STO – Lifetime Subscription Perks March 16, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Star Trek Online.Tags: Lifetime Subscription
7 comments
I got a note from Cryptic today that has a little more information about the “extras” that those of us who bought lifetime subscriptions to the game get. Anything to validate my purchase!
STO LIFETIME PERKS
Greetings Lifetime Members!
We just wanted to thank you again for purchasing a Lifetime Subscription from us. As you already know, this entitles you to play the game without paying a monthly fee. But, that’s not where it ends. Later this month we’ll be releasing special perks for you, just to show our appreciation. Here’s some of what we’re working on, exclusive to Lifetime Subscribers:Exclusive In-Game Chat Channel
Talk shop with other Lifetime Subscribers. Share thoughts and ideas about the game, or anything else.Front-of-Queue Support
Waiting isn’t fun, and we don’t think you should have to do it. Any time the server is queued, you’ll go to the front of it.In-Game Title
Visibly show off your support.In-Game VIP Lounge
Spend time in an exclusive area inside the game. This social area is limited to Lifetime Subscribers only.A Unique Costume Piece
Show off your lifetime status in style.We’ll see you in-game, and thank you again!
-The Cryptic Team
It is nice to see the Front-of Queue item on that list, though it might have helped a bit to have that a few weeks ago.
A Quick Pass Through GDC 2010 March 15, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, In Person.Tags: GDC, GDC 2010, Le Colonial, PlayStation Move, Zombrex
9 comments
Last week was my fourth pass through the Game Developers Conference, having also gone up to San Francisco in 2007, 2008, and 2009.
This year my expo pass was provided by the fine people at FileCatalyst. They were at the show to talk to companies about their accelerated and managed file transfer solutions. While they asked for nothing in return, I figured I would put their logo up as a thank you.
GDC was considerably more compressed than previous years. Gaming may be recession proof, but trade shows are not. So this time around they put all of the recruiting and demo booths onto the same show floor at Moscone North, where they filled out about 70-80% of the space that either area took up last year or the year before.
Coverage of the show is all over the place. Both Karen and Darren have posts up about what they saw in their days devoted to the show. My own time there was limited and spent mostly talking to people I already knew. (Like Karen and Darren.)
One thing that a lot of people were talking about was PlayStation Move, the motion controllers that Sony was showing for use with the PS3. On the other hand, I couldn’t hear anybody talk about it without mentioning Nintendo or the Wii, so it is already being defined in terms of the competition. And while the tech demo looked good, I didn’t see anything that hinted at a killer app to drive the hardware. My main complaint about the Wii is that most games could just as easily be played with a game pad, and here is Sony bringing motion controllers to a console that already has a game pad. They had better have something in the bag to drive this idea.
I did discover evidence first hand that Activision is indeed evil. Strike one, they were handing out beer. Strike two, it was Bud Light. Strike three, the cup wasn’t worth keeping once the beer was gone. So this was just designed to force engineers use the public restroom as far as I could tell.
I also got my Zombrex vaccination. If you don’t know what that is, you’re not alone. There was a booth where they had faux injection guns that they would put up to your arm to inoculate you against becoming a zombie. You got a bandage that said ZOMBREX on it to cover up your non-existent injection wound, a follow up injection in a box (which turned out to be a pretty cool pen that looks like a hypodermic), and a poster detailing “practical advice to dealing with zombie infection” which I’ll have to scan at some point.
ZOMBREX Injector
All of which seemed to be in furtherance of nothing, since they didn’t seem to be pushing anything other than their bogus injections. Questioning the booth staff got nothing but blank looks and talk about zombies. The only thing I could find on Google that seemed to relate was a post about Dead Rising 2.
I’m sure we’ll find out what this was about soon enough. The box the pen came in has an expiration date of August 31, 2010. Anything shipping on or around that date related to zombies?
Anyway, their viral (heh) campaign seems to have worked somewhat. I’ve already devoted a couple of paragraphs and a picture in this post towards it.
