Category Archives: Pokemon Go

April 2024 in Review

The Site

A while back WP.com introduced Blaze, a paid ad program that allows you to promote your blog. Back when it first showed up they gave me a $50 credit and I tried it… and it was not worth the cash. 65 clicks into my promoted post seemed like a joke for that much money.

Then they sent out surveys and talked about how they were making it better. So when they gave me another $50 credit this month I decided to try it again. This time I chose my post about Balatro, which I though was maybe a bit more mainstream for a video game ad.

And this time they are telling me the ad pulled in almost 500 clicks. A serious improvement… if it is true. The problem is that if I go into the WP.com stats and look at how many clicks that post received during the run of the ad, it is actually closer to 250.

Still an improvement… but the stats on my admin page show clicks from all sources, just not the ad, and while traffic often dies off after a day or two, it can still carry on for weeks in little drips and drabs. So there is no saying that all of those 250 were from the ad.

In the end, even if it was a great improvement and added another 25 to 50 views a day over a ten day campaign, would you spend $50 of your own money for that result? I wouldn’t.

Meanwhile, just because I need an excuse to put an image in here somewhere, the surges of direct traffic continue to pop up now and again.

Direct traffic as a source in April 2024

However, these surges are a lot less regular than they were back in November and December. Search engine traffic… which means Google 99% of the time, remain steady.

Also, WTF is going on with the Google Analytics site? Have they just broken it on Firefox to be dicks?

Finally, the Flag Counter widget informs me that somebody from a new country visited the blog in April. Welcome random person from Palau! I hope you found something interesting!

First new county in a few years

Palau, a trust territory of the United States in the wake of the second world war, is an independent island nation, but has two ZIP codes assigned to it and is still served by the US Postal Service.

One Year Ago

I did what I believed to be my final post specifically covering April Fools at Blizzard, Blizz having gone pretty cool on the whole thing since around 2017. We’ll see if this pans out.

The Fellowship and Fire update came to New World, bringing with is seasons and season passes.

LOTRO offered a limited time level 140 boost, which was the cap at the time. I bought one and went through the process of using it.

Niantic was going after remote raiding in Pokemon Go.

Honest Game Trailers took on the Civilization Series, which aligned nicely with my own brief retrospective on the games. I did my own round up of the series, with some ranking. All versions I looked at were playable in some form. I even went and played Civilization VI. I am still not a fan.

In Wrath Classic the group was culling Stratholme with Arthas. I also had some minor gripes about Wrath Classic. We also had the Activision Blizzard Q1 2023 financials.

I wrote about five EVE Online maps that were better than the two in-game maps the game offers. Spoiler: fifth place was a multi-way tie, so it was way more than five. Meanwhile, somebody did a video of the 2007 to 2022 null sec influence map… which was one of the maps on my list.

Meanwhile, as we drew closer to the EVE 20th anniversary, CCP was refurbing the EVE monument, which included the ability to get your character name on the plaques if you missed that at the ten year anniversary. They also outlined the road to Alliance Tournament XIX.

I also did a Friday Bullet Points post about EVE Online that covered the new launcher beta, another in-game theft, a reminder about the monument thing, Fraternity Keepstars, and the MER. Oh, and they also announced that EVE Anywhere was going away. Cloud Computing was sooo 2016.

In the game, the Imperium and B2 coalitions managed to win the armor time against Fraternity’s Keepstar in X47L-Q, a battle than ran through down time, so we all got kicked and had to log back in again to resume the fight. Having lost the armor timer, Fraternity and its allies did not contest the final timer and the Keepstar was destroyed. The Imperium then dialed-back operations in Pure Blind.

I also looked into March 2023 destruction in the game.

Then there was the a16z Project Awakening that CCP was going on about. I was not a fan. Since Pearl Abyss was all in on this blockchain scam nonsense, I wondered who should have bought CCP back in 2018.

I was wondering what Atari… or the company that owned the Atari name… was actually in the business of doing.

I was also kind of wondering what the Metaverse Standards Forum was doing… another working group for a nonsense idea.

I did another Friday Bullet Points post, this time about the Worldle-verse, where Wordle itself hit puzzle 666, Spotify was shutting down Heardle, a DOS version of Wordle, a WoW focused version of Wordle, and Digits from the NYT which they have since shut down.

I was fiddling with AI bots, asking what the difference between an MMO and an MMORPG was, why there were so many fantasy MMORPS, and how to find a warm ocean in Minecraft.

And over on Twitter, which was still Twitter then, Elon’s threat to take away blue checkmarks for verified users and make them only available for sale failed to appear on the appointed day… except for the New York Times, which Elon felt was spreading the “woke mind virus” or some BS. “Woke” quickly came to mean “something I don’t like” when used by Elon. The unpaid for blue checks eventually were taken away in the back half of the month. The blue check mark went from “this celeb or whoever is who they say they are” to “This bozo paid $8.”

Five Years Ago

April Fools, once a grand tradition at Blizzard, was pretty sparse.

Google Plus went away.

The Minecraft Village & Pillage update landed.

CCP loudly announced the removal and banning of CSM13 member Brisc Rubal. And then in what I described as the “nightmare scenario,” CCP hedged, promising to investigate further. And then they exonerated Brisc and restored him apologizing for all the trouble. A disastrous example of “measure once, cut twice” by CCP. And Brisc didn’t get his reputation back. I still see people who think he must have been guilty and somehow worked a deal or threatened to sue in order to get CCP to back down.

CCP also announced the CSM14 election timeline. Brisc opted to stay away from that. And the April update brought capital nerfs, especially for the Rorqual. Hilmar was starting on something about player retention. And CCP unveiled the Katia Sai monument in Saisio.

Actually out in space myself in EVE Online, I was flying with Liberty Squad as we visited The Spire for a fight over a Sotiyo as well as busting some other structures and setting some timers. There was also an op from Delve to Lonetrek and another Reavers Race.

NantWorks handed H1Z1… or Z1 Battle Royale… back to Daybreak, having failed to make a go of the challenge of reviving the game.

I reviewed a bit of the coverage the EverQuest 20th anniversary got. There was also some changes to the Selo progression server, which reflected on what players wanted versus what Daybreak was offering.

I was also playing World of Warcraft, binging on pet battles and catching some new pets. We got some news about the approaching update, which would unlock flying in Battle for Azeroth. That promoted me to get the first part of the pathfinder achievement done. I also got my first alt to level 120, though he hadn’t even been to Zandalar or Kul’Tiras. Pet battles will do ya.

And I came up with a guide to criticizing games you do not like.

Ten Years Ago

Spacewar! for the PDP-1 was up via emulation on the internet archive.

The Elder Scrolls Online launched, hitting its planned April 4th date. I did not play.

I was diving in to Pokemon X & Y, having returned to Pokemon at last.

The strategy group played a game of Civilization V that ended with a win via nuclear terror.

The Kickstarter campaign for the book A History of the Great Empires of EVE Online kicked off. We were also watching Pantheon: Rise of the Something was splutter along after failing its Kickstarter campaign.

In EVE Online proper there was Burn Jita 3, which seemed like less of a thing the third time out. There was a video. Then there was the CSM9 vote. At least there were only 36 candidates on the ballot.

In null sec we were shooting Black Legion things, because that is what we did in the CFC. I was just happy to be using lasers, those skills having been trained up amongst my 120 million skill points. There were also some posts about being space famous and an attempt at in-game blackmail.

But on the broader CCP front, World of Darkness was officially cancelled.

On the iPad I was playing Hearthstone and QuizUp… for about a week.

Turbine announced that Beornings were coming to Lord of the Rings Online.

SOE gave me a key for seven days of Landmark, so I went and tried it out. SOE also announced H1Z1 and began their love affair with Reddit and got their new All Access plan running. While on the old school front, Dave Georgeson said SOE never plans to shut down EverQuest.

Warlords of Draenor was still a long ways away. But Blizzard was doing well on other fronts. The instance group finished up Zul’gurub. And there was the usual April Fools stuff.

Over at GamesIndustry.biz they have a round up of what was going in April of 2014.

Fifteen Years Ago

Dave Arneson passed away. He was, with Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, that so-influential gaming system that has shaped how we view fantasy swords and sorcery games for over 30 years now. There would be no World of Warcraft as it is today without Dungeons & Dragons.

We also saw the launch of SOE’s Free Realms, which stuttered a bit on day one. Soon though they had millions of people signed up for the game, but since it was free to play, not a common thing at the time, that was no indication of revenue. My daughter tried to sign up four times, so that was at least four out of the millions. SOE was advertising the game heavily on Cartoon Network. But FR did not run on MacOS, and my daughter was running on an iMac at the time. I knew she has signed up because her email used to get routed to me.

In EVE Online I was mulling over the Apocrypha expansion and configuring up a Cerebus to try out as a mission runner. I was also doing invention to make tech II missiles, which meant data cores and research agents and such, and pondering the idea that maybe using your skills should increase your skill points or something.

As usual, there was much ado about World of Warcraft.

PETA was planning some event in WoW. I had trouble believing it wasn’t a joke.
In a blinding flash of the obvious, Nielsen reported that a lot of guys play WoW.
There was Noblegarden, or Blizzard Easter, and its egg collecting frenzy.
There was my daughter and I trying to swim to Silvermoon to find a pet for her hunter.
I couldn’t find a copy of The Burning Crusade at Fry’s.
After hitting level 30 my daughter, my mom, and I were all riding around together on our night elf cat mounts.
And the instance group, after a hiatus, got back together, did a warm up run in the Shadow Labyrinth, then went on to finally collect the head of Ingvar the Plunderer. After that it was on to The Nexus.

I was sniggering like a pre-teen about Cornhole. Also, there was something about Honest Scrap that was a meme, back when memes weren’t just pop culture references.

I was looking back on two years of the Wii and the games we played on it.

On the TV we were apparently watching Castle and Dollhouse.

And then there were new comers as we brought home two wee kittens.

Twenty Years Ago

City of Heroes launched in the US. Closed down by NCsoft in 2012, the game lives on with a privately run server called City of Heroes Rebirth, built on the original code base.

Lineage II launched in North America. This successor to the Lineage never reached the original’s popularity, but hung on to its own user base.

