June 2008 Entries
My life seems to have gone all PvP lately, which is somewhat uncharacteristic of me, the Eternal Handwringing Carebear. I'm sure it's just a phase, but last Tuesday saw the first Tuesday N00b Club Fight Club. The first rule of N00b Club is...you do not blog about...doh! The four of us online that night have various dabbling experience at the PvP side of Guild Wars, but nothing organised or particularly practiced, and I've always thought it was a bit of a shame in my own case. Guild Wars is possibly one of the few MMOs I think has...
My ongoing correspondence course in EVE Online pew pew continues, with a night spent mostly soloing out in the contested Myridian Strip and surrounds, the front lines of the recently erupted factional war between the godless rebel scum and the self-righteous fascists. Having pitched in with the aforementioned scum, it was out on patrol last night, pottering about largely on my own, partly to see if Factional Warfare can be done alone at all.
I think I'm regarding the entire project as something of a literal education actually; I've paid up my tuition fees in the form of a big...
In the dust and magma of Crucible, lies the Stall Junkyard, dumping ground of the self-liberated Brann ex-convicts, abandoned to their own devices on the harsh world of Arieki. With the destruction of the homeworld, the remaining Brann transportees rose up and tenaciously started anew, throwing off their shackles and forging a new and more gritty kind of society; functional, mechanical, and a far cry from the spiritual idyll of their original roots. Such industrialisation creates a tremendous amount of junk, and most of it ends up here. Not the most picturesque locations for a away-day holiday, but...
Another fortnight, another two hours of formless rambling into microphones. For reasons which will become increasingly apparent as you listen, I've become somewhat slack on the actual blogging of late, and do apologise. Hopefully, Drastic Action over the next week or so will mean service resumed as usual. Either that, or I'll just go mad; whichever! Van Hemlock Overdrive!; Ep 9; In which various forms of Excess are poked with the pointy stick of Amateur Psychiatry, an Epic What We are Playing section utterly crushes any kind of News Section, Excessive Download Gluttony is threatened with...
Several days later, the twitching has calmed down to the point where I can put, er, finger to keyboard and recount some of the horrors of war that took place on the previously mentioned Massively Planetside walking tour. As expected, it did indeed turn out to be quite a harrowing ordeal, but interesting, and quite a lot of fun too.
For some reason most likely rooted in deep-seated masochistic tendencies, a large gang of the staffers over at Massively decided not only to have a go at Planetside, but to do so in such a fashion that everyone else on...
I was going to just edit the last post, but it all got a bit complicated, so here's a whole new post! Last post, I was bitching about how long it would take the brand new player (or fresh alt), to grind out the required Faction Standing to take part in Factional Warfare. Well, several commenters came to my rescue, most notably Bremen's tip-off about the Graduation Certificate missions. So, I've spent an evening following up on that, and seem to have worked out an optimal route to the magical 0.5 standing: ...
So I finally got a bit of time to have a crack at the new EVE Factional Warfare thing last night, only it didn't quite go how I was anticipating, and I'm quickly learning that the whole PvP-Lite, Jump In and Face-Shoot aspect of it isn't nearly as accessible as I was imagining. I shouldn't be surprised really; this is EVE Online, not Planetside, and I think I'd somewhat lost track of what 'casual' actually means in this particular game, compared to most other MMOs. I'm keen! I want to give it a go, as I suspect it...
Well, this one is peculiar:
Massively: Come frag Massively in Planetside!
In which the various writers and staff of the Massively online magazine thing go on a jolly company outing to Auraxis. I can only assume that this is some kind of disciplinary measure, ("Right! You're all going into Planetside, until *someone* owns up!"), given the wide diversity and breath of games in which the Massively-ers play and write. Some of those folks have only ever played Second Life! Oh the humanity!
The event looks to be partnered with SOE in some fashion, and the hapless Pro-Bloggers look to be getting some...
Somewhat later this week, mostly my fault. Somewhat ambitious ideas for The Twiddely Bits (Technical podcast terminology) that go between the Bits Where We're Saying Stuff, got rather out of hand and ended up giving us an entirely additional Co-host, and presenting a rather stiff technical challenge for my Producer/Original Co-host. He's still grumpy for lack of sleep, but I'm pleased with the results, which can be found here: Van Hemlock's 'Not An Eve Podcast!'; Episode 8; In which our two plucky internet spaceship pilots prepare for the Empyrean Age, but also find time to Scoff...
Well, because I'm a sucker for both nostalgic reverie, and anything with the word 'Free' in it, I've gone hook line and sinker for the recent and quite unexpected SOE Living Legacy shindig. All strikes me as quite a clever marketing campaign; how can we get ourselves back in the headlines again? Answer; bung everyone that left a few free months on the house. Ostensibly, this is all so we, the fickle and disloyal ex-Everquesters can see what's new, and how it's all improved over the months and years since we last had a go. Fight with...
I do like a good desert. Despite never having been in a real one*, of all the Standard MMO Landscapes, I often find that the Desert Map is the most interesting. There often isn't a lot in a desert, hence the name, but even so, it is perhaps this very emptiness that I find so appealing. Very much an Explorer thing, I think, but a well done desert is a truly exotic place; howling winds blowing mournfully through rocky pinnacles, or over wide expansive dunes, which reach on into the distance like a solid sea. Here and...