Arceus is Coming! August 9, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in DS, entertainment, Pokemon.Tags: Arceus, National Pokedex, Pokemon Diamond, Pokemon Pearl, Pokemon Platinum
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Pokemon.com announced that a new Pokemon will soon be available that will occupy position 493 in the National Pokedex. Described as an “Alpha Pokemon,” this new entry in the game is called Arceus.
Arceus is Coming!
Arceus will be available for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl as well as Platinum, which means it will be part of a store event at some point. My guess is that we will see a Toys R Us event announced at some point in the future to coincide with the release of the next straight-to-DVD Pokemon movie.
And when this 12th Pokemon movie is out we’ll finally know if its name is pronounced “Are-Key-Us” or “Are-See-Us.”
[Addendum: according to the Pokemon Wiki, it is pronounced "Ar-Cee-Us..." but they don't say if it is a hard "C" or not either... I assume not, but we'll probably have to wait to see how Ash says it in the movie.]
Best Matrix Online Farewell Quote August 8, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Misc MMOs, Sony Online Entertainment.Tags: The Matrix Online
5 comments
Sony Online Entertainment closed down The Matrix Online last weekend, ending its four year reign.
It was not an easy four years.
It was based off three movies, only one of which was really good. It did not get great reviews. It went through a mid-life revamp that, like all such efforts, alienated some of it loyal fans. But everybody loves to beat SOE with the NGE stick.
My own time playing the game was short as I personally found nothing in the game compelling enough to keep me interested.
So in its final days, Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica remembered the game with:
The Matrix Online offered a weirdly meta experience, as real people created virtual players to go online in a virtual world pretending to be a virtual world.
A reasonable summation in my mind.
Now that it is gone, most of us can only read about what we missed.
The Other Moment… August 7, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Vikund
9 comments
Server: Eldre’Thalas
Location: Icecrown
Date: August 6th, 2009, 10:24pm local time
Vikund hits level 80
In a frenzy of questing after finding that Dalaran no longer killed my computer, I raced ahead of the instance group and became the first to hit level 80.
Skronk and Ula were there to see me hit the level cap, along with Ground Commander Koup.
As when Tistann hit the cap, there was an email encouraging me to keep fighting and a supply of potions.
Now, what to do at 80? There are a few more instances for the group to conquer still, but then what?
It was reported that there was a game that Bung was keen to go have us all try, but he communicated that only to Ula who then forgot what it was called. Something involving and MMO that was also a shooter that wasn’t out yet.
But he’s gone off on vacation for a bit, so we’ll have to wait to see what game he meant.
WoW Patch 3.2 – Cautiously Optimistic August 7, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.9 comments
Patch day is a mixed bag, often a triumph for some while a disaster for others.
And it can be all the more extreme with World of Warcraft and the requisite AddOn apocalypse that comes with every patch and their legendary slow patch download system that seemed at one point to be designed to get you to subscribe to places like FilePlanet.
Thus I generally approach patch day with low expectations, no matter how nice the changes look in the patch.
So I was a bit surprised how well the WoW 3.2 patch went for me.
When I got home Tuesday night Blizzard’s updater downloaded the patch in record time. (I hadn’t let it pre-download as I was just going to grab it from FilePlanet, then FilePlanet was having problems.)
With my Dalaran problems I had pared down my AddOns to the bare minimum, so the pain of their absence was minimal.
And so I was in Azeroth and looking around before I knew it.
Of course, some there were a pile of additions and changes to engineering, so I knew I was going to have to get into Dalaran and train that up. I decided to bite the bullet and get it done, soonest started, soonest done and all that.
The question was just how many reboots would it take me to accomplish this task and get back out of the city.
My hearthstone was still set to Hero’s Welcome. Silly me. I’ve been crashing in Dalaran since March, but I haven’t changed my recall point in all that time. Well, it is a key point in the game, even if the game craps out when I get there.
I hit the stone and watched Dalaran load slowly around me.
Then, when I could actually move, I started trotting to the engineering trainer. I made it.
I trained the new items, checked out the “engineers only” steam powered auctioneer, then went next door to the forge to smelt down some ore I had on me. The game was still running.
