My Year in EVE Online 2020

As CCP did last year, they setup a way that you can generate a video summarizing what you did in EVE Online.  You may have recieved a promotional email about it.  Otherwise, there is a dev blog post.  There are a couple of changes since last time though.

Me in New Eden in 2020

In 2019 they grouped up your characters and made the video four you.  My video for Wilhelm Arcturus included data for him and 8 alts.  That probably explains why the “skill points earned” value was so high.

This time around it is only for Omega accounts and you can pick the character you want to be featured in the video.  It does appear that you can only make one video per account, so do your main first.  My secondary account has two characters active in different spheres and I could only make a video for one of them.

You can also choose what aspects of the game you wish the video to feature.

Select which categories interest you

I was at a bit of a loss after picking PVP Kills and Most Valuable Kill Mail.  Since you need to pick five, I added in Market, Wealth Generation, and Planetary Production.

As with last year, they allow you to download your video, as it will disappear in a month or so.  I grabbed mine and uploaded it to YouTube.

For those who don’t want to watch it, or if it goes away some day, I took screen shots of some of the key metrics it reports.

Skill points

Everybody gets the skill points screen.  I gained 14,746,215 skill points.  I think I spent some time training an alt on my main account, so that is probably not completely optimal, but still pretty good.

Travel Stats

Everybody also gets the travel stats.  Those numbers are down considerably from last year.  On the other hand, they aren’t the sum total of nine different characters, so it is hard to tell if I traveled more or less in 2020.

Favorite somethings…

There is also a favorites listing.  I don’t spend as much time just sitting in station as some I suppose, though that still seems like a high percentage of my time online.  That I play in null sec makes the security area no surprise.  The Guardian is the logi ship I flew a lot in the first half of the year.

Pee vee pee

For the PvP category… well, I got on a lot of kill mails.  That is ~80% of what zKillboard claims I did for 2020, but most everybody seems to be finding issues with these stats.  I guess if we’re all being measured using the same flawed system then the rankings are okay.

As for getting on that many kill mails, I am going to credit a few ECM burst ops for a lot of that, since I am otherwise in a logi ship most of the time.  ECM bursts are a quick way to pad your kill board.  The pod kills are most certainly victims of ECM bursts.  When it comes to value destroyed I have been shorted some due to the fact that none of the four Keepstars in NPC Delve that we blew up generated kill mails.  I should have been on two of them for sure, while would have been at least a couple hundred billion more ISK.  Oh well.

Most valuable kill mail

My most valuable kill was a Nyx we shot in Tenal back in February of 2020.  I think we were up there to help Guardians of the Galaxy/Dead Coalition when PandaFam was rolling over them.  We were almost all in bombers, so it was likely a hot drop.

Market stats

On the market I had 513 transactions.  I sold 3.3 billion ISK worth of something, but I cannot remember what.  That balanced out the 2.6 billion in ISK I spent I suppose.

Where the money comes and goes

I ended up spending a billion more ISK than I made.  That isn’t a big enough deficit for me to go into government work or run a Silicon Valley start up, but I’m still losing money.  Aside from the 3.3 billion ISK I made on market sales I don’t remember, the rest is probably from Alliance SRP payments and some ISK transfers from my high sec PvE alts.

Planetary Inaction

My Planetary Interaction stats are poor.  This is because I haven’t bothered to get more than three planets running and I constantly forget to restart extractions.  Somebody suggested putting them on a four day timer when I started back doing PI, but I had to move that out to a seven day timer… and can still go for a couple of weeks before I remember to check.  Oh well.

So that is my year in EVE Online I guess.

I also uploaded the video for my primary alt, who did some ratting at one point this year.

Given how little of that he did, he still ranks okay.

You can check out videos from others as CCP is encouraging people to post them with the #MyEVE2020 hash tag on Twitter.  And if you click on the video links that go to the CCP site, you will see that this is also being used as a marketing scheme to get people to try the game.  If you sign up from the video page you will get a bonus 1 million skill points for your new character.

EverQuest Claws of Veeshan Expansion to Launch on December 8th

Daybreak announced that the upcoming EverQuest expansion, Claws of Veeshan, will launch on Tuesday, December 8th.

