Archive for July, 2009

29
Jul

From Norrath to Lowsec

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: EVE and Everquest

I sometimes really miss EverQuest II. I considered rolling a new character, a necromancer, which is a class I always wanted to play but never did. I just don’t really want to pay for so many MMO subscriptions every month. Maybe when the next GU comes out, I’ll reactivate and play that Erudite necromancer I always wanted to be.

Meanwhile, in EVE, I finished training some vital skills. Core Competency Standard is currently underway, and I finished fitting my Raven with all of its awesomeness like shield extenders and shield rigs, along with some cruise missile launchers. Since my Raven is dedicated to low-sec ratting in Sylph Alliance sovereign space, I needed something to occupy my time in low-sec Empire space.

Enter HMS Bounty, my Caracal. This missile boat is built purely for PVP, with shields out the wazoo, heavy assault missiles, a warp jammer, and all the other goodies that will cost me millions to replace when I get blown up in .4 space. Like all of my other ships (Drake, Probe, Raven, etc), it’s another possession to add to my hangar and admire. But I’ve accepted right off the bat that this ship will likely be lost sooner rather than later. Hopefully I’ll get a few kills before that happens.

Tonight I’m headed into Sylph Alliance space and hoping I don’t get blown up on the way there. Wish me luck.

23
Jul

the ship collector

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: EVE

I will admit something to you today. I’m a completionist. Nothing makes me happier than acquiring something and all its accessories. I love the feeling of a complete set.

When I was a kid, I had tons of GI Joe action figures and vehicles. My brother and I would get everything out to play GI Joe. I’d meticulously set up my figures into organized units, position the vehicles exactly how I wanted them, and form a mental map of the events that would transpire. Upon completing that exercise, I’d say, “Well, that was fun.” My poor brother would complain about how we never actually played GI Joe.

This behavior continues into my MMO playing, to an extent. I never wanted to collect pets, or mounts, or specific types of flibbertygibbits. What I did want was to complete my set of gear. I would use a tool like Rawr or Wowhead to plan my gear, acquire that gear through raiding/pvp/etc, and then I was done.

In EVE, I’m able to fully enjoy my completionist habit. There are so many ships, and so many fittings, the possibilities for a fleet are nearly endless. I have already acquired several ships, fully outfitted them, and parked them in hangars. Occasionally I’ll pull one out and fly it around, but I don’t really do much. I have a couple of ships that are my regulars, and the rest of them are just, well, nice to have.

I have a Kestrel for mission running. I have a Hoarder for moving stuff around. I have a Cormorant for salvaging. I have a Drake with Tech 2 launchers just sitting in a hangar. I have a fully-fitted PVP powerhouse Raven. I have an Osprey for mining. I have a Probe for scanning. I have a Caracal because I needed to add a cruiser to the mix. I also have several frigates just sitting around.

Each one of these is fitted to the maximum of my capabilities. I have spent 250 million ISK on ships that I don’t use. And I don’t mind at all. I plan to get many more. I also plan to use them more than I do now; for example, I’m going to start taking my Raven to the wormhole with my corp to kill sleepers, and I plan to start hunting rats in the Caracal with one of my friends.

And the greatest thing is that I can lose it all. I love that risk. I’m scared of losing my Raven but I like “watching the skies” for that other battleship with battlecruiser escorts. It’s exhilarating to risk losing something that’s so important to me. (Fortunately, they’re just pixels.)

Part of me wishes I had gotten into EVE sooner, but I realize that I wasn’t ready for it. I needed to see the “traditional” MMOs through before I could really invest in a skill-based game like EVE or Darkfall. I miss EQ2 but with nobody to play it with, it’s just not fun.

We’ll see if EVE can sustain me. I’ll let you know how it goes.

15
Jul

dawn of eve. cheesy, i know.

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: EVE

Last night was a touchstone moment for me in EVE. I finished training the skills necessary to fly my Raven.

Wait, EVE? When did I start playing that? As it turns out, a few months ago. Let me explain.

I was at Best Buy with my wife and brother, browsing the PC games section. I noticed that Best Buy still had a copy of the Warhammer Online collector edition, which I wanted so bad back when WAR was new. As I scanned the boxes for something interesting to try out, I saw EVE Online.

CCP, the makers of EVE, had struck a distribution deal with Atari, and they released a boxed version of EVE in stores. They call this version “EVE Online Special Edition”, and it includes a 21-day buddy pass for your friends and a pretty nice Gallente shuttle that, as I found out later, is like a giant bullseye flying through space.

That’s what you do in EVE. You’re a pilot, and you fly spaceships. You don’t walk around. You’re always in your ship (or a pod). You outfit your ship with weapons, mining lasers, salvagers, and so on. And you can have more than one ship. In fact, you can have a practically limitless number of ships, spread all over the universe.

