Tag Archives: Twitter

What is EVE Project Galaxy?

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Earlier today CCP let slip on Twitter something about a new game called EVE: Project Galaxy.

So many questions now…

The tweet was quickly deleted, but it was captured and posted to Reddit pretty quickly, from where I got the above image.  Nothing posted to the internet ever really disappears.  Massively OP picked it up as well, but has nothing further that what is pictures above.

Now, of course, there are nothing but questions and no answers in sight.

This is apparently in addition to Project: Nova and Project: Aurora, the latter which we saw at EVE Vegas last year and which has since been christened EVE: War of Ascension.

NetEase is of course the Chinese giant that, among many other things, owns titles like Fantasy Westward Journey and runs games like World of Warcraft and Minecraft in China for Blizzard and Microsoft respectively.  So a big company with a big staff and plenty of resources to throw at new titles.  The positively dwarf CCP by most any measure you care to mention.

And then there is the mention of Apple’s ARKit 2, which is their augmented reality framework for mobile apps.  Augmented reality and EVE Online?  Internet spaceships in our personal spaces?

So how does a huge Chinese developer and augmented reality mix together in a mobile app… excuse me, a mobile MMO… in a way that will “bring an authentic EVE Online experience” to people?  I am not sure how that all adds up.

Anyway, if nothing else, Net Ease being involved probably means that few if any EVE Online development resources were moved off to work on this.  But I am curious to see what all of this adds up to when CCP finally gets around to announcing it for real.

Addendum: Since this post went up, the tweet has been tweeted again:

Still no idea what it really means.  As for timing, I gather it was just to get some traction from the ARKit 2 announcement at the Apple WWDC.

Addendum 2:  CCP Falcon describing the difference between the two mobile games being developed:

EVE: War of Ascension and EVE: Project Galaxy are two different games.  War of Ascension is being co-developed with Kongregate, and Project Galaxy is being co-developed with NetEase.

War of Ascension is designed from the ground up to be a mobile game that gives a taste of the EVE Universe, where as Project Galaxy’s aim is to bring the actual 3D feel of the desktop version of EVE to mobile

And CCP Falcon on where the dev resources are coming from:

Resources aren’t being diverted from EVE Online to develop Project Galaxy.

It’s being co-developed with a partner in China, NetEase, who’re working on the game itself, with CCP as a strategic partner and the owner of the IP. We’re working close with them to make sure we get the best possible experience of EVE on a mobile device.

Addendum 3:  These are alleged to be early pictures from the game in one of the videos from the ARKit 2 page.

The familiar shape of an Apoc on the screen

Shooting a TCU maybe?

I am not sure how AR makes this better, but there it is.

When I Look at that Cloud, I see Juche

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There is a little thing on Twitter right now called Word Cloud Bot that will create a word cloud from your Twitter feed.  Not the first one of these I have seen, and it likely won’t be the last.  But this one is at least simple to use and you don’t have to authorize it to take over your feed.

Anyway, this is the cloud it generated for me.

@wilhelm2451 cloud

@wilhelm2451 cloud

I find the whole thing aesthetically pleasing to look at.  The colors are soothing and I like the way smaller words are woven in.  You really have to click on it and view it in full size to appreciate it.

Apparently the bigger the word, the more you use it.  So “EVE,” “Draenor,” “Pokemon,” “WoW,” “Blizzard,” and what not… those all make sense.

But the biggest word in the whole thing is “post,” which I find odd because as far as I can tell, I rarely, to the point of almost never, use the word “post” on Twitter.  And I would be surprised to find that I used the word “blog” that often.  Maybe “play” or “year,” but the most likely words seemed to be much smaller.  After all, a good portion of my feed is automatic tweets of post titles with a link, so the cloud ought to be heavily influenced by my titles here. “Quote” ought to be huge, given my run of “Quote of the Day” posts.  I can see the influence of post titles, especially from my EVE Online Pictures site (Basilisk!), but those words are all pretty minor.

So I went poking around to see if there was a description somewhere about how this bot does its thing.  And, sure enough, there was a bit right there in its feed.

I use the last 1200 tweets to build the word cloud. Common words are excluded. There are at most 180 words in a word cloud.

