MMORPG

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’m in a sort of MMO rut these days, and it’s not because MMOs have let me down. They haven’t; most of the MMOs I play regularly are extremely good, and if I’m not having much fun, I’m sure it’s not he game’s fault. I’ve been thinking about the old Bartle method for classifying MMO players as having varying degrees of four attributes, a character sheet of sorts for gamers – Explorer, Socialite, Achiever and Killer. Everyone has each of those to a lesser or greater extent. Explorers like seeing something they haven’t seen before. Socialites like doing things with other people. Achievers want to have the most or be the best, and Killers want to hug puppies and donate to worthy charities. The Bartle test shows me to be a heavy Explorer type, with about equal shares of Socialite and Achiever, and lastly, far and away the least, a Killer. ...

The distinguished Senior Partners. Sparkplay, developers of the upcoming free-to-play, browser-based, anthropomorphic (not Furry) MMO Earth Eternal, announced that they have profile pages for each of the 22 perfect examples of Beastdom available for you to play. Man is long dead, the meek (you) have inherited the Earth, but what you do with it now is entirely up to you. ...

Well, given the state of PvP as aptly described by The Friendly Necromancer, where endless reshuffles and easy access by everyone to the most powerful healing spell in the entire game combine to make duels extremely lengthy affairs, I’m not sure how Wizard 101’s Season 1 Arena will work out, but they’re going to be having a go at it. Without the superior gear available as rewards from World of Warcraft’s arena battles, I’m not sure how many people will really want to do hours long duels (even the 2v2 I was doing with my balance wizard + random partners tended to last ages), but for good or ill, the promised arena battles and pvp ladders are coming today. The standings are by level and by overall success, and come with badges and rewards you can’t get any other way, so if you think you have a meaner killer instinct than your everyday, common, pig-zapping wizard, why not visit Diego in Unicorn Way and sign up? ...

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? ...

*Trees, spring and autumn Surround the ruins of our dreams Bookends to our lives* Okay, so I like Wizard 101 player housing. So shoot me :P

One of the nice things about doing the Daily Blogroll is that it takes the pressure off trying to do something fun every night. Tuesday night, Kasul and I were playing LotRO, running around doing quests in the Lone Lands, and I realized I was bored senseless by the tedium of LotRO’s quest grind. Last night was all W101; a friend and I did a couple Moo Shu Onis and then farmed Baron Greebly for cool stuff, and we let each other see our homes. I was playing with a good friend each time, but LotRO’s soul-crushing quest grind couldn’t be saved. I suspect LotRO won’t be on my hard drive much longer. I love the players, but the game is just a grind in pretty clothes. ...

When I’m running around the mean streets of the Rogue Isles in City of Heroes, you know what I hate the most? Nah, not the dons of the Family. Not even Longbow. It’s those damn tourists from Paragon City. And NOW I find that the heroes themselves are thinking about slumming their dark sides on my turf? Sente hopes the expansion adds more depth to the Mission Architect, allowing real choices instead of “if it moves, kill it. If it doesn’t move, harvest it.” gameplay so common in CoX missions. Syp sees this as a necessary move to separate the game from Champions Online and DC Universe Online. Spinks wonders why it took so long for such a basic premise as heroes and villains swapping sides to make it into the game. Hudson hopes the expansion will deal with City of Heroes’ boredom factor. ...

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. ...