Blog Archives
Oh, yeah… Blaugust!
That’s certainly a thing I signed up for! Probably should have had a post ready to go or something.
As it turns out, I have been playing Abiotic Factor pretty much nonstop since the 1.0 release. It is not often that I manage to find a game that takes over my entire life, although the survival crafting genre is certainly good for that. I’ll have more to say about the game later, as I’m in that enviable state of not wanting to spend time talking about how much fun I’m having when I could be, well, having fun.
In any case, if you’re a Blaugust tourist, welcome! I’ve been blogging since 2010 with close to 1600 posts full of premium quality words. You can either take my word for it, click on The Goods drop-down over to the right there (I recommend Philosophy) to check for yourself, or, well, buckle up, buttercup.
…for tomorrow. Oh, wait, it’s the weekend. Monday, probably!
Blarghest
The last time I officially joined Blaugust was back in 2015. Back then, the conclusion I came to was that it wasn’t really worth the effort: posting every single day for a month did not meaningfully increase page views. I’m not trying to chase page views per se, but you can’t become a fan of something if you don’t know about it. Discoverability is a real issue, especially if you don’t want to juice SEO metrics in suspect ways. So, on a lark, I decided to rejoin Blaugust nine years later (e.g. this year) to at least throw my hat back in the ring and try to expand my (and others’) horizons.
What I’m finding is not particularly encouraging.
More specifically, I was looking at the list of participants. I’m not going to name names, but more than a few of the dozen I’ve browsed thus far appear to be almost nakedly commercial blogs (e.g. affiliate-linked), AI-based news aggregate sites, and similar nonsense. I’m not trying to be the blogging gatekeeper here, but is there no vetting process to keep out the spam? I suppose that may be a bit much when 100+ people/bots sign up, but it also seems deeply counter-productive to the mission statement of:
Posting regularly builds a community and in this era of AI-slop content, our voices are needed even more than we ever have been at any point in the past.
Ahem. The calls are coming from inside the house, my friends.
[Fake Edit] In fairness, after getting through all 76 of the original list, the number of spam blogs did not increase much. Perhaps a non-standard ordering mechanism would have left a better first impression.
Anyway, we’ll have to see how this Blaugust plays out. I have added 10-20 new blogs to my Feedly roll, and am interested to see where they go from here. Their initial stuff was good enough for my curiosity. The real trick though, is who is still posting in September.
Blaugust 2024 – Day 1
I have chosen to participate in Blaugust 2024 this year, despite the fact that I am currently on vacation.
Hello. My name* is Azuriel and I have been blogging for almost 14 years now. In the early days, my blogging was focused on World of Warcraft. In fact, “Azuriel” is the name of my main in WoW. I started Player Vs Auction House for the release of the Cataclysm expansion, and despite that ultra-niche topic, the blog did well enough for itself. Over time though, I started to realize that chasing gold trends was less interesting than the design philosophy behind the game, so I pivoted to that. Once I started drifting away from WoW itself, it was time for another pivot towards “let’s talk about whatever else I want.”
That is probably enough as far as introductions go. If this is your first time here, I recommend clicking on the drop-down over on the right labeled The Goods, and selecting Philosophy. Everything that I post is top-quality, but those trend towards a higher level. Or you can check out this list of posts, back when I participated in Blaugust 2015. Nevermind that my best work seems to be from years ago.
Otherwise, well, welcome.
*Not my real name, of course.
Blaugust Clean-up
Thank god that’s over. Nothing quite like getting into the spirit of blogging by burning yourself out with thirty-one daily posts.
I’m halfway kidding.
It was a fun experiment, but I’m doubtful that I’ll participate next year. While there is still some possibility of long-tail shenanigans, my mid-month analysis seems correct:
The numbers, minus the numbers.
In other words, in terms of pageviews and visitors, daily posting still resulted in 10% less views than the peak in May. Which, incidentally, was a month that saw eleven (11) posts. Perhaps that is not quite as fair a comparison given how August is certainly 16% higher than both June and July. Then again, I posted 11 and 13 times in those months, respectively. Talk about diminishing returns.
The thing that is up rather markedly are comments:
Probably the better blogging indicator.
