Has It Been That Long Already?

 

I had a busy day today. I was going to skip blogging - again - even though that would make it four days out of the last five. It's bad but in a way it's good. I'm trying to be more laid-back about posting so as to get in shape for Blaugust, when I hope to make missing a day here and there feel like a win. 

With the extra time I wasn't going to spend writing, I thought I might play some Wuthering Waves. I'd read Naithin's post so I knew I was behind again. I never quite caught up after Black Shores. Wuthering Waves has to hold the record for Game I Like Most But Play Least.

I thought I ought to find out what I was missing, so I watched the promo video for the latest update, which is also the First Anniversary Celebration. It goes by a typically overwrought title: "Fiery Arpeggio of Summer Reunion". 

The video is long! Over ten minutes! It's also only partially translated. The first part is in English but then it's hit or miss. I watched the cinematic at the start and then skimmed the rest. After I'd finished I was more confused than before I started so I read the Patch Notes.

The patch notes are long!. I ran them through a word counter. Over four thousand words but at least they're all in English. Even so, most of them meant very little to me.

I thought I'd better log in and see the thing for myself. The patch was long! 3GB but thankfully it was fast. When I got into the game, though, things slowed down. My fault, not the game.

I began by claiming everything I was owed since last time I played. That took a while. Then I went through every tab that had an exclamation point indicating something new. That took a lot longer.

As I was doing that, I came across the Anniversary "gift" that most interested me. I knew from various sources that there'd been a deal of grumpiness about the birthday handouts, which were widely seen as inadequate if not downright insulting. I wasn't much bothered by any of that. I just wanted to read my First Annual Report.

If you click on the "Resounding Waves" banner in game it takes you to a web page, where you can watch a personalized presentation of the highlights of your year in the game. It goes through the key story points you've completed and gives you a bunch of stats about what you've been up to over the last twelve months. 

Then at the end it ties the whole lot together in an infographic that's pretty much impossible to see. That's it in the tiny banner at the top of the post. Fortunately, I took screenshots of every interesting page as I went along so I've dropped a few of those in but if you want to watch the full presentation, you'll find a QR code in the header image that supposedly takes you to the web page and lets you watch the same slide-show I did. 

I haven't tested it. If you try it, feel free to let me know in the comments if it works. Or, I guess, if it doesn't, although I don't suppose there's much I can do about it.

As I was watching the report, one of the pages seemed to indicate I'd saved a lot of currency but not spent much, which is absolutely true. It made me think of something Naithin said, namely that the new Resonator is OP and that he'd been lucky enough to get her, so I thought I'd spend some of my tokens to see if I could, too.

I couldn't. Or rather I didn't. I spent about half of my good tokens and about a fifth of my newbie ones, which got me some four-stars on the 1-in-10 guarantee, plus a couple of genuine wins on top. But no five stars and certainly not Zani, the one I was after. It was fun trying, though.

It also took a while. And when I was done I thought why not whip out a quick post about it? Which I've just done. And now it's too late to play.

That's how it always happens....