I don’t have much to add to the EverQuest Next wake that hasn’t already been said, except for this possibly controversial thought: I’m kind of glad they cancelled it. Wait, wait, let me explain. We’ve known all along that Landmark was the prototype for EverQuest Next. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was dreading the day that they released Landmark with Norrath assets and called it EQN, because Landmark is not a very good game. (125 words.)

TLDR; I’m enjoying Black Desert Online, and I think it’s worth $30. If you like crafting, it’s well worth $30. It’s not your grandfather’s MMORPG, though, and it takes some time to get used to it. I mentioned on Twitter that I didn’t understand why people were drawn to The Division, and it occurred to me that I should explain why I’m drawn to Black Desert Online, in case anyone is looking at the BDO hype and scratching their heads. (1190 words.)

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! (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. (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. (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. (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. (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. (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. (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. (807 words.)

Last time I did this. Note that some games might not be on the following list because I have either a) forgotten about them, or b) never heard of them, or c) dismissed them as not MMORPGs. This MassivelyOP Betawatch post helped me a lot, too. * Games marked with a * can be bought and played now in some early access form or another. (I think. Don’t hold me to it. (904 words.)

Everyone is making a chart of their gaming for the year (Belghast, Liore, and Wilhelm at least), so I thought I’d see if I could get ManicTime to export something into Excel. After judicious flipping, coloring, and rearranging, this is what I got: My data only starts in February, so January is missing. It probably might have had some WoW in there, but definitely more SWTOR and FFXIV. I’m a little disappointed to see that ManicTime is dead wrong about some of the times it recorded. (205 words.)

Here’s my year end “Best Of” list, because if you’re on the Internet, you have to do a year-end list of some kind. It’s the law. 2015 Contenders After studying my Steam purchase history and searching my memory, I’ve come up with the following list of new games that I purchased and played in 2015. These are only games that were released in 2015, not every single game that I purchased or played in 2015. (597 words.)