Archive for May, 2005

I’m sorry…. who?

Published by Spot on 31 May 2005 in General. 4 Comments

Hello, my name is Spot and I am the newest addition to the writers here at KTR. I also have a personal blog which I upkeep at www.sp0t.com. As opposed to rewriting my about page, I will just copy it here as a sort of introduction:

Games continue to inspire me as the ultimate art medium. It is the only channel through which a designer may capture the visual, auditory and interactive senses; wielding them into an all encompassing envelope of emotion and stimulation. This ability alone; the power to construct a presentation on such a level, is beautiful to me.

I have therefore studied the game development industry for close to five years now; soaking in anything I can get my hands on. Watching the MMO revolution begin its unyielding climb toward the premiere emotional stimulant is an incredible experience.

I believe that what we label as games, will soon (and have already begun) to become much more. The possibilities of educational and entire varieties of non-entertainment driven opportunities exist and become more obvious each day.

My employment of three years with deviantART.com has provided me with the unique experience of watching (and assisting to guide) a truly massive community of over a million people, which allows me a somewhat uncommon perspective on massively multiplayer environments.

I currently live in Los Angeles, California with two roommates, one of which has played quite a few MMO’s, the other which often I find absorbed in a game of Counter-Strike or Rise of Nations. I frequent many MMO’s so as to gain a wider perspective on different design methods. Over the past six months, I have held accounts in EQ2 / SWG / WoW / Matrix / Ryzom / EVE / EAB / AO / L2 Etc.

I am also a die hard fan of the Splinter Cell franchise.

That’s about it for me. I will be writing more about design theory as it applies to my MMO experiences, and I look forward to discussing these things with you all.

Thanks.

-Spot

My weekend of Eve

Published by Zxyrox on 31 May 2005 in General. 6 Comments

[EVE Online] I can’t think of anything really breathtakingly interesting about what I did this weekend but on a side note, once I figure out how to configure screenshots with the paint tool (yeah I’m that out of it) I’ll post up some screenshots.

Well I helped out Ethic with some of the functions of EVE and I hope he continues to play as I find the game very interesting myself and I hope he does the same. As an update, I helped him out with mining and got him a new ship to use and I believe around the area of doubling his money tonight, and so far it’s all good.

I’ve lost 3 ships already to this darned war and I hope these idiots cut it out soon. I and everyone else don’t know what we did to them but I’m sure they are just corp killers. Well we have alot of people from other corps that delcared war on them in our honor, apparantly our CEO is a well liked guy.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great guy but some of the people he has helping us aren’t the least bit appreciative of the help some of the not-so-uber members have done. I myself was told I wasn’t going to be worth anything in a fight because my current combat ship is a cruiser. (I’m sorry I can’t afford a 120mill battleship guys) so mr. mercinary got the short end of the stick when I told him I’m no longer helping his efforts and he can consider himself - 1 pilot…of course one of the members of about the same experience of me in the corp decides to take mr. mercinary’s side and try to rationalize his harshness “he just doesnt want you to lose anymore ships”.

Well, you can imagine how many people took my side in corp-channel the operation wasnt even mr.mercinary’s business in the first place and my wingman wasnt too happy about him pissing me off, well more on that later.. I have to go mine :)

-Zxyrox

Ethic’s In Space

Published by Ethic on 30 May 2005 in EVE Online. 8 Comments

ethic[EVE Online] After logging into EVE for the first time and creating my character, I was sent through a tutorial. There are no player avatars in the game, unless you consider a ship your player avatar, which I guess is actually the truth of it. Your person only exists as a character portrait. My character shown here, is named “Ethic KTR”.

This doesn’t bother me, as the ship is kind of like the ultimate loot. Well, except you don’t really loot it. Um, well you can sort of loot other ships.

When you start the game, you get a free ship and 1,000 ISK (the native form of currency). My ship was called an Ibis, but I renamed it to be called “The Alcyone”. That is something cool off the bat, you can name your ship. The second image is of my ship.

alcyoneThe tutorial was good, and it got me started. I really did need help and thanks to Zxyrox I was able to get most of my questions answered. I ran a few delivery missions and did some mining and managed to get my ISK up to around 65,000 at the moment. I’m on the verge of buying my first new ship.

Here is a typical mission for you: While docked in a station, an agent asked me to deliver some cargo to another station. I open up my cargo hold and also the station items window. I drag the cargo from the items window into my cargo hold. Then I click on undock.

I then find myself outside the station. I open up my map and do a search for the destination. When it finds it, I mark it as my destination point. I then click on autopilot and it takes me all the way to my end destination system (even through the jump gates) with no interaction needed. I could have done it by going from jump gate to jump gate on my own, but this is much easier. It did not take too long, but I will admit that at this point it is pretty much a waiting game. You do not need to interact with the game too much so far.

