Tag Archives: Pokemon Sun and Moon

Summing Up my Nintendo 3DS Play Time

Nintendo is making it clear that the Wii U and 3DS gaming platforms are coming to the end of their supported life. As with the Wii before them, they are turning down services and trying to make it clear that the future, as far as their platform exclusive titles are concerned, is on the Switch.

This past week it was announced that the Nintendo was set to turn off Virtual Console support as of March 2023, after which no new purchases or fresh downloads would be allowed. This set off some wailing and gnashing of teeth, but if history is any sort of lesson, this was inevitable. Even Sony, which supports their hardware long after it has been supplanted by newer models, eventually ends that support… though push back got them to extend support for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita stores after they initially announced those were to be turned off last year. But that is merely a stay of the inevitable execution. The PlayStation 3 launched in 2006.

Anyway, in order to soften the blow or to turn the pending demise of the platform into a moment of nostalgia, Nintendo has put up a page that allows you to explore your Nintendo 3DS and Wii U memories.

Soon memories and some hardware will be all that is left

I saw that Aywren had posted about her memories, so I went to check out when the site had to say about my own play time.

Of course, I never had a Wii U, so that part of the report was not much use to me, but I did have a Nintendo 3DS XL. In fact, I had… have… still have sitting on my desk, still charging… a pair of them, including the final revision of the line, the 2DS XL.

The final incarnation of the dual screen line

I’m still a tad bitter about that, having bought and moved onto the unit at just about the exact moment that Gamefreak declared that there would be no more core Pokemon RPG titles on the platform.

Why would that irk me? Well, I think the play time report they provided illustrates that.

It is Pokemon all the way down…

The top three on the list are Pokemon Sun, Pokemon Y, and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire.

The prime games for me

Those three titles alone add up to 440 of the 518 hours of play time I recorded on the console.

Other titles that they show beyond the top three include:

Pokemon Omega Ruby
Pokemon Ultra Moon
Pokemon Blue
Pokemon Silver
Pokemon Bank
Pokemon Sun & Moon Special Demo
Poke Transporter

Given that it takes 30 or so hours to play through the main story of a Pokemon game, there is enough time left unaccounted for to have played a couple of those titles through. I know I played through Pokemon Blue for the 20th anniversary of the series, there being a blog post about it.

Pretty much the only non-Pokemon apps on the list were YouTube, Netflix, StreetPass Mii Plaza, and Mario Kart 7. I doubt I spent much time with any of them on the 3DS. I certainly only tried Netflix and YouTube to see what watching video was like on the unit. It was no substitute for an iPad… or even the average smart phone.

So that is my time spent on the Nintendo 3DS. That might have been past my peak of Pokemon play times… I put 243 hours alone on Pokemon SoulSilver on the old cobalt blue Nintendo DS Lite… but it was still an era that saw a decent amount of play time.

The Switch Lite I now own hasn’t seen anywhere close to that much play time, but the platform is still young.

Pokemon Dialga and Palkia GameStop Download Event

It being an even numbered year… or such is my theory… Nintendo has again decided to give Pokemon players a chance to get their hands on an array of otherwise mildly difficult to obtain legendary Pokemon.

The first up are from the Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, & Platinum generation, Palkia and Dialga.

Legendaries of the DS era

To obtain one or both of this pair you must trundle on down to your local GameStop to pick up a code to redeem with your game.

The code requires you to own a copy of Pokemon Sun, Moon, UltraSun, or UltraMoon, and the legendary you get depends on which copy of the game you have. Those with Pokemon Sun or UltraSun get Palkia while those with Pokemon Moon or UltraMoon get Dialga.

But the divide doesn’t end there. Those with Pokemon Sun or Moon get a level 60 version of their respective legendary with one set of moves, while those with Pokemon UltraSun or UltraMoon get a level 100 version of their legendary with a different set of moves and a held item.

Look, here is the chart if you want the details.

You can click on this to see it larger…

So the true OCD Pokemon fan has to have all four games… but of course they already do… in order to obtain all four legendary variations.

I will likely just get a code for my copy of Pokemon UltraMoon… mostly because through my own bit of obsessive “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!” collecting, I already have the duo sitting in Pokemon Bank. But I wouldn’t say no to another one.

Anyway, all of this, including the steps on how to redeem your code once you obtain it from GameStop, are documented over on the Pokemon web site.

There is a time constraint. The codes will only be available during February and must be redeemed by May 28, 2018.

Happy collecting!

Addendum: I actually picked up a card after writing this.

The Dialga and Palkia card

The cards are much bigger than the last GameStop distro, being about 4x the side by my estimation.

