I think it says something that even after spending almost 100 hours on my first playthrough of Mass Effect: Andromeda, I was still left chomping at the bit for more.

Thus, while it took me months and a couple excellent DLCs to convince to play Inquisition a second time, I started on my second playthrough of Andromeda quite quickly.

At times I regretted doing it so soon, as the game was still quite fresh in my mind. It did feel like a bit of a grind at times.

But more often than not I continued to enjoy myself. Andromeda is a truly special game the likes of which we are rarely privileged to see. I still have trouble fully articulating in rational terms exactly what I love so much about it — most likely it’s a confluence of factors — but regardless it’s a game that clicks for me in a way few others do.

I made it easier on myself by skipping most optional content and focusing almost entirely on the essentials: main story, crew missions, finding Arks, and of course Ryder Family Secrets. It only took me about half as long as the original playthrough.

I tried to make a lot of different choices, which allowed me to examine just much your choices actually matter in Andromeda. It seems to depend on the choice, sometimes unpredictably so.

It does seem to be well and truly impossible to permanently sour your relationship with any particular character. Having been buddies with Jaal the first time, I resolved to do everything in my power to piss him off this time, but while he spent a lot of the game giving me the silent treatment, he nonetheless ended the game by telling me I felt like family. In this context it seemed bizarrely out of the blue.

On the other hand, I did somehow get a totally new (to me) scene with Drack at the end of the game this time. I’m guessing this is because I made more choices he liked?

Also, be prepared for a surprising amount of heartbreak if you don’t convince Avitus to become a Pathfinder.

Overall, I’d say choices in Andromeda are more meaningful than they seemed to be the first time I played, but there’s still definitely room for improvement on that front.

On the subject of choices, I opted to romance Cora this time around. It’s much less of a disappointment than Suvi’s romance, though I have seen better. It’s a lot of flirting and very little actual relationship stuff, which is a bit strange, but on the plus side it does make Cora feel a lot more three-dimensional by allowing her to show a softer side, and I think that’s the best thing an in-game romance arc can accomplish.

I was going to complain that Scott feels rather flat as a character, but then I remembered I felt the same about Sara. I still think I’d prefer her a little, if only because she takes up a lot less screen space. Scott is surprisingly huge, and it was quite a jarring adjustment after playing exclusively female characters in my Mass Effect career to date.

One other thing I want to address is the new game plus mode in Andromeda. It’s fantastic.

The only thing of any significance that doesn’t carry over is AVP, and that hardly makes any difference anyhow. Your inventory, your skill choices, your credits, your strike teams, your Nomad upgrades, your research data… it’s all carried over.

You can continue with the same character, design an entirely new Ryder, or swap to the opposite Ryder twin while keeping the same custom appearances of both. The last is what I did this time, meaning my Sara from the original playthrough was an NPC this time. That felt a little strange at times.

This playthrough saw me hit the gear cap of level eighty. I farmed up a trove of crafting materials and proceeded to craft myself a final set of optimized gear.

Not only did I make all the items I need for my current build, but I constructed weapons and armour to support every build I can ever see myself attempting. On any subsequent playthroughs — and oh, there will be more — I won’t have to bother with crafting, or picking up mineral nodes, or scanning every little thing, or mining with the Nomad, or hunting down those stupid hidden caches, or even looting enemy corpses. I never have to worry about items or resources again. I can simply focus on the story.

I am free from the tyranny of loot.

My only complaint is that it took one and a half playthroughs to get to this point. This is how the game should have been from the start.

I’m baaaack.

Perhaps because my last visit was so short, it feels like it’s been a long time since I played World of Warcraft, though rationally speaking it hasn’t. Regardless, it is as ever easy to get back into the swing of things.

I’m taking a relatively laidback approach to my return so far — after a brief burst of intense grinding the first couple days — so I haven’t yet visited the Tomb of Sargeras or done anything too dramatic.

I did give the new dungeons a run. I enjoyed the Cathedral of Eternal Night. Solid five-man, nothing to complain about. Return to Karazhan I’m mixed on. I know a lot of people loved original Karazhan, but I was always bitter such an iconic location in WoW lore was reduced to a cheesy haunted house. The new five-man version is less of a waste of potential, but only somewhat.

My initial goal was to focus on the Broken Shore story. It’s not the most exciting content they’ve ever done, but it is pretty quick and painless as grinds go, so I was able to unlock flight much quicker than I’d anticipated.

At last.

It’s so much better now. The game feels complete, and I can finally start playing at my own pace. I cannot exaggerate the relief I feel upon being able to take to the skies again.

With this, I can finally embark on my main goal for the expansion and begin leveling alts. The Mustering of Azeroth is at hand.

First up: Monk.

I’m developing a slightly unconventional but effective and so far enjoyable alternative leveling style, since I’ve already done plenty of questing in Legion. Basically I just fly around the Broken Isles collecting herbs, completing bonus objectives, fighting Legion invasions when they come, and doing anything else quick that catches my eye. Also queue for the occasional dungeon while flying around.

The variety keeps things fresh, and so far the levels seem to be going by pretty fast. Invasions in particular are a great source of XP. Their only downside is they don’t seem to award much gear, but I think the solution there could be to stop doing them at 109 and do quests and/or dungeons for the last level. That should get you some fairly up to date gear for when you hit max level.

I’m not sure if this will be my strategy for every alt going forward, but so far it’s working for me.

The one other thing that’s making this exploration-heavy leveling method enjoyable is the newly implemented Inky Black Potion. Easily obtainable from a vendor at the Darkmoon Faire (or the auction house when the Faire isn’t on), it turns the entire game world to night for its duration.

A lot of people are loving the potion because it makes the world much darker than regular night time, but I’m just glad to be able to experience night at all.

Unlike most games, World of Warcraft’s day/night cycle is actually tied to real world time. Between that and the fact that Blizzard is in California, that means I have to stay up well past midnight to actually see the sun set over Azeroth. As a result, I’ve had very little experience of in-game night despite playing for the better part of a decade.

Therefore, playing with the Inky Black Potion almost feels like playing an entirely new game, at least visually. Everything takes on a totally different character. Val’sharah is somewhat pretty in daylight, but it’s breathtaking in total darkness. The soft glow of lanterns, the bright wisps fluttering through dark branches, the shafts of gleaming moonlight… it’s enchanting.

The only problem is it can sometimes make it a bit hard to see what’s happening on screen when playing in the afternoon. Downside of living in an apartment that’s half windows and faces due west.

Of course, the Inky Black Potion is a perfect fit for a Night Elf, which is why I’m mainly using it on my monk so far.

In retrospect, it seems incredibly bizarre my Night Elf has spent the vast majority of her existence in daylight. Just imagine how messed up her Circadian Rhythm must be by now. Poor girl must be exhausted.

Man, the casting changes have really not done this show any favours.

We were bound to get at least one episode devoted mainly to fleshing out the newbies, and “Give It Up, Princess” appears to be it. Unfortunately, its focus is not on Solara, but on Jimmy the Idiot Boy.

It’s a long, dull, irritating slog that mostly goes nowhere. In theory it’s setting up something that could be interesting in the future regarding Ferrous Corporation, but we’ll have to wait for the pay-off on that.

I’m repeating myself, but this new guy is terrible. Absolutely terrible. It feels like he was meant to be the show’s comedy relief, but he’s not funny. At all. Not even close.

