The Site 

How about now?  Is the site loading performance any better now?

I opened up a post about the site’s performance on the WP.com support forum and got a response from the team the next day that was basically, “Works on my machine, get lost,” which is honestly the level of support I have come to expect from WP.com over the years.  They are absolutely in a mode to deflect all possible complaints on the first try.

Still, I was disappointed. I thought I had them because their own speed test tool, which runs on their servers and not my local machine, was reporting problems.  But if you run the test enough times eventually you will hit a good patch and it will work. (I finally got it to run, but its results include AI recommendations that were ludicrously wrong.  Badly trained AI is worse than no AI.)

So I started building up evidence to support a ticket, because I wasn’t giving up and when profiling the site loading it was always the initial response from the server that was the long pole.

I took measurements at different times of day over a few days and I was seeing time between 653ms (acceptable) and 22.4 seconds (WTF?) always backed up at the waiting for response marker.  Every time.

And then it stopped happening for a while.

For about a week the biggest slow down on the profiles was loading the header image… which are not large images at all.  So I suspect the JavaScript which does the random header selection is causing that issue, something they absolutely won’t fix because they don’t support their old themes and, as far as I can tell, none of their new themes support such a feature.

That points, once again, to a need to change themes to something currently supported, work I am not thrilled to start.  I went with a hosted plan rather than hosting the blog myself because I wanted to avoid all this sort of thing.  But WP.com cares not for its customers.

Then the delays started up again.  Same routine.  The problem is that “waiting for response” category is a bucket that could be covering for any number of things.  It might just be their server being bad.  But it could be something else.  So I started down the final list of items I had yet to change, landing on the Blog Roll 8.0 sidebar RSS widget.  That particular Rube Goldberg setup started as 3.0 back in 2014 as my second attempt to replace Google Reader as the RSS source. (Again, screw Google for killing that app.)  I’ve had to patch it and rework it multiple times over the years, and it still had problems.  Pinboard, which creates the RSS feed, has always been balky and goes through periods of unreliability, but WP.com used to load that widget after the first screen load.  It seems that WP.com made a change and it looks like they won’t load the site unless all widgets have loaded or timed out.  So when Pinboard chokes, the site is slow.  Very slow.

Or that was my theory.  To fix that I am on to a new version of the blog roll, using Inoreader, a Feedly competitor, which does the Google Reader thing and lets you get an RSS feed out of a category group.  It doesn’t let me format the output the way my Feedly to IFTTT to Pinboard route did, but it does seem more responsive.

So I ask again, is the site loading any better now?  Or do I need a new theory of the case?

Also, a last minute gripe… I turned ads back on again and WP.com broke something because it shouldn’t be showing ads to people logged into WP.com… but the site was showing outlines of where ads should be… which was just as bad as having ads there, but zero revenue.  So I turned them off again.

Did you see any of that last week?

Dammit WP.com, can you just stop screwing things up already?

One Year Ago

Playable Worlds announced Stars Reach.

We also got a launch date for The War Within.

The Janthir Wilds expansion for Guild Wars 2 was announced, promising player housing.

In a Friday Bullet Points post I summed up the hot summer happenings including the Equinox expansion for EVE Online, the beta for The War Within, Valheim on MacOS, Pax Dei early access, the Tarisland launch, the coming Steam Summer Sale, and the imminent demise of ICQ.

That was followed up by another Friday Bullet Points post where I covered Tarisland launching, the Valheim board game, the Throne & Liberty launch date, and the latest Hearthstone expansion that had something to do with ketchup packets.

Then I tried Tarisland and said I hated it… mostly due to its control scheme.  This upset a few people, so I gave it a try on the iPad.

The Anashti Sul special server opened up in EverQuest II.

I created some memes about various CCP projects… which were honestly not as harsh as I billed them.

I say that because we got the Equinox expansion which was a whole lot of stuff that wasn’t really done yet… and wouldn’t be done for months.  At least we got login rewards again and I made a lime green ship SKIN with SKINR.  The May MER didn’t look bad, but would the expansion bump up activity?

There was also the road to Alliance Tournament XX to consider.  Also, the EVE Online app ecosystem seemed to be in decay.

However, we did have Ser Fukalite’s ship spinning medal to celebrate.

