Well, that’s a lot of crickets.
I guess I’m better at disappearing than I ever planned to be. I’m still alive and well, but I haven’t launched the Aion client in about a month now. Honestly, I just haven’t felt drawn to spend what little free time I get with Aion instead of with friends. Friends are far more understanding of time commitments than Aion seems to be. Friends don’t have horribly low frame-rates… usually; Aion still gives me crap at the low-end of the graphics settings. And, at the end of the day, I just don’t know how to go about playing a game of monster killing for hours on end by myself – it gets far too boring far too quickly, and the rewards for it are so far away.
So, for the time being, I’m staying away from Aion. If they fix the graphics to not fail on mid-range machines, I might go back. If they change the gameplay to be more quest-oriented than grind oriented, I might go back. If the social structure of Aion becomes less of a battle to avoid bots and assholes, and more of a cooperative, reinforcing environment, I might go back. But with all three of these grievances hanging over the game simultaneously, I really can’t bring myself to play a character past level 20 or so, and I’m not motivated to play those 20-odd levels over again when the plot and pathing are identical every time.
As for insights and guides and such, I don’t want to make any promises, but I will still try to put more of them up here. Chances are that I’ll repurpose this blog in the near future and step away from the Aion-centric angle I set out with, though; guides that are up-and-coming will likely have a very different focus. I understand and appreciate the benefits of blogs centered about a single game, but I don’t know that I can do the community justice at the moment; I’m not enthralled with Aion, and there’s no other single game that really catches my eye at the moment. Rather, I think I’d have more to offer if I were to take a freelance, generic gaming blog approach. The question is: is there an audience that’s as curious about all sorts of games on the market as I am?
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