I’ve been complaining about the show being too quick to kill off its characters, but can this guy please get spaced sooner rather than later? He is the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to Dark Matter.

I feel bad for the actor. He seems destined to be hated, but it’s not really his fault. The writers just gave him a crap part. He’s probably a very nice guy and totally undeserving of how much I’m dumping on his work.

The one piece of good news is that there’s actually a lot of interesting stuff going on in this episode. You just have to look to the subplots.

We get to see Sally the android stretch her wings again, which is always nice (though that Southern accent needs work). I do get the feeling there might be some consequences to her trying to share the upgrade. Should be interesting to see.

I also enjoyed Ryo’s subplot. Mostly all he’s done this season is shake his fist at the Raza like some toothless Saturday morning cartoon villain, but this time he gets a much meatier story to sink his teeth into, and it shows his true character as a ruler and as a man.

I am increasingly suspecting that someone in his court is conspiring against him. I’m just not sure if it’s Misaki or Teku. Misaki seems the much more likely candidate… but that’s exactly what gives me doubts. She’s too obvious. And Teku is definitely smart enough to plot to bring Ryo down without ever giving a hint that he’s disloyal.

Finally and most intriguingly, we get to see Six again, if only briefly. That gives me hope the show isn’t done with him yet. The ending hints he may be in dire straights, but at least there’s the chance he could once again be a full cast member. I’ll cling to hope for as long as I can.

Now, if only one of those plot threads could have served as the focus of this episode, instead of the dumbass.

Overall rating: 6.5/10

Well, it’s that time of year again. The time when wild rumours, rampant speculation, leaks, and “leaks” about the next World of Warcraft expansion are flying wildly. And boy, we’ve got a doozy to lead things off.

Datamining for 7.3 has revealed a partial armour set labelled “Kul Tiras quest.”

Well then.

Kul Tiras has always been one of the great oversights of WoW. As a pillar of the Alliance, a naval superpower, one of the last surviving human nations, and the homeland of Jaina Proudmoore, it’s something that very much should be in the game but inexplicably isn’t. Honestly, a very strong argument could be made that it should have been the Alliance capitol instead of Stormwind.

And yet it’s nowhere to be found. It’s barely even mentioned. If Kul Tiras is finally making its way into the game, and that now seems almost certain, it’s long overdue.

I had initially assumed we’d be visiting it for a story scenario or something, but it has been pointed out that this “[place name] quest” file name nomenclature has in the past always been used for leveling gear in a new expansion.

This raises the very real possibility that Kul Tiras will be the setting of the next expansion.

Kul Tiras is very significant politically, but not very big geographically, which could make for a very cramped expansion, but Legion has proven that Blizzard is willing to set expansions in smaller locales. And it’s also possible that the expansion might include other islands, such as Zandalar or Tel Abim.

Of course, Kul Tiras indicates an aquatic expansion, and that raises the possibility of Azshara.

Man, I’ve wanted an Azshara/Naga/N’Zoth expansion for so long now. I refuse to get my hopes up again. There have been too many false alarms: The Dark Below, Eye of Azshara…

I also have to wonder if, after all this time, Blizzard could deliver on my expectations for such a thing.

Azshara is, I think, the last great Warcraft villain. We can’t bring Gul’dan back from the dead again. The Lich King’s story is finished. Murozond and Deathwing are defeated. The mid-level Legion leadership has been pretty defanged in WoW, and Sargeras is too powerful for players to ever face directly. Sylvanas is too beloved by the fans to be made a direct antagonist.

There are still the Old Gods and Void Lords, but Azshara has a human (for lack of a better term) face that they lack. For all her godlike power and legendary influence on the Warcraft universe, she’s still ultimately just a person. A profoundly twisted, chillingly selfish person, but a person nonetheless.

Azshara is unique among Warcraft villains, and not just because she’s one of the few prominent female villains in the universe. Most Warcraft villains are literal monsters: mutant dragons who bleed liquid hate, undead monstrosities, grotesque demon lords, eldritch beings from a realm of pure entropy.

Even Gul’dan, arguably her closest analogue, is nakedly monstrous, his appearance hideous and his cruelty clear.

Azshara isn’t like that. Azshara is charming, personable, and charismatic. Her darkness is well hidden. To the untrained eye, she is a beacon of grace and beauty, truly the Light of Lights.

Azshara is a slow poison, a subtle killer. Her people continued to love and worship her even as she burned everything they ever loved. She already shattered the world once, and she’s had ten thousand years to perfect her plan to finish the job.

But can WoW do justice to all that? Historically it’s done a very poor job of making its antagonists into credible threats, with the Lich King and to a much lesser extent Garrosh being the only notable exceptions.

Kul Tiras probably also means more Jaina, and that could also be a problem. Every time I think Blizzard can’t ruin Jaina’s character more, they find a way. I so want to have the old Jaina back, but I think it’s now far too late for that.

So while the news of a Kul Tiras expansion would have once filled me with joy, right now I’m trying to keep my expectations carefully managed. It could be great, but it could also be a terrible disappointment.

I won’t lie, though. If Gamescom/BlizzCon rolls around and they show a trailer for “World of Warcraft: Light of Lights,” I may nerdgasm a bit.

After some rough episodes, this is a return to form for Dark Matter. It’s not perfect, but on the whole, it’s a good ride.

There’s a twist that it would be impossible to discuss this episode without spoiling. The twist comes fairly early on, and I won’t spoil the other twists later in the episode, but if you haven’t seen “One More Card to Play” yet and want to come in totally fresh, you might want to leave now.

Cool? Cool.

The episode begins with Two and Three stirring rebellion aboard a Zairon prison ship, but it soon becomes clear it’s not actually Two and Three. It’s Portia and Marcus, their ruthless selves from the other universe.

Yes, the evil universe is back, and they’re about to cause all kinds of problems for the Raza crew.

As mentioned above, this is a return to the kind of rollicking, thoroughly entertaining adventure that Dark Matter is known for. It’s a fun episode, there’s humour, there’s action, there are some good twists, the ending gives us another cliffhanger, and it’s just a good ride all around.

I have to say, I like having Wexler back. I mean, he’s disgusting, but that’s the point. When it comes to “love to hate them” bad guys, there are few better.

It was also interesting to see Ryo continue to lose it, though once again it was too small a portion of the episode.

And once again, Five and Sally steal the show by being completely awesome in every way.

There are still some issues. The new guy continues to irritate, though he’s not in the spotlight nearly so much as past episodes, so it could be a lot worse.

If the ending is to be believed, I’ve gotten my wish, and the new guy is gone. I’m not going to get my hopes up too high, but if he really is gone — or at least reduced to a background character — that can only help the show.

I’ll miss Solara, but if they must be a package deal, he’s more annoying than she was interesting, so this is still a net gain.

Also, I had hoped the return of the evil universe characters might offer some more insight into Portia and Sally’s history, but I was destined for disappointment on that front.

Still, it’s a pretty solid hour of television all told.

Overall rating: 7/10

Three down, nine to go.

I’ve now completed the monk class story in World of Warcraft. So far, every class story has been a bit inconsistent, to varying degrees, but this is much truer of the monk campaign than the rogue or warlock stories.

The monk story starts well. It’s intense, and it gives a clear and personal reason to hate the Legion right of the gate.

