Over the Hill

A patch came out last week that added three more points of interest to Emerald Lake because some people had finished all the maps and found that there were still cosmetic items left unlocked.  The crates at points of interest are the way to get those, so a few more were sprinkled about to make sure they were all available.

We went back and did that, then turned ourselves to the next region, Gimli Ridge.

Despite the name, Gimli Ridge has a good deal of water and a lot of swamp down in its lowlands.  Enough swamp that one starts to learn the fundamentals of driving through slippery mud.  That tends to boil down to getting up some momentum and trying to avoid steering as much as possible.  Also, don’t hit things.

The Blazer… the Trail Burner in the game… excels at swamp driving, being able to build up a significant head of steam and, with even the first water fording upgrades, doesn’t need to be steered away from any open water in the swamp.

The Trail Burner in the Swamp

It isn’t that my Scout… Trailrat… cannot get through the swamp.  It is that the Blazer is barely phased by the mud once it gets going.

Out in the swamps… there are a couple of swampy areas… you will find one of the more unique challenge trails, the Fraser Research Boardwalk.

Starting the Fraser Research Boardwalk

The goal of this is to get to the end… a mere 174 meters away at the yellow building… without falling off.  This is a task perhaps less suited to the big and somewhat floaty on its suspension Blazer.  But I had to try.

The physics model can get a little janky and I managed to, at about the half way point, bounce myself off the roof of one of the sunken buildings you need to drive over and ended up facing the wrong way.  Not being keen to try and turn the beast around on the narrow plank surface, I decided to just reverse my way to the final two checkpoints.

Backing up!

In the grand tradition of Sponge Bob at boating school, I managed to over do the backing up aspect of the whole thing and ended up missing the last small turn, landing ass first in the swamp and wedged between a couple of posts.

Off the boardwalk inches from the goal

After a few attempts I decided that I was not going to be able to winch myself back up onto the boardwalk.  The winch can be magic at times, but your tires need to at least have some surface grip before it will perform miracles.

Failing that, I used my last winch point, placing it in the middle of the destination and managed to get just enough grip to put the nose of the Blazer sufficiently into the circle to finish the trail.

Challenge Trail Complete

I later went back and did it with the Scout/Trailrat, a more nimble ride, and one that I had fully upgraded by that point, and managed the whole thing without falling off.

It is hard to quantify how different the various vehicles are.  You can find their mass and horsepower and what not on the wiki… or wikis, there seem to be a couple… but they definitely “feel” different.

I compare that pair, which feel different, to the Blast Wagon (reward for the Windcall Gorge Trail in Gimli Ridge), the original Dodge Power Wagon recreated, which has its own distinct feel, being very slow until you get an engine upgrade, but seemingly able to climb up anything in low gear.

The Blast Wagon in olive drab livery

So over the weekend Potshot and I got together to do a couple of trails as a duo.  We managed the Bridal Veil Falls trail, which rewards one with The Brick (Toyota Land Cruiser J70) where I only fell off the trail a couple of times.

Potshot winching me up from another potential fall

At night, in the rain only adds to the experience.  Potshot had already done the trail, as evidenced by his vehicle, which is The Brick.  That turns out to be an very competent trail vehicle as well.

The trails are getting more challenging, for us at least, though not completely beyond our capability.  And then we hit the Waddington Scree Trail.  We found that and, on starting, got into trouble almost immediately.

The winch is out already

The image above show Potshot, whose vehicle is stuck between some rocks, with me trying to pull him out.  Also, the start of the trail is about 20 feet behind me.  If that.  This trail was going to make you work for it from the first moment.

Meanwhile, I was having less luck than I might have hoped, managing to fall on my side while trying to reposition.

And over I went

Potshot, still wedged between rocks, deployed a winch point between us, there being no trees handy to latch onto, that we might both get ourselves going again.  Through the magic of game physics I did get myself upright once more, Potshot got himself unstuck. and we eventually got ourselves past that first hurdle on the trail, but we had not covered ourselves in glory so far.

Up the trail some, but not very far

The image above, maybe 15 minutes into our run at the trail, show the start of the trail (the brown trail at the upper right of the image) and the fact that we somehow needed to expend two more winch anchor points in order to progress even that far.  It is a good thing we packed extra.

