31 | March | 2024 | The Ancient Gaming Noob

The Site

By the time you read this I will have turned off ads again. Yay! Though, I have always said if you’re a regular reader, you should use ad block. I want to tax bots for visiting, not you.

My relationship with ads on the site is a bit complicated. I was paying for a hosting level that would let me turn off ads, then opted in for a step up for a few more features, which included the ability to earn money via ads. So my plan was to use ads to offset the cost of the more expensive plan, which is $100 a year. I have managed to accomplish that. In fact, this past holiday season was a big bonus time for ads. This was largely built on the quality of the ads being displayed. November holiday ads brought in $73.41, the peak income for the blog.

Though the odd, unexpected direct traffic helped push that number up, it was really the quality of ads that made it pay. This past month traffic slowed down a lot… the bots were only active during the holidays as well I guess… but half as many ads delivered did not cough up half the dollar amount. Instead it was about twelve bucks.

2024 traffic sources so far – search is the most stable, direct the most chaotic

Twelve bucks is not nothing, but it has also been trending down heavily over the month, so even that cash amount is heavily rooted in slightly better ad quality in the early days. And if it is going to go back down to five dollar a month ad earnings, I’d rather just not have ads.

In fact, the only reason I did not turn them off earlier is because I needed just $10 more to hit the next payout goal, as WordPress.com only sends you the money when they owe you more than $100. I hit that, so ads can go, and stay gone for a while. I am ahead of the game, thanks again to the holidays, so have earned enough to cover hosting out a few years at this point.

I might turn ads on again come October, just to see if ad quality is high again over the holidays. But they have also added a setting so that if you’re logged into WP.com, you won’t see ads. I’ll make sure that is on. If you’ve actually bothered to log in… and I hear WP.com has made even that annoying… you ought to have some benefit.

Also here on the site, a few days back I crossed the 7,000 post mark. That reminds me a bit of a punchline about being unaware that somebody could stack crap that high, but I guess if you stick around and post regularly you will end up with big numbers eventually.

Finally, this is the 1,462nd daily post in a row, at least if we’re counting day start/finish at UTC. I started doing daily posts when we did Blapril during Covid back in 2020 and have kept it up for no good reason since.

Remember Blapril? That feels like so long ago

WP.com no longer recognizes my streak since I changed the date format on the blog from UTC to US Pacific time. When the conversion hit I discovered that last May I did a post that counted as the next day for UTC but not for Pacific time, so as far as WP.com in concerned I have only posted a little over 300 days in a row. I think that illustrates exactly how ephemeral such a streak really is.

One Year Ago

I opened up the month noting that we would soon have five versions of Diablo available to buy and play, a veritable Age of Diablo. However, I wasn’t even sure if I liked Diablo anymore. The Diablo IV early access beta weekend event also got some mixed reviews.

I mentioned Pax Dei for the first time, an upcoming title its studio, Mainframe, described as a medieval EVE Online, which was something I had heard before. Is that still the goal?

Blizzard was trying to spark interest in the Dragonflight expansion with a free weekend.

Over in Wrath Classic, the instance group was into the Halls of Stone, then the Halls of Lightening, and Utgarde Pinnacle. We also took on Onyxia, just to say we’d done it. I was also soaking up the Argent Tournament up in Icecrown as Wrath Classic passed its six month mark.

In EVE Online, the Imperium was headed north to help the then B2 Coalition defend itself from Faternity and PanFam. That meant move ops north. I went on my first op with Progodlegend, former leader of TEST, who came to the Imperium after World War Bee. We were out in the north setting timers and otherwise “putting money in the bank” for future fights.

One of the first payouts was a 6,000 player fight in X47L-Q, battling on a Keepstar right at downtime. That didn’t go so well for the Imperium and many of us needed to be rescued from the system later because the servers were having issues with us all logging back in.

We did managed to bring down three Fraternity Keepstars in Pure Blind in the interim, as well as an irreplaceable Fraternity Fortizar in Pochven, but things often devolved to “made you form!” levels of nonsense.

Back in Delve, Alpha clone doctrines were taking up the defense of the region.

In low sec Faction Warfare, the promised direct enlistment finally arrived. We also got three days of Omega Time for 1 PLEX to get people to try that out.

Elsewhere, CCP announced funding for their crypto blockchain scam/game, Project Awakening.

Over at Meta (nee Facebook) they seemed to be pulling back from their vision of a VR future for the company. Having spent 25 billion dollars more than they took in on the VR front, layoffs were happening and legs seemed to be off the roadmap for Horizon Worlds.

