October 2023 Gaming: Mad Kings, Old Ones, and Comfy Cats

Halloween events in MMOs. That’s what October modern gaming for me has meant going back as far as my memory allows and this year was no different. Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, and The Division 2 were the main games I celebrated the spooky season in this year, using the opportunity in some to make some decent progress. None of the events I played had any real new content, though, aside from a few cosmetics. As these games age and players move on to other shinier pastures I can’t really fault them for it. Just sort of sad that these decades-old games are almost fully relying on nostalgia to draw players in. Still, seasonal events are always a good excuse to pop back in, even if the stay isn’t a long one.

October’s Goals Rating: 50/50

My goals for October mainly focused around Halloween events, as usual.

• Complete the 1st Part of Division 2‘s Year 5 Season 2 Update and Hit SHD level 250 – Complete!
• Check out LotRO‘s Harvestmath – Complete!
• Check out GW2‘s Shadow of the Mad King – Complete!
• Check out ESO‘s Witch’s Festival – Nope. Started very late and ESO just wasn’t calling me.
• Order a few more parts for the new PC and put it all together (3rd time’s the charm?) – Parts came in, now I’m just procrastinating.
• Get out 3 blog posts (One less than last goal?) – Nope. I’m awful.
• Prep for a Return to Streaming on Twitch – Kind of? I’ll explain.

3.5 out of 7. Not bad. I hit up the Halloween events in a lot more games than I was expecting myself to, Elder Scrolls Online just wasn’t one of them. ESO‘s event basically revolves around playing the game like normal, maybe making sure to run a delve or a public dungeon every day to get tickets just to do their awful seasonal rewards schtick of forming one pet just to use doohickeys to turn it into another pet or mount or something. Since the tickets are capped, though, if you want the top stuff you have to log in and play content you wouldn’t normally, like PvP. Their system mostly ends up feeling grindy or tedious so I only really play an event if I feel like it, which this time I didn’t.

As for returning to Twitch streaming, I was reminded that if I receive a payment from Amazon for streaming on Twitch during the year, then I’d have to upgrade to a deluxe tax package when doing my taxes next year which is going to be an extra $50 or so. I doubt if I return for just November and December I’d receive enough donations to offset that extra cost alone. So, better to return after the new year. Otherwise I’d be paying to do so. Nobody in the streaming community ever really talks about the taxes. Mostly because taxes are just not a fun thing to talk about, I guess.

Guild Wars 2’s Mad King, Stopped Clocktower, and Draconis Mons

I just said nothing was new in Halloween events this year, but that’s not entirely true. This year during Guild Wars 2 Shadow of the Mad King Halloween festival the infamous Clocktower jumping puzzle, notorious for not allowing you to take a moments breath while jumping, was standing still. Allowing all players to ascend the tower at their leisure, even gliding. Not only was this a nice change of pace, but at the top was a vendor where you could trade some crafting components for paper bag helms with emoji faces on them. Adorable.

Also I spent some days before all the Halloween events started in earnest finishing up the Living World Season 3 Flashpoint release and Draconis Mons zone, the penultimate leading up to the Path of Fire expansion. Yes, I’m that far behind in the story. It was due to the years there where Arenanet was just being an absolute garbage company. Treating their employees quite poorly and for a long time it just felt wrong supporting them. However, with a regime change in mid-2019, it finally felt worth coming back to. So I started a brand new 2019 character with the intent of 100%’ing everything I can and now I’m playing catch up.

Shooting Through Star Trek Online’s Catspaw Castle

Star Trek Online will take any content from the deep well of Star Trek to use for its multiple missions, but they only recently started to get into the Halloween spirit in 2021 with a spooky Task Force Operation, STO‘s version of dungeons, based off the TOS episode Catspaw. It’s a classic episode in which Kirk, Spock, and Bones find themselves in a quintessential spooky castle with witches, black cats, dungeons, and magic. Of course it ends up being alien shenanigans. The TFO in Star Trek Online, which has been expanded to multiple solo instances as well, takes that idea and uses another spooky Star Trek foe, the out-of-phase ghostlike Dividians and combines them in an old castle, witches-and-ghosts encounter. It’s… a little cheesy. But then again, Star Trek itself can also be quite cheesy at times, too.

Aside from the Halloween missions I used the time to catch up on the latest feature episodes, Wish Upon A Star and Taken By Surprise in the new Kings & Queens story arc involving the Mirror Universe Borg. A foe that hasn’t been explored before in the Star Trek mythos.

Revisiting the Original Mad King in Guild Wars Nightfall

Over the last week or so, as I’m nearing completion of the Living World Season 3 in Guild Wars 2, I’ve been back in Guild Wars 1 in preparation going through the Nightfall release. As I was too entrenched in World of Warcraft at the time Guild Wars was popular I never completed their storylines and have been trying to make up for that. My plan is to complete each branch of Guild Wars before completing it’s related expansion in Guild Wars 2. So I completed Prophecies before I went through Heart of Thorns, and plan on completing Nightfall before Path of Fire, and then Factions before End of Dragons. Then probably Eye of the North before Secrets of the Obscure. Although those last two aren’t as closely linked as the other three, it at least matches the back and forth pattern.

The nostalgia got to me and I had to complete the old school Mad King’s Finale on Halloween as well as doing some of the Halloween themed missions in Elona, which I had never completed before, this being my first run through Elona. So many trick-or-treat bags opened.

To continue the trend, I also made more headway through Elona. Completing the Grand Court of Sebelkeh, Nundu Bay, and Jennur’s Horde mission and all the side quests I could find, I’ve played up to entering the Desolation area and the Gate of Desolation mission before losing steam.

Haunted Burrow and Tipsy Wistmead

Rounding out the month of October I spent a few days in Lord of the Rings Online for their yearly Harvestmath festival. It’s always a fun LotRO holiday as it entails the spooky Haunted Burrow as well as the Wistmead zone. In the past LotRO has absolutely won Halloween for Wistmead and the spooky Bingo Boffin quests associated with them and should absolutely be done by anyone who hasn’t run them yet, it’s just great content. However, the only items I found myself going for this year were the new mount, an elk with a massive curving rack that’ll poke your eye out, the new pet, a day-of-the-dead themed goat, a couple of gear cosmetics I’ll probably never wear, and a couple of cats to hang around my hobbit home. Cats in a hobbit home. Can you *get* any comfier than that?

Not a lot of stuff, though. So it didn’t take long to get the tokens needed, only 3 nights. I did use the opportunity to create a fast-run guide for future years. Spoilers: you spend most of it drunk. Dang drunk quests.

Saving the First Puppeteers Victim and Hitting SHD 250

The Division 2 is a game I’m quickly finding myself coming back to over and over again and it’s really surprised me. It’s not like I’m a big FPS aficionado. There’s just something about The Division 2‘s balance between the fun minute-to-minute gameplay, a consistent progression that feels meaningful, and a storyline and world that is evolving and playing out slowly but meaningfully that is just hitting all the right notes.

I remember once hearing from an MMO game designer interview that you should give the players multiple goals to work on that stretch over different lengths. So have goals that could be completed in a single session, goals that can be completed over multiple sessions from days to weeks, and goals that can take months to even years all going on simultaneously. If you can balance goals like that well, there will always be something for players to chase well beyond when the main story ends. I feel like The Division 2 really showcases that concept well, as well as having excellent minute-to-minute gameplay. Such that running the same missions over and over doesn’t feel like a slog or a grind, which is quite the trick.

