EverQuest Legends

I was, however, committed to the final product.  I have been on about Daybreak serving this particular non-hardcore slice of potential fans who maybe don’t want the full Norrath experience of old.  Even with mercenaries and the gradual easing of how things play on the live servers over the years there is still a lot of content out there you need to group up to see.

Daybreak continued to trade on that whole “hardcore heritage” thing even as the reality of their potential audience has shifted over the years.

Any by “potential audience,” I mean me.  I mean, it is likely an audience much larger than just one person, but I can only really speak for me even if I feel, in my gut, that there might be potential beyond just me.

And EverQuest Legends is very much aimed at that demographic that wants to go live out some adventures in a 27 year old video game with graphics that look like bad linoliuem on some random polygons.  But I was down for it, so bought the game on Friday afternoon.

The game is $20, plus a $10 a month subscription after your first month.  You order through the Daybreak account management portal, which tells you exactly who is running the show here.  To align with that I have decided to categorize any posts about EQL as EverQuest with a tag specifying this particular flavor of the game, the way I would any of the special servers.

So I bought the game, declined to buy any of the special currency for the in-game cash shop, downloaded the client, installed it on my apps drive (and not in whatever God forsaken location in the Windows directory it was trying to get to) and logged in.

There I found the server selection screen, following the long established EQ layered pattern of getting into the damn game.  On Friday evening all the choices had population listed as “High” but I was going to go straight to Qeynos no matter what.

EverQuest Legends Servers

That screenshot was taken during the AM on a weekday when only the people of Freeport are getting high.

I was interested to see that there was a column for “True Box,” which is Daybreak’s “no multi-boxing” rule set, as well as a column for “Subscription,” which implies that there was at least a thought given to a free to play option.  We’ll see if we get there some day.  For now it is all pay to play.

The EQL site asked me to go watch a 30 minute video about the game in order to learn to play.  But screw that.  I have no desire to spend 30 minutes watching somebody yammer on to deliver maybe 5 minutes worth of information.

Seriously, this routine is a plague on gaming.  I am sure you’re a very nice person, but I honestly don’t care about your back story or that you had to delete a character to do this video (see, I started watching the damn thing), I want you to communicate something useful.  This is not a chat down at the pub.  We’re not making small talk.  I have the game running in another window, so spit it out!

That is an impossible request.  If you make instructional videos you seem to be required by law to spend at least 40% of each video talking about something else.

Also, what kind of retro experience would it be to watch a video?  We didn’t watch videos explaining games to us back in 1999.  Hell, I didn’t even read the damn manual that came with EverQuest until months had gone by.  On that first night I jumped in and rolled up a half-elf in Surefall Glade and got on with it, which was exactly my plan for the evening.

(Later, when I did go looking for some information about EQL all I could find were freaking videos.  There was only one written guide, and it was from a gold seller site.  Far be it for me to side with illicit RMT, but who else is out there actually serving the community?)

So, channeling 1999 me, I repeated my experience from day one and chose a half-elf.  However, I deviated from 1999 in that I went with druid as my primary class.  Back in 99 a friend had already “called” druid and I didn’t want to double up, so I rolled a ranger… and rolling a ranger is always a mistake, so I wasn’t going to do that again.

Your primary class is locked to the usual race limitations.  But then you get to pick a second class.  I had heard somewhere that having a tank class in the mix was good, so I went with warrior.

I want to be able to cast Spirit of the Wolf and kick snakes.  So there we go.

I also went with my 1999 first pick name, which had not been taken, then pressed the button to carry on to Surefall Glade… and found myself with Doug.

Doug is close enough to interact with

Doug, his dad, his dead grand dad, and his… sister?… mother?… some female relation are there to show you how to do some of the basic things.  All of them are named Doug, except for Dougina, who runs the shop.  It is a decent little tutorial I suppose, and teaches you how to do things which is actually useful because if you played WoW you’re going to be very confused about simple things like moving items in your inventory.  And handing something to an NPC? Forget about it.

There are also a couple of sign boards just as you zone in that give you some information about the keyboard controls, including the most vital information you will ever receive, which is how to get out of the water without drowning when you fall in.

Read this, remember this

Seriously, some new character’s body in the bottom of the pond outside of Crow’s in Qeynos was practically a meme back in the day.  I have mentioned it in the past and almost saw it happen to Potshot back when we tried out the Fippy Darkpaw server.

