Dawntrail [7.0]: Post may contain potential spoilers.
8 Months
Oh joy. What to do, what to do. I swear its some curse. I feel like I had predicted this a long time ago, but not sure where I said it in this blog. Essentially, I predicted that the main reason that I played FFXIV so consistently was because of this blog. However ever since moving and my computer inevitably dying. I just lost all motivation to play FFXIV. Sky, doesn’t exactly help in getting me to play FFXIV all that much.
Heck in nearly one year playing that game. I managed to spend roughly 900 hours in that game. I enjoy the game a lot, but I don’t feel much desire to do screenshot blogs in the same sense with FFXIV. Mainly due to being a lot harder to get clean screenshots in decent quality. Thats because Steam doesn’t give an option to adjust the quality of their screenshots and normally they ain’t great.
Anyhow, its been roughly 8 months since my last post. During that time I hardly touched FFXIV. Didn’t even progress all that far in the MSQ for Dawntrail. I was just not interested. I do want to do these posts more often, but when you haven’t done them for so long. It begs the question on if I should return.
Its fairly obvious looking about on some of the more recent posts that I was already getting burnt out and tried thinking of potential solutions. The inevitable goal was to hit the 500 mark I believe, but here we are. So the real question is what should I do?
I don’t know.
The one key thing that allowed me to keep going for so long was quite simple. One screenshot a day. Nothing more was needed. I always wanted to add more to it, but knowing that it would just burn me out. Kind’ve what happened to the hydaelyn preservation project. It doesn’t take much to say the least.
So yeah. I have no idea what to do. So many ideas, yet not the energy to to execute them all. For now lets talk about what I have been doing.
Its actually been longer
I gotta interrupt something before diving any further. Firstly, what I said above and a good chunk below has been about 8 months ago (post was initially made on 3/19/25). Crazy in a way. I started making this post 8 months ago with the intents of just bombarding as much as I could into a single post. In reality, that decision just resulted in me never making this post and I kind’ve forgotten about it. Funny to see what I had typed initially and comparing to now.
In truth I have no real idea on what I to add to this post. Not sure how I want to continue with blog at all. My subscription to FFXIV has ended like 6+ months ago at this point and not sure if I will have the desire to reup the subscription along completing dawntrail. Life has gotten in the way of things is one way to put it. Recalling to the past that I was once concerned about having an addiction to FFXIV seems like this blog was the pure motivation for me playing the game so much. Without the blog posts I just simply stopped playing. If anything all it meant that I had little else to keep me playing the game. The few friends I had who played the game weren’t very active at this point which I don’t blame them by any means.
I wonder what I can do to bring the blog back to life. Should be over a year at this point since I actively posted here. Sky is a game that I still actively play at this point and nearly daily as well. Mainly in part of the folks whom I chat to. If it wasn’t for that I probably wouldn’t play the game. There is one little mmo that I had been considering about doing blogs for but not entirely sure if I really want to. Its called Project Gorgon. Don’t recall if I had mentioned it in my blogs before but its quite a fun game for aslong you got people to join along with. Playing completely solo while somewhat viable is just not gonna be fun long term. I’ll talk a bit more about it later down in the post.
Moving on from that. There isn’t much that will get me encouraged to continue this blog any further. Maybe I could talk things beyond games themselves, but I don’t really have a huge interest in other things. I’ve played games throughout my entire life. Whether it was board/card games, to tabletop rpgs or even video games. That is what I had spent the majority of my time along where I made my friends at.
There are only two other hobbies that I have that could be mentioned. Reading and fountain pens. Reading has been quite the ride for me. I’ve enjoyed reading in the past, but I haven’t really gotten into till a few years ago. Nowadays I probably read the equivalent of 10-20 books a year heck probably far more. Sadly I been reading a lot of webnovels and they don’t follow the typical book format. One particular story that I read has chapters in the 10k-20k word count amd there’s 90+ chapters… The guy is a madman considering he just started the story early last year and has already surpassed a million words. There are plenty of others that I read. One in particular is called Mother of Learning that is a phenominal story. If you want an interesting twist on a time loop story. Thats one for you. There’s really only one aspect of the story that I wish they had delved into more, but understandable they hadn’t. After all time was of the essence.