Then, as we rounded the corner to the next waypoint it was my turn to get wedged between some boulders.

The Trailrat gets stuck

Potshot had to climb over one of the boulders… which was probably the correct choice in any case… to get on the other side at the right angle to get me unstuck.  It took a bit, but some wiggling and tugging with the winch and… I was on my side… but no longer stuck and with a tree close enough to winch myself back upright.

After that the trail let up and we were able to at least not get stuck for very long.  The winch was still deployed a few times… I am starting to use the damn thing like I am Spider-man shooting webs, a topic for another post… but that is par for the course.  If you could just drive up it, then it wouldn’t be a challenge trail, now would it?

We then found ourselves at the end of the trail in a relatively flat spot.

The Waddington Scree Trail completed

The reward for the Waddington Scree Trail is Das Rust Ox, an interpretation of the Mercedes-Benz T2, an absolute bread van of a vehicle that will surely lead to further comedy.

Das Rust Ox comedy preview

And that mostly wrapped up Gimli Ridge for us.  There was a bit more to do, but Asgard Mountain, the next area, was already calling for us.

WoW Forever

I played both more and less than I thought I would.  I find the ideas behind WoW Forever attractive and I am invested in the project.  I am in, and I was keen to get a glimpse of what Blizz was planning to deliver.

But this also wasn’t 2019, when WoW Classic was looming and we were about to be let back into content that had been removed from the game nearly a decade back, content that hadn’t been in something like its original form since The Burning Crusade arrived.

If I feel the burning desire to play vanilla content, Blizz has classic servers for that purpose.  If this was all about that content as it was back in 2006, WoW Forever wouldn’t been a thing.

But you couldn’t tell that if you spend any time on Reddit.  The retail, classic, and forever subreddits have all become an angry stew of puerile resentment.  I’d already decided to cut back on Reddit lately, but the reactions to WoW Forever pushed me further away.

I am on this vanilla content thing in part because there is/was a persistent group over on Reddit who were both demanding Classic Plus but who also explode in rage at every aspect of WoW Forever that isn’t 2006 vanilla, hauling out the argument that Classic Plus must not be anything that isn’t “classic” as we already know it.  It boggles the mind.

Whatever.

The beta did what betas are supposed to do.  It let the company test things, find problems, and experiment with new ideas.  Again, this seemed to enrage a certain subset of vocal players, with complaints when they did change things, when they didn’t change things, and when something wasn’t changed fast enough or too fast.  Kind of crazy.  I suppose some feel that Blizz won’t listen unless there is outrage.  But I would counter that assuming Blizz is listening at always a dodgy proposition.

Next week we’ll see how a wider audience feels.  The beta was popular and a lot of people threw down cash to get in, but betas are always a self-selecting audience that is often not representative of who will show up once an MMO goes live.  My EverQuest II tale of the Rise of Kunark beta, where those players in raid gear felt all the content was too easy, might be a couple decades in the past at this point, but it still serves.  When it went live the overland content was brutal for anybody showing up not completely kitted out.

There are certainly some things I will be keeping an eye on.

The whole layering plan, which was probably the most complained about aspect of the game in beta, will be top of the list… though I am not sure how much it will matter to me.  It is the solution to the server population disparities and the being able to play with your friends problem that plagued the first dozen years of the game, which came back strong again for WoW Classic.

The downsides include not getting to see everybody standing in Westfall.

The upside is that if you did see everybody standing in Westfall there would be no Defias to speak of, they would be hunted into extinction, so if you want to run quests there you might actually have a chance.

I know, somebody is going to say something about server communities and I am going to roll my eyes so hard it will probably detach a retina.

Even Poncho, who pissed off a ton of people by cutting in line on the opening night of WoW Classic back in 2019, who ended up having a guild named after him (the public “No Ponchos” guild) and had a Reddit thread about him was probably only known to a couple hundred people tops on a server with thousands of players.  So I don’t give the idea of server communities much weight.

More concerning to me is how to manage the layering as a player.  Blizz has taken a very “don’t worry your pretty little head” view on the topic which I do find a bit irksome.  I’d pay some extra, for example, if I could choose never to be in a layer with anybody who follows Asmongold… or maybe just see what layer of how many I was in.

