Tag Archives: Evony

May 2010 in Review

The Site

As predicted, the disruption of being laid off meant less posts.  Theoretically, I have much more time in which to write.  However, I had a writing routine which is broken without the whole job thing around which it was structured, leading to less writing over all.

Well, less blog writing.  I’ve been writing lots of email, updating my resume, writing cover letters, and so on.  So the amount of writing I’m doing is going up over all.  You just don’t see as much of my output now.

My mother was also out to visit recently, which really has nothing to do with the site, but gives me an excuse to post a picture.

Authenticators Three

It turns out that while my mother, myself, and my daughter all have Blizzard authenticators, we all have different ones.  I am sure there is somebody out there who collects this sort of thing and who is saying, “Hey, where did you get that middle one?”

One Year Ago

It was just a year ago when I was able to expose the true conspiracy behind the EuroGamer Darkfall review.  Powerful forces have been suppressing this story ever since.

Meanwhile, EverQuest was celebrating its 10 year anniversary by putting up a new server.  Polled on what it should be, people chose the 51/50 rule set.  I’m sure that, somehow, that say something about MMOs and nostalgia.  And did anybody go play on that new server?  How did it work out?

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

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

And speaking of EVE Online, it was a year ago that I announced my one year experiment, EVE Online Pictures.  That site is now two years old.

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

And a year ago Playboy’s “Massively Casual Online Game” Playboy Manager was announced.  The game was supposed to launch in the summer of 2009 according to the press release.  The site for the game is still there (go Google it) but it still mentions signing up for beta invites.  Casual might refer to the development plan I guess.

New Linking Sites

I would like to thank the following site for linking here.

Please take a moment to visit them in return.

Most Viewed Posts in May

  1. Pokewalker Winner’s Path WiFi Event
  2. How To Find An Agent in EVE Online
  3. Pokewalker Twinking
  4. Battle of the Immortals – Key Features
  5. Play On: Guild Name Generator
  6. Starting Fresh in Middle-earth Three Years Later
  7. So This is Where EQII Marketing is Headed
  8. April Fools at Blizzard
  9. TTH Picks the Top Ten PvP MMOs
  10. The Agency… on Facebook
  11. Re-Entering Middle-earth
  12. Of Server Merges, Memorial Dings, Vanity Mounts, and Predictions

Search Terms of the Month

freeport housing looks like shit
[Well, I hear the Halas housing is much better.]

how do i hack the arceus event
[I make a pokewalker cheat and this is what I get?]

MLB dugout blueprints
[I’m calling homeland security on this one.]

white mouse
[My first thought was, “Seriously?”  But it turns out the site is the number one response when you search Google images for “white mouse.”  Go figure.]

Spam Comment of the Month

Tom Cruise is a fudge packer
[This was on a Pokemon post.  Again, go figure.]

EVE Online

The wormhole expedition seems to be back on.  Potshot has been leading on this, and has a couple of posts on the subject. (In order, Spaaace, Parking, Defenses, and Room.)  I opted-in by taking my pile of ISK and buying a couple of PLEX so I could be around to help out and still keep up my embargo on new expenses.  I also trained up Starbase Defense Management so I could man the guns should it come to pew-pew.

Lord of the Rings Online

I have a couple of posts backed up on LOTRO.  I have been playing my two new characters on Firefoot.  They are both past level 25 at this point and it feels like I could keep going at a moderate pace and make my goal from last year of at least seeing Moria.  Then again, things could flatten out.  We’ll see.

Lord of Ultima

A friend of mine thought Lord of Ultima looked neat, so I joined him in playing.  He has since stopped, but I plug along.  I am WilhelmIV on World 3.  It isn’t really anything like the Ultima series up to and including Ultima Online.  It is more like Evony without the ads, scams, and stolen artwork.  I’m about ready to build a castle, which makes you open to attack, to see how quickly I will get wiped out.  I am surrounded by BioWare Edmonton players.

World of Warcraft

After throwing out tons of different ideas and possible alternative games, it sounds like we are going to press on with our team of horde characters on Lightninghoof and see if we cannot blast through the Outlands doing only random instances via the dungeon finder.

Nintendo DS/Wii

Pokemon is still in play.  My daughter and I are both in Kanto now, another item I should post about, since we managed it in very different styles.  I was disappointed to find that Pokemon Ranch does not work with HeartGold and SoulSilver, and I am going to guess that Pokemon Battle Revolution is likewise incompatible.

While we have a new, favorite disk for the Wii, I will write about that later.

And we pulled out Wii Fit, which my wife got for her birthday in 2009 (she asked for it!).  The body evaluation section of the program declared my daughter obese.  We had to go in and change her profile.  She had grown over 7 inches since we last played.  Once fixed, she was again at the skinny end of healthy.

