Stories

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8 entries. 9,810 words.

July, 2012

  • 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.

April, 2014

  • Trying New Things In May. 2014-04-30 12:19 AM.
    • Administration
    • Stories
    • Streaming

    The Newbie Blogger Initiative runs through May, so, to celebrate, I thought I would try a couple of new things and see what happens.T-Day StreamingI’m going to do a regular stream during the month of May. The stream will run Tuesdays and Thursdays at roughly 7:00 PM Eastern Time for about an hour, starting on May 1. You can find me at http://twitch.tv/endgameviable.Why would I do such a crazy thing? Well, everyone else is doing it, and we are all slaves to trendiness. I often talk to myself or the game while I’m playing anyway, so I might as well click on the “broadcast” button while I’m doing it. Also, I want to create an example of the kind of stream that I prefer to watch.What kind of stream is it going to be? Well, it’ll be MMORPGs, obviously. And pretty casual. Possibly informative and/or amusing. My target audience won’t be hardcore gamers.At this time I am planning to stream ArcheAge, because it’s all the rage. Other possibilities include ESO and … well, that’s about it. ArcheAge or ESO. Maybe I’ll alternate between them.NPC FictionI saw that one of the topics for this year’s NBI is “Creative writing articles and guides.” I wouldn’t presume to try tackling the vastness of a guide on creative writing, but a while back I had an idea for some writing exercises, and this seems like the perfect time to give it a try.The goal of my project is to write very short pieces of fiction, perhaps as little as 1,000 words each. The inspiration for the fiction will come from a random NPC in an MMORPG, preferably one who doesn’t otherwise have a part in a quest. You know how you sometimes run across an NPC who doesn’t seem to do anything but add atmosphere to an area? He or she may not even have any lines to speak, or may not even have a name beyond something generic like “Pact Soldier.” Those are the ones I mean. Why are they there? What are they thinking about? What are their dreams? If you could interact with those NPCs, what would they say? What quests might they give out?So I will try to publish a short fiction related to those NPCs every Sunday during May. (I suppose technically it would be “fan fiction.”) 388 words.

May, 2014

  • 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.

August, 2015

  • A Dream About Enemy Base Infiltration. 2015-08-03 3:00 PM.
    • Musings
    • Stories
    • Writing

    Blaugust Day 3 It’s Sunday morning as I write this. I had the strangest dream last night. That’s not unusual because, honestly, a lot of my dreams are strange. I think the scientific explanation of dreaming* involves your subconscious re-processing things you’ve experienced, but that doesn’t explain a lot of my dreams. Quite often I see things in my dreams that I have no memory of ever seeing, hearing, or experiencing before. Sometimes I’ve heard complete songs with melodies and lyrics. Sometimes I’ve seen stories with plots and dialog. Of course the next morning they are completely gone, which makes me wonder if those songs really had melodies and lyrics, or if I just thought they had melodies and lyrics. 600 words.

August, 2016

  • 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.

November, 2016

  • An Election Day Tale. 2016-11-09 12:04 AM.
    • Politics
    • Stories
    • Writing

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

January, 2019

  • The Fall of Bekarlogem – Dwarf Fortress. 2019-01-20 12:56 AM.
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    • Stories

    I imagine if you draw a Venn diagram of “people who play Dwarf Fortress” and “people who are programmers,” the two circles would overlap quite a bit. Unfortunately for me, I’m a programmer, so I think I’m more vulnerable to this DF sickness than most people. Playing the game is quite a bit like using a text editor, considering how much you use the arrow keys to select things in rhythmic patterns. Anyway… 764 words.