Author Archives: Azuriel
Authentic Wirehead
Bhagpuss has a post out called “It’s Real if I Say It’s Real,” with a strong argument that while people say they desire authenticity in the face of (e.g.) AI-generated music, A) people often can’t tell the difference, and B) if you enjoyed it, what does it even matter?
It was the clearest, most positive advocacy of the wirehead future I’ve ever seen in the wild.
Now, speaking of clarity, Bhagpuss didn’t advocate for wirehead in the post. Not directly. I have no personal reason to believe Bhagpuss would agree with my characterization of his post in the first place. However. I do believe it is the natural result and consequence of accepting the two premises.
Premise one is that we have passed (and are perhaps far beyond) the point at which the average person can easily differentiate between AI-generated content and the “real thing.” Indeed, is there really anyone anywhere ready to argue the opposite? Linked in the Bhagpuss’ post was this survey showing 97% of respondents being unable to tell the difference between human-made and AI-generated music across three samples. ChatGPT 4.5 already passed the classical three-way Turing Test, being selected as the human 73% of the time. Imagine that other person the research subject was texting with, and being so resoundingly rejected as human.
Then again, perhaps the results should not be all that surprising. We are very susceptible to suggestion, subterfuge, misdirection, and marketing. Bhagpuss brought up the old-school Pepsi vs Coke challenge, but you can also look at wine tasting studies where simply being told one type was more expensive led to it being rated more highly. Hell, the simple existence of the placebo effect at all should throw cold (triple-filtered, premium Icelandic) water on the notion that we exist in some objective reality. And us not, you know, just doing the best we can while piloting wet bags of sentient meat.
So, premise #1 is that it has become increasingly difficult to tell when something was created by AI.
Premise #2 is when we no longer care that it was artificially generated. For a lot of people, we are already well past this mile marker. Indirectly, when we no longer bother trying to verify the veracity of the source. Or directly, when we know it is AI-generated and enjoy it anyway.
I am actually kind of sympathetic on this point, philosophically. I have always been a big believer that an argument stands on its own merits. To discredit an idea based on the character of the person who made it is the definition of an ad hominem fallacy. In which case, wouldn’t casting aspersions on AI be… ad machina? If a song, or story, or argument is good, does its origins really matter? Maybe, maybe not.
Way back in my college days, I studied abroad in Japan for a semester. One thing I took was a knock-off Zune filled with LimeWired songs, and it was my proverbial sandbar while feeling adrift and alone. Some memories are so intensely entangled with certain songs, that I cannot think of one without the other. One of my favorites back then was… Last Train Home. By lostprophets. Sung by Ian Watkins.
So… yeah. It’s a little difficult for me to square the circle that is separating the art from the artist.
But suppose you really don’t care. Perhaps you are immune to “cancel culture” arguments, unmoved from allegations of a politician’s hypocrisy, and would derive indistinguishable pleasure between seeing the Mona Lisa in person and a print thereof hanging on your wall. “It’s all the same in the wash.”
To which I would ask: what distance remains to simply activating your nucleus accumbens directly?
What is AI music if not computer-generated noises attempting to substitute for the physical wire in your brain? Same for AI video, AI games, AI companions. If the context and circumstances of the art have no meaning, bear no weight, then… the last middle-man to cut out is you. Wirehead: engage.
…
I acknowledge that in many respects, it is a reductive argument. “Regular music is human-generated noises attempting to substitute for the wire.” We do not exist in a Platonic universe, unmoored from biological processes. Even my own notion that human-derived art should impart greater meaning into a work is itself mental scaffolding erected to enhance the pleasure derived from experiencing it.
That said, this entire thought experiment is getting less theoretical by the day. One of the last saving graces against a wirehead future is the minor, you know, brain surgery component. But what if that was not strictly necessary? What if there was a machine capable of gauging our reactions to given stimuli, allowing it to test different combinations of outputs in the form of words, sounds, and flashing lights to remotely trigger one’s nucleus accumbens? They would need some kind of reinforcement mechanism to calculate success, and an army of volunteers against which to test. The whole thing would cost trillions!
