak). 2018-04-27 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  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). So I downloaded it and tried to login. It won’t let me play using the SSG account I use for LotRO. It tells me I need a subscription. It’s a free-to-play game. DDO isn’t listed on my SSG account and I can’t find any way to add it. I had to create a new SSG account to play DDO, which apparently is what they recommend now. That is dumb. My characters weren’t very high level and I can’t even remember what classes they were, but I didn’t think they deserved to be erased completely. Anyway I ended up playing for about 20 minutes and, while I remembered why I enjoyed it, there are plenty of other enjoyable games for me to play right now. 861 words.

May, 2018

• Monthly Recap – April 2018. 2018-05-02 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Podcast
  • Roundup
  • Videos
  
  _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. 658 words.
• Week End – EQ Royale, New World. 2018-05-05 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  I’m moving this post to Saturday so I can mention stuff that happens on Friday, which previously fell through the cracks. (Of course nothing happened on Friday this week.) The MMO news and blogging world dries up completely on weekends so it’s a better time for recaps anyway. My Week It’s been a slow gaming week for me. I played a little bit of ESO, a little bit of DDO, and, for the first time, a little bit of a Steam sale game I bought in December 2015 called Ryse: Son of Rome. It’s a bombastic third-person action RPG that so far I would characterize as “okay.” 490 words.
• Week End – Conan Exiles, Wild West Online. 2018-05-12 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  My Week Last weekend I tried Fortnite Battle Royale for a second time and I haven’t played much else this week. It was a brand new gaming experience for me and that pretty much trumps everything else when I’m in the doldrums of “every game I own is boring” that dominates roughly 50% of any given year. And hey, it’s free! Admittedly, I had more fun spectating and making videos than I did actually playing the game. Also, I kind of stopped playing already, since, being an adult, I (and my sore finger joints) can’t commit to the mandatory 500 minimum hours of practice time required to keep up. And once the thrill of discovery is over, there is not much fun in playing battle royale without the mindset of playing to win. 997 words.
• FFXIV – Story’s End. 2018-05-16 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  My Final Fantasy XIV subscription runs out this weekend, and I’m not planning to renew it. (I said that last time, too, but this time I really mean it!) I want to clarify my last post a little bit. I said that I had “run out of endgame content,” but after thinking about it a while, that isn’t exactly what I meant to say. A more appropriate analogy would be that my FFXIV character feels like she’s nearing the end of her story. 685 words.
• Week End – Albion, Phoebes. 2018-05-19 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  A summary of news and observations from this past week. My Week The ring and middle fingers of my left hand have been sore so I’ve been trying to lay off of mouse-and-keyboard gaming for a bit. (It helps that none of my current games are speaking to me right now.) I installed Bioshock Remastered and have been casually playing through it again on Easy mode with a controller. I also played a bit of The Forest on a controller, which I discovered had finally launched for reals (it’s a great game, and still has one of my favorite building systems). 882 words.
• DDO Likes and Dislikes. 2018-05-21 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  I played a few more hours of Dungeons and Dragons Online over the weekend, continuing to start over from scratch since I couldn’t get to my previous characters after the switchover to Standing Stone Game. It’s kind of a relaxing game for me right now because it requires no thought or effort. I just click, click, click and look at the pretty pictures on the screen as they go by. 764 words.
• Week End – Summerset, FFXIV 4.3. 2018-05-26 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  News and observations from the past week. Fort Frolic from BioShock Remastered. In The News Steam is (allegedly) cracking down on sexytime cartoon games. I say “allegedly” only because I personally couldn’t confirm any official communications from Valve, I only read the second-hand reports from potentially affected developers. This caused a bit of an uproar in the Twitterverse. My only two cents is that this is an example of one of the many universal truths in life: You can choose to make an artistic statement or you can choose to make money, but very rarely can you choose both. Especially when you hitch your business wagon to someone else’s selling platform, be it Steam, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, Patreon, network television, or any of a million other examples, you inevitably run into boundaries and limitations, and they can change on a whim. 584 words.

June, 2018

• Week End – Fallout 76, Because SEO. 2018-06-02 2:55 PM.
  • MMO
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  A summary of news and observations from the week. I loaded Dauntless (and FRAPS) a second time just to take a screenshot for this post. In The News It’s been an incredibly bleak week for news, to my eye. Maybe everyone took the whole week off, because Monday was a holiday here in the US. 642 words.
• Monthly Recap – May 2018. 2018-06-04 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  The obligatory screenshot from the beginning of BioShock. Games Played It’s been a really slow month for gaming. BioShock Remastered, 13 hours. Haven’t quite reached the end yet as my attention got diverted elsewhere. Fortnite, 10 hours. I enjoyed it but it doesn’t suit my non-competitive lifestyle. Ryse: Son of Rome, 7 hours. Quick and satisfying. Dungeons and Dragons Online, 7 hours. Great for vegging out, but like most older games, terrible if you want to read any of the text on the screen. The Forest, 3 hours. A great, atmospheric, immersive forest environment exploration and survival game that deserves more time than I give it. Podcast RSS Feed 326 words.
• Week End – Steam Flood. 2018-06-09 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Steam
  
