We’ve been really releasing some of the science fiction behind the game, which takes place around three black holes that are spinning around each other in a sort of a “three-body problem” with black holes.
This interview had to be over at VentureBeat because I don’t think any serious video game news site takes the idea of blockchain based video games seriously. But that is what VentureBeat is for, though even they have toned down the crypto puffery, having moved on to framing AI as the future of everything. That AI is little more than a scam relative to the promises being made is not a coincidence.
Just wake up already
Anyway, we knew that Hilmar was into the blockchain thing because he had been ostentatiously hobnobbing with the crypto bros and shoving NFTs down people’s throats at the Alliance Tournament, to the point that it created such a backlash that he had to promise that blockchain would not be part of EVE Online… for the foreseeable future at least. From a company that has a history of promises coming with unstated expiration dates, leaving the door open was ominous, but they have at least kept their word so far.
All of which is so much back story, but doesn’t really address the quote. And, on its own, it doesn’t seem like much of a quote to get me riled up enough to make a post. I mean, if I wanted wanted to get riled up I need go no further than the regular shitheel Mike Ybarra, who tried to inject himself into relevance again by declaring on Twitter that we should go easy on Microsoft Games/XBox head Phil Spencer after he killed more studios and laid off more staff because executives have feelings too.
Not to get too angry about this, but if you want to be the boss of a big organization that is going to close studios and lay people off, you better be up to the task of taking a bit of well warranted criticism because whatever in the hell else are you doing to earn that bloated compensation package. Because you don’t actually MAKE anything or do anything on a day to day basis but make high level decisions that other people will implement.
You want to be the boss? Then harden the fuck up. Certainly don’t be a whiny bitch like Mike Ybarra. Can we just put him in a ring with Mark Kern and have them battle over which “resting on extremely dubious laurels” contestant is the least relevant? I don’t even care who would win, I just want their ignorance to stop showing up in my timeline.
You think I’ve gone off on a tangent here, don’t you? Suddenly I’m all up about somebody who isn’t associated in any way with the quote at the top. But you’re wrong! It all ties together.
Because Hilmar is the head of CCP, so occupies that same role, being the captain who, if he isn’t actually steering the ship, is at least telling the helmsman the course to follow. And when Hilmar gets a bad idea stuck in his head, he won’t let it go.
Which brings us to Project Awakening, the cryto game that CCP is making, though at least they are spending Marc Andressen’s money to do it, as a16z is in for $40 million to make this blockchain fantasy real.
I have a whole rambling post about Project Awakening and its source and implications, the former being a Hilmar obsession, the latter being a financial disaster, but we’ll let history judge on that should it ship.
What I did NOT expect was that a past Hilmar obsession… at least what I thought was a “past” obsession… would make an appearance in Project Awakening. But there it is in that quote. Hilmar was really fascinated by the book Three-Body Problem.
Somewhere I have a quote from him about how that book really inspired him and set him on a course to what became the “chaos era” of New Eden. There is a whole tag dedicated to that and its effects if you click here and scroll down.
We got Drifters appearing and hitting player owned structures in null sec… mysteriously focusing on Delve at a time when we were burning down PanFam structures in Tribute… funny how that worked out… and then they were camping gates and then Hilmar wanted to stir the chaos era pot even further and initiated the null sec local blackout.
Local was delayed in null sec
That was a huge success… oh wait, I am holding the chart upside down… no, that led to the second lowest level of player logins in recent-ish memory.
Logins Crater with the Blackout Dip of 2019
The only bigger hit to player logins came with the industrial great leap forward when CCP absolutely wrecked the economy… once again, in the middle of a freaking war effectively ending by making capital ships too expensive to risk… leading to what I refer to as the Year of Disappointment, which was only broken when CCP relented a bit on the economy… though the mineral price index is still close to an all time high because their resource allocation program made certain minerals spawn only in low sec where miners are hunted relentlessly.
All of which you would think would be a lesson from which a company might learn.
But no, there is Hilmar up there referencing the Three-Body Problem again and, further on in the interview, talking about how the game takes place on a planet that is under the influence of three nearby black holes… something which he claims they are spending time modeling… which sounds to me like he is going whole hog on chaos again.
