Over the Hill

Asgard Mountain isn’t a radical change from Gimli Ridge, but it does push things further.  The terrain is more rugged, the marked trails less tamed, and the unmarked trails more common.  To find all of the points of interest you will spend a lot more time driving past the end of marked trails than you had on the previous two maps.

Yes, even on the first map, Emerald Lake, you have to push beyond the end of marked trails to find the final few points of interest.  But at Asgard Mountain there are some pretty large swathes of the map that have no trails indicated so you will need to make your own way across a variety of terrain and find paths to the markers that present themselves.  Sometimes the way forward is fairly obvious.  Other times you may get within sight of a goal only to have to easy way to get there.

Just a sheer cliff in the way…

That is the exploration aspect of the game, the challenge of the map, the bit that makes getting there worthwhile.  And the sights are worthwhile, with beautiful views and the occasional surprise find.

Is that an abandoned Apollo command capsule?

The marked trails vary, with some smooth rides.

Down a trail by a lake

Then there are some trails that seem to be worthy of being challenge trails in their own right… something not helped by our own driving errors.

Hanging off a bridge by two wheels

That was on the way to a trail and I think we had to restart that journey twice, only to find the actual challenge trail much more relaxing.

There are two vehicle recovery challenges on the map and both of them are very much a step up from previous maps.  The first one I found had a stranded vehicle down in a shallow bowl that you had to spiral down and then tow the vehicle back up.  This was the first one I couldn’t simply brute force with the Blazer.  Instead you have to figure out where you need to plant yourself so you have enough grip to pull your target up a steep incline.  Also, I did it in the middle of a snowstorm.

It is like Dun Morogh out here…

The other is a high wire act where you have to tow a stranded vehicle along a mountain trail where there downhill aspects can make the whole thing go awry as the mass an momentum of the free wheeling target can work against you.  I got pulled down the mountain face on the first try, yoinked off the track by the tow rope.

The stranded vehicle is taking me down

I ended up doing a pretty cautions run the next time and made it to the rescue point, but I had to hook and unhook it a few times to get it there safely.

After a few weekdays exploring on our own, Potshot and I grouped up to take on the last challenge trail we had left, the one at the top of the ascent from the previous post.  We took this one seriously… or at least semi-seriously… getting our favored trail vehicles out to make the run to the highest summit on the map.

The pair at the cabin where we started

I was in my red Scout… Trailrat… and Potshot had chosen The Brick, both vehicles fully upgraded for the ascent.  I had recently unlocked the hot dog roof cosmetic, so decided to run with that.

From the cabin it is only a few dozen yards to the start of the trail, the Midgar Ascent.

Midgar Ascent in big letters when you arrive

We set out on the trail which, honestly, did not have anything quite as challenging as “the crack” of the previous post.  But it was still a job and required some careful approach lines and generous use of the winch.

Hot dog wagon waiting for Potshot to get lined up

Together we managed to make it to the top and wrapped up the final challenge trail, arriving at the Heimdall’s Eye observatory, which was the final scenic point on our list as well.

Top of the world ma!  The hot dog wagon has arrived!

After that I had to find two more points of interest to find.  One was in a very obvious diamond of unexplored territory in the middle of the southeast quadrant of the map.  That was another one where you follow a trail, then push on beyond the marked trail to find an unmarked by fairly readable trail to the eventual mark.

The final point of interest Potshot had to point me at.  As it turned out I had driven past, but not quite close enough, to a point of interest at the very middle north of the map.  It required a long run up a shallow but undulating snowy slope to get there.  It was within site of that Apollo capsule pictured above.  That screen shot was from this ride to the last point of interest.

I made it to the final crate, got my reward as well as the Canadian Passport achievement for making it all the way through the first three maps.

That meant the next stop was Algeria.

Fractured Skies has arrived

I was a bit surprised when I logged in this morning to find that there was no login reward event kicking off for the expansion.  Did somebody forget to flip the switch for that?  I though that was a requirement for literally any new thing in EVE Online.  It is there in the expansion post.  Maybe tomorrow then?

