WoW – Questioning My Belonging In MMORPGs
MMORPG players are abuzz about World of Warcraft’s next expansion, Battle for Azeroth, which begins next month. (There are too many posts to link here; throw a dart at the blogosphere and you’ll find a post on Battle for Azeroth preparations.) The last character I played in unsubscribed WoW: A level 3 Goblin, c. 2017 Nothing makes me puzzle over my association with the MMORPG genre more than a World of Warcraft expansion.
WoW – Questioning My Belonging In MMORPGs
MMORPG players are abuzz about World of Warcraft’s next expansion, Battle for Azeroth, which begins next month. (There are too many posts to link here; throw a dart at the blogosphere and you’ll find a post on Battle for Azeroth preparations.) The last character I played in unsubscribed WoW: A level 3 Goblin, c. 2017 Nothing makes me puzzle over my association with the MMORPG genre more than a World of Warcraft expansion.
Week End – WoW 8.0
Weekly news and observations. In The News The biggest news this week is the World of Warcraft 8.0 pre-expansion patch dropping Tuesday. I don’t have a WoW subscription and have no plans to play this expansion (which doesn’t actually begin until next month), at least not right away. It’s tempting to jump in with all the excitement at launch time, but I haven’t played WoW since about two weeks after the last expansion, and I know I’ll only play this expansion for about two weeks before running into the “I’ve done all of this before” wall, so I’ll just save myself the $65 this time around.
Week End – WoW 8.0
Weekly news and observations. In The News The biggest news this week is the World of Warcraft 8.0 pre-expansion patch dropping Tuesday. I don’t have a WoW subscription and have no plans to play this expansion (which doesn’t actually begin until next month), at least not right away. It’s tempting to jump in with all the excitement at launch time, but I haven’t played WoW since about two weeks after the last expansion, and I know I’ll only play this expansion for about two weeks before running into the “I’ve done all of this before” wall, so I’ll just save myself the $65 this time around.
BioShock Remastered
Way back in May I was looking for an easy game to play*, and I found the Remastered editions of BioShock and BioShock 2 in my Steam library. They appeared there for free when those editions were released, because I owned the original games. My original plan was to play BioShock 2, because I have owned it since the Christmas sale of 2010 and have yet to play it, but I didn’t remember the original story very well so I started up the first game instead.
BioShock Remastered
Way back in May I was looking for an easy game to play*, and I found the Remastered editions of BioShock and BioShock 2 in my Steam library. They appeared there for free when those editions were released, because I owned the original games. My original plan was to play BioShock 2, because I have owned it since the Christmas sale of 2010 and have yet to play it, but I didn’t remember the original story very well so I started up the first game instead.
Week End – A Pretty Boring Week
News and observations from the week. In The News It’s been another dead week, as far as I can tell. One of these days I’d love to do a statistical analysis to see just what percentage of news articles are about games still in development. I bet it would approach 50%. Last weekend, Tennocon, the Warframe fan conference, happened. The biggest news I remember hearing was Warframe coming to the Switch.
Week End – A Pretty Boring Week
News and observations from the week. In The News It’s been another dead week, as far as I can tell. One of these days I’d love to do a statistical analysis to see just what percentage of news articles are about games still in development. I bet it would approach 50%. Last weekend, Tennocon, the Warframe fan conference, happened. The biggest news I remember hearing was Warframe coming to the Switch.
Demon’s Souls, Briefly
As I wait for my hands and fingers and thumbs to regenerate themselves, which is taking forever-frankly at this point I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever be able to play an action game with a controller ever again-I thought I would try to injure my hands more by typing up a bit about Demon’s Souls. If nothing else, The Nexus has a lot more artistic style than Firelink Shrine. I’ve wanted to play Demon’s Souls ever since I played Dark Souls, three years ago.
Demon’s Souls, Briefly
As I wait for my hands and fingers and thumbs to regenerate themselves, which is taking forever-frankly at this point I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever be able to play an action game with a controller ever again-I thought I would try to injure my hands more by typing up a bit about Demon’s Souls. If nothing else, The Nexus has a lot more artistic style than Firelink Shrine. I’ve wanted to play Demon’s Souls ever since I played Dark Souls, three years ago.
Blaugust Reborn Is Happening
Belghast is rebooting Blaugust, so head on over there for all the details (and here for more details). All the cool kids are doing it. I probably won’t be able to participate formally, but I’m sure I’ll post something during the month and I’ll cheer everyone on from the sidelines. This is a screenshot of a cryptic book from Secret World Legends, which is supposed to sort of vaguely remind one of the topic of blogging when one doesn't have any better images around.
Blaugust Reborn Is Happening
Belghast is rebooting Blaugust, so head on over there for all the details (and here for more details). All the cool kids are doing it. I probably won’t be able to participate formally, but I’m sure I’ll post something during the month and I’ll cheer everyone on from the sidelines. This is a screenshot of a cryptic book from Secret World Legends, which is supposed to sort of vaguely remind one of the topic of blogging when one doesn't have any better images around.
Week End – Defiance 2050 I guess?
In The News Of course the big controversy of the week was that whole thing with ArenaNet and the influencer and the two writers, which I won’t rehash here. I kind of wish I hadn’t said anything yesterday, because it was “too soon.” I only meant to say I felt kind of guilty about having just written a scathing post about the game. Maybe I’ll revisit it in a few weeks, because I do think there are a lot of different lessons to be learned from the entire catastrophe.
Week End – Defiance 2050 I guess?
In The News Of course the big controversy of the week was that whole thing with ArenaNet and the influencer and the two writers, which I won’t rehash here. I kind of wish I hadn’t said anything yesterday, because it was “too soon.” I only meant to say I felt kind of guilty about having just written a scathing post about the game. Maybe I’ll revisit it in a few weeks, because I do think there are a lot of different lessons to be learned from the entire catastrophe.
GW2 – Writers Fired
Given recent unexpected events at ArenaNet, I feel pretty awful about my last post on GW2. I’ve expressed displeasure over ArenaNet’s handling of story and gameplay plenty of times here which is exactly the kind of thing that led to the firing of two ArenaNet writers. So I wanted to say a couple of things. Oddly contrite-looking Commander screenshot seems appropriate here. First of all, I absolutely respect any game writer or developer’s right to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, that I don’t understand the challenges associated with writing for a game, etc.