The problem is that after a while it stops being a monk story and becomes simply a brewmaster story. Even as a brewmaster main, this is a bit hard to get behind. Brewmaster is fun to play, but it’s far too silly a concept to carry a full story arc. To put it mildly, I have trouble taking the game seriously when it starts borrowing philosophy from Homer Simpson.

“Brew: The cause of, and solution to, all of Azeroth’s problems.”

This is a problem Blizzard often runs into. I like WoW’s sense of humour, but when the jokes become the meat of the story, they stop being funny pretty fast.

The ending of the base storyline is short and severely underwhelming in terms of both plot and gameplay, but on the upside, the 7.2 continuation provides a much more satisfying conclusion (the same was true for warlocks). The story’s still awfully brew-centric, but there’s some clever gameplay. At one point you imbibe a particularly potent batch of Storm Brew and are able to devastate an entire cohort of demons while moving at super speed (represented by the entire game around you moving in slow motion).

The real charm of the monk campaign is found not in the meat of its story but in the peripheral features. Fu Zan and Sheilun both have excellent acquisition quests and really fascinating lore. Seriously, if you haven’t read the lore book on Sheilun yet, go do that. Just… wow.

The frequent opportunities to revisit Pandaria are also welcome, and in many ways the monk campaign does feel like a good epilogue to Mists of Pandaria, which was one of the best expansions for story, despite whatever other flaws it may have had. After all the damage we did to Pandaria, it feels good to now be standing as one of its protectors.

The monk story also brings back a number of memorable characters from Pandaria. The Monkey King, of course, is always welcome to join me when I go grookin’.

But my favourite part was being able to recruit Taran Zhu. I know Zhu bruised a lot of people’s egos, but I’ve always felt him to be a very compelling and well-written character. After all of his distrust of us, his anger, all that he lost, to have him willing to follow my banner was an incredibly gratifying moment and, to me, the perfect coda to Mists of Pandaria.

I only wish the new characters could have been as compelling. Blizzard seemed to want to add some racial diversity to the monk followers, which is understandable, but the fact they’ve never really bothered to create non-Pandaren monk characters before now meant I got saddled with a bunch of nobodies I don’t care about.

Still better than Li-Li, I guess.

The monk campaign is so all over the map it’s hard to rate. At times, it’s thrilling or profoundly powerful. At others, it’s deeply disappointing. Overall, this won’t go down as my favourite class story, but I can’t say it didn’t have its moments.

I think the radio has been playing the Revivalists too much, because I keep wanting to type “Wish I Could Believe You When I Was Young.”

Anyway.

After hoodwinking us all into thinking Six was gone, this episode is pretty much all Six, all the time. After a ruthless chemical attack by Ferrous, Six is the only survivor, and while he makes it off the planet in one piece, he’s far from out of the woods.

Things start to get weird as he experiences flashbacks to his previous life — before the Raza, before the memory wipe — triggered by exposure to the neurotoxin.

To be honest, I was able to see where this was going pretty early on. I’ll avoid spoiling it, but if you’ve watched enough sci-fi, you probably will, too.

So it’s a very predictable episode, but otherwise it’s not bad. A focus on Six is always welcome, especially after we thought we were losing him, and he gets to turn the tables on the bad guys in some spectacular fashion.

On the downside, there’s little room left for meaningful development of the other cast members, but that’s really only noticeable because Dark Matter usually goes above and beyond to give everyone something to do. One episode where that’s not the case isn’t the end of the world.

My one real complaint is not so much about this episode as it is the rest of the season up until now. If Six was never going anywhere, why fake us out like that? What was the point of that whole tangent? I suppose we’ve now made Ferrous into an even scarier threat than they already were, but did it need to take so much time?

We’re seven episodes in, and it feels like the season is just getting started. It feels overdue for us to get some serious development with the corporate war and the conflict with Ryo.

And I don’t think the next episode will solve that, either. It looks like Sarah’s story is going to take centre stage (bringing back the dead never has a happy ending — a good nerd like Five should know that). And I think that will be interesting, and I’m looking forward to it, but again, when do we return to the main story?

But hey, at least Six is back.

Overall rating: 7/10

For the last couple years, I’ve been having an extended period of unproductivity in my fiction writing. I’ve managed a few short stories, but they’ve been very sporadic, and work on my books has ground to a screeching halt. This is due to some personal issues that are not really appropriate for discussion on a public blog, but the point is not much is getting done.

When I stopped writing, I was a little less than halfway through a new series, which I consider to be my life’s work, having been developing it for the last twenty years. I’m tentatively calling it The Soulcleaver Saga, and it’s set in the universe of The Wounding and Lady of the Dawn, both of which tie into the books.

The issues in my life that derailed my work on it have not abated — if anything they’ve worsened — but I think the time has come to stop making excuses and get back to work regardless. Therefore, I am developing a new schedule to that end.

For the record, I’m not posting this to boast or show off that I’m “hashtag am writing” or whatever. I’ve been at this long enough to know most of my blog readers aren’t interested in my fiction (no judgment; you’re not obligated to). I’m posting this because if I put all this out in a public form, I’ll lose face if I don’t follow through. I’m deliberating shaming myself into working.

My plan is thus:

• I will do seven hours of writing work per week. In theory, one hour per day, but with the flexibility to maybe skip one day and catch up later or something. This idea shamelessly stolen from Ashley at Robo♥beat.
• “Writing work” is defined as actually writing, revising, proofreading, or doing major plotting or world-building (IE coming up with new stuff, not just writing down things I’ve already defined in my mind).
• During this hour, I will not use the Internet except for research or Internet radio. No distractions.
• I may skip days due to illness or other extreme/unusual circumstances, but I will try to keep such instances to a minimum.
• I will prioritize fiction over working on my blog. I don’t think there will be much conflict or that my posting schedule will be much affected, but I’ll mention it just in case.

My goals are:

• To rewrite the first two Soulcleaver books with more depth and detail, among other changes.
• To complete the remaining three Soulcleaver books.
• To rewrite and republish Rage of the Old Gods. It was the first book I wrote, and I believe can now do better in some ways, especially regarding the beginning, which I’ve never been happy with. I may also revisit the later books in the series, but right now I’m pretty content with them, and I’m not sure they need to change.
• To write any good short story concepts that occur to me along the way, especially if they are part of the Soulcleaver universe.

I do not promise to complete those goals in that order, or any order. Only that they will eventually all get done. Once they are completed, I will give myself permission to resume giving up, if desired.

Because I like to procrastinate, this new schedule will begin on the first Monday after this post is published.

I have several reasons for doing this, but one utterly outclasses all others: My father. While it is likely he will be around for many years to come, and I certainly hope he will be, the fact is he’s not going to live forever, and I don’t think I could live with myself if he didn’t see the completion of my life’s work. I want to get it done while there’s still time.

My writing was never meant to be about me anyway. I lost sight of that over the years. True creativity must be unselfish, I think.

For the two of you who are still reading this, I leave you with one of the main characters of the Soulcleaver series, as recreated in Black Desert Online.

I’m coming home, Seesha.

Well, I got my wish. I said I wanted more focus on the main arcs of the season, and here it is. “Hot Chocolate” puts galactic politics and the conflict with Ryo front and centre.