Dead man’s float?

Anyway, I completed the trials of Doug, got my two pairs of boots, merged them into one slightly better pair of boots, and then asked him to send me to Surefall Glade.

There it was, as dull as ever.  Seriously, I don’t know why I pick it.  It is likely the worst starting town of them all.  But it is MY damn starting town.

Surefall Glade at twilight… it doesn’t get better than that… and even that is crap

But it is close to Qeynos.  So I left Surefall to go out into the Qeynos Hills, walked around a bit, killed a few wee mobs, saw my xp bar go up, waved to Holly Windstalker as she wandered by (and pretended I hadn’t been eyeing the wolves or the bears), then decided to go to Qeynos.

There is, of course, no more pathetically normal start to the game than to stand out in the front yard of Qeynos to kill beetles and snakes and whatever.  Might as well live the whole experience.

On zoning into Qeynos I found myself next to the gnoll, the legend, Fippy Darkpaw himself.  I immediately attacked.  While he con’d some levels above me, this was my opportunity to see exactly what I, a level 1 druid/warrior, might be able to solo.

So I went at him with my splintered club and my level 1 fire spell… I couldn’t even use flame lick yet because I hadn’t yet found a fire beetle eye, the required reagent, which for some reason I still remember after all of these years.  Anyway, it was “Have at you!”

Fippy Darkpaw! We meet again!

It was a near run thing too.  But I managed it, and while I had taken a lot of damage, it was Fippy who turned to flee… I had forgotten about that behavior, but it a battle to the last few hit points it is a wonderful feeling when the foe starts to run… and down he went.

Fippy Darkpaw Slain!

That was pretty much the game there, all goals accomplished!  Hah!

Anyway, I got to loot his paw, which I am sure was a quest item at some point in time.  That also got me the look UI, which isn’t completely different from live, but which has a sell button on it so you don’t have to keep visiting your local vendor.

The loot of Fippy Darkpaw

Is it like that in live?  I haven’t played there in a while.

So I was now out in front of Qeynos which, unlike Surefall Glade, had some people hanging around.  Somebody even randomly handed me the Hierophant’s Crook, a real old school druid weapon giving me the classic druid look of a homeless half-elf with a giant stick.

Let me show you my 2H Blunt!

Fippy got me to level 2 and I ran around beating on things and casting Flame Lick once I got my fire beetle eye, and generally did the old school traditional grind, getting myself to the exhalted height of level 4, at which point I was able to solo one of the willowwisps in Qeynos Hills, one of those pinnacle moments back in the day.  (Only a burnt out lightstone dropped however.  Bah.)

Willowisp ran and I finished it off

I used a lot of mana on that one and more than a few heals were cast.

I was also happy to see that, on leveling up, you were simply granted skills.

Level 4, have a couple spells

First, there are few things as annoying as trying to figure out which spells to even buy in old EverQuest.  Finding the vendor and going through the list where you have to get detailed info on each spell to figure out if your class can use that spell at your current level.

That doesn’t even get to the usual “Do I even have the money?” aspect of buying spells, or how screwed you can be if you blow your whole wad on the wrong spell.

Otherwise I am still figuring out what the dual class thing really means and how each one levels up and what the stances really do, but I got started on my way just doing the classic path into the game.

Then the game was down some over the weekend and when it was up I was off playing Planet Crafter with Potshot.  But I have started.  Now I need to go back to that RMT site to read their guide.

I am like this in real life as well.  It is probably why I have ended up as a project manager.  I’ll listen to ideas and possibilities for hours, but I am always the guy who needs to bring the conversation around to whether or not a suggest or idea or new feature will get us to our goal.

When I lack a plan or goal or destination I get restless and a bit bored.  This happens all the time for me in video games.  This blog is a written record of that.

And that is fine.  Video games are entertainment, and if you are not being entertained then you ought to move along.  It is as easy as that.  Mostly.

In single player games there is no problem at all.  You stop playing and everything just waits for you.  If you get the urge to play again, you just pick up where you left off.

Things are a little more complicated with multiplayer.  If you stop playing WoW there is no real penalty.  There are content updates and events and such, but if those were engaging you wouldn’t be bored, would you?

