blog thing | The Ancient Gaming Noob

Five Years of Spaceship Pictures May 23, 2013

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, entertainment, EVE Online.
Tags: EVE Online Pictures, Meaningless Milestones
2 comments

Every so often I get the urge to run off and start another blog, as though this one wasn’t enough.

Sometimes I think I have a funny idea. Sometimes I repeat something I have already done.

And for some reason, I always feel the need to make up yet another pseudonym. I don’t know why.

But over the last seven years of blogging (because there was a blog before this one) I have only stuck with this blog and one other. The rest all sit, neglected. I didn’t even get past the creation stage with some.

Aside from this blog, my only other… success… is EVE Online Pictures, which turns five years old this week. And I am surprised it has made it that far.

The first and only banner for the blog

For the last five years I have posted 2 or 3 pictures a week, every week, all from EVE Online. And since I do a yearly anniversary post here every year, I thought maybe I ought to do one for my other blog after five years.

I am doing it here, because this is the “words” blog. That is just the “pictures” blog.

The big question is why does that blog even exist? I could have easily done picture only posts here as a regular feature. That is certainly my thought in hindsight. It surely would have made things less complex.

I think I wanted to see how a picture only blog would fare on its own. By the time I started it, I was nearly two years into this blog and had, thanks largely to VirginWorlds, garnered a regular readership beyond any reasonable expectations. So I decided to see what would happen with another blog… kept scrupulously separate for about a year… with a different sort of format.

So EVE Online Pictures was born.

As noted above, I am also surprised that I have kept it going for five years. Compared to this blog, traffic has always been sparse (despite what WordPress.com said at one point), and fell off precipitously with the changed to Google image search back in February. Feedback is rare unless I misidentify a ship. I keep words to a minimum, so there are few opinions expressed to go back and review later on. And, as much as I go on about blogging for myself, traffic and comments do help in keeping this blog active.

Then there was a gap from mid 2009, when Potshot and I gave up on our wormhole expedition, through to Incarna, when I wasn’t really playing the game. I held a contest to get pictures to post. The contest entries make up 111 of the 580 posts on the blog. So at least 20% of the posts on the blog are not even my screen shots. And that does not include pictures I have borrowed from other sites. (Always with acknowledgement and a link back.)

And yet I have carried on. The last year has been especially fruitful for pictures. Being in null sec has let me take lots of screen shots of battles and ships of the sort you never get in high sec. And so the blog carries on. And I expect it to continue on as long as I am playing EVE, and then for a while after that as I mine through the thousands of screen shots I have amassed.

There are more details about EVE Online Pictures, including statistics similar to the stats I have been keeping for my yearly posts about this blog.

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New Blogger Initiative a Year Later – Who Survived? May 9, 2013

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, entertainment.
Tags: Community Service, I could make a little list, Linkwhoring, NBI, New Blogger Initiative, Newbie Blogger Initiative
20 comments

It was just a year ago that Syp kicked off his Newbie Blogger Initiative plan.

The idea was to inflict blogging on as many newcomers as possible by getting a bunch of old cranks to give semi-useful and often contradictory advice about blogging. And link whoring.

As is clear from that, I went for a humorous/cynical/sarcastic spin on the whole thing. That was because, in the past, I have read so much horrible, inappropriate, or just bad from all rational perspectives advice on blogging that it practically puts me at the laugh/cry fork in the road. And I always choose to laugh, which doesn’t make me very popular at funerals I must admit. I end up thinking “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants” and it is all down hill from there.

Yes, there are a lot of nuts and bolts things you can speak to about themes, fonts, statistics, comment moderation, spam, and the like. But when it comes to the actual motivation and philosophy of blogging, the only universal I could come up with is:

Be the blog you want to read.

Which isn’t very helpful.

And I have nothing for any subsequent existential crisis which might result from realizing that you don’t actually want to read your own blog. But it seemed better than telling somebody they need to put a picture of a cat in every post or whatever the SEO experts are saying of late.

Anyway, there was much enthusiasm. Lots of people trotted out advice of all sorts (a list of some of the posts here), some of which was actually more useful than I expected. Nobody actually told people to post pictures of cats. The usual wet blankets had to chime in that it was all a wasted effort, because that is what wet blankets do. Why deny them their place.

In the end, by my count, 110 new blogs were created and were being blogged on by new bloggers here in Blogsylvannia. I have them all listed and linked in another post.

But now that a dozen months have flown by, I thought I would take a look at the mortality rate for NBI blogs. Of 110 who started, how many are still active?

The answer is 30, or 27% of those that started.

Active is, of course, subject to interpretation. My bar for being considered an active blog was still being at your URL (or having noted a forwarding address) and having posted something on or after April 1, 2013.

That leaves the following blogs, which you should go visit and congratulate.

Is that a lot or a little, good or bad?

I suppose it depends on your point of view. The only other data I have on the subject is from when I did The Great Survey of Linking Blogs back in September 2011. During that I went back and checked on all 281 of the outgoing links for blogs that at some time put me in their blog roll. I found that of 263 unique blogs, 74 were still active, which totals up to about 28%.

So 27% from that sample size seems to be about par for the course, as far as I can tell.

New World Tavern and Casual Aggro did similar round up posts, though their criteria was a bit different (as were their counts), so they came up with 40% and 25% respectively. As they say, your mileage may vary. Avatars of Steel also has a post about the NBI, while there is a class of 2012 badge up for participants over at Ravalation.

And what of the other 80 blogs? A bit on that after the cut.

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The Blog ‘Banner Art’ Post May 3, 2013

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, entertainment.
Tags: Banner Images
2 comments

One of the reasons I chose the current template for the blog way back in 2006 was that it had a nice little area at the top where you could put your own graphic as a banner.

And so I took to this idea and have, over the last 6+ years, created any number of graphics to fit into that banner space. Some I have been quite happy with. If you have visited here very often, you have probably seen the EverQuest chessboard banner which I put up when I am feeling nostalgic. Others have been less pleasing.

