October in Review October 31, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, Casual Games, entertainment, EVE Online, Hardware, Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft.Tags: Civilization V
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The Site
This month we found out that only Bhagpuss and my mother actually look at the blog in anything other than an RSS reader… and judging from the FeedReader stats, that reader is Google Reader.
Okay, maybe a few other people look at it once in a while according to the poll.
Poll Results
I asked this question because I put something new in the sidebar, a list of posts other blogs that I found interesting. I suppose it will just end up being a reminder list for me of posts to perhaps look at again.
And it c0nflicts a bit with my Twitter feed, since along with being an alternative feed for my posts, I do occasionally link other posts in there as well. Sometimes the same post goes in both. I’m confused. I’m still working out what I really want out of Twitter and Google Reader sharing.
And speaking of Twitter, this month is the first time that Twitter has actually figured in any significant way in the traffic coming to the blog. The top 5 sources of referral traffic this month:
This does not include search engine traffic, that would put Google.com on top.
Twitter became significant because CCP_Fallout tweeted the results of the EVE Online Screen Shot Contest to the tweet fleet. That brought a lot of people over to look.
One Year Ago
Last year at about this time Torchlight came out, giving a lot of people a Diablo-like injection of fun. It didn’t have a lot of replay value for me. Once I burned through the game once I was pretty much done, which made it unlike Diablo II, which I returned to a number of times. But it was just $20 and gave us a taste of what Runic might be able to deliver going forward.
I was on a MUD history kick, with tales of exciting ways to die in Kobold Village, the Kobold Temple of the Unholy, getting lost in the Faerie Forest, and all the rooms in TorilMUD.
It was also the three year anniversary of the regular Saturday night instance group, and I presented a summary of what we had done. I will probably revisit that theme for the fifth anniversary.
A couple of us scouted the then newly Free to Play Dungeons & Dragons Online as a possible next game for the instance group, but it didn’t stick.
I was able to buy the Adventurer’s Pack for LOTRO and get the Siege of Mirkwood expansion for free. Not as good of a deal as monthly subscribers got I understand, but a decent deal. Of course, LOTRO has changed a lot since then.
In World of Warcraft October last year say me finish off both the Brewfest and Hallow’s End meta achievements. I was still left with one achievement for each holiday though. Fun was had with pumpkins and the Headless Horseman.
The instance group returned to Utgarde Keep to take on Utgarde Pinnacle, at that time the last five-person dungeon in Northrend. We were victorious and gained the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement. But otherwise we were deciding on where the group should go next.
New Linking Sites
I would like to thank the following site for linking here.
Please take a moment to visit them in return.
- EVE Online Screen Shot Contest Winners
- Fighting Blood Elf Porn
- A Quick Pass Through GDC 2010
- How I Got My 5,000 Turbine Points
- Pokemon Mew Download Event
- How To Find An Agent in EVE Online
- Play On: Guild Name Generator
- BlizzCon Costume & Dance Contest Notes
- One Month of LOTRO Free to Play
- LOTRO – Comparing VIP with Free
- WoW Account Hacked – This Just Keeps Happening
- The Path to My Next System
Most Common Search Terms in October
I’m not sure this needs to be a regular feature, but this month people got here via these search terms.
- zombrex
- elf porn
- thorin oakenshield
- turbine points
- blood elf porn
- onyxia
- zombrex pen
- the ancient gaming noob
- tagn
- wow account hacked
- mafia wars
- lego x wing
Search Terms of the Month
thorin keeper of ulduar costume
[huh?]
Hardware
The new machine is up and running. I’ve moved over most of the key data from my old machine. Probably the most annoying items are iTunes, which is throwing a fit about exporting and importing my playlists, and Eudora. I was perfectly happy using Eudora 6.2 as my email client for the last five years or so. It also doubles as my text editor and to do list holder. However 6.2 is very unhappy under Windows 7, even when trying to run it under XP emulation mode. Meanwhile, the new, open source version of the mail client, build on to of Thunderbird, looks a lot like old Eudora, but does not behave like it. Most annoying.
And then there is the question of what to load up on the new machine.
So far, game-wise, I dragged over World of Warcraft. I had just patched up to 4.0.1 and wasn’t going to do that again.
Then I did fresh installs of EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and Civilization V. The first two I thought would be good to refresh, since both have been on my old system for a long time. And of course, I had no drag-over option with Civ V. It does, however, run on my new system. Go me.
Now what else should I install?
And what am I going to do with the old CPU? Aside from gagging when taxed by certain games, it runs well.
EVE Online
The screen shot contest went off well. I sent out all the prizes, though one person didn’t claim their PLEX and the contract expired. I created a new contract.
I’ve gotten back into the game a little bit of late. With a fresh install and a DX11 capable system, I wanted to fly around a bit.
I also started up the economic engine again, working the market place. I’ve spent more than half of my saved ISK over the last 8 months. It is time to refresh the coffers.
Meanwhile, I am posting three of the screen shot entries from the contest over at EVE Online Pictures every week.
Facebook games finally hit the limit for me. They can be amusing to start with, little economic sims that they all seem to be, but they don’t have much staying power. That isn’t to say that there couldn’t be a great Facebook game for me, but I have yet to see one I really like over time.
Lord of the Rings Online
While the instance group, or the four of us who have been playing this summer and fall, have been in LOTRO regularly, the pace is slowing down. I suspect that we’re in a rest mode before Cataclysm lands.
I will keep up with LOTRO I am sure. At level 41, Silinus is my highest level LOTRO character ever, and there is still the draw of Moria. But as a group I think we might be off for a while.
World of Warcraft
The instance group is still figuring out how we should approach Cataclysm, since we have a group of level 80s, a group in the mid-60s, and the option to roll up fresh. The changes to classes, the new races, the upsetting and recreation of zones, and the ch0pping up of a couple of long, drawn out instances might mean we need to start fresh again.
Pokemon SoulSilver
- #303 Mawile
#461 Weavile- #464 Rhyperior
#466 Elecivire- #472 Gliscor
- #
474 Porygon-Z - #488 Cresselia
Willing to discuss trades over Nintendo WiFi for any of these.
You’ll know when I’m done. There will be a post.
Coming Up
I know there are a lot of things going on, that the next month will be full of stuff, yet it is all slowly being overshadowed by Cataclysm.
For example, LEGO Universe went live recently. I was interested in that. Now I just cannot get my enthusiasm up for it.
Maybe I’ll just take November off.
Nah.
Ha, elf porn & blood elf porn. (That was me!)
;)
I’m sure I’m not the only one who just googled for “thorin keeper of ulduar costume” and clicked through to this very post. Just to get your stats rolling for November.
I just read up on RSS feeds so at least I now know what the term means. I might experiment with it to see if it works for me, but it sounds a bit like one of those “time-saving” conveniences that actually automate away most of the parts of a process that attracted me in the first place.
I still visit the actual site daily, just find it easier to type TA into Firefox to get here. Do that for the 4-5 blogs I visit daily as well. Those that I don’t regularly visit I use links from my blog or others.
I actually have your blog on my Chrome dashboard at work ;)
@Bhagpuss – I think the best part of setting up something like Google Reader to watch RSS feeds is that it helps you keep track of blogs that post sporadically or go on hiatus now and again.
It also has a nice little “>>” button at the top of each post that will take you straight to the site.
@Gordon – That is probably more attention than I deserve.