The Site
Blaugust is coming to a close today and soon we’ll be down to just the counting. I managed to over fulfill my quota by just enough to be a hero worker without straying into the Stakhanovite zone. No need to go over by too much. 35 posts seemed sufficient.
Blaugust 2026
I didn’t do too much specifically about Blaugust. But that is my normal routine. I was going to post every day in August anyway. I did, however, write a first cut, brief history of Blaugust.
Now that the event is winding down, if you too participated in Blaugust you can help out with the final accounting by filling out the exit survey and indicating how many posts you made during the event.
Back to the blog, this is also the 240th month in review post. Or should be. The implication of that is we’re headed into some sort of double digit anniversary or something next month. Stay tuned. Also, that should have probably been in the “coming up” section, but by the time I get to the far end of the post I will probably have forgotten about this and will simply repeat myself there.
I don’t have much for the site, but I did fish a pretty good comment out of the spam filter a couple weeks back. Take a look at this:
Do you want to be a member of the great Illuminati and start living the life you’ve dreamt about? also be popular among others, have riches and fame, I was sent by the Freemason high chief to bring 66 members into the Illuminati, I have gotten 40, so we looking for 26 being,, try and be among the twenty-six people to be rich and famous.
That’s right, I’ve been invited to join the Illuminati. Pretty cool, huh? I wasn’t aware that they had merged with the Freemasons, or that they used gmail, or had a WhatsApp account with a Houston phone number, but it is tough times for everybody these days, and even secret societies are not immune I guess.
One Year Ago
It was Blaugust once more, and we were kicking off with 146 participants. Or 146 sites. Some people were running multiple, including myself. By the second week, when I introduced myself, the number was up to 164 sites. At the halfway mark the count was 166. When I started writing about writing for the event, we were up to 168.
The topic of comments came up in the event and I wrote a piece about to to keep me from leaving comments on your blog. I also pulled out a half written draft from years back and tried to complete it.
No Man’s Sky rolled out the Voyagers update, which introduced corvettes and saw concurrent users hit the highest peak since the launch of the game.
We got an accidental peek at the pricing for WoW Midnight, which included housing. Then we got the official announcement, with many more details.
Daybreak was having a margins meltdown in the Enad Gloabl 7 Q2 2025 financials. Over at LOTRO we were in the last few days of the 32-bit servers.
I checked in on Stars Reach… and still wasn’t sure about that as a name.
World of Tanks turned fifteen and I went back to give it another try.
In EVE Online I wrote about Ishtar ratting in forsaken hubs.
I also did a Friday bullet points post that covered the War in Heaven, Pandemic Legion leaving PanFam, the addition of “complete three jumps” to the AIR daily activities, CCP limiting Twitch SKIN redemption, Pearl Abyss financials, and my first ever legit solo kill in New Eden.
I also hit 280 million skill points. And then there was the June 2025 MER. And then I hit my 19th anniversary of playing the game.
In Pokemon Go I was working out my platinum medal strategy for getting to level 49. We also got the news that the game would raise the level cap to 80.
The group started its adventures in Palworld. I got out there and was pretty quickly breaking the law… and fishing.
I wonder if, in the long term, Kickstarter was any good for MMOs. There were certainly a lot of duds and broken promises in the mix.
Speaking of which, Dual Universe went offline. It was better than many who went down that path, but Kickstarter did not save it in the end.
I was on about the economics of water and how if makes sense to drink water from Fiji in California.
I did a binge watching post about The Lazerus Project.
I also pointed out why the AI bubble kept on going despite the obvious economic issues. Basically, Wall Street and Silicon Valley had not yet come up with a “next big thing” to snow people with.
Five Years Ago
It was Blaugust of course, and we had almost 50 participants as the event opened up. I wondered if it was better to have one blog or multiple, I was on about my RSS feeds, and wrote something about motivation and passion.
Niantic relented on some of their post-COVID feature roll backs, most importantly the range at which you can access gyms and Pokestops.
