36 Weeks of World War Bee

The was is extending into numbers that make be want to try and break it down by quadrants.  It would be nice if it fit into four nice, 9 week segments.  But it doesn’t really.  Not that there have not been phases of the war, they just don’t slice up into nicely symmetrical time segments.  Instead they are all messy and overlap.

We have, for example, been in the “invading Delve” phase since last October, which started with the PAPI attempts to get a Keepstar in NPC Delve, which succeeded on the fifth try.  We finished the two months of “PAPI titans trapped in M2-XFE” phase in week 35 and PAPI has taken that as a cue to move to what seems to be a “declare victory and hope the Imperium will take the hint and leave” phase of the war.

Talking in Stations declares victory

I suspect that they will be disappointed.

Not that there wasn’t some bad news for us.  PAPI continued to sblow up our structures, including two Keepstars this past week.  More disturbing to me was a notification I saw mid-week.

Elvis has left the building

I wondered if ElitistOps had once again been cast out of Goonswarm for some transgression as they had back under the reign of Darius Johnson. (SA post about it if you want some gory history from over a decade ago.)  Them coming back to Goons at the start of the war had been a big boost and they got up to the antics for which they have become rightly know, like Madcows stealing a Leviathan from an unfueled TEST POS back in week three of the war.  That earned them a lot of leeway on ping abuse.  The word is that they have gone back to Snuffed Out to get back to their more normal mode of operation and that the split was amicable.

But their leaving hasn’t slackened the pace of blowing up unwary Legacy pilots as they try to evac out of their old territory.  Things like this Erebus packed full of goods gating through null, or this Ark caught in Brave’s station hauling fuel, a Vagur being used to carry, or even this Impel being used to transport a lot of value in a cheap hull.

Not that PAPI hasn’t had their own kills.  Despite repeated warnings… I think there is a ping about every hour about this now… Imperium capital pilots keep jumping to the bait cyno beacon in AJI-MA, including a Ragnorak and a Wyvern recently.  The carnage continues.

Delve Front

As noted above, Vily has been preaching a “Victory in Delve” message of late.  TEST went so far as to expend the effort to take all of the territorial control units (TCUs) that they could in Delve just so the region would look to be all theirs on the null sec influence maps.

Unfortunately, TCUs don’t really count for much and have generally been ignored by both sides, as ihubs demonstrate the practical control of a solar system.  Also, they like to ignore that big patch of Goonswarm space in Delve, the fly in the ointment of their propaganda.  And when you zoom out the blue donut needed to get to the gates of 1DQ1-A becomes apparent.

Which isn’t to say they don’t control most of the ihubs as well, as the ihub map from DOTLAN shows.

Delve – Mar 14, 2021

PAPI now needs to defend those ihubs, which the Imperium has been out reinforcing regularly, even flipping a couple over the course of the week.  They have their conquest, but we still live in the big blue circle on the map and can range out from there to make them work to hold it.  Their progress on territory has stalled.

As noted, they have been reducing our structures in systems where they have held the ihub for long enough to put up a cyno jammer.  They killed the Keepstars in M2-XFE, S-6HHN, 5-CQDA, and ZXB-VC under the umbrella of cyno jamming safety.  They clearly do not want to fight Imperium titans after losing badly at M2-XFE.

Meanwhile, on the weather front, the second Delve metaliminal storm has moved off to Period Basis, leaving the region storm free.  In order to celebrate, the RNG brought an incursion into the YX-LYK constellation, so we have that to deal with as well.

Other Theaters

In Querious Brave continues to hold onto their new living area.

Querious – Mar 14, 2021

That is good news for them as their old space in Catch is on fire and will soon be naught but ashes and memories.

Catch – Mar 14, 2021

Brave is down to just three of its old core systems.  They managed to defend GE-8JV, where their Keepstar and much of their assets in the region are located.  It seems unlikely that The Initiative and its allies are going to let Brave unachor that Keepstar in peace.

Likewise, Immensea continues to fall as the last few Legacy systems are under siege.