Led by Six, the crew of the Raza attempts to mediate the fractious delegates of various independent worlds, but when one of them turns up dead, suspicion is everywhere. At the same time, the Raza‘s systems begin failing, and soon the forces of Zairon are closing in.

I am running out of ways to say “Dark Matter is really fun and exciting,” but for whatever it’s worth, this episode is fun and exciting.

It has many of the things I love about Dark Matter. It’s got action, reversals, and twists. It’s got Six being the voice of reason when everything else seems to be falling apart. It’s got Five playing the hero. Even Sarah gets to help out; it seems my suspicions of her taking a sinister turn were unfounded (at least for now…).

However, my favourite part of “Hot Chocolate” by far was the fight between Two and Ryo. It may seem shallow to praise a simple fight sequence, but then, it’s not just a simple fight sequence.

Firstly, the choreography and cinematography are fantastic. It’s a beautiful sequence to watch. Two peerless fighters at the top of their game.

And then you factor in what it means within the context of the story, what it means to the characters. Once, they were friends, companions. Now, they’re bitter enemies. You feel Two’s rage and grief at Ryo’s betrayal, her pain at Nyx’s loss and all else Ryo has cost them. The tension between these characters has been building all season, and it just erupts.

It’s magic.

I do have two complaints about this episode. Neither is huge, but they are worth mentioning.

One is that it’s a little disappointing Sally the android doesn’t get to do much here. There was the potential here for her to have a real moment of triumph, but she’s basically just powerless and reliant on the crew to rescue her instead. Her character deserves better.

The other is that, entertaining as it was, this episode doesn’t really advance the plot that much. I really loved getting a meaty confrontation with Ryo finally, but in the end things haven’t changed much. There’s the usual cliff-hanger ending, but it had nothing to do with the rest of the episode.

It was an enjoyable episode, but not an important one.

Overall rating: 7.8/10

I have often said I have far too much franchise loyalty for my own good.

Case in point.

I think my feelings on The Secret World’s reboot as Legends are known by now. Nonetheless, I can’t say with absolute certainty that I’m never going to play it. I have eight characters in SW:TOR now, after all. No one could have predicted that.

And if I ever play it, I’ll want my loot from TSW. And if I do, I’ll need to link my account now, because there’s a time limit on that.

In theory, all you have to do is click a button on the account page, but I’m paranoid, so I wanted to actually log into the game and make sure it all transferred. Which meant actually playing the game, as you don’t get delivered items until you finish the tutorial and make it to Agartha.

I bring you now the tale of that ill-fated excursion.

I agonized greatly over which character to attempt to recreate. This is one of the biggest things turning me off Legends to begin with. I don’t have enough character slots to bring them all over (which is ridiculous; I paid for the damn things), and I hate the idea of having to choose between them.

In the end, for reasons I have trouble articulating even to myself, I picked Dorothy the Templar as my ambassador to this new/old world.

Things didn’t get off to a great start. The new character creation is just awful. TSW already had fairly limited options for a modern MMO, and Legends has greatly reduced your choices. You can no longer customize facial features individually. You can only pick a face and then choose from a variety of randomized variations of it. I can’t imagine how anyone thought this was a good idea.

Also, why is everything blinking all the time?!?! Aaaaaghhh.

To be fair, I like the new hair. It’s mostly the same styles, but they’re now higher rez, and there are more and better colour choices. There’s actually a nice green now. I almost made Kamala instead for that reason, but I couldn’t come up with a face that looked at all like her.

Not that I got Dorothy entirely right, either. She wound up in this weird uncanny valley scenario where she almost looked like the character I know… but not quite.

The new tutorial has gotten some criticism, but I actually kind of like it. It’s atmospheric, and it has some interesting hints about the greater lore. It also feels pretty remedial at times, but a lengthy, hand-holding tutorial is exactly what the old game needed. Really that’s the only big change it needed. I think this will be good for new players.

This is then followed by the original tutorials in Tokyo and the faction HQ (each slightly redone), and I did start to get impatient after a while, but I think that’s mainly because I’m a veteran who knew what to expect. Again, I think a new player would probably find it a lot more palatable.

I didn’t experience enough of the new gameplay to form any clear conclusions. It all seemed as insultingly easy as I’d feared (most enemies died in literally one shot), but that is the tutorial. Maybe things are different once you get out into the world.

A part of me died when I saw the “class selection” section in character creation, and the new skill trees are definitely simplified, but after studying them a bit, they didn’t seem quite as brainless as I’d expected. There are still far more abilities than you can equip at a time, so it seems deck-building is not entirely dead.

I still hate the idea of having to unlock additional weapons beyond your base class, though.

From the looks of it, shotguns are now a true tanking weapon. I really like that. I always wanted to tank with a shotgun as my main weapon.

I’m curious if any other weapons have changed roles, but I didn’t notice any at a glance way to see the roles of various weapons.

The new combat animations don’t seem to have quite as much energy or flair as they used to, at least where firearms are concerned, and there’s now this awkward animation whenever your character stops running. It looks absolutely terrible. I don’t know what they were thinking.

The game world itself doesn’t seem much changed. Temple Hall is still full of cats — I wasn’t sure if that would carry over. I thought maybe they’d run the competition again or just ignore it all.

One thing hasn’t changed: Agartha is still weird as hell.

Eventually, I finished the tutorials and made it to Agartha, at which point my cosmetics unlocked. I didn’t go through it all with a fine-toothed comb, but it does seem the large majority of stuff did carry over, including my Panoptic Core.

Deck uniforms are one thing that didn’t carry over, though, so I was not able to put Dorothy in her traditional Puritan outfit. But I did see some people in Agartha with deck outfits, so they must still be in the game somehow. Bizarrely, they no longer seem to be tied to faction. I saw someone in a Templar uniform that had Illuminati colours. It was very jarring.

Unfortunately, upon entering Agartha I also began to suffer from nearly constant disconnects and crashes that made it unplayable. After nearly an hour of relogging, rebooting, and tinkering with game settings, I was unable to solve the problem. I thought maybe if I could make it out of Agartha things might improve, but I was crashing so much even that proved a bridge too far.

At this point, my already thin patience with the reboot reached its end. I ragequit and uninstalled.

I’m still not going to say I’ll never play Legends, but it’s certainly not something that greatly interests me right now. I still see no good reason why we needed to lose our characters and all our progression, and the fact the game is literally unplayable for me right now isn’t improving matters.

The adventure continues as I work my way through World of Warcraft’s class stories. With three down, demon hunter and paladin are the next ones up.

The demons within:

I was not impressed by the demon hunter class story.

There’s not a lot I can point to be as being especially crumby about it. It’s there, it exists, and it works, but there’s nothing particularly special or memorable about it.

A lot of it boils down to the characters, I think. Being a new class, demon hunters don’t have the luxury of bringing back a lot of well-known faces. Pretty much everyone is new, and a class campaign just isn’t long or in-depth enough to flesh them out. So I just didn’t much care about any of them. Kor’vas is a notable exception, but she didn’t get enough attention. Actually all her best moments are outside the demon hunter campaign, in Azsuna and Harbingers.

And again, it’s just a very by the numbers experience. It works, but it has no flavour.

The one thing that’s interesting about the demon hunter story is that it actually features a story choice with real consequences. This has never happened in World of Warcraft before. Even if you do get choices, they never have consequences. Not until now.