The Enad Global 7 Q2 2022 financials included the announcement that Ji Ham, once acting CEO of Daybreak, would not be acting CEO of EG7.
The Q2 2021 results for Activision Blizzard came out. It was hard to tell if the state of California lawsuit and the stories relating to it were having an effect on the bottom line for Blizzard yet. I was fairly sure that Blizzard had beshat itself such that the company would drop their name from the company letterhead. I mean, the stories were ugly.
That didn’t stop me from jumping into the Diablo II Resurrected beta however.
The instance group was getting its epic mounts in WoW Classic. That done we went back to give Hellfire Ramparts another try as a group of four. We also went back to Blackrock Depths (for probably the 14th time) to scare up some stuff for Ula to disenchant.
Honest Game Trailers and Carbot were doing videos about Burning Crusade Classic.
I continued my exploration of immersion, this time looking at EverQuest and then EVE Online.
I gave The Fermi Paradox a try.
In EVE Online the days of World War Bee wound down to an end. PAPI tired of the siege and the Imperium was able to retake all of its space very quickly.
- 56 Weeks of World War Bee
- PAPI Begins Pulling Out of Delve
- Operations in Delve as World War Bee Continues
- 57 Weeks of World War Bee – Victory in Delve
- Destroying the Forge of Heroes
- Towards a New Delve
- The Downfall of The Tower of Legends
- 58 Weeks of World War Bee
- The July Monthly Economic Report and the Lull Time in EVE Online
- 59 Weeks and the End of World War Bee
- Fifteen Years of Kill Mails in New Eden
I also wrote two Friday bullet point posts. Past me loves to do those just to annoy future me I am sure.
The first one covered New World being delayed, Switch sales numbers, FFXIV subscription numbers, the Chinese government being down on video games again, the one year anniversary of EVE Echoes, and another free EverQuest II character boost. Kind of a lot in that one.
The second one brought up Richard Bartle’s Designing Virtual Worlds book being available for free, Quantic Foundry research about cross-gender play, EA making lock boxes slightly less bad, and a video looking at what happened with Vanguard and EverQuest Next.
Finally, there was the tale of the missing tree on our street.
Ten Years Ago
It was really Blaugust, so I was posting every… single… day… even though it was supposed to be the “super relaxed” version of the event.
After spilling Mr. Yoshida’s delicious sauce over my ancient cell phone, I finally joined the smart phone boom with an iPhone 5S. Of course, that meant playing Pokemon Go, something my wife does better than I do.
I tried to come to grips with the constant whine that every MMORPG should cater to every single play style by asking if any MMORPG had ever managed to find a new audience after launch. I remain unconvinced that it has ever worked.
Blizzard was telling people that World of Warcraft was still the number one subscription MMORPG. But after their vow of silence on subscription numbers, that brag seemed a bit hollow.
In the game though things were looking up as the pre-Legion expansion event , the demon invasions, proved to be a boon to leveling up alts as they built up momentum. And I still had that level 100 boost with the expansion to look forward to.
And then WoW Legion launched and it was on to the Broken Isles and class halls and what not.
I speculated what WoW expansions would look like if they were done like Pokemon games.
The Stormhold server in EverQuest II was facing a unlock voting crisis over the Rise of Kunark expansion. It failed the first two votes, and failing a third would put votes in a moratorium for a while. However, it passed on the third try. I also shared my secret EQII shame. Of course, with the coming of WoW Legion I was out of the game… like Legends of Norrath… just in time to miss some deals.
In EVE Online we had the YC118.7 update. I was wondering if better PvE could save the game, though I remain unsure as to what “better” would really look like.
I was also celebrating my ten year anniversary with EVE Online. Meanwhile CCP had a free to play plan lined up for New Eden. It looked like it had some holes in it though… which we later learned it did.
Down in the southwest of New Eden the Imperium had set up shop in Sakht and was banging on the door of Delve, dropping citadels, blowing up citadels, and fighting LUMPY over sov timers. Despite threats to keep the Imperium down for good, the locals in Delve got very little support in their fight and we were into the region shortly.
Back up north I was able to slip my last belongings out of the newly quiet system of Saranen. Meanwhile, Executive Outcomes, which rode out the struggle as part of the Imperium, parted ways once the Casino War was over.
And somewhere along the line I found the time to get out Half-Life 2 and give it another spin.
Fifteen Years Ago
Blizzard announced some crazy idea that you would have to be logged on to Battle.net at all times to play Diablo III. Glad that never came up again. Oh, wait…
SOE finally got a comprehensive server status page, and Scars of Velious opened up on Fippy Darkpaw. I was wondering if they had “made good” with customers after the great hacking in April/May of the year.
I hit 70 million skill points in EVE Online and prepared to check out after the summer or rage.
I was back playing LOTRO for a bit. I made it into Moria, then went looking for hoes. I also wrote a post summing up my relationship with LOTRO up to that point. It’s complicated.
Wargaming.net announced World of Battleships. They have since changed the name to World of Warships, because we cannot have enough games with the acronym WoW yet. This got me musing on battleships and related games.
Meanwhile, World or Warplanes (another WoW) got a web site with cool pictures and stuff.
David Reid was telling people that Rift had ONE MILLION CUSTOMERS. How one actually defined a customer was left as an exercise to the student.
I was still playing some Need for Speed World. I was enjoying destructible terrain, though the weekend the police broke lead to some different destruction.
I mentioned some of the little things I liked in MMOs.
I was wondering about World of Warcraft Magazine issue 5. It seemed to be very late.
And Namaste put out a Very Short History of MMOs video.
Twenty Years Ago
This is the last month in review where I have to pull things from Twenty years ago without linking back to my own blog posts.
AOL, which is still a thing even today (I strongly suspect my mother-in-law still gives them money every month here in 2026), bought the GameDaily site which, in a case of foreshadowing, was eventually disappeared into the Joystiq brand.
I started playing EVE Online on the evening August 29, 2006. (After UTC midnight, so August 30 in Iceland/London.) It was my last “pre-blog” MMO start. It was certainly another stepping stone on the way to the blog, as I felt I have to tell somebody about the horrible new player experience. Some things never change.
Thirty-Five Years Ago
Tim Berners-Lee released to the public the first browser for something he called the World Wide Web. Geocities sites and pop-up ads and massive link rot were on the horizon.
Meanwhile, Linus Torvalds announced the operating system he was working on to the Usenet news group comp.os.minix. While he wanted to call the OS Freax, it would eventually get the name Linux.
Forty-Five Years Ago
In 1981 IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer, perhaps the most influential and least IBM-like product the company has ever created. After failing to come up with an internal design and feeling the market slipping away, IBM let a team working outside of the normal company hierarchy put together a machine with off the shelf parts and an open architecture that was the essential foundation of the PC market we have today.
IBM, seeing all the clones spawning in its wake, eventually decided to make a more proprietary model, so introduced the IBM Personal System/2 in 1987. Clones would need to pay IBM to remain compatible. The rest of the market said, “No thanks!” and the clones became the standard and IBM no longer makes desktop or laptop PCs. I think the most lasting legacy of that 1987 design is the PS/2 port… and I think even that has died off after nearly 30 years of USB being the new standard.
Most Viewed Posts in August
- Stardew Valley – Farm Upgrades and Stardrops as the Second Winter Approaches
- EVE Online, Departure Planning, and the Big Sell Off
- Planning my Platinum Medal Strategy for Pokemon Go Level 49
- EverQuest Legends – Level 10 and Decisions to be Made
- This One Simple Trick will Up Your Pokemon Go Steps Dramatically!