  News and observations from the past week. I keep thinking I should write real posts about stuff, but I’m having a hard time finding anything that interests me enough to write more than a few sentences. Dark Souls Remastered. It bugs me but also amuses me that the featured image I put in these posts doesn’t match the title. 660 words.
• Week End – Wall-to-Wall E3. 2018-06-16 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  In The News I have to retract last week’s applause for Valve’s Libertarian stance on content. I started to write a blog post about this, but Wilhelm said everything I was going to say. They completely and comically reversed their “no filters” stance and replaced it with “we’ll take down whatever we personally don’t like and call it trolling.” It’s the right move from a business and PR perspective, probably, but whatever respect I had for what I interpreted as a principled we-trust-the-customers-to-decide stand last week is now completely gone. I certainly never would have bought Active Shooter, but pulling that game while leaving thousands of other murder simulators on the store could not be any more arbitrary. 1,088 words.
• Week End – WHO Pitch Forks. 2018-06-23 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  Weekly summary of news and observations. I should really copy and paste a standard template for this opening because I have to type it from memory every time and I think it subtly changes every week. In The News There’s been some hubbub about the World Health Organization’s gaming disorder classification. The WHO added “gaming disorder” to the “International Classification of Diseases,” and every gamer who has been on the defensive about that kind of thing since the 90s got out their pitch forks and torches. I personally think any gamer who is actually honest with themselves can probably remember a time when they made a choice to play a game instead of doing something more important instead, so denying that a “gaming disorder” could exist to the point that it impairs a person’s life seems silly to me. Of course someone could hurt their life by playing too many games. I think in this case it’s largely an argument over semantics. Addictive personalities and compulsive disorders are definitely a real thing, but whether you’re addicted to gaming or something else is probably irrelevant, so I imagine the objection here is singling out “gaming” as more of a trigger than anything else. 712 words.
• Week End – Trion, GW2. 2018-06-30 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Weekly news and observations. In The News In surprise news, Trion acquired Gazillion’s assets. It’s not all that surprising, actually. After their implosion, I would think Gazillion was selling everything at a deep discount, so why not pick up a whole library of a competitor’s source code? Trion also seems to be trying to turn themselves into something like SpatialOS, which, again, why not? It sounds like they’ll be renting out the technology they already use and maintain for their own games. The gaming industry is more about building game engines now than building games anyway. It’s turning into another record industry, where the artists (the game makers in this case) are the least important part. (Note: That might be a cynical viewpoint.) 672 words.

July, 2018

• Monthly Recap – June 2018. 2018-07-02 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Single-Player
  • Steam
  
  Games Played It’s true, I have a nearly limitless supply of images from Dark Souls to put into my posts. Dark Souls Remastered, 65 hours. It feels like I’ve played a lot more than this, actually. I now know this is beyond the limit of how much I can play a controller game in a month. (I remember once thinking that controller games were easier on my hands than WASD mouse-and-keyboard games, boy was *that* wrong.) The Walking Dead, Season Two, 9 hours. I finally played this Telltale game, some four years after buying it, and some five years after playing the first season, because I was looking for something to do this past weekend that didn’t require much hand activity. The Walking Dead, Season One (400 Days DLC), 2 hours. I realized I never got the 400 Days DLC for the first game so I played through that, too. I *should* have played it before Season Two, but of course I didn’t. Dark Souls III, 2 hours. I started trying to make a new character so I can finish my The Ringed City DLC playthrough, but I abandoned it to rest my hands. Fallout 1, 1 hour. Another game I tried to play because it required only mouse clicking and no WASD movement, but despite loving the game in 1997, it’s a bit of a snooze-fest in 2018. Guild Wars 2, 1 hour. I played the first part of the Living World Season 4, Episode 3, which was the entirety of my MMORPG gameplay for the entire month. I found yet another disadvantage of console gaming because I can’t track anything I play there. I just have to guesstimate that I played a few hours of Demon’s Souls on the PS3 this month, which I also abandoned to rest my hands. 331 words.
• GW2 – Not Forewarned Enough. 2018-07-04 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  After finishing the first part of Living World Season 4, Episode 3, Seized, last week I said that everything had already been said about GW2’s Living World and nothing had changed. I muttered under my breath a lot about that first part-both the story and gameplay-but to be far it was far better than the first part of LW4 Episode 1, which was the video game equivalent of riding in a hot car with a screaming toddler. 2,236 words.
• Week End – Defiance 2050 I guess?. 2018-07-07 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  In The News Of course the big controversy of the week was that whole thing with ArenaNet and the influencer and the two writers, which I won’t rehash here. I kind of wish I hadn’t said anything yesterday, because it was “too soon.” I only meant to say I felt kind of guilty about having just written a scathing post about the game. Maybe I’ll revisit it in a few weeks, because I do think there are a lot of different lessons to be learned from the entire catastrophe. 502 words.
• Week End – A Pretty Boring Week. 2018-07-14 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  News and observations from the week. In The News It’s been another dead week, as far as I can tell. One of these days I’d love to do a statistical analysis to see just what percentage of news articles are about games still in development. I bet it would approach 50%. Last weekend, Tennocon, the Warframe fan conference, happened. The biggest news I remember hearing was Warframe coming to the Switch. That wacky Switch thing seems just crazy enough to work. It’s slowly but steadily gaining momentum month after month. 334 words.
• Week End – WoW 8.0. 2018-07-21 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Weekly news and observations. In The News The biggest news this week is the World of Warcraft 8.0 pre-expansion patch dropping Tuesday. I don’t have a WoW subscription and have no plans to play this expansion (which doesn’t actually begin until next month), at least not right away. It’s tempting to jump in with all the excitement at launch time, but I haven’t played WoW since about two weeks after the last expansion, and I know I’ll only play this expansion for about two weeks before running into the “I’ve done all of this before” wall, so I’ll just save myself the $65 this time around. Not to mention I can’t play games right now anyway, see below. 455 words.
• WoW – Questioning My Belonging In MMORPGs. 2018-07-24 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  MMORPG players are abuzz about World of Warcraft’s next expansion, Battle for Azeroth, which begins next month. (There are too many posts to link here; throw a dart at the blogosphere and you’ll find a post on Battle for Azeroth preparations.) The last character I played in unsubscribed WoW: A level 3 Goblin, c. 2017 Nothing makes me puzzle over my association with the MMORPG genre more than a World of Warcraft expansion. Nothing makes me feel so out of place-so much like an outsider, like I don’t fit in with the MMORPG player crowd. 1,192 words.
• Week End – Thorny Battle. 2018-07-28 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  In The News Nobody is talking about anything except World of Warcraft’s “War of Thorns” event. It’s either the greatest thing ever, or the worst thing ever, or some variation in between, depending on where you look. However, some people are talking about the newest update to No Man’s Sky. I’ve been tempted to get this game forever, but I’m really hesitant to get a game so dependent on procedurally-generated worlds, even at a discounted Steam price of $30. I didn’t care for Trove’s procedurally-generated worlds too much. 259 words.

