The Site
January, eh? Don’t even get me started. But this is supposed to be about the blog, where some things happened as well.
There was a bit of a scare this month when WP.com went after the classic editor again, framing it as an improvement. They have, once again, relented and returned the classic editor, so can continue to write in that as I have become accustomed to for the last 18+ years.
That said, I will give them credit for at least not totally breaking classic editor posts. It used to be the case that if you opened a classic post in the block editor it would slam it into blocks, ruining formatting and making it uneditable in classic again. Not it nicely puts everything in the classic block which, while a lesser editor that the full classic editor, is still a million miles closer to being good than the standard block editor.
Also, I mentioned the Fediverse connection in the same post as the classic editor, and I have to say I am actually impressed with that integration.
The Blog as Seen on Mastodon
You can follow the blog feed directly on Mastodon now… and other Fediverse connected services… I think. The connection worked for exactly two posts over at Pixelfed then died, so who knows.
Still, it is probably easier to leave a comment on one of my posts from your Mastodon account (if you follow tagn.wordpress.com@tagn.wordpress.com) than it is to leave a comment here on the blog itself if you lack a WP.com account. I’m not sure exactly how comments work in reverse. A couple of my comments here have appeared over on Mastodon… but not all of them. However, if somebody comments over there any replies to that comment show up over there as well. I suppose that is good enough.
I do find it interesting what the Fediverse connection pulls through from the site, like the original creation date and the total post count. (You cannot find all 7,335 posts there, only the ones that went live since I setup the connection.) I cannot actually edit any of that, save through the blog settings, and what it picks up and updates from that is a bit vague. We’ll see.
So even though WP.com whipped me up to a level of incandescent rage two weeks back, I am now mostly mollified… though I’ll still be angry when they come for the classic editor again… and they will.
One Year Ago
A new year demands new predictions or something… anyway, I made some.
I also reviewed my 2023 games played and looked forward into 2024.
Also, the Steam Winter Sale 2023 ended and I actually bought some games… also, stats and awards and all that.
Those purchases were part of a search for a game like Valheim. I even asked some AIs about the options. In the end though, we just started playing Valheim again. But to change things up, we were going to embrace a few mods.
We got roadmaps for Lord of the Rings Online as well as anniversary roadmaps for EverQuest and EverQuest II.
I asked the AIs to rank the EverQuest expansions… all of them… and they just started making up expansions.
I wondered if the Shadowlands level squish in WoW was a bad idea… or worth the effort. I don’t think it was, but I also hadn’t played retail WoW since Shadowlands either. I mean, I poked my nose in and ended up looking like a clown. The introduction of follower dungeons in retail sounded interesting.
In WoW Classic Season of Discovery we were hitting the Deadmines. Harpy Riot, our guild, made it to Van Cleef on the second try. Then it was off to Wailing Caverns and Shadowfang Keep.
In WoW Classic it was the Ruby Sanctum in Northrend that heralded the end of Wrath Classic. Still, with the Joyous Journeys xp boost I hauled out my rogue and set him on the way to level cap.
I also asked some AIs to rank the Northrend zones.
In the midst of that, Microsoft kicked off its first round of layoffs targeting Activision Blizzard.
I looked into destruction in EVE Online for December 2023 and then all of 2023. We also got a roadmap from CCP, but they seemed fixated on Vanguard, their FPS. There was also the Kickstarter campaign for the War for New Eden board game.
We also hit the 10 year anniversary of the battle at B-R5RB.
In the Telephone Tales series I wrote about residential ISDN in the US, being laid off from Big Island,
Zwift, my then bicycle exercise app, was offering up welfare levels.
I summed up some of our binge watching and was trying to come up with a premise for a way to introduce a new James Bond now that Daniel Craig had retired from the role.
Five Years Ago
A new year meant predictions. Also, there was the end of another Steam Winter Sale complete with stats and my own gaming outlook for 2020. I also had a list of things I wanted to see in the year and my game time played for 2019.
SuperData Research had their own review of 2019.
A research group published a paper exploring the electrical usage impact of video games in the state of California. It was more than hot tub pumps.
Daybreak finally did their studio split thing, though what it really meant was left unanswered.
In EverQuest II I was gearing up for the moon. I also leveled up my crafting by doing things other than crafting, though I had our guild hall open for actual crafting. Leveling up was quick and I soon had three characters on Luclin.
In EVE Online there was the “My Year In EVE” video thing. GDC also had a video about EVE Online and how they fixed the ghost training problem.
The January game update buffed heavy missiles and added Nirvana implants, the “shield slaves” that people had been asking about for years.
CCP introduced new player packs that were essentially selling skill points… again. They were also handing out more skill points for logging in, doing a PLEX for Good for the Australian wildfires as well, and finishing the 64-bit client transition.
Our long time corp, Black Sheep Down, was going away, which led me to join Karma Fleet.
