The October Halloween Post

Happy Halloween!

What’s better than “The days are now too dark”-depression? Halloween! We’ve been enjoying some spooky Halloween events in games like Tower Unite, Phasmophobia and Guild Wars 2. We also hope you all enjoyed this years Dooty rebranding of BumpMap with the new role names and icons as well as a very skeltal banner.

With halloween came a much more diverse presence in BumpMap than ever before. Timebomb and Dutch visited me for a week and were pretty much out of VC for a whole week. Tothemax Natt Vakt, Jepser and Grandpa visited me for a weekend, and Nuclear visited Merg for a week so there has definitely been a big jump in “physical activity” and a decline in digital activity, most noticeable in the voice chat statistics. (This is a good thing).

It’s so fun to hang out with you all and to see you hang out with each other. And as a final note to this paragraph, Dutch and Timebomb. Thank you so much for traveling through Europe to meet up with me and Flamina. It was an amazing time, let’s do it again next year!

PS. Uncharted 4 was such a great experience with you.

This October has really served as a reminder for what BumpMap is and will continue to be. On the surface it’s a games community, but looking at the relationships that has evolved and been nurtured over the years I am confident to call it a great community where everyone contributes to make it a truly special place where friendships grow.

I am very fortunate to be able to call you my friends.

– UnTubular

The games of the month™

Games? Games!

Phasmophobia

Only one month after the anniversary update, the team behind Phasmophobia drops a new huge update to the game. This updates several parts of the game and also includes a brand new map called Maple Lodge Campsite!

The game has had a great content release schedule these last few months and it continues to be a game we can always go back to and know we can have a good time!
– UnTubular

Guild Wars 2

This month has been a spooky one in Guild Wars 2! The Halloween Event has been ongoing and we even managed to join in on a live Halloween celebration which I will include some pictures from! Jep and I have been doing the Living World Season 4 content and we are currently a bit over halfway through. On top of that Jep has been in the process of getting a new mount, the Roller Beetle.

The free return to Living World Season 5 has just started and as fast as we are through season 4 we will all start the new one. We will however need to see how much time there is for the game this month considering the release of both Shin Megami Tensei V and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl.

During this month both Ren and I managed to obtain the Skyscale mount which is currently the hardest mount in the game to obtain, if you don’t count the Griffon since that one requires a lot of Gold, though that is the only real showstopper.

During the Halloween event we also managed to visit a Halloween-themed costume contest and I will of course supply you with the best of the best from that contest!

It’s been an incredibly fun month with lots of events I will of course still be able to play in the future although my new job certainly won’t allow me to play the 200 hours per month that I did before (or will it?). Nonetheless you can look forward to more of these posts in the future!

– UnTubular and the Guild Wars Gang

Tower Unite

With spooky month, along came spooky events in our favourite video games! For us, the game of choice for our spooky socialising was Tower Unite! Broken achievements and ticket redeeming aside, we had a lot of fun (and slight rage) searching for jack o’ lanterns, completing labyrinths and various other finding quests.

Tower Unite remains a place to play and socialise when we are all dying of boredom because we can’t agree or there aren’t enough people for specific games. We spent a significant amount of time this month just watching YouTube videos together in the Tower Cinema. It is surprisingly comfy to just sit in comfortable silence and watch silly videos. It almost begins to fill the hole in my heart left behind by the demise of Walkman, R.I.P.
– merg

Armello

I will begin with two words that will enrage most of us who have been playing Armello this past month. ‘Prestige Win.’ Some of us have unfortunately decided we are done with playing Armello for the moment because of balancing issues but the rest of us will continue our seemingly never-ending quest of beating Dagge at this game.

We will get there; I swear we will. Armello is a charming little game that could be improved with some seemingly simple balancing changes. Regardless, we have had fun playing! I won the very first game I played and then proceeded to never win again. Great going, merg.

