RULE the FIRST: Under no circumstances are you to smear your subjects (moles) in mayonnaise, Thousand Island salad dressing, or olive oil made within North America before holding them above your head and singing the score to Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom of the Opera. Different sauces or musicals are acceptable.
RULE the SECOND: You may not express, on social media or in person, any affection or interaction with Oscar Meyer-branded sandwich meat.
RULE the THIRD: If you are offered hot dogs for any reason, you must agree to eat at least three, but you must take four and place the fourth inside of the highest pocket on your clothing. If your outfit has no pockets, you may smear your face against the hot dog and then fling it at the nearest motor vehicle.
RULE the FOURTH: No dabbing.
RULE the FIFTH: At any time you may be called upon to sing “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher. A band will be provided for you if needed, but it will be staffed by moles and be of poor quality.
RULE the SIXTH: You must answer What Are You Playing via self-addressed stamped envelope.
Bonus question: Have you ever done a self-imposed challenge run of any sort (including speedruns) in a game? If so, which game and how did it go?
Andy McAdams: I picked up Final Fantasy XIV again to hangout with my FC folks some more. I’m also feeling like a space-y game, so I downloaded Star Trek Online, have been investigating Star Wars Galaxies (someone on staff keeps saying it’s amazing, but I can’t quite remember who), and I’m even considering Anarchy Online. I’ll probably play some Dwarf Fortress too just to round out the weekend.
Bonus Question: I’m not a speedrun or the ilk kind of person. I really loved the Heroic dungeon achievements back in Wrath but I don’t think that’s quite the same. Yeah, I dunno. Maybe I’m weird that I haven’t done anything like that?
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): I’m still in love with SWGL, fam. I’m lining up a whole afternoon for crafting.
I’m not much of a speedrun person, but back in the day with SWG, I used to start up new characters on servers I’d never played before and see how far I could get with no guild, no help, and no combat, just pure trading; a few minutes here and there working the bazaar and doing math and putting my knowledge of the game’s market to work. I did really well on those servers and wound up using the money I made to buy TCG goodies and trade them back to my “real” servers.
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX): I’ll probably be spending more time out and about this weekend more than actually doing anything gaming related. I’ll be continuing my questing through Black Desert Online for my upcoming expose on the Black Spirit! Aside from that, I’ll probably be playing some Super Smash Bros and maybe some Legends of Runeterra. I’ve got a week off next week, so I gotta figure out what game I’d want to play for the next week.
I am actually challenging myself with the games I play: To immerse myself in the game, the mechanics, and the story. I usually have background music or thinking about other things while I play a game, but for the upcoming week, I want to truly disconnect when I play the game. I want to reconnect with gaming and just have fun with whatever game I choose to play!
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): Out of sheer curiosity and a whim, I picked up Media Molecule’s Dreams for the PS4 just to see what that’s all about and whether or not I can actually reasonably do anything with it in terms of making games. Otherwise, I’ll be curious to see what it’s like finding other people’s creations. Really it’s just a lot of exploring that one this weekend. On the MMO side of things, there’s some further event planning for my FC to do in Final Fantasy XIV and some life skills to try out in Black Desert Online.
I’m not particularly great at the self-imposed in-game challenges that run beyond beating a game to 100% completion. I don’t have the hand-eye coordination to do speedruns or other twitch reaction challenges, so I’d rather watch the pros at Games Done Quick do it themselves (and help out charity in the process).
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): Prepping ahead of time for the FFXIV patch, but that’s a fairly light activity; most of this weekend will be spent with STO or in Fire Emblem: Three Houses now that the last DLC is out. Or just relaxing with my wife, don’t you know.
Honestly, I’ve done a lot of little challenges here and there over the years; solo character challenges in a bunch of JRPGs, a few SCCs in Final Fantasy Tactics, and even some amateur speedruns on my Genesis back before that was a thing we had a name for. I also tend to create challenges for myself more or less by accident, like capping everything in FFXIV or the time I leveled a character almost exclusively through space missions in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I’m swamped with a lot that I would like to be playing, time permitting. Neverwinter and Star Trek Online are fun, breezy times, but now I have Lord of the Rings Online’s Rohan to get through on the progression server as well.
Tyler Edwards: I’ve got a truly brutal flu at the moment, so how much and what gaming I do will heavily depend on what I can muster the energy for. At the very least I’ll probably still do my daily chores in Star Trek Online. Almost got the new event ship unlocked. Depending on my energy and mood, I might also dip into Age of Empires II DE or Warcraft III: Reforged.
Bonus question: In World of Warcraft I’ve always loved the flavor of the warlock class, but I’m not a big fan of pet classes in traditional MMOs, so back in Cataclysm I decided to set myself the challenge of leveling a warlock to cap without using any pets. Now, I wasn’t super strict about it. I did still put out a pet when doing group content or especially challenging quests. But I’d say at least 75% of the time I was playing pet-free, and I did make it all the way to the level cap. It was a lot of fun; made me really learn the ins and outs of the class and get full use out of my defensive and utility spells.
Patron Pierre: My The Last of Us playthrough will still be going on this weekend. Such a great game, so perfectly written. I haven’t started Kentucky Route Zero yet, maybe I’ll have enough time this weekend. And The Elder Scrolls Online, very casually, if possible. But I have a very busy weekend and probably won’t have enough time for all of that, as I have to moderate the chat of a friend streamer this Sunday. She’s doing a long stream dedicated to indie games: some French devs interview, a speedrun of The Witness, discovering music from different indie games and much more…
I’m not really into speedrun; I’m always impressed by speedrunners, but I’m more of a slowrunner in games, “very slow-runner” in reality. If I know a game takes 20 hours to finish, I know it will take my completionist, smelling-the-roses self at least double to finish, 40-50 hours most probably. The only game I did some kind of speedrun in is the Commandos series of games. As performance in missions was ranked 1–3 stars depending on how fast you finished the missions; I tried to max all the missions to get the best score at the end. So, not really speedrunning, rather game-scoring indeed. Slowrunning on the other hand? I’m an expert!
And you MOP readers, WRUP this weekend? I’m wondering…
Every Saturday, join the Massively OP community and staff for What Are You Playing, our roundup of what MMORPGs and other games we’re hoping to play this weekend (with a bonus question or two for our amusement). Tell us what you’re up to! Go off-topic! And don’t forget to have fun!
