Seven Years of Reavers

Another year has flown past, so fast that I missed the actual anniversary date, which is October 15th.  But I am still in the right month.

Reavers forum bee

I have done a series of anniversary posts about the SIG, noting what we have been up to each year.  Those past posts:

• A Year of Reavers
• Two Years of Reavers
• Three Years of Reavers
• Four Years of Reavers
• Five Years of Reavers
• Six Years of Reavers

Seven years is not an exceptionally long period of time in a game that is rounding the corner and headed towards its nineteenth anniversary.  There are corporations and alliances that have lasted nearly as long.  Goonswarm Federation, the CONDI version, is past the eleven year mark, and is predecessors go back to 2005.

SIG and squads though, they can be more transitory.  They are groups that do not exist strictly within the framework of the game.  EVE Online doesn’t know my various affiliations in that regard.

Some are almost stolid or venerable.  CapSwarm or GSOL or Corps Diplomatique are part of the framework of the organization, legs of the stool that keep Fat Bee from sprawling on the floor.

Others are more mercurial.  Some rise up due to a specific situation, then fade when the crisis has passed.  Others rise and fall only to return again later.  Some rise and fall with amazing rapidity.  I think there was a point where Bomberwaffe was getting purged and reformed every few moths.

The key for these groups seems to be the leadership and a core group of players who have bought in on the mission.  Black Ops and MiniLuv seem very consistent.  Liberty Squad fell when its leadership went off on a different adventure.  Bomberwaffer was mercurial because DBRB was running it, and mercurial is his middle name.

And in all that Reavers abide.

We are not as active as we once were.  There were a lot of ops on that first year summary as we deployed behind enemy lines.  This last year has been less active… at least as a group.

There was, after all, a giant war going on for most of the past 12 months where most of the rest of null sec grouped up and attacked us.  There was plenty to do on the home front, and with Asher being the Imperium sky marshal he couldn’t necessarily take us all off once more into hostile space for weeks at a time.

But still, we did some things.  We robbed some space banks when that became a thing.  We setup out in Catch and ran some ops with The Initiative to help put pressure on Brave and other Legacy alliances.  Eventually they abandoned the region and tried to live in our space.  But at the time Progodlegend accused Asher of abandoning the war.

Asher’s traveling trouble in Catch at Christmas

Of course, in the end, we know who really abandoned the war, undercutting his allies by starting to unachor structures even as they were making one last assault on 1DQ1-A.

A bunch of new groups formed up in the Imperium during the war, and some old ones revived. I joined a couple, flew with some more when they called for backup, but Reavers remains my home group.  Even when we aren’t officially doing something, it is a place where Asher can find some people to pick up a task that needs to be done.

I ended up in a Damnation boosting for one of the super fleets during the first battle of M2-XFE because Asher put out the call for help in our channel.

My Damnation in the the thick of our supers

I could have just stayed in a Rokh and gotten on a dozen more hostile titan kills, but sometimes you go where you are needed.

Furthermore, it is not uncommon to see names I recognize from Reavers now further up in the ranks of the coalition, punishment for showing competence in the face of need.

And our Mumble channel remains active.  I mentioned the anniversary earlier in the week, linking one of our early super kills, and there were people online who were there and remembered those early ops.

Since the end of the war things have been quiet.  I haven’t logged into EVE Online much at all over the weeks since then.  I think a lot of people are tired, and there is rebuilding to be done and ISK to be earned to build up reserves for the next war.

But eventually something will come up.  Some of our groups are already out in hostile space shooting our recent foes.  We may ride again when the time is right.

Our favorite ship and SKIN

The early days of Reavers, when we were out blowing up hostile titans in build and the Imperium was denying our existence (there is Progodlegend again) represent some good memories in New Eden.

An explosion from 2014

We will have to wait and see where we end up next.

The September MER Follows the War in EVE Online

CCP got the EVE Online Monthly Economic Report for September out on Monday, so it is time to see what the numbers say for the third month of World War Bee.

