October 2017 in Review

The Site

Odd that this, a month in review post, is also my yearly Halloween post.  That is kind of anti-climactic… unless you really like these posts I guess.

Meanwhile, the only amusing site-related bit for the month was this message I got over on Facebook.

My flaming fart joke falls afoul of Facebook

Yes, you can follow the blog on Facebook by friending Wilhelm Arcturus there.  Friend him, he’ll accept.  It is just blog posts from here, EVE Online Pictures, and updates from Good Reads, if you’re interesting in what I am reading.  I don’t play crappy Facebook games any more because, so far as I can tall, all Facebook games are crappy.  Thanks Zynga!

Anyway, Facebook seemed to think that the lighting of farts was an indicator of spam.  Or such is my guess.

Given all the absolute garbage that gets “suggested” to me by Facebook, not to mention all of the alleged Russian sponsored political ads that Facebook is trying to pretend didn’t happen, flagging my post as spam seems almost comical.  That’s some top notch work there Facebook.  I bet it wouldn’t be spam if I paid you some money.  Glad you’re on the job.

I filled out the form declaring that my post was not spam.  Well, it isn’t spam any more than anything I post here is spam, but spam is in the eye of the beholder I suppose.  I haven’t been back to check to see if they agreed.  That account is a bit on auto-pilot.

Happy Halloween all the same!  Go “like” this post on Facebook or something!

One Year Ago

Amazon’s game studio announced some games including the alleged MMO New World.  Being given almost no information about New World did not stop some people from banging the hype drum, boosting expectations, and generally setting themselves up for disappointment.

Also announced was the Nintendo Switch, which would allow millenials to play video games at roof-top parties if the trailer was to be take literally.

Civilization VI launched and became the first Civ title I did not acquire at the soonest opportunity.  It just didn’t excite me.  Instead I was getting my strategy game fix with Stellaris.

I reviewed the Mineserver Kickstarter campaign a year later.  The units were nine months late with no end to the wait in sight.

I made it to level 20 in Pokemon Go.  There was also a Halloween event.

Tom Chilton of unfortunate quote fame let out another one when he said that World of Warcraft had over 10 million subscribers again after the Legion expansion launch.  Blizzard, having taken a vow of silence on subscription numbers the year before, denied everything and claimed he was mis-quoted.

Over at Daybreak they were discontinuing game cards and taking H1Z1: King of the Kill off of Station Cash as an RMT currency.  They did give us firm dates for the two Kurnak based expansions for EverQuest and EverQuest II.

In EVE Online, while we were fortifying Delve our foes in the Casino War began to turn on each other, with Pandemic Legion and their followers declaring their intention to take Tribute and Vale of the Silent away from Circle of Two and TEST.  All I could do was give a Nelson Muntz, “Haw-haw!” at that turn of events.

Still, that wasn’t half as much fun as CCP declaring casinos against the EULA with the coming of the Ascension expansion.  Our foes would have to actually earn ISK in-game.  I wondered what that would do to the economy.

We also got the YC118.9 update which, among other things, meant the death of the in-game browser.  We did get breast cancer awareness skins.  Yay, pink skins!

At our end of New Eden there was a lot to do.  I was fighting the Blood Raider menace with my Ishtar and looking for ways to help the coalition.  Reavers turned two years old and were blowing up citadels and fighting over timers in Querious.  The coalition itself was ranging up into Fountain with a new doctrine.

And in World of Warcraft the Legion got its first post-launch content drop while my own enthusiasm for the expansion was starting to wane.

Finally, I was at EVE Vegas, but since it lasted through Halloween I didn’t post about it until November.  Also, a new version of my blogger feed was operating in the side bar.

Five Years Ago

The San Francisco Giants won the World Series.  That made the second time in my life, which was one more than I had any reason to hope for.

Disney bought out Lucasfilm, claiming ownership of Star Wars.  Panic ensued.

Zynga was well into its troubles, leaving me to wonder how Lord British viewed his partnership with the imploding company.  Certainly the Zynga business plan seemed… childish?

I had a sudden crescendo of activity around World of Warcraft, culminating in Blizzard finally letting me cancel my subscription.  There was the Panda launch and people declaring success or failure.

Instead I was off in the Emerald Dream pirate server attempting to relive what WoW was like back in 2006.  In involved a shovel.  Vanilla WoW nostalgia drove a sudden surge of traffic to the blog.