I doubt we’ll ever see WoW start offering regular story choices like SW:TOR, but it is an intriguing precedent to set.

I’m still mixed on how the class plays. Vengeance feels fine, but it doesn’t have a lot of unique character. I’m torn on havoc. It felt very mindless at first, but I’ve had a surprising amount of trouble mastering it, so maybe it’s not really that easy.

It is shockingly squishy. I didn’t think Blizzard still did glass cannon specs like this. In theory I like the idea of more challenge in WoW, but there isn’t really any way to overcome Havoc’s squishiness with good play (save pulling less, I suppose). It’s just a lot of slow healing up between fights.

The fix for this is to take Demonic as your 110 talent. It makes a huge difference, to the point where it feels mandatory for playing solo (and usually nothing is mandatory solo). In general Demonic makes the spec feel much, much better by making demon form a core feature of the spec rather than a cooldown to be carefully saved. It should be baseline, if you ask me.

The other main thing I like about havoc is also a talent, Demonic Appetite. This causes your main finisher to spawn lesser soul fragments, and all soul fragments to give you a sizable amount of fury. The end result is you spend the fight watching the battlefield and trying to gobble up fragments as they spawn, while also monitoring your positioning so you don’t leave melee range.

It forces you to focus on the game world, not just your action bars, and think about your positioning in a way no other class does. It’s a very unique and interesting playstyle. Again, it should be baseline.

Overall, I suppose the spec is growing on me. Finding a good outfit helped, too. I’m getting used to the character.

Ride of the righteous:

I liked the paladin class story a lot better than the demon hunter’s, but it’s still not perfect.

It captures the feeling of the class well. There’s a lot of big speeches, protecting the innocent, and smiting the wicked. Blizzard has always had a real passion for paladins as a concept — Metzen mained a human paladin, as I recall — and it shows.

I also liked the characters. The cast even includes that rarest of unicorns, a Draenei who feels like a real person.

And it needs to be said that the artifact quests are outstanding. I have several classes left to go, but I have a very hard time believing any will top paladins on the artifact front. Every single one is amazing. You should roll a paladin just to do their artifact quests — I’m not kidding.

But as with many of these, it starts to fall apart at the ending.

It’s not even a bad ending. It’s a very fun and epic ending, more so than any of the class stories I’ve yet played. But it’s the ending to the priest story, not the paladin story.

Now, I haven’t done the priest campaign yet, but I have to assume they get roughly the same ending and this is just a case of reused content (if not, it’s even weirder).

And it does make perfect sense for the priest and paladin stories to be intertwined. Defending priests is kind of why paladins exist in the first place, after all. And again, it’s an enjoyable ending. But I can’t help but feel I was robbed of a real paladin story.

Also, what in the actual hell is the deal with the glowing Dreadlord? Like, what? Just… what? That demands an explanation, but none is given.

So it’s another story that’s decent on the whole, but could be better.

What’s really surprised me is how much fun I’m having playing a protection paladin in Legion. Historically, my paladin has been a healer first, and I thought I’d switch to retribution as a main spec in Legion because of Ashbringer, but I’ve ended up playing prot far more than anything else.

I’ve played protection off and on for as long as I’ve had the paladin, but it never quite clicked, and I thought the loss of holy power as a secondary resource would make matters worse (it’s certainly killed holy for me). But I’m having a blast.

I think it’s some combination of the changes made by active mitigation and the talent that lets Hammer of the Righteous have no cooldown. The rotation just flows now.

Aside from that, no other spec I’ve played this expansion feels so much like the archetypical tank. I don’t think I’ve died once while playing prot in Legion, be it in a dungeon or the open world. You’re just indestructible. It doesn’t matter if your damage is a little low while questing because you can just pull half the zone and wear them all down at once. It’s actually better to do that because you get more procs of Avenger’s Shield, which is your main source of damage.

On top of that, you also bring some pretty nice off-healing in a group setting. The other day I had a DPS who kept standing in the fire, and the healer was occupied with keeping everyone else alive, but I was able to keep them up until the end of the fight with Lay on Hands and Hand of the Protector.

Prot still has crap mobility, which I’m not fond of, but the abundance of ranged attacks helps compensate for that. And otherwise it plays wonderfully.

Blizzard’s commitment to “class fantasy” in Legion has been hit and miss, but they nailed it for prot pallies. You want to feel like an unshakeable bastion of righteousness? This is your spec.

On class stories:

That makes five class stories down now, and I’m feeling a bit mixed on this whole endeavour.

Artifact quests remain a delight, but the truth is I’ve yet to be truly impressed by any of the class stories. Most of them have interesting moments, and they’re rarely bad, but none of them have truly blown me away. That makes me wonder if it’s still worth trying to do them all.

On the other hand, it’s also turning out to be a lot less work than I expected. Leveling in Legion was pretty quick to begin with, and with the addition of invasions and heirlooms that scale to 110, it’s a breeze. Once you get to max level, it only takes a couple days of light play (at most) to finish a class story.

So it’s not exactly costing me much to keep finishing them, either. This is nowhere near the grind I thought it would be, and how often do you get to say that where WoW is concerned?

Immediately after watching “Isn’t that a Paradox?”, I turned on the radio. Milky Chance was on, and the first line I heard was, “We don’t talk about it.”

That seems an apt reaction to this episode.

Most sci-fi shows will eventually accumulate at least one or two episodes the fans would sooner pretend never happened. I believe we have come to that point in Dark Matter’s history.

Okay, so, time travel. I’m not in love with the idea of time travel in Dark Matter to begin with. Its strength is its characters, not in its sci-fi elements, and it just doesn’t really seem to fit in with the grittier tone of the universe.

Still, it might be forgivable if it was used to tell an interesting story, but it isn’t. It’s just an excuse for an endless string of fish out of water gags. To be fair, some are pretty funny, but it’s not enough to carry an episode.

We also need to acknowledge the fact that, by all appearances, a blink drive can be used to travel through time as easily as space. This means that from now on either the series is going to solve every problem with the deus ex machina of traveling back in time to fix every mistake, or be constantly raising the question of why the crew isn’t going back in time to fix their mistakes. The latter is preferable, but neither is desirable.

And do not even get me started on the utterly cringey sub-plot about the tweenage boy falling for Five. That was physically painful. I mean, I always say I love seeing Five get screen time, but not like this.

Not like this.

The requisite end of episode teaser for the next episode looks interesting, at least. We’re overdue for a good Sally episode.

Overall rating: 5/10 I was going to give it a four, but I’m adding an extra point because it references Dungeon Siege III, one of the most criminally underrated video games of recent memory.

I want to believe Five is an Anjali main. Two would play Katarina, of course.

New articles:

I’ve been getting lax about linking my recent articles for MMO Bro, so it’s time for a good old-fashioned link dump.

First, I do a two part series looking at what Western MMOs can learn from their Eastern counterparts, and vice versa.

Next, I run down a list of the best level-scaling systems in the MMO genre. I really do love level-scaling, and the more I play games with it, the more I wish it was universal. It opens so many doors.

Finally, I get a bit more serious and talk about the issue of player toxicity in MMOs. Specifically, some practical solutions for how I think communities could be improved.

From the start, I’ve felt very torn about the addition of the necromancer to Diablo III.