Launch day… launch week… will be a clown show and many people will be complaining about every little problem.  Ideally that will all settle down quickly enough.  That is another intent behind this new single server thing.  If people are posting images of hour long queues to get into the game it is going to be a failure for layering.  What is the point if it cannot solve that?  The excuse for it with beta was being surprised so many people would fork out the cash for beta so the servers were not up to it.  With it going live you don’t want to make the same mistake twice.

There are a lot of other little changes coming relative to WoW Classic.  Some I have commented on already, like the revamp of crafting which felt pretty good in beta.  Others I steered clear of or never got around to posting about.  The reduced xp for dungeons… that sounds like a good idea, but I’ll have to see how it plays out.  And old school player that I am, the boat route update, so night elves don’t have to run the wetlands gauntlet to join their friends… I might run it anyway, just for kicks, but it was probably a good idea and within the spirit of the original game because the Deeprun Tram was supposed to go Teldrassil in the original plan.

Everything else… well, we’ll figure it out.  I hear you might even be able to tank as a pally.

The group will be trying to reform.  We’ll be going PvE and probably Alliance.

We won’t be in a hurry.  As I have said, I expect the first week to be comedy and complaints as the servers get overrun by players far in excess of Blizzard’s expectation because there won’t even be a “buy the box” barrier to entry.  We’ll see.

I’ll do some name reservations tomorrow… one thing you got for buying into the beta… though I still have to think on some last names.  A couple decades with WoW has caused my last name thinking to atrophy a bit.  That used to be important back in the days of MUDs or in EverQuest.

We’re also going to experiment with grouping outside of our small, core group.  I’ve put a WoW Forever section on the TAGN Discord server as a way to coordinate what we’re up to.  It only has a discussion channel currently, but if we need more… channels are free.

That will be open to anybody.  The TAGN Discord has a very small population, so I don’t expect it will be an issue.  And if it ends up being one, well I can always make that section invite only.  I hate getting into roles and permissions, but I’ve done it enough professionally that doing it on Discord should be no problem.

And next week we’ll see how it all begins.

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

Week forty-three saw three titles release, which had some potential to shake up the scoreboard, but first we need to see how things were lined up last time.

Week 42 Scores

Out of the gate on Monday we had an update for Planet Zoo 2, Arhanta’s final title to release, which took a bit of a hit.

• Planet Zoo 2
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 82.5 to 80.8

That dropped their score a bit, but will it be enough to put anybody else within reach of first place?

Meanwhile Bhagpuss got a one point boost as more Nivalis Nights reviews came in.

• Nivalis Nights
  • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
  • Score has gone UP from 70.0 to 71.0

After that we started seeing some of the week’s titles show up, opening with Final Fantasy Resonance.

Final Fantasy Resonance

I’ve never found any appeal in the series myself, but it has a dedicated fan base that Square Enix tends to fairly well, so a strong score was not a surprise.

• Final Fantasy Resonance
  • [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
  • Now has a score of 84.6

That was followed out of the gate by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, another of the week’s releases.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4

Another popular series, though without the lengthy pedigree of Final Fantasy, I will admit I had low expectations for it, and those low expectations seemed to be confirmed by the opening reviews.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Now has a score of 76.7

About 77 is not awful, but it is below average.  My sense of the series, as a complete outsider who has never played a single version of it, is that Activision might have milked that particular cow too hard and too often.

Then we had a couple more updates for titles already released, with upticks for both Ula and Arhanta.

• Toem 2
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Score has gone UP from 82.2 to 83.9
• Planet Zoo 2
  • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
  • Score has gone UP from 80.8 to 82.5

That put Planet Zoo 2 about back where it left off last week.

At about the same time we saw the third and final title for the week get its first score, with One Piece: Grand Gourmet arriving.

One Piece: Grand Gourmet

Unlike the other pair of week forty-three titles, this one was not from quite as storied franchise, though with 56 titles in the series it has its own history, so I had no expectations for a score.