To that effect my time in Division 2 in October was quite fruitful. I completed the first manhunt target of Puppeteers, the Year 5 Season 2 ongoing story, saving Cindy McAllister. Thus expanding the staff in the ongoing rebuilding of the Castle settlement after its decimation during the base games main story. At the same time I hit the first soft-cap of SHD level 250, an ongoing slight vertical progression you unlock after completing the Warlords of New York expansion that scales 1:1 with base game levels and Season progression track levels simultaneously. At SHD 250 you complete the first set of major performance increases. SHD 500 and SHD 750 bring lesser but still significant increases with a total SHD cap of 1000 to attain. On top of that, completing my 4th of 6 specializations, and acquiring all of the hidden collectibles to be found in the main DC area — aside from the Dark Zone. Many different progression tracks, all of them worth progressing, and every session played brings progress made in each of them. Whoever is in charge over there knows what they’re doing and other MMOs should be taking note.

Gaming Goals For November

As we enter November I’m feeling very blase, a bit melancholy, and feeling some burn out from MMOs. So maybe I’ll make more headway in single players? Which ones, though, are a little up in the air. Been working through New Vegas, so that’s a lock, but another? We’ll see. Having gone 50/50 for October let’s try this again.

• Complete 2nd Part of Division 2‘s Year 5 Season 2 Manhunt
• Finish Fallout New Vegas
• Play a good chunk of another new/returning single player title
• Write 3 blog posts (keeping it at 3, it’s a good minimum)
• Organize enough to prepare for building the new PC (trying a new tactic)
• Prepare to start streaming again in 2024

Some of these feel a little loose but that’s only because I’m feeling so meh right now, and I expect the lack of motivation to continue as the sunlight decreases and it gets colder. I always enjoy the beginning of fall but the post-Halloween lull always gets to me. Here’s hoping I get some of it done. Ending on a bit of a down note, but as always, thanks for reading!

// Ocho

September 2023 Gaming: Riding in Rohan and No Man’s Sky’s Needless Impersonation of Starfield

September came in hot as heck and is leaving also pretty hot. I’m sure we’ll start cooling off soon. Hopefully. My hoodies are calling me from the depths of the closet so I certainly hope so, anyway. As I sit with a nice breeze and campfire smoke on the air let’s go over my September gaming, which — sort of weird for me — only consisted of mainly two games: Lord of the Rings Online and No Man’s Sky. LotRO pulling me in with their new piratey quest chain and No Man’s Sky with their 11th Expedition. Sadly both, in my opinion, ended up a little underwhelming. Not bad, per se, just a little less than I was expecting.

September’s Goals Rating: Not Bad, I Guess

Some of the goals I had for September were putting my wishes out into the universe to hold me accountable, so that I didn’t meet those I’m not surprised. But that’s okay as they weren’t that bad. Let’s check them out.

• Complete No Man’s Sky‘s Expedition 11 – Complete!
• Check out Star Trek Online‘s Incursion (and complete missed story) – Nope, wanted to, but just wasn’t feeling it.
• Check out LotRO‘s Tale of the Shipwrecked Mariner – Complete!
• Build the New PC (2nd Time on Goals) – Nada, but I think my hesitancy is stemming from too much risk, so I need to address that first.
• More Fallout: New Vegas – Nope. Also, just wasn’t feeling it.
• Get out 4 posts; Get on a weekly blog posting schedule – 25% complete! Hey, 1 is better than 0, right?
• Avoid dire sickness, unlike last year – Complete! We got sick, of course, but far from dire.

3 out of 7? Decent batting average, but far from stellar. I blame the Expedition but I’ll get into that. But hey, we only ended up under heavy sickness for only 3 or 4 days, the back-to-school crud mainly making us feel run down and crappy all month, but still able to function. A HUGE improvement over last year.

Lord of the Rings Online: Milling in a pre-Mariner Multiverse

As I type this recap of September, the Mariner, LotRO‘s newest class is officially live and players are able to start swashbuckling their way across Middle-Earth. Which is awesome. The new class sounds like a lot of fun but I’m the type of MMO player that splits up all my characters among multiple games, so rarely do I create more than one character per game.

My reasoning is that until I see all the story a game has to offer re-rolling new characters in the middle of that only delays how long it takes to see all that content. Of course when I reach the top my inclination is instead of restarting the game to see how other classes play I just play a different game. It’s not a hard rule, mind you, like lately trying out ESO‘s Arcanist until level 10 to unlock rewards, or having multiple Star Trek Online characters to play through their Recruitment Events and different faction-specific stories. But still, one character is usually enough for me.

Anyway, for Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day Lord of the Rings Online this year launched a set of eleven missions titled Stowaway: The Old Man on the Shore with the reward of a full sailor-themed outfit, which is quite excellent. The storyline followed the tale of this old man as he recounts his life, his trials and tribulations with a nemesis sailor and achieving vengeance and was a decent story to play through.

However, I thought the missions themselves felt a little bare. The maps were basically a generic tavern, a generic port city, generic ruins, generic cave, and a generic bad-guy encampment. All with sets of mobs wandering around, just waiting for players to beat up on. Not bad, really, but with their next expansion Corsairs of Umbar not too far away and this content being released featuring sailors and pirates, I was expecting this to be a little more of a preview of what is to come and it just didn’t hit that mark. Ah well.

It did get me back into playing LotRO for a time, though, so it totally succeeded in that regard. My main, a Dwarf Runekeeper finished up everything in the winter-cursed zone of Wildermore and started good progress into Western Rohan. I finished up the zone of Kingstead, fully leveled up my warsteed, and started in on Eastfold. Also, been experimenting with the new Landscape Difficulty slider, currently set at +3 Fearless, but I’ll give my varied thoughts on that in another post. Hopefully.

No Man’s Sky: Expedition 11, or Starfield-Lite

The other half of the month I spent in No Man’s Sky in their 11th Expedition. Expeditions, as I have mentioned before, are generally one of the best launching off points for new players and usually act as a tour through the game’s newest content. For veteran players who have learned the ins and outs these usually only take a handful of nights to complete. This one, however, took me 8 nights, and was all over the place that I can’t in good faith suggest it.

It was focused primarily on “exploration”, which in this case meant landing on random hot/acidic/whatever planets and scanning everything around until you finally come across one creature good enough for the missions to complete. This took way longer than I feel it should have and maybe was used to help bolster a player’s nanite reserve — as, you see, scanning every creature on a planet’s surface gives the player a sizable nanite boost — but the tedium of landing and scanning, landing, scanning, landing, scanning, was just too much. As for the phases, milestones generally completable in order following a guided path, I ended up finishing the 1st phase, then the 5th last phase, then the 4th, the 2nd, and finishing up with the 3rd phase. Totally out of order, but that was the easiest path to take.

I can only guess this Expedition was released simply to compete with Starfield. Which, to me, seems silly. Starfield is the latest Bethesda game that’s been in development for years and, by most accounts I’ve read, plays exactly like a Bethesda game. A style that between Fallout and Elder Scrolls has fully cemented itself in gamers brains so much that it’s essentially a money-printer now. Trying to compete with that feels like throwing rocks at a mountain. Totally unnecessary. No Man’s Sky and Starfield are two totally different products with their only real similarity being spaceships and planets. They’re completely different otherwise.

Oh, except for the bugs. This Expedition was riddled with bad bugs, just like Starfield, including one bug where, until it was hot-fixed, stopped most players from even finishing the Expedition! So it, just like LotRO‘s new Stowaway story, felt totally rushed. The rewards leave a lot to be desired, too, the best of which being an electric backpack trail and a simple tent — a base addition that does allow you to get out of the elements without needing to build a full structure, which is nice, but not thrilling. Both of these combined, along with the bugs, leave me no choice but to not suggest playing this Expedition. I have yet to add it to my Expedition ranking, but when I do it’ll be very low down the list.

