148 entries. 120,107 words.
2018-01
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Games Played – Year End 2017.
2018-01-01.
What counts as astronomy in Divinity: Original Sin. First, statistics for December of 2017. I flip-flopped around a lot during the holiday time, as is pretty normal for me.
A surprising addition to this list is EverQuest II, in which I had quite a bit of fun starting a new character, at least until I installed new Steam purchase Divinity: Original Sin, which captured a lot of my attention late in the month.
- Progression Report
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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
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Top 10 Videos From 2017.
2018-01-05.
It’s time for more video rankings! I know blog readers hate videos, but this is the only place I can put this information for posterity.
Major video releases from me in 2017 included:
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (still unfinished) Mass Effect Andromeda Final Fantasy XIV - Stormblood, The Legend Returns Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, Living World Seasons 2 and 3 Dark Souls III - The Ringed City DLC (still unfinished) Below are my top ten videos in 2017, according to YouTube running time.
- Videos
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Single-Player Holidays.
2018-01-08.
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. :)
- MMORPG
- RPG
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Free Book Weekend.
2018-01-12.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post for a blatant, unabashed, self-promotional advertisement that has no purpose other than to shower me with cold, hard cash that I will not share with you.*
I have had a book on Amazon called Lute of the Sparrow under my writing name Everett Renshaw for about seven years now. This weekend (starting January 13), I am making it available for free. Please go forth, download it, read it, and post a review.
- Administration
- Writing
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ARK Revisited Two Years Later.
2018-01-15.
There is a wide variety of interesting sky effects, too. I haven’t played ARK much since early 2016, so I decided to re-download it and give it another look. The game finally “launched” last year, after all. Presumably all of the problems I had with the game are now fixed.
Well, not exactly. Although to be fair I really enjoyed it before, too. I just ran out of challenge. I got to a point where I could go to any biome and survive, and kill any dinosaur in my path, and that is pretty much “winning” the game.
- Reviews
- Survival
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YouTube – Death of a Hobby.
2018-01-17.
I never thought this would happen, but YouTube finally made changes that affect me.
Previously, channels had to reach 10,000 total views to be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). …starting today, new channels will need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months to be eligible for ads. We will begin enforcing these new requirements for existing channels in YPP beginning February 20th, 2018.
- Videos
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MMO News Roundup.
2018-01-19.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Rift Prime – Too Late?.
2018-01-22.
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.
- MMORPG
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MMO News Roundup 2.
2018-01-26.
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. Final Fantasy XIV 4.2 releases January 30. Yay! The nostalgia part of this patch means nothing to me, as I’ve never played any other Final Fantasy game.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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FFXIV – 4.2 Rise of a New Sun Patch Notes.
2018-01-29.
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).
- MMORPG
2018-02
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MMO News Reactions 3.
2018-02-02.
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.
_
Sea of Thieves was in closed beta. This is a game on my radar, but the more I see, the less I’m interested.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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What’s With The Console Exclusives?.
2018-02-05.
Last week we learned that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be delayed until October 26, 2018, and there is still no word on a PC version. (The first one was a console exclusive.)
Red Dead Redemption 2 is Coming October 26th 2018: https://t.co/LLSkGYfJMP pic.twitter.com/fSu8k9qVZe — Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) February 1, 2018 I personally don’t care that much about RDR2, having never played or even seen the first one. I was more interested in the ensuing Twitter thread I got involved in about PC versus console games.
- Discussion
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Games Played – January 2018.
2018-02-05.
A Bethesda-heavy month.
Oblivion - 23 hours Fallout 4 - 20 hours Rift - 15 hours ShooterGame* … I mean ARK - 10 hours Morrowind - 10 hours Skyrim - 4 hours Dark Souls III - 3 hours Final Fantasy XIV - 2 hours ESO - 1 hour It might seem like an even distribution of games across the entire month, but it was more like a sequential progression of games starting with Morrowind, then Oblivion, then ARK, and then the month ended with Rift and finally Fallout 4 sunk its claws into me big time (again), quite unexpectedly.
- Progression Report
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MMO News Reactions 4.
2018-02-09.
_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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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A Podcast Experiment.
2018-02-11.
I’m excited and terrified to announce that I’m launching an experimental podcast project tentatively called Main Quest and you-yes you-can listen to the first two episodes right here! Well, down below a bit, anyway.
Have you ever been sitting at work, or driving your car, or waiting at the dentist, and thought, “I wish I could listen to the story from a game right now?”
Well I have. A lot. So much so that I’ve recorded a lot of my own gameplay with OBS over the last two or three years, converted it to mp3s, and put them on my phone, just so I could listen to them at work.
- Administration
- Media
- Podcast
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RIFT Leveling Anew.
2018-02-12.
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.
- MMORPG
- Opinion
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MMO News Reactions 5.