• One Piece: Grand Gourmet
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Now has a score of 81.2

That fell right in the “average” zone for picks in the league, at least using last year as a metric; not bad, but nobody is likely kicking themselves for not grabbing it first either… and all the more so when addition reviews knocked it down by about a point.

• One Piece: Grand Gourmet
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 81.2 to 80.0

Wednesday night saw both One Piece: Grand Gourmet and Final Fantasy Resonance hit their release mark and the scoreboard recorded the impact of both titles landing.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Score has gone UP from 49.8 to 59.8
    • Moved from 10th place to 8th place
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Moved from 8th place to 9th place
  • Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)
    • Moved from 9th place to 10th place
  • Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)
    • Score has gone UP from 26.9 to 41.7
    • Moved from 13th place to 12th place
  • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
    • Moved from 12th place to 13th place

That got us to Thursday when Ula took a hit on Mio: Memories in Orbit.

• Mio: Memories in Orbit
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 82.8 to 80.6

That was the first title to launch in the league, way back at week four.  I guess somebody finally got around to reviewing it and had a bone to pick.

Then, as the date on the east coast changed to Friday, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 released.  And with the release it also got a decent boost in its score.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone UP from 76.7 to 83.7

Maybe that cow hasn’t been milked as hard as I thought.  That was enough to get Shawn another step up the scoreboard.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Score has gone UP from 66.5 to 73.5
    • Moved from 8th place to 7th place
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Moved from 7th place to 8th place

Then, as Friday wore on, another boost for the title.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone UP from 85.3 to 86.5

As Corr pointed out on Discord, that was almost a 10 point score boost in a single day.  However, not everybody was in love with the game and some more reviews pressed it back down a bit.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 86.5 to 84.8

Still, a very respectable outing, making it the top scoring title for the week. (For those playing at home, I setup the posts now so the top scoring title is the featured image for the post when it lands on social media, so I keep an eye on that.)

And then, as quickly as it went down, Mio: Memories in Orbit went back up.  Did it suddenly get some new attention?

• Mio: Memories in Orbit
  • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
  • Score has gone UP from 80.6 to 82.1

That pretty much wrapped up the week, leaving the scoreboard looking like this.

Week 43 Scores

Four players have all nine of their titles ship, even if not all of them have a score yet.  Three more of us our waiting on just two titles.

We did get one bid this week.

• Bids in TAGN League
  • Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World
  • Won by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais) with a bid of $25

Pallais dropped Hollow Knight: Silksong – Sea of Sorrow, which had no announced released date beyond a 2026 target, to make way for Dragon Quest Monsters.  Pallais also has four titles  yet to ship, including Grand Theft Auto VI.

When it comes to week forty-four we have but one title launching.  These are the next ten titles on the launch list.

Week 44 Coming Up

Those are also the last ten titles with 2026 launch dates nailed down, the final one landing on December 10th. The remainders all have estimates.

We will soon start getting to some quiet weeks.  I will use those to start suggesting what the 2027 league might look like.

Related:

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

• EA Kills Off BioWare, Video Game Community Mourns
  • Aftermath – Electronic Arts Closing BioWare, Laying Off Hundreds
  • Ars Technica – RIP BioWare: EA shuts down storied RPG studio after over three decades
  • Ars Technica – Leaked Mass Effect: Universe trailer gives a taste of what we’re all missing
  • PC Gamer – RIP BioWare: EA has shut down the legendary RPG developer
  • PC Gamer – With BioWare dead, EA lays out its ‘next chapter,’ and it’s pretty much as predicted: Guns and football are fine, and everything else is under the microscope
  • WCCF Tech – EA Shuts Down BioWare and Cancels Its 50-Person Mass Effect Project
  • Massively OP – EA officially shuts down BioWare and lays off 400 workers in the process
  • Game Informer – EA Is Shutting Down Legendary RPG Studio BioWare
  • Game Developer – EA closes BioWare after 30 years of game development
  • Parallel Context – Alas BioWare
  • Going Commando – Bye-Bye BioWare

It is one thing to think something bad is going to happen, to expect it, to feel like it is on the horizon, and another thing when the bad thing actually comes to pass.

So my write off last year of EA and whatever it was before the Saudi acquisition, didn’t do much to help when the dirty deeds occur.  The pain is real.