The worst part is they added a whole bunch of great things with the Echoes update! Including a new race, new Pirate reputation, huge capital ship battles, new story, and a staff multi-tool. All excellent additions to the game that the Expedition doesn’t touch at all! The reasoning being, I guess, is that the new content is mostly found after the main story’s end. Which also feels unnecessary. So I spent the rest of my time in No Man’s Sky checking out all the new stuff. But why have this race, with a full language, only available after the conclusion of the main storyline when the rest of the game is all relatively non-linear? Even the new story didn’t feel entirely like a justification for it. Just a weird miss-step. They could’ve waited a few weeks, polished it up, maybe added some of the new elements, when players are now getting a little tired of Starfield, and they probably would’ve been better off. But that’s just my armchair thinking. Who knows what they were really thinking.

Gaming Goals for October

So, all in all a little disappointing. Except, that is, for making good headway into a new-to-me LotRO expansion. So what do I hope to complete in this, the spookiest month of October? Here are my goals.

• Complete the 1st Part of Division 2‘s Year 5 Season 2 Update and Hit SHD level 250
• Check out LotRO‘s Harvestmath
• Check out GW2‘s Shadow of the Mad King
• Check out ESO‘s Witch’s Festival
• Order a few more parts for the new PC and put it all together (3rd time’s the charm?)
• Get out 3 blog posts (One less than last goal?)
• Prep for a Return to Streaming on Twitch

All of these feel totally doable as I know I will be checking out all the Halloween offerings in the games I usually play, but this year (hopefully) without all the sickness and vacation prepping as last year. Here’s hoping a safe and spooky month for all!

// Ocho

August 2023 Gaming Recap: Exploring Vabbi, Markarth, and the Mojave Wasteland

So now that August and #Blaugust have ended, I’ve taken a week off, and I’ve done a post-mortem soul-search of how I performed on this blog during the month, how did I do on actual August gaming? As usual I hopped from game to game, which is my nature, spending time in 6 different games this month. Those being Guild Wars: Nightfall, Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout: New Vegas, The Division 2, Honkai: Star Rail, and Lord of the Rings Online. Yet simultaneously, due to #Blaugust and still not finding the best rhythm when it comes to blogging, I spent less time gaming in August than I have in the past 6 years. Bit of a wild month, for sure.

August’s Goals Rating: Not Bad

The goals that I had for August were also varied — but reasonable — and I feel like I accomplished most of them.

• Complete ESO‘s Markarth — Complete
• Get out 15 posts for Blaugust — Not quite, I only made 8 posts.
• Get My New PC Built — Didn’t even start. Going to try again this month. Hopefully.
• Complete Division 2‘s Year 5 Season 1 Broken Wings Manhunt — Complete
• Check out Lord of the Rings Online‘s Farmer’s Faire — Complete
• Complete Fallout New Vegas — Not completed, but I did make good progress.

I’ll admit my bar is fairly low but 3 out of 6 goals fully complete, with 2 others making decent progress: I call that a win. We are talking about hobbies and entertainment, after all.

Guild Wars: Nightfall’s Vabbi Exploration

Using a system that I have where if I’m feeling uninspired and can’t decide what to play, I list off all the MMOs and games that I’d like to play or make more progress in, note the ones I’d actually play at a given time, and then use a random number generator or spinner to pick what I play. The reason I keep coming back to this system is because I’ll usually end up playing the game it picks for a long while, which was again the case as it picked Guild Wars: Nightfall and it was my most played game of the month.

I’ve made good progress in Nightfall, exploring about 75% of Elona and working through the Vabbi region with my Mesmer main. Shocking nobody, I never made any real progress in the original Guild Wars when it was in its prime, but periodically come back to it as the gameplay is so unique and, for the time, the environments are so well done. They feel a little dated now but, come on, it’s been out for 16 years. That’s to be expected. Still fun to play and I hope to complete Nightfall before I get to GW2‘s Path of Fire. Even if I’m behind the curve I still like all my story content in relative order, thank you very much.

Elder Scrolls Online’s Markarth Completion

One of my August goals was completing Markarth and I did just that, prompting me to write about how over-congratulatory Elder Scrolls Online can feel. Overall, Markarth felt fine. Using the above/below ground zoning and Harrowstorms like Greymoor did but completing with what felt like a better boss battle.

My issue with ESO right now is, though, that my main character feels quite overpowered for main story content, but that’s the only content I really want to play. I have zero interest in running dungeons, raids (trials?), or PvP. When the main content feels totally trivial it lacks that real pull, then that triviality reflects on the game overall. So even if the story is amazing it’ll get a bit of hit in my mind just for being too easy, which isn’t really fair, but not something I can really help. If they instituted a sort of self-difficulty scaling similar to Lord of the Rings Online, maybe that would help some. Certainly couldn’t hurt.

Fallout: New Vegas Finally Getting to the Main Story

The game I’ve so far played more than any other this year has been Fallout: New Vegas. Widely considered by many to be the best Fallout game to date, I have a hard time disagreeing. My experience through the Mojave Wasteland has been fantastic. Having that expected Bethesda difficulty curve that feels very rewarding and compelling, I’ve explored every nook and cranny the base game has to offer and love that the game made it easy to do. Combined with the all-encompassing faction reputation system and mission completion branches that spiderweb through the whole game, this has been a wonderful playthrough. After exploring as much as I could and completing as many side missions as possible, including every companion’s storylines, I finally made it past the first act of the main story at level 36, 6 levels past the base game’s initial max level.

However, I’ve learned through some wikis — I like to make game decisions and then look up what happens if I picked the alternate instead — that when the main story completes the game ends and doesn’t let you proceed. So I intend to get as far as I can in the main story and then start on the DLCs first. I expect I’ll be playing this well into winter depending on how long those DLC take.

Cleanup: Division 2’s Broken Wings Completion, LotRO’s Farmer’s Faire, and Honkai: Star Rail

Rounding out the month were some other notable and not-as-notable accomplishments.

I rescued the final minor target and primary target of Division 2‘s Broken Wings, helping to rebuild the DC Castle Settlement after it had been obliterated during the main story. Easy enough for a now well-geared and built Agent, but getting to the point of soloing the Challenging manhunts has been quite a journey. Well worth it, though. The minute-to-minute gameplay I find quite fun. Division 2 just hits way more enjoyable boxes for me than I ever thought it would.

I spent only one evening in Lord of the Rings Online Farmer’s Faire this year. Surprising considering I spent so much more time in the event last year but with my back-supply of tokens one night was all that I needed to get all the new rewards. Hoping to pop in this month for the upcoming new Mariner stuff, though.

Finally, I’ve been checking out Honkai: Star Rail on mobile and coming away liking it quite a bit. The game plays like Final Fantasy X, complete with turn-based combat, giant attack animations, and hallway-esque maps which works extremely well on mobile devices. Combined with that nice Genshin: Impact anime style and writing evocative of old-school point-and-click adventure games — or I think so, anyway — I’ve been finding it quite enjoyable.

Genshin: Impact always felt like it had an identity crisis to me. Too much of a mobile UI feel on PC, but was super hard to control effectively on mobile. Honkai: Star Rail, in comparison, feels like it knows what it is and just feels “cool”. Probably won’t be playing it much on PC, though I like that the option is there.

Gaming Goals for September

September has famously been the month where we all start getting sick and spend it mostly feeling icky, so we’ll see how much gaming or writing I end up doing. However, here are my goals for September.

• Complete No Man’s Sky‘s Expedition 11
• Check out Star Trek Online‘s Incursion (and complete missed story)
• Check out LotRO‘s Tale of the Shipwrecked Mariner
• Build the New PC (2nd Time on Goals)
• More Fallout: New Vegas
• Get out 4 posts; Get on a weekly blog posting schedule
• Avoid dire sickness, unlike last year

We’ll see how things go, I guess. How about you, dear reader? What are your goals? What are you playing? Let me know!

// Ocho

#Blaugust Come, #Blaugust Go

This month, like many many others, didn’t quite go as planned. As it usually does, Blaugust, the blogging during August writing festival, drew me in to once more take up the task of writing as much as I could during what I’m quickly learning is the most chaotic month of the year for my family. Despite all the writing and disarray this month brings, though, I was able to get in some gaming time, albeit not nearly as much as I’m use to. So I guess this post will mostly be me self-reflecting and reasoning how I’m so bad at this.

