The Other Keepstar Falls in Rage

One one Keepstar awaited in wormhole J115405.  Named “Unassailable Wealth,” the Initiative had been in the night before to get it to the final timer.

Unassailable Wealth waits to be assailed

That was the last big target in the hole known to some as “Rage,” the final loot pinata to smack, and its timer was running down, set to end just after the transition to December 15th on the UTC clock that EVE Online uses.

There was a bit of a warm up a couple of hours before as a Fortizar on grid with the Keepstar had its final timer come up.

Astero with the Fortizar

Above the Fortizar is the Keepstar, below it the planet around which they all had been set.  My alt got out on grid in his Astero to drop a sentry drone in order to get on the kill mail.  I also got out Wilhelm in the Hound he looted to take a few shots as well.

Hound over the Fortizar

The main effort was by the usual ball of Ravens that the Initiative favors for these operations.  The Fortizar, lacking the Arcing Vorton Projector doomsday weapon, just sat there and took the damage until it blew.

The Fortizar erupts in flames

According to the kill mail my Hound actually kept up with individual Ravens as far as damage went, though damage deflected by the damage cap makes that an odd metric to figure.

After that there was a couple of hours off before the big kill.  As the time approached pings went out to alert everybody who wanted to be there for the final fight… if there was to be a fight.  It seemed unlikely that Hard Knocks would show up in force at this point, but complacency on our part might make resistance viable.

For Reavers Thomas Lear came out to FC our Ishtar fleet.  I jumped into my Guardian and, this time, remembered to put the Bouncer II sentry drone I brought along into the drone bay.  I wanted to be able to tag the Keepstar, as last time around it didn’t work out.

The rules for this fight were laid out up front.  This time around the Initiative, which had spent the last year setting up this whole event, was claiming the loot from this Keepstar for itself.  Once it blew everybody else was going to have to get off grid as they would be shooting any outsiders looking to scavenge.

In the Reavers channel this didn’t get much of a response.  It certainly seemed right to me that those who did the bulk of the work reap the rewards.  And let them try to haul stuff out after we were done.  I was there for the spectacle and a couple of kill mails, not some random stuff I would have to worry about taking home.  (I almost never loot after battles.  I don’t even think to do it until somebody mentions it.)

On the main fleet coms however, people were apparently pissing and moaning about getting left out of the sack of the Keepstar.  If there were ever a reason to join a SIG or a squad, it is main fleet coms.

The event itself went down about as expected.  Various fleets showed up, the main one being the ball of Ravens fielded by the Initiative.  They unleashed their barrage of cruise missiles at the Keepstar and, in return, the Keepstar gunner zapped them with the Arcing Vorton Projector whenever it cycled.

The Keepstar reaching out

With a 10 minute recycle time, only two shots were made before the final moment when the Keepstar exploded.

The Keepstar, now brighter than the sun

Then the loot pinata began spewing hangar containers to loot.  At that point the Initiative did something special.  They warped in and formed their logo in brackets on grid.

The Initiative logo in spaceships

For reference, this is their logo on DOTLAN EVE Maps.

INIT info

It is really only the center part of the logo, but it was a nice bit of work.  My screen shot of it isn’t that good, since I was caught unaware and just had to use whatever overview I had to hand to try and see it.  Over at INN their post has a screen shot with just the ships and aimed so the sun is behind the eye of the logo.   Very nice.

It is my understanding, confirmed on NER coms, that on person set that up, making the bookmarks for each ship location, then handed them out before the fleet so everybody could warp to the spot and, tah-dah, logo in space!

At that point all the wise people not in the Initiative warped out and docked up or tethered.  Those foolish enough to ignore the warnings, or unlucky enough to have missed them, were blown up according to the kill board.  More loot for the Initiative.

There are still some more structures to blow up and the Initiative has committed to hitting every last one of them, leaving only after they have all been destroyed.  Much of the rest of the Imperium headed home though.  The big kill mails and epic loot are all gone.  Only die hard structure shooters like Reavers are hanging around for some more kills.

And so it goes.  That post at INN looks a bit at Hard Knocks.  They aren’t imploding or shedding members.  They still have their null sec rental space in Cobalt Edge.  There is a rumor that they are folding into Pandemic Legion and merging their rental space, but there is as yet no substance it.

I suspect that once we have cleared out of JJ115405… nobody in the attacking force wants to keep the place… that Hard Knocks will return.  They will probably set up a more modest holding there.  No Keepstars.  The Keepstars were an extravagance, some bling to show off to the world.  And that is why we ended up there.  Fortizars are cheaper and would suit their needs.

