August in Review

The Site

It was Blaugust, which meant a post every day of the month.

And, in my over zealous attempt to ensure that I would have a blog post for every day of August, I ended up with extras.  This is my 49th and final post for August.  At least I hope it is.

You would have thought after I had already posted every single day in July that I would have been more relaxed about Blaugust, but such is not my way.  In fact, if the WP.com insights page for the blog is to be believed, this is my 82nd day in a row of posting.  Go me I guess.

Three month post density chart

The colors go from zero to four posts.

49 posts in a single month makes this my most prolific Blaugust ever and puts this August in third place overall for months with the most posts, falling behind January 2007, which saw 59 posts, and November 2006, which rang up 53 posts.  But in those early days of the blog I was posting a few words or a picture about a bunch of things.

Now will I have something left to post tomorrow?  It seems likely.  I barely had to dip into my backup posts for the month, so I have some things still ready to go.

One Year Ago

I built myself a new computer!

That meant an update to Windows 10, which meant jump starting my ancient copy of ZMud yet again.  You have to hand it to Microsoft that the support libraries it needed were still available and still functioned.  You don’t get that from Apple.

There was a data leak from Steam that gave us some insight into what was popular on the service. (But only if they supported achievements.)  Oh, and Runes of Magic finally landed on Steam.

On Kickstarter there was Stay Awhile and Listen II and the return of the Warcraft Diary, this time with a more reasonable plan.  Also, there was a Togdor board game.  Nostalgia made me back that.

I first heard about Decentraland, which sounded like Second Life combined with Block Chain.

It was Blaugust and I was wondering what I should even write about.  I also wrote about consolidating your blog reading via various options and the importance of leaving (and responding to) comments, and something about blogging editorial policy.

Daybreak was closing down the first EverQuest II progression servers.  They don’t last as long as the EverQuest flavors.  Daybreak also told us that Just Survive was destined not to.

Before Battle for Azeroth launched for WoW I was wondering about the now every expansion question about where I should use by character boost.  I ended up boosting a Horde Blood Elf paladin.

And then BFA went live and it was time for the opening tale.  Then it was off to Kul Tiras with Jaina.  Given how they did the zone scaling, I was wondering why they bothered with levels.

BFA sales were about on par for for a WoW expansion.

I was wondering how many people played EVE Online.  It was alleged to be less than EverQuest.  As it turned out, my estimates were not far off from what CCP would tell us a week later.

The August update for EVE Online brought us new Badger models… and a few other things.

I hit 200 million skill points on my main character.  I decided to start working on an alt on that account then.

In EVE Online the Monthly Economic Report was showing how much deploying off to war was costing the Imperium in opportunity cost.

The Rooks & Kings video First Light on the Fifth Day, about how the great war on the China server ended up sending refugees to Tranquility, was released.

Out in null sec on TQ there was a war on, which was focused on the NCDot Keepstar in X47L-Q in Pure Blind.  Titans clashed at the armor timer.  Then we had to wait for the final timer, which meant smaller ops in the area and doing some prep for the final battle.  Asher also drove us back to Delve for some side tasks.

Then more titans died along with the Keepstar.  After that, attention turned to the Circle of Two Keepstar in Fade.

And Gevlon was back with his conspiracy about CCP picking winners in EVE Online, and I only made him angry by suggesting that Malcanis was the one doing the picking.

Five Years Ago

I was marveling at the prescience of some quotes from GDC 2007.

We had a couple more SOE games close.  Vanguard saw some touching tributes, while Wizardry Online pretty much passed without comment.  Then Dragon’s Prophet launched without comment, which I suspected might be a sign.

The last ever SOE Live tried to get us excited about EverQuest Next again.  Otherwise it was sort of business as usual on the Norrath front.  I wished for more than I got certainly.

Project: Gorgon was having a Kickstarter and was asking for $100,000.  I was dubious.

Google was forcing me to make bad referential post titles.

Our months long Civilization V game wrapped up with victory for mattman and China.

DarkFall introduced another PLEX-like currency, DUEL. (Which was alleged to stand for “Do U Even Lift?”)

I was wondering what to do about Raptr.

Blizzard gave us a date when they would tell us the launch date for Warlords of Draenor,  then eventually told us November 13th.  Meanwhile WoW subscriptions were down 800K during the long summer of mild discontent.  But people were in the beta for the expansion at least.

I took my loremaster project into Outland and content from The Burning Crusade., staring with what I consider the worst zone in the game.  Then I had to search hard in Terokkar, and had trouble in Nagrand.

We also had that whole 10 Years, 10 Questions thing about WoW to write about.

EVE Online gave us the Hyperion expansion, which included burner missions that killed a lot of player ships.  I was on about hats in New Eden.  We also deployed to Delve, because we always deploy to Delve at some point during the summer, and hung around towers.  There was also a fight at our staging system.

Nintendo announced a new 3DS XL handheld, and my thoughts went straight to Pokemon.

Amazon acquired Twitch and GamerGate became a thing,

And then there was the first Blaugust, from which I at least got a post out of a questionnaire.

Ten Years Ago

The Matrix Online (MxO for those in the know) was shut down by SOE that August.  Planetside was still around though… for the time being.

Bruce Everiss was getting sued for libel by the makers of Envoy.  That was eventually worked though the next March.  Enovy, LLC dropped their suit, but not before causing Mr. Everiss much pain and hamstringing his desire to be as forthright in the future.

Somebody was granted a patent for something that sounded a lot like podcasting.  How did that ever turn out?  Oh, wait, like this.  Turns out podcasting doesn’t make any money, even for Adam Corolla, so trolling with that particular patent is a losing proposition.

That Wii Bowling Ball made another appearance.  Still no know deaths attributed to it.