The reverse side of the card

Friday Bullet Points Dipped in Nostalgia

It is raining again… which is a good thing in California… and a spate of different things have rolled across my screen, all of which interest me but which don’t quite warrant a full blog post yet, so we’re back to Friday bullet points.

Age of Empires Restrictive Edition

I was keen as mustard when it was announced last June that Microsoft was working on a remaster of the original Age of Empires. While I was always more of an Age of Empires II – The Age of Kings fan… and I own the remaster of that already… I was still in for the original.

Age of Empires

After a long stretch of silence, there was finally some news about the game.

On the upside of things, the remaster will be available come February 20, 2018, so it will be here soon.

On the down side, the game will ONLY be available through the Microsoft Windows Store. Leaving aside the whole “I don’t need another goddam Steam clone” and my lack of trust in Microsoft, the store itself tells me it won’t be available until the end of 2018 and that it won’t run on my device.

Also, it may require certain hardware

So I guess that pretty much lets the air out of any Age of Empires nostalgia I had as well as being a bad sign for any possible hope I had in their whole Age of Empires IV plan.

Rift’s Prime Number

From there we head over to Trion Worlds where their 2018 Rift On! producer’s letter.

Trion looks to be eyeing the green fields of nostalgia as well, taking a card from Daybreak’s deck and promising something called Rift Prime, a subscription only version of the game that will come with a fresh server, reduced cash shop options, progressively unlocked content, and NO lockboxes.

I have said in the past that the one thing that would surely get me to roll on back to Telara was a retro server of some sort, so this sounds like it might be the time. The instance group in pre-Storm Legion expansion Rift was one of my MMO high points. Still, there are some mixed messages.

We plan to present RIFT at its roots as much as is possible to do, and look forward to sharing details over the coming weeks. The PRIME server will progress at a faster pace than the original launch and will eventually come to an end in spectacular fashion.

So back to the roots is good, and I expect that the servers will have to progress… by which I assume they mean unlock expansions… more rapidly that than the first time around. I am curious as to what the spectacular end will be.

But then there is also this to wrestle with.

As a small teaser of what’s to come, dynamically matching characters to their current zone’s level, dungeons dropping loot specific to your character’s true level, caps on the number of professions available to a single character, and participation awards that carry over to your characters on existing servers.

Many upcoming live content changes that apply to existing servers will also apply to the new PRIME server, assuming they’re not restricted by progression locks.

That doesn’t sound very much like Rift at its roots.

Anyway, the current time frame is “spring” for Rift Prime which, as we recall from the Landmark launch, extends out to the first day of summer in the back half of June. Syp goes on about the Rift Prime server idea at length, but I am waiting for more details before I crank up the thousand word minimum post-o-matic opinion machine.

Legendary Pokemon Return.. Again

It is an even numbered year so Nintendo is having Pokemon events to give away legendary Pokemon.

Didn’t we just get some of these?

Getting people to come to events to make Pokemon a more social game has always been part of the Game Freak/Nintendo plan, but didn’t we just spend 2016 having monthly legendary events? And isn’t the ability to catch a bunch of these part of the sales pitch for Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon?

Oh well, if you missed out and don’t have the wherewithal for end game Pokemon, another series of events are coming for 2018 starting with a Dialga and Palkia event in February at your local GameStop. In order to participate you must have a copy of Pokemon Sun, Moon, UltraSun, or UltraMoon.

Also coming up in February for Pokemon nostalgia buffs is Pokemon Crystal on the 3DS Virtual Console.

Honest Game Trailers – Pokemon Sun and Moon

Honest Game Trailers continues its journey to review every release generation of the core Pokemon RPG series.

More blunt that usual about Pokemon being essentially the same damn game over and over, but fans buy them over and over as well, so I guess repetition isn’t much to complain about given the success. I know I’ll be buying Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon when it comes out next month.

For those dying to see previous entries in the series, here are the links:

Pokemon UltraSun and UltraMoon Coming plus Pokemon Gold and Silver on Virtual Console

Nintendo had a brief series of announcements early this morning. The expected Pokemon Stars, rumored to be the first Pokemon title for the Nintendo Switch was not on the list. Instead, the Switch gets its own version of Pokken Tournament.

On the Nintendo 3DS front, Nintendo announced that the next titles in the core Pokemon RPG cycle would be Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon, which will be available on November 17, 2017.

UltraSun and UltraMoon

These titles will feature a new story line in the Alola region and will allow players to capture Pokemon not available in the original Pokemon Sun & Moon games.

This development hearkens back to the Pokemon Black & White and Pokemon Black & White Version 2, where the same landscape was used to tell a second Pokemon story.

There was also a Virtual Console announcement. As I predicted back in January, Nintendo is carrying on with the old school Nostalgia by bringing Pokemon Gold & Silver to the 3DS via the Virtual Console.