- Stardew Valley – Unlocking the Greenhouse
- Planning My Path to 50 Platinum Medals for Level 80 in Pokemon Go
- Building My First Corvette in No Man’s Sky
- Making Level 73 in Pokemon Go and onward to Level 74
- No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
- 20 Games that Defined the Apple II
- EverQuest Legends Announced… But What is it Exactly?
Game Time by ManicTime and Nintendo
Planet Crafter came out way ahead for August, followed up by the weekly game of Stardew Valley with my daughter.
- Planet Crafter – 49.75%
- Stardew Valley – 22.95%
- EverQuest Legends – 15.53%
- EVE Online – 7.59%
- Stars Reach – 3.31%
- No Man’s Sky – 0.84%
- World of Warcraft – 0.04%
EVE Online
I did go on a few home defense ops… three to be exact… which puts off my being purged for a bit. Not that KarmaFleet does any sort of regular member purge, but it happens. I also managed to get on a few kill mails on those ops, so zKillboard can again act as proof of life.
But as I hit the 20 year mark with the game I was also feeling somewhat tired of it as well.
EverQuest Legends
I have been off to a slow start with this. So far it is the sort of thing that has worked for me in the evening when I have a sizable block of time and want to just play something while listening to a podcast. I’m still well within my comfort zone in the unfashionable end of the Antonican continent.
No Man’s Sky
I’ve got nothing here. Early in the month, when I did the looking back portion of the post, I sketched out all the games and I put in a placeholder for No Man’s Sky because I was absolutely sure that the Cosmos update would land before the end of the month. It has not. Maybe it will be a September thing.
Planet Crafter
Potshot and I continued to craft a planet, crafting it so hard that it ended up being terraformed. We then opted to go and craft a moon in the same solar system, once again crafting so hard that the place was soon teeming with… well… trees at least. But we’ll get to that.
Pokemon Go
I am so very close to level 76 at this point. I might even be there by the time this post goes live. My wife got there two weeks back, but I still need that 38th platinum medal. Soon. Very soon.
- Level: 75
- XP Progress: 92.4% of the 203,353,000 xp needed for level 80
- Tasks for Level 76
- XP: Done
- Platinum Medals: 37 of 38
- Defeat 100 Team GO Rocket Grunts – DONE
- Explore 300 km – DONE
- Catch 200 Pokemon in a single day – DONE
- Pokedex status: 938 (+2) caught
- Pokemon I want: Basculegion
- Current buddy: multiple as I work on parallel buddies
Stardew Valley
My daughter and I have carried on with our farm and life in and around Pelican Town. We play every Sunday still, with an occasional session during the week. We are almost done with year two. The community center will be done once we catch or otherwise obtain a puffer fish.
Stars Reach
It went into early access. I played a bit. It has some things going for it, though it is still very rough in places. The whole move from pre-alpha to early access was not accompanied by any sort of last moment miracle patch. Instead, things are being fixed bit by bit. We’ll see how it shapes up. But the portents… the spirits seem mildly perturbed.
Coming Up
A major milestone is coming up in the middle of next month. Well, “major” in that it is a nice round number that people find significant. Whether it means anything is up to the reader I suppose.
BlizzCon is coming up in September as well. Expect a predictions post about what to expect early next week, and then a follow up to see what really came to pass. Spoiler: I am betting against Classic Plus. But don’t let me stop you from getting your hopes up.
Valheim is leaving early access. The Deep North will arrive with new terrors to conquer… what I have read indicates that they want to one-up the already dreadful Ashlands… along with a price increase.
CCP plans to nerf null sec… excuse me, “fix force projection” for us… because they are obsessed with small gang gate camps as the only real way to play in New Eden… which could come to pass next month. Maybe. If everybody gets back from their summer holiday in time.
I am sure there will be some other things popping up. But right now I can only really commit to some Stardew Valley, more Planet Crafter, and the weekly Fantasy Critic League posts… oh, and blathering on about the blog for the anniversary.
Oh, and No Man’s Sky… the Cosmos update… It’s gotta show up soon, right?