Gamer Clarity

I had a bad time getting off my addition... Addiction?... What am I talking about?  Drink?  Drugs?  Women?... No I'm talking about Azeroth.

Yeah, I was addicted to World of Warcraft, in a big way, it came after a time being a member of a top flight Day of Defeat teams - Yes, I was once a hardcore FPS player folks - Enemy Down ladder anyone?  Yeah, old school....

And myself and another couple of players on the team (waves to Chaplain) were looking for something else to play, and it was the weekend before I started a new job - the job I currently still have technically - and a friend came to stay (waves to Paul) and he'd just bought a new game "World of Warcraft".

Now I knew about Warcraft, I'd played the RTS games (I even still have my copy of Warcraft II on the shelf behind me) but I'd not ventured into any MMO ever before; yes EverQuest and even Ultima had passed me by.  And I went out that night and bought the game from the local Asda.

I rolled a human, a Warrior (flexes muscles) and I roped Chaplain into playing too and that was it, I was hooked... I played every hour I could, my day was get up, boot PC, walk dog whilst machine booted and kettle boiled, back in tepid tea, toast and check the auction house and may be pick up a few nodes of metal ore before work.

I'd work until lunch when I had an hours gap at that time, and I lived 10 minutes away from work, so it was drive home, see the dog, feed him, and check the auction house, check my mails, post messages to guild members (yes I ran a guild) planning the nights activities (usually an instance for either myself as the main tank or the main guild priest to get gear - so everyone else could get theirs that little bit more easily) and it was back to work.

I'd blaze through the afternoon and be setting off home as soon as I could, arriving home I would walk the dog again and either we'd stop at the local chip shop for a kebab or I'd call for a pizza on the return trip, that would arrive when we got home and the dog would curl up around my feet whilst I played and ground and quested all night long.

I found achievement beyond my normal day, I found organizing the team purposeful (at the time I had gone from running a team of folks at work, to being the most junior developer, a hard knock so I channeled my team building and drive into the guild - not always to great success, but I ran two different guilds in my time - one a family style small team the other a vast ramshackle affair of infighting and subterfuge).

After years, I mean years, the vanilla game, The Burning Crusade and through to Wrath I played all day everyday, in Wrath I became a top flight PVP terror (not on the arena circuit, but out in the world, world PVP baby!)  I digested every tip, watched hours of "WarcraftMovies.com", I lived and breathed that game.

I was still playing ten years ago when I had a revelation, at work I had the chance to start to lead product, to do that my focus, my drive, my energy had to be focused back on work, away from play.  I'd already diluted my Warcraft time anyway - as by then I also ran two accounts (carrier pilot) in EveOnline and a multi-billion ISK empire and a small corp of players.  But work needed my focus.

I had met my future wife as well and frankly grown up... "When one becomes a man, one has to put away such childish things"... So I quit, boom, overnight, my final two characters a 68 priest and 78 druid were to be the last I took to higher level, Wrath was the last expansion I played.

All my characters now sit in the pergatory of the unsubbed account, but I yearn to see them again.  I'm sure you've all seen my efforts to set up my own server (an on going affair I might add), and it's that yearning for the old days which drives me to want to do that, time is the only stopper.

Time, the one element missing when I quit before, the yearning was there, but time is short and you have to focus.

At the moment at work I'm focussed on a delivery of a new product to a new market, I need that time back to myself, but I also need a release.  The current gaming trend for high impact, high drama, like PUBG is not doing my relaxing any good, the stress of World PVP would not in Warcraft either, and Eve - forget it, nerve wracking - so maybe my original home World of Warcraft PVE, on EU Thunderhorn server?  Maybe my old characters are still there?

Xelous the 60 warrior.

Eylomae the 60 hunter - who must look completely out of place in 2018 with a full set of Beastmaster (tier 1 I called it, but I've recently learned it's considered tier 0.1 - if it's even called the Beastmaster armour set at all!).

And all the rest, Blackthorn my bad-ass 80 Mage... 

