This is kind of a sh*tpost, I’ll admit, but I’m just kind of amazed by what is going on with Game Pass this week.
They’ve added 3 games in 3 days and I imagine for a lot of folks there’s nothing of note here, or maybe one of the three is of some interest, but for me? It’s like someone at Microsoft looked over my shoulder and said “He’s focusing too much on the games he’s playing… let’s tempt the heck out of him.”
Now I haven’t played ANY of these games yet but I really want to play all three. They are:
Star Trucker — Think of this like Euro Truck Simulator, only in space. There was a demo of it during one of the Steam Next Fest events and I tried it then and really had a good time with it. Mind you this isn’t game of the year material… but it was just fun. Assuming I’m remembering right, anyway. I’ll know more when I play it!
Age of Mythology: Retold — Folks of a certain age will remember Age of Mythology. It was basically Age of Empires with a fantasy twist in that various gods manifested in the game with their special powers. I’m not sure if this is a straight-up re-release with better graphics or if there’s new content, but I’m looking forward to finding out!
Expeditions: A MudRunner Game — Around this time last year I was devoting a significant amount of my gaming time to Snowrunner, the prior game in this series. This one seems like it may have a little more ‘game’ to it in that it has various goals beyond basically “Haul something from here to there.” but if it is half as much fun (to me!) as Snowrunner I’m in deep trouble and may as well uninstall all the MMOs I’ve been trying to juggle.
And that’s it. That’s the post. 3 games in 3 days and I REALLY want to play them all. I doubt any of these will be super popular and probably I’m in a very small group in being excited for all three of them but… thanks Xbox, for all the interesting games this week!
I have to admit I’ve not really been playing World of Warcraft as much as I had anticipated, but I do pop in now and then. I’m not sure why I don’t play more. There’s nothing about it that bothers me or anything. I mean partially it is just due to playing so many games at once, but it’s partially that it hasn’t REALLY grabbed me yet. I am not playing through The War Within since I don’t have a level 70 character. I’m playing the last expansion, Dragonflight.
So far it has been a pretty chill experience, and maybe that is actually part of the issue? When I log in I play for a while and then I tend to get a little sleepy and so I log out. Mind you recently almost everything can make me feel a little sleepy (I need to talk to my doc about tweaking my meds so I’m not borderline narcoleptic). I started out doing every quest I saw but then decided instead to focus on the main questline to see how far that would take me and to see what it will unlock.
I have the new (?) dragon flight system that gives you skills to boost speed and height and a stamina bar. That’s pretty fun. And of course the area is new to me, though I’m not sure I appreciate it as much as some might. It is clearly intended to nudge you towards using the new flight tools since there’s a lot of vertical movement, but it’s also your typical fire and brimstone type biome. All lava and barren rock. At least the part I’m in now is. I honestly tend not to use mounts in games too often; I kind of like running around taking my time. And while I think you CAN get anywhere in this area by running to it, you’d spend a LOT of time circling spires looking for staircases.
I also don’t have any history with the characters so even though they talk about the years we’ve spent fighting side by side, I have no idea who they are. Without any context it’s a little hard to care about them.
I feel like a lot of this comes down to me becoming refamiliarized with the game and the lore to some extent. This should get better as I build some history with the NPCs I’m interacting with. There is nothing in the plot or the gameplay that I can point to and say “I’m not playing because I don’t like THIS.” It is all fine. It’s just not super compelling yet.
Huh, I didn’t intend to write such a ‘down on WoW’ post. OK not ‘down’ on it but maybe apathetic? Anyway, in fact I wanted to write this post because of something I really did enjoy! I did my first Dungeon yesterday using the new “Dungeon Diving with NPCs” system (not the actual name) that I think was added with Dragonflight? It was Neltharus, a Dragonflight dungeon, anyway. This NPC was loitering about outside the dungeon and offered to help. I said “OK let’s go” and the game asked me what role I was going to fill. I said DPS and bam, there I was inside with 4 NPC companions including a tank, a healer. a DPS and honestly not sure what the last was. Support? I dunno. [I of course forgot to take any screenshots.]
You can choose to lead the party or you can ask an NPC to lead. I did the latter and Captain Garrick, one of the NPCs and someone I know from Exile’s Reach, bellows “I’ll keep you safe” and takes off running. I have to say it was really just like playing with a PUG but without any attitude. Garrick ran from boss to boss. I struggled to keep up and follow everything that was happening, so just like playing with people! I felt awkward and dumb but I kept reminding myself “these are NPCs, they don’t care” and that was pretty nice. And at any time I could click a button to take back the lead and everyone would stop and wait for as long as I needed. No judgement from the NPCs!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE! this system. I let the NPC lead this time, but I might go back and do it again with me leading. The fight wasn’t really challenging at all but I definitely need practice with targeting and resource management and getting back the knack of watching the enemy, the party, and my own skill bars all at once. Being able to practice this without worrying that I’m irritating other people is amazing. And my assumption is that if I was playing with a friend, we could do the same thing and just get 3 NPC companions? I am not 100% sure on that, but Gwyn in case you are reading and are thinking of going back to play with Glo! (Though my understanding is this system only works on some of the newer dungeons.)
