A Nice Cool Christmas

Today was my last at work until the day after Christmas Day or "Boxing Day" as we call it where I come from. They also call it that in Canada, apparently, if 30Rock is a reliable source, which I'm not at all sure it is. 

Anyway, call it what you want, it's the only day I'm working between now and New Year's Day, which I'm guessing is called "New Year's Day" all around the world, except in countries where it isn't. Isn't New Year's Day, I mean, not isn't called "New Year's Day".

I'm not making this any clearer, am I? Let's have some tunes.

Frosty the Snowman - The Cocteau Twins

That's not something you expect, is it? The Cocteaus covering Phil Spector. Although when you put it like that it doesn't sound quite as outlandish. And I guess some people might think of Liz Fraser as something of an ice queen so maybe Frosty's not such a stretch, either. 

Originally issued as a double A-side with Winter Wonderland on the... well, the other A-side, I guess.  The take on Winter Wonderland is a little more conventional but not much. Came out in 1993 and sailed right under my radar.

A Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis - Carrie Myers and The Proper Way

Well, that's dampened the mood. Can't have anyone enjoying themselves at Christmastime, can we? I do ask a lot of rhetorical questions these days, don't I? It's annoying, isn't it?

I think I must have been aware of this one, if only because it's on Tom Waits' 1978 album Blue Valentine and a friend of mine at that time was a huge Waits fan. He almost certainly played it to me at some point but I really didn't develop any kind of interest or affection for Tom Waits until he moved on from his beatnik drunk phase to his accordionist falling downstairs period, aka the rest of his career.

I watched Tom himself do this on YouTube, thinking I'd use the original but he seems to want to play  it for laughs, which is quite disturbing. More disturbing, for sure, than Carrie Myers' empathic, emotional reading. I might bookmark this for use as supporting evidence next time I drag the Intentional Fallacy out for another airing.

Merry Christmas, Baby (Please Don't Die) - Crocodiles and the Dum Dum Girls

Speaking of things that sound like musicians falling downstairs...

That has to be the most Jesus and Marychain thing I've ever heard that wasn't actually by them, and I've heard Meat Whiplash. I own an album by the Dum Dum Girls and nothing on it as good as this. Maybe it's The Crocodiles' influence. Sorry, Crocodiles, no definite article. Never heard of them before but I'm going to after.

Christmas in Malaysia - Artist Unknown

And finally, because apparently I'm determined to give everyone cultural whiplash (Not a band, as far as I know...), here's what I think is a TV commercial for a Malaysian retailer called Shopee. It reminds me a little of Reese Lansangan, which I guess isn't that weird, since she's from Malysia, too. The girl with the uke even looks a little bit like her.

Wonder if she shops at Shopee?

Still Having A Great Time. Wish You Could Have Been There.

My Vetrovian journey continues, although according to the invaluable timeline on EQ2i it's nearing the end. I'm on step eleven of thirteen, the moment when we finally step inside Castle Vacrul, the ominous floating hulk that hangs over the mountains and yet somehow can't be seen by anyone but me.

It's difficult for me to talk about the story and the writing with any kind of objectivity. I worry that by any external standard it would properly be judged a farrago of fantastical nonsense but then so would most mmorpg stories so I'm not sure that's much of a concern.

Stylistically, there are certain problems. Questgivers make long speeches filled with incomprehensible, unpronounceable names, referring to abstruse and arcane events from the past as though quoting holy writ, which is in fact pretty much what they are doing, since as usual almost everyone involved is either a God, a demi-god or a would-be candidate for godhood.

When I'm not trying to unpick paragraph after paragraph of infodump, I'm groaning at bad puns or shaking my head at yet another self-indulgent in-joke. Quests are either humorous and inconsequential or sombre and self-important. Tonally, you can frequently hear the gears grinding as you move from one questgiver to another. 

Six fantasy names in a single paragraph. Not even close to the record!

 

It should be easy enough to sum all of this up as by-the-yard fantasy crossed with self-indulgent fan-fic and yet I fricken' love it! It's writing that understands exactly who the audience is and exactly what they want. I should know. I am that audience and it's exactly what I want.

After more than two decades soaking in the EverQuest ether I know this world as well as I know any, including my own. And by "as well" I mean partially, selectively and subjectively. 