The in-game store however had three free things waiting for me.

Free Stuff

Going from the left, the first is the character background everybody got for voting in the CSM21 election.  That isn’t really related to the expansion, the update was just the vehicle for its delivery.

The second is the weekly 15K skill points that Omega accounts get, this time with 25 PLEX attached.

And third is the now standard seven days of free Omega subscription time to get people to show up and try the new stuff and maybe inflate player numbers a bit.  Expect the usual spike in ISK on the MER.

There is also the usual Twitch drop routine running.  The streamer ecosystem must be preserved.

Then there is the expansion itself which, in a nutshell, is delivering the following items:

• AIR Academy Ships
• Level 1 Mission Modernization
• AIR Career Program is now a set of Achievements
• New UI/HUD (Preview Mode)
• Navy Attack Battlecruisers
• Synchronizer Rigs
• New Modules
• Faction Light Attack Fighters
• Ship Rebalancing
• Something Something Faction Warfare
• Trying to make EVE Vanguard a thing

The first three on the list represent another chapter in CCP/Frenris attempting to figure out how to get new players to like their 23 year old game while trying to dodge Malcanis.  We all know that one, right?

Whenever a mechanics change is proposed on behalf of new players, that change is always to the overwhelming advantage of richer, older players.

That basically means that any change you make has to be so limited that nobody really cares about it.  So giving new players free, fitted ships that can only be used in Exordium, the PvP-free kiddie pool region the company created… is a choice.  Maybe it will teach them how to fit a ship.  Probably not, but it could happen.  Also that assumes CCP knows how to fit a ship.

The goal is retaining new players, but this feels a bit like kicking the can down the road.  And, if you look at the most recent MER, Exordium isn’t exactly setting the world on fire with its stats.  It beats out NPC null sec on a couple of points… but I think that really just tells you something about NPC null sec.

Also on the new player retention list in redoing level 1 missions.  Cool.  But PvE is still dull in New Eden and remains a dead end trajectory for most.  In 22 years I doubt the company has improved on the chart they showed at Fanfest 2014 as they set out to solve the player retention problem.

New Player Trajectory – EVE Fanfest 2014

Also, that just means level 2 missions look dated now once you graduate to them, and they are all repetitive in the extreme.  Their primary upside is that they deliver an expected output… ISK and LP… reliably.

And then there is moving the AIR Career Program to become achievements.  I mean, sure… that was a pretty cheap way to beef up the achievement count, which was pretty limited with its initial launch.   Those are now all in the Achievements window.

AIR Career Achievements

This is one where Malcanis is going to be found true.  The company just reset the program for everybody, so if you already reaped the skill point rewards from the program, you get to do it again.  Also, you get a title this time.

I continue to be mildly annoyed at the company’s willingness to disregard the 23 years of history of the game for some immediate gratification… but more skill points I’ll collect by mostly doing what I was going to do anyway… so yay.

The new HUD UI… I’ll wait a few weeks before I turn that on.  I have no doubt there will be things broken in it.  We’ll see if it shapes up.

The new Navy Attack Battlecruisers are part of the pattern of making navy versions of all the T1 hulls because it is easier than making brand new ships I am sure.

There is an argument to be made that there are already enough ships in the game, or even too many for each to have a role at which they excel.  But new ships in EVE Online are like new heroes in Overwatch… exciting and always overpowered until the eventual nerf.

Also navy faction ships require LPs to purchase which come most heavily from Faction Warfare, which is what the company has been is all about for the last couple of years.  Make Faction Warfare something again!

Not that FW didn’t deserve the love.  It had long been neglected.  And some days it is better for the company to focus on areas of space other than your own.  Certainly every time they look at null sec they can only see nerfs they want to apply.  I just wonder if the long time FW players are feeling good about all the attention.

Same for faction light fighters.  More things to spend LP on.  Expect faction versions of all fighters eventually.

Then there was a bunch of rebalancing and some new rigs that somebody will have to explain to me.  That mostly means I need to update Pyfa and make sure I have Defender Missiles trained to V.

