Blaugust 2026 – Past Half Way, Creator Appreciation, and What I Write About

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We are now onto the backside of Blaugust, the halfway point is just behind us in the rear view mirror and a mere two weeks left before things are wrapped up.

Blaugust 2026

I have not gone in on some of the group writing projects or weekly themes so far, and I am not going to get involved in the RSS debate as it seems to be more of an esoteric measuring of good versus ideal. My RSS feed delivers full text and I don’t plan to change it. Case closed for me.

But that tends to be my way. My plan for Blaugust tends to be to just keep doing what I was already going to do anyway, which is to write about video games.

And not even popular video games, for the most part. Occasionally my life intersects with some popular title like Balatro or Blue Prince, but I usually end up getting off that train pretty quickly. Nor do I tend to write anything very useful, except as a side effect of what I planned to write. I don’t do help guides or write reviews.

So I don’t write anything of general interest about an arguably unimportant and often niche entertainment topic.

This site is really just a web log, from which the word “blog” was derived, of my video game activity. When I started out on this journey of blogging about 20 years I no doubt thought I was going to have some profound observations to share. There is an early era of the blog where I felt every post had to have a lesson or a point or should sum up into some tidy little message.

But I couldn’t sustain that even if I wanted to. I meandered for a few years somewhat uncertain what to really write about. Eventually that settled down into recording my journey. I found a pace I could sustain, and kept going. I occasionally joke that there are weeks when I spend more time writing about video games than playing them, but only because it is true.

Does what I write have value? Maybe.

As I note in the About section of the site, the blog is about me, and for me. There is a primary audience of one. And I find value in what I have written. But I also do not write and move on. I also revisit. My month in review posts include an ever growing section about what happened one, five, ten, and so on years ago, anchored in what I wrote.

At some level the blog is an experiment in building context. How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been, or whatever it was the Talking Heads were on about.

There is also a bit of an experiment in measuring what I think I like and how that plays out and what opinions stand the test of time and which changed. For example, I wrote early on in the life of the blog that I was not a big fan of The Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft. I took issue with some of the design choices the team made which seemed quite transparently chosen to try and make the expansion last two years so they could get the next one out.

Suffused by nostalgia in 2019 when WoW Classic launched, our group was able to test whether we were too harsh on the expansion at the time. And… no… we were not. It remained a slow, grindy mess and we skipped most of it, opting to go all in on Wrath of the Lich King when its turn came. And then we stopped playing when Cataclysm ran way too long. It was literally history repeating itself.

Anyway, the blog will be hitting its 20th anniversary next month and I will no doubt have many words of that sort to share.

Overall though, as a source of memories and impressions recorded in the context of their time over the last 20 years, the blog has served me well… and others. My writing a week by week status of World War Bee for 59 weeks straight back in 2020 and 2021 has turned into a good first hand context and timeline for the events of the war. And I link out to other sources each week, so you could fine worse ways to start out looking into one of the largest virtual wars in video game history.

Which brings me back around to what I write about and the fact that it is Creator Appreciation week.

Blaugust 2026 Schedule

This week started out as developer appreciation week back when the event was more a collection of video game blogs, but got generalized to “creator appreciation” as the event moved through the years.

Here is the thing. My blog, from my perspective at least, is almost all creator appreciation.

Again drawing from my About page, I try not to waste time writing about things I do not like.

You may rightfully retort, “Aha! But I just saw you didn’t like the World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade! Clearly you are a liar or filled with self-deception!

Maybe you’re right. Self deception is a common flaw. But I will say that I do like World of Warcraft overall as a title. I have enjoyed many hours playing it. That I do not like one aspect of it, that there was an expansion that I did not love, that I take issue with the design choices the team made in crafting any particular era of the game, does not change the fact that I like the game.

I would argue that I spend no small amount of time trying to figure out WHY I don’t like aspects of games that I otherwise like and enjoy and that sort of introspection is not hating on a game. I long ago learned that not every game is for ME alone and that it is unreasonable to believe everything should be tailored to my particular likes and desires.

Hell, I have opened up posts about games pretty hostile up front. See my first post after playing Tarisland. The title literally announced “I Hate It Already!” But I spent most of the post… and two further posts… exploring why. It was mostly the control scheme. That and the fact it was a somewhat generic fantasy MMORPG.

The point here is that I take the work being done seriously, even if I don’t like the implementation. I appreciate the effort, even if it isn’t for me and I try to be somewhat thoughtful in my approach, to at least justify my reaction… though that can be a bit trying when CCP/Fenris is off on one of their attempts to solve a complex problem with a single dimension fix.