I went out, mounted up, and headed towards Krauses Landing to make my escape. Not that it would matter. History had shown me that once in Dalaran I was doomed to lock up, no matter how far away I flew nor how quickly I did it.
On the way to the landing, I decided to turn and pick up the extra Children’s Week quest that got tossed in with the patch, picking the Wolvar orphan to guide around Northrend.
Dalaran was packed, and usually the more crowded it is the quicker the crash comes, but I was still going. I had crossed the city twice, with is one and a half times more than I can usually manage at peak times.
I decided to push my luck.
I picked up the daily cooking quest back at Hero’s Welcome. I ran around to the bank to pick up supplies for it, cooked up the right items, and turned them in. I was still there.
I picked up the daily fishing quest, which required a flight to Wintergrasp and then a return. I did that, came back, and was still online.
I did a bit of fishing in the fountain.
After about an hour, I started to quietly think in the back of my mind that perhaps Blizzard had fixed my issue. I tried not to think that too loud, lest I frighten whatever fixed the problem. But I have set myself to cautiously optimistic on the situation.
The problem might be gone.
Which both made me happy and pissed me off.
It pissed me off because for the last few months I have been been convinced the problem has been at my end. It stared when I had to get a new video card and I could never find another problem decription in the support forums that sounded like the same one I was having.
If I see other people are experiencing the same problem I am, I feel better. I can relax. Misery loves company. But if I am the only one who seems to be, say, crashing in Dalaran, then I get obsessed about fixing the problem at my end.
But it made me happy because all I really want to do is play the game without having to worry about restarting every time I got within a certain radius of the main city in Northrend.
So all the other stuff in the patch is nice. I like the cheaper, earlier mounts. I like that the base flying mount has been sped up. I like that there is a mailbox by the auctioneer in Darnassus.
But I really like the whole not crashing thing a lot. I hope it lasts. Quality of life rocks. And I need not avert my eyes from Dalaran for fear of a crash!
Let us fly to Dalaran!
Meanwhile my daughter, who got special dispensation to play some during the week after doing some of her summer homework, declared this the best patch ever.
She is happy that some of her characters in their 20s get mounts now, but she is especially happy about the fact that battlegrounds now grant experience. She has been a bit of the PvP girl of late, sitting with her hunter at level 39. But in just an evening she got herself to level 40 and got to buy her epic mount.
So, all-in-all, we would have to give WoW Patch 3.2 a positive review so far.
How is it treating you?
Quitting Eternal Skirmish? August 6, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Humor, World of Warcraft.Tags: Lore Sjöberg
6 comments
Lore Sjöberg‘s Bad Gods site has a parody of MMO exit surveys up today.
Well, not a parody of just any MMO exit survey. As Lore says,
I’m recently returning to playing Warcraft after the 3.2 update. If you’ve ever tried to quit Warcraft — and you should, it’s an integral part of the complete experience — you’ll see that the subscription cancellation form does its best to cajole, argue, and guilt trip you into staying.
He isn’t kidding. On the account management page, attached to the link to the page to cancel your subscription, is this plea:
You can use this link to terminate your subscription online. Before you do so, we would love to hear from you by telephone. There are many steps that our representatives can take to address any problems you may be experiencing. Please call us at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD (800-592-5499).
Call us! Don’t just leave mad!
And that is before they really start in on you.
Anyway, be sure to actually select items from the “Why you’re leaving” drop down list of the parody. There is even a response in there to soothe Tipa’s concerns.
Halls of Stone August 6, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Instance Group, World of Warcraft.Tags: Halls of Stone
5 comments
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get into Azeroth on Saturday night. My Dalaran problem, my machine locking up whenever I spend any time in Dalaran, was getting worse. The same issue had started happening in other areas of Northrend and by last weekend had spread to old Azeroth. Crashes in Stormwind were cause for real concern in my opinion.
Since I have never found a post on the Blizzard forums from anybody who seemed to be having the same problem I have been facing, I have always assumed that there was something wrong with my system. This lead to me taking the machine apart on Saturday, swapping video cards out, checking drivers, and uninstalling unnecessary items.