2018-02-16.
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!
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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FFXIV – 4.2 Rise of a New Sun Completed (Spoilers).
2018-02-19.
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.
- MMORPG
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That Ashes of Creation Live Stream.
2018-02-21.
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.
- MMORPG
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Kitchen Sink Post #6.
2018-02-23.
_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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Why Is It So Hard to Get Back Into ESO?.
2018-02-26.
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.
- MMORPG
2018-03
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MMO Roundup #7.
2018-03-02.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Games Played – February 2018.
2018-03-03.
I can’t say that February was the most productive month I’ve ever spent on this Earth. But I got a lot of material for a podcast, at least. (And YouTube videos, if I ever upload them.)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance - 63 hours Fallout 4 - 60 hours Final Fantasy XIV - 39 hours Elder Scrolls Online - 17 hours If you were to put them in chronological order, it would be: Fallout 4, FFXIV and ESO, then Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
- Progression Report
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Life is Strange.
2018-03-05.
Steam is having yet another one of those sales, and I saw that a lot of Square Enix games were available cheap. Life is Strange, for example, is available for $5. It’s one of those games that everyone says is fantastic. It also happens that the first episode is available for free, so I thought I’d try it out and see if I wanted to spend the $5 for the entire thing.
- Single-Player
- Steam
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MMO Roundup #8.
2018-03-09.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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RIFT Prime – The First Week.
2018-03-12.
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.
- MMORPG
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Project: Gorgon Acquired.
2018-03-14.
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.
- MMORPG
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MMO Roundup #9.
2018-03-16.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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EverQuest Coirnav Diary, Complete (Probably).
2018-03-19.
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.
- MMORPG
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MMO Roundup #10.
2018-03-23.
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.
- Administration
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Secret World Legends Revisited.
2018-03-26.
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. I started SWL with everyone else when it launched, and made a character very similar to my old The Secret World character-a shotgun/hammer Illuminati guy.
- MMORPG
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MMO Roundup #11.
2018-03-30.
_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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
2018-04
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Games Played – March 2018.
2018-04-02.
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.
- MMORPG
- Progression Report
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Weeklies – Haven Week.
2018-04-06.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Kingdom Come: Deliverance Completed.
2018-04-09.
I’ve been holding off on writing about Kingdom Come: Deliverance until I was done, but finally, after 86.7 hours according to the save game file, and 108 hours according to ManicTime, between February 20 and this past weekend, April 8, I finished the game.
An interior in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Spectacular scenery and lighting is common. I say “finished,” but what I mean is that I reached the The End screen, the point at which the developers believe your characters’ story has ended.
- Reviews
- RPG
- Steam
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Weeklies – SWL, Anti-PAX, Batteries.
2018-04-13.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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FFXIV – End Of Life?.
2018-04-16.
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.
- MMORPG
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Weeklies – ESO, SWL.
2018-04-20.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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GW2 – LW4, Ep 2, A Bug In The System (Spoilers).
2018-04-23.
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.
- MMORPG
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ESO – Morrowind Story (Spoilers).
2018-04-25.
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.
- MMORPG
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Weeklies – Oligarchgate (The One About Daybreak).
2018-04-27.
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).
- MMORPG
- Roundup
2018-05
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Monthly Recap – April 2018.
2018-05-02.
_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. Games Played Elder Scrolls Online, 24 hours. The surprise winner this month.
- MMORPG
- Podcast
- Roundup
- Videos
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Week End – EQ Royale, New World.
2018-05-05.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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The First Time I Played Fortnite Battle Royale.
2018-05-07.
Fortnite was in the news last week. The real news, that is, not just the MMO news. Both The New York Times and The Guardian mentioned it.
But I’m not here to talk about those articles. They just reminded me of those heady days when I played Fortnite Battle Royale myself. Heady day, I mean. Because I only played for one day. One match, in fact, on that one day.* It didn’t click with me.
- MMO
- Reviews
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Fortnite, The Followup.
2018-05-09.
After writing my last post on Fortnite, I played over a dozen more games and now I have a somewhat more nuanced opinion about it. To respond a little bit to Jeromai’s comment, I think I get it now. Kind of. At least I have some understanding of the appeal of the battle royale genre in general and Fortnite in particular. Two major things clicked into place, which I’ll detail below.
- MMO
- Reviews
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Week End – Conan Exiles, Wild West Online.
2018-05-12.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Ryse: Son of Rome.
2018-05-14.
You play Marius, a Roman soldier with a gruff Sean Bean-style accent. The main reason to play Ryse: Son of Rome is because you bought it for $7 in a Steam sale three years ago, and you’re bored of everything else and desperate for something-anything-new and interesting to play. (Without the bother and expense of spending $60+ on actual new games.) That being said, it’s actually not a bad game.