The first Project: Gorgon kickstarter kicked off.

I was invited on a pre-release tour of the Storm Legion expansion in Rift.  Then there was the big update to the soul system, some adventures in Lantern Hook, and the Autumn Harvest Festival.

In World of Tanks the word of the day was Sturmgeschütz.

Storm Eagle Studios was again worried about my marriage.

There was some trolling about free to play.

Lord of the Rings Online launched the Rider of Rohan expansion.  I eventually picked it up for Turbine Points… or LOTRO Points… or whatever.  I haven’t actually played through it yet.

In EVE Online we got the Retribution expansion that updated all that crime watch stuff.  At least visible timers ended up being cool.

EVE-Kill was looking for donations to keep everybody’s then-favorite kill board up and running.  It has since died, so I guess that didn’t work out in the long run.  Also in that post, there was a new EVE site up called The Mittani dot com (worst name ever), something about sound in EVE Online (who knew?), and the dawn of miner bumping.  This is why I hate those bullet point posts one, five, and ten years later.

I was off on a CSAA killing mission that got me accused of cognitive dissonance.  I was feeling warm and cozy in null sec.  We were also pursuing our foes in Tribute and the Vale of the Silent.

I was wondering how EA Louse’s comments about Star Wars: The Old Republic were holding up two years after he made them.

I was complaining about games (or, in my 30+ year old example, a game master) that try to impose their story on your character.   I don’t mind being a part of the overall story, but my characters have their own stories and motivations and I do not like it when games put their own words in my character’s mouth.

And, finally, there was the case for seat belts.

Ten Years Ago

For about 20 minutes the blog had a different theme.

In EVE Online I finally finished my training and was actually flying a Hulk!  Being mining focused, I went out and calculated which asteroids were the most profitable to mine.  Veldspar rated surprisingly high.  I was also calculating the cost of producing light missiles, probably the only time I really used a spreadsheet for EVE Online.  “Spreadsheets in Space” is a lie.

I also figured out that with 120 billion ISK and a year of training, I could fly a Titan, but I couldn’t fire the main weapon system.

Blizzard made its first big cut in the amount of experience needed to get to level 60 in World of Warcraft.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

There was SOE’s Station Access Savings Calculator.

EA announced it was buying BioWare for $860 million.  It seemed like MMOs might be in EA’s future again, as BioWare was already known to be at work on one.  Meanwhile, I was trying to work up a set of criteria on evaluating whether an MMO would be a success or not.

I was going on about THE REAL PROBLEM with voice chat in video games.

Mario Kart Double Dash was our Wii game of the moment.  My daughter was also playing Webkinz, though some of her friend’s got their mothers to play for them.

I found one of the rare Golden C-3P0 mini figures in a LEGO package.  I was also looking at the stack of old Dungeons & Dragons books at the used book store up the street from work. (Both my work and the book store are long since gone.)

The instance group finished up Zul’Farrk and went after one wing, then the other, in Maraudon.  We were closing in on level 50 across the group.  I also got a horde character to level 40… I think he is still level 40 today. I was also excited to get a 16 slot bag drop!  Also, being able to craft from items in the bank, as we now can, would have helped me a lot.  Meanwhile I finally read some quest text closely.

Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising was put on indefinite hold, which lead to a headline contest.

In the post-launch downturn for Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine was out polling players about what they wanted… and what they would pay for.

As usual, with the coming of autumn, the rains, and a new expansion I again became nostalgic for EverQuest.  I was also playing around with some ideas for Secrets of Faydwer packaging.

Also, Team Fortress 2 launched.

Twenty Years Ago

Age of Empires and the first Grand Theft Auto launched.

Most Viewed Posts in October

1. From Alola Pokedex to National Pokedex in Pokemon Sun
2. Where the Hell is that EverQuest Successor Already?
3. Lost in Legion
4. Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
5. Home From EVE Vegas 2017
6. RimWorld Ate My Gaming Time
7. The Demise of BattleClinic
8. VR Development Dead and Layoffs at CCP
9. Daybreak 30 Months In
10. Lifeblood comes to EVE Online
11. Three Years of Reavers
12. Attribute Remap in New Eden

Mildly amusing that the end of month post Lost in Legion made it up to third place on the list so quickly.  Writing about WoW attracts views.  Also amusing is how the top two posts on the list have persisted for so long.  There is a reason for the first, there being NO national Pokedex in Pokemon Sun & Moon, however the second seems… odd.  Are people really looking for an EverQuest successor?  They keep coming here in search of that.  I’m not sure my post is much help in that regard.

