Lessons from Hulkageddon II? January 14, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online, MMO Design.Tags: CONCORD, Hulkageddon
36 comments
The week long Hulkageddon II event is over.
If you look at the statistics on the kill board, you will see that over a twelve hundred exhumers were destroyed along with over 300 mining barges.
Along with that, over 200 of the pilots were also pod killed as part of the action.
They even managed to knock off a dozen Orcas and, according to the kill board, one carrier. I’m not sure how that last one fit in. Was somebody drone mining with it, or was that just a target of opportunity?
And what does all this mean?
Certainly the people who participated in the event voluntarily had a good time. Achievements were made, prizes were won, videos were shared.
And they will point out how many macro miners… automated mining bots… they knocked off. And, certainly, messing with the botters is a cherished tradition in MMOs. When you zap a bot and you see his pod continue to fly back and forth to the belt for hours after the kill, it is hard not to feel a sense of accomplishment.
But not everybody who lost a ship was a bot. Some of them were just regular players. Those in mining barges especially, which are lightly tanked and thus easily killed, were likely to be newer players. People like that got screwed. Somebody’s fun became their misery.
And you can take the cliche attitudes that people throw around in EVE. Don’t fly what you cannot afford to lose. Don’t ever assume you are safe outside of a station. Don’t AFK. EVE is about PvP. Sandbox, landmines, blah blah blah.
But all that amounts to is throwing a teaspoon of kitty litter over the steaming cow turd that is the loophole in the way things work in EVE Online.
Because you cannot deny that a loophole exists when a group of people can slaughter hundreds of mining ships in high security space and face little or no sanction. They slip past CONCORD, head to a belt, blast somebody, get their own minimally equipped ship blown up, collect the insurance payout, grab another ship and do it again.
CONCORD doing its usual bang up job
Don’t like the security standing hit? Just make an alt and finance it with your main. A few skills and you’re ready to go.
And I am not anti-pirate. That is a legitimate play style in the game and part of what makes EVE what it is. I am not even anti-ganking per se. If you’re willing to pay the price, you ought to be able to do what you want. But the price does not seem to be high enough at the moment. An event like this shows that there is something out of balance in the game.
How do you fix it, or do you even try?
A few possible changes come to my mind.
- Don’t offer insurance to people below a certain security level
- Don’t pay insurance claims if CONCORD kills you
- Make the attacker pay for the insurance outlay for the victims ship if CONCORD gets involved
- Make CONCORD more responsive
- Have CONCORD pursue low security players when they enter high sec
- Give mining ships better default tanks
- Give mining ships a huge shield booster bonus
- Remove insurance from the game
I am not sure any of them are actually good ideas. They all change the flavor of the game to some extent as well as leading to other avenues to be exploited.
Somebody attacks a freighter full of donuts though, and suddenly...
So what do you do?
How do you close, or at least tighten up, this loophole without killing off that which makes EVE the game it is?
Does EVE need big changes? Little changes? Or do should we just leave it alone?
What lessons do you think come out of Hulkageddon?
STO – Customize Your Head! January 13, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Star Trek Online.Tags: Character Creation, Reynaldo Fabulous
10 comments
Proving that last night was a matter of the servers being too busy, I was able to log on to Star Trek Online this morning.
That got me into character creation where phrases, seen out of context, can be quite amusing. For example, I chuckled every time I looked up and saw:
A while I found that phrase funny, it is certainly the truth. You have two levels of character customization, extremely simple and Cryptic-style complex. So you can, if you wish, customize many aspects of your head.
Some of your options...
You are not quite as free with your options as you are in Champions Online. Uniform options are a bit limited, though you can go the “inflict pain through bad color choices” route in that area if you so desire.
When it came to character creation though, I went the “WWKD?”
What would Kirk do?
Kirk would get himself a decent haircut, a gold tunic, strike a heroic pose, and then get on with things.
And so Captain Fabulous was born, ready to report to the USS Wensleydale!
Ensign Reynaldo T. Fabulous
Now to actually find some time to play the game.
STO Open Beta – First Night January 13, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Star Trek Online, World of Warcraft.Tags: Open Beta, Wintergrasp
6 comments
I got home last night and found that my download was complete. The Star Trek Online client was ready to install.
I ran the installer. That went well.
I logged in and let it patch. Also good.
And then I was told that the server was down, but that it would be up soon. No big deal.
At some point after the server came up, I logged in. I got to see the Cryptic and Atari logos as well as the cool loading screen.
Loading Screen Engaged!
And then that was about it for the excitement.