So if I wasn’t down enough on Project Awakening already for being blockchain based, which means it will, at a minimum, attract the type of people who like crypto due to the “get rich quick” allure of it, meaning even if it isn’t a scam, it will host scams before collapsing in on itself when it runs out of suckers, there is now the extra added level of Hilmar wanting to set things on fire right from the get-go.
There are currently zero crypto games that have been anything but brief successes before falling to the self-defeating logic of the idea that you can make money playing a video game over time.
But now the whole thing will be hamstrung by chaos.
Between that and EVE Vanguard, the fans of which have to keep saying “it’s only in alpha” as a defense of its lackluster showing so far, I wonder where CCP will be in five years. I hope they get the upcoming Equinox expansion right and don’t mess up EVE: Galaxy Conquest, the other title they have in development.
I had already been wondering whether Zwift, the app I use to “gamify” my exercise bike usage, was worth the $15 a month fee it was charging.
Ride On? Screw off!
If I had been more hardcore, a dedicated rider that used many of the features the app offers to keep myself in competitive shape, I might see some real value in the options Zwift offers. But as a causal 2-3 day a week rider that basically uses two features and just likes the fact that it tracks my totals… well, there are cheaper alternatives out there I am sure.
So when I received the following message from Zwift this week I sprang into action.
We’re writing to inform you of changes to your Zwift Subscription pricing. The monthly Zwift subscription price will be increased to $19.99, plus applicable taxes.
Your first payment at the new price will be on your next billing date after June 6th.
We hope you’re enjoying your time on Zwift. We have worked hard to keep prices locked since 2017 and have made this change to allow us to continue making indoor cycling fun with more content experiences and product innovation.
And by “sprang into action” I mean I went straight to their site and cancelled my subscription.
Just to belabor the point I made above, the value proposition for Zwift relative to other $15 a month options… things that include our Valheim server rental, my WoW subscription, a number of streaming channels we might watch, or even my Daybreak all access subscription where I am doing little more than touring old zones in EverQuest… was dubious to start with.
Add in that I am already feeling quite a bit of subscription fatigue in the current economy where literally everything and everybody online is asking me to fork over a recurring subscription fee for content… and I get it, content costs money to make, but money is also a limited resource so I can’t give everybody money and still pay the mortgage… and I am suddenly pretty price sensitive. Also, the price of everything is going up a lot faster than my salary since the pandemic. Thanks to the magic of inflation and a decade of 1% raises, I effectively make less than I did fifteen years ago.
Anyway, Zwift is off the menu. It was only inertia that kept me from cutting it previously. The price increase just cemented my feelings about it.
They sent me a survey to ask why I cancelled and I was pretty clear that the price increase was the reason. I am sure that will go into the bin as I have found that any company that makes a suddenly price increase without any warning it is coming has already convinced themselves that they are making the right decision and any complaints can be brushed away as outliers.
Of course, the funny thing is that if they decided tomorrow that the price hike was a huge mistake and they declared that they were rolling back to $15 a month, I wouldn’t go back. I was bothered by the old price, but not enough to be moved to action. But now that the price change has made me reflect on the value of Zwift, I wouldn’t go back, even at the old price.
It is generally a mistake to make users think too hard about the value your service offers.
Anyway, I am now in the market for an exercise app that works with the BlueTooth connection to our Schwinn IC4 exercise bike, preferably something without a recurring subscription model. And if such a thing doesn’t exist, then I can just peddle away without an app. I’ll just use the timer on my phone or listen to a podcast that is about the right length and not worry about it.
Blizzard would like to keep the WoW Classic party… and revenue stream… going, lest that team appear next on Phil Spencer’s every increasing list of layoff targets, and they need some help.
Can you re-run a cataclysm?
Having split WoW Classic into four different flavors at this point and facing the peril of the main thread heading into what was once considered one of the worst WoW expansions… at least until Shadowlands came along… with the coming of Cataclysm Classic, they really need some more people playing… and paying. So they are giving it away for free, at least for the weekend.
Or at least that is my take. Your mileage may vary. Either way, WoW Classic is free to play for the weekend… but only the Cataclysm Classic flavor according to the news piece. So come enjoy the pre-patch!
When the installation or update is complete, click Play.
Play free through May 13, 2024, at 10:00 am PDT!
Also, Blizzard would very much like you to buy some things and they have a new WoW Classic focused shop as a vehicle for your virtual good needs… again, they want to stay off of Spencer’s list, because the word is that he is far from done on his cutting spree. But I guess they won’t need developers once they develop an AI that can do more than parlor tricks.
With April we’re back to a 30 day month, so one might expect something of a drop in the total given that EVE Online players had 24 fewer hours to explode things. But you would be wrong. They managed to blow up 501,859 ships, structures, and capsules, a nearly 8K uptick from the 493,867 that went up in March.
That comes out to 16,728 losses per day in April, also a noticeable uptick over the 15,931 losses per day in March. That is nearly 800 more things exploding every single day, though we’ll get to why that might not be as significant as the high level numbers might indicate… ans the come down starts when we get to ISK.
For ISK value a total of 42.48 trillion ISK was recorded as destroyed in April, down from 46.19 trillion in March, with the average ISK loss per day in April running at 1,415 billion ISK per day, down from 1,490 billion ISK per day the previous month.
That sank the average cost per loss, another metric in my spreadsheet, from 93.53 million ISK per loss to 84.64 million ISK per loss.
How did this happen? I’ll throw a meme out for it and we’ll get into the details later.
It is an old meme, but it checks out
Okay, we’re now four months into the year and we’re now hitting a point where somebody has wrecked my pet theory that losses per day is a reasonable indicator of player activity in New Eden. Ideally, my chart should correspond in some way to Jester’s daily rolling average chart.
Average Daily EVE Online Players – April 2024 Edition
Compare that to my average losses per day chart.
Average losses per Day – April 2024 Edition
At first glance the 2024 line appears to be following Jester’s 2024 line. But his chart is a 30 day rolling average so it is still influenced by March numbers. It won’t turn… or stay flat or dip a bit… until the May chart comes out.
Finally, for this section, there is the losses per day chart, which I usually trot our as a demonstration of the normal ebb and flow of New Eden destruction, peaking on weekends and dipping mid week, with ISK loss and hull count moving together. But this month that last bit seems set to mock me.
April 2024 – Losses per day
Some very expensive ships were lost around the 5th of the month, as we see ISK losses spiking well above the loss count, while on the 22nd of the month the loss count spikes without a corresponding spike in ISK. I refer you to the meme above for that, but I’ll have data to follow up on that.
Top 20 Most Frequent Losses by Class and Hull
Once more we kick off with the raw losses for the top categories.
Class
Count
% of Apr
Hull
Count
% of Apr
Capsule
124,208
24.75%
Capsule
122,765
24.46%
Shuttle
76,798
15.30%
Caldari Shuttle
25,459
5.07%
Frigate
67,131
13.38%
Amarr Shuttle
23,359
4.65%
Cruiser
39,431
7.86%
Minmatar Shuttle
15,791
3.15%
Destroyer
33,680
6.71%
Mobile Tractor Unit
12,640
2.52%
Corvette
18,438
3.67%
Gallente Shuttle
11,408
2.27%
Combat Battlecruiser
16,621
3.31%
Venture
10,812
2.15%
Mobile Tractor Unit
13,124
2.62%
Ibis
8,329
1.66%
Interdictor
11,086
2.21%
Heron
7,346
1.46%
Heavy Assault Cruiser
9,394
1.87%
Vexor
6,659
1.33%
Hauler
8,732
1.74%
Ishtar
6,484
1.29%
Battleship
8,351
1.66%
Catalyst
5,071
1.01%
Interceptor
7,898
1.57%
Algos
5,016
1.00%
Assault Frigate
7,541
1.50%
Sabre
4,971
0.99%
Mobile Warp Disruptor
4,607
0.92%
Exequror Navy Issue
4,914
0.98%
Tactical Destroyer
4,512
0.90%
Thrasher
4,516
0.90%
Stealth Bomber
4,456
0.89%
Velator
4,434
0.88%
Strategic Cruiser
4,237
0.84%
Caracal
3,834
0.76%
Covert Ops
3,843
0.77%
Cyclone Fleet Issue
3,360
0.67%
Mining Barge
3,842
0.77%
Punisher
3,030
0.60%
Not for the last time in this post I am going to say something about shuttles. Generally speaking, shuttles are in third place most months, behind the ever at the top capsules and the perennial second place entry, frigates as a class. Last month, for example, shuttles rang in at 9.22% of the month’s total losses. This month they surpassed 15%.
Hulls Lost only Once This Month
Once again I have filtered out all of the POS towers and modules… POS kills continue… and fighter squadrons and other odd and uninteresting… to me at least… kills to get to the more interesting stuff, with links to the kill on zKillboard… when possible.
We have some AT ships on the list this month, starting with the Cybele, an ATXIX reward ship, and only the second one recorded as lost, and the Laelaps, an ATXVI ship, which perished up in Vale of the Silent.
The Miasmos hulls, Amastris and Quafe Ultra editions, are hold overs from the Odyssey expansion. The Amastris edition did not make it to zKillboard. Somebody post that kill please.
The others on the list are a bit more commonplace, though the Komodo, the Guristas faction titan, is notable for its expense. And the Syndicate Mobile Large War Disruptor… I haven’t seen one of those on the list before. Over at zKillboard it records the last loss back in 2021.
Top 20 Total ISK Lost by Hull Type
Looking into that top hulls that made up the ISK losses in April.
Hull
Count
Sum of ISK Lost
% of Apr
ISK per Loss
Capsule
122,765
3,411.07 billion
8.030%
27.79 million
Vargur
836
1,998.61 billion
4.705%
2,390.68 million
Ishtar
6,484
1,761.58 billion
4.147%
271.68 million
Loki
1,704
1,363.79 billion
3.211%
800.35 million
Tengu
1,274
1,023.87 billion
2.410%
803.67 million
Paladin
482
942.44 billion
2.219%
1,955.28 million
Gila
1,648
836.01 billion
1.968%
507.29 million
Golem
365
786.64 billion
1.852%
2,155.19 million
Praxis
2,350
756.02 billion
1.780%
321.71 million
Fortizar
58
673.33 billion
1.585%
11,609.12 million
Kronos
270
535.37 billion
1.260%
1,982.84 million
Proteus
687
529.73 billion
1.247%
771.08 million
Athanor
255
496.29 billion
1.168%
1,946.25 million
Nestor
185
488.45 billion
1.150%
2,640.27 million
Revelation
98
466.15 billion
1.097%
4,756.59 million
Naglfar
111
459.36 billion
1.081%
4,138.38 million
Exequror Navy Issue
4,914
436.25 billion
1.027%
88.78 million
Legion
572
423.49 billion
0.997%
740.36 million
Bustard
350
389.81 billion
0.918%
1,113.75 million
Orca
245
380.74 billion
0.896%
1,554.03 million
Capsules, as always, top the list through sheer volume, even at a paltry average of 27.79 million ISK per loss.
This is becoming very much a “usual suspects” sort of chart every month. Fortizar losses were up almost 50% over March, when 40 were blown up. Dreads don’t make up much of the total, given the clash that happened in Abhazon in April… though I suspect those numbers will pop up a bit next time as there was a return clash there just this past week.
And I suppose it is a good thing that Capsuleer Day has come around again to replenish the Praxis supplies, as they keep blowing up at a substantial rate for a battleship.
Top 20 Regions by ISK and Hull Losses
The regions where losses were happening most.