Immensea – Mar 14, 2021

And, while I haven’t been covering Impass, another Legacy region, that has begun to fall as well, with The Initiative finding an low power Fortizar in the region that ended up being quite a loot pinata, including a cache of dreads, which got scooped up.

Then there is Esoteria, where The Bastion has continued to take systems now that TEST has mostly given up.

Esoteria – Mar 14, 2021

The Army of Mango Alliance (AOM), which left the front lines back in week 17 of the war, and which had promised TEST that they would help them defend Esoteria, has begun to scoop up systems of their own in the region.  Perhaps they will better defend the systems they take that the ones TEST has left behind.

My Participation

I did get out into the war a couple of times this past week.  The highlight was a series of running battles to defend several Fortizar timers in Delve.  We were successful across the board despite starting off down in numbers.  I was in the early Ferox fleet and lost my ship in PUIG-F when the FC’s client disconnected and we were left hanging in space for a minute.

Feroxes Firing

However, I was able to reship and joined the reinforcement Cerberus fleet to get back in the fight, flying a Scimitar this time around, which survived.

Cerbs moving fase

I ended up on a few kill mails, so proof of life for yet another month, but had to add another hull to my loss list, which now stands at:

• Ares interceptor – 15
• Malediction interceptor – 7
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 6
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 4
• Drake battle cruiser – 4
• Scimitar logi – 3
• Purifier stealth bomber – 3
• Guardian logi – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

The Imperium switched their structure timers settings, an operation that takes 30 days to process in order to keep alliances from flipping them for immediate tactical gain, to be in Euro time again.  They were in US time, which meant that structure fights tended to be very late indeed for the Euros.  With the flip the Euros will now be on the front line and US time zone players can filter in as reinforcements if a long fights erupts.

CCP kicked off the Federation Grand Prix event which had tasks and rewards, including their first Expert Systems give-away, a package that boosted player skills up so that they could fly an interceptor hull, which makes the event much quicker/safer.  This seemed to me to be a much more viable path than trying to sell these packs, but we’ll see how CCP runs with them as time goes on.

And then here in many parts of the US Daylight Savings Time started.  I don’t know if that hour’s shift will impact the weekly peak concurrent player count, but for this week it was down a bit again, sagging right to the 35K mark.

• Day 1 – 38,838
• Week 1 – 37,034
• Week 2 – 34,799
• Week 3 – 34,692
• Week 4 – 35,583
• Week 5 – 35,479
• Week 6 – 34,974
• Week 7 – 38,299
• Week 8 – 35,650
• Week 9 – 35,075
• Week 10 – 35,812
• Week 11 – 35,165
• Week 12 – 36,671
• Week 13 – 35,618
• Week 14 – 39,681
• Week 15 – 40,359
• Week 16 – 36,642
• Week 17 – 37,695
• Week 18 – 36,632
• Week 19 – 35,816 (Saturday)
• Week 20 – 37,628 (Saturday)
• Week 21 – 34,888
• Week 22 – 33,264
• Week 23 – 33,149
• Week 24 – 32,807 (Saturday)
• Week 25 – 31,611
• Week 26 – 39,667 (Saturday)
• Week 27 – 34,989 (Saturday)
• Week 28 – 34,713
• Week 29 – 35,996
• Week 30 – 38,323
• Week 31 – 38,167
• Week 32 – 37,259
• Week 33 – 35,886 (Saturday)
• Week 34 – 35,626
• Week 35 – 35,379
• Week 36 – 35,085

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 36
• INN – The Saga of Delta Squad – Part II
• NEP – WWB2: The Story So Far
• INN – Into Deepwater
• INN – The Imperium Strikes Back
• INN – Legacy’s Move to Delve
• INN – BoB is Back: A Tale of Ideologies

Blizzard in the Badlands

I saw this ogre shout while out in the Badlands and had to laugh.

Tell us how you really feel…

At this moment there is almost an aura of nostalgia about this being the top gaming news item a few months back now that we have Covid-19 and uncertain future ahead of us.

(I named my hunter pet “Blitzchung” back then and saw no need to change it.)

