Wednesday, July 29, 2015

A Day in the Past: Hinterlands

The Hinterlands is a sort of random, out of the way little zone that actually contains a good chunk of pleasant memories.

it was hard to find an old map without words or farming paths on it

The Hinterlands has a lot of trolls, but it's also pretty dwarvish. Aerie Peak is right at the entrance, and the two guardian named gryphons at the entrance to the zone are only hostile to horde players.

they wouldn't stand a chance, now

Simply going into Hinterlands required that you could sneak past or kill these two tough level 40 guardians, and the path led you directly into the alliance town, where a patrolling dwarf guard may have very well found you if you didn't immediately step off the paved path, directly into the mobs and monsters of the zone.

what did I ever do to you dwarves anyways

As a horde player, it was an accomplishment to be able to get in to The Hinterlands, and when you did, you were rewarded with a very quest-dense area.

Monday, July 27, 2015

More Terraria!

I've been binging on Terraria (again). There are two main, general idea aspects about Terraria that I really like. The first one is building houses and creating things.

uh, still a work in progress

The second one is exploring and fighting monsters and bosses.

and riding bees while being menacing toward penguins

Today, I'm gonna go on and on about the first one. My current baby world is just my creative hub where I retire to after creating new worlds, plunging them into chaos, murdering all of their inhabitants, and pillaging all their resources. I take my exploring, monster fighting, death machine character, and he becomes a peaceful house builder who frets over little details and wonder which kind of door he should use for each room.

Currently, I'm putting detail work into a few key areas.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

How to Make a Liar Out of Yourself

I mentioned maybe one post ago that I'd be cutting back on scheduled posting days to help keep the pressure off me to write so often, hopefully resulting in consistent updates on the days I did have scheduled.

I am a liar.


I skipped out on Monday I apologize.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Bad Mobile Land

I've said before that I like mobile games, but I feel like they will be forever jammed into their awful, freemium, pay to win, ad-riddled format due to their nature. No other "platform," if you'd call it that, is as saturated in 'in-game purchases' as mobile games. It's understandable, since they offer a different experience and mostly target a completely different audience. They don't have to worry about creating games that will convince you to buy a smart phone because basically everyone under 40 already has one - they just have to throw games at people until one sticks.

and some are unfortunately way too sticky

It was undeniably uncomfortable to hear about major gaming companies planning to release more games on mobile. When we're talking about mobile games, it is entirely reasonable to assume it will be "Free*" with more in-app purchases than you can handle. Nintendo released two free to download Pokemon games in their store for the 3DS that follow the same model, it's not unreasonable to assume their mobile games will do the same thing.

pokemon trozei- I mean, shuffle

They aren't going to be making mobile games so that they can break out of the stereotypical freemium game styles and revolutionize what we know about mobile gaming, no, they're making them to take advantage of that model. If it wasn't profitable, people wouldn't be doing it en masse as they are.

It doesn't help when you realize that they are putting less resources into making actual games in order to chase this freemium mobile gaming model. A browse around your local app store tends to come up with nothing but sorrow and despair. It makes the entire aspect of a legitimate mobile gaming format seem hopeless.

But amidst all the pay to win, wait ten days for your action to complete, 'any purchase will remove all ads' games, there are a couple gems. I found one such gem a few days ago.


Monday, July 13, 2015

For Clarity

I'm a little weird about WoW right now. I haven't really played since the Wednesday after 6.2's release, but I've been thinking about it a lot. The thing is, I can't really play the game that I want to play.

I've written before about my early addictions to the game. I've been writing about some more particular, fond memories I have with a day in the past. I've only published two but I have others in the works. It's cathartic for me to write about my nostalgia with the game, but there's something weird about thinking about the game all the time but never actually logging in to play it.

I still follow a lot of Warcraft players and I see them talking about their shipyards, raids, and Tanaan and I feel like I'm missing so much. I don't dislike the 6.2 content - I wrote about how I was really into it when I played it. I've just been doing a lot of other stuff lately and I haven't had time to really sit down and play video games. It's not that I don't want to experience the new content, it's that when I sit down to play, I tend to, well, not get anything else done. Other things have been taking a higher priority than video games. I'm not exactly happy about that, but it's what it is.

it could be worse

I'm not sure why I haven't accepted my current status as a break, yet. I've been on the fence since last year about taking a break. I've sort of been drifting around, acting like I'm pseudo-active in the game, but I'm not really. I tried to pug one boss in the new raid and that's all I've seen of it. I haven't logged in about two and half weeks. I feel like part of what's kept me from officially "taking a break" has been my blog.

I'm officially accepting that I'm on hiatus. With the main source of inspiration for my blog writings on the backburner, I'm cutting back on scheduled post days, removing Friday from my schedule. My weekends have been significantly busy lately, so cutting back on post days should help keep me posting more instead of feeling overwhelmed and skipping a week. I'll still probably write about Warcraft related topics, but the vast majority of interesting topics usually stem from current, relevant content, which I won't be experiencing for the most part.

oh well

Maybe I'll be more active next expansion.

Friday, July 10, 2015

A Day in the Past: Winterspring

Welcome to a day of the past, the days of Winterspring before the Cataclysm.

It was one of my favorite zones in hang out in during Vanilla. Apparently, this was kinda weird, because people always asked me "what's going on in Winterspring?" I'd get whispered unusually regularly by guildies and friends who noticed I was in Winterspring who didn't understand why anyone would even be there.

is this even a zone?

I went there on both my hunter and my druid. It was a really great place, especially Darkwhisper Gorge.

yay dark and dreary deadly demons!

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Horray Terraria

I took a sudden unannounced break from the internet for the last week or so. I haven't been playing many games and I've mostly been being a busy adult with many important things to do.

My biggest problem when I miss a couple post days is I figure I'll just keep missing them because I already missed so many. I'm not sure that logic checks out, but hey, I never said it was a good argument. To break the cycle, I'm going to share a little bit about one of my favorite PC games, Terraria.

just building a house as an egyptian pharaoh