I know it’s a little weird to choose to play an MMO and then be delighted that I don’t have to play with other people, but that’s me in a nutshell. FF XIV has a similar system and I remember loving it there, too. I like being able to actually take my time and look around and appreciate the work that goes into these dungeons!
Got this 2-handed mace — they call it a mace, I’d call it a maul — as a drop during my first visit to a dungeon
For my trouble of doing the dungeon I got a couple of nice gear upgrades, so it was worth it from that point of view too. I’m looking forward to doing more of these and generally it made me excited to get through this content and into The War Within where I know they’ve really leaned into this system.
Meanwhile I hit level 25 with my new character, putting her at the same level as my once-upon-a-time level-capped pre-smush characters.
So I continue to push forward. Once I get these dragons sorted I look forward to going to fight the mole men or whomever lives in the bowels of the world in The War Within!
Today is the last day of the current Fallout 76 Season which started back in June. (I think it was June 12th.) Tomorrow we all start back at 0 (after re-downloading the entire game this patch — the devs are trying to make the client smaller which is requiring a complete re-download). I haven’t watched any data mining videos this time out so I’m not sure what is in store for the new season.
To recap how season progression works (or at least, how it worked this season) in Fallout 76, you gain season experience by doing various daily and weekly tasks, and you earn 25 “Season Tickets” per season level. Every few levels from 0 to 100 a new page of prizes unlocks and you purchase whatever looks interesting with these tickets. Level 100 is considered “Complete” and then you get into “Bonus Levels.” Nothing more unlocks until level 150 when you get a selection of purchasable “consumable” style items, and you can buy these over and over as long as you have the tickets. These are things like Atoms (for the cash shop), Lunchboxes (which offer buffs when consumed) and Perk Points (used to level up Legendary Perks).
I was determined to get to level 150 and spend my tickets on Perk Points to level up those Legendary Perks and I did it. (That’s the final page of the season pass at the top of this post.) In fact yesterday I hit level 200. I’m past where all the Legendary Perks that I use are maxed and I have tickets to spare. Trying to decide what to spend them on. I could bank Perk Points in case I decide to switch my Legendary Perk cards, or I could spend these tickets on one of my alts. But 200 seems like a good stopping point so I am NOT logging into Fallout 76 today, for the first time since June.
I have some personal struggles around becoming obsessive about things and chasing these season levels has become something of an obsession. For the past month or so I’ve never really played Fallout 76 for fun. I’d just to log in, do the Daily & Weekly Tasks as efficiently & quickly as possible so as to max that Season level, then I’d go play something else for enjoyment. That’s how I ‘broke’ Fallout 76 for myself. On the one hand there’s a certain level of satisfaction in having hit this goal but on the other hand… why?
My character now is so OP that not much in the game makes me break a sweat. There’s group content I can’t solo because it requires doing several things at once, but in terms of combat only the world bosses that result from dropping nukes even offer a challenge. Bethesda says they are aware of this and they intend to add more challenging content soon.
But even without challenging enemies I could be playing for fun. Doing quests and content I haven’t done, trying new builds, or working on my CAMP to make it cool. But by forcing myself to do those tasks every time I log in, Fallout 76 has become just another chore for me to do every day, and I’m really sad about that.
This next season I’ll be aiming to hit 100, at most, and that only if there’s something really interesting on the level 100 unlock page. And I know that hitting 100 is pretty easy, if I could hit 200 this time, so I won’t sweat missing days now and then.
There’s also a new crafting system to explore and I’m going to burn through a TON of Legendary Items I have been saving which is going to empty my stash and my backpack so I won’t have to deal with being over-encumbered all the time.
Basically the promise I am making to myself is that, for this coming season, I’ll play Fallout 76 for the fun, not for the metrics or the challenge of hitting some arbitrary number.
OK OK, total clickbait title. I am so very, very far from completing all the content available for Guild Wars 2 and even if/when I do that, can one ever really beat an MMO?
So here’s what really happened. In a convulsion of actual humanity, someone at my company decided to close our offices at 1 PM on Friday in celebration of the 3-day weekend. And against all odds I was actually free by 1:30 or so (usually there’s 1 tryhard somewhere in the company that insists on continuing to work and who needs support). That meant I had a few hours to myself with no chores to do and no obligations to partner or doggo, which doesn’t happen too often. And I had one mission left in the “My Story” part of Guild Wars 2 which, I THINK, was the ‘end’ of the tale when the game launched.
It’s fortunate I had those hours too, because it was a LONG mission; it took about 90 minutes start to finish. I’m not sure what would have happened if I’d been forced to stop part-way through but I’m hoping it would have ‘checkpointed’ my progress so I wouldn’t have had to start all over again when I came back. So was it worth doing?
In terms of story and characters, yeah it was. I’ve grown fond of this band of leaders of the world’s different factions. The story itself was fine but for me it was the characters that I really enjoyed. Even the ancillary characters who’re hanging around in the background can be amusing to watch and listen to.
Her: So tough guy: How’d a high profile swashbuckler like you get into the Order of Whispers? Him: I’m good at what they do. I may not fit their recruiting profile, but I get results. Him: What’s your excuse? A vivacious lass like you joined the uptight and straight-laced vigil? Her: Ha! That makes two of us that “don’t fit the profile.” Let’s have a drink and see what else we have in common.
