Category: MMO

WoW Now, Holy Cow!

Posted on by Nimgimli

The best part about writing about World of Warcraft is coming up with silly post titles.

As I am sure you are aware, World of Warcraft has a new expansion, The War Within, that is in the midst of rolling out. Early access has started and full launch is, I believe, Monday. Normally a WoW expansion wouldn’t interest me at all. The last time I seriously played WoW was before the Burning Crusade expansion. Mind you I was big into what we now call vanilla WoW. I happened to be playing when I was laid off from a job at the start of one summer and decided to just chill out and look for more work in the autumn, and I spent that summer just LIVING in World Of Warcraft. Joined a guild, made friends, chatted with them constantly. The classic MMO experience. It was a really nice time. Then it was back to real life and full-time work and for whatever reason Burning Crusade didn’t hit me right so I left.

I’ve jumped back in many times since but it has never really stuck. And now it is time to jump back in again. And honestly it probably won’t stick but as long as I have fun for a while, does it really matter?

So why now? Two main reasons and I’m going to be honest. Mostly it is due to game developer, influencer and all-around great guy, Dusty Monk. If you don’t know Dusty, he’s one of the nicest people I’ve met online and I think you should subscribe to his relatively new YouTube vlog, I’m Still Playing. (He is just starting out with this project and having more subscribers will help get his channel pushed to more people via the YouTube algorithm, so even if you’re not normally a YT viewer subscribing would still help him out.) I’ve had the pleasure to know Dusty for a number of years and I know that he and I have similar tastes in games. If he likes something I probably will too. He is pretty psyched for The War Within and he’s been getting me psyched too. Here’s the post, from earlier this week, that pushed me over the top:

And if you read the comments you’ll see:

Me: Dammit Dusty, stop tempting me!
Dusty: Brutha I had you in mind when I made this video cause I know you’re like me! C’mon check it out!

I mean how can I resist that? I can’t! I just can’t!

I do tend to play MMOs solo and I do tend to drift away when I run out of content that is solo-able. In some games I can join in with other people to do un-organized group events and I enjoy those, but the idea of waiting around to Form A Group at this point in my life isn’t very appealing. I am just past the point where I can sit down and know I have 2-3 straight hours to play, and like Dusty mentions in that video, you don’t want to finally get in a group then say “Sorry, gotta go.” I am just not that kind of person.

And this solo-friendly aspect of The War Within isn’t just something that Dusty has imagined. At Gamescom, Tina Fong, Associate Art Director on The War Within, when talking about the new Delves feature, said “something that is a priority to us for delves is that it really caters to a group of our audience that historically has been a little underserved by the end game progression loop that we have..” and she goes on to talk about “overworld” players, as she calls us soloists, while Game Director Ion Hazzikostas spelled it out, saying they are “making sure there is a deep solo experience“. In addition to Delves there’s now something like Final Fantasy XIV‘s trust system where you can do at least the main quest dungeons in the expansion with a group of NPCs. No more waiting for a group to take your DPS character through a dungeon so you can continue with the story. Dusty does a great job of going over all the solo-friendly aspects of this new expansion in the video above.

And if you want to watch The War Within segment from the Gamescom 2024 Xbox show (where the Fong and Hazzikostas quotes come from), here it is all queued up for you.

And in addition to that, just on the off chance WoW does ‘stick’ this time (there’s probably a dozen or more “Back to WoW” posts on this blog from throughout the years… probably some are showing in Related Posts down below this post), the start of an expansion which in itself is the start of a new storyline seems like an excellent time to dive back in. It’ll presumably be 4 years (the story is supposed to stretch over 3 expansions and I’m assuming one per year) before that happens again.

