Monthly Archives: March 2023

March 2023 in Review

The Site

There are a lot of months where I am really scratching my head and wondering if this section of the monthly review is worth the effort. And there there are months like this were I have something strange to share and I am glad I have it.

For reasons unknown, March saw a rise in users from Kazakhstan.

The countries are generally sorted by the population of English speaking citizens, but somehow our friends in Central Asia made the cut early in the month.

The Kazakhs fell off somewhat past mid-month, allowing Sweden and France to overtake them by the end of the month. Still, that was a bit unusual.

Also, for those of you following the new JetPack app that WordPress.com has been pushing, I left the old WordPress app on my phone until the day they threatened to pull the stats from it… and they did, indeed, pulls that stats from it. I can still view and edit posts, but stats are a no-go.

On Year Ago

Nintendo announced the coming of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.

Blizzard gave us a date for when they would announce their next expansion. and it sounded like Diablo Immortal might finally launch in 2022.

I was kind of done with EverQuest II and Visions of Vertovia after a couple month run. The game itself was getting a community resource council, such councils being in vogue again. I have no idea what became of that.

EverQuest turned 23.

The group was still playing Lost Ark. I was on Twitch getting drops for watching people play the game… or, in truth, not watching but just leaving Twitch open in the background.

My solo character was moving along in Lost Ark, seeing epic battles and getting a stronghold and figuring out what was shared between characters on my account. All of that got me looking at Steam achievements and some issues there. But it was the flavor of the month. Even CarBot was into it with videos. I even made it to level 50, which is some sort of break point in the game.

The group itself ran through the Morai Ruins and a couple other instance while looking for mokoko seeds… and more mokoko seeds.

When it came to EVE Online I recounted five bad ideas that never seem to die… though it was really ten bad ideas, because EVE Online is like that.

On the side of good ideas, CCP had a PLEX for Good campaign for Ukrainian refugees. The usual details followed, and they ended up raising more than half a million dollars.

Of course, CCP can never just have a win. They also started selling full fit ships with the Prospector pack, a move so brazen I started wondering if their current economy destroying plan was put in place just to sell ships for cash. This led to a streamer protest, a new kind of blackout for the game.

I was sure we were going to get some sort of crypto or pay to earn announcement next, what with Hilmar tweeting (and the official EVE Online account retweeting) about how he was pals with a pack of crypto grifters.

Meanwhile, the MER showed that economic activity was clearly slowing down.

Actually in New Eden, the GEF SIG was moving to Esoteria to shoot at FI.RE because they were letting Pandemic Horde use their structures to attack us. Then it was into Feythabolis.

I was trying out Combat Mission: Red Thunder and FreeCiv… and the Ideology expansion for RimWorld. I was also wondering when we might go back to Valheim. But I stopped playing Words with Friends. I think variations on Wordle replaced that.

Finally, we were binge watching too many mysteries at our house.

Five Years Ago

Project: Gorgon made it to Steam.

Shroud of the Avatar left early access.

EverQuest turned nineteen and launched a new server.

In EVE Online the player run Burn Jita event was back for 2018. Many ships were destroyed and I took a bunch of screen shots and tried to count the cost.

Up in Pure Blind we killed some dreads and I got a kill mark on my guardian.

CCP let out more details about the road to CSM13. There was a pretty short interval in which to register your candidacy.

The March Update for EVE Online dropped the jump fatigue cap to four hours and introduced The Hunt event.

There was an INN editorial about the metaphorical masks we wear in EVE Online. I asked if we donned the masks on purpose or if our masks were shaped by the game itself. I was also blog warring with SynCaine over the idea of instanced null sec battles. It would break the game in my view.

Rift Prime went live and I spend a good chunk of time playing that. I was in the guild The Fishing Defiants with Liore and some of the cats she used to herd. The daily gifts and the chat could be overwhelming.

I played through Freemarch pretty quickly and moved to the east end of Stonefield. Trion was tinkering with the experience curve, but they gave us some informational tidbits about the server.

And a Kickstarter campaign for the World of Warcraft Diary looked doomed from the outset. But the author vowed to regroup and return.

Ten Years Ago

Dave Georgeson of SOE said MMOs should never die. A noble sentiment at the time, it rang a bit hollow just a year and five SOE MMO closure announcements later. Business is business.

I got a seven day pass to Azeroth from Blizzard. It was nice. I had some fun, but I wasn’t ready to go back full time yet.

Meanwhile, Blizzard was saying they were blindsided by the popularity of the auction house in Diablo III. They were nearly a year late on that revelation.

On a similar theme, EA launched a new version of SimCity, pretty much ignoring the obvious expectations the franchise came with. I could only wonder if they learned anything from their efforts.

The instance group was doing some Rift content as a four player group. This was the time of our long hiatus, though we got a full group now and again. And when it was just the three of us, we ended up playing Neverwinter Nights 2 instead.

In EVE Online we were chasing around Deklein, flying the Tech Fleet doctrine, and bagging a carrier or two.

EON Magazine was closing its doors, marking the end of an era in EVE Online.

EverQuest hit its 14 year anniversary, and there was some talk about the camera view’s influence on the game’s popularity.

I was still playing World of Tanks and had hit the 2,000 battle mark. I was out there with the KV-3 and the ARL 44.

I finished up all the things in Wayfaerer Foothills, which sort of ended my time in Guild Wars 2.

Then there was the Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter campaign, which seemed more marketing tool than funding effort, and which hit its number in 11 days. Still, Lord British felt the need to stir the pot by declaring most game designers suck… and are lazy… and are not as good as him. Then he claimed he was taken out of context and not just saying things for cheap publicity. As the month closed, his Kickstarter was wrapping up, but Camelot Unchained was coming.

It was announced that Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings was getting updated to run on modern machines with better graphics. That set me on five other older games that I wished would get a similar revamp, which I think was more useful than just declaring that game developers need to innovate.

Finally, I was looking for input on some actual, real world things.

Fifteen Years Ago

I was again ruminating about the whole “Why So Much Fantasy in MMORPGs?” thing, this time on the shores of chaos.

We started to see the end of the “Brent hand picks the news” era over at VirginWorlds. The reign of myself and CrazyKinux was near to an end.

I got a Nintendo DS Lite and my own copy of Pokemon Diamond for my birthday! Then a copy of Pokemon Pearl showed up as well to complete the set. On Friday’s I was looking for a balloon.

EverQuest celebrated its 9th anniversary. A very nice time line print of the game was posted over at the EQ Dev blog to celebrate, along with a video.

In Lord of the Rings Online some sites were speculating about future expansions. And then Turbine announced The Mines of Moria! Meanwhile, I was trying to give out some founder’s referrals. I never gave them all out and, at this point, I don’t think they are a thing anymore.

