Blog Features

Regularly Playing: November 2019 Edition

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Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last Regularly Playing column. The idea behind this is that I throw out and update once a month talking about what I am playing and what has faded away. It also serves as an opportunity for me to “true up” my regularly playing widget in the sidebar of this blog. However had I updated at the beginning of October you would have largely just seen a single entry for Destiny 2. I was in a pretty unhappy place with Blizzard and it really made me not want to spend much time writing about what I was doing other than Destiny.

However we have a new month and with it comes some new perspectives. I’ve allowed myself to step back from that precipice even though I feel like a bit of a fraud for doing so. I was making myself unhappy by dwelling so much on the bad feelings. I am back dipping my toe into Blizzard things, but I am still largely feeling awful for doing so. However lets get to the list so I can start talking more about each one of them.

To Those Remaining

Destiny 2 – PC

I’ve been playing an excessive amount of Destiny 2 and if you have read my blog over the last month or so you will have noticed this. Destiny is in a truly amazing state right now and the Cross Save functionality has created this hotbed of players on the PC platform. Over night it seems that PC went from the lowest population platform to the highest as folks are taking advantage of just how much better the experience is on the PC as opposed to the aging console generation. I still only have a handful of people regularly playing but it helps greatly to have Thalen who is also going through a similar renaissance. I’ve more or less given up on most of the AggroChat crew understanding or even latching onto how great this game.

Diablo 3 – PC/Switch

This game was periodically off the menu… but as soon as I eased up on my stance regarding the Blizzard/Hong Kong situation it was one of the first things I logged into. With all of the news about Diablo 4 it has renewed my interests in playing some Diablo 3. I more or less failed miserably at this season but I did managed to knock out the cosmetics for it. I am hoping to get back on track with the new season starting soon and return to semi-regularly playing this with Grace.

Dragalia Lost – Android

This continues to be a nightly thing that I play as I am winding down from the day. I am not super active in it, but generally speaking I play enough each night to knock out the daily objectives. I am not sure what it is about this pattern that I find relaxing but generally speaking as I am wrapping up the last few things I am finding myself fighting to stay awake and can lay down the tablet and slumber peacefully. The release cadence as I have said before really is the piece that keeps me engaged, and the fact that I get a gacha summon pretty often through simply playing the game normally. They are not getting money from me, but they are getting a bunch of active usage.

World of Warcraft Classic – PC

I’m leaving this one on the list but I have to admit it is hanging by a thread here. I initially stopped playing Classic over the Hong Kong incident as I stopped playing any Blizzard games. However upon resuming play I am finding it exceptionally hard to get back into the slower pace of this game. I’ve become used to the run and gun pace of Destiny 2 and my brain is sorta fighting back against this. I had some experience with this when I came back to Classic after the launch of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep. In theory I probably need a bit more time to figure out how to slide back in and resume my path to 60.

To The New And Returning

The Outer Worlds – PC

While I am in a bit of a holding pattern thanks to activity in Destiny 2, I eased into The Outer Worlds a few weekends ago and am looking forward to maybe getting in and playing some more this weekend. This is pretty much the perfect logical successor to my favorite of the Fallout series, New Vegas. It is a weird remix of Fallout, Firefly, Bioshock and Mass Effect and were I not as addicted to Destiny as I currently am it would have become my primary game. I am sure I will get back in and play some more, hopefully prior to the podcast on Saturday.

World of Warcraft – Retail

This is one I did not expect, but after my ceasing of hostilities towards Blizzard… I am finding myself playing a lot more of Retail than I am of Classic. I got in the other night and did the 15th anniversary quests, but I am also finding myself just running around on the Demon Hunter a bit. The other thing I found odd was that I attempted to log into my Alliance characters and found myself turning my nose up at them because they just didn’t feel right. I guess I made a legitimate transition over to The Horde at some point? I blame Grace.

To Those Departing

Bloodstained – PC/Switch

I am sure I will pick this game back up at some point but I have had another things on my mind. In truth I will always be more of an MMO player than I ever am a purveyor of Single Player games. This one will get attention because I still have yet to beat it. I just haven’t been in the mood for it of late.