For the GameBoy Color

The second generation Pokemon games will be available on September 22, 2017 and will, like the Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow versions of last year, be Pokemon Bank compatible. No word on Pokemon Crystal however.

Pokemon Gold and Silver

My wish for a return to Sinnoh via a remake of Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, & Platinum will have to wait for another year it seems, though I hold out hope that we will get there eventually.

As for whether or not the Nintendo Switch will take over the core Pokemon RPG game line, that seems to have been refuted, Nintendo seems committed to the 3DS/2DS handheld consoles.

May 2017 in Review

The Site

Not much changed here and WordPress.com didn’t add anything that particularly annoyed me this month, so pretty much the status quo.

As it is May I guess I can talk about my other blog, EVE Online Pictures, the one-time experiment that became an official EVE Online fan site. It turned nine years old this month. Next year I will devote a whole post to its anniversary. This year I will just post the usual page views per month chart.

EVE Online Pictures – Page Views per Month through May 2017

You may need to click on that to see if full size in order to make it legible.

Anyway, that is the page view tale. You can see the sudden drop off when Google changed how image search worked in February of 2013. Traffic to the site can be very much peaks and valleys. There is a fairly regular group that hits the site on the three days a week that I post a picture. At that rate after nine years the total post count is just past 1,300. There were times when I was just posting twice a week, and a month stretch during the Fountain War where I posted every day.

But then something will happen and boost stats suddenly. During January and March CCP Phantom used a picture for the EVE Online week in review post and linked back site. That prompted a couple of spikes, including the highest page view count in a single day back on January 17th with 939. That was quite a jump for a site that generally has 25-50 page views a day.

And sometimes a person will show up and scroll through the whole site. The theme I use there lets you page down while it keeps loading content, so you can browse all the pictures without needing to click. I will log on and see a spike of 50 page views, but only two unique users have hit the site. So while the uniques to page views ratio for this site is about 1.5, for EVE Online Pictures it runs from 2.5-4 most days.

Anyway, my time capsule of pictures from New Eden carries on, there waiting to be browsed. There are some 2006-ish classic graphics all the way through to whatever is current. New stars was the latest thing and I have a few of those up already.

One Year Ago

Overwatch went live. Still haven’t played it.

DUST 514 went offline. Never did play it.

Landmark’s official launch date was announced. Never did buy it.

There was word about Pokemon Sun & Moon, Civilization VI, EverQuest II prestige servers, the tribulations of WildStar, and the WoW Legion Beta, all in one bullet points post.

In EVE Online I saw my first citadel. Now they’re freakin’ everywhere. There was also a free weekend on Steam that got a lot of accounts created, but which still faced the wall of the new player experience. There was a Blog Banter about Project Nova and that brief experiment with recurring opportunities that granted skill points. There were also details from the CSMXI election and that whole 85% thing, which did not add up for me.

In space the Casino War was still a thing. We were huddled up in the back room of the Quafe Warehouse in Saranen plotting ways to strike back and keep the war going. We threw industrials at sovereignty. That got us a foothold back in Fade for a bit.

Mostly though it was battles in low sec. Asher led us out to battle in his Phantasm, we squared off against capitals, blew up some fax machines. There were battles over structures in Saranen and we managed to anchor an Astrahus to face the citadels arrayed against us. Lots of shooting, but not much changed.

Oh, and SynCaine joined KarmaFleet. I even saw him on an op.

Outside of New Eden Blizzard could only talk about MAUs after renouncing discussion of subscription numbers. Given the whole Nostalrius situation I was wondering what Vanilla WoW really was. And the Warcraft movie was approaching.

In Minecraft I was planning a rail line and finding a path for it to run. Aaron’s project of the month was a facility in the nether to make the collection of Ghast tears easier.

I was also momentarily nostalgic for Starsiege: Tribes… or for what I could remember of it.

And in TorilMUD the elves were no longer restricted to the isle of Evermeet until level 20.

Five Years Ago

I played Portal finally. Now Zoidberg makes the cake joke!

I wrote about camping rare mobs and how this all came from the fact that MUDs used to crash pretty often.

There was the start of the first Newbie Blogger Initiative thing.

On the Fippy Darkpaw server, The Gates of Discord unlock vote shut down that expansion. This caused some hard feelings. And then it failed the vote again.

38 Studios went tits up due to managerial incompetence. Not how you run a start up. But the myth of what greatness might have been lives on, fostered primarily by those whose reputations would benefit from such tales.

The instance group was clearing out King’s Breach in Rift.

Diablo III came out and… error 37. Then error 75. And installer problems. High expectations, huge sales, its always online nature, and memories of past Diablo games probably doomed it the eyes of many. Still, we played it a bit. I compared it to the beta version of Torchlight II, its primary foe in the click to kill genre. I moaned about atmosphere and the influence of WoW on it.

