The September MER Shows EVE Online in a Post War Mining Boom

CCP was out early this month, getting the September MER posted before the end of the first full week.

EVE Online nerds harder

Unfortunately we have another MER with a missing region, and I don’t just mean Pochven, which has yet to make the cut.  This time around Period Basis did not get included.  Regions have gone missing in the report in the past and that is apparently a small enough error in CCP’s eyes that they won’t bother with a revision.  Period Basis isn’t a huge region, so its absence won’t tilt the numbers dramatically.  Just know that it isn’t there.

Mining

I expect that we will see Delve in the top five for September and that overall mining value will go up with the changes we saw in last week’s update, where ice availability was doubled and Mercoxit spawns were increased.

-From my August MER Review

I made that minor prediction last month and it seems to have come to pass.  It is nice to be right now and then, even with a gimme prediction.

Overall mining output jumped from 21.95 trillion ISK value mined in August to 32.77 trillion ISK value mined in September.

When it comes to the most productive regions, Delve did indeed bubble up into the top five as expected, landing in the number two position.

1. Genesis – 2.15 trillion
2. Delve – 1.80 trillion
3. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.69 trillion
4. Vale of the Silent – 1.51 trillion
5. Fountain – 1.39 trillion
6. The Forge – 1.38 trillion
7. Metropolis – 1.11 trillion
8. Domain – 1.07 trillion
9. Malpais – 908 billion
10. Syndicate – 874 billion

The odd one on the list is Genesis, an empire region with a mix of high and low sec systems.  According to Reddit, Dock Workers and some allies are setting up a mining empire there.  But overall null sec regions now represent half the list, a change from June 2020 after the big mining nerf, when 9 of the 10 top regions were high sec.

Meanwhile, mineral prices kept to their decline, no doubt helps along with the boost in Mercoxit spawns which should have helped the morphite shortage.

Sep 2021 – Economic Indices

Since the value of minerals mined is a function of the market price, 30 trillion ISK in ore mined in September is still less ore than 30 trillion ISK mined two years back when the price was very low.  We will see if the increased output can keep pace with the falling prices.

Production

Things still have not kicked up much on the production front since the big industry changes back in April.  It still doesn’t make sense to produce many of the ships whose requirements were changed, capital ships especially, so most people are getting by on what they had before the update.

September 2021 – Production vs Destruction vs Mined

There was a bit of a post-change surge as it looked like there was going to be an epic end battle to the war, and that has carried on somewhat with the Imperium rebuilding its regions while Brave and TEST try to settle down into new space far from Delve.

CCP showed production value overall at 101.98 trillion ISK, up about 5 trillion over August.  I expect that might settle down a bit once the post-war rebuilding effort cools off.

The top regions for production in September were:

1. The Forge – 19.26 trillion
2. Delve – 11.47 trillion
3. Lonetrek – 7.44 trillion
4. The Citadel – 7.38 trillion
5. Vale of the Silent – 7.28 trillion
6. Sinq Laison – 3.95 trillion
7. Fade – 3.85 trillion
8. Domain – 3.07 trillion
9. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.99 trillion
10. Placid – 2.81 trillion

As always, The Forge, Lonetrek, and The Citadel all feed the Jita market and are always in the top five.  Delve was up slightly in amount, but otherwise stuck in second place due to the rebuilding effort in the region.

Destruction

The was was over in August, but there was still plenty of cleanup work going on… I was on two Keepstar kills in September… the war was mostly over and so the destruction level started to trend down a bit, dropping to 31.41 trillion ISK, about 5 trillion down from August.  The top regions were:

1. The Citadel – 2.01 trillion
2. Vale of the Silent – 1.74 trillion
3. The Forge – 1.66 trillion
4. Delve – 1.35 trillion
5. Metropolis – 1.34 trillion
6. Lonetrek – 1.31 trillion
7. Genesis – 1.09 trillion
8. Esoteria – 1.07 trillion
9. Sinq Laison – 1.04 trillion
10. Geminate – 995 billion

The Citadel is up top, being home to Uedama, the favored ganking choke point in high sec since the Trigalvians took Niarja away from us last year.  It is the place where Catalyst destroyers blow up.

