WinterCo Staging Keepstar in 4-HWWF Destroyed

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Strictly speaking the Imperium’s campaign against WinterCo has achieved success.  Beyond success, really.  Asher declared our objective back at the start of the month as follows:

Our objective is straightforward: we will attempt to destroy their staging Keepstar in Geminate.

That we destroyed WinterCo’s main staging Keepstar in Vale of the Silent, the region beyond Geminate, feels like we over achieved our goal.

The dead Keepstar in 4-HWWF

Not that it was easy or that we did not face some setbacks, but we got there.

This final blow started on one of our setbacks.  The Imperium had dropped a new staging Keepstar of its own in O-VWPB as a stepping stone towards covering all of Geminate.

I was out of town when this went down, so missed the fun, but WinterCo stepped up and threw lots of small ships at the anchoring Keepstar and, as at Atioth, was able to overcome Imperium defense and blow up the structure.

O-VW Keepstar down before it went live

However, during that event The Initiative slipped in and set the armor timer for WinterCo’s main staging Keepstar in 4-HWWF, deep in Vale of the Silent.  This was their home, the center of the coalition, the structure where many key assets were based, especially after their withdrawal from Geminate.

This was going to make it a tough nut to crack.  WinterCo literally lives there, so just had to undock to defend.  In addition, the timer was set to come out on a Saturday evening Beijing time… bad for us, good for them… as the Keepstar was declared to be heavily armored, with four sets of plates installed, making potentially extra difficult to go after.  This led to the expected brags and concern trolls over on Reddit.

Asher, are you okey?

It also led to an outbreak of xenophobic nationalism on the part of some of WinterCo.

I mean, it is one thing when some line member is being shitty in local.  Only someone interested in making a stink will claim that the leadership of a coalition of thousands of players explicitly endorses the statements of every single member, that one person in local captures the essential nature of a group.

But when the leadership of one of the core corporations in Fraternity is whipping up the nationalistic xenophobia… well, that is a little harder to distance yourself from.  That is one where you expect coalition leadership… especially a coalition that has a sizable European contingent… to maybe at least suggest that organization isn’t just built on hatred.  A bit awkward.  I haven’t seen anything from Noraus on the topic… maybe I missed it… or maybe that is the official party line within WinterCo.

Anyway, that is their problem, not mine.  I keep local chat minimized so I can see the player names but no messages.

As it turns out, the plates were a lie and xenophobia doesn’t win battles.  The Imperium went all in on Saturday and won the armor timer.  It rained Vexors as I understand, leading to some memes.

The Imperium lost more than 12K ships according to a battle report posted to Reddit.

The Armor timer Battle Report Header

WinterCo losses were inflated somewhat due to a pair of titans getting caught out during the fight.

I got home after that fight was hours done.  But there was still the final fight to come.  Under normal circumstances the defender would walk away from fighting on the structure timer.  But this was in WinterCo’s home system with other structures around.  They even dropped a new Keepstar in the system.  This was still their home turf and the outcome was not at all assured for the Imperium.

Those who had remained in system and logged off were told to remain there and only log in when the next timer landed.

I wasn’t in system and spent a day or so waiting for a move op or some other way to get ready for the coming battle.  Honestly, everything seemed almost too chill.  I was keyed up to DO something and command was telling people to relax.

Finally on Monday at about lunch time for me there was a call for a handout Crusader fleet that was going to fly to 4-HWWF so we could safe up and log out to wait for the coming battle.  As I always do with free ships, I insured before I undocked because you might as well make a bit of ISK if you lose it.  Apple Pear was leading us out there with the idea that interdiction nullifiers would get us through the camps that WinterCo had setup.

We were not so fortunate.  This was not helped by the fact that I was dual boxing when we used the nullifiers to get through a gate only to find a bubble festival on the other side as well and that the cool down on our nullifiers was too long to just hold cloak until they were ready to use again.

Still, some of us managed to wriggle out.

A 5km/s interceptor is tough to catch even in a bubble field, and you have to pick a target.  I managed to get my alt to on system away from 4-HWWF while my main got caught by some smart bombing battleships when my nullifier was still on cool down.  Oh well.

One Crusader still on the way… if damaged a bit

And even my alt logged off with armor damage.

