R.A.M.O.N.E.S.

I remember reading somewhere that The Beatles are still the most covered band of all time, which is a bit of a depressing thought if it's true. If we're talking songs about bands, though, my bet is The Ramones would win by a New York mile.

If you don't believe me, try this playlist. One hundred and ninety-four songs that mention The Ramones. Allegedly. I haven't checked every one. I'll take it on trust.

I also haven't just ripped off that research for this post. No, honestly, I haven't. Not much, anyway. I already knew all of the songs I'm linking here before I even looked at that list. Well, most of them. The good ones.

It is a fine list, though, isn't it? I mean, don't you want to hear Have You Seen Dee Dee Ramone? by Jesus H Presley? No? How about Homenaje a los Ramones by Los Petersellers? Or When The Flintstones (Met The Ramones) by The Magic Sponge?

Then there's Johnny Ramone by Like Some Cat From Japan. Sounds a bit like The Flying Lizards. It's pretty good, although it's at least twice as long as it ought to be. Yes, you met Johnny in 1994. We get it, already.

A surprising number of songs about The Ramones sound nothing like The Ramones. I say "surprising" because, of course, there are also a shedload of covers of Ramones songs and 95% of them sound exactly like The Ramones. Or, at least, the bands playing them obviously think they do.

Seriously, what is it that makes everyone think they can nail that trademark Ramones sound? I mean, if it was that easy everyone would be doing it. Oh, wait...

There are a few bands who can do it. Some of them, arguably, even better than The Ramones. I can think of one or two I'd love to share but I'll save them for another time. Today we're having songs about the boys, not by them.

Oh, sod it. Let's have a couple anyway. We don't need an excuse to hear The Spazzys doing Paco Doesn't Love Me or The Pantones, covering the same song in Spanish. Impossible though it seems, The Pantones do it even better.

Getting back to the main theme, The Spazzys' also have a song about a Ramone. It's an unusual choice: Marky. They wanna cut their hair like him. Well, I guess you wouldn't want to cut it like Joey. Or Dee Dee. Or, god forbid, Johnny.

There seem to be more songs about Joey than any of the other Ramones. I could fill this post entirely with songs about Joey. Hell, even U2 have one. It's called The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) and no, I am not going to link to it. Go find it yourself, if you really feel you must.

Sleater-Kinney don't want Joey's hair, they want to be him. For you. Yes, you. Here they are at CBGBs back in '97, telling you so. They still feel the same today and so does Gerard Way. He's from My Chemical Romance. They were A Threat to Our Nation's Youth once. Rememember that? No, didn't think so.

I'm guessing any similarity to Iggy's I Wanna Be Your Dog is no co-incidence.

Andy Shernoff, who I'm also guessing is the same person as Adny Shernoff of The Dictators, not least because his heartfelt tribute, Sweet Joey, sounds almost exactly like The Dictators, is perhaps unique among the acts here in that he actually knew Joey Ramone. And performed with him.

Most of the songs about Joey revolve around meeting Joey, dancing with Joey, being like Joey or even becoming Joey. Or just being glad Joey existed and sorry he doesn't any more. Sloppy Seconds claim You Can't Kill Joey Ramone but no-one did. He just got ill and died.

Sloppy Seconds are a very smart bunch of punks with a flair for titles to match The Ramones' and the lyrical chops to back it up. You pretty much have to if you're going to stand on stage proclaiming "I Don't Wanna Be A Homosexual" and not have people take you at face value.

It was a problem The Ramones faced from the outset. Are these guys for real? Are they really that dumb? Are they genuine nazis? Yes, no, no. Well, in Joey's case at least. He was what passed for a liberal intellectual in the band. No wonder everyone loved him.

The Ramones sound revolves around Johnny's chainsaw guitar but there was always a little doo wop going on somewhere. The seventies were a hotbed of fifties revivalism and in a strange way The Ramones were part of that. Simon Love, in his tribute, Joey Ramone, (original title, Simon!) sounds a little more sixties than fifties but Joey often channeled the girl groups too, so it works.

Mason Zgoda reaches back further still. There's some forties torch song in her Joey Ramone (What, again?). She's not even really singing about Joey, just drawing on his mystique for metaphor. "I'll be your Joni Mitchell/Be my Joey Ramone". Imagine how their children would have looked. Not to mention sounded...

Takes a while to start, this one. Stay with it. It's worth it.

