The Steam Winter Sale Kicks Off for 2019

With the turning of the seasons comes a sale at Steam.  There is one for spring, summer, and autumn.  But the winter or holiday or whatever sale, that is the original big sale, the one that used to spark excitement and a frenzy of buying titles you never ended up playing.

Back for 2019

No doubt if you have a wish list on Steam you have an email in your inbox this morning telling you that a good portion of it is currently available at a discount.

There is also the usual Steam event with things to do to earn badges and such.  One of the day one actions was to put some items on your wish list, Steam no doubt still stinging from the summer sale when they managed to get people to purge their wish lists, to the chagrin of many an indie dev.

It is also time for the Steam awards voting.  The nominations were last month and now users get to pick from the most nominated titles.  As a crusty old MMORPG player who rarely plays the latest and greatest titles, I haven’t touched many of the nominated titles.  I think I own two of them.  But, like the general public on election day, ignorance never stopped me from voting.  Only laziness can do that, and I am not that lazy yet.

Anyway, it is here.  Time to shop… or browse… or earn a badge or two… or maybe log in and see if your account is still there or look at your game list for some sort of “games of the decade” post.

The Day of No Downtime

Today is a strange day in New Eden as something that usually happens every single day did not happen.  There was no downtime at 11:00 UTC.  The game was not offline for the usual time, but persisted on through its regular break to keep running.

Celebrating no downtime

This lack of a downtime was cause to write up a whole Dev Blog about downtime, why they do it every day, and even how they picked the time.  It is another one of those posts that are worth the read just for the insight into the considerations.

Downtime generally isn’t an issue for me as, being on the Pacific coast, it is a very rare day when I am up and online when it happens.  But I am sure there are people for whom it is just the most annoying thing about EVE Online, this daily break in the action.  Then again, some people are probably relieved.  Some battles, like B-R5RB, didn’t end until downtime logged everybody off. (I went to bed and left my Dominix just drifting in game.  It made it to downtime.)

Of course, somebody always has the difficult questions:

No resetting of high sec asteroid belts?

Nosy Gamer, Twitter

So, as has been noted, it is a bit of a non-event.  It is literally something not happening.  But downtime is such a feature of the game that it seems worth noting.  And, of course, downtime will be back tomorrow.  But for one day there was no downtime, allowing almost 48 hours of continuous play… or idleness.  EVE Online is also one of those games without an inactivity timer so, among other things, downtime kicks all those people who just left the game client running and walked off.  There is also the possibility that maybe a downtime every single day will at some point no longer be a necessity.

Others on this:

• The Nosy Gamer
• Imperium News
• Forum Thread about No Downtime
• Forum Thread for No Downtime Problem Reporting

Fantasy Movie League Fall 2019 Final Score

I said at the mid-season check-in that the fall 2019 Fantasy Movie League race was more interesting than usual.

The race remained tight right up until week 10, when SynCaine bet on Midway and ended up with the perfect pick, which got him $95 million for the week, $40 million more than the second place pick.  That jumped him up into first place overall and opened up a gap that nobody was able to close in the final three weeks, so the final top scores for the TAGN league for fall were:

1. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $1,003,734,130
2. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $948,306,363
3. Too Orangey For Crows – $926,452,645
4. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – $914,543,237
5. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $885,407,281
6. Joanie’s Joint – $838,079,152

The alternate scoring, based on a 1 to 5 point scale this time around since we had only about seven regulars, ended up as follows:

1. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 42
2. Too Orangey For Crows – 37
3. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – 31
4. Cyanbane’s Neuticles Viewing Party – 26
5. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – 26
6. Joanie’s Joint – 14

Bhagpuss and I swapped spots for the alternate scoring.  During close weeks I was frequently in the pack but several spots down.  I extended the final scores to six players as Joanie actually had the top score two weeks, which was as often as I won.

Congratulations to SynCaine for winning the season!

The winter, or “awards” season starts this week.  I won’t be covering it on a weekly basis.  But if it turns out to be another interesting race I will give a mid-season update.

If you want to join on the league you need to make a Fantasy Movie League account.  Once that is done, go to the leagues page, find the search field, and enter TAGN, which should bring up only our league.  Click on the link for TAGN Movie Obsession.  That should bring you to the league page where you will find a button that says Join.  Click that, enter George as the password, and you’re in.