I decided to give EVE a try so I bought the game. I installed it on my Mac Pro when I got home and flew a few of the starter missions. I thought it was a pretty cool game. It’s skill-based, which is quite a bit different from WoW and EQ2, being level-based games. In EVE, you don’t go from 1 to a level cap, and there’s no endgame. Instead, you train skills, and each time a skill training is complete, you gain the ability to do something. For example, there’s a Targeting skill. Each time your Targeting reaches a new level (from 1 to 5), your capabilities in Targeting improves. It lets you target more accurately, with faster speed, and so on. If you plan on doing a lot of PVP, Targeting is a good skill to train, for example.

My 60-day EVE subscription expired with me putting maybe 3 or 4 hours into the game. I just didn’t really get into it, and I was playing a lot of EQ2. EVE doesn’t have the kind of “log in and quest” mentality that EQ2 has, so oftentimes I felt like I didn’t know what to do. Plus, I had no idea what to train my skills toward.

Fate intervened in the form of a coworker and one of his friends, who are both active and jubilant EVE aficionados. After a few conversations with them over tacos, I decided to resubscribe and give EVE another try. I followed their advice and made ample use of EVEWiki, downloaded EVEMon, and read about certificates. I started a new character so I’d have a clean slate, started training the basic core competency, and set out in the world with the intention of becoming a pirate.

As I traveled from stargate to stargate for various missions, I came across a very impressive-looking ship. It was the Raven. I knew right then that I had to have one. Being the goal-oriented person I am, I immediately set my plan into motion. I went into EVEMon, created a plan for the Raven, decided on a loadout, added all the skills to my plan, and started the 15 day process of learning the skills I needed to fly this badboy.

But I also needed a way to pay for it. The Raven is 80 million ISK, and the training books were easily 10 million. It would take me months to earn 90 million ISK from mission running. That’s when my coworker told me about PLEX.

PLEX is an EVE timecard that you can buy from CCP and sell in-game for ISK. It’s built right into the game. Long-term players with billions of ISK don’t even pay to play EVE anymore; they buy PLEX on the market. I bought two cards for $35 total and sold them for almost 700 million ISK. My money problems were solved immediately.

I’ve never had a problem with RMT when it is sanctioned by the maker of the game. I’ve bought server transfers, gender changes, name changes, Station Cash, and FreeRealms cards, so to me, PLEX was no different. My instant millionaire status still didn’t allow me to fly the Raven: I had to wait, just like everyone else.

My long-term goal is to do missions with my Raven, help my corporation mine wormhole space by blowing up sleepers, maybe PVP in .4 space. Someday I’ll get a Tech 2 ship like a Widow, and maybe even join a corp that lives in 0.0 like GoonFleet.

Here I am today, Raven Day + 1, and my beautiful new ship is sitting in the hangar, waiting for me to undock it and fly around. But I can’t do anything with it. I don’t have my Cruise missiles, or my capacitor efficiency, or shields. I have to wait until Sunday for those skills to finish training.

I love this game.

14
Jul

Joy and Pain

By angryraider 1 Comment
Categories: General

I don’t know what it is about EQ2 that makes me more emotionally invested it in than other MMOs that I currently play or have played in the past. In terms of the number of hours spent playing, I’ve invested far more into WoW than EQ2, maybe tenfold or even more. It’s a dizzying concept to grasp, but bear in mind that I played WoW for four-and-a-half years, and a lot of that was spent raiding on several different characters, all of whom needed fantastic gear, rep grinds, badges, and so on.

But with EQ2, I find myself caring more about each hour I spend in game than I ever did in WoW. It’s like an hour in EQ2 is more valuable than an hour in WoW; perhaps it’s because EQ2 is less grindy, or maybe it’s because EQ2 has so much more to do and I want to maximize my efficiency. WoW also does a much better job of leading you from point A to point B so you can spend more time doing what you set out to do.

A couple of nights ago, I was playing my then-65 ranger with my wife on her 48 illusionist and my brother on his 80 wizard. We mentored down to my wife’s level and ran the Eye for Power HQ, along with that ridiculously painful related quest where you have to kill Webclaw. The Webclaw quest involves killing placeholder after placeholder after placeholder to spawn a named for an update. When our named spawned, someone stole him from us so we had to do it all over again. Yet, we were victorious and finished both quests, which put Ipswich at 66 with 72 AA.

As I ran around Feerrott the next day, picking up lizardman parts for the Lore and Legend quest, I arrived at the realization noted in the first paragraph of this post. For each hour I put into the game, I wanted to extract as much growth as possible, whether it’s AA, or gear, or a quest update, or whatever. If I didn’t accomplish something after my playtime, I’d walk away somewhat frustrated. Yet at the same time, if I logged in and overplayed with dungeon run after dungeon run, I’d feel burned out and tired. I needed to find the balance.

