little by little, one travels far…

…although it feels as though I’m going nowhere in a gaming sense 😉  i’ve completely lost motivation and direction which is having a real impact on blogging.  when I am playing *something* it is slightly half-heartedly and even when I am concentrating, it isn’t anything really worth sharing 😉

so what have games have i been thinking about / pottering about in?

lotro:  currently on the back burner,  mixture of being in a quiet (yet lovely!) guild, our weekly small fellowship not being able to happen at the moment combined with alt burnout.  (after stupid amounts of alts in eq2 I CANNOT face the same in lotro, so the alts I do have are crafting slaves ;))  I do want to continue a comic adaptation I started over on My Middle Earth Net and I do want to explore the new region so may well be tempted back in soon 🙂

eq2:  well I never got Tanzi to level 90 and never got my little guild up to being able to have a guild hall, so i’ve been pottering about a little there.  If, at any point in the future, I am forced to open an account with Alaplaya I will stop playing completely.  still disgusted by that.

minecraft:  I made a little jungle home that I want to finish and have a couple of ideas that I’m playing about with.  such a cool game 🙂

star trek online: I downloaded and got very excited (absolutely LOVE DS9!) but the space combat is just beyond me at the moment.  It makes me feel like a stereotypical girl so I may have to go back just to beat it 😛

rift: I thought I’d give the first 20 levels another go (its free for those levels) but I had to stop downloading and the whole thing cancelled when i was halfway through.  have been too annoyed to re-download as yet.

skyrim: currently not playing, though there is a new patch with new kill animations so I may well be back stealthing and sniping away soon 😀  still love the game and fully intend ‘finishing’ it at some point

dragon age: although i started again i can’t really face going through the whole thing so more occasional pottering here 😛  there is talk though of more in the series – yay!

so there you go – plenty of potential gameage but not really in a gaming mood at the mo.  so have been doing lots of other non-computery stuff over the last month or so 🙂

although usually when I write a post like this, I get my game back on and blogging resumes 😛  we shall see

girls & boys

Dragon Age 2 and the possibility of gay relationships has been a fairly hot topic recently on both the DA forums and in the blogsphere in general (see article regarding ‘DA not catering to the straight male gamer’ on rock paper shotgun).  I have to say I was pretty impressed by the inclusion of the possibility.  I had originally been irritated by the fact that I had a romance option with other female characters as I had assumed (as in some other games I have played) that it was mainly there for the gratification of the male gamer.  I felt quite shamefaced that I had jumped to the wrong conclusion when I found out that male characters could also have same-sex relationships.  I was also incredibly impressed by David Gaider’s response to the whole furore on the forums.

This quote from his response, particularly interested me:

“The romances in the game are not for “the straight male gamer”. They’re for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don’t need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant… and that’s ignoring the idea that they don’t have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The “rights” of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent “right” to get more options than anyone else.”

I’m glad that the gaming industry is moving on and pushing boundaries and I think, crucially, offering players the power of choice.   I remember a time when the RPG games I played didn’t even allow me to choose gender.  In the Sega games (Sword of Thunder, Ring of Power) it was fairly easy to ignore as the graphics weren’t that clear so I mainly just considered my character as a Sonic the Hedgehog type in human form.  Moving on to the Final Fantasy games (on Sega Megadrive also I think, possibly a later model of console…) I had a slightly harder time ignoring the fact that was I stuck with playing a male character.  It was probably the excruciatingly awful romantic dialogue I had to scroll through as quickly as possible (the ‘romance’ was generally with a pukingly vapid female with a ridiculous outfit which somehow made it even worse).  I did still enjoy the games though and just grit my teeth through those bits.

But then came Daggerfall… Baldur’s Gate… Oblivion, Everquest II, Dragon Age, Lord of the Rings Online…  Where I could not only play a female (with no stat penalties for doing so AND I was paid the same amount for quest rewards as a male character who did the same job :P), but she also either had proper armour to fight in (i.e. no chainmail bikinis :P) or it was possible to change the appearance (and so, I could control how revealing her outfit was).  I have to admit, part of the reason that Rift drifted off my radar was partly down to spotting some chainmail bikinis on npcs (see cool article over at Spinksville) plus, as far as I could see, my female rogue elf had no choice but to start adventuring in a shoulder & midriff baring top AND a face full of garish makeup.  If I’d had a choice to tone down the make up, wear different clothing, it wouldn’t have bothered me one bit.  To be fair I didn’t feedback that during Beta as there were a whole lot of other reasons as well why I decided not to play (nothing wrong with the game, just didn’t appeal to me more than eq2 or lotro ).