EVE Online Gets Rapid Fire and Triglavians in its Third November Update

I thought EVE Online going to updates every five weeks was a bit of a fast pace, but now we’re into our third update for November.  We had the new player login campaign update first, a tiny update yes, but it got its own release notes, so I covered it.  Then we got the Beat Around the Boosh update two weeks back.  And now we’re getting an update to the Triglavian event and the Team Talos Rapid Fire update, which was mentioned back at EVE Vegas.

The invasion continues

On the Triglavian front, the event has been updated, with CONCORD observatories being deployed around New Eden to study the Triglavian stellar accelerators.  But, as always, CONCORD needs your help.  In this case, they want you to defend these observatories from Triglavian attack.

Also coming with this update is the Triglavian dreadnought, the Zirnitra, which was previewed at EVE Vegas.

Very big Triglavian ships arrive

With it comes a new capital ship class entropic disintigrator weapon along with the X-large ammo to go with it and the skills you’ll need to train up in order to use the ship and its weapons.  And, of course, there are BPCs out there.  This dreadnought is supposed to be less expensive to build than past faction dreads have been.  CCP wants people flying this beast.

Then there is the Team Talos project, the Rapid Fire update, which brings good news to a number of Minmatar hulls and auto cannons.

Stabber Fleet Issue, Tempest Fleet Issue, Typhoon, Bellicose and Rifter are all getting a bit of a buff, while medium autocannons are getting a bit of stat increase as well.

On the flip side, the over-used Muninn is getting a bit of a nerf (no wonder Elo Knight is taking a break now) as are Angel Cartel ships.

Then there is Team Five-0 and the shareable bookmarks update.  This brings the long sought after Alliance Bookmarks feature by creating a way that bookmarks can be shared via the Access Control List interface.  There is a cost however, in that there are limits to the number of bookmarks than can be saved.  There are 102 individuals that currently exceed the 20,000 bookmark hard cap that the system will enforce, but with 248 million saved locations in New Eden, some effort to keep system performance viable had to be made.

There is a dev blog that covers this in detail and the forum thread where problems with the change are brought up.  No matter what CCP does at this point, somebody will be unhappy.  Of course, I only have a few hundred bookmarks, so I am nowhere close to the problem zone.  And I know people who are very happy with the change as well.  I’ll personally be glad to have wormhole bookmarks that can be set to expire and go away on their own.

Then there is the Black Friday login campaign which will reward capsuleers who login daily between Nov 27th (tomorrow) and Dec 3rd.

Further details for these changes are in the updated November patch notes, with some additional information on the updates page. The update has been reported live, so it is our reality now.

In addition, as part of EVE London CCP released a new trailer for items coming to the game this winter.

However, a good portion of them are available as part of today’s update, which is dropping nearly a month ahead of the calendar maker determined first day of winter in the northern hemisphere.  But I’ve always maintained that seasons are more a state of mind… though November still feels like autumn in my book.

Daybreak Ready to Launch Special Servers for EverQuest II Anniversary

We are into November and it is time for EverQuest II to start kicking off its 15th anniversary.  First up on the list are new special rules servers!

As their anniversary splash screen proudly declares

On the EverQuest II side of the house, the Rivervale server, set to launch today.  Rivervale was the home town of the halflings back in the original EverQuest and a strange sub-zone in the Enchanted Lands in EverQuest II.  It still houses halflings, and the old Fool’s Gold, but it is also home to a lot of demons as well as hosting the bee and bixie dungeon, the Tower of Drafling.  I remember spending a lot of time in a group with Rarik in that zone.

The Fool’s Gold still stands… somebody scrubbed off the sign I guess

The new Rivervale server will be a “Live Heroic Server,” which is an all new name, so I’ll just quote Daybreak from the FAQ as to what that means:

Any new character on a heroic server is granted a level boost bauble that will enable them to jump directly into some of the more recent content, boosting to level 95 with a gear set that will set you on your path in the Phantom Seas (released in 2014’s Altar of Malice expansion).

So it sounds like if you join in you’ll be able to jump straight into the content that went live around the game’s 10th anniversary.  I wonder if that was planned?

Otherwise content on the server will be the same as on a live server, which means if you own the latest expansion, last year’s Chaos Descending expansion, you will be able to play right through into that.

