T w e n t y S i d e d
DM of the Rings Remastered LXXI: The Spice of Life
Wednesday Action Log 5-8-24
This week I ended up playing a bit of Risk of Rain Returns. Mostly just cleaning up the achievements I missed. I think I’m mostly done with Minecraft. I’ve mined more copper and the cube is now around nine thousand blocks, I also did some of the archaeology stuff and got a sniffer, the plants and sniffer are kind of useless but the archaeology is fun.
Beating it With a Hammer: Making WoW Work For Me
I have been determined to not lose control of the story THIS TIME while playing World of Warcraft. And I must tell you, it has still been a challenge. And I’m still learning. Step one was to follow the default storyline prompts for the current iteration of WoW. That means after the starting area (recommended choice: Exile’s Reach) you will be directed to start the Battle for Azeroth expansion. I discussed last week how two quests/quest chains actually happen before Battle for Azeroth properly begins, and both are still available in the game. I DID just learn why the Heart of Azeroth beginning isn’t included in the start of the BfA story: even though NARRATIVELY it takes place before anything else you will be doing, the Heart of Azeroth mechanic WILL NOT be used until you start the War Campaign quests. These don’t became available until around level 35 or 40. I ALSO just found out that SOME of the War Campaign quests are designed to be done interchangeably with the storyline quests. My previous belief that the War Campaign had needlessly distracted me from the story was incorrect.
HOWEVER…the game does a TERRIBLE job of explaining any of this. As in, it DOES NOT explain anything. These options just become available. I will explain how I’ve reached my current state in the game.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Beating it With a Hammer: Making WoW Work For Me”
DM of the Rings Remastered LXX: The Needs of the Many
Break Week: First Job Second Verse
This post was supposed to be a cheerful, excited outlook into the job I’m starting today, my first ‘real’ job in seven years. But, sorry, there’s some real truths mixed up here. We keep trying to tiptoe around the hard things as gracefully as dad did but it just leads to questions I can’t answer, and there’s so much behind the scenes. I keep having to make bummer posts, I’m not a fan. Hopefully next update will be actually a good one, it helps to put the cards on the table so improvements don’t sound like negatives down the line.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Break Week: First Job Second Verse”
Wednesday Action Log 5-1-24
This week I’m still playing Minecraft. I’ve mostly just been mining copper, and I’m mad at the way they implemented it. Copper ore is quite common and you get multiple raw copper per ore You need to smelt 9 raw copper to make one block and if you don’t want it to oxidize you need to use one honeycomb per block. So instead of doing anything productive I decided to make an obelisk out of raw copper blocks for some reason. This is created 100% in survival, and only over three days.
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I Bet You Forgot I was Playing WoW (so did I)
By which I mean I actually stopped playing World of Warcraft for the last few months. I got Cinderlynn up to level 60 and all the other characters to 20, or a little higher. I experimented with using Chromie-time to level in Burning Legion, Wrath of the Lich King, and Mists of Pandaria. Basically I had set all my alts to level in a different expansion, including an Alliance-side character in Battle for Azeroth, the current default leveling path. But honestly, once I hit level 60 with Cinderlynn the game starts throwing pop-up ads at you to jump straight to the latest content. Quest givers that start all the different areas of the latest expansion, or other recent expansions; suddenly appear everywhere. You can accidentally take a quest that starts, say; Shadowlands…and you jump into a non-stop starter quest that ends with not only quest givers to continue that story and sidequests, but also prompts to jump you straight back into the expansion you just CAME from. The bottom line is, my brain got overloaded, I stopped having fun, I felt like I was being herded away from the content I wanted to play, and I just went to playing only Star Wars: The Old Republic. WHICH I HAVEN’T STOPPED PLAYING, don’t worry. I have Rix’larril’an and Mikan Sixteen completing a crafting challenge for the current Galactic Season while I type this. But as I mentioned in my very first World of Warcraft post, there is something very…comforting about WoW’s gameplay and design to me. So about a week ago I updated the game and logged back in to see what was going on, and if I could make sense of anything and get going again without much hassle.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “I Bet You Forgot I was Playing WoW (so did I)”
From The Archives:
What is Vulkan?
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
Stop Asking Me to Play Dark Souls!
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
The Dumbest Cutscene
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This is Why We Can’t Have Short Criticism
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
Another PC Golden Age?
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction
Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.
The Gradient of Plot Holes
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
Pixel City Dev Blog
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.