According to the data in the MER, 55.8% of all Catalysts that died in EVE in September with a player on the killmail did so in Uedama. And on 34.8% of those killmails, GSF pilots got the final blow. #tweetfleet

— Noizy (@noizygamer) October 8, 2021

MiniLuv keeps itself busy.

Vale of the Silent is home to a low grade conflict, while The Forge was more ganks.

Delve is on the list, mostly due to remaining clean up and an opportunistic period during the rebuild.  You have to hold the ihub in a system for 35 days before you can start putting up Ansiblex jump gates.  Once up, travel becomes considerably safer.  During the wait for that a few groups took advantage of people gating for travel and got in some kills.

Trade

ISK keeps New Eden going, but trade was down a bit in September, ringing in at a 607 trillion ISK total, down  40 trillion from August.  The top regions for trade were:

1. The Forge – 449 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 43.55 trillion (Amarr)
3. Delve – 16.73 trillion (Imperium)
4. Sinq Laison – 15 trillion (Dodixie)
5. Lonetrek – 14.74 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
6. Metropolis – 9.27 trillion (Hek)
7. Heimatar – 7.34 trillion (Rens)
8. The Kalevala Expanse – 6.21 trillion (PanFam)
9. Vale of the Silent – 4.98 trillion (Fraternity)
10. Essence – 4.34 trillion (Gallente High Sec)

Those are the same ten regions in the same order as August, so things have carried on as before.  Some were down a bit, a few were up, but it was mostly the same.

ISK Faucets

And then there is where the money all comes from.

Sep 2021 – Faucet end of the chart big chart

That is hard to read, I know, even if you view it full size.  Somebody at CCP has much better eyes than mine if they’re making charts with such tiny print.

But the current order of things stayed about the same in September, with commodities remaining the top faucet, bringing in 35.7 trillion ISK.  NPC bounties and ESS payouts combined stayed about the same as last month, ringing in at 29.47 trillion ISK.  I suspect the Period Basis numbers would have bumped that up a bit more.

Sep 2021 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

Going into September NPC bounties and commodities were running neck and neck, and then CCP had an in-game event and commodities saw a spike as people turned in their drops.

Missing from that top ten chart are Redeemed ISK Tokens, which saw a huge spike previously, enough for that to break into the chart, knocking blueprints off the list.  Well, now that most people have redeemed their tokens, it is off and blueprints are back on.  I guess that means the chart isn’t really the “top ten sinks and faucets over time” but “this months top ten sinks and faucets and their three year history.”

For commodities, you can see how they are broken out on this chart.

Sep 2021 – Top Commodity Items Over Time

The event items fell into the Overseer’s Personal Effects line, boosting that up as the month closed out.  Triglavian Data, which are drops from Abyssal Pockets, fell off a bit during that as people swapped to the more lucrative event path.

As for NPC bounties, Delve continued its come back, topping the list for September.

1. Delve – 2.22 trillion (Imperium)
2. Vale of the Silent – 2.11 trillion (Fraternity)
3. Outer Passage – 1.45 trillion (TEST)
4. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.39 trillion (PanFam)
5. Fountain – 1.34 trillion (Imperium)
6. Malpais – 1.06 trillion (PanFam)
7. Tenal – 956 billion (Fraternity)
8. Querious – 951 billion (Imperium)
9. Oasa – 911 billion (Fraternity)
10. Tribute – 891 billion (Fraternity)

The null sec blocs are back to crabbing to prepare for the next big war.  It is the necessary prerequisite if your going to burn trillions of ISK a month in a campaign.

Related:

• CCP – September Monthly Economic Report
• Reddit – MER Discussion
• TNG – The September MER – Ship Losses
• TNG – A Look at DOTLAN Data for Sep 2021

Another PAPI Keepstar Destroyed in Delve

I woke up this morning to find that PAPI, the Snek Coalition, had finally decided to go for it again and dropped another Keepstar in NPC Delve.  This time they chose 319-3D as their target system.

This was apparently a flash drop in an attempt to take us unawares as PAPI did not stand up their own forces until the Keepstar was deployed.  That meant our early response was able to put down damage immediately on arriving without an organized resistance ready, so the first 40% of the structure was knocked down with very little in the way of time dilation in play.

By the time I got online and into the fight, the Keepstar structure was already at 42% with the timer paused at seven and a half minutes.