Region
Sum of ISK Lost
% of Apr
Region
Count
% of Apr
Pochven
2.626 trillion
6.18%
The Forge
50,898
10.14%
The Citadel
2.061 trillion
4.85%
Essence
26,036
5.19%
The Forge
1.979 trillion
4.66%
Black Rise
21,477
4.28%
F-R00030
1.699 trillion
4.00%
Pochven
21,453
4.27%
Genesis
1.577 trillion
3.71%
Vale of the Silent
17,561
3.50%
Vale of the Silent
1.504 trillion
3.54%
Lonetrek
17,344
3.46%
Delve
1.454 trillion
3.42%
The Bleak Lands
17,340
3.46%
Catch
1.300 trillion
3.06%
The Citadel
16,657
3.32%
Querious
1.062 trillion
2.50%
Delve
15,128
3.01%
Perrigen Falls
.955 trillion
2.25%
Genesis
14,622
2.91%
Sinq Laison
.954 trillion
2.25%
Catch
14,316
2.85%
Essence
.904 trillion
2.13%
Querious
12,636
2.52%
Providence
.899 trillion
2.12%
Perrigen Falls
11,442
2.28%
Lonetrek
.886 trillion
2.09%
Verge Vendor
10,724
2.14%
Curse
.857 trillion
2.02%
Placid
10,396
2.07%
Devoid
.829 trillion
1.95%
F-R00030
10,348
2.06%
Fountain
.777 trillion
1.83%
Devoid
9,983
1.99%
Metropolis
.712 trillion
1.68%
Curse
9,655
1.92%
The Bleak Lands
.692 trillion
1.63%
Sinq Laison
9,289
1.85%
Immensea
.590 trillion
1.39%
Fountain
7,982
1.59%
Pochven continues to blow up the ISK chart. I wish I had some direct insight into that.
Top 20 Systems by ISK and Hull Losses
Diving a little deeper into losses by location.
System
Region
Sum of ISK lost
% of Apr
System
Region
Count
% of Apr
Ahbazon
Genesis
1245.96 billion
2.933%
Uitra
The Forge
27446
5.469%
Jita
The Forge
880.40 billion
2.073%
Iwisoda
Black Rise
15652
3.119%
Tama
The Citadel
516.01 billion
1.215%
Jita
The Forge
13822
2.754%
Uedama
The Citadel
468.77 billion
1.104%
Ahbazon
Genesis
11646
2.321%
Sivala
The Citadel
457.76 billion
1.078%
Heydieles
Essence
9605
1.914%
G-0Q86
Curse
424.38 billion
0.999%
Ouelletta
Verge Vendor
7737
1.542%
Gheth
Devoid
393.35 billion
0.926%
Tama
The Citadel
5559
1.108%
U-QVWD
Catch
390.68 billion
0.920%
Fliet
Essence
5351
1.066%
J141434
F-R00030
354.36 billion
0.834%
4-HWWF
Vale of the Silent
4473
0.891%
KBP7-G
Providence
314.70 billion
0.741%
Kourmonen
The Bleak Lands
4195
0.836%
Heydieles
Essence
304.20 billion
0.716%
Kamela
The Bleak Lands
3778
0.753%
4-HWWF
Vale of the Silent
294.98 billion
0.694%
Akiainavas
Lonetrek
3680
0.733%
Sakenta
Pochven
289.25 billion
0.681%
MJ-5F9
Perrigen Falls
3104
0.619%
J104037
F-R00030
280.09 billion
0.659%
Huola
The Bleak Lands
3052
0.608%
Ignebaener
Pochven
247.97 billion
0.584%
G-0Q86
Curse
2987
0.595%
Otela
Pochven
223.49 billion
0.526%
J104037
F-R00030
2681
0.534%
MJ-5F9
Perrigen Falls
220.02 billion
0.518%
Deven
Essence
2558
0.510%
GM-0K7
Immensea
196.78 billion
0.463%
Abune
Essence
2525
0.503%
Kourmonen
The Bleak Lands
196.27 billion
0.462%
U-QVWD
Catch
2416
0.481%
Skarkon
Pochven
163.07 billion
0.384%
K7D-II
Querious
2227
0.444%
On the ISK side of the chart we can see the effects of the struggle over the Imperium Fortizar in Ahbazon, as losses there were 50% above perennial champion Jita.
Meanwhile, at the top of the count side of the chart is Uitra and whatever shuttle exploit has been going on there for months and months.
Once again it tops the total kill in a system list. Here are the ships lost in Uitra in April. As usual, shuttles dominate, with 22,626 destroyed in the system, almost one third of all shuttles destroyed in New Eden in April.
