WoW - 7 years of content in one weekend

I quit playing WoW sometime around Cataclysm. Back when everyone in the arena was a pillar-fucking frost mage, when LFR became a thing (and by 'thing' I mean massive clusterfuck of complete idios) and when I got too tired of grinding yet another set of top-tier items only to watch it become obsolete with the next content update. To be fair, the latter is simply how MMOs work, but I felt I was no longer the target audience. And that feeling was confirmed the moment they announced those fucking pandas.

So I cancelled my sub and endured seven years of family gatherings, where Claire, her sister and their mother would talk about nothing but WoW. Did you know warriors now do this and rogues can do that and now they're bringing back these guys and pandas aren't so bad and hey I got my first legendary and blah fucking blah, only interrupted by my occasional "I don't care", "I'm not coming back", "Please stop talking to me".

Fuck Pandaria with a rake!

It's one of the reasons why I hate this game so much. It's all-consuming. People get so stupidly crazy about it, they don't care whether you want to hear it or not, they don't care if you care, they just wanna talk about it. Things get really annoying when I have to listen to stories about the lore. I hate the lore. The lore is stupid. Hey, let's rip off every overused fantasy cliché ever, let's use everything in Norse mythology and change a single letter in the name of every deity, event and location, cram all the Asian stereotypes we can think of into one of the expansions and add a stupid race, which causes the community to get as racist and offensive as they can manage with their naming, that'll be fun!

I don't care about Illidan, Malfurion, Thrall, Jaina or any of these other cunts, so please shut up about it, stop talking to me and save it for a fucking blog or something. I don't read the comics, I don't give a shit about the novels and the only bit of WoW-related entertainment I willingly endure is the odd Dark Legacy strip or one of the videos by Carbot Animations. Look, I don't walk up to you and tell you how I find female armpits strangely and inexplicably arousing or how the number of "varieties" listed on a Heinz product is completely made-up, because you never asked and I presume you don't give a shit. So please extend the same courtesy to me. Shut up about WoW if I don't ask.

Wizard cat doesn't care if this offends you.

So, what the fuck am I even doing here?
Well, as you might have heard, I've been dicking around with one of thise weird little magic boxes, which let you play computer games on the go. These things run WoW and do so remarkably well. I had a fiddle with Claire's device (huehue), installed a controller add-on and the game looked, felt and played insanely good.

This blew my mind, because it goes above and beyond everything I have deemed possible in regards to 'mobile' gaming. I love my 3DS, but at the end of the day, those are games on a shitty, interlaced low-res screen with annoying jaggies and (often) simplistic gameplay mechanics. Sure, there's your Monster Hunter and Bravely Default, but you also get Miitopia and Tomodachi Life and other fun, silly time-wasters. Most of them are really great, fun games and I'm not knocking them. BUT - on a GPD Win I can play Dungeon Siege, Baldur's Gate, Wizardry 8, a modded Skyrim or stuff like Elder Scrolls Online and WoW on the go. Well, you'll want Wi-Fi for the last two, but you get the idea.

Suddenly I'm playing a fucking portable MMO. Not some dumbed-down shit like Phantasy Star Portable or Final Fantasy Explorers. Fucking WoW, playing like a 3rd person action game. And it worked stupidly well, especially on Claire's demon hunter, what with the double-jumping and gliding and shit. So I made the ultimate mistake. I went there. "You know... I've been clean since 2010, but I could totally see myself playing this on a portable device like that."

Daddy is back.

I checked back on my old account, then subbed to have access to my old characters, then set up the controller addon, played around for a little bit and ultimately put it all on the big screen. I still play it on the portable, as well, but heyho. Options and all that. I even rolled the character I was never allowed to play back in the day - a Tauren Paladin. Friends in the beta told me paladins are for pansies, so I rolled a warrior. Family told me they wanted to go Alliance, so I rolled a night elf. Now my friends and family are dead and cows can become paladins, so I could put everything into one new character. And I shall name him Impaladin. Because he's a paladin. And impales things. Cows aren't impalas, though. Ugh... this one may need some more time in the oven.

WoW runs at 45-60 FPS in 4K with all settings cranked up. WoW still looks shit in 4K with all settings cranked up, because it's so old and it was never pretty to begin with. So I lowered my expectations, went to Pandaria, being level 85 and all, and absolutely hated the shit out of it. The fucking cheesy music they play in every Chinese restaurant around here, the stereotypes, the cringy pretend accents, topped off by the dullest, most monotonous quest design you could get in an MMO. Quests always appeared in threes: Kill X guys, click Y things, rescue Z NPCs. Hand in, get three follow-up quests. Again and again. All the enemies died in two or three hits, they couldn't possibly hurt me and the only reason not to just finish the entire thing using only auto attacks is to speed things up a bit.

Transmogrification is the true endgame.

I was too stupid to bring any heirlooms or boosters and suffered through this crap for much longer than I wanted to. Orgrimmar raid was fun, though. I think I've only encountered one actual pandaren player, so far. A level 110 female panda, who could have destroyed me in one click (I'm on a pvp server), but instead of death I was treated to a /pet emote. Weird.

Warlords of Draenor was even weirder. Storm the dark portal with a huge army of NPCs, mash your AoE-button of choice, never be at risk, because you're always surrounded by dozens of virtual babysitters and get insanely powerful gear for every single quest. I liked some of the garrison stuff, even though I should have known that everything I did there was a waste of time, as the whole thing would be replaced by class halls in Legion. Quests still appeared in threes and NPCs never seemed to run out of follow-up tasks. Mind-numbingly easy and dull. I bumped into rare baddies highlighted with an asterisk on the compass. Those were fun, especially the boss monsters recommended for groups of three players. They were tough to solo, so that was a nice change of pace at least.

"FOR THE ALLI... um... actually, I think I've left the stove on."

At this point it wasn't possible for me to hate this game any more than I already did and I had alienated everyone in the guild to a point where they left me alone when they saw me log on. I jumped right into Legion when I hit level 98, then played the scenario stuff up to the part where Varian kicks the bucket. I never read the novels or comic books and the game itself did so little to make me care about the guy, I really didn't mind him dying. Massive coffin was a bit weird, considering he exploded into green goo, which was clearly left behind by the Alliance. Maybe they just put his favourite boxer shorts in there or something. Great production values, though! Cool cutscenes, finally some more story I actually got to see, even if it was all about some other guy again. WoW is always about Thrall and Arthas and Varian and a whole bunch of people and never about my character. I'm some random asshole who gets to help the main characters. Some RPG.

