Pre-Release
23 entries. 16,355 words.
2015-02
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Crowfall Sounds Like A PvP MMO.
2015-02-07.
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.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
- Responses
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The Forest, A Visual Feast.
2015-02-11.
In January, I went through a phase where I wanted to play some survival-type games. I’ve been intrigued by The Forest ever since I first saw it show up on Steam, but I generally try to resist buying Early Access games, particularly from unknown sources. Until one day when I was bored out of my mind with my current games and wanted to look at something new. And hey, it was only $15.
- Pre-Release
- Reviews
- Single-Player
- Steam
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Crowfall And Much Rambling On Game Types.
2015-02-27.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
- Pre-Release
2015-03
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On The Radar For 2015.
2015-03-30.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
- Pre-Release
- Predictions
2015-05
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FFXIV – UI Wish List for Heavensward.
2015-05-27.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
- Pre-Release
- Wish List
2015-06
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Finding Heavensward.
2015-06-19.
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.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
2015-07
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Why I Didn’t Buy H1Z1 For $10.
2015-07-06.
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.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
- Steam
2015-08
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YouTube Gaming Or Something Like It.
2015-08-04.
I don’t stream a lot but I like YouTube Gaming so far. Twitch is okay, and Hitbox is okay, but I almost always see a lot of stuttering, lag, and painful dropouts, both when I stream and when I watch other streams. With YouTube Gaming I’m just going to go out on a limb here and guess that they’re going to have the best possible video streaming technology working behind the scenes.
- Pre-Release
- Reviews
- Streaming
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Reactions To WoW Legion.
2015-08-10.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
- Pre-Release
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Project Gorgon – The New Black?.
2015-08-15.
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.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
- Reviews
2015-11
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ARK – Um It’s Got Issues.
2015-11-02.
Here’s my advice: Do not buy ARK right now. At least, don’t buy it with any expectation of actually playing it. Because on my 12GB system it runs out of memory and crashes. If you run the “low memory” 4GB version it doesn’t crash, but it runs horribly slow. There is a good two minutes of loading screen to wait through before geting into the game (literally-I timed it). Then in order to get it to run at an acceptable frame rate (which to me is a rock-solid 60 fps, but I suppose in a pinch 30-40 fps will do) you have to disable almost every graphical setting, and then the game is painful to look at.
- Pre-Release
- Reviews
- Survival
2016-02
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Snap Judgment – The Division Open Beta.
2016-02-21.
The Division isn’t for me.
It’s a very beautiful-looking game. The graphics are fantastic, and the urban environments are very realistic and detailed.
Unfortunately I didn’t see anything new or innovative in the gameplay. The whole time I was playing, I kept thinking, “This plays just like Defiance, and Defiance is free.” The only thing The Division has is the cover mechanic. And the fantastic graphics, of course.
I also couldn’t help but notice that there were very few other people around in this alleged MMO game.
- Pre-Release
- Shooter
- Snap Judgment
- Videos
2016-05
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Overwatch Snap Judgments.
2016-05-17.
I finally have a chance to talk a bit about Overwatch, which I played for roughly an hour or two during the open beta.
My first impression was horrible, because I played it on a Sunday night, which is usually my least favorite time of the week, considering that it’s the time when I’m forced to face the reality of going back to work the next day. Last week was a particularly onerous week because it was my last one on the dying project, so I was anticipating a horrendous week of panic and anxiety from me and everyone else who would be left behind after I’m gone.
- Pre-Release
- Shooter
- Snap Judgment
2016-11
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Snap Judgment – Novus Inceptio.
2016-11-18.
I should be really excited to play Rift: Starfall Prophecy but to be honest I couldn’t care less about any MMORPG right now. I’m just in one of those moods.
Instead I installed one of the many games on my Steam list that I’ve never tried so that I could bring you another (cue huge reverb and echo) … Snap Judgment! .. judgment .. ment .. nt.
Novus Inceptio is yet another Early Access survival sandbox game.
- Pre-Release
- Single-Player
- Snap Judgment
- Steam
2017-01
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On The Radar For 2017.
2017-01-01.
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.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
2017-06
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Far Cry 5 Outrage Hype!.
2017-06-01.
Hey look, I downloaded the fan kit with ready-made images for blog posts! There wasn’t much happening Friday the 26th except some kind of Far Cry 5 reveal, so I’ll see if I can summon up some words about it.
From what I can tell, Far Cry 5 is going to be essentially the same gameplay as Far Cry 2, 3, 4, and Primal, except it will be set in America with a Christian cult as the bad guys, and of course, that’s where the controversy begins.
- Pre-Release
- Single-Player
2017-08
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Subnautica.
2017-08-29.
Last night I tried out an early access survival game called Subnautica. I bought it for $9.99 in the last Steam sale.
The premise of this game is unlike other survival games in that you play a big part of it underwater. The game begins with you scrambling into a “rescue pod” while your ship blows up around you. (I assume it’s some kind of spaceship.) The rescue pod lands in a big alien ocean and then it’s your job to survive, while your ship looms in the distance, burning and giving off radiation.
- Pre-Release
- Steam
- Survival
2017-11
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WoW – Battle For Azeroth.
2017-11-06.
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.
I guess there’s nothing wrong with focusing completely on WoW, but, to me, WoW is just one game out of a hundred, a game that remains dormant roughly 22 months out of every 24 months.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
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GW2 – Living World Season 4 Announced.
2017-11-15.
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.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
2018-01
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On The Radar For 2018.
2018-01-03.
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.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
2018-08
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Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay Reaction – Blaugust 28.
2018-08-28.
Screenshot from the Cyberpunk 2077 web site. Well at least it’s not a post about Battle for Azeroth. But it is another post where I say what I really think instead of what people want to hear, so I’ll probably get in trouble.
Like Roger, and late-breaking addition Scopique, I took a look at GameSpot’s Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay demo. My reaction was a bit less enthusiastic. (Those two links are the only other two reactions I’ve seen to the video, by the way.
- Pre-Release
- Single-Player
2018-09
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New Lord of the Rings MMO.
2018-09-10.
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.
- MMO
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
2019-01
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On The Radar For 2019.
2019-01-02.
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.
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release