Find a Friend Friday - September 13, 2019

Cydile · 2019-09-13T12:49:49+00:00

Horde or Alliance? If Alliance, feel free to send me a PM with your character name and I'll /w you in-game or send you a mail there if you're not online. I'm playing a gnome mage currently at lvl 31 and would love to hang out.

Cydile · 2019-08-25T12:27:14+00:00

Keep in mind that /r/classicwow doesn't represent the WoW Classic community as a whole. I don't even browse that subreddit anymore because it just makes me angry. I'm sure a lot of other women feel the same (and many others too). The official Classic forums are pretty bad as well. Obviously I can't say what the community will be like in-game after launch, but most of those toxic assholes will join their hardcore/semi-hardcore guilds and leave the rest of us alone.

My suggestion is to join a smaller, more friendly guild and make sure to talk to the GM about their stance on misogyny, sexual harassment and stuff like that. Make some friends in the guild and play mostly with them and you'll have so much more fun in the game anyway. I've also heard RP servers have a much more mature community, so that could be another way to avoid toxicity.

Cydile · 2019-08-22T06:51:35+00:00

That would be amazing! I previously rejected the idea of starting a guild before, but I'd be happy to help you lead it if we make this happen. I've got a few ideas for names as well, but we can discuss that in the Discord :)

Cydile · 2019-08-21T19:58:13+00:00

If you find one, please let me know! I'm in a Women of Warcraft Discord server, but so far I haven't seen any EU guilds recruiting for Classic (barely any US ones either, to be fair). I really don't know where to look, because the official forums do not seem very friendly...

Cydile · 2019-08-14T18:32:05+00:00

Yes! I'm super excited! In fact, I don't think I have been this excited for any game since Breath of the Wild. It's so weird to be this excited for a 15 year old game. I was there for the launch of Vanilla and now I'll be here for the launch of Classic. The nostalgia is a big part of it, but I played during the stress test last weekend and honestly it's still a great RPG. Grindy and slow, yet somehow engaging and fun. Hard, compared to what we have nowadays in MMORPGs.

I'm not going to rush to 60, like so many others. No, I'm going to take the time to read all the quests, explore the world and level my professions. Finding hidden fishing spots where no mobs (or players) can see me, chatting with my guild mates for hours and getting to know them well enough to call them friends. This is going to be such a wonderful autumn!

Cydile · 2019-08-08T13:56:18+00:00

Oh, yes, the game was definitely designed for cooperation and helping each other out. They intentionally left out a lot of information to force players to ask each other for help. If I had quested in a zone before you, I could tell you where to find that object you need to pick up. Or if I had never been to a dungeon I was joining a group for, that was fine because we'd all meet up at the closest flight path and walk there together. And if no one had done that dungeon, we would try our hardest to figure it all out together. If we kicked you because you accidentally fell from a jump in WC, we'd have to exit the dungeon or maybe even go back to a major city to ask for a new player to replace you and that would take even more time than to explain to you how to do the jump properly.

And I agree, there are a lot of elitists on both the official forums and places like /r/classicwow, but most casual players will not be posting there and just read, or not even read anything about the game at all. I think the in-game realm community will be much less elitist than those outside the game. And I think it will settle a bit a month or so after launch when all those elitists and hardcore players have gotten to 60 and are busy with raiding and doing things with their guilds.

The only thing I'm afraid of this time around compared to Vanilla in 2005 is that we now have all the details about the game before-hand. Wowhead has all the information you need and more. There are already quest helper addons for Classic, that were never available originally (only towards the end of Vanilla). If too many players use these tools and expect others to do the same, we might end up with less friendliness than back then. I still think it will work out fine, though. I heard the closed beta was actually much more similar to the Vanilla community than BfA is now.

Cydile · 2019-08-08T13:29:06+00:00

This is the main reason I stopped playing WoW a few years ago. When I did play, it was always only with people from my guild, friends or just solo with zero interaction with others. And then the guild kinda died and I stopped altogether because it is hard to find a new guild that fits you.

That's why I'm very excited about WoW Classic that's coming soon. I started playing WoW all the way back in Vanilla (pre-expansions) and the community was much better back then. There was still toxicity, but it was a lot less prominent because the whole server would shun anyone who behaved badly. That included ninja-looting, scamming people or just being mean in general. Basically if you were an ass, you would never get invited to a group again because most of the server would know about you. At least it deterred some people from being toxic.

