December Doldrums

The first half of December has seemed fairly hectic this year. Real Life busy-ness has cut into my game time; and quite honestly, my gaming energy. I don't feel like there's a ton to write about on this blog, hence the paucity of posts. After playing Rift intensely during Thanksgiving weekend, I have barely logged in the past two weeks. This is not burn-out so much as a fear of burn-out, methinks.

On the other hand, I have burned out on The Secret World. A few frustrating sessions in Tokyo have led to me taking an indefinite hiatus from the game. This decision has a lot to do with my aforementioned energy crisis. There have been times in the past, even recently, that I enjoyed the challenge TSW presents. But I am part of the camp that feels the AEGIS system brings an unnecessary layer of complexity ("complexity for complexity's sake") to the game. And right now, I don't feel it's necessary for me to expend further energy on it. There is so much I like about the game—the story, the attention to detail, the ability wheel system—but it's not enough to overcome the feeling that, in Tokyo, I am fighting every fight twice, thanks to the necessity of burning down the mob's shield. And that's even assuming I have equipped the right "weapon," when failure to do so may or may not lead to either a hasty retreat or a not-exactly-quick death on my part.

Far more agonizing was the decision to leave Beyond the Veil. Xander, Antida, and the rest have become friends over the past year-and-a-half, and I feel I am letting them down. But I find that I have little to contribute to a webcast about a game I am reluctant to play. In the meantime, they seem to have recruited some new blood, and the show is as exciting as ever.

~~~

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.