Thirty Five Years Ago

The Nintendo Game Boy launched in Japan. Perhaps the definitive hand held console for a generation, it lasted from the Tetris era into the original Pokemon series of games.

Most Viewed Posts in April

Search Terms of the Month

eve origin of the northern coalition
[Pretty sure it started in the north…]

zombie heat gay game
[Look man, just leave me out of this…]

“ttc-collective-agreement-2020”
[Widely criticized, now just a PanFam thing]

is jetpack replaced wordpress app
[Sort of…]

valheim how much iron do i need for the entire game
[All of it. Seriously, later biomes use it.]

how to get edencom lp
[Run Edencom missions?]

Game Time from ManicTime

In the end, April was pretty evenly divided. I came in on Conan Exiles and out on Wrath Classic really.

Conan Exiles – 29.56%
WoW Classic – 23.75%
Balatro – 21.81%
Valheim – 13.00%
EVE Online – 5.50%
EverQuest – 6.39%

Balatro

A deck building rogue-like poker based card game. That ate up some time. I’ve kind of hit a wall on getting past 80K points in a single hand to be a boss blind. The cards have failed me there a few times.

Conan Exiles

We were all-in on this at the start of the month. Many hours were invested. We explored, found horses, did our first dungeon… then it kind of faded. It didn’t help that GPortal’s LA data center, where our server is hosted, was down for a full weekend this month. That’ll break your stride.

EVE Online

I did undock and go on a couple of fleets this month. I left my mark on zKillboard to at least provide proof of life. But I haven’t been all that invested. The interesting ops have been running in early EU time, which is the only time PanFam and Fraternity will show up.

EverQuest

I continue to explore some of the old places still there in Norrath, with erratic tales of the old days based on foggy memories and rose colored glasses. Not done with this yet.

Pokemon Go

Just a few more Team Rocket leaders to go to unlock level 45 for my with and I. At least we still earn xp as we try to knock down that one final objective, so we’ll be a few million points into that level once we finish the task.

Level: 44 (138% of the way to 45 in xp, 3 of 4 level tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 822 (+1) caught, 836 (+2) seen
Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 15 of 20
Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
Current buddy: Zygarde

Valheim

We had a slow down in Valheim as Conan Exiles became a focus for several weeks. Also, the Mistlands were a bit too oppressive. Now that I have banished the mist… at least on my client… I am going to see if we can unlock some of the resources of the biome as the Ashlands loom.

WoW Classic

We started off the month having spent weeks away from the game. But the coming of Cataclysm Classic awakened the desire to carry on… at least in Potshot and I. I spent time working on one last alt who is already level 79 as I write this. I will have some options going into a revamped Azeroth late in May.

Zwift

Zwift gave up on its bonus experience for weekly usage streaks, so my unearned advancement up the level path has slowed down. Not that levels mean much, aside from cosmetic unlocks, and I am many levels from anything interesting. But still I get on and ride.

Level – 27 (+1)
Distanced cycled – 1,973 miles (+35 miles)
Elevation climbed – 72,198 (+1,457 feet)
Calories burned – 59,692 (+1,075)

Coming Up

I wrote a post about a number of things coming up on the WoW front in May. Probably the most on point is the coming of Cataclysm Classic. The pre-patch lands today and the expansion on May 20th. The will no doubt generate some sort of assessment of Wrath Classic and a bit of history about Cata.

It is also the Capsuleer Day celebration in EVE Online. I’ll get to that, but it looks like that day, the game’s 21st anniversary this year, will be celebrated all month long.

I also strongly suspect that we’ll get the Ashlands update for Valheim in May. They are close.

I have to travel quite a bit more than usual in May, so my posting streak is at risk of being broken… not that such a streak has any real meaning. But it is a thing.

March 2024 in Review

5 Replies

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.

Pokemon Go Now Lets You Use a Lucky Egg at Friendship Milestones

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I wrote previously about the angst and frustration at trying to time friendship milestones in Pokemon Go. These can be the biggest single xp events you have in the game and using a lucky egg will double the amount of experience you get… if you time it right and don’t mess it up.

Pokemon Go – Since 2016

The fact that my post about this one of the most popular posts I have written in the last year based on search results indicates that I am not the only one who felt this might be an issue.

You want the big xp, pop a lucky egg in time!

However, Niantic has apparently heard our frustrated outburst when somebody becomes a best friend and you find you’ve forgotten to pop that lucky egg to make the most of it.

This past week I noticed a few updates with the game, the biggest one being the button I saw last night on a friendship milestone.

Use a lucky egg? Yes Please!

There is now a big button on the alert that allows you to use a lucky egg and apply it to your milestone, even displaying how much additional xp you will get for it.

I am sure this will benefit Niantic in that it will drive lucky egg sales from the shop, which will, in turn, drive coin sales. But for this change I don’t care. As a player lingering in the mid-40s, these friendship milestones are a big deal for leveling up.

In addition, Niantic also put in buttons when you use a revive or a heal that allow you to “revive all” or “heal all,” which can be very handy after you have done a few raids and are catching up to your group. It also lets you use up all those lesser heal potions quickly rather than just trashing them for taking up too much storage space.

Of course, the ways of the Pokemon Go client are strange. I had the new revive and heal buttons show up days ago in my client, but my wife doesn’t see the in her app. However, she saw the “use lucky egg” option. So if you don’t see any of these today, you should see them soon. Just hope you don’t miss a friendship milestone while you wait.

And then there is the “two steps forward, one step back” aspect of things.

Niantic has messed up the daily streak tracker in the app.

Which day am I on?

When you look at that, have I completed the two day 6 activities? It looks like it. Or maybe it is day 7 now and I have not done that yet.

But no. In this screen shot I have done the catch but have yet to do the spin on day 6. Can you see any diffence between the two rows? Because I can’t.

This at least once caused me to use a lucky egg thinking it was day 7 during the big streak bonus they had going recently. The big streak bonus is gone, so no more 40K payouts on day 7, doubled with a lucky egg if you remembered and were not fooled by the UI, but the steak indicator still needs to be fixed.

The worst part is that this bit of the UI used to work fine… then they broke it.

So it is in Pokemon Go.

Dire Predictions in the Face of the Horror that will be 2024

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For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

–Hosea 8:7

Welcome to the new year. It is going to suck. 2024 is going to be a grim year. If we accept that up front, we’ll be better prepared to meet things head on.

2024 banner courtesy of our daughter

I mean sure, everything LOOKS good right now. The stock market has hit record highs, gas prices are way down, and the unemployment rate is as low as it has ever been in my lifetime. US troops aren’t fighting on the ground on foreign soil for the first time in decades. Hell, inflation has been tamed to the extent that the Federal Reserve says it will be lowering interest rates. Those are all ingredients for a happy new year.

Except, of course, it is a presidential election year. Those are bad even when both candidates aren’t too old and when one of them didn’t attempt a coup the last time around. And this time the coup guy is promising a dictatorship if he wins. You’d think that would make this election an easy choice… but no. So it is going to be grim campaign, and even if the wannabe dictator loses he won’t go quietly. It will be non-stop whining from him and his followers until he dies.

And that is just our own problem. The rest of the world is still on fire, with Russia in Ukraine, China bullying anybody within IRBM range, and the eternal mess that is Palestine and Israel having flared up into a full armed conflict again.

Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.

-Tom Lehrer, quoting a friend

That means the need for distraction from a possible national disaster will be stronger than ever. Will it be a good year for video games as we trod the wind swept precipice of doom? The grimness of the prospect of 2024 has put me in a bit of a mood, so I am going to trot out what is probably the most dire set of predictions I have done so far. But they will be video game predictions (mostly), so the stakes are low. There is, of course, a long history of this sort of thing here:

2008 – Predictions (silly, mostly wrong)
2009 – Predictions (mostly silly, mostly wrong)
2010 – Predictions (lots of bullet points, mostly wrong)
2011 – Demands (mostly unmet)
2012 – Questions (mostly unanswered)
2013 – Goals (mostly unfulfilled)
2014 – Predictions (serious, mostly wrong again)
2015 – Predictions (serious, mostly wrong as usual)
2016 – Predictions (serious-ish, mostly wrong)
2017 – Predictions (more wrong than usual)
2018 – Predictions (serious and maybe less wrong than usual)
2019 – Predictions (scandalous and mostly wrong)
2020 – Predictions (2020 made me so very wrong)
2021 – Questions (mostly bad answers)
2022 – Predictions (serious and slightly more accurate than usual)
2023 – Questions (That were mostly predictions and surprisingly on point)

I wrote most of these the day I scored my 2023 predictions and, while I updated a couple due to news that came out later… the whole WoW Roadmap made me shift some dates… others I left “as is” even when contrary news landed because the news isn’t always right and things happen.

Also, I will inject my usual reminder that predictions are not wishes. I don’t WANT bad things to happen, but I live in a world where far too few good things happen. I am a product of my environment.

1 – Microsoft Buyers Remorse

Everything with Microsoft and XBox was rainbows and lollipops at BlizzCon but, having closed the deal, now MSFT is going to need to deal with the reality. And the reality is that they are going to behave like every other large game studio has been and lay a bunch of people off. Microsoft has already severely trimmed some of its other companies, like LinkedIn, so it will be Blizz next. Granted, there was always going to be some redundancy trimmed, but MSFT will got further and will axe a couple hundred people working on active Blizz projects in 2024

2 – Activision Settlement Woes

Activision Blizzard may have settled with the state of California over harassment and discrimination charges, but they still have a laundry list of changes they have promised to make… and they’ll drag their feet on that until the state has to come after them again. California will need to get in there in order to force compliance with the agreed upon terms before the end of 2024.

3 – The War Within Launch Date

I am going to put my money on September 9/10 as the world-wide release date for The War Within, and as I usually do, the accounting for points will be minus two for every week off I am.

4 – The War Within Reception

Fair to middling. Hopes of that the start of this three parter will bestir the fan base and drive people back to retail will… if not fall flat, will be a repeat of Dragonflight. Shadowland killed off retail for too many people and WoW Classic was there to catch them. Retail WoW is a foreign country to many now. It won’t fail or anything, but it will be akin to what we just saw where the launch will generate no “best ever!” press release and they will be giving out free weekends and discounted pricing within a month.