Then there is the whole Faction Warfare thing, campaigns and what not, which I won’t pretend to understand even a bit.  As part of that the company is duct taping EVE Vanguard onto the game in hopes to boost the paid alpha they are going to try and foist off on people. I will do my part by mentioning it as little as possible.

So it goes.

Then there are the usual sales and promotions.  You must buy for the game to survive.

Finally, there is, of course, a release trailer for the expansion.

Twenty seconds into the trailer there is the quip, “Did they fix sov yet?” as two players try to convince a third to come play.  That is just the usual Rattati and Okami bullshit that is really getting tiresome.  They hate null sec and don’t care who knows it… but also, if they’re running the game, wouldn’t it be THEM who would be in charge of “fixing” sov?  Fuck the both of them.

Tell us how new player retention is doing boys!  Has all the time you’ve spent on it moved the needle even a bit?

Anyway, I’ll leave it on that happy note.  The expansion is here.  There are new things.  Maybe some of them will stick.  You can find the details below.

Related:

• CCP/Fenris – The Fractured Skies Expansion Is Here
• CCP/Fenris – Fracture Skies expansion notes
• CCP/Fenris – Patch Notes (where the post expansion fixes will get posted)
• CCP/Fenris – Fractured Skies expansion announcement
• CCP/Fenris – Fractured Skies announcement press release
• Evehermit – Fractured Skies Expansion

WoW Forever

There was, as with WoW Classic, very much a comfortable feeling being back in the vanilla vision of the world.  Perhaps one of the more confusing things to explain to somebody not at all invested in the game is how it is fun to go out and… well… run through a bunch of quests I am sure I have done dozens of times before.

If you go back to my post about the Account Played addon that tallies up your play time, I have a lot of time invested in both retail WoW and WoW Classic.

There is a comfort to it… as noted… but also a feeling I sometimes refer to as the “Lone Lands effect,” after the zone in Lord of the Rings Online.  I enjoy playing through that zone, in part because it is interesting, but also because I have obtained something of a mastery of the landscape.  I know how to get places, where mobs are.  It is maybe the one zone in Middle-earth where I feel like the adventurer the game sets you up to be.

There is a bit of that in running through these quest lines once more.  But there are also new additions, so it isn’t all just making myself feel good via repeating a previously accomplished task.  And, in a game where a lot of other people are playing, there is always some variability in your experience.  No two runs are identical, as familiar as they may feel.

Or so I say.

Blizzard as well seemed to be having a good weekend.  They were on social media on Friday announcing that WoW Forever had been their “biggest launch ever.” (Blue Sky link)

Nov 6, 2026 – 18:34 Pacific Time post

In case that graphic falls by the wayside at some future date, the post says:

Congratulations everyone, you made HISTORY!

WoW: Forever has achieved:

The biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players
The highest number of returning players in WoW history

This is all because of you, the players. From all of us, THANK YOU!

That is all over a banner that says “Thank you for the Biggest Launch Ever!”

It has been a while since Blizz had a superlative that grand about a WoW launch.

Otherwise, Notes from the weekend.

• Character Splitting

At one point I was hitting level 8 with a character and then turning around to roll up a new one.  Alt-itis for the… win?

Once I had four characters in play I settled down a bit… or at least focused on getting those four to at least level 10.  For my hunter, my first character in play (because I always have to have a hunter as my solo time character), level 10 is important because it is when you finally get a pet.

Really, at times it seems a bit crazy that you have to play through to level 10 before you get the defining aspect of your class… but whatever.  So Tistann, my hunter, was the first to level 10 and got out and did the pet quests.

Learning to tame a boar

The hunter class is as it always was in vanilla, an awkward yet fun mix of skills, maintenance, and inventory management because you have one fewer bags than everybody else.

My pally was next, and my shaman and warrior are close.

That was made possible by… spending a lot of time playing.  If ManicTime is to believed… and it is… I spent about 7 hours playing on Saturday.  For me in my 30s or 40s… pretty normal.  For me in my 60s… well, I need to get up and take a break more often.  Still, I could have probably played more.