The timer held at 7:28

As with the Keepstar fights on Monday and Tuesday of last week, the Imperium organized fleets and concentrated on shooting the structure, ignoring the hostile ships on grid.  I was able to get into one of the support fleets that helped keep the enemy distracted while the battleships and dreadnoughts did the heavy lifting to kill the Keepstar.

Imperium dreads lined up to warp to the fight

I kept busy and got to watch for the final three hours of the five hour flight.

On grid at the fight

This fight wasn’t going to break any records, unlike the fight in FWST-8 on Tuesday, but there were still between 4,400 and 4,600 people in local for most of the time.

A count mid fight, tidi in full

There wasn’t much in the way of drama when it came to the fight.  Having done this twice already, and having had time to refine tactics and resupply, we never had a moment where the timer started counting down again or really any doubt that the structure would be destroyed.  The enemy stayed on grid to harvest kill mails, but could not stop us from winning the objective.  This did not make the enemy as happy as you might think.

Redline XIII comments in Twitch chat on INN

With the conclusion forgone, it was just a matter of time before the structure was destroyed and the battle over.

Early battle reports show that, while the ISK was heavily favored the defenders, killing this Keepstar cost the Imperium about half of what the fight on Tuesday cost.

Battle Report Header

There was, again, no kill mail for the Keepstar, so you can once again add 187 billion ISK to the PAPI side of the chart.

The server seemed stable for the most part, though at one point there was a combined bombing run that made everything stop and chug along for a bit, before resuming the slow pace of 10% tidi.

This time around it looks like CCP left the bounty payments system running.  I saw calls related to that throughout the fight.

Bounty calls piling up

CCP did say that they might leave those calls on for a fight to see how much they change server load compared to when they turned them off for Tuesday’s fight.

At the end of the fight the Imperium may have lost a lot more ships, but we once again left a Keepstar wreck in our wake.

Keepstar wreck on grid

Now we wait to see what the enemy does next.  Will they drop another Keepstar before Tuesday’s patch?  Monday is technically a holiday in the US, though not a widely observed one (Columbus Day), so some people will be off and ready to scrap.

Invaders Pass on the SVM-3K ihub Contest

This was a weeks of first for the war.  The invaders dropped their first Keepstars in Delve.  On Monday and Tuesday huge battles broke out that led to the destruction of both structures.

After falling down on that, the hostiles changed gears and achieved another first and managed to reinforce an ihub in Delve.  They went in and got the ihub in SVM-3K, which is one of the boarder systems with Querious.

SVM-3K, not too far from FWST-8

On the other side of the regional gate is 8QT-H4, the current PAPI staging system.  Thus is seems like a reasonable first target, being just one gate from where their forces are marshaled.

The sov contest for the ihub was set to kick off at 00:55 UTC.  The Imperium formed up some forces early, including a Rokh fleet led by Elo Knight, which I joined in with.  We actually jumped into 8QT-H4 a little after the 00:00 because an Imperium Fortizar left behind in 8QT was coming out for its armor timer.  We were bridged in and docked up, undocking when the time came to try and hold back the attackers.

The Rokhs undock

A short, sharp fight ensued.  Being in their staging system, the numbers were stacked against us from the start.

Fight on the Fort

The losses went against us according to the battle report, with us losing nearly 14 billion ISK while they suffered a little over 8 billion ISK in losses, though in the shadow of the fights on Monday and Tuesday, that is barely enough to mentioned.

Battle Report Header

Elo Knight managed to extract most of the fleet from the system, though some stragglers were left behind on the Fortizar, where they were safe for the time being.  We went through the gate and into SVM-3K, where we spread out to wait the impending attack.  They out numbered us sufficiently that it seemed like it would be a hard fight.  So we waited on the gate, ready to hold them off as long as we could.

And we waited

The time came, the sov contest began, and our hackers went out to save the ihub.  Meanwhile, nobody came through the gate.  As we watched, the contest went quickly… for an entosis run… our way.

The contest almost won

The invaders decided that they had better things to do on a Saturday night.  The ihub was saved and we flew back to 1DQ1-A and stood down.  Delve remains secure for the moment, though the invaders seem to be up to something this morning.  More on that later.

China Reckoning

The integrity of China was more important than [the people] in Tiananmen Square.