So how did I do in Blaugust this month? Including this post I will have written a total of 8 posts and 11 out of the 20 achievements. I’ll give myself enough props to admit it’s far from zero, but not enough to garner any sort of praise or pride from. As usual, I had a lot of steam in the beginning, setting a goal I believed to be high but achievable of 1 post every 2 days. Up until the middle of the month I had a steady rhythm going. Then, Life happened.

As it always does, though, right? Life will always get in the way. That’s what life *does*. Then it comes down to priorities, reality, and understanding. My son, whom I refer to as “Baby Ocho” — but is far from a baby any more– turned six years old and is starting school full-time in September. So that meant celebrating his birthday with all the family and his school friends, a lot of travelling and six different social events. Then came all the back-to-school events for both him and my wife, shopping, visiting, and helping set up classrooms. Couple that with aging parents, whose injuries and maladies pop up out of nowhere, so multiple hospital visits. I’m exhausted and stressed.

That’s why I game, though, to help relieve exhaustion and stress. To be the balance that helps keep me from going over the deep end into serious depression. Been there. Don’t recommend it. Without my gaming time, I don’t know where I would be. Some people turn to gambling, alcohol, or drugs. Gaming feels way more innocuous, but to get the stress-relief I have to, you know, actually find time to play. Doing that at the same time as writing for fun has been my constant challenge.

So what’s the benefit of writing? I’ve never been into writing. Science, math, theatre, sure, but writing had always been a challenge for me. Doing a 3-page physics problem was always way easier for me than writing a 3-page essay. Yet, here I am, blogging. I’ve always considered myself a jack-of-all-trades, so I tend to gravitate toward what I’m *not* good at, just so I can understand it better, practice, and learn more about it.

Also, the community around blogging is quite fun! Blogging has allowed me to feel part of something a little bigger than myself, and that’s a good feeling. I still feel like I’m on the outside looking in, though, and not wholly welcomed, but that’s how I feel in most groups which is a self-reflection for another time.

Since writing time and playing time overlap for me so much, then, that means sacrificing one to do the other. With writing I’ve spent so little time gaming that the last month I’ve gamed less was July 2017 when my wife was 8 months pregnant. So every night turns into a choice of which do I do, write or game? Logically, I have to game to have something to write about in the first place. Plus, writing doesn’t help with my stress — most times adding to it — but gaming does help. So writing sadly and inevitably takes the backseat. So it goes.

In the end all I can say is ‘I tried’. Could I have done better? Absolutely, but I also could’ve done a lot worse, or not even tried at all. That’s a worse sin in my book. So I won’t be winning anything outside of the ‘Bronze’ award, or even improving my sad blogging reputation. I have, though, learned a little more about myself. And really, isn’t that the whole point?

// Ocho

Stop Congratulating Me!

There’s a psychological belief out there that the reason we play the games we do is that they give us experiences we don’t normally receive in our real lives. So the other day I was joking about how some of the reasons we play MMOs are that they complete that psychological need for being given reasonable tasks, completing those tasks, and being rewarded well for our efforts. The feeling of having a to-do list, crossing off everything, and being rewarded for it? The. Best.

There’s a point, though, when the felicitations become way too much. Especially for those of us who like story and don’t like missing anything so we’ll read every piece of dialogue handed to us. Saying a nice ‘thank you’ and giving us some new shiny is one thing, but having us be the centerpiece of a giant ceremony while every character we’ve ever helped is in attendance, giving each of them new lines to say, thanking us *again*? I’m talking about Elder Scrolls Online.

I like Elder Scrolls Online a lot. Only a couple years behind new releases — I’ve almost 100%’d now 35 out of the available 40 zones with my completion of the Markarth DLC — Elder Scrolls online is my 2nd most played game over the past 6 1/2 years. But they go *really* hard on the overly congratulatory fluff. Out of those 35 zones, not sure about maybe the starter zones as much, but every other single zone’s story, especially the DLCs, wraps up with some huge ceremony saying how our characters have saved the world, yet again, and how we’ll always be welcome in the halls of blah blah blah.

What makes it standout more than other games, aside from all the pomp and pageantry of it, though, is also, in juxtaposition, how *not* rewarding it is. Elder Scrolls Online, like many other games, has an excessive amount of loot drops where you’ll find yourself selling it all to vendors or breaking it all down into crafting materials. Not necessarily a bad thing as the highest quality loot is attained through crafting, so those mats are essential. It just hits different when at the end of the DLC they handed me a single epic axe of a seemingly-random zone gearset and 600 gold. A relatively less than stellar reward.

Although, once you start accruing Champion points the game’s difficulty drops as well, which is reminiscent of every other Bethesda game, to be honest. So this massive challenge was also fairly easy for a decently geared, post-max level player. It could be that they’re not-so-subtly pushing players to more challenging content, too. Like it has an undercurrent of sarcasm. Or that’s just how it comes across to me being so over-geared, anyway, and I’m probably imagining it.

I get it, though. It’s not just that we beat some big bad thing. It’s more than that. They’re also, basically, thanking us for buying the DLCs, subscribing, basically supporting and playing the game itself. They’re not just thanking your character. They’re thanking *you*, the player. So these moments are basically the developers reaching out to us directly. The end gathering of all the NPCs you helped and giving them all a new thankful line or two to say acts as a sort of credits scroll, too. A definite capstone to the zone.

I know I don’t have to read each and every one of the breathless thank-yous, but my completionist tendency compels me to. I’ll only come back to this zone if I need to farm some dailies, so I might as well get everything I can out of it while I’m here now, including all the dialogue. Still, though, for an introvert like myself, I never expected the thankful dialogue in the end to be the game’s real challenge.

// Ocho

Tricks to Keep Your Aging Windows PC Going

The CPU in my current PC is an Intel Core i7-3770. This CPU was released in April of 2012 and I couldn’t have been happier with it over the years. As my wife is fond of saying, “It doesn’t owe me anything”. It sits atop an ASUS P8Z77-V Pro motherboard, also released in April 2012 that also “doesn’t owe me anything”. However, this is now 2023, and I’ve pushed these parts to their limits with almost daily hard usage and gaming, but I’ve also taken good care of them over the years and that’s why they’ve lasted as long as they have. Now showing multiple signs of starting to fail I thought I’d reveal some of the tricks I’ve picked up over the years to help squeeze as much life out of them as I could.

Restrict System-Wide or Application-Specific FPS Using Graphics Card Control Panel

At this point, even with an NVidia GTX 1070 Ti, my bottleneck is still my processor and motherboard and when the CPU becomes your bottleneck the next step is a full system upgrade. Even with the greatest of video cards taking the load, your CPU isn’t idle, it still has quite a bit of processing to do. So if you want to keep it going as long as it can, sorry to say, you have to start embracing lower framerates.

The best way is to use your graphics card’s Control Panel. For NVidia cards this will be the NVidia Control Panel and for AMD cards it would be AMD Radeon Settings. I’m more familiar with NVidia’s, but as part of the ‘3D Settings’ task, under ‘Global Settings’ you can restrict the framerate of your whole system. Optimally this should be set to your monitor’s refresh rate — pumping out more frames than your monitor is capable of showing you is purely wasteful, in my opinion, and just causing unneeded stress on your hardware — but even over time I’ve needed to drop this even further down to a framerate that is tolerable. For me, that sweet spot is 35 FPS. 30 in some applications feels a bit stuttering where 35 hits better where I can still enjoy the games I’m playing without even noticing drops.

This alone has helped me keep my system going far longer than it would have otherwise. Embrace and learn to love a lower framerate!