Dragons, always dragons

This, the 27th expansion to the 1999 title, is currently available for pre-order from Daybreak and is available in four price levels:

• Standard Edition – $34.99
• Collector’s Edition – $89.99
• Premium Edition – $139.99
• Friends & Family Edition – $249.99

The question is how much additional fluff do you want with your expansion?  The “Freinds & Family Edition” includes an in-game tradeable token that can be redeemed for a base copy of the expansion.

Interestingly, or oddly, the base package does not include the insta-level heroic character options, though the fact that the boost only gets you to level 85 still in a game where the level cap is now 30 levels beyond that does make one question Daybreak yet again.  When will they fix that?

The expansion, which was announced back in October, includes the following:

• 6 Expansion Zones – Follow the chilling trail of ice into the lands dominated by the dragons of Velious. Find the source of the mysterious and restless ice and put an end to the dangers that have enveloped the entire continent.
• New Raids, Quests, and Missions
• New Spells, Combat Abilities, and AAs
• New Collections
• Dragon’s Hoard – A dragon’s hoard for those that have collected so many items, it is nigh impossible to contain. This is an additional space to hold all those items you may need once more but do not need now.

That sounds about right for a Norrath expansion.

A Smooth Slide into Shadowlands

I expressed some concern about the launch of the Shadowlands expansion in my post on Sunday, wondering if the server problems I had been seeing might impact the new experience.

But when it came down to it, at least on the Eldre’Thalas server, things seemed to go pretty smoothly.  (Though there were problems elsewhere I hear.)

I had read that the starting hook for the expansion hook would be out in front of the fountain before Stormwind Keep, so set myself up there early in the day.

The fountain, with some people beginning to gather

A little before 3pm local time, the hour of the launch for me, I logged in to gather with the other early birds to get right into things.  Ula had some free time as well, so we grouped up and waited around the fountain, which by that point was quite crowded.

The early crowd is ready

Moments after 3pm hit there was an announcement in the area by Highlord Darion Mograine.

Hear ye!

And then a death gate opened up before the fountain and people started piling in.

If all your friends jumped into a death gate, would you do it too?

It was through there to Icecrown and Bolvar Fordragon who had a few feats of strength for people to go through before he sent them off into the Maw to go find the people scooped up by Sylvanas in the pre-invasion.

So why am I dragging your little bits around the ceremony again?

And then it was into the Maw, the so-called crucible of the damned.

Welcome to The Maw

And it was a grim, dark hellscape with some of the tormented to fight and some of the regulars to find.  You end up with Jaina Proudmoore and Thrall to start with and end up on an exciting run through the place.  You find Anduin Wrynn and have to work to free him, and then Warchief Baine Bloodhoof.  The place is a torment and everybody wants to get out, and has been struggling to do so since they were taken.

Together you work your way to what my be a way out of the place, a portal that seems to respond only to your presence.  So they cover you while you escape.

Jaina, Baine, Anduin, and Thrall while you fiddle with the thing

And then, hey presto, you’re teleported to Orbios and your first achievement.

I fought the Maw and the Maw won…

There you meet the locals, talk about what is going on, get a tour of the place, and generally take your time, heedless of the fact that your recent pals are still being tormented.  But they have a way of doing things.  There is apparently enormous red tape in the after life.

From there you get sent off to Bastion to ingratiate yourself with the locals and run through their bright and shiny lands, the polar opposite of the Maw when it comes to style, and help them deal with their personal issues.

Seriously, Jaina, Thrall, Baine, and Anduin got themselves recaptured covering your escape, and were clearly unhappy about it.

Anduin is not at all happy

And now you’re farting around with really some of the most annoyingly chirpy mobs in the game who all sound like they’re in a cult if you start paying close attention to what they’re saying.  It is like being in the 70s.

Still, when in Rome… so you go along with the initiation, fight your personal demons manifested, relive past events in brief, and haul around their anima, the precious resource that drives things around there.

At first I thought they said “anime”

You get some armor, spar with some initiates, dust, tidy up, and attend some more lectures on the whole thing.

Ula and Vikund at another seminar

Doing all the fetch and carry and introspection gets you a level pretty quickly.  I was level 52 before the evening was out, and well on my way to 53.  The first person made it to 60, the new level cap, in just three hours.

