The Site
Welcome to the start of year twenty-one I guess. That is the… I guess downside… I am not sure, really… of anniversaries, that they just blow by and we’re on to the next arbitrary increment of time.
This persistent progression of time starts to wear on you after a while. Life starts to feel less like it is running in real time and more in an accelerated time lapse approximation of itself.
That is all a trick of memory I am sure. The pace of time has not changed. The atomic clock isn’t running any faster. The shake of a lamb’s tail remains constant. It is just the perception of the traveler, eternally perched on the razor thin line between what might happen and what has already occurred. The constant accumulation of mental baggage just wears on you.
Which is why I write all this stuff down, or so I have alleged.
Anyway, this section is supposed to be about the site and not my anchored angst about aging. WP.com hasn’t screwed anything up month, or not such that I have noticed. I guess they broke connections to Tumblr for a day… you’d think they would be better about that since they own both… but it was fixed quickly enough. Also, the insane CEO of the parent company, Automattic, fired all of the directors on the board who stood against and tried to fire him. I am sure that will work out well. Also, are there any tech companies not headed by malignant narcissists who feel they are always the smartest person in the room? And will any of them actually pay any consequences for their idiocy? It feels like a bit “no” on both of those.
Which still isn’t directly about the site either I suppose. But I got on this whole tangent because WP.com started doing achievements 135 days ago. I know this because there is an achievement for a daily activity streak.
My top achievements or something
That says a 134 day streak, but it will be 135 when this post goes live.
So there I am.
One Year Ago
The blog turned nineteen years old.
I mused on the whole idea of Labor Day in the US.
I was on about the whole “plus problem,” the idea that WoW Classic Plus, or EverQuest Plus, would ever mean the same thing to different people.
Speaking of which, Daybreak won a preliminary injunction against The Heroes Journey. That was the beginning of the obviously inevitable end for the pirate server and its attempts to cash in on the EverQuest IP. This led to a lot of bad takes and even worse behavior, such as one the EverQuest subreddit mods closing down the whole thing in a fit of pique. The THJ fans were coming off as a pack of entitled brats.
LOTRO put the Kingdoms of Harad expansion up for pre-order.
In No Man’s Sky I was building my first corvette from the Voyagers update. Potshot and I fiddled around with different designs.
Then it was onto Expedition 19: Corvette, which also showed you how to build a corvette. This being my first expedition, I spent time looking for things like my echo locator. I managed to finish the whole thing up despite my mistakes. I cashed out with quite a bit of stuff.
The whole corvette aspect of Voyagers was pretty amazing and brought a lot of players back to the game.
The group was back to playing with Palworld. We set out to visit the oil rig as group mission.
Over in EVE Online I was finally fixing my EDECOM standings. I was tired of getting shot by gunstars in random high sec systems. That required a second trip to Pochven to finish it off.
I did a Friday bullet points post about EVE Online featuring ships on fire, Alliance Tournament XXI updates, a video from The Scope, ESI updates, and the coming Legion expansion update.
Then I did a follow up about the Legion update dropped, we got more news about ATXXI, and the CSM XX elections were also on their way. I also took a look at the August 2025 MER.
I did another Friday bullet points post about the failure of Final Stand: Ragnarok, the closure of Tarisland, yet another delay for Squadron 42, Blizz offering a “free” WoW pet with a $75 purchase, Nintendo being jerks with patents, and Elon and Hilmar chatting.
Then there was the disastrous Ship of Heroes launch. It was a difficult operation and I tried to come up with some ideas to rescue the project, but it was doomed. It closed down on the one year anniversary of the launch.
We were binge watching Wednesday season 2 on Netflix and Alien Earth on Hulu.
Finally, I was pissed about iTunes wrecking my music listening. (I need to do a follow up about how Apple Music made things even worse. I mean, seriously, fuck Apple.)
Five Years Ago
It was time to sum up the labors of Blaugust once more.