Reflections on the Eve of the 20 Year EverQuest Anniversary

I was dreamin’ when I wrote this, so sue me if I go too fast
But life is just a party and parties weren’t meant to last

-Prince, 1999

What to say, here at the 20 year mark of the game?  There is so much emotion and history all packed around the game, the way it has changed, how the company has treated it, how the players have held onto it, and where it stood in the context of the different times along its twenty year life.

EverQuest stuff I have about the house

I’ve told the tale many times before how hearing about EverQuest through the people playing TorilMUD, some of whom were developing EQ.  I’ve mentioned passing up on the beta.  And I’ve recounted how, on March 16, 1999 I stopped by Fry’s on the way home, picked up a copy, got home, installed it, and was instantly hooked.

It was like no other game I had ever played.  The heavy influence of TorilMUD was clear to me, but that added just a touch of familiarity to help seal the deal.  But EQ was different all the same.  In having to adapt to a 3D world, much had to change.  And it was the open world, the misty edge of Qeynos hill, the far reaches of the Karanas, the dangers of Blackburrow, the sewers under Qeynos, and the fact that the place was full of other people that made it new and different.

But here we are at the 20 year mark and I decided to dig around to see if I could come up with something new to add to what I may have written before.  The blog has been around long enough that I have posts for the eighth, tenth, thirteenth, fifteenth, and other anniversaries.

A splash screen of expansion splash screens at 17 years

Me dispensing a few words about Norrath on March 16th is about as reliable as the Queen’s Christmas Message.

Honestly, for a game I have barely played very much over the life of the blog… save for that burst of activity around the Fippy Darkpaw Time Locked Progression server back in 2010… I have a lot of posts about it.  It was, at the last accounting, the fourth most common category on the blog, and it doesn’t even get a boost in its count from the month in review posts.

Chart celebrating 15 years

Anyway, I hit upon the idea of maybe dredging up some context for the time around the game’s launch.  After all, in my brain one of the great divides in the world is before/after the launch of EverQuest.  In its way, it changed everything.

Remembering my Computer Gaming World time capsule post from late last year, I got it in my mind to go check out the March 1999 edition of the magazine. EverCrack is what they called it back then and they couldn’t open up servers fast enough for a stretch.  It had 200K players before the year was out.  It must have been a big deal, right?

The archive site was up and running so off I went.

There was nothing on the cover of the March 1999 edition, but it must have gotten a mention inside, right?  Or maybe not.  The .pdf archives are scans of the magazine, not text, so I couldn’t do a search for the name, but there was naught to be seen.  Even the Pipeline section, which tracked the game release schedule didn’t have an entry for EverQuest. (But Duke Nukem Forever was listed, with TBD as a target.)

Well, in the magazine business the date on the cover generally represented the expiration date, so a March edition might represent copy from January or early February at the latest.  So I went to April and May.

Nothing there.  No mention.  Not even ads. (There is an advertiser index at the end of each issue at least.)  Come June there had been enough lead time that EverQuest starts to show up in the listings of the mail order software ads at the back end of the magazine.

And it wasn’t as though their audience hadn’t heard about online games.  The sporadic user popularity poll (in going through the archive it felt like a few different people put CGW together so things appear or disappear from one month to the next) had Ultima Online and Merdidian 59 on the list in April of 1999.

April 1999 RPG Chart

It wasn’t until later in the year that EverQuest started to get mentioned, though in one issue they refer to the company running it as Sony, Verant, and 989 Studios in three different places.  Things were complicated before it all got rolled up as SOE.  There is a column in September 1999 issue (spurred by a mention of the topic in Time magazine) about the sale of virtual goods.  There is even a Brad McQuaid quote in that about virtual worlds.

EverQuest doesn’t even get a mention on a CGW cover until June of 2000 (EverQuest Expansion!) and doesn’t rate its own cover until the December of 2001 issue, to coincide with the Shadows of Luclin expansion.

Firiona Vie in all her mounted glory?

By that point the game was past 400K subscriptions and was the king of the still fresh MMORPG genre.  Certainly SOE didn’t buy their way into that coverage, as there still wasn’t an ad for EverQuest in the magazine.

But the real irony here is which game got the CGW cover the month before.