I  do wonder whether CCP might look into the Initiative’s Raven fleet tactics to see if EVE Online players have found yet another hole in the game mechanics that ought to be filled.  What starts as ingenuity tends to become the meta.  We shall see.

Four Keepstar Targets in Fade and Pure Blind

Ops have already run in order to reinforce the remaining four northern Keepstar in Fade and Pure Blind.  The are scattered across two zones, so I ended up using the multi-region map for the area that is available at DOTLAN.

And then I flew out to take a peek at each of them just to see where the timers stood.  I have a general idea as ops area already on the calendar, but sometimes you just want to know the exact time.  So off I flew, first to C4C-Z4 and the first Circle of Two Keepstar.

Circle of Two Keepstar in Fade

From there I zipped over to DO6H-Q and the NCDot Keepstar.

NCDot Keepstar in Fade

Then I headed down into Pure Blind to 3V8-LJ to find the second CO2 Keepstar.

The CO2 Keepstar in Pure Blind

Then I made the last leg of the trip over to 7X-VKB to see the Darkness Keepstar.

All four are set to go this coming Wednesday, September 19th, at various early hours of the day.  At least early for me, sitting here on the West coast of the US.

Map of Fade, Pure Blind, and Cloud Ring – Times are in UTC

I doubt I will make it onto any of those kill mails.  But their destruction seems inevitable as northern forces draw back deeper into their own territory.  The question is whether or not there is a war once these are destroyed.  I am sure there will be some lesser structures to clean out of the area.  But once cleansed, the Imperium isn’t planning on moving in and they will stick around if CO2 comes back.  So who will end up in Fade?

Summer Movie League – The Mediocre Muppet Caper

Our summer Fantasy Movie League is coming to a close soon as we are now through week thirteen, the penultimate week of the season.

I like the word “penultimate” and will use it every chance I get.

For week thirteen we had the following choices for our lineups.

Crazy Rich Asians     $318
Happytime Murders     $264
The Meg               $201
Mile 22               $129
Mission: Impossible   $127
Christopher Robin     $106
Alpha                 $102
BlacKkKlansman        $84
A.X.L.                $58
Hotel Transylvania 3  $45
Slender Man           $40
Mamma Mia 2           $35
Ant-Man and the Wasp  $29
The Equalizer 2       $28
Incredibles 2         $27

Crazy Rich Asians was still slated to take the top spot in its second week, but second place was expected to go to Happytime Murders, with The Meg coming in third.

I was not enthusiastic at all for Happytime Murders however.  As I said in league chatter, to me it seemed like a picture in search of an audience.  The clips and trailers, along with the R rating, were pushing it as an adult feature, so you couldn’t expect too many kids going to see it.

But even with Melissa McCarthy at the helm it looked like a rip-off of homage to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a film with a PG rating back in the 80s, done with muppets rather than animation.  Or puppets rather, as muppets are a registered trademark of the Disney corporation.  The film was clearly trying to ride on that association however, along with children’s television with the tag line “No Sesame, All Street,” for which they were sued by the Children’s Television Workshop.

So I was staying away from that.  I was also down on A.X.L. which, despite its low threshold for success based on its FML pricing, seemed trite and uninspired.

At the beginning of the week I was keen on CRA and my Monday Hot Takes League saw me anchor on two screens of that along with some filler that was mostly picked to spend my budget and avoid A.X.L.

As the week went on though, I began to feel like CRA wasn’t going to do it, that to be worth that price it would have to have an almost unprecedentedly small drop in earnings week over week as to be unlikely.

I decided that since I could get three screens of The Meg for less than the price of two screens of CRA that I would go with sharks for my anchor.  So I ended up with 3x The Meg, 1x Mile 22, 2x BlackKklansman, and 2x Hotel Transylvania for the TAGN league pick.

Summer Movie League – My Week Thirteen Picks

That wasn’t a bad pick.  I did okay for the week.  But if I had just stuck with my Monday pick I would have won the week in the TAGN league because CRA only dropped 6% week over week, which was just the sort of unprecedented result that was needed to justify the price.  Anchoring on two screens of CRA was the path to the perfect pick.

Summer Movie League – Week Thirteen Perfect Pick

While I failed to get on board with CRA, at least I didn’t go with Happytime Murders which, in addition to confused marketing and poor reviews, also fell into third place overall for the week behind The Meg.  And that wasn’t because The Meg was suddenly on fire, but because Happytime Murders just didn’t have the draw.

On the other hand A.X.L. did okay, at least based on its FML pricing.  It ended up just about where it needed to be so if you used it as a filler item it didn’t drag you down.

