The November MER Shows Bounties Tanking and Mineral Prices Plateauing in EVE Online

CCP released the EVE Online Monthly Economic Report for November 2020 late last week, so it is time to see where the war and CCP’s nerfs are having an impact.

EVE Online nerds harder

NPC Bounties

I want to start with the biggest impact, which came with NPC bounties, long the largest ISK faucet in the game.  On November 10th CCP launched the Dynamic Bounty System and the mandatory Encounter Surveillance System changes, both aimed squarely at turning down the ISK faucet.

And how did that work out?  Direct hit maybe?  Look at the chart.

Nov 2020 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

NPC bounties fell as far in November as they ever have on that chart, dipping down into the region of the Chaos Era experiments of summer 2019.  Even though the nerf only hit the last two thirds of the month, the numbers were telling when compared to October.

October 2020 vs. November 2020 faucets

You may need to click on that chart above to read the numbers, but you’ll see that NPC Bounties dropped off by 24 trillion ISK in November, allowing NPC Commodities… which is mostly wormhole income, with some Abyssal deadspace turn-ins… to jump to the top of the chart.  In fact, NPC Commodities and Incursion Payouts both jumped in November, almost as though people were looking for other channels to earn ISK.

As for where the bounties were being claimed, most of the usual suspects are in the top ten, but most took a hit.

1. Oasa – 4.10 trillion (PandaFam) 66% of October
2. Cobalt Edge – 2.17 trillion (PandaFam) 60% of October
3. Perrigen Falls – 1.99 trillion (PandaFam) 69% of October
4. Branch – 1.95 trillion (PandaFam) 46% of October
5. Fountain – 1.88 trillion (Imperium) 115% of October
6. Vale of the Silent – 1.80 trillion (mixed small groups) 71% of October
7. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.77 trillion (PandaFam) 79% of October
8. Detorid – 1.41 trillion (Legacy) 72% of October
9. Insmother – 1.34 trillion (Legacy) 65% of October
10. Tenal – 1.24 trillion (PandaFam) 70% of October

The one region that was up was Fountain, which wasn’t in the top ten in October.  I think that is where The Initiative was doing some ratting, though it might have been LowSechnaya Sholupen, which holds the constellations close to Aridia.

Overall the regional totals added up to 39.3 trillion ISK, down from 55.9 trillion ISK in October.  And, yes, those numbers do not match the ones on those bar graphs above because CCP calculates the numbers differently in different areas.  My total for regions comes from the raw data in the regionalstats.csv file that comes with the report.

Mining

Mining is still living with the nerfs from earlier that are keeping mineral prices at or near their all time high.

Nov 2020 – Economic Indices – Long Term

If you look at the short term indices chart, you can see a slight dip in November relative to the October peak.

Nov 2020 – Economic Indices

But that is mostly likely just the market prices stabilizing after the shock of the huge nerf to mining.  Minerals remain expensive and rare.

The top regions for mining remain mostly high sec.

1. The Forge – 1.37 trillion (High Sec)
2. Metropolis – 1.26 trillion (High Sec)
3. Domain – 1.22 trillion (High Sec)
4. Oasa – 1.20 trillion (PandaFam)
5. Sinq Laison – 979 billion (High Sec)
6. Lonetrek – 874 billion (High Sec)
7. Tash-Murkon – 793 billion (High Sec)
8. Derelik – 739 billion (High Sec)
9. Essence – 669 billion (High Sec)
10. The Citadel – 665 billion (High Sec)

A total of 23.7 trillion ISK in mineral value was mined in November, down from the 28.68 trillion ISK in value mined in October.  The new mining meta is to sit in high sec in a brick tanked Orca and AFK mine with drones.

Production

The top regions for production in November were:

1. The Forge – 21.59 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 11.62 trillion (Imperium)
3. Lonetrek – 7.13 trillion (High Sec)
4. Sinq Laison – 5.88 trillion (High Sec)
5. The Citadel – 5.79 trillion (High Sec)
6. Domain – 4.89 trillion (High Sec)
7. Esoteria – 4.08 trillion (Legacy)
8. Tribute – 3.89 trillion (mixed small groups)
9. Oasa – 3.51 trillion (PandaFam)
10. Vale of the Silent – 2.94 trillion (mixed small groups)

Total production added up to 115 trillion ISK in value, largely concentrated in the high sec regions around Jita (The Forge, Lonetrek, and The Citadel), the main trade hub.  That is down from the 122.78 trillion ISK in production that happened in October.  Delve, focal point of the war, was down more than 6 trillion ISK, accounting for almost half the drop in monthly production in New Eden.

