Uncategorized

Partner in Crime

by

Last night was a very good night, and one that I have needed for awhile. It had absolutely nothing to do with what I happened to be playing, which was of course Guild Wars 2, but instead the company I kept. I’ve talked about my friend Grace so many times over the years on this blog and quite honestly they are one of my favorite people on the planet. It used to be that we were pretty regularly on the same bandwidth when it came to games and were partners in crime… whatever that crime happened to be. Lately however we have fallen out of step and the crossover opportunities have been limited. Our fallback was always Diablo 3 and the coming of a brand new season roughly every three months. However we’ve both sworn off Blizzard titles for the moment until the situation there improves… which has been more painful than I can put into words because it has also cost us our regular decompression sessions.

The pandemic has been hard in wildly different ways for different people. Grace and I have managed to stay in contact and pretty much still talk every single day, but our long gaming sessions over voice chat have dwindled to non-existent. Last night however we opted to remedy that and while they spent the evening on a combination of the Switch and Knitting and I had a casual night of World Bosses in Guild Wars 2, we spent almost three hours just talking about whatever the conversation happened to bring up. We talked about parents, jobs, and they graciously listened to me go on at length about Guild Wars 2. I am not necessarily trying to sell Grace on the game but I certainly would love to have them try it, but also know that at least until Living World Season 1 has rolled out completely that is going to be a non-starter. I just have a problem with gushing about something when I am super into it, and Grace has been there for me as I gushed at length about other games that they were not interested in at all.

The sad thing as we were talking is that we realized we had not done one of these big lengthy catch up sessions… since probably last year sometime. That is way the hell too long honestly. Granted we hang out for the length of the AggroChat podcast, but that is a more directed conversation and less free form random word association. The next step however is we have to figure out some game we are both interested in playing at the same time. While I have missed the conversation, I have very much extremely missed the random nonsense that we often got up to when playing games together. Aging and adulthood sucks sometimes, because it often pulls you away from the sorts of interactions you need most. Part of it for me is that I have also not been as available as I once was given that I can only really hang on voice chat when I am upstairs due to the quirks of Parsec blocking microphones. Since I have been working remotely for the last three years… the upstairs is “Work” and when I get off I go downstairs to “Home”. Though last night was fine and I really need to try and sort out how to make a microphone work in spite of Parsec.

In other random news I am really enjoying the Halo series. I’ve said it before but I know next to nothing about Halo and I think it has helped my enjoyment. It does however make me want to go back and try and play the games again. I find it to be a really compelling setting and maybe it will act as a catalyst for me to actually get into the series in general. I know I had not played any of the Witcher games to the end until I watched the Netflix series, and that lead me to go on a deep dive and play everything Witcher related I could get my hands on. I technically own all of the Halo games, and even if I did not they are all available through Gamepass. At some point when I decide to get on a single player kick again, I should try and play through them all.

Pile of Guilty Pleasures

by

I have a bunch of things that I have repeated on this blog but never actually coalesced into a “feature”. I watch way more YouTube than I should, and I often times have a video running on my second monitor that I am halfway paying attention to. I could be watching something more meaningful… but I am trash. I have a number of guilty pleasure channels that I indulge in from time to time, and have shared a number of these in the past. Today I am going to share some more and you can judge me for my bad taste (at least on some of these).

Mythical Kitchen

I’ve been a fan of Rhett and Link for years, and through the transitive property of enjoyment… I got hooked on Mythical Kitchen when they spun that off as a secondary channel. Chef Josh is just the right level of endearing and annoying mixed into a compelling package. I also really like the larger cast of talent specifically Nicole, Trevor, and Vi. There are so many reoccurring bits and the one I linked today is where Josh cooks a three course meal for a famous food critic… and then decides to use some item commonly found in a Seven Eleven. It is this nexus of comedy show and cooking show that I particularly enjoy.

