No Man’s Sky and the Cosmos Update

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While I was away last week Hello Games popped up and finally launched the long expected 10 year anniversary update for No Man’s Sky.  Welcome to Cosmos!

No Man’s Sky – Cosmos

This was heralded by Sean Murray posting the martini emoji on social media (no doubt a cosmopolitan, or cosmo) for several days before it the launch.  But we knew what it was going to be called already, as they gave us the hint back at the end of the Voyagers expedition when the game hit its official 10 year anniversary.  Certainly there was a lot of speculation based on the name over on Reddit.

But now we have it… and it sounds like it might have been good to be away when Cosmos first dropped as there were some teething issues.  It happens, and all the more so when you’re coordinating an update across multiple platforms.  I haven’t checked, did the Switch 2 even get the update yet?

My guess back at the start of the year was that we would get an update to bases and base management.  My guess turned out to be wrong.  Instead we’re getting more stuff in space… which is good too.  The brief guide at login says the following:

The Cosmos Update in Brief

When I logged in for the first time I found the game prompting me to become a space station director.  They clearly hadn’t been paying attention to me record as a settlement director.

Do you want to run a space station?

You just have to go to the station core and select the new “claim station” option.

Make your choice

So yeah, I was in.  I selected the option.  And then I found out that, unlike settlements, they aren’t just handing out space station directorships to just anybody who asks.  There are tasks to accomplish.

Just complete these tasks and we’ll process your application

That seems doable… but I wasn’t going to do it just that minute.  Instead I undocked and jumped around a bit to see the new space mapping feature.  It was always strange that you could have a star map but not a solar system map, but now that has been fixed.

Viewing the Aciushuw system

I like it.  I will have to spend more time with it for sure.  But it was also BlizzCon weekend so my attention was elsewhere.

The high levels details from the expansion were posted as follows:

Deep-Space Mapping

  • A map for the local star system is now accessible from the Quick Menu, displaying local celestial bodies, the space station, and other deep-space points of interest.
  • Added an array of new deep-space points of interest, including rocky and icy asteroid belts, inhabited and infested deep-space outposts, procedurally-generated variations of deep-space hulks, debris fields, and asteroid platforms.
  • Implemented a point of interest at the star(s) of a system, which hubristic Travellers may fly to if they choose…
  • Many deep-space points of interest can be stripped and mined for valuable resources, including comet dust, gelatinous fibres, and contaminated metal. Process raw materials at a deep-space outpost to convert them into lucrative items to sell on the Galactic Trade Network, or utilise in space station construction.
  • Points of interest will begin to appear on the star system map once a save has reached the Space Anomaly for the first time.
  • Added a light tutorial mission, Signals, to introduce the star system map and navigation around deep-space points of interest.
  • Outposts are managed by an alien quartermaster, who trades in maps and salvaged materials.
  • Outposts also house a salvage & delivery terminal, offering deep-space contracts to adventurous space explorers.
  • Added a number of new player titles earned for accomplishments at deep-space points of interest.
  • Several deep-space anomalies now have a chance of granting rare station decoration blueprints to visitors.
  • Converted the Dream Aerial to a reusable product, which can now be crafted and consumed multiple times to locate individual living frigates.
  • The Living Ship encountered during the Starbirth mission chain now patrols around infested outposts, and can be actively sought out during the mission.
  • Added several new music tracks for visiting locations in deep space. These include ambient tracks when near asteroid belts, stars, hulks, or space outposts, and more dramatic music when the structural integrity of a hulk begins to fail.

Shipbreaking

  • Space hulks often house lucrative items, but they are volatile, and are likely to melt down and explode if their structural integrity is disrupted.
  • Added a new Corvette utility part, the Tractor Beam, to gather physical cargo into the Corvette hold.
  • The Tractor Beam can be purchased alongside other Corvette parts at the Corvette Workshop in space stations.
  • Improved control handling, animations, and crosshairs for the Gravitino Coil.
  • The Gravitino Coil may now be equipped in Space Stations.

Space Station Directorship

  • Prove yourself to the local authorities to become director of a Space Station, gaining rights to shape its external decorations, interior layout and ancillary compartments.
  • Earn colossal exterior decoration modules and place them around the outside of your station.
  • Directors can remove and adjust existing station decoration.
  • In addition, the full range of existing base parts are available to reshape and redecorate the interior of the station.
  • Directors can expand their space station by adding additional rooms to the main hangar, which they are then free to decorate as they please.

Galactic Alliances

  • Station directors may found their own alliance and seek like minded travellers to join their collective.
  • Join an alliance by visiting any of their owned space stations.
  • Quickly access your alliance’s systems via the teleporter.
  • Players may join up to three alliances.
  • Alliances are graded by the activity of their members. The largest and most active alliances are visible on a leaderboard at the space station core.

Orbital Constructions

  • Construct orbital bases anywhere in space – utilising natural asteroid platforms as a starting point, or staking your claim on any empty volume of space.
  • Added a number of new corridor base parts, buildable in orbital constructions.
  • A huge number of new station decoration parts have been added, unlockable from the Construction Research Terminal aboard the Space Anomaly.

Spacewalking

  • Added an eject button for non-Corvette starships, accessible from the Quick Menu.
  • Deepened and expanded spacewalking, adding true six degrees of freedom movement, including roll.
  • Improved the transition when landing on and taking off from objects with gravity in space.
  • Explosions in space will now knock the player back.
  • Spacewalking drains the cold protection technologies in the exosuit, unless in close proximity to other hazards, such as hot balls of glowing gas.

There is an update trailer as well, to give you a peek at what Cosmos has delivered.

There is also a “deep dive” video which runs twice as long as the one minute and twenty second trailer, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for depth I imagine.  But people are impatient and you might have seen how I reacted when EverQuest Legends suggested I watch a 30 minute video before I started playing!

So there we go.