- Reviews
- Single-Player
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FFXIV – Story’s End.
2018-05-16.
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.
- MMORPG
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Week End – Albion, Phoebes.
2018-05-19.
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).
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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DDO Likes and Dislikes.
2018-05-21.
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.
- MMORPG
- Reviews
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GDPR Compliance Missive.
2018-05-25.
Today, May 25th (a Friday, amusingly enough for those of us who know that Friday is the worst day to deploy new things), is the day that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect for the European Union, so, since I have a web site on The Internet, and I know there are Europeans who occasionally visit this site, and supposedly I’m a professional in the information technology field, I wanted to write about it quickly.
- Blog
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Week End – Summerset, FFXIV 4.3.
2018-05-26.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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What the Heck is Dauntless.
2018-05-29.
Over the Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S. everyone was talking about Dauntless, or more accurately, talking about the queues that made it impossible to play Dauntless.
It made me wonder: What the heck is Dauntless?
Well, it’s a co-op action RPG coming to PC in 2018. And I guess that’s all we need to know to create hordes of stampeding fans hyped with excitement about it. Or at least, that’s what their web site would lead us to believe, because the only other clue we get before the big red “Download Game” button is: “Battle ferocious Behemoths, craft powerful weapons, and forge your legend in the Shattered Isles.
- MMO
2018-06
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Week End – Fallout 76, Because SEO.
2018-06-02.
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.
Bethesda teased us with an announcement of a new game called Fallout 76. It’s debatable whether this deserves to be mentioned on an MMO-themed blog, but see above about bleak news.
- MMO
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Monthly Recap – May 2018.
2018-06-04.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Week End – Steam Flood.
2018-06-09.
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. In The News Star Wars Galaxies creator Raph Koster to release postmortem book on MMORPGs.
- MMORPG
- Steam
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E3 – Anthem, Sekiro, Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76.
2018-06-11.
Fine! I’ll write something about the E3s and whatnot. I’m not a big fan of these kinds of game conferences but I actually sat down and watched some showcases this weekend, because really, who among us can honestly say they’d pass up a chance to write snarky tweets and ruin people’s fun on the Internet.
I missed most of the EA show on Friday. I started watching right before the Anthem gameplay footage, which was followed by approximately 20 continuous hours of FIFA gameplay.
- Musings
-
E3 – Square Enix, Ubisoft, Sony.
2018-06-13.
I watched the Square Enix showcase but it left little impression on me. Unlike seemingly everyone else, though, I liked that it was just a series of trailers and videos, and not one of those awkward live presentations in front of a confused audience. I just feel like in the year 2018, we should have evolved beyond the 90s-Steve Jobs-cult-of-personality-walking-around-on-stage phase of our lives.
Although the guy from Bethesda talking about Fallout 76 actually was pretty entertaining.
- Consoles
- Musings
-
Week End – Wall-to-Wall E3.
2018-06-16.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
-
On Blogging More.
2018-06-18.
This is an amalgamation of an old draft from March 2017 that I never got around to publishing, probably because I never found a picture for it, and some new thoughts because the subject came up again this past week.
My keyboard, stylistically distorted purely for artistic effect, not at all to mask the dust and dirt that showed up because of the side lighting angle. Roger wrote a post called Where Have all the Bloggers Gone?
- Blog
- Musings
- Writing
-
Week End – WHO Pitch Forks.
2018-06-23.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
-
Controller Woes: Aging and D-Pads.
2018-06-25.
I’ve been playing a lot of Dark Souls Remastered lately, which requires playing on a controller. Technically you can play the game with mouse-and-keyboard on PC (and it’s even easier in the Remastered edition) but the control scheme is completely alien to any other mouse-and-keyboard game, and it takes a lot of getting used to, and it’s just not worth the effort for one game. Even the controller scheme takes a fair amount practicing and learning, even if you’re used to using controller.
- Hardware
- Musings
-
Dark Souls Remastered Edition.
2018-06-27.
To the dismay of I’m sure most people on the Internet, I could write for days about how much Dark Souls pitches exactly into my wheelhouse as a game (mixed metaphor used intentionally because it’s funny), but I’ll try to keep this post focused on just what is different in the PC version of the Dark Souls Remastered edition.
In short: There aren’t that many differences. But there are some.
- Reviews
-
Week End – Trion, GW2.
2018-06-30.
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.
- MMORPG
2018-07
-
Monthly Recap – June 2018.
2018-07-02.
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.
- MMORPG
- Single-Player
- Steam
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GW2 – Not Forewarned Enough.
2018-07-04.
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.
- MMORPG
-
GW2 – Writers Fired.
2018-07-06.
Given recent unexpected events at ArenaNet, I feel pretty awful about my last post on GW2. I’ve expressed displeasure over ArenaNet’s handling of story and gameplay plenty of times here which is exactly the kind of thing that led to the firing of two ArenaNet writers. So I wanted to say a couple of things.
