Looking Back at 2017 – Highs and Lows

We are here again at the point of the year where I take a moment to look back at the state of things and wonder how we managed to get things as messed up as they appear to be.

This post follows the usual random stream of consciousness, “oh yeah, that happened” level of effort with no attempt to link out to anything.  I just spew out bullet points.  Past efforts, for comparison or whatever, are available:

• Looking Back at 2016
• Looking Back at 2015
• Looking Back at 2014
• Looking Back at 2013
• Looking Back at 2012
• Looking Back at 2011
• Looking Back at 2010
• Looking Back at 2006

So what happened in 2017 that stuck with me:

Blizzard

Highs

• World of Warcraft team managed to keep delivering new content with the Legion expansion, which seems like it will stem the usual max exodus that comes with the regular second summer content drought.
• Money money money money… WoW still brings in so much money it has avoided any real F2P lootbox taint so far.
• New expansion, Battle for Azeroth, announced at BlizzCon.
• Holy fuck, WoW Classic announced at BlizzCon!!1! one one !
• Diablo III got the necromancer and that odd Diablo special event.
• Overwatch is still go-go-go.
• More Hearthstone card packs to sell.
• StarCraft Remaster!
• StarCraft II base game now free.
• Heroes of the Storm got some sort of revamp… and then another one.

Lows

• WoW subscription numbers are still top secret and their other metrics are BS; SuperData Research can seem more informative than Activision Blizzard quarterly reports.
• We haven’t actually hit the second summer of Legion yet; things could still go badly.
• The renewed Horde vs. Alliance aspect of Battle for Azeroth isn’t a universally inspiring as, say, the Lich King.
• Blizzard is just now staffing up the WoW Classic team, so the ship date is probably still far away, like 2020.
• League of Legends still makes more money than WoW and Riot doesn’t have to design huge zones or raids, they just have to sell some skins, boosts, and the occasional OP champion.
• Diablo III is very much on the back burner now.
• Still no Diablo II or Warcraft III remasters.
• StarCraft II feels like it is also falling by the wayside; making it free and putting the remastered StarCraft on the Battle.net launcher feels like the successor never topped the original.
• How long until Hearthstone card packs hit the level of absurdity?  I suppose if Magic: The Gathering is any indication, the answer is “never.”  But for me that point has already come and gone.
• Did the Heroes of the Storm updates make any difference?  Is Heroes of the Storm even going to be a thing come BlizzCon 2018?
• I hate to get all “what have you done for us lately,” but you got anything new planned Blizz?

Daybreak

Highs

• Still holds a high enough spot in my heart to get its own category in this post despite my not playing any of their games right now.
• Continued the Norrath development cycle another year, with EverQuest and EverQuest II each getting a new expansion.
• Planes of Prophecy in EQII got some good reviews by the locals and continues the successful nostalgia plan at Daybreak, it being a call back to the monumental 2002 Planes of Power expansion in EQ.
• Somebody must be buying the $140 versions of those expansions if they keep offering them.
• Ongoing Norrathian nostalgia train as post EQ and EQII got new expansion locked progression servers.
• DC Universe Online remains strong on consoles.
• H1Z1 – King of the Kill was the king of battle royale games on Steam for a while.
• H1Z1 – King of the Kill is going to China via Tencent, Riot’s parent company.
• Just Survive is supposed to get some attention and updates.
• Still a rumor of a new game coming from Daybreak, maybe even a Norrath game.

Lows

• The EQII fan base remains restive, especially in the forums.  Daybreak inherited a lot of anger debt from SOE.
• How many special servers can Daybreak roll out before they hit diminishing returns?
• How many time can EQ go back to Kunark before that well dries up?
• PlayerUnknown’s Battleground pretty much dwarfed H1Z1 – King of the Kill on Steam… and then so did Fortnite.
• H1Z1 – King of the Kill renamed back to just H1Z1 because the word “kill” kills sales, or so they say.
• In China H1Z1 will apparently be King of Survival. Bite the wax tadpole!
• Just Survive seemed aptly named given how long it was neglected.  But at least it did survive.
• Landmark, gone in a blink, a lesson in early access.  There is nothing special about “going live” when you’ve been charging people to play all along.
• Rumors don’t pay the bills and any new game will likely go straight on to Steam as unfinished “early access” and suffer the same fate.

Standing Stone

Highs

• Free from WB and their bottom line expectations, they are focused on their two titles.
• Continuing to develop and improve both Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online.
• Launched the Mordor expansion so, after a decade, the end of the War of the Rings is in sight.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online got some updates as well.

Lows

• Company is clearly tied to milking the final acts of both DDO and LOTRO; they will never create a new title.
• Since they didn’t get Asheron’s Call, that went away.
• Still not really sure who owns them; WB doesn’t just give assets away.
• Still not clear on relationship with Daybreak and who is benefiting from it.
• Not sure the avatar graphical update was worth the investment; every gripe I had about the old avatars still exist.
• From Frodo leaving Bag End to the destruction of the ring took about six months in the books (September 23, 3018 TA to March 25, 3019 TA).
• The end of the War of the Rings means the end of the game, unless we’re going to get a quest to go with Sam to the Grey Havens and then help him run for mayor.
• The Mordor expansion… just not that appealing… and the expensive versions of the expansion seemed even more over-priced for what one got than even Daybreak’s offerings.

CCP

Highs

• Consistent updates and big feature expansions are still a thing for EVE Online.
• A renewed focus on EVE Online late in the year.
• Promise of a 64-bit client, which should reduce client crashes in big fleet fights… at least crashes from exceeding the 32-bit limit on memory allocation.
• Can still get headlines out of player conflicts in null sec.
• Andrew Groen has a podcast going into more detail about null sec history.
• A lot of community outreach by CCP, with players streaming on their Twitch channel and such.
• An expansion of Alpha Clone abilities.
• The company seemed to be a leader in VR titles with Valkyrie, Gunjack, and the new Sparc.
• Valkyrie now available for non-VR players with the Warzone expansion
• Project Nova and Project Aurora are going forward with partnered studios doing much of the heavy lifting.
• /r/eve on Reddit… not as toxic as it once was.

