28 | February | 2018 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

The Site

I do not have much to complain about when it comes to WP.com this month. Okay, I hate the new comment editor, the way I hate all the new tools they shove at us claiming they are “better” when they are verifiably not, but at least there still a way to use the old one to correct my typos and insert links after the fact because I am too lazy for format HTML on the fly.

Instead I will just take a few lines to bring up followers. I hit a milestone a while back.

2018 and “1337” is still a funny joke… also, what was I doing up taking that screen shot?

The site continues to get followers. The count, as of this writing, is 1386. Followers are a strange metric. Some of them are clearly in the “if I follow everybody then maybe somebody will follow me back and actually look at my horrible click-bait advertising blog” category. But not all of them.

As far as I can tell the only use for following another blog is that you then see the blog in the WordPress.com reader which, I will admit, has improved over the years. I am not going to dump Feedly for it any time soon, but it has its uses and I want to do a post about it and some of its features at a later date. But for now, followers continue on.

One Year Ago

Daybreak shut down Landmark less than a year after it officially went “live.” That’s what extended early access will do to you.

In EVE Online applications to run for CSM12 opened up. The CSM itself was reduced from 12 members to just 10. That allowed CCP to potentially fly all members to summits, but also reduced the likelihood of more voices outside of null sec being elected.

Blog Banter #79 explored the benefits and pitfalls of being a long time veteran of New Eden, while CCP posted a nice graph tracking the 25 largest corporations over time. The graph only had starting numbers, so I provided the ending numbers.

We also got an update that introduced insurance to citadels and kicked off the Guardian’s Gala event.

Actually in game I was blown up by battle Rorquals as well as spending time moving my stuff to a new home system, sitting on a titan, sitting on a Keepstar, survived my first capital op, and dipped my toe into the spectacle that was Burn Jita 2017. I also had a new favorite EVE Online screen shot.

I wasn’t playing World of Warcraft, but that didn’t stop me from trying to find information about it in Activision Blizzard’s annual financial report. Good luck there. I didn’t even bother this year. Meanwhile, in an unexplained turn, SuperData Research divided WoW into East and West on its monthly Top Ten chart. I still suspect that was an attempt to make Overwatch look better.

Not only was I not playing WoW, I wasn’t playing any fantasy MMORPGs. Standing Stone was trying to get me to log into Lord of the Rings Online with the promise of a new mount.

I was confronted by a metaphor for a MMO Kickstarter projects when somebody decided they wanted to make an Apocalypse Now based MMO.

I was still working on the mansion road in Minecraft. I hit a setback along the way… fell into lava surrounded by creepers… but still made it past the half way point.

And finally, after taking a bit of a break, I was back into Pokemon Sun, working my way towards filling the Alola Pokedex.

Five Years Ago

Raptr sent me a summary of my 2012 gaming.

Google changed how image search worked, causing a precipitous drop in page views. Google giveth, and Google taketh away… though they have been heavy on the taketh front for the last couple of years.

I wrote of the problem with Bond villains. And it wasn’t that they failed to drive Jags. I also looked at the Netflix remake of House of Cards.

RuneScape joined the rare breed of MMOs with an old rules, nostalgia focused server.

I tinkered with Prose with Bros on the iPad. That was amusing for about two weeks.

In something of a breath of fresh air in an argument dedicated to absolutes and bad analogies, with some game devs equating buying used games with piracy, EA admitted that the used game market wasn’t all bad and that the ability to trade in games might be propping up new game sales. They still wanted to kill used games like everybody else in the industry, but at least they were attempting a moment of honesty about it.

The MOBA version of Warhammer Online was declared dead before it even left beta. The good metacritic score for Warhammer Online remained of little value.

A group got together to create an Age of Empires II: Age of Kings expansion called Forgotten Empires. This was before it was announced that Age of Kings would be updated and brought to Steam.

Blizzard and ArenaNet were both offering deep discounts on their MMOs. I opted for Guild Wars 2, which had an awkward start for me.

The instance group was still without a quorum and a fantasy title to call its own. We were playing a bit of World of Tanks, which gets awkward with four. I also made some short videos about Crushing your VK and a cliff diving BDR GB1. And I was working on my Soviet heavies as well as the French heavy tree.

In EVE Online we went back to EWN-2U, the scene of my first real epic null sec battle. But null sec was pretty quiet, so we also spent time just flying in circles. The Goons did produce a nice guide to EVE Online in the form of a .pdf called Thrilling Internet Spaceship Stories.

I was considering the REAL problem with levels and was wondering why nobody else did in-game music the way Lord of the Rings Online did.

And I answered the magic question, just how many times do you have to sign or initial things when closing escrow on a home refinance?

Ten Years Ago

The month started out with our Pirates of the Burning Sea enthusiasm waning.

The instance group was kicking off its Outlands efforts, after running the required equipment upgrade quests, with Hellfire Ramparts, though first we ran through lower Blackrock Spire and got access to Upper Blackrock Spire.

In EVE Online I lost my Drake to pirates in Rancer. I wasn’t going to pay any ransom. And I managed to make a tech II blueprint as I was getting invention going. I was also wishing for a few things from the game.

Turbine announced that Lord of the Rings Online had extended its agreement with Tolkien Enterprises out until 2014, with an option to go to 2017. As a lifetime member I applauded this extension.