Overnight Channel/TFIL

So there is an awful lot about this channel that would normally annoy me. However something is going on with it that I find interesting. Firstly it very much seems to have started as the same bullshit prank channel that the internet is flooded with, but at some point they decided to lean super freaking hard into paranormal investigations. I am a sucker for these sorts of shows and if I happen to see a marathon of Ghost Adventures on… I am going to watch it. I have watched a number of these videos over the last few weeks and they have greatly improved their technique and are seemingly taking this shit way more seriously than you would expect from a channel of “himbos”. The disturbing thing is that they have managed to capture some pretty shocking evidence in spite of themselves. I think my interest comes from the fact that I too dabbled in EVP back in the late 90s and was in the orbit of a legitimate group of investigators here.

Adam Savage’s Tested

I love Adam Savage. I have loved this man since Myth Busters and I have continued to follow his career after that show stopped. The format of his Tested videos really changed with the pandemic and they became deeply personal, and honestly… something I enjoy so much better. I specifically linked a video of him showing off his Science Fiction Blaster collection, but probably my favorite videos are the “One Day Builds” series. My dad was a maker before that title existed, and honestly watching an Adam Savage video reminds me a lot of my father and visiting his own very similar workshop. My Mom is the sort of person that despises silence… and my Dad has always used his workshop as a way to get some peace and quiet. It is also great when Adam goes into stories about his movie prop making days.

New Rockstars

The next two picks should be taken as a pair and not individually. One of the interesting things that has shifted interesting over the last few years is the way that Disney shows have become the new “must see tv”. As a result I consume a certain amount of media surrounding these, namely I have gotten in this pattern of watching a show and then turning around and watching some of the easter egg videos or reaction breakdowns surrounding it. There are two channels that really stand out for me in the way they digest this media and then spin off content related to that. The first is New Rockstars and they probably have the higher production value.

Screencrush

The second of these is Screencrush and honestly… I think I like its overall aesthetic better. The entire show takes place within a set patterned off of a Blockbuster Video, which absolutely hits me straight in the nostalgia feels. Additionally Screencrush has Doug the Dog, and having a cute animal immediately improves everything. Like I said above I don’t really consider these two different picks on this list, but instead sort of bookends that provide similar but different experiences. For example I have been thinking about both the Dark Avengers and the Midnight Sons of late, trying to figure out how Moon Knight and Blade are going to work into these… and low and behold here is a video with some theories surrounding that.

Loading Ready Run

We close out this section with the granddaddy of guilty pleasure channels for me… Loading Ready Run. If for some reason you are not already in the orbit of this channel, I highly suggest at least tuning in each week for CheckPoint. This is effectively a condensed news comedy show and the takes they come up with are golden. The absolute best thing they have ever done however is Qwerpline, an imaginary radio talk show set in the occasionally eldritch city of Nsberg. I am also partial to Crapshots which is a very short form sketchy comedy show. Again if you are not already watching their content then I would suggest adding it to your rotation.

Quaggan are my Friends

by

Good Morning Friends. I am so screwed up right now in my schedule. The last few days we have not been getting up and around until 9 am, because my wife has been on spring break all week and then I took a few days off to join her. Always in the past our cat based alarm clock would kick in and Josie would get hyper active trying to wake us up. For whatever reason she has decided that it is a far better use of her time to just keep snuggling with us as we sleep peacefully… which results in us just not waking up at all. I foresee us needing to set an alarm clock for the next few days or Monday is going to be very awful.

In Guild Wars 2 the Quaggan are a effectively anthropomorphic dolphins. One thing that Guild Wars in general really nails is just how damned good it is at creating these anthro races. Quaggans however take the cake when it comes to adorableness. However now that I am up in the northern reaches I have encountered the even more adorable Arctic variants that are based on Orcas. I now want to live with these adorable frens. Cooo Quaggan just blew your mind!

I’ve continued to slowly push my way into the Living World 3 zones and I have to say… I love the way these are designed. Bloodstone Fen was pretty damned horrible, but I have greatly enjoyed Ember Bay, Bitterfrost Frontier, and now Lake Doric are phenomenal. There are so many activities popping off at any given moment, and they all feel extremely rewarding. It has been extremely challenging for me to sit down and say that I am going to focus fire the quests, because I want to spend every moment doing all the things and getting all the rewards. I have been waiting anxiously to get to Lake Doric because apparently this is the prime real estate for farming crafting materials. I’ve not spent much time in there, but the Centaur camp does seem pretty awesome.