Lows

• Literally dammed if they focus on EVE Online and dammed if they do not.
• The cost of focus on EVE Online was layoffs.
• Somehow, laying off most of the EVE Online community team was “focusing” on EVE Online.
• This year saw the least number of Dev Blogs published in the history of the game, and at this point they get a dozen gimmes in the form of the Monthly Economic Report.
• EVE Online remains the only viable post-Hættuspil game for the company.
• EVE Online also remains firmly in the post “Jesus Feature” era; not much being added to the game that would bring back old players.  Updates in 2018 were mostly iterative.
• The captain’s quarters are gone.  Some part of me did want that to work out, but CCP just doesn’t have the breadth to do that and keep internet spaceships viable at the same time.
• Music with updates seems to be a thing of the past, which is sad because EVE Online music is something I actually listen to regularly.
• Null sec headlines this summer quickly turned to bad player behavior thanks to GigX making real world threats, thus reaffirming that New Eden is a horrible place for horrible people.
• Apparently nothing outside of null sec and the occasional scam makes for a headline or a story worth telling.
• Andrew Groen gave up focusing on EVE Online after only a few episodes.
• The whole Alpha Clone thing opened the door for creeping microtransactions and the eventual shit-death of the universe.
• Some of our community remains shit.
• While VR is growing as a segment, it is still very small.
• Making Valkyrie available without VR doesn’t inspire confidence in the VR market
• Valkyrie with VR was visually interesting, taking that away makes it feel flat.
• Need to been an octopus to play Valkyrie well with keyboard an mouse; really requires a game pad… by which I mean an XBox 360 controller specifically, unless you want to configure everything by trial and error.
• And speaking of things that do not inspire confidence in VR, I hope you really like Gunjack, Sparc, and EVE: Valkyrie exactly the way they are now, because development for the products has been shelved and most of the staff laid off.
• What are the odds that an EVE Online based shooter or mobile app will be a success no matter who is doing the coding?
• Ha, ha, ha… I just remembered when they were talking about an EVE Online TV show.
• /r/eve on Reddit being better than before is a very low bar and hardly worth bragging about.

Nintendo

Highs

• The Switch is selling well.  It will pass total Wii U sales numbers soon.
• Video games on the Switch sell well even with reduced visual fidelity
• Seemed to figure out its NES Classic issue so SNES Classics are much easier to come by
• Might actually re-release the NES Classic next year.
• New Pokemon games in the form of Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon.
• Old Pokemon games in the form of Pokemon Gold & Silver… and Pokemon Crystal soon.
  
• Yet more Metroid of some sort.
• More mobile apps.  Lots of people downloaded Super Mario Jump!

Lows

• For all its success, I cannot see a reason to buy a Switch.  And it isn’t anything like Wii level popularity.
• End of the Wii Store is coming… well, in 2019, but still… alright, I was surprised it was still even open.
• Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon were not a big change over Pokemon Sun & Moon.
• No Pokemon Diamond & Pearl remake… yet.
• After Pokemon Go other Nintendo mobile apps have failed to see anything close to that level of popularity or financial success.

Other Games

Highs

• Unified Minecraft clients so you can share servers with your friend on different platforms
• Fortnite shows up as an sharp looking co-op survival game.
• PlayerUnknown’s Battleground takes the Battle Royale idea and runs with it to massive success, leaving H1Z1: King of the Kill in the dust.
• Star Citizen hasn’t imploded yet and even seems to have made some progress.
• Word of a Age of Empires remaster to go with my Age of Kings remaster.
• Steam, still a purveyor of the occasional rare gems, always a sale of some sort just around the corner.
• Rimworld ate up a lot of my gaming hours over the summer
• I played a lot of MMOs over the course of 2017.
• Lots of MMOs still out there surviving many years in.
• Toril MUD is coming up on 25 years of operation in one form or another!
• EA going too far with Star Wars Battlefront II microtransactions brought a lot of attention to what is going on with that sort of thing.

Lows

• Original Minecraft, now called the “Java edition,” was not part of the unification plan.
• PUBG devs got really pissy when Fortnite decided that it too would become a battle royale game.
• Have you tried to decipher Fortnite’s purchasing options?  I went to their site and gave up after looking at that.  Also, if you bought in for co-op survival, sorry, battle royale is now the thing.
• Star Citizen is still a lot a vision and very little reality as fan boys celebrate getting access to an Alpha version only a few months late while a real viable game isn’t even a speck on the horizon yet.
• Speaking of Star Citizen, giving everybody access to the public test server doesn’t count towards “shippping” the long promised Alpha 3.0 release.  That just says it isn’t ready yet.
• Eventually we will hit remaster saturation… or start having to remaster the remasters as tech progresses.
• Steam is still clogged with a huge mass of absolute shit that makes finding gems a near impossible chore.
• I’m glad I bought No Man’s Sky on sale, as it really didn’t grab me at all. Slowest load times ever.
• I played several MMOs for less than a month each this year before landing back in WoW, so same as it ever was.
• I went on a zone (raid) with a group in TorilMUD and my ability to parse scrolling text is not what it used to be.  I was totally lost.
• Server merges for games like Runes of Magic and SWTOR show the decline.
• Club Penguin thrown over by Disney for a mobile app.  After “land war in Asia” one of the classic blunders is to force your installed base to change platforms and re-start from scratch.
• Marvel Heroes suffered a sudden, if not totally unexpected demise, leading to questions about refunds for people who recently made in-game purchases.
• Are there any Funcom MMOs that are not in maintenance mode?
• Civilization VI just didn’t inspire me, but at least I bought it on sale.
• EA managed to go so far on the microtransaction greed front as to attract the attention of various governmental organizations.  That could end very badly for all of us.  Way to shit the bed for everybody there EA!
• Trion, apparently missing the whole EA fiasco, decided to sell a $100 lockbox in Rift with a random “premium” mount, some of which are available in-game for much much less.  Then attempted to deflect criticism via derision and sarcasm.  At least they saw the light after a few hours of being pounded.
• Games I backed on Kickstarter continue to fail to ship, with Mineserver leading the way in the ratio of promise to actual delivery date failure metric.
• Early access, Kickstarter campaigns, and beta have all become pretty much synonymous with getting the money up front and delivering shit as the industry does its usual gyration where somebody succeeds on good faith and then others take the most superficial lessons from that and pile on simply looking to make money before delivering.
• Fewer video high quality video games showing up as the expense to make them continues to rise while older games hang on through DLC and other monetization plans.  How long ago did GTA V ship?
• As I write this I cannot think of a new video game title to which I am looking forward to seeing launch.

