The Site

I spent some time watching the views odometer, waiting for it to roll over to all sixes for a screen shot… because I also take pictures of my car odometer when it hits a fun number.  I am just that guy.  However, as often happens, I missed the moment.  Instead, I caught this number:

666 is, of course, every dumb person’s number to get worked up about in the west.  Meanwhile, if you grew up with or spent a lot of time around Asian cultures in the US, you will find an affinity for the number 8 in many, it being deemed lucky.  Here in Silicon Valley there are a lot of home listings that end in “888” rather than “999” to seem propitious.  So is the number 6,668,888 lucky or not?

Other than that, WP.com didn’t break anything too badly in March.  I mean, the comments management panel spacing is all screwed up, so all comments have to fit in a 25 character wide column, which means a long, narrow entry that is way taller on the page than it has to be.  But, I am also pretty sure WP.com doesn’t care about blogs or blogging, much less comments on blog posts, and hasn’t for at least a decade at this point.

My currently selected theme is in danger of breaking under the weight of new features it doesn’t support, but when I go look at the themes WP.com recommends, none of them look like an actual blog anymore.  I mean, WP.com hates sidebars and showing actual content on a single page.  Yes, I am stuck on a very old fashioned… in tech time scales… vision of a blog,

Finally, Discord… didn’t break anything, but it looks like they are planning to do some sort of Fediverse integration because when I drop a link to a post in there now it grabs the Activtity Pub version of link and resolves to that… which would be fine if WP.com didn’t toss way to much data down that pipeline.  So now any link I share from the blog on Discord is obnoxiously long so I kind of feel like I shouldn’t do that any more.

I could just turn off the Activity Pub integration.  I think maybe three people see it on Mastodon.  But I kind of like it as a point of integration, especially since you can leave a comment on the blog from Mastodon, which is frankly easier than trying to leave a comment on the actual blog if you do not have a WP.com account.

For those interested, I wrote about the Activity Pub integration back in January.

One Year Ago

I had thoughts about Dune: Part 2 and the idea that there might be a part 3.

I was thinking about a new monitor.  I have not acted on that as yet.

Mark Jacobs announced he was taking funding for the Camelot Unchained from the crypto crazy VCs at Andreesen Horowitz.  The question here was really who was scamming whom on this deal?

EverQuest turned 25, which required a retrospective post as well as some stats from the team and a look at the anniversary events and rewards.

In my ongoing EverQuest starting points series, I went into the Qeynos Aquaduct, roamed around Blackburrow, fell off the raft in Halas, and what West Karana was like back in the day.

In Valheim we were getting ourselves in trouble again as we searched for Moder.  Then it was into the plains and defeating Yagluth… because we’d done this before.  Then it was the Mistlands, which we did not love.

We also decided to poke our noses into The Elder Scrolls Online.  I made it to level 10, but didn’t go much further.

We then dropped into Conan Exiles for a peek.  That looked good enough that we went all in on it.

I had some Friday Bullet Points about Blizzard including bits about Season of Discovery, WoW Classic Hardcore, some insight into The War Within, Diablo IV on GamePass, and another WoW mount from Hearthstone.

With the Hardcore Classic announcement, I came up with a few other classic server ideas I figured Blizz might explore.  Meanwhile, Blizz went with the Plunderstorm event in retail WoW.

Meanwhile, something that looked like WoW subscription numbers leaked out of Blizz.

In EVE Online there was the February destruction stats from the MER and a high sec brawl in Perimeter over TTC Sotiyos.

Niantic knew what we needed and let us pop a lucky egg at friendship milestones.

I also had a Friday Bullet Points post about the New York Times trying to own the word “Wordle,” Apple and Epic at it again, Nintendo shutting down the Yuzu Switch emulator, Elon inventing blogging, EA going all-in on AI, and the WoW Cataclysm Classic closed beta starting.  Only one of those wasn’t dumb, you pick which.

Then there were some spring focused Friday Bullet points as I mentioned the Steam Spring Sale, the Anomaly expansion for RimWorld, the Stellaris Machine Age expansion, something about Project Awakening, and something about Playable Worlds using AI in there at that point unannounced game.

Then a final round of Friday bullet points about DC Universe Online landing on PS5, Guild Wars 3 confirmed… maybe, Gearbox escaping the clutches of the awful Embracer Group, and Blizz and NetEase getting back together again.

Finally, my Telephone Tales series reached Edify and the telephony subsystem and speech recognition.

