EVE Online

While discussing the possibility of “classic” servers in World of Warcraft, Cameron waxes nostalgic about his own yearning for the simpler days of gnoll-pounding in the Karanas. I loved those days too – my blog is named after one of those old zones, and my header images are all from EQ1, so you know I’m standing right there with Cameron, casting SoW, shooting off careless lightning and healing as best an old-school druid can. I was so nostalgic at one point that I restarted on a new no-transfer server, Stromm, and went through the entire game from scratch (xping in East Commonlands and Permafrost and Oasis, seeing the world once again), so that helped sate that particular yearning. ...

A feature of mine about good games that DON’T have Warcraft in their names and could use some well-deserved love is up on Massively. Check it out, let me know what you think :)

I had the pleasure of being on SUWT #22 this weekend. I was first on SUWT #12, so I guess I’ll get another chance to mix it up with the crew on SUWT #32! The fights, the yelling, the smashed windows, the death threats and broken relationships that make podcasts fun, are all here. Our souls laid bare. Tune in and listen to the terror that inevitably occurs whenever someone lets me get too close to a microphone. ...

There’s been a lot of topics going around the blogosphere, and I’ve been holding off on them because, well, I don’t really have anything groundbreaking to say about them. But, what the heck. eBook Readers First up is a non-MMO one, but something I’ve covered extensively in this blog – eBook readers. “Ask Slashdot” fielded a question from a reader who asked Which eBook Reader is Best? The comments fell predictably into the camps that felt nothing could come close to the experience of reading an actual book; PDAs, cell phones and laptop computers were more appropriate for the task; Sony’s Reader comes from Sony and nothing more needs to be said (these are people angry less for the SWG NGE than for Sony’s rootkit adventures and their role as a quarter of the allegedly evil* RIAA). I use my Sony Reader every day, and daily rediscover old friends – yesterday brought Fred Saberhagen’s “First Book of Swords” and Julian May’s “The Many-Colored Land” onto my Reader. I didn’t comment on Slashdot, though, because… well, commenting on Slashdot on matters of opinion is pretty pointless. I doubt many would be sympathetic to my “I use a Reader because it looks good and is REALLY EASY TO READ” stance anyway. ...

What if we took EvE Online, and made a fantasy game out of it – using all of EvE’s mechanisms, as closely as possible? Syncaine claims that EvE has solved nearly all MMO problems. Fine, let’s turn that around. In EvE, you fly ships from system to system, battling, exploring, gathering resources, trading, or any other purpose you can find. You, though, are not your ship. Your ship can be blowed up. You can try to escape, but maybe you get blowed up, too. But not to worry. Upon word of your untimely demise, a clone will arise from a vat to carry on where you left off. ...

CCP, makers of EvE Online, announced yesterday that they will soon have official support for their game on the Macintosh and Linux. It’s little things like this that chip away at Windows’ dominance in PC gaming. The kind of thing that would make me want to resubscribe – I’m writing this on Linux, I do nearly everything on Linux, except for the times I reboot to Windows to play a game. ...

Shut Up, We’re Talking! #12 is up. I had the pleasure of being part of it, along with Grimwell (SOE EQ2 Community Manager) and Tom-Tom from Gamer’s Mind. Thanks, Darren, for being such an awesome host! Darren really knows how to keep the discussion going and moving to interesting places. I was positive I’d have nothing to say :P

My two week EvE Online trial has come to an end, and now EvE wants me to pay $14.95, each and every month. Did I have fun? I did. EvE is an exciting, original game. Although the NPC-given missions are fairly cookie-cutter, it’s understood that this is just filler to get you ready for the real game that lives in 0.0 space. EvE doesn’t insist upon leveling or grinding, though there definitely is a grind in the game. But if all you want to do is find rare stuff to mine, you can do that from Day 1 and make a fairly decent living and see a good portion of the universe. But fly your little mining frigate near someone else’s battleship, and soon you’ll be working on the necessary skills to command one yourself. ...

Whilst playing EvE Online today, it occurred to me that SF book authors are missing a real savings, book-cover wise, by not just finding a good screenshot in EvE and using that for their cover… Why, if more people did that, we could have books like… hmm… There’s a big seller for ya. Who wouldn’t buy a book by someone named Spock? One woman’s tale of reaching middle age and coming across a nest of Kilrathi in Beta Sector…! ...

I hadn’t finished training Gallenite Frigate III before I left for work, so there went the whole day… not training anything… Naturally, the very first order of the night when I got home was to start my training (I chose Electronics up to skill level II, now doing Science V which seems required for a lot of fabbing). The second was to buy my Incursus Killing Death Machine of Hurt. Those smug jerks bringing their trash through Luse thought they’d seen the last of me when they blew Isis’ Dark Laughter out of the sky. They were going to understand just how cold space can be. ...