Tag Archives: RimWorld

Friday Bullet Points on the Cusp of Spring

What did I Play in 2022 and how does 2023 look?

Did I mention 2022 was kind of a crappy year around our house? Nothing tragic happened. Nobody died and the house didn’t burn down or anything. Instead it was just a wearing down of the spirit as one dumb thing after another happened. It was a year of reacting to problems.

2022 is what we get

This resulted in me spending about 33% less time in 2022 playing video games, at least as tracked by ManicTime, the app I use to spy on my computer time.

ManicTime – For your app time tracking needs

And things started with me being laid off at the end of 2021, which probably boosted my time played in January, because you can only spend so much time on the job search before you are crippled with anxiety because the job you got a decade ago with a Business degree now lists a Master Degree in Computer Science as the preferred education. This is how HR aids and abets the bottom line, by inflating required qualifications so the company can complain that there are not enough qualified candidates so they need more H1B visas please.

But I digress. Job searching is a part time thing, but once you have a new job then the work of figuring things out is just beginning. So the new job starts in April, then my mom falls and has to come and live with us over the summer and I spend a lot of my free time trying to figure out her finances (still not there yet) and getting her into assisted living, so October is about when I come up for air from that… and then the holidays hit but I don’t have enough vacation banked up to lounge about, otherwise November and December would have been the high points of the year, as they have been in past years. The last two weeks of December are traditionally a very big gaming time for me.

Time spent playing games in 2022

So quite a year.

And what did I play? ManicTime tracked 21 titles played on my PC, broken out as follows:

WoW Classic – 29.02%
Valheim – 18.70%
EVE Online – 16.62%
Lost Ark – 9.44%
EverQuest II – 7.04%
Minecraft – 4.39%
Stellaris – 3.42%
Pokemon Shining Pearl – 3.03%
New World – 2.49%
Combat Mission: Red Thunder – 1.50%
Solasta – 1.23%
RimWorld – 1.22%
FreeCiv – 0.35%
Raft – 0.33%
LEGO Star Wars – 0.25%
Diablo Immortal – 0.24%
World of Warcraft – 0.22%
V Rising – 0.20%
EverQuest – 0.17%
LOTRO – 0.09%
World of Tanks – 0.05%

For those more visually oriented, I have a pie chart, which breaks out the top ten, with a slice to cover everything else.

Games played in 2022 pie chart

96% of my tracked gaming time consisted of those ten games, so it seems pretty safe to focus on them.

Now, for purposes of tracking, when I played things is almost as important as how much I played… at least to me, and all the more so given that first chart. So I am finally down to the usual chart that breaks out the top ten titles by when I played them in 2022.

2022 in gaming for me

EVE Online is the usual all year title. It may only be in third place on the percentages, but it is a title I did go in and play every month. I am on a kill mail and have at least one fleet participation credit for each month.

WoW Classic in 2022 really translates into Wrath of the Lich King Classic, along with the pre-patch to get ready for it. We tired of Outland well before we got very far, but once Wrath was looming we were back in business. We hopped into Outland to get our characters and a few alts to level 68 to be ready for Northrend. It is the most played title for me, though it covers a bit less than half of the year.

Then there was Valheim, which we went back to try again with a fresh world in order to see what had changed since we last played. That was a pretty focused play time, but Valheim is very good at that. With the release of the Mistlands biome I got our world back online, but we’re still pretty tied up with Wrath, so it might be a while before we seek a foothold there.

Lost Ark was where we landed after New World. That went okay for a bit. It was fun, but kind of silly and not really our thing.

EverQuest II was me playing the Visions of Vertovia expansion, which wore out once I got to the end game stuff and needed to get on the gear and skill upgrade grind to be able to managed any further content.

Minecraft was an attempt to fill the void after we reached the end of the plains biome. But after all the work we did in that world my daughter and I started back in the day, I feel like I might have worn out Minecraft. It always feels like I am redoing things I’ve already done.

Stellaris and Forza Horizon 4, both titles I want to go back and play, were there because I had lots of time over the holidays and into January, and then reality began to sink in a little more firmly.

Pokemon Shining Pearl, the remake that my daughter and I had been waiting for, saw quite a bit of play around the Holidays… and is the one item on the list that ManicTime doesn’t track. But the Switch gives you some play time numbers and Pokemon games themselves always have a timer for how long you’ve played. That was good fun, until I beat the main game, after which I fell off the title. I wasn’t going to catch ’em all.

New World was the end of our stint there. They’ve since merged servers and removed our company and what not to the extent that I am not sure we’ll ever return. It is go back to that mess or go back to queues on a fresh start server… until those servers die and get merged again.

Finally there is Combat Mission: Red Thunder, which was an attempt to relive a bit of my gaming from 20 years ago. It isn’t Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin, but it was okay.

So that was what I played. I am not going to go as deep into charts as Belghast, but I have a summary of sorts. Maybe at some point I’ll try and wrap up a five year view.

And what does the new year look like? What do I think I will play in 2023?

Likely Candidates:

WoW Classic
EVE Online
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Valheim

Those all seem safe since I am literally playing them already. LEGO Star Wars… we’ll see how far I get with that one.

Strong Possibilities:

Pokemon Scarlet
RimWorld
Dwarf Fortress

Those feel like things I might get into. My daughter got me Pokemon for Xmas, RimWorld has the Biotech expansion to explore, and Dwarf Fortress is finally available in a comprehensible form on Steam. I should try it.

Seems Likely:

Diablo IV

I think I will be in for that, if it ships this year.

Things I will want to play, but probably won’t:

Forza Horizon 4/5
Lord of the Rings Online
Solesta
Civilization
EverQuest
Project: Gorgon
Most of my Steam library

It just seems to work out that way. I have a limited amount of time and a hierarchy or titles I am in the mood to play.

Negative Interest:

WoW Dragonflight
New World
EverQuest II
Minecraft

Not saying they are bad games, but my own mood isn’t there for them. I’m sour on New World and, in something of an odd twist, the previous expansions have put me off of both retail WoW and EQII for now. And I think I covered Minecraft above.

But, in the end, my ability to predict what I will end up playing is somewhat limited. I have a whole history of these post and my looking forward statements about what I might play have often not aligned with the reality at the end of the year… to the point that I stopped writing a separate forecasting post.

2021 – Combined summary and predictions into one post
2020 – Combined summary and predictions into one post
2019 – I played some things that I predicted I would, but not many
2018 – Technically, mission accomplished; reality, not so much.
2017 – I played nothing from the list, though arguably only two were playable
2016 – I played none from the list, but most didn’t ship
2015 – literally nothing I listed went live
2014 – I played Warlords of Draenor, which was a gimme really
2012 – Actually tried most of the items on the list
2011 – Tried 3 out of 5 eventually, but then The Agency was on the list
2007 LOTRO (shipped!)
2007 Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising (Didn’t ship)

Anyway, that is another wrap up post for 2022. We shall see what 2023 really brings.

The RimWorld Biotech Expansion

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RimWorld, that copious consumer of my play time whenever I turn my attention to it, is back with a new DLC/Expansion called BioTech.

