But I have to admit there is something deeply funny about questing in a business suit. MapleStory 2 is one of those MMOs that I never would have looked at twice, except that there’s nothing else to look at right now. See previous post lamenting the pitiable dearth of MMORPGs. The last Nexon game I played was Riders of Icarus, which I did not think much of. I even downloaded and tried it again yesterday, and I still didn’t like it. It sounds like a cool idea to have a game built around collecting mounts and such, but none of that seems to exist at the beginning of the game, which is a huge disappointment. The UI and all the “advertisements” plastered all over the screen are very off-putting as well. (588 words.)

I stumbled upon a headline from Blaugust alumni MMOist about Bless Online launching for reals on October 23. I’ve alternated between interest and disinterest on this title since at least 2017, but I knew I wasn’t going to spend a cent on it until I could play it first. (Especially after Bhagpuss’s first impressions, parts one and two, made it sound like as uninspired a game as it could possibly be made to sound.) Luckily for me it looks like the game will launch as free-to-play. (666 words.)

I saw that Sypster posted about returning to Guild Wars 2, so in the absence of anything else to write about, I’ll relay my own experience with that very subject. Back in July, I went ahead and uninstalled Guild Wars 2. Partly because I’d grown to strongly dislike the gameplay (as opposed to the nominal experience of mildly disliking it), and partly because I didn’t think much of ArenaNet anymore. (And still don’t.) (787 words.)

My World of Warcraft subscription ended weeks ago, and the last time I actually played was September 3rd, a month ago. I meant to go back and complete the Siege of Boralus but I got too involved playing The Witcher again. I rescued Jaina though, so that was a good-enough ending for me. I figured I should finally post what I thought of the expansion. I get the impression there’s a lot of people complaining about Battle for Azeroth. I don’t see that myself. I only see the people saying, “Gosh there’s a lot of people angry about this expansion.” I don’t know where people are looking to see all these angry people, or why people are even looking there. I’ve only seen people reporting what I consider to be legitimate criticisms in a fairly respectful way. (938 words.)

I uploaded the last episode of my Fallout 4 podcast yesterday. It took me a while to get the concluding episode out due to injuring my hand and cataract surgery and, frankly, a bit of malaise, but it’s finally done. Here is the series page, though it displays the episodes in reverse order. It’s a serial podcast, so it’s better if you start at the first one. In all there are 21 episodes for a total of about 5 hours of listening. As a body of work, I’m quite proud of it. It’s a great story (well, mostly), but it’s also the most complicated piece of audio engineering I’ve completed in quite some time. I wrote a number of scripts and figured out a lot of FFMPEG command-line options to streamline the processing of each episode. (244 words.)

Even with a week and a half of down time from cataract surgery, I still managed to play a few games this past month. The Witcher (Enhanced Edition), 39 hours. This is what I spent most of my gaming time doing after World of Warcraft and before surgery, and a little bit afterward to finish up the story. This is the first time I’ve finished the whole game. It got kind of weird at the end. Dragon Age: Inquisition, 5 hours. I restarted this a number of times with different classes, trying to find something to play after WoW. But it didn’t stick (again). World of Warcraft, 5 hours. The last bit before I lost interest. I don’t think I logged in for the last week of my subscription time. See you in two years for the next expansion, WoW! One problem with console gaming is that I don’t know where to find statistical data showing how much I played on the PS4. But I would guess I played 6 or 7 hours of The Last of Us (Remastered) this month. (296 words.)

In the interests of brevity and not boring everyone to death, I’ll edit the rest of these down to a few sentences. 12. “What is your family ancestry?” My family came from a group of Anabaptists who originated in Switzerland, moved to what is now Ukraine, and emigrated to Kansas en masse around 1874. 13. “What scares you?” A whole lot of things, mostly personal. 14. “What are you most grateful for?” Life, consciousness, self-awareness. (576 words.)

This is a photo I took in the New York Cloisters museum some years back. Seemed appropriate for the Jesus talk down below. Had a rough night last night with back pain. One of those situations where there’s no way to stand, sit, or lie down that feels better. It’s a lot better today but I’ve also been working harder to keep myself still. Yesterday I tried to ignore it. Big mistake. Frustrating as it might be, there’s always less overall down time when you stop and rest rather than try to keep pushing through the pain or sickness. There’s your dose of adult wisdom for the day. (820 words.)

Nothing new to report about the eye, except the new normal seems more normal every day. I stopped using the antibiotic eye drops as instructed, and now only use the prednisone (steroid) eye drops 4 times a day for another week. (Those drops drive me crazy because I swear they have chalk in them, as if they simply crushed up some pills and mixed it with water.) I don’t see much of anything interesting happening in gaming. I feel really bad for news sites right now. There’s maybe 1 or 2 actual news stories a week, usually about games that aren’t even out yet, but they have to keep making up stuff that sounds like important news twenty times a day. (1192 words.)

So I guess I’ll write something about games this time. The eye continues to improve, and focusing on nearby things gets a little bit better each day. (Writing this post has been the easiest so far.) There’s still a slight bit of soreness there which crops up in unexpected ways. Sometimes it hurts when I yawn or squeeze my eye shut, and sometimes it feels like there’s something like a hair stuck in the eye. Usually some Tylenol fixes it. But it doesn’t interfere with my activity at all. Today I mowed and drove to the grocery store and back (I was cleared for driving the next day, actually). (642 words.)