Hull
Count
Sum of ISK Lost
Caldari Shuttle
9,260
201.32 million
Amarr Shuttle
7,576
159.84 million
Gallente Shuttle
3,160
44.45 million
Minmatar Shuttle
2,630
45.06 million
Capsule
2,473
248.15 million
Ibis
2,099
210.00 million
Reaper
104
10.56 million
Velator
45
3.95 million
Impairor
35
3.53 million
Merlin
24
11.64 million
Bantam
8
1.24 million
Venture
8
9.11 million
Gnosis
7
406.80 million
Cormorant
6
7.66 million
Badger
3
2.12 million
Condor
2
.81 million
Corax
1
1.91 million
Griffin
1
.34 million
Heron
1
.68 million
Incursus
1
.26 million
Tristan
1
1.35 million
Vexor
1
7.94 million
However, in Black Rise, the system of Iwisoda emerged as a new locus of shuttle destruction in April. Is the Uitra scam… or whatever it is… expanding? Oh no, this is something completely different.
Here are the ship loss totals for Iwisoda in April broken out by hull.
Hull
Count
Sum of ISK lost
Minmatar Shuttle
7,733
125.02 million
Amarr Shuttle
5,128
106.04 million
Caldari Shuttle
2,770
61.38 million
Gallente Shuttle
9
.12 million
Capsule
4
.00 million
Dragoon
2
10.30 million
Venture
2
14.62 million
Heron
1
.76 million
Myrmidon
1
63.99 million
Prospect
1
41.25 million
Raitaru
1
818.11 million
That is a good 15,640 shuttles destroyed, about 20% of the shuttles lost in New Eden in April. So the two systems together fall just shy of accounting for half the shuttles in April, ringing in at 49.82% of the total.
In Uitra though, the shuttle losses, if you look over at DOTLAN EVE Maps, are spread out pretty evenly across the month. I Iwisoda, everything happened in a very short span of time, around which there was very little activity.
The destruction chart for Iwisoda – Apr 21 through 24
What apparently happened was that Snuffed Out, making mischief in low sec as usual, decided to fiddle somebody’s kill board by putting up a Raitaru, delivering 15,640 shuttles to that individual, then blowing up the Raitaru while it was in a state where asset safety would not engage. That deposited all those shuttles out into space where they destroyed them. The kills count against the person to whom they were delivered.
Now, the killdump.csv file, CCP’s official output of losses that comes with the MER, does not include individual pilot data. Corps and alliances are all you get. So with that data I could only tell you that Stay Frosty lost 15,640 shuttles in Iwisoda, eclipsing any of the regulars in Uitra by a fair margin.
Class
Count
System
Victim Corp
Shuttle
15,640
Iwisoda
Stay Frosty.
Shuttle
3,222
Uitra
Trata de Clones
Shuttle
3,058
Uitra
SPKur
Shuttle
2,235
Uitra
OldGangsta Association
Shuttle
1,930
Korama
Monster Raving Loonies
Shuttle
1,742
Uitra
Red Spider Nebula
Shuttle
1,385
Akiainavas
Science and Trade Institute
Shuttle
1,279
Uitra
The Hunter’s Nightmare
Shuttle
1,167
Uitra
The-Blazing-Phoenix
Shuttle
1,027
Uitra
State Protectorate
However, I observed the goings on over on Twitter where Rixx Javix, CEO of Stay Frosty, spent several days posting cat pictures and telling people he was totally not bothered by some in-game incident. Then he wrote a blog post about it where he wanted this “loop-hole” addressed. You can judge for yourself whether it really bothered him or not. I certainly cannot speak to his state of mind.
But yes, if you go to the Iwisoda page over on zKillboard currently, there are bunch of shuttle losses with his name on them, with Snuffed Out as the killer. The system is otherwise not very active, so those will be there for a while.
A sample from the Iwisoda kills
They are all flagged as “padding” now, so they do not affect his kill board. I suspect that this is somehow related to why the corps in Uitra don’t go all in on destruction, though I still haven’t figured out their game and how it benefits them.
Anyway, you can totally see that spike in losses on my kills per day chart up at the top, where losses spike while ISK is actually down.
Meanwhile, that “loop-hole” has been around for ages and I have seen it used before. I first documented it here with the Fort Knocks Keepstar kill in December 2018, when somebody delivered a ton of Bantam frigates to Doomchincilla which all popped up on his zKillboad totals.
