Daily Archives: May 31, 2019

May in Review

The Site

The blog got a bit of an honor this month when it made the IBuyPower Top 60 MMO Blogs list. There is even a badge for it.

I made the cut

I think 60 is an odd number though and, in glancing at the other entries, it is a bit of an odd list. There are a lot of recognizable sites in there, though a number of them had shut down or have been quiet or don’t focus on just MMOs or have eschewed the whole MMO thing for some time.

And in looking at it you might think that somebody just used Google to quickly assemble the list. However, the descriptions associated with the entries are detailed enough that clearly the person who made the list had some insight into each one.

And then there is the value of the list. SynCaine dropped me a note congratulating me on making the cut before I got the official email and he had to send me a direct link because I couldn’t find it on the IBuyPower.com web site or blog or via Google search.

It is, apparently, a secret list. Maybe I shouldn’t even be sharing this with you.

Anyway, my usual cynical world view aside, I should be happy to see that somebody still reads the site. And I would say something nice about their products and pricing, except that I am in the “build my own gaming PC” camp, as posts from just last year would indicate. You can see why my wife complains about me not being able to just say “Thank you” and stop at that.

In other site related news, I found that Goodreads provides an RSS feed of your book updates, so that is now way down at the bottom of what is now my probably too long by half side bar. So if you’re dying to know what I am reading, there it is. The only downside is that position on the list is only by last updated, which happens both when I start or finish a book. (I never give progress along the way.) Given that I do, at times, have multiple books going, the ordering of the list can be… deceptive maybe? Perhaps I am the only one that cares about that.

One Year Ago

My other blog turned ten years old, so I did a retrospective… here… since my other blog is a picture blog.

There was the big rumor post about plans at Daybreak that included winding down EverQuest and EverQuest II in favor of a new EverQuest game. While some items on the list did come to pass ( Just Survive did not and PlanetSide Arena is effectively PlanetSide 3), the old school preservationist faction won out in Norrath and it looks like we’ll be getting expansions for some years to come. Meanwhile, they were also giving out level 100 character boost in EQII again.

While I was on a WoW break of sorts, Blizzard seemed to be doing well enough in the financial report for Q1 2018. Of course, they were feeding us tidbits to keep us interested while we waited for Battle for Azeroth, with pre-orders available since January.

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, an RTS from the turn of the century, was still getting expansions. You cannot keep a good game down.

I objected to a silly post about making the MMO genre “more accessible.” It was all either blindingly obvious or too specific to be practical as a general rule.

I was still mucking about in Rift Prime, having made it into Scarlet Gorge, though it felt like something was missing.

Microsoft was planning to discontinue support for Minecraft on some older consoles after the Aquatic Update was released.

On the Kickstarter front the was big success for the Empires of EVE Vol. II campaign and a huge flop for the ill advised Flower of Knighthood campaign.

CCP was celebrating the 15th anniversary of EVE Online and I was going on about the importance of all the tales that make up the ongoing story of the game.

I was over on the test server trying out the upcoming Abyssal Space content, which I likened to dungeons. Why not? CCP calls things dungeons in their patch notes.

At the end of the month we got the Into the Abyss expansion for EVE Online and people were losing ships to Triglavians almost immediately.

That was preceded by what I called the great third part apocalypse as CCP shut down the old API interface, killing any number of third party applications that depended on it. I was also on about their New Eden Store scarcity policy.

We got an update on when the elections for CSM13 would be held, while with the MER I was wondering if anybody would challenged the might of the Delve economy.

And then, actually in game, we were still running ops against GotG in the north, exchanging citadel kills and chasing after them into Venal and mounting some ops from there before returning to Pure Blind.

Five Years Ago

EA killed off Mythic Entertainment. They had already handed over Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot to Broadsword, so what was left in any case?

The news about post-Kickstarter Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen continued to be off-putting.

I got another seven day trial in Landmark.

The strategy group started in on our BIG map campaign in Civilization V.

Nintendo announced Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were coming in November. They also closed down the WiFi game services for the Nintendo DS and Wii, which led EA to shut down the server support for 50 games a month later. Most of them were DS and Wii related, but EA used the opportunity to kill off some PC game support as well.

Nintendo also launched Mario Kart 8, one of the few bright spots on the otherwise disappointing Wii U. Soon the Luigi death stare was everywhere.

