i'll write something that goes more into why i'm playing an MMO first here soon, but in short, i'll care less about it due to it being a controlled online experience which makes it easier to use it to figure out what i'm doing here. i'd be playing Final Fantasy XI instead but Square's PlayOnline stuff is a nightmare to deal with still in 2023 and i have to wait several days for them to simply send me a code i bought. also i'm on a small Elder Scrolls kick right now. i've played a lot of Morrowind this week but i want to do more with that...when i'm ready... actually i just did some DIY work on a new desk and my place is a bit of a mess right now which i should be dealing with but why not do this instead for a little bit and have my enjoyment affected by the backdrop of put-off chores clouding my mind. here's hoping the game is bad so i get off it sooner

a catwife is born, for the second time due to being logged out for inactivity while i looked up Khajiit naming conventions

i looted some wax from an urn and got an achievement called Wax Collector. it's an MMO alright. let me just mark all these notifications and login bonuses and rewards for buying the game i guess? as read

i wanted to play this game mainly for the lore which i assumed would involve collecting and reading lots of books like i always do in these games... no button prompt... this is not a good sign. and the textures aren't high enough quality for me to be able to read it from here

i'm glad i'm coming here from Morrowind so the bad MMO combat is actually a step up. turn brain off and avoid red circle while clicking. i'm going for headshots with this bow but they probably do not even register here. okay yeah i just fought another boss and no matter where i shot it still showed the arrow whizzing animation going to the centre of the enemy. you do just click on the guy

fsdfgha...the second chosen one

okay you can read these books but the whole bookcase is just a single entity of one book and i can't pick it up. Whatever. i'm starting at Khenarthi's Roost if anyone knows if this is good. is it good. i'm following a chronology guide and there's cats there

trust me i want to go back

update: i "went" "back", to the beginning of Morrowind but in this game and now i want to Go Back even more

well i don't know what happened i just got flung off a tower but that's my first death. and obviously i can respawn right here. ok upon looking at that screenshot again i didn't see there was in fact a penalty for it, and i guess in Morrowind you could very easily save and reload so fine ok i guess i deserved to die

is the RPG experience hurt or enhanced by a dramatic character death being accompanied by another player teabagging a corpse next to them... i'm not sure yet

i logged off to watch the Sonic direct and now i'm sittin wondering if i wanna keep playing. i've been pretty susceptible to getting sucked into big open RPGs recently (i played like 50 hours of Elden Ring in a week) but the MMO trappings sure strip away the parts that suck me in so good and hard. instead of reading separate dialogue entries to try to figure out what to do i follow a quest marker. instead of having any sense of adventure or discovery to enjoy i instantly know everything the game has to offer because everything is a progress meter. i need that specific part of my brain to be occupied too not just the part that likes seeing numbers go up or checkboxes be filled, or else that adventure-hungry part of my brain just defaults back to the usual thoughts about what i'm doing with my life. this is a good MMO probably but as the years go on, as both i and MMOs themselves change, the best MMO probably isn't good enough. watch there be another ten journal pages after this and it turns out i was just talking myself out of playing it here today so i could go do chores. i'll play more soon

tired of dealing with Vana'diel's technical problems so i'm back in Tamriel hello, yes i would like some interesting quests with voiced dialogue and no characters who talk like Ned Flanders. i don't know if i'd have felt as much like coming back to this if it weren't for this journal directory. right now it's just a list of like, these are the games i'm playing, and that helps me not impulsively start playing something else instead. i never finish any dang games so it's nice to have this fun little website that can keep me on track with things, at least for longer than i usually would. it's not at all that it helps "force" me to continue playing things i don't super want to play, i am just very impulsive and that impulsivity resulting in a dozen img/gamerdiaries/eso/10th-finished games is what fogs my brain up and makes me not want to continue with any of them. not that i can finish The Elder Scrolls Online (or actually any Elder Scrolls) but i'm going to put in the time

Elder Scrolls NPCs can be pretty stupid but do they really not notice several people doing this same quest that requires stealth. there's even a gold seller bot making all this noise

quests in this game are in a weird spot i feel. maybe it's because i try to play it like an Elder Scrolls game with MMO features (it's not) (it's an MMO with Elder Scrolls features), but other players just being around and thrust into whatever i'm doing is a lot more jarring than in other online games. here's a "protect an NPC while they do things" quest that i assume would usually involve enemies spawning that i must swiftly defeat. i did not see any enemies, but i did see other players around, seemingly doing their own thing. it didn't feel like a group of players working together, in fact i didn't even realize until a while in that my task of protecting this guy was probably meant to involve things from which to protect him. also i've seen nothing thus far in the game world that really acknowledges the other players - usually in MMOs you might see a passing mention of "your fellow adventurers" or people to trade with etc. but it still just feels like a singleplayer world in a multiplayer game

i'm gonna give these dudes sky-rim wedgies (imagine me sitting here trying to think of Tamriel-wedgie wordplay and my excitement upon remembering the name "Skyrim")

this quest was cool because i'd be off in the background taking care of a pest problem and this group of NPCs would keep having conversations while within earshot. maybe it's not as cool as i think and it's just the gaps they'd have in their dialogue that made me think "wow they just keep talking" but it's another thing that really makes it seem like a singleplayer world, in that there just seems to be so much of it and it's all voiced. FFXIV is lauded as "the one MMO with a good story" but it's still like :o when you actually hear a character's voice at the start of a cutscene. i only call it a singleplayer trait because of that density i typically expect from MMO dialogue, and i guess if there was more (or any) text-only dialogue it would blend more with the text chat from other players. playing FFXI lately its world feels super seamless because there's no voiced dialogue, and it all goes to the same chat window

if there's no other player there teabagging the corpse to enhance a dramatic death scene i can always count on the full minute of level-up/achievement/reward pop-ups while the characters are still talking

i "completed" the starting area i guess, something i still wish wasn't so encouraged with all the completion menus and waypoints and whatnot, and i was dreading a good hour of reward pop-ups but - nothing? not even an achievement. on one hand. thank god. on the other hand what da hell! if you're gonna MMO-ify your world by constantly showing me what's left to do and reminding me how finite and un-immersive you want to make it why would y...whatever

here's the stable you gotta log in on i guess 180 separate days to fully level your horse. dailies dailies i love it

it's cool because i spent a lot of time managing inventory space until i could sell a bunch of stolen items for like 1k gold, but then there are daily login rewards where i think it's like. week 2 or 3 you get 100k. that's one thing i've realized is a reason MMO worlds feel so much less immersive to me, the weird mix of high-level and low-level stuff. this game really does lay everything bare right at the start - welcome to tutamriel island here's your shop to buy beginner items but also a shop right next to it that sells all the highest level gear and a bunch of different materials and currencies for systems you will not encounter until level cap. i get it you wanna advertise your game that i already bought to me but it's just another aspect of these games that reinforces the concept that "the real game starts at level cap"