Some wag in the YouTube comments on the next one says "Somehow I can't imagine there ever being a song called Dancing With Wreckless Eric". Well, I can. Maybe I'll write one. Wreckless is recovering from Covid19 as I type this so, god willing, he won't get to pass on his wife Amy's best wishes to Joey in rock'n'roll heaven any time soon. (Rock'n'roll heaven? Geez. I missed my calling as a late night D.J. that's for sure).

Let's wrap up this meeting of the Joey Ramone Fan Club with something a little more Ramonesesque. The Psychords say they wanna live like Joey Ramone. Looks to me like they're half way there already.

Joey inspires quality. Dee Dee... well, Dee Dee inspired an entire album of tributes. I haven't attempted to listen to many of its thirty-one tracks but I do like I Love Her and She Loves The Ramones by The Havenots.

Songs about people's girlfriends liking or not liking The Ramones make up a sub-genre all their own. The Creeps' My Girlfriend Hates The Ramones is very fast and has great dynamics. The Huntingtons' Jeannie Hates The Ramones seems to be the same song, personalized. The Huntingtons are clearly going to have some issues with Jeannie. They make their intent clear in I Wanna Be A Ramone. I can see that putting a crimp in the relationship.

Capping them all is the extraordinarily impolite "She's Ugly But She Likes The Ramones" by The Come Ons. It's actually a lot better than I expected from that title and the knowledge that it comes from an EP called "Tougher Than Elton John" suggests a band with more than a passing familiarity with irony.

In a pathetically obvious attempt to redress the balance after that lapse of taste and judgment, here's Shonen Knife. Ramones Forever indeed.

I was wondering how to end this post and then I came across the perfect pair of pairings. Yes, I took them from the long list. The skill in research is getting someone else to do the tedious grunt work as any research assistant will tell you.

It's probably never occured to you that The Ramones would have any standing, let alone influence, with country music fans. It certainly never occured to me until I ran into Heidi Howe. Yeah, well, never underestimate the power of the three chord trick. It's a universal language.

"I first learned at seventeen

 The only faith that works for me

 The Ramones and George Jones

 Too tough to die and seventeen's turned thirty-four

 And George Jones don't make my country stations anymore

 Punk rock don't sound as sweet as it did before"

Ain't that the truth?

It might seem a narower leap than George Jones to The Ramones but back when I was a punk there was a big division between those who picked the Pistols and those who chose The Clash. I was very, very firmly in the Clash camp, a judgment I believe time has endorsed. Supposedly, both bands rated The Ramones but it sounds like things didn't work out so amicably for Gary Sunshine, who tells his own, personal tale of musical battle-lines drawn in The Sex Pistols & The Ramones (A Love Story).

That's probably enough Ramones for one day. Oh, wait, but before we go there's one more loose end to tie. Remember that title all the way up there at the top? It's a song and here it is.

Lemmy, doing R.A.M.O.N.E.S, with The Ramones.  Not going to get a better coda.

Now, I wonder who else has enough songs written about them to make a whole post? Gotta be a few...

(There's No) Planning In Shadowlands

Blizzard seems to be managing the buzz around the upcoming Shadowlands expansion for World of Warcraft rather adroitly so far. The way they finesse datamining to make it into a marketing opportunity rather than a security issue is exemplary.

They obviously could not have foreseen the extraordinary circumstances in which the run-up to launch would occur. It makes it a little difficult to unpick what's part of the original plan, what's a genuine response to the situation and what's a hybrid of the two.

Given that one of the tent-pole features of Shadowlands is the Level Squish and a complete re-write of the entire concept of levelling, including adjustments to the experience curve that "make it faster than ever", it seems somewhat odd to go for what looks likely to be several months of double xp. It seems even odder to see people jumping on it.

I've already half decided to buy Shadowlands when it launches. I have no history of buying WoW expansions. When I first played the game I bought everything that was available in a matter of a few days - first the base game, then Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, when I discovered to my immense surprise that WoW was actually not at all bad.

Those were all the expansions there were at the time. By the time Cataclysm appeared I'd already stopped playing. I never felt the need to buy another expansion after that although I did re-subscribe for the Legion pre-events. I enjoyed them so much I put Legion on my Amazon wish list and Mrs Bhagpuss bought it for me for my birthday.

I never played it. I think I left it uninstalled for a couple of years and then, when I finally got around to trying it, I lasted about two sessions. Until Classic came along I was perfectly happy with the sub-level 20 free trial whenever I felt the need for a wander around Azeroth.

