I’ve been taking things easy on the blogging front, because I haven’t had much to report on the gaming front, I’m afraid. In some cases it’s by choice, but in others it seems the universe and/or my computer are conspiring against me.
I haven’t logged any time in Guild Wars for a while now; after my big push to get my Protector of Tyria title (and in the process, finally finish Prophecies on my main), as well as grinding Asura faction on the double EotN faction weekend, and trying to finish the War In Kryta content (still stuck on Battle for Lion’s Arch due to bad timing on my part), I got pretty burned out. I’ll not likely return until there’s another big WiK addition. It’s funny, because I was just starting to reconsider my previously-held position that I just can’t sustain gaming for hours every night because I was having such fun in Guild Wars, but no, I really can’t sustain gaming for hours every night. Fortunately there’s no subscription to cancel and re-activate, as ever, hooray for Guild Wars.
Since I was no longer playing GW, it was lucky that Gamescom came around right at that time, so I could drown myself in GW2 footage, commentary, speculation and all-around glee. While sill I want this game to come out so badly it hurts, that rush is finally starting to die down – though I’m still paying close attention to PAX – and I can turn my attention to other things.
One such thing is the resurgence of Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising and news of stress testing. NDAs prevent me from saying anything more about this, but I am excited to see that something is on the near horizon.
Another such thing is EverQuest II Extended, which I have gone ahead and created a character in, to putter around in New Halas. I wish I could be more excited about this, as generally speaking EQII has been one of my favorite MMO experiences and as recently as this year I had to wrestle with myself to keep from subscribing, so this ought to be a dream come true. However, I’m pretty disappointed in the way SOE has gone about breaking into the F2P market, from the segregated servers and abolition of live server free trials, to the absurd restrictions still placed upon EQIIExtended users who pay the equivalent of a monthly subscription. Had SOE handled this a little more deftly, I would have been sure to throw some money their way, whether to buy a race, or a class, or broker tokens, or the latest expansion – anything, really. Now I’m pretty determined to see how far I can get for free, and not sure I’ll continue on if that turns out to be “not very far.”
Finally, this weekend is the start of the Final Fantasy XIV open beta. While I already know that FFXIV is not for me – I tried FFXI as well, and boy, is it not for me – the game looks positively gorgeous in my opinion and I wanted to have such loveliness on my actual computer, even if just for an evening of tussling with an arcane menu system. Six client crashes and a character falling through the world later, and I think I’m about done. Also, I had a guildleve to work on, crashed on my way to the location, and it went away, unable to be reclaimed from the NPC I’d originally got it from. Still, I managed to kill a few things, take a few nice screenshots, watch two evocative cutscenes, had a same-sex demoness proposition me, and was invited to discuss male body parts by a lalafell.
Client issues or not, I’m reluctant to call that a complete failure based on the above experience alone.
Casual Is As Casual Does 