The Site

WordPress.com hasn’t changed up anything dramatically this month.  Nothing here to get angry about.  They have still broken things however, so there is still some minor disappointment.

Back in January I mentioned that WP.com had introduced Activity Pub integration, which let you connect your blog directly with the Fediverse, so that it would appear on, allow people to follow it, and auto update for users of services such as Mastodon.  Pretty cool.  You could even leave a comment on the blog from Mastodon, which was honestly easier than trying to leave a comment here without logging into a WP.com account.

I had a couple of problems with it on this blog, and turned it off in March as it was causing problems with Discord.  But I let it run with my other blog, EVE Online Pictures, because its format was quite well suited to the integration.  And so it appeared in the Fediverse.

Granted, nobody actually followed it, which is about par for the course for the 17 years that blog has existed.  There is no broad interest in EVE Online screen shots.  It would get a like now and then… but even that seemed to dry up in June.

And then I discovered that WP.com broke the whole Activity Pub thing, so the likes stopped because the integration stopped working after June 11, 2025.

This corresponded with an update to the blog settings for WP.com hosted blogs and there does not seem to be any way to get the integration running again.  I cannot even turn it off and back on again, the most basic of trouble shooting, because the on/off option has gone missing.

One Year Ago

There was the end of the Steam Summer sale, which always prompts me to summarize my gaming so far in the year.

There was also Pokemon Go Fest 2024.  My wife and I also made it to level 46 in the game.

Enad Global 7 bought the struggling title Palia and assigned it to Daybreak.  Meanwhile, the EQ and EQII producer’s letters gave hints about their fall plans.

Playable Worlds, having announced Stars Reach, put the game up to wishlist on Steam and got on all the usual social media sites.  Then there was the start of the pillars posts, followed by more pillars, and then even more pillars.  It was like the Acropolis.

I played a bit more Tarisland.

In EVE Online the Guristas took over the Alliance Tournament XX sponsorship.

The AIR daily goals got a change up while CCP made it clear that the “farms and fields” idea for null sec was over.  There would, once again, be good space and bad space in null sec.  This got Asher to write an open letter to CCP about their plans, which got endorsements even from our traditional foes.

I did a Friday bullet points post about CCP announcements around Equinox, Vanguard, Carbon, ATXX timeline updates, and actually getting mentioned in the Community Beats post.  Meanwhile I was still on about shuttle destruction in the MER and CCP introduced the weekly 15K skill point injector for Omega accounts.  The latter gets you an extra 780K skill points a year if you remember to redeem them.

I also sold a SKIN on the Paragon Hub.

In game we were out in the Dronelands shooting the new Skyhooks.  While out there I narrowly averted disaster when I jumped to the Fraternity staging beacon.

Then the invasion of far Catch began in what was the start of the Imperium’s plan to move eastward.  PanFam and Fraternity didn’t seem concerned even as we dropped a Keepstar on grid with one of their in U-QVWD.

With Cataclysm Classic we bowled over Blackrock Caverns in our second try.  Then, because we missed a quest, we went back and did it again as a foursome.  Along the way an alt hit level cap.

Over in retail, the pre-patch for The War Within landed.

There was also the World of Racetrack vision of WoW.

In Valheim I made it to the Ashlands, mostly out of my grudge against it.  Having gotten there and tested it out I was done.

I started back in No Man’s Sky.  You start out in trouble and then work up from there.

There was the warm up to Blaugust 2024.

Finally, WP.com was being awful, because that is what they do best.

Five Years Ago

The 2020 Steam Summer Sale finished up.  I bought some things.

In TorilMUD, aging was abolished.  And a good thing too!

SSG was compensating people for outages in Lord of the Rings Online.

Minecraft gave us the Nether Update.  I went out and found a crimson forest in the nether.

I was reflecting on Diablo II at its twenty year anniversary.  We didn’t know for sure there would be a remaster at that point.

Blizzard was getting us more details about the Shadowlands beta and launch.

