NEO Scavenger is on sale for $5 so I got it and played it for a few hours last night.

It's a single-player post-apocalypse survival hexcrawl game. It's very detailed and gritty. Clothing, equipment, personal health & wounds, crafting useful things from junk, weather, are all pretty detailed and realism/grit/detail-oriented. Hiding, tracking and terrain are useful. Combat is a bit like GURPS without a map and without visible numbers. I'm liking it quite a bit. It took me a while to find semi-reasonable clothes, I still have nothing good to wear on my right foot, I nearly died of hypothermia, and now I've got a fair camp of useful garbage and a few actual tools, but I should start traveling more and I only have plastic bags and cardboard boxes to carry stuff with, so I probably will leave most of my trash horde behind.

Stardew Valley. It's very relaxing unlike most of the games I usually play. A really great callback to Harvest Moon.

I have been playing a lot of Blood Bowl Chaos Edition. I have Blood Bowl 2, but haven't really played it yet because my computer is potato. It boots up fine, but I'm not sure it'll run well.

On rotation, depending on if any of my friends are online (and if I have a moment to spare after the kids are in bed):

- Overwatch: to unwind
- Vermintide: to unwind + unleash rage
- The Forest: to explore
- Divinity: Original Sin: to RP

With my son (on good days when he's being a nice little guy ):
- Lego Jurassic Park
- Lego Marvel Super Heroes

One of my players has been playing the latest release of Subnautica. Looks really interesting and seems fairly freeform in how you go about survival and exploration.

World of Warcraft remains my go-to game, and yes the graphic requirements did go up with Legion- and man did they fuck it up. Folks running bleeding-edge machines are having issues with framerates due to the poor optimization, especially with a handful of particle effects that are used for a lot of things. (As in "I should get 120 FPS, but when the Hunter uses his Artifact's CD it craters to 40." bad.) For folks playing on potatoes, that often means cratering to 10 FPS or less- and god forbid that a bunch go off in quick succession. Total lockup until resolved and despawned, by which time your guy can be dead.

And it's been this way since the pre-patch, back in September.

My laptop is seven years old, and running on low settings, but it would be fine if not for these issues. Of course the devs deny that this is even an issue, and aren't doing jack shit about it despite this being a routine thread on their tech support forums since the Beta.

Good thing I clean up on the recent Steam Winter Sale (and have Guild Wars 2 on backup), because if this shit continues the good time I'm having with Legion will be soured to the point that I won't bother with whatever comes next.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;939240World of Warcraft remains my go-to game, and yes the graphic requirements did go up with Legion- and man did they fuck it up. Folks running bleeding-edge machines are having issues with framerates due to the poor optimization, especially with a handful of particle effects that are used for a lot of things. (As in "I should get 120 FPS, but when the Hunter uses his Artifact's CD it craters to 40." bad.) For folks playing on potatoes, that often means cratering to 10 FPS or less- and god forbid that a bunch go off in quick succession. Total lockup until resolved and despawned, by which time your guy can be dead.

And it's been this way since the pre-patch, back in September.

My laptop is seven years old, and running on low settings, but it would be fine if not for these issues. Of course the devs deny that this is even an issue, and aren't doing jack shit about it despite this being a routine thread on their tech support forums since the Beta.

It's sort of a relief to read this because this has been happening to me as well and people look at me like I'm from Mars when I say my 6yo desktop rig won't fucking run WoW.

Man, I miss the game.

Quote from: The Butcher;939319It's sort of a relief to read this because this has been happening to me as well and people look at me like I'm from Mars when I say my 6yo desktop rig won't fucking run WoW.

Man, I miss the game.

If you can get by with vicarious alternatives, head over to Twitch and find one of the many WOW streamers there to follow. That's where a lot of the influencers in the WOW community are, including where some influential podcasts get streamed live. You'll also be able to get a good sense on if the game remains something you want to play from watching others play it and comment on it. Oh, and the WOW team does do live Q&A there every few weeks; some of them also stream there.

*ahem*

So, because of this being Diablo's 20th anniversary, I leaped to get D3 on sale for my PC. (Base game is $10. Xpac is $10. Bundle is $20. Buy direct from Blizzard via Battlenet.) The recreation of D1 in the D3 engine is a great way to mark the occasion.

Currently playing:  Elder Scrolls Online; Star Wars the Old Republic; Age of Conan or one of the dozens upon dozens of other PC based games I have.

On the IPad,,exclusively Star Wars Galaxy Heroes.

Awaiting:  Conan Exiles Survival MMO (Jan 31, 2017 early entry).  This will likely take over a good portion of my life, or at least whatever free time I can manage.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;939335If you can get by with vicarious alternatives, head over to Twitch and find one of the many WOW streamers there to follow. That's where a lot of the influencers in the WOW community are, including where some influential podcasts get streamed live. You'll also be able to get a good sense on if the game remains something you want to play from watching others play it and comment on it. Oh, and the WOW team does do live Q&A there every few weeks; some of them also stream there.

*ahem*

So, because of this being Diablo's 20th anniversary, I leaped to get D3 on sale for my PC. (Base game is $10. Xpac is $10. Bundle is $20. Buy direct from Blizzard via Battlenet.) The recreation of D1 in the D3 engine is a great way to mark the occasion.

No offence, but this literally reads like someone describing video game equivalent of methadone treatment.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;939335If you can get by with vicarious alternatives, head over to Twitch and find one of the many WOW streamers there to follow.

Not really my thing. I was invited to a private server, though — vanilla, no less! Maybe this time I'll finally gather the courage to give it a try.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;939335So, because of this being Diablo's 20th anniversary, I leaped to get D3 on sale for my PC. (Base game is $10. Xpac is $10. Bundle is $20. Buy direct from Blizzard via Battlenet.) The recreation of D1 in the D3 engine is a great way to mark the occasion.

Oh yeah, I gotta reinstall D3 and get the expansion for this one. Necromancer FTW!

Quote from: Rincewind1;939611No offence, but this literally reads like someone describing video game equivalent of methadone treatment.

Nah. Methadone actually gives you a buzz.

Quote from: Rincewind1;939611No offence, but this literally reads like someone describing video game equivalent of methadone treatment.

None taken. I use streamers and video makers these days to see if games I find interesting play as well as they look. Saved me a lot of time and money.

Currently playing Fallout 4, Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Quote from: The Butcher;939656I was invited to a private server, though — vanilla, no less! Maybe this time I'll finally gather the courage to give it a try.

I was on Nostalrius (sp?) and very much enjoyed the vanilla version of WOW... except for the 'always on' PVP aspect, that became frustrating after a while...

One of my players got a neet little beta stage game called Astroneers. Was fun to watch them play it. Will be interesting to see how that one develops.