After 6 weeks of vacation, I’m back at work.  That 6 weeks was required, pretty much out of gas on the project I’d been working on for 4 years.  While July was more or less a write off, August was a lot of fun.  It’s a dichotomy really, given that I really like games and I also really like the outdoors and it’s nigh impossible to do both adequately.  And being a Canadian, we only have a few weeks of summer a year, so the latter passion won out.

The family spent most of the month out of the house.  Either at zoos, museums, parks or cottages.  My eldest really caught on to fishing this year and caught a nice walleye on her first “solo cast”.  That was quite an accomplishment and given the results, I’m sure she’s going to be bitten on that for a long time.  My youngest found an interesting passion in collecting rocks everywhere we went. In the middle of a conversation she’d just stop, see a rock and pick it up.  Impressive.  My wife is enamoured with camping fires, so we had quite a few of those.  And I got my time out on the boat.

This last long weekend was the men’s family fishing tourney, so 15 of us trekked for about 6 hours to a lodge and had a blast.  It was way too hot and the fish wouldn’t bite but it was still a good cap to the summer.

Summer Gaming

The odd times I was at home, I was able to get a few gaming sessions in.  FF14, Diablo 3 and some Assassin’s Creed 4 were on deck.

FF14 saw me hit level 60 and in a short amount of time had enough gear at max level to call it complete.  I do not have the time for organized raids, or at least a block of time that I can dedicate to it.  So max level dungeons and gear runs is enough.  I managed to level up my Dark Knight to about 40 though, and that was neat enough.  You lose appreciation for tanking in a game with a 2.5s GCD pretty quickly until you play that role.  I haven’t logged on in a month mind you and with Wildstar going F2P in a few weeks…I’m thinking of swapping back.  We’ll see.

Assassin’s Creed 4 was solely installed for the pirate ship combat.  I rushed through the rest of the game, made it to about ¾ of the quests done and then moved out to conquer the seas.  This playthrough was rather easy compared to my previous one.  I remember getting destroyed quite easily by some naval forts in the past but this run was like butter.  Maybe I just took them on too early in the past.  AC4 has a pretty crappy story but it does have some decent mechanics and the OCD in my liked the collection of all things.  I still despise the “follow target” or the “eavesdrop target” missions.  In a game where you can take on an entire army in melee combat, failing because you took a wrong turn seems asinine.  Deus Ex does this part much better.

Diablo 3

Let’s pretend for a second you haven’t ever played Diablo 3.  Now is a good time to start.  I have harped at length against the original launch of the game, even got a refund in the first few days because of the constant disconnects.  The RMAH (and AH) were incredibly poorly thought out and had an even worse implementation.  Blizzard was smart enough to fire the game director Jay Wilson, and bring in some quality members to wright that ship.  There were a lot of changes in store but the real turning point was the Reaper of Souls (RoS) really turned it up to 11.  AH was gone, complete rebalance of all classes and stats, smart loot (wizards would get next to no strength drops), a new class, seasons (ladders), bounties and rifts for added gameplay.

Patch 2.3 launched a couple weeks back and season 4 started last week.  There are massive quality of life improvements to the game and they’ve now added another form of gambling with the old D2 cube.  My monk is level 70 and missing 2 final pieces for her complete set.  Even without those pieces, I can manage some T6 content.  My brother is running a barbarian and when we end up in a duo, it’s just explosions everywhere.

I like the pick up and play style of game.  Without the realm of trials (massive quality of life improvement getting rid of that) the process of rifting is much smoother.  I can also drop out of a game without any real concerns.

Now to see if I can convert my exercise bike to hold a keyboard/mouse.  Getting some exercise after a month of beer would be a good thing.

Now that the weather’s a lot better (we broke some cold records this year) I like to take the time to go outside from the office and breathe some air and see the sights.  From time to time, I’ll take a walk with my boss and have a chat about the goings on.  I also try to have a coffee talk with some old bosses, to see where things are at and bounce some ideas off them.  It’s a sort of basic mentoring process when I think about it.

Quick aside.  When I started doing this, oh about 10 years ago I guess, this was seen as brown nosing.  I get that.  The thing is, if you want to move up in the world, you can’t be looking down or sideways, you have to look up.  To get to where my boss is, I need to know how they got there.  There’s plenty of time for me to get great at the job I’m doing, but at some point I’m going to want to move on.  I guess I’m just bad at sitting in one spot for very long.  My wife is going through a similar process at her work but she ends up caring a whole lot more than I do about the negative folk.  The ones that are comfortable in the job they do, or have aspirations, tend to not really care much or will actively help you out.