So it is creator appreciation every week. I probably could have just written that and saved you a journey. But where is the fun in that? Also, I often think through an idea while writing about it, which means I do not always end up where I though I might when I started.

Also, it is NOT TOO LATE to join in on Blaugust. We had somebody sign up for the event this weekend. If you want to join in here are they key links to get started.

Blaugust initial Announcement – All this info in a longer format
Blaugust Sign-Up Page – Get yourself officially on the Blaugust list
Blaugust Discord Server – Come hang out with fellow Blaugust participants
The Blaugust Prompt List – The 2024 version, but they’re still fresh
Past Blaugust Media Kit page – Where to find past Blaugust logos
2026 Blaugust Media Kit – Plus all of these links and a few more

So far we have 165 participants signed up, along with a few out there I have noticed who are using the has tag and going along without signing up. But I am only going to list out the one who filled out the form because there has been too many post on social media for me to sort out who is who. So, alphabetically we have the following sites:

Feel free to copy this list and maybe give some of the sites a visit if you have the chance.

TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2026 – Week Thirty-Three and Waiting for Scores

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As expected there were no titles set to launch for week thirty-three. We have nothing on the calendar until the last week of August. So the same problem next week.

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

I may give next week’s post a pass if nothing happens. But we left off last time with two titles that were still waiting for scores, so it is almost as if they did not ship last week. They will be the meat of this post, but first we need to see where we left off last time.

Week 32 Scores

That set, we did get scores for the two missing titles.

First up was Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, which Archey had dropped previously and was subsequently picked up by Corr, who out-bid me on the title.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls

We did not have to wait long for a score to show up. It already had a page on Open Critic and by Monday afternoon it was on the board.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
- [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
- Now has a score of 89

89 is an extremely strong score, enough to boost Corr on the board and make Archey regret at least that life choice.

Publisher Score Updates
- Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)
  - Score has gone UP from 53.6 to 72.6
  - Moved from 6th place to 4th place
- S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)
  - Moved from 4th place to 5th place
- Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
  - Moved from 5th place to 6th place

However, that score was based off of just a few reviews, so any further incoming reviews would have sufficient weight to change the overall score noticeably. And that is what happened.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
- [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
- Score has gone DOWN from 88.1 to 87.1

That move down wasn’t all that dramatic. That is still a strong score, and we will have to see what score Nocturne, the title Archey too to replace it, turns in before we can fully know the wisdom of the choice. But for the moment Marvel Tokon looked like a keeper.

Then there was Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin. We had to wait until Wednesday afternoon before that showed up with a score.

Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin

I thought maybe this might be a case of an expansion that didn’t get reviews, but it got on the board with a strong number.

Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin
- [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]
- Now has a score of 88.3

That put it ahead of Marvel Tokon for score, if only just. But it was enough to push Shintar back up the scoreboard after getting dropped to 6th place earlier.

Publisher Score Updates
- Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
  - Score has gone UP from 57.4 to 75.7
  - Moved from 6th place to 4th place
- Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)
  - Moved from 4th place to 5th place
- S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)
  - Moved from 5th place to 6th place

That said, the Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin score is based on just four reviews, and the three “top critics” who got the game past the bar and on to the scoreboard seem pretty small scale to me. And if another review comes in at, say, a 7 out of 10, the overall score for the game could take a serious dive. This feels like the “stop the count” scene in Veep.

Then again, it could just keep getting good scores… which was what happened.

Pokemon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin
- [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]
- Score has gone UP from 88.3 to 90

So that came in at the end of the week, leaving the scoreboard looking like this.

Week 33 Scores

Shintar, while still hanging out in fourth place, remains with a solid prediction for first place for the end of the season. Likewise, a strong showing by Corr this week has him now projected for second place in the league, pushing me down a notch.

For the first time in a while, there were no bids in the league.

We did get an update that one of our Warhammer titles might go missing as Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV slipped out to December.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV
- Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais),
- Counter Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)
  - Release date changed from ‘Thursday, September 17, 2026’
  - to ‘Thursday, December 03, 2026’

December is very close to next year and it wouldn’t be the first title to decide to punt before the Steam Winter Sale and roll the dice in the new year.

With no other changes, the next ten titles remain as before.

Week 34 Coming Up

So nothing set for next week. We shall see if there are enough updates to make a post for week thirty-four. Otherwise, we’ll be back for week thirty-five

A Brief History of Blaugust

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Brief for specific definitions of the word I suppose. Blog posts, even long blog posts, are brief in relation to The Stand or the works of Robert Jordan. The problem here is that I wrote that title at the top of an empty blog post, so I cannot really tell how deep this is going to get. But I am going there.

