First Run in the Sushi Boat August 4, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online.Tags: Dominix
11 comments
My mining alt finally skilled up to the point where he could fly the Dominix battleship I have equipped as an AFK level 4 mission runner and dubbed “Sushi Boat” due to the fact that the Domi looks… well… somewhat fishy.
I had all the modules together, detailed in my previous post about the Domi, plus a stack of Ogre heavy drones in the drone bay to provide the offensive firepower.
Now I just had to try it out.
I decided for a first run that perhaps I should go with a level 3 mission, just to see how things played out. I went to the local level 3 agent for Amarr Navy and drew Gone Berserk, a straightforward “go blow up some hostile ships” mission.
I flew out to the mission location and set to work. I used the 425mm rail gun I had fitted to get the attention of the bad guys.
Reach out and touch someone...
Then, when the room was lit up and hostile to me, I turned on the modules and let loose the drones.
Ogre on the way!
Then I sat back and watched how things developed. I wanted to make sure that all the waves of bad guys went after my Dominix and not the drones and that the drones would take care of business.
It was a bit difficult to watch. I fly Caldari ships and have been, in the past, all about shield tanking. Now I had to sit still and watch the shields fade.
Where I usually panic
The armor repair units kept up even when all the waves were on me, never letting damage get beyond where you see it in the picture above. I should hope that would be the case for a level 3 mission, but theory is different than seeing it actually happen.
I had loaded up a couple of tractor beams and a salvager in the high slots along with the gun, so I was able to loot while the drones did the work.
The true test came when the neighbor knocked on our door and I truly had to go AFK during the mission.
I returned to find the Dominix alone amongst the wrecks of the enemy ships, with all of the drones orbiting and still intact.
Then it was just a matter of post-mission clean up.
Reeling in the salvage
The trial mission was a success.
Now I have to pull a level 4 mission and see how it works out. I still need to get a couple more levels of Gallente battleship, which boosts drone hit points and damage, as well as a couple levels of heavy drone operations before I think I am really ready.
Cheating Poll: Results August 3, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Misc MMOs, polls, World of Warcraft.5 comments
While I was away at Lake Tahoe, approximately 200 people responded to my poll on cheating. That doesn’t seem like a lot given my daily traffic, but I suppose I should discount all those who end up here via Pokemon related Google searches.
I took a snapshot of the results over the weekend to look at. The poll is still open, so the votes may vary a little from what you see below, but the pattern seemed to be set by about the 100th person and has not varied much since.
The Poll
I make no claims of statistical validity. If I were designing a survey on constitutes cheating in an MMO, I would have gone about it quite differently. This was just something to get a sense of what people who read this blog, and who have an opinion on the subject, we thinking using the tools I had available to me. The tool, the Poll Daddy poll creation tool, has its limitations.
I did forget to put “none of these are cheating” as an option, because I am sure there is somebody out there who was fine with everything on the list. So consider the hard core hacker demographic excluded. You had to think something was cheating to be counted.
Also, remember that this poll asked whether people thought these things were cheating regardless of the rules of any given game. The EULA does not enter into this, this is what you felt was cheating. (Though despite saying this, there were comments that went to the EULA argument.)
The Results
The results, to my eye, fell into three categories,
- Things we see as cheating
- Things about which we have some discomfort
- Things that are mostly personal bias
Cheating
The top seven most popular responses represent what a majority of respondents see as cheating today.
Hacking, for example, was a gimme. Due to the limitations of the poll interface available to me, I have no real measurement of how many people took the poll, but I am willing to bet that the hacking response was a reasonable indicator.
Did anybody see things on the list that they considered cheating, but hacking was not among them? Please answer in the comments if you did.
So a majority of respondents seem to agree that hacking, botting, using exploits, and such are cheating.
Exploits as cheating is tricky, because I am going to guess that is the one on the list that almost all of us have done at one time or another. I have an instance group post here where we essentially used an exploit to finish a boss that was giving us fits.
I was also interested to see that paid power leveling is considered cheating by more people than buying a character outright.
Discomfort
In the middle are three items that didn’t get a vote from the majority, but got enough votes to stand out from the bottom group. They seem, to me, to strike the chord of “fairness.”
Sanctioned RMT, in which the game company will sell you in-game items via some mechanism, is still a sore subject with many. It smacks of money replacing skill or dedication to some. (And then there is Darren and that horse.) I am a bit surprised that this isn’t higher, but I am going to guess that there is a group out there that doesn’t care either way, which about sums up my own view.
Automation of simple tasks surprised me a bit, given that so many games (e.g. WoW, EQ2, LOTRO) have built-in macro languages that allow you to do this. In addition, simple automation, such as picking up a fumbled sword, has been allowed automation in most MUDs I have played when almost everything else on this list was considered cheating. I should probably allow for lack of clarity in my definition on this one. If somebody selected this as cheating and wants to expand on that choice, I would welcome the comment.
Multi-play, multi-boxing, or running multiple accounts feels like cheating if you came from the right background, especially MUDs. It also carries the same stigma as sanctioned RMT, where those with the money to afford a good computer and multiple accounts win out over the average player.
Bias
Then we are left with the final seven results.
Information from the web, which I broke into three categories because in my own gaming history they each became legitimate in their own time frame. But they all represent the same thing, the free flow of game information.
Power leveling and twinking probably fall under the category of “we’ve all done it.” What, you’ve never given a drop to an alt or had a higher level friend help you for a bit? Neither were ever really cheating any place I played. What probably annoys us is when some people go to extremes, like the guy in the PUG who rolls “need” on a blue BOE drop because “he has an alt” or the level 19 in the battleground wearing all blues with enchants on every possible piece of equipment.