So yup, I’m going to do it. Of course I’m still playing, or trying to play, Guild Wars 2 (between overtime at work, following Gamescom and writing a post every day I’ve had little time to actually play this week), and I doubt I can do justice to two MMOs at the same time, but y’know, I’m not getting any younger. I’m going to play what I feel like playing when I feel like playing it and stop agonizing over my choices. It’s just games, right? There’s like a 98% chance that by mid-September I’m playing something other than Guild Wars 2 OR World of Warcraft. That’s just me, chaotic good. Ok maybe chaotic neutral. 🙂

Guild Wars 2: My First World Boss!

Posted on by Nimgimli

OK I’m pretty sure the title is a lie. It’s more than likely that WAY back at launch I took part in a world boss battle, but I have no recollection of doing so. Also, this is kind of a thrown together lazy Sunday post, so apologies for that.

The other morning I was in-game, doing hearts and working on “My Story” when a call went out that a World Boss group was forming for an event that took place in an hour. AN HOUR? I ignored it because that was forever away. But I was still playing when the call went out that it was happening in 15 minutes so I started move towards the “Commander” making the call.

You can join a Squad just by clicking on a Commander (which is another player who… I dunno how they become a Commander, but it’s presumably an experienced player). So I joined their squad. No idea how many players can join a squad but it seemed, y’know, raid-sized.

Staying safely back from the world boss
I’m just taking it all in…

I was a total fish out of water. Another player helpfully suggested I use a ranged weapon (I’m playing a Warrior) but I didn’t have one, so I hung back and mostly helped to res fallen fighters and to clear out the riff raff mobs on the perimeter.

Want to know what world boss it was? I have no idea! Want to know what zone it was in? I don’t even know that. I was just in my own little world when the call went out. I never really know where I am in Guild Wars 2, just always working my way towards that green asterisk thingie that indicates the next step in your story quest. I have find that going from one to the next on foot rather than teleport, and doing hearts and stuff along the way, has kept me pretty closed to leveled up enough to just keep rolling along, but I pay NO attention to where I am.

Oh wait, I took screenshots! It was Tequatl the Sunless!

Screenshot showing a sea of people fighting the boss
Look at them all! We’re a horde! {click to embiggen]

I’m not sure I did any damage to the actual boss. At the end was a chest that looked like a trophy and I couldn’t seem to interact with it (image at the top of the post is of the chest, quite elaborate, no?), but what made the whole thing fun was seeing so many more advanced players in all their shiny armor and fancy mounts and stuff. It was a real spectacle and very aspirational. I can’t wait to keep moving through the game, learning new stuff, exploring new areas… I’m pretty jazzed about Guild Wars 2 now!

More crowd shots from the world boss fight. I have no idea what is happening
Like I have NO CLUE what is going on, but I’m having fun!

Being a Newb And A Veteran At The Same Time Is Weird

Posted on by Nimgimli

Remember when I said I was done posting about Fallout 76? I officially retract that!!

So as mentioned, I’ve started playing Fallout 76 on Steam. Since Bethesda doesn’t offer any kind of cross-play or cross-progression, that meant starting over. These days you can start at level 20, which I did, but really the first 50 levels of Fallout is newbie-ville. I hit 30 last night. I don’t really have a build, I’m constantly low on ammo, I have no mutations, and I haven’t even really picked a weapon type to focus on yet. I use whatever I happen to have ammo for. Taking down a non-trivial enemy can take 3 or 4 reloads of a weapon.

But I haven’t stopped my Xbox Fallout 76 character. There I have a build that is very solid. I have quality gear, a ton of mutations (including marsupial that lets you jump really high) and more ammo than I know what to do with. Only the toughest enemies take more than 1 full clip of my railway rifle and many things get 1-shotted, though the railway fires so fast I usually waste a couple of rounds. On Xbox I’m level 320 or somewhere around there.

Currently there’s a two week campaign running where at the top of every hour there is a Mothman event at Pleasant Valley (where the legend of the Mothman first arose, apparently). The bulk of this event is guarding 3 pyres from enraged cultists. On the Xbox I generally pick a pyre and defend it easily. In fact other players just kind of get in my way. I find the event rather boring really, as there is zero challenge to it. (But. y’know, LOOT!) After the pyres are defended you have to get up to a rooftop to commune with the Mothman, which I do via just jumping a couple of times thanks to the marsupial super jump.