My biggest complaint with Living World 3 has been that every fight appears to be a “find the stupid gimmick” encounter. Like this one from last night where I had to make the big invincible boss charge through all of the little invincible veteran mobs, so that he would destroy them in the process. Then finally after doing all of that… the fight took mere seconds to finish because I actually got to fight something rather than juggling gimmicks. I really hate gimmick fights. They always just seem like a way of dragging the fight out rather than letting you burn something down and be done with it. I get that they are trying to extend the length of the encounter and make it feel more epic… but it just doesn’t end up doing that when something goes from “unkillable” to dead when you have jumped through a sequence of artificial hoops. I hope this improves as we move into later content.

These encounters aside, I am still very much enjoying my time in Guild Wars 2. I sorta wish I could have arrived at a point of peace with this game a decade ago. I feel like I have lost so much time with something I am really enjoying. There is reasonably no way in hell I will ever really get caught up. Instead I am just sorta chewing away at whatever content fits my fancy for the moment. Guild Wars 2 really is sort of the ultimate choose your own adventure experience. It isn’t going to push you towards any one objective but when you know how to find them… there are so many long term grinds that feel worthwhile.

Buying Battlecat

by

Good Morning Friends! I hope you are recovering from sleep theft weekend. I found myself waking up this morning, setting a second alarm and then going back to sleep. This one seems to be hitting me personally harder than they usually do, but I am uncertain why. Whatever the case I mostly spent the weekend playing Guild Wars 2, which is probably of no surprise to anyone who has been reading this blog lately. Once the game clicked finally… I have been unpacking this huge box of things to do. So one of the things that I never quite understood before now is that while technically there are three expansions to Guild Wars 2, it is more like there are six.

What I mean by that is starting with Living World Season 3, each new season is almost like an expansion in itself with a large number of new zones being added to the game. While the scope of each zone is maybe not as grand as a proper expansion zone, they are most definitely cool. I am working my way through Living World Season 3 before starting Path of Fire properly. I’ve talked about this before with Elder Scrolls Online, but I have a strong desire to complete content in the order in which it was released. I screwed this up with Living World Season 2, given that I have now beaten Heart of Thorns before seeing it all the way through. However I did make it pretty far into Season 2 on my Warrior so I did not feel like I was missing a lot of information. At some point I will go back and finish that up. However going forward I want to try and follow the story track because it is actually getting interesting.

I spent a good chunk of last night running around the Ring of Fire zone and doing events as they popped up. It is shocking just how lucrative this new area appears to be at least compared to zones in the old school Tyria zones. I am guessing this is going to be a thing going forward as I spend more time in these new expansion zones. The story is also starting to ramp up so that I better understand what lead to Heart of Thorns and why our actions directly influenced the events. There are a lot of folks who really seem to hate Taimi but I find I really like that character. I mean she is infinitely less egotistical than Zojja was, but is still an Asuran so you have to sorta give her some slack. At some point I need to buckle down and find the rest of the drones that I am supposed to be reactivating.

Another big thing that happened this weekend is that I finished off the grind for my Warclaw, which should make World vs World significantly more enjoyable. It has sorta sucked being one of the only people on foot while everyone else rode around mounted. I talk about the steps required to get the mount in another post, but essentially I have been on the experience grind for awhile now having completed all of the other objectives. On Friday I got in with a really good group that was rolling through objectives left and right and ground out almost half of the progression track then. Last night I got back into the game and ground out the last pip of progress. Of course after ALL of the work… it still required that I spend 8 gold which I happily did to finish this out. If you can get in with a good commander, WvW is really an excellent source of resources especially high end leather and cloth.

I also managed to wrap up the meta achievement for killing all three Wurms in the Triple Trouble event. I did not grab a screenshot so instead you get one of me fighting another big baddie called Drakkar. That fight in particular is maybe the hardest thing that I have encountered in GW2 and had serious flashbacks to FFXIV raiding. I did however manage to get through Drakkar without dying at all, and managed to pick up a number of the achievements for avoiding things. I think we ultimately just didn’t have enough players to really make the fight manageable. I am guessing because of its relative difficulty level that it does not get run as often as the others. I find myself having a blast in this game and have so many long term grinds that I am working on… but often times find myself easily distracted by whatever happens to be going on in a specific zone.