May 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

1. Day One of New PLEX
2. Pokemon Lycanroc event at GameStop
3. Who is Backing Ashes of Creation?
4. The EVE Online YC119.5 Update Brings PLEX Changes and More
5. The EverQuest Agnarr Progression Server to Remain Locked in Time
6. Visiting the Blood Raiders Shipyard
7. From Alola Pokedex to National Pokedex in Pokemon Sun
8. EVE Online Turns 14
9. Where the Hell is that EverQuest Successor Already?
10. Fighting the Blood Raider Menace or How I Rat
11. Return to the Land of the Ten Dollar Horse
12. A Return to Form Reinforces the Blood Raiders Shipyard

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.