Blaugust 2026

And I want to go there because Blaugust has been a thing for a baker’s dozen years, with 2020 getting a double dose… though we also skipped a year… and I want to chart out how things went. It is a thing I do sometimes. That and summer re-run posts. This is not a summer re-run post.

Also, we’re halfway through Blaugust 2026 and I don’t feel like I’ve been paying much attention to it. I seem to have enough to write about most days without feeling the need to force things.

The tale will be in brief based on what I remember. But I will also link out to all of my Blaugust posts for each year. I tend to link out all over in those, so if you want to root out details they are probably linked somewhere in there.

So let’s go.

2014 – Blaugust Begins

As something of vaguely associated extension of the Newbie Blogger Initiative… it isn’t mentioned at all but the event was called the “Blaugust Initiative” in the first post so maybe… Belghast decided to throw out the idea of having an addition event that had people post every day, in part because he himself was in the midst of a self-imposed experiment of posting every day so why not share the pain?

Blaugust of 2014

The origin story is… well… this as summed up in the Gospel of Blaugust:

Thanks to cramming together of blog and august, Blaugust was born, and the idea is to take the challenge during the month of August to write a new post every day.

This was also in the Anook era of Blaugust, where we tried using that attempt to make another gamer social site. We had 51 blogs entered, each of which I recorded in my review post.

My 2014 related posts:

Jul 31 – Hot Blaugust Nights
Aug 22 – Savior of Blaugust – That Video Game Questionnaire Thing
Sep 1 – Blaugust in Review

2015 – Blaugust Intensifies

The first year worked out so well that Belghast decided to give it another run.

Blaugust of 2015

Again, this was run after the May Newbie Blogger Initiative event and there was considerable overlap between the two event, at least in the case of the regulars who all show up to these sorts of things. We continued on using Anook as the focal point of the event and most people logged in there and posted links to post.

We had 71 sites involved with the event, which I again recorded in my review post.

My 2015 related posts:

Aug 1 – It is Blaugust and You Are Already Late!
Aug 31 – Blaugust in Review

2016 – Blaugust Relaxes

After two years of something of a hardcore event, pushing people to post every day and having some parameters around what even counts as a post, Bel came back with the more casual version of the event.

Blaugust of 2016

I mean, casual if you wanted it to be so. He, and many of the usual suspects went on posting every single day like maniacs, but you were not excluded if you didn’t want to keep up that sort of pace. That led to people going at their own pace. We had 59 participants.

While I am listed as doing weekday posts, I posted 36 times that August, so clearly made the daily post metric.

My 2015 related posts:

Aug 3 – Blaugust is Upon Us
Aug 31 – August 2016 in Review

2017 – Blaugust Skips a Year

There was no official Blaugust for 2017. I keep forgetting about this… though anything pre-2020 is the “before times” when everything was different. This was likely due to the NBI not being run, and they were somewhat run as a pair.

That said, there were a few of us who did an unofficial Blaugust and posted for all thirty-one days, something I noted in passing in my month in review for that August.

2018 – Blaugust Reborn

After a lapse Blaugust was back in part to get people jazzed about blogging, which by that point had long been seen as a dead end in the age of Facebook and Twitter.

Blaugust of 2018

For the first time the Newbie Blogger Initiative is mentioned in the announcement post as something that helped bring together the local bloggers into a group that would join in on such events. While social media was around, we were still congregating on Anook.

90 blogs signed up in Blaugust Reborn 2018
83 bloggers made at least one post during the month
We added 1404 more than new blog posts to the community as a result of Blaugust Reborn
This equated to an average of 45 new blog posts per day
26 Bloggers had 31 or more posts

My 2018 posts:

Jul 23 – A Blaugust to Revive Blogging
Aug 1 – It Is Blaugust and What Should I Even Write About?
Aug 11 – Blaugust and Consolidating Your Blog Reading
Aug 18 – Blaugust and Making Comments on Comments
Aug 25 – Blaugust and Editorial Policy
Sep 3 – The Labors of Blaugust

2019 – Blaugust Continues

The last Blaugust of the “before times” for many of us, where the world is divided into before Covid and after. For me that meant going to the office every day, something I haven’t done since March 17, 2020.

