April 2015 in Review

The Site

I have nothing new to gripe about when it comes to WordPress.com, so I will just repeat that I really, really hate the new post editor and it is going to be very painful to transition once they drop support for the “classic” version.  I hope they at least fix the bit that crashes my browser when I try to use it.

So, with that out of the way, I want to ask a philosophical question about post categories.  As you can see on the side bar over on the right, there is a drop down that lists out the larger categories that I write about here.  Those are general areas, usual a game or a company or a specific group, while I use tags for specific items, like a dungeon or expansion associated with a specific game.

My question is, what should I do about SOE and Daybreak?

Daybreak… wait, no!

I have a category for Sony Online Entertainment, which I use for topics that involve the company itself rather than just a specific game.  When they were bought out by Columbus Nova Prospekt and changed their name to Daybreak Game Company, I made a new category for that.

Here’s the right one…

But now I wonder if that was the right move?  Should I have kept continuity, and the load of history with the SOE category, and just changed it to Daybreak?  Or should I have just kept on with SOE, because a Limburger cheese by any other name smells the same?  Or do I stick with two, and use them both when referring to something that applies to both or refers to the history that comes with SOE, eventually using only Daybreak as the company starts using its new logo and domain name to form its own identity?

Angry CONCORD guy comes to life!

When is it no longer relevant to refer to SOE and the history that brings?

Or am I, as usual, over thinking this?  (Hat tip to Feldon for spotting the logo thing.)

One Year Ago

Spacewar! for the PDP-1 was up via emulation on the internet archive.

The Elder Scrolls Online launched, hitting its planned April 4th date.  I did not play.

I was diving in to Pokemon X & Y, having returned to Pokemon at last.

The strategy group played a game of Civilization V that ended with a win via nuclear terror.

The Kickstarter campaign for the book A History of the Great Empires of EVE Online kicked off.  But Pantheon: Rise of the Something was spluttering along after failing its Kickstarter campaign.

In EVE Online proper there was Burn Jita 3, which seemed like less of a thing the third time out.  There was a video.  Then there was the CSM9 vote.  At least there were only 36 candidates on the ballot.

In null sec we were shooting Black Legion things, because that is what we do in the CFC.  I was just happy to be using lasers.  those skills having been trained up amongst my 120 million skill points.  There were also some posts about being space famous and an attempt at in-game blackmail.

But on the broader CCP front, World of Darkness was officially cancelled.

On the iPad I was playing Hearthstone and QuizUp… for about a week.

Turbine announced that Beornings were coming to Lord of the Rings Online.

SOE gave me a key for seven days of Landmark, so I went and tried it out.  SOE also announced H1Z1 and began their current love affair with Reddit and got their new All Access plan running.  While on the old school front, Dave Georgeson said SOE never plans to shut down EverQuest.

Warlords of Draenor was still a long ways away.  But Blizzard was doing well on other fronts.  The instance group finished up Zul’gurub.  And there was the usual April Fools stuff.

Five Years Ago

Video games as art?  Did we flay Roger Ebert enough over that?

Turbine was purchased by Warner Brothers Home Entertainment.  No word on a Harry Potter MMO as yet, though we did get LEGO Harry Potter.

Crimson Leaf Games brought out their rework of Megawars III / Stellar Emperor.  1986 style online game play at a much cheaper price.

SOE announced a new subscription plan for EQII, the EQII Passport.  Framed by at least one person as “1/3 the price for 1/10 the access” it surely must have been the right plan for somebody.

And speaking of paying for games, I wondered where Facebook credits were headed.  They seemed like a bad deal for games relative to paying companies like Zynga directly.  Despite speculation that they would be the ONLY currency allowed on Facebook, that has still not to come to pass.

And while talking about Facebook games, I couldn’t bring myself to play Mafia Wars, so I secured a deposition about the game from a friend.

In EVE Online somebody was trying to blackmail Gaff’s corp.  This was an out of game threat though.

Blizzard introduced the Celestial Steed (aka the sparkle pony or the greed steed) to the Blizzard Store.  Blog reactions were mixed, but the queue to buy the mount on day one got 140,000 transactions deep.  That is a lot of horsies, which meant they were everywhere in the game pretty soon.  The Lil’ XT companion pet that was introduced at the same time also made its own mark on the world… until Blizzard toned it down.

