Weeklies – SWL, Anti-PAX, Batteries

It’s been a slow week.

My primary game is still Secret World Legends though I didn’t play as much this week. Now that the Morninglight content is already out, I don’t feel any more pressure to “hurry up.” Also, Egypt is a bit dull, particularly the City of the Sun God, which is just a long series of tasks that don’t seem to have much story relevance. Other than the cut scenes, most of your minute-to-minute gameplay is mindlessly standing in front of monsters, pressing the left mouse button over and over again with little or no danger of dying. (Just like Kritika Online!) It’s a far cry from the Egypt of the old The Secret World, which was a constant (albeit annoying) struggle to survive.

My Daybreak All-Access Pass is over now so no more Coirnav for me. I ended up about halfway through level two after about eight hours of play time. If nothing else it has given me an idea for a post about the differences between “playing the game of EverQuest” (a horrible experience) and “playing the metagame of EverQuest” (apparently a fun experience).

I’m seeing others talking more about Project Gorgon. I have all but given up on it until they fix whatever is wrong with mouse steering in Serbule. It’s almost unplayable for me in town unless I use the keyboard to move and turn. Beyond that, I’m suffering from an extreme bewilderment over what to do after I log in. I have a huge list of quest tasks, but I don’t know where to go to accomplish any of them, and they are interdependent, so you have to do this one to get the widget so you can that one, but you have to build favor with the NPC, which means you have to do more tasks for him, which might involve getting stuff from other NPCs, but you have to build favor with them first, and it all seems like an endless circular reference and I don’t even know where to start anymore or what I was trying to accomplish in the first place.

This article about an ArcheAge class action lawsuit is the only news item that caught my eye this week. I didn’t realize this was a thing. I was probably affected by whatever happened there but I can’t say I ever felt like it warranted a lawsuit (I doubt I ever bought a single thing from the ArcheAge cash shop).

PAX East or Forward or Upside Down or whatever was this past weekend. I don’t pay much attention to game conventions anymore, to be honest. I’m sure they’re vitally important for networking with fellow industry professionals, trending topics for SEO, and writing off business expenses, but in terms of actual news for gamers, they seem to be losing relevance. I can’t recall a single noteworthy story from the weekend.

Since there’s so little MMO news, let’s talk more about me! The battery in my car died this week, so that was fun. Fortunately I was at home this time, unlike the last time I experienced a dead battery a couple years ago. In hindsight, I probably should have expected it, since the car was a bit sluggish in starting over the cold winter. But in my defense, car batteries don’t seem to last as long as they used to, and they also seem to go from working to not-working overnight (or between the time you drive to a store and the time you leave a store). In the old days, a battery could last a long time even after you noticed it was hard to start the car. Now, it seems like the first time you notice a problem, you should immediately drop everything and drive to a parts store for a new battery.

The interesting part of the story is this: I ordered a nifty iClever jump-starting gizmo for this and future emergencies. I didn’t really expect it to work, but it did, perfectly, on the first try, minutes after taking it out of the Amazon shipping box, with zero hassle. I don’t like to endorse products but this seems like a great thing to put in a modern day emergency kit. (The question will be how long the gizmo’s battery lasts… I’ll have to retract my endorsement if I have to buy a new gizmo every year, which would defeat the entire purpose of it.)

Otherwise, nothing to report.