As I mused two weeks ago, I am not entirely sure whether the uptick in comments is due to the shotgun effect – more posts makes it more likely you post something people want to talk about – or from the nature of the Blaugust event itself, or a complete coincidence, or what. The thing I do know is that pageviews are one thing, but comments can actually challenge your arguments, change your worldview, and even comfort you with camaraderie. All things I definitely appreciate.
Not worth posting daily for that though, Christ.
Anyway, I have a birthday and Metal Gear Solid 5 to enjoy this week. So, see you… maybe Thursday. Or whenever the hell I feel like it.
*sigh* Feels good to say that again.
The Best of In An Age, Vol. 1
[Blaugust Day 31]
If you are looking for the best, most philosophical, endearing, poignant, expertly written posts for In An Age, then look no further.
That’s right, they appear here, at the top of InAnAge.com, two or three times each week depending on when I feel like dropping epiphanous bombs. Subscribe or add to your RSS reader of your choice, and you’ll be notified every time the light shines forth from my bushel. Which, again, is all the goddamn time. Worst… bushel… ever.
If you’re not up for reading nearly 800 posts though, here are the Top 5, in no particular order:
Wirehead
This post is actually somewhat topical given how it was originally written about my feeling of “offness” whilst playing Guild Wars 2. The term “wirehead” has came to represent any game I play obsessively but ends up making me feel empty when I turn it off. Favorite line from the post: “Playing Guild Wars 2 feels like going to Disneyland ahead of the apocalypse.”
Entitlement
Despite the years, I still consider “entitlement” to a be a trigger word for me and a Godwin’s Law for videogame arguments generally. The best summation of my feeling on the word ended up coming from a more recent follow-up post: “When you use the word “entitlement” as a pejorative, all you are doing is asserting that someone has unreasonable expectations about something, without actually bothering to offer an argument or explanation as to why it is unreasonable.”
The Problem With F2P and Microtransactions
If there was one other concept I wish the whole of the internet knew and understood, it is that of Consumer Surplus. While the F2P and microtransaction ship has long since sailed, the idea of Consumer Surplus is still useful in moderating the insanely anti-consumer sentiments that crop up in gaming discussions with disturbing regularity. This particular post isn’t the best one on the topic, but it’s the first, and it explains what Consumer Surplus is. For the others, just click on the Consumer Surplus tag.
My Issues with the Bioshock Infinite Plot
Oh man, Bioshock Infinite. It’s been over two years since I wrote that post, but I still stand by every argument made and presented. Simply put: if you liked Infinite’s plot, you’re wrong. Case closed.
Established Fact
Speaking of arguments, I’m still rather fond of this one. At the time, the internet was discussing why WoW was losing subscribers in Cataclysm despite the (established) fact that the actual cause was the increase in dungeon difficulty. Incidentally, I consider that post and a few others from that time period as the beginnings of my (one-sided) rivalry with SynCaine.
________________
There you have it, the Top 5 posts from In An Age. While the newest amongst them is April 2013, my original list had at least 25 entries mostly pulled from the Philosophy category. In fact, that’s the place I recommend going to if you enjoy my writing at all and yet somehow have failed to keep current with my steady stream of genius. Priorities, people; work on them.
Runners-Up:
- A Flight Too Far
- Revisiting Single-Player MMOs
- Design > Toxicity
- No Country for Old Blizzard
- The F-Word
Enjoy Continue enjoying.
B2P MMO Goes F2P
We kinda knew from an earlier leak already, but it’s now official: Guild Wars 2 is going F2P.
The F2P restrictions can be compared here, or just read this bullet list from Reddit:
- Does not receive daily login bonus
- Start with less storage than paid account : 2 character slots, 3 bag slots
- No map wide chat interaction, can use local chat
- Cannot post on ArenaNet forums
- Can only start new whisper conversations once every 30 seconds
- Can trade and buy common items on TP
- Can’t mail items or gold to other players, can still send text-only mail to friends
- Must be level 60 before entering WvW, other unspecified zone/level restrictions
- They must play to level 10 before leaving the starter zones, to level 30 before using LFG
- They can play PvP immediately but must get to rank 20 before using custom and unranked arenas
- Cannot trade gold for gems
- Cannot access guild vaults
The more I think about it, the more bizarre this announcement gets. First, has there ever been a B2P MMO that went to F2P? I know GW2 is highly dependent on its cash shop for additional revenue already, but this still feels like a weird strategy. Especially in terms of those “restrictions,” which are incredibly lenient when compared to similar offerings. I guess the WvW restriction might prevent easier zerg leveling/karma farming, but the scaling was so bad back when I played that you practically had to be 60+ to do anything of particular note anyway.