Coming Up

More sporadic posting, and it will get worse before it gets better, as once I get a new job (please!) there will be coming up to speed with the new position and the eventual creation of a new routine which may allow even less time to write, like if I get that job over in Emeryville for which I applied.  I would end up spending a lot more time commuting and a lot less time writing in that case.

But I should always have time for at least the weekly instance group write-ups.  We shall see what the future brings.

I Think We Need a Futile Gesture

I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.

Eric “Otter” Stratton, Animal House

It has been pointed out that the company which makes Evony has been behaving… badly I guess would be the right term… with their game and ads and spam comments. They have even been declared an aspirant to the title “Most Hated Game on the Net” by The Guardian,

Evony LLC is, I gather, somewhat unhappy about these responses to its game and ad campaign, especially those from Bruce Everiss.

Evony LLC is now positioning themselves as a small company defending itself from abuse and have done what any such small company would do, tried to contact Bruce Everiss and show that he is being unfair in his characterizations of the game and the practices surrounding it.  You know, an outreach sort of thing, because that is what these games are about: Community.

Oh, wait, no they didn’t.

No, they lawyered up first thing and had their attorneys start sending notes threatening legal action on the opposite site of the globe from Mr. Everiss.  Because that is what small US based companies which believe in the justness of their cause do, they hire lawyers in Australia to sue somebody in England.

Craptasitic.

And what can people like you and I do about this sort of thing?

Frankly, nothing.

Nothing except mock the people at Evony for being such transparently bad sports, to put the situation mildly.

I applaud the team at PopCap who have taken to making parodies of the ever-present Evony ads to advertise their own game, Plants vs. Zombies.

But PopCap is somewhat constrained in what it can do, being a business and interested in selling its game rather than scolding a mis-behaving company.  We can do better.

I want to come up with some really hilarious versions of the Evony ads.  Something like a Last Tango in Paris version:

Your Butter awaits, my Lord!

What can we come up with?  And who wants to do some artwork?  You can treat this as a meme if you like, or a challenge.

Should we make this a contest?

And who has some good ideas for parody ads?

Daily Bog Roll 7/11 – Two Ply Edition

We at TAGN, who have apparently started using the royal first person plural, have decided to pitch in and help Tipa while she is adjusting to a new work schedule.  So, we give you the Daily Bog Roll!

It gets readable if you click on it

click to make the text legible

Our top story today: Blogalissimo Francisco Tolbold is still dead!

Or at least he is taking a break from blogging.  Work on Toblopedia has been suspended out of respect for the auteur.  Candle-light vigils have been reported in major cities.

In a change of editorial policy, Syncaine put out a Friday post that did not attack World of Warcraft, but rather defended the standard $15 a month subscription plan in the case of well established, triple-A titles.  Don’t cry for me Rob Pardo.

Potshot, tiring of the “Horse Dialogs,” runs off and actually plays Runes of Magic to see if it is even worth worrying about their cash shop policies.

Scott Hartsman was deported from Ohio or something.  Anyway, he is out of a job.

Eric the Elder Gamer points out that the live team, the team that runs an MMO after it ships, often isn’t the same group that built it.  Wasn’t that Scott Hartsman’s job at SOE?  Anyway, he calls them the “B-Team,” at least when it comes to WoWLive team people commiserate.

Another former EverQuest II guy, Ryan Shwayder, wants to know where all the “social” went in our MMOs.  He has a laundry list of things that have made us solo-nauts in these games and then says that the Copernicus project at 38 Studios is going to fix all of them.  How it will do this though is left as an exercise to the reader.

Chiming in on the Professor Goodbar drama, Gevlon says that winning is everything and the ends more than justify the means.  But he says that about everything.  Meanwhile we find out what the Professor thinks about somebody quoting from his work… though  he uses the word “srsly.”  No word yet on a coconut powered netbook.

Recently some nun said space is boring. (To be fair, I am pretty sure that is church doctrine.)  But Mynxee at Life in Low Sec doesn’t find it boring, though she did find it a bit exasperating being lost in wormhole space.

Meanwhile, Evony (a contraction of “Ever Annoying”) the self-proclaimed “World’s Best Web Game” fresh from its stunningly successful web ad campaign has begun spamming the comment threads of all the cool blogs just to make sure everybody knows they’re still alive and they have this awesome cool game and that it is free forever… or until it shuts down… whichever comes first.

And, finally, Beau Turkey wonders if his relationship with Darkfall ended too soon.  What is the MMO equivalent of the phrase “Booty Call?”

Anyway, go enjoy your free Slurpee at participating 7-Eleven stores.  It is National Slurpee Day.