Enemies are your best friends

[EVE Online] In an interesting diplay of game mechanics, I can now make friends in EVE Online by blowing up their ships. If I have never talked with anyone, they are neutral to me; if I have run some missions for them, they like me a little; if I have blown up some of their stuff, they are surprisingly friendly.

You see, there is a skill called “Diplomacy: Skill at interacting with hostile Agents. 0.4 Bonus per level to effective standing towards hostile Agents.” I took my first level of Diplomacy tonight, although I could theoretically take up to five. Checking how much my contact likes me after running my last mission of the night, I was surprised to see how many pirate factions had taken a liking to me. My corporation is in a massive war against the Blood Raider Covenant, who now gives me a +0.38 rating. Guristas Pirates, Angel Cartel, and all the other pirates now like me more than all but one of the groups for which I have run missions. I failed a mission for one group, since it involved my being ganked by a dozen NPC pirates; if I start running missions for them successfully, my faction rating will take a big hit.

If you’ll excuse me, I am going to go make some new friends by blowing up ships, attacking random passers-by, and generally pushing people into traffic. That is apparently the most efficient way to make friends in EVE.

: Zubon

The Promise of New Shinies

[City of Heroes] Cryptic has announced the next update to City of Heroes, Forest of Dread (in August). This brings us a new zone with four new villain groups, in which Statesman gets to show off his degrees in mythology and whatnot by showing us around the British Isles. New power sets and some other excitement I will not copy over. You can read. There seems to be interesting info about Issue 5 content gathered over here, including the now-defunct skill system. Aren’t Croatoa and Salamanca both American Indian tribe names? The latter mostly brings to mind a good book by Sharon Creech. We shall see how the background story for the zone goes.

I wonder how many people hold on because of the promise of new and shiny things to come. Most games release with something less than full content; City of Heroes’ major contribution to this trend was adding levels 41-50 in the first patch, which is probably a lesser sin than many games. Some games have gone more than a year without implementing everything listed on the box, even by generous interpretations.

I know that I will be around City of Heroes to see Issue 5 because I am on the three-month subscription plan. Were it not for that, I wonder if I would stay until August. For me, there is a six-month gap with no significant content additions. I am not really interested in PvP, so Issue 4 was mostly wasted on me. It brought new story arcs for Kheldians, and those have been good story arcs as far as I have seen, but that’s it besides Defender love and Scrapper nerfs. I took a few months off the game early on, since I had lost interest in the low 30s, but I have taken three characters to 50 since then. There is not much more content for me to see, and it is only so interesting seeing it from a different angle. I must make sure to have a level 25 character or two when the time comes.

: Zubon

The first strategy never seems to work for me.

This is gold. Comedy gold. The guy that wrote this probably isn’t American so the grammar is a little off, but its the internet. No one has good grammar on the internet (well, besides me).

If you don’t have a wife, or fiancée, or girlfirend, or have ever had one of the above, or ever plan on having one of the above, or have met a woman, or have heard of the term “woman,” then this is not for you. For the rest of us men out there, this is great.

If you are a woman, please ignore the following link…

Guide: How to manage having a wife and playing a MMORPG.

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I am a Ninja!

[Final Fantasy XI] More update information from our friends at Square Enix. Its not really much, just more storage tweaks mainly. The most important information though is the fact that Ninja’s can now create quiver-like bundling for ninja tools in much the same way that rangers have quivers for arrows. This makes alot of sense given that both ninja tools and arrows stack to 99. This will mean that I can store alot more ninja tools in the Mog House or on my character. It also means that I can buy more stacks of ninja tools while they are cheap and have them for later without having to mule them away.

Other information from the update includes new items that can be held by the storage NPC and new warp/teleport rings that are available for purchase through the conquest point system.

Here is the information in toto:

Bundling ninja tools, an addition to the storable equipment list, and new items earned by conquest points!

All this and more are coming up in the next version update in mid-July.

*Bundling Stacks of Ninja Tools
Similar to quivers, players will soon be able to bundle multiple stacks of 99 ninja tools as one item. The player can accumulate 12 stacks of 99 ninja tools in one item slot. In short, players will be able to carry twelve times more ninja tools in each slot than before!

*Equipment Storage
There is an NPC that players can talk to in order to have special equipment stored as a Key Item. This frees up inventory space for more items. Soon, Mythril Plate Armor will be added to the list of storable equipment.

*New Items Earned by Conquest Points
The Return Ring and the Homing Ring will be added to the list of items that can be obtained through exchanging conquest points.

Keep checking this section for more exciting news regarding July’s version update!

Mugged from the FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team webpage.

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My Boss Is a Jerk

[EVE Online] I am warping about Gallente space, running some missions, shooting down pirates, when my contact asks me to deal with The Disgruntled Employee. Hmm, what is this?

Yes, I have something for you. Federation Customs recently sacked one of its employees after a routine inspection revealed a large amount of indecent pictures stored in his personal database. Sadly, this ex-employee wasn’t all too pleased with our decision, and has resorted to camping outside of our headquarters and harassing our customers. Fortunately though, we dug up some old offences this guy made and revealed them to the authorities, who promptly lowered his security rating quite a bit. In effect, he’s fair game. Please warp over to the location on the bookmark I’m about to give you and squash this little pest. I doubt he will survive for long, as some of our customers are heavily armed. So hurry up and take him out if you want your reward.

It is a short distance from “porn on the work computer” to “price on your head.” Of course I select option 1. No problem, I’ll do it, since camping someone’s HQ is rude. Let’s head to the mission!

The disgruntled smut-king’s hideout is supposedly located within this former asteroid belt which has been almost completely mined to oblivion. A suspicious looking hollow asteroid and a few barren rocks are all that remain of this once densely packed belt.

Ah, there he is, with two of the weakest drones I have ever seen. Checking info:

A disgruntled ex-employee who has been harrassing local customers.
Threat level: pathetic

Mission: success! Tomorrow: more heroics!

: Zubon

On Demand Ignorance®

[Lineage 2] In Lineage 2 you have the wonderful feeling of knowing that if you ever need help, you can simply type /gm and usually within 20 minutes a real GM will be talking to you (wow).

This concept tends to breakdown however when you ask a question and the GM continues responding with prewritten form responses which in no way answer your question. After informing the GM that this response does not answer your question, you are rewarded with another form response which is simply the same response you were given before, yet written somewhat differently.

What is this GM doing, playing Russian roulette with a response generator?

Finally I explain once more what my question is and why this person has not yet answered it. Response? “Is there anything else I can do for you today?” I told them no thank you and to have a great day.

GM Evaluation: Poor!

Spot

Mobs galore!

[Final Fantasy XI] In an attempt to keep all the level 75’s burning arrows and mana to get their merit points, Square Enix is changing around the mobbies in some of the Chains of Promathia areas. My guess this will be in the areas where people would run out of mobs to kill for experience point chains. Bibiki Bay has been mentioned as one of the possible areas.

Recently, FFXI’s incredible popularity has led to a population boom! The introduction of the Merit Point system and the rapid increase in the number of missions and quests have also increased the traffic in several select areas.

In order to allow everyone room to engage in battles to their heart’s content, the FFXI development team will be adjusting enemy locations in the next version update. The bulk of the changes will be to areas from the newest expansion pack, “Chains of Promathia.” These adjustments will give players more freedom when choosing where to battle.

The next version update is currently in the testing phase, so look forward to experiencing it soon!

They are probably just equalizing the mob distribution based upon player usage, while using this as an opportunity to toot there own horn.

Pilfered from the Final Fantasy XI webpage.

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[Insert cute but trite “WoW”-esque comment here.]

[World of Warcraft] I fail today at naming this post but I do provide you with information about World of Warcraft. Cold hard facts from the Lead Developer Shane Dabiri (we go way back, we do!) about the great and wonderful-ness of WoW, and how they plan on taking over the universe on the backs of Epic White Tigers.

There were some comments of note:

We are committed to delivering the highest quality online experience for our players. Some of our upcoming plans have already been mentioned on our community site. For example, in our next major update, we will be releasing Blackwing Lair, a 40-person raid dungeon, where you will be able to battle against the epic dragon Nefarian and his minions. We are also working on a 20-person dungeon called Zul’Gurub, and the mysterious lands of Ahn’Qiraj in Silithus. Outside of dungeons, we want to continue adding new world events, such as a carnival that will take place in Mulgore and Elwynn forest.

Awesome! A third dungeon to grind through endlessly when you have nothing else to do after you ding 60!

Of course, on top of all this, each content update will also bring new quests, items, professions recipes, and continued class improvements. Some have asked about an expansion and what it might hold. I wanted to let players know that it is in the works, and we’ll release details as soon as we can.