Thus the week ended up with scores looking like this:

1. Joanie’s Joint – $71,400,125
2. grannanj’s Cineplex – $70,978,648
3. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $70,706,218
4. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $62,887,75
5. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $60,735,430
6. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $60,084,033
7. Too Orangey For Crows – $53,041,276
8. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $49,660,699
9. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $42,582,979
10. Goat Water Picture Palace – $42,550,095
11. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $40,224,039
12. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $39,238,157

Joanie won the week, their first win of the season, though grannanj and Vigo were close behind.  All three of them anchored on a pair of CRA screens.  After that we get into people who anchored on The Meg.  Corr had four screens of it, Ben had two, and I had three.  Go figure.

After that Happytime Murders start figuring in lineups, dragging them down, though SynCaine went all in on Mile 22, so stands out in the pack in that regard at least.

That left the overall scores for the season looking like this:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $1,175,879,341
2. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $1,125,111,970
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – $1,108,602,352
4. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $1,034,589,827
5. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $1,000,347,512
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $993,182,641
7. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $988,423,806
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $986,412,699
9. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $974,990,413
10. Joanie’s Joint – $952,413,909
11. Too Orangey For Crows – $950,848,424
12. grannanj’s Cineplex – $944,483,300
13. I HAS BAD TASTE – $890,174,972
14. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $707,708,993

Corr widened his lead against Goat and myself, though I was able to reclaim second place from Goat.  Vigo jumped up several spots on a strong performance and Joanie pushed Bhagpuss off of his hard earned tenth place spot with their week winning finish.

Now we are headed into the fourteenth and final week.  While Corr has first place locked, Goat and I are still battling over second, while fifth position still could change hands as well.

To get there we have the following choices.

Crazy Rich Asians     $460
The Meg               $204
Mission: Impossible   $143
Operation Finale      $133
Christopher Robin     $116
Searching             $111
Happytime Murders     $108
Alpha                 $97
BlacKkKlansman        $92
Mile 22               $89
Kin                   $82
Incredibles 2         $62
Ya Veremos            $56
Hotel Transylvania 3  $49
A.X.L.                $44

Falling off the list for the final week are Slender Man, Mamma Mia 2, The Equalizer 2, and Ant-Man and the Wasp.  I am a bit surprised that The Increadibles 2 held on for another week since it was the bottom pick for week thirteen.  Pixar magic I guess, as it has made the cut twelve weeks running now.  That is no Black Panther run, but it is damn good.

New this week are Operation Finale, Searching, Kin, and Ya Veremos, none of which I had heard of until I started working on this post.

Operation Finale follows the story of the Israeli abduction and trial of Adolph Eichmann in 1960.  This tale has been done before as The House on Garibaldi Street , The Man who Captured Eichmann, Eichmann, and Operation Eichmann.  The latter stands out in my mind especially since it featured Werner Klemperer as Eichmann and John Banner as Rudolph Hoess, roles made somewhat surreal due to their characters on the show Hogan’s Heroes.  I remember seeing it on TV at one point and not being able to tell if it was serious or not for quite a stretch due to the actors and how they played it.

Operation Finale was pegged at about $7 million on the last long range forecast I saw, though it was trending upward.  It should be at about 1,800 theaters in the US.

Searching is a thriller starting John Cho, of whom I am a big fan, about a father whose daughter is kidnapped and as the police find no leads he goes off after her, following her digital footprint.  A technological Taken maybe?  I don’t know, but there is no long range forecast for it, so maybe not at the Liam Neeson scale.  It is supposed to be in 1,100 theaters, expanding from just 9, and is in its second week so won’t get any boost from Thursday night previews.

Kin is… well… I will let the ad copy spell it out:

Armed with a mysterious weapon, an ex-con and his adopted teenage brother go on the run from a vengeful criminal and a gang of otherworldly soldiers.

So we have that.  It was called at $5 million on the latest long range forecast and was estimated to be in 2,100 theaters.

And then there is Ya Veremos, a Spanish language film, with no long range forecast either.  While it has done very well in Mexico foreign language films are always a bit of a wildcard here.

On top of all of that, we have a holiday weekend coming up in the US.  Viva Labor Day and all that.  Time to put away the white shoes.

That means this week fourteen is a four day haul, Friday through Monday, and the forecasts I mentioned above were only for the first three days.  Forecasts and results always get messed up on these weeks, a situation made all the worse by this being the final week of the season.  You are pretty much on your own this time around as the forecasts won’t help much.

Meanwhile, the new season starts the following weekend, so there will be a busy transition as this season wraps up a day late while the new season starts.  Expect two posts, but the new season post might be on Wednesday with the old season results showing up on Thursday.  There are only so many hours in the day to write this stuff.

