The fifth ffxiv expansion, Dawntrail, releases in exactly three weeks on June 28 and I'm excited to continue the adventure. It will be interesting to see how the dynamics between the Scions plays out on opposite sides of the political struggle over in Tural and Wuk Lamat seems like a great addition to the cast.
If there isn't a battle on that big bridge between the northern and southern regions, I will be sorely disappointed.
I have one book left in The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells after which I'll be caught up (until the next three come out). The titular character's relatable perspective on this dystopian universe has been entertaining to read, what with Murderbot's growth as a person, their relationships with ART, Ratthi, Mensah and the rest of their crew, and all the various adventures, missions, and whodunits.
It also looks like there will be a TV adaption of the books expected to release later this year, about which I'm fairly optimistic. Although with Murderbot processing so many things in parallel, it will be interesting to see how it translates to this medium.
I tried out the Ultracube mod a few weeks ago, but the weekly friday facts for Factorio really have me excitedly waiting for the next expansion that might be releasing later this year.
The fff-414 details earlier today about resources spoiling on Gleba have me cautiously optimistic, since it's a mechanic that penalizes my habit of frequently buffering materials on my bases.
The music in fff-406 is amazing. A lot of my spotify history is whatever game soundtrack I'm listening to in the background while coding (FFXIV, Frostpunk, Octopath Traveler, etc) and this looks to be a strong addition. (The rest of my history is my kid's playlists.)
I have such a huge amount of respect for the factorio devs. It is obvious how much love and polish they put into the game and I can't imagine this expansion will be any exception.
After writing the first three sections of this journal entry, I looked up out of curiosity if there had been any news on when Civ 7 was coming out, and lo and behold, it was accidentally announced earlier today! (It has since been formally announced for 2025.)
With previous Civ games releasing in 1991 (I), 1996 (II), 2001 (III), 2005 (IV), 2010 (V), 2016 (VI), this 9 year gap will have been the longest between major releases.
Last year I launched roze, a discord bot for tracking turns for multiplayer Civ 6 games. She is now a verified bot in over 100 servers, which is pretty exciting (and required me to do some extra data retention cleanups and introduce a terms of service). If they don't include built-in support for something similar in Civ 7, I'll try and get roze up and running pretty quickly after launch.