Every year for the past.. I’m not even sure how long, I’ve signed up to do Blaugust. Hosted by Belghast, with a number of participants and mentors, this event helps encourage people to blog throughout the month of August, be you a veteran or a newcomer. I love the community it fosters, and it’s always a great way for me to go around collecting awesome sites to read.
2021 has been a great year as far as blogging goes, for me personally. I’ve written every single day since January, and it’s something that I’ve wanted to keep up with for the entire year. I’ve branched off a bit from gaming and included knitting and art along with my adventures, but the basics remain the same. As always, I’m looking forward to this event and I can’t wait to see the new baby blogs that crop up. Maybe some of them will enjoy it so much they’ll stick around, and if not, that’s OK too. I can’t say I’ll have a lot of advice to give, but I am signed up as a mentor, and I’ll do my best to pass on some tips and tricks to blogging. The least I can do after all of the lovely things that the community has done for me.
Yesterday a bunch of news dropped about a lawsuit being taken against Activision / Blizzard for their ‘frat boy’ culture. I doubt very much that it came as a surprise to anyone, but I went and read through the legal papers for it and the details were disgusting.
What was even more disgusting was the response from a spokesperson of Activision that said that the statements presented in the court document were “distorted and in many cases false” and this is where Activision crossed over an invisible line I have as far as supporting their games go.
We all have those invisible lines. Something that tells us “you know what, I just don’t want to support them any more”. Mine, I will admit, is pretty broad. I like video games, I enjoy supporting developers, and it’s ingrained into my entire life. I’ve played World of Warcraft since the start. I’ve weathered some pretty nasty storms with them – this time, I just can’t.
As a woman, my entire life I’ve been told that if I speak up about sexual harassment I was doing it for the attention. On two distinctive occasions I did the right thing and I talked to the right people and no one believed me. They told me I was trying to get attention. So on the third (and arguably biggest) occasion when I was raped in a washroom after work in a shopping mall I told no one except my boyfriend at the time. I did nothing. I never went to the police, what would be the point. I quietly quit my job, and never went back to that mall again.
It’s an enormous deal to me that so many women are standing up and being strong enough to share what has been going on or what has gone on in the past, and they are being told that their statements are distorted and false. There is nothing as heartbreaking for a victim than to be told that they are lying – when they are not. It is one of many reasons that women just don’t feel comfortable to speak up and talk about this sort of thing to begin with. There is almost always some sort of punishment. Whether it’s burning bridges, missed job opportunities, or something else. There is zero incentive for victims to come forward, and so much to lose.
So yes, Activision has crossed a line. I’m not willing to continue to support a company that can’t support female co-workers, or even ex co-workers. I’ve cancelled my account, and I can only hope that the victims are able to get some sort of closure from all of this.
When I stopped playing EverQuest last time, I had reached level 100 with my enchanter, 97 with my bard, and the shadowknight had also reached 100. I was playing with a good friend who has since moved to another server so they could participate in raids – but that’s OK, there’s still lots of folks around. I don’t think heroic adventures were a thing, but they are now, and they’re a neat way of getting experience and obtaining some gear / items if you’re not exactly geared to handle the awesome current content (which of course I am no where near).
Anyway, there’s an NPC in PoK who will send you off to work on some heroic adventures, or you can just bypass that and go read up on one of the guides out there like this one from Almar. You can start heroic adventures at 75 (they scale) but it’s recommended that you hold off for a bit. I’ve only done a handful so far, but they’ve been pretty fun and offer up some good experience and an alternative way of leveling if you’re bored of open world zone grinding. Most of the quests I’ve found tend to be ‘save my village, collect these items’ type, but there’s also the chance for a rare spawn to show up and provide some extra loot (so long as you can kill them).
Hopefully completing these will give some gear alongside the experience so my characters are not so poorly equipped. Next I need to look into upgrading their spells.
Well for once I don’t have a screen shot to show off, but that’s because I’ve been gaming on my laptop, and it’s always awkward to shuffle pictures around. I’ve been meandering through some zones with my team of three (shadowknight, enchanter, shaman) and three mercs – and having an absolute blast. The game is still filled with people playing (even if a lot of them are multiboxing these days) and current-day zones are always full of groups. The shaman has leveled up from their boosted level of 85 to almost 97, and the other two characters are sitting at a respectable 105 – that’s 5 whole levels since I returned. I’m quite pleased! Picking up spells and figuring out where I go next has been a bit difficult as I’m not overly familiar with progression in the older expansions, but there are still guides out there and I’m able to fumble my way around. I’m hoping to catch the shaman up and then maybe gear everyone out a bit more. I’m not sure I’ll be able to take the team all the way to 115 but that is the (eventual) end goal. We’ll just have to see.
I remember some time ago when Tipa was writing about a new challenge of hers that she was making – sticking with a video game (MMO) for a year – and I envied that mind set. It’s one that I have not been able to adhere to for a VERY long time, and one I envy because I feel that in a year you’re able to really set down some roots, make friends, and get somewhere in an MMO. Jumping around from game to game isn’t fun on my wallet or my game play, if I have to be honest.
Then I went and looked back to the games I was playing in 2013 when raptr game tracking was still a thing. The games at the top of that list 8 years ago were STILL the top games I play today. They included WoW, EQ, EQ2, Sims 3 (now it’s Sims 4, but that’s close enough), Wurm, and then a few stragglers like EVE. Almost nothing has changed in which games I play. I still bounce around from game to game, and I rarely ever stick with any of the new ones.
Now I find myself back playing EverQuest, talking to the ‘locals’ and getting to know the names I see in chat. Almost all of them are older, with families like myself. Most have been playing for 15+ years. It’s comfortable. Once again I think to myself ‘is this a game I could stick with for a year?’ – and just like always, I don’t really have an answer. It’s still something I would like to do, if for no other reason than I’ve never been able to complete it before.
A Pixel Nomad 