#Terrible MMO Names

[terrible-mmo-names]

Thank you for respecting my immersion

[draconym]

Sorry what the hell is the homophobic horse game

I assume you just got here, try clicking on the tag to read the other posts about the homophobic horse game. In short, it is a charmingly janky and overly complex horse breeding/racing MMO with a procedurally generated map several orders of magnitude larger than Planet Earth.

Were it not for the game's terrible moderation and hostile development team, I'm sure it would be an underground hit with people who love open world map exploration, horses, and hilariously inconsistent graphics that look like they're from the n64 era. However, the game's arbitrary, vindictive, and even bigoted moderation choices have left it branded (ha) with the name Homophobic Horse Game by a lot of people on tumblr. At least a few of whom are banned for doing things like saying "trains rights" in private chat (the word "trans" is banned by the game's chat filters).

I'm pretty sure the game subsists on a few whales spending thousands of real-world dollars to buy fancy horses from the premium currency shop. I've never paid any money in the game, since you can't buy incredibly fucked up looking horses with real-world money. You have to catch and breed those yourself. So for freeloading weirdos like me, the game is free.

Anyway it's called Horse Isle 3 if you want to play it.

[wc-confessions]

An unsanitary TW is probably needed but it's just for the character name

So when I was 12, I was active on this Warrior Cats roleplay site called the Animal Jam Clans Wiki (a FANDOM site dedicated to WC Roleplay, specifically for roleplay based in Animal Jam, a children's MMO from the 2010s, although they did have forums and Discord-based roleplay groups on the site too) and back then, I really wanted to be popular on that site and have a character that everyone liked and ask to roleplay with, etc, etc. One day, my dad made a (very much stolen and terrible) joke about yellow snow since it was snowing that day, and my pre-teen brain immediately went "Ah! I should make a character named Yellowsnow!" since I thought that having an incredibly stupid character name would get me attention. And it did. It very much did

He became a pretty popular character on the site to the point where even a couple of years after I stopped roleplaying as him, I introduced myself to someone I never met as the person who created Yellowsnow and they knew who I was and who the character was. I also got fanart unprompted a couple of times

Although he began as a joke character, he grew into a more and more serious character that honestly is near and dear to my heart strangely enough? I've changed his name since then, but I don't feel comfortable posting about him nowadays because of his old name. I don't know, it just doesn't feel right people not knowing what his old name was if I post about him since it was pretty gross and all. Either way, hope this was okay to send here (I double-checked the rules but I still wasn't sure), I just wanted to get it off my chest since it's been on my mind for the past couple of months

.

[glacierbash]

Y'know, any time I start to talk about this game, I feel obligated to lead with the funniest fact I have: I absolutely hated Final Fantasy, for myriad reasons both personal and amusing. I hated, for example, the way Elezen were shaped. I hated that Lalafell looked so young. I hated that everybody acted like it was so great, and by sheer contrarian nature I decided I would simply never play this game. And for quite some time, that worked! I'd bombard my partner with whatever media algorithms recommended me involving FFXIV, just to make fun of it. I detested this MMO, without having ever tried it. And yet, deep down, I knew I wanted a community. I wanted to be around people, even if through an online medium. When I worked at the library, my coworker set up a WoW private server that I spent some time fucking around in, but deep down I wanted people. Try as I might, I couldn't deny some part of me wanted to see what the game was all about.

So, I tried it. I spent 30 minutes exactly between opening the character creator to first posting a name that, genuinely, would define more than 2 years of my life: Iverelle Vauvenelle.

I spend about 2 days playing the game, one being chased around by strangers who my partner swore were good people, and one just questing on my own--and it was fine. I got to MSQ level 24, quite literally one quest away from being able to travel to other city states, and I stopped. I played my fair share, I played 5 hours, and I decided the game wasn't for me. I put it down for several months, when I was approached by somebody who I am no longer friends with. He said I should play the game again, keep going just long enough to travel to Gridania, so that I could see one of his alts--and maybe, we could play together! I didn't want to upset him, so I said "fine," and gave it another try.

By the end of the week, I was finishing up ARR, and moving into post patch, and something just... Changed for me. I'm not sure what it was, honestly. It's not like the game magically changed for me then, or if Iverelle had become perhaps my most meaningful character ever, but something shifted, and I found myself enjoying the game. It didn't even make sense to me then when I bought a subscription to the game, but I knew that something here was special. I just... Had to.

Post patch took me about a month, with multiple days spent stressing out over queuing into Good King Mogglemog out of fear and anxiety, because the trial was labeled as hard and my disorder was, frankly, at its worst. But, I managed to do so anyways. The victory was meaningless for most people, but for me? It was beyond words, just how important it was that I did content with other people, especially considering I went through all of ARR solo.

I made it to the end of ARR, to the infamous cutscene, when I realized I was sick with covid. In VC with two of my friends, I said the infamous line: "I think I have a fever." What a way to enter Heavensward, huh? I think it is in no small part due to Covid that Heavensward ended up being my favorite expansion of all time, and why Ysayle Dangoulain ended up being my favorite character of all time. Sickness and quarantine gave me all the time in the world, and being far too sick to be anxious, I sped through the story. One week later, I was done with Heavensward.

And of course, by now, I am finished with Endwalker and awaiting Dawntrail. For 2 years of my life now, I have been playing this game nigh daily. I stay up late playing it, I finish my daily responsibilities as soon as possible to play it, and I find myself enjoying it. I never thought that would happen, truth be told. More importantly than enjoying the game itself, though, is the friends I met.

I have lived a very isolated life. Partially due to my anxiety making me extremely averse to interacting with people, and partially due to how I've been raised, I struggle a lot with people. Autism, anxiety, and having not been properly socialized made me terrible. I longed for new friends, but I hated the effort that went into it. Imagine my surprise when one day, I found myself driving out to meet people who I play this game with, to spend time with them? When I found myself wanting to meet them?

