Tyrannis

The upcoming (summer ?) expansion was announced in a new devblog. As it was to be expected, it will mainly consists of the ‘tinkering with planets’ sub game that was mentioned at fanfest 2009. Back then we were told that it was sort of sim city like game, a side game you tinker with every time you log on for 10mins or so.

Nothing much more was revealed about the planet subgame, so it leaves more questions than answers. Will there be some sort of limit to how many planets one player can ‘own’ ? Or will the startup costs be the limiting factor ? Will there be a mad gold rush once this thing goes live and will all the ‘good planets’ be taken 30mins after Tyrannis going live ? Will losec planets be better than hisec ones ?

What will be produced on these planets ? How will it tie in with the existing game industry wise ? I hope we’ll get the answers in the upcoming devblogs on the subject.

Another part of the expansion will be Eve Gate. This is what the eve fans have been calling Spacebook. EVE Gate will allow you to interact with EVE through a regular web browser. Sounds like an interesting addition to the game, but not something that really changes or enhances the game. Why it’s agile to change a name I don’t know, but let’s just assume that’s some sort of joke ;).

We are working on other optimizations and improvements throughout the game, as usual with our expansions. A task force is working on reducing fleet fight lag, often working deep into the night chasing action around on TQ, while another team is developing an advanced simulation environment for load testing on our local servers.

Once again something that should just be normal operations for an MMO is being touted as an expansion feature… <mumbles something about marketing speak>.

So what do I think of all this ? While interesting, just the planet subgame seems a bit thin for an expansion. I missed the T3 frigates announcement. I guess that fell by the roadside, or maybe they’re still working on them and they might be announced later.

Van Hemlock Podcast 90

The Vanhemlock podcast by @jonshute and @vanhemlock is an MMO centric one. Or at least started out that way :). Recently it’s been chopped up into two segments. One news episode and one where Jon and Tim go deeper into a specific subject, or they just keep on chatting about what they’re playing !

Why am I mentioning this here ? Well, episode 90 is all about Vanhemlock taking the Agony Unleashed pvp course ! So it’s a must-listen for any Eve Online player.

Van Hemlock podcast episode #90

LoSec Roam

Morphisat never much pvped. Mainly carebearing in HiSec. But Friday night Hidden Agenda had a Low Sec Roam planned, I joined to finally get some pvp action with Morph.

Most of the fleet consisted of Ravens, with a few inties, and some other stuff (a thorax and a drake). There wasn’t much roaming down as on the second gate sat a flashy dreadnought ! Apparently it was in Siege mode, as it tanked very well.

But slowly his shields started to go down. A drake showed up (not quite sure why) that got blown up in the process. Then right on top of the gate we were fighting on, a Thanatos appeared ! We switched our focus on his, and he couldn’t tank all the torps coming in. Slowly but surely he went down. Especially the last few bits off his hull seem to take forever though. Some people had to warp out as they were shot at by fighters as well as the dreadnought, so damage output was starting to get a bit lower.

thanatos

Later on we had another engagement with the dreadnought, but this time he got more help and it was a little bit much, though a support drake went down.

All in a successful op. ! We had a lot of fun. Didn’t expect to see any capitals at all, let alone blow one up ;).

One Year in Hidden Agenda

Today (feb 9th) it’s exactly one year ago, that I joined Hidden Agenda. The corp I was in previously had slowly bled dry. I had been looking for a new corporation for some time on the forums and I might even have joined the recruitment channel a few times. But I didn’t find anything that I fancy. Finding a nice corp that you feel at home with, is pretty hard !

I made a post on this blog asking for suggestions, and I got some. Of those suggestions, there was only one corporation that actually had non-afk people in the public channel and a decent website, and that was Hidden Agenda. It’s things like that that make a good impression on potential members ! After a rigorous background check I was accepted into HA.

Hidden Agenda

Although I haven’t been very active lately, I have had a very nice time in Hidden Agenda the past year. It seems to suit my semi-solo, but sometimes in-company gameplay very well. There are usually plenty of people on, willing to help each other if needed. There are group activities (mining ops, the odd frig tournament, lowsec security runs), but you’re not frowned upon when you do not attend, or miss one.

