Short Attention Span

"Of course, all of this means EverQuest II and the Fallen Gate server will drop by the wayside as I jump games after a month yet again".

Wilhelm at TAGN

Ah, yes. "All of this". It's a problem, that's for sure.

In March I was enthusing about returning to Lord of the Rings Online. That didn't last.

In April I was thundering through Twin Saga  on a turtle until FFXIV's endless free trial shouldered it out of the spotlight for a while.

Along the way I took the unusual step of buying Tanzia, a game that plays like an MMO but isn't. I barely even wrote about that one but I did play it quite a bit before yet another distraction came along.

I ended up enjoying Secret Worlds Legends more than I thought I would, although many of my original reservations remain. (For a more considered take on the problematic nature of this ill-conceived revamp, read Karinshastha's excellent review) but, much though I wanted to get to the end of the story, something else soon caught my eye and it was off to Norrath once again.

Did it stop there? No, of course it didn't. This weekend I found myself dithering between two new possibilities. Dark and Light appeared unexpectedly on Steam and Yonder cropped up on several blogs I follow.

I vaguely remember D&L from its original, disastrous launch as an MMO back in 2006. I didn't pay it much attention then and I hadn't been taking much more notice of the revamp but I visited the website and it looked somewhat intriguing.

Given that I'd been speculating about what a hybrid Survival/MMO might look like only a few weeks ago, it seemed churlish to ignore one when it came along. I got as far as reading some of the Steam reviews but while I was there I also took a look at what people were saying about Yonder.

It was neck and neck for a while but in the end it was Yonder's delicate footprint that nudged ahead. D&L is a 50GB download; Yonder is less than a tenth of that.

So I ponied up my £15 and downloaded Yonder, which took less than five minutes. That was on Saturday and I was working Sunday but Steam tells me I've already played for four hours. I would have guessed longer but time seems to drift when I'm exploring Gemea.

Posts specifically about Yonder may or may not follow. There's an awful lot I could say. It's as gorgeous as I was led to believe but nowhere near as relaxing. In some ways it's not so much an Explorer's dream as an Achiever's tick-list. I certainly wasn't was expecting so many quests, let alone a central storyline.

Perhaps we'll get back to that in a proper review sometime - or a First Impressions piece at least. Or maybe we won't because the next cab's already pulling away from the rank.

Tomorrow the Living Story Season 3 Finale drops. Titled "One Path Ends" it supposedly takes us back to Orr. Once the dust settles everyone's expecting the official announcement of GW2's second expansion, which so rumor has it, could be with us as soon as the end of September.

That's going to push everything else off the table for a while. Looks like I won't have time to take advantage of the Level 105 boost that comes with LotRO's imminent Mordor expansion after all. Maybe I'll ask for that one for my birthday in November.

Except, that's when the still-under-wraps EQ2 expansion will probably appear...most likely right on top of the XPack for GW2 (which I don't for one moment believe will land in September - at least I hope not, because I'll be in Italy then...)

Anyway, getting Legion for my birthday last year didn't work out so well. I still haven't found a window for WoW.

Remember when we used to talk about Three-Monthers? Ah, those were the days!