The Site
I haven’t complained about WordPress.com in a while, so let me get stuck into them. They broke the classic editor… again. Not drastically, but the break made it much more annoying to use. When I wrote to their support… they call them “happiness engineers,” which sounds like a title the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation would use… the response was pretty much “LOL, use the block editor dummy!” followed by a long, cut and pasted entry about how wonderful it is.
I do not like the block editor. It feels like a software dev’s view of a word processor, with each paragraph in its own block, as though people somehow felt a need to re-arrange paragraphs so often that they made it a feature. Object oriented writing isn’t really a thing. My paragraphs cannot be re-ordered at will and make sense. They barely make sense when correctly ordered.
There is the “classic” block in the block editor, which is almost tolerable, but lacks some of the features of the classic editor. And trying to explain the omissions to a “happiness engineer” was like trying to explain tea to a robot.
Fortunately, Paeroka at Nerdy Bookahs noticed that the classic editor was only broken in Firefox, not Chrome. Another typical dev problem, and one I run into at work a lot, where everybody only ever uses Chrome despite the fact that our customers are often on locked down work machines that only have Edge or IE11 on them. I personally prefer Firefox, though I can complain about most browsers for one reason or another, but I can use Chrome to write if I have to.
Otherwise it was a pretty good month. Traffic was up as the swell of Valheim players looking for information about the game sent a bunch of people my way. I was also enthusiastic to write about the game.
Valheim on Steam
The traffic tapered off towards the end of the month as every gaming site in creation jumped on the Valheim bandwagon. But you can see from the most viewed posts list that it generated some interest here. And I am sure I will have more to say about the game.
One Year Ago
The anticipated Torchlight Frontiers MMORPG was demoted to Torchlight III, another action RPG with multiplayer support.
Daybreak was warming up for the EverQuest 21st anniversary.
Blizzard reported a decent Q4 for 2019, at least compared to the rest of the year. WoW Classic helped. A lot. But the Warcraft III Reforged fiasco was not likely to help Blizz for Q1 2020.
Over at CCP Project Nova, the latest attempt at a first person shooter, was transitioning into some other project. But they were going to keep that quiet until the had something real to bring to us. They also cancelled FanFest in Iceland over corona virus fears, and rightly so.
For the February update in EVE Online we got the Guardians Gala, new implant sets, and the start of what would become a year of nerfing mining into oblivion. CCP gave us some skill points for being down due to a DDoS attack. The also announced a plan to fix undercutting in the market.
Out in New Eden the Goon Expeditionary Force was formed and went out on its first deployment. I managed to get on a bunch of kill mails in my ECM burst interceptor. We were also out shooting structures and
As fall out from the death of Guardians of the Galaxy coalition, Ranger Regiment joined the Imperium.
I also compare raids, where up to 40 people need to coordinate, with fleet ops in EVE Online, where up to 255 people work as a team, facing off against another group generally of equal size.
In WoW Classic the instance group was working on the Scarlet Monastery Cathedral wing, then we were back again to finish up a quest. Then I summed up all of our Scarlet Monastery time over the years in a post, including a mock version of the place in Neverwinter.
The we were off to Razorfen Downs.
As we were getting to level 40, I wondered how close we were to being half way to level cap. There are a variety of ways to measure that.
I was also still playing the EverQuest II expansion, and even bought a couple Krono as my cash resources were rather meager.
And then there was Camelot Unchained, where City State Entertainment announced that they were working on another game which would somehow magically speed up delivery of the game that was already four years past the promised date, prompting people to ask for refunds, myself included. Of course, getting a refund was not easy, and City State was not at all inclined to be helpful, with Mark Jacobs himself showing up to tell me I must be dumb to not have all the details of a seven year old credit card charge close to hand, but I ended up finally finding the transaction ID from the 2013 pledge and got a refund, minus processing fees.
Five Years Ago
We were in Hawaii for a few days for my wife’s birthday.
I was wondering about MMOs and their middle age problems.
I was on episode 80 of the Couchpodtatoes podcast, where we reviewed Daybreak’s first year.
LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens was announced, and it was even going to be available on the PlayStation 3. Lucky me.
Pokemon turned 20. To celebrate there was a re-launch of the classic Pokemon Red, Blue, & Yellow on Virtual Console, special legendary downloads every month, and the announcement that we would be getting the next installment in the series, Pokemon Sun & Moon, for the holidays.