I reply to a request every ~30 seconds, I can’t go faster than that because otherwise Twitter will block me, so you may have to wait a bit.

That was interesting, but not exactly useful in answering my question, which still stands even if we limit the tweet corpus to 1,200. (That is less than a year of Twitter, and just under 20% of my 6,104 tweets up to this time.)  My only guess is that when WordPress.com tweets about a new post for me, somehow the word “post” is embedded in there.  And I suppose that even if the word is not literally in my Twitter feed, it is there metaphorically with each tweet that WordPress.com does, so the size of the word “post” probably represents the prevalence of blog post notifications in my feed.

My favorite word in the whole thing… and there are a number of good/amusing words scattered throughout in tiny print… is Juche.  It is right there between the “L” an the “O” in “Blog,” below “soe” and “close.”  And SOE being close to Juche is pretty funny as well.

Anyway, I like it.  Tweet Cloud might be more accurate in representing the words I use.

Tweet Cloud covering approximately the same time period

Tweet Cloud covering approximately the same time period

The word “post” is still in there, though “time” outweighs it.

But the result is not nearly as interesting to stare at.

And for those who cannot get enough of the style of that first word cloud, I also have the cloud generated for my awful spam Twitter feed, which reflects what Rift and Raptr have tweeted for me in the past.

The pain of that feed, but fun to look at still

The pain of that feed, but fun to look at still

That feed has been quiet for a while, though I suspect it will liven up again with Blizzard giving us Twitter integration in the WoW 6.1 patch.  You never have to see a bit of that from me so long as you do not follow my second feed.

Items from the Mail Bag – Press Releases and Special Offers Edition

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Digging into the mail bag, another reminder that I haven’t felt inspired to write about much new of late.

Darkfall: Unholy Wait

Aventurine sent me the press release announcing that Darkfall: Unholy Wars would finally launch on April 16th, after a five month delay.

DFLOGO B-450

Back in September of 2012 they announced that the original Darkfall would shut down on November 15th to make room for Unholy Wars, which was slated to launch on the 20th of the same month.  And then… well… the Aventurine reputation needed to be maintain.  So here we are, seven months after that announcement, and the game should launch next week.

Now, the press release points out that this time was well spent, that much was learned from the beta.  We shall see next week.  Maybe.

Blizzard Remains Steadfast

After running out my seven free days of World of Warcraft, I remained on the fence about whether it would be worthwhile to subscribe or not.  And then, ten days later, I received an email from Blizz with a subject line asking me to resubscribe to the game.

WoWResubNow

I was intrigued.  I wondered if Blizz might sweeten the deal now that they had me thinking about the game.  A special offer might have been enough to tip the balance.

But there was no special offer.  It was just a link to the standard subscription page.  Blizz isn’t at a point right now where it feels the need to anything special to get people to come back.

Twitter Pushes Advertising

Twitter has decided that I am a small business and, as such, I need to advertise on their service.  So I received a whole stream of messages from them offering me a free $50 advance on my advertising.

TwitterAd

I have not taken them up on their offer, having no idea what I would even promote.

Mega Wars IV

Crimson Leaf Games, which recreated the classic CompuServe game Mega Wars III that I poked my nose into ages ago, has taken the idea a step further and created Mega Wars IV which includes a full graphical client done in Microsoft Silverlight.

MegaWars4

Interestingly, Stellar Emperor, the version of the game that ran on GEnie, which I have also covered, went this route in the early 90s, adding on a graphical client and updating the game, thus diverging it from what stated off as its twin, Mega Wars III.

Populist Wish Fulfillment

I keep getting press releases around a film titled Assault on Wall Street.  The synopsis for the picture is:

Jim is an average New Yorker living a peaceful life with a well paying job and a loving family. Suddenly, everything changes when the economy crashes causing Jim to lose his job, home and wife. Filled with anger and rage, Jim snaps and goes to extreme lengths to seek revenge for the life taken from him.

The poster shows the star, Dominic Purcell a pistol in one hand, a combat rifle in the other, with bullet riddled NYPD cars and SWAT teams deploying in the background.

So, yeah, gun violence.  I guess that takes Occupy Wall Street up a notch.  Let’s go kill the 1%!