So after doing that, I log off the Xbox and log onto Steam and an hour later the event happens again and I fast travel to it and OMG it is SO hard! I basically have to be carried. The enraged cultists can kill me pretty quick, half the time I run out of ammo, and when I don’t it takes me so long to kill 1 cultist that 2 or 3 others in the same wave will have done serious damage to the pyre. I absolutely need help. Heck I even struggle in the preliminary part of the event where you’re killing deer and regular cultists. Then when the pyres have been defended and it is time to get up on the roof? I have to follow a bunch of ramps and stairs to get there and often, since I’m always encumbered, I don’t get there in time to commune with Wise Mothman! So sad. At least I still get the “Event Completed” but I don’t get the Mothman’s buff.

Going from one experience pretty nearly directly to the other just feels so entirely weird. I realize in a lot of ways you’d have the same experience just playing an alt, but playing Fallout 76 on the console feels different from playing on the PC, too. Plus on console I use a controller and on PC mouse and keyboard. So even things like the muscle memory I have from Xbox don’t really translate to the Steam version. It’s like a different game, only it’s the same. LOL

Honestly I find being the struggling newbie on Steam is more fun. I think part of the reason I’ve somewhat drifted away from the Xbox version of the game is I just get bored. I have a ton of quests to do but the combat in them is so easy that they all start to feel like fetch quests. Only when someone drops a nuke and an end-game boss comes out to play do things get really interesting. It was a hoot being really powerful for a while, but eventually you start to miss that challenge, y’know?

At QuakeCon there was a Fallout 76 panel and they did mention that they are aware that there is not enough difficult content in the game and they heavily implied that more will be added, so I’m looking forward to that. Until then I’ll keep being the newbie on Steam, getting underfoot and in the way of the old pros who could probably solo the event without too much difficulty!

A Curious Little Fallout 76 Movement Bug

Posted on by Nimgimli

While I never signed up or declared my intention to take part in Blaugust, on August 1st I got some FOMO and wrote a post. Then another on the 2nd, and another after that and here we are half-way through the month and I’ve kept it up. But my batteries are running down, mostly because half my team at work is on leave or vacation just as the summer lull is ending and projects are starting to heat up. One team member comes back next Tuesday so I THINK if I can get through to then, I might make the full month, but this week has been tough. (Plus GamesCom is next week which should provide plenty of blog fodder.)

All of which is a preamble to a short little post about a curious bug I ran into in the PC/Steam version of Fallout 76. Yes, now I’m playing Fallout 76 on Steam…did I mention that here? First I was going to play it on GeForce Now but then I got hooked (again!) and decided to install it locally.

So I was having a great time of it for a while, then suddenly I lost the ability to move. I was playing with a controller and at first thought it was a controller bug. I would turn and look around a bit and then suddenly I’d start moving again. I figured that was my cue to get used to playing with mouse and keyboard. But the same thing happened even after I’d set the controller aside. It hadn’t happened when I was playing on GeForce Now, though. And I noticed it seemed to happen more when I was in a building than when I was outside. I had installed a mod that was supposed to improve wide-screen support, so I disabled that (honestly I didn’t notice much different anyway…but FO76 could really improve its wide screen support). That didn’t fix the bug. But through continued messing with it I discovered that it mostly happened when I looked down to loot a body, and looking up at the sky would often fix it.

