So I guess I’m blogging again

In a rash decision I signed up for Blaugust 2016  yesterday and committed to posting something here every day. I haven’t blogged in years. I’ve always kind of wanted to get back to it, but had dropped into a pit of thinking I had nothing much to offer in the way of interesting opinions, especially as I dropped out of gaming through a bad back, anti-social working hours and spending too much time on my own sitting in front of the TV.

So I can’t promise this will be insightful, interesting or otherwise all that great. But I hope that within the month, there’s at least a few things worth reading.

Topics I hope to  cover include:

• Comics – my main passion at the moment. I get quite a few per month, and also have a subscription to Marvel Unlimited, so there may be some suggested reading lists (or links to places to find them)
• VR gaming – we have an HTC Vive, and while I’ve not played with it much, I have enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would
• TV / Films – I’m still a TV-obsessed creature, and I have a cinema subscription card, so I can see as many films as I want at local cinema for £17/month. This means I see most things
• News / Media – can’t promise I’ll delve into this one, but my work involves reading a lot of world media and occasionally there may be something I want to say about how things are reported, and maybe suggest some good places to get news

There’s probably other things too, and if there’s anything you want to know about, just let me know and I’ll try and come up with something!

(Also, now re-learning WordPress, so don’t be surprised if things like changing my Blogroll takes a few days – it will happen)

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Oops, did I forget my blog?

What can I say? Blame my friend who sent me Dragon Age: Origins. Blame work, for asking me to do some overtime. And blame me, for being a self-proclaimed slacker.

Am enjoying Dragon Age so far, but I only started it yesterday and am taking it quite slow. It’s also the EU Welcome Back week for LotRO so I’m showing Spinks round some of Moria she hasn’t seen yet and Lothlorien too. Next week is the launch of Siege of Mirkwood and that will definitely take up some of my time, though considering many of my ‘stable-ish’ group are away or starting new jobs/settling into new jobs, I’m sure I’ll be able to spare some time for Dragon Age. I’m definitely going to try to (for variety, if nothing else). I intend to add it to the very few computer games I’ve played through to the end.

In the meantime, I’ve been organising a sweet/chocolate-only Secret Santa for the kin in LotRO. I heartily recommend it, it wasn’t half as hard to organise as I thought. Get some interest, get people to send you their addresses, and then pair people up so that everyone gets sent something. I’ve set a £3 suggested spending limit, with posting that should take it to around £5, and I’ve tried to mix up the mainland EU/Scandinavia and UK players. I don’t normally get that involved in the social organising side. I used to do a bit of instance leading, but recently I’ve been more of a wallflower kin-wise. But while we were all discussing favourite local sweets, I thought it’d be a nice way of showing off one of the most important sides of ourselves (our favourite sweeties, of course). If it goes well, I’m going to suggest a chocolate-based one for Easter. And we’ll see how it goes. Do it! It’s been a lot less hassle than I thought.

More soon, honestly.

I Never Promised…

Did you notice how directly after saying I’d come back to the blog, I kind of vanished down to London? Ha ha.

I’m at Spinks’ house overnight though, reading through Vampire: the Requiem (it was the Masquerade in my day!), and thinking I need my own copy. But that also I should update as to what I’m playing and where, before I get back to commenting a little on MMOs.

I’m playing LotRO exclusively now. I tried WAR again for the 10 days, and didn’t do much more than play Nordenwatch and Gates of Ekrund. Both very enjoyable. There’s a lot of fun around the game, but without my old guild and the people I wanted to say hi to, I found it tricky to stay for a long period.

Plus, our LotRO kin has finally started on DN (the new end raid). We did pretty good, I think. Got the first bosses down in few runs, and they cleared them again on friday (though I was in London!). They’re doing exploring tonight, and I fully expect another one or two bosses to drop. And next week I’ll be back with them again.

I kind of like new raids. I like learning the encounters, and try to go to them as clear of spoilers as I can. Often I might try and find out if I need anything specific to watch out for as a Captain, but I do try and stay fairly clear of direct discussion of fights. I like to see a boss drop for the first time. But I can make do with it being MY first time. I don’t much like loot and loot distribution, it stalls the raid a little – but I appreciate it’s there and has to be done, and I don’t mind the system we’ve gone for in-kin, so it could be worse. I like the familiar chit-chat, hanging out with more than a group of kinmates. But I’ve also been in a very dark place recently and found the first return-to-raiding night a bit shouty for me. I think it’s because I wasn’t joining in, or felt unable to.

Which is something I’ve noticed about myself. I used to be one of the loud ones in TS, and would be shoutier than anyone during raids. I feel something is holding me back, and it’s probably myself. I’ve gone a bit reflective and insular to deal with my mourning. And I have a liability to snap that previously I had under far better control. So I try and stay quiet to avoid it. Even though I hope people understand. Yesterday I snapped at two people I didn’t 100% mean to. And one I did!