Given that the only name I recognize in the cast is Eric Roberts, and that they are sending press releases to random gaming blogs, I am going to guess they couldn’t get any funding from those in the 1%.

World of Tanks Rolls On

Wargaming.net is very good about sending out regular press releases.  Two big things they have coming up are the World of Tanks 8.5 update, which includes more German tanks, redone maps, and changes to what non-premium accounts can do.  There is a preview over at The Mittani.

And then there is World of Tanks Blitz.

WoT_Blitz_Logo_800px

This is Wargaming.net’s attempt to bring World of Tanks to mobile platforms.  Featuring 7 vs. 7 battles, I will be interested to see how they translate their Windows shooter to that mobile world.

Twitter Feature Suggestion

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I have been very interested over the last two years at how powerful a communications device Twitter can be.  There are a number of serious news stories that I came to learn about first on Twitter.  Events like the raid on Osama bin Laden and the death of Steve Jobs first came to me via Twitter.

And smaller events too, which can be anything from game updates to the birth of a child.

Congratulations Syp.  Nice Game of Thrones reference there.

Twitter has become part of my news cycle.

I follow a range of people who are more prone to passing on links and information rather than pontificating.  I find Twitter much better suited to that and tend to shun people who try to use it as a broadcast IM channel or who try to run question and answer events. (I’m looking at you SOE.)

And one of the most powerful tools in Twitter is the retweet.  Via this you can take a tweet you have read and rebroadcast it to the people who follow you.  This is what gets messages out, this is the amplifier that can move a news story across the world in a matter of minutes.

Basically, you don’t have to follow everybody, you just have to follow people who watch areas in which you are interested and who know how to retweet the key items.  I could follow a dozen or more free speech advocates on Twitter, but I don’t.  I only follow Ken over at Popehat because he follows those people and retweets the key items.

It is the modern day phone tree for information if you can find the right people to follow.

The problem is that people will retweet things for different reasons.  Sometimes a retweet is a matter of wanting to pass along important information or an interesting article on particular topics, and sometimes a retweet is a matter of public mockery.  Or humor.  Or irony.  Or something else that strays from a direct endorsement of the material being retweeted.

That is what I have to conclude was going on when I saw this retweet this morning.

Chuck Woolery, a game show host probabbly best know for his time on Love Connection and being the guy before Pat Sajak on Wheel of Fortune, says that people born as US citizens are whiners.  Thanks Chuck!  I see you were born here, and you appear to be whining as well, so we’ll call that another point in your favor.

You can try and read things into that tweet.  Is he pro-immigration?  Does he simply feel Americans should appreciate their country more?  Is he sure the US is so perfect that nobody has a legitimate reason to complain about anything?  Or is he just a fussy old man telling the kids to get off his damn lawn in his own special way?

I hold no brief for Chuck Woolery, and cannot interpret his real meaning.  So I have to go with the face value proposition that he called a lot of people, including him and I, whiners.  Go Chuck.

At best this is somebody attempting to express a complex concept in a medium that really only lends itself to the simple.  At worst, it is more of the bumper sticker philosophy that pretends to add to the national discourse while actually being empty of any message more complex than, “America; Love it of Leave it!”

But the real point here is that somebody I follow on Twitter felt the need to pass this along, and I cannot tell why.

A simple retweet just sends the original message along to you.  And while there are options to add your own comment, you are still restricted to the 140 character limit of the medium.  So you can get the original message, but the intent of the retweet… be it informational or simple mockery… remains opaque.

So my feature suggestion is to add a method to characterize the nature of the retweet.  It could be as simple as a little icon in the corner that you can mouse over to get the mood of the retweet.  Twitter could probably come up with a dozen or so options to cover most of the uses on Twitter.

I suggest the following as a starter list:

  1. This is great!
  2. Breaking news! (real)
  3. Breaking news! (ironic)
  4. Aww, something cute!
  5. I couldn’t have said it better!
  6. Retweet this please!
  7. This is a great article on the subject!
  8. This issue is important to me!
  9. I expect you to actually do something about this!
  10. This tweet is what is wrong with America/My Country/The World!
  11. I am retweeting this ironically
  12. Here we go again…
  13. Ha! Look at this idiot!
  14. Death to America!
  15. Ron Paul 2012!

