Oh, I’ve been doing that. This is a hot topic on the big gold-making Discord server, and there are over 10,000 people in there (and that’s just English-speaking players who even know about and opted-in to said Discord server).
As long as it’s a one-time thing I can’t get too annoyed by it.
I just hope it doesn’t turn into a frequent thing, and it’s hard not to be skeptical when the token/battle.net credit system has only become more restricted over the years.
No, Blizzard makes an extra $5 a month on any subscription bought with gold.
This seems intended to create an extra hurdle for people managing a large number of accounts in the hopes of making that kind of operation less profitable.
Atelier Totori. Part of a very chill/cozy series about young girls crafting things with alchemy.
I enjoyed the story. It was a bit more emotional than I was expecting. I like games like this that get deep into the crafting, but the UI/UX was kinda brutal. I’m going to keep trying more recent games in this series, hoping to find one I liked as much as this one, just more friendly to tinker with.
The space elements were a big part of the marketing. I knew better than to expect atmospheric flight or anything but simple space combat, but intra-system travel being only done in menus and the space sections being put in small lightboxes with planet renderings was rather shocking. That’s 20th-century stuff. It’s especially bizarre given how much of the Bethesda magic has leaned on roads in the past, and there aren’t any roads outside of cities. Even the cargo runs are 100% in menus, without talking to a single person.
Starfield only getting one nomination–and in a category it has no chance of winning–is not at all what I would have expected going into this year.
I don’t know if that speaks to how nuts this year has been for new releases or to how much Starfield fell short, in light of the fact that its player counts on Steam are starting to fall below Skyrim.
I don’t think I’ve ever really liked the way Metacritic does it. GameRankings was my go-to for years (RIP), but I’ve preferred OpenCritic for review aggregating since they started up.
There’s a lot of churn in video games criticism right now, and this year in particular highlighted some issues I have with how some outlets are doing things with their reviews. Things like rushing to press without finishing games (even just 20 hours in some cases), and omitted technical performance/bug discussion. I was enjoying The Washington Post’s game section but that got shut down. Eurogamer and Gamespot were previous favorites of mine, but they seem to have changed their criticism style and I’m not a fan of what either are doing.
I do have some PC outlets I still like (PC Gamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun for anyone else reading), but I can’t say I have an outstanding favorite otherwise at the moment. I pretty much just browse OpenCritic and pick out reviews at the extreme ends of the score spread and some random ones in the middle at this point.
I try to do the patient gamer thing too, as I’m always happier with games that have been polished (and they are cheaper). The threads in those communities are great for finding games. The Fediverse has one at !patientgamers although it’s still not super active yet.
This update makes a big change in the transmog system: all drops found will now be added to an account’s collection, not just the ones equippable by the current character. A use case for the reputation and achievement changes is that they will save hours on obtaining the Legion druid forms (although they’ve said old reps aren’t coming right away).
We don’t have a lot of specific details yet, but a lot of it appears to be quality-of-life changes. There will be an account-wide reagent bank for professions; just that alone is a massive change. Unified flight paths is a QoL change that will also save people thousands of gold, designating “favorite” characters gets around realm swapping, etc.
I have multiple friends that are over the moon about this announcement. People love their alts.
Well, a bunch more talent just hit the job market with The Escapist melting down, too.
I encourage anyone that hasn’t yet to try any subscription-based journalism for a month just to see how different the writing is when it’s not beholden to advertising and SEO.
“The Big Cheese is the Dark Souls of poses” from the Destructoid review gave me a good chuckle. Unfortunately, The Big Cheese was also the Dark Souls of poses back in Smooth Moves, and it’s not encouraging to hear this game might be just as fiddly.
This November isn’t as stacked for me as last year’s, but I think I’m still going to wait on this one a bit.
I just finished Atelier Totori. Third game in the series I’ve tried, second I’ve finished (after Rorona). I mostly nibbled at this one (did much the same with Rorona, especially early on) but I liked the story and characters a lot more here. I laughed, I cried. The progression system was much more interesting, too. Even with all that, the UI/UX is just plain brutal. I really hope the next game I play in the series is better about this. I’m also quite surprised that I did almost everything with months to spare, considering everything I heard about how strict the time limit is in Totori.
A friend and also just finished our Baldur’s Gate 3 multiplayer campaign (her first run, I had a lot of hours in it before she started). Amazingly I still don’t think I’ve fully gotten the game out of my system yet.
WarioWare: Move It! comes out in a few days and I’ll likely be picking that up right away. Other than that, I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll finally pick up Phantom Liberty.