The Burden of Returning to Middle-earth

While I am still not planning to play on either of the Legendary servers that the LOTRO team launched last Wednesday, I did decided to log in to take a look and see if there were queues or a big crowd in the starter areas.

You have to go for a bit into the game to see much because the initial start tutorial is a single player instance.  But it was in that instance I was reminded again of how long I’ve been playing LOTRO and the baggage that comes with it.

One of the early interesting aspects of LOTRO was the fact that you got plenty of bag space right at the start.  That bags were fixed in size and number eventually became a burden on the game… no bag upgrades… and after free to play, unlocking those bags became something to sell to people… but at the start it seemed pretty neat, inventory space always being one of those aspects of MMORPGs that most players have had to deal with.

But, while all that early bag space seemed like a luxury back in 2007, here in 2021 it is almost a necessity.  I rolled up an new character on Shadowfax and, once in the game, I found my bags well on their way to being filled up already.

At least there are six bags

What you see here is the culmination of a 14 year relationship with Lord of the Rings Online.  In my bags is every bonus item, from the Glass of Aglaral (bag 1, second row, first slot), which was the in-game item that came with the LORTO Special Edition box back in 2007, to the 14th anniversary gift box we received back in April.

Anniversary related items take up a whole bag of their own, there being 14 boxes and a house item.  Some of them include fireworks, so there is the tie-in to US Independence day, which is today.

Then there are the expansion related items… I never opted for the super collector’s edition, but many of them had something special, and often an extra item for pre-orders… that I have collected over the years.  There are six cloaks with stats, another five cosmetic items, three mounts, two boxes with more cosmetic items, two pocket items, some tokens that can be redeemed for other things, a writ for a title (in addition to the dozen I got without an item to bestow them), and a stack of scented candles.

This is still a nice cloak

On the one hand, this is an long time veteran problem.  No new player is going to have to juggle this much stuff on entering the game.  On the other hand, I am going to guess that this is why other games I could mention…  a couple of Norrath MMOs come to mind… have a redemption interface that lets you go and claim things when you need them.  I am sure I have even more items I could pile onto a new character in EverQuest II… due to quirks of the early game old hands are a year ahead on anniversary items…  but I can go get it at need.

Anyway, there is enough bag space left that I can play through the tutorial and the starter area before getting to the bank and still have enough room… at least if I don’t try to open up all those boxes.  I haven’t tried, but I suspect that doing so would take up all my inventory and then some.

And I have to leave some room because the game keeps filling my bags with junk.  On my Treebeard character… I was checking to see if there was a queue on either server… there was not… I noticed that the intro quests were trying to and me gear that were downgrades from the stuff the game equipped me with for just logging in.

Why are you insulting me with this item?

Unlike my bag space issue, that seems like a problem that could mess up new players, or at least highlight that perhaps SSG hasn’t been as studious of a caretaker of the game as perhaps they should have been. Seriously, this should be an easy fix.

After years of focus on the new player experience by CCP in EVE Online I might be a little more sensitive to the dumb that companies do.

Ahn’Qiraj Coming This Month and More Bots Banned in WoW Classic

Time for a bit more WoW Classic news as Blizzard continues its offensive against the bot peril.

Classic is as classic does

After reportedly banning 74,000 accounts for EULA violations about two weeks back, Blizzard was back to announce another 40,000 accounts banned.

Since the launch of WoW Classic, we’ve taken action daily against accounts that were botting, hacking, and selling in-game services for real money. This continual effort has resulted in the average daily number of accounts actioned consistently increasing in the Americas, EU, Korea, and Taiwan. In May of this year, we witnessed a surge in the number of botters, and our intensification of efforts to eliminate them brought our average of actioned accounts upwards into the thousands per day.

Since our last post about this issue on June 17, we’ve continued to remove exploiters at a high pace, typically 2,000-3,000 per day, with over 4,000 accounts actioned on some days. This daily effort has resulted in actions taken against over 40,000 accounts since June 17 in the Americas, EU, Korea, and Taiwan.

We’re dedicated to driving the the exploiters away wherever we can, as we continue to make our response to this one of our highest priorities. This is a long-term effort that becomes continuously more difficult, as exploits and those who use them are driven by real money profit motives. We take action constantly, 24/7, to enforce the Blizzard End-User License Agreement 43. Any account that violates or assists others in violating license limitations on hacking, cheating, and other unauthorized use of the game is subject to suspension and removal.

As always, we greatly appreciate your reports. Player reports have been and will remain highly valuable to us, as we must evolve our detection and response methods to stay ahead of the organizations who would otherwise degrade the game for legitimate players.

The war on bots and such carries on.