Oddly contrite-looking Commander screenshot seems appropriate here. First of all, I absolutely respect any game writer or developer’s right to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, that I don’t understand the challenges associated with writing for a game, etc.
- Musings
-
Week End – Defiance 2050 I guess?.
2018-07-07.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
-
Blaugust Reborn Is Happening.
2018-07-10.
Belghast is rebooting Blaugust, so head on over there for all the details (and here for more details). All the cool kids are doing it. I probably won’t be able to participate formally, but I’m sure I’ll post something during the month and I’ll cheer everyone on from the sidelines.
This is a screenshot of a cryptic book from Secret World Legends, which is supposed to sort of vaguely remind one of the topic of blogging when one doesn't have any better images around.
- Community
-
Demon’s Souls, Briefly.
2018-07-11.
As I wait for my hands and fingers and thumbs to regenerate themselves, which is taking forever-frankly at this point I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever be able to play an action game with a controller ever again-I thought I would try to injure my hands more by typing up a bit about Demon’s Souls.
If nothing else, The Nexus has a lot more artistic style than Firelink Shrine. I’ve wanted to play Demon’s Souls ever since I played Dark Souls, three years ago.
- Reviews
- Videos
-
Week End – A Pretty Boring Week.
2018-07-14.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
-
BioShock Remastered.
2018-07-16.
Way back in May I was looking for an easy game to play*, and I found the Remastered editions of BioShock and BioShock 2 in my Steam library. They appeared there for free when those editions were released, because I owned the original games. My original plan was to play BioShock 2, because I have owned it since the Christmas sale of 2010 and have yet to play it, but I didn’t remember the original story very well so I started up the first game instead.
- Single-Player
-
Week End – WoW 8.0.
2018-07-21.
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.
- MMORPG
-
WoW – Questioning My Belonging In MMORPGs.
2018-07-24.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
-
Week End – Thorny Battle.
2018-07-28.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
-
Flipping The Tables For Blaugust.
2018-07-29.
I’ve belatedly decided to officially participate in the Blaugust extravaganza. I wasn’t going to because frankly I didn’t think I’d be able to write 31 posts in August. (I still don’t think I will.) But late this past week I stumbled upon some information that I completely missed the first time: You don’t actually have to write 31 posts to participate. I figure that even in my crippled state I should be able to manage five or ten posts.
- Blog
- Writing
-
Primary Care Doctors.
2018-07-30.
This afternoon I have an appointment with a new primary care doctor, one I’ve never seen before. I had no choice but to select a new one because I had to buy new insurance this year, and my old doctor wasn’t “in the network.” It took three months to get this appointment.
I don’t like doctors even on a good day. Especially “primary care” doctors. As far as I can tell, the main goal of this type of doctor is to shove you out the office door as fast as possible with the most generic of healthcare solutions that they can think of: “Here, take this generic prescription and come back in a couple weeks if your problem’s not better.
- Blog
- Musings
-
The Medical Report.
2018-07-31.
The very brief medical news is: Yesterday, the doctor was considerably more concerned about my high blood pressure than my hands. I’ll be starting on some new medication for it. I have a followup appointment Wednesday morning where bloodwork will be done and they will see if my pressure is still in what they casually referred to as the “stroke zone.”
They did an EKG and I got the distinct impression that if the readings had gone poorly, I might very well have been strapped to a gurney and carted to a hospital right then.
- Blog
- Musings
2018-08
-
Blaugust Introduction – Blaugust 1.
2018-08-01.
This is my back yard and the raucous neighbors who frequently visit. Today is the first day of Blaugust. I thought I would start by introducing myself, something I probably should have done a long time ago.
Hi! I’m a middle-aged guy who lives alone in a somewhat rural-ish house with a dog and a cat. I’m “in my 40s,” though in truth I’m now a lot closer to 50 than I would care to admit.
- Blog
- Musings
-
Gaming Goals Aren’t Fun For Me – Blaugust 2.
2018-08-02.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
-
Blog Post Topic Ideas.
2018-08-02.
I know bloggers are always in search of topics to write about, so I thought I would throw out some ideas here at the start of Blaugust. Then I noticed some others doing that. Then I noticed topic brainstorming is actually on the schedule for the first week. Reading comprehension, yay! Anyway a__lmost all of these are based on posts that are sitting in my Drafts folder unfinished right now.
- Blog
- Discussion
-
Monthly Recap – July 2018.
2018-08-03.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
-
The Cataract Report – Blaugust 3.
2018-08-03.