Media

Highs

• Blade Runner 2049 really looked, sounded, and “felt” excellent.
• Dunkirk was beautiful and engaging to watch.
• Lots of blockbuster superhero movies, if you like that sort of thing.
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi for pete’s sake!
• Fantasy Movie League has been fun.
• Stranger Things 2 gave fans of the first series something new to binge on and was strong enough that a third season has been green lit.
• Comcast put Netflix and YouTube apps in their cable box so I can now easily switch to either service and watch them on the TV.
• Amazon Prime video remains worthwhile.
• The beloved celebrity death train that was 2016 seemed to have subsided somewhat.

Lows

• Box office confirmation that Blade Runner was a cult classic and not a mainstream success in any way.
• I saw Dunkirk in IMax and it was so loud I think it damaged my hearing.  Also, I refuse to believe in Spitfires that can glide forever.
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi left me feeling dissatisfied.  We’ve also hit a point in the franchise where you can neither like or dislike a film, or any aspect of the film, without somebody declaring your opinion flat out wrong because you’re either too big of a nerd or not big enough or a nerd.  That’s not how this works.
• I am not very much into the superhero things really.  Can we get some better science fictions movies… that aren’t necessarily Star Wars of Star Trek?
• Fantasy Movie League can seem really random in results unless you are REALLY into keeping up on details and projections.  I fail at that more often that I succeed.  My ability to care is limited and sometimes I just want to roll the dice.
• Stranger Things 2 lacked the punch, got off track, and was a lot more interested in itself than the first series.
• If I couldn’t figure out where Stranger Things 2 was going to go, where in the hell will Stranger Things 3 end up?  How much can Hawkins take?
• You don’t want to see my Comcast bill.  And I have to have them because there are literally no other choices in my area.
• And in this era where I am paying so much to Comcast, HBO, Netflix, and Amazon for streaming, the best and most cost effective way to see a new release at home is still getting disks in the mail via the old Netflix delivery service.  All hail the postal service I guess.
• It is a good thing the video has value because Amazon Prime shipping… let’s just say I wouldn’t order anything breakable from Amazon these days.
• I watched YouTube’s 2017 Rewind video and… boy do I feel old.  I got fidget spinners, the eclipse, and maybe that planking is dead?
• I might be willing to sacrifice a few more celebrities if it would keep the president from provoking North Korea on Twitter.  Maybe we can get some deal on all the ones suddenly accused of sexual misconduct?

The Blog, internet, and other things

Highs

• The blog, it still lives!
• I managed to just about keep up the pace, posting more than 300 times.
• People still show up here, read posts, and occasionally leave comments.
• I still actually enjoy writing.
• There is still a pretty active MMO blogging community out there.
• There is even something of an MMO press still.
• Net neutrality was good while it lasted.

Lows

• More blogs I have known have fallen by the wayside or disappeared.
• Reddit, Twitter, and Twitch are a far more common outlet for gamers than blogs and podcasts these days.
• The alleged MMO press can’t really stick to MMOs most days without stretching the definition to mean simply “online multiplayer.”
• Massively OP continues to demonstrate that they have some sort of institutional axe to grind when it comes to EVE Online and Daybreak.
• My rate of posting, while still beyond my “every weekday” goal, continues to slacken.
• People showing up and leaving comments is, likewise, falling off.
• Do I really play anything besides EVE Online and WoW?  So what will I write about?
• My typos are starting to become more common and more egregious… it now compares with Apple’s auto-correct in absurdity some days… to the point that I am starting to wonder if I have some sort of neurological disease.   Stapling machine.
• I am starting to enjoy what I have written more than what I am writing, so that the looking back section of the month in review posts have started to expand considerably.  Blog founded largely on nostalgia likes nostalgia!
• WordPress.com is getting more aggressive in monetizing free blogs, injecting more ads and pushing their subscription plans constantly.
• For all of WP.com’s ballyhoo’d features I still have to keep a Rube Goldberg-esque series of technologies in harmony to have a dynamic blog roll in my side bar.
• Patreon managed to screw a lot of small content creators by announcing (then withdrawing) a horrible cash grab that was badly disguised as an improvement.

Well, that is all I had from 2017 stuck in my brain.  The time left in the year is easily measured in hours at this point.  On to a new year.

Was anybody else looking back at the old year?

2017 MMO Blogging Champs

Things change, people change, hairstyles change, interest rates fluctuate.
-Hillary Flammond, Top Secret!

It isn’t 2008 any more. Hell, it is going to be 2018 in just days, at which point I will have to retire this image my daughter made for me.  So I might as well use it again!

