Blogger without an MMO

Change is in the air, there’s no denying it now. So I’m pretty sure by now everyone has noticed how this blog has gotten a lot quieter lately. There’s a lot of reasons for that including winter doldrums and a generally busy last few weeks but in the end I simply feel that my main reason for blogging, which was to talk about what MMO I’m currently enjoying has mostly dried up for the simple reason I’m not really enjoying an MMO at the moment.

I’m still trying to figure out how that situation came to be and I hate to be anti-climatic but it feels to me like I’ve reached the end of what the current crop of MMOs can offer. I’m not saying all MMOs are the same but the core mechanics have been more or less the same for the past few years and it has gotten to a point, at least for me, where I’m not seeing orcs, dragons and jedis but only mechanics and game systems. Even somewhat unique MMOs like TSW seems to be only able to grab my attention for a few hours and even then, only if I get to play with someone.

Which right there is a strange paradox, if I enjoy playing MMOs with people I should be seeking them out but going through the process of finding new guilds, investing time and so on seems rather pointless to me at the moment, I’d rather be spending my time doing something else.

All of this to lead me to why this blog became so quiet. Without an active interest in MMOs, my main drive to blog is mostly gone and I feel like I need to find new material. On the other hand, my interest could just kick up at any moment and suddenly I’ll want to blog tons here and I like having a space on the interweb to vent when I need to. Also, I reinstalled Lotro during the weekend so maybe that will get me going again.

So what does this means for the future here. First, I’m not quitting blogging… but it might get quieter here for a while. If does drag on for too long then I’ll see about the pertinence of keeping this place up. Second, I’m playing a lot of Starcraft 2 since the beginning of the year and I’m starting to think it might be fun to blog about my struggles and noobness. I might be doing that here or on a new blog to keep things clean… not sure yet, but I’d like to have your opinion on this.

So here you have it. Sorry for the downer post but I felt like I had to explain the situation. Wish you all the best.

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Those February doldrums…

It’s February again and I’m feeling restless… the current offering of MMOs doesn’t seem to hold my interest and while WoW does a good job of killing time I can feel the need for some more excitement. I’m still enjoying my nightly Sc2 adventures but on the MMO front…. meh…. but then again its February and I tend to get that way every year right around now so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise.

I’ve been revisiting shortly some old MMOs like Lotro and Conan of all things but they didn’t keep my interest for more than a big 30 minutes. I even thought about trying out Eve online and then remembered I’d have to mine forever and then get ganked by a raging troll so I’ll skip. TSW is still present in my mind but I want to wait until I get my new PC so it can be a more smooth experience…

So… like I said, I’m restless. Nothing seems to fit and I get critical of everything coming my way. I’ll get out of it at some point but until then, do forgive this blog for being a bit quieter.

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Happy holidays and may your end of the world be awesome

Like many of you I’ll be starting my holidays vacations today and posting will become more erratic in the next two weeks since I plan to fully enjoy my time off. Lots of zombie killings are in my future (TSW, Resident Evil, Walking dead) along with lots of family stuff.

So happy holidays to all and happy gaming.

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Afk while I fight germs

Sorry for the delays in posting but I’ve had a tough week and it’s now clear it was because I was fighting the early stages of a nasty cold/flu/thing.. I’ll spare you the details but it’s not pleasant. In any case, I wanted to let you all know I’ve been working on my raid post and I’m hoping to publish it early next week. On the Resident evil marathon front I finished Resident Evil 0 and will be moving to RE1. I’ll do a more detailed post but let me just say it was a harsh reminder of what survival horror used to be.\

Thanks for your patience and I’ll get back to blogging soon!

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Three years old!

I’m posting this a bit early but I know I’ll forget this weekend so I’ll just post it right away.

This blog will be turning three this sunday and I wanted to thank everyone for making it possible. In the end, blogging without anyone to read or comment is pretty boring and you guys have kept me going through some rough patches so again, a big thank you.

Tough it might not be obvious to people reading here, I feel this blog has changed a lot during the last year. For one thing, there’s a lot more of you out there reading this (thank you!) and the tone has changed somewhat. When I started this blog I was all about talking about topics that I felt needed to be addressed in MMOs but after two years of blogging I was starting to feel like I was running out of ideas.

This made me take a good look at my past posts for the ones that I enjoyed writing and those that had success and I realized two things. I love writing about video gaming at large, video game history and the lore surrounding them and even though these posts don’t always generate a ton of feedback they are fun to do so expect a few more next year.

The other thing is that you guys love it when I challenge game designs and flaws. I try to walk the fine line between being critical and outline raging and while I may not always succeed you guys don’t seem to mind much. It will probably never make me popular with the game companies and get me tons of free stuff or invited to parties but that’s not why I write. I write these posts because I feel that too often we, the players, are taken for granted and not being respected and if I can help change that some then the original goal of this blog will have been achieved.

Once again, thank you for being here and I’ll do my best to make next year even more interesting.

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