How Does World War Bee End?

It has been a year of war, a year that has seen some of the biggest, most epic battles in the history of New Eden, a year that has seen trillions of ISK in assets destroyed, a year that has seen the largest coalition of null sec organizations in the history of the game… 103 alliances at the start… come together to attack the Imperium.

The PAPI assault on the Imperium has rolled the Goon led coalition back to a single constellation in the Delve region.  By the end of Week 36 of the war the Imperium held only the O-EIMK Constellation in Delve.  PAPI media outlets were ready to declare the war won then.

Talking in Stations declares victory

The expectation seemed to be that the Imperium would follow the plan, evac low sec, at which point PAPI could finish destroying the last remaining Imperium structures at their leisure.  Instead, the Imperium held fast and now the was has been in stalemate ever since.  PAPI has not been able to break into the final Imperium bastion in Delve, but they retain such a numerical advantage that the Imperium cannot break out.  And so both sides settled down for a siege of sorts.

O-EIMK Constellation – May 30, 2021

And so it has gone for 16 weeks, more than a third of the war so far.  That has given people a lot of time to ponder, game out, and wish cast how the war might end.

How Do Wars Usually End in New Eden?

Morale is to material as three is to one

-Napoleon

Wars in EVE Online tend to end the way wars in the real world do; one side falters, loses faith, or otherwise stops showing up.  In New Eden, when one side stops logging in, the other side wins.

The failure cascade is a staple of our wars, where the line members give up, stop joining fleets, and try to evacuate whatever assets they can even as their leadership is talking about eventual victory.  You can only snow your line members so long.  They know when they’re losing, when the supply infrastructure is coming apart, when the finances have been tapped out.

Organizations that survive losses are the ones who spot the trend and find a way to end the war before the line members head for the exit en masse.

This time around neither side has hit the point where line members have given up.  Participation numbers are down, but that is to be expected when there isn’t much going on.  The Imperium bides its time by hunting PAPI pilots in Delve and other regions and PAPI pretends the war is still moving forward by killing left behind Imperium structures one by one.  That keeps enough players in motion to stave off desertion, but this cannot go on forever. Or can it?

The problem is that neither side can extricate itself from the war without devastating losses.

Survival of the Imperium

PAPI made a serious mistakes engaging with the Imperium very early in the war.  That was when Vily gave an interview to Polygon where he stated that the war aim of the giant coalition he brought together was extermination, the removal of Goons from EVE Online.

This was a propaganda coup for the Imperium.  When the enemy has declared they will accept nothing short of elimination of your faction, there is no longer any reason to contemplate peace or even compromise.  The war became one of survival against a foe who painted us all with the same “bad for the game” brush.  The victory conditions are set; we win by denying PAPI their stated objective, our mere survival means we win.  This is why Imperium line members aren’t calling bullshit when The Mittani says we’re winning.  We didn’t even set the victory conditions!

Meanwhile, Vily’s statement meant that there was no other path to peace beyond leaving the game.  There is no retreat so we might as well keep fighting where we stand.

Vily has squirmed on the hook of his own making since that interview, trying to downplay it, claiming that he didn’t really mean it, allowing that maybe the existence of the Goonswarm could be tolerated even if PAPI won.  The problem is that he hedges on the extermination stance whenever the war slows down, but as soon as PAPI gains a victory he and Progodlegend are quick to remind everybody that the war is about driving the Imperium and its members from the game.

That wavering on message just looks like weakness from the Imperium side of the war, and nobody is at all convinced he wouldn’t push his extermination plan if he could, he’s just seems to be worried he won’t have the means to fulfill it.  So we’re not going anywhere unless they force us out.

TEST is Next and a Tiger by the Tail

Vily’s statement about extermination made “TEST is Next!” the war cry of the Imperium.  That is a fairly empty threat when PAPI represents most of null sec and outnumbers the Imperium by a wide margin.

But from TEST’s perspective, they actually have to follow up on Vily’s statements and effectively drive the Imperium from the game.  If they do not and the PAPI blue donut disbands, TEST and its Legacy coalition partners will very quickly be on the defensive.  The general consensus is that in a war between just Legacy and the Imperium, Legacy loses.