Meanwhile, after having done a load test that brought the test server to its knees, presumably with more players than they expect to jump in on a live server, Blizzard has announced the start date for the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj event.

Starting July 28th, presumably after the usual maintenance window, the event will be available on US realms, and on July 29th on EU realms.  Per the posts:

At that time, players can begin the quest chain to craft a Scepter of the Shifting Sands, and players can turn in gathered resources to advance the Ahn’Qiraj war effort.

Once both of those activities are completed on a given realm, the gates of Ahn’Qiraj will be available to be opened.

I have been, somewhat unintentionally, hoarding cloth in my bank.  I had a mind toward getting first aid up on all my characters.  But when this starts I suppose I can clear some bank slots by donating to the cause.  We are now getting into things I actually remember happening back in the day when I first started playing WoW.

Also, a clarification about nature resist gear that is currently not available in WoW Classic was posted, though only in the EU forums, listing out the gear that was not yet in the game and that Blizzard was looking into when to release it into the game.

The Drifters Change Up in Null

By the end of the weekend the patterns of the Drifter attacks in null sec had been pretty well documented.  There were a set group of systems they were hitting and a regular, if erratic, behavior that had them bouncing around those systems shooting structures, including gates, as well as anybody who happened to wander into range.

Drifters Hitting a Raitaru

But there was very much a feeling that once Wednesday rolled around, the seeming weekly inflection point for Invasion expansion events, that we would see a change.

And, sure enough, we did see a change.

A new set of systems appeared to be targeted as the new day dawned.

But, more important, the behavior of the Drifters changed up as well.  In addition to warping to structures they began warping into combat and mining anomalies to shoot up anybody they happened to run into.  The high sec dream of Drifters shooting null sec players appears to have come to pass.  You can watch the Vigilant Tyrannos corporation kill board on Zkill to see what they are blowing up.

Pandemic Horde having a bad day in Geminate

While it still seems to be mostly defense fleets and people caught on gates, Vexor Navy Issues, the ratting ship of choice, are starting to appear more frequently.

None of our Rorquals are on the kill board yet, though there were some close calls.

He lived, no big deal

But the Drifters did manage to get one earlier down south.

And they did managed to join in on an Athanor kill, though it was anchoring and under attack by players, so it was probably going down regardless.

So the Drifter menace got a bit more real.  And longer as well.  Rather than being a limited hours attack, things seem to be running all the way to downtime no, so I hope you have around the clock coverage in your region.  Oh, and it is a holiday today in the US, and a four day weekend for many, so lots of people will be away.  Nice timing.

The drifters do still appear to be sticking to a select, if expanded, set of systems, so as long as you move out of a system where the Drifters are hanging out to return to the usual amount of risk.  Intel channels are your friend.  But if you have to defend against them, then it is just non-stop now.  And if you go through those systems… well, the kill rate for Drifters went from a few an hour to something like two a minute last night, including pods, across null sec.

CCP has not, as of my writing this, commented on the Drifter invasion save for a video from The Scope that was posted last Friday.  We will have to wait and see if The Scope will have any further comment and when, if ever, the Triglavian invasion of high sec and the Drifter invasion of null sec come together as an event.

So CCP continues to beset null sec with even more tedious, unrewarding game play, which seems odd from a company that is also fretting publicly about new player retention.

Summer Movie League – Three Paths Forward

Week five of our Summer Fantasy Movie League is now done and recorded.

This week was another pause in the big release schedule, so the lineup held a mix of carry overs and new titles at the top.

Incredibles 2              $591
Jurassic World SAT         $356
Jurassic World SUN         $278
Uncle Drew                 $275
Jurassic World FRI         $266
Sicario 2                  $201
Ocean's 8                  $97
Tag                        $64
Deadpool 2                 $41
Solo                       $31
Sanju                      $30
Won't You Be My Neighbor   $24
Hereditary                 $24
Superfly                   $22
Avengers: Infinity War     $18

The Incredibles 2 was at the top again, but Jurassic World was still expected to be big enough to need to be split into three days.  Uncle Drew was expected to be the bigger of the two new films, with Sicario 2 a bit down the list.  Then there was a gap and the filler kicked in.

I came into the week stung by ignoring the dinos in Jurassic World so, as noted last week, I jumped onto that with my Monday Hot Takes league picks, anchoring on two Saturday screenings.

Of course, as the week went on more details and more theories began to appear.  In the TAGN chatter channel dinos were a thing, but I started to think I was overestimating how much Jurassic World would bring in.

So, while I went with dinos on Monday night, by the time the TAGN lock time approached, I was leaning more towards a lineup anchored on The Incredibles 2 once again.  So I went with that plus six screens of the reasonably priced Tag, filling in the last spot with Hereditary.

