Where Exactly Is This Battle? – Blaugust 24

• MMORPG

• Battle for Azeroth
• Black Desert
• Blaugust
• World of Warcraft

This is going to get me into trouble, but I’m already bored with Battle for Azeroth. I didn’t even play yesterday. It’s basically a continuation of Legion, and … well, I already played Legion. The story that got me interested in the first place is nowhere to be seen. There is no “battle for Azeroth” taking place in the Battle for Azeroth expansion, as far as I can tell, at least through level 115. I knew this was going to happen, and I fell for the hype anyway.

The only things happening story-wise are little self-contained, isolated, unrelated errands scattered throughout Kul Tiras. The compelling character story between Jaina and her mother I mentioned before? Vanished into thin air, never to be seen again after a couple of Disney-style cut scenes in the beginning. It’s been a good 20 hours since I saw Jaina’s name even mentioned. Dealing with ramifications of war crimes committed by Sylvanas (which was all off-screen for me, since I came into the story late)? Never mentioned, as if it never happened.

I really miss the consistent, linear storytelling of Final Fantasy XIV’s Main Scenario Quest. I guess some people hate being forced to march through the MSQ on rails, but as an overarching storytelling device, it’s unmatched. You just can’t tell a long story without some kind of linear structure.

Anyway, I abandoned trying to finish all the “chapters” in Drustvar. Just like Legion, each zone has six or seven “chapters” in an overarching story, except you finish the overarching story after completing only three or four of the chapters, and the rest appear to be optional side-stories.

Upon returning to the Harbormaster’s Office and the Big Map On The Wall, I was given a quest called Tol Dagor: The Ashvane Overseer that looks like it might be related to Jaina, but it also looks like it leads into the dungeon for Tiragarde Sound. Womp womp. I went to Stormsong Valley instead.

For Honor Starter Edition

In other news, I picked up the free “Starter” edition of For Honor on Steam the other night. Only after installing it did I realize that I probably can’t play it very effectively until my thumb gets better. (I imagine it’s best played with a controller, and the mouse-and-keyboard keymappings feature the spacebar very prominently, which is still off-limits for me.)

My left thumb is considerably better, but still not 100% yet. I can bend it, but it’s stiff and occasionally pains me in odd ways (holding anything between my thumb and fingers, for example, like a plate, hurts my thumb). I can hold a controller and lightly operate the thumbsticks, but it feels like if I actually try to play a game for any length of time, I’ll end up hurting my thumb again and going right back to square one.

Black Desert Remastered

I also re-downloaded Black Desert Online last night to take a look at the “remastered” graphics. I logged in briefly, only to find that the graphics settings looked like they had been completely randomized. Everything was scaled weirdly and pixelated, and the mouse pointer was not aligned with the buttons, so it was a challenge to find the right place on the screen to activate buttons… the button is here but the mouse pointer only highlights it when you move it way over there.

I have similar problems when running a lot of modern games for the first time… the default resolution they pick ends up being completely wrong, scaled weird, or in a weird aspect ratio. I don’t know if it’s a common Nvidia problem or just my system or what. (I do have Windows set to scale fonts larger, which could be related.) Anyway BDO somehow ended up changing my Windows desktop resolution and I had to reboot to get it back to normal. I haven’t yet managed to see the new graphics in the game yet.