Surely, no one would go for that…
Impressions: The Outer Worlds 2
When it comes to The Outer Worlds 2 (TOW2), when compared to the original game, there have been some marked improvements in some areas, and some continued nonsense in others. What follows are my initial impressions after about 12 hours of gameplay, still on the first planet.
One of my gripes from the first game came from what I considered stunted exploration:
Outside of combat, things are so formulaic that I don’t even know why Obsidian bothered with exploration elements at all. There are three ammo types for all guns (light, heavy, energy); there are multiple damage types (physical, corrosive, etc) but they map 1:1 in a cookie-cutter resistance way; 99% of everything you find is either currency, unnecessary food, and more copies of generic guns/armor to break down for generic parts to repair the guns you chosen to use; mods for guns/armor sound important but are again generic nonsense (your melee weapon deals plasma damage now!) that just ticks the customization 101 box. Even the Perks are boring.
I am pleased to report there are now 10 (!) ammunition types! But seriously, there is a much bigger emphasis picking up random pieces of junk to break down into useful materials and then crafting them into other items. I cannot exactly recall if the prior game already had a similar system or not beyond repairing/upgrading, but it certainly feels much better in TOW2. Additionally, there have been several unique “playing cards” sprinkled about that grant permanent buffs when picked up. Overall, it is not on the same level as Fallout whereby you shout in excitement at discovering an Aluminum can amongst a bunch of Tin ones, but it does make general exploration more worth it, with a knock-on effect of making navigating the game world more engaging. The Avowed-style vaulting certainly helps too.
Sadly, one of the things making the world considerably less engaging is the Skill/Perk system.
Not sure if this qualifies as a hot take, but I despise Skills checks in games. “It encourages roleplaying and specialization.” No, it does not. There is nothing more nakedly mechanical and abstract than a Skill check. What is the difference between Speech 3 and Speech 5, from a “roleplaying” perspective?
To me, roleplaying is all about choices you make. When you defeat the bandits, do you forgive them or do you execute them? Do you accept the quest from the shady merchant, or do you turn them in? Or do you complete the quest, keep the item, then kill the merchant yourself while pinning the death on an innocent bystander? Those are meaningful roleplaying choices. Imagine not even having the option to turn the merchant over to the authorities because you put one too many points into Lockpicking last time you leveled up.
To Obsidian’s credit, TOW2 is not entirely binary in the Skills checks thus far. A stuck door can be opened with Engineering 3 or the Brawny Trait. Special medicine can be synthesized via Medical 4 or just winging it via the Lucky Trait. Sometimes just finding incriminating evidence is enough to trigger additional dialog choices. But there are absolutely single Skill checks in quests or conversations and you either have the number, or you have the deficiency rubbed in your face. Which means if you want to roleplay “someone in an RPG who can talk to people,” you need to hyperfocus on maxing out Speech. That’s 20 points, accrued at two points per level. Since there is a level cap of 30, that means you can max out just 3 total skills (out of 12) with everything else being zero, or perhaps max two with some scattered levels in other things for flavor.
To state the obvious, this is not a fun way to play the game. “Yay, level up and… another 2 points into Speech.” Or, in actuality, just leveling up and not choosing any Skills at all because I don’t feel that I have enough information to even make a meaningful choice. Is Speech 4 good enough for this area of the game? Can I afford to raise Sneak to 2 in order to get past this skill check and break into the building in front of me? Or am I going to immediately regret it the next time an NPC starts talking to me?
This is a real scenario I encountered: exploring the map, find a befuddled man in front of a locked house. Don’t have Medical 2, so I fruitlessly exhaust the dialog choices with him. I can see items in the house through the window, but there is no way inside as none of the doors are powered. Up the road is a power sub-station that is malfunctioning, presumably the cause of the locked house. The sub-station repair kit is inside a locked building, and you need Sneak 2 or the Nimble trait to squeeze through the vent. On the roof of the building is the malfunctioning panel, which requires Engineering 3 or the Innovative trait or the repair kit mentioned earlier. If you don’t have any of those… fuck you, I guess.
