Monthly Archives: December 2025

December 2025 in Review

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Here we are at the last post of 2025.  I am always tempted to turn this month in review into something of a year in review… but then I realize I will probably end up with half a dozen such posts in various forms both before and after the new year.  And I also do an anniversary post as well.  How much more wrap up do you need?

And yet, there are a few tidbits that don’t get covered elsewhere and which seem to fit into both the month and review and year in review categories.  So, for example, I can bring out the chart that shows my post distribution over the year.

Once again, I posted every day of the year.  The dark squares are where I posted twice in a day.

TAGN 2025 Posting Activity

I did not post three times in a single day this year.  That happens on a rare occasion… usually due to a couple of timely news items landing during a week where I have a post already set for every day… but not in 2025.

That last square will actually turn into a double post day once this goes live.  I had that No Man’s Sky post this morning.  That will make this the 393rd post for 2025 and the 2,104th consecutive days of publishing a post on the site, a record that has been running since Covid had us all at home.

And then there is the full year traffic.  2025 was an up year.

TAGN Page Views by Year 2025 Edition (final numbers update)

I am trying to decide if the pattern of my blog traffic matches any real world dynamic… does traffic go up when the economy is bad or when there are more hurricanes… or does it follow a certain game, like EVE Online, or is it related to the games I wrote about (2025 saw me write a lot about No Man’s Sky for example), or is it just a game of “Google Loves Me.  Google Loves Me Not?”

All web traffic is a lie, so I suppose it depends on which lie I find most comforting.

One Year Ago

In end of year wrap ups I reviewed my 2024 predictions, recounted my Twitch time, parsed my Reddit Recap, recited my Steam Replay, read out my books of 2025, and looked at highs of 2024.

Then there was the Steam Winter Sale.

Path of Exile II arrived in early access.  But to play this eventual free title you had to buy your way in.  I decided I could wait.

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen also went into early access.  You had to pay for that too… and I declined… but it wasn’t going to be free later on.

And then there was Balatro on the iPad, which seemed to me to be it’s perfect platform.

At Daybreak EverQuest launched The Outer Brood expansion.

In Enshrouded we had made it to Pikemead’s Reach, the largest settlement in the game and full of hazards.  We also setup an outpost in the Far Away Fray Tavern.  Then we were on a hunt for music.

In EVE Online CCP was reworking AIR Daily Goals again.  They also killed off the Activity Tracker, which had been broken for a few months.  Another neglected feature.

There was also the launch of the Winter Nexus event, which I did twice. After that it kind of wears out its welcome.

I also took a look at the impact of the Revenant expansion in the MER, with a special side trip into shuttles once the Utria issue was shut down.

We were also out hunting Skyhooks in The Spire.

Meanwhile, CCP was looking for suckers to buy into their blockchain scam title, EVE Frontier.

In the Stars Reach pre-alpha we were not required to make some of our tools.and gave us a bunch to do with civil engineering.  I tried to embrace the homestead aspect of it, but that really isn’t my thing.

In Pokemon Go I was stuck on the requirements to get to level 47.

I was a bit on about game studios embracing AI.  Elon Musk figured he would use his AI to make games great again or some BS.

I kicked off Fantasy Critic League for 2025.  How did that work out?

Finally, we arrived at the end of my Telephone Tales series, with me working for the state… but I had one follow on post to mark a significant telephone event and perhaps the real end of the story.

Five Years Ago

Pandemic binge watching was still under way, which led me to summarize how it felt.  Somewhere in all that binging I found time to read, so had five books to talk about.  I was also promoting the ability to read the blog via FlipBoard.

Then there were predictions to be reviewed, though 2020 was beyond predicting really.

The Steam Winter Sale kicked off yet again.

I played Among Us for an evening.  I have yet to to play it since.

We got the news that Daybreak was set to be purchased by a Swedish company called Enad Global 7.  As part of that we got a look into Daybreak’s financials.  We learned that DC Universe Online had the most players and highest gross revenue of all their titles, yet EverQuest still managed to eke out the highest net profit.  The deal closed before the month was done.

EverQuest also launched the Claws of Veeshan expansion, the 27th for the title, while its younger sibling, EverQuest II, released the Reign of Shadows expansion, its 17th since launch.

In Pokemon Go, the update had arrived that raised the level cap from 40 to 50, so I was sizing up what it was going to take to get to level 41.

In WoW Shadowlands I hit the level cap… which was back to level 60 after the big squish… after which I had to choose my covenant.  We got a look at how Shadowlands stacked up against past launches.  SuperData, in what would be one of its final reports, said WoW subscribers were up with the expansion.

In WoW Classic the instance group was wandering Blackrock Depths and Stormwind with Marshal Windsor, then went back in to go after a couple more of the bosses in that dungeon.  That done, we made it through the bar only get get stopped cold in the lyceum.   But I was working on my blacksmithing skills as well, though I couldn’t tell you why now.

