After much brooding in my hidden lair, I think it is time to get back to blog posting.
So here are some things that have been going on my mind as well as some stuff I’ve been up to.
If it seems there is a lot of uncertainty in this post it is because… there is. I blame it on my chronicle indecisiveness. Anyhoo, let’s get started with…
Plans for the blog
One of the things I’ve been thinking the most is what I want to do with the blog, both from a technical point of view and from a content one. Mostly from a technical point of view.
See, I love WordPress. It is a pretty good piece of software. It is even better that there is a company that provides a free service with that software. The drawback though is that WordPress.com severely limits what we can do without paying.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not demanding them to change anything or complaining that they are trying to earn a living out of this. However I’ve been thinking, if i am going to pay for stuff I might as well go all the way and pay for a server hosting somewhere else where I can install/modify all the stuff I want. So that is something I have been seriously considering for a while.
If I finally make a final decision about it I will make a post about it with more details. For now just be warned that the blog might eventually have a home somewhere else. With all the benefits and consequences of such a move.
What is the content again?
Originally the plan for this blog was to write about MMORPGs, anime and anything else I felt strongly enough about. Although that hasn’t formally changed, the content of the blog has been mainly about MMORPGs. There are some good reasons for that. It is simply that for me it is easier to write about MMORPGs as there is always something unique, something I experienced that I can talk about. With something more passive like a book, anime or even a single player game I find it a lot harder to write about without feeling like people would be better served elsewhere, in a bigger site, with more professional reviews (and better writers).
The bad part about it is that I started to feel like… hmmm… how can I say this? I kinda started to feel like I’ve cornered myself into writing about MMORPGs. Even what exactly I wrote about started to bug me. As I said, I just hate writing the same thing someone else already did (and did better!).
I know it is silly and I should just write whatever makes me happy. It is my blog after all. A hobby that I do just for fun.
And that is more or less what I intent to do. Just stop worrying so much about silly things and write whatever is in my mind. In practice it probably won’t change much. But if you ever see a post about some crazy japanese show in a genre you never heard about…. you will know the reason. 🙂
Ze games!
Between all the brooding I’ve been doing, I’ve been playing games too! Surprisingly enough I was able to restrain myself on Steam’s Christmas Sale (although I did give more gifts through there so I guess it is wash). Between all the games bought, given and received as gifts I found some surprisingly enjoyable games. They aren’t really any hidden gems as much as games I ignored before for a reason or another.
Among those, the most prominent ones are Terraria and… The Sims 3.
Let me start with Terraria. If I had to describe it in very few words it would be: imagine if Minecraft and the Zelda series had a 2d side-scrolling lovechild and you have Terraria. The game is actually a lot more than that, but you can see the influences of both of those games on it.
Then there is The Sims 3. One might (rightfully so) scratch their heads and wonder why I was so surprised to enjoy this game. Well, the on both previous games I got bored of it very quickly because all I saw was micro-managing some virtual twerps who couldn’t do anything by themselves. Although a lot of the game is still about it on the Sims 3, I also found out that it is pretty fun coming up with meta-goals (like transform key people in town into vampires) and try to execute them.
Another difference is that back in the Sims 1 and 2 I wasn’t all interested into house decoration in games. Nowadays I am, it is one of my creative fixes. On the Sims 3 I am finding it to be very challenging to make a house that is functional, creative and aesthetically pleasing. It also has made me much more appreciative of the works of professional architects and designers.
What still annoys me is that despite all the evolution of the series the rest of the town is still pretty nonchalant about your actions. For instance, turning a significant part of the population into vampires don’t seem to have as much impact as one would expect.
Exploring the land of the Penguin
In more personal notes, I’ve been trying to go back to Linux. I’ve already used it as my main system years ago (early 2000’s I think?) but end up returning to Windows because of games. From time to time I still checked it just to see the changes but never made a big effort to go back. Now with Windows 8, an OS that I couldn’t find less appealing, and Steam for Linux I am find it more appealing to go back to the land of the penguin. There is just something about Linux that makes me much happier than Windows does.