There is the whole aspect of casual friends you may have made in game.  I’ve wandered off and left a whole slew of acquaintances behind, never to run into them again.  Returning later I’ve found myself in a guild where nobody play or kicked out of the guild and with a friends list of people who no longer log in.

I’ve solved this mostly by no longer making any casual friends in online games.

But then there is EVE Online.

The bubbles of existence in null sec

When New Eden is not that exciting, when you’re not logging it, it is a bid dodgy to just stop playing.  If you live in low or high sec with NPC stations scattered about you can just park you stuff and rest assured that it will be there and available should you return.

But in null sec… and wormhole space as well I imagine… where it is all player owned Upwell, you can’t just stop logging in for a year.  Not if you want to be able to find your stuff.  Your corp might have left the alliance and joined their foes, your alliance might have packed up and moved, there might have been a war and the structure you had all your stuff in might be gone so when you log back into the game you’ll find yourself sitting in space, no friendly station to be seen, and all your stuff locked up in asset safety.

It is worse in wormhole space I guess, because they don’t even have asset safety, your stuff just gets dumped into space and is gone.

For a game that trades on the sunk cost fallacy… well, it is actually pretty effective to make people worry about losing their stuff.

Anyway, all of this comes up because I am at that point where I have no plan in EVE Online.  I didn’t log in much last month, stopped bothering with my PI, and basically did the minimum to remain looking active.  That requires me to go on at least one strategic fleet op every month, though I usually just do two because they aren’t hard to find and when they’re purging the slackers you want to be a bit ahead of the curve.

But I can’t just log off and go away for months.  I’d probably get away with it for six months, or maybe a year.  They don’t purge people on a regular cadence.  But if I did get purged it would mean having to deal with all my stuff, most of which is sitting in a Keepstar in the Insmother region of null sec.  That is kind of a bad neighborhood if you aren’t in the gang.

Part of me is surprised I have as much stuff as I do because we moved from Delve to Tenerifis, which meant packing up and either hauling or shipping everything.

And then we moved again less than a year later, at which point I had to pack everything up again.

So you might image that  I had lightened my load considerably… and I did… but stuff just starts to accumulate the moment you settle down in a new home.  There are new doctrines which means buying new ships, there are various items from login rewards and such, and there is all the stuff from you get from ratting, which I don’t do a lot of, but I do enough to have to haul a blockade runner full of modules back home every so often.

It all adds up, and is made worse by the fact that I am that guy who still has the bag of marbles in his bank in WoW because you never know when that might be useful!  I am the worst about that.  I hesitate to mention what I have in my bank in EverQuest II.

When I get in this state, when there is no war happening and none on the horizon, where the summer doldrums have hit and most of the ops involve saving someone’s Rorqual from yet another INIT gang roving in our space, I often start thinking about taking a break.

But, as noted, that is not always easy.  Stuff… always stuff… hangs over me.

So I do what I usually do in this situation, which is to start selling stuff off.  I go into my hangar and sort everything by group, and then just start listing whole categories of things.

I’ll get in there and, one I make sure everything is repackages and is stacked up by type, I will select something like all the missile launchers, click on “sell” in the contextual menu, and the go through and price them all, one by one, checking the current market price for each, until I have them all set.  Then I press the button and they are all listed.

Then I go on to the next item.  Maybe it will be shield boosters, or propulsion modules, or armor hardeners, and do the same thing.  A new batch of items will go up for sale.

I just listed all the drugs… excuse me, boosters… I had in my hangar.  I have no idea where they all came from.  I only held onto the Quafe Classic, which is something you only get from events and is of high value.  Though, honestly, I should probably have just listed that as well.

I do this is groups, maybe one or two groups when I am logged in for a bit.  I don’t want it to become a chore.  I just want to lighten my load so, if I need to move I can.

Ships are… not more difficult, but more annoying to deal with.  fitted ships at least.  To sell a fitted ship you have to sell them via contract, and half the fitted ships in my hangar are from outdated doctrines.  So what I should really do is strip them, repackage the hulls and all the modules, and sell them too.

More things to sell.

Now, what happens is that I transition to having no plan to having a plan.  The plan is to sell everything off so I can walk away for a while.  But it takes time.  I keep finding new things to list.  If I decide to strip a few more ships in order to repackage them, a bunch more stuff ends up in my hangar.  I have to repackage all of that and then there is more stuff to list on the market.

