A 64-bit EverQuest Client is Coming

Add this to the list of things I never would have imagined; Daybreak is talking about updating the EverQuest client and servers to 64-bit.

EverQuest in 1999

Back in 1999, when EverQuest launched, there were still a lot of 16-bit apps on Windows.  I am pretty sure InstallShield still had 16-bit libraries in its config when EverQuest shipped because I had to get a exception from Microsoft for a Win-logo certification because of them.  And it was a pain in the backside.

The EverQuest team put out a Producer’s Letter today which announced the 64-bit upgrade was coming, with a target of early 2022, after the Terror of Luclin expansion goes live and has settled in a bit.

There are some other items in the letter about events coming up, ExtraLife participation, and something about server merges.  But at its age, with all of the special servers it launches, doing an EverQuest server merge is just another part of the life of the game.

I am interested to see how the 64-bit conversion goes, whether or not it will improve performance, and if this might include an improved launcher.  Maybe this will put EverQuest on the 4Games platform, a move that EG7 said was in the works for all of their titles back in May.

Even if it doesn’t change much, having a 64-bit client is likely going to be a requirement to keep the game active in the future.  At some point Microsoft will stop supporting 32-bit apps on Windows.  I am not sure how I will play Civilization II when that happens though.  Maybe that will get a remaster by then.

Can Blizzard Do Anything That Doesn’t Look Bad Right Now?

Betteridge’s law of headlines suggests that the answer to this question must be “No,” unless we consider it an open ended question.  But the easy answer is “no,” and I’ll stake that against whatever Activision Blizzard announces in a few hours at their Q3 2021 investor’s call.

In advance of that however, we can look at the cat mount.  Did you know that you can buy a cat mount now, a flying cat mount no less, in World of Warcraft.  Well you can, and it is just $25 for the “Sunwarmed Feline,” described as the “fuzziest mount Azeroth has ever seen.”

It is admittedly very fuzzy

Now, even in the best of times, somebody would have been shouting “cash grab” or complaining about a subscription game padding their bankroll with cash shop purchases.

But that has died down somewhat, and you can usually predict the regulars who are going to show up with that complaint.  We’re kind of past the outrage era of the sparkle pony and the $10 horse I think.  Another mount in the cash shop is pretty much expected now and then.

Unless, of course, your studio is being investigated by the state for having been a hostile work place since forever ago and senior staff… who were already leaving rather regularly… begin getting the boot and even the CEO has to take a temporary cut.  Oh, and your studio is basically living off of nostalgia for games launched 15-20 years ago.

When that happens doing anything like adding a new mount to the online store is immediately greeted by rage.  How dare you continue to conduct business as normal!

I mean, look at this headline over at Massively OP:

Tell us how you really feel…

Not that I am holding up Massively OP as a beacon of temperate games journalism… I think one of the biggest arguments in favor of video games being art is the amount of ink spilled over opinions, and their site is driven by opinion as much as any… but a year ago that headline would have just been World of Warcraft releases a new cash shop mount and would have had maybe 20 comments split evenly between grumbles about corporate greed and joy about the cool new kitty.  Now the pitchforks and torches are out.

And that is pretty much the reaction to everything.  If they let somebody else go, change some NPCs name, cover up some cleavage, or remove a suggestive joke or emoji the crowd is angry because they aren’t doing enough, they are doing the wrong things, they should be focused on something else, or they are just doing some window dressing rather than fixing the main problem, take your pick.

And even things that might otherwise seem good get the veil of suspicion draped over them.  It is hard not to think that the whole WoW Classic Season of Mastery was a quick attempt to shore up Q4 2021 revenue and win some goodwill by feeding us some more nostalgia.

Even when the press release announced that Bobby Kotick had asked the board of directors to to cut his compensation, my gut reaction was to wonder aloud if they said yes.  Everything they say, everything they do, is under the microscope, so if the press release just says “asked” I want to know the response. I don’t want to hear that he asked, I want to hear that it was done.