Back on track.  I tend to be introspective, seeing what I can tweak/improve/focus on to make me better at what I do and more efficient.  I hate being inefficient and not knowing something.  Drives me bonkers.  I think that’s why RPGs fascinate me so much, you have massive control of the outcome with forethought and repetition.  One recent walk, I had mentioned how my side of the family is extremely thick headed, in that we don’t let things drop very well.  The joke is to tell one of us we can’t do something, just to have us prove that we can.  It’s certainly a dangerous trait but with the appropriate controls can be used as an excellent motivator.  Heck, I’ve made a career of being told no and finding a way.

Which I think applies to many of life’s problems and people’s attitudes towards them.  There’s certainly the adage that men are solution focused when seeing a problem, while women are more empathetic to the sufferer.  Yet it’s a special mind set to move from “that can’t be solved” to “hmm, I wonder if this will work”.  I think as kids we all are in the 2^nd camp.  Imagination is everywhere and we have little to no concept of limitations.  As we grow older and hit those speed bumps or road blocks, how we deal with those events shapes the rest of our lives.

It isn’t about getting back up when you get knocked down, truly it isn’t.  That’s pride more than anything else.  It’s about figuring out why you got knocked down in the first place, and then figuring out how to avoid it in the future.  Maybe you’re better off staying on the ground, letting the other person think they’ve won and waiting it out.  Maybe you’re better off jumping up and taking a swing, or running away.  Heck, sometimes it’s about watching someone else get hit to the ground and learning from it.

Recently at work, I’ve been pushing for a particular service to be available to our clients.  The owner of that service (or lack thereof) hasn’t been on-side and I’ve had to manage expectations with clients since.  Clearly I’m being told no we can’t do it, and clearly I’m saying yes we can.  So where the logic applies (we should be doing this for a number of reasons) and the political side does not is the place I’ve landed.  There are quite a few swings my way, that are not made in an obvious fashion.  I’m a rather practical person and this new method of conflict is a heck of a learning experience.   And learning new things is a heck of a rush.

I’ll tie this back into gaming a bit, where the skills I’ve learned to perform a task as separate from those where I learn to work through a problem. Strategy and tactics.  There’s a point in gaming where it’s about repetition of a given task, time and time again, with only a few variants. The typical tank & spank of dungeon let’s say.  From time to time though, there’s some innovative spin to a problem, where the solution is far from apparent. Adaptability rather than randomness.  I find that more comfortable I get with foundational items, the more it becomes second nature, the easier it is for me to try something new.  I can always fall back on what I’m good at but a new challenge is rewarding in its own right.  It’s that challenge/new spin that keeps me interested in games.  It might be hard to find somedays but when you do, there’s a feeling deep inside that only gamers can really appreciate. It’s just interesting to find analogies with the real world.

Cause there’s only 1 day left, right?

Blog

Well, this year was the busiest year on the blog by a fairly large factor.  Writing more apparently helps!  I do have plans to keep that up in the new year after the holidays.  Similar to Wilhelm, WordPress’ updates are boggling to me.  The site worked fine at the start of the year and all these new interfaces have caused more problems than not. I guess it’s good for the layman but are there really that many new bloggers today?  Odd…

I’ve made some changes over the year to the blogroll, much cleaner now.  Once day I’ll get an RSS feed to work for it.  It’s been a good year for bloggers overall I should think, with a fair amount of cross-chat.  Gamergate helped that a bit, and the NotAllMen trip as well.  I mean, there’s nothing better than stupidity to get people writing after all.

I also added some new pages to the top of the site on theorycrafting, for those interested.  It’s the two fields of gaming I rather enjoy and I wanted to keep the interesting points up for those who are also curious.

Personal

Kids are bigger, so much bigger.  It’s a ton of fun to watch them grow as people and make their own way.  At 2 and 4, there’s an innocence that’s hard to find elsewhere and it’s refreshing.  Honestly, it’s the best part of my day.

Work is nearing a major milestone after too many delays.  The stress load from work is more than I am comfortable with.  Too few people to make decisions and it falls on 2-3 people, one of whom is me.  That said, it’s been great for career progression but hell on my psyche.  It’s not sustainable and I realize that.  See previous paragraph as to coping mechanism.  Crossroad of sorts.

Games

An interesting year for games…

Transistor – A rather amazing game in a small package.  You should do yourself the pleasure of playing.  Amazing soundtrack.   I’m putting this up there with Ico/Shadow of the Colossus as game art.