While CCP was still fruitlessly trying to work out how to create an FPS based in New Eden, in EVE Online, their one and only successful ongoing title, World War Bee was raging, and would soon lead to yet another Guinness world record setting battle.  News from EVE Online summed up:

Finally, I tried to sum up 2020 by shooting only for the high points.  It wasn’t easy.

Ten Years Ago

Thanks to The Force Awakens coming out, George Lucas was in the news and rationalizing his “Han didn’t shoot first” change.  I wasn’t buying it.  There were certainly other things he could have changed.

It was December, so I had to go over the usual posts, scoring predictions, looking back at the highs and lows of the year gone past, looking forward to what I might play 2016, and something about the inevitable Steam holiday sale.  I also made a chart to show what MMOs I was playing in 2015 because everybody else was doing it.  I totally forgot to make that chart again this year.

There was the Operation: Frostline expansion in EVE Online.

In New Eden I got blow up trying to slip a Caracal out of Fountain.  It happens.  On the other hand, I did get my first kill mark on another solo op.  I also hit 150 million skill points, an achievement soon to be made trivial by skill injectors.

The much reviled Fountain War Kickstarter was finally cancelled, as it was clearly not going to get anywhere close to its $150K target.  But was that going to bank the flames of the brightly burning Goon hate? (hint: no)

The recently rebranded Imperium was taking its plans to low sec, either to generate content or display its arrogance depending on who was describing it.  We were also waging a war in Cloud Ring.

Turbine finally got their head screwed on right when it came to insta-levels in Lord of the Rings Online.  I was stomping around in the Mirkwood expansion trying to see in the dark.

In Minecraft I was building a prismarine outpost along the great northern road.  Aaron and I also killed the End Dragon.

On the EverQuest front, the Phinigel “true box” server opened, a retro progression server that was supposed to keep people from multi-boxing groups.

I summed up five years of Raptr tracking my game play with my top 20 played games.  There was LEGO’s somewhat nonsensical online name policy.  And I was playing Monument Valley on the iPad.

Fifteen Years Ago

That December I had one of my all-time most popular posts, Talking Cats Playing Pattycake!  You can thank me for not taking the hint and going all talking cats, all the time.  Or hate me for not doing that.  Take your pick.  And We Didn’t Start the Fire?  Nothing.

But I still had kitty pictures.  Awww.

I still think that if you label a window “Currency” it ought to show all your currency, not just the odd-ball stuff.

I was still feeling the sting of ThinkGeek teasing us with the iCade at April Fools, all the more so because some pretenders were on the scene.

Turbine was giving away 10,000 Turbine Points, which comes out to real, and possibly taxable, value in real world dollars.  The comments on the post were obviously not from tax professionals.

I visited EverQuest for long enough to find a house.  And then I was out of money.

In EverQuest II they were starting the run up to vampires.

And I summed up what we knew about The Agency to that point… which was bupkiss.

In World of Warcraft, Cataclysm launched.  If you weren’t in the beta, there were still scams promising to get you in.  There was the digital pre-order, which worked for me.  And one final hardware upgrade we needed at our house before the expansion launched.  And then there was picking a new character for the re-rolled instance group in Azeroth.

The U.S. release date for Pokemon Black and White was announced at last.

Finally, I wrote something that looked sort of like a review of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s book Mogworld.  And then there was something about zombies vs. werewolves vs. vampires vs. unicorns.

Twenty Years Ago

CCP dropped the Red Moon Rising expansion on EVE Online, introducing a host of new ships including titans and motherships.  They also introduced a new tutorial and new player experience, so some things never change.

Asherons Call 2: Fallen Kings, the sequel to Asheron’s Call, was shut down by Turbine.  Revived again some years later, it and its predecessor were both shut down when Jeffrey Epstein, Columbus Nova, and/or Daybreak Game Company acquired the MMO portion of Turbine and created Standing Stone Games.  That left the open question as to who might own the AC/AC2 IP at this point.  Warner?  Daybreak?  EG7?  Jeffrey Epstein?  The Russians?  Massively OP said at one point that WB still owned it.  Does that mean Netflix might own it soon?  Of course, if you don’t use an IP ownership ends, so maybe you could own it next!

Twenty-Five Years Ago

The second EverQuest expansion, The Scars of Velious, launched.  The icy continent of Velious brought frost giants, Coldain Dwarves, and more dragons to Norrath.  It also introduced The Sleeper, a once per server event.

