30 | November | 2018 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

The Site

This month I started putting links to posts here on Facebook manually. I’m not sure why. Probably because I still manually post them to the Blaugust Discord channel as well, and once I am doing that why not do another site?

My posts used to get posted to the Wilhelm Arcturus timeline on Facebook automatically. Then Facebook blocked the automatic posting of links to timelines a few months back in an effort to look responsive to people claiming that the company was in some way responsible the results of the 2016 election. Hiring a firm to promote George Soros conspiracy theories is fine it seems, but random individuals feeding their work into their own timeline is a threat to democracy.

Honestly, after writing that last sentence I am wondering again why I even have an account there. I don’t believe they influenced the election at all, because in my experience most people make their decision first and then rationalize it after the fact with cherry-picked data. (See Gevlon for an extreme example.) But that doesn’t mean Facebook isn’t a loathsome company run by an ongoing PR nightmare of a CEO. So I might not even be there tomorrow. It isn’t like Facebook generates any significant traffic. Posting links this month did increase traffic… actually doubled it… but double means about 60 referrals. I get more than that when somebody popular (i.e. not me) shares one of my links there, so I am back to not being sure if it is worth the effort.

In other, less dramatic news, the blog hit another minor milestone, crossing the 5 million page view mark. I think the last such milestone I noted was 1 million page views back in March 2010. So 4 million since then.

Milestone of a sort

5 million page views is probably what a popular site gets in a day, if not an hour, but it seems like a big number for my little blog.

The site is also coming up on 5,000 posts. So, on average, each post has over 1,000 page views. In reality, most people land on the main URL and read from there or hit one of about 30 posts that have anywhere from 10K to 65K views. About 10% of posts have 1,000 page views or more.

The visitors number on that graphic is a bit deceptive. WordPress.com didn’t start counting visitors until the end of December 2012. However, 2011 and 2012 were the peak years of the blog. Since then popularity of the blog began to fall off in 2013, the visitors entry only represents a “past my prime” sort of number.

Still, April 13, 2013 remains the most popular day ever on the blog. Looking at the post for that day, my theory about there being an inverse relationship between effort and popularity seems to be confirmed.

Finally, and perhaps unsurprisingly, posts related to Lord of the Rings Online saw a bit of a surge this month, as the most viewed posts section below indicates.

One Year Ago

It was BlizzCon. Blizzard, while pretty much ignoring the Diablo franchise, did announce the next World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth, as well as WoW Classic. There was much discussion after BlizzCon wrapped up. I brought up a list of things that would likely be different in WoW Classic compared to live.

Actually in WoW I was into Suramar and my class hall campaign, timewalking in Northrend, and picking up again with pet battles. The WoW thirteenth anniversary event was timely as it gave a boost to faction gains, something I was working on to unlock flying. Also, as predicted, I failed to get the headless horseman’s mount yet again. This is fine.

In EVE Online we were off on what would become a nearly year long deployment to the north of New Eden. I was worried about these upcoming Alpha clone skill injectors. CCP also had a screen shot contest. And I did a write up about the Neocom II app for iOS and only got a few material facts wrong.

I was trying to get my copy of ZMud 7.21 up and working again. This comes up every so often.

I had to get ZMud going so I could finish up my post about the Elemental Glades in TorilMUD.

EverQuest II became a teenager, turning 13. For its birthday it got the Planes of Prophecy expansion.

In Minecraft I was touring our world looking at some of the epic structures.

There was some crazy talk out of EA. And that was before the Star Wars: Battlefront II fiasco started to boil over, with Disney stepping in to check EA.

Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon launched, marking the end of new Pokemon titles for the Nintendo handheld line.

And a video on YouTube ended up prompting a long discussion about how much it costs to make a video game.

Five Years Ago

TorilMUD, measured through its lineage via Sojourn MUD, hit the 20 year mark. So I was playing that before there was any sort of Warcraft.

Time was running out on Warhammer Online, but they were going to give people a last chance to see the place… for free. A pity I couldn’t get my account to work.

There was a scathing quote of the day about what “social gaming” had come to mean.

The Tears of Veeshan expansion launched in EverQuest II while we said farewell to EverQuest: Macintosh Edition. Meanwhile, EverQuest veteran Aradune was back in play talking about a new MMO he had planned.

As for SOE, they were also being called out for selling Founder’s Packs for EverQuest Next or Landmark or whatever. I was also wondering about the alleged new combat might imply that latency was no longer an issue.