More about that in a future post. Maybe. >_> <_<
Is that all?
I think those are all the things that have been on my mind since late November until now. Well, all the things that makes sense to write on this blog. There are more personal stuff that have been on my mind and I am leaving out as this is not the place nor the time for it.
For now let’s see where this blog will go this year!
EDIT: Oh, yeah forgot something! If anyone has any request, suggestions, comments or critique about the blog, this is probably the best time to do it!
I saw Terraria on sale on Steam a couple or so days ago and bought it! It definitely seems like a fun and interesting game, though I have no idea whatsoever when I’ll make time to play it. 🙂
I am glad that you are enjoying Sims 3! Sims have definitely gotten more intelligent than they used to be, but they are very annoyingly nonchalant about some things that would entirely freak out a non-sim…and vice versa! Last full moon, one of the neighborhood sims turned into a zombie and was sitting passively reading a book in the library and no other sim around him seemed to think anything strange was in the vicinity. Silly sims!
Yep, you should do whatever you want on your blog. It’s yours! If someone doesn’t like something you write, then they don’t have to read it, and that would be their problem!
I got Terraria as a christmas gift from poTisheriona and poSychel. I probably wouldn’t have tried it otherwise but since it was a gift I had to play it! And much to my surprise it is a very, very fun game. 🙂
Yeah, it is the same thing when zombies appear in my Sims game. Vampires at least do have an option to scare people and it can be pretty fun to do it. Unless they are brave or daredevils. In that case they completely ignore it (daredevils even think it is cool!). Also, children can check under their bed for monsters and sometimes a monster arm will appear from under it, doing a sweep to grab something, with some growls too! One time that happened to poor V’Satai. He got so scared that he ran to the hall then fainted a couple times.
I know. I am just neurotic with everything I do, as you well know. >_<
Terraria looks like it’s a very fun game!
Oh my, I had that monster under the bed thing happen a few weeks ago in my game when I was playing the Goldbeard family in Barnacle Bay. The small boy in the family has the “evil” trait, and I thought it was extra hilarious when he had that encounter with the monsters under the bed hahaha! Serves him right for continuously putting traps on the upstairs computer for his sister to discover. One would think she would have caught on eventually, but it gets her every time. 🙂
Heh. I guess even computer characters have karma to deal with. 🙂
In the Ghostlight household none of the boys have the evil trait. Quite the opposite, Alistair has the good trait (both his parents are good after all!). So he never had a wish to do a prank. V’Satai had the occasional wish to do a prank but it is rare. Yet someone has been doing pranks inside the house…. My guess is that Alistair’s imaginary friend has doing that since I usually keep Alistair busy playing with his brother.
Another detail that makes me suspect of the imaginary friend (Mr. Snuggles for future reference) is that I don’t have any idea of what his traits are. I have been trying to make Alistair to talk to Mr. Snuggles to figure it out but so far no lucky. Looking at Mr. Snuggles he seems to have the insane and neat traits. Maybe evil or mischievous too to explain all the pranks around the house!
Don’t feel bad writing about the same stuff the other guy already did. This is the blogosphere, it’s a huge piggy bank where everyone drops their two cents.
Also, keep this blog and turn it into a niche MMO blog. It already has a strong foothold. If you want to write about anime or other crazy Japanese shows, just start another blog and promote it through here. I used to write about different topics before, from Indie bands to my GI Joe collection, and I had trouble keeping my audience because I was all over the map.
Well, my problem isn’t so much writing about the same topic as others as writing it in only slightly different words. It is just that I don’t want to feel like I am parroting others, so to speak. With MMORPGs it is easy to avoid that, hence why I write so much about them. With single player games or other similar things there are a lot of time where I am thinking about how to write it and it feels just like that. When that happens I don’t write about it at all.
I guess that kind of feeling might be just the side-effect of reading a lot. Or maybe I am just being neurotic. Hm.
As for splitting it into different blogs. I considered it but discarded the idea because I don’t feel like I will write enough about other topics to justify splitting it over. Besides when I began this blog I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to write about. All I knew is I needed to write about the things I am passionate about. So I left its goal purposely vague just so I wouldn’t chain myself to something I’d end up disliking in the future and closing down yet another blog.