So for me, if a game offers me choice and equality – its far more likely that you’ll find me in their world.

for those who missed the early 90s, the title references a Blur track 😛

2010 round up

So… in 2010 I got just over 5,600 views (averaging around 16 per day) and published roughly 110 posts.   Not bad for my little blog.

This year I played:

Dragon Age I still haven’t finished it, although I am determined to play it through (and Awakenings) before DA2 comes out.   I do really love the game and if I’m in the mood for full on slaughter it fits the bill very well.  My only gripe about the game is the fact that it is so linear and there is no complete world to explore, just pockets on a map.  Even so, the game is great and I’m looking forward to playing DA2 in 2011 🙂

Everquest 2 Personally, its been a rocky year.  The year began full of promise with a new expansion and our guild the busiest its ever been, then a combination of boredom (lack of content), the station cash shop/eq2X mess and guild drama killed the fun.  I have had a break from August to December and have only recently logged in a few times for some Frostfell decorating and the double xp event.   I’m currently thinking that I will probably only play for a bit around the expansion and then stop my sub.

Lord of the Rings online I haven’t played this properly for a couple of months due to having been down to 1 computer and christmas busy-ness, so have only recently been logging in for the Winter festival.  Its a beautiful game though and I’m not done with it, so I will be playing and exploring in Middle Earth again next year.

Rift I’ve popped in and out of the betas.  Even though it is a very nice looking game and looks as though it will be a solid and interesting MMO when it finally releases, I just can’t summon the enthusiasm to properly investigate the beta at the moment.  I’m not sure why.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim This was the news that made me happy – if I had to choose just one of these games to play with no others allowed, it would be this one.  Only 11 months to go 😛

 

caught up

well that was a scary flurry of posts eh?  remember it well, I suspect (and hope) I will never match that output again.

The fact that we’re still down to one computer and that we’re in the runup to Christmas means that I haven’t had much time or opportunity to play MMOs.  I don’t watch very much TV but I did get a few little apps to play on my iPod and I’m also reading a few books via the kindle app.  (Absolutely loving my iPod at the moment!)

I have to admit though, even when it is ‘my turn’ on the computer, gaming without Dimzad just isn’t as much fun…  So I’ve not even really been getting the urge to play.  That’s compounded by the fact that I don’t want Eldaeriel to level any more until Dimzad has caught up and I’m not sure I’m ready to repeat the 20-40 content yet with an alt.  Still the patch that went live yesterday will be bringing some cool stuff with it (bank rework, revamped elf and dwarf starter areas, loremaster & runekeeper changes, crafting changes, new dyes…, full notes)

I popped onto eq2 as the city fair was visiting Halas and I wanted the coldain doors for Periwinkle’s house.  As I was travelling from the docks up to the city, I was hit by a snowball.  I wondered if someone was messing around with last year’s snowballs and for a moment hoped it would be one of my ex-guildys…. but no..

…the culprit seemed to be this snowman.  I’m not sure when he was added or why he’s there but thought it was quite funny.

I’m looking forward to the winter festivals in both lotro and eq2.  I’m planning on finishing some decorating projects in eq2 – particularly with Drednever faction items for Asirra’s house in Maj’Dul, Frostfell items for Periwinkle’s house in New Halas and mending Saraya’s outdoor garden.  I must also remember they’ve added new Faydark themed items to the newbie quests in Greater Faydark for Suzita’s house!

Hopefully we will have heard from the insurance people soon about my laptop and we will be back to 2 comps – I can’t wait to carry on with Eldaeriel 😉

sundry game news/witterings:

I was sent an invite for the Rift beta last weekend but I decided not to check it out.  It does look great and I’m really interested in at least checking out the full game, but as Dimzad doesn’t seem that impressed and currently doesn’t seem as though he wants to try it out I’m going to ignore it a little for now.

I also read a rumour (old news now I know) about an Oblivion sequel hopefully coming in the next year or two.  I hope that its true because I love the Elder Scroll series 😀  However the UESPwiki says:

Eurogamer is reporting that TES V will follow on directly from Oblivion. Their story comes from a journalist who sat behind “a person involved in the game” on a plane trip, so should be taken with a large pinch of salt, but is still interesting as so far in the Elder Scrolls series, no game has been a direct sequel to another.

I keep meaning to install Dragon Age on this desktop but keep forgetting.  I must finish this game – it is superb.  I’m looking forward to the release of Dragon Age 2 also but I have to admit to being quite disappointed when I realised there would be no Alistair – pfft 😛

so many games, so little time 😉

anyways…