There is also an expedition coming up to go with the Cosmos update.  We will probably see that in a week or so, once everything settles down and all platforms are good to go.  Called Our Journey Continues, the 23rd expedition will offer the following:

  • Expedition Twenty-Three will begin shortly and run for approximately six weeks.
  • This special event celebrates 10 years of No Man’s Sky, and journeys through the history of its evolution since launch.
  • A developer’s commentary read by Sean Murray is available for each milestone of the expedition, permanently accessible in the Collected Knowledge section of the Catalogue once unlocked.
  • Nostalgia-themed rewards include framed commemorative art, decals and titles, a golden edition of the original Rasamama 36 starship, an astronaut bobblehead, the Starbound v0.27 multi-tool, and a vintage Interceptor ship and diplodocus pet as seen in early trailers.

When that lands I am sure I will have dug myself out of my current backlog of things to do in order to join in.

Related:

BlizzCon 2026 – Monday Morning Reactions Featuring Actual WoW Classic Plus

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BlizzCon 2026 is now in the books.  All that was said has been recorded.  Now it is time to get in some reactions around what went on.  There will be months of analysis, but the post-game gut reaction is important too.

BlizzCon 2026

I am going to go through this in the same order I did back before BlizzCon in my predictions post.  We’ll see how I did.

WoW Retail – The Declared Path Remains

It felt like WoW Retail already had a destination declared with the Worldsoul Saga, so all I could come up with was four predictions, and two were wrong.

  • WoW Midnight season and raid updates
  • Passive aggressive apology for how addons have been going
  • Housing updates
  • Previews of The Last Titan

And, honestly, things seemed to be pretty light during the keynote.  But that was because there was something else as the big Azeroth reveal.  Retail had to wait until their panel to get the boatload of updates and goodies Blizz had queued up for them.

When the time came Blizz delivered for retail, including on the housing front, and a new play mode, and the next remix destination, which will be Wrath of the Lich King… and a roadmap.

WoW Retail 2026-2027 Roadmap

Also, it feels like the retail team is trying to gut the eventual anniversary classic ride into Northrend the way they screwed over the Mists of Pandaria launch by going with that as the remix before it landed for original classic progression.  As somebody told me, once is coincidence, twice is enemy action.  This is all heightened by the WoW Classic announcements… which included nothing about what we know as WoW Classic currently.  But that is up next.

Related:

WoW Classic – Classic Plus Actual

I was wrong, Classic Plus is now a thing.  I am happy to have been wrong.  But we’ll get to that in a second.  First, how did I do with my predictions?

  • Warlords of Draenor date for original classic progression
  • Next phase for The Burning Crusade for anniversary classic
  • Wrath of the Lich King date for anniversary classic
  • The Burning Crusade for Hardcore
  • Plans for a new Season of Discovery style experiment

Was that a big zero?  A goose egg for me?  Do you even classic bro?

Not so good on my part.

But all of that was washed aside with the announcement of World of Warcraft Forever, which is what Blizz is calling Classic Plus.  And it is arriving November 4th.  Who cares about all that old shit when something new is showing up? (Somebody does I am sure, but give me a min.)

WoW Forever

I am interested to see how this plays out.  But I am also not sure how it will play out.

There is, however, a roadmap… which includes a Hardcore version of the game showing up after a bit.  Sure.  Why not?  That doesn’t hurt anybody.

WoW Forever 2026-2027 Roadmap

WoW Forever appears to be, on the surface, exactly what a bunch of people were asking for.  We will adventure forever in vanilla Azeroth, where new content will be added… which was my person bar for whether of not this would be “Classic Plus” for real… and never have a level cap increase or have to trade in our raid purples for starter zone greens or worry about flying mounts because there won’t ever be any flying.  They put that genie back in the bottle bitches!

But there is also a lot of… ambiguity.

For openers, it is difficult to tell where the line between 2019 WoW Classic and 2026 WoW Midnight really is.  So if you read Reddit… and you should not read Reddit if you want to maintain your sanity… you can find the WoW Classic pure vanilla idealists upset about being betrayed while over on the WoW Retail side you can find your share of retail purists wondering aloud “who is that even for?”

Who could of predicted that no matter what path Blizz chose that somebody would be loudly upset about it?  I mean besides me and literally anybody else paying any attention at all to the problem.  We couldn’t define “classic” and people bitched about it constantly, so defining “classic plus” was always a non-starter.

WoW Forever is what Blizz says it is and we’re all just going to have to accept that.  You don’t own the copyright or get to choose the path.  Sorry.  It all rides or dies on what Blizz does now.

There are certainly a few choices revealed that made me raise an eyebrow.  The opt-in transmog will absolutely make those who live by their transmog irate.  They care how people see them so they’ll be unhappy to be seen in their clown suit.

The new race, the smurf elves or whatever, being a DLC has people screaming about cash grabs, though it does seem like it is just subscribe to play so the price only matters if you want to play the new elves.  Anything that is a one time price doesn’t bother me.  I’d rather that than it having its own subscription the way EverQuest Legends does.

Then there is the “no realms” aspect, which will require us all to have a last name.  That has potential for both good and bad.  I have already seen the “I know everybody on my server” community out in force on that one.  But if you want to avoid the launch day 3 hour login queue, this is how you do it.  I might have to revisit an old post if it works.

And does WoW Forever and the “every expansion remix track” in retail kill the legit, old school, play it as it launched back in the day, classic as an option?

They were certainly pushing this image as part of the whole event.

Are these the only WoW options in the future?

I get it.  WoW Forever was the big new thing they wanted to talk about.  But the last seven years of WoW Classic also feels like it might be getting shoved into the dust bin and forgotten.  I mean, Heroes of the Storm got a new hero… Blizz found time to talk about that during the keynote!  But did we get any updates on current classic?  Was there a third roadmap out there I missed?

There is a lot to digest and I will no doubt have more thoughts later.

But I’ll be there for it.  I alternate between being hyped and feeling like I am being sold EverQuest Next.  Still, I renewed my WoW subscription (it was set to expire this afternoon!) and will play it when it launches.  While I have my doubts about some choices, I am willing to give it a go  There is a non-zero chance that they found the magic compromise between old and new to give the vanilla vibe while having new content.  That was the ask, when you dig into it.  So we’ll see.  The horse might sing.

