rift
Regularly Playing: August Edition
It has been most of the summer since I last updated my sidebar, and a lot of things have changed. Â I figured it was high time that I true things up since we are just about to go into the school year, and starting to enter a pretty tightly packed release schedule for the rest of the year. Â For those unfamiliar with this feature, I functionally talk about the things that I have added… the things that are remaining… and the things that I am ultimately removing from regular rotation. Â I play a lot of games at any given time… and generally speaking the moment I update my sidebar… Â I have a wild mood swing game wise that leads me somewhere completely differently. Â So here goes nothing!
To Those Remaining
Final Fantasy XIV
Since I last posted there has been a lot of movement in this game, namely the release of a new expansion called Stormblood. Â As a result I swapped my Heavensward icon out for a Stormblood one. Â As far as my time in the game… Â I’ve reached 70 and 310+ gear on both my Warrior and my Samurai and have fallen off significantly in the amount of time I am actually playing. Â There is still plenty to be done, and I want to get back in the swing of playing on a regular basis, however lately I am deep within my own turtle session which means I tend to be favoring games where I don’t have much of a crowd. Â Still well within the realm of active games, just only logging in once or twice a day instead of devoting all of my time to it.
To The Returning and New
Guild Wars 2
This is the first time since picking up the game at launch that I can legitimately say that I am really enjoying myself while playing this game. Â For whatever reason it took five years to actually click with me, and now it is like discovering hidden treasure. Â I am attempting to do all the things and it is fitting the bill really well because I don’t have much infrastructure in the game currently. Â My current goal is reaching 100% in all of the old world zones, which I believe is one of the requirements for starting down the Legendary weapon rabbit hole. Â Another huge boon for my enjoyment of the game is the fact that there are now proper beards for non-norn characters.
Rift
To be honest since its release in 2011 it has never really been far off my radar. Â Crawling back into Rift is like wrapping myself in a warm blanket, because it is so familiar. Â In the past six years I’ve had highs and lows with the game, but I know that regardless I will always return and always be interested in whatever happens to be going on. Â Recently during my turtle mode game play in general, I have been spending a bit of time trying to catch up and hit the Prophecy of Ahnket level cap. Â I am also digging the tweaks I made to my default outfit. Â Rift in many ways feels like this snapshot of what everyone wanted in a game around its release, and in some ways it is still ahead of its time. Â In other ways though it feels like a time capsule to a time when MMO games were slower paced and more methodical. Â I still find it enjoyable and am always proud to feature it on my sidebar when I am playing.
Diablo 3
Another game that is never far off my radar is Diablo 3, and with us currently being in the thrall of another season… Â it is obviously occupying some sidebar territory. Â This is the first season to feature Necromancers and it has been hilarious to see literally bone spikes for days. Â I really don’t have a whole lot to talk about the game because if by now you don’t get my attraction you probably never will.
World of Warcraft
I have honestly all but stopped playing World of Warcraft, but I am keeping a space on my sidebar for it because of the RoboSquid Armada. Â This is effectively our weird brain chain of trying to run every dungeon and raid in World of Warcraft at level in minimal gear. Â Prior to the launch of Stormblood we had left off at Blackfathom Deeps and it seems like everyone is coalescing towards starting this up again. Â I am more than happy to do some madness with my baby monk.
To Those Departing
Star Wars the Old Republic
If I am being completely honest… I have to say I love what this game has become. Â I had this awesome time playing through the Shadows of Revan, Ziost and Fallen Empire content and then I sort of needed a break from deeply story driven gaming. Â It was also around about this time that we were ramping up for the release of Stormblood. Â At some point in the future when I need to completely dive into something wholly immersive… I will pick this back up and run through the Eternal Throne story line. Â I still poke my head in from time to time, but not enough to keep it on the sidebar.
Horizon Zero Dawn
This is one of those games that I really need to finish, but I have a feeling by the time I ultimately get back around to it… Â I will functionally need to restart the experience. Â This game is a casualty of too many other games coming out at the same time… and ultimately its playtime got eaten up by Mass Effect Andromeda that for whatever reason clicked way harder with me than Horizon did. Â I really enjoyed the game but I feel like I am going to have to be in the right frame of mind to actually return to it.