EVE Online nerds harder

Since it is war time, destruction is the first thing I want to look at.  The top ten regions for destruction in September were:

1. Querious – 2.71 trillion (Imperium)
2. The Forge – 2.24 trillion (High Sec)
3. Lonetrek – 1.59 trillion (High Sec)
4. The Citadel – 1.54 trillion (High Sec)
5. Delve – 1.40 trillion (Imperium)
6. Metropolis – 1.19 trillion (High Sec)
7. Sinq Laison – 1.15 trillion (High Sec)
8. Catch – 942 billion (Legacy)
9. Genesis – 919 billion (High Sec)
10. Oasa – 848 billion (PandaFam)

As with August, The Forge, the usual top dog, remains in second place and three null sec regions occupy the list.  But in August it was Fountain at the top.  For September Querious tops the list with almost the exact same total as Fountain had the month before.

Most of the other regions, most of which were in last month’s top ten, were down.  Only Catch was up compared to the previous month.

Overall the MER says that 33.6 trillion ISK was destroyed in New Eden in September, down from the 38.4 trillion reported in August.  An odd turn in that.  My guess is that when we get the October MER we will find Delve at the top… I count nearly 10 trillion destroyed so far… with Querulous in staying on the list.

From there I might as well flip the coin a look at production.  The top ten regions were:

1. The Forge – 21 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 14 trillion (Imperium)
3. Lonetrek – 6.74 trillion (High Sec)
4. The Citadel – 6.72 trillion (High Sec)
5. Domain – 4.56 trillion (High Sec)
6. Oasa – 4.48 trillion (PandaFam)
7. Sinq Laison – 4.39 trillion (High Sec)
8. Vale of the Silent – 3.69 trillion (mixed small groups)
9. Esoteria – 3.06 trillion (Legacy)
10. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.89 trillion (PandaFam)

The Forge, Lonetrek, and The Citadel, which all feed the Jita market dominate production.  But Delve does pretty well as the Imperium builds to feed its war effort.  Meanwhile, PandaFam in Oasa and TKE work away on their supply line and Legacy builds in Esoteria.  I am note sure who is building in Vale of the Silent, but carry on.  A total of 114.5 trillion ISK of production took place in September.

And to supply that production there needs to be minerals.

With the announcement of the pending mining nerf, mineral prices resumed their climb in September.

Sep 2020 – Economic Indices

In fact, if you look at the long term chart, mineral prices are now around the all time high they hit back in 2012, when CCP changed the drones NPCs in the drone regions to have bounties rather than mineral drops.

Sep 2020 – Economic Indices – Long Term

We have to keep that in mind when we look at the amount mined, as it is measured in ISK value rather than a physical amount.  The top ten regions for mining were:

1. The Forge – 1.50 trillion (High Sec)
2. Oasa – 1.27 trillion (PandaFam)
3. Metropolis – 1.26 trillion (High Sec)
4. Sinq Laison – 1.23 trillion (High Sec)
5. Domain – 1.14 trillion (High Sec)
6. Lonetrek – 1.14 trillion (High Sec)
7. The Citadel – 888 billion (High Sec)
8. Tash-Murkon – 849 billion (High Sec)
9. Perrigen Falls – 769 billion (PandaFam)
10. Everyshore – 768 billion (High Sec)

Mining remained a high sec game, with only two null sec regions making the cut.  Gone are the days of the “Delve Time Units” of yore.  And even with the bump in mineral prices, the amount mined was in most of the top regions when compared to August.   Overall the regional data shows a total of 27.3 trillion ISK worth was mined in September, down from the 30.6 trillion ISK mined in August and the 29 trillion ISK mined in July, when prices were less dear.

And once you mine and build all of that, you have to sell it, which brings us to the trade values.  The top ten regions for trade were:

1. The Forge – 411 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 52 trillion (Amarr)
3. Sinq Laison – 24 trillion (Dodixie)
4. Delve – 20 trillion (Imperium)
5. Lonetrek – 15 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
6. Metropolis – 10 trillion (Hek)
7. Heimatar 9.2 trillion (Rens)
8. Essence 5.2 trillion (Gallente High Sec)
9. Oasa – 4.3 trillion (PandaFam)
10. The Citadel 4.2 trillion (Caldari High Sec)

Of the 600 trillion ISK in trade in New Eden, Jita remains the undisputed champion, accounting for (along with Perimeter) more than two thirds of the total.  But The Forge has been declining a bit every month, while the fall of Niarja has seemed to stimulate Amarr some, as it has risen since that event, up almost 9 trillion ISK since August.

However, since Niarja was pulled from its high sec connections to become part of the Triglavian Pochven region earlier this month, that might change.  Amarr was no doubt boosted some by the proximity of the fighting in Niarja.  Now that is gone.  Will its proximity to the war front, relative to Jita, sustain its growth going forward?