In WoW Classic it was Cataclysm time, and I was in the fragile submarine quest in Vash’jir.  Then it was off to Mount Hyjal, and after that Deepholm. The group was doing its first run at Blackrock Caverns

Civilization VII was announced.

I was still poking around in Valheim looking for The Queen.  I eventually found her after a long voyage and slew her… though I had set the server for easy mode at that point.  That unlocked my journey to the Ashlands.

In my ongoing telephone tales series I wrote about the great failure of VXML, the ascent of enterprise VoIP,

Noted imbecile Lars Wingefors declared you couldn’t raise prices on video games.

Amazon Games announced an update to New World by trying to make it sound like a brand new console title as they tried to pretend the PC game didn’t exist.

I was leafing through the state of the Twitter alternatives.  Over on X Elon decided to hide the ability to see who clicked on the like button so his white nationalist fan boys would stopped getting called out for being literal nazis.

I was also vanity searching on AI to see if it knew anything about me.  There was also a brief mention at the end of the month in review post of something called Fantasy Critic.  Did that ever become something?

And, as mentioned at the top of this section, there was a Steam Summer Sale.

Five Years Ago

Our daughter graduated from high school.  It was a pandemic graduation, but we made do.

My poll about voice chat indicated that Discord now rules that roost.

Pokemon Go gave us remote raid passes since we all had to stay home.

I was giving Minecraft Dungeons a try.  I finished the main story fairly quickly and found the game to be light and fun, but not very deep or replayable.  Other reviews were even less charitable.

Daybreak was still having problems with their Aradune progression server.

We were getting down to the final days of the Battle for Azeroth expansion in World of Warcraft and I was wondering how it would rank in the pantheon of expansions and how much the previous expansion plays into how people feel about the current or next expansion.

WoW Classic was still going strong enough that Blizz had to turn layering back on for several realms.  There was also the Summer Bowl and the campaign against bots.

The instance group was still working on Zul’Farrak, failing the stairs when Sergeant Bly and his crew died.  Then, the next time, Bly and his crew survived, but disappeared as we looted the field.

My hunter became my first character to hit level 50 in WoW Classic.

In EVE Online I was reminding people about why CCP gave Upwell structures asset safety… because they took it away with the Forsaken Fortress update.  Another case of people foolishly believing in company promises.  So we went out and shot our own abandoned state structures in Delve just to keep other groups from coming along and doing it.

Meanwhile, the CCP mineral starvation plan was driving mineral prices to an all time high. (Which would seem comically low a year, two years, and even five years later.)

We did, however, get new ships for the EDENCOM faction as part of the Triglavian invasion event as well as a Project Discovery update that moved its focus onto the coronavirus.  And we got character log off!  People had only been asking for that since forever.

The CSM15 elections kicked off, with the results being announced by mid-month.

Also a little something about how opaque the game UI can be.

Actually in space the GEF was still up north fighting over various objectives.  But that all came to a screeching halt when we we found out that most of null sec was planning to gang up against us and invade.  They denied it, but then the evidence was found.  Our deployment up north ended and we began consolidating the empire into our core space, pulling down the last Keepstar in Cloud Ring before the month was out.  World War Bee was coming.

We were playing some Minecraft and seeing how villages had changed.

I was getting promotions for an Atari branded online casino complete with its own crypto-currency.  I guess, as a brand, Atari still has some value.

Ten Years Ago

There was a cheer for the NBI class of 2015.

I was wondering what Turbine would do after they cancelled Infinite Crisis.  I was also looking for a summer game to play.

After waffling before a live audience, Blizzard finally caved and said there would be flying in Draenor.

Remember that time we killed a Mordus Angels Revenant?  It seems like everybody has killed one by now.

Also in EVE Online we got the Carnyx expansion, which had some of the initial Fozzie Sov features.  So we were out sov-wanding station services, though Dominion sov quirks still ruled the day in our fight at ED-9LT.  We then headed back north thinking maybe our friends in Querious would come visit us some day… *cough*

The coming of Fozzie Sov also meant further consolidation of holdings to make sure we could defend our space.  TNT got pushed out to Tribute to share space with the Circle of Two.  Tensions between the two alliances started almost right away.