Later, once the EU people started to head for bed but before it was prime time for those in China, I slapped together another Crusader from parts found in our staging and flew it out to where my alt was, chasing along after another interceptor on the same mission.  On getting to WBR5-R I decided to take another route into 4-HWWF as the 8TPX-N seemed to be the most camped.

There were no unguarded entries into the system, and they all had anchored bubbles on both sides.

There is a gate in those bubbles somewhere

Once again, there were a couple of ships watching for people trying to sneak in, but a 5km/s interceptor can out run most tackle.  I did get somebody sniping at me and got into armor before I was out of bubbles and off to a safe… because I had a safe in system.

I had forgotten my black ops adventure when I jumped to the 4-HWWF beacon in my Redeemer… only to find the staging system guardians asleep at their posts.  I got my alt in through another gate and went to the safe he had… from the same incident no doubt.  I don’t think I had him out in null sec the previous time I recorded a visit to the system.  That was back in 2012.  But NCDot was involved!

My plan was simple.  Safe log.  Go to bed.  Wake up once the fight started… which would happen at 2am my time in California… set both Crusaders in orbit around the Keepstar shooting their pulse lasers and moving 5km/s, then go back to bed and see what happened when I woke up.

So I wandered back to my computer at 2am, the cats following me, wondering what I was up to and if it might involve food for them.  I started to get myself logged in, which took a while, but I was successful.  There were more than 6K people listed in local and tidi was at 10% and the server was backed up such that calls were taking 3-5 minutes to be resolved.

Local at 9:17 UTC on Apr 28

Things were strange, as usual.  My guns were ungrouped in the UI, but were actually grouped on F1 so far as the server was concerned.

Another common side effect of server strain… also, armor damage

I found the Keepstar in the system and warped to it with my alt first, only to find I went to the wrong Keepstar.  Nobody told me WinterCo had dropped a second.

Most everybody was on the other Keepstar

I had also turned the graphics off.  I wasn’t going to be up watching the show, so I figured I might as well turn them off.

Eventually I got to the right Keepstar, got myself in orbit, and started locking it up.  Then I fleeted up with my main and warped him to my alt and started the whole orbit and locking process.  Once I got a lock and it stuck… there were some burst jams going off… and both Crusaders were burning fast orbits around the Keepstar I went back to bed.  That took about an hour, so there was another hour to go until downtime.

I was able to get away with all of this smoothly as my wife was up helping our daughter pack to move back home for a bit before going off to grad school.  That was where I had been until the weekend, driving a vehicle crammed with stuff as the first move op.

I got up around 6:30am, because I am old and that is just when old men wake up it seems, and went back to my computer and found I had been kicked out of the game at down time, as expected.  I logged in both accounts, my alt first, and started them grinding their way through the queue to get into game while I went off and took a shower, got dressed, and made some breakfast.

I timed that about right as my alt got in a couple of minutes after I sat back down.  The Keepstar was still there.  I was still at my orbit distance.  There was 10% of the structure left to burn through.  All I had to do was lock it back up, get my guns firing, and maybe start burning that hot orbit again.

The Keepstar at 14:29 UTC with about 10% left to go

Everything was still very slow, there were still about 6K people listed in local, and there was a very real chance that the server would hold me in check while I waited for my guns to finally cycle.

Worse, my main was a few minutes behind.  I should have logged him in first.

In Jabber people were counting down the percentage of hull left.  Both my alt and my main had the structure locked up by 4% and it was just a wait for the weapons activation.  Then it was down to 2%.  Then 1%,  Then there was that moment when it says 0% and you’re at the end… and my alt’s guns fired and registered a hit.

Then the target lock disappeared.  The Keepstar was dead.

We just had to wait for the server to catch up with that fact.

In space it sat there, then went back to the vulnerable state, like it was still alive.  Some people were paranoid or hopeful, depending on which side they were on.  But I had been down this path before.  It was just processing all the asset safety deliveries, and there would be many for this structure.  All the stuff people didn’t haul off between the armor and structure timers had to go into a delivery queue.  Meanwhile, all the clones with all their implants, inaccessible since the armor timer had been lost, were deleted.

There was a lot of baggage to be dealt with.  I started working on this post.  Asher called a quick fireside and congratulated us on the effort and success, promising an Aeon super carrier to the Imperium pilot who got the final blow.  When the kill mail finally appeared, that went to Judas Aralius of Sigma Grindset.  Congrats!