Trade Value

The top regions for trade value in November were:

1. The Forge – 439.5 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 55.46 trillion (Amarr)
3. Delve – 22.79 trillion (Imperium)
4. Sinq Laison – 20.93 trillion (Dodixie)
5. Lonetrek – 14.63 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
6. Metropolis – 10.13 trillion (Hek)
7. Heimatar – 9.70 trillion (Rens)
8. Essence – 5.07 trillion (Gallente High Sec)
9. The Citadel – 4.43 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
10. Insmother – 3.74 trillion (Legacy)

Jita remains the dominate numbers, accounting for 70% of the 629 trillion ISK in trading done in New Eden in November.  Amarr remains the strongest among the lesser hubs, holding onto its number two spot even after having the short route to Jita cut by the Triglavian invasion.  Delve was down about 2 trillion ISK in value, though the destruction numbers in the region were down considerably, so there were likely just less ships that needed to be replaced.

Destruction

Finally, the impact of the war, which was being fought for its second month in Delve.  The top ten regions for destruction were:

1. Delve – 4.50 trillion (Imperium)
2. The Forge – 2.04 trillion (High Sec)
3. The Citadel – 1.93 trillion (High Sec)
4. Lonetrek – 1.65 trillion (High Sec)
5. Sinq Laison – 1.36 trillion (High Sec)
6. Metropolis – 1.31 trillion (High Sec)
7. Oasa – 1.11 trillion (PandaFam)
8. Heimatar – 1.04 trillion (High Sec)
9. Esoteria – 1.01 trillion (Legacy)
10. Syndicate – 961 billion (NPC Null Sec)

Destruction overall was down from 45 trillion ISK in October to 40 trillion ISK in November.  The largest regional drop was in Delve, which saw 10.89 trillion ISK in destruction in October, largely due to the Keepstar fights in NPC Delve, to a mere 4.5 trillion ISK this month.  There is still clearly a war going on.  Esoteria, TEST’s home region, which has been under attack by the Imperium joined the list.  TEST’s response to that has been to declare they are abandoning the region to move into Imperium space.  That is an issue that has yet to be resolved.

And that is where things stood in November.

For December we will have to see if people adapt to the NPC bounty nerfs or if CCP’s minor tweaks to them have any impact on that ISK faucet.

PAPI Headshot Falls Flat in 1DQ

When I use the term “headshot,” I am merely borrowing from PAPI’s own words.

Boom Headshot!

The invaders got together in EUTZ yesterday to make their first real push against the Imperium capital from their staging on gate over in T5ZI-S.

As soon as PAPI started to move, pings went out on the Imperium side and forces were formed to defend the system.  Multiple fleets went up and EU players, and those of us in the US working from home who could take a break.  I got into Mister Vee’s Rokh fleet and we undocked with Fax support to get into the fight.

Rokhs and Minokawas on the way

PAPI’s plan seemed to be a two pronged attack, with them targeting both the main cyno jammer in system as well as the ihub.  Killing the cyno jammer would allow them to drop their capital fleet on us while getting the ihub would break the Ansiblex jump bridge connection to Helms Deep and the safe hold of Delve that it defends.

We headed to the ihub, which is on grid with multiple structures, including a Keepstar and a faction Fortizar that sat within range of our guns.

On the ihub grid

As we arrived we could see that PAPI had multiple entosis ships at work on the ihub, but they still had a long ways to go.

51 minutes to go

That the system was under heavy time dilation due to there being nearly 3K people in system was not helping their progress.

We got set up on the Fortizar, spread out a bit, and started shooting targets as they were called.  Things moved slowly in tidi, and we had a couple of fleets on grid with the hostiles, so there was some overlap in targeting… and some targets melted pretty quickly.

And then they seemed to give up on the ihub.  We had blown up all of their entosis ships… those went so fast I couldn’t finish locking them before they were gone… and the ihub began counting back down in our direction.

Back towards CONDI

Interdictors were out to try and hold them down… most escaped but we got a few more… and then the ihub was quiet again.  We kept an eye on it lest they return.  But the fight was still going on over the cyno jammer and there was now more than 3,800 people in system.

The faction Fortizar and other structures on grid

The cyno jammer fight went our way as well and soon after that began to tip towards us the hostiles began to collect themselves up and headed for the gate back to T5Z.  We warped over there to join in on trying to pop ships as they tried to get out.

Rokh ball waiting for targets by the gate

We managed to pluck a few stragglers out of the mix, but most got out.  When the smoke cleared and zKillboard caught up, the battle report showed that the fight over the ihub and cyno jammer fell in our favor.