In World of Warcraft, patch 2.4 was the latest end-of-the-world panic. I was trying out Alterac Valley trying to get a mount, not reading that I needed to get exalted reputation to buy it. I was also racing against a boat. Meanwhile the instance group made it to Shattrath and then hit the Blood Furnace while my wife and her friends were drinking apple-tinis.

In EVE Online I learned that there was a cap of fifty days on production lines. I was also trying to break up with an R&D agent and fitting out a new Drake. We got a “log off” button with the Trinity 1.1 patch.

Official forums were the talk again for a bit, as Marc Jacobs said he wasn’t going to have them for Warhammer Online. No, the Warhammer Herald (to be created in the image of the Camelot Herald) was going to be enough. Well, we know how that worked out.

It was announced that SOE would be moved in the Sony organization from reporting up through Sony Pictures to reporting in through the PlayStation organization. There was also the EQ2Flames drama where the forum was uninvited from all future participation in SOE events, at which point the site went all out to burn any remaining bridges with SOE. (From VirginWorlds Podcast #109)

And, finally, fifteen years ago Gary Gygax left us. We still miss him because we still feel his influence every day.

Twenty Years Ago

March 2003 saw the end of production for the original GameBoy and GameBoy Color models from Nintendo, which had been produced since 1989.

In North America we got Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. There used to be a lag time between the Japanese launch and the localized launches for the rest of the world.

Shadowbane, another run at the “open world PvP will be great!” idea for MMORPGs, launched back in 2003. Another victim of the “wolves and sheep” issue… sheep will leave if they are constantly terrorized by wolves… it managed to stumble along through various reworks until finally closing in 2009.

Ashen Empires also launched back in March of 2003. While it has been through multiple owners and its own series of revamps (they finally added a freaking quest log to the game in 2020), it carries on as of this writing.

Twenty Five Years Ago

StarCraft hit the shelves 25 years ago today. As I recall we all went to Fry’s at lunch to buy a copy the day it came out. You can still buy a remastered copy from Blizzard if you want, or download the original for free last I checked.

Thirty Five Years Ago

On March 8, 1988 Activision changes its name to Mediagenic because “reasons.” (Activision remains the name of a subsidiary, along with Infocom and their business software unit.) In 1991 Bobby Kotick buys into the company and changes the name back to Activision in 1992.

Most Viewed Posts in March

Search Terms of the Month

does baelgar knock back
[Bael’Gar does knock back]

nihilist sculpture death corpse cosmos universe
[Pretty sure this is in New Eden somewhere]

gamer blogs
[There are some still]

Game Time from ManicTime

I’ve decided to stop posting the ManicTime numbers monthly. They have an odd effect on me in that I feel the need to record and write about anything that appears on the list which has, at times, inhibited me from actually playing games now and then. I’m going to leave the app running, but it will be more for that end of the year “what did I play” sort of thing.

EVE Online

It was a busy month in New Eden for me, at least relative to recent months, perhaps the busiest month since the end of the last big war when we were dogging PAPI’s retreat from Delve. According to the Imperium participation app I went on 20 fleets in March. Only a few were on the front lines in Pure Blind though. Instead my main effort was in the Alpha Clone homeland defense fleets. My alpha alt got on way more kill mails than my main this month. Maybe I left the wrong character at home.

Pokemon Go

Another month of saving postcards for Scatterbugs in order to evolve Vivillons. I have now evolved seven of the eighteen and have the Scatterbugs for eight more that I will be able to evolve once I have saved enough box tops… or postcards.

Level: 43 (52% of the way to 44 in xp, 1 of 4 tasks complete)
Pokedex status: 760 (+4) caught, 774 (+3) seen
Mega Evolutions obtained: 24 of 34
Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
Current buddy: Amaura

WoW Classic

We carried on in Northrend. As I noted in my six month passing post earlier this week, Wrath has its charms and there are clearly things I still enjoy about it. We still have some dungeons left to run there too. But if Valheim got the Ashlands biome finished, I might suggest it was time for a change of scenery… at least until phase 3 of Wrath lands.

Zwift

After a slow month in last month it was some work getting back on the bike again, what with travel, being sick again, and just not feeling like it. And, of course, after months of building up some endurance I feel like I am back at square one. But I did get on the damn bike.

Level – 18
Distanced cycled – 1,542 miles (+22 miles)
Elevation climbed – 59,347 (+456 feet)
Calories burned – 48,155 (+556)

Coming Up

Well, you know what tomorrow is. Expect a post, but maybe not the post you expect.

This week also saw me hit the three year mark for posting every day, something that has become a bit of a burden. This post is day 1,098 in a row, and tomorrow, for which a post has already been written, will be 1,099. If I am smart I’ll take Sunday off, break the streak, and not worry about this sort of thing ever again.

Otherwise it is April, and that means I need to get my taxes done. And my mother’s taxes too. Don’t ask, it isn’t a happy story. As I have managed to procrastinate this long, I expect I might be spending some evenings working on that rather than playing video games.

The Continuing Twitter End Times

6 Replies

The thing they never tell you about the end times of large corporations is how long they take to play out.

For example Kodak, one-time giant of film and film processing, whose red and yellow logo was known world wide, has been a dead man walking since it completely failed to make the transition to digital cameras. It’s long and inevitable collapse is still in progress and it has thrashed around looking for any way to avoid its destiny, including a brief flirtation with cryto mining. It still printing products and has a market for film, but that continues to shrink. Even my dentist… dental x-rays were long a revenue source for the company… has a digital x-ray system now. My dentist runs a booming practice and likes to have all the latest toys… he has a freaking laser drill… but eventually the strip mall practices will have digital x-ray systems and that market will dry up.

And then there is IBM, one time champion of corporate America who stole a march on Apple and and for a few years dominated the personal computer market. They spent the 90s trying to fight the trends their own IBM PC started, and for the last 20 years or so have jettisoned pretty much every tangible business line to focus on buzzwords. I asked ChatGPT to list out their current offerings and got IBM Cloud, Watson AI, and some very special use platforms, but when it put IBM Blockchain on the list I thought surely it was pranking me. But no, IBM Blockchain is a thing and IBM jumping on that trend cannot be a good sign, aside from confirming to me that it is something companies grab on to when looking for a cheap, short term buzzword win.

Both companies will linger and shrink and eke out an existence for decades, but their list of their former products, sold off or shut down, will only grow while their actual footprint will continue to shrink.

So the fact that Twitter hasn’t died yet, even after Elon Musk went into a data center and started shutting off random servers, is probably par for the course. I mean, Elon seems to want to speed run the destruction of the company, and publicly said Twitter’s valuation was $20 billion, or less than half of what he paid for it, but there is some inertia holding things in place.

Still, he persists and April looks like it could be another big step on his goal of immolation.

To start with, on April first, because of course on April Fools day, Twitter will remove the legacy verified user blue check marks. Going forward, only those wiling to pay the $8 a month for Twitter Blue will get that special badge.

Who will be the fool?

What does that subscription get you?