BioWare Bye-bye

EA announced this past week that they are shutting down the 31 year old studio that brought us so many great titles.  Sure, it has been part of EA for 19 years, and EA had already slowly sucked much of the life out of the place.  But there was always hope for something else out of them while they lasted.  Now that hope has been erased.

About 400 people are being laid off as part of this because that is what the industry is about these days… and this is just the first big cut, the item at the top of the list.  More will follow.

• Xbox, where “Reset” means “Layoff”
  • Xbox Wire – Continuing Our Reset
  • Game Developer – Microsoft CEO says Xbox is simply ‘streamlining’ after cutting over 5,750 jobs in three years
  • Polygon – Xbox reportedly planning 3 more rounds of layoffs
  • Massively OP – Xbox is reportedly queuing up for three more layoff rounds starting as soon as this month

Asha Sharma would like to take a moment out from the previously announce layoffs, still in progress, to announce three fresh new round of layoffs.

I don’t know what else to add other than a company declaring that it has a plan doesn’t mean that it is a good plan… or even a coherent plan.  And if that plan seems diametrically opposed to their previous plan, well the message seems to be that they are just pretending they know what they are doing.  Everybody who rode the video game boom up thought they were brilliant when the wave elevated them.  Now reality has arrived to show us what they really are.

• XBox Cloud Gaming Prices
  • Ars Technica – Xbox wants you to pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games you already bought
  • Polygon – Xbox confirms Cloud Gaming’s new pay-as-you-go prices

Cloud Gaming?  More like Clown Gaming!

From the Ars Technica article above, if you just want to use XBox cloud gaming without game pass, this is what it will cost per hour.

• 10 hours for $4 (~$0.40/hour)
• 25 hours for $8 (~$0.32/hour)
• 50 hours for $12 (~$0.24/hour)

Like, have they even seen the Nvidia cloud gaming pricing?  I mean, the XBox plans are cheaper than buying a new PC these days thanks to AI data centers gobbling up all the resources, but Nvidia is cheaper still… with free tiers.  Ad supported free tiers, and you are limited to one hour gaming sessions, but not to just one hour of gaming.

I don’t know.  Again, those are pretty trivial pricing schemes in the grand scheme of things, like the cost of hardware.  You have to take out a loan to buy a high end video card these days.  But, like so many thing, I expect those prices will go up in a year because you are paying to play your game on their hardware, and the hardware prices are going up for everybody.

• The Next XBox Will be More Costly
  • Ars Technica – Microsoft reportedly projects $1,200 to $1,800 price for 2028 Project Helix
  • Aftermath – $1200-$1800 For A Console Is Such Commercial Suicide

One of the arguments for consoles was always that they were cheaper than a gaming PC.  Of course, with the price of everything going up, they probably still are.  But nobody’s salary is going up as fast.  More business for cloud gaming?

• XBox: The RTO Will Continue until Morale Improves
  • RPS – Xbox reportedly mandate four days a week in office for staff close to Microsoft’s Washington HQ, up from three day requirement
  • Kotaku – Xbox Employees Who Survive Upcoming Layoffs Will Be Rewarded With More Mandatory Time In The Office If They Live Within 50 Miles

Just piling on at this point probably, but the boss wants to feel good about herself by being able to look out over the sea of serfs toiling on her behalf, looking as busy as possible to avoid being the next one on the chopping block.  And if there are not enough cubes for everybody, you can bet that will be solved with another “reset.”  Better tell her you read the latest gushing profile of her on whatever business site is trying to help rehabilitate Xbox this week.

• AI Slop Turns Steam Next Fest into Steam Slop Fest
  • PC Gamer – Steam Next Fest has over 8,000 demos, as worthless vibe coded slop levels up
  • PC Gamer – Developer cancels public demo of its upcoming horror drinking game, fearing it will be instantly cloned by AI vibe coders
  • Aftermath – Game Developers Fear That Thieving AI Vibecoders Will Make Free Game Demos A Thing Of The Past
  • Aftermath – All My Hobbies Are Getting Slopped Up, And It’s Exhausting
  • EuroGamer – Steam Next Fest 2026 has more than double the number of demos than last year, but how much of it is generative ‘AI slop’?
  • Destructoid – PC gamers are annoyed with Steam Next Fest’s abundance of AI titles
  • Kotaku – Steam Next Fest Has Become A Massive Disaster And A Grim Look At The Future
  • GameSpot – AI Slop Presents A Much Bigger Problem Than Just Flooding Steam Next Fest
  • IGN – Steam Fans Are Begging for a No-AI Filter as Steam Next Fest Is Filled With Slop