As with other such special servers, you will not be able to transfer on or off of the server and, of course, you will need to have a Daybreak All Access subscription in order to play on it.

Also, as a bit of a late update yesterday, it was announced that the Rivervale server would be a “free trade” server.  The FAQ was poor about indicating what that actually means, but fortunately they did a such a server previously.  The Isle of Refuge server, launched back in 2016, was also a free trade server.  You can read what I wrote about it back then, but the upshot is in this quote:

Isle of Refuge is what we call a “Free Trade Server.” This means that almost all items can be traded freely between players. There are a few exceptions – Heirloom items purchased via a merchant or in the marketplace, granted from repeatable quests, or received via /claims will remain Heirloom.

So that will be it.  Most everything that you might think of as “bind on pick up” on this server will be “bind on equip” and tradeable, to sully this conversation by using WoW terminology.

Meanwhile, older sibling EverQuest, which turned 20 back in March, is also opening up a special server today to help celebrate the EverQuest II anniversary.

The Miragul server, named for the lich of Everfrost, is billed as a “Heroic Progression Server.”

According to the FAQ that means that new characters will start at level 85 with gear, spells, and AA points.  Content will be unlocked up through the 2010 House of Thule expansion, after which later expansions will be unlocked based on whether or not they include an increase in the level cap.  Expansions that do will be held for three months, while those without an increase will be active for two months.

It is also a “true box” server, which means that the client will try to keep you from multi-boxing your way through things.  And, as always, a Daybreak All Access subscription is required to roll up a character on the server and you cannot transfer characters from other servers to this server.

And so the anniversary celebration begins.

Both servers are slated to go live at noon Pacific Time today, but we know how that goes.  Still, they will probably be up and running before you’re done with dinner this evening.

Don’t Forget to Claim Your Skill Points

I may complain at how much skill points have been cheapened by CCP’s recent propensity towards handing them out relentlessly… they have become CCP’s hammer and every problem seems to be a nail these days… but I am not too proud to go collect them all the same.

So I wrapped up the most recent bonus week of skill points for just logging in last night.

Last handout collected… just for an alt, of course

CCP was nice enough to give us eight days in which to collect the seven rewards, so if you missed a day along the way you can still catch up.  You have until downtime (11:00 UTC) on the 24th.

If you missed two days though… well… I guess you didn’t want it bad enough.  I don’t know.  But don’t worry.  There will no doubt be more skill points handed out at some later date.  And the return of the skilling spree, where just killing somewhere between one and ten NPCs will get you some skill points, carries on.  So you can still do that.

Skill Point Bonus Time Again in New Eden

I really wish more people had picked SKINs in that survey CCP did about a year back on what sort of rewards we like.  Apparently we all put skill points at the top of our list so now it is all skill points all the time when CCP wants to give us something.

So CCP announced this morning that it is now Bonus Skill Point Week.

When in doubt hand skill points out!

The routine is the same as it has been in the past.  From today, October 16th, through October 24th, log in every day after down time (which is at 11:00 UTC) with every account to claim some free skill points.

This time around CCP did not say up front how many skill points one could accrue over the course of the week, but the usual split between Alpha and Omega clones is in place.  Basically, you get some skill points as an Alpha, but you will get more, probably a lot more, as an Omega, and the login screen will show you just how many more as an enticement to subscribe.

How to collect your skill points are covered in the announcement linked above, but I am sure you could figure it out if you just logged in to look.

This event joins the return of the Skilling Spree, which came back at the start of the month, as the events for the season.  I am sure some are holding out hope for a new Crimson Harvest, the graphically stunning event that ran last year around this time.  We shall see.

Speculation as to why CCP has decided to throw more skill points at us, what it might mean to MAU/DAU numbers, and how this might relate to the one year anniversary of the Pearl Abyss acquisition and the bonuses related to it will no doubt come up as a topic over on /r/eve.

I, for one, won’t turn up my nose at the offer of some free skill points.  The effort is low enough that I’ll log in my Omega and Alpha accounts.  I don’t think I’ll go so far as upgrading any of the latter however.

The October Update Expands the Triglavian Invasion of New Eden

We are into October and it is time for another update to EVE Online.  Probably the biggest thing on the agenda for the patch is a new stage to the Triglavian invasion.

