The Site
This month I’ll ramble on a bit about Feedly. With the demise of Google Reader, Feedly is where I ended up in my search for an online RSS feed reader. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t even as good as Google Reader was before Google+ came along. But it is close enough to the post-Google+ version of Google Reader that I am okay with it. I even opted in for Feedly Pro, which at this point only buys me a search field, but other things are promised for the future. And I appear to need that search field. Who are you bloggers who do not have any sort of search function available on your blogs? (Looking at Liore, amongst a cast of dozens.)
Anyway, it fills my basic needs, even if it appears to hate how WordPress.com formats pictures, appearing to toss them around in a fit of pique and sundering them from their captions when my posts are viewed. And there is much I do not know, or have not noticed about the service. For example, the other day Tobold was chuckling about how Feedly was attempting to prove what we all secretly believe, that he and SynCaine are the same person and just trolling us all on a grand scale. Laugh while you can! Somebody will prove it some day!
But I was wondering about Feedly recommending feeds, which he noted. It doesn’t do that for me, though that might be because I have it set in the most minimalist form I could manage. I don’t need anything fancy or pictures or a book format or anything. I have FlipBoard for that. I just want a list of titles to run through. And I also saw in his screen shot… such a rare thing on his blog that we all should stop and gape (pro tip: png format for text like that, as JPEG will blur.)… that it also showed the number of people who are subscribed various feeds. So, of course, I had to go find out how many people on Feedly were subscribed to mine.
That is actually a lot more than I would have guessed. So much more that I suspect that the number is wrong. I certainly would have put the number far lower. Not that the number is huge. Look what Massively has on Feedly.
Still, if it is correct, I guess I am not faring too badly. And I am doing a bit better than some on Feedly.
Ah well, I can make Mittens feel better about that one.
I bring this up not only because it is something to ponder… though that would be reason enough… but also because it pokes a big hole in WordPress.com’s stats page. Theoretically, WordPress.com tells me how many page views I get on the site and, if I go into detail on a single post, how many people saw it through syndication. Back in the days of Google Reader, the ratio of site to syndication views was at least 3 to 1 in favor of RSS feeds. Checking recent posts, that ratio has swung in favor of on-site views, with the ratio having move to something like 2 to 1 in that direction. And believe me, the numbers listed for syndicated views are nowhere close to the alleged number of followers that Feedly pegs me at. So something, somewhere is amiss. The usual state of affairs in the universe I suspect.
I am also curious about where those little hash tag entries come from for feeds and why I only get two.
One Year Ago
Firefly Universe Online. Was that a hoax or not? I still don’t know. And does the acronym FUO seem mildly obscene?
Wizardry Online joined the SOE stable while Pirates of the Burning Sea was sent packing. Who is laughing now?
We got our full group together in Rift and did our first instance of the year, dying at least 100 times combined. This lead to a side post about bosses and gimmicks and what makes a challenge.
In World of Tanks the instance group was scooting around. We even created our own little clan. Potshot and I were totally going French.
In EVE Online, after a sudden burst of war fever died down, there was a surprise battle where more than 2,500 ships clashed in Asakai when CFC FC Dabigredboat lead a supercap fleet in to rescue a stray titan. The battle was so big that CCP did a Dev Blog about it. Meanwhile, we were to be denied LEGO Rifters.
The DUST 514 open beta was officially open. I still haven’t bombed anything from orbit yet.
Path of Exile went into full open beta as well.
Krono made its way from EverQuest II to EverQuest while I was wondering what people were spending their Station Cash on.
I was musing about MUDs again, and vendors who wouldn’t simply buy any crap you had for sale and dead rats.
There was a list of 20 games that defined the Apple II.
And I wrote out my yearly list. This time it was goals, mostly because I was on vacation when I was supposed to be writing it.
Five Years Ago
Five years ago I was in a Middle-earth mood. I had rolled up some new characters on the same server as a few notable podcasters and then started trying to catch up to them. The small and friendly community in LOTRO helped out, so I was able to do the Great Barrow with a pickup group and not feel the need to drink heavily afterward. Of course, I sometimes feel the need to stir the pot. And then there was the whole icon thing.
I also mentioned something that involved punching Amy Tan that seemed to go down well. According to Google, this was the only site it tracks that has ever used the exact phrase “punch Amy Tan.” I think it is still pretty much a TAGN unique.
In WoW the instance group was working its way up to Ingvar the Plunderer. This was the height of our “we suck” phase. Meanwhile Blizz was busy patching in improvements.
While in EVE there was a bit of mission running plus I hit a monetary milestone and 30 million skill points.