Leaving aside all the other problems with LLMs, the fact that it gives people with no talent the impression that they are artists or creators is still a huge downside.  According to the PC Gamer article linked above, there are over 8K demos for Next Fest, almost double the last time, and a big percentage of them are awful AI slop copies of other awful AI slop titles.

Meanwhile, real devs are afraid that their new titles will be swiped and recreated by AI if they even show them off before launch.  Everything is just fodder for the plagiarism machine to make bad copies of original ideas… or unoriginal or even bad ideas… such that anything good gets lost in a plague of bad clones.

AI does not “democratize” the creative process, it just floods the internet with crap.  Sturgeon’s Law about 90% of everything being crap will need to be revised.  AI is making 99.99% of everything crap.

I have no sympathy of the huge mass of AI slop merchants making everything worse.  If you used AI to copy somebody else’s game you are not a game developer, you are a leech on the industry.  It is all a hunt to get rich quick on the next Flappy Bird or whatever

Steam needs to put an AI Content flag on titles so people can exclude them from searches.  I appreciate the efforts of the current AI statements that Steam requires, but they are not enough.  To start with, most of them look like bald faced lies or whiny justifications.  I literally saw one earlier that claimed that the videos of game play were not made with AI.  Yeah, but what about the actual game content?  All AI slop.

I am not going to claim to be a purist.  We live in a world where most companies are requiring devs to use AI as at least a coding assistant.  That is going on with my projects as well.  I highly doubt, being part of Microsoft, that WoW Forever hasn’t been partially assembled with AI coding assistance.  That is just the reality we have to live in these days.  If something is flagged for using AI to assist coding, that isn’t an automatic dismissal from me.

But it is one thing to use the tool with care and another to use it as a manure spreader to flood the zone with shit.

We do not want the Tim Sweeney version of the future where he fires his devs because he can vibe code awful, broken versions of the Epic Game Store.

We are still in the “drug dealer handing out free samples to get you addicted” stage of the AI bubble.  I cannot wait for the moment when the bills come due and the AI companies have to start charging what it really costs to produce all that slop.  I have never been more in favor of barriers to entry than I am today.

• The Q4 Expansion, Fractured Skies, Arrives November 10th
  • CCP/Fenris – Fractured Skies Expansion Arrives 10 Nov

End of the year expansion time.  This will be the second in the trio of expansions focused on low sec and faction warfare.  If I count right, six of the previous eight expansions since the return to the twice yearly cadence have been focused on low sec and faction warfare.  So you know what the company cares about when the ninth is also about low sec and faction warfare.  Then again, every time the look at null sec the decide to try and break it, so maybe it is for the best that they are focused elsewhere.

EVE Online Fractured Skies Features

The highlights include:

• New navy faction attack battlecruisers – The company plan to “navy all the things” continues.
• AIR Academy ships – Maybe if we give new players free ships they’ll PvP… or at least not just quit in the first 10 minutes… if they can even get through that new tutorial.
• Updated HUD UI – This could be good, but a long history of bad UI choices makes me cautious.
• AIR Career Program becomes Achievements – But you’ll have to do them over again because, as always, they don’t care about your history with the game.
• Something to try any make Faction Warfare exciting – I don’t play in that corner of space, so maybe?  Good luck storming the castle or something!
• EVE Vanguard being handcuffed to EVE Online – It will be a paid alpha because they need money

At least this time around the low sec focused expansion doesn’t also include a “nerf null sec” ambition… at least not yet.  We won’t know what most of this really means until we get the patch notes.  Anyway, that is coming to a New Eden near you soon enough.

