December 2023 in Review

The Site

We have arrived at the end of another year.  This will be my 385th and final post of the year… unless somebody announces something crazy here in the fading moments of 2023.

My 2023 banner courtesy of our daughter

The site itself did fairly well this month.  The traffic surge of November carried on into December, if somewhat subdued… except on Fridays.  Every Friday there is a significant drop off in page views and visits… down to the old pre-surge levels at least… and I am now trying to figure that one out.  Do I publish dull things on Friday… or on Thursday, since the traffic on one day seems to be focused on the post of the day before?

The traffic means that the ad revenue is good as well.  I made enough that I put my other blog, EVE Online pictures, on a personal plan so it has no ads now.  Of course, that means that WordPress is now sending me email notes about upgrading to the next most expensive plan for TWO blogs now.  Joy.

One Year Ago

Steam had a Winter Sale… as it always does.

Eleven months after announcing the plan, the US FTC sued to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Blizzard gave us a launch date for Diablo IV, which was June of 2023.

In Wrath Classic we finished up the Pilgrim’s Bounty achievements. Then the group was off to Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom.  Then it was time for a run at Drak’Tharon Keep.

My DK was off in Gizzly Hills and hit level 77, which meant it was time for cold weather flying, which quickly saw him get to level 80, the first of my characters to do so.

Meanwhile, Honest Game Trailers was taking on Wrath Classic.

EverQuest launched its Night of Shadows expansion, the 29th on the list.

Over in Valheim, the Mistlands biome arrived.  Our world was still up on the server we had rented, so I went to go explore the new biome a bit.

In EVE Online there was a pretty big fight at H-PA29 in Venal, part of the Fraternity/PanFam assault on the B2 coalition.  I did my last run through the economy with the December MER.  I switched to just charting destruction in 2023.  I was also on a bit about Evermarks and the inflating prices of Rifters, which may or may not have been related.

There was also a review of my year in EVE Online thanks to CCP.

And in a Friday Bullet Points post I covered the Winter Nexus, the addition of a multiple overviews option with the new UI, an attempt to fix the isogen shortage by putting special mining sites in systems with blue stars, some faction warfare updates, the somewhat delayed official results for Alliance Tournament XVIII, and the fact that CCP was ending sales of physical ship models… again.

In the usual end of the year wrap up posts, I scored my predictions for 2022, I reported on my time on Reddit, totaled up my time on Twitch, picked my books for the year, and did my annual highs and lows post.

For the Star Trek movie rewatch, we saw Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and Star Trek: Generations, where the whole numbering scheme gave up, and which was where the original series cast handed over the helm to captain Picard and the next generation.  That led us into Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek: Nemesis, none of which thrilled me.  That was the end of the initial theatrical run of films.

Then we were on to Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Star Trek: Beyond, the Kelvin parallel universe reboot, which I kind of like, something that makes me a bit of a Trek heretic.

Five Years Ago

Epic Games set out to challenge Steam with their own digital games store front.  That didn’t stop Steam from going on with its usual Winter Sale.

Somebody was trying to crowd fund yet another gamer social network which got me on a tear about gamers not being a unified demographic.  The Kickstarter failed, as I expected.  It was a dumb idea.

Blizzard stepped back a bit from their MOBA, Heroes of the Storm.

In a season of MMO offers, Dungeons & Dragons Online had a $299 season pass offer, Lord of the Rings Online had a $199 legacy bundle, and Daybreak had a limited $299 lifetime subscription offer, though when buyers hit the limit, the limit was extended.

Daybreak launched The Burning Lands expansion for EverQuest as they were laying off staff.  The layoff was alleged to be focused in their Austin office, where PlanetSide stuff happens.

Daybreak, which had been hinting about a new game coming, then announced PlanetSide Arena, which didn’t feel like a new game at all.  And didn’t they just lay people off from that team?  It was slated to be available by February 2019.

On the LOTRO Legendary server I made a side trip to Esteldin.  I also made a side trip to the fall festival to get drunk.  LOTRO does a very nice drunk simulation.  Then it was off to Evendim, where I made it through Tinnudir and Annuminas.  After that I was in the Trollshaws.  I even made it into the Misty Mountains.  I was on a roll in Middle-earth.

CCP put out their December update for EVE Online, which included changes to high sec war decs, as well as the assets for the holiday login rewards and the Operation Permafrost event.  I wasn’t happy with that event.  It didn’t measure up to the Halloween event in my mind.  I did have some better luck with it eventually.

I was also carping about the dearth of ship SKINs in the New Eden Store.  How do you run a space cash shop where I cannot buy something for my ship? That situation has since improved.

CCP also announced the final destinations for the Invasion World Tour, in which they would change things up by bringing EVE Fanfest to eight locations around the world.