At some point I’ll pick some favorites to play.  But for now I am spreading out a bit.

• Auction House

I did not use the auction house at all during beta because… well… why bother?  I spent all my time out in the field just playing.  So I was a bit surprised to find that Blizz had swapped over to what I think of as more of the Guild Wars 2 style auction house.  It isn’t fully there, as you still have to go to the auctioneer NPC, but you cannot see individual auctions, just the price points.

Auctions for linen bags

This has a number of benefits, the primary one being able to see the state of the market at a glance.  I am not sure I need an addon like Auctioneer for my simple AH needs.

Selling is likewise simple and quick.

Auction house selling linen cloth

That shows you the sellers out there and, by default, pre-prices you at the lowest price point which, if everybody simply took, would lead to more universal happiness I am sure as the auction house works on a “first in, first out” system for items of the same price.  But people are anxious and want to sell first, so the desire to undercut overtakes people.

I have tended to find the big group and just stick my items there, avoiding the first couple of under cutters… and have been rewarded.  Now, we’re in a time of high demand, so things may change, but I have yet to do that and have my items not sell… and they usually sell before I can close the AH window.

Of course, I went to the AH to sell because I was out of silver for skills at level 10.  But to sell you have to put down a deposit, and I didn’t even have a coin for a deposit.

So I sole enough light leather to the vendor to get the cash for a deposit, then listed a couple of stacks of light leather, which sold immediately.  You still have to wait the hour to get your cash in the mail.

Cash for light leather

But once the mail came in I had enough cash to go buy back my light leather from the vendor to then list it at the AH.  Light leather, right now, is pretty easy to pick up out in the world.  Just wander through the wendigo cave and you’ll fill up on it.

• Guild Formed

Part of the need for cash was to get a guild formed.  On Saturday when we had five of us near Ironforge I sent my now slightly cash flush hunter over to the visitor’s center to pick up a guild charter for 10 silver.  We didn’t even have to pool our coppers, I just grabbed it.

But to buy it you have to give the guild a name.  I believe you can change it later, but for the moment I needed something.  We had discussed a few options, but our old WoW Classic guild name, Crag Boar Rebellion still resonated, so we went with that… even staving off the desire to make it “xXCrag Boar RebellionXx” or “Dark /><\ Boars” or some such.

Charter in hand I did the same thing I did back in 2019, which was to stand outside the bank in Ironforge and ask people in chat to sign our charter while just randomly sending signature requests to anybody walking by who wasn’t in a guild.

Busking for signatures…

This actually worked… and pretty quickly.  People seemed to be in a good mood about it.  I was worried because I had already heard enough tales of Asmogoof the Unwashed and his completely toxic Olympus guild spamming invites to people to the point of everybody learning how to turn off guild invites… which also blocks guild charter signature invites.

[To purge the taint of Olympus from your experience there are addons like OlympusMute]

I know this because Ula had already turned that option on thanks to Olympus spam and I wanted to get all five of us on the charter first before I started rando-invite quest.

So a number of people no doubt did not see my spam request.  But enough did that we had a all the signatures and a guild formed within ten minutes.  I think WoW Forever must have just put everybody in a good mood.

The guild tag on Steam Cleaner

Then, once the guild was formed… and I ran immediately to the guild registrar when we got that last signature… a couple of people quit the guild and we kicked two more… but one person asked to stay and we let them.  Can’t hurt I guess.  The first tab for a guild bank costs 100 gold, so we aren’t going to have to worry about that for quite a while.

Then there was getting everybody invited which always means getting somebody who was promoted to officer online when another character shows up.

And invitation from Skronk

Anyway, op success on the guild creation front.  Since I turn off all global channels, guild chat, party chat, and proximity “say” is all I see now.

• Crowds and Stability

As noted, Blizz is tooting its own horn about the opening success for WoW Forever.  And it sure felt like it was very popular on the ground.  The layering, which seemed a bit wonky opening night, seemed to get better.  Things like named mobs for quests were respawning so quickly opening night that it was hard not to end up killing the same mob a few times if there was nobody else waiting because you couldn’t get out of the aggro radius before it popped back up.

