April Fruit-Surprise Salad (Wurm, Vanguard)

Oh well, I’m kind of glad Wurm gave me a push. I’ll start with Wurm because I’ve decided to back out fast – well as fast as you can do anything in Wurm, which isn’t all that quick. I’ll contract to just paying for one premium on Celebration (plus upkeep) and wait and see what happens from there. I’ll hang on to the North Independence deed as long as I can but I think that has to go too. I am not sure why this has caught me on the funnybone – size of the price rise? Well, it’s more an annoyance than a gamebreaker. Bombshell way it was done? No, that’s normal. Wierdness of increasing prices (on a sub!) by 60% when the rest of the industry is becoming more price competitive? Nope that kind of sheer peculiar is totally normal for Wurm and even what is the word… entrancing….

A combination of constantly accelerating decay and having to log in frequently whether it’s convenient or not is much more likely to be my problem. It’s a high maintenance game! And I don’t need another job/mortgage/dependent. Anyway we’ll see what happens. I was only going to go dormant at the end of 2013. Bringing it forward feels like a relief which tells me I’m doing the right thing (for me). I hope dormant is good enough because I don’t want to quit completely. I do want to deinvest though. Some people will be extending themselves to buy extra premium and silver before May 2, I do not intend to do that. I know there’s probably some moneymaking opportunity there, but  metagaming for real profit doesn’t float my boat (tedious). Plus, when I get caught up in sweeping changes I aim at somewhere near revenue neutral and get in a position from which I can move/wait it out. The poor old Wurm ingame economy such as it is, is going to be a bit strange for a while – just guessing.

The good news is that this will free up time to finish the Begunner’s Guide and perhaps I can even do some more guide/informational Wurm posts. I’d like that. It’s such a fascinating game, and very different to anything else. Doing guides helps me see that afresh. Yes, the root of my problem is the time that maintenance demands in Wurm and that’s making me scale down – it was on the cards already. The price rise just made me do an unscheduled evaluation – and I realised I’d rather scale back sooner than later.

I wish I knew enough about Vanguard to do guides, but I definitely don’t !! (yet)  The magic persists even though the merge of Halgar and Telon servers resulted in a laggy mess. With graphics turned down it’s playable and I’m hoping things will improve.  I have no idea why Vanguard attracts me so much. The obvious things are that the classes are all distinct, the levelling is slow and satisfying, the questing is interesting, for the first time ever I’m reading the lore. I’ve thought about it a lot. And I’ve decided those things are all great but not enough to explain why I am so magnetically drawn to this game. Luckily I don’t mind not knowing things if I know I don’t know them. I am quite happily prancing about on an assortment of alts all now orbiting level 10 apart from a couple of stragglers and two that are in their teens. They do not have marvellous clothing, nor am I excited about Vanguard housing. From what I can understand it’s another one of those “you have to maintain it” deals and I think I’ve had high maintenance up to the gunnels. They are just simply fun to play. I like the new spells you get every two levels. That reward system both encourages you onward and upward and breaks up the levelling cycle. And, most importantly, those spells are often interesting and suprising – not just some stats wrapped up in some sparkly stuff. It makes a big difference.

I also like the small touches you come across here and there. Generally Vanguard is sort of empty, which I don’t mind since wide open spaces are the kind of thing I was brought up with. I like it when my eyes do not bump into stuff on their way to the distance. It’s fine and eases my soul. Where I come from sometimes the entire landscape was punctuated by only one small shrub. But in that apparent emptiness there are things to discover, and I like that too. Mysterious giant bones. Small settlements in the middle of nowhere, a pair of fighters sparring, copper pots. Just odds and ends, yet someone put them there perhaps for a reason, or maybe they were forgotten. The game feels layered and historied. It is an artefact.

Those two were the only games I played this month. Due to the people currently in charge of this country, life is unsettled and I’ve been scuttling about (like most people) getting hatches battened down for the inevitable stuff hitting the fan. Throughout the land costs are way higher than officially reported and wages (and other income) are regressed to danger point, budgets need to be rethought, but at least the unprecedented barrage of forms and other garbage has ceased streaming through my letterbox. Four months of it – unbelievable. I’m hoping I can now ignore the morass of incompetence above me for the rest of the year! I will try to anyway. But I’m not promising to play more games because things are now so peculiar in this country that anything could happen. Heh there are very much times I want to stick my head out of the window and yell “make the madness stopppppppppp so I can get back to my normal routine!! (I better not.)

There’s also that I’m enjoying PlanetGardenShed more than before now that it’s beginning to hang together, albeit as a structural prototype. It’s become more of an escape than other games – I don’t know if that will continue. I think… even just having a play-space where nobody is experimentally poking at me me hoping I’ll magically create money from nothing (or do their work for them)  is providing more relief from life than gaming possibly can. Other people’s creations are still highly intriguing, and always will be. I read more, far more blogs than I ever write posts on mine. It is like visiting other worlds, familiar, but different. I’m addicted. But just for now perhaps life’s tide is at a place where I don’t want the demands that go with enjoying stridently commercial offerings. That’s my theory and I’ll keep it for as long as it fits.

Small Frozen Fruit Salad wrapped in Fog (2013)(Vanguard, EQ2, Wurm)

Over here we saw some sun already this year but the trees are still asleep, their buds barely visible – they knew we were in for another cold spell. I’m supposed to be out and about today but happens I have a choice in the matter and I’m not stupid. So home I am, with work to do and warm, and sensible it is too plus good for the environment. Outiside is freezing fog. This won’t take long. The fallout from January continues, albeit at a slower rate and I’ve been busy with real things. I’ve played but 3 games plus Frog Fractions which I still haven’t finished even though it’s quite short.