Screenshot of the fallout76prefs.ini file
If you’re playing the Xbox Windows version of Fallout 76, look in Project76Prefs.ini instead

To keep a short post short, it turns out it was a framerate issue. When I looked down at the ground, or when I was inside an enclosed area, the framerate went so high the that game just seemed to freak out and couldn’t keep up or something. THAT was when I remembered that I’d followed YouTuber AngryTurtle’s advice to change a setting in the Fallout76Prefs.ini file. The specific setting was iPresentInterval=1 which we were told to set to iPresentInterval=0 to make the game run much better. Which in fact it does…it apparently turns off the FPS cap and the game’s built in VSYNC. But it maybe does TOO good a job?

The solution is either to just turn that back to 1, or to use the Nvidia control panel to cap the framerate. I did the latter, setting max framerate to 144 fps which is what my monitor runs at. I had a bit of screen tearing when I looked down and ran, so I also turned on Nvidia Vsync. That fixed the issue for me.

It was just such a weird bug that rather than annoy me, I found it kind of amusing and fascinating (OK I mostly felt that way AFTER I solved it). If any devs wander by I’d love to hear a theory as to why too high a framerate would make a game engine just sit down and cry like this!

Screenshot of my nvidia control panel settings for fallout76.exe

Fallout 76 News From Quake Con

Posted on by Nimgimli

I thought I was done talking about Fallout 76 for a while but now we have some actual news courtesy of Quake Con, which is happening this weekend.

The next update, called Milepost Zero, is coming on September 3rd, which means the current season runs for 3 more weeks, ending on September 2nd. I can snag a lot more Perk Packs if I keep doing all the daily and weekly tasks for those three weeks!

In addition to the new season, there’s a new Legendary Crafting system that I’m a little wary of. It comes out on Sept 3rd as well. The general idea seems to be to give us more control over what we craft (right now it is pure RNG where we spend Legendary Modules and just HOPE we get the mods we want) and that’s a good thing, but the system is on the test server now and they seem to still be iterating and changing it in pretty big ways, and three weeks isn’t all that much time. I’m just a little worried the system is going to be wonky when it first launches, though I’m confident it’ll keep getting refined and improved after launch.

I haven’t played on the test server (since I play on Xbox) but it sounds like you’ll need to scrap Legendary Items that you get as drops for a “very small” (quote from one of the dev team on a Quake Con live stream) chance that you’ll learn the recipe to craft the mod for one of the Legendary Perks that were on that item. This leads me to believe that when the system is brand new, none of us are going to be crafting Legendary Gear for a while since first we’ll need to scrap a ton of stuff to learn the recipes. Fortunately I’m in a pretty good space for Legendary Weapons right now. The Legendary Mods you craft can be traded to other players so some lucky players who unlock recipes early are going to be rolling in caps from selling Mods.

There’s also a new game system coming for the update where you run a branch of the Blue Ridge Caravan Company. I haven’t seen a lot of details about that but it sounds like you’ll have to put together an Outpost, similar to your C.A.M.P., and then you can spawn caravans and will have to escort them to keep them safe. Other players can join in and help with the escort and these are intended to be farmable so I guess you’ll be able to fire them off as frequently as you want. I’m sure we’ll get more details on this system closer to launch.

Now that I’ve been doing a lot more PC gaming I’m kind of tempted to switch to the PC version of Fallout 76 for the new season. (I sure wish Bethesda would offer cross-progression for both FO76 and Elder Scrolls Online!) Tempted, but not sure it is wise. I have a lot of time invested in my Xbox account, and I bought a full year of Fallout 1st back in April so it is probably silly to walk away from the 7 months of remaining paid-for time. Maybe I just should dabble on PC this next season with an aim towards moving over completely sometime in Winter or next Spring, but not doing so until I have a PC character semi-established. Not sure I want to play without Fallout 1st, though… I guess I have time to sort this all out, though.

Anyway that’s it for today. A quick Fallout 76 post for a lazy Sunday!

Meanwhile, Back in Guild Wars 2

Posted on by Nimgimli

Before I started playing the new Diablo IV Season I had been playing Guild Wars 2 quite a bit. I am very much not ready to let go of that game so I have to figure out a way to balance things out a little. Both games have a bit of time pressure attached to them: the Diablo IV season will end, and Guild Wars 2 has a new expansion coming very soon (and come to think of it, D4 has an expansion in a couple months).