But one of the challenges of creating a banner is the size. To fit in that space at the top of the blog, the graphic has to be 730 pixels by 140 pixels in size.

Size Sample

When I picked the template, I did not give the size much thought. Later, when I was trying to make banners, I began to realize what such mail slot-like dimensions really meant. Basically, any banner graphic is very heavy on horizontal relative to vertical, with the ratio being more than 5 to 1 in favor of the left-right bias. That is a wider ratio than Cinerama.

So I have to find pictures or screen shots where what I want to capture is in a very narrow vertical zone, but spread out on the horizontal plane. So I have, over time, developed a sense of what pictures might work and which will not. There are a lot of screen shots where I have to shake my head and move on because the vertical element required to get across the message or feeling I want is too much.

And if the aspect ratio were not enough, the template itself works against me. I have to take into account that there are two tabs that stick up into the banner at the bottom left. So I cannot let anything key to the image get covered by that.

And then there is the name of the blog itself, which the template superimposes over the image. I don’t want anything key being covered by that. Plus, I need to make sure that the banner contrasts enough with the blog name so that it can be read. I do have the option of turning the blog name off, in which case I can lay it out myself on the banner image. I have done that a few times, but I do not make a habit of it.

I also have to maintain the banner images manually.

Today, with many of the new templates, you can upload banners, crop and edit them, and even setup a list of banners from which the template will draw at random. However, way back when I started, WordPress.com templates required you to provide a URL to the banner. No storage, no editing, and no randomizing. And while they have updated some of the templates, the one I use (Regulus) is still pretty much stuck in 2006.

All of which has left me with a collection 730 by 140 images saved away in various directories of my hard drive. I have tried to collect them all together in one post. If you are interested to see what I have created over the last few years (or what a few other people created as part of a contest at one point), all the ones I could find are after the cut.

There are about 90 in the gallery at this point, but I keep finding more. And I know there are still more store away somewhere. I used to put them up on Image Shack, but I cannot find many. I did not adopt the convention of putting “banner” in the image name until I was well into making them. So I suspect the list will grow over time.

Banner mania after the cut.

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Reviewing My Questions for 2012 December 18, 2012

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, Diablo II, Diablo III, entertainment, EVE Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Guild Wars 2, Lord of the Rings Online, PlanetSide 2, Sony Online Entertainment, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Torchlight II.
Tags: Lord British
14 comments

At the beginning of each new year I have a special post. Sometimes if it predictions. Some times it is demands. Last year I decided it should be questions.

I asked 12 questions of the new year. 12 questions for the year 2012.

I think it is time to see if I received any clear answers.

1. What fate awaits the Old Republic?

Love it, hate it, see it as a revolution in MMOs or as a symbol of that all is wrong, Star Wars the Old Republic is now a force to be reckoned with on the MMO landscape. It has everybody’s attention for good or ill. Where will it lead us?

That was the position at the beginning of the year.

Unfortunately, the answer since then seems to be “Over a cliff.” That cliff was described by the chart showing ongoing drops in total subscribers every quarter after launch.

Apparently story and voice acting will only keep people interested for so long. That works for a single player game. For a subscription game, not so much. And so the Tortanic began to sink, and it was heralded as the death of the subscription model for MMOs. They did announce an expansion, so they will have some content to sell along side action bars and raid access. But there do not seem to be clear blue skies on the horizon for SWTOR yet.

2. Can Blizzard stem the World of Warcraft subscription trend?

Sort of. The annual pass option, which got you a shiny mount and a free copy of Diablo III, kept at least a million people locked into their subscriptions. And while numbers still fell, they rebounded some with the release of the Mists of Pandaria expansion. The peak of “over 12 million” appears to be in the past, but 10 million isn’t so bad.

And, of course, WoW still rakes in cash like no other MMO out there. Reports of the death of the subscription model may be a bit premature.

3. Will Free to Play continue to be the gold mine/panacea for subscription games?

Panacea? It certainly seems so. SOE has thrown in fully for the free model, bringing all their titles save the original PlanetSide into the fold. And certainly SWTOR is looking to that model to rescue it and revive their fortunes.

Is it a gold mine though? Early reports from the LOTRO transition to F2P seemed to indicate that there was indeed gold to be had. However, since then, there appears to have been some iron pyrite mixed in with the real thing, leading companies to try and cast an ever wider net to get players to buy their RMT currency and then turn around and spend it in their cash shop.

LOTRO, which at least lets you earn their RMT cash in-game, went towards the odious prize boxes and started suggesting things like the hobby horse mount.

SOE screwed up their RMT currency so badly with heavy discounts that they had to stop selling premium memberships and expansions in Station Cash.

And reports I have read indicate that SWTOR might not have figured out the magic formula for F2P success quite yet either.

So there appears to be a lot more work to be done on the F2P front. Merely being F2P is no longer enough, as there are a lot of choices out there.

Companies keep bringing their games to the F2P altar, but that alone is no longer enough.

4. Who will really win the “Just Like Diablo” battle of 2012?

It depends on what you value.

I started to write a full post about it with the objective of declaring Diablo III the winner, but only on technicalities. Basically, it does more to capture the atmosphere of Diablo II, while at the same time doing the most to destroy the game. It just feels more like Diablo II, if you ignore the auction house, the always online aspect, the need to play through the game repeatedly in order to get to the most challenging game play, and a few other things.

That said, I think Torchlight II is, overall, a better game if you take the “heir to Diablo II” aspect out of the picture. It doesn’t get anywhere close on story or atmosphere compared to Diablo II, but it managed to avoid the manifold mistakes of Diablo III while being light, fun, and full of options denied the players of Diablo III.

Basically, the answer for me is that neither game really wins the “Just Like Diablo” crown, mostly because it just isn’t the year 2000 any more, so neither game could really have the same impact.

5. When will we lose a game to hacking?

We seem to be safe from this still, at least on the MMO front. Lots of security breaches, but I haven’t read about a game completely brought down and destroyed, never to run again because of hacking.