This is what happens when people feel you have betrayed your trust, when you private reality turns out to be kind of shitty compared to your public persona, when you prove once again that corporations are not people so cannot be our friends, ever.  Our relationships with them are purely transactional and if we see them any other way we’re just kidding ourselves.

Of course, in the middle of all of this, are a lot of actual people who do the work that makes Blizzard go, most of whom probably just want to do their job in a safe environment where they can be themselves.  This has to be a miserable time for them.

But they have to move forward, the company has to move forward or a lot of people will lose their jobs, maybe jobs that they really love, jobs that they have worked many years to get to, and even if corporations done care about the individual, “Blizzard Lays Off Staff” would be another blow of a headline.

So I wonder what the other side of this looks like.  Ion Hazzikostas has an interview over at Venture Beat about trying to move forward.  Because they have to move forward, fixing things and shipping products, or they all go home.

And outrage has an expiration date, unless you keep feeding it, which has been one of the Blizzard problems; we keep getting new revelations.  The end doesn’t come until all the bad stuff comes out in the daylight.

There is a temptation to compare Blizzard to Riot, which went through its own series of damning revelations about being an incredibly hostile place to work if you weren’t a meat eating white hetro male.  The headlines for them dried up pretty fast after the initial revelations, though the state of California is still on them about working conditions.  The state will keep going until it stops getting complaints.

But Riot’s audience feels a little different than Blizzards.  Not that there isn’t toxicity in any large, popular online game, but League of Legends has a reputation in that regard above and beyond the likes of WoW.  And during the time when Riot was in the headlines they remained at the top of the monthly SuperData chart… I miss that bit of monthly insight… so the bottom line didn’t seem to be hard hit.

So I suppose we’ll see later today with the investor’s call how hard Blizzard is getting hit when it comes to the bottom line, though how much of that is outrage at the company and how much is the fact that Blizz just hasn’t been delivering much new in a while will still be up for debate.

Seventeen Weeks of World War Bee

We are coming up to the end of the fourth month of the war this week and things carry on.

Somebody put together an overall report to try and capture how much both sides in the war lost in October.  It sums up to 17.5 trillion ISK, with the Imperium losing 11.5 trillion and PAPI suffering just shy of 6 trillion ISK in losses, no counting four Keepstars that failed to generate kill mails.

To put that in perspective, the September MER reported that a total of 33.6 trillion ISK was destroyed across all of New Eden.  If the parties to the war alone lost more than half that amount in October I am sure something will be wrong if Delve isn’t at the top of the destruction list when we get the October MER.

Not included in that was an Imperium loss reportedly valued at over one trillion ISK early on this week when somebody in Shadow State unanchored a corp Sotiyo in MO-GZ5 without warning, destroying all clones and killing all builds in progress in the engineering structure.  The fitting of the structure indicated that it was being used to build super capitals and apparently there were a bunch of Wyvern super carriers in build at the time.

There is a policy about only trusting structures held by the alliance or executor corp thereof, but since the drifter invasion back in June 2019 the coalition has enforced an access control list policy that means you can dock up and use any structure held by any member corp, so people don’t always check the ticker.

Also, that we’re pulling down structures isn’t a good look as the invaders take more of the region, though we do still have a lot of structures hanging about waiting for somebody to attack them.

In better news for the Imperium, old partners from the past and former neighbors in Period Basis, Red Alliance has joined in the war on our side, deserting PAPI to renew ties that go back to The Great War against Band of Brothers.

Red Alliance info

They currently live in the southeast of null sec in the Insmother region, where they hold 40 systems.

Unfortunately, swapping sides not only surprised PAPI, it also apparently surprised some of their members as well, and about a third of them jumped ship.

Red Alliance info a day later

Also, since then all of their space has been taken, so they HELD 40 systems in Insmother.  They only have two left as of this writing and I expect that number to drop to zero soon.  But they can come join us in Fortress Delve.

