The header doesn’t make a whole lot of sense I’m afraid, but I just couldn’t resist mashing one of my all-time favourite albums and the fact that this here blog is seven years old today into one, albeit completely incomprehensible, title. Sorry ’bout that.
Anyway, seven years. Phew. It still boggles my mind that I kept this going for more than a couple of months, let alone the better part of a decade. Turns out that having a gaming diary of sorts to preserve fond memories and/or keep track of progress made or milestones reached actually means quite a lot to me.
For example, I just realized that my entire time playing Black Desert Online happened during the blog’s existence, and from my first adventures as a noob in 2018 to my latest leaps in terms of gear progression just a couple of weeks ago I’ve put it all on record here, which pleases me greatly.
That being said, I haven’t actually been gaming all that much during recent months. Not because I didn’t feel like it, but because I’ve decided to pick back up another old passion of mine: musicianship.
As I’ve talked about before I started playing the guitar when I was sixteen or so, and switched to the drums six years later. I played those on and off until my mid-thirties, which is when I decided that I’d had enough of sweaty rehearsal rooms, bad, non-paid gigs in front of like 20 people and having to replace sticks, drumheads and cymbals all the time.
I’ve never really quit entirely though. Whenever someone I know came up with the idea to play some live music, like at a birthday or christmas party, I was game to pick up the guitar or sticks again for a couple of weeks.
Back in March I had so much fun at one such event that I finally decided to devote myself to the guitar in earnest once more (the drums are out for the aforementioned reasons as well as a few others), and I pulled the trigger on a specific piece of hardware I’d had my eye on for quite some time already:
This beauty is now accompanied by a Line 6 Helix, which I’ve settled on as my all-in-one solution for amp modeling and effects after thorough research, and I couldn’t be happier with this setup. I’m even fiddling around with sounds and effects all the time, although that was something I absolutely loathed back when I started playing. The Helix sounds really great and makes that kind of tinkering very easy though, and having learned a lot about making stuff sound good during 20+ years in my line of work also helps of course.
So, yeah, lots of fun.
I’m still making time for playing games though, because of course I am. Besides BDO I’m still semi-regularly meeting up with my buddies in Hunt: Showdown, and I’ve also dusted off my Arknights account once again. Man, what an awesome game that is.
Meanwhile I’ve put Helldivers 2 on hold until the next big patch arrives. Like many players I’m hoping that it’ll basically be the mother of all patches, because the game desperately needs it.
I’ve talked about how much fun it can be, however until very recently Arrowhead Studios seem to have been on a crusade against too much fun for whatever reason. At least that’s how a big chunk of the playerbase feels, myself included. Many formerly good weapons were nerfed, new additions to the arsenal have mostly been weak to begin with, enemy spawn timers were severely shortened for squads of less than four players, making solo or duo play on higher difficulties completely unfeasible for all but the best or most stress-resistant of players.
The devs have said that they’ve heard our concerns and are going to course-correct. The spawn changes will be reverted, that much has been officially announced. Whether or not weapons (and also a few stratagems) will see some much needed love remains to be seen. Here’s hoping for the best.
So this is what I’m up to going into year eight of this blog’s existence. Chances are that as long as there are great games to be played I’ll continue to write some stuff every now and then.
If that’s not an enticing advertisement I don’t know what is…
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