In WoW Classic the instance group was finishing up Zul’Farrak and then meandering about Maraudon, which we finished up on our second run.

Blizzard was banning botters in classic while getting ready to open up the Ahn’Qiraj war effort event.  As part of the anti-botting effort they were limiting the number of instances players could spawn in a day, but we were at least getting some extra bag slots.

CCP cancelled their San Diego player event as Covid did not look to be going away any time soon.

I also resigned myself to the fact that, despite past promises, CCP was going to keep selling skill points in EVE Online.  (I’d feel better if they stopped being so dumb about it.)

In game we saw the launch of the Zenith Quadrant, the first part of which was a small update to command ships, and official support for the capsuleer cemetery at Molea.  The June MER showed that mining was shifting to high sec after the resource changes.

But the bulk of my posts in July were about the opening of World War Bee, which I chose to list out rather than try to create a paragraph narrative:

It was kind of a big deal at the time.

Ten Years Ago

I was feeling a bit of the summertime MMO ennui blues.

Windows 10 launched, bringing with it the Microsoft Solitaire Collection.  This wasn’t your Win 3.1 Solitaire or Freecell, and more is the pity.

Project: Gorgon was off with another Kickstarter campaign.  Would the third time be a charm? (Spoiler: yes)

Need for Speed: World shut down, so I said farewell to Palmont.

Derek Smart began what would become is crusade against Star Citizen, detailing why he felt we would never see the game that was promised.  It could have ended there, but RSI responded in a way guaranteed to turn it into a fight and took away his Rear Admiralty.   Game on!

In Minecraft I was learning about not falling off of things, bringing light to dark places, and accumulating materials.  Also, sheep stole my mine cart.

I was mucking around in War Thunder for a bit.  It is a pain to return to the game because there is always a huge update required.

Over at Daybreak, there was a vote up for the EverQuest progression server Ragefire about speeding up the unlock of Ruins of Kunark, as well as talk about raids and such.

On the EverQuest II side of the house, there was a beta for its first nostalgia servers.  I avoided the beta but was there when the servers went live… for the big surprise, the return of the Isle of Refuge, adding to the nostalgia experience.

And while that was going on, it appeared to be the end of Smed at Daybreak.

In New Eden my alliance, TNT, handed over its last system in Deklein. We then lived in Tribute.

The Aegis expansion hit… but there was a delay between that and other bits of what we now call Fozzie sov to be deployed.  But entosis link modules were finally able to take sov as the month rolled along.  So we started to learn by doing.

There was a plan in the Imperium to bring in care bears to mine and rat in order to raise ADMs so that our now much reduced space holdings would remain secure.

At one point Mordus Angels managed to claim some sovereignty in Pure Blind!  Can you imagine?  Crazy times!

Meanwhile, in the cash shop… erm… New Eden store, more skins were being rolled out.  Or, rather, the same skin on more ships.  The blog banter of the month was on about attributes, and I was bitching about never having enough jump clones.

On the Azeroth front, Blizzard said they would be announcing the next World of Warcraft expansion… right after the Q2 quarterly report was released, which raised some suspicions in me.  What would the subscription numbers look like if they felt they needed a big announcement to distract from them?

And I finally got my copy of Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls from the Kickstarter… only two years late.

Fifteen Years Ago

The late Paul the octopus created the then largest page view day ever in the history of the blog, later to be surpassed by Cats playing Patty Cake and Alamo.  Actually writing about games is never popular.

I was told I write like Cory Doctorow… or maybe Ian Flemming.

My daughter was Banned from Club Penguin.  Tears were shed, lessons were learned.

EverQuest II Extended, the free to play EverQuest II, was announced.  I wondered whether trying to play it without paying at all would be a challenge in and of itself.  Meanwhile, there was some evidence that EQII accounts had value.  That stunning news no doubt got them going on the authenticator they announced at Fan Faire this year.