Not from today, but from 2010, the last time I saw an eye doctor before 2018. This morning I finally saw the cataract specialist. It’s been about five months since the optometrist told me I had a cataract. It looks like I never wrote a full post about that. No Blaugust back then. :)
The delay was mostly because of having to meet insurance requirements: To make a long story short, I have new insurance this year, and that insurance requires a referral from my primary care doctor, but I had to find a new primary care doctor because my old one was not in the new insurance network, all of which adds up to a lot of waiting for appointments.
- Blog
- Musings
-
Those WoW Cinematics – Blaugust 4.
2018-08-04.
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.
- MMORPG
-
New Writing Process Didn’t Work – Blaugust 5.
2018-08-05.
This photo of boats is completely relevant to this post! I think I’ve collected enough observational data now to abandon my new writing process. At first it was new and invigorating, but after a week it’s kind of irritating and not any better or faster.
For posterity, here’s what I did: I turned on the webcam and recorded myself talking for about 7 or 8 minutes. I played back the video with VLC and set the playback speed slightly slower, and transcribed what I said into a Scrivener document.
- Blog
- Musings
- Writing
-
I Wish EQ2 Would Explain More – Blaugust 6.
2018-08-06.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
-
Back Yard Bird-Watching – Blaugust 7.
2018-08-07.
The classic and ubiquitous American Robin from many years ago at a different house. My dad was an avid backyard bird-watcher. He would setup bird feeders and watch all the wildlife that showed up through binoculars from the living room. In the early days of video cameras, this was back in the 80s, I remember he’d setup one of those monstrous suitcase-sized VHS camcorders on a tripod to record birds at the feeders.
- Blog
- Musings
-
The Hand Report – Blaugust 8.
2018-08-08.
This morning I went to another doctor’s appointment, the fourth one in the last nine days. This time I went to see a hand specialist, as I had been referred from my primary care doctor. I was amazed to be able to get an appointment to see him two days after calling.
It’s interesting to see the kind of people you find in waiting rooms. Based on my meager experience the last couple of weeks, doctor’s offices seems to be the social hotspot for people over 60.
- Blog
- Musings
-
Nineties News Nostalgia on Netflix – Blaugust 9.
2018-08-09.
I just finished watching the American Crime Story: The People Versus O.J. Simpson series on Netflix. It’s pretty good. I’m not sure it deserved to win any Emmys, but I enjoyed it anyway, especially the second half of the series. I didn’t remember a lot of the twists and turns.
I didn’t see much of anything about the whole OJ Trial when it happened. I remember the basic framework of it: The Bronco, the trial, the gloves, the acquittal.
- Blog
- Media
- Musings
-
More Netflix Documentaries – Blaugust 10.
2018-08-10.
You might have noticed I don’t post a lot about games here, and that’s mostly because I haven’t played much of anything in the last month. So the “here’s what I played last night” style of post is completely off the table for me so far in Blaugust. It makes it kind of hard to think of something to say. :)
I could tell you what I watched last night, which was a Netflix documentary called Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist.
- Blog
- Media
-
My Oldest Computer Files – Blaugust 11.
2018-08-11.
My dog likes to be involved with everything. They say everything’s been written before and there’s nothing new to write on a gaming blog. Well, okay, I say that, because I’m lazy and not very motivated. I keep looking at all the mountains of writing prompts floating around Blaugust, including the ones I wrote, and thinking, “Meh, I’m just not interested in writing about that today.”
Then, suddenly, a revelation! Wilhelm’s post on installing ZMud contained this passage:
- Blog
- Musings
-
Diablo III for the First Time – Blaugust 12.
2018-08-12.
The quest for non-WASD games to play using only the right hand on the mouse inevitably leads to either strategy games or isometric action RPGs. I’ve been through a number of strategy games already and I just can’t get into them right now. In the past, I’ve turned to Path of Exile in this kind of situation (because it’s free), but this time I decided to try out the trial version of Diablo III for the very first time.
- Reviews
- Single-Player
-
Battle for Azeroth Impulse Buy – Blaugust 13.
2018-08-13.
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.
- MMORPG
-
The Siege of Lordaeron – Blaugust 14.
2018-08-14.
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.
- MMORPG
-
2.5 Hrs Into Battle for Azeroth – Blaugust 15.
2018-08-15.
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.)
As of this writing, ManicTime says I’ve played the expansion for a total of 2.
- MMORPG
-
Finding Teldrassil – Blaugust 16.
2018-08-16.
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.
Big news, though: I installed an addon! Bagnon, the one (of many) that merges all your different bags into one big bag.
- MMORPG
-
Realm Pop – Blaugust 17.
2018-08-17.
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.
- MMORPG
-
Developer Appreciation Overthinking – Blaugust 18.
2018-08-18.
The Blaugust theme of the week is Developer Appreciation, but I’ll be honest, I have no idea how to write on this topic. It’s one of those situations where I have to decide whether to write what I think everyone expects, or write what I actually think.