Battle Report Header

With the participant numbers about even, it was going to be a steep hill for PAPI to be successful in their headshot attempt.  And, because 1DQ has its ADM up at 5.7, that means it will take an attacker 57 minutes to successfully entosis the ihub on any attempt and that there is less than a three and a half hour window when they can make the attempt daily.

Still, I am sure they will be back.  The Imperium won, but we have to keep winning that fight until they give up.  And PAPI, they have to take down at least the cyno jammers so they can drop their capitals in to support any attack on our Keepstars.  We’ll be back for another round I am sure.

After the fight, when we were back on the Keepstar, Mister Vee regrouped us all to him and had us all set off our MJDs to see us burst out in a group.  He seemed to enjoy the Rokh doctrine.

MJDs warming up

I ended up in the model of the Keepstar, which again tells you how big the Keepstar model is.  I jumped 100km and was inside still.

Later on Asher took 200 of us into T5ZI-S to show PAPI how entosis is done.

On the T5Z ihub with eight hackers

Despite being outnumbered in the system, the PAPI response to us was desultory at best, with individual ships showing up to try and ECM Burst the entosis ships to break their lock and stop the hack.  Not only were they not successful, Asher declared that we should make one of their pods a pet and not kill it, but just keep it pointed so it could not warp away.  And such became the fate of Brothuhbob.

Brothuhbob trying to motor out of range

It would have been Vily, who came out in a Griffin and got popped, but somebody wanted his corpse so his pod didn’t last.

We kept Brothuhbob around for quite a while.  Somebody put combat drones on him at one point and several of us in the logi wing rushed out and repped him to keep him safe.  Eventually he decided his only way out was to self-destruct.  Reps can’t stop that.

We successfully reinforced the T5Z ihub, though their ADM was much lower and we didn’t have tidi slowing down the timer, and headed back to 1DQ.

SuperData Sees WoW Rising and Crusader Kings 3 Holding On

SuperData Research published their monthly digital revenue chart for October so it is time to see what is up in video games.  As has become almost standard so far in 2020, their report opens up with another statement about how much video game revenue is up over the previous year.

• Consumers spent $10.6B on digital games in October 2020, up 14% year-over-year. Consistent with ongoing trends, console spending grew the fastest, with earnings up 18% over 2019. This was especially impressive growth given that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare launched in October 2019 and many of the biggest titles of the 2020 holiday season were not released until November. Earnings on other platforms rose as well, with mobile up 15% and PC up 10%.

Again, people staying home, or trying to, has led to more consumption on the video game front.

And then there is the chart itself.

SuperData Research Top 10 – October 2020

On the PC end of the chart the usual top four remain in place, swapping spots but otherwise the same crowd as always.  But in fifth position, or the first actually competitive position most months, World of Warcraft shows up.  This is not unexpected as the warm up for the Shadowlands expansion was in play.

Then there is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in sixth and Roblox in seventh spot.

And then we find Crusader Kings III still on the chart for October in spot eight.  It is down from fifth spot last month, but the surprise is that it stayed on the chart at all.  Games that are not online subscription or cash shop based tend to peak quickly and fade, usually just appearing for a single month.  But CK3 breaks the mold again.

That is followed by Fornite and Valorant, while World of Tanks fell off the list again.

On the console column, NBA 2K21 tops the list, followed by FIFA 21.  And down at the bottom of the list is Grand Theft Auto V.  It has been a regular on the list since it began, can it hold on much longer?

And on the mobile end of the chart Pokemon Go is back at the top of the chart.  It passed the 4 billion dollar total revenue mark during the summer and just keeps on going.

Then there is Genshin Impact, which made both the console and mobile charts.  SuperData has a bullet point about it:

• Genshin Impact from miHoYo was October’s highest-grossing game. The title, which was released on September 28 on mobile, PlayStation 4 and PC, is an unprecedented international success for a game made by a Chinese developer. Genshin Impact features monetization mechanics commonly found in mobile games like collecting characters through gacha (where users pay for the chance to get random in-game items) and limited-time events. However, gameplay inspired by console role-playing games and action-adventure titles attracted players who may have avoided mobile gacha games in the past.

Last months number one, Free Fire, the shooter title from Singapore, carried on in third position in October.

Perennial list member Candy Crush Saga held on another month, securing seventh position.  And down at the bottom of the list is Honour of Kings, which had a run in first place for much of this year.  Still, don’t cry for its fall, being in the top ten overall still means it is probably raking in the bucks.