Meanwhile, reports are in saying that The Army of Mango Alliance has left the PAPI coalition as well, pulling another five thousand characters out of the blue donut of alliances attacking us.

The Army of Mango Alliance info

On the comedy front, we managed to catch Vily in an ECM burst interceptor and podded him, only to find out he was flying such an expendable ship in a 2.6 billion ISK pod.

And, despite the war, both sides got together and killed a potential competitor to the Tranquility Trading Tower in Perimeter.  Some things transcend war… like ISK.

Delve Front

Operations in Delve carry on.  After taking all the ihubs in the W-4U1E constellation last week, PAPI’s attention turned towards the next constellation down the line, LSC-4P, where they again successfully rolled up all the ihubs.

They then turned their attention towards the YX-LYK constellation, adjacent to NPC Delve and the path to Aridia, which the reinforced.  However, when those timers came up PAPI passed once again… they’re now being referred to as PassPI… declining to contest those timers.  That might have been related to a bubble wrapped present we left them in the in game to the constellation.

On the gate in 6Q-R50

That was only 87 bubbles, far shy of the 149 that apparently is the allowed limit that was discovered at YZ9-F6 earlier in the month.

Having formed, PAPI turned their attention to the OK-FEM constellation.  We followed and a brawl erupted.  In the fight they managed to destroy the ihub in 9GNS-2.  However all of the ihubs in the YX-LYK constellation were saved and the battle report showed a fairly even exchange of losses across the battle.

Battle Report Header

Small fights and entosis fleets continues throughout the balance of the week, with PAPI reinforcing the rest of the OK-FEM constellation and most of the F-I56R constellation, but losing two ihubs in the previously conquered LSC-4 constellation.  The Delve ihub map ended up looking like this at the end of the week.

Delve ihubs – Nov 1, 2020

Small fights… at least relative to the record setting Keepstar brawls…  over ihubs and timers continue to be the meta in Delve for now.

Other Locations

Period Basis remains mostly in PAPI hands now.  Red Alliance isn’t going to be able to move into their old home any time soon.  But having taken most of the region PAPI now has to hold it, and the Imperium has been busy reinforcing TEST ihubs down there, even taking back the ihub in the key system of TCAG-3.

Likewise, taking Querious means holding Querious, and the Imperium has been slipping in to retake ihubs there as well, stitching up a line of them leading into NPC Delve.

Northwest Querious – Nov. 1, 2020

Time spent defending there is time not spent attacking Delve.

There there is TEST space itself.  Systems in Paragon Soul are repeatedly reinforced and over in Estoteria the SIG from The Bastion remains a thorn in TEST’s side as they continue to hold out in the systems they took several weeks back.

Esoteria – Nov. 1, 2020

Qicia from The Bastion was on The Meta Show this past Saturday to talk about why they went there after Fountain and the situation they face, reporting that TEST’s attempts to retake those ihubs and kill the Fortizar they have diminished over time.  PandaFam, which is doing the heavy lifting elsewhere, is not inclined to help TEST defend its backfield from these sorts of pin pricks, so The Bastion carries on with their policy of making TEST jump clone home to defend timers.

My Participation

After a week off I was in for some fleets over the course of the week. Operations were generally on a much smaller scale.  In fact, about half the time PAPI didn’t bother showing up.  But I was part of the the defense of YX-LYK and the subsequent brawl mentioned above, during which I lost a Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I, so I will add that to my tally of losses so far.

• Ares interceptor – 11
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 3
• Drake entosis battle cruiser – 3
• Purifier stealth bomber – 2
• Guardian logi – 2
• Malediction interceptor – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis ratting battlecruiser – 1
• Scimitar logi – 1
• Bifrost entosis command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

As I mentioned on a post last Thursday, the big fight at FWST-8 renewed two Guinness World Records for the game.  The battle saw 8,825 players involved over the course of the battle, with 6,557 playing concurrently at its peak, breaking the records set at 2014’s “Bloodbath of B-R5RB” and in 2018’s “Siege of 9-4RP2” respectively.  Links to the press releases are in that post.