So TEST is very much invested in the war carrying on.  Vily’s words cut both ways and, while I doubt the Imperium would view “TEST is next” as a war of extermination, TEST will be the next Circle of Two for us and we will spend the next decade if needs be shooting them where ever they go.

PandaFam Ascendant

PandaFam, the name coined by Jin’taan more than a year back, is the coalition of Pandemic Horde, Fraternity, NCDot, and Pandemic Legion, who live together in the northeast of null sec.  The war has been an opportunity for them.  They have expanded their space, their regions top the crabbing aspects of the monthly economic report, and their rental income is alleged to be up due to the fact that their space is generally safe, the war being so far away.  Aside from The Initiative prodding them a bit, the war has been very good to them.

They also represent the backbone of the attack on the Imperium.  Pandemic Horde has done the heavy lifting throughout the war and NCDot is always well represented relative to the size of their alliance.

PandaFam’s goal in the war has been to bring down the Imperium after from its post-Casino War heights, when Delve turned into the dominant economic machine in New Eden.  While they have never objected to Vily’s extermination plan, neither have they made that their own goal.  Their stated plan has been to wreck the Goon economy, destroy the tribute faction Fortizars from the war against Guardians of the Galaxy, and evict us from 1DQ.

Otherwise, PandaFam does not have a lot of skin in the game.  They don’t want any of the space lost by the Imperium and their own space has not suffered.  They could declare a legitimate victory today and walk away as the dominant power in null sec.  So why stay?

Goals aside, the war serves their purposes.  It keeps their space safe, it gives their combat pilots and FCs a war to play around with, and it keeps the Imperium economy offline.  Their power continues to grow relative to Legacy and the Imperium at a cost that is pretty reasonable.  But if they pull out, the balance shifts to the Imperium and “TEST is next!” becomes a reality.  They need to be there to prop up Legacy in order to maintain the benefits they are currently reaping.

Minor Powers

There are other players in the war, but their contributions have dwindled.  The Russian FI.RE coalition in the southeast and Army of Mango Alliance have been pushing a bit to clear up space that the Imperium took in Legacy’s backfield, but they don’t make up significant numbers in fights and they seem unlikely to up their commitment unless the Imperium and its allies come for their space.  They have their own local issues.  If they there is another history making fight brewing, they will show up in small numbers, but otherwise they are mostly on board because it is the safest course for them.

So How Does the War End?

Back to the question in the headline.

In the short term, I am pretty sure it just keeps going.  Neither Legacy nor the Imperium can get what they want with a peace settlement.  Legacy isn’t going to restore the Imperium to their pre-war space and the Imperium isn’t going to simply go away or let TEST off the hook.

Meanwhile PandaFam is getting all they want out of the war, so peace brings them no benefit.  They will keep propping up Legacy so long as that remains true.  They would still like to destroy everything in 1DQ1-A, but not at the cost it would take currently.

So PAPI continues to nibble around the edges.  They are clearing out any Imperium structures they can find.  They are pushing Imperium allies out of the Legacy space they have occupied.  They are looking to gank suspected Imperium alts in high sec.  They are trying to find other routes to chip away at the defenders.

PAPI could make like more miserable for the Imperium if they wanted to put in the effort.  They have setup Fortizars in NPC Delve on the stations from which they could camp then in order to interdict supplies coming in to 1DQ.  They could tighten the siege.  But that would be a lot of work and every ounce of misery for the Imperium down the road has to be purchased with an ounce of PAPI misery now, camping stations or gates or otherwise trying to suppress the Imperium.

Meanwhile, it is part of the Goon identity in EVE Online that they are willing and able to put up with more misery than anybody else, that they excel in a war of boredom and stalemate.  To fight to the last in 1DQ1-A, to make the attackers pay a terrible price for any attempt to evict us, is almost literally what it is to be a Goon right now.

