The February EVE Online Economic Report Brings New and Updated Graphs

I was starting to watch the calendar, wondering when we would see the February Monthly Economic report.  It can run later in the month, but when there is less than a week left you begin to think CCP might have forgotten.

EVE Online nerds harder

But they did not forget.  In fact, we got some new data with the February MER, so lets go take a look.

Bounties, Commodities, and ISK

As we have seen over the last few months, since the big NPC bounty nerf in null sec, NPC commodities have take over as the largest ISK faucet into New Eden.  February was no exception.

Feb 2021 – Faucet end of the chart

However, there was not a lot of insight as to what that commodity market meant.  There is 32.1 trillion ISK that had been, in the past, somewhat hand waved.  Like much of wormhole life, it was a bit of a mystery to many of us.  But now we get a chart dedicated to just commodities.

Feb 2021 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

That chart isn’t very easy to read unless you click on it to view it full size, but the blue line is Sleeper Components, the red line is Overseer Personal Effects, the teal line is Triglavian Data, and the brown line is ESS Bonds.

The first two of those are wormhole item, though you can see the big boost in Overseer Personal Effects because they were part of the holiday even in other areas of space.  Triglavian Data are drops from running Abyssal pockets, which has seen its peaks.  And ESS Bonds are what you get from robbing an ESS bank, which you can see was very popular for a bit when the mandatory ESS nerf hit, then fell off dramatically soon thereafter when people either defended their ESS banks or just stopped ratting.  But that was the CCP plan I am sure.

There is, of course, no regional data for these numbers, and not just because most of it is from wormhole space.  The NPC commodities are drop that you have to go turn in at an NPC station to collect the ISK, and they don’t count as an ISK faucet until they are turned in.

We also got an update to the top sinks and faucets chart, which now tracks the top ten sinks and faucets.

Feb 2021 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

Commodities were added and skills were broken up into “skill market” and “skill purchase,” a division I do not quite understand.  Maybe the latter is skills purchased from your character sheet rather than via the market interface.  I am not sure.  It is also in a new format that is less easy to read unless you click on it to view it full size.

NPC bounties, diminished though they be, still tally up by regions.  There were 25 trillion ISK in NPC bounties paid out in February, down from 28 million trillion ISK in January.  The sinks and faucets data even lines up more closely than usual with the regional data this month.

The top regions for NPC bounty payouts were:

1. Vale of the Silent – 1.75 trillion (PandaFam)
2. The Kalevala Expanse – 986 billion (PandaFam)
3. Insmother – 981 billion (FI.RE Coalition)
4. Perrigen Falls – 898 billion (PandaFam)
5. Oasa – 889 billion (PandaFam)
6. Tenal – 861 billion (PandaFam)
7. Metropolis – 857 billion (Minmatar High Sec)
8. Deklein – 835 billion (PandaFam)
9. Fountain – 827 billion (Imperium)
10. Branch – 778 billion (PandaFam)

Once again, the northeast of New Eden null sec, where PandaFam (Pandemic Legion, NCDot, Pandemic Horde, and Fraternity) is where a lot of the bounties are being paid out, it being far from the war in the south of null sec.  Vale of the Silent jumping to the top may relate to the battles between some of the local, smaller groups and Fraternity, which saw the latter seize most of the ihubs in the region and then drive up their ADMs to make them defensible.

Surprising me a bit again was Metropolis showing up in the top ten.  The next highest high sec area is Lonetrek, which would sit in 15th place with 627 billion ISK in bounties.  Must be a lot of mission running going on around there.

Destruction

As mentioned, there is a war on, and the MERs for December and January showed record levels of destruction in Delve thanks to the battles around the M2-XFE Keepstar, with and 74.83 trillion and 55.34 trillion in destruction game-wide respectively.

Things settled down in February, as the hellcamp of the logged off PAPI super capital fleet carried on.  Total destruction game-wide was down to 38.43 trillion ISK, with Delve again topping the top ten list.