As often happens, the Keepstar itself showed up as being unfit over at zKillboard.  But scans of it had been taken during the battle to confirm, among other things, that there were no armor plates fit.

The scan result shared

The objective was ours.  I flew around a bit trying to target somebody just to get a few more shots off.  I lost my main’s Crusader on grid, and my alt a system over at a gate camp in one of the bubbles arrays.  They couldn’t work hard enough to keep us out, but they were not going to let us get away.  Again, I insured for a reason.  I expected to die on grid while asleep.

The battle report was of little succor to WinterCo as they Keepstar loss balanced out a lot of the cheap ships we threw at it.  And the hidden costs in asset safety fees and clone destruction doesn’t show up on the battle report.  WinterCo partisans have been quick to dismiss such losses, but I remember the pain that caused Pandemic Horde pilots back in November… though they were camped in, so it hit them much harder.  Still, it is a non-zero cost.

The battle report summary

And if that were not enough, WinterCo lost two other Keepstars while this was going on, one in Aunenen and one in B-9C24 in Pure Blind.

Keepstar Tuesday

That Pure Blind Keepstar had FIVE armor plates, for all the good it did.

Asher says that we have a few more things to clean up, but that we have met the objectives of the expedition.

The Geminate War so far from my own posts, since the EVE Online news ecosystem has completely disappeared.

The Archive: Epics Of Virtual History Kickstarter Campaign Launches

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Andrew Groen, author of the two volume set Empires of EVE is back again with another book.  It is not another volume about EVE Online, though a third and final Empires of EVE book is said to be in the works.

But before that comes to pass, he has another project set to go, The Archive, with the Kickstarter campaign for it starting today.

The Archive

What is The Archive?  I’ll just borrow from the campaign page.

THE ARCHIVE: EPICS OF VIRTUAL HISTORY is the first new series in ten years from EMPIRES OF EVE author Andrew Groen – the product of six years of research. The volume is finished and ready to go to print.

Each chapter takes readers into a new virtual realm to experience tales documenting the moments when digital worlds stopped being games and became digital societies.

Inspired by ancient books like the Sagas of Icelanders, The Archive: Epics of Virtual History is an artifact dedicated to keeping these worlds alive in memory.

The greatest events in virtual world history are disappearing. They deserve to be remembered. Together we can build The Archive.

But what does that mean?  What is included in these tales.  Some of the samples are:

The First Scarab Lord – The tale of Kalahad, the first World of Warcraft player to conquer the legendary Gates of Ahn’Qiraj quest chain, inciting tens of thousands of players to embark on a pilgrimage to witness his moment of victory when the gates opened for the first time.

The Lords of Deception – The player-tyrant ‘Lord Owaine’ from the ice bound isles of Shadowbane (2003) is seeking to extend his hand to conquer the entire ‘Deception’ server. To do that he must turn his rival guilds against each other and exploit the chaos. 

The Siege of Caiger Mall – In the dystopian hellscape of Urban Dead (2005), the human players have barricaded themselves within a shopping mall, attempting to rebuild civilization, attracting every zombie player in the game to an undead siege that will define the history of the game forever.

The Return of the Hopeslayer – The players of Asheron’s Call stage a rebellion against their own game’s developers to prevent the destruction of a crystal and the release of the boss of the next expansion, Bael’Zaeron the Hopeslayer.

The Desecration of Molea – The holiest site of the EVE Online community, a graveyard for real players, is sacked by the lord of all trolls, and the community discovers the resilience of ritual. 

The book manuscript is said to be complete.  This will not be something years in the making before you get it.  The promise date for delivery is September of 2026.  I suspect that will slip, because these things always do.  But maybe it is safe to say that you’ll have it by Christmas?  We shall see.

I mean, at least it isn’t an MMO.  Never back those.  But books… I have had good luck with books on Kickstarter.  They’re always late, and sometimes comically so… looking at you Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls… but they tend to deliver and meet expectations.

The campaign itself seeks a minimum of $20,000 in funding over the next 30 days.  As I write this the campaign is past the $7,000 mark, about one third of the way, which makes it a pretty good chance that this campaign will fund.