Making babies

With this update children will be introduced into the game. From the update:

With Biotech, colonists (and outsiders) can become pregnant and give birth. Pregnancy can begin naturally, or via technological means, and can be controlled by a variety of methods.

Babies bring joy, but also challenges. Colonists’ hearts will melt when the baby coos and giggles in their arms. But it takes effort to keep a baby happy and healthy and loved – create a safe haven for them in a cozy pastel nursery where there is always warm milk, a comfortable crib, overflowing toy chests and kind caregivers.

They grow up fast (especially if you use a growth vat) – soon your child will be walking, talking, and getting into trouble. They’ll soak up knowledge in the classroom and tag along with adults to watch them work. Kids find many ways to entertain themselves with art, exploring nature, playing with technology, and more. Teach them lessons and they’ll learn how to survive, cook, make friends, create art, build, craft, hunt, and fight. Watch as they grow up and make mistakes, lose loved ones, and survive hardships.

I have always been interested in the relationships between colonists in the game, and have played out otherwise dead-end or solved games just to see how they evolve over time. A colonist who has had sex recently is a happy colonist.

And now sex will have consequences. Your colonists will be able to have kids the old fashioned way… or you can genetically engineer them, grow them in vats, and create your own clone army. This is RimWorld, a sandbox that lets you choose your path in many ways.

The expansion also introduces mechaniods, semi-living machines that can be controlled by colonists with a special brain implant. Mechanoids can be for menial labor or combat and will have their own technological research track.

Or you can go right into genetically modifying your colonists. This will also be a thing. That furry cult you created with the Ideology expansion, now you will be able to modify the members so they can reach their ideal state.

I expect, as with past updates, there will be a series of fixes and revisions as a larger audience starts playing and giving feedback. By the time we hit the holidays, when I hope to have some more free time, it ought to have settled down so I can give it a try.

My 2022 in Gaming So Far

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One of the other things the Steam Summer Sale tends to spark in me is a review of my gaming so far in the year. One thing that happened in the first half of 2022 was that a new title took over as my most played game on Steam.

My Steam top ten titles

I think Civilization V has been at the top of the list since I made my current Steam account back in 2010… and I did that because you had to have a Steam account to play. I was kind of against Steam back then, but have clearly softened on it as an option over the years.

Now, however, Valheim has taken over the top spot, managing to do so in less than 18 months. That says something about me or Valheim or both I suppose.

Anyway, Valheim got there by being my most played title so far in 2022 as measured by ManicTime. Out of time spent gaming on my PC, this is how my play percentages break out.

Valheim – 30.97%
Lost Ark – 15.80%
EVE Online – 15.70%
EverQuest II – 11.78%
Stellaris – 5.72%
Pokemon Pearl – 5.07%
New World – 4.10%
Minecraft – 4.45%
CM Red Thunder – 2.52%
RimWorld – 2.04%
FreeCiv – 0.59%
Diablo Immortal – 0.39%
V Rising – 0.34%
EverQuest – 0.28%
LOTRO – 0.16%
World of Tanks – 0.09%

After Valheim we have Lost Ark and EVE Online pretty much neck in neck for play time. I think Lost Ark got the advantage just because it takes so long to load.

Finally in double digits is EQII where I was playing the Visions of Vetrovia expansion.

Down in single digits, after some single player stuff was the end of our run at New World. I am not even sure what server I am on now. There has been some talk about Amazon fixing some of the issues, but I am not sure there is a lot of desire to return there any time soon.

Then there is Minecraft, which has gotten a bit of a boost since The Wild update hit. Below RimWorld are titles that have not been touched all that much.

So what will the back half of the year look like? Valheim is at the top of the list, but unless we get the update for the Mistlands, there isn’t much to do but muck about and build things. Lost Ark and New World are unlikely to grow in play time, and EverQuest II, I left that unsatisfied with the last expansion. That might need a break for another expansion or two before I find it on my list again.

EVE Online, of course, is going to carry on for now. And Minecraft, which we only started playing in June, looks like it could keep going.

Solasta is something we just picked up this past week, and it has potential.

And then there is the coming of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. It looks to be a couple months away at this point, and we’re not really chomping at the bit for it right now… but give it some time and we might be primed to go back to Northrend.

That is where I stand at the mid-year check-in.

Friday Bullet Points on a Chilly Spring Saturday

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[This was supposed to be yesterday’s post, but then I woke up to a big news event, so it is a day late.]

It is cold out, considering it is spring here in California. It has even rained here in the last 24 hours. I am wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, which isn’t exactly the gear of arctic explorers, but by this late in April I have generally been well into the “I will wear shorts every day until I have finished off the Halloween candy” state of affairs that working from home forever has brought me to.

Not that the weather has anything to do with the rest of this post, but I needed a headline and the weather will serve when nothing else comes to mind. So on with another bullet points post or items I thought worth noting but which weren’t worth a whole post on their own.

Enad Global 7

EG7 Dropping Russia

On the trend with western companies bailing from Russia after its brutal invasion of Ukraine, Enad Global 7 has announced that they will selling off their Innova subsidiary to the management of the team for a total of 32 million Euros, quite a haircut for the company considering they shelled out 109 million Euros for the company when they closed the deal for it a little over a year ago. Innova was primarily acquired because they held the license to run a number of MMOs in the EU and Russia. The current state of the Ukraine conflict puts Innova in a tough spot.

Meanwhile EG7 also announced that they would Toadman Interactive, another acquired studio, would be relocated from its current location in Russia to somewhere in the EU.

Database evolution

EVE Online Database History

CCP has posted another of the dev blogs that makes them a standout on the communications front in the industry. Every time I think that they could do better, I have to remind myself how poorly the industry handles this sort of thing.

New database server upgrades have arrived and that has prompted the team to write a history of the databases of EVE Online, spanning from the early days when they had to solve lag problems with people just warping across systems, to being able to cope with 100 vs 100 fights, to the monster servers that they have today which make the original 2003 game look as powerful as a digital watch by comparison. (Though I still think digital watches wee a pretty neat idea.)

Anyway, if this is your sort of thing… and I am all over these sorts of posts… you can find the whole thing on CCPs news site here.

A new drama generator

RimWorld is Legal in Australia Again

It was noted previously that, after the Ideology expansion for RimWorld landed, it seemed like maybe the thought of feminist nudist cannibals was too much for the faint hearts in Canberra.

And that could have been it, though the whole thing came up due to the fact that there was a console version of the game on the horizon, which was what got the Classification Review Board taking a look at RimWorld again. And they didn’t like what they saw, so flagged it as “Refused Classification” which made it unsalable down under.

That was undone earlier this week… on 4/20 if you think there is any significance in that… allowing the people of Australian to once again purchase RimWorld or redeem Steam keys for the game.

And, speaking of console support, RimWorld also announced that the game now has full support for Steam Deck, so perhaps that was what triggered the whole thing.

The return of the classic

Diablo II Resurrected Gets Ladders and more

Diablo II Resurrected has gotten its 2.4 patch, which is the biggest update the game has received in a long long time.

The lead story for the update is the unlock of the ladder seasons for those who want a competitive Diablo II experience, but there is so much more in the update such as class updates, mercenary fixes, new rune words, new Horadric Cube recipes, quality of life updates, and even some new levels of legacy graphics emulation for those who play with the old school look.