1. Delve – 4.37 trillion
2. The Forge – 2.31 trillion
3. Lonetrek – 2.30 trillion
4. The Citadel – 1.90 trillion
5. Sinq Laison – 1.77 trillion
6. Metropolis – 1.40 trillion
7. Catch – 1.37 trillion
8. Vale of the Silent – 1.32 trillion
9. Domain – 1.02 trillion
10. Querious – 996 billion

However, Delve was less than a quarter of what is was in January, and not even a fifth of what it was in December as the attackers lost their momentum after the big fights.  High sec regions dominate the list, though Catch, where Brave space was under attack, Vale of the Silent, which Fraternity grabbed, and Querious, with Siberian Squads moving in, all made the top ten.

Production

On the flip side of destruction is production, and February saw 104.6 trillion ISK equivalent produced in New Eden, down about 5 trillion ISK from January.  The top ten regions were:

1. The Forge – 22 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 10 trillion (Imperium/PAPI)
3. Lonetrek – 6.23 trillion (High Sec)
4. Sinq Laison – 6.09 trillion (High Sec)
5. The Citadel – 5.20 trillion (High Sec)
6. Domain – 4 trillion (High Sec)
7. Heimatar – 3.52 trillion (High Sec)
8. Fade – 3 trillion (We Form Volta)
9. Oasa – 2.74 trillion (PandaFam)
10. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.73 trillion (PandaFam)

Delve carried on in second place, but was down a bit, having produced 11.7 trillion ISK in January.  Vale of the Silent, purged by Fraternity, dropped from the top ten (it was 11th), while Fade, primarily home to We Form Volta, showed up in 8th position.

Trade

The regional stats sum up to 583 trillion ISK in value for February, down from 675 trillion ISK in January, which might reflect a reduction in the need to replace ships after the huge losses around M2-XFE.  The top regions for trade were:

The Forge – 407 trillion (Jita)
Domain – 53.5 trillion (Amarr)
Sinq Laison – 20 trillion (Dodixie)
Delve – 16.03 trillion (Imperium/PAPI)
Lonetrek – 14.06 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
Metropolis – 11.11 trillion (Hek)
Heimatar – 9.81 trillion (Rens)
Essence – 5.17 trillion (Gallente High Sec)
The Citadel – 4.81 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
Tash-Murkon – 4.10 trillion (Amarr High Sec)

The Forge, home of Jita, tops the list as usual, though it was down 60 trillion ISK compared to its January total.  But all regions in the top ten were down noticeably and, while the list of regions remains the same, Delve fell below Sinq Laison, its trade numbers having dropped almost in half compared to January.  Again, the slow down in the war and the reduction in the need to replace losses no doubt factors into that.

Mining

The price of minerals continued to rise to yet another all time high in February, though the slope of the rise has tapered of relative to the spike of the last few months.

Feb 2021 – Economic Indices

I remain a bit dubious of that chart still, if only because when I am in Jita I don’t see anything like that sort of slope for any of the minerals I check.  But I am not sure how that number is calculated.

Meanwhile, in the regional stats, the actual value of ore mined fell again, dropping from 20.4 trillion ISK in value to 18.94 trillion ISK.  That may be related to Fraternity being busy with Vale of the Silent, as their core region, Oasa, fell out of the top ten.

1. The Forge – 1.15 trillion
2. Metropolis – 1.14 trillion
3. Sinq Laison – 943 billion
4. Domain – 926 billion
5. Lonetrek – 754 billion
6. Heimatar – 642 billion
7. Everyshore – 619 billion
8. Tash-Murkon – 601 billion
9. The Citadel – 592 billion
10. Derelik – 473 billion

I do not even have to mark the regional affiliation as they are all primarily high sec regions.  The age of the AFK Orca has conquered the list.

So it goes for another month in space economics.  As always, you can find more charts and download the raw data over at the dev blog.

In the mean time, CCP has just promised a “significant update to industry” set to launch in April.  That means we won’t see any changes to the MER until it comes out in May.  We shall see how significant they really are.

SuperData and the Opening of the Coronavirus

March has become the “stay at home” month for many of us, even in jurisdictions where there has been no official order to do so.  Events have been cancelled, movie theaters shut down (drive-ins are back in vogue though), and we are not going out to do many things we might have otherwise.

And so home activities have gone up.  Netflix and other streaming services are seeing a boost in activity as are video game platforms.  Video game usage is up, Steam has seen a record number of people connected, and XBox Live has fallen over a couple of times due to the sudden surge.

And into this comes the SuperData Research digital revenue chart for February 2020.

