Here we are at the last post of 2025. I am always tempted to turn this month in review into something of a year in review… but then I realize I will probably end up with half a dozen such posts in various forms both before and after the new year. And I also do an anniversary post as well. How much more wrap up do you need?
And yet, there are a few tidbits that don’t get covered elsewhere and which seem to fit into both the month and review and year in review categories. So, for example, I can bring out the chart that shows my post distribution over the year.
Once again, I posted every day of the year. The dark squares are where I posted twice in a day.
TAGN 2025 Posting Activity
I did not post three times in a single day this year. That happens on a rare occasion… usually due to a couple of timely news items landing during a week where I have a post already set for every day… but not in 2025.
That last square will actually turn into a double post day once this goes live. I had that No Man’s Sky post this morning. That will make this the 393rd post for 2025 and the 2,104th consecutive days of publishing a post on the site, a record that has been running since Covid had us all at home.
And then there is the full year traffic. 2025 was an up year.
TAGN Page Views by Year 2025 Edition (as of post time)
I am trying to decide if the pattern of my blog traffic matches any real world dynamic… does traffic go up when the economy is bad or when there are more hurricanes… or does it follow a certain game, like EVE Online, or is it related to the games I wrote about (2025 saw me write a lot about No Man’s Sky for example), or is it just a game of “Google Loves Me. Google Loves Me Not?”
All web traffic is a lie, so I suppose it depends on which lie I find most comforting.
One Year Ago
In end of year wrap ups I reviewed my 2024 predictions, recounted my Twitch time, parsed my Reddit Recap, recited my Steam Replay, read out my books of 2025, and looked at highs of 2024.
Then there was the Steam Winter Sale.
Path of Exile II arrived in early access. But to play this eventual free title you had to buy your way in. I decided I could wait.
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen also went into early access. You had to pay for that too… and I declined… but it wasn’t going to be free later on.
And then there was Balatro on the iPad, which seemed to me to be it’s perfect platform.
At Daybreak EverQuest launched The Outer Brood expansion.
In Enshrouded we had made it to Pikemead’s Reach, the largest settlement in the game and full of hazards. We also setup an outpost in the Far Away Fray Tavern. Then we were on a hunt for music.
In EVE Online CCP was reworking AIR Daily Goals again. They also killed off the Activity Tracker, which had been broken for a few months. Another neglected feature.
There was also the launch of the Winter Nexus event, which I did twice. After that it kind of wears out its welcome.
I also took a look at the impact of the Revenant expansion in the MER, with a special side trip into shuttles once the Utria issue was shut down.
We were also out hunting Skyhooks in The Spire.
Meanwhile, CCP was looking for suckers to buy into their blockchain scam title, EVE Frontier.
In the Stars Reach pre-alpha we were not required to make some of our tools.and gave us a bunch to do with civil engineering. I tried to embrace the homestead aspect of it, but that really isn’t my thing.
In Pokemon Go I was stuck on the requirements to get to level 47.
I was a bit on about game studios embracing AI. Elon Musk figured he would use his AI to make games great again or some BS.
I kicked off Fantasy Critic League for 2025. How did that work out?
Finally, we arrived at the end of my Telephone Tales series, with me working for the state… but I had one follow on post to mark a significant telephone event and perhaps the real end of the story.
Five Years Ago
Pandemic binge watching was still under way, which led me to summarize how it felt. Somewhere in all that binging I found time to read, so had five books to talk about. I was also promoting the ability to read the blog via FlipBoard.
Then there were predictions to be reviewed, though 2020 was beyond predicting really.
The Steam Winter Sale kicked off yet again.
I played Among Us for an evening. I have yet to to play it since.
We got the news that Daybreak was set to be purchased by a Swedish company called Enad Global 7. As part of that we got a look into Daybreak’s financials. We learned that DC Universe Online had the most players and highest gross revenue of all their titles, yet EverQuest still managed to eke out the highest net profit. The deal closed before the month was done.
EverQuest also launched the Claws of Veeshan expansion, the 27th for the title, while its younger sibling, EverQuest II, released the Reign of Shadows expansion, its 17th since launch.
In Pokemon Go, the update had arrived that raised the level cap from 40 to 50, so I was sizing up what it was going to take to get to level 41.
In WoW Shadowlands I hit the level cap… which was back to level 60 after the big squish… after which I had to choose my covenant. We got a look at how Shadowlands stacked up against past launches. SuperData, in what would be one of its final reports, said WoW subscribers were up with the expansion.
In WoW Classic the instance group was wandering Blackrock Depths and Stormwind with Marshal Windsor, then went back in to go after a couple more of the bosses in that dungeon. That done, we made it through the bar only get get stopped cold in the lyceum. But I was working on my blacksmithing skills as well, though I couldn’t tell you why now.
