I’ve been dipping into Trove a bit more lately, because it’s become quite stable. I don’t know how to say this politely, but it’s a much better game than Landmark. :) Trove plays a bit like what we’ve been told Landmark will be. That is, you can explore, fight monsters, level up, find resources, craft stuff, and build stuff. The thing about Trove is that after about three months of alpha, all of those things work.

Everybody’s giving their impressions of WildStar now that the NDA is down, but honestly I saw enough in the hours and hours and hours of livestreams that were going on way back in December to decide that I was probably going to get it. Even if it wasn’t a game that looked fun, I’d still want to at least see what everyone was talking about, and I expect it to be the MMO everyone will be playing in the second half of 2014, with a brief distraction for the new WoW Expansion.

Note: Apparently you’re not supposed to be able to play ArcheAge RU from the U.S. anymore, but for some reason I’m still able to. ArcheAge is growing on me. I feel like I was too harsh on it in my first report. The graphics actually aren’t bad at all, and better than Fallen Earth, at least color-wise. (The first time, I had played AA after FFXIV, which has drop-dead gorgeous graphics, so my perception was probably skewed.

I decided to learn to play without the Invert Mouse option. I’ve considered doing this for a long time, but the final straw was wanting to continue checking out ArcheAge without getting a headache. But you know if you’ve ever tried to change this setting that you need to turn it off for every game at the same time. It’s not something you can turn off in one game but leave on in another game.

I feel like I’m at a crossroads with FFXIV. I’m teetering on that line between “it’s fun to play” and “it’s work to play.” If I try to push myself much more I’m almost certainly going to burn out. Right now, when I log in each night after work, I have a to-do list of things I want to accomplish: I want to level at least one gathering class. I want to level one crafting class (I often skip that in favor of gathering right now).

I am the world’s worst blogger when it comes to dealing with comments. Partly it’s because I’m not nearly as good at “real-time” communication as writing things in advance, but mostly it’s because it’s technologically much more difficult for me to post comments at the present time. Most of my posts are written in a plain text editor and posted via. WordPress’s post-by-email feature, because I don’t have access to my site during the times when it’s most convenient for me to write.

Some random news bits. I pre-ordered WildStar, which now allows me to finally play in the beta. By the way I did sign up for the beta many, many long months ago, but they never invited me. They thought they could keep me out, but who’s laughing now? Trion is apparently hoping to get ArcheAge out this year (2014). That would be super. I hope it’s after summer, though, so that I can be sufficiently bored with WildStar before it comes out.

I figured out what is missing from my daily FFXIV experience: Soloing. I realized this when I logged into Rift and picked up my Dendrome quest line where I last left off months and months ago. There’s something fundamentally satisfying about toodling around by yourself, chipping away at quests and turning them in. You can stop at any time and fix yourself a drink, or make a sandwich, or whatever. You can get up and go to the store, leaving your character standing right out in the middle of nowhere.

I thought maybe I could use this time before ESO launches to level another character in Rift up to 60. The lucky winner of my attention is a Dwarf Warrior, who is currently at 53 and wandering around the depressing, sickly, bruised blue-and-purple landscapes of Seratos. It seemed like a great idea until I remembered that almost every single encounter ended with my health nearly depleted. I read once that the Storm Legion zones had been nerfed, but they don’t seem all that much easier to me.

Having pre-ordered, I used my first beta weekend in WildStar to figure out what I’m going to play at launch. I think my first character is going to be either a Warrior or an Esper. Probably Warrior, because it was the most fun. Those are the only two classes that “clicked” for me in the first three or four levels. So far, ranged combat feels weird to me with the telegraph system.

I spent most of a whole weekend playing … Rift! Man that game is awesome. Have I mentioned that? It’s the best WoW-clone of all the WoW-clones. Definitely more better than WoW itself. I leveled my Warrior from 53 to 57, using a combination of quests and Instant Adventures. Mostly IAs. I used up three 160% Experience potions that I had from some Trion gift or another, and then I got a 30-day Patron status so I could use the daily 40% Experience bonuses for the rest of the trip to 60, which will probably occur during the week.

My reaction to the upcoming GW2 Feature Pack: Why the heck did we have to wait until after the Living Story to get these things?? Most of what I’ve read falls into the category of “it probably should have been like that in the first place.” The Wardrobe and Dye changes sound awesome. I have occasionally tried to figure out what to do with all the various “skins” I’ve picked up, but I don’t have a clue.