I think the most important thing will be to approach this expecting neither a pristine vanilla experience nor a retail point of view.  It is trying to be something different and I’ll have to be sure I am open to that.  Embrace what it has to offer, be open to the new experience, don’t set too many expectations.

Meanwhile, beta for it starts on Thursday.

Related:

Hearthstone and Other WoW IP Related Items

The usual stuff for at least Hearthstone is practically a gimme.  For the rest… I was stretching my ability to care.  This was what I went with.

  • New Hearthstone expansion
  • How they’re going to fix what they broke with a previous Hearthstone expansion
  • More rewards in other Blizz titles if you’ll just come play Hearthstone for a bit
  • Something minor about Warcraft Rumble
  • Whatever they’re doing with Wizards of the Coast, which will end up being either a collectable card game or rules for a table top RPG

I completely missed the idea of a new Warcraft III expansion.  Strange but true.  Hope that revives interest after the completely botched remaster launch.  I won’t be playing it, but there is no doubt a core of RTS fans out there looking forward to it.

And, honestly, the items I have lined out… I didn’t actually verify they didn’t come to pass, I just assumed they didn’t if they were not in the keynote.

Diablo Things

Diablo hit is 30th anniversary, so there was a lot about that.  I got that one right for the bingo card, if not in my predictions.  Also on the bingo card but not in my predictions: Diablo V.  Who knew?  My four predictions were pretty basic and I couldn’t even get those right.

  • Diablo IV new season
  • Diablo IV new expansion reveal
  • Diablo Immortal more seasons and more cash shop thingies
  • Diablo III yet another season

Besides the Diablo V and anniversary thing, the big miss was probably the Diablo animated series project with Netflix.  That seems a bit shaky to me, if only because streaming services are feeling a bit shaky and Netflix has a reputation of cancelling stuff after two seasons, good or not, because it is cheaper to throw a few dubbed shows in the lineup instead.  Also, despite my enjoying the first few Diablo games, I am not all that big on the story itself.  It will have to get really good reviews to get on our TV.

Ovewatch and Other Things

Here is where I was basically tossing darts blind, and my guesses were as follows:

  • Overwatch – new hero reveal
  • StarCraft – Something vague about a new game based on the IP
  • Heroes of the Storm – Patch update, maybe a new hero
  • Lost Vikings – Erik, Baleog, and Olaf showing up somewhere new

I mean, I did better here than I did with WoW Classic, right?

Technically I think Overwatch is getting something like ten new heroes… but we got one reveal right there at the keynote.  Hell, we got a Heroes of the Storm hero announced as well.  I cannot remember even a single detail about either, but they were announced.

Also, we were forced to watch some long ass animated trailer thing that did not make a lick of sense to me.  Maybe the Overwatch people got it, but it felt like five minutes showing me something that could have probably just been described in 15 seconds.

The StarCraft shooter, long rumored and possibly cancelled at least twice before, finally made contact.  This has been a long time coming.  StarCraft Ghost was slated for the freaking GameCube, to give you a sense of time.  That era was probably the last point at which a shooter might have interested me, if I seem a bit blase on the whole thing.

But making a successful shooter is easy right?  I mean, even CCP thinks they can manage it.  We’ll see how this plays out.

BlizzCon Keynote Bingo Winning Squares!

Finally, the most important part for everybody I am sure, the bingo results.

It looks like 15 of the 54 possible squares came to pass.  If I do it again next year there will be some things I will cut for sure.  But I will also include a square for “you can play it on the show floor” for new things announced.

The items I am declaring having come to pass are:

  • Actual Classic Plus
  • Blizzard Family
  • Diablo 30th anniversary
  • Diablo V
  • For the Horde!
  • Holly Longdale Speaking
  • Mention of the Warcraft RTS
  • New Hearthstone Play Mode
  • New Hearthstone expansion
  • New Hero for Overwatch
  • New hero for Heroes of the Storm
  • Some boring exec talking on stage
  • StarCraft Shooter
  • The Last Titan teaser cinematic
  • eSports ignored

A couple of those were oddly insightful.  I must have been drunk to include Diablo V, but then it got announced!

I think, had I done this correctly, I would have been able to see all the cards generated so I could tell if anybody got a bingo.  But 15 out of 54 make for some pretty slight odds.

My own card did not get a bingo.  I only hit on five spots.

Wilhelm – Bingo Card Result

I think the lesson for next year is some more gimme squares.  Things like “female presenter dressed up to be on stage” and “male presenter thinks a product T-shirt is dressing up” spring to mind.  There is a real dichotomy between the sexes when it comes to what they wear on stage.  And maybe something like “Holly Longdale laughs uncomfortably more than a dozen times during her presentation” will find its way into the mix.

Anyway, that is my Monday morning recap.  There is a lot more to dig into, and WoW Forever is going to need some further examination for sure.  But I will need some more time on that front.

EVE Online and the Road to CSM 21

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The calendar sweeps forward relentlessly and we find ourselves once again facing elections.

No, not those election.  We’ll get to that real world pending disaster on our own.

Instead I am referring, once again, to the EVE Online elections for the Council of Stellar Management. CCP has put out the first dev blog about the upcoming elections for CSM21.

Council of Stellar Management 21

Those of paying for subscriptions will once again be asked to vote for players to represent us to the company.  And the company will reward our efforts by ignoring anything from the CSM that does not align with their preconceived notions.

Seriously, CSM20 should be the nail in the coffin for the whole “null sec tells CCP/Fenris what to do” scare mongering.  Instead they only listened to the guy going on about the force projection “problem” because the company wants the whole game to be low sec small gang fights

And, as noted in the past, I’d be less salty about that if CCP/Fenris hadn’t decided on the most counter productive plan possible.  It will be a waste of limited dev resources as they chase some fantasy that was spun in their brain about some perfect balance between low sec small gang and null sect empires moderated by some insane self-delusion about how their convoluted Ansiblex plan will work out.

Even if you are in the cult of small gang and believe null sec being able to defend its space is bad, this can’t be what you think the company should be wasting time trying to tune.  Just delete Ansiblex jump bridges and move on.  Anything else is a fool’s journey.

But the company leadership only cares about making the game fit their ideals.  They want the theoretical game they play in their heads, when they think about the game at all.

