My mom wrote that in one of her photo albums about the death of her mother. I feel the same way now that she's gone. Although I didn't want to include such personal stuff here, I'll make an exception in this case since I don't keep an actual journal but still want to put it somewhere. It also explains why there haven't been any updates.

Life fucked me over in rather subtle but no less debilitating ways. My mom helped me through the worst of it, and I'll always be grateful to her for that. My dad passed away when my problems were still overwhelming, and I didn't realize until now just how difficult everything must have been for her.

I got better as I got older, but some things never go away. At some point, I gave up trying to find a partner as it didn't seem to be worth it to put so much effort into something that had such a low chance of success. I also resigned myself to never being happy. Having a reasonable comfortable existence would have to be enough.

I mostly kept to myself and did the things I enjoy. When I was in a really good mood, which wasn't that often, I sometimes felt love for my mom, though it never lasted long. I always thought I should have felt that way more often, but I just didn't. I was unemotional most of the time, which was just fine with me.

Last year, my mom's cancer started to affect her more, which coincided with my chronic fatigue. Fortunately, I managed to get rid of my ailment and was able to do more again. I convinced my mom to go on vacation with me because I knew it was the last opportunity. It was one of the best things I ever did.

I'm so glad my mom's condition wasn't that bad yet on my birthday. We'd even baked my birthday cake together, and it was one of the best. I also did my MMO birthday stuff. My interests were still a high priority for me.

Soon after my birthday, my mom's condition worsened even further. I'd always thought I wouldn't be able to care for her as it's not something I'm comfortable with, but instead I couldn't not care for her. That's when I found out just how much she truly meant to me.

The next few months were the most taxing and stressful of my life. I had no idea I was even capable of doing that much, but I was in really good shape, possibly the best I'd ever been. Not only had I lost the weight I'd put on during my bout of chronic fatigue, I was also as fit as I had been before it. Moreover, it had started to feel nice just being alive. And for the first time in my life, I had a real purpose.

I listened to music to cope with the stress because music I like directly affects my brain in a positive manner like nothing else does. I was also still playing MMOs since I needed time on my own. When my mom died, however, my interests suddenly seemed so trivial. It was like a spell had been broken.

I couldn't help but think that I should have done it differently, spent less time in virtual worlds and more time with my mom. That I should have shown more interest in other things. And not only for my mom but for myself. So I would have had a somewhat satisfying life instead of a moderately comfortable one. And now it was too late. That realization broke me, especially since it was most likely my only chance at it.

It took a few weeks until I was able to enjoy music again. I logged into some MMOs but haven't actually played them, or any single player games for that matter. I'll probably get back into the latter before the former, as I did keep up with MMO news. Guild Wars allows single-word names now, but I was too late to get mine, which annoyed me despite everything else going on. Not being able to use the names I want is so stupid.

I'm feeling a little better again, but I really need to secure my standard of living somehow. I don't think I could acclimate myself to a new home, so if it comes to that, there's a good chance I'll prematurely join my parents in the family grave.

I was busy with other stuff for much longer than I'd anticipated, but I really want to get back into things here. I haven't done any gaming outside the MMO space, which had two nice surprises for me earlier this year, though I've also had a bit of a main character appearance crisis once again. I intend to make an update about my MMO activities once a month or so, at least as long as my interest in them remains high.

When I wanted to play some Defiance again after a fairly long time of inactivity, I was taken aback to discover that it was gone. I didn't keep up with MMO news at the time, so I totally missed its shutdown. At least I had recorded all of the cinematics. The first surprise was that Defiance was being brought back by a different studio.

It didn't bother me that the old account data was gone since I'd pretty much been done with the game and had entertained the idea of starting over at times. After going through the story content and maxing one's EGO, there really isn't much to do except trying to get better weapons. My original character did have some really badass guns. When the server came up, I only snagged my name. I plan to create a slightly different version of my former character on my next birthday and redo my videos in higher quality.

