Daily Blogroll

The Daily Blogroll — Saturday, 7 March 2026

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Syp is dragging a Minstrel through a rough LOTRO expansion zone, but a gorgeous dwarf city briefly cuts through the slog.

CrazyKinux impulse-bought Planet of Lana II off four gorgeous screenshots alone, sold on its hand-painted look and short puzzle-adventure vibe.

Frostilyte’s February was slowed by illness, with The King is Watching landing more lukewarm than its demo despite that clever watched-workers hook.

Heartless says ARC Raiders’ optional character reset makes loot and progression feel exciting again, especially with fresh loadouts and nastier ARC robots.

Bhagpuss points to AdventureQuest Worlds Infinity as proof MMORPG Kickstarters can work when a studio like Artix has years of player trust.

Belghast finds World of Warcraft heroics surprisingly chill lately, and wonders if the usual elitist dungeon energy moved on elsewhere.

Wilhelm runs through gaming annoyances, from Highguard flaming out fast to Tencent panic and Steam’s latest lawsuit over marketplace gambling claims.

Jamie Zawinski nerds out over Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ rebuilt season 2 title sequence and its split-timeline visual storytelling.

Bruce Schneier brings the weekly squid oddity, this time on Byzantine monks keeping squid on the menu through taxonomic confusion and a handy recipe.

Dave Winer jumps from politics to Industry and The Pitt, while also asking for help getting his real X account back.

Tobold argues AI answers are turning SEO into winner-takes-all AEO, where being in the chatbot summary matters more than ranking on page two.

Tipa is done with security upsells and hosted-blog headaches, and is eyeing a rebuild with Hugo, GitHub Pages, and more control.

The Daily Blogroll — Friday, 6 March 2026

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

John says The Dark Rites of Arkham leans hard into Lovecraft while pointedly confronting his racism through two detectives investigating a gruesome occult murder.

Tom bounces between World of Warcraft’s fun-but-empty leveling loop and Final Fantasy XIV’s long Endwalker march, with Delves as WoW’s bright spot.

Sey rounds up indie highlights including FROGGONIT’s launch, Slay the Spire 2, Bel’s Fanfaire Kickstarter news, and a new Chicory soundtrack project.

Kimimi celebrates Colony 28 hitting Steam at last, praising the 1996 Czech sci-fi adventure’s open exploration, scarce ammo, and clever cover-based combat.

Krista spotlights Lost & Found Co as a cute hidden-object puzzler where Ducky reunites Plumville’s lost items through hand-drawn scenes and light magical chaos.

Luna kicks off a Steam Next Fest favorites roundup with inKONBINI’s cozy store-management vibes and The Eternal Life of Goldman’s hand-drawn platforming.

Mailvaltar contrasts Resident Evil 4 remake’s action-adventure feel with Resident Evil VII’s brutal, Baker-family horror, while Diablo II Resurrected keeps stealing his free time.

Wilhelm’s Guild Wars Reforged group tweaks henchman positioning, gripes about ANet’s moved mission button, and fights through undead on the road to Lion’s Arch.

Nimgimli reflects on aging, work guilt, and the surprisingly freeing realization that free time can just be for games, TV, beer, or even naps.

Michael says Mastodon’s weekly #Monsterdon watchalong, usually with free-to-stream B-movies, has made Sunday nights fun again.

Dave Winer says Claude and ChatGPT still want to take the wheel with his software, then quietly plugs the Scripting News nightly email.

Blockade85 thinks eye strain is zapping his energy for Enshrouded, Dune, FFXI, FFXIV, and even Doom, so an optometrist visit feels overdue.

The Daily Blogroll — Thursday, 5 March 2026

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tipa speed-runs impressions: Windrose feels like familiar co-op survival with pirates, while Tides of Blazefall mashes Disco Elysium vibes with Sunless Sea and cards.

Roger argues games lean on videos, YouTube, and Discord instead of real tutorials—watching his grandkids struggle on PC, even basics like Fall Guys and Chivalry 2 passes.

Emily dives into A Plague Tale: Requiem right after the first game, praising its bleak cinematic sequel energy, expanded combat options, and deeper Macula-and-rats lore.

Sweetie mourns gaming’s drift to digital-only, arguing good physical editions—art books, props, steelbooks, even clever boxes—are memory anchors a virtual library can’t match.

Wilhelm and Potshot take Outbound’s Steam Next Fest demo for a co-op spin, wrangling friend codes, shared saves, and a not-so-speedy VW-style van.

Anarchae looks back on moving into an apartment in March 2020—COVID, mutual aid, scraping by—and how nonstop news/Twitter habits shifted as life stabilized (sort of).

Axxuy makes the case for physical mail over chat apps: letters are slower, longer, and tangible, and they’ve made a Discord-born friendship feel genuinely deeper.