I did get to see Gary Gannon do one of his Game Breakr Daily GDC Wrap Up broadcasts with Brent and Darren right there on the show floor.
Live From Moscone Center
Gary, with lots of behind the scenes support from Todd, got some great stuff there at the show. Be sure to head over to Game Breakr to see the clips.
Then, once the show wrapped up for the evening, it was time to walk over to Le Colonial for dinner.
Dinner at Le Colonial
From left to right, the group in the picture is:
- Darren of The Common Sense Gamer and Shut Up, We’re Talking
- Myself
- Brent, the man behind VirginWorlds
- Neil Kirby, who was speaking at the Artificial Intelligence in Computer Games Roundtables
- Karen of Journey’s with Jaye and Shut Up, We’re Talking
- Shawn Schuster Editor-in-Chief at Massively
- Lady Sinea of Ringcast
- Brian “Psychochild” Green of Meridian 59 and Psychochild’s Blog
And behind the camera was Seraphina, with whom I did not get much of a chance to speak.
I also got a request for a picture of Shawn and Lady Sinea. Behind them is our waiter who studiously avoided catching my eye once it came time to take a picture.
Shawn and Lady Sinea
Dinner was excellent of course, as was the company, but all nights come to an end at some point, and we headed back to our rooms or homes. Until next year!
Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver Launch Today! March 14, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in DS, entertainment, Pokemon.Tags: Pokemon HeartGold, Pokemon SoulSilver
1 comment so far
Today is the day. Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver launch today.
The web site for HeartGold and SoulSilver has been updated with a lot of new information about the game, along with some hints of things to be revealed later.
We pre-ordered through Amazon.com, which means that a Sunday launch date guarantees that we won’t get the game for at least a day or two after launch. Nintendo seems to be pretty strict about shipping early, since it looks like Amazon won’t even start shipping until tomorrow.
That is okay though, a few days delay won’t kill us. We will have all next weekend to explore the Johto region.
STO – Season One Updates Coming March 14, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Star Trek Online.3 comments
I’ve been playing Star Trek Online at a rather relaxed pace so far. It does seem to be designed to let you drop in for a quick mission or two. But that does not mean I have not been paying attention to the game.
Still on the press release mailing list, this fell in my inbox today:
Season 1: Common Ground Fact Sheet
Our latest content update, Season 1: Common Ground, is releasing shortly. Here’s just a bit of the updates we have headed players’ way.
Lifetime Subscriber Perks
We’ve put together a special thank you package for our Lifetime subscribers:
· Classified Access Codes – A free C-store item.
· The Captain’s Table – A special social area exclusive to Lifetime subscribers, available to both Federation and Klingon captains.
· Special In-Game Title – “Career Officers” are those who’ve joined Starfleet or the KDF for the long haul.
PVP Updates
· Wargames – Federation players can now participate in PvP against one another to better prepare for the dangers of the battlefield.
· New PvP Map – Explore “Shanty Town,” a brand new Ground Assault map available for both Klingon and Federation players.
Customization
· Off-Duty Uniforms – Experience Risa in style! Starfleet officers will have the option to change into off-duty outfits to enjoy more casual attire.
· New Stances and Hairstyles – Further customize your Captain by changing his or her hairstyle, or adopting two brand new stances: Stern and Relaxed.
Ships
· A New Klingon Battle Cruiser – The K’Tanco Battle Cruiser has been made available to Klingon Lieutenant Commanders.
· Klingon Ship Customization – Use the ship tailor to customize your Bird of Prey or Raptor.
· Respec Is Here – Unhappy with your Captain’s loadout? Use the respec tool to change things up.
Missions
· New Fleet Actions Everywhere!
o The Big Dig – Available in Romulan space.
o DS9 Under Siege - The True Way has attacked and boarded DS9. Repel the invasion to save the day.
o Klingons Can Play, Too – Klingon Captains may now access the Crystalline Entity, Big Dig and Breaking the Planet Fleet Actions
Skills
· New Skill: Starship Attack Vectors – Improve your ship’s accuracy and critical hit chance.