My catgirl's skin tone might be a bit too dark as well, so I'm gonna do some more comparisons until I'm absolutely sure which one to use. Since I've never played her, recreating her wouldn't be an issue, except she's on my regular account and therefore behind a paywall. I also have a free trial account which I played on a while back and have since been using to test different character options. The trial offers a ton of content, but I find two of its restrictions quite limiting.

The first is not having access to retainers, making it much more difficult to work on crafting classes due to the limited amount of space. The second is not being able to use the market board, which means I'd have to get all the gear appearances I want myself. The same applies to crafting materials and anything else I might need. On the other hand, I can play whenever I like without having to subscribe, which is a huge plus for me. I should be able to work around both restrictions, so I've decided to play the trial version instead. I still need to set up my UI, though, so this recreation is also scheduled for my next birthday.

Once I'd finally settled on Jenny Nightflower as my full gaming name, I logged into GW to create my ranger with it only to discover it was already taken! Cue another naming crisis. I eventually decided to use Jenny Flowers as my character name with Nightflower as more of a nickname. Fortunately, that one wasn't taken.

And now GW has done it again! When I wanted to start leveling my character in pre-Searing Ascalon at long last, I noticed that her skin tone looked a little too dark. It seems I went too far in that direction the last time, probably influenced by my Rift character, who's quite a bit darker than myself. Now I really like how my Rift character looks, but in general I want my main characters to be closer to myself in that respect. I'm going to find the right skin tone for my GW character and recreate her on my next birthday.

I play mainly GW2 still. I usually do a bit of daily farming for legendaries, which are rather expensive. I'm still missing a good amount of weapon types, so I'm going for more first and second generation legendary weapons. I prefer crafting precursors by doing their collections, which require a large amount of materials. The collectibles from fractals were one of my bottlenecks since I don't like doing group content unless I'm familiar with it. There was an unexpected fractal bonus event, however, that introduced automatic matchmaking for some of them. I didn't really care about the legendary gloves that could be earned from it, but I got quite a few of the collectibles I was missing. I crafted several more precursors, but I need a lot of additional materials to progress the rest.

My main bottleneck now is gifts of exploration. The only way to get them is map completion of the original zones, which rewards two of them. Somewhat ironically, I've been using the wizard's vault starter kits to make and sell legendaries in order to have more money to turn my crafted precursors into legendaries for my own use. The starter kits have some expensive components in them but not the one that needs a gift of exploration, so I've recently run out. It's not a high priority at the moment, though. For one thing, I still haven't finished the latest expansion, and I want to do that before the next one comes out at the end of the month.

The new expansion will finally make legendary aquabreathers available and also have a legendary ring that can be acquired via open world gameplay. Assuming the ring can be created twice, I'd have full legendary armor and accessories with those, so I decided that my future long-term characters will be in full legendary gear from the start. This makes it impossible to accidentally mess up their appearance while playing through and recording their personal story. I still haven't finalized all of their designs yet, though.

One of the fractal bonus event vendors offered one armor set for each weight class, and one token was enough to unlock all the skins of an otherwise cash shop-exclusive set, which was really nice. My engineer will most likely wear the medium armor set since I didn't like anything else for her so far. The heavy armor set isn't bad either, and I might use it on my guardian. As for weapons, I think I've found the right black lion weapon set for each class. My warrior is the only exception and will use the luminous set obtained from birthday gifts. For a consistent look, I want the classes who can use an aquatic spear to use the spear skin from their set for the underwater scenes.

Since regular spears are a recent addition, older black lion sets didn't include a skin for them, though a handful of sets have gotten one since. Not only does the set my new ranger uses not have a spear skin yet, her leggings cause a seam on her back which I doubt ever gets fixed unless I report it as a bug, so she remains stuck in tutorial area limbo for the time being. In case she isn't ready by the time I have the upcoming legendaries, I'm not sure which of my other characters I'll start instead. My warrior is the only one who doesn't need anything, and my revenant and elementalist lack just a few more things, so most likely it's going to be one of those three.

