My time in EverQuest’s latest timelocked progression server, Aradune, didn’t go anywhere this summer. I still felt nostalgic for the older days of MMOs, though, and eventually I started reminiscing about those good old EverQuest II days. EQ2 doesn’t get a lot of love. According to the latest news from Darkpaw’s new corporate overlords, the original EverQuest brings in more revenue and has more players. What was supposed to be a graphical revolution in MMOs, in 2020 pales in comparison to newer MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV. ...

I came into this series cold: I haven’t played more than a couple hours of any Assassin’s Creed game. One, I played a portion of the tutorial of when I was seeing if PlayStation Now, Sony’s game streaming service, would work with my connection (no). The other, Black Flag, I played until they went back to the “real world” for the first time – also another game I got free somehow. So, I can’t compare this to other Assassin’s Creed games. ...

I really want to apologize for the gaps in game blogging. I’m still gaming, as much as ever. I have a lot to write about with EverQuest II, the PlayStation 5, and especially Assassins Creed: Valhalla, and I will try to get to these things :-) As well as streaming again. But for now, here’s our latest adventures in Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. When the pandemic hit, we stopped having game nights. When Connecticut flattened the curve in the summer and things eased up again, we started meeting and playing the new Gloomhaven game, Jaws of the Lion, every other Game Night, which we hold every other week. It used to be weekly before the pandemic, but we want to space them two weeks in case anyone is sick without knowing it. ...

I chose my first 3D printer carefully. I lurked on r/3dprinting for months, reading all their guides, looking at what they were printing, finding people who were doing the sorts of things with their printer that I wanted to do, and finally ordered the best of the bunch: The Creality Ender 3 Pro. There was a lot of help for it and a lot of support, and I was so excited by it, that I ordered it the moment I had a couple hundred bucks I didn’t need. Because it was affordable, too. Budget printing for amazing results. ...

I hate to be hyperbolic about this. But… I just can’t. Imagine… a marketplace, backed by the “blockchain” and “non-fungible tokens”, where you could buy gacha packs that contain random gifs of old Atari 2600 cartridge boxes. Some just stand there, doing nothing. Some are colored gold. Some spin. If you are very, very lucky, and spend a lot of money on gacha packs, you might find yourself in the possession of a gif of a box that opens up to show the game being played for a couple of seconds. ...

I’d forgotten we’d discussed changing game night from Thursday to Wednesday and only remembered when my daughter showed up on the doorstep, ready to game. I didn’t have the next Jaws of the Lion scenario ready, and we’d just played Terraforming Mars. Me, I wanted to play Mahjong, but I wasn’t hearing a lot of enthusiasm about it. Tom suggested Heart of Crown, so that’s what we played. I hauled out the card table and we got to setting up the game. ...

There’s been many efforts to define exactly what a “rogue-like” game is. Permadeath is definitely one. A different map every time you play is another. Having to discover each time what the magic items you discover do, that’s one. Descending into a deep dungeon, grabbing a quest item and making it back to the surface in one go, definitely. Rogue came out of a thriving ecosystem of similar dungeon-exploration games from the late 70s and early 80s. Its simple, quick gameplay was perfect for quick gaming sessions between classes, which is how I first encountered it at the University of New Hampshire back in the day. Universities, back then, were the fertile breeding ground for the progenitors of many computer game genres that we still play today. It was a wonderful time. ...

I am done with the early access content in Solasta: Crown of the Magister. I think Solasta did what it set out to do. It made a statement about how it would approach the modern era of D&D computer RPGs and how it sets itself apart from other modern offerings such as Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin and Baldur’s Gate 3. And it made me eager to see what comes next. ...

I’m not as big a collector of Mahjong games as my boyfriend is; he has a really impressive collection of both import and domestic games for the SNES (even leaving the solitaire mahjong games aside, there’s an impressive number). But, even though I am nothing more than a beginner, I do like playing the game and am always looking out for something new. While standing in line for Stellazzio Virtual Theater’s production of “Phantom of the Opera” last night (their productions are held entirely within Final Fantasy XIV, making them the perfect socially-distanced night on the town), I grew bored with waiting and chatting with my FC and picked up my Switch. ...

While writing up yesterday’s post about my first experiences with Solasta, the D&D 5e-compatible RPG released to Steam early access a couple days ago, I found that I’d actually made the most boring adventuring party possible. Tank, healer, nuker, melee dps – those rules are enshrined in D&D legend as the minimum basis for any successful group. All on my own, I’d duplicated the pre-rolled party that Tactical Adventures had provided. I had verified that I was the most boring player in the known gaming universe. ...