Daybreak announced the splitting of H1Z1 into two games; H1Z1 – Makes Some Money and H1Z1 – Gets Ignored.
I was making the case that Blizzard should continue to talk about WoW subscription numbers, even if they were down, as they were at least more concrete than MAUs, which have no correlation with revenue. Of course, times have changed. I was able to pre-order WoW Legion with a 20% discount thanks to Amazon Prime.
The shut down date for CCP’s DUST 514 was announced. The end was nigh. They also announced they were shutting down EVElopedia, thus creating dozens of new dead links on my blog in one fell swoop. Some days I just hate the internet. But at least the company’s financials seemed okay. Not bankrupt yet.
In EVE Online we had the Madi Gras release that introduce skill injectors/extractors and the skill point economic boom. Of course, it became about penis size right away and somebody had to inject enough to train up all the skills in game. You can buy your way to the top now, a pity it doesn’t actually make you any smarter in real life.
The EVE Online Blog Banter was about road maps for the game.
The CSM 11 election season was warming up, with CCP Falcon spreading bullshit in an attempt to cover the “no Sions” rule. Sion Kumitomo was boycotting the CSM 10 Winter summit as it was the only agency he felt he had. But at least CCP Falcon and CCP Leelo were off the CSM detail, with CCP Guard and CCP Logibro taking their places.
In space there was the last flight of the Reaver Ravens and a final fight down in Querious before returning to the north. Then it was Yacht Fleet and the war between SpaceMonkeys Alliance and the RMT tainted I Want ISK in what was already being called “The Casino War.”
And then there was a call to go play PlanetSide 2, which seemed ill timed considering the war.
In Minecraft I reviewed the state of our automated farms… which were mostly Aaron’s.
And in Diablo III I was giving season 5 a run, running first through story mode and then going after some of the seasonal objectives in adventure mode.
Ten Years Ago
I was accidentally declared influential. That was the first and last time that ever happened, and in an era before “influencers” were even a thing. We got over that pretty quickly.
Hulkageddon IV came and went. We all survived. And then there was the new character creator in EVE Online. It had… options.
LOTRO had a welcome back event… even though it was free to play, so coming back wasn’t all that hard… unless you count time spent waiting for the patcher.
There was yet another sign of the coming apocalypse.
NetDevil got pulled out of LEGO Universe.
Nintendo was banging the drum for Pokemon Black and White. We were certainly ready for it at our house.
Van Hemlock was slumming back in MMOs for a bit.
I was taking a look at the holy trinity of roles through a historical lens. It wasn’t always exactly Tank/Healer/DPS.
The instance group was still playing World of Warcraft. Now we just get nostalgic about it.
World of Tanks. It was in beta and set some sort of bogus record.
Rift was getting ready to launch. People were freaking out in the absence of calm words. Personally, I wasn’t buying into the game. Who needed a WoW clone when we had WoW?
Nostalgia was officially on with the launch of the Fippy Darkpaw Time Locked Progression server. Characters were rolled. Low level zones were crowded and experience was slow. But the tour was a go. We hit the Qeynos Hills, Blackburrow, West Karana, and the Qeynos Sewers. Important spells were rediscovered and camping trips were planned. Not everything was as we remembered it, but it made for a pretty darn good nostalgia adventure.
And while that was going on, SOE shipped the Destiny of Velious expansion for EverQuest II. But I couldn’t be bothered.
And, finally, one of our cats was on top of the refrigerator.
Fifteen Years Ago
Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach launched. Based somewhat on the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rule set it set out to be the best dungeon crawl experience in the MMORPG genre, and featured no dragons at launch. It also unapologetically required required player grouping, something declared right on the box. That made me put it back on the shelf at Fry’s. It has since become solo friendly, free to play, and toned down the name to just Dungeons & Dragons Online.
SOE lauched the Kingdom of Sky expansion for EverQuest II, which raised the level cap to 70 and introduced alternate advancement, a mechanism long familiar to EQ veterans by that point. This was also at a point of peak performance issues in the game, including the height of the Qeynos Harbor lag problem. I was on board with WoW by then and declined to buy the expansion.
EVE Online reached the 100,000 subscriber mark, back when companies talked about such things publicly, and launched the Bloodlines expansion. That expansion, which basically complicated character creation and made everybody go Caldari, would be the current state of the game when I made my first character in New Eden a few months down the road.
