I have too many MMORPGs in my life.
Shaiya was my first foray into the multitude of digital worlds, but, whilst sharing several of the same features as many of the mainstream MMOs, just didn't cut the mustard. So a close friend was lovely enough to introduce me to the social vampire that is World of Warcraft. I've been playing it for about three years on an extremely on and off basis. I've just about reached endgame content, and eh...
Despite the huge revamp Blizzard undertook on Azeroth, the slightly prettier places just weren't enough to hold my attention when I hit 85 and entered the rather elitist realm of Cataclysm heroics. Admittedly, I was mainly armed with green quest rewards and a couple of Cata normal drops, so Heroics weren't really my place. About a week later, juggling WoW with every other game I play, and I scraped the bare minimum gear score to venture into a random HC. With excitement in my heart and a strange sense of achievement welling up in my head, I joined the random queue.
I was... bored.
Yes, heroics offer better gear, tougher foes, and overall a more challenging experience, but then I realized I was playing the same dungeons over and over again for the chance to pull myself up onto a slightly higher rung of the WoW ladder. Not to mention the simply insane amount of waiting time if you want to go and do anything that doesn't become a repetitive chore after about an hour of farming that culminates to probably about ten minutes of crafting. For the time I have to play it, WoW is no longer rewarding enough to justify the 8.99 a month. It's essentially the same reason I stopped playing the Sims - I don't really enjoy doing stuff that we pretty much have to do in every day of our real lives.
Not to mention that I'm so familiar with WoW - the lore, the races, the classes, and the dubious social experience - that after three years, it's become old. So I've moved to Rift, which is currently patching. I'm going to embark on my first voyage into Telara later tonight with the same close friend that got me into WoW; which has a sort of poetry to it I suppose! I would post some real life updates on here, but my world has solely been digital lately. I've spent the last weekend playing WoW and watching How I Met Your Mother.
Depending on your perspective, my life really, really sucks, or really, really wins.
-L
Ponderously gnawing on the bloated biomechanical mass of post modernism since 2008.
Monday, 21 March 2011
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Game overload
The past week has been... full.
I had a mock film studies exam the other day which went pretty poorly. It's not that I don't know what I have to be writing about; it's more a combination of two factors. 1) My film studies grade has no impact whatsoever on my Uni entry. 2) Since discovering this, my film studies tutor, who isn't a friendly type at the best of times (He's like Bilbo Baggins if the One Ring was permanently fused to his... -cough-) has made his displeasure at this quite obvious.
I managed to get the adverts for my marketing assignments recorded, so all I have to do for that is finish editing them and bulk out my client report. Filming for the b/C video didn't happen on Tuesday, but Wednesday was a pretty bulky day filled with proofreading and minor editorial duties for Tag '11. My graphics design tutor is really punishing me for dealing with my assigned workload so quickly, slapping me with extra tasks as soon as I've dealt with everything he handed out before. I think they're pushing me to see how much they can get out of me, and I could probably keep handing it back out for a good while, but I'm losing drive.
On Thursday my girlfriend arrived to stay for the weekend, after a fruitless FMP session and a frustratingly redundant GCSE class. The GCSE is another victim of me, in that my Uni entrance doesn't rely on it at all, despite being bullied into it by the collective media department of Eastbourne Vocational College. It's such a waste of my time. It was awesome having Lisa around for longer than usual (Even if she did have the misfortune of arriving roughly the same time as Dragon Age II) and I'm sad she's gone, but axes to the grindstone once more, and all that.
Onto DAII. I've not played it exhaustively but I did manage to rack up some decent hours over the weekend, and it's keeping my interest far more than the first game. I found Origins to be a solid RPG with a few rough edges but some truly interesting, superbly written characters supported by a vast mythology and a rich fantasy world. Unfortunately, I found a majority of the game failed to stimulate my interest, so I didn't even manage an entire playthrough (I got to the archdemon and then quit). I loved the Morrigan/Flemeth story, so you can imagine my joy when a giant dragon swoops down on the fledgling adventurers, toasts a group of darkspawn, and casually reveals herself to be Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek fame once more. I apologize for being a little bit ridiculous but Captain Janeway as a shapeshifting dragon is a pretty high grade of awesome.