So the war goes on and the occasional calls for one side or the other to do what is “good for the game” fall on deaf ears.  Nobody is going to sacrifice their side for some esoteric idea of what the game needs.

Longer term, somebody is going to wear out.  Somebody is going to get sick of all of this.  Fraternity will come to blows with one of the Chinese alliances that fought against them on the Serenity server or PandaFam will get tired of propping up Legacy or Legacy will end up in some sort of internal crisis because they have to dock up every time the Imperium forms bombers.  Morale somewhere will crumble.  People will stop logging in or somebody at the director level will decide they have had enough and betray Legacy yet again.

Or maybe PAPI will put in the effort to turn the the war into a real siege and actually starve the Imperium out.  I am sure the PAPI wet dream is to starve us to the point that we can’t even fuel the main Keepstar so that when they come to kill it, it drops all the loot like the biggest space pinata ever.  They keep killing it on the test server, so they clearly have something like that on their wish list.

What I don’t think will happen is an epic assault on 1DQ1-A.  The fights at M2-XFE showed that the Imperium is willing to go all in with supers and titans and, in their home system where they are all now parked, PAPI is not going to risk a repeat of jumping into 4K hungry and heavily armed Goons.  The lesson I took from the second M2-XFE fight is that it might not be possible to attack us on our capital system.

So it will be a wearing away process.

But all that will take time.  I suspect that we’ll be looking at winter coming before either side has worn down enough to either lose the war or find a compromise that leads to a treaty.

Addendum: Of course, I write two thousand words about this over the weekend and then somebody on /r/eve sums up the options in about 250.

Theaters of Operation

Fighting in Delve ought to seem almost normal to me.  I think we spent time every summer from 2012 through to 2016 invading Delve and kicking whoever lived there out.

Delve – Summer 2012 Poster

We went there with TEST and Pandemic Legion in 2012 (seems like strange times now), against TEST in 2013, against somebody nearby in 2014 (we owned the place for a bit, but gave it up), against Darkness and NCDot in 2015, and then finally against LUMPY and a few others when we fled the north after the Casino War to set up shop in the region.

And yet, here in 2020, I don’t feel like I “know” the region all that well.  I know some of the key spots, our staging in 1DQ1-A, the path up into (and through) Fountain down which I traveled so many times, and some key intersections, like 1-SMEB and the run through Aridia.  But now that we are fighting a war, I wanted a clearer visualization of the region.  Despite living there for four years, I have spent most of that time deployed in space belonging to others and fighting there.  Since we arrived we’ve only had to chase small gangs out of Delve.  We’ve not been invaded.  Time for something new.

I went looking for a map that would cover the area where the war is taking place.

DOTLAN EVE Maps was my first stop.  It has logical maps of all the regions.  That is very useful for navigating within and individual region, but less so when you want to show more than one region.  They do have a combined Delve/Querious/Period basis map, which shows three of three of the regions we are defending.

Also, DOTLAN’s maps, being logical in an attempt to get the systems nicely lined up showing the jump gate connections in as little space as possible, do not reflect how the systems are oriented in space or the distance between stars, which plays into where Ansiblex jump bridges can be deployed and where capitals can jump.

The in-game map shows the distances between star systems fairly well.

Looking at the in-game map

You get some sense of the distances between regions… far further than any capital can jump or Ansiblex can bridge… which explains why some foothold systems like TCAG-3 are going to see plenty of action.  However, readability of the in-game map is, frankly, shit.  As I have said, it is an impressive site to show your friends if you’re showing them the game, but it isn’t all that useful when you’re trying to navigate New Eden.

It isn’t completely useless.  You can get some information out of it, see systems where battles have been going on.

The hot spot in Period Basis

TCAG-3 has been a focus point because it is at one end of the regional gate that lays between Period Basis and Paragon Soul, regions held by the Imperium and Legacy Coalition respectively.  Legacy getting control of that system and being able to lay down structure would let them roll up our southern flank. (That particular number reflects a Legacy push into the system.  We lost more ships, but held the field. I went out for lunch about five minutes before the pings went out for that fight, so completely missed it.)