And then I complained about talent trees. Most people seem to like them more than I do.

But mostly I was on about EVE Online. There was a summary of the first Burn Jita. Hulkageddon V came and sort of went. There were spoils from the war in the north to be handed out. OTEC actually got out there, putting aside differences, to defend its financial interests. We blew up an IRC CSAA in Cobalt Edge. There was a question as to whether PLEX was cheating. I mined in null sec for the first time and didn’t know where to put stuff. There were stats about Escalation and Hulkageddon and just ships being blown up in general. And I made a post around John Smeldley’s tweet about Drakes and new missile graphics. He dropped me a note in reply. Turns out he is not only a huge EVE Online fan, but was in the CFC as well. As Mittens would say, one of us.

Ten Years Ago

The then common discussions were going around, what made WoW so successful and what games might contend with WoW? Some of the so called “contenders” were pretty silly picks.

Speaking of Blizzard, they also announced they were going to back to the StarCraft franchise with StarCraft II. About time indeed!

The instance group was focused on LOTRO for the first time. I had things to complain about, especially the state of the economy. And, only a month in we spotted a level 50 player. That must have been some hard work, as the game sort of petered out at about level 35 back then. Still, Middle-earth was a pretty place. It even had rainbows.

Vanguard was heavily in the news. Sigil fell and SOE stepped in to pick up the pieces, though I wondered how long before the many problems with the game became attached to SOE. I was also wondering about the impact of the game’s system requirements.

I was wondering how many more expansions EverQuest would have, while pointing out that you could get the game and all the expansions for only $15.

The owners of Allakhazam, long a staple of EQ knowledge, sold off their gold selling RMT wing, thus removing that taint and a host of gold selling ads from the site.

SOE officially announced the Rise of Kunark expansion for EverQuest II, keeping the game firmly on the nostalgia train. Meanwhile, I had a suggestion for the new Arasai race.

Finally, there were some podcasts I thought people should listen to again. I am not sure you can get most of them any more.

Most Viewed Posts in May

Search Terms of the Month

cash and carry price list daybreak
[I think you and I are talking about different Daybreaks]

how fast travel eve
[Clone jump is about it, and you leave your ship behind]

show me the planets in the world
[I don’t think it works that way]

nes classic in 25 years
[That’s about the wait to get one]

www pngporn.com
[I don’t even know how this got you here]

EVE Online

I don’t feel like I have played all that much… but then I look at my list of participation credits and I guess I did go on some fleets. Reavers have been out and about and blowing things up. We killed four Astrahus citadels in one evening. I just tend not to post about that until the deployment is done.

There was also the first Blood Raiders Shipyard event, which turned into a bit of comedy in the end. At least I got to go out and see a bit of the battle. And, having bookmarked the spot, I was able to guide Mark726 out to it so he could do a post about it on EVE Travel.

Minecraft

The Minecraft server remains pretty quiet. Aaron has been back a bit and must be working on something. I have been logging on some myself and wandering up and down the north mansion road and doing improvements to some of the villages and other rest stops along the way.

Pokemon Sun

I have been slowly but surely trading away at the GTS in order to expand my National Pokedex coverage. I am close to finishing up the first two generations. I also signed up and tried the May International online tournament. I battled six people and lost to five of them. Three of them beat me with the same pair of Pokemon using the same moves. I’ll have to write about that.

Pokemon Go

There was an event this month that made rock Pokemon more common for a week, as well as reducing the distance required for your buddy Pokemon to earn a candy. That actually got me a couple of new Pokemon this month as well as helping me level up to 28. I also managed to finally evolve one of the first generation starter Pokemon to its final form, getting an Venusaur at last.

My basic stats this month:

Level: 28 (+1)
Pokedex status: 166 (+11) caught, 187 (+9) seen
Pokemon I want: Gyrados
Current buddy: Magikarp… only 230km more to get enough candies for a Gyrados

Runes of Magic

Runes of Magic was sort of the guest host game for the month of May. I jumped in at the start of the month and was pretty much done with it by the time we got to the last weekend. It does still feel like 2009 in Taborea… though you’ll have to decide for yourself if that is a good thing… even if the screen has gotten a bit more cluttered since launch. I think they have hit the limit for the number of icons around the mini map. I won’t say I am done with it forever, but I am done with it for the moment.

Coming Up

Steam Summer Sale? Summer is just twenty days away in the northern hemisphere, and said sale usually starts right about then. A price break might get me across the threshold towards buying Rimworld. Been on my wishlist for a while, but “early access” is a red flag to me these days. SynCaine seems positive about it though. And Zubon seems happy with Mini Metro, another game that has lingered on my wishlist for a while. Maybe I will buy some stuff.