In EverQuest the Fippy Darkpaw progression server wrapped up the Seeds of Destruction expansion.

In EVE Online I was wondering about the prospects for a summer war. Everybody just assumed that there would be one, though in null sec the various empires seemed to be settling in and consolidating. Sure, there was the trap at Daras… another on the list of reasons we shy away from low sec… the run down to Placid for a kill, and that op down in Syndicate (my post on which stirred up some sour grapes about day one players) but otherwise things were quiet. That left plenty of time to go find my name on the monument.

As EVE Online turned eleven I was wondering if the alleged ‘learning cliff’ was still the biggest issue facing EVE Online.

Meanwhile CCP announced they were getting off the twice a year, huge update release pattern in order to have releases… named releases for a while… every month. This led into a post about the pacing of content delivery.

In World of Warcraft the Timeless Isle was still a thing. The Warlords of Draenor expansion was still over the horizon and subscriptions were down to 7.6 million under the weight of wait. That seemed like a big drop until Warlords of Draenor fell to 5 million two years later. Meanwhile, our group was slowing down a bit even as we started in on dungeons in Pandaria.

In attempt to make plans for another summer hiatus, I gave Star Wars: The Old Republic a try, going through the Sith starting area.

And then there was the kick off of the 2014 Newbie Blogger Initiative.

Ten Years Ago

I was able to expose the true conspiracy behind the EuroGamer Darkfall review. Powerful forces have been suppressing this story ever since.

EA lost a billion dollars. This came after the CEO announced that recessions were good because they eliminate competitors. They can also eliminate bad execs.

Meanwhile, EverQuest was celebrating its 10 year anniversary by putting up a new server. Polled on what it should be, people chose the 51/50 rule set. I’m sure that, somehow, that says something about MMOs and nostalgia. I cannot recall how that server even played out at this point.

I went back and played some Blizzard classics, Diablo II and StarCraft, both of which have patches now that mean you do not need the CD to play. This was prompted by Blizzard’s pushing people towards Battle.net and the announcement of the opt-in for the StarCraft II beta. I opted in right away. I hear that some people got in to the beta almost a year later. *cough*

In New Eden, it was new ship time, as I picked up both an Orca and a Buzzard. I also managed to lose my Cerebus. Oops.

And speaking of EVE Online, I announced my one year experiment, EVE Online Pictures. That site is now eleven years old.

CCP put a new boxed version of EVE Online on store shelves. I bought a copy and made a fabulous new character.

In World of Warcraft the instance group was moving along slowly. We did hit Azjol Nerub, but vacations and such kept us down to four people, so we spent a bit of time back in Burning Crusade doing heroics and generally messing around. That included our run into Ogrimmar to do Ragefire Chasm.

I also messed around with the Noblegarden holiday. I actually got all the achievements for that. However, Children’s Week was another story.

Playboy’s “Massively Casual Online Game” Playboy Manager was announced. The game was supposed to launch in the summer of 2009 according to the press release.

And then there was a little game called Minecraft that was first made available in early access back in May 2009. Recent estimates put it as possibly the best selling game of all time.

Fifteen Years Ago

Nintendo announces a new console code named Revolution to follow from the GameCube. Revolution would latter be given the official name Wii.

Twenty Years Ago

Nintendo starts talking about Project Dolphin, the console to follow the Nintendo 64. This would eventually become the GameCube.

Most Viewed Posts in May

Search Terms of the Month

daybreak lifetime membership refund
[Buyer’s remorse already?]

ccp mittani collusion
[#NoCollution]

does candy crush go on forever
[Yes, yes it does]

things that need fixing in tilligerry peninsula
[‘struth!]

Game Time from ManicTime

A couple more games on the list this month. EverQuest got no play in May, so I guess my 20th anniversary nostalgia is done. Still lots of WoW played, but it wasn’t as dominant as it was in April. Total hours played was actually up as well.

World of Warcraft 45.77%
Minecraft 26.08%
EVE Online 24.33%
WoW Classic 3.32%
EverQuest II 0.28%
Lord of the Rings Online 0.23%

EVE Online

War were declared, and we moved up and out of Delve to the boarder of Tribute. I’ve been on a few ops, so my total for the month will likely end up higher than a month without a war, but I still had more fun dropping with Black Ops on things. Plus the war is crowded… like WoW Classic crowded… a topic which I will get to next week.