I've always been mildly curious to see the changes wrought by the Cataclysm and explore the lands of the pandas. Just not curious enough to level up and do anything about it. The revamped levelling plan for Shadowlands has me very intrigued.

It sounds as if it might be possible to experience all the eras of WoW in concentrated short form. I'd like to see how that might work. It would also mean seeing quite a lot of content completely new to me, possibly in the form of some kind of whistle-stop tour through WoW's greatest hits.

There's also the extremely tempting hint that it might be possible in Shadowlands to play a Vulpera without having first to level a character to max and then jump through a circusful of hoops. I said back when the fox race was first revealed that I'd re-subscribe if I could start as one and I still feel that way.

All of which suggests to me that right now would be the very worst time to go all-in on double xp. Why would I want to level a character up before the big changes to levelling? Okay, I realize that for some people levelling an infinite number of characters is no problem but even as a confirmed and committed altaholic I do retain some small sense of perspective.

I confess I am tempted to re-sub for a month or two. There's no real clarity yet about how long the lockdown will last here in the U.K. but it's going to be a few more weeks at least. It could be even longer, especially if there's a phased return to the new normal.

That would make having access to superfast xp on Retail and also being able to return to do a bit more on my characters on Classic quite an attractive prospect. If, that is, it wasn't for the freakin' great elephant in the room that is the new levelling experience.

So I'm going to resist the siren calls for now. At least until we get a hard release date and some indications of what the pre-launch events might bring. One way or another, though, I suspect another visit to Azeroth may feature in my gaming future later in the year.

This One Goes To Eleven

Sometime around now I was hoping I'd be ready to write a post about the changes to EverQuest II's Overseer feature. There's just one, tiny problem, I'm not at all sure I understand them. Judging by this thread, neither does anyone else, possibly not even the people who designed them.

On Saturday I dinged eleven in Overseering (Overseerage? Overseerdom?). All of the missions I had on that account were immediately removed, except for the ones still counting down the clock. Those vanished as soon as they completed.

Along the road to level eleven I ran into two achievements, one each for for dinging Overseer levels five and ten. Each  landmark came with its own "tutorial" (a pop up window filled with multicolored text) and a consumable containing three missions from what I'm guessing we're now calling "Season One".

I just logged in to do some banking. What the heck is going on?

Every character I logged in got one  but as the tool tip tells you, it can only be unpacked by one character on the account. You can also only choose one of the three missions from each of the level five and level ten crates. Those then become "charged" options in your list of available missions and you can start them in addition to the ten you're allowed daily. Or that's how I thought it worked. Now I'm not so sure.

All of which is confusing enough but once you hit the magic level eleven you gain access to a vendor who "sells" all of the missions you managed to unlock during Season One. There are two of them, one in Freeport and one in Qeynos.

The Freeport vendor is a Sarnak called Stanley Parnem. (Is that really a traditional name for a Sarnak or is there some kind of in joke I'm missing?). I don't know who "sells" them in Qeynos. The missions cost zero copper and the game describes them as as "free charged missions", which suggests either someone writes this stuff in their second language or they're being deliberately obtuse.

You can mouse over the icons to get a great deal of detail about each mission but the two crucial pieces of information I look for - quality and length - aren't included. I thought that wouldn't really matter since you can have all of them for nothing but it seems that although you can buy them all you can only use a limited number of them. How limited and under what rules... no-one seems to know.

Stanley. He's quite the popular guy.

At first I thought you could have all of them, which seemed like total madness. Why have a ten-mission daily quota for the current season and also allow you to do the entire first season on top of it? That's forty missions! Imagine how many it would add up to after six or seven seasons!

It's not as crazy as that, fortunately. You can "buy" an unlimited quantity of free "charged" missions (I really wish they'd thought of a less confusing adjective there), including multiple copies of the same one (I tested that-  for science!) but there turns out to be a cap on how many you can use in a day. As I mentioned, no-one seems to know what it is yet, but there's definitely some kind of limit..

Mine capped on Saturday at five charged missions (plus the Weekly mission, which also counts as charged) but people were talking in the Test chat channel about having eight or more. Now that I've done those missions once, though, I can only repeat two of them. I'm waiting on the inevitable update to the update for more clarity.

When we briefly had twenty missions a day during the bonus mission week I did find that a bit too much of a good thing. I'd be happy with five charged missions on top of the regular ten but I know some people won't be satisfied until they get them all.