I also need a replacement for Runes of Magic to fill the fantasy MMORPG void. Actually, I might have a replacement lined up, and those with a keen eye for detail might be able to tell what it is.

My daughter says that I must play Pokemon: Magikarp Jump on my phone. We’ll see if that warrants a post.

In New Eden we remain deployed, which means more ops to go on and fights to be had.

The Ashes of Creation Kickstarter campaign winds up in a couple days. That is closing in on the $3 million mark, so the question is just which stretch goals will be achieved… and what the post-campaign fund raising will look like. Star Citizen has proven that you should never stop asking for money.

Otherwise, I am not sure what the next month will bring.

Pokemon Lycanroc event at GameStop

Pokemon Sun & Moon have been out for about six months now, and we’ve not heard anything yet about the next release, so Nintendo is still promoting what it has. There is still a Pokemon in the Alola Pokedex unaccounted for, Marshadow, who does look like a cross between a marshmallow and a shadow. But as they dangle that before us, Nintendo also has another give away.

Between May 15, 2017 and June 5, 2017 you can go to your local GameStop to pick up a card for a special Lyncanroc Pokemon in its night time, full moon, werewolf-esque form.

Available for a limited time

Supplies of the cards are limited, so head to GameStop sooner rather than later if you want this Pokemon. The code is only valid for Pokemon Sun & Moon.

Of course, you can always just evolve a Rockruff into this form by leveling him up past level 25 at night, but the GameStop version comes with a special set of moves and a held item.

Meanwhile, Nintendo also has another download offer going on this month. Following the instructions at this link will let you download mega stones so you can have mega evolutions in battle for Pidgeot, Steelix, Heracross, and Houndoom.

May 2017 Mega Stones

As with the above, this offer is only good for Pokemon Sun & Moon and must be collected before the end of the month.

I continue to potter around in Pokemon Sun at my end, working on a project I will likely post about at another time.

Friday Bullet Points for a Warm Spring Day

Well, it has been warm in Silicon Valley this week, with temperatures up to 90 degrees at times. After a wet winter that means that more than spring is in the air. Pollen is a serious, palpable thing outside right now for those of us with allergies. But a runny nose and a desire for some of those good old “makes you drowsy” allergy meds from my youth won’t stop me from at least doing a bullet points post.

Pokemon Go in the Grass

Bulbasaur knows what I am talking about!

Clearly in the spirit of my pain, Niantic is having a Grass Weekend mini-event for Pokemon Go. Starting this afternoon and ending early Monday grass type Pokemon are supposed to be out in force. In addition, lures dropped at Pokestops are supposed to last 6 hours rather than the usual 30 minutes. Will that be enough to lure me out of the house?

Pokemon Sun & Moon Bean Collecting

Meanwhile, in Pokemon Sun & Moon, there is an in-game event around collecting Poke Beans at the Poke Pelago. As with the Pokemon Go event, it runs until Monday. The minimum and bonus thresholds have already been reached, so all you have to do to get some Festival Coins is register in the Festival Plaza, collect some beans, and then go back and update you status. Details are at the link. If you are a registered Pokemon Global Link player, you get double the Festival coins plus a level ball and some rare candy as well.

We’re well past the 6 million bean stretch goal…

Ashes of Creation Campaign Status

The Ashes of Creation Kickstarter that I wrote about earlier in the week seems to have hit the mid-campaign doldrums already. After passing a million dollars in the first 36 hours, pledges have slowed down. That is to be expected. I will be interested if they have a mid-campaign plan after their very strong start. Meanwhile, there has been some concerns about Intrepid’s Creative Director and CEO Steven Sharif and the depth of experience of the Ashes of Creation team. Sharif has responded via an interview with Massively OP.

Activision Blizzard still Touting MAUs

The Activision Blizzard first quarter results were announced yesterday. You can find all the data, such that it is, over on their investor relations site. Blizzard and King were tied as the first quarter net earning powers, with King ahead it gross revenue but Blizzard having a higher margin.

Revenues on Slide 10 of the investor presentation

And yet the big “we’re doing good!” metric remains Monthly Active Users, or MAUs. I have griped before that MAUs are meaningless without context. The fact that the two net earners have wildly different MAU numbers (41 million for Blizzard, or less than Activision, and 341 million for King) seems to require at least some details about their disparate business models.

Meanwhile, the report also celebrates Overwatch becoming Blizzard’s eighth “billion dollar” franchise, making me strain my brain to come up with that many.

World of Warcraft
Warcraft
StarCraft
Diablo
Hearthstone
Overwatch
Heroes of the Storm
Lost Vikings

They must be slicing and dicing what constitutes a franchise to get eight billion dollar earners… or Lost Vikings was more popular than I imagined. Also, I would argue that WoW is a continuation of the Warcraft franchise. But marketing will segment how they see fit.