Other bullet points from the SuperData report:

• FIFA 21 sold 1.5M digital units. Compared to the launch month of FIFA 20, launch month digital sales and revenue were both up (1.2M vs. 1.5M for sales). However Electronic Arts had a significantly shorter launch month period in which to sell FIFA 20 since it was released only at the end of September, while FIFA 21 went on sale at the start of October.
• Watch Dogs: Legion from Ubisoft broke franchise records, selling 1.9M digital units.  Even though the game was only on sale for the final three days in October, its first month sales were significantly higher than Watch Dogs 2, which was released on November 15, 2016 and sold 431K digital units. The latest game likely benefited from several free giveaways of Watch Dogs 2 earlier in 2020, which built up the franchise’s audience.
• Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time from Activision Blizzard sold 402K digital units, a smaller total than recent remakes of titles in the franchise. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy sold 520K digital units in June 2017 (it released on the last day of the month), while Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled sold 552K copies in June 2019. There was likely less pent-up demand for Crash 4 and the title was also released during a more crowded release period than its predecessors. First-month earnings were, however, the highest of modern Crash games since Crash 4 launched at a standard $59.99 price point instead of $39.99, like the recent remakes.
• Star Wars: Squadrons sold 1.1M digital units in October, putting it ahead of the launch of Star Wars: Battlefront II (1.0M) and behind Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2.9M).
• The Star Wars IP attracted a sizable audience to the title even though it belonged to the niche space combat subgenre. In contrast to Crash 4, Squadrons earnings were lower than those of other modern Star Wars games given its lower $39.99 price.
• SuperData will now regularly be reporting on the performance of game subscription services, which give users access to a library of premium titles at a fixed monthly price. Publishers and platform holders have invested heavily in Netflix-style subscription services in order to generate recurring revenue. SuperData is currently covering Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Now and EA Play.* Combined revenue for these services in October was up 142% year-over-year and subscriber numbers rose 113%. Xbox Game Pass accounted for the majority of growth in both cases.

EVE Echoes Launches Giving Players a New Beginning

Today sees the launch of EVE Echoes, the NetEase built mobile version of EVE Online.  CCP has a press release out announcing that the game has gone live.

EVE Echoes

This launch brings EVE Online, or a facsimile thereof, to your iOS or Android phone or tablet.

The launch video promises a new way to experience New Eden, which is no doubt true.  (Also, is that Hilmar’s ‘rona hair or is he growing it out for a 70s revival?)

I signed up for the Alpha test early on and got to try it out.  My summary:  It is not for me.

I am not a big phone/tablet gamer to start with.  And a game as complicated as EVE Online, which is tough enough to play with a keyboard and mouse, does not lend itself to a mobile interface.  Or such is my opinion in any case.

I am sure that it will suit some people.  Lots of people apparently, as they are saying they have over five million registrations in advance of the launch.

Big number is big

Of course, it is a free to play mobile MMO based on an mildly famous/infamous IP, so there are no doubt a lot of people who simply want to kick the tires… and no doubt more than a few botters looking to get in early to start an illicit RMT business.

More interesting to me though is the thought of starting with a reset version of New Eden.  People have long be asking for a reboot of the game, a new server where everybody starts fresh.

CCP will never do this.  It would kill the game.

Unlike EverQuest or World of Warcraft, being on a single server is the life blood of the New Eden, and splitting that population could lead to the player world falling below a critical mass of sustainability.  There is a threshold below which the game fails to be able to support the specialization of roles we now enjoy.  Or so the theory goes.

But now there is a fresh version of New Eden being rolled out, one where everybody is going to start equal and new, with no huge skill point advantage, no piles of ISK, no T2 blueprint originals to give a production advantage, and no alliance tournament ships rattling around in hangars.

This is the reboot many have asked for.  Will they use it?

Will the game take off?  Will it draw players away from the original?

I know, it isn’t an exact duplicate of the PC version of the game.  It is quite different in many ways.  But it is still basically the same premise.  We shall see.

I will say that EVE Echoes certainly seems to have gotten to market more quickly than another NetEase mobile partnership, Diablo: Immortal, the status of which still seems vague.

A Princess of Maraudon

Last time around we jumped into Maraudon without much forethought, choosing to take the experience in as fresh a way as we could.  That led to us taking a somewhat less than optimal route, as we had to double back after clearing the purple side to get a critical question from the orange side.

(Note to self: You can’t be OP is you don’t do orange before purple.)