Autopilot takes me to the system I needed, but I still need to find the end station. There are icons on the screen and you can just hover over them, or there is a window that shows what is nearby. Finding the end station, I click on “warp to within 15 km” and away I go. When I get to the station, I request docking privileges by right clicking on the station and choosing dock.

Once docked, I can click on my agent and tell them the delivery is complete and I collect my fee. I could then return to my original station and get another assignment, or I can talk to a local agent (if available).

miningI also spent some time mining for “feldspar” which comes from an asteroid. I would find a nearby asteroid field and lock onto an asteroid with the mineral I am searching for, and then click on my mining laser. Then I wait until my cargo hold is full and warp back to the station for processing and sale. The third image is of me during a mining expedition.

So that sums up my first weekend in EVE. I find the game to be very peaceful. I also find it to be very complicated and I like that. It means I have a lot of things to learn. I also find the immersion level to be very high, because everything makes sense. Private chats, email, storage space, everything fits the setting. And the scenery, at least so far, is nothing short of breathless. And only one server, means I can play alongside, and chat with anyone that is playing.

- Ethic

So what brings YOU here?

Published by Zubon on 30 May 2005 in City of Heroes/Villains. 0 Comments

[City of Heroes] Life must be odd in Paragon City, you know? Superheroes everywhere, and a lot of them are pretty freaky. I mean, to say nothing of the guys walking around on fire or covered in floating skulls, you have half-transparent floating squid creatures that can turn into some tank-like crustacean. Over here, the author wonders, “Just stop and think for a moment about how odd it would be if the world’s most powerful superbeing just stopped into a malt shop in full costume to share a milkshake with a girl.”

When you get on the monorail, you need to ask the guy next to you to please stop dripping his alien ichor on your groceries. “Pardon, my wife is expecting, could you not use your cloud of choking nuclear radiation just here?” Oh, and the equivalent of GNC, Image Inc., also has a big display case of firearms and special ammunition to go with your high-fiber cereals.

Despite all of this, after rescuing someone, s/he will frequently tell you, “I’ve never met a hero before!”

Zubon

Argh :(

Published by DC on 30 May 2005 in World of Warcraft. 4 Comments

[World of Warcraft] After returning from my camping trip I looked forward to playing some WoW. However, I noticed my computer was much more sluggish than usual. It seems I was down to 2 gigs of hard drive space. So I go in and delete some files and run defragmenter and disc clean up. After that, my WoW won’t load properly. I might have to delete and reinstall the game, but I hate doing that especially with MMOs where that means downloading all the patches again. But unless I figure this out soon, that’s what I’ll have to do… argh.

DC

A New Beginning

Published by Ethic on 28 May 2005 in EVE Online. 4 Comments

eve[EVE Online] I’m downloading the free 14-day trial offered at Penny Arcade as I write this. I’m going to give EVE a shot, but I’m going to need some in-game assistance. Someone to show me the ropes a little.

Anyone up to it, send me an email and tell me how to get ahold of you. Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: “Currently there are 10692 players on the server and of that 799 are trial accounts. The server is configured to accept a maximum of 800 trial accounts.” Bah. They did tell me that if I wanted to subscribe I could log in right away. Thanks for that I guess. I suppose my 14 days is going to countdown regardless of my ability to try the game or not.

UPDATE p2: I did manage to get in a good amount of time this weekend, I hope to have a “beginning” write up sometime this week.

- Ethic

More Free Play

Published by Ethic on 28 May 2005 in General. 1 Comment

money [Asheron's Call 2] Turbine is offering former players of AC2 a chance to come back and see what’s new. They are giving out free 30 day trials for former players.

Give it a try, you might like the changes.

People that have never tried AC2, can give it a try for free for 15 days.

Here is a returning player guide to help you get back in the swing of things.

- Ethic

I’m A Carney

Published by Ethic on 27 May 2005 in General. 1 Comment

carnivalI love going to the carnival. You know the ones that travel from town to town. Every small town gets their chance to have a carnival and the whole city shows up. The rides get assembled and the carneys yell from the booths. “Win your girlfriend a teddy bear, kid!”.

I remember one carnival I went to in my grandparents’ home town. It started with a parade and ended with a concert. In the parade, they had soldiers in jeeps firing off blanks from machine guns and the shells sprayed all over the street. The kids ran out to grab handfulls even though they were blistering hot. I still have some of those.

One time I found myself at a booth where you would toss a dime and if it landed on a plate you would win a pocketknife. I only had a nickel but the guy said it was ok. I gave it a toss and it landed. I still have that pocketknife too.

Anyway, there is a new carnival in town. This one is for gamers. If you are a gamer, you should go check it out. If you aren’t a gamer, what are you doing reading this boring old site? Have fun!

- Ethic

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