I Have Actually Been Playing Games, Too

Good Advice

My last few posts have only been about games in the abstract. But I have really been playing video games, honest! A few hours a day, in fact! Just, most of the screenshots of the games I’ve been playing are on my pc, instead of my school computer where I blog from most of the time. And I haven’t been playing Steam games, either, which means no cloud storage.

The game that’s been taking most of my time is ESO. I’m really liking (so far) how much the game experience is like a proper Elder Scrolls game. And the writing isn’t so terrible either. When I first heard of the game, and how they were doing the alliance system, and being in 2E without any reason, and how the UI looked a lot like the default Skyrim UI, and all that, I was a big hater, I admit. I am not a huge fan of Skyrim (it took me 200+ hours to figure that out…), mostly because everything was even more casualized and consolized than Oblivion, and ESO looked like more of the same.

This seems like it would be uncomfortable to walk on.

Glad to find out it’s not, really. It’s a proper action MMO that just happens to be in the Elder Scrolls universe. While I don’t think it’s the best that could have been done, it is competent. And I do miss some of the detail that gets lost when greatly increasing the playable area (all the towns on Vvardenfell, for example, are much smaller than they are in Morrowind, and the buildings that are in both games are smaller, too). But taking all that into account, it’s good enough. Good enough to subscribe to.

As for my actual progress, I’ve gotten up to 20 or 21. Haven’t gotten any of the crafting up very high; I’m wondering if it’s worth keeping all of those green and blue equips for Research, or just Deconstructing them to get the crafting xp. I’m mostly doing this without guides, since (so far) it’s easy enough. Going through the main Morrowind story (this is the weakest writing so far; as per usual with TES games, the strength in writing is in the small details, not the big picture or grand events), since I guess that’s what I get for starting on that expansion. I have no idea what the actual main story is, or how to start it.

As an aside, I wish the earbuds I’m using (because I generally play in the dark of the morning, and my roommates want to sleep then for some reason) had markers for L and R. It’s always a mystery until I get in-game.

Some Quick Blog Housekeeping

I’ve finally gotten around to updating the blog itself. It still has that default picture at the top, but at least this looks like a proper blog. I hate all that infinite scrolling nonsense, and not having stuff on the sidebars. Apparently I had to switch from “modern business” theme or some-such. Now this looks like the old-fashioned blogs I’m used to.

I’ve also set up some nifty stuff on the side, now that I can. I even put up an RSS button. Which I did because, for the first time since I started reading blogs back in 2001, I also got an RSS reader. WordPress has a nifty “follow” function (also a button for that, too, on the side there), but that only works for WordPress blogs. Unfortunately, some people don’t have RSS set up. I’ve finally gotten around to looking up most of the Blaugust participants (figured that was a good way to start), and some of them I’d like to follow, I can’t. It’s slightly annoying.

I couldn’t figure out how to set up a proper blogroll. The “Links” widget for WordPress doesn’t seem like it’s editable, even though it looks like it should be (or I’m dumb and can’t figure it out – very possible!). So I just went with the Blogs I’m Following, which only works for WordPress blogs. So sorry.

I still don’t get Twitter. I thought I got it, then what I got changed. I’m not a social person, even online, so so far it’s just there to announce my blog posts. Thinking on it, I probably should be following the blogs I follow in the normal fashion on Twitter, too.