As you may know, I’ve been looking for another solid game – preferably an MMORPG – to play and livestream on Twitch, that might help my channel grow. After doing some research, I decided to try “Elder Scrolls Online”, because it tends to have a lot of viewers on Twitch when I’m streaming, but not that many streamers overall. So theoretically, that means a greater chance for gaining viewers over some other games I’ve played of late.
Well, that didn’t work out all that stupendously.
You see, I had issues getting ESO to play nice with OBS (my livestreaming software) in the past, but the other day I had reinstalled ESO, and it worked with OBS just fine, so I decided to give it a try on my last Sunday night session. But when I went to start ESO over Steam, it never actually started. Sure, Steam said it was running. Elder Scrolls Online said it was running (it told me so in no uncertain terms, when I’d try launching it again). Even Windows thought it was running, because the Launcher process was active in Task Manager.
After banging my head against this issue for half an hour, I decided this just wasn’t going to get solved before show time, and looked for a replacement game. I could have jumped into “Lord of the Rings Online” again, or “Rift”, maybe “Trove”, or any number of other options. Instead, I tapped good ol’ Funcom, and jumped into “Secret World Legends”.
“Wait… Don’t you prefer ‘The Secret World’, Scormey”, you ask?
Well, yes and no. I love TSW, always have, always will. But since last year, when Funcom released their ‘Shared World RPG’ re-imagining of TSW in “Secret World Legends”, there simply isn’t anyone in TSW anymore. Which is fine, if you want to play the ultimate Solo MMORPG, but not so great when you want to actually get somewhere in the game. A lot of the content in TSW requires multiple people, if not full groups, where SWL can be soloed almost entirely.
The choice wasn’t that hard.
Anyway, end result: I had a great time, and while the viewer numbers may not have been quite as high as they might have been with ESO, “Secret World Legends” actually starts when you ask it to… Although I did encounter a game-breaking bug at one point which required a restart, but otherwise everything else went well.
So here’s the thing: I know me, and I will still be playing LOTRO into the future. But I’m also going to play a lot of SWL, because I’m digging it pretty hard right now. Then again, I am still paying for Patron status in “Rift”, so I should play that more regularly, huh? And finally, I think I’ll keep “Trove” in the rotation, too. In theory, coupled with the weekly podcast on Thursdays, I could make each of those games a weekly show on Twitch, and have something for this site every weekday.
Food for thought. Oh, by the way, yes I have uninstalled ESO again. I don’t envision bothering to reinstall it ever again.