The Triglavian Menace Continues

There isn’t much in the way of details however, with the only line about it being:

The Triglavian Collective has been spotted deploying what appear to be system-altering structures across invaded locations.

What these structures are and how they may be altering systems remains to be discovered.  Let’s just hope that CCP can keep them out of the new player starter systems this time around.

There are also a new Triglavian implants with the mid-grade Mimesis set being introduced.  The low grade set came in with last month’s update.  These are available at LP store at DED stations.

CCP has modified the market so that players do not need to manually repackage items in order to list them on the market.  If a player attempts to list an item now it will be automatically repackaged.  Given that what can be listed on the market and the state it needs to be in (repaired and repackaged) has always been a bit of a pain, this is probably a good change.

The UI has been updated so that players can distinguish between the different cyno types that were introduced with the September update.

Another item from the September update that has seen some revision is the tutorial part of the new player experience.  Given that the recent CSM Summit Minutes indicated that CCP would be putting 80% of dev resources on new player retention, I suppose the only surprise here is that there were not more changes.

The tutorial got the following changes:

• Improvements made to the text Aura displays throughout the Tutorial.
• Added shortcuts to the Tutorial Instructions.
• Improved the flow for claiming rewards during the Tutorial.
• Removed the civilian mining laser from the starter corvettes (not other versions of the corvettes) to help new players.
• Improved the hiding behavior for the Aura Conversation window
• Updated the rewards to the tutorial to be ISK, modules, or ammunition.

In addition there was a wave of UI changes to various aspects of the game that very much feel like an attempt to make the UI less obstinate in the face of player needs.  Whether or not the notoriously balky interface that has seemed at times to almost resent telling you what you need to know can be improved enough to keep it from scaring off or scarring new players remains to be seen.  I have heard the phrase “lipstick on a pig” bandied about, but CCP isn’t done yet.

My own favorite item from the patch notes was a fix to a situation where mobile tractor units were causing scooped items to go missing:

Mobile Tractor Units would occasionally not eject their contents when being scooped from space, leading to the apparent loss of some items. (This was caused by the MTU being too greedy and scooping back up its own jet-can at the same time as a ship is picking up the MTU!) The auto-looter behavior will now shut down earlier during the scoop-to-ship process.

As I have been known to say, timing is everything.

There are, as always, lots of other small fixes and tweaks in the update.  You can find details in the patch notes  No updates page entry for this patch (so far).  Word is that the update has been deployed successfully.

Skilling Spree Returns to EVE Online

1. Stop the bleeding
2. Fix the stupid
3. Excite and teach
4. Incentivize return

-CCP Burger on CCP’s focus, CSM summit minutes page 6

I cannot tell if this announcement falls under items one or four, but it isn’t much of a stretch to guess that it is a reaction to the fact that the concurrent user count started to take a dive over the summer as soon as CCP stopped handing out skill points.  CCP pretty much says that in the CSM summit minutes linked above.

So today CCP has declared the return of the Skilling Spree event.

… to kill an NPC once a day for however long

As of down time today the event is back meaning that when you log in you will be given a daily task to blow up 1, 5, or 10 NPC ships which will earn you 10,000, 25,000, or 50,000 skill points respectively.

Only 10K for you today

Then you log in the next day to do it all again.

I am reminded once more about how CCP did something like this back in 2016 and then decided it wasn’t worth it.  But I am going to guess that at the time CCP wasn’t being held to any sort of daily or monthly active user metric the way they apparently are now.  You don’t keep mentioning DAU and MAU unless they mean something to you, right?

There is no end date currently announced for the event… as with the blackout when it went live, its duration appears to be indefinite… so I guess the skills will continue on a spree until morale improves.

There is also a forum thread for the resurrected event where people even more cynical than I are leaving comments.

Blaugust and Keeping the Words Flowing to the Site

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

-Voltaire

Here we are in the last week of Blaugust and the topic of the week is about staying motivated.

To write a single blog post is pretty easy.  We all have something to say, some opinion to share, something to complain about, or some entertaining tale of challenge, victory, defeat, or shame.  It probably isn’t a chore to get to maybe half a dozen posts.  The world is, as I noted a couple weeks back, full of topics if you look closely enough.

