I’ve been back in FFXIV for just over a week now, picking up with the beginning of Endwalker and meandering my way through the story. In my down time, I have always loved crafting & gathering jobs in the game, so it wasn’t too long before I learned that spearfishing had been revamped in 6.1 – and that I had not even picked it up prior to the revamp.
It’s a mini game that opens these days. You find a node much like you would with botany and mining, and you have to use your spear on fish that swim by. I thought the game was pretty fun, and a nice change from the regular fishing that I have all but forgotten how to do. I picked up a few hermit crabs that I needed for a provision mission, and a handful of other fish that I put on the auction house. I don’t have a lot of gil in game (probably one of the few games where I spend most of my time broke) but I’m trying to save up so that I can enter the housing market. We’ll see how that goes. My husband has also returned to the game, so he’s been working through the older expansions with a handful of friends, and I’m now waiting for him to catch up in Endwalker. Overall? It has been some nice casual gaming, and a perfect way to spend a few evenings.
Week one of the 2023 Blaugust festival is a ‘Welcome to Blaugust’ theme, and while I’ve never really been known to write on any sort of schedule or adhere to any sort of prompts, I do think that what you decide to call your blog is probably one of the very first steps you take. My own blog name has changed over the years, and is now hopefully in its final form.
I started out as MmoQuests – because I was blogging about (you guessed it) quests. In Mmorpgs. Usually EQ2. Over the years this changed, and I started writing about games in general, and then I started writing about my art, and cooking, and life. I decided to switch the site to NomadicGamersEh. I’ve always felt like a bit of a nomad when it came to gaming, playing one thing or another until I grow bored and move on. I also had hopes of doing some TTRPG blogging with the family, but that didn’t exactly work out (hence the ‘S’ in gamers). Since I’m Canadian, I thought I’d be even MORE witty, and put ‘eh’ on the end. Why? I’m not even really sure.
Last night I realized I STILL wasn’t happy with the name. It’s difficult to motivate yourself to write on a site when you’re not in love with the name, it can demotivate you. I decided to finally settle on NomadicGamer.ca – dropped the S, and went with .ca for my Canadian nod. Plus .com is still being squatted on. I used to own that one too on a wordpress hosted site, but I gave up the name years ago when money was tight. Now they want $3k for it and .ca will suit me just fine, thanks. I also own NomadicReader.com where I do book reviews, though I don’t post on that site nearly enough.
Hopefully this name sticks around a while. Blaugust is always a great time of year to do some general blog maintenance, update those links, and just make sure everything is running as it should be. I need to design a new header, but aside from that I think it’s all looking the way it should.
Tomorrow, we get back to posting about games! Palia is on the menu for later today, and Baldur’s Gate 3 is in the works for tomorrow. Not to mention those 2 new books I just picked up.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
I’m taking inspiration for this post from Tipa, who is another long time blogger – she started talking about what she posted on August 1st through the years, and I thought that was a fascinating topic, so here I am shamelessly copying. My blog started out at MmoQuests.com and gradually transitioned to NomadicGamerEh since I have always bounced around from game to game, and I happen to be Canadian. Let’s face it, I’m not very creative when it comes to names.
Back in 2006 I was writing about EverQuest2, I was playing Silverstep who was a warden (druid), and I was very excited to get an ultra rare recipe book from my guild at the time, Valorous Union. I don’t actually remember that guild, but I like that there’s a record of it on my blog. I complained about being East coast when everyone else was West, and time zones just not matching up (I still complain about this).
In 2007 I was still talking about EQ2 (go figure, this would be a theme for many years) and player housing. game update 37 was all the news, and included a lot of crafting changes. I sure did love player housing. I still think EQ2 was one of the best systems out there, and I loved the creativity of the player base.
In 2008 I’m still talking about EQ2 but this time I featured a member of the community – Coniaric. I interviewed this player just for the fun of it, and I actually asked them what kitchen appliance they would be. Alright then!
In August of 2009 I’m still going strong, with 31 posts that month. I think August has probably always been one of my busiest blogging months – not only because of Blaugust which I’ve done for the past 7(?) years now, but also because August is just a hop skip and jump away from fall, which is my favourite time of year. I have so much energy and happiness during that season, I can’t help but write and share.
Player books were a thing and my 2009 August 1st post was highlighting a book that I have in my Norrathian Library (EQ2, of course) – which still exists to this day. I have hundreds of books written by players through the years. I no longer collect new books, but I’ve always been VERY proud of my collection.