Holy crap, ya’ll! The Early Access for ESO is almost here! It’s a 5-day head start, and that’s just a couple of days away! I’m trying to think back to the last MMO I played at or before the actual launch day. Was it Rift? Maybe it was Guild Wars 2, but I don’t think so. I think it was Rift. That was like 2011. Good lord. That was ages ago.

As you’re reading this, I’m undoubtedly playing ESO. (Actually I’m probably at work, but I’ll be playing it when I get home.) I’m enjoying that magic time in every MMO when you don’t yet know all the things that make you want to quit playing. I won’t bore you with my impressions of ESO because a) I’ve already posted them, and b) you’ve already got it because it’s a new MMO and you know you can’t stand not playing a new MMO that everyone is talking about, no matter how many bad reviews you’ve seen or how much you oppose a subscription model on principal.

Super fastly-written thoughts on ESO. It’s awesome! Even more awesomer that I thought it would be! That’s probably just first-day excitement talking though. But still, it’s pretty good. And new. Anything new is good, if you ask me. At least for a couple of days. Smoothest launch ever. No network-related problems. No queues, no lag, no disconnects. None, zero, zip. Got in five minutes before 7 AM without issue. Many problems I had from beta were fixed.

Last week I had some generally negative things to say about Landmark, so I thought I would balance it out with some positive things this week. And then follow it with something negative again. I spent a big chunk of time on Saturday playing Landmark the first significant time I’ve spent in the beta. It occurred to me that Landmark is essentially an endgame gear grind from the moment you step into it.

Still enjoying ESO. I was pleased with the first patch yesterday. It addressed almost every problem I had encountered. Finally I could capture Balreth’s soul and continue the main storyline, which, as I expected, unlocked a whole string of other quests in the zone. Based on just this one patch, I feel like Zenimax is going to release larger patches farther apart, rather than push out small patches frequently. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

When the ESO servers came back up after the inexplicable pre-launch downtime, I threw caution to the wind and jumped into the Fungal Grotto dungeon to see what it was like. I was level 14 and would soon out-level it, so I figured I probably wouldn’t have another chance. I picked the DPS role because that’s always the least stressful way to explore how dungeons work in a new game. Also, I didn’t have much in the way of tanking or healing skills.

A quick followup to the Cobalt Pick debacle: The last Landmark patch fixed the invisible Ancient Rootstock trees. They are still rare, but now it’s more like 1 in 50 trees instead of 1 in 50,000,000 trees. That’s an acceptable level of rare-ness for me. It’s rare enough that you feel a small thrill of victory when you find one, but not so rare that you want to quit playing.

Having post-by-email technical difficulties, but I’m playing ESO instead of trying to fix it. Please stand by…

Lucky you. Because I can’t seem to post by email during the week any more, you get to read an epic novel of a post put together over the weekend. Falls-on-Steps. Yeah, I made an Argonian even though I played one in beta. It’s actually been kind of nice that I haven’t been able to post. I’m having so much fun playing ESO that I don’t want to analyze the game very much, because then I might start to wonder if I’m really supposed to be having this much fun or not.

The technical difficulties seem to have fixed themselves. Shrug. I have one more criticism about ESO, although it’s not exactly a “criticism” so much as it is merely an “observation of the way ESO does things.” Most of the zones look the same. Stonefalls, near the beginning of the Ebonheart Pact starting point. Not exactly the same. Some of them have jungle trees and some of them have deciduous trees. Some of them are more rocky and some of them are more grassy.

I never got a chance to write my impressions of Final Fantasy XIV’s 2.2 patch, so I will do so now. I only had about one day to look at it before ESO came out, so there are some gaps in my knowledge. Like, for example, how I didn’t look at any of the new dungeons or trials. I did get a chance to sort-of look into Glamours, but it appears that you need Tailor, Leatherworker, and/or Armorer classes to create those glamour crystals, and of course I do not have those beyond level 15.

I was interested in checking out the new GW2 Feature Pack until I read Zubon’s warning. Apparently you have to re-do and re-learn all your characters after you login. I suppose I should have expected it, given the complete restructuring of the trait-lines. But facing the cold, hard reality of having to re-learn your class from the ground up is pretty daunting. Especially when you haven’t thought about GW2 traits in ages.

So. H1Z1. Another zombie game. That’s already enough to make me not care about it. Zombies were old when The Secret World came out. (Yes, TSW is already an MMO with zombies.) Zombies are now so old that you can’t help but roll your eyes whenever you see another zombie game. “But wait, in this one the zombies can breakdance! See how relevant we are!” No. Zombies are dead. Pun intended.