I've neglected WoW for the past week for a variety of reasons, so I'll probably hop back on Steamwheedle Cartel later this evening to get stuck back in. I've got too many options at the moment, I can't stick at just one game for more than a couple of hours. I've got quite a while before the next deluge of quality releases beat the crap out of my bank balance, however, with just Duke Nukem Forever and Alice: Madness Returns awaiting months from now. I'm considering buying Space Marine, but I seriously need to start saving money, days are just falling away until moving time!
-L
Listening To:
The Sin'Dorei, Blizzard Entertainment
Watching:
True Blood seasons 1-3, The Big Bang Theory season 4
Playing:
Dragon Age 2, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Borderlands, Dead Space 2
I had a mock film studies exam the other day which went pretty poorly. It's not that I don't know what I have to be writing about; it's more a combination of two factors. 1) My film studies grade has no impact whatsoever on my Uni entry. 2) Since discovering this, my film studies tutor, who isn't a friendly type at the best of times (He's like Bilbo Baggins if the One Ring was permanently fused to his... -cough-) has made his displeasure at this quite obvious.
I managed to get the adverts for my marketing assignments recorded, so all I have to do for that is finish editing them and bulk out my client report. Filming for the b/C video didn't happen on Tuesday, but Wednesday was a pretty bulky day filled with proofreading and minor editorial duties for Tag '11. My graphics design tutor is really punishing me for dealing with my assigned workload so quickly, slapping me with extra tasks as soon as I've dealt with everything he handed out before. I think they're pushing me to see how much they can get out of me, and I could probably keep handing it back out for a good while, but I'm losing drive.
On Thursday my girlfriend arrived to stay for the weekend, after a fruitless FMP session and a frustratingly redundant GCSE class. The GCSE is another victim of me, in that my Uni entrance doesn't rely on it at all, despite being bullied into it by the collective media department of Eastbourne Vocational College. It's such a waste of my time. It was awesome having Lisa around for longer than usual (Even if she did have the misfortune of arriving roughly the same time as Dragon Age II) and I'm sad she's gone, but axes to the grindstone once more, and all that.
Onto DAII. I've not played it exhaustively but I did manage to rack up some decent hours over the weekend, and it's keeping my interest far more than the first game. I found Origins to be a solid RPG with a few rough edges but some truly interesting, superbly written characters supported by a vast mythology and a rich fantasy world. Unfortunately, I found a majority of the game failed to stimulate my interest, so I didn't even manage an entire playthrough (I got to the archdemon and then quit). I loved the Morrigan/Flemeth story, so you can imagine my joy when a giant dragon swoops down on the fledgling adventurers, toasts a group of darkspawn, and casually reveals herself to be Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek fame once more. I apologize for being a little bit ridiculous but Captain Janeway as a shapeshifting dragon is a pretty high grade of awesome.
I've neglected WoW for the past week for a variety of reasons, so I'll probably hop back on Steamwheedle Cartel later this evening to get stuck back in. I've got too many options at the moment, I can't stick at just one game for more than a couple of hours. I've got quite a while before the next deluge of quality releases beat the crap out of my bank balance, however, with just Duke Nukem Forever and Alice: Madness Returns awaiting months from now. I'm considering buying Space Marine, but I seriously need to start saving money, days are just falling away until moving time!
-L
Listening To:
The Sin'Dorei, Blizzard Entertainment
Watching:
True Blood seasons 1-3, The Big Bang Theory season 4
Playing:
Dragon Age 2, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Borderlands, Dead Space 2
Saturday, 5 March 2011
I'd be lying...
...if I said that I haven't paid much attention to Twitter, ZZN or my blog because I've been busy.
It's all thanks to this little bastard. It's true, I probably have better things to be doing than level grinding or trying to get my Ramkahen/Hyjal rep up to Exalted so I can finally go and do some Cataclysm heroics, but my gear is pretty terrible seeing as I left a couple of weeks after the expansion hit and only returned a couple of weeks ago. I made it to level 85 the other day but I've been distracted by alts and, of course, RETRIBUTION, which has made gearing somewhat slow. This is simply because if I have to pick between spending hours grinding dungeons with random strangers who think they're better than me, or sending hordes of armoured Chaos death machines to shoot the hell out of random strangers who think they're better than me, the choice is obvious.