Download a Temperature and CPU Usage Tracker

Heat is the enemy of electronics. Period. Now, admittedly, I only have the cooling fan that came with my CPU on top of it, so considering that’s all I’ve had all these years, it’s still an impressive feat that its lasted as long as it has.

So how did I know when it was time to start tuning down my system? Specifically, when my CPU temperatures started going out of control and I only knew that from downloading a temperature tracker. My preferred tracker has been HWiNFO64, a mega-comprehensive diagnostic software that tracks *way* more than you will ever need. You will need to go through and tailor it to your needs, but being able to track core temps and CPU usage in real time helps to keep you more informed about how the programs you’re using are affecting your hardware.

Also, keeping your CPU at 100% capacity for long period of time also isn’t great for the longevity of your CPU. Like a car’s engine, it’s okay to push from time to time but constant red-lining will eventually lead to serious issues. That’s not to say you should treat it with absolute kid gloves, though. It’s meant to be used. My sweet spot I’ve found is around 80% capacity. If I can keep a program there I find I can run with no issues for hours consistently.

Set Download Speed Limits in Steam and Turn Off Auto-Updating

This one sort of surprised me when I realized it was causing a bit of an issue. When downloading a game from Steam the default is, not surprisingly, set to as fast as it can possibly go. Which for me and the upgraded tier of service I have from our ISP, is about 500 Mbps — way more than anyone really needs unless you’re downloading huge files all the time, by the way. I only have it that fast as I really needed more upload speed, which is still only at 25 Mbps. However, I quickly realized my old CPU couldn’t handle download speeds that fast. As fast as it could go quickly ran my CPU usage to full and started quickly overheating.

Steam has a setting to throttle download speeds, though, very helpful for many reasons including this issue. When I cut the download speed in half, a still quite hefty 250 Mbps, my CPU handles it much more reasonably.

Also, consider limiting auto-updating games, too. The default setting is for games to update as soon as Steam turns on, which also happens to be most likely when your PC loads, too. This ends up being an unnecessary strain and something that can be pushed off. Considering also that many ISPs are switching over to metered data usage Steam being allowed to update whenever it wants feels just wasteful. I’ve found the better option to just limit the times when Steam can update and to just update a game right before you go to play it. Might be a couple minutes when you go and play but saves a lot in the long run.

Learn to Use Windows Reliability Monitor and Event Viewer

When you inevitably start running into problems, like crashing or lag spikes, Windows has two programs that are really helpful to determine what exactly caused it, Event Viewer and Reliability Monitor.

Reliability Monitor is always the first one I open as it’s usually easier to follow and deals mainly with software issues. It does this by rating, a bit unhelpfully, your PC’s stability on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s helpfulness, though, is in showing you what precisely failed. For example, periodically my system completely freezes up. No seeming reason, it just freezes up in the middle of doing anything. On checking Reliability Monitor right after one of these freezes, I noticed Microsoft’s GameInput reconfiguring itself every time. Sadly, not much I could do about that. I’ve tried uninstalling GameInput, deactivating it, etc. and it keeps coming back. At this point all I can do is manage it, but at least I know the cause.

Event Viewer is more for hardware issues. Graphics card crashes, memory faults, etc. However, it is a bit hard to read if you’re not familiar. But if you have a problem it’ll at least show you warnings or critical issues around the time of the fault and you can look up the codes or files it gives you to give you a better idea of the source. Either way, getting familiar with both Reliability Monitor and Event Viewer will absolutely help to resolve issues quicker than not.

Play Games in Your Backlog

If you’ve been gaming for any appreciable amount of time you almost certainly have a mountain of games you already own that you very likely may never get around to playing. I get it. The call of the brand new, just released game is very strong. However, older systems may not be up to playing them. Sure, you can use the techniques above to help squeeze more life out of them than otherwise, like how I can play The Division 2 easily, but something like Cyberpunk or the upcoming Starfield? No way. So what better time if you’re not financially comfortable to upgrade or it’s just not in the cards than to take a look at your backlog. Those games you picked up a few years ago will probably run much better than more current titles.

It’s Been A Long Road…

So, there you have it, these are some of my tricks to keep this old 10 year old PC going strong. Mainly, to treat it well. Don’t push it to its limits, cut back on frames, monitor it’s health, and mainly play the games I know it can handle. All good ideas for even new PCs as well, to tell you the truth.

So sitting on my kitchen table right now are all the parts to build a brand new PC, so I can finally upgrade. I just have to find the time to really back this one up, take it apart, and build it all anew. I’m just dragging my feet as I’ve spent so long getting to know this one so well inside and out over the years that it feels a bit like losing an old friend. I’m sure I’ll get over it quickly, though.

// Ocho

10 Games To Know Me

We’re now into the 2nd week of Blaugust 2023: Introduce Yourself Week! One of the many engagement posts floating around the social meeds lately is the simple #10GamestoKnowMe hashtag. I usually side-eye engagement posts as, despite them being a seemingly innocent way to get to know people, they’re usually used with the ulterior motive of using multiple responses to trick the algorithm to artificially boost the asker, placing them into more feeds, so they feel sketchy. Also, I’m terrible at self-promotion. But posting to my own blog? That feels different. Here, it’s Content(tm). Plus, Krikket of ‘Nerd Girl Thoughts’ did it so I’m copying giving proper appreciation to the idea. So, without further ado and in no particular order, here are the top 10 Games to Know Me.

Ultima VI & VII

Quite absolutely the best games to know me I’m just going to place right here at the top. Ultima VII, acclaimed as one of the greatest RPGs of all time and a pinnacle of the Ultima series, that many of today’s most popular franchises take inspiration from. For me, I took a little more than just that, I took life guidance from both Ultima VII and Ultima VI. I played these games at just the right foundational period in my life that I took the concept of the virtues literally as a guiding force in my life. Truth, Love, and Courage. Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility. I take these virtues such to heart that I strive my best to this day to live up to them.

The Secret World / Secret World Legends

Easily one of the best MMOs out there, Secret World encompasses, in a way, sort of everything I personally am not. It takes the modern world we know and supposes that ‘Everything is True’. Every myth, every legend, every conspiracy. All true. Me, though, I’m a skeptic. For me, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. That opposite draws me in. It’s fun to play with the idea of conspiracy, but a cautionary tale to wrap oneself in it.

Plus, I’ve been podcasting about Secret World since 2015? 2016? I honestly can’t remember when I started with Holosuite Media‘s ‘Beyond the Veil’ cast initially. However, with the show’s main hosts wanting to retire we officially stopped ‘Beyond the Veil’ and took up the mantle again as ‘The Zero Point Report’, which we’ve ran continuously since and are still going.

Star Trek Online

The MMO that I’ve been playing the longest, continuously, has been Star Trek Online. My draw to it is simply I’m a huge Star Trek nerd. I’ve gone through and watched every series, every movie, read quite a few Star Trek novels, have plenty of swag, and just overall love it. Star Trek Online is that perfect combination for my love of Trek and MMOs.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Not officially my first foray in the Elder Scrolls series, that was the original Arena, but one which was still largely inspirational for me. Morrowind was the first real open world RPG that I ever fully completed outside of the already mentioned Ultima series, and Morrowind took my breath away. Yes, the game is seen as punishing and janky now, but I was blown away by the sheer depth.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Gabriel Knight was the first game that legit scared me. There’s a scene early on in the game where Gabriel attends a lecture, falls asleep during it, and has a dream where a coffin opens before him and he falls directly into it. When I played this as a kid in the mid-90s, this scene alone freaked me out for days. So much that I’m pretty sure I never finished it as a kid. Wasn’t my first foray into beloved Sierra games, I honestly forget what was my first one there, possibly one of the Quest for Glory games, but Gabriel is the one that stuck with me much more than the others. I should really get around to beating it one of these days.