· New Skill: Combat Maneuvers – Improve your ship’s evasion and turn rate.
· New Skill: Starship Battle Strategy – Improve your ship’s critical hit severity and damage resistance.
In The C-Store
· New Bridge Variants - All new ways to update your Bridges’ look, available for a low price in the C-Store for both Federation and Klingon ships.
· Federation Ship Variants – New takes on your old favorites, available for a low price in the C-Store.
I’m glad to see something in there for the lifetime subscribers as well as the option to respec. And maybe there is something on the list I can spend my C-Store points on, like a ship variant.
There is a slightly different list of items for the “Common Ground” update over at the STO site that shows a few different items, like additional playable races. You can find it here.
Embracing the Dungeon Finder March 12, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Instance Group, World of Warcraft.Tags: Dungeon Finder, Maraudon, Sunken Temple
3 comments
Saturday afternoon found Potshot and I running around with alts on Lightninghoof.
I had Grungur, my healing shaman on and he had his pally on, who was only a couple levels ahead of Grungur, and also spec’d healing.
Thinking we might get some good, fast exp, he re-spec’d to protection and we hit the dungeon finder as a healer tank pair. We got off to a bit of a slow start… working as a team we tend not to be the “gogogo!” types, something which lost us one impatient DPS player… but we hit our stride pretty quick. And joining as a tank/healer pair meant never waiting for more than about 5 seconds to get a group.
Earl showed up and got out one of his alts, a fury warrior, and joined us as DPS for a run. We had a bit of a hiccup with the dungeon finder at that point, as the level spread between us left only one dungeon possible to run (the armory in Scarlet Monastery) but when we tried to do random (because we wanted to goodie bag) the system kept picking dungeons that at least one of us were not eligible for.
Still, the experience was good, so we thought we would go the random dungeon route with our main characters that night, since we were a bit shy in levels to get the quests for Sunken Temple. Going into the night, our group was:
46 Blood Elf Paladin – Enaldie (Ula)
47 Tauren Druid – Hurmoo (Vikund)
47 Tauren Druid – Azawak (Skronk)
47 Orc Shaman – Earlthebat (Earlthecat)
47 Undead Mage – Bigbutt (Bungholio)
The first thing we had to do though was go back to Maraudon and finish up the quests that are (mostly) in what I will call the vestibule of the instance. We had to knock off the first three khans, kill some elementals, and take a quick peek into the instance to cure some tainted plants.
Finishing up Maraudon Quests
That did not take us too long. Once we turned in the quests it was time to queue up for a random dungeon with the dungeon finder. And that dungeon was:
Maraudon!
Although it was called, Maraudon – Pristine Waters.
I guess they have Maraudon chopped up into more manageable chunks for dungeon finder. This chunk puts the group in mid-air over the waterfalls that leads to the last section of the instance. You drop into the deep water and can swim to the shallows.
In the shallows, ready to start
If I recall right, that is about where the staff of Celebras used to drop you, back before it had stats. (And decent stats too, Hurmoo is wielding that staff.)
That leaves a pretty reasonable chunk of Maraudon to take care of. And to complete the dungeon and get the goodie bag, you do not even have to go after all of the bosses, you can just go straight for the princess.
We opted for a detour to Landslide, but then headed for Princess Theradras.
Stalking the princess again
The princess did not take us long, and soon we had our loot.
That went so fast, we queued up again. And this time we got…
Well, crap. We were going to hold off on Sunken Temple until we had all the quests. The experience from quests has been really good, so we don’t like to skip it.
Still, there we were. We didn’t want to wait out the 15 minute re-try timer just to get it again, so we decided to give it a go. At least this would be a good warm up. All we had to do was kill the Shade of Eranikus. However, you have to do a few things before you can do that.
And so began a blurry trip down memory lane.
We went and killed the mini-bosses on one level.