I pick up on references that remind me of things I've done or seen or been told about. I recognize most of the names, even if I can't always remember where I heard them before. When certain, familiar characters emerge from the shadows of the plot I gasp just like I should.

It's like watching a new season of a favorite TV show, something low culture and high camp. It could feel cheap and shameful but instead it feel joyous and uplifting. Like anything that hangs around for long enough, after more than twenty years Norrathian lore has acquired the patina that comes with age. It's very easy to mistake that for gravitas.

As I've read through post after post about Endwalker, happily cracking open the spoilers for a story I know I'll never follow, it's occurred to me how unlikely it is that anyone reading anything I write about Visions of Vetrovia would ever care if I spoiled anything about the plot. I know some regulars here play EverQuest II and at least three people have mentioned buying the latest expansion but if any of them care a hoot about the lore they've mostly kept it to themselves.

Nerds, eh?

Even so, I'd still go out of my way to avoid spoiling any major plot twists or reveals... if there were any. There might be. I couldn't say. 

It might seem strange but even at this late stage of the plot I'm not entirely clear what's going on. I know Mayong Mistmoore is up to something but then Mayong's always up to something. 

He's a busy fellow, always has been. He's "up to something" in Terror of Luclin, the latest expansion for EverQuest, where he's been seen on the moon. The suspicion there is that he may be trying to usurp a god, which I think is what he's doing in Vetrovia half a millenium later. 

To be fair, it's what he's always doing. The idée fixe is one of the less-celebrated vampire tropes. I wonder if the reason Mayong so aspires to godhood is that true immortality, rather than mere undeath, would free his mind from the shackles of habit. Gods play dice. Vampires play chess.

I fear he may have, once again, bitten off more than he can suck. He seems to have set in motion a chain of events that could lead to a return to full godhood for Anashti Sul. 

Usually I'd have fact-checked that last paragraph before committing it to print. For all I know she's already got her Godcard back, if indeed I'm right in thinking she ever lost it. 

Recovered memories are tight!

 

I'm not entirely up to speed with Anashti Sul's history, as must be obvious. I think she's the god of the undead but I have a feeling she was also a major god of healing at one point. I also seem to remember we fought her or helped her or freed her or imprisoned her in some previous storyline. I know that this time around a lot of people stand back and gasp when her name is mentioned so I did too, although I couldn't really tell you why. 

I'm not being twee about that, by the way. I was sitting down, so I didn't actually stand back, but the first time an NPC pointed out whose altar I'd just been messing with, I echoed the name out loud in a tone of exaggerated surprise.

It wasn't even the first time I'd exclaimed out loud at a reveal. It happened close to the start, when I correctly identified Tserrina Syl`Tor in the first instance before anyone said her name. I'm easily excited.

This is the kind of immersion you can't just buy. You can just buy the expansion, sure, but the immersion, that you have to bring with you. That's how serial fiction works and mmorpgs are serial fiction.

In standalone games, just as in novels or movies, it's possible to generate all the necessary emotions to lose yourself in the imagined lives of others in just one, concentrated experience. Long-running TV shows, like comics and series novels, rely on an accretive process for their success. So do mmorpgs.

Some genuinely fascinting implications for the game, should Mayong succeed. He won't, of course.

It's been very noticeable how many bloggers, writing about Endwalker, have referred to the expansion as the culmination of a decade of storytelling. For all that everyone praises the story as something that exemplifies the best of what the genre has so far been able to produce, no-one seems to be suggesting any new player should start there.

Without at least some knowledge of what has gone before, even the finest installment of an ongoing narrative can't hope to have the same emotional impact. No matter how detailed and comprehensive the "Previously on...", there's no substitute for having been there.

Even if you can barely remember what happened. Honestly, it doesn't matter if you can't. There's not going to be a test. All that counts is that you know enough to feel inside the story rather than outside. That's all immersion means, in the end.

For good or ill, I'm inside Norrath's story now. Any judgments I offer are going to be relative.

It's bloody good, though!

The Wretched World Is Run By Ox And Ass (You Heard It Here First!)

I had been toying with a vague plan, where I'd put up a short post for each of the twelve days of Christmas featuring some strange, weird or amusing Christmas song. I didn't want to use anything I'd posted before or anything obvious everyone would already know but, surprisingly, I don't have dozens of bizarre seasonal numbers playing in my head so I knew I'd have to do some homework.