The certainly seem much more interested in their crap first person shooter and their blockchain scam game, much more so than the one successful video game they have ever made.  And they certainly don’t care about player feedback.

They are even now talking about how they are listening to feedback with their proposed HUD changes when it looks like they’re just listening to people who agree with them.  I know that is basic human nature, to weight agreement more strongly than opposition, but trained professionals know how to manage that sort of thing.

That said, tech in general hates people who can manage that sort of analysis and prefers just to ride forward on vibes and self delusion.  The first person to get laid off is usually the person questioning the current management plan.  I’ve seen that too often in Silicon Valley.  Why would I expect more from CCP/Fenris?

So when it comes to the CSM their literal brag points include the force projection nerf and how they are listening when it comes to HUD updates.  Here is their list:

  • The Catalyst Major Update – With community feedback at its core, this overhaul delivered new tools and insights for factional warfare and beyond.
  • Not-So-Little Things – Ongoing CSM input helped prioritize dozens of high-impact quality-of-life changes.
  • A Major Update coming for Cradle of War on 22 September, reflecting both community feedback and CSM collaboration. One change coming this time involves force projection, highlighted by current and previous CSM members as an important topic.
  • The EVE HUD has been redesigned based on feedback and collaboration with the community and CSM.

If we take that list at face value we have buffs for low sec via faction warfare (which will carry on for two more expansions after having spent two of the last four expansions focused on FW and low sec), fixing shit they should have been able to spot on their own if they played the game, nerfing null sec to favor low sec small gang players, and trying to update the UI without screwing it up… and I have my doubts about them not screwing it up.  The UI update is more likely to simply generate a host of new “Not-So-Little Things” to brag about fixing later because, again, they don’t play the game.

The company likes to say they listen, but the evidence does not support the assertion.  Don’t make me bring up the red dot.  What was it, nine months to get a simple fix?

The reality is that the CSM has no agency and the company ignores it more than it listens.  It is, as I suggested back when an elected body was first announced, the Galactic Student council, with no power at all, an you should point and laugh at any candidate running on a platform of making something happen.

Mostly what the CSM does is try to talk the company off the ledge from their worst ideas.  But when company leadership has their heart set on a really bad plan, they’ll just ignore all dissent and push on regardless.  It is practically a law of physics that you can’t talk CCP/Fenris out of their dumbest ideas… and the reign or Rattati has seen more than its share of epically dumb ideas.

So it goes.

But even if the CSM is a losing battle to try and act as a guardrail, if null sec didn’t get in there we’d probably just get nerfed harder.  So it will be coordination to get out the vote as usual.  As always, players will optimize to deal with the situation.

If YOU want to get on the CSM… well, if you’re deciding that right now, you’re not going to make it.  You need to spend a year or so on the forums and r/eve and making video content to get the attention of enough players to have a snowflake’s chance in hell.  And even then it will be an uphill battle.

Still, you can toss your hat in the ring starting on Thursday.  This is the schedule for the election.

  • Candidate submissions: 17 September – 2 October
  • Candidate announcement: 6 October
  • Campaign period: 6 October – 21 October
  • Voting period: 22 October – 3 November

Once the voting is closed there will be a few days for the company to get the results and somehow make an hour long presentation out of them.

The rules for those wishing to run remain mostly as before:

  • Your account must be older than 60 days at the time candidacy applications close.
  • Characters on both Alpha and Omega accounts are eligible to run.
  • You must have a history of honoring the EULA and the Terms of Service. We will screen every applicant thoroughly, and EULA/TOS violations on your record can result in a rejected application.
  • If you are unsure if you qualify, we strongly encourage you to apply early, as applications are processed in 72 hours.
  • AFTER you receive confirmation that you have been greenlit as a candidate, you must create a campaign thread in the CSM section on EVE Online forums covering the following questions:
    • Your EVE Online story.
    • Your areas of expertise. In which areas of the game do you feel you are the most knowledgeable? What qualities set you apart from other candidates? As part of your answer, please outline any relevant experience and perspectives you have on these topics:
      • Factional Warfare
      • Unstructured PvP
      • Ships, gameplay, and the HUD
      • Industry and markets
      • Sovereignty management and logistics
      • Highsec and the new-player experience
      • The connection between EVE Online and EVE Vanguard [Ed: JFC no!]
    • Why are you applying for the CSM?
    • What can players expect from you?
    • You are free to add more information and manage your campaign thread as you see fit, but the above four questions are the bare minimum required from everyone.
    • NOTE: Campaign threads for candidates that have not been approved might be removed to avoid confusion.
  • Your account must have updated and correct information at the time of your application. This includes your real-life name, correct date of birth, and the same email you use to submit your application. To view and edit this information go to the account management page. If you are unsure, you may file a support ticket along with your CSM application to update your account.
  • Candidates must be at least 18 years of age. If the legal adult age in your home country (the age at which you have the legal capacity to enter into a contract) is higher than 18, that number applies instead.
  • As an applicant, you must consent to provide your personal details to Fenris Creations, including your real name and a copy of your passport or national ID card for those that do not plan to attend the CSM summit in person. Fenris Creations needs to affirm your real-life identity for NDA contract purposes.
  • If you do not currently have a valid passport, we will accept a picture/scan of a valid and approved passport application accompanied by a picture of your national ID card.
  • You must consent to share your country of origin with the EVE community and display it on the EVE Online website. You will not be required to share any other personal information.
  • If you are running as an “alt” and controlling a character with a reputation in the EVE universe, Fenris Creations may require you to run under that identity at its full discretion.

Related:

TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2026 – Week Thirty-Seven with Some Updates

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Vacation is over and the whole 20 year thing is now in the rear view mirror.

Time to get back to it.  The words won’t just vomit themselves onto the page.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s anniversary post, it was probably a good week to be away, at least when it came to the league.  We had no titles slated to release so changes were entirely based on news and incoming reviews on already launched titles.

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

And we were not without some updates over the course of the week, so there is a bit to cover.  But first we need the usual reminder of where we left off last time.

Week 36 Scores

When it comes to actual changes on the scoreboard we did have some updates.  Early on in the week we had a score change.