The great thing is that Blizzard has gone all in on this 22 year old game to make it better and fix things that has been problems for decades. The sad thing is that this might be the peak of Diablo news this year unless Diablo Immortal is a lot better than I suspect it will be.

Playable Worlds

Playable Worlds gets $25 Million in Funding

Finally, news got out this week that Playable Worlds, Raph Koster’s sandbox cloud MMO venture, managed to pick up $25 million in financing for the project from a group that includes Korean video game publisher Kakao Games Corp.

That got Raph Koster to speak a bit more about the vision for the title:

“It’s about having environments that are more alive,” Koster said. “Players can affect things that evolve and change rather than being static. Most games build their maps out of static meshes. Ours are dynamic and come down on the fly from the server. It’s about enabling worlds to feel more alive. That’s really what it comes down to.”

“Offering truly and fully persistent shared environments and massive scale is something else that is really important to us,” Koster said. “These aren’t just theme parks that you ride through, right? Where the developers are the ones who are in control. Giving full persistence also unlocks the ability for players to have far more impact. If you chop down a tree, it is permanently gone from the world for everybody.”

Specifics about the project were not forthcoming.

And we have heard a vision like this before, with the EverQuest Next project, which was eventually shelved by Daybreak, in part because of the processing requirements such a dynamic and player changeable world entailed.

March 2022 in Review

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The Site

It looks like I might get paid soon. If the final numbers for the month are correct, I may have cracked the $100 mark for ad revenue since I enabled ads back in October of 2021. I was at $88.59 earned when the month began and it looks like I am comfortably past the $12 mark for this month, so I could be there.

It looked dicey for most of the month, then somebody linked my 2009 post about Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID! in /r/wow and that put me over the top. Some things never die.

The goal was always to pay for the premium hosting option, which runs about $100 a year. So that may have paid off.

Of course, it is one thing to think I should get paid and another to actually see the cash in my PayPal account. We shall see how speedy WordPress.com is on that.

Meanwhile, I passed another posting milestone.

A post a day in San Jose

731 days adds up to two years straight of posting every single day. You too can manage this, if only you let go of your standards and just hit the “publish” button on whatever you have to hand!

As for how long this streak will continue, I am pretty sure it will end in April. It is going to be a busy month and my goal was just to get to the two year mark in the end. Still, I kind of hate to let it go because it is one of those things that, after you have invested 731 days in it, the whole thing resets to 1 as soon as you skip a day and then topping your previous record is two years away.

But it is that sort of thinking that got me here in the first place. Better to just let it go at some point.

One Year Ago

EverQuest, under the EG7 banner, turned 22 years old.

The beta for Burning Crusade Classic opened up, starting the march to the launch of the next classic experience.

My wife and I both hit level 41 in Pokemon Go.

Raph Koster started telling us about what Playable Worlds was up to, but it was all very vague.

But a lot of the month was spent writing about Valheim. That was definitely the apple of our group’s eye as we made it to a month of playing it and were still going strong. That was long enough for Honest Game Trailers to do a video about it.

Having defeated The Elder, we were off looking for iron in the swamps. Iron turned into a key focus for us.

We finally found Haldor the Trader in our game. I also figured out fishing.

Having geared up, we went after the next boss, Bonemass, with an elaborate plan. Then it was off to the mountains of Valheim, which led to a new set of experiences. I also made our first Dragur Fang Bow.

The other major topic for the month was EVE Online where we still had World War Bee going along with some CCP actions, which I will sum up as a list:

Finally, I summed up some more pandemic binge watching.

Five Years Ago

EverQuest turned eighteen. Now an adult, it still lives in Daybreak’s basement and grumbles about how it used to be the center of attention before all these younger siblings showed up.

Blizzard officially announced that StarCraft, even older than EverQuest, was getting a remaster. We suspected it was going to happen, but it was nice to get the official word.

Flying was unleashed in the Broken Isles with the Tomb of Sargeras update to WoW Legion.

The Nintendo Switch launched. But I was still playing Pokemon Sun on my 3DS XL, binging on the Alola Pokedex. Then I had to figure out where the National Pokedex was. It turns out it is in Pokemon Bank. I was hoping for a remake of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl.

Disney shut down Club Penguin, hoping to force players onto their new mobile app, Club Penguin Island. Mobile is always better, right? It did not end well, with Club Penguin Island closing down in just two years. Way to fumble success!

In Minecraft, the long road to the forest mansion I found was nearly done.

In EVE Online I took a trip out to Oasa and back.

We got the YC119.3 update that nerfed Rorqual mining a bit and gave us warp bubble decay among other things. Music was included. A follow on patch let us see our estimated space wealth.

Blog Banter #80 was on the topic of the CSM, something about which I has opinions! It was a timely topic as the voting for CSM12 was just kicking off. In the mean time Gevlon declared that CCP was picking winners… though not CSM winners I guess.

We had a dev blog about refineries coming to New Eden. Moon mining was going to change and it seemed like the end of the POS was coming at last. There was also an announcement about changing PLEX, breaking it up into 500 pieces and replacing Aurum with PLEX. But not that free Aurum they gave you, though they relented on that after some outcry.

I was nostalgic for old ship models in New Eden and talking about the tension between grouping and solo again.

And, finally, we had to say good-bye to our cat Oscar after 17 years.

Ten Years Ago

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

I was wondering how important pictures were in blog posts. I think I’ve gone pretty far in favor of them since.

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.

We found out when Diablo III was slated to ship.

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, and doesn’t seem too far off on Star Citizen so far.

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, leaving PlanetSide the only hold out on that front Meanwhile 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.

Speaking of names, I was wondering if Pokemon Black 2 & White 2 were the least creative names in the series. Whatever, there were download events.

Then there was a mailbag post about the Path of Exile beta, EON Magazine going digital, something about Roger Ebert, and a few other items.

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

Fifteen 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 price 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

eve online news ships
[Nothing on that front I’m afraid]

глобальная карта майнкрафт а
[Maps for Minecraft are always in demand]

hellcamp
[This one time, at hellcamp]

custom character naked gay
[If it is an avatar, it it really gay on its own?]

Game Time from ManicTime

This month was kind of a search for something to play. Lost Ark was the top option, but I find that I can only play so much of that in a day. EVE Online is always situational; I go play when something is happening, but that isn’t all the time. So I dragged out a few other options.

Lost Ark – 51.67%
EVE Online – 16.46%
Combat Mission – Red Thunder – 15.59%
RimWorld – 12.64%
FreeCiv – 3.63%

Combat Mission – Red Thunder

As noted in my post about it, I originally wanted to play Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin, but it was not having my 34″ monitor. Not surprising from a game that is about 20 years old. So I dove into what was essentially the revised version, though even Red Thunder is from 2014, so not exactly new. My feelings are a bit mixed. It works, but seems like a bit less of a game than the original, then tries to make up for it by putting more units on the map.