Wing Commander IV

My sister was gifted a brand new computer back in the late 90s and me, like the awful younger brother I am, used the opportunity while she was still home for winter break to fully install and play the heck out of Wing Commander IV. My memory is very fuzzy on whether I played much of the other Wing Commander titles before that. I had to, right? Almost positive I did, but Wing Commander had a depth to it that drew me in beyond just the fun flying aspect and made me appreciate games as being so much more, bordering on movies or TV.

Galaga

The first games I ever played weren’t on the PC, they were on the Atari 7600. My parents gifted us an Atari one year and we loved it, especially me. I hogged the heck out of that system. There were many games that I remember playing a ton of including Ms. Pac Man, Barnstormer, Choplifter, Impossible Mission, Pitfall, Tutankhaman, and many others, but Galaga was one of my absolute favorites. That it’s seen a continuing presence in arcades is no surprise to me.

Lord of the Rings Online

I’ve been tracking and micro-journaling about my gameplay since 2017, a practice that I highly suggest as I’ve derived much enjoyment and data about my own playstyle from. The game that currently holds the top spot as my most played over those 6+ years is Lord of the Rings Online, a game that I’ve grown extremely fond of. As a kid, I loved fantasy novels, from my father reading to me The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, to Dragonlance novels, to reading and journaling the full Lord of the Rings series itself when I was in 8th grade. I’ve loved fantasy, and no game encompasses the world J.R.R. Tolkien created better than LotRO. It’s just an amazing accomplishment and one of the “coziest” games out there, too.

Might & Magic: Clouds of Xeen

Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen is another game that I just consumed hard when I was a kid. Not a fully open world like the Ultima games, but one that still allowed an amazing depth of exploration with dangers and fierce puzzles around every corner. I lapped it all up. To this day I’m very good at getting my bearings and reading and deciphering maps, which helps a LOT while driving, and a lot of that comes from navigating through Might & Magic. Someday I’m going to give the other Might and Magic games a full playthrough. Someday.

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

For the last spot on my list, I’m going with what is widely panned as the “worst video game of all time”. It makes my list, though, because I saw it as anything but the worst. I was very good at this game. I found it tricky at times, sure, but totally playable, and play it I did. A lot. So, years later, when I finally found out that others, so-called “experts”, had deemed it awful and a crime against gaming itself I learned very quickly to not take the opinions of others to heart. That the only opinion that truly matters is your own and the only way to get those opinions is to experience something yourself. If all you do is experience the world through the lens of others, especially others who have a vested interest in controlling that lens, who is really in control? So no, I refuse to believe that ET is the worst game ever. I loved it.

This view now extends to all media. Combined with a big dose of Humility, I refuse to believe that any art, made in good faith, is bad. The worst that you’ll ever hear from me is simply “It’s not for me”. It won’t get all the rage-clicks, of course, and I’ve been called ‘immature’ or that my views just ‘aren’t as refined’ for holding it, but it’s how I Honestly feel.

So That’s Me

So there you have it. I gained beliefs and morals from Ultima. Explored who I’m not and found community in Secret World. Got to explore my passions deeper in Star Trek Online and Lord of the Rings Online. Saw a much bigger world in Morrowind. Felt the first time a game really hit me hard in Gabriel Knight. Learned that games could be more and equaled other media types with Wing Commander. Saw the fun of gaming in Galaga. Learned how to better explore the world around me in Might and Magic. And finally, learned how not to take the words of others so seriously with ET.

That’s who I am. To say that these games and more haven’t helped shape me would be a lie. How about you? How have your passions and your hobbies affected the course of your life? That’s one of the many definitions of art, that these games have the capacity to touch us and affect us so.

// Ocho

= Morrowind screenshot from jkgarland on Reddit, Wing Commander IV screenshot from Riot Pixels, Galaga screenshot from NenrikiGaming, Might & Magic Clouds of Xeen screenshot from QuestforGaming, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial screenshot from AtariAge.

All of No Man’s Sky’s Expeditions Ranked

No Man’s Sky’s path from ‘worst $60 purchase ever’ to ‘not the worst but if I had waited and paid $30 later it would’ve been an amazing value’ is one of the best success stories in gaming today. So much so that it’s a complete mystery how when so many MMOs and “live service” games act like it’s a privilege to hand them money every month and totally necessary to keep their poor kids from wearing shoes made out of cardboard that No Man’s Sky has pumped out 35 major updates over the past 7 years on the box price alone!

My favorite content has been, far and away, the Expeditions. In a game of completely freeform and randomized exploration Expeditions are a game mode that is structured, goes through specifically tailored content to show off new things, and unlocks account-wide rewards or a great headstart for a new character.

Believe it or not, I’ve played No Man’s Sky so much that I feel like I’ve “completed” it, as much as that means. Not only have I completed the main storyline and achievement-based Atlas path but I’ve completed all ten currently released Expeditions. So, I feel pretty confident in saying I know a thing or two about the game. With that confidence, here are what I consider my super-objective and be-all-end-all ranking of all of the released Expeditions to date.

#10 – Expedition 2: Beachhead

Starting in May 2021, Beachhead was the crossover Expedition with the release of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition. This expedition was a lot more condensed than the first Expedition, Pioneers, and didn’t need as much traveling. It focused on exploring many new planet types but in the end, ended up largely forgettable aside from the final reward: the Mass Effect Normandy as a frigate you could send out on their own adventures from your freighter.

#9 – Expedition 1: Pioneers

The OG Expedition, started alongside with the titular Expeditions update in March 2021. This update featured primarily traveling very long distances and exploring everything the game had to offer up until that point. Discovering creatures, farming, collecting artifacts, completing fleet expeditions, learning alien languages, collecting whispering eggs, derelict freighters, etc. However, despite the reward for this Expedition being the fantastic Golden Vector S-tier fighter this was the most frustrating as you had to discover 35 completely uncharted systems as well as an abandoned system. With thousands of players having completed this before me and every player starting in the same system it took a frustratingly long time to fly out beyond where other players had already been. Hence the low ranking. The Golden Vector is pretty sweet, though.

#8 – Expedition 6: Blighted

Launching in April of 2022, this expedition focused on the Outlaws update and focused on pirate-controlled stations, solar ships, a space combat revamp, the addition of your own fighter squadrons, settlements, and, most important, flowing cloth capes. Nothing really sticks out to me as being that memorable about the expedition, however.

#7 – Expedition 9: Utopia

From February 2023, the Utopia expedition was released alongside the Fractal update, which featured mostly a large update to in-game lighting. The Expedition focused primarily on base-building on multiple planets and added the kind of frustrating aspect that any crafting could not take place outside of a base’s limits. Base-building isn’t my favorite game activity, but I did make one of most awesome bases I’ve ever had.

#6 – Expedition 5: Exobiology

Launching in February of 2022 not long after the Sentinel update, this update focused on treating the universe’s fauna with care. Feeding them, riding them, making them our companions, and using the food items they produced to bake our own cakes. Collect all the pets!

#5 – Expedition 4: Emergence

The almost Halloween October 2021 Emergence Expedition launched around the same time as the first new Dune movie, and so featured a story revolving around gigantic sandworms and their spawn. The reward for this one was the ability to make your own character look like a sandworm as well as to grow a rideable sandworm pet to fly you through the skies. Watch that first step getting off its back, though.

#4 – Expedition 8: Polestar

Heading into my personal top 4 favorite Expeditions, from July of 2022 comes the Polestar Expedition. Launching after the Endurance update, the expedition focused on freighters, vastly upgrading the interior space of freighters adding teleportation, a dynamic crew, better base-building inside the freighter, freighter variety, organic frigates, and the ability to add catwalks outside your hull to get some majestic planet screenshots. And I love me some screenshots.

