Dofus 2.0

It’s been a while since I’ve really talked about my love of gaming, so I thought it was time to slot in a post about my MMORPGing activities. (On a side note, I realise that many of the people who read this blog do so because of my musings on writing, which is what I mainly blog about. I do have other passions though, which is why I sometimes like to write about them too. If you’re not interested in gaming, that’s fair enough: just skip this post.)

Recently I’ve started playing a MMORPG called Dofus again. It’s been a while since I’ve played, but the low system requirements, low subscription cost (or even option not to subscribe at all) and relaxing gameplay style keep me coming back. Dofus is a cartoony, Flash-based game with instanced, turn-based combat. It also incorporates the more traditional elements of MMORPGs, having a number of different classes to choose from, a massive world map, both PvE and PvP, loads of different armours to collect and mounts (which I think are newly introduced).

I’ve chosen today to blog about Dofus because I recently came across something interesting on their website: the introduction of Dofus 2.0, coming soon. I’ve played a number of online games that have been through similar upgrades, but this one has me intrigued, as it’s occurring on a game I really enjoy. The upgrades seem to involve rebuilding the game from the ground up, improving the graphics and performance, whilst retaining the original gameplay and, most importantly, players’ characters.

Will this upgrade be a success? That’s difficult to say. Most MMORPGs have so many slightly-obsessive fans that even the most minute change to the game can upset them. Personally though, I think this is going to turn out to be a great improvement to an already enjoyable game and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Playing To Your Writing Strengths

If, like me, you write with the ultimate aim of getting published one day, you may have heard a piece of advice that runs thus: To break into the market, it’s best to get some short stories in print first, then use your publishing credits to your advantage when you try to get a novel published. It sounds like good advice and indeed, for some people, that may well be the way to go about breaking into the publishing world. Lately I’ve realised something though: that strategy is unlikely to work for me.

Put simply, I’m not terribly good at writing short stories. Sure, I can write them and I’ve even had one accepted to an online magazine. Generally though, I really struggle to write anything shorter than 30,000 words. My brain just doesn’t work that way. Whenever I have an idea, I immediately start adding it into a novel, be that one I’m working on or one I might work on in the future. For me, writing novels is far easier than writing short stories, which sounds strange, but that seems to be the way my brain works. I’d even go so far as to say that I don’t particularly enjoy reading short stories, whereas picking up a novel seems like the most natural thing in the world.

This realisation has led me to give up with short stories, for the moment and concentrate on finishing my latest novel. That’s not to say that I won’t try again with short fiction in months or years to come – I believe in challenging myself in my writing as much as possible – but, for now, that’s not where my emphasis is going to lie.

I suppose my advice is this: sometimes it’s best to play towards your writing strengths. Right now, I feel that struggling with short stories that I’m not going to enjoy writing would be a waste of my time. That lack of enthusiam will doubtless show in any story I write, which will likely lead to rejection. It may be going against perceived wisdom, particularly in the field of SF and fantasy, but for me it’s got to be novels all the way.

Still Alive… More or Less

I realised today that it’s almost two months since I last updated this blog. *slaps wrist* Luckily, I now finally have time to start posting again, so proper posts will be coming in the next few days. For now though, here’s a quick update.

My current novel project is very much turning out to be a winner. I’m aware that it’s going to need a significant amount of editing when I get to the end, but for now I’m just focussing on getting the first draft done. Here’s my progress:

As you can see, I’m doing reasonably well at the moment, hitting somewhere between 1000 and 1500 words a day. My plan is to reach the 80k by the end of September, but we’ll see how it goes.

Other than writing, I’ve been focussing on research and pulling together ideas for my dissertation, the plan for which will have to be complete sometime in October.  The topic? The Roman cult of Mithraism.

And then there are all the other little things I’ve been doing to amuse myself – playing copious amounts of Guild Wars, catching up on my reading and experimenting with some new recipes. After all, I am supposed to be on holiday.