Of course, as soon as I started, the first thing I discovered was that loads of people had had the same idea already. There are plenty of playlists called things like "Rare, Bizarre and Unique Christmas Songs" or just "Weird Christmas Songs" but far from being a help it was a bloody nuisance.

The whole point of doing something like this is to share things I've discovered for myself, not to plagiarize someone else's work, so I fastidiously avoided clicking on any of those compilations. Instead, I spent two or three hours across a couple a days trawling YouTube for likely candidates. Chances are I was just repeating the exact same process as the creators of the lists but the selections would at least be my own and there was always the chance I'd come across something new. 

Newness itself was my original aim. I began by looking for songs that hadn't been uploaded or preferably recorded before this year. That rapidly fell apart for two reasons: I didn't find much from 2021 that did much for me but I did stumble across quite a few intriguing oddities from past years that I hadn't heard.

In the end I decided I'd settle for just that: anything I hadn't heard before, regardless of how old it was or how well-known it seemed to be. I realize I should have heard some of these before - you'd think I'd have noticed Christmas songs by Blondie or Bob Dylan (The lack of links there indicates we'll get to those soon enough.) but I can honestly say I haven't. 

I'm still digging around and it can be heavy going at times. There are an unconscionable number of supposedly humorous seasonal ditties that deserve to remain thoroughly obscure. Surf rock acts and old school country singers seem particularly fond of novelty numbers featuring any combination of grandparents, santas, reindeer and dismemberment but those are nothing to the torrent of infantile smut. It baffles me how so many inept amateurs can believe a few swear words and a bucketful of sexual innuendo will render any holiday situation hilarious.

If you sift the trash with sufficient rigor, however, the occasional gem does shine through, certainly enough to justify a short series. It won't be the "twelve days of Christmas" for the very good reason that the traditional dozen doesn't even begin until Christmas Day itself and by the twenty-seventh I'm sure everyone will have heard all the Christmas songs thay can stomach for another year.

Instead I'm just going to toss up a few tracks as and when it seems appropriate, by which I mean when I haven't got anything much to post about or when I'm pushed for time. Like today! 

I did consider dumping everything I've found in one massive splurge but seriously, who's going to listen to more than two or three demented Christmas tunes in a sitting? Okay, I will, apparently, but other than me? 

And with that  let's have the opening salvo. I'm still looking for more, by the way, and I'm open to suggestions.

This is one of the oddest but also one of the most fascinating I've found so far. The lyrics were generated by the GPT-2 neural net and set to music by a band called The Forever Now. The AI was "trained" by Janelle Shane, who has a book out that I plan on buying as a Christmas present to myself.

It's quite long at around six minutes but I recommend watching to the end. It hits a mesmeric, oddly soothing groove in the final third before crashing to sudden, unsettling coda. If this is what AIs think about Christmas I fear for the singularity.

I feel I should have heard this decades ago but I didn't. I did, however, watch a Netflix documentary recently, called "A Futile and Stupid Gesture", about the two guys who created National Lampoon. It's a little pleased with itself at times but worth a look. They didn't mention this but there's a lot of other stuff like it in the movie.

This gem features Bill Murray on lead vocals (Yes, really.). There's a longer version that doesn't seem to have the same high production values but does have a spoken section featuring Gilda Radner that's worth a listen, too. 

 Speaking of high production values...

Everything I know about KPop could be etched onto the wing of a ladybird  but I'm becoming painfully conscious that's a situation that can't be allowed to stand. I'd estimate a good fifth of all of NME's music coverage that I read these days involves some Korean outfit or other and not just Blackpink or BTS, either. We're long past the point where it can be shrugged off as some kind of fad. If Korea's not the future of pop culture it's one of the futures.

It took me a while to work it out but I think "Christmas EveL" just means "Christmas Eve". I was imagining it meant "Christmas Evil" but that would be a different song altogether. The auto-translated lyrics are illuminating: "My pants are wet to the knee/After a bit , I topple over" is a couplet you wouldn't expect. Good tune, though. Catchy chorus.

That's enough for now. Expect one or two more of these in the run-up to Christmas. Get you in the mood, they will. 

The mood for what, though? Ah, there's a question!

