Endgame Viable

On the subject of the Black Desert cash shop, I agree that it’s a little steep. Or perhaps I should say that you don’t get enough in-game value for the money you spend. I’ll get to the specifics later. First I want to highlight something I think is good about the BDO cash shop: They don’t shove it in your face in every window that comes up. There’s no popup window when you login that shows you all the sales and exhorts you to “Go buy stuff now!” If I didn’t know there was a cash shop, I might have totally overlooked that Pearl Store button in settings. That alone is worth the $30 admission. (1136 words.)

Since I am too lazy/don’t have time to write a coherent post about Black Desert I thought I would take the very simple route of pasting a bunch of my tweets about it into a post. Boy was that a mistake. It turned that it wasn’t easy at all, and this post took far longer to create than I wanted it to. This is a big problem because I just got the “Learning Higher Processing Skills” quest from Ficy in Heidel, which opens up the “Pure Water for an Experiment” quest from Flaviano, which then allows you (I think) to heat Melted Copper Shards into Copper Ingots, a task I’ve been wanting to do for some twenty or thirty hours of game time now. (127 words.)

The Division isn’t for me. It’s a very beautiful-looking game. The graphics are fantastic, and the urban environments are very realistic and detailed. Unfortunately I didn’t see anything new or innovative in the gameplay. The whole time I was playing, I kept thinking, “This plays just like Defiance, and Defiance is free.” The only thing The Division has is the cover mechanic. And the fantastic graphics, of course. I also couldn’t help but notice that there were very few other people around in this alleged MMO game. Perhaps that’s why they keep talking up the Dark Zone-because that’s the only place that has any people in it? (115 words.)

I was reading the Albion Online State of the Game and came across this part: Red zones will be full loot PvP zones that do not contain any claimable territories. Red zones will be subject to a crime and reputation system that makes sure that killing peaceful players - in particular, if they are zerged down - has more consequences for the attackers. No part of that makes me more interested in Albion Online. (263 words.)

I recently saw a farewell post on My Life in Azeroth. I’m sorry to see anyone stop blogging, and I hope they resume someday, but the tone of the post got me thinking. It seems like a lot of WoW players sound apologetic or guilty when they discuss leaving that game, like they are somehow letting Blizzard or the community down. I’ve seen it in blog posts, and I’ve seen it on Twitter. Like they are admitting some deep, dark secret that they didn’t want to tell anyone. Like they are revealing some deep personal flaw in themselves. (307 words.)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Apparently the moratorium on spoilers for Star Wars is over, although personally I don’t think it should end until a film is released to streaming or rentals. The theater experience is not as good as my house, even though I don’t have an especially great television or sound system like I used to. Movies in theaters are generally awful experiences. There are very few movies that would get me to go to a theater anymore. Not any of the comic book movies, not The Martian, not Interstellar, not any of the upcoming nerdy movies coming out this year, pretty much nothing … except a new Star Wars movie. A Star Wars_ sequel_. With the original cast in it. (1435 words.)

If anyone looks at my YouTube channel*, you can tell I’m still playing a fair amount of ARK. I’m in a very “I want to be by myself” gaming mood right now and toodling around by myself on a giant island of dinosaurs is a good fix. Thanks to a suggestion from Aywren I’ve customized my server settings to make the game a little more palatable. I haven’t altered it much, just a few tweaks to GameUserSettings.ini to minimize the annoyances: (1537 words.)

(I totally stole this image from depaul.edu.) One weekend I got the idea that it would be simple for me to write a hit video game, make tons of money, and leave my day job*. I’ve dabbled at writing games now and then since I first learned programming back in the 80s, so this is nothing new (I have yet to actually complete a game, though). Anyway, I started reading up on popular 3D game engines. From what I can gather, there are basically two choices: Unity 5 or Unreal 4. (817 words.)

This was a post I intended to publish somewhere near the beginning of January. I bought a lot of things in the 2015 Steam Winter sale, but I kept all of my purchases to 7.99 or less, so I consider that a relative success. I even installed some of them. :) Undertale. 7.99. It didn’t look like my kind of game, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. I installed and played it briefly … but it isn’t really my kind of game. At least in my current frame of mind. (692 words.)

With the start of the new year, I decided to give ARK: Survival Evolved another chance. So many people rave about this game, in streams, podcasts, and blogs. I had a lot of bad feelings to overcome, but I figured it was possible that I was the one who was wrong about it. So on January 1st, I fired up a single player game, determined to play until I “got it.” I ended up playing about 18 hours over the holiday weekend. What I call my Beach Base on the northern edge of The Island. (807 words.)