For our follow up trip we were going to be more direct.  Our group for the run was:

• Moronae – level 51 night elf druid
• Viniki – level 51 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 51 dwarf priest
• Ula – level 50 gnome mage

We had a distinct series of tasks to accomplish, which started with some quest turn-ins on our way there.  We met up in Theramore to turn in a quest, then flew out to Nijel’s Point in Desolace and got another turn-in done along the way to the instance.  Then it was through the big doors to get started.

In we go

The next item on our list was Magra, the Third Khan, who held the final jewel we needed for another quest.  That meant going down the orange side of the entry area, as he hangs out in a side tunnel, up some stairs from the instance line over there.

Orange, this way…

It took a bit to find him.  The color/texture/lighting inside that area really messes with my ability to resolve the 2D image into a 3D environment in places, so we ended up taking a rather round about way to him because I was sure the direct route was a dead end.  Instead, it was just a sharp turn in the cave, which I discovered when we came back that way.  But we got him.

Then it was over to the purple side of things again, where we fought our way through to Lord Vyletongue.  He was all we really needed from the purple side.

This time around we pulled the guards outside of his lair first, then took him and the interior pair second, making the fight much more manageable.  He had the second item for the Celebras quest.  After that we just needed to get back to him.  The purple side of the instance does allow you to bypass some mobs, though we did have a mishap with the toxic bubbles.  After last week we knew to kite them as their AOE attack was hard on the melee.  Ula, who was trying to get in one last spell before pulling back sat too long in range and ended up being our first casualty of the run.

Mage down! Mage down!

It was about time to redo buffs anyway, so we rested a bit, then moved on.  Along the way we did get one of the better named drops of the run.

Imposing!

They came off a treant, so I guess he had a monkey living in his branches at some point.

Once out of the purple side and into the center of the instance, we found we could bypass quite a bit of the trash by jumping off into the brackish water and slaying the few mobs that wandered there.  We didn’t need any more drops of quest updates.

That brought us to Celebras again.  We fought him and his mininions and bested them, and this time Celebras had a quest turn-in for us and offered to teach us about the stone of something or other.

Celebras the instructor

That was a bit more of listen, turn-in, listen, watch, and so on.  We got out of sync, but once somebody is finished Celebras is willing to run the whole routine again for anybody who was left out.

Celebras and Ula

So we ended up with the Scepter of Celebras, which those of us who were just clicking through and not reading the quest text then asked, “So what? What  does it do? Can we use it right now?”

I had to go look it up, being one of those who clicked through without reading.  The scepter lets you skip the whole orange/purple parts of the instance and start at the stone, so you can farm the inner instance.  But we were not even sure what the inner instance was about, so we wandered off to see what we could find.

As with the the earlier parts, we found we could bypass quite a few mobs along the way.  We killed what we needed to, bypassed any mobs off the path, and made our way along.  Landslide, the primordial behemoth boss, dropped a helm upgrade for me.

Defense and Nature Resist

I also got a cloak upgrade that also had a nature resist stat, that being the theme of Maraudon gear I guess.

From there we fought our way down to Princess Theradras.  I actually didn’t take very may screen shots on this run.  I find that being the tank keeps me busy and I forget to take screen shots all the time.  But there was a nice vantage of the path leading down to the princess, with the behemoths in pairs spaced out along the route that I wish I had stopped to take a picture of.

But we made it down there to the island where Princess Theradras roams.

Princess Theradras is about

And we sat for a bit and discussed how we sort of remembered this fight and maybe some failed strategies and something about line of sight and being in the water and some other possibilities.  In the end I just looked it up.  I had been up past 3am the night before playing EVE Online and only got about 4 hours of sleep because I am old and seemingly incapable of staying asleep past 7am, so I wanted to get this done on the first try.

The basic info was she hits hard, so the tank needs to endure, and if she runs off after any of the casters the tank needs to grab her quick because she’ll smoosh the clothies.

In the end, we got her in one run.  It went about as described, though I think the fact that, by the time we got to her, we were all level 51 (and I had just hit 52) gave us enough of a buffer to endure any rogue attacks.  She dropped a nice caster item.  We gathered up and took the traditional screen shot.

Down with the princess!

I didn’t tweak the saturation or anything on that screen shot, it is just bright green around there.

After that I was feeling done, but we needed to leave and couldn’t remember if there was an exit path out of the instance or if we had to stone out.  I thought there might be something down in the water below the path to the princess, so we jumped off to check.  While we were there we took down Rotgrip.

Rotgrip under water

That was worth the effort as Moronae ended up with a nice set of boots out of it.

with nature resist

We explored a bit more… there is a whole cave area down behind where Rotgrip lurks… but did not find any likely exits, so decided to just stone back to Ironforge.

