Real Life

11th Anniversary

11 years. That’s how long I’ve been writing here at MmoQuests. When I first started it was to collect my stories of EverQuest 2. Over the years I’ve added a lot more games to those posts, and I’ve written a total of 3,028 (3,029 with this one) articles. That’s not bad, for 11 years. If you had of asked me if I thought I’d still be writing here, 11 years later, I probably would have laughed. Shrugged. Not known the answer. I’m proud that I’ve managed to keep the blog going for that long.

Things have changed a lot in that time. I volunteered for SOE (back when they were SOE). I wrote for a video game magazine. Wrote for video game web sites. Got to travel to California to interview some wonderful people. Started working for Carbine Studios. Worked for NCSOFT.

Things have changed a lot for me in my personal life, too. I moved across the country. I got married. I’ve got a little boy. I grew up, in other words. Despite the fact that a lot has changed, a lot also stayed the same. I still have a ton of passion for video games. I know a lot of the same gamer’s. I still write as frequently as I can, which lately is once a day, but that’s still pretty new. I’m making up for lost time.

I’ve never written for an audience, I’ve always just written for myself. I get comments here and there and they’re absolutely wonderful when I do, but whether or not I get a comment doesn’t decide if I’ll continue writing and I think that’s been the one thing that has kept me going. Writing is just something I do, whether you enjoy it or not, whether you take a minute to read it.

So here’s to 11 years and here’s to 11 more. It’s been absolutely lovely.

 

A Stream Scheduling Change (Life Happens)

I had intended to stream Black Desert Online last night at 7pm PDT but that didn’t happen.

I wasn’t feeling the game, my mood was a bit bleh, and instead I hopped into Gwent: The Witcher Cardgame. Things were moving along at a pretty nice pace, I was 13 minutes into my stream (yes, I remember the exact minute) and I was doing a multiplayer game against a random person (my apologies, whoever you were, but at least you won).

My little guy doesn’t sleep through the night quite yet, and last night was a rough one for him so at the 13 minute mark I had to suddenly sign off and go take care of him. He was screaming and crying and wouldn’t calm down which I hear is pretty normal for 8 month old babies. Truth of the matter is I may just not be able to stream until he’s a bit older or at least sleeping through the night.

In a test, I’m moving my Tuesday to Friday streams up half an hour, from 7:30-8:30 PDT instead of from 7-8. I’m hoping this gives my little guy more time to fall soundly asleep, leaving me with at least an hour to stream. I don’t know if this will work, I may be too tired, he may still wake up, a number of other factors come into play. I REALLY want to stream. Right now I feel like my days are 99% baby filled (which they are) and the small 1% I’m entitled to helps me keep my sanity. Unfortunately it also comes down to the fact that I need sleep. A lot of sleep. I’m a nursing first time mother and sleep is incredibly important. When he starts sleeping through the night hopefully I’ll also be able to sleep more soundly and I may have more time to stream then. I need to find the balance that lets me take good care of my family, and also allow myself that 1% of sanity. I am still a human being, after all.

So! Tonight should be guild wars 2. 7:30 PDT. We’ll see how that goes. Please tune in, give my channel a follow, and stick around if you enjoy things.

Keeping up With Gaming

In EverQuest 2 things have come to a bit of a standstill. I don’t have the time to LFG to do dungeons, and I’m pretty bored of running the same advanced solo dungeons every day. I log in to craft, get my loyalty tokens, and putter around, but I haven’t been keeping up with my epic 2.0 or progression in any real meaningful way. Since I have so many characters just doing the little bit of daily stuff I do is enough to keep me ‘busy’ but I’m also wondering if it wasn’t a mistake to get a year long subscription. Of course I had intended to play EverQuest with that, not EQ2, so maybe when I have a bit more time I’ll go back to my original plan.

In WoW things are moving along (even if it is at a snail’s pace). I’m able to queue for a few raids a week, I do some world quests, my characters move up the chain of progression. I’m really excited about the new pet battle dungeon coming to the game soon(tm) and I can’t wait to give it a try. I wish pet battles could be done independently of logging into the game (ie: mobile) but things are not so bad. My subscription for WoW lasts until July, so I have a few more months of that left and I’ll probably renew. It’s a good game even with my limited time.

EVE Online. I subscribed with a PLEX and then played once or twice. Truth of the matter is as much as I adore this game (and I do) I really want to play it with TWO accounts and that’s just not viable for me at this time. I probably won’t renew until I can afford to activate both my accounts, so maybe once my EQ2 subscription runs out. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, I love playing, but I really like both accounts active so I can make full use of things.