While CCP was still fruitlessly trying to work out how to create an FPS based in New Eden, in EVE Online, their one and only successful ongoing title, World War Bee was raging, and would soon lead to yet another Guinness world record setting battle. News from EVE Online summed up:
Finally, I tried to sum up 2020 by shooting only for the high points. It wasn’t easy.
Ten Years Ago
Thanks to The Force Awakens coming out, George Lucas was in the news and rationalizing his “Han didn’t shoot first” change. I wasn’t buying it. There were certainly other things he could have changed.
It was December, so I had to go over the usual posts, scoring predictions, looking back at the highs and lows of the year gone past, looking forward to what I might play 2016, and something about the inevitable Steam holiday sale. I also made a chart to show what MMOs I was playing in 2015 because everybody else was doing it. I totally forgot to make that chart again this year.
There was the Operation: Frostline expansion in EVE Online.
In New Eden I got blow up trying to slip a Caracal out of Fountain. It happens. On the other hand, I did get my first kill mark on another solo op. I also hit 150 million skill points, an achievement soon to be made trivial by skill injectors.
The much reviled Fountain War Kickstarter was finally cancelled, as it was clearly not going to get anywhere close to its $150K target. But was that going to bank the flames of the brightly burning Goon hate? (hint: no)
The recently rebranded Imperium was taking its plans to low sec, either to generate content or display its arrogance depending on who was describing it. We were also waging a war in Cloud Ring.
Turbine finally got their head screwed on right when it came to insta-levels in Lord of the Rings Online. I was stomping around in the Mirkwood expansion trying to see in the dark.
In Minecraft I was building a prismarine outpost along the great northern road. Aaron and I also killed the End Dragon.
On the EverQuest front, the Phinigel “true box” server opened, a retro progression server that was supposed to keep people from multi-boxing groups.
I summed up five years of Raptr tracking my game play with my top 20 played games. There was LEGO’s somewhat nonsensical online name policy. And I was playing Monument Valley on the iPad.
Fifteen Years Ago
That December I had one of my all-time most popular posts, Talking Cats Playing Pattycake! You can thank me for not taking the hint and going all talking cats, all the time. Or hate me for not doing that. Take your pick. And We Didn’t Start the Fire? Nothing.
But I still had kitty pictures. Awww.
I still think that if you label a window “Currency” it ought to show all your currency, not just the odd-ball stuff.
I was still feeling the sting of ThinkGeek teasing us with the iCade at April Fools, all the more so because some pretenders were on the scene.
Turbine was giving away 10,000 Turbine Points, which comes out to real, and possibly taxable, value in real world dollars. The comments on the post were obviously not from tax professionals.
I visited EverQuest for long enough to find a house. And then I was out of money.
In EverQuest II they were starting the run up to vampires.
And I summed up what we knew about The Agency to that point… which was bupkiss.
In World of Warcraft, Cataclysm launched. If you weren’t in the beta, there were still scams promising to get you in. There was the digital pre-order, which worked for me. And one final hardware upgrade we needed at our house before the expansion launched. And then there was picking a new character for the re-rolled instance group in Azeroth.
The U.S. release date for Pokemon Black and White was announced at last.
Finally, I wrote something that looked sort of like a review of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s book Mogworld. And then there was something about zombies vs. werewolves vs. vampires vs. unicorns.
Twenty Years Ago
CCP dropped the Red Moon Rising expansion on EVE Online, introducing a host of new ships including titans and motherships. They also introduced a new tutorial and new player experience, so some things never change.
Asherons Call 2: Fallen Kings, the sequel to Asheron’s Call, was shut down by Turbine. Revived again some years later, it and its predecessor were both shut down when Jeffrey Epstein, Columbus Nova, and/or Daybreak Game Company acquired the MMO portion of Turbine and created Standing Stone Games. That left the open question as to who might own the AC/AC2 IP at this point. Warner? Daybreak? EG7? Jeffrey Epstein? The Russians? Massively OP said at one point that WB still owned it. Does that mean Netflix might own it soon? Of course, if you don’t use an IP ownership ends, so maybe you could own it next!
Twenty-Five Years Ago
The second EverQuest expansion, The Scars of Velious, launched. The icy continent of Velious brought frost giants, Coldain Dwarves, and more dragons to Norrath. It also introduced The Sleeper, a once per server event.
Most Viewed Posts in December
- The No Man’s Sky Holidays 2025 Expedition Schedule
- No Man’s Sky Kicks off Expedition 19 Redux: Corvette
- Guild Wars Reforged – We Make a Guild and ArenaNet Changes the Rules
- We Roll Again in Guild Wars as Reforged Characters
- Alamo teeches u 2 play DURID!
