FNG: The #1 Thing To Do in Utah on a Friday Night

So I was checking out some Google Analytics for the blog to see what kind of keywords were driving people to our site.

It appears there are still a lot of people playing Age of Empires I and II and looking to find the command-line parameters (no doubt to skip the intro cinematics when they launch the game.)

In just a few short days, there were 29 phrases that brought gamers to our site from the search engines. My favorite:

what to do on a friday night in utah (Our site was #1 and #2 of about 512,000)


I guess that means we're the #1 thing to do on a Friday night in Utah! I'll have to agree. :)

Phrases that brought the most people here in the last few days included the words 2008 turkey bowl in whatever order and added some words in some cases. I guess there are a lot of "Turkey Bowls" out there. We happened to be #3 of about 695,000 for the exact phrase "2008 turkey bowl"; not too shabby!

We're doing pretty well with some TrackMania, PURE, and Motocross Madness 2 search phrases too.

Anyway, I had to share... that "what do to on a friday night in utah" had me in stitches for several minutes. FNG rocks; the most popular Friday night activity in Utah... heh

Age of Empires II Command-Line Parameters

Microsoft provides a knowledgebase article that describes all of the command-line parameters you can add to your Age II shortcuts.

I really like the "NoStartup" one that lets you skip the opening cinematics.
Enjoy.

Example:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\empires2.exe" nostartup

Clan Skirmish - This Friday! (Starcraft and/or Age of Empires II)

So last Friday was a bust... not even worth of an FNG Report. It was basically riddled with lack of ability to find CDs and connection issues.

Tsam, Thundr, Toxic, Atholon and I were all present; and most of us played a little TrackMania til Tsam bailed. The plan after was to switch to Motocross Madness 2 (MCM2).

We lost Toxic after several attempts to get MCM2 working on that waste of an OS just a notch better than Windows ME (also known as Vista....) and he left after not being able to find his CD for a reinstall.

Atholon installed MCM2 for the first time that night, and no matter what we did, including Hamachi, he just couldn't get connected with us. So he dropped.

It was down to Thundr and I again, and we finally got a few rounds of MCM2 in; which were enjoyable, but anti-climactic after all the hassle.

So on to the better news:
Clan Skirmish this Friday on Starcraft and/or Age of Empires II!

I received an email not long ago from a Mark Zimmerman; who recently rejoined a bunch of college roommates that used to game together 5 years ago. They decided to call their clan "Wan Party." After Googling for 'Wan Party' he found our site and signed up for our contact list.

We got in touch with each other and have scheduled a match or two for 19 September (time to be announced.)

So FNGers that are intersted in some fun casual Starcraft or Age II games this Friday, make sure to have both games installed and fully patched, ready to go. We're not facing a repeat of last Friday (in fact, I'd recommend we do a connection test-run before Friday.)

Sound off if you're coming to play. I (That One Guy) will be there.