In terms of rewards, well I got a level 80 Exotic helm, something I’d been about to buy off the trading post, so yeah definitely worth it for the rewards.
In terms of gameplay it was kind of a mixed bag. The straight-up battles were fun but there was a bit too much ‘gimmick’ fighting in it for my tastes. I don’t want to get into spoilers but it was one of those cases where you, the player, has to do several things at once while your ‘allies’ stand around and watch you. I get why they do this: so you can be the Big Damned Hero, but logically it bugs me. Like we’re saving the world, maybe get off your lazy butts and help!? 🙂
But I was really glad to finish, 12 years after buying the game. In terms of hours spent on this character, it was around 55 but of course I was doing a lot of stuff besides story missions.
So what’s next? Living World Season 1, which I almost immediately dove into. Haven’t got far yet but the bump in challenge is pretty welcome. From the very start the fights have been more interesting and there’s this little side story where one of your companions is being followed around by a baby creature and it is just so darned adorable. I hope nothing happens to it!
What I’m wrestling with now is whether to push on with my current character or try a different profession for a while. There’s a LOT of content yet to do and while I like my Warrior well enough maybe there’s a profession I’d like even more. Still pondering this…
It seems a little odd to do a monthly recap this month. Traditionally I’ve been doing those mostly as a reminder to future me as to what I was playing when. This month it’s all there in the posts I’ve already written. Also, ironically enough, I didn’t do as much gaming as I generally do because I spent so much time writing posts! I’m a pretty quick ‘rough draft’ writer but I make a ton of typos and errors and tend to spend a lot of time re-reading & re-writing, plus cropping and resizing screenshots, doing the SEO work and all that. And I STILL always find several mistakes after posting!!
So having blogged every day this month, will I continue? No, not daily. It’s just a bit too much for me. But my “whenever I feel like it” approach isn’t working either. I have gotten faster over the course of the month and the amount of mental effort it takes to write a post is much lower now than it was on August 1st, just demonstrating once again that the brain is a muscle. Writing a lot makes writing faster and easier…what a revelation! 🙂 I think I want to commit to a minimum of two posts a week and kind of hope for at least 3. But two seems like an easily achievable goal that won’t stress me out.
The reason I did Naaagust rather than Blaugust is because I generally HATE commitments. The running joke that I wasn’t in fact doing Blaugust but just happened to be posting every day gave me a mental escape hatch where I could stop any time I wanted to without feeling like I’d failed. Yes my brain is easily tricked, even when it is me doing the tricking.
Anyway, on to the traditional recap.
Playing
Fallout 76 — I’ve once again ‘broken’ a game for myself and this time it is Fallout 76. I so hyper-focused on advancing the Seasons that it became one more chore to do every day, like feeding the dog. I did it, but I did it as quickly as possible then shut the game down. I dabbled a bit with playing on PC which was fun for a few nights but then I started to think about duplicating the hundreds (over 500 in fact) of hours I’d devoted to the Xbox version and decided that life is too short to do all that over again. So Fallout 76 is kind of in a holding pattern until then next update drops (and the next season starts) in a few days. Sadly the big new feature for this update is delayed a bit, but we’ll get the new Legendary Crafting system which should be interesting. Just a matter of if it is “good interesting” or “bad interesting.” 🙂 I SHOULD hit level 200 in the current season before it ends, but I will NOT be stressing over the seasons stuff the next time around. I want the game to be fun again!
Oh I almost forgot, just this past Thursday I encountered a Legendary Treasure Hunter; a mob I’ve never seen before. I guess it must be from some event. It was on my private server so wasn’t something triggered by another player. I’ll have to do some research. [Fallout 76 is just not a game that screenshots well, sorry!]
These mole-miner Legendary Treasure Hunter was a new find for me this past week.
Diablo IV — This is a weird one. Every time I play my seasonal character I enjoy myself, and on the new PC I’m pretty dumbfounded by the spectacle of it all, particularly when I’m wearing headphones and it is at night and dark and no one else is around. It’s great! But… I just don’t boot it up very often and I am not sure why. Maybe it is as simple as having too many different gaming irons in the playtime fire and preferring to play games that friends are playing. I don’t play WITH friends but just talking on the socials about playing the same game as them is enjoyable.
Guild Wars 2 — This journey has been pretty well-documented this month, and I don’t plan to stop any time soon. This is probably the most fun I’ve ever had playing Guild Wars 2. I don’t think it is that the game has changed so much as that I have changed. I don’t question it too much, I just enjoy the ride.
Been taking my first steps into the Guild Wars 2 fashion scene, which of course is the true endgame! 🙂
World of Warcraft — I STILL can’t believe I’m back in WoW, but so far, at least, I’m having fun, but I’m not like ‘over the moon’ having fun. It helps that I skipped so many expansions so that in a lot of ways it feels like a new game. I think I need to stop doing every quest I see and get the story moving. My new character is something like level 21 now. We’ll see if it still gets listed in the September recap!