Recall in the water

After that I called it a day.  We still had a couple of quests to turn in.  One was back in Desolace, which promised to reward me with a best in slot item for tanks, the Mark of the Chosen.  The other was in Moonglade, which Moronae could just teleport to in order to turn it in.  The rest of us were going to have to get there the hard way.  But for 6,100 xp and a gold and a half I’ll make the run.

We missed at least one boss on our runs, and probably a few more things, but Maraudon isn’t anybody in the group’s special favorite instance, so we may be done there.

That makes the next instance on the list Sunken Temple.  But before we venture into there we need to get our level 50 class quests ready, as they all seem to require something from that instance to complete.

The Ahn’Qiraj War Effort set to Begin in WoW Classic

The day has arrived for the Ahn’Qiraj opening events to begin in WoW Classic.

Here come the bugs!

In order to unlock the 20 player Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj raid and the 40 player Temple of Ahn’Qiraj raid, Horde and Alliance players have to collect supplies in Orgrimmar and Ironforge to support the coming war.

Upon collecting enough supplies, a 10 hour long war event will be unlocked.  That will bring Anubisath and Qiraji warriors to Barrens and Thousand Needles, for low level players, and Silithus, Tanaris, and Feralas for higher levels.  Fighting there will gain you gold, loot, and faction with the Brood of Nozdormu.

There is also a quest line to run down that rewards a mount, so long as you finish it before the gates unlock, and a competition to become the person on your server declared the Scarab Lord.

And all of that begins today once the servers are up.  Blizzard has a post up describing the event in more detail.  And, it seems that at least one server has all the supplies they need stored up in advance, so it will be a very short event there indeed.

I also got a reminder that Holly Longdale is on the WoW Classic team on Twitter this morning.

The quests leading to opening the gates of Ahn'Qiraj in WoW Classic unlock this week! They will lead to a one-time event soon. Epic to relive! Reminds me of the Sleeper in EQ. :P

— Holly Longdale (@TheWindstalker) July 28, 2020

Let’s hope it isn’t too much like the Sleeper event and the server doesn’t go down.

Meanwhile, Blizzard thinks it has a handle on the lag issues that the event may cause, but we shall see.

June in Review

The Site

I think I fixed the MMO Blog Feed in the side bar that shows the blog name, though I am keeping the alternate one on hand at the bottom of the side bar in case my changes do not prove resilient.

I also had an odd call back to the past via Twitch this month.

Twitch is Twitch

A bunch of things have been going on around Twitch, including them… Amazon… selling the game mods part of Twitch (which used to be Curse) to another company, their competitor Mixer basically giving up, a Twitch blackout protest, Trump’s Twitch account getting banned (he had a Twitch account?), and Twitch getting sued.

It is that latter that came up here as I noticed a sudden surge in hits on a post about Erik Estavillo, from when he sued Blizzard because World of Warcraft was too difficult.  As it turns out, he is also the person who is suing Twitch because they allow women to use their sexuality to exploit sex addicts like himself.  First WoW was too hard and now he is too hard.

It had been a decade or so since his name popped up and you think that maybe people change and get on with their lives.  But I guess not.  Now I wonder who will pop up next?  Is it time for another Jack Thompson headline?  Who will 2020 inflict upon us next?

One Year Ago

I had declared that there were three problems MMORPGs were never going to solve.  I remain pretty solid on that.

I was also mocking the purity of leveling.  People be mad if you don’t do it right.

After waiting for it to finally drop, the Rise of Azshara update finally hit, bringing the flying unlock to Battle for Azeroth.

Over on the WoW Classic front, Blizzard had a load test that went pretty well.

In EVE Online the CSM14 elections kicked off.  The results were probably not surprising, though the last candidate squeaked into the tenth spot by a mere dozen votes.

New Player retention was very much on CCP’s mind.  I am not sure selling skill points in the Starter Pack was going to fix that, though it looked good to old hands.  The June update though was more about shadows and putting repair services in every NPC station.

Actually in the game the Imperium was well into its plan to “glass” Pure Blind, Tribute, and parts of Vale of the Silent and drive PanFam from those regions.  I have a series of posts about that campaign:

• Stomping About in Pure Blind and Tribute – June 3
• Keepstar Nocturnal Mission – June 11
• Line Member Blues – June 14
• Symphony of the Lance – June 15
• Operations in Eastern Tribute and the Vale of the Silent – June 17
• Keepstar Down in P3EN-E – June 18
• Structure Cleanup in Vale of the Silent – June 20
• The Last Keepstar in Tribute Falls as We Look for More Targets – June 25

We were poised to keep pushing, with The Mittani suggesting we might go as far as Malpais, when there were suddenly reports of Drifters attacking null sec citadels.  The Chaos Era was about to arrive.

