Gaming Posts

If you just want to see my gaming-related posts, you can find them right here!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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.

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.

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.

It’s time once against for the prestigious Endgame Viable Awards for 2017, posted a bit early because the 31st is a Sunday. Hopefully I won’t play any new games over the weekend to skew these results. 2016 Awards 2015 Awards I give out three awards: Game of the Year, MMORPG of the Year, and MMORPG Expansion of the Year. In my warped worldview “Game of the Year” sort of implies Steam game of the year and excludes traditional MMORPGs.

I allowed myself to buy one game in the Steam Winter Sale, which was Divinity: Original Sin. Then, a few hours later, I bought the Skyrim Special Edition, because I saw everyone on Twitter talking about it which reminded me that I wanted to buy that too and, hey, what a coincidence, it was on sale. But this post is about Divinity: Original Sin. It’s an isometric, turn-based strategy RPG which can trace its ancestry back to games like Baldur’s Gate (the earliest example of this kind that I can think).

This is a post about The Last Jedi, so don’t read any further until you’ve seen the movie. I’ll give you some blank lines to click away. Note: I added an update way at the bottom of this post. I’ll give you a few more blank lines just in case you accidentally flick your eyes down lower on the page. Okay, get ready. Brace yourselves. This is going to change everything you’ve ever known about everything, and your life will never be the same.

I’m not entirely sure how to categorize a post about Warframe. It’s usually covered by the MMORPG press but after only a few minutes with it I can say it’s obviously not an MMORPG. Perhaps I finally need to add that “MMO” category to my blog, for discussing what are effectively little more than regular old multiplayer games. I’ve never heard anyone say they didn’t like Warframe. In fact I’ve heard a lot of “positive buzz” about Warframe.

I alluded to trying out Kritika Online in my last post, so I thought I would write a bit about it. For one thing, I want to have a post to link to later in the year for my “Game/MMORPG of the Year” post, and for another thing, Friday is looming, and I don’t have anything to post yet. I downloaded and played Kritika on November 22nd, the day before Thanksgiving.

Image stolen from Wookiepedia. And, you know, that movie. Tobold recently declared that the MMO blogosphere was dead to him (paraphrasing slightly), so I suppose it’s my duty to point out that we’re still here, sort of. Tobold was one of the first, if not the first MMORPG blogger I read, way back in the olden days when he talked about Vanilla WoW all the time. He was one of the original models for how I thought a blog should look.