I don’t want this post to be too long, so let’s sum it up. 2011 has me playing EQ2 again but I also see some posts on Rift further into the month. In 2012 I have no posts around the 1st, but I’m playing Guild Wars 2. In 2013 I release my very first book – it’s a book of poetry, angst ridden teenage poetry. I think I just wanted to prove to myself that I could. In 2014 I start my very first Blaugust, but the August 1st post is actually my goodbye post to Vanguard after the announcement that it would be shutting down. I volunteered as a guide and I had a lot of fun with it. I was incredibly sad when they announced the shut down. You can read the rest of my posts over on the right with the drop down menu. I can see my post counts and know immediately when my children were born, when I moved across the country, when I had a lot of time to write, and when I had zero time to write. It’s a detailed online history of my life as a gamer (with nods to other hobbies), and I treasure that. I think one of the most important things about this blog is that it has always just been written for myself, due to my love of writing. I appreciate and thank anyone who has stumbled into it, but at the end of the day I just write what I want to say and if I have nothing to say, I don’t write.
I’ve been away from wurm online for two entire days – and in that time period shit hit the fan. I’m still trying to figure everything out, but between the forums, and the Wurm Online discord, what I assume is that some staff were presented with options / happenings from the ‘new’ CEO / company, disagreed with what those were, and decided to take a stand and leave. An enormous number of staff have left this week, more than I’ve ever seen before in the history of Wurm Online – and that worries me. The overall health of the game worries me. As a 15+ year player I am considering that it might be time to move on before it gets bad. I’m not one to make that decision lightly.
I like Wurm for what it is now. Yes, more players would be great. Yes, it’s old, and it’s niche, but I’m happy with it (usually) and I enjoy it for what it currently is. I do not want to see it change THAT much so that it loses the soul of what I consider to be Wurm. It’s an old niche game and I am so thankful it is still around when so many others are not. I do not think it’s healthy to think it can ever be something like Valheim or similar. Most of the staff of Wurm Online (including but not limited to developers, forum moderators, discord moderators, etc) are volunteers. They do this as a passion project, and get experience. They are there because they WANT to be. It makes sense that if the future is not one that they feel the same passion about, they would leave. I wish them nothing but the best, no matter how involved they were.
I’m incredibly concerned about the future of Wurm and the direction that it is headed. I understand that a lot of players are excited about what might be and how it can potentially grow, but I personally love Wurm for what it already is. I would be incredibly sad to see it lose what makes it special.
For now, I’m not doing anything about these feelings except listening closely to the forums and discord to see where we’re headed. We haven’t been given a lot of information on the specifics as to WHY staff left (for obvious reasons people cannot talk about it or don’t want to talk about it) but I know it couldn’t have been an easy decision.
Today is the 2nd last day of a player run event on the Pristine server called a ‘Friendalong’ it’s an impalong with games, arena fights, and of course working on skills and improving tools and items for other players. The last impalong event I went to was the Deliverance one, and this one is quite a bit different. One of the games I really thought was fun, called slap slap. Two players will strip down, turn on auto fight, and be handed some sort of fish. Then they have to dual each other, and the host will pick a body part (kept secret). First person who slaps them with the fish on that body part wins. It was cute and fun, I’d never heard of it before.
Some of the events are frustrating for me, including the main one to find tickets each day. They’re out in the bay, and you’re allowed to submit one a day to the grand prize drawing. The problem is I tend to stick close to the sermon area for folks, and I can’t see very well even with settings adjusted. I stayed all 5 days at the impalong, but only had 2 tickets for the grand prize that other people donated to me since I didn’t find any on my own. I spent about 2h looking, but eventually wandered back to the sermon area. I’ve had these ticket type events before, and my preference is the one from the Deliverance impalong where they hid riddles all over the deed on signs. You would send in your answers to an player and they’d go over their logs at the end to see how many you answered correctly, then you earned a ticket for each correct answer. I thought that was a fair way of doing it so players still interacted but didn’t have to leave the event area.
I also absolutely loved a game called find the cheese that was at the Deliverance event. I wrote about it, it was so creative and fun. I found the events at this impalong a bit lack luster and repetitive. The hosts were briefly around but then had to tend to real life – which is also why I think impalongs are best served in shorter bursts, 3 days is about max. This event is running for 6 days, with the same 6 events scheduled for each day.
There was a dragon slaying but I didn’t make it for that event, I did participate in horse racing but only the 1st place winner received anything. Lawn darts was a lot of fun to watch, but I didn’t want to risk dying. I do wish there was a bit more creativity to the events, how about a fashion show where people vote for the winners, or something involving treasure maps. I know impalongs take a LOT of time, effort, and coordination and I appreciate all the efforts that are made but I felt a bit let down.
That being said, I DID have a good time. I love visiting with everyone, but I know one of the hosts is dealing with a family medical emergency, and I’m not sure what happened to Sidereal, they insisted they’d be there but they’ve been gone for 10 days now and I’m concerned. I hope everything is OK.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.
stargrace 