Hidden Agenda is one of the oldest corporations in Eve. I think the secret to it’s success is the mix of veterans and the influx of new people, who might even be only a few weeks old. Every now and then someone leaves or slowly fades away ofcourse, that’s inevitable. But the active recruitment by some members makes sure the corp keeps it’s freshness and does not slowly bleed to death. Without new players a corp slowly ends up with just a handful of core veterans, and it’s very hard to recruit people by then, because the newcomers will feel like outsiders, and it’s also hard to offer them something.

In Hidden Agenda, new players are offered a lot of advise, they can come along mining (there is bound to be someone out there in a hulk) and raise their mission standings quickly. Also some of the richers members have been known to hand out some goodies to newer or less fortunate corp members. There are a lot of industrialists in the corp, so chances are there is a good deal to be made when you need something.

Lately the corporation has also been exploring Wormholes. I still have to make my way to one of them, but I am sure one of these days I’ll put together a Drake and pay them a visit in unexplored space !

To finish off this post, I’d like to shout out to Ruffio and Cattis and everyone else in Hidden Agenda who made the past year in Eve a fun experience !

Why I Love Eve

But there is more to Eve than meets the eye. It’s the players, the people. The subculture around it.

This time a special Blog Banter with a few prices attached !

Whether you’ve logged into the game every day since its launch in 2003, or you’ve taken one or several sabbaticals from your capsuleer career, you’ve always come back to New Eden don’t you. Why is that?

We know the EVE Online Community is unique in so many ways, and that EVE Online is like no other MMORPG out there. But what makes the game special for you?

What is it that makes this particular virtual world so enticing, so mysterious and so alluring that we keep coming back for more. Why is EVE one of the very few MMOs to see a continuous growth in its subscriber.

To put it simply: Why do you love EVE Online so much?

At the moment this is a hard question for me to answer. I have only been playing very occasionally the last few months. Once you have done a lot of all the things Eve has to offer, it’s hard to motivate yourself to get back in the game and do those things again. Exploration, mining, production, Factional Warfare PVP, at the moment I have a feeling I have seen it all. I am a bit Eved out. It seems I am not the only one in the blogosphere at the moment (letrange and rettic posted similar thoughts).

All those things I summed up are the plus points of Eve though, so don’t get me wrong. There is a lot to do, to discover, and especially to learn ! But it doesn’t come by itself, the content isn’t slapped in your face, you have to go out and do research and find everything yourself.

But there is more to Eve than meets the eye. It’s the players, the people. The subculture around it. The blogpack, the tweetfleet, and who knows what else ! It keeps you connected to New Eden even when you’re not playing that much.

funny-pictures-your-cat-is-very-concerned

But lately I have also been concerned about the state of the game. Eve’s lack of decent customer service. People with paid for accounts getting locked out and it takes over five days to get a response. The recent server problems and apparent lack of Quality Control on the last patch (the 0.0 part didn’t seem to work to well if I have to believe all the forum whining, although it did shake up 0.0).

The last ‘expansion’ didn’t add a lot to the game, neither Quantum Rise. At least Apocrypha brought wormholes and T3 ships, but for some reason I don’t like wormholes at all. Maybe that explains why I am a bit Eved out at the moment, even in a sandbox, you need a few new tools to play with every now and then. It could be that this is because of the new console game that is being developed, but I doubt that that is the case, as it is an entire separate development team in China doing that. Which makes you wonder what they’re working on at the moment ? It can’t be Incarna (walking in stations) can it ?

Anyway, I love Eve regardless, and it’s healthy to have players worried about the state of the game, rather than them just leaving, and unsubbing without a word. The Eve Playerbase cares a lot about their game and I assume CCP does as well.

Star Trek Online beta Impressions

Yes this is an Eve blog, but I figured some eve players might be interested in this game.

For the past few days I have been playing Star Trek Online a bit. I am now level 7 and also got a Klingon character, but I didn’t play that one a whole lot.

