The Drawing Board

At rank 18, I’m still probably well ahead of the casual players.   However, I surprised myself by playing absolutely no Warhammer Online this Saturday, probably very little on Friday or Thursday.  Maybe the game is starting to wear on a bit… I’m starting to notice things that need improvement.

For example, the grind decelerates a little too sharply by my current rank, leading to my least favorite thing in MMORPGs: monotony.   As an apothecary/cultivator, my inventory restrictions are murderous, giving me another reason to believe I should already by rank 20 (where, among other things, I get another bag to hold my inventory).  Finally, it’s just a tad counterintuitive to lock players out of earlier PvP tiers as they level past them.  (I apply this mostly to RvR, but this applies to the scenarios as well.) I could understand dropping them in potency as to not bully the lower rank players, but turning them into chickens that can’t fight just isolates players from their fellow guild members.  (My brother has been afraid to take his Ironbreaker over 20 for days.)

At this point, I'm mostly looking forward to Fallout 3. End of October, baby.

That said, the game is still fun.  Though my ever-erratic inner muse is ever hard to gauge the motivations of, I anticipate that I’m far from canceling my account.  If anything, I’m likely to start some alts now that the grind on my Archmage is beginning to wear.  I’ve already noticed a lack of Order Tanks (or else capably played Order Tanks), and have a fledgling Swordsmaster in development for when the Archmages seem to be running overly thick.  I think all my harping about the power of a capable tank when I created the PvP guide has twisted my mind towards this end.

Better news is that I’ve redirected much of my leisure time back into my BYOND game development.  Generally speaking, this is a good idea. I’m learning a craft (albeit one that I’d be pleasantly delighted if I’ll ever get paid for) and producing genuine tangible artifacts of toil as opposed to the usual intangible pissing away of time.  BYOND hobbism is actually very good mental exercise – as arrogant as it might sound to you to say it, I believe that taking a little time to program makes me genuinely smarter in a noticeable way.  All that patient discussion of real-world logic to a stupid adding machine is the mental muscle building equivalent of refrigerator moving.

For the rest of this entry, that’s pretty much what’s on the menu: talk about what I’ve been up to in BYOND, and a little talk about the virtues of the drawing board.