SuperData Research Top 10 – February 2020

In February things were starting up around Covid-19.  I was in Portland, Oregon in the middle of the month and once we got back events were starting to get cancelled and the movie box office was already starting to tank.

Unfortunately, we cannot tell much from the main SuperData chart, as it is just a ranking without numbers.  The gaps between games as well as any change for a particular game, is unknown and unmarked unless titles change positions or falls off the list.

So we see the usual suspects on the chart.  At the PC end, the same top four remain in the same order.  CD:GO made it to fifth as Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot had its debut month on the chart then fell off.  World of Tanks surged a bit with some updates and events in February.  World of Warcraft stayed on the list despite troubles reported last month.

And Fortnite returned to the PC end of the chart.  Last month, as Bhagpuss pointed out, Epic Games was bitching to anybody who would listen that the SuperData numbers had to be wrong, though they declined to supply their own numbers and wouldn’t tell us where they thought they should be on the chart or even if they had the data to make that assessment.  Basically Tim Sweeney being Tim Sweeney.

As with the PC end of things, the console and mobile columns of the chart, aside from some jockeying for position, remained mostly made up of the same players, with the same titles topping the lists.  Jedi: Fallen Order and Pokemon Go both made their way back on to their respective charts.

So it will be interesting to see if, come the March numbers, if any of those mostly static lists change any.  Will something new take the public by storm?  Animal Crossing: New Horizons maybe?  Or will people remain set with their old standbys and just spend more time and money there?  Word is that Pokemon Go is already making bank.

The only detail we get is in the bullet points that SuperData provides with their posting.  The opening one did say that digital revenue was up:

• Digital games spending totaled $9.2B in February, up 4% year-over-year. Much like in recent months, mobile revenue (up 16% year-over-year) made up for lower console and PC revenue (down 22% and 6%, respectively). A release schedule largely devoid of AAA games resulted in limited spending on console games. In comparison, February 2019 featured the launches of major titles like Anthem and Apex Legends, which contributed to the year-over-year revenue drop across the free-to-play (down 49%) and premium console segments (down 17%).

But that was a small bump and mostly in mobile, while the PC and console were down.  But SuperData is not unaware of what is going on in the world and the next three bullet points were related to, or might be related to, the current world situation.

• The spread of COVID-19 had a limited impact on gaming habits in North America and Europe in February, but this is changing. The most significant containment efforts like business shutdowns and travel restrictions did not ramp up until March. Many titles have since had an influx of players and spending as consumers have turned to games as one of the few entertainment options available.
• There are signs Japanese consumers gravitated to games over other activities in February. The Japanese versions of Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle and Monster Strike both saw jumps in revenue and user numbers. Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle in particular had its Japanese revenue more than triple from $24.8M in January to $78.0M in February.
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive monthly active user numbers climbed to 24.0M, their highest levels ever. Player counts for the nearly eight-year-old title have trended upward consistently since the switch to a free-to-play business model in December 2018. An update to the game in late November 2019, which featured a battle pass and cosmetic character skins, has resulted in monthly revenue that is approaching the game’s previous all-time peak in July 2017. Despite the renewed interest in the title, its surge in player count may not be sustainable given the runaway success of Call of Duty: Warzone and the pending release of Valorant, an upcoming free-to-play shooter from Riot Games.

I expect that next month their analysis will include their own interpretation as to how COVID-19 has impacted the market.

As has become the custom for this post, I will add the NPD February video games chart.  As always, NPD is US only, combines PC and console sales, and doesn’t always include digital sales.

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 (2)
2. NBA 2K20 (6)
3. Grand Theft Auto V (5)
4. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (1)
5. Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (75)
6. Mario Kart 8* (8)
7. Ring Fit Adventure (9)
8. Madden NFL 20 (3)
9. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate* (7)
10. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (4)

* Digital sales not included

The following number is the position the game was in last month.  I have tended to ignore that number, but this month I saw that Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 had jumped up from 75th on their list, implying that NPD keeps much more detail than they share.

I will be interested to see how this chart changes next month.  If it were physical sales only, it might go completely weird, but as it combines some digital with physical, we might just see Nintendo titles disappear from the mix even as Animal Crossing jumps up onto the SuperData chart.