I completed 100 levels in The Agency: Covert Ops.  I was unemployed, what can I say?

StarCraft II launched.  I never bought a copy and the base edition eventually went free.  It never surpassed the original in popularity and Blizz eventually just stopped doing content for it, though like many old Blizz titles, it does get a patch once in a while to keep it playable.

Need for Speed World, an MMO version of the Need for Speed series, launched.  I ended up playing it for a bit.  But, being an EA MMO, it was doomed to be shut down.

In EVE Online Hulkageddon III ended, and it even had a video wrap-up.  And then PLEX was made transportable in space.  I wonder if they waited for Hulkageddon to be over for that?

In another Summer hiatus season, the instance group started another run at LOTRO.  This time it was Bung who was out, having the dual issues of moving and having a new baby to care for.  Those of us in Middle-earth hung out with old friends.  That put off deciding who my main character was, by letting me roll another one!

Blizzard gave up on some of their RealID plans thanks to much public kvetching.  Shortly there after, the ESRB came out against Real ID as being bad for consumer security while proving they too were bad for consumer security.

Blizzard revamped Parental Controls again.  As much as I have griped about them, they are better than any comparable controls I have seen, even in games that offer that as a feature.

World of Warcraft Magazine issue #2 showed up.  Issue #4 would arrive 9 months later, which is kind of a long time for an alleged quarterly publication.  Once issue #5 was finally out, the whole thing was shut down.

And somebody was trying to make yet another flying car that failed to live up to our expectations.  Have none of these scientists ever seen The Jetsons?

Twenty Years Ago

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas gets rated adults only (AO 18+) and the company faces sanctions when the hot coffee mod unlocks a hidden mini-game that existed in the product which allow the protagonist to have sex with his girlfriends.  Unlike some other infamous graphic mods, this one was not fan created content, but something the company put into the game.

In EVE Online the Cold War expansion hit, bringing freighters, dreadnoughts, and player owned outposts (“Permanent” caputurable stations, not to be confused with Player Owned Starbases, the doughty POS that remains to this day)  in null sec.  Those stations are gone, but remembered via special faction Fortizars.

Forty Years Ago

The Amiga 1000, the first in the line of Commodore’s Amiga series of computers, is debuted.  Launched in an era when DOS users were still working from a command prompt and Mac users could run exactly one program at a time, the Amiga brought performance, multitasking, multimedia, and high resolution graphics to the masses.  Later versions of the Amiga, combined with the Video Toaster software package, would do for video production what the Macintosh and the laser printer did for desktop publishing.

Forty-Five Years Ago

Atari releases Missile Command to arcades, one of the iconic titles of the era.  Not the first arcade title to use a trackball, but it certainly helped cement the trackball as an input device.  It hasn’t been ported/copied onto as many platforms as Tertis, but it has never gone away either.

Most Viewed Posts in July

1. Why Does EverQuest Have to be The Way It Is?
2. Stuck on the Level 47 Requirements for Pokemon Go
3. How Badly Do I Want a Titan?
4. TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2025 – Week Twenty-Eight Goes Bananza
5. The Blizzard WoW Classic 2025 Road Map includes Pandaria and New Vanilla Progression Servers
6. The Mordor Project Arrives… In Mordor… Which Was the Plan All Along!
7. Level 48 Achieved and the Level 49 Task Requirements in Pokemon Go
8. TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2025 – Week Twenty-Six and Counter Picks
9. Level 45 at Last in Pokemon Go
10. LOTRO Legendary Items – 2025 Edition
11. EVE Online and the Summer of Change in Southern Null Sec
12. TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2025 – Week Twenty-Seven with Tony Hawk and EA College Football 26

Search Terms of the Month

what is rimworld
[Oh my, where to begin?]

rimworld odyssey worth it
[Maybe… but you have to leave your base to play it]

rimworld unable to reach parking spot
[I am not sure…]

why is it called rimworld
[Why are you called Steve?]

rimworld lossless scaling
[Why would you want this?]

rimworld on ipad
[Maybe through Steam Link]

rimworld skilled in everything to an unnatural degree
[Did you win then?]