I went to GDC up in San Francisco and had dinner some members of the VirginWorlds Podcast Collective plus Alan “Brenlo” Crosby, and got pictures to prove it. (I had a beard then… and I have a beard now… this is becoming a winter routine for me.)

My daughter got a Nintendo DS for Valentine’s Day.

We played a little KartRider, which is still never made it to North America.

I defended myself against some slander about me being a dwarf.

I summed up the annual EverQuest Nostalgia Tour.

I decided that there was hope for a real science fiction MMORPG.

And I found out my blog was worth $61,534.86,though I couldn’t figure out how to cash in. Since then, the value of the site has gone down. I blame the economy.

Twenty Years Ago

We’re in a dead zone in my personal history where nothing really stands out from 20 years ago. It was probably RTS stuff, StarCraft and Total Annihilation and lots of Civilization II. I recall having setup a series of custom empires. And, of course, there was TorilMUD. But we’re slowly moving into to a time of new titles.

Most Viewed Posts in February

Search Terms of the Month

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[Not by any measure I can imagine]

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[See where sexy gets you]

EVE Online

I played the game, went on a few fleets, blew some things up, but nothing was exciting enough to get me to write a post. Just the usual friction in null sec. I got on the killboard for the month and got in my required PAP links. I did do some of the Guardian’s Gala event, picked up a few SKINs I didn’t have along with a few cerebral accelerators and a ton of fireworks. But if I had just ratted for the same amount of time I spent doing that I could have bought all of it off the market and had ISK left over. Aryth asked CCP about the payout for effort I and they said they meant to do that. So there you go. Otherwise most of my posting about the game was about changes, both those that showed up this month and the ones planned for next month.

Minecraft

I wandered back into Minecraft for a bit to work on the long overland mine cart track to the forest mansion I found. I finished the road ages ago, but then started working on laying tracks the whole length. I got bored with that, but came back to it over the last couple of weeks mostly because Minecraft is a good game to play when you want to just work away at something while listening to an audiobook or podcast. Not a huge endorsement I suppose, but it fit into a niche I needed filled.

Pokemon Go

More Hoenn Pokemon were released into the wild, so we all had new things to catch and evolve. There was also an event this past Saturday where for a short window you could catch the elusive Dratini. I totally missed that. But I would have needed to catch 33 of them in order to get the final evolution, a Dragonite. Ah well.

Level: 31 (+0)
Pokedex status: 284 (+22) caught, 323 (+22) seen
Pokemon I want: Lapras, but it is unlikely I’ll see one again any time soon
Current buddy: Doduo, just needs four candies to evolve

World of Warcraft

I have managed to unlock all the world quest options and follower missions for Argus. I also have both factions there into revered and am on the way to exalted, which will unlock the two remaining allied races for me.

Other Games

Played some more Stellaris, then picked up the expansion, but haven’t played enough since then to have a good feel for how things changed. I also played a few rounds of Age of Empires II just because.

Coming Up

March looks like it will be a double retro MMO month with Trion launching its Rift Prime server and Daybreak launching yet another EverQuest progression server. I am still on the fence a bit about Rift. I suspect that, as with so many things, my memories of playing the game in the past will not line up with the reality of playing it again today.

In WoW… well… I’ll carry on until I am exalted all around in Legion. But what happens after that is up in the air.

On the Minecraft front the rail line I have been working on is close enough to being done that I’m probably just going to put on an audiobook and finish that up.

In EVE Online we’re getting a bunch of stuff with the March update, the CSM election process promises to kick off, plus, and you might be hearing it here first, but Burn Jita is returning soon. Be wary.

And on the blog… we’re having some work done on our house which might get in the way of gaming or writing, so there might be more gaps that usual when it comes to posting if I find there is a couch and a desk stored in front of my computer.

Daybreak’s one-time H1Z1, then H1Z1: King of the Kill, then just King of the Kill, and finally just H1Z1 again, is reported to be leaving Early Access today. There is a Producer’s Letter on the official site full of enthusiasm for this monumental day.

H1Z1 2015 Logo

At least they are trying to own the whole naming thing.

You missed one I think…

Starting as the Battle Royale mode of their zombie survival game first announced almost four years ago was a surprise success, selling in the seven figures and dominating the Steam charts. Rightly wanting to reinforce success, the rest of the game was partitioned off as the aptly named Just Survive while the company focused on the bit that was getting attention.

I don’t think we’re here anymore…

Of course, what it also did was spawn imitators. We hear all about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds these days, a title that leapfrogged H1Z1’s success in a way reminiscent of what WoW did to EverQuest, and which spawned its own imitator and competitor, Fortnite and its Battle Royale module.

Meanwhile H1Z1 has slid down the charts, having lost a reported 91% of its player base. Once things looked rosy and there was a deal with Tencent to bring the game to China. Now I wonder if that is in jeopardy.

So it seems like exactly the right moment to leave Early Access I guess. Not that leaving Early Access means anything at all these days. The game was supposed to leave Early Access last year, but then didn’t. Now it has and it doesn’t mean much of anything. There is no launch day bump when you’ve been acting like a shipping product for a couple of years already.

They do have some new features that come with launch, the main one being a car based Battle Royale mode.

Zombies in cars getting coffee

Of course, in what I can only see as an ironic twist, they announced a beta feature on launch day. We will see if the updates that Daybreak are bringing to the game with its long past due launch will stem the tide of its fleeing player base. Is it too little, too late?