I went a little bit too far on that last one and uninstalled ALL of the nVidia drivers on my machine, forgetting that the ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboard uses an nVidia nForce chipset for some essential things like driving the network interface. Whoops. Fortunately I had those drivers on hand and by the end of the afternoon I was able to get things back to where WoW was mostly just dying around Dalaran again.
With that experience, I got myself out to the summoning stone by the Halls of Stone well in advance of the group and camped there so as to limit the amount of texture loading, the common theme in all these crashes. So I was in place when we logged in. Our group was:
78 Warrior – Earlthecat
78 Paladin – Vikund
79 Priest – Skronk
79 Mage – Ula
79 Warlock – Bungholio
And we stood again outside the Halls of Stone.
I've used this picture before
Once in we found ourselves faced with an array of humanoids and giants with the occasional mechanical thrown in to keep things interesting. Both Earl and Vikund are engineers, but found that while they could repair mechanicals, they didn’t have a lot on hand to do crowd control when it came to them. We endured.
There were runs on a the inhabitants of the Halls of Stone that I initially thought were the lambda symbol, similar to that from Half-Life and Half-Life 2.
This way to Nova Prospekt?
This lead me to try to make a couple of Gordon Freeman jokes, which fell flat. It’s been done.
After the initial few groups, we came to a big locked door. The map of the instance showed something behind it, so we figured we would get back to that at some point. Further on we came to a three-way intersection. We decided to go clockwise from the left.
However, a few fights into that and we saw a quest mob up ahead. Fearing an escort quest that might be hindered by the other two passages being left full of bad guys, we opted to skip that passage for now and move to the next one on the list.
That lead us to a very big girl indeed.
Any relation to Sister of Pain?
The Maiden of Grief, and a tough cookie she was. Just not tough enough. As always, we were in the instance without having done any research, so we went with the usual Plan A routine:
In with the tank
on heals he relies
DPS like hell
and hope she dies
Fortunately, it worked for us yet again.
So slept the fair maiden
There was even the Ring of Repose, a decent caster ring as a reward.
Which lead us to the next passage around the clock and another big boss, Kyrstallus.
Folger's Krystallus
The fight with him was about on par with the Maiden of Grief, only he had an area attack that left the group stunned for several seconds at a time throughout the fight. That lead to a couple close health bar moments, but in the end he was down and we were all standing.
Which left us with the original passage and the expected escort quest. Brann Bronzebeard, youngest brother of the king of the dwarves and an active member of The Explorer’s League, was the escortee.
He lead us to the Tribunal of Ages, a big circular room with a gnomish device called the Archivum Console at the far side. And once he began to fiddle with it, things began to happen.
We quickly figured out that it was a “Defend Brann” event. We managed to keep Brann safe, but as soon as the event was done, he was off to the next encounter, which was behind the locked door we passed on the way in.
This turned out to be another “Defend Brann” event, but this time there was a boss involved along with a host of oozes and some other friends. The boss was Sjonnir The Ironshaper, and I don’t know if we’re just getting good or if the instances are getting easier, but Brann did his thing, we slew the bad guys, and we were done.
We got out picture with Brann.
Posing with the Archivum Console
Then took one last look at Sjonnir before we headed for the exit.
Our time together was brief
All of which left us with time to go off and try something else. We decided to take a look into the next instance on our list, the Halls of Lightning, but after we stepped in we found out that we had not done the lead-in quests for this instance. So we went to go roll that up so we would get the maximum benefit from doing the instance.
Once we looked it up though, it turned out to be at the end of a chain of 35 quests and 10 side quests. Once we got to the right location and all got to the same point on the quest chain (some people had started already) we ended up getting about 17 quests in before we called it a night. So we did not get to do anything in the Halls of Lightning, though there were enough comic moments to keep us amused.
Transformed Earl on his copter
So next time around, we should be able to start in on the Halls of Lightning.
We did decide that since we are all at least well into level 78, the leash is off and we can go to level cap. We should have some level 80s by next post. We shall see what that does to our enthusiasm for the game.