Also, the plan for next season is to return to the default FML rules, including screens locking at 9am Pacific Time on Fridays, so you’ll have an extra day to pick in the hope that fewer people will forget.  If you have any thoughts on next season leave a comment here or in the FML Chatter group for the league, which is where we are also talking about scoring alternatives.

But this season still is still going, though it effectively closes on Thursday at 9am, so you have less than 24 hours to make your final picks.  Go do them!  Now!

My Monday Hot Takes picks are currently 4x The Meg and 4x A.X.L., but you know I’ll change my mind by Thursday.  I am trying to figure out who goes to the movies on Labor Day weekend.

A Decade of DOTLAN EVEMaps

Without going to much into the historical details or timeline: I can proudly announce that DOTLAN EveMaps has reached a major milestone and is providing a well known and respected service to all players of New Eden for 10 years now!

Wollari, 10 Years of EVE Maps

Wollari tweeted out earlier that DOTLAN EVEMaps turned ten years old today.

I suppose the big question ask on the tenth anniversary of DOTLAN is why CCP doesn’t have an official map that is even a tenth as useful.

I wrote a piece a couple years back about the top five problems with the game, and I limited myself to five and a bonus item, but believe me the in-game map was in the running for a spot on that list.

I mean, the in-game map is beautiful.  I highly recommend that you show that your friends who don’t play the game.  It is impressive as hell.  I mean, it really looks like something important.  I like to show off the systems I’ve visited.

Still haven’t been nearly everywhere yet

But as a utility that transmit information to the user it is sub-par.  I basically use the view that shows the location of your fleet members and maybe the recent kills view, but the latter generally just so I can take a screen shot of a huge red ball in The Forge when Burn Jita is going.  Mostly though I just use the star system view to check bookmarks and bounce points when I travel through null.

Maps are so useful in games like EVE Online.  And there has been a healthy tradition in the community of creating maps for the game, from Ombeve’s 2d maps, to the maps EON Magazine used to sell, to the null sec influence maps (and a summary site), to GARPA Topographical Survey (highlighted here), to the various utilities that map wormhole connections.

But my go-to site is DOTLAN and I visit almost every single day.  Links to it and screen shots from it pepper my posts about null sec.  I cannot imagine the game without it.

I first became aware of the site when Meclin/Rarik/Gaff (we all have so many handles) went off to null sec with Skyforger in TNT.  That was around the middle of 2009.  He started sending me information about what things were like out in null sec, including DOTLAN EVEMaps, which he said was essential.

Still wandering the ways of high sec empire space, I thought the site looked interesting, but could not see it as essential to my ventures.  I had already memorized the routes through my little corner of space, and when I didn’t know the way I knew the destination and could simply plot a route there in the game.

But in late 2011, when I was back in the game but almost immediately bored of life in high sec again, Meclin got me to make the jump to null sec and my world changed.  I was suddenly in a part of the game where systems had crazy alphanumeric designations rather than unpronounceable names, I had no idea how to get places, and my overview was suddenly vitally important at all times because random strangers could show up at any time to shoot me.

At that point I had DOTLAN up pretty much constantly when I was logged into the game.  The intel channels would call out hostiles in systems and, at that time the system info didn’t give you the route/jumps from your location, so I kept having to check to see who was distant and who was close and needed minding.  That was back when I lived in 0P-F3K and fleets moved out from VFK-IV.

Wars and operations and fleet movements expanded my need to keep track of where the hell I was.  And even as I started to get used to flying to and fro, using the jump bridge network and recognizing systems that were choke points on the routes across space, I still kept DOTLAN up and going.

And I still use it nearly every day now.  Sure, if I need to move some place around Delve I will bring up GARPA because it has the jump bridges in it, so can give me the shortest route with those included.  But we’re deployed up north and running off to the east and going all sorts of places where I need to at least refresh my memory as to the layout of the land.

And even when I don’t need to know where I am or where I am going, and when I don’t need a visual aid for a blog post to show routes or proximity of locations or whatever, I still go bring up the front page to take a look.  It is a source of information as to what is going on in New Eden.  There on the front page you can see alliance movements, recent data on the most violent systems in the game, and sovereignty changes.  I go there and see the numbers and often wonder what is going on, why did that alliance gain or lose so many members in the last week, was there a big battle in that system at the top of the list.

Even today I look at the front page and wonder what is going on with Dream Fleet and Red Alliance, our neighbors down in Period Basis.

DOTLAN says something happened

EVE Online is a game full of stories, and DOTLAN is one of the places that helps you find those stories and, quite literally, put them on the map.

Anyway, DOTLAN is a huge resource for the EVE Online community.  Wollari is asking in his blog post for people to comment on their memories of the site here on its birthday.  But that is a tough thing to do, because so many changes have been highlighted there over the years.  Grand conquests have been show as well as humiliating defeats.

