The Site
I just flew in from Vegas and boy are my arms tired.
What I am calling Version 6 of the MMO Blogger feed in the side bar seems to be working. At least it is not “down” more often than not, which was an issue with the previous version.
Of course, I was feeling pretty proud of it, and then at one point in the middle of the month, the feed totally missed about 20 posts that it should have picked up for no reason I could determine. I wondered if one of the feeds I had added in recently might have caused the hiccup, but there hasn’t been an issue since then.
Meanwhile, over at my other site I got this badge from WordPress.com.
1000 posts
This struck me as a bit odd as I the site is well past the 1,200 post mark. And then I remembered that, as part of the experiment when I started it, I used a different name to post under so as to not influence it from this blog. And then… after about 200 posts I guess… I decided to stop doing that. So there we are, 1,000 posts since I made that change.
One Year Ago
I opened up the month with a post about the Mineserver Kickstarter campaign, a little box that promised to make hosting easy!
Then there was the now perennial complaint about customers being too cheap to by any and every 99 cent game. It is because your 99 cent game sucks.
In EverQuest II, the Desert of Flames expansion unlock votes passed on Stormhold and Deathtoll, which made me ponder the pacing of nostalgia. Daybreak seemed to want to go faster.
Daybreak also have expansion announcements for EverQuest and EverQuest II that included pricey special editions. Milk ’em while you got ’em I guess. But PlanetSide 2 was having problems attracting subscribers.
EverQuest II was consolidating servers, so it was farewell to Crushbone.
In Lord of the Rings Online, server consolidation was just getting under way as well.
Crowfall was still in development, but had announced some costly RMT castles.
Guild Wars 2 launched the Heart of Thorns expansion.
I picked up the Reaper of Souls expansion for Diablo III and made it through Act V.
My wife and I went to EVE Vegas where we partied and heard about the planned Citadel expansion. I brought some give-aways for the trip, which I covered, along with Pirate’s Little Helper, in a Friday bullet points post.
Meanwhile, in New Eden I was very impressed with the multi-buy feature that came in with the previous month’s Vanguard release. I was also wondering if space priests were a problem. I also went pipe bombing for the first time. The month’s Blog Banter wanted to know about my PC. And Reavers celebrated their first anniversary.
And the sad tale of CCP and White Wolf came to an end as CCP sold off the subsidiary and its neglected IP, World of Darkness.
Finally, in Minecraft, Aaron began his draining of an ocean monument, and I was interested in bases, several of which sprang up as I worked on the Great Northern Road.
Five Years Ago
We all said farewell to Steve Jobs.
Tobold was predicting that CCP would go bankrupt in 2012. Not there yet.
I summed up what I liked and disliked about Need for Speed: World.
I got Civilization II running on Windows 7 64-bit. People still come here for that article. I am not sure it even still works. But it didn’t work back then with my 16-bit copy, I had to get the 32-bit version, Civilization II Gold Edition.
I started another contest, this time for Azerothian travel posters.
And I recalled the start of the alien invasion!
EA was planning to unify all of its free to play online games to use the same in-game currency… something that never actually happened… also, I think all the games on the list are dead now.
Nintendo was talking about augmented reality on their new 3DS console. Five years later we got Pokemon Go… on iOS and Android.
The announcement of their Unity release got Gaff and I back to TorilMUD to mess around with the Tako Demon. I have to remember some MUD command syntax to get his corpse afterwards.
Then there was BlizzCon. The instance group was already bemused by Cataclysm, and the mention of Pandas did not revive our spirits. Pet Battles seemed interesting at the time. In coming to grips with the Pandaria announcements, I assumed that I would end up buying the expansion. Another bad prediction from last year.
And then there were other WoW related things, like the announcement of the Guardian Cub, which some people predicted would be like PLEX in EVE Online. Not quite, but it probably provided test data for the eventual WoW Token idea.
In EverQuest, on the Fippy Darkpaw server, after much complaining, SOE seemed to suddenly wake up and start doing things. Problems were, you know, solved! It was becoming a kinder, gentler server. Sort of.
And then there was Rift. We started scouting it as a potential home for in instance group after the disaster in EverQuest II. The scouting went well enough that we all ended up in Telara.
Finally, I was sorting through many press releases and wondering where this so-called GDC Hall of Fame was.
Ten Years Ago
The site got a mention in VirginWorlds Podcast episode 33 while Blessing of Kings was telling me how to be a raider in World of Warcraft.
I was defending instancing and game company forums as well as moaning about the fact that I couldn’t find a decent video card for my AGP motherboard. Also, Blizzard’s WoW patcher was pissing me off as well while Lore was mocking WoW groups.