After that, the only two messages I saw were:
and
over and over again.
Not the most auspicious start for me I suppose.
But then again, it was the first night of open beta for a popular game. Problems are to be expected.
It was persistent enough that I began to wonder if it was some sort of replay of the UDP issue I was having with Pirates of the Burning Sea way back when. (PotBS comparisons with STO seem to en vogue at the moment.) However, a check of the forums showed that other people were having the same issue.
So there was no Star Fleet activity at our house on the first night of open beta.
But World of Warcraft was there for me. I got on just in time to run Wintergrasp and call it a night.
STO Open Beta Poll January 12, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Humor, polls, Star Trek Online.Tags: FilePlanet, Open Beta
13 comments
Here I sit, 10 hours into the Star Trek Online open beta client download and about 40% complete. Come on FilePlanet download manager!
That has given me some time to go look at other posts about open beta. Some are quite good and provide valuable information or perspectives. And some are… a bit tedious.
So, in absence of anything else to post at the moment, I thought I would do a poll.
I also figured out how to resolve that “poll doesn’t wrap long answers” issue I was having. Go me. Of course, I got word wrapping to work, but now it forces me to use the default poll style. How like life.
Now back to downloading.
STO – Pre-Order Key in Hand January 12, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Star Trek Online.Tags: FilePlanet, Open Beta, Pre-orders
1 comment so far
Gamestop obliged me this afternoon with an email that contained my pre-order game key so I can get in the Star Trek Online open beta, which begins tomorrow if things go as planned.
Of course, the next trick will be downloading the game client, which weighs in at around 7GB if I read the forums correctly.
Not that I will have much time to actually play in the open beta for the next week or so, but I’d like to get it set up so that when I do have time, I can give it a try.
Addendum: Ah, they put up a page about the open beta. It looks like my subscription to FilePlanet will pay off again.
I Know it is Just the Name of the System… January 11, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online, Humor.Tags: Amarr, Arshat, Hulkageddon
2 comments
I was looking at the Hulkageddon II killboard and decided to see how much destruction was going on in my neighborhood, which is the Domain region. All this emergent game play is fun until it starts happening in your own favorite fishing hole.
I discovered that one of my previously noted favorite systems seems to be at the top of the chart.
Now, I’m not calling anybody names, I’m just saying it seems oddly appropriate that a lot of the killing in the Domain region is happening in Arshat.
The World of Warcraft Magazine January 11, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: EON Magazine, MMO Magazines, World of Warcraft Magazine
3 comments
So, yes, I subscribed to the World of Warcraft Magazine. The first issue showed up this past weekend.
Vol. 1, Issue 1, Winter 2009
After all, I’ve subscribed to several print magazines that covered the MMO market in general (most of which have folded), as well as the EVE Online magazine EON, and even the EverQuest II magazine EQuinox.
And, in the end, I have let all these subscriptions lapse.
The general MMO magazines, some of which didn’t last as long as my subscription, all suffered from the same problem: I’d effectively read most of their content on the web 4-8 weeks ahead of receiving them in the mail. The death of print media in a nutshell. And the remaining content, items unique to the magazine, were not worth the price of the subscription.
EON, the EVE Online magazine, is probably the best MMO magazine around. It looks good and is chock full of information you probably haven’t read at six gaming sites already. Plus they have cool posters. The problem for me was that the magazine tended to be aimed at people way more into the game than I have ever been. A lot of the content got flagged “nothing to do with me really” as I went through it each quarter.
And then there was EQuinox. EQuinox looked very nice. It was done by MMM Publishing, the same people who do EON. But it was very thin. Too thin to be worth nearly $20 a copy after you added in tax and shipping. I do not think I was alone in that assessment, since I believe it only ran a two issues in the end.
So what can the Official World of Warcraft Magazine offer up in a space where others have failed?
In general, the magazine looks good. It is well produced, though perhaps not as glossy as EON.
It has some heft at 144 pages. The official site says 148 pages, but to get there you have to count the cover, inside and out, none of which has any real content and which are not numbered.
My last copy of EON weighed in at 80 pages while that first issue of EQuinox was a very light feeling 66 pages, so it compared quite favorably there.