Blaugust of 2019

There was a push to get the event beyond video game blogs… though I kind of miss when that was the case. But there aren’t so many of us I guess. It also marked the start of the Discord server to coordinate the event and the naming of mentors, several of whom managed to get so named by the simple virtue of having been around since the beginning. Any mentoring I have done was purely accidental I am sure. The following stats were recorded for the event:

1305 posts were made by Blagust 2019 Participants
66 Individuals Participated
11 Newbie Bloggers Participated
55 out of 66 made at least 5 posts qualifying for Bronze
36 made at least 15 posts qualifying for Silver
31 made at least 25 posts qualifying for Gold
27 made 31 or more posts during the month of August qualifying for Rainbow

Also, we had a subreddit for the event. I swear we did, it is still there. It never really took off.

My 2019 posts:

Jul 17 – Blaugust 2019 is Coming
Aug 1 – Blaugust Arrives and You Call This Prep?
Aug 8 – Blaugust and What the Hell to Write About
Aug 23 – Blaugust and Burning Things Down
Aug 29 – Blaugust and Keeping the Words Flowing to the Site
Aug 31 – My Gamer Motivation Profile Once Again
Sep 7 – The Labors of Blaugust 2019

2020 – Blapril Brings Early Blaugust

Then there was Covid and the March that seemed to last forever. Most of us were only at home starting at the mid-point of the month, but it felt like a year because we were all suddenly yoinked out of our regular routines and forced to stay home and watch Tiger King on Netflix.

It was dire.

The Blapril commeth

We were still on Discord and had an event hash tag for social media. Did we have that before Blapril? I don’t remember and am too lazy to figure it out. (Okay, we had it in 2019 as well. Still, Blapril was different.)

My 2020 posts:

Mar 27 – Blapril is a Promise that Blaugust is Bound to Keep
Apr 2 – Blapril Prep Week is Almost Over
Apr 10 – Blapril and Figuring Out What to Write
Apr 18 – Road Trip with Mojo Nixon
Apr 25 – To the Series Born
Apr 28 – Blapril and Staying Motivated
May 2 – My Top Five Most Viewed Posts
May 7 – A Flawed Profile in Gamer Motivation
May 9 – My Top Five Most Viewed Posts Year by Year
May 15 – The Labors of Blapril

2020 – Blaugust Promptapalooza

Wait, we already had Blaugust in April, what were we supposed to due in August when people were starting to get sick of this whole Covid thing but the grocery store still had signs up all over the store with arrows and distance rules like it was a driver training school? How about Promptapalooza?

August means some sort of Blaugust

We were going to get together and chain together 31 days of blog posts, with everybody having a date and a prompt assigned to throw in their entry, and you had to link back to previous posts in the chain. I got day five, so was done pretty quick.

My 2020 prompt posts:

Aug 1 – Blaugust Promptapalooza Arrives
Aug 5 – Promptapalooza and a Quote of the Day
Aug 28 – Promptapalooza and Writing a Blog Post

2021 – Post Covid Blaugust

It was 2021 and we had a Covid vaccine and vaccine cards and I had to fill out a form and provide proof of vaccination to visit my mom, who lived in Hawaii at the time.

Blaugust of 2021

We believed we were returning to normalcy… but there was no going back. Still, we had a good turnout and the following stats were recorded:

981 posts were made by Blaugust 2021 Participants
45 Individuals Participated in the event and made at least one post
2 Newbie Bloggers Participated and both made 31 posts
40 out of the 45 participating made at least 5 posts qualifying for Bronze
31 out of the 45 participating made at least 15 posts qualifying for Silver
22 out of the 45 participating made at least 25 posts qualifying for Gold
20 blogers made at least 31 posts qualifying for Rainbow Diamond

My 2021 posts:

Jul 17 – The Return of Blaugust 2021
Aug 1 – Welcome to Blaugust 2021
Aug 8 – One Blog or Multiple?
Aug 24 – On Blogging, Motivation, and Passion
Sep 3 – The Labors of Blaugust 2021

2022 – Blaugust

I have no idea why the Stranger Things font style was chosen. That was a thing back in 2016. But I guess it worked.

Blaugust time is coming to town…

Still, people showed up and the numbers ended up looking like this:

1333 posts were made by Blaugust 2022 Participants.
67 blogs signed up and made at least one post during the month.
24 blogs participated in Blaugust for the very first time.
- Collectively our “Newbies” made a total of 376 posts.
60 out of the 67 participating blogs made at least 5 posts qualifying for Bronze.
42 out of the 67 participating blogs made at least 15 posts qualifying for Silver.
30 out of the 67 participating blogs made at least 25 posts qualifying for Gold.
26 out of the 67 participating blogs made at least 31 posts qualifying for Rainbow Diamond

My posts for 2022:

Jul 25 – Blaugust 2022 Commences in One Week
Aug 1 – Blaugust Begins 2022
Aug 8 – Blaugust and Introductions
Aug 16 – Blaugust and What is Content Anyway?
Aug 22 – Staying Motivated Going into Blaugust Week Four
Aug 29 – Blaugust and What to do with a Popular Post
Sep 3 – The Labors of Blaugust 2022

2023 – Blaugust Turns Ten

We arrive at the 10th year since the start of the event, but not the 10th Blaugust? I mean we skipped a year and we had Blapril and whatever.