So the only answer here I suppose was, “Not yet.”

6. Will SOE remain the only player in the MMO nostalgia game?

This stems from the Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server, about which I have posted often.

And my answer up until last week would have been “Yes.” SOE is the only purveyor of MMO nostalgia. I even got impatient by mid-year and went after the issue in a blog post.

After all, it seems like WoW could make a bundle with a similar scheme. There are literally dozens of private WoW servers out there trying to recreate the “old” WoW, that being anywhere from day one to before Cataclysm. I spent a bit of time on the Emerald Dream server and can vouch for the cathartic effect of playing an old-school version of the game.

But no such official venture looks to be forthcoming.

And then Turbine showed up with Asheron’s Call 2, fresh from the crypt, electrodes bolted on firmly in an attempt to create life where there was none.

I am not sure if it is quite the same thing, but it is something. And it is nostalgic.

So SOE does not own the MMO nostalgia market completely.

7. Will Guild Wars 2 be the game changer in the MMO market in 2012?

Well, a lot was promised for Guild Wars 2. But did it really change anything?

I have seen a number of GW2 fans lauding The Secret World for adopting the GW2 revenue plan, conveniently ignoring all the details that prove that they did no such thing. Yes, there is the “buy the box” aspect for a free to play game that sure sounds a lot like GW2. But what about the continuing monthly subscription model that unlocks things and hands out RMT currency as a reward? That sounds a lot like an SOE game, doesn’t it?

I suspect that the “buy the box” aspect was a requirement only because they admitted they did not make their sales numbers, so it is either throw away all those boxes or find a way to keep selling them.

And, if we’re honest with ourselves, the “buy the box” plan was from Guild Wars, not GW2, so rationalize harder please.

Anyway, I think it is too early to tell. GW2 only launched at the end of August, which didn’t leave a lot of time for anybody to react to anything they did in 2012, conspiracy theories not withstanding.

Maybe next year?

8. Will CCP ever be anything but the company that makes EVE Online?

Of course, they also helped make Lazy Town, right? Next question.

Okay, yes, DUST 514. It looms. It seems like it could be something some day. But that day was not this year. So I can only say, “We shall see.”

Call me when DUST 514 is a thing and maybe I will be able to build enough enthusiasm to download it.

9. What will the earth shattering MMO announcements be in 2012?

I have to go with NCsoft shutting down City of Heroes, SWTOR going free to play, and Turbine reviving Asheron’s Call 2.

Oh, and that 38 Studios fiasco. An MMO that never was will never be.

Anything else?

10. Will MMOs get redefined in new and interesting (or bad and annoying) ways?

No, nothing new here, move along.

Okay, maybe PlanetSide 2 moved the ball a few inches down field with a really massive online shooter. But what else was there really?

11. Are we every going to get another decent MMO news podcast?

No.

12. What will Lord British do next?

Apparently jump on board the Zynga train just as it drives over a cliff. Timing is everything in comedy!

So those are my questions and the answers as I see them. I am sure somebody will remind me of a few items I missed… or will want to argue about Diablo III vs. Torchlight II. But that is about it for me.

Now to consider next year’s post.

But Now I am Six, I’m as Clever as Clever September 12, 2012

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, entertainment.
Tags: Anniversary, Meaningless Milestones
12 comments

When I was One, I had just begun.
When I was Two, I was nearly new.
When I was Three, I was hardly me.
When I was Four, I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever,
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.

From Now We are Six, by A. A. Milne

Back to our regularly planned post.

Here we are again, another anniversary. It has been six years and I am still here.

Needs a haircut, just like me

As I do every year, I am going to try to summarize the story so far in terms of statistics and other such nonsense, all while attempting to overlay a completely inappropriate theme over the whole thing. Cue Christopher Robin.

For those who want to read the past efforts, here they are.

As the years have gone along, these posts have become longer and sillier. But I have tried to keep some consistency year over year for comparison. Each year the same base stats get updated, while I try to add some new aspect into the mix.

This is long and boring for those who are not interested in the site for the sake of the site, so it is mostly hidden after the cut.

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August in Review August 31, 2012

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, entertainment, Month in Review, Rift, World of Warcraft.
4 comments

The Site

Here we are at the 72nd monthly review post, and it still lacks in substance to the same degree that it did nearly six years ago.

Ah well, it is a habit by this point. I even created a category for these posts. I just have to go back and add that category to the first 62 monthly review posts. I’ll get to that some day. Now to come up with something about the site.

Well, there is the turning of the seasons… last month’s spam was all about Brazilian email list scams, this month it turned to Guild Wars 2 gold selling sites. Always a sign of change.

My email inbox however seems to be primarily devoted to WoW related scams. I will be happy for Mists of Panderia to ship if only because the phishing scams will have to find something besides panda beta access scams to send me. I am at the level of more than one a day on those right now, all to an email address that isn’t associated with my Blizzard account. Always amusing.

Well, maybe not always.

One Year Ago

Blizzard announced some crazy idea that you would have to be logged on to Battle.net at all times to play Diablo III. Glad that never came up again. Oh, wait…

SOE finally got a comprehensive server status page, and Scars of Velious opened up on Fippy Darkpaw.

I hit 70 million skill points in EVE Online and prepared to check out after the summer or rage.

I was back playing LOTRO for a bit. I made it into Moria, then went looking for hoes. I also wrote a post summing up my relationship with LOTRO up to that point. It’s complicated.

Wargaming.net announced World of Battleships. They have since changed the name to World of Warships, because we cannot have enough games we can shorted to WoW yet. This got me musing on battleships and related games.

Meanwhile, World or Warplanes (another WoW) got a web site with cool pictures and stuff.

David Reid was telling people that Rift had ONE MILLION CUSTOMERS. How one actually defines a customer was left as an exercise to the student.

I was still playing some Need for Speed World. I was enjoying destructible terrain, though the weekend the police broke lead to some different destruction.