There are, of course, stretch goals and limited early bird backer options and the usual things that are expected to get people engaged, or at least induce a bit of FOMO in the potential audience.

I am in for a hardbound copy.  We shall see how this plays out.  What I really want is Empires of EVE: Volume III, but this will tide me over I suppose.

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Notes from Retail WoW – Anything but Midnight

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Do we have access to housing again?

World of Warcraft Midnight

It seems like it is mostly back… except for flooring.  I guess flooring is still broken, falling back to the default setting the moment you look away.

It was kind of a tough week for Blizz with the big 12.0.5 update undoing some of their game to the point that they have issued a bit of an apology along with a number of hot fixes.  This is probably what you get when you’re part of Microsoft and they make you use Copilot.  Or maybe, as PC Gamer opined, Blizz has made their schedule the most important thing, surpassing even quality.

Not that it bothered me at all.  I was still deep in Outland with my Dark Iron dwarf warrior Dargan.  I had left off stymied by the faction requirement needed to get to the last quest chain in Netherstorm, so moved on to Shadowmoon Valley, the last of the zones on my loremaster list.

Here too I was to find myself thwarted.  While I rolled through quite a bit of the zone without too much trouble… as in Netherstorm, quests that were for 2-3 players were still doable solo as you’re OP enough for that if geared up sufficiently… but Shadowmoon Valley goes into quests that suggest 4-5 players to accomplish.  I hit those after I crossed over level 50 and my heirloom gear gave out.  Combined that left me struggling.

As noted last time, around level 60 I did the catch up gear event, but gave up on my loremaster dreams and just went over to Terokkar Forest to get to level 70.  I was interested to see if Chromie time ended at 70 and forced you into the World Soul Saga, the current trilogy of expansions that the game’s story line is tied up with.

And the game did prompt me to head to the Isle of Dorn.

A recap of sorts

I decided to head that way, having somewhat worn out Outland.  There I picked up some quests, but avoided the story.

Yeah, I’ll pass on reading all of that

I skipped ahead to collect the reward.

I also did a few delves with Brann Bronzebeard, who isn’t quite as chaotic as the follower dungeons hunter NPC… but he is still a bit dodgy.

In a Delve with Brann

Doing those I basically pushed on at a rate of about a level every 4-5 quests until I hit 80… which did not take all that long.

Level 80 arrives

And then I was out of Chromie time, with the summons to return and get on with the business of the current expansion.

A new life await on the off world colonies!

And then I stopped playing Dargan.  I already have a character a ways into the overland Midnight content.  I wasn’t sure I really wanted to duplicate that.

But that gave me another level 80 with about 25 hours total played.  And with every level 80 you have you appear to get a 5% warband xp boost.  So now I have a 10% boost for any alts I care to work on.  I still don’t understand the whole warband thing, but that aspect of it seems simple enough.

Then then weekend came and I went back to my deathknight as we had the whole of the guild on.  Initially four of us did a Dragonflight follower dungeon, which is the one set of such dungeons that we seem to be able to access across all of our varied alts.  We hit Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr.

Go for Uldaman

Uldaman has a history with our group, the most recent chapter being written during the opening of the Covid lockdown six years back.

The original was one of those sprawling instances that the devs seemed to expect to take multiple visits, where if you were the right level for the opening of the place you were likely in over your head by the last boss.  The era of such experimental dungeons is long gone, broken first by Blizzard arriving at something of a formula for dungeons, then the addition of the the dungeon finder, which requires all dungeons to be like a pizza delivery; something available in 30 minutes or less.

I am not even sure pizza delivery is that fast anymore.  That might be something from the 80s.

But instances must be that fast, so the Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr was a pretty easily digestible bit of content.  Still, it had some flashes from the past, for those who remember the old instance, which is now only available on classic.

The model in Uldaman

That looks about as it did when Ironaya was in that room.

Fighting Ironaya back during Covid

We rolled through that pretty well, the only problem being the NPC DPS, which managed to run ahead and get themselves killed without us noticing until Ula called out that we were short one before a fight.

After that Gaff joined us, so we had a full group and could run something without NPC assist.  But what to run?

We ended up doing the current time walking event… do those now run pretty much all the time?  Anyway, it was Mists of Pandaria dungeons, most of which were going to be new experiences to the group.

