Elder Scrolls Online
50 entries. 30,145 words.
2013-11
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The Delicate Balance of Beta Testing.
2013-11-20.
I think it’s safe to say this: I got an invitation for this weekend’s TESO beta test. I assume it’s okay to say that because they made a big public announcement that they were sending out the invitations. I had to accept a rather harsh-sounding NDA though so I don’t think I’ll be able to say much of anything else.
Beta testing is a delicate balance. On the one hand, it’s super exciting to see a new shiney and possibly shape the course of its future (though to be honest, in my experience, beta reports are largely ignored unless it is a game-breaking bug), but on the other hand, you don’t want to play so much that you burn out before the game even launches.
- MMORPG
2014-02
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ESO – Speculating on Zenimax.
2014-02-14.
Zenimax is getting a lot of flak for their strict NDA, and I thought I would speculate on why they might think it’s a good idea to keep it in place, when other early games don’t. Which is not to imply that I think it’s a good idea, or a bad idea, or anything in between. I’m not a games journalist, so I couldn’t care less whether it has an NDA or not.
- MMORPG
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ESO – Impressions from Beta.
2014-02-18.
So apparently Zenimax lifted their NDA a day after I speculated why they hadn’t lifted their NDA. Neat. Anyway, now I can post what I wrote about ESO mainly after the second beta weekend I was in.
Fair warning: The maximum level I have achieved is 7. That’s a couple of hours of gameplay. I have absolutely no idea what the endgame is like; I don’t even know what the maximum level is.
- MMORPG
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ESO – It’s About The Horse.
2014-02-19.
Yeah I pre-ordered the $79 Imperial Edition of ESO. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it?
I didn’t do it for the Imperial race, which I don’t care about. I fully expect Zenimax to make that available for purchase later anyway. I didn’t do it because I’m an Elder Scrolls fan boy and I think ESO is awesome. (I tolerate TES and I merely think ESO is better than average.*)
I mainly bought it for the horse.
- MMORPG
2014-03
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Landmark et al – Take My Money!.
2014-03-03.
Here’s my feedback to SOE regarding Landmark’s proposed monetization plans: Hey can I just pay you and not get spammed with advertising for potions and costumes? That would be super. Oh, and by the way I already paid you. Maybe factor that into your plans, too.
Also, are you ever planning to increase the percentage of your game that is finished? It’s been at 60% now for a month. (Okay, that probably wasn’t fair.
- MMORPG
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ESO – What Does Floaty Mean?.
2014-03-07.
Today I am pondering what it means when combat feels “floaty.” This is one of the most common criticisms I’ve seen about ESO: “The combat is too floaty.” I’ve seen this criticism leveled against a lot of games over the years, actually.
But what does that mean?
I don’t know about anyone else, but when I was swinging my dual daggers in the ESO beta, at no point did my Argonian begin to float away into the sky*.
- MMORPG
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ESO – Something New And Shiny!.
2014-03-31.
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.
- MMORPG
2014-04
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ESO – Early Days.
2014-04-01.
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.
- MMORPG
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ESO – First Patch.
2014-04-03.
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.
- MMORPG
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ESO – First Time in Fungal Grotto.
2014-04-04.
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.
- MMORPG
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ESO – The Good and The Bad.
2014-04-14.
Lucky you. Because I can’t seem to post by email during the week any more, you get to read an epic novel of a post put together over the weekend.
Falls-on-Steps. Yeah, I made an Argonian even though I played one in beta.
It’s actually been kind of nice that I haven’t been able to post. I’m having so much fun playing ESO that I don’t want to analyze the game very much, because then I might start to wonder if I’m really supposed to be having this much fun or not.
- MMORPG
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ESO – When Zones Look The Same.
2014-04-15.
The technical difficulties seem to have fixed themselves. Shrug.
I have one more criticism about ESO, although it’s not exactly a “criticism” so much as it is merely an “observation of the way ESO does things.”
Most of the zones look the same.
Stonefalls, near the beginning of the Ebonheart Pact starting point.
Not exactly the same. Some of them have jungle trees and some of them have deciduous trees. Some of them are more rocky and some of them are more grassy.