I mentioned some of the little things I liked in MMOs.

I was wondering about World of Warcraft Magazine issue 5. It seemed to be very late.

And Namaste put out a Very Short History of MMOs video. Wasn’t there a follow up video?

Five Years Ago

I won something in a contest! A Warp Drive Active Shirt! I still haven’t been to any sort of EVE Online event where it would impress people however.

And speaking of EVE, I started down the training path to get my alt flying a Hulk. As with most such ventures, it began with mining in the modest Bantam frigate and the oddly shaped Osprey cruiser. Also, our corp, the Twilight Cadre was founded. I also wrote up a piece on how to find an agent in EVE Online (without external resources) that has become one of the most viewed posts on this site.

I received a copy of the first issue of EQuinox, the official EverQuest II magazine. It was… thin. And it had a dark elf on the cover. You would think there were no other races in EverQuest with all the play dark elves get.

Meanwhile, Qeynos harbor was full of rumors about Sarnak!

Legends of Norrath was announced at SOE Fan Faire 2007. I was not there, but I listened to the presentation live while IM’ing with Darren about what we heard, which included an interesting offer from Leonai of Online Gaming Radio. I still have not actually played LoN. I am just not the collectible card game kind of person.

I purchased the Richard Garriot’s Tabula Rasa Pre-Order box, only to find that getting into the beta, as was promised on the outside of the box, was not as easy as I had hoped. You had to get access to the beta forum to get the information, and the beta forum was not letting people in!

In a strange turn of fate, I happened to take a look at PlayOn on the very day they posted their WoW Random Guild Name Generator. So I posted a quick link to it, which in turn has become my most viewed post ever. The popularity was related to some Google algorithm which put up this site on the first page of searches related to guild name generators. And so, for a year, that post has been on the top of the list in my month in review.

I also put up what would become my second most popular post for quite a while, How to Find an Agent in EVE Online. It only took CCP four years to make the whole thing less convoluted.

CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson stirred up the “why so much fantasy?” discussion about MMOs and I put out my own views, to which I now just link back whenever the discussion comes back up again.

And, finally, it was a year ago when TAGN hit the 100,000 page view milestone. We have had a few more since then.

New Linking Sites

The following blogs have linked this site in their blogroll, for which they have my thanks.

Please take a moment to visit them in return.

Most Viewed Posts in August

I discover that being SynCaine is being successful, as my attempt to emulate him became my most popular post of the month. And no Pokemon on the list. How did that happen?

Spam Comment of the Month

Yes, and you can’t sig tank against a tengu with a scimitar and keep up with it. Even base sig is like 70 something and CN HMs have like 84m ER.
[I have no idea if this is true, or what it has to do with the SEO link that came with it]

Search Terms of the Month

Who still subscribes to WoW?
[A question Blizzard might have to work on soon]

pics of half open pokeballs
[Rule 34 in action I am sure]

are the asilomar conference grounds haunted?
[I have it on good authority that they are]

terry prachet noobs
[They have only read "The Color of Magic?"]

EVE Online

Life continues on in null sec, with one war ending and another beginning. This latest war seems to be taking place mostly while I am still at the office though. Or at least the fun bits. Damn Europeans. Anyway, I have shot a lot of structures lately. Well, I haven’t even done that. I have flow logistic for a lot of structure shooting, which is like being on the medical team for a miniature golf tournament. Sure, people get hurt once in a while, but do they really need reps. I was able to passive tank the POS guns last night while flying slow and in a straight line. (FC orders)

My high sec industrial alt has been plugging away. I may have to tell his tale some day. He has been on a mission.

Oh, and my main character, Wilhelm Arcturus, just celebrated his 6th year since creation this past Wednesday. That seems like a long time ago.

Guild Wars 2

It launched. It has sold a lot of boxes. A lot of people are playing it.

Just not me.

Not yet, in any case. I am going to let this settle down a bit before I jump in. Yes, I missed out on the baseball cap and the super low priced karma weapons (limit, 49 per customer) and the bans. And I probably will have to create characters with super cryptic names, since names have to be unique game-wide. But I am willing to sacrifice.

My target point: I’ll buy in when I can get a box (virtual or otherwise) for $40 or less.

It might be a long wait.

Rift

I have been spending my swords and sorcery play time in Telara for the most part, and I have been quite enjoying it. I have another character at level 50 now, so that is a warrior and a rogue.

Sanperre Level 50

Meanwhile, the instance group is coming back together in Rift and the group is just 11 levels away from 50 as well. We should be there long before Storm Legion arrives.

I might have to go work on a mage. I have one. He is level 12. It would be something to have one of each at level cap. But I have never really been a mage person. We shall see.

World of Warcraft

Despite not playing much (I have been doing Darkmoon Faire every month with a couple characters and that is about it) I did download the nearly 8 GB of data that came with the dread Patch 5.0.4. I then logged in all of my characters to consolidate pets and mounts and achievements across characters. This caused Raptr to erroneously report that I had somehow earned 75 achievements the other night. Industrious. With nearly two months left to go on my annual pass,I figured I ought to see what there was to see.

Coming Up

Next month. Well, Torchlight II launches, which I absolutely will be getting, as will Mists of Panderia, which I have no plans to purchase at all. Heck, I will be able to create a panda if I want without it. I just won’t get any new content otherwise. But I still have a lot of Cataclysm content left undone, so why bother?

There might be another expansion unlock on Fippy Darkpaw. We shall see how the vote goes this time. Gates of Discord had a hard fight. Will Omens of War face similar resistance?

Riders of Rohan rode on out of September and into October, so that will get saved for another day.

Fall is approaching, the traditional time for deep nostalgia here at TAGN. What will it involve this year?

And, finally, people who did some math up at the top of this post will realize that another regular tradition of this blog is looming next month. Now I just need to come up with a theme for it.