August, 2018

• Gaming Goals Aren’t Fun For Me – Blaugust 2. 2018-08-02 2:59 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  I’ve noticed over the years that a lot of bloggers post their gaming goals at the start of every month. I’ve always found this both fascinating and puzzling. I myself can’t think of a time when I’ve ever made long-term planning goals for any games I’m playing. My goal-all the time, every month, every day, every time I log into any game-is to experience something fun or interesting or entertaining or challenging or surprising. 342 words.
• Monthly Recap – July 2018. 2018-08-03 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  If you’re just joining us, I use the free version of a program called ManicTime to track all the games I play every month. I’ve found it to be a lot more accurate than Steam, especially for the games that I don’t run through Steam. I’m not sure I can really explain why I track this information, though. I guess so I have a record of what I’m playing, in case I ever want to look back and see. 421 words.
• Those WoW Cinematics – Blaugust 4. 2018-08-04 2:16 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  From Legion, Helheim Normally each Saturday I post a summary of interesting gaming news and events from my week. But this week, I haven’t seen any gaming stories of interest, and I’ve already posted a number of things about myself for Blaugust. Instead, this morning I thought I would write about these wacky World of Warcraft cinematics all the kids are talking about. Specifically, Warbringer Jaina, Warbringer Sylvanas, and Old Soldier. 335 words.
• I Wish EQ2 Would Explain More – Blaugust 6. 2018-08-06 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  EverQuest II would probably rank second on my list of MMORPGs that I wish was easier for me to get into and play more (below Lord of the Rings Online). But they sure don’t make much of effort to accommodate new or returning players. The longest I’ve ever played EverQuest II is leveling a Warden up into the 40s five years ago. Whenever I return to that character, it’s almost impossible to figure out how to play the game again, because EQ2 follows the “more-is-more” philosophy of giving out hotbar abilities every character level. If you don’t play regularly, it’s pretty hard to comprehend the sheer magnitude of hotbar skills given to you, when to use them, or whether to use them at all. 1,027 words.
• Battle for Azeroth Impulse Buy – Blaugust 13. 2018-08-13 3:19 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  It was probably inevitable. I went ahead and pre-ordered the World of Warcraft expansion Battle for Azeroth one day early. There’s a couple of reasons I caved. First, I was thinking about buying a new game anyway. Even though I said I wasn’t going to buy Diablo III, I started contemplating it. I did in fact load up Path of Exile Sunday night and play a little bit of my old characters (level 13 is my highest level guy there), and it wasn’t as fun as I expected. PoE is a far better-looking game, but it also has more complex mechanics. It swung the pendulum a bit too far in the other direction. It’s actually hard to beat bosses. You have to watch your health bar and drink potions at the right time and dodge stuff and think about what you’re doing. :) 859 words.
• The Siege of Lordaeron – Blaugust 14. 2018-08-14 5:55 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I re-activated my World of Warcraft subscription this morning and played the new expansion for about 45 minutes. Hardcore! I had some hope that I might avoid spamming posts about Battle for Azeroth, but what else is there to talk about? I also made an appointment to take my dog and cat to the vet next week. Not exactly riveting stuff. I’m going to refrain from mentioning any of the negative observations I made and just focus on the good things. We live in a time when even constructive criticism is interpreted as a personal affront to most fans. (It’s a bit like politics… you can either express hate for games, or express love for games, but anything in between is socially unacceptable now.) In reality it’s the same World of Warcraft with all of the same pros and cons as before, but I’ll just pretend I was starstruck the whole time. 770 words.
• 2.5 Hrs Into Battle for Azeroth – Blaugust 15. 2018-08-15 1:40 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Finding spoiler-free screenshots typically results in rather bland imagery for blog posts. The second problem with writing post after post about Battle for Azeroth, besides boring everyone to death, is that nobody is going to read them. Everyone is avoiding spoilers, so nobody is going to click on a post about the expansion two days in. (I wouldn’t, and I’m generally not reading WoW posts right now.) 745 words.
• Finding Teldrassil – Blaugust 16. 2018-08-16 2:48 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  That’s not Teldrassil, that’s the new city in Kul Tiras, which I can confirm is, in fact, sprawling and confusing. I’m already tired of writing about Battle for Azeroth and I’ve played for less than 4 hours. It’s possible that you can infer something on how I feel about MMORPGs in general right now, but I’ll leave that to the reader’s imagination. 699 words.
• Realm Pop – Blaugust 17. 2018-08-17 12:04 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Thanks to a post from Leo’s Life, I learned about a web site called Realm Pop. It’s a very simple site that charts demographics information about all of the World of Warcraft servers. I’ve always suspected that I played World of Warcraft on a fairly low population server (Undermine), but now I can finally see it in black-and-white: 232,356 players. And that is including the populations of its two “connected” realms, Anvilmar and Xavius. So it’s actually 232k people spread out over three different servers. 493 words.
• Sunday Browns and Disenchanted Disappointment – Blaugust 19. 2018-08-19 3:36 PM.
  • Media
  • MMORPG
  
  Drustvar, the brown zone … for a few steps, until the lighting changes. Today is not just an “I can’t think of anything to write” day, it’s an “I actively don’t want to write because I hate the way I write” day. I was working on a post about comments last night but it’s not finished and I don’t want to post it until it is. 581 words.
• Drustvar Screenshots – Blaugust 20. 2018-08-20 6:07 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Screenshots! Because it’s that kind of a day. A friendly, inviting architectural feature for the entrance to a building. Here we see the bow of a boat built in a house, and the incredibly rare Swift Stormsaber mount that I usually ride in WoW. 108 words.
• Drustvar Complete, Mastodon – Blaugust 21. 2018-08-21 1:24 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  So we meet again, blank page. Stop yelling at me, now-a-total-of-150-draft-posts-I-can’t-use, you know what you did. Ever wonder why I embed the image in the post and also set it as the "featured image" in WordPress, so it shows up twice on the web site? For the RSS feed. I design my posts almost exclusively for RSS feed readers. 627 words.
• That Amazon New World Preview – Blaugust 22. 2018-08-22 12:41 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  From the [new New World game site][1]. Cool for a game, but loads of historicity to pick apart there. :) We got our first “hands on” look at Amazon’s New World from Tech Advisor UK, and it doesn’t look pretty. (I mean, it looks pretty, sure, but I am referring to the gameplay.) 680 words.
• News: Ashes, Torchlight, Twitch – Blaugust 23. 2018-08-23 2:09 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Videos
  