Most Viewed Posts in December

  1. The No Man’s Sky Holidays 2025 Expedition Schedule
  2. No Man’s Sky Kicks off Expedition 19 Redux: Corvette
  3. Guild Wars Reforged – We Make a Guild and ArenaNet Changes the Rules
  4. We Roll Again in Guild Wars as Reforged Characters
  5. Alamo teeches u 2 play DURID!
  6. Cat Catching in Enshrouded
  7. No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
  8. Planning my Platinum Medal Strategy for Pokemon Go Level 49
  9. Total Annihilation: A 2025 Return to a Retro RTS Classic
  10. Building My First Corvette in No Man’s Sky
  11. RuneScape Shows How It’s Done with its 2025-26 Roadmaps
  12. Enshrouded and our First Night Sanctum

Search Terms of the Month

guild wars reforged
[Indeed!]

when is guild wars reforged coming out
[December 3rd]

what is guild wars reforged
[Update Guild Wars]

guild wars reforged discord
[Nothing official, ANet don’t play that]

guild wars reforged which campaign
[We did Prophecies]

guild wars reforged client download
[On the site under the hamburger menu]

guild wars reforged races
[Just humans]

is guild wars reforged an mmo
[Stop that please]

guild wars reforged free
[Just pay the $20, don’t be like that]

guild wars reforged gold
[And no illicit RMT please]

guild wars reforged private server
[No, stop it]

warcraft iii: reforged crack only
[That was what Blizz was smoking]

Game Time by ManicTime and iOS

Pokemon Go topped the chart this month.

  1. Pokemon Go – 30.33%
  2. Guild Wars – 29.20%
  3. EVE Online – 24.36%
  4. Forza Horizon – 3.86%
  5. No Man’s Sky – 11.37%
  6. Palia – 1.76%

That said, it did so for a couple of reasons.  The first was that there was some serious competition for play time on the PC.  That advantage also played to its advantage because the holidays sent us on the road a few times, and when away from my PC there is only time for Pokemon Go really, since I do not play anything else on my phone.

This has led me to wonder if the iOS time tracking experiment is really worthwhile, as games there compete for a different time slice than PC games.  But more on that when I review my 2025 games played.

EVE Online

After the tumult of the scouring of the Drone regions, I figured December would be a nice quiet month when I would mind my PI and maybe go on an op or two.  And then the Winter Nexus showed up and I spent a lot of time on that.  But that was pretty chill all the same.  I finished up the rewards track on two characters, when on a couple of ops, and kind of took a break.

Forza Horizon 5

This was going to be my holiday game.  I grabbed the base game on sale for $20, a price I do not regret, and for a couple of days I had my game pad out and was racing all over the map.  Then, Guild Wars Reforged showed up and THAT became the holiday game and I didn’t log into Forza again.  Still a good game and I will likely play some more, but it fell off this holiday season.

Guild Wars Reforged

This was the surprise of the season, both in the fact that ArenaNet even did it and that our group decided to pick it up.  We’ll see if it lasts.  When we tried it back in the day, we fell out of it pretty quickly.  This time for sure I guess!

No Man’s Sky

I thought I was done with the expeditions after doing the first three for the holidays… and then I did the corvette expedition and had a good time.  A better time, arguably, than I did with the first three.  In between I log in, jump my freighter to a new system, explore a planet or two, send my frigates out on missions, and make my way slowly to the center of the galaxy.

Palia

All my chickens… or whatever they are… are hungry and depressed and too old to breed or produce eggs.  I wasn’t expecting Palia to punish you quite that hard for not playing for a couple of weeks.  I mean, my plants will sit there waiting to be watered and weeded literally forever, but the chickens age out while you’re away.  Lesson learned I guess.

Pokemon Go

My wife and I made it to level 72 earlier this month, so the focus has been on the four tasks required for the next level.  The most difficult one, for me at least, is getting three more Pokemon to max CP.  I have managed two so far, but I need a good 40 XL candies to get either of my two prime candidates there… and those candies are not coming easy.

  • Level: 72
  • XP Progress: 72.8% of the 203,353,000 xp needed for level 80
  • Tasks for Level 73
    • XP: Done
    • Platinum Medals: 25 of 25
    • Purify 100 Shadow Pokemon: 100 of 100
    • Power up 3 Pokemon to their max CP: 2 of 3
    • Win 30 raids: 19 of 30
  • Pokedex status: 916 (+10) caught out of 1,008 in the Pokedex
  • Pokemon I want: Hawlucha
  • Current buddy: Vulpix (for max CP candies)

Coming Up

Well, tomorrow is 2026, which means a New Years prediction post.  What dumb things will I predict this time?  Find out soon enough!

There is also some final 2025 wrapping up to do.  There will be the end of the Steam Winter Sale, the Steam Awards, and their annual stats update.

In addition, there will also be my game time wrap up of 2025.  I don’t do that early.

As mentioned earlier, today also kicks off the final holiday expedition in No Man’s Sky.  Will I do that one as well?

There is more to do in Guild Wars Reforged. the unleashing of a new Imperium fleet doctrine in EVE Online, and maybe I’ll do something about those chickens in Palia.  We shall see.

No Man’s Sky and the Last 2025 Holiday Run – Expedition 20 Redux: Breach

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Here we are, at the fifth and final 2025 holiday expedition for No Man’s Sky.

The holiday expeditions are coming

For the final round we are back to Expedition 20: Breach.

No Man’s Sky – Breach

In their holiday expedition post, the expedition is describe as:

Breach: 31st Dec – 13th Jan Traverse a desolate and abandoned universe, confronting both the awe and the horror that lurks in deep space. Follow the tale of the ill-faded Fireship Arcadia, step into zero-gravity, and scavenge modules from its wreckage to enhance your own corvette builds. Complete milestones to earn a set of ancient, powerful Atlas-themed corvette modules.

