Misc. | Superior Realities

Two years ago today, I joined WordPress and made my first post here at Superior Realities. Back then, I was just starting to dip my toes into the worlds of blogging and professional writing. I knew nothing about the fine art of bloggery, and I had no professional writing credits to my name.

One year later, I had become comfortable with the medium of blogging, with dozens of posts to my name, and I was a professional writer who had been published in magazines and taken honors in the Blizzard fan fiction contest.

Overall, I don’t think this year has been as eventful as the last one was. At least not in regards to topics relevant to this blog. I’ve had a very eventful and fairly unpleasant year when it comes to my personal life, but Superior Realities is about escaping the mundane.

When it comes to this blog, I think this has been a good year. I look back at regrets from the first year, and I’ve managed to largely avoid making the same mistakes this year. I wanted to focus less on Warcraft and put a bit more effort towards posts about writing, and I’ve managed to achieve both of those things.

Gaming:

As I said, I’ve had less of a fixation on World of Warcraft this year, so I’ve been able to put more time towards other games.

Of course, there have still been plenty of WoW posts. I’ve taken a tour of Pandaria, ranted about the current expansion’s endgame, and I’ve put on my tinfoil hat and theorized about the lore.

But I have found myself somewhat bored with Warcraft this year. I’m not sure how much of it is due to mistakes on Blizzard’s part and how much is burnout on my part, but I’ve found myself drawn to other games much more.

For a time, I jumped on the Guild Wars 2 hype train, but over the long haul, it lost its luster, and I haven’t been back in months. I still think it’s a great game in many ways, but I find there are better ways to get my gaming fix.

The problem with Guild Wars 2 was its terrible story and lore. Those are the most important things to me in games. And that brings me to The Secret World.

The Secret World is a game that has absolutely blown me away with its intense combat, challenging content, open-ended character customization, horizontal progression, and fantastic story. I’ve made post after post praising its brilliance.

Speaking of story, this year has also seen me get into the Mass Effect games. I’ve had a fairly tempestuous relationship with them, sometimes being horribly disappointed and other times being completely blown away. Expect another post to sum up my thoughts on the series soon.

I’ve also done some posts on more general gaming topics. I thought the question of whether we as gamers have “ideal” characters was interesting.

Writing:

In terms of my freelancing, this hasn’t been a very eventful year. I’ve picked up a few new clients, but nothing truly groundbreaking. Working for ADANAI has been fun, at least. They give me interesting topics to chew on.

I’ve also succeeded in doing more posts about writing on Superior Realities. Aside from the usual updates on my latest articles, I’ve mused on topics such as likable versus sympathetic characters and my favourite word.

I’ve also posted more of my fiction. I’ve dug up the ghosts of contests past, and I’ve told you all the tale of the Forest God’s child.

Of course, there is one piece of big writing news this year: Yesterday’s launch of the World Spectrum novels. Looking back, I was hinting at this even back at the first anniversary of Superior Realities. That should give you an idea of how much preparation went into releasing these things.

It all seems a bit much just to tell the tale of a crazy girl who beats up giant robots.

Other thoughts:

There have been a few other highlights on Superior Realities this year. I’ve had some epic rants on topics from Warcraft novels to Star Trek. I also expanded the purview of the blog in interesting ways, such as musing on the concept of fantasy music.

I don’t have many regrets about this year’s blogging. I feel I’ve let the concept of retro reviews fall by the wayside a little too much, and it’d be nice to get back to singing the praises of the old and the obscure a bit more.

It’s not necessarily directly related to this blog, but I somewhat regret not doing much GIMP art recently, either. This is largely due to how time-consuming it is coupled with a lack of good reason to make any. I’ve left GalacticaBBS, so I’m not entering their graphics contests anymore.

My plan for the coming year is mainly to continue as I have. I am considering creating more crossover between the World Spectrum site and Superior Realities, but I’m not sure what form that will take. As I said, doing more retro reviews would be nice. It’d be nice to do more epic rants, too, but those can’t really be planned for.

What of you, dear readers? What did you enjoy from Superior Realities this year, and what would you likely to see me give more attention to in future?

* * *

I leave you now with a picture I’ve been trying to find an excuse to post for months. Courtesy of The Secret World, please enjoy this image of Gangnam Style as performed by an undead Mayan priest.

Zombie Mayan style!