Vanguard continues to fascinate, I’m delighted to say. It’s the game I played most. I now just about have one of everything and have managed to see Pankhor Zhi (it’s empty), and sent a Kurashasa homeward, but the Kurashasa zone is already shut off, so too late. Quite nice plinking around nearby though where there are the starter quests for another race to be had (I forget which). A little Raki made it all the way to the wood-elf starting zone, but the pics are on my zapped external hdd, and a lesser giant made it to Halgarad (hope I spelled it right). I really like the old starter zones. I don’t care about the gear, I like the variety. This is a fabulous game to solo in by the way. Nothing is too easy, which makes it all quite gripping. Slowly I’m meeting people too and it all feels very natural. I do have the secret weapon of course, I can always get a family member to group with me and tackle anything unsoloable, but so far haven’t needed to.

Phew

Everquest 2 yay, played this second most much and I neglect writing about it I know. So far it’s been a total voyage of discovery and I’ve now discovered too much to catch up on is the problem. I will make a new alt and write about all the bits as I come across them is probably the best way to tackle it. And I do want to because this is a massive game with a huge amount of good stuff in it. It’s also (oddly for an MMORPG) a game in which one of the alts has a “life” of her own (the big girl). The Big Girl is a story – mostly my alts have the (soon to be devalued) clothes they stand in and a few kills, very thin, but the Big Girl is more complex and more fun. I think she has her own take on the male gaze for one thing. Hahaha!

Poor old Wurm has made it to the household chores list, the real one. At the bottom. Well…  I log in, do chores, log out and not much to say really except it’s working. Nothing has crumbled to dust and my skills are going up. I also get to chat to friends if they’re around. I don’t have the time for this game. I’m wriggling and squirming to fit it in but it’s like trying to keep an octopus in a fish tank. I’ll do this ‘improve year’, review in June and most likely go dormant in December – with real regret. I’d like to keep playing, but there’s far too much maintenance. The whole point of a virtual world is that it should exist independent of me, and I’m afraid that bargain has to include my stuff has to exist independent of me because I don’t have the time to sustain it.  So, yeah, guess decay did for me in the end. I think the decision is made really. I can’t see “dormant” lasting long either since the trader would still be needing fed. Too many, way too many chores. Sill, I’m there for this year.

Footnote: If you want to see what’s left of the starting zones in Vanguard – I found this guide helpful:

http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Old_Starter_Towns_Guide

Small Festive Fruit Salad – ((the best gifties) EQ2, GW1, Wurm, Wow) and some singleplayer games

Pressies thin out some as you get older, at least until you have grandchildren to make homemade ones, (hopefully), which I don’t have yet. So I spent Christmas play hours with the game that gave me the nicest gifts. So there.

The Big Girl looking unusually spiffy, (helm closed though (shy!))

It was Frostfell the first time I played Everquest II and I remember how impressed I was then. Nowadays the game runs much better and I’m still impressed. Every year more content is added. Gifts are given out daily (for quite a long time – right through early January) and accessible to f2p (and trial !!) players too. New items are added. Useful items, craftables, and decorative items. Yay! Thank you Everquest for that very seasonal and generous reminder that there can be, even in this old world, enough nice stuff for everyone if the effort is made. It does warm the heart. Hey, guess what I bought an expansion! Destiny of Velious (edit: no, sigh, I “misread”. DoV is not included. Dontcha just love advertising that makes you think something when something else is true) is now included with Age of Discovery, so it’s a very decent deal (not really so decent then) and I did want to treat myself to one game thing this year.  If it hadn’t been for their lovely Frostfell events, I wouldn’t have known that or decided to buy, so it payed off for them too. Now I can have a Mercenary – the Big Girl won’t be so lonely. You know, she’s a romantic at heart. Maybe that’s why she bought an outfit from the CS. Who knows perhaps …

Edit: So… in that case I think I’ll hold off trying out “gold”. I really don’t like sneaky stuff.

Much fun had in GW1 too. Err I never got near anything seasonal, because I got sucked into this quest about a Nornbear and then after that there was another interesting one,  and then I wanted to move my ranger out from pre-searing and so it went on. Great play, but no special gifties really. I think they go for cosmetic only, but I haven’t got anywhere near to find out.

Wurm is still settling after all the excitement of Wurm 1.0. . Here are some of the splendid (mostly hahaahaha!) things players are already making. http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/71682-multi-story-house-pics/ I think multistorey has already and will, bring in much revenue for Codeclub AB. The playerbase, which loyally supported the game through to release and in last months lost quite some silver(euros) through disappearing enchanted grass and horses walking through fences, was very polite about the cosmetic santa hat gift (premium players only). Wurm has a very nice playerbase. There is also some problem that makes the game begin to stutter after about an hours play (not only me)  which is a bit offputting, so I didn’t spend too much time there. Thank you for the hat.