-Muammar al-Gaddafi, in an insightful moment

Well, here we are.

Just so you know, I’ll get to this eventually

China certainly has been in the news of late for its noxious behavior, not that noxious behavior is anything new from the authoritarian government that runs the country.  Its legitimacy is built on a foundation of things like the Cultural Revolution and Tienanmen Square.  And while they’ve ditched most of the economic aspect of Mao’s teachings, they’re are still big on the repressive state thing.

As a rule, the government of China has also been pretty intolerant of any criticism, express or implied.  For example, if another country mentions Tibet or meets with, or even allows into their territory, the Dalai Lama, they can expect an official diplomatic protest from China.  Make a map that doesn’t show Taiwan as part of China or, even worse, refers to Taiwan as a country and you can expect an angry response from China.

Internally, in addition to the usual level of arbitrary police state activities, there is the Orwellian social credit system, which will soon be mandatory, that rewards pro-government activities with perks, while denying things to people doing things that the government does not like… which includes merely being connected to anybody the government does not like.  A social network that rewards you for ostracizing non-conformists… more so.

More recently they have been sending their citizens to “re-education” camps for the crime of being Muslim and battling a now nearly 18 week long series of protest in Hong Kong over an extradition law that would allow residents of the special administrative region to be extradited to China proper, where the rule of law is what the government says it is at any given moment.

That is the foundation on which the last week or so has been laid.

Then there is the trade war.  Our president, who says trade wars are good and easy to win, has been actively pursuing one with China for some time now.  The president has been quite vocal about China, saying we do not need them and that US companies should go elsewhere.  Of course, he also promised China he wouldn’t mention the protest in Hong Kong either, so not a lot of moral high ground there. (He also praised the strength of the Chinese government for gunning down students in Tienanmen Square back when it happened, so he never had any moral high group to begin with.)  But he has highlighted the long simmering perception that US companies are shipping jobs to China in exchange for higher profits.

Then in the last week or so we had things like John Oliver… don’t mention him in China… reporting on China’s one child policy, which is now a two child policy, double the children allowed but all the same government abuse remains, and the South Park episode “Band in China,” which went after US companies willing to do just about anything to make China happy in order to make more money.

That brings up to last Friday when the General Manager of the Houston Rockets Daryl Morey tweeted a message in support of the protesters in Hong Kong.  This drew an immediate response from the Chinese government, saying the tweet had outraged fans in China which cancelled all future interactions with the team.

By Monday the NBA was apologizing, the owner of the Rockets expressed his regret, and Morey himself was on Twitter apologizing for causing any offense.  The NBA is in full on appease China mode.  NBA fans were not happy about this and started holding up signs that would no doubt offend the Chinese government, so the NBA began ejecting fans from games.  There is even a fun video you can find of somebody holding up a pro Hong Kong sign on the public sidewalk outside of the NBA headquarters being told by the security guard that they would have him arrested if he didn’t move along.

We’re used to companies like Apple or Google doing what China says for years.  They’ve both been pulling apps from their stores in China that the government does not like, including one that tracks police activity and another that merely allowed access to a new source that mentioned the problems in Hong Kong.  But now China has moved to dictating what can go on at NBA games being played in the United States.

And Blizzard stepped right into this already flaming bag of dog shit on Tuesday when they announced that the professional Hearthstone player Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai, who is from Hong Kong, would be suspended from play for one year and have all of his prize money “rescinded” for saying, “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age!” on a post game stream where he was being interviewed.  Blizzard also cut ties with the two broadcasters who were doing the interview despite neither of them doing anything beyond looking doomed by what was just said.  They knew China.

And now people outside of China are rightfully pissed off at Blizzard.

I heard the argument that NetEase runs Blizzard’s operations in China and that it was they who actually precipitated the action and released the noxious statement afterwards, but that doesn’t really matter, true or not.  Whoever did it, did so in Blizzard’s name, and Blizzard went along with it, so it might as well have all come straight from J. Allen Brack’s.  He gets the power, he gets the money, and he gets the blame.

So now we are into the #BoycottBlizzard era.