July in Review July 31, 2012

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, entertainment, EVE Online, Month in Review, Rift, World of Warcraft.
1 comment so far

The Site

It has been the month of Brazilian spam here at TAGN. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that Akismet, the spam filter, seems unsure about my interest in comments that link back to sites with names like “Mala Direta Segmentada, Listas de emails, Mala Direta e Lista de email,” and so has dumped them en masse into the moderation directory.

Success Kit! Who doesn’t want that?

So I have had to go look at a few dozen messages in the spam directory every day. And I have been nearly tricked a couple of times. While 99% of the messages are of the standard generic blog praise variety, occasionally there have been snippets of text stolen from elsewhere that seem almost real, and which are almost always related to the post in question. Two I almost approved at first glance:

Runic’s affable nature – something that’s evident in the snug cuddle of its games – means that rather than wringing their hands over the negativity that’s swarmed around Diablo 3 recently, they’re sympathetic. Schaefer sees features such as the real-money auction house as a necessity for certain productions.

And then on an EVE post:

The F1-spammer is another way of Gevlon to impolitely dismiss anything else that is not a succseful trader.Do you have 1 bil ISK after 5 years of EvE? You are a loser.Do you kill roids all day long for a measly 50 mil ? You are a loser ? Do you live in low-sec and destroy a T1 Badger on a gate ? You are a loser.Do you live in null sec and spam F1 2-3 times a week ? You are a loser.

That last one I am sure is somebody’s comment or post from elsewhere. It does sound like a standard critique of Gevlon.

Anyway, I hope that Akismet will get on the ball here and start blocking the boys from Brazil. For a month it is amusing. After that though….

One Year Ago

Google+ was already starting to become annoying.

I tried Civ World. I didn’t like it.

In EVE Online, the results of the emergency CSM Incarna summit were released with CCP basically saying, “Ooops.”

I hit level 50 in LOTRO, got into Eregion, and actually saw the door into Moria. Only a couple of years had passed since I bought the expansion. Gaff was ahead of me, as usual. Meanwhile, Isengard was in beta, but nobody was supposed to talk about it.

Getting lost… rules.

EA, BioWare, and their new Origin service got together and combined my accounts without bothering to mention they were doing it in advance. Just another day at EA as I understand it. Customers come behind their own convenience. Still, I was interested in their authenticator and how it stacked up against others. Can you actually buy those yet without getting the CE?

Speaking of authenticators, SOE made one available as well that looked just like the Blizzard model. But they cannot be swapped, one for the other. I got the official line from VASCO on that.

And on the SOE front, they announced that they were going to revamp Freeport, which I took as a waste of time. (Plus, of course, Qeynos got shoved off until later.) I am still not convinced that either revamp was worth the effort of the time spent downloading the assets. But I am not sure Beastlords were either. They seemed pretty broken when they launched.

The instance group wrapped up our last adventure in EverQuest II Extended. There were a number of way the game wasn’t right for us. It wasn’t just the ugly mounts.

The pending closure of Star Wars Galaxies lead to interest (and concerns) about SWG emulation.

But PlanetSide 2 news was coming. I think they are in closed technical alpha at this point.

I started playing Need for Speed: World, a driving MMO. It wasn’t a bad game with the right music playing.

Zynga helped reveal the two faces of Tobold.

And World of Warplanes was announced, which got me wondering if this might not be a spiritual successor to Air Warrior of old.

Five Years Ago

Hey, it was the Revelations expansion in EVE Online that was news a year back, and I was running through the updated new player tutorial. It was a huge improvement, though I ran into a glitch or two.

The instance group was still off in LOTRO for the Summer, though we were having issues at The Great Barrow when we weren’t playing Truth or Dare.

Vanguard was already planning server merges. 13 servers down to 4.

EverQuest II got its own magazine… again (okay, it was an SOE magazine for Station Access subscribers the first time around, but it had an EQ2 scantily clad dark elf on the cover!)… in the form of EQuinox. And they were offering Rise of Kunark beta access to subscribers!

Dr. Richard Bartle, keeping to his strict regime of “one controversial fanboi enraging quote every summer” said he would like to improve the MMORPG species by turning off World of Warcraft. Seems kind of mild after this year’s entry and reaction!

Perpetual was making crazy-insane statements about Star Trek Online… like no Galaxy-class starships for you! Ships that size were planned to be “space cities” and quest hubs. Cryptic take note: If I cannot aspire to be Captain Kirk, I am not sure I want to play! Or just go read Tipa’s post on the subject.

The end of Auto Assault was announced by NC Soft and I took note and pondered a (silly) solution.

And I stopped in front of SOE headquarters for a picture. (Mirror universe Wilhelm, with goatee.)

New Linking Sites

The following blogs have linked this site in their blogroll, for which they have my thanks.

Please take a moment to visit them in return.

Most Viewed Posts in July

Search Terms of the Month

im human and i don’t know the path to the scarlet monastery dungeon
[See, not everybody uses Dungeon Finder!]

what is the reaction occuring in a rootberr float
[The reaction is me becoming much happier as I consume it.]

ubicación de los nazgul en flyff
[Nazgul in Flyff? I don't want to know.]

one does not simply troll jita
[Actually, that is exactly what one does. Go look at local.]

Spam Comment of the Month

Packet-forging exploits have been used for some time to alter the damage players deal to monsters or receive from them. Combined with Meso Guard, hackers were able to fool the game into hitting them for -2,147,483,648 damage (the largest negative value a signed 32-bit integer can hold). Since the damage was a negative value, the Meso Guard skill then granted the player over two billion mesos. Hacking players used their ill-gotten gains to buy up practically everything in players’ market stalls, massively inflating the game’s economy by pouring untold billions into the hands of random players.

This from a comment which linked back to a Maple Story Meso (Gold) selling site. Was this describing how they got they Meso? At least it wasn’t more freakin’ Brazilian spam.