And yet, here I was. I was driving out to meet these people who I play this game with--and more importantly, they wanted to meet me. Even as I think back on that day, I start to tear up. It was one of the most important days of my life. Were it not for this game, for playing it daily, for being dragged into a Free Company and for sitting in calls with people because of this game, I would not have known these people. They are some of the most important people in my life.

I think of the late nights playing Mahjong, or doing PVP, or treasure maps, or just sitting around talking. I think of those nights and then having to wake up early for work, waking up exhausted but so happy. I think of staying up until damn near 5 in the morning talking about whatever it is that comes to mind. I think about stupid inside jokes, and shared experiences, and the stories that I'll tell for years to come.

It's just a game. Final Fantasy XIV is, at the end of the day, just a game--and yet, that game has served as a way for me to grow as a person in ways I've never thought possible. My anxiety has not magically been cured, mind; but, when I'm able to talk to strangers and my heartrate doesn't skyrocket, when I'm able to do things in this game that once terrified me, when I'm able to exist comfortably not just in this game but in the outside world, I realize that it's done more for me than I'll ever be able to say. Yes, it is just a game, but people play a game due to a shared interest, no? And through that shared interest, friendships can blossom. To say that I love my friends, the people I met ultimately because of this game, would be an understatement, and I fear I do not make that clear enough.

Stupid as it is to say, Final Fantasy XIV has changed my life, for the better. Dawntrail is coming in just a few short hours, and though I am a whirlwind of emotions, the predominant one is excitement. I was there for the end of an era, and now I am here for the start of a new one.

So thank you. If you read all the way through this, thank you. If you skimmed just to the end, thank you. Thank you to my friends, especially. I would not be here as I am now were it not for you all.

Here's to a new adventure, friends :^] (Second screenshot featuring: @gailiag, the best viera on hydaelyn)

[datcloudboi]

List of video games turning 10 years old in 2023:

Aliens: Colonial Marines (the godawful FPS from Gearbox)

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Animal Crossing: New Leaf (do people still like New Horizons? I genuinely don't know...)

Antichamber

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (the one where you play as a pirate)

Batman: Arkham Origins (IMO, not bad at all)

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Company of Heroes 2

Disney Infinity

DmC: Devil May Cry (the reboot. PS, c'mon, guys, this game wasn't bad at all)

Don't Starve

Dragon's Crown (developed by Vanillaware, who would go on to make 13 Sentinels, which is one of the best games I've ever played.)

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (the director's cut version of Dragon's Dogma and pretty much the best way to play the game)

Dynasty Warriors 8

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (the relaunch of what is now one of the most successful MMOs of all time)

Fire Emblem: Awakening (in the West)

Fuse

Gears of War: Judgment

God of War: Ascension (the last game in the series before Dad of Boi)

Grand Theft Auto V (old_man.gif)

Killer Instinct (the reboot)

Killer is Dead (a decent hack & slash from Grasshopper Manufacture, the devs behind No More Heroes)

Killzone: Shadow Fall (a launch title for the PlayStation 4)

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (as part of the Year of Luigi™️)

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (as part of the Year of Luigi™️)

Marvel Puzzle Quest

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (don't fuck with THIS senator!)

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (an excellent JRPG from Level-5 that was also animated by Studio Ghibli)

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

Pandora's Tower (one of the last big name games to release on the Wii)

Papers, Please

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time

The PlayStation 4

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (the first Pokémon game on 3DS)

Pokémon X and Y (the first 3D mainline Pokémon games)

Project × Zone (a crossover between Capcom, Sega, and Bandai Namco properties)

Remember Me (the first game developed by Dontnod, who would go on to create Life is Strange)

Rune Factory 4

Ryse: Son of Rome (a launch title for the Xbox One)

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers

Shin Megami Tensei IV

SimCity (the one that was always online for some godforsaken reason)

Slender: The Arrival

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (the only Sly game not made by the original devs)

Splinter Cell: Blacklist (so far, the last Splinter Cell game to release)

The Stanley Parable

Super Mario 3D World

Tales of Xillia (is this one of the good Tales games or no? I thought it was decent.)

Tomb Raider (the reboot)

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (an absolutely terrible spin-off of the TV show centered on Daryl)

The Walking Dead: Season Two (or, at least, the first episode of the series)

The Wolf Among Us (or at least, the first episode of the series)

The Xbox One

Ys: Memories of Celceta

[baratrongirl]

for the fandom positivity ask: 1, 24, and 25! :D

list 3 positive things about your current fandom(s)

Ace Attorney

Incredibly queer-friendly.

There are important ships for lovers of M/M, M/F and F/F.

So much merchandise, both official and fan-made!

Elder Scrolls Online

Large age range of players - I am genuine friends with people from their early 20s to their late 60s, and it doesn't feel weird.

Incredibly welcoming, at least on PC. (I can't answer for the console versions.) Of course, this requires having a good guild, but I have several! (You can be in up to 5 guilds per account per server.)

Probably one of the most queer- and disabled-positive MMOs out there.

24. how has fandom positively impacted your life?

The vast majority of the friends I have now, outside of old friends from university, are people I met through one fandom or another.

I go on holiday to hang out in person with fandom friends. I take my mum to meet my fandom friends! I met a partner through Elder Scrolls Online.

I've written fanfiction and helped others write fic, through beta-reading or random inspiration. I used to help run a weekly podcast which was a ton of fun. I've run a gaming guild with around 500 members for the past ten years (this October). I've interviewed Bethesda and Zenimax staff and been interviewed by Bethesda for an Elder Scrolls Online ten year anniversary special.

I discovered my favourite band when they played at an ESO event!

I honestly don't think I can put a limit on the positive impact that I've had from fandom. But it's involved getting out there - COMMENTING on people's fanworks, REBLOGGING fanworks on Tumblr, GOING to conventions, TALKING on Discord. I have a massive advantage as an extrovert, but I still have social phobia and faceblindness. Now I just tell people that I'm faceblind in advance and tell them to come speak to me! It works so much better! And I ask them to please remind me of their name if I look like I don't remember, because I WILL remember as soon as we get into conversation.