Fortunately, this was about to change when I got to hang out in the warrior class hall with "Odyn" and "Hymdall" and other suuuuper-inventive and original characters. That bit was cool, because for the first time, WoW was actually about my character. Go get an artifact weapon, go hire a bunch of guys and boss them around, go do some heroic shit. Still had to kill plenty of murlocs and other such boring crap, but heyho, it was still an improvement. With certain limitations. "You are my most powerful weapon", says Odyn, while my humble level 99 guy is surrounded by fully decked-out level 110 warriors with millions upon millions of HP. Yeah, I'm the tough guy around here. Sounds plausible.

The mighty Somethingsomethingstrasza, aspect of GO FUCK YOURSELF!

When I ran out of class hall stuff, I made the worst possible mistake - I picked Highmountain as the starting point for my Legion quests. This area is impossibly huge, there are 300 quests for every square pixel in the area and Blizzard are going out of their way to make you run around like an idiot as much as humanly possible. Wanna fly? FUCK YOU! You can unlock flying by solving ALL THE FUCKING QUESTS IN ALL THE ZONES! Meanwhile, enjoy walking around stupidly long, narrow, winding mountain trails, chock-full of fucking monsters, which respawn every 3-5 seconds. And once again - kill some things, click some other things, rescue some guys. Fucking everywhere. The variety was killing me!

Fortunately, after completely clearing three zones, the game allowed me to move on after only getting 'friendly' reputation with the remaining zone factions. Then I did the absolute minimum required for me to do at the Broken Shore until I was finally allowed into Argus. I was a fresh level 110 character with a gear score somewhere around... the low to mid seven-hundreds, maybe? I had a little over a million HP, with the average player around me sporting 4-8 million. That was on Sunday morning. Claire dragged me to all of my quest locations via druid taxi, grabbing every world boss, rare mob and treasure chest along the way.

The family calls it Argoose. Still not sure if that's a community thing or an inside joke.

A few hours later I had all my weekly invasions done, bought my first two level ~920 Argus items, then we flew all over the Broken Shore for a few hours to farm more chests and bosses. After spending thousands of nexus crystals or whatever it is you farm over there on level 850 gear we fired up the raid finder and played every single Legion raid. Started with the simple, harmless stuff and went all the way to Gul'dan and Kil'jaeden. For the most part, it was stupidly easy, but also a lot more fun than the casual raid back in Cataclysm. Kil'jaeden even required a bit of knowledge and I'm not ashamed to admit I caused a wipe on the first try, because I had no fucking clue what I was doing.

Raiding took about half a day, then my item level went up to just under 900. Claire needed a few heroic Legion dungeons for some quests, but it was now almost midnight, so there were no groups around. So we teamed up and 2-manned them (tanky bear druid + fury warrior). Odyn, Helya and Raven...something... vampire guy? They went down just fine with just the two of us in there. All I have to do now is find some legendaries and get a few more Argus items. I'm assuming the next content update is already being made, so my gear won't stay decent for very long. But getting from level bullshit to level awesome has never been so quick and easy before. I'm okay with that.

I'm gonna need mogging gear with higher-res textures, though.

I like to be one of those elitist dickheads, who tell everyone how "back in the day you couldn't just murder 20 mobs at once. There were lots of group quests and nobody could solo elite enemies. Maybe raiders, but noobs like you weren't cool enough to be raiders. Fucking welfare epix cunt" and all that. But to be perfectly honest, I think that right now WoW is probably the best it has ever been. Yeeees, there's a bunch of RNG, you don't know whether your next epic is gonna be just that or warforged or god knows what. Finding that next legendary may take a day, but it may also take for fucking ever. Thing is, though, everybody gets at least a certain level of awesomeness without being forced to turn WoW into a second job.

I never liked raiding with 40 people. I don't like raid guilds. And for as much as I've enjoyed my better days in the arena, having to fight week after week after week in order to keep up with the better players and to maintain a certain rating wasn't always fun. It was a chore. I went from complete worthlessness to reasonably well-geared over the course of a few days instead of weeks or possibly months. And don't gimme that "hurrdurr, back in the day you still had to work for your items" bullshit. So fucking what if you did? Folks seeking a challenge can still do the mythic raids with their guilds and get stuff, which is still a little bit more powerful and looks a little more awesome than its non-mythic counterparts. You're still the better player and it's not like the filthy casuals are taking anything away from you. You're just pissed off, because now they get to have powerful gear, too. Well boo fucking hoo!

Burn, cunt!

Legion is basically WoW 2. It brings back some of the best stuff from vanilla, BC and WotLK. The zones, signature items, bosses, even remixes of classic tunes basically remind you of everything you've done on WoW over the years. It's more of the same, but it's prettier, looks and sounds nicer. Of course this comes with the obvious downside that much of the classic content now looks really shit by comparison. Not that anyone still spends a lot of time there anymore these days, anyway.

And there's so insanely much to do! I may not give a shit about Pokémon-style pet battles, but some folks do and they've been a thing for years now. World quests and world bosses with massive rewards. The hunt for legendary items. Casual raids, which are easy to join and laughably easy to play, as well as hardcore raids for folks who seek a challenge. Claire and I are playing heroic dungeons without a group. Who knows, maybe we can take it to mythic ones when I get my legendary items. Battlegrounds now put everyone on an even level, much like Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2, so you have to win by skill (or flavour of the month) now, not gear.

It uses lots of pretty colours, too.

Finding a group for any world boss, invasion or other team-based activity only takes seconds now, thanks to the improvd LFP-tool. The auction house is more comfortable than ever, there have been lots and lots of little UI improvements over the years and WoW has never been so user-friendly and comfortable to play before, even entirely without addons.

I'm gonna get my legendary items next, gear up on Argus some more, then duel for a while, top the occasional DPS chart and that's the plan for now. Will I stick around after that? I dunno, probably not. I don't care for titles, achievements, pet battles or collecting shit. I'm playing a warrior and I wanna punch things in the face. Yet another kitten, beetle or dragon whelpling won't help me punch harder and I don't need yet another 'rare' dragon to park my ass on. I've already got 20 flying mounts and only one ass. The sheer variety and quality of content makes it easy to see why so many people are still hooked after so many years. That said, the boring, generic quest design in the open world can really kiss my ass. I know I said that having a bit of voiced dialogue in games like SWTOR or (T)ESO doesn't make a generic quest any less dull. I may have been wrong. Having a wall of text to click through before playing the generic quest might actually be worse. No challenge, no variety in quest design, no interesting story - does anyone enjoy this bit?

