The Site
May always seems so quiet after the bustle of April and the April Fools traffic it gets. May is down 50% when it comes to page views. I suppose that is what happens when not much happens. The most viewed posts for the month reflect this as the old Google search favorites return to the top of the list while things I actually wrote in May are somewhat scarce.
So, looking further afield, what was the biggest thing to happen this month? Probably GDPR.
Look for the EU Label
I am happy to announce that there has been no change to the privacy policy at TAGN, since I never had one since I don’t keep any data on you myself. WP.com has some statement on that, since they actually hold all the data, but things around here are business as usual. I’m not even sure that cookies warning comes up correctly. But I don’t have ads here. I pay not to have ads here. No ads, no cookies for tracking ads. It does pop up on my other blog.
One Year Ago
Nintendo announced the new 2DS XL hardware. It seemed like a deal, since all it was missing was the somewhat unloved 3D option.
Being a bit down on crowdfunding MMOs, I was wondering who was backing Ashes of Creation.
Daybreak was giving out free level boosts… again… in EverQuest II.
Over in the land of Everquest, the new Agnarr limited progression server went live with a promise never to progress past the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion. I wondered about the life of progression servers and if this attempt to make a perma-retro server might extend beyond Daybreak.
I returned to the land of the ten dollar horse of legend, Runes of Magic. Once a trailblazer, an Asian MMO built for the west and designed on the free to play model, in some ways it is very much stuck in time. And I am not just talking about the archaic patcher. It still feels like it did back in 2009. Which isn’t a bad thing, really. Look how popular retro servers are now. And it isn’t a bad MMO either.
I worked my way through to the first big city, explored the cash shop, and carried on through the month until the grind started to surpass any sense of nostalgia I was feeling. As with many such games, if I was playing with a group it would have been fine, but as a solo venture it had its limits.
EVE Online turned 14 years old. I was again looking at the monthly economic report where Delve was leading null sec in ratting and mining and the Rorqual remained the top mining ship.
The May update for EVE Online gave us new PLEX and the Blood Raiders ship yards. New PLEX was a money making opportunity for some. New PLEX went well enough that CCP decided to covert the Aurum they gave away for free sooner than expected. And then there were the new small skill injectors.
The first Blood Raiders ship yard showed up in Period Basis. I went to go visit it. After some trial and error the Imperium went old school and reinforced it with a mass of T1 frigates. I missed the destruction (and TEST swooping in with interceptors to steal the loot) but still managed to get blown up by the leftover Blood Raider forces. A dread can one-shot an Ibis.
In other ops in New Eden we went to a brawl around an Astrahus in Catch and I manged to get my Cerb blown up trying to catch up with the fleet, which gave me an opportunity to try flying an interdictor.
In a bullet points post I noted that Blizzard called Overwatch its eighth billion dollar franchise, but I couldn’t figure out what the other seven might be. Has Blizzard even had eight things one might call a “franchise” at this point? Also, SuperData was splitting WoW into East and West versions again.
And I rather optimistically suggested that the Mineserver Kickstarter project might still happen. Ha, ha, ha, I can be so naive.
Five Years Ago
I celebrated the five year anniversary of a blog. No, not this one.
EVE Online turned 10 (I even made a movie) and reminded us of its true nature, while DUST 514 finally went live for real.
Somebody was saying that there had only ever been two successful MMOs, EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
I checked up on the Newbie Blogger Initiative to see who survived their first year of blogging.
Camelot Unchained made its Kickstarter goal one day before their campaign ended. Success at the last minute is still success.
The project code named Titan was rumored to have been pushed out to 2016. Meanwhile Activision-Blizzard announced that WoW had shed 1.3 million subscribers, dropping to 8.3 million total. And then there was the problems with the Diablo III economy. Rough times.
The XBox One was announced. Or the name was. I didn’t like it.
I made a chart about the relative natures of MMO economies. I was also musing about dangerous travel.
We were starting to peek into NeverWinter as a possible game for the instance group, in hopes that we might have a hiatus from our long hiatus. We also played a bit of Need for Speed: World.
Rift, ostensibly the game the instance group was playing (and which I was still playing a bit of), announced it was going free to play, which made me mutter about revenue models again.
Our EVE Online corp decided to go play some Lord of the Rings Online, and so my relationship with Middle-earth continued and I was quickly in the Lone Lands.
And finally, I wrote a bit about the first computer game I ever played, which led to some charts about my video gaming timeline.
Ten Years Ago
My daughter and I were finishing up the final battles in the base game of Pokemon Diamond as well as staging our own gym battles.
In EVE Online CCP gave us a date for the Empyrean Age as well as giving us all a gift on the five year anniversary of the game. I still have that gift in my hangar.
Meanwhile I was building battleships, working the regional price variations, dealing with the realities of production, refining my Drake fittings, and laughing at a the EVE Online guide to talking smack.
Oh, and I was being propositioned in a standard Goon scam. Damn Goons!
In World of Warcraft the instance group was doing some quests to level up a bit because the Mana Tombs were proving to be a challenge. We also did some mucking about with alts.
And, in the industry in general, Turbine got $40 million dollars to play with (I wonder where that ended up?) while Age of Conan launched amid immediate declarations of success and failure.
Fifteen Years Ago
SOE launched PlanetSide, their MMOFPS.
3DO laid everybody off and filed for bankruptcy, leading to the end of the line for it and its subsidiary New World Computing, best known for the Might and Magic series.
Most Viewed Posts in May
- From Alola Pokedex to National Pokedex in Pokemon Sun
- Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
- What Would Even Help This Genre Anyway?
- Rumors of Future Daybreak Projects and the End of EverQuest
- Where the Hell is that EverQuest Successor Already?
- Burn Jita 2018 Aftermath
- Top 25 EVE Online Corporations Graph – The End Number
- EVE Online Third Party Apocalypse Day
- Lost Dungeons of New Eden
- Rift Prime Time
- Burn Jita Back for 2018
- The Road to CSM13
Search Terms of the Month
do people still play everquest in 2018?
[Daybreak has never been owned by Columbus Nova]
google play talent tree rpg
[I’m not sure how that works]
what is impulse control eve online
[Not buying PLEX?]
swamp of sorrows or winterspring
[Hrmm… neither? Winterspring maybe?]
games gay nude servers
[Would there be a point to non-nude servers?]
spanking organizer adult software
[I’m sure I saw a spanking organizer on Steam]
EVE Online
We got the big Into the Abyss PvE expansion for the game, which introduced Triglavian ships and modules, all obtainable via the deathtrap solo space dungeons known as abyssal pockets.
In game, in null sec, in the north, things were exciting for various reasons. GotG announced they were going to stop trying to defend Fade and Pure Blind, which led to dissent in MOA, which lived in Pure Blind, and which decided to abandon its position there. And then Circle of Two came over to take up stewardship in Fade, giving the Imperium groups deployed in Pure Blind a new set of opponents to spar with.
EverQuest II
The Daybreak team was handing out level 100 characters again, this time with gear that would keep you from being squashed like a bug when you hit the latest content, so I went and made yet another character, a Shadow Knight. Despite a few hitches, I actually played a bit with him. A post about it to follow at some point.
Pokemon Go
Still at level 32, but chugging along. The change up in available Pokemon and the occasional events keep things interesting. I did get one of those Alola Exeggutors… a few actually. They were on every street corner yesterday.
My current state of affairs:
Level: 32 (+0)
Pokedex status: 327 (+15) caught, 349 (+7) seen
Pokemon I want: Still Lapras, still don’t have one
Current buddy: Spoink
Rift
I logged into Rift Prime for 21 days during May, collecting my daily prize until I got another mount, then stopped logging in altogether. And that is likely the end of that for now. Still a decent MMORPG, lots there to love, had fun in Freemach and Stonefield, it was great to be in the mass of players at low levels, but soloing along just wasn’t keeping me invested.
Coming Up
In EVE Online the CSM 13 elections are slated to happen from 12 noon UTC (EVE Time) on 4 June through until 12 noon UTC on 11 June. Be ready to cast your ballot.
Also coming to EVE Online is the great null sec outpost conversion, where all those stations in conquerable null sec systems will be converted to faction citadels. This is slated for June 5 and will result in a lot of assets that have been locked in hostile stations suddenly becoming available via asset recovery. I expect some last minute grabs at stations over the weekend.
I may go play some more EverQuest II. Maybe. I have until June 7th to see if it is worth subscribing to… and I’d need to buy the expansion… for that one free level 100 heroic character. Is this the whole “giving away the razor then selling the blades” thing at work again?
The Kickstarter campaign for The Flower of Knighthood will wrap up, though I cannot imagine why they haven’t cancelled it already. While it has gotten some more pledges, it still hasn’t managed to collect, all total, as much as it needed to get every single day of the campaign in order to fund. It is currently trending to hit 1% of its $600K target.
The Summer Fantasy Movie League is kicking off with new rules. See the previous post for details and a link to join. We shall see how that turns out. I don’t usually mention FML in the monthly review post, do I?
Finally, summer will commence on the 21st, my daughter will be out of school, and I will likely have to leave the house and go on a vacation or something.
from The Ancient Gaming Noob https://ift.tt/2J1lhc8
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