All this for just $8 a month

I like that even a subscription won’t free you from ads. Let’s hear it for half measures!

Actual celebrities, for whom the original verification system was put in place to serve, seem unimpressed. Stephan King has pointed out on a few occasions that Twitter ought to be paying him and other celebs that draw people to the platform. William Shatner was pointing this out to Musk as well this past week. I have mentioned the unique set of circumstances that somehow let Twitter hit a critical mass of celebrities that helped make it viable. Twitter’s value is in who you can follow and interact with. Without that it isn’t a very impressive application.

Oh well, Stephan King, Neil Gaiman, William Gibson and many more won’t have a blue check mark come next week. That means that if you follow @st3ph4nking it might not be who you think it is.

That is the first hit of the one-two punch. We needed to start with that for the next hit to have its full impact. Come April 15th, if you don’t have that blue checkmark the algorithm won’t promote you so only those who follow you will see your Tweets.

Musk dictates

The theory here is that bots won’t pay $8 to get themselves boosted into people’s timelines.

Also, I think the voting thing is hilarious because I am sure every time he runs a poll and it doesn’t come out the way he wants he assumes it was bots. If you agree with him you’re human, if you disagree you must be a bot.

And he is really obsessed with the bots… as he was during the purchase fiasco where he tried to make bots a reason to get out of his offer despite the fact that he had waved that off explicitly as a reason to do so.

Bots are all the things

This is where following a bunch of devs with live service video game experience is fun because they’ve been fighting bots for the last couple of decades and have opinions founded on experience about Musk’s plan.

To sum some of that up, it sounds like Twitter is about to learn a lot about stolen credit cards and other ways to get into subscription services where there is some benefit to be gained. And, of course, Musk outlined the benefit above, that subscribing means the algorithm will spread your message for you.

So come September 15th the For You tab on Twitter is going to be filled with people who paid $8 in order to get into your timeline and bots who defrauded Twitter in order to do so.

Oh, and the other lesson from live service games is that hacking subscribed accounts is a very popular pastime as well. It is possible that having a blue check mark will put a target marker on your account and that we’ll see more “my account was hacked when it posted that noxious opinion!” only it might actually be true on occasion going forward.

Now I know some people don’t like the For You tab in any case and wonder that anybody who frequent that location, but the algorithm has been pretty good to me over the years. My interests are pretty simple I guess and I don’t bother to engage with aholes. But now that tab is going to be hot garbage through and through.

So the upshot is that you had best find the people you want to follow on Twitter because the algorithm won’t be there to help you soon.

TechDirt – Elon Is Shadow Boosting Accounts He Likes, While Trying To Drive Away Users Who Won’t Pay
The Verge – Elon Musk says Twitter’s For You page will only recommend verified accounts
Fast Company – Believe it or not, Elon Musk is about to make Twitter even worse

The “Made You Form” Stage of the War in Pure Blind

Leave a reply

The Imperium’s entry into the war in the north that is centered on the Pure Blind region saw some immediate results. There were battles with thousands of ships involved, including a server breaking battle over a Keepstar timer, Keepstars and Fortizars and lesser structures have been attacked and destroyed.

The X47 Keepstar a couple weeks back

And then things slowed down, which always tends to happen in a war. Fraternity and PanFam couldn’t simultaneously four Keepstars in Pure Blind, but now that they are down to just the staging Keepstar in X47, their ability to form to defend is pretty easy. So, while we can set the armor timer, they can all just log in and be on the structure to defend it.

So we have entered the time that comes in many wars where the front lines have solidified and making headway by brute force becomes difficult and costly. The Imperium and Fraternity have staging Keepstars just one titan jump apart.

The jump from DO6 to X47

You can tell when a was enters this phase because over on r/eve the propaganda front in the war shifts over to things like “made you form,” “too scared to form,” and the traditional favorite, “not winning fast enough.”

This stage of a war tends to remain static until one side gets tired of it and stops showing up. So there can be days, weeks, even months… as we saw when PAPI invaded Delve and cornered the Imperium in a single constellation… of fruitless fights, calls for fleets only to stand down, and name calling as neither side makes any progress.

Somebody breaks eventually. The attackers may get tired of not making any progress, or the defenders may lose hope and stop logging in, but morale will slip with one group and the fail cascade will begin. The other side will start to make progress and their morale will soar while the other side’s will crash. Then the war will move towards its conclusion.

But we’re a ways from that now. On the main front we’re locked into something of a stalemate, with either side able to counter the moves of the other, so both sides are looking for alternate paths or ways to divert hostile forces away from the main front.

Pandemic Horde has spend some time attacking Delve in an attempt to get the Imperium to pull back and defend there. But our Alpha Clone defense doctrine, which pits a mnass of secondary accounts in cheap Feroxes, Cormorants, and Ospreys against the attackers has been successful so far. We lose a lot of ships, but they tend to be 30 million ISK Feroxes against ships 3 to 5 times that price (or more sometimes), so the ISK exchange is poor for the other side while we’re fully reimbursed on the contract price of the ships so we happily jump into fights because we make money on the insurance if we get blown up.

In March my Alpha Clone homeland defense character is on a lot more kill mails than my main who got stuck into some of those big fights.

None of which means there aren’t fights happening or won’t be more fights. This week there has been a struggle for the Imperium and B2 to get a Fortizar anchored on the same grid as Faternity’s X47 Keepstar. That promises to be bloody, but in and of itself will not be conclusive.

Fights will continue. What will be missing for a while is any definitive victories or defeats as each side looks for a lever to give themselves an edge in budging the other side.

Six Months of Wrath Classic

Leave a reply

Wrath of the Lich King Classic launched six months ago the past weekend, which seems as good of a time as any to stop and do a “how’s it going?” sort of post.

Has he even shown up yet?

Generally speaking, I would say it has been going pretty well for me and our group.

This was by no means guaranteed up front. We dove into WoW Classic pretty hard, but still took a couple of breaks along the way, then jumped into The Burning Crusade Classic but found ourselves distracted and off to other titles part way into that, such that when Wrath Classic loomed we had to get in and work to get our characters to 68 so we could make our way to Northrend.

For me, WotLK holds a special spot in the history of WoW as probably my peak involvement with the game. But when you’ve done all the things you’re likely to ever do on the first pass, the question seemed to be how likely was it going to be that I would want to do some, if not all, of those things again.

We have, as a group and as individuals, in the past taken runs at the expansion again with alts only to get bogged down or lose interest barely a zone into the expansion. I’ve done the first two dozen quests in Borean Tundra a lot of times.

But now, six months in, I seem to be still invested in Wrath Classic. My play time in the month in review post on Friday will, once again, put WoW Classic at the top of the list. I log in daily. I do the Argent Tournament dailies or battle in Wintergrasp most days of the week.

And our group has done pretty well, though I have to hand it to Potshot committing to running instances as both the healer and as a hunter doing ranged DPS to help sustain us and give us that extra bit of damage to tip the scales in our favor on a lot of boss fights.