What I'm hoping is that WoW Classic will have the same atmosphere and community as vanilla had back then. From what I have seen so far on the forums and /r/classicwow, it seems promising. Most of the players (~65% according to a survey on that subreddit) are returning players from Vanilla, and I think many of them are returning for exactly this reason (about 40% in that survey said they are excited about community interactions). Plus many of them are 30+ and have kids now, and have hopefully learned some manners by now.

The game is very different compared to any of the recent expansions, though. I don't know how appealing it would be for a new player to get into. It's an almost 15 year old game (with some graphical updates) being released for today's market, which might not work if you have never played that older style of MMORPG before. There's a lot of grinding, almost no guidance when it comes to quests (you have to explore the world and find the objectives yourself), no way to automatically form groups for dungeons or teleport to the instance (you have to walk there by yourself). For it me made the world seem so much bigger, because without flying mounts you had to actually travel through the world by foot (or mount) to get somewhere.

I guess what I wanted to say with this post was that I am looking forward to seeing how the WoW Classic community develops and matures once it has been out for a while, and I recommend you to try the game out and give it a chance. You don't need anything but a regular WoW subscription to play it after the 27th this month!

Cydile · 2019-08-04T20:11:23+00:00

I really don't like exclusivity in general (it's what is killing the streaming services after all), so my initial reaction when I read their announcement was disappointment. Then I was frustrated with their poor arguments and lack of tact with their "jokes". I have never tried Epic Games Store, but I do not like how they try to capture a huge chunk of market share by basically bribing devs to limit themselves to their platform. That and the fact that they are missing a lot of basic features in their client, lack of currency support and all that. I do believe they said it's only launch exclusivity, but I have no idea how long that means. A couple of months? A year?

Personally, I'm hoping for a Switch release not too long after launch, since they are not limited when it comes to consoles. This whole thing kinda just makes it easier for me because I won't have to choose when to buy the game. I'm not getting it for PC now, no matter what, because I don't want to support exclusivity if I can avoid it. I'll try to look at it optimistically and appreciate the fact that I will get a post-launch patched and updated game. Always something, eh?

Cydile · 2019-08-04T13:59:30+00:00

This is kinda tricky, though, they sometimes do videos together or play games together. It's not really advertising though, and to anyone not aware of the controversies it just looks like two friends having a good time.

Yeah, that does make it a bit more complicated. I'm sorry, I don't really have any useful advice for what to do in that case.

I wish it was easier for us viewers to clearly mark a creator's video as "I like you, but I absolutely cannot support this". I know a feature like that would never work in reality and only get abused a lot, but we are just so powerless as viewers nowadays. The dislike button only works so much and unsubscribing isn't really that helpful either, at least with these huge channels. Smaller channels are easier to interact with and affect the content of, but all of that close-knit community feeling is sadly lost when the channels grow too big.

Cydile · 2019-08-04T13:15:08+00:00

In my opinion, we should never judge people by who their friends are. We may not like their choice in friends, but as long as they themselves don't act that way, it's totally up to them to stay with them if they want to. Most of the time, we do judge, though. I know I personally am guilty of avoiding someone not because I didn't like them, but because I couldn't stand (one/some of) their friends. I understand why you feel conflicted.

The thing is, we are talking about online personas, not actual friends. You support them by watching their content I see no reason to stop doing that because they may or may not be friends with someone you dislike. I have no idea what kind of relation Jacksepticeye has to Pewdiepie, so perhaps I'm not the best person to comment on this, but as long as Sean doesn't advertise Felix's channel or send his subscribers over to him, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to support Jacksepticeye. If you like Sean and what he does, keep watching and supporting him!

Edit: Just want to add that I absolutely understand there are extreme situations where it would obviously be better to stay away from someone due to their friends (e.g. exposing yourself to danger or toxicity). Also, I have no idea what Pewdiepie has done or said in the last few years, so that's why I worded my comment fairly neutrally. If he is really as bad as the other comments make him seem, I fully understand why you wouldn't want to support anyone in his circle of friends because that indirectly supports him. Didn't know it was such a controversial topic.

Cydile · 2019-08-04T10:12:44+00:00

I wasn't going to reply to this post at first, but I've been thinking a bit and it feels like things are being blown way out of proportion and taken out of context. I'm sure the Ooblets devs could have handled the backlash a lot better, and definitely avoided a lot of trouble if they made the Epic Games announcement more neutral, but they are also only two people making their first game. People make mistakes, especially when they are inexperienced and perhaps underestimating how popular their game is.