One I do remember is from back at the end of 2016 when CCP turned off the ability to deploy outposts… stations… in null sec space as part of the last update for YC118.  The alliance Fraternity got out and deployed the final null sec outpost just hours before the deadline.

The final list…

Of course, outposts are gone now, converted to citadels last month.  But as Ascendant Frontier will always be the first alliance to drop an outpost, Fraternity will always be the last, and we likely know this because it was right up there on the front page at DOTLAN.

I honestly can’t say enough good about the site.  It is a shining beacon both for the community and as to how much the efforts of the community matter to this game.

Thanks so much Wollari!

Kickstarter – Stay Awhile and Listen Book II

My fondness for video games and Kickstarter has cooled, this is true.  Except in special circumstances, it feels like making a game ends up being too sprawling of a venture to fund this way without inviting the inevitable delay and disappointment.  And doubly so (or more) for anything in the MMO genre.  I’ll buy games when they launch.  Or when I fail to notice they’re still in early access.

Books on the other hand, books seem to work out okay.  While the Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls campaign went way past their promised dates, that is pretty much a game.  But things like Empires of EVE have kept reasonably close to their timelines and deliver on what they promise.  And even the laggardly Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls ended up on my bookshelf eventually and was worth the wait.

And so it is that I have another book based Kickstarter on my radar, Stay Awhile and Listen Book II.

Of course, my first question was, “What happened with Stay Awhile and Listen?”  I mean, if we’re speaking of a “Book II” then it seems likely that there is an original out there.

And there was.

The author already has the first book out, Stay Awhile and Listen Book I, released initially back in 2013, which you can find over at Amazon.  While the title suggests that Diablo is the focus, the author’s description of the series says it covers more of the evolution of Blizzard as a company and has tales about other projects, including both those that shipped and those that never saw the light of day.

Stay Awhile…

The book itself is said to be essentially done and the funding is for editing and artwork to get the whole project wrapped up.  So the amount of funding requested is not huge when compared to some other projects, sitting at $12,000, of which $5,500 has already been pledged.

And while the campaign hit my benchmark of 20% funding in the first 24 hours, meaning that it has a chance of success, the pledges really dropped off after day three.  Like, off a cliff, to the point that I suspect the campaign won’t fund unless it gets some more attention.  So I want to help get the word out lest the campaign founder midway through..

This sort of behind the scenes book is something I enjoy, so I am in for $30.  That gets me a paperback of book II and ebook versions of both book I and book II.  If this sort of thing interests you as well, take a look at the Kickstarter page.  The campaign has about 20 days left to run and the estimated delivery date for the finished product is June of next year.

Introducing Your CSM13 Representatives

The voting ended on Monday, the ballot boxes were as stuffed as they were going to get, and, with no real venue or event going on to carry the announcement, CCP went to Twitch to broadcast the winners of the election.

Space elections are serious business…

Those on CSM13 fall into two groups.  First there are the incumbents.  Basically, anybody who was on CSM12 and who ran again made the cut.  Seven incumbents ran and they were:

• Aryth – Goonswarm Federation
• Innominate – Goonswarm Federation
• Sort Dragon – Darkness
• Innominate – Goonswarm Federation
• The Judge – Goonswarm Federation
• Jin’taan – Red Noise (formerly of CVA and TEST)
• Suitonia – The Felines of the Egg of the Lisa
• Steve Ronuken – Fuzzwork Enterprises

Aryth, at the top of the Imperium ballot, was the biggest vote getter.  Sort Dragon, who was substituted in when Vince Draken was removed last year, managed to make the cut on his own this time.  Meanwhile, proving that betrayal is no barrier to success, managed to make it back on the council as well.

That leaves the three new people on the CSM, who were:

• Killah Bee – Northern Coalition
• Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation
• Brisc Rubal – The Initiative

That gives you all ten members of CSM13.

The CSM 13 Winners

As you can see, null sec dominated the vote even more than usual, with only two players outside of 0.0 making the cut.

For those keeping track, 7 out of 10 people on the Imperium ballot (which I posted here with the full candidate list) made it onto the CSM this year, with only Mawderator, Sullen Decimus, and Commander Aze left out.  However, some of the people on the Imperium ballot had or built constituencies outside of the Imperium.  Still, the top four players on the Imperium ballot made it, which was one more than I really thought would. (I do wonder how many people outside of the Imperium voted for The Judge.)

On the stream CCP Guard said that there was a total of 29,417, down a bit from the 31,274 that were cast for CSM12.  He attributed this in part in that no direct mailing went out during the election as none were slated the one week time frame of the election.  You can see where the CSM13 number stacks up historically.