EVE Online

Things started off with a bang in New Eden. I got back from a trip to find war were declared. (That last sentence was formed to make it a Futurama reference.) I got down to Delve.. eventually… got into one giant battle, and then it was chase the bad guys or camp their station. The leaders of SoCo, Against All Authorities, clearly had an agenda that did not include defending sovereignty. You can define victory however you want, and they define it by “winning” the kill board totals every month. Of course, they like to smart bomb their own fleet to get on blue kills, a fact supported by every kill mail I’ve seen. You have to wonder how they would rank without that. The Mittani has his own dismissive view of the SoCo effort posted.

Anyway, the war ended with three regions conquered (and -A- declaring victory because we didn’t take more), so we all headed back home. Now we can rat, roam, and worry about how CCP is going to screw things up (from a null sec point of view) with alchemy and mining barge changes. Of course, when there is not a war and an abundance of fleet ops, my status as a crap member of our corp becomes more obvious and the likelihood of my getting kicked for any number of infractions like not being on voice coms at all times, hanging out in high sec, or not logging onto our broken forums goes up dramatically. So I am clearly hoping for another war.

Rift

The instance group remains on hiatus. Our general target of “hit level 38″ has yet to be achieved across the group. So we still have that to take care of.

On the bright side, the new “all levels” version of instant adventure seems to be just the ticket. I blew through two levels with that in very little time. It seems to be the “help me skip this zone” answer to those leveling up an alt.

Despite the hiatus, I did spend some time in Telara. It passed EverQuest II Extended as my most played game this month, according to Raptr. But I have been using Raptr for less than two years, so you have to take that with a grain of salt.

And there was a Rift summer event, though it didn’t seem to stick around very long. It is still Summer and all. But it did involve fishing, so I participated in that aspect. And I learned my Rift event lesson; pick up all the event related quests that you can, because when the event ends it basically finishes those quest for you. You get credit, exp, and whatever reward.

Steam Summer Sale

I managed to get through the sale on less than $10. Portal 2 was the winning purchase. I have enjoyed that very much. Railworks Train Simulator 2012 was one of the others. I actually sat down one Sunday afternoon and attempted to play it seriously. There will be a post coming up on that I am sure.

World of Warcraft

Darkmoon Faire. That is what I have been doing in WoW every month. There is a set of quests each time around that boosts your trade skills by 5 points.

Upcoming

What is on the horizon for August?

Well, the start of the launch frenzy begins with Guild Wars 2 going live at the end of the month. I have no personal investment in Guild Wars, so I will probably just let that settle down and cure the major forms of cancer before I get involved.

But that is still practically a month away, leaving most of August for other things, even if I wanted to get involved.

I am tempted to give DUST 514 a try. The major drawback is that the PlayStation 3 is hooked up to our one TV, and that is currently playing Olympics coverage every hour of the day that NBC deigns to allow. Which, admittedly isn’t that many hours in the day. NBC has to put Bob Costas in his cryogenic rejuvenation chamber for 18 hours a day I guess. But it does soak up all of prime time.

There is a rumor that we are going to go attack somebody else in EVE. We seem to be primed for it. There was a pair of towers to defend the other day and the fleet call up yielded two full Drake fleets with people left over complaining they couldn’t get in. Otherwise it is training up skills so I can fly in more fleet types.

Then there is Darkmoon Faire this weekend. I will be doing that. There are only two more before it is panda time. Despite my lack of excitement, I have gotten a couple of messages from friends who seem quite thrilled at the prospect of a new WoW expansion.

And, finally, I am trying to get my daughter to write a guest post about Minecraft. She plays on a PvP server. She needs to explain how that even works. But unlike her father, she seems like she wants to play more than she wants to write. We shall see.

June in Review June 30, 2012

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, Diablo III, entertainment, EVE Online, Month in Review, Rift.
5 comments

The Site

Summer is here, the silly season, when people go looking for news stories where none are to be found. I think it officially started when that decade long Civilization II game made it to Yahoo news then somebody had to go to Sid Meier to get his take on things. And the profound words from brother Sid?

It would be amazing if we could come back in 2025 and find out if someone’s had a 10-year game of ‘Civ V’ going.

Yes, way to push the current product line. I’ll get right on that.

Which actually has nothing to do with the site except to prove that it is summer.

It has been quiet around here because I’m on a boat. Summer means vacations.

The actual boat

Sing the song if you feel it to be appropriate. I know I’ll run into somebody singing it. I just hope it isn’t me.

I’d try to tie the ship’s name, Conquest, into the new Rift feature, but that seems like work. So onto the usual end of the month blather.

One Year Ago

I had to get out my Monty Python and the Holy Grail DVD.

I was wondering if people were picking on Lord British. This was before he started talking about his “ultimate RPG” and made it a very entertaining sport.

We were not playing WoW, but guild accounts were being hacked. And we were not even among those 600K WoW players that supposedly went to Rift.

LOTRO announced the Rise of Isengard expansion and offered up a exp boosting item for pre-orders.

I was wondering what launch conditions would be like for SWTOR. Of course, I sort of figured it might launch before mid-December.

LEGO Universe announced it was going free to play. At our house, my daughter enjoyed it for a bit, but eventually dropped it for Animal Jam.

CCP began a slow and deliberate campaign of alternating between shooting itself in the foot and sticking said foot in its mouth, all in the name of the Incarna expansion. And my sentry drones were still boring. And then LulzSec brought them down.

SOE announced a new version of Station Access, its “all games for one low monthly price.” Called SOE All Access, it had a price of $19.95 a month. This was a welcome drop from the previous $29.99 a month price.

Of course, by this point, SOE had dropped The Matrix Online and had just announced they were killing Star Wars Galaxies, so there were certainly less games to play. Of course, that was also back when they had some games that were not free to play.

At least SOE was up and running after the PSN/SOE outage. A pity they fumbled the marketing opportunities offered by their make good plan.

The instance group had finally gotten out of the damn starter zone in EverQuest II Extended, but the game still wasn’t sitting well.

On the Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server, the Ruins of Kunark expansion was opened up and then “finished” in short order.