Wurm Online / Unlimited. I currently have two active accounts in Wurm Online, Stargrace, and Blesse (a Vynora priest). I’ve got three active deeds (two on Xanadu and one on Independence) and while I haven’t been doing much to them aside from keeping up with the fields and animals, I still enjoy logging in every day. Wurm is one of those games that just really relaxes me. Plus I can leave it up and running while I putter around with my little one in real life. I also logged into Wurm Unlimited to check on my deed there. One had fallen (I re-deeded the place, my buildings and walls were all still standing) over on Sklotopolis, and over on Age of Urath – well, that server is apparently done now. It had a lock symbol by it with no users online. Should have stuck with my first choice! I also noticed a “new” server with the highest population these days, Zaneth. I’m incredibly cautious about new servers because it seems like there’s a huge overturn and you never know if the server will actually stick around but as long as I don’t go off and donate right away (like I have in the past) then I suppose there’s no real harm in checking things out.

In the meantime life is pretty busy. I get maybe an hour of gaming a day, which isn’t anything to sneeze at, and by rotating what I play I keep from getting bored. Of course it does seem that as soon as I settle in to do a dungeon or improve some weapons my little guy is waking up and begging for my attention, but hey that’s the joys of parenthood. He’s 4.5 months old right now, and while things haven’t exactly gotten easier yet, they’re constantly changing.

I hope everyone else has been having a great time despite the turmoil that seems to be enclosing around the world. Are you checking out Conan Exiles? What about ESO’s big announcement today? Did you give For Honor a try? Head to PAX South? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Where Did Stargrace Go?!

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Welcome to the world, Leo.

I was scheduled for a c-section October 20th, my due date being October 27th – but Leo didn’t want to wait, and he decided to make an appearance September 23rd, 6:44pm. I was sitting at my desk reading a blog post by a friend when my water broke. He was 5 weeks early and had to stay at the NICU for 2 weeks, hooked up to machines and wires. I thought those would be the roughest part of this very early journey, but as we came home things were just getting started.

I still have a baby registry here for anyone who wants to help out or send little Leo a gift. My family lives far away and I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed with things as a brand new first time Mom to a preemie baby. I’m currently on some medication to help with postpartum depression. Things are certainly not easy. We’re managing, because that’s what humans are programmed to do, but I’m finding it difficult. I have a lot of guilt and shame over how difficult I find things, too. Everyone tells me this is normal, and that it will pass and get easier with time.

Leo was born at 4lbs 5oz. Just a tiny thing. He had a feeding tube for the first two weeks of his life. He’s now 4lbs 14oz, so he’s still very small but he’s getting bigger. Nothing prepared me for any of this, no matter how much I’ve read or how much I looked into everything. I also developed a complication from my c-section which is still ongoing today. I developed a hematoma that opened up and has been bleeding out since the 24th of September. On top of everything else this single incident has really taken its toll on me. It doesn’t hurt, but bleeding constantly 24/7 for so long means a lot of  bandage changes, packing (think like a wisdom tooth needs to be packed) and ruining clothing with blood. Plus it’s along my incision, which is just in an awkward not-fun place.

Still. We carry on. Because we must. It’s what we do.

How Gaming Influences

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One thing I’ve been really fascinated with is the transition of Twitch (and other streaming platforms). Back when I first “knew” twitch, it was called Justin.TV and it was used to stream (mostly) TV shows (like sports that were blocked out on TV unless you paid for the package, etc). It has evolved quite a few times since then, becoming one of the more popular video game streaming platforms. It has since evolved even further, adding new and unique categories to streaming – categories that I wouldn’t necessarily even consider to be something someone would stream let alone watch. Turns out people enjoy watching the non-mainstream just as much.

There are people of all ages streaming all sorts of creative endeavors and it (quite frankly) blows my mind. No longer are crochet, knitting, and cross stitch a hobby that just older generations are partaking in. People streaming engage with their audience in various ways, encouraging others to pick up the craft and motivating everyone. Of course having a nice set up certainly helps, a way to automate things like thanking your followers and acknowledging donations. The fancier you can get with your set up the more hands-on your crafting can be and the less time you’ll spend trying to hook (see what I did there) viewers.

Personally, I love this new move. I enjoy watching video game streams but I enjoy watching crafty streams even more. I admire the talent these people have, and if you can find someone who has both the talent and the online charisma to make their channel into something special, well, then you’re set.

Have you found some of these fantastic creative streamers in your travels? Want to give them a shout out? Be sure to drop a link down in comments.