On the one hand, I’m a big fan of necromancers in general and Diablo necromancers in particular. I think it’s a fresh take on the archetype to present them not as power-hungry madmen, but spiritual people devoted to maintaining the balance of nature.

But on the other hand, I remain deeply unhappy that Blizzard has abandoned D3’s story unfinished, and it’s hard to get excited about doing all the same stuff over again, even with a new class.

In the end, it is the WoW Token that broke the deadlock. Thanks to it, I was able to get the necromancer effectively free. At that point there was no good reason not to give it a shot.

On the whole, it’s a fun class. It took me a few days to find a build I really like, but that’s to be expected, and experimentation can be enjoyable in its own right.

Much to my own surprise, I wound up favouring a melee-heavy build, with Death Nova and Grim Scythe as my core attacks. I had initially planned to go for as many pets as possible, but it created too much screen clutter, so I ended up using “only” eight pets: the obligatory skeletons and a bone golem. Plus my follower and some demonic suicide bombers summoned by a ring I found.

If I were to describe the necromancer in a word, I’d go with “visceral.” Not only does it feel far more physical than any other spellcaster, it feels more physical than even the melee classes. It’s all reverberating explosions, bone-snapping crunches, and wet splashes of gore.

If you’re a fan of ultra-violence, this is the class for you. It is spectacularly gorey. The necromancer’s finest moments come as the entire screen is filled with erupting blood and the constant rain of body parts. It gave me a lot of warm, fuzzy flashbacks to the Myth franchise.

Good times.

On the downside, the necromancer’s resource, essence, has a “feast/famine” feel that can rather derail the flow of play sometimes. Resources that don’t automatically regenerate just never feel right in Diablo III for some reason.

My biggest complaint with the class, though, is how lifeless (no pun intended) they feel as a person.

It’s been a while, I admit, but I seem to recall the D2 necromancer having a fair bit of personality. I recall him seeming curious and passionate.

The D3 necro is not like that. She speaks in a soulless monotone the vast majority of the time and generally avoids displaying anything resembling warmth, personality, or humanity.

I’m used to playing the cocky, reckless wizard and the wry yet warm crusader. Compared to them, the necromancer is like watching grass grow.

And really, it’s just not that exciting to be playing through all the same stuff yet again.

I love the campaign in Diablo III, and revisiting it reminded me why. Say what you will about Blizzard’s story-telling, but they got it right this time, and I vehemently reject any claims to the contrary. D3’s story is epic, powerful, exciting, and brimming with colourful and three-dimensional characters.

But I’ve already done it so many times. I love chocolate ice cream, but if I had chocolate ice cream for every meal for a year, I’d be begging for something, anything else by the end. I’d also probably end up with diabetes, but that’s neither here nor there.

As it is, my necromancer is currently languishing in the early days of act five, and I’m not sure she’s going to progress much beyond that.

Of course, the necromancer wasn’t the only thing included in patch 2.6. There’s also the new adventure mode zones, Shrouded Moors and Temple of the Firstborn.

I went into these with very low expectations, but if you ignore the adventure mode trappings and just play through them as linear story content, you’ll actually get a solid, atmospheric, and satisfyingly complete story. This is in stark contrast to the deliberately obtuse Greyhollow Island and the utterly pointless Ruins of Sescheron.

The presence of Obvious-Traitor McSinister-Guy is a bit much, but otherwise it’s a good ride. And the environmental art is gorgeous.

Sadly, it only takes about thirty or forty minutes at the outside to finish, and it has no meaningful replay value. In the end, it’s only a reminder of the kind of great story-telling Diablo III could be doing if they actually put any effort in.

In its early days, Dark Matter was focused on slowly revealing the dark histories of the Raza crew before their memory wipe, but by now we’ve learned the backstories for the whole crew, except one.

Until now.

The android I’ve been calling Sally in lieu of another name receives a call for help from Victor, the rebel android she connected with back in season two. At her direction, the Raza crew rescues him and his companions, and he points the way to a mysterious sanctuary for free-willed androids.

Once they arrive, it’s time for a massive info-dump. This is the long awaited origin story for Sally the android, but there’s far more to it than that. We also get some truly startling revelations about Two’s past that show a completely different side of the woman she was before she was Two, and those past events also have some powerful implications for Three in the present.

“Built, not Born” is a fascinating and powerful episode. I’ve said many times that the greatest strength of Dark Matter is its characters, and this episode capitalizes on that resource brilliantly.

I loved seeing the android grapple with the truth of her identity, and how she truly has become an equal and valued member of the crew. It’s genuinely touching.

I’m also glad to see that there was more to the woman Two used to be than violence and self-interest, and I think it throws her whole character into a new light. The person she is now seems like a more natural evolution in this context. She makes sense.

I think it’s very interesting that the androids’ backstory is now tied into what I am increasingly suspecting will be the true meta plot of Dark Matter as a series. That could go interesting places in the future.

I even liked Three’s story! It was great. I’ve never enjoyed a Three plot anywhere near this much.

There isn’t much action this time around, but there’s still plenty of humour even with so much heavy stuff going on, and honestly it’s all so good I don’t even miss the fisticuffs and gunplay.

Season three has so far been what I will generously call inconsistent, but it pleases me to say that Dark Matter’s worst ever episode has been followed by one of its best ever episodes.

You have to look pretty hard to find anything to criticize here, but I will say I find it a bit strange that Two’s blood is suddenly a panacea. Why did no one think of that before now?

Also, this is probably the first time I’ve ever had anything bad to say about Five — and it will probably be the last time, too — but I don’t like how she blew up on Chase. I understand and even admire her feelings, but he was only trying to help, and really, it’s not right for Five to be making decisions for her friend. As he said, it would’ve been up to her. In trying to defend her rights as an autonomous person, Five ended up undermining those very same rights.

But those are some pretty tiny nits to pick in otherwise excellent episode.

Overall rating: 8.9/10

I’m not sure how to feel about us finally having a real name for the android. I wonder if the the crew will actually use it, or stick to calling her the android just as they’ve kept their numerical monikers. And if they don’t use her name, should I keep calling her Sally? I don’t mind the new name, but she does really look like a Sally…

If you’ve been following Superior Realities for a while, you’re probably familiar with The Wounding, a short story I’ve been pimping at every opportunity. It is the first piece of fiction I released from a setting and a story now twenty years in the making.

I have recently updated The Wounding to take into account the most recent revisions to the setting. As my first foray into the modern incarnation of the universe, it was starting to feel a bit dated.

Now, I’ll be honest: If you’ve already read The Wounding, it’s probably not worth reading again. The substance of the story hasn’t changed. I’ve just added a little more detail and polish. This update was mostly for my own satisfaction.

However, if you’ve never read it before, there’s never been a better time to give it a try, and I’m still very eager for any feedback you may have on the setting.

From the time I first began learning about the Mass Effect franchise, I’ve seen a strange degree of overlap between it and another beloved sci-fi gaming franchise, StarCraft. At times I’ve dismissed it as the result of an over-active imagination, but they just keep borrowing from each other.

I thought it’d be interesting to look at the bizarre relationship of these two franchises that increasingly seem to have been separated at birth.

This post will contain spoilers for Mass Effect: Andromeda up to and including the mission Journey to Meridian.

Your StarCraft in my Mass Effect:

It began with my reading a plot synopsis for Mass Effect 1. I couldn’t help but notice that it sounded eerily like the cancelled StarCraft: Ghost game, which was also a third person shooter.

