September in Review

The Site

The site passed the one year marker.  My post with all sorts of data about the past year seemed to be well received and many very nice things were said.  Thank you again to all who left a comment on the anniversary.  This gives me a new filler item… er… topic I can introduce to the monthly round up.

Of course, recently, WordPress.com seems to be having some problems with comments.  Judging by the amount of spam comments I have had over the last few days, it may very well be load related.

I did get a nice surprise in that my observation about the unmentioned icon update that was part of EverQuest II’s Game Update 38 got linked in the Town Crier.   They also linked my “Naked” post in the Town Crier.  Together those two links generated a lot of traffic.

One Year Ago

Our WoW instance group started up.  We’re all the way to Zul’Farrak.  Is that a lot or a little?

One year since I started up EVE Online… at least for the first time.

New Linking Sites

• geekdw
• Journeys with Jaye
• Massive Multiplayer PK
• The Gooneybin
• The Wizard of Duke Street
• Trolley Dodger Gaming

Most Viewed Posts In September

1. Play On: Guild Name Generator
2. Tabula Rasa Beta Forum Access!
3. Why Isn’t LOTRO More Fun?
4. Tabula Rasa: The New Auto Assault?
5. Tabula Rasa Pre-Order
6. What Is A “Tank” In EVE?
7. How To Find An Agent in EVE Online
8. 38 – The Iconic Update
9. Views on the G15 LCD
10. Naked Zones
11. A Year of Living Noobishly
12. EVE, ISK, and RMT

Best Search Terms of the Month

wordpress faerie theme
[Ummm]

Rainbows Unicorns
[Shoot me now]

will i ever found a nice house
[Not if you play WoW]

Outgoing Link Connection

Both Scott Adams and I linked to the Wikipedia article on cognitive dissonance this month.  This wouldn’t be quite so interesting except as I was writing up my monthly summary I was looking for a way to tie in the concept again because it is one of my favorite oddities about human behavior.

Anyway, just so I can link it again, here is the article on cognitive dissonance.

Scott Adams’ post on why economists are resistant to cognitive dissonance is here.

Most Persistent Spam Comment of the Month

A spam signed by a “John Campbell” offering me a work from home job that pays 3000-4000 USD, GBP, or EUR per month.  The reason I keep seeing it is that Akismet is not sure that it is spam, so I keep having to moderate it over and over.  Oddly, or perhaps not, it always gets sent to the same posting on the site, over and over and over.

EVE Online

Lost a few cruisers, mined a lot of ore, and trained, trained, trained.  EVE feeds an obsessive compulsive need within me when it comes to training.  It is very rare for me to let any time elapse without a skill training.

EverQuest II

Aside from our adventure in the Court of Innovation, I have not had much time to get in and play EverQuest II.  One of our original guild members came back to the game.  He left before Desert of Flames came out and seemed to be pleased.  He has even declared the fae race, which I persuaded him to try, not as bad as he was afraid they would be.  Fae glide FTW!

Lord of the Rings Online

I have been back to poke around in Middle-earth a couple of times since the weekly instance group moved back to WoW, but I haven’t done anything serious in game.  I’ve just explored a bit more and taken some goofy screen shots of dwarven mining carts.

Tabula Rasa

I played in the beta some, but I do not feel compelled to actually play the game when it comes out.  There wasn’t anything really wrong with it, it just isn’t something for which I would drop one of the other games I play.  I will be interested to see what pricing plan they eventually announce for the game.  It is getting awfully close to the release date to be keeping that a secret.

Wii

We have been going Gamecube gaming crazy on the Wii over the last month.  So much so that we already broke one of the el cheapo Gamecube controllers I bought on eBay.  A special thanks to the guys at the GameStop over by Westgate Mall who went through every single used Nintendo Gamecube controller in the store to pick out the best one for me.  I did not ask them to do it, they were just that serious about the game play experience.

World of Warcraft

The return of the Saturday night instance group to WoW.  Three out of five of us are in the process of moving across country, so we haven’t hit every Saturday night, but we have managed to all be on together at least twice.  We will soon be moving on from Zul’Farrak.

Podcasts

I was not on any podcasts.  I broke my run of being on every non-prime, even-numbered episode of Shut Up We’re Talking, as #10 was recording last night and I wasn’t there.

I did get a mention on Warp Drive Active #14, where they took on my question about tanking in EVE.  A good listen, though I have to say that my handle is not pronounced “While-hem.”  I’ll send my German mother-in-law along and have those two saying “Vill-Helm” with Teutonic perfection.

Upcoming

I have a busy month ahead with an ISO audit coming up at work.  Nothing but fun there!  Still, I have a series of Wii related articles to finish up as well as the usual report on the instance group.  And, at some time near the end of October I will be able to fly the Hulk in EVE Online.  Expect some unoriginal and bad Marvel Comics related pun at some point.