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers – PC

I am sorry Shadowbringers… you suffered a cruel fate at the hands of WoW Classic and never quite recovered. I know there is a new patch, with new content to experience… but I am also not exactly finding myself rushing back to play it. I am not exactly sure what it is with this game but I go through this cycle after the release of an expansion. I play it hard and heavy for awhile… level two characters… and then disappear. It happened to some extent with Heavensward but absolutely both Stormblood and Shadowbringers saw me in exactly the same pattern. Once the overarching story was completed, my desire to keep playing dissipated.

Magic the Gathering Arena – PC

I’ve also found myself simply not logging into Magic the Gathering Arena. This is a game that desperately needs a tablet friendly version. If that existed I would spend way more of that “before bedtime” tablet gaming playing Arena. As it stands when I am at a PC there are just other games I would rather be playing. I’ve also not felt nearly as connected with either War of the Spark or the Eldraine expansions as I have with previous themes. I loved Ixalan, and I think it might go down as probably my favorite non-Dominaria plane we visited. Return to Return to Ravnica felt weirdly watered down as though it were a subject that had been just spread too thin. I am sure I will return at some point but for right now it leaves the list.

Monster Hunter World Iceborne – PS4

You just never had a chance did you Iceborne. You launched at a bad time for me when my attentions were drawn elsewhere to WoW Classic. Then you announced the release of the PC version and I more or less decided to wait. The PC version really is the best version of the game and I found myself just struggling to get used to using a controller again. I am sorry that we just couldn’t come to a workable arrangement. I will see you in January.

Summary

Hopefully I can get back on the wagon of keeping this updated at the beginning of each month. We have a lot of familiar faces on the list in spite of a few of those exiting. I am sure for example I will play through the new patch content in FFXIV at some point, but that point is not now and it is not even really on my radar. My goal is to finish up The Outer Worlds and try and ease back into WoW Classic. However I have a bad habit of abandoning my goals.

Regularly Playing: September 2019 Edition

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For those who are new to this blog, I run a semi-monthly column of sorts where I track what I have been playing over the previous month. This does a few things but largely it allows me to track over the course of the years what I have been into at a given time. My blog serves as a bit of a record to jog my memory and help me firmly plant when certain events are happening. Also it allows my readers a window into what I am up to and what my thoughts are about a thing in short form. I also generally try and use this moment in time as a point to “true up” my sidebar widget.

To Those Remaining

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – PC / Switch

This one is sorta hanging on by a thread at this point, not for want of desire but more for lack of time. I have however booted it up and made a bit more progress over the past month as well as starting the Switch version. Word of warning, I would say if you are ONLY going to buy a single version of this game, maybe don’t buy the Switch version. It has some slowdown issues and the graphical fidelity are not up to snuff from what I have been used to with the PC version. As it stands I own copies of this I believe for every platform… largely because I want to support the hell out of this title and see more games in this series released.

Destiny 2 – PC / Xbox One / PS4

I have been playing considerably more of Destiny 2 than I had in the months leading up to now. There is a bunch of exciting stuff happening not the least of which is the enabling of Cross Save. I can now play my guardian on every single console platform in addition to the PC and have gone through the process of moving my character from Battle.net to Steam. I am super pumped about the launch of Shadowkeep coming up in October. Of note if you have ever played the PC version then it would behoove you to go through the process of moving your character from BNet to Steam because after October 1st it will not longer be accessible through the BNet client.

Diablo 3 – PC

I legitimately thought this one would be leaving my list this month. A new season started at the tail end of August and with the impending launch of World of Warcraft Classic a few days later, I fully expected to just skip out on this season. However I found myself once again logging in on a Friday night for the ritual Grace and I have maintained for the last several seasons. It is enough of a thing that it felt weird NOT to be playing Diablo 3 on an opening night. I had a lot of fun and we ran Demon Hunters just to make the season a little easier to complete. I’ve made it as far as unlocking the seasonal rewards and I am not sure if I will push any further.