Elder Scrolls Online – Launched with no end game, lost a ton of people.  I can’t remember the last news package from the game which is both bad and good I guess.  I do know they got rid of their end game design for something sane.  One of the few MMOs that actively punished you for being social.  Had (really) good art and quests.  Just a multiplayer Elder Scrolls really and that’s not worth much more than box price to me.

Wildstar – had an endgame that no one wanted to play.  Seriously, there were 20(!) guilds running the 40 man raids at peak.  Do the math.  There have been updates and news about it, not all positive but at least something.  They are actively pushing lore, which isn’t what people play, so that’s odd.  I do expect it to go B2P as the components are there for it to work, similar to guild wars.  If they can figure out what they want people to do at max level that doesn’t have the word raid in it, then there’s some chance.  Combat mechanics were great, response time was fluid and art was cool.  The pieces themselves are great, it’s just the combined packages that was ugh.

WoW / WoD – Still subbed after 2 months but I think that’s at the tail end.  The most dumbed down version of the game yet, which would do well to attract people but nothing to retain them.  Hit 10+ million subs at launch, would be surprised if they retain 8 by the next quarter.  The zone quests are better than MoP…ugh…I’m trying to think of more positives here.  Garrisons can get you raid equipped?  I dunno… there’s just no reason to be social anymore.  See ESO… Also, waiting 14 months for content is a pretty big middle finger to their playerbase.  Math to me says they have 4-5 million people willing to play if there was something to do, so that’s what, $50 million they left on the table due to shitty release schedules?

SWTOR / SoR – A better expansion than the Makeb one, with a good retool of the skills and questing experience.  The dungeons and raids are good, there’s side quests and the art is still solid if you like the IP.  Strongholds are good housing and fit the F2P model well.  Conquests are a solid thing to do for guilds.  Was an overall good year after the crap of GSF that should die a slow death in a fire.  If BW can continue to release content like this, then it’s a good thing.  That said, they need to fix the rewards structure a bit.

FF14 – I decided not to subscribe here because I know the time investment and return is too high for me.  It’s the best bang for your buck mind you, with new zones, classes, dungeons, raids and plenty more on a frequent basis.  Where WoW has nothing for 14 months there were 5 (or 6?) content patches for FF14.

Dragon Age Inquisition You know, I like the game mechanics but after about 10 hours there’s too much MMO crap and not enough fighting.  I don’t want to collect herbs.  I want to fight bad guys.  There’s too much busy work and I feel like I’m orchestrating rather than actually doing.  When fights occur, they are against little peons half the time and not much fun.  The lack of healing removes most strategy as it’s just nuke as hard as you can or get an OP class to run it all.  It’s a decent enough game but I still prefer the original.

Shadow of Mordor – My pick for game of the year.  Two parts really shine.  First is the controls which pair the Batman and Assassin’s Creed series for fluid combat and parkour. Seriously, AC plays like garbage compared to this.  There’s no parry/attack here, it’s infinite moving combos.   Tons of fun.  Second, the nemesis system.  Consider this an innovation that should (will) be used for future games across the board.  Makes for tons of replay ability and personal investment.  The enemies you fight are unique to your game, which makes for so much more fun when you finally nail that one orc who’s been pestering you for hours and just won’t die.

Android Tablet – I’ve been looking for a solid game or two.  Room 2, 10000000, 1849, Darkness Reborn, Devious Dungeon, Hearthstone, Shadowrun Returns, Wayward Souls, SNES 9x are all actively used, whether Free of at cost.  Simpsons is still there too as a way to play a game without spending a cent.  Feedly and Chrome likely take up half of my time though….solid investment.  Oh, and a UE Boom is an amazeballs bluetooth speaker if you’re looking for one.

Overall

It’s been a good year.  Hoping that the same applies to all my readers.  Fingers crossed that 2015 is also a good run.

I’ve been gaming for a long time, I can’t really think back to a time where I didn’t game.  It’s one of my two main hobbies – hockey and gaming.  I’m 35 now, and I’d bet dollars to donuts I’ve been doing it for 30 years.  As with most folk, I’ve had ups and downs.  My hobbies have kept me sane through them.  In a particular rough spot, at the tail end of my teens and early twenties, I was having issues with home and finding some direction in life.  It got pretty dark for a while.  Ultima Online and Everquest were my two main releases.  Given that high speed wasn’t around, a modem was required.  That took up a phone line, so I ended up playing overnight to avoid conflicts with the house line.

Aside from that, you should know that I’m a high-functional introvert.  It’s getting better with time and practice but my wife is the family extrovert.  Makes for a solid team.

