Game Tools Revisited

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This is likely a post that very few people will care about, but I am making it nonetheless. Some years back I completely reworked the way my menu structure functioned, and among several tweaks was adding the “Game Tools” menu. Something you need to know about me is that I do not use bookmarks, and instead largely rely on the browser remembering sites I hit frequently when I start typing the name into the search bar. The end result is that I have near total recall while actively playing a game, but rapidly forget what sites I had been using when I go on one of my long breaks from a specific title. I wanted a way of keeping track of these resources that I regularly use while playing games that I often cycle back and forth between. The added benefit of the Game Tools menu is that it allowed me to easily share those same resources with anyone else interested in playing the game.

WordPress has this really neat functionality to nigh infinitely nest menus under one another, and I thought this to be a really cool way of creating a structure for links. The only problem here is that once a menu gets too large it becomes ridiculously cumbersome to manage. As a result any time I changed anything it would seemingly take a progressively longer amount of time to actually save the edit. I’ve even had the save fail completely and cause it to lose an entire submenu in the structure. This only served to cause me to not really want to touch the links at all and leave them more or less in an “as is” state. None of this made me happy, and like so many things in my life, I eventually reach a critical breaking point that brings me to action.

So instead of trying to come up with a clever way of handling this, I am legitimately rolling back to one of the earliest constructs of the internet… a static page. Right now I am in the process of converting all of the nested menu structures into a single landing page. This does a few things that are beneficial, namely, it reduces menu bloat but also serves to give me a place to make some commentary about each resource. At the time of writing this Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy V, New World, and Diablo 3 have been converted to this new structure. The rest will follow as I have time to take my contorted menu structure and rework it into something that makes sense in page form. I’m attempting group links a bit more than I have in the menu, but each game page is ending up a little bit different. I might roll some additional information on each page, like where you can actually find me in that game and maybe a link to that category of posts on the blog.

This is just one of several changes that have been a long time coming. Another thing that is really bothering me right now is the sidebar so I figure once I sort out my menus, that is probably going to be my next renovation. I’ve been consistently blogging on the same website for over thirteen years now, and I feel like I need to uproot a few things and move them around a bit. I still largely like the central column with sidebar format, because that is ultimately what feels the most blog-like for me personally. I’ve always felt like blogs are best experienced in the structural context of the chosen layout of the author, but I have to admit some of the more pictorial tumblr/instagram style formats drive me up a wall.

Again I am not sure anyone cares because I am not entirely certain anyone has actually used that “Game Tools” menu to access the resources contained within. However, I use it… and it will make things a little less fiddly to update.

Bel Goes Mad and Does PVP

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Good Morning Friends! I’ve not put a ton of effort into it but as I get time I have been collecting cats for my home instance, and I noticed in Rata Sum one of them has started hanging out with this random Asura on the roof. I think this is pretty freaking cute and that you all needed this in your lives. There are times when I question who the hell I am anymore. Firstly for so many years I was diametrically opposed to Guild Wars 2, or at the very least I did not understand what people saw in the game. For even longer I have been one of the most anti-PVP people I know in my circle… and what am I doing now? I am dabbling in PVP in Guild Wars 2, and enjoying myself. I legitimately am wondering if I need to find an exorcist.

It all started simple enough with Thalen repeatedly making the comment that we need to find someone into PVP so we can get the reward potions for the guild hall upgrades. At that point, I had been enjoying World vs World in the game for a while, and it planted a thought in my brain. If I can enjoy this game mode where I spend most of my time dead and running back… maybe I can actually enjoy the structured PVP in Guild Wars 2. One of the things that I enjoyed about the siege combat of the battlegrounds is that there really is no negative to it. The deaths don’t incur a cost, and almost any amount of time spent there is rewarding so it is pretty much a win/win situation. Lately, I have been using the rewards tracks to farm up Mystic Clovers, and my extreme need for them also planted the idea of maybe doing the Drizzlewood track in PVP as well.

So for the last several days, I have been on this weird mission to farm as many PVP potions as I could. This has more or less meant doing three of the four PVP dailies each day, with the fourth being inaccessible because I have no interest in joining a tournament and waiting around for it to start. Through sheer happenstance, I have landed on my Ranger as my WvW character and my fledgling Engineer as my PVP character. So each day at reset I do Tequatl, then pop over to Belglory my Engineer and knock out my PVP dailies, then finally land on my Ranger for some WvW dailies. The end result is that on an average day I am knocking out all but two of my dailies in total. Depending on how fast I get through all of this I often end up working on leveling the Engineer that is now I believe 73.