#3 – Expedition 7: Leviathan

Beginning in May 2022 the Leviathan Expedition was the first to ask the player to do something they hadn’t been asked to do yet: to die. Adding a bit of a roguelike playstyle, at least while this expedition was going on, players were trapped inside of a time loop. Tuned to a harder difficulty, players recovered lost memory fragments and as a community unlocked better and better upgrades as players progressed. Also you got to fly the game’s still-new solar ships with recharging capabilities and sleek sails that extend from your ship.

#2 – Expedition 10: Singularity

The latest update as of this post, from June 2023. The Singularity Expedition dealt with adding some depth to the games sentinels, adding purple corrupted sentinels and a bunch of sentinel lore all hidden behind hex and binary-coded messages pointing toward a mysterious feminine god-like being we may learn more of later. Or at least that’s what I currently believe it’s pointing to. A mysterious story that I have to decode and awesome new ships? Yes, please.

#1 – Expedition 3: Cartographers

My top pick is one of the first trio of Expeditions released, from September of 2021. One of the most memorable, the Cartographers expedition flipped the script of every other expedition to date and focused primarily on just one planet. Coming soon after the Frontier update which added settlements, a base building overhaul, and a much-needed sky-box update, every player started on the same planet and had to survive and fully explore the hostile marsh-like world from its depths to it’s highest heights to succeed.

For the World is Hollow…

So there you go. My super-comprehensive and totally scientific ranking of all of No Man’s Sky’s Expeditions to date. As you can see I take an absurd amount of screenshots and I really just need an outlet to showcase them all. A list like this is a worthwhile excuse to do just that so I hope you enjoy them.

I hope eventually they open up the expeditions in a way that doesn’t make them as time-limited. As I said, I consider them some of the most worthwhile content in the game to play and it’s a shame the only Expeditions that were given a repeat have only been the first three. So if you haven’t experienced them, here’s hoping you still may get to someday. Keep looking to the skies, Travellers.

// Ocho

The Great Social Media Schism: Where Do We Go Now?

Let’s face it. Twitter as we knew it for the past decade is over. In its prime it was awesome. You would find talented creators, up-to-the-minute news from real experts, comedians with witty takes, and multiple vibrant communities all thriving. Was it perfect? Absolutely not, it felt like a dumpster fire on the best of days. But as they say, life is messy. However, now it feels… different. Mediocre takes are being artificially boosted, anyone with a couple bucks can pay their way into your feed, and experts words are being drowned out in a sea of laugh or poop emojis. So it was only a matter of time before competition started to arise.

Now, as Twitter is rebranding to the edgelord, ubiquitous ‘X’ and threatening its way into banking, crypto, or other bad pyramid schemes, we’re seeing these multiple options come sharper into focus. Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and others. So let’s go over what I believe are the strengths and weaknesses of each site.

Bluesky

I’m going to start with the site I know the most about, having been on for about a month now. Yes, only a month. Bluesky has taken the part of Twitter that felt belonged to the comedians and shitposters but in a good way.

Bluesky is great for your spicy posts, your random posts, your thoughts that just come into your head, your political thoughts. Like Twitter of old, the content and posts that make it into your main feed feels based on merit. The ‘best’ posts rise to the top.

But better, you can use Feeds to customize it completely. Want a feed of just posts from Mutuals (people you follow who follow back) in chronological order? It’s there! Want a feed of only new users first posts? There! Want a feed of your most-liked posts? Yup, it’s there! Those feeds are a game changer. Especially ‘Mutuals’, but the others show that Bluesky has a very modded feel and since anyone can create a feed, the feeds are endless. Either to supplement the UI like showing ‘likes’, or topic based. The Science feed, for example, will attach any post with a test tube emoji.

Overall, Bluesky feels like a good start. It has the potential to be as chaotic and fun as Twitter in its prime. What it really lacks is population. But with invites being doled out to everyone, one every 10 days, it is growing, albeit slowly.

Mastodon

To be fair, I’m still trying to wrap my head around Mastodon. Mastodon is the most open and decentralized of the group. That decentralization means it’s great for the individual communities that Twitter hosted. For example, currently I’m on a server that is focused around a podcast that’s all about DOS games, a passion of mine that — I’ll be honest — I’ve largely not explored. I know, I know. Bad Ocho. But I want to explore it better, and being on this server may help with that. Or at least let me be around kindred spirits.

Another server that hosts Blaugust’s main account, is Gamepad, which is more generalized gaming focused. Both seem awesome so far. This type of community is a big aspect of why I used social media in the first place.

However, despite plenty of folks who say “Oh! Don’t worry! Mastodon is easy!” so far I haven’t largely found that to be the case. Where the hardest grasp of Bluesky was finding Feeds, I’m still trying to find decent people to follow and Mastodon isn’t making that easy. For example, a good trick on finding followers from Twitter/Bluesky is to just find someone you like and to use their own follow lists to discover good accounts to follow. But if that person is on a different server you can’t just see their list. You have to open the user’s individual profile, click their following list, take the link to their home server’s original profile, click their following list *again*, then take any user from there, search for their name on your home server’s search box, and then click their follow button. Compared to Twitter’s UI this feels like 5 steps too many.

But I have been told that I need to stop “thinking like other social media sites” as this is so totally different. Championed to be algorithm-less, even. That very well may be true. Life, and thus, good social media is, as I said, quite messy. And this is definitely messy. Not sure, though, if that isn’t just used as just an excuse for currently having a non-intuitive UI. Also saying “this is harder so it’s better” is also not great for long term health. People said that about old Secret World. “Well, it’s harder, so that means only players who are *worthy enough* will be at the top” and that thinking proved itself to be extremely bad for the games overall health. When Funcom even tried to fix their difficulty curve they got a lot of flak from gatekeeping players screaming about the “easification” and how it was ruining the game. No, what ruins the product are those gatekeepers. If the end goal is a more robust population you *want* to make the process as smooth as it can be.

However, I think Mastodon has the ability to get there. It’s still in its relative newness — I was told by Belghast that they have been checking out this server type structure since 2018 — so it’s been around for a few years, but with the great scism and people looking elsewhere, they could, and seem to be, showing new users what they’re all about. So I may still get there yet where I start calling it easy, too, let me get back to you in a month or so.

Threads

I’m going to have the least to say about Threads. Mainly because I feel like it currently has the least to offer. That is, unless you’re an “influencer”. This is where we see the businesses, the influencers, those that already had a sizable following on Instagram, it’s where we’re seeing them go to set up their presence.

Threads first few days, though, built totally off Facebook’s Instagram, was just a giant untrained firehose of algorithm. The total opposite of Mastodon’s open-source concept, it was, by my standards, far from great. Every post was just engagement bait after engagement bait as these influencers tried to one-up each other with the cringiest bait in an attempt to grab new followers. Pizza Hut talking about their “stuffed-crustussy” feels indicative of what Threads whole deal is.

Now they at least have a ‘Following’ tab but oof. OOF. Threads may have some good points besides engagement bait, influencer peddling, and brand embarrassment, but if it’s there I haven’t seen it.

Facebook?

What’s to say? Facebook I use just for family, local town news, IRL friends, and old-friend type stuff and where I just post memes I find funny as I truly don’t care that much about it. Facebook, to me, isn’t about any “social media” presence and Facebook users are generally so set in their ways they’re not exploring far outside its bounds, anyway.

Like Threads, it’s also all about the brands and influencers. Makes sense for being the same company, but I just don’t see any ‘future’. Facebook will outlast us all and survive until the heat death of the universe, sure, but it will never be any more than it is. It’s potential already on full-display and wrung out.

The Rise of Blogs!

This is where I am hope-filled and basically throwing my wishes out into the universe but with the fracturing of social media into it’s component parts, we saw a lot of the writers and long-form authors start heading to their own sites or push using a site like Substack so users could subscribe to their content outside of the social-media sphere. And where is the best place after the world has fractured but your own space. Your own home, your own site.