- MMORPG
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ESO – The View From 30.
2014-04-24.
My Templar has reached level 30, and I’m starting to notice a few long-term trends in ESO gameplay.
First, my character hasn’t really changed very much. I expected that having more skill points available would allow me to make significant changes to my gameplay style over time, but I am still using basically the same set of 5 skills that I started with. And to be honest, the newer skills available to me don’t sound very interesting or helpful.
- MMORPG
- Status
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ESO – Public Dungeon Boss Bots.
2014-04-30.
Massively wondered why public dungeon boss bots are so hard to stamp out in ESO. I thought I would answer this in a blog post, because any comment I posted would be lost in the noise.
I don’t have any first-hand “inside baseball” knowledge but from what I’ve pieced together from years and years of developer posts about how bots are dealt with, this is my guess on why they can’t just snap their fingers and make all the bots in public dungeons disappear:
- MMORPG
- Responses
2014-05
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ESO – Decision Time.
2014-05-01.
Okay I’m just going to say it. ESO is not holding my attention. I keep logging in and thinking to myself, “You know, I don’t particularly feel like playing this.” I’ll go through a quest or two and then log out again.
It’s a major factor in why I went ahead and dropped cough cough dollars on ArcheAge.
And yet I can’t think of anything wrong with ESO (well, except for inventory management - it’s really a pain).
- MMORPG
- Status
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ESO – Sub Cancelled For Now.
2014-05-06.
I went ahead and cancelled my ESO subscription. I’ve got a few more days left but I suspect my Templar will stay at level 36. I think I will wait two or three months and return to see what changes have been made. I like the direction I’m seeing in the roadmap; I’m just itching to do other things right now.
Go to the light!
In the meantime, I’m planning to play Rift 2.
- MMORPG
- Status
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ESO – The Power of Looting Barrels.
2014-05-07.
When I first started playing ESO, I detested the idea that every barrel, box, and urn had something in it. That was one of my least favorite parts of Oblivion and Skyrim: Picking up cheese and vegetables in every barrel. You didn’t have to, but the healing from a big stack of corn could save you in a pinch, because it was too expensive to buy health potions.
The possibilities are practically endless!
- MMORPG
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ESO – Complete One-Eighty On Subbing.
2014-05-13.
So, yeah, I changed my mind and subbed for one month of ESO. I did it after I played the Arbiter in Rift for a night, and realized to my horror that there was no way that I would be able to fill all of my gaming time between now and the WildStar launch with Rift tanking.
I sort of forgot to factor in my terror of tanking high-level dungeons in PUGs.
- MMORPG
- Status
- Tanking
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May, The MMO Crisis Month.
2014-05-19.
May has been an MMO crisis month.
I can only stand to play ESO for a quest or two at a time. There’s nothing wrong with the game (except the horrible inventory management and dungeon grouping tools). I accept full responsibility for my lack of enjoyment. At level 41, my stupid Two-Handed Templar build feels weak and ineffective, and it has almost no AoE damage capability. Everyone around me in public dungeons is burning down big groups in seconds, but I have to wack on mobs one at a time.
- MMORPG
- Status
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Tuesday’s Stream – ESO’s Shadow of Sancre Tor.
2014-05-21.
Tuesday night’s stream of Elder Scrolls Online, wherein I completed two whole quests, including the level 40 story quest “Shadow of Sancre Tor.”
Link updated.
- Streaming
2014-06
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Weekend Versus Weeknight Characters.
2014-06-04.
It just occurred to me that I am a completely different MMO gamer on weekends when compared to weekdays (weeknights, actually). For me, weekends are about exploration and discovery and lore, but on most weeknights, I just want to “grind” and avoid a lot of mental engagement.
This WildStar launch weekend has given me a great example of the distinction. On Saturday and Sunday I spent a fair amount of time reading lore and quest text (or trying to, with that microscopic, reader-unfriendly font) and looking around at things.
- MMORPG
- Musings
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Mid-June MMO Status Report.
2014-06-20.
Not much to talk about, so here’s a non-WildStar MMO status report!