Five Years Ago

Oh man, it was the start of the pandemic lockdown, the March that lasted forever as we all learned how to stay home.  Fortunately I received a Ninendo Switch Lite for my birthday to keep me busy.

I did another poll about which voice service people were using.  Discord swept the poll.

I summed up the Winter Fantasy Movie League run, but FML was soon put on a pause due to theaters being shut.

Gamigo CEO Remco Westerman was unironically going on about synergy.

I was still playing a bit of EverQuest II, though it was mostly the Overseer feature getting me to log in.  EverQuest turned 21, which brought with is new servers, server merges, and other special items.  We got a free heroic upgrade… to level 85… which I used on one of my characters.

The big news from Daybreak though was Holly Longdale, who had been running the Norrath franchise for the company, leaving for Blizzard.

In WoW Classic the instance group was working through Razorfen Downs before heading off to Uldaman.  Archaedas was an issue, but with some suggestions we were able to finish him as a four person group.

I was also trying to farm the Hydrocane from Gnomeregan.

In EVE Online there was an early March update that brought us some changes, which was followed later with an update that included low sec and faction warfare changes as well as giving battleships a frigate escape bay.  CCP was also moving along with their economic privation plan, announcing the removal of minerals from moons.  The February MER was already showing mineral prices rising and this was expected to make them go higher still.

CCP threw more skill points at us.

Out in space we were packing up to head home from Venal.  Liberty Squad was done as the corporation Terrifying League of Dog Fort, which was running the group, left the alliance to find adventure elsewhere.

There was a plan for Blapril, an early run at Blaugust, as we were all home with free time.

There was a question as to whether of not there should be a shooter from CCP like Project Nova.

And there were some Friday Bullet Points from Gamasutra, including even more about CCP’s Project Nova… which, give how long CCP has been at this shooter thing, should have been called Project Aeternum.

Ten Years Ago

I hit level 50 yet again.  Hitting 50 is a thing people do in level based MMOs.

The Elder Scrolls Online dropped the subscription business model.

The Crowfall Kickstarter campaign was still running.  I was wondering if they had a mid-game plan.  They really didn’t, but the campaign still brought in $1.7 million, double what was asked.

EA closed down Maxis as an entity within its organization.  It is what EA does best.

It was a Turbine roast as an insider spilled the beans on problems that have plagued the developer of Lord of the Rings Online.

Rift hit its four year anniversary, but it felt like it had been around for longer than that.

I was wondering what a progression server would look like with EverQuest II.  But it was Sweet 16 for EverQuest, which was getting a new progression server for its birthday it seemed.

Blizzard announced that they were going to go ahead with their PLEX-like idea, the WoW Token.  The instance group was in the Iron Docks and farting around in garrisons.

CCP was talking about the next stage of the proposed sovereignty changes for EVE Online.  There was the Scylla release, which was overshadowed by Fanfest.  Also, the members of CSMX were announced.

In New Eden I attempted to fly an Ibis from Immensea to Deklein.  Then there was a rumor of war as the usual suspects attacked our sovereignty in Fountain.  That called for a big old move op which, in post-Phoebe New Eden, meant caps taking gates.  Then there was that system our foes took.  And once they were evicted from Fountain, it was time for a punitive expedition to Delve.

And The Mittani declared that the power blocs of New Eden would never die.  We shall see.  He fortunately didn’t include himself in the equation.

My daughter and I tried out Diablo III on the PlayStation 3.

I put together a review of my Kickstarter history… I should do that again.

Finally, it seemed as though some of the MMO news sites were paying attention to bloggers again… at least briefly.

Fifteen Years Ago

With the March 2010 month in review I was able to announce that the site had passed the one million page view mark.  A minor milestone.

FarmVille.  We all tried it as research for Shut Up We’re Talking #60.  We didn’t inhale.  Does anybody even get that reference anymore?

I ran through GDC and had dinner.

I was waxing nostalgic for some flavor of Rome.

EA was saying very stupid things about how many subscribers Star Wars: The Old Republic would need.  It is never too early to set the bar for failure.  Also they were threatening to taint 38 Studios.

I was also wondering about greater challenges in MMOs.  Must all paths be equally easy?

I held an April Fools contest, which got a few entries.

Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver launched and, after some delay, I was picking that initial Pokemon.

I was still invested in Star Trek Online… I was trying…. well, they were giving us lifetime subscribers some perks.

In EVE Online I hit 50 million skill points.  I also had my first Tengu.

World of Tanks was staring to announce some of their progression trees, starting with the Russian and American sets.  Those have changed a lot since then.

