January 2009 in Review

The Site

The site rolls along for another month.  Every once in a while I look at the other templates that WordPress.com offers for bloggers, but none of them suits me quite as well as this one.  Yes, I could do whatever I wanted if I hosted the site myself, but I know I would end up spending more time tinkering and less time writing.

On the downside of things, I did get evicted from the EVE Blog Pack in order to free up one of the 30 slots to which the pack is limited so that a more active EVE blogger might be added, an event heralded by a line in the pack log reading “And removed some inactive blogs.”

It seems that CrazyKinux has decided that the pack should be for blogs that focus exclusively on EVE.  Hybrids take it in the nuts again.  I guess I won’t have to carry on agitating for my Pack Profiles idea.

One Year Ago

Last January I seemed to be writing all sorts of stuff that has come back to haunt me.

I started off with a helping of silly predictions.

Then, with Tabula Rasa dead to me since open beta, I started wondering if there was any hope at all for a Science Fiction MMORPG.  This ended up being one of my most responded to posts ever with, in addition to all the comments, Potshot, Tipa, Lemegeton, Gooney, and even Massively following up with response posts. This post still gets a lot of views every month. (And yes, I do think there is hope, I just don’t know when we’ll get what we’re looking for.)

And, along with that, I wrote about five LEGO Video Games I would like to see made, another post that makes the monthly list of most viewed posts on a regular basis a year later.

Then there was the start of the run-up to Pirates of the Burning Sea which, among other things, required me to invest in a new router.

In WoW, the Saturday night instance group was hitting Scholomance, Stratholme, and level 60, getting us to the Outlands only a year after Burning Crusade shipped!

In EVE Online, after spending millions of ISK, I managed my first Tech II Blueprint, then I couldn’t afford to build it. Ah, life in EVE.  I also got my standing past 8.0 with the Caldari Navy and spent time hauling trash.

And, finally, in Lord of the Rings Online I was able to pick up my Bree Pony, the 2007 holiday gift to founders.

New Linking Sites

Every month I worry that I am not going to have a site to link in this section.  This month, however, I have way too many.  I like to keep the list small enough that people are likely to click on the whole list.  So, since I have so many this time around, I am going to hold a few back for next month.

• Addictive
• Gaming Granny
• Nerf the Cat
• Reroller
• Spillbloggen
• The Fickle Corebear

Please take a moment to visit these site that were kind enough to link here.

Most Viewed Posts in January

1. Play On: Guild Name Generator
2. 2009 MMORPG Progdictionations
3. Getting Upper Blackrock Spire Access
4. How To Find An Agent in EVE Online
5. Threshold RPG and Wikipedia
6. Finding King Ping
7. LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
8. The Name Generator
9. Facing Ingvar the Plunderer
10. Five LEGO Video Game Titles I Want
11. WoW Patch 3.0.8 – Small Details
12. 2008 MMORPG Progdictionations

Spam Comments of the Month

charmender up ur bungwhole
[sounds uncomfortable, but I am going to get some interesting new hits from Google I bet!]

pl0x nub 1337 w00t rofl lmao lmfao roflmao lol lolz WOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
[You left out STFU]

I really enjoyed reading this article. Warcraft has so many different things to do! I’m amazed daily at how many new things people are constantly creating and showing to the public. Your article is very well written. Thanks for the great read
[I had to assume this was spam because it was in response to this post.  If I this comment was yours and you feel I was incorrect… boy you have low standards.]

EVE Online

With the passing of the holidays and the return of health and sanity, I was able to spend some more time in space.  I have been out mining that now-so-lucrative veldspar as tritanium prices have been holding above 4 ISK.  I have also done some level 4 missions, mostly to gain faction for my mining alt and to generate cash and salvage.

I have lots of money in my wallet and my standing is over 8 with four factions now, but I do not really have a short and long term goal in EVE, and that is one of the keys to keeping EVE interesting.  The Monty Burns “Make more money!” doesn’t cut it alone at some point after a billion ISK.

So I have been training up combat skills while I figure out my next path in EVE.

EverQuest II

As much fun as Reynaldo Fabulous was to play, my time spent in Norrath has fallen off dramatically over the last month.  Even the opulent Revelry and Honor guild hall can’t draw me in.  But as I said on SUWT #41, the core group of people with whom I game aren’t in Norrath either.

And so I let my subscription lapse.  There is no point in paying if I am not playing.

Lord of the Rings Online

I have been running through Middle-earth on a regular basis on the theory that having a group of people around in the Podcasters of Bree kinship will allow me some grouping opportunities.  I am catching up with them, but I am not sure what will happen when I get there.  I am the only person on the left coast in the kinship it seems, so when I’m logging on to start playing, they’re all logging off to go to bed. Or so they say.  Even Gaff, the three-box leveling dynamo has been nowhere to be seen for the last couple of weeks.

Still, I am enjoying the game, having found many of the rough spots smoothed over somewhat.  It is far from perfect.  At some point I’ll get annoyed enough to do a “five things that annoy me” post about the game again.  But it is nice.  I keep saying that.  And it is Middle-earth.  And I have a lifetime subscription.  And there is Moria somewhere out there.

World of Warcraft

It has been hard not to play WoW over the last month.

The instance group has been on a bit of a hiatus due to outside commitments in January.  (And not, I hope, because I made us look less than able in a post.)  So I have tried to leave Vikund idle.  But, while I have many alts, he is my main for a lot of things.

So I find myself logging in just to run the Kalu’ak daily quests because I want that fishing pole they offer when you hit exalted.  I never thought I would do a faction grind.  I have zero factions at exalted on any of my characters in WoW.  Then I saw that fishing pole.  We all have a price.

So my goal now is to not get too far ahead of the rest of the group.

Wii

I meant to write about some of the Wii games that showed up for Christmas.  Instead I wrote about how our Wii seems to be making a lot more noise now.  Well, more topics for later.

Coming Up

I fully expect the return of the instance group to happen in February, at which point Ingvar the Plunderer will get his comeuppance at last.

I see no end in sight for LOTRO currently.  I will have to find out what happened to Gaff.  I need his help for a few fellowship quests, plus I understand that I will get a new class quest at level 30, which is not all that far off.

I will have to come up with a plan for EVE Online.  It isn’t going to be 0.0, so don’t even go there.  That requires way too much time commitment.  I need something bigger than skilling my alt up to a Vulture and honing Wilhelm’s combat skills further, but smaller than a complete change in play style.  We shall see.

And, finally, I want to see if I can get this sort of thing going on FARK.

A man can dream.

[Editors note: This blog does not in any way endorse actually punching Amy Tan or any other author hung up on monther/daughter relationships.]