The Rubicon expansion for EVE Online went live, complete with lots of stats. The update did not save us from the node crash at E-YJ8G. Big fleet battles, with thousand of drones in play, were taxing the servers beyond their limits. Meanwhile, there was the Long Guy Fawkes Day… another node crash, but only after 6 hours of crushing TiDi… and we were headed back to Curse again.

EVE Online community site EVE Bloggers found a new home at last.

BlizzCon rolled around and I was speculating about what they might announce. The actual big news generated much excitement for WoW players with the Warlords of Draenor announcement, though few thought it would take a year for them to ship it. There was a silly moment where they declared something impossible.

I was already back and binging on the WoW, but the rest of the instance group came back as well after the announcement… and we basically did what we should have done a few years back, we got out the old group and picked up where we left off.

I was dropping bombs in War Thunder.

I wondered why we couldn’t just turn off achievements.

There was also a moment of Apple II nostalgia.

I was having problems with the LOTRO patcher… again.

And, after having read Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire at its 20th anniversary, I got around to reading the other two books in the series. The title of that post is a spoiler.

Ten Years Ago

We were all excited about expansions.

For EverQuest II, there was The Shadow Odyssey that showed up around the four year anniversary and which gave us the bear mount. If you bought retail you also got the pewter bear which went on to feature in so many Tipa cartoons and my own parody thereof.

In EVE Online, the Quantum Rise expansion was available, granting those of us in New Eden certificates, among other things.

While it wasn’t out yet, Turbine was warming people up for the Mines of Moria expansion for Lord of the Rings Online. It sounded great. It just took me forever to get there. At least I got the T-shirt… erm… the cloak.

And then there was a little thing called Wrath of the Lich King. Yeah, that. Sort of a big deal for some, setting sales records at the time.

The instance group did its last Outland instance (well, the last one at level) and then began poking our noses into Northrend to start the grand tour of the new expansion. We even got into the first instance. We also took a shot at the Headless Horseman. To this day I still don’t have his mount.

On the flip side, Warhammer Online passed from regular play rotation. We left, never to return.

Finally, I was keeping the nostalgia ball rolling with a look back at how information used to be regarded back in the days of MUDs, a notable MUD NPC, hitting level cap in TorilMUD, a question about Anarchy Online, and a hazy recollection of a GEnie game called Stellar Warrior.

Twenty Years Ago

In a trifecta month, Half-Life, StarCraft: Brood War, and Starsiege: Tribes all launched.

Most Viewed Posts in November

Search Terms of the Month

lotro anor server queue
[Don’t get me started]

lotro anor vs ithil population
[Going to say sun > moon]

blizzard stock
[ACTI, and it is down]

everquest 3?
[Nope]

apps people pay 99 cents for
[Crappy ones?]

arti kata1- a lot of gold for killing 2- the daily reward for watching 6000 videos is increased all in all that a day is offered 3- energy is not wasted 4- rapid level increase 5- increased inventory size to 2 billion)) 6- vip included 2
[I don’t even know how that gets you here]

EVE Online

Kind of a quiet month for me in New Eden. We did have the Onslaught expansion and two Monthly Economic reports show up, so I didn’t lack for things to post about. But I only went on a couple of fleet ops and, while I was resolved to run more Abyssal deadspace sites with my high sec alt, I never really got around to it. Mostly I was tending skill queues and writing about the theoretical rather than the actual.

EverQuest II

My latest dalliance with EverQuest II seems to have come to an end. I cannot jump between more than a couple of games. I like to be able to focus and get into a game. I enjoyed my time, but the game does have a rather jarring transition between content that interrupted what was otherwise a smooth run. At least I spent a bunch of my Station Cash. That should make Daybreak happy, or at least somebody in accounting.

Lord of the Rings Online

The LOTRO Legendary server was the flavor of the month for November. Despite being bad at promoting it and reticent to declare an actual launch date… and the whole thing being rather shy on things to distinguish it from the normal live servers… it was quite a success. After past optimism on the server front as Turbine, SSG went safe and stuck to a single server, opting to open a second only after the first was well and truly overrun with players.

Being back in Middle-earth has been fun, though that is easy to say when I am still in the midst of content I know and enjoy. I might even make it to 50 before they unlock the Mines of Moria expansion. But I have my doubts as to whether there is anything they can do to make anything after Moria fun.

Pokemon Go

This remains the one game my wife and I play together. I just wish it would let you change teams, as she is Instinct and I am Mystic. I would pay for a team change token. But being on different teams hasn’t stopped us from going out to do research tasks and knock down gyms that are help by team Valor.

