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April 2020 Goals

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I have a feeling there just won’t be as many jokes today. It’s still a very serious time for everyone. I received news yesterday that the date for working at home has been extended until at least May 1st. I didn’t think I’d miss going in to work. Working from home was cool for 2 weeks but the novelty has worn off. Plus, I think my cat is sick of me being home all the time…

Let’s take a look at the March goals:

Finish Epistory – Typing Chronicles: I did that! It only took me 2 play sessions to finish it up after I made it a goal.

Play More Neverwinter: I don’t think I’ve touched Neverwinter since the beginning of March and I don’t have much of a desire right now to go back.

Play Animal Crossing: New Horizons: I’m currently doing that and in an unexpected turn so is my wife. It’s been a blast to play together and send each other weird items we find. I’m looking forward to playing a lot more.

Read 2 books: So I sort of completed this. Technically one of the books I finished was mostly read in February but I finished it in March so I’m counting it. I read The Uploaded by Ferret Steinmetz and Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley

April Goals

Finish Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX: This was one of the new games I bought this year. The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games are my favorite spin-off games of the franchise. I might even like them more than the mainline games. It’s an interesting mix of pokemon and rogue-like dungeon crawling. The gameplay is great the story is….not so much. I knew I’d play less of this when I got Animal Crossing and was trying to finish it up before then but I’d say I still have a ways to go.

Finish the Kingdoms of Amalur DLC: I’m ready to go back to this now. I had an idea where I would respec my character and try out a different class for both DLC’s but I kind of miss raining meteors down on my enemies.

Start Tales of Berseria again: This is the last game on my list that I wanted to play through. The issue is I had put 10 hours into this game at some point but don’t remember what’s going on. So when I tried to start over it felt like I’d done all this before. I think I’m just going to push past that feeling and try to get back into it.

Read 2 more books: During my time in isolation, I’ve been trying to maintain a good reading habit. Currently, I’m reading Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky and I’m hoping to finish Deadhouse Gate by Steven Erikson this month as well. We’ll see how that goes since they’re both lengthy titles.

March Goals

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Finish Epistory -Typing Chronicles: Not too long ago I posted a list of games I wanted to play I have gotten through that list surprisingly fast. I’m not sure how much of the game I have left but I can’t imagine it’s more than an hour or 2

Play more Neverwinter: I’m not far enough into the game to have specific goals for it. Lately, I haven’t been taking the time to play it even though I’ve been enjoying it. This month I’d like to put more time into it and progress.

Play Animal Crossing New Horizons: The last time I played an Animal Crossing game was on the Gamecube. My sister and I put so much time into that game. I’m excited about this new iteration and even more excited that my sister, who lives on the other side of the country, is also picking up a copy!

Read 2 Books: I’ve lowered my Goodreads Reading Challenge this year from 24 books to 15. I feel like it’s a more realistic goal these days. I’m at 4 finished books for the year so far and I’d like to keep the 2 a month going while I’m still in the reading mood. It’s usually toward the middle of the year I’ll read nothing and then find myself at the end of the year trying to catch up to my goal. This year I’ve made it a goal to start reading Steven Erikson’s Malazan series which are not short books. I finished one in January and I’m in the middle of the second book now.

The Sword of Midras

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I was at my local library the other day when I passed the Fantasy/SciFi section and saw The Sword of Midras: a Shroud of The Avatar novel by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott. My first thought was “Huh maybe it’s a series that has nothing to do with the game.” Turns out it’s the first book in a trilogy that’s a prequel to Portalarium’s upcoming, there aren’t going to be anymore wipes but we didn’t launch yet, MMO. I’m all ready reading something but it was less than 300 pages so i decided to check it out.

I know books based off video games aren’t by any means a new thing but I was surprised when something as seemingly niche as Shroud of The Avatar had a book published.It made a little more sense when I did a little digging. A shorter version of the book was distributed to backers as Blade of The Avatar. It would make sense that people who pledged their hard earned money to a game would be interested in a book about their game. The book was already written so why not get it traditionally published as well? Turns out the publishers didn’t want to publish something that had already been giving to 50,000 people already for mass market. So a few chapters were added so that they could get their book traditionally published but who’s the target audience for this now?

I know this isn’t the first MMO to have a book out before it launched either. I remember being very excited when the Guild Wars trilogy came out that bridged the gap between Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. Those have fairly respectable ratings on Goodreads, while they weren’t fantastic and I barely remember what they were about, as a fan at the time they did it for me. I’ve also seen the scores of books

The people who already received most of it from the kick starter obviously aren’t unless they really want to read those extra 4 chapters. Maybe once the game actually launches new players will want to buy it but it hasn’t officially been launched yet. It also seems like they’re hinging on it being so successful that it will sell two more books. I picked it up simply because I have a vague idea of what Shroud of The Avatar is but I wouldn’t have paid for it if I saw it outside of the library.

The only thing I can think of is if the story and writing are actually good enough to compete with other fantasy novels. This I can’t comment on yet as I haven’t read more than a few chapters  but I’m interested to see how it turns out.

I’ll get back to you when I finish it.