There is nothing more frustrating than having your elaborate 5-turn-spanned plan fail because of a rogue spell card or a king’s guard on the wrong tile but to me, this unpredictability only adds to the appeal! I am sure we will play more of Armello in the upcoming months! If you are interested in joining the shitshow, feel free!

– merg

As always, any games you would like to see, feel free to suggest them in Gaming Chat! We are always on the lookout for cool new games to play so be there or be square. Or be there and be square, your choice entirely.

In November we celebrate! (4 years)

As November begins, BumpMap’s fourth birthday draws near. Man, I cannot believe it has been four years. I joined just two weeks after the server was made, and I saw almost all of its lifespan but its birth. Kinda like a dad who was stuck in a meeting and couldn’t come to the hospital. It’s been an amazing time.

We’ve grown as a community and as people, and yet BumpMap has been the single most consistent online space I have discovered and become a part of. I’m sure next month’s blog post will feature a little more emotional dilly dally, but let me just say: I’m really looking forward to celebrating.

So get ready for the Bump-Birthday! The server anniversary! The anniserversary? Whatever! Bring snacks and bio-degradable confetti! And thank YOU for being part of this community!

– Jaye

October Statistics

It’s Jaye and Tim, bringing you the monthly stats! Is it spooky? Of course! I have a course on statistics, and the homework terrifies me anew each week!

User Activity

Messages

We sent 8 739 messages in total during October. That is an average of 291 messages per day. The five most active people in the text channels were:

1. UnTubular with 1957 messages

2. Fish with 1453 messages

3. Ren with 1126 messages

4. Jaye with 835 messages

5. merg with 575 messages

That is roughly 68% of total messages in October, or around two thirds! I, Jaye, have risen from number 5 to 4! Watch my onslaught! general-chat saw the highest activity again with 2508 messages, finally beating voice-chat-text’s ass and reclaiming the throne. In fact, voice-chat-text isn’t even in the top 3 this month! Instead, spots 2 and 3 go to gaming-chat with 1786 messages and media-and-links with 1551 messages.

Voice Activity

So what was going on in the voice chat then, if voice-chat-text was so…calm? In September we spent a total of 58 646 minutes in voice chat. That is equal to 977 hours, which if we convert it to days, gives us 32,5 days of voice chatting! That’s „only“ enough to cover the whole month with one person. In fact, it is 40 000 minutes of less voice chatting. Which is slightly longer than the Director’s Cut of Lord of the Rings. We weren’t gone on movie marathons though, but we were traveling! Vacation! Meet-ups! Good times were had. And everyone will be back to populate voice chat with extra power in November for sure!

The most active voice chatters of October were:

1. UnTubular with 6424 minutes = 107 hours in total

2. Natt Vakt with 6320 minutes = 105 hours in total

3. merg with 6065 minutes = 102 hours in total

4. Dagge with 5806 minutes = 97 hours in total

5. Gemra with 5395 minutes = 90 hours in total

That is roughly 51% of the total time spent in voice chat. Ranks rose and fell, only merg stays comfortably and steadily on number three. Jepser is lost from the Top 5, and Gemra enters the battle. And where am I?! Stressing over my statistics homework, that’s where!

The time spent in the two most popular channels were respectively: In memoriam Walkman’s Chat: 44 985 minutes (around 77% of time spent) Hippo chat 1: 8385 Minutes. Have I mentioned that Hippo Chat 1 and Idun Chat 1 are called „1“ respectively just to annoy me, Jaye? I’m not exaggerating, they really did that. Anyway, I’ll go do my actual homework now. Oh no! Even more numbers! More statistics! Aaaaahhh!

End note

Last month Jackbox Party Pack 8 released. We haven’t really had enough time with it yet to give you a full explanation but we will hopefully have that in the future!

Like Jaye mentioned above, we are celebrating the 4 year anniversary of BumpMap next month! Keep an eye on #announcements to see what fun things we have in store for you!

– UnTubular