I guess that’s it then. You know me, always playing the newest games! LOL
Watching
Time Bandits (Apple TV) — We thought this was really cute. I guess folks were mad because it wasn’t a sequel to the original movie or something? I wasn’t really paying attention when it came out. But THIS Time Bandits is about a little kid, Kevin, who is a complete history nerd that falls in with a group of misfits who call themselves bandits but rarely manage to steal anything. Wherever in time they go, Kevin tends to be the smartest one in the room but he manages NOT to be obnoxious. We thought it was often funny and often sweet.
A Discovery of Witches (Netflix) — This is an urban fantasy series in the ‘sexy vampires’ genre. PartPurple loves this stuff and I usually only tolerate it, but for some reason this one is grabbing me. Maybe I’m just getting sappy in my old age. I’m not sure I would actually recommend it, though. This time out we have witches, vampires and demons living among us and they all hate each other. But our beautiful young witch main character falls in love with a 1500 year old vampire, upsetting all the other various creatures. We’re not too far into it but it’s OK so far. This one originally aired on AMC in the US.
Rent-A-Girlfriend (Crunchyroll) — I reviewed this one. Spoiler: I really enjoyed it!
Recovery of an MMO Junkie (Crunchyroll) — I reviewed this one too! Spoiler again: I really enjoyed it, too. Enough so that I’ve watched it twice now.
I KNOW we watched some other stuff but whatever it was left such a light impression on my brain that I’ve forgotten what it was!
Reading
Still nothing, really. Every so often I pick up The Tower of Swallows, book 4 in The Witcher series but you know, I’ve resisted admitting this to myself but I’m just not actually liking these books that much. I enjoy The Witcher games and The Witcher Netflix series but something about the pacing or the manner of storytelling in the novels isn’t super satisfying to me. There’s just one more after this so I’ll probably push through, but these are books that I WANT to like more than I ACTUALLY like. So make of that what you will.
And that’s Naaagust in the can! One more month of hellish summer and then maybe things will start to cool a bit. We did have a freakishly cool week this month which was just enough to get us all hopefully, then the brutal heat rolled back in. That’s just life in eastern North Carolina, I guess.
Now let’s see if I can post at least twice a week during the next month!
A few weeks ago I posted about buying a new set of Logitech peripherals. Now that I’ve been using them all for a while, I wanted to follow up with my thoughts on each one.
First up and the one I have the most issues with, the keyboard.
Logitech G915 TKL Wireless Tactile Version
I love the feel of this keyboard, which is obviously the most important aspect of a keyboard. It is mechanical but isn’t super loud and the keys are fairly low profile. They make various versions of this keyboard so this being the “Tactile” version is important to note. You can customize the F keys but I haven’t messed with that at all. In fact there appears to be a way to set up 3 versions of the F keys (and you can set up different profiles for different apps/games). The RGB lighting can be handled by the Ghub software or it can be connected to Windows 11’s Dynamic Lighting. I’ve done the latter just cuz, but honestly I didn’t notice this doing much. I eventually switched back to the Ghub system using a theme that marks the last key you hit in a different color. Why? I dunno, it just seemed interesting!
One nice perk for some is a “Game Mode” where you can disable certain keys, like the Windows key. I don’t use that since I use the XBox Game Bar for captures and such and it requires the Windows key, but I bet a lot of folks would appreciate this feature.
Now the downsides. The secondary functions of keys, like the $%^& symbols, do not light up and in a dark room you really can’t see them. It’s OK if your fingers are already in position since you probably know where these are, but if you’re just reaching over to hit the ^ key or something, if you’re like me you might not remember that’s on the 6 key. So that’s my first issue. My second is that when the lighting goes out, which it does pretty soon after you stop typing, the letters are really hard to see in a dark room. I generally have to tap a key to kick the lights on, then I can place my hands in the proper position. Ideally the lights would stay on a little longer and/or using the mouse would keep the keyboard lights on. Or, y’know, maybe have lettering that is readable even with the backlight off.
Of course you have to charge the keyboard (which is maybe why the lights go off so quickly) which isn’t a huge deal except the charging port is a micro-usb port and I’m surrounded by USB-C cables at this point. I bought a little micro-usb to usb-c adapter so I can just unplug my game controller and plug that cable into the keyboard to charge it, but a built in USB-C charging port would be welcome.
So that’s a lot of words about downsides but the important thing is I LOVE the feel of the keyboard so I’m still pretty happy with it. And even though I got the Wireless version just because it was what was available and I was too impatient to wait for the wired one to ship in a week, I’m pretty happy I did since it is nice to easily move the keyboard around without a cable knocking things over and such.
Logitech G502 X Wired Gaming Mouse
Very happy with this mouse. It has that asymmetric design where there is a kind of shelf for your thumb to rest on, and the mouse is very light. I keep it at 1600 dpi by default but it can go all the way up to 25,600 DPI. I set it that high once and that is just crazy and unusably fast, but it’s there if you’re The Flash or someone. The scroll wheel has both smooth and ‘ratchet’ scrolling with a button below the wheel to toggle between the two. You can save multiple profiles and there’s a second button to toggle through those. The scroll wheel pushes in and also clicks horizontally left and right. Next to the main left button are 2 extra buttons you can hit with your index finger pretty easily (by default they toggle DPI up/down) and on the side are three more that you can hit with your thumb. All of these can be customized per game and the Ghub software even offers Commands for a bunch of games. Like pick the Once Human profile and there’s a Summon Motorcycle command that is really just rebinding “G” but you don’t have to remember that the default key for Summon Motorcycle is apparently G.