Delve, meanwhile, saw a boost in trade, and will likely see an even bigger boost in both trade and production when the October MER is released.

And, finally, to pay for all that trade, capsuleers need ISK, and NPC bounties remain the biggest ISK faucet in the game.

Sep 2020 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

NPC bounties have settled down into a fairly predictable range over the last few months.  For August the total bounty payout was 52.6 trillion ISK, in September the number was 52.1 trillion ISK.  But who is earning that ISK?  The top ten regions in September were:

1. Oasa – 6.10 trillion (PandaFam)
2. Branch – 3.47 trillion (PandaFam)
3. Cobalt Edge – 3.40 trillion (PandaFam)
4. Perrigen Falls – 2.79 trillion (PandaFam)
5. The Kalevala Expanse – 2.35 trillion (PandaFam)
6. Insmother – 2.27 trillion (Legacy)
7. Vale of the Silent – 2.18 trillion (mixed small groups)
8. Esoteria – 1.97 trillion (Legacy)
9. Detorid – 1.92 trillion (Legacy)
10. Deklein – 1.89 trillion (mixed small groups)

PandaFam in general, and Fraternity in particular, seem to be raking in the big ISK still in their home space, far from the war.

So it goes.

As noted the war and the big mining nerf will likely show up even more pronounced on the MER when the October edition is released.  Destruction, production, and trade ought to see a boost, while overall mineral prices should continue their climb into record high territory.

As always, the charts and data from the MER are available from CCP.

 

Running of the Gnomes in WoW Classic

I have been, over the years, vaguely aware of the Running of the Gnomes event.  When I saw it was coming up again I posted about it in our group Discord, thinking it might be something interesting for Ula to make a video about.  She looked into what it was about, found the official site and the charity which it supports, and said we ought to do the run.

It was slated for Saturday, so we got on early and rolled up the required characters, gnomes with pink hair, in order to join in.  At least male gnomes can have pink hair.

My gnome for the run

Before hand you want to get in one of the guilds they form in order to get directions (and, I gather, get counted for participation) and maybe get a red shirt to go with the color theme.  They were handing those out for free.  If you had the cash to opt for a guild tabard you ended up with a nice pink and white theme with a heart.  I saved my gold, but Ula and Skronk bought them on the plan that they are not soul bound so could be handed off to their main characters once the guild got around to spending 10g on a tabard design.  That might be a while.

There were not many people on as early as us, and I was wondering how big the turnout might be given that the run on retail had gone off the week before.  But as the clock ticked down more and more pink haired gnomes began showing up.

Some gnomes in the house

As the hour approached more and more gnomes piled into the scrum.  And then we were off.  The three of us formed out own little group so we could keep track of each other, and I tried to simply follow Ula’s gnome, but the server wasn’t sure what to do about all of us.

There was a lot of rubber banding and stops and starts as we ran up the path and into the first tunnel.  But it all seemed to be holding together for the moment.

Pink hair into the first tunnel

But on the far side of the tunnel something happened… layering probably… and for a bit I was running down the road by myself.

I think we’re alone now…

We were on voice coms as well, reporting what we saw.  I kept on trotting, but I was nervous about being ahead of the pack.  It wasn’t a big deal in the starter zone, but we were headed to Booty Bay and along the way there it was going to be a good idea to be in the middle of the pack.

However, as I ran along gnomes started re-appearing running along the road with me.

On the road to Ironforge

We ran up into Ironforge, took the tram to Stormwind, running through town to group up again at the front gate.

At the gates

It was hard to take a good picture as a lot of people kept shouting or talking and I have speech bubbles turned on. (And I couldn’t quickly find how to turn that off.)  Still, a lot of us clumped up at the gates.  The guild we were in, one of a couple, showed more than 500 players running along with us, but I imagine layering was keeping us separated.

From the gates we took off with the fountain in Darkshire as our destination.

Along the forest road

There was some confusion as to which route to follow.  Some people cut across country before we made it to the Eastvale logging camp while others stuck to the road and went through Redridge.

I went cross country and over the river

We halted at the fountain in Darkshire to form back up again.

Mass pink in town

From Darkshire the next leg was through Stranglethorn Vale and into Booty Bay, the official destination of the run.

