The Site
I think I fixed the MMO Blog Feed in the side bar that shows the blog name, though I am keeping the alternate one on hand at the bottom of the side bar in case my changes do not prove resilient.
I also had an odd call back to the past via Twitch this month.
Twitch is Twitch
A bunch of things have been going on around Twitch, including them… Amazon… selling the game mods part of Twitch (which used to be Curse) to another company, their competitor Mixer basically giving up, a Twitch blackout protest, Trump’s Twitch account getting banned (he had a Twitch account?), and Twitch getting sued.
It is that latter that came up here as I noticed a sudden surge in hits on a post about Erik Estavillo, from when he sued Blizzard because World of Warcraft was too difficult. As it turns out, he is also the person who is suing Twitch because they allow women to use their sexuality to exploit sex addicts like himself. First WoW was too hard and now he is too hard.
It had been a decade or so since his name popped up and you think that maybe people change and get on with their lives. But I guess not. Now I wonder who will pop up next? Is it time for another Jack Thompson headline? Who will 2020 inflict upon us next?
One Year Ago
I had declared that there were three problems MMORPGs were never going to solve. I remain pretty solid on that.
I was also mocking the purity of leveling. People be mad if you don’t do it right.
After waiting for it to finally drop, the Rise of Azshara update finally hit, bringing the flying unlock to Battle for Azeroth.
Over on the WoW Classic front, Blizzard had a load test that went pretty well.
In EVE Online the CSM14 elections kicked off. The results were probably not surprising, though the last candidate squeaked into the tenth spot by a mere dozen votes.
New Player retention was very much on CCP’s mind. I am not sure selling skill points in the Starter Pack was going to fix that, though it looked good to old hands. The June update though was more about shadows and putting repair services in every NPC station.
Actually in the game the Imperium was well into its plan to “glass” Pure Blind, Tribute, and parts of Vale of the Silent and drive PanFam from those regions. I have a series of posts about that campaign:
- Stomping About in Pure Blind and Tribute – June 3
- Keepstar Nocturnal Mission – June 11
- Line Member Blues – June 14
- Symphony of the Lance – June 15
- Operations in Eastern Tribute and the Vale of the Silent – June 17
- Keepstar Down in P3EN-E – June 18
- Structure Cleanup in Vale of the Silent – June 20
- The Last Keepstar in Tribute Falls as We Look for More Targets – June 25
We were poised to keep pushing, with The Mittani suggesting we might go as far as Malpais, when there were suddenly reports of Drifters attacking null sec citadels. The Chaos Era was about to arrive.
The Spring FML season ended and we rolled into the Summer FML blockbuster season with a few new rules. Remember back when we had movies and theaters and such?
I was also trying to figure out where the Age of Empires II Definitive Edition fit into the scheme of things.
There was a Steam Summer Sale. There always is.
I had a Friday Bullet Points post about Stadia, Google, esports, and something Blizzard cancelled.
Five Years Ago
There was a cheer for the NBI class of 2015.
I was wondering what Turbine would do after they cancelled Infinite Crisis. I was also looking for a summer game to play.
After waffling before a live audience, Blizzard finally caved and said there would be flying in Draenor.
Remember that time we killed a Mordus Angels Revenant? It seems like everybody has killed one by now.
Also in EVE Online we got the Carnyx expansion, which had some of the initial Fozzie Sov features. So we were out sov-wanding station services, though Dominion sov quirks still ruled the day in our fight at ED-9LT. We then headed back north thinking maybe our friends in Querious would come visit us some day… *cough*
The coming of Fozzie Sov also meant further consolidation of holdings to make sure we could defend our space. TNT got pushed out to Tribute to share space with the Circle of Two. Tensions between the two alliances started almost right away.
And then there was Burn Amarr. I took some screen shots. And I splurged on ship skins.
Over at Daybreak they were talking about special servers for EverQuest II at last. It looked like we might get some sort of progression server, for which there was a poll. And then another poll, looking for a name.
Meanwhile, over in EverQuest, they were still working on how to deal with raiding on the Ragefire server, and the Ruins of Kunark unlock vote was upon us.
I was playing Neko Atsume on the iPad… back when it was only in Japanese! I was also going on about 64-bit OS requirements finally coming to video games and an old grievance of mine.
My daughter suddenly wanted to play The Sims. That lasted for about three days. This is why I make her wait a week on any sudden new fad she want to follow.
The Steam Summer sale came and went and I bought nothing. That turned out to be the last sale with the traditional daily specials format.
I brought up the F2P business model yet again based on a quote over at Massively OP which, if nothing else, got a long comment from Brad McQuaid on the subject.
And, finally, I played Minecraft with my daughter for Father’s Day, which led to a whole new adventure in gaming.
Ten Years Ago
Warhammer Online, whose game tips I previously mocked, was out soliciting user written game tips with the most boring video game related video ever. Really, I was embarrassed for them.
Meanwhile, there were comical tips to be found in another game.
CCP was telling people that the steep learning curve in EVE Online was just part of the game, and Hulkageddon III was on the way.
FrontierVille came along, evoking the whole Oregon Trail thing… for which they recently were sued. And a good thing to, as they are a bunch of lying bastards there at Zynga. They never sent me my FarmVille magnet.
There was the big news from Turbine with Lord of the Rings Online going Free to Play. I wondered is Lifetime Subscribers like myself would get the shaft in this transition. But Turbine made me a perm VIP instead and put out one of those charts that seems to accompany these multi-level subscription scams structures. But I was winning LOTRO lotteries, so I was happy for the moment.
