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Important Storyline

[EVE Online] Every 16 missions or so, a contact will call you for an Important Storyline mission. Yes, that is what they are called. Anyway, they give you a bit of story, sometimes have a chain of missions, and are a nice break from repetitive missions. Yesterday, three out of four missions were “stop the Serpentis pirates who are harassing people nearby.” When I logged on today, I was excited to see a message from my usual Storyline contact. Hurray! What excitement am I doing for the Gallente Navy? Last time, I had to face waves of Caldari attackers to stop a double agent.

Important Personnel Transportation
Mission briefing
I have something important for you this time. One of our chief janitors has just started his vacation, and requested that I find a suitable pilot to transport him to Grinacanne I – Federal Intelligence Office Assembly Plant, where he’ll be visiting his aunt for a couple weeks. Since you’re looking for work, I thought I’d offer you this job. What do you say?

This mission expires at 2005.07.21 00:22:47
This is an important mission, which will have significant impact on your faction standings.

Excuse me? You want me to use a warship as a personal transport vehicle for a janitor? And I need to put down a 50,000 credit deposit on him. You know, just in case I try to sell him a few stations over. Good janitors are hard to come by.

It really did affect my faction ratings, too, 10x as much as my previous mission. Which involved dealing with enemies of the Federation. I dropped in faction with other empires, who apparently are really bitter about this janitor’s getting to take a vacation. (Random reference: the gardener who Prine Xizor tries to hire away from the Emperor in Shadows of the Empire. Poor guy.) This must be some Very Important Janitor. Maybe he will be the next Amarr emperor. If he doesn’t show up in future missions, I am going to quit. :p

: Zubon

Blizz Con Official Site Up

[Blizz Con] The official website is up and my guess was right: it’s going to be at the Anaheim Convention Center. 3 days of Q&As with developers and chances to play Blizzard games for a mere… $120!!?!!?1!!!/??!1!

Um… maybe I won’t be making it after all :( $120 to play WoW, StarCraft, WC3, and Diablo plus chat with developers (whom I’m sure won’t have that much to say)? It’s only $30 bucks to go to Comic-Con for a day and gawk at Kate Beckinsale promoting the the sequel to Underworld.

DC

Oh come on…

[Final Fantasy XI] Ok, seriously, I am still holding back all comments, and its not like this is some major change, but COME ON, I DONT NEED TO KNOW EVERY LITTLE DETAIL HANDED OUT LIKE CHRUMBS TO A BEGGER! Ummm… yeah, deep breath time.

Just release the update information already.

Ticket to Japan: $1000
Two nights in seedy Japanese motel: $2
Enough Saki to kill the pain: $5
Killing the teasing idiot that writes these update updates: Priceless

Simpler Title Selection and a New NPC Fortuneteller!

The next version update will introduce changes to the character title selection system and reveal a new NPC fortuneteller.

New Character Title Selection System
-Currently, when using the services of an NPC bard to change your title, you must pay gil to receive a list of earned titles that you can select from. However, in the next version update, you may see your list of titles without paying. It will still cost gil to change your title, but the price will be lowered.

-After altering your character’s title, the surrounding adventurers will be notified by a /say message announcing the change.

-Players will now have the option to have one of their titles selected randomly for free once each day (Earth time).

New NPC Fortuneteller
-A new NPC will tell the player’s fortune regarding character titles and other “elements.”

Keep checking this site for the newest information regarding the version update in mid-July!

Ripped from the dead cold grip of some idiot SE programmer at the FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team webpage.

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What?

[Final Fantasy XI]

Introducing the Fellowship Quest

The Fellowship Quest will be added in the next version update. After completing the quest, you will receive an item that will allow you to call an NPC to come to your aid!

Adventure together, defeat fearsome monsters together, and gain experience together! That’s right–your NPC friend can also gain experience and level up alongside you! After you’ve fought a few battles together, your ally might show up wearing new gear the next time you call for it! This new feature will open up the excitement of Vana’diel like never before!

The next version update coming in mid-July is full of new adventures and features designed to maximize your enjoyment in Vana’diel. Keep your eyes peeled for more information!

FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team (7/11/2005)

Wow, I dont know what to make of all these changes…

Are they trying to make the game like Guild Wars? Hired NPC’s? I find this troubling as it could radically unbalance the party system…

Plundered from the FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team webpage.

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Auditory Entanglements

I had the pleasure of attending the first Video Games Live event last night at the famous Hollywood Bowl.

While I have been a huge gaming enthusiast for most of my life, and especially in the last five years, I was doubtful of this event’s turnout. While taking into consideration the majority public opinion that games are simply that, just games; it seemed quite probable that those interested enough to spend hard earned cash on a ticket fit into a small room.

I was beyond mistaken. The Hollywood Bowl seats sixteen thousand. Very few of these seats were empty. Hearing a crowd of fifteen thousand people of all ages cheer and scream when Yuji Naka (creator of Sonic the Hedgehog) walked onto the stage was one of the most surreal and amazing experiences that I have enjoyed in quite some time.

Games covered included Mario™, Zelda®, Halo®, Metal Gear Solid®, Myst®, Final Fantasy®, Castlevania®, Medal of Honor™, Sonic™, Tron©, Tomb Raider®, Advent Rising, Headhunter, Beyond Good & Evil™, Splinter Cell®, Ghost Recon™, Rainbow Six®, Pong®, Donkey Kong® as well as EverQuest® II and World of Warcraft®.

There were two girls of about the age of 13 sitting in front of me. When the World of Warcraft segment started they almost fell off their chairs screaming. I was astonished at the diversity of people present. During the intermission a raffle was held based on ticket number. The second presentation started with a competition between a forty five year old woman and a thirteen year old boy. Suffice it to say the thirteen year old won.

The event wrapped up with an introduction of the Mario music by designer Shigeru Miyamoto to much fanfare. The producers then announced time for one more presentation and asking for any requests were answered by a huge cheering for Halo.

After the conclusion of the segments, the stage was filled one by one with the designers and composers present for the event, which looked to be a good forty or fifty.

Overall the event was extremely entertaining, and most likely was for even non-gamers. The music was beautiful and at times heart pumping. I suggest you check out the tour dates to see if it will be visiting your area.

-Spot
www.sp0t.com

So release the update already…

[Final Fantasy XI] So more update information, this time it deals with tweaks to experience in level capped areas and the experience you get from lower conning mobs. I am not even going to go into this stuff until the update is released…

Changes to Experience Acquisition

The next version update will bring the following changes:

-Chain Bonuses in Level-Restricted Areas
Currently, when fighting in level-restricted Chains of Promathia areas, EXP chain bonuses are determined by a player’s actual level. However, after the version update, bonuses will be determined by the player’s level within the area. This means adventurers will soon be able to earn extra EXP by defeating multiple enemies that are “even match” or higher, just as if the player was fighting in a regular area.

-Slight Adjustments in Experience Acquisition
The player will soon be able to earn experience from monsters of a slightly wider level range than previously possible. As a result, experience points earned by defeating “decent challenge” and “easy prey” monsters will slightly increase.

Check the FINAL FANTASY XI main page for more information as it is released!

FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team (7/7/2005)

Rogued from the FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team webpage.

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Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes

Patch Day! It seems nothing brings more excitement and fear to the MMO gamer than patch day. I’d also be willing to bet nothing causes more people to quit than patch day.

In a perfect world, patch day is the day when the bug that has been driving you crazy finally gets fixed. It is when new content is added. It is when the “too powerful” get nerfed. It is when the “too weak” gets buffed. It is when you get that new game feeling again if only for a moment. All in a perfect world.

The reality of it is that patch day breaks things. It breaks the UI. It makes more lag. The class/item you have come to love does not work as well as it used to. It makes you revise previous successful strategies. It makes previously worthless items priceless and previously priceless items worthless. It adds content you finish in 3 hours. This is not to mention the headache of getting the patch downloaded in the first place.

In general, people don’t like change. You create a game and rules for play. The players learn the rules and play according to them (not talking about cheaters here). On patch day, the rules often get changed. This upsets players who had been playing by the rules. They get tired of the game having the rules changed each patch day and they quit.

Patch day often will have small changes that would originally appear to be minor. Changes like the voice of a character or the revision of a custom logo background. People get used to things and when you change even the little stuff it becomes a big deal to them. They liked the old logo background. The old voice was fine, why did you change it?

A new player would not even notice these items. In fact, they will get used to the way it is currently and would likely get upset if you changed it back.

I’ll cite a recent example from EVE Online. They just had a patch come out. In this patch, the power of missles was changed in various ways. Now you need to buy some skills to make them work as well as before, and they deal damage in a different way. Big missles are not as deadly to small ships.

Now, I already read the patch notes and recognized the missle changes so I just avoided missles for the most part. It is how I prefer to deal with change. After the patch came out, I started training missle skills and I do not notice any issues with them. People that had jumped all over missles because they were so powerful are currently upset. Even though the patch notes were available and a test server was in place for people to see how it would impact them.

Another thing they changed was the voice of the ship computer. I rarely played with sound up so I do not recall much of the old voice. I like the new voice, even though she sounds a bit apethetic about everything. I half expect her to say, “Oh bother, I suppose I will request yet another permission to dock for you.” But still, the player complaints abound.

To be expected, people will quit. It happens at every patch when you change something people like. The truth is, almost everything in the game is liked by someone for some reason. No matter what you change, you will piss someone off.

I’m glad I’m not a dev.

– Ethic

Potentially Excessive Use of /emote

[completely off-topic] A friend of mine is trying to take a British kinda-holiday national. That would be today, so-declared International Kissing Day. Those of you lacking appropriate partners can use in-game emotes, although check your game’s harassment policy first depending on your use.

We now return you to your scheduled blogging and gaming. Thank you.

: Zubon