That is my proposal, my first pass cut at a list that would cover most situations.

Did I miss anything?  What else should be on the list?

And what do you think should have been the flag for that Chuck Woolery retweet?

And Then I Missed Out on the Error 37 Party

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Diablo III launch day!

However, I wasn’t going to stay up until midnight to play.  I am too old for that sort of thing.  But it sounds like I missed a shared experience.  When I checked Twitter this morning, Error 37 seemed to be the topic of the day.

One theory…

Blizzard’s response is to… well… hang in there and keep trying.

Error 37
We’re aware that some players are experiencing Error 37 when attempting to log in to Diablo III. This error indicates that the Diablo III server is full and is likely the result of high login traffic. If you receive this error message, please wait and try again.

Error 3005 and 3006
Along with Error 37, we’re also aware of players receiving Error 3005 and Error 3006. If you receive either of these messages while playing, please wait and try again.

Error 14009/315300
We’re still looking into these issues; however, a player workaround is available. If you are experiencing either of these issues and are using Windows, create a new user account with administration powers (http://www.wintuts.com/Manage-User-Accounts). From there, log into Diablo III.

Character Creation Issues
While most of the character creation issues have been resolved, it’s possible that if you attempted to create characters previously and did not log out, you may have actually maxed out your character list. If you are still receiving an error creating new characters, log out and log back in and then check your character list.

Hopefully all this will be cleared up by the time I am able to try logging in tonight.

If nothing else, this sure seems to be a sign of sales success.

Overwhelmed by success…

I just still wish that they had not ditched offline and LAN play.

And it seems that not everybody is getting error 37.

The Tug of War Between Escalation and Hulkageddon

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Again, CCP_Diagoras offers up data tidbits too juicy to ignore.

This time it is a comparison of mining activity before and after the Inferno: Escalation update went live.

Inferno – The Escalation Begins

One of the notable aspects of this update was the removal of mineral drops from drone NPCs and the removal of tech I ship fittings from all NPC drops.  Both of these were very significant sources of mineral in the New Eden economy.

The intent of this was to spur mining and make it a more profitable venture.

So you would assume that mining activity would be on the rise post-Escalation. And there was an increase some regions of space.

Null sec:

Compared to the 7 day avg before Escalation, the last 7 have seen a 14.3% increase in avg m3 mined in nullsec (from 19.8% to 33.2% of total)

Low sec:

Compared to the 7 day avg before Escalation, the last 7 have seen a 49.1% increase in avg m3 mined in low sec (from 0.26% to 0.58% of total)

WH space:

Compared to the 7 day avg before Escalation, the last 7 have seen a 14.7% increase in avg m3 mined in WH sec (from 2.8% to 4.7% of total)

So far, as expected.  Rising mineral prices appear to be driving a desire to mine.

Then there is high sec:

Compared to the 7 day average before Escalation, the last 7 days have seen a 45.53% decrease in average m3 of ore mined within high sec.

Ouch, a 45% dive!

Of course, Hulkageddon is under way.  And Hulkageddon targets are primarily in high security space.  So most of those (as of this moment)  nearly 4,000 dead mining ships on the leaderboard were in high sec.

The targets are in high sec for two reasons.

First, in low, null, and WH space, miners already have to take defensive precautions every day.  Hulkageddon in null sec, for example, is pretty much a non-event.

Second, most of the miners in the game are in high sec space.  CCP_Diagoras put up one more factoid that illustrates this very well.

Average mined per day for the last 7 days: High (1.47bn m3), Low (13.8m m3), Null (796m m3), WH (112m m3)

So even with a 45% drop in high sec mining, it is still the place where most of the ore is harvested.  High sec accounts for nearly double the ore as the rest of space, even with Hulkageddon in full forces.

I hope we’ll get to see some 7 day yields in the post-Hulkageddon time frame to see how much ore high sec miners will be pulling in when the threat of gank has been (mostly) removed.

EVE Online – Player Ships Blown Up in April

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Why aren’t you following CCP_Diagoras on Twitter already?  He has all the fun facts, and today’s facts include the totals for player ships blown up in the month of April.