But there will also always be the question of whether or not we could have done some or all of these instances as a group of four, the way we did in WoW Classic. We could have leveled into some of them as a group of four I am sure, but there is that Prince Keleseth DPS check so early on that it is not implausible that we might have just given up on it.

So, now that we are six months in, is it everything I remembered?

Yes and no. Some of the zones feel like a bit of a slog. While I have two characters at level 80 now, the next one is only at level 75 and one is still back at level 70.

At some point I will want to do a ranking of Northrend zones, the way I did with the Outland zones, but I have to admit the zones aren’t all that exciting. There is no zone I feel strongly about for either the top or bottom of the list, though I tentatively would be Icecrown at the top and Crystalsong Forest at the bottom for pretty much the same reasons. Icecrown is where everything ends up happening and Crystalsong Forest might be the most skippable zone in the expansion.

Then again, Zul’Drak has a lot to recommend it being at the bottom of the list as well. And I know some people love Grizzly Hills the way they loved Nagrand, but it wasn’t that big of a deal for me.

Anyway, we’ll see what I come up with when I get to that post. I am not quite ready for it yet.

Otherwise it has been interesting to see what has grabbed me and what has not. I thought, for example, that I would be more interested in leveling up some alts, that working my way through the quest lines of each zone would keep me invested.

That has been less the case that I figured. I made it that was with my Deathknight, being the completionist on zones for the lore achievement, but ended up going from 78 to 80 on my pally largely on dailies. And my hunter is still lingering at level 75.

On the other hand, I am a bit surprised that I log in to do the Argent Tournament dailies as often as I do. I thought that might be one of those “did it once, that was enough” things, but I guess I must enjoy them because I find it difficult to log in for things I do not enjoy.

So far my expectations have been about met. They have been exceeded on some fronts and have fallen short on others. In the end though I do still log on and play pretty much daily.

A Look into February 2023 Destruction in EVE Online

3 Replies

This is my third post looking into monthly destruction based on the kill dump file that is included as part of the Monthly Economic Report, and I am already seeing some of the limitations of this as a recurring monthly post, at least when it comes to keeping it somewhat fresh and interesting.

For example, the baseline stat, the total number of ships and structures destroyed in New Eden in February was 400,617.

That is 94% of the January total, which was 425,629, but February only has 90% of the days that January has, so that is pretty close to a consistent result.

Likewise, 110,089 of those were capsules, compared to 115,904 the previous month, and 25,384 of those were corvettes while in January the number was 27,221.

34.97 trillion ISK was reported in the loss column as a result of destruction, which lines up exactly with the destruction data in the MER from the produced/destroyed/mined chart, which means they must be drawing from the same source, and is in line with the regional destruction data, though that is lower because it does not count wormhole space.

There is still the lack of alignment between the regional data in the MER, which puts these as the top ten regions for destruction

The Forge – 1.67 trillion 4.82% (Caldari High Sec)
Pure Blind – 1.61 trillion 4.68% (B2 Coalition)
The Citadel – 1.52 trillion 4.40% (Caldari High Sec)
Vale of the Silent – 1.45 trillion 4.19% (Fraternity)
Fade – 1.43 trillion 4.15% (B2 Coalition)
Sinq Laison – 1.40 trillion 4.05% (Gallente High Sec)
Lonetrek – 1.38 trillion 3.99% (Caldari High Sec)
Delve – 1.32 trillion 3.83% (B2 Coalition)
Perrigen Falls – 1.23 trillion 3.56% (PanFam)
Metropolis – 1.08 trillion 3.12% (Minmata High Sec)

While the data from the kill dump file puts the top ten regions as:

Pure Blind – 1.51 trillion
Fade – 1.32 trillion
Vale of the Silent – 1.30 trillion
The Citadel – 1.28 trillion
The Forge – 1.22 trillion
Sinq Laison – 1.10 trillion
Perrigen Falls – 1.08 trillion
Delve – .97 trillion
Lonetrek – .91 trillion
Heimatar – .77 trillion

And that list is based on the total value of the ship’s loss, including modules that dropped, and not just what was destroyed. That list is actually the same regions in the same order, but the numbers are a bit smaller to account for the approximately 10 trillion ISK in modules and cargo that was left on the field to be recovered.

By the way, if you want a safer place to hang out, try Khanid. That region saw a mere 41.71 billion ISK in destruction. The only locations lower were a few under used wormhole systems. Omist was the null sec region with the lowest destruction, ringing in at 57.53 billion ISK destroyed, but it is also in that area that FI.RE departed that hasn’t yet found a new permanent owner.

When we drill down to the solar system level, Jita does win out when we are counting ISK lost:

Jita 478.89 billion
C4C-Z4 475.29 billion
Auga 469.22 billion
F-NMX6 452.31 billion
Ahbazon 424.01 billion
Sivala 304.61 billion
Gheth 255.11 billion
MJ-5F9 252.15 billion
Miroitem 233.06 billion
4-HWWF 198.13 billion

But Jita is only in third place when we count total individual losses:

Auga 11,499
Deepari 10,278
Jita 10,226
Ahbazon 6,909
Nagamanen 6,800
C4C-Z4 6,638
F-NMX6 5,983
Miroitem 4,846
Tama 4,654
Oinasiken 4,461

Deepari isn’t quite the outlier it was before, but it still has a lot of destruction even for a new player system. I would expect to see the other empire new player starting system on the list, unless there is some advantage to Amarr for Alpha Clone alts or bots/

If we take capsules and corvettes out of the equation, which pares down total destruction to 266,144, the most destroyed classes of ships in February were:

Frigate 64,906
Cruiser 33,130
Destroyer 27,144
Shuttle 18,726
Combat Battlecruiser 13,359
Mobile Tractor Unit 10,900
Heavy Assault Cruiser 10,556
Hauler 7,970
Interdictor 7,667
Interceptor 6,877
Battleship 6,099
Assault Frigate 5,949
Stealth Bomber 4,614
Tactical Destroyer 4,198
Strategic Cruiser 3,938
Mobile Warp Disruptor 3,676
Mining Barge 3,206
Covert Ops 3,134
Marauder 2,203
Command Destroyer 2,049

And, when we get down to specific hulls, the usual suspects are there in the top 20 as well.

Mobile Tractor Unit 10,467
Venture 10,290
Heron 7,328
Caldari Shuttle 6,696
Ishtar 6,070
Caracal 5,234
Amarr Shuttle 5,156
Vexor 4,663
Thrasher 4,252
Sabre 4,052
Catalyst 3,809
Tristan 3,620
Gallente Shuttle 3,554
Hurricane 3,235
Kikimora 3,175
Punisher 3,091
Merlin 2,817
Atron 2,720
Rifter 2,701
Minmatar Shuttle 2,638

There is a little change. Herons beat Caldari Shuttles this month. But it is about the same. The people of New Eden seem set in their routine.