  There were a few big news items in the gaming world that I failed to mention, largely because they didn’t mean that much to me, but if I smash them all together perhaps I can make a post out of them. From the Ashes of Creation press kit. Ashes of Creation and My.com The first is Ashes of Creation’s publishing deal with My.com. My understanding is this is a European deal so theoretically it doesn’t affect me anyway. 652 words.
• Where Exactly Is This Battle? – Blaugust 24. 2018-08-24 6:26 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Stormsong Valley This is going to get me into trouble, but I’m already bored with Battle for Azeroth. I didn’t even play yesterday. It’s basically a continuation of Legion, and … well, I already played Legion. The story that got me interested in the first place is nowhere to be seen. There is no “battle for Azeroth” taking place in the Battle for Azeroth expansion, as far as I can tell, at least through level 115. I knew this was going to happen, and I fell for the hype anyway. 657 words.
• Stormsong Valley and On Accident – Blaugust 25. 2018-08-25 1:45 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Writing
  
  Moonshade Highlands, I mean, Stormsong Valley The Azshara short was the weakest of the three Warbringer videos, as self-contained short films go. (Sylvanas being the strongest.) My reaction before watching it: Who is Azshara? And after watching it: Who is Azshara? As far as I could tell, it had no connection with the game of World of Warcraft that I’ve been playing the past week. 494 words.
• A Logical Dead End – Blaugust 26. 2018-08-26 3:19 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Island Expedition tutorial I just went ahead and cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription today. It was largely a formality. I can’t imagine a world (of Warcraft! Har!) where this expansion would have been so great that I’d have played for more than a month. Incidentally, no other MMO makes it so easy to cancel its subscription, I’ve noticed. You just click the “Cancel” link and that’s it. No questions, no guilt trips, no nothing. 834 words.
• Side Quests and Spigots – Blaugust 27. 2018-08-27 1:51 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Isn’t anyone going to clean up this beach? Really bad for tourism. My Blaugust posts have definitely turned into a diary. Not normally what I like to write, but the posts must be posted. I’ve abandoned the concept of playing World of Warcraft by giving the game my full attention. I played for two more hours yesterday while watching Hulu, clicking through the quest text without reading it, blindly killing mobs and collecting drops until the objectives were done. 813 words.
• Battle for Azeroth 119 Update – Blaugust 30. 2018-08-30 1:45 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  This will be my last “spontaneous” Blaugust post this year. I started tomorrow’s “performance review” post a week ago, and then there will be my “what I played this month” post after that, which I started yesterday. I started today’s post … well, today. So since it’s my last one, I better make it good! Um. Okay. Here we go. Any second now, something interesting will come to me. 1,008 words.

September, 2018

• Games Played – August 2018. 2018-09-01 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Progression Report
  
  The first story thing WoW gave me to do upon reaching level 120 was to go to this Zandalar desert to assassinate some Horde NPCs. I completely forgot to say this in my huge missive yesterday: Blaugust seemed like a great success, congratulations to everyone who participated! Huge thanks to Belghast and all the mentors for pulling all of that together. To all the new bloggers, great job! It doesn’t matter if you posted every day or not. If you keep going, that’s fantastic, but if you need to take a break, that’s fine too. Every blogger has a different pace that their comfortable with. There’s no wrong way to do it. 387 words.
• WoW – Finding Jaina’s Trail Again. 2018-09-03 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I mentioned that I was close to giving up on World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth expansion, because the game seemed to have given up on telling me Jaina’s story. Well I finally picked up her story again. It turns out that you have to complete all three Kul Tiras zone story chapters (half of which don’t seem to have anything to do with anything) before a new quest unlocks which begins the followup to Jaina’s cut scenes from the very beginning of the expansion. 601 words.
• New Lord of the Rings MMO. 2018-09-10 2:00 PM.
  • MMO
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  
  A random Lord of the Rings Online screenshot Even packed full of news as it was, I still neglected to mention in my Saturday post that Athlon is planning to make a new Lord of the Rings Prequel MMO. That is the extent of what we know so far. We can speculate that it will probably be released on console and PC, that it will probably be free-to-play, and that it will probably not even remotely resemble the kind of traditional MMORPG that we actually want to play. My own personal prediction based on context is that it’s going to be a cookie-cutter shovelware game designed to grab as much money from players as quickly as possible, somewhere in the vein of a game like Black Gold Online, my go-to example of such. 275 words.

October, 2018

• Battle for Azeroth Conclusions. 2018-10-03 4:06 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  My World of Warcraft subscription ended weeks ago, and the last time I actually played was September 3rd, a month ago. I meant to go back and complete the Siege of Boralus but I got too involved playing The Witcher again. I rescued Jaina though, so that was a good-enough ending for me. I figured I should finally post what I thought of the expansion. I get the impression there’s a lot of people complaining about Battle for Azeroth. I don’t see that myself. I only see the people saying, “Gosh there’s a lot of people angry about this expansion.” I don’t know where people are looking to see all these angry people, or why people are even looking there. I’ve only seen people reporting what I consider to be legitimate criticisms in a fairly respectful way. 938 words.
• GW2 – A Star To Guide Us. 2018-10-06 9:50 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I saw that Sypster posted about returning to Guild Wars 2, so in the absence of anything else to write about, I’ll relay my own experience with that very subject. Back in July, I went ahead and uninstalled Guild Wars 2. Partly because I’d grown to strongly dislike the gameplay (as opposed to the nominal experience of mildly disliking it), and partly because I didn’t think much of ArenaNet anymore. (And still don’t.) 787 words.
• Bless Online Launching For Reals. 2018-10-10 2:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I stumbled upon a headline from Blaugust alumni MMOist about Bless Online launching for reals on October 23. I’ve alternated between interest and disinterest on this title since at least 2017, but I knew I wasn’t going to spend a cent on it until I could play it first. (Especially after Bhagpuss’s first impressions, parts one and two, made it sound like as uninspired a game as it could possibly be made to sound.) Luckily for me it looks like the game will launch as free-to-play. 666 words.
• Snap Judgment – MapleStory 2. 2018-10-11 1:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  But I have to admit there is something deeply funny about questing in a business suit. MapleStory 2 is one of those MMOs that I never would have looked at twice, except that there’s nothing else to look at right now. See previous post lamenting the pitiable dearth of MMORPGs. The last Nexon game I played was Riders of Icarus, which I did not think much of. I even downloaded and tried it again yesterday, and I still didn’t like it. It sounds like a cool idea to have a game built around collecting mounts and such, but none of that seems to exist at the beginning of the game, which is a huge disappointment. The UI and all the “advertisements” plastered all over the screen are very off-putting as well. 588 words.
• Trion Sold To Who Now?. 2018-10-23 1:10 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Trion Worlds was just acquired by a company called Gambino. No wait, it’s Gamigo. I don’t have much to say about this except I’ve never heard of Gamigo before. I’m hardly an expert in the global operations of every company in the gaming industry, but it does seem a little bit strange that the name Gamigo has never crossed my MMO radar in the last twenty years. They seem to be based in Germany, so maybe it’s not that surprising. The first impressions I’m hearing from people on social media are not particularly good. 668 words.
• Snap Judgment – Bless Online. 2018-10-26 3:29 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  Bless Online launched on Steam for free the other day to exactly zero fanfare, as far as I can tell. Certainly nobody mentioned it on Twitter or in the blogosphere. I had to use my feed reader’s search feature to find the announcement on MassivelyOP. I’m a big fan of free trials when it comes to MMORPGs, and very rarely have I ever spent money on one without trying it out in some way first. (Not counting the old days when you had no choice. Let’s say I haven’t played without a trial since 2006.) So now that it would cost me nothing but time, I finally downloaded Bless Online, installed it, and gave it a shot. 1,025 words.