So far in my travels, I have encountered two different modes of play for PVP, the first of which being Stronghold. As far as I can tell there is only one map here called Battle of Champion’s Dusk, with the layout shown above. This is essentially a highly condensed version of Summoner’s Rift from League of Legends, with your objective being to break into the enemy fort at the end of your lane and kill the “Lord”. This is done by summoning “creeps” to borrow the LoL parlance, which travel down the lane and bombs the fortified door. These are summoned through collecting supplies that spawn in the center of the map and are a contested resource. Additionally, there are trebuchets on both sides that are constantly attacking the door, and players can disable these to slow down the progress of the enemy team. It is a perfectly cromulent game mode, but it is far from my favorite.

The mode I would far rather play is Conquest, which is essentially this game’s version of capture the flag or as I am most used to it Control from Destiny 2. There are three objectives that can be held by moving your team members into the circle and waiting for it to capture. Each objective you hold contributes points to your score and the first team to 500 points wins. Each map in the rotation also has some sort of a secondary objective that might be taking down NPCs that spawn at regular intervals for bonus points, or pushing through to an objective and channeling an orb to capture it for your team. I am not sure what it is about this mode but it feels much more simple and as a result more enjoyable. It seems to be way more flexible for random players, whereas Stronghold feels like it needs a fixed strategy and core teamwork. I may also be biased because my dumb turrets build seems to work swimmingly in Conquest and mostly fails in Stronghold.

Friends… I still have no clue who the hell I am anymore. I am championing a game that I resigned from the alpha testing for because I thought it felt awful. Now I am playing a game mode that I have traditionally railed against for breeding toxic players. I mean sure I have run into a few knobs so far in PVP and WvW but for the most part, everyone has been damned chill. I am certain that the toxicity exists, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised to just follow along and do some content. I did run into a commander the other night that was kicking anyone who would not join his Discord, so there was that. However, that has seemingly been the massive exception as opposed to being the norm. With my Necro, I mostly enjoyed taking camps, but with the Ranger, I find I am actually enjoying objective defense.

We need literally multiple hundred PVP potions for upgrades, so I am trying to ignore this and keep plugging away at it. We knocked out several of the other objectives in a similar faction by just contributing a little bit each day, so I figure slow and steady here will also win the race. I think more than anything that is the thing I am enjoying about Guild Wars 2. Progress is measured in weeks and months rather than days… which makes it feel not so crushing when you can’t do a certain thing on a specific day. All of the gearing objectives are working towards a long-tailed objective that isn’t also moving further away from me. Eventually, I will have Legendary items in the game, but I am also in no real rush to get there either, and not having them is not adversely impacting my enjoyment. So far at least it feels like pretty much everything is doable in a good set of starter exotics.

Mixtape Mondays: Contextual Rickroll

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Good Morning Friends! I hope you had a most excellent weekend. For those of us in the US, it was Mother’s Day and I hope that went off swimmingly for everyone. Me… well we spent some time on the side of a very busy turnpike because we had a spectacular flat. For anyone who might not be used to this feature of my blog, Mixtape Mondays are where I create a number of mixtapes and share them with you. As a kid, I was a prolific maker of mixtapes and loved the structure of lining up songs in a specific order to convey a feeling. The original series ran for 20 episodes before I ran out of creative juice, and now we are on week three of this revival. Who knows how long I will keep it going this time, but I still have a bit more ammunition ready to go.

Contextual Rickroll

The internet has a proud tradition of bait and switch tactics, and one of the proudest of these traditions is hyping something up and then linking the Never Gonna Give You Up video by Rick Astley. I am not sure why this one artifact of a bygone age came to represent the epitome of cringe, but it did. However too often it seems like folks view this one video as some sort of isolated incident or an odd happening that makes no sense. However friends… I am here to tell you that the theme song of the Rickroll, was absolutely an element of the times in which the song was created. I’ve kicked around the notion of creating a playlist for a while that places the song in its proper conditions. When I was in seventh grade I had fairly major sinus surgery and spent quite a bit of time laying in the hospital. Given that I grew up with cable… and as a result without MTV… I consumed as much as I could possibly watch. Never Gonna Give You Up was a new song at this time, and I present to you the auditory landscape of this era.