I don’t have any downsides beyond I am still working on developing the muscle memory to hit all these buttons. I’m slowly adding custom button presses for the games I’ve been playing. Overall, super happy with the mouse and glad I got the wired version just because I have to assume a wireless version would be heavier due to the battery inside.
Logitech G Pro X SE Wired Gaming Headset
Really over the moon happy with this headset, but I do want to stress that I am not a true audiophile and a certain amount of hearing loss runs in my family as we age, and I am definitely experiencing that, along with a lot of tinnitus. So keeping all that in mind, the headset is super comfortable and really blocks out the world to where I have to tell PartPurple I’m putting them on so if she calls me and I ignore her, it isn’t that I’m being rude, I just can’t hear her. Music sounds really good, games sound great. The surround sound works really well, the mike SEEMS to work really well in testing though I still haven’t actually spoken to anyone using it. The Ghub software lets you set equalizer profiles, which I did, but once I found something I liked I just left it. As with the other peripherals you can set up custom profiles depending on app/game but I haven’t bothered so far.
Again, really no downsides. I maaaaybe should’ve gone with a wireless set, but since these are dedicated to using on the PC there’s something to be said for never having to worry about if they’re charged and what not. But having the cable dangling around is a bit of a hassle, particularly since Lola somehow always winds up with it wrapped around her paws (one of her MANY beds is right next to my gaming station).
So in conclusion, I guess this was a really boring post because basically I love all this gear. I won’t get any clicks for this! I should chosen something I hate as my topic for today.
But yeah, I’m just in this honeymoon PC gaming period. I LOVE my new PC, I love these peripherals, there are SO many games I want to play. All I need now is to win the lottery so I can quick my day job and just hang around playing all day!
I was kind of struggling to find ONE LAST topic for #naaagust earlier this week (I don’t always post things in the order I write them) when another round of Twitch drops came along and Tipa wrote a post about how odd the whole concept is. I commented there that I don’t often actively watch Twitch but I will open a stream and mute the tab just to get the drops. As I’m writing this I have the stream of an acquaintance from Mastodon in a muted tab. Not for drops but just to ‘help’ their channel. I think it helps?
But in case any streamers read this and are curious as to WHY I don’t watch Twitch, I figured I’d share in case it is helpful for them as a way to expand their audience. I mean I am not conceited enough to believe that I am some unique individual so if I think this way, there are probably others who think the same way.
I do want to stress, in the strongest terms possible, that I am NOT telling anyone what to do! I don’t know the business of streaming and if streaming is just a hobby for you then obviously you should do what brings you joy. I’m just sharing why I, personally, don’t often watch streams.
Why I Don’t Watch
First off, length. These streams tend to be LONG. I get that you’re probably supposed to dip in, stay a while, and go on about your business but I’m a bit OCD and am a start-to-finish person. It feels vaguely unsettling to leave something in progress. And I don’t really multitask, at least when there is sound involved. There’s no way I could watch a stream while I’m working because the streamer’s voice would break my concentration. When I’m not working, the 3 hours I could spend watching you stream is 3 hours I could spend playing a game myself which, sorry, I’d generally rather do! I don’t know how to ‘fix’ this, though. I assume you need to stream for a long time just because if you say you’re going to stream from 5pm to 6pm the chance of people working their schedules around that specific time slot is very slim.
I DO watch gaming content but it is generally on YouTube where it has been edited down to under 20 minutes and available on-demand. Anything longer than that takes a real commitment for me to start watching, and even then I probably won’t watch it all in one sitting. And just to be an even bigger pain in your behind, I won’t watch a VOD of your Twitch stream because when you’re talking to people in the chat I am only ‘hearing’ half the conversation, which I find annoying. I watch most content on a YouTube app on my TV so don’t ever read chat.
The second, and bigger, reason I don’t watch Twitch streams is spoilers. If you’re playing a game I want to play, I won’t watch because I want to discover what is in the game for myself. If you’re playing a game I don’t want to play, I’m PROBABLY not going to watch because I’m just not interested in that game.
Last is the little things, and these are SUPER subjective, but things that tend to make me turn off a stream: excessive shouting, and excessive cursing. And OF COURSE racism, misogyny and all that stuff but I think that goes without saying. But I personally am not a fan of that 14 year old boy energy that I encounter a lot on random streams. Fart jokes and things like that. A nice soothing voice helps, but I mean, your voice is your voice, right?
Why I Might Watch
So that’s kind of a dilemma, right? So what WILL I watch?
The few times I have gotten interested in watching a streamer it was some kind of ‘evergreen’ game that didn’t really have a set narrative. A good example, back when Mixer was a thing, was a guy who streamed Farming Simulator on a persistent, multiplayer farm. Farming Simulator is a game I’m kind of curious about but always get bored of playing, but since this person was working with others it was more interesting. Like one guy would be driving the machine that cuts the hay and another would be driving the truck that catches the hay bails and they’d have to stay coordinated (but often mayhem would ensue) They’d have daily chores to do like check on the apiaries or whatever. It was also a heavily modded version of the game so they had stuff to do that wasn’t in my version of Farming Simulator. There was also really no ‘start’ or ‘finish’ to the game so you could just drop in whenever and see what was going on. Maybe stay until the end of one set of chores or something.
