Category: General

I’ve noticed a strong trend in Eve lately, it seems that (like most games) CCP keeps adding more, and more, and even more “endgame” content, gigantic gargantuan doomsday ships that cost several billions of isk to buy, let alone train in its own.

I realise they are also revamping tech 1 frigates and cruisers, as well as adding new tech 2 destroyers, battlecruisers, and cruisers, also, at high prices. It seems to me more and more people that have over 40billion isk and have enough tech 2/named fitted bs stashed away to survive the end of the world, need more of an advantage then they already have?

Big bad alliances getting more content, and leaving the little guy in the dust, of course, this has always been the case in Eve, but making huge ships only flyable in 0.0 (which anyone who has ever been to 0.0 or been in an alliance knows that every inch of 0.0 is closely guarded by the local alliance who controls the territory) instantly cuts off a good number of players.

Continue reading WoW and Eve Online, where I stand.

[Mystery game] Before our ages reached double-digits, most of us realized an easy way to find out who someone was interested in. Romantically, that is, as much as that means when you are in elementary school. You simply ask names until you get a non-denial. “No” means “no”; “I’m not going to answer that!” means “yes.”

In a related story, after the PATRIOT Act, librarians were inflamed. We are not debating the politics of that one here, but librarian outrage was palpable enough to get the Attorney General joking about it. You see, one section (which no one has ever publicly reported being used) would let investigators seize all of a library’s records to check for suspected terrorists (kind of like in Seven); disclosure of such a record seizure would be a felony. One creative way someone thought of getting around this was to put up a sign by the front desk, “There have been no federal seizures of library patron records this week.” You’re allowed to say that. Take it down when appropriate.

Watch me draw this seamlessly back on topic…

Continue reading Beta, Boys, and the USA-PATRIOT Act

The Carnival of Gamers has made it’s ninth stop, this time at The Game Chair. Our own Zubon has set up a booth, but he might not yet know about it. I snuck him in at the last minute while he was sleeping.

The next stop for the carnival will be right here at Kill Ten Rats. Where I live, this is the time of the Winter Carnival. Therefore, I plan to turn the next stop into a winter wonderland. So get your submissions ready, it’s going to get really cold out and the Ice Palace needs help being built.

– Ethic

[City of Heroes] One of the more annoying things in any game is that people who quit hang around the forums for weeks to complain. One standard way of dealing with this on the official boards is to retrict posting privleges to paying customers. We still complain incessantly, but most of us are busy playing rather than posting. Cryptic/NCSoft does this one better: if you cancel your account but still have time left, you cannot post during your remaining play time. (It does warn you of this at the appropriate screen, and you can wait and cancel your account just before your renewal date.)

: Zubon

[City of Villains] Early in City of Heroes, task forces were repeatedly bugged, annoying, and generally not worth the effort of completing. After several fixes, they were still in the same status. Then they were mostly fixed, with badges added retroactively. Then they added some badges to the most tiring ones, not retroactively. These tiring ones are scheduled to be made less tiring someday.

City of Villains is aspiring to this track record.

Continue reading Strike Forces and Task Forces

[City of Heroes/Villains] City of Heroes/Villains exhibits all the varieties of choice in games to which I referred recently, and it does it all before you even start the game.

First, the game is class-based, under the name “archetype.” Each game begins with five options. City of Heroes will be the most familiar: tank, support, crowd control, damage (ranged), and damage (melee). There you go: class-based game, five options.

Continue reading Simultaneous Systems of Character Choice

[World of Warcraft] You have to wonder if it was really worth it for Blizzard to go into China. You also have to wonder if there was a reason that Sony and Square Enix havent ventured into the mainland…

Suing Blizzard is fast becoming a massively multiplayer pastime in China.

Numerous sources reported earlier this week that the parents of a boy who leaped from a 24-story building are filing suit against Blizzard in relation to the young man’s supposed addiction to World of Warcraft.

Continue reading WoW really is crack…

[Star Trek Online] I havent been following the development of Star Trek Online for a while since new information was slow in coming. Anyways, I check it out today and find that they have redesigned their website. There are 2 concept pictures and a Shockwave Flash animation of what appears to be the engineering element of the game.

Continue reading Some Star Trek Online News

A year ago, World of Warcraft and EverQuest II were coming out, eagerly anticipated titles set to knock the current champions off their thrones. People were saying, “City of Heroes is just something I’m playing until World of Warcraft comes out.” Before that, guilds might have signed up for Asheron’s Call to practice until Shadowbane came out. Message boards for years said, “Wait until X is out, then I’m out of here!”

Continue reading The New New Thing?