I’ve had a Guild Wars 2 account pretty much since it launched. According to the /age command my account is 4,366 days old. That’s not to say I’ve played a lot. I have a bunch of characters but only 3 of note.

I have a level 80 but that character did a lot of his leveling by logging in every day and collecting the daily experience rewards they used to dish out. This character has a play time of about 47 hours. He was my first character back when leveling was presumably the slowest it has ever been, but most days I’d log in, grab the daily rewards and log out. I don’t think he moved an inch for about 20 levels!

I have a level 56 character that I actually played all the way to level 56, and his play time is 67 hours; I honestly don’t remember much about playing him.

My current “main” is level 70 Warrior with a play time of 32 hours. I’ve been using a bunch of exp buffs on her which might explain why she seems to be leveling faster than the level 56, or maybe the game itself has been tweaked to speed up leveling. Not sure.

Then I have some even lower levels not worth talking about. Grand total play time is 225 hours which averages out to like 18:45/year. 🙂 Obviously in reality the game just laid dormant for years at a time. (I seem to be injecting a lot of math into my blog posts lately for some reason.)

Anyway, yes when I came back after several years away I of course started a new character to “re-learn to play” and I of course grew attached to her and so just kept on. I have a ton of level boosts in my inventory so I could’ve just boosted her to level 80 but I figured that would defeat the point of playing a new character to re-learn. Plus it feels cheat-ie. One of my weird quirks… using a %exp booster is fine. Using an level skip boost feels like cheating!

Right now she is still in the base game story. My intention as of now is to play through all the content in order. With 10 years of content that will take me quite a while, I reckon. I own the first couple of expansion packs but have been resisting buying others until I catch up. And after 32 hours I am still baffled by a lot of things. I have a ton of hero points that I’m holding onto because I have no idea what to do with them after I have all my skill slots full, and I’m not really struggling much with the content unless I wander into an event that needs a big group and there aren’t enough of us there.

I’ve been trying to learn to be patient about games. I find that just playing and slowly figuring things out is more rewarding than googling or watching YouTube videos and then just emulating what some other player is doing. Since I’m not in an active guild, if I am doing it wrong I’m only hurting myself, and if I’m having fun I’m really NOT hurting myself even if I die over and over!

I am looking forward to how things change at level 80. It’s strange how much I’ve been changing as a gamer in recent years. I’ve mentioned a few times that these days it is much less common for me to get super hyped for an upcoming game and to jump in on Day 1, and I’ve been getting a lot more satisfaction out of playing older games that have had some years of patching and polish. But another change is that the old me tended to lose interest in a game once a character hit level cap. I was so addicted to the dopamine hit of the DINGS! that once there were no more levels to gain I either rolled an alt or moved to a new game. Now I’m much more liable to keep on playing (~glances over at his level 313 Fallout 76 character~) and exploring the game’s systems and nuances.

So yeah, no giant landmarks to celebrate in Guild Wars 2 just now, but I did want to get a post about out because it deserves the attention!! 🙂

Finished with Final Fantasy Fourteen For Now

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m never one to pass on an alliterative title.

So as it says above, my 1 month Final Fantasy XIV sub ends in a couple of days and for once I timed things right. For the past week or so I’ve been logging in less and less so it’s the right time for a break.

I do plan on returning, probably when they release the next chunk of solo-able Main Story Quest dungeons. Not that I’ve gone through all the ones that are available now: the last one I did was Brayflox’s Longstop which crops up in the long (and to me, annoying) quest chain that happens before you fight Titan. Do you remember it? You’re sent all over hell & back getting food for a feast?

