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 :)

April 2024 In Review

 Taking some inspiration from The Ancient Gaming Noob (TAGN for short) I wanted to start up month-in-review posts.

Microsoft Designer / prompt "an image to represent a blog post summarizing the month of april"

The Blog

 I will likely write a bigger post about this but I had a "surprise" after researching recent random traffic spikes.  The findings are best explained in this summary which guided me through blocking spammers that are abusing Google Analytics GA4 tags.  Needless to say my bubble was deflated as 90% of the traffic to my blog has just been spam and not real traffic (which explains why I see so few comments).  So where I was thinking I had 1,000 visits a day I really just have 100 (and that may still be high).  

 Anyone using Google Analytics should read that article and take the actions to block the spammers and build reports to review your historical traffic without that traffic counted.  I did parts of this through April so won't have a full picture quite yet and will share more on traffic stats in future monthly updates.

 In other metrics:

• Posts:
  
• Target: 22 (at least one per week day)
  
• Posted: 16
• Difference: -6
• Why the miss?  Work.  It's been busy so spare time has been gaming instead of blogging.  Fortunately clearing up here for May to get back on track.
•  Search Trends
• "new world ultimate trophy" is the main search driver to the blog and then hundreds of other New World search terms after that (daily checklist, season 5 artifacts, upgrade named gear - just to name a few)
  
• "call of the wild the angler multiplayer" is the big non-New World driver anytime that game seems to have a hiccup with this multiplayer features.
  

What I Played

 New World continues to dominate my time even though there isn't much new to do in the game.  My main focus has been on 3v3 arenas and the Springtide Bloom event.  The spring event, while bugged, was a good "do it and chill".  The bug let you get rewards faster so I was able to get all skins and rewards from the event with less effort than expected.   For 3v3 arenas I peaked into the top 10 for wins briefly for Season 5 and am back to 12th.  My main playing partner hit #1 though so that was cool to see; though both of us lack the time to stay on the top for the full season.  We'll still give it a go though.

 Fallout fever caught me as it has so many others and I gave Fallout 3 a couple hours of attention, but will admit it fell off almost immediately in favor of New World.

 I also got time with the Pax Dei Wilderness Alpha and spent several hours there.  The game has a good bit to improve but there is a little glimpse of promise of game there.

Years Ago

 One thing I wanted to steal from TAGNs is his look back over the last twenty years (we're getting old!).  My look back will mostly be from my blog history but a real life event may pop in here or there.

1 Year Ago

 April 2023 brought us Season 1 in New World and Rabbits Revenge (which due to patch delays we did NOT get in 2024).

5 Years Ago

 April 2019 caught me in my drought of blogging so had no posts, but my youngest son was also just turning 3 months old at the time so I was plenty busy.

10 Years Ago

 April of 2014 was all about the MEGASERVERS coming to Guild Wars 2.  Ten years later and we still have MMOs thinking they can launch with single servers.  How I wish New World had a megaserver model!

15 Years Ago

  April of 2009 I was looking at the news about A Dance With Dragons being delayed and fifteen years later, while we did get Dance, we have NOT gotten the next book in the series!  But GRRM is not my bitch so I'll leave it at that (if you get this comment you get it).

 20 19 Years Ago

 Technically I have 20 named years on my sidebar, but mathematically 2005 is only 19 years ago.  And April of 2005 I was not yet blogging, but that was all about to change as I started in May 2005!  Which means I was thinking about it in April!

Fallout to the Fallout

 

 The Fallout series on Amazon is all the rage and rightfully so as it recreates not only the theme of the games but also the quirkiness.  I am one episode in and even I, the can't-ever-seem-to-play-single-player-games gamer, am contemplating a jump back into the Fallout games.

 I was reading Tales of the Aggronaut and the post from Belghast: Radioactive Nostalgia.  Both in title and content the post was spot on.  The Fallout TV (is it really TV?) series is spot on translating the game to the screen.  From the look of characters to the well-placed medpacks on the walls everything just feels right in the first episode and I can't imagine it gets too far off later in the season.  