Blaugust – 2023 Edition

Still, we had people turn out and the stats were:

104 Blogs Signed Up for Blaugust.
- Of those Blogs 100 Made at least one post during the month of August.
We had 56 folks sign up for Blaugust who had never participated before.
During this past month, Blaugust Participants created 1459 Content Posts.
Club of Honor – Made at least one post during the event: 25 blogs
Bronze Club – Made at least five posts: 37 blogs
Silver Club – Made at least fifteen posts: 7 blogs
Gold Club – Made at least twenty-five posts: 2 blogs
Rainbow-Diamond Club – Made at least thirty one posts: 29 blogs

And Bel made a 10th anniversary banner at the end.

The Ten Events of Blaugust so far

My 2023 posts:

Jul 14 – Blaugust Returns for 2023 Celebrating 10 Years of the Event
Jul 27 – Blaugust 2023 is Right Around the Corner
Aug 1 – Welcome to Blaugust 2023
Aug 3 – Looking Back at Blaugust 2014
Aug 7 – Blaugust 2023 Hits the 100 Blog Mark
Aug 8 – The Many Ways to Read This Blog During Blaugust
Aug 28 – In the Final Stretch of Blaugust 2023
Sep 2 – The Labors of Blaugust 2023

2024 – Blaugust Contines

And the Blaugust train just kept going.

Blaugust – 2024 Edition

We had our first bit of controversy when two blogs showed up posting AI written content. This made people mad, even if one of them seemed to be making fun of AI. I don’t know.

The basic numbers for the event were:

116 Blogs Signed Up for Blaugust.
- Of Those Blogs 113 Made at least one blog post during the month of August.
We had 67 blogs sign up that had never participated before in a Blaugust Event.
During the past month, Blaugust Participants created 1978 Content Posts.

My posts for 2024:

Jul 22 – The Herald of Blaugust 2024 has Appeared
Aug 1 – Welcome to Blaugust 2024!
Aug 6 – Blaugust 2024 – Welcome to TAGN or What’s in a Name?
Aug 17 – Blaugust and Wondering If Blogging is Dead?
Aug 23 – Blaugust and Motivation – How The Sausage is Made at TAGN
Aug 29 – Blaugust – Who Even Reads This Stuff?
Sep 3 – The Labors of Blaugust 2024

2025 – Bel Steps Back from Blaugust

Life had hit Belgahst pretty hard in 2025 with the passing of his wife on July 2nd, a tragedy I am not sure how one even begins to cope with. I can’t even directly approach the idea of my wife passing without my eyes welling up in tears.

Blaugust of 2025

The Blaugust community stepped up to keep Bel’s event going, with Krikket of Nerd Girl Thoughts taking on the role of coordinating the event.

Krikket recorded the stats for the event on her site, which you can find here. We had 162 blogs sign up, making it a top year for the event.

My 2025 posts:

Jul 25 – The Herald of Blaugust 2025
Jul 29 – Blaugust 2025 is Nearly Here!
Aug 1 – Welcome to Blaugust! Oh No! Now What?
Aug 5 – Running Blaugust on a Second Blog
Aug 8 – It is Still Blaugust and Who Am I Even?
Aug 13 – Blaugust and How to Keep Me from Commenting on Your Blog
Aug 16 – Blaugust 2025 at the Halfway Mark
Aug 27 – Blaugust Motivation – Where Do All These Words Come From?
Aug 29 – The Demise of General Media – Reviving a Post Draft from 2009

2026 – Belghast Memorial Blaugust

All of that brings us to this year when we have come together for another event, both to keep the event alive and to remember Belghast, who passed away on the anniversary of his wife’s death. In the interim he had been diagnosed with cancer and had been undergoing treatment, posting his way through his experience on his blog and still playing video games, we he passed.

And brings me to the end of the history of the event. It will likely carry on, and as it does some of us will remember Bel for the work he put in to build this community and keep it going.

How Bad is Multiboxing and How Do We Fix It?