5 – Cataclysm Classic Launch Date

I am going to put my money on July 15/16 as the world-wide release date for Cataclysm Classic and, as above, the accounting for points will be minus two for every week off I am.

6 – Pandamonium

I don’t think Cataclysm Classic will be the disaster some think it will be, but I also don’t think it is going to hold player attention for as long as Wrath Classic managed. Blizz will announce Mists of Pandaria Classic at BlizzCon and the implication will be that Cata Classic will last less than a year all told.

7 – Season of Discovery Rug Pull

Blizz will get to the end of the vanilla content with Season of Discovery and announce that they will be shutting off the servers because it is over. This will annoy players who were invested in the whole thing or who were still holding out hope for Classic Plus. As with Season of Mastery, when Blizzard uses the word “season” they mean “temporary.”

8 – Diablo IV Expansion

We will get the expected content update in Q2 2024, with May 23/24 being the world wide launch date. The usual “off by weeks” rule above applies.

9 – Blizz and the Unnamed Survival Title

It will remain unnamed and unremarked upon in 2024. Nothing to see here.

10 – World of Warcraft Celebrates 20 Years

World of Warcraft will hit its 20 year anniversary in November. As such, I am going to throw out a few bullet points, worth five points each, should they come to pass.

Physical 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition
Digital 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition
In-game Achievement for Logging in During the Anniversary
Mount Gift in Retail WoW
Pet Gift in WoW Classic
BlizzCon is dominated by WoW… more that usual
A New flavor of WoW Classic is announced

That is a possible 35 points in play.

11 – The Year of EverQuest

The Norrath titles, EverQuest and EverQuest II, are turning 25 and 20 respectively in 2024. As such, Daybreak will have some big plans or some such. No doubt the EverQuest II anniversary will be overshadowed by WoW, but it will still be a thing. As above, I am going to throw out some bullet points that are worth five points each should they come to pass.

Nostalgia themed expansions visiting old locations and old raid bosses for both titles
Fresh start servers for classic content for both titles
A special rules server that isn’t just classic content for EverQuest
A special rules server for EQII that includes a goals/achievements race for prizes
Special 20th and 25th anniversary items in the physical gear store
An in-person event for fans at the Daybreak HQ in San Diego

That is a possible 30 points in play.

12 – Daybreak Un-Announcements

Last year we got low key announcements that there were H1Z1 and EverQuest titles in the offing. My guess is that Daybreak is going to walk one of those back, either removing it from their plans entirely or pushing back any previously planned dates by at least two years. And you know what, I am going to demand double points if they do it for both. How do you like them apples?

13 – LOTRO No Closer to 4K Support

Meanwhile, over at the Standing Stone group at Daybreak, they are going to potter merrily along with content updates and cash shop items and they are not going to do one thing to further the cause of 4K video support for the game. After seven years of “we’ll get to it” I view this as a gimme, a free ten points, and I dare SSG to prove me wrong!

14 – Consoles for Some but not All

In 2024 DC Universe Online will become a native PlayStation 5 application… and PlanetSide 2 will not. Oh, and it goes without saying that the idea of LOTRO on consoles will never be mentioned again by Daybreak/EG7… but I said it anyway! I’ll even give myself NEGATIVE ten points it LOTRO on consoles is mentioned in any way save for announcing it won’t happen. That should offset #12.

15 – EVE Online Expansion Dreams

CCP, having tasted success from three Faction Warfare expansions in a row will roll the dice on that again for its mid-year expansion, but that will fail to keep the proverbial summer slump from hitting the way Viridian prevented it.

16 – EVE Vanguard Launch Date

I don’t know when it will officially be live, but it won’t be in 2024. There will be more live tests and some form of early access, but it will still be in the gray zone between testing and a live launch come the end of the year. I am going to give myself half credit it it does fully launch in 2024, but not until November and eight points if it lands in December.

17 – EVE Galaxy Conquest’s Fate

The new mobile title announced at Fanfest, EVE Galaxy Conquest, will launch then fade so fast in the sea of mobile titles out there that the promise of a PC version will never come to pass. That will be a shame, because EVE Online has an older demographic that would really dig into a strategic, 4x PC title set in New Eden. Half credit if it doesn’t launch at all in 2024.

18 – EVE War for New Eden

The EVE Online board game. I feel this was announced prematurely. There was no benefit from breaking that news before Fanfest unless the Kickstarter was ready to go. And given the dearth of information available so far, I am going to predict that the Kickstarter won’t go live before June 1st and if you pledge to get a copy it won’t arrive in time for Christmas.

19 – Project Awakening

It won’t ship in 2024, but we will get a preview and it will be a weakly revamped version of EVE Online that puts all in game items on the blockchain and will feature a new currency that a16z will own. The only people who will be excited by this are people invested in blockchain because this will be entirely about that technology and not at all about game play. (Which is the perennial fault of all of these crypto projects. Also, play to earn is a garbage idea and will never succeed in the long term, being a completely untenable economic idea.)

20 – Camelot Unhinged

It is always an easy one, predicting that Camelot Unchained won’t ship. It has been good for almost a decade. (Beta 1 access, promised for February 2015, still not a thing.) So let’s dial that up a notch. Not only will it not ship in 2024, it also won’t be available for any sort of general access beta for backers (staged, one weekend, events don’t count), and Marc Jacobs is going to announce a THIRD title his team is working on.

21 – Starved Citizen

Chris Roberts will stumble this year, announcing something that will end up being a step too far for all but his most die hard adherents. Second and third quarter revenues will fall short by year over year measures. But then he’ll announce some crazy new feature at CitizenCon… zero G sex or a psychedelic asteroid mining colony option or maybe actual in game psychedelics… and things will recover in the fourth quarter. Depending heavily on The Nosy Gamer to keep me honest on this one with his reporting.

22 – Pantheon Something Something Something

Visionary Realms will make a huge mistake and ship something this year. I say “mistake” because they have managed to survive on selling vision… hey, it is literally in their name… but when the rubber finally hits the road… oh my. It might only be early access to Pantheon, but it will be generally available and the reaction will be muted and panic will set in at the company as they find out that nostalgia has problems interacting with reality.

23 – Random Shot at Ubisoft

Just because I’ve set some personal record for grudges against a company when it comes to Ubisoft… a record achieved largely by them renewing my ire pretty much annually. So Ubisoft will do something in 2024 that will enrage players/fans/gamers or whoever and I will renew my vow to never buy another game from them again. Also, water will be wet and the sun will continue to rise in the east.

24 – Metaversary Stories

In the smoking remains of the metaverse hype of 2022, here is how the few remaining contenders will fare in 2024. Each bullet point is worth 5 points.

Meta Horizon Worlds will shut down
Decentraland will shut down
Playable Worlds will not deliver any tangible content for end users
VentureBeat will continue to act like the metaverse is still a thing to be achieved
There will continue to be no coherent definition of “metaverse” that isn’t so general that you could claim the internet already is the metaverse. (I expect this to be a gimme, but we’ll see)

25 points total in play here.

25 – Virtual Banality

Virtual Reality will remain a niche market, giving lie to all those optimistic growth charts of the last dozen years, with sales of VR hardware actually declining in 2024.

26 – Pokemon Go to the Moon!

Pokemon Go will release an update that will increase the level cap to 60, with the experience point gap between 59 and 60 being ONE BILLION. This will be the classic blunder of hurting all the normies… I friend online so many casual players on community days that are mid-30s to low-40s… because a tiny percentage of the player base hit 50 too quickly.

27 – Destination Steam

The following Blizzard titles will end up on Steam in 2024. Five points per correct guess.

Diablo II Resurrected
Diablo Immortal
StarCraft
StarCraft II
World of Warcraft

25 points in play here.

28 – Destination XBox

The following Blizzard titles will end up in the XBox PC store… not necessarily on Game Pass, but available for purchase or subscription through Microsoft’s XBox store front for your PC.

World of Warcraft
Diablo IV
Diablo Immortal
Diablo II Resurrected
StarCraft
StarCraft II

30 points in play here.

29 – Pax Dei

Pax Dei will end up reneging on their “no NPCs” plan once they get into early access… so I guess part of this prediction is that they will get to early access this year… because somebody will recall how hard CCP had to work to bootstrap a player economy into existence even with NPCs as part of their plan. Their player run sandbox idea will shamble along until they do this.

30 – Tarislandia

While some members of the gaming press have been falling all over themselves to dismiss Tarisland a WoW clone, even idiotically suggesting it somehow sprang fully formed into existence when WoW lost its partner in China… those diabolical Chinese planned it this way all along… when it finally ships this year… there is part of the prediction… people will change their tune and will declare it is more of a Lost Ark clone… or anything besides being the cheap copy of WoW that it was so aggressively painted as in the press.

31 – Just Won’t Ship

As the heading says, these titles won’t ship in 2024. For purposes of this prediction, remaining in alpha or beta means the ship metric was not met, but I am going to say that paid early access counts as shipping, because screw anybody who tries to take money AND deflect issues. This is five points per bullet point.

ArcheAge II
Bitcraft
Blue Protocol
Chrono Odyssey
Dune: Awakening
Eternal Tombs
Havenworld
Path of Exile II
Reign of Giulds
Squadron 42
Soulframe

I really dug into the news of expected releases fill out that list, and would be happy to be wrong… but you know I’m going to be mostly right here. I mean, half of these are barely a gleam in the milkman’s eye at this point. Also, I put Squadron 42 in there because there is no way that will ship before 2028… if ever. Feature complete my ass.

Anyway, a big 55 points at stake here.

Bonus Predictions

These are the crazy fringe guesses that have no basis in reality, but I get 10 additional points if one of them actually comes to pass.

