Stargrace

Lets Play Banished

It started out innocently enough. I was in charge of a village. There were 6 adults, 6 children, and eventually 6 students. They had homes, and a small supply of firewood and food. Enough to last a year but not much beyond that unless I helped. I figured the best thing to do would be to create a hospital first, and then a school so my little village could become educated. Along the way I built a blacksmith, started a mine, created a gatherer hut, fishing docks, and some hunting stations.

Little did I know that I had neglected a few key points, the first one being that you need a woodcutter in order to create firewood. This is different than the typical logs that I had been stockpiling. My first winter everyone was nice and cosy, but when the second winter hit we were in trouble. Citizens were complaining about the bitter wind and a few died off, freezing to death. Then there were the problems with food. Crops were planted late, didn’t have a season to grow, and I had not rounded up any animals into pens to use for food even though the ground was covered with chickens. Citizens started complaining that there was no food, and they slowly, one at a time, died.

Children who were left with no parents had no way to bring food home, so they died. The chain went on and on until I gave up and started the town over, taking my new knowledge with me.

I’m still on my first year but at least I haven’t been hit with a tornado like a friend of mine was. His poor town was practically wiped out before he even started. In a “thank goodness it wasn’t me” moment I laughed. I laughed hard. The game is currently $20 on steam, but you can also buy it directly from the web site and you’ll get two keys that way. One for a DRM free PC version, and the steam key. The game is created by a single developer, and it makes me cringe to think back to the $60 I forked out for SimCity that I played for a month before giving up.

That doesn’t mean everything is perfect, or that the game is a guaranteed win with everyone. While the basic ‘jist’ of it is survival, some people get bored once they’ve accomplished that goal and have a bustling village. If you happen to enjoy building towns just for the sake of building towns I am confident you will have as much fun with Banished as I have been having not to mention the fact that the game is just gorgeous and incredibly detailed.

Early Access is Everywhere

I was taking a look through my steam games this morning, and noticed that a majority of the newer games I own are still in early access. This isn’t a bad thing and I’m glad that indie companies (as well as more established companies) are able to acquire funding for their games through early access BUT I can’t help but wish that these games were completed, or that more of them were completed.

Starbound, Folk Tale, Gnomoria, Castle Story, Craft the World, and The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot are just some of those games.

It got me thinking about the bickering that happened when Landmark offered ‘early access’ to players for buying in (without touching on Kickstarter at this point). Why were people not hating on Ubisoft for their early access sales? Why are so many people upset and pointing fingers directly at SOE when it is a very common thing to see these days? Funding comes through many different ways. It can be a kickstarter project, it can be through pre-order sales, early access sales, etc. Truth of the matter is people have to get paid for their work and there’s no shame in buying into these early access games at all. You’re helping to fund the game, you’re telling the company that you believe in their product enough to spend money. As a ‘reward’ for plopping down that money you’re typically given early access.

The gaming industry is constantly shifting and changing – we saw it shift when more and more games moved away from subscription models and turned free to play, and we’re seeing it again as more games garner their funding from crowdsourcing mechanics. It’s time to stop being angry at companies, businesses, for trying to earn money. It is their job. If you don’t believe in their product you don’t have to pay for it but please don’t hold a grudge against those who do.

WurmOffline

February 19, 2014 by Rolf

Since we do not know how, when or under which circumstances our current hosting company want to bring our servers back online we are working on retrieving the data from those servers and put on the new planned hosting. We have the new hosting prepared but it will take a while to set it up.

The game will not be back online within the next 8 hours but we’ll do our best to keep going until they are. We’ll know more at around 20.00 hrs CET today.

I can’t even imagine what the WurmOnline team must be going through with this. Their servers were taken offline by their host due to a DDOS attack yesterday, and it sounds like the greatest issues are not actually with that attack but with their hosts reaction to the attack (which they’re entitled to, but it still isn’t much fun). The host is responsible for not only WurmOnline but other contracts which were also brought down with the DDOS, which is why this has escalated.

The worst part of this is that they pushed 1.2 live yesterday and it is an amazing update. I had a chance to play it for a while until the DDOS attack and it is one of the best updates the game has ever had. It’s a game changing patch that I think a lot of players are really going to love and it will help to bring in more players, too. It is just a shame that some cruel person had to go and ruin that for everyone else.

Hopefully things get back up and running soon.

Pet Battles, Crafting, and Leveling – Oh My!

The collection grows. I’m now up to 321 unique pets in my world of warcraft collection. I’ve slowly been working through the overland zones hunting down the ones I’m missing. I managed to get my terrible turnip to 25 which means I don’t have to worry about accidently one shotting lower level pets that I’m trying to capture (he has an attack that basically wounds but doesn’t kill) which is always a big fear of mine.

I’ve gone back to working on some factions – The Anglers and Nate. I want his hat. I also managed to get my warlock to level 90 (finally) making her the fourth. My horde deathknight hit level 72, and I did more thinking about which character I want to level to 90 when pre-orders go live for the next expansion. I am thinking a hunter, but I’d really prefer two characters (one horde, one alliance) so if they open up the ability to pay for a level 90 character I’ll probably take advantage of it. I know, many people are of the opinion that paying for a level 90 is a horrible idea but I’ve already done the leveling game so many times now, and what I enjoy is not having to worry about whether or not I am level 90 in order to play the aspects of the game that I enjoy. No matter how ‘easy’ leveling is, 90 is a large number and can be daunting, especially if you already have multiple characters already there. Playing through the same content (or even playing through different content in the hopes of leveling) can be tedious.

I’ve also been spending some time working on my crafting, trying to earn money (though I ended up spending quite a bit on the warlock, she needed to be able to fly in Pandaria zones) – alts are expensive! I did get her most of the 496 gear she needs but she’s missing a trinket, a weapon, a second ring, those types of things. I do still have an 85 druid that I would love to get to 90, but I’m not sure if I want to play the leveling game once again so soon. I’m sure I’ll make a go at it sooner or later.

There’s still so much for me to do in game. I find it surprising and fantastic. Normally I would have stopped playing by now, having run out of content. I think I’ve finally found a great balance of games to play and things to do at a pace that keeps me interested.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Sand, Sand Everywhere..

Wow. Some people have created some truly amazing things in EverQuest Next Landmark so far. Me? I still have an empty plot of land with a few craft machines tossed about. Last night I decided it was time to create the line and paint tools, things I have been saving up to craft for some time. I didn’t want to collect the Elemental Cobalt required for the next tier forge, so I borrowed one from a neighbour and happily made my tools. Afterward I had enough supplies to create a cobalt pick – which of course ended up being slow even with my crafting bracelets on. That’s just the sort of luck I have.

Next will be to watch a few tutorials and try to understand how these new tools work. That, and collect a lot of sand and dirt. I turned most of mine into bags of gems and ore last night, then realized that I wanted to build with these supplies and I should have kept them on hand (and then paint them in a different material later on). Thankfully those supplies are abundant and I shouldn’t have too much issues finding more. Especially since I live smack dab in a giant desert.

The game is slowly getting updates now that some of the major bugs have been squashed (bugs like being unable to build on your claim, voxels vanishing, trees and boulders growing on claims that couldn’t be removed). There has been talk of the combat system, and new materials have been added as of yesterdays update. I’m still not spending a great deal of time in-game because I know it is alpha and thus it will be wiped and then there’s beta where it will also be wiped, but I am enjoying myself quite a bit and I’ve been narrowing down what I would like to eventually build. Whether I’ll manage to pull it off or not has yet to be seen.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!