  • Fantasy Critic: Rhythm Heaven Groove
    • [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
    • Score has gone UP from 83.3 to 84.6

Rhythm Heaven Groove came out back in the first week of July, so it has been stewing for a while.  I suspect that Open Critic simply “found” some additional old reviews as I do not see anything on the list more recent than August.

Rhythm Heaven Groove

That change was just enough to tip the tight competition between Nimgimli and Bhagpuss, who started the week just over a point apart in score, in favor of the latter.

  • Publisher Score Updates
    • Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)
      • Score has gone UP from 44.1 to 45.4
      • Moved from 8th place to 7th place
    • Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)
      • Moved from 7th place to 8th place

They still remained neck in neck as the score change was not all that significant.

Then I took a hit with Crimson Moon.

Crimson Moon

That was a bit more expected as it still sits at a dozen reviews total, so any new review can make a difference.

  • Crimson Moon
    • [Picked by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 76.3 to 74.6

I was not the only one to drop.  Big Walk also took a small hit during the week.

Big Walk

Somebody came in with a 7/10 review during the week which had just enough weight to drag the title down a little over a point.

  • Big Walk
    • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 89.3 to 88.1

Then we started getting some scores for next week.  Marvel’s Wolverine, one of four titles set to launch next week got enough early reviews to get on the board.

  • Marvel’s Wolverine
    • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
    • Now has a score of 80.6

That was a good score in the world of Fantasy Critic League… though shouldn’t it be Marvel Wolverine, without the possessive?  That is what it seems to say on the box.

Marvel Wolverine… see!

Another nit for me to pick I suppose.  Anyway, after the first few reviews landed, a lot more started pouring in, which dropped the title a bit.

  • Marvel’s Wolverine
    • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 80.6 to 77.5

Now past the 70 review mark, it feels like that is about where it is going to hold for the league.

And then, as the week drew towards its end Bhagpuss and Nimgimli swapped back to their original positions at the start of the week as something changed enough to move them with being enough to get an update ping.

  • Publisher Score Updates
    • Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)
      • Moved from 8th place to 7th place
    • Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)
      • Moved from 7th place to 8th place

So some scores changed during the week, but the overall rankings remained the same, leaving us with the following scoreboard.

Week 37 Scores

Not much to really go over on that front.

Also, no bids this week.

But there was a Nintendo Direct… two I think… while I was off in distant Los Angeles which got us some release dates for three titles.

  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (2026)
    • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
      • Release date changed from ‘2026’
      • to ‘Thursday, November 05, 2026’
  • Hela: of Mice & Magic
    • [Picked by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)]
      • Release date changed from ‘Q4 2026’
      • to ‘Tuesday, December 01, 2026’
  • Professor Layton and the New World of Steam
    • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
      • Release date changed from ‘Late 2026’
      • to ‘Thursday, December 10, 2026’

The biggest deal was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which previously had a long note attached to its details about how nobody was sure if it was a remaster, a remake, or something else.  Well, that got nicely sorted.  It is a remake.

That got at least one person I know who might otherwise be expected to favor some other console to declare they would buy a Switch 2 in order to play it.  The power of Link.

And then there are the other two.  Professor Layton has been around for ages, so another puzzle mystery title I gather, while I have no idea what Hela: of Mice & Magic is about.  I just feel like the first word after a colon should be capitalized, so that bugs me a bit.

All of which had no impact on the next ten titles on the list to ship.

Week 38 Coming Up

That gives us four titles set to launch next week, starting with Wolverine on Tuesday.  But the big one is probably Fire Emblem, as that has to potential to further solidify Shintar’s lock on first place in the final accounting.  We shall see.

Related:

The Official TAGN 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Post!

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Today is the day I hit the mark.

WordPress.com has confirmed.

I have been blogging here for 20 years.

The annual WP.com greeting

It is time once again to recap.  This post guaranteed to contain at least 17.7% new content by volume.  Also, I am avoiding AI and proving it by using my awful Canva banner for this celebration.

20 Years… see what happens when you let me use Canva?

That said, I was tempted by AI because I am not sure I could out-do its ability to churn out a really bad design.  This one, for example, which I almost went with.

In the end I decided to leave that by the wayside as this week is more about words than images.

Fortunately one problem I rarely have is coming up short on words.  Spelling them correctly or placing them in the right order… those problems I have.  But simple word count, usually not an issue.  And all the more so when it comes to anniversary posts, of which this is the 20th, though I have managed to spread this all out over three days of posts, so maybe this won’t go as long as usual… though, glancing down the page I seem to have failed on that front as well.

If, for some reason, you feel the need to “collect” the whole set… and I don’t even know what that would actually mean in this context any more than I know what it means that this is a “collector’s edition” post… here are links to past annual ventures.

That list of posts is like a microcosm of the life of the blog.  It started out hopeful and often a bit “try hard,” occasionally coming within inches of grasping onto clever, before settling down to a regular cadence of reporting on what I was playing, remarking on some aspect of video game news, and rehashing the same old opinions I’ve espoused all along whenever the moment made them even tangentially relevant once more.

But who is the bigger fool?  The fool who spends 20 years writing a grousing manifesto about video games or the fool who actually reads it?

Also, I am not sure what that had to do with anything or if made any sense.  It just sounded good when I said it aloud in my office a few times with a dramatic intonation.  The cat looked at me funny, but that was due to my disturbing his nap most likely.

The Basic Stats

Due to me needing to write this in advance, stats are cut off at September 7.  The missing 5 days are less than a rounding error 20 years into this.  In parenthesis are the diffs from last year, or notes where needed.

Days since launch: 7,300 (+360, because of the early cut off)
Posts total: 7,957 (+385)
Total Words: 7,306,525 (WP.com calculation)
Average words per post: (+23)
Post Likes: 27,064 (+1,770)
Average posts per day: 1.090 (-0.01… I continue to slow… slowly)
Comments: 41,268 (+1,200)
Average comments per post: 5.18 5.29 (-0.11)
Average comments per day: 5.65 (-0.12)
Comments written by me: 8,588 or 20.8%
Space used by images: 5.3 GB used, 7.7 GB (59.3%) upload space remaining.
Blog Subscribers: 3,711 (+188, mostly bots)

I have tracked other stats over the years but… well, I am not sure how much value even the remaining ones have, so the number of prime ministers Italy has had over the last 20 years seemed pretty expendable.