The implementation is clunky and buggy so far but it seems to be working after a fashion. I imagine there will be quite  a few tweaks and corrections before things settle down. However many we end up with, unless I'm missing something, I can't see any reason, other than the time it takes to set them up, not to do all the available missions every day from now on however many that ends up being.

Except, of course, that first we all have to build back up to having ten missions avaialable for the new season. Just like when the Overseer feature began, you begin with just two. The rest are going to come as drops from the reward crates, just like last time.

It's all very complicated. Overcomplicated, really.  The version of Overseer now running in the original EverQuest is a lot better designed and implemented. That one really is an enjoyable mini-game all on its own.

The EQII version is fun all the same and I've found it to be highly profitable. If I get rewards in Season Two anything like the ones I've had during the opening season I will be very happy.

The other big change to the system that came with the big update was the option to convert excess or duplicate agents into a form of currency called agent resumes. This only applies to talentless agents, the useless ones everyone stops using as soon as they get anything better. It occurs to me that as time goes on we're all going to start piling up multiples of the good agents and people are soon going to start complaining about that but maybe it's all part of some cunning plan.

For now, I'll just keep on handing the decent agents on to different characters to use. I have a team of ten on Skyfire so it should be a while before I run out of willing hands.

The vendor who takes the new currency in Freeport stands just along the dock from Stanley. I haven't checked where the Qeynos vendors are. His name is Old Michem, he likes to fish, and he sells a big selection of the items you can get as rewards for doing the missions themselves.

It means if you're out of luck with RNG you can save up to buy whatever it was you wanted. I know a lot of people like that although it never sets my blood racing. The prices are a little eye-watering. The 165 resolve gear runs to 60 agent resumes plus some status and plat. The bottleneck is the resumes, of course. You'd be lucky to get one item a month at those prices. Also, even 165 resolve seems to be old hat now. The new solo instance is handing out 170s.

The Shadowed recipe books cost 250 agent resumes plus 312,500 status and 7,500 platinum, which is a real hurdle. It would be worth saving up for something like the Shadowed Sage Studies 20 book, which until now has been changing hands for many millions of platinum on the broker but I can't imagine many people bothering with any of the recipe books other than Sage, Alchemist and Jeweller since crafting in BoL is generally agreed to be borked for all but those three classes. Oh, and Provisioner, maybe.

Anyway, as is always the case, what seems like an outrageous price today is going to look like peanuts in a few months. Only the very impatient are going to pay through the nose. And it should eventually drive down the cost of the pricier books on the Broker.

That's about as much as I know so far. Some of what I said is almost certainly wrong and anything I got right could change at any time. The Overseer feature is still very much a work in progress.

But I like it. It's interesting to play around with and I've done very well out of it. I'm curious to see where it goes next.

A Little Something On Account

Between us, Mrs Bhagpuss and I have seven Daybreak accounts. I made the first when I bought EverQuest in 1999. As soon as Mrs Bhagpuss watched me playing she wanted a go so we shared that account for a couple of months, in flagrant breach of the EULA.

We didn't really need Sony Online Entertainment's contract enforcement team to tell us that was a bad idea. As our desire to play expanded to fill most of the available hours it soon became clear we didn't just need separate accounts, we needed separate PCs.

An account each was fine for the first few years. Our shared origins made for a few problems now and then but mostly we settled down to me using the original and Mrs Bhagpuss using the newer one.

That arrangement didn't last as long as you might imagine. Somewhere along the line, for reasons I can no longer remember, we swapped. In short order each of us ended up with yet more characters on both accounts. Don't ask me why. I'm sure it made sense at the time.

The 66-slot backpack as it looks from the outside.

Fortunately for both of us, all of that only ever really applied to EverQuest. We managed, by and large, to keep our characters and accounts seperate in EverQuest II and only I ever played any of the other All Access titles.

We'd probably still have just the two accounts if it hadn't been for one of John "Smed" Smedley's brilliant wheezes. He experienced a damascene conversion to the free to play model and, despite a determined rearguard action by a substantial cadre of veteran players, managed to drag the entire business around to his "free to play - your way" of thinking.

The transition began cautiously with a new f2p server, Freeport. I can't now recall exactly how the whole thing worked but I seem to remember that to play there you needed a new account unsullied by subscription payments. Or possibly we just thought it would be tidier that way. Better late than never, I guess.