And that about sums it up I suppose.  Again, I am not sure if I am going to run it.  I recall it having a couple of tedious bits.  But I am not a fan of some of the “under the sea” aspects of the expedition… mostly because I always forget to bring the parts with me.

My new life, 1,000 meters under the sea

Of course, part of the problem was the UI lying to me.

They were literally on this planet, I had just killed two!

I imagine they have probably fixed this by now… but we will have to see.

Meanwhile, the UI is now nudging people that the expedition is ready.

Just go to the anomaly to start the expedition

Once there, the expedition terminal should be all primed to go.

Well, it is all primed if you’re on PC.  I know from Reddit that the update for consoles can lag by a day or two at times.

Expedition 20 Redux – Breach

Now, the question is, will I run it again?  Maybe.

My previous post about running the expedition back in October, linked below, reminds me that it was not as chill as the Corvette expedition.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind another batch of the Atlas corvette parts.  We shall see how I feel this weekend I suppose.  I’ll look at the shopping list from the guide on Reddit to be sure.  I’ve done it without that once already.  We shall see.

Oh, and quartzite refines to chromatic metal!  Remember that in the first system where the usual four metals are not present!

But for those who have not run it before or who are keen to run it again, it is up.

Related:

Looking Back at 2025 – I Really Have to Just Focus on the Highs Again

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Once again on the path out of 2025 continues with what is sometimes my final reflective post to be written during the year.

The Year is 2025

There is, at this point, a long tradition of such posts here at TAGN.  If you are sufficiently bored, you can indulge yourself with the musings of past years:

Usually I do highs and lows.  Once in a while I try highs, lows, and in between.  Those are rare years.  And then there are years where the lows will grind you down if you spend too much time dwelling on them, so I just have to zero in on the good things.  2024 was like that, and 2025 even more so.

For years like those I have to just leave behind all the layoffs, cancellations, studio closures, corporate greed, transparent bonus chasing, lies, betrayals, and any AI related stupidity… which is 99% of the pro-AI discourse… and focus on what went right.

Or at least I have to try.

I cannot be held responsible for any backhanded compliments or sarcasm you may perceive.  I am only human, and can only play along with so much greed and stupidity before I start using “fuck” as a modifier in every other sentence.

So here we go.

Microsoft

  • Hasn’t completely gutted Blizzard to boost margins yet.  Crap, I’m off to a bed start already.  But sure, Blizz is still mostly whole.
  • World of Warcraft gets housing!  20 years late by most accounts, but finally there!
  • The War Within got some good updates, even if they had to play the nostalgia card with the Legion Remix to fill out the time between summer and the next expansion.
  • Still had a variety of WoW Classic options in 2025
    • WoW Classic Mists of Pandaria
    • WoW Classic simply vanilla
    • WoW Classic Season of Discovery
    • WoW Classic Hardcore
    • WoW Classic Classic
    • And, coming soon, WoW Classic Classic TBC
  • Diablo IV seemed to pull it together with that last update that made the loot grind… I don’t know… fun maybe?
  • Hearthstone keeps Hearthstoning.
  • A year with a “2” in it, so probably another Call of Duty game shipped
  • XBox no doubt shipped some things and only raised prices… again… but only once… right?

CCP

  • Remained a contributing factor to the Pearl Abyss bottom line, ensuring its continued existence… and possibility of being sold.
  • Hasn’t been sold off to a capital management firm yet… but there are rumblings.
  • Might get sold… maybe to NetEase… would that be bad?
  • EVE Online Legion and Catalyst expansions landed this year with solid results as the “expansions named after in-game ships” era continues.
  • The peak concurrent users hit its highest point since the Covid influx of May 2020.
  • Some pretty big things happened, including the Imperium packing up and moving east, PanFam collapsing, and the Drone Regions being opened up to new groups.  That’ll be something for 2026.
  • Finally started work on the new in-game map!
  • Occasional indication that they fix things based on player feedback… though this would be more convincing if it wasn’t so often stuff that they broke or shipped broken.
  • Some things happened outside of their one money making title:
    • EVE Vanguard testing carried on
    • EVE Online board game Kickstarter shipped
    • EVE Frontier still in testing, hasn’t gone completely crypto mad… yet
  • No layoffs… also yet.  But a new year is coming.