It has become a time to pressure the company to try and do the right thing.  I am not sure exactly what that “right thing” is.  I doubt Blizzard will be able to do something… will be able to do anything… that will make everybody happy.  But even the NBA stood up just a bit… or pretended to, anyway… and said they wouldn’t regulate what players or team owners said, not officially, though that still doesn’t apply to fans. (And given player and team official comments since that statement, the NBA has clearly told them what to avoid saying.  And after GSW coach Steve Kerr defended China’s human rights record, the NBA cancelled all press interaction.  No doubt they need to get all their stories straight and cleared by Beijing.)

People have been cancelling WoW subscriptions to let Blizzard know how they feel about their actions.  I have cancelled mine, putting “Hong Kong” in the text field on the exit survey.  My account still has some time left to run, and I’ll keep playing WoW Classic as that runs down, both because I paid for that time and because I hold out hope that Blizzard will do something, sooner rather than later.  Ongoing silence could change that, and worse behavior certainly will, but I’ll give them at least until BlizzCon.  They need to do something before BlizzCon or they might be looking back longingly at the Diablo Immortal announcement.  It has been suggested that they might even cancel BlizzCon.  We shall see.  Still, I have sent them the economic message, the only message that counts:  No more money from me.

That is the nice thing about a subscription based game.  You can effectively vote with your wallet.  That stings more than a petition, but you can sign that too if you want. (There are a few of those, that was just the most popular one I saw.)  Players of their free to play titles have taken to deleting their accounts, since not paying is the default behavior. (Rumors that Blizz was blocking account deletion at one point do not seem to hold water.  Somebody had a problem and it quickly turned into a conspiracy theory from what I can tell. Your mileage may vary.)

But I am not kidding myself.  I am not changing the world here.  Withholding financial support only punishes Blizzard, not China, and any real effects will likely be felt by employees, some of who are equally unhappy with Blizzard’s actions, who may end up getting laid off.  J. Allen Brack or Bobby Kotick or whoever else makes these sorts of decisions will keep their jobs.  But maybe they’ll make better choices going forward.

Remember that.  The goal ought to be to change Blizzard’s behavior.  If your goal is to destroy Blizzard, a US company largely staffed in the US by US workers, I’m not on your side. (Some people shouting the loudest were already angry at Blizzard well before this, so I am suspicious of some motivations.)  And if you’re harassing Blizzard employees, well fuck you.

One of the protest efforts has been the attempt to adopt the character Mei from Overwatch as a symbol of the Hong Kong protests, no doubt with an eye to getting the gamed banned in China the way Winnie the Pooh was.  But this might have the odd side effect of making Blizzard more likely to do what China says.  It is all the easier for the government of China to ban Overwatch if it does become a symbol, so Blizzard may be all that much more motivated to stay in its good graces.  Nothing is ever simple.

And all of effort against Blizzard does nothing for Hong Kong, which I fear is without much hope.  When push comes to shove, China will roll the tanks, as they have done in the past, before they will relinquish any control.  The government of China likes having Hong Kong, rich and successful and semi-free, as a part of their country.  It makes them look good.  But their tolerance of protests so far is, to my mind, largely a lure to get Taiwan back.  But if Hong Kong gets too far out of control, China will use force.  They play a long game, and if keeping control of what they have pushes out getting Taiwan back by another 50 years, they’ll still make that choice.

But maybe public push back on companies like Blizzard or the NBA will cost enough to make other companies put a little more emphasis on what their current customers here are worth when they considering prostituting their values… like those values out in front of Blizzard’s headquarters, covered up by employees embarrassed at the company’s behavior… to curry favor with a dystopian dictatorship that is so thin skinned that it cannot stand any criticism.

I am a cynic, yet somehow I always find room for hope.  We shall see.

Other related items:

• TechDirt
• Twitter thread of various company actions
• Contains Moderate Peril

Chaos Descending Expansion Coming November 19th with Pre-Orders Available Now

In its way it is a bit more interesting to be talking about a new expansion when I am actually playing EverQuest II pretty regularly at the moment.

Of course how I get from where I am now, which is somewhere in the Destiny of Velious expansion from 2011, to the new stuff isn’t at all clear to me.  Given how far behind I am, and that I just picked up last year’s Planes of Prophecy expansion for half price in last month’s sale, it is pretty unlikely I am going to be in a rush to pre-order.  But I will go on about it all the same.

