31 | December | 2017 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

The Site

Welcome to the 350th and likely last post here for 2017. I mean, unless there is some dramatic news like Daybreak announcing EverQuest III, this is pretty much it for the year.

For this section I will drop in a bonus, end-of-year list just because I like lists. In this case, the list is of the five most popular posts from the site in 2017 with a little commentary as to why I think they topped the list.

1 – From Alola Pokedex to National Pokedex in Pokemon Sun

This is just a strange aspect of Pokemon Sun & Moon… and UltraSun & UltraMoon… in that, unlike past versions of the game, there is no National Pokedex to unlock. As the post notes, Nintendo wants you to track that through the Pokemon Bank app, which is good in that it keeps track across multiple games, but bad because you cannot actually access it to see what you’re missing without going into Pokemon Bank. Basically, people Google to try and find the National Pokedex and end up ere.

2 – April Fools at Blizzard 2017 – Not Much to Talk About

Google was kind to me for some reason this year. Unlike the other posts on the list, which were spread out over the course of the year, this one had 90% of its traffic over three days.

3 – Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!

This one pops up on Reddit every once in a while, but with the announcement of WoW Classic it suddenly started showing up a lot more frequently. Nostalgia for the win.

4 – Where the Hell is that EverQuest Successor Already?

I have no idea why this one gets the constant drip, drip, drip of traffic, other than the oft broached idea that there is a market out there for a successor to the now classic Diku MUD translation to a 3D world.

5 – At the Camp in 68FT-6

I think this one just gets people coming for the LOL picture.

Bubble arrangement for the win

Anyway, that is one more bit of 2017 blog trivia here on the last day of the year.

One Year Ago

As happens every December, I reviewed my predictions for the year, assessed the highs and lows, and made some attempt at a gaming outlook for 2017. For the last I was feeling somewhat adrift… which turned out to be right on the money for most of 2017!

At Daybreak we found out that Russel Shanks had been replaced as CEO. Still not sure what changed with that, if anything.

A little later former Daybreak CEO John Smedley announced the end of Hero’s Song and PixelMage Games.

Meanwhile Turbine was losing Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online to a spin-off called Standing Stone Games. Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2 were to be closed and Turbine was slated to become solely a maker of mobile games. Standing Stone Games also had some deal with Daybreak, they were even mentioned in the EULA, so maybe that was what changed.

In New Eden we had Blog Banter #78 which asked the pwipe question about EVE Online.

Then there was the rumor that CCP might be up for sale for ONE BILLION DOLLARS! I followed that up with my thoughts as to what would happen to EVE Online if certain companies bought CCP. EA, for example, would end up shutting down the game and closing the studio, if history is any guide.

I also listed out what I felt were the top five problems with EVE Online, then added a bonus item, because EVE is like that.

There was also the traditional Yoiul gifts, if the launcher would let you into the game and the last update for YC118, which included music.

Then there was null sec, where I was celebrating my fifth anniversary. Down in Delve we managed to lose 600 billion ISK on our own cyno beacon.

In space the war in Tribute was heating up. Asher led us up there to shoot targets of opportunity in M-OEE8 as Pandemic Legion and friends contested the timer on CO2’s Keepstar. That was also the second day that the PCU passed 50K since the Ascension expansion. I went back north on my own to be there for the death of that Keepstar. The heralded the exit of TEST and CO2 from the north.

That in turn led to the opening of a Winter war down south, a war that eventually fizzled when the participants decided nobody wanted to fight a Fozzie Sov war, so new boundaries were negotiated instead.

Reavers went out to help one side in a structure fight in Catch and went to join in on yet another Keepstar fight. That one survived but another one got popped.

I was mucking around a bit in EverQuest II, trying to find my way in new content.

In Minecraft my mansion road project required the application of TNT to blast a road through a jungle. Minecraft also had nice packages and Skronk made me a cobblestone generator for Christmas.

And no December would be complete without a Steam Winter Sale, and no such sale would be worth its name without issues!