- Cat Catching in Enshrouded
- No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
- Planning my Platinum Medal Strategy for Pokemon Go Level 49
- Total Annihilation: A 2025 Return to a Retro RTS Classic
- Building My First Corvette in No Man’s Sky
- RuneScape Shows How It’s Done with its 2025-26 Roadmaps
- Enshrouded and our First Night Sanctum
Search Terms of the Month
guild wars reforged
[Indeed!]
when is guild wars reforged coming out
[December 3rd]
what is guild wars reforged
[Update Guild Wars]
guild wars reforged discord
[Nothing official, ANet don’t play that]
guild wars reforged which campaign
[We did Prophecies]
guild wars reforged client download
[On the site under the hamburger menu]
guild wars reforged races
[Just humans]
is guild wars reforged an mmo
[Stop that please]
guild wars reforged free
[Just pay the $20, don’t be like that]
guild wars reforged gold
[And no illicit RMT please]
guild wars reforged private server
[No, stop it]
warcraft iii: reforged crack only
[That was what Blizz was smoking]
Game Time by ManicTime and iOS
Pokemon Go topped the chart this month.
- Pokemon Go – 30.33%
- Guild Wars – 29.20%
- EVE Online – 24.36%
- Forza Horizon – 3.86%
- No Man’s Sky – 11.37%
- Palia – 1.76%
That said, it did so for a couple of reasons. The first was that there was some serious competition for play time on the PC. That advantage also played to its advantage because the holidays sent us on the road a few times, and when away from my PC there is only time for Pokemon Go really, since I do not play anything else on my phone.
This has led me to wonder if the iOS time tracking experiment is really worthwhile, as games there compete for a different time slice than PC games. But more on that when I review my 2025 games played.
EVE Online
After the tumult of the scouring of the Drone regions, I figured December would be a nice quiet month when I would mind my PI and maybe go on an op or two. And then the Winter Nexus showed up and I spent a lot of time on that. But that was pretty chill all the same. I finished up the rewards track on two characters, when on a couple of ops, and kind of took a break.
Forza Horizon 5
This was going to be my holiday game. I grabbed the base game on sale for $20, a price I do not regret, and for a couple of days I had my game pad out and was racing all over the map. Then, Guild Wars Reforged showed up and THAT became the holiday game and I didn’t log into Forza again. Still a good game and I will likely play some more, but it fell off this holiday season.
Guild Wars Reforged
This was the surprise of the season, both in the fact that ArenaNet even did it and that our group decided to pick it up. We’ll see if it lasts. When we tried it back in the day, we fell out of it pretty quickly. This time for sure I guess!
No Man’s Sky
I thought I was done with the expeditions after doing the first three for the holidays… and then I did the corvette expedition and had a good time. A better time, arguably, than I did with the first three. In between I log in, jump my freighter to a new system, explore a planet or two, send my frigates out on missions, and make my way slowly to the center of the galaxy.
Palia
All my chickens… or whatever they are… are hungry and depressed and too old to breed or produce eggs. I wasn’t expecting Palia to punish you quite that hard for not playing for a couple of weeks. I mean, my plants will sit there waiting to be watered and weeded literally forever, but the chickens age out while you’re away. Lesson learned I guess.
Pokemon Go
My wife and I made it to level 72 earlier this month, so the focus has been on the four tasks required for the next level. The most difficult one, for me at least, is getting three more Pokemon to max CP. I have managed two so far, but I need a good 40 XL candies to get either of my two prime candidates there… and those candies are not coming easy.
- Level: 72
- XP Progress: 72.8% of the 203,353,000 xp needed for level 80
- Tasks for Level 73
- XP: Done
- Platinum Medals: 25 of 25
- Purify 100 Shadow Pokemon: 100 of 100
- Power up 3 Pokemon to their max CP: 2 of 3
- Win 30 raids: 19 of 30
- Pokedex status: 916 (+10) caught out of 1,008 in the Pokedex
- Pokemon I want: Hawlucha
- Current buddy: Vulpix (for max CP candies)
Coming Up
Well, tomorrow is 2026, which means a New Years prediction post. What dumb things will I predict this time? Find out soon enough!
There is also some final 2025 wrapping up to do. There will be the end of the Steam Winter Sale, the Steam Awards, and their annual stats update.
In addition, there will also be my game time wrap up of 2025. I don’t do that early.
As mentioned earlier, today also kicks off the final holiday expedition in No Man’s Sky. Will I do that one as well?
There is more to do in Guild Wars Reforged. the unleashing of a new Imperium fleet doctrine in EVE Online, and maybe I’ll do something about those chickens in Palia. We shall see.