The Site
Just trivia for the site this month. A week or so back my phone buzzed with this announcement.
A New Record!
I found that amusing, though since I have turned off the alert for when somebody clicks “like” on a post, I am not sure who went through and clicked the button on a bunch of posts. None of the recent posts at that point had more than three or four likes, so I assume it was somebody serially reading and liking posts.
Meanwhile, back in the day, WordPress.com used to give bloggers some end of year stats around New Years, but stopped doing that a couple of years back. On the stats page there is an Insights tab that shows various meta details about your blog which now includes some annual details. For 2017 my stats were:
- Total Posts: 350
- Total Comments: 1,429
- avg comments per post: 4
- total likes: 1,398
- avg likes per post: 4
- total words: 326,343
- avg words per post: 932
It also tells me that so far for 2018 I am averaging over one thousand words per post, so the bloviation continues. Also, the likes per post stat confirms that 21 in a day is an outlier event which has increased my average likes per day for 2018 to 5.
One Year Ago
As with most years here at the blog, it began with predictions.
Nintendo was telling us all about the Switch console, due in March.
I barely had predictions post before Daybreak announced they were closing Landmark, ticking one off the list for me. That got people freaked out about other Daybreak titles, so I reviewed the list.
That also led me off onto a semi-sarcastic rant about an EverQuest successor.
It was also high noon for Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2.
With a new iPad I lost all my progress on Candy Crush Saga, so forswore the title forever.
I was also tallying up the results of my purchases from the Steam Winter Sale. I don’t get why people like Stardew Valley so much. Just not my thing I guess. I did play a stretch of Train Valley however.
The long mansion road project was starting to hit home with me, but I kept on moving forward village by village.
In EVE Online I hit the 170 million skill point mark. All those skill points and I still don’t use my capital ships. After a false start we got the first update of YC119. It had music. It was also the kick off of the CSM election season.
In null sec there was a big battle at F4R2-Q that seemed to herald a new war. However coordination problems with the local defenders saw us pulling back to Catch.
And in Diablo III we were waiting for the Darkening of Tristram event. I ran through it quickly once, and then again to get some more achievements. It was kind of neat, but it wasn’t the original Diablo.
Five Years Ago
Firefly Universe Online. Was that a hoax or not? I still don’t know. And does the acronym FUO seem mildly obscene?
Wizardry Online joined the SOE stable while Pirates of the Burning Sea was sent packing. Who is laughing now?
We got our full group together in Rift and did our first instance of the year, dying at least 100 times combined. This lead to a side post about bosses and gimmicks and what makes a challenge.
In World of Tanks the instance group was scooting around. We even created our own little clan. Potshot and I were totally going French.
In EVE Online, after a sudden burst of war fever died down, there was a surprise battle where more than 2,500 ships clashed in Asakai when CFC FC Dabigredboat led a supercap fleet in to rescue a stray titan. The battle was so big that CCP did a Dev Blog about it. Meanwhile, we were to be denied LEGO Rifters.
The DUST 514 open beta was officially open. I still haven’t bombed anything from orbit yet.
Path of Exile went into full open beta as well.
Krono made its way from EverQuest II to EverQuest while I was wondering what people were spending their Station Cash on.
I was musing about MUDs again, and vendors who wouldn’t simply buy any crap you had for sale and dead rats.
There was a list of 20 games that defined the Apple II.
And I wrote out my yearly list. This time it was goals, mostly because I was on vacation when I was supposed to be writing it.
Ten Years Ago
I started off with a helping of silly predictions.
I was bemoaning my inability to be a fan boy and parrying claims that PvE players were going to ruin Warhammer Online.
There were some pictures from my daughter’s LEGO birthday party. Those seem to get linked on Pintrest quite often.
Then, with Tabula Rasa dead to me since open beta, I started wondering if there was any hope at all for a Science Fiction MMORPG. This ended up being one of my most responded to posts of the time. Plus, in addition to all the comments, Potshot, Tipa, Lemegeton, Gooney, and even Massively following up with response posts. This post still gets a lot of views every month. (And yes, I do think there is hope, I just don’t know when we’ll get what we’re looking for.)
And, along with that, I wrote about five LEGO Video Games I would like to see made. And a few of those ended up getting made. Imagine!
Then there was the start of the run-up to Pirates of the Burning Sea which, among other things, required me to invest in a new router as well as reviewing how to pick a server in a new game. The latter was from a time when we assumed servers would stay crowded like they did in WoW.
In World of Warcraft the Saturday night instance group was hitting Scholomance, Dire Maul West and Scholomance again as part of the Paladin mount quest, Stratholme, then Dire Maul West once more for the Warlock mount quest, and then Scholomance for the third and final time to get all the epic mounts straight. By then we were all level 60 which meant we could head to the Outlands only a year after The Burning Crusade shipped!
In EVE Online, after spending millions of ISK, I managed my first Tech II Blueprint, then I couldn’t afford to build it. Ah, life in New Eden. I also got my standing past 8.0 with the Caldari Navy and spent time hauling trash.
And, finally, in Lord of the Rings Online I was able to pick up my Bree Pony, the 2007 holiday gift to founders.
Twenty Years Ago
I got nothing. I think we were all still playing Warcraft II and waiting for StarCraft to come out. I remember a lot of people I knew being anxious for it to ship.
Most Viewed Posts in January
- From Alola Pokedex to National Pokedex in Pokemon Sun
- Where the Hell is that EverQuest Successor Already?
- Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
- Top 25 EVE Online Corporations Graph – The End Number
- The Coming Battle in 9-4RP2
- My 2018 MMO Outlook – Mining for Old Gold
- A Bit More Bag Space with WoW Patch 7.3.5
- The Million Dollar Battle Hangover
- 2018 – Predictions for a New Year
- A Return to Physical Netflix
- Quote of the Day – Satan Speaks on Lockboxes
- Delve – How Does One Value Minerals?
Search Terms of the Month
pokemon battle on middle earth.jar
[Heresy, both the concept and it being in Java]
swtor-digipass@go6
[Somebody knows their VASCO products]
everquest 3
[Dream on]
pokemon sun and moon solo run
[It is a single player game, so I guess that is any run]
what is the name of the third warcraft expansion
[That is the one we do not name]
war thunder plane with most bombs
[I think it is the He-111, at least for lower tier planes]
EVE Online
Early in the month I was in as part of our small deployment to the north, dropping citadels and making the locals come up to fight over timers, which went well enough for us until the locals finally got their act together and blobbed up. We’d have done the same around Delve, just a lot sooner.
Then came the build up for the big battle at 9-4RP2, which distracted us from other efforts in the north. When I finally came back to our staging system I found that the locals had been busy removing all of our citadels. So I guess we’ll be starting from scratch on that front.
Pokemon Go
Pokemon Go saw the releases of more Hoenn Pokemon towards the end of the month, so my captured and caught numbers went up noticeably again. I also finally got the last candy I needed to evolve my Slowepoke into a Slowbro. I also managed to squeak into level 31.
Heartbreak moment of the month was finally seeing a Lapras in the wild, then being cheap and not using one of my few sure catch candies on the first throw and having it flee.
- Level: 31 (+1)
- Pokedex status: 262 (+23) caught, 301 (+25) seen
- Pokemon I want: Seaking
- Current buddy: Horsea to earn candies to get that Seaking evolution.
World of Warcraft
I spent a lot of time with Pet Battles, right up to the end of the month finish of the Celestial Tournament. I am also edging my way up to the 700 pet mark, for which there is no achievement.
I also carried on in Argus rather halfheartedly with my main and then worked on some alts. I potentially will have quite a pile of level 110 characters when Battle for Azeroth ships, so I am not sure what I will do with the level 110 boost that will come with the expansion. I am certainly not running out right this second to pre-order because of that. The allied race thing however…
Other Games
I watched The Mittani playing Stellaris for a bit on the INN stream and then went back and played that for a bit. That is my problem with watching people stream games, I just want to go play them rather than watch. Meanwhile, Stellaris is still a good game in which you can get lost for hours.
I got fed up with War Thunder and uninstalled it. I just got tired of high skill players haunting the lower tiers for easy kills. Or maybe I am just horrible. Meanwhile the interface that combines the game’s aerial aspect with tank combat and sea combat… I think that is in there… is confusing enough that I stopped bothering to pursue it. I’ll have to get my flight sim fix elsewhere. (Also I had to use regedit to remove all of War Thunder, which makes it less likely that I will ever install it again.)
I was invited to play a couple of Jack Pack 3 games with Liore’s club, specifically Trivia Murder Party and Tee K.O., both of which were a lot of fun. There is also an interesting “watch things on your computer screen, provide answer and/or draw things on your phone/tablet” dynamic to the whole thing.
Coming Up
Well, I would take a guess that there won’t be another huge battle next month in EVE Online. Null sec needs time to ponder before another 6,000+ player conflict happens. But there will be updates to citadels with the February release, some of which will make them easier to attack, especially if they are just sitting around out of fuel and unused.
Also we should start hearing something about the CSM election campaign season.
In World of Warcraft I have my eye on the level scaling changes that came in with patch 7.3.5. Specifically, I want to see what going to Northrend at level 58 and spending 22 levels there is like. Can I get through all the content before I out level it? Will I need to take off my heirloom gear? The latter idea bugs me only because I like not having to worry about gear as I play through the story. Also, I want to do it as Horde to see if there is much difference between that and the Alliance campaign.
I will also keep running the Celestial Tournament every week until I have all the pets from that. I’m starting to wind down a bit on the obsessive pet leveling binge… the week with 200% exp where I went nuts burned me out a bit… but there are still some key pets I want to get to 25. Also I should finish up Argus and run all the instances I need to in order to wrap up crafting. Doing LFG isn’t that much of a pain, I am just not fond of the “rush rush” nature of it.
We’ll see if I keep with Stellaris or wander off after a couple of games.
Also there are a couple of major sports events coming up, Super Bowl 52, which mostly serves to remind me how old I am since a couple of east coast teams are in it, and the Winter Olympics, so I can look forward to people complaining about how NBC has screwed up the coverage. Somewhere in between the two is my wife’s birthday, better not forget that!
And, finally, for those interested in blog stats, I also have the 2017 blog stats for my other blog, EVE Online Pictures:
- Total Posts: 183
- Total Comments: 7
- Avg Comments Per Post: 0
- Total Likes: 19
- Avg Likes Per Post: 0
- Total Words: 381
- Avg Words Per Post: 2
I am actually a bit surprised there were that many words, since the count does not include titles. I guess I can’t keep quiet even on a blog that is supposed to be pictures. The comments were split, 3 telling me I misidentified a ship, 3 of my copping to my mistake, and one “nice.” Very few people click the like button or rate the posts there. I thought the rating feature would be a thing, but it isn’t. Ah well. I’ll write more about all of that when it turns ten years old later this year.
from The Ancient Gaming Noob http://ift.tt/2BGzLWj
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