New Year's Gaming Resolutions For 2019

The year 2018 is in the record books. Finally. I won't dwell on the past year today, mostly because I'm still compiling statistics in EVE Online. Today's post is a look ahead to 2019 and what I plan on doing in my gaming and blogging life. I probably won't complete a single one, but the year is new and hope springs eternal. But since resolutions at the beginning of the year are a tradition, I'll go ahead and make some.

First, I want to play and finish some of the single player games in my Steam Library. The first is one I picked up in December, Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations. I bought the game in the Winter Steam Sale because the game usually costs $80 and the sale allowed me to pick up the game for 67% off. I want to finish all the tutorial missions and then finish at least one of the Live scenarios based on real world events. I purchased both Seasons 1 & 2 and even though the combined cost due to the sale was $12, I'd like to justify the purchase.

I also have two other games I'd like to play and finish. The first is Valkyria Chronicles. I bought the game in 2014 and even played 14 hours. But I never finished the game. Maybe 2019 is the year I succeed. The second game is one I purchased in 2012, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Yes, I purchased 38 Studios' only published game before the company crashed and burned. Surprisingly, not only is the game still available on Steam, but THQ Nordic acquired the rights to the IP in September. I only played the first few hours of the game before becoming distracted. If THQ does something with the IP, I'd like to at least have a little background on what came before.

Currently, I am playing two MMORPGs. In addition to EVE, I have a subscription for Elder Scrolls Online. Last night I hit level 40, so I think reaching level 50 by the end of the year is realistic. I understand the maximum effective number of champion points is 720, but I hear the maximum level of gear is 160 champion points. If I can wear the highest rated gear at the end of the year, I'll consider my objective achieved.

Last, but certainly not least on my game list is EVE Online. I want to finish up creating a base in Amarr space and then create a base in the Gallente COSMOS high sec constellation. I finally want to level up my Gallente standings to 9.9 in order to get the 2-run Megathron Navy Issue blueprint copy.

On the industry front, I want to build at least two battleships. The first is the Marshall. I am so close right now, so I need to add a second battleship. I think building a Tempest Navy Issue is a nice goal. I also want to build a Tornado, the Minmatar attack battlecruiser. I know, not ambitious, but I think the standings grind will take up a lot of time.

My resolution for the blog is to write at least 100 posts, or two per week. Last year I only wrote 73 posts, the fewest number in the 9 years of The Nosy Gamer's existence. A more ambitious goal is 181 posts in order to end the year with a total of 2000 posts, but I'm not really sure I'll have time to write that much, so my resolution is 100 posts.

Part of reaching my blogging goal my involve reaching inside myself and releasing my inner Matari. With the Minmatar region of Heimatar a magnate for a distribution botter, I planned on looking into the markets in the Minmatar Republic for evidence of botting and illicit RMT anyway. Why not expand the concept and look at the home of my favorite faction in EVE? The Caldari get a lot of attention due to the presence of Jita and the citadels in Perimeter. In null sec, the Monthly Economic Report often serves as a recruiting tool for The Imperium. Why not give the Minmatar Republic a little press?

Those are my basic plans for 2019. If I manage to get even one item on my list done, I'll call the year a win. Now back to tracking that botter down in Illinfrik. Yes, it's news in the Minmatar Republic, my we don't need that kind here.

Where Is The Originality?

I started to drop out of popular culture long before 2005 when I started playing World of Warcraft.  Television was lame, with reality TV making an introduction with Survivor and American Idol back in 2002.  Movies?  Besides The Lord of The Rings trilogy (2001-2003), I didn't see anything of interest.  Music?  Country music isn't exactly mainstream, although Taylor Swift and appearances on The Apprentice by Trace Adkins and John Rich put the genre a little more into the spotlight.  Books?  Science fiction and fantasy isn't mainstream either.  In short, I was out of the mainstream and enjoying life.

I wasn't aware just how unoriginal popular culture has become until I looked at last year's top 10 list of movies in terms of worldwide gross.  Here they are:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
3. Pirates of the Carribbean: On Stranger Tides
4. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
5. Kung Fu Panda 2
6. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
7. Fast Five
8. The Hangover Part II
9. The Smurfs
10. Cars 2

Nine of the top ten movies were sequels.  And after having a drill sergeant we called Papa Smurf, I wouldn't want to watch the tenth movie as I might become traumatized.

But are MMORPGs any better in terms of originality where their intellectual properties are concerned?  Looking at the five most popular Western MMOs from yesterday's Digital Dozen post, the answer is discouraging.

The 800 pound gorilla of the genre, World of Warcraft, started with an IP created for their successful Warcraft RTS games.  By the time WoW launched on the 10th anniversary of the release of the Warcraft franchise, the game was the fourth one set in the world of Azeroth.  While very successful, as an intellectual property not very original.

While unoriginal in its application to an MMORPG, at least Blizzard created the IP, unlike 3 of the other 4 games in the top 5.  The #2 game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, relies on the Star Wars universe and LucasArts is listed as co-publisher of the game along with Electronic Arts on Wikipedia.  The #4 game, Lord of the Rings Online, relies on the world created by H.R. Tolkien, although Turbine does not have rights to works like The Silmarillion.  The #5 game, Star Trek Online, uses the universe created by Gene Roddenberry. 

That accounts for 4 or the top 5 games.  What about the #3 ranked game, Eve Online?  Bucking the trend amongst the most successful MMORPGs (and movies), CCP created an original intellectual property we now know as New Eden.  CCP didn't just create a world and then leave story generation to players.  Over the past nine years CCP has added to the story to the point that the lore information was reorganized into the Fiction Portal in the Evelopedia.  With thousands of pages of information, famed explorer Mark726 of Eve Travel in conjunction with Seismic Stan has published a lore guide on Freebooted that gives a rather long summary of the Eve Online IP.

But Eve Online launched in 2003.  Are we condemned to see major game studios pushing unoriginal intellectual properties to us?  I don't think so.  Last year's surprise hit Rift climbed as high as #5 on Xfire among video games of all genres and last week was the 11th most played MMORPG.  In April, Funcom plans on releasing The Secret World, an MMORPG in the modern world with the premise that three ancient conspiracies are at war with each other and with ancient evils.  A game about conspiracies promises a lot of originality in looking at myths and legends.

Perhaps the most intriguing use of an intellectual property may come from Curt Schilling's 38 Studios.  Schilling hired R. A. Salvatore to create a world for the company's Project Copernicus that was used for the sRPG Kingdom's of Amalur: Reckoning.  In 2004 Blizzard released an MMO based on a world created for a RTS series.  Will Project Copernicus launch to a ready-made player base already invested in the Amalur world?  CCP had a lot of growing pains as it slowly climbed up the charts.  Has 38 Studios found a winning formula, at least as far as their IP is concerned, to avoid that?