There were a lot of people in each layer, and sometimes it felt like you wouldn’t be able to get a quest done as all the mobs were being devoured.  But I found that, with a bit of patience, it tended to work out.  Like crowds anywhere, they tend to show up in waves so if you hung around for a bit one wave would depart and you could get wrapped up as the next wave arrived.

I had a bit more trouble with quest turn ins… or at least one quest turn in.  The Operation Recombobulation quest, when you turn it in, sends the quest giver into a 30 seconds routine during which nobody else can get or turn in the quest.  People were piling up trying to turn that in and we were past the good cheer on that front as impatient people raced to turn in the quests whenever the NPC became available.  It was maddening at times.

Then there was the usual races to kill this mob or that where tempers could flare.  I was on both sides of the coin on that one throughout the weekend.  In this time it is probably best to forgive people their trespass.

Also, there was a fair share of smaller problems.  The AH seemed to take a few tries to buy something at times… I suspect a race condition in matching up purchases with orders that leaves you getting the order you were assigned being snapped up before it gets processes.

The client also seemed to get slower and slower to launch as the weekend progressed, such that by Sunday afternoon it took a couple of minutes from pressing the PLAY button for the client to actually appear.

Layering, as noted, seemed to stay stable for me, but over on Reddit somebody posted a video of layering breaking and dumping everybody into one layer that gave a taste of how many people are actually playing the game.

• Atmosphere

I am enjoying the feel of WoW Forever so far.  People like to talk about the campfires as a nice touch to the game, and I am certainly in favor of that.

Campfire, turned purple by the current Twitch drop

But I have to admit I am constantly taking screenshots of just the way things look in game with the new lighting scheme.

I saw a complaint at one point about the fact that because WoW operates on a real world day/night cycle, where your server time controls the time of day you experience, that a lot of people were going to end up playing at night and… that seemed like it might suck with the new lighting scheme Blizz introduced.

Dark places are much darker.  The tunnels in Stormwind are pretty dark even in broad daylight.  I feel like Blizz might want to look into a torch slot or something to let people shine a bit of light on the world when they need it.  There are some torches you can equip in weapon slots, if you can find them, but it feels like Blizz might commit a bit harder to giving players some light at night.

That said, my experience so far, at least in Dun Morogh, has me feeling pretty good about the the night.  The dark isn’t the inky blackness of early EverQuest before we all figured out where the gamma slider was in the settings.  It is just dark enough to make light stand out.  And the storms and the fog that comes and goes from the place… if you don’t like the weather in Dun Morogh right now, just wait five minutes and it will be something different.

Running to Kharanos at night

It gives the whole area a sense of atmosphere.  It is quite possible, in a driving snowstorm, to get completely disoriented and end up going the wrong direction.  You’re never going to get fully lost… open the map already… but it tickles the sensation of being lost in the world which makes everything feel more alive.

Overall, a good first weekend for me.  Looking forward to more.

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

One of the releases for the week was a big one… and the other, not so much.  Not yet, in any case.  But before we get to the details, here is where we stood at the end of last week.

Week 44 Scores

With just the two releases, the expectation was for not much in the way of changes… or updates… or much of anything.

And when we got to Tuesday evening the first title of the week dropped, which was World of Warcraft: Forever.

WoW Forever

In something of a fit of enthusiasm, I picked that.  We’ll see if I regret it.

• World of Warcraft: Forever has released!
  • [Picked by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)]

Technically though, it wasn’t actually going to release until 15:00 Pacific Time the next day, but whatever.  So maybe having no reviews yet was to be expected.

While I was waiting for reviews the league came in with another rap on the knuckles for Shawn.

• One Piece: Grand Gourmet
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 75.0 to 73.8

That was not enough to stir up the rankings however.

However, then came the first reviews for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

This 2026 update of the 1998 fan favorite entry in the Zelda series came in hot.