But at some point the white hot rage or whatever drove you to start a blog will diminish.  You will have said the things that were on your mind at the beginning and will have to face the fact that if you want to keep writing you will need both a source of topics and the motivation to keep going.

If you are happy with what you have written, if people are reading, if you’re getting comments that turn into thoughtful discussions or interesting counter-points to your posts, it will be easier to carry on.  Attention is a powerful motivator.

But what if you post your well crafted opus on the evolution of housing options in Runes of Magic and nobody responds?

There was a time about a decade back when you could reliably count on somebody showing up for a comment if you had managed to pass what seems now like a fairly low bar of notoriety.  The stats that WP.com shows me say that there was a stretch when I could count on an average of 8 comments per post.  Even with some percentage of those being my own responses in comments, that is a lot of discussion going on.

As SynCaine pointed out in my July month in review post, there was a link to a reference to a fairly simple post he did back in 2009 that ended up with 40 comments.  That was the golden age, where a rant or a controversial opinion might get your comments to overflow.

But now a days the threshold for getting comments has risen quite a bit.  The advent of other social media channels like Twitter and Reddit, and other gamer outlets like Twitch, not to mention the whims of Google, has made blogs much more of a niche than they were.  Comments per post here, which peaked at 9 a decade back, are a lot closer to 3 these days.  And if it wasn’t for Bhagpuss that number would probably have sunk to around 2.

What do you do now?

Well, first, go leave a comment on another blog.  They’ll appreciate it.  And, if they don’t, you know not to bother going forward.  There are still plenty of fish in that sea.

But after that, you probably need to evaluate why you were blogging in the first place and work towards that as a goal.

If you started blogging in order to get traffic and comments and whatever, you can still do that.  It is more difficult than it was a decade back, but you can still swing it.  You can work on your SEO, you can promote your blog on a wide range of social networks, and you can tackle controversial topics or take radical stances on more mundane things.  You can get attention.  Whether that attention will make you happy is your call.

Or maybe you set out simply to craft a gold plated edifice of perfect text that you expect to stand the test of time and and serve as a shining beacon to future generations.  You might manage that with a few more revisions of that post that has been sitting in your drafts folder for two years already.

My own motivation is much more mundane; just to remember.

Even if you have your writing goals nailed down and you can think up topics left and right, there can still be times when motivation lacks.  Do I want to write about another move op or quest run or achievement?  Sometimes the words just won’t come, or dribble out half halfheartedly.  It is around then that I feel like I need to prime the pump.  The one thing that seems to get me writing is to be writing already.  So I have a series of regular posts I do, or events that I will write about, which I can fall back on.  I mentioned a few in my prep week post.

Probably the most common on here at TAGN is the month in review post.  I have managed to do one on the last day of the month, every month, since I started the blog.  But I don’t have to write it on that day.  It has a standard format and, save for a couple of entries that require the end of the month, I can start writing it any time.  I often start writing these posts weeks in advance when I have some time to write but don’t feel I have something to write about.  Doing the 1/5/10 years ago section often sparks ideas and leads me off to some topic about which to write.

Another post type I find I can get running with are Quote of the Day posts.  Somebody is always saying something.  Take their quote and run with it.  And then there are “Summer Re-Runs” posts, where I lump together a series of posts on a specific topic that bring together a story or a bit of history.

There are some other regular posts, like a look at the EVE Online Monthly Economic Report and the SuperData Research digital video game revenue chart.  EVE Online also releases a patch/feature update most months, which is an easy item to write about.

And then there are the items that trigger posts for me, things like announcements, patch notes, expansions, and the sort of headline news items that come around once in a while.  There are times when I get in almost a reactionary style of writing, where these sorts of bits that I feel I ought to write about start showing up all of a sudden and I am just writing about them.  The blog starts to feel like a news site as I try to cover these sorts of things.  But I am not about news, but about context, the idea that all sorts of things are going on even if I am only playing EVE Online or WoW in a given week.

Of course, the problem with standard posts is that they can start to feel routine.  If they get stale then they are less likely to spur you to write other things.  Sometimes you have to shake things up in order to find a new balance that can keep you going.  For example, for the EVE Online MER I kept reporting on the same charts for over a year.  When that got stale, I decided to find something specific to focus on each month, something related to events in the game to see what influence they had.

