About this blog

2017 in review

The year is nearing its end and so it’s time for a new round of “what happened?”.
What I played a lot:

  • WoW: Legion
  • SW:TOR
  • Guild Wars 2
  • Marvel Heroes
  • Ragnarok Restart
  • InfiniPicross, Picross Touch & Picross Luna

Completed:

  • Mass Effect 3
  • Fallout Shelter (146h, 34/35 achievements)
  • InfiniPicross (it’s infinite, but 27h and 100% achievements have to count)
  • Picross Touch (“completed”, 60h, 13/18 achievements, 550+ games played)

Played a bit:

  • Party Hard
  • Project Highrise
  • Crypt of the Necrodancer
  • Rise to Ruins
  • Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
  • WildStar
  • EVE Online
  • TESO (The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited)

Gaming expenses in 2017:

  • SW:TOR: 3x 11 EUR
  • WoW: 4x 13 EUR
  • Diablo 3: 15 EUR for Rise of the Necromancer
  • WildStar: no idea, website says zero
  • Xbox 360: 0 EUR
  • GameBoy Advance: bought some used cartrdiges at a retro fair, 20 EUR iirc
  • Games on Steam: ~36 EUR – Templar Battleforce, InfiniPicross, Party Hard, Submerged, Cities: Skylines, TESO, Rise to Ruins
  • Games on GOG: ~14 EUR – Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Project Highrise, Pinata(Deadlight, meh)
  • Games on Bundlestars/Fanatical: 1 EUR
  • Hardware: 17 EUR for a SteamLink + Game bundle
  • Marvel Heroes: 30 EUR for ingame currency, via Steam
  • Guild Wars 2: 80 EUR for the expansion

This means: 298 EUR in 2017, at ~25 EUR per month. (I actually needed to doublecheck this, it seemed awfully low before I added GW2).

  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid for: 7
  • Bought stuff in the shop: Marvel Heroes
  • Full price games: 1 (GW2: Path of Fire) (and a D3 expansion, which was not full price…)

2017 in review Read More »

This blog is now 8 years old

As I wrote somewhere, this wasn’t my first gaming blog, but it’s the one I kept.
This is the first post, made on Oct 18, 2009. It started as a WoW blog because I really only played WoW at that time. This wouldn’t really change for a few years – at least not in the sense that I played a game enough that I would write about it.
This should be post #138.
I’m still mostly playing MMOs, but I’m not raiding and hardly grouping outside of RL friends, so I guess that makes me the prototype casual pretend-single-player MMO player. And I’m having a blast. At least when I’m not on a month long gaming break, which is also fine.
Actually there were quite a few MMOs/notable expansions I only started (or were released) after this blog was created:

  • SW:TOR launched on December 20, 2011 – played at launch
  • Marvel Heroes launched on June 4, 2013 – I started in December 2014
  • TESO launched on April 4, 2014, I started in 2017
  • WildStar launched on June 3, 2014 – played at launch
  • Guild Wars 2 launched on August 28, 2012, but I only started in spring 2015
  • WoW: Cataclysm – December 7, 2010 – played at launch
  • WoW: Mists of Pandaria – September 25, 2012 – played at launch, stopped in April 2014 iirc
  • WoW: Warlords of Draenor – November 13, 2014 – started in December, stopped in January
  • WoW: Legion – August 30, 2016 – resubscribed a month before launch, stayed for a while

But here’s the oldtimers, being released more than 8 years ago:

  • EVE Online launched on May 23, 2003, but I started in 2014 iirc
  • Ragnarok Online launched in the EU on April 15, 2004, but I started in December 2003
  • The Lord of the Rings Online – April 24, 2007
  • WoW launched on February 11, 2005 – but I started in May 2006 iirc
  • WoW: The Burning Crusade – January 16, 2007 – played at launch
  • WoW: Wrath of the Lich King – November 13, 2008 – played at launch

Not even trying something similar for non-MMOs because I don’t even remember when I bought a game at launch day. But I’ve also not just waited for a sale. I tend to not be overexcited and just at some point happen to pick them up if they sound interesting. One exception is Diablo 3, incl expansions.
Let’s see, I’m really bad with predictions (but I don’t do them in my year-end post anyway) so here’s a list with the “moderately interesting” label for the next time:

  • Albion Online
  • Crowfall
  • Destiny 2, the beta really hooked me.. but now.. MMOs, not shooters
  • Wild West Online

And yes, this is a scheduled post because I would’ve surely forgotten to publish it on the correct day 😛

This blog is now 8 years old Read More »

The 2016 review

It’s Christmas eve around noon and this year I’m early with preparing my review post instead of playing games. I think that says enough.
Again I didn’t really go out of my way to buy stuff in sales, but it happened. Again I don’t really buy new stuff. Again there’s MMO subscriptions. Again I’m pretty happy with my spending.

  • Played a lot:
    • WoW: Legion (6 toons at 110)
    • EVE (hard to measure)
    • Marvel Heroes
    • Diablo 3 (S6: Crusader/Slayer, S7: Wizard/Chapter 4, S8: Barbarian/Chapter 4)
  • Completed:
  • Played a bit:
    • WoW: WoD (1 month just before Legion launch)
    • Faeria
    • Mass Effect 3
    • Dishonored
    • Guild Wars 2 (quite a bit at the start of the year)
    • Broken Sword
    • The Witcher
    • FarCry3: Blood Dragon
    • AC: Brotherhood (finally abandoned, Black Flag next)
  • Basically only logged in once or twice:
    • WildStar
    • SW:TOR

Gaming expenses in 2016:

  • WoW: 117 EUR – 45 EUR (Legion), 52 EUR (subscription), 20 EUR (character transfer)
  • EVE: 144 EUR – 2x 6month subscription (until April ’17)
  • Marvel Heroes: 80 EUR for the Advance Pack 3
  • Games on Steam: 33 EUR – Broken Sword 1-5 (15 EUR), KotOR2 (3 EUR), Faeria (6 EUR), Dishonored (3 EUR), Pony Island (2 EUR), Out There Somewhere + Dungeon Hearts (1 EUR)
  • Xbox 360: 0 EUR

This means: 374 EUR in 2016, so ~31 EUR per month, slightly up from last year’s 355 EUR, but with a 4 month subscription credit into 2017.

  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid for
    • with money: 12
    • with ingame currency: 1
  • Bought stuff in the shop: Marvel Heroes
  • Logged in to but didn’t spend money: GW2, WildStar, SW:TOR
  • Full price games: 1 (WoW: Legion)

The 2016 review Read More »

Gaming-free February

Back from a lengthy and much-needed vacation and it’s already March. The only gaming relating thing I did in the last 3 weeks was 10 minutes of a match-three on Android and approximately 5 more minutes of some puzzle game. I didn’t miss anything, but have already started my daily login to Marvel Heroes and Guild Wars 2 for the login bonuses. Haven’t played anything since returning though, but started reading my gaming-related RSS feeds on the subway again already.
I also didn’t miss gaming. At all. Before I left I had started playing The Witcher, might continue there. And then there’s still Mass Effect 3.

Gaming-free February Read More »

Testing the wordpress.com desktop client

I’m testing the Windows version.
Help -> About WordPress.com: Version 1.2.3 release

  • Contra: The installer doesn’t ask me where it should install to
  • Contra: 153 MB is a bit much for this, really.
  • Meh: I think it’s a bad idea to call your client “website.tld”
  • Pro: Login is easy and smooth
  • Pro: The admin view looks better than the website
  • Bug: When the About window is open, I can type, but the cursor is gone
  • Pro: Autosaving works
  • Contra: It shows me 2 drafts with “Untitled” – that’s a bit vague
  • Pro: Getting to the drafts is one click less I think
  • Pro: The “posts” view is kind of nice and shows an image plus text
  • Pro: The Categories & Tags seem to be easily accessible
  • Bug: Lost my cursor again, this time I just opened and closed the preferences, switching to “HTML” and back to “Visual” fixes it
  • Contra: When resizing the whole window, this input field stays in a fixed width column, like a web page. (This editor seems to be based on either node-webkit or Electron, so probably it is just a web page. Maybe even the new editor that I didn’t like last I tried it.)
  • Pro:  The “Preview” view is a lot better than on the website and displays fine, but the embedding seems a bit buggy. (Window too high, scrollbars weird, but the content is fine)

 
Summary: Looks good so far. Now I’m gonna hit “Publish” and hope for the best.