It helps that I'm old enough not to care if some people dislike me. There's always more fish in the sea.

25. a piece of advice for taking care of yourself in fandom spaces

DON'T FIGHT.

There will always be people who have terrible takes on things. People whose headcanons clash with yours, people whose headcanons clash with canon, people who are just plain Wrong On The Internet.

It doesn't matter. Let them do their thing. Block them if they're taking up too much space on your preferred social media.

Fandom is supposed to be FUN and if you're not having FUN, you need to change something. Whether it's blocking/ignoring people who annoy you, getting away from negativity, leaving that Discord server and finding a new one...

[allstartrekgames]

Star Trek Online

Original Release: 2010

Developer: Cryptic Studios

Publisher: Atari, Perfect World, Gearbox

Platform: PC, Xbox One/Series, PlayStation 4/5.

I’ve played a lot of Star Trek Online in the past, so for this playthough I decided to start from scratch on Xbox. The game is still evolving with gameplay changes and new content, so my thought here are based on my original time with the game from a while ago on PC, along with finishing up to the end of the Delta Quadrant on Xbox.

The gameplay for this game is best described as “serviceable”. It’s not terrible, but it also isn’t the most exciting. It gets the job done and is just about entertaining enough to get you to the next part of the game. In space combat, you have to keep an eye on shield arcs and weapon charge while activating powers, while on the ground it plays a bit more like a shooter, but doesn’t have exact aiming (you can also play as a more traditional MMO game on PC).

The main enjoyment I got from the game was the story, having a few dialogue choices (even though they change nothing) and just interreacting with the world. The overall story arc is about a mysterious threat pushing people into war and being discovered before everyone starts banding together to investigate and stop them. Early on, voiced dialogue was rare, but is not much more common, although some missions have sections where the dialogue is just text, which creates an odd mixture of the two. There are lots of references and a lot of characters from the shows crop up, usually voiced by the same actor.

The mission lengths vary a massive amount, and you really have no idea how long a mission will be before starting it. Some just involve talking to one person while others can be a few hours long. Some can be just combat after combat (sometimes massively overstaying its welcome as wave after wave of enemies turn up) while others are more story based with lots of information to reveal, characters to interact with and puzzles to solve – these ones are worth playing the game for.

At certain ranks you get awarded a ship, you can pick a name and registry. I decided to call all mine the USS Saru, adding letters as I got new ships. You only have a choice between a few ships, while the rest you’ll have to grind by collecting dilithium or pay for with their premium currency of “Zen” – there are a lot of different currencies in the game, which kind of goes against Star Trek a lot. By the end of my playthough, I had enough dilithium for one ship.

What is nice about the ships is that you can customise them, choosing different hulls, saucers, pylons and nacelles, as well as some hull designs. Some options are locked behind premium currency, though. I ended up changing all of my ships. I would absolutely love a new game similar to Starship Creator that just let you design ships using all of the options available in Star Trek Online.

There’s plenty of Star Trek Online that I didn’t such, such as the group activities. I do remember doing a few missions in he past, including one where you fly through a massive Voth ships that is so large that it has multiple hangar bays that carry Voth city ships. There’s other kind of repeatable missions to help grind for upgrades, which is something I really don’t enjoy.

I enjoyed my time with Star Trek Online, but at towards the end of the Delta Quadrant missions I felt extremely underpowered (while up until a few missions prior, I felt overpowered) and even buying a new ship didn’t help much. I think I had reached the point of grinding or coughing up money.

You can choose not only different factions in the game (although later missions mostly are the same for all), but different introductions. A major one is the New Romulus faction, who can then join the Federation or Klingons after their starting missions. I tried out the Discovery era missions (you end up forward in time to carry on with the main campaign) and enjoyed it, you get to interact with Lorca. The tutorial mission is just a slightly reworked version of the normal tutorial, but at least you get to meet captain Shran. The ship you use also has one of the nicest bridges in the game (the ship interiors are terrible for the most part). I do appreciate that you essentially get to play a short Discovery game.

I don’t think I will return to Star Trek Online, though, due to the game’s economy and grinding. Once development for the game slows down, I would certainly be very interested in a one-off purchase “Star Trek Offline”.

[dog-m3at]

Hello everyone, today this post exists because of something terrible that is happening in this hellsite….

THE LACK OF LOVE FOR THE WORLD OF TEENY TOYS EXPLORATION!!!!

So today I’m going to correct that, by giving a brief summary of the world of teeny toys, a bit about the player and an invite to experience this series for yourself!

Teeny Toys was an early 2000’s kids mmo a la toontown, with a 3D world you can explore as a teeny wind-up robot toy, which you could customize to your hearts content!

the overworld resembles a house blown to massive proportions, with a living room, kitchen, ???, ??? And ???

The person playing this game is a man named Daniel, a former player of teeny toys back when it was still open, he remembers being an absolutea fan of the game back in its hay day, and jumped at the chance to play it again after teeny toys have reopened their servers after a mysterious shutdown back in 2007

And that’s all I got to say about this wonderful project! Keep in mind it’s a horror series, and it’s just starting out, soo the story isn’t quite developed yet, but what it does have shows a lot of promise! And the series gets slightly unsettling the more you watch it, and what happened in the most recent video was really upsetting for me at least, but I still love the story and all it’s characters, and I can’t wait what it does next!

I’ll probably make another post in the future for more of the spoiler-y parts (tagged ofc) but it kinda saddens me how little love this series gets. But I hope this post piqued your interest enough for you to watch It yourself!

Bye bye for now!

[only-by-the-stars]

so. I have. some thoughts about TotK.

they're not happy ones.