The remaining bullet points from SuperData:

• A free giveaway of The Sims 4 for PlayStation Plus users led to the title’s console players outnumbering PC users for the first time (2.5M vs. 2.2M). The title has long earned the lion’s share of its revenue from the sale of in-game content, so the giveaway presented a low-risk way to attract new audience members and potentially convert them to spenders down the road.
• The social casino title Coin Master achieved its highest earnings ever ($87.1M) as it rose to eighth place in the mobile revenue charts. The game from publisher Moon Active combines slots gameplay with town-building elements. It now vastly out-earns other mobile social casino titles like Slotomania and DoubleDown Casino and celebrities like Jennifer Lopez have appeared in ads for the title.

And so it goes.  We shall see what the March numbers bring and if certain incentives… Blizzard has a 100% xp bonus going for retail WoW right now for example… change anything.

Traveling to The Scarlet Desert

It has been a low key goal of mine to hit level 50, the original level cap, in EverQuest during this, its 20th anniversary month.

Of course, I don’t want to do that on one of their retro servers.  A live server will do me just fine.  And that there is an experience boost active on live servers through the end of the month is all the better.  I want to be a tourist.  I want to see the sights, not get in there and grind away.

This goal was prompted by the fact that I seemed on a pace to get there, so why not keep on track to make it happen.  All I seemed to have to do was go visit the daily hot zone quest giver on the Plane of Knowledge every day and run the quest he gave me.

The loading screen tip told me about him

Bonus hot zone experience on top of anniversary bonus experience was popping me up a few levels every day.  There was also a nice piece of equipment as a reward and it got me out into the world to see zones I had not visited in years, or may have never visited.

Hunting tigers on Kunark

And then I took the level 45 quest that sent me off to the Scarlet Desert and things began to go awry.

Norrath is a big place.  As we saw from the infographic they put out for the 20th anniversary, there is a lot of space and a lot of places in EverQuest.

That is a lot of walking

This is not helped by the fact that I haven’t really played EverQuest actively at level in the current content since some point in 2001.  That was 18 years ago.  Maybe my playing into some of The Serpent’s Spine content when it launched might count, but even that was back in 2006, at the start of the life of this blog, now nearly 13 years in the rear view mirror.

Even the Plane of Knowledge, the PoK, which came in with the Planes of Power expansion back in 2002, is in my mental list of “that new stuff.”

Basically, the game has grown far beyond my ability to comprehend, and I have forgotten a lot of even the bits I used to know.

Still, I was managing okay.  The daily hot zone quests for levels 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 were all pretty much in Antonica or Kunark, which meant I could find them by just looking at the in-game atlas and tracking back to a nearby zone that had a teleport from the PoK.

But the quest for level 45 was set in the Scarlet Desert, and I had no idea how to get there.  That was Shadows of Luclin content so, for me, it might as well have been on the moon. *cough*

Yes, it is on the moon

Actually, I went to the Paludal Caverns for one of the earlier quests, but that wasn’t too difficult.  I generally go to Zam, look up the zone, then look up the connecting zones to see if I know how to get to any of those, then the zones that connect to those, by which point I have usually found a landmark or a place with a portal on the PoK.

No so with the Scarlet Desert, the path to which you can see nestled in on the right side of the map, as well as on the south east side below the Twilight Sea. Easy points of reference, like Shar Vahl, the city of the Vah Shir cat people, were multiple hops away, leaving it looking like a long way to walk.

While fiddling around I discovered… or rediscovered, since I am sure I saw it at some time in the past… I guess that was about five years ago at another anniversary… the zone guide interface.  This lists out the many zones in the game and will attempt to chart a path to your destination.

A great idea!  I got it set to direct me to the Scarlet Desert and set off to follow the wisp.

Destination Set

The route seemed to be okay.  It did not include the need to go through an NPC, which I discovered five years back, breaks the pathing… and possibly your ability to follow the path if the NPC is no longer there.  The wisp can be comical at times, following a strict angled path along roads at times, while at other times lighting off and heading straight up almost vertical slopes at others.

One of the things I forget about EverQuest is that you can run up cliffs that would be impassible in other games.  But the wisp knows where you can go up.  Going down, at least without taking damage, can be another matter.  I didn’t have any life threatening falls, but I took some hits going down steep slopes.

Everything was going find until I zoned into Grieg’s End.  The first room in the zone had three aggro level 54 mobs.