How World of Warcraft Destroyed My Family

Disclaimer: This isn't some 'cautionary tale' or some bullshit about how WoW or MMOs are bad and you shouldn't play them. It's a story about a weak-willed man, who was destroyed by addiction and escapism. Had it not been for WoW, it would have been alcohol, gambling or some other shit. But to me, WoW will always be the game that let me bond with my father, yet ultimately lead to him dying alone in his apartment in his fifties.

I never cared for Warcraft much. I liked Warcraft 2 back in the day, because I really enjoyed the music and artwork. Badass elves with giant bows, epic warships, corpses slowly decaying on the battlefield - it was a bit like Doom or one of the Duke Nukem games where everyone had a demo version sitting around, so I played that for a bit. Warcraft 3 came and went without me looking at it much and I pretty much ignored all the news about the upcoming World of Warcraft. I thought it looked stupid. Sure, the crude, cartoony looks resembled Warcraft 3 and it's all oh so nice and timeless, but I prefer a more realistic style.

Probably the first image of WoW you've seen back then. You can quite easily count the polygons here.

And then a friend sent me a code for the closed beta. I figured I may as well have a look at what all the fuss is about, rolled a Tauren and... meh. I was playing this huge hunk of beef, who pounded boars to pudding with a comically huge hammer. The pace was dreadfully slow, obviously, because it's an MMO and I had one or two abilities in my hotbar. Pound a boar, sit around and wait for health, rinse, repeat. It was the middle of the night, so it was dark and that particular bit of the Tauren starting area looks a bit shit, so my first impression wasn't great. I was ready to stop there.

I used to spend most of my weekends at my family's place back then and my dad saw me play. He got curious, so I let him use my beta account for a bit. He dicked around on there for a bit, then my stepbrother watched him play and started sharing the account, as well. A little while later they opened things up a bit and you could just apply for beta keys, so the two of them got their own keys and then all three of us played the beta.

Mulgore was still a bit bland.

I finally started to enjoy the game a little more when Goulash, my Tauren warrior, gained a few levels and the Alliance started gathering in my area. At first it was just a guy or two, then a dozen, suddenly there were fifty or so people filling my screen, some of them on horses. I had never seen anything like it. More and more Horde players gathered as well, both sides separated by a crappy little stream, which still had that weird glittering water effect back then.

We genuinely thought it looked pretty.

I don't actually remember a lot of fighting happening that night. I can't remember whether the servers died or whether it all went offline for maintenance, but what really left a lasting impression was how two small 'armies' formed on both sides. It was intimidating as fuck! One moment you're just walking around killing boars for some generic, boring quests, the next you're being stared down by a bunch of armored soldiers on horses and everyone is getting ready to kill each other. This wasn't planned, scripted or staged. You don't get moments like that in an offline game. Well, you sorta do in a way, but only because they're supposed to happen then and there. But at that moment, WoW told a story. My story, the story of the Alliance and the Horde, something that only happened once, to us, right there. It's hard to describe without sounding completely mad, but I still remember how it made me feel one and a half decades later.

The release version came and I still remember playing disc jockey, waiting ages for the installation to complete, only to wait even longer for updates, then spend hours trying to register my account. The website was completely dead. My dad and stepbrother created their accounts the second it all went live, but I was still at work and now they were gaining levels like crazy while I didn't even have my account, yet. Grrr!

When BC came out, we queued outside the store all night for the midnight release. They played WoW tavern music.

When I finally managed to actually get into the game, the family had already ruined it - I wanted to be a Tauren warrior, just like in the beta. But my traitorous kin went Alliance. My dad played a dwarven hunter named Redbeard and my brother was a gnome mage named Lightcry, because he was an edgy teenager. I think his ICQ handle back then was Lightcry_of_Dark_Magic. And suddenly, my email address, which started in Knuckles.Echidna felt only half as cringy.

So my warrior was now a night elf and we all started to explore Azeroth together. My brother figured out portals, then we all ended up hanging out in Elwynn Forest, we whacked Hogger, went through the Deadmines and I felt a superhero, because it was suddenly my job to set the pace, lead the charge, tank the bosses. Warrior stuff. That same character had been my main ever since. I had found my place, my job, the thing I wanted to do on there. And we fucking bonded over that shit. Dinner talk was all about the goblin shredder, Mr. Smite and Van Cleef. We did something together, experienced something wild and epic and it felt like we had really achieved something.

What a fucking great first dungeon impression that was!

Most importantly, though, I finally got to spend some time with my dad. He was pretty much always working, sleeping or sitting in his office playing computer games all day, so getting any kind of interaction from him was borderline impossible. To give you an idea of how awkward things were, I didn't wish for any presents on my tenth birthday. I just wanted to spend an entire day with my dad, so we ended up going to the park together for a few hours. He just didn't know how to deal with us kids or what to do with us. It didn't help that I had severe anger issues in my teens, so I wasn't exactly easy to approach, either.
Now he was still playing a computer game all day, but that game was an MMO, so we were usually playing together. There was just one problem - his other activities, working and sleeping, got dialed back more and more to make more time in his schedule for WoW.

It's difficult to acknoledge a problem when you're having so much fun. The three of us would stay up all night, occasionally meet in the kitchen to have some chocolate, cookies, cereal, toast and most definitely caffeine, play till the sun goes up, finally sleep until the afternoon hours, then go right back to WoW. That's a perfect weekend if you're roomies, but it's hell to everyone else when you're a family and things like money and education are a concern. My dad didn't spend as much time with our stepmother as he should have done, he didn't work as much as he needed to and my stepbrother flunked out in school and got in trouble with his girlfriend, who ultimately broke up with him. Meanwhile, I decided to buy the game for my (other) brother, who did the most reasonable thing anyone could have done in that situation - he traded the game for some pot. He was studying hard at the time and didn't want to get completely sucked in like the rest of us.

Say yes to drugs, kids!

It was bizarre. I'd spend just about every weekend at my parents', bring my computer, we'd stay up all night to play WoW and on my occasional trips to the kitchen I'd find my stepmother, just sitting by herself in the dark. Drinking. Looking back, that's probably not very surprising. It's the weekend, it's way past bedtime and she's all alone, because her husband is playing an MMO all night. Again. He wouldn't come to bed until a time where most normal people got up. It didn't seem like a big deal to me, because fuck yeah, Scholomance! And then T 0.5 sets! And then Molten Core! Ragnaros dropped his dagger and I paraded it around Ironforge (as a warrior!) like it was the world's greatest treasure and people from all over the server sent me private messages to congratulate me and tell me I was awesome. You didn't get free epic welfare items in the mail back then, so they were a pretty big deal for a little while.