Anyway, back to the land of Benedryl for me.

When You Have Finished Pokemon But Still Want to Play Pokemon

My video game play preferences tend to be subject to a certain amount of… hrmm… variability.

If I am into a game at a given point in time, I play it a lot and don’t want to put it down. If I am not into a game… well, no amount of telling myself I should play can get me to log in.

No doubt, if you follow the blog closely (I’m sorry), you will have noted my changing whims and passions when it comes to video games. I think that is pretty normal, when it comes down to it. I might be a bit more binge-y than some, but things change and interests wane. Sometimes a game is done and sometimes you are done with a game.

But what do you do when you have finished the game but still want to play?

Such is my issue with Pokemon at the moment.

For me, Pokemon is one of my most binge-y games. I am either really into it and play every day, or I am not into it and can’t bring myself to take my 3DS off the charger.

Right now I am really into having quite enjoyed Pokemon Sun. Unfortunately, I have pretty much done everything I wanted to in the game. I finished the story, defeated the elite four, became champion, captured all of the island Tapu Pokemon, captured the ultra beasts in the end game story, and completed the Alola pokedex.

Alola Pokedex at 100%

But I still want to play, so I have pottered around a bit, upgraded Poke Pelago all the way, gotten the Festival Plaza up to level 76, and considered filling out the National Pokedex again.

However, the National Pokedex situation is… sub-optimal. In a way, I like that it is in Pokemon Bank, so it can take data from any of the 3DS Pokemon games. But in order to check where you stand, you have to log out of Pokemon Sun… and that takes a bit as the game taxes the old 3DS some… then open up Pokemon Bank, updated the Pokemon stats, and get the listing of what you have seen/captured so far, then save and close that out and launch Pokemon Sun again, at which point if I haven’t written down my next few goal Pokemon they will have fallen out of my short term memory already. The joys of being old.

So the only key thing left to do is build up a team to battle other players… some might say that is the whole point of the game… but that is one aspect of Pokemon I am not really into. When I get to that I lose interest and never get anywhere.

But I still want to play Pokemon.

No problem, I have a lot of older Pokemon games. In fact I think, between my daughter and I, we own all but one of the DS/3DS series of Pokemon games. Neither of us has Pokemon Yellow, but other than that we are covered.

If I wanted to use this play time to work on the National Pokedex I would have to limit myself to the 3DS titles or Pokemon Black & White / Black & White Version 2, since those are the only ones that can place Pokemon direction into Pokemon Bank. Still, we have all of those titles.

Then there was the other issue, in that almost all of those games are “done,” at least for specific definitions of the word. I am bad at going back to old games that are in progress and picking them back up again. And, while you can erase and restart Pokemon games, I am also loathe to wipe out past efforts.

So I decided I would pick up a new copy of a title I had not played myself from the Nintendo eShop. That left me with four choices, Pokemon Moon, Pokemon Yellow, Pokemon Omega Ruby, and Pokemon X. I have played through companion titles for all of those games, which were Pokemon Sun, Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, and Pokemon Y. The variations of Black & White were out because you they are only available at retail at this point used or at inflated prices.

As much as I enjoyed Pokemon Sun, Pokemon Moon was too similar and I had just wrung about all the content I wanted out of the pair, having played my daughter’s copy for a bit to finish up the Alola Pokedex.

Playing Pokemon Blue was an interesting archeological exercise, a delve into the history of the series, but not something I was keep to repeat, even if Pokemon Yellow has color.

Pokemon Y was enjoyable enough, but the Kalos region didn’t thrill me and this first attempt at 3D in Pokemon was awkward at times as the camera seemed determined to keep you from looking in the direction you needed at times.

All of which left me looking at Pokemon Omega Ruby. Not a bad choice. The game has been out for a while and is available at the Nintendo eShop.

It also has a extensive end-game involving the capture of legendary Pokemon to keep me going.

Finally, while I finished up Alpha Sapphire, I only just got there. It was the at the end of my binge cycle, so picking it up again… and I tried for a bit… has left me stumbling around. Better to start fresh again. Also, there is a bit of the Civilization aspect to this, where starting off is often one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game… once you get past the tutorial telling you things you know already.

So I downloaded it and started off. Since I had already fulfilled the house rules obligation to not start with the same Pokemon as my daughter, I felt free to pick the fire type starter Pokemon, Torchic.

He is adorable

How he is described:

As cute as Torchic looks, this Pokémon can shoot fireballs of more than 1,800 degrees F out of its mouth and scorch its foes as black as cinders.