EVE Online

A deployment, first to Esoteria, then to Feythabolis, has been the main focus of my time in the game. That and tending to my PI farms, which is pretty much my only source of income these days. Still, it did keep me busy. According to the KarmaFleet participation app I went on 16 fleet ops in March, which doesn’t include move ops. That isn’t exactly huge compare to some people. There are a lot of people more into the game than I am. But 13 of those were in the last week of the month. That is a lot more ops than I went on in

FreeCiv

I thought I would give this a shot and, as a free title that is essentially an open source community project, it has a lot of depth. That’s what nearly 25 of continuous work gets you. It is also more than a bit obtuse when it comes to the UI and its depth takes some work to find.

Lost Ark

This is really the only fantasy MMORPG I am playing at all at the moment, which is a bit of a strange turn for me. The group is playing it and I have been running around playing solo as well. It is both a light commitment, at least up to level 50, and free to play, which is a hard combo to beat at the moment.

Pokemon Go

We got some new Pokemon to catch out in the world as the Pokemon Sun & Moon collection started getting doled out, including the first couple of legendaries in raids.

Level: 42 ( 33.8% of the way to 43 in xp, 4 of 4 tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 697 (+12) caught, 721 (+16) seen
Mega Evolutions obtained: 15 of 18
Pokemon I want: I need a Torkoal for my Hoenn Pokedex
Current buddy: Rockruff

RimWorld

Another return to an old favorite, this time with an eye towards exploring the Ideology expansion now that changes to it have finally settled down. It remains a good story generator and a time sink that can make hours go by.

Zwift

I actually kind of hit a sweet spot in Zwift in March, getting on the bike and peddling for much longer than I usually do. My minimum effort has always been 20 minutes per session, but I had a week of hitting 35 minutes per session. That gave me a bit more distance this month, though that week seemed to be an outlier high and this week I wasn’t feeling it as much. I wonder if it is related to how interesting the audio book is I am listening to while I ride? Anyway, going down the Interstate 80 route from California, I have now peddled myself into the southwest corner of Wyoming, having left Utah in the rear view mirror.

Level – 14 (+1)
Distanced cycled – 903.2 774.8 miles (+128.4 miles)
Time – 1d 16h 55m 1d 23h 49m (+6h 54m)
Elevation climbed – 33,855 (+4,354 feet)
Calories burned – 30,076 25,924 (+4,152)

Coming Up

Today is the end of Q1 2022, so any number of companies will begin working on their quarterly results, which we will likely see reported at some time in May.

And tomorrow is April Fools Day, which people either love or love to complain about.

On the 19th of next month we should be hearing from Blizzard about the next World of Warcraft expansion. A WoW expansion announcement is always a big deal, but this one has a lot more riding on it given the state of malaise that Shadowlands brought to the game as well as all of the internal and legal issues the company has been facing. Plus, it would be nice to impress the new owners with something hot.

We should also see the launch of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, the delayed ultimate version of the LEGO Star Wars series from Traveller’s Tales.

Otherwise, it might be a light month around here. As I noted at the top of the post, there are a lot of things I need to do in real life next month, so there might not be time for much posting or many video games.

We shall see.

RimWorld Ideology

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The Ideology expansion for RimWorld has been out for quite a while now, having launched back in July of 2021. I know because I bought it when it came out and fully intended to write about it last summer. But the expansion went through some needed changes based on feedback pretty quickly, so I waited for that to settle down then moved on to something else and forgot about it.

RimWorld Ideology

But I got RimWorld out again this month and played a bit… this week literally has three posts now about me looking for something to play… and I figured I ought to revisit my thoughts on the expansion.

RimWorld, just to dial back a moment, is a top down survival simulator that has been around for over five years now if we count early access. My earliest post about playing was back in 2017. Since then it has had the Royalty and then the Ideology expansion packs.

The basic scenario premise is that of three people having their spaceship crash land on a planet and having to get themselves off planet and home again.

From a mechanics based “win the game” point of view, there is a well established through path which SynCaine covered back in 2017; get food production up, build defenses, ignore missions, do the minimum to keep your people happy, and focus on tech to build that spaceship in order to get off the planet.

Even adhering to that, getting through the game has some challenges. Raids become more common and more aggressive as you move through time, and when you have that ship built and are getting it ready for launch, the attacks become relentless.

But another way to look at the game is as a story generator. Each of the people in your game, the colonists, have skills and personality traits that dictate what keeps them happy and how they get along with others.

The game has a whole system of possible interactions, including rivalries, relationships, couples falling in love, marriage, divorce, and simple animosity that can break out into fist fights.

Royalty and Ideology both add more layers to your colonists, though Ideology much more so than Royalty. Royalty you can basically play along with or ignore. Ideology becomes a serious part of the game play.

So one of the first patches to the Ideology expansion was the ability to not use it once you had purchased it. You cannot just ignore it like Royalty. After that there was a lot of tuning.

From a pure mechanics “winning” point of view, Ideology makes the game harder because it makes your colonists more difficult to keep happy. So if that is your gig, then this is hard mode.

For those who enjoy the story of their colonists, this adds in a whole new dynamic.

When starting up the game you can opt out of the expansion or, if you run with it, choose a pre-made ideology, go random, or roll up your own specific ideology.

Choose a path, or go without

The web page for the expansion has a list of the many memes and precepts that can be mixed into an ideology.

An ideology isn’t just a religion, though it can have religious rituals and symbols. It is more of a total community belief system and, as you can see from the choices on that screen. It can be anything from a criminal gang to cannibals to tree worshiping vegans.

Some of the pre-made sets you can choose

And with any ideology comes a list of expectations. There will be rituals they expect, official positions to be filled, clothing to be produced, and activities they will demand, otherwise they won’t be happy.

For example, I had a colony of burka wearing female supremacist dominators who were quite unhappy unless I sent them out on the occasional raid in order to beat down on the locals and capture some of them to enslave. Every raid gave them a temp happiness boost, every slave in the colony boosted their happiness by a bit, and the person who did the actual enslaving got a big happiness boost.

Interestingly, one of the people they enslaved had the masochist trait and their happiness was improved when the were forced to wear a slave collar and body strap. That slave was never going to revolt.

Unfortunately, the other slaves were not so inclined and there was a bloodbath when they rose up. (Pro tip: don’t put the slave quarters next to a storage room that contains weapons.) The slave rebellion left only one colonist alive, one of the slaves, and their wounds got infected and they died a few days later.

One of the reasons for the rebellion was that everybody on the planet has an ideology and if you want to bring people into your colony and keep them happy, then you need to convert them. That takes time.

Another drug loving colony was wiped out when a raid hit while they were in the middle of getting stoned. Granted, it was a big raid, but I am not sure all of them being huddled around the communal bong set the right tone for defense.

The expansion opens up a range of new items from apparel to ritual related furniture to quests that can change up your colony completely.

So, is it worth $20? Certainly more so than the Royalty expansion.

If you like the story of your colonists more than building that spaceship, the Ideology expansion adds a lot of depth to the game.

My Games Played for 2021 and Looking Forward into 2022

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It is that time again, time to look back at what I played last year and maybe try to get an idea as to what I might play in the coming year.