I was wondering what genre our post apocalyptic future really was.  People assume it is Science Fiction.  Is it?

On the Blizzard front, we learned that we were not going to get StarCraft II for Christmas.  I still don’t own a copy yet, though I did buy that remaster of the original.

There was a lot of speculation before BlizzCon about the next WoW expansion.  My guesses were far off the mark.

I also tried to draw parallels between 2004 and 2009.  It was a Cataclysm in the making.  At least I correctly predicted nostalgia might come into play if the old world changed.

I subscribed to the BlizzCon Pay-per-view event via DirecTV.  That was a lot of gaming coverage to watch.  Also, it was the first year of a big act closing ceremony, with Ozzy Osbourne featured.

Meanwhile in the instance group, we were finally almost all level 80.  It was time to screw around in some old raid instances.

I actually posted the results of that cheating poll I had set up.  I generally mean to post the results of these sorts of things, but somehow I usually don’t get around to it.

And, finally, I was on a re-reading binge that August while making Code Red floats.

Forty Years Ago

Atari released the Lunar Lander arcade game.  I remember playing this when it came out.  It was difficult, single player, and the first game I can recall where you could feed in quarters for more play time.  Each quarter bought you a set amount of fuel rather than a specific amount of time or in-game lives.

Most Viewed Posts in August

1. Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
2. Minecraft and the Search for a Warm Ocean
3. How Many People Play EVE Online?
4. The WoW Classic Name Reservation Run
5. What Should EverQuest 3 Even Look Like?
6. The Factions of MMO Nostalgia and Progression Servers
7. WoW Classic First Night Fun Complete with Queues
8. WoW Classic Server Names Announced
9. Chaos Fatigue
10. All I want to do right now is Play WoW Classic
11. The Chaos Era is Coming to Cynos
12. WoW Classic and the Hunter’s Path

Search Terms of the Month

minecraft everquest qeynos
[Yes please!]

will burning down a pillager outpost stop them spawning
[No it will not]

asilomar haunted
[So I have been told]

pokémon go account gehackt
[das ist Scheiße]

why is rasberry so hated?
[if only…]

Game Time from ManicTime

Pretty much a two game month for me.  I was probably too busy writing posts for Blaugust to play much more.  EVE Online was heavy at the start of the month, tapering off until the skill point give away time was over.  WoW ramped up some before WoW Classic, then took over my play time at the end of the month.  ManicTime sees them both as the same app, which no doubt aligns Blizzard’s plan in that because they do not want proof that their old game is more popular than their new.  You don’t want an analyst at the earnings call asking if the Blizz team has basically been wasting the last decade on stuff less popular than vanilla.

World of Warcraft – 54.93%
EVE Online – 39.16%
Teamfight Tactics – 2.89%
Minecraft – 2.17%
Dota Underlords – 0.85%

Auto Chess

While I spent a bit of time with both Dota Underlords and Teamfight Tactics, “spent” is probably the operative word.  They were both interesting to tinker with for a while, but I didn’t really feel the need to keep playing beyond the point when I wrote a post comparing the two games.  Just not my cup of tea, though I will be interested to see how they evolve over time.

EVE Online

The Chaos Era and the Season of Skills login rewards dominated the game in August.  Well, that and arguing about changes to the game, but that seems to be part and parcel of the Chaos Era.  I remain chagrined that chaos was the takeaway for Hilmar from The Three-Body Problem.  It would be like coming away from Game of Thrones thinking, “What I really need is a dwarf in my game.”  Anyway, I persisted through the login rewards and got my remaining ships home safely from our deployment.

Minecraft

I did get log into Minecraft for a bit to play, though less out of a desire for the blocky landscape and more out of a need to find something I could occupy myself with during the wait for WoW Classic.  It is a fine game for logging on and tinkering a bit.  Not sure I still need to keep our server hosted on Minecraft Realms though, as it is just me on there of late.

Pokemon Go

The Team Rocket event was interesting, a change up for the game.  I went through and did what I needed for the event and got ten victories for the bronze badge, but after that I was kind of done.  Unlike a raid or a gym attack, you don’t know what you’re facing until you’ve already picked your team.  I used up a lot of potions and revives for just those ten wins.

Level: 37 (+1)
Pokedex status: 438 (+6) caught, 461 (+4) seen
Pokemon I want:  Any of the ones that need Sinnoh stones
Current buddy: Feebass, for the current special task event

World of Warcraft

I was feeling quite the malaise when it came to Battle for Azeroth.  I thought with the Rise of Azshara update I would get in and unlock flying, but I wasn’t really thrilled with the Nazjatar zone.  Like the Tortallian, I am not down with the Naga.  It wasn’t until I went to Mechagon that I found something I liked… just in time for WoW Classic to show up.

WoW Classic

Given how many posts I had up this month about WoW Classic, you’d think that was all I played in August, but it didn’t even go live until the last week of the month.  It hasn’t even been up for a week yet.  But it is finally here.  You don’t have to listen to me pine for it any more.  We’re trying to get the band back together as we wander through a version of the game more than a decade gone.

Coming Up

WoW Classic.  WoW Classic.  WoW Classic.  The highs, the low, the queues, the memories, the complaints.  I am sure there will be a lot of WoW Classic talk.  It is the event of the season.

Still, while that will no doubt be a regular feature, other things will happen.

I am sure I’ll have something to sum up from Blaugust.

Some of us are waiting for various bits of news from Daybreak, from release and expansion info to the status of the company overall.  Some of that will show up next month I am sure.

The Chaos Era continues in EVE Online.  There will be the September update and the first CSM14 summit.  Reavers might even do a thing as well.

Also, there is a milestone coming up for the blog.  All that and more… hopefully more… coming in September.