It is a pity that he evolves into rather less attractive forms. (See the starter Pokemon for the game here.) But such is the way with Pokemon, the starters are always cute but lose that aspect as they evolve.

I kicked off the new game last night and, being in binge mode, am already two gyms in. I did consider running the game as a Nuzlocke challenge, but decided against it. I just wanted to dive in and collect them all, as the motto goes. I might try Nuzlocke another time.

I have gotten used to some of the great features that Game Freak put into Pokemon Sun & Moon… I do miss just being able to drag and drop in the storage box for example, and having to burden Pokemon with HMs for travel and such will be annoying… but Pokemon Omega Ruby has some good aspects of its own, like letting you know when you’ve caught all the Pokemon in a given area. We shall see how long my current passion/binge can sustain me.

March 2017 in Review

The Site

It can be a bit of an issue, writing a gaming blog focused on MMORPGs when you are not playing very many such games. Or only one such game, which in my case is EVE Online, and all the more so when you’re off doing something you’re not supposed to blab about.

MMORPGs just feel more conducive to daily posts than single player games like Pokemon or even shared world games like Minecraft. Those are good for one post a week if I feel like I have actually done something worth posting about.

Also, I have to take Pokemon screen shots with my phone, and they look like crap

That led to me simply not writing as many posts this month, and many of them were focused on game news and updates and wider industry items. Those are solid posts, things I like to go back to in a year to see how things really turned out. But they don’t tell my own story, which is the focus of the blog.

One Year Ago

Daybreak announced that they were giving up on EverQuest Next. That left me wondering what the future looked like for Landmark. It wasn’t going to have PvP.

I also wrote up a post about all of the SOE/Daybreak MMOs and their current (mostly closed) status. Things still looked pretty good for EverQuest at 17, though I wasn’t sure how experience injectors were going to play out in EverQuest II.

Also in EverQuest II the PvP version of their retro nostalgia server, Deathtoll, was getting folded into the PvE version, Stormhold, due to lack of interest, thus ending open world PvP in the game outside of that Russian server. I was looking for nostalgia on the Stormhold side of things again.

Voting kicked off for CSM 11 with Xenuria on the official Imperium ballot. How things change.

The monthly EVE Online update introduced Project Discovery and made it so you had to be mutual friends in order to track somebody’s online status in your contact list. The month’s blog banter wanted people to imagine other games based off of the EVE Online IP, so I went with something akin to Diplomacy.

There were a bunch of little EVE Online things, like server upgrades, downtime compensation, and skill injector fun that I put into one bullet points post. I like those posts when I do them, I hate them a year later when I want to do my summary. It is easier when each topic has its own post!

Fighting was going on as the Casino War widened. Some of the coalition was staged in Saranen, which meant flying quite a ways to defend territory on the far side of Tribute, including an unfortunate event with a Higgs anchor rig on my Guardian. There were things going on in several regions, including a really good brawl in Fade.

Then the weight in numbers began to tell as we had to fight fires on several fronts. I wondered if we were going to have a last stand at VFK-IV. The plan, however, was not to waste ships against the superior numbers arrayed against us. Instead we gave up territory, announcing the abandonment of the Vale of the Silent region, occupied by Lawn and Bastion, with one constellation owned by Circle-of-Two. CO2 decided to leave the Imperium over this in order to save their territory, which would soon be the front line in the war, betraying us even as the fight was still going on in M-OEE8. Once the war was over their new friends turned on them and took their territory anyway. Who says there are no happy endings?

The M-OEE8 fight was still a big one and got CCP some press. That is one thing null sec is good for, bringing attention to the game.

Black Desert Online went live and much bitching about the cash shop ensued, so I couldn’t resist jumping on that bandwagon yet again. The cash shop is a necessary evil at this point.

I was poking fun at VR, which is still struggling for relevance. Meanwhile EVE Valkyrie and Gunjack went live with the official Occulus Rift launch.

Minecraft 1.9, the Combat Upgrade landed, giving us shields. I stopped wearing one of those ages ago, as you can’t read maps, among other things, if you have one on.

In Minecraft Aaron’s zombie pig farm was causing MC Pro Hosting to lag out on us. But we made the switch to the much more reasonably priced Minecraft Realms hosting option, which solved that issue. Premium pricing was not getting us premium service.

In Diablo III I was chasing the Season 5 set dungeon.

And, finally, things looked grim for WildStar, with China cancelled, layoffs, and dwindling revenue.

Five Years Ago

The family and I went and visited the USS Iowa while it was docked up in Richmond.

April Fools spirit hit Wargaming.net a little early.

It only seemed like Zynga was desperate back then.

I took a quick peek back into Need for Speed: World.

Raptr said I could be the top WoW player they tracked… if I just played another 18,999 hours.