November, 2018

• Games Played – October 2018. 2018-11-05 3:00 PM.
  • Consoles
  • MMORPG
  
  Very old GW2 shot from my media library because my back hurts too much to sit at my PC to find a new one, and this post has been sitting here for a week waiting to post and I’m tired of waiting. 304 words.
• Mandatory BlizzCon Post. 2018-11-08 2:43 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  Random WoW image from the media library because I can’t be bothered to find one that makes sense for this post. This will be what I hope is a quick blog post about BlizzCon, largely inspired by peer pressure more than any real interest. In fact, the main reason this post didn’t get deleted was I needed a vehicle to say that I’m trying to reserve most of my writing energy this month for NaNoWriMo. I’m still having back trouble so typing at keyboards for long periods of time is challenging. You can safely skip the rest of this post because I won’t be saying anything about BlizzCon that you haven’t already read a thousand times before. 563 words.
• LotRO Legendary Server Malaise. 2018-11-10 3:00 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Lord of the Rings Online opened their Legendary Server the other day. It’s another of what has become known in the industry as a “progression” server, although I feel like they’re stretching that definition in this case. (Then again, nobody has ever defined what a “progression” server is, except Daybreak. Or maybe it started with SOE, I don’t remember.) In this case “progression” seems to mean a new server with a level cap of 50 and nothing else, which to me is the bare minimum of effort. 1,099 words.

December, 2018

• Games Played – November 2018. 2018-12-01 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  This should be a hoot. Because I didn’t play any games in November. As I mentioned last time, I spent November recovering from back pain and avoided the PC computer chair like the plague while I worked on rebuilding my upper back muscles with torturous stretches and exercises. Lord of the Rings Online, 1 hour. I played my level 62 hobbit Hunter in Mines of Moria for an hour. I did not advance any levels in the allegedly super fast leveling curve that everyone says LotRO has. This little bit of gaming probably contributed to a very painful relapse of back pain in the middle of the month. And that was it, folks. In fact ManicTime tells me I only used the PC in November for a total of 5 hours. 249 words.
• Endgame Viable Awards 2018. 2018-12-31 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Single-Player
  • Steam
  
  It’s time once against for the prestigious Endgame Viable Awards for 2018. 2017 Awards 2016 Awards 2015 Awards I give out three awards for PC games only: Game of the Year, MMORPG of the Year, and MMORPG Expansion of the Year. In my warped worldview “Game of the Year” sort of implies Steam game of the year (because that’s the only place I buy PC games) and excludes traditional MMORPGs. 1,055 words.

January, 2019

• On The Radar For 2019. 2019-01-02 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Pre-Release
  
  Here’s my annual summary of PC MMORPGs that are on my radar for the new year 2019. (Here is 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014). I’ll warn you up front it’s bleak. I am only considering “traditional” style MMORPGs in this list, not things like MOBAs or brawlers or Diablo-clones or whatever else people call MMOs these days. Actually, since I find out about these from MMO sites, and most MMO sites now cover things that aren’t traditional MMORPGs, some of these might in fact not be traditional MMORPGs. Actually, even MMORPGs these days aren’t much like old school traditional MMORPGs anymore, but that’s another topic. The point is I try to weed out things that are obviously not traditional MMORPGs, like, say, Anthem or Fallout 76 or Rend or Cyberpunk 2077. 1,410 words.
• GW2 – All or Nothing Completed. 2019-01-21 2:42 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’m pretty weary of writing about Guild Wars 2 so this is going to be a short post. Mostly it’s just to note that I did finish the new Episode 5, All or Nothing last night. I don’t say what happens here, but there is one big hint below (from ArenaNet) which is plenty to work out what happens, so beware. I hadn’t logged into Guild Wars 2 a single time since I finished episode 4. I started this one on January 9th. Sometimes I didn’t play more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time. 913 words.

February, 2019

• ArenaNet Layoffs. 2019-02-23 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  ArenaNet is laying off an undetermined number of employees on the orders of NCSoft. Random Guild Wars 2 screenshot because thumbnail. I actually don’t have much to say about this, but I felt like it was big enough news to warrant a blog post to mark the occasion. To be perfectly blunt, I’m so numb to the game industry right now that this barely elicited a mild shrug. It’s a weekday, so of course another major MMO studio is suffering losses. Reminder to all the kids out there: Don’t work in the game industry, unless maybe you’re the one running the company. 521 words.