So, anyway, I’m still running around with 2 loose skill points and about to level up again for a total of 4. Could I put two points in Sneak and solve the area? Sure. How many more Sneak checks will I encounter though? This was literally the first one. Conversely, Engineering has come up quite a lot, so I’m more inclined to put points there instead. But I also have to acknowledge that since I know there will be Speech 20 checks in the game, I only get one other max skill (because I put a point into Guns and Observation), and that was originally going to be Hacking and/or Lockpicking.
This is all very fun, I’m having so much fun, can you tell? So much fun I’m seriously considering deleting 10 hours of progress so I can pick different traits – why did I think Witty was going to be useful if I’m not trying to kill everyone I meet? – and bypass some of these dilemmas. Unless, of course, there will be some future dilemmas with different Skills rendering everything moot.
By the way, I understand that there are indeed real people out there who either don’t care about being locked out of content, or who appreciate the “enforced roleplaying” aspect. I want you to know that I see you… and I don’t understand you. In fact, I may actively hate you. For one thing, the “enforcement” mechanism of discrete Skill checks could have stayed inside your roleplaying mind; you can still commit to your Chaotic Neutral space pirate fantasy without Speech 10 checks sprinkled about. Just, you know, pick those dialog choices, shoot empire guards on sight, or whatever. Hell, I’m more fine with a morality bar governing choices, because at least that is based on prior actions made inside the game world rather than the UI. Where is the fun picking answers before you even get to the questions?
Ultimately, if you have designed your game such that players would rather run around with unspent Skill/Perk points lest they miss out, you have failed IMO. Either by not making them exciting enough to want to pick straight away, or by gating too much content behind them.
Other than, well, all that? The Outer Worlds 2 is pretty good thus far. Time will tell how annoying it will continue getting with Skill checks as we get further into the game. My guess is “loads more annoying.”
Impressions: Stalker 2
Stalker 2 is leaving Game Pass in a few days. Which means I should probably play a bit of it, eh?
As the picture above shows, I did not get very far. I believe there was originally a 15-day warning message about the game leaving Game Pass, and so it was technically possible for me to plow through the 50ish hours needed to complete the game. However… it just didn’t grip me. Plus, I was trying to play some other games (Outer Worlds 2) at the time, so being “forced” into playing something else didn’t exactly leave me in the best headspace.
I have not talked about them much directly, but I have played all of the original games 10+ years ago:
- Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl (22 hours)
- Stalker: Clear Skies (5.2 hours)
- Stalker: Call of Pripyat (22.7 hours)
For those that have never played the series, Stalker is some quintessential eurojank. The premise (I think) is that after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the area is not just radiated, but a bunch of anomalies and mutants show up. The anomalies are extremely deadly environmental hazards that one must navigate carefully, but allow intrepid “stalkers” to claim nearby artifacts with varying powers. These are quite valuable scientific specimens, as you can imagine, leading many different factions fighting to control the best locations within the Exclusion Zone. There is also a loose plot that navigates you closer and closer towards the source of the anomalies.
One of the Stalker series’ biggest claims to fame is the “A-Life” mechanic. Essentially, A-Life was an attempt at making the Zone feel like a living, breathing world. We hear a lot about that sort of thing these days, usually with “innovations” like NPCs having a work schedule and going home at night, etc. Meanwhile, Stalker devs originally built NPCs capable of beating the game themselves back in like 2008. While things were reigned in a bit, the point is that a lot of very innovative stuff went on to make the original game world(s) feel like you were the least interesting thing in it… until you weren’t.
What does this all have to do with Stalker 2? Well, it originally launched without anything resembling A-Life. Instead, you got what every open-world game has: “dynamic” events that spawn randomly within rendering distance of you. Hearing gun shots in the distance while walking around can feel haunting; less so when it happens like clockwork. The more up-to-date articles I’m finding is saying that Stalker 2 eventually did get A-Life working, but some of the magic still feels gone.
Honestly though, that really just sort of sums it up: the magic is gone for me.
