Once again I am going to lead off this morning with an update on the folks who have joined in the fun since my last post. I have a sneaking suspicion that these will continue especially considering we have a bunch of folks in the Discord who have yet to actually fill out the sign-up form. I am not officially counting someone until I have an entry in the sign up sheet from them. Another thing that has happened is I was asked to record a quick demo for the for someone to mix into their podcast. I am not sure if anyone else out there cares about such thing but I thought I would link it here. I did find myself falling into radio announcer voice a bit but whatever… I think it does a reasonable job of summarizing the event.
As far as the sign-ups we don’t have as many as we have had in past days. I feel like this is going to probably slow down a bit and then pick back up just prior to the event starting around July 25th.
New Participants
I want to give an extra call out to RumorsMatrix who completely bucked the notion of WordPress vs Blogger and went off and created his own custom blogging software. That is some awesome dedication and I highly suggest you check out [barely readable diary] because it is anything but. I’ve had a few questions recently about the whole Mentor vs Participant thing largely because there were some in the community that were viewing Participant as the “newbie” role and didn’t necessarily feel like they were ready for the “mentor” title either. Functionally this comes down to intent and less about who is new or not.
I’ve used the analogy of Blaugust as a Blogging Summer Camp, and in that concept the Mentors would effectively be the Camp Counselors. As a mentor you should feel comfortable with other bloggers coming up to you and asking for advice or some form of assistance. Participants on the other hand are folks who just want to join their blog into this nonsense and participate in the festival of blogging as a whole. I do however intend to try and track a few metrics that were not in the form, namely folks for whom this is their first Blaugust, and folks who started a brand new blog for the initiative. Ultimately if you just want to join in and have fun then Participant is likely the role for you.
Last night I continued my journey in Elder Scrolls Online Orsinium DLC and knocked out a few more areas before ultimately getting pulled into a crisis at work. You never want to hear the words “catastrophic failure” at 10 pm… but we managed to get everything wrapped up by 11ish. However it greatly cut into the flow of my evening and kept me from completing more than I otherwise would have. The depth of this content continues to impress me as does the scale, and I keep thinking in the back of my head… if all of these DLCs are this cool it might be a really long time before I chew through it. It sounds as though the key differentiation between a DLC and an Expansion is the first is largely centered around a single zone and the later includes multiple areas.
I am extremely thankful that I wound up finishing all three factions worth of content before starting any of the DLCs. There were times I contemplated straying off that path but it is really paying off in spades. During the original quest lines there are certain characters that stand out, and occasionally show back up multiple times during the course of the main story. One of the interesting things is that if you have completed all three factions… you end up getting recognized by characters that you have interacted with in all three campaigns. For example Neramo is part of the original Daggerfall starting area of Stros M’Kai and when I bumped into him in Wrothgar he recalled our previous adventures. Similarly you run into Rigurt the Brash a handful of times during the Ebonheart Pact story… and you can see how he is greeting me here.
Functionally this feels like the difference between starting Mass Effect with the first game and playing your way through all of them, each time importing your save game… and just starting with Mass Effect 3. I am hoping this time commitment continues to pay off as we move forward through other DLC… I did some googling and apparently at the least Neramo shows up a few more times in the future. It is this level of scripting and quest detail that makes the game feel so good as people greet you differently based on your past experiences. Sure it is an illusion and they are simply checking to see if this quest or that quest was completed, but it is a level of detail that is sorely missing in other games. I still remember how painfully jarring it was when I encountered Alexstrasza in the Twilight Highlands after completing several arcs for her during Wrath of the Lich King saving Wyrmrest Temple… and having her not remember my character in the least.
I have a huge backlog of Elder Scrolls Online content to get through and I am still greatly enjoying myself.
Even though I completed the entire season journey, I am still very engaged in Diablo 3 for the time being. Maybe it has something to do with the joy of double treasure goblins. It’s given me some time to work on achievements. You can see I’ve maxed out a few categories, like the set dungeons and campaign mode. I am sorely lacking in hardcore mode achievements though. I’m considering leveling a hardcore character this season just to knock out a few of the easier ones and bring that 31% up to something more respectable.
In other news,