Pascal the Builder

Featuring once again, that weird text based game, Cleft of Dimensions.

I was "hired" as a builder, which is a low tier staff member who creates new areas. I say "hired" because I definitely am not being paid.

Staff members are called immortals, which is slightly fitting as they actually can't be killed, at least under normal circumstances.

I have been a very busy beaver, and I built an area in the game based off of Animal Crossing.

I meant to post about this sooner, and maybe do some updates regularly because of it, but frankly there isn't that much to say about the actual process. I've been entirely engrossed in this for almost two weeks, now. It's really been my main focus, but even the higher ups are impressed with how quickly I put it together.

Text Based Blog Post

I will write about that DnD session like I promised. Today is not the day I do that, however.

Today I'm playing Cleft of Dimensions, again.

yeah this one

I never really get tired of CoD (which obviously doesn't stand for Call of Duty in this context), but I just end up playing something else and forgetting about it for awhile. Then I go back to it and play it until something else comes up.

The Banished Country

I've written before about Banished, and I'm sure you're wondering "what else can you even attempt to write about this game?" The game is addictive and I've put many, many hours into it, but it's true - there isn't too much to say about it.

"this game is fun 10/10"

The game is a city builder, but it has some distinct differences that make it stand out. You aren't technically "the mayor" or monarch, as there's no treasury or currency or ultimate Collectible Thing that you aim to accumulate.

CC added a governor, but he's a randomly appointed townsperson

All the resources are given to the town itself for use by the populous to survive and to expand. Indeed, other than a couple achievements, you are given no actual distinct goals... at all.

This is one of two of the main criticisms I've seen from people who dislike the game - the other, funnily enough, being that the game has a steep learning curve. Apparently, you won't like Banished if you need to be told what to do, how to do it, when and where to do it, and when you're done doing it. As I've said before, I don't agree that you need to be told what your goal should be in order to enjoy this game.

here is what you do: build the town

But, I've already written about that and I try not to be too repetitive between blog posts.

Dungeons and Dragons Revival

I said that, for the grand re-re-opening of my blog (back up to acceptable updating standards), I would make a new post about our DnD campaign, as we recently played a session after a century long, unplanned haitus.

There is only one problem...

pff, figures

No no, don't worry, I still plan on writing about DnD, but I went back to see when the last time I had updated about our campaign was, and, well, I remembered that was another thing I had dropped the ball on.

We had several short play sessions since my last post, prior to the most recent one, and a decently important chunk of things happened. I cannot in good conscience simply omit all of that information.

But wait, it gets worse!

of course it does

I can't exactly remember all of the details, but... I don't want to just list off key points that I remember unentertainingly.

This will be a challenge, so, get ready for...

Chapter 5 - in More or Less Hopefully Entertaining Detail!

Back from the Dead

It's been awhile! Oops.

don't look at me

I've been, to make excuses, very busy. Things have finally settled down, now, and I no longer have any particular, looming deadlines for large events. I have been thinking about blogging for awhile, but I haven't played any video games for, like, a month.

zzzz

It's been pretty harsh.

However, I finally played DnD again with the original crew in our original campaign. I think a DnD post would be an excellent way to engage the grand re-re-opening of my blog to a hopefully steady and consistent existence once again.

Of course, it won't be today because I have a lot of housework to catch up on. But look forward to it!

Reformat the Remix

So I managed to start up Caturday after two months only to skip four post days in a row. I had two or three drafts sitting around, but I've been much busier than normal lately and just skipped out entirely. Once September is over, the majority of my tasks will be completed and I should have sufficient time to write.

busy teaching cats to take and upload their own pictures

One of the posts I was going to make was about city building and regular building games, featuring my two favorites Terraria and Banished. Well, I had to reformat my laptop and, while I tried to save my Terraria world - and still have yet to see if I was successful, my most recent thriving and bustling Banished town has been obliterated. Without time to actually play as it is, that post will have to wait.

The most exciting news about Warcraft that I have is that I'm currently reinstalling it after the reformat.

Oh, why did I reformat? What is this, an interrogation?

it's this cat's fault

I have been dabbling in a little Hearthstone lately because I just picked up a tablet, but honestly my laptop is usually closed and off to the side recently as is. I had been putting off reformatting it for weeks because I didn't want to have to go through all... all this, like I currently am.