I thought I might resubscribe the other day, it hit me like a pang in the gut, to call Chaplain and say "3pm Stormwind Gates, EU Thunderhown, Xelous will march back into town".  But I couldn't make myself do it.

So much has changed in the game, some maybe for the better, but to my play experience, to my recapturing the past so much has changed for the negative.

The moment of clarity shone through, I can never go back, I am still a gamer, though of which game is yet to be seen.

Three Games I Can't Face (Again)

Three games I often think about, but which I could never return are raising their heads with me lately, the first being Eve-Online.

I was invited back by a friend, whom wanted me and my three decently trained (for 2012) accounts to go back in to the game, and run mining operations for him.  If you're not aware, mining in Eve is pretty much staring at rocks, you have to be in a special place, and busy with other stuff to let your game time turn into this monotony.

He assured me there's loads of new stuff, "since you like mined Xel, there's loads"... But my heart just wasn't in it.  I did install the game, and try a free account for like 25 minutes, until I got utterly bored with it and had to stop.

My main problem is probably the style of game play, I loved Eve, I played way back before the new engine.  It was a clicky menu fest then, and it seems twice as much so now.

Though I still love the Armageddon!

The next is World Of Warcraft, I don't often get invited back to WoW nowadays, but when I initially quit I was asked perhaps every other day.  With the release of the movie however, my interested was peaked, and so I took a look... 

What have they done to my beloved Stormwind?

I just can't, I can't face it.  But I look back on my appearance on "Shut Up We're Talking" (which incidentally spawned this very blog) and I remember saying that damage & level inflation would devalue and dumb down the game... Boy, was I right, or was I right?

The third, and final one, is CubeWorld.  I was big into this when it came out, I begged a friend to lend me his account before I bought it (which he wouldn't - *cough* tight wad) but buying into it, was great.  It mixed Zelda with Minecraft with a proper olde tyme Adventure feel.

I had high hopes it would become part of my regular rotation, unfortunately, development seems to have utterly stopped, and it blows in the wind like dust from my gaming bones.

Do you miss an old game?  Do you insist you have quit a game, or stopped subscribing to it?... Let us know what it is in the comments below!

Eve PVP - No-one Engages

As you all know, I'm a big fan of the style of PVP in World of Warcraft.  Not the outcome of that PVP, as I'm alliance and played on two servers where alliance couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag, but that you can queue up and dive into things.

In Eve however, you have to look for trouble, be surprised by trouble, or simply not get into trouble, to have PVP arrive.  I have spent about 65% of my time (over the last three hours) tempting people into trying to fight me... They see right through this and refuse, they're not dumb... But, then they're trying to chose the battlefield, and there seems little leverage to make them fight me, unless they want to...

And it seems, even -10.0 rated pirates don't want to fight me...

I had my armageddon out, I checked out a local 0.4 sec pipe and went for a jolly, first I checked there were pilots there, and indeed their were... a couple of dil-holes with "We are Angry Fuckers" style corps, and a few miner style players who were not out mining... presumably because of the first lot of 'tards.

Anyway, I loiter around, I move between several low-sec systems and no-one challenges me... I even sit slow boating, as if I'm on autopilot... No-one comes to even take a look... I know this because I could see them on my scanner, not coming to look, they were just "looking" with their scanners... which means they weren't cloaked and already looking, nor were they off changing ship to challenge me.

So, driving up and down, down and up, that's what I've done... waggling my eye lashes, and looking, for all the world like a pointless target, I even shot some belt rats with only one gun, to make me look like I was struggling... hoping to have them engage...

But, they didn't...

This has always been the way with Eve for me, either you are out trying to earn a living, not looking for trouble, and trouble appears... Or... No trouble comes your way, when you're looking.

Point of fact, I went to the system in question because I had a really good fight there once, I was returning from a mission and three guys jumped me, and I tanked and killed a couple (chasing one off) in a mission fit battlecruiser... It was a good fight, and I decided that day to park one or two PVP fits in the region... But all to no avail...