Richard “Lord British” Garriott will announce that his blockchain shambles of a project will be driven by AI, because that buzzword is still active and must remain active until he jumps on the bandwagon, which is always the sign that the gold rush is over and we need to move on.
That third title that City State Entertainment announces in 2024 will be blockchain driven because Mark Jacobs will have been offered a wad of money, the way CCP has, to make a title using the technology. It will be the final sell out and he will never ship another game in his lifetime.
Peter Molyneux’s Project MOAT will be announced as a blockchain, AI driven, multiverse vision… if it isn’t all that already. I cannot be bothered to check. I have just seen a few headlines, which is more than it deserves. This almost seems like a gimme at this point in his career. I am hoping Conner at MMO Fallout will keep me honest here.
Somebody will notice that CCP’s promise that its skill point packs are “once per account” is meaningless when they just change up the packs every month or so, meaning that there is effectively no limit over time. I will deduct zero points if I am the source of this discovery. I am allowed to set fires too!
I feel like I could do a whole Twitter predictions post, but I am going to just predict that Elon is going to loudly threaten bankruptcy by the end of 2024 to keep creditors at bay. Muskovites have been smug about him having those foolish enough to finance the deal by the balls following the old saw about “Borrow a thousand dollars and the bank owns, borrow a billion dollars and you own the bank,” but Musk put up Tesla stock as collateral and if he isn’t making his payments they can declare default and take the stock. Musk won’t like that, and bankruptcy won’t stop it in the long term, but the mention of bankruptcy will introduce delay and chaos, which is all he’ll want out of it. He won’t actually declare bankruptcy since he is convinced that would make his penis shrink further.

Come the Accounting

Those are my predictions for 2024. That is a possible total 450 points, plus a potential 50 bonus points for wild ass guesses, for a grand total of 550 points should I be correct on everything… which I almost certainly will not be. (Somebody check my math, I did that all in my head and… well.. you’ve got some insight into what is going on in there if you’re read this far.)

Once again I must say, as I always do, that predictions are not wishes. These are things I think could happen, not necessarily things I would want to happen. This is more to stimulate ideas in my head than anything else. But if you’re still mad I said something, go ahead at let me have it. I remain staunch in my statement that being proven wrong on these is no sin.

As for measurements, I usually start off trying to write “SMART” predictions (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), but then I get half way into the list and I start writing vague, subjective, or difficult to measure items that cause me problems at the end of the year.

I mean, I don’t even know what UbiSoft could do to piss me off, but I suspect they will do something. But can I prove it pissed me off in some objective way? No, you’ll just have to trust me.

I do try to grade myself in a fairly strict manner. I think my history shows that I don’t try to go the old Gevlon route of twisting every prediction to find some loophole in order to claim I was actually 100% correct. I am old and have long since found peace (and humor) in being wrong.

Everything, however, is time bound. If it doesn’t happen by December 15th I was wrong and get no points.

So we’ll see how this all turns out on December 15th. The week before that I’ll probably be scrambling to find out if, for example, any of those titles shipped.

Meanwhile, others out there predicting:

The Nosy Gamer – My Predictions For 2024
Broken Toys – Predicting 2024: Politics and War
Broken Toys – Predicting 2024: Technology
Broken Toys – Predicting 2024: Gaming
Niko Gaming News – Predictions for 2024

December 2023 in Review

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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:

Spore
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
The Sims 2: FreeTime
Spore Creature Creator
Sins of a Solar Empire
The Sims 2: Apartment Life
The Sims 2: Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Soulstorm
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.

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.

November 2023 in Review

4 Replies

The Site

It has a been an odd month for the blog. I mean, sure, WP.com had to have its usual moment of stupidity. They made comments use the horrible block editor for about a day, which broke so many things that they actually rolled that change back. Still, I see their intent and they will no doubt come back to that idea and kill off the few comments I get here by making the feature unusable eventually.

But the odd bit was that I suddenly started getting a lot more traffic. Like, something on the order of 2.5x traffic in November when compared to August, the last “normal” month, and I don’t know why or where it is coming from. And Google Analytics is no damn help.

I mean, it tells me something. Back in August traffic acquisition was in the fixed ratio that it has been in for years.

August 2023 Traffic Sources

Organic Search, which is search engines, which means 90% of it is from Google, was the top source of traffic. It always has been over the life of the blog. Traffic for most sites depend on Google’s blessings.

Direct is next, a distant second, and has in the past been something I generally assumed were regular readers who have me as a favorite or a bookmark to visit.

Organic Social is social media and you can usually spot where something gets a bit of traction on Facebook or Twitter or Reddit… those are the only social media sites which ever send me any real traffic, and it is Reddit most of the time at that.

Then there is Referral, which means I was linked somewhere that isn’t a recognized social media site. You can see a little spike at the start of the month where an old post about voxels was linked in a forum post over at Hacker News.

Finally, there is Unassigned, which means Google doesn’t know or care.

That is the usual pattern, the ebb and flow of traffic here for the last decade, since Google changed how image search worked.

In September Direct saw a bit of a rise, then in October it saw a sharp spike that coincided with yet another post about Twitter. And then came November with a roller coaster ride of Direct traffic showing up off and on.

November 2023 Traffic Sources

There you see Organic Search tracing about its usual line across the chart. No real changes there, steady and consistent.

You can also see a couple of bumps from Organic Social. I think the one on the 25th was somebody yet again linking my post about “Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!” to Reddit.

And then there is Direct which is COMPLETELY OFF THE HOOK. I mean, what the hell? Not that I don’t appreciate the traffic (it made November my best ad revenue month ever by about 3x… please use Ad Block if you’re not a bot, I want bots to pay my hosting bill), but there are spikes in there big enough that they had to change the scale of the chart compared to August.

As usual, I am going to remind people that web traffic stats are garbage when it comes to details, but useful for trends. But still, why all of that Direct traffic? That is about 58% of my total traffic for the month pretty much out of nowhere and, according to my understanding, that I wasn’t linked anywhere, just one day more than a thousand people had me bookmarked and decided to pay me a visit or something. Of course, it is always possible that Google Analytics is wrong and maybe this is all… I don’t know, traffic from Mastodon? (Haha, no, but maybe something else.)

Looking at other tools I have, the operating system ratio seems to have skewed very heavily in favor of Android devices, pushing that beyond 57% of my traffic. A year ago, the last time I posted that chart, Windows 10 was over 62% of my traffic.

The net result here is that November was the most active month for traffic since April of 2016.

Strange times. But the web is a strange place.

One Year Ago

Elon Musk had owned Twitter for just a week and things seemed to be going to hell already.

The Uprising expansion was coming for EVE Online and CCP was introducing the new ships a week ahead of its launch. The October MER was there for a baseline to see how strong Uprising would hit. The launch came and we got all the updates promised. The expansion era had returned to EVE Online, bringing with it a spike in players.

For WoW Classic I posted my rankings of the Outland zones. Everybody loves Nagrand.

However, by that point the group was well into Northrend and taking a peek into The Nexus. Our return visit saw us defeat the final boss. Then it was time for Azjol Nerub, which we made harder than it had to be. We also made our way to Dalaran and joined in on Pilgrim’s Bounty.

My deathknight was on his own path through Northrend, hitting all the quests.

There was also a run back to Outland to back fill some enchanting and some harvesting needs.

Overall Blizz was trying to get WoW players to subscribe for a year at a time. They also had a good Q3 2022 financial report.

And Q4 2022 was looking good as the Dragonflight expansion landed at the end of the month for WoW.

PlanetSide 2 was trying to set another Guinness Book record for its 20th anniversary.

For EverQuest II’s eighteenth birthday I was thinking about housing. The Renewal of Ro expansion landed for EQII later in the month.

LOTRO had its Before the Shadows mini-expansion go live.

In a Friday Bullet Points post I covered Crowfall going offline, the boost in New World players with the Brimstone Sands update, the anniversary mount in EverQuest II, WoW’s character stories on Twitter for its 18th anniversary, and CCP opening up retroactive recruiting bonuses so you could get a million skill points for just clicking a recruit a friend link even if you had been playing for years.

Then in a second Friday Bullet Points post I followed up on some of the Twitter woes, Blizzard and NetEase parting ways, the announcement of EVE Online Fanfest 2023, CCP embracing the MAU metric, Enad Global 7’s Q3 2022 financials, the Pokemon Violet and Scarlet launch, and the preview of the Mistlands biome in Valheim.

Then on Black Friday I posted another Friday Bullet Points post focused on EVE Online that reviewed a Team Security update, Permaband arriving on Spotify, Progodlegedn joining the Imperium, Alliance Tournament XVIII, some faction warfare stuff, Photon UI updates, planned overview changes, and Black Friday sales on Omega time.

The Mistlands biome was soon available for testing in Valheim.

Finally, my wife and I decided rewatch all of the Star Trek movies. In November we managed Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Star Trek IV The Voyage Home.

Then, just for good measure, I reviewed All Quiet on the Western Front and how it deviated from the core theme of the book and previous film adaptations. It still looked pretty cool though.

Five Years Ago

It was the end of days for WildStar.

I commemorated TorilMUD for having survived for 25 years, and did a post about the Castle Drulak zone on Evermeet.

I was looking back at the decade old VirginWorlds podcast dedicated to the Star Wars: The Old Republic announcement.

BlizzCon was on its way and I was projecting what we might see. What we actually got… well, Diablo Immortal didn’t play well with fans, but we heard a lot about WoW Classic. I went over why I felt fan expectations for Blizz are hopeless, but nobody listens.

I had finally schlepped my way to level 120 in Battle for Azeroth and collected my WoW 14th anniversary gifts.

In EVE Online, there was the very pretty Crimson Harvest event. I was also showing off the swag I got from EVE Vegas. There was also an op out to Geminate to tangle with Pandemic Horde.

But mostly there was the Onslaught expansion, which landed mid-month and reduced the once mighty POS to just so many bubbles in space, though they still haven’t pulled them from the game five years later. There were also daily login rewards and the activity tracker.

Project Nova, shown at EVE Vegas, had been postponed.

Daybreak was announcing The Burning Lands expansion for EverQuest while the Chaos Descending expansion launched for EverQuest II on my anniversary with the game, though I bid the game farewell for a while.

But the month was really focused on Lord of the Rings Online and its Legendary Server. I wondered what we might see on the eve of its launch. The server itself was overwhelmed pretty quickly and there were problems with its login queue. A second server was announced almost right away.

After fiddling around with ways to beat the queue I was able to get in and start a new character. There were some quirks of the game to come to grips with, like the lack of tin. But I made it to the Lone Lands before the month was out, working on the many deeds there.

Ten Years Ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was dropping bombs in War Thunder.

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

There was also a moment of Apple II nostalgia.

I was having problems with the LOTRO patcher… again.

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

Fifteen Years Ago

We were all excited about expansions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twenty Years Ago

The Frontiers expansion for the PlayStation 2 based EverQuest Online Adventures launched.