Still, you do have a point. And it might be a good idea to do it so I can feel more free to write about the subjects that interest me. I will have to think about it some more. Might even try to write about other stuff offline to see if I can justify splitting things up or not.
Thanks for the comment! 🙂
Terraria is a really fun game. I haven’t played it in quite some time and according to a game trailer, my characer is still living in the stone age. Still, it was fun so far. 😉
I’m the same with content that I’ve seen others cover already. That’s why I hardly ever write about Guild Wars 2 news. On the other hand, I guess that most readers don’t come to my blog to read about news. They come to my blog because there’s a) something unique (like regions by level for GW2 – that one’s getting a ton of hits every week!) or b) because they want to see what *I* write about, which is ultimately more flattering. Turning around the tables, that’s why I go to other people’s blogs. I don’t care about them reporting news. I do care about them commenting on news or a game in general. I care about their opinions.
We also thought about self-hosting before but decided against doing it because it’d mean more effort to keep every bit of it up-to-date. 😉
I haven’t played it for a bit too. Last time I played I think I was trying to upgrade my stuff to fight… Skeletron, I think is the name of the boss. I was starting to get an itch to explore the dungeon but we can’t do it until we defeat that guy.
Exactly. I keep reading Nerdy Bookahs because I like your writing style and there is always something there I can’t find somewhere else. The region by levels post you mentioned is one I’ve used myself a few times and linked it on my guild’s forum. It is pretty handy!
True. That is one of the consequences of self-hosting. But since I like tinkering with that kind of stuff anyway it should be fine. 🙂
I was actually surprised that before I’d posted that overview, that nobody else had one. But it’s still also one of my favourite posts when it comes to how often I look at it (though that’s not too difficult, as I don’t really look at my old posts anymore unless somebody commented on it).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Skeletron. Hmm…
I like tinkering with it as well. I actually did put up a blog on our website, but never used it. There’s a difference between playing around when I want to and having to maintain it… 😉 So yeah, being lazy wins for me here. ^^
Now that you mention it, I am surprised nobody posted something like it before too… Usually those kind of guides are already out when the game is launched. I guess people were more concerned with figuring out the stats and how to beat dungeons. @_@
Well, if you can find the dungeon entrance Skeletron isn’t too far from it. That is all the hint I am giving. Just don’t try to enter the dungeon before you defeat Skeletron or you will be killed in one-hit by the dungeon guardian. (Yes, it happened to me. >_<)
Good point. I admit that maintaining it does scare me a bit since I am afraid of losing data or having it hacked or something. Still since it is only small, personal, blog if either of those happens it won't be nearly as bad as if… I dunno if I had to maintain a commercial site for a big company. Now that wouldn't be the kind of job I would like to have. @_@
The wiki has the information about every region, for example. But yeah, there was no single table showing all regions sorted by level. At least, none that I could find.
Hee! Thanks for the hint. 🙂 I got ripped into pieces by a lot of other meanies already, though. I guess I’m far away from any dungeons or bosses.
Just make sure you’ve got backups. 🙂
*nods* When deciding for a new destination the table is much better.
No problem. Though I should say that my choice of words before was rather poor. I should have said that was probably the only hint I can give about Skeletron without spoiling things. @_@
And I got killed a lot in the beginning too. Once I upgraded some of my stuff things became a lot more smooth and deaths started to be more because of stupid mistakes I made than anything else. One hint I found that helped me in those beginning stages was to craft a broadsword. They have a nice angle to deal with enemies and the speed isn’t too bad either.
I will definitely have some backups around. I just need to figure out the exact scheme I will use for them.
I loved the play on words of “chronicle indecisiveness”. 😀
You should totally do what you enjoy. You are entertaining, and people show up to visit. /cheer!
Thank you!
Although I must admit it wasn’t an intented play on words as much as me being dumb and misusing the english language. My excuse is that it is my second language thus sometimes things like that happen. @_@