Month: May 2018

Blogaversary!

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Blogaversary!

I got congratulated by WordPress recently on my 6-year anniversary. That didn’t seem right. Long-time readers (you’re both awesome, by the way) might note that I started this blog just before the launch of WildStar. I did some digging and was embarrassed to discover that I’d forgotten an aborted attempt at blogging during my SWTOR days. I’m not sure I ever actually went live with it, but I was planning a blog called “The Disgraceful Jedi”. I suppose it was due to unspoken peer pressure from my time with the Snark Side folks. That guild was overflowing with bloggers. I still count a couple of those guildies among my dearest friends, so I must have been doing something right even without joining all of their nonsense.

In any case, I did start blogging eventually, as you can see. It took WildStar’s awesome housing system to get me excited enough to do it. My first post here was in May 2014. During that time when I was madly in love with WildStar I was was writing tons of commentary and guides.

By 2015 I was still playing heavily, but I was blogging less. I had months-long gaps between posts here. I did participate in Blaugust that year though, and wrote my serious of shiphand / expedition guides. Later that year WS went free-to-play and my branching out to other games became more common.

In 2016 WildStar was becoming “inexplicably unsatisfying” to me. I played a lot of Diablo 3 and various solo games like Subnautica and Stardew Valley instead. That year I did at least manage to write something here every month. The launch of WoW:Legion sucked me back into that game and provided plenty of blog fodder. August 2016 was also when I started my reading challenge. On the one hand, it’s depressing that I still have so far to go to finish that list of 100 books. On the other hand, I’ve really been enjoying the process so who cares how long it takes?

By 2017 I was consistently writing “monthly goals” posts. It has helped me prioritize my gaming, and has the added benefit of letting me remember more clearly what I was working on back then. That year was a bit overwhelming with tons of great game releases. Between Horizon Zero Dawn, FFXV, Diablo 3’s Rise of the Necromancer, Destiny 2, and FFXIV: Stormblood, my dance card was very full. I somehow also managed to make time for some random completionist projects too. I cleared all of D3’s set challenge dungeons, and got all of the class mounts from WoW: Legion.

That brings us to this year. So far I’ve felt a bit adrift. I have a couple small projects going in WoW, but my play time there is pretty small. I’ve dabbled in D2, FFXIV, Monster Hunter, and D3 but nothing has been very sticky. Sometimes I’ve had more book posts here than game ones. Also I’ve been spending a lot more of my time and energy on my Creative Thing activities. I’m hoping that the next WoW expansion will bring some focus, but I am finding it hard to get hyped since I actively dislike the faction conflict premise.

I’m glad I have been writing here the past four years. I’ve met some cool people, and had interesting dialogs with commenters and other bloggers. I also have this record of what I’ve been up to for the past few years. Ultimately I guess I keep doing this because it is fun!

AggroChat #202 – Sequential Things

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Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

aggrochat202_720

Tonight we are extremely happy that Tam is still with us.  Find out how exactly he has managed to be hit five different times by motor vehicles.  With his ability to take a fall he is still with us and healing… but still very sore. We talk a bit about the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general terms and attempt to be as spoiler free as possible.  Largely we discuss what a feat it is to have 19 movies and 11 television series that all more or less interact with each other in the same shared universe. From there Kodra and Belghast talks a bit about Magic the Gathering Arena and the new quick draft mode.  Finally Tam talks a bit about his experiences with Yakuza Zero and what a weird game that ultimately is.

Topics Discussed:

  • Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • Magic the Gathering Arena Drafting
  • Yakuza 0

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Rudderless

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Rudderless

Last night was largely spent cleaning up quests that I have had in my log for a long while over in Monster Hunter World.  Since the Kulve event is over…  I feel like I don’t have as much of a pressing goal as I previously did.  I could of course just farm things like Nergigante for parts that I need to make awesome weapons, but the Kulve event sorta robbed me of a bit of the drive there.  Apart from the bow… I have a reasonable weapon option of every type right now.  Sure there are things I want to make but the need isn’t there in the same way that it once was given that I have a box full of decent options.  At this point I am hunter rank 70 and the meter is climbing extremely slowly on doing normal stuff.  In theory I should be engaging in a bunch of tempered fights but I really don’t like soloing in Monster Hunter World that much, and I also didn’t much feel like SOS Roulette last night…  so was stuck just wandering around and knocking out things that have been sitting in my log for awhile.

Rudderless

Monster Hunter World has more or less become my MMO of choice right now, and as a result it is making every other MMO feel really weird to play.  I’ve largely been checked out of Final Fantasy XIV for awhile now, and the Battle for Azeroth changes are making me not that keen on World of Warcraft.  I have the desire to play Elder Scrolls Online…  but I find myself lacking the focus since that is a game that requires all of my attention.  I realize this is an odd thing to say given that Monster Hunter World is way more reactionary than ESO is…  but I also have to play MHW upstairs and with Elder Scrolls I can chill out downstairs with the laptop while watching television.  I find my mind wandering or paying too close attention to something that is on television and end up in a horrible spot in Tamriel.  The other game that is sorta calling my name at this very moment is Star Wars the Old Republic because I really would love to play through the rest of the content I have missed.  I have not done any of Knights of the Eternal Throne, in fact the first quest of that expansion is sitting waiting there on my Jedi Knight for me to pick up and start playing.