I was also wonder if, after all the industry turmoil of the last decade or so, if free to play ended up working out as planned for MMOs.

I took my first peek at ChatGPT. What nonsense it could produce!

And EverQuest turned 24 while EverQuest II was fiddling with another PvP server.

Finally, the Twitter end times certainly were taking a long time to come to fruition.

Five Years Ago

I dug up my old Macintosh PowerBook 190cs, which I didn’t even remember I still had, and thought about writing about some of the games still on it. However, I was unable to get it onto the network, so screen shots were difficult to obtain and I ended up running out of steam on the whole thing for the time being.

Activision Blizzard was hedging a bit on what effect their layoff of 8% of the company might produce.

Perfect World Entertainment officially killed of the Foundry in both Neverwinter and Star Trek Online, ending their player made content experiment.

Steam decided that they really did need to curate games on their site, a decision pushed by their inept handling of Rape Day. The Epic Game Store, always eager to capitalize on Valve’s foibles, declared that there would be no porn in their store.

Gamigo killed off the Rift Prime retro server due to lack of popularity. It remains my opinion that the Storm Legion expansion killed the game the first time around, so having it do it again was no surprise.

A data center move brought down and kept offline Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online for longer than expected.

Over at Massively OP they were talking about “niche MMORPGs,” a term as ill-defined as most in the gaming world. Honestly, one could argue that MMORPGs are a niche genre.

Over at GoG.com we got a version of the original Diablo, and while it felt primitive it was still very playable and pretty damn good.

Niantic finally allowed players to change teams in Pokemon Go, allowing me to swap from Team Mystic to Team Instinct.

I was giving Path of Exile a shot again with their Synthesis update.

On the LOTRO Legendary servers the Mines of Moria expansion opened up. That sent me off to Eregion in search of legendary weapons and such.

In EVE Online the March update brought new restrictions to Alpha clones. They could no longer run level 4 or 5 missions. People could buy skill books straight from their character sheet… for a bit of a markup. CCP was also tinkering with null sec anomalies. They were worried about too much ISK in the economy. Skill Points though? They were just handing those out.

There was a video of Burn Jita 6 in full 4K.

CCP Guard announced he was leaving CCP after 16 years of service.

In New Eden there were two notable ship losses, the first Komodo titan to die and a rare Gold Magnate. I also got a ship blown up as part of my Myrmidon Experiment, though that was a much less expensive loss.

There was also the EVE Ather Wars tech demo, which went well enough, even if it did not get as many players in space as the company had hoped for.

But Katia Sai was being celebrated for visiting every system in New Eden.

I was pondering the proposed level squish for World of Warcraft. My guess was that Blizzard would be too risk-averse to do it, but I was proven wrong later in the year at BlizzCon. Blizz also revived Wintergrasp, the huge battleground from Wrath of the Lich King, which was fun to visit again.

Runes of Magic turned ten and I reflected on its place in the tale of the genre.

But the big news was EverQuest turning 20 years old. I reflected on its history and celebrated its anniversary. I covered what the team had to say, which included some good news as well as a bit of hubris.

And I was still doing my own play through of some EverQuest content. I got a mercenary for my cleric, traveled to distant zones via dangerous paths, and even hit level 50. It was a lot easier to get there than it was back in the day. It was quite the tourist excursion!

Ten Years Ago

I was thinking about the word “free” and how it really brings up negative connotations. Basically, “free” is usually a scam, so why should we expect “Free to Play” games to viewed as anything else?

My other blog, EVE Online Pictures, qualified for inclusion as an EVE Online fan site. Free account! Or it was. CCP changes the program and really cares about streamers now and not very much about blogs.

Meanwhile CCP lost money through “derecognizing” an asset which would turn out to be the demise of World of Darkness as a project for them. CCP was also taking a stab at cosmetic options for ships.

I picked my 15 most influential video games, and got some other people to pick theirs as well.

WalMart was going to get into the used video game market. Did that ever go anywhere? I don’t shop at Wally World.

Something called MyDream wanted to be a Minecraft killer or some such.

It was the end of the line for Free Realms and Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures as SOE chief John Smedley vowed never to make kids games again. While over in EverQuest the 15 year anniversary included the introduction of instant level 85 characters. I gave that a try and got lost immediately.

Facebook bought Occulus Rift. Meanwhile, Sony announced Project Morpheus which later became PlayStation VR. If you are interested, GamesIndustry.biz has its own look at March 2014, with a lot more about VR.

Brad McQuaid was a month past his unsuccessful Pantheon Kickstarter and I was wondering what the plan was.