And then there is the content. Topics covered in this first issue are:
- Things to look forward to in Cataclysm
- A feature about Mike Morhaime and the history of Blizzard
- Companion Pets
- Overview and background of Ice Crown Citadel
- Different methods guilds use to distribute loot from raids
- Isle of Conquest battleground guide
- Achievements
- A guide to line of sight and how to maintain it in various conditions
- Heroic Prints poster guide
- Guide to inscription (which has the same graphic as Syp has in his blog header)
- Guide to the Argent Tournament/Trial of the Crusader area
- Guide to addons for healers
- WoW Five Year Anniversary overview – includes a nice time line
- Arathi Basin battleground guide
- Overview of the return of Onyxia
- Overview of the WOW trading card game
- Fan art gallery
- Some one page guides to things like keeping threat when tanking and when to swap weapons in combat
- An attempt at humor on the last page
Over all, the first issue was pretty good. It felt like it contained a lot of information.
Then I realized that there were no ads in the magazine at all. No pages bought by WoW guilds, fan sites, news sites, vendors, nor any of the other stuff that you expect to find in such a magazine… stuff that generally finances the magazine… were anywhere to be seen.
Of course, seen from another angle, the magazine is nothing but a giant advertisement for World of Warcraft. But then you cannot buy it off a news stand, you have to know about it and subscribe, so if it is nothing but an ad, it is directed at people who already bought the product.
And it did deliver value.
A lot of the magazine was devote to guides that contained reasonable, practical advice. Nothing you couldn’t search the web and build on your own, but it is nicely presented in a single location. For me, the battleground guides were quite nice, since I tend to spend most of my time lost in battlegrounds trying to figure out what I should be doing.
While the information about Cataclysm was nothing really new if you read all the info coming out of BlizzCon, it was well put together with screen shots of new UI pieces and the like.
The articles about Blizzard and World of Warcraft in general delivered a lot of good information. I liked the list of features that they added over time that you now just take for granted, like the ability to turn off scrolling quest text. The game went almost a year before they got that added in.
So, all in all, a strong first outing for the World of Warcraft magazine, at least relative to comparable magazines. You can go browse through some of it online on the official site, linked way back in the first sentence.
Now the real question: Can they follow up with an equally good second issue come Spring? Pulling together a first issue is one thing. Getting into the cycle of putting out an issue every quarter is something else altogether.
We’ll see in the spring I guess.
More Blizzard Account Phishing January 9, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Blizzard, entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Blizzard Authenticator, Phishing
9 comments
This seems to be the week for phishing when it comes to World of Warcraft accounts.
Well, two in one week is two more than I have received in the last five years.
I almost believed this one… for a second or two.
Greetings!
This is an automated notification regarding the recent change(s) made to your World of Warcraft account. Your password has recently been modified through the Password Recovery website.
*** If you made this password change, please disregard this notification.
However, if you did NOT make changes to your password we recommend you Login verify your password
[Bogus URL deleted]
If you are unable to successfully verify your password using the automated system, please contact Billing & Account Services at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD (1-800-592-5499) Mon-Fri, 8am-8pm Pacific Time or at billing@blizzard.com.
Account security is solely the responsibility of the account holder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives typically must lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.
Regards,
The World of Warcraft Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment
Okay I believed it for more than a second. It was simple enough to be believable at first glance, and I still had in the back of my mind the events of another account hacking. But I had to wonder how anybody could change my password since I have the Blizzard Authenticator, and you need a code from that edit account information.
Then I looked closely at the URL in the email. The domain it it was “battlu.net.” Not the real deal.
So be wary. If you want to go check up on something like this, go directly to the Blizzard site and log into account management from there. Avoid “helpful” URLs.
Things to do While Waiting for Star Trek Online January 8, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Humor, Star Trek Online.6 comments
While you’re waiting… presuming you are waiting… you can:
- Think up ship names
- Finally figure out which pre-order bonus you really want and cancel those other ones before it is too late
- Learn a few choice Klingon phrases like “Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam” or “Hab SoSlI’ Quch!”
- Haunt the official forums in search of any new scraps information
- Create your own little fan site
- Go make trouble over at some SW-TOR fan site
- Watch some of the trailers again
- Practice shouting, “Khaaaan!“
- Build your own LEGO USS Enterprise
- Grumble about not being in the closed beta
- Fret about what could go wrong with the release
- Make your own Star Trek Online box art
Open beta is only next week, but we still have all weekend to go.
What else should be on the list?
Crayon Physics – Pay What You Want Sale January 8, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Other PC Games.Tags: Crayon Physics
2 comments
The makers of Crayon Physics, a 2D physics simulation game, are celebrating the one year anniversary of the release of the game by having a pay what you want sale.
Between now and January 15th, you can visit their site, purchase Crayon Physics, and pay any amount you want.
It does require you to use PayPal as a payment option.