April, 2019

• Albion Online Impressions. 2019-04-16 9:12 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  I’ve had nothing at all to write about for the last month except Critical Role and Sekiro. I can’t write about Critical Role because a) most people don’t care and b) any discussion of it would basically be 100% spoilers and c) D&D isn’t really my thing anyway. I can’t write about Sekiro because there’s nothing much to say except “I’m playing Sekiro.” It’s not the kind of game that lends itself to a lot of discussion. It’s a bit like Pac-Man-you either play it or you don’t, there’s not much to say during the process. (Unless you want to start a Big Internet Fight about whether games should be hard or not. That was just one of a billion different links provided for context.) 1,195 words.
• City of Heroes Drama. 2019-04-19 12:23 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Literally the only superhero-related screenshot from a game I have. This is Colossus from Marvel Heroes. The big story in MMORPG news lately is about City of Heroes, the second-most talked about dead game after Star Wars Galaxies. Apparently, somebody has been working on (yet another) City of Heroes emulator in secret. There’s a lot of drama around it, because of course there is. I don’t know all the details and it’s tiresome to read through the articles about it. 742 words.
• Complicated Character Creation. 2019-04-30 8:59 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  MassivelyOP asks: “How obsessively do you plan your characters?” At first I thought they meant the *appearance* of your character. So I tweeted my usual I-can-say-everything-that-needs-to-be-said-about-MMOs-in-one-sentence-and-hoo-boy-does-that-make-blogging-hard response to most discussion topics: Honestly these days I just click randomize a bunch of times and then "Enter Game" … I've been burned so, so many times spending an hour in character creation only to find that everyone looks exactly the same from the back. 797 words.

June, 2019

• Passing on Shadowbringers. 2019-06-20 3:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I probably won’t play Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers expansion. I’ve had a lot of fun in Final Fantasy XIV but it occurred to me that the game isn’t made for me anymore. Bye bye spunky porcelain-faced Miqo'te in the Bain mask. That became really clear when I watched the Square Enix event for E3. At the end of the event, Twitter exploded with excitement over a bombshell surprise reveal. I watched the entire E3 event. I didn’t have the slightest idea what the reveal was. Apparently there was one sentence spoken at the end of the trailer that caused an eruption of excitement and it went right over my head. 880 words.

July, 2019

• Games Played – June 2019. 2019-07-01 12:53 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  • RPG
  
  Another super easy month to figure out. It was Bloodborne on the PS4. I basically only play one game at a time anymore, and have little interest in anything else until I finish with it. Bloodborne (PS4), ~50-60 hours. Time estimated by looking at how long I ran OBS Studio on my PC, which was 50 hours. However when I finished the game and entered New Game+ last night, the total save game time was 68 hours, but that extends a little bit into May as well. Silly consoles. Hard to measure game time accurately. Lords of the Fallen (PC), 3 hours. Ah yes. I got this game in a Steam sale many, many years ago. There were days where I had to skip playing Bloodborne to rest my thumb, and on those days, I ventured into Lords of the Fallen again with mouse and keyboard. It’s the game that the Internet mercilessly mocks for daring to try to copy the Souls formula. It fell a bit short, but it’s not nearly as bad as the Internet would lead you to believe. Of all the games out there labelled “Souls-like,” it’s the only one I’ve seen that actually *is* Souls-like. Someday I might even finish it. Final Fantasy XIV (PC), 2 hours. I played a whopping 2 hours of my one week of free time given to returning players. I definitely know how to take advantage of free stuff. 239 words.
• Can I Trust The Trust System?. 2019-07-11 12:18 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I’ve heard about a thing in Final Fantasy XIV called the “Trust System.” I didn’t pay any attention to it. Why would I? It’s called a “trust system.” Typical of most things in Final Fantasy, there is nothing within the words of that name that even remotely implies what it actually *is*. If they had called it what it is, which is apparently “AI Party Members For Completing Main Scenario Quest Dungeons Solo,” then boy would my ears have pricked up fast. I might have even bought the Shadowbringers expansion and played it. Alas, it’s too late now, as the launch wave of hype and the FOMO danger zone is pretty much over. Everyone has already finished the story and maxed out their mains and stopped talking about it. But I might pick it up later, when it goes on sale. 897 words.
• ESO – Two Good Quests in Rivenspire. 2019-07-28 2:38 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I grouse about Elder Scrolls Online a lot, so I thought it would be fair to point out that I actually had an enjoyable play session yesterday for a couple of hours. My “main” from the game’s launch in 2014 is a Nord Templar who is now somewhere around level 48 I think. This is the character I keep trying to play, and keep running into frustrations because the game consistently refuses to let me play the way I want to play this character. I wanted to make this guy a heavy armor, two-handed grunt who smashes everything over the head with a huge heavy swing of the two-handed sword. That is apparently “wrong” for a Templar, and the game punishes me all the time for it. It’s very aggravating. I don’t play him very much anymore. 1,240 words.

August, 2019

• WoW Classic Fever Heating Up. 2019-08-16 10:16 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Most of the blogging and Twittering MMO world is talking about World of Warcraft Classic, with all the recent hubbub about name reservations. My advanced Googling skills tell me that it launches on August 27th. Not WoW Classic, but probably a quest that will be in WoW Classic. I personally have never been interested in WoW Classic, have never yearned for the “good old days” of World of Warcraft, and have no idea why anyone would want such a thing. The Vanilla game engine was clearly inferior to the modern engine, which leaves nostalgia as the only reason to play. But I never played in a WoW guild, never did any raiding or dungeons, never formed any lifelong Internet friendships or married anyone in-game. WoW came along well *after* my “nostalgia days” of Internet gaming. I’ve been ignoring the whole thing. 979 words.
• On ArcheAge Unchained. 2019-08-22 5:34 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I used to play ArcheAge. There was a time when I got a ridiculous amount of blog traffic on my ArcheAge posts, which to this day, I still can’t explain. (This post on PvE content after level 30 was a top performer for some reason.) I remember being very excited about ArcheAge. It was actually a great game. Then I stopped playing. I was never particularly angry about it, I just didn’t agree with their decision to force people to subscribe to maintain a house and property. And once you lose your house and property, there is no compelling reason to play ArcheAge. 1,176 words.
• Tree of Savior – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 24]. 2019-08-24 1:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  • Steam
  • Streaming
  • Videos
  
