April 2008 Entries
On the crumbling edge of the mesa of Mires, sits brooding Iapyx. Its an ugly place, a grim place; harsh bleak steel and dusty burning air, but such is life for mankind now. Across a flimsy bridge, atop a lone pinnacle lies a glowing pillar of light, incongruous in this otherwise desolate and melting land; an Eloh Control point, a very literal line in the sand. The AFS have been driven from Earth to this wretched ball of molten slag called Arieki, and by the look of the massive fortifications on the landward side of the bridge, refuse to...
Busy Saturday this weekend, with not one, but two podcasts being recorded, making it about the most stuff I've ever got done on a weekend day, ever. There's our own humble offering here: Van Hemlock & Van Hemlockability; Part the Fifth: In which a somewhat Pragmatic View is taken on Open Beta Tests, and a distinctly more Enthusiastic Outlook is shown for Fishing! Also, some news is treated in a Jolly Flippant Manner Indeed, and a break is taken for Ice Cream! Useful Links: Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog: AoC = Another Raiding Treadmill......
Looks like my plans for world domination are coming along nicely! Since setting up this Google Analytics thingie some months back, I'd largely forgotten about it, to be honest. While it is indeed gratifying to know that a fair few people are actually reading this stuff, I think I mostly do it for the act of doing itself - keeping my hand in on the writing thing, and also just a kind of diary for my own future reference, and inevitable senility and/or nervous breakdown.
Its a fascinating place though, if a tad narcissistic; not so much the bog-standard stuff,...
As the new adventurer makes their way in their world, they learn. This in turn increases their array of abilities, feats, skills, spells, perks, talents, etc, making them more powerful, and this makes them capable of facing greater challenges, which brings them new lessons and makes them learn further. Its probably all very Nietzsche, although the ultimate destination of this relentless, but often repeated, drive to perfection is perhaps less clear. At any rate, rather than overwhelm the new player with hundreds of abilities from the word go, it has become standard in these games to ration them...
Regular readers will by now, know that I have a rather unfashionable vice. Everyone has at least one, those awkward quirks in otherwise good friends, those little things that you don't approve of, or like, but put up with out of a greater sense of comradeship. We put up with them because we hope the the favour will be returned, I guess. Mine, or at least one of mine, is an enduring fascination with [Name Removed For Legal Reasons], an online virtual world where users are encouraged to build things, sell them, show them off to friends, make a...
With my minerals all finally rounded up and the Ravens built and sold, its on the road once again. While the initial ordering balls-up was indeed annoying, I don't particularly regret my enforced stint as a mercantile ship-builder in EVE Online. It was a good opportunity to practice my marketeering and generally poke about in the guts of one of the more esoteric aspects of the game, and I've always been partial to a good spreadsheet on occasion. The final tally for the episode was a profit of about 30 million ISK, which was about 4.5% of the...
Let me take you back...back...back... Its June 2001. Lady Marmalade by All Saints is topping the UK charts, there's just been a total eclipse of the sun in South America, and Shrek is probably still on at the cinema. I, being the stay-at-home type, probably missed all of those, and at the time was enduring the last stages of a crippling cycle of Rallos Zek related psychological self-harm in Everquest, which would eventually turn me into the online sociopath I am today. Still, in those days the MMO market, if you could even call it that, consisted...
So there I was, pottering about in Cavalon, the Luxon Capital and hub of the Jade Sea area of Guild Wars: Factions, early Tuesday night, without a care in the world. Indeed, the most pressing concern I had at the time was 'Will my Mesmer's bum look big in Luxon Armour?' Turmoil! Then my regular Tuesday night colleague comes bouncing in with a cheery 'Oh! Cavalon! Let's try The Deep!', and it all went downhill from there really. Each of the Guild Wars offerings has an area like this. When you've beaten the story, and won,...
Yet again, I managed to get up before sunset, one Saturday in two, and make it to the luxurious state-of-the-art recording studios of my Cohost and Producer. This is no mean feat, what with me being more or less nocturnal now and my body-clock has drifted, after much abuse, to a time-zone shared mostly with the citizens of Rio De Janeiro. I think there was once a time when I did things on a Saturday; productive things. They may have even involved Being Outdoors - I forget. However, in lieu of anything productive, er, produced, this weekend, we made...
Bit of a functional 'nuts and bolts' Nifty! today, rather than anything sexy or cool in the accepted sense. Its to do with vendors, and crafting. At this late stage in the day, we're all familiar with the standard Vendor interface that seems to have become de rigueur in most MMOs. I use WoW as the example, but variants can be found everywhere; the optimistic 'shopkeeper' stood idly in the last bastion of civilisation before the Mountains of Doom, offering three tabs. There's main 'standard' tab, offering consumables, reagents, ammo, bandages and for some bizarre reason mostly...
Just a quickie, and a reblog at that. Listeners to the most recent podcast may remember me grumbling about my lack of any kind of affinity for, and indeed, knowledge of, any of the nominations for EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management. I'm being on best behaviour here and most certainly not assuming that this is just a prize lottery, the winners of which will receive a free holiday in Reykjavik, and instead find myself quite fascinated by the whole experiment in online democracy that it is.
Anyway, looks like Crazykinux, the hardest working man in EVE Blogging, has it...
Meanwhile on Foreas, I've been joined by my long time Guild Wars N00b Club comrade. I thought they might like it, given that this was the person that managed to convince me, a post-Rallos Zek Traumatic Syndrome sufferer to try Planetside, all those years ago. Revenge is a dish best served cold and all that, and despite having a PC that barely meets the minimum spec for Tabula Rasa, the three-day trial Refer-A-Friend thing seemed to be enough to make something of a convert of them. (Incidentally, I think I still have three of those left, so first-come...
A Nifty! from the Periphery today, and a bit of a walk down memory lane. Pet classes are nothing new, and pretty much every MMO since Ultima Online has offered some mechanism whereby an Adventurer (of any epoch) need not have to rely on their own strength alone. From EQ's Magician and Necromancer, through AO's Metaphysicist, (Which wins a special Nifty! mention for being the single most abstract MMO Class Concept EVER! "I think, therefore I am...uber!"), Bureaucrat and Engineer, right up to Wow's Hunter and Warlock, CoV's Mastermind and LotR's Captain; almost all MMOs have something that'll let...
Not a big fan of April Fool's Day on the best of years, but this year, it seems to have happened on a Tuesday! I'd successfully dodged the usual low-grade idiocy all day, and then THIS happens:
Yup - they turned us all into stickmen!
Incidentally, the cup in the middle is that $100,000 Tournament Series Trophy I was rambling on about in the podcast. The text when you click on it reads:
$100,000 Tournament Series Trophy
Presented by the Zaishen to the 2007 monthly champions of the $100,000 Tournament Series.
Monthly GvG Champions:
- Heart of Ashes and Dust (May) ...