EverQuest II

I actually meant to play some EQII this month. One thing I did in March was move to a bigger house in Halas, leaving behind the base model apartment for much larger digs, because I was just running out of space to display all the junk I have collected in the game over the years. However, the Minecraft update came along and that pretty much ate up my decorating play time.

Lord of the Rings Online

I logged in to make sure I got the anniversary gifts on at least one character. I appear to have fallen off the wagon for LOTRO Legendary somewhere in Moria. That might be the end of that because, while I was keen to get into Moria, getting into Mirkwood doesn’t motivate me at all.

Minecraft

I have carried on with the Village and Pillage update for Minecraft. I haven’t actually found a panda yet, but I have spent a lot of time with villagers and met the pillagers… which got me back to fortifying villages. A wall around your village keeps your villagers safer… unless they find a way to get out, in which case they will wander straight into death.

Pokemon Go

The leveling up process carries on ever so slowly. I am about a third of the way to level 37, though I will admit I haven’t been optimizing for gaining xp. It is possible to burst xp for a short bit, but the increments start to look small when lined up against the 2 million needed to level up. Oh well.

Level: 36 (+0)
Pokedex status: 419 (+9) caught, 447 (+6) seen
Pokemon I want: Meltan, but I still have to catch a damn Aerodactyl to get one
Current buddy: Luxio

World of Warcraft

Given how much WoW I played over the course of the month I feel like I should have more to say about it. I did a lot of pet battles and world quests. I started on another character in Kul Tiras… or carried on with one I started previously.

WoW Classic

WoW Classic is such a different game from current WoW that I expect it deserves its own listing, seeing that it gets its own time tracking category as well. This month it was just the two stress tests, which was enough to whet my appetite for the August launch.

Also, it was kind of a big month for WoW Classic. It ended up getting five posts here in May.

WoW Classic Coming August 27th – May 14
Was Cataclysm a Required Prerequisite for WoW Classic? – May 16
What to do with WoW Classic as it Ages – May 22
Simulating the WoW Classic Opening – May 22
WoW Classic Stress Test Redux – May 30

A lot of coverage… for me… for something that isn’t live yet. I’m not even in the beta.

Coming Up

In EVE Online the war in Tribute will continue on, perhaps spreading to other regions.

The CSM14 elections will also go live come the 10th, with results to be announced at EVE North (is Toronto “north” enough when compared to Iceland or ~~Leningrad~~ St. Petersburg?) by the end of the month.

Maybe we will get that 8.2 patch for World of Warcraft by the end of the month.

Since summer will be arriving, it seems likely that there will be a Steam summer sale. I haven’t actually logged into Steam this month.

Oh, and as I mentioned yesterday, summer FML time. Now I’ll be blathering about movies once a week yet again.

Failed Headshot in Tribute

It was one of those fights where I could tell we were losing, but things in my own little corner of the engagement seemed to go pretty well. So my view of the strategic outcome is more a matter of what I have read and heard elsewhere rather than anything I could attest to personally.

There had been pings earlier in the day to rouse the troops and get them to log in at what is generally a late hour for even USTZ, 04:30 UTC. That translates to 9:30pm here on the west coast, which is about the time I want to be in bed. But I figured I could be a little tired on Friday, so I stayed up for it.

The stated plan was to take out the ihub in SH1-6P, which is where the defenders of the region have massed their forces. To finish off the ihub, which had been reinforced previously, meant an entosis fight across the six systems of the constellation.

The two stagings and the target constellation

If we won the cyno jammer would be disabled and we would be able to drop titans and supers on their staging Keepstar at will. With the jammer still there they can keep out capitals out unless they want to gate in.

The first ping that went out for a Baltec fleet, the battleships doctrine based around the Megathron. That filled up almost instantly, to the point that even though I was logged in before hand I couldn’t get in.

The next up was the Eagle fleet. I managed to get into that before it too filled up, though it filled partially with people in Megathrons and interceptors, so there was a while of sorting that out and getting the right ships in the fleet. It took us a good 40 minutes to get sorted and on a titan and ready to be bridged.

A dramatically lit titan

From there we were bridged into Tribute to sit on one of our citadels, where it seemed like we were bringing out the big guns as two titan fleets landed and tethered up around us.

