August has come and gone and so has Blaugust 2025. I didn't achieve what I wanted to achieve for Blaugust so let's take a look back at the August that was.
The Blog
Blogger recorded visits for July: 326,819
In other metrics:
- Posts:
- Target: 31 (to meet the Blaugust goal of once a day)
- Posted: 17
- Difference: -14
- I fell off the Blaugust horse early and never got back on it. My Blaugust plans to talk about blogging and blogging platforms never materialized. I'll get a Blaugust recap out here in the next few days.
- Search Trends
- Search trends changed in June and that trend continued in July:
- "battlefield secure boot" "secure boot required battlefield" - Secure Boot being required to play the Battlefield 6 beta was a hot topic and I shared my own experience in a post which netted the most Google clicks of any posts this month.
- "deadlock invite pending" - this search skyrocketed around the time of the Deadlock update (which I posted about here). Honestly surprised Valve has continued with the invite system for the open test; seems like at this point they'd be better off just letting anyone try that wants to.
- "arc raiders countdown" - this actually trended way, way down this month which is expected as we are at the midpoint between Tech Test 2 hype and the October release date for ARC Raiders.
- In "things I observed in search console":
- Image searches for "minecraft mountain base" is my top result for images. It's neat to see many years later that my Minecraft adventure from 2010 (15 years ago!) is hopefully inspiring new builders. The post: Minecraft Mountain Base
- "bf2042 iwo jima" netted a small number of visits which was nice to see as BF2042 enjoyed a resurgence in interest thanks to Battlefield 6. The new Iwo Jima map has been a blast to play in 2042.
What I Played
My friends and I have been sticking with Dune Awakening, but honestly, it’s pushing me to the edge of rage quitting more often than not. The combat is rough, and PvP ends up being a frustrating mess. Losing in PvP can set you back hours of progress, especially if your opponents decide to thumper your thopter — sending it to a worm and deleting it permanently.
Normally, I wouldn’t mind setbacks like that, but the combat feels so bad that I never feel like I have a fair chance. Ground fights are plagued with stagger locks that stop you from dodging, activating skills, or even moving. Then you add in tactics like players gliding in silently on a thopter, pocketing it mid-air, and dropping right behind you… it just leaves you feeling powerless. More often than not, you have to resign yourself to being ganked repeatedly, even when you’re actively looking for a fight.
So yes, I’m still begrudgingly playing Dune Awakening with my friends, but the PvP endgame just isn’t fun. There’s only so much building and gathering I can do to distract myself from that.
Later in August, I jumped on the No Man’s Sky bandwagon after the Voyagers update. I’ve been really enjoying my early exploration of the galaxy. There’s something refreshing about a game with so many possibilities. The fact that I can take off in my ship from a planet, fly into space, head to another world, and never hit a loading screen still amazes me. Add in space stations, the anomaly, space pirates, and more than I can list, and it’s clear this game is going to steal a serious chunk of my gaming time. And I haven’t even touched on the multiplayer yet!
On top of that, my sons and I have been continuing our Minecraft adventures. I need to get us set up on a realm, especially after we lost progress when a local save reset on us. It’s also tough that our current setup isn’t persistent, so if we’re not all playing at the same time, no one can move the world forward. A realm would solve most of that and make our sessions much smoother.
Years Ago
1 Year Ago
August 2024 was a wonderful Blaugust experience and my wrap up can be read here.
Also in August of 2024 we got a first look at Dune Awakening's gameplay. It was clear in the video that combat wasn't going to be great and sure enough a year later and combat isn't great. I guess it's a positive that the initial video look we got back then was what the actual game turned out to be.
August of 2024 also brought us Deadlock's initial beta test. This was the hottest game since sliced bread at the time. A year later and the game has pretty much dropped in interest and is still in a test phase. Player activity is down from hundreds of thousands peak players to just tens of thousands. It's possible the game peaked before ever making it to release.
5 Years Ago
In August of 2020 we were enjoying the Crowfall Beta. At the time I thought this was the next big game for me. I was going to lose hundreds, if not thousands, of hours to it. Fast forward to today and Crowfall has already been shut down. But the Crowfall Beta does hold a special place in my nonexistent heart because it was through the beta community that I found out about this other game called New World and little did I know at the time but New World would be the game where I lost thousands of hours (4,000+ and counting!).
10 Years Ago
August of 2015 existed in the time of no blogging for me.
15 Years Ago
August of 2010 was marked by my purchase of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. 15 years later and he has delivered five books in this amazing series! Now if only George RR Martin could deliver at such a pace.
Another interesting post and article to look back on was this one: MMO Developers: Read this, learn from it . Now 15 years later I'd of expected more MMOs to have been developed around the single server design. And while we have mega servers in many MMOs we really haven't gotten another single server MMO like EVE Online.
20 Years Ago
In August of 2005 I was complaining about Alterac Valley in World of Warcraft and how it needed to be rebuilt. I really miss those days. Alterac Valley was such a fun experience at the time and I dearly miss those simpler days where I had hours and hours to devote to a singe map game mode and write such long winded change requests for it!Speaking of WoW battleground design suggestions I also suggested they should be cross server. At the time it was a foreign thought to have cross server activities. Fast forward to modern MMOs and it's hearsay if they launch without cross server capabilities. Oh how times change!
I made a Battlefield 2 video and uploaded it to Google Video. Sadly it's been lost to history at this point as I didn't opt to migrate it to YouTube. Not even the Wayback Machine has a copy of the video even though it did archive the page at one point. Another sign of "oh how times change"! Note: it is possible I have a copy on my old hard drives sitting on the shelves; I just haven't spent the time to dig through them.