It was also anniversary time as the blog turned fifteen. Also, WordPress was talking about putting “sponsored content” into blogs.
I also wrote something about 35 years of connected computing, it marking the anniversary of purchasing my first modem back in 1986.
I was wondering if the level squish had been a good idea a year after Blizz did it. I still wonder if it was today.
In Burning Crusade Classic the instance group managed to get through the Blood Furnace as a foursome.
But we were kind of slowing down on that, and on our radar was Diablo II Resurrected, which launched at last.
Daybreak announced the Visions of Vertovia expansion for EverQuest II. Then it was time for the Pandas and the pre-expansion catch up. Meanwhile, over in EverQuest there was something about perks… for sale of course. And Lord of the Rings Online announced the Fate of Gundabad expansion.
Meanwhile, Amazon finally launched New World. Having played in some of the beta cycle, I was moaning about how the vision for the game had changed.
In EVE Online it was once again time for Caldari Union Day. We also got the Gateway quadrant update, which included yet another new player experience, as well as a UI update for skills that once again proved that the one thing CCP UI designers value over all else is wasted empty space in the middle of informational elements.
CCP was also telling us that 24 million pilots had played EVE Online, though they were not clear about what that really meant.
The New Eden monthly economic report was showing us the impact of the end of World War Bee. Meanwhile, CCP remain on its path to make players poor, their solution to MUDflation, while I was looking to my own finances in game.
Things were still happening though. We blew up a Keepstar in Catch and CCP helped up blow up botters in Yulai once again.
I was getting setup with Zwift and our new exercise bike. A year later I am still using it regularly, even if the stages of every ride remain the same.
We were also binge watching Ray Donovan and all of the Helen Mirren versions of Prime Suspect.
My wife and I went to Maui where we were involved in some minor driving adventure.
Finally, it had been 20 years since terrorists brought down the World Trade Center and I was reflecting on how it was very much a dividing line in history.
Ten Years Ago
It was the tenth anniversary of the blog.
I was looking back at day/night cycles and full zone respawns of yore.
My wife’s Pokemon Go account was hacked, but I recovered it pretty quickly. That post brings in a lot of search engine traffic looking for ways to hack Pokemon Go accounts. So many bad people.
Daybreak announced that both EverQuest and EverQuest II would be launching Kunark focused expansions, with Empires of Kunark slated for the former and Kunark Ascending for the latter.
Smed was taking his Hero’s Song project back to the crowdfunding arena again, this time via Indiegogo which, unlike Kickstarter, lets you keep the money even if you don’t meet your goal.
I was going on about problems EVE Online has getting new players to stick with the game… again. We also had the YC118.8 Update which revamped a the look of mining barges and some frigates, among other thing. It also launched the Purity of the Throne event that had me chasing white skins for Amarr ships.
There was also the ascension of Caitiz of House Tash-Murkon to the Amarr throne. All those ships are still lined up in Amarr for some reason. Did they have to wait a year for the first Jubilee?
And Alpha Clones would soon be a thing, so I was wondering what you could do with one.
In post-Casino War events the Imperium finished conquering Delve and a state of normalcy was starting to come to pass. I also got my last ship out of Deklein.
And then there was World of Warcraft where the Legion expansion was off and running. There was even an app for it. I started off slowly as I figured things out and moved clockwise around the Broken Isles. That didn’t stop me from checking up on my Draenor garrison though.
And then in one of those bullet point posts that I always hate a year later when it comes time to do the summary I covered Star Trek Online going to consoles, Legends of Norrath card packs, rewards for Omega players in EVE Online, and the then upcoming EVE Vegas.
Finally, No Man’s Sky launched, capping off yet another dismal episode of fan behavior. After getting death threats for delaying the launch, Hello Games finally shipped the game only to have the fan base explode even more so when it was discovered that features that were straight up said to be in the product… multiplayer being the prime suspect… were not. Still, it made a lot of money and features have since been added and it got its own Honest Game Trailers video. There are, no doubt, lessons to be learned here.
