They had me at Razah! Immediately rolled a Revenant, and will be playing it alongside my new Warrior while I figure out which I like more.

Really excited for the livestream to see more Conduit.

Can’t wait for the livestream to learn more about Paragon. I might be Warrioring through the new expansion…

Having Skritt buddies is tempting me to add Thief to my roster too!

The blog post elaborates on the spec icon at least, the big theme is gambling. Your Skritt pals will steal two random artifacts for you to pick from, and your new utility skill class can be recast while on cooldown, but with a risk of penalties to you.

I do think it’s funny that Thief is getting this, while Mesmer is getting bard troubador, given Mesmer has “chaos sorcery”… which is not wild magic, but space, time, mind and sense magic.

the most important thing was revealed though: I’m gonna get to take some fantastic screenshots of my Sylvari playing a lute.

Think this time was just right place, right time. A lot of retention mechanics are online now, like Wizard’s Vault, and also having a cosmetic set that interested me to keep playing for a while (Astral Ward). Rerelease of LWS1 helped me feel connected to the story as opposed to having no idea who the new Destiny’s Edge 2 crew was.

The sad thing is, after I bounced some time during the very first release of LWS1, I spent the following period constantly thinking “man, I wish this game was more like GW2”. But I’m back now for good, and loving it!

you have to consider the cost in terms of real wages though, inflation only makes production costs higher for producers, for customers money is worth about as much as it has been since the 70’s; though this changes from income quantile to income quantile, and from market to market.

the price increases only reflects confidence Nintendo has in their DRM.

Happened twice, both to my #1 games. Tried Chrono Trigger as a kid and didn’t like it, then came back and played it as a young adult and was like… damn… this is an actual treasure.

In 2015 I tried FFXI due to the XIV crossover event, and I could not get past the eccentric and clunky UI and the pacing of the combat. I tried again a couple of years later and committed to finishing all the stories. It became my new #1 and I think genuinely one of the best games ever made, in terms of revealing and pushing the artistic potential of online games, and games in general. Actual masterpiece and a massive innovation, and unlike Chrono Trigger I think the lessons are going to be a lot harder to learn and replicate.

this is the entire cycle that keeps undergrad computer science going

I get the feeling that “Techdirt” may be a bit biased.

nano for editing config files, emacs if I’m writing code… kwrite or joplin if I need a scratch pad or to share notes between devices respectively