So hi guys, just going to throw something up real quick for the weekend! We’ve been extremely busy with videogames as usual, but even more than usual somehow, so here’s what I’ve been playing lately!
World of Warcraft Yep, still immersed in Pandaland, although these days I can at least drag myself away to play other games for a bit. It’s amazing how great this expac is though, one of Blizzard’s finest hours since the WC2/SC/D2 era. And I want a big strong Klaxxi to chirrup gently while I play with his antennae.
The Walking Dead I know I said there’d be a proper post on this, and I still intend to do that but I am astonishingly lazy so that post is not this post! Still, it’s a genuinely brilliant adventure game set in The Walking Dead world which doesn’t shy away from the sort of grim stuff in the comics and TV show, and it has a whole bunch of well-written and interesting characters, some of who you get really attached to. And then they die.
Liberal Crime Squad This was a game Toady One made before he became obsessed with Dwarf Fortress and, like that game, this is a pretty spergy and incredibly addictive devourer of time. It is a (very) satirical game based on American politics where, as the titular LCS, you set out to demonstrate to the country why the Arch-Conservative trend sweeping the country is a bad idea and to instead institute Elite Liberal laws. The big draw is the sheer variety of ways to achieve this. Break into a Corporate HQ and steal evidence of misdeeds, hack into government websites and deface them, seduce Judges so they act in your favor, go out into the street and protest, the list goes on and on.
Sweet Baby Jesus this kid is hot
Assassin’s Creed III This long-awaited continuation of the AC series is proving to be pretty much everything Pike and myself hoped it would be. It’s an expansion of pretty much everything the previous games had, just as II built on the original massively. It’s also a game in no real hurry; you don’t even get control of Connor until several hours in (But that’s okay because the guy you are instead, Haythem Kenway, is a superbly debonair gentleman) and the game isn’t afraid of throwing some considerable soliloquies at you. The best of which has to be Ben Franklin’s musing on his Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress and why cougars are totally great.
Also there’s some sprinklings of FTL and Project Zomboid in there!
What have you readers been playing lately, and are planning on playing this weekend? Do share your thoughts in the comments below!
For obvious reasons Dwarfs make the best Brewmasters, so when Pike and I rolled a couple of Monks I chose Dorf as my race. I quickly found that the best reference to anything in WoW is sitting down there in Coldridge Valley.
This is a reference to Parappa the Rapper in the Year of Our Lord 2012.
Based on this alone I’d be quite happy to call Pandamans a shining success, but as it turns out absolutely everything about this expansion I’ve seen so far is solid goddamn gold. I’ve no doubt my dear co-blogger Pike will have a lot more to say on the subject seeing as she is the one who is actually good at this videogame, so I shan’t go into it in too much detail, but I cannot stop playing this freaking game. Would you like to know more? Well then, let’s consider that the Panda Inn music is peerless:
Just wait until the kazoo kicks in.
Oh, and Pokewow? The thing I long scorned as a shameless gimmick intended to bring in people who would otherwise have no interest in the game? I was COMPLETELY WRONG in every way. Pet Battles is absolutely freaking insanely brilliant and addictive and anytime I find myself at a loss for other stuff to do, welp, time to set REAPER PRIME on some chumps. (REAPER PRIME is a Tiny Harvester about ten inches tall.) And I think that’s the key to what MoP has done right – there’s a huge variety of things to do open to you and a lot of them require minimal investment of time to get started. For all the old man “danged kids” lamenting Pike and myself do I have to admit I’m pretty glad to see the narrow idea of what endgame is in the past.
I should go play some bad games so I stop fanboying over stuff but, heck, I just want to enthuse about how great videogames are so here we are, with constant posts about great games!
If you are anything like myself or Mister Adequate, then you will be well-acquainted with that obnoxious insect that comes around every six months or so and nibbles on you and makes you nostalgic for World of Warcraft and won’t stop nibbling until you actually re-sub. This invariably results in a few weeks of playing little else but WoW until the bug is satiated and flies away– for the time being, anyway.
I was visited by this bug about a week back and after several days of trying to ignore it and swat it away while it hummed the Karazhan theme in my ear, I recently caved and re-downloaded the game. I know, I know.
Now I haven’t played in months and months and one of the things that I always felt bad about was that I left my long-time main, Tawyn, rather unceremoniously dumped in Stormwind in a bunch of greens from the new Cataclysm content– basically I played for about a month after Cata launch and then realized “You know what, I’m still bored of raiding and heroics” and logged out and didn’t return. So poor Tawyn wasn’t retired in her level 70 epics or her level 80 epics– no, she was retired wearing [Boring Uldum Pants of the Whale] and such. Obviously this wasn’t going to do, so the very first thing I did was transmogrify into old stuff from my favorite ever raid instance, Karazhan, and various assorted BC heroics. For the first time in years, Tawyn matched my figureprint of her and the mental image I have when I think of her. I… really can’t express how good this felt.