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (2026)
  • [Picked by Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)]
  • Now has a score of 95.6

That is the highest opening score I can recall seeing in the league so far, and it was built on a lot of 10/10 reviews.  The main danger to that score seemed to be sites that only score in whole numbers thinking it was not perfect so only giving it 9/10 on the review.

When that hit the launch date later that evening, Corr shot up to second position in the league.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)
    • Score has gone UP from 95.3 to 125.5
    • Moved from 6th place to 2nd place
  • Anthania Interactive (Ula)
    • Moved from 2nd place to 3rd place
  • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
    • Moved from 3rd place to 4th place
  • TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)
    • Moved from 4th place to 5th place
  • S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)
    • Moved from 5th place to 6th place

And that kind of ended up the week as far as updates went.  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time managed to hold on pretty well, ending up at 95.1 as the week ended.

Then there was WoW Forever, which now has just one review on Open Critic.  It is a top critic review, so I just need two more before the end of the year.  As Corr pointed out on Discord, both WoW Classic and WoW Anniversary Classic got enough reviews to get scores on the site, which gives me hope that WoW Forever will as well.

All of which left the scoreboard looking like this.

Week 45 Scores

Arhanta remains pretty solidly in first place, but now Corr is just 15 points shy of taking the lead.  That depends on his final pick, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, which is set to come out on December 10th, the last day of releases for the season at this point.

There was one bid this week in the league as Shintar dumped the now delayed until 2027 title The Duskbloods.

• Bids in TAGN League
  • Stage Tour
    • Won by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar) with a bid of $7
    • Dropped game ‘The Duskbloods’ conditionally

Stage Tour also lands on December 10th, so there will be two titles that day that might determine the final standings.

The league now predicts Shintar for third place, but that depends heavily on her other pick, Hollow Knight: Silksong – Sea of Sorrow, which is still just estimated for a 2026 release.

Overall, six of the thirteen players in the league have all nine titles launched at this point, but seven more remain with titles in play.

There are currently still nine titles with solid ship dates on the coming attractions list.

Week 46 Coming Up

Next week sees just one title launching, Warhammer Survivors, one of the many Warhammer titles on the list for this year.  And, of course, we’ll have to see if WoW Forever can catch a break on reviews.

Related:

• TAGN Fantasy Critic League
• Fantasy Critic Site
• Fantasy Critic How to Play
• Fantasy Critic FAQ
• Fantasy Critic Most Desired Reviews
• Open Critic Review Site

Council of Stellar Management 21

As the established pattern goes, there are ten candidates elected to the council, followed by two additional candidates picked from those who finished in 11th to 20th position to round out the body to an even dozen. It is a system that gives the company some leeway to pick points of view they feel the council may lack… or to find people who will echo the points they have already decided on.

While 54 candidates had been announced back in early October, it appears that Machiavellian dropped out at some point because the final ballot only had 53 candidates listed.  The election itself ran from downtime on October 22nd to downtime on November 3rd.

With the election over and the votes counted, these are your new CSM21 representatives.

CSM21 Revealed

Listing them all out, with the link to their candidate post.

That result gives us six out of twelve candidates from null sec alliances, down from seven elected for CSM20… though one of those seven was in Pandemic Horde, which imploded just as the election was ending, so does that even count?

I am not enthused by company picks.  Switch 4 is from YoungPuke2’s alliance and seems likely to have been selected to continue the crusade to nerf null sec through very dumb ideas that are a waste of developer time, like the Ansiblex nerf.  They’ll probably be extra hot to trot on the anti-null sec agenda since we’ve been busy blowing up structures around Amamake for the last week.

Overall that seems to be an unusually even spread for an elected group where null sec tends to be the most organized group when it comes to voting.

Goonswarm Federation, for example, managed to get 6,470 accounts to vote the same ballot.  Given how bad we, as a group, tend to be about following simple instructions, that seems pretty amazing.  That is how we ended up electing three CSM members.  That beat out Fraternity, which had 2,029 accounts hit the suggested ballot and Brave, which 1,081 accounts on its ballot, though each managed to get a member on the council as well.