The World First #Shadowlands level 60 has been completed! Monkeylool aka Rixers from the OTK EU guild has gotten their Monk to the max level in just over 3 hours! Congratulations!https://t.co/Zgy6yJUncJ pic.twitter.com/sdJkXpOeXW

— Icy Veins (@icyveins) November 24, 2020

But I gather that the level grind is not the big deal in Shadowlands.  Once you get to the level cap you have to pick a covenant and start earning your way into that as an alternate advancement method.  Something beyond just a rep grind so far as I have seen, though I haven’t looked too closely yet.

You get some new gear naturally, though I was surprised that it took a while for the first pieces to show up.  They were not in a hurry to replace everything you had in the first half dozen quests.  And some of it wasn’t good enough to replace what I had.  While I didn’t work very hard on the Heart of Azeroth in Battle for Azeroth, the first neck slot quest reward wasn’t cutting it as a replacement.

Heart of Azeroth wins today, even if it is cut off from its life force

Likewise, the big sword I got from Nathanos Blightcaller was better than the first weapons that came my way as drops or rewards.

My blade remains viable

And while the server seemed solid and I did not see any queues later in the evening when I logged back in, things were still a bit off.  I tried to group up with Ula again later on and we got stuck in different phases even though we were on the same quest.  We tried the dreaded “party sync” option, and while it did indeed get us onto the same quest again, we remained in different phases.

And perhaps some of the quests are meant to be solo, but it would be nice to have some indication of that.  Later, when we tried to add Skronk to the group, we had similar issues.  He couldn’t join the group at first, then he was in a different phase, and even after the part sync put us onto his quests, we still couldn’t all get into the same phase and visible to each other.

And that was on top of the usual factional annoyances.  This is one of the expansions where the Alliance and the Horde have identical experiences, so we’re all out there mixed together in Bastion.  But if a fellow Alliance member tags a mob, I can still join in and get credit, but if somebody from the Horde tags it, it is now gray to me and gets me no credit.  If we’re essentially fighting on the same side this round, maybe adjust that?  I don’t know.

But the advancement is going quickly enough that hopefully Bastion will be in the rear view mirror before not too long.  It the sort of environment that brings up thoughts like, “I’m not saying Sylvanas is right, but looking at this place, I am not saying she is completely wrong either.”  Hell, one event involves a bunch of the locals sick of the routine and rising up against the status quo.  I had to go help put that down despite my sympathies.

Vikund ready to enforce conformity

But it is just a zone, and some zones you like and others you don’t, though the narrative in it feels like an extended intro that I kind of want to wrap up but never quite gets there.  Will I want to go through this with alts?

I will admit that the place looks pretty good.  A lot of work went into things.  I just have to get through Bastion and get back to rescuing people from the Maw, right?

EverQuest II Unavailable at its Sweet Sixteen

Yesterday would have been the usual date when I write something about another EverQuest II anniversary, for it was on November 13th 2004 that I signed on to play for the first time.  Roll stock footage of the early days.

My earliest screen shot of EQ2 – Nov. 14, 2004

Some years I make a big deal out of this.  Last year, at the fifteenth anniversary, I wrote a long tale of the game.  This year I was just going to log in and write a little something about the passing of another year.  However, Daybreak is having an outage.  If your client isn’t up to date, and they have pushed new content since I last logged in, you are out of luck.

Sorry, no update for you

This apparently applies to all of their titles, EverQuest gives me the same error, and has been going on for a few days now.  This seems like a critical issue, but Daybreak has fallen back into their usual bad habit of being uncommunicative.  Feldon of EQ2 Wire fame has been keeping an eye on this:

Daybreak Games uses a CDN (Content Distribution Network) to distribute patcher files for its games including @everquestii. 3 day outage for people in certain regions. Every other company using the same upstream provider worked around the prob 2 days ago. Daybreak helpless?

— EQ2Wire (@EQ2Wire) November 12, 2020

Daybreak has since banned him from the forums for poking at this issue as it drags on.  The company line is that they are helpless to do anything until their CDN provider fixes the issue.

For me this isn’t a huge deal.  I only wanted to peek in on yet another anniversary and see what was up, look at my characters, and poke around a bit.  I’m already invested in WoW retail and WoW Classic along with EVE Online at the moment, so my bandwidth for another game is limited.  But, you never know.  Last year I didn’t plan to play and ended up subscribing and playing for a few months.