An elite human operative goes on an intergalactic journey to track down and stop a renegade Spectre.

Which game did I just describe?

Of course, once you get into Mass Effect, the two games divulge quite a bit, but by then the connection between StarCraft and Mass Effect had wormed its way into my thoughts, and I kept seeing small similarities here and there.

The Protheans and the Reapers both bear some vague resemblance to the Xel’naga in their role in the story. Turians look like Protoss with hydralisk mouths. Alliance military uniforms look a fair bit like Dominion naval uniforms. Biotics are not unlike the telekinetics wielded by some of the more powerful ghosts.

Your Mass Effect in my StarCraft:

And it’s not a one-way street. StarCraft II clearly took a lot of inspiration from the Mass Effect franchise.

The basic structures of the games are largely the same. Go to the bridge, pick a location via the galaxy map, play a mission, and come back to your ship to chat with the NPCs before embarking once again.

Wings of Liberty even tried to copy a little bit of Mass Effect’s famous choices by giving the player great control over what order to do missions in, and even some choices on how to direct the story.

This was somewhat of a failed experiment, as Blizzard just isn’t that good at non-linearity. Later games abandoned most (though not all) player choice regarding the story and what order to tackle things in, but the general Mass Effecty structure of missions and conversations remained.

And StarCraft was definitely the richer for it. Every entry in the StarCraft II trilogy has featured some great core characters, and in both SC2 and Mass Effect, the conversations between you and your crew are highlights, whether you’re talking spirituality with Thane or being simultaneously fascinated and chilled by Abathur’s utter inhumanity.

Then there’s the Covert Ops DLC to consider. To match Nova’s high-tech feel, the traditionally guitar-heavy soundtrack given to Terrans was shifted more towards synth sounds, and the end result is very reminiscent of a lot of Mass Effect’s music. One song in particular that plays in the main menus sometimes sounds almost exactly like the main theme from the earlier ME games.

Plus, if you squint, the Griffin has a pretty similar silhouette to the Normandy.

A new phase:

And then came Andromeda, and things just got weirder.

I kind of blinked when I saw Andromeda was going to prominently feature a ship called the Hyperion. But that’s small fries.

You can also see a bit of the Zerg in the Kett. Their modus operandi is pretty similar. Go around assimilating other species and stealing their best genes. Abathur and the Archon would have a grand old time talking shop, I’m sure.

This is concept art for a Remnant Vault in Mass Effect: Andromeda.

There’s still a lot of difference, though. The Kett are still humanoids who rely on technology, and they don’t appear to have any hive mind.

But then there’s the Remnant.

Holy hell.

The Protheans and the Reapers each occasionally reminded me of the Xel’naga in some vague ways, but the Remnant — or, more accurately, their creators — are the Xel’naga. Literally, unequivocally, the Xel’naga.

I remember the first gameplay video of Andromeda I saw. It featured a Remnant ruin, and I was like, “Hey, look, it’s a Xel’naga temple.” Finally playing Andromeda only confirmed the uncanny resemblance between the architecture of the Remnant and the Wanderers from Afar.

Still, that’s just visuals.

But then we learned the Remnant’s creators, the Jaardan, were grand intergalactic biologists who seeded life throughout the cosmos for unknown purposes. Then we learned their civilization was centered around a lost artificial world in deep space. Then we learned they were in the business of creating whole sentient races.

This is concept art for a Xel’naga temple in StarCraft II.

In other words, they are the Xel’naga.

And now it’s just too weird. An entire core section of the StarCraft universe has basically been transplanted wholesale into Mass Effect. At this point I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we found out the Kett were created by some renegade Jaardan. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Artanis popped up on the Tempest vidcon.

Not complaining. In a way it’s kind of cool. Damn strange, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any work of fiction copy another in such an uncanny way. I like to joke that the Krogan are basically Klingons, but there’s vastly more difference between Krogan and Klingons than there is between the Jaardan and the Xel’naga.

Tinfoil abounds:

I don’t really know what all this means. I freely grant that at least a good chunk of this is my seeing patterns where there are none. Lots of these similarities can easily be dismissed as random happenstance.

And certainly there are plenty of differences between the franchises, too. Mass Effect tends to present a relatively optimistic vision of humanity’s future, whereas StarCraft embraces a more dystopic view.

But some stuff, especially around the Remnant/Jaardan/Xel’naga, is harder to dismiss. I mean, I don’t imagine Bioware is sitting around consciously stealing ideas from StarCraft, but the fact remains that if they were they could hardly do a better job.

I know there has been at least a little cross-pollination between the two development teams. Brian Kindregan has written for both StarCraft and Mass Effect. But beyond that I don’t really know what’s going on here.

I just know it’s weird, and fascinating.

Do you remember back in season two when I was joking how if you squinted you could sort of see the Dark Matter universe as a far-future version of The Secret World?

It’s a bit less of a joke now. I think Dark Matter just walked into empty.

Spurred by one of Suki/Sally/whatever’s recovered memories, Two leads the Raza crew to a secret Dwarf Star facility. Something about the place sets Three on edge immediately, but Two forges ahead, and in the depths of the facility, the terrible truth of Dwarf Star’s plans is at last revealed.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Rook Dwarf Star wgah’nagl fhtagn.

This is by any measure a strong episode. It’s suspenseful, and it’s exciting, and it provides all the fun of a Dwarf Star episode without any Wil Wheaton (sorry, he’s just not good at playing a villain).

That said, this is definitely one of those episodes that’s most interesting not for what it is, but for what it may lead to. I’ve been developing a growing suspicion for a while now that Dwarf Star is the true Big Bad and meta arc of Dark Matter, and this certainly doesn’t dissuade me from that idea. It’s hard to imagine Zairon or the corporations, bad as they are, ever being as scary as this.

I’ve long enjoyed Dark Matter’s character-driven stories, but I’m not one to ever turn down a good fight to save the universe.

This is also the second episode in a row that has featured Three as an important and even interesting part of the story. Has the cast’s last remaining weak link finally been shored up?

Overall rating: 8.5/10 Dwarf Stars collide with the mind. Please adjust the pressure. I’m not comfortable.

In other news…

It seems Dark Matter might not be our only option for some Filthy TV, though. Massively has just reported on the utterly and completely unexpected news that Johnny Depp wants to make a TV series based on The Secret World.

Yes, really.

Now, I’m not going to get too excited. Lots of ideas get optioned for movies or TV and then never make it out of development hell. I don’t think the odds of this series actually making it to air are very good.

That said, if it does, obviously I’ll watch the hell out of it. It’d be worth watching just to see Jeffrey Combs reprise his role as Hayden Montag. Maybe this could even be a more worthy end to the story than Legends.

The real question is, what actress is crazy enough to do Lilith justice? She’s probably too big a name for them to afford, but I think Charlize Theron could do well.

It is, in the end, surprisingly difficult to quit an MMO for good. If you’ve invested in something heavily, you may find yourself slinking back now and again even if you get tired of it.

Such seems to be the case with me and Guild Wars 2. While I stopped playing regularly a long time ago and almost entirely lost interest in it, I nonetheless felt my curiosity peaked when they decided to offer everyone a free preview of the next expansion, Path of Fire.

My full thoughts on the new expansion can be found over at MMO Bro. Overall, it was better than I expected, but probably not enough to bring me back to the game after so much time.