The instance group was beginning to embrace the Dungeon Finder.  However, after Mauradon we found we still had to do a chunk of external legwork to prepare for our Sunken Temple run.  I also got a chopper along the way, on my birthday no less.

And, finally, that whole Derek Smart/Alganon thing was just kicking off.

Twenty Years Ago

The late Monolith Productions, backed by Sega and Warner Brothers, launched The Matrix Online in the US.  It hit Europe a month later. The title was soon taken over by Sony Online Entertainment, which ran it until its closure in 2009.

The Bloodline Chronicles adventure pack was released for EverQuest II.  It was free for Station Access subscribers.  Among other things it gave the game destructible walls.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

Sony launched the PlayStation 2. Available initially only in Japan, it had ten launch titles.

Most Viewed Posts in March

1. Enshrouded After the Dragon
2. The Blizzard WoW Classic 2025 Road Map includes Pandaria and New Vanilla Progression Servers
3. Where Does Your Tolerance for Grind Fail?
4. I Wanted Evendim, I got Esteldin
5. Stuck on the Level 47 Requirements for Pokemon Go
6. Why is Niantic Selling Pokemon Go? To Jump on the AI Bandwagon of Course!
7. No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
8. The Stars Reach Kickstarter Campaign Approaches $500K
9. This One Simple Trick will Up Your Pokemon Go Steps Dramatically!
10. Arrival in Oatbarton – Starting Evendim
11. RuneScape Shows How It’s Done with its 2025-26 Roadmaps
12. LOTRO 2025 and a Sparse Yet Chaotic Roadmap Ahead

Search Terms of the Month

is threads dead
[It always was… also Meta is a horrible company]

voice xml
[No dead, but not very healthy either]

wizards unite
[Now there is something literally dead]

wow classic ddos
[That got some people on Hardcore dead]

will star citizen ever release
[No, but neither is it dead]

eve portal
[That is dead]

what is the least searched thing on google
[That bringing you here might mean TAGN is dead]

Game Time by ManicTime and iOS

• LOTRO – 49.02%
• Pokemon Go – 22.68%
• Enshrouded – 13.46%
• Balatro – 7.67%
• EVE Online – 6.74%
• World of Warcraft – 0.42%

The amusing bit in this is WoW.  Shintar had written a post about starting fresh in retail and I took it to heart, gave it a shot, and spent about an hour with a fresh character in the Dragonflight content… and then ran off to LOTRO the second the new server launched… where I also started a fresh character… and never looked back.

Enshrouded

As I have said a few times now, we have reached about the peak of possible progress currently available in the game so far.  We still want to play, and will be changing things up next month.  But I’ll get to that next week.

EVE Online

I got on early in the month and blew up some moon drills with the team… and then didn’t do much else.  But at least the AIR Career Program thing has been fixed… at least it was if you thought it was broken before.  The April and May MERs will be interesting to watch.

Lord of the Rings Online

As the game time metrics above indicate, I did dive right into LOTRO again.  The promise of an improved server experience… well, it is somewhat better.  The server is packed, so some lag is to be expected.  But at least it isn’t lagging during off-peak, late night, week day hours… which it was totally doing the last time I played.

Pokemon Go

Made some progress, but there were no big events that really made the month stand out.  I ended up playing about an hour a day, though that is almost all time during which I would not be otherwise playing a video game.

• Level: 47 – 67% of the way to 48
• Task Status
  • 10 souvenirs from buddy – 10/10
  • Earn 300 hearts with your buddy – 300/300
  • Walk 200km with your buddy – 200/200
  • Walk 25km a week for eight weeks – 4/8
• Pokedex status: 871 (+7) caught out of 1,008 in the Pokedex
• Pokemon I want: Carnivine, a missing Sinnoh entry
• Current buddy: Corviknight

Coming Up

April Fools is tomorrow, though with the way the world has been going since January 20th, I am not sure you could come up with a “just kidding” item that wouldn’t seem tame when compared to how bad things are shaping up.  Prices up, inflation up, unemployment up, US prestige… down to an all time low.  Again, this was all promised in advance…

Meanwhile, back in the bunker I’ll likely be carrying on with the my attempt to reach Mordor in LOTRO.  I am actually not that far from Moria now.  My posts have to catch up.

I will also be keeping an eye on the EVE Online Monthly Economic Report.  The March report won’t show much of the AIR change, but it might capture the beginning of the trend.  Also, I will try to find some time to undock and maybe shoot something.

And, as noted above, we’ll be looking for a change up in Enshrouded.