I’m sure the intention here is to simply state, “I think games are great and I don’t think developers should get death threats on Twitter!
- Blog
- Musings
-
Sunday Browns and Disenchanted Disappointment – Blaugust 19.
2018-08-19.
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.
It’s been, what, two days since I reported on Battle for Azeroth, so surely there must be a clamoring for news there.
- Media
- MMORPG
-
Drustvar Screenshots – Blaugust 20.
2018-08-20.
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. This vaguely terrifying creature was called a "mountain doe." That doesn't look like any doe \*I've\* ever seen. Except maybe in my nightmares. Here we see the standard position of my Hunter's pet in most attempted screenshots.
- MMORPG
-
Drustvar Complete, Mastodon – Blaugust 21.
2018-08-21.
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. World of Warcraft In Battle for Azeroth yesterday, I got to the end of the Drustvar zone, which actually isn’t the end because there are still some side quests and missing pieces for the zone completion achievement, but it’s the end of the main story for the zone, and of course I excitedly ran after the NPCs to go into the final dramatic confrontation to complete it … until I saw I was running into a Dungeon Portal.
- MMORPG
- Musings
-
That Amazon New World Preview – Blaugust 22.
2018-08-22.
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.)
Here’s what I’ve previously written about New World:
Amazon’s New World Reveal Hopes and Predictions for New World Amazon’s New World, Part Two Week End - EQ Royale, New World I’ve had a rather cynical take, to put it mildly.
- MMORPG
- Musings
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News: Ashes, Torchlight, Twitch – Blaugust 23.
2018-08-23.
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.
- MMORPG
- Videos
-
Where Exactly Is This Battle? – Blaugust 24.
2018-08-24.
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.
- MMORPG
-
Stormsong Valley and On Accident – Blaugust 25.
2018-08-25.
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.
As I’m going through Stormsong Valley, I can understand why people rush to endgame in WoW.
- MMORPG
- Writing
-
A Logical Dead End – Blaugust 26.
2018-08-26.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
-
Side Quests and Spigots – Blaugust 27.
2018-08-27.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
-
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
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Hard Drive Shopping – Blaugust 29.
2018-08-29.
Casualties of War aka. Information Technology. This SSD and external USB drive both died last year, both less than two years old. I mentioned my main 2 TB D: drive conked out yesterday morning for mysterious reasons. It’s working again now, but I’m eyeing it suspiciously, because I’ve noticed some odd behavior in my applications and rebooted a couple of times yesterday to straighten it out. I’m not sure it was hard drive related but it could have been.
- Hardware
- Musings
-
Battle for Azeroth 119 Update – Blaugust 30.
2018-08-30.
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.
- MMORPG
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Blaugust Performance Self-Review – Blaugust 31.
2018-08-31.
Back in July I filled a directory with 70 photographs for potential use in Blaugust posts. Last chance to use them! This is Chingoteague. I'm not sure if this is sunrise or sunset but let's just say it's sunset to fit the theme of the post. It’s time to review my performance in Blaugust! Setting goals is only half the battle in self-improvement. The other half is evaluating your performance to see what worked, what didn’t work, and how you can improve for next time.
- Blog
- Musings
- Writing
2018-09
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Games Played – August 2018.
2018-09-01.
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.
- MMORPG
- Progression Report
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WoW – Finding Jaina’s Trail Again.
2018-09-03.
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.
- MMORPG
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Week End – Carbine, CCP, Daybreak, Witcher.
2018-09-08.
I started to write three or four blog posts this week, didn’t finish them, and didn’t want to post them. Instead I decided to cram all of them together into one summary post for the week. This allows me to post, but without the bother of crafting long essays that have beginnings, middles, or ends, when everything I want to say can be summed up in a paragraph. No wonder listcicles are so popular!
- Blog
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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
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Resuming Dark Souls In The Worst Place.
2018-09-12.
My thumb is finally well enough that I can use a game controller again. This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that I can resume Dark Souls Remastered and finish my casual nostalgia tour, my (latest) video series Magnum Opus.
The bad news is that I’m in a terrible place to resume the game.
The last time I played Dark Souls Remastered before significant pain in my fingers and thumbs impacted my performance was June 23rd, when I spent all day working on Artorias (technically it only took 1 hour and 35 minutes, but it was spread out all day).
- RPG
- Single-Player
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The Witcher’s (Hard) Easy Difficulty.
2018-09-13.
Before getting back to Dark Souls, of course I have to finish The Witcher, which I started after I got bored with Battle for Azeroth. I’ve never finished it before. I think I’ve always crashed out of it somewhere in Chapter II. Probably because of all the tedious running back and forth in the Temple District.
The first Witcher game gets a lot of flak for its odd combat system (and rightly so), but I’ve never been bothered by it.