Actually in EVE Online Asher brought the Reavers SIG on a wormhole adventure to help blow up a Keepstar, which I recorded in a series of posts:

• Waiting for a Hole – Dec 9, 2018
• Fort Knocks Way Down in the Hole – Dec 12, 2018
• Sotiyo Boom – Dec 13, 2018
• A Keepstar Waits in the Hole – Dec 14, 2018
• The Other Keepstar Falls in Rage – Dec 15, 2018
• Out of the Hole and Back to Delve – Dec 19, 2018

The Reavers also went out and did one of our null sec space races for fun.

In my usual year end posts, I reviewed my predictions for 2018, wrote about my five books of the year, went over the highs and lows of the last dozen months, reviewed the games I played, and ranted a bit about the state of MMORPGs.

Also, I had something about how the core player base will always optimize their behavior to match game mechanics.  Then there was a throw away post about various game studios.

Finally, I told the story of the two chocolate pies.

Ten Years Ago

It was the final shut down for Warhammer Online.

It was also the end of the road for World of Darkness at CCP, which shut down the project and laid off much of the staff.

CCP did give me a copy of the EVE Online Second Decade Collector’s Edition.

Actually in EVE, I was looking at flying a dreadnought, looking at my hull tanking certificate, and actually went on a couple of ops, blowing things up in NS2L-4 and BW-WJ2.

Shroud of the Avatar was an actual thing.  You could log in and see stuff.  Granted, a year later it was still in alpha and had a long way to go, but at least progress was being made I guess.

Turbine threw their hat in the ring with their own insta-level scheme for Lord of the Rings Online.  It got you all the way to the doors of Moria.  I was not impressed.  Not only was the level cap well beyond Moria at that point, I tend to believe that the best content in the game is the 1-50 run.  But that is the nature of level based games.

Blizzard put a cash shop in World of Warcraft.  But don’t call those microtransactions, because they are not.  Microtransactions require an intermediate currency.  If you’re selling in straight up dollars, pounds, and euros, it isn’t a microtransaction.

The instance group in World of Warcraft ventured under the sea and into the Mount Hyjal region, then ran through the Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns instances.  Meanwhile, I had an alt finish up The Burning Crusade for me.  And then there was my character a level cap, swamped with options including Timeless Isle.

I reviewed my goals and tried to sum up 2013.

I did some book reviews of a sort, looking at The Kindly Ones, The Circle, and some space operas.

Finally, we were very sad at our house when our cat Fred died.  We still miss him.

Fifteen Years Ago

December seemed to be all about the micropayments and the like.  Sony Online Entertainment surprised some by putting Station Cash driven stores into EverQuest and EverQuest II.  The selection wasn’t great and the pricing seemed a bit off, but I was more interested to know what other SOE products would get the Station Cash treatment.

In EverQuest II I ran Reynaldo Fabulous from creation to level 50 in an very short (to me) stretch of time.  And then I stopped.

And then EA announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic would be microtransaction financed.  Or maybe they didn’t.  It ended up that way eventually, but three years later at launch it was very much a subscription game in the classic sense.  Free to play and a cash shop came later.

In Azeroth we were still coming to grips with the Northrend instances.  In Utgarde Keep we managed to kill off Prince Keleseth, but couldn’t hold it together to finish the instance.  Outside, we were running around doing quests.

Meanwhile, somebody was working on a WoW code, akin to the old geek code that used to clutter many a .sig file back when Usenet was cool and we knew the spammers by name.

I actually found some time to play Lord of the Rings Online.

And on the MUD nostalgia front I was reminding people what quests used to be like and sharing some really bad limericks.

Best selling PC Games from 2008:

1. Spore
2. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
3. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
4. The Sims 2: FreeTime
5. Spore Creature Creator
6. Sins of a Solar Empire
7. The Sims 2: Apartment Life
8. The Sims 2: Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff
9. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm
10. The Sims Castaway Stories

Twenty-Five Years Ago

The original Baldur’s Gate was released.

And, in something of a reductive cycle, the first video game version of the physical Pokemon Trading Card game, itself based on the Pokemon Red & Blue video games, was released on the GameBoy in Japan.  In a nod to simplicity, it was called the Pokemon Trading Card Game by the time it arrived in the US.

Thirty Years Ago

Doom arrived.  You might have heard of it.

Most Viewed Posts in December

An ongoing side effect of the traffic boom is that more recent posts are making this monthly list.  Usually it is the same eight old posts and maybe four more recent ones, so that I can just copy the list from month to month.  Now I have to go and build out a whole list every month.