StarCraft II – Delayed to 2010 August 5, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment.Tags: StarCraft II
3 comments
Blizzard announced that they are doing well financially, then brought up the release of StarCraft II being pushed back to the first half of next year to coincide with the revamped Battle.net.
Maybe they will use this time to add LAN support which Rob Pardo announced was not planned for the game back in June. Ars Technica has a good article on why LAN support is important to so many of us older players.
Forty Million Skill Points August 5, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online.Tags: Meaningless Milestones, Skill Points
5 comments
Time and the training queue wait for no man.
It takes about 7 months or so for me to accumulated 10 million skill points in EVE Online. Whether I am playing actively or on a bit of a break, the skill points keep coming. So back in January I hit the 30 million skill point mark, and at about the same interval before that I hit 20 million and then 10 million skill points.
Since Apocrypha came out I normalized my attributes so that they are all, with skills and implants, sitting at 23.10. This means that no matter what area I decide to train in, the skill points come in at a rate of 2,079 per hour.
For me, this works, as I tend to be all over the skill tree. Previously if I was working on spaceship command skills, I would be trucking along at 2,300 sp/hr, but if I had to switch over to leadership, I would be down at 1,500 sp/hr. If I were focused only on combat related skills, this wouldn’t be such a smart idea, but being the generalist that I am, it is fine.
So after another 10 million skill points, here is how my skill point totals line up.
Spaceship Command: 8,199,285 Engineering: 5,740,869 Science: 4,948,539 Trade: 3,271,765 Missiles: 3,208,506 Learning: 3,078,488 Industry: 2,461,964 Leadership: 2,307,163 Mechanic: 1,178,568 Electronics: 1,510,936 Gunnery: 1,442,459 Social: 1,015,932 Navigation: 959,314 Drones: 670,758 Corp Management: 28,243
Spaceship Command is once again my top category. Last time around Engineering had passed it because I had focused on shield related skills. This time though there was a lot of training to fly first the freighter and then the Orca. And then when I started to slump in EVE I threw Cladari Battleships V on the list, over a million skill points right there, as an investment in the future. You need that skill to fly the Golem as well as a few capital ships.
Leadership also went up quite a bit thanks to the attribute shuffle and the requirements to fly an Orca and use that mining foreman implant. Missiles nearly doubled as well in total skill points because when in doubt I put my money in skills that make things go boom.
Wilhelm has 191 known skills, up 21 since the 30 million mark. Thanks to the skill queue that was added with Apocrypha he has just a single skill at level 1 now. That skill is Frigate Construction. I cannot remember exactly why I bought it (some plan involving the construction of frigates I would guess) and could not see any reason to train it up any further, so it remains my token level 1 skill.
Wilhelm’s skills are distributed as follows:
Level 1: 1 skill Level 2: 41 skills Level 3: 36 skills Level 4: 57 skills Level 5: 56 skills
That is 15 more skills at level 5 since the last time. I am at the point where refining things requires level V skills. I also have a lot more skills at level 2. I think I did a mass 1 to 2 training session to test out the training queue system. Level 3 and 4 skills remained pretty close to where they were before.
Finally there is the titan metric.
Way back when I calculated with EVE Mon that it would take me over 168 days to be able to fly the Caldari Titan. At the last checkpoint I had that down to 146 days. As of this point I am just over 99 days from being able to fly that titan, having shaved off 47 days, most of which was thanks to Caldari Battleship V.
Given the now constant rate of 2,079 skill points per hour, it will take a little over 200 days for me to be able to report on where I stand at 50 million skill points. That will put me at about February 17th, 2010, given that I rolled over the 40 million mark last Sunday.
Unless I train some of those remaining learning skills or buy some better implants. How much does +5 cost? I’m going to guess they cost a lot.
Who Owns Podcasting? August 4, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Podcasts.Tags: Adam Curry, Sun Microsystems, VoloMedia
11 comments
As a podcast listener and occasional guest on shows like Shut Up We’re Talking and Witty Ranter, I have a mild vested interest in podcasting.
So it was with some interest that I read about a company called VoloMedia that was granted a patent last week for “method for providing episodic media content.” Or, as it has been immediately spun, podcasting.
A detailed account is posted over at Ars Technica.
If you deliver episodic content over the internet, they believe they own you. Podcasts are part of it, but VoloMedia is aiming for anybody delivering episodic content as downloads.
Of course, this is going to cause some controversy.
I have to imagine that those involved with creating RSS are going to have a few words to say on the subject.
And then there is Sun Microsystems, now owned by Oracle, who it is claimed invented podcasting starting with work done back in 1999.
And, frankly, there has been podcast-like technology in progress for well over a decade.
How soon before Adam Curry speaks out on the subject?
Myself, I suspect that this will amount to very little in the end. Prior art will nip this in the bud.
We’ll see if I come to regret that opinion.
My Interests with WoW Patch 3.2 August 4, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.8 comments
It looks like patch 3.2 has arrived at last and is bringing a boat load of changes. WoW.com has the release notes for the patch posted and has guides to changes in specific areas.
The aspect of the patch I have been looking forward to is the change in mounts.
- The cast time for summoning any ground mount is now 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds.
- Apprentice Riding (Skill 75): Can now be learned at level 20 for 4 gold. Mail will be sent to players who reach level 20 directing them to the riding trainer.
- Journeyman Riding (Skill 150): Can now be learned at level 40 for 50 gold. Mail will be sent to players who reach level 40 directing them back to the riding trainer.
- Expert Riding (Skill 225): Can now be learned at level 60 for 600 gold from trainers in Honor Hold or Thrallmar. Faction discounts now apply (Honor Hold for Alliance; Thrallmar for Horde). Flight speed at this skill level has been increased to 150% of run speed, up from 60%.
- Artisan Riding (Skill 300): Faction discounts now apply (Honor Hold or Valiance Expedition for Alliance; Thrallmar or Warsong Offensive for Horde).
- In order to further equalize the number of purchasable mounts available to each race, a new 60% speed ground mount has been added for night elves, and a new 100% speed ground mount has been added for the undead.
- Flying over Dalaran and Wintergrasp is now possible so long as players keep a healthy distance above the ground.
You get them earlier, they cost less, everybody is happy. I have been holding off on buying the epic flying mount for my level 80 hunter because I knew a price break on the skill was coming as a part of this patch.
One item elsewhere in the release notes surprised me a bit:
Tome of Cold Weather Flight: New heirloom item. Players who have reached level 80 can now purchase this book for 1,000 gold from Hira Snowdawn, the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran. Similar to other heirloom items, this item can be mailed to other characters of the same realm, account and faction. The book is consumed when read training the character in Cold Weather Flying. Requires level 68.
So when you get to level 80 you can get cold weather flying for your alts so they can fly through Northrend from day one.
Another expected change, the accumulation of experience in battlegrounds has its own system built around it now:
- Players will now be awarded experience for completing objectives and actions that yield honor in Battlegrounds (honorable kills not included).
- Players who do not wish to gain experience through PvP can visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar – both located near the Battlemasters in either city – and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold.
- Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
- Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off.
- Behsten and Slahtz can reinstate experience gains for players, for a 10 gold fee of course. Any experience that would’ve been accumulated if experience gains were enabled cannot be recovered.
So you can turn off experience gain now, or turn it back on, for 10 gold. What isn’t clear to me is, if you turn off experience will you get gold in place of experience for doing quests, the way you currently do if you are at level cap? I am going to guess that the answer is no since they did not mention it.
And then, of interest to me, is a heap of changes to the engineering profession, the chosen trade skill path of Vikund, may main. While I despair about the usefulness of engineering from time to time, I always find something to keep me going with it. New with 3.2 are a Wormhole generator for travel in Northrend, a new deluxe repair bot, and a steam powered auctioneer in Dalaran available only to Grand Master Engineers. If only I did not crash every time I entered Dalaran.
A big patch day, so I imagine things will be a bit shakey for the balance of the week. Blizzard has already extended the downtime for today because of the patch.
Now how many of my alts are going to be getting epic ground mounts soon?