Summer Movie League – My Week Five Pick

The last spot was a toss up between a Hereditary, a horror flick losing screens, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor at the same price, which was gaining screens but which seemed of limited interest to me to summer movie goers.

Corr ended up with mostly the same idea as I did, only he went with Mr. Rogers.  As it turned out, that was the better choice by $135,164.  Mr. Rogers would have been an even better pick with bonuses turned on, which would have given it an extra $2 million since it got the best performer award.  But we don’t play with bonuses here.

Then, after the TAGN league locked and Friday morning rolled around I saw the preview numbers for Uncle Drew and Sicario 2 and quickly re-did my lineups for everything else anchored on four screens of Sicario 2.

As it turned out, four screens of Sicario 2 was the go-to anchor for the week.  If only I had figured that out a day earlier.  For the TAGN League the perfect pick was 4x Sicario 2, 2x Tag, Deadpool 2, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor.  It was worth $93,788,152.

Summer Movie League – Week Five Perfect Pick

And somebody got the perfect pick.  Goat managed to get the right lineup and, while there is no bonus, they at least know they got the best possible score for the week.  The week five scores ended up looking like:

1. Goat Water Picture Palace – $93,788,152
2. aria82’s Cineplex – $92,425,935
3. I HAS BAD TASTE – $87,186,436
4. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $85,147,538
5. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $84,124,122
6. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $83,988,958
7. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $82,970,318
8. Joanie’s Joint – $78,195,986
9. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $78,018,678
10. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $77,613,186
11. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $74,689,271
12. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre – $74,689,271
13. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $73,673,508
14. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $73,673,508
15. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $72,591,123
16. Kraut Screens – $71,986,662
17. Too Orangey For Crows – $71,695,833
18. grannanj’s Cineplex – $66,746,828
19. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $66,113,433

The weeks rankings go from the top two, who were all-in on Sicario 2, to the next two who played at least a pair of the film with dinos, to those of us who anchored on The Incredibles 2, (or Uncle Drew and a pair of Sicario 2 screens in one case), followed by those who only bet on Jurassic World as an anchor.

My Monday pick would have put me in 16th place while my Friday pick would have had me tied for second, so I guess I should be happy with sixth place overall.  It kept me in the running, as the week five overall ranking ended up looking like this.

1. I HAS BAD TASTE – $494,244,960
2. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $486,011,951
3. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $481,296,634
4. Goat Water Picture Palace – $480,901,172
5. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $476,892,071
6. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $475,088,091
7. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $467,831,033
8. Kraut Screens – $462,006,518
9. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $459,708,209
10. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $457,618,648
11. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $452,026,794
12. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $445,933,072
13. grannanj’s Cineplex – $433,314,075
14. aria82’s Cineplex – $416,321,459
15. Joanie’s Joint – $384,363,297
16. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $373,5560,729
17. Too Orangey For Crows – $368,417,335
18. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $287,596,163
19. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre – $283,238,550

While Isey of I HAS BAD TASTE didn’t make first place for the week, but he didn’t have to in order to claim first position overall.  All he had to do was beat Vigo, which he did soundly.  So behold the new leader.

And it might be a good week to pull into the lead as the summer is starting to slow down a bit.  This week has a semi-blockbuster coming on this week in the form of Ant-Man and The Wasp, leaving a lineup looking like this:

Ant-Man and the Wasp      $804
Jurassic World            $267
Incredibles 2             $229
The First Purge           $201
Sicario 2                 $89
Uncle Drew                $71 
Ocean's 8                 $48 
Tag                       $34
Won't You Be My Neighbor  $23
Deadpool 2                $20
Solo                      $13
Hereditary                $12
Sanju                     $11
Avengers: Infinity War    $11
Superfly                  $6

In addition to the Marvel movie Ant-Man and The Wasp we also get The First Purge.

Ant-Man is “only” expected to reach about $80 million over the weekend, a lot for most movies, but summer blockbusters have been good for over $100 million this year, so it is slightly tame on that scale.

Meanwhile The First Purge is the fourth installment in The Purge franchise, is supposed to be good for a bit more than $20 million, a decent start for a normal movie.  But that puts it in fourth place this week.  Also, it opens today rather than on Friday, which means it might lose steam early and there won’t be any Thursday night previews to pad its totals.

With Jurassic World slimming down to a single day we didn’t lose any titles this week.  However, there is now a lot of very similarly priced low-end filler to choose from.

Going forward from this week all the openings are expected to decrease in size.  The only big launch after this week is Mission Impossible at the end of the month.  After that we’ll be looking for the next Baby Driver.  So if you need a big week, this might be the time to do a little extra research.