(behind a cut for spoilers and negativity)

to be clear, the gameplay is mostly fun. that's what's kept me going this far. but... I'm not sure anymore if it can keep carrying me. because this is, honest to god, one of the biggest stinkers of a story I've ever seen in a video game. and I DO NOT say that lightly!!! I have seen some SHIT, okay??? time travel and alternate dimension shenanigans that left me unsure of what the fuck the situation was after the ending, a reveal that the universe was one big MMO... those have stuck in my mind for well over a decade for being just that fucking bad.

and this story isn't just as stupid, no. it's as stupid as those, AND it's INCREDIBLY poorly told. like I cannot stress that enough!!! as of this writing, I have found every single glyph on the world map + the bonus tear that you get for seeing all those + the little bonus scene from getting the Master Sword. they're all numbered in more or less chronological order in the menu, 1-18.

so.

why in god's name am I still missing 11, 14, and 16????????

LIKE

AM I JUST GONNA GET THEM AFTER DOING PLOT-MANDATED EVENTS?

this is deeply fucking terrible!!! at least in those other bad stories I got to watch all the nonsense unfold in linear order, AND! AND AND AND!!! I WAS INVOLVED IN IT, IT WASN'T SOMEONE ELSE'S MEMORIES

and also the writing for Zelda herself is just atrocious and embarrassing, like I'm genuinely cringing here. in the flashbacks she does little aside from stand around and talk, her love for history/science only comes up in the intro, and functions as long-winded exposition, and she unfortunately was handed the Idiot Ball on top of it (not figuring out that Ganondorf was the the Basement Mummy till after he transformed? girl... Urbosa even SAID that CALAMITY GANON was said to have been born as a Gerudo man... why are Nintendo's writers determined to make her look stupid like this???). and in the present time, she's apparently good at everything and everyone loves her (even the unhinged flower lady), and she gets a super special gold horse, and it's just... she's barely a character. she's more like the overpowered OC everyone loves that kids just starting to write come up with.

which is fine at that stage! necessary, even! we all start somewhere, and I am NOT shaming anyone for doing that when they're just starting out. goodness knows I produced my share of embarrassing crap as a baby writer.

but this is a main installment of a major franchise by one of the biggest video game companies, made by paid adult professionals. that is. embarrassing.

and... as far as I've seen/heard from others who have seen more cutscenes than I have (again, this is bullshit, why are these apparently key scenes being withheld from me?), there's never an explanation for the Calamity/Calamity Ganon and he doesn't seem to be the same entity as Ganondorf. Zelda also never once considers trying to prevent the Calamity, either, and save all those lives, because Reasons, I guess. and the time travel magically doesn't affect anything but the current crisis???? calling BS on this too. plus, it doesn't help that there's so little flow/build-up/connective tissue between the cutscenes. next to nothing, in fact. it feels like I watched the isolated anime cutscenes of an older RPG whose story was told mainly through scenes in the game engine, and tried to understand the plot from there.

except that for this game, that's all I get.

also they managed to make the Silent Princess metaphor even more ham-fisted than in BOTW, which is quite the achievement. good lord. the way my eyes rolled seeing that, the incredulous laughter I burst into... sheesh.

at this point I just. don't know if I should try and power through and rush to the ending, take a break, or just drop it entirely. either way, it would never get a replay the way BOTW did. it's just. bleh.

and don't even get me started on how they fucked up the Poes and Gibdos, way to even disappoint my desire for the return of favorite creepy enemies, I didn't even get my ReDeads. I DIDN'T EVEN GET MY REDEADS

in closing, everyone who complained about the story/time travel in AOC owes me the cost of TotK. that game may have been silly, but at least it respected the Champions and I got to see more characters interacting and everything playing out as it happened and I didn't feel so distant/isolated from it all. ugh. I need to replay THAT game!

[morismentos]

Aaaahhh I love Life and Death’s relationship! Any thoughts on them? Like, their favorite hobbies, things they agreed or disagreed on, etc? (Sorry if these asks are overwhelming, I just really like your headcanons 😭)

i have soo many thoughts, and don’t worry at all i really appreciate these asks :D

here’s a bunch of little things, in no particular order

- i think they would have mostly just enjoyed each others company, despite whatever activity it was. or at the very least they tried doing something at least once (she played his mmos for a bit but it just wasn’t her thing) 

- i think they would at the start of the company trade ideas in their respective talents. it was a nice relief from what they were used to but also contributed to the over load of production

-a tad unrelated but their designs are the perfect opposite of each other. i mean besides color, life is more top heavy (her hair) and death is more bottom heavy(his cloak)

- i think they would have disagree on silly things, small things, stuff that they either weren’t serious about, or easily forgave each other in like 5-10 minutes, business was another story

(addendum for my own personal sanity: while it would be a nice reprieve from business, ‘arguing’ about things that don’t really matter or are not that important i think after a certain point for how stubborn both of them are, it would have gotten under their skin, and along with many other things continued to spiral)

this only started becoming an issue with the joint project. Life is very particular with how things are run, death is as well to an extent. but Life wants things to go Perfectly(it’s ironic) it would bleed into their personal life, death couldn’t handle the stress and little things would set her off

(she wants things to be good, per say, a show of what she can do that she has the talent ect)

(or at the very least this is what i thiiiink went down, i am still workin through the game) 

- they’d go to restaurants as like a friday evening thing, to then fall into the routine of just one or two of their favorites places

- Life, i think, would have always been more adept to the social side of the business, not that he’s terrible at it, it’s just not something he prefers. he has an old account laying around from when she pestered him to make one. (he does use it to check on every1s posts, he does this more then he will admit) i have no clue what his user name would be.  yet (or if he has on for that matter but on the factor of funniness, i would like to think it matches hers not the exact same but like same spacing mori-blank-blaaank)

- i’ve already mentioned the snake thing but i think she would also enjoy mushrooms, and the cultivation of them. her favorite being the violet webcap (it’s one of her favorite department as well, and also one of the largest)