But back to maps.

In between the DOTLAN and the in-game map is GARPA Topographical Survey, the home grown map tool available to Imperium pilots.  It has been around for quite a while, and there was even a version released to the general public at one point.  It is less readable than DOTLAN, but much clearer than the in-game map.  Also, it has nice pastel shades for regions.

The GARPA view of the southern theater

That shows how Delve, Querious, and Period Basis are lined up, along with the strange way that Querious bisects Delve, linking the two regions rather intimately.

You can also see the Legacy regions of Catch, Paragon Soul, Esoteria, and Impass and the routes through which those invading us must come. (Stain is NPC null, but there is a path in from there as well.)  Viewed close up, with system names visible:

Might need to click on this to read system names…

As I mentioned above, most of the action up to this point has been coming our of Paragon Soul and into Period Basis, with some ventured out of Catch and Aridia.  However, that seems likely to change, with the emphasis likely to be on the Catch route into Querious and Delve.  The two staging Keepstars, and the super fleets they are holding, are in FAT-6P in Catch, and the first target seems likely to be 4-07MU, which is the Imperium outpost in Catch.

The Foothold in Catch

At least I assume that is why they are amassing a super fleet there.  They can’t jump into our space, so they have to take the gate to 49-USU in order to get within range of anything.

And then there is Fountain, which doesn’t fit nicely on the above map without making it huge.

The northern theater of operations

There are three was into Fountain besides Delve.  Outer Ring is an NPC null sec region, while Cloud Ring, the route we took during the Fountain War back in 2013, seems quiet for the moment.  PandaFam has instead set up shop in Hophib in Aridia, which lets them base out of a low sec NPC station which cannot be assailed.  That is the upside.

The downside for them seems to be that getting to Hophib is a bit of a pain and doesn’t put them close to anything vital.  The main spine of the region runs between KVN-36 and C-4NOD, that epic gate jump up the left side of the region that is the primary highway for the Imperium to head north, and the axis on which our activity there centers. (Those two systems are simply next to each other on the DOTLAN region map.)  PandaFam has to go quite a ways to disrupt that, while the jump bridge network lets The Initiative respond to them speedily from the center.

Still, PandaFam, after some initial setbacks, appears to have made more progress than their allies in the south, reinforcing the Taurus constellation next door to their staging.

All reinforced as I write this

They still have to get in and fight the node contest, but that will be chaotic with nodes for all six systems spawning in a short time frame.  A foothold there won’t break the Imperium, but if they can snap the jump bridge network that lets The Initiative deploy there quickly it could force us to defend further back or spend a lot of time taking gates to get all the way around to where PandaFam is pushing.

Anyway, that is where we are fighting and will likely continue to be fighting for a while.  We will see what the new day brings.

Post War Moves and Drops in Null Sec

While the Imperium attack on the north, with its intent to “glass” the Tribute and Vale of the Silent regions, did not produce any record setting or headline worth spaceship battles, there was still a considerable amount of destruction.  In addition to blowing up all of the infrastructure hubs in Tribute and a good number in the western side of Vale of the Silent, the tally in the forums shows we blew up the following list of structures during the deployment, in something like descending order of value:

• Keepstar : 4
• Sotiyo : 11
• Faction Fortizar : 1
• Fortizar : 36
• Tatara : 18
• Azbel : 18
• Athanor : 57
• Astrahus : 73
• Raitaru : 69
• Ansiblex Jump Gate : 20
• Pharolux Cyno Beacon : 4
• Tenebrex Cyno Jammer : 68

Then the Drifters showed up and the war ended as everybody in null sec had to scramble to figure out what that really meant.  For us it meant move ops home, delayed because the people who would be leading those ops were the same people able to gun structures at home, and the were not able to do both.

As tends to happen, people adapted to the Drifter menace… though CCP dialed it up for a day last week, the attacks faded about the time the “no local” message started getting out… and the various groups started looking into what the post war world of null sec was going to look like.