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A few weeks back over on Reddit, in the EVE Online subreddit, the whole place spent about ten days ranting about the evils of multiboxing and how it was ruining the game and that CCP/Fenris needed to DO SOMETHING about it NOW!

That is always the way. If nothing else, Reddit carries with it a sense of urgency and demands for action, usually coupled with bad or unworkable solutions. The wisdom of crowds can only get you so far.

Then the whole thing kind of petered out as everybody got their say and the cynics chimed in about how players with multiple accounts were all that was keeping the game going and that the company was never going to cut off a lucrative revenue stream.

But even with the current swell of rage spent for the moment, the question remains as to whether or not multiboxing is bad and how bad it really is.

Of course, multiboxing has been a thing in EVE Online since forever. Having a second account is such a force multiplier for so many things that it pretty much feels like a requirement for anybody really serious about the game. There are all sorts of uses, from hauling support to scouting a route to being able to light a cyno so you can move your own capital ship around to simply having eyes on two locations at the same time.

I was out multiboxing before the end of my first full year in the game, because jet can mining with a single account simply led to theft and griefing. So I got a second account to haul my ore while I mined with my main

Mammoth and Retriever back in 2007

Now, I don’t think a second account is really what people are on about… though you never know with Reddit. Like everything, there are the people who can see reasonable bounds and those who are absolute purists.

Back in 2009 I did a post with a poll about what people considered cheating, and multiboxing landed pretty far down the list, down in what I considered the “discomfort zone,” where it probably wasn’t cheating, but it wasn’t exactly endorsed either. (Referred to as “multi-play” on the chart below. It was a different era.)

Poll Results

So it felt, at that time… and that was kind of a while ago… that the concept wasn’t hugely bothersome. But context matters.

I think people are more likely to be upset about fleets of multiboxers than my dual boxing scenario back in 2007.

Pretty blue lasers of a multi-boxing ice mining fleet… in 2011, but I don’t have anything more recent

Now, I want to divert for a minute to distinguish mere multiboxing from input broadcasting.

Input broadcasting is using software to control multiple accounts by sending them all the same command. This was a plague for a bit in New Eden, with stealth bomber fleets being controlled by a single person executing perfectly synchronized fleet destroying bomb runs.

Input broadcasting is already explicitly against the rules in EVE Online and getting caught will get you a suspension or a ban on multiple offenses.

It is also against the rules in most other MMORPGs. How enforcement is going is a legit question, but there was a point in WoW when groups of five shaman, all being controlled by input broadcasting, were an absolute bane in retail, being used to farm for gold sellers.

And the same problem has come up in EverQuest, to the point that some of their special servers have been designated as “true box,” which means that multiboxing is not allowed and that Daybreak is using code to attempt to prevent the behavior. (While input broadcasting is also against the EULA, the company seems less interested in doing anything about multiboxing on the live servers.)

The true box idea came up on the special servers due to player complaints. But when asked to vote on the parameters for the most recent such server, Frostreaver, the polling came out against true box. So opinions clearly vary.

But neither of those titles really give you advantage in game, neither has a real multiplier effect, the way EVE Online does. And you do not often have to look too hard in New Eden to find somebody running a fleet of 5, 10, 20, or even 50 accounts, often with the same name and a number to sort them out.

Borg Units 83 to 87

That those characters are numbered up into the 80s at least implies that there are more than just the five I spotted when passing through Amarr space.

And that isn’t an idle implication. You can find whole corporations, like Solaris legionis maximus, which appears to consist of one person with 150 alts, all with the first name Sunwalker. I appreciate the creativity in not using numbers, but still… the only thing worse than numbered characters is when they owner doesn’t bother to zero pad the numbers so they sort correctly… but still, whatcha doing with 150 alts buddy?

There are sizable fleets of multiboxers out there, but what is the problem?

Well, there is always the “fairness” problem and some argument about pay to win, but those are pretty vague.

I saw a post from a year ago that tried to sum up some key elements, appropriately titled Multiboxing is Killing EVE, so I am just going to steal from that rather than craft my own list:

Faction Warfare? Get ready to fight entire fleets controlled by a single player.
Mining? Find a good ore spot? A multiboxer will show up with 15 ships and wipe it clean.
Market? PLEX prices keep skyrocketing because these multiboxers generate insane amounts of ISK and just buy up PLEX to sustain their armies.

I have no experience with faction warfare and, as this post is a year old, it might not take into account CCP/Fenris deciding to try and price control PLEX, though the economics side of my brain thinks that PLEX pricing rising high enough would discourage multiboxers. But it would also harm everybody who goes to purchase PLEX as well as reducing PLEX transactions which would in turn hurt the company’s bottom line, so I suspect they won’t experiment with that idea.