I had a yen to visit WoW (my comfy old slipper), and thought I’d see what their free trial is like and I did see a Chrismas tree in Dolanaar. It’s the silliest free trial I ever saw. All social functions and the auction house and mail are disabled (to deter gold sellers and spammers) so you get a fast run through some tramelled, cut down and incredibly bland content on a character which has a few clunky skills. Frankly if I’d started with this trial I’d never have bothered playing it. I most certainly wasn’t going to go and read up where to go for Chrismas events, let alone trail along there – probably not available for trial players anyway. I didn’t care to find out. WoW also runs very badly now meaning a sub is forever out of the question. For my purposes, sadly for I’m fond of it, it’s pretty much become a hunka junk, and the loss of old content doesn’t help (compare to the stupendous amount there is to do in EQ2 even on the most basic account). The fund for a computer with a better graphics card has been started and is growing in tiny increments – and we’ll get there but you know what all these games you have to play on high enders also miss? Most households don’t have 4 high end machines. One good one and 3 older is much more likely, with members of the family wanting sometimes to play together. Silly game vendors. Use brain.

Must be said, once I hit Frostfell I stopped bothering about looking at other games for the presents and seasonal events. I checked Vanguard, but I’m too new in it to know where things are, and never got as far as Star Trek.

The first of the single player games were already downloaded (a pound/5 spent here and there over 2012) and fun is being had with those. FTL – wow, I really like that. It makes stories as you go – that’s a new one, not played much yet, but what I did play I very much enjoyed. Spacechem - at top of the list for everyone in family to be told about because of how it makes you think - in a way that’s going to be very useful for coding, o I am sneaky, yes. I found an infant modding Legend of Grimrock the other day. My methods do most certainly work. Dungeonkeeper II – delighted! found on Gog. Used to have this but it used to keep falling over on my old desktop, which I binned this year. Now it runs nicely and I’m looking forward to getting further than the tutorial. Gnomoria - had this for a whiley, go my gnomes… go…. build me an empire. (yes, I talk to them). NeoScavenger remains terribly addictive. I thought I was burned out on it then I played it again and woops, ahm…. yes. Only for when I have time because I can’t stop playing it at one game. Two roguelikes in that list there (FTL is the other one), and both near the top for enjoyment. I didn’t think I liked roguelikes. Now I know eh. Plants vs Zombies. Whats to say. Much loved . Ravenhearst – I like this game, you find objects in the clutter. It’s also good for me – my eyes are slowly getting not so good and all crises are greeted with the words “Where’s my specs!” I find it handy to practice spotting things in what is increasingly a difficult to visually decipher world.

On the upside all men are handsome now.

Think that’s about it… ahm downloaded but not yet played RealMyst, and barely started playing something called Tag – the single player games fit my life well, and I’ll be sticking with them mostly as things hot up. They are also very good value, most of them well under 5 euros. No subs this year apart from, much later, see if EQII gold is any good for a month, maybe 2. Although compared to other forms of entertainment, subs are cheap, it’s the commitment and pressure they bring I don’t need, and the lack of opportunity to play other games caused by a lockdown on budgetted funds and time. One sub game is already one too much. Playtime will be for play this year, not “I payed a sub so now so I should”…blah blah blah, no tx go away. Early conclusion…. single player games by Indies are far and away the best value just now (beginning of the year) and more diverse and creative than current multiplayer offerings.

Surprisingly Small Fruit Salad (GW1,EQ2, WoW, Wurm Online)

So with life being very whirly and disconnected just now, there is less time to play. Plus if you remember I decluttered my hard drive and gave the laptop a new lease of life by doing a destructive restore – and I’m not in a hurry to add too many odds and ends. They’ll accrue eventually.

GW1 – To the amusement of all mum finally got a character out of pre-searing and is (4 years late) completely hooked. There are an awful lot of reasons why I like playing this. We all do.

Here are some of the reasons we like it then (trying out this blog editor at same time, Iets see how bullets go) :

it runs well

• it runs well
• it runs well (ok enough of that)
• it looks good
• the combat is fun and direct and unfussy.
• it is immersive due to the very beautiful graphics and the music helps too
• the story provides some extra immersion without being clumsy or obtrusive
• I like the sense of being on a journey through strange new lands, fighting my way, that theme works!
• there is no sub – I don’t feel any pressure to log on lest I waste money
• there is no nagging at all in fact
• in all the time I have attempted to play it it has always felt fresh and properly supported, if pared down
• I am not a second class player, I am equal to all … (edit: this post is already threatening to get rather large, I’ll leave it there)

Soo what stopped me from getting more involved for four years? Believe it or not, baggage limitation. Nothing as immersion-breaking as having to stop and empty your inadequate bags too often. And no, I’m not going to pay to remove the irritant.

(Guild Wars 2 runs ok on the other machine but not well enough for anyone to want to spread. One copy will do but if it ever gets better, we will buy more. We have 3/4 copies of GW1)

And….

EQ2 – Surprise! Yes me too. I am surprised I went back to this. I can play it until the point where the in-your-face marketing gets me (alas not long before that happens).

They have only themselves to blame that I barely spent money here because this is a great game. I love the rhythm of going out and adventuring, then coming home to decorate or just mess about in my home(s) so by rights I should be playing more and spending more.

I even like browsing the cash shop and treating myself now and again but all the other constant “buy, buy, buy” stuff gets on my nerves big time so I hardly bother. (The items are really nice when I do look).

I am planning to play bronze (totally free) on one account and play Gold (full sub) on one account for a month or two (already have a silver account) in the interests of finding out if any of their payment plans are remotely coherent and/or comfortable. I doubt it. Plus, since they double-dip I will not be subbing for quite some time. The money thus saved will go to buying some not-all-that-new expansions. Only then will I do the Gold experiment. i.e. dont hold breath.