The Voting for CSM 21 Has Begun

• CCP/Fenris – CSM 21 – Cast Your Vote Now!
• CCP/Fenris – CSM21 Dev Blog
• CCP/Fenris – CSM 21 Candidate Announcements
• CCP/Fenris – The Roles and Duties of a member of the Council of Stellar Management
• TAGN – EVE Online and the Road to CSM 21
• TAGN  – The Road to CSM21 – The Official Candidates List

The time has come again.  You may cast a vote for your Council of Stellar Management candidates… so long as you have a subscribed account.  And you can cast a vote for every subscribed account.  Multiboxers win again, though even I have two active accounts.  You need two if you have a capital ship.

Council of Stellar Management 21

As of yesterday after downtime the voting period for CSM21 has been open.  It will run until downtime on the morning of November 3rd, which means you probably need to get it done by Monday, November 2nd.

I put together a table with all of the candidates, their affiliation, their/my bias, and a link to their campaign post.  The campaign post is key and I remain surprised/dismayed that the company makes every candidate do one, then fails to link to it in their own candidate list post.

My usual advice is to avoid people who are promising to make the company do things and focus on the people who want to stop the company from doing more dumb things.  The latter works out for the best slightly more often than the former, though “nearly never” applies to both generally.

• Partner Program Giveaways Policy Update
  • CCP/Fenris – Policy Update – Giveaways

The company has changed the rules for the partner program when it comes to giving things away that the company provides.  Turns out you’re not supposed to sell or otherwise setup a situation where it profits you.  And while this applies to the whole of the partner program, since most of that is Twitch streamers and most of the problems listed are related to Twitch, it feels like a crack down on abuses on that particular platform.

Things you can no longer do:

• Sub goals and Hype Train unlocks. “Hit 100 subs and I’ll give away a Machariel,” or “Hype Train level 3 unlocks a PLEX giveaway.” Giveaways cannot be unlocked or triggered by paid support, even when everyone can enter.
• Paid prize pools. “Every 1,000 Bits adds 100 million ISK to the pot.” Paid support cannot make a giveaway bigger.
• Paying to speed things up. “Every gifted sub takes five minutes off the giveaway timer.” Paid support cannot bring giveaways forward or make them more frequent.
• Extra chances for Bits or donations. “Cheer 500 Bits for a bonus entry,” or a prize for your top donor. The parity rule now explicitly covers any financial support, not just subscriptions.
• Channel point rewards. “Redeem 50,000 channel points for a SKIN,” or spending channel points to trigger or enter a giveaway. On Twitch, subscribers earn channel points faster than everyone else. You can’t control that, but it’s a fact of the platform, so no in-game items or giveaways can sit behind channel points.
• Back-to-back giveaways. You can now run no more than one giveaway in any rolling 60-minute window, so one at 20:55 and another at 21:05 would break the limit.
• Drawings spread across a stream. Any winner picked more than 10 minutes after the first counts as a new giveaway.
• Giveaway streams. Giveaways should support your content, so there needs to be content for them to support. Streams that exist just to host giveaways and run their own bespoke points systems are not allowed.

You can report anybody who is doing the above and CCP might look into it.  Their actual enforcement of the rules varies greatly based on who is doing the violating and what they are doing.

Things you’re still good with:

• One giveaway in any rolling hour, open to everyone on equal terms and not tied to paid support.
• Several prizes or winners in one drawing, as long as every winner is picked and announced within 10 minutes of the first.
• Re-drawing a winner who turned out to be ineligible or didn’t claim their prize, as long as it’s the same prize and the re-draw isn’t used to drum up more engagement.
• Celebrating milestones that have nothing to do with paid support, like a follower goal, within the one-per-hour limit.
• Giveaways tied to fundraising milestones on charity streams, under the conditions below.

There are exceptions for charity streams, but you can’t be directly receiving and financial benefit.

The big question for me is whether this means that CCP/Fenris itself will no longer give away GalNet SKINS for channel points.  Does the policy apply to them or only to their Twitch partners.  I ask because of the next item…

• Alliance Tournament XXII Finals – October 31 / November 1
  • CCP/Fenris – Announcing Alliance Tournament XXII
  • TAGN – The Road to Alliance Tournament XXII

So that is coming up in a week.

