The Site

WordPress.com acknowledged once again that I posted every day for a year straight, a reminder than quantity does not equal quality.

Another year gone by…

Also, it only says that because I changed the time zone setting for the blog from UTC to Pacific time which changed my streak when it recalculated it.  The count should be around 1,522, but I posted the occasional item for the next day before midnight Pacific time so the changing of the time setting changed what counted.  That’s the way it goes.

There is a Dril tweet for all occasions

Also, the chaos that social media has become has taken a lot of the edge off of Dril these days.  But that is for another post I suppose.

Anyway, I am not mad because what is a posting streak anyway?  Plus, WP.com did something nice this month… they paid me.  Those ads some of you had to endure earlier in the year paid the hosting fee for the site for 2024.

Getting Paid

Granted, they took their time about it.  But dollars are dollars… and they are in my PayPal account just in time for me to blow it all on the Steam Summer Sale in June, if I can wait that long.

Then there is my other site, EVE Online Pictures, which I have let slide this month.  Part of that is due to not playing much EVE Online, so not having any new screen shots… I am surprisingly picky about what I post there, though you might not believe that if you scroll through the place… has taken the edge off.  That and the fact that not posting has had pretty much zero impact on traffic… nobody visits when I post, so it is hard to go downhill from there… has made it easy to ignore.  I might go back to it with the new expansion… but after 16 years of being essentially unknown, it might also be time to let the experiment fade.

The question back in 2008 was whether or not an all pictures blog about EVE Online could achieve some level of popularity.  The answer, in this case, seems to be “no.”

One Year Ago

EVE Online turned 20 and the month long capsuleer day celebrations kicked off.  I did my own post reflecting on the two decades of the game.

CCP was also talking about the upcoming Viridian expansion, which included tech II capital ships.

I also did a bullet point post about the game that included the deadline to get on the monument, the minutes from the CSM17 summit, the delay of the CSM18 election, fireworks in Jita, the building of the first shipcaster, an ESS theft story, and the end of the BOSS alliance.  Then I did another one, again mentioning the monument, chat channel issues, the MER, player made billboards, a T-shirt design contest, and the Pearl Abyss financials.

I was considering average daily destruction as a metric for EVE Online and looked into the April 2023 destruction count.  I also wondered how many skill points were enough in New Eden.

Over at Enad Global 7, My Singing Monsters was still making the most money, but investment groups were demanding more money from the company, suggesting that the company explore being sold.  Good thing Embracer Group didn’t get hold of them.

In Wrath Classic I had accomplished some of my goals in Wintergrasp and the Argent Tournament, though I could not yet build Jeeves.  The group managed to get through The Oculus,

Blizzard said they were going to make a hardcore mode server for WoW Classic and they introduced WoW Tokens to Wrath Classic.

I started my lossless scaling experiment to see if that would make LOTRO more playable on my 34″ wide screen monitor.  It helped, but couldn’t overcome all of my large screen issues.  That was just in time for the 16th anniversary.  Meanwhile, Amazon said they were again interested in doing a Middle-earth game.

In the AI Question Time series I asked about a tank in EVE Online, sandbox MMO options, whether it could generate some ideas for an RPG campaign, including a royal family, and about Wilhelm Arcturus.

I was on about timing lucky eggs with friendship levels in Pokemon Go.  That is probably my most popular post from 2023.

I did a mail bag post after being inundated by media op offers.

I caught up with HBO becoming Max, Netflix ending its DVD services, and MTV just ending, along with some more binge watching.

I was checking out Twitter alternatives as Elon’s reign kept getting dumber and dumber.

Finally, it was Memorial Day once more.

Five Years Ago

Back in May of 2018 there was a rumor leak about Daybreak, so a year later I went back over them to see what came to pass.

Blizzard revenue margins dropped considerably.  As if to prove the point, WoW dropped off of SuperData’s digital revenue chart.

To hide that in the news cycle Blizzard gave us a date for WoW Classic. I wondered if the Cataclysm expansion was a necessary prerequisite for WoW Classic.  I also was speculating as to what would happen with WoW Classic as it aged.