James Cameron was jumping onto the MMO bandwagon with Multiverse Network, which was going to lower the barrier to entry for MMO creation. The plan was for there to be an MMO released alongside his next movie, but Avatar had to go it alone in the end, while Multiverse Network shut down in 2011.
Twenty Years Ago
Civilzation II, perhaps one of the oldest games I can still play, and which I have invested many hours into, launched on leap day 1996.
Pokemon Red & Green, the genesis of the Pokemon franchise, launched in Japan.
Thirty Years Ago
The Legend of Zelda launches on the NES, the first game in the long running franchise.
Most Viewed Posts in February
- Deer Hunting in Valheim
- Minecraft and the Search for a Warm Ocean
- Tunnels and Trolls and Teens and the Bronze Age in Valheim
- The Guardians Gala Event Returns to EVE Online
- A First Look at Valheim
- Traveling to the Black Forest in Valheim
- Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
- Robbing Some Space Banks
- CCP is Just Going to Keep Selling Skill Points for Cash
- Time to Earn some ISK
- What Does LOTRO Need?
- Titan Massacre at M2-XFE
Search Terms of the Month
goons papi eve meta explained
[Good luck with that]
keepstar meme
[Yes]
keepster broom
[What?]
how do keepstars protect themselves
[Memes, brooms]
eve echoes burn jita
[One can only hope]
eve minokawa solo fit
[Again, good luck with that]
Game Time from ManicTime
When the month started off it looked very much like WoW Classic would be at the top of the list. I was serious about my paladin alt, the group was finishing up Blackrock Depths, and things were going well. And then Valheim showed up and ate up all my free time. Well played.
- Valheim – 63.16%
- WoW Classic – 22.85%
- EVE Online – 13.52%
- World of Warcraft – 0.47%
EVE Online
The was carried on. There were a few big clashes, but nothing like the titan battles or the Keepstar drops from the end of 2020. I got into a few fights, but mostly spent my time on the M2 hellcamp, which carries on. Both sides are grinding away at each other and trying to keep their side motivated. The side that loses interest first loses.
Pokemon Go
There were some fun events for the Kanto celebration that got my wife and I out of the house. Lots of raids and tasks. We’re slowly closing in on level 41.
Level: 40 (88% of the way to 41 in xp, all tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 619 (+6) caught, 647 (+5) seen
Mega Evolutions obtained: 11 of 11
Pokemon I want: Still need some Unova Pokemon to fill in the gaps
Current buddy: Frogadier
Valheim
The surprise hit game of 2021 so far. I went from, “Why no, I have never heard of this new early access game on Steam” to it consuming all of my gaming time over the course of a week.
World of Warcraft
WoW has really fallen down the list. As I said in my BlizzConline summary, it isn’t so much that Shadowlands is bad, it is just always the 3rd or 4th thing on my list to play. I forgot to log in and do the Darkmoon Faire tradeskill quests even this month. I am really falling off the retail WoW wagon.
WoW Classic
We finally finished up the last quest for Blackrock Depths on our twelfth run. Doing it as a four person group was often a challenge. And, for a four person group I am not sure we have the optimum class balance. Had I to do it over again I might have tanked with a paladin. The raid meta won’t allow pally tanks, but for the 5 person dungeons it would have worked. Now we just have to decide what to hit next.
Coming Up
More Valheim I bet. We’re kind of moving slowly on our world, but base building is satisfying. We still haven’t found the damn vendor, so hopefully that will happen next month. I’ve explored a lot of black forest biome on foot so far and that is getting a bit old.
World War Bee will carry on in EVE Online. Neither side seems ready to crack yet as the war enters its eighth month. Meanwhile, CCP is carrying on with strangling the economy along with a couple more odd ideas that I might explore.
The instance group might get back to WoW Classic. We’re all playing Valheim together at the moment, but that isn’t as structured as a dungeon run, which is both good and bad. We’ll see.
EverQuest will turn 22 in March. Are there any good birthdays after your 21st? I think the last real birthday party I had was when I was ten.
I will also expect that we will start getting a drip feed of news from Blizzard about their projects for this year, including The Burning Crusade Classic and Diablo II Ressurected. Likewise from Nintendo around Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl and Pokemon Legends: Arceus. And I am still waiting for some new on LEGO Starwars: The Skywalker Saga, which was delayed into 2021.
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