Come to think of it, maybe I had a problem as well. I was in job training back then. Wholesale and foreign trade. I aced all the tests without studying, because that shit was stupidly easy. I finished my final exams a year early, just because I could. And then the company didn't hire me. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I installed WoW on my office computer. I only played when I was on my lunch break, but people don't see you taking your daily one hour break from work. They see you playing a computer game at work.

I went from a complete job training, certificate and everything, straight into unemployment. My stepbrother had to repeat a year in school. My parents had to move, because they couldn't afford the rent anymore. Or any of the bills.
Things got downright depressing when I visited my parents over the following years. What used to be four brand new cars turned into one or two shitty, used ones. What used to be one palace after another turned into a fairly modest house. I'd see my dad sleep on the sofa more often than not. But I only really started to understand there was a big fucking problem one Christmas eve. The whole family sat together at the table, we exchanged presents, had a nice dinner, everybody was talking and in the middle of it all my dad got up, excused himself and said he had a raid. And he went to play WoW.

The atmosphere. God. My dad sitting in front of the computer, my stepmother walks in. Deathly silence. Not even looking at each other. There was the occasional glimpse at what things were like when they were okay. When my dad asked for a cup of coffee. And my stepmother would bring it. Here you go, thank you, human interaction, thank fuck, they're talking. Not much later my stepmother gathered the family and said she had to tell us something. "Oh, so you finally got divorced", I said. Again, I was difficult and not entirely subtle.
"Oh, so your dad has already told you?" Nope. There was absolutely no need.

What gave it away? Was it all the sleeping on sofas or the drinking in darkness and solitude?

My stepmother and I weren't very close. I think deep down she resents me until this day, because I was an enabler. I got my old man into this game, kept coming over to keep him playing all night. In my defense, I don't think WoW was the real problem. He wasn't raking in as much cash as he used to as a real estate manager. Midlife crisis. Losing his hair and his bite. He knew his marriage was falling apart, his bills remained unpaid, shit was getting worse by the day and he ignored it, ran away from it, spent his time in Azeroth, where he could be a hero, a dragonslayer, someone! If it hadn't been WoW it would have been some other addiction, some other form of escapism.

Still, I dread to think about how much of this is my fault. I was just happy to stay up all night and do something with my old man. Those were the best weekends, ever - and I was hooked just as much as he was. Should I have told him to stop at some point, go to sleep, spend some time with our stepmother? Would it have made a difference? I was a kid back then and just craved the attention of a man, who never showed up when I sang in the band, when I was in the play, when I held the graduation speech in school in front of all the kids, teachers and parents. Looking back, it's easy to say I should have stayed at home, stayed away from him and the game, encouraged him to get his ass to work and to spend some real time with the family. I honestly don't think it would have made a difference. I'm just not sure the rest of my family sees it that way.

Hanging out with one of Claire's first ever characters.

I had just hooked up with Claire back then. She lived in the UK and I lived in Germany, so WoW was a great way for us to stay in touch and do something together. Claire, my dad and I did some crazy shit on there together! He taught her the odd bit of German here and there and got her into crafting, we cleared dungeons together, fought in the battlegrounds and everything was great in Azeroth while real life turned to shit a little more each day.

I had fallen out with the family and was no longer welcome at their weekend dinner gatherings. I lost my new job less than a year after I got hired. We bought WoW for Claire's sister and their mother. They had never seriously played any computer games up to that point and had zero interest in WoW, but they were willing to give it a try. By the time Claire moved in with me, WoW was their way to stay in touch with her. In that situation, WoW wasn't bad at all. Quite the opposite, really. Even though Claire was with me in Germany, her mom and sister could play and chat with her every day. And we all did stuff together.

Real gaming families are a lot fatter and less enthusiastic than that, though.

My dad and my (former) stepmother had finally split up. They'd still gather for family dinners and such, but I was never invited. The official explanation was that I simply lived too far away and nobody had the time or money to come pick me up. I had no car and no money toget over there and that suited me fine. Thing is, I didn't have a job, I played WoW a lot just like our dad did, and to them it was probably my fault he did it in the first place. Everyone was constantly on edge. My stepmother was drinking and didn't know how to deal with all the debt they had piled up. I was broke, had no job and hated my family for being dicks to me. My old man wrecked his marriage and he was still broke, addicted and generally fucked. Us kids were all young adults now, we all had our problems and frustrations, things between us were tense and there had been lots of shouting and slammed doors and people leaving in anger for a while, long before I was officially banned from all family gatherings. None of us were in a particularly good place.

Things got so weird with my dad over the next few years. My former stepmother hooked up with some elderly rich guy and I'm sure this happened completely out of love and not because of her financial worries or anything. My dad would make fun of them, talk about how the divorce was the best thing that ever happened to him and how he's now banging some 20 year old chick. It's hard to tell how much of that, if anything, wasn't a lie. We fell out when I asked him if that was really the sort of thing he should be bragging about to his son. We particularly fell out over lots and lots of empty promises.

He was great at telling people the exact thing they wanted to hear.

He always went on and on about how he had this great new job now and how he'd come visit us in the UK, so we could hang out. Year after year. At some point I told him to stop promising things and just book a fucking flight, already. Told him I'd pay for it. But he refused, saying he'd want to save up some money first, so we could actually do something together when he gets here. My brother back in Germany asked him over and over again to meet and do something, but he'd always make excuses. 

He died alone in his apartment of what the police said were "natural causes". He was diabetic and had not taken his medicine in over a year. In fact, he also hadn't paid the rent in over a year and my uncle had to pay his electric bill for him when they turned off the power. I met his "colleagues" at the funeral and they said he was a nice guy, showed up in the office now and then to send his emails to me, but he didn't actually do much of anything. I'm not sure if he ever actually made any money. One of the folks at the funeral said he used to play WoW with my dad. Apparently they were in the same guild or something. Funny how that works. He was buried right in the city where he died, not near any friends or relatives, in a shitty little grave with a shitty little slate on the ground instead of a headstone. We didn't have the money for a better burial and I'm not sure most of the family really cared enough.

Classic AV.

It's as though he was simply waiting for it to happen. He didn't work. Not really. Just used the computer there to talk to me. He didn't pay any bills. Didn't go to the doctor. Didn't want to see anybody. I still saw him on battle.net all the time, even though I had since moved on from WoW to Diablo 3. Azeroth was his happy place.

I didn't log on there since the day he died. No WoW, no Diablo. Couldn't face it. Heck, I've been gone from WoW for nearly seven years now, but Claire still plays and friends and (her side of the) family sometimes nag me a bit, ask me to come back, that sort of thing. So I had a quick look at it this weekend. 