The beta for WoW Classic had been up for a while, but they decided to do a stress test, so they let everybody in for a bit.  Of course I went!  And I did the following week as well.

In what we now call retail WoW I was off collecting the Children’s Week pets.

Blizzard also gave us a peek at their 15th Anniversary Collector’s Edition.

The Mittani uttered the words, “Gevlon was right” in a public forum.

EVE Online celebrated its sixteen year anniversary with a sixteen day login campaign.  The Invasion expansion was slated for the end of the month.  Its arrival brought more Triglavian fun to the game as well as the big revamp of The Agency interface and some war dec changes.

CCP Peligro Tweeted out a chart about who gets banned for botting in New Eden.  CCP had also been trying to nerf ratting and mining, so that was the focus of my MER review that month.

The CSM14 election was coming up and Jester did a Reddit AMA about his time on the CSM as his NDA had finally expired.  I also had a bullet points post about CSM14 candidates and rewards and a coming war and such.

Out in Delve I got to undock my dreadnought.

With Liberty Squad I went on ops to Amamake and into Etherium reach that resulted in explosions.  I also got to drop on some Rorquals with Black Ops.

But people were focused on the coming Imperium attack on the north and where it would land.  Even as we formed up and moved vast fleets to the north of null sec, our target was still speculation, though once we set up shop in the east of Pure Blind it looked like Tribute was the target.  There was a rush to see if we could kill the PanFam staging Keepstar, but when that failed we settled in to burn down the region.

In Minecraft I was growing bamboo and looking for the new village types that came in with the Village & Pillage update.  The I went looking for pillagers.

Connor at MMO Fallout announced that the site was winding down… and then he changed his mind.

And I watched the Catch-22 miniseries on Hulu.  I liked some of it, but there were issues for me.  There always are.

Ten Years Ago

EA killed off Mythic Entertainment.  They had already handed over Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot to Broadsword, so what was left in any case?

The news about post-Kickstarter Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen continued to be off-putting.

I got another seven day trial in Landmark.

The strategy group started in on our BIG map campaign in Civilization V.

Nintendo announced Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were coming in November. They also closed down the WiFi game services for the Nintendo DS and Wii, which led EA to shut down the server support for 50 games a month later.  Most of them were DS and Wii related, but EA used the opportunity to kill off some PC game support as well.

Nintendo also launched Mario Kart 8, one of the few bright spots on the otherwise disappointing Wii U.  Soon the Luigi death stare was everywhere.

In EverQuest the Fippy Darkpaw progression server wrapped up the Seeds of Destruction expansion.

In EVE Online I was wondering about the prospects for a summer war.  Everybody just assumed that there would be one, though in null sec the various empires seemed to be settling in and consolidating.  Sure, there was the trap at Daras… another on the list of reasons we shy away from low sec… the run down to Placid for a kill, and that op down in Syndicate (my post on which stirred up some sour grapes about day one players) but otherwise things were quiet.  That left plenty of time to go find my name on the monument.

As EVE Online turned eleven I was wondering if the alleged ‘learning cliff’ was still the biggest issue facing EVE Online.

Meanwhile CCP announced they were getting off the twice a year, huge update release pattern in order to have releases… named releases for a while… every month.  This led into a post about the pacing of content delivery.

In World of Warcraft the Timeless Isle was still a thing.  The Warlords of Draenor expansion was still over the horizon and subscriptions were down to 7.6 million under the weight of wait.  That seemed like a big drop until Warlords of Draenor fell to 5 million two years later.   Meanwhile, our group was slowing down a bit even as we started in on dungeons in Pandaria.

In attempt to make plans for another summer hiatus, I gave Star Wars: The Old Republic a try, going through the Sith starting area.

And then there was the kick off of the 2014 Newbie Blogger Initiative.

Fifteen Years Ago

I was able to expose the true conspiracy behind the EuroGamer Darkfall review.  Powerful forces have been suppressing this story ever since.