Whatever the reason, Mrs Bhagpuss and I made new accounts and  started over. Freeport was a great success and we were very happy there for several years. It remains one of my favorite servers in any game although sadly, like most of the really good ones, it no longer exists. It was merged and merged again until all that remains is a legacy title that I proudly display above the heads of my Old Freeportians.

We'd have stopped at four accounts if it hadn't been for another of SOE's half-baked fancies. EQII had muddled along perfectly happily for many years with the best housing offer in MMORPGs. It could have gone on like that indefinitely but there always has to be someone who thinks they can do better, doesn't there?

Apparently what decorators had been missing all these years was competition! Cut-throat competition. A whole set of league tables was created, with awards and prizes and titles and guess what? All hell broke loose.

Smed's always been strong on PvP, even when it's seemed a bad fit for some of the games under his watch but I don't think even he could have imagined the mayhem his little sideshow would unleash. Housemakers couldn't actually beat each other to death with ulthork's foot umbrella stands but they found plenty of ways to turn what had been a polite mutual appreciation society into a self-declared celebrity death match.

No-one cares about the mechanics any more so I won't attempt to recount them. Suffice to say we made another three accounts because if you want to win a popularity contest the more votes you can keep in your pocket the better.

Born too late.

All of which is a very long preamble to explain how it was that I came to be logging in seven accounts this morning, five of which haven't seen daylight for several years. My goal was to secure for each of them the very excellent Great Escape Crate that I mentioned a couple of days ago. I'm not sure if the offer is time-limited but better safe than sorry. Wouldn't want to miss out on something I'm never going to use on characters I'm never going to play. Forget the irony, just give me the stuff!

It's not as though it was the first time, after all. All the accounts have Heroic characters on them from previous giveaways, including Mrs. Bhagpuss's. She hasn't even logged in to EQII since before Heroic characters existed but I always log in her accounts to grab a free Heroic if there's one going.

Across my own accounts and the "neutral" ones I appear to have boosted have no fewer than three Ratonga shadowknights as well as an Iksar warlock and a Ratonga bruiser, who even has the same name as the one I'm playing on my regular account. I don't remember making any of them, although a couple seem to have been played, at least a little. I still have plenty of Heroic tokens left, too, if I feel like making some more.

Why, yes, thank you. I would like another ratonga.

As I was searching through the Claim window for the current promotion I noticed a number of other freebies I seem to have missed. One of Mrs Bhagpuss's accounts had something that particularly struck my eye, an unlock for the Freeblood vampire race, normally available only through the cash shop.

That unlock came with something called the Velious Winter Rewards, which I vaguely remember. It was part of a promotion back in the winter of 2010/11. It happened back before my current account even existed, which explains why I don't have one. Or at least not on that account. I checked my old main account, though, and not only do I have the unlock there, I've already claimed it!

So I could have made a Freeblood any time in the last decade. Why didn't I? I have no explanation. I even have a free character slot on that account. Maybe I'll go make one now.

In fact, if I wanted, I could go on a character-making spree. I discovered this morning all the free accounts and one of the formerly-subbed ones had something called the EverQuest II Adventurer's Pack waiting to be claimed. It contains a couple of two-hour 100% xp potions and a character slot unlock.

Where did that come from? Google couldn't tell me and neither could the forums, although I did find this useful link that gives you a complete list of every flag on your account. You can also use the in-game command /show_account_features although it only gives you the highlights.

From that I can see that my main account doesn't own the Adventurer's Pack and never did.Why? No clue. It's a pity, though. I could have done with another character slot on the account I actually play rather than on all the ones I don't. I guess I could start multi-boxing...

I was so sure I'd used all of these...

There are so many more things waiting in Claim for me to either get around to using or deciding who should have them. Every account gets Veteran Rewards these days and even the free accounts are up to Year 10. There's only one more to come after that before Daybreak stopped counting. They went to loyalty points from Year Twelve onwards. You get those from doing dailies. I have about twelve hundred of them.

I also used all my Legends of Norrath packs just as the card game was about to sunset so I have a bunch of prizes from there, scattered across several accounts. Some of those are very nice. The only problem is I can't decide who should get them so they just sit there in /claim. I look at them once in awhile and it makes me happy.

Then there's all the Goblin Games tickets. That was a quasi-cash shop thing that got discontinued years ago. I thought I'd used all mine but at some point there must have been a giveaway because all the accounts have stacks of fifteen.