The instance group was in WoW still, playing horde characters on the Lightninghoof RP-PvP server.  We we working on Dire Maul, attempting a successful tribute run after having run around Blackrock Depths.

Since the instance group was getting close to finishing up the classic WoW dungeon and wondering if we should press through the Burning Crusade content (as short as it passes), we started exploring other games as possible alternatives.  This lead us to try out Runes of Magic for a bit.

There was April Fool’s.  I had a contest while Blizzard went over the top, as usual.

And, finally, the cruelest 2010 April Fool’s tease, the iPad arcade stand.  On the bright side, while it started as a tease, it ended up becoming a real thing.

New Linking Sites

The following blogs have linked this site in their blogrolls, for which they have my thanks.

• StarShadow
• Tastes Like Battle Chicken

Please take a moment to visit them in return.

Most Viewed Posts in April

1. April Fools at Blizzard – 2015
2. Reavers Represent
3. Progression Server Progress in EverQuest
4. CCP Copies Blizzard’s WoW Token Idea
5. Considering Star Wars Galaxies Emulation? Better Grab a Disk!
6. The Mighty Insta-90 Question – Which Class to Boost?
7. Complaining About Small Things in WoW… Yet Again
8. Running Civilization II on Windows 7 64-bit
9. Daybreak and Forums and Reddit
10. LOTRO – The War of the Ring as an Eight Year Long Quagmire
11. The Fall of ZXB-VC and the End of Dominion
12. Hail The Imperium! Amarr Victor!

Search Terms of the Month

lotro all that is beoring
[Yeah, beoring… that was what you meant]

overpowered by my wife likelike
[I bet you likelike!]

best way to powerlevel in everquest
[Buy a level 85 character]

merry karanas png porn
[Things in the Karanas have never been that merry]

eve do cnr need tp
[I even keep an extra roll on hand]

soe taking over?
[SOE is dead, man]

EVE Online

The annual purging of Delve seems to be about complete, our foes have fled before us, and what remains of N3 is a wreck.  Even the Reavers have been taking sovereignty from them, while the local renters have started paying us tribute to leave them alone, that “shame renters into defending the space they pay for” plan having not worked out.  The CFC changed its name to The Imperium and has pretty much “won” the Dominion sovereignty version of the game.  Not bad for April.

World of Warcraft

Sometimes I think I play a different version of this game than some other bloggers.  Or maybe I just don’t play as much or I have too many alts or too many garrisons or whatever.  But I keep logging on and seeing how much I have left to do/see/explore and then I compare this to people who are “done” with the expansion and already complaining about needing new content.  Maybe I am slowing down in my old age.

Coming Up

It looks like we might be set for another round of the New Blogger Initiative.  It is set to start… soon.

In WoW the instance group is on the road to 100.  I’ve been letting down the team by not showing up lately, but at least we’re in the gap between new dungeon content.  Still, it would be nice to get there before the inevitable summer hiatus kicks in and the group is pretty much done until autumn.  So I expect May will focus on that.

There will be things to do in EVE Online… I have a lot of crap to move out of Fountain to start with… but otherwise my space tribe is sort of in a holding pattern until June and the Fozzie-Sov comedy/chaos event.  Also, if I am using the term “space tribe,” which comes straight from the mouth of The Mittani, I have clearly been assimilated.  All hail The Imperium!

The Imperium: Join us. Achieve everything. http://t.co/HbJrn7NFdE #tweetfleet #eveonline #imperium

— ~GOON-EMPEROR OF DELVE~ (@TheMittani) April 29, 2015

I will play a new game in May… because I really only played WoW and EVE in April… and likely write about it as well.  If you’re friends with me on Steam, you might have seen it added to my list and have been asking yourself, “WTF?”  There is a comedic opportunity reason behind this.  We’ll see how this plays out.

And, finally, I am going to start working on getting official Daybreak endorsement for my FreeRealms emulation project, because they seem to be into that sort of thing at the moment.