BB54 – Grey Suits Me Better…

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Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 54th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page. Today’s topic comes Diaries of a Space Noob blog and other sources: “Quick post. I was listening to a song and a question occurred to me. Where are the EVE heroes? Against a dark background surely all we have are anti-heroes? A lot of mockery is aimed at any who attempt to be white knights. EVE is a dark place and yet pretty much all other MMO’s try to place the player in the role of some form of hero, boosting the ego and taking the player out of the humdrum 1 in 7 billion that is RL. Why have I fitted into EVE? Did I never want to be that? So I guess my question is: “Do classic heroes exist in EVE? Is such heroism even possible in EVE? How would you go about being one without opening yourself wide open to scams? Is the nature of the game so dark that heroes can’t exist? How do you deal with that irony? What effect does this have on us and the psyche of new Continue Reading →

On Deck: Banished

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Well, I have to thank Mabrick for probably killing the next few weeks of my life.  He ran a few articles about Banished, and I’m going to give a try. Some background:  When I stopped playing Eve last year, it was not due to a lack of time, but a lack of time which I could safely play games without being interrupted.  This was due to living in a house with a very ill family member and the need to physically or emotionally support those I was with.  This put a damper of my foray into Faction Warfare.  So I started to look for games I could pause, leave, or otherwise abandon at any time.  I got back into Minecraft, specifically with the modded servers over at Ars Technica.  A good group of guys and gals over there, and we still have some mod servers going strong.  I also managed to get myself into Dwarf Fortress rather heavily, first in the normal mode and then into the heavily modded Masterwork version. If you like Eve, there is a good chance you like very complex games that have a steep learning cruve and that reward your efforts, more often than not, Continue Reading →

Diablo Loot 2.0 Review

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You might have guessed that I have been playing a bit of D3 lately.  You would be right.  I even went so far as to pre-order Reaper of Souls, because D3 is scratching a mindless kill-fest itch I have been having lately.  Since I’ve put a good chunk of time in over the last week, I decided I might as well give a snapshot review of D3 with Loot 2.0, as a bit of a baseline for when I play the expansion.   For the record, I started playing Loot 2.0 with a 60 Barbarian with no Paragon levels, leveled a Wizard from about 20 to 31, and started a Witch Doctor up to about 10. The Good Loot The biggest part of the patch/update/whatever was, by and large, a success.  On non-60 characters, the drops are wonderfully improved.  Items get replaced left and right.  Crafting yields lots of appropriate gear.  I never had the moment of thinking “I really need to check the Auction House”, which was a relief, considering that was half of every play session last time around.  On my 60, drops were ok.  And by I ok, I do mean a damn sight better than before.  But Continue Reading →

Trees vs Choices

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After spending some time with Diablo III, I was reminded of maybe the most fundamental change between D2 and D3, and in “old” Bizzard and “new” Blizzard.  Most of you are probably aware of the skill trees in Diablo 2.  Some of you may have played World of Warcraft.  Both had skill trees that looked like a flow chart: A Diablo II skill tree. An “old” WoW talent tree. Both operated on the idea that at various experience levels you gained points to spend in the trees.  These points either improved abilities or unlocked new ones.  Diablo 3 and the new WoW talent trees both dumped that approach in favor of unlocking core abilities at certain levels, and then providing a small number of choices.  In D3 this takes the form of glyphs that alter a given ability.  In WoW, the system is a little more convoluted, but at each talent tree level you generally get to choose between three additional abilities or modifications. Picking glyphs for a skill in Diablo 3. The “new” talent tree in WoW.  Another major change in the system was that in the old point-based system respeccing your skills was either impossible or incurred a Continue Reading →

Diablo III Loot 2.0 Impressions

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Blizzard completely revamped Diablo III a week or so ago, and I decided to take a look.  They made a lot of changes to the game, and most of them would have been amazing… at launch.  That is a very negative statement, and I think the changes are all very nice.  It is just sad to see it happen this way.  I’ll explain the changes briefly, what I think of them, and then why I’m being such a jerk about it. The Past I bought and played D3 shortly after it came out.  Long enough afterwards to not have to deal with the crazy login issues, but I did learn real quick about the joys of the D3 auction house.  The AH, which will soon be gone as we know it, was where everyone went to dump all the useful items they found that they had no use for.  It was full of stuff, and because there are not too many gold sinks in the game, inflation was nasty.  On the face of things, this might not have been so bad.  If there is no other real use for large sums of the gold you get, why not spend it Continue Reading →