EA lost a billion dollars.  This came after the CEO announced that recessions were good because they eliminate competitors.  They can also eliminate bad execs.

Meanwhile, EverQuest was celebrating its 10 year anniversary by putting up a new server.  Polled on what it should be, people chose the 51/50 rule set.  I’m sure that, somehow, that says something about MMOs and nostalgia.  I cannot recall how that server even played out at this point.

I went back and played some Blizzard classics, Diablo II and StarCraft, both of which received  patches that meant you no longer needed the CD to play.  This was prompted by Blizzard’s pushing people towards Battle.net and the announcement of the opt-in for the StarCraft II beta.  I opted in right away.  I hear that some people got in to the beta almost a year later. *cough*

In New Eden, it was new ship time, as I picked up both an Orca and a Buzzard.  I also managed to lose my Cerebus.   Oops.

And speaking of EVE Online, I announced my one year experiment, EVE Online Pictures.

CCP put a new boxed version of EVE Online on store shelves.  I bought a copy and made a fabulous new character.

In World of Warcraft the instance group was moving along slowly.  We did hit Azjol Nerub, but vacations and such kept us down to four people, so we spent a bit of time back in Burning Crusade doing heroics and generally messing around.  That included our run into Ogrimmar to do Ragefire Chasm.

I also messed around with the Noblegarden holiday.  I actually got all the achievements for that.  However, Children’s Week was another story.

Playboy’s “Massively Casual Online Game” Playboy Manager was announced.  The game was supposed to launch in the summer of 2009 according to the press release.  There was a whole story about what happened… but you’ll have to search up on it because it is too long to repeat here.

And then there was a little game called Minecraft that was first made available in early access back in May 2009.  Estimates put it as possibly the best selling game of all time.

Twenty Years Ago

Nintendo announces a new console code named Revolution to follow from the GameCube.  Revolution would latter be given the official name Wii.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

Nintendo started talking about Project Dolphin, the console to follow the Nintendo 64.  This would eventually become the GameCube.

The 4th Coming, an early MMORPG developed by the French Canadian firm Vircom Interactive, is officially launched.  The game is still running and being updated as of this writing by DialSoft, which took over the title in 2006.

Thirty Years Ago

Chaos Studios, once called Silicone & Synapse, having changed its name to Ogre Studios the month before due to a trademark claim by Chaos Technologies, changed its name one last time and became Blizzard Entertainment.

Most Viewed Posts in May

1. Are the Ashlands going to Kill Valheim?
2. The Ashlands Arrive in Valheim
3. Quote of the Day – Just Say No?
4. Timing those Lucky Eggs for Friendship Milestone…
5. Just a Sap in the Mistlands
6. The Special Business Unit
7. After Three Weeks of the Cataclysm Pre-Patch
8. Finding an Infested Mine in Valheim at Last!
9. Level 45 at Last in Pokemon Go
10. Warm Ups for Cataclysm Classic
11. EverQuest Starting Points – Butcherblock and Kaladim
12. EverQuest Starting Points – Ak’Anon and Whatever Happened to the Steamfont Mountains

Search Terms of the Month

can i still play the older versions of civilization?
[Have I got the post for you!]

pokemon go best friend lucky egg can i claim later
[I don’t think so]

gamer blogs
[I think I am on page 912 of that search on Google]

waerzor
[Neither than nor porn here]

Game Time from ManicTime

WoW Classic, with Cataclysm showing up, got the gang back together and into Azeroth.  Clearly I spent a lot of time there… and all the more so due to Valheim issues.  At the bottom end is Palia, which I tried briefly early in the month for somebody’s friend code bonus and… I don’t really remember much… and the retail WoW, where I logged in to collect something and to check an achievement.

• WoW Classic – 80.02%
• EVE Online – 6.68%
• EverQuest – 5.86%
• Valheim – 5.66%
• Palia – 1.72%
• World of Warcraft – 0.06%

EVE Online

I did managed to collect all 30 daily rewards for capsuleer day/month in celebration of the game’s 21st anniversary.  I even logged in and went on a couple of fleets, got on my requisite kill mail, updated my PI… and did nothing else.  I am kind of waiting around for the Equinox expansion to show up to see what that will mean.