A Monumental Change For Crowfall

Earlier this year I spent several hours in the open beta version of Kickstarter success story Crowfall. That the game can be considered any kind of success tells a different kind of story.

The bar for mmorpgs on the crowdfunding platform, which recently kickstarted its own controversy involving industry hot-button fix-all, blockchain , is set astonishingly low.  All a game has to do to qualify is come to market.

Crowfall managed that much, after which it all but vanished. In the months that followed I happened on almost no commentary at all about the game. No one I followed was playing it. No-one was writing about it. The only news stories I saw revolved around rumor and speculation over whether it was about to close down for good.

Compared to the years of angst-ridden hand-wringing that prefaced Wildstar's eventual demise, interest in even Crowfall's ultimate failure seemed desultory. It appeared anyone who remembered the game at all was only waiting for final confirmation they could finally forget about it.

It's all a far cry from the brash, bold claims made by the developers all those years ago, when I described the PR blitz as "arrogant and aggressive". Back then, Artcraft laid out a pitch that suggested much was wrong with the genre but they knew how to fix it.  

Most of the things they claimed were holding the genre back most likely weren't but that's arguably a matter of opinion. That the solutions they came up with fixed nothing is a matter of record. Crowfall failed to find much of an audience and couldn't keep most of what it found. By the few accounts there were, the game was spiralling down to disaster.

And then someone grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and hauled it back. Crowfall has been bought, outright by a company that supposedly wants to patch it up and run it on. 

The purchaser isn't one of the usual suspects, the game aggregators, who hoover up functional but unpopular properties and package them for a different market. It's a small company out of Austin, Texas that publishes mobile games.

The name of the company in question is Monumental and their flagship title is Mythgard, "a fantasy cyberpunk CCG of heroes, gods, and mythical beasts" currently enjoying a twenty-four hour peak population on Steam of twenty-two players. Its all-time peak is less than five hundred.

You might wonder why such a company would want to buy a PC-based mmorpg, although with stats like those it is possible that even Crowfall's level of "success" looks juicy. The press release and some subsequent conversation around the purchase presents an appealing tale of a long-term Crowfall superfan who found himself in the happy position of being able to take control of the game he loves and plays but it also includes a less-cuddly proposition:

"Monumental sees this as more than a unique and compelling game; it’s an online platform designed around player interaction and a perfect platform for experimentation"

That jumped out at me from the MassivelyOP report. You don't often see companies admit they've bought an IP or a game for the express purpose of twisting it into something else. Usually there's a lot of fine talk about how nothing much will change except your login details and the name of the currency in the cash shop. 

 

Much of the speculation about what this might mean revolves around the conversion of the Crowfall IP for mobile, which makes sense given Monumental's current portfolio. It could equally be read, however, as an opportunity for the purchaser to get a foot in the door of PC gaming, using Crowfall's name as a calling card and its infrastructure as a key. It's certainly true that Crowfall's cartoony, attractive artstyle would adapt very well to other, perhaps less PvP-oriented, options.

Whether it will lead to significant changes to Crowfall itself very much remains to be seen. Monty Kerr, CEO of Monumental and the aforementioned superfan, certainly has aspirations in that direction:

"I’ll also be the first to admit that I couldn’t have built Crowfall. But I can finish it, expand it, and make sure this unique and amazing game has found its forever home."

J. Todd Coleman, chief architect and former owner, goes further:

"[Kerr] wanted his company to buy Crowfall, hire the team, and take the game back into development. Go back to working on the promise of Crowfall: a dynamic online world with real conflict, where players decide the fate of the world."

Apparently, Monumental has financial resources Artcraft doesn't that make all this a possibility. What they are I have yet to hear anyone explain. Given the length of time and amount of money it has already taken to get Crowfall into the barely adequate state it exists in right now, those resources would need to be substantial.

It's going to be interesting to watch how this one plays out. More interesting, I fear, than playing the game has been, at least so far.

Getting Into The Winter Convergence Spirit With The Winter Convergence First Impressions Blog Post (I Think I'm Catching The Tone Here...)

Winter Convergence. It's not the snappiest name for a festival, is it? It's the one they're going with though, so I guess we'd better all get used to it. I won't make any more snide comments about it, I promise. Not this post, anyway.