ArcheAge. I’ve only logged in to pay the taxes on my measely 8×8 farm, and occasionally grow aspen trees. I don’t expect to play this any more until after it launches.
The Secret World. I have logged in every few days to grind through a mission or two in the City of the Sun God zone. I’m attempting to collect AP and SP so I can fill out my skills better, which will better prepare me to go back to the Besieged Farmlands and continue the main story quest, which will then eventually allow me to get to Tokyo perhaps sometime in 2018.
- MMORPG
- Status
2014-08
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What’s The Best Subscription-Only MMO?.
2014-08-29.
What’s the best subscription-only MMO out there right now? If you could only pick one to maintain, which one would it be? (By the way, the possible answers are: WoW, EVE, WildStar, ESO, or FFXIV.)
This is pretty easy for me to answer, actually: Final Fantasy XIV. Hands down. No need to even talk about it. It’s beautiful, it’s fun, there’s a lot to do, it’s updated often, it does every MMO mechanic (that matters) exactly right, and it’s cheaper than the others at $12/month.
- Advice
- MMORPG
- Opinion
2015-01
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Year End 2014.
2015-01-01.
In most Steam sales, I have a fairly strict cut-off point of avoiding anything unless it is under $10. Over the past year or so, I’ve rarely found anything meeting that criteria that I don’t already have, so I was a bit surprised to find myself buying nine games in this Winter Steam Sale, including Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, The Walking Dead Season 2, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Democracy 3, Contagion, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Dominions 4, Thief, and Transistor.
- MMORPG
- Opinion
- Status
- Steam
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Arbitrary Mid-January Status Update.
2015-01-19.
I’m in a “bouncing around between games” mode at the moment, now that I’m done with Elite: Dangerous. I’ve been logging into two or three or four different MMOs a day, looking for one to capture my imagination.
Level 100!
WoW. My WoW subscription runs out on the 20th, and I won’t be renewing. WoW is a fun game, but I always tire of it pretty quickly. I did manage to reach level 100 with my Hunter and upgrade my Garrison, though.
- MMORPG
- Status
2015-02
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What Does Buy-to-Play Really Say About An MMO?.
2015-02-03.
ESO* is going Buy-to-Play. Yay! I’m looking forward to playing it again.
(Holy jeez those guys make awesome cinematics. I wonder how much of a AAA studio’s game development budget goes into those.)
But philosophically speaking, I wonder what the Buy-to-Play model says about an MMO. After having experienced it in GW2, B2P seems to imply something that’s not a very good thing. The game company seems to be saying, “Here’s our persistent world game, but there’s really only about a month or two of fresh gameplay for you to look at, and we’re probably not going to update it very much, so don’t make any long-term plans to stay in our game.
- MMORPG
- Opinion
2015-12
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Getting Back Into MMORPGs.
2015-12-16.
I’m having a hard time getting back into some MMORPGs I used to play.
FFXIV. First of course is FFXIV, the game that I have an active subscription for that’s draining my money while I avoid logging in. Every time I try to get back into it, I keep running into this roadblock-Heavensward is hard. Well, maybe hard isn’t the right word. More like tedious. I’m mired at level 53 in the Dravanian Forelands where it takes an hour to run from one side to the other for quests since I don’t have flying unlocked there yet.
- MMORPG
- Status
2016-10
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Audiobooks, NaNoWriMo, and other Miscellany.
2016-10-18.
This is one of those rambling posts about everything and nothing, because I don’t have much to say. Just writing for the sake of writing because I was bored at work.
I’ve been listening to audiobooks again, trying to use up my credits. I recently finished Stephen King’s 11.22.63, which was beautifully read by Craig Wasson. He’s the actor who played the lead in that weird 80s movie Body Double. Now I’m listening to Stephen King’s End of Watch, which is beautifully read by Will Patton.
- MMORPG
- Status
2017-01
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Returning to Elder Scrolls Online.
2017-01-01.
I’ve been dabbling in The Elder Scrolls Online again. Last time I played it for any length of time was in the two months after it launched, April 2014. It’s one of the better MMORPGs if you didn’t know, undoubtedly in the Top Five. (Obligatory warning that it does not in any way resemble the single-player Elder Scrolls games.) Visually, I would probably rank it second behind Black Desert Online for the best-looking MMORPG out there.