The word going about is than PanFam, made up primarily of Pandemic Legion, Northern Coalition, and Pandemic Horde, were going to move.

Tribute has been pretty much abandoned by PanFam as being too hard to defend, and echo of what we learned during the Casino War.  It’s handiness to Jita and other regions is a blessing and a curse.  The Territorial Control Units mostly still show NCDot and PL, but that is mostly because TCUs do not have much in the way of value aside from being markers on the map these days.  It is the ihubs that count, and they were wiped out.

Tribute – July 7, 2019

In some parts of Tribute some new people have started moving in.  In the 03C-SU constellation, which is highlighted, the new owners even put down ihubs.  I guess they intend to stay.

I am not sure what is going to happen with Vale of the Silent, except that PanFam will no longer live there.  The word is that the coalition will be moving deeper into the Dronelands in eastern null sec, calling the regions of Malpais and The Kalevala Expanse their new home.

A leaked announcement that has shown up a few places, including Reddit, has Pandemic Horde setting up shop in TKE.

Horde instructions – click to make more legible

The word is that PL and NCDot will live next door in Malpais, while the renters that currently occupy both regions will be relocated to Geminate.  I am sure that will make those hunting ratters and miners happy as they will be.

Those wishing to hunt PanFam however will be less happy as they are moving to a similar model to what we have in Delve.  From a central staging point they will be able to drop supers and titans on anybody in their territory, being able to land on an estimated 200 systems.  The lack of nearby NPC null space, as we have in Delve, makes their situation all the more secure.  Dread bombs will take some work.

The Mittani, who has been showing up in the Talking in Stations Discord had some comments on the situation:

Mittens on Malpais

So that is the new null sec reality.  We have out are in the southwest of null sec, PanFam has their new center in the northeast of null sec, and if we’re going to brawl in any major way it will likely be due to us meeting in the middle somewhere.

But if people are moving, that means move ops and people wandering to their destination solo.  And for Pandemic Horde, there is a pair of systems through which they must pass in order to move from Geminate to where they want to be in TKE.  The gap between the two regions is too far for a direct jump unless you’re in a jump freighter.  Their extended range can bridge the gap, but everything else has to gate or go a long way out of the way.

The gap from DOTLAN navigation

And any place where you have a bunch of stragglers wandering blind through a choke point, you’re going to get some people waiting on a black ops ready to drop on them.

Sitting on a Redeemer in Geminate

The Drifter invasion stopped wars and got the null sec groups to cooperate and agree to a general non-invasion pact, but that doesn’t mean we stopped shooting each other.  Once the Drifter stuff was under control we all went back to roaming each other’s space looking for targets.  Even the blue donut isn’t all that blue.

So I got to spend some time with Black Ops (being in Reavers made me something like a Black Ops auxiliary back when we were operating out of Pure Blind in 2018) dropping on the occasional straggler.

This sort of operation involves a lot of waiting.  I sat around and wrote yesterday’s post while sitting on that Redeemer waiting for somebody to tell us to wake up.  But when the time comes you do get some fun kills.

The first drop was on a Thanatos that was caught on the gate in 9P4O-F.

Thanatos caught by us

This guy wasn’t particularly valuable according to the kill mail, but it is always feels good as a subcap pilot to kill a capital ship.  We blew up the wreck, so there was nothing left to recover.  There were some people in system, but nobody came to help him.  Like us, PH was probably telling people to no yolo on their own, so those that do at least serve as an example to the rest.

The next guy though, another Thanatos, he was hauling his stuff.  He made it through the gate, so we jumped through and caught him on the other side and blew him up.

Another Thanatos brewing up

The kill mail showed this to be a suitcase, carrying a bunch of his stuff to his new home.  That wreck got blown up as well, so nothing was recovered.

A little while later we also managed to grab a Charon freighter, though this time around some of the locals came to help.  We got the kill, but couldn’t stick around to blow up the wreck.  Still, a decent amount of stuff destroyed.

I couldn’t stick around all day, but the kills when they happen are exciting.  And sometimes you snatch something valuable right from under their nose.  That Ark was sitting on a Fortizar untethered.  The PDS from the citadel got top damage.

