It's been a while since I've posted here. I went on a vacation, and since I mostly post from work I ended up not posting at all. Also, it's been kind of a tricky time in my personal life, and my gaming habits have probably reflected the increased stress.
So I've essentially given up on Eve Online at the moment. We got war decced for a few days and I pretty much just logged on, set my next skill, logged off. Then I couldn't seem to break that pattern. I dunno, it just seems like there's no expectation of changes in the long term. For the next few years, I'll be doing missions or looking for wormholes and combat sites in wormholes. In another month or so I could probably try to move into a wormhole. But for what? So much of my enjoyment of the game was in figuring things out. Working on spreadsheets for missile damage, planetary interaction, mining, industry. Now that I've done this, the actual gameplay just isn't that compelling. I still love exploration, but I have to admit that it all feels pointless. If I find a site in a wormhole and clear it, I'll get maybe 12-30m isk. So what? Spend an hour mining and get 4-5m isk. Do missions and get some isk and standing. Do pvp and lose isk and make enemies. What's the point? Eve is a game where doing stuff doesn't progress your character. You only get better by simply existing. In short, eve no longer is making me happy, so no more playing eve.
I've actually gotten somewhat captured by Assassin's Creed 2: Brotherhood. A very well executed game. It's like they took the parts of the AC2 that I loved most and extended them. The full sync concept rewards you for doing nifty things instead of just bashing your way through it, leading to a lot more stealth gameplay, assassinations from blending or hiding, etc, while making those damn races a lot less punishing. If you can't do the race fast enough, you don't have to do it over and over, you just don't get the full sync. Going after borgia towers feels like you're an actual assassin, instead of just some warrior running around to kill enemies. Rebuilding rome and shop quests make you actually care about money and finding treasures. Seeing a flag/feather in eagle vision marks it on your map, and later on you get maps of all locations, and can see how many are left to find in each district, instead of simply knowing you need 30 more feathers, somewhere in the world. Everything to do with the assassin recruits is simply awesome. The various guild records/ranks encourage you to do fun stuff and recognizes when you go out of your way to be awesome.
But there are two things that are somewhat worse than the last game, I'd say. First, the story is just weaker. The first game had a great revenge/survival thing going where you felt like part of an epic tale. This one doesn't, the opening sequence is great, but after that you just kinda run around the city making life better for you and worse for your enemies. That's fun, but it's not very epic. Secondly, the conspiracy/the truth doesn't at all hold my attention. The conspiracies seem less 'amg, look at this blatantly bizarre thing in this old painting' and more 'look how we doctored these photos to make them seem sinister'. Ah well. The game suffers from being the middle game. All the setup was in the first game, all the conclusions will be in Assassin's Creed Revelations. Amazing gameplay, bad context.
I've also been playing a lot of world of warcraft. Used to be I'd just log on to raid and repost auctions every couple of days. Now I'm on 3-4 hours a night, pvping and chasing achievements. That's right, I'm doing pvp! :o I'm amazed myself. But it's oddly fun to have a quick little match. It's also disturbingly easy to get honor gear quickly. I've been playing less than a week and already have 3.6k resilience. I'm also looking up random achievements and trying to get them. Jumping on trampolines, killing rares, gasping under rainbows, etc.
I'm sure part of the reason why my attitude towards wow has shifted is due to the latest round of nerfs to the raid content. In a single night we went from 2/7 heroic to 6/7 heroic. I don't know if we'll ever get heroic rag, so it's possible that we're simply done. And the next raid won't be for months. :o We already have attendance issues, I can't imagine the churn we'll get doing farm content over and over for months.
Last night I started playing a new game called Glitch. It's a non-combat mmo. :o I don't have a strong opinion of it yet, I need to play more. I really need to get a house or some sort of base of operations.
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