- RPG
- Single-Player
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Cataract Surgery Day.
2018-09-18.
This is probably the last chance I’ll have to write anything before I get a cataract removed from my right eye. I’ll have scheduled this post to publish Tuesday morning, theoretically about the time of the surgery.
I say “theoretically” because there are a lot of moving parts that have to come together and I feel like there’s at least a 50% chance I’ll arrive at the appointment and they’ll tell me, “Sorry we can’t proceed because some random thing wasn’t done right.
- Blog
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Cataract Removed.
2018-09-19.
Just a very brief post to say the cataract surgery went well, and the procedure did in fact take about 10 minutes. I felt nothing, saw nothing, heard almost nothing except some classic rock tunes on a radio somewhere. Most of the time was spent signing consent forms, waiting for dilation drops to take effect (they dosed me three different times with dilation drops which lasted all day), and putting an IV in my arm for a sedative.
- Blog
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Day Two Without Cataract.
2018-09-19.
Day two of life after cataract surgery was perfectly fine. I went to my followup appointment this morning, where the doctor barely even looked at me before letting me go again. They apparently don’t worry too much about people my age recovering from cataract surgery. But in any case the technician checked my eyeball pressure and I could read the eye chart at I think it was 20/30 through the bionic lens already.
- Blog
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Day Three.
2018-09-20.
The eye continues to improve. Computer screen text is getting clearer, and sunlight doesn’t hurt as much. The “new” eye wears out quickly though in front of the computer. It starts to twitch, as one’s eyes do after reading a long time. (At least my eyes do.) It just starts happening within about five minutes. So I’m staying away from the computer except for short periods.
Earlier in the year, I found that with the cataract, dark themes (white-on-black text) were easier to read, but since the surgery I’ve found the exact opposite.
- Blog
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Day Four.
2018-09-21.
Okay I’m getting pretty impatient now. I want to be fully recovered right now please.
The new eye is better after another day, but still a bit blurry and hard to focus on a computer monitor for any amount of time, especially text. It gets better every day, but it’s still a chore.
I can see the television from a chair halfway across the room fine, though, so I’ve been watching (and re-watching, in fact) The Americans, and I started playing a little bit of The Last Of Us (Remastered) on the PS4.
- Blog
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Telltale and Last Of Us.
2018-09-22.
So I guess I’ll write something about games this time. The eye continues to improve, and focusing on nearby things gets a little bit better each day. (Writing this post has been the easiest so far.) There’s still a slight bit of soreness there which crops up in unexpected ways. Sometimes it hurts when I yawn or squeeze my eye shut, and sometimes it feels like there’s something like a hair stuck in the eye.
- Consoles
- RPG
- Single-Player
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Comfy Questions and Answers, Part 1.
2018-09-27.
Nothing new to report about the eye, except the new normal seems more normal every day. I stopped using the antibiotic eye drops as instructed, and now only use the prednisone (steroid) eye drops 4 times a day for another week. (Those drops drive me crazy because I swear they have chalk in them, as if they simply crushed up some pills and mixed it with water.)
I don’t see much of anything interesting happening in gaming.
- Blog
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Comfy Questions and Answers, Part 2.
2018-09-28.
This is a photo I took in the New York Cloisters museum some years back. Seemed appropriate for the Jesus talk down below. Had a rough night last night with back pain. One of those situations where there’s no way to stand, sit, or lie down that feels better. It’s a lot better today but I’ve also been working harder to keep myself still. Yesterday I tried to ignore it. Big mistake.
- Blog
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Comfy Questions and Answers, Part 3.
2018-09-30.
In the interests of brevity and not boring everyone to death, I’ll edit the rest of these down to a few sentences.
12. “What is your family ancestry?” My family came from a group of Anabaptists who originated in Switzerland, moved to what is now Ukraine, and emigrated to Kansas en masse around 1874.
13. “What scares you?” A whole lot of things, mostly personal.
14. “What are you most grateful for?
- Blog
2018-10
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Games Played – September 2018.
2018-10-01.
Even with a week and a half of down time from cataract surgery, I still managed to play a few games this past month.
The Witcher (Enhanced Edition), 39 hours. This is what I spent most of my gaming time doing after World of Warcraft and before surgery, and a little bit afterward to finish up the story. This is the first time I’ve finished the whole game. It got kind of weird at the end.
- Consoles
- Progression Report
- Roundup
- RPG
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Fallout 4 Podcast Completed.
2018-10-02.
I uploaded the last episode of my Fallout 4 podcast yesterday. It took me a while to get the concluding episode out due to injuring my hand and cataract surgery and, frankly, a bit of malaise, but it’s finally done.
Here is the series page, though it displays the episodes in reverse order. It’s a serial podcast, so it’s better if you start at the first one.
In all there are 21 episodes for a total of about 5 hours of listening.