The strict MMORPG market has peaked and the lines between what we call MMOs and what would have been, in the past, mere multi-player games has blurred. I’m pretty sure that the original Diablo, a co-op game with a lobby from 1996, could be spun as an MMO in today’s market.

Meanwhile blogs have long since ceased to be the trend on the internet, with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Reddit splitting out those who might have blogged in the past from those of us more dedicated to the solo, long form existence. Sitting down to write a new post on a regular basis is a different experience than the interplay on Twitter or the caustic comment culture of Reddit.

And yet some of us remain, bloggers who focus on the MMORPG niche who write something on a regular basis.

My Feedly account is littered with the titles of MMO blogs long gone dormant. But the tradition remains and I see posts daily from blogs. Some stray from the core topic… but that was ever the case even back in the heyday… and, as noted above, with the lines blurred one can argue as to what is and is not an MMO. Raph Koster says that Pokemon Go is an MMO. Are you going to believe him or Tobold?

Anyway, in these times I thought I would call out a dozen MMO Blogs who bring it on a regular basis.

1. Aywren Sojourner
2. Endgame Viable
3. Going Commando
4. Growing up in Azeroth
5. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
6. Inventory Full
7. MMO Fallout
8. Nomadic Gamers
9. Tales of the Aggronaut
10. The Nosy Gamer

Which isn’t to say that those are all that remain in our little corner of the internet.  Ten is an arbitrary number, small enough to make the list easy enough to fill.  There are still others out there, some on par with any on that list.  Yes, there are others who don’t bring the content as often or who have branched out regularly beyond just MMORPGs, but are still part of our little community in spirit if not in every day practice.  So if you’re thinking MMO blogs have disappeared or died off, you can sort through this list as well.

• Alternative Chat
• Atheren’s Adventures
• Bio Break
• Contains Moderate Peril
• ECTmmo.com
• EVE Travel
• Evehermit
• Eveoganda
• Gamer By Design
• Gamer Girl Confessions
• GamingSF
• Hardcore Casual
• I HAS PC
• In an Age
• Keen and Graev
• Killed in a Smiling Accident
• Leo’s Life
• Low Sec Lifestyle
• Mail Valtar
• MMOBro
• Mystic Worlds
• Parallel Context
• Priest With A Cause
• Ravalation
• Stabbed Up
• Why I Game
• Wolfshead Online

Blogging about MMOs is not yet dead.

Winter Movie League – Darkest Jumanji

The big four day Christmas weekend has come and gone for the winter season of our Fantasy Movie League.

The question of the week was really whether or not Star Wars: The Last Jedi would prevail as the best anchor choice or if one of the week’s new arrivals would take that spot. The options for the week were:

Star Wars                  $815
Jumanji                    $275
Pitch Perfect 3            $251
The Greatest Showman       $110
Downsizing                 $72
Ferdinand                   $67
Father Figures             $54
Coco                       $51
All the Money in the World $31
Wonder                     $28
Justice League             $17
Daddy's Home 2             $20
The Shape of Water         $23
Darkest Hour               $16
Best of the Rest           $15

It was a given that Star Wars would rule the four day box office, but pricing would allow players to pick but a single screen of that.  The other likely anchors, Jumanji and Pitch Perfect 3, were both good for three screens.  Would three screens of either beat out one screen of Star Wars?

I went back and forth on that through the week.  Star Wars seemed like the safe play.  Pitch Perfect 3 was capping out the marketing side of the equation by a fair margin.  And then Jumanji, which opened early in the week, seemed to be coming on strong.  As the deadline for picks closed in I opted for safety and went with Star Wars as my anchor.

Meanwhile it was clear by Thursday that the pricing for Darkest Hour was really low and it seemed likely to be the price/performer of the week, so my initial inclination to pick Best of the Rest fell by the wayside.  There was still a fair amount of budget left behind so I put a screen of Downsizing in the mix since that seemed likely to do better than Darkest Hour, even with the bonus.  So my screens looked like this.

My Winter Week Four Picks

I settled on that with about 20 minute left before picks were locked.  And then it was time to see what the weekend would bring.

Saturday looked good, with Star Wars estimates marking it as the winning anchor.  However, I do not call it the “Saturday of false hope” for nothing.  Reality has often changed radically between the Saturday morning estimates and the final score.

Sure enough, come Sunday the balance had tipped in favor of Jumanji.  Star Wars was still strong, but not strong enough, and Pitch Perfect 3 faded and did not come close to being a viable anchor in the end.

The perfect pick for the week ended up being three screens of Jumanji, one screen of Greatest Showman, and four screens of Darkest Hour, a select worth about $191 million.

Winter Week Four Perfect Pick

Nobody in the Meta League picked that.  Most of us anchored on Star Wars, so the four who anchored on Jumanji led the way.  The scores settled out like this:

1. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $163,392,215
2. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $163,392,215
3. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $163,168,241
4. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $155,499,222
5. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $154,230,311
6. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $154,230,311
7. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $151,781,915
8. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $146,964,536
9. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $146,964,536
10. The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $120,913,670
11. The Bean Movie Burrito (T) – $120,612,642
12. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $120,243,581
13. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $119,841,779
14. Movies Movies Movies (T) – $118,023,711
15. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $117,892,261
16. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $117,668,287
17. Kraut Screens (T) – $116,225,055
18. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $113,081,211
19. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $110,925,055
20. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $109,357,237

Meta League Legend

• TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
• MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)

Aure got the win for the MCats league while Pak got is for the TAGN leagu.

Those numbers are not “official” because the Jumanji numbers are still estimates at this point.  Hollywood is mostly off this week, so some numbers take time.  But I can’t wait any longer so that is what I am reporting for now.  I doubt anybody will change in the lineup once the final numbers are in unless Jumanji is way over-estimated.