Enad Global 7

  • While caving to many capital management demands, hasn’t sold itself to the Saudis yet!
  • All the annual expansions!
    • EverQuest – Shattering of Ro
    • EverQuest II – Rage of Cthurath
    • Lord of the Rings Online – Kingdoms of Harad
    • Whatever it is DDO, DCUO, and PlanetSide do for new content… I feel like I say that every year.  I should figure out what they do some day.  Wasn’t there something about fishing in PlanetSide, or was that an April Fools joke?
  • Shut down that THJ pirate server… for now, but they will prevail, the law being 100% on their side… which was making $100K a month according to the court.  They need to follow up with the players to make anything positive about it though.
  • Possible chance that the Norrath team might actually listen to players for their 2026 special servers, because if THJ did one thing, it proved there was some demand for something different.
  • Palia doing strong business for the group.
  • LOTRO managed to get most everybody onto the new 64-bit servers… but it was a half a year march of easily avoided mistakes and all the lag problems seemed to move with the players.
  • SSG is also, finally, trying to make LOTRO look better at resolutions above 1920×1080.  I approve of this, but am not going to gush like some until I see what gets to live.  I have been lied to before.

Other MMO and Online Game Things

  • Pokemon Go hasn’t been wrecked by its new Saudi owners yet… yet.
  • Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity expansion launched.
  • Guild Wars: Reforged came out of nowhere and people are not talking about it enough.  Or maybe I am talking about it too much.  One or the other.
  • Old School RuneScape got boats!  Boats!  I want boats!
  • Playable Worlds had a successful Stars Reach Kickstarter campaign.
  • Enshrouded gave us water… and is set for 1.0 in the spring.
  • No Man’s Sky hit hard, first with Worlds: Part II and then with the amazing Voyagers updates!
  • Patheon: Rise of the Fallen has kept it going and is even introducing mounts.
  • Dune: Awakening landed and had some solid points, even if Funcom had to learn, yet again, that maybe a lot of players don’t want PvP.
  • For all its issues, the Ship of Heroes team shipped their title.  A lot of indies don’t even get that far.
  • Dual Universe may have shut their servers, but the team left players a way to run their own.  That puts them ahead of the game.
  • Speaking of universes, Prosperous Universe, a web wannabe spreadsheet space title, keeps sending me email updates.  They must still be going, right?
  • Hey, TorilMUD carried on… 22 years since the last pwipe, 32 years since I first wandered into its vision of Forgotten Realms.

Other Video Game Items

  • Sid Meier’s Last Hurrah; Civilization VII launched… not sure it was great, but it persists.
  • I don’t know if we needed a fifth Europa Universalis, but we got a fifth Europa Universalis.  I failed at the last four, so passed… but it is there if you want it!
  • A good year for indie titles.  I know some people get salty and go on about how not every indie title prospered whenever you mention an indie success.  So a good year for quality indie titles, because it is never a good year for mediocre, knock-off crap indie titles.
  • A shout out to GoG.com for keeping some old titles alive.  A pity Amazon ditched it for their AI Luna platform, which I absolutely will not touch.  Hope the new owner… who was one of the old owners… doesn’t mess things up.
  • Despite my blase attitude towards the event, the Steam Winter Sale still has some tempting deals… it is only the size of my library and the number of unplayed titles that restrains me
  • Oh, and Steam hasn’t gone evil on us yet… though Gabe buying a mega yacht with a submarine dock does make you go, “uh, what?”  But at least he keeps his mouth shut.
  • The Gabe Cube promises to… I don’t know, but people seem to be excited about it.
  • Oh my, Half Life 3 rumors for 2026 already?  A launch title for the Gabe Cube you say?  Tell me more!

Blogs, Social Media, Media, and Online Life

  • The blog abides – TAGN made it past the 19 year mark.
  • In 2025 TAGN saw another uptick.  I think writing about No Man’s Sky helped a lot.
  • The 2025 TAGN Fantasy Critic League was fun for me.  Was it good for you?
  • Google search continues to accept my existence and send people to the blog.
  • WordPress.com, despite all its drama and bad updates, hasn’t broken their platform yet or completely wrecked it with AI slop options… but it is trying hard with the latter.
  • The blogging community likewise abides.
  • Hey, we even had a pretty good Blaugust in 2025.
  • Blue Sky has shaped up nicely and isn’t owned by a right-wing billionaire eager to suppress speech they don’t like (You’ll say “X” and I’ll point to Threads as well).  It is still full of people who seem to get enraged if anybody disagrees with them, which makes me want to ask if they are new to this social media thing.  Seriously, mute or block and move on if crazies show up.  Life is too short.
  • Mastodon likewise hangs on, having grabbed that “Linux of social media” corner of the market.  Still clunky and odd, but it abides.
  • Despite some questionable moves… like ads in all the things… streaming services have managed to put out some decent content.  I was down with things like Pluribus, Alien: Earth, and Mobland on various services, along with a fresh season of Slow Horses.  Oh, and the second season of Andor was so very good, if a little too on point for our current situation.
  • Meanwhile Netflix remains in a league of its own for new content.  If I go back and look at my Binge Watching posts for 2025, Netflix dominates.  I turn streaming services off and on regularly when we’ve finished shows, but I never even think about it with Netflix.  There is just always something new there every week.  I don’t know if their business model is sustainable, but absolutely dominates.
  • On the big screen… or on the small screen when we watched… there were some decent films to be found.  I was pretty happy with F1 and KPop Demon Hunters was fun, even if the music didn’t do anything for me.  We saw the former actually in the theater, but I cannot remember if we saw anything else beyond our living room.