Making ships explode

This was just too interesting for me not to shamelessly repeat.  I love hard numbers.

Total player ships lost in April – 406,790

This number does not include rookie ships or ships killed by CONCORD.

Player ships lost to PvP

  • Total – 248,610
  • High sec – 61,790
  • Low sec – 63,903
  • Null sec – 108,317
  • Wormhole – 18,829

Player ships lost to PvE

  • Total – 158,180
  • High sec – 138,880
  • Low sec – 6,595
  • Null sec – 8,486
  • Wormhole – 4,229

Top killing alliances in high sec

(More on Red vs Blue here.)

Top killing alliances in low sec

Top killing alliances in null sec

Top killing alliances in wormhole space

And that is what keeps the EVE Online economy going.

EVE Trivial Stats Feed

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I love statistics, both trivial and profound.  Numbers, stats, ratios, Venn diagrams, I find delight in such.

And so it was that as soon as I learned of @CCP_Diagoras Twitter feed, I had to follow it.

The prime purpose of his feed appears to be to toss out random (or requested) bits of data about EVE Online.

Sometimes the data is too obscure for me, but most of the time it is of interest.  And the tidbits are always extra special when they hit close to home.  For example, two of today’s tweets:

Hey, I am part of that statistic!  I have blown people up in VFK this month!

The CFC capital is a happening place I guess.  Lots of guests dropping in uninvited.

And my first PvP death ever was in M-OEE8.

And while it didn’t happen this month, I have been blown up in Rancer!  It is a low sec system that cuts travel time between Caldari and Minmatar space by quite a few jumps.  And as such, it is often camped.

Anyway, if you feel you are not getting enough EVE Online trivia, there is another source for you.

Addendum:

Oh, yeah, the high sec systems.  I know all of these well.

Such fun.  I still have a metric ton of crap in Hageken.  That used to be my home.

Interesting that the deaths for high, low, and null sec are so close for the top 5 systems.

Smed Tweets that DC Universe Online Doing Well as Free to Play

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John Smedley,President of Sony Online Entertainment has been active on Twitter again, this time giving updates on how DC Universe Online has been doing since the transition to a free to play business model.

QFT – You never know when a tweet will face a delete:

Really happy with how DCUO is doing. Here are some interesting facts

DCUO’s playerbase is growing at 6% a day.. great to see all the new players!

700% increase in daily revenue (47% PC / 53% PS3)

More than 85% of daily log-ins are returning players.

Additional character slots and the Vanguard of the Heavens character skins are the two most popular marketplace items

The change in business model appeared to have lured blogger Green Armadillo of Player Versus Developer into the game, and he has been posting about it quite a bit.

Have you joined the rush into (or back into) DCUO since the business model change?

Things I Hate About Twitter – The Babbling Company Feed

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There are companies that do not get it.

Seriously, when I follow your company on Twitter, it is because I want to get updates about what your company is doing.

This is especially the case when the big name at your company invites people to follow with the promise of company information.

Okay, wow, cool, Richard Garriott‘s company, Portalarium is on Twitter.  They are going to tweet about their games in the works and more!  I’ll jump right on that and follow!

Only they are not really tweeting anything about their games.

Portalarium tweets since September 8th: 38

Portalarium tweets talking about Portalarium products: ~2

They actually tweeted this twice:

I submit that, technically, this is not really “about” their game at all, just a come-on to try and get people to download it and play.

I realize that some poor schmoe has been given the job of engaging with the community.  I realize this person must have a tough job, since apparently the company has given them nothing to talk about.  But this sort of crap is… well… crap!

We are not stuck in a god damn elevator together, you do not have to make conversation to pass the time.  If you have nothing to say, don’t say it!

Okay, yes, their twitter profile says, “Sharing interesting infobits on topics of interest to our company and employees and our industry!”  Which I guess makes Mr. Garriott the person to blame here.

And the fact that the main thing on the front page of their web site is the text:

Home of
Hall-of-Fame Game Designer,
Richard “Lord British” Garriott

along with what must be at least a 20 year old picture of gaming’s most famous space tourist should have probably tipped me off as to what I should expect.