Then we went and activated the statues in order on another level. (Fortunately, Alpha Map has the order listed.)
Then we headed down to the very bottom level, killed the boss, and activated the altar which I don’t suppose we really needed to do, since it just shows you the order you need to activate the statues, and we’d already done that. Score one for thoroughness I suppose.
Finally, we headed to what I will call the main level and began clearing everybody out.
Dealing with Morphaz
All the dragons and dragonkin were a boon for Azawak, who is the leather worker in our group.
We ended up with just Jammal’an the Prophet and Eranikus. But Jammal’an was behind a force field and Eranikus wouldn’t give us the time of day.
Excuse me, Mr. Ghost Dragon? Can we kill you?
We ran around a bit, just to see if there was anything left in the area we needed to do, but all seemed quiet. We did find the Elder Starsong who hangs out in Sunken Temple during the Lunar Festival.
Elder Starsong
Then Bigbutt spotted one of the mini-bosses still alive up in his balcony. We missed one.
That meant finding our way back, which wasn’t so easy because Sunken Temple seems to respawn pretty quickly. That means you can just go where everything is already dead and know you’re on the right track.
We fought our way to the last mini-boss, killed him, then jumped down from his balcony to the main floor and headed for Jammal’an. Sure enough, the force field was down. We knocked off his congregation, remembering to simply avoid the ghosts that sometimes appear, and were able to take him and his assistant down pretty readily.
Then it was out to the center again for the last two dragons before Eranikus. Once they were dispatched, we were finally ready for the last fight. As has often been the case, the final fight was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Unlike our usual ending, we got an achievement AND a goodie bag.
The corpse of the shade of Eranikus
The experience was good. We all ended up at least two levels higher than we were when the night started. Now we just need to go grab all the quests and do it again!
The American Tank Tree March 11, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Misc MMOs.Tags: World of Tanks
4 comments
World of Tanks has released the American tank tree for their game.
The American Tank Tree
The American tank tree illustrates quite clearly the US position on tank development, which were largely influenced by General McNair, that the US Army didn’t need anything better than the Sherman, which should be used for infantry support and which should leave the enemy tanks to the tank destroyer units.
Because of this position, I thought perhaps they would combine the US and UK tank trees, but I guess not.
Haunted by the Gorgon March 10, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Star Trek Online.Tags: Melvin Belli, Star Trek
1 comment so far
Hail, hail, fire and snow,
call the angel, we will go,
far away, for to see,
friendly angel come to me-Rhyme from the worst episode ever
There I was in another strange solar system checking on another Federation outpost.
Another planet to save!
There had been a distress signal. Something strange was happening on the surface. There was a request to beam down to the planet.
However, when I got there, this was the mission briefing.
I have, in a number of posts and comments, mentioned that one of my least favorite episodes of the original Star Trek series is And the Children Shall Lead.
There are other episodes I am not fond of… in fact, it can be a bit painful to go back and watch a lot of those old episodes… did TV get more sophisticated over the last 40 years?
Anyway, there is only one episode I actually call out for special negative attention, and that is the one. A bad script, badly acted, with an annoying lawyer dressed up as a grotesque green-ish blancmange.
And so it was with some chagrin that I read this briefing which I immediately recognized as a nod to that very episode.
This put me in the mood to blow something up. Any Gorgon, kid waving their fist, or over-weight lawyer I ran across was looking to get a grenade tossed their way just for openers. And if you read that last line in the briefing, I seemed to have carte blanche to zero-out anybody who even looked at me cross-eyed. The away team was ready.
Ready for action!
The first step on the mission was to get some more readings on these Gorgons, which meant running around the local area looking for that Star Trek Online “mission objective here” shiny effect. We were going to find out what made them tick, all the better to put the hurt on them, or so I hoped.
Upon getting the last reading, the mission update came up.
Who? What? That was it?
You mean I don’t get to shoot the bloated, scarred visage of a Gorgon or any snot-nosed pre-teens?
After that I had to head over to Starbase 24 where one is guaranteed the option of blowing things up.