Someplace that won’t be controlled by some megalomaniac that could totally change under you. I mean, unless you’re that megalomaniac, I guess. But getting people to *find* your site in the first place is still important and so we still need the other social media sites and a good RSS feedcatcher to help control all the ones you want to read. I’d love to see a return to the golden age of blogs, and this Blaugust feels like a good place to start if this does actually happen. I just wouldn’t bet on it, is all. It’d be nice, though.

Let It Go!

Overall, this schism has felt a long time coming. As we enter this new age it’s nice to keep in mind a few points we learned from the Twitter age.

1. Your follower number is only important if those people are real and they interact with you.
2. You don’t have to keep the same persona you’ve shown. New sites means new personal evolution potential.
3. You don’t have to continue! Chasing clout is neverending, so it’s okay to throw in the towel. Give it up! Go off the grid! Find a hut in the woods and live off the land! Become a solitary forest creature! Become local myth and legend!

You get the idea. Anyway, take everything I’ve said with a grain of salt. Your social media experiences may widely vary from my own. I hope you have great success in this new social media landscape and if you ever find the big secrets, please let me know what they are. Until then, I’ll stay filled to the brim with hot takes that’ll keep getting me in trouble. But what else is a blog for but to get out these hot takes as cohesively as possible in the hope that we make that connection with others and leave a mark in this uncaring universe? Or something.

// Ocho

P.S. – If you’d like to find me on any of these new sites, please check out my Linktree, which has a nice listing of all the places you can find me. If you made it this far, I’d love to connect with you.

July 2023 Gaming: Anniversaries, Summer Resorts, Empty Lakes, Rescuing Civilians, and Making it to Another Galaxy

Summer is always an event-filled time for MMOs and who am I to turn down a good seasonal celebration? Even if the loot isn’t always great, I always try to peek into a good event to see if there’s anything at least worst chasing. So this month for me featured lots of event and game hopping, but I also made some good progress overall.

Guild Wars 2’s Lake Doric and Festival of the Four Winds

The game I spent the most time in this month, not by much, was Guild Wars 2. Currently going through the Living World Season 3 content, sandwiched between the Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire expansions. Haven’t played much of Guild Wars 2 this year as I’m trying to play all the content in both Guild Wars 1 and 2 in a relative order and I’m stubborn about doing so. However, the only Guild Wars 1 content I’ve made it through has been Prophecies, and I’d love to complete Nightfall before starting Path of Fire since the two share a lot of story. Heart of Thorns continues story from Prophecies, Path of Fire continues Nightfall, and End of Dragons continues Factions. So I’m dragging my heels in Guild Wars 2’s intermission as I complete Nightfall.

The Festival of the Four Winds is something I haven’t spent that much time in and wanted to explore a bit more, but sadly determined it’s not really the best for me. The Festival revolves a lot around mounts obtained in Path of Fire and “renting” the basic mounts only goes so far. So I completed the bare minimum to achieve the dailies and spent the rest of my time exploring and completing ‘The Head of the Snake’ story and the Lake Doric zone. That end fight, though. Not that hard but certainly ramped up the creep factor.

Elder Scroll’s Online Ascent of the Arcanist, Zeal of Zenithar, and Markarth

Elder Scrolls Online is a game that I’ve made such great progress that I’m almost caught up with new content. I’m only 3 years behind which is pretty good for me! I leveled the new green-loving arcanist class to level 10 which unlocked some account-wide rewards, like a cute yellow torchbug pet. Now I have a little better understanding, though, for why ESO players use what’s called “light attack weaving”, basically animation cancelling after an ability with a light attack to vastly increase DPS. While trying out this “weaving”, even with a brand new character, mobs just melted. Not going to lie, it feels a bit cheap and unbalanced. But since it’s basically demanded to do higher-end content the developers have been very wary about changing it, not wanting to upset their most vocal communities with, probably, long-time-necessary nerfs.

My other time has been participating in the Zeal of Zenithar event, all about, well, playing the game really. To make daily progress in Zeal of Zenithar all that is needed is to find a chest, gain a level, or dig up an antiquity. Simple. ESO’s event rewards feel so complex, though, and take multiple paths and need so many currency-capped tickets that they’re my least favorite event reward system out of any MMO. At least I don’t have to do more than just play the game, at least.

So I’ve been working through the next zone in order, which is Scotla– err, I mean Markarth. It’s basically, well, the Elder Scrolls version of Scotland. Almost too much scottish, which is weird because I never really pictured the game’s Reachmen, essentially brutal savages in the single-player Skyrim, to basically all sound like they’re from the scottish highlands. I guess it works? I mean, they’re basically working through all the rest of Earth’s cultures. The Indian Khajit, European Bretons, Aztec Argonians, Viking Nords, etc. So why not Scotland? I try not to think about it too hard. Still, I was a little surprised, is all. However, I just finished a super-cute quest with two young adults against joining in an arranged marriage but finding they have feelings for each other, which was quite adorable.

Secret World Legends 6th Anniversary and Star Trek Online’s Summer Event

Secret World Legends just passed it’s 6th anniversary and had the usual hourly golem bosses and developer-changing beehemoths in Agartha and is always a fun time to jump in and see what’s going on. To the obvious point, yes, progress is very slow in coming to the game. Note: not completely gone, though, as most imply. Just very slow. Secret World has a very loving community and the developers do give as much love as they can under their limited teams, but you can tell they are currently bound by Funcom’s other games. Namely the forthcoming Dune: Awakening and the still-strong Conan Exiles. Others may hate and have chips on their shoulders but I’m just happy this amazing game is still going, slow it may be. So it goes.

Star Trek Online’s annual Summer Event ended and I completed 20 days of doing the bare minimum one event per day so that I was able to pick up the Hysperian Intel Battlecruiser Tier 6 ship. It’s fantasy-themed off the Strange New Worlds Season 1 tear-jerker episode ‘The Elysian Kingdom’. Seemed fun and looks striking in that green and gold.

Division 2’s Broken Wings and “Completing” No Man’s Sky

I spent some time in The Division 2 as well, one of the most newest games in my MMO stable, and one that I’ve played enough to hit the story-cap. Still have a hard time thinking about just what it is that draws me to it, but I find I’ve really enjoyed the Division’s story — a world dealing with an awful pandemic –, the realistic attention to detail in the environment, and the fun moment-to-moment gameplay. Currently in their Year 5 Season 1 content, the latest “manhunt” has changed to focus on rescuing civilians helpful in rebuilding one of the game’s communities that was decimated during the base game story. My build and power is just good enough to make playing it a challenge but still doable. Quite fun.

Finally, despite completing No Man’s Sky’s latest Expedition 10 in June, I made the leap to just complete what I had remaining to do in No Man’s Sky. Namely, finishing off the main story, completing the Atlas Path, and making it to the galaxy’s center. Sort of. Didn’t make it to the center, but The Atlas Path story sort of ends the same as if you’ve found the galaxy’s center. So for all intents, I feel like I’ve really “completed” No Man’s Sky. As much as that can be done in such an open world game as it is. Expect more of a writeup later from me about it.

Gaming Goals for August

Anyway, lots of good gaming in July, but I enter August feeling a little blah and a bit listless. No games have currently hooked me so hard that they’re pulling all of my attention. So I feel I’ll just be continuing game-hopping until my ennui subsides. But this is, at least, what I hope to accomplish:

• Complete ESO’s Markarth
• Get out 15 posts for Blaugust
• Get My New PC Built
• Complete Division 2’s Year 5 Season 1 Broken Wings Manhunt
• Check out Lord of the Rings Online’s Farmer’s Faire
• Complete Fallout New Vegas — I’m so close to the end

Seems reasonable, right? At least I think so. We’ll see how much I actually get to. Hopefully most of it. So if you’ve made it this far, what have you been playing? What are your goals? I love to hear about all the adventures you all get up to.

// Ocho

P.S. – One of my longer posts. If you’ve made it this far, thank you. You rock.