Forget the name. Now I've taken a first look at the event, there's one thing I can definitely say in its favor. It's big. For a brand new festival in a brand new mmorpg it's really quite impressive.

The game wants you to know about it, too. There are banners for Winter Convergence all over the place. I think I went through about five different screens telling me about it before I got into the game proper. 

Then again, I may have gone round more than once. I did have a little trouble coming back after my short time away. I won't bore you with the details but let's just say I'd forgotten a few things and then, when I got in, my internet connection went out

There were a few other issues as well, so all in all in it wasn't the smoothest of returns. It's just as well the event itself is highly accessible. If I'd had to make much of an effort I might have called it for the day and gone back to EverQuest II.

I didn't, though. I managed to get myself into the game, where my character was patiently waiting by the roaring fire in the Town Hall in Weaver's Fen. In retrospect, if I'd known it would be weeks before I saw her again, I'd have taken the trouble to run her back to her house in Mourningdale (On which she now owes property tax, also something I forgot about.)

The very first thing that caught my eye was the huge string of lights above the fireplace. It felt remarkably cheery and, like the entire Winter Convergance festival really, weirdly inappropriate.

I don't really want to start out by picking holes in what is, after all, supposed to be a jolly bit of holiday fun and it's very important to remember that so far I've barely seen any of the content and done almost none of the questline. It's theoretically possible that when all is revealed it will make perfect sense. I'd have to say I think that's unlikely but the possibility exists.

Even so, I'm finding the whole thing a little hard to swallow. There are a lot of lights for a start but I don't believe Aeternum's tech level supports electrical power yet. Everything seems to be lit by oil lanterns. I guess we'll have to assume these lights are all Azoth-powered but Azoth does have a very distinctive blue color and half these lights are pink. 

Then there are the "Lost Presents". One of the key ways to earn the holiday currency, Winter Tokens, is
by finding presents that have been stolen by "the Frigid Folk" and left scattered across the landcape. As yet I have only the vaguest idea who the Frigid Folk might be and absolutely no clue why, or more importantly how, they're stealing presents. 

For that matter I don't really know who they're stealing them from. Townsfolk, presumably, but why the beleagured inhabitants of all these towns, most of which are under virtual siege from the wide variety of arcane and malign forces surrounding and threatening to overwhelm them, should be making, wrapping and stockpiling gifts in such prodigious quantities mystifies me. I thought they were all running out of supplies, getting desperate. They've certainly sent me on enough missions on that ticket.

Then there's the Winter Wanderer and the Winter Warrior, two elemental forces, one of whom is also split into two, a Positive and a Negative. The Frigid Folk follow the Warrior but so far I've seen none of them. 

 

I have, however, met the Winter Wanderer's positive persona. He's a twelve foot tall yeti and he lives in a Winter Village that he built himself or so I'm guessing. I think there are several of them. As an elemental force I imagine he can be in more than one place at a time. 

I spotted one of the villages on the map just north of Weaver's Fen so I ran up there to take a look. I found my first lost present just outside the town gates. Hard to miss, really. You can see the blue glow from several hundred yards away. The presents also show up on my HUD radar display, although it's possible you need a certain level of gathering skill for that to happen. 

By the time I got to the Winter Village I'd recovered three lost presents, which turned out to be very handy, since one of the first things the Wanderer wanted me to do was combine three presents into a Winter Token at a Holiday Hut (These names are killing me...) How that works I couldn't begin to imagine but it does.

The Winter Village itself is fantastic. Absolutely beautiful and not entirely out of keeping with the built environment. The huts are reminiscent of some "German Markets" I've visited in real life, although in my experience it's usually been raining and the only "snow" has been coming from a hose poking out of an upstairs window.

The big advantage of being an elemental force of nature dedicated to Winter, of course, is that you can have all the snow you want. Not only that, you can make sure it only falls in convenient and scenic locations, in pristine swathes and attractive drifts and if any should happen to thaw it will immediately re-freeze into delightful icicles. No need to grit the roads or shovel the sidewalks, let alone buy a cylinder of compressed air.

Let's not cavil. The art department's done a superb job. The highlighted locations look beautiful. I could and very likely will use some of them for Christmas cards. I particularly liked the stage with the purple curtains and I was chortling to myself when I discovered you can crouch down and stroke the oversized clockwork rabbit's snazzy sweater.