Testing the wordpress.com desktop client Read More »

Quick 2015 review

Even though this blog doesn’t have many posts and also not many readers, I like doing review posts of my stuff. Caught a cold these days and didn’t get to play a lot on New Year’s Day.
Some people did cool charts on what they played in 2015, I can skip that fancy stuff and do a short list, especially as I can’t tell what I played in which month, as I wasn’t paying many subscriptions and am generally not good enough at tracking these things.

  • Significant amount of time spent:
    • Marvel Heroes
    • Guild Wars 2
    • WildStar
    • Ragnarok Online
    • EVE Online (only January+February)
    • Trine 2 (via AggroChat Game Club 2)
    • Shadowrun: Dragonfall
    • Shadowrun Returns
    • Lost Lands
    • Xbox 360: Rock Band, Rock Band 2, LEGO Rock Band
  • Insignificant amount of time spent:
    • Mass Effect
    • Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
    • Borderlands 2
    • Age of Wonders III
    • Diablo III
    • Heroes of Might and Magic V
    • SW: TOR
    • Android: Fallout Shelter
  • Log in, play less than an hour, log out:
    • WoW
    • Age of Wonders – Shadow Magic

Gaming expenses in 2015:

Damn, this is a lot harder than last year.

  • WildStar: ~40 EUR for sub in Jan-Mar iirc
  • GW2: 110 EUR: box for 10 EUR, Heart of Thorns Ultimate Edition for 99 EUR
  • Marvel Heroes: ~120 EUR -Magik Hero Pack (16 EUR), ingame currency (~105 EUR)
  • Games on Steam: ~66 EUR – AoW3 (15 EUR), SR: Dragonfall (4,50 EUR), SR: Hong Kong (19 EUR), The Witcher 2 (3 EUR), Borderlands 2 (10 EUR), ME 1+2 + AC4 (14 EUR), Hero Siege (1 EUR)
  • Games on GoG: 3 EUR – Robin Hood (2 EUR), The Witcher (1 EUR)
  • Games on HumbleBundle: 16 EUR – GameMaker (12 EUR), Trine (1 EUR), Talisman (3 EUR)
  • Xbox 360: 0 EUR, unless I forgot a random used game for 5 bucks
  • EVE: 0 EUR (paid in Nov ’14)
  • WoW: 0 EUR
  • Ragnarok: 0 EUR
  • SW:TOR : 0 EUR

To sum it up: 355 EUR in 2015, which boils down to ~30 EUR per month for gaming. (2014: ~450/year or 37.50/month)

  • Amount of MMOs months I paid subs: 5
  • Amount of MMOs I logged into and played truly “F2P” without purchases: 3 (Ragnarok, SW:TOR, WoW)
  • Full price games/expansions I bought: 2 (Heart of Thorns and SR: Hong Kong)
  • Amount of games I feel I supported enough/voted with my wallet according to the amount of time I spent there: 2 of 2
    • preordered the HoT Ultimate Edition because I felt bad for enjoying GW2 so much on a 10 EUR one-time purchase
    • spent about exactly 10 EUR per month for stuff in Marvel Heroes – like a sub, but 100% optional. I never felt pressured to buy something. I <3 you, Gazillion.

Quick 2015 review Read More »

Blaugust, but not for me

This is kind of about Blaugust. I’d already read a lot of stuff during last year’s month-long blogging event and I think it’s a cool idea, so check it out if you read this but haven’t heard of it, which I find unlikely anyway.
Sadly it is not for me, for several reasons. I already wrote that I put gaming (and some other things) on the backburner at the moment for lack of enjoyment and an urge to spend more time outside in the sun. Also I usually am doing my biggest holiday trip of the year in August, also this year. Incidentally I am mostly writing this post because I am sitting in a lobby, drinking coffee and waiting for something in preparation of said trip. Then I am really bad at forcing myself to blog. I’ve been blogging on and off for around 15 years I think, so I’d say I know what works and what doesn’t. And finally, I plan to write about my trip extensively, but not here. Unlike a lot of people who either blog under their real name or add personal stuff, I put that elsewhere and that’s why most posts here are just summaries of what I did. But don’t worry, you’re not missing out on my “exciting” life 😛

Blaugust, but not for me Read More »

2014 gaming expenses

Why come up with original content when you can grab the best ideas? 🙂
This is what I spent on games and gaming in 2014, but I’m sure I forgot somethng.

MMOs, roughly by time /played

WoW: 156 EUR
I was subscribed for 6 months in early 2014 (I think 2 of those were spent only logging in once a week and chatting to guildies, could’ve saved that) and for 1 month in December after I had bought Warlords of Draenor 2 weeks after launch, end of November. WoD was 45 EUR and I also had one paid character transfer in February to the server where I was working on Algalon.
WildStar: ~105 EUR
I don’t remember the box price (around 40 EUR?) and I’ve been subscribed since launch (5 months).
Pet peeve: NCSoft always needs 2FA via email because my IP changed. Doh, I live in Germany, where roughly 75% of non-mobile users have a new IP on a daily basis.
SW:TOR: 36 EUR
I was subscribed for 3 months, January until March. If I remember correctly I was levelling my Jedi Sage to 55. No clue why I didn’t write about it.
EVE Online: 48 EUR
I was subscribed until February and came back in late October. That’s 4 months of subscriptions (1 discounted) and I spent 2 PLEX on dual training I had already paid for in 2013.
Marvel Heroes: 8.50 EUR
I started close to New Year’s Eve and spent money on 1000G to buy 3 heroes at the sale. Quite fun, looking forward to finishing the story mode for the first time.

Other games

Diablo 3 – Reaper of Souls: 40 EUR
Back when it launched it was fun for a while, but now awesome fun like Diablo 2 was. In the patch preceding the expansion launch and also after the expansion I played a whole lot. Worth the money, even if went a little stale after a while again.
Steam: ~30 EUR
Hammerwatch 4-pack, Assassin’s Creed 2, AC 3, AC: Brotherhood, AC: Revelations, 10000000, Game Dev Tycoon, Terraria, Gunpoint
I had grabbed Assassin’s Creed 2 at a sale, completed it in a few days and bought the sequels, started with Brotherhood then went to play something else. Still looking forward to finishing them.
I wrote about Game Dev Tycoon and loved it. Same for Gunpoint. Terraria wasn’t really my cup of tea and 10,000,000 was a bit weird, but after an hour it was more fun than in the beginning. And Hammerwatch I only stopped playing because of Marvel Heroes. Still plan to finish it piecemeal.
GoG: 15 EUR
Heroes of Might & Magic 5 Bundle, The Settlers 4, Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, Master of Orion 1+2
After this post I didn’t buy Anno, but Settlers 4. I got the Master of Orion titles because of good things I heard, but it’s a bit too oldschool it seems, I wasn’t immediately hooked. HoMM 5 got a decent amount of play time already, it looks better and plays nearly as good as HoMM 3. (HoMM 4 sucked, btw)
Humble Bundle: 13 EUR
Humble Bundle 11 and Shadowrun Returns, haven’t played any of these for an extended amount of time.
XBox 360: 0 EUR
The only topic where I can’t easily track my purchases online, because I only pick up discounted games in stores here and there, but I’m pretty sure Lego Marvel Heroes was the last one at Christmas 2013.
That’s ~450 EUR in 12 months or 37.50 EUR per month. A lot more than I had thought but still not too bad for a hobby that I could spend a few hours a day with.
To reflect on what could be done to save some money:

  • only 2 MMO subs per month (should be no problem, 2014 it was 19 months of subs in total)
  • restrain myself even more at sales on Steam/GoG/Humble Bundle (wasn’t too bad though) Then again I think I bought more Humble Bundles because of the soundtracks or one game than because of the majority of games in it
  • if I didn’t count incorrectly, I paid for 3 full price games or expansions (D3, WS, WoD)

2014 gaming expenses Read More »

Nostalgia: The blog that never was

In August 2007, a bit over 2 years before starting this blog, I already had started a wow blog. As I was playing a Rogue, it was aptly named Vanish!

Some time ago I found all 5 posts I had posted there, before taking it down again (no clue why) and now I’m sharing them, lightly edited.

Welcome onboard (Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:27:27 +0200)

If there’s one thing the world doesn’t need, it’s probably another blog about WoW. But we will see how useless it will be.
As of now this blog is without a real theme, mostly it will be about Rogues, Druids, Warlocks, Raiding, Addons and, to a degree, about PvP, WoWWiki [1], Arena and the other classes.
The only editor (atm) has been playing since May 2005 with just a few breaks not longer than a month. That’s why he owns a 70 Rogue, 70 Druid, 65 Warlock, 35 Warrior and 19 Hunter Twink. He never really rerolled, just made chars to redo quests up to level 10 or visit friends on other servers. These were mostly Warriors that made it to their 20s on Arathor-EU, Vek’lor-DE, Malygos-DE and some others.
From the DE you can also see that he’s from Germany. He’s been living in Munich for more than 20 years, studying Computer Science for some years now and playing video games for less than 20 years. Normally he doesn’t talk about himself in the third person, but he started this post and was too lazy to rewrite it.

Maulgar is king! (Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:20:00 +0200)

Some hours ago I finished the first run to Gruul’s Lair with my guild. The Unstable Flasks are quite handy, and as I had 1000 Apexis Shards on my Druid I made a stack of 20 and was happy to get some bankspace back.
Sadly it didn’t run too well, the pull really is awfully complicated and we wiped… and wiped… and wiped. Good thing is that I could run out and not die most of the times when the pull failed. Still some repair costs and time feels a bit wasted as I didn’t do much besides clicking ok to readycheck and dpsing Blindeye sometimes. Oh, and sorting out DKP from a handful of screenshots will definitely be more demanding than my role in this fight.

Stupidest Feature ever (Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:19:25 +0200)

The berserker buff in instances not only gives you +30% damage, it also lets your model grow in size.
Now if you take the berserker buff inside the Stables, try to run out because it’s busy with Alliance and can’t get through the archway you just used and thus die… you wanna strangle someone responsible for that…

Games Convention 2007 (Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:39:56 +0200)

The GC was quite interesting, but I couldn’t be bothered to queue up for 2h or more just to get to play Wrath of the Lich King for maybe 10 mins. Too much fuzz. The Trading Card Game seemed quite nice, although it’s a bit sad that the Upper Deck employees didn’t really know more than the absolute basics of the game.

Maulgar was king (Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:44:38 +0200)

Second night of Gruul’s Lair. After some attempts on Maulgar I was feared into the wall with full health and mana and had to watch one after the other die. At 1% the only remaining Paladin couldn’t keep the MT up anymore and we wiped. Quite frustrating, as I tried everything from casting “target not in line of sight” and them positioning Maulgar in front of the wall I was inside to Auto-Unstuck (which doesn’t work in battle of course…). But the next try we killed him with 25man up (maybe 1 or battle rezzes used) and then even got Gruul to 60%, let’s wait for next week.
[1]: This predates wowpedia, but I strongly encourage you to use Wowpedia, not WoWWiki.

Nostalgia: The blog that never was Read More »

Spring cleaning

You know those resolutions like “I will update this blog more often now” – they hardly work.
Then again, a new game is exciting and when SW:TOR launched I at least managed to crank out a few, but on a different blog, long forgotten now.
Que sera, sera. For now I have updated the About page and added some stuff about WildStar and other MMOs than WoW.
I also cleaned up the Blogroll. 2 of 7 blogs still valid. 2 domains expired/squatted. 3 not updated in years. Will fill it up again soonish, maybe. Probably when I have decided whose blogs about WildStar I will read. Pat The Chua has a nice list, if you’re searching for content, I am evaluating that list as well.

Spring cleaning Read More »