Of course, for Daybreak this should be a big deal.  They are in the midst of their ramp up to their latest expansion.  They want people coming back to the game.  The pre-orders are available, the pre-launch events are starting, people should be coming back to the game.

Except, of course, some people cannot currently.

So I’ll just note the anniversary without logging in.  I hope they get their act together soon… at least on the patching issue.  As an overall wish for the company that is probably too much to ask.

Related:

Inventory Full – No Service: EQII

Addendum:  After I wrote this Daybreak made some progress on the issue, the PlanetSide 2 team being the only one to broadcast it, though I still could not get logged in  They let you bypass the launcher patching, but then it fails on the in-game patching service, so the game is still unplayable, at least for me.

Also dug up was the fact that Daybreak is still using the Sony domain for some of its services more than five years after they were split from the company.

Daybreak buys Cold Iron Studios

A press release went out from Daybreak on Tuesday announcing that they had purchased Cold Iron Studios.

It follows you as you move about the room!

To preserve it, since Daybreak has shown a willingness to re-write history at times, here is the body of the press release:

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – August 11, 2020 – Daybreak Games, global publisher and developer of large-scale multiplayer online games, today announced it acquired Cold Iron Studios, the San Jose based studio of veteran MMO, action and shooter developers currently working on a PC and console game set in the iconic Alien universe.

Cold Iron Studios co-founder Craig Zinkievich will continue to lead the studio and the development of the Alien game, reporting to Ji Ham, CEO of Daybreak Games. The game promises to deliver an action-packed, sci-fi shooter experience unlike any other game on the market.

“We’re incredibly proud and excited to be part of the Daybreak family,” said Zinkievich. “Daybreak and Cold Iron share the same passion and long history for delivering action-packed multiplayer games for audiences worldwide. In combining our decades of experience developing and launching globally successful multiplayer titles, we’re destined to make great games together.”

“We are delighted to have Cold Iron Studios join the Daybreak Games family and accelerate our next generation of growth,” said Ham. “Strategic investments in highly talented and proven teams that have outstanding leaders and a track record of developing awesome online games is an important part of our growth and strategy for Daybreak.”

Cold Iron Studios was established in 2015 by the creators of City of Heroes, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter. Under the new ownership, Cold Iron Studios will operate independently with Daybreak acting as publisher providing marketing, tech and operational support.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

There is nothing particularly startling in the text.  The terms were not disclosed because neither were publicly held companies, so what goes on is viewed as none of your business.  I guess we can confirm that Ji Ham is still the CEO, though I am sure Jason Epstein still owns the whole thing.  Or Columbus Nova.  Or whoever.

Cold Iron will operate independently, with Daybreak acting as the publisher the way they do with Lord of the Rings Online, a tidbit that once again brings up the “do they or don’t they” around who owns Standing Stone Games.

As the background image on their web site strongly suggests, Cold Iron is working on a licensed game based on the Alien franchise.  There isn’t much in the way of details on the site, save for a brief description of the company.

Cold Iron Studios was founded in 2015 by three industry veterans who had a goal of creating games they want to play and building a team they love working with. Since then, the team has expanded to 30+ awesome developers and we’ve moved into a downtown office in the heart of Silicon Valley. We’re a diverse group of passionate gamers with decades of experience developing and launching award-winning MMO and action titles. Currently, the team is working on a new PC and console shooter based on the Alien franchise.

So it is a shooter for PC and consoles based on the Alien franchise.  Oddly, when you click on the careers or apply links, they resolve to another game studio, Scopely, and to the Marvel Strike Force page specifically in one case. Scopely acquired the 20th Century Fox gaming studio Foxnet Games, which published Marvel Strike Force, earlier this year.  Cold Iron had apparently been a part of that deal, having been acquired by Fox previously.  Scopely has now turned around and sold them to Daybreak.  Four owners in five years is very Silicon Valley.

More interesting perhaps is the connection to another company, Cryptic Studios.

Cryptic, which made City of Heroes for NCsoft and Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter, has been part of Perfect World Entertainment since 2011.  It still has an office in Silicon Valley, over in Los Gatos just around the corner from Netflix. (The Cryptic sign was still up when I drove past a couple months back anyway.)

Cold Iron was founded in San Jose in 2015 by a group of former Cryptic employees.  That is close enough to Cryptic as makes no difference.