I don't have to answer any of your questions, it's a long story okay? Gosh.

army cat drones did it

So I can't even play any computer games to write about them until I reinstall them. A new Colonial Charters update came out for my favorite Banished mod while I was busy not playing it, so I probably would have started a new town anyway.

The good news is that the reformat went well and my laptop will see a full recovery.

it's resting in bed

Look, don't worry about why, just know that everything worked out in the end.

Caturday Revival

I haven't done Caturday for about two months. Whoops. I never intended to stop, persay, but it got really easy to skip. I also skipped last Wednesday - but this week has been incredibly busy, so I have plenty of excuses.

Since I haven't done Caturday in so long, I decided that instead of giving myself a way out of it by trying to think of a theme and possibly not coming up with anything, I'm going to make it about my own cats.

these ones

If you're here because you're one of the people who see my cats on a regular basis, you may have seen these pictures before. I can only get so many interesting pictures at a time, since the cats are usually

just lazing around.

But I'm also going to talk about them a little bit, in case you've just started tuning in recently. And also because I want to, because they are my cats and I think they're great. Surprising, I know.

A Day in the Past: The WotLK Story

If you read The TBC Story, this story starts off right where that one ended. It's less self indulgence about me and my own personal history (but don't worry, I still managed to squeeze it in there) and more about the history of my long passed, best guild I'd ever been in.

To catch you up, after TBC release I screwed around as a non-raider until my guild exploded and asked me to go resto during T4. Fast forward through that guild dissolving shortly after, during T5, and over a year of me healing TBC progression in a new and better guild, and slow down around the end of TBC when I went back to balance.

flashback fade out, queue dream sequence music

TBC was the pinnacle of my raiding career. As I said at the end of my TBC story, at the homestretch of Sunwell, I was ranking as 4th best balance druid in the US and 12th best in the world.

It's Another Flying Post - Pre-Legion Edition

I made a disclaimer earlier that I'm purposefully keeping myself ignorant to announced Legion features. If I say a thing or things that have already been discussed, announced, explained, or debunked, that is because I intentionally did not research this topic. My reasoning can be summarized by saying that I don't want to spoil the game before it even comes out. My reasoning can be lengthily explained by this particular blog post. Please excuse me and any accidental uneducated nonsense.

Blizzard decided to enter into Warlords without allowing flying. They nudged at maaaybe adding it later, only to kind of backhandedly "announce" in a random article somewhere that they maybe might not be adding it back to the game ever probably most likely. Of course, throughout the entire debacle, people were very fervently internet-campaigning about it, and this just took the cake. I mean, if you somehow missed the whole thing, you must have left mid-Mists or earlier and just come back to the Warcraft community scene like, yesterday.

actual depiction of pro-flying protest rally

Everyone was writing about flying, so I tried to keep my posts about it to a minimum. My first two posts were before they had announced that flying would be back, where I ended the second stating I was sorry and wouldn't write anymore flying posts. Then I made a third one when they made the decision to add flying, insincerely apologizing for lying about not writing another flying post. Knowing better this time around, I did not, in fact, promise to not write about flying again, so here we are!

The Grand Garrison Mistake

As of this moment, I simply cannot stand my garrison. Just a few moments of walking around in my garrison reminds me that I'm sick of it and I'm sick of Warlords.

That's just how I feel. I'm sure not everyone does, but I'm definitely not the only person. But why? What did they get wrong?

Garrisons were a decent idea that got implemented poorly. There is one particular aspect of garrisons that is not only a problem on its own, but caused a huge problem in Warlords entirely.

I'm Not Buying a Ticket for the Legion Hype Train

As everyone knows, the next Warcraft expansion was announced.

wait wait

there, this one

I really don't want to know too much about it before it comes out because I don't want to experience the same kind of uncontrollable hype followed by months of disappointment. Of course, no matter how hard I try, there is only so much I can avoid learning beforehand, since the majority of people I talk to and follow are all talking about it like crazy. I can only expect that they will continue to talk about it until the day of release.