Where did I leave my keys…

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Well.  I re-subscribed to Eve, on two accounts!  Being out of the loop for two expansions really does leave me with a lot to learn.  But life is better, if fundamentally different from nine months ago when I started winding down my time in Eve.  Luckily I have landed back pretty much where I was.  Both my old corps still have me on the roster, so I can take some time to figure out next steps. This will be a slow process for a variety of reasons. First is life.  If you look back a few posts, you’ll see that last summer and fall were pretty rough due to a death in the family and the end of the carefree life of being a student.  I am fully employed, no longer a student.  The family is recovering as best families can.  I am now an expecting father, as exciting as that is!  So much to do to prepare for the Grimmlet.  I am branching back out into tactile hobbies since I have space and money. Second is Eve.  A lot has changed.  Not in big ways, but in so many little ways that it is taking time to both get Continue Reading →

Necessary Force

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Only three things in Eve are certain.  Death, taxes, and rage. Ok, death and taxes may not actually be certain, I’m not really sure.  But one thing that can always be counted on is player rage.  This week’s ragefest has been a nicely simmering stew of CCP missteps, player reaction, and CSM posting.  If you guessed that I am referring to the Ishukone Scorpions, you win a tritanium! Up front, I don’t give an Ibis about what CCP did, if it is favoritism, or any of that.  But the facts of the story and the apoplectic response to it are fascinating.  Here is my best understanding of what happened: CCP decided to give some ships to SOMER Blink’s staff and some tournament organizers as a way of saying thank you for their efforts in creating content in New Eden.  CCP did this secretly and SOMER advised their staff to keep things on the down low to not draw undue attention to the gifts, as they presciently assumed it would rub some players the wrong way.  CCP has also given comparable gifts to other various players and organizations.  Some CSM members, due to affiliations and relationships in game, knew about this Continue Reading →

Changes…

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It’s been a few months.  Due to family illness and unemployment after graduating from my latest round of education I completely left Eve as both an expense I could not justify and a time sink I could not engage in given my play style.  The illness continues, but the unemployment looks to be coming to an end.  I hope to resubscribe soon, but I’m not sure how much time I will have to play. On the blog front, I want to expand what I write about here.  I want to write about more than Eve, as I have had a chance to play more casual games that one can simply walk away from when needed at a moments notice.  I’m not sure if that means I will renamed or redesign the blog, but I do know it means this will no longer be just an Eve blog. My biggest regret is that without realizing it, I let most of my contacts and relationships in Eve just wither away for the last few months, so to all those who had been conversing with me and sharing their time and knowledge, sorry for that.  Life outside internet spaceships came first, and will Continue Reading →

Empty Space

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Well, it’s summer again.  Living in the upper Midwest means swings of 38 F to 95 F within a day or two, leading to the lovely situation where my car is full of winter coats and beach towels.  Well, maybe that was a week or two ago.  But reveling in the psychotic nature of the season has left me almost no time to play Eve recently, along with my final finals, and an impending three-week trip.  I’ll be gone until mid June, so I hope everyone has a fun Odyssey launch, and try not to completely wreck the place while I’m gone! Maybe the launcher will work by the time I return?

Odyssey Skill Reminder

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Just a quick reminder, although it might me a bit late or irrelevant to you.  Skills for flying a lot of ships are changing come June 4, and you should be ready by doing a few things: If you have Destroyers V and Battlecruisers V update your clone to hold about 6-7 million more skill points. If you don’t have those skill trained, that sucks, but train them as far as you can. If you have BC V, train all the racial cruisers to at least III, and inject Command Ships so as to get the racial Command Ship skills receive ranks in the skill (Edited based on comment 5/18/13). Look at the links posted further down in this post to see if there are other ships that you can essentially skill into come patch day. Here is a nice picture that illustrates some of the changes, stolen from a very useful Eve University forum post: This dev blog has more details. If you are a player who is fairly well along the way to a lot of T2 ships, command ships, or who remembered to train Destroyers and Battlecruisers to V, but forgot about the other requirements, you should Continue Reading →