I am not in a hurry either because, while I am down to one account, my subscription on that account doesn’t run out until February.  Also, when I do finally decide to move I’ll need to resub my second account for at least a bit because once I can get everything pared down to the point that it will fit in a jump freighter, a fax, and a carrier, I’ll need somebody to go ahead and light cynos so I can get everything parked in a nice, safe low sec station.

Of course, now I am engaged with the game again, working towards a plan, a plan that has some time to run.  So I start tending my PI again.  If I am playing the market I might as well have a little bit more to list.

The sell off has gone so well that I earned one of the few achievements available outside of empire space in just a few days.  All it required was selling 2.5 billion ISK of items in a regional market.  Surprisingly, given the Fenris focus on empire space, selling in null sec counted.

Marginal Victory Achieved

(Also, you can see how quiet things have been for me. I haven’t even been through 30 different solar systems since Cradle of War launched back in early June.)

I am actually well past that mark.  And while I had a couple of officer mods that sold for a decent amount, I have mostly been selling modules in the 1-8 million ISK range.  I was just sitting on a lot of stuff.

So I will be at this for a while, so if something does start to happen in the interim, if there is a war or a deployment or some other adventure, I will probably still be around for it.  I’ve done this whole “sell off and pack up routine” a few times before.  The furthest I have gotten is right before PAPI invaded the Imperium back in 2020.  I had already moved a carrier and a fax to a low sec station in Aridia, easy to do from Delve, when the drums of war started to bang.

Which, I will admit, ended up being pretty timely.  Unlike a lot of people I did not have many things end up in asset safety when our structures began to fall.  I had corralled most of my stuff in 1DQ and was selling it off of getting it ready to ship.

So for now I have a plan.  We’ll see if another plan shows up to give me a reason to not simply finish this one up and drop out.  New Eden has never failed on that front so far.

No Man’s Sky – Celebrating 10 Years

That said, I didn’t think we were going to get there.   A few posts on social media and Reddit were not going to get to enough people for that to happen.   Even the last minute boost from Hello Games on their Discord server wasn’t enough to make an impact.

As a one-time exception, we’d like to share a community initiative celebrating No Man’s Sky’s 10th anniversary. On August 9th, many No Man’s Sky communities are coming together to try to break the concurrent player record set at launch as a way of thanking Hello Games for a decade of exploration. Simply log into the game on August 9, 2026 18:00 UTC  and help us set a new record!

Whatever.  A celebration was had.  I logged on a bit before the appointed hour, flew over to the anomaly, the nexus of community activity, the one place where you are likely to see other players if there is any sort of even going on, and danced.

As one does.

I put myself out in front of the main area between ship parking and all the NPC vendors and activities, and started to dance.

Like Billy Idol, dancing by myself

I will say this, No Man’s Sky picked a good default dance.  I gather than there are some alternatives you can unlock somewhere.  I occasionally see somebody swaying to a rhythm or doing a side to side cha-cha thing, but mostly we’re all out there waving our arms and doing the running man.  It is an energetic but simple move than conveys a sense of joy and enthusiasm in me.

You can back it with a variety of tunes.  I am not sure Riverdance should on that list, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying.

I was dancing alone.  A few people were coming and going.  Occasionally somebody would stop and dance along for a minute.  It is a thing in the community.  You just join in for a bit.

You can actually chat.  There is a chat option.  But people almost never use it.  They just show up, dance with you a bit, and move along, likely never to be seen again.  While NMS feels more crowded than its lonely origin, we remain travelers and every meeting is a chance encounter unlikely to ever be repeated again.

True to form, somebody ran by a bit later, stopped, danced a bit, then moved on.

Then somebody else came by and gave me a bunch of stuff, also a not-uncommon occurrence in the anomaly.

Some gifts… and I remember how to use chat to thank them!

This has happened to me a few times.  Some apparently rich, long time player, dressed up in their finery and feeling generous, will suddenly fill up your inventory with various items.  And never just cheap stuff.  These people don’t hand out ferrite dust.  It is usually valuable or useful items.

For example, I took the 9,999 runaway mould and refined it down to 1,999 nanite cluster, one of the in-game currencies, and definitely an amount you could buy stuff with.

The refiner output

I also went over to the Expedition for Dreamers site which had been setup to support and promote the event.  There I (mostly) waited for the appointed hour and logged my activities.