Graphics? Phenomenal. In the moment, things look a bit gritty and muddled. Then I realized that, hey, it kind of looks like I’m viewing this game through a body camera. That’s low-key crazy good.
The mutants are hit-or-miss. The dogs have insanely good AI, with all the juking and serpentine movement that causes immediate panic as you empty your magazine into the dirt and end up dying to what would otherwise be level 1 enemies in other games. Other mutants? Deadly… but rote. How nice of the invisible bloodsuckers to attack me, then run off long enough for me to use a healing injector and reload before attacking again.
My problem is that the series is just not that mechanically interesting to me anymore. Granted, maybe a whole lot of things change after hour 7, I dunno. Fundamentally though, there doesn’t seem to be a lot going on. For example, there are a lot of random abandoned houses dotting the landscape. You can go into just about every one of them. But… there’s nothing to interact with inside. While that “makes sense” from an immersion standpoint, it fails on a gameplay standpoint. Even when there are things to pick up, they’re just the same bullets, broken guns, canned meat, bandages, etc, as everywhere else. That leads you naturally to just going from map icon to map icon, collecting crap to sell to a vendor to hopefully afford something that the game is likely to just give you for free in another hour.
Seriously though, you start the game with a vest armor that provides about as much protection as, well, a regular-ass vest would. Then you talk with an NPC that can upgrade your vest with like chainmail for cash. Not two missions later though, you pick up a way better armor right at the start to an area, and then find an even better piece 30 minutes later. Gotta love these designer gotcha moments, right? Or hate them with an undying passion.
Meanwhile, the whole time I was playing, I was trying to remember what even happened in the first games. I thought I remembered there being a cool twist/choice at the end, then I realized I was thinking of Metro 2033’s ending instead. And by the way, Metro actually rewarded exploration because those extra bullets you found doubled as currency. To say nothing about Fallout 3, which came out at a similar time; even when not finding those little post-apoc vignettes, you were always looking for additional aluminum cans or duct tape.
Some of these criticism are, in a sense, unfair. Presuming that the A-Life situation is actually resolved, I would say that Stalker 2 is definitely a Stalker game. If you played the others, you’ll probably like it. There are some little things that add to the charm, like seeing a group of stalkers coming in an sitting around a campfire while someone plays the guitar. Or how after a firefight, the survivors actually loot the bodies of their comrades, just like you were about it. The first time that happened, I was like “Hey!” And then I was like, “fair play.”
So, if you’re in for a bleak, immersive mil-sim with some mutants and anomalies for flavor, then yeah. Stalker 2. (Un)Fortunately, I’ve been spoiled by Metro and Fallout in the intervening years, and it turns out I like what they bring more than what this series does. It’s a time and a place that’s passed for me.
Un-Necesse-ary
Necesse recently graduated from Early Access to full 1.0 release. I had played it previously for almost 10 hours, so I wanted to give it another go to see what had improved. As it turns out… not much.
I’ve heard the game described as “top-down Terraria meets RimWorld,” but that is criminally misleading. Yes, it is a top-down, open-world survival crafting game with RimWorld-esque colony management functions. But what it’s actually more like is a lower-budget Keplerth. Now, in my Impressions of that game I called it a knockoff Necesse, so there’s some circular referencing going on.
The point is to not go into Necesse thinking you are going to get the same tight, engaging gameplay loops of Terraria or… like anything at all related to RimWorld’s subtle genius. The NPCs you recruit to your village can be assigned tasks like chopping wood or shearing sheep, but they have zero personality, relevant moods, or any necessary functionality at all. Hell, most of the crafting you can do is itself pointless in comparison to random drops.
OK, let’s back up. What’s Necesse and its gameplay loop?
In Necesse, there is a large overworld with various creatures and hazards and biomes to explore. Additionally, there is an underground “layer” full of much more dangerous monsters and random loot. The loose goal is for you to summon bosses using specific item drops, defeat them, and use the resulting drops to unlock the next tier of progression. As you might expect with the top-down perspective, most of the bosses are bullet-hell style affairs with multiple phases.