Meanwhile, over at Daybreak, Cryptic co-founder Jack Emmert now runs the Austin based studio for the company that runs DC Universe Online and operates under the name Dimensional Ink Games since the studio split announcement earlier this year, though he reports into Daybreak in San Diego, so their independence as a studio remains to be proven.

But the connection, a Cryptic founder being in place at a company that purchase a studio built on former Cryptic devs does incline one to try and draw a connection.  Yes, it is a small industry with a lot of cross-pollination, but Daybreak and/or Jason Epstein haven’t exactly been visibly keen to open the wallet and invest in anything.  Layoffs and shut downs and cancelled plans have been more the legacy of the last 5+ years.

But now they’re spending?

And Dimensional Ink Games, of the three Daybreak sub-studios, is the only one who has even hinted that they have a new title in progress.  Is Cold Iron going to be used to back that plan up?

Yes, I know the press release says they will be operating independently.  I also know that when somebody owns you, you’re exactly as independent as they say you are at any given moment.  I worked for an independent start up at one point and spent a few months working on things for another independent start up because the VC who bankrolled both companies liked their idea better than ours for a brief stretch of time.

Anyway, Daybreak spent some money, we know very little, and there is plenty of room for speculation and wild conspiracy theories.  Go crazy.

Other Coverage:

• GamesIndustry.biz
• VentureBeat
• WCCFTech
• MMO Fallout
• Massively  OP
• MMORPG.com

SuperData Research Says Gaming Still Going Strong in June

SuperData Research has released their digital revenue rankings chart for June 2020.  Digital revenue remains strong in the video game market according to the lead item, though PC and consoles were down a bit from March.

• Digital games generated $10.46B in revenue in June 2020, the second-highest total ever after April 2020’s $10.54B sum. Overall earnings were up 3% from May ($10.2B) and 9% over June 2019 ($9.6B). Both PC and console revenue were down from their 2020 peaks set in March. This was offset by growth in mobile revenue, which hit an all-time high. Mobile game spending typically sees a boost in the summer months, and this seasonal growth was likely further bolstered by the limited availability of other entertainment options due to COVID-19.

The chart itself shows the top ten in each segment they cover.

SuperData Research Top 10 – June 2020

On the PC side of the chart, the usual top four continue to dominate the list, though Dungeon Fighter Online and League of Legends swapped places.

Roblox, which climbed onto the list in April held on to the fifth spot, which it had taken last month.

In sixth place we have Valorant, the new shooter from Riot.  My daughter plays it and describes it as a mash up of CS:GO and Overwatch, though she was yelling at her screen so much I initially thought she must be playing golf.  But I guess it does have the word “rant” in the title.  SuperData called out the game specifically in their notes:

• Valorant from Riot Games had the biggest launch ever for a free-to-play PC title. The game’s revenue and player numbers put it ahead of what the PC version of Apex Legends achieved in February 2019. Apex Legends did, however, earn more overall at launch due to its console version. Valorant also made more than its closest competitor, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in June despite the Valve title having a slightly larger audience. CS:GO user numbers and revenue were also down for the second straight month in June, indicating Valorant is siphoning away players.

This gives Riot two games on the PC list, and might explain why LoL slipped into second place I suppose.

After that we have Fortnite, which is seeing a bit of a resurgence with their new party game mode, World of Warcraft, CS:GO, and The Sims 4.  World of Tanks, a generally solid entry on the list, fell off for June.

On the console list, The Last of Us II, a PlayStation exclusive, jumped to the top.

• The Last of Us Part 2 sold 2.8M digital units in June, easily setting the record for exclusive PlayStation launches. The long-awaited sequel surpassed Marvel’s Spider-Man and Final Fantasy VII Remake, which each sold 2.2M digital units in their respective release months. However, sales of TLOU2 are likely to be frontloaded as more than two-thirds of first-month digital sales were preorders, a high share even for a AAA title.

After that is FIFA 20 and then Pokemon Sword & Shield, which launched a paid DLC update that boosted revenue.

• The Isle of Armor expansion for Pokémon Sword & Shield was responsible for the title’s highest monthly digital earnings since launch. The earnings far exceed the highest month of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate additional content revenue. This is the first time a traditional Pokémon game has featured premium additional content, and this new strategy has paid off.