Five Years Ago

I got all Buddhist on the subject on the raiders vs. non-raiders rift. I think what I said could be applied to some current controversies.

I ran down my list of complimentary comment spam.

I did a poll asking which software people used for voice coms. At the time, almost nobody who responded was using game-integrated voice software. Most people were using Ventrilo.

We were still playing LOTRO. I was out at the Forsaken Inn… not for the last time. The instance group, minus Earl, finished the first epic book… again, not for the last time. And server queues, something common at launch, were starting to disappear after just two months. This was odd, since the last great server queue experience was with WoW, where queues went on for over a year on some servers.

Vanguard, which was merging servers… yet again, not for the last time… gave rise to a discussion about future proofing games. I held that just making system requirements huge… something that was an issue with Vanguard… was not the same thing.

After letting Blizzard’s announcement of StarCraft II sink in, I put up a post about the original StarCraft back when it was our office game of choice.

Darren was all worked up about crafting being the suck, so I started trying to list out all the things that might be wrong with crafting. Then Tobold suggested the whole “figure out recipes by trial and error” idea and I ran screaming from the room.

And I said nice things about “Opinions of the Misinformed.”

New Linking Sites

The New Blogger Initiative helped me find a bunch of new linking blogs. So I will mention a few of them each month. The first round is:

Please take a moment to visit them in return.

Most Viewed Posts in June

Search Terms of the Month

female gabe newell
[Please, no, in the name of all that is holy]

cartoon pictures of little kids to be shown on microscoft word
[Not bean kids I hope]

why did star wars galaxies fail
[George Lucas - The George giveth and the George taketh away]

Diablo III

I came into June still playing a lot of Diablo III. It had replaced Rift for a few weeks running as the Saturday night game for those of the instance group not on hiatus. However, that has begun to taper off at my end. Part of that was because of other games competing for my limited play hours, but some of it was no doubt because, having played through the game once in Normal mode, running it again in Nightmare was hasn’t provided much new. The game is harder. You have to pick your battles more carefully. I cannot just run my barbarian into any huge group of monsters I see and expect to win every time. And you have to start looking into different stats on equipment. I noticed that gear with resistance was dropping a lot more and took the hint. Grabbing fire resist gear for The Butcher actually made that fight easier the second time around.

But the longevity of the content, for me at least, seems to be in doubt. Which brings me back to what I wrote a number of times; what is Blizzard going to do with the game going forward?

EVE Online

With the end of the war in the north, things have been quiet. There was a jump in fleet ops when IRC was the target, but that seems to have settled down. I have been spending some time doing industrial stuff in empire space with an alt who now has access to a fully equipped industrial station. But otherwise there has not been much to write about. Of course, it is said the Goons invade somebody every summer once school is out. Maybe things will get lively soon.

Rift

I have been back in Rift quite a bit. The announcement of the Storm Legion expansion prodded me to get to level 50, and then being there got me exploring what to do in the game at level cap. All in all, I have put in more play time in Rift than any other game over the last month. Meanwhile, the various vacation and outdoor plans of the instance group has put us on summer hiatus. I did get my cleric out to try and level him up… I figure mentoring is coming soon… but found out that I really need to work out how to play a cleric solo around level 36. I just died a lot. Ah well.

Coming Up

What is coming up in July? The instance group on hiatus, Diablo III winding down, playing Rift end game? Am I going to have to start posting about Lord British tweeting about his running times?

We definitely need to invade somebody in null sec.

In the mean time I am going to have Issac make me another drink and go wander over to the Lido deck.

May in Review May 31, 2012

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, Diablo III, entertainment, EVE Online, Month in Review, Rift, World of Warcraft.
Tags: Portal
15 comments

The Site

What Alexa says about my readership. (Emphasis is theirs.)

Based on internet averages, tagn.wordpress.com is visited more frequently by males who are in the age range 18-24, have no children, have no college education and browse this site from home.

At least they didn’t specifically mention your mother’s basement. Still, I cannot say that is a winning endorsement. I am just glad there isn’t a feature that attempts to describe the owner of the site based on readership!

I suppose I should be happy that Alexa has anything to say about my site. It has nothing to say about my other blog.

In general, Alexa says the following about the site:

tagn.wordpress.com is ranked #1,087,910 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. Approximately 68% of visits to the site consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces). We estimate that 21% of visitors to the site come from the US, where it has attained a traffic rank of 541,171. Visitors to it spend roughly 78 seconds on each pageview and a total of two minutes on the site during each visit. The fraction of visits to Tagn.wordpress.com referred by search engines is about 14%.

Wasn’t that interesting? 68% of you arrive here and immediately leave, having discovered your mistake. About par for the course I imagine. I am surprised that it only pegs the number of US visitors as 21% of the total traffic, as the flag counter on the side bar puts the number just over 50%.

Flag Counter Tally as of May 2012

And when two such sources disagree, how do we decide who is right? Probably neither, but somebody is probably closer.

And that is our site discussion of the month.

One Year Ago

May 2011 was the time of the great Sony outage, with the Playstation Network down for 24 days and Sony Online Entertainment down for 13 days. It was a communication fiasco from start to finish, with bad updates almost daily. About all they could do was promise us all goodies for when they finally came back up.

CCP was starting the build up to the Incarna fiasco with the introduction of Aurum.

On the Fippy Darkpaw time locked progression server, there was agitation to vote NO on unlocking the Kunark expansion. Such agitation shows up with each unlock vote. But no vote failed until Gates of Discord came along.

The instance group was in EverQuest II… when it was up… and trying to get the hell out of the starter area. We managed it, but it took a lot more time than I would have thought. We started in on some dungeons and got ourselves a guild hall.

World of Warcraft subscriptions started to decline, while Trion started offering free server transfers in Rift.

And finally, as hot as things seemed to be around here, there was no rapture. You just couldn’t buy a break that month.

Five Years Ago

The usual discussions were going around, what made WoW so successful and what games might contend with WoW? Some of the so called “contenders” were pretty silly picks.