That is what springs to mind in my stream of consciousness.  What else good happened?

2026

It is coming.  We cannot stop it.  We will have to see what it brings and what we can make from that.

Guild Wars Reforged and Wandering the Diessa Lowlands

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The holidays have kept people busy, but somehow Potshot and I seem to find time to get on and play, so we have been running alts ahead of the group while also figuring out how things work in the game.

Guild Wars Reforged

I thought I was ranging out ahead because I made it to Piken Square out in The Breach, but then Potshot said he was as far as Grendich Courthouse in the Diessa Lowlands, so I figured I had better catch up!

Potshot and I had been there before in our brief comedic test to see if, at level 6 and having just created a guild, whether or not we could walk to Lion’s Arch.  We could not.

Yes, we wiped… a couple of times

The path that joins The Breach and Diessa Lowlands is pretty heavily camped… at least for us… and we learned that perhaps we ought not to just blunder into whatever mobs are wandering lest we attract everybody in the neighborhood.

So, having left from Piken Square on the journey with my henchmen… the whole group now level 8… so mighty… I took care on approach to the zone line, letting groups wander off on their own before tackling them.

The Charr hanging out on The Breach side of the crossing

That went well enough.  Amazing what a bit of care and paying attention to the red dots on the mini map will do for you.

Then there was the question of where to go from there.  Some excellent planning on my part.  I did have a couple of quests from Piken Square to finish in the Diessa Lowlands, so I followed the first of those, The Duke’s Daughter, which led me on wide arc along the south side of the zone before I found her ghost.

I had another quest to slay Garfazz Bloodfang, but the mini-map arrow was pulling me further east for that and it *felt* maybe I ought to turn north at some point.  I had glanced at the map online and had a sense of where it might be, so off I went.  I figured that the zone, which like The Breach, tends to channel you towards specific destinations, would push me in the right direction.

And then I hit the bridge.

The Bridge of Trouble

In the middle of the zone the path wound under a bridge connecting a couple areas of high ground… high ground that was occupied by some wandering groups who, if they roamed too close, would start using ranged attacks on us.

In addition, there were a few of groups arrayed on either side of the bridge along the path.  This looked to be the next gauntlet to pass through, and on the first try I managed to get us mired with the maximum number of mobs, causing a wipe.

Well, I wanted to go back to Piken Square to turn in the quest I had finished anyway.

That done I rolled out with the group again, made the crossing into the zone, wandered a while, and eventually showed up near the bridge again.

This time I tried to be careful.  I took the groups on the near side of the bridge by themselves then, having cleared one side, watched the mini-map until the group roaming across the bridge wandered off to the right, at which point I tried to rush the group past the bridge and down the canyon to take the big group on the other side as quickly as possible.

Not quickly enough.  We were still engaged when another group on the high ground wandered up and added their fire to the battle.  Another wipe.

Ah, but we had made progress.  Enough progress to try and finish things off with the death debuff?   I ran the group back to find out… and no.  With two rounds of debuff it was time to start again.

With greater care and patience I got the group past the bridge.  This was only my fourth time running down the path, at least I seemed to be learning.  I had mentioned this to Potshot on Discord and he had linked a map for me to follow.

The map to follow

 He linked that at about 22:30 local time when I was off for another run and in Discord, sitting on my second monitor, in the dark, scaled down considerably, I really only registered the red line, which seemed to show I was on the right path. 

So I pressed on… and arrived at something like a portal or zone line.

So what is this Flame Temple Corridor?

 Well, the red line seemed to go this way, so off we went.

We’re in the corridor now!

That was a long series of fights, but at least there were some NPCs who picked us up and traveled with us… until they died.  But not before we had passed by the urn with Althea’s Ashes for a quest.  Handy.  So something accomplished.  But as I pressed on, we came to another zone line.

And now a Dragon’s Gullet?

I went into Dragon’s Gullet, but by that point it was clear that I had gone down the wrong path.  I probed in a ways, then decided to call it a night as it was closing in on midnight.

The next day, when I had some time, I go on and set out once more from Piken Square to wander through Diessa Lowlands once more.  This time I figured I would focus on my remaining quest and just find Garfazz Bloodfang.

I followed the arrow on the mini-map and wandered west and north, eventually finding the camp of Garfazz and, after quite a fight, finished him off.  I and my pet were level 10 by that point.  We did at least accumulate xp and items and cash.  I had upgraded my armor to the second set in Ascalon City by that point and had found a better bow… and, of course, had more points to assign to boost skills.

Having done that, I started to wander, trying line up with the map Potshot linked, where I had finally noticed the green and blue paths that led to Grendich Courthouse.  But aligning the terrain that I could see it was hard to judge where I really was, so I wandered some more.

Finally, probing around the map I got close enough that the map drew the swirl thing that showed where the camp lay.  By that point I had wandered quite a ways.  I took a screen shot of my path.