We also have one new person in the TAGN league as of week 4, making the Meta League a total of 20 in size.

The stratification was those who went with Jumanji at the top, followed by those who went for Star Wars and Darkest hour, in turn followed by those who went with Star Wars and something besides Darkest Hour.  Nobody went with Pitch Perfect 3.

That left the overall Meta League rankings at the end of week four looking like:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $418,221,987
2. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $410,294,826
3. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $386,208,484
4. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $385,720,281
5. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $384,745,077
6. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $383,010,343
7. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $381,349,688
8. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $380,133,410
9. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $377,780,532
10. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $355,895,828
11. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $351,494,606
12. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $344,267,851
13. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $341,678,005
14. The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $338,997,819
15. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $338,357,463
16. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $331,395,978
17. Kraut Screens (T) – $325,810,538
18. Movies Movies Movies (T) – $324,614,661
19. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $315,947,954
20. The Bean Movie Burrito (T) – $120,612,642

The Jumanji gap and the bonus from Darkest Hour was enough to shake up the rankings a bit.  It wasn’t enough to shake Corr from the top of the tree however.

And now we are off to week five.  Star Wars still looks like a strong anchor while Jumanji looks to be getting punished a bit for exceeding expectations so much in week four.  Likewise for Darkest Hour.  The options for week five are:

Star Wars                  $610
Jumanji                    $588
Pitch Perfect 3            $242
The Greatest Showman       $143
Ferdinand                  $131
Coco                       $110
Darkest Hour               $93
The Shape of Water         $73
Downsizing                 $64
Father Figures             $48
All the Money in the World $40
Wonder                     $32
Molly's Game               $21
Best of the Rest           $21
Lady Bird                  $20

Justice League and Daddy’s Home 2 both fell off the list this week, the latter meaning SynCaine will have to find something else to pick to fill out his screens.  They were replaced by Molly’s Game and Lady Bird, which returns to the list at an odd $20 price, below the Best of the Rest pick. I’m not sure how that works out, but there it is.

The conservative streak in me at this point says Star Wars all the way as an anchor, but I know my mind has been changed on picks as late as Friday morning.  Still, the weekend estimate seems low.  My own informal polling over the holiday weekend ended up with most people I spoke to having not seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi yet but were planning to see it.  However this is also a dead week, so there was opportunity to see if before the weekend.  We shall see.

Merry Christmas

It has been 40 years since I last really, really wanted something for Christmas.

But I still look under the tree every year all the same

Happy Holidays!

May you find something you want today, even if it is only a bit of peace and quiet.

Picking My Favorite WoW Expansion by Reputation

There is always a desire to rate and rank things, to quantify things down to a simple calculation.  Sure, you wrote a nice 2,500 review of that game, but how many stars did you give it?  What is the Meta Critic score.

And I am not immune to such things.  I can ramble on for hundreds of words about something, how I feel about it, what I liked and what bothered me, but sometimes I’d like a nice objective measure of my real reaction.

Which brings us to World of Warcraft expansions.  I had this idea rolling around in my head and then Syp moved me to action by essentially praising what I found to be one of the worst aspects of the first WoW expansion, The Burning Crusade.

Looking out from the Portal

I find expansions problematic in general.  They must change the game and, in doing so, alienate some segment of the game’s population.  They seek to extend the support of the fan base yet risk driving it away because every horrible feature, no matter how seemingly universally reviled, is somebody’s favorite.  So when an expansion makes something better it inevitably wrecks the game for somebody.

I’ve long said, only semi-sarcastically, that EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark was the only “good” expansion, mostly because it expanded Norrath without changing it too much.

And yet I am always at least somewhat enthusiastic for expansions, so I am even at war with myself over the idea.

Anyway, my gut ranking of WoW expansions has generally been:

1. Wrath of the Lich King
2. The Burning Crusade
3. Mists of Pandaria
4. Warlords of Draenor
5. Cataclysm

Vanilla can’t really be ranked in that list, it is more of a baseline, and WoW Legion is still active and I am still playing it, so the jury remains out.

But I do wonder how much of an effect distance in time has on that ranking.  If it wasn’t for a peeve of mine about quests in TBC it might actually contend for first spot.  I mean, I loved the dungeons, there were plenty of them and, at the time, that was more important than a lot of other things.

So I started fishing around for a way to quantify my activities in each expansion.  Ideally I would be able to extract something like total play time or number of quests or number of dailies or number of dungeons run while each was the current live expansion.

I stopped for a bit at measuring the number of characters who hit the level cap during the expansion, that being at least theoretically being a measure of how much I enjoyed playing in an expansion, but discarded it when the list turned out like this:

1. Warlords of Draenor – 7
2. Mists of Pandaria- 3
3. Cataclysm – 3
4. Wrath of the Lich King – 2
   
5. The Burning Crusade – 2
   

Hanging with Khadgar and Thrall in Draenor

This is more a measure of how easy it was to level up rather than an indicator of enjoyment.  Plus, WoD started the trend of giving players a level boost and ended on the pre-launch event for WoW Legion where I managed to get two character to max level.

So I fished around some more and settled upon factions.  More specifically, how may factions from a given expansion did I end up getting to exalted status?  It is a decent measure of how long I stuck with a given expansion and it is something I tend to do with a single character.

So I went over to the WoW Armory and looked at Vikund’s standings, took the total number of “main” factions and the number I managed to get to exalted and ranked the expansions based on the percentage, which looked like this:

1. Mists of Pandaria – 10 of 12 or 83%
2. Wrath of the Lich King – 8 of 11 or 73%
3. The Burning Crusade – 6 of 13 or 46%
4. Warlords of Draenor – 3 of 8 or 38%
5. Cataclysm – 1 of 4 or 25%

Jumping into Pandaria

Of course, there are problems with that measurement.  To start with, not all expansions have the same, or even comparable, numbers of factions.  And there there is the question as to which factions should really count?  I put “main” in apologetic quotes above for a reason.  I somewhat arbitrarily decided individuals in Mists of Pandaria should count, nor should the Sholazar Basin factions in Wrath of the Lich King.