Search Terms of the Month

eve jaspet mining strategies
[Go find some in your Venture and mine it. Warp off if somebody shows up.]

eve online change name
[As bad as the name is, I don’t think they’re going to change it]

new everquest game
[Maybe, some day… probably not an MMO though]

any games succeeded everquest
[Technically EverQuest II I suppose]

level 20-25 planarite bow rift
[The way you level up, you won’t use it for long I bet]

“october 15 2017” torilmud
[An oddly specific date]

blizzcon predictions 2017
[I sort of did that yesterday]

why make flying in draenor so difficult
[Wait until you get to Legion buddy]

EVE Online

There was EVE Vegas.  We also got a big update with the Lifeblood expansion last week.  The repercussions of that will likely take a while to settle down.  But actually, in-game, I did not do a lot in New Eden.  I went on one actual strategic op, got two PAP links, and that was about it.  Oh, and I remapped my attributes.  I’m barely down from that high.  Woo.  Perhaps The Agency revamp and the Crimson Harvest event will give me something to do.

RimWorld

Holy moly, this is probably why I wasn’t playing EVE Online… or anything else… for at least half the month.  Steam says I put in a lot of hours playing RimWorld… which isn’t a game you play so much as tinker with and adjust and watch until you realize it is way past when you planned to go to bed.  I eventually hit a threshold with it, but for a while that was pretty much all that was running on my computer.

Grim Dawn

This was on a Steam sale when the game launched an expansion.  It had long been on my wish list, so I decided to grab it.  I haven’t spent too much time with it, but it really seems to be the ideal Diablo clone; same enough that you get it right away, but different enough to not feel like a straight up copy.  Unfortunately the timing was bad and I started off in WoW and have slacked off.  I’ll have to return to it and write something about it, but SynCaine was effusive about it back in March and so far I agree.  Tops Diablo III, Path of Exile, Torchlight II, and the Titan Quest remaster in my early, and perhaps premature, opinion.

Pokemon Go

I hit level 30, a milestone indeed, though the path from there to level 40 is much longer than the path I have already trod.  Then there was the Halloween event which offered double candy, something that helped my finally evolve a Magikarp into a Gyrados.  It takes 400 candies to get there and Magikarp are rare in my neck of the woods.  My next goal is to get a Blissey because I want to be that level 30 jerk with one in a gym that can’t be taken down by people level 25 or under.

• Level: 30 (+1)
• Pokedex status: 204 (+15) caught, 236 (+14) seen
• Pokemon I want: Blissey
• Current buddy: Chansey, because I only need 10 more candies to evolve it to Blissey

Pokemon Silver

I started off playing for a bit, but let that fall to the wayside with the coming of RimWorld.  I haven’t even gotten to the first gym yet.   Still, it is playable and clearly a solid entry that helped cement the Pokemon saga as a staple of Nintendo’s handheld titles.  I own a 3DS XL to play Pokemon.

World of Warcraft

I resubscribed.  I want to fly in Legion.  I am still figuring out where I left off a year ago.  But I will say returning to WoW and all of its polished smoothness is still a good feeling even when I’m mildly frustrated about what the hell I should be doing.  I seem to be on course now, immersed in a task, though the mount of the Headless Horseman still eludes me.

Coming Up

Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. 

So we have that to look forward to.   Seems apropos this year. 

But by the time that rolls around BlizzCon 2017 will have come and gone and we’ll be more the wiser… or not.  Despite my prediction back in January, it seems likely we’ll all be talking about a new expansion for WoW rather than Guy Fawkes.  I waxed a bit about that in yesterday’s post.

I expect we’ll have a broader look at the upcoming expansions for EverQuest and EverQuest II, the latter being set to arrive during the last week of the month.

Given the big expansion in EVE Online I’m not sure we’re slated to get a November update.  They may just be pushing bug fixes through until December when they have a few more items in store.  And the disruption that layoffs and re-orgs cause lends more weight to “not much going on in November” idea.

Nintendo will be launching Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon in the latter half of the month.  I should get that pre-ordered to get my discount on Amazon and make sure my old 3DS XL is charged up.

And then there is the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, the gateway to winter, Christmas, New Years, and a bunch of predictable annual posts.  We’ll get there soon enough.