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EVE Gets Serious

EVE[EVE Online] “Human Cattle” is a tier II Gallente mission chain in EVE, and it has some of the hardest missions I have ever seen. Granted, I am not optimized for heavy combat, but that ambush that started with blowing off half my shields was rough.

The missions get progressively harder, such that I was frequently destroying one target, fleeing to repair my hull, then going back. Then I got to the last area. Those big red crosses are all really big ships. The smaller ones I can solo, given time, if there are only two or three of them.
Human Cattle 1 My ship is at that angle because I am getting out of Dodge. And now the real picture…

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Looking Back: Ethic’s 2005 MMORPG Predictions

Let’s go back and take a look at my 2005 MMORPG predictions and see how close I was.

World of Warcraft: Will continue to dominate the casual playerbase. Hardcores will move on. Will become the number one MMOG in the USA.

Looks pretty good, but perhaps that one was too easy.

Asheron’s Call 2: Won’t make it to 2006.

Ouch. Dead on.

Everquest 2: Completely gives up on the casual player market and focuses on the powergamers, thus raping Everquest.

Wrong. It appears that EQ2 has been trying to lure the casuals over to the SOE camp. I got this game as a gift for Christmas, perhaps I’ll give it a try.

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Same Character, Different Game

EVE[EVE Online] I seem to have three characters, which I play across a number of games. As I have mentioned, I tend towards healers and support classes. In City of Heroes, I have two level 50 Defenders, and my highest level villain is a Thermal Radiation Corruptor (buffer/healer). I have the name Zubon reserved as a Defender on almost every server. My second character is a mage/blaster/whatever they are called in your game: the glass cannon. My third character is the pet class. Ideally you combine them, so my Dark Age of Camelot character was a Theurgist (nuking mage with buffs and quasi-pets).

Flying around EVE Online while my superhero wife worked on hitting level 50, I contemplated EVE drones and CoV Masterminds, since both of my current main characters in CoV are Masterminds. When I am not playing the game where my henchmen destroy my enemies for me, I play the game where my drones destroy my enemies for me. I seem to have turned the two most polar opposite games out there into the same game. That feels really weird.

On the other hand, I am posting during combat, so there are advantages to playing this way.

Sweet Mother of Pearl!

EVE[EVE Online] I logged back into EVE Online tonight. I do not know how much has changed, but the changes to my character since I last logged on are disorienting. I used to hunt pirates almost entirely with drones. Now most of my drones will not fit in my ship, and my skills changed so that I cannot control as many. So that is a switch. More surprises to come as I poke around, I suspect.

Anyone know a good ship with a 125 m3 or larger drone bay? My ogres want to go back to work, preferably without investing a few months of skills in being able to use them again. I guess I’ll need to remember how these guns work. Hmph. I mostly just used them to aggravate far off enemies who I did not feel like chasing: shoot them once, they come closer, and my drones eat them.

I guess this is what happens when you leave a game for six months. Did the Iteron Mark V used to hold more? I recall its holding much more cargo than a Mark IV.

: Zubon

I Like To Watch

gw[Guild Wars] The latest update out of ArenaNet has added something I like to call “Voyeur Mode”. The official name is a more boring “Observer Mode”.

That’s right, you can watch certain matches – time delayed 15 minutes to avoid abuse by cheating. This sounds interesting enough, I’d like to see more games add something along this line.

Sadly I stopped playing Guild Wars months ago, pretty much lost all interest in it. The Observer Mode is something I will check out, if only to study the technical side of it all.

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Hello and Goodbye

wow[World of Warcraft] Blizzard has said hello to many players over the past year, now crossing the 5 million mark. I’m pretty sure nobody believed an MMO would have sold this well.

With that level of popularity comes some negatives as well. Scammers, thiefs, beggars, cheaters, farmers, crooks, and low life scum. Blizzard has occasionally said goodbye to large groups of accounts, the success of such actions are questionable but at least they are trying. The most recent round of bannings shut down over 18,000 accounts. That is around the total number of people playing EVE Online at any given moment, so it’s not a small amount.

I wonder if banning accounts really slows down the activities that caused the ban. I bet it’s a losing battle for Blizzard. Although, it probably is a financial gain for Blizzard anyway, because most of the banned people will just buy a new box and start over.

– Ethic

Asheron’s Call 2 Memories

ac2[Asheron’s Call 2] First off, the people. The community of AC2 players was amazing. I’ve seen nothing like it before or since.

Leafcull!!!

The “end of beta” Tyrant assault on Molworth and Cragstone (they attacked all the cities, but these were the ones I was at). Running through the vaults (Arwic, Lost Wish, Esper, etc.) in the beginning as a group. Looking up at the rain hitting an invisible “floor” above me. Leveling just by running through portals and clicking on obelisks (crazy run buff too). Fueling the forges for crafters. Chat, or should I say no chat. Tou Tou Vault – argh the jumping. Cragstone Excavation (fighting the crowd for medallion pieces). Ghost Mines. Lady Aerfalle. Olthoi and Olthoi mounds. Lady Silva. Tyrants Loft and Lord Deimos. The White Rabbit. Becoming a Hero. Icefire, Boots, and Mage Academy. Gurogs and Buruns.

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Whimper

ac2[Asheron’s Call 2] Well, it’s almost over now. AC2 is closing down on the 30th of December. What’s left to do?

For one, you can read Wired’s article, “Not With a Bang but a Whimper”, here (thanks to Inhibit for sending me the link). Or, if you still have an account like I do, you can get boosted to the max level which is 150 and go fight two Tyrants at one time in East Gevoth or perhaps go fight Ahria Queen of Night.

But mostly it is just another MMO to go down the tubes. Lots of things went wrong and some went right. Lessons will have hopefully been learned.

Current AC2 players have been invited to DDO’s beta, so all is not lost. Yes, they sent me one so I guess they want me to stop playing AC2 now? Anyway, I’m planning to be there when they pull the plug, to see if they have any inspiration left or if they will do just that – pull the plug.

Whimper.

– Ethic

Loving Change

ffxi [Final Fantasy XI] My brother mentioned FFXI one night. I’m not sure how we really came to this decision, but because he hadn’t asked for anything for Christmas, we came to the idea that maybe an FFXI account would be a good idea. Both he and I have burnt ourselves out on WoW, though we are far from done with WoW.

I’ve been kind of mellow lately, not feeling like even logging into WoW, even though I got home five days ago and have been able to. I’ve mostly been playing offline games between my new Nintendo DS and Dragon Quest VIII. I don’t know exactly why I haven’t felt compelled to play WoW. There’s many reasons I can think of, with feeling bored of the game actually being close to last on the list. Playing FFXI again would be like breathing fresh air again. I’ve never played two MMORPGs at once, so I don’t know if this could eventually be a good or bad thing for me.

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