EverQuest

I spent a bit of time running around old Norrath in search of starting points.  I think I have one more post in me on that front, if I can find some words.  But I think come June and the launch of the EverQuest II Origins Server that I might need to turn my eye towards post-cataclysm Norrath.

Pokemon Go

As noted earlier this month, my wife and I finally made it past the final task to get to level 45, which meant we were already halfway to 46 on the xp front.

• Level: 45 (+1, now 57% of the way to 46 in xp, 1 of 4 level tasks complete)
• Pokedex status: 825 (+4) caught, 839 (+5) seen
• Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 15 of 20
• Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
• Current buddy: Varoom… which is really a Pokemon, I swear

Valheim

The letdown of the Ashlands and Iron Gate going all in on “you must suffer to play our game!” along with the arrival of Cata Classic made for a pretty steep downturn in my play time here, which is saying something because so for in 2024 Valheim is my most played title by a fair margin.  I still want to try The Queen in the Mistlands, but that will probably be then end of things until somebody rolls up a “make the Ashlands available to casuals” mod like the mist removal mod for the Mistlands.

WoW Classic

Cataclysm Classic is now a thing.  It may not be a popular thing, but it does seem to be our thing.  For all the issues it has and my general angst about it as an expansion, I have spent more time playing it than anything else this month.  We’ll see how that carries on though…

Zwift

My last entry for Zwift.  As I noted earlier this month, they sent me a note saying that on my next billing cycle they would be raising the price to $20 a month.  That prompted me to cancel immediately.  I thought I had the rest of May to ride because the note said my next billing date was June 6… however, that was wrong and I found my account lapsed by mid-month.  So it goes.  These are my final numbers for Zwift.

• Level – 27
• Distanced cycled – 1,980.5 miles
• Time spent riding – 4d 8h 23m
• Elevation climbed – 72,375
• Calories burned – 58,617 (+1,323)

Going back to something I was doing previously, that distance would be about from my house to Davenport, Iowa.

Coming Up

On June 11th we’re going to get the Equinox expansion for EVE Online, so that will be a thing that I will be there to try out.

Over at Daybreak, the EverQuest II time locked expansion server Anashti Sul will go live, and I want to take a peek into that.

Traisland, the Tencent MMORPG that the gaming press cannot stop calling a WoW rip-off, is set to go live on June 21.  Given that it is following the free to play model, it is likely I will give it a try.

The first day of summer… the summer solstice is on Thursday, June 20th, should see the start of the Steam Summer Sale.  Like I need more titles in my back log.  Still, there it is.

And then there is Cataclysm Classic.  We’re invested for the moment and the first dungeon is waiting for us.

A couple weeks back Enad Global 7 issued their financials for the first quarter of 2024 and I was doing something else… I think I was in Ione, CA that day… anyway, I am finally getting around to mentioning it.

Enad Global 7

Not that there is a lot to mention.  The report straight up says it was a quiet quarter with no major releases and an continued decline in users for Big Blue Bubble’s My Singing Monsters title that saw a huge surge in popularity about 18 months back.

• As expected, Q1 was a “quieter” quarter, reflecting limited planned releases
  • No major product and content releases for the period
  • MSM lower level performance as expected
  • Market weakness pressuring our 3rd party service business units

They didn’t even follow up on the Q4 2023 surprise announcement about the sale of the PlanetSide IP, though we did find out later that the IP somehow ended up with Toadman, another of EG7’s studios, leaving one to wonder what was going on.  No further details have been provided.

So earning were down in Q1 2024.  All that quiet.

The LTM side of the chart are the “last twelve months” totals marked every quarter, which is supposed to more indicative of how the company is doing overall than a strictly quarter focused view… and EG7 is down on that view as well.

Summing up the quarter in the chart they showed who was contributing to the bottom line.