Number of Votes Cast – CSM 1 through CSM 12

CCP Guard said that there will be a full dev blog about the election published, most likely tomorrow, with all of the voting data so you can check for yourself how things played out.  I will add a link to this post when that goes up.

CCP Guard on the stream

CCP Guard did say that Tikktokk Tokkzikk of Pandemic Legion appeared to be in 11th place, so if somebody needs to be replaced during the term, that will likely be who steps in.

In the mean time CCP is still working on getting the server back up.  The game has been down for a while now today.

What Would Even Help This Genre Anyway?

Earlier this week Massively OP published a Perfect Ten post about things the MMO industry could do to make its games more accessible, and I have to admit that my gut response was, “Who cares?”

The Perfect Ten column used to be the realm of sarcasm and exaggeration for humor, but it seems to have crept into the realm of simply another opinion piece about the MMO scene.  And this one strikes me as another thinly veiled attempt to tell devs how to save the genre.

The problem is, the genre doesn’t need saving.  It is what it is.  It had its moment of peak popularity and now it has settled down into the niche it is.  People still make MMOs, so the genre isn’t dead.  Yes, it has WoW looming over it as the yardstick against which every other game will be measured, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Other genres have that.  If you’re going to make an RTS and you haven’t thought about how it will measure up against StarCraft, then they are doing it wrong.  Likewise, if you’re going to make an action clicky RPG, you had best know what made Diablo and Diablo II great.

If anything, I think the popularity of WoW didn’t act as deterrent enough at the peak of the genre.  Rather than seeing that they would have to compete against this behemoth, a host of developers looked at WoW and felt they could repeat WoW’s success by simply copying WoW with minor variations.

So, in this post peak era of the genre, no amount of accessibility ideas are going to bring back to the growth levels we saw back in the mid-point of the last decade.  We are too hemmed in to the expectations that come with the acronym “MMO,” or at least those that come with “MMORPG,” for any turning of the currently accepted dials to change anything.  And that list is entirely made up of “re-arranging the deck chairs” sort of suggestions.

Which isn’t to say that the list itself is horrible.  I can get behind at least half of them in some way or another, though they are pretty subjective.  What does it mean to have a “clean user interface” these days?

EverQuest in 1999 – Looks pretty clean, everything is big and well labeled

Further down the list, what does a “flexible and fair business model” even look like?  In the end the company needs to pay the bills and keep their staff happy.  If you won’t subscribe and will walk away if there is too much emphasis on the cash shop or lootboxes are a thing, what do you think the company should do?

But overall, these aren’t going to change the fortunes of the genre or any particular game… except maybe the business model thing, and I think that can only get worse for either the company or the customer… or both.

All of which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have the discussion either.  MMO nerds will talk about MMOs.  I could crank out a 500-1,500 word opinion piece on 7 out of the 10 on the list.  In this case, I decided to go for the meta discussion about the discussion itself and the genre and its needs.

In the end my gut says that anything capable of causing a resurgence of growth to the genre would have to be different enough from the World of Warcraft template that we would likely call it something else.

We have what we have.  While it is no longer the aspiration of any three devs who happen to be sitting together to build a WoW-killing MMO, it is still a popular gaming niche.  Titles from it make the top ten list when it comes to revenue.  It just isn’t 2008 any more.  The future no longer seems to be a gilded path towards limitless growth.  But some times reality is a good thing.

The EverQuest Agnarr Server Hits the Planes of Power

About a year back Daybreak announced yet another retro/progression server.  This was the Agnarr server and it was to have a feature to make it stand out from its numerous predecessors.

Agnarr the Stormlord for whom the server was named

The Agnarr server would be “PoP locked,” that is it would progress only to the Planes of Power expansion and then stop, remaining for its existence at that point.

Planes of Power – Hope you like it!

Actually, “PoP locked” is incorrect.  The FAQ for the server indicates that the Legacy of Ykesha and Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansions, which came after Planes of Power, would also be unlocked.  The schedule was for an expansion to be unlocked every twelve weeks, so the timeline ought to be as follows:

• May 24, 2017 – Agnarr server opens with original EverQuest content
• August 16, 2017 – Ruins of Kunark expansion unlocked
• November 8, 2017 – Scars of Velious expansion unlocked
• January 31, 2018 – Shadows of Luclin expansion unlocked
• April 25, 2018 – Planes of Power expansion unlocked
• July 18, 2018 – Legacy of Ykesha expansion unlocked
• October 10, 2018 – Lost Dungeons of Norrath unlocked

Things were right on track with Planes of Power opening up this past Wednesday. (Though most of us were consumed with other drama at the time.)  So while there is more content to be unlocked, the Planes of Power expansion is the last big raid focused update for the server.  With past progression servers the follow-on pair of LoY and LDoN were opened up semi-concurrently with Planes of Power.