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
Another game that has fallen off the radar that I want to start back up at some point is Breath of the Wild. Â Two things happened to harm this experience… firstly a bunch of other stuff got released. Â Secondly… I picked up the switch and decided to restart the game. Â I still play this occasionally but not enough to really keep it hanging out on the right side of the screen.
A Warm Blanket
Today marks the beginning of the whole “Daily Creative Thing” business and while you might have been expecting something from me… Â unfortunately you can’t really expect me to get up and do creativity by six in the morning. Â Sitting down and writing out a blog post is challenging enough. Â I am however planning on making something happen today or tonight depending upon when the muse hits me. Â The other big thing going on today is that it is my Nineteenth wedding anniversary, and while I am not entirely certain what we are doing to mark the occasion yet I am sure we will come up with something. Â In truth what it will probably mean is that my wife and I go out to dinner, and then wander around hitting the various stores and checking to see if they have started marking down their back to school stuff yet. Â “School Supply Season” is like Christmas for my wife, and while this is not exactly the normal thing for people to get excited about… Â it is for a teacher. Â I’ve spent many an hour over the years scrounging for one last folder or ruler or package of gluesticks for her classroom.
Work is still madness and I am still finding myself deep in the throes of turtle mode. Â Honestly more than anything what happens during these times is I resort to comfort gaming. Â I end up dusting off a game that I had not been playing that much and spend a significant chunk of time roaming around its world. Â Lately that has meant an awful lot of Rift because much like Phantasy Star Online yesterday… I carry a significant torch for this game as well. Â In honor of the occasion I decided to vary up my default wardrobe a bit from what I had been running around in the first screenshot… to what I am now running around in… Â which is honestly mostly just some dye and swapping a few pieces. Â I never managed to hit the “Prophecy of” level cap and I’ve just been working my way through any of the content that I had left to do in various zones. Â So far the thing that I am liking the most about the content is the way that each zone has this major event that takes place at the very end of the zone that ties up a bunch of loose threads from various quests and packages it neatly in this really epic fight. Â In many ways Rift feels like a game from a different time, and this has both good and bad aspects to it. Â The bad is it feels much slower than other MMOs and the time to kill and time to level can feel a little grating at times. Â However on the good side this is also this same thing that makes it feel familiar and lived in… Â and something that I can return to over and over to wear it like a blanket. Â The main problem that I have with Rift that ultimately causes me to wander away is that I don’t have my social infrastructure here. Â My circle of friends that I record the podcast and game on a nightly basis with… Â have moved on past this game and will likely never return. Â At this point I think I am just too set in my ways to branch out and build new communities, and I also know that I will soon return to the fold and wander away from the game myself.
Another game I have been playing a not insignificant amount of is Fallout 4.  This runs pretty damned smoothly on the laptop and it has been a recent go to for when I want to wander around a world and explore a bit.  In the theme of carrying torches for games… I have loved Fallout since I saved up my pennies to buy the first game when it released back in 1997.  I was going to college at the time and not really buying many games, but still made a beeline to Walmart to pick it up once I knew they had it in stock.  Side note… that was literally the only place in town that sold PC games and was before the mass expansion of Game Stop.  At that point Software Etc and Babbages still existed as separate entities as well as Comp USA and the unrelated Circuit City and Computer City.  When the games made the tradition to the open world format I was skeptical but quickly got on board thanks to my love of the Elder Scrolls games.  Now the modern Fallout games serve as this familiar touchstone that I can keep returning to anytime I need solace.  I’ve started countless games of Fallout 3 and New Vegas and it seems like now I am carrying that tradition over into Fallout 4 as well.  My default play mode tends to be to wander towards a corner of the map and do whatever happens to be there.  I am not really big for following larger quests in this game, and I likely would have never actually beaten it were it not for the fact that we chose this as a game club game… and I felt obligated to do so.  Gaming in general for me is not ever really about beating the game… but more about existing in that game world for a period of time.  The game world of choice is determined by whatever mood I happen to be in.  Fallout for me tends to be for when I am in a slower paced mood and want to wander around aimlessly dispensing frontier justice on the raiders.