Data Unfiltered

For those who want to stare at even more numbers… well, this is for you!

I’ll open up with the page view totals by month and year, as provided by WordPress.com.

Year 20 – Page views by month

You’ll probably need to click on that to see the full details.  WP.com used to provide a better chart, one with full numbers.  But the kids there don’t like data, they like things that have colors because they never have to deal with any data I guess.  Still, you can sense a pattern, with a ramp up in views to a peak in 2012, then a long decline, with a brief recent resurgence.

To better visualize this I have a chart that just shows the annual page view totals.  I usually put up this chart with only full, 12 month years, which means 2007 to 2025 in this case.

TAGN Page View Traffic by Full Years – 2007 through 2025

Some of that is explicable if you just know what was going on with the internet.

Google was pretty generous to small sites until they made a change in 2013.  Mostly that affected traffic from Google Image searches, which now just cached all your images and sent you no traffic.  That hit here at TAGN somewhat, but over at my other blog, which is images only, traffic fell off a cliff and has never recovered.

A lot of internet interest went to social media around then as well.  Yes, Facebook and Twitter were things before then, but they really took over after 2012 or so.  Meanwhile, interest in MMORPGs fell off.

There was a bit of a Covid resurgence in 2020.  Blogs and MMORPGs were briefly popular again.  But that fell off pretty hard once the Covid vaccine let us do other things.

Then suddenly, things began to pick up again?  Why was that?

I have a version of that chart where I have included 2026 so far, with more than a quarter of the year to go, because the trend is rising.

TAGN Page View Traffic by Full Years – 2007 through Q3 2026

The blog is on track to get back into 2013 era numbers, which is crazy talk.  Few of the things I write about are very popular.  EVE Online is like death for blog views these days.  I’ll get into what is popular in a later section, but if I wanted more page views I’d only write about Pokemon Go, Stardew Valley, and No Man’s Sky.

And yes, I have written some about all three of those since 2022, but something else has been going on.  Looking over at Google Analytics for the blog, here are the top 20 cities that have sent me traffic in 2026.

  1. Singapore
  2. Matsumoto
  3. Bortala, Mongol Autonomous Prefecture
  4. Urumqi
  5. Kashgar Prefecture
  6. Ho Chi Minh City
  7. Dhaka
  8. Tashkent
  9. Tome
  10. Hanoi
  11. Ashburn, Virginia
  12. Sao Paulo
  13. Tunis
  14. Karachi
  15. North Bergen, New Jersey
  16. Lahore
  17. Amman
  18. Shenzhen
  19. Guangzhou
  20. London

What is the pattern there?  It sure isn’t “places with English speaking gamers.”   Yes, Singapore has a lot of English speakers.  And so does London, though if I broke these out by percentages you would see a pretty big gap between 15th and 16th spots for traffic.  So it is unlikely to be actual people coming here to read up on Stardew Valley.

Could it be places with AI data centers?

There is something interesting going on with the page view stats.  WordPress.com showed a huge spike in February and seems to have spotted some sort of bot trend and filtered it out.  It looks like they did another round of that in late August as traffic fell off something of a cliff in the last week and remains at 2022 levels.

Those levels are most likely correct and are largely driven by Google search results, which send me 300 to 1,200 page views a day depending on what I write about.  Google Search Console mostly agrees with those numbers.  With that trend in mind, I am on track for maybe 450K page views in 2026.

Google Analytics though… they have not done any filtering and are reporting at least double the activity that WordPress.com is this month, putting me on track for 600K or more views for 2026.

All of which is just another reminder that web stats are all garbage.  And you can’t even depend on consistency of measurement to spot trends because they keep changing up the models.

Who Sends Traffic to TAGN?

Search engines in general, and Google in particular.  WP.com has recorded 2,479,284 search engine referrals over the life of the blog and this is how they break down.

Search Engine  Referrals  % of total search
Google Search           2,105,259 84.914%
Google Image Search              237,926 9.597%
Google Android Search Box                67,614 2.727%
Bing                29,608 1.194%
duckduckgo.com                11,273 0.455%
Yahoo Search                   9,009 0.363%
Yandex                   3,821 0.154%
Ask.com                   1,881 0.076%
 Google Mobile                   1,796 0.072%
Baidu                   1,748 0.071%
Yahoo Image Search                   1,472 0.059%
 isearch.avg.com                   1,320 0.053%
Ecosia                   1,203 0.049%
wow.com                   1,118 0.045%
search.babylon.com                      994 0.040%
Conduit.com Search                      733 0.030%
AOL                      712 0.029%
search.comcast.net                      547 0.022%
search-results.com                      472 0.019%
Startpage                      425 0.017%
 Brave Search                      353 0.014%

The thing is, WP.com also says that the blog has had a total of 7,413,746 page views since its inception, while the search engine views are only 2,479,284, or roughly 33% of total page views.

Part of that is because page views and referrals are different things.  If you get a referral from Google and you open up a dozen posts to see the comments, that is just one referral but a dozen page views.

And people occasionally do that.  I had that Canadian visitor back in 2020 who showed up in the middle of the night and scrolled the whole blog, logging a lot of page views.  But mostly people just show up, look at one post for less than a minute, then move on.

So it FEELS like somebody else must be sending me traffic.  But it probably isn’t from referrals.

Excluding search engines, here are the top 20 sites for referral traffic over the life of the blog.

