_I’m altering the format for this post a bit. Previously I just recorded the games I’d been playing, for no discernible reason. Now I’m going to add in a bunch of cross-media promotion so people have an even bigger reason to skip it. _ My ESO Nightblade in Glenumbra - another example of how screenshots look awful during most games’ night cycle. (658 words.)

Not much gaming to report this week. I’m on a Secret World Legends break. I’ve mainly been dabbling in Elder Scrolls Online (trying to record the Orsinium storyline; much like with Morrowind, I messed up and have to restart it). Since @Sypster has been talking up Dungeons & Dragons Online for a while, I thought I would check it out again myself. I’ve played DDO before, and enjoyed it, but I haven’t had it installed in years (computer forensic evidence suggests since 2015). So I downloaded it and tried to login. It won’t let me play using the SSG account I use for LotRO. It tells me I need a subscription. It’s a free-to-play game. DDO isn’t listed on my SSG account and I can’t find any way to add it. I had to create a new SSG account to play DDO, which apparently is what they recommend now. That is dumb. My characters weren’t very high level and I can’t even remember what classes they were, but I didn’t think they deserved to be erased completely. Anyway I ended up playing for about 20 minutes and, while I remembered why I enjoyed it, there are plenty of other enjoyable games for me to play right now. (861 words.)

I finished up the Morrowind storyline in Elder Scrolls Online last week. I liked it. With the usual ESO caveats. Because even living gods who can levitate moonlets need someone to run errands now and then. I’m not entirely sure what to call Morrowind. Is it DLC? Is it an Expansion? It’s not big enough to deserve the title “Expansion” if that’s what they are calling it, but it’s also a distinctly different entity from the DLC that is normally in the Crown Store, because you had to buy it separately. Oh, here it is: They call them “Chapters.” (1841 words.)

I finally finished Guild Wars 2’s Living World Season 4, Episode 2, “A Bug In The System” on Friday night. So here’s the quarterly post where I yell at Guild Wars 2 again for making me incredibly angry when I play it. This scenic overview looked better in the game than in this screenshot. It was the most disjointed episode I can remember, but I’ll concede it was probably because of the way I played it. The episode consists of five “chapters.” I played the first three chapters all in a row (because you have to, grumble, grumble) back in March. I started into the fourth “chapter,” the one where you have to wander all over the new Sandswept Isles map and destroy shield generators, but I stopped in frustrated disgust (because I really did not care for the maze-like, mob-packed map or the lack of clear directions about where to go) and left the game for a month. Then I went back into the game and finished the shield generator bit over several non-contiguous days last week, and played the final chapter on Friday night. (1365 words.)

Yikes, April is almost over already. I finished Secret World Legends’ Red Sun, Black Sand and left Egypt behind. I’m taking a break for a while. This past weekend I decided to try to play through the Morrowind content in ESO. It took four tries, but I finally got past the first meeting with Vivec and into the rest of the story. (I had a hard time finding a character I wanted to play.) I knew reports had indicated it was short, but I was still a bit surprised to finish the entire Morrowind expansion story in 5 1/2 hours*. As per usual, I recorded everything and it will probably end up on my YouTube channel. I’m also working on a post about it. (302 words.)

I haven’t logged into Final Fantasy XIV for a couple of months now. I hadn’t logged in for a couple of months before that, too. Most times I try to log in, I stare at the screen for a few minutes, then log out. What’s up with that? To be honest, I think I’ve reached the point I get to in every MMORPG’s lifetime when I’ve consumed all of the endgame content that I’m interested in. Previously, this has happened in RIFT and … well, that’s it, I think. I’ve left every other MMORPG from lack of interest rather than lack of content. (689 words.)

It’s been a slow week. City of the Sun God, near the Houy Sentinel. My primary game is still Secret World Legends though I didn’t play as much this week. Now that the Morninglight content is already out, I don’t feel any more pressure to “hurry up.” Also, Egypt is a bit dull, particularly the City of the Sun God, which is just a long series of tasks that don’t seem to have much story relevance. Other than the cut scenes, most of your minute-to-minute gameplay is mindlessly standing in front of monsters, pressing the left mouse button over and over again with little or no danger of dying. (Just like Kritika Online!) It’s a far cry from the Egypt of the old The Secret World, which was a constant (albeit annoying) struggle to survive. (790 words.)

I’ve been holding off on writing about Kingdom Come: Deliverance until I was done, but finally, after 86.7 hours according to the save game file, and 108 hours according to ManicTime, between February 20 and this past weekend, April 8, I finished the game. An interior in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Spectacular scenery and lighting is common. I say “finished,” but what I mean is that I reached the The End screen, the point at which the developers believe your characters’ story has ended. Like most “open world” games, there are still many more side quests I could do, and there are a lot of random encounters in the world, but I’m never interested in that stuff once I finish the main story. (2436 words.)

New title! “Weeklies?” Get it? Like Dailies, but Weeklies! I was actually planning to stop doing these but then Bhagpuss had to go and say that he enjoyed them. :) I’ve been very distracted this week by re-watching the complete Haven series, because @MissByx reminded me that I had not yet seen past season 4, so I started it again from the beginning. I could write volumes about this show but I will try to refrain. The show has almost no connection to the novella it’s based on (which was a noir crime drama, not supernatural in any way), but it captures the spirit of Stephen King’s other supernatural works very well. It is also a textbook example of how building likable, relatable, grounded characters is the most important thing in genre fiction (for me, at least). The style and tone of the show changes quite a lot over the course of its six-but-they-call-it-five seasons, but it still resonated very strongly with me all the way to the end. (The video game tie-in is this: The show’s lead Emily Rose also voiced Elena Fisher in the Uncharted games, and fellow Uncharted actors Nolan North and Claudia Black also appeared in Haven.) (470 words.)

Secret World Legends, Sign of the Times March was an odd month, both in gaming and life. Even the weather was weird. March doesn’t usually feel like the dead of winter where I live. Secret World Legends - 57 hours RIFT Prime (and RIFT) - 48 hours* Kingdom Come: Deliverance - 38 hours Project: Gorgon - 11 hours** EverQuest - 8 hours Final Fantasy XIV - 3 hours Guild Wars 2 - 3 hours Black Desert Online - 2 hours Life is Strange - 2 hours * ManicTime seems to have difficulty distinguishing between RIFT and RIFT Prime, so I’m not entirely sure how much time was in RIFT and how much was in Prime. I don’t think I spent more than a few hours in RIFT Normal, though. (138 words.)