And then there is the free time question, which I included only because it comes up in the fairness debate on sanctioned RMT. I don’t have much free time, but I have money, let me use what I have. It was suggested that if I included free time then I should have also included things like a better internet connection or a better computer/video card as choices as well. But I rarely ever see those as part of the sanction RMT debate while off-setting the advantages of people with lots of free time is a cornerstone of the pro-RMT argument.
And, finally, other. There were only two things put in the “other” box.
The first was Third Party Chat, which was a throw-back item from a friend to remind me that there was a time when talking to other players in-game via a third-party chat program like ICQ was considered cheating. It was immersion breaking. But group chat worked world-wide, and then things like guild chat came into games and it started to seem a bit silly. But I installed ICQ years back (I have a six digit account number… I think if you sign up now they are eight or nine digits) to chat with people who were in game but out of touch.
And the second was twinking, but specifically twinking in WoW battlegrounds, and only until patch 3.2 comes out at which point battlegrounds will award experience and there will be much QQ’ing by the battleground twink community.
My Own Votes
I picked everything in the top group except the purchase of characters. I find that one to be pretty self-enforcing. And I also picked twinking, though in my mind I was voting against excessive twinking, so I couldn’t even keep to my own definitions.
The Irony
Aside from paid power leveling and hacking, I have been complicit in some way with every other item on the list. I either did it myself or somebody I knew well in-game did it where it was a violation of the terms of service and I not only did not turn them in, but I also benefited directly or indirectly in some way.
Some day I will write a tell-all series of posts which will illustrate how naive people (including myself) have been, how most of the time these things either sucked the joy out of a game or lead to behavior that left the people involved no better off than before they started, or turned out to be huge wastes of time or money.
There will be tragedy and stupidity with a good dose of comedy and the occasional victory over a flawed or broken system. I just have to wait until the statute of limitations runs out. What is the forgiveness period on an MMO EULA? Never?
And You?
Did the poll reflect your own views? Did you vote? When you look at the results do you feel a sense of satisfaction or outrage? Do you have any cheating related confessions?
Darkrai Member Card Event August 2, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in DS, entertainment, Pokemon.Tags: Darkrai, Pokemon Diamond, Pokemon Pearl, Pokemon Platinum
10 comments
Pokemon.com has announced that you can get Darkrai in Pokemon Platinum between August 3rd and September 13th by obtaining the member card in game.
You need to have Nintendo WiFi Connection configured on your Nintendo DS in order to get the member card.
This is the only way you can get Darkrai directly in Pokemon Platinum. Of course, if you picked Darkrai up in Pokemon Diamond or Pearl at the Toys R Us event a little over a year back, you can always trade him to your copy of Platinum… with a little help.
Ice Cream Experiment August 1, 2009
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Humor, In Person.Tags: Code Red, Code Red Float, Mountain Dew, root beer, root beer floats
10 comments
Something magic happens when you mix root beer with vanilla ice cream. A root beer float occurs, a rich and creamy transcendent flavor package that is more than the sum of its parts.
Well, it seems like that to me, but I really like root beer floats.
So when my daughter and I came in from playing this afternoon, I agreed when she said it was time for root beer floats.
But then disaster struck. While we had plenty of ice cream (Dryers Vanilla Bean), there was no root beer to be had.
We had other sodas around the house, but the failed experiments of youth flooded back to me.
Sure, when you’re young, you think that if root beer tastes great with vanilla ice cream, then other beverages must as well.
So you try Coke, and it is okay, but the carbonation is too sharp and the flavors don’t meld quite right. Then there is lemon-lime in the form of 7-Up or Sprite, but the faux citrus flavoring doesn’t mix as well as you would wish with the vanilla. And the less said about diet sodas or ginger ale mixed with ice cream, the better.
So it was with some trepidation that I inventoried the soda reserves in our refrigerator. The usual suspects were there, Coke, Diet Coke, ginger ale, Sprite… but then I spotted something a little different, a soda that did not exist in my youth.
Could this cherry flavored soda succeed where others had failed?
It certainly had potential. Like root beer, the carbonation in Code Red is more subdued than colas. And the flavoring was something different.
And so we set out to create the Code Red Float.
Two tall glasses
Two scoops of ice cream in each
Half a can of Mountain Dew Code Red in each glass
The results looked promising.
Warning: Experimental Drink!
The mixture foamed up like any good root beer float ought to, with a thick and creamy foam. When stirred with a straw, the harsh red of the drink mellowed into a happy summer shade of pink.
That left only the taste test.
I shouted, “ARE YOU READY?” which got something of an eye roll from my daughter, but she said she was. I let her choose her glass and we gave it a try.
Pretty good.
The cherry flavor of the Code Red mixed well with the vanilla bean ice cream, forming a different flavor, a light cherry cream akin to something in the middle of a chocolate candy.
We drank up.
My daughter was less enthusiastic about the remaining ice cream. But she isn’t big on the left over ice cream in a root beer float either. I, on the other hand, did what I have done since I was a child, which was slurp every last bit of ice cream loudly through the straw until the glass was empty.
Experiment Complete
The remaining foam in the glass even had the same tenacious nature that a root beer float leaves, a concoction that is just short of caulk if left to dry in the glass.
And so our experiment was declared a success.
But I’m still putting root beer on the shopping list.
