The Recluse Report - February 2026 Part 1

17 February, 2026. 2,364 words.

There’s a big controversy about Discord starting to crack down on age verification worldwide, or something like that. I found out about it on Discord.

I can’t say I’m surprised. It was a great run for 5 or 10 years there but letting the huddled masses onto the Internet has definitely proven to have been a huge mistake in hindsight. I assume that’s not a controversial viewpoint.

Gaming

Ashes of Creation

Since Intrepid Studios just imploded in dramatic fashion, I dug out the game again and recorded three videos for the historical record.

I don’t personally think the game was a scam or a cash grab or anything like that, but I do think it was mismanaged, had an inexperienced development team, and they probably bit off way more than they could chew. From the outside, the end result of those two situations looks roughly the same. But I can’t see anyone in this day and age sinking 10 years into a game project as some kind of long con.

I don’t know anything or particularly care about the business side of it or any of the personalities involved; I can only make some educated guesses about the development process based on looking at the game and noting technical issues I see.

There are multitudinous writing issues, so I don’t think they had a particularly strong writing team. It varies widely from “this part isn’t bad” to “somebody copied this from their phone without fixing autocorrect mistakes.” Which seems like a particularly troublesome oversight for a game that primarily presents its storyline through writing.

I can only assume somebody made a decision that the story didn’t matter, and all the players were going to speed-click through the quest dialogs anyway, so they haven’t bothered to do much editing to date. If that’s the route they wanted to go, there are better ways to facilitate that playstyle than wasting your time writing quest text.

I think my overarching impression is that whoever the creative and technical leads were didn’t have a lot of experience in the MMORPG space. I got the impression they hadn’t been keeping up with trends in the genre, or were trying to make something vaguely like what they remembered from their youth, or simply didn’t play MMORPGs. It felt like I kept seeing problems that have been solved over and over in the last 20 years of the genre, like they were starting over from scratch making a game from 2005 without any of the knowledge learned since then.

Anyway the Steam page is plastered with bright red negative reviews telling everyone to force Steam to give refunds, but my take is this: It’s unlikely any of those employees are going to get paid for their last days at Intrepid, but it seems even more unlikely if they have to pay back all the customers too. So I kind of don’t mind losing a few bucks to say, “Hey Intrepid, save your non-existent money for the people out of a job maybe.” That’s why everyone bought this on Kickstarter in the first place, right? To donate money to the devs making the game? An act of charity? Because they couldn’t convince any real entrepreneurial backers to fund their game?

Evenshor

I saw Tipa mention Evenshor, and I hadn’t heard of it before, so on the strength of just the post title, I looked it up, and I thought it was one of the best ideas for a video game I’ve seen in a long time.

The only problem is that it’s emulating EverQuest instead of, you know, the good MMORPG from the 90s. (That being Asheron’s Call.)

I only played a short time, but I can report that it’s a dead ringer for playing any MMORPG before around 2000. Watching computer-generated general chat and guild chat is hilarious. I was even able to ask a question in guild chat about how to give things to NPCs and got an answer!

It’s not going to have much longevity, but it was a fun diversion.

Nioh 3

I tried it out, but I think it suffers from all the same problems as Nioh 1. I was offput when it upended an encyclopedia’s worth of keys and abilities on my head at the beginning, which isn’t exactly my jam. I like games with simple controls that are hard to master, not complex controls that are hard to memorize.

I’m probably going to return it on Steam, and maybe get it on the PS5. [I did.] In any case it’s unlikely to be a video series on my channel. I’m just not that into it.

Final Fantasy XIV

I continue to plug away at the Endwalker main scenario quest. I’ve just started the block of level 86 quests. I think I counted 40-something quests remaining before going into the post-launch quests.

I’ve fallen short of my goal of doing three quests a day though. Each quest takes me about 20-25 minutes, when reading all the text out loud.

My character reached level 90 about halfway through the MSQ, with all the XP boosts in effect.

World of Warcraft

On my journey to get ready for Midnight, I’ve leveled from 50 to 60 through about a zone and a half of Shadowlands, from 60 to 70 through a zone of Dragonflight, and from 70 to 80 in The War Within Recap. Grand total of playing time has been maybe 12 hours? It doesn’t take long to level in World of Warcraft Retail.

Unlike Final Fantasy XIV, you don’t have to actually complete the expansion story in WoW to move on to the next expansion. In fact, with the exception of the War Within Recap, it’s almost impossible to complete an expansion’s story because you out-level the content in about five minutes.

I can’t comment on the new housing system because I’m uninterested, except that at looks exactly like what you’d expect housing in WoW to look like: Awkward.

I can comment on the War Within Recap, a streamlined version of that expansion which allowed me to hit all the story highlights on my way from 70 to 80, while cutting out all the boring kill 10 rats quests along the way.

I enjoyed it, and I wish there was a similar “recap version” for every expansion. In fact, I dare say that every MMORPG should implement some kind of “recap” alternative for every expansion, made for alts or players catching up later. It’s a rare situation where I think something from modern WoW should become an MMORPG genre staple, but that’s one of them.

In a nutshell, I’m ready to play Midnight when it launches and now I’m just grinding for Twilight currency and new gear in the pre-expansion event.

I vaguely remember there’s reason to frown on playing/talking about Activision/Blizzard games now, but rest assured I hate all the things I’m supposed to hate (whatever they are). But I typically reserve my useless retail activism in gaming for Chinese-developed games and Tencent. I just find most breakout Chinese games look like they’re transparently copied-and-pasted from previously popular western games.