I'm not quite so sure about the writing. The Winter Wanderer talks like Yogi Bear after a stroke. I don't know quite why such a supernatural entity should be so inarticulate although I have an inkling we may get to find out. He certainly knows my name, though. He wouldn't stop using it and since he was trying to convince me to do him a favor at the time, it made me suspect he'd read one of those management books on how to get the best out of your workforce.

After I'd made my first Winter Token the Yeti sent me off to find a regular settlement to grab myself a present from under the tree and check out the town board for winter temp work. I looked at the full map for the first time and did a double take. Most of it was green.

It seems my faction has been very busy while I've been away. When I was last there we had three territories. Now we have eight. We have lost Brightwood but we own everything else except Weaver's Fen and Mourningdale.

As it happened, Brightwood was the nearest so I went there, even though it was in enemy hands. It makes precious little difference to me who's setting the taxes. At first I veered off route a couple of times to pick up some lost presents but it seems there's not much need to go looking for them in the wilderness. When the Frigid Folk steal them they seem to like leaving them by the side of the road. I found one about every few hundred yards all the way there.

The tree in Brightwood was hard to miss. It dominates the central square, wreathed in lights and piled with presents. I helped myself to one of those then checked the town board, which had just three Winter missions. One of those autocompleted when I took it, since I happened to be running across country carrying thirty stone blocks. Actually more like fifty. Who needs a sleigh?

Around then my GeForce Now timer began to tick down the last few minutes so I decided to log out and write this. As I was leaving, I noticed yet another promo for a free gift in the Cash Shop (It actually tells you about it at character select but I wasn't paying attention then.) I clicked on that and got myself a lovely potted poinsettia for my house. I'll have to pay my taxes before I can place it but I was going to have to do that anyway.

There's also an impressive, free Hunter's Festive Coat outfit with ermine trim. I took that too, of course, but there wasn't time to try it on before I had to leave. Something to look forward to next time.

And yes, I will be back. I'm not remotely convinced by the lore but Amazon seem to have the holiday fun part down. Part of the event runs on Winter Tokens and part on reputation, using the exact progression mechanics as the three player factions, with a whole load of items opening up for purchase as you reach higher ranks. I only had a brief glance through what you can buy or earn but some of it looks pretty desirable.

If I wasn't already hip-deep in the snow of two other holiday events I'd jump right on this one but since it began later and goes on longer I'll probably save it for a while and do the others first. Winter Convergence has the huge advantage of being new, though, so I may not be able to hold back.

In addition to the things I've seen so far there are Ice Caves to explore, Gaelemite meteors to mine and a whole questline to follow. I'm sure this won't be the last time I post about it all. This is why game companies run these festivals. They get people logging in.

In this case I'd say, at first sight, they've done enough to justify the hype. We'll see if I still feel the same by the time the snow melts away in January.

If You're Reading This It May Already Be Too Late...

This is going to count as one of the tardiest PSAs ever but better late, as they say. I wouldn't have thought to mention it at all had Mrs. Bhagpuss not appeared behind me as I was about to log in for my dailies in Guild Wars 2 this morning to tell me there was a free gift in the Black Lion store (Which she confusingly referred to as "The Red Lion", as if it was a pub.)

As it happened, I already knew there was a freebie because I'd picked it up yesterday on both the two accounts I'm playing regularly. It's one of those Black Lion Claim Tickets that entitle you to a free weapon skin or some such cosmetic doodaddle. I only took it because it was there. I never turn down a free gift, even one I don't want. That would just be rude.

All I ever do with the things is throw them in the bank. I rarely even click on them or visit the vendor that takes them to see what they buy. This time, though, I was fortunate enough to have Mrs. Bhagpuss to advise me. 

She was keen that I should know there was an option right at the bottom of the vendor's inventory where you can buy something called a "Vintage Black Lion Weapon Box". As far as I can tell, this is a new addition to the game. The wiki entry doesn't give a date but the History there only goes back as far as last month.

Mrs. Bhagpuss told me the boxes contained all the old skins that used to be in Black Lion Chests, the game's heavily overpriced lockboxes. Okay, to be strictly accurate, it's the Black Lion Keys that open the boxes that are overpriced but it's always the keys, isn't it? I don't know why we talk about lockboxes being the problem. Does any game actually sell the boxes?