Gaff got out his druid bear tank to lead while I swapped my DK over to unholy to fill out a DPS slot.  We pressed the button and ended up getting Scholomance.

I didn’t even know that was a MoP dungeon.

But here we were back on the theme of sprawling dungeons from vanilla that were cut down to fit the dungeon finder format.  Not that it was a bad run… there were definitely some twists in this revisit… and I am not sure if I would have been up for the old school version of the place… but it was an imitation of the past, getting one a bit of the flavor without so much effort expended or time spent.

Professor Slate the Potions Master coming for us

I haven’t written anything about Scholomance since 2008.  We might have given it a miss in WoW Classic.

Anyway, we rolled through that, figuring out the tricks of the fights as we went.

That went fast enough that we rolled out again for another random time walking instance, where we drew the Mogu’shan Palace.

I feel like I did this instance at least once back in the day… but we did not do it with our group.  Or I did not write about it.  We picked up MoP at the very end with the promise of next expansion, Warlords of Draenor, luring us in.  We were better off with MoP.

Anyway, while I have no evidence here on the blog, I feel like I experienced both the brawl scene that comes after the first boss and the fight in the throne room of the final boss.

The brawl kicks off after our victory

Either way, we made it through and beat the final boss, the stood at his throne for a final group picture.

The group at the end of the Mogu’shan Palace

Each of these runs was good for two levels for each of us under level 80.

Ideally we will eventually put together a group that can do the WoW Midnight dungeons together, which will require us all to get to level 80 and get stuck into the content.

Until then, we carry on doing all sorts of things.

TAGN Fantasy Critic League 2026 – Week Seventeen and the Chronic Blunt Punch

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Week seventeen opened up on Monday, April 20th, which made for the usual round of 420 jokes and a 420 related release.

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

But before we start on the journey of week seventeen, here is where the scores left off last time.

Week 16 Scores

The week opened up right away with its first release, Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch.

  • Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch
    • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
    • Now has a score of 71.7

Opening up with a nearly two point score, that was honestly better than I expected.  That is because, looking at the history of the game… well, there are some red flags.

Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch

Crowd funded back in 2016 using the Fig platform, it has been on the list for a possible 4/20 launch since at least 2023.  It had a 2024 date for a while before returning to TBA.  But now, in 2026, the game which was created with input from Kevin Smith himself, finally arrived landing safely over 70.

And then more reviews came in and put it in Pokemon Champions territory.

  • Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch
    • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 71.7 to 66.2

Still, that was only five reviews.  Plenty of room for a change in direction.

Meanwhile, more score updates landed.

  • Mouse: P.I. For Hire
    • [Picked by Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 82.7 to 81.4
  • Super Meat Boy 3D
    • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 76.0 to 74.8
  • Replaced
    • [Picked by S Class Warfare Studios (p0tsh0t)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 79.3 to 78.0

That made for a bit of a down Monday, with the scoreboard shifting a bit with the changes.

  • Publisher Score Updates
    • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
      • Score has gone DOWN from 15.4 to 14.2
      • Moved from 10th place to 9th place
    • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
      • Score has gone DOWN from 18.4 to 13.0
      • Moved from 9th place to 10th place

Archey’s spot in 9th was solidified a bit when Super Meat Boy 3D regained its ground later in the day.

  • Super Meat Boy 3D
    • [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]
    • Score has gone UP from 74.8 to 76.3

Monday also saw the first reviews show up for Vampire Crawlers.

  • Vampire Crawlers
    • [Picked by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)]
    • Now has a score of 82.1

And Monday also saw a delay show up for one of the week’s expected releases, Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred.

  • Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred
    • [Picked by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm),
    • Counter Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
      • Release date changed from ‘Friday, April 24, 2026’
      • to ‘Tuesday, April 28, 2026’.

I am not sure what a four day delay is buying anybody… but there it was.

Then, as we crossed over into Tuesday on the east coast, Vampire crawlers went live and its score changed up the scoreboard.

  • Publisher Score Updates
    • Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)
      • Score has gone UP from 30.6 to 42.7
      • Moved from 6th place to 2nd place
    • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
      • Moved from 2nd place to 3rd place
    • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
      • 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

That gave Nimgimli quite a boost, jumping them from sixth to second place.