I went looking for KartRider and found that after beta Nexon apparently folded up that tent and called it a day, at least here in the US.
I noticed that the optical drive on our Wii started making a lot of noise. It still makes noise five years later, but it also still works.
There was that whole controversy about Wikipedia deleting entries on MUDs and MUD history. That lead to the creation of MUD History Wiki over on Wikia. Many MUDs are still alive and well, and sites like the MUD Connector seem to still thrive.
I pointed to a post over at Massively that showed the top selling games for October of 2008 were almost all a couple years old or more.
I hit the 1,000 post mark, which was cause for yet another milestone post and some reflection. (I’m past the 3,000 mark a now and I’ll probably hold off on more reflection until the 5,000 mark, so you’re safe for a while.)
Oh, and I predicted a whole bunch of crap that mostly failed to materialize. But that didn’t stop me from trying again this year.
And, like everybody else, I had a laundry list for the new President. He totally failed on all fronts!
New Linking Blogs
The following blogs have linked this site in their blogroll, for which they have my thanks.
Please take a moment to visit them in return.
Most Viewed Posts in January
- Eastasia Routed at B-R5RB! 70+ Titans Down!
- Running Civilization II on Windows 7 64-bit
- A Horrible Community…
- Bloodbath at SOE – Four Titles Closing Down, PlanetSide Goes F2P
- SOE All Access Changes… yet again… And the Future
- Did Blizzard Just Hint at the Warlords of Draenor Ship Date?
- Blizzard Isn’t Giving You a Free Copy of Reaper of Souls
- My MMO Outlook for 2014
- In Which We Have Always Been At War With Eastasia
- Quote of the Day – WoW, Legacy Raids, and The Squish
- The Malthusian Trap of HED-GP
- Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen and the Realities of Kickstarter Funding
Search Terms of the Month
nation pokedex all 705 caught
[And I thought 485 was bad]
mountain dew code red with vanilla ice cream
[been there, done that]
why are bond villains so stupid
[Their motivations are mostly mundane]
many talk porno blog
[loves you long time]
EVE Online
After starting off the month bitching and moaning about being bored in null sec and mostly tending my training queue in a station in high sec, the war in the south heated up. There was the big battle at HED-GP, which I avoided but which was worth writing about, and then the titan slaying festival at B-R5RB that I managed to sneak into towards the end of the fight. Quite the time. And then CCP pushed Rubicon 1.1 the next day, the bugs in which pretty much grounded null sec. Ah well, such is the way of things in New Eden. CCP will get it fixed, and that big fight will keep me subscribed for another six months. And while the big battle has turned the tide of the war, it still isn’t over yet.
World of Warcraft
The binge in Azeroth continued through January. I made a sky golem. I got a second character to level 90. I managed to get to exalted with a couple more factions in Pandaria. I actually did a raid via the raid finder, which I would have posted about had I understood a bit of what happened. I think it just reinforced the reason I am in a group that does five person content and not a raiding guild. Still, fun continues to be had in WoW.
Coming Up
Well, there is a bunch of stuff coming up, though I am not sure how much of it I will write about.
I probably won’t say anything about the SuperBowl.
While the launch fervor is building, I remain lukewarm about The Elder Scrolls Online. The minor flare up about the pre-order and collector’s edition hasn’t helped that at all. And by that, I mean that it didn’t make me care any more or less about the game.
EverQuest Next Landmark Minecraft, the part of the EverQuest Next story I don’t really care about, will go/has gone/might be into alpha today. Smed has cautioned those who paid to be there to remember that this is alpha. To his credit, he did say that SOE would offer refunds to people who didn’t like it. SOE always wants to do the right thing, it just takes them a few tries to get there some days.
The Kickstarter campaign for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen will finish up before the end of next month. As of last night I would have guessed it wasn’t going to make it. It got a boost from the announcement that Vanguard was closing, and the Reddit AMA that Brad did helped things, but it didn’t look like either was going to be enough. And then there was the announcement that there would be a cross promotion with Lord British and Shroud of the Avatar. Support both and get something special. While I remain skeptical of the fickle nature of the fondness Lord British can show, this could help out a lot. Will that be enough? At this point there needs to be a really big finale for this campaign to fund.
While there is still a war on in EVE Online, the news seems to indicate that it might be winding down before too long. What will this mean to the three sided power structure in null sec?
Raptr sent me a summary of my year in gaming 2013 which actually surprised me. That’ll get a post.
Warlords of Draenor might go into beta… or might at least announce when beta will begin, which will likely start the 6 month count down to the go-live date. I still have to figure out which class to insta-level to 90. And then there will likely be more of the usual with the regular group in Azeroth.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 