I played LotRO for a while back at launch but had trouble choosing between hunter and champion as my main. I also remember it feeling quite grindy, and I don't think I got very far. After it went F2P, I started fresh on a new server. At that point, I hadn't decided which version of my name to use for my main characters going forward, so I tested both. Since I wasn't fond of the diminutive at first, I deleted the character with it. However, I ended up liking it better after all, but by that time the name had been taken of course. It was enough to spoil the entire game for me, and I quit it altogether.

The announcement earlier this year of the switch to new 64-bit servers was the second surprise and revived my interest. If I could get my name on one of them, I wouldn't mind playing it again. Subscribers got a head start to reserve a limited amount of names, but it wasn't that important to me. And then I even missed the opening of the servers, or so I thought. It turned out that the large amount of character transfers was causing issues, and the servers would open a bit later. I was there that time and, much to my surprise, did get my name. Just in case, I also reserved two other names I've been using in MMOs.

I didn't play right away since there were reports of some issues I wanted to avoid. There's a deed for reaching level 20 without dying that my completionist nature demands I have, and I'd hate to have to restart my character due to an ill-timed lag spike or crash. To avoid potentially missing anything else, I looked into other things that could become unavailable. The LotRO wiki has a dedicated entry for the topic, and there's an even more extensive forum thread.

Landscape difficulty has apparently been nerfed quite a bit since I played it way back when, but a landscape difficulty setting was introduced that has deeds associated with it, which means I'll have to play it that way until level 130. To be better prepared, I decided to test the higher difficulty setting with a different character first. Since I like to have access to all trade skills, I'm glad it was changed so crafting professions can be freely chosen, making it possible for three characters to cover them all, though my main will need the extra crafting slot from the cash shop. I chose a guardian and lore-master in addition to my hunter to have one of each armor type.

I've only been playing my high elf guardian so far, and I had one really close call despite being very careful. Leveling is really slow this way, but it'll help to be familiar with the quests when playing my other characters. Once my guardian is level 20, I'll do the same with a lore-master, then use both to craft gear for my main to make it easier for her to safely get to level 20.

I wasn't planning to recreate this main. Character appearance can be changed at a barber for in-game money, though I didn't know that at first and tried in vain to find some sort of makeover token in the cash shop. However, I'd rather not play her with the default appearance until I have access to a barber, so I've added her to the list of characters to recreate on my next birthday, especially since I won't play her anyway until my two other characters are level 20, which should happen around that time.

While LotRO looks pretty good in 4k with maxed settings, the lack of scaling for certain UI elements makes it impossible for me to comfortably play it that way. It's really annoying having to change resolutions every time I want to play it, and I hope the UI will be updated in the future to have proper 4k support.

I haven't done much in SWTOR for quite some time. I still consider it one of my favorite MMOs, but I've played it so much that the only thing that matters to me now is recording cinematics. I have one character of each origin for that purpose, including my Jedi Knight main. I recorded a lot of videos with her but stopped eventually, mainly because I wasn't able to capture certain raid cinematics without unacceptable stuff in them. I'll definitely skip cinematics in content that can't be done solo if I ever get to that point again, though the only other character that would apply to is my Bounty Hunter, who'd cover the content on the Sith Empire side. The other six characters are for their class stories and possibly additional things exclusive to them.

It took a while to design all of my characters and get the items I wanted for them. By the time I was happy with their appearances, a road map for the game had included the intention of graphically updating the starter planets, so I waited for that since I want my videos to look as nice as possible. Eventually, the updates began. However, there were still some issues when I looked into starting my bounty hunter's story, and I decided to postpone any videos until I could be sure that it was as polished as possible.

Then late last year, character modernization happened. It was completely unexpected, but a graphical update for my characters sure sounded like a nice surprise. However, the changes turned out to be so bad that they made the game unplayable for me. Since then, updates have been made that improved things a lot, so my characters look mostly like they did before, and I can log into them again without feeling bad.