The mining thing though, that I have seen. That is where multiboxing without the need to use input broadcasting is a real force multiplier. And if you search for multiboxing posts the multi character mining blight gets brought up frequently. These include tales of people being rude or threatening if you show up in their belt to somebody who had their own suicide gank alts to blow you up if you dared mine their rocks.

Annoying stuff and the sort of thing that having a PvP title brings with it… though people are only marginally worse to each other in general in New Eden than they are in Azeroth in my experience. But people take their ship being blown up more seriously than somebody camping the graveyard or low key harassing your group.

So it is more than an annoyance and could be classified as an actual problem.

The question is, what should be done about it?

And, to follow on, what can we actually expect CCP/Fenris to do about it?

That second part is the trick, because the company could try to ban all multiboxing, but that would be a disaster. First, players will find ways to work around any such ban, so when multiboxing is a crime, only the criminals will multibox or some such. Also, it would limit revenue when the game is probably pretty dependent on people paying for multiple accounts.

At some level the company sees the person with 150 Omega accounts as 150 times more valuable than me and my single account. (I am currently down to one Omega account.) You will never convince me otherwise.

It feels like the normal action of PvP might put a damper on some of the activity. Unless you’re input broadcasting you’re unlikely to be very deft at combat in faction warfare, at least against groups. But against a singleton you’re going to be unbeatable likely, and there are a lot of lone wolves out there.

PvP doesn’t do much for high sec mining fleets. The war dec restrictions keep corps safe, and even if those were rolled back the multiboxers would just revert to NPC corps for safety at the cost of higher taxes.

Out in null sec… well, multibox mining is the norm. But at least out there alliances own the systems and set their own rules to limit abusing people who aren’t running multiple accounts. Mining drama kept to a minimum by tossing out people who create too much mining drama.

This feels like a problem with no simple answer, something that can’t be solved by a “just do X” sort of action. (Which is about all Reddit can manage. We do love to yell simple yet impractical solutions at the company over there.)

So how does this get solved?

My gut reaction is the Invincible meme.

The only real answer I can find

Again, CCP/Fenris is a business and, no matter how much they might protest, they are not going to eliminate a revenue stream to preserve the integrity of the game. If anything, history shows they will tell us they care about such things, then will go ahead and do what they said they would not do anyway. (See the whole selling skill points issue.)

And therein lies the trick. How do you make multiboxing less oppressive to those who have to operate around it without removing the incentive system that makes people multibox and makes the company money?

I am open to ideas. But anything that does not take into account the company revenue side of things is tough to take seriously.

TL;DR: Multiboxing kind of sucks, but it makes money so where is the incentive to fix it?

Planet Crafter – Teleportation, Explosions, and Exploration

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As I wrote in my previous Planet Crafter post, it is difficult to find a break point at which to sit down and write an update because new things come at you all the time changing the game and advancing your goal of terraforming the world you’ve landed on.

Certainly A Planet Crafter

It feels like you get a few technology unlocks every hour or so, and a big one often enough to change the dynamics a few times over the course of a week.

Last time I mentioned that we had just unlocked teleporter technology and was wondering how that might change things up. We do, in fact, have a network of four teleport booths setup on the planet now.

The teleporter in Clavius base

Ignoring the lessons of Larry Niven, the teleport booth was placed inside the base. But the likelihood of strangers arriving seemed pretty small. So far we had only seen notes from people who were quite clearly dead or off planet.

But a single teleporter, like a single video phone, is not very useful. It was time to go explore.

Exploration is very much a part of the game. Some times, when you’re building up new terraforming equipment, like our huge new T5 drills, and are trying to move the needle on some of your metrics, you can end up spending a bunch of time just working on your base or marshaling supplies.

If this were a carnival ride you could stick a few people in each of those cylinders

This is especially true where there is some useful new tech unlock getting close that will make your life better.

More inventory space? Yes please!

Eventually you need to get out and explore. So Potshot gathered up the materials to build another teleporter and we got on our jet packs and went out to find some place to connect to our transportation network.

By this point the atmosphere was sufficiently breathable that we were no longer constrained by oxygen. Our suits could now keep us supplied indefinitely. Likewise, we had picked up the water filter option, so we could refill our suits from any open water, and we had a lot of open water by this point.

