May 2024 In Review

May has come and gone.  Here is a look back (late delivery due to vacation).

The Blog

 I still owe a larger post about my findings with "spam" abuse of my GA4 (Google Analytics) tags that made me realize most of my traffic tracked to my blog was not real.  With that said let me present two numbers for blog traffic in May.

 First; the Blogger provided number (last 30 days graph / May count over the top)

 Second; my much filtered Google Analytics number.

 Those pictures tell two very different stories.  16k+ visits according to Blogger but only 875 per Google Analytics after I apply traffic source filters to get rid of spammers abusing GA4 tags.

 So May saw between 875 and 16,000+ visits to the blog. I'll pretend the latter is correct because... reasons.

 In other metrics:

• Posts:
  
• Target: 15 (at least one per week day; except vacation)
  
• Posted:17
• Difference: +2
• Woohoo!  Back on track this Month
•  Search Trends
• "best battlefield game", "best battlefield", "best battlefield games" blew up this month directing folks to my post: Best Battlefield!?
• New World dominates the rest of the search queries across Bing and Google.  This month the champ was "new world roadmap 2024" which makes sense as May was the original timeframe for the 2024 roadmap to be provided (that has now been pushed to June 7th for the big news)
  

What I Played

 New World continues as my main game.  I spent a lot of time in 3v3 arenas (100+ wins this season).  With vacation I won't be able to make top 10 though on the leaderboard but hoping my main playing partner makes it in (he has a shot at #1).

 I also spent some time in Jedi: Fallen Order.  I really like the visuals and Star Wars story of the game, but the "on rails" corridor levels totally ruin the feeling.  That is why I am looking forward to Star Wars: Outlaws to give me an open world experience.

 Fallout fever died off as I gave up Fallout 3 (the game is too dated at this point for my tastes) and I didn't bother to grab Fallout 4/76/NV/whatever.

 I was accepted to the Combat Champions playtest but didn't get a chance to play due to vacation.

Years Ago

1 Year Ago

 In May 2023 we got the first news of Amazon Game Studios (developers of my beloved New World) were starting working on a Lord of the Rings MMO.  In kind we began digging New World's grave.

5 Years Ago

 May 2019 I was looking at Magic the Gathering and reminiscing about the guild I helped run for a while: Casualties of War!

10 Years Ago

 In May of 2014 I was running around Guild Wars 2 and decided to document where traits could be obtained.  How much that game has changed!

15 Years Ago

  May of 2009 was a busy month on the blog and in retrospect some important things happened.

• Shadowbane wasn't quite yet dead: https://www.heartlessgamer.com/2009/05/not-gone-yet.html
• I reviewed Darkfall... by stealing a reviewer's review of another game: https://www.heartlessgamer.com/2009/05/darkfall-lost-review-made-possible.html
• Free Realms hit 2 million players (crazy for the time): https://www.heartlessgamer.com/2009/05/free-realms-hits-2-million-none-could.html
• Warhammer Online was undoing dumb designs: https://www.heartlessgamer.com/2009/05/mythic-checks-another-item-off-wars.html
• The irony is not lost on me all these years later that New World also had to eventually remove the idea of "wards" on gear for the same reason as WAR... wards made any gear without ward pointless.  Time is a flat circle or something.
  

 20 19 Years Ago

 Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.

 In May of 2005 I started a blog so I had that going for me :)

A Self-Serving PC Gaming Wish-List

It's not my birthday, but I was inspired by Alec Meer's birthday post over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

I want these things.

• A Free 2 Play Warhammer Online.
• A fantasy-based EVE Online (where is World of Darkness anyways?).
• A Shadowbane that doesn't make me want to vomit on my keyboard.
• Battlefield 1942 recreated in Battlefield: Bad Company 2's engine, destructible environments and all.
• An announcement from 38 studios on what their MMOG will be.
• To figure out what ever happened to Project Offset.
• Some sort of hypno-therapy that makes me incredible at FPS games overnight.
• To never see or hear the phrase “dumbed-down” again
• A loaf of bread.
• My kid's two front teeth (teething sucks btw)

NOTE: Yes, I stole a couple of Alec's ideas and changed or did not change the words slightly.

July 2009, What Happened to Shadowbane?

Last time that I checked, Shadowbane was set to close down on July 1st, 2009. It's July 3rd and I can't seem to find any obituaries or any official info on what happened to the game.

The Shadowbane websites no longer exist (that I can find) and the MMO news aggregation sites are quiet. I guess Aeria Games didn't come in to save the game.

Is this truly how Shadowbane has gone out, without even a whimper?

Free Realms' Similar Demographics

While surfing Aeria Games' twitter feed for any updates on Shadowbane's future, I cam accross this gem of a quote:

We're interested to see what you think of Free Realms. Our Hello Kitty Online will also have similar demographics.
about 24 hours ago from web

Ouch.

Not Gone Yet!

Shadowbane, as far as Ubisoft cares, is gone forever.

However, the development team doesn't seem to be giving up without at least some sort of massive send-off.

Following our recent news, the support and enthusiasm the community has shown for Shadowbane has led to an extension of the closure date to July 1, 2009. This should allow the community enough time to play out its final days appropriately. We are looking into various options to make these final days as fun as possible!

Shadowbane, the cockroach of MMOGs-that-should-be-dead-already.

Update: Aeria Games has twittered some interest in buying Shadowbane and keeping it afloat.

@game_zine Not yet. We are discussing with Ubisoft on Shadowbane. Let us know what you think about the game.

@LisaFinefrock Please give us feedback as we are very interested in Shadowbane.

@grumpywalker Please let us know what you love about Shadowbane.

Dear Shadowbane

Dear Shadowbane,

You suck.

I pondered over the last week how to write this letter, but nothing can say it better than those two simple words. You have peaked my interest for over a decade and you never once managed to satisfy my curiosity.

I bought your box, your expansions, and resubscribed my accounts many times. Now you are free, and you still suck. You lag, you crash, and worst of all, you still force people to level. Would it be so difficult to remove your barely working PvE content in favor of an instant level 75 system? No, I thought not. That would require thought and consideration for me, the player.

I've tried to make this work. I've spent restless days trying to rip my eyes out as another bug, lag spike, or plain bad game mechanic sucked another death out of my avatar. All in the vain hope that I would some day get to the "end game" and finally get the chance to PK some newbs. Alas, I never made it.

I'm done and I'm not coming back. Once again Shadowbane, you suck!

Yours truly,

Heartless_

World of Warcraft, Shadowbane, etc.

I am a gamer. A gamer plays games. I will now be gallivanting around in several worlds on a purely casual basis.

Yes, I am back in World of Warcraft. No, I still do not have The Burning Crusade, or plans to pick it up.

I am also back playing Shadowbane, well, because it's free.

On top of this, I am still trudging through Neverwinter Nights 2 single-player campaign and plan to finish it.

PS. I have a new laptop, which just might let me play games when I am out of town. Shhh... don't tell my wife.