A lot of hair colors were added, which I appreciate, but there's still no dark brown that I like. It's also annoying that the same color can vary quite a bit on different hairstyles. I was never completely happy with my main's hair, and it looks like that won't change. Complexion is another issue. I like my main to have freckles now, but only a few complexions have them. Eyebrows can't be chosen independently either, so I can't get the look for my main I really want.

I'd still like to record my characters' stories, but I'm gonna wait until I can be certain that no further appearance changes of any significance are going to happen and all planets involved in the origin stories have been properly updated. I'd actually like to replay the story on my main the most, but the name Jenny is invalid now, even with a last name added, making it impossible to recreate her even if I wanted to. Oddly enough, names starting with 'Jenn' were blocked in WoW for the longest time before that restriction was lifted. If only SWTOR had some sort of New Game Plus mode, but that seems very unlikely to ever happen.

I'm done with WoW retail unless it gets a free-to-play option in the future, in which case I'd play it casually. I don't think that'll ever happen, though. A Classic Plus version would definitely be interesting, but I'd only play it under one condition: humans can be hunters from the start. An expanded Classic progression server with that option would be fine with me too. But yeah, the only thing that would get me to subscribe to WoW again is being able to play a human hunter from the very beginning.

My interest in MMOs has been higher again this year, and I thought it would be fun to write about my history with the genre. However, even the first entry became really long, and I wasn't able to finish it before my birthday. I decided to finish it later, and writing about my MMO past is now a long-term goal. As for my future MMO adventures, it's going to be largely the same for now. Just like last year, I re-created my main characters for both Guild Wars games on my birthday.

Since I never even played my GW main, it was more of a motivational thing. I want to get the title Legendary Defender of Ascalon for her, which requires reaching the highest level while staying in the tutorial area. I already got it on a different character but only because a friend showed me how. Most foes there stop giving experience at some point, and I doubt I can efficiently farm the ones that still do on my own, so I'll be relying on the daily quest that becomes available at the halfway point of level ten. Acquiring that title is my goal for GW this year.

I did play my GW2 main from last year for a while, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with her appearance and also hadn't figured out the right settings for video capture yet, so I stopped playing her. She's still in the turorial area as well and will remain there until I'm sure which dyes I want to use for her armor. I do have alts to play, which are also fun. After more than a decade, I finally managed to settle on most of their designs and personal story options!

Conveniently, Final Fantasy XIV had a free login campaign right around my birthday, and I used the opportunity to create a new character without having to subscribe. I really like FF14 but hate having to subscribe to it. The free trial is nice but too limited. I'll play it almost exclusively when I do subscribe, but I have no idea when that might be. I'm still busy with other stuff at the moment, so there might not be another update until next month.

So I suffered from chronic fatigue for like a year. It wasn't extremely bad but still fairly brutal. Doing anything physical exhausted me rather quickly, and I couldn't get through most days without taking a long nap. It even affected my mind, and I often felt like I was in a haze. Doctors were useless, but I fortunately saw something on TV about Echinacea, which supposedly strengthens the immune system. Since I suspected I had a long-term infection, I gave it a try, even though I was skeptical that it would help. Well, it actually did work, and I got rid of my illness. Pretty amazing what a plant can do.

During that time, my motivation was really low and my creativity basically nonexistent. I watched a lot of movies and almost exclusively played Guild Wars 2. Although I don't like to compete against other players, I had been regularly playing World versus World to get legendary armor. The large scale and objective-based gameplay made it more palatable to me, and as I understood it better and improved at it, I actually found myself enjoying it quite a bit. Except 1v1s, I still hate those and avoid them whenever possible. I was a bit obsessed with it for a while even and got the rest of armor as well as the backpack from there. I almost made it to mithril rank, but I got tired of it when I started to feel better, and I haven't been back since. I could still use the legendary rings from there, though, especially if the next expansion doesn't offer them through solo play.

My birthday is later this month, so there will probably be some more MMO-related entries around that time. To make navigation easier, I implemented some changes that were almost ready before I stopped caring. Well, that's all for now. Happy New Year!