Generally I think I like the early levels of A Realm Reborn best, before you are expected to teleport all over the world to pick up a package or talk to an NPC. I am not really a fan of fast travel because, for me, it robs the world of a sense of scale and of being real. Of course I COULD just travel between these places on my Chocobo, and I might actually do that if I wasn’t paying a subscription fee which means there’s always a little clock ticking in the back of my brain. I don’t want to waste that much time when my time is limited to what I’m willing to pay for.

Anyway back to this quest chain. I had forgotten that when I was sent to get the wine it became a whole sub-branch of fetch quests and I just couldn’t face it, so I stopped logging in. I will try to power through these before my time runs out so they’re not the first thing I encounter when I inevitably come back.

And coming back should be easy because I’m playing a Paladin and at level 40 (I have managed to get way over-leveled without trying – Brayflox is a level 32 instance) I have only 5 skills that I regularly use. I have more than 5 slotted of course, but I rarely have need to use them. Turns out playing a Tank solo is kind of dull, at least so far. I’ve considered starting to level a healer or dps job but again…the clock is ticking and by the time it occurred to me to start a new job I only had a week of time left. Tt seemed wasteful to start over again. Maybe when I return.

Hmm, so far this post has sounded like a bunch of griping, but in general I’ve been having fun in FF XIV. I’m just grumpy because of this one quest chain.

Concerning Solo Dungeons

Doing the dungeons solo has been really enjoyable for a few reasons.

First, there’s obviously no social anxiety issues when your party buddies are all npcs.

Second, I get to really explore all the nooks and crannies and I have a better sense of the layout of these dungeons now. Dungeons that in the past were just a blur of rooms dashed through while trying to keep up with an experienced party hell-bent on finishing as quickly as possible now feel like fully-formed places. Haukke Manor is actually creepy when you have a minute to look around!

Third, you get to keep all the loot! I know that comes off as very selfish but it’s nice to go into a dungeon and come out the other side having replaced several pieces of gear with upgrades. Bonus: You have time to stop and put that gear on while you’re still in the dungeon!

Outside of the dungeons, the game has been pleasant enough though experience flows in so quickly that, as mentioned, I’m over-level everywhere. There’s not much challenge in overland content right now, which is another reason I thought I might start a new job. Easy-mode gets boring. If I wasn’t focused on the Main Story quest I’d mix things up by re-running Dungeons or grinding Fates (both of which level sync you) but again…the clock is ticking.

I still love the visuals and the vibe of the game. It would be great to be able to own a house and just kind of widen the experience beyond just questing all the time.

Sometimes when I’m done playing I stay logged in and turn on the “Idle Camera” and leave it running on the TV just to watch what folks are doing, see what they are wearing. That kind of thing.

So better to leave while I’m still basically feeling good about the game. I’ve got other things I want to play and FFXIV will be there waiting for me for the foreseeable future.

Weirdly, the thing I’ve been playing most when I’ve not been in FFXIV is Elder Scrolls Online. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. But that’s a different post.

Final Fantasy XIV, The Solo MMO

Posted on by Nimgimli

Here’s a perfect example of life as an old person. There I was, finally really enjoying Guild Wars 2, when I jacked up my shoulder. And when I say “jacked up” what I mean is, I went to bed one night feeling fine and woke up with my shoulder feeling like it was on fire. Best I can figure, it’s a rotator cuff issue, but WHY it happened, I have no idea. I was just put on some statins for high cholesterol and I’m wondering if that is it. I’ve stopped taking them for a bit to see if this goes away.

Anyway this isn’t a medical blog, but the point is with my shoulder the way it is, sitting at a keyboard is really, really painful. Work has been hell. I tried to push through and keep playing but eventually decided it wasn’t worth it, so I headed back to my consoles.

But the MMO bug was still latched onto me. There’s ESO on consoles, of course, but I wanted something different (I low-key play ESO pretty much all the time). And then I learned that this week the FFXIV patch drops that brings the Trust System (tho they call it something else) to the original A Realm Reborn stages of the game. What this means is you can do the ‘story dungeons’ solo with a group of NPCs.

PERFECT.

I always love FFXIV right up to where I’m forced to group to progress. I don’t like being reliant on other people and I don’t like other people being reliant on me. If I screw up a run I feel awful for days. Basically what happened in my prior FFXIV sessions is I’d play until I really fucked up in a dungeon, then I just never log in again, but even before then having to wait for the dungeon finder to decide it’s time for you to play…between that and the login queues FFXIV hasn’t been a good fit, much as I love the world.

Now though, I can play through the MSQ until the end of ARR at my own pace and not have all that stress. I am so down for that. Of course my “main” is already through all of ARR so I had to start a new character to experience what it’s like to be a new FFXIV player. Bonus points for being able to pick a class based on what sounded fun rather than based on avoiding any kind of high-pressure roles (eg tank or healer). So for the first time in ages I’m playing a Gladiator. I’ll tank for NPCs, but not for people.

My first take-away is that leveling has been sped up a lot. Yesterday I installed the game, created a character, spent too much time going through the settings [it always takes me a while to get used to the controller for FFXIV, but this time out I don’t even have the game installed on PC…PS5 only!], and barely played. I was level 2 or 3 and had done one quest that involved combat. This morning in a few hours I got to level 11 just by doing Main Story Quests, Class Quests, keeping my Hunting Log on track and 2 or 3 low level Fates I stumbled on. No other quests done. None needed so far.

At level 11 I’m still wearing some of the gear I was ‘born’ in, and that quest where you have to have everything level 5 to complete it? That quest is still there but he waved me through regardless of the fact I was wearing some level 1 gear.

So I guess I’ll just be playing for a month, if that. I assume I’ll burn through the ARR content pretty quickly then I’ll have to wait for the next patch when they add that Trust system to the first expansion’s dungeons. Hey, it’ll be like playing on a “Progression Server” in some other old-timey MMO!

Apologies for this being a kind of low-effort blog post, but it is killing me to by typing (again, this shoulder thing) and I just want to get this out and go find some pain-killers!

Dungeon Encounters and STO

Posted on by Nimgimli

Somehow another week has slipped past without a blog post. Time flies, except when it doesn’t. Every work day seems to take an age to pass, but then suddenly it is Monday again. Next Monday is November 1st!

In days of yore this time of year would be the height of new game mania for me, but this year I’m not feeling it very much. Oh I’ll play Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite since they’re both on Game Pass but when it comes to shelling out cash I’ve become quite conservative. I have SO many games I haven’t played that it seems crazy to buy new ones.

Or at least that’s how I was feeling until Dungeon Encounters appeared out of nowhere and I had to buy it. In my defense, it was less than $25 and it was just so different from anything else I owned. Anything else remotely modern, anyway. It’s been a while since I played a game where I needed to take notes in order to remember where things are! I’ve been enjoying it. Maybe not as much as Tipa has (she’s already finished it!) but enough that it has pulled me away from most other games.

One thing holding me back is, well, my back. I’ve been having some terrible spasms in my back and it has made sitting in one place for a long time quite painful. So I tend to move from place to place. Gaming is particularly bad because once I get immersed in a game I start to slouch and that really aggravates my back. So I’ve been spending a lot of time watching TV while perched very upright on the front edge of the couch.

Alternatively I sit at my PC, where sadly I have a pretty shit chair, but it is so shit that it requires me to stay more or less upright, lest it (and me) topple to the ground. On the PC I’ve finally gone back to Star Trek Online. That only took a month to get around to. In September I shared a post from Roger Edwards about playing the STO story arcs in order. I’ve learned that Cryptic has put some obstacles up to prevent us from doing that. Some of the “Side Quests” that Roger suggests we play are now locked behind a level gate which is FAR above my level (I’m 10 and you have to be 55 or 65 to do these quests, according to reddit.)