World of Warcraft hype three years early

That’s right, more than two and a half years after EverQuest launched and more than three years before it would launch, World of Warcraft was the cover choice for the magazine.

I realize that CGW wasn’t the be-all end-all of computer gaming magazines.  PC Gamer managed to get an EverQuest review in by June of 1999.  MetaCritic has some other early reviews noted, so there was some traction, though not as much as you might imagine.  But the CGW archive is handy and looking at the covers and reviews, they were clearly keen to cover anything that might be popular.  There are a lot of familiar games in those pages.

But it is a reminder that EverQuest wasn’t the hot property at launch that some part of my brain thinks it was.  That popularity came later.  While I remember going to Fry’s to buy it the day it launched, I cannot remember how I knew that was the day.  I was aware of it through the TorilMUD connection, so maybe that was it.  And its growth over the first few months was very much a word of mouth affair.  I played on the first night, then came into the office to tell some co-workers that they had to get this game.  They then spread it to other friends.  Eventually it came around and I would run into people and find that they were playing already.

A Nine Year Timeline for EQ

After a while the game started bubbling up other places, it started being called EverCrack, virtual worlds and virtual economies started to be a topic of discussion, and songs about lost corpses started to make their way around the web.

1999 EverQuest Trivia

It was different for later games from SOE.  You can see PlanetSide mentioned on that EverQuest cover.  Star Wars Galaxies started getting mentions in CGW well before its launch.  And come the EverQuest II launch in 2004, there is a scantily clad Antonia Bayle on the cover of the December edition, along with a six page ad spread inside (plus another two page marketing co-op ad from nVidia and a two page spread for Star Wars Galaxies).

EverQuest II on the cover of CGW – December 2004 Issue

Jeff Green was in there with coverage of the game titled The Once and Future King.

If only.

By that point MMORPGs (and gold sellers) were well represented in the CGW ads, with Dark Age of Camelot, Saga of Ryzom, The Matrix Online, City of Heroes, and a little game called World of Warcraft all represented.  There is some irony in how the magazine’s focus turned around, with WoW getting a cover before EQ, then EQII dominating the launch cycle coverage against WoW.

But SOE arrived there, with the assumed natural heir to dominance in the MMORPG genre, because of the way EverQuest took off.  EverQuest and Norrath are the natural foundation of the house that Smed built.  EverQuest remains viable and expanding 20 years later because of what it sparked in so many people back when it launched.

Ultima Online came first, EverQuest II looks better, World of Warcraft took the crown, but nothing so far has sunk what EverQuest started back then.

Maybe some parties were meant to last.

And speaking of lasting, this also happens to be post number 5,000 on the blog.  It seems fitting that it should coincide with the EverQuest anniversary.

Others on the topic of 20 years (I’ll be returning to that first link in another post):

• PC Gamer – How is classic MMO EverQuest still alive after two decades?
• PC Gamer – The story of EverQuest, the MMO that changed everything (read this for sure)
• PC Gamer – Our 7 favorite stories of death and adventure from 20 years of Everquest
• Fandom – The Weird and Wonderful History of Everquest
• PC Gamer – Looking back at the researchers who tried to understand EverQuest
• GameSpot – EverQuest 20th Anniversary Trailer
• EverQuest II – Celebrate 20 Years of EverQuest with Double Experience and Status!

Project Gorgon on Steam

The day arrived earlier this week as Project: Gorgon, long in an alpha that you could play for free, finally moved to Steam.  It is early access, to be sure, but it has arrived.

A New Logo for Steam

For a very small project that took three tries to get a Kickstarter funded, this is a pretty big deal.

Yes, I expected it would get there sooner.  I’m pretty sure Eric Heimberg expected it to get there much sooner as well.  After all, the post-Kickstarter plan was to get to Steam some time in October.

October of 2015.

Welcome to the problem with Kickstarting a beast as complicated as an MMORPG.

At least the promise was only to get onto Steam.  Other ventures in which I have a minor stake, Shroud of the Avatar, Camelot Unchained, and Star Citizen, have all blown past their promised ship dates.  Shroud of the Avatar might hit something that looks like a finished project by the end of this year, but Star Citizen continues to recede from the horizon while Camelot Unchained is shooting for a beta at some point this summer.