I did a few goblin games this morning. The prizes are pretty good but because SOE was trying to get around the lottery laws you have to play an actual game to make it "game of skill" not a "lottery", even though it's a game a blindfolded monkey would win every time.

Plus some bright spark thought it would be nifty to have an actual goblin that spawns and invites you to an actual goblin cave, meaning you have to have a conversation and zone in and out every time you use a ticket. I run out of patience after about five goes.

None of this would be a problem if EQII hadn't always been so extraordinarily generous with the free gifts. It's not just a load of old tat. It's quality stuff. Stuff you want to have. And there's a lot of it.

Maybe I'll take this opportunity to go through the whole shebang and hand things out to whoever needs, wants, will use. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Only I'd probably need to be on lockdown until this time next year to get through it all.

Best not tempt fate. I guess it's safe enough where it is.

Draft Resister

There's been some talk around the blogosphere concerning draft posts. I think it started at Contains Moderate Peril.

The whole idea is something of a mystery to me. Obviously, I understand the concept but I've never been much of a one for writing drafts, not even back in my school and university days. I've always been  more of a " bang it out, knock it into shape, stick it out there" all in one session kind of writer.

Well, apart from my blessedly brief Penman/Morley period, that is. You should see the piece I wrote on DC's first Crisis series. I worked on that for days to make sure I drained every last drop of comprehensibility out of it. By the time it was published even I had no idea what I was talking about.

I'd all but forgotten Blogger had a draft folder until I replied to a comment at... um... oh dear... how embarassing... I do aplologize... Amid the welter of Blapril posts I've rather lost track. I know it was somewhere I visit regularly... If whoever it was would like to remind me I'll add a link later.
 

As I was saying the other day about my spam folder, I don't do as much maintenance on the blog as I should . Since I was in the drafts folder, I took the opportunity to tidy up a little and have a snoop around.

There were sixteen files, two of which were completely blank. I deleted those. Of the remaining fourteen, two were posts I'd just finished, due to be published that day and the next. Writing ahead like that isn't something I normally do. It's been a bit of an experiment for Blapril and it hasn't really worked. I'll be glad to get back to posting everything on the day it's written.

One more draft in the folder is the ongoing record I'm keeping of songs and lyrics used in titles. It will become a post in its own right in July.  That leaves eleven, only four of which are titled:



Here Comes The New Boss - Looks finished, except for the pictures. A post in which I pontificate at considerable length on the tired topic of subscriptions vs free-to-play, drawing analogies with other media as I attempt some kind of extremely ill-advised historical analysis.

I'm fairly certain that, when I read it back, I must have been too horrified by my cod-academic posturing to consider publishing it. When I write stuff like that, which happens more often than I'd like, I usually make heavy edits in the hope of turning the dry straw into something more palatable. If I can't manage that I usually junk it and move on. It would be very rare for me leave one lying around. In fact, it may be the only extant example from eight years of blogging.

Overthinking Again - Oh wait, no it's not. Here's another! In this gem I ask myself a lot of rhetorical questions about the state of MMORPG gaming, only to conclude "I should probably play more games. That way I might not find myself thinking so much." You think, buddy?

That one might have been re-purposed and published in a much less emo version. I seem to have a faint recollection of doing something of the kind. Unfortunately, opening a draft file in Blogger resets the date so I can't easily flip back to the month it was originally written and check if it ever went live. Shame I didn't think to write the original dates down before I looked through the whole folder, really.

The Potterer's Guide : The Maw, Shadow Behemoth, The Great Jungle Worm and Fire Elemental - This one I remember. I'm pretty sure what happened here was that I got a fair way in before deciding to make it into a series. That's how it ended up being published, anyway.

Why I kept the draft is another matter, although the explanation is most likely "why not?" After all, iIt's been sitting there quietly since 2013, harming no-one. It may as well stay there.

And I mispelled "wurm" but it's probably a little late to go back and change it now.



Scattershot: TSW -  Complete and ready to post with pictures and everything. This really does look finished, albeit it's from the very early days and extremely short by modern standards.

As the title suggests it's a random selection of observations on The Secret World beta, full of shattering insights like

That Templar intro sequence sets a great mood. The guy that did the arm movements probably needs to stop watching those old Thunderbirds videos, though.

and 

Someone likes Keanu Reeves. A lot.

Since I can date this one by subject matter, let's check. Ah yes, it was published in full back in May 2012. Verbatim.

I don't think that really counts as a draft, does it? It's just a copy of a finished post. I suppose that means I could delete it now but you and I both know I'm not going to do that.