As for the war in Delve, the assumed strategy of PAPI is to take ihubs, hold them for the required time in order to be able to deploy a cyno jammer (35 days if I recall correctly) and, only then, work on reducing most of the structures in the system.  Or at least the Keepstars.  We still have a Keepstar in 49-U6U in Querious, and that like be the first system PAPI is able to cyno jam.  We will see what happens then.  I suspect it will involve warp disruption bubbles, that being the new meta.

The weekly peak concurrent users went up a bit this past Sunday.

• 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

However, that seems as likely to be due to the Crimson Harvest and other Halloween related events as anything.

And so we head into another week.

Related posts from last week:

• INN – World War Bee: Week 17
• PCGamesN – EVE Online’s World War Bee 2 and the terrifying power of bullshit
• New Eden Post – Infrastructure Hubs in Delve Start to Fall
• INN – BRAVE: We’re In Delve Now
• INN – Witness Me!
• INN – The Butterfly Effect

The Apology

The cynical side of me was betting that Blizz would just ignore this and hope it went away.  And, given that there were 40,000+ hardcore cheering fans inside the convention center and about 40 protesters outside as the opening ceremony began, they probably could have pulled it off in the short term.

Instead, the first thing that happened was J. Allen Brack got up and read his apology for what happened.  You can read the text here.

Reading from the teleprompter

As one would expect, the reactions to this were many and varied.  Ars Technica called the apology vague.   Massively OP put the word “apology” in quotes, so I guess they were not buying it.  But they have taken a hard editorial line against Blizzard.  I don’t recall them putting in little editorial apologies for covering other badly behaving companies like Riot.

Others seemed to take the apology as enough.  SynCaine declared victory for the protest.  They certainly got a response.

My own reaction remains somewhat mixed.  The apology was actually fairly vague, though this was a speech at a fan even and not a courtroom elocution, so it was probably too much to expect a rehash of every detail.  Brack said he was sorry for what happened and didn’t shift blame or claim extenuating circumstances.  He didn’t say that the Chinese or Bobby Kotick or whoever made him do it or go the NBA route and try to cast himself as a hero by going on about on how he talked the Chinese down from an even harsher penalty.  He didn’t mention China or Hong Kong at all.  The only thing he did seem clear on was that Blizzard did not live up to the standards to which it claims to aspire.

But what are those standards?

You have to parse things carefully to figure out what he was sorry for, and even then it is pretty opaque.  He said Blizz was too fast to pass judgement then too slow to respond to the outcry that judgement caused.  I think the latter at least is correct.  Going more than a day made things worse certainly.

As for not living up to the purpose of the company, there was some hand waving about bringing people together across the world through video games.  The promise was to do better on that as well, though I am not sure what better or worse really looks like.

He did not announce any specific changes either, nor hold up a “Free Hong Kong” sign, nor put the flag of Hong Kong or the guy walking around dressed up as Winnie the Pooh up on the big screen behind the stage.  Going openly and loudly against China was all that would appease some people, and that was never going to happen.  Blizz was never going to jump into the political ring.

And he didn’t let Blitzchung, or the two teams that were banned for showing support for Hong Kong, off the hook.  Their suspensions stand, and I am okay with that.  There were rules about that, Blitzchung knew them, knew he would likely face sanction, and chose to disobey them for a higher cause.

Blizz, in my opinion, still has to penalize him for what he did, because he did do something wrong and he knew it.  Blizz rescinding the ban would just send the message that it is okay to bring your politics into the tournament.

Most people seem worked up about the ban because they support Blitzchung’s message.  I am sure those people would be find suspending somebody who said something that didn’t align with their world view, which is the typical free speech hypocrisy we see every day.  Blizz isn’t the government.  They don’t have to allow free speech in their tournament.  So as long as Blizz applies bans in such circumstances independent of the message, I think they’re acting correctly.