So…  their only recent sale is this:

I may rust though.

which is rather nice, I must say, though it cries out for more holes. The inside spaces are lovely shapes. But they need windows for max atmosphere! It would also, to me have been a no-brainer for this to be able to travel, but it’s pretty good as it is. It is a house by the way. I think the carnivorous plant suffers from sea-sickness but I do have a few other bits and bobs I can use to furnish it

In its favour, EQ2 now runs very well at medium-ish settings and is still playable if cranked up, so it looks like they have worked on that part. Still haven’t managed to see through my windows in New Halas though. Hardware? Setting I am missing? Anyone know?

Wurm Online – is too interesting not to play just now, but I very soon won’t have time for Wurmstyle time-hogging. It’s a real shame that it’s so life-unfriendly. I’m not quitting but have no idea how much or when I’ll be able to play and anyway at times I won’t have internet making the expense truly worthless. If all I’m paying for is to log on when I can and repair stuff because that’s all there is time for, some hard decisions might be made. I’ll keep going for now though and see how I feel as time passes. I still just like being there, so there is that.  Much as I love Wurm I have to note the contrast with EQ2 where after a few months complete absence I could simply walk back in to all my stuff, and all the things I had made, arranged and achieved – without loss. I realise that it’s a different style of game. But a barrier to re-entry is a barrier to re-entry and padding (high proportion of repetitive maintenance tasks) is padding.

WoW – I finally dropped my sub. It’s still my old slippers though and I’ll go back now and again. Again, I’m time limited, no point in paying if I can’t play.

Extremely late and happy June fruit salad

It’s the hols! No apols!

Anyway I’m out of my rut & having fun. Gaming still – of course. Now and again I played Sacrifice which you can dip into when you please, and it’s fun and it doesn’t hurt your brain too much. It’s one of those games where you work out your strategy and try to outmanoever the other person (or in my case the computer). I find it hard to stop playing:

Wurm Online continues to entertain since I’m building that new deed. I know full well once that’s over I’m overdue for one of my irritated with the maintenance phases. But having fun for now.

WordPress appears to be running very slow and having troubles with my screenie of Sacrifice – it may appear magically later? Who knows.

I also payed a visit back to EQ2 and went through the usual cycle – it’s such a great game. Always something new to discover. This time it was the mentoring system, which I didn’t know was there and that allowed me to actually get transmuting going. I had wondered how that worked. It’s also just fun to mentor down – when I first started playing (I realise) I missed a lot just because everything was so new and strange. The first months were spent more learning some of the game & I think I didn’t pay my usual attention to small things. Even so I remember being very impressed. So there’s that part of the cycle, then, over time, the ineptness of SOE makes itself felt and I feel uneasy, eventually unwilling to log in. Nothing in particular set me off this time, just… dunno… like something creepy is going on. I have learned to trust my instincts.

Someone called it Forsaken Underpants and when I find that again, I owe you a link. I don’t know why I like playing it, some things in life are just a mystery. My highest forty something alt isn’t going to get much further I don’t think. Forsaken World is impressively guild-strangled, forced grouping is… well you can’t any do instances at all without a group and half the systems lead nowhere. So progression in any sense is pretty much out of the window. I captured a nightmare and I was happy. At forty something the underwear problem isn’t so bad.

Since the Blizzard offering failed on the first steps – download, install, run (duh) – I tried Torchlight, and have had a wonderful time with it, I must say. Perfectly charming, replayable, enjoyable, fun game. I really do like it and anticipate many happy hours with it. Good stuff. Hope the next one is as good – having seen and played this I will be looking out for it.

I can’t remember anything else – must admit I’m not in the mood for anything even vaguely worky tonight, not even looking on the desktop to see what I forgot. I like the hols. I like people being allowed to relax for a change. It’s good for us. To continue that theme June’s fruit salad is late and… relaxed.

May fruit salad

May was more about real life than gaming and June, have to say, is shaping up the same way. I did very much enjoy the opening of the Celebration server on Wurm Online though. And treated our household to the Legend of Grimrock instead of a fish and chip supper. It was really nice to see younger players trying it out, finding it strange and constricted …and then getting hooked. So the house resounds to the sounds of arg, as people fall into traps, miss getting through gates and are defeated by giant snails – oh wait that last was me. I started it off for the rest, got killed by a snail and had to go and do something else. Somehow everyone is fed, warm, clothed and in reasonably hygaenic surroundings as I sit here on a Sunday evening thinking – phew! What a month.

Just about everyone passing through here gets suborned into trying a game if they don’t escape fast enough. Research! I like watching their reactions to ones I already know, and frankly I don’t have time to try half the things on my hard drive, so settling a guest in with an unknown title is pretty helpful. Nothing that doesn’t run stays on the drive. I download, install, check it works and leave it until I have time or a guinea pig… err guest, to check it out. The comments are fascinating – I have to tell you, whatever is pushed at us, nobody has ever once said “oh goodie we have to join a guild to get x, I can’t wait!”. Or “I like not being able to personalise my avatar.” Just watching people’s reactions to some of the current staples makes me wonder what planet devs live on. Perhaps they just never watch and listen to real players starting out in their games?

Actually tonight I feel pretty brain dead and will have to revive myself with a wonderful hot cup of tea, a hot water bottle, a fluffy blanket, anything warm !! – yep I have just been seeing someone off on a bus, standing out in the cold for near an hour. For some reason summer hasn’t made an appearance here this year and yeah wait I’ll get that cup of tea and try to remember what I played in spare moments during the blur that was last month.