  Yesterday for the Steam Backlog Bonanza I tried out an MMORPG called Tree of Savior. It launched in 2016, but I’m not entirely sure how it got onto my list. It’s free-to-play on Steam, so I never actually “bought” it, so it’s technically not in my backlog. I might have placed it in there manually because I wanted to try it, but I don’t remember. I made the game list weeks ago. Who can remember that far back? 821 words.
• WoW Classic Obligatory Post. 2019-08-27 2:26 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Okay I’m going to try to be brief here because nobody likes a buzzkill. World of Warcraft Classic launched Monday night here in the U.S. It was extremely smooth and free of major technical issues, as far as I’m concerned, which is an amazing accomplishment. Blizzard has gotten really good at launches. The “narrative” will be that it was a catastrophe, because that’s the only narrative that can be spun to draw a crowd, but it wasn’t. Queues were inevitable. 693 words.
• WoW Classic and Random Group Invites. 2019-08-28 10:25 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I took a screenshot last night in World of Warcraft Classic that really captures my nostalgic feelings for the old days. I never ran down this particular road in Vanilla, but many like it. I’m by myself, running down a long, empty road. That’s pretty much how I played World of Warcraft back in the day, and how I usually play MMORPGs today. I play on my own schedule, I never play the same time two days in a row, I start and stop on a whim, I log out suddenly when I get bored or think of something else I want to do in real life, often right in the middle of a field of mobs. In 2019, I’m very rarely in-game more than an hour at a time, and usually closer to a half hour. 2,144 words.

September, 2019

• Half-Hearted September Update. 2019-09-17 3:00 PM.
  • Development
  • MMORPG
  • Music
  
  I’m back in a “I don’t really have anything to say” blogging mood. I’ve played maybe, possibly, two hours of games in the last week. I played a little bit more of Max Payne 3, and I logged into World of Warcraft for about 20 minutes to check something. I logged in to check that a wonderful discovery someone made in Classic is, in fact, right there in Retail as well. The main thing I don’t understand about the Classic Phenomenon is why people can’t find the same chill, relaxing fun with friends in WoW Retail, creating memories and tales of adventure just like they’re doing in WoW Classic. It’s essentially the same game, it’s just that the time sinks are mandatory in Classic instead of voluntary. 1,021 words.
• GW2 LW4 Episode 6, War Eternal. 2019-09-24 2:50 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Even though ArenaNet is dead to me and I almost never actually enjoy playing Guild Wars 2, I decided to log in again. I’ve been hearing some good things about the new Icebrood Saga thingy, so I wanted to try it out. It’s free, after all. That’s the best thing about new content in Guild Wars 2 by far. Also it’s kind of a tradition at this point that I record my gameplay of these Living World episodes. 1,425 words.
• GW2 LW5 Prologue – Bound by Blood. 2019-09-26 2:35 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I don’t know what we’re calling this Icebrood Saga thing. Is it Living World Season 5? Or is it something else entirely? I don’t know. I’ve seen people calling it Season 5 so that’s probably the label that will stick in the community. It’s a lot easier than “Icebrood Saga.” (I’m certainly not going to be abbreviating it “IS” because I don’t particularly want a bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists showing up on my web site.) 1,594 words.
• LotRO Quest Font Size – This Changes Everything. 2019-09-27 7:23 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I learned something yesterday that isn’t getting the attention that it deserves, so I thought I’d write a blog post about it. Are you sitting down? This is really amazing, so make sure you’re sitting down. You can now change the quest text font size in Lord of the Rings Online. I searched my MMO News feeds to find the all-caps headlines shouting this from the rooftops, but I didn’t find any. I didn’t see any mention of it whatsoever. I was stunned. 604 words.

October, 2019

• Astellia Online First Impressions. 2019-10-01 5:02 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Yesterday I decided to roll the dice and bought the $30 standard buy-to-play edition of Astellia Online. I’ve heard that it’s “okay.” But I like the idea of paying a modest fee and having essentially lifetime access to the game. (Its lifetime, not mine, probably.) It's a nice-looking game if nothing else. I paid $30 for Black Desert Online back when it came out, and I haven’t regretted that choice. I only played for a month or so, and haven’t really touched it since, but I appreciate that I can still log in whenever I want to look at it. So I’m applying the same logic here. 923 words.
• Astellia’s Price Point. 2019-10-03 1:42 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  I can tell from the whopping two comments on my Astellia Online impressions post that interest in this new MMORPG is simply through the roof. (Actually most people probably still haven’t even heard of it, and I wouldn’t have either if it weren’t for a random MassivelyOP article here or there.) The theme of those two comments was something like, “They’ve got to be crazy if they think anyone is going to pay $30 for an unknown Eastern game.” So I thought I’d write a few thoughts on the price point. 785 words.
• Four News Stories. 2019-10-09 10:28 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  For SEO purposes, I should probably break these into separate posts, but I just don’t feel like it. But I’ve identified four big gaming news stories of late that I figured I should at least make a note of for posterity. Raph Koster’s New Company. Don’t really care. It’s vaporware until proven otherwise. Mainly it makes me wonder about the future of Crowfall. Perhaps he’s only left because Crowfall is fully set on its course and there’s no more creative work to do. Personally I’ve been wondering lately if Crowfall will be the first MMO to start its servers, run for a while with weekly press releases and publicity and patches, and then sunset, all without ever launching. 668 words.
• ESO Glenumbra and Stormhaven. 2019-10-13 6:29 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  Last time I mentioned Elder Scrolls Online, I was working my way through Rivenspire, which is the third zone of the Daggerfall Covenent. During the mad scramble of Blaugust and the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I wandered away from that. But I finally got back in there and finished up the Rivenspire zone story. It was less enjoyable toward the end, but I didn’t hate it. I recorded the whole experience and I was thinking of uploading it, much like my playthrough of the Morrowind zone story. Then I realized that it wouldn’t make much sense to upload the Rivenspire zone story without the two previous zones that preceded it, so I decided to go through and record the Glenumbra and Stormhaven zone stories. I made a brand new character and started back at the beginning again. 755 words.
• Opting Out of the Fashion Wars. 2019-10-18 3:22 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  MassivelyOP did a Daily Grind post that led me to an unexpected insight into my current view of MMOs. I think I’m vaguely on the record as saying MMORPGs aren’t in a very good place right now. I have a bunch of reasons for that which I won’t get into here. The relevant information for this post is that most of the reaction I see to my offhand remarks is, “What are you talking about? MMOs are better than ever! Stop being so negative!” I understand why sites with a vested monetary interest in the MMO genre would say things like that, but I’ve never really understood how Joe Average MMORPG Player could be excited about the giant void of perpetual beta and blandness ahead of us in the genre right now. 807 words.