And then there was Burn Amarr.  I took some screen shots.  And I splurged on ship skins.

Over at Daybreak they were talking about special servers for EverQuest II at last.  It looked like we might get some sort of progression server, for which there was a poll.  And then another poll, looking for a name.

Meanwhile, over in EverQuest, they were still working on how to deal with raiding on the Ragefire server, and the Ruins of Kunark unlock vote was upon us.

I was playing Neko Atsume on the iPad… back when it was only in Japanese!  I was also going on about 64-bit OS requirements finally coming to video games and an old grievance of mine.

My daughter suddenly wanted to play The Sims.  That lasted for about three days.  This is why I make her wait a week on any sudden new fad she want to follow.

The Steam Summer sale came and went and I bought nothing.  That turned out to be the last sale with the traditional daily specials format.

I brought up the F2P business model yet again based on a quote over at Massively OP which, if nothing else, got a long comment from Brad McQuaid on the subject.

And, finally, I played Minecraft with my daughter for Father’s Day, which led to a whole new adventure in gaming.

Fifteen Years Ago

Warhammer Online, whose game tips I previously mocked, was out soliciting user written game tips with the most boring video game related video ever.  Really, I was embarrassed for them.

Meanwhile, there were comical tips to be found in another game.

CCP was telling people that the steep learning curve in EVE Online was just part of the game, and Hulkageddon III was on the way.

FrontierVille came along, evoking the whole Oregon Trail thing… for which they recently were sued.  And a good thing to, as they are a bunch of lying bastards there at Zynga.  They never sent me my FarmVille magnet.

There was the big news from Turbine with Lord of the Rings Online going Free to Play.  I wondered is Lifetime Subscribers like myself would get the shaft in this transition.  But Turbine made me a perm VIP instead and put out one of those charts that seems to accompany these multi-level subscription scams structures.  But I was winning LOTRO lotteries, so I was happy for the moment.

In Pokemon SoulSilver I had beat all the gym leaders, but we were having Pokewalker problems.

Then there was Blizzard.  Where to start?

They were selling WoW Gold straight from the main page.  Really.  It just isn’t what you think.

They screwed up the parental controls interface… in my opinion… along with compromising the security of it.

The whole RealID thing was just getting warmed up.

One of the accounts in our guild was compromised and the guild bank was looted.  That had happened so many times to so many people that wasn’t even news any more.

And during all this, the instance group was working its way through The Burning Crusade content with our Horde alts, but we weren’t really feeling it.  Ennui had set in and our only hope was Cataclysm.  And there were plenty of offers to get us into the beta.

Twenty Years Ago

In EverQuest II we got the Splitpaw Saga adventure pack.  Those of us with Station Access got it as part of the package, while those without had to pay… ten bucks I think.  I actually ended up playing through that quite a bit.  As early experiment with content that scaled with your levels, it was good from level 20 to level 50.  Unfortunately, it never progressed and now every time I end up in the Thundering Steppes with my newer characters the intro quest pops up.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

Diablo II launched. It enlarged on its predecessor with more classes and a four act storyline that played out over different environments.  A pre-digital distribution title, it was awarded a Guinness Book record as the fastest selling video game ever, having shipped and sold one million boxes over the course of the first month.  For comparison its 2012 successor, Diablo III, sold 3.5 million copies in the first 24 hours, also setting a Guinness Book record.

Shogun: Total War launched, setting down a template that would become the Total War series that is still getting new titles.

Microsoft acquired Bungie… and then later spun them off.  Then some years later Sony acquired them.

Sony’s SOE acquired Verant Interactive, something that simplified the “who is running EverQuest?” question which, at launch, was possibly some sub-group within Sony, 989 Studios, or Verant, a situation reflected in gaming press coverage of the time, where various companies were named, often in the same article.  It was all SOE after that… until Daybreak then EG7.