Assorted Turtling
Yesterday was an exceedingly stressful day, and that combined with the fact that my wife is out of town… Â lead to a sudden bout of turtling. Â For those unfamiliar with the nomenclature… Â I go through these periods where I feel like I need to pull my head into my shell to attempt to remain sane. Â I’m thankful that I have a few friends that get it, and don’t give me too much hassle about it, but every so often I just reach this point where I need to disconnect from humanity. Â Last night was one of those nights and I cycled restlessly through a whole bunch of games to see if I could find something that would fit well enough to pass the evening in. Â The negative is that in theory this should have been a night I was tanking in Final Fantasy XIV, but I just could not handle communicating with others… Â or having anyone I cared about relying on me. Â The irony is that I wound up for a bit early in the evening in Destiny… Â and absolutely wound up carrying two other players hard through a random strike. Â I took a screenshot not because it is impressive… Â but because it shows the massive difference between my participation and that of the other two. Â This was on the Wretched Eye strike… and I wound up kiting the Ogre… and DPSing most things down… Â and resurrecting the other two people constantly. Â Now I know what Squirrel and Jex feel like when I run with them.
From there I wound up back downstairs and watched the last episode of Handmaid’s Tale… Â which is maybe not the best idea to watch when you are already feeling depressed. Â While doing so I ended booting up Rift and playing around some there. Â I am still level 67 and working on the Gedlo Badlands, which is not exactly my favorite zone so far. Â Moonshade Highlands is my jam, and I have never been that big of a fan of desolate desert landscapes… Â especially not ones where everything is on fire. Â That said I did make a lot of progress knocking out various quests and while it still feels like my experience bar isn’t really moving… Â the constant ding of planar levels seems to help the feeling of being mired. Â I have been running around with a heavy Warlord hybrid build, and while I have been absent it seems to have been buffed significantly. Â Previously I had a lot of problems with struggling to kill a given mob in time before it killed me. Â Now I seem to be able to run around and wreck things pretty safely. Â My biggest complaint with Starfall Prophecy now Prophecy of Ahnket… are the legendary morphs of abilities. Â Each of them seems to read like it is going to be universally better than the original… Â but after taking a few of them they seem to FEEL worse. Â The biggest problem here is that you cannot undo them without paying for a respec…and then you have to remember what the hell you chose as a spec down to the point where you screwed up and chose the wrong legendary morph. Â Personally I think the system should just be a toggle, and that you can have X number of legendaries toggled on equal to the number you have earned.
I also played a little Secret World Legends, which is something I seem to do just about every day… or at the very least I am logging in to get the rewards. Â I am not completely sold on the game but I am enjoying it enough to keep showing up and experiencing it. Â The combat feels fresh enough to make going through a bunch of quests I did long long ago feel worth it. Â My key complaint however is the game still does a piss poor job of clearly identifying which quests you have completed and which ones you have not. Â That was one of my biggest problems with the game is to log in and roam around through a sea of cutely named quests… that all sort of blend together in my head making it impossible to sort out if I have or have not completed them. Â This was even worse when it came to expansion content going into the game, and blending in among all of those other quests that I did a year ago. Â So far blade and elemental is fun enough, but I find myself really missing the shotgun… and with the way gear levels up in this game I feel like I am really not in a great place to switch gears at any point soon. Â I do have an extremely low level shotgun sitting in my inventory and I might try swapping it out at some point soon just to see if it is viable. Â I’ve moved on to the Savage Coast but there is honestly still a lot in Kingsmouth that I have never really gotten around to completing. Â My biggest complaint overall is as compared to the original… the drop rates of anything meaningful in the world is nonexistent. Â All of your gear seems to come from lootbags gained through doing quests… so I have a feeling that a big part of the “endgame” is going to be repeating quests on the daily reset to get more stuff to fuse into your gear. Â That doesn’t really bode well for those players that are not a big fan of grindy mechanics.