Blizzard pushed out Warcraft III Reforged, broken, berefet of expected features, and with restrictions on user created content, all of which made it an object of scorn and an item on many “worst releases of 2020” lists.
World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth was getting down to its final content drop. There was a lot of stuff with it. Also, they were offering a flying rat to six month subscribers.
In WoW Classic the instance group was in the Scarlet Monastery. We took a shot at the library and the armory, then ran off to Stranglethorn Vale for a bit of xp. After that we went back and did the library and the armory again. I also ended up with my first level 40 in WoW Classic.
Ten Years Ago
The Elder Scrolls Online announced they were ditching their mandatory subscription model.
We bid farewell to Massively and WoW Insider as AOL pared down their web content presence yet again.
At long last Runic was poised to deliver the Mac OS version of Torchlight II. I just didn’t care any more.
Anet surprised exactly nobody and announced a Guild Wars 2 expansion.
Elite: Dangerous was making me feel like an incompetent boob… well, more so that usual.
Smed took the bait and wrote “money grab” in a tweet, which then became a gaming news headline. Of course, he was also saying things about disgusting carebears and telling us things were not MMOs when they were clearly labeled as such.
Sony players were told they would get as much as 450 Station Cash for the great downtime of 2011, while the lawyers would pocket $2.75 million.
PlanetSide 2 got a record for what I considered a somewhat stage managed achievement.
In EverQuest II I was running a paladin through the same content I just ran through with a berserker including the Palace of the Awakened.
The Lord of the Rings Online Producer’s Letter wasn’t impressing me, to the point I was wondering whether anybody else might create an open world Middle-earth game.
In WoW I got in and did the 10th Anniversary Molten Core event at the last minute. The instance group was discovering that you had to be level 92 to do just about anything in Gorgrond. I was also opining about garrisons in Draenor. I had five after all.
In EVE Online it was time to usher in YC117. There was also a video about the age range of the New Eden player base, the Proteus expansion, Gevlon was making more friends, and the Reavers deployed again, passing though Thera on the way,
I was muttering about paid early access and that sort of thing again. Even Blizzard seemed to be in on the act.
And we had to say goodbye to our little Trixie cat.
Fifteen Years Ago
Well, there was the usual set of ill-considered predictions.
Oh, and that Battlestar Galactia/Bohemian Rhapsody video on YouTube. I liked that.
The first issue of The Official World of Warcraft Magazine shipped.
I was wondering how many people remapped they keys for games.
There was Hulkageddon II, from which I tried to draw lessons. Always good for some gamer angst… and anger. There was also the Dominion 1.1 patch.
There was a certain amount of excitement on my part for Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver. January was the ramp up time for Pokemon hype.
Oh, and there was LEGO Rock Band out.
The instance group was still warming up on the Horde side, making it as far as Razorfen Downs.
And the whole forever argument around Tanks and Healers vs. DPS? We were going on about that back in January 2010 as well. The Dungeon Finder brought this all into sharp relief.
But the month was primarily about Star Trek Online.
I was making making up polls and contests around that Del Taco shuttle tie-in and silly lists of things to do while waiting for open beta.
And when it finally arrived, I spent a lot of time with the character creator, some of it to make my first character and some of it just in the name of science. I customized my ship and wondered how I could get rid of the shields in my combat screen shots. Did they ever change that? And I pondered whether or not it was a good idea to get a lifetime subscription. The poll results said it wasn’t, but I did it anyway. The majority was correct it would seem.
Oh, I did do one other thing in January 2010.
Twenty Years Ago
Vicarious Visions, later Blizzard Albany, was acquired by Activision. The studio would later do the most excellent Diablo II Resurrected remaster that the original Diablo team said couldn’t be done.
2K Games was founded as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive and would go on to publish titles from the Civilization, Boarderlands, and Bioshock series among others.
Most Viewed Posts in January
- Threads is Dead
- Level 47 Achieved and the Level 48 Requirements in Pokemon Go
- The Blizzard WoW Classic 2025 Road Map includes Pandaria and New Vanilla Progression Servers
- A Look at the EverQuest and EverQuest II 2025 Roadmaps
- The Josh Strife Hayes Ultimate MMO Tier List
- TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2025 Draft Results
- The Altar of Zul and Jintha’alor
- Bubble Wrap Plan Gets a PAPI Keepstar Anchored in NPC Delve
- Path of Exile II Arrives in Early Access… For a Price
- No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
- Balatro on the iPad is Perfection
- Timing those Lucky Eggs for Friendship Milestones in Pokemon Go
Search Terms of the Month
error 37
[A classic Diablo 3 error!]
civ 6 unsupported amount of players
[All of them?]
what does atari do now
[Whatever it can think of I guess]
cavindra
[Are you in Desolace?]
balatro play online free
[JFC just buy the game, no wonder we can’t have nice things]
Game Time from ManicTime and iOS
A change up starting this month will be the inclusion of mobile games now that I have figured out how to turn on the screen time tracker in iOS. There are really only two games I play on mobile, Pokemon Go and Balatro... but that could change. I did not start tracking until some time into the month, so the calculations are shy of reality, but will shape up as we move on in the year.