So this channel was compelling because there was no set storyline to spoil, and since it was a group of players it was something I couldn’t do, in a game that I was actually interested in.
That, I guess, is my stream viewing sweet spot. Find a game that doesn’t have a narrative to be spoiled and play it in such a way that I can’t, or won’t, play myself. I’ve dabbled in watching e-sports a time or two as well. Match-based games. I don’t do PvP so I wouldn’t actually play these games, but watching skilled players can be interesting.
If I could find a group of likable friends that stream, it might be compelling. I tend to live my life with just 1 other person to talk to, so being exposed to a group of people chatting and having fun is intriguing to me. And probably not just to me. As evidence I point to Critical Role and generally the many D&D streams that are now popular. I mean MAYBE people watch for the role play but I suspect they watch just as much for the fun people are having together. (Note I don’t watch Critical Role because episodes are so danged long. One upon a time Deborah Ann Woll did a series called Relics & Rarities which was a role play series where each episode was an hour long, and that was something we loved.) I’d probably enjoy being a fly on the wall and watching you and a few friends have fun playing a game together. Probably a co-op game since there’s usually more friendly banter and less stress about winning or losing.
So in summary, maybe this is helpful or food for thought. Maybe it is just coming across as me being selfish and expecting the world to deliver exactly what I want it to! But I just wanted to give a glimpse into the mind of a non-viewer in case it is of any help to anyone. If anyone knows of streams that I might enjoy, giving all the above, please leave a comment!
If you asked me a few weeks ago if I was thinking of trying World of Warcraft again I would’ve told you a very firm “NOPE” but here I am.
Just to recap the journey up to now. First played WoW in the Friends & Family Beta when the only race you could play were the Undead. Or Forsaken? I can’t even remember the race name. The skeleton characters. Played at launch heavily up to the release of the Burning Crusades then quit. For a while I’d go back to try new expansions, and whichever one the Blood Elves were in was the last time I spent any amount of time at all playing.
At some point post-Cataclysm I tried again but, not knowing any better, I treated it like “Classic WoW” and just went to Northshire Abbey then Goldshire then Westfall just like I’d always done. I leveled so fast and gameplay was so easy I didn’t stay long. Maybe tried the same thing for Night Elves? Then I tried Classic but that was too far the other way, if you know what I mean. I’d done those first zones so often they just felt tedious and THAT leveling was too slow! All this stopped quite a few years ago. 3? 4? 5 maybe? A long while ago.
OK that brings us up to now, and if you’re playing WoW this will all be stuff you already know. I’m writing this more for friends who, like me, haven’t played in a long time.
I rolled a new character (because of course I did) and ran through the new starter zone called Exiles Reach. (You do have a choice of starting in your racial staring zone). I liked Exiles Reach because there was a nice group of characters from various races there which was a good reminder to me that this was “New WoW”. If doesn’t take too long to run through even doing everything (I think I did everything) and when you get out you’ll be about level 10 and you get ported to your race’s main city, in my case Stormwind. Good old Stormwind. It was kind of nice to learn I still knew my way around it without much trouble, aside from that new-fangled Harbor zone. When did Stormwind get a harbor?
Then I had a few choices. The game nudged me towards two, one of which was Dragonflight, the last expansion (this was before The War Within had launched) and the other was, I THINK, the ‘pre-patch’ zone that I’ve heard friends talking about and which didn’t look super interesting from what I’d seen. Seemed just a place to grind up levels, but I could be wrong and maybe that wasn’t even what choice #2 was. They don’t make it very clear (though once you decide on a ‘campaign’ they make it pretty hard to get lost). And if I didn’t want to do either of those I could’ve headed down to Elwynn Forest or something, but I knew I didn’t want to do that, at least not right away. There are also ways to go back and play earlier expansions but I think you need at least one high level character before you can access that system. I’m not sure how interested I am in that, anyway.
It’d be pretty hard to get lost in the campaign. If you forget to accept a quest the game will remind you, and while it is hard to see here, there’s an icon on the map showing exactly where you need to go
In the end I went with Dragonflight, a zone I’d never been to in a game that was both familiar and very alien. I feel like the narrative is much heavier than it used to be, which I’m enjoying. Not only do we get some cut scenes but also there are NPCs with conversation bubbles over their head. When you interact with these it kicks off a discussion between a few NPCs that you just eavesdrop on. I’m eating that stuff up.
There’s now a metric sh*t ton of stuff to collect and a lot of it is account-wide. I was over the moon when I checked the Mount collection and my Nightsaber mounts that my old main used to ride were in there. And you can ride immediately. [That’s Petra riding a Frostmane at the top of the post, though next to Cadet Sendrax both she and the cat look tiny!] Remember when you had to hit level 40 before you could even use a mount? There’s a ton of systems I know nothing about, but I could still take skinning so I can skin my kills and sell the leather, so that felt really familiar!