Suddenly, playing my character was fun again. Because suddenly, I didn’t look like a scrub in greens. Nor did I look like a mishmash of epics from the current content. Rather, I looked like my character— something I was proud of.
Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t feel like raiding or doing heroics or really any sort of endgame. But at least I can deal with dailies and things like leveling once MoP comes out (should I get the expac– I’m still not sure if I will.)
The new patch comes out tomorrow and it gets rid of hunter stat sticks, which means I’ll lose my lovely Sonic Spear and I won’t be able to sport my Legacy in the future. But you’ll have to pry Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle out of my cold, dead, purple hands.
So Europa Universalis IV has been announced, which is something that we’ll no doubt be talking about in greater detail within the next few days, but for today’s Friday post I want to share a video I found the other night. Basically it’s a guy talking about how an MMO guild or raid leader is probably better equipped for a leadership position than someone who has just gone to school and has no other experience, and how the guild/raid model could be applied to businesses. In other words, he’s reiterating stuff any MMO player has already known for years. It’s kind of nice to see other people realize it, though. Now if only we could clone this guy and put him in charge of employment around the world, right?
So last week, Mister Adequate resubbed to World of Warcraft, and then promptly tossed me a Scroll of Resurrection (at my request, I won’t deny it). This was despite a lot of warnings from people that I’d get pulled back into it and that it would eat up all my time. Still, I went ahead and activated my free week and logged in.
The first thing I noticed was that my poor neglected main was still buffed with a buff from the Lunar Festival which just goes to show you how long it’s been since I logged in.
The second thing I noticed was that I’d apparently been kicked from my guild for inactivity, which didn’t bother me too much because last I checked most of the cool people had either moved to a new guild or quit playing.
Upon flying to the training dummies I noticed a third thing, which was that I somehow still remembered all of my keybinds. That tickled me a little bit.
Anyways, then I got bored and logged out for the rest of the day.
The next morning I was feeling nostalgic for Burning Crusade so I picked a random alt that was in Outlands and did some quests. I did that for about 45 minutes and I felt proud that I still sort of knew how to play a hunter. And you know, it was fun for a little bit. But then I got bored again and logged out and spent the rest of the day playing Civ.
My reaction to that decision
The third day I logged into a completely different alt, one who was in the midst of the re-done Cataclysm quests in Ashenvale (this particular alt still had the Christmas gnome buff from December). Again, I messed around for about an hour and then it was off to other things, both games and otherwise.
So, you may be wondering where I’m going with this. Believe me, I don’t intend this to be some sort of WoW or MMO bash. As far as I’m concerned WoW is still the best MMO on the market today, and the majority of my memories of the game are fond ones. But I think I attempted to come back to it too soon. My interest in it simply has not been rekindled in my absence. You have awakened me too soon, Scroll of Resurrection!
Yes, that is a pony Ragnaros.
I think I’ll resub for a month, just to get Mister Adequate his free month for the Scroll of Resurrection, but I can’t envision myself doing anything beyond messing around with alts for a few hours each week. You never know, of course, but more and more I’m thinking I should let the game lie for a bit longer.
There’s more to WoW than endgame, of course, and my particular playstyle at the moment– derping around on alts for a few hours a week– is certainly a valid one, but is it worth the $15/month when you’re as broke as I am? I’ve yet to decide. Currently I’m leaning toward “no”. But we’ll see, I suppose. We’ll see.
Yes, I’m talking about that old standby that nobody ever truly escapes from, the game that both codified MMOs and redefined what they could commercially and culturally achieve – World of Warcraft. Now, our dear Pike has as most of you will know been a very long-time player of WoW, and played solidly for years, which is of course where her delightful Aspect of the Hare arose from. In fact I first played the game considerably before she ever touched it (I got it just as Patch 1.6 came out.), but unlike her I come and go in waves. I play for a few months, then put it aside for a few months, repeat. Apparently ad nauseum. I had thought I had escaped for good; I last played in early Spring if I recall correctly.
But here I am, and I know the signs by now. I’ve started reading the WoW forums. I keep an eye on the patch notes. I’ve updated to the latest version. I’m looking for the best current plugins to use. Sooner or later, no matter how long and hard I resist it, I’m going to give Blizzard yet more of my altogether too scarce money and I am going to spend an extraordinary amount of time playing World of Warcraft.
Again. And I’m sure I’ll drag Pike along with me, because she’s susceptible to that sort of thing and hearing me ooh-ing and ah-ing over some mediocre Green I just found will make her itch to play it.
Goldshire, my body is ready!
Are there any games, MMO or otherwise, which just seem to always manage to call you back to them, an irresistible siren song that must inexorably conquer you despite your best efforts?
Also how is WoW these days, to those who still play?