Dragalia Lost – Android

This one is going to likely maintain a permanent slot on my list. Unfortunately I don’t really have any new screenshots because I no longer play on my phone where it is super easy to take screenshots. On my Galaxy Tab S4 I have to do a complicated volume down and power button to take a shot so I never do it. On my ZTE Axon 7 phone it is a 3 finger gesture to take a shot, and I am wondering if there is a way to restore that functionality to the tablet with an application or something. This game keeps my attention because they keep rolling out new events, with either brand new or revisiting boss encounters for me to play with. I pretty much play enough each night to complete the daily objectives and then head to sleep.

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers – PC

I went from hot and heavy to barely at all on this one. I got in, completed the Shadowbringers story and leveled the Warrior to 80 and my Samurai to 80 as well. Then I disappeared once again because other things released that pulled away my attention. I will continue to play this it fits and spurts for the remainder of this month I am certain, because my attention is being funneled super hard away from almost everything else that I have on my plate. I would really like to level a Magic DPS and a Healer so that I can see all of the Shadowbringers role quests. Still a great game I just am waiting on more story content to drag me back into it.

Magic the Gathering Arena – PC

My attention span for this game has been limited this month, but with the upcoming release content for Throne of Eldraine and the Brawl event happening right now I want to poke my head back in. I have to say though I would play this WAY more if I could play it from my Tablet. My winding down and bed routine would probably include a quick rush through Dragalia dailies and then a few matches of MTGA. I feel like they are missing out on a lot by not having a tablet client, though I guess in theory I could stream this from bed with Parsec. I should investigate how feasible that really is. I sorta wish that I could configure Parsec to work in a sort of console friendly mode where instead of my desktop I am presented with a board of icons of applications to launch.

To The New and Returning

Monster Hunter World Iceborne – PS4

I am a sucker. I did in fact buy this on the PS4 to be able to play it now… when I would way rather have just waited to play it on the PC. The PC version is so superior to the PS4 version for my purposes… however for some reason Capcom is maintaining a staggered schedule of releases. I still love the game and as a result they are getting two purchases from me. I am what is wrong with games and I know I should feel ashamed. I am honestly not sure how much time I will have to devote to this but I really want to poke around and try and get used to a PS4 Controller again.

World of Warcraft Classic – PC

This is the grand daddy of all things on this list and is consuming the most of my time. As of last night I hit 28 on my Undead Warrior and am about halfway to 29. I have plans already made to run Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Deep tonight with guildies, and this game is dominating my headspace at the moment. I cannot fully explain why it feels so good but god does it feel good to be back in Vanilla WoW. I knew I would be playing it because Grace had never gotten to experiment, but on some level I fully expected it just to be the two of us running around and doing nonsense. Instead we have a legitimately large guild full of friends all seemingly digging this experience. Long live House Kraken!

To Those Departing

Final Fantasy V – Android

This one largely lost focus somewhere around the Earth Shrine. I probably will return to it because I really like the idea of legitimately playing this without the Four Job Fiesta rules. That said on some level I agree with Ash on this one that the rules actually improve the game. Right now I feel like I need to do all of the things to min-max my characters, whereas playing under the rules dictates my actions. It limits the scope of what is available and causes me to focus on specific strategies. That said now that I know this is a reasonable option I might sign on next year for the Fiesta from my tablet. I just wish this version synced with any other version of the game so I could pop between playing on the PC for example and the tablet. Everything should have cross save.

Summary

The last several months have been pretty stable to be honest with not a lot of changes happening. Mostly a few things shift into focus as a few other things fall out of focus. I expect this month will be about World of Warcraft Classic with a side dish of Monster Hunter World Iceborne and a little bit of Destiny 2 especially as we get closer to the launch of Shadowkeep. Destiny has made me wish that literally every game had cross save if not cross play. I am mostly fine with having to buy a client for each platform, but I would love to be able to carry my characters over to it. There is no reason why Diablo 3 on the switch couldn’t have connected to Battle.net for example, and I have zero excitement over Overwatch Switch as it stands because I fully expect that it will not be connected to Battle.net either. I want more ability to play with my friends on the characters I have already spent time building, because quite frankly I don’t generally have enough bandwidth to level something new.