Not much. Botanicula, but I barely played. Everquest in a mad moment – never played it before. Main memory of this attempt is enjoying moving the windows about – don’t think I even started the tutorial. I think I was pretty tired.

I did manage to spend quite a lot of time here and there going through Blender tutorials on Youtube while doing other things. There is a terrific amount to learn and small doses of learning here and there provide a great deal of food for thought and inspiration. Our ideas file is bulging nicely. It’s a nice phase this, experimenting, trying things, learning. I think we’ll not hurry Blender really is perfect for prototyping and for figuring out how things might work. Expanding the prototype, well, I’m not sure. We’ll take it as far as it goes, feel the edges so to speak, and keep our options open.  For example when I googled “create an ingame  mouse pointer” (and variations on that query)  I was presented with a lot of frustrated users, some dead ends, the usual pratts talking down to people who dared to ask – a general mishmash. One or two possible solutions requiring python were there. I shall explore those eventually. And of course I’m not running the very latest version right now, so this very basic functionality might actually have been included in the game engine by now. Maybe it’s there but not documented. As far as I can tell though, player interaction is very limited. Keypresses or mouseclick equivalent.

However things certainly move fast in the Blender world and I remain deeply impressed.

And that’s about it for May. Yay bedtime!

April fruit salad (Wurm Online, Star Trek Online, Creatures 1, Guild Wars, Aion, Forsaken World, EQ2 …The Guardian)

I had completely forgotten about Creatures 1

You wouldn’t believe it from the wonderfully tranquil posts but in fact most of my belongings are in boxes and quotes are rolling in for work to be done to this house. Well, not rolling. Amazing how many people don’t want work. I’m still chasing for quotes. Anyway it’s a weird way to be living. Yet another situation with which a desktop could not cope. Of. The lappy moves happily from one work area to another, and even out of the house when needs must. I have no trouble blogging, gaming, working on …Thingie, checking Reuters or doing anything computery I normally would. When I tell people I haven’t watched tv since 2009 they get a strange blank look on their faces right enough, but the internet allows me access to Reuters which allows me to watch the markets’ reactions to news as well as see what’s going on, I’m fine for news and if I want to watch something entertaining I usually can do it on here. I think the tv still works, but who cares. The computer access is probably why I’m not a screaming madperson. Home improvements are such a trial.

Theres been a huge dejunk which I’ve enjoyed terrifically and I like having life reduced to basics. It reminds me of the old days. Various old days. I’ve had the peculiar joy of back to basics during several stages of my time, though a stint in the bush was the best by far. Would do that one again anytime! That was when I was at school – we really had a fabulous education.

I’m still de-junking. I think I’m addicted.

Having cohabited with various individuals at various stages, I’ve inherited some of the daftest things – which I suddenly realised I neither need nor want. I have found no less than six dead toasters all of which were kept to be fixed sometime. Less obvious examples abound too. Old diaries. Man, I doubt anyone is ever going to be interested and I have no intention of wading through them. I had the verbals badly when I was young and looking for lerve – and its all total rubbish hahaha! I mean who cares if X had a nice colour hair in my last year of high school which reminded me of the cap of a certain species of mushroom. All grey and gold sheened etc etc. Heh. Out. Anything I want to say about my life I’ll say now I think. I’ll keep the diaries from when I was sailing.

So there’s that going on. My Wurm begunner’s guide will have to wait it’s turn. I manage to game here and there, but nothing deep or sustained. It’s fruit salad gaming. Very nice, very light, bit here bit there.

So here’s what I’ve been up to.

Wurm still has the flickery ui thing, I kind of just cope with it now. I’ve not had time to test some things out for the devs – will do soon. Umm all the spawns are unicorns and my fishing rod keeps breaking. I still find farming my fields very soothing though, and just generally pottering about on my land. Last night spent some time making some leather armour – very satisfying. Should be good enough for hunting wild green dogs and when my fighting skills are up some, a unicorn may fall – the hunting alt is a wuss remember.

Star Trek online I play quite often. For some reason it always puts me in a really good mood. I’m only a Lieutenant I think, and a very inept one at that, but that doesn’t bother me any. I just have to commend a game where I can go and play a mission without doing homework and have a really good experience which leaves me smiling and happy. If it had housing I’d probably spend even more time there – I like the trekkiness, the graphics, the sounds. I want to own my own bit of it!

Creatures 1 – I had completely forgotten about Creatures until I was browsing GoG. Creatures 1 and 2 are downloaded and I’m once again spending 15 minutes here and there with the Norns which in Creatures 1 rather fatally don’t know how to eat. It’s a problem. I think I’ve managed to get the Encyclopedia Nornica working, but I suspect my Norns are doomed, doomed I tell you – What an amazing game though.  Will blog about sometime – if I ever manage to get them to eat something. Creatures is something like an ultimate tamagochi. Your little Norns do all the tamagochi stuff, but with a lot more independence. You can leave them to it and they will get on with exploring their very pretty world (at this stage with disastrous consequences) and eventually breed (maybe). Or you can intervene. And they are without doubt the cutest ever digital beasties – not in the sickly, referenced ”about something else” way anime is cute, but just plain cute. The real deal. Their toys are fun, their world is pretty – and the Creatures community is a long way from dead, I am pleased to say. Player-made tools are available to enhance your little Nornic world – not explored many of those yet, the Encyclopedia Nornica I already mentioned is my first COB I’ve ever imported. Except I managed to inject a christmas tree too, I seriously don’t remember how I did that. Age…

Guild Wars has mostly been played by other people in here – I’ve not spent much time with it. This is partly because I (with the purse strings) buy copies and make accounts for supervised play – and the account I reserve for myself gets kidnapped/begged for/given away… this time I have made a secret one and am bopping around pre-searing Ascalon with hope in my heart! Perhaps for once I’ll actually make it over the wall before someone realises there’s another account in the house. It really is very popular in here.