- MMORPG
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FFXIV – 3.0 Main Scenario Complete.
2017-01-20.
A while back I said I was playing ESO again.. welllll, I sort of lost interest. (I think it’s because I find the quests very depressing, and it also seems like everywhere you go and everything you do is basically the same as what you did before.) So it’s mostly FFXIV and an occasionally foray into LotRO for me these days.
I finished the Aetherial Research Facility. I got a nice group with a very “professional” tank, who explained the mechanics concisely and non-judgmentally.
- MMORPG
- Status
2018-01
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Single-Player Holidays.
2018-01-08.
The last thing I mentioned playing was Divinity: Original Sin. I sort of gave up on it. It’s a great game and all, but it’s just too exhausting. I went through two boss fights in a row (SparkMaster 5000 and Radagoth) and both times, luck was the determining factor for success. That’s just not fun. I don’t know how all the people who play tabletop games do it. :)
- MMORPG
- RPG
2018-02
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Kitchen Sink Post #6.
2018-02-23.
_I’m still tinkering with the formula for this weekly “bullet post” thing. Now I feel like I should include news items and any interesting progress I’ve made on games I’m playing.
_
ESO… always seems better in screenshots. I started the week playing some FFXIV, trying to work on improving my gear with Rabanastre runs and Omega 4.0 runs.
Then I started playing ESO, trying to find what it was that everyone keeps saying that they love about that game.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Why Is It So Hard to Get Back Into ESO?.
2018-02-26.
Coldharbor, a painfully long slog through a very depressing blue landscape. If I had to guess which MMORPG was most popular right now based just on my Twitter feed (discounting WoW of course), I would guess that ESO is probably a strong contender.
I used to love ESO. I played for about two months when it launched. I enjoyed it a lot. It was such a fresh take on the genre.
- MMORPG
2018-03
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MMO Roundup #10.
2018-03-23.
A weekly diary of MMO news and observations.
Secret World Legends, the League of Monster Slayers tree house In my last roundup I said that Secret World Legends wasn’t The Next Big Thing. This week I made a new Templar Sword/Elementalist and now suddenly the game looks fresh and interesting and exciting again. It just goes to show how much a tiny change in play style can make a huge difference in one’s perception of a game.
- Administration
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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MMO Roundup #11.
2018-03-30.
_These post titles are killing me. I hate titles that don’t mean anything. I don’t know about anyone else, but I almost never click through to read an article if the title doesn’t interest me (my feed reader also shows the first sentence, so that is also a factor). I assume everyone else is the same. But here I am, doing the exact thing I hate. “Generic Post #11.” I might as well call it, “Don’t bother reading this one.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
2018-04
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Weeklies – ESO, SWL.
2018-04-20.
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.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Weeklies – Oligarchgate (The One About Daybreak).
2018-04-27.
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).
- MMORPG
- Roundup
2018-05
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Monthly Recap – April 2018.
2018-05-02.
_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. Games Played Elder Scrolls Online, 24 hours. The surprise winner this month.
- MMORPG
- Podcast
- Roundup
- Videos
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Week End – EQ Royale, New World.
2018-05-05.
I’m moving this post to Saturday so I can mention stuff that happens on Friday, which previously fell through the cracks. (Of course nothing happened on Friday this week.) The MMO news and blogging world dries up completely on weekends so it’s a better time for recaps anyway.
My Week It’s been a slow gaming week for me. I played a little bit of ESO, a little bit of DDO, and, for the first time, a little bit of a Steam sale game I bought in December 2015 called Ryse: Son of Rome.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Week End – Albion, Phoebes.
2018-05-19.
A summary of news and observations from this past week.
My Week The ring and middle fingers of my left hand have been sore so I’ve been trying to lay off of mouse-and-keyboard gaming for a bit. (It helps that none of my current games are speaking to me right now.) I installed Bioshock Remastered and have been casually playing through it again on Easy mode with a controller. I also played a bit of The Forest on a controller, which I discovered had finally launched for reals (it’s a great game, and still has one of my favorite building systems).