The Milestones for the expedition

I did these… in spirit is not in hard reality.  There were a couple I might have fudged on a bit… though I think this post, and the previous one, covers most of what I did in game.

Once I have clicked the buttons, I was given access to the big button for the reward.

Claim your Travleller Card

This turned out to be a little ID card that you could tune to your needs, and even add you picture to.  I chose my long standing social media avatar, which I made ages ago with the a white square around it so my horns would appear to be breaking out of the image.

Atlas Identity Card for Wilhelm Arcturus – Traveller

I had tabbed out of the game in order to enter my objectives and then fiddled with the ID card a bit, as you ca change different aspects of it.  But I left myself dancing.

And when I came back to the game, I found myself no longer alone.  Several others had shown up in the open area in front of the group mission terminal and joined in the dance.

People had joined in on the dance

I kept dancing for a while longer, and people came and went as the mood struck them.  Somebody even shared a bit about their time with the game.

Sharing a memory – True enough MECO, true enough

Because it is a very different game than it was back at launch in 2016.

I stayed and danced for a while longer.  People came and went.  And then, eventually, I felt it was my turn to move on.  By virtue of my early arrival I was able to start the dance, but other carried it on after I left.  They may still be dancing for all I know.

As with the dance, the anniversary events will carry on as well.  We’re not even to the 10th anniversary of the game’s arrival on Steam, which hits on August 12th.  And my own 10 year anniversary, such that it is, won’t hit until August 14, 2027, a bit more than a year down the road.

On top of that, we’re still waiting for what Hello Games has planned for us later this month for the 10th anniversary.

In many ways, yesterday was just a small opening act.  There is more to come.  Hello Games is just warming up.

Addendum:

This morning Hello Games gave us their anniversary trailer.

In that, after a run past how far the game has come, we learned that the next update will be called Cosmos.

No details yet.  Just a tease.  But something to look forward to.

Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games

Before we dig into that however, we need to check the scoreboard and where everybody stood last time around.

Week 31 scores

The groundwork laid down, we can get on with the scoring and releases, which kicked off right away.  Scores were down for the first two titles by Monday afternoon.

• Beast of Reincarnation
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Now has a score of 76.2
• Big Walk
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
  • Now has a score of 87

Beast of Reincarnation came in a little soft with that initial score.

Beast of Reincarnation

The title from Game Freak, known mostly for being the developer of the core Pokemon RPG titles for the last 30 years, threw its hat into the realm of world fighting RPGs, launching on PC and consoles besides Nintendo’s.

Big Walk, on the other hand, came out strong.

Big Walk

This title from the makers of Untitled Goose Game, showed up with a strong indie energy buzz.  Despite getting fewer reviews that Beast of Reincarnation above, it got a much more positive reaction.

By the time we hit Monday evening and we rolled over to the next day on the east coast, the league marked them as released and gave us a big score update.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Anthania Interactive (Ula)
    • Score has gone UP from 87.0 to 93.2
  • S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)
    • Score has gone UP from 41.4 to 58.1
    • Moved from 8th place to 4th place
  • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
    • Moved from 4th place to 5th place
  • Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)
    • Moved from 5th place to 6th place
  • Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)
    • Moved from 6th place to 7th place
  • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
    • Moved from 7th place to 8th place

While Big Walk’s multiplayer only approach has caused a bit of push back (I like this post at Aftermath), it continued to score well as a few more reviews came in, bumping it up.

• Big Walk
  • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
  • Score has gone UP from 86.7 to 88.6

This boosted Potshot’s prospects, though in my other league I counter picked Big Walk, so its strong release has likely thwarted my ambitions over there.  Here, however, nobody was so foolish so it was all upside for Potshot.

So the week was off to a strong start.

On Tuesday night we got notice that the next title on the list, Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin, had launched .

• Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin has released!
  • [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]

This title was an expansion to the popular and high scoring Pokemon Pokopia released earlier this year, as well as being another Game Freak entry this week.

Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin

However, there were not enough reviews for a score.  In fact, there wasn’t even a page for it over at Open Critic.

Likewise, the next evening we received the update that Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls had launched.

• Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has released!
  • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]

This title has a bit of league history as well, having been dropped by Archey only to have Corr and I bid on it, with Corr winning the bid.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls

On the hype factor front, it seemed like a solid pick given it rang in at 73.  Hype factor isn’t an absolute predictor of a good score, but it tends to be a more reliable factor than anything else.  If you picked the top ten titles available based on hype factor you would be doing very well.

That left our league with five titles on the “most desired reviews” list, grabbing the top four slots… again.  (Beastro is in the top twenty.)

Most desired reviews – Aug 6, 2026

And then… no further word.  The rest of the week was quiet, which left the scoreboard looking like this come Saturday evening.

Week 32 Scores

With the changes the projections shifted a bit, with UIa now pegged for 6th position and Potshot now in the run for 5th.  Arhanta held onto the nod for 4th, Corr is predicted for 3rd, I am lined up for 2nd, and Shintar remains the league’s pick for 1st place at the end of the season.

But there are still a lot of titles left to score and a more counter picks still to account for.

For the first time in quite a stretch there were no bids.

However, two titles did get release updates.

• Crimson Moon
  • [Picked by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)]
    • Release date changed from ‘September 2026’
    • to ‘Tuesday, September 01, 2026’
• Toem 2
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
    • Release date changed from ‘Summer 2026’
    • to ‘Tuesday, September 29, 2026’

That leaves the next ten titles on the schedule as follows.

Week 33 Coming Up

We have no releases lined up for the next two weeks.  However, there are still the two titles from this week to check in on, Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin and Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls.

As of Saturday night Marvel Tokon has five reviews, including two top critic reviews, so could show up with a strong score in the coming week.

However, Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin so far lacks a review page on Open Critic, leaving its status somewhat in doubt.  Its status as an “expansion pass” for Pokemon Pokopia could leave it in the lurch.  We shall see.

Related:

• TAGN Fantasy Critic League
• TAGN Discord Server
• Fantasy Critic Site
• Fantasy Critic How to Play
• Fantasy Critic FAQ
• Fantasy Critic Most Desired Reviews
• Open Critic Review Site

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference

–Elie Wiesel

Last week the site Aftermath, had what they called Hater Week, where the staff opened up on things they did not like.  There were some interesting takes.

Aftermath Hater Week – I totally stole this image

Some of them I felt in my bones, like the one about how awful Adobe is.  I remember having a beta copy of Photoshop 2.0 back in 1991 and thinking it was the coolest thing ever.  I am not even a creative by profession, but everybody I know in that domain hates Adobe with the combined heat of a thousands suns.

There is a post about hating fall damage and Souls-type games and what we’re really mad about around Sony abandoning physical discs and even some paired point/counter-point articles about a few topics.

You can read the collection here.  I don’t think you need to be a subscriber.

(I am a subscriber, so apologies if there is a paywall.)

It was a fun series of posts, not all of which spoke to me… and there was a topic or two I thought might be missing like how maybe we could all give Fortnite, Roblox, GTA V, Call of Duty, and Minecraft a freaking rest and play something else.  I mean, it is the same thing on XBox every freaking week from Cricana. (Image posted by Mat Piscatella of Circana.  Blue Sky link.)

Circana Stats for PlayStation, XBox, and Steam w/e July 25, 2026

There are times when I feel like I play the same games all the time.  That is kind of an MMO thing.  But man, I feel like an expeditionary compared to those charts.  (Also, congrats to Palworld and its success on its 1.0 launch.  Look at its Steam rank!)

Overall though it was something of a cathartic week because one cannot be constantly positive about everything.

In fact, I am not sure how you can be a blogger and not give into your emotions.  The Jedi were bullshit.  You can’t bring “balance” to the force when the Sith are part of the equation.  There is no neutral ground.  To claim neutrality it to reinforce evil.

Blogging is a passion project.  Nobody is making any real money doing this.  I maybe pay my hosting fee every year with ads, but that is a long, long way from quitting my day job.

And likely almost nobody is reading what you write.  I got 2,000 views the other day, half of them from North Bergen, New Jersey, a location that hosts some data centers, so it was probably just bots scraping my site to feed the demon LLMs.

Seriously, I don’t even get upset when people steal my content, because it at least implies it has value.  Also, I secretly enjoy the idea of my work messing up some LLM’s response.  Somewhere somebody may be getting a response that suggests punching Amy Tan.