Always Go With Your Gut… March 10, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Other PC Games.Tags: 38 Studios, EA
4 comments
Back to my 2010 predictions, and one in particular.
One of the following companies will announce their first/next project, and it won’t be an MMO (5 points):
Aventurine
Carbine Studios
Red5 Studios
Simutronics
Turbine
Only, when I first made that list, I had 38 Studios on it. It seemed logical. I had lumped them together with Red 5 and Carbine last year.
Then I talked myself out of it.
They had already announced Copernicus. Of course an MMO would be their first release. I was thinking crazy thoughts.
Then there was yesterday’s press release.
The key item is:
Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced an agreement with 38 Studios, LLC to publish the company’s first video game, an epic single-player role-playing game codenamed ‘Project Mercury’.
I just hate it when I talk myself out of things that come to pass.
And then, of course, there is the whole “OMG! EA is the devil!” reaction, for which, I must admit, I have some sympathy.
Still, it is probably better than reading that Activision is involved, know what I mean?
Whiskey Tengu Foxtrot? March 9, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, EVE Online.Tags: EVE Fitting Tool, EVEMon, Tengu
10 comments
What to do with all that ISK I have in my wallet?
A few weeks back I was sitting in EVE Online. Star Trek Online was down and I had had all of the WoW I could take for the day. So there I was in New Eden wondering what to do.
I started thinking about one of my predictions for 2010, that strategic cruisers would become a common sight. Of course, some people objected to that right away, saying that they were already a common sight in their neck of the woods. That area is usually called 0.0 space, and my friend Meclin did confirm that the tech 3 ships were in fact not a unique sight out there.
I had never seen one however. But then I, like a majority of EVE players, never go into 0.0 space, so I would dispute that they are a common sight. I see most every ship hovering around Amarr station, so that is my measure for what is a common sight and what is not.
Of course, sitting there with no real plan and a bunch of ISK, I figured that I could make my prediction come true by buying my own strategic cruiser. Money + boredom = expensive new experiment!
The first thing I needed was the basic skill. Easy and not too expensive:
Caldari Strategic Cruiser – 1,350,000 ISK
You only need the first level of skill to qualify for the ship. That takes just a few minutes.
And then there was the ship itself. The Caldari strategic cruiser is called the Tengu, which is what lead to the title of the post.
Tengu: 207,000,000 ISK
So I rushed off to assemble the new ship to see what it looked like. Only there was a problem.
You can’t just fly the ship without its subsystems. Heck, you cannot even assemble the ship. You get this message.
There were subsystems available, but of course that requires more skills.
I had to run off and buy those. They were 4,500,000 ISK each, and I needed five.
- Caldari Defensive Subsystem
- Caldari Electronics Subsystem
- Caldari Engineering Subsystem
- Caldari Offensive Subsystem
- Caldari Propulsion Subsystem
This is how it goes with me and EVE. Every impulse buy inevitably requires me to come up with at least another skill and some additional equipment to support the purchase.
The skills were quick. I injected all five and queued up the first level for each, then went to Amarr to look for subsystems. All the subsystems for the Tengu were available, but which to choose?
Fortunately in EVE most buying decisions are not irreversible. Very few items are “bind on equip” if you will. Ships, ship fittings, and the like can be repackaged and resold on the market. So I picked five likely looking fittings without much in the way of research, dropping about 120,000,000 ISK in the process.
I was then able to assemble the ship.
Now I just had to activate the ship and take her out for a spin. But when moving my pod to the ship I got one last warning.
Oh yeah, if the ship gets blown up, you lose some of your subsystem skill points. Something of a dis-incentive to train them to level five I suppose.
But, at last, I was able to get into space with the Tengu.
Ship Name: Whiskey Tengu Foxtrt
Like a lot of Caldari ships, her beauty is more in her technical specifications than in her appearance.