Welcoming committee

I had also learned, as I leveled up, that while my mercenary was practically Superman when I was in my 20s, by now he was starting to show some weakness.  At level 41 he couldn’t simply take on three mobs at that level.  He wasn’t going to be able to chip away at them successfully even with heals from me. (Which drew aggro and led to more fun.)

With Grieg’s End seeming impassible for now, I gated us back to the PoK to look into another route.  The guide had actually offered up three and I had just taken the first one.  I excluded Grieg’s End from the list and took the next one offered.

The Fungus Grove route

This one routed me through several routes to the Twilight Sea and, from there, to the Scarlet Desert.  As before, the trip started smoothly enough, until I arrived in the Fungus Grove.  The mobs there were not as high level as Grieg’s End, but still a bit higher than my merc and I.  We dealt with a few solos, but accidentally got embroiled in a mass of attacking mushrooms that was clearly going to overwhelm us over time.  I decided to leave the my merc to his fate and just run for the zone line following the wisp.  But the wisp led me to a dead end… which was soon my dead end.  I was down and back in the PoK again.

Thinking there had to be an easier way, I went to Google to search for routes.  Somebody wrote that the easy way to get there was via the Guild Lobby off of the PoK.  There was a portal there that would drop me just two connections from the Scarlet Desert.

Unfortunately, one of the zones was a level 90+ area and I was one-shotted before I knew it and back in the PoK again, this time down a level.  I forgot that you could lose levels.

Time for another route.  If longer is safer I’d be okay.

Going via The Grey

The route updates as you go along, so that was a few zones into the trip.

This route, again, started out swimmingly.  The main problem along the way, was that the Chelsith Reborn zone was about on level with me and full of aggro mobs.  It also has that classic EverQuest feature/flaw where the mobs are all on the same pathing, so my merc and I ended up being stuck in one spot for over 30 minutes fighting off a seemingly endless series of adds that would wander up and join the fight.

On the bright side, Chelsith Reborn was also flagged as a hot zone, which meant bonus experience.  I recovered level 41, made it to level 42, and got a hair into level 43 just standing around slaughtering elementals and raptors during that time.

As lucrative as that was exp-wise, I did want to move along.  So I made it to the cave that zoned me into The Grey and started carefully looking around there.  It seemed safe.  I threaded my way around the dangers marked on the map when I suddenly noticed that the little breath meter was up, the one that you get when you’re under water.  The zone was airless.

I died.  And lost level 43.

I called it a night, but returned the next day to give The Grey another try.  I got my level back and padded it a bit in Chelsith Reborn, then got to the zone line determined to make a straight run through The Grey to the Scarlet Desert.

At about the halfway point, some mobs chasing me, and my air almost gone, I figured I was not going to make it.  You need to be going faster than I could manage to cross the zone in time.  Fortunately I had my Gate spell on my spell bar and I was able to land safely back in the PoK.  Again.

Having used the three recommended paths to the Scarlet Desert, I decided to pull back and see if maybe it would recommend something different if I specified the Twilight Sea instead.  And, as it turns out, yes, it does.

Headed for the Twilight Sea

That was a long path.  The run through the Katta Castellum was especially long, though it was probably worth the trip just to see it.  It is an example of the EverQuest dev team not being afraid to build on the epic scale.  And the swim across the Twilight Sea leveled up my swimming skill nicely.  But best of all, I arrived safely in the Scarlet Desert.

The Scarlet Desert welcoming committee

Now I just had to find five of the mobs I needed to slay in order to complete the task.  That can be a chore, and I wasn’t having much luck.  On the big mesa in the zone I spotted one of the mobs named however, and decided to give it a shot.

These guys, up on the mesa

There things went south.  I didn’t get just the one mob I wanted, he was linked with two others.  Still, a triple pull seemed within the bounds of our capabilities.  They were all +/- 1 level to us.

However, for no particular reason I could see, I had a moment of merc berserk as he suddenly ran off and collected up every other mob in sight, leaving me high and dry with the three original mobs who proceeded to beat me into the sand.  And there I was, back in the PoK again.

So I ran back.  Visited the castle.  Improved my swimming some more.  Then started in again on my mob search.

I tried the same mob again, thinking it might have been a glitch.  It wasn’t.  My merc just goes crazy up there.  Fortunately I stood a ways back this time and was able to zone out before my merc died.