Getting back to the free ticket, my usual problem with them is that I suffer from choice paralysis. I hate choosing one item to pick from a list. Faced with a whole lot of things I could spend my tickets on I prefer not to spend them at all. Not making a choice means that, notionally, I own everything. So much more satisfying.

I have no such compunctions when it comes to shoving my hand into a virtual bran barrel. I love lockboxes just so long as no-one's expecting me to pay for them. I particularly love them when they're extremely likely to contain something I don't have and have a high chance it might be something I want. 

Better yet if it's something I can sell. All the skins that come out of these boxes are tradeable as far as I know. What's more, so are the boxes. Mrs. Bhagpuss mentioned that, should I not want to open the box, I could just take the money, currently somewhere around 30 gold, by hawking them on the Trading Post.

I didn't do that. I opened mine. One free ticket on each of my three accounts, the third of which I logged in for the first time in months just for the purpose. 

I even logged my free account in to see if ArenaNet were going to be super-generous. Unsurprisngly, they were not, although my Charr there did get his fourth birthday present and a Wintersday gift from under the tree, which he was standing next to, suggesting it's been a year since I last saw him.

On the paid-for accounts I was very pleased with what I got, so much so that I used several of the other tickets I had squirrelled away. The pick of the bunch was the Greatsword, the name of which I forget, closely followed by the Sceptre (Ditto.) You can see them both at the top of the post.

All of the skins I got were good enough that I might use them, although I'd have to find a character who wields the relevant weapon, which might be a bit of an ask. Maybe when End of Dragons shuffles the pack again.

I checked the going rate for all of them on the Trading Post. The lowest was 25 gold. The highest, suprisingly the rather staid-looking axe, sells for around 55 gold. I think if I was looking to make money I'd probably open the boxes and sell the contents rather than sell the boxes themselves. The odds look pretty good there.

I held back some of my tickets just in case. In case of what, you may well ask. I have no idea. 

I'm not clear on whether these Vintage boxes are a permanent addition to the game, even assuming they really are new, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. As for the free tickets, I believe this is the final day. I did say I was late on this one. Sorry about that.

Tomorrow, though, there's another freebie: a Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock. Another spin of the wheel! The official announcement doesn't mention how long that's going to be around, either, so I'd recommend grabbing it on the 17th just in case it's a one-day wonder.

This has been a Public Service Announcement. We now return you to your regular programming. Assuming you can even tell the difference.

Snow Day

This is the barest minimum of effort for the most meagre of placeholder posts but I got home too late from work for anything more ambitious and yet apparently I am now pathologically incapable of breaking my daily posting run, which extends back into the end of July. An intervention may be required at some point.

When I'm in a rush to get something posted I usually fall back on the two old staples - screenshots and songs. Luckily for me, Wintersday just opened in Guild Wars 2. As I type this I haven't even been to Divinity's Reach to check it out but I'm about to rectify that omission as I type.

I'm betting it looks pretty much the same, although there were several changes noted in the patch notes, including a new route for the Dolyak that drops presents in the street (Not a euphemism, for once.) and all the orphans have nice punctuation hats to let you know they're waiting for your quest love.

There are also a bunch of changes to the Toypocalypse event, presumably intended to make it less soul-searingly tedious. Okay, it's not really that bad but the appeal wore off a good few years ago and last time I tried it it seemed like it went on for several weeks. Not sure I can work up the enthusiasm to go through it again just to see what's changed.

People love Wintersday, though, at least when the snow's fresh on the ground. I'm logged in now and the lag is ferocious. There are so many people running around in a frenzy, chattering excitedly it feels like school just let out. Which for all I know it did. Actually, it's probably about that time on the East Coast.

The glare is enough to make you snowblind. I always forget just how overwhelmingly blue Wintersday is. It makes my eyes water but you get used to it all too soon. Like all the other winter festivals in all the other games, Wintersday will be here for a lot longer than my affection for it is likely to last but I'm still always happy to see it arrive.

And that's really just about all I have time for. Let's end with a song, shall we? Got a feeling I might have linked this one before but who cares? It's not like anyone's going to remember, is it?

It's unseasonably warm where I live at the moment but it's going to get a lot colder very soon so here's hoping for a good winter.