There is crafting in Necesse, but it feels largely perfunctory and unsatisfactory. Yes, you can collect wood to make a Wood Sword, smelt copper into copper ingots to make a Copper Sword, and so on. You can also just buy weapons from NPCs too, skipping multiple tiers in the process. Indeed, the underground portions of the game feature loads of enemies that have a chance of dropping gear that vastly outstrips anything you could reasonably craft. So, rather than feeling like you are earning your way through escalating challenges, most of the time you are better off just running around under-geared until you very suddenly are not.
There is technically hunger in Necesse, but it is the sort of half-baked nonsense that is unfortunately typical in this space. Are there dozens of food recipes? Yes. Are any of them necessary at all? No. More complicated dishes can grant you larger bonuses to damage (etc) and you can even automate some of the cooking via the NPCs you recruit to your base. But… why? Just eat a bunch of coconuts or berries or whatever else is nearby. Perhaps this sort of thing becomes more required on higher difficulties. It all just feels rote, like designers going through the same motions just because “everyone” builds games this way. It’s 2025, guys: if food isn’t going to be super-scarce resource, then it needs to have a more integrated game function (increasing HP, etc) ala Valheim or similar. Otherwise, just leave it out.
To an extent, it’s a bit unfair to be too harsh on Necesse considering it was largely developed by one dude. Counter-point: Stardew Valley. Also: maybe it’s worth bringing on more people to make the game more engaging? There was a graphics overhaul at one point, which certainly improved things, but the UI itself is still hot garbage. Could they make the icons even tinier? [Fake Edit:] Just found the option for UI scale, but it still looks bad even when scaled up.
Anyway, that’s Necesse.
Never the Straw You Want
I may be done with Hearthstone for good. At the very least, it has been more than a month since I last logged in. While my participation has ebbed and flowed over the last twelve (12!) years I have played, this time feels a bit different. I just… have no specific desire to log in again. The impetus is gone.
And I’m pretty sure it’s because of the Event quest changes.
When we talk about the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” we refer to a number of isolated causes that, over time, accumulate to the point of sudden failure. But what is often not addressed, is how… lame the very last one can be. I didn’t stop playing because of some Blizzard controversy (remember Hong Kong?), or reintroducing mechanics that the devs hate and whom consequently made bad on purpose, or leveraging terrible AI artwork in promotional material, or making sets intentionally weak as a power level reset while still charging full price, or introducing $158 pet gacha mechanics, or any of the multitude of other reasons. Hell, I didn’t even quit over the first disastrous quest overhaul.
Nah, the last straw for me was Blizzard getting too cute with the Event quests.
For context, Event Quests are an extra layer of Weekly/Daily quests that grant Event XP that moves you along a reward track. These Events last 4-5 weeks or so, and the rewards are usually free packs, hero portraits, and occasionally free epic/Legendary cards. Blizzard has actually stepped up the number of Events lately – or at least it felt that way – so in many respects, I should have been feeling grateful for the extra stuff. Instead, I felt worse.
Thing is, I used to be able to complete quests, including Event quests, while doing Battlegrounds. This was helpful for those time periods in which Standard was feeling boring, or perhaps I didn’t have all the Legendaries needed for a competitive deck, or just enjoyed Battlegrounds more at that time. These new quests have the “Traditional Modes” limiter, which means Standard or Wild only.
Also, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m something of an optimizer. If you tell me I need to either play 2000 minions OR 500 Day of Rebirth deathrattle minions in Ranked Standard, I’m going to try the latter. And it’s going to feel horrible, not the least because any deck filled with those specific kind of minions is going to lose, on account of them being non-competitive. So here I am, trashing my Rank by losing constantly with cards I barely get to play – as games don’t last long when you play bad cards – and I still have to play like 500 of them, all because some fucking black-hat psychologist thought it would maximize engagement. Fuck every bit of that.
“Just ignore the quest and play normally.” Hearthstone isn’t the only game I play, and I sometimes go days without playing at all. Without focusing specifically on completing the quest, including the specific game modes it requires, completion won’t actually happen naturally. “Events aren’t required for anything, just enjoy whatever rewards you can get at your level of engagement.” Missing rewards, which now sometimes includes Legendary cards in the final steps, feels worse than not having Events happening at all. It would be one thing if it were a hidden achievement, or unlocked just a new skin or whatever, but it’s a rather in-your-face tracking mechanism that pops up after every game.
It’s a straw. Individually immaterial. Completely harmless to anyone who still enjoys playing Hearthstone on a baseline level. I 100% recognize that, by all measures, I would have likely drifted further and further away from the game independent of any changes to Event quests or otherwise.
However… it’s the last fucking straw. Perhaps not the one I deserve, but the one I have right now.
Price Hike
You have likely heard the news already, but in the last few weeks Microsoft has increased the price of Game Pass, kind of significantly. The Ultimate tier went from $19.99 to $29.99, for example, which is a 50% increase. Even the PC tier where I’m at went from $11.99 to $16.49, which is a 38% increase. While Microsoft has tried spinning the “value added” from things like free battlepasses to a few F2P games, most everything is the same or worse.
I have a couple of things I wanted to say about this.
First, the amount of “I told you so!”s from people – including former FTC chair Lina Khan – who suggest the price increase is a result of the Activision Blizzard merger is kind of ridiculous. Yes, $55 billion is a lot of investment money that Microsoft expects a return on. However… do we imagine the Game Pass subscription was going to stay at the same level if the merger didn’t occur? Was Microsoft not going to lay off the same game devs as before? Subscriptions go up and to the right. It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that Netflix and Disney+ will have a(nother) price increase within the next two years, with or without any mergers.
Incidentally, the math on people canceling their subscriptions is interesting. Even if just under one-third of people cancelled their subscription… Microsoft would still break even. Hell, depending on the network traffic and other server costs, Microsoft probably comes out ahead even if half of everyone quits.
For the record, I’m not here to defend the price hikes or Microsoft in general. We are absolutely seeing an across-the-board decrease in Consumer Surplus as a result of this, and it behooves everyone to double-check their internal math to see if Game Pass still makes sense. If all you’re playing is Hollow Knight: Silksong for the month, well, you were better off just buying it outright. Even the “free” copy of Call of Duty is going to start costing you extra starting in month 3 versus 7+ now.
But let’s not pretend that where we’re at today wasn’t worth how we got here. Microsoft was going to Microsoft anyway. The fact that we got to enjoy a comparatively cheap way to play videogames for years and years was phenomenal. The party is over now? Oh no, back to… buying videogames again.
Compare that to what’s going to happen when the AI music inevitably stops.
Self-Correcting
I feel there are many elements about AI that will eventually be self-correcting… in a sort of apocalyptic, crash-and-burn kind of way. For example, the AI-summarized web doesn’t leave much economic oxygen for people to create content worth summarizing. Assuming, of course, that ad-based revenue streams continue to make sense at all as we cross into over 50% of all internet traffic being bots.
On an individual level, I am experiencing some interesting changes that may also be self-correcting.
I have mentioned it a few times, but I have had a problem with watching Youtube (Shorts). As in, I would pop on over to quickly decompress from some other activity, and then 2-3 hours later, awaken from my fugue, algorithmic state having not accomplished anything that I had set out to. It’s a problem.
…or, at least, it was. Because I am now beginning to encounter (presumed) AI-directed, curated, and/or created content. And it repulses me in an uncanny valley way. Takes me right out of whatever hypnosis I was under and immediately causes me to close the tab. Which, of course, is great for me.
I put “presumed” up there though, because sometimes I cannot really tell. For example, this video about “15 forgotten garden traditions” is probably AI generated – it features generic voiceover on top of stitched-together montage of others peoples’ (at least attributed) content. Much like the now-maligned em dash however, perhaps that style of video is now just guilty by association? Another video was on The Saver’s Paradox and my AI-dar went off immediately. Looking further into the channel and thinking about what it would require to prompt that level of video though, it seems like it’s legit.
Perhaps neither of those videos bothered you in the slightest. In which case, congratulations! You are absolutely set up for a future filled to the brim with… content. For me though, the magic is gone.
It may well be inevitable that the quality of AI generation is such that it become indistinguishable from human content. In which case, why would I be on Youtube at all, instead of in my own prompt?
Self-correcting! As it turns out, even black holes evaporate eventually.
[GW2] Tasks
It’s been 2-3 weeks since I’ve started playing Guild Wars 2 again. So… what am I doing?
Thus far, I have been really leaning into the current Fractal event. Which, to be fair, is primarily due to the FOMO elements. The introduction of the new Legendary gloves you can get for running Quickplay versions of the early Fractals will be sticking around, but there’s another “reward track” that grants two Bag space slots, a 20-slot bag, and a Legendary starter kit that will be going away on October 7th. Theoretically, you can still grind most/all of it by the time this post goes Live, but I have enjoyed gaining some extra progress – via Daily/Weekly achievement resets – by spacing things out.
There is probably some debate to be had as to whether adding the Quickplay feature to Fractals will lead to more players doing Fractals after the event ends. Honestly… maybe? It certainly has demystified the game mode to an extent, as my normal M.O. for this sort of group content would be to watch YouTube videos to understand all the mechanics before even stepping inside. That sort of thing is not particularly viable when Quickplay has like 10ish options randomly picked for you. Of course, everything has been toned way down for the game mode, so you get the gist after seeing the maps several times even if you aren’t reading text (since everyone is Go-Go-Go).
Another piece of “content” I have very much enjoyed is the Wizard’s Vault. This is a rework of the Daily Achievements (read: daily quests) system with a fancy new interface and currency called Astral Acclaim. It was very annoying at first, as it had a mixture of PvE and PvP objectives, but once I figured out that you can uncheck the PvP box and get all PvE-based objectives, everything was grand. You have both Daily and Weekly tabs you can work on, and then you have a large menu of rewards to choose from that eventually reset every quarter or whatever. So, for example, you can choose to spend Astral Acclaim on certain cosmetics, or a Legendary starter kit, or a bag containing 1g (x90), or your choice of an Ascended Weapon, and so on. The Weekly tab requires six objectives to get the big bonus chest, but there are eight total options so you even have some choice to skip ones you find annoying.
The one thing I haven’t done is purchase any expansion content. For one thing, Visions of Eternity is right around the corner (Oct 28). While $25 is not onerous for an MMO expansion, purchasing three of them back-to-back is another matter. Plus, you know how I am: why pay full price when the expansions were literally on sale at the beginning of the month? I missed that boat, but I’m assuming there will be another sale around launch day. Of course, waiting is always kind of risky, as I could easily come to my senses and start playing other things again.
[Fake Edit] Steam Autumn sale is on, and now those two expansions are $17.50 and $19.99. Huzzah!
The other thing I haven’t (yet) started in on are unlocking Legendaries. In pretty much every guide out there, the recommendation is for players to not do weapon or armor Legendaries first, but instead go for accessories (rings, amulet, etc). This makes some sense, as accessories apply to every character you ever make, whereas armor is broken up into weight classes (can’t use Light Armor Legendary on your Thief). Weapon Legendaries can apply to multiple characters… but not if they are off-meta or off-spec. Well, this is GW2, so meta probably doesn’t really matter all that much.
Regardless, the “problem” is that I have effectively decked out all my alts in Ascended accessories already. It’s been like seven years since this post, but farming Winterberries an unholy amount of times will get you most everything you need. Berserker stats won’t help Viper builds, but as long as you alternate what you get your alts, you can usually just shuffle the accessories around each time balance patches change the math. Grinding out Vision or Aurora or whatever may provide a little QoL bump, but it will not actually improve any stats. So, dilemma.
For now, I will continue what I’m doing for as long as it remains fun. Which it is. For now. Although, I came across this “resolution” while looking up past GW2 posts, and… yeah. We’ll see.
What Do You Get with GW2 Expansions?