Just a month away

After announcing the upcoming expansion in the middle of last month, along with the half price sale, Daybreak was finally ready to reveal more information about what to expect.  This came in the form of a live stream using Facebook, a choice that, along with its mid-morning timing, made it extremely unlikely that I would watch it.  Fortunately they had the foresight to record the whole thing and upload it to YouTube so we could review it at our leisure.

Given the advent of video editing software like 30 years ago, once wonders why we much endure more than four minutes of “Broadcast Will Begin Shortly,” but I guess that gives you the full streaming experience.

When the stream does start nobody begins talking about actual game content until the 13th minute, spending the opening time with the underwater prestige home and other items that you get when you order the premium edition.  Have to pimp the upsell I guess.

Eventually they start in on the hub area and the new zones, though the whole thing moves along at such a leisurely pace that I wandered off at some point after the 25 minute mark. Everything doesn’t have to be a snappy, well-rehearsed BlizzCon style announcement, but this was very low energy and life is too short for videos that can’t even meet me halfway when it comes to engagement.

I was probably better served by the blurb on the pre-orders page.

The Elemental Planes of Order have been thrown into chaos! Thrust in the middle of a mystery of Celestial proportions, you must return to the Planes of Power to help restore balance to the Planes of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Accomplishing this will be no small feat, and you will need to make new allies such as Maelin Starpyre, the Grand Librarian of Myrist, who resides within the Plane of Knowledge, as well as learn the fate of infamous characters from Norrath’s past by traveling to the Plane of Justice.

I could see how they were getting to some of that on the stream now.  There were some bullet points to go along with that.

• Face the trials of the Elemental Planes with all new adventure, tradeskill, and public quests!
• Get ahead with new achievements, collections, and more.
• Conquer all new Solo, Heroic and Raid challenges, including a new contested Raid Dungeon!
• Mount Gear – Mounts can now be equipped with gear to bolster their rider’s power!
• Mount Levels – For the first time your mounts can now level! They can level to 10.
• Ascension Levels – Ascend 5 levels to 20.
• Mercenary Levels – Gain another 10 levels, for a maximum of 20!

Some of that is the same thing you could say about every expansion.  And Ascension levels going to level 20 doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t have any Ascension levels yet so far as I can tell.

Mounts get gear and levels though, that is new.  I wonder what that really means though.  Is this just a new way to inflate player stats as a way to gate content in the usual overkill method?  I guess mounts have had stats for a while now.  But gear and levels… I don’t know.

And I guess I know what mercenary levels are, having just blown a good chunk of my Daybreak Cash reserves boosting one of mine to level 10.  I will likely use the “set and wait” method for those additional ten.

So there are your progression options, in addition to the usual gear inflation.

In addition, when you buy the expansion you will get access to all previous expansions.

Last year Daybreak was saying something about maybe not including past content along the way with new expansions, but I guess that madness has passed.  Their web site only allows you to buy the most recent expansion.

As noted, pre-orders are available now at the usual price points.

Premium packages available for premium prices

I get to use that same graphic every year since they don’t change the pricing, though the higher priced packages now say “Buy or Upgrade Now” in a nod to the fact that some people might change their minds later and want that under water house, maybe as a memento to remember the 2008 financial crises or something.

As usual, All Access subscribers get 10% off the price, which always makes me wonder how many non-subscribers actually buy the expansions.  Whatever.  Probably best not to think too hard on that.

The standard edition gets you the new content and a character boost to get you to level 110.  Given the way of the world, that is not a bad deal for the content you’ll get plus the inevitable mid-point game update mini-expansion that will likely show up next year.

The pricier collector’s and premium editions get you additional boosts for things like trade skills and ascension levels, plus an array of other items including the under water prestige home that featured so prominently at the start of the video above.  I am less inclined to favor those choices for the price.

In addition, if you pre-order you get a special cosmetic illusion as well as access to the beta, which is happening right now and which offers all sorts of rewards if only you’ll come test the expansion.

As somebody who just got the last expansion at half price, and who is nowhere near that content, much less the coming content, I don’t have much incentive to pre-order.  Had I not, I might have considered it to get the content I do not have yet, but now I’ll likely wait until this time next year when the pre-order for the next expansion is available… if there is one… and skip this one entirely.

Unless I keep on with my Norrath adventures and actually finish the content I have.  But since I’m still back in 2011, I am not sure how likely that is.