Twenty Five Years Ago

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

The Sega Dreamcast launched in Japan. It would not arrive in the US until 9/9/99, an important day in my own life.

Thirty Years Ago

Sojourn MUD goes live, the start of a series of rebirths that live on today in TorilMUD. The actual launch date is lost to time, but I have evidence I started playing right after its post-test pwipe back in November 1993.

Forty Years Ago

MegaWars I launches on CompuServe… somewhere around this time in 1983… maybe? A port of DecWar, which itself was a version of War, which in turn was a two player version of the original Star Trek computer game. Bill Louden got Kesmai to scrub the Star Trek references and clean the game up for commercial release. MegaWars I was later rewritten and expanded by Kesmai into the four empire title Stellar Warrior, which was launched on GEnie after Bill Louden moved over to try and create a CompuServe competitor built on GE’s computing network, which was largely idle outside of business hours. I played and have written about Stellar Warrior here on the blog.

Most Viewed Posts in November

One of the side effects of this traffic surge has been that it has been focused on recent posts, so a bunch of the old standards that wind up here every month are missing. Only the Pokemon Go one about lucky eggs made the cut. We’ll see if the rest return next month.

Search Terms of the Month

teen rating.top
[I think this blog might be M for mature]

wow classic: cataclysm classic
[Coming soon-ish]

does soulstone work in hc wow
[No, there is no soulstone exception]

chatgpt warthunder gameplay
[Do I want to know?]

h1z1 battle royale
[That is one of its names… can’t remember if it is the current name]

“wagering-agreement-meaning-in-nepali”
[Why does this keep coming up?]

Game Time by ManicTime

EVE Online topped the list for the first time in ages, another sign that we might be about done with Wrath Classic.

EVE Online – 59.32%
WoW Classic – 39.30%
World of Warcraft – 0.91%
LOTRO – 0.48%

EVE Online

The Havoc expansion landed and the user numbers were up and, as you can see from the ManicTime numbers above, I spent a much greater percentage of my time playing EVE Online. I spent most of it doing null sec things and have yet to see any of the Havoc content beyond having visited Zarzakh back before CCP let people use warp disruptor bubbles there. New Eden is a big place and the Havoc changes are focused on a pretty small slice of it.

Pokemon Go

Still playing. I need to do a post to catch up on how we’ve done with the new features in the app. I already have something in my drafts with the title “stop trying to make routes a thing” or some such. The 1.5x friendship level bonus is going away today, which will make getting to 45 all that much slower.

Level: 44 (47% 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: Smolive

WoW Classic

The end is in sight for our Northrend adventures. Things are spinning down, we’ve done most of the things we set out to do, and once we can all get together again and finish off the Halls of Reflection dungeon, we will have about completed our nostalgia tour.

Zwift

Due to a electrical panel issue, the back room of our house is now without power. That was, of course, the place where we had room for the exercise bike to sit. It is also the room where we had Thanksgiving dinner, though we do that mid-afternoon and the room has skylights, but anything after sun down is in the dark or lit by battery powered candles.

Our panel needs to be replaced, but that takes permits from the city and the cooperation of PG&E, the main utility for Northern California, which means I hope we can get this fixed some time in January. This is a real issue and not just an excuse to skip exercising over the holidays… stop bringing up extension cords and other solutions… we just have to wait this out.

Coming Up

Later today WoW Classic: Season of Discovery launches. I will probably try that this evening. We’ll see how crazy it is and if I just go back and finish leveling up my rogue in Wrath Classic.

The EverQuest Laurion’s Song expansion will also be showing up soon, not that I am at all likely to buy it or play the game again, but with nearly 25 years of history and 30 expansions at this point, it is worth taking note of.

December is the month that comes with a standard range of summing up the year posts, both based on my own assessments and the stats that various companies will inevitably throw at me. You can expect the usual suspects to show up about books, highs and lows, where I spent my time on Twitch, and how many bananas in distance I scrolled on Reddit.

It is also the season for a host of holiday traditions, from in-game events to the Steam Winter Sale. There will be some indulging in all of that I am sure.

And… maybe I’ll have some time off to play something new. It could happen.

October 2023 in Review

6 Replies

The Site

As a follow up from last month I did, in fact, go back and put the year into the title of every past Month in Review post. It wasn’t all that difficult. Now will I remember to put the year in going forward?

On to my current annoyance with WordPress.com… because they are always pissing me off with one dumb thing or another… which this month is a change to how they handle dates on the main stats page. Previously you just picked the scale… days, weeks, months, years… and the data sized to fill up the available space, with an arrow to click if you wanted to see older data.

For some reason they decided that on this page… and not on any other stats page… what people really needed was an awkward date picker.

Also, it looks like complete amateur hour

Now you have to pick the scale you want and the range you want to display. For example, if you go from Days to Months, it doesn’t switch scale and, instead shows you the current month in the scale of the current month… which would be one month. So you have to complete multiple clicks to see what you want, which used to be available with a single click. [Addendum: They have worked to make this slightly less awkward over the last week, but it is still a poor idea, adding complexity without much benefit.]

But that isn’t the real annoying bit. The date picker also won’t let you pick dates in the future. Makes sense, because why would you want that? There is not data there, right?

Unless, of course, your computer and your blog are set to different time zones. Mine are, or were, because back when I started the blog UTC was the only option WP.com allowed, so I just got used to doing everything in UTC. That was fine. Our servers at work do everything in UTC and EVE Online is in UTC, so I am pretty used to converting everything to UTC, at least during waking hours.

With this change, when it hit 5pm Pacific time on my computer, tomorrow started in UTC (and that will soon be at 4pm as Daylight Savings Time ends this coming weekend), but the stats page woouldn’t let me see what was going on with the blog until midnight, because until then the blog lives in some bizarro tomorrow world that the the stats page doesn’t understand.

This, by the way, has always been a problem on the WP or Jet Pack apps on my phone and tablet. But you could trick them into showing you the current UTC day with a little effort. The web stats update, however, is steadfast in denying me that.

I gave in and finally changed the blog time setting to be Pacific time. I long fought that change fearing that WordPress would find some way to screw that up. Also, all of my stats are now 7 or 8 hours offset from before and the cycle of traffic is different.

But what about the benefits of this new date picker? I mean, theoretically you could view different ranges of data than just the old defaults, right?

Let’s try a few months of days in the stats

You might think that, but the stats page itself didn’t get updated, just the date and scale selectors, so if you try to display anything that falls outside of the previous parameters if just doesn’t draw. Jesus wept, why are so may devs just so dumb about thinking these things through, or at least putting in a minimal amount of freaking error handling?

This is truly the boundary between seasoned developers and the kids we hire straight out of college because the VP doesn’t want some other company’s “bad habits.”

Anyway, as expected, changing the time zone for the blog caused some issues. Stats didn’t work at all for about a day and when things finally settled down, I found that the change reset my streak counter. On Sunday the 22nd I had hit 1,302 consecutive days posting. On Monday, after having gone back and recalculated everything with the new time zone settings, I was knocked down to a mere 153 day streak.

This is not the streak you’re looking for

The post I wrote for May 24th was posted before midnight local time on May 23rd, so it didn’t count after the big reset. I would consciously do that at times, knowing I was working in UTC and not local time. (Though if you go look at the actual posts on those dates, they are still dated with the original post date and not the time change date, so at some level the WP.com is still indicating my streak SHOULD be valid. And the publish times aren’t off by enough to have been a UTC issue anyway.)

So rather than my having to take a day off or reach an amusing number… 1,337 was my next target… WP.com put a bullet into that whole journey.

On the up side, you likely won’t ever see me write about that posting streak again. On the down side, what am I going to use this section of the Month if Review posts for?

Besides complaining about WP.com I mean.

One Year Ago

Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and the tidings of doom began. Twitter, now called X, is still a thing as of this writing… the new name is dumb and everybody who uses it has to immediately explain they mean Twitter… but it is partially broken and is actively promoting white nationalism and antisemitism. Elon Musk’s behavior since the takeover has also thoroughly tarnished his reputation… except with white nationalists and fans of antisemitism I suppose.

Completely unrelated to that, I was wondering why there were so many used Teslas on local dealership lots. A year later people are apologizing for owning Teslas… because we’ve seen what kind of person Elon Musk really is.

Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg, who became Elon’s nemesis at some point, was still on his metaverse kick even though his own development team did play the Horizon Worlds app on their own time. Meta was trying to address the lack of legs in Horizon Worlds, but I wasn’t convinced.

The EverQuest II expansion Renewal of Ro was announced. while EverQuest was getting the Night of Shadows expansion.

New World also had its Brimstone Sands expansion launch, while the studio was out bragging about how much they had learned since the game launched. A lot of it felt like things they could have figured out before launch. I took a peek into the game and had no server yet again.

With the launch of Wrath of the Lich King Classic, the instance group was landing in Borean Tundra to start our journey. I needed to do some work on weapon skills there. I was also trying to not leave character behind in Outland.

I had my druid alt pick up inscription, the trade skill added with Wrath.

We made it 70 in Borean Tundra and moved over to Howling Fjord, giving us a chance for our first peek into Utgarde Keep. Our second run, after a bit of research, was more successful, but it took the third try to get our act together and finish the whole thing.

I had some early wishes for Wrath Classic.

On the retail WoW front Blizzard was getting ready for the Dragonflight expansion. The pre-patch was up soon and it changed the whole UI.

RimWorld launched its BioTech expansion.

And then there was EVE Online, where I was looking into the effect on PLEX prices that the Omega clone sale, which made a month of Omega 300 PLEX versus the usual 500. I even did a post about the MER focused on just that before I got to the rest of the economy. Somewhat related, there was also a opinion on how a perfectly safe high sec was working out in EVE Echoes.

I also did a bullet points post about the Empires of EVE vol. II audio book, The Mittani no longer in Goons, the start of Alliance Tournament XVIII, and the three day Weekend Omega pack.

There was the result of the war on Orcas. The Reavers SIG turned 8 years old. We also got the Crimson Harvest event.

And CCP made the new Photon UI the default with the October update. They also decided to fix the dynamic bounty system… kind of a surprise since they had been so sure that its previous form would fix ratting or stop botting or drive conflict. (Spoiler: it did none of those things.)