Contributions to revenue by group

As noted above, My Singing Monsters was down, but our friends at Daybreak were chugging along as expected in a quarter with no big releases.

Earnings for Daybreak and Big Blue Bubble

Daybreak was even up a bit in Q1 and has held steady during the rise and decline of My Singing Monsters.  But Daybreak has a few “medium” events in 2024 to keep it going as this chart indicates.

The Plan for 2024… caveats excepted

The only “large” event for the year is MechWarrior 5: Clans.

As part of this quiet quarter EG7 took a moment to remind people that things are bad all over in  the video game market, but they are sticking to their goad of 3 Billion SEK in earnings in 2026, with that growth kicking in any minute now.

The promised future

We’ll see how that shakes out with the Q2 results.

But next up, on June 7th, is the first dividend payment, the reaction to capital management investors demanding that EG7 not hold cash reserves when they could be just handing that money to shareholders.  EG7 is taking a cautious approach to that, but the shareholder meeting coming up on June 19th will no doubt be a sounding as to whether to voracious maw of Wall Street is momentarily sated or if they will demand more.

Also, I missed when EG7 released their final 2023 company report.  That is worth a glance and I linked it at the end of the post along with all the usual suspects.  I did pull a couple of charts out just because I thought they were interesting.

The first is the staffing levels of the various units that are part of EG7, totaling up to 736 people.

Where the staff are at EG7

The Daybreak total at the end of 2023 was 264 people (about as many as I hear work on World of Warcraft these days) or about 36% of EG7’s total, broken out into the following groups:

• Daybreak – Standing Stone (LOTRO/DDO) – 60
• Daybreak – Developer & Publisher – 59
• Daybreak – Darkpaw (EQ/EQII) – 53
• Daybreak – Dimensional Ink (DCUO) – 49
• Daybreak – Rogue Planet (PlanetSide 2) – 27
• Daybreak – Magic Online – 16

And then there was a chart about some random demographic metrics for the company which they decided to report on.

Accident free in 2023

Cyber attacks were down, as were reported sick days.  I imagine those sick days were all reported in Europe where they require those sorts of benefits by law.  Meanwhile, female staff declined in a number of groups… though the seem to be sneaking in a new female member of the board as according to the report she was only elevated in 2024.  Details.

Anyway, EG7 made the “slow quarter” excuse, which you can do once in a while.  Now to see if they can light a fire under Q2.  If they don’t the capital management investors may start howling again for the company to be parted out and sold again.

Related:

• EG7 – Investor Relations Page
• EG7 – Q1 2024 Interim Report
• EG7 – Q1 2024 Investor Presentation
• EG7 – 2023 Annual Report
• Simply Wall St – There’s A Lot To Like About EG7’s Upcoming Dividend
• Massively OP – EG7 Q1 2024: Daybreak still mum on PlanetSide 2, new H1Z1 game hires lead designer
• Massively OP – EG7’s 2023 annual report claims Daybreak and SSG collectively count 264 staffers

The Cataclysm arrived in its full form about a week ago and I swear to you that I have had to update the Questie addon twice a day, every day, since then.

The cataclysm is real

Questie puts up an apologetic message on loading that says that the quest data for the addon has been built up via private servers and Cataclysm isn’t popular in that domain so the new quest data is a lot rougher than past outings.  Another argument for “classic” ending with Wrath I suppose.  But I give them props for the updates.

Otherwise things work… or at least are not egregiously broken.  At least not after a couple of updates.

Out in Vashj’ir there were few oddities with quests not running right on the first pass, the occasional quest window that wouldn’t go away when accepted, and one quest where the object given you wouldn’t perform its task.

That led to a point in under water where I was without a connecting quest in the chain to send me to the next location.  After some going back and forth I gave up and managed to pick up the quest chain… or at least a quest chain… further on down the zone, so could carry on.

This got fixed later and I was able to go back and pick up the missed quest, so my ability to get the achievement for doing the zone quests won’t be blocked… by that at least.

There are other, more general failings in this zone, but they are more by design than by failing to replicate a stable, playable version of the original.