So we haven’t seen anything really new and different so far. Kind of cool if you just like to see the details every month, but I like to chart changes and see if they track to events. For March we’ll have some battles in Pure Blind and the Frigate Free For All in Ouelletta that should stand out. I’ll look for those. But I have been fishing around for something else to look into.

One thought was new battles graphic that CCP included in the MER. As I noted, as an image it is not very useful or enlightening unless you just happen to know what those circles are referencing.

Feb 2023 – Battles in New Eden by Participants

However, even though the data is provided in the form of a JSON file (named kill_dump.json, which is a bit confusing next to kill_dump.csv), it is somewhat incomplete. I could not reproduce that chart with the data provided.

The problem is that they exported some of the key data, but in creating the chart they had access to additional data they did not include. For example, they do not system name, only system ID, so I had to made a translation table to map the names to the IDs because I am pretty sure few of us know off hand that system ID 30000142 refers to Jita.

And then there are participants, which I haven’t figured out how to tease out of the data structure in Power BI and the fact that the ISK value of battles is given in two forms, CCP valuation and ZKill valuation, and they can be pretty far apart.

All told CCP’s valuation for battles only totals up to 28.29 trillion ISK, while ZKill valuation rings in at 60.37 trillion ISK. That is kind of a big gap, and it is unevenly distributed.

For example, the top five battles in cost using CCP’s valuation system are in:

8-4GQM – Feb 21 – 242.26 billion
DFH-V5 – Feb 26 – 216.82 billion
Egghelende – Feb 21 – 175.29 billion
Dooz – Feb 7 – 168.42 billion
T-RPFU – Feb 5 – 148.31 billion

While using the ZKill valuation the top five battles were:

Urlen- Feb 8 – 377.12 billion
K4YZ-Y – Feb 22 – 236.10 billion
J5A-IX – Feb 9 – 208.40 billion
Sadana – Feb 1 – 182.03 billion
B3QP-K – Feb 1 – 109.59 billion

I ended up feeling like the ZKill valuations are just wrong, in part because it is difficult to find supporting evidence.

So, going back to the CCP valuation list, I went looking for that top battle and was able to find it on the HTML version of the map CCP provided, which lets you mouse over the circles to get details.

CCP’s map at 8-4GQM battle details

With that, I went to go make a battle report for that time frame on Feb 21st, and came up with what looked like an actual battle in Branch on that date. Here is the header from the battle report.

8-4GQM Battle Report Header

Pandemic Horde and Fraternity got into it with B2 Coalition and capital ships were deployed, with Karter Viper of Siberian Squads (they left the Imperium after some internal drama and went and joined Fraternity as part of WinterCo) losing a titan as part of the mix.

Then I let ZKill generate its own battle report (which might have caught a mistake in mine, as I have Banderlogs on the the Fraternity side and ZKill puts them on our side, but I can’t remember where they actually sit) and then I tried to compare all the data.

The side totals from ZKill

And for the battle we have the following valuations:

CCP value – 242.26 billion ISK
BR Tool value – 136.6 billion ISK
ZKill Related kills value – 136.3 billion ISK
CCP ZKill value – 31.73 billion ISK

So I am not sure how valuable that is. I know the data is going to vary from site to site based on the parameters around collecting it, but I feel a bit like the old saying about how a man with one watch always knows what time it is, but a man with two watches is never quite sure.

Anyway, as a reason to continue doing these sorts of posts CCP’s battle data isn’t going to sustain me. It is a bit too much for somewhat inconsistent results. Then again, when we get the March MER it will include some battles that I was in. And maybe they will have gotten some feedback on the data presentation.

Computer Generated Nonsense on Tap

8 Replies

It has come to this, I am going to post about ChatGPT.

AI and ChatGPT have been very much the rage online as it has been proven that a computer program can, with enough data input, imitate the most empty and banal writing known to man. Or at least this man, if man I be. The world is so stupid sometimes that I am not fully ruling out the whole “brain in a jar” hypothesis.

I am not wholly against the idea. I can see potential in the tech for many things; idea generation, creation of mundane filler text (no more Lorem Ipsum), structuring information, and the occasional silly poem or song about a specific topic, though apparently ChatGPT has its limits.

It’s full potential will never be realized until it creates porn

Though it seems the former president is the inappropriate or offensive content. I asked for a song about his hair being sucked into a jet engine and got the same response.

Anyway, I started thinking about this when somebody dropped a Washington Post quiz in a Discord chat that asked people to try and identify the AI generated content. I came away from that really not caring about the answers as the text versions were not only really bland boiler plate style text, but were also on topics that I neither knew nor cared about. I could barely read them I was so aggressively uninterested.

Meanwhile, Bhagpuss was fiddling around with ChatGPT last week, having it write reviews for games he hadn’t played, and the output was also superficially convincing though, again, not about anything I had any real knowledge of, so it seemed fine to me because I couldn’t care enough to check any of it.

So I decided to run a few things through the bot about topics on which I was more fully versed. I played around with things like biographies of people like my great uncle. This is where I noticed ChatGPT’s tendency towards flights of fancy as it got most of the material facts of his life wrong.

But that was also a pretty narrow topic. So I decided to go on to video games, asking it to write a press release for Blizzard announcing that NFTs will be part of the next World of Warcraft expansion. I got this.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Blizzard Announces NFT Integration in the Next World of Warcraft Expansion

IRVINE, Calif. – Blizzard Entertainment is thrilled to announce that NFTs (non-fungible tokens) will be a part of the next World of Warcraft expansion, Shadowlands: Chains of Domination.

The integration of NFTs will allow players to own and trade unique in-game items, such as mounts, weapons, and armor, that are backed by blockchain technology. This exciting new feature will provide players with a sense of ownership and authenticity, as well as a new level of value to their in-game assets.

“We are excited to bring NFTs to World of Warcraft,” said J. Allen Brack, president of Blizzard Entertainment. “This integration allows us to explore new avenues for player engagement and opens up a new world of possibilities for the World of Warcraft community.”

The introduction of NFTs in Shadowlands: Chains of Domination will provide players with a new layer of immersion and engagement, allowing them to fully immerse themselves in the game’s rich and expansive world. The integration will also allow for greater player autonomy and control, providing a more democratic and inclusive gaming experience.

Blizzard is committed to ensuring that the integration of NFTs in Shadowlands: Chains of Domination is a safe and secure experience for all players. The company has taken extensive measures to ensure that the NFTs are tamper-proof and secure, and players can have confidence in the authenticity of their in-game items.

Shadowlands: Chains of Domination is set to release later this year, and Blizzard looks forward to bringing this exciting new feature to the World of Warcraft community. For more information, please visit the official World of Warcraft website.