Fifteen Years Ago
I did the great survey of blogs that had, at one time or another, included this site in their blog roll over the last five years. Only 28% of them were still up and active. There was also the five year anniversary post and all that it entailed.
I implied that Tobold’s mother a llama. This had NOTHING to do with him not having a blog roll.
I was totally going to resist Steam selling me Rift for cheap. That didn’t work, and I ended up playing for about a year or so.
Star Trek Online announced it was going free to play, though I couldn’t imagine how it wasn’t already.
In LOTRO, the Rise of Isengard expansion came out and I almost didn’t notice. Which was odd, because we were kind of playing LOTRO still.
The Goons were going to wreck the EVE economy by blowing up high sec ice miners. Another vast Goon conspiracy. I was being nostalgic for my earlier days in EVE.
GameSpy had a post about re-imagining Diablo as a first person perspective game, which was met with much derision. Me, I liked the idea and even had suggestions for further topics in that vein to explore. Meanwhile, Diablo III was pushed out to the middle of 2012.
In other Blizzard news, the Official World of Warcraft Magazine went belly up after just five issues. And then there was a drop in WoW subscribers. They lost 600,000 players, though I wasn’t one of them… yet. Good thing they never lost more than that…
I was still playing Need for Speed: World pretty regularly. I was filming police chases, avoiding police chases, and buying the squarest ride in the game.
In EverQuest, on the Fippy Darkpaw server, the retro experience was made complete by “guilds behaving badly” when it came to contested content. Some GMs came up with unorthodox ways to resolve conflicts. Somewhere along the way I got my SOE Authenticator, which I never use.
ArenaNet said something about private GuildWars 2 PvP servers. I wonder how that would play today?
EA/BioWare gave us a release date for SWTOR at last, so I could start fretting about pre-orders and grace periods. While I wasn’t in beta yet, BioWare was asking how I was enjoying it.
There was no word about life on Planet Michael.
And, finally, I was wondering how 9/11, which took place just a couple months before the birth of my daughter, would influence her view of the world relative to my own. This was triggered by her trip to New York, where she visited the Nintendo Store.
Twenty Years Ago
It has come time, I can now refer to blog posts from 20 years ago in these reviews.
There was the first post. I still haven’t covered all of the topics I promised 20 years back. But neither have I stopped blogging yet, so there is still time!
After that I was straight into the EverQuest nostalgia, an oft recurring topic here. The Serpent’s Spine expansion came out for the game. I would get to that in a bit.
LEGO Star Wars II – The Original Trilogy launched, setting the casual path for future Traveller’s Tales LEGO based games. My daughter and I would later play this on the Wii, but that was still out in the future.
Pokemon Diamond & Pearl, the first core Pokemon RPG titles for the Nintendo DS platform shipped in Japan. They wouldn’t reach US shores for another six months. Again, another series that would show up here as time moved on.
Green Monster Games, later 38 Studios, was unveiled to the public by founder Curt Schilling with R. A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane as part of the creative team. What a fiasco that was. Schilling had no more business going down that path than I would have managing an MLB team. Turns out being good on the mound doesn’t endow you with any common sense in business, finance, or politics. But that is ever the problem. Somebody is good (or gets lucky) at one thing and then thinks they have mastered all the things.
Roblox launched. I didn’t know about it at the time, but the title has grown to be many things, including controversial.
I was into EVE Online, which I began playing just about two weeks before I started the blog. My first post about it concerned the tutorial, then I went on to my impressions. I already had EVEMon up and running, because you cannot play EVE Online without it. And, while I was hardly aware of it, the first titan had been built in New Eden.
I was musing about games slated for the future, including Star Trek Online and Lord of the Rings Online. I had reservations about both.
I kicked off my old school gaming reminiscences with a post about Stellar Emperor as it was back in 1986. That was 40 years ago. Damn continuous motion of time.
The instance group formed up for adventures in Azeroth.
I wrote the first “Month in Review” post. I am not sure WHY I decided to do that, but it became a thing as here I am doing the that same sort of post a decade and a half later. (About nine years ago I decided month in review should have its own category, so I went back and edited each and every last one to put them all in that category. Fortunately, being a once a month thing, it was easy to figure out if I missed any or not. Then I decided that I needed the year in the title, so I went back and redid all those posts again!)
I also wrote something about Saga of Ryzom in that month in review post, which might be the one of the few times I ever wrote anything about it. It had launched two years before and people were talking about it, but my play time with it was very short and unfulfilling.
But the smartest thing I probably did in that first month was link out to Brent at VirginWorlds in a post, which got him to notice my brand new blog, which kind of got me into the club pretty quickly as well as getting me my first comment.
Thirty Years Ago
Meridian 59 by 3DO launched, about a year ahead of Ultima Online. M59 remains part of the perennial discussion as to what was the first “real” MMORPG.
Forty-Five Years Ago
Wizardry for the Apple II launched back in 1981, one of the early influential titles for me. I still have graph paper maps of the levels in a drawer in my office. Robert Woodhead, one of the creators of the game, would later serve four terms on the EVE Online Council of Stellar Management. The game itself was ported to a dozen different operating systems and was somewhat recently remastered and is available on Steam.
Apple ][+ The Upgrades Begin
Castle Wolfenstein, another influential Apple II title, launched as well. I needed that two button joystick to play that for sure!Most Viewed Posts in September
- Building My First Corvette in No Man’s Sky
- No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
- Planet Crafter – Terraformed Skeo
- BlizzCon Bingo – Predictions for BlizzCon 2026
- Planning My Path to 50 Platinum Medals for Level 80 in Pokemon Go
- Planning my Platinum Medal Strategy for Pokemon Go Level 49
- Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID!
- This One Simple Trick will Up Your Pokemon Go Steps Dramatically!
- Stardew Valley – Farm Upgrades and Stardrops as the Second Winter Approaches
- Getting to The Elder in Valheim
- First Weekend with the WoW Forever Beta
- The Purloined Letter – WoW Subscriber Numbers Leak from a GDC Presentation
- No Man’s Sky – Expedition 23 – Starting Off with Our Journey Continues
- 20 Games that Defined the Apple II
- Cat Catching in Enshrouded
- Wrath of the Lich King Zones Ranked
- No Man’s Sky Remnant, the Furnace, and the Final Colossus Upgrades
- Making Level 73 in Pokemon Go and onward to Level 74
- The Journey to Orgrimmar and Ragefire Chasm
- The Test of Righteousness
For no good reason I expanded the list from 12 to 20. I don’t know why. I do it all in an Excel spreadsheet that concatenates things to make the HTML formatted list and it is as easy to do 12 as 20 I guess. Or maybe I was just carrying on with the number 20 for 20 years. Who can tell?
Game Time by ManicTime and Nintendo
Something of a split pack for September. While Planet Crafter is out in front, we also finished that up more than a week back, allowing other titles to creep in.
- Planet Crafter – 27.21%
- No Man’s Sky – 17.92%
- EVE Online – 17.13%
- Valheim – 14.86%
- Stardew Valley – 13.32%
- WoW Forever – 6.31%
- EverQuest Legends – 2.25%
- World of Warcraft – 0.93%
- WoW Classic – 0.06%
Nine titles is a lot for me in a single month, though WoW Classic I am pretty sure I just check in on to compare it to WoW Forever. I expect that to be the top game come November… but what will be up top in October remains to be seen.
EVE Online
I was in a bit of a cycle of neglect in New Eden this month. I had celebrated twenty years with the game in August and wasn’t sure what else could be experienced in a game that itself faces a bunch of old age problems. That and t