Aion I tried to download. And tried again. And tried again. And fiddled a bit and tried again… well, to be honest if they can’t even sort out their launcher there isn’t much hope for the rest of it. The game downloads ok, the launcher downloads ok – then it informs me it needs one patch and goes into a world of its own, hanging at various percents. ah who cares. It’s 2012. I want to download, install, see if it runs and see what I think. Four steps only. I don’t want to revert drivers, disable firewalls, open ports, edit inis, unistall p2p stuff that they “need” (they have apparently stopped using Pando Media Booster now, but I don’t care anymore.)  Might try again sometime if I’m bored. Which is unlikely.

Forsaken World – play most days before bed – nice graphics, nothing too demanding, can let my head unravel happily in pleasant surroundings and pheumonia-inducing beginner garb (modesty does improve somewhat as you earn more gear – but the armour is never armour).

That used to be the slot for EQ2 but I don’t find that so appealing nowadays. Looking at the box from the outside, yes Sony need cash (it turns out). Under current management I am not convinced that this lovely game even has a future – and that puts me off playing it. Its badly priced, communication with customers is abysmal and on top of all that Sony, like the Guardian seem to think console and hand-held gaming is the only real gaming and that’s where their efforts will be concentrated. On a side note the Guardian video games section should be called Console and Hand-Held Games – if you just read it and nothing else  you’d think the pc as a platform was nothing more than a blip. Hahahaha! Tell that to Warcraft. It’s from that hidebound era when the pc was srs b’ness toy on which mployees did not play! My laptop indeed looks like it should belong to some go-getter in a suit (until you spot the raid-ravaged keyboard), but it has a few tricks under its hood like 4g ram and for Intel a notbad graphics chip with still unexplored potential. I’m not sure if people are still modding drivers for the chip - last time I looked people were, but those are sites you don’t want to visit without bug spray and full armour. In other words don’t go unless you know what you are doing re malware, registers, assembly code and preferably sandbox the entire journey. My apologies to any legitimate operators out there, but even finding those is perilous.

And that’s about it – plootering with other games but most I’m still at the “learning the controls” stage, not much to report. Nor do most games lend themselves to story-telling. I’m sure I’ll find another one that does sometime, but mostly there isn’t a lot to say about one’s personal journey – you play through the quests/missions – maybe fight another player, perhaps defeat a boss – all the same as anyone else = its very “lite”.  It’s when you creatively interact that stories happen. EQ2 has some potetial via housing for that, but not a huge amount. Likewise Creatures has a little via the breeding and (mis)adventures of Norns, and possible the creation of COBs. It’s something I’m actively on the lookout for. Lietenant Dgirp of the USS Potato is happy on her rails though, as are my new Vampire in Forsaken World, and the tourist Warlock in WoW – they are just not very interesting in themselves, though they sometimes point me to general issues I’d like to write about or think about.

Wahhey!

January was a spitty spotty month for gaming, too much background noise to settle to anything plus so many new things to try. It is like being in a fruit salad.

On the gorgeous one terabyte hard drive (yum yum) for having a look at, currently – Anarchy Online, Star Trek Online, Eden Eternal, Kerbal Space Program. I also treated myself to an All Access pass from Sony this month so EQ the original, Free Realms & Vanguard are there. My goto games are there – EQ2 (promoted! hahaha – aww I love EQ2), Guild Wars, Wurm Online, WoW.  Dropped: Skyrim. It runs badly on my machine but so does Vanguard, that’s not it. I’m not playing it because the internal spaces are too small. It gets on my nerves *hugely* when I cant move about freely inside buildings. Champions Online is there. Just looking… yep that’s it.

Still plenty of room. Minecraft would be there if it had a free trial. I tried Minecraft Classic but found it hard to figure out the controls and I have better things to do than search for Classic help, if such a thing even exists.  I would like to try it – but I’m not forking out an upfront fee for Minecraft until I like it. Rift… maybe if I run out of things will put their trial on. LoTro, ran like a hog on 3 legs last time I tried (year or two ago), not in a hurry to try again. I will soon download Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Although I dipped in and out of games last month between all the palaver of a January, rather than played any one with any consistency a  few things do stand out:

Vanguard is achingly beautiful, I don’t care if it runs badly for me really – I like it. It will stay on my drive for a visit now and again. Can’t comment too much because I’m such a noob, but it seems satisfyingly complex and challenging. I’m soloing of course. Actually – in two week’s scrappy play at my starter area (not the island) I haven’t seen a soul, which is fine by me – it adds to the immersion of this strange and lovely world. There are people somewhere, I know it, one day I will meet them unexpectedly… works perfectly for me. I love the modelling of the monsters – I died a good few times getting a closer look at things I have no business tangling with. I have an alt on the starter island as well and have to say those hobgoblins in the swamp are stunning to look at, and their spells are very pretty… I have just started the crafting tutorial and have very little experience of diplomacy, so no comments about those. But most of all I love that you don’t level too fast. I have always been dismally unimpressed by endgames right since I started playing anything – I’m in no rush.