Yes, Azeroth, not everyone has left Blizzard to go work at NCSoft! We still have the guy that brings me coffee in the morning. And we managed to shackle two of the junior interns to a desk. They are now being instructed in game coding, a la A Clockwork Orange! So there is an expansion on the way, but the GM’s will be forced to ban you if you ever ask when it might be released. Oh yeah, forgot to mention we tossed that in the last ToS update…

Anyway, back to reality, Blizzard looks like they are working pretty hard at content development, so there should be more for everyone soon.

Blatantly stolen from the WoW general discussion forum.

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EVE: A Pirate’s Paradise….

Well, normally I think CCP is one of, if not the best devs in MMO history, the customer service is great, the server is reletively lag-free, and the patches dont take forever to download and best of all, I’ve never been stuck in a server que, ever. In adverse to WoW where there have been server downings, que’s, and just no way to get on. CCP has always made me glad to be onboard, but there is an aspect of the game that sets me over the edge.

1. The GMs (much like UO) are extremely evil and sedistic most of the time. Hell, most of them ARE pirates, and they have been known to kill random innocent players in low sec with thier uber gimped faction ships and tech 2 mods, therefore having a ship about as powerful as 5 Battleships, which is obsurd. And they have the powers of a basic chatroom moderator, except they dont need to be limited to a chat window…no! Lets give them the ability to take away a players ability to type in private conversations, corp, local, and even send eve mails for set amounts of time for either A. being petitioned for disrupting a chat channel (which can sometimes be a false acusation) or B. because you slight them, although it is rare to run into a GM in person or in chat, it has happened and multiple people have complained. I myself was gagged my first week of EVE for “Not respecting the rights of members in the channel” which was basically me going into a chat and being a newb unaware that it was a roleplaying channel, and when my friend asked if anyone liked anime was told “anime, hmm the records have no history of that since 2010!” and then questioning the sanity of the roleplayer.

2. A new bookmark nerf, now CCP has kept nerfs and most things to a minimal if not beneficial degree (the missile nerf sounds like a good idea IMO) but they now want to nerf bookmarks which are essencially an ability to set up a quicker faster route to an asteroid, stargate, or station. Making the travel system in EVE semi-bearable. Now CCP is one of those companies that give the Pirates(PKers) ALL the love as far as nerfs, updates, and fixes with anything else. And they have been complaining that its too easy for an industrial ship or helpless mining craft to escape thier clutches with quickwarps(QW). So the devs are going to make all the pirates happy by proposing a way to make a quickwarp that worked one day, not work the next. However I can see one good reason for this and it is serverside loads from the people with thousands and thousands of bookmarks. Now, saying the QW make players invinceable is a load of bullcrap, it still takes large ships like battleships, battlecruisers, industrials, and even cruisers time to warp, and having to fly 15km in a slowass indie is possibly the most annoying thing you will ever do in EVE, hell in low sec we have to constantly take supplies to our POS in a .3 system, therefore meaning each time we carry millions of supplies through those systems to just keep the thing alive or even to get the products from it to sell, we will need to bring an escort with us, which might not work if they are in large ganging groups. Overall this idea is stupid.

3. Not being able to dock at a POS. I could go on for hours on this but I already have on everything else so I will spare you the pain…but… I REALLY WANT TO BE ABLE TO DOCK AT MY OWN STATION. I would think this would be standard issue. Considering a starbase is…well…a starbase, and its nothing more than a chore without that ability. Hell I would move out and live in low sec if I could dock with our POS, and yet CCP complains about trying to get people to go out in low sec. Well not being able to dock at a station and nerfing QW, the most essencial travel tools, aren’t going to help. For the first time i’m not liking the choice of CCP but still the game is great and I cant wait for the new Dreadnaught class ships to be released…for now…happy hunting you lucky pirates!

-Zxyrox

Update of Irrelevancy

[Final Fantasy XI] As the resident Final Fantasy XI guy I figured it was my duty to bring you any and all updates for the game, but man, I wish they gave me something more that Chocobo rustlin’…

From the FFXI homepage:

Adventurers, take up your swords and staves! A plethora of action-packed quests is currently in the works for the upcoming FINAL FANTASY XI version update…

The following is a sample of the excitement that awaits:

*A quest requiring adventurers to deliver a lost chocobo to its home stables. Test your riding skills while competing for jaw-dropping prizes and the title of “Vana’diel’s Fastest”!

*Quests to obtain masks designed after your favorite beastmen. Only those who obtain the unique headwear will be able to unlock the equipment’s true power…

And that is only the beginning! Keep your eyes glued to this page for the latest in update information!

FINAL FANTASY XI Development Team (6/22/2005)

Woohoo… Chocobo racing and funny-looking hats.

Stolen from the FFXI developers page.

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