Shield and armor titans on the field

We bridged off the citadel into Venal, something that a PanFam post on Reddit at least implied was unexpected. They had bubble fucked the route through Tribute so we went through Venal, which was clear. They seemed a bit salty about that.

Coming out of Venal with the Baltecs

We didn’t see those titans again last night. We went in with the Baltec fleet, swatting aside the Sabres sent to slow us down pretty easily, ending up in Q-CAB2 on the WH-JCA gate. The fight waited for us on the other side of the gate.

Ready to jump in

In we went. TiDi was surging and while it never got down to the sludge of struggling at 10%, it stayed between 12% and 20% for much of the fight, slowing everything down. The Eagles went through the gate and shot anchored bubbled and Sabres to clear a way for the Baltecs.

Glancing at the TiDi situation

Once through the bubbles and anchored up the fight became the usual repetition of locking and shooting targets, changing ammo to suit the situation, and managing drones. For us the fight was trying to hit targets and break their tank before they could get reps, which is tough to do in TiDi, since it gives the logi pilots additional time to respond. The game may be moving slow, but the humans at the controls are still at normal speed. I know when I am flying logi it is easier to land critical reps in that situation.

This time however I was in an Eagle, shooting things.

Eagles flocking on grid

It was announced pretty soon into the fight that the entosis effort had failed. The locals had won the objective. But we were stuck in and not doing too badly, so there was no rush to get out. We were managing to pick off a target now and again before they got reps. I even saw a name or two I recognized, like Dreydan Trovirr of the Open Comms Show.

Saying “Hi” to Dreydan

He, like many of our targets, caught reps in time and lived.

The locals brought out some HAW dreads, which put some hurt on the Baltec fleet, which was taking the brunt of the fire. Big, fat battleships are hard to resist and the dreads shredded the Bhaalgorns that were with the Baltecs. But we managed to get in and pop some of the dreads along the way.

A Naglfar blows, other wrecks visible

We were also given a treat when a small pack of Macherials arrived on grid with us, which we blew up as fast as we could lock and shoot. I ended up on the kills of five Machs and five dreads.

In a bit of a surreal situation, it turned out that one of the hostiles was streaming the fight with a very short delay… or no delay because it seemed only seconds behind… which meant we could hear their FC calling targets, allowing our logi to get reps on our ships before the damage hit. I am not sure if that was ignorance or arrogance on their part, but we were happy enough to listen in as we continued to shoot.

Our Eagles lit by a dread explosion

As the Baltecs ceased to be much of a force and we became the primary target and the locals brought out their titans it looked like it was time for us to go. We had lost our anchor, Zintage Enaka and were following a backup as we headed back to Q-CAB2 and though Venal again for home.

Once we were into Venal and grouped up the route was clear for our staging. Our fleet, the Harpy fleet that came in after us, and what of the Baltec fleet that managed to get out were not bothered after that. I arrived back at our staging Keepstar safe, having only lost my drones somewhere along the way.

Once there I was able to put the rigs on my ship. I only noticed when we were into Venal that, after I bought the Eagle off a contract, I forgot to put the rigs on.

Something in my cargo hold I should have noticed

This is maybe the fourth op I’ve been on in this Eagle too. I’ve glad nobody shot at me, though I am even more glad I didn’t get into the Baltec fleet. However, I might have got to bed sooner if I had been in the Baltec fleet. I didn’t turn the lights out until 1am. Very late for me.

As for the battle, not only did we lose the objective, but the ISK war came out against us as well. I tried to put together a battle report covering the constellation so as to include kills in battles over entosis hacking. (That just adds to our losses.) I didn’t get everybody in the right columns, but all the significant groups were sorted.

Battle Report Header

We blew up almost 58 billion in hostiles, helped along by those HAW dreads, but lost over 100 billion ISK in the process.

Nearly 2,000 pilots were involved. The locals dialed up Fraternity for some assistance while we had TEST and Brave from Legacy coalition, who have been fighting Fraternity, show up on our side.

In the end though, a fight like that doesn’t change much. We’re not going home, the locals are not going away. I suspect that rather than jumping straight at their staging we might spend some time drawing the locals out. There is a Keepstar sitting 0-YMBJ, one gate from our staging in Pure Blind, that is just begging to be blown up.

Anyway, we shall see where we go from here.

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Daily Archives: May 31, 2019

May in Review

Failed Headshot in Tribute