The PL killboard sullied with all those frigates
The “loop-hole” in question was put in place to stop a different sort of abuse. When citadels came into the game people would create courier contracts that would send people to structures where they had no access, so they could not complete the contracts… and sometimes got ganked for the effort. So CCP created a delivery mechanic to solve that, which assigned ownership to the recipient of the delivery, something that has been abused now and then ever since.
All of which I guess shows that a few dedicated individuals can mess with the destruction stats by blowing up shuttles… messing up my average kills per day metric by basically exploding about 30K more shuttles than expected (the March total was 45,547 while April saw 76,798 shuttles pop) while other ship class losses, such as capsules and frigate, were actually down for the month.
Systems with Just One Recorded Loss
We got a story out of the data this month, so a less dull post than usual I guess. But in digging through the system level data I was a bit surprised to see how many systems recorded just ONE LOSS in the month of April.
I mean, there are a lot of systems in New Eden, and 7,486 saw at least something blow up. I suspect there is a range of systems out there were no ships blew up, but they don’t make the data set.
So just to make this post super extra long, here are the 392 systems where exactly one ship was recorded lost by CCP… though this data does not 100% agree with what appears on zKillboard.
EverQuest’s insta levels scheme, the Heroic Character options in the cash shop, will have a new variation next week that will prove once again how out of touch I am with the meta in Norrath.
It says EverQuest on it…
Starting on May 15th you will be able to buy a level 50 Heroic Character upgrade for 2,500 Daybreak Points. Given that those points cost about a penny each, that is effectively $25 to get to level 50… in an MMORPG where the level cap is 125.
This joins the $35 level 85 Heroic Character option, which has been around since 2014, and the $40 level 100 Heroic Character option that was introduced in 2022.
As has been patiently explained to me, the meta in EverQuest is different and apparently nobody wants to get into the current content, preferring to jump in to content that is 5-10 years in the past… and with the level 50 option, content that is a good 24 years old, since the level cap was raised from 50 to 60 with the Ruins of Kunark expansion back in April of 2000.
Or maybe they want to jump straight to the original raids that came with launch 25 years back. I couldn’t tell you. I am clearly on the outside looking in.
That out of the way, what is it you get for your $25? The announcement says:
2,500 Platinum
Horse Mount (Fast Speed)
Two 16-Slot Bags
Spells
Full Set of Equipment, including weapons, armor, and a charm
Food, Drink, and Ammunition
I mean, that isn’t nothing. It is certainly more than you would end up with if you rolled up a fresh character and ran to level 50… and I can at least speak from experience on that front, having done just that back at the 20th anniversary.
But it also is not a lot. That much platinum in the mudflation hellscape that has been Norrath for the last 20 years will keep your mercenary paid for, but won’t buy you anything nice at the bazaar. You would be better served buying some Krono and selling that at the bazaar… if you can figure that out, which is an adventure in and of itself compared to selling PLEX in EVE Online or WoW Tokens in World of Warcraft… and netting high six seven figures in platinum. I haven’t checked recently, but the last time I did it the price of Krono was only capped by the maximum sell price at the bazaar.
The only upside I can think of is if you don’t want to bother with the grind from 1 to 50… which is a barren and lonely journey in the original content, and still pretty sterile in the alternative, which is The Serpent Spine content… but you don’t want to be completely overwhelmed by suddenly gaining 600+ spells and 14K AA points, which was the case when I collected my free level 100 heroic character last month.
I kid you not on the spell thing.
The spell book at page 86 with 8 spells per page…
And maybe that is enough of a hook… though, maybe not as much as you might think. Going and looking at all the druid spells available on current live servers at level 50 and you come out with well over 300 spells possible. You don’t need them all, and a bunch were added by later expansions, but I suspect you will get them all when you do your heroic upgrade.
I mean, half as many spells… 40-ish pages in you spell book versus 80+ pages… is better I guess. It is still going to be overwhelming given a UI that was built on the idea that you might have 80 spells… 10 pages… with a spell heavy class like a druid back at launch.
Anyway, if this was what you were looking for in Norrath… well, it will be here soon!
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