And then there was the weekly Fantasy Movie League posts, which grew to be immense, 2,000 word ventures each week.  That started to feel like a burden.  So I looked at what was the most interesting bits and focused on that… for me it is probably the look at the new movies that show up each week… and cut other parts back to no more than what was probably really needed.

But all of those together, the regular posts and the fall back options, give me just enough structure that I seem to be able to build up a week’s worth of posts, one week after another, until another year has gone by.  And then they find their way into the Month in Review post where I look at them and often find inspiration from them yet again.

Or I suppose you could just to what WordPress.com sent me this morning about writing more.

EVE Echoes Alpha Announced

It has been a while since we heard about anything besides EVE Online out of CCP, but they appear to be still working on other titles.  Today CCP announced the sign up for the EVE Echoes alpha.

EVE Echoes Alpha

First show to us somewhat by accident as part of the Apple ARKkit 2 at WWDC as EVE: Project Galaxy, the game was  formally unveiled last year as EVE Echoes.

EVE Echoes is the latest iteration of CCP’s attempt to create a mobile game based on the EVE Online universe and is being created in conjunction with NetEase, the company also working with Blizzard on the missing-since-BlizzCon title Diablo Immortal.

CCP previously demoed an EVE Online based mobile game made in conjunction with PlayRaven (now a subsidiary of Rovio of Angry Birds fame) at EVE Vegas a couple of years back under the name Project Aurora.  This was alleged to have become EVE: War of Ascension, but we haven’t heard much about it since. (Googling the title seems to suggest it was released for iOS and Andriod in some regions, but I couldn’t say for sure.  It does not appear on the CCP site anywhere.  Maybe the Rovio acquisition complicated things.)

Anyway, if a mobile version of the EVE Online experience appeals to you, you can sign up for the Alpha at the EVE Echoes site.

Being invited to the Alpha will mean keeping things quiet according to the sign up.

How hard core is hardcore?

So if you’re doing this for a blog post or stream event, you might have to sit on your hands for a bit.  CCP will want to let the gaming news sites have first bite at the publicity before the plebes can start gushing and/or complaining about the new game.

Learning Restraint in Placid

Our Fortizar in Frarie still stands.  Maybe there will be an actual fight over it at some point.

Named “Little House on the Frarie”

Last night wasn’t the night however.  I got home and saw a ping that we would be forming up to defend it.  Snuffed Out had come by and set the armor timer yet again.

Time running down…

As the time ticked down, we formed up in the Fortizar in our Abaddons and Guardians.  A scout in their home system of Rakapas reported that they were logged in and had eyes on their bridging titan.

But they did not come.  The timer ran down and the Fortizar was no longer in danger.

We were formed up and ready to go, and it was clear that Snuff was as well, though their bridging titan logged off.  They were not going to come to us.  They were expecting, not unreasonably after our past performance, us to come shoot one of their structures like we did on Saturday.

However, Cainun decided that we were not going to reward them with a feed for not showing up to the timer.  The Abaddon fleet stood down, we all got our PAP, and that was that.  Another doctrine was called later and Liberty Squad roamed elsewhere.  No fight with Snuff.

Null Sec Local Blackout is in Effect

As promised, with the passing of downtime today, CCP switched the the null sec local channel from immediate to delayed mode, meaning that people only appear in the list when they speak rather than as soon as they enter the current system.  The duration of this “undetermined” according to CCP.

Local is now delayed in null sec

Basically, they want to leave their options open as they see how this turns out.

Of course, there is always somebody who wants to talk.

Quiet local, and then…

In the run up to this various groups have been planning and trying to get their members on board with the new reality.  Classes on how to use the directional scanner effectively have been running (here is a quick video if you are interested), suggestions on what to do if you are going to rat or mine (be aligned, use d-scan, watch intel channels) have been put into an infographic, and optimum gates to camp if you want to help shoot the expected deluge of hunts have been broadcast repeatedly.

Even the /r/eve Reddit community mods have set the subreddit to private with a message about the change to null sec local in the hope of getting the news out as far and wide as possible.

But somebody won’t get the word, and comedy will ensue as they blithely fly around a seemingly empty null sec.

The change is imperfect.  You can still go to DOTLAN EVE Maps to see kill statistics or look at the in-game map to see where things might be hot.  Intel is still available.