In a set of short items, I also noted that EverQuest Next Landmark became simply Landmark, two of the founders of Runic games left the studio to try their luck elsewhere, while King, the makers of Candy Crush Saga, went public and became one of the most shorted stocks on the market! They were mentioned on the Planet Money podcast about shorting. Of course, Blizzard ended up buying them, so I wonder how those shorts played out in the end?

The ongoing “Blizzard isn’t giving you…” series continued… is that still a common phishing vector… while Diablo III: Reaper of Souls went live, an event which included the end of the hated auction house. I had gone back to the game to try some of the changes.

Also on the Blizzard front Hearthstone launched. They did manage to find a hook to get me to play Hearthstone… or at least a couple rounds of it. Ten years later I would be surprised to find I have played more than 50 rounds of the game. (Though I did go collect the 10 year anniversary fiery hearthsteed, so there is that.)

I was also musing about WoW and when the expansion would launch and the stat squish and guild levels and pseudo-server merges and my insta-90 choice and Warlords of Draenor being $50… which was at least better than it being $60. While, actually in the game the instance group took on Zul’Aman.

We formed something I ended up calling the “strategy group,” if only to distinguish it from the “instance group” which started out playing some Age of Empires II.

And I wrote another installment of my ongoing TorilMUD series, this time about the Faerie Forest.

Fifteen Years Ago

In March 2009 we were excited about Pokemon Platinum around our house, although we weren’t really finished with Pokemon Diamond yet.

I spent a day up at GDC in San Francisco.

In WoW we finished up a short hiatus and started back in at the Steamvault. My daughter was tearing up Warsong Gulch. Meanwhile, the Lich King seemed to have laid a curse on my new video card. Nothing I did ever seemed to change this issue, though it did seem to go away eventually.

In EVE Online, the Apocrypha expansion came out bringing wormhole space to the game. And with that the classic graphics were swept away. Adam though, was making his own adventures in New Eden. Oh, and I bought a freighter.

Mythic was trying to tempt me back into Warhammer Online with 10 days free.

Somebody tried to put together a list of the Ten Most Important MMORPGs. Like all such list, this one started the comments rolling.

It was launch day and I was already complaining about Runes of Magic… well, about the patcher in any case.

I finished up what was then the last book of the Wheel of Time series. The last Robert Jordan authored one.

The EverQuest 10th anniversary just wasn’t evoking the level of nostalgia in me that I thought it would.

And we had to say goodbye to an old friend and family member. The picture my daughter drew is still up on the wall. Years later it still draws the occasional sad word later in the evenings when people are tired and a bit more emotionally fragile.

Twenty Years Ago

Battlefield Vietnam, the follow up title to Battlefield 1942 and its expansions, hit the shelves. This was probably the last shooter I played online regularly. It never got a stellar mod like the Desert Combat, though it did have the Sweden vs. Norway mod that was… unique. I also recall one of the maps had an issue that killed your frame rate if you entered a particular area.

Twenty-five Years Ago

Some game called EverQuest launched. Heard of it?

Oh, and RSS became a thing back in March of 1999 as well. A blogger’s best friend… or a good friend… or a cousin that will drop you at the airport when you need it. Something like that.

Most Viewed Posts in March

Search Terms of the Month

“wagering-agreement-meaning-in-nepali”
[Every month this comes up more and more]

“civ5-research-agreement-worth-it”
[Maybe… sure, why not?]

valheim memes
[I am sure there are some]

eve online global maps history
[It is really beyond global…]

can a stone golem destroy silver valheim
[I am really not sure]

топ гей игр на андроид
[Not really able to judge]

Game Time from ManicTime

A bit of a change up this month, with two brand new… to me at least… titles on the list. Valheim was still at the top, but was down from the nearly 90% mark it hit in February.

Valheim – 47.84%
Conan Exiles – 30.50%
EVE Online – 9.27%
Elder Scrolls Online – 6.65%
EverQuest – 5.47%
Hearthstone – 0.23%
World of Warcraft – 0.03%

Meanwhile, life in Azeroth… we’ll get to that below.

Conan Exiles

Conan Exiles is the new hotness for our group, or at least Potshot, Ula and I. It pushes a lot of the right survival sandbox world buttons in ways similar, but not the same, as Valheim did. Will it last though? We have spent quite a bit of the first couple weeks with it being happy little crafting and base building care bears. Eventually, though, we’ll want to find something to work towards besides another tier of furniture making or cooking. And, honestly, I have no idea what that will be.