There’s now the Warband stuff where all your characters across all servers are part of an extended family. Aside from showing a group of them on the login screen I’m not sure what real impact that has. There is a shared bank vault for anyone in your Warband but it costs 1,000 gold which seemed crazy until I saw how fast gold accumulates in “new WoW”. So that’s something fun to work towards. I guess in the newer zones you can set things so that quests that you’ve already done on other characters are hidden which will be handy if I start running alts.
Like collecting things? There’s 48 pages worth of “Toy Box” items to collect.
And 42 pages of appearance items!
As for the actual minute-to-minute gameplay, that still feels like good old WoW to me. I’m playing a Paladin which I’ve played before. There’s now a specialization system (3 per class I guess) and you get skill points to spend as you level up. I honestly cannot recall if that was in vanilla WoW or not but it seems like another alt-friendly system. I THINK you can switch specializations at will, but I’m not sure.
I’m playing on a low-population server and noticed a lot of other characters had an * after their name. According to Google this means they’re from a different server. I’m not sure exactly how that works…did they choose to come play on Kirin Tor or does the game just magically move them to balance things out. Not sure. To be fair I’ve not interacted with anyone anyway. Even chat is quiet, to the point where I wondered if some channels defaulted to off but it didn’t seem that way. There’s a lot of odd things that don’t unlock until you get a few levels (like area looting unlocked at level 8 or something) so maybe the game is protecting me from “Barrens Chat” as we used to call it.
So yeah, having fun so far. Love learning about these dragon-people, which I didn’t know existed. New cultures with new lore is always fun. The old routine of grabbing 1 ‘big’ quest and then 2 or 3 ‘kill ten rats’ quests that happen in the same spot is both familiar and still enjoyable. Nothing like running back and handing in 3 or 4 quests all at the same time and watching the experience bar move! As I mentioned I’m really digging the heavier story telling.
So that’s where I’ll leave things for now but as I learn and experience more stuff I may be back with more WoW Journal Entries. While everyone else is talking about The War Within you can listen to me yammer on about Dragonflight!
The last time I talked about Guild Wars 2 I was in a bit of a slump after being my own worst enemy and basically turning the game into a chore to get through rather than a journey of pleasure. I took a few days more or less off which helped to clear my mental palate, and over the weekend jumped back in.
This time I went back to playing the way I favor which is, yes, to follow the “My Story” quests but to travel from one to the next on foot, allowing myself to be constantly distracted by events and vistas and whatever else pops up as I slowly uncover parts of the map. I really enjoy this style of play and I am not looking forward to having the whole map revealed, but I guess I have a ways to go before that is a problem.
Found an anniversary chest in my bank vault and got these cosmetic skins from it so Petra is no longer a pirate. Also note to self: Turn off my own name in the UI!So far I had one fight that was really tough (one fight that I should have been able to do on my own, I mean…clearly there are PLENTY of group fights that kick my butt) and for that one I needed to sleep on the fight, think of new ideas (and the game gave me hints along those lines, I just wasn’t listening) and then try them. Doing that I beat the fight the next day and it was really satisfying. So more of that, please.
If I AM going to have a real issue with Guild Wars 2, it might be due to what many people see as the game’s strength: the horizontal progression aspect. Right now my character is level 80 but her gear is not. Some of it is. Some of it is lower level than that. Then there’s the question of tier quality. The game pushes you towards having Exotic gear in each slot and I’m not there yet. The top 3 gear tiers are Exotic, Ascended and then Legendary but everyone says Legendary offers quality of life improvements but not better stats. So level 80 Ascended gear has the best stats in the game. And I’m already being urged to equip level 80 Exotic, which is just 1 tier down.
Thing is, I actually like the gear grind and farming for better gear and making my character more powerful. I have a ways to go before I have all level 80 Ascended gear, unless I watch one of the many “How to gear up fast” videos and follow along. But I DON’T want to go the trading post and just buy gear that some other player has crafted or found; where’s the enjoyment in that? Getting your gear is half the fun of MMOs for me!
So I was kind of in a dilemma and then Stargrace shared a game-changing tip with me. (PixelOne had told me about this earlier but it went right over my head because stuff goes in one ear and out the other with me.) There’s an item in the shop called the World Boss Portal Device. It costs 400 Gems ($5 US assuming you buy them for cash) but OMG it is awesome. You use it and it tells you what world bosses are close to spawning and it will portal you to their location. And just to make it even greater, you can set it up so it notifies you in text chat 10 minutes before a boss spawns, too.
For guildless, friendless players like me, this is a game changer. I used it to do two boss fights in a row and my only “gripe” is then I had to spend a bunch of time sorting through all the loot that I got from doing them! Most of it was salvage or trading post fodder but I did get a couple of upgrades from it, and that was from just 2 bosses and maybe an hour of playing. So now I know that whenever I want to change things up and work on getting some good gear “drops”, I can use this device to jump in a zerg attack on a world boss. Super fun stuff! Oh and it just so happened one of the bosses was Tequatl again, and this time I was actually contributing thanks to having a rifle in my bag.
The only “downside” to chasing world bosses is inventory management!
