Having post-by-email technical difficulties, but I’m playing ESO instead of trying to fix it. Please stand by… (17 words.)

A quick followup to the Cobalt Pick debacle: The last Landmark patch fixed the invisible Ancient Rootstock trees. They are still rare, but now it’s more like 1 in 50 trees instead of 1 in 50,000,000 trees. That’s an acceptable level of rare-ness for me. It’s rare enough that you feel a small thrill of victory when you find one, but not so rare that you want to quit playing. (70 words.)

When the ESO servers came back up after the inexplicable pre-launch downtime, I threw caution to the wind and jumped into the Fungal Grotto dungeon to see what it was like. I was level 14 and would soon out-level it, so I figured I probably wouldn’t have another chance. I picked the DPS role because that’s always the least stressful way to explore how dungeons work in a new game. Also, I didn’t have much in the way of tanking or healing skills. (Although as it turned out, I had to do both healing and tanking in the dungeon.) (813 words.)

Still enjoying ESO. I was pleased with the first patch yesterday. It addressed almost every problem I had encountered. Finally I could capture Balreth’s soul and continue the main storyline, which, as I expected, unlocked a whole string of other quests in the zone. Based on just this one patch, I feel like Zenimax is going to release larger patches farther apart, rather than push out small patches frequently. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Their patch notes were not terrible, but I feel like they weren’t 100% complete either. (I am completely spoiled by Square Enix patch notes, though.) (655 words.)

Last week I had some generally negative things to say about Landmark, so I thought I would balance it out with some positive things this week. And then follow it with something negative again. I spent a big chunk of time on Saturday playing Landmark the first significant time I’ve spent in the beta. It occurred to me that Landmark is essentially an endgame gear grind from the moment you step into it. (600 words.)

Super fastly-written thoughts on ESO. It’s awesome! Even more awesomer that I thought it would be! That’s probably just first-day excitement talking though. But still, it’s pretty good. And new. Anything new is good, if you ask me. At least for a couple of days. Smoothest launch ever. No network-related problems. No queues, no lag, no disconnects. None, zero, zip. Got in five minutes before 7 AM without issue. Many problems I had from beta were fixed. For example, I no longer get launched into the air as if from a cannon when I walk up stairs. I no longer get stuck in NPC dialogs. (671 words.)

As you’re reading this, I’m undoubtedly playing ESO. (Actually I’m probably at work, but I’ll be playing it when I get home.) I’m enjoying that magic time in every MMO when you don’t yet know all the things that make you want to quit playing. I won’t bore you with my impressions of ESO because a) I’ve already posted them, and b) you’ve already got it because it’s a new MMO and you know you can’t stand not playing a new MMO that everyone is talking about, no matter how many bad reviews you’ve seen or how much you oppose a subscription model on principal. (367 words.)

Holy crap, ya’ll! The Early Access for ESO is almost here! It’s a 5-day head start, and that’s just a couple of days away! I’m trying to think back to the last MMO I played at or before the actual launch day. Was it Rift? Maybe it was Guild Wars 2, but I don’t think so. I think it was Rift. That was like 2011. Good lord. That was ages ago. (198 words.)

My reaction to the upcoming GW2 Feature Pack: Why the heck did we have to wait until after the Living Story to get these things?? Most of what I’ve read falls into the category of “it probably should have been like that in the first place.” The Wardrobe and Dye changes sound awesome. I have occasionally tried to figure out what to do with all the various “skins” I’ve picked up, but I don’t have a clue. I’m afraid I’m going to accidentally delete them or apply them wrong somehow. I don’t have very many, and they’re all mismatched pieces from various sets anyway. Having this Wardrobe system will make it way easier to deal with that stuff. (I hope.) (207 words.)

I spent most of a whole weekend playing … Rift! Man that game is awesome. Have I mentioned that? It’s the best WoW-clone of all the WoW-clones. Definitely more better than WoW itself. I leveled my Warrior from 53 to 57, using a combination of quests and Instant Adventures. Mostly IAs. I used up three 160% Experience potions that I had from some Trion gift or another, and then I got a 30-day Patron status so I could use the daily 40% Experience bonuses for the rest of the trip to 60, which will probably occur during the week. (365 words.)