About Blizzard Entertainment Best known for blockbuster hits including World of Warcraft®, Hearthstone®, Overwatch®, Diablo®, and StarCraft®, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard Entertainment’s track record includes twenty-two #1 games* and numerous Game of the Year awards. The company’s online gaming service, Battle.net®, is one of the largest in the world, with millions of active players.

That is a pretty convincing simulacrum of a Blizzard press release… if you not very little about World of Warcraft. If you know that Shadowlands was already and expansion or that J. Allen Brack has been gone for a couple of years, it is less convincing. And have they really had 22 #1 games?

But I was asking the bot to speculate, and maybe that wasn’t fair. So I settled down on something more direct. I asked it to write a short history of Sony Online Entertainment. After all, that is something I have some knowledge of, having thrown together a timeline of the company previously. And just to spice things up, I also asked Microsoft’s Bing ChatAI and Google’s Bard AI to answer the prompt as well.

The Bing AI was direct and to the point, lacking any flourish.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) began with Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA), an internal game development studio of Sony, formed by 1995. In 1996, John Smedley was put in charge of SISA’s development of an online role-playing video game. The game would evolve into the MMORPG EverQuest ¹.

In April 1998, SOE was formed by merging parts of Sony Online Ventures with Sony Pictures Entertainment ¹. Within a matter of months after this change, Sony Interactive Studios America was renamed 989 Studios ¹. Towards the end of 1998, 989 Studios shifted its strategy to making PlayStation games ¹.

In February 2015, SOE was sold to investment firm Columbus Nova and rebranded as Daybreak Game Company ¹.

There isn’t a lot going on there, but that seems to be the way of Bing’s AI. It doesn’t go into great depth, but the details of the different organizations that eventually coalesced into Sony Online Entertainment are a bit foggy to me to this day. Gaming magazine articles from the time often used the names like Verant, 989 Studios, and various groups within Sony interchangeably, sometimes in the same article. The fact that 989 went off in another direction doesn’t seem much on point.

Bing, despite its brevity, did link to sources. I will give it that. And it is certain that SOE was sold to Columbus Nova, something Daybreak has been deceptive about, to say the least. But the AI also seemed content to pull everything from the same Wikipedia article, like a 5th grader writing a report.

Google’s Bard, on the other hand, holds no tuck with reality and spins a unique tale that diverges considerably from the reality in which I live.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was an American video game developer and publisher based in San Diego, California. It was founded in December 1997 as a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment, but was spun off to an independent investor in February 2015 and renamed Daybreak Game Company.

SOE was one of the leading developers of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Its most popular games included EverQuest, EverQuest II, PlanetSide, Free Realms, and DC Universe Online. SOE also developed and published a number of single-player games, including the EverQuest expansions, The Matrix Online, and The Agency.

In 2015, SOE was acquired by Columbus Nova, an investment firm. The acquisition was seen as a way to help SOE expand its reach into new markets. However, the acquisition was not successful, and SOE was shut down in 2017.

SOE’s legacy lives on through the games that it developed and published. EverQuest and EverQuest II are still popular MMOGs, and PlanetSide is considered one of the best first-person shooters of all time. SOE’s single-player games have also been praised for their graphics, gameplay, and story.

SOE was a pioneer in the development of MMOGs, and its games have helped to shape the online gaming industry. The company’s legacy will continue to live on through the games that it created.

Oof, SOE, you are missed. But your legacy lives on through EverQuest and all those single player titles, like The Matrix Online and The Agency.

Still, it was also on point about Columbus Nova, I’ll give it that.

Now Bard is the newest player on the scene and I just got access to the beta this past week, so it has, perhaps, not been fed all the data it needed to get that prompt right. Still, its willingness to run with the prompt with abandon, creating its own alternate version of the facts, is something to keep in mind… it you’re into some alternate reality fiction.

Finally, there is ChatGPT.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was founded in 1995 as Verant Interactive by John Smedley, Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost. The company initially focused on creating video games for personal computers. Verant Interactive released its first game, “EverQuest,” in 1999. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) quickly became popular, and its success led to Verant Interactive being acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000.

After the acquisition, Verant Interactive was renamed to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). SOE continued to develop and publish online games, including “Star Wars Galaxies” and “Planetside.” In 2005, SOE launched “EverQuest II,” the sequel to the original “EverQuest.”

SOE also expanded its offerings beyond traditional MMORPGs with the release of “Free Realms,” a family-friendly online game that offered a mix of different gameplay styles. In 2011, SOE released “DC Universe Online,” a massively multiplayer online action game set in the DC Universe.

In 2015, SOE was sold by Sony to an investment firm and renamed Daybreak Game Company. The company continued to operate many of the games previously released by SOE, including “EverQuest,” “EverQuest II,” and “DC Universe Online.” Daybreak Game Company also began developing new titles, including “H1Z1,” a zombie survival game, and “PlanetSide 2,” a massive multiplayer first-person shooter.

In 2021, Daybreak Game Company was acquired by Enad Global 7, a Swedish video game company. The acquisition included the rights to all of the games previously published by SOE and Daybreak Game Company. Today, the company continues to develop and publish online games under the Daybreak Game Company name.

There are issues in that piece as well. Dates are incorrect… we know that, in the end, no new games were launched under the Daybreak banner that hadn’t been started under SOE… and I am pretty sure Verant was not “acquired” by Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000, at least in the way a one might buy and independent entity. But as I noted above, the early history of SOE and the organizations that ended up being combined into it are a bit murky.

It skipped the whole Columbus Nova thing… coward… but it did carry on to the acquisition by Enad Global 7, though it ends on a pretty generic “still continues to develop and publish online games” phrasing, which is not supported by any direct observation. No new games have been published in years.

So I wouldn’t trust any of them to write anything authoritative. At a minimum I would want to fact check these AIs on any but the most obvious details. I’ll take “the sky was blue,” though I’ll see what the date is and if it was during winter I’ll go check the weather report. (ChatGPT won’t talk about the weather, even for past dates. It tells me to go check the weather report.)

Instead, the most striking thing is probably the assumed authority that comes out of these AI bots.

I saw somebody compare them to a 20 year old male on the internet; completely sure of their facts and wrong in some way on most of them.

Likewise, I think a comparison to news reporting is somewhat apt, that the closer you are to a story, the more likely you are to find errors… and I have never read a news story that I was close to that did not contain errors in fact… but the authority of the news is such that you will assume truth if you have no first hand knowledge.

I suppose the lesson is to be wary, since people seem keen to take short cuts and use these AIs to write news stories rather than just filler text, and the AI makes mistakes as fundamental as any human.

I have no plans to rely on AI for anything other than occasional humor at this point. In any case, I do not believe it could generate a blog post that would fool any regular reader here. I am hesitant about many things in the way the AI (or a 20 year old male on the internet) simply is not.

EverQuest II is back with Another PvP TLE Server

Leave a reply

I feel like we’ve been here before. Well, I KNOW we’ve been here before, but I am missing something between last time and this time. Two years back Daybreak went back for another try at making PvP a thing in EverQuest II with the Tarinax server.