My dad's contact has been deleted from my friend list. I'm not sure how that even works. Maybe one of his guild mates told Blizzard he had died. Maybe somebody picked up his old account and deleted me off the contact list. It's like he never existed. It's weird. Passing the gates of Ironforge, where I used to duel Redbeard, his dwarven hunter. No constant popups from his revolving door of crafting characters. No messages asking if I'm up for a dungeon. 

No more telling him to stop being so shit in pvp.

I port to Stormwind, it plays that familiar tune and it feels like a punch in the gut. I should probably just forget all about the game and move on with my life, for all the shit that has happened around it. But at the end of the day, Azeroth was the only place where I could be close to my old man. It was the only way for us to really bond, to do stuff together, to have some semblance of a father-son-relationship, no matter how fucked up it was and how much damage it has done to everyone around us. If I could, I'd place a tribute to him right there in the game. Have a dwarf named Redbeard patrol around Loch Modan, side by side with his trusty war pig. Because that's the one place where he was really happy and it'd be so much better than a shitty little grave in a place where no one is ever going to visit him.

My former stepmother sent an email or two after the funeral. I always took the time to respond, but we haven't talked in what must have been two years now. My brother, who used to be a professinal CS-gamer with sponsors and everything, has completely given up on gaming. I don't think his son is allowed to play any videogames, either, which makes me feel a bit sorry for the kid. He still nags me because my son spends so much time with his computer. Yeah, well. I play videogames for a living and if my son wants to do the same, then I'm not going to stop him. But my brother wants absolutely nothing to do with any of it. My stepbrother hasn't talked to me since the funeral, but last I heard, he's focusing on work, school and his new girlfriend. I'm not sure if he even still has a computer.

Claire's family never stopped. They're still on there all the time, buying all the expansions, doing everything together. They go to work, they have healthy relationships and they seem to be relatively stable human beings. I think online games can be a great way to bond and stay in touch. They can also ruin lives, just like any other addiction. I'm not sure where to go from there. Probably just hang out with them, move on with life, do my thing, not overthink shit. I'm not sure it's ever gonna stop feeling so weird.

I will always miss you, you big jerk.

WoW, a Gamecube and (modded) Skyrim in my pocket - GPD Win

I have just modded the shit out of my Skyrim installation. Better storms, flora, lighting, blood and gore, countless new weapons and armors, cloaks, all the good stuff. Now, if you're at least slightly familiar with me or my Facebook profile, then you'll know this is nothing special and I've been doing this sort of thing for years. What's different this time around is how I'm doing all this on a handheld gaming device, which is pretty much exactly the size of a 3DS XL.

The GPD Win

The GPD Win comes with a 1.60 GHz (2.56GHz max) Intel Atom x7 Z8750 64-bit cpu, 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 64GB built in eMMC storage and MicroSD support and Intel HD 405 Graphics at 200/600 MHz. It runs Windows 10 and handles Skyrim at perfectly playable FPS:

And yes, you can absolutely install mods, if you've got a large enough SD card to handle all the extra content. Naturally, you wouldn't want to go for all those beefy 4K texture packs or a juicy ENB, but it does handle the Skyrim Script Extender, SkyUI and all the follower overhauls, unkillable horses and other essentials that separates the master race from the console peasants.
Amazingly, this fun little gadget also plays World of Warcraft like a boss. Behold!

It also emulates ALL THE THINGS from a PlayStation 2 to a Sega Dreamcast to Gamecube and even some Wii games like so:

It goes without saying that the GPD Win also emulates all your ancient retro crap from the 8 and 16 bit era. It's hilarious. Just a few months ago I was struggling to find a decent enough SNES emulator, which would run on my 3DS without too much stutter. It felt like a miracle when I managed to emulate the Sega CD on Nintendo's little handheld. Now I can play play the Metroid Prime trilogy on the bus. Not that I would ever ride the bus or play Metroid, but it's good to know that I have the possibility.

The built-in analog-sticks, D-Pad and face buttons do a decent job at emulating Xbox 360 controls, though the shoulder buttons are a bit crap and there are separate L3/R3 buttons on the device's tiny keyboard, as you can't actually press down on the two analog sticks. That's fine and the built-in controller still gets the job done in most games. For everything else there's a USB slot you can use for an external controller. I'm actually using my Switch Pro controller via bluetooth. When I want to go all out I also connect a bluetooth mouse and a small bluetooth keyboard, so I can play Warframe or Call of Duty on the go without having to play in controller mode. Sure, you wouldn't want to play like that when you're on the bus or in the backseat of a car. But I can take this thing on trips, bring it with me for Christmas family gatherings and I could even hook up the device to their tv screen via mini-HDMI, so I can join the rest of them for some jolly cooperation.

I get that once you go all out with bluetooth peripherals you may as well go for a proper laptop. What makes the GPD Win so fun, however, is its flexibility. You can use an extra controller, a bigger keyboard or attach the whole thing to your TV, but at the same time you can just put the device in your pocket, play on the go and use the built-in controller and keyboard. Sure, you wouldn't want to raid-heal on WoW with that kind of setup, but it's more than enough for a quick lap of Mario Kart Double Dash on the go.

Speaking of 'retro' - games like Need for Speed Underground (2) may not have aged incredibly well and may look a bit blurry and dated on a large modern OLED panel, but put that game on the GPD Win's small, sharp, crystal-clear screen and not only is it gonna look really great, but it'll run at 60 FPS with all the settings cranked up.

And there's something undeniably satisfying about having the Mass Effect Trilogy, Darksiders and Diablo 3 in your pocket. If you really want to, you could even run Dragon Age: Inquisition on a GPD Win, although 'run' might be a bit of an optimistic description.

I managed to run Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin on high settings at 30-40 FPS, the Steam version of Sonic Adventure 2 runs at a stable 60 FPS and if I'm really desperate, I can continue my PC playthrough of Divinity: Original Sin 2 on the GPD Win through the power of cloud saves. Granted, the game stutters a LOT on the portable device, but performance only matters so much in a turn-based game. Meanwhile, older CoD games, the Unreal Tournament Series or Quake up to and including Quake 4 run beautifully. The more modern you go, the more you'll have to lower your settings and/or resolution to keep things playable.

It's also a pretty amazing portable arcade machine.

When it comes to emulation and less demanding games on the go, the GPD Win is a stunning, surprisingly powerful little toy. In fact, it currently offers better value for money than a Nintendo Switch, unless you're absolutely dying to play (both :P) Switch exclusives. Of course, given unlimited funds, there is no doubt that everybody should own a Switch just to play Breath of the Wild, because the game really is that good.