My fifth journey through Diessa Lowlands

From there I was able to make it and… Grendich Courthouse is kind of a dump.  There isn’t a lot of “there” there.  But it did have a merchant and a collector and bank access, so I was able to unload my bag.

Meanwhile, Potshot had been looking into missions.  So after a bit of progress on the map, we grouped up and turned to those for a bit.

TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2025 – Winners and Wrap Up

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The 2025 league is now officially done.  The end time was 17:00 Pacific time yesterday.

Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games

Any changes after that will be ignored.

So the final scores for the 2025 TAGN Fantasy Critic League are as follows:

TAGN FCL 2025 – Final Scores

The league still thinks Cyanbane has a shot at third place, but we’re calling things as they stand right now.

Congrats to Bhagpuss, who secured the top spot and held off contenders for many weeks!

That is quite a ways from the opening estimate by the league immediately after the draft, which put Bhagpuss in 10th place.  A rise to the top indeed

The initial standings estimate

I am dubious of the early projections at this point, but it did get Potshot up at the top, and he ran a close second.

Even when we all finally had a score at week twelve, Bhagpuss was still being projected down in eighth position.

The Standings for Week 12

At that point Shintar was the pick for first.  But Bhagpuss has held the top projection since week sixteen, which was the last time Potshot was projected to win.

The Standings for Week 16

Potshot had a run in first place, and was only a few points shy in the end, but then Bhagpuss picks started coming in and he rose to the top and stayed there.

So the final scores and ranking looked like this:

Rank Name Publisher Score
1🥇 Bhagpuss Pretty Blue Fox Games 134.66
2🥈 p0tsh0t Hare Brained Schemes 130.46
3🥉 Shintar Play Forever Mwahahaha 109.25
4 Cyanbane Neutical Publishing 108.68
5 Shawn Crash and Burn Games 106.65
6 Shilgrod Rusty Shackleford 96.56
7 Wilhelm TAGN HQ 76.46
8 Archey Frabjous Day Enterprises 65.46
9 Arhanta Rodent Entertainment 55.3
10 Kluwes Slightly Scuffed Studios 51.14

Shintar held out in the end, with Octopath Traveler 0 bubbling up a bit more in the reviews, giving her a half a point gap ahead of Cyanbane.

Octopath Traveler 0

Still, very close.

Looking at the final scores, the top ten highest scoring picks in the league were:

Title Reviews Score Picked By
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 92.1 24.2 Bhagpuss
Donkey Kong Bananza 91.3 22.7 Shilgrod
Hollow Knight: Silksong 91.1 22.3 Shintar
Split Fiction 90.7 21.5 Potshot
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter 90.1 20.3 Kluwes
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach 89.6 19.6 Arhanta
Blue Prince 89.6 19.6 Bhagpuss
Monster Hunter Wilds 89.4 19.4 Shintar
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II 88.9 18.9 Kluwes
Monster Train 2 87.8 17.8 Cyanbane

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was the best pick for our league. (Pity about the AI thing.)

Clair Obscur Expedition 33

And yes, the first place winner picked the highest scoring title for the league, and had two in the top ten.

But Shintar also had two picks in the top ten, and Arhanta had one and ended up in ninth position.

At the other end of the list, what picks were dragging us down?  Here are the bottom ten lowest scoring picks.

Title Reviews Score Picked By
Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game 61.1 -8.9 Archey
Lost Soul Aside 62.8 -7.2 Arhanta
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 63 -7 Arhanta
Shadow Labyrinth 69 -1 Shintar
Killing Floor 3 69.3 -0.7 Kluwes
Ultimate Sheep Raccoon 0 0 Wilhelm
RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business 70.7 0.7 Archey
Little Nightmares III 71.2 1.2 Arhanta
Sniper Elite: Resistance 73.2 3.2 Wilhelm
Mafia: The Old Country 73.6 3.6 Kluwes

I have two on that list, as does Archey, while Arhanta has three.  That out weighed any decent picks.

Out of 84 titles picked in the league, only four went into negative territory.  And then there were the zero score titles.

My Ultimate Sheep Raccoon pick is the only title to ship and not receive sufficient reviews for a score.

Ultimate Sheep Raccoon – womp womp

There were three other titles, locked by counter picks, that did not get a score because they failed to ship.  Those were Fable, picked by Archey, World of Warcraft: Midnight picked by Shilgrod, and Unannounced Mainline Half-Life Game, picked by me, giving me two zero point titles.

Speaking of counter picks, this is how we did as a league on those.

Counter Pick Title Picker Target Score Impact
The Outer Worlds 2 Shilgrod Shintar -12.7
Dynasty Warriors: Origins Cyanbane Archey -11.1
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Arhanta Shilgrod -11.1
Dune: Awakening Kluwes Shawn -10.7
Mafia: The Old Country Potshot Kluwes -3.6
Unannounced Mainline Half-Life Game Shintar Wilhelm 0
Ultimate Sheep Raccoon Archey Wilhelm 0
Wonder Woman Bhagpuss Shilgrod 0
World of Warcraft: Midnight Wilhelm Shilgrod 0
Fable Shawn Archey 0

So nobody made any headway with their counter pick, but half the league lost some points in the transaction.  Still, failing to choose a counter pick gets you negative fifteen points, so nobody did worse than not taking a shot.

