February 2018

What if we all played what we wanted?

stargrace February 18, 2018 0Comment

My game time is precious. I don’t have a huge amount of it any more, and I don’t mind that. It has made me optimize what time I do have, and appreciate the gaming that I do. One thing I still see gamers doing to other gamers is berating them for not playing the “right” games. Talking down to them for their games of choice. I wonder how many people are playing games they truly want to play, and how many are playing due to social pressure, or even fears.

I still hop from game to game and get excited about new releases, but for the past 7 months I’ve been playing WoW quite steadily. My husband returned from 6 months at depot and started playing with me, which reinforced my desire to be in Azeroth. I’ve gotten some flack for playing and enjoying it, but I haven’t let that stop me. I don’t care what people say. I don’t care if others think the game is beneath me. I’m having fun, it’s relaxing, the world (for me) is amazing, and again my husband is playing with me, so that’s just one more hook. There are so many awesome games out there that I like to think there’s something for everyone and we don’t have to put down folks who are not interested in playing the same games as us. I don’t care if someone decides that Hello Kitty Online is their main game, more power to them.

The world is filled with some really scary things. Video games give us a moment or two to get away from that, to be a part of something magical, to suspend reality for a brief while. Lets not take that away from anyone by being negative to them about what they’re playing. We don’t have to like the same things, but we should certainly learn a bit more tolerance, in every aspect of our lives.

Back At It!

stargrace February 15, 2018 0Comment

Shew! After nearly two weeks I’m finally back online, moved into my new home, internet set up. The drive from British Columbia to Saskatchewan was pretty amazing even if we did have to take part in a 5 hour detour due to avalanche control. We drove through Jasper instead of our original plan through Banff, and while it wasn’t quite as spectacular, it was still pretty special. Unfortunately along the way the husband got sick, and then shortly after myself and my little one caught what he had (the joys of driving for four days along with living in a hotel for two weeks). We’re slowly getting over it, but I stress the word slowly. The flu this season is nothing to laugh at, that’s for sure.

Now that we’re getting settled, I’ve had some time here and there to do a little gaming. Or at least, I would, if things had worked out with my computer. Something (I have no idea what) happened during the move and now my computer suffers from FPS issues any time I play any games, and it also lags out typing in programs like discord. I get no errors, my drives all seem OK, and at this point in time I haven’t narrowed down if it’s my SSD, my power supply, or my video card. I’m hoping to swap some parts out with my husband’s computer to try to figure it out, but again we’re just getting settled and that’s a lot of work to jump right into. Needless to say, I’m frustrated. I would replace whatever was broken if I knew what it was, but without any errors to follow I’m just running various monitoring programs and trying to make sense of what I see.

That being said, I DID manage to get into WoW and do some auction house business, a game where FPS isn’t a big deal and won’t kill me unless I miss click on an expensive item. Blizzard finally brought their API back online yesterday, and there was much rejoicing from everyone who uses the remote auction house, The Undermine Journal, and TradeSkillMaster. I haven’t been making a ton of coin lately, but 15-20k a day is not too bad and I’m content with that.

This weekend is a free play weekend for Overwatch, a game that I have wanted to purchase for ages now – I’m HOPING with this free weekend it also goes on sale, and I’m impatiently waiting for that to happen so I can snag the game. I want to try streaming some of my initial attempts, of course with my computer under the weather that may take some time. We’ll just have to see.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I have missed everyone dearly and I’ve missed writing here – so expect more posts coming in the future, hopefully on a better schedule than I’ve kept over the last year or so.