I also learned, in playing the DK, that path of frost might not be the most useful ability in Vashj’ir.  I had it up when I hit the zone and, once in the capsized boat that is the first quest hub, found I needed to dismiss it to jump back in the water.  Go figure.

I did find it a bit amusing when my DK, the first of my characters to level up, was congratulated on hitting level 0.

Still, that is a hefty load of hit points

I figured that was a minor oversight, something easy to fix.  But as the week went on and I hit 81 with three more characters, then 82 with a couple, I began to suspect that this might be a symptom of some more fundamental conflict with Cataclysm code running on the current retail framework.  For users it is cosmetic and doesn’t appear elsewhere, but it is one of those things that if I were the project manage, I would be asking the devs to explain what this really meant.

That said, and my tepid engagement with Cataclysm as a whole aside, I have been putting some effort to get into things.

Being only a 5 level expansion, people were hitting level cap on opening day.  The opening zones of Vashj’ir, while not empty… there is always that guy there to snipe that last mob you need it seems… was certainly over the first day rush very quickly.  Even the weekend failed to bring much of a surge to the game that I could detect.

Then again, we are on Bloodsail Buccaneers, the PVE-RP server, which according to Ironforge.pro, which uses data from Blizzard’s armory site to try and estimate populations, isn’t exactly a booming metropolis, reporting in about as about 1.4% of the population of the US Cataclysm servers.  If you want an active US server you need to land on Pagle for Alliance and Faerlina for Horde.

The numbers as I write this

The numbers also show Cataclysm Classic being slightly more popular in the EU than the US… by very close to the ratio of the population difference between the two regions.  I find that both normal and odd at the same time.

According to the demographics, Cataclysm is also more than twice as popular than classic era vanilla but about half as popular as Season of Discovery.  And while I am skeptical that those numbers absolutely represent the player base, the ratios may be okay if they are generating all the numbers in the same way.  The usual “even data collected incorrectly can be useful in some ways if it is collected consistently” argument I make applies.

I have been sending characters up both the Vashj’ir and Hyjal paths for their first zone and the xp is such that it appears you need only do one or the other before moving on to Deepholm, so it is probably good that achievements are shared so I don’t have to do all the zones with one character.

So far most of the classes have been working out okay.  The protection paladin and blood deathknight have no problem tearing through overland leveling content.  Likewise, my hunter was just fine once I remembered to spend the pet talent points as well… though he wasn’t having any problems before I did that, it just made things go faster.

The feral druid is a little squishy… but always was I suppose.  They made an odd change to thorns, which is now a short buff with a cool down.  And I also got Chad the rogue out, though that is a play style I need to be in the right mindset to pull off.  After stomping through the brush with the pally and DK, being a little circumspect takes some effort.

Trade skills… are in progress.  It took me a bit to realize that, with the alts who only have gathering professions only, that they have the tracker on for both.  So I was out with Irondam, who has both mining and herbalism, thinking I was only tracking herbs and wondering why I kept finding mining nodes.

When it comes to cooking however, the cult of dailies has taken over and you are at the mercy of Robby Flay and the currency he offers, which are required to buy recipes.

Robby Flay in Stormwind… have to visit him every day

This is offset a bit by Darkmoon Faire moving to its island instance, which means once a month you can go there and get a 5 point boost on your trade skills with a quick quest.  That doesn’t seem like much, but sometimes 5 points will be just enough to get you past a dead spot.

Overall, not a bad first week I suppose.  Popularity is obviously nowhere near where it was with the launch of WoW Classic nearly five years back, nor even the arrival of Wrath Classic 18 month ago, but it is trucking along.  This is similar to the player arc you might see with EverQuest retro servers, where the launch is always huge, but after a few expansion unlocks it tends to be down to those invested in reliving the raids or other aspects of the experience.

Even if it is just 50K players, they are all subscribed and, judging by what I have seen, a certain percentage even bought the special mount pack.  So probably well worth the time invested.  Not a gold mine anymore, but making money.