Bonus biographical note: "Scattershot" was the name of the column I used to write back when I co-published a comics fanzine in the early 1980s.


That leaves seven more drafts in the folder. Three seem to be fragmentary remnants that went on to become published posts. I probably went at them with the virtual scissors and glue and this is all that's left. Usually I'd do re-writes in the same file but sometimes, if I've really changed the flow, I'll cut&paste into a new one. Then, because I'm messy, I might forget to throw away the scraps.

Two more seem to be things I started but never finished because I decided they were either too shrill or too four Yorkshiremen (RIP Tim Brooke-Taylor). At least I hope that was the reason. A rant is one thing but a hysterical shriek is something else. Plus, who wants to be the "I was happier then" guy? Not me.

That leaves two.  One's a list of ideas for posts about music. I jotted that down last summer when I made the decision to open Inventory Full up to topics outside MMORPG gaming. I think I've written a post for every idea on that list now but I'm going to keep it for its historical value.

Last we have a collection of screenshots, no text. I remember I was flipping through some old folders of shots from Guild Wars 2 one afternoon and I started to pick out the ones with speech bubbles, thinking I might do something with them one day.

Guess what? Today's the day!

The Fox And The Rabbit: Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

Before we begin, let me just say this post has been sitting around for a while. I'm finding that writing posts a few days in advance creates more problems than it solves. And I'm not even sure there were any problems in the first place.

Yesterday I had to insert a bunch of fake edits. I could do the same here but it's a joke that gets old fast. Suffice it to say Easter is over, negotiations with Freya are progressing and I do now know how to wear a hat.

Let's crack on.

I am still playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. In fact, last night when I went to bed, instead of starting to watch Amazon's well-reviewed new episodic fantasy series, Tales From The Loop, as I'd planned, I found myself catching eggler fish instead.

I've been reading a fair amount about the Easter event in Animal Crossing New Horizons, not all of it very complimentary but it hadn't even occured to me I'd run into Zipper the egg-crazed rabbit in Pocket Camp. I'm a little unclear on whether Bunny Day is a separate holiday from the general egg-based shenanigans in the way EverQuest II overlaps three events during Easter but until I logged in last night I hadn't noticed a seasonal flavor to the game, other than the ever-present "April" prompt.

Zip it, Zipper. Just point me at the fish.

It would be easy for me to miss something. I haven't logged in every day and I still don't really know what I'm doing.

The Animal Crossing games are supposed to be light, relaxing fun, or so the marketing and much of the fandom seems want you to believe, but getting to the "fun" part takes some serious determination, particularly, I suspect, in the case of Pocket Camp. It can sometimes feel like a very "mobile" game, if you know what I mean.

There are patience issues to be overcome even before that. It's slow to load on my Kindle Fire, something it has in common with pretty much every app. The Kindle always seems to have a million more important things to do than whatever I had in mind. I'm resigned to a five minute wait before I can watch anything on Amazon Prime because it takes that long before it lets me adjust the volume.

ACPC doesn't have that problem but it frequently crashes before it gets going. Fortunately, once it's sorted itself out, it's completely stable. And then the pop-ups start.

There are an inordinate amount of windows to navigate. Some of them are trying to sell me things but most seem to belong to a tutorial that never ends. Every time I do anything I haven't done before - and not infrequently when I do things I have - some screen opens up to tell me how to do it.

Freya the free spirit. I may be in love.

It can take ten minutes before I'm in full control. Okay, maybe it's not that long. I haven't timed it. It feels like it, though. It says a lot for the quality of Animal Crossing that I'm putting up with it. When the Kindle and Nintendo finally settle down and leave me to get on with things I have a pretty good time.

As I mentioned in my previous AC post, my goal was to find Freya the fox and ask her to come to my camp. Progress has been made on that front. I found her, talked to her and gave her some things she wanted but as yet, I haven't had the nerve to invite her to join me.

I'm having some issues with the etiquette here. It's that politeness thing again. It seems rather louche, doesn't it? Inviting someone you've only just met to come home with you. Not to mention move in.

The option seems to appear the very first time you speak to a new animal but there's a whole mechanic going on with hearts filling up as you do them favors or give them stuff. I'm very unclear on whether there are thresholds to reach below which an invitation would be rebuffed. It's a nervous kind of dance and I don't know the steps yet.

I could look it up. Animal Crossing guides and videos must keep an entire server farm in business. But where's the fun in that? I'll just keep poking around in the game itself. I'm sure it'll all come clear eventually.

