January 2011 in Review

The Site

Another month of very minor changes to the site.

I think the big discovery of the month involved Twitter.  WordPress.com allows you to past the URL for a tweet into a post and it will then reproduce the tweet in all its correctly sized glory in you post.  This has allowed me to pass on some of the tweets of Chairman Smed and Blizzard Customer Support as well as earth shattering proclamations like this.

http://twitter.com/#!/professorbeej/status/31795377061494784

Beware the wrath of @professorbeej.

[Addendum: Message from 2023, this functionality might be broken soon. It is a long story.]

One Year Ago

Well, there was the usual set of ill-considered predictions.

Oh, and that Battlestar Galactia/Bohemian Rhapsody video on YouTube.  I liked that.

The first issue of The Official World of Warcraft Magazine shipped.

There was Hulkageddon II, from which I tried to draw lessons.  Always good for some gamer angst… and anger.

There was a certain amount of excitement on my part for Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver.  January is the ramp up time for Pokemon hype.

The instance group was still warming up on the Horde side, making it as far as Razorfen Downs.

And the whole Tanks and Healers vs. DPS and who is more important that is all the rage in January 2011?  We were going on about that back in January 2010 as well.  The Dungeon Finder brought this all into sharp relief.

But the month was primarily about Star Trek Online.  I was obsessed.

I was making making up polls and contests around that Del Taco shuttle tie-in and silly lists of things to do while waiting for open beta.

And when it finally arrived, I spent a lot of time with the character creator, some of it to make my first character and some of it just in the name of science.  I customized my ship and wondered how I could get rid of the shields in my combat screen shots.  Did they ever change that? And I pondered whether or not it was a good idea to get a lifetime subscription.  The poll results said it wasn’t, but I did it anyway.  The majority was correct it would seem.

Oh, I did do one other thing in January.

New Linking Sites

I would like to thank the following site for linking here.

• nomnom.info
• Sixty-Four
• Voodoo Gamer
• Your target is Dead

Please take a moment to visit them in return.

Most Viewed Posts in January

1. Shiny Pokemon Events Coming to GameStop in January
2. Fighting Blood Elf Porn
3. How To Find An Agent in EVE Online
4. Play On: Guild Name Generator
5. Download Ash’s Pikachu at Toys R Us
6. LOTRO – Comparing VIP with Free
7. What is the Scale of this Blog Health-o-Meter?
8. Five Minutes with the New EVE Character Creator
9. My Demands for 2011
10. Westfall Ablaze!
11. 2011 – First MMO Check Points
12. The Five Most Pressing Issues Facing World of Warcraft?

Most Common Search Terms of the Month

1. elf porn
2. blood elf porn
3. wow account hacked
4. ancient gaming noob
5. cataclysm
6. guild names
7. gamestop pokemon events
8. gamestop shiny pokemon
9. gamestop shiny pokemon event
10. blog-health-o-meter
11. thorin
12. gamestop entei

Search Terms of the Month

3d wow blood elf porn
[now there is somebody with ambition]

why do cats play patty cake
[some things are unknowable]

“fear the boot” affair
[Obviously I need to catch up with their podcast]

Where I Spent My Gaming Time

Game time distribution as counted by my Raptr profile, which doesn’t count everything… especially when I forget to add a game until I have been playing it for a while.

1. World of Warcraft – 79%
2. World of Tanks – 7%
3. EVE Online – 5%
4. Lord of the Rings Online – 4%
5. Rift – 4%

EVE Online

Incursion is finally fully deployed.  I still haven’t made my new avatar yet, though I am favoring the Percy Dovetonsils look.  I wonder if I can make an avatar with no pants?  I haven’t seen any Sansha incursions either, but we’ll get to that I’m sure.

EverQuest II Extended

As I became more involved with Cataclysm, EQII started to fall by the wayside.  I did spend a little bit of time in the game as I had to be ready for the Gold to Bronze to Silver transition.  That meant salting away my excess platinum in trade skill fuel.  But once that was done I was able to buy the extra bag slots on my two main characters, so now they are just waiting until I come back for another visit.

Lord of the Rings Online

I got the Middle-earth bug for a little bit.  I didn’t do much.  But I have been entering the newly restored LOTRO Lotteries, and when I win one, which happens now and again, I log on to collect my prize and usually end up playing for a little while.

World of Warcraft

I have been exploring Cataclysm, both at the low end at the high.  I still haven’t gotten a character to level 85 yet though.  I have been seeing the sights and sticking my nose in every corner.  That, and my daughter and I still have characters we play that are in the mid-70s, so I’m not done with Lich King yet really.

Coming Up

Well, there are at least two games on that list above that I have not mentioned in posts.  You can probably expect to hear about both of them. (Potshot already has a post up about one we were playing this past week.)

And Pokemon.  With the run up to the release of Pokemon Black and White, I am sure I will have more events to mark.

And, of course, the usual stuff along with the occasional reposted tweet.