Of course CCP/Fenris has a long history of simply ignoring the null sec reps.  In the end, the company does what it feels like.

As for the turnout… it was somewhat down when compared to last year, though about on par for turnout over the last decade.

This is what CCP has reported for turnout.  Links go to posts with the details.

• CSM21 2026 – 32,675 total votes
• CSM20 2025 – 49,870 total votes
• CSM19 2024 – 35,701 total votes
• CSM18 2023 – 47,155 total votes
• CSM17 2022 – 30,814 total votes
• CSM16 2021 – 38,086 total votes
• CSM15 2020 – 36,120 total votes
• CSM14 2019 – 32,994 total votes
• CSM13 2018 – 29,417 total votes
• CSM12 2017 – 31,274 total votes

I suspect that the CSM20 turnout was so high due to there being turmoil due to the Pandemic Horde collapse mentioned above.  (Also, you can feel my waning enthusiasm for the CSM if you go through those old posts.  Also, does anybody who was on CSM12 even still play EVE Online?)

For historical reference, here are the voting totals for CSM1 through CSM12.

Number of Votes Cast – CSM 1 through CSM 12

CSM7 still holds the record for the number of votes, at 59,109 cast.

For those interested, this is the order of elimination by round.

1. “itsFluffy000” with 51.777248 votes
2. “Mercilessguard” with 54.345765 votes
3. “Taran Lazarus” with 70.973149 votes
4. “SkyMikerJedi” with 72.604068 votes
5. “Nordpol The Extinguisher” with 79.511172 votes
6. “DCTDN” with 86.862623 votes
7. “Amiomia” with 88.682600 votes
8. “Tikka” with 99.016331 votes
9. “MILINT ARC Trooper” with 102.260364 votes
10. “Joilove Sunrunner” with 108.446469 votes
11. “Sawdeth Ternius” with 114.000000 votes
12. “Styxx” with 119.528667 votes
13. “Frozen Fallout” with 119.872731 votes
14. “Seraph Essael” with 143.042627 votes
15. “Reagalan” with 144.099749 votes
16. “tagknife” with 146.501254 votes
17. “0BAKEE” with 151.724901 votes
18. “Misty Dawn253” with 153.521378 votes
19. “Sean Vanstroll” with 166.531069 votes
20. “Jay Cee Ormand” with 182.012433 votes
21. “Adhamhnon” with 189.929147 votes
22. “Angela Chent-Shi” with 200.488367 votes
23. “CruelCodex Owasso” with 205.288181 votes
24. “Jennifer Corring” with 226.440870 votes
25. “Culaure” with 263.583596 votes
26. “Schadsquatch” with 277.732646 votes
27. “Ankh Lai” with 279.665073 votes
28. “Bluedagger” with 304.611351 votes
29. “DutchGunner” with 333.749476 votes
30. “Rathon Altol” with 368.991253 votes
31. “Poiuyt20 Fliba” with 389.121571 votes
32. “sennett” with 429.915043 votes
33. “Nova Terra-Ren” with 501.495672 votes
34. “Nyx 0” with 556.653198 votes
35. “Orion Sa-Solo” with 612.847217 votes
36. “Shivon” with 663.607840 votes
37. “xXNemXx” with 703.089130 votes
38. “Drake Iddon” with 878.128465 votes
39. “Switch 4” with 1145.871143 votes
40. “Limited Liability” with 1189.836101 votes
41. “Ceema” with 1380.574066 votes
42. “Kenneth Feld” with 1619.673382 votes
43. “HuntBuzz” with 1784.082312 votes

I don’t want to be too judgemental, but I also feel a bit like if you were one of maybe the first 20 eliminated that you really had no business throwing your hat in the ring in the first place.  Either you didn’t put in the work campaigning or you had no message or no constituency to begin with.

For those thinking about a run for CSM22, the time to start campaigning is NOW.  Also, now might still be too late for most of you.

If you want to watch Swift run through the election results round by round, the replay of the stream is available on YouTube.

Otherwise the announcement, the results, and the details are all available as a dev blog.

• CC/Fenris – Here’s Your CSM 21!