Free Realms

In EVE Online, at my new home at the Sisters of EVE base in the Arnon system, with Mining IV, Refining III, and two Miner II mining lasers and purely selling in-system, I make about 27.5K ISK per minute of mining. If I processed the ore at my current level and sold it in the best market within seven jumps, I would make about 26K ISK/minute of mining, not including travel time. The question is, how many sessions of mining would it take to pay for the skills and equipment necessary to make refining more profitable than just selling the ore straight with no additional skills going toward mining? EVEMon has me at about ten days to having the skills necessary to fly a ORE Retriever mining barge… EVE is the first game I have HAD to play with a spreadsheet open. ...

I was thinking this morning about Norman Spinrad’s “Bug Jack Barron”, where a treatment can make you immortal, but a child has to die (this btw is a massive spoiler if you have not read the book). In MMOs, we are immortal, but at some point we’ve done everything or it just gets boring and we move on to the next game. If we had immortality in our real lives, how long would we live before we were just desperate to have it end so we could move on? ...

Etha, 8 Medic; and Tipa, 16 Miner Tipa is: 16 Miner/12 Ninja/8 Chef/7 Archer/2 Wizard I’ve been enjoying myself quite a lot with Free Realms the past couple of weeks; when I sit down to play an MMO, like as not these days it’ll be FR I fire up. I’ve been two boxing, which isn’t really needed nor entirely effective, but makes some things easier. The dungeons are usually fairly challenging for their level, there’s humor everywhere, there’s a sort of whimsy I like, and I can’t finish a quest without picking up a few more. ...

I saw Star Trek Friday night – and it was great. Kinda made me wonder if someone could do the same for Star Wars… like if, somehow, Jarjar Binks went back in time to train Anakin before Qui-gon Schindler got to him… After an exciting Free Realms weekend in which the log-in servers were down for many hours, I still got some time in. Restarted as an archer and got to level 7, right in the middle of the grind to level 10. Tobold got his blacksmith to 20 and finds the whole job pointless since fairly cheap RMT weapons you can get at level 1 are way better than the best weapons you can craft at 20. ...

Apologies to Randall Munroe Yes, I really do believe you can’t honestly review an MMO without investing yourself in it for a fairly substantial bit of time, so that any oddities with controls and stuff become second nature and you can understand the core of what the game developers were striving for. A 1999 EverQuest review could have written all about the low polygons and stiffness of the character models, the laughably sharp-cornered world and so on, and missed the forest for the trees. You have to play a MMO long enough to see and appreciate the forest before you stamp a score on a review. ...

In the aftermath of the scandal surrounding Darkfall and its 2/10 Eurogamer review, I just have a couple of things to say. You Darkfall players and those bloggers up in arms because they didn’t play it sufficiently enough to get a good picture of the game? Listen up. Are you the ones who write about EverQuest II that the starting areas are drab and some screenshot you saw a few years ago wasn’t bright enough for you? Weren’t able to figure out the skills or heroic opportunities and pronounced it broken? Wondered why I stuck with the game even though it clearly wasn’t as good as WoW? ...

My new computer is due to be delivered today! I’ll be at work, of course, but maybe I can finally find their delivery center and pick it up afterward. My hope and fervent dream is that this will be the computer powerful enough to run Lord of the Rings Online…. Anyway. A couple of weeks ago, Paragon Studios introduced the Make Your Own Farm Mission (aka Architect) system, where players could find a badge they wanted to gain, and find the perfect mission among the thousands created for this purpose to gain that badge, or that level, or whatever they liked. Experience with similar level creators in such obscure games as Diablo, Diablo II and LittleBig Planet wasn’t clue enough that many players would use their new powers to create and play custom missions to benefit their characters. ...

Yes, this is the Daily Blogroll MY OWN BLOG didn’t want you to see! I’m kinda tired of Free Realms. Not the game; heck, considering my computer now refuses to run Lord of the Rings Online for long, I’ve been spending most of my gaming time in Free Realms. Beau is having fun playing. Pete at Dragonchasers took a 75 degree turn and went from being marginal about the game to a fan in just three short days. Syp of Bio Break is still dubious, but what does he care – his wife is Tinker Bell! ...

We’re still in Wednesday, aren’t we? Since Free Realms launched way back last Tuesday, I’ve been running a day behind. FR has had a bunch of launch day issues, it’s been anything but a smooth launch. Friends lists disappearing, paid-for member access being revoked, Station Access members still not given memberships… Even though SOE had a cracked-wide-open closed beta, it still choked on the onslaught of live players. But it’s up, running fairly well, and when the hiccups are cured, should be able to get on with unleashing hordes of ninjas and wizards on the world. ...

After hours of agonizing labor pains, SOE popped Free Realms out last night, just before midnight in California. They were just half an hour from having to have their launch party in Fairbanks, but they technically shipped it Tuesday, despite it being Wednesday in four-fifths of the world. Despite the late hour, the server was bustling with new chefs and brawlers. It doesn’t look like Station Access members are considered members in Free Realms yet, or maybe it’s just me. Look for me in the game, my character is Tipa Tanglewood. Speedy custom name approval FTW! ...