PvP has been a problematic journey for the game, as I have detailed in the past, largely because balancing PvE and PvP is generally a thankless task that rarely works out as hoped. At one point every piece of equipment had PvE and PvP stats, but PvP breaking abilities remained.

Anyway, the gap was what happened to that server. I guess I missed it somewhere along the way that it was merged into the Antonia Bayle server earlier this month. That is the EQII version of the Vox server, where all dead servers are merged when their time is past.

Still, I guess the old server must have done okay because Daybreak has announced a NEW PVP TLE server for EQII, set to launch in April.

PvP is returning with Zarrakon

As always, this special server is for All Access subscribers only. No poors.

The rules for this server are pretty much the same as the last one. Again, if they didn’t see fit to make changes they last one must have done something right.

TLE is time locked expansions, so new content will open up on a regular schedule
Launches with the Shattered Lands, Deserts of Flame, and Kingdom of Sky expansions already unlocked
Faction based PvP – Qeynos versus Freeport
Free Trade server – Things that would be bind on pickup on normal servers will be bind on equip, thus salable or tradable

And all of this kicks off on April 25, 2023 at 12:00pm PDT.

3 Days of EVE Online Omega Time for 1 PLEX This Weekend Only

1 Reply

Note: This offer has now ended.

CCP is offering up 3 days of Omega time… that is what being subscribed is called in EVE Online, so all the subscriber benefits… for just 1 PLEX.

This weekend only

There are, of course, limitations, like one purchase per account. You cannot buy a decade’s worth of subscription time via this deal, so stop scheming. And the deal is only good until downtime on Monday, March 27th.

1 PLEX for 3 days Omega? Even the four generals of the empires are staring at it in disbelief!
Pick it up from the NES store – One purchase per account. Only available until 1100 UTC Monday.

Have a good weekend!
o7#tweetfleet #EVEOnline pic.twitter.com/ow2LtPtyuD

— EVE Online (@EveOnline) March 24, 2023

Of course, being the suspicious person I am, my first thought was to wonder what stats CCP is trying to juice here on the last weekend of Q1 2023? I mean sure, maybe they just want you to go try the new Faction Warfare direct enlistment, but I always week the ulterior motive.

But it is Friday, the sun is finally out, it is warm, and it has been a long week so I am too tired to think about it. So I turned to our new AI friends to tell me about why CCP might do this. Here were there responses.

Bing’s AI chat bot offered up the following bullet points:

Bing’s AI didn’t really understand the question and wrote about why CCP might offer 3 days for 50 PLEX as part of another deal. Bing does, however, like to link to its sources… I like a bot that shows its work… though it apparently can’t number footnotes correctly. Also, “a nice micro ship?” What does that even mean?

Google’s new Bard AI chat bot gave me the following reasons:

To increase revenue. By offering a discount on PLEX, CCP can encourage more players to purchase it. This will increase revenue in the short term.
To attract new players. By offering a free trial of Omega time, CCP can attract new players to EVE Online. These players may then decide to purchase a subscription to the game.
To retain existing players. By offering a discount on PLEX, CCP can encourage existing players to purchase it. This will help to retain players who might otherwise have lapsed their subscription.
To build goodwill with players. By offering a free trial of Omega time, CCP can build goodwill with players. This goodwill may encourage players to continue playing EVE Online in the future.

I guess. Not exactly a revenue buster, that one PLEX… however I suppose if you had zero PLEX and didn’t know you could just buy one in Jita, you might spend some cash on some. And the other are kind of on point, though a bit ephemeral.

And then there is ChatGPT’s response:

End of the Quarter Sales Boost: The end of a financial quarter is a crucial time for any business, as it is the time when financial reports are generated, and targets are set for the upcoming quarter. Offering a promotion like this can help CCP boost their sales figures for the quarter and meet their targets.
Player Retention: EVE Online is a complex game that requires a significant investment of time and effort to progress. Offering three days of Omega time for one PLEX can incentivize players to log in and continue playing, thus increasing player retention.
Attract New Players: EVE Online has a high learning curve, and new players may be hesitant to commit to a subscription without first trying out the game. Offering a promotion like this can attract new players by giving them a taste of the benefits of Omega status without requiring a long-term commitment.
Increase PLEX Demand: PLEX is a critical currency in EVE Online, and its value is determined by supply and demand. By offering a promotion that encourages players to purchase PLEX, CCP can increase the demand for the currency and potentially drive up its value.

It follows on with this quote:

Overall, the promotion of offering three days of Omega time for one PLEX on the last weekend of the quarter can be seen as a strategic move by CCP to boost sales, increase player engagement, and attract new players.

I agree with ChatGPT in that they are trying to boost some end of quarter measurement, but I am not sure selling something for 1 PLEX is going to is going exactly set revenue on fire. But there are other metrics in the sea of financial bullshit. They might be trying to get a lift on monthly active users or maybe total Omega accounts active in Q1.

After all, they gave away Omega time for a PLEX in Q4 as well with the launch of the Uprising expansion.

Anyway, I am sure there is an answer somewhere, though the likelihood of my ever knowing it is pretty small. So I spent the 1 PLEX and added 3 days to my Omega time.

Dragon Tom Foolery

Leave a reply

After out encounter with King Ymiron in Utgarde Pinnacle, Ula opened a portal to Theramore which, among other things, is the center of nostalgia in Azeroth.

He’s talking about vanilla WoW

Why Theramore, aside from the ability to make the joke above? Well, Theramore is a town on the edge of the Dustwallow Marsh, the location of one of my “things to do” items for Wrath Classic.

I am talking about Onyxia.

Onyxia slumbers

As our group lands at level 80, we’re in the zone to go poke at some of the raids back in vanilla WoW. Onyxia tops the list because at some point her raid gets upgraded to level 80. I have heard rumor that will occur when phase 3 of Wrath Classic kicks in.

So I had put the idea in the minds of the group and when we had some time left after Utgarde Pinnacle, Ula was able to get us into Theramore straight away.

There was still a ride across the swamp to deal with, and remembering that we had to convert our group to a raid in order to enter Onyxia’s lair, but otherwise we were able to stumble into he domain… which is honestly, pretty small.

Fergorin remarked that there really wasn’t much too it. A passageway leads from the entrance down and around to her big open room, large enough to accommodate 40 friends looking to party, with only a couple of perfunctory trash mobs on the way in.

So there wasn’t much to do in preparation. We made sure we had buffs up and went in and got her.

Playing with Onyxia

While her level shows up as “skull” even for us at level 80, he ability to damage us was pretty low. Two expansions of DPS and armor upgrades, spells and buffs, and whatever else, meant that our group of five was more than up to the match and was never really in much danger.

I think we literally ran into and aggro’d ALL the whelps, but the repercussions were minimal as we AOE’d them down.