I still worry a bit about what will keep me engaged once I DO get all my gear, but that’s really just borrowing trouble because it’s a long way off and I do still have a bevy of alts to level up and gear up. I feel like I’m happiest in Guild Wars 2 when I just do my thing and don’t worry about the future, though that can be tough for me. I’m a born worrier.
So yeah, still enjoying myself now that I stopped fixating on getting through the content as quickly and efficiently as possible. We’ll see how long I can balance Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft but honestly if I AM going to play 2 MMOs at once, this feels like a good pair since they scratch different itches. Guild Wars 2 with its more action-y combat and vast world that is about ‘go do whatever, whenever’ and WOW with its tab target combat and strong quest lines to follow along (and yes, it’s lovely gear treadmill).
I tell you what, there are worse problems than having TWO games you’re currently enjoying!
Here we are, the last Sunday of this month in which I completely arbitrarily decided to try to see if I could blog every day, and it certainly had nothing to do with any kind of event organized around BLogging in AUGUST. It’s hard to imagine: only 6 more posts to go, and I have 2 in the can in case of emergencies and then there’s my usual monthly recap (mostly redundant this month but I still plan to do one). So I only need three more ideas and I’ll have made it! Yay go me!
But anyway, once again I’m going to call out a few games I’ve seen while watching Gamescom and Gamescom-adjacent coverage (which I am STILL doing, by the way…there’s SO much. Currently watching the Future Games Show coverage which I think just ‘happened’ to come out during Gamescom though I’m not 100% sure). I don’t bother talking about games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle or Star Wars Outlaws since I figure we all know about those. I like to share somewhat lesser-known games that just caught my eye for some reason (or in some cases, no particular reason!)
Redacted is a rogue-lite with what appears to be a lot of permanent upgrades you can purchase between runs. I can’t really do TRUE rogue-likes where you completely start from scratch every run. I just don’t have the patience. I need something to make me feel like I’ve made some kind of progression each run. Redacted is by the same team that did The Callisto Project but has a VERY different aesthetic. Bright and colorful and low on the gore. The premise is that you’re a guard in a prison on Callisto and the prison is overrun by beasties. There’s one escape pod left and you have to get to it before one of the prisoners (of which only a few are left) do. So you’re fighting monsters, you’re fighting these prisoners, and if you find the corpse you left from your last run, you can fight that. It’ll be as powerful as you were last time you died, so there’s a lot of risk there, but if you beat it you get back an upgrade that you had on that run. Big risk. big reward. Anyway here’s the trailer
Staying in the world of rogue-lites is 33 Immortals. This isn’t a new announcement but I’m mentioning it because there’s a beta running on Game Pass this weekend and I’ve tried it. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about it, but suffice to say that assuming it ships in good shape and isn’t full of bugs, I’ll be picking it up. The premise here is that you join 32 other players on a map chock-full of baddies. If you wander off on your own you’ll probably die, but herding 32 strangers is hard, right? And there are these mini-dungeon areas you’ll find that have even tougher enemies but again, going in alone is almost certain death so you have to kind of organically join a crowd and hope everyone goes in there. As with Redacted there are permanent upgrades you can purchase between runs so you’re always getting a little stronger. And once again, bright and colorful graphics. Here’s a 9 minute segment from the Xbox Gamescom coverage about the game:
Eternal Strands is not a rogue-lite! It’s fantasy game featuring mostly magical, physics-based combat, from what I can see. It’s from Yellow Brick Games, one member of whom is Mike Laidlaw who used to be with Bioware. I don’t actually know a lot about this one other than what is in the trailer, but I just got a good vibe from it. Maybe it’s because I followed Laidlaw back on ‘good’ Twitter so I feel that weird artificial connection to him that you get when you 1-way follow someone on social media. Ha!
Now if you know me, you know I love nautical themed games and I love pirates, even though, yeah I know REAL pirates weren’t, and are not, nice people. Just let me have this, OK? Rogue Waters is a pirating tactics game. It has both ship-to-ship and cutlass-to-cutlass combat, and just to be clear these are Saturday matinee pirates, get me, matey? It is not 100% clear how the ship-to-ship fights play out but once you’re on the enemy deck it appears to be pure tactics gameplay. Guess we’ll see when it comes out at the end of September.
Last up is Lost Skies which just caught my attention because grappling hooks and gliding. I love flying in games almost as much as I love captaining a pirate ship. This is another game I know almost nothing about but the very short trailer enchanted me, even if I can’t quite articulate why.
Oh, one last bonus game that doesn’t quite fit in the ‘you might not know about this one’ bucket, and that is Warhammer 40K Space Marines II. I’m sharing this just because I thought this was going to be another horde-mode co-op game like Vermintide but it is not. It’s got a proper single player campaign… two of them in fact. You CAN play these co-op but you don’t have to. And there’s PvP too if that is your thing. Here’s a 10 minute segment from the Xbox Gamescom show:
Man there’s a lot of games coming out, aren’t there? We all need more free hours in our days. We need a device that lets you step out of the time flow to a pocket dimension where you can play as much as you want, then step back into real time refreshed and ready for life’s annoying responsibilities. Someone invent that, please. I realize while you’re inventing it you probably won’t have any time for gaming, but y’know, just take one for the team, OK?