I also rolled a new character on a new server in LOTRO because… why not?

In EVE Online voting commenced and The Mittani won the chairmanship of the CSM 7 by a large margin. And then he named names during his alliance talk and was removed from CSM 7 and banned from EVE for 30 days.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, we were being taunted by a LEGO Rifter that we were doomed never to see and Derek Smart was telling everybody DUST 514 was doomed to fail. Well, he got that one right I guess.

Meanwhile, the war in the north was heating up again even without The Mittani. The CFC was picking up systems in Tenal as bases of operation for the upcoming offensive. Then there was the bloodbath at C-J6MT.

In Rift, we had a couple of runs at the Foul Cascade.

EverQuest turned 13 and went free to play. That saw more than a few of us run in to give it a try. Fall nostalgia in the Spring. We ran the tutorial, tried out mercenaries, and created a guild. I am not sure what became of our little group. Nostalgia is like that.

It was also announced that Vanguard would be going free to play as well. While on the Fippy Darkpaw server, LDON and LoY went live… I think.

Then I was trying to find another blog name that used the TAGN acronym as a setup for an April Fools joke. That totally fell flat.

And, finally, I attempted to bring together as many memories from the early days of Air Warrior as I could.

Ten Years Ago

In EverQuest II, my swashbuckler Blintz became my highest level MMO character at the time, hitting the level 50 mark. I was also going on about the pain of the alchemist trade and offline selling in the game.

Meanwhile, I was still griping about the rise in the cost of Station Access, but at least I got something of an answer as to how my Station Access dollars were allocated. SOE was having problems with their email marketing though.

In World of Warcraft the instance group, after a couple attempts finally finished up Uldaman in one of the more memorable fights of our time as a team, was then coming to a temporary stopping point at Zul’Farrak. Work would keep Earl too busy to play with us for the next few months. Meanwhile, a load of my other friends in WoW disappeared due to server splits.

Proving that random grouping has been a problem for a long time, there was a discussion going around about being able to rate people with whom you have grouped. That option doesn’t seem to have come to pass.

CCP was whispering in my ear about resubscribing for their Revelations expansion.

EverQuest turned 8 years old and the blog itself hit the six month mark.

And, finally, I had a comically large arrow stuck in my head.

Most Viewed Posts in March

Search Terms of the Month

cleric spell syntax torilmud
[c ‘full heal’ meclin]

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[Not as amusing as the blogging or podcasting vanhemlock]

how to make a charged creeper farm survival
[Aaron did that already]

eve how to get places faster
[Jump clones? Interceptors?]

hussein althumani buffalo
[I don’t even know how that string got you here]

EVE Online

The first half of the month was fairly quiet. We got the monthly update, I did some ratting, but not much exciting happened. For the second half I have been on a deployment, but I do not write about deployments until they are over. A post about that will come as soon as we are home. I did do my first combat probe scanning, though if you look at my kill board, I only had simple targets in mind.

Minecraft

I continue to work on the long road. With less than 2km left to go, I should be able to wrap the project up. Then I will have to ride it end to end to see just how long it takes to go 20+ km on a horse. Meanwhile, a couple of people from my corp in EVE Online have joined our server, so more people are building things in our world.

Pokemon

I went to town with Pokemon Sun, wrapping up the main story line and the post story activities and finishing the Alola Pokedex. However, that really hasn’t sated my Pokemon playing binge, so I am wondering what to do next.

Pokemon Go

The rainy weather abated in California in time for the Water festival in Pokemon Go. That actually let me catch a number of new Pokemon, though I did not get nearly enough Magikarp in order to evolve a Gyrados. Playing it gets me to take a walk every day to pick up a few of the nearby Pokestops. My basic stats this moneth:

Level: 27 (+1)
Pokedex status: 149 (+21) caught, 172 (+19) seen
Pokemon I want: Final evolution of any of the starter Pokemon
Current buddy: Hoothoot, who earns a candy every kilometer.

Coming Up

It is April Fools tomorrow, so prepare for the few funny, and the many unfunny, attempts to play on the theme of the day. There are already some items out there, like the Reddit post about Brave Newbies disbanding. Be more skeptical than usual through the weekend.

We should be getting a lot more EVE Online news next week, as Fan Fest runs April 6-8. We will also learn who will be sitting on CSM XII. And we should get the usual monthly update as well at some point.

Our deployment in New Eden seems likely to wrap up soon-ish, so I will post about those adventures, such that they were.

I will likely finish the long road. Then it will be a matter of what to do next.

We will also hit the 10 year anniversary for Lord of the Rings Online. I have to imagine they will have somethings planned for that.

And I have to our income taxes and make our property tax payment. The joys of adulting.

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Veni, Vidi, Scripsi