In Pokemon SoulSilver I had beat all the gym leaders, but we were having Pokewalker problems.
Then there was Blizzard. Where to start?
They were selling WoW Gold straight from the main page. Really. It just isn’t what you think.
They screwed up the parental controls interface… in my opinion… along with compromising the security of it.
The whole RealID thing was just getting warmed up.
One of the accounts in our guild was compromised and the guild bank was looted. That has happened so many times to so many people that isn’t news any more.
And during all this, the instance group was working its way through The Burning Crusade content with our Horde alts, but we weren’t really feeling it. Ennui had set in and our only hope was Cataclysm. And there were plenty of offers to get us into the beta.
Fifteen Years Ago
In EverQuest II we got the Splitpaw Saga adventure pack. Those of us with Station Access got it as part of the package, while those without had to pay… ten bucks I think. I actually ended up playing through that quite a bit. As early experiment with content that scaled with your levels, it was good from level 20 to level 50. Unfortunately, it never progressed and now every time I end up in the Thundering Steppes with my newer characters the intro quest pops up.
In EVE Online the Cold War expansion hit, bringing freighters, dreadnoughts, and player owned stations in null sec. The latter are gone, but remembered via special faction Fortizars.
Twenty Years Ago
Diablo II launched. It enlarged on its predecessor with more classes and a four act storyline that played out over different environments. A pre-digital distribution title, it was awarded a Guinness Book record as the fastest selling video game ever, having shipped and sold one million boxes over the course of the first month. For comparison its 2012 successor, Diablo III, sold 3.5 million copies in the first 24 hours, also setting a Guinness Book record.
Shogun: Total War launched, setting down a template that would become the Total War series that is still getting new titles.
[I mistakenly put these two in the May post, but the anniversaries are actually in June.]
Most Viewed Posts in June
- SuperData and Wavering WoW Subscriptions
- Minecraft and the Search for a Warm Ocean
- EQ Aradune Server Remains Over Crowded
- Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
- EQ Aradune and Rizlona Servers off to the Usual Rocky Start
- Top 25 EVE Online Corporations Graph – The End Number
- Darkpaw Announces and Adjusts Plans for the Rizlona and Aradune Time Locked Progression Servers
- EQ Aradune Server and Trading One Problem for Another
- Why We Had Asset Safety in the First Place
- EVE Online Gets New Ships and COVID-19 Research with the June Update
- Hints of a Diablo II Remaster
- Ruled by Discord
Search Terms of the Month
play eve the way it’s meant to be played “eve online”
[Good luck with that!]
eq full servers wtf
[IKR!]
rizlona vs aradune server
[boxing versus queues]
heritage quests everquest 1
[Not so much]
jintha’alor altar solo run
[Be level 60]
Game Time from ManicTime
WoW Classic turned out to be the game of the month, though it was off to a slow start. Even two weeks into the month it was in no better than third place.
- WoW Classic – 37.41%
- EVE Online – 31.81%
- Minecraft – 14.62%
- Minecraft Dungeons – 8.58%
- EverQuest – 7.07%
EVE Online
The GEF deployment ended as we began ramping up for war in null sec. The other two blocs, PandaFam and Legacy Coalition, might be coming for us. Or maybe just Legacy. We shall see.
We also got those new EDENCOM ships. I’m training up the skills. We shall see if the ships are any good. And CCP finally made it so you can swap characters without exiting the game and logging back in.
EverQuest
I let my Daybreak Access account lapse. I wasn’t doing anything that required it, except checking to see if the Aradune server still had a queue. But I have still been logging on to play with the Overseer feature. It does not require a subscription and I just log in once or twice a day for a bit to check up on missions. I’d play this as an iPad game I guess.
Minecraft
The month started out strong on Minecraft. I think in the first week I played much more of that than all things combined. Then things started to pop a bit in EVE Online and I started getting back into WoW Classic outside of the instance group and Minecraft began to slip.
Minecraft Dungeons
This was the other game I started off strong with early on. I played through the story and started playing through it again at the harder level… and then I sort of stopped. As I said, the game isn’t bad, but unless you want to play the same content through over and over, there is only 4-7 hours of game there depending how you play.
Pokemon Go
My wife and I edged ever closer to level 40. The remote raid pass option has meant we have been able to catch a few Pokemon that we might have otherwise missed out on. But the social distancing and the hot weather have combined to make our Pokemon walks somewhat rare. Nobody needs that when it is 95 degrees out.
Level: 39 (38% of the way to level 40)
Pokedex status: 545 (+4) caught, 576 (+7) seen
Pokemon I want: Some of these Unova Pokemon where I only have one
Current buddy: Fraxure
World of Warcraft
I did Darkmoon Faire on my main to get my trade skills up a bit and that was pretty much it.
WoW Classic
Old Azeroth was resurgent this month as the group got back into dungeons once again. I also started working on alts once more. After a bit of a break it was nice to get back into the old game again. There will no doubt be more posts coming on it.
Coming Up
It is going to be a long, hot summer, made agonizing by a presidential election failing presidency and we won’t even have NBC’s Olympics coverage to complain about as a distraction.
So staying home will remain a thing. Fortunately, we have video games.
We will see if there is to be war in EVE Online between the Imperium and Legacy Coalition. We still have a few days of prep.
The instance group might actually run a dungeon besides Zul’Farrak.
It remains ever a temptation to go back into WoW and Battle for Azeroth to play through the Horde story while the double xp lasts. It doesn’t seem likely, but it could happen.
There is another weekend of the Steam Summer Sale. I might buy something. It is always a possibility.
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