Anyways, the main problem with reading is that I can’t find myself making a blog about it. I like to enjoy reading but it would be too much of a chore for me if I had to sit there and think of something to talk about it. Honestly, thats the main crux of my problem. These posts can’t be complicated or anything fancy. The more demands I make to these posts, the likelier that I wouldn’t make them. I’ve already touched on this subject many times in the past. Originally the idea was simply about posting a screenshot everyday about FFXIV. That was the only requirement to a blogpost. FFXIV worked perfectly because it was an mmo and had a decade of content to work with. Even if I had hit the 500 milestone. There were plenty of things that I could do to keep up the screenshots. Afterall, I hardly dabbled into the world of player housing nor had I tried to get others involved in my little blog.
Anyhow, I should mention the one last other hobby about mine and why that isn’t fruitful to make a blog about. Fountain pens are quite simply an expensive hobby. Yes I can get dozens upon dozens of fountain pens under $50, but thats the problem. It would cost a pretty penny to make a single post. FFXIV was at worst a 12-20 dollar subscription and the server hosting this website isn’t super expensive either. A single $50 dollar fountain pen would cost more than the website and FFXIV combined. So clearly, I couldn’t do a daily blog post about fountain pens. Maybe a weekly or likely a monthly blog post, but I know from personal experience that anything other than daily. I will eventually stop doing it. Thats mainly because I have no incentive or reason to keep these posts going aside from my own motivation.
If I was confident that there were people actively looking at my blogs, then things could be different. In fact it was why I had that network traffic program to try and see if people were looking at my posts without it being directly predatory like using tracker scripts and such. The main problem is that I had no idea that the traffic I saw were really people or not and no idea if people were even browsing the website. I eventually shutdown the program so that it didn’t produced a 500gb txt file. (Not likely but it would’ve just kept growing)
Regardless, fountain pens is simply not an option for me to make blogs about due to their expense. Plus I just like to write with them and not talking about them.
So here we are again. I just don’t see what I can do on the daily to keep me engaged with this blog. The only real candidates is Project Gorgon and Sky: Children of the Light. Those are the two games that I have been actively playing the past few months. There are a tons of other games that I had played over the course of the past 12 months or so, but nothing that I would devote tons of posts towards. There is one candidate that may allow me to bring countless time towards and thats Vintage Story.
Before I delve any further. Lets give old me a chance to talk about my time from about 8 months ago when I was originally talking about my hiatus of 8 months.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
Recently (not so recently now), I finished Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and if anyone knows how it feels like to beat a game. I’m kind’ve at a lost on what to do. Such a good game and man the climax of the story is pretty great as well. Its weird knowing that it took 40+ hours to beat the game but at the same time feels like so much and so little happened at the same time. Wish there was more to the main story, but its still a satisfying conclusion to the story and potential setup for more.
One little tidbit about Kingdom Come Deliverance. It is based on real historical events. So uh… I kind’ve delved a bit into the future of what happens after the events of game. The Hussite wars is interesting. Its sort’ve weird to talk about real history as if its a spoiler. I’ll just refrain talking about it and you are free to delve into it if you like.
I’m gonna toss a bunch of screenshots from the game. Mind you they can be a bit on the spoiler side, but you won’t recognize the screenshots unless you have played through the main story.
The one interesting thing about the game as a whole is the comedy. Its everywhere, but just small enough to not become overbearing. In fact, while listening to one of the voice actors during their auditioning for “Henry”. He mentioned how the developers were looking for something that was more “whimsical” in tone. Sadly I don’t remember the exact phrase/word, but I do know that they weren’t look for something serious and gritty from the actors. I should establish that this game has some very serious and dark moments, but its more like how the actors managed to take those serious tones and give it a more “palatable” presentation.
Still, I enjoy the game for what it is and will probably play again in a more complete fashion in a year or two once the dlc comes out.
Ashes of Creation
This is quite a stellar experience. While the game clearly have its growing pains. I personally enjoyed the experience. The only downside is that I as much as I want to keep playing it. The game is clearly not in a finished state. I mainly want to play with the ship stuff and run caravans, but I’ll give it some more time to be worked on before I really delve back into it. I probably would talk more about it, but my mind is drawing a bit of a blank about what to talk about.
With an addition of 8 months. In truth I haven’t did much about the game. Playing it has been a joy no doubt about it. However, the biggest problem is that nothing was truly permament which is fine, but I have little reason to sit there and dive deep into the game mechanics when it could all change in a heart beat. Another problem is that the guild I particpated in had left a bit of a sour taste. Not directly because of the game but do to the guild leader decisions and actions. Mainly in part it was just he tried really hard to have the guild be ontop when in reality there was for little need to be. Sure having access to end game content is important for when the game eventually releases but we are nowhere at the state where the game will release.