 It is so good that it has many players such as Belghast back and playing the Fallout games.  Even I'm considering going back to Fallout 3 or 4 which I never finished.  Or maybe like Belghast I revisit my favorite in the series: New Vegas.  Regardless of my decision the SteamDB charts don't lie: lots of folks are returning to Fallout games with the popularity of the TV series (see charts below).  You might say there is some fallout... to the Fallout.

 

Fallout: New Vegas – My journey

FYI, spoiler warning.



I’m ashamed to admit that Fallout: New Vegas is the first Fall Out game I’ve actually played (as in played). Sure there was the Fallout and Fallout 2 dabbling I did in high school back in the day, but I really wasn’t a PC gamer at that point. I passed on Fallout 3 because I don’t buy single player RPGs anymore until they are on a Steam sale (and Fallout 3 has yet to be on a really good Steam sale). So when FO:NV went on sale for $4.99 I was going to pass assuming it required that I have Fallout 3. It wasn’t fathomable to me that a game’s sequel would be on a cheaper sale than the original. A friend spotted my stupidity and bought me FO:NV. Twenty-five hours later, I’m glad he did.

I’m well behind the release of the game with this post, so I won’t bore anyone with the technical or graphical side of the game. The game works well and looks good.

I finished FO:NV in a single week, a rarity for any game I purchase. What kept me coming back for more was the main storyline of the game, which is ironic considering the immense amount of side content available in the game. I really enjoyed the story and world. The various factions in game are interesting and the constant struggle between the sides is well done. It literally blew my mind when I realized all of these different sides were attempting to recruit me as the all-star for their side in the upcoming battle of Hoover Dam. I genuinely felt like each side had a valid offer.

After this was taken, I accidentally shot him in the face.

In the end I decided to go the route of helping Yes Man. Well to be honest, I accidentally shot Mr. House in the face when he was out of his life-enabling chamber which sort of ruled out following his path towards a Mr. House controlled New Vegas. Which by default made me the leader I guess? I wasn’t quite sure at the end if I was in control or whether Yes Man was. The massive army of robots under Yes Man’s control sort of tells me I wasn’t in charge. Either way, I’m pleased with my decisions.

To note though, at one point I was heavily leaning towards supporting Caesar’s Legion. The free supplies every few days seemed like a nice bonus (except trying to remember where the stash was replenished). However, I must admit I’m not into the whole cannibalism and anti-technology thing they have going on.

I didn’t side with the NCR because, well… I really liked their NCR Ranger Armor and ED-E wouldn’t stop getting into fights with them for some reason, so my NCR faction rating was shot. NCR soliders also make for great experience farming. However, it did make trips to the Strip a bit dodgy until I realized I could disguise myself as an NCR member.

I finished at level 15, which is only half of the available thirty levels. I followed a guide that had me start with ten intelligence, which did result in a ton of extra skill points per level. Following the guide really helped towards my enjoyment of the game as I often met the minimum threshold for a lot of alternate paths and having Repair high early on helped me unlock the ED-E companion who is a huge boon to situational awareness in combat.

My character focused on Guns, Lock-picking, Barter, Repair, and Sneak. My weapons of choice were the Assault Carbine and Hunting Rifle, replaced by the Marksman Carbine and Sniper Rifle eventually. My favorite perk to combine with these was the Bloody Mess which is self explanatory.

Being a loot whore, I also kept choosing looting-specific perks such as the one that let me carry up to 250 weight and Jury Rigging which let me repair my massive stock pile of guns I had made outside Gun Runners (btw I’m amazed how this game can remember where I leave just about anything, even if that anything is 100+ different guns).

Now that I finished the game I’ve been going back a little bit and leveling up some. I have an Anti-material Rifle now (.50 caliber sniper rifle). With the weapon handling perk and implants, I can wield it effectively now.

I’ve also just started to dig into some of the side quests that are in the game. I was really into the main story line and did absolutely nothing on my first run through. I’m still clearing out the stuff from Primm and the other starting areas.

Oh and to note, I killed Boone because I wanted his hat. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It was an otherwise unjustified killing in that giant dinosaur statue.

Here is my collection of screenshots.  And a couple of my favorites below:

Boone's Beret + Boone's Sunglasses + ED-E (robot) + NCR Ranger Armor = I'm a murderin' thief!

Barrels, always getting in the way of my bullets.