Nintendo also has Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossings: New Horizons on the list.  That is unusual for the company and shows them transitioning from their strong retail presence of the past to a bigger digital footprint, no doubt spurred by the pandemic.

In fourth place was GTA V, which SuperData had some concerns about.

• Grand Theft Auto V revenue on console fell 33% in June, indicating a lack of major updates may be offsetting increased engagement from COVID-19 lockdowns. The last named update to the game, The Diamond Casino Heist, released in December 2019. During that time, spending did rise temporarily in April and May, possibly due to COVID-19 lockdowns, before falling in June. The PC version is on a different performance trajectory and continued to benefit from a free Epic Games Store giveaway in May.

After that comes Fortnite, again doing well, and Destiny 2, which jumped onto the list in sixth place as it too had something new to offer:

• Destiny 2 revenue and player numbers rose substantially as a result of a new season and announced expansion packs. Preorders for the Beyond Light expansion, currently slated to launch in November, and spending coinciding with a new season of content caused monthly earnings to rise 221% in June to reach the highest level since October 2019. Player numbers also jumped 45% to a record total for the game. The current and announced updates to the game were especially appealing to lapsed players, and millions of users who had previously quit the game returned in June.

On the mobile end of the chart, where all the money is I guess, Peacekeeper Elite, the Chinese market mobile version of PUBG, remained at the top of the list, followed by the previous reigning champ, Honour of Kings.  PUBG Mobile West also made the list, grabbing the tenth position.  In between Pokemon Go held onto fourth position while Candy Crush Saga dropped down to the ninth spot.

And then for comparison, NPD is back in the saddle still and has their own June numbers chart up.  As always, NPD numbers are US only, combine PC and console sales, and doesn’t always include digital sales (where noted).

1. The Last of Us: Part II
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons*
4. Grand Theft Auto V
5. Mortal Kombat 11
6. Red Dead Redemption II
7. Ring Fit Adventure
8. NBA 2K20
9. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe*
10. Minecraft Dungeons*

*Digital sales on Nintendo eShop not included

That is a very different list in some ways.  Yes, TLOU2 is at the top, because consoles are still the most retail oriented of the platforms and everything on the list is on consoles.  But Pokemon Sword & Shield is nowhere to be seen because the DLC is digital only.  Instead, the Nintendo Ring Fit Adventure for the Switch, which has a controller with it, makes the cut, as does Mario Kart 8: Deluxe, an older title, showing that Nintendo still has a foot in the retail space.  ACNH making both the SuperData’s digital list and NPD’s retail only list shows how strong it remains.

April Fools at Blizzard 2020 is Centered on Overwatch

This year it seems it was the Overwatch teams turn to embrace the day, or at least be the theme of the day.

Googly eyes at the hero select screen

It has become something of an annual tradition here to cover what Blizzard has been up to every April Fools.  There have been years where the company has put a lot of effort into various items for the day and there have been years where April Fools has barely been a thing at Blizzard.

This year seems like an outlier, with a different feel altogether.  In the past the level of effort has often correlated to highs and lows with the company itself.  Last year, for example, was not a great year for the company, so it wasn’t surprising that people had little time for this sort of thing.

But with the COVID-19 pandemic raging around the world, I was curious to see if there would be any mirth on the first at all.  Blizzard has been giving players benefits in light of the crisis, like an xp boost in WoW and unlocking all the heroes in Heroes of the Storm and co-op commanders in Star Craft II.  It would be completely understandable to give the whole April fools thing a pass.  But a little bit of humor in the right dose wouldn’t go amiss either.

And some of these ideas take a while to put together.  I am going to guess that the giant cat that Bhagpuss wrote about over in Guild Wars II wasn’t rolled up over the weekend but planned well in advance.

Which brings us to Overwatch and its googly eyes on heroes at the select screen, and in the play of the game clip at match end, which I mentioned above. (This came as a tip from Blueline Basher.  The screen shot is one from many in the forum.)

Following on that, over in the Heroes of the Storm forums there were April 1st PTR patch notes posted that included the addition of a new hero, Mercy.  I got that Mercy was an Overwatch hero, but I know so little about HotS that I couldn’t really tell if the patch notes were a joke or if somebody on the team unironically posted an update on April 1st.  And then I watched the video linked in the patch notes, which doesn’t really reveal itself until the very end.