Only then did I start looking at possible fittings for the Tengu. It looks like I’ll need to work on my heavy missiles skills so I can mount tech II launchers, since the Tengu is limited to cruiser/battlecruiser modules.
Another hobby ship with which to tinker. Time to get out EVEMon and the EVE Fitting Tool to plot out a possible level 4 mission runner fit.
Motorcycle for My Birthday March 8, 2010
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, World of Warcraft.Tags: Mekgineer's Chopper, Mount
15 comments
I asked my daughter a few weeks back whether I should work on saving up cash for one of the mammoth mounts that can carry two passengers or if I should concentrate instead on the Mekgineer’s Chopper, an engineer created motorcycle mount that can carry one passenger.
My daughter immediately said, “The motorcycle!”
As a father, I should probably worry about that answer from my daughter.
Logically, this probably wasn’t the best choice. One of the passenger carrying mammoth mounts was much cheaper than the chopper, while the other mammoth mount was… probably cheaper as well considering the materials involved, and comes with a vendor.
Still, I like to have a task, and putting together the materials for the chopper would keep me busy for a while. I would have to make 12 titansteel bars, which you can only do once per day, and which require some expensive materials.
In an effort to conserve gold, I decided to harvest all the materials myself. This was helped along by the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor, an item for which I had the recipe but which I had not bothered to make. In assembling that to harvest gas clouds, I found that if you want to make money on my server, you should be harvesting and selling fel iron at the auction house. I went to harvest my own since it was selling for about the same price as titanium.
And so the harvesting and collecting began. The best run I had was 16 titanium veins in Wintergrasp in about a 30 minute gap of time. It was an event unlike any I had seen before. Nobody else seemed to be around and nothing but titanium seemed to be popping.
Yesterday, after nearly two weeks of gathering materials, I had everything together to assemble the chopper.
Several of the parts, the Goblin-machines Pistons, the Salvaged Iron Golem parts, and the Elementium plated Exhaust Pipe are supposedly rare salvage drops from mechanicals in Northrend, but I have never seen one, so I ended up having to spend the 12,500 gold to purchase all of them from the vendor out at K3.
That was most of my gold, but I was ready. I hit create and waited. Once done, the key was in my inventory. I could try to list it at the auction house, or click on it and make the chopper mine. I made it mine, getting the chopper and an achievement.
The achievement put me at 4000 achievement points. I quickly mounted the chopper to see what I had.
Vikund on the chopper
A human looks pretty good mounted on the chopper. Gnomes on the other hand…
The license plate
My daughter pointed out to me several times that the chopper license plate reads “PWN.”
I told my daughter that the chopper was done. She immediately got out one of her characters on Vikund’s server to go for a ride. Unfortunately, most of her characters are on other servers, so she only had a level 15 hunter available for a ride. Still, we grouped up and went.
Driving off in Stormwind
That is actually her saying “weee!” despite the text bubble appearing over my head. We headed out to Elwyn Forest.
Down the forest road
She called me on Skype from her computer so she could tell me where to drive. We rolled all over the place.
Underwater chopper
Water figured in a number of her requests.
Upsidedown underwater chopper
Thanks to a water walking potion, we even rode over the water.
Riding down the Stormwind canals
We ended up riding all over the place for about 90 minutes. When we tired of the area around Stormwind, we made our way to the Barrens and rode around there for a while. We had quite a bit of fun and my daughter’s character collected quite a bit of discovery experience.
She did get killed once during the ride when I strayed a little to close to some higher level mobs. That was during a quick ride in Northrend. Level 68s kill a level 15 pretty fast. Fortunately Vikund can ress as well as ride.
So was making the chopper worth it. I think the next picture answers that question.
Unrehearsed testimony
That was a pretty big bonus, especially since yesterday was also my birthday. That might have been the best thing I got all day.
After a while we had to break for dinner. But when putting my daughter to bed, she started asking if there were other places we could ride. I think, in addition to the free discovery exp, she was having a lot of fun just riding all over the place.
Planning rides for another day
So the chopper was well worth the investment for me.