Most Viewed Posts in June

1. Stuck on the Level 47 Requirements for Pokemon Go
2. The Imperium is Moving East, Leaving Delve and Querious, with Goonswarm Moving into Insmother
3. The Blizzard WoW Classic 2025 Road Map includes Pandaria and New Vanilla Progression Servers
4. TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2025 – Week Twenty-Three, Dune Awakening, and the Mario Kart Roller Coaster
5. Arrival in Minas Tirith
6. TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2025 – Week Twenty-Two: How About That Mario Kart World?
7. Cleaning up on The Pelennor after the Siege
8. No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends
9. GoG Summer Sale 2025
10. TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2025 – Week Twenty-One and the Elden Ring Nightreign Launch
11. Cat Catching in Enshrouded
12. Delve, Insmother, and The Big Scoop

Search Terms of the Months

steam summer sale
[You bet]

steam summer sale 2025
[A little more precise]

when is steam summer sale
[Now]

where is steam summer sale
[Um… on Steam?]

stea summer sale
[Steam, dear]

stram summer sale
[No, Steam]

stean summer sale
[Steam…]

steam summer aale
[Sale…]

steam discount summer
[Steam Summer Sale please]

quando é a steam summer sale
[Ahora!]

gog summer sale
[That too!]

playstation summer sale
[Get lost]

Game Time by ManicTime and iOS

• EVE Online – 31.31%
• Pokemon Go – 24.90%
• LOTRO – 23.81%
• Enshrouded – 17.69%
• Balatro – 1.57%
• WoW Classic – 0.73%

I did log into WoW Classic for a bit, to check where my characters there stand.  We haven’t played since early November.  Meanwhile, some travel meant I only played Pokemon Go for the last few days of the month.  It is the only game I play on my phone.  (Balatro is iPad only for me, though you can play it on the iPhone.  I just need my glasses to do so.)

Enshrouded

I meant all month to write something about Enshrouded… but never quite got to it.  Part of that is because we’re moving forward a bit slowly and because we’re covering some of the same ground about which I have already written.  But the latest big update has changed the game enough that I want to cover how much it has changed.  I’ll get there.  But we are playing it regularly.

EVE Online

What happens when you have a war and the other side declines to show up?  More move ops!  I spent quite a bit of time in the game, but not very much of it in combat.  I mean, I got on my share of kill mails… but at last check I went on 17 fleets, most of which were moving things, scooping things, or covering people moving and scooping things.  War is logistics I guess.

Lord of the Rings Online

Onward to Mordor!  I left off at the very gates of the black land.  Soon I will be there.  (Well, I have already been at this point, but that post has gone line.  Soon!)

I played a lot of LOTRO in June, though not as much as May, largely due to increased activity in EVE Online and there being only so many hours in the day.  Still, I did log in daily and use up my blue bar and do my tasks.

Pokemon Go

Since hitting level 48 my main focus has been on completing the tasks required to unlock level 49.  Specifically, the 35 platinum medals.  I managed to get one more since I leveled up, but I still need 13 more.  I am going to need a plan.  Meanwhile, my play time was up because it was Pokemon Go fest and we were at the airport waiting for a delayed flight, so we spent quite a bit of time doing raids and tasks.

• Level: 48 – 17.1% of the way to 49
• Task Status – 0 of 4 done
  • 10 trades with Pokemon caught at least 300km apart – 0/10
  • Obtain 50 Lucky Pokemon in trades – 0/50
  • Send 500 Gifts to friends – 383/500
  • Earn 35 platinum medals – 22/35
• Pokedex status: 883 (+5) caught out of 1,008 in the Pokedex
• Pokemon I want: Carnivine, a missing Sinnoh entry
• Current buddy: Bisharp

Coming Up

I will undoubtedly make it fully into Mordor in Lord of the Rings Online.  That will be kind of a big deal for me.  Expect a post or three.

Meanwhile, WoW Classic might liven up a bit as we’re running down the clock to the long awaited arrival of the Mists of Pandaria expansion.  We stopped playing WoW Classic on November 3, 2024, having grown tired of Cataclysm.  Will pandas revive our spirits?  Am I still subscribed?  Find out in July!

In New Eden I expect more move ops and such as the Imperium continues to slide east, nestling up against long time rival and foe PanFam.  Could sparks fly?  But we’ll also be into the Icelandic summer vacation season, so EVE Online might be otherwise quiet.

We’ll also be half way through the year, so that will probably get at least one “the year so far…” sort of post out of me.

Otherwise I guess it is just hot hobbit summer.  Make sure you get your characters off of the soon to be closing 32-bit servers.