Star Trek Online is a total blast. I have found my place in life – I was destined to fly a spaceship! Again I’m the noobest of the noob here but managed to make my way to level 5 on both alts and get the Anniversary Ship. I am sure my skill choices would make a veteran player scream & run away, but tell you this – I’m not leaving. Most liked thing so far: the sheer Star Trekkiness of it. I do things just to hear the little sound effects – I’m probably a menace. But I like a lot of things about this game. The missions are fun and lighthearted, the controls for space flight and combat are suprisingly easy to use. The NPCs are well developed and as Tesh pointed out in her comment to a previous post, you can be rid of the NPCs without drama if your friend turns up unexpectedly. There’s stuff to learn & do and make, plenty of depth. Yep, it’s a keeper.

February, lot to do in real life but I’ll keep exploring and download anything else I hear about that takes my fancy.

Wurm Online  is still unplayable very sadly – I just about limp through the farming I need to do. Very depressing. Someone is looking into it though. Fingers crossed. I’m beginning plan disbands – not only is everything merrily decaying (ugh) but I can’t do a thing about it either, which has had the good side of making me realise how little I miss fixing things, and paying to fix things. Disband & let the lot rot – I shall make one item at a time & improve it to the point where decay is not so noticeable? This could be how it all ends up – assuming I get to play again. I could sail my ship, stay with my friend or just keep one postage stamp deed over ore… The chopping starts on the 29th of Feb and will continue whenever upkeep runs out. I’m by no means ready to leave, but the fact is - I can’t play it.

Free Realms – amg. A.M.G. what is that? The cash shop is more than in your face, oh my oh my oh my. The “game” is just a vehicle for the all pervasive Cash Shop - unbelievable! Heaps of scorn… and then I found myself sneaking back to play it some more…. heh heh (blush)

The Breeding of Blue Dogs

Well now. My festive season was tranquil and calm – I hope that everyone else had a something similar maybe with a bit more excitement – I dont like excitement, so mine was perfect for me. School holidays are over & it’s back to a normal routine – gaming here and there in small doses for pleasure & self reward, when time permits. I like this. I do well on routine. In fact I’m a boring old frump – or trying to be.

With that out of the way – on WoW my tourist is fair enjoying Westfall the New, except the economic depression looks silly next to plush Elwynn – why dont they all just cross the bridge or swim the river to greener pastures, I wonder to myself as I dispatch another gnoll. Murlocs remain a joy – glad they are still around. On the main I’ve settled for Survival as second spec, (bm main Because I Can) and am relearning Survival in my usual methodical way. Did a few of the 4.3 new dungeons – always a misery while dps is low, but done. More later. After setting up the Surv spec I’ll sort out what pvp rags I have. It behooves me to do guild runs for the dungeons so they’ll be relatively painless, maybe I can pvp now & again too. Don’t know. Time…. Anyway not rushing to raid at all. Some guild stuff probably needs attending to but I have no intention of paying to work for Blizzard nowadays – the guild itself has matured into an independent entity - I just keep the lights burning & the fridge stocked with fish. All in all no hyper enthusiasm has been wasted on WoW the game, but I enjoy diving into it when I have the time.

Wurm – still the nearest contender to a main game for me has thrown up a couple of sparkles. As part of metagaming against decay my main should be free by the end of today to wander from deed to deed as a sort of superhandywoman, her old deed shrunk to a working smithy and a few tiles over some ore – and a caretaker alt being lovingly chewed by our pet bear in the process of feeding it. Travelling handywoman means I can use my ship more Now there’s worth it. In the last throes of shrinking the deed I needed to sail to Freedom Harbour this morning – the sun was just up, gale from the west, I climbed aboard and realised that soon I shall be free to sail my corbita whenever I please. A sense of wonderful freedom & open horizons, the sea, the morning, the wind…. ahhhh.

Theres more to be done with the metagame of course, but it’s become satisfying now that I have made some progress. How many storage bins do I need? What’s not even worth making (lamps, lamps, lamps), where do things decay most….   When the reorganisation is complete I will be paying £8 a month on deeds (plus £10 when I want to premium an alt for 2 months) – that still seems stiff for the amount of gameplay vs maintenance. But I’ll see how it goes when I get there. Everything takes a long time – I have horses to move yet & fields to restructure – now that there is a point to it – i.e. being able to enjoy the game again, I don’t mind.

The other sparkle relates to moving horses – 3 at a time on a 2 hour adventure. Totally reminded me of why I play. It’s harsh – we had to run from a pack of wolves, some of the mountainous paths are still unfamiliar. Could have died at any time. Could have lost all the horses! Need to keep an eye on water, need to be extremely wary of the forests – its….. just quite nailbiting until you roll in at your destination because death can be very sudden on Wurm. One moment all seems peaceful…. And then, on the way back I came across a young blue dog – pretty creature – and managed to tame it! Well, ok it still looks like a walking compost heap only dark blue,  but hey I never had one before - and I like the context in which it was found, at the tail end of a gruelling trek (2 hours to home as well) as I made my way thirstily across the Grande Steppe toward a hot meal and a long sleep in my bed wot I made (and repair daily).  It’s a boy, the dog, so less chance (if any?) of breeding another blue from it, but I will try of course & there begins another Wurmy chapter. The Breeding of Blue Dogs – hehe.