The main constraint to just flying around was food, and water if we strayed too far from a place where we could resupply. But food lasts a long time relative to water, so we were able to fly pretty freely without needing to seek shelter. We also flew by many little one room life support pods that we had scattered about the map back when oxygen was the primary constraint.

So Saturday we went on a big loop of the map, which is feeling much smaller now that we are less constrained. We traveled for a while and settled on a big, open area, previously hidden by ice walls that have since melted.

An open valley to explore

This open canyon area the leads out to an ocean, ended up having a lot of locations to explore. It was near a spaceship crash site… and seriously, it seemed to be raining spaceships at some point because their wreckage is everywhere… that we set up our first teleport network connection.

And a good thing too, because there was a lot to haul home from this site which combined wreckage and what looked to be a past civilization that might have lived here. That bridge and those arches didn’t fall from space. Was this planet habitable at some previous time?

As we spread out the pick up what included a seemingly endless number of rocket engines… useful for many things, but there is a limit to our need… we found a water filled grotto area that had a whole under water complex of things to discover.

The grotto back in the canyon depths

Accessing the deep water area meant going down what we ended up referring to as the “deep hole” where Potshot nearly drowned due to being in third person view.

Looking up from a bit down the deep hole

As in EverQuest… didn’t I mention drowning there just yesterday… swimming in Planet Crafter is pretty awkward in third person view because the camera angles are severely limited. Basically, you cannot look straight up, which you need to do to swim straight up.

This is where we discovered that he had been playing the game in third person, over the shoulder view the whole time while I had been playing in first person view. Normally I prefer the over the shoulder view because it allows for situational awareness and some semblance of peripheral vision, which is important in game with combat. So in a game like EverQuest where I need to make sure there isn’t a cyclops wandering around, I stay in third person view. (Again, borrowing from yesterday for illustration.)

Fippy Darkpaw! We meet again! And in third person perspective!

I had not worried about this in Planet Crafter because there hasn’t been anything like combat so far. (We’ll see what happens when the frogs start running the place.) In fact I had only just discovered the night before that there was an option besides first person view. You change views by clicking on the middle mouse button, which is the mouse wheel button, something I always forget is even a thing, which toggles you between the two perspectives.

So we exchanged that bit of information and swimming overall because less of a traumatic experience.

Still, I almost drowned because it is a bit of a labyrinth down there and I got lost and couldn’t find my way out… and while oxygen isn’t a problem above water, it still is when you go diving. Fortunately I was cautious and had a couple of oxygen bottles on me for emergency use.

Our explorations also got us to the first of the Warden Keys, which are scattered around the planet, but which need a special chip to be able to see. You get the first one free then have to get the upgrade to find more.

The first Warden Key location

This also led us to a cave with yet another spaceship… though this one appeared to be intact rather than splattered over the landscape.

A ship that might still fly

We couldn’t get to the ship. It is floating out in a big open area beyond our ability to reach. But it being there at least implies we’ll get getting to it some day.

In addition we picked up the ability to make explosives along the way. There were a number of blocked passages throughout the game that said you needed to blow them up. Now, with bombs in hand, I set out to do so.

I messed up a a bit on the first try. You have to position yourself so when you drop the explosive charge… which seems like a bad thing to do, but whatever… it lands in the right place, because you can’t pick it up again, you can only activate it which turns on the five second timer.

Still, I managed to clear some stuff out.

Blocked passage with the bomb set

And then boom.

Passage soon to be clear

The explosives do not harm anything but the stuff flagged as susceptible to damage. (Which I assume includes me, so I got clear.) So the ship that was in sustained no damage even if the stuff blocking the passage was obliterated.

Some of these opened up to doors that required key cards. Others opened up to new areas and wrecks to salvage.

How did this ship even get in here

That in turn led to more salvage operations and more stuff to haul and more rocket motors to store.

Meanwhile, on the terraforming front we reached the fish stage of planetary life, which meant building aquariums and fish spreaders. Then the amphibians showed up and our front yard was taken over by what I refer to as the “blue frog group.”

But we just keep adding things to make the numbers go up.

The numbers… they go up

That has led to further reconfiguration of our main base, which now has more storage and drones… we unlocked drones… which can auto-harvest and keep things supplied, like the auto-crafters, so we are just a hive of production.

The base as of this week

Finally, we reached the point where I could bake some cookies and a birthday cake.

Not just a cake, a birthday cake

It isn’t anybody’s birthday, but there it is, decorating our lab.

Nothing to report on Save Sync, which we continue to use to share a save file between us. It suits our needs and we haven’t messed up yet.

The Ancient Gaming Noob

Veni, Vidi, Scripsi