It would be different if Blizz were to go after somebody for political statements they made on their own time or tried to lecture people about the situation in Hong Kong.  That would be a whole different kettle of fish.  But participating in their tournaments on their dime you have to play by their rules.

Given that, I am not really sure what the promise to do better really means.  I guess it will mean being consistent with a six month ban for similar violations, applied regardless of message, that taking away prize money earned is wrong, and that penalties should be more slowly deliberated on and more quickly communicated. Maybe?  As anybody who has watched (and understood) the show BoJack Horseman knows, apologizing or feeling bad about what you’ve done doesn’t matter if you don’t change your behavior.  So is that the behavior change?  If not, what is?

For the most part I liked that Brack got up first thing and spoke about this issue, rather than ignoring it or downplaying it or waiting until after 5pm on a Friday to post it to their site.  And the apology had some good aspects, as I mentioned.   But the promise to do better didn’t leave me all that reassured as I am still not clear as to how that translates into action going forward.

So it is complicated.  I am no fan of China.  I haven’t forgiven then for Tienanmen Square.  They are a totalitarian, repressive regime and are engaged in ethnic cleansing as I noted previously.  Letting them into the WTO was a mistake to my mind, given how the abuse it.  The idea has always been that a free market will infect China and force it to liberalize. (Though the real plan has always been simply to make money, because we’re like that.)

The problem is that China doesn’t have a free market.  Every company in China operates only at the sufferance of the government and must be expected to act as agents of the government on deemand.  Any foreign company that does business in China has to partner up with one of those government approved entities, give it control in a joint venture, and be ready appease the Chinese government on demand.  So I would have rather Blizz avoided that altogether.  But that ship sailed years ago and they are hardly alone in doing business in China and to sanction them while giving Apple, Google, GM, the NBA, or whoever a pass doesn’t work for me.  And should you even punish a US company when many of its main competitors are owned in part or in whole by companies like Tencent and NetEase? Doesn’t that essentially help China more?

This is me thinking too much about the whole thing.

If after the apology you’re still on the #BoycottBlizzard bandwagon, I get it.  I don’t think you’ll get what you want, and you really aren’t doing anything to hurt China, or even support Hong Kong, but if Blizzard disappointed you then withholding your support is reasonable.

As for my own reaction, I didn’t rush off to renew my WoW subscription or pre-order Shadowlands.  My financial support remains withheld for now.  But it seems much more likely that I will do both when I feel the time is ripe.  I still have a good amount of time left before I need to do either.   This incident won’t stand in my way, but I will remain sensitive to how Blizz may behave in similar circumstances going forward.  And I wonder who will push the boundaries next and how Blizz will respond.  They could still mess this up.

Mining My Way Through the Crimson Harvest

Basically, I wanted the Gila SKIN.

Actually, I didn’t even want that to start with.  What I started out wanting to is just to see the sky boxes.  At EVE Vegas, at the presentation about The Agency & Events, one of the bits of info was that Crimson Harvest would be using the new graphics tech that had previously been introduced in Abyssal deadspace.

I had to go see that, so I grabbed a high sec alt and put her in a Venture and headed off to see what was what.

I chose a venture because the presentation also said that the event had mining as well as combat and it was just easier to grab the mining ship, which I had to hand.

A Venture in the Crimson Harvest event

The Venture, however, was a little light for the task.  It could mine away, but the rats that spawned in the harvest sites were a little too tough for it, so I upgraded to a Procurer.  I used the hardened null sect semi-bait fit that the coalition was pushing back when we moved into Delve.  It was already proof against Blood Raiders.  I brought that out to mine and shoot the rats.

Procuerer out in the Crimson Harvest

This worked out pretty well, and I mined and shot my way along for a while.  I got the cerebral accelerator at 50 points pretty quickly, and then started in towards the Astero SKIN, since that was only 150 points.