Into Stranglethorn

STV was interesting though.  Up until this point things hadn’t been very high level around us.  A few gnomes were lost, but the guides, high level characters around to clear the way, had kept the path pretty safe.  On the path in STV though the aggro radius of level 2-4 gnomes… nobody who made it that far was still level 1 based on discovery xp alone… was such that distant beasts would come crashing out of the jungle to attack gnomes.

Tiger in our midst!

Tigers, gorillas, panthers, and those lizards for that one quest all came running at us.  Our shepherds killed them as they came, but they were not fast enough to save every gnome.  The sight of gnomes being mauled by the local wildlife was pretty damn hilarious.

Most of us made it to Booty Bay though.  I stayed in the middle of the road in the middle of the pack and was never bothered.  Once there we headed to what I gather is the traditional location on the roof above the inn to form a heart.  Color me surprised that we managed it.

The heart formed… with no dialog bubbles for a brief moment

We jumped into the water to form a heart there as well.  There was some odd layering issue and a the server was having problems keeping track of gnomes.  If you went under water it looked like gnomes who jumped in were crashing all the way to the bottom of the bay.

That was the end of the official event.  The run took about 40 minutes to make from start to heart, at least if you didn’t die along the way.

But there is an after party aspect to it.  We all got on the boat to Ratchet and sailed to The Barrens.  From there we ran up to the side gate of Orgrimmar… the one we used on our Ragefire Chasm adventure… and ran on into town.

Into Orgrimmar!

There were so many of us that the guards could not slay us all.  Those of us further back in the pack ran past many a pink haired corpse as we ran deeper and deeper into town.

Running down the avenue

The goal was to find Thrall and lick him.  I made it to just outside the building where he resides before being cut down.  Ula was cut down much further back, but Skronk made it into Thrall’s chamber before dying.

Dead gnomes strewn about outside of Thrall’s place

We released and ran back as ghosts… something we have some practice with… to see if we could get into licking range of Thrall.  However, the guards are thick on the ground around Thrall and without the sheer weight in numbers a low level gnome has less than a 2 second life expectancy in that building.

I managed to get within sight of Thrall, but it was going to take a few more runs to be able to try to lick him.  And Skonk, who could revive right on Thrall’s throne, reported getting beat down before he could click the macro he made to target and lick Thrall.

I can see Thrall from here

After playing around with that for a bit, we gave up, used the angel to revive at the graveyard, and hearthstoned back home. (Guild chat indicated that we did that just ahead of some Horde players deciding to camp the graveyard.)

There we took a final pic of our three even gnomes.

Back where we started

It was quite the event.  I hope they raised some money.  I will definitely run it next year if I am subscribed.

 

Civilization VI Launches

Today is the official launch day for Civilization VI, though I understand if you pre-ordered on Steam you got access last night, the next chapter in Sid Meier’s now quarter century long attempt to make the perfect 4X strategy game.

Come and get your 4X

The whole thing began with the launch of Civilization back in September 1991.

I do not remember exactly when I bought my copy of the first Civilization… early 1992 I think… but since then I have purchased most of the series on the earliest possible date I could get my hands on a copy.

However, I do not have a copy of Civ VI in my hot little hands today.  I don’t know if it is aging or ennui, but I am not impatient to pick up a copy just yet.  Certainly, some of it is experience.  Civilization games tend to be a hot mess on day one.  Early versions usually needed the next generation of processors to show up in order to make them playable, while later releases you were probably not going to be able to play reliably until the first patch landed.  Back in October 2010, I was complaining about how Civilization V was crashing on my machine day one.

So I am not buying a copy today.

I will buy a copy at some point though.  I will just let things settle down a bit first, watch reactions to the game, maybe wait for that first patch.  And we all know it will be marked down a bit for the Steam Holiday Sale anyway.  I will probably get it then.  I certainly have to get it before the first expansion.  If it is anything live Civilization V, each expansion will change the game so much it will be like a new game.

Meanwhile, here is the usual stack rank of Civ titles ordered by how much time I spent with them, which is generally a sign of which ones I liked best.

1. Civilization II
2. Civilization V
3. Civilization
4. Alpha Centauri
5. Civilization III
6. Civilization IV
7. Beyond Earth

I’d play some more Civ II except I lost the damn CD again.

I see there is already a look at Civ VI over at Nomadic Gamers.