The question that Google failed to (succinctly) answer for me is this: what do I actually get with the three latest Guild Wars 2 mini-expansions? You know, aside from the story and everything. What unlocks? Are there new Legendaries? If I had to pick which to get first, or maybe only one at all, what would the biggest bang for my buck be?
Since I had to look this stuff up for myself, I figure I may as well write it down. Note: all expansions retail at $25 and come with a Shared Inventory Slot plus level 80 boost. And, you know, story content.
Secrets of the Obscure
- Mastery to unlock weapons for use regardless of spec (Scourge can use pistol from Harbinger, etc)
- New open-world focused Legendary Armor set
- Faster Skyscale mount unlock, plus additional abilities
- Exclusive Relics that are often Best-in-slot (Relic of the Fractal)
Janthir Wilds
- Introduces land-based Spear as a new option for all classes (Best-in-slot for some meta builds)
- New Legendary Spear and Backpack
- Homestead is your own private customizable house
- Warclaw mount gets a lot more functionality (double-jumps and such)
- Exclusive Relics that can be Best-in-slot (Relic of the Claw)
Visions of Eternity
- One new Elite spec for each class (nine total)
- Skimmer mount gets a lot more functionality
- New homestead map (if you own Janthir Wilds)
- “New system updates will make raids easier to access” (Quickplay?)
- Note: not yet out at the time of this post
Hopefully helpful to Googlers down the road.
In An Age 
Dumb Problems
Oct 23
Posted by Azuriel
I’m going to talk about a dumb blogging problem I experienced recently, so feel free to skip this one.
Like most problems in the world, it started with Tobold. I’ve been a persona non grata in his comment section for years now, but I’ve kept his blog on my Feedly for masochistic reasons. One of his latest posts was so unbelievably asinine though – “Trump isn’t doing any permanent damage!” – that I had had enough. That’s when I realized that I still had him linked over in the Blogroll section of my sidebar, so I figured I should take care of that too.
Big mistake.
Over the years, I have often heard people complain about WordPress, sometimes vehemently enough to drive them to self-host and even try and reinvent the Comment section wheel. While I had misgivings when WordPress changed to the “block” format many years ago, for the most part all the nonsense seemed to just happen to Other People. As it turns out, that’s because WordPress does indeed make inexplicable changes and then hides them in a sort of load-bearing Schrödinger’s box to surprise you with if you ever open it. “Looking to edit your Blogroll? Well, now it’s a Legacy Widget. Also, that widget doesn’t exist anymore! Enjoy the dead cat.”
Now, on the one hand, I can kind of see the logic. The original setup was clunky as fuck: you place a Blogroll widget in your sidebar, and then add entries to the “Link” section of your blog. The new setup is… add a list block to the sidebar with some hyperlinks. Technically, it’s a more elegant solution. Or would be, if they also added information on how to recreate the sort of red bar thing.
Guys, I was raging. It’s bad enough when you have a problem that you find difficult to articulate in a searchable way. But when the problem is caused by someone else laying a goddamn trap in your code… I get it now. The extra dumb thing was how I stumbled onto the solution. After several hours, I was finally giving up and willing to try and grab a JPG of the red bar and manually photo edit some text on it when I ended up right-clicking and Inspecting the bar, e.g. looking at the HTML code directly.
For future reference:
More specifically, you have to add the “Custom HTML” widget to the sidebar and then paste that in. Change the title in the Span section to match your needs, of course. I’m assuming that the H3 (header) design is keyed off of the overall Theme (I’m using Mystique) and color options of the blog.
Anyway, that was a lot more of my yesterday than strictly necessary. Also, the Blogroll itself is looking a bit sparse after trimming Tobold and several bloggers who no longer post. Honestly, I never even liked the static list in the first place – it’s just a poor substitute for the glory that was Blogspot’s dynamic blogroll. You know, the one that allowed you to link to 50+ blogs or whatever and display whichever ones posted most recently at the top? If there was ever a wheel that needed reinventing, it is that one.
Posted in Commentary
5 Comments
Tags: Blogging, Blogroll, Dumb Problems to Have, Schrödinger's Cat, Wordpress