Picking something that won’t ship seems to be the safest bet.

Overall, the average score for a pick in our league was 11.73 points, or about an 82 review score.  That makes for 105.7 as the overall average score for nine picks, not factoring in counter picks.  Bhagpuss was in with 14.96 points on average per pick.  Meanwhile, half the league was below average!  It is almost like math works.

Then there is how things went overall.  You can use the league search functions to find the best and worst titles for the season.   These were the ten highest score titles that we could have chosen.

Title Score Released Hype % Picked Our League
Hades II 29 25-Sep-25 22.7 26.40% none
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 24.2 24-Apr-25 78.2 93.50% Bhagpuss
The Séance of Blake Manor 22.9 27-Oct-25 1.3 1.30% none
Donkey Kong Bananza 22.8 17-Jul-25 74.8 87.90% Shilgrod
Hollow Knight: Silksong 22.3 4-Sep-25 84.1 94.90% Shintar
Split Fiction 21.5 6-Mar-25 90.4 98.20% Potshot
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter 20.3 19-Sep-25 28.5 39.90% Klulwes
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach 19.6 26-Jun-25 86.4 97% Arhanta
Blue Prince 19.6 10-Apr-25 40.6 57.60% Bhagpuss
Monster Hunter Wilds 19.4 28-Feb-25 97.3 99.20% Shintar

While we grabbed eight of the top ten scoring titles in our league,  we missed out on Hades II, the top scoring pick for 2025.

Hades II

The only other title in the top ten we missed was The Seance of Blake Manor.

The Seance of Blake Manor

That was not on anybody’s radar it seems.  With a 1.3 hype factor is only ended up being picked in 1.30% of leagues.

Flipping that on its head, the ten worst scoring titles for 2025 we could have picked from were the following:

Title Score Released Hype % Picked
MindsEye -18.4 10-Jun-25 5.6 6.50%
Dead Static Drive -18.3 5-Nov-25 0.7 1%
Captain Blood -15.5 6-May-25 0 0%
Tamagotchi Plaza -14.6 27-Jun-25 0.6 0.80%
Let It Die: Inferno -14.2 3-Dec-25 1.2 1.10%
Neptunia Riders VS Dogoos -13 28-Jan-25 0 0%
Scar-Lead Salvation -12.9 29-May-25 0 0%
Creature Keeper -12.5 8-May-25 0.2 0.20%
The House of the Dead 2: Remake -12 7-Aug-25 0.3 0.30%
Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact -11.1 17-Jul-25 1.7 2.10%

I can say that we stayed pretty clear of that segment, our worst pick only being 20 rows down the page.  We could have done worse.  So that is a wrap for 2025.

2026 League Starts Next Week

Now, the final reminder for the 2026 league.  Everybody has created their publisher and most people have set themselves to auto pick.

The draft is slated for Saturday, January 3, 2026, at 11:00 Pacific time, which is 19:00 UTC.  At that time you, me, or the league will be picking four titles.  That will leave five titles and a counter pick to be chosen later.

You do not have to be there for the draft.  But if you are not there and you have a watchlist of picks, you should turn on the Auto Draft option which is located under Player Actions on the left side of the league window.

Here is the Auto Draft setting

We have an even dozen in the league right now, which means we will be picking 48 titles, so your watchlist should be pretty deep if possible.  If it is not, then the league will pick the title available with the highest hype level for you… or if you didn’t set auto draft, then I will pick the highest hyped available title for you.

The draft order and picks will be broadcast on the TAGN Discord server since I have the bot setup for it.

A reminder of the rule changes made for the coming year:

  • Number of ‘any unreleased’ droppable games per publisher changed from 4 to Unlimited
  • Number of ‘will release’ droppable games per publisher changed from 4 to Unlimited
  • ‘Counter Picks Block Drops’ from ‘Yes’ to ‘No’

So nobody will be stuck behind a counter pick and, more importantly, I won’t have to go in and manually resolve titles that get cancelled.  I would like to not have to intervene in the league.

There is still time to join for 2026.

I  wrote a whole post last year about how to join and what to do that goes into greater detail.  But the summary was:

  1. Go to Fantasy Critic League and create an account
  2. Click on this link, which will invite you to join the TAGN League [updated for 2026]
  3. Follow the instructions which includes creating a publisher that represents you
  4. Click on the Auto Draft link in the side bar and turn that on
  5. Recommended – Create a Watch List of titles you are interested in
  6. Profit!

Once the draft is run the league will be locked for 2026, and then we’ll see how it goes.

Addendum Dec 29 16:07 Pacific Time update:

  • Publisher Score Updates
    • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
      • Moved from 4th place to 3rd place
    • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
      • Moved from 3rd place to 4th place

Really?  But I called the final score on Saturday, so this is just some post game trivia.

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