So the two people pretty much baking an MMO on their own project looks pretty good by comparison.  Sure, it still doesn’t have a Wikipedia page yet (Project Gorgon there references an US Navy missile program) but there it is on Steam at least.

Of course, there are something like 35 games arriving on Steam every single day, threatening to bury us all in a bottomless pit of derivative crap that should never see the light of day, so getting there isn’t exactly the leap over the high bar it was once upon a time.  But, woo hoo, go indie dreamers all the same I guess.  (Just don’t quit your day jobs.)

I am in a mood to bitch, aren’t I?  Well, I shall complain no more… or not as much… for this should be a happy thing, something to celebrate.  You can actually find Project: Gorgon on Steam and read all about it.   And, honestly, it sounds better than I remember.  The bullet points are all good.

• Each non-player (NPC) you meet has their own goals and interest, and reward players that choose to be their friend.
• You can drop items on the ground, and other players can pick them up. What’s so great about that? Imagine laying down a trail of literal (virtual) breadcrumbs to guide your friends (or lure your enemies) into the woods.
• Shopkeepers keep inventory, so you can buy items that other players have sold to them. Want to help out new players? Sell your cast-off items to the shopkeeper in the new player zone and watch the new players go to town.
• If you are on fire, you can jump into a lake to put it out. This type of mechanic can have a subtle effect on your strategies, especially when you are fighting a fire mage!
• You can inscribe messages onto items, write books, and even leave notes for other players. Make your name as an in-game poet, or pronounce your greatness to the world!

Some of that sounds like classic MUD stuff that has gone missing in the more modern revisions of the genre.  Likewise this batch sounds interesting.

• Battle Chemistry: Create huge explosions, inject yourself with mysterious mutagens or program a pet golem!
• Unarmed Combat: Grapple and control enemies using a situational-aware combo system that varies based on where you are and what day it is.
• Animal Handling: Tame animals and train them to become ferocious fighters. Then breed your best and sell their offspring to other players.
• Necromancy: Seek out corpses and graveyards to raise an undead army. No graveyard around? Well, there are always the corpses of your friends.
• Cow: Got turned into a cow by that boss? That sucks. But learn some kicks and how to stampede, and you’ll be right back out there kicking grass in no time!
• That’s just a few! There’s also Sword Fighting, Combat Psychology, Staff Fighting, Sigil Scripting, Mentalism, and more.

In addition, there is a reasonable list of goals to achieve before the game moves from Early Access to Live, like fleshing out the content, which currently runs up to level 70, to level 100.

All in all I am impressed.  And if you act now, you can buy it on Steam for 25% off the normal $40 price.  Or if you are like me and paid back in 2015, there is a Steam key waiting in your in your email.  I got mine.

Project: Gorgon moving to Steam has long been my stated trigger point to start playing, and I am going to get right on that… once I am done with Rift Prime.

Okay, I’ll probably get Project: Gorgon loaded up on Steam and take a peek but, in my dotage, I have become mostly single threaded when it comes to fantasy MMORPGs.  I kind of just want to play one at a time, enjoy myself as the world washes over me, then change up when I am starting to tire.  And for the moment that world is Telara.

From Alola Pokedex to National Pokedex in Pokemon Sun

I did it.  I finished the Alola Pokedex in Pokemon Sun.

Alola Pokedex at 100%

It took a bit of work.   I ran the final series of missions that send the player off to catch the ultra beast Pokemon.   The missions send you out to catch five different ultra beasts, along with having to engage in three trainer battles to prove you are up to the task, before you are done and rewarded with 1,000,000 in the local currency for the effort.

I did the missions and caught the five ultra beasts.  The catch is that there are seven ultra beasts, two of which only appear in Pokemon Sun and two which only appear in Pokemon Moon.  So, in order to get all seven, which is required to complete the Pokedex, you have to trade… trade or own two copies of the game or, in my case, use your daughter’s copy of the game.