That said, even after the preview ended, I kept playing sporadically for a few days. I revisited my three main characters — thief, warrior, and mesmer. I wandered the maps, did some events.

Although it’s a fairly useless talent, one skill I’ve discovered I have is that I don’t forget how to play video games. I don’t experience the need to relearn things I’ve heard other people report when returning to an older title, or if I do it’s only to a very minor degree. For the most part I was able to jump right back in as if no time had passed. Of course it probably doesn’t hurt that 90% of my thief’s playstyle is just spamming Death Blossom…

On the whole, it was a good time. I found my way to a zone in Ascalon that I’d never visited before — Iron Marches, I think — and it turned out to be incredibly gorgeous, even by Ascalonian standards. Many a screenshot was taken.

GW2 was always a pretty game. I was also reminded how much I love its armour models. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it probably has the best looking gear of any game I’ve played, MMO or otherwise. I’ll admit a large part of my motivation to revisit the mesmer was just to gawk at how pretty her clothes are.

Had a great time with my warrior, too. Normally I’m not fan of the warrior archetype, but something about GW2 warriors just feels great. They’re a fantastic class. I also love the voice-overs for human males — very charming, very charismatic — and the Simpsons fan in me is still laughing at, “Urge to kill rising…”

And then I just stopped logging in.

This is consistent with the other times I’ve returned to GW2 since leaving initially. I play a bit, I enjoy it all, and then I completely lose interest for another year or two.

We often talk about “stickiness” in relation to MMOs. I think GW2 might be the least sticky game I’ve ever played. It’s the opposite of sticky. It’s slippery.

It’s a strange situation. Guild Wars 2 is a very fun game that I have no desire to play.

Next up on my journey through Legion’s class stories is mage, and this was an interesting case.

Long-time blog readers may remember that my mage was my original main. He wasn’t the first character I ever created in World of Warcraft, but he is the first one I committed to and made significant headway into the game with. He was my first character to ever reach max level, alongside a bevy of other firsts, and he received the lion’s share of my attention for the first year or two at least.

But I started falling out of love with the class in Cataclysm, and when Mists of Pandaria launched, I completely abandoned the character.

That was five years ago, and now suddenly I was playing him again. It was a bizarre feeling. I really don’t know what to compare it to.

Bizarre, but not unpleasant, though. I found it an excellent example of what makes MMOs special, and why I keep playing them despite all their many foibles. The persistence and longevity of them is staggering. There’s something strangely comforting to be able to return “home” to a character nearly ten years old after so long away.

Single-player games cannot offer anything like this.

That’s not to say I’m entirely back on the mage train. While there were times, as I fell back into the dance of locking down and kiting mobs, when I felt some of the old joy return, the fact is mage still just doesn’t click for me the way it used to. I’m not sure if it’s because of how the class has changed, or how I have, but the magic just isn’t quite there anymore (no pun intended).

The most fun thing about it was actually my combat ally, Archmage Modera. She has a ranged version of frost nova, helping me keep enemies at a safe distance for even longer, and it even allows my spells to benefit from shatter and all those other juicy frost mage passives. And unlike my nova, it doesn’t even break on damage!

This created a great “tag team” playstyle, and I haven’t felt so much camaraderie for a video game NPC since that time Cora and I charged the same Kett at the same time from opposite directions.

It was not a good day to be that Kett.

But while I didn’t entirely fall back in love with playing a mage, their class story proved to be quite enjoyable, maybe the best yet.

One thing I’ve learned from doing these is that the class campaigns aren’t long enough to tell satisfying, self-contained stories. To work, they need to lean heavily on established lore and characters. The Warcraft universe is so vast now that there are oodles of great characters and potential plot threads that are just gathering dust. Class stories are a good way to fill in the blanks, so to speak.

The mage story works well because that’s exactly what it does.

Interestingly enough, the mage campaign is basically a sequel to the Warcraft comics, focusing on the hunt for the Dreadlord Kathra’natir. Med’an issues aside, I was a big fan of the comics, and I think they’re one of the highlights of modern Warcraft lore, so this pleases me well.

Meryl Felstorm, in particular, could be the poster child for ridiculously awesome yet totally obscure Warcraft characters, so I loved finally getting to meet him in-game. The voice actor they got for him is great, too — exactly how I imagined his voice.

It’s a relief because it doesn’t always work out that way. Valeera’s voice actress is not bad, but her voice just doesn’t suit the character at all, and Thisalee Crow’s new voice has scarred me for life.

As with most class stories, the plot was a little straightforward, and the final quest over a little too quickly, but on the whole the mage campaign tells a very satisfying story.

It did a very good job of utilizing the class’s abilities in interesting ways, too. Among other things, there’s a boss fight where you will be overwhelmed by adds unless you spellsteal them to power them down, and a segment where you evade a small army of demons using invisibility.

My one significant complaint is that if this is meant to be the final throwdown with Kathra’natir, Valeera really should have been there. I realize she’s already in the rogue campaign, but there’s no reason she couldn’t have appeared in both. Of all (living) people, Valeera probably has the best cause to want vengeance against Kathra’natir.

Man, this has been a crazy season. For a while there I really thought Dark Matter was losing its mojo. There were a lot of mediocre episodes, and at least one straight up terrible one, in the middle of the season, and there have been a lot of missed opportunities. I was starting to get pretty discouraged.

But now I’m starting to think they took all the awesome out of the middle of the season so they could cram it into the end. The last three episodes have been incredible, and this is the best one yet — not just of the season, but maybe the whole series.

“My Final Gift to You” brings the ultimate confrontation with Emperor Ryo Ishida, the man who was once Four. I’ve spent the season being disappointed this plot hasn’t got more attention, and this very well could have been too little too late, but they managed to stuff a full season’s worth of emotion and intensity into one episode.

Ryo has abducted Two. To get her back, he demands the Raza crew hand over the blink drive. But Two’s life isn’t his only tool of manipulation. His reclaimed memories also grant him access to the darkest secrets of every member of the crew, and he uses these to masterfully manipulate them.

But the Raza crew aren’t Ryo’s only problem. As the war worsens for Zairon, unrest grows, and intrigue within the court threatens to throw all into chaos.

Oh, yeah, and Suki just happens to have a galaxy-shaking revelation, too.

Man, where to even begin? Everything about this episode was awesome.

I think my favourite part was Ryo’s one-on-one meetings with all of the crew members and how he was pretty much able to play all of them like a fiddle. There’s fantastic performances from every member of the cast here, and some really intriguing revelations that have no doubt sewn plot seeds for many episodes to come.

My one and only complaint is that I don’t like being strung along with Five’s secret. Just tell us who it is already.

I think I enjoy Ryo/Four more as a villain than I did as a protagonist, honestly. This episode really shows just how ruthlessly cunning he is, and his personal connection to the crew adds such a raw emotional intensity to the conflict. “Former friend turned bitter enemy” is hardly a new angle for a story, but rarely is it executed so well.

And we get some awesome sword fights, and we’re treated to another awesome “love to hate her” performance from Ellen Wong as Misaki, and we get to see clearer than ever how much Suki has become an equal member of the crew…

Really, “My Final Gift to You” is just excellent in every way. I hope the season finale can somehow keep up this momentum.

Overall rating: 9.3/10