However, if you're not a die-hard Mario and Zelda fan (or perfectly happy playing Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and just about every Zelda title that came before on the go), then a GPD Win may well be the better option. It costs roughly the same as a Switch (I've seen the GPD as cheap as 280 Pounds, but also as expensive as 550, depending on where you look), you get a much bigger library of games and since the GPD Win runs Steam, you get your entire Steam library on there. Meanwhile, the Switch offers you five year old indie crap at two to three times the price you'd pay on Steam.

The obvious downside, of course, is how the GPD Win is a portable computer and not a console. And that means Windows updates, potential crashes, viruses, Cortana and all the other nonsense one may have to put up with on a PC. Sure, you can disable Cortana through the registry, run your Windows defender and surf the web using an adblocker. But you'll have to set it all up first, just like on a big PC. A Switch or 3DS, on the other hand, you simply fire up and play. Sure, those have game updates and system updates now, too, but if you've ever had a gaming session interrupted by a surprise Windows update, you'll agree that consoles are still a lot more convenient in that regard.

If you're shit with computers buy a Switch is what I'm saying.

And seeing as the Switch is only getting the Skyrim Legendary Edition (as in, the old one without the Fallout 4 engine), you may as well run that through a GPD Win and spice it up with some mods. Because you probably shouldn't hope for an awful lot of mods on the Switch.

Saturn Emulation: The Force Awakens

I just did something I've been waiting to do for 20 years. I didn't think I'd ever get the chance, but here it is, right in front of me, and I wish my dad was still alive, so he could enjoy it, too. I'm playing all three scenarios of Shining Force III. In English and without broken sound, music or graphics.

This is gonna take some explaining and I don't believe anyone who frequents this blog will have even a single fuck to give. That's okay. But I'll write this down, if only to get it out of my system. This is probably something I'd be sending to my old man in an email right now if he were still around.

Shining Force was one of the main reasons why I wanted to become a games journalist and a part of the games industry. I got hyped for the original Shining Force in the early nineties, when I saw a review in German Powerplay magazine.
The editor, Michael Hengst, joked about having to throw out his girlfriend and stocking up on junk food and coke in order to fully immerse himself in the game, which was the funniest shit my 11 year old self had ever read in a magazine. That guy was my hero and I thought he had the most awesome job in the world. That and Shining Force looked like the most awesome game I had ever seen.

I didn't believe videogames could look so cool when I saw the screenshots.

Shining Force was the one thing my dad, my brother and I constantly talked about when we finally had a chance to play it. We took turns, watched each other play, compared our forces and shared secrets about hidden bonus characters. There was some serious bonding going on there and Shining Force had always been special to us.

Over the years I have probably finished the first game alone well over 20 times. I've played them all - on the Megadrive, Sega CD, Gameboy Advance, I've even played the Japanese Game Gear titles all the way to the end before there were emulators or translation patches. I loved absolutely everything about the Shining-series until Sega did what they do best and fucked it all up. But not before taking one last massive shit on a huge portion of their fan base with Shining Force 3.

Was Shining Force 3 a terrible game, then? Not at all! In fact, it's probably the best game of the series. However, it was split up into three parts or "scenarios" as Sega called them. And in an absolute dick move they released the first scenario in Europe and North America, ended it in a cliffhanger, then never released scenarios 2 and 3 outside of Japan.

I imported the other two, but... yeah.

Fans translated the dialogue and released scripts on the internet, so for a while I tried playing the Japanese version of scenario 2 using a printed script. But there were gaps, the plot was difficult to follow and the whole experience simply wasn't very enjoyable. Years later they released an actual translation patch, which could be applied to an image of the original game disc, but by then my Saturn had gone the way of the dodo.

Sure, there were emulators, but Saturn emulation used to be absolute garbage until fairly recently. First there were performance issues, graphical glitches and crashes. These problems went away over time as hardware got more powerful, but one annoying problem, which persisted across all emulators was abysmal sound emulation. Shining Force 3 has an absolutely fantastic soundtrack by Motoi Sakuraba, which got completely butchered by SSF, GiriGiri, Satourne and whatever other emulators I've repeatedly tried over the years. Yes, I could have completed all three games with shitty music, but I absolutely didn't enjoy that.

Most Saturn Games were always ugly, they aged horribly... at least let me have proper music!

And then my friend Haggy started a Facebook post about Saturn emulation through Retroarch. I've been using Retroarch on my 3DS for a while and really enjoyed it, but I was willing to bet my life that their Saturn core was just as shit, broken and flawed as every oher Saturn emulator I've tried so far. Heck, I tried half a dozen emulators earlier this year and gave up in frustration when all of them ran or sounded like shit! But I gave Haggy the benefit of the doubt. After all, they did finally crack the Saturn very recently. So... maybe? Worth a shot? Nothing to lose but time and all that.

So I fired up Retroarch, booted up the Mednafen Saturn Core, fed the first scenario of Shining Force 3 to the emulator and prepared for disappointment as the intro loaded up. But what do you know? It looked and sounded exactly like on the original hardware! I couldn't fucking believe it! After so many years I pretty much gave up on the idea and just checked back on the emulators every once in a while, because eh, what else are ya gonna do with all that spare time? None of them ever did the job - until now!

The filter I'm using makes stuff look like stained glass. Looks slightly less awful than the pixellated default look.

I've just completed the first scenario of Shining Force 3, then transferred my savegame to a patched, fully translated version of scenario 2. After two decades I finally get to see how the story continues. I can play the final two parts without having to put up with printed scripts, crashes, performance problems or broken audio. And every now and then I get all giddy over scenario 2's little graphical improvements, added features and other crap in a game, which is old enough to drive and always looked ugly as sin.

I named the first scenario's main character after my dad's character and did a complete playthrough, with all the hidden shit, the bonus battle, all the stuff I'm normally too lazy to complete, because my old man used to love this sort of thing. Now I get to experience the rest of the story. I wonder how he'd feel about these translated scenarios if he was still around. Heck, I wonder what he'd say if I told him I'm writing quests and translations for actual games now. Or that I'm the community manager for a game, which may end up being 'the next Baldur's Gate'. I still can't believe he's gone. There's a million things I wanna tell him.

Memetopia

I'm not a huge fan of casual, dumbed-down, 'everybody can enjoy this' kind of games. Some people just wanna turn their brains off for a bit and enjoy a game without having to think too much. I like to be challenged, to get into complex game mechanics and to feel immersed in a game. So Miitopia wasn't really on my radar. And it didn't have to be, because Claire is absolutely crazy about her Miis and bought the game the second it was released on the eShop.

