Alright, let’s get a gap between official episodes before I spend the day grinding away at finishing the new episode before I either finish it tonight, or my heart explodes from all the caffeine I am forcing myself to drink.

Sidequest: Wildstar
I thought I was pretty cut and dry here. Wildstar is a traditional style MMORPG with non-traditional art direction, that’s in the hands of the worst possible company to publish them. Worse than EA. Yeah, I said it. NCSoft has done borderline nothing to promote the game, and only recently have I been told that there was a marketing push. In Boston only. For Pax East. Then it stopped. So yeah. No real change there.
There’s this prevalent air of traditionalism lurking in Wildstar. It’s like the dev team, who admittedly worked on some of the most iconic (and traditional) MMOs on the market, WoW and Everquest 1 and 2, locked themselves up in a bunker and started work on this game in 2006, never once peeking their head out to see if there was any market shift. No reticle combat option? Sure the skill shot thing is a bit unique, but it’s still very “target and click skills”. Two faction war. Set classes. Skill trees. Kill X, gather Y. It may not be as “cloney” as SWTOR was, but you’ve played this game before. Trust me.
There’s this odd “two game competition” going on between the fanboys of Wildstar and TESO, I’ve noticed, which tends to happen when two MMOs are due out around the same time. Though comparing TESO to Wildstar is like comparing Coke to Mountain Dew. They are both “soda”, but these aren’t just two different companies, they are two different FLAVORS. If anything, due to the rampant traditionalism, Wildstar’s biggest competition is going to be World of Warcraft… especially with the upcoming graphical upgrade making WoW look pretty damned close to Wildstar’s art style.
Also, Wildstar being advertised on fucking TRASH CANS?! Are you trying to tell us something, NCSoft?

The 1v1 me bro Tournament Finals
So after three grueling weeks of competition, we finally… don’t have a winner. Yes, in a stunning upset, Tebble was not proven invincible, and taken down in the final round by LDJoy, who fought back through the loser’s bracket after losing to RolloT. Next match will probably conclude this upcoming SMITE Night to decide out winner, since Tebble technically has to lose twice in order to be out. The playlist of the remaining matches can be found here if you are interested. (My match against Tebble is a rather interesting watch, partially for the gameplay, mostly for the yelling RolloT does.)

Digimon Masters (Episode 55)
This one… took a while. It was tough because as I mentioned before… I have no nostalgia with the title, and beyond that factor, there’s really nothing in this game. It’s there for the pet collectors, and progression feels… stale. Pointless. I wasn’t even sure if there was anything at stake, and it sure didn’t feel like there was. Still it holds a lot of attnetion for those that love it, and letting Dabeer and SonicRose take the reigns really helped keep this from being a 15 minute episode of me yelling “I don’t get it.” over and over again. This is also pretty similar to what I am doing in my Patreon for the “Raid Leader” and “Beta Tester” Patreon tiers, as well as a push to better involve my community in the creation of these episodes. It’s not ALWAYS going to be necessary, but having more than just me giving insight to a certain game helps along the fact that people will have differing opinions, but mechanics and gameplay is the same no matter who you ask.
Oh, that theory for the chat filter blocking “monkey” and “SM”?
“Monkey” has been used as a racial slur on many occasions, and SM in sequence is “S and M”, a.k.a. Sadomasochism. Considering this is a “children’s” title, the company was probably trying to block as many “offensive” words as they could think of, and with English not being their first language, it probably led to this kind of odd confusion. Take a look at Age of Wushu, for example where you couldn’t say “horse” because “HOR”, which for anyone with a PHD in Curse-ology is clearly NOT how you spell “whore”. There was also LUNA Online’s chat filter banning the use of two innocent letter next to each other because, according to rumor, the letters on a Korean keyboard would spell out a common Korean swear word. All possibilities. All stupid. Babelfish is not a substitute for localization, guys.

Chaos Previews: Echoes of Eridu
“I’m sorry, what?” you might ask. No you didn’t miss this one on site, or Blip. I made this video as a YouTube exclusive to support a game I really want to see come to light, that’s currently on Kickstarter. There, as of the time of this post, 11 days to go and the game just hit their halfway mark, but I’m going to do all I can to get this game off the ground. Again, it’s not in my wheelhouse, which is why I haven’t posted anything about it on here or Blip, but the idea of a multiplayer action Roguelike with the gameplay style of Megaman X has me floored, and I really want to see this game happen. Check out the trailer on Kickstarter, and watch my hands on preview below!

A quick update on the state of my Patreon.
Let’s say I’m doing FAR better than I thought I would, having reached the first and second goal in a matter of days, and steadily approaching the $200 mark. This means (after the first payout of course) that work on the first and second goal will commence. The first goal being “More Streams” which planning is in the midst of right now.
The plan for streams is for a Wednesday, Friday and Sunday schedule. Wednesday will be The Secret World streams dubbed “The Immersion Break.”, Friday will be a preview of whatever game I’m currently working on called “The Strea-view”, where I’ll take and field questions (a community mod would be highly appreciated during this time. Sunday, of course, is still “SMITE Night”. Ideas for other days and streams will come eventually, with another idea of mine, called the “Strea-wind” where the community votes on a game we all played/I reviewed previously and we marathon the hell out of it. In that case it would be likely any off-week Tuesday. In fact, there’s something special planned coming up soon, if we can decide on a time.

As for now, stay tuned tonight or tomorrow for the next full episode of MMO Grinder…. You won’t want to miss it.