Released Together?  Not this time

LoY, which was only called an “extension” rather than an “expansion” back then introduced the Froglock race which evicted the trolls from their home, sending them to Neriak.  Tales of races seeking the ancestral homes are common in MMORPGs, but have we ever had somebody driven from theirs (or returning to theirs if you take the frog side of the conflict) as part of an expansion?

Meanwhile LDON is notable for introducing instanced, small group dungeons that attempted some level of randomness in layout to increase replayability.

That is where things will stop on Agnarr come October, at which point the plan is for the server to remain static.  This is the “forever classic” server that many have pined for, though I am sure there is still heated debate over what really constitutes “classic.”  It may also be an attempt to recreate the long passed EverQuest for Macintosh server Al’Kabor which stayed locked in time for so many years as a time capsule representing the game as it was back in 2002. (Officially shut down on November 2013)

The Gates of Discord expansion, the next in line on the long list of EverQuest expansions, which introduced instancing for raids as well as small group content, won’t be seen.  The Gates of Discord expansion remains controversial for using instancing, though that very idea would be picked up by Blizzard for World of Warcraft, set to launch a little more than a year later.

Not for Agnarr

The irony is that in order to keep player complaints down and keep the servers from needing direct GM intervention with things like raid schedules due to bad player behavior, Daybreak has put instancing in for all of the old raids already.  In the end the Gates of Discord expansion was the path forward.

But now the Agnarr server, the progression server that will soon cease to progress, has hit its crown jewel, the Planes of Power expansion.  It is an expansion of legend in the history of EverQuest, both for its breadth and ambition as well as for its level of brokenness at launch.

Firiona Vie casts in the expansion graphic

Daybreak has even put up a guide on their site that highlights what you can find in the Planes of Power expansion.

What will become of the server once the final expansion has been unlocked and it is left to drift on its own?  We shall see.  There are some who predict the growth a vibrant community, others who expect it to end up a ghost town.  But to play on it you have to subscribe, so it had best offer something that can’t be had for free on the live servers.

Spring Movie League – It’s All in the Filler

With week seven in the read view mirror we are now past the half way point for our Spring Fantasy Movie League.

For week seven we had a few new films in the lineup, which looked like this.

Rampage                      $535 
A Quiet Place                $361
Truth or Dare                $207 
Ready Player One             $167 
Blockers                     $147
Isle of Dogs                 $105
Black Panther                $74 
I Can Only Imagine           $62 
Tyler Perry's Acrimony       $52
Chappaquiddick               $47
Sherlock Gnomes              $46
The Miracle Season           $29
Pacific Rim                  $27
A Wrinkle in Time            $25
Love Simon                   $18

However, not very far into the week it started to become clear that the anchor of choice was going to be A Quiet Place.  Ticket sales over the course of the week, good reviews, and good word of mouth seemed to indicate that it would out perform its pricing for the week.

At the top of the price list was Rampage, which had a long range forecast of about $31 million.  But it seemed like A Quiet Place would do that much as well, and you could have two AQP as your anchor.

Meanwhile Truth or Dare felt to me like it was held back on a few levels.  It was a horror film coming in the shadow of A Quiet Place.  It was also a teen film facing competition from Blockers.  And it really didn’t have a huge name draw in the cast.

So with two screens of A Quiet Place locked in, it came down to the filler screens.  That is always a gamble because at the low end of the price range a shift of a $100K can make all the difference.

In the end I opted for 2x A Quiet Place, 3x I Can Only Imagine, 1x Acrimony, and 2x Love Simon.

Spring Week Seven – My Picks

This was mostly on gut because Imagine and Simon both had a record of dropping less than expected week over week, while Acrimony happened to fit nicely in the middle, leaving me with just $4 left over.

When lockout came on Friday I found myself in good company on the anchor picks.  And with the first estimates on Saturday morning A Quiet Place was in as the best performer, while Corr had the perfect pick.

But as I say over and over, Saturday is a day of false hope, and having the perfect pick on Saturday when the filler screens were going to make or break you made it even more so.

Sunday however threw things for a spin.  Truth or Dare, performing better than I expected, muscled in and took over the best performer spot, with four screens of it being the anchor for the perfect pick.  Suddenly Skar, who had anchored on one screen of AQP and two screens of Truth or Dare was leading the pack in the Meta League.

But Truth or Dare was ahead by just the width of a shadow and by the time the final numbers started coming in A Quiet Place was back on top as best performer.  The perfect pick ended up being 2x A Quiet Place, 2x Black Panther, 1x Acrimony, 2x The Miracle Season, 1x Love Simon.