Level: 34 (+0)
Pokedex status: 371 (+8) caught, 391 (+16) seen
Pokemon I want: Rhyperior, the Rhydon evolution, but I need about 80 candies
Current buddy: Eevee, for the special research task

World of Warcraft

I did managed to hit level cap. 120 wasn’t all that hard, I just fell off the horse when distracted by other things. I was a bit sullen at yet again being denied the Headless Horseman’s mount, but I did get on and do a bit for the WoW 14th anniversary event. But by the time Pilgrim’s Bounty showed up I was heavily invested in LOTRO, so my time in Azeroth had tapered off quite a bit.

Coming Up

A new year is in the offing, which means those standard end-of-the-year posts. There are predictions to review, highs and lows to chart, my January gaming plan to go over, and whatever else I write about every December. Maybe I’ll pick my books of the year or examine what it was I played in 2018.

The usual holiday events will no doubt be in full force in games soon enough, along with a Steam Winter Sale. Neither stirs much excitement in me at the moment.

EverQuest will get its 25th expansion next month. I am sure that will be a moment of note.

And I will have wrapped up the TAGN FML league for a while. I am going to take winter and spring off from that with a plan to return again for another summer blockbuster season.

As for play time, it seems likely that the LOTRO Legendary server thing will keep my attention. I am currently working on how to make a LOTROmon joke as a post because, not only do your characters never die (they merely lose morale and are defeated, which seems akin to how Pokemon faint), but the servers are named Anor and Ithil, Sindarin for sun and moon, which were the names of the last real Pokemon games from Nintendo and Game Freak. I think if I could find a sleeping Snorlax analogy I’d be set.

After showing off Project Nova at EVE Vegas this year, where it looked as good as any other shooter but seemed to lack much of a edge to set it apart from a market full of shooters, CCP has decided to go back to the drawing board.

As reported over at Massively OP, the Project Nova page now has an informational update, quoted below for posterity:

At CCP, one of our core principles is that we work to provide our players with excellent experiences. This mindset can be found within every creative team working on bringing your beloved virtual worlds to life. This means that we keep challenging ourselves every step of the way by asking difficult questions when facing tough decisions – especially when this principle could be compromised.

The development of Project Nova is an example of where this fundamental belief has been continuously exercised and put into practice.

At EVE Vegas, we showed you the most recent iteration of our vision to provide an engaging and unique FPS experience to enrich the EVE Universe. Our goal for this was always to reinforce the ‘One War // One Universe’ gameplay and create a worthy spiritual successor to DUST 514 that has the potential to captivate not only existing Mercenaries and Capsuleers, but also to attract new adventurers into the ever-evolving world of New Eden.

Over the course of Project Nova’s development, we conducted a number of player research sessions with external partners, tirelessly playtested the game internally and brought community stalwarts in to help us evaluate the project. Now, after taking all this research and feedback into account, we see that the gameplay experience in its current form does not live up to our original vision and would not achieve our ambitious goals for this project. As a result, we will not be moving forward with the upcoming invite-only Alpha until further notice.

We are aware that many of you have been eagerly anticipating the moment when you can get your hands on Project Nova. Please accept our heartfelt apologies for the disappointment this will no doubt cause. We hope you understand that we need to take a step back and return to the drawing board, where we will spend more time figuring out how all this hard work can translate into something better and more meaningful for the EVE Universe. Remaining true to our vision of Project Nova’s future in connection with EVE is essential. That is the only way we will be able to continue creating memorable experiences that ensure you – our ineffable players – are satisfied and make us proud as developers.

Project Nova continues to evolve and we remain committed to delivering a high-quality team-based shooter experience to EVE Online fans, while exploring new and exciting opportunities to integrate the two games. CCP is in no rush to release Project Nova until we’re satisfied it provides a rock-solid gameplay experience and visuals to match.

Naturally, there will be a rush to figure out what hand CCP’s new owners, Pearl Abyss, had in this change. I am sure people will be speculating as to how PA put the brakes on this project and attribute it to malice or greed. It is always easy to do that.

But it could be completely the other way around. It might be that Pearl Abyss owning CCP has given the team in Iceland the ability to hold off shipping the project, allowing them time to find the raison d’etre that this game seemed to lack when it was shown at EVE Vegas.

Anyway, there it stands. Project Nova seems unlikely to see the light of day in 2019.