Eq2 keeps unfolding new things before my astonished eyes and I confess to saving it for special enjoyment. My big girl has added some kind of scifi mortarboard mount to her regalia – I need to work in some screenshots I think . When I have time I will. As its such a treat I don’t actually play it that much – and I have the deepest respect for the amount of work that’s gone into it. My, that really shows… I keep stopping to look at things – or listen to the sound track. Spend a fair amount of time perched on the rock just to enjoy the scenery too. The quests are fun! I am allergic to grinding, so I take it easy on them though. One or two per session keeps me perfectly happy – as does gathering here & there or crafting when I feel the urge too. All in all, just having a wonderful time there. I tend to reserve a few hours for it – so it is a now and then treat only. But, but, right at the end of my real day, I log on just to be in my Eq2 house for a few minutes. It’s become part of my “here ends the day” routine.

As for …. thingie (still no project name) well I got that code built yeehar (did ya doubt me?) and now am learning Blender. All those buttons! I’m in heaven!!!!!! Child and I are learning at the same time, which makes it the more fun as our first gingerbread men are almost worthy of being scary mobs. Much laughter has been caused by this particular piece of software – we’ll keep at it for sure, whether we use Blender or not in the end. It’s a creative pause in the coding – need to figure out what needs doing next & accumulate a few minor pieces of hardware, mostly storage. Huge learning curve here anyway – think I’ll brush up on a few other things while I pause & plan. I’m mosly stopped dead by needing a printer cartridge to arrive, now I think about it. I want to put our project plan on the walls for comment & amendment.

What I did on my school hols… err, no that not it

This month:

Inspired by cries of delight & pvp within the household I downloaded Guildwars again – the others have convinced me it is worth a romp. I used to play when I was still in love with WoW and their servers were down. Time to give it a proper chance methinks! So far I am admiring how pared down it is. What is there works well and what isn’t necessary isn’t there. That makes for direct and engaging play. I’m funny about pvp – I hate it until I’m doing it. Planning more to do the solo tourist thing myself and watch the others fight on their accounts – it fits in better with the seasonal domestic demands. Jingle bells…

In EQ2 I am enchanted by my first Frostfell – ohhhhhh, it’s really nice. What I have been missing out on eh? I notice this year my own Christmas tree here at home in real is subtle and delicate – a jade plant with little bears and stars hidden in the branches…. I think the EQ2 graphics are having some kind of effect on me. A triple SC day was a welcome surprise – I bought. Mind I said I wanted to spend some money but the prices weren’t right. Well with the triple SC they are, so I now have some unlockers & interesting bags & a Fae and a Tenebrous Island and my guardian who is a big girl is gallumphing about happily with some quite ugly angel wings on and a hat she crafted. And one of those sinister backpacks too. Heh.

Still loving the housing tho I wish I could figure out which settings would let me see through the windows in my New Halas house.

In Wurm I plodded through the snow fixing things and muttering under my breath. I’m sure decay is heavier now! With the time left I did some terraforming – all in all not terribly inspiring, but independently functioning online worlds are few and far between – I’ll find a way to make this work for me. I like the idea of having one main (skilling) deed and some tiny specialisticky satelites- that bit is good. I should probably figure out which items are absolutely necessary to just keep my holdings ticking over & get rid of the rest. I should probably time the repair round. One has ample time to contemplate such things, check, repair, check….perhaps I should live on my corbita! Or take up looting… no that’s just more stuff. Hmmm, repair, check, don’t repair….Ah and I found a blue deer and managed to tame it, and some little black foals were born – verra verra cute in my head – in reality all the animals onscreen look like children’s farm game animal models. Animations are…. supposedly under developement and rare. In fact the first time a bear actually reared up I almost fell off my chair I am so used to being scared of them just as they stand there gormlessly somehow emanating damage. Wurm works the same way books do – you supply much of the exciting stuff in your own mind.  Pvp is very funny indeed – you STARE at your opponent until one of you falls over because the other has better numbers. Hahahaha! And people get very worked up about it!! (see forums)  so the imagination thing obviously works just fine hahaha – ok I know it’s not that hilarious sorry, sorry (you can in fact lose your stuff). The numbers thing as always doesn’t work out – ever – …. endless twiddling with pvp balance and it gets metagamed. Nothing new there then. It still fun though – in an “aquired taste” sort of way.

In WoW I worked the target dummy a little on my main and on the Warlock meandered over to Westfall which is much changed now. I’ll see what I think of the new version. I think I chose the wrong spec – I went demo so  I can learn another more important lock from the bottom up so to speak, but really why don’t I go affliction & tour Warsong Gulch… I’m tempted. Everyone always wants to duel warlocks tis a pest. Everyone-usually-rogues hahaha – but then they want to duel everyone, so in this case pvp is probably not going to be avoided entirely. There is always that one rogue that catches me at the right moment and away we go.

On our own game I’ve hit a block on one bit of compiling some source & blech cba so I am messing about with other stuff, it’s all needed nothing’s wasted. Really need a solid block of time to work through the code stuff. I’m doing some of the light twiddly bits – like trying to think up a project name while peeling potatoes for a roast, Project Potatoes! no….Project Peeler! Onion?  Parsley! Project Parsley has a nice alliterative ring to it & suitably has nothing whatever to do with anything we have planned. Nope too hobbity, crafty-cutesy. Uhmmmm…Annihilation? LOL