Nomadic Gamers and Westworld

Daily Ramble 153: Nomadic Gamers and Westworld

Today I head over to Nomadic Gamers eh! to see how things are in the second degree from Beyond Tannhauser Gate and Stargrace explains what she’s been doing in WoW. WoW is certainly the 800 pound gorilla in the gaming world as you can tell by the number of people who blog about it. Regardless of the numbers though, I love reading what people have to say about the game since there’s so many different facets to the game and everyone has a different take on them. Stargrace is looking to make some gold and I think it’s pretty cool that she’s working the system to make sure she can play the games she wants – hey, Blizzard offers a way for people to earn expansions and other games they make so why not take advantage of it. I’m actually gonna follow to see how she does it so I might be able to take similar steps.

I also take a look today at starting a new project…and I am not good at following through on these but I’m gonna try again. This time, I’m looking at rewatching Westworld before the April 22nd season 2 premier. We’ll see how that goes…

Nomadic Gamers eh!

Stargrace over at Nomadic Gamers eh! has ventured into the cut-throat game of gold making in World of Warcraft and is loving it. She’s compiled a few posts over the past few weeks looking at how she’s been able to leverage the small amount of time she’s been able to play into WoW tokens. She’s been using TSM – Trade Skill Master – to work the economies of the servers she’s playing on and it reminds me of how complex these games we play are. I really get the feeling that kids growing up these days will get their first experience in budgeting and the markets by playing MMOs. Warcraft and others like Eve Online have truly intricate economic systems that rival Wall Street and this offers different ways for people to play. Sometimes, as Stargrace is trying to do, you can even purchase the game’s expansion or a subscription with in-game currency.

Outside of gold making, she talks about the Rift progression server and pet battles using the Rematch mod and the way she expresses her passion for these games makes me seriously think about returning to WoW for a bit. I never did get through all the Legion content and I really should give it a go since the expansion will be out later this year.

I enjoyed catching up on what Stargrace had to say about WoW, Rift, gold making and pets, and I’m happy to include her site in my Six Degrees.

This has been an installment of my Six Degrees 2018 series in which I take a look at the wonderful blogs that surround Beyond Tannhauser Gate. The blogosphere is large but there are so many friends to be found within Six Degrees.

Westworld

With just under 10 weeks until the season 2 premier of Westworld on April 22, I figured I would like to refresh my understanding of the first season. This is, in my view, one of the best shows on television these days but it’s really complex so a rewatch would definitely help prepare me for the second season. With that in mind, I’m gonna put aside my American Gods watch for the moment and focus on Westworld.

If you haven’t heard of or seen anything about Westworld, it is a science fiction western thriller based in a Wild West themed amusement park in the near future. Based on the 1973 movie written by Michael Crichton (who also wrote Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and Sphere among many others), the show depicts a world where high-paying guests can live out their fantasies with the help of human looking robotic hosts. The androids walk the guests through pre-defined narratives that have been created by the park staff so its kinda like a real life rendition of a virtual reality western. With the robots programmed to be unable to harm anything alive, things take an intersting turn when a new software patch is deployed that seems to be allowing the machines to deviate from their scripted behavior.

I watched the show during it’s original airing in 2016 and it turned into a program I had to watch live because it was so good. It’s been a long time though so I’ve definitely got the itch to rewatch it since I’m sure there are things that have slipped my mind in the intervening time.

To kickoff my rewatch here’s the wonderful opening credits that set the tone for the show and highlight the great music that is part of this must watch series.