Five Years Ago

Gamigo bought the games of Trion Worlds, leaving not much behind.

We heard that a lot of people play Minecraft, that there would be no Minecraft 2, and that pandas were coming.

We were told that Google Plus would be going away. It had few fans, a bizarre UI, and was the excuse used to kill Google Reader, so I didn’t shed a tear at that announcement.

We learned that Mike Morhaime would be stepping down as CEO of Blizzard to be replaced by J. Allen Brack of the infamously incorrect quote about the idea of WoW Classic.

Standing Stone decided to farm nostalgia with the LOTRO Legendary server idea.

We learned that the 25th EverQuest expansion would be The Burning Lands. For EverQuest II the Chaos Descending expansion was coming.

I was on a nostalgia tour of EverQuest II that involved a quest chain that was literally a nostalgia tour of EverQuest II. That got me geared up to run through The Withered Lands. I made it to level 100 even.

There was a hint that the survival side of H1Z1, Just Survive, might survive. And then we were told it would not.

In New Eden the Keepstar War was over and a massive move op got me back home to Delve. There was even a video. Then it was back to shooting stuff around home.

The Reavers SIG turned four years old.

We seemed to be headed to war in high sec in Perimeter, and shot the Panfam trading Fortizar. That ended when TEST dropped a Keepstar, the Perimeter Trading Tower.

The October update was about balance, which meant killing ECM really, while the CSM 13 summit minutes mentioned how war decs were killing high sec.

I was headed to EVE Vegas where we would see Pearl Abyss, CCP’s new owners, for the first time. Much info was shared and swag gathered. I even gave a presentation. But it was about blogging, so nobody saw it. I summed it all up when I got home. I was dubious about the announced FLEX structures.

There was some joyful hysteria as a DCMA exception was made for MMO preservation. However, it required the owner of the source code give it over voluntarily, which seemed like a huge stumbling block to me. Creating emulators was still verboten.

And then there was that Rules for Rulers video, which prompted me to read the source material on which it was based, which made me even more cynical about politics than I already was.

Ten Years Ago

EverQuest: Mactinosh Edition was slated to shut down after a ten year run. Meanwhile, EverQuest Live launched Call of the Forsaken, the game’s 20th expansion. The Fippy Darkpaw server made it to The Buried Sea expansion. And in EverQuest II, insta-level characters were set to become a thing.

Also, Daybreak got DC Universe Online onto the PlayStation 4 where it reportedly continues to do quite well.

With the release of Pokemon X & Y, which required upgrading to Nintendo 3DS hardware, I was saying farewell to the series. Little did I know I would be pulled back in a few months down the road.

As part of some NBI event I attempted to recount all the guilds I had joined over the years.

Somebody was attempting to remake the old Kesmai game Stellar Emperor.

Path of Exile finished up beta and was officially live.

After a post-F2P boom, Trion went back to paring down the number of servers for Rift while its servers in China were shut down completely.

The instance group was still running Foundry modules in Neverwinter.

I was trying out War Thunder. After failing to get through the tutorial for World of Warplanes, I opted for its competitor, which seems better suited for the inept like me. I was able to get out there and be a target for other players while bombing at least.

In New Eden our gate camp deployment to the Curse region was wrapping up almost as soon as it started. It felt like we had just snuck in. It was time to go home to the quiet of Deklein for a while and wait for the Rubicon expansion. While there I finally bought my first capital ship, an Archon carrier. It went for its first jump and then stayed docked for almost a year. Of course, I found out I had a lot of stuff sitting in hangars around New Eden. Nine million things, to put a number to it. And CCP was setting up classes for new players… which was great if you lived in the European time zone.

I was pondering the “journey vs. destination” question with MMOs while feeling a bit wistful that World of Warcraft holidays were not offering much new.

Marc Pinkus, founder of Zynga, declared he was bored of games.

And we finally ditched AT&T DSL for Comcast cable-modem internet, resolving the bandwidth sharing problems at our house.

Fifteen Years Ago

In one of the worst kept secrets in video game development it was announced that BioWare’s MMO project was in fact Star Wars: The Old Republic. Their subscription goals were, of course, quite modest.

I celebrated my 15 years of playing Sojourn/TorilMUD with the first in a series of posts. Nostalgia FTW! And I guess that makes this the 25 year mark. My, how time flies! I probably need a post about that.

And speaking of Nostalgia, Tipa was out looking for EverQuest blogs. I’m not sure any were discovered. EverQuest itself launched its fifteenth expansion, Seeds of Destruction, which brought NPC mercenaries to the game to assist players.

The instance group formed up a guild and was running in Warhammer Online. We had our best night and our worst night, plus a few that were somewhere in between. All in all though, things were not as exciting as we had hoped.

Mythic was trying out incentives to get better server balance while starting to talk about new stuff coming soon. Not a word about the quest log however.

In EVE Online Potshot, Gaff, and I were playing with fleets and I was flying a shiny new ship. Also the EVE Blog Pack was defined.

Finally, I stared logging into World of Warcraft again to get things lined up for the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I managed to survive through the controversial scourge event and was intrigued by the shiny new achievements.

Twenty Years Ago

A shooter named Call of Duty launched. Now Activision’s annual revenue pretty much depends on shipping a sequel to it.

Lineage II launched as well. The successor to the original Lineage, which was in last month’s post celebrating its 20th anniversary, it had the usual problem of MMORPG sequels in never living up to the success of the original.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

The Rise of Rome expansion came out for Age of Empires.

Delta Tao launches Clan Lord, and early MMORPG on the Macintosh platform.

Thirty Five Years Ago

The Sega MegaDrive launched in Japan. Mentioned mostly because I ended up with a Sega Genesis, the name used in the US, a few years later.

Elevator Action arrives in the US, an arcade title I pushed a lot of quarters into back in the day.

Forty Five Years Ago

Really, am I going back that far now? Yes I am! I went back 50 years for Atari’s founding didn’t I? Anyway, back in October of 1978 Space Invaders arrived in North America. I posted about that event. It was a big deal back in the day.

Most Viewed Posts in October

Normally I don’t say anything about the most viewed posts because they tend to be mostly some older posts that still have some traction on Google and maybe one of two things from the current month. Most months I just paste in the previous month’s list, change the order a bit, and add/delete maybe four items tops. But this month was a little different.

The blog saw a pretty big uptick in traffic and I cannot explain why. It started with my post about Elon owning Twitter for a year, but carried on. My post from yesterday made the cut, and the last post before the review almost never has enough traffic to manage that. Also, none of that traffic is from search engines, which have been pretty flat this month. Don’t know where the traffic is coming from, and it will probably be gone tomorrow, but for now it is almost like… well, 2020 and the Covid shut down, which saw a brief resurgence in traffic here. It would take a lot more to get me back to 2012/2013 numbers.

Search Terms of the Month

“wagering-agreement-meaning-in-nepali”
[No idea]

Gamer Blogs
[I feel like I’ve been here before]

FI.RE Coalition Logo
[I think it was just FI.RE in outline block letters like this]

Game Time from ManicTime

No surprises here really. Lots of time in Northrend. A bit of time spent in New Eden. And I think I logged into retail WoW twice to check things claimed via Prime Gaming.

WoW Classic – 82.18%
EVE Online – 13.28%
Baldur’s Gate 3 – 4.50%
World of Warcraft – 0.05%

Baldur’s Gate 3

After taking a month off Potshot and I did get some time in on BG3 this month, making it back to the druid’s grove after defeating the bosses at the goblin outpost. We didn’t get beyond that yet, but we made some progress. Maybe as the holidays approach we’ll find some more free time for this.

EVE Online

It was Crimson Harvest and some war fighting up in the north in New Eden in October, along with GM Week. I didn’t do any of the Crimson Harvest event, but I was in for some of the sov war up in Deklein and I got an alt in for the GM Week bot bash, so I have yet another character whose kill board is all capitals and nothing else… besides losses.

I also spent a lot of time with EVE Online Twitch streams running in a browser tab, fishing for Twitch drops. CCP went nuts with the Twitch drops. I have more drops from them over the last month than all other titles combined. My Twitch end of year summary is going to be hilariously inaccurate, at least relative to what I actually sat and watched.

Pokemon Go

Level: 44 (39% of the way to 45 in xp, 1 of 4 tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 804 (+3) caught, 819 (+6) seen
Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 15 of 20
Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
Current buddy: Smolive

WoW Classic

We got the final update for Wrath Classic, the last three dungeons are in, and it is time to finish this expansion off. That and running through Hallow’s End, where the Headless Horseman’s mount dropped for me at last, about sums up the month. Gave me plenty to do, so I didn’t spend any time back in Hardcore.

Zwift

Another month where I got on the bike just twice. I have excuses, but I was seriously considering just omitting this from the post. But I don’t put it here for you I suppose. I put it here to remind myself I am slacking. We’ll see what the next month brings.

Level – 19 (+0)
Distanced cycled – 1,762 miles (+19 miles)
Elevation climbed – 66,588 (+577 feet)
Calories burned – 54,158 (+459)

Coming Up

The holiday season is pretty much here. It is Halloween today, Day of the Dead tomorrow, Thanksgiving in the US at the end of the month, and then your December holiday of choice culminating in New Years where we used to all need a new calendar, but now with digital how many people even hang up a physical calendar anymore?

With the closing of the year we will see a series of announcements and no doubt a few MMO updates.

BlizzCon starts this Friday. What will Blizzard, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation, announce?

EVE Online is slated to launch the Havoc expansion.

EG7 and Daybreak will be launching the Corsairs of Umbar expansion for LOTRO and getting ready for the two musically theme expansions for EverQuest and EverQuest II, Laurion’s Song and Ballads of Zimara respectively.

And as the weather cools down and it is easier to stay at home in front of the computer, digital nostalgia has a chance to settle in. Will I drag out some old title to play?

Then there are holiday events in the offing. But more of that lands in December.

All I need is just Two Excellent Throws a Day in Pokemon Go

2 Replies

Oh, Pokemon Go, I still play it, even when I am not visiting some of the more remote gyms in the US.

Pokemon Go – Since 2016

I mentioned previously the ~80 day event for a master ball. The task list for that seemed a bit daunting there at the start.

