I recently checked out two text MUDs that someone had deployed, mostly because they reminded me of an old mobile text game I used to have installed: Parallel Universe, the one about meeting another version of yourself on a spaceship from a different world.

I tried both of them for a bit, and that old "doing quiz questions" feeling came rushing back. Everything was built around multiple-choice decisions. One of them had an evolution theme that felt a lot like Spore. Another was based on the Jin Yong Heroes setting, where you pick sides, decide who to help, or choose to help no one at all. After five or six questions, I gave up. The novelty wore off pretty quickly.

At the same time, I also came across a Red Alert battle platform for Red Moon 3, and I signed up for that too. It requires WeChat real-name verification. The testing itself worked fine, so technically there was no problem getting in.

The issue was matchmaking—or rather, the lack of it. There doesn't seem to be any automatic matching. I entered five or six rooms and got kicked out of every one of them. It feels more like something made for groups of friends than for random players dropping in alone.

I keep telling myself I should at least finish one game of Civilization VI, but honestly I don't even want to launch it.

So I went back to Warcraft III on the KK platform instead. Lately my level has been dropping badly. I lose far more than I win. Maybe all the strong players have come back.

Over the last two days, I played three matches in a row as Night Elf against Orc. Every time it was the same kind of setup: a solo-leveling Blademaster constantly harassing, towers stacked back at home, and then those suicide bat riders showing up to harass and go for base demolition. It's incredibly annoying to deal with.

I only won one of those games, and even that one took forever—more than half an hour. It felt less like normal RTS and more like a game of hide-and-seek. The Blademaster was impossible to pin down, always appearing and disappearing, and the bats would stay tucked away in corners waiting for the right moment.

I was running a ranged-heavy Night Elf style with Demon Hunter, Naga, and Pandaren Brewmaster, and even then it only felt barely workable. I kept getting dragged around and forced to respond. Trying to counterpush his base didn't go well either. Orc buildings with spikes are tough enough already, so even when I got the chance, I still couldn't really tear the base down.

On a completely different note, I also ended up comparing the lengths of a few long books. Galactic Empire comes out to more than 2.7 million characters. Those Ming Affairs is only around 1.4 million. Linhai Qiming is much longer at 9.11 million characters, and it was written collaboratively. My wife actually finished that one, which is impressive.