WTF Nintendo?

I watched her play for a while and was really surprised by some of this quirky little RPG's fun and clever features. All of Claire's characters had their own personalities and mindsets and they all interacted with each other in funny, if sometimes idiotic ways. I don't like how you can really just give orders to your main character in battle or how you just watch your characters walk about when they explore, only to be occasionally interrupted by attacking monsters. Then I saw how her party was utterly destroyed by a surprisingly challenging boss and felt intrigued. The game doesn't just hand shit to you, just because it looks a bit primitive at first. So I went and gave it a go.

Spongebob is the root of all evil.

I don't play Tomodachi Life and I don't have Miis representing all my friends and family living on my 3DS. Claire does, so you can see her, her mother, some of our German friends and my grumpy self in her game, which is actually quite fun. For my game I'm using whatever random shit I can find on the internet. My goal is to destroy Spongebob.

A noble endeavor.

Spongebob has stolen people's faces and plastered them all over random monsters, so it's my job to defeat the monsters, return the faces to their owners and... look, don't ask me. It's fucking Japanese, alright?
My main character's personality is 'stubborn', which is good in some situations and frustrating in others. He's a tanky warrior and one his quirks is that he can brace for impact before an enemy attack, greatly mitigating the incoming damage. On the other hand, he may flat-out refuse healing, because heals are for pussies. It makes him likable in a weird way, but it's not always helpful when your warrior cockblocks your cleric in a difficult fight.

My first additional party member is a skeleton, who is also a chef. His personality is 'laid-back', which sounded good on paper, but it usually means that he'll hide behind the warrior or he'll skip turns altogether in order to preserve mana. He whacks monsters with a frying pan and cooks stuff to heal the party in battle.

Yeah, Zoidberg is there, too.

As I said before, you only get to give orders to your main character, while the rest of your party members do whatever they feel is right. And the AI isn't always great. Sometimes my group will get attacked by a large group of weaker monsters. This isn't a big deal if you have a thief, because they can damage all enemies on the screen with a single attack, taking out weaker groups with one attack. It gets problematic, however, when the AI decides to skip the attack to steal a banana, instead, causing the weak monsters to wreak havoc upon your party. I really wish I could just give orders to my party members directly! I have only finished the first part of the story so far, so maybe you get to tell them what to do later, once you raise your friendship level enough. But right now I have to put up with the occasional dumb AI decision.

Some boss battles aren't as 'casual' as you might expect.

If you don't want to plaster your Mii's faces all over the characters of this game, the game seems to grab random popupar faces off the internet, instead. I was a little surprised to bump into people like GabeN or Walter White, because I definitely didn't put those in there, myself.

The game automatically downloaded this one.

Naturally, you'll have more fun with this game if these Miis and faces are actually something you care about. Claire made herself a cleric with a kind personality, so she'll often spare monsters or throw herself in harm's way to protect others. She also put our friend Haggy in there and made him a cool pop-star, meaning he's too awesome to be affected by most status ailments and he can devastate whole groups of enemies with his mighty singing voice. She also put Haggy's girlfriend in there and is planning to make her a cat, which is an actual character class and all sorts of creepy.

Not sure if my thief is an ant or Tupac.

As party members heal, buff and fight alongside each other, their friendship level goes up and they unlock new special abilities. For instance, one party member might warn a friend if they're about to be attacked, giving them a chance to dodge the incoming hit. Or one of your guys may want to show off to another party member, causing him to deal a bit of extra damage. Your characters also interact with each other outside of battle. My skeleton chef wanted to impress another party member with a new outfit and came back with a flowing mane of golden, glorious hair.

Bitch, I'm fabulous!

Characters will often ask for a bit of money, telling you they'll go and buy a new weapon or some armor with it. Sometimes, however, they will return with some other random shit, so there's no guarantee they'll actually buy the thing you gave them money for. Again, this can be a fun little quirk, but may annoy you if you want total control over your party. Sometimes they just do what they want.

His face might be back, but he'll be forever alone.

Miitopia doesn't just simplify (or take away your control over) shopping for gear. Instead of stocking up on a ton of potions and healing items like you would in other classic RPGs, Miitopia hands you various salt shakers, which dispense HP, MP or bring fallen comrades back to life, depending on the shaker you use. Once they're empty, that's it and you'll have to refill them at the next inn. You can find bits of food like HP bananas or MP sweets, which can also restore your health and mana, but they're very rare and massively expensive, so I ended up adventuring entirely without them most of the time.

Hanging out with Dolan and Auntie Hamburger.

The silly humor in this game is one of its best features. Sometimes two of your party members may start a training montage together, which raises their friendship level. In fact, the whole friendship system is so cool, I wish more RPGs used it. It's just fun to see how your group goes from complete strangers to close friends, who will help each other and try to impress one another, causing them to fight harder and harder all the time. Except when one of them is having a bad day and decides to screw around with the rest of the team.

If you hate the idea that your characters may have a bit of a will of their own, then this game certainly isn't for you. But if you don't need your RPGs to be super serious and you like goofy humor, then Miitopia is abolutely worth picking up. Make no mistake, though - it may look ridiculously easy at first glance, but things can get pretty challenging, especially if you don't put a bit of thought into how you want to set up your party.

I'm 5 Months Late - For Honor

Once upon a time there was a(nother) massively hyped Ubisoft title, which looked innovative, visually impressive, fun to play and sold really well. And then it lost 95% of its user base. Now take this info with a grain of salt, as the good folks at Ubisoft state the player count is fine, which happens to be exactly the kind of thing I would say about a game I'm trying to sell. Hyperbole vs damage control, I don't know which side is lying more, but it's safe to say that For Honor isn't exactly super popular anymore.
Personally, I've ignored the game for two reasons: Dark Souls 3 and its DLC and all the complaints I've heard about For Honor - shitty netcode, lag-switchers, toxic community, macrotransactions, Pay2Win, oh joy...

15 playthroughs of Dark Souls 3 and a well-paid new job later, however, I couldn't stop wondering how awful For Honor really was. After all, I could afford it now and while some of my friends bashed the game just as much as everyone else, others said it's actually really fun, warts and all. So I took the plunge and grabbed it, jumping right into campaign mode to get the hang of things.

And it looked so damn good!