The key to that balance is playing a class you enjoy, building a certain bond with your character, and most importantly, managing your own expectations. I used to think it was important to have a plan for each play session. We’re going to do this HQ, or that epic update, or the other shard run. With trying to manage my time, plus my brother’s time, plus my wife’s time, I started to feel less like a Ratonga Ranger and more like an Erudite Project Manager.

It’s good to have goals. Success feels good. Accomplishments feel good. But sometimes being goal-oriented can, well, ruin the fun. With trying to plan an evening of activities every time we logged in, the excitement got sucked out of it as my focus switched from doing what sounded fun to making sure everyone was happy. Like the old cliche says, when it starts to feel like a job it’s no longer a game.

I left Feerrott last night feeling like a new rat. Now that I can manage my own expectations, I don’t feel as pressured to manage everyone else’s.

06
Jul

where do we go

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: Everquest

My brother bought EQ2 the day it came out, which I believe was November 8, 2004. He left City of Heroes (“bye bye nothinghead”) for EQ2, while I stayed in Paragon City and forged to 50. We had been playing CoH together but he had lost interest and time, as he worked nights.

A couple of weeks after EQ2’s launch, WoW came out, and with all of EQ2’s launch issues, he switched to WoW and I left City of Heroes for Azeroth as well. This worked out well for us as we could have our “mains” that we played together on the weekends, and our alts for when our hours didn’t jibe.

In September 2006, he grew tired of WoW and decided to switch back to EQ2. He convinced me to try out EQ2 so I bought it, as did Zoe, with the Kingdom of Sky expansion. I couldn’t really get into it, but I did get my troll shadowknight to 6 and camp him in Freeport before I quit and went back to WoW.

Fast forward to April 2008, and once again, we are tired of WoW. We decide to revisit EQ2 and we all bought Rise of Kunark. I rolled my Sarnak shadow knight, Grabthar, and off we went into Norrath. We always played together, the three of us. But Summer arrived and we let our EQ2 accounts lapse, so we returned to WoW again. Our characters sat in their inns and houses, waiting for our return, which mercifully happened around Christmastime.

Now my brother and I have 80s (my shadow knight and his reroll, a wizard). I have my epic and T1 + some T2, he has T1 and the Bloodthirsty Choker. We’re in a pretty active guild. I have about 150 AA and he has something like 140, which isn’t bad for fairly fresh 80s. We have barely scratched the surface of what the EQ2 endgame has to offer.

But now I have a feeling of, “Where do we go from here?” Recent events in-game have left me wondering if EQ2’s culture is inhospitable to our accustomed playstyle, or if it’s just the people in our guild. Tanking in instances has been an exciting experience, and I’ve grown much more accustomed to my combat arts and spells, and I’m learning the intricacies of the encounters in the game, but the other people in my group seem to make my job so much harder. This wasn’t the case in WoW. Only noobs would attack on pulls or go ahead of the tank or pull with a spellcast before the tank was ready.

My brother and I play together as much as we can; he still works nights, so I try to save the juicy stuff for his night off. But like me, his patience is wearing thin, so only time will tell as to whether we stick with it or make a change.

06
Jul

i love it when a plan comes together

By angryraider 0 Comments
Categories: Everquest

This past weekend was very productive in EQ2. On Friday night we raided Protector’s Realm and I got some great Fabled forearms. There were some pretty good drops in there for tanks, and the other SK got a new shield and some new boots. I didn’t roll on the boots as I wanted to keep my T2 bonus, so I was happy for him. I’m not sure why he took the shield as what he had was better, but mox nix.

After the raid we worked on my epic updates. We pounded through Karnor’s Castle, Chelsith, and Shard of Fear. We finished up SoF at 2:30 AM so we called it at that point, and I only needed Maiden’s Chamber and VoES to finish it all up. That happened on Saturday.

After much standing around waiting, I killed the last NPC and was given Sedition. I was pretty exhausted after running all those dungeons, so I just added an adornment and logged.

On Sunday I ran through Crucible to try for my shield, but alas, it did not drop. I was pretty burned out on dungeon runs so I passed on the WoE raid. It started right after Crucible and I didn’t have six contiguous hours to spend at that point. But I did log in later, and to my shock was asked to zone in to WoE to receive a Fabled belt (the name of which escapes me).

After that, I went name-farming in Moors with my brother and killed about six or seven. Most of them dropped Ornate chests so I picked up a lot of attuneable Legendary items, including a ring I gave to my ranger.

It was a very productive weekend, that’s for sure. But it was not without its frustrations. I’ll save that for my next post.