The latest dev blog from Wargaming sparks joy. Well, one part of it does, at least.
Yorktown and Hornet
Never getting my hands on Enterprise really really hurt, but if the rest of the Yorktown class carriers are coming, that’s quite the consolation. I’d rather have the full set, but it’s not like Enterprise was deleted from the game. The ship still exists and so do I, so there’s still hope someday. For now, I will gush over the first and last of the Yorktown class fleet carriers.
Maya
The more Takao class cruisers there are in the game, the better, I say. I was surprised Maya’s only going to be a tier seven ship, but the modifications to the hull and armament could justify it. With a reload booster, faster torpedoes, and a heal–on a T7 cruiser I might add–Maya’s looking to be quite powerful at close range. I’m looking forward to her full introduction.
This Does Not Spark Joy
Super carriers … yeah I don’t hate the idea on principle, but my biggest issue with World of Warships is how toxic and reactionary the community can get. Any time Wargaming pulls something like this, I’m going to hear about it in-game. I’m going to be hearing about it from all the content creators. I’m going to be hearing about it pretty much everywhere.
I’m going to be hearing about it for months.
It’s just one of those situations I’d rather not have cross my eyes or ears at all, but that’s just the way things work, sometimes.
January 15th, this Saturday is when we’ll finally get to try out the game’s new features.
Some things that were touched on previously over the last few months were new armor sets, more accessories, gameplay balance changes, new stages and enemies, save profiles, and plenty of other things.
Quality of life cometh. This is an update I’ll be actively testing so things are about to get very busy. I’m actually wondering if I could use the game to help design a few of the mechs in Aeon. I mean I definitely can, I’m just wondering if I should put that much investment into it in the meantime. Incidentally the game started out for the developers as an app to help them design their own robots, so I’m on the same wavelength. I’m just wondering about minor things: EG, if I came up with a design in the program, how much would I have to alter its final appearance outside of the program for it to be my own intellectual property? Where is that dividing line, exactly?
I don’t know, yet.
Anyway, I’m going to try to get at least one of the Fleeing Victory chapters done by Saturday so I’m not too far behind when I start trying out the update.
I should have known I’d be knocking out the majority of the visual site work all at once. Today’s been rough and I’m running on three hours of sleep. I wanted to write today not fight with the Divi modules on the front and back ends. My legs hurt.
Anyway, it’s been a long day so I’m going to keep this brief.
I changed the font from the AC7 font I was experimenting with to one called Archivo. It’s more comfortable to read on a teal-ish backdrop. I’ll still be using the AC7 one for something specific on the main site, though.
With that said, the Praedian Records main site (jgphoenix is a subdomain) was what I was originally working on today. I was running the main site with a mediawiki setup but decided to use wordpress instead. The uninstallation took longer than it should have, but I’m getting very familiar with all of this now. WordPress needs more plugins than mediawiki but I don’t need 90% of the latter’s features, not to mention I don’t need over a thousand individual articles.
At least not right now.
The idea with the big switch was to trim things down and try to plan for the long term. No programs or features that are too heavy or that won’t ever be useful, etc. I’ve got a lot more work to do but after today I think it’s best to let the new look settle for a week or two and then go in and do another pass. Right now there are a few problems I couldn’t successfully troubleshoot, like why certain settings for text modules don’t take no matter which end of the site I do them on. That could take a while to figure out, but I’ve made all the progress I can for today.
This has been a frustrating update, but I’m feeling better now that it’s coming together. The main site should also be presentable in the near future. I’ll be writing up as much information on there as I can in my spare time.
Still no ideas for How-To articles for this month, but I think an FnF will work instead. It helps that I’m nearly finished with the first one. My FnF articles are basically just ‘wiki style’ pages for fictional things I really like with my personal input thrown in somewhere. Also pictures. They’re not typical blog articles but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The other article is definitely going to be a Code Fairy follow up, I just need a good day to sit down and go through the game a couple of times. Today I was busy cleaning up, catching up on world events, and organizing plugins.
Fleeing Victory
I’ll try to have one or both of those done by this weekend, but there’s a very good story in the Zion setting that’s vying for my attention all day everyday right now. It’s making it really hard to focus on FV and LGT.
It’s actually pretty funny. For a while the well was extremely dry on the Zion side of things. Aeon has a couple of things that are ready and waiting for me to finish my economic research, and Praedia content just spawns out of the aether as a whole. It’s Zion where ideas struggle to coalesce into something coherent.
Until now, that is.
Now a whole (local) setting has erupted into existence out of thin air and I can’t help but fill in little details and timelines to make it as real as possible. I really need to start writing soon.
Things are starting to get back to normal, so it’s time to catch up on things (and shoot some things).
Clan Battles
8 Wins and 4 Losses. It looked something like this: 2 Wins, 1 Loss, 6 Wins, 3 Losses.
2:1 ratio? I’ll take it.
Overall a very good night, and this is Storm League, too. It’s safe to say we’re competing at that level now. We’re not just hanging on like the previous Tier 10 season.
That said, there aren’t any duplicate ships or aircraft carriers allowed this season. I’m sure that would throw a whole squadron of wrenches at any strategy we use.
Next Week
I want to knock out at least a couple of my January goals this week. I’m looking at doing both Fleeing Victory chapters as well as that first article. Remote play works but I need to play directly from my PS4 first to get familiar with the content, and then go through and get the screenshots I need through remote play, so that will probably take a couple of days.
I should also be able to finish The Long Moonlight by this weekend.
Site Work
I’m still poking around the site in the background, ditching old or less helpful plugins, finding decent or flat-out better alternatives, and so on. When I have the time I’m going to add a few more things to the front end to help with navigation and making the Praedian Records more appealing.
Speaking of which, fiddling with that picture of the Bourgogne reminded of my Favorites in Fiction pages. I need to get back to making those, too. I’m not sure if FnFs should count toward my ‘2 articles’ monthly goal, but it’s tempting. It’s not significantly less work than something like a review or a How-To article.