Meanwhile, despite the release being delayed, reviews started showing up for Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred.

  • Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred
    • [Picked by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm),
    • Counter Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
    • Now has a score of 82.7

An average score, but still not a great counter pick for Pallais.  That is going to sting then it goes live next week.

And more reviews came in for Jay and Silent Bob, and that was not good news.

  • Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch
    • [Picked by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 66.2 to 63

That was enough to drop Shilgrod down to twelfth place on the board.

  • Publisher Score Updates
    • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)
      • Moved from 11th place to 10th place
    • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
      • Moved from 12th place to 11th place
    • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
      • Score has gone DOWN from 13.0 to 9.7
      • Moved from 10th place to 12th place

We then had Kiln, one of the releases slated for this week launch.

  • Kiln has released!
    • [Picked by Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)]

However, as of this writing it only has two reviews, which is not enough to get a score.

Kiln

Not sure what happened there, but there is always next week.

Speaking of next week, reviews started coming in for Saros, which is on the list for this coming Thursday.

  • Saros
    • [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]
    • Now has a score of 92.1

That was looking like a league best score out of the gate, but then more reviews came in and moderated that score a bit.

  • Saros
    • [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 91.4 to 89.5

Meanwhile, Ula’s high scoring pick, OPUS: Prism Peak, also saw a bit of a dip on more reviews.

  • OPUS: Prism Peak
    • [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
    • Score has gone DOWN from 90.5 to 88.8

Both are still enviable scores… just slightly less so now.

And then RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike saw a small bump in score.

  • RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike
    • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
    • Score has gone UP from 80.5 to 81.8

And all of that together left the scoreboard looking like this.

Week 17 scores

We also had two bids for week seventeen.

  • Bids in TAGN League
    • Directive 8020: A Dark Pictures Game
    • Won by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli) with a bid of $8
  • Warhammer Survivors
    • Won by Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod) with a bid of $25
    • Dropped game ‘Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet’ conditionally

And then there was one drop.

  • Drops in TAGN League
    • Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra
      • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod):
      •  (Drop Successful)

In addition to Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred getting a date change, we had the following titles get updates.

  • Splatoon Raiders
    • [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
    • Release date changed from ‘TBA’
    • to ‘Thursday, July 23, 2026’.
  • Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced
    • [Picked by Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)]
    • Release date changed from ‘TBA’
    • to ‘Thursday, July 09, 2026’.

That leaves the next ten coming titles as follows,

Week 18 Coming Up

That gives us four titles slated for next week in addition to waiting on a score for Kiln.

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Binge Watching – The Continue Watching List – Apple TV Edition

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For every show we watch there is some other show or three that we start, sit through it somewhere between five minutes and two episodes, only to stop and never return.

These shows are immortalized in the lingering “continue watching” sections of various streaming services.  They sit there, with the digital version of puppy dog eyes and unwavering optimism, hoping for us to return.

We mostly do not.  There have been a few notable exceptions, but for the most part a show gets its shot and is done.

This happens on all the services, and probably more on Netflix than any other.  That is in part because Netflix just shoves more new content onto their platform than and three other services combined, and in part because they do love to push some poorly dubbed stuff out there.  I am good never reconsidering any of that.

But I am surprised at the number of such shows I have on Apple TV, which prides itself on being a purveyor of nothing but quality content.

Apple TV, now without the “+”

I started this post as a cross platform list, but realized the titles I wanted to put in play were heavily weighted towards Apple TV.  So I cut all of those out and made this a special Apple TV edition.

Your job; make the argument as to why we should resume any of these shows… or agree that we were right to move on.  Your option!

I heard a Hollywood columnist dis this series on a podcast, and was fine staying away from it.  It sounded like another vehicle where Hollywood is very engaged with its favorite topic: Hollywood.

Then my wife suggested it and we had nothing else queued up, so we watched the first episode… and I laughed a lot and quite enjoyed myself.  Though, reflecting on that, there was a lot of “they are setting up an obvious joke and doing it slowly enough that I can figure it out so I feel all clever and am laughing in anticipation” which is a thing you can do to bond with your audience I guess.  It worked on me.

And then we watched episode two and the whole thing was so annoying… and we could once again see every joke coming… that we dropped the whole thing and moved on.