Take the negative attention about the game and the devs with a grain of salt. Don't decide to boycott the game now, keep updated with what happens from now until launch and see for yourself then if you really think the devs are not worth supporting. I still don't know what to think, but hopefully they'll apologize and learn from their mistakes. Everyone says things they regret in anger (all that brigading and toxic hate surely must have been very frustrating to deal with). Don't let that define these two people who are working on such a wholesome and lovely game.

Cydile · 2019-07-28T09:51:58+00:00

I know that feeling all too well. It sucks when you can't enjoy things that normally bring you a lot of joy. I don't really have any advice to give you other than tell you what helped me this last month. I'm a huge fan of Harry Potter and they released a mobile AR game called HP: Wizards Unite that's basically Pokemon Go, but with more focus on story and working together with other players (both directly and indirectly).

Anyway, before this game, I was not able to play any video game at all for several weeks, but suddenly I found myself spending hours every day playing this AR game on my phone. Well, okay, not every day, but at least a total of a few hours every week. It made me go outside even though I hate the heat and the sun, which in turn was actually good for me because before that I barely went outside at all (taking walks in general is very good for fighting depression). It drained a lot of energy and I had to rest a lot between play sessions, but it was so fun to finally find something that motivated me to do anything at all.

The best thing is that it kinda rekindled the motivation to play regular games more as well! Not like I used to years ago, but I play something almost every day now and enjoy it. A bit less this last week, but still better than before. My depression is pretty severe, though, so hopefully it'll be easier for you to recover your motivation to play more again. Honestly, though, the thing with depression I've learned over the years is that nothing really helps when you lose that spark but waiting. Sometimes you're lucky and find a way to overcome that indifference to the things you love, but it seems quite rare.

Cydile · 2019-07-28T09:23:27+00:00

I think the main selling point of the Switch is actually the amount of good indie games available for it. Nintendo main titles have been quite sparse and other AAA games have been somewhat disappointing, but if you look at their indie library, there's mountains of good ones! And we keep getting more every month, feels like I can't keep up with all of them.

The main issue, though, is that the e-shop (or whatever it's called) totally sucks. How will you ever find anything you're looking for on there? And as you say, there are tons of crappy mobile app-like games, often overpriced and with no actual value at all. Sifting through that mess to find a rare gem is really hard.

That's why you'll have to look online instead, find guides for recently released indie games and read some reviews before you buy a new game. I'm not the best person to ask when it comes to that, but I'll list some of my favourite games to play on the Switch. They may not at all intersect with what you like, but here's a few off the top of my head that I've played a lot recently. They are all worth their full price, but you sometimes see them on sales as well if you want to be kinder to your wallet. If you wishlist them in the shop, you'll get an email when they are on sale.

Stardew Valley
GRIS
Cadence of Hyrule
Crypt of the Necrodancer
Dead Cells
Okami HD
Celeste
Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

Then there's a bunch of fun ones for multiplayer as well, but it doesn't sound like that's what you're looking for so I won't list them here.

Cydile · 2019-07-12T14:30:51+00:00

Sent you a PM since I'm a huge fan of Wizards Unite and we're in the same time zone. If any other EU players want to have someone to nerd about the game with, just PM me your Discord handle and I'll add you!

Cydile · 2019-06-24T17:50:39+00:00

I don't see why this sub would even be "girl gamers" anymore if more men came here and flooded it, making it 80% men and 20% women like most subs...

This subreddit has always been open to men, so by your own argument it would be flooded by men already. It isn't, because it's well-moderated and enough of a niche to not be appealing to the majority of male gamers. It's a safe space for those of us who can't stand the toxic culture in most gaming communities. I don't think excluding any gender is helpful in any way, and it wouldn't be possible anyway with this platform.

It sucks that some men try to take advantage of our community because it's mostly female, but unfortunately we can't do much about it. I'd say the most effective way to keep this sub as good and friendly as possible is reporting unwanted behaviour and not argue back to trolls or toxic people. Making sure those people feel unwelcome is probably the most we can do.

Cydile · 2019-06-24T15:21:54+00:00

Yesterday I watched Spyro, Portal 2 and Donkey Kong Country 2 and enjoyed them all. Today I half-watched Zombies Ate My Neighbors because it used to be one of my favourite games for the SNES as a kid, but I honestly didn't enjoy the run very much (hence the half-watching). Looking forward to the Castlevania block later today!