2020 plus 1

Past Entries

2020 – Combined summary and predictions into one post
2019 – I played some things that I predicted I would, but not many
2018 – Technically, mission accomplished; reality, not so much.
2017 – I played nothing from the list, though arguably only two were playable
2016 – I played none from the list, but most didn’t ship
2015 – literally nothing I listed went live
2014 – I played Warlords of Draenor, which was a gimme really
2012 – Actually tried most of the items on the list
2011 – Tried 3 out of 5 eventually, but then The Agency was on the list
2007 LOTRO (shipped!)
2007 Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising (Didn’t ship)

Last year I wasn’t really feeling it for what I might play, probably because the list I made didn’t really pan out, so when I made the call for 2021 I kept it short and sweet.

The likely candidates were:

WoW Classic
EVE Online
Retail WoW
Burning Crusade Classic

I also threw out RimWorld, Civilzation V, and maybe World of Tanks as possible candidates to which I might return.

So now is when I look at what I actually played. I don’t go as into as much detail as Belghast, but my chart is more colorful! The top ten titles, which represent the games I spent 10 or more hours with in 2021, were:

2021 in gaming for me

Overall I tracked time for 20 games, so the bottom half of the list did not make it to the ten hour mark.

WoW Classic – 29.61%
Valheim – 23.10%
EVE Online – 18.73%
Diablo II – 7.18%
New World – 6.67%
Forza Horizon 4 – 3.68%
Forza Horizon 5 – 2.36%
RimWorld – 2.21%
EverQuest II – 1.77%
Pokemon Pearl – 1.21%
World of Tanks – 0.92%
War in the Pacific – 0.56%
MMO Tycoon 2 – 0.49%
The Fermi Paradox – 0.48%
World of Warcraft – 0.38%
Flashing Lights – 0.36%
Runes of Magic – 0.18%
Art of Rally – 0.13%
Hearthstone – 0.05%
LOTRO – 0.05%

EVE Online was the only title I played through all year, and even that was fairly light once World War Bee ended, which explains why it ranked in third in overall time played.

WoW Classic, which includes Burning Crusade Classic, topped the total time played, but petered out when we were reminded that we did not exactly love The Burning Crusade the first time around. Our WoW Classic time probably peaked in Blackrock Depths, which we ran into a dozen times at least. Leaving was made easier by having Blizzard’s behavior exposed.

Valheim, which came out of nowhere to become our obsession for a few months managed to come in second. We got our money’s worth out of that title, though the content ran out of steam for us and the small team working on it was overwhelmed trying to just keep things going.

Diablo II Resurrected was also a good time for a bit. New World showed up in September, but we didn’t really start playing it in earnest until more than a month had gone by and the login queues began to subside.

The two flavors of Forza Horizon were in there as well. I combined them into one row on the chart, though they would have easily both made it on their own.

RimWorld made the cut when the Ideology expansion hit, giving your colonists their own belief systems to work around.

I wandered into EverQuest II for a bit, as I tend to do, but didn’t make a big commitment.

Once it arrived, Pokemon Shining Pearl was a hit for me, making it into the top ten for time played in just the last five days of the year.

And then there was World of Tanks, after which time played starts to drop off rather quickly on the chart. I suppose my one regret was not being able to get into War in the Pacific, though honestly the biggest hurdle was how tiny the print was on my 34″ monitor. It is a war game from an earlier age of small monitors with large pixels.

So of the four likely candidates, I did end up playing three of them. Retail WoW quickly fell off the rotation for me in 2021 as the Shadowlands expansion turned into a repetitive grind for somebody not interested in raiding. Technically I logged in for quiet a while into the year, but I am not sure you should count the monthly run at Darkmoon Faire as really “playing” the game. I only did that because I was already subscribed and playing WoW Classic.

Which I guess brings us to the 2022 outlook.

2022 is what we get

Here is what I can see from where I sit this week.

Sure Things

EVE Online
Forza Horizon
New World
Pokemon Shining Pearl
Stellaris

I already have time logged for all of those this year. I might give up on them sooner rather than later, but they will be somewhere on the list. I certainly have much still to do in Shining Pearl and the group seems committed to New World for the time being. And I just bought some of the DLC for Stellaris, so I’ll play a bit of that I am sure.

Likely Candidates

EverQuest II
RimWorld
World of Tanks
WoW Classic Wrath of the Lich King

I own the latest expansion for EQII and am subscribed for another two months, I’ll probably play some. Likewise, it is easy enough to pick up World of Tanks whenever.

And, naturally,l I started thinking about RimWorld again since I started writing this, which makes it more likely that I will go back and play it. It happens.

WotLK Classic though, that depends on Blizzard actually shipping it this year, though it feels like that is all the WoW team will manage in 2022, and Blizzard not being a complete shit show that makes me feel bad handing them money. I am biased towards playing it, that expansion representing what is my likely peak in Azeroth, but I am also wary of Blizz and how they might screw it up or just make doing business with them so unpalatable that I’d rather just stick with the memories.

Maybe, Maybe Not

Age of Empires IV
LOTRO
Valheim

AOE4 is part of the XBox PC subscription, so I just need to download it. I am just wary of another 100 megabyte download for a title that might not pan out for me. I haven’t liked anything in the series since AOE2.

LOTRO I want to go back and play now and again, but it looks so bad on my big monitor that they have to do something for wide screen support before I will commit. If they do that I’ll give it a shot, otherwise I’ll pass.

And then there is Valheim. I am wary of this because any updates they ship will only apply to unexplored areas, and on the world we build up we explored a lot, including into biomes that should be getting content. So going back for new content means started over again on a new world, abandoning all of our work. That might be too much to ask.

Unlikely

World of Warcraft
Burning Crusade Classic
WoW Season of Mastery
Diablo Immortal

Okay, I might try Diablo: Immortal when it arrives, having a phone and all that… though I’ll likely play it on the iPad instead. But otherwise the theme here is clearly Blizzard games I would be likely to play in past years not drawing much appeal from me in 2021… and honestly it is as much because of their own lack of merit as much as because of anything Blizzard is up to.

And then there are the new games that might show up. As I have noted in the past, in January of 2021 I wouldn’t have called Valheim, New World, or Pokemon Shining Pearl even being options, yet they all made the cut. So I am open to some new things, but I cannot see far enough into the future to tell what might show up and tickle my fancy.

August 2021 in Review

The Site

Another month goes by. I hit two minor meaningless milestones in August. In addition to my 6,000th post I also managed to make it to 500 consecutive days of posting.

Quantity has a quality all its own

That was one that was easy up until I got past 400 posts and then it started to weigh on me. But I made it. In fact, today marks 521 days in a row. But I probably won’t keep it going. The pressure of starting over again at 1 is starting to be outweighed by inability to really care about that sort of meaningless milestone after a certain point. 500 felt worth it somehow, but beyond that is just yadda yadda yadda.

Otherwise it was kind of a slow month for traffic here, which was odd because Blaugust usually heralds a bit of a boost in page views and visitors. I appear to have fallen out of favor with Google again, as search engine referrals have tanked over the last three months. Such is life on the web.

One Year Ago

It was Promptapalooza Blaugust a year ago, a bit of a change up since we kind of did Blaugust as Blapril earlier in the year. I wrote something about Quote of the Day and my alleged writing process.

The pandemic was still in full swing with no vaccine in sight. I started writing about the shows we were binge watching around our house. And then I did it again.