If you knew me back when Warlords was about to be released, you may remember just how hyped I was. It won't be like that for Legion. It's not that I'm not excited about it - my only impressions so far are bits and pieces I've put together from the unavoidable internet and I'm already super excited. It's just that I realized long ago the benefits of not spoiling yourself - learning everything about the game before it comes out is like reading a full script of a movie before you see it.

For these reasons, my blog posts before release will not be about Legion hype. I understand, too, that this will mean far fewer people will have interest in my blog for the time being. My most viewed posts are Warcraft posts about current content, controversies, or upcoming or recently released features. People aren't going to care about Terraria and what my guild was doing six years ago while there's Legion hype being thrown in everyone's faces.

But I'm okay with that.

This means, too, that I may make posts with thoughts, opinions, or discussions about things that are embarassingly irrelevant. For example, I may mention that I'm happy to be leaving my garrison, but in fact Blizzard has announced that your garrison as is will be air lifted into a new zone in Legion. Now, this is just an example, but I may make a faux pas like that. I don't know. That's what happens when you purposefully don't know things.

Speaking of garrisons, I am thrilled they won't be in Legion. They won't, right?

...

Wait, don't tell me!

The Banished Colonial Charters

Banished is a great game that I haven't played in awhile. I wrote about it and why it's amazing despite its supposed flaws a couple months ago. A friend told me that he's been playing Banished while waiting for Warlords to come to an end, and that there was so much new stuff for him to do because of this mystical colonial charter mod.

I had looked into their mods last time I played, which was around when I wrote about it, but it looked like they weren't actually in service yet. They finally came out and let me tell you, this one is crazy.

The colonial charters mod adds so much stuff. It has its own website. From the moment I loaded the game with the mod enabled, I could tell there was going to be an overload of new things to understand.

what's CC Medium- oh holy crap what even is this

A Day in the Past: The TBC Story

While I started as feral and fought tooth and claw to succeed and have my ability be recognized, at the end of Vanilla, a friend convinced me to go balance.

just add moonfire

He wanted to play my character late at night in WSG (don't tell Blizzard), so I let him. He raved about how amazing balance was in PvP and sent me many screencaps of impressive scoreboards. I think he was just a very good PvPer, but he did get me exalted with the Warsong Outriders, so there's that.

Because I was "stuck" as balance, I got adjusted to it, to the point where I realized, hey, I kinda like this. I stayed balance into TBC where I kept it while leveling and for the first three or four months.

In terms of socially being a subhuman low life hybrid spec, I definitely took a step backward. Feral got a lot better in TBC, while already ahead of balance in the first place. If I had stayed feral, I'd have achieved being a "real spec" a lot sooner, but as I've said before, I never back down from being an underdog.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

A Day in the Past: Vanilla Feral

Back in the day, when Androgyn might have looked sorta like this...

rough estimate. this was awhile ago man.

 Or more accurately, usually like this...

(mouth breathing sounds)

Most of our enemies were dragons and undead, we didn't have flying mounts, and only 1% of the playerbase even saw our most difficult raids. It was a simpler time, when the world was new and
"of the Boar" was for some reason a stat combination that appeared on gear on purpose.

yeah we're doing this

I reminisce a lot. I can't help it. Nostalgia is one of my most frequent post tags. Well, I'm doing it again, and this time I'm going to do it with purpose. I've written about parts of the following personal history before - it was actually my ninth post on this blog. This time it has a little more of a narrowed focus and specific purpose. I'm going to do two things that I really like - I'm going to reminisce, and I'm going to tell stories about my reminiscences.

Welcome to A Day in the Past, my new series about Warcraft back in the day. Specifically, my Warcraft life. If you're a stick in the mud about that dreaded nostalgia, feel free to read my post about what it is and why it's totally normal and okay!

Now, on with the show!

Jungles, Shipyards, and Orcs Oh My

So 6.2 came out yesterday. This was me, today, on Wednesday.

zeroed in on the druid changes

Yesterday, I went on a day trip and played MH4U, forgetting there was a huge patch. So, I dove in today.

I updated my addons, - except for Master Plan since it wasn't updated and doesn't work and my life is in shambles - half assed some of my garrison chores, and built a shipyard. I'm killing orcs in Tanaan Jungle, and vaguely remembering that there was something about being able to fly.

pigeons?