I didn’t notice it at the time, but a German gaming site called Plarium put me on their list of the 8 best MMO blogs. Of course they also put Tobold, who doesn’t actually write about MMOs anymore and Tipa of West Karana, who hasn’t been updating for a while now, and themselves, which seems like a bit of ego, but still it was cool to find. Also, it was probably a year and a half ago, but I just found it recently so I’m going to pretend the date is in US format because then I can mention it here.

Finally I was going on about companies making MMOs… and the people playing them… feeling that every single title had to be all things to all people, leading to dissolute efforts and titles that do a lot of things but don’t really stand out in any particular aspect. Just because YOU like housing doesn’t mean every MMORPG absolutely HAS to have housing dammit. (Sorry Syp.)

Five Years Ago

I wrote a post looking at 50 years of James Bond. It included ranked lists for people to argue about.

There was my standard Highs & Lows post for the year gone by, and I reviewed my questions for 2012.

Turbine announced that they were bringing back Asheron’s Call 2. That ended up going mostly wrong in the end.

I was deep into my World of Tanks binge. I was up to the KV-2 on the Soviet heavy line, choosing that path after the three way split at the KV-1. (And the T-28.) I was also still working on the German tank destroyer line.

We were having a bit of fun in Need for Speed: World. I even made a holiday video.

In Rift we were having some trouble getting a full group together, so we were doing some lower level instances as a group of four. I was also struggling with the whole dimension thing.

Gaff and I took a quick peek into EverQuest II. Nostalgia didn’t last long. I also took a one-time shot at Wizardy Online. It just wasn’t a game for me, but not every game has to be.

I was looking back on a year in null sec in EVE Online. The Retribution expansion went live. Also I hit 90 million skill points.

I crammed together all the ads I could find from the EVE Online splash screen. The then new launcher killed off those ads… sort of. They’re just elsewhere now, but not so easy to screen shot.

Ten Years Ago

December 2007 seemed to be a busy time for the SOE. First there was the whole “moving a whole guild from test to a live server” brouhaha. Then there was the rumor of SOE being purchased by Zapak Digital Entertainment. And, finally, there was the deal with Live Gamer to take over transactions on the Station Exchange servers, at which time Smed himself said that this did not mean that they were going to open the flood gates of RMT on any of their servers not currently served by SOE’s own Station Exchange RMT plan. All of which I wrapped up in one post.

Another EverQuest Nostalgia Tour was off to the usual activities, including grousing about keyboard settings.

I put up my predictions for the “Next EverQuest II Expansion,” the whole “predicting Kunark” thing from the year before having gone to my head. I was also looking at crafting after the Rise of Kunark expansion shipped. I hit level 61 and then 62, but I wouldn’t get much further for a long time. And I was looking at shrunken owlbears and trolling in Darklight Woods.

The Saturday Night Instance Group was in World of Warcraft and finishing up Blackrock Depths. This was back in the days where you didn’t just run an instance in 15 minutes with some strangers then queue up again in dungeon Finder for the next one. Our first run got us through the detention block, our second run got us to Lord Incendius, and our third run finally finished off the instance and got us on our way to Marshall Windsor and Lady Prestor. That was basically four Saturday nights dealing with one instance. Good times.

I was also happy about a feature of the WoW Armory.

Dr. Richard Bartle brought up the “why so much fantasy” question for its regular beating to death.

I was interviewed over at World IV. That was back when I was somebody I guess. At least somebody worth interviewing.

I was annoyed at Lord of the Rings Online, which was updating a lot of files and killing my video card, but still wasn’t giving me a horse.

I lost my first battlecruiser to pirates in EVE Online. Meanwhile, after pissing away a lot of ISK on invention, I was not getting a lot of results.

We also got the Trinity expansion, which had some issue… like deleting the boot.ini file on people’s drives. #NeverForget

CCP was also telling people to get out of Jita, it already having grown to be the trade hub of New Eden. A couple of jumps over in Hageken somebody built one of the first space designs I had seen.