The task list

With more than half of the timeline left to go… 45 days as of this writing… I have managed to knock out a good chunk of the tasks.

Catch 1,000 Pokemon – Done
Hatch 30 eggs – Done
Catch 100 different species – Done
Spin 300 Pokestops – Done
Earn 100,000 XP – Done
Earn 100,000 Stardust – Done

But those were all pretty non-controversial. I figured those would get done and there they are complete with more than half of the event still left to run.

The status of those left uncompleted so far:

Win 60 raids – 35
Make 120 Excellent Throws – 53
Complete 150 Field Research Tasks – 80
Explore 50km – 24km

25 more raids in 45 days… piece of cake. I’ll get that done.

70 field research tasks in 45 days… very doable. You can basically do as many as you want in a single day just going to different Pokestops.

Explore another 26km in 45 days… again, not too worried. Honestly, I would be a lot further along if I just remembered to put my phone in my pocket when I am pacing around the house coming up with an email response or blog post idea. I can make that happen.

67 excellent throws in 45 days… this one worries me in the way the others do not. The others I can brute force. They just involve some effort and me actually leaving the house, something that has become a rare moment on most weekdays now that I work from home.

But an excellent throw… requires a bit of skill or luck that is elusive to me. I can go a couple of days without hitting one, then get five in one evening while watching TV. I could get 10 this weekend if I hit the right raid bosses with huge target reticles that allow a lot of slop in your throw while still giving you an excellent. Or I might get none.

So the whole thing seems somewhat in doubt… but then so does my motivation.

I went over the whole master ball as a reward thing in a past post, and even asked AI bots when it would be worthwhile to actually use that most rare of pokeballs.

But in asking that, I forgot a fundamental aspect of Pokemon Go, which is that all the rarest legendary Pokemon come from raids. And when you win a raid and are given the opportunity to catch a very special Pokemon… you cannot actually use your master ball. You are limited to the special raid balls which dictate how many throws you get in order to catch your target.

So, basically, you can only actually use the master ball on the more mundane, every day Pokemon you see in the field. And I can barely be bothered to switch to a great or ultra ball for most of those. So what I remain conflicted on what a master ball is even good for and whether it is worth the effort.

September 2023 in Review

1 Reply

The Site

In hindsight, I think I should have been putting the year in the title of all of my month in review posts this whole time, and not just starting to do it on the first such post at the start of the 18th year of the blog. But here we are.

It remains to be seen if I will be able to find the energy to go back and re-title the 204 previous month in review posts. It could happen if I am in the right mood. Anyway, it will be that way going forward… if I remember next month.

This month saw the 17th anniversary of the blog. I know, there was a whole post about that. However, I was away when it went live, so didn’t get to inject the WordPress.com achievement.

WordPress gives me a pat on the back

And, speaking of WordPress.com, for no apparent reason one of my email subscriptions to the blog suddenly reactivated itself and started sending me daily updates again. I mentioned this in a post some time back about email and email subscriptions and how WP.com seemed to have purged a huge number of email subscribers. I know they were not simply going into the spam filter for months. I checked on that regularly. But suddenly, back on the 9th of this month, I started getting them again.

So, if you were an email subscriber and similarly found yourself getting updates once more… welcome back I guess! What happened between July 1st and September 8th… I couldn’t tell you because I don’t know.

Also, now that the admin panel shows you the list of email subscribers I can confirm… that my email address from above isn’t even on the list. But Brasse’s email at soe.sony.com is still there. I wonder which bit bucket those emails are landing in… if they are getting sent at all. I should probably just remove that email address from the list, but I am sort of happy that she subscribed in the first place… back in December of 2012.

Finally, WordPress has be messing with comments again. Some testing shows that if you try to leave a comment with an email address that has ever in any way been associated with a WordPress account, it will demand that you sign into the account in order to leave the comment and will not let you proceed until you do.

If that is getting in your way… and you actually read this, which is probably a thin chance… you can just leave an anonymous comment (still an option, still works) and sign your name at the bottom and I’ll go retroactively put it in the name field. I receive few enough comments these days that this isn’t really much of an effort and I’d like WP.com not to actively deter people from leaving a few more.

One Year Ago

There was the annual summing up of Blaugust. Also, the blog turned sixteen.

The completely predictable demise of Google Stadia was finally announced.

I was wondering what it was going to be like with a bunch of 20 year old MMORPGs. It was fun when UO or EQ hit that mark, but soon there will be many more.

EverQuest announced they were finally upgrading their heroic character boost from 85 to 100, though that was still nowhere near the level cap.

LOTRO could only manage a mini-expansion for 2022.

In WoW Classic our group was in Nagrand trying to get ourselves to level 68 in anticipation of the coming of Wrath Classic. One of the benefits of the Wrath pre-patch is that flying mounts were available at level 60. We ended up having to go to the Blades Edge Mountains before we were done. We made it to 68 there, so we were ready for Wrath Classic.

Meanwhile, the pre-Wrath plague zombie event landed. And there was how to adapt to the class changes that came with Wrath… including the introduction of Death Knights. We all made a Death Knight. And achievements and level boosts.

I also reflected on The Burning Crusade Classic, and how it didn’t stick with us… just like the original.

Then it was all eyes on launch day for Wrath Classic. I was on the first boat to Borean Tundra… but others had queues and so many people failed to load when the boat zoned that they had to put in a teleport NPC at the dock. The memories of Captain Placeholder.

We also got a November 28th launch date for WoW Dragonflight.

In EVE Online CCP held GM Week once again, including everybody’s favorite event, the Yulai bot bash. The August 2022 MER was looking a bit flat while the price of PLEX was rising.

CCP also announced the Uprising expansion as part of their return to the “two expansions a year” plan. There were also Faction Warfare updates kicking off.

In New Eden itself, the Imperium was retreating from its over-extended position in the southeast of null sec. Move ops kept going ahead of the collapsing front. Once home we began reaching out to make trouble elsewhere… though The Initiative was making trouble at home.

I wrote a brief history of Goon leadership in EVE Online. I also hit 250 million skill points.

And I wrote another Jury Duty story.

Five Years Ago

I did my post-event summary of Blaugust 2018. Also, the blog turned another year older. It seems to do that almost every year.

Pirates of the Burning Sea was in danger of shutting down. A player group eventually took it over. We’ll have to see how that plays out.

WildStar was no so lucky as NCsoft announced its time was coming to an end. Is there an emulator yet?

Club Penguin Island was done too, though that was the result of Disney being dumb and/or arrogant. We don’t get emulators for mobile apps, do we? Not that there would be much call for it given how CPI was received.

I was cynical about Torchlight Frontiers. But I am that way about a lot of things.

Then there was the crazy Daybreak and NantWorks joint partnership around H1Z1 and maybe EverQuest on your phone. I don’t know. But at least Daybreak could announce an EverQuest II expansion.

I actually played some EverQuest II. I went looking for a path to follow, getting stuck in a waterfall along the way.

I was on CCP about trading their touted “epic” tutorial with a laborious one based around The Agency interface.

That would fade into the back when just days later it was announced that CCP was being acquired by Pearl Abyss, makers of Black Desert Online. That got me going on about what it is like to be acquired as a company, something I’ve been through a bunch of times. I even related it to how a studio called Silicon & Synapse got acquired way back in the day, and they did all right, before wondering about the EVE Online store.

The EVE Online September update saw the end of another asymmetrical ship design.

Meanwhile, actually in New Eden, there was a war on. We had out eyes on that CO2 Keepstar. We blew that up, along with other structures of theirs. Then we were after more structures in Fade and Pure Blind. That led to a day when five Keepstars were blown up. With the war going badly, Dead Coalition bribed us to pack up and go home, ending the war.

Blizzard had a mount for you, if only you would subscribe to WoW for six months. Speaking of mounts, I got my Darkmoon Dirigible mount at last. And Blizz said people would get a demo of WoW Classic as part of BlizzCon, even home viewers.

Over on Kickstarter, the World of Warcraft Diary about creating the game picked up $600K.

I did a piece about the Elder Forest zone on TorilMUD. A great zone and a boon for young elves.

I also had a bit of a time capsule post and a link out to a character name creator.

Ten Years Ago

We heard that Warhammer Online was slated to shut down in December.

We also got the official word that Blizzard would be killing the auction house in Diablo III.

SOE was getting over some of their Station Cash screw ups while launching Dragon’s Prophet.

In general I wasn’t too excited about the expansion outlook on the MMO scene.

In EVE Online the Rubicon expansion went live. Our corp had a little drama as Gaff plotted to overthrow our CEO and created a new corp, Black Sheep Down. As is usual, he was good for the intrigue, but once he became El Supremo, he got bored and stopped playing. Happens after every coup… and there have been a few. We went from being literally the worst corp in TNT to… erm… well, that didn’t change I guess. We did run out to low sec for a fight and I put my alt in the corp to bolster our numbers because there was a minimum height requirement or something.

In general we were finishing up our deployment in Delve cleaning up after the TEST collapse and I hit 110 million skill points. Also, there was the war between evebloggers.com and evebloggers.net.

The instance group, in a hint as to where we were headed, ran a series of WoW dungeon knock-offs in Neverwinter.

And it was time for the usual bout of autumnal nostalgia. This time I returned to Azeroth, which made me ask the question, when is it nostalgia anyway? My daughter and I and a friend had a plan to roll up some new characters on a new server. Whatever it was, it felt like home.

I covered the great resurrection exploit in TorilMUD.

Meanwhile, pseudo-MMO Grand Theft Auto V launched. GameIndustry.biz has a 10 year retrospective of the title.

Fifteen Years Ago

Warhammer Online went live, first with the head start and then for everybody.

As we saw with other MMOs, there were issues coordinating with friends about which server to choose, leading to yet another gripe post about the whole sharded existence we have had to put up with in MMOS. I did wonder if the EverQuest II mechanism of multiple versions of a given zone might be worth it to get everybody on a single server.

The instance group was into WAR (after escaping from Durnhold Keep), though as a group we have some parameters that we had to work within. And the battlegrounds in WAR were not playing out well. And the type of quests that were in PvE led to some talk about which goal was worse.

In Warhammer itself, war were declared on gold sellers and Mythic was being very demonstrative about it. Of course, it did not appear to stem tells from gold seller bots that seemed to sit active for days.