My own Monday Hot Takes league picks were 4x The Incredibles 2 and 4x Deadpool 2, a lineup that left me with $4, which I took as a sign that it was meant to be.  We shall see if I change my mind between now and when the league locks.

The league locks in less than 24 hours from the time this post goes live, so make your picks soon.

 

Delve – We Mine and We Rat Things a Little Less

The monthly economic report for June 2017 is out already and the first thing I went to see was whether or not the reduced carrier nerfs that came in with the June update had any effect on bounty payouts.

There is, as they say, a chart for that…. specifically the chart showing the top eight ISK sinks and faucets.

June 2017 – Top 8 ISK Sinks and Faucets over time

It looks like the nerf was a palpable hit, dropping bounties back to January levels as well as proving again how much carrier and super carrier ratting was contributing to the number.  Even in Fortress Delve the number was down.

June 2017 – Bounties per Region

CCP Quant did not include the bounties per region chart previously, but Delve’s bounties were part of the region summary chart for May where they were listed at 8.8 trillion ISK.  The June chart above shows just over 8 trillion ISK in bounties for June, so about a 10% hit to the bounty ISK faucet in Delve.  That is actually a marginally bigger hit than in the game overall, where bounties fell from 69 trillion ISK to 63 trillion ISK total, about a 9% reduction.

Of course, that likely isn’t enough and even CCP has said they are not done yet, as I noted in my post about the June update, another blow against carrier and super carrier ratting is planned:

We are working on changes to Anomalies that will reduce the effectiveness of Carriers and Supercarriers. These changes will be announced at a later date.

At least one chronic complainer will cry about CCP never fulfilling their promises… and the company have an admittedly shaky reputation on that front, at least if you take every visionary statement as a promise… but they have been serious about the economy before, and I expect them to continue to be serious.  We shall see.

Meanwhile, there was yet another nerf to Rorqual mining as part of the June patch as well.  Using Delve as the benchmark again, back in May there was almost 9 trillion ISK worth or ore extracted in the region.

June 2017 – Mining Value by Region

In June, with half the month after the latest nerf, the number shy of 8.5 trillion ISK worth of mining done, making for a hit of just over 5%.  Not as big of an impact as bounties.

But then, mining is not like bounties.  Mining does not generate ISK out of thin air, so while it might impact the velocity of ISK, it does not change the money supply.  It is also measures via the market price, so a shift in price can shift that number.

And what is mined is used to produce ships and modules in New Eden, something especially so in Delve.  Aryth, CSM member and economic director in GSF, said on Talking in Stations that Delve doesn’t export minerals or ore but actually has to import them in order to feed the engines of production in the region.  I can speak from personal observation that buy orders in the region would keep you from ever bothering to export to Jita, while the production of the region is visible on another chart.

June 2017 – Production Values by Region

Production was actually down most places for June, including Delve, where it was off about 10% from May.  I wonder if that is the Rorqual nerf throttling production or something else.

Mining is, after all, a double balance.  The price of minerals has to be high enough to make mining a worthwhile venture.  However, when the price of minerals goes up, so does the price of everything else.  I’ll let economists argue over which side of that equation is more important.

Overall, the money supply in New Eden went down.

June 2017 – ISK Sinks and Faucets and Total Money Supply

One hundred trillion ISK came into the economy via faucets in June, most of it via NPC bounties.

sixty trillion ISK came out of New Eden via a variety of sinks, mostly NPC transaction taxes, while another 57 trillion ISK came out through player account activity (not sure how that works with Alpha clones now) and GM activity (we all know how that one works, the GM takes your stuff because you got caught breaking the terms of service), for a net reduction of about 17 trillion ISK.

At least the upward trend of the money supply was throttled a bit.  I would like to know how much of that 57 trillion ISK was from GMs taking money from those who exploited the ghost training bug.

Anyway, so it goes.  I still remain slightly amazed that CCP shares so many numbers with us, but EVE Online remains a very different game from its competitors.

Hail to the NBI Class of 2016

That time of year has come and passed yet again, and another class of new blogs has been through the Newbie Blogger Initiative.

This years class is, so far as I can tell:

1. A to Zeo
2. Aunion’s Blog
3. Chordian
4. Cookie Cutter Monks
5. I’m Not Squishy
6. Just East of West
7. Pleasant Gamer
8. Shadows Gaming Blog
9. SparkoMarco Gaming
10. Static Refresh
11. The Wild Core Chronicle
12. Vyx

I couldn’t find a definitive list, so I merged together what data I could find into a single list.  If I missed somebody, leave a comment.

There are a dozen new blogs to keep an eye on.  Some will no doubt fade soon enough… some may have faded already.  But as like as not one of those blogs will take root and be around for a while and add to our little corner of the internet.