I bought a new gaming computer full of Quad Core goodness.

X-Fire was still a thing and putting out stats about what their users were playing, including MMOs. EVE Online figured on the list, as it did on the F13.net poll about MMOs.

There was a Duke Nukem Forever trailer, just six years after the last one. The game still wouldn’t come out until 2011 and remains the yardstick for delay to which even Chris Roberts may still aspire.

And the best selling PC games of 2007 were:

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
The Sims 2: Seasons
Command & Conquer 3
The Sims 2: Bon Voyage
Supreme Commander
Lord of the Rings Online: The Shadows of Angmar
The Orange Box
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
BioShock
The Sims 2: H&M Fashion Stuff

Twenty Years Ago

Quake II launched, which I recall being mildly controversial and leading to a Quake vs. Quake II division in the community.

The Pokemon anime episode Cyber Soldier Porygon aired, causing hundreds of kids to have seizures due to the rapidly flashing animation.

Also my wife let her recently laid off boyfriend… me… move in with her for reasons I still don’t quite understand. Any objective outside observer who had ever seen my apartment would have called it a bad idea I am sure. Also, I had a cat. An unemployed man with a cat. What was she thinking?

Forty Years Ago

The Atari 2600 was on store shelves everywhere and I got one for Christmas.

Most Viewed Posts in December

Search Terms of the Month

best heroic character everquest
[Aradune?]

eve online grinding sucks
[It you think you’re grinding, it probably sucks in any game]

rift cancel subscription
[I did that quite a while back]

does tetris speed up
[You have never played Tetris I would guess]

plex online
[That’s what some people call it]

daybreak legends what the hell is ap
[No idea man]

EVE Online

I was in for our northern deployment and managed to get on some fun ops. We blew up some stuff… and got blown up ourselves. Still, I have four kill marks on surviving ships from these ops and only lost three ships, so that means I win right?

On the Yoiul end of things I remained surprised that CCP was intent on making us work for our presents. I suspected they would relent and give us something for logging in on the 25th, but no such luck.

Pokemon Go

This month saw the release of the third generation Pokemon into the wild after getting a tease at Halloween. That meant new Pokemon to catch and evolve. Also, for the first time ever, I saw a Lapras out in the wild… and then used the wrong berry on it and it fled after I threw the first Pokeball. So I still do not have a Lapras. But with the new generation there have been plenty of other Pokemon to catch. The stats this month:

Level: 30 (+0)
Pokedex status: 239 (+29) caught, 274 (+37) seen
Pokemon I want: Slowbro
Current buddy: Slowpoke to earn candies to evolve him… true to his name, this is going slow

Steam

There was a sale. I haven’t purchased anything… yet. There is still time though.

World of Warcraft

I unlocked flying and started working on some alts and have been doing a lot of pet battles and collecting and such. I even managed to get that fox kit in Northrend that only spawns when it is snowing.

Coming Up

A Brand new year. Some crazy ass predictions are already queued up for tomorrow’s post. Stay tuned to see what I think 2018 might bring. And I did an MMO Outlook post as well. Then we’ll get back to the usual routine.

In EVE Online CCP seems intent on killing off the current, reliable Agent Finder feature in favor of something that mostly works in The Agency window. People have voiced concern in response to this, but CCP has not acknowledged any of it. Press on regardless… who needs to find more than a dozen agents anyway?

Actually playing the game I suspect our northern deployment will carry on. The locals are getting serious about us having dropped a Fortizar on grid with our staging station in NPC null.

In WoW the pet battle crusade will continue. I think I have managed to scoop up just about all of the caught or easily obtained battle pets. It is probably time to turn to the “raiding with leashes” achievements to get some more of the raid pet drops. I’ll need to clear out my bags for that.

The Steam Winter Sale will wrap up soon. As of this moment I have not purchased a single title, but I still have time.

Otherwise it looks to be more of the same, with Kickstarter projects delaying or failing to deliver, early access cash grabs falling apart, loot boxes for everything, and nothing new or exciting under the sun.