The points roll in pretty fast.  Or fast enough, anyway.  You get 10 points for every 500 units you mine, and another 10 points for every Blood Raider event ship you blow up, and 10 more points if you blow up a boss Blood Raider.  The Procurer could hold three and half loads of ore before having to unload and could handle most of what the Blood Raiders could throw at it.  I did learn to be careful flying too close the banana of doom.

The Banana of Doom in the background

Straying too close to the banana spawns a double helping of Blood Raiders, more than my little Procurer could handle right off.

This got a little hairy by the banana

Fortunately there was a citadel in most systems where I ran the event, so I would just warp off, tether up, and repair.  And, on warping back, I was generally far enough away from the remaining crowd of Blood Raiders that I was able to pick them off as they hove into range.

The Gila SKIN became my goal, though it required 350 points, which seemed a long way off from the 150 mark.  But I kept going.  I wanted the SKIN primarily because I have this idea that I am going to skill up this alt to run higher level Abyssal deadspace sites.  Right now she runs level one sites in a Caracal, but I would like to be able to run at least level three sites and the Gila is favored for that and high.  And I can’t fly a ship without a SKIN.  Well, except for the Procurer I guess, but SKINs don’t apply very well to ORE ships.

So I plodded along, mining, shooting up Blood Raiders, and looting their wrecks.  They drop a lot of Agency drugs, which should serve me well later.  Some of them are on the list for Reavers.

Soon than I would have thought I ended up with the Gila SKIN.  I didn’t do it all in one go, but over a couple of sessions it went by fast.  Then there was the Machaeriel SKIN at 650 points, but that seemed so far away.  But I was getting lots of nice loot from the wrecks, so I kept going.

650 didn’t take that long at all.  I had a nice run where somebody dropped in with an Orca and invited me to a fleet and boosted for me.  That sped up mining and extended my the range of my strip miners.

I hit 650 points and it didn’t feel like it took all that long.  After that there was only the Avatar SKIN at 1,000 points, which seemed a long way away.  But I wasn’t doing much else… actually I was only half paying attention to the mining and able to do other things on the computer… so I carried on, eventually capping out and earning the final SKIN.

A thousand points wasn’t all that hard

I don’t have an Avatar, and I doubt I ever will, but I can give that SKIN to somebody or hold onto it until it goes up in value.

Overall I found the event pretty mellow.  I did like how they setup the sites for this event.  Rather than the random sites in this system and that there were just two sites in every system.  One was Crimson Harvest Fields, which was where you went to mine but could also shoot up some structures to trigger a Blood Raider spawn.  And then there was the proximity spawn from the banana.

The other site in each system was the Crimson Gauntlet, which was a combat oriented site.  I got out another character and ran through those for a bit just to try them.  I used my heavy missile event Drake.

Ghostbird SKIN Drake in a Crimson Gauntlet site

The first time I went out I realized I was hardened against totally the wrong damage types, which led to a moment of drama and a heavily scarred Drake.  But once I went back and fixed my resists the Drake was pretty solid with the usual tactic of putting drones on the frigates and missiles on cruisers and up.

The fact that there was one of each site in every system meant that if one site got crowded or was worn out, I could just move over a system or two and find a fresh site.  There also seemed to be multiple instances of the Crimson Harvest Fields sites running in the same system at times.  Access was via an acceleration gate, so that was completely possible.  I would leave to unload then come back and find the situation different.  Then go for an unload run again and find wrecks or people who were there the first time but missing the second.

And the art of the event was very nice.  I took a lot of screen shots, some of which I have piled on to the end of this post.  Click on some them to see them full size.  They are intense.

Overall, a decent event.  I actually got a second Gila SKIN with the second character, it being easy enough to just get that done.

Anyway, while the event doesn’t have much time left to run, you could easily pick up the Avatar SKIN over the weekend without feeling like the event burned you out.