And, for all the complaints above, I have spent most of my gaming time playing it and rediscovering what the expansion brought.  Expect more opinions I suppose.

Rivervale is the halfling home town, where those barefoot little mooks start their journey in Norrath.

Halflings are, of course, the hobbits of Tolkien lore… except only hobbits, wizards, and authorized agents of the Tolkien estate use the word “hobbits,” such that TSR was sued by the latter for using the word “hobbit” (along with “ent” and “balrog”) in early printings of Dungeons & Dragons, so had to change to “halfling” and “treant” (Nalrog became some kind of demon as I recall, maybe a pit lord?), terms which we now use freely when not wanting to face the wrath of Tolkien’s heirs and business managers. (Which now include the horrible Embracer Group.)  Anyway, that was back in the 70s, so by the time EverQuest showed up the naming scheme was a long established practice for any title not paying royalties to the Tolkien estate.  (Tolkien enterprises apparently also tried to take hold of “dragon,” “goblin,” “dwarf,” and “warg,” but there was so much prior art around those words that they couldn’t make it stick.)

But look at these guys, they are hobbits, right?

Kind of an unfortunate last name I suppose…

Also, the early Norrath obsession with alcohol is present… and is that a “G” run on that barrel in the back room? (You might need to click on the image to enlarge it to see.)  Are you just looking for the Tolkien estate lawyers to start climbing all over you?

Anyway, Rivervale is one of those locations in Norrath that I probably have stronger memories of from EverQuest II that the original EverQuest.  In part, that is because it isn’t exactly a memorable place.  While probably more intricate than Surefall Glade, it isn’t all that big, mostly being centered around the Fool’s Gold inn, which is about the middle of the town.

The Fool’s Gold Inn – BarcaLoungers in every room

Rivervale isn’t quite Hobbiton, or even Michel Delving.  The Fool’s Gold has a somewhat organic feel, like it might be built around the remains of a large tree trunk, but the town hall is a stone faced edifice, like a low rent Petra, where the mayor sits on the top floor running the place with an iron fist, enforcing his will with an army of masked deputies who are the most common sight on the paths.

A veritable halfling Mount Doom with that sky color…

There are some hobbit… erm… halfling holes around, though they lack the signature round doors that we read about in the description of hobbit holes back in The Hobbit.

Halflings adopt the right angle for technology based reasons

That is probably less to do with the Tolkien estate and more to do with the state of 3D world rendering technology in the late 90s.  The rest of the place is mostly buildings that feel borrowed from elsewhere in Norrath.

Are the feet weary or is the foot rest weary?

Anyway, going to the Project 1999 wiki for a map…

Rivervale Map

The legend for that map:

• 1. Pottery Wheel and Kiln
• 2. Nyla Gubbin’s House
• 3. Merchants selling Bags and Fishing Supplies
• 4. Weary Foot Rest – Inn
• 5. Vale Forge
• 6. Town Hall and Leatherfoot Hall – Bank, Warrior Guild, Merchants selling Various Weapons
• 7. Merchants selling Food and other Goods, Fishing Supplies
• 8. Priest of Discord
• 9. Fool’s Gold – Rogue Guild, Merchants selling Alcohol, Brew Barrel
• 10. Merchant selling Cloth Armor, Brew Barrel, and Loom
• 11. Merchants selling Potions and Crystals
• 12. Merchant selling Leather Armor and Patterns outside, Small Chain Armor and Small Chain Armor Patterns
• 13. Druid Guild with Merchants selling Ore, Veggies, Druid Weapons, and Druid and Ranger Spells, Forge and Oven outside
• 14. Pottery Wheel and Oven, Fletching and Bowyery Equipment, Weapon Molds
• 15. Merchant selling Potions and Crystals
• 16. Cleric and Paladin Guilds with Merchants selling Blunt Weapons and Cleric and Paladin Spells

That is a nice little burg, big enough to stretch your short legs, but not so large that you would get lost in it for more than 30 seconds.