Elder Scrolls Online

Ah, poor ESO. We jumped into this with such hope at the start of the month and… there was nothing wrong with it, but nothing that compelled us to stay either. I probably have a couple more posts about it, one about the final bits of my play time with it and one this coming week about it hitting its 10th anniversary. But otherwise I wouldn’t expect to read much more about it here, in the short term at least.

EVE Online

People are bitching on Reddit that there isn’t a war going on in null sec, as they always do when there isn’t a big war. But honestly there are fights going on all the time. I have no problem getting in on an op that gets a fight and gets me on a couple of kill mails every month. My minimum goal is a participation credit and being on a kill mail every month, if only to prove I am still there. And there is something of a low key war in play right now between the usual suspects. It is just that, with CCP threatening to change null sec with the summer expansion, the major powers are reluctant to commit to anything like a full scale invasion, lest they get caught with their pants down when CCP does something crazy.

EverQuest

Am I really playing EverQuest? I don’t think so, not in any conventional sense. And yet I am subscribed and logging in a few times a week. I suppose that means I look like a player as far as Daybreak is concerned.

Pokemon Go

We kept on going in March, even heading down to the community center for the big raid day where we got some new friends on our buddy list and caught some Groudons. However, my wife and I both neglected to keep up with the task requirement to get to level 45, so we both need to defeat about a dozen Team Rocket bosses before we can advance. Each boss is unlocked by defeating six grunts. You could probably do two bosses a day if you went out and actively sought out grunts at Pokestops. But when most of your weekday play time is on the couch, you can get maybe a boss every other day from Team Rocket balloons and a bit of diligence. (Or you could just buy the boss tokens in the cash shop, but screw that. 45 doesn’t unlock anything that special.)

Level: 44 (110% of the way to 45 in xp, 3 of 4 level tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 821 (+3) caught, 834 (+2) seen
Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 15 of 20
Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
Current buddy: Zygarde

Valheim

We made our way through the plains, defeated Yagluth, got ourselves a foothold in the mistlands… and then kind of drew up short. Part of that was the call of Valheim was only strong for Potshot and I this time around, so we were off trying other things like ESO and Conan Exiles. But part of this, as I mentioned in a post this past week, was due to the mistlands being something of an upshift in difficulty relative to the experience so far. We’ve not given up, but our time there tapered off as we considered how to approach the new required level of effort.

WoW and WoW Classic and Hearthstone

I don’t think I actually logged into WoW Classic in March. ManicTime doesn’t think so, but it also doesn’t differentiate between retail and classic and classic era clients very well. We are done with Wrath Classic and Cataclysm Classic is still not due for a while.

I did log into retail WoW, at least for a bit because I loaded up Hearthstone, logged in long enough to get counted for their 10 year anniversary event. Then I went over to retail to collect my fiery hearthsteed. Do I need another mount in retail? No. Will I keep claiming them there? Absolutely. Also, the original hearthsteed was a nice, clean design, so one with flames seemed worth having.

Zwift

I did get on the bike this month. Not as often as I should, but some exercise is better than none, right? Right!? My main problem is that I get in writing mode and start cranking out long posts like the EverQuest Starting Points series or… well, this post. Damn, I’m past 3,500 words and I am not done yet. Anyway, exercise was had, even if it was delayed by writing. Also, I seem to have finally hit a slightly steeper leveling curve, so I only gained two levels this past month.

Level – 26 (+2)
Distanced cycled – 1,935 miles (+56 miles)
Elevation climbed – 70,741 (+1,912 feet)
Calories burned – 58,617 (+1,323)

Coming Up

Tomorrow is April 1st and I am strongly considering not posting anything at all. First, it would break the silly posting streak that I mentioned so many words ago at the top of the post. Second, I don’t actually have anything ready at this moment… though it is 9am on Saturday morning, so there is plenty of time. And, third, I suppose it would be an anti-April Fools to not do anything at all.

Then again, if I get up and find Blizzard has full on embraced April Fools once again, I may feel compelled to document it. I suspect, however, aside from the usual “leaked” patch notes post they do annually, we won’t see much of an effort.

I will re-iterate that I am not an anti-April Fools grump like some. That said, the day does serve to illustrate that some of us, myself included, are not all that funny. We’ll see how I feel when the tomorrow comes I suppose.

Otherwise, what is coming up in April?

Um… ESO‘s 10 year anniversary. Probably some more EverQuest posts. I am sure something will happen in EVE Online. And we’re going to have to DO SOMETHING in Conan Exiles at some point. We can only play house for so long.

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Daily Archives: March 31, 2024

March 2024 in Review