The second bizarre thing about this announcement is the timing. Remember two months ago when ArenaNet bundled the base game into the expansion box price and the internet lost its shit? Surely they knew they were going to announce a F2P conversion two months later… right? Maybe they wanted to wait until PAX for the press coverage, but that was still a lot of negative coverage right in the summer months that could have been avoided multiple ways. Perhaps them knowing F2P was coming contributed to their laissez faire attitude at that particular information rollout.
I’ll admit that I’ve been feeling a slight itch to maybe perhaps download GW2 again, especially after I stopped playing WoW. My game experience ended on a particularly sour note last time around, but it might of been because I wasn’t completely sold on the Elementalist playstyle. Plus, you know, since I bought the retail box years ago, I could start it up and be back playing with little issue.
On the other hand, ArenaNet’s commitment to “Living Stories” and one-time events means that I’m not even sure what, if anything, would actually be different a second time around. Lion’s Arch was destroyed and rebuilt, I think? Maybe they added a few more entries to the Explicit Schedule of Villainy? Who knows. For now, I’m much more likely to get into FF14 than GW2 again.
Best of luck to ArenaNet just the same.
Lessons Learned: Home Theater Edition
[Blaugust Day 29]
If I had to pinpoint the exact moment when my home theater plans started falling apart, it was when I decided not to get a home theater. I still don’t want one, for the record, but I’m currently in that sort of purgatory where doing something and not doing something are both equally bad. Since I cannot go back in time, I will have to settle for dispensing vicarious wisdom.
Originally, I bought a 32″ TV and a PS3 for my console needs. That was fine at the time, as I was living with a roommate and thus had the TV in my bedroom. Then, of course, I decided I needed to get some kind of soundbar because TV speakers are universally terrible. This setup worked for about a year and a half, until I ended up getting a new apartment by myself. At that point, a 32″ TV just starts looking comically small from 9 feet away. So… new TV.
Enter the dilemma.
Price-wise, the 42″ TVs I was looking at were the same price as projectors. I decided to go with the projector because A) why not?, and B) poor long-term planning. I’m not saying that I regret the purchase per se, but it definitely set me down a path that I had not fully anticipated.
So I had the projector and the soundbar. I was not all that happy with the soundbar though, because its volume settings were such that Volume 4 was a bit too quiet to hear, and Volume 5 was too loud. Now that I had a projector, surely it would be as good a time as any to pick up a set of 5.1 surround sound speakers, yeah? No, past self. The answer is no. Unfortunately, I was not quantumly entangled at that point and ended up buying this particular set of speakers for a sum that was probably around $100.
It was not until this point that I realized I had made a mistake like six moves ago.
See, home theaters are like building a computer – you can’t just randomly buy the shit you need (motherboard, CPU, etc) and expect the disparate parts to just come together somehow. For example, let’s take a look at the back of my projector and speakers for a second:
Uh oh.
There are a lot of things wrong with this picture. A lot of embarrassing, quite-obvious-in-retrospect things. Things like “how the hell are these two things supposed to connect?” The answer is two audio-out cables from the projector. So I have HDMI quality picture and sound coming from the PS3 to the projector, which then downgrades the picture to 720p and reduces the sound to 2-channels, aka stereo. That… sucks. What’s worse is that I’m not even sure these speakers were better than the soundbar, because most times its either too quiet or shaking the walls, and while I have reduced the amount of neighbors I have with my recent move, I remain in an apartment.
A “solution” to this problem is precisely the thing that you’re supposed to buy with any 5.1 speaker setup: a receiver. Which, despite a rather exhaustive amount of research, is a device I have a hard time believing needs to exist as a discreet product. Near as I can tell, a receiver is a $200+ ugly box that takes the already-5.1 sound from your main device and “translates” it into 5.1 sound for your speakers. Why the device needs a receiver to exist, or why speakers can’t just play the sound, I have no idea.