- Podcast
- Single-Player
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Battle for Azeroth Conclusions.
2018-10-03.
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.
- MMORPG
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GW2 – A Star To Guide Us.
2018-10-06.
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.
- MMORPG
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Bless Online Launching For Reals.
2018-10-10.
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.
- MMORPG
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Snap Judgment – MapleStory 2.
2018-10-11.
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.
- MMORPG
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Not Dead Yet – The Inactivity Report.
2018-10-18.
Horizon Zero Dawn, the only thing I've played in the last week. I was trying yet again to think of something interesting to write, when I saw Roger talking about Blaugust this morning, which led me to Gevlon talking about Blaugust, where I found out that I’m no longer an active blogger.
I mean, sure, I haven’t posted in a week, whereas I normally try to post something once or twice a week.
- Consoles
- Musings
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The Last Of Us, YouTube, and a Ripsaw.
2018-10-22.
I just realized this image is pretty similar to the Horizon Zero Dawn image in my last post. I mentioned that I had abandoned The Last Of Us and gotten into Horizon Zero Dawn, so of course, right after that, I abandoned Horizon Zero Dawn and got back into The Last Of Us.
You see, I was always interested in seeing the remainder of the story-I was just getting frustrated with the stealth mechanics.
- Consoles
- Single-Player
- Videos
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Trion Sold To Who Now?.
2018-10-23.
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.
- MMORPG
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Snap Judgment – Bless Online.
2018-10-26.
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.
- MMORPG
- Reviews
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Video Game Museums.
2018-10-29.
The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, photo by Brandt Luke Zorn. I saw a tweet the other day that made me raise an eyebrow:
Hey Twitter fans: please go track down people who could legally get us Star Wars Galaxy's server code, and City of Heroes server code. If they agree to hand over the server code, we can bring those games back online legally. — Video Game Museum! (@TheMADE) October 26, 2018 The content of this tweet baffled me.
- Musings
2018-11
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Games Played – October 2018.
2018-11-05.
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. October was a slow PC gaming month, partially due to back pain making it hard to sit at in the computer chair to play games, and partially due to a lack of games that interest me right now.
- Consoles
- MMORPG
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Mandatory BlizzCon Post.
2018-11-08.
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.
- MMORPG
- Musings
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LotRO Legendary Server Malaise.
2018-11-10.
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.
- MMORPG
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My Grandfather on Armistice Day, 100 Years Ago.
2018-11-11.
Exactly one hundred years ago today, World War I ended with the signing of the Armistice.
I’m posting this at 11:00 my time, though of course the actual Armistice was signed in France, so I’m probably four or five hours late.
My grandfather was a part of the American Expeditionary Force along with a million others, went through basic training, shipped over to France, and arrived just in time for the last offensive in the war, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which began on September 26, 1918.
- Musings
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November in Review.
2018-11-28.
I don’t normally do month-in-review posts, but since I was largely absent this month, I figured I should do one for a change.
I’ve spent most of November trying to recover from back pain. The first day of the month it got really bad, then it got better, then it got really bad again, and now it’s getting better again. I’ve been taking a muscle relaxant called baclofen every day this month, and last week I started going to physical therapy to try to loosen things up.
- MMO
- Musings
2018-12
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Games Played – November 2018.
2018-12-01.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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RimWorld First Impressions.
2018-12-10.
The rest of the world has already played and finished with RimWorld, which I think has been in Early Access for quite some time, but I just started playing it. I happened to see Sean Sands from Gamers With Jobs playing it on their YouTube channel and thought it looked amazing, so I picked it up. I didn’t even wait for a sale, because I wanted to jump into it while I was interested.
- Reviews
- Single-Player
- Steam
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Another Year Over.
2018-12-20.
I’m playing RimWorld in pretty much every spare moment of every day right now. This game is just amazing. If MMORPGs had even a tenth of this much interesting gameplay elements, maybe they wouldn’t be dying out. :)
Note: I don’t really think MMORPGs are dying out. They’re just evolving into the game equivalent of Marvel summer blockbusters: Designed by focus groups to appeal to the broadest possible audience, which often doesn’t include MMORPG players of the 90s, who are clearly in the minority of gamer audiences these days.
- Music
- Musings
- Videos
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Fighting Early Access Disasters.
2018-12-24.
Live shot of players navigating the gaming industry in 2018. Bhagpuss has a post referencing, among other things, the deplorable state of Early Access game releases right now, seen in such recent launch disasters as Fallout 76 (not technically early access but, seriously, it was) and Atlas (which as I write this hasn’t been out more than a day and has already been review-bombed to death on Steam).
I have nothing to add to his observations except that yes, I agree.
- Musings
- Responses
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Endgame Viable Awards 2018.
2018-12-31.
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.
- MMORPG
- Single-Player
- Steam