Rudderless

Lately I have been trying to ease my way back into Destiny 2 given that the new expansion lands on Tuesday.  The moment to moment PVE gameplay is still every bit as fun as it ever was…  but my current problem with this game is actually a silly one.  I have been out of inventory space for a very long time and the pain of having to juggle items between characters or dismantle things immediately upon getting them wears me out.  When I have an MMO and my bags are a mess or I am lacking enough bag space in general… I find myself extremely demotivated to play it.  This is in part what is going wrong with Project Gorgon at this very moment…  I have next to no bag space and as a result I am constantly having to play the inventory management game which is the exact opposite of fun.  The expansion is adding another 100 slots and supposedly some of the kiosks we used to have back in Destiny 1 so we will see how this improves my opinion of the game by not having to care quite so closely about what was in each inventory slot.  In theory I would love to push my Warlock and Hunter through Curse of Osiris…  because that is a sign of just how hard I stalled out on this game.  The expansion landed and I only managed to get one character through before legitimately giving up and moving on to other things.

I’m in a really weird space with gaming in general right now and it seems like I spend more time getting ready to play a game… than actually sitting down and playing a game.  There is an intangible wanderlust that has effected me and I am not sure what the cure is.  It is almost as though I am too stressed on a daily basis to actually sit down and enjoy the things I am supposed to enjoy.  I’ve been through these periods in the past and sadly it has also cut off any desire I had to stream or be engaged with other people in any way.  It has been a rough several weeks and I have a feeling that at some point it has to let up… and the clouds will part once more and I will feel like a human being.  Apologies to anyone who is attempting to interact with me right now because I am sure the experience is lacking.

More Things Going Wrong

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Today I have a riveting tale from our long running compendium of things not going as planned, soon to be made into a major motion picture.  The sequence of events that I was expecting yesterday was to go to work and then around noon head home to wait for the air conditioning folks to come service our unit.  When we upgraded to the nonsense thing as tall as I am… one of its quirks is that instead of a small filter it has a mega HEPA filter and a light that is supposed to kill bacteria as it circulates through.  This apparatus is supposed to be replaced every year, but for the last three visits they have not had the correct part on the truck so we are going on two years with the same bits.  I made certain that I asked ahead this time when we scheduled the maintenance that they bring the correct part so that it could be changed.  In theory the serviceman was supposed to arrive around 1 pm and my thought was originally that I could have a relaxing afternoon as soon as he left.

What actually happened was that the guy showed up between 2 and 2:30 and immediately stated that he did not have the correct parts because for whatever reason they had us down with the wrong unit in their system.  He called around to try and get one of the other trucks to bring him a filter…  and when that failed he decided to do all of the bits he could do without the filter and then would have to go back to the shop and get it himself.  I had every indication that this was a thing he was going to do when he left my home and come right back to finish the job.  So I attempted to patiently wait…  and not really get into anything I could not drop immediately if the doorbell were to ring.

It was around 5:30 that I called into the business who stated that he was still scheduled to finish the job, but that he had gotten diverted to another site temporarily.  They assured me that we were next on the list and that he would be there shortly.  When my wife got home around 7:30 she was also perturbed and called in again after two hours had passed since the previous call.  She got the after hours on call service, and someone got back to us extremely quickly…  at that time they seemed to have no clue what was going on.  It was around 8:45 that he finally showed up with this nonsense filter and uv light in hand…  wrapped up the job and paid.

The problem with all of this is the fact that I felt like I couldn’t actually do anything because I had to be available for someone to swing by and deal with our stuff.  So what could have been a leisurely afternoon of gaming silliness turned into an anxiety riddled one where I was afraid to put on my headphones for fear I would miss the knocking on my door.  Hell there was an interlude in there where I ordered a pizza but was too afraid to actually sit down and eat for fear the guy would show up while I was attempting to chow down.  I am annoyed with the service company because I expected more from them.  Usually their estimates are pretty accurate for when someone will be showing up, but the whole not having this part on the trucks is frustrating.  If you are actively selling this system then you should be actively prepared to support it.

Anyways…  so you my readers get another “non-post” because I didn’t really get to sit down and do anything involved until around 9 pm last night…  at which time I logged into Monster Hunter World and got one more Kulve run in before we say farewell to that event for an unknown period of time.  I managed to get another orange Hammer and another purple Light Bowgun…  but even then I was more than happy to say goodbye knowing how much I have managed to get from it.  Still kinda annoyed that I never got a decent bow from the event, which only means that I now need to research what bow to craft so I can fill that gap in myself.