- this one’s more self indulgent but they’re bug enjoyers, death in the more bee side of things, and life on the more arachnid side of things (and bees as in specifically carpenter bees)

[woltourney]

ROUND 1 / SIDE B / POLL 8

Rigel Orionis / Ragdoll (@thegreatyin) v. Syla (@mistdrinkersblade)

Rigel Orionis / Ragdoll:

q. What is your WoL name and pronouns? a. 'Rigel Orionis', but it's really just a name he came up with on the spot- outside of the game universe, he's just referred to as Ragdoll. For the purposes of poll naming, feel free to use either/or. He/they pronouns. He does have an in-universe lore-accurate name, but Rigel is just what he goes by.

q. What is your WoL's species? a. Fluffy humanoid beast? Catperson? He thinks?? Everyone calls him a "milk quote" something and at this point he's too far in to just turn around and ask. (Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te)

q. What is your WoL's class? Or classes? a. Canonically switches them up depending on expansion. Started as a Black Mage, went Red Mage in Heavensward, swapped between Machinist and Dancer in Stormblood, and currently (because I'm not at Endwalker yer) mains both Reaper and Dark Knight in Shadowbringers. I'd imagine his "true" main is probably just Red Mage, with maybe a hint of DRK in there for spice.

q. What data centre/server are you on, if you want people to find you? a. Crystal, Goblin! I'd love to hang with people sometime. There's so many scales left to grind for that damn Rathalos mount.

q. Tell us a bit about your WoL! a. (No major spoilers aside from vague Stormblood references!) Rigel is! A jerk! He's always been a little jerk at heart, and regardless of setting, he always falls back to being a little jerk… on the outside. He's smug, cocky, insults you for fun- the physical embodiment of every terrible gay twink at every gay bar ever. And then sometimes he's alone and starts randomly sobbing. And sometimes he's cuddly and desperate for affection. And sometimes he's intensely devoted to the people he's decided are his family, even to the point of death. And sometimes he's just deeply lonely. There's a lot of suitcases upon suitcases to unpack, here. Once upon a time, in the midst of some guy's ambiguous tragic backstory, he suddenly woke up in the wastelands of Carteneau with no idea where he was or how he got there. After coming to the terms with the fact of being a catboy, they decided to take up odd jobs and favors around the first place they ended up traveling to- some weird obscure city called "Ul'dah". Eventually they ran into some equally-obscure guy called Thancred, and the rest is the plot of the universally acclaimed MMO with an unlimited free trial going up to level 60 including the award winning expansion Heavensward. They are. Mixed. On the whole "being a hero" thing. He really just wanted to go home, but suddenly he's saddled with two teenagers, a job, and a weird blond stalker with a rampant masochism streak. Also the crippling identity and existential crisis, but shhhh, those haven't hit him yet. A universal trait of Rigel is that he likes to sing. I didn't list Bard as one of his canonical jobs, but I can see him unironically picking it up as a genuine stress reducer. He has a thing for music, and art, and history, and reading, and all combinations of the four. That aside, he probably delights in the little mundane things the most, like building a rock collection or taking a relaxing nature walk.

q. Why should YOU win? (Answer IC!) a. "Win? I'm winning? Who??"

q. Anything else you wanna add? a. He's an unrelated OC (named Rigel Alphoris-Orionis, go figure) that I decided to import into FFXIV as a semi-joke when I wasn't sure if I was going to stick with the game. By the end of ARR, I ended up going all-in on the concept of him being the unfortunate protagonist of life, and now in my personal canon he is quite literally just that OC isekaied against his will into Eorzea. Terrible personality and all. And his soul is puppeteering a corpse Ascian-style, but nobody (including him) actually knows that yet.

Syla:

q. What is your WoL name and pronouns? a. Syla (He/Him)

q. What is your WoL's species? a. Rava Viera

q. What is your WoL's class? Or classes? a. Gunbreaker

q. What data centre/server are you on, if you want people to find you? a. Crystal - Balmung

q. Tell us a bit about your WoL! a. A member of Lente's Tears who was kicked out for a premature / failed assassination attempt on Legatus Noah van Gabranth. Fled to Eorzea to seek help in freeing his homeland of Dalmasca, only to get picked up by the Scions like a stray cat. He enjoys being a hero, although it does get a bit tiring after so often to him. But Syla enjoys being a beacon of hope and relief for others.. His free time is spent either working and tinkering on his gunblade and cartridges or training with allies.

q. Why should YOU win? (Answer IC!) a. "Why shouldn't I win? You don't face the things I've seen and walk away a from mere contest of affections empty handed."

[terrible-mmo-names]

"I hope this is just about killing puppies and not something worse" is never a sentence I thought I'd say while playing an MMO. Or in general. Yet here we are.

[fluffybunnybadass]

Pst. When did you do the free trial for XIV? because there hasn't been a time restriction on it in years

A few months ago i redeemed a 30 day trial & key of arr from some humble bundle i bought YEARS AND YEARS AGO. also had to make a new acct too bc apparently steam demo version accounts/keys and their actual client keys don't mix, which sucked but i mean, the "free trial" was terrible and so limited in terms of, well, everything basic you exprct out of an mmo that i wasn't really disappointed about losing that char. (only the char name, but i managed to find a way around lol) that's beside the point

i tried to log in sometime *after* the 30 days were up and it was like "you can't login bc u don't have anymore time", and i think i even googled or maybe reached out via their livechat about this discrepancy too, but apparently you start out paid, you don't get to free play ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[talkinbouttinygames]

FAREWELL. - A Send-Off to Blaseball

I’ve got no way to put this that it’ll make sense to someone who wasn’t there. But I’ll try my best, because at this point, recollections are what’s left. The stories told – about something really, really excellent. I said it in my original coverage, but stories are Blaseball. The names and the stats and data are just the materials the fans steals to collage into a narrative of strife and struggle and the whims of fate and community, and it was like nothing else I’ve seen before. And I doubt I’ll easily see it again.

It makes sense. Blaseball in its entire run has never been sustainable in a healthy way. Despite being about as lightweight as you could make a kind of game, it just wasn’t enough for the fast pace. Things like the sun being swallowed by a black hole or the Grand Unslam are wonderful legend pieces, but they’re also proof of the game’s frailty, and the fact that they were embraced by the fandom is partly a stroke of luck. It’s pretty clear that Blaseball can easily run you dry—I myself was rather checked out during the Expansion Era, which I now regret despite circumstances at the time—I don’t blame the Game Band for deciding continuing the game wasn’t worth it. Maybe if the game had been drafted with sustainability from the start, requiring a subscription like an MMO and on a TV show schedule… but it was made as an off-hand project born of frustration at impotence in times of crisis for the sake of profit, a gift of the internet. The way it took off and grew probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t you could just sign up for.

Of course, “took off” might be a bit of hyperbole. It exceeded the Game Band’s expectations after they passed the game around to some friends, sure. But the fact is that despite the overwhelming love from the fans, Blaseball is really quite terribly small and niche in the grand scheme of the internet. It mostly existed on Twitter, a site whose future existence is a great deal more precarious than it was around a year ago. It’s very liable to become a piece of passing trivia, or obscure nostalgia, supposing no Youtuber video essayist makes a rundown that goes 7-figures viral. Obviously, as a man writing for a ‘zine mostly read by his patient friends, I’ve not nearly that influential, but I want to say: Blaseball will not be forgotten, not by me. I love(d) it and it opened my eyes to a wondrous form of narrative and I’ll be thinking about it for the rest of my life.

It was a game of rotten systems, about how disparate people across groups can work as a greater community in order to rebel against those systems, and yes, through rebellion be punished—sometimes dearly for it—but never negating the existence of the rebellion in the first place. It was a lovely loom for weaving sports narrative and the fandom (a good chunk of whom are not sports fans) provided thread with passionate fervor. It was a wonderful testament to collective play and the act of giving a shit.

I’d advise any Blaseball fan to save and archive (preferably physically somewhere) any and all Blaseball media they’ve got on their socials or elsewhere. Even aside from the now seemingly imminent Twitterpocalypse, the Blaseball wiki exists primarily as a way to dispense the events of Blaseball in a clean, matter-of-fact way. It won’t express the reaction tweets, the fan theories, the narrative as it was on the ground. (And for that matter, the wiki itself still has gaps with what is essentially a skeleton crew of editors…) Blaseball was ephemeral in its life and it’s up to fans to stop it from fading.

I am, we all are love Blaseball.

[feedback]

[sonic-spirit]

OKAY, STAR STABLE, LET’S GOOOO!!!

So a week ago I started playing the MMO Star Stable Online. Which by all accounts is an awful idea, because it’s a clunky, overpriced trainwreck. And I am having so much fun.

Okay, maybe “fun” is a bit strong. I absolutely can’t recommend it. But I’ve got a long history of, “It’s terrible, and I LOVE IT,” with various media, and this is falling firmly into that category.

:readmore:

The premise of Star Stable (or SSO, but I’m gonna be stubborn and call it Star Stable) is that you are a girl (and you can only be a girl) who’s gone out to summer riding camp, because you both really like horses, and because you feel a faint mystical draw. And like, haven’t we all, right? So you’re this girl, you’re assigned a horse that the stable later “sells” to you (your only free horse) because their owners moved far away and don’t really come out to them anymore so it all works out for everyone.

You create your avatar from the super limited stock hairstyles and makeup designs that look like Bratz rejects, pick your horse’s coat color and name, and away you go into a janky World of Warcraft clone of your horse girl dreams! And no joke, apparently the original name of the company that owns Star Stable was “World of Horsecraft”. So yeah, loooots of very WoW game mechanics without some of the quality of life improvements that that game received over the last 10 years.

Cuz yeah, Star Stable Online was initially released in October 2011 (in Sweden, it went worldwide in June 2012). It was also actually a follow-up to the Starshine Legacy, Star Academy, and Star Stable games…but I’m still gonna be stubborn and keep calling it Star Stable.

Like most games targeted at horse girls it’s full of superficialness and jank. But it actually has some interesting story going on and isn’t just about putting bows on vaguely unsettling horse models! It’s a win!

I really like the story so far. There’s some evil industrialists doing shady shit for real estate schemes and environmentally terrible oil drilling, and ALSO the EEEEVIL horse girls with EEEEVIL horses, naturally called the Dark Riders.

And DUDE. So like, I understand that the long-time fanbase is upset about the character re-designs and apparently there were some personality changes too, and that absolutely sucks on characters you know and are attached to. But as someone coming in from the outside?

WHAT a glow-up. Like, new style Sabine has SEVERE dark mommy dom energy. And fuuuuck, those arms, tho. Like, that’s not even usually my thing, and I’m all damn. ^_^ Though I do like pretty boys that can beat me up, so pretty girls that can beat me up is not really a stretch.

And like, LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL CANONICAL LESBIAN! I love her! I love Alex!

So yeah. I do see the charm of the old art style, especially the more of the 2D art I see. But the new 3D models are SOOOO NICE. Just A+

But not all the characters have been updated yet! Or even most!

Ya wanna see Mario next to Ydris?

Because there’s a scene where you ABSOLUTELY do, and it’s hilarious.

^_^ Yeh, Ydris is on his way to Tumblr daddy-itude, if not there already.

Fun fact: The first NPC you meet, Justin Moorland? NOT ONE OF THE UPDATED CHARACTERS YET.

Look at him. Glorious.

So yeah. The player avatars are apparently set to be getting an update soon-ish, like, there’s a closed beta going on, apparently, but yeah. Not there yet.

So here’s my dude:

Yeah. It’s a whole thing.

Sooo, I don’t love that you have to be a girl. Like, there’s just no option, and the game’s writers have stated it’s not gonna change—that the story is about a young girl, and since plenty of games are locked as stories about dudes they don’t see a problem with locking you in on that.

