The Site
The site was picked for an honor over at Massively, being included in their 2010 round-up of MMO Blogs they like. I want to thank the team over there again which does try to link up the MMO blogger community on a regular basis. They seem to favor my other site, EVE Online Pictures, when they need a specific EVE Online screen shot and they always link back and give credit when they do.
I won’t spoil their rankings, but I will say congratulations to the other sites that were part of the write up and encourage readers to visit them all. There were only a couple that did not already have a spot in my Google Reader list.
The combination of Massively mention and Talking Cats Playing Patty Cake managed to make December 2010 the month with the most page views ever, defeating the previous champion, the late Octopus Paul and his World Cup Predictions, who made July 2010 the previous record holder.
Paul does still hold the single day page view record. What animal story will be able to top that?
One Year Ago
Let’s see… a random reader wrote in to tell me that the social aspects of MMOs are insignificant. I don’t think he understood what he was talking about.
People seemed to be getting worked up as to how you define content in an MMO. Can you compare sandbox and amusement park content fairly? Taking some of this to its logical extreme, I demonstrated something that trumped all MMO content.
Also getting people worked up was the catch in the whole free to play model, brought up by changes to the store in Battlefield Heroes. That actually got responses all over the place.
The US release date for Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver was announced. I am beginning to see a pattern here, a December announcement and a March release date for Pokemon every year.
People were warming up for Star Trek Online. There was a confusing array of pre-order options. But it was missing some items I really wanted. (I think the awful early movie uniforms just appeared recently in the C-Store. Now I don’t really want them.)
In WoW we were busy wrapping up the holiday achievements, including wrapping up Pilgrim’s Bounty.
We were also playing with this new Dungeon Finder thing that showed up with WoW patch 3.3. Automated cross-server instance group matching with random strangers? It will never work.
The instance group, in its horde RP-PvP server form was hitting Gnomeregan and Shadowfang Keep, both of which seemed… much easier.
And I was officially epic… proven by the achievement. Of course by that time, somebody already had all the possible WoW achievements. Too epic to be believed.
Meanwhile, this horrible image was keeping me up at nights. You just cannot unsee things once you have seen them.
Finally, there was an actual podcast interview with Erik “WoW isn’t easy enough” Estavillo. He was a surprisingly good sport about being the subject of mockery.
New Linking Sites
I would like to thank the following site for linking here. I had to search a bit this month, but still found a few sites I had not previously mentioned.
Please take a moment to visit them in return.
Most Viewed Posts in December
- Talking Cats Play Pattycake
- Heroic Deadmines!
- Fighting Blood Elf Porn
- Play On: Guild Name Generator
- How To Find An Agent in EVE Online
- How I Got My 5,000 Turbine Points
- The Hot New WoW Hunter Pet
- Reviewing My 2010 Predictions
- Shiny Pokemon Events Coming to GameStop in January
- WoW Account Hacked – This Just Keeps Happening
- 499 Way to Find Yourself… Well… Here
- Turbine is Totally the Reason Warhammer Online Failed…
Most Common Search Terms of the Month
- heroic deadmines
- elf porn
- cataclysm
- blood elf porn
- zombrex
- guild names
- turbine points
- ancient gaming noob
- blizzard authenticator
- cats playing patty cake
- lotro vip
- wow hunter pets
Spam Comments of the Month
This is the best blog I’ve ever seen in my life…
[Thank you, but I won’t be studying Spanish abroad. I live in California, Spanish comes to me.]
DELETE THIS POST
[How about I just delete your comment? Does that work for you?]
makes me want to drink alcoholic beverages
[Celebrating the end of learning skills in EVE? Wait, this might not be spam. No, checked your URL. Spam.]
I conceive this internet site is rattling informative!
[Sorry, that’s me. I rattle when I cough… or kvetch.]
“pokemon ranch” “porn”
[The ongoing need to prove Rule 34]
Where I Spent My Gaming Time in December
Game time distribution as counted by my Raptr profile, which doesn’t count Lord of Ultima or DC Universe Online beta.
- World of Warcraft – 62%
- EverQuest II Extended – 25%
- Civilization V – 7%
- EVE Online – 4%
- Hearts of Iron III – 1% (Damn Steam sale got me yesterday!)
EVE Online
Not much activity in space for me in December. The great learning skill point redistribution allowed me to get within a couple of days of equipping and flying a Nightmare. The account is set to lapse soon and I will probably let it go until Incursions is fully launched.
EverQuest II Extended
For the first two weeks of the month, this was my #1 game. Even during the first week of Cataclysm I played more EQII. And then I started getting folded into the WoW routine and Norrath started to fall by the wayside. While I was gold this month, I will probably opt for a silver account when that expires. I suppose that means no Freeblood race for me, but it would cost me another $30 to get that $20 options, and even then I would have to spend $45 more to get the full set of Freeblood features.
Lord of the Rings Online
The hot summer game for the instance group has also seen a drop in play from me. I’ve logged in a couple of times. I have kept the game patched. But I have not done very much. You’ll note that the play time didn’t even make the list above. I was on long enough to see and approve of the latest update to the vault UI. I do have to peek back in soon though, as the lotteries are back in the game.
World of Warcraft
Cataclysm has reshaped the world and I am starting to find myself more and more caught up in it. The odd thing is that I have spent most of my time playing Wrath of the Lich King content. My daughter and I are both in the middle of that with characters still. And I have been doing Argent Tournament dailies with one of my characters to finish off rep with the main Alliance cities and to pick up a few heirloom items for the alts I suspect I will end up making.
Coming Up
I might have a set of January 1st predictions for 2011 up tomorrow. Or maybe I won’t.
The instance group is poised to return to the new (and presumably improved) Deadmines. The holidays have gotten in the way, but the cold gray new year should give us ample time to get into the reworked dungeon progression in Azeroth.
I am also looking for some Twitter management app. Right now I am just using the built-in WordPress.com ability to publish to Twitter when I post and then the Twitter web site for everything else. Only the web site seems pretty awkward for any purpose other than a Twitter post. Who can suggest something?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 