If I add those in MoP goes to 63% and WotLK goes to 61%.  Since that keeps the ranking the same I dismissed that for the moment.

Going the other direction, I might argue that the sub-factions of Alliance Vanguard in WotLK ought not to count the same way the Sholazar Basin factions didn’t count, which would give the expansion an 86% score, putting it on top.

And then there is the question of which factions did I get to exalted in one expansion AFTER a later expansion appeared.  Things get ugly for TBC with that, since I did at least three of those factions long after the fact, and even uglier for Cataclysm, which drops to zero.

1. Wrath of the Lich King – 8 of 11 or 86%
2. Mists of Pandaria – 10 of 12 or 83%
3. Warlords of Draenor – 3 of 8 or 38%
4. The Burning Crusade – 3 of 13 or 23%
5. Cataclysm – 0 of 4 or 0%

Valiance Keep Harbor

This is the reason I cannot rate Vanilla, I am pretty sure I only had one or two factions to exalted at the most during the reign of the original game, and maybe not even that.  The Argent Tournament in WotLK got me to exalted on most of the main alliance factions  Also, there are a those wacky factions, like the Bloodsail Buccaneers, or raid only factions, like the Brood of Nozdormu, that I was never going to crack.

And this brings in a side issue, which is the expectations set by the previous state of the game.  After Vanilla my expectations for TBC were pretty high.  They were met on the dungeon experience side of things, but were dashed by how Blizz decided questing should be handled.  And don’t get me started on ugly equipment or the introduction of some really dull daily quests.

So my expectations were more modest for WotLK.

Then came Cataclysm, the expansion I spent the least amount of time playing.  That set expectations so low that I punted on Mists of Pandaria until it had been out for a year, then found it to be a really solid expansion.  But with only 5 level boost in the level cap you could get to dailies and follow on items like playing with your farm or doing fishing quest pretty quickly.

That realization, along with the return to TBC vibe that Warlords of Draenor started with and the idea of housing, again set expectations high.  The zones were fine, the dungeons good, but garrisons sucked the life out of things, seemingly having been designed to prove a comment that Blizz made long ago about why they didn’t want housing; they pulled people out of the world into their own little domains.

To add to the list of things that this might measure, I should also consider what I got out of getting various faction standings to their current state.

In WotLK getting to exalted unlocked mounts.  Many mounts.  Likewise, mounts were a motivator in MoP.  I know that the only faction I have at exalted in Cataclysm is there because I wanted that camel mount, while in TBC the Netherwing and the Sha’tari Skyguard specifically to get their mounts.  But in Warlords of Draenor I either didn’t want mounts or they were not there.  I can’t remember.  All I really wanted was to unlock flying, and that

And over the course of all of this the game has changed, the market changed, and we have all changed.  Goofy stuff that my daughter and I used to do, like wander far afield just to find a specific pet, have been replaced with other tasks.  The instance group, with whom I ran though Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK, started to fall apart as the years went by, our lives changed, and our ability to stay up late diminished.

So I have gone from a situation where the dungeon content has been supreme in my mind to being much more interested in solo items with some touristy group things via Dungeon Finder and LFR.  That means my rankings are flawed in an even more esoteric fashion.

So TBC and WotLK were good at dungeons when that was important to me while Cataclysm was not, while MoP was very good for solo when that was important to me while WoD wasn’t quite there.  But WotLK was also very good for solo for me once the group tired, while the TBC solo content didn’t hold me very well once the group was done with dungeons.

So maybe, in my own little world, I can admit that WotLK was a good expansion and put it alongside Ruins of Kunark.

Basically, 1,500 words in, I think I have decided that I have wholeheartedly liked two MMO expansions, but I don’t expect you to agree with me.

Blaze Fleet in Deklein

Up north it has become clear that the locals have decided to get serious about the citadels we have been dropping.  Early on they were responding with modest fleets only to find themselves in trouble from time to time even against our own modest efforts.  Battleship fleets started coming with force auxiliary support, then capitals started getting dropped, and we even saw supers getting dropped on us.

You can’t really complain about that.  We’d do the same on our own home turf.  But when our scouts are out reporting on the forces being arrayed against, just standing down instead of taking the fight starts to seem like the most realistic option.  We still tend to go to see if we can at least extract some kills from the situation, but the likelihood of us winning any timers is pretty much non-existent at this point.

We had a couple of timers the other night and Asher had promised us something special.  When we got online we found that, rather than our sturdy VNIs, he had a different theme planned.  We were going out in Armageddons instead.  We could then wear our CCP Blaze SKINs for the ship.

The CCP Blaze SKIN on my ‘geddon

There had been a real push to get people to pick up the limited edition SKINs that CCP offered to honor the late CCP Blaze and raise money for his family.  Pings went out Imperium-wide encouraging people to buy the SKIN pack, while within Reavers there was an even stronger push to get people to grab them as several of the ships are in our doctrine catalog.

So Asher had a whole fleet doctrine imported and handed out ships in our staging station, trading for logi, boosters, support, and the ships of the line, the Armageddon.  I opted for the latter, mostly because I had the CCP Blaze SKIN for it, otherwise I might have considered logi.

As that got sorted out reports were coming in about what was being brought to face us.  In Fade, the Astrahus in DW-T2I had Pandemic Horde coming in Machariel battleships and capitals, while the citadel up in Deklein had a Guardians of the Galaxy coalition was also forming capitals, but were going with a Typhoon battleship doctrine instead.  The odds against us were going to be long whichever way we chose to jump.