So, if you happen to be a transmasc enby, as a very non-random example, you get to run around a game world with everyone calling you she/her, girl, my darling, that sort of thing. Like, for me it mostly just feels not great, I don’t mind the rapidly over-affectionate endearments people throw out to girls, though I’d rather do that while calling me a boy, but it could def be p triggering to some trans guys. If the game stokes any kind of interest and you’re transfem, though, I could see it really scratching a nice gender place.

But yeah. I don’t see the push-back to games that lock your character in place as a boy being to lock you in place as a girl instead, actually. The real push back is options. Give us options. Let us swim in the wild ocean of gender, adrift in ways only we can imagine. Give us some customization when that’s already the point of the game. We’re not playing as Sally from Stockholm. We’re playing as You, the MC. Hell, I’d honestly be good with the same character model but you can get different (ie flat chest) looks with clothing items and a field to enter in pronouns to be plugged in by the system. Bonus if you let me select endearments I’m okay with. Like, I’m stoked they’re gonna be updated the avatar models, and when that happens I SERIOUSLY hope they include build options, and honestly when they do roll it out I’m gonna have way higher standards than I would about simply making the current models easier for trans and nonbinary players to live with. I’m mostly keeping my requests to NPC interactions, because it’s a lot easier to edit text than character models.

That being said, locking the hair and makeup options behind the “This is the in-game currency you can only get with real, actual money,” is scummy as hell.

Which brings me to the predatory aspects of the game, and why I absolutely shouldn’t be playing it, and why I absolutely will not recommend it, no matter how much I enjoy/end up enjoying it.

Shit costs mad money. And it only gets worse from there.

There’s two ways to play: An $80 lifetime membership, or an $8 per month subscription. There’s subscription bundles, but they still charge you the same $8 per month, just in larger chunks. There is a trial free-play up to level 5, and I got to level 6 on it before running out of anything to do. Because it strangles you down not by kicking you out of the game when you hit the level 5 cap, but by not opening up new parts of the map, and by not generating additional quests in the places you can get to—despite there still being plenty of local quests you’d otherwise have access to, or even by giving you the quests you can’t complete because you’re locked into the first two or so areas. There’s also a one-time-option two-week membership for $4, which is what I’m currently on.

Because although I’ve all but made up my mind…I’m still making up my mind. Money’s tight. Is this worth the $80 to me?

Because I am not giving them a cent after that.

See, the most predatory part of the game is that there’s two currencies: Jorvik shillings, gained through quests and training, and Star Coins, made of real actual dollars (or krona, cuz Sweden). And there’s two ways to get Star Coins. You receive 100 per week in an “allowance” through your paid subscription (this is also true for the lifetime membership), or through buying them.

That’s it. No quest rewards, no ability to transfer Jorvik shillings into Star Coins, nothing. And though some items can be paid for by either Jorvik shillings or Star Coins, many items can’t. And guess where the horses land.

STAR COINS, BAY-BEEEEE! That’s right, you can get more, newer, shiny horses to love and play with. To bond with and ride. To become overly attached to the pixels on the screen cuz roleplay, bay-bee! And all it costs is a mere 900 Star Coins. Sometimes more.

Yeah. And again, you can ONLY use Star Coins to get horses, AND they’ve been releasing new horses every month.

Like, the point of the game’s story is not to collect all the horses…but it’s absolutely where the company wants their players to be looking at and thinking about. They promote and pump out these bright, shiny, beautiful things, and people snatch them up.

It takes 9 weeks to save up for one horse. Nearly 2 months. Unless you buy more Star Coins.

And it’s not just new horses that are locked behind a paywall. Remember how I complained about avatar customization? Well it’s BACK, bay-bee! You can change your avatar’s hair and makeup. You can buy new looks and swap them out. For Star Coins. And only Star Coins. Wanna change your home stable—the place you store the inventory you don’t carry in your bag, and the place you keep your horses, go back to to switch out your character customization, etc? Real Money Coins. Want to expand the number of slots in your stable? I think that’s also Real Money Coins, but I could be misremembering…it’s to their advantage to keep slots costing, but cheaper.

Everything you buy has the Real Money Coin option. Not everything has the shillings option. And again, some of the choicest stuff is behind that meat grinder, and wouldn’t it just be easier to just pay, rather than waiting weeks and weeks?

Yeah. It’s gross.

Holy micro-transactions, Batman! But the hole goes deeper.

So, there’s a mobile app. Well, technically there’s two, cuz the game itself was ported to mobile in 2020. You can do it, but I don’t recommend it. The clunky play is even worse on a touch screen, it’s pretty resource-intensive and suuuper drained my battery, and heated up my phone a significant amount. So yeah, you can. But it’s p bad.

But they also have a mobile app that’s designed to be a mobile app, and not just a 10-year-old game ported over to run on different hardware. It’s Horse Tamagotchi. That’s it. It’s just a Tamagotchi game, but horses.

Changing my thinking from “Horse raising sim” to “Horse Tamagotchi” is how I kept from bouncing right off, by the way.

You get a foal of your choice from the fairly large selection of horse breeds and raise it up to an adult. Once you get it up to level 10, you can use your Real Money Coins to transfer your new baby to the Real Game. As a level one. Of 15.

To be fair, it only takes three days to max level them, and you could probably do it quicker if you really wanted to. But why would you want to unless you already had the coins ready for transfer? Nothing you do after they reach cap is gonna affect them going over. Like, there’s a happiness meter, so theoretically that might transfer, but this is a game that dumps your quest log when you log out, so I doubt it.