So this is the dilemma I now face. It’s dumb to have 5.1 speakers playing stereo. Spending $200 on a receiver though, is also pretty dumb since I don’t necessarily care about true surround sound. And even if I do get a receiver, it’s also kinda dumb to spend that money to pump surround sound through my cheap speakers. That’s like wearing $200 dress shoes with sweatpants. But my current setup is not particularly good by itself; it works, it’s passable, and it also contributes to my lack of desire to play console games. I’m tempted to just buy a better quality soundbar and call it a day, but that leaves me with a set of useless speakers. There’s also the problem that I’m using a projector, which means the soundbar either needs quasi-receiver-like powers so I can run my PS3 signal through it, or I suppose it can run on the two stereo cables. Would the optical speaker jack in the back of the PS3 work too? I have no idea.
On the one hand, I have to be mindful of the Sunk Cost Fallacy here. If a soundbar would solve my problems, the speakers will just need to go back into a box in the closet. A receiver would also solve my problems though, and presumably be more modular/useful in the future home theater experiments. And, just throwing this out there, buying a regular (40+”) TV and soundbar would solve even more problems still. The projector is cool and all, but it’s one of those things I’m starting to realize that you can’t (or shouldn’t, at least) just half-ass.
Well, there you go. Learn from my mistakes.
How Not to Get Money
[Blaugust Day 28]
Much like Steam before it, CrunchyRoll has completely supplanted any desire of mine to pirate its product – in this case, anime. It was really a combination of things, as it was getting annoying finding anime torrents with more than 4-5 seeders, having to download 10+ GB worth of show that you’re going to end up deleting anyway, bad fan subs, missing episodes, and so on.
#Firstworldpirateproblems, truly.
Then here came CrunchyRoll with streaming content, professional subbing, and even simulcasts if you wanted to pay for Premium. If you didn’t want to pay, you could still watch the shows of your choice, with ads. Ads which, incidentally, are completely blocked with AdBlockPlus such that they barely register as a flicker on the screen.
Originally, I think I was tricked into subscribing for CrunchyRoll Premium in that they were holding the final episode of the show I was watching hostage. It might have been legitimate, in that the show just ended in Japan, and Premium users get access to the latest episode at least a week before it goes “free.” Whatever the reason, I signed up for the “free trial” of Premium and then stayed subscribed ever since. I consider it a fairly good value overall, especially since I can watch everything in 1080p. You wouldn’t think resolution matters in hand-drawn content, but you would be surprised. Or maybe that was just me being surprised.
I usually watch 1-2 episodes of some random show or another during dinner, which means I can plow through an entire series in a week or two. This wasn’t a problem, until it kinda was: I had watched just about everything ever recommended to me… that plays on CrunchyRoll.
Now I wanted to watch Steins;Gate. Enter FUNimation:
Spoilers! …not really, this is episode 2.
Which, incidentally, plays anime through Hulu.
Have you ever been in a situation where a friend or coworker was really shit-talking someone bad, and you nod your head, but in the back of your mind you’re thinking “Surely some of that is exaggeration. Nobody is that awful.” And some time passes before you encounter that person, so you sorta forget about them. Then you finally meet them and realize “holy shit, they really are that awful! I regret everything!”
So, yeah, Hulu.
Are you serious?
I heard Hulu was bad with ads, but my mind is still reeling from this encounter. I was trying to watch Steins;Gate, which is already hard enough to follow without two minutes, forty seconds of unskippable ads every four minutes of show. I understand that that’s “normal” television show content-to-ad ratios (22 min of show, 8 of ads), but that is also precisely why I don’t watch television. I have never bought cable my whole adult life and hopefully never will.
Really, you almost have to experience this abomination for yourself:
How about no?
Apparently AdBlockPlus will block some ads but not others. I could not verify it for sure, but I’m also convinced that the timer resets sometimes when I’m Alt-Tabbed and it tries to cycle into another ad that it cannot display. At least, it certainly feels that way. Or perhaps I am so used to, you know, the internet that waiting 150 seconds for the content I want to load simply feels like an eternity.
Like CrunchyRoll, FUNimation has a Premium version that supposedly removes the ads. Given how much shit I’ve heard about Hulu, and how Hulu expressly states that “†Some shows will still serve ads to subscribers,” I have little inclination to believe them.
So congrats, FUNimation/Hulu, for being goddamn annoying enough that this becomes a better alternative once again:
Just in time.
It took about 35 minutes to download that. Or about four episodes worth of Hulu advertising.
Adventures in Hardware Installation
[Blaugust Day 27]
Remember that GTX 970 card I ordered? It arrived Tuesday, but tonight was the first time I had a chance to dedicate to sweating bullets installing it. I’m not sweating because I’m nervous around electronics, I’m sweating because if something goes wrong, I’d be out a lot of money when alternatives were available. Plus, it’d be an embarrassing story, like failing your driver’s test 2-3 times when you’re the high school Valedictorian.
…you know, as a hypothetical example. I’d feel real bad for that guy person. If they existed.
In any case, I cracked open my PC case and started poking around:
That’s right, I paid the extra ~$30 for professional cabling.
The hardest part of the 560ti removal was the damned power cables. In addition to having some sort of devil-spawn locking mechanism, they felt like they were super-glued on the card. Worrying about static is one thing, but the true nightmare to me is all the wiggling, pushing, and (cringe) bending of hundred-dollar electronics that sometimes becomes necessary.
Unplug, damn you!
After much consternation, I managed to unseat the power cords. At which time I unboxed the GTX 970 with the care of holding some distant cousin’s infant that they just threw into your arms like some kind of crazy person. Here is a comparison shot:
A slight bit smaller.
Incidentally, that gross-looking stuff in the sink is dust from inside my computer case. While I do periodically clean with a can of compressed air, in my immense wisdom it appears that that cleaning never extended to the video card’s fans. Absolutely filthy, man. I’m surprised the card never burst into flame. Now that I think about it, I’m not entirely sure how safe it was these last four years to have those dumb stickers stuck on the top of the circuitry. I had been assuming it was kosher since it came like that from the shop, but I never really did double-check…
Installing the 970 was pretty easy, by the way. Push it into the slot until it clicks, hand-tighten the case screw and then plug…
God. Dammit.
Turns out that when you upgrade to a smaller card, and the designers move the power plugs to the side for no discernible reason, you’re going to have a bad time.
So at this point, I start an increasingly desperate bid to cut the zip ties inside my case to free up more power cable slack so I can plug the damn thing in. First, kitchen scissors. Second, a sharp knife in a sawing motion. Third, the Swiss Army Knife I typically use to cut open packages. When that didn’t work, I tried the scissor attachment of the Swiss Army Knife. Success! I ended up having to cut through two zip ties to get enough slack to plug it in.
And here I am, having finished taking the card for a test drive:
An actual comparison.
I feel better about this investment already.
In An Age 
Continue Reading
Aug 11
Posted by Azuriel
In the spirit of Blaugust, allow me to give an unsolicited opinion: excerpts suck. If I see a post in my Feedly roll that is just a paragraph that ends with Continue Reading… I don’t. That blog gets dropped.
There’s really only two reasons to have excerpts on: you don’t know better, or you do. In the latter case, congrats on being a cog in the giant SEO/clickbait bullshit machine. Be better, if you can.
In case you’re a member of the former category though, for WordPress check Settings > Reading:
Are there legitimate concerns about having your blog content displayed in an RSS aggregator versus readers coming directly to your blog? Maybe. I have no idea if someone reading this post on Feedly will have their View register on my WordPress stats or whatever. I could also see concerns about post formatting if you care about that sort of thing. For example, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to avoid orphan words in the blog proper. Seriously, check my posts sometimes (engagement!). None of which matters for Feedly readers though, because those line lengths are all over the place.
You might think me arrogant for suggesting that losing my subscription to your blog is a reason to turn off excerpts. I would instead suggest that forcing readers to open a new tab just for you is itself the height of arrogance. Do you yourself open tabs for every blog you follow every day, like it’s 2005? No.
Turn off your excerpts. Thanks for reading.
Posted in Commentary
4 Comments
Tags: Arrogance, Blaugust, Continue Reading, Excerpts, Feedly, Unsolicited Advice