Brennan digs into Font Awesome’s Build Awesome Kickstarter and why 11ty/Eleventy being “rebranded” feels less like celebration and more like a worrying inflection point.

Cliffski contrasts Claude’s calm, deep-dive financial Q&A with the meme-noise of Discord and wallstbets, arguing AI finally serves readers with actual attention spans.

Warner reacts to a WSJ-reported lawsuit alleging Google’s Gemini fueled delusions and suicide, calling for real guardrails on the people deploying companionship AI.

Dave Winer marvels at Claude.ai as a rapid-fire software teammate for his outliner ideas, then riffs on DigitalOcean server weirdness and being kinder to friends.

Andrew Plotkin plugs The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope, a crosslinked grab-bag of narrative-design mini-essays (including his), and suggests flipping to a random page and wandering.

The Daily Blogroll — Wednesday, 4 March 2026

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Aywren finishes Dawntrail for the 5th time while pushing alts and a relic grind, hitting near-burnout thanks to dungeon spam, 40-minute queues, and repeat FATE events.

Shintar recounts SWTOR’s Total Galactic War on Taris, where an unexpected rival guild crashed the party and turned a “chill” conquest into an intense grind.

Azuriel is so hooked on Mewgenics he’s updating its mostly-empty wiki mid-binge, skipping GW2 dailies and racking up nearly 100 hours fast.

Bhagpuss finally rolls credits on Baldur’s Gate 3: impressed by Larian’s craft and combat, but feels the campaign is too long and the cosmic stakes blunted choices.

Joar barely started WoW: Midnight (level 81 in Eversong) but real-life moves and family milestones mean gaming may be on pause until summer.

Belghast celebrates WoW: Midnight’s release, praises the revamped base UI and stronger storytelling, and happily admits to leaning on one-button assist to chill.

Wilhelm checks in on WoW: Midnight’s launch hype—housing, boosts, level cap 90, and a lore-heavy pitch that still mostly leaves him shrugging.

Thomas says NORSE: Oath of Blood isn’t the Viking X-com he hoped for—more linear, cutscene-heavy, and sometimes scripted to the point combat deaths feel “lame.”

Jamie Zawinski highlights Craig S. Kaplan’s interactive P5.js physics demo (with Matter.js), calling it pure fun and linking the messy source for tinkerers.

Mike begins resurrecting a dumpster-saved TRS-80 Model 1—cracked case, missing labels, scary power plugs—and starts plastic surgery with model cement.

Dave Winer put Claude.ai to work cranking out a browser spreadsheet and OPML outliner, then hits the wall where “no standard terminology” means shaky results.

JJM builds “Tomato,” a dependency-light OCaml CLI Pomodoro timer, compares it to his earlier Haskell version, and nerds out on XDG state paths.

The Daily Blogroll — Tuesday, 3 March 2026

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Syp sets March goals after a malaise month: prioritize WoW: Midnight, maybe push WoW Classic to 50, finish LOTRO’s Harad, and eye ESO or Fallout 76.

CrazyKinux kicks off New Eden Banter, arguing EVE Online endures thanks to the single-shard sandbox, player-made drama, and real-loss economics that make it feel lived-in.

Frank wonders why the AI boom hasn’t produced truly new gameplay yet, name-checking AI Dungeon, Death by AI, Suck Up!, and “engine” demos that feel dull.

Frostilyte rounds up Steam Next Fest demos, loving Tiling Town’s road-filling logic obsession and teasing Rhell’s Zelda-like systemic freedom via custom spellcrafting.

Heartless’ Marathon Server Slam impressions: slick extraction-hero shooting with bold neon sci‑fi vibes, but the confusing UI and pixel-font menus kept getting in the way.

Magi says VIDEOCULT swerves from Rain World’s slow survival to Airframe Ultra’s chaotic hover-bike racing-plus-brawling, where brutal collisions and sabotage are the whole point.

Wilhelm riff-lists why EVE Online keeps going, while side-eyeing “decline” narratives and reminiscing about when blogging beat streaming at EVE Vegas.

Tobold returns to Europa Universalis V on the beta patch, then dives into a Byzantine run—dire taxes, estate privileges, and early Ottoman brinkmanship to rewrite history.

Tipa tackles EVE Online’s longevity by rewinding through spreadsheets, Star Raiders, Elite, and even 1975’s Starweb to trace the genre DNA.

Bruce Schneier points to Moltbook as “AI theater,” warning about a near-future “LOL WUT” moment where AI content is cheap, undetectable, and trust online collapses.

Scopique shares a Blender render inspired by Clive Barker’s Imajica, explaining the “meditation room” scene and why interpretation and story context matter as much as the image.

Dave Winer welcomes John Palfrey back to blogging, then recaps Fediforum: less Bluesky evangelism, more interop—define text objects (Markdown) and accept some centralization.