Bless Me! Are You Playing That Old Thing Again?

It's Friday! Why not make it Log Back In To Games You Haven't Played For A While Day? Might need a catchier title...

Seriously, though. So many games, right? Hard to keep up. Just this week I saw posts or press releases about updates or content drops or free giveaways in DCUO, Lord of the Rings Online, AdventureQuest 3D, EverQuest II, Once Human, Palworld, Blade and Soul, Bless Unleashed...

Hang on a mo... what was that last one? Bless Unleashed? Is that still going? Didn't it sunset like... years ago?

No, actually. It did not. Bless did. Which was a different game. Kind of.

Then Bless Unleashed went through some crypto/NFT nonsense that meant anyone who ever cared about it even a tiny bit wrote it off as might-as-well-be-dead, just like Riders of Icarus and some other games I can't even remember that went down the same blind alley. 

But then crypto crashed and NFTs turned into just one of those things like deely-boppers and shag-pile carpets that turn up on "Weren't Your Parents' Generation Crazy? shows a couple of decades down the line and the games that jumped that bandwagon jumped right off again pretty darn smartly and carried on rolling along as though none of that ever happened.

As I may have mentioned before (Just kidding. I know I mention it all the time.) Bless Unleashed is still in the top row of my Most Played Games on Steam. It is just hanging on now at #6 , having been pushed out of the top five earlier this year when I was on a run with Nightingale (Oh, hey, another game I need to patch up...) but Steam defaults to six games per row so BU hasn't technically "dropped" yet, although Once Human is breathing down it's neck so its only a matter of time. 

Okay, that was a dumb thing to say. It's a list ordered by hours played so what else could it be a matter of?

Anyways up (Is there such a thing as regional appropriation?) the point is, I somehow managed to play eighty-one hours of Bless Unleashed. I think there may be some padding in there, where I left it running while I was doing something else once or twice, but it's true I did play it a lot for a while. And enjoyed it. 

No, really. I swear!

I must have because I managed to get to level 29 when the cap was 45 although now I think it might be as high as 100. And now, as of last night, I'm level 30!

Oh, yes. I did it! I not only logged in, I played! Not for long but that eighty-one hours is now eighty-one and a half. So I played for half an hour. Could just have said that. No need to be so dramatic.

Ah, but there was a bit more too it than that. Back when all that crypto crap was happening I was running short of disk space and searching for things I could do without. It seemed plain I wasn't going to play Bless Unleashed again, not now it had turned to the dark side, so I uninstalled it and moved on.

Except that I'd been playing it on Steam and Steam doesn't like you to get rid of anything. Even though I didn't have the client on my hard drive any more, I still kept getting the notices about updates. And the game still sat there in my list, looking at me and smiling enigmatically, once in a while.

For a long time all that was no more than a curiosity. I always glance at the news items that scroll past on the top of the screen when I enter The Library and I had noticed that Bless Unleashed had mostly stopped getting what you might call real updates, just server restarts and the occasional cash shop deal. I figured the crypto swerve had dealt the death blow and now the game was just waiting to expire.

Then yesterday I happened to see this. To save you the click, it's The Battle for the Western Prairies: Rise of the Harpy Queen. An actual event, albeit one that piggy-backs off an existing fight. 

 "The Western Prairies are in grave danger! The Harpy Queen has unleashed her minions in a massive invasion, attacking farms, capturing villagers, and disrupting trade routes. Driven by an insatiable thirst for power, she poses a significant threat to our lands.

The people cry out for help, and we must answer their call. Brave adventurers, it’s time to take up arms against the Harpy Queen's tyranny. Unite with fellow heroes, devise strategies to counter her abilities, and prepare for an epic battle that will determine the fate of the Western Prairies."

Doesn't that sound dramatic? I believe the Harpy Queen is a world boss that, back when I was playing, tended not to get beaten very often. As I read it, this is an attempt to rectify that, a one-off, live affair to which all are invited, although whether it's being organized by players or devs is unclear:

"Event Date: August 31, 2024

• EU: 7:00 PM to 8:00PM CEST (UTC+2)
  
• NA: 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM PDT (UTC-7)
  

Location: Navarra's Western Prairie (Harpy Queen's Nest)"

I guess it's going to be a big one because

"Victory will require skill, teamwork, and a commitment to protect our home. Together, we can end the Harpy Queen's reign of terror. Who among you will rise to become the heroes of the Western Prairies?"

Well, yes indeed. Who? You may well ask. As a well-known Google search term might put it, does anyone still play Bless Unleashed?

Thanks to the ever-popular Steam Charts (Popular with me, at least, for the actual, factual, undisputed population data they provide.) I can confirm that, yes they do. Not as many as a year ago, sure, but still an average concurrency somewhere around five hundred, which may not sound like a lot but is plenty better than many MMORPGs and probably enough to keep the servers up in maintenance mode for a while longer.

Being a big fan of one-time, be there or miss out, live events in MMORPGs, I thought I might at least take a look. I mean, I'm probably going to forget to log in and even if I remember I'm probably not going to be able to find the spot where it all happens and even if I somehow manage to get there on time I'm sure there won't be anything a lowly level 30 will be able to do, especially one being played by someone who can't even remember which button does what.

Still, I thought I might make the effort. That's actually about as convenient a time as I could ask for - six in the evening on a Saturday. It'd be rude not to at least think about it. I'll see what I can do.

So there we go. Another game no-one cares about and that even I don't pretend to be playing any more that I've posted about and might post about again, although if we're realistic, probably won't. As Wilhelm so cogently inquired yesterday, who even reads this stuff?

Well, you just did!