Endgame Viable

Totally ripped off from https://secretworldlegends.com/ There is some interesting MMORPG news out! Well, “shared-world” news, that is. Some time back, Funcom mentioned in an investor report that they were planning to “re-launch” The Secret World, and Internet speculation ran rampant. Nobody knew what that actually meant. Today, we found out. Funcom is planning to launch a new free-to-play game called Secret World Legends (the official acronym is apparently SWL, judging from my Twitter feed). This game will be a “shared-world action RPG.” You can read all the announcement information yourself on their site. (333 words.)

Over the weekend I tried to do three new gaming things: Play Mass Effect 2 (to finally finish it), play Mass Effect 3 (for the first time), and play Mass Effect 1 (over again). I installed Mass Effect 2 from Steam, hoping beyond hope that by some magical time-space temporal vortex I would be able to pick up where I left off years ago (probably at least two computers ago), but of course I had to start over. My goal was to play through the game quickly so that I could then finally start Mass Effect 3, a game I’ve had for years but never played. (710 words.)

I read on MassivelyOP that Shroud of the Avatar was having a free trial “test” (whatever that is) so I downloaded the game and tried it out last weekend. I’ve seen increasing buzz about the game and I was curious to see if there was anything to it. I only played for about an hour, and while I can’t say I was dying to play more, I did find it interesting enough to leave it on my games to continue watching. It had a number of things you just don’t find in traditional MMORPGs. (1012 words.)

I’m now 56 days into my Navezgane 7 Days To Die game. I’ve built a forge and a workbench and a cement mixer and my base is getting upgraded to concrete and reinforced steel. Just in time for the bigger zombies like policemen, soldiers, and weird alien “feral” zombies. I also found some iron veins to mine. I had a hard time finding them because I kept hearing that you’re supposed to dig where you find gravel but it’s not actually “gravel” that comes out of the ground, it’s sand and stone (which combine to make gravel). (1208 words.)

Yes, that’s a miniature panda on my head. Last night I took a look at Revelation Online for the first time. I played for about 45 minutes. I don’t have much to say about it, except I didn’t particularly care for it. It’s a solidly average anime-style MMORPG that takes no chances. It’s an Asian version of a WoW-clone. (A Lineage-clone?) I saw nothing that advanced the MMORPG genre in any way. (692 words.)

From a draft written somewhere around October 2016… I finally got around to watching Amazon’s teaser video, thinking that it would erase my earlier skepticism and soften my opinion about their upcoming games, and maybe even start to get excited about the possibilities. Unfortunately it only pushed my skeptical buttons even harder. “What if a game was built for Twitch,” wonders a voiceover 12 seconds into the video. Instant buzzkill. The video goes on to mention Twitch about five times in the first 60 seconds, before anything about games. If we go with the assumption that what they put into the very beginning of their video is the “hook” and therefore the most important message they want to deliver, we have to assume that Twitch integration is the most important part of their design philosophy for these games. And if Amazon making games to target Twitch viewers is not a corporate-synergy-driven game design, I don’t know what is. It’s as if they accidentally put the video meant for their shareholders out to the public. (317 words.)

Another post rescued from my drafts… Book 14 begins with Laerdan preparing for a journey south. He asked me to collect a bunch of gear for him that he left strewn around Eriador, because the hero’s journey always involves fetching stuff. It was a lengthy, boring scavenger hunt. When I returned to Rivendell, Laerdan was gone. In a note, he said he sent me away so I wouldn’t interfere. I spent all that time collecting his gear for nothing. But I wasn’t bitter about it. Much. (628 words.)

It’s a heart. Valentine’s Day? February? A perfectly logical picture for this post. Games played in February, according to ManicTime. A pretty strong survival game theme here. :) 7 Days To Die - 67 hours Conan Exiles - 62 hours* Rise of the Tomb Raider - 9 hours ARK - 4 hours The Secret World - 2 hours ESO - 2 hours * Conan Exiles approximated since ManicTime counted every new version as a different game. (76 words.)

Bust of Janus, from Wikimedia Commons. Get it? Janus? January? Hey any picture is better than nothing. Better late than never, here are the games I played in January, according to ManicTime: Final Fantasy XIV <td> 76 hrs </td> Elder Scrolls Online <td> 15 hrs </td> Lord of the Rings Online <td> 12 hrs </td> Morrowind <td> 7 hrs </td> Novus Inceptio <td> 2 hrs </td> Star Wars: The Old Republic <td> 2 hrs </td> (Only games played 2 hours or more shown.) (117 words.)

_Rescued from the drafts folder…_ Blatantly stolen from therepopulation.com because I don’t have any screenshots. I was initially glad to hear that The Repopulation will be coming back. I splurged in a moment of weakness and bought it for $20 on Steam back in February 2015. I don’t remember why I bought it. I think I had heard some positive feedback about it, and I had heard also it described as being heavily inspired by Star Wars Galaxies, and I was curious to see what a SWG-like game looked like. (I’ve never even seen SWG, let alone played it.) (465 words.)