Track LIst

  • Heaven Is A Place On Earth – Belinda Carlisle
  • You Keep Me Hangin On – Kim Wilde
  • Tonight, Tonight, Tonight – Genesis
  • Higher Love – Steve Winwood
  • I Heard a Rumor – Bananarama
  • So Emotional – Whitney Houston
  • Heart And Soul – T’Pau
  • Breakout – Swing Out Sister
  • Glory of Love – Peter Cetera
  • Someday – Glass Tiger
  • Broken Wings – Mr. Mister
  • Holding Back the Years – Simply Red
  • Tell It to My Heart – Taylor Dayne
  • Never Gonna Give You Up – Rick Astley

Listen On Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Listen On Tidal

That friend brings to close the third Mixtape Monday in this new series. I can’t say that I am going to be listening to this one a ton, but it served a very specific purpose. Think of this as an auditory time capsule to place the Rickroll in its original context. For those who might be finding this as your first Mixtape Mondays post, I keep an archive of all of the mixtapes I have created shown below. I hope you all have a most excellent week, and I hope I manage to finish up a few more mixes before next Monday.

Taweret is Best

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Good Morning Friends! I’ve not really been feeling myself this week. It might be the constant rain or the impending stress of a holiday weekend and juggling visits to three houses. Whatever the case I have felt like going into turtle mode where I pull my head up into my shell. As such most of my gaming of late has been running around on my little Engineer in Guild Wars 2 and working on zone completion for leveling purposes. As of last night, she is 36 and I have at least one trait line fully trained to give me access to all sorts of goodies with my turrets. Engineer is a weird class, and honestly, I think it would be significantly better if the turrets were on shorter cooldowns. Essentially it feels like I can take on anything in the world… if I have my full retinue of mechanical friends, and the rest of the time I feel like a harsh glance could kill me.

The only World Boss that I have been doing on the regular is Tequatl, and of late I have been doing that on my Ranger. I am not sure why the sudden switch in allegiance, but doing Tequatl on a Longbow Ranger is pretty painless and I am mostly just running it for the chance at easy ascended gear. There are a few other bosses that would be probably beneficial to loop in, but it seems like I operate in one of two modes. Either I ride the World Boss train and spend all evening hitting everything, or I do Tequatl at reset and call it good for the rest of the evening. Once I settle into leveling an alt for the night, it is hard to poke my head back out and pay attention to other boss spawns from that point forward even though I get notifications. If I felt better this week I would probably be pushing the main story forward, but a fugue state of leveling my Engineer seems to be what my mind needs right now.

Moon Knight wrapped up and I am extremely happy with the conclusion of the series and where it places the character going forward for season two. The highlight of the series however is Taweret, because those ear wiggles are so damned great. I love the character of Layla and I have all sorts of theories as to how things are going to progress from here. However, I am seeing a lot of people who either were disappointed in the series or considered it generally meh. I’ve been talking to Thalen about this and I think it might be based on how bought into the character of Moon Knight you were going into the show. I was a Marvel kid and as such had encountered Moon Knight countless times… which gave me a firm understanding of which alters we might be seeing during the course of the show. The conclusion really is how I expected things to go down, or more so how it HAD to go down to progress.

Another interesting thing that I am watching now as it releases on YouTube is Mystery Incorporated, a version of Scooby Doo that appears to have taken notes from the modern Archie/Riverdale CW Series. So far it is interesting and very much NOT the slapstick romp that the cartoon is. Right now the only piece that exists is the pilot but it was interesting enough to subscribe to the channel and see where this goes. I’m not likely to get much gaming or media time this weekend, but at some point, there is a whole slew of other things that I want to catch up on. I purposefully waited until the entire Picard series had finished season 2 before checking that out, and then there is Strange New Worlds. I also need to actually sit down and watch my way through Discovery as well. Star Trek is definitely something that I have neglected over the years because while it was something I enjoyed… it was never the cultural touchstone for me that Star Was was.

There we have it… a blog post created. I sorta had to force my way through this one because I was not even sure what I wanted to talk about this morning. However, I did not want to go two days in a row without a post because it felt like I would be sliding down a potentially slippery slope back into going months between writing. Sometimes you just sorta have to brute force your way through it for a bit to keep the words flowing.