1. From the Village to the Island
2. My Steam Replay for 2023… Plus My XBox 2023 Stats
3. Usenet Newsgroups Part II – What is on that CD and Why Your Hard Drive isn’t a Database
4. Some Days it Doesn’t Pay to Undock in New Eden
5. My Twitch Time in 2023 and the Influence of Twitch Drops
6. Timing those Lucky Eggs for Friendship Milestones in Pokemon Go
7. Usenet Newsgroups Part III – Founding, Fame, Influence, and Foreshadowing
8. Thoughts about my Next Computer
9. YoYo Mechanic
10. The Ogres of Loch Modan
11. Arriving in Westfall in WoW Classic Season of Discovery
12. Wrath of the Lich King Zones Ranked

Search Terms of the Month

“wagering-agreement-meaning-in-nepali”
[I think every time I post this I end up getting it as a term]

pen and paper mmorpg
[If it is pen and paper it isn’t really an MMORPG, is it?]

хижина морлока
[No idea where his hut is]

cracked zmud 7.21
[Mine is still licensed]

mmo news 8 dec 2023
[BG3 on consoles? I don’t know…]

stuffit expander free download
[Wow, now that is an oldie]

wraptrick yoruba movie
[Eh?]

Game Time from ManicTime

What did I end up playing in December?  I bet you can guess some of the list!

• EVE Online – 59.37%
• WoW Classic – 37.41%
• Astro Colony – 1.99%
• EVE Vanguard – 0.91%
• Wizardry – 0.31%

A lot of time spent on the Winter Nexus event in New Eden, plus a general clean up and list for sale of stuff accumulating in my hangars.  I made some ISK.  WoW Classic was almost entirely Season of Discovery, though ManicTime doesn’t break those two out.  I will below however.

Then three new items.  EVE Vanguard was the first public player test of the game which reminded me once more about why I don’t play shooters.  The other two I will mention below.

Astro Colony

A little building game I picked up on Steam during the Winter Sale.  It is a space sim colony/factory builder that you can setup as a shared private server if you like… and I am checking it for that sort of group play potential.  Pretty well done but still in early access.  Look for a deeper post on it next year.

EVE Online

I scoffed a bit at the Winter Nexus event because the combat sites were overrun like a Westfall Defias gathering in WoW Classic Season of Discovery.  Then I did most of the event on two alts via the ice mining path, which worked out though it was kind of boring… something good to do while AFK.  Then I did some of the data sites via scanning, and found that engaging enough that I did the whole thing a third time on my main and mostly in null sec storms in hostile space.  It was modestly lucrative and enjoyable.

Pokemon Go

There was a good community event in December… and by good, I mean one where my wife and I, using lucky eggs, were able to make some significant progress in the slog to level 50.

• Level: 44 (62% of the way to 45 in xp, 2 of 4 tasks complete)
• Pokedex status: 812 (+8) caught, 825 (+6) seen
• Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 15 of 20
• Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
• Current buddy: Larvesta

Wizardry

There is a remake/remaster of the classic Apple II (and other platforms) title Wizardry available up on Steam.  At some point I will have to post about whether remastering a game that old, keeping the exact same mechanics but simply updating the graphical interface, is a viable path forward.

WoW Classic – Season of Discovery

In many ways this has exceeded my expectations, though maybe we were just ready for a new vanilla WoW experience again.  There are downsides, the primary one is the crowding on servers and the fact that the population is compressed into the first 25 levels, so at prime time on a weekend or holiday zones like Westfall, Redridge, Loch Modan, and even Darkshore are crowded, making people surly and unhelpful about other people hunting the same mobs or drops.  This is no day one of WoW Classic with everybody queuing up nicely.

WoW Classic – Wrath of the Lich King

I thought I would be getting one more character up to level 80 and then Blizz turned of the Joyous Journeys XP buff and that, in turn, pulled the plug on my desire to get my rogue up to the level cap… largely because he was still in Outland.  We still have one dungeon left to do.  We’ll see if we get back to it.

Zwift

Still waiting on permits from the power company… Pacific Gas and Electric (of Perpetual Graft and Extortion as my grandfather referred to them) is notoriously slow and indifferent to customers.  The city has our permits approved, but PG&E hasn’t gotten back to the contractor, so the back room of our house where the exercise bike is still has no power.  My one new years resolution will be to get back on the bike and exercise regularly once things are fixed.

Coming Up

A whole new year, with a lot going on… but not so much in January.

The first thing up tomorrow will be the usual annual predictions post.  I went pretty hard at that the day I scored my 2023 predictions, so there should be something in there to annoy just about everybody.

There will be the end of the Steam Winter Sale and the data that brings up… plus I bought a few things!

I will have a summing up of my 2023 game play time as well as a look into what I might play in 2024.

The instance group made its first run at the Deadmines yesterday… need to write that up… as well as how things are faring in Season of Discovery overall.

There will be the EVE Online MER and a look into December destruction, but I feel like I should do a post about overall destruction in 2023 as well… especially since I remember the command line function to concatenate .csv files.

I did, in fact, order a new computer from Digital Storm.  That should show up in the next week or so, which means I will have to mention that.

And the ongoing telephone tales series will continue.  I already have the post for next Sunday ready to go.

Basically, same stuff, different year.  Have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve.