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City of Heroes Free Reactivation Weekend

coh[City of Heroes] Their poor, hammered update servers. I will be able to connect someday. With any luck, this will be the party that the last free weekend should have been, relatively bug-free. I was just thinking of re-subscribing anyway! Good timing, except for that LAN party this weekend.

Since I am getting a little free playtime, I will give them a little free press. The first thing is that CoX will soon be introducing Veteran Rewards, stuff you get for having subscribed for a while. This includes wings, trenchcoats, and other mostly decorative touches. My special pre-order glowie-Sprint will no longer be quite as special. The other is that they are pimping the new combined CoH/CoV game, available only at Wal-Mart.

If you have an old account, see if you can log on. If you have never tried it, the “Good Versus Evil Edition” is a cheap way to try both. I will have nice things to say about it all next week, most likely.

: Zubon

Warning and Disclaimer (Part 1)

Please do not read Kill Ten Rats while driving. Studies have shown that distracted driving is a leading cause of crashes. This should not be interpreted as encouragement to read other blogs while driving.

Kill Ten Rats does not promote violence against animals. Also, if your residence, business, or other relevant location faces a rodent infestation, Kill Ten Rats does not purport to recommend a specific level of extermination sufficient to solve your problems. Please consult a professional.

: Zubon

Game of the Moment

A cute free thing online: Gunbound. Gunbound is a battle of cute little tanks. It is turn based with an interface quite a bit like a golf game. You might ride on a glowing grub that shoots bouncing balls of death or a triceratops with explosive cabbage. When learning to play, I recommend Mage or Turtle, since they are the most straightforward mobiles.

Basic instructions: right/left to move, up/down to aim, space bar to fire, tab to switch weapons. You get gold for winning or making nice shots, which you can use to buy hats and such. You can also buy them with real cash. The items give bonuses, but half the rooms ignore those bonuses so you don’t have to compete against people who pay to play.

Servers are kind of very bad, with significant lag freezes between turns on many games. There is no more juvenile trash-talking than in most subscription-based games, but then maybe I have been lucky. I could use an ignore list some days. If the buddies list is working when you try it out, you can add me and we can shoot at each other. What are friends for?

: Zubon

PS: referral event at the moment. Feel free to tell them Zubon sent you, since I’m saving up to buy a cape. :)

BoB Declares War On ASCN

EVE[EVE Online] The Band of Brothers (BoB) alliance (the 6th largest in EVE with 1531 members) has declared war on the Ascendant Frontier (ASCN) alliance (the largest in EVE with 3829 members). My corporation, Ars Caelestis, is part of ASCN. While this is part of what playing EVE is all about, I really wonder how the server cluster will hold up in battles with the potential to become huge.

Continue reading BoB Declares War On ASCN

WoW vs. EVE

Since I have been thinking about it anyway, I want to do the flip side of this post.

EVE on the other hand starts out kind of rough and ugly. Confusing at times and seeming as if there is nothing to do.

I will cite the problem in the opposite direction: there is everything to do. Once you exit the tutorial, you can run missions, mine, hunt baby rats, start training for trade runs, jump into corp politics, explore the galaxy, learn the market… Many people, when faced with unlimited choice, lock up and cannot handle it. If no direction is inherently more meaningful than any other, they may not even see a reason to move.

In economic terms, people feel opportunity costs. The more choices you have, the more things you need to give up to do anything else right now. If you are playing a Warrior, you have given up the other seven WoW choices (for now). If you are training Learning 1, there are over 300 other skills that you are not training, there are people several years ahead of you, and it will never be possible to cap every skill. From the instant you log on, you can check the market and see the multi-million ISK items out there, with the tier II items directly next to the ones you can use. If you see a level 10 in the WoW newbie zone, he’s slumming. WoW even has an eventual “win” condition. It has rules, and borders, and an end zone.

Freedom, opportunity, and choices scare a lot of people. There are enough places in real life where they are faced with radical existentialism, and they do not want to deal with it in a game. My mother yet to come to grips with Mario, who can move sideways and jump, or do both at the same time!

: Zubon

EVE vs. WoW

I came across an old post today on Terra Nova. Part of it hit the nail on the head as to why I prefer EVE over WoW. Let me share that part with you.

WoW (and too it symbolizes so much in the genre) is a place that reeks of fun and playfulness on the surface, but once ensnared, players are led into a deception that spells W*O*R*K. Eve-Online on the other hand is Icelandic with Calvinist overtones – yet in this confining straightjacket there is opportunity to find one’s own way towards a demeanor of play. One represents a fall into an abyss, the other, a rise from one to redemption…

Most all MMOs out there that I have played go for the fun and easy right off the bat. Levels ding several times a night. New skills and new armor in a flurry of action. Fast forward a few months and it’s days to get a level and you are still wearing that same ugly cloak you found 2 weeks ago. EVE on the other hand starts out kind of rough and ugly. Confusing at times and seeming as if there is nothing to do. Fast forward a few months and you can go from a hardcore ice miner to a covert-ops pilot sneaking behind the enemy forces in the time it takes to dock and switch ships.

Yes, I am an EVE fanboy and I hope more MMORPGs can find a way to make a game keep getting more fun as you play it, like EVE does.

– Ethic

Another First For ASCN

EVE[EVE Online] The first Titan has been built and it was Ascendant Frontier that made it happen. It’s a pretty big deal, and an even bigger ship. Way to go ASCN! Ars Caelestis is proud to be a part of ASCN.

Updated:

Official news report.

ASCN leader CYVOK posted on the official EVE forums: “Maybe our second titan finished at 13:02 today, maybe it didn’t.” Hmm…

– Ethic

One More (Last?) Time

wow[World of Warcraft] Been kind of feeling burnt out of gaming lately. I’ve been working two jobs racking up 65 hours a week on a regular basis and when I get free time all I want to do is sleep. Having said that, my wife recently mentioned that she wanted to play World of Warcraft some more.

My account has been inactive for a while, but I thought about it. If I bought a second account, we could play together. I ran the option by her and she thought it sounded like something fun for us to do together. I found a copy of WoW on sale at the local game store and it’s sitting here on top of my copy of Half-Life2 Episode 1 and a book “Small Stakes Hold ’em”. HL2e1 is something I actually finished playing recently, but the book has yet to be cracked open (poker is one of my other hobbies). I’m just waiting for the word from her to fire up both computers down here in the nerdcenter of the house. I imagine I’ll have some things to write and perhaps I’ll even have her write a post or two.

We shall see.

– Ethic

Recreating World War II

The Warlords expansion to Civilization IV adds Churchill and Stalin to the list of leaders available, helping you to recreate The War, although Italy is still represented by the Romans. You can round out the Allies with FDR running the Americans while Mao and Hirohito battle in Asia. Germany, of course, will be ruled by … … Bismarck.

Something seems to be missing here.

: Zubon

PS – Hirohito but no Tokugawa?