Blaugust 2019 Wrap up

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As of Sunday September 1st the running of the 2019 edition of Blaugust was finished. Yesterday I spent some time going through all of the blogs that had participated and tabulated the number of posts. Bonus points for Nait for helping me find a few posts that were not clearly visible on the front page of a few of the participating blogs. By final tally here are some of the statistics for 2019.

  • 1305 posts were made by Blagust 2019 Participants
  • 66 Individuals Participated
  • 11 Newbie Bloggers Participated
  • 55 out of 66 made at least 5 posts qualifying for Bronze
  • 36 made at least 15 posts qualifying for Silver
  • 31 made at least 25 posts qualifying for Gold
  • 27 made 31 or more posts during the month of August qualifying for Rainbow

We had one outlier this month and I went back an forth about it, but Data_Error embarked upon a project of making a post for every Pokemon and as a result wound up with a nonsense 83 posts during the month of August. Wilhelm and Bhagpuss both came in with over 40 posts with 49 and 42 respectively, making me think I need an entirely new award for over 40. I was however super impressed with the fact that Three of our newbies made 31 posts or more and one Newbie got the 25 or higher needed for Gold.

Without further ado, lets dig into the awards.

Bronze Award

These are individuals who made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2019.

Silver Award

These are individuals who made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2019

Gold Award

These are individuals who made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2019

Rainbow Award

These are individuals who made at least 31 posts during the month of August 2019

Honorable Mentions

These folks signed up and in a few case built brand new blogs, but didn’t quite make it to at least five posts. However I applaud anyone for signing up and making an effort.

I’ve always updated the media kit to include links to the various new award images. At some point I will dig through the backlogs of Blaugust and upload all of the previous awards there also. I think it was a really great year. We had a little less attendance than last year, but we also had a significant chunk of our participants make it to Rainbow. More important than anything is that it infused new life into the community with us branching out and reaching several folks who were brand new to Blaugust.

I want to take an extra moment to thank all of the Mentors who have watched the Discord and answered so many questions over the past two months. They also added support in so many other ways behind the scenes.

2019 Mentors

Here is hoping that we have a great year of blogging and that I will see you all next year for another Blaugust. During the months between please stay active in the Discord so we can hang out and continue the Blaugust magic for the entire year to come.

Obsidian Entertainment

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The challenge with the whole “Developer Appreciation Week” is that I have been doing these posts for quite some time. The folks that would immediately come to mind from my ever present fixation on MMORPGs have already been written about, likely more than once. So instead we are going to mine the well of my memories and start talking about studios that I really like the work of, that are maybe not as flashy as a Blizzard Entertainment or a Bioware. First up today is Obsidian Entertainment, which is going to have a bit of a twisting path considering I am also going to talk a bit about Black Isle the studio that largely became Obsidian.

The Black Isle Years

Interplay was one of those juggernaut studios of my adolescent and teen years. The division I wound up becoming most connected to however was Black Isle Studios. The whole publisher/developer relationship becomes a bit hazy at times but they danced a lovely duet with Bioware for some years during the creation of Baldur’s Gate and the follow on properties. However the two games I am going to write about specifically are as far as I am aware are firmly in the camp of Black Isle Studios.

Fallout 1 and Fallout 2

I am largely going to commit the sin of lumping Fallout 1 and 2 together for these purposes given that they are the offerings developed by Black Isle and the only two of the early PC games that I really claim. I have no clue what was going on with Tactics, nor do I really grok the console Brotherhood of Steel game. To say I was enamored with this game and its universe is a bit of an understatement. This came out when I was in college and I am pretty sure I ditched a few classes to play just a little bit more of it. I was on board with pretty much everything about this game, and imprinted extremely hard on it. I spent hours roaming the desert looking for one more secret.

Planescape Torment

Another game that I imprinted extremely hard on was Planescape Torment, which I did not play until way after it had released. One of my good friends burned through PC games extremely quickly, and he used to sell me an entire document box full of games for $50 as he was trying to clear out space. Planescape Torment was in one of these boxes and I played the hell out of it, with it even managing to pull me away from Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot which had become my nightly fare at the time. There was just something about the world building and the characters that hooked me. I was never really a huge fan of the Planescape setting, but after seeing the potential as exposed through Torment… I remember going out on Ebay and buying the old boxed set to read up more on it.