I didn't read up a lot on the new patch. Honestly, I haven't been keeping up to date with what's coming in and going out in patches for awhile. This is the biggest patch of Warlords so far, and here is an exhaustive list of what I knew about it before today:

• A meta-achievement to grant flying but apparently not yet or something
• Timewalking and relevant weekends (which I wrote about)
• Tanaan Jungle, supposedly kinda like Timeless Isle
• New raid instance
• Shipyards are a thing

Funnily enough, I've really been looking forward to 6.2. Not for anything in particular really, since I haven't been paying that much attention, but for a dive into some (hopefully) exciting new content.

Seriously, Monday

Welcome to Monday, where I've prepared for you another of my excellent, top quality posts!

I'll believe it when I see it

Before I go on with this lie, I'll admit up front that this post is a bar above being about nothing. I browsed the internet for awhile and logged into WoW to see if I could be inspired, but nothing turned up. It's long been my policy that if I am not interested in writing about something, I will not waste anyone's time forcing words out onto the keyboard without any personal investment. That's how these wonderful cop out posts come to be.

I'll let you in on a secret, though. I totally have a post idea. Several post ideas, actually. Like, maybe even ten or twelve that follow the same basic principles. A series you could even say. The only problem is that it will require in game traveling and artistic screenshot gathering and editing - in other words, lots of time. Time isn't something I have today, so that makes it something for me to start another day.

Why don't I have time today, you ask? Oh, don't be shy, I know you're totally interested.

Sleepy Caturday

Happy Caturday, internet! Cats, like people, yawn before they go to sleep, when they wake up, and also randomly for no apparent reason. Cats, however, are much cuter when they yawn. If you were prepared to disagree, my reasons are listed below.

where did my chin go

Those Damn Dirty Scoundrels

Recently, Blizzard went back on a thing they said. It was super significant. Discussion about it had been going on for kind of a long time if I remember correctly.

As any time where Blizzard does something differently than they said they would earlier, people jumped out of the woodwork and wrote angry forum posts about how Blizzard are LIARS!

NO! THRALL SAVE US!

Liars, all of them! They said they would never do this thing, and then they did. They said this thing would be a thing forever and now it's NOT! This other thing, they said it would be made this thing, but now it's a totally different thing! How can we ever even trust any single thing they ever say?!

these things

The very idea!

Nostalgia Explained

In my post about timewalking, I touched on how revamping old dungeons and 'updating' them for current content was one of the ways Blizzard has tried to accommodate people who want to revisit some of their favorite old dungeons. I also mentioned that I'm really not a fan of this method.

pictured: not me

Now, I understand the arguments in favor of revamping dungeons. One big one is the stories in them are outdated and they seem irrelevant. Why wouldn't the Gilnean traitors see Shadowfang Keep and say "that would make a good base of operations"? It makes sense that Scholomance would have changed over the last so many years since we first visited it, the school must be getting funding from somewhere. It makes sense that Warlord Zaela would commandeer UBRS and use it as a stakeout point for her planned invasion of alliance cities. Wouldn't it make sense that the old threats within them have been successfully neutralized? Why wouldn't big baddies see these strategically placed structures as a cool place to go start a new cult of evildoers?

But my gut says "Now why would you go and do something like that? Didn't you see the sign that said 'DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!'?"

How will we finish testing with the self-destruct mechanism active?

World of Identity Crisis

It's been a little under three months since my guild dissolved. We had been struggling since WoD's release, a veritable rollercoaster of events with an initial huge influx of new members, the splitting off of one of our best healers, followed by a full split of the entire guild where both our most casual and most hardcore people left the guild for different perceived reasons. Our GM quit and we tried to merge with another guild, which failed tremendously. We had just enough good people to hold on while we tried to rebuild, but recruiting was impossible. Of the about six good people that were holding us together, three of them left to greener pastures due to our stagnation. We were done.

We never made it to a level of progression and success that I was used to, and I've been struggling with Warlords as an expansion on its own since December of last year. Without a guild, a raiding schedule, or any interesting content, I haven't had much reason to play the game. I keep logging in, though, and I want to play. I don't know if I should look for a new guild or not. I feel completely conflicted about what I think I should do right now.