Game Time by ManicTime and iOS

• EVE Online – 37.60%
• Pokemon Go – 19.92%
• Enshrouded – 19.71%
• WoW Classic – 12.01%
• RimWorld – 10.48%
• LOTRO – 0.23%
• World of Warcraft – 0.05%

EVE Online topped the list for July.  I’ll get into that below.  Also, WoW Classic is back… a bit.  I mean, we had the pre-patch all month.  And LOTRO… well… I did get to Mordor.  I’ll always have that.

Enshrouded

The group has made some effort to get together and do a few things, but it is summer and people have things to do on the weekends.  We did make some progress, including getting to the spire in the Albaneve Summits.  We’re not ready to fight the dragon yet, but we should be able to mount an expedition to get the blast furnace once we’re all around.

EVE Online

I ended up playing a lot in New Eden, if “playing” is the right word.  I didn’t go on a lot of ops… though there were plenty to go on… but I had plenty to do in finishing up the move, starting with filtering down all the stuff in my hangar.  I had piled so much in there that I went over the item limit.  So there was some inventory management time.  Also some ship reassembly, including some Epithals, which are used to haul PI materials, because it was also time to get my PI back online, as the market had started to recover.  And then I stuck an alt in an Ishtar and did Forsaken Hubs for a couple of days, just to earn some ISK.  That is probably worth a post soon.

Pokemon Go

My focus for the month was largely around trying to advance some achievements to get to platinum level as that is going to be the biggest barrier.  I knocked out a few, but I am still 10 shy and I am close to being done with the easy ones.  Meanwhile, my wife is still level 47 because she still needs to walk 25km in a week… something she totally does, but she leaves her phone sitting on the desk or counter while doing so.  Like I said, keep your phone in your pocket to get steps!

• Level: 48 – 35.2% of the way to 49
• Task Status – 1 of 4 done
  • 10 trades with Pokemon caught at least 300km apart – 1/10
  • Obtain 50 Lucky Pokemon in trades – 0/50
  • Send 500 Gifts to friends – 500/500
  • Earn 35 platinum medals – 25/35
• Pokedex status: 887 (+4) caught out of 1,008 in the Pokedex
• Pokemon I want: Carnivine, a missing Sinnoh entry
• Current buddy: Toxel

RimWorld

With the launch of the Odyssey update I grabbed a copy of that and went and played some RimWorld for a few days.  It is still a fine answer to the question, “What do I do with six hours of free time on a Saturday afternoon/evening?”  You can sit there for hours fiddling with your colonists and their base.  It is also kind of amusing to see the start points for the different DLC paths pop up.  But after a few days of dealing with the problems of my colonists, I decided to step back from it again.  It is engaging but not entirely satisfying for me now.

WoW Classic

Oh, and stepping back from RimWorld might have coincided with Mists of Pandaria landing in WoW Classic.  I got my Pandarian out of the tutorial and did some pet battles, but with the opening of the expansion I jumped right in… literally… you jump and parachute into the expansion as part of the opening.  It has, however, been kind of slow going… though I remember that being the case back in the day as well.  The Jade Forest is not the best zone in the expansion.  We’ll see if I carry on, or if the group decided to take a panda vacation from Enshrouded for a bit.

Coming Up

Well, as I have mentioned a few times, it will be Blaugust 2025.  Expect some posts to go along with that, starting tomorrow.

At the back end of the month will be Gamescom, and Blizz is expected to announce a couple of things… like maybe the timeline for Midnight and when housing might become a thing in WoW.

Fantasy Critic League will carry on, though my next title to launch isn’t until September.  So I’ll be in last place for a while still.

Otherwise, it will be the usual stuff.  In EVE Online we might get a hint about the next expansion and we might be about due for another update in Enshrouded… though I suspect that will come closer to November.