I went on about those tips you see on the loading screen of many MMOs, spurred by a couple less than helpful tips in WAR.

In EVE Online I hit a major ISK milestone. But I was building up ISK because I had my eye on a freighter.

The Empyrean Age 1.1 update was upon us, which included 2 changes designed to reduce the scourge of suicide ganking. And nobody ever complained about that again.

Meanwhile CCP was offering up battleships for sale… model battleship for real cash, not ISK.

But the most important EVE Online event was probably Yahtzee Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation review of EVE Online. Much shoe-on-head wearing and talk about tactical logistical reconfiguration ensued.

In EverQuest II, the Living Legacy promotion was ending.

I was wondering why there wasn’t a World of Warcraft animated series yet. I think that might have been better than the movie we got.

LEGO Batman showed up, as did Wizard 101.

And, finally, the site hit the two year mark.

Twenty Years Ago

Valve released the first version of Steam, mostly to replace the World Opponent Network they bought from Sierra.

SOE released the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion for EverQuest, bringing instanced small group content to the game. Their ads specifically mentioned the new “dungeon crawl” experience.

Twenty-five Years Ago

Pokemon Red & Blue for the Nintendo GameBoy and GameBoy Color launched in North America.

NCsoft’s Lineage, probably the most successful of the late 90s MMORPGs, launched in South Korea.

Delta Force launched in the US. I have written about it and voxels and the coming of 3D accelerated video cards in the past.

And Google was founded back in September of 1998 as well. I should acknowledge the site that sends me most of my traffic.

Most Viewed Posts in September

Search Terms of the Month

homefront operation eve
[Those are a thing now, yes]

eve online plex for omega shiet
[it is kind of shiet, right?]

gamer blogs
[No such thing these days]

“see-bew-the-making-and-remaking-of-the-good-friday-agreement-26”
[uh… I’ve got nothing…]

candy crush old episodes
[Maybe on the GameShow channel?]

“wagering-agreement-meaning-in-nepali”
[Is this a Last Crusade reference?]

“the-primary-agreement-ffxiv”
[That you’ll sit still and watch all the cut scenes?]

Game Time by ManicTime

With vacation time away from home, total time played was down considerably. And when I did play something on my PC, it was probably based in Azeroth.

WoW Classic – 90.74%
EVE Online – 8.88%
World of Warcraft – 0.37%

ManicTime does not break out Wrath Classic from Hardcore, so those are the combined hours under WoW Classic. Also, I apparently spent almost an hour in retail WoW, so Blizz can claim another MAU. I think I was comparing the pets and mounts UI and the Dungeon Finder UI with what was on the PTR server for Ice Crown Citadel update for Wrath Classic.

Baldur’s Gate 3

As indicated by the play time chart, Potshot and I played zero Baldur’s Gate 3 in September. But we’re trying to get back to it. We even talked about that recently.

EVE Online

I did go on a couple of ops in September, but otherwise did not commit all that much. I helped blow up a few customs offices in Period Basis. High drama. I also logged in to visit Zarzakh and collect my Twitch drops and to update my planetary industry.

Pokemon Go

We played on the big island of Hawaii and started in on the master ball event. Oh, and I finished up my league matches so was able to advance to level 44 finally. Now I have a new set of tasks on the way to level 45. But the event that boosted xp gains in the first half of the month got me well on my way to that level at least.

Level: 44 (26% of the way to 45 in xp, 1 of 4 tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 801 (+21) caught, 813 (+18) seen
Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 15 of 20
Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
Current buddy: Magikarp because I need to earn candies for a task

WoW Classic

The month started with the group still running Wintergrasp for honor points and ended with the group doing Brewfest and trying to get a mount to drop from Corin Direbrew. In the middle it was almost all hardcore.

WoW Classic Hardcore

We came, we rolled, we died. Well, Ula and I both died in any case.

A lot of time was spent in hardcore and then I died. Now considering whether I really want to keep doing that.

Zwift

Not a good month for the stationary bicycle. I was traveling for two weekends, and moving furniture on a third, so that is basically two riding sessions.

Level – 19 (+0)
Distanced cycled – 1,743 miles (+17 miles)
Elevation climbed – 66,011 (+384 feet)
Calories burned – 53,599 (+390)

Coming Up

In EVE Online we’ll be in the midst of the build up to the coming Havoc expansion.

Elsewhere we will be seeing the ongoing autumnal holidays carrying on. Brewfest in WoW will give way to Hallow’s End and all that. In EVE Online the Crimson Harvest event will also return.

We will be in the run up to BlizzCon, so there will likely be some hints to drive speculation on that front. There have already been leaks about a possible location from datamining.

It is also the traditional expansion announcement season for EQ, EQII, and LOTRO over at Daybreak.

And there are a few anniversaries of note coming up.

The Southernmost Pokemon Go Gym in the 50 States

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After our time at Kilauea on the big island, I wanted to check out one more spot on our way back to our hotel. As you drive from the volcano towards Kona along Route 11 there is a sign that says South Point Road that will lead you down a 12 mile stretch of occasionally single lane black top to Ka Lae, which is the southernmost point within the 50 states that make up the core of the United States.

This is the sign when you’re leaving Ka Lae

There are US possessions and territories further south, such as American Samoa, but there is no destination within the actual 50 US states that is further south.

The location is also generically referred to as South Point, and it is a windy and desolate location. There are some cattle ranches along the road there and a satellite tracking station run by the US arm of the Swedish Space Corporation, but it feels pretty empty.

I am in serious danger of over using the word “desolate” here. The feeling of isolation, at being at the end of land, with the wind and the crashing waves and the volcanic coastline, it is quite palpable. On the flip side, there were about a dozen groups with pickups or RVs who had set up camps and were hanging out or fishing or just doing whatever one does at the end of South Point Road. So it wasn’t like we were alone out there, though the vibe with the nature made it feel a bit like we were intruding, that other people out there had gone there to get away from everything and here we were, showing up in our rental car to gawk. But we were hardly the only gawkers either.

The location is thought to be the first place where Polynesians from Tahiti landed in the islands, it being, as noted, the southernmost location and closest to their point of departure. It also has some of the oldest signs of settlement, including holes bored through the volcanic rock which were used to moor their boats so they could fish without getting swept away by the wind and strong currents.

As you walk along the western side of the shore it is a cliff where you can see how the layers of lava from eruptions over years flowed to the ocean, cooled, solidified, then were covered by the next flow, building up the land over thousands of years.

The layers exposed

Further along, as you reach the southernmost tip of the island, the cliffs dip down until the waves are crashing upon a lava rock shore. I took a bit of video of the waves hitting the shore, though what you hear on the video is mostly the sound of the constant wind.

That video is close to, but not exactly at the southern most point, which Google maps has marked as a bit of rock out in the water.

The Google maps satellite view of South Point

You might be able to see a line in the middle of the tan patch up from the lava rocks. That is the wall to the left of the video.

You can see some dirt in the foreground, that tan patch, which had a very fine powdery texture which left our shoes covered in the same tone. Beyond the dirt and some of the lava rocks it looks like there might be sand, or perhaps a pebbled beach. There is very little sand on the coasts of the big island, and what you see there is actually bits of coral that have washed up and accumulated over the centuries.

The coral made more visible

The coral has been bleached by the sun and there is so much of it that it reminded me a bit of the bone textures used on early WoW.

close up of the coral bits

Of course, with black lava rock and white coral bits to hand, people spend time writing things out on the black rock. There was some of that along the highways in Kona when we were last on the big island in 2001, but they seemed to have all been removed. When my wife wondered aloud about that, I opined that it might have gotten obscene, leading the highway department to clean things up, which led to a side discussion where my she learned about the idea of “time to penis,” a video game concept she thought was pretty funny, if somewhat telling.

But nobody is cleaning up at South Point… or the wind and waves eventually clean up everything… so there were a few recent creations and the remains of some older ones that had been scattered. There was, however, a nice one declaring the location.

Welcome to South Point

We put together one with our daughter’s initials, an echo of our 2001 trip when my wife was just pregnant with her and we were coming up with a name, which we also wrote in coral on black rock somewhere along the island. Probably at the black sand beach.

Behind us at the shore was the South Point navigational marker, a light beacon and visible sign.

The South Point Navigational Marker

It is on a concrete pillar with a solar panel on the back to charge up the battery for its flashing beacon, back in the hard packed dirt area. Also, visible in the background, are some little white pillars that are the windmills of the Pali o Kulani wind farm, which takes advantage of the nearly constant wind to provide power to the island’s electrical grid.

Naturally, to take these pictures I had my phone out and, in having it out I noticed that I was getting 2-3 bars of LTE signal way out at the lonely end of the island. I suspect line of sight to towers helped, but it is a sign of progress that there was almost nowhere on the island that I was without a cellular signal.

And, seeing I had signal I naturally had to bring up Pokemon Go to see if there was a Pokestop of a gym down at the end of the big island. I was not disappointed. The navigational marker was the location of a gym.

Spinning the photo disks for a gift

The gym was in the hands of Team Valor, so we had to take it for Team Instinct… because of course we did.

There was also a Pokestop close by, which was at the sign marking the mooring holes I mentioned previously.

Mooring holes Pokestop

Somebody will, of course, decry this creep of technology into the most remote areas of our world, but occasionally the Pokestops directed us to some minor item of note or clarified something we couldn’t see, like this USCGS marker that was beyond the barrier back at Kilauea.

USCGS Reference Marker – Set in place in 1940

And, of course, these Pokemon Go locations don’t actually blight the landscape in reality, just in the augmented version on our phones.

Anyway, as the title of this posts indicates, I believe I have now visited the southernmost Pokemon Go gym within the 50 US states. And, as of this writing, my wife and I are still in the gym, along with three other people who showed up to join in.

Still holding the gym as of Saturday afternoon

We’ll see how long we last in that southernmost of gyms.

[Addendum: We got kicked out at 3 Days, 22 hours, 4 minutes.]

I also have one Pokemon gift/postcard in my bag from that gym still to send to one of my in-game friends. That is one I will save to my postcard book and favorite so I don’t delete it by mistake.

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Category Archives: Pokemon Go

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The Southernmost Pokemon Go Gym in the 50 States