Time to hunt elsewhere for mobs.

Around the mesa I did find similar mobs and eventually some of the ones I wanted started to spawn.

A sun reaver at last

I found my five, got my nice bit of gear, and ended up just shy of level 45.  Not bad.  It would have been better if I had been able to do it all right the first time.  But this way I did see more of Norrath… my zone achievement count went up quite a bit… even if it took me three evenings to get it done.

And then I had to gate back to the PoK because to get the quest for the next day I had to go back and speak to the hot zone guy again.  So I will be traveling some more.

But the real iron in all of that… the damn quest is called “A Simple Task.”

Rift Prime Leveling After the Patch

Or patches.  There were a few patches applied to Rift Prime last week, though the main one on Wednesday was the one that was probably of most interest.

Downtime Tiger caught mid-dash, please don’t let the server crash

That patch was the one set to address the quest line experience issue.

Up until the patch, if you set about to follow the various quest chains that lead you around Telara, you would rather quickly find the quest levels out pacing you, even if you diligently picked up every quest, carnage or otherwise, and spend time beating down every invasion or rift that came your way.

This is one of those delicate balance things.  I’ve oft complained about the other side of the coin, where quests are so rewarding that the quest chain in a zone goes gray and becomes trivial before you’ve reached the end of the story.

Anyway, this is one of the issues that came up almost immediately and seemed like something Trion could verify pretty easily, but it still took them two weeks to do something about it.  I know after a couple of decades in software that no fix is ever as fast or as perfect as you think it will be, but my gut says they should have tweaked this sooner… on a retro server having the right feel and pacing is pretty critical to maintaining your base… and then move on to add the tool that allows them to adjust the dial on various aspects of experience gain later.

Still, it did get done, and my initial observation was that it seemed to be about on track.  But I thought I would give is a more thorough look.  So I rolled up an alt.

On Rift Prime you are limited to two characters.  The stated reason is to force interdependence, which means that they don’t want you having all the trade skills on a single account.  That seems like a short-sighted move to me.  You truly dedicated would likely roll up and play through with one of each of the archetypes, so you’ve cut their options in half, while the very much WoW-inspired crafting system is going to make the market suffer from the usual problem of over-production of trivial items that one has to go through in order to level a trade skill.  How many tin longswords can the market absorb?  Not that many at all.

After rolling a cleric I decided my other character should be a warrior.  I had rolled one up before the patch, but did not get too far with him, so I deleted him and re-rolled another warrior with the same name, which led to a sort of odd series of inheritances.

The new warrior showed up in the world with some of the settings from the old version set.  I had tinkered with the number of hot bars and dropped out of the default guild with the first guy, and when I re-rolled and entered the world I found that those remained.  Other key settings I had to go back and click again.

Must stop those proposals

Once I got that settled I started off down the quest chain, all the more quickly for having done it so recently.  I was out of the starting area and down the path for not too long before I hit level 10 over at Kelari Refuge.

Level 10 already

The quests did seem to be keeping me in their level zone as I continued around Freemarch along the north side of the zone and through the quests and their various quirks.

And to you!

I kept running along until I got to the back end of the zone and level 16.  I felt that the tripling of quest experience had done its bit, that you could follow the quest chain and not fall behind.  I ran after rifts now and then when they were handy, and did a zone event along the way, but those don’t seem to reward enough experience to upset the apple cart, save for the daily “close some rifts or kill some rift creatures” quests.

So, problem solved, at least tentatively.  I can’t speak for how it goes beyond Stonefield, where my main is playing, but so far so good.

Of course, that isn’t the only problem Rift Prime is facing.  While queues have diminished to almost nothing even at peak times, random bouts of lag are still an issue.  I can go for a while and have no problem at all and then for a stretch NPCs don’t respond, quest don’t update, and even stages linger past their time for several very noticeable seconds.  And when that delay goes longer, it is often followed by a crash and a request for the player to respond.

Send in the report or send in the report… or cancel I guess…

And you can tell when the crash is hitting a large group of people, because then the report fails to go through as well.

Sorry, no report from you

I love me some cryptic error numbers, and there is no re-try, so whatever my computer had to report fell by the wayside.

I am sure this has been a voyage of discovery for the folks at Trion.  We shall see what was learned if they give this thing another try in a couple of years.