Remy – Violent Video Games

From ReasonTV, what happens when you play those horrible video games.

 

I’ve never thrown a turtle at another driver, but back in the day I used to feel tempted to take off across country in my car after driving a Humvee all over the map in the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942.

Hat tip to Noizy who tweeted this.

Quote of the Day – Cat Ears in Space

My ideal patch would be one where they fix vuln timers on citadels, heavily nerf or remove void bombs on citadels, make sov nodes a damage capped structure not entosis based, make refineries mirror 90% of PoS mechanics, and add cat ears and an option to replace my engine trails with a stream of hundred dollar bills.
CSM 12 member Jin’taan,  Reddit Post

In one blow Jin’taan has hit on quite a few issues I fully support.

The CXM 12 Member from Provi Bloc

And not all of them are strictly null sec focused.  In fact, only ditching entosis is applicable directly to null sec.  The rest are pretty universal.  And cat ears… that could be the back door to getting hats to be a thing in New Eden.  I am glad he was on our ballot.

The End of the 2017 Steam Summer Sale

Another Steam Summer Sale has come and gone.

Summer Sale 2017 Version

I logged in every day and collected all the stickers from the event.  I managed to get one full set of the trading cards so I could turn those in.  I even added about a dozen new games to my wishlist as ran through my daily queue.

But the real question is; did I buy anything?

Well, yes.  Yes I did.  As I noted previously, I went into this sale keen to buy some titles.  I was l was looking for something new, something to shake up the current, slightly stale state of my gaming.  I showed up to chew gum and buy games… and I was all out of gum.  So what did I buy.

Mini Metro

I already posted about this game at the start of the sale.  I actually liked it enough that I bought the iOS version to play on my iPad Air 2… which I notice actually has a higher screen resolution than the 19th century steam powered monitor on my computer.  Hrmm…   Anyway, good stuff, but still light fare.  I like it on the iPad because I can play while I watch TV.

RimWorld

This has been on my list for a while, but Early Access is a bit of a red flag for me.  However, after SynCaine wrote about it I decided it might be worth the gamble.

I bought it, I played for a couple of hours, then I stopped.  I didn’t stop because the game was bad.  I stopped because this game really needs a rainy day when my wife and daughter are out and I have an excuse to not do anything else for hours at a stretch.  My impressions were good, but I didn’t want to jump in until I had time to really immerse myself in it.  So now it sits in my Steam library waiting for its time.

Civilization VI

The inevitable purchase.  Having owned every Sid Meier game in the series up to this point, it was only a matter of time before I grabbed this one.

However, I am mildly disappointed with it.  I only have a couple of hours in, but my disappointment was almost immediate.  Upon starting off it seemed like they spent a lot more time making graphics and spiffy animations and other things that, for me, just get in the way of the actual mechanics of the game.  Classically, the first 100 or so turns of a Civilization game are the most exciting part, or so legend say.  However, as the series has progressed, the free wheeling aspect of the initial phase of the game has been toned down.  Civilization VI, subjectively, feels like the culmination of this to me.

Also, the AI remains as dopey as ever.  I had a scout on automatic.  He went up an isthmus and got hung up on a barbarian camp there.  I took over and moved him in another direction as there were other unexplored areas he could have chosen.  I left him on the edge of unexplored plains and set him to automatic again… and he ran straight back to the same damn barbarian camp.

I might need a rainy day to dig into this as well, but my immediate, superficial response to Civ VI is a hearty “Meh” and a desire to figure out where my Civ II disk went.  Civ II remains my favorite in the series.

And that was it.  Three games.  Not exactly an overflowing bag of loot.  There were a few titles I was strongly considering buying… I was at home on the evening of the fourth wondering if I should pull the trigger on any of them… but ended up not doing so.  The key contenders were:

Doom

I put this on my wishlist after it came out because people who were into it were so jazzed up about it.  I haven’t been much on shooters for at least a decade, but Doom was so well received that the sale price almost made me take the plunge.