Social Gaming

Ultima Online I was pulled in through a magazine ad a friend pass my way.  We played together at launch for a few weeks but he moved on and I delved deeper.  I eventually became a PK hunter and that meta aspect to the game made me a fair amount of friends.  The actions I took were such that I ended up “grey” most of the time, rather than hunting the Illustrious title of pure nobility.  It was my first real foray into social groups and it really taught me a solid amount about group play, delegation and responsibility.  I was fairly active, even after the Trammel split in 2000.  I made a few alt accounts and used my personal house as a base of operations.  EBay was my friend and I sold/bought property and characters which subsidized my gaming hobby for a very long time.

Everquest came out in late 1999 and it honestly took me a while to get into the game.  The inability to see in the dark was a major roadblock and I didn’t really swap over until 2001, when the guild I had in UO finally dissolved.  EQ I started playing with another real life friend but he also moved on.  This was probably the lowest of the low for me in RL. EQ was crack, came at a perfect time, and it was common to have 8-16 hour sessions go through without knowing it.

I ended up settling with a Dark Elf Necromancer, as the late hour sessions made it somewhat harder to find groupmates.  That said, things took a turn once I found this Barbarian Warrior in my mid-teens.  We’d play together all the time.  ICQ was a mainstay back then and we’d be chatting all the time.  He worked shift-work, was married (at 16 on Hallowe’en of all dates) and had kids, even though we were both the same age.  I can distinctly remember camping the isle in OoT for days trying to get through the hell levels.  The only recourse was our chats.  While this certainly kept me afloat, I’d like to think I did the same for him.

I printed out dozens of these maps

Time has a way with things and eventually we parted.  He found another job (with Gateway if I recall) with different hours and he had to work things out with his wife.  We’d still chat every week or so but clearly there was a gap.  I would say he was my first real online best friend.

I did keep up with EQ and met a nice couple from California, in a small social guild.  That was a ton of fun and that lasted many years.  We all merged into an adult guild, the Companions, back in the RoK days.  I think that lasted an extra 2 expansions, as I clearly remember raiding in the Vellious expansion as well and starting planes.  The guild had a requirement that people be over 30, though made an exception for me.  These were professional people, lawyers and doctors for a large part.  I think I grew up 5 years in 1 during this time.  I managed the website (which cemented my direction in IT) and did all the art and updates.  A bunch of the folk were related too, so it was like being part of an adopted family.  That was an awesome feeling – of belonging somewhere.

But the time in EQ had to move on and I moved off to Horizons and the promise of player-built housing with a subsection of the guild.  This was my first foray into group projects.  We’d set out build orders and collect/refine the material.  It was a lot of fun collecting everything and working as a team on a non-combat goal.  Everyone could participate. Unfortunately, the higher end part of the game was seriously broken and that prevented future growth.  Even more bad timing was EQ2 and WoW on the horizon (pun not intended).  We split ways here because after playing both betas, EQ2 held no appeal while WoW seemed to hit the right nerve.  This also coincided with a rather dramatic shift in the personal space and a relative uptick on future outlook.  UO and EQ both helped me get through a heck of a funk.

I think in hindsight the social aspect really filled a need I had at that time.  As I’ve grown older and matured, I’ve found other ways to meet my needs.  I have a great wife who understands and supports my gaming habits.  My kids are amazing and are so much more fulfilling than I had thought possible.  The social aspect at work is great and my friends outside of work fill in a huge gap as well.   Games, in of themselves, are less a social thing for me now and more of a hobby to get the brain ticking.  It’s also challenging in today’s gamespace where there’s no whitespace or dead time.  There’s a reason EQ implemented the /gems function after all.  Today it’s more about voice chat and that option just isn’t so viable with 3 other people in the house.

Social Blogging

With that gap in social from gaming I have moved on to blogs.  I’ve owned this domain for 11 years now, blogging for nearly as long.  A social network has been built over the years, supported through forums, games, twitter, podcasts and cross-posting.  The NBI is a great example of this, where the community comes together to help some new bloggers.  Blaugust was a cool challenge to post something every day.  Bloggy Xmas is obviously the most recent example of this.

With so many games available for our attention, the odds of a single community in a single game are long gone.  The bonds last across games but you still need a mechanism to share stories.  Blogs are an amazing way to do that.  While my blogroll isn’t as long as it should be, it’s a decent sample of the various folks sharing their ideas, with very little overlap.  In fact, there are a few that conflict with each other which provides some great counterpoints.

The community is small enough that everyone seems to know each other yet big enough for everyone to be able find something they can relate to.  I hope everyone reading this can find a few more friends through this Bloggy Xmas event.  We all share a same passion for games and that’s certainly something worth sharing.