First of all I was suffering on the ground from weird hiccups and stuttering. Turning off some graphical options seem to have fixed that (dynamic lightning was one of those). Luckily the space part didn’t suffer from any of that.

screenshot_2010-01-16-20-25-48

The first few days were rather frustrating with a lot of server problems. After a few patches this disappeared and I have been able to play lag free. If you do get in that is. The login servers seem to have capacity problems that are currently being fixed in code as well as with new hardware.

The space combat is very nice. You have to manage your shields and rotate around the target, or let it rotate around you. You have diminish it’s shields with your lasers and once they’re down finish him off with your photon torpedoes. Your bridge crew each have some special abilities you can use, like more power to shields or drain your target’s shields, each have a cooldown, so you cannot use them all the time.

The missions themselves seems to be mostly patrol this or that and pick up something or take a scan etc. Usually there are enemy ship where you have to scan. Fun part of these missions is that you are usually automatically grouped with other people. Also there are enemy ships on the map that require a group effort to take down. A bit like the public quests of warhammer. Some missions were bugged, and I wasn’t able to complete them, or I did complete them and it didn’t register right. I hope they get this fixed before release as that is somewhat frustrating.

sto_ui

Ground combat, though in no way as bad as it was in pirates of the burning sea, feels very awkward and clunky. The animations would have been bad in 2001, let along in 2010. Your enemies walk through objects or seem to run while still standing etc.. In short, it still needs a lot of work.

The non combat missions are very boring at the moment. I hope they either scrap them or change them a bit. For example I had to escort a freighter which took about 15mins (also because i had no clue where to escort it to), and absolutely nothing happened ! Another mission on the ground had me tag four, uhm can’t even remember what, but there was absolutely nothing there. No mobs, no enemies, just a sand blizzard and a few rocks here and there.

The character creator is very nice. You can customize your character in almost every way. Along the way you earn skillpoints that you can use. But it isn’t entirely clear to me, what these skills do. And how +9 is better than +3. I hope it is, but it wasn’t very evident so far.

This is getting a bit long, so I’ll wind it up here.  Overall the game has potential. The space combat makes up for a lot of the clunkiness of the ground combat. The missions are fun and character progression is nice. I doubt it has longevity though. It could very well be that after two months, you’re sick and tired of doing the same thing time and again. But it might also get more entertaining as you get higher in level and get bigger ships etc. Time will tell ! At this point I would not pay 239,99 for the lifetime sub. I’ll play the 1st free month and see if I still like it after that.

Other reviews:

Potshot – Star trek not quite online

Keen and Graeve – Star Trek Online impressions

The Vanhemlock site has a few posts on STO as well by @jonshute !

Nice indepth review on A Ding World

Navy Scorpion vs Navy Raven

No it’s not a pvp encounter ! Just a little post in which we compare the two for the purpose of mission running.

Slot layout and bonuses :

Seven launcher slots vs. Six launchers (both have an empty one to fit a tractor beam or salvager or something else)

Six mid slots vs. eight mid slots.

Five low slots vs. four.

Scorpion Bonus:

Caldari Battleship Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Cruise and Siege Launcher Rate Of Fire and 5% shield resistance per level

Raven Bonus:

Caldari Battleship Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Siege and Cruise Missile Launcher Rate Of Fire and 10% bonus to Torpedo and Cruise Missile Velocity per level of skill.

The scorpion has a bit more cpu and powergrid making it very easy to fit however you like it. The Scorpion seems to be a bit more expensive at the moment. But it’s not that much of a difference (about 550mil vs. 600mil or so ?).

Navy Scorpion

Basically if you want a beefier tank, which is very easy to fit, and want to have an afterburner to burn between those mission gates a bit faster, the scorpion is a very fine choice as a mission runner.  Also with eight midslots there is plenty of room for either extra tank or a target painter.

If you’re already tanking missions with ease in a vanilla raven, and just want some extra firepower, the Navy Raven is a good choice.

What you can also do if you have an alt that helps you out mission running, is get the scorpion and give the navy raven to your alt :).

Of course the rattlesnake or nightmare are in a class of their own, but it depends for what faction agents you run mission for in case of the nightmare, but pirate faction ships are in another price range I would say ! And I don’t have any experience flying them to compare them against the above mentioned ships.