What is odd about Rivervale is its location.  It is kind of shoved into an odd corner in the middle of Antonica, wedged between some less savory spots.

I mean sure, its front yard starting zone, Misty Thicket, is fine.

The Misty Thicket map

It even has some very halfling quests, something of a precursor to the Shire quests in LOTRO eight years later, like the one where you get a box and have to go around finding specimens of local plant and animal life for a collection.

The legend for that map:

1. Orc Camp
2. Goblin Camps
3. Haunted Obelisk
4. Gate through the wall
5. Merchant with Baking Supplies
6. Empty Huts
7. Empty Hut; Unoffically Blixkin Entopop’s “House”
8. Merchant with Small Leather Armor and Patterns
9. Merchant with Sewing Supplies, including How To’s, Large Kit, and Needle and Thimble Molds
10. Merchant with Pottery Supplies
11. Abandoned Tower
12. Merchant with Small Armor Molds
13. Druid Stone Ring
14. Lil Honeybugger’s Hut

I mean, there are some orc and goblins pretty close to hand, but that is why the mayor no doubt ran on a campaign to build a wall, which at least in fantasy worlds is a goal that can be accomplished.

Just another stone in the wall…

Misty Thicket is another one of those zones that got a revamp while the home town stayed in original condition.  I think there was some revamp of Runnyeye, which became Runnyeye Citadel in a later expansion, and this was the attached zone they chose to spiff up.  Anyway, it means that you get some 2007 level 3D rendering of actual curves in the place, as well as updated textures.

The rats however are still from 1999

However, the mention of Runnyeye brings me to the issues I mentioned above, which is that Rivervale and Misty Thicket are hemmed in by danger.  Not that you can’t find danger when venturing out from any hometown, but the poor halflings have Runnyeye on one side of things, with the Gorge of King Xorbb and East Karana beyond, and Kithicor Forest on the other side, a hazardous zone that lays between halflings and the Commonlands and Freeport.

Runnyeye isn’t so bad, and is the halfling fill-in for Blackburrow or Crushbone I suppose, though it always felt more dangerous and more like a dungeon than either of those.  And Kithicor can be traveled safely if you know what you are doing… hugging the wall… but any naive wee halfling wandering out to follow the road through Kithicor was in for a rough time of it.

I do wonder if, like so much of Norrath, this was influenced by Sojourn/TorilMUD where the halfling starting town, Beluir, was stuck way down south in the Calimshan Desert, which meant anybody who just had to make a halfling rogue would have a rough time of it traveling north to Waterdeep.  Not that Rivervale is that far off the beaten path… but it also isn’t attached to the Commonlands directly either.  I think dark elves have an easier time getting to Freeport.

Anyway, that is what I have on Rivervale… and really all the starting points I am familiar with.

I never rolled up any of the “evil” races, so have no memories of the home towns for dark elves, trolls, or ogres.  But there is always Erudin.  We’ll see if I can string together a few coherent paragraphs about that place.  It is, if nothing else, “different” than many other locations.

Series so far:

• EverQuest Starting Points – Surefall Glade
• EverQuest Starting Points – Qeynos Hills
• EverQuest Starting Points – Finding Qeynos
• EverQuest Starting Points – What Can I Even Say About Qeynos?
• EverQuest Starting Points – Under Qeynos in the Aqueduct
• EverQuest Starting Points – Is Blackburrow a Dungeon, a Zone, or a City?
• EverQuest Starting Points – Getting Out of Halas
• EverQuest Starting Points – West Karana Where the Scope of the World Begins
• EverQuest Starting Points – North and South Karana
• EverQuest Starting Points – East Karana and the route to Freeport
• EverQuest Starting Points – Highpass Hold and Kithicor Forest
• EverQuest Starting Points – Butcherblock and Kaladim
• EverQuest Starting Points – Greater Faydark, Where the Elves Are
• EverQuest Starting Points – Ak’Anon and Whatever Happened to the Steamfont Mountains

In Memoriam

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.

–Edward Thomas, Easter 1915
(Killed in Action, April 9, 1917)