EVE Alliance Tournament XXII

Due to changes in the tournament structure, with earlier elimination rounds, the finals are more compact than they have been in past years, fitting into a single weekend this time around.  Putting on Halloween weekend… well, that was a choice.  But I am told that the New Eden player base is aging, so maybe none of us have plans for a weekend that included a major party holiday.

Also, all the updates are on Discord so I can’t really link to them and they’ve all scrolled off into infinity because that is how Discord works.  Oh well.  All I want to know is if I’ll get another GalNet SKIN if I leave Twitch running in the background.

• Monthly Ban Report – September 2026
  • CCP/Fenris – Monthly Ban Report – September 2026

This has become a regular thing in recent months.  The company wants to assure you that it is banning people, even some of the people you are reporting… though the vast majority of bans are for automated account creation.

I do want to point out that on the Ishtar did not make the cut for the top ten most banned ship types when it came to macro use (i.e. botting).  The top ten were:

1. Moa – 315
2. Algos – 31
3. Praxis – 24
4. Venture – 21
5. Apocalypse Navy Issue – 19
6. Machariel – 17
7. Miasmos – 13
8. Gila – 13
9. Pioneer – 13
10. Stormbringer – 10

That is because Ishtar drone ratting is so self-sustaining that you don’t need software to do it.  The ships listed need the help… though the Gila might feel close to the Ishtar due to being a drone boat, but that is used to run abyssals and isn’t just orbiting a can in a Forsaken Hub somewhere.

• The September 2026 Monthly Economic Report
  • CCP/Fenris – Monthly Economic Report – September 2026

The MER is still a thing.  Somebody probably still cares.  The company highlights from the report:

• Mining Value declined again in September.
• Mining increased slightly in High Sec and Wormhole space, while Production rose in Low Sec.
• Destruction showed signs of increasing in Low Sec and Wormhole space.
• Gas Volume Mined in Wormhole space rose compared with August.
• Gas volume mined in Vale of the Silent increased by approximately 113% in September compared with August.
• Low Sec saw a small, brief rise in Ice Volume Mined toward the end of September.
• Active ISK Delta shifted from +82.2 trillion ISK in August to −144.7 trillion ISK in September.
• The Mineral Price Index continued to fall.
• The Module Price Index fell by approximately 4% compared with August.

I used to care and pay attention to all of that.  Now, not so much.  The company seems laser focused on… some real trivia in their summary.  I mean, me too back when I covered the MER, but I used at least look for reasons why things occurred.  Matching game changes and activity to results seemed to be the point.  Oh well.

• Have You Told Your Research Agents You Love Them Lately?
  • CCP/Fenris – Keeping Memories Alive

The company is wiping agent memories like their the men in black as part of the upgrade from Python 2.7 to Python 3 something. (Python 2.7 has only been completely unsupported since 2020.)  There is a long winded explanation of the why and the how of the whole thing in that linked dev blog.  Mostly things won’t change.

Unless you still have some active research agents.  Remember those?

It has been a long time since I posted something about research/R&D agents.  That was some 2009 level posting.

Once upon a time that was a mildly lucrative, low effort ISK faucet.  You setup with an agent, let the research points build up over a few months, then go turn the points into datacores (required for Tech II research), bring them to market, and profit.

CCP nerfed that some since the good old days, and added in other sources for datacores.  The current Crimson Harvest event, for example, is raining datacores, so prices are currently down.  But they still can get you some ISK.

But to keep that trickle of ISK live, you must go visit your research agents and run at least ONE MISSION for them.  That is pretty easy.  They either want you to deliver something or given them something like 2,000 pieces of Tritanium.

How to find your research agents, or figure out if you still have some… I have no idea how to do that in the current UI.  The company still has the fucking Proving Grounds in the UI, but I cannot find research agents anywhere.

This is part of why I keep my half working copy of EVEMon around because, like the Pepperidge Farms meme, it remembers.

My research agents revealed

You will know you have successfully run a mission for them because they will get back to you after the next downtime to complain about a problem.

This is why I got out of management

You can ignore that, like you always do.

Anyway, I ran through my agents, collected all my cores, and sold them before the event.  That was worth somewhat more than $150 million ISK.  That won’t make me rich, but that is another modest doctrine ship I can purchase.