This blog began as a World of Warcraft-specific one. I've played the game for 15 years, and probably logged more hours in it than any other video game. Before I get too dramatic here, this isn't some post announcing that I'm quitting the game or anything. I do have some continuing discomfort giving money to a company that is currently ignoring workers' demands and attempting to bust any burgeoning union rather than actually fixing the deep-rooted problems that have, apparently, persisted since the company's beginnings. A combination of a hiatus to gather thoughts on the Blizzard lawsuit and a three-week trip to the east coast interrupted by momentum in patch 9.1, and while I think I'd like to see the rest of Sanctum of Domination, I've just been feeling less compelled to play WoW of late. That makes me a bit sad, given that Shadowlands feels like my expansion - the kind of high-fantasy, big-concept swing that I've wanted the game to take.
And I don't think I'm going to jump onto the FFXIV bandwagon. MMOs seem to demand a lot more attention than other genres of game, and while I'm in deep enough with WoW and invested in it, I'd like to give other game genres some air to breathe.
As it turns out, this fall has a lot of stuff vying for my attention. In just two days, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt gets released for MTG (or at least Arena - I forget if the physical cards come out the same time as the digital ones,) which is a plane I missed on the first two visits, and one I've been really eager to play in. (I always wanted to make a werewolf deck, and this seems like the best time to do so.) The vampire-themed follow-up, Crimson Vow, comes out later.
Of late, I've also become obsessed with next month's release of Metroid Dread. I re-played Super Metroid on my Switch and some funky controls aside, the game holds up really well. (I've also been replaying Super Mario World, which to me is the quintessential video game, and have found that I definitely have many layers of rust. I cannot tell you how many times I tried to get into that freaking floating door in the castle in the Vanilla Dome but could never quite pull it off with Magikoopa shooting at me. I say this as someone who, in college I think, got all 96 exits and completed the Special World. I hope this isn't just me being old now.)
Then, on the D&D front, we've got Wild Beyond the Witchlight coming out this month and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons next month, both of which I've pre-ordered from my FLGS.
I'm also planning on replacing my 6S iPhone with one of the new ones announced today. I don't do a ton of gaming on my phone, but at least being able to run Arena on it without draining half the battery in a single match should be good (and having a bigger screen to see the cards.)
My biggest current gaming project is a probably-too-ambitious attempt to use the core rules of 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons to create a science-fiction equivalent (working title is Stars & Spaceships, which yes, is not good, but again, it's a working title.) I'm hoping I'll have something in a state to be playtested before too long. I know there are probably a lot of sci-fi games out there, but I also know that learning a new TTRPG can be a really daunting challenge, and I think letting my friends slip into a familiar world of actions and bonus actions, ability checks, attack rolls and saving throws, and a core character-building principle of "what species are you," "what were you before you took up this adventuring lifestyle," and "what kind of genre archetype are you" would make it a lot easier for players to pick the thing up and go. Expect more updates if I get this thing off the ground.
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