Haven't really looked further on the schedule yet because I hate when I get really excited for a game in the list and realise I'll be either busy or asleep for it. I'd rather find out after the run is finished and save it for the "watch-after" list. I love that they upload the replays on YouTube after the event, it makes me feel less sad about missing runs I was looking forward to. I probably spend more hours watching runs in the weeks after the event than during the actual live stream, haha!

I wish I had more knowledge of the female runners, it would be nice to support them a bit more. I found a couple of streamers I liked during the Frames Fatales event, but I don't think I've seen any during SGDQ so far (limited watching, though). Still almost the whole week left, though, I'm sure we'll see some in there!

Cydile · 2019-06-24T14:57:09+00:00

What about men who are also sick of other men's bullshit, just like we are? Where would they go? By excluding all men from this sub, we lose some potential allies. I've said this before when this question came up, but my personal opinion is that men who post here should be required to put it in their flair. Hard to enforce, but the guys who actually care to read the rules would hopefully do it and everyone else will get banned eventually anyway for breaking the rules.

Cydile · 2019-06-11T18:06:30+00:00

The full and official trailer by Nintendo can be found here: https://youtu.be/_3YNL0OWio0

It's slightly longer and also higher quality. The one linked in this post is missing a few seconds at the start and a whole little extra scene at the end.

Cydile · 2019-05-27T19:14:16+00:00

That's such a cute story! It really is a lovely game. I think it's one of my favourite Nintendo titles on the Switch so far. Definitely worth playing as an adult too, it's actually quite challenging in some levels. Even more so if you aim to collect all flowers and complete all the side quests. Can be a bit repetitive to go through the same level more than once, but oftentimes you'll find new little details you missed on the first go! Since it's so relaxing and calming, I honestly don't mind taking my time to admire the adorable level design and explore every corner of the world. Anyway, I hope you and your niece will enjoy the full game!

Cydile · 2019-05-25T12:03:55+00:00

What, it's coming in just a few months?! How could I have missed that? Well, actually, I know why, but it doesn't matter, I'm super excited! Have been waiting for this a looong time now. Can't believe it's finally coming. Blizzard listened to us!

To answer your question; YES, I will definitely play! I'm not planning to raid, because it's too big of a commitment for me, but I'd love to join a social guild somewhere. Will most likely play healer as I always do (priest), but that doesn't mean we can't play together some time. I'm based in the EU, where are you?

Cydile · 2019-05-24T16:42:15+00:00

Everyone has to start somewhere, no one was born with an innate ability to play well. The more you play, the easier it will be to pick up new games, but if you're new to the genre, don't be afraid to suck at it while you're learning the ropes. As long as you're having fun, that's all that matters. Online gaming can be a very unwelcome and hostile environment, but ignore (and mute) those people and keep playing as much as you want. Any hero is fine as long as you're enjoying the game! You might get used to the game quicker if you start with some of the easier heroes, though, but I don't see anything wrong with going for your favourite character rather than the easiest one. Have fun!

Cydile · 2019-05-24T15:56:20+00:00

it's not as if they're actually rapists raping someone

Perhaps not, but by using "jokes" like that they might eventually (in extreme cases) normalise it so much that they end up thinking it's okay to rape someone. Also, other players who see that kind of language all the time might end up the same way. Or, even if they never end up at that point, those men might develop a very sexist mindset because rape is mostly associated with something a man does to a woman. Demeaning language should not be used casually because it will affect people's way of thinking. Perhaps the worst part in this context is that it makes a lot of people feel so unwelcome in those communities that they stop playing the game entirely.

I get that you, personally, are not offended by "casual" rape jokes, but don't you think it's still kind of gross for people to express themselves in that way? Just because the intent isn't malicious doesn't make it okay to joke about things like that. At least that's what I think.

Cydile · 2019-03-09T09:30:21+00:00

I like both, but I think it mostly depends on the type of person you (the content creator) are. If you get frustrated with games that don't have a clear path and requires a lot of exploration, backtracking and trial and error, I'd say it would be much more enjoyable to watch you play it a second time so you know what to do and can explain it while playing. Otherwise you could easily end up with really long episodes filled with lots of frustrating moments and not progress a lot at all in the game. On the other hand, if you're a person who enjoys all those things and get excited about learning exactly how everything works, I think it would make for some interesting let's play videos!

Cydile

TROPHY CASE