Passion is what gets me to open the site and start writing… and a lot of it is negative.  But that is fine, even good in some ways.  Because passion is caring.  Passion is giving a damn.  So there is no sin in being negative about something that you care about and want to be better.

I am here to have an argument.  That argument is often with myself.  But I try not to be the reply guy, automatically gainsaying anything from a person or company I do not like.

I have said on more than a few occasions that I rarely write about things I really do not like.  In part I find just unbalanced negativity to not be enjoyable, but also if I don’t like something I often don’t care that much about it.  When that is the case, it is hard to get beyond “it sucks,” and I have a soft 500 word minimum on the site these days, so unless I can surround those two words with another 498 of context and back story, then that post isn’t going anywhere. (Though, to be fair, have you read me?  There are times when I can surround “sky is blue” with many words of context.)

And, frankly, you can get the facts about any game I write about elsewhere.  My only value add is my opinion, the context I am able to put around events, and occasionally remembering to link out to other posts on the topic.  I can be like Smithers in the first few seasons of The Simpsons who, when Mr. Burns would ask who this Homer Simpson was, would then give the backstory about him thwarting his run for governor, his wife painting him in the nude, running over his son, etc.

It was an unparalleled gag that had to be killed off because it reached a point being too much.  (Though it did get a bit of a replay in the Who Shot Mister Burns? episodes.)

Here in text however, not only am I not constrained by the limits of audience attention spans… I mean, what audience, right… but I can often link back to the context in the form of past posts for those few who come here to wallow in what I have to offer.

My point here being… and I realize it keeps getting lost in my meandering style of asides and vague pop culture references… is that passion is a driver and that negative emotions are often the strongest of the bunch.

This blog might not have existed except for the fact that I started playing EVE Online two weeks earlier and was annoyed at how bad the tutorial was.  The game was very compelling, but JFC is that all they could manage when it came to onboarding new players?  It made me mad, and I harnessed that to launch into this soon to be 20 year long venture.

So there is all that.

But there is a line, right?  There is passion, there is giving in to the dark side now and then, and there is being a hater.  And going full hater is bad, right?  I would have said before the past week.

Enter Ed Zitron, self identified hater on the topic of AI.

You may remember him from the 2009 Darkfall review scandal where the publisher of the game complained loudly that Ed couldn’t possibly have played enough to write his review, which culminated in a 2/10 score at the end.  Eurogamer lept to the defense of its contributor and… mostly caved, getting the game a second pass review where they managed to double the score to a 4/10.

Nice work Aventurine.  A real golf-clap level of effort.

Zitron has long since moved on to other ventures and has more recently become the absolute, number one, go-to AI Hater when you need somebody to cut through the smoke screen of bullshit that OpenAI or Oracle or Microsoft.  That he gets the call to appear on all sorts of media to speak is a testament to his standing on this.  I have linked out to his free posts a few times here on the blog.

Anyway, at the culmination of Hater Week at Aftermath, their weekly podcast had Ed Zitron as a guest and he went into depth about what it means to really take on the mantle of hater.

You can find it here.  It is worth a listen.

His main point is that to be a true hater you must learn all you can about that which you hate, you must know what you hate at least as well as those producing it.  You must transcend the mere dislike of something and know why it is bad in as much detail as possible.  And the main focus of his hate has evolved from “well, AI just sucks” to detailed analysis of the financials that tell a very compelling tale about how the various AI companies are lying or are involved in what amounts to an elaborate, high finance check kiting scheme of interlocking investments to the same pile of money gets counted on multiple balance sheets.

His work is almost exhausting in detail as he cranks out 8-15K posts on a regular basis.

But that level of effort earns him a living, as his newsletter has enough subscribers to be considered a pretty obvious success.

I am not even sure how to characterize that level of passion and where it has taken him.  It is more than just a bit.  But what is it?  Cover what you hate and you’ll work hard every day of your life but feel some amount of satisfaction when you’re proven right?

Not sure I can recommend it, but it has worked out for him.

If you are interested in either Aftermath or Ed Zitron’s work, they are linked below.  Aftermath covers video games, the internet, and the cultural miasma that enfolds those things.  And, while Ed Zitron hates AI, he also hates other things like Microsoft, Oracle, and other Silicon Valley related boondoggles.  He also occasionally shares pictures of his cats.

• Aftermath
• Where’s Your Ed At?