Twitter reminded me I had been on their site for a decade.

Facebook said you would need a Facebook account to log into your Oculus VR headset.

Epic broke the rules for the Apple Store and the Google Play store and, when Fortnite was removed due to this, immediately sued, which was their plan. But what did Epic really want?

Daybreak bought Cold Iron Studios. I think. The press release about the acquisition has since been scrubbed… classic Daybreak, though still available at the Internet Archive… and Cold Iron has since gone on to ship Aliens: Fireteam Elite, which was not published by Daybreak or EG7 so far as I can tell. Both Massively OP and MMO Fallout followed up on this for me though.

The pandemic was turning out to be quite lucrative for Activision Blizzard and the Shadowlands expansion was just two months out.

Over at SSG they were in danger of entering J. Allen Brack territory in warning people that they didn’t want “classic” LOTRO. They’re probably right in the case of LOTRO, but it still gets people worked up.

I had returned to Diablo II, writing up my adventures in Act I.

In WoW Classic, which turned one year old, we were getting ready for Sunken Temple. The road there takes some time. Our first run went down stairs.

EVE Echoes, the NetEase mobile game based on EVE Online, launched.

In EVE Online CCP was introducing space weather in the form of metaliminal storms. We got armor plating tiericide, Niarja fell to the Triglavians, and the promised metaliminal storms came out way before the month was out.

I hit my 14th anniversary with the game and wrote something about the spaceship meta.

World War Bee was in full swing. I’ll just list out the posts on that:

Finally, Brian Green passed away and the community mourned his passing.

Five Years Ago

It was really Blaugust, so I was posting every… single… day even though it was supposed to be the “super relaxed” version of the event.

After spilling Mr. Yoshida’s delicious sauce over my ancient cell phone, I finally joined the smart phone boom with an iPhone 5S. Of course, that meant playing Pokemon Go, something my wife does better than I do.

I tried to come to grips with the constant whine that every MMORPG should cater to every single play style by asking if any MMORPG had ever managed to find a new audience after launch. I remain unconvinced that it has ever worked.

Blizzard was telling people that World of Warcraft was still the number one subscription MMORPG. But after their vow of silence on subscription numbers, that brag seemed a bit hollow.

In the game though things were looking up as the pre-Legion expansion event , the demon invasions, proved to be a boon to leveling up alts as they built up momentum. And I still had that level 100 boost with the expansion to look forward to.

And then WoW Legion launched and it was on to the Broken Isles and class halls and what not.

I speculated what WoW expansions would look like if they were done like Pokemon games.

The Stormhold server in EverQuest II was facing a unlock voting crisis over the Rise of Kunark expansion. It failed the first two votes, and failing a third would put votes in a moratorium for a while. However, it passed on the third try. I also shared my secret EQII shame. Of course, with the coming of WoW Legion I was out of the game… like Legends of Norrath… just in time to miss some deals.

In EVE Online we had the YC118.7 update. I was wondering if better PvE could save the game, though I remain unsure as to what “better” would really look like.

I was also celebrating my ten year anniversary with EVE Online. Meanwhile CCP had a free to play plan lined up for New Eden. It looked like it had some holes in it though… which we later learned it did.

Down in the southwest of New Eden the Imperium had set up shop in Sakht and was banging on the door of Delve, dropping citadels, blowing up citadels, and fighting LUMPY over sov timers. Despite threats to keep the Imperium down for good, the locals in Delve got very little support in their fight and we were into the region shortly.

Back up north I was able to slip my last belongings out of the newly quiet system of Saranen. Meanwhile, Executive Outcomes, which rode out the struggle as part of the Imperium, parted ways once the Casino War was over.

And somewhere along the line I found the time to get out Half-Life 2 and give it another spin.

Ten Years Ago

Blizzard announced some crazy idea that you would have to be logged on to Battle.net at all times to play Diablo III. Glad that never came up again. Oh, wait…

SOE finally got a comprehensive server status page, and Scars of Velious opened up on Fippy Darkpaw. I was wondering if they had “made good” with customers after the great hacking in April/May of the year.

I hit 70 million skill points in EVE Online and prepared to check out after the summer or rage.

I was back playing LOTRO for a bit. I made it into Moria, then went looking for hoes. I also wrote a post summing up my relationship with LOTRO up to that point. It’s complicated.

Wargaming.net announced World of Battleships. They have since changed the name to World of Warships, because we cannot have enough games we can shorted to WoW yet. This got me musing on battleships and related games.

Meanwhile, World or Warplanes (another WoW) got a web site with cool pictures and stuff.

David Reid was telling people that Rift had ONE MILLION CUSTOMERS. How one actually defines a customer was left as an exercise to the student.

I was still playing some Need for Speed World. I was enjoying destructible terrain, though the weekend the police broke lead to some different destruction.

I mentioned some of the little things I liked in MMOs.

I was wondering about World of Warcraft Magazine issue 5. It seemed to be very late.

And Namaste put out a Very Short History of MMOs video.

Fifteen Years Ago

This is the last month in review where I have to pull things from fifteen years ago without linking back to my own blog posts.

AOL, which is still a thing even today (I strongly suspect my mother-in-law still gives them money every month), bought the GameDaily site which, in a case of foreshadowing, was eventually disappeared into the Joystiq brand.

I started playing EVE Online on August 29, 2006. It was my last “pre-blog” MMO start. It was certainly another stepping stone on the way to the blog, as I felt I have to tell somebody about the horrible new player experience. Some things never change.

Thirty Years Ago

Tim Berners-Lee released to the public the first browser for something he called the World Wide Web. Geocities sites and pop-up ads and massive link rot are on the horizon.

Meanwhile, Linus Torvalds announced the operating system he was working on to the Usenet news group comp.os.minix. While he wanted to call the OS Freax, it would eventually get the name Linux.

Forty Years Ago

IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer, perhaps the most influential and least IBM-like product the company has ever created. After failing to come up with an internal design and feeling the market slipping away, IBM let a team working outside of the normal company hierarchy put together a machine with off the shelf parts and an open architecture that was the essential foundation of the PC market we have today.

IBM, seeing all the clones spawning in its wake, eventually decided to make a more proprietary model, so introduced the IBM Personal System/2 in 1987. The rest of the market said, “No thanks!” and the clones became the standard and IBM no longer makes desktop or laptop PCs. I think the most lasting legacy of that 1987 design is the PS/2 port.

Most Viewed Posts in August

Search Terms of the Month

Карта страны майнкрафт
[There are some map generators out there]

база майнкрафт
[I have made many]

симулятор секса игры на пк
[I get this search term in English a lot]

test alliance please ignore
[Easier to do these days]

ancient winter poncho
[No Ponchos!]

Game Time from ManicTime

The usual suspects top the list, though I was on EVE Online a lot more in the first couple weeks of the month. Then, once Delve was recovered, that fell off somewhat. The others I mention in their own entries below.

EVE Online – 45.29%
WoW Classic – 27.87%
RimWorld – 15.47%
Diablo II Resurrected beta – 6.20%
The Fermi Paradox – 4.96%

Diablo II

The Diablo II Resurrected beta was available for two weekends for some of us, so I was able to get a look at it. It is good, though the team clearly still has some bugs to work out. We’ll get to see if for real come the end of next month.