Something happened over here

But it is nothing like the immediate warning you get when a hostile shows up in local.

And now we wait to see what happens.  Will this usher in an exciting new era of null sec?  Or will people stop ratting and mining except in protected groups, leading to more complaints about how difficult it is to hunt in 0.0. space?

Meanwhile, conspiracy theories and fantasies about the change persist.  My favorite so far is that this is CCP trying to hide the fact that null sec is empty and that EVE Online is dying.  There should be an EVE Online version of Godwin’s Law for EVE Online.  Something like:

As an EVE discussion grows longer, the probability of somebody saying that EVE Online is dying approaches 1.

And so it goes.

WoW Classic Load Test Went So Well More Load Was Added

Blizzard, rather quietly I felt, announced another stress test for WoW Classic, which kicked off yesterday at 2pm Pacific time.

Classic is as classic does

The kick off time meant that I would be at work when it began.  But, given what happened with the first and second tests, I figured I would be home early enough to see the servers straining under the load.

But by the time I logged in there were no queues or technical problems apparent.

I was confused for a minute because the WoW Classic Beta client wasn’t working, but for this run Blizzard had people download the actual WoW Classic client.  I thought that might take some time, but since I had already downloaded an earlier version of it for BlizzCon last year, that went quite quickly.

When I logged in I found there were only two servers to choose from, others appearing to be offline.

WoW Classic third load test realms

I later saw on Twitter that there was a reason for this; Blizzard wanted more load.

MOAR LOAD!!!

But even with that additional load, I was able to log straight in, make a new character, and run around in game without seeing any technical problems.

Practical problems however… there was an incredible crush of people running around the night elf starter area.

Hey, I guess we’re all starting off right now together!

The first quest, which involves slaying boars and night sabres right there was swamped with people trying to be the first to tag any that spawned, since unlike WoW today, only the person who tags it first gets the credit.

However, even this crowd appeared to be for a reason.

Increased populations are all part of the plan

So while competition for mobs was trying, it was all in service of loading the servers to see how they will hold up when the actual launch comes in late August.

I tinkered around for a bit, ran about, and actually got a few quest mobs, but then logged off.  Things seemed to be in good shape.  I hope this bodes well for the actual launch.

If you want to take a look yourself, the stress test runs into Friday and is open to anybody who is currently subscribed to World of Warcraft.  You just need to download the WoW Classic client from the launcher… which is considerably smaller than the current live game… and you can play up to level 15 while the test is up.

Keepstar Down in P3EN-E

In the wee hours of the morning… 1:30am here on the Pacific coast, 4:30am on the east coast… the final timer for the Keepstar in P3EN-E in the Vale of the Silent ended.  An Imperium fleet had been gathered for that moment and proceeded to destroy the structure.

Keepstar kill mail

I choose to keep on sleeping rather than spend a couple of hours forming up with a fleet, traveling, shooting, then schlepping back home, a choice many of the people who engaged in last week’s double Keepstar kill appear to have taken as well.  There were 859 pilots on the kill this time around, down from over 1,500 on each kill last week.  I guess one Keepstar isn’t worth missing a few hours sleep in the middle of the night.

The kill mail shows the usual giant blob of titans, supers, and smaller capital ships, though this time around it looks like the supers did the bulk of the damage with fighters and then everybody else was jumped in to get on the kill.

The grinding of PanFam space continues.  There are more structures left to kill, including a Keepstar in SH1-6P, where the ihub is already under assault.

Spring 2019 FML Results

The long spring FML league… it ran 14 weeks, which felt like two weeks too many to me… finished up the past weekend.  The summer league is here now, and I will get to that in the next post.  But I figured I would spend a few minutes on the spring run.

While I did not write about it as it progressed, a small group of regulars played almost every week.  I think eight people managed to get a pick in almost every week, and the top five players for the season were fairly tightly packed score-wise, at least compared with other seasons.

I did almost all of my picks on Monday evening when week’s unlocked, usually based purely on gut response to pictures rather than any research at all.  This failed me a few weeks.  I was particularly down on Aladdin in week 13, which cost me.