As you know, my old computer somewhat sucked. I mean, it was a good computer, but it just didn’t have the power to work as a good gaming rig.

Yes, I’m using the past tense.

BEHOLD THE GLORY OF MY NEW ALIENWARE GAMING COMPUTER.

Slick.

This will improve all of my gaming, but by far the biggest benefit comes with The Secret World. I’ve gone from having abominable lag on even the lowest settings to playing smoothly with everything set to maximum.

By all that is unholy, this game is beautiful. My first five minutes were spent simply gawking and repeating the phrase, “Oh, wow.”

Compare and contrast.

Agartha before:

Agartha after:

My Templar before:

My Templar after:

The subtle shadows on her chest are from the moonlight passing through her hair.

Amazing.

These shots really aren’t doing it justice. The game just looks unbelievably good now.

But what’s even more important than the differences in how it looks are the differences in how it plays. There are many things I simply couldn’t do before that I now can.

Dungeons:

I never ran dungeons in TSW with the old computer. With my lag, I would have simply been a liability to groups. But with the new computer, I finally dipped my toes in. I took the unusual step of tanking them so that I could find groups more easily. Also, I so out-gear the dungeons that I would steal aggro from the tank if I tried to DPS, and I have a lot of tanking skills unlocked already.

I’ve done the first two dungeons so far, Polaris and Hell Raised.

The dungeons in TSW aren’t as wildly original as the rest of the game. There are differences from the norm, but they’re more subtle. A near total lack of trash, for one. Those of you who loathe trash would definitely enjoy the dungeons in TSW; almost all of each run is fighting bosses. There are also more bosses, making the dungeons feel more rewarding than in, say, World of Warcraft.

But otherwise, they feel pretty familiar. Fire is bad; don’t stand in it.

Like most of the game, the dungeons in TSW are a bit tougher than in WoW. There are no easy mode early dungeons. Polaris was kind of faceroll — at least until the Cthulhu fight — but Hell Raised was definitely not the sort of thing you can sleepwalk through. Ignore boss mechanics at your own peril, even if you out-gear it.

Overall, they were decent experiences. A few of the DPS died in Polaris a few times, but I don’t think that was my fault, and Hell Raised was a bit ugly at first because we didn’t have a healer, but it was fine once we got one.

Of the two, I think I liked Hell Raised better. I like the aesthetic of the Hell Dimensions in TSW — a bit post-apocalyptic, a bit gothic, a bit sci-fi, a bit steampunk. Weird, but neat.

I’ll also say that the groups I got seemed pretty nice. They were patient and didn’t yell at me for screwing up a few fights because I didn’t know the mechanics.

With that being said, it was a great moment to reflect on just how much I hate finding groups manually in MMOs. Spamming general chat for half an hour is not my idea of fun. And overall, the dungeons weren’t mind-blowing.

As it stands now, I don’t see dungeons becoming a big part of my Secret World routine. There are a few more I’d like to see for the story — such as Darkness War, because Vikings — but I may not do anymore after that.

It’s also tempting to do the other Hell dungeons, as they make up a largely self-contained story unto themselves, and Wicker is intriguing. He’s… not what I expected.

In other news…

Aaaaall aboard!

I also found the time to play through the issue six storyline, The Last Train to Cairo. I probably could have done this on the old computer, but I’m glad I waited. There were several sequences requiring tricky maneuvering that would have been excruciating with the old lag.

I didn’t enjoy this DLC as much as the Tyler Freeborn arc, which I still lack the words to adequately praise. Last Train was fun, but it wasn’t spectacular, and parts of it were rather annoying. Too many infiltration missions in close succession. Plus, I just never liked Egypt or the Atenist story that much.

It had its moments, though. The way they borrowed the combat system from Age of Conan for one sequence was really interesting, and the actual Last Train mission itself was all kinds of awesome.

And getting a free epic at the end of the chain was pretty sweet, too, especially for someone with no intention of getting serious about running dungeons or PvP.

Also, Nassir. Dear God, Nassir. Worth the price of admission just for him.

There really needs to be a sitcom starring him and Said. It’d be like the Odd Couple, except one is a mummy from the Old Kingdom, and the other IS THE BRUCE WILLIS, MOTHER****ER.

Oh, and one other thing…

You know that jumping puzzle that stopped me short on my Dragon?

Nailed it in one try on the new computer. Not a single death.

Superior Realities

Category Archives: Misc.

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New Computer, New Options

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