EVE Online

World War Bee is over. The enemy has retreated from our territory, various parties are still finding new homes, Legacy Coalition is no more, PAPI has effectively been disbanded, and the threat of the dreaded blue donut has been averted once again. There is lots of rebuilding left to be done and lessons to be absorbed. Absent our Ansiblex jump gate network Delve has become a target for neutrals looking for easy kills and gates camps pop up all over, so the Home Defense fleet has been pretty active. The jump gates will be back up again in less than two weeks though. Then there will be a new transit network to learn.

Pokemon Go

My wanted Pokemon, Heracross, showed up in raids in August, so I got my wish and finished off the Johto Pokedex. So what do I wish for next?

Otherwise the month was okay. After the high of Pokemon Go Fest last month I haven’t been too excited about playing, and was all the more turned off when Niantic went back to the 40m radius for gyms and Pokestops. It is nice that it is back to 80m permanently, but I need something to spark my interest. Level 41 is dragging on and every level after is that much more of a grind.

Level: 41 (77% of the way to 42 in xp, 4 of 4 tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 662 (+8) caught, 686 (+9) seen
Mega Evolutions obtained: 12 of 14
Pokemon I want: I need a Torkoal for my Hoenn Pokedex
Current buddy: Noibat

RimWorld

I kept on playing with the Ideology expansion for RimWorld. It is pretty neat. I have been meaning to write up a little review of it, but the dev has been adapting it from player feedback and it has evolved some, so it is probably better that I have waited.

The Fermi Paradox

I wrote a post about this during the month. I played it for a while, but it felt a little light to me. As I noted, it is in early access, and just arrived there in July, so it has plenty of room to grow. I will likely revisit it at a later date because I like the concept, even if the initial execution isn’t quite there yet.

WoW Classic

As I mentioned in a post this month, our group has decided to stick with WoW Classic despite the troubles at Blizzard. It is just the game that brings us together and I am not sure another title would work as well in the long term. We spent the month working on epic mounts and then finally finished up Hellfire Ramparts as a group of four.

Coming Up

It is rumored that we will be getting the Valheim Hearth & Home update mid-month. Our server is still running, so we might have to log in and see what that brings us.

By the end of the month we should also see the launch of Diablo II Resurrected. I’m down for that. It even sounds like mod support might be in place for it. There was a piece about how the Median XL mod would be ready to go for it at launch.

There is also a likelihood that Amazon’s New World will ship next month, though I am in kind of “I’ll believe it when it happens” state of mind there.

In EVE Online it will be a time of rebuilding and homeland defense fleets. In WoW Classic it is time for us to try the Blood Furnace, the second dungeon in Outland.

And, of course, there will be the biggest of my annual meaningless milestones in about two weeks when the blog will turn 15 years old.

July 2021 in Review

The Site

There has been some discussion of the summer slump that EVE Online has been in, with the peak concurrent user numbers taking a dive over the last month or so. There are several theories and lots of possible influences on that number, not the least of which is that it is summer and pandemic restrictions have been relaxed so some people just want to go on vacation after 15 months stuck at home.

EVE Online gets the focus here because they let people see their online numbers all the time and there is a site dedicated to tracking them. Other games are less forthcoming with these sorts of stats, which makes it look like it might just be a New Eden problem.

Looking at my own blog stats however, I see a similar trend when it comes to pages view when I bring up the week by week stats.

Weekly page views – May – July 2021

The current week is a little low due to the measurement being from Monday to Sunday, but you can see the trend down from May to July, which lines up pretty well with the weekly peak concurrent user number I have been tracking in my weekly World War Bee updates.

This is not to say that CCP doesn’t have other problems, but it feels like there is a bit of a slump in interest in video games after more than a year of people binging on them.

One Year Ago

The 2020 Steam Summer Sale finished up. I bought some things.

In TorilMUD, aging was abolished.

SSG was compensating people for outages in Lord of the Rings Online.

Minecraft gave us the Nether Update. I went out and found a crimson forest in the nether.

I was reflecting on Diablo II at its twenty year anniversary. We didn’t know for sure there would be a remaster at that point.

Blizzard was getting us more details about the Shadowlands beta and launch.

In WoW Classic the instance group was finishing up Zul’Farrak and then meandering about Maraudon, which we finished up on our second run.

Blizzard was banning botters in classic while getting ready to open up the Ahn’Qiraj war effort event. As part of the anti-botting effort they were limiting the number of instances players could spawn in a day, but we were at least getting some extra bag slots.

CCP cancelled their San Diego player event as Covid did not look to be going away any time soon.

I also resigned myself to the fact that, despite past promises, CCP was going to keep selling skill points in EVE Online. (I’d feel better if they stopped being so dumb about it.)

In game we saw the launch of the Zenith Quadrant, the first part which was a small update to command ships, and an official capsuleer cemetery at Molea. The June MER showed that mining was shifting to high sec after the resource changes.

But the bulk of my posts in July were about the opening of World War Bee, which I am just going to list out rather than try to create a paragraph narrative:

Hangar Work as War Approaches – July 3
Opening Moves in the War – July 5
Day One of World War Bee – July 6
Theaters of Operation – July 7
Entosis Warfare – July 8
The Imperium Loses the XZ-SKZ Infrastructure Hub – July 9
Planning the Return to XZ-SKZ – July 9
A Week of World War Bee – July 13
9CG6-H – Flash Point in Querious – July 14
Imperium Setback in the Taurus Constellation – July 15
Lurking in Catch – July 16
POS Shoots are Still a Thing – July 18
Two Weeks of World War Bee – July 20
Losses in Fountain but a Win in Period Basis – July 21
Legacy Sweeps into Eastern Querious – July 26
Three Weeks of World War Bee – July 27
Chasing Dreadnoughts with DBRB – July 29

Five Years Ago

Pokemon Go was everywhere after it launched. Everywhere.

I listed out the NBI Class of 2016. I haven’t gone to check how many survived the year.

Daybreak turned off the last PlanetSide server and the game was gone… though it lingered on the server status page for a while.

Daybreak did launch a pair of special event servers for EverQuest and EverQuest II. I was keen enough to go earn the special mount on the EQII server.

There was strange news for Turbine as their parent company, Warner Brothers, announced that they were transitioning into a mobile app development studio. We wondered what that meant for Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online.

In Minecraft I was tinkering with maps and night renders while Aaron created a huge map room in game.

In World of Warcraft I managed to unlock flying in Draenor. Just in time too, as the 7.0 patch was already pre-loading. Soon the garrison gold mine would be turned off. And then it hit, bringing new features.

In EVE Online the Casino War was winding down. There was a Keepstar to chase, the alleged hellcamp, and some sovereignty exchanges in Pure Blind. That wasn’t really going anywhere though. We killed four titans in Okagaiken and blew up a CSAA just to show we were still fighting. But in the end we admitted defeat and began packing for our trek to greener pastures.

Our destination was Delve, ever the region that calls to Goons. But first we had to get through Rakapas. I was there for a bit before I ended up soloing my carrier down to our staging in Sakht, accruing the maximum about of jump fatigue possible.

