Conquering the Arena

The Maelstrom Arena. There’s nothing like it in all Oblivion!

Sometimes, you feel like challenging yourself. You want to see how well your build works. You want to see if all those gear upgrades you worked so hard to craft make any difference. You want to see if you have mad skillz to brag about.

Apparently, so do a lot of other people. Enough that game developers will often put in some kind of solo challenge or gauntlet to put their players through hell – places where grouping up is disabled and you have to face the dangers all alone.

In The Secret World, there were nightmare solo scenarios. In Guild Wars 2, there’s the Queen’s Gauntlet. I put myself through those and emerged victorious. But then I found the Veteran Maelstrom Arena in The Elder Scrolls Online… a place so challenging, frustrating and infuriating that it took me months to finish and gave me repetitive strain pains in my hands.

But it was so worth it when I finally defeated it. Continue reading “Conquering the Arena”

Days of Their Lives

Telling the stories of simulated people, one day at a time.

I’ve been a long-time player of The Sims, and one of things that draws me into the game is watching the lives of my simulated people unfold and being able to share that with others. It’s like having your own personal soap opera that you can interact with and direct.

Past iterations of the game included a story exchange feature, which let you upload your screenshot albums to a central hub for others to browse. But over the years this has been deprecated and the current edition of the game, The Sims 4, doesn’t have one. This doesn’t meant that players can’t share their stories though, as a whole community of “SimLit” (Sims literature) authors has grown over the years, sharing their creations on various blogging and social media platforms.

Almost a year ago, I decided that it was time to take the plunge and join them… Continue reading “Days of Their Lives”