Rank Site  Referrals Sent 
1 virginworlds.com*        51,973
2 blessingofkings.blogspot.com (i)        51,702
3 WordPress.com Reader        47,256
4 totaleve.com*        43,472
5 evebloggers.com*        32,260
6 lowseclifestyle.com (i)        29,389
7 evenews24.com (i)        28,170
8 Google Reader*        25,899
9 Twitter*        21,856
10 keenandgraev.com (i)        18,935
11 Facebook        17,304
12 Reddit        17,209
13 bhagpuss.blogspot.com        12,230
14 syncaine.com (i)        11,462
15 playervsdeveloper.blogspot.com (i)        10,958
16 popehat.com (i)        10,858
17 feedly.com        10,254
18 greedygoblin.blogspot.com (i)        10,154
19 eq2-daily.com*           7,948
20 killtenrats.com           6,803

Sites marked with an asterisk are no longer there.  Sites marked with “(i)” are still there, but inactive.  Technically Twitter is still there as X.com, but it actively suppresses links to outside sites now, so is effectively no longer a traffic source, in addition to being dead to me.

I am going to give Ethic the benefit of the doubt since he seems to be back for Guild Wars 3 over at Kill Ten Rats.  But there was also a semi-farewell post a couple years back and a whole lot of quiet since Zubon moved on.  (Was that really in 2019? Yikes!)

Also, sites at blogspot.com are annoying because Google gives you the domain for every country, so I would have to dig out Blessing of Kings for co.uk and .au and .ca and whatever else generated traffic, which would likely put it above Virgin Worlds, but I don’t have the energy for the effort.  A general review indicates that you should maybe add between 5% to 20% to their counts, but no more than that.

The top 20 there only add up to about 466K referrals, which pegs them at about 20% of search engine traffic and maybe 6% of page views.

Which means some large percentage of traffic is likely bots.  But we knew that already, didn’t we?  It is either that or my burgeoning fan base in Bortala, Mongol Autonomous Prefecture.

One source of traffic that has absolutely not developed is the LLMs the bots are scraping sites to feed.  You can find a few entries for each way, way, way down the referral list, but the next one to make it to three digits on the list will be the first.  The only LLM element that sends traffic on any regular basis is Tipa’s Daily Blog Roll, and that is managing one or two a day.  The LLM companies do not want to join the internet, they want to eat the internet whole and sell it back to you via tokens.

What is Popular Here in Any Case?

This is always more interesting to me than raw stats, and I will open with the usual list of the top 20 most popular posts over the lifetime of the blog, now with both the view count and the month/year when each item was published.

  1. Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID! – Jul 2009 – 66,698 views
  2. Play On: Guild Name Generator – Aug 2007 – 66,233 Views
  3. Running Civilization II on Windows 7 64-bit – Oct 2011- 57,213 Views
  4. How To Find An Agent in EVE Online – Aug 2007 – 40,281 Views
  5. How to Catch Zorua and Zoroark – Mar 2011 – 36,290 Views
  6. First Pokemon Black and White Download Event – Victini – Mar 2011 – 33,347 Views
  7. Minecraft and the Search for a Warm Ocean – Jul 2018 – 31,190 Views
  8. From Alola Pokedex to National Pokedex in Pokemon Sun – Mar 2017 – 26,149 Views
  9. April Fools at Blizzard – 2013 – Apr 2013 – 24,799 Views
  10. Considering Star Wars Galaxies Emulation? Better Grab a Disk! – Jul 2011 – 24,661Views
  11. Getting Upper Blackrock Spire Access – Feb 2008 – 23,892 Views
  12. 20 Games that Defined the Apple II – Jan 2013 – 23,141 Views
  13. Timing Lucky Eggs for Friendship Milestones in Pokemon Go – May 2023 – 23,028 Views
  14. Diablo III vs. Torchlight II – A Matter of Details – May 2012 -22,362 Views
  15. EVE Online – The Tutorial – Sep 2006 – 18,737 Views
  16. The Mighty Insta-90 Question – Which Class to Boost? – Jan 2014 – 18,730 Views
  17. The No Man’s Sky Holidays 2025 Expedition Schedule – Nov 2025 – 17,709 Views
  18. Type 59 Being Pulled from the World of Tanks Store – Jan 2012 – 16,023 Views
  19. World of Warcraft Magazine – Issue 2 – Jul 2010 – 15,990 Views
  20. Level 85 in EverQuest… Now What? – Mar 2014 – 15,953 Views

As I have said in the past, there is a lot of old stuff on that list that have been carried on through time.  And a good quarter of them are barely even things I wrote.  They are rather things I copied or put up based on news.

For example, the most recently posted item on that list is about the 2025 No Man’s Sky holiday expedition schedule.  Nice to have something less than a year old make the cut, but that was me summarizing a post by Hello Games and adding some context and links.

Now you can compare this with the top 20 most viewed posts over the last three years.

  1. The No Man’s Sky Holidays 2025 Expedition Schedule Nov 2025 – 17,728 Views
  2. No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends Aug 2024 – 15,648 Views
  3. Timing those Lucky Egg Milestones in Pokemon Go May 2023 – 14,984 Views
  4. The No Man’s Sky Worlds Part II Update Overwhelms Me Feb 2025 – 14,516 Views
  5. WoW Classic 2025 Road Map includes Pandaria and Vanilla Servers Nov 2024 – 10,520 Views
  6. Planning my Platinum Medal Strategy for Pokemon Go Level 49 Aug 2025 – 10,140 Views
  7. Cat Catching in Enshrouded – Nov 2024 – 9,675 Views
  8. No Man’s Sky and Finishing Up Expedition 21: Remnant and Beyond Feb 2026 – 8,923 Views
  9. Alamo teechs u 2 play DURID! Jul 2009 – 8,839 Views
  10. Stuck on the Level 47 Requirements for Pokemon Go Dec 2024 – 8,624 Views
  11. Level 45 at Last in Pokemon Go May 2024 – 8,260 Views
  12. Building My First Corvette in No Man’s Sky Sep 2025 – 7,874 Views
  13. Answering Questions with AI – Finding a Warm Ocean in Minecraft Apr 2023 – 7,353 Views
  14. No Man’s Sky Remnant, the Furnace, and the Final Colossus UpgradesFeb 20266230Views
  15. April Fools at Blizzard 2026 – Am I Still Doing This? Apr 2026 – 6,192 Views
  16. The Altar of Zul and Jintha’alor Apr 2020 – 5,855 Views
  17. This One Simple Trick will Up Your Pokemon Go Steps Dramatically! Mar 2025 – 5,702 Views
  18. Threads is Dead Jan 2025 – 5,648 Views
  19. Stardew Valley – The Luau, The Train, and the Green Rain Jun 2026 – 5,261 Views
  20. WoW Midnight Editions and Pricing for Early Access for Housing Aug 2025 – 4,825 Views

There are some overlaps.  Alamo will never die.  That post gets linked on the WoW Classic subreddit every six months or so.  But when the weight of years has been removed you do see some more recent items.  Even items from this year.