Is there no place safe from generation hatred?

I may not have managed to lure Freya into my clutches just yet but I do have a bunny hat. Zipper gave me a long spiel about eggs and fish and measuring sticks, most of which I let wash over me, but I did pick up the bit about fish that sparkle so when I saw one I caught it. Then I kept catching them until there weren't any left.

When I gave my fish to Zipper he gave me a hat. I love hats. In game and out. I've been told I'm a natural at wearing hats. It's a talent, what can I say?

Unfortunately, this time I can't work out how to put my hat on. I can put it on an animal. I managed to work out how to put clothes on Apollo the probably-an-eagle. I made him wear a dress and he liked it. I could have given him my bunny hat but who knows if he'd ever have given it back? Not a risk I'm prepared to take.

For now my hat is staying in my backpack. Not that I have a backpack. I mean, I probably do have a backpack because I keep picking stuff up and when I need to give it to people there it is. But I can't see my backpack.

I'm not worried. I'll figure it out. I worked out how to paint my VW Camper a lovely two-tone blue, didn't I? Animal Crossing Pocket Camp has a garage run by the bastard penguin offspring of Mario and Chico Marx because why wouldn't it?

Swordfish! The password is swordfish!

I also figured out how to go inside my van and how to decorate it. I have some flowers and a lamp in there. It's cosy. If I had a van like that in real life I would be very happy to self-isolate inside it for a week or two, let me tell you!

As the BBC reported today (Tuesday, as I write) a lot of people are finding a substitute in virtual worlds for the lives they've temporarily mislaid in the real one. The BBC has a good record of reporting online gaming in a clear and reasonably accurate fashion for non-gamers. They often hang their reportage on the peg of the newest gaming fad so it wasn't a surprise to see the lede given over to Animal Crossing.

The Corporation also has a strong preference for certain IPs,  EVE Online being one of them. Hilmar Pétursson, CCP's head executive and a very familiar name in MMORPG circles, pops up to tell us Eve "is famous for being a very social game", which is one way of putting it.

In days gone past a piece like this would have focused heavily on World of Warcraft but Azeroth doesn't merit a mention even in passing. Apparently Call of Duty and Fortnite are where people go to hang with their friends these lockdown days.

And Animal Crossing, of course. Tobold still doesn't get it but millions of others do. I think I may be one of them.

Be There Or Be... Somewhere Else, I Guess.

This just popped up on my Pitchfork feed. Why don't these things happen in games I play? Don't answer that. I know.

Game concerts have been happening for years, of course. Decades, almost. With no-one touring right now and perhaps not likely to be for a lot longer than anyone's really prepared to admit, the atractions of a virtual stage must be obvious even to the most flannel-shirted troubador.

Come to think of it, why is it mostly EDM, emo, pop-punk and metal acts that play the game stages? Wouldn't some of these fantasy settings be better suited to people who already seem to think they're following in the bardic tradition? Yeah, ok, point. Maybe let's not encourage them.

Anyway, since I'm not likely to be attending 100 gecs' Square Garden party, I thought I'd have a little dance-off of my own right here, featuring some of the headline acts. Any excuse to put up another Charlie XCX video...

Since it's where the whole thing's going to be happening (Friday 24 April, mark your calendars), let's open with Parry Gripp and "Tortoise Playing Minecraft". Hey, it could happen!

Continuing the animal theme, here's Cashmere Cat. Or should I say Princess Catgirl?

Fantasy's fantasy but things just turned real. I never realised Halsey was an anagram of Ashley until I saw this benny blanco video. 

Was that too serious? Maybe just a tad. Let's lift the mood. This is a party, right? Kero Kero Bonito's so good, too, we really ought to double up!

And now... the headliners.  Charli XCX is at home right now but she's still making magic, if this track she premiered a week ago is any guide. Love that distortion.

It's a festival set, though, so we need some crowd-pleasers alongside the new stuff.

Aaaaaand now, the act you've all been waiting for - although I confess I'd never heard of them until today - here they are - 100 gecs! First with Charli XCX and Kero Kero Bonito, then on their own.

Phew! I'm about all partied out. I think I might just go and have a lie down. If you play Minecraft I guess you can see the real thing go down next Friday. If not, it's going to be livestreamed here. and the charity they're doing all this for is Feeding America, if that's your kind of thing.

Thanks you, Blapril, and goodnight!