The instance group was focused on LOTRO for the first time. I had things to complain about, especially the state of the economy. And, only a month in we spotted a level 50 player. That must have been some hard work, as the game sort of petered out at about level 35 back then. Still, Middle-earth was a pretty place. It even had rainbows.

Vanguard was heavily in the news. Sigil fell and SOE stepped in to pick up the pieces, though I wondered how long before the many problems with the game became attached to SOE. I was also wondering about the impact of the game’s system requirements.

I was wondering how many more expansions EverQuest would have, while pointing out that you could get the game and all the expansions for only $15.

The owners of Allakhazam, long a staple of EQ knowledge, sold off their gold selling RMT wing, thus removing that taint and a host of gold selling ads from the site.

SOE officially announced the Rise of Kunark expansion for EverQuest II, keeping the game firmly on the nostalgia train. Meanwhile, I had a suggestion for the new Arasai race.

Finally, there were some podcasts I thought people should listen to again. I am not sure you can get most of them any more.

New Linking Blogs

After having to dip into the recycle pile to reuse some past linking sites last month, this month there are three new sites to mention!

Please take a moment to visit them.

Most Viewed Posts in May

Search Terms of the Month

error 37
[Brought more traffic here during May than all other search terms combined]

p-51 bomb-aiming stripes sight lines for dive bombing
[A few of these... this has to be a World of Warplanes related search]

fiesta outspark atlas sword
[There is an Ayn Rand reference in there somewhere]

Diablo III

As expected, Diablo III was the focus of about half of the month. I have had a good time with it, having gotten through normal mode with my barbarian. I am currently in Act II with him in nightmare mode. This second run through is going slower both because it is actually harder… they throw a lot more blue elite monsters at you… and because it is the same thing I just did, so the drive to advance the story is gone. I know how the story goes, where the surprise twist is, and so on. And the randomization is pretty minimal, killing another aspect of change between plays, as the anchor points of the story pretty much force things into place. So while I am still playing, I am concentrating more on playing with friends.

EVE Online

Things in New Eden were a bit quiet mid-month. I did managed to get out on one strategic operation, so I am at least on the kill boards for May. Who I might be flying with in these ops is interesting. And, of course, there is skill training, always skill training. I should be able to fly a heavy interdictor in about a week with all skills at IV or V. Now will I actually buy one and fly one? That is another story.

Portal

I Finished Portal. I got half the achievements. It was fun, though pretty short. I am glad I got it for free. It was probably $10 worth of cool… and met that $2/hour threshold for games… but I probably wouldn’t have bought it. Portal 2 is on my Steam wish list now, waiting for a sale.

Rift

After the instance group finished up King’s Breach, we haven’t really been back to Telara. As a group we have to get a couple of levels before we can hit the next dungeon, and we can get about a level a week if we focus as a group. Instead of focusing we’ve been on vacation or playing Diablo III. I am not sure if this means any change to our future plans or not at this time.

World of Warcraft

Since I paid for Diablo III by signing up for a years worth of WoW, I have felt compelled to at least log on once in a while. I have one character at 85 and have settled into a pattern of logging on for Darkmoon Faire every month, specifically for the tradeskill related quests, since they boost your skill by 5 each time. This is part of my plan to have at least one character max’d out on all skills when PandaVille arrives. And then I log in to do whatever event happens to be going on, but only if I still have some achievements left to get. So I was on for Children’s Week. That got me the last of the companion pets and two achievements, though I still do not have the meta achievement. I am just not going to do those battleground achievements.

Coming Up

Summer, and the expectation of warm weather. It has been unseasonably chilly out here for much of the month.

And gaming… hrmm… I am out of immediate goals after Diablo III.

Something will turn up, I am sure of it. It always does.

What is Richard Garriott de Cayeux up to these days?

NBI – All The Pretty Blogs… With Some Contradictory Advice Thrown In May 31, 2012

Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in blog thing, entertainment.
Tags: Linkwhoring, NBI, New Blogger Initiative, Newbie Blogger Initiative
7 comments

All good things must come to an end. This holds for mediocre and bad things as well. You can pick which you felt the New Blogger Initiative was. Syp certainly seems happy about things.

As one of the so-called sponsors, I committed to putting up an announcement about the event, writing a bit of advice (I even did some advice embedded in a live post), and then posting a summing up of all the new blogs and advice shared. And so here we are at that final step, the summing up.

Hrmm.

I really have nothing else to add, so I will let you sum it up.

(NBI advice: polls are a great way to avoid committing to an opinion! And, as a bonus, you can always wring another post out of evaluating the results!)

That said, onto the long lists of blogs and articles, which are after the cut.

(more…)

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The Ancient Gaming Noob

Five Years of Spaceship Pictures May 23, 2013

New Blogger Initiative a Year Later – Who Survived? May 9, 2013

The Blog ‘Banner Art’ Post May 3, 2013

Reviewing My Questions for 2012 December 18, 2012

1. What fate awaits the Old Republic?

2. Can Blizzard stem the World of Warcraft subscription trend?

3. Will Free to Play continue to be the gold mine/panacea for subscription games?

4. Who will really win the “Just Like Diablo” battle of 2012?

5. When will we lose a game to hacking?

6. Will SOE remain the only player in the MMO nostalgia game?

7. Will Guild Wars 2 be the game changer in the MMO market in 2012?

8. Will CCP ever be anything but the company that makes EVE Online?

9. What will the earth shattering MMO announcements be in 2012?

10. Will MMOs get redefined in new and interesting (or bad and annoying) ways?

11. Are we every going to get another decent MMO news podcast?

12. What will Lord British do next?

But Now I am Six, I’m as Clever as Clever September 12, 2012

August in Review August 31, 2012

July in Review July 31, 2012

June in Review June 30, 2012

May in Review May 31, 2012

NBI – All The Pretty Blogs… With Some Contradictory Advice Thrown In May 31, 2012

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