I also hit 160 million skill points while the Blog Banter spoke of malaise.

Ten Years Ago

Google+ was already starting to become annoying. (At the end of that post I also link out to an article that predicts that social media in general, and Facebook specifically, will start to fade by 2014.)

I tried Civ World, the Facebook interpretation of the classic Civilization series of games. I didn’t like it.

In EVE Online, the results of the emergency CSM Incarna summit were released with CCP basically saying, “Ooops.”

I hit level 50 in LOTRO, got into Eregion, and actually saw the door into Moria. Only a couple of years had passed since I bought the expansion. Gaff was ahead of me, as usual. Meanwhile, Isengard was in beta, but nobody was supposed to talk about it.

Getting lost… rules.

EA, BioWare, and their new Origin service got together and combined my accounts without bothering to mention they were doing it in advance. Just another day at EA as I understand it. Customers come behind their own convenience. Still, I was interested in their authenticator and how it stacked up against others.

Speaking of authenticators, SOE made one available as well that looked just like the Blizzard model. But they cannot be swapped, one for the other. I got the official line from VASCO on that.

And on the EverQuest II front, they announced that they were going to revamp Freeport, which I took as a waste of time. (Plus, of course, Qeynos got shoved off until later.) I am still not convinced that either revamp was worth the effort of the time spent downloading the assets. But I am not sure Beastlords were either. They seemed pretty broken when they launched.

The instance group wrapped up our last adventure in EverQuest II Extended. There were a number of ways the game wasn’t right for us. It wasn’t just the ugly mounts.

The pending closure of Star Wars Galaxies led to interest (and concerns) about SWG emulation.

But PlanetSide 2 news was coming.

I started playing Need for Speed: World, a driving MMO. It wasn’t a bad game with the right music playing.

Zynga helped reveal the two faces of Tobold.

And World of Warplanes was announced, which got me wondering if this might not be a spiritual successor to Air Warrior of old. [The answer to that was “no.”]

Fifteen Years Ago

Twitter launched. This blog has been entirely part of the Twitter era.

Microsoft was talking about a device to challenge the iPod and denying they would ship an XBox 360 with an HD DVD drive. Being on the mark half the time is pretty good for them.

EA was trying to retain people by giving out more stock options and revising under water options while Take-Two Interactive was being investigated over stock grant shenanigans.

The ESA announced they were downsizing their yearly E3 conference.

The Civ IV – Warlords, the first expansion for the title, came out on Windows,

Twenty-Five Years Ago

The perhaps unfortunately named (and all the more so given the current scandal) CUC International purchased Blizzard Entertainment parent Davidson & Associates and Sierra Online, which became the heart of the new CUC Software. The company later became Cedant Software, Havas Interactive, and eventually Vivendi Games.

Most Viewed Posts in July

Search Terms of the Month

is imperiume tech stock the one that bill gates called the holy grail
[Google says “no”]

how to get to the scarlet desert eq
[I actually have a whole post about that]

sylvanas x anduin wordpress
[The math doesn’t add up]

minecraft warm biome near cold biome
[I have screenshots of an ice biome taken from a desert biome]

Game Time from ManicTime

I came into the month working pretty hard on WoW Classic, or at least alts there. Then the war started heating up a bit in New Eden and I tried a playing a few other titles.

WoW Classic – 51.04%
EVE Online – 24.36%
RimWorld – 12.44%
Flashing Lights – 4.64%
MMO Tycoon 2 – 4.51%
World of Warcraft – 1.06%
New World – 0.95%

EVE Online

Lots of little things going on in New Eden, but the war itself wasn’t very exciting. PAPI decided to take the summer off at one point, then changes their minds and now are coming back for a final try to take our capitol. They’ve only had a Keepstar next door since November.

New World

So yeah, I pre-ordered and have played a tiny bit in the beta. Things have changed a lot since I was in one of the early betas a couple of years back at this point. I am not sure I am happy with the direction the game took. But more on all of that at a later date.

Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go Fest was the big deal this month. My wife and I did a lot of that. But the climb from 40 to 50… that’s a lot of xp. To get from level 47 to level 48 you need 21 million xp, which is more than levels 1-40 combined. You need to be pretty hard core for that, and yet I met a level 50 player during the event. In talking to him, he just does everything I do, just a lot more often. For example, he has caught almost 400K Pokemon, while my total is about 18K.

Level: 41 (69% of the way to 42 in xp, 4 of 4 tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 654 (+8) caught, 677 (+2) seen
Mega Evolutions obtained: 11 of 13
Pokemon I want: Heracross would finish my Johto Pokedex
Current buddy: Noibat

RimWorld

With the coming of the Ideology update for the game, I bought it and gave it a try. I will no doubt have some words to write about what changed, but in general it is an easy game to sink back into even with the updates.

Steam Games

As I noted, I bought a few titles during the Steam Summer Sale. You can see I’ve played them a bit in the Game Time section this post. I plan to write something about each of them. But plans often fall by the wayside. I thought I would have a post up about at least one of them by this point, and yet here we are.

World of Warcraft

It was a bit more than the usual routine for retail WoW this month. I did the Darkmoon Faire quests, but then I spent some time with pet battles when they had the bonus event running. Still, over all, I didn’t spend much more than an hour with the game.

WoW Classic

I went into July strong on Burning Crusade Classic. Or, at least the vanilla content as re-worked by the Burning Crusade updates. I leveled my rogue from 21 to 37 while working on crafting and some other things. And then the giant harassment scandal blew up at Blizz and, while my subscription hasn’t lapsed yet and our group is still playing a bit… we have paid for the privileged… we’re also discussing what we ought to do.

Coming Up

August means we will be getting some Q2 2021 financial reports. Activision Blizzard should be interesting because it ought to give some insight into what the end of the lockdown in many places has meant to video games.

When it comes to WoW specifically the 9.1 patch came out at the very end of Q2, so the impact of that and the flow of players from retail WoW into FFXIV won’t be reflected until Q3 results. And Q3… well, now that the state of California is after Activision Blizzard for creating and abetting a hostile workplace, I can only see things getting worse for the company. They’re just another Riot and all their words about diversity and inclusiveness were just BS. If you needed an actual example of virtue signalling… trying to ride on a popular wave that you don’t really care about… this might be it. The question time for the Q2 call should be lit.

Then there is EVE Online. August is traditionally a slow month for CCP as it is the nicest weather all year in Iceland, so they tend to emulate the French and go on vacation if possible. But World War Bee still… rages? I am not sure it has “raged” at all in the last six months. But PAPI has promised an all out assault on the Imperium capitol, so maybe the rage will return to space, rather than hanging out in r/eve.

And, of course, it is the start of Blaugust, the annual blogging celebration. It is not too late to join in. There will be more about that tomorrow.

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Tag Archives: RimWorld

Friday Bullet Points on the Cusp of Spring

What did I Play in 2022 and how does 2023 look?

The RimWorld Biotech Expansion

My 2022 in Gaming So Far

Friday Bullet Points on a Chilly Spring Saturday

March 2022 in Review

RimWorld Ideology

My Games Played for 2021 and Looking Forward into 2022

August 2021 in Review

July 2021 in Review