Anyway, digression over. We’re raiding DN in LotRO, as well as the Turtle (or Filikul). We may even return to the Watcher when we can be bothered and have the right people together. And in the meantime I want to get back into grouping with kinmates and helping them through content.

I am considering the refer-a-friend WoW trial Spinks sent my way. But then I remember I’d have to buy the game AGAIN, and I have cold feet. I’d like to return to the familiarity of the game in a way, but I don’t want to buy it. I could just resub on an old account, but then I lose the 3x xp. And I’ll probably get bored by level 20!

All my excitement is based around World of Darkness and Rohan.

/update.

Directions

I’ve pared down my blogroll instead of increasing it. I read a ton of blogs on my RSS, and I just went through a spring clean before I consider re-blogging here.

I didn’t use any strict criteria, the blogroll is a more personal thing for me. People I consider friends as well as blogs I wouldn’t want to miss reading. And it’s my first port of call. The RSS feeds I save for when I have time. But I still read them.

This is a very personal blog. It’s not going to ever get you big hits if I link to you, so don’t get offended and don’t assume I don’t read you if you’re not up front on the blogroll here.

I’m working on a couple of side projects your links might be better suited to. Or, I might not blog enough here to make it worth noticing!

Nerf the Cat is moving directly to a more personal place. I’ll talk about what I’m playing, watching, thinking. I won’t be upset if you don’t visit, or comment or link to me (except when Spinks doesn’t, cos she has my bond of blood). But bear it in mind.

I don’t have anything that important to say about MMOs and gaming, except what I’m feeling and thinking about it on any given day…

So…

Am back in the UK, and heading home today. Which means sometime soon my schedule will return to normal and I can reconsider blogging again.

Would you like:

• Info about Comic Con, what I did & saw, even if it’s not game-y at all?
• My review and feelings about District 9?
• Just games stuff again, all the time!

A-Wake

It’s been a tough couple of days for me, decision-wise. I knew I’d have to close down Book of Grudges eventually, I can’t keep blogging in two places at once, and my focus isn’t as tightly on WAR as it once was.

I didn’t expect it to coincide with my 6-month sub ending and my chosen server (Burlok) dying a death.

But sometimes you just get to feel a bit fatalistic about things. I’m not going to re-sub until June, I want some time away from it, and to reflect and consider all the changes that will come with a server change, and whether I want to stick with my Rune Priest, or continue with my Magus instead on Karak-Azgal (I hope to move my Rune Priest to K8P!).

There’s a lot of good about WAR. The community is passionate, articulate and friendly (generally). The first tiers are great fun, and the devs listen and respond to feedback (though who wouldn’t love to hear a Mark Jacobs State of the Game address about now). The Land of the Dead sounds like a great upgrade, with more solo-friendly content, better handling of wards (d’oh, this should really have been in a while back since it annoyed so many) and an alternate end-game. There’s a lot of hope at the end of the tunnel.

But I personally need a few weeks away from it all.

As for Book of Grudges, the content under my sole command definitely suffered, and I feel I’m secure enough with posting here that I can make all my WAR commentary here just as easily now and I’m not just giving up on blogging per se. Thanks to everyone that’s been supportive of this new blog, and to Spinks and my friends for putting up with me for so long!

Expect my first Warhammer-related posting soon (it might be messy, but we had an interesting idea down at the pub. Oh boy!)

Next stages

So the next stage of getting back into blogging properly on WAR is to go through all those lovely new blogs (and I’ve peeked at most of them and they are pretty fun), and add them to my feed reader. To stay informed on European things.. well, I’m hoping people give me a little slack as I’m getting my head around it. And try to make some contacts on the various servers – actually, that’s my plan for this weekend, truthfully!

It’s strange, I actually used to work in the field of internet communications consultancy, and wrote papers on community-building, etc. But it was all to do with massive multinationals and activists and bringing the two sides together. And I prefer random blogging, really. But I do feel insane loyalty to the games-blogging community, whatever game – though especially WAR, I guess. I’d say especially LotRO too, but the game doesn’t have a very vocal blogging community.

And sometimes I wonder about that, but then.. how often did I mention LotRO on Book of Grudges? How often before that did I think about talking about it, but didn’t? Yes, I guested on a LotRO podcast but that was because I was morbidly curious to hear how I sounded, and because we were discussing my love of the time – monster play.

Anyway, as I juggle opinion pieces here, and community stuff there, things might get a bit jumbled. Always feel free to prod me in the right direction. All your views mean a LOT to me.