For years, bookahnerk’s family went to this little Italian shop where the owners had a special recipe for pesto. They always bought their pesto there and sometimes even sent some to us. Now that we’re living in the same city, we could go there on our own and we have done so a few times. Unfortunately, the owners closed the shop now. They couldn’t find anybody who’d be willing to continue and they’ve gotten too old to continue themselves. So I suggested that we should just all get together, experiment and find a good new recipe for ourselves! But what’s pesto without noodles, right? And if we’re already doing pesto ourselves, why not noodles as well? We bought a noodle machine and everything is ready for the family cooking event dinner tomorrow night. But since it’s a new machine, we wanted to see if it’s working properly tonight and did a little test drive with pasta dough. As you can see, it went very well! I can’t wait to … [Read more...] about Cooking experiments: Noodles
Old School Grind Was the Real Participation Trophy
When people talk about modern conveniences in MMOs — like more accessible gear and better quality of life features — inevitably you’ll have some people chime in that it was so much better in the good old days when people had to “work hard” to achieve things in games. The phrase “participation trophy” comes up a lot to describe modern perks. That phrase and the surrounding mentality are what I want to focus on today. I think people have it entirely backwards. I think the old school grind was the real participation trophy. The perception seems to be rooted in the idea that games were harder back in the day, but most of the things people point to when they make that point weren’t actually difficult. They were just inconvenient. Long travel times, low drop rates, unclear quest directions, glacial leveling speed… these are all things that made games more time-consuming, but they generally didn’t require any real skill to overcome. … [Read more...] about Old School Grind Was the Real Participation Trophy
Fallout 76 shows off its upcoming Vault 94 raid
It’s hard to know how to feel about the preview of Fallout 76’s upcoming raid on Vault 94 as a long-time MMO player. The article itself talks in detail about the idea that this area will be instanced, so other players can’t disrupt it, and we imagine most veterans will be torn between feeling faintly patronized and patronizing the article right back. “Aw, bless, you’re providing instanced content now just like a real MMO! That’s so cute.” But hey, why not split the difference? The important thing is that the raid on Vault 94 looks like fun for players, taking a full team of level 50+ players into the site to take on one of three missions within the depths. Successful completion offers various rewards as well as Vault Steel used to craft items, with more rewards coming from taking on higher difficulty levels (you can’t learn armor plans at Novice difficulty, for example). So even if the concept might not feel exceedingly novel for veterans … [Read more...] about Fallout 76 shows off its upcoming Vault 94 raid
Lawful Neutral: The long fall of Project Copernicus’ 38 Studios
There are some MMO stories that are just unbelievable. They are so warped convoluted and confusing that we think there’s no possible way it can be true. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Curt Shilling, the baseball player whose game studio implosion was so notoriously cataclysmic you could see it from space, is in the news again, although not for video games this time – this time, it’s for politics. I’ve had the 38 Studios debacle in my backlog of stories to cover here in Lawful Neutral, and I thought that now was a good time to take a jaunt down memory lane, with a story that started in 2006 and (hopefully) ended earlier in 2019. Let’s recap I’m not going to rehash the full history here; you should check out our recent article with approximately a metric crap ton of references about this whole saga and our Game Archaeologist on Project Copernicus from earlier this year. But here’s the basic run-down: Curt Shilling, a decorated former … [Read more...] about Lawful Neutral: The long fall of Project Copernicus’ 38 Studios
MapleStory Explains Server Mergers With Worlds Unite Academy
MapleStory is merging servers and Nexon wants to make sure that you know exactly what is happening. The existing worlds will be reduced to five in the North American region: Scania, Bera, Aurora, Elysium, and the Reboot server. Maintenance starts late on August 27 and the servers aren’t expected to be back up until some time on August 28. Nexon recommends that you don’t fashion weapons out of cookware and creeping down dark alleys looking for hogs. Instead, you can mow some lawns, build a website, or do some reading. You’ll be limited to fifty characters. If you had purchased character slots that exceed this amount, the cost will be credited to your account. Nexon notes that you have until January 2020 in order to decide which characters are going to be kept, otherwise the game will keep the 50 highest leveled people. More information can be found at the official website. … [Read more...] about MapleStory Explains Server Mergers With Worlds Unite Academy