Saints Row IV

I put this on my wishlist on a whim at one point due to somebody going on about how great the Saints Row series is.  I’ve never played any of it… I’ve never even seen it played.  But it seems whimsical and silly in its style, and the price was down at the eight dollar level for the sale.  And then something in the back of my head said, “Isn’t this series something of a parody of the Grand Theft Auto series?” and I was afraid I might not appreciate the reference unless I played something from the original.

Grand Theft Auto V

So I went looking for the current champion of the genre.  It has the reviews.  It has history.  It has Target Australia on its case.  What is not to love?  But when I got to the store page on Steam the reviews were atrocious.  I gather, reading the more recent ones, that Rockstar did something to piss off its user base, but I wasn’t sure how deep I needed to go into reviews to find any other objection, so I decided to give it a pass.  So, reviews make a difference.

At the end of the day I purchased three new games, with is three more than I bought in the last Summer Sale when I was feeling a “sale weariness” around Steam.  If the three I considered strongly, but did not purchase, I am still open to them down the road if somebody has something to add to their reputation.  They are still on my wishlist.

The odd side effect of the sale though has been my jumping back into some older games after reading about new ones.  But that is a topic for another post.

High Value Target

Somewhere in the north a Keepstar citadel is in the midst of its online process.

Looks like it has about 18 hours to go…

That is the sort of thing that could start a fight.

The Pokemon 20th Anniversary Continues with a Shaymin Download Event and Other Tidbits

The celebration of the 20th anniversary of Pokemon continues.  This month’s legendary Pokemon is Shaymin, the hedgehog-like legendary grass type Pokemon from the Pokemon Diamond & Pearl era.

Happy Shaymin

I remember going to a Toys R Us event to download Shaymin about seven years back.

Shaymin Event back in February 2009

This time around you do not have to go to Toys R Us (or GameStop) to get Shaymin, you can download it directly to your copy Pokemon X & Y or Pokemon Alpha Sapphire & Omega Ruby via your Nintendo 3DS wifi connection.

Next month though it will be a return to GameStop to pick up a code for Arceus.  Here are the upcoming download events:

• August – Arceus (GameStop)
• September – Victini (Nintendo Network)
• October – Keldeo (Nintendo Network)
• November – Genesect (GameStop)
• December – Meloetta (Nintendo Network)

And, for the first time in a few months, there is no other download event going.  Of course, that may be due to there being enough other Pokemon related things going on.

Nintendo has been releasing more and more details about the upcoming Pokemon Sun & Moon, slated to be launched this November.

Sun and Moon coming in November

There is also the Sinnoh Classic Pokemon Global Link event coming up, which will require you to compete online with only Pokemon available from the Pokemon Diamond & Pearl era. (Rules here)

Back to when there were only 493 Pokemon

You need a Pokemon Trainer Club account and a copy of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire or Pokemon Omega Ruby in order to join in.

In addition, the 2016 US National Pokemon Championships ran this past weekend in Columbus, Ohio.  That leads to the 2016 Pokemon World Championships, which will be held in up in San Francisco (about an hour from where I live) on August 19-21 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel.

[Insert stock location establishing Golden Gate Bridge picture]

While the main event itself is invite only, there is at least the promise of some sort of side events for people showing up just to gawk, so I’ll have to keep an eye on the news to see if there is a reason to head up that when when it happens.  If nothing else, it ought to be a gold mine for street passes.

And, finally, this week saw the release of Pokemon GO here in the US.  Pokemon Go is the augmented reality game for your Android or iOS device that lets you catch Pokemon in real world settings.

While my iPad 2 is to old to run Pokemon GO, my daughter grabbed it immediately for her iPhone and almost immediately caught a charizard in our family room.  Then she wanted to head out the door to the park up the street where a PokeStop was located.

While I wasn’t able to play, other bloggers in our corner of the internet were on the job, so you can read some first hand experiences with the game here:

• Gamer By Design
• Tales of the Aggronaut
• Aywren Sojourner
• Randark’s Review
• Soultamer Gaming