Category: General

[EVE Online] Thought I’d share something I’ve been pondering over the last few weeks….

In EVE online, my “progression” came in different stages.

First 2 months: Mostly I was just getting to know the game…new shiny, new gameplay…new style…new (almost) everything. I wasnt sure on what I wanted to do… I had skills spread out in all directions, and I did missions and mined with a friend for the most part.

2-3 months later: I had decided I wanted to be a miner/industrialist. I had my skills queued up for a mining barge craft, which I would fly within a month, I stayed in the corporation’s system and harvested isk all day long, making around 10mill per day

Continue reading Have not posted for a while…so…

[World of Warcraft] Today was my server’s (Mannoroth) day for the gates of AQ (Ahn’Qiraj) to open. Unfortunately, I was on the road today, had to pick up my brother, and forgot that my local time zone is not the same as my server’s time zone, so I missed the opening of AQ by a few minutes. Regardless, I got to run around the area and have a little fun.

Continue reading Live Event: AQ

[EVE Online] One of the things EVE Online is known for is skill training in real time. That is, you click the start button, and the skill trains. It takes a certain amount of time, whether you are online or not, and then you get the skill level when that time is up. Pretty simple.

About the only way to make this go faster is to improve your attributes (Perception, Intelligence, etc.), either through the Learning skill set or by buying valuable cybernetic implants. Conversely, the only thing those attributes do is cut skill training times.

As a player, you face a simple choice: learn Learning skills or go for directly useful ones. You must play for a long period of time for the time spent on the Learning skills to pay itself back, but the best time to train those skills is from day one, before you really know whether you want to play EVE. This must have interesting effects on player retention, and I presume that someone at CCP has done the math.

Continue reading Learning Skills

[City of Villains] I understand that many of you used to play Everquest or some other game where it was accepted for team-formation to take as long as a half-hour. Apparently, there are still games where grouping is nigh-mandatory and forming a playable team takes that long.

Stop playing those games.

Continue reading Acceptable Waiting Times

[EVE Online] I have mentioned before about the Important Storyline mission of “give the janitor a ride to his vacation spot.” Working for another corporation recently, I was again offered the chance to be a janitor’s taxi, a mission that strongly affected my standings with several empires. This is a janitor of some import. I realized, talking with him while we warped between systems, that the janitor is actually Chuck Norris.

As the greatest actor of our time might say, “Whoa.”

: Zubon

In-game, we do not have five-hour meetings. When we get a large group of people together for five hours, we are going to slaughter things by the thousand.

In-game, we do not spend the first half hour of our gathering engaging in a clever ice-breaker, to help get those creative juices flowing and put everyone in the right mental place for a free-wheeling discussion. We spend the first half-hour alt-tabbed, reading web pages while waiting for everyone to get to the right zone. We may also be discussing character builds or the latest test server notes on Teamspeak. (If anyone has a way for me to alt-tab from life during clever ice-breakers, please post it in the comments. No PDAs.)

Continue reading Work vs. Game

[EVE Online] Tonight, in EVE Online, Ethic took a dangerous mission through Amarr space. The Amarr are a society of cruel slavelords, known to steal ponies from one-legged Caldari orphans and choke them, just to watch them die. There is reason to believe that Ethic has been taken captive, and an Amarr-programmed clone has replaced him.

If there are any odd posts here or hostile actions in EQ2, do not say that you have not been warned.

: Zubon

[City of Villains] I recently posted about a stealth nerf to stealth, which is fun to say. They are not going through with it. The reason for the nerf hitting test was to reduce risk-free xp. The reason for its leaving was well reasoned posts from players. And it was a “stealth” stealth nerf due to an ongoing internal documentation issue.

I thought this one needed an update, not just a note in the comments, in case you had been thinking badly of Cryptic. Corrections need to be visible on blogs.

: Zubon

[World of Warcraft] Patch bites me on the ass again, don’t know what to say. I’m not investing 12 more hours into fixing this problem.

Meh.

-Zxyrox

Welcome to the Carnival of Gamers X – Winter Carnival! This year we have lots of activites to take our minds off the brutally cold weather. Luckily the lakes froze over early so we could get a good start on building the Ice Palace.

This years schedule of events:

Curling Exhibition

Over at the Fairground Ice Rink, we have a Curling Exhibition by Russ Mitchell from “Boxing Alcibiades”. He is famous for a special move he calls “Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion is a great game”. It’s a long name, which is possibly why most other players just call it RoToWar BarInIaGaGa.

Continue reading Carnival of Gamers X – Winter Carnival