I can appreciate how they actually tried to come up with some kind of story, which explains why the fuck medieval knights, vikings and samurai are suddenly beating the shit out of each other. And I'm not gonna criticize the game, just because said story is incredibly dumb. And yeah, real vikings didn't have massive horns or wings on their helmets, real swords and shields could never withstand the amount of abuse they're being subjected to in this game, yada, yada, yada. You're not gonna play this game if you crave realism. Let's move on.

Thing is, even with a completely stupid story, the campaign is seriously fun to play, because hacking people to bits is enjoyable and the awesome cutscenes and great voice-acting are entertaining even when things make zero sense. It helps that you can choose between FemShep and Illidan Stormrage to voice your main protagonist in the knight storyline.

I was not prepared for such a fun experience.

On paper, combat is ridiculously simple, which is another reason why I had no desire to give this game a try sooner. You can swing your weapon left, right or up and you can block in these same three directions. That's not a skill-based fighting game, its rock-paper-scissors in a fancy setting. However, you also get dodge rolls, combos, parries, unblockable attacks and special abilities, so there's actually quite a lot of depth to the whole thing. Problem is, the AI can't handle most situations where you simply spam random attacks in all directions, meaning the solo campaign is laughably easy, apart from a rare few moments, where the game blatantly cheats (input reading) or where you have to fight a boss, who summons an entire pack of wolves, which take turns humping you while the boss pummels you into a mushy pink paste. It's not as unfair as it sounds and I'm currently beating the campaign on hard mode, just for the fun of it. One complete playthrough only takes about six hours, but it's good fun and you can even play it with a friend, if you actually know somebody else who still plays this.

Of course there's an obvious problem when the solo mode makes you feel like a total god of war - you'll walk into multiplayer expecting to destroy everything. And naturally, For Honor's singleplayer is about as good at preparing you for multiplayer as is the singleplayer mode in any Call of Duty game. I logged on, I got matched up with super high level players, I got destroyed and I got cussed out of my matches for being a noob. I wished I had never bought the damn game.

But... but I get all the cool executions in hard mode!

So I hated myself for a bit, hated the game, kept on playing because what the fuck else am I gonna do at 2 in the morning, followed some of my team mates around for a bit, figured out the basics and finally started killing a few people. Which is good, because the game eternally tracks your kills and deaths without mercy and if there's one thing I hate even more than being shit at a game, it's stupid stat-tracking, which rubs my nose in it whenever I look at the stupid menu screen. It took me a while, but things started looking up.

"I'm killing someone! Mom, get the camera!"

It still seemed brutally unfair how the game would match me with people in full heroic gear, with god knows how many levels under their belts, but it was good to see that they all die the same if you stab 'em hard enough. I was starting to have fun!

I gave it another try today and something weird happened. First of all, I discovered that there's a "VS AI" duel mode, which actually grants experience points and loot. So you can seriously practice against bots and progress at the same time! So I did that for a little while to get the hang of my character, then jumped into an online match and to my massive surprise, the game matched me with a whole bunch of other complete noobs! I shit ye not! Lots and lots of prestige zeros, no gear, everyone a scrub like me! But since I spent all last night fighting the most hardcore of the bunch, followed by a bunch of practice duels, I was now destroying the other lowbies in the session.

Look how heroic I am!

As for the community being toxic, I have to say it's really not any different than any competitive shooter out there. Yes, I'm happy to report that my mother seems to be really well-known in this community and by the sound of it, she's still sexually active. A lot. But really, you can disable voice and even text chat and things never got as nasty as they do in most MOBAs out there. Or Overwatch, for that matter. I can live with it.

As for the complaints about microtransactions, premium shit, the season pass, Pay2Win and all that... ehhh, it looks a lot worse than it really is. First of all, the season pass is entirely unnecessary, unless you INSTANTLY want EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER without unlocking them first. I got enough currency to unlock four characters straight away just for completing the tutorial. Add that to the three or four characters, who are already unlocked at the beginning of the game and that's half the roster right there, without forcing you to pay anything extra. Keep on playing online or offline and you'll be able to unlock the rest of them in no time. Granted, the brand new Centurion and Shinobi characters are massively expensive compared to the rest of the bunch, so if you're dying to use those, you'll have to grind or fork out. That's not great, but it's also not the big deal people make it out to be.

Of course, fiery killing animations and other such fancy stuff come much faster if you throw some cash at the screen.

I had a test run with many of the characters simply by completing the story mode, so I knew exactly which character I liked best and insta-unlocked that one via ingame currency when I started playing multiplayer. There's also a massive amount of customization options from emblems to colours to emotes, execution moves (read: finishers) and special helmets and pauldrons and shit. I love all of this stuff, though some of the more exotic dye patterns and emblems take absolutely ridiculous amounts of grinding to unlock. Real money doesn't help with that, either, since these unlockables are tied to character levels.

Speaking of real money - yes, you can buy random loot chests with ingame currency and the fastest way to obtain said currency is by spending cold, hard cash. However, you can't just fire up the game and buy your way to victory, as the really good stuff only starts to drop after your character has reached a certain level. There's also no "this sword will kill another player in one hit" or "this armor makes you unkillable" kind of gear here. Every item may raise a specific stat, possibly giving you more defense or attack power, but it does so at the cost of another stat, meaning you may require more time to regenerate stamina or your revenge mode (=more power for a few moments when you are outnumbered) could end more quickly. You can grab any fresh character with standard items and zero customization and attack a player in full heroic gear and still win if you fight better (or get lucky, that's always a factor). Bear witness to the perfection that is my fighting on the internet:

It's amazing what killstealing and matchmaking against noobs can do!

Is this game still gonna be a thing in a few months? I think so. Yes, finding a match in any of the less popular game modes is close to impossible, but that also applies to every Call of Duty on PC whenever you try to join something that isn't a team deathmatch. Duels and Domination matches are listed as 'highly active' and so far I had no difficulty getting a session going. Yes, I got disconnected once or twice or got host migration popups, which sucks. But as somebody, who has spent hundreds of hours in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, this hardly bothers me anymore. Peer2Peer matches suck, but I can tolerate them. They also mean the game could still be around in a few years, because there are no dedicated servers to shut down... I think?

If the game is as dead as some say, then maybe new seasons and additional characters will stop sooner rather than later. With that in mind, I actually found lobbies full of complete noobs today, so For Honor must still attract some new blood, right?
I've seen online stores selling this game for as little as 30 Quid now and I believe it's worth that if you're into this sort of game. I like it better than Chivalry or Mount & Blade and I've sunk quite a few hours into those. Of course, if you're already completely hooked on a similar title, then For Honor will do nothing for you. Same if you simply don't enjoy the genre. But I'm a sucker for fighting games and 'medieval' combat, so this one is right up my alley.