So I grabbed my daughter’s 3DS and looked into doing the missions on her copy of Pokemon Moon, since she had no interest in doing so herself.  She finished up the main story back in December, long enough ago that she couldn’t remember if she had defeated the Elite Four.  It turned out she had, though with a really odd team… odd to me anyway… so I ended up trading my team over to her game to run through the missions.

Once I completed them I traded my team back to my copy of Pokemon Sun, then swapped two of the Sun-only ultra beasts for two of the Moon-only ultra beasts (you end up catching multiple of both) and the Alola Pokedex was finally complete.  You only need 300 for that, but I hit 301 because of the Magearna download, which you get by using the QR scanner.

I then went to the GameFreak office in the game and got my trainer book stamped to mark the achievement.

Achievement notarized

After that I figured it was time to unlock the National Pokedex.  The ritual for that in past Pokemon titles generally involved going to speak to the local tree-named Pokemon Professor to get them to unlock the National setting on your Pokedex.  But when I spoke to the shirtless Professor Kukui, he was still giving me the same line he had last time I spoke to him.  There was no mention of a Pokedex upgrade.

After poking about a bit more, I headed to Google to search up the answer.

As it turns out, there is no National Pokedex within Pokemon Sun & Moon.  This was a bit of a let down.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to attempt it, but being denied the opportunity stung a bit.

I was instead directed to Pokemon Bank, Nintendo’s Pokemon cloud storage application.  It had been upgraded back in January to integrate with Pokemon Sun & Moon, something I mentioned in a Friday bullet point post.  The app has its own rather sparse site here.

How things line up now

One of the features I did not notice… and which really wasn’t called out all that well… was the integration of the National Pokedex option into Pokemon Bank.  That is all you get with Sun & Moon.

I have Pokemon Bank, because of course I do, so I went in to check it out.  If you launch it, choose Pokemon Sun or Moon, and go to the menu, there is now a Pokedex option.

Accessing the Pokedex

This went off and catalogued what I had collected in Pokemon Sun and gave me a total.

My total for Pokemon Sun

That gave me a total of 330 Pokemon, both caught and seen.  I had moved some of the legendary Pokemon from last year’s distributions last year over to the game along with a few of the starter Pokemon from past titles in anticipation of a National Pokedex hunt.  330 isn’t bad, but the total is over 800, so I was far from there.

Pokemon Bank also lets you view the Pokemon in a table view by generations if a simple number isn’t enough for you… it certainly isn’t enough for me.

First gen Pokemon, Bulbasaur through Mew

As you can see, I moved some over, but Pokemon Sun & Moon also included a lot of Pokemon from past generations as well, which was a good thing I think.

In all it was kind of neat… though after using the new box interface in Pokemon Sun & Moon, navigating felt very awkward… but was I really going to have to move everything to Sun & Moon to finish the National Pokedex?

But then I wondered… since it didn’t actually say this anywhere… if this was actually a cross-title National Pokedex.  If I had it scan other Pokemon Bank compatible titles, would those sum up into a single National Pokedex?  So I had it scan Pokemon Y and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, and the answer is yes, it is a single cross-title National Pokedex.

My totals across the three titles

So there it is.  Across the three titles I have caught 512 types of Pokemon and have seen 650.  That gets me a little closer to the past 800 number of the total National Pokedex.

Pokemon Bank also gives you some stats as well under Adventure Records.

Wild Pokemon Encounters

You can tell the game I worked on the Pokedex hardest.

This also means that if I want to work on the National Pokedex, my best option is probably to go back to Pokemon Y and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and finish up the regional Pokdexes in those games.

My Pokemon Y stats… and see, National Pokedex built-in

The problem there is that going back to earlier games means giving up whatever UI and control improvements the current generation has introduced, and Pokemon Sun & Moon really went far in improving controls, especially for simple things like handling Pokemon in your storage.

Still, that might be a thing to pursue.  I am pretty much done with Pokemon Sun since I don’t do battles and such.  Catching them all is generally the end of a title for me, and I haven’t caught them all yet in the past versions.  So it is play older titles or wait for the next new title to be announced.  The thing is, I think I already know what the next title will be.  But that is a topic for another post.