For the past few months, my interests in gaming have cratered to the point where I’m not sure if I’ll be playing any by the time 2023 ends.
I’m still playing ArcheAge Unchained (but it’s losing players at a steady clip due to the complete incompetence of Kakao Games Europe; I don’t even have the motivation to do an actual write up about all of their recent screwups), but am waiting for them to finally give up the ghost, and announce they need to do server mergers (which always represents the best time to leave since you can have all of your properties auto-demoed and sent full-kit; just in case there is ever the desire to play again and not losing all those designs and mats that went into building them). But it’s clear with how they are handling the publishing, that they are just trying to milk the remaining player base for at least the next year until they can begin hyping ArcheAge 2.
But besides popping in and out of Genshin Impact, that is about it. Lost Ark (which after my initial time on KR, thought it would at least play a filler role) is effectively just a redundant item level grind; the end game turned out way worse than I could ever imagine where it can’t even do that filler role for me. Which is disappointing because there are so many things they got right with QoL, things like shared roster, and currency/material storage. But the end game cycle is mind-numbing (unless you enjoy raiding, honing/refining gear and repeating this cycle over and over). And nothing else has caught my fancy (to where I am just biding time now in a nearly 10 year old game that will likely be shuttered once ArcheAge 2 releases; and I probably won’t be playing that seeing how incompetent Kakao Games Europe is).
Diablo IV? Hard pass. Little has been resolved with Activision-Blizzard (the EU is throwing the monkey wrench into Microsoft’s acquisition since there is a rightful inquiry into anti-trust issues). I want to see the entire Activision-Blizzard leadership removed should the Microsoft acquisition actually go through before I consider patronizing the Blizzard Entertainment subsidiary again (I doubt that will occur let alone, this making it past the EU).
And the shenanigans are already happening well before it even launches; the fiasco with the D4 Collectors Box not including the actual game, is like another insult to this long suffering Diablo franchise customer base. The company continues showing its lack of awareness with this move. And if they are sticking the middle finger at you now, then expect the abuse to continue once the game is actually in service. We saw that with D3 already; fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Blue Protocol? I have no idea (Japanese developed games are normally always misses for me (it’s either something with the game play or the terrible PC user interface designs given most Japanese designers have their roots in console development).
And as for TERA Offline? We’re only coming up on the 6-month mark of the PC version closing. After an initial burst of private server involvement, I could feel the lack of actual meaningful changes telling me to step away so that I could gradually re-involve myself when the itch was actually there. That itch to experience the game again just doesn’t exist yet (so I’ve steered a wide berth from RZ, all the private servers, and my own offline server files).
Basically, I don’t see much in the horizon for the next year, and thus expect my overall posting to this blog to also diminish where I may just end up calling it a day, and leaving it in place for archival purposes.