Anyway, there it is, EverQuest II expansion number 15 going live in about a month.

Fall Movie League – Pony Fever!

Week six for our fall Fantasy Movie League is done and it quite clearly had a theme.

When I wrote last week’s post I ended up saying that Blade Runner 2049, despite being the big new title of the week, was too expensive, with The Mountain Between Us looking like the most attractively priced film, and marking My Little Pony as a potential dark horse candidate.

Sound words in hindsight.  These were the prices for week six.

Blade Runner 2049        $838
 The Mountain Between Us $150
 It                      $143
 Kingsmen                $133
 American Made           $131
 My Little Pony          $126
 LEGO Ninjago Movie      $109
 Victoria & Abdul        $56
 Flatliners              $44
 Battle of the Sexes     $32
 American Assassin       $26
 The Stray               $16
 Home Again              $14
 Til Death Do Us Part    $10
 Mother!                 $9

There was still some room to work with in the top six movies, with no real obvious right path save for the pricing of The Mountain Between Us.

However, come Wednesday a madness struck, a pony fever took over the FML chat.  Box Office Pro, which had previously put My Little Pony in at about $7 million for the weekend box office suddenly and rather drastically upped their estimate to just about $12 million.

With $12 million as the target all question of who to pick went out the door… if you believed the estimate.  A lot of people did as the pony fever spread, and the movie rose in the research vault from the 9th most popular pick with 22% of players choosing it up to 3rd position with almost 32% of the total, surpassed only by Blade Runner 2049 with 38% and It with 34%.

In the FML chatter forums people were complaining that the week was now a slam dunk and that FML ought to change the pricing after the fact if movies get a sudden bump like that.

Meanwhile, on the FML Slack channel I am on, the discussion quickly got most of us on board with the pony train hype.

The problem here is that estimates are just that… estimates.  They are not reality.  Though, after the Friday night numbers the estimates seemed to be coming true as the Saturday predictions showed the pony special pick… seven screens of My Little Pony and one of LEGO Ninjago being the prefect pick and My Little Pony the price/performance leader.  That would have put all of us well past the $90 million mark for the week.  We were going to leave everybody in our dust.  Stats showed that half of the top 100 players were all-in on ponies.

That was my pick as well, so I was up on that pony high as well.

My Fall Week Six Picks

But the Saturday estimates are like a rock on the coast that has sunk many an optimistic mariner.

Sunday came and the My Little Pony party seemed to be over.  The estimates turned out to be very optimistic and the Sunday numbers hangover was upon us.  Pony dreams crashed and The Mountain Between Us ascended.  In the end the perfect pick was six screens of The Mountain Between Us and two of Flatliners, the latter also getting the best price/performance nod.  138 people got the perfect pick this week.

Fall Week Six Perfect Pick

My Little Pony rang in just shy of $9 million for the weekend, putting it at 75% of its high end estimate.  Bad pony!  No treats for you!

Another victim of MLP fever

Meanwhile the Meta League scores for the week shook out like this:

1. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $70,041,952
2. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $69,285,911
3. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $69,203,767
4. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $69,203,767
5. Wilhelm’s Films from New Eden – $69,203,767
6. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $69,203,767
7. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $69,203,767
8. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $69,203,767
9. Kraut Screens (T) – $66,935,930
10. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $66,373,163
11. The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $66,196,344
12. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $47,543,164
13. I HAS MOVIES (T) – $43,541,793
14. Ocho’s Octoplex (L) – $26,325,300 [did not pick]

Meta League legend:

• TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
• MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)
• Liore’s Summer League – players from it marked with an (L)

Ben won first place for the week with six screens of The Mountain Between Us, but didn’t have Flatliners, while SynCaine got second with six screens of It.  However that did not put them all that far ahead of the pony crew, who shared the next six positions with identical picks.

Not a big gap there.  It wasn’t a week for one of us to get ahead with a good pick.  Rather the pack stayed mostly in place with bad picks (or no pick in one case) causing people to fall back a bit.

