EVE Online: To Avenge, This Is the Pact

I’m not really going to swear vengeance on the corp that hunted us down, took our starbase and then – magnanimously – retracted the wardec once they’d gotten what they wanted from us. I was choosing from among the ships left to Etha, and this frigate looked just like the sort of thing that would sneak up on someone, decloak, go into a mad speed-tanked frenzy, leave them smoldering wreckage and warp away into the shadows…. ...

July 15, 2010 · 2 min · 417 words · Tipa

EVE Online: Do you hear the people sing?

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about EVE Online; it’s been awhile since I PLAYED EVE Online. It’s my own fault, what happened. I’d left Otakudyne, a dead corp, for a nullsec corp. I found when I got there that nullsec was everything I didn’t like. Having to continuously monitor three mandatory channels, with at least three more that would be need to be watched, having to be on voice chat whenever I played the game, not being able to two box, having to farm rats for money, having to abandon the invention business which was my only source of income (since I’d stopped running missions because they were boring)…. The one night I spent in nullsec was a harrowing gauntlet of no fun at all. ...

July 15, 2010 · 4 min · 694 words · Tipa

Wizard101: The Death of Estrakir

Even though you no longer have to do the Celestia pre-quest in order to eventually head to that undersea expansion when it arrives later this year, why wouldn’t you want to, right? The pre-quest has you fighting bosses in Krokotopia, Mooshu and Dragonspyre in order to assemble a Rosetta stone that will allow the deciphering of a mysterious message. The message is from a lost Marleybone expedition into lost Celestia in search of the truth to rumors about Astral Magic. ...

July 12, 2010 · 3 min · 443 words · Tipa

STO: How to Choose Your Dabo Girl

Season 2.0 is out on Star Trek Online’s test server, Tribble, now, and they’ve just stuffed the game with new goodness. Five new levels, which bring you from Rear Admiral, LOWER HALF to Rear Admiral, UPPER HALF. As @Longasc noted, get them together, you end up with one WHOLE Admiral, or maybe a FRONT Admiral. Yeah, that title is silly, has got to go. With the new levels come new missions that bring you to the realm of the only creatures that can scare the Borg, Species 8472, AKA the Undine. Creatures who come from a universe where there is no vacuum, no stars or planets, only a weird, dense infinity of force lines known as fluidic space, and the strange life forms that swim among them. They hate we puny beings made out of inferior baryonic matter. ...

July 10, 2010 · 4 min · 693 words · Tipa

Does WoW set impossibly high standards?

It wasn’t the “Warhammer 40K MMO needs just one million of WoW’s players” line from Danny Bilson’s ebulliently gleeful speech about the game THQ plans to publish that caught my eye. Every game that comes out admits they’d be happy to get just ten or twenty percent of World of Warcraft’s player base. And if a million people each send me a dollar, I’ll send you all a little booklet explaining how to become a millionaire. (Please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope). ...

July 6, 2010 · 5 min · 959 words · Tipa

Fantasy Earth Zero Blogfail: Under the Radar

After writing my own review of Fantasy Earth Zero a couple days back, I went looking for other reviews to find out why the heck I’d never heard about this game. Or if I had heard about it, dismissed it as just another Asian F2P MMO. By the looks of it – graphics incredibly dated (it is, after all, a four year old game) – huge anime influence – it looks entirely humdrum. None of the reviews I could find hinted at the all levels invited, grind-free RTS gameplay hidden inside. ...

July 6, 2010 · 4 min · 710 words · Tipa

STO: Sparkle Ponies in Space -- Adrift with the Galaxy X

I resisted the original sparkle pony in World of Warcraft, felt no urge to get the Cash Cat in EverQuest 2, nor the Stationbuck Steed in EverQuest. Everyone has their price – mine was the Galaxy Dreadnought (AKA Galaxy X) cruiser. It can cloak! It can equip phaser cannons! It has a unique weapon – the spinal phaser lance! It can crush your enemies. Riker flew one in an alternate future timeline in the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” series finale. It is a futuristic update to the standard TNG Enterprise-D, which in this alternate future, was not destroyed by the comical yet bumbling crew in “Star Trek Generations”. ...

July 5, 2010 · 3 min · 494 words · Tipa

Fantasy Earth Zero review: MMORTS goes mainstream

Fantasy Earth Zero is a Massively Multiplayer Real Time Strategy game originally published by Final Fantasy-makers Square Enix, but now by Gamepot USA. Although FEZ in some ways resembles a variant of the Asian free-to-play model (and it is now F2P), once you finish the comprehensive tutorial and are led to the main part of the game, the game’s true nature becomes clear. The players are the soldiers in the massive armies of five nations, all vying for control of the rich center country, the source of the best treasure and resources. (A sixth nation sits apart, neutral, and is the only place where players from opposing nations may meet outside of battle). ...

July 4, 2010 · 7 min · 1450 words · Tipa

Wizard101: More Celestia!

I dunno how much longer I can take this dribbling and drabbling of Celestia information. I’ve done the pre-quests (well, on Test, anyway), met one of the Celestia generals face to claw and learned of the evil reign of Queen Umbra…. Time to wand up and take the battle to the evil queen and rescue those poor Marleybone explorers. But … not quite yet. Wands down, wizards. ...

July 2, 2010 · 1 min · 146 words · Tipa

Assault on the Inbox: Independence Day Edition

Exciting MMO news lands in my inbox; I pass it along. Cryptic is dropping prices in their “C-Store” for the holiday weekend on existing items. Emphasis on existing; they also announce that the Galaxy X/Galaxy Dreadnought class cruiser will soon be available in the shop. This is the three nacelled Enterprise-D variant that Riker commanded in the future segment of The Next Generation’s “All Good Things”, and in particular is the ship that @Longasc has been trying to earn via getting people to sign up. Well, it’ll be in the store soon. ...

July 2, 2010 · 3 min · 560 words · Tipa