- MMORPG
- Roundup
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Week End – Summerset, FFXIV 4.3.
2018-05-26.
News and observations from the past week.
Fort Frolic from BioShock Remastered. In The News Steam is (allegedly) cracking down on sexytime cartoon games. I say “allegedly” only because I personally couldn’t confirm any official communications from Valve, I only read the second-hand reports from potentially affected developers. This caused a bit of an uproar in the Twitterverse. My only two cents is that this is an example of one of the many universal truths in life: You can choose to make an artistic statement or you can choose to make money, but very rarely can you choose both.
- MMORPG
- Roundup
2018-06
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Week End – Fallout 76, Because SEO.
2018-06-02.
A summary of news and observations from the week.
I loaded Dauntless (and FRAPS) a second time just to take a screenshot for this post. In The News It’s been an incredibly bleak week for news, to my eye. Maybe everyone took the whole week off, because Monday was a holiday here in the US.
Bethesda teased us with an announcement of a new game called Fallout 76. It’s debatable whether this deserves to be mentioned on an MMO-themed blog, but see above about bleak news.
- MMO
- MMORPG
- Roundup
2019-04
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Complicated Character Creation.
2019-04-30.
MassivelyOP asks: “How obsessively do you plan your characters?”
At first I thought they meant the *appearance* of your character. So I tweeted my usual I-can-say-everything-that-needs-to-be-said-about-MMOs-in-one-sentence-and-hoo-boy-does-that-make-blogging-hard response to most discussion topics:
Honestly these days I just click randomize a bunch of times and then "Enter Game" … I've been burned so, so many times spending an hour in character creation only to find that everyone looks exactly the same from the back.
- MMORPG
2019-05
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Games Played – April 2019.
2019-05-01.
It’s been another odd gaming month. I thought I would be playing a lot of Sekiro, but it turns out I’m just not in the mood for it, or any games really. I’ve gotten much more enjoyment from consuming plain old non-interactive video content in my free time (ie. mostly Critical Role).
Sekiro, 28 hours. I am currently on the “Guardian Ape” boss and not terribly interested in putting in the repetitive practice needed to get past it.
- Roundup
2019-07
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ESO – Two Good Quests in Rivenspire.
2019-07-28.
I grouse about Elder Scrolls Online a lot, so I thought it would be fair to point out that I actually had an enjoyable play session yesterday for a couple of hours.
My “main” from the game’s launch in 2014 is a Nord Templar who is now somewhere around level 48 I think. This is the character I keep trying to play, and keep running into frustrations because the game consistently refuses to let me play the way I want to play this character.
- MMORPG
2019-08
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Games Played – July 2019.
2019-08-01.
Ran out of steam on Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls and went back to PC games in July.
PC Games Elder Scrolls Online, 7 hours. Wow, whodathunkkit. I found myself intrigued by the Zone Story in Rivenspire enough to keep logging in to go through it. Still haven’t finished it yet though. Now I’m distracted by the Steam backlog. Lords of the Fallen, 2 hours. This was my alternate game when my hands hurt from using the controller too much.
- Roundup
2019-10
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ESO Glenumbra and Stormhaven.
2019-10-13.
Last time I mentioned Elder Scrolls Online, I was working my way through Rivenspire, which is the third zone of the Daggerfall Covenent. During the mad scramble of Blaugust and the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I wandered away from that. But I finally got back in there and finished up the Rivenspire zone story. It was less enjoyable toward the end, but I didn’t hate it.
I recorded the whole experience and I was thinking of uploading it, much like my playthrough of the Morrowind zone story.
- MMORPG
2021-08
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Best MMO Technology.
2021-08-25.
Yesterday I mentioned how much I worried that Final Fantasy XIV was staggering into their new expansion on duct tape and bailing wire, so I thought today I’d mention the MMORPGs that appear to have a much more solid technology base that I don’t have to worry about.
- Gaming
2021-10
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New World - The End ...?.
2021-10-04.
On the seventh morning of New World I think I can confidently report that this game isn’t for me.
- Gaming
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Now What?.
2021-10-06.
Searching for the next game to play, and also apparently listing every game I’ve looked at recently.
- Gaming