 

The other Blizzard games, Diablo III, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, and World of Warcraft have all been quiet so far as April Fools is concerned.  No news items or fresh blue posts with an April 1 date.  It is still early in the day on the west coast, so maybe something else will pop up, in which case I will add it here, but for now that is all I have seen.

If you are jonsing for a Blizzard April Fools joke your best bet is to look at past efforts.  You can look at the posts I have done over the last decade.

• April 2009
• April 2010
• April 2011
• April 2012
• April 2013
• April 2014
• April 2015
• April 2016
• April 2017
• April 2018
• April 2019

If you want to go back further than that, there is the official Blizzard April Fool’s archive, though that stops at 2015, which is probably meaningful in some way.

In a way I am kind of happy they did something this year, if only to keep the long tradition alive.  They haven’t missed a year since 1999, even if some years have been rather sparse.

For other games you can check out the post over at Massively OP where they are trying to round up the MMO front.

Camelot Unchained Refund Received

What will likely be the last post on the topic of Camelot Unchained here for some time.

I got a refund on my Kickstarter pledge.  I got it very quickly and with no deductions for processing charges at the CSE end of things, just the money transfer fee from PayPal, a mere $3.49.  Op success.  I should be very happy.

And yet I am still a little prickly about the whole thing.  I still think that a transaction ID for a credit charge remains a pretty unlikely thing for people to have around nearly seven years later.  Mark Jacobs says that the company needs to use that to protect themselves from scammers, but it sure can make it hard on people who didn’t keep one specific email from that far back.

I am also a bit prickly about the fact that I got a refund so very quickly.  I have an egalitarian streak, and getting jumped to the head of the line and getting an expedited refund straight from the CEO for being the loud mouth doesn’t make necessarily make me feel good about myself.  I’m not giving the money back… dollar votes are still a thing in my mind, and that was a motivation here… but I don’t have to like the fact that others are going to be stuck.  I don’t want to be special, I just want to be part of a system that works.  But that is so rarely the case.

Before you declare this a victory proving that blogs are still relevant, I have to stop you.  They aren’t.  Blogging remains a backwater in the world of social media.  If Bree at Massively OP had not mentioned me to Mark Jacobs I might still be waiting for the Pony Express to deliver my request to the archives department of my credit card company in Wichita in the hope that they would be able to find a transaction ID somewhere in the Indiana Jones warehouse where I imagine they store their old paper records and other such these treasures.

I did not ask Bree to do this for me.  She had asked me to forward the email blast that CSE sent out to everybody asking for refunds last week, and I followed that up with the next message from CSE just to keep her in the loop.  Next thing I knew Mark Jacobs had taken up residence in my comment section.  It was a bit of a shock.

As for why I wanted a refund, there are a couple of reasons.  The first, as I mentioned above, is dollar votes, the idea that you spend your money on things you support and believe in and withhold it from things that you do not.  After years of delays and updates and things that have not come to pass, I began to feel my support was not warranted.  There is a whole story of a startup I worked for in the 90s that plays into this, but I will just say that enthusiasm fatigue is a thing.  Given enough changes, updates, delays, and excuses and your capacity to give a shit will eventually fade.

This is why I try not to get invested in games too early in their development cycle.  It rarely ends well as all surprise and sense of accomplishment tends to be broken by early familiarity.

I also pledged more for this campaign than I did for many other, largely due to Mark Jacobs visiting my blog back during the Kickstarter campaign.  This week was not his first visit.  Blogs were still mildly relevant in 2013 I guess.  And while $110 isn’t going to make a huge difference in my life, I pledged that much only because of him.

And then there is the fact that almost seven years down the road I am not sure I care about the game any more.  Part of that is the enthusiasm fatigue I mentioned above.  I unsubscribed from the updates email list because it was tiring to read after a few years.  (For whatever reason I have not unsubscribe from the Star Citizen weekly updates. I suppose their brevity makes them less wearing.)

But part of it is my, my life, my friends, and what I enjoy have all changed over time.  Seven years changes people.  What CSE is selling doesn’t really thrill me now, so a chance to redirect a bit of money into something that I might enjoy is something worth doing.

Now to figure out what that is.

Anyway, I won’t harp on this or be one of those people who has to post something negative every time Camelot Unchained gets mentioned.  That isn’t my style.  I got my money back and I can move on to something else and leave this in the past.