Free Realms

(Shhh! Hello Kitty Online’s closed beta started yesterday! Expect a HKO First Look once I’ve found my way around). Massively reports that EVE Online’s next expansion, Dominion, has just been announced. Dominion brings a new focus on planets, undoubtedly setting the scene for EVE’s planetbound companion FPS MMO, Dust 514. EVE is also adding social media functionality to the game, and I have no idea what that means. Tweet every mission? No clue. Lastly, the walking around in stations expansion is given a name, Incarna, so I guess we’re stuck in our pods for at least another few months. ...

Having heard about the EVE Fitting Tool from a helpful commentator, I spent a lot of time last night working some Battle Clinic builds into viable builds for me. VERY happy. Later on, the corps went on an impromptu trip through a wormhole, where we were relentlessly shadowed by the corp (Bones) who had staked it out. They allowed us to take on a Sleeper cell before we left. We got some T3 loot, but since we’d all brought expendable ships (that’s my Exequoror “The Liberator” hovering outside the wormhole), we weren’t up for taking out the second wave, which included a battleship. (Drew at Wizard of Duke Street has a little more about wormholing). ...

I got a spam comment today which mentioned, while complimenting me on explaining some vague idea to them, that they were unsure of this blog’s update schedule. Geez. When even SPAMMERS wonder why you don’t update every day, it’s getting out of hand ;) Fact is, most of the time I am doing boring stuff. CrazyKinux linked to a blog once that insisted nobody wants to read about someone running mission in EVE Online, so once I read that, I stopped posting about my adventures in EVE. I’m leveling up a character in Wizard 101 so I can do Grizzleheim with level-appropriate characters, but that takes time. I do fit in little bits about what I’m doing in EVE and Wizard101 now and then in these blogrolls… but they don’t seem worthy of entire posts! ...

[slide width=“640” height=“480”] Just got back from Virginia yesterday afternoon (you’ll be seeing some pictures from my trip on my ShutterCal widget to the right in the coming days) and am still catching up on all the blogospheric happenings of the past few days. Reason enough to show off some 3D images I’ve been making. A few weeks ago, I got wondering how I could turn game screenshots into three dimensional images. MMORPGs would be a lot more immersive if we could see the game world in the same number of dimensions as we see the real world. ...

The weekend went by too fast, as it always does. Rock, Paper, Shotguns Kieron Gillen had the perilous job of re-reviewing Darkfall for Eurogamer. Eurogamer’s original review score, 2/10, was savaged by the Darkfall developers and players. In Darkfallout, Kieron talks about the perils of being the clean-up crew for a disaster, and why he was shocked at the reaction by some other game journalists to the first review. Following up on last week’s discussion about how MMOs are like men, women, dogs, or kitchen cleansers, Green Armadillo notices that his dog is a lot like an MMO player. Except we have to go get our OWN food. ...

I love the feeling of peace and serenity EVE Online gives. And then sometimes weird, exciting stuff happens. A corps-mate and I were testing weapons fire and tank abilities last night when a battle broke out behind us as rival corps met outside a station. It was great, and for some reason reminded me of the very first story I ever read about EVE Online, about The Great Scam which put the game on everyone’s long range scanners. ...

Only 178 days till Christmas! With 2009 halfway gone now, I thought you’d want to know. I predicted this year would be one of the best ever for MMOs, with some high-profile releases and expansions, but with many titles delayed and some now not due until next year (like Star Trek Online and EQ2’s Sentinel’s Fate expansion), 2009 just might lose the “best year ever” crown to 2010. My being bad at predicting was harshly lit when I predicted last year that the expansion that would turn out to be Shadow Odyssey would be Odus, and this year, when I predicted Velious, it really WAS Odus… and what’s worse is that it really is about what you’d expect from a generic expansion. ...

I’m not gonna say anything snarky about Michael Jackson. When he died yesterday, millions of people all over the world played his music loud and sang along; people gathered to remember him. When you and I die, how many people will even remember we lived? Nobody will remember us for how many max level characters we had or how many nights we spent raiding. We’ll only be remembered by and because of the people whose hearts we touched. Beau Turkey finds the most memorable moments in MMOs are not the levels ground out, but the coming together of friends to work on something as a team. ...

Between allergies and traveling, hasn’t been a lot of writing being done. When I got back home Sunday, there were nearly 200 messages in the my feed readers. Ugh. Lots happened! <– You’ll see over on the left that we now have a guild on Free Realms. Let me know if you want to join ;) On to the blogs! ...

Yup, back in Florensia for a second try at it. Because, hey, be a pirate on the sea and an adventurer on the land, build your own ship, hire a (NPC) crew, two separate career paths, and it costs nuttin’. The cash shop only has some potions… I dunno how they make money in this game. The general chat is about what you’d expect, though. Big news today was that ex-EverQuest and Vanguard helmer Brad McQuaid was ending his self-imposed exile of idyllic days spent racing cars and playing games to jump back into the spotlight with his very own blog. Or did he? Genda believes the whole thing is a hoax, someone (possibly drummer Keith Sharward) just having a bit of fun. The actual Brad McQuaid doesn’t seem to have taken the steps of building up his LinkedIn profile in awhile, anyway. ...