Yeah, I didn’t mention that yet. If you have an in-progress quest when you log out or lose connection, no you didn’t, you haven’t accepted it yet, actually. So remember what you were up to, and don’t take more quests than you’ll finish in one session. This is honestly easy to do, most of the quests are short, and often are, running between two places or fetch quests. But it does go against most people’s WoW-taught impulse. I’m just lucky I started the game intending to pick it clean of content, and began with only taking one quest at a time. It’s been more enjoyable than grabbing every quest I encountered ever was, and helped me actually follow the story, unlike some of my WoW playing, but yeah. Not exactly the way you expect to play an MMO.

So back to Horse Tamagotchi. You get your foal, “Play minigames” with it (swipe up-down-left-right, drag and drop, or move your finger slow or fast over it to Do A Thing), level until it gets tired, then stop. There’s a gardening mechanic to get treats you can also sell for coins, and some dress-up and decorate mechanics that mostly cost Real Money. You can have up to 3 stalls for free, after that it’s Real Money. Like I said, there’s a decently wide selection of horse breeds, and some of the coat colors are app exclusives—so the only way to get That Breed in That Color. And different colored horse is what the community is About, soooo. Yeah.

I picked an Appaloosa, a Paso Fino, and a Welsh Pony, cuz there’s pony races only ponies can do, and I want in. My absolute favorite horse breed, cuz I’m basic like that, is the Arabian. And that’s not in the app (or possibly not in the app yet). So I picked my second favorite, a cool gaited breed I was also planning to buy in game eventually, and a pony for those sweet, sweet pony races. And I think all three might have app-exclusive coat colors? So that’s neat.

But that makes 3 more horses I’d like to bring into the main game. That’s 18 weeks of play, plus another 10 to get an Arabian because you bet your ass I’m getting my favorite breed, and Arabs cost 950 Real Monies, cuz they special. So that’s nearly 6 months for all these horses, and for me to either impulsively break down and lay out the money OR(and) get bored and drop the obsession entirely.

Chaos, and all this got kicked off because I learned about Alicia Online, a fully free horse MMO that I can’t play on my computer cuz it’s a Mac, but could totally ask to install on and borrow one of my partners’. I’m very smooth.

And all of this, and I’m over here like, “Damn. I wish I could be a horse trainer.”

[atlasllm]

I know you're blog title is probably exaggerating, but I wanna know exactly what moments and what about them made you cry. Hold nothing back. I'm willing to read a Bible's worth of this stuff. I love hearing about how people emotionally connect to pieces of fiction in a positive way, especially if it's something near and dear to me like Sonic.

nope i am not exaggerating in the slightest lol, i've kept count for the past year

That being said, I don't remember ALL of each moments that made me cry, but I answered a similar question a year ago (back then the count was only 6 times)

I cried because Sonic reminds me of a very obscure comfort character of mine and one of the 2 people I talk to who know about this character confirm that he is exactly like him, which hits deep because they both are optimistic punk guitarists who would definitely fit My Chemical Romance's "Danger Days" album due to their life philosophies

I made a new friend recently One of my friends has been a Sonic fan longer than I've been alive, and since I got into Sonic post-Forces they said that they were glad the first game I can experience be released is Sonic Frontiers because of how massively amazing it is in comparison to how the franchise has been for the past decade

Catching up with a friend since they're working and I'm in college and they allowed me to infodump on Discord call about Sonic Frontiers... I forget WHY exactly it made me cry at the moment but like, god this game was so good and I was only WATCHING gameplay

I think more recent ones I remember have been:

Outright crying because it took me so many hours to finally beat the Master King Koco Trial (I have video of this but I don't think I'm ready to use vids of me crying for internet clout yet LMAO)

Hearing I'm Here (Revisited) for the first time and hearing the instrumental + Kellin Quinn's vocals as Eggman aims the rifle, seeing Sonic grow so powerful he defeats The End in one shot, floats through space unconscious, and lands back down onto the planet okay and finally able to be with his friends again

I'm not 100% sure about these ones, but I guarantee-ish moments I have cried were:

Watching Penny "Snapcube" Parker play Sonic Frontiers (like I've said, this is the first Sonic game I've actively followed coming out + would have just watched let's plays before realizing it looked so fun to play that I wanted it for Christmas) and her playing the entire Chaos Island storyline where Sonic admits Tails is basically his little brother and he'll miss him when he goes out on his own adventure

Sage's sacrifice + hearing Dear Father

That shot in the original ending (Penny played Hard Mode so it was getting me antsy enough to see what the ending would be after the bullet hell section) where it's just Sonic flying through the air like a shooting star; the shot of Sonic being a literal star coupled with the specific part of I'm With You that plays just looked so incredibly beautiful

While once again I'm not sure if I can name specific moments, but Sonic Frontiers is genuinely one of the best experiences I've had. For the longest time I've only played free-to-play MMOs like Wizard101 and Toontown (and also Minecraft Bedrock edition), and while I have yet to catch up to Wizard101, I've never really gotten attatched to triple A games.

Watching Penny play Sonic Frontiers, after ages of hearing that "oh this old Sonic game is the best" "eugh these past few Sonic games are terrible" and seeing a human just genuinely enjoy this fresh new game, especially as the first Sonic game that I as a newer fan was seeing experience in real time, just filled me with so much joy. Seeing each update come out to make it better and better, and seeing Frontiers completely blow itself out of the water and put Sonic on-par with other triple A games instead of being seen as a joke 24/7, it made the experience of Sonic Frontiers being my first real Sonic game so much more sweeter. And heck, it's incredibly accessible! Wizard101 is basically a card game simulator and even I with a keyboard was able to 100% it, play hard mode, and complete the DLC!

I think that in itself, seeing Frontiers as my first Sonic game and seeing how good it is, just makes the entire experience really emotional for me. How so many of my friends who've been fans longer than me are excited I get to experience the same joy they felt when they first became Sonic fans. It's like seeing an old friend that you haven't seen for a long time mixed with the sheer joy of waking up on Christmas morning during your childhood.

I have a lot of feelings about this game ;w;

EDIT: OH OH that part where Sonic grabs the giant sword and slashes Knight in half coupled with the ending of Find Your Flame 100% made me cry too