It was already clear to many of us that this Armageddon fleet was going to be a one-way trip, but Asher put it out there on coms and asked us if we still wanted to go.  The response in fleet chat was overwhelmingly in favor of going.  So we undocked.

Leaving our station

We did not have as many CCP Blaze SKINs… or SKINs in general… as I would have hoped.  The Armageddon isn’t used very much in the null sec meta, so buying a SKIN for one isn’t much of a priority.  If cash or ISK are short, it is arguably a bit of a waste for a ship you’re unlikely to ever fly.  But there were also some comments from people who hadn’t gotten the word about the CCP Blaze SKIN deal who would have bought it if only they had known.

That is always the way of things.  No matter how much you think you’re getting the word out about something… there was a dev blog, it was in the launcher, it was highlighted in the New Eden store, it was mentioned on EVE news sites, and our own coalition was pinging about it… most people don’t pay that close of attention to their video games.  As I have been known to say, if you’re reading this you’re part of some strange minority that probably obsesses too much about games.

Still, there were some CCP Blaze SKINs present.

SKINs on display

The first thing we had to do was warp to another station as the one we chose to stage out of does not offer insurance as a service.  If we were going to go on a one-way trip opting in on the Platinum insurance plan seemed like a good idea.  That goes double for T1 battleships like the Armageddon, which gets a handsome payout relative to its cost.  Once insured we got to undock again.

Armageddons undocking again

Then it was off to the titan to see where we would be heading.  Even as we were hanging around waiting for the bridge it looked like we would be off to Deklein as the INN coverage of the Fade Astrahus timer was already showing the shoot there winding down.

Drunk Canadian and the fall of the Astrahus

As expected, we went off to Deklein to face the GotG fleet in part, as Asher noted later, because they were flying a Typhoon doctrine, something they declared dumb when we did it, but not so dumb that they didn’t copy it.  The fleet meta defies propaganda.

Bridged into Deklein we gated towards the impending fight, then turned to hang on the gate 3QE-9Q gate in E-FIC0, a system name that always makes me think of my credit score.

The gate of fate

We held there because our scout had reported the hostiles coming that way.  Soon enough they were coming through the gate and the fight was on.  Bubbles were up and and we were off to the races.

Bubbles going up around the gate

The Armageddon gets boosts to energy neutralizer range as well as drone hit points, so we were sent off to neut out targets near our name alphabetically while putting drones on one set of targets while running our rapid heavy missile launchers against another set.

That did not start out very well.  While we knocked down a few Typhoons, their logi wasn’t breaking.  And then we spent some time focusing on one of the Apostles that was nearby in the hope of getting a big kill.

A fat target in our midst

That did not meet with success and all the time we were getting whittled away.  The ECM fleet that flew up from Delve to join in with us was picked off in short order and the Armageddons began to drop one by one.  After seeing that the Apostle wasn’t going to go down we switched back to Typhoons, sending our drones after each broadcast in turn, launching fresh drones when the current ones were cleared away by smart bombs.

The Typhoons did not seem to be hitting us very hard.  I survived quite a while with a batch of them hitting me.  But once one of the 19 hostile carriers on grid sent fighters my way, the end was nigh for my Armageddon.  Fighters eat up sub-caps pretty handily.

Into structure now… I also forgot to turn my neut back on when I capped out

I went boom shortly thereafter, managing to catch my ship coming apart only to have the screen shot ruined by the insurance payout popping up during the most dramatic point.  Still, it looks pretty neat cropped down.

My Armageddon coming apart

From that point on I was floating around in my pod watching the fight.  A couple more Typhoons went down but we were rapidly approaching the point where we could no longer break their tanks.  Fleet chat filled with links to our kill mails as we died and soon logi and support were gone as the final stand ended.

A few ships managed to get away, but the battle report shows we welped and welped hard.  I was sitting back in the station in my fresh pod when I saw the bounty payment notification for Asher come in.  They saved him for later.

Bounty Paid

It isn’t a bad thing to place a bounty on your FC.  The bounty system will often tell you they’ve been blown up well before you hear it on coms so you are ready to change over to the alternate anchor or get the hell out if appropriate.

Anyway, it all went as expected.  We got stuck in, got a few kills, and then died a glorious death in our old homeland. No citadels were saved.  All that remains in the CCP Blaze tribute thread on Reddit and some screen shots of our fleet.  For the latter I have a gallery below:

Winter Movie League – Jedi Triumphant

The week we had all been waiting for finally arrived for out Winter Fantasy Movie League run.

The Star Wars: The Last Jedi premier weekend promised to be a high rolling weekend for totals.  The options for the week were as follows:

Star Wars - Friday           $823
Star Wars - Saturday         $501
Star Wars - Sunday           $422
Ferdinand                    $157
Coco                         $90
Wonder                       $40
Justice League               $35
The Disaster Artist          $45
Thor: Ragnarok               $25
Daddy's Home 2               $25
Murder on the Orient Express $21
Lady Bird                    $19
The Shape of Water           $18
The Star                     $17
Three Billboards             $14

As expected, Star Wars was split into three days to keep other movie picks viable.  But at that pricing and with the initial estimates the only viable anchor outside of Star Wars seemed to be Ferdinand.

Initially pegged to hit as much as $25 million on its opening weekend, Ferdinand was priced such that it was the obvious pick… if you believed that estimate.  I wasn’t buying it and my skepticism was reinforced by an decline in the estimates for the picture as the week went on.

At least when sites could be bothered to pay Ferdinand a moments notice.  That annoyance of the week was mostly the inability to get much news about other possible pictures in light of all the focus on Star Wars.

My initial, Monday afternoon at 5pm pick was two screens of Sunday Star Wars and six screens of Thor, a selection I did not budge from until Friday morning.  I have long harbored the bias that Friday was a sucker’s play, and the pricing for Friday for Star Wars did little to assuage that feeling.

