Text Based Building

I've mentioned building before, and I also mentioned how it's kind of tough to write about. It's hard to talk about, too. Every time someone asks me what I've been doing lately, it's a choice between "basically nothing," or attempting to explain this building process to them.

I'm going to try to shed a little more light on it today and what exactly I'm talking about.

If this is your first time hearing about this and you aren't already bored, I initially wrote a post to explain exactly what Cleft of Dimensions is, and then I briefly and inadequately explained what building is in a different post. If you already know what a MUD is, it's that.

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.

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

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.

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 More or Less Wonderful Life

One of my favorite Harvest Moon games, and favorite games in general, was A Wonderful Life on Gamecube. It was also one of my mom's favorite games.

it's actually one of the most different games in the franchise, too

My mom started dabbling in video games right before I had become a teenager. The first kinds of games she played were simulation games, typically a lot of stuff with tycoon at the end, The Sims being the game she ultimately binged the hardest on when first starting out.

Banished

Banished is a city builder designed by Shining Rock Software, which misleadingly is just one stellar dude, Luke Hodorowicz. It was released on February 18th in 2014, but it's still being tweaked and updated regularly. It's just now starting to have player-created mod content.

I got the game the day after it was released, played it for several days straight, and frequently go back to it. This is one of my favorite games, but some people give it flak for a couple reasons. This post is not really a review (I am not even really a reviewer, so get that out of your head), but rather me expressing my (correct) opinions on some controversial gameplay and design within Banished.

The game has almost zero plot so you couldn't really say there are any spoilers, though gameplay and mechanics will be discussed within this post.

Idle Gaming - When You're Too Lazy to Actually Game

unrealistic number of cookies

Ah, idle games. The very phrase elicits feelings of... staring vacantly at numbers. Endlessly clicking on things to earn resources to build and buy more things to get more resources to build or buy other things that give you more or maybe different resources to use to buy and build... other things and, sometimes, you... don't really know why you're playing.

Currently, the most famous of these games is probably cookie clicker. It's probably also the best example of one of the addictive power of these games. If you've ever been sucked in by an idle game, then you already know what I mean. The thing about most games like these is there really isn't... a point.

The goal feels like it's to accumulate more resources and build all the things to completion, but some games have no end. Some games add incentives to restart your game, putting you spiraling into an infinite loop of cookies or cabbages or what have you. Some of them do end, but to be honest, the end is always disappointing.

Idle games have been around for quite a long time - I remember playing one when I was still in middle school, in the early 2000s, before the term "idle game" was even coined. Now, there are a ton of them, sometimes their addictive powers being used for evil, exploiting the 'idle' aspect of them to riddle the games with microtransactions...

...while some people genuinely make great idle games for entertainment.

Grandpa Multi-User Dungeon

Before there were MMOs, there were MUDs. An older guildmate of mine actually told me that MMOs were originally referred to as "graphical MUDs". . .

Now I don't know how true that is, but MUDs are text based games where you explore vast and mysterious worlds, but just, like, with words.

they're very intense

There are a lot of them, but I've been playing one in particular that's very well made and maintained, Cleft of Dimensions.

"What's your played time?"

picture unrelated

Played time is a common comparison that World of Warcraft players often like to make. Some view it as a positive thing, a way to show how much time and dedication they've put into the game, while others seem to be embarrassed of their played time.

Threads pop up now and again, where invariably someone will say they are embarrassed of their 125 days and someone will respond to that person letting them know they have 300 days, someone nonchalantly says they've been playing for 800 days, so on and so forth. Some people seem to pretend to be embarrassed while others brag about played time that seems rather low.

Pascal: Origins

of course a master of the zergling rush

I've been playing video games since I was very young. I only played console games until my family got its first computer around when I was 11. The first notable games I played were Starcraft and Command and Conquer: Red Alert. I played other games, but RTS games were by far my favorite.

My brother owned Warcraft 3 but he insisted that I'd break it if I played it, so he never let me. I finally played it when I visited my family in Germany - my uncle specifically asked me if there were any games I'd like to play while I was visiting and I asked him for it. Once I got home, I secured myself a copy of it and played it for months.

When World of Warcraft first came out, I didn't even know it existed, but my brother got it a few months after its release. He no longer believed I would break his computer just by touching it and he more or less demanded that I come upstairs and play it.

Updated Character Models Aren't Enough

Hold up! Let me explain -

I thought the new models were pretty good

In Warlords of Draenor we're getting new character models. It's something that Blizzard had been asked about countless times and something a majority of people would say is an overdue change for a ten year old game. The new character models have encountered quite a few problems in their development, including mountains of both positive and negative feedback by the players.

Blizzard was in a damned if they do damned if they don't situation - for more than one problem. Blizzard would either have had to keep their old models and their old graphics and had to deal with more and more people questioning why they aren't updating them, or start updating everything - including the player models, which then creates its own slew of problems.

Of course, they opted to improve their graphics. They began adding updated, HD models for important lore characters, for creatures, for armor, the environment - basically everything. They were really starting to up the ante on their graphics for the game, something that they had gotten a lot of flak for. The graphics of World of Warcraft is a discussion in itself, but as we see new MMOs and new games come out with absolutely stunning, smooth graphics and textures - it was just a matter of time until Blizzard put emphasis on improving WoW's graphics situation.