October 2007 in Review

The Site

Another month went by there when I wasn’t looking.

In October I briefly flirted with a new WordPress theme for the site, but my wife told me in 20 seconds what it took me 20 minutes to figure out, which was that it wasn’t for me.

She also told me that nobody cares about the pictures I put up in the banner, that it is only the pictures I put in the posts that matter.  Despite her persistence about being right in so many things (outside of the relationship between the electrical bill and how many lights are left on in the house), I refuse to believe this and will continue to update the banner pictures a couple of times a month.

Also, my wife, who has no interest in computer games, started reading the site recently just to see what I am spending all my time writing.  I am going to hear about that comment on the electrical bill, at least when we get done talking about last nights fun.  No damage, but the house felt like it was on a water bed for about 10 seconds.

One Year Ago

One year ago our Saturday night WoW group completed our first full instance run, The Deadmines, on our third try at it, and got in a whack at The Wailing Caverns.

I decided in EVE Online that covert ops would be a good career choice.  It certainly sounds cool.  However, the effort was cut short when I got to some of the pricier skills.

I felt that fall urge to run around in EverQuest, plus I wanted to take some pictures of Faydwer in order to compare them to the upcoming EverQuest II expansion, Echoes of Faydwer.

I also jumped into EverQuest II and got all confused (nothing new there) about the trade skill changes that occured during the 10 months I was away.

And I spent some time carping about MMO pricing plans.  I still feel the same way on that a year later.

New Linking Sites

A big thank you to the following sites:

• Ardent Interludes
• It’s a Miner’s Life For Me
• The Game Dame! 

Most Viewed Posts In October

1. Play On: Guild Name Generator
2. Tabula Rasa Beta Forum Access!
3. What Is A “Tank” In EVE?
4. Mithril Mining Madness
5. How To Find An Agent in EVE Online
6. My New Scorecard
7. Station Launcher Beta in October
8. The Mommy MMO
9. Why Isn’t LOTRO More Fun?
10. EverQuest and the Fall

Best Search Terms of the Month

“eve online” AND wreck
[That should “Caracal wreck”]

you fail
[And you have been sent here]

hair+samurai
[That brings up an odd mental image]

EVE Online

Finally, the Hulk is flying.  Now I have to have my miner train up additional skills to equip it.  Still, it pulls down a lot of ore.  With my main I continue on with missions and the production path, and I have write-ups to do on both.  Blueprints I submitted for material research processing early this month ought to be finishing up soon, so my production costs should be going down.

EverQuest

As I wrote, fall comes, a little rain falls, and I decide I want to go back and play EverQuest.  I swapped over my Station account to Station Access so I could play.  I ran the updates, brought the game up, and it crashes.  Actually, it terminates immediately upon entering the game.  No message.  No log.  Nothing.  I suspect it might have something to do with my removing the Audigy sound card from my system.  I have not been able to get the on-board audio to work (though it shows active in the device manager).  Everything else seems content to run with either no sound card or my USB headphones plugged in, but it would not surprise me in the least if EQ would refuse to run without a sound card running correctly.

EverQuest II

I have spent almost no time in EverQuest II over the last month.  Time has been a bit short, and the time that I do have has been spent in EVE or WoW.  Still, Rise of Kunark is coming.  Hey, wasn’t I supposed to get a beta invite as part of pre-ordering EQuinox?  No word yet and the time for beta is rapidly coming to a close.

World of Warcraft

The Saturday night instance group continues to roll on.  We managed to knock off Zul’Farrak at last, level the whole team up to 50, and get through most of Maraudon.  I have also been playing my hunter some and may end up having two level 50+ characters in the game soon.  While I said the whole promise of the 2.3 patch was something of a disincentive, it turns out not to be as big as I thought.  I ended up grinding him more than a level just collecting leather for leather working, so now he is able to work with rugged leather.

Upcoming

I go through these cycles where I worry that I am going to run out of things to write about that seem to alternate with periods where I have too many topics lined up and things become dated before I get to them.  I am in one of those too many topics periods of time, so I need to start getting them written, at least as outlines, as I tend to forget things if I let them slide too long.

That said, you can certainly expect to see some more on EVE in the coming month, the continuation of the tale of the WoW instance group, something about Kunark, and, if it rains again, probably something about EverQuest.  I just cannot let go.