Our Saturday night World of Warcraft instance group completed our first full dungeon run in the Deadmines. That meant my first dungeon run write up. And my second. But we got it on our third try. Then it was off to The Wailing Caverns. Did anybody have a five player dungeon adventure path like WoW back then?
I decided in EVE Online that covert ops would be a good career choice. It certainly sounds cool. However, the effort was cut short when I got to some of the pricier skills.
When it came to the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online, I was up in arms about pointy ears and monster play, while the approaching Age of Conan made me think more about Barsoom.
I felt that fall urge to run around in EverQuest, no doubt prompted by another EQ nostalgia post, plus I wanted to take some pictures of Faydwer in order to compare them to the upcoming EverQuest II expansion, Echoes of Faydwer.
I also jumped into EverQuest II and got all confused (nothing new there) about the trade skill changes that occurred during the 10 months I was away.
And I spent some time carping about MMO pricing plans and wondering what pen and paper games might make good MMOs.
Most Viewed Posts in October
Legion So Far…
Pokemon Go Account Hacked and Recovered
*BOOM* Headshot! Gambling Down with the EVE Online EULA Changes for Ascension
Make My Alpha Clone
The Economy of New Eden Without Gambling
Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
Amazon’s New World
The Schadenfreude War
World of Warcraft Reported to be Sitting at 10.1 Million Subscribers
WoW Legion Sales Numbers Stacked Up Against Past Launches
Fighting the Blood Raider Menace or How I Rat
Civilization VI Launches
Search Terms of the Month
is everquest still active 2016
[2016 says yes!]
trion worlds vs ea
[Trion has better quality, but are still punching up in that fight]
Spam Comment of the Month
For some reason tactical flashlights and hardcore porno got superseded for a few days by spam comments with the name “metal building erection” which makes the 12 year old in me giggle… which is why I got beat up as a 12 year old, as giggling wasn’t generally accepted at my middle school, the social structure of which was modeled on Lord of the Flies.
EVE Online
In New Eden I have been reviving some old skills, learning some new ones, building up my ISK reserves, and generally enjoying not being at war or moving everything I own across space. There is a small conflict brewing in Fountain where we can find fights and there is Asher’s fight club plan for Querious to implement.
Minecraft
I have been working on a project now and then in Minecraft. There is a humorous post in it, I just haven’t gotten around to finishing the project… though sometimes I am not sure any Minecraft project is ever done… or writing it up. Some Day.
Pokemon Go
My wife and I carry on playing. She is still ahead of me, at level 25. A few changes went in this past month. You now get a bonus when attempting to capture a Pokemon of a type for which you have a gold medal… the gold medal you get for catching 500 of that type, which must mean you are well practiced. And then there is the change to “seen” Pokemon in the Pokedex. Previously you got credit for having seen a Pokemon only if you attempted to catch it but then had it escape. Not, in line with the core RPG titles, you get credit for having seen a Pokemon even if you have only seen it in a local gym. This is how my “seen” number jumped by 50.
Current end of month stats:
Level: 22 (+4)
Pokedex status: 79 (+18) caught, 113 (+50) seen
Pokemon I want: Snorlax
Current buddy: Bulbasaur
Stellaris
While everybody was playing Civilization VI, I finally bought Stellaris, which came out back in May. That seemed to be sufficient time to let it mature, because it seems pretty good. That ate up most of my free gaming time for the last week or so of the month.
World of Warcraft
As noted, I have been dragging my feet in the WoW Legion expansion. I made it through Stormhein, hit 110, and then started wandering off to older content just because. Not sure why the malaise, but there it is. Here at the end of the month I have been getting on daily to run the Headless Horseman instance in the vain hope that maybe, this year, the mount will drop for me.
Coming Up
November is going to be a pretty big month in my favored corners of the video game world.
First, there will be BlizzCon, which is this week, November 4th and 5th. I don’t think we will hear very much about World of Warcraft… and there won’t be any Chris Metzen there to rally the fans… but there is hope for other things. We shall see.
Then on the following week the EVE Online expansion Ascension goes live with a huge amount of changes and new things to shake up New Eden, not the least of which are Alpha Clones, the CCP version of free to play. I expect chaos and exploits and extended down time. [The Ascenion expansion has been moved to November 15 now, so at least it won’t be hit by the expected election day DDoS attack.]
Then on the week after that we get the one-two punch as EverQuest II and EverQuest both launch their annual expansions on November 15th and 16th respectively. Kunark, long a favorite place in Norrath, is the theme of both expansions.
After all of that, there will be the Pokemon Sun & Moon launch. I already have that pre-orderd from Amazon, so it should show up on the 19th.
And finally it will be the Thanksgiving holiday and maybe I will be able to catch up with everything. I am sure there is more going on in November, but that will likely be enough for me.