Then, if we want a more recent perspective, these are the top 20 most viewed posts over the past three month.

  1. Stardew Valley – The Luau, The Train, and the Green Rain Jun 2026 – 5,261Views
  2. Stardew Valley – Stardrops as the Second Winter Approaches Aug 2026 – 4,054 Views
  3. No Man’s Sky Expedition 22: Why Would I Run These Missions? Jun 2026 – 3,704 Views
  4. Windrose: Welcome to the Swamp Jul 2026 – 3,147 Views
  5. Planning my Platinum Medals for Pokemon Go Level 49 Aug 2025 – 2,403 Views
  6. A Brief Survey of MMORPG Subscription Prices in 2026 Jun 2026 – 2,294 Views
  7. Planning My 50 Platinum Medals for Level 80 in Pokemon Go Jul 2026 – 2,065 Views
  8. No Man’s Sky and The Swarm Expedition: Countdown to the end of the Countermeasures Milestone Jul 2026 – 1,791 Views
  9. No Man’s Sky and Getting Started with Expedition 22: The Swarm Jun 2026 – 1,753 Views
  10. Stardew Valley on Our TV Jun 2026 – 1.712 Views
  11. This One Simple Trick will Up Your Pokemon Go Steps Dramatically! Mar 2025 – 1,556 Views
  12. Building My First Corvette in No Man’s Sky Sep 2025 – 1,232 Views
  13. No Man’s Sky – Playing with Friends Aug 2024 – 1,059 Views
  14. EVE Online, Departure Planning, and the Big Sell Off Aug 2026 – 927 Views
  15. Cat Catching in Enshrouded Nov 2024 – 897 Views
  16. EverQuest Legends Announced… But What is it Exactly? Mar 2026 – 792 Views
  17. Making Level 73 in Pokemon Go and onward to Level 74 Jan 2026 – 748 Views
  18. Stardew Valley and Through the Winter and Into Year Two Jul 2026 – 737 Views
  19. Microsoft Embraces Layoffs and Enshittification for XBox Games Jun 2026 – 724 Views
  20. Stardew Valley and Creating a New Save Jul 2026 – 710 Views

As I have said elsewhere, Stardew Valley has been more popular than I expected.  Then again, it has sold some 50 million copies, putting it in contention with Overwatch for popularity. That’s enough that I am surprised Microsoft hasn’t tried to buy it and screw it up.  I think there could be a world where you rent a Stardew Valley server for you and your friends to play on. (There already is.  I know that.  But there are complications.)

And all that proves is that what is popular changes over time.  If this interests you I did a post about the top five most viewed posts by year back in 2020.  Though, if that interests you then you are kind of odd.

The Inevitable Summing Up

I wrote almost everything above this section last Sunday.

Something that probably should have been part of yesterdays post about semi-regrets is the fact that I decided to launch a blog on a day that guaranteed it would fall on the same week as my wedding anniversary almost every year.

2006 me has some things to answer for.

As such I was away most of the week on a trip, which included going to Universal Studios on the literal hottest day of the year there so far.  It was 104 degrees at its peak and didn’t drop below 100 until we were back at the pool at the hotel, finally dropping into the 90s around 7pm.

I will say this.  People don’t go to Universal Studios in huge numbers when it is 104 degrees, so we were able to do all the rides we wanted without any waiting.  Some friends, who are serious amusement park people so may have a somewhat skewed view of things, suggested we would need two days to really experience the place.  But if there isn’t a line for anything you can get get it done in five hours and be back at the hotel for a dip in the pool.

All of which is somewhat beside the point other than I was away and I did not take my laptop, so everything this week before this post was written in advance.

Oh, and it was a hell of a week to be away.  Valheim left early access, No Man’s Sky launched their big update at last, Nintendo had some huge announcements, Sony screwed up yet again, and BlizzCon is later today.  Nobody is going to read this because there is too much else going on.

So I am not even feeling the usual pathos that often rolls in at this point in these annual posts where wonder aloud if I should take a break, not write so much, or change up what I write about.  Normally that just marks me as an unreliable narrator, as here I am inevitably back the next day and posting.

But I can’t even must up any enthusiasm for that because I feel like I am behind.  I am happy very little happened in Fantasy Critic League this past week because I can get that post out quickly tomorrow and then follow up with another one later in the day.

Then there will be a round up of the BlizzCon news and first looks at the Cosmos expansion in No Man’s Sky and Valheim 1.0, both of which feel fine to be delayed on since both have had a few patches.  Then there is Planet Crafter, where Potshot and I have already moved on to the next planet and Stardew Valley which my daughter and I played last weekend but which I still have to catch up with.  I think next week’s plan is already booked up.

Somehow there is always something else to write about.

And that doesn’t even get to two additional Saturday series I have been weighing writing.

So clearly a lack of topics isn’t going to stop me.

My goal, which I ended up setting a year or two into the life of the blog, when I decided to start reigning in the chaos and maybe start trying to have something of a plan (remember, no plan at launch!), was to have a post on every week day, leaving aside weekends for overflow or non-gaming topics of whatever.  I have somehow exceeded that plan… to the point that I have posted every day since March 29, 2020.

Maybe I could give up on that streak.  I mean, it has no meaning.  It is the ultimate nonsense “number goes up” charade.  But man, once you let go the work to get back to that number should I regret it… I might not last that long overall.

Really, though, I am wondering how long I can carry on.  Twenty years seems to have moved right past me.  The next twenty, however… well, I could make it to thirty years I suppose, but I have trouble seeing myself being capable of much beyond that even if the desire remained.

But I will commit to next week.  There will be posts then.

Thanks for continuing to visit here.