Endgame Viable

I don’t think I’ve written about pay-to-win before, mostly on purpose. Frankly I think most of the outrage is entirely manufactured. But I posted a brief comment on Jef Reahard’s controversial MassivelyOP post to the effect that “pay-to-win” is one of those emotionally-charged terms like “climate change” or “gun control” that evokes instantaneous knee-jerk, black-and-white responses, so it’s a dangerous road to travel as a blogger. Because in reality it’s a very complicated subject with many shades of gray, and it requires us to sit down and think long and hard about our gaming goals and values and who’s got time for any of that? (371 words.)

Have some Dark Souls screenshots to start your work week. I am absolutely in love with the “look” of this game. I’ve always been a big fan of realism in game graphics and this game looks like you could reach out and touch what’s happening on the screen, at least after you install the DSfix mod. Tomb of the Giants Before I found out that Anor Londo was the place I needed to go, I wandered around The Catacombs and the Tomb of the Giants for quite a while. The Tomb is so dark you actually have to find and use a hideous skull lantern to see more than two steps ahead. My Knight is seen here wielding the enormous, heavy Dark Knight sword you get from the Undead Parish: I got so sick of those Skeletons down there that I pulled out something that would smash them flat. (399 words.)

ArcheAge is merging servers, and of course all of the ones I play(ed) on are affected: Naima and Calleil. (Of course those two aren’t merging together, so I’m still going to end up on two different servers: Kraken and Hanure.) So it looks like if you didn’t stick with one of the very first full servers with all-day queues, you’re getting merged. Out of curiosity I logged in to see what the game looks like now. It’s still on my to-do list to finish leveling my Elf from 48 to 50, which probably wouldn’t take more than a day. Oh, actually I guess it’s 55 now. Or is it more now? Clearly I haven’t been paying attention. I dread trying to play again, though, because as with most MMORPGs, I fear the re-learning curve. It’s probably not that bad with ArcheAge, but still, it was a dangerous world out there at level 48. (582 words.)

About a year ago I installed Project Gorgon and played around in the starter cave. It was mildly interesting but of course it wasn’t finished, the graphics were terrible, and there are so many other things to play. So I put it away again, filing it in the back of my mind. Now suddenly everyone is talking about Project Gorgon. And by everyone I mean MassivelyOP which apparently has turned into the all-Gorgon-all-the-time site. :) Not that there’s anything wrong with that I guess-it’s not like Project Gorgon is a multi-billion-dollar corporation. It’s just a guy and his wife. At this stage in their development it doesn’t bother me to see them getting a media spotlight. And besides, it’s such a niche game that a thousand suns of media spotlight couldn’t possibly make it a mainstream hit. (418 words.)

After defeating Chaos Witch Quelaag, ringing the second bell, and leaving Blighttown, our intrepid Knight Sir Thomas wandered far and wide looking for the right path. His journey took him back to the Undead Parish bonfire, past Andre the Blacksmith, to Darkroot Garden, where the Demonic Foliage lives. (I’m not making that up.) Darkroot is also home to a clan of Giant Stone Knights, napping among the trees. You’d think they would welcome a fellow Knight, but they did not. Apparently they don’t like to be woken up. Fortunately they are slow and easily dispatched. (319 words.)

Previously on Dark Souls, our intrepid Knight Thomas dispatched the Gaping Dragon on his way through The Depths. The Gaping Dragon dropped a key which opened a door leading to Blighttown, a total bastard of a zone, pardon my French. Let’s just say that Thomas the Knight died a lot-sometimes from falling but mostly from getting poisoned. Not just regular poison, either. Super-duper “toxic” poison, delivered by friendly neighborhood Blowdart Snipers hiding in hard-to-reach areas, spitting deadly darts rapid-fire while you climb up and down ladders and navigate across shaky wooden bridges, dodging Ghouls and Flaming Attack Dogs. Even after abandoning his knightly armor and switching to poison-resistant Thief gear, Thomas the Knight was quite sick most of the time. (472 words.)

Way back in April, Endgame Viable became a year old, statistically speaking. That is to say, in April, I had accumulated my first full year of WordPress site statistics. (The Endgame Viable “brand” was actually born on October 16, 2013, while the first post on this blog-ie. the database that powers this blog-was June 29, 2012.) I’m not one to keep a close eye on statistics, but they can be useful to see what “works” and what “doesn’t work,” and some new bloggers might be interested in what I’ve learned. (475 words.)

A while back I saw this pro-GamerGate post and had a flashback to my days in the political blogosphere. I’ll save you the time of reading it: It’s a long, very well-worded piece of propaganda disguised as anti-propaganda. (You know you’re reading propaganda when you come across the word “indoctrination.”) The part that really made my jaw drop was this: Never forget that you [developers] are here to please the gamers, they are not here to please you, validate your beliefs or prop up your ego. (465 words.)

World of Warcraft is so far off my radar right now that the announcement of the new Legion expansion* is about as interesting to me as a deer tick. Even that horrible analogy was more interesting to me. It’s not that I don’t like WoW when I play it. It just doesn’t hold my attention for very long. There are two things I just don’t understand about WoW fandom: The first is how people can look around at all of the MMORPGs out there and decide that WoW is the only one they want to play, and the second is how anyone can follow any of the lore that happens in WoW. (674 words.)

Elite: Dangerous has an expansion coming out and you’ll never guess what happened after the announcement: People on Reddit got mad. In a related story, the sun rose and set today. I admit I’m just an average guy who doesn’t grasp all this new-fangled math the kids use, but I have never understood the “it’s not fair that if someone buys it today they’ll get a better price than someone who bought it before” logic when it comes to games. Of course now that I’m writing it out, I can’t think of the right words to explain why that doesn’t make sense to me. But here goes. (560 words.)