I'm beginning to wonder if I should just go join the Red Vs Blue thing and call is quits on roaming PVP in Eve... I mean, I'm no Garmon, or Kil2, but if people won't engage... What is a pilot to do?

Docking Accepted....

It has been nearly two years since I played Eve.  I quit to play Star Trek online, being very unimpressed with Star Trek and finding my then corporation in Eve becoming more and more inactive I didn't return to the game... I was a huge player of Eve, I had at one time three accounts, all with two years of training time on them, and one with a lot longer than that.

I had industry down pat, and ran an industry organized corp, I had a carrier and a POS out in low-sec, I had a fleet of battleships for running missions, and even indulged in some PVP from time to time... But the PVP in Eve always made me nervous... You actually can loose ships, and working alone I always found it hard to deal with the myriad of other fittings one found out in space.

Unlike WoW where I was a PVP diva, you just get killed, jump up and re-spawn with no harm, in Eve getting shot at, or loosing when you started shooting, was a real bummer.  But the thrill was there... It really was.

One of my accounts was a pirate, I use the past tense, because really I was coerced into a Pirate Corp as a three week old noob, what had happened was that I was out ratting, and did not know that 0.4 was like dangerous, I was a noob... So I was shooting shit in a belt when two guys jumped me... I was in a terribly fitted Amar battlecruiser, and they were in moderately okay fitted Gallente cruisers.  The fight was close, but I lost my Battlecruiser, but I chatted to them and they ended up inviting me...

The net result was three weeks of struggle, I bought a battleship, lost it, bought another, lost it, bought a set of frigates, never flew them... and the corp moved location, I moved out there, they dropped us off and then moved somewhere else, leaving me with a -0.95 rating and nowhere to make money...

I tried to repair that character reputation, but it was all to no avail, the history was indelibly there, I was a pirate... Things got worse, when I found some friends in 0.0 space, and set up working with them, then one day I got shot at by a guy far from their space... but I killed him... YAY a KILL!!... Only to get back to my friends to find out they were more friendly with him and they blew me up.

Utterly dejected I left this character, sent his ISK to an alt and set up trading a while... ending up at the start of this post with a new character, and two other accounts, running missions and mining for a living.

However, this week, I have the urge for more internet space ships... I have the urge for some pew pew... I've actually got all three accounts restored (but not subscribed) and each is offering 15 days free play time.

There are two or three new places for PVP in Eve... The empire war is still going on (this was started when I was still playing) but I found that joining a certain nation limited my trading and mining opportunities, especially when shipping a freighter around the universe.  The new avenues for combat are a little more up my street... One is called Red v Blue... 

No, not that Red v Blue... this is a player run initiative, to create to corporations in Eve, one called "Red" the other called "Blue", and the two are at perpetual war with one another... This means one is able to wage a limited war of opportunity, jumping in and out of the corporations at will, and doing it all whilst not getting overly exposed to low-sec or 0.0 ganking.

This appeals to me... It also appeals to me to carry out the last thing I had on my Eve agenda, before I quit, this was to find some empire mining operation, which was definitely linked to the low-sec or null sec big boys, and declare war on them, making it hard for them to move their goods around.  This idea of mine came about, because my mining corp was being pressured to leave the high-sec and low-sec areas it worked in.  We were being pressured even off of the exploration find we were uncovering, and it was all getting very silly... 

Working so hard in high-sec to find an exploration target, only to settle in mining and find the neighbours burrowing into your fat asteroids as well....

Unfortunately before I dive back in I need to get to grips with the vast number of changes to the game, there have been two major updates, and around five complex patches and balance changes to the game since I departed.  Everything from types of ships, to module roles, to the shape of the universe itself have been changed.

The most interesting thing I saw as an ex-mission runner was the idea of new tier-3 battlecruisers, able to fit battleship sized modules... The idea of having my main tanking (shield) ship running missions (level IV - so a battleship) backed up by a faster, more manoeuvrable, hard hitting gunship battlecruiser was very interesting.

So, this leaves me in the precarious position of wanting to look at all this, knowing what a huge time sink it is, and how little time I actually get on the computer at home...

I'm going to take out a trial account and get used to the new user interface first... and I also stumbled over this active blog, to update my knowledge of the system:

http://www.thewholefrigate.com/2012/03/what-is-pvp-fit.html

Busy Busy...

Oh me oh my, could more be going on this week?  Gaming wise, we’ve had the release date for Cataclysm… Clearly someone at the BBC News desk has a huge game boner for World of Warcraft, because they report a lot of stuff about the game on there.  I reckon they’ve also got an Eve player and a fair few Console players… get in touch chaps & chapesses, I’d love to hear what you play at the BBC?

But yes, Cataclysm, 7^th December, if you all missed it, just in time to get the bugs sorted for Christmas, or more specifically for the University holidays… yes here in Britain the Universities full of Students start to break up and most have completed the break up for the Yule period by the 15^th… so I guess most all Student UK customers of Blizzard will be busy busy busy enjoying the new game.

I still fear for the inflation of items in the game, I’ve also noted that the retail price is listed as €34.99, that’s about £30.  That’s the price of a whole new game… I don’t doubt Blizzards work is worth the cost, but thirty quid… when you already pay a subscription?... Nooo thank you.

I have to admit, I’ve had a few pangs to go back to WoW recently, notably last weekend, when I thought long and hard about trying to introduce the misses to it with me… it’d only end in tears though, and she’s got better things to do with her time… As have I… *cough*.

Eve-Online

Alas other gaming news, I’ve had to let my Eve Subs slide for a few months, I might pick them back up after Christmas, but I simply wasn’t playing enough to warrant all three subs.

Grand Theft Auto… WHERE?

The other gaming news I wanted to bring to the fore, since Darren took my link about Wii elbow J, was a report of Take Two Interactive (aka Rockstar Games) winning damages in the High Court… yes the law came down on their side; and rightly so; after Express Newspapers (a tatty rag of a newspaper here in the UK) said they would make a new game… “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.

This fictional title was so named for the town in which the now infamous gunman Raoul Moat had his final stand off with Police, the full story is here.

I’m not too bothered about Rockstar winning the case, I just find the “joke” from the newspaper; which kicked off the case; as in such bad taste it’s like I’m sucking on a pocket full of old pennies.  Bitter Bitter Bitter.

Obituaries

And finally, sadly, we’ve lost two shining lights in Entertainment and Film this week, first in the US Tony Curtis.  I liked Curtis in his films, my favourite being Operation Petticoat where he starred opposite Cary Grant.  I don’t know why I really like that film. I just do, and I enjoy Curtis’s character within.

But a bigger loss for me is that of Sir Norman Wisdom.  Who died yesterday evening.  Many of you in the US won’t have a clue who Norman was, you’ll not have heard of him, not have seen his films.  You may see one on BBC feeds soon, as a tribute to our Norman.  You may not understand the films, you may not get the social context, you may not know the jokes, just watch the utter brilliance, the sheer delight that is Norman’s legacy to us.  His body acting, his comic timing, his slap stick style.  He was described by Charlie Chaplin as “my favourite clown”, go on, go find out why.

Sir Norman Wisdom, OBE (1915 - 2010)

Virtual Machine Mash Up

So, today I've only had time to switch a few skills around in Eve, but at work today I was enjoying playing about with the latest edition of VmWare's VmPlayer product... this lets you create and run Virtual Machines on your desktop, and it's FREE... I like free.

Anyway, it has been a long time since I've had such an easy time playing about with Virtual Machines, for instance on my spare Linux based PC at work I have set up an image of my old PentiumIII Windows XP box. I always need this old machine, it's been hanging around gathering dust under my desk for about five years.

Finally, I can run a copy seamlessly on my faster newer Linux Box and be reassured that I have that machine as is, great geeky fun.

You have to sign up for a whole bunch of e-mail stuff from VmWare to download the player, but its great fun, so if you've ever pondered about how to virtualize a machine go give it a go.


I have also been watching an old Eve themed bit of Machinema, I watched these so many many moons ago, but I still like to watch this now-and-again. Even if they do fly Minmatar.

The Colonists Are Doing Their Thing...

Well, today is the fourth of July, a day that a bunch of trouble makers signed a piece of paper declaring them independant or something... I still say John Hancock's signature says more about American personality today than it ever said as his actual name... but anyway...

Today, I've noticed has been a mixed day for MMORPG participation, the numbers of Americans one runs into in Eve for example has been markedly lessened. Whether that's a good thing or not, I'm uncertain, there's a core of pretty decent yanks out there flying about.
But, this is not the point of my post, today I've been working a little more on my planetary installations in Eve... and I've come one conclusion... Darren (of Common Sense Gamer) please, please, for the love of god almighty, please don't ever install any planetary gear in Eve.


Okay... Don't come crying to me when you try it and find out that its CCP's covert implementation of Farmville...

Yes, I'm affraid, I've come to the conclusion that appart from being able to make a product you can use or sell in New Eden, there is quite a lot of the same game mechanics as Farmville.

I find I've a set of extractors which are on long cycles, and a set which are on very short cycles, and these short cycled ones run out of materials to extract after just a few hours so I'm constantly going back to find more materials for them...

It's not a dead dog of a process yet, I'm still doing the tweaking to try and find a mix of extractors to optimize my cycles. I have intermediate silos to collect excess resources from the extractors, and provide it for the next industrial cycle.

But at the end of the day, this is just a lot of clicking every few hours... And, I don't think its all that much fun.

Planetary Interaction in Eve

They say a picture speaks a thousand words, well, the above image speaks of at least half a dozen... Interesting, Awkward, New, at-long-last... at the ones I'll pick out just now. I am of course talking about CCP's newly introduced planetary interaction in their venerable title Eve-Online.

As ever, with a something in Eve you have to train up some skills to carry out this task, they primarily involve skills to scan for resources on the planets, installing better command centers and linking planets together so they can cooperate in production tasks.

Now, I think it always important in Eve that whatever you are doing it have a purpose, the purpose of my Planetary production is to provide me with a large stash of POS fuels. Well, at least the stocks of POS fuels I used to have to buy off of the market. This is a major step in completing the supply chain cycles for POS, it at least explains where these fuels come from in the World that is New Eden.


It may not be very clear, but here is my first lot of processed Oxygen, from a Gas planet installation.

There are varying levels of possible materials which can be produced from your installations, many of which I don't have a clear explanation or understanding of. But, time will tell on that, I'll figure it out.

About the planetary interaction interface, I have to say it is unfortunately very awkward to work with, between constant messages telling me to wait x amount of seconds between actions, and the "routing" explanation is pretty poor. I managed at one point to route raw materials straight through the factory to the silo... with no explanation that the materials would not be processed on the way through.

It's very hard to explain why the interface is so awkward, it is just something you would have to experience yourself.

Awkwardness aside though, the interface is very pretty, and once set up, you can safely dock and managed your installations from afar. You only need visit them to pick up, or deliver, materials and goods.

This fire and forget approach to the planets, as well as the gorgeous (though sparse) graphics make for an enjoyable new feature, and as I emphasised above, it has a purpose. In fact I think it will have a major on going effect on the universe at large.

For now, I'm signing off, it's the daily down time and I need breakfast.

Eve, Eve and more Eve

All this week, I've been bitting and bobbing in Eve. I've moved a few ships around, I scared the hell out of two Russian noobs in low-sec by uncloaking my falcon on top of them (they were being lary about my not being able to find them, when they had opened a Militia mission, which has a system wide beacon).


One thing that has always struck, and will probably always strike, me is the quality of the look and feel of Eve. I mean, the new Tranquility Engine is spankingly beautiful, even when docked (as you can see with one of my Amarrian Assault Ships above).

I mean, I started playing in 2005, and the engine back then looked light years a-head of anything else around it [no pun intended]... I've seen the highs and the lows of life on the edge, I've been a pirate and I've spend a fair amount of time in Empire making myself fat and rich.

I'm doing well though, I usually end up falling into a stupor of mining asteroids, something I find very relaxing, but totally mind numbing... sometimes you want mind numbing, sometimes you want raw materials, but other times you want a thrill.

So, I've been preparing to re-join my militia's. I have a fleet (and I mean a fleet) of tech 1 cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships sat in a certain location, I have a POS Tower sat ready for deployment as a strong point, and I have a carrier for support while I plan my secret attack behind the enemy lines...


I have also though been developing a rather healthy interest in trade, something; as I've said before; I never took an interest in before.

My running tally to far is 108 million ISk from a 1 million ISK investment, in three weeks.

Sometimes markets are tough, and I'm getting tired of having to perform WoW style 0.01 ISK undercuts, on other orders out there.

What I'm going to be looking at next weekend (since I've just finished the planetary interaction skills to level 4) is ... yes planetary interaction, I kind of gave it away then didn't I... anyway, yes. Planetary interaction. I watched the CCP Tutorials, and as a graduate of the Eve-University I've enjoyed watching their video guides on YouTube... they're not overly detailed... I remember how detailed my Eve-Video's were for the University.

My Videos: I, II, III

Tyrannis

Yes, the new expansion from CCP for Eve-Online has just launched today! Get it while it's hot.
The patch is a generous 291 MB in size, on average here in the UK you should be getting about 700k/sec download (no matter what your bandwidth/speed is) with highs around 2mb/sec.

Update

The patch process seems to be flawed, as it completes I receive the message:


I'm currently running the client repair tool to see what's wrong, and it just says that a file "math.dll" in the temp folder it's working with is a piece of Malware...

This is PrevX reporting it as Malware and the install stops...


Update Again

The repair tool has been busy... it reports that the install was missing a bunch of data nearly 52mb of it...?


As for the Malware report, I've cleaned the whole temp directory listed as bad from my machine, and a new bunch of temp directories were created. None of these have a Math.dll in them...?

So I can only think that was already on my machine? God I hate Windoze.

EVE Expansion, Social Clicking and more DDO

It might actually be time for a me to return to Eve-Online, with ever more news being released about the next Expansion due out in May, May the 18th to be precise, my appetite has been whetted.

EVE Online | Tyrannis

Unfortunately, I sense some foreboding about the new features. Planetary Interaction, or PI as it's being called, looks awesome and it very well might be, however, I have a feeling it'll be the exclusive domain of 0.0 alliances, and out of the reach of anti-social high-sec miner spunk monkeys, like me.

I did however like the look of the new Scorpion. Having flown a Scorp in fleet engagements, I know how quickly they get made primary [everyones hates ECM], but I also know how ugly they are/were. So, I have a semi-stoked game boner for that little gem...

I have tonight however been doing three things... the first was play some "Social City" on Facebook and when I use the word play I do so in the loosest sense of the word, you know like you'd play with peeling paint... or... you'd be made to play with the kid from class who got the Chicken Pox first.

Here we see the burgeoning "Xel City" at level 3... a lot of clicks later... and you end up with this...

Erm..... Thrilling....

The next thing I did however, was more interesting, I played some more DDO. I made myself another Rank of level 1, and played a little more of the initial story line. This time stopping occultist baddy people hitting a crystal. For my efforts I got a nice pair of new bracers.


I have to say that I am over my initial downer about DDO, I'm coming to grip with the interface, after three good play sessions of about 2 hours each it is comming more naturally, however, I still have this nagging feeling that really it shouldn't have been up to me to change my needs from the game. It does seem to lack some basic information, access to quite what to do doesn't come easily. And I'd have to say some of that problem comes from information overload. There are a lot of NPC's, a lot of interactions to get used to and the tooltips lag terribly [even on an overclocked Quad Core CPU on 8GB of RAM with dual 8800 Graphics cards in SLi Mode????].

I did however come across some rather lush graphics, the lighting in DDO is done very well... the shadow stenciling however, is not... more about that in an up coming post.

The other thing I did was re-watch the Top Gear USA Special, there's something so heart warming watching a BBC crew being run out of "a hick town" in a hail of stones.