Spring Week Seven – Perfect Pick

It is unusual for a winning lineup to have five different titles in it and the general recommendation is to try to keep it to three or four at most.  But when the anchor is also the best performer it is a matter of getting the most out of the filler no matter what.  Nobody in the Meta League got the perfect pick this week.

That left the scores for the week looking like:

1. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $90,454,671
2. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $90,348,718
3. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $89,790,581
4. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $88,138,888
5. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $87,576,863
6. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $87,576,863
7. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $87,453,970
8. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $87,451,105
9. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $87,016,918
10. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies (T) – $84,839,318
11. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $84,368,064
12. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $84,368,064
13. DumCheese’s Cineplex (T) – $82,681,813
14. JHW’s Cineplex (T) – $82,681,813
15. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $79,519,219
16. Bean Movie Burrito (T) – $73,102,608
17. Goat Water Picture Palace (T) – $72,416,392
18. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $71,851,296
19. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $69,562,268
20. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $69,183,935
21. Kraut Screens (T) – $68,968,210
22. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex (T) – $65,658,324

The Meta League Legend:

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

SynCaine topped the Meta League this week, though not by much, with Biyondios just $105K behind him.  Corr missed out on his perfect pick and ened up in third place, leading the MCats League.  Then there was Skar, on top on Sunday, but back in 10th place on Monday.  So it goes.

The pack was very close in score this week, which did not make for much change in the season rankings.

1. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $687,562,198
2. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $682,836,540
3. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $663,652,472
4. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $645,662,309
5. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $633,592,608
6. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $632,530,977
7. Goat Water Picture Palace (T) – $622,580,794
8. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $619,149,976
9. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $614,081,399
10. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $613,788,104
11. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $605,152,623
12. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $582,529,067
13. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $558,462,207
14. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $538,787,711
15. Kraut Screens (T) – $536,872,905
16. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $525,348,454
17. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $512,340,200
18. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex (T) – $500,346,633
19. DumCheese’s Cineplex (T) – $496,766,130
20. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies (T) – $486,862,102
21. JHW’s Cineplex (T) – $426,892,424
22. Bean Movie Burrito (T) – $414,409,827

Ben remained on top, with the gap between him and Po shrinking ever so slightly.  Otherwise nobody really pulled much in the way of distance on anybody this time around.

That leads us to week eight and the back half of the season.  The lineup for the week looks like this:

 A Quiet Place            $361
 Rampage                  $258
 I Feel Pretty            $251
 Truth or Dare            $126
 Blockers                 $98
 Ready Player One         $95
 Super Troopers 2         $84
 Black Panther            $72
 Traffik                  $68
 Isle of Dogs             $47
 I Can Only Imagine       $33
 Tyler Perry's Acrimony   $26
 Chappaquiddick           $25
 The Miracle Season       $19
 Sherlock Gnomes          $18

Dropping from the lineup are Pacific Rim, A Wrinkle in Time, and Love Simon.

Replacing them we have I Feel Pretty, Traffik, and Super Troopers 2.

I Feel Pretty is an Amy Schumer vehicle and I would say that it would probably do as well as those tend to do, except for some negative reactions to the trailer.  That may stunt its numbers for the weekend.  So I don’t think it is going to be a break out hit, and neither does the pricing for the week, which puts it behind A Quiet Place, going into its third week, and Rampage, going into its second.

Traffik is not the remake of the movie Traffic, which was a remake of the UK mini-series Traffik, that I thought it might be just from the title.  More is the pity, as I think that might have been a better plan.  Instead it is a new film with no big names showing up mid-pack.

And then there is Super Troopers 2.

What do you do when somebody makes a sequel… or, in this case a prequel… to a cult classic?  I mean, I love meow some Super Troopers on any Friday night after a few beers.  But can you make magic twice?  Could you?  Should you?  Would you?

I was thinking no, until I read the premise over on Wikipedia.  This represents the parents of the group in the original, back in the 70s, with even longer hair and mightier mustaches.  Also, to get it into production they had to crowd source it with an Indiegogo campaign which raised more than they expected and got the word out early that the film was coming.  That means there is a pre-set audience that has been waiting for this week for quite a while.  Not a Star Wars sized audience to be sure, but probably bigger than we expect.

So I am going to declare that this week will be the polar opposite of last week.

Last week you knew the anchors, you just had to figure out the filler.  This week I calling Super Troopers 2 as the filler in the perfect pick.  You just need to figure out how to anchor a lineup with five or six screens of the Super Troopers 2.  Get on it right meow!