The middle phase of the fight, where Onyxia rises up and flies around her chamber was a bit annoying for me, the paladin tank, as my ranged attacks are pretty limited. I was able to deploy the engineering rocket launcher on my gloves and the Gnomish lightning generator trinket I wear. During that time Onyxia seemed to focus on Bjorid, our hunter, so between whelps I kept having to go taunt her off of him… not that he was in any immediate danger, but that is my job.

There was also her breath weapon being deployed during that part of the fight, which we tried to avoid. But we had fire protection aura up to help mitigate that.

Then she came back down to the ground and I was able to get in there and do my melee tank thing and she was soon down.

Achievement cheesed

I find it interesting that they already have the “Level 60” notation in the title. When we did this very same thing back in 2009, that wasn’t there yet.

And, of course, there is the loot. Lots of stuff drops off of raid bosses.

The first items on the list

The gear is, of course, a couple of expansions behind the times. I rolled greed on Doombringer, thinking it had a cool model, but it wasn’t all that special.

A lot of stuff went to Ula to disenchant. The items in contention were Onyxia’s head, which starts a quest, and the Onyxia Hide Backpack. (We did not get the Onyxia whelp pet as a drop.)

Bjorid got the head, and I ended up with the backpack.

18 slots

A backpack that size would have seemed like luxury back in vanilla. It is still the biggest bag I have currently, but I was at least able to shift bags around and take a 12 slot bag out of my bank storage and put a 16 slot in there in its place.

Then it was time for a picture.

Posing with Onyxia

Bjorid then skinned her and that was that. But we still had things to do.

Ula got us another portal, this time to Stormwind, in order to run down the quest related to Onyxia’s head. We had to go see the king.

Hey, remember us? We exposed Katrana Prestor in this room a couple years back? Well, we have her head now.

The king sent us to the front of Stormwind to speak with Major Mattingly, who yelled out to the whole town about out victory.

Major Mattingly shouts

He goes on a bit and the head gets hung up in the arch.

There she is… not sure where Bjorid was hiding that head

The adulation of Stormwind was a bit underwhelming.

There was much rejoicing

We did not, however, get the Rallying Cry of the Dragon Slayer buff on us, despite Major Mattingly’s words. I seem to recall them making some change to that buff back in WoW Classic, and I suspect that there might be a level restriction on it.

But the whole thing didn’t take that long. We could go back and farm an 18 slot bag for everybody before phase 3 lands and she becomes a level 80 raid. But that is another item off the nostalgia tour list. Now to get the Leeroy Jenkins achievement.

Finishing up in Utgarde Pinnacle

Leave a reply

We are getting down to the last few instances available to us in Wrath Classic. This past weekend when we got together, there were three possibilities on the agenda, but really only one we were up for. We’ll get to the Culling of Stratholme for certain, and we’ll even do the Oculus, if only for the sake of comedy,

But the next on the list for us was to finish up Utgarde Pinnacle.

Those following along might recall that we have been to Utgarde Pinnacle before, during the Lunar Festival, when we needed to get in and past the third boss, Skadi, in order to get to one of the elders required for the meta achievement.

Elder Chogan’gada deep in Utgarde Pinnacle

The difficulty there was that we were a little light in levels to take on the dungeon. We were all level 76 or 77 at the time, and you need to be level 78 to even use the meeting stone outside the instance to summon people. Fortunately, it is just upstairs from the Utgarde Keep stone, so we were able to assemble for that effort, which took some creativity on our part.

But now we’re all a level or more up the scale.

The group for our venture

So we were able to get there… I was able to use my engineer’s Northrend wormhole generator, which drops you right by the instance… and summon whoever was left behind and get going fairly quickly.

Into Utgarde Keep

We were all able to pick up the quests this time as well, because you have to be level 78 for that too.

Then we rolled on in. We were not expecting too much difficulty, having gotten at least as far as the third boss when none of us were level 78. This, of course, made us a bit sloppy because we had the power to absorb an add now and then. This would, of course, wreck us later.

But we made it through the first boss, Svala Sorrowgrave without much issue.

Yeah, tell me about it

She even coughed up a serious upgrade for me, some blue plate wrists.

Svala’s bloody shackles

The name implies that she was wearing them, but I suppose even first bosses can get away with that sort of thing.

So we rolled on, clearing and collecting items for the “junk in the trunk” quest that three of us had to do. It involves picking up bits and pieces along the way.

The second boss, Gortok Palehoof and his pets, was also not a big effort.

Go on Gortok

He and his pets were dispatched without too much angst. Each has a special routine, but none surprised us.

Which led us to Skadi. Him we had had problems with before. But I think by this point we had also attempted him at least ten times, so we knew the routine. We got sloppy, I called out the wrong side to stand on when the frost carpet was laid out for us, but we somehow managed to hang on, brought Skadi down off his dragon, and slew him.

Skadi’s end

We were now on the path to the final boss, King Ymiron. There was just a bit of trash to clear on the way. And that is where we wiped.

We took on a group of four, two shaman and two necros, and then pair of berserkers we hadn’t seen wandered in, and things seemed like they were under control until one of the necros feared us all just as Fergorin was winding up for a big heal that I really needed. Feared you cannot use a potion or a health stone, so I went down, and then the rest of the party. It was a wipe.

But we had a soul stone, so Fergorin could revive on the spot and ress me, and together we ressed the rest of the party.

Cleanup outside of King Ymiron’s chamber

We had at least knocked out the two shaman, so once we were all back upright, finishing things off in the room went quickly. And then we went up the ramp at the other side of the room and were facing King Ymiron.

This is his place

I won’t say this fight was hard, because we managed to get through it on the first go. But it was definitely a fight that made us work a bit for it, a fight where a serious screw up could have, would have, led to a wipe. King Ymiron hits hard and has some special attack and towards the end of the fight gets all over the place.

King Ymiron beating on me… also, check out how deep that rug is

The onus was really on Fergorin to keep me alive. But he managed it, and the king was thrown down. One of the drops was a nice sword, suitable for a holy pally, so Fergorin got that.

The Jeweled Coronation Sword

Then it was time for a pic of the group at the throne.

The group at the end

That did not take us too long. We had enough time to look into something else, so Ula opened a portal to Theremore. But where we went from there is for another post.

Anyway, we did this better than our 2009 run at the instance, though I think that was largely due to having practiced on Skadi as many times as we did. Back then we wiped on him even though the group was all level 80.

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Monthly Archives: March 2023

March 2023 in Review

The Continuing Twitter End Times

The “Made You Form” Stage of the War in Pure Blind

Six Months of Wrath Classic

A Look into February 2023 Destruction in EVE Online

Computer Generated Nonsense on Tap

EverQuest II is back with Another PvP TLE Server

3 Days of EVE Online Omega Time for 1 PLEX This Weekend Only

Dragon Tom Foolery

Finishing up in Utgarde Pinnacle