My consoles gather dust and my PC stares smugly out from glaring blue LEDs at them, but that won't last for long - after all, Dragon Age 2 comes out next Friday and that's certainly deserving of my free time. As for Retribution, it's pretty crazy. Six new campaigns sounds impressive, but then you realize most of the missions are vaguely written enough to apply to all six factions. Despite this, it's still a huge variety of content, and I can imagine getting a crazy amount of playtime out of it.
Argh, what else? Dragging myself away from the virtual world, I've had my final Uni offer come through, from my first choice (UCA Farnham). It's a pretty fantastic offer, too - all I have to do is pass my current course and my place is secure. I've accepted, obviously, and it's going to make the last stretch of college so much more bearable knowing that if I don't hit my predicted B- in Film Studies, or don't quite manage that A grade elsewhere, it's not the end of my academic life. I'm looking forward to leaving home and being all independent, but going through all my belongings and having to decide between leaving Shiny Collector's Edition #1 or Quirky BioShock Merchandise #3 behind (I know, my life is that difficult).
My page layout tutor took a look at this blog and he was amazed by the graphic design work, seeing as he taught me 50% of my photoshop knowledge and 100% of my inDesign skills, not to mention he's started teaching me bits of HTML on the side. I'm going to make the site shinier in the next few months. Other projects... The music video reached a hitch, we can't film the band until the 25th of March which is relatively close, but deadline - wise it's far too late. So I've initiated a back up plan which should be more than adequate. I'm hoping to score at least a Merit for it.
Tag Mag is going ahead okay from what I know, they keep handing me work, I keep finishing it, as far as I'm concerned that's my part in all of it. I've got Distinctions in both design and journalism so I'm happy with that. I think that's all from me for now. More updates later!
-L
It's all thanks to this little bastard. It's true, I probably have better things to be doing than level grinding or trying to get my Ramkahen/Hyjal rep up to Exalted so I can finally go and do some Cataclysm heroics, but my gear is pretty terrible seeing as I left a couple of weeks after the expansion hit and only returned a couple of weeks ago. I made it to level 85 the other day but I've been distracted by alts and, of course, RETRIBUTION, which has made gearing somewhat slow. This is simply because if I have to pick between spending hours grinding dungeons with random strangers who think they're better than me, or sending hordes of armoured Chaos death machines to shoot the hell out of random strangers who think they're better than me, the choice is obvious.
My consoles gather dust and my PC stares smugly out from glaring blue LEDs at them, but that won't last for long - after all, Dragon Age 2 comes out next Friday and that's certainly deserving of my free time. As for Retribution, it's pretty crazy. Six new campaigns sounds impressive, but then you realize most of the missions are vaguely written enough to apply to all six factions. Despite this, it's still a huge variety of content, and I can imagine getting a crazy amount of playtime out of it.
Argh, what else? Dragging myself away from the virtual world, I've had my final Uni offer come through, from my first choice (UCA Farnham). It's a pretty fantastic offer, too - all I have to do is pass my current course and my place is secure. I've accepted, obviously, and it's going to make the last stretch of college so much more bearable knowing that if I don't hit my predicted B- in Film Studies, or don't quite manage that A grade elsewhere, it's not the end of my academic life. I'm looking forward to leaving home and being all independent, but going through all my belongings and having to decide between leaving Shiny Collector's Edition #1 or Quirky BioShock Merchandise #3 behind (I know, my life is that difficult).
My page layout tutor took a look at this blog and he was amazed by the graphic design work, seeing as he taught me 50% of my photoshop knowledge and 100% of my inDesign skills, not to mention he's started teaching me bits of HTML on the side. I'm going to make the site shinier in the next few months. Other projects... The music video reached a hitch, we can't film the band until the 25th of March which is relatively close, but deadline - wise it's far too late. So I've initiated a back up plan which should be more than adequate. I'm hoping to score at least a Merit for it.
Tag Mag is going ahead okay from what I know, they keep handing me work, I keep finishing it, as far as I'm concerned that's my part in all of it. I've got Distinctions in both design and journalism so I'm happy with that. I think that's all from me for now. More updates later!
-L
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