- Enshrouded – 34.56%
- EVE Online – 32.12%
- Total Annihilation – 12.56%
- Pokemon Go – 7.92%
- Stars Reach – 4.82%
- Balatro – 3.88%
- Zmud – 1.61%
- LOTRO – 1.36%
- Combat Mission:BB – 1.17%
Even adding in my Pokemon Go time, and I tend to play it when I take my lunch time walk, it was a low playtime month, at least relative to the excess of the holidays.
Balatro
As noted in a post this month, it is great to have it on the iPad. There was a whole post about that. I have been sitting on the couch playing that a few nights a week before bed. I don’t have anything special to say about it really beyond past posts, but I thought I would mention it now that iOS apps are included in my game time.
Enshrouded
We have been chugging along as flameborn in our weekly adventures, which have been quite satisfying. Being one of the titles that came out of the “games like Valheim” search of a year ago, I am probably going to do a compare/contrast series of posts about the two, how they seem to both scratch similar itches in one regard and very different things in other. I am thinking about starting with travel, comparing the joy of gliding with the unparalleled satisfaction of messing about in boats.
EVE Online
I spent time in New Eden, but did I really play the game? I invested effort in getting my PI farms set up again in far Tenerifis, then I spent some time doing the AIR Career Program to finish up on at least one character, which took some time as well. I guess that counts. But when it comes to going out and blowing things up… or being blown up… my activity record shows I went on two fleets, which isn’t a lot. But I did get on a few kill mails, so my streak continues.
Lord of the Rings Online
I did patch up, log in, and poke around. The talk of the coming 64-bit servers and a desire not to have even more characters stranded on dead servers was part of that. But I also indulged my annual “Is the UI as unworkable at 3440×1440 as I remember it? Have they fixed anything?” experiment where I tinker with settings for an hour and get exasperated that one thing will scale and another will not while one setting persists through logout while another snaps back to the default. Anyway, if I had found a perfect setting I would have a post up about a belated trip to Mordor or something, but I did not. Still, I spent more time there than in Azeroth.
Pokemon Go
As noted early in the month, my wife and I both his level 47, which meant that the new set of tasks were very much in my mind. Three of them look to be pretty easy, but I have yet to walk a full 25km in a week with my phone. I made it to 21km one week, and then it rained.
- Level: 47 – 39% of the way to 48
- Task Status
- 10 souvenirs from buddy – 8/10
- Earn 300 hearts with your buddy – 205/300
- Walk 200km with your buddy – 66/200
- Walk 25km a week for eight weeks – 0/8
- Pokedex status: 860 (+3) caught, 872 (+3) seen
- Pokemon I want: Some missing ones from the older Pokedexes
- Current buddy: Vivillon
Stars Reach
The play tests have gotten more involved. On the one hand, that gives more insight into what a final game might be like. On the other, that means doing the same thing over and over, only in a more complicated way, with every reset. I am reminded a bit of the EVE Online pre-launch testing where several groups, including Band of Brothers, perfected their launch strategy, seeing such tests as dress rehearsals for the big day. It was estimated that the wealth advantage those people gained from their early plans took a decade to even out with players who showed up later.
Total Annihilation
Sparked by a seasonal sale over at GoG.com, I spent a week or so reliving the late 90s again with this classic RTS title. Will I carry on? Probably not, unless I go find some better computer opponents. That was the case even back in the day, that the default in-game one, even set to hard, was not all that challenging and somewhat chaotic. But users came up with replacements. Might need to look into that.
Coming Up
Civilzation VII comes out next month. I haven’t really written about that, save for picking it in the TAGN Fantasy Critic League, but it is on my mind. Probably won’t buy it day one, if only because the arc of Civ releases always includes launch problems. I will say, however, that this is one of the reasons I have 64GB of RAM in my latest computer.
Also, Civ VII is probably my most high profile pick in FCL. We’ll see how that plays out. Some of the previews have me a bit worried… and, as noted, there is a long tradition of troubled launches.
We still have a whole new zone to explore in Enshrouded, along with yaks to tame and new minerals to discover.
In EVE Online my income will finally start to come online as a month of PI gets picked up and hauled to market. Then we’ll see if there was a market for it.
Playable Worlds has been saying their Kickstarter campaign for Stars Reach will show up in February. I still do not understand what they will actually have on offer, what they plan to exchange for real world cash, but I suppose we shall see soon enough.
We should also get the Enad Global 7 Q4 2024 and full 2024 financials… next Friday I think. That should be interesting as they have completely axed the studio where they sent PlanetSide 2. That should require at least a short song and dance to explain. And then what about that H1Z1 remake/relaunch pipe dream? I suspect they will hold the line on it being one of their most important first person properties and nothing else.
And, just to wind back around the FCL, we will have some launches this month in the league, so more real scores. Still, it will be a long year.