Month: August 2021

Zath Gor Bastion was once a border fort of Great Zorisz – a watch point along the great swamps northwest of what is now Shu-Qune. With the collapse of Great Zorisz, the princes of Shu-Qune secured as many of the border forts as they could as their small nation was both threatened by the Wizard-Priests of Khalesh-Sonket and the foul creatures encroaching from the Shüss swamps. Each fort was assigned to one of the Counts of Shu-Qune – both as a show of faith in their support, but also to keep them directly involved in the defense of the Principality.

All of these small forts are based around a primary tower & keep with a small curtain wall and one or more additional towers. Zath Gor Bastion is fairly typical of one of these forts, although in better repair…

Boy do I feel like I’m in a weird place with MMO gaming right now. Call it a summer malaise or what have you, but it’s that mixture of guilt, restlessness, and a hunger for fresh blogging material that keeps turning my mind to MMOs I’m not playing — but kind of feel that I should. Or might. Perhaps. Maybe at some point later this year.

The delay of New World really threw my summer plans into disarray. Now I’ve got over a month before gearing up for that, so I have some extra time that I could be using elsewhere. Not that LOTRO or FFXIV doesn’t offer enough content to fill those hours, but… restlessness. Freshness. I don’t like getting too stale.

In any case, here are six MMOs that I’ve been contemplating as titles that I want to get to sooner or later:

No Man’s Sky

The recent…

Five rusty black monoliths sit on a barren stretch between the sands of the Ghost Dunes. Depending on the vagaries of the winds the bases of these rough black spires are usually hidden in the sand, but sometimes the bare rock outcropping they stand upon is swept free and the entrance to the central structure is visible.

The original purpose of this remnant of the long-dead pretty folk is lost to time – and since their departure from this world the locals have used it as a temple to them, as a tomb, and as a home base for desert raiders and treasure hunters. While the spires of the monoliths are tall and stand above the dunes above, the interior of the structure goes down underground instead of into the spire itself. The central chamber extends through three levels – the…

When I first heard the rumors about a brand new, Nintendo-themed area getting built in Universal Studios Japan, I took the news with a mix of excitement and pessimism. On the one hand, it was just plain cool that Nintendo was now mainstream enough to be featured in the most major theme park aside from Disney World: Universal Studios. On the other, it was supposedly going to be built in Universal Studios Japan, a world away from my home in the US. I was glad it was being built, but I doubted that I’d ever actually have the chance to visit it for myself. That was a few years ago now, and things changed dramatically in the time since those first rumors began to surface. Now, not only am I actually living and working in Japan, but things are finally open enough here that I could realize the dream and…