The Spring FML season ended and we rolled into the Summer FML blockbuster season with a few new rules.  Remember back when we had movies and theaters and such?

I was also trying to figure out where the Age of Empires II Definitive Edition fit into the scheme of things.

There was a Steam Summer Sale.  There always is.

I had a Friday Bullet Points post about Stadia, Google, esports, and something Blizzard cancelled.

Five Years Ago

There was a cheer for the NBI class of 2015.

I was wondering what Turbine would do after they cancelled Infinite Crisis.  I was also looking for a summer game to play.

After waffling before a live audience, Blizzard finally caved and said there would be flying in Draenor.

Remember that time we killed a Mordus Angels Revenant?  It seems like everybody has killed one by now.

Also in EVE Online we got the Carnyx expansion, which had some of the initial Fozzie Sov features.  So we were out sov-wanding station services, though Dominion sov quirks still ruled the day in our fight at ED-9LT.  We then headed back north thinking maybe our friends in Querious would come visit us some day… *cough*

The coming of Fozzie Sov also meant further consolidation of holdings to make sure we could defend our space.  TNT got pushed out to Tribute to share space with the Circle of Two.  Tensions between the two alliances started almost right away.

And then there was Burn Amarr.  I took some screen shots.  And I splurged on ship skins.

Over at Daybreak they were talking about special servers for EverQuest II at last.  It looked like we might get some sort of progression server, for which there was a poll.  And then another poll, looking for a name.

Meanwhile, over in EverQuest, they were still working on how to deal with raiding on the Ragefire server, and the Ruins of Kunark unlock vote was upon us.

I was playing Neko Atsume on the iPad… back when it was only in Japanese!  I was also going on about 64-bit OS requirements finally coming to video games and an old grievance of mine.

My daughter suddenly wanted to play The Sims.  That lasted for about three days.  This is why I make her wait a week on any sudden new fad she want to follow.

The Steam Summer sale came and went and I bought nothing.  That turned out to be the last sale with the traditional daily specials format.

I brought up the F2P business model yet again based on a quote over at Massively OP which, if nothing else, got a long comment from Brad McQuaid on the subject.

And, finally, I played Minecraft with my daughter for Father’s Day, which led to a whole new adventure in gaming.

Ten Years Ago

Warhammer Online, whose game tips I previously mocked, was out soliciting user written game tips with the most boring video game related video ever.  Really, I was embarrassed for them.

Meanwhile, there were comical tips to be found in another game.

CCP was telling people that the steep learning curve in EVE Online was just part of the game, and Hulkageddon III was on the way.

FrontierVille came along, evoking the whole Oregon Trail thing… for which they recently were sued.  And a good thing to, as they are a bunch of lying bastards there at Zynga.  They never sent me my FarmVille magnet.

There was the big news from Turbine with Lord of the Rings Online going Free to Play.  I wondered is Lifetime Subscribers like myself would get the shaft in this transition.  But Turbine made me a perm VIP instead and put out one of those charts that seems to accompany these multi-level subscription scams structures.  But I was winning LOTRO lotteries, so I was happy for the moment.

In Pokemon SoulSilver I had beat all the gym leaders, but we were having Pokewalker problems.

Then there was Blizzard.  Where to start?

They were selling WoW Gold straight from the main page.  Really.  It just isn’t what you think.

They screwed up the parental controls interface… in my opinion… along with compromising the security of it.

The whole RealID thing was just getting warmed up.

One of the accounts in our guild was compromised and the guild bank was looted.  That has happened so many times to so many people that isn’t news any more.

And during all this, the instance group was working its way through The Burning Crusade content with our Horde alts, but we weren’t really feeling it.  Ennui had set in and our only hope was Cataclysm.  And there were plenty of offers to get us into the beta.

Fifteen Years Ago

In EverQuest II we got the Splitpaw Saga adventure pack.  Those of us with Station Access got it as part of the package, while those without had to pay… ten bucks I think.  I actually ended up playing through that quite a bit.  As early experiment with content that scaled with your levels, it was good from level 20 to level 50.  Unfortunately, it never progressed and now every time I end up in the Thundering Steppes with my newer characters the intro quest pops up.

In EVE Online the Cold War expansion hit, bringing freighters, dreadnoughts, and player owned stations in null sec.  The latter are gone, but remembered via special faction Fortizars.