So the overall season looks like this at the end of week six:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $495,822,427
2. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $487,853,090
3. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $481,634,080
4. Elly’s Elemental E-Plex (M) – $464,913,125
5. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $461,002,597
6. Ocho’s Octoplex (L) – $417,219,840
7. Wilhelm’s Films from New Eden – $458,705,932
8. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $457,758,858
9. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $436,092,325
10. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $398,132,000
11. The Filthy Fleapit (T) – $374,010,367
12. I HAS MOVIES (T) – $361,124,951*
13. Kraut Screens (T) – $342,913,780
14. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $188,230,727

Remember, some people in the (T) league showed up late… though not Isey of I HAS MOVIES who is clearly in the running for the “I voted my heart/gut” award for the season.

There it is, another week down and the next looming with a new set of picks and prices.

Happy Death Day          $350
Blade Runner 2049        $237
The Foreigner            $143
The Mountain Between Us  $99
It                       $95
My Little Pony           $84
Victoria & Abdul         $80
Kingsmen                 $71
American Made            $71
LEGO Ninjago Movie       $70
Marshall                 $62
Flatliners               $34
Battle of the Sexes      $24
American Assassin        $9
Til Death Do Us Part     $7

Blade Runner 2049 got a big price reduction, not only because of it being in the second week but also because it fell far shy of the estimates for its opening weekend, hitting just $32 million instead of passing $50 million.  But even before the estimates from last week were out they were saying they expected the movie to stay stronger than expected over time rather than peaking the first week and then disappearing.

Having seen Blade Runner 2049, I do recommend it, but only if you’ve seen the original.  It might be hard to figure out why some things matter if you have not.  But if you’re into it the 168 minutes go right by.  I plan to go see it again.

But would I anchor my week seven picks on it is the question?  Otherwise I know nothing about Happy Death Day, though 2017 seems to be the year of horror… and not just in the movies… and likewise nothing about The Foreigner.

And even with those three as possible anchors, what else looks strong to back that up?  Ponies?

YC118.9 Release Arrives in New Eden

We are all waiting in anticipation for the November release, a full on, old-school, EVE Online expansion, which even has a name now: Ascension.  No doubt much of EVE Vegas will be devoted to reveals and discussions around that.

But Ascension is almost a month away, so we’ll have to wait for the goodies, which will apparently include an increase in capital jump range.  In the mean time there is the monthly-ish update for October hitting today.  No special name, no real glory, but still a few items worth note are being delivered.

The Crimson Harvest event is set to return to New Eden next week.  While the details are sparse, it is probably safe to assume that it is akin to last year’s event, with Blood Raider sites appearing in game, dropping a special skin and cerebral accelerators. In anticipation of this, CCP is setting up to peddle some additional skins and PLEX offers.  Or so I gather.  The information on the updates page is pretty vague.

Dark SKIN is Dark and possibly available to you in some unspecified context

Coming into the game with this update will be updated graphs for the market.

Using the new graphic library

Also arriving in New Eden will be the blue prints to create the charges that will be used in the revamped fleet boosting mechanic that is coming with the Ascension release.  People can now start producing the charges and stocking the market in anticipation of their coming need.

Coming out of the game is the in-game browser.  This change, announced back in June, but appearing in the patch notes at the last minute, was due to the work needed to keep such a browser secure and up to date.

While an understandable motive in a time when CCP is devoting more resources to its VR games at the expense of EVE Online, it will be missed by people who play full screen or on a single monitor or who have third party utilities that take advantage of the browsers access to in-game data.

The Imperium’s participation link system used to use the in-game browser, but has been modified to use CREST to grab fleet members to note their attendance.  Now the FCs just have to remember to use it.  I used the in-game browser for the last time on Sunday for a fleet.

Other updates to the game include performance improvements to graphics post-processing, which seems aimed primarily at AMD users (so let’s hope it doesn’t kill nVidia performance in the grand CCP tradition of every change creating a new problem or three),  something about balancing the hard points on mining ships to match their appearance, and the usual round of bug fixes, including solving the wandering stargate issue that has come up on Reddit a few times of late.  From the patch notes:

Stargates would occasionally express their envy of dynamic objects by moving to a different position in their solar system after downtime. They have now been properly anchored and should remain firmly in their intended positions. “Pity the poor stargate, destined to remain forever immobile whilst faithfully sending ships towards locations that it can never know.”

And so it goes.

There are a host of other small items in the patch notes, plus the rather shallow entries on the updates page regarding today’s release, which has been deployed successfully.

As always though, there is a song for the release.