So What Are You Up To Lately, Xyzzy?

[xyzzysqrl]

With the ongoing health crisis of doomy diabetes doom out of the way, it's time to refocus on what I do best: Video games.

(It's been uncomfortable to say that for years because of the way most modern-day Loud Internet Gamers act, but it's also true: I play video games and post blog entries about them. That's my thing.)

So what am I doing lately? Well, I've been doing a lot of streaming. That's going to pause for a while, but I've had a good time beating various games with some company. Thanks to everyone who shows up for that. You're all wonderful and very supportive of my utter bullshit.

The three games I'm focused on lately don't lend themselves to streaming very well, though. At least not the way I play them.

MMO 1: Elder Scrolls Online.

I'm still pretty fixated on this one. It's easily the second-best MMORPG on the market, for my money, with the first being FFXIV. Unfortunately I don't feel like tapping back into the plot and dungeon roll of FFXIV and I can't get interested in the side-stuff, so ESO it is for me.

My sorcerer cat, Mottlefur, has a fantastic outfit thanks to finishing up the thieves' guild questline, has finished the main story and a fair bit of the DLC tales, and is really cruising along towards being my Forever Character/main who does All The Content. ESO is such a good game to wander and explore in, with some of the best-written quest dialog in the business and lots of books/reading material laying around. The combat system is bland as hell but y'know that's the Elder Scrolls for you.

For the most part I've been trying to log her in and progress in something, somewhere every day. I'm also thinking of starting a side-alt to actually try out the dungeoneering in that game, but ... ew, people, y'know? MMOs are best experienced alone.

That's what I always say, anyway. But what if?

MMO 2: World of Warcraft (Classic)

What if I'd taken a different evolutionary path down the road of MMOs? When I saw World of Warcraft in beta for the first time, I dismissed it with a laugh. You had to pick a CLASS? The combat was so CLUNKY. This would never dethrone City of Heroes as Best MMO.

I didn't get into WoW until sometime just before the Burning Crusade launch. (I had a WoW hat I got when I picked up the expansion that I wore for years.) My character was a Troll Shaman who didn't use totems because I didn't like the micromanagement, which is like being a baseball player who doesn't use bats because he doesn't like violence against balls.

In short, I was Real Bad at WoW.

With WoW Classic coming up over the horizon, however, maybe I can go back and do things differently. My concern is that I've lost all memories of the old days. But I've been soft-invited to a guild and might join up with that. I might have a shot at doing better this time.

I'm thinking about a gnome mage. Short and pink's the way to think, no?

Until Classic's out I've been playing a Panda Warrior because I just wanna hit things and then hit things again. S'going well thanks.

GAME 3: Pillars of Eternity II

I picked this up on sale with all the DLC and told myself I'd just dip in a little, do a bit of scouting and learn how the systems worked.

Oh god I want to be playing this. This is so good. So, SO good. But it's really not a stream game, being super text-dense and full of sidequests and fiddly bits.

But I'm super playing this now I guess?? Looking forward to that.

--

So there you have the reasons I'll be scarce on stream and also what I'm planning to get real up to in the next month or three. Will I be able to juggle two MMOs and a dense single-player RPG? Who knows, but I'll have fun, and it'll distract me a bit from snacking all day, which will help the blood sugar and possibly blood pressure.

This year isn't looking great for my total game clears, but at least I'm having some fun with MMOs again, y'know?

In the realm of actual reality, I've been gearing up for a second run at the DMV to get a proper ID card so I can get health insurance etc etc. I've also been vaguely considering: What if I change my actual, for real physical name to Xyzzy? It would save time if I decide to initiate the process of swapping physical genders, since that's nice and neutral. It'll also befuddle the hell out of anyone trying to pronounce it, which is fun. But... hmm. I dunno.

Plus I need the ID card first and then I would have to promptly get a SECOND one, which is aaaaaaaaa to consider.

So, maybe not.
But it's on my mind.

Comments

[callunav]

You make me want to dig out my old single-player RPGs. (I never got interested in MMOs, somehow.) Maybe I will. I actually found one or two surprisingly good ones that run on my phone. The only problem is, I get partway through and then I get busy, and then I forget, and then it's been a couple years and I have to start over from the beginning. I know the first 2/3 of Inotia 4 /really well/, by now. There needs to be a 'back up by a few scenes to get back into things' option for these games.

[xyzzysqrl]

There's a few games that offer recaps and summaries of what you did last, when you load them up.
Unfortunately these are usually the Expensive Big Box AAA Experience RPGs. It hasn't trickled down much.

[callunav]

Well, we can hope.

[bhagpuss]

I really need to log in to ESO again and have a good look at the quest writing. I keep reading people saying how great it is but my memory is that it's at best ordinary and more often plain bad. Overwritten, stilted, unnatural and "professional" in the way airport novelists and technical manual writers are. Also of all the quests I did, which was quite a lot, not one was interesting in terms of narrative or character.

I might be misremebering it, though. Must go check.

[xyzzysqrl]

Try some of the DLC. Wrothgar, if you have it. Murkmire. Morrowind, maybe.

Bear in mind, I -love- verbose questgivers and I don't know what "overwritten' means.

Also, why bother when you have dozens of other MMOs to prod at? Like you could engage with something you like that others don't and champion that, y'know?
...
Okay that's a feint, mostly I just want to read you (the only person I know who has played this game) refuting this really godawful PC Gamer article about Otherland.

[bhagpuss]

Wow! That's a review by someone who clearly hasn't played many MMOs and had a commission to write a humorous article that he'd left until a couple of hours before the deadline. Otherland is buggy and very, very confusing but compared to a lot of MMOs I've tried it's polished and content-rich.

He's right in that if you haven't read the Tad Williams trilogy almost all of the narrative will be completely obscure, but that's kind of the point of the IP. It's aimed at people who have read the books and it does a half-decent job of evoking them. The gameplay is pedestrian, it's true, but there are plenty of working quests and the NPC dialog isn't bad by genre standards. Combat is nowhere near as floaty and disconnected as he describes although I would say that it's worse now than it used to be - they keep revising and adjusting stuff and it sometimes seems they're heading in the wrong direction.

The question of who is playing the game and how its funded is interesting. I wondered that. A couple of years ago I did see the odd other player but the last few times I've logged in I haven't seen anyone. Derek Smart kept that MMO I forget the name of (the one that allegedly copied assets from WoW) running for several years when no-one was playing it, presumably out of hubris and pride, so maybe it's somethign like that. Or maybe they're getting a governement grant - the company runing it is in Germany, I think...

Anyway, I don't fancy doing another whole post on Otherland (and I certainly don't want to play it again since it keeps making me start from the beginning due to the aforementioned updates and resets) but there's your rebuttal!

[penguinmayhem]

Is it like a Chinese pronunciation like a 'chi' or soft 'z' sound or whatever?


At least you picked something remotely similar to a respectable name.

[xyzzysqrl]

I pronounce it with a long I sound, so it's "Xy-Zee".
Most people pronounce it "Zizzy", to rhyme with "Sissy". There's probably no correct answer.