December, 2019

• Revisiting Ongoing Games. 2019-12-18 9:22 PM.
  • MMO
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  
  I briefly mentioned the category “Ongoing Games” in my last post (or “post”) as a potential replacement for the terms “MMORPG” and/or “MMO.” Even before I saw Jeromai’s post, which I agree with, I started to doubt my own judgment about it. The more I thought about it, the more “Ongoing Game” meant nothing whatsoever. It might as well be “Game.” Almost any game could fit into this category in 2019. Final Fantasy XIV? Sure. Fortnite? Sure. Sekiro? Probably. The Division 2? Definitely. Death Stranding? Absolutely. Outward? Well, maybe not that one. 226 words.
• Games Of My Decade. 2019-12-27 6:10 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Musings
  • RPG
  
  Here’s a quick rundown of memorable games that I played throughout the decade. These are games that I played more-or-less continuously for a month or more (that I remember, at least). In between these games were plenty of others, but these are the ones that made the biggest impact on me. Age of Conan. 2010. I can’t find many records of what I played in 2010. Age of Conan, WoW. (ref) 413 words.

January, 2020

• Endgame Viable Awards 2019. 2020-01-04 10:50 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  It’s time once against for the prestigious Endgame Viable Awards for 2019. 2018 Awards 2017 Awards 2016 Awards 2015 Awards 2014 Review 2013 Review This year, I’m going to shrink the size of this post considerably. I didn’t buy or play very many games this year, so there’s not much point in making a huge affair out of it. I’m going to list all the games I bought this year, then I’m going to pick the ones I liked best, and that’s it. 541 words.
• A Bit More On EverQuest II. 2020-01-20 9:37 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  It seems like every time I mention EverQuest I or II, I inadvertently start a firestorm of blogging controversy. :) Even before I read Bhagpuss’s post, I was thinking I should probably expand my thoughts on EverQuest II*. It’s one of the games I periodically try to get back into, and one that I wish I was caught up with. I can’t precisely explain why I wish that anymore, though; I suppose it always felt like one of the most “complete” fantasy MMORPG experiences, representative perhaps of the pinnacle of what the genre is capable of. Or perhaps it’s more of an archival representation of what the genre used to be, a trip to a very interesting museum, in a way. 798 words.
• EverQuest II Oawluuf Journal. 2020-01-22 4:26 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  So I had planned to just upload some videos as I stumbled and bumbled around in EverQuest II and forget about it, because it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience for me to do so, but it turns out that EverQuest II is, well, not a very good video subject. So since all the update comments I left on my last post are just a jumble, I thought I’d try to write down a more coherent narrative of my attempts to find some meaningful gameplay with my lost Level 100 Ogre Coercer. I did find a level 100 story to follow, but it took a while. 2,378 words.

September, 2020

• New World Beta Unimpresses. 2020-09-05 2:59 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Reviews
  
  I’m not going to dwell on this very much, because everyone else seems to be enjoying it, but just for the record, I didn’t care for the New World beta very much. I was ready to give up on it after a half hour, but I recognize that MMOs tend to start slow. So I persevered for a little over two hours and by the end I felt it to be repetitive and unrewarding. I feel like two hours is plenty of time for any game to make their case for why I should continue playing. 855 words.

October, 2020

• Baffling War of Three Peaks Kerfuffle. 2020-10-20 4:12 PM.
  • MMORPG
  
  People on Twitter seem to be freaking out about paying $20 for some new thing in Lord of the Rings Online. I am baffled. I don’t currently play LotRO, but I’ve always wanted to finish the Epic Story before they shut down the game. It’s just that it’s an Epic Chore to do so. But I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll probably never finish the whole thing before the game ends. 700 words.

May, 2021

• FFXIV and Technical Debt. 2021-05-18 8:14 PM.
  • Gaming
  • MMORPG
  
  I blurted out some tweets yesterday morning about Final Fantasy XIV which I think need some further clarification. 830 words.

July, 2021

• Another FFXIV Free Login. 2021-07-12 10:42 AM.
  • Gaming
  • MMORPG
  
  There’s a lot of buzz about Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker expansion, and now I see it’s that time again when Square Enix is letting lapsed Final Fantasy XIV accounts login free for a couple of weeks. 697 words.
• What's Wrong With Nioh. 2021-07-14 8:30 AM.
  • Gaming
  • Soulslike
  • MMORPG
  
  I simply have no choice but to rant about Nioh for some number of paragraphs. 1,777 words.
• FFXIV - The Unending Journey. 2021-07-15 9:09 AM.
  • Gaming
  • MMORPG
  
  I played Final Fantasy XIV last night. Sort of. 763 words.
• FFXIV - Shadowbringers. 2021-07-18 8:47 PM.
  • Gaming
  • MMORPG
  
  I didn’t really intend to play Shadowbringers. I thought I was done with Final Fantasy XIV forever, actually. But a few things combined to get me back in this game. 602 words.
• FFXIV - Shadowbringers Update. 2021-07-28 9:33 AM.
  • Gaming
  • MMORPG
  
  We now bring you a brief Shadowbringers update. 1,609 words.

August, 2021

• FFXIV - What's Still Holding It Back?. 2021-08-01 9:30 AM.
  • Gaming
  • MMORPG
  
  Final Fantasy XIV is enjoying a massive surge in popularity this summer, but there are still a few things preventing it from reigning supreme in the MMORPG space. 393 words.

August, 2022

• Those New MMOs. 2022-08-15 7:07 PM.
  • Gaming
  • MMORPG
  
  I heard talk about a couple of new MMOs, Tower of Fantasy, and one other one which disappeared so fast I can’t even remember the name of it. 255 words.

September, 2022

• Wrath Classic Launch. 2022-09-27 8:41 AM.
  • Gaming
  • MMORPG
  
  There’s a bit (ha!) of buzz going around about World of Warcraft’s Wrath of the Lich King Classic launch today. 352 words.