Despite that snafu I’m enjoying STO quite a bit. We’re in the thick of a surge in Star Trek fandom here at Chez Dragonchasers. We’ve been re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’ve been re-watching TOS, and soon the new animated YA show starts up (with Lower Decks just recently ending for the season). So STO slots in very nicely, and the episodic nature means I can log in, play through an episode and then log out to give my back a rest.

I still mean to/want to play both New World and Black Desert Online, I just keep running out of time in the day before I get to them. I think for New World I have the opposite of FOMO. So many of the people who were hyped about it now seem disappointed in it so I wonder what’s the point of dumping a bunch of hours into it just so I can reach their level of disappointment. May as well take it slow and easy and see what new features/changes Amazon makes to bring folks back.

Meanwhile over in BDO I think I need to create a non-Seasonal alt. My seasonal character levels so fast that all the content she has to do is trivial (in terms of her main questline) and I think I’d rather level at a slower pace and have more time to absorb all the skills and systems. There’s absolutely nothing preventing me from rolling an alt other than choice paralysis because so many of the classes seem really interesting. I just need to set aside some time to do it. I think the Season system is awesome for established players but for this particular first-timer, slower might be better.

New World: Finally Feeling Settled

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ve had a rough time with New World. Not the actual playing of the game, but the issues that orbit the core gameplay.

First it was the queues. On Day 1 I created a character on Minda to play with Belghast’s Greysky Expeditions Company. And, being me, I created a 2nd character on a different server because I know there WILL be times when I want to play in absolute solitude on a server where no one knows me.

The launch week queues on Minda & character #2’s server (not being coy, I literally forget what server it was) broke me though. I couldn’t take waiting hours to play any more.

Solution #1 was to create a character on NA West just to spend time with. So that was my 3rd character. Didn’t last very long since the lag difference was appreciable. Felt like dodging was a lot more iffy. That character still exists, gathering dust.

Solution #2: By the time I got to Solution #2 Amazon had rolled out a bunch of new servers on NA East that were empty(ish). I deleted my Minda character, created a new one (character #4) with the same name and look on a low pop server, and re-started. The idea was to level up on the new server until Amazon gave us server transfers, which they’d promised. Then I’d rejoin Bel & gang.

This new server never had a queue and at first I was having a great time. But then the community started getting super toxic. At least the Syndicate faction was super toxic and the worst players also ‘ruled’ the faction by dint of holding land. I mean there was other faction/Company drama (super high taxes set by bitter Governors) but the end result was I kept ‘moving’ towns to try to avoid the idiots. Eventually it started bothering me just to log in. But I still wanted to play.

I fired up character #2 and for some reason, just wasn’t feeling her. I often play female characters in MMOs but for some reason that felt off for me in New World. I think it was because I figured I might start actually interacting with others and didn’t want to deal with any confusion. That’s probably a really out-of-date attitude given I know many, many people who play a gender other than what they present in real life, but whatever. In the end I deleted her and started character #5 on yet another new, empty(ish) server.

And, though I’m worried I’m going to jinx it, I think I am FINALLY comfortable with queues, community and my character. Most of the big Companies on this server have non-offensive names and faction chat (I went Marauder this time) has been mostly inoffensive. I’m still sorting this character; I started him as a full dex built, using Spear and Rapier & wearing light armor. Not sure that is going to stick but since he is only level 14 I can respec for free.

My Minda-replacement character is still on the toxic server, waiting to be able to move. He is Hatchet/Hammer and with this new character I’m trying to resist replicating him but it’s hard. Hatchet is super fun.

But anyway the point is I now log in, putter around at my own pace, don’t get my blood pressure way up due to being around a bunch of asshats, and I’m finally really enjoying the whole vibe. But damn it took a while to get here!

Of course thanks to Stargrace’s posts about Black Desert Online, I am now torn between 2 MMOs, New World and BDO. When it rains, it pours! 2016’s Black Desert Online is now becoming a new obsession, but that story is for another post.