Blogging When the Gaming is Meh

Apr 22, 2016 | about me, blogging, gaming, MMO | 7 comments

Hello? Is this thing on?Hello there you few brave souls who have stuck with me through the *crickets* and sounds of silence my blog has become. I recently realized how much I’ve missed blogging, so I made a commitment to start writing again. I’m taking an hour a week to see how much I can get done, both here on my fun blog and elsewhere on my business blog. I’m even using a program called Toggl to make sure I get in a full hour. This week, some of that time was spent finding images to break up the wall of words, but a lot of that time was spent contemplating what gaming topics I might cover. I got pretty tired of being emo about games. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all isn’t going to work with this commitment to write stuff.

This armor is ridiculous

This “armor” is ridiculous!

Lets face it, for those of us who play MMOs, things have been a bit weird/bad/boring… meh. Wildstar’s cutbacks gutted that community, WoW has been chugging along like those perpetually looping soundtracks you hear in malls and eventually ignore, and SWTOR’s new content lasts as long as an ice cube on a hot sidewalk. I still see Rift and Defiance pushing out community enthusiasm posts, which is great to see. Games like those and LOTRO are still out there, but no longer feel vibrant and enticing to me anymore. I won’t even go into my reasons not to try out BDO (Boob Desert Online), but you probably get the gist of it.

People are hyping upcoming games like Star Citizen (that feel to me like they’ll never be ready to play). “Super Secret IPs” keep being hinted, but lets face it, if you can’t tell us what they are yet, they aren’t coming anytime in the near future. Slow trickles of writers and developers away from other games have me confused about them. Are those people leaving for bad reasons, or horrible reasons, or maybe the games are mostly done and they don’t have stuff to do anymore? I remember a time when I had a lot of enthusiasm about games. There were joyful noises being made and a lot of really positive vibes going on. Now, it really feels like many of us are just going through the motions, trying to recapture those glory days of old. This tweet from today sums up my feelings about this perfectly: Twitter Quote

I even went back to play WoW for a while. I sub’d for a game cards worth, then used in-game gold to buy a couple of months worth of tokens. The garrison stuff kept me going for a while. I played a monk with my hubby up through level 60ish. Tried to grind rep in Tanaan. But when all was said and done, I let the last two weeks of my last token evaporate without logging in. And I have no regrets about that.

TroopersOn a positive note, I did join an active SWTOR guild recently and they are still doing things to keep folks interested and involved. I ran a trooper themed Op with them that went… interestingly… I ran a couple of Ops with my other guild to shake out the dust on my Gunslinger and had fun and started to gear her up. It was funny seeing the contrast between mass chaos and a well oiled machine. Considering how much doing Ops content keeps me involved and having goals, I REALLY hope SWTOR’s team understands how important it is to keep creating new operations for us.

So I ask you few, you proud, you brave souls who are still reading this: What games are you playing and do they give you joy or do you go through the motions of playing them? Convince me I’m wrong about being MEH, I dare you!

Blaugust 2023 Wrap Up

  • Blaugust 2023 In Review by Belghast
  • This wrap up post is the best way to see who was involved this year, and some of the amazing stats.

    7 Comments

    1. Shintar

      Well, the new warzone has really invigorated my interested in SWTOR’s PvP; not sure if that is your cup of tea. Neverwinter’s new campaign has been reasonably interesting, if a bit grindy. And playing on a private Vanilla WoW server has been enjoyable for a while, as well as filled with high internet drama for the last couple of weeks!

      Reply
      • gamerladyp

        Is that the one that got shut down? I wish I liked PvP, it would give me an additional outlet, but it has rarely been fun or positive for me. I’m glad it has been fun and happy to see that side of the game getting reinvigorated.

        Reply
        • Shintar

          Nah, the one I’m playing on hasn’t been shut down, but it has swallowed up most of the refugees from the closed server.

    2. Ravanel Griffon

      Like you, I’m not hyper invovled in any MMO at the time, but I don’t mind so much. Right now I’m juggling SWTOR, LOTRO and ARK: Survival.

      I’m not ‘feeling’ SWTOR so much at the moment, but still login twice a week to raid with my guild. The raids are pretty good, after all, and some of my guildies are still involved with the game. It’s more of a social thing. If there’s some new content, I might get sucked in once more. I still have to finish decorating my strongholds (unfortunately I’ll need to grind a lot of credits).

      Right now, me and my guildies are being drawn to LOTRO once more. It’s been a while since we moved from there to SWTOR and it’s the game where we originally met. It’s a lot of fun to do “nostalgia instances” with low level characters using an XP stopper, and some new instances have been added that we still need to try out. There’s even a new raid being developed. With some luck it will be a good one. It would be awesome to try it out with my guildies/kinnies!

      Reply
      • Ravanel Griffon

        Also, I’d love to try out BDO, but my PC isn’t good enough for running the graphics on a decent setting. I had no idea the armor was so shallow, though. It’s one of the things that keeps me away from Guild Wars 2, which is otherwise a very decent game. Not being able to create good-looking (not too revealing) outfits for my characters is a killer for me.

        Reply
        • gamerladyp

          I have seen some good armor types, but they seem to be the crafted kind, not game default awards/options. Asian games always drive me batty that way.

      • gamerladyp

        Taking a break from a game can be just the thing to get re-enthused about it later, especially if you come back to find new things you’ve never seen. I love both the nostalgia of re-experiencing fun times and figuring out new stuff. Glad you are having fun. I should play LOTRO again, if only for the music! 🙂

        Reply

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