Good Bye (Riddance) 2016

Well, Christmas is done with much food, alcohol, laughter and friends and while the tree is still up, the end of the year brings a more contemplative mood.  And rightly so, 2016 was a weird year, nobody would disagree with that.

Personally, it was a year full of work-related disappointments and frustrations but other than that, I have nothing to complain about.  I exercise much more, weigh (a little) less, am in much better health than last year.  Yes, 2016 has been good to me.

Gaming-wise, the three defining things this year were:

1. In EVE Online, I left Noir. and headed back to Wormhole space with my friends from Z3r0 Return Mining.  My time in Noir. was by far the most exciting online game-play experience I have ever experienced in any game and I wish I could have had this experience 5 years ago when I had more time for computer games.  But it took too much of my time and energy and EVE is not a game that is easily played “in small increments“.
2. I bought No-Man’s Sky.  I was sold on the vision and the aspiration of the game and overlaid what I wished a perfect single-player space game should onto a brand new and untested team.  The sheer amount of hype should have warned me but it didn’t and I ended up $60 short and feeling deeply saddened.  Yes, yes, they are adding new features and patching it but for me, the fire is out.  I wasn’t interested in No Man’s Sky.  I was interested in my own game that exists no where but in my head.  Lesson learned.
3. Fallout 4 was on sale after Thanksgiving and I could not resist.  I am still lagging behind in Skyrim and the thought of having a Skyrim-like experience in a post-apocalyptic world was just too enticing. I never played the other Fallout games so “4” was brand new to me.  And what a game this is.  Unbelievable.  The sense of dread, despair and sheer abandonment that the scenery evokes is beyond anything I had experienced to-date.  Its an incredibly well crafted horror story complete with Zombies, aliens, evil scientists and heart-wrenching personal stories that make you want to curl up and cry.  As of this morning, I am level 31 and while I have pretty much found out whats happening in the main storyline, I still have quite a few hours left before I close this book.

Fallout 4 – Details make the game

If this was 2016, what will 2017 bring?

EVE Online is in a good place now and I will enjoy playing the game as much as I have time.  While I miss the large-scale Nullsec battles, I enjoy hanging out in Wormhole space.  My fallback plan – manufacturing – was always interesting but when done in High Security without the support of dedicated industrial complexes, it is just too inefficient.  I should move my alts to a Nullsec industrial outfit, I guess but I can’t bring myself to do that.  Still an option though.

Everything that is Virtual Reality or “VR” will bypass me in 2017.  The Occulus Rift and related devices are “Generation 1” and I tend to not purchase new technologies well into Gen 3 or 4.  I would think that my first VR / AR device will not be in our house before 2020.  However, if it does come earlier, I will be happy, meaning the technology adopts faster to the market than I current think is possible. We shall see.

Blogs – maybe I am biased but I see far fewer good blogs out there, most of the EVE gaming information is now based on Reddit or one of the highly polished, pseudo-gaming-media aggregators that pride themselves on being “professional. Gone are the days of Jester and Tigerears where individuals generated raw but valuable content in form of opinions, guides and commentary.  Its a shame but Reddit fills that hole nicely.  What does this mean to this blog?  I will pretty much stay my course but try to polish my writing a little bit so it stands the test of time rather than writing in acronyms that only insiders understand.

Overall, any year that one can be healthy and with friends is a good year and that will be my focus for 2017.

 

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