(I say useless because maybe only 1% of gamers are old/savvy enough to understand anything but pew-pew-pretty-colors-take-my-money when it comes to games, so a handful of people making a stand is hardly a formidable force for change.)

Whatever happened to Microsoft buying Activision/Blizzard anyway? Oh, they completed it, that’s what happened.

Project: Gorgon

Yeah, I tried Project: Gorgon again since everyone’s talking about it.

I got off that stupid starter island, which is more like a prison if you ask me, with that constant cacophony of Humble Bundle sound effect library sounds clanging in your ears all the time, and that was as far as I got. It looked more-or-less exactly like I remember it from however many years ago I played it, virtually unchanged in every way.

However I’m happy to report the mouse-turning bug was nowhere to be found, so it’s actually playable again.

It’s cute but it’s nowhere near as fun as Final Fantasy XIV or even World of Warcraft. It might dazzle a 1997 audience coming off of Ultima Online and give 1998’s EverQuest and 1999’s Asheron’s Call a run for its money, but unfortunately it’s 2026 now.

Stars Reach

I dug out Stars Reach again since I’d recorded some videos of Ashes of Creation and other miscellaneous new MMORPGs.

Stars Reach is seriously early, early, early access. It’s barely functional, in my opinion, though admittedly, I didn’t see many bugs. And most of the features that are in the game are the same features you’d find in any of a hundred survival games. It’s not exactly bursting with fun things to do at the moment.

Not to mention I just heard they’re laying off developers. Not a great sign.

Media Consumption

Super Bowl LX

You won’t have any way of knowing this, but for the record, I predicted the Seahawks would win in a romp. I imagine most thinking sports fans did. The Patriots looked a lot like the Commanders of last year: Playing way above their actual capabilities, benefiting from a softer schedule. While the Seahawks looked unstoppable.

Holy crap I just learned about Ring Search Party in a Superbowl commercial?!? Thank god I don’t buy Internet-enabled security devices. Listen to your Gen-X elders: Don’t buy Internet-enabled security devices! Also, don’t stab yourself in the eye with a fork. Because apparently we have to explain things that should be really, really obvious.

Otherwise, AI deepfakes were all the rage in Superbowl commercials. And yes, they all look fake, but I guess visual effects are supposed to look fake now? Since literally all of them do.

And it turns out I was right about the game. The Seahawks were in charge the entire game, and the Patriots never had a chance, except for a couple of minutes at the beginning and a brief spurt of life in the 4th quarter that saved them from getting shut out completely.

As for the Bad Bunny halftime show, it was okay. As a musical performance, it seemed pretty fake and overly-produced, as many Superbowl halftime shows do. I’m way too old to appreciate modern pop music that’s produced more for the Busby Berkeley visual choreography while the music itself is an afterthought. I, for example, almost never watch music videos. There were some cool beats though. But I wouldn’t recognize any of it if I heard it again.

Anyway that’s it for NFL football until the end of summer, unless you count that spring football league.

Home Life

Cold Snap

It was weeks of cold weather, where the temperature stayed at or below freezing, so snow and ice was just sitting on the ground everywhere forever. My driveway was a solid sheet of ice.

My new SUV has exactly zero difficulty in the snow, so it’s no big deal for getting around, but it’s still pretty annoying. I’m not a big fan of cold weather, what with my house being quite chilly in the cold.

The other annoying thing is how you go to the store sometimes and the bread and eggs and meat shelves are completely empty when there’s a 50% chance of less than half-inch of snow in the forecast. It’s comically stereotypical South-in-the-snow behavior.

Times like this make me feel quite lucky to have grown up in a fairly pragmatic family.

The cold finally let up on February 9, when the high temperature climbed all the way into the 50s for the first time in forever. The day I’m posting this, the temperatures are supposed to be reach 60 all week.

Stray Dog

A strange thing happened: A stray dog hung out at my house for a few days. Well, she had a collar so I suppose I should say “unsupervised” dog.

I went out to the front to try to get the last of the snow and ice off my front sidewalk, and I noticed a little white dog curled up next to my front porch in the sun. She got up and wandered away from me into the back yard, and that’s when I noticed a rather distinctive set of teats that immediately made me wonder if this dog had just given birth.

The dog then plopped down in the sun in the back yard, watching and waiting.

In any case, I’ve never seen a stray dog hang around my yard before. The few I’ve seen are always passing through on their way somewhere else. Stray cats are far more common around my house.

The little dog disappeared late in the afternoon, then reappeared again on my front porch two days later. She’s a pint-sized beagley hound mix.

My instinct is to try to befriend her and see if she needs any help, but I don’t really want a dog in my life. (Mainly because I don’t want a pet that outlives me, which seems especially cruel.)

Then again, she’s moved away the couple of times she’s seen me, so she may not want help. It’s been a couple of especially cold days, I haven’t seen her again, and I’m worried about her. Hopefully she found her way back to whoever put that collar on her, and she didn’t freeze to death out there somewhere in the woods.

Cancer Corner

Nothing new to report (which is good). I mentioned this last time but I had another brain MRI which showed everything the same as before (which is good).

The only notable thing to say about it is that one of the earplugs wasn’t quite in and MRIs are frickin’ loud without earplugs.

I also had an MRI of my left hip area as a precaution. I mentioned to my oncologist that I had some pain in my left hip in the mornings when I get up that goes away after I move around a bit, and she wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything going on there. It happens to be the same area where I had radiation on a bone spot in my left femur neck, and that spot has been unremarked-on in any followup CT scans.

Bye!