Then on Friday morning I saw the Thursday night preview numbers come in for Star Wars.  The 7pm to midnight run of the movie brought in about $45 million.

As we learned previously, Thursday night preview numbers get added into the Friday total for FML, so Star Wars was going into Friday, its first full day, with $45 million on the books.  That was enough to get me to change my picks with less than an hour to go.

But then what should the filler be?  I could see that seven screens of Thor or Daddy’s Home 2 would be easy enough.  Biased against the latter, I went with Thor.  And then, seeing how much of my budget was left, I ended up injecting Justice League and The Star into the mix at the cost of two screens of Thor.

My Winter Week Three Picks

That was where I sat when time ran out and the picks were locked.

Then it was time to contend with FML.

For some reason they decided to update their user interface on the biggest week of the season, changing up how information was presented to the user and hiding away something that used to be easy to see; the picks of others.

You could still click on individuals to see what they picked for the week, but previously if would show the whole league listing for the week with all the picks.

That issue got addressed when they put in the first weekend estimates on Saturday morning, but that still left a 24 hour gap where you couldn’t easily eyeball your league’s pick as a whole.  I hope they will fix that before the coming week.  That is the first thing I like to do when the picks get locked, check to see what everybody went with.

And then there was the point in time when they updated the estimates and somebody keyed in $54 million instead of $5.4 million for Wonder and the rankings were suddenly upended.

Things did settle down though and as the results were updated it looked like anchoring on Friday might have been the best call.  My secondary picks however… not so much.  Seven screens of Daddy’s Home 2 were the winning add ons to the Friday anchor, the Perfect pick, which one of the Meta League players got.

Winter Week Three Perfect Pick

So the Meta League scores for the week looked like this come the final numbers:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $150,374,259
2. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $126,618,403
3. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $126,391,492
4. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $122,295,706
5. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $122,200,948
6. The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $121,527,861
7. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $121,260,528
8. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $119,959,574
9. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $119,841,499
10. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $117,530,074
11. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $117,514,309
12. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $113,954,953
13. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $113,556,221
14. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $113,556,221
15. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $111,856,907
16. Kraut Screens (T) – $108,270,492
17. Movies Movies Movies (T) – $100,930,447
18. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $92,035,164
19. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $92,035,164

Meta League Legend

• TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
• MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)

At the top end was Corr with the perfect pick., with Elly in second place with what was my second to last pick… and then I decided I was leaving too much of my budget behind so swapped it out.  That put me in third.

After Corr the top half of the pack was pretty tight, with less that a $10 million gap.  There were a couple of empty screen gambles in that group, including Po Huit, who left two screens unfilled for his pick.

Then things start to tail off.  Overall the rankings followed the general pattern of Friday, then Saturday & Sunday, then Sunday & Sunday, then Saturday only, and finally SynCaine and Liore who both went all-in on Ferdinand.

That led to some changes in the overall season ranking.

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $263,991,676
2. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $246,902,611
3. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $239,243,948
4. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $236,054,049
5. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $236,045,807
6. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $234,910,614
7. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $233,602,345
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $230,221,059
9. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $229,567,773
10. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $225,903,099
11. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $221,434,424
12. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $221,352,862
13. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $220,689,176
14. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $218,314,767
15. The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $218,084,149
16. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $214,612,291
17. Kraut Screens (T) – $209,585,483
18. Movies Movies Movies (T) – $206,590,950
19. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $205,022,899

Corr’s perfect pick was enough to move him from 7th to 1st place overall in the Meta League, pushing ahead of Ben.  On the flip side, SynCaine’s opting for Ferdinand dropped him from 2nd to 14th spot on the list.  My betting on Friday was able to get me from 15th to 9th position, but the pack is still pretty tight.  Corr does not yet have anything like an unassailable lead and a good or bad week for people could still shake up the ordering quite a bit.

Which brings us to week four, the Christmas Holiday weekend which includes Monday in the results.  The options are:

Star Wars                  $815
Jumanji                    $275
Pitch Perfect 3            $251
The Greatest Showman       $110
Downsizing                 $72
Ferdinand                   $67
Father Figures             $54
Coco                       $51
All the Money in the World $31
Wonder                     $28
Justice League             $17
Daddy's Home 2             $20
The Shape of Water         $23
Darkest Hour               $16
Best of the Rest           $15

Star Wars sits at the top again, priced so you can only have one screen of that and some low priced filler.  Is the force that powerful?  I think it might well be and my Monday evening gut pick was anchored on it.  It did an all time top ten Monday take this week scoring $21 million.  Maybe I was sensing that.

But if you’re feeling a disturbance in the force, there are other plays available.  This coming weekend sees a lot of new titles showing up looking to cash in on holiday magic and vacation time.  Jumanji, Pitch Perfect 3, The Greatest Showman, Downsizing, Father Figures, and All the Money in the World are new this week.

Meanwhile The Star, Three Billboards, Murder on the Orient Express, Lady Bird, The Disaster Artist, and Thor: Ragnarok have all fallen off as options.  Having The Star go missing this week is a bit ironic I suppose.

Then there are the lingering few.  I clearly do not understand the movie going world if Daddy’s Home 2 is not only still on the list, but not even at the bottom yet.  Ferdinand and Coco also seem poised to pick up some kids out of school business.

And then there is the wild card, with Best of the Rest appearing on the picks for $15.  That means whatever other movie out there performs the best will take that spot.  Historically that play seems more likely than not to be the best/price performer since it rewards any film that exceeds a certain amount.  This could be the way The Star works itself back on the list.  A $2 million showing for it would make it viable.

So you have to ask yourself, is this going to be a Star Wars Christmas or not?