Twenty Years Ago

Diablo II launched. It enlarged on its predecessor with more classes and a four act storyline that played out over different environments.  A pre-digital distribution title, it was awarded a Guinness Book record as the fastest selling video game ever, having shipped and sold one million boxes over the course of the first month.  For comparison its 2012 successor, Diablo III, sold 3.5 million copies in the first 24 hours, also setting a Guinness Book record.

Shogun: Total War launched, setting down a template that would become the Total War series that is still getting new titles.

[I mistakenly put these two in the May post, but the anniversaries are actually in June.]

Most Viewed Posts in June

1. SuperData and Wavering WoW Subscriptions
2. Minecraft and the Search for a Warm Ocean
3. EQ Aradune Server Remains Over Crowded
4. Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
5. EQ Aradune and Rizlona Servers off to the Usual Rocky Start
6. Top 25 EVE Online Corporations Graph – The End Number
7. Darkpaw Announces and Adjusts Plans for the Rizlona and Aradune Time Locked Progression Servers
8. EQ Aradune Server and Trading One Problem for Another
9. Why We Had Asset Safety in the First Place
10. EVE Online Gets New Ships and COVID-19 Research with the June Update
11. Hints of a Diablo II Remaster
12. Ruled by Discord

Search Terms of the Month

play eve the way it’s meant to be played “eve online”
[Good luck with that!]

eq full servers wtf
[IKR!]

rizlona vs aradune server
[boxing versus queues]

heritage quests everquest 1
[Not so much]

jintha’alor altar solo run
[Be level 60]

Game Time from ManicTime

WoW Classic turned out to be the game of the month, though it was off to a slow start.  Even two weeks into the month it was in no better than third place.

• WoW Classic – 37.41%
• EVE Online – 31.81%
• Minecraft – 14.62%
• Minecraft Dungeons – 8.58%
• EverQuest – 7.07%

EVE Online

The GEF deployment ended as we began ramping up for war in null sec.  The other two blocs, PandaFam and Legacy Coalition, might be coming for us.  Or maybe just Legacy.  We shall see.

We also got those new EDENCOM ships.  I’m training up the skills.  We shall see if the ships are any good.  And CCP finally made it so you can swap characters without exiting the game and logging back in.

EverQuest

I let my Daybreak Access account lapse.  I wasn’t doing anything that required it, except checking to see if the Aradune server still had a queue.  But I have still been logging on to play with the Overseer feature.  It does not require a subscription and I just log in once or twice a day for a bit to check up on missions.  I’d play this as an iPad game I guess.

Minecraft

The month started out strong on Minecraft.  I think in the first week I played much more of that than all things combined.  Then things started to pop a bit in EVE Online and I started getting back into WoW Classic outside of the instance group and Minecraft began to slip.

Minecraft Dungeons

This was the other game I started off strong with early on.  I played through the story and started playing through it again at the harder level… and then I sort of stopped.  As I said, the game isn’t bad, but unless you want to play the same content through over and over, there is only 4-7 hours of game there depending how you play.

Pokemon Go

My wife and I edged ever closer to level 40.  The remote raid pass option has meant we have been able to catch a few Pokemon that we might have otherwise missed out on.  But the social distancing and the hot weather have combined to make our Pokemon walks somewhat rare.  Nobody needs that when it is 95 degrees out.

Level: 39 (38% of the way to level 40)
Pokedex status: 545 (+4) caught, 576 (+7) seen
Pokemon I want: Some of these Unova Pokemon where I only have one
Current buddy: Fraxure

World of Warcraft

I did Darkmoon Faire on my main to get my trade skills up a bit and that was pretty much it.

WoW Classic

Old Azeroth was resurgent this month as the group got back into dungeons once again.  I also started working on alts once more.  After a bit of a break it was nice to get back into the old game again.  There will no doubt be more posts coming on it.

Coming Up

It is going to be a long, hot summer, made agonizing by a presidential election failing presidency and we won’t even have NBC’s Olympics coverage to complain about as a distraction.

So staying home will remain a thing.  Fortunately, we have video games.

We will see if there is to be war in EVE Online between the Imperium and Legacy Coalition.  We still have a few days of prep.

The instance group might actually run a dungeon besides Zul’Farrak.

It remains ever a temptation to go back into WoW and Battle for Azeroth to play through the Horde story while the double xp lasts.  It doesn’t seem likely, but it could happen.

There is another weekend of the Steam Summer Sale.  I might buy something.  It is always a possibility.