So the game has been sitting on the backburner for me while I occasionally take a peek on whats going on and seeing how its faring. Mind you I haven’t looked at it in the past few months so no idea if anything has changed since.
Dominions 6
So this is a fun little game. Dominions 6 presentation is very simple, but once you start to scrapping the surface of it. You will discover that there is no true bottom in the depths of strategy with the game. About over 100 different nations at various ages and hundreds of spells that could be utilized. You create armies for your pretender to take dominion of the whole world. Either by total conquest or claiming thrones.
As mentioned before. The game on the surface looks plain, but it just takes a tiny bit in grasping the mechanics of the game is when you start to truly experience the “sauce” of the game. One thing is for certain. Its a very niche game and heavily geared towards pvp.
While you can purely fight against AI. Once you understand the mechanics enough, the AI can become predictable. What makes Dominions a far more interesting game is the nuance behind the actions of your enemies and how you prepare against them. As a result. Fighting other players become the norm.
There’s just two key problems. Firstly, there is no true implementation of playing and running a game without relying off of third party tools. While the game does offer some solutions. You are better off organizing games in various discord servers. Secondly, is how long it takes to complete games.
Chances are people play one turn per day. Meaning it can take a month or more till the game comes to an conclusion. There are ways to organize groups to play the game faster, but you are still going to dedicate a significant portion of your day or week playing the game. Personally, I don’t mind playing a turn once a day. The key issue I have is how the games are organized. Its foreign…
Honestly, I won’t deny that I’m just way too anxious to play games like these. The community on the outside appear to be fairly friendly, but I would have to dedicate a fair amount of time to be able to play the game without being curb stomped. Which means I would have to focus on playing only against the AI till I become confident (which is never).
Dominions is just one of those games that are hard for me to get involved with other players. The solution of organizing games is just very different and foreign to me. Plus I don’t want to play games with others knowing that I lack a decent grasp of the game mechanics. I know enough to play the game, but not enough to play any nation effectively that won’t be countered so easily.
As said before, I’m just to anxious to dive into the deep end.
Back to more recent times
So… About Project Gorgon and Vintage Story. Whats the deal with them? Not much honestly.
Project Gorgon
Hopefully lazy loading isn’t gonna make the images a slog to load. Probably should resolve that with the website at some point. Anyhow, Project Gorgon is made my a very small dev team. Its a fantasy mmo that is meant to be rather whimsical in design. One of the core designs is that everything you can do in the game is a skill that can be leveled up. In fact, some skills have synergy levels in that you get a level for one if you reach a certain level for another. Its more impactful towards endgame however.
The screenshot above is a shot of the central and the more “beginner” area of the game called Serbule Keep. Before proceeding forward. I will not deny that the game visuals are not top of the line. They are definetely towards a more old school and possibly dated look, but personally to me it still has a style that I actually quite enjoy.
The only real sad part about the game is that its a very niche and small mmo. The game deserves more attention, but I sort’ve doubt it will reach mainstream popularity. There’s a lot to be said, but I’m not sure if there’s anything that I want to add right now. One thing of note that the above screenshot and the few below were part of a screenshot contest that I participated in for their inevitable full release. Not sure when or if I even won the contest since its been over a darn month that it occured.
Vintage Story
Its an unforgiving survial game in a somewhat post-apocalyptic world. Its similar in design to something like minecraft but it tackles the game in a far different way. Personally, I would give screenshots about it, but I rather just post this than let it continue to sit in limbo for another 8 months. Unlike Project Gorgon or FFXIV. Vintage Story is not an mmo. Its more of a singleplayer experience. Multiplayer does exist in the same capacity that minecraft does, but it doesn’t have that mmo feel most are familiar with.
I am considering on making daily screenshots posts for the game. The main culprit being that I want a reason to play the game again. However, I’m not sure if I can make daily screenshots without atleast investing tons of time in the game each day to make a noteworthy screenshot. Time is just not on my side.
Where to
I wish there was something more concrete that I could talk about. The reality is that I simply haven’t found myself a huge desire to do these blog posts again. The other problem is that there is a real world possibility that this website may be no more in the next couple of months. I would like to keep the server alive and there are other things its being used for that isn’t just myself, but I am in a financial position that doesn’t ensure that this website would last past the year. Then again, in the current real world. Life has proven to be more challenging than any of us would like at this time.
Its kind’ve why I decided to finish this post. In the potential future that it very well may be the last till some unknown future. Another possibility is that this blog will live on somewhere else if such an event were to occur, but I can’t predict the future at this time.
Anyhow, I hope you folks have a good day or night.