Rise of Obsidian Entertainment

With the bankruptcy of Interplay in 2003, Black Isle as we knew it was dissolved. Effectively two companies branched out from Interplay. The first was Troika Games in 1998 founded by Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson. The second was Obsidian Games in 2003 founded by Feargus Urquhart, Chis Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan and Chris Jones. Obsidian is effectively the continuation of Black Isle under a different name, adopting a similar white on black logo style and another name that more or less means “Black”.

Fallout New Vegas

I loved the reboot of the Fallout universe by Bethesda games, though I had always wondered what exactly Van Buren would have ended up looking like. All of the work that has leaked out over the years seems as though it would have taken a vastly different direction, and in truth I think Fallout did well to make the leap to a 3D open world engine. Fallout New Vegas however really is the ultimate version of this, bringing in all of the rich world building and attention to detail from the 2D game into the 3D realm.

New Vegas has one of the best openings of a fallout game, and as far as the overarching flow… it is one of the few times I actually care about the main plot. In Fallout 3 I n ever cared about meeting up with my father, and in Fallout 4 I absolutely did not give a flying fuck about getting that toddler back… but in New Vegas I wanted to find the man who shot me. I was invested in the story of the world in a way I have never been in one of the Bethesda outings. It is because of this that I will likely always list New Vegas as my favorite Fallout game.

Tyranny

An Obsidian game that I feel is criminally underrated is Tyranny. It came out in 2016 and represents a slightly different spin on the classic PC RPG. Instead of playing the hero you are effectively playing the enforcer of an evil overlord who has taken over all of the world but the territory you are sent to claim. You are sent there to deliver the Edict of Execution… that either you will resolve the surrender of the territory peacefully within 8 days or everyone in the entire region including yourself will be killed.

This is a good primer for what sort of game you are about to be playing. At every step there is choice, and these choices when chained together end up making vastly different play through experiences. Each decision has weight and with it you are effectively carving out your own destiny, in what is otherwise a relatively short game. I think it took me about 16 hours in my first play-through, and in subsequent play-thoughs significantly less. However each time has felt fresh and new which is something few games can really pull off.

Skyforge

Another game that I feel is deeply underrated is Skyforge, an Action MMORPG that Obsidian worked with the Allods team to create. The world is somewhat nonsense, but nonetheless lovingly crafted as you are effectively a God that has risen after the death of your previous incarnation. You use your powers to help the people fight off alien incursions, in what is effectively a Mission and Lobby based MMORPG. I find it deeply enjoyable when you play it with a controller especially, and slightly less so with a mouse and keyboard. From an MMO and RPG aspect it seems extremely simple, and I am guessing that Obsidian was largely involved in setting the world in motion, and occasionally with Story Arcs. Regardless it is a fun game that Obsidian had a hand in so I am mentioning it.

The Microsoft Era

In November of 2018, Obsidian Entertainment was acquired by Microsoft in its recent grab to start locking down studios for exclusives. As such we are entering yet another phase in the life of this constantly morphing studio. So far it seems like Microsoft has been an excellent steward of the companies it has snatched up. Another favorite of my Undead Labs seemingly has had an excellent and productive relationship under the yoke. So I am hoping that Obsidian can get all of the resources it needs to similarly succeed.

The Outer Worlds

The game I am looking forward to that is just around the corner is The Outer Worlds slotted to release on October 25th. Everything I have seen about this game makes it seem like Obsidian is effectively creating a new IP based on a very familiar Fallout style game. My first impressions were… what if Fallout were actually a Firefly-esc Wild West in Outer Space type game. The few gameplay sessions I have watched make me think that it is going to bring the same sort of weighty decision making, each time giving you an option to resolve something peaceably or to just wade in guns blazing… and ultimately have to deal with those circumstances later.

I have watched enough to know I will be picking this up, but I am largely avoiding much coverage for fear of seeing too much. I want the experiences I have in this game to be fresh and new and not reminiscent of something I once saw in an E3 demo. Secretly I am hoping that we are going to be getting something that can rival my memories of New Vegas. However if I just get 20-30 hours of enjoyment out of it I will be super happy.