On the other hand, I got the perfect pick in week 12, a big win that revived my otherwise modest fortunes.  Overall the scores for the top ten players for the season ended up looking like this:

1. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $1,425,273,371
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – $1,410,622,811
3. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – $1,379,179,921
4. Too Orangey For Crows – $1,372,973,416
5. grannanj’s Cineplex – $1,367,523,445
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $1,335,897,444
7. Joanie’s Joint – $1,288,023,932
8. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $1,058,566,243
9. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $1,019,273,600
10. I HAS BAD TASTE – $448,199,463

Week 13 was important to Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex.  They went with Aladdin while Goat and I avoided it, a situation that vaulted the Hamsterplex into first.  Even Goat’s win in week 14 was not enough to catch back up.

The alternate scoring was a bit different:

1. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – 102
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – 102
3. Too Orangey For Crows – 92
4. grannanj’s Cineplex – 89
5. Wilhelm’s Qeynosian Kinetoscope – 84
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – 80
7. Joanie’s Joint – 76
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – 55
9. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – 49
10. I HAS BAD TASTE – 22

Goat and Hamster, close in the overall scores, ended up tied for the alternate scoring.

Goat won three of the weeks, but five people won at least two weeks during the season, and two others won one week a piece.

The alternate scoring smoothed out my perfect pick week, pushing me down to fifth place.

Overall, choosing the winner came down to the final week.  A slightly better pick would have gotten Hamster a win in both measures, while grabbing the perfect pick would have put Goat back in first place in the overall scoring.

With that covered, it is time to move on to the summer 2019 league and a look at the opening week, which I will cover in the next post later today.

Plans for a Summer FML League

The time has come, the spring Fantasy Movie League season is coming to a close, and the summer season is upon us.  It is time to fire up the TAGN League for summer blockbusters.

I actually feel like we’re a week too late.  Maybe two weeks too late.  Regardless of what the calendar makers say, for me summer runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day in the US.  That is certainly when the big summer movies hit the screens and have their runs.  A big Memorial Day release can sometimes still be found on budget theater screens at the far end of summer.

For whatever reason, FML ran the spring league for 14 weeks, putting it through Memorial Day and the weekend beyond.  That means the summer league doesn’t get to start with big box office draws like Aladdin, which launched last week, and Godzilla: King of Monsters.

Add in John Wick 3 and Avengers: End Game having already launched and you start to wonder if we’ve been robbed of the big weeks one expects during summer.

But we shouldn’t fret.  I think we got all of those early because the summer is still full of titles that will no doubt bring in big numbers.  Headliners for some of the summer weekends include:

• June 7 – X-Men: Dark Phoenix
• June 14 – Men in Black: International
• June 21 – Toy Story 4
• July 5 – Spider-man: Far from Home
• July 19 – The Lion King
• August 2 – Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

That is a lot of sequels, spin-offs, and remakes.  But there are also the smaller titles that could break out and become horribly over-done dynasties of their own some day.  And then there are the horror movies that always seem to do much better than I predict.  Will they fool me again this summer?

Anyway, my tentative plans for the summer league include the following:

• Thursday night lock so we all have to pick before the preview numbers hit
• No empty screen penalty
• $2 million bonus for the worst performing film

I am sold on the first one, while the other two I am putting out there just to shake things up a bit.  If people scream in the comments about either I may put them back the way they were.

Otherwise things will be about the same as the last season I ran, including the main an alternate scoring method.

I had mentioned possibly breaking up the summer into three shorter sprints.  However, just because FML gives you a field that shows the duration of a season doesn’t mean that you can edit it.  It looks like we are stuck with 13 weeks unless I am missing something.

In the mean time the spring league looks like it might have a surprise winner.  Goat had led the whole season, only to be upset last week by Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex.  Goat (and I) bet against Aladdin, which went on to do better than expected, with an exceptionally strong Sunday.

I will post the winners for spring next week in addition to the opening week post for the summer season.

If you are interested in playing, I will post a link to join the TAGN league in the comments on this post and in next week’s post.  The links expire after a few days and you will need to create an account at the FML site to play.

I am also considering creating a Discord server for the blog where, among other things, movie discussion could be a channel.  Discord is light and, if you already have it, one more server on your list isn’t a big deal. (I actually created one ages ago, I’ve just never invited anybody to it.)

As always, if you have any suggestions for the season let me know in the comments.