I will, at this point, admit that I cannot watch shows like The Office or Always Sunny where people are just being dumb.  I get what my daughter and I call “second hand anxiety” for lack of a better term.  I mean, even Parks and Rec strayed close to the line on that front, though not enough to chase me off.

So episode two triggered that in a big way… and also simply annoyed my wife.  Is that the way the rest of the season goes?

Disclaimer – Apple TV

I am not one to get bent out of shape about non-linear stories… I mean, big fan of Catch-22 if nothing else… but this came across as so dry and uninteresting that we dropped half way into the first episode.

Foundation – Apple TV

I honestly didn’t want to watch it because I found the whole Foundation series to be pretentious garbage when I was young and never felt the need to return to it.  I have a mixed relationship with Asimov’s work on a good day where even the stuff I enjoy I still roll me eyes at a bit.  The thing here is that my wife, ever on the lookout for a good SF series, but not a reader of SF, keeps seeing this.  So I bring up an episode, she finds it dull, and we move on for a year until she fixes on it again.  Is there a payoff that makes the series worth it?

White Lotus – Apple TV

Whenever the topic of what series people recommend comes up, White Lotus seems to make an appearance.  It has come up enough times that my wife and I have given it a shot at least twice… and maybe three times honestly.  But it doesn’t thrill her and I literally can’t stand any of the charters  by the end of the first episode of season one.  I could identify with or find sympathy for a single one of them.  Even Steve Zahn, who is my favorite actor for playing annoying characters, was not engaging.  So it goes.

Margo’s Got Money Problems – Apple TV

This one is kind of on the edge.  We are three episodes in and it is a new series and all episodes are not even available yet.  But it also, three episodes in it feels like it has been in a rush to fill in a whole range of backstory items with the promise that it will settle down a bit.  We don’t spend a lot of time exploring the situation, things just happen and are in the rear view mirror, never to be discusses again.  Showing us Dakota Elle Fannings boobs a couple times an episode isn’t a substitute for a plot one can get invested in.  I tend to expect more from David E. Kelley.

The Last Thing he Told Me – Apple TV

We got two episodes in and… stopped.  That was a while back, so I don’t even remember why we stopped, just that we never went.  There has already been a season two released since.  Is there something there?

Constellation – Apple TV

Another on the list of shows we stopped watching long enough ago that I cannot even remember why.  But Apple TV remembers!  It even says we made it two episodes in.  What did we miss?

Time Bandits – Apple TV

I don’t think we even made it through the first episode here.  But it was a dubious prospect from the get go, a remake of based on the beloved, if somewhat half baked early Terry Gilliam film of the same name.  And it was also cancelled after one season.  I suspect there isn’t much there, but I don’t know.

Dope Thief – Apple TV

A gritty crime drama about a pair guys who impersonate DEA agents to knock over drug houses and how they get in trouble.  We made it through the first episode, where things were already heating up, but my wife used her veto power.  Do I get the cats involved to get the two-thirds majority vote to override that veto or save my political capital for some other show.  (History: I had to advocate strongly to get my wife to watch both The Wire and Breaking Bad.  So sometimes she is just wrong about shows.  But those are also exceptional shows.)

Loot – Apple TV

Apple might be lying to me on this one.  It is in the vast horizontal scroll of title cards under the “continue watching” section, but also seems to indicate that we didn’t even watch the first episode.  Did I just click on it by mistake at one point?  But now there are three seasons of it, so maybe we should watch it?

Dark Matter – Apple TV

This one is a bit of a special case.  We didn’t stop watching it because we didn’t like it.  We stopped because we foolishly started watching it before all the episodes dropped, so got half way into the season and kind of forgot about it.  Apple TV is good about telling you about new episodes, except when it isn’t.  Now we’re lost the thread and there is a new season landing in… October?  Do we go back and do a rewatch or just try to pick up where we left off?

So there we go, eleven shows from the “continue watching” list that Apple has for us.  And that doesn’t even include a few things that I know we aren’t going to continue watching ever, like Strange Planet and The Completely Made Up Adventures of Dick Turpin.

I suspect that the lesson here is that maybe Apple TV should have an expiration timer on its “continue watching” section.  Netflix seems to, even while it remembers every episode I have watched, so if I go back and examine a show and see an episode or two with the red progress bars at the bottom, I know we’ve been there before.