Eve Online day 3

I'm having a lot of fun with Eve Online, and I'm glad I decided to give it another try. It's amazing what a little reading can make in experience! Yesterday morning I was running a few missions in my Incursus and definitely noticed that the missions are getting harder. I was still getting through them, but I notice I'm taking a lot more damage than before and the missions themselves are taking significantly longer. Part of which might be that I'm not using drones yet and I understand that I probably should be. It's something I'll have to look into very soon. But the point I took away from those few missions was that I couldn't simply waltz into a mission and finish with my hands tied behind my back. It also meant that my ISK per hour was decreasing and my expenses were going to go up.

As I described yesterday I bought a Catalyst Destroyer and converted it to my mining effort. It cost me about 820k ISK, literally leaving me with a little over 2k ISK after the purchase. But by the time I logged off last night I had over 1.4 million ISK. I would undoubtedly have made much more but I was mining the slow way. That is with one single basic miner. I'm still in that period where I can claim noobness! So anyway, by the late afternoon I had figured out (with some more reading) that I should strip out the gun I also had fitted and add a second basic miner. At my level of training it's all my poor little CPU can handle right now, and also not impact my available cargo space. After all, that's why I bought the Destroyer in the first place. A lot of guides will tell you to but a mining Frigate and to use that until you can get a Cruiser, but with the rather limited cargo space of a Frigate you end up running back and forth to a space station all too often. With my Destroyers 430 m3 cargo hold I can at least hold 4000 m3 ore. With the two mining lasers it takes me 7 mins to fill that up, and less than a minute to travel back to the station and back. Which means I can make about 7 fully loaded trips in an hour, whereas I'd have to make about double that in a Frigate.

In any regard I more than made up for my investment yesterday alone and everything I make in the next several days will go toward the purchase of a Cruiser where I'll begin to make some serious money. I know there are different schools of thought on the best way for a beginning player to make money, but Mining seems to be the best way I can tell. In the next few weeks I'll work my way up to a Hulk and from there I'll buy the heavy combat equipment that I want for my combat fix.

/rant Blizzcon 2009 announced

Surprise! Blizzcon 2009 is going to be in Anaheim!! Just seems like this week is my week to bitch about everything Blizzard. Not like New York or Washington DC aren't HUGE metropolitan areas where Blizzcon could be held. Sure would be nice to alternate years, with one year being on the West coast and one year being on the East coast. Sigh.

EVE Online noob

A year ago I took a swing at playing EVE Online based on entries I was reading from one of my favorite blogs (Mystic Worlds). I started up a trial account, but in all honesty I found EVE to be very complicated and really spent only a few days in game trying things out before I abandoned my account and headed back to WoW. It wasn't that EVE is beyond a new player to start in now, but rather that I wasn't willing to do the research necessary to understand just what was going on, and what I needed to do in the game to get anywhere.

Recently I had been thinking about giving EVE another go and I restarted my account back up yesterday morning. This time however, I have been doing a great deal of reading. EVE is a completely open game, which is something I haven't really experienced since my days in Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) from 2002-2005. But SWG was more simplistic than EVE, with extremely limited linear options open to any character. Not so in EVE Online, where there are literally dozens and dozens of paths--none of which is linear--available to a character. That complication both attracts me to EVE and dismays me at the same time. You create your character, but really have little idea of just what you want to do. Or rather have little information about what you really can do in EVE, and there is the crux of the problem for new players like me.

Even if you had a general idea of what you wanted to do, be it PVP, or miner, manufacturer, or what have you; how would you get there from the starter area? I haven't completed all the available tutorials yet but I certainly haven't found enough information that is terribly helpful in mapping out the various skills one would have to learn to be of any use. Some skills are rather obvious. If you want to be a miner, obviously mining skill is of great use, but what isn't so obvious is the ancillary skills that one needs in order to get the most of of a ship and mining operations. I'm still digging through all of that myself.

So there I was yesterday with a newly reopened account. There was my original character from a year ago (a Minmator) though I really didn't remember enough about the game to really do anything with him. So I created a new toon (a Gallente) and started working through the starter missions. Made some good money (about 850k ISK) in one day after expenses and a few purchases. Probably made close to 1 mil ISK including all that. But I then decided that what I really want to do is accumulate some serious money as I go along, and that, I think, requires mining. And that is what I have been doing all day. I bought myself a Destroyer that has a much larger cargo hold than either of my two Frigates, and have been running mining trips to one of the asteroid fields all day. While I embark of the training required to boost my mining skills and abilities will take over the next few days, I'll continue mining with my sub-optimal ship and equipment now and run some missions to make extra money and have some fun along the side.

By the weekend I should have a ship--although smaller--and equipment that is actually better at mining. From there I'll work up to a Cruiser that is optimized for mining. And from there I'll work up to a Battleship, which I can use to Mine and get into some serious PVE or PVP. I should be making enough money by this time in my training that I expect I can afford a real mining vessel. I'll decide where to go from there once I'm there.

TLDR, EVE is a game for people that do not necessarily want immediate gratification. EVE Online is a game that requires someone to make long term plans and realize rewards over weeks or months. It's a completely non-linear game which has a fairly steep learning curve, and features player created content foremost, with limited developer content to fill in holes.

Here's to my next million ISK!

Love was not in the air for all

Well, it's over. As of 6am EST this morning the world event called "Love is in the air" ended and many people were unable to finish the meta achievement because they were unable to loot at least one of the items that only drops from the gift of adoration. And you only get that once every 60 minutes. For the second year in a row I was unable to get the perma-peddlefoot, though I was able to complete the Love is in the Air meta achievement on Saturday. I was one of the lucky ones I suppose. Of course it helped considerably that I was able to play vastly more hours than the average person.

I think I have been fairly forthcoming with my distaste for this type of achievement construction. Blizzard has stated several times they are "fine" with the level of luck some of the achievements require, but I think that shows a level of arrogance they may come to regret one day. I don't truly believe anyone is asking for achievements to be "easy", but it's something again entirely when you create achievements that are completely random chance. Those achievements favor people who can play more because of probability. Yet there were plenty of examples of people posting on the official forums that had looted 70+ gifts of adoration and were still unable to complete the candy achievement, or get a peddlefoot.

I want achievements that reward perseverance rather than luck. I want achievements that require me to think, rather than one that makes me log in every hour on the hour for an RNG check. Somehow I think Blizzard has the know how and talent to make this happen. So why aren't they?

Dual Spec... Say what??

Blizzard finally released a little more information regarding the upcoming dual-spec system--a lot of which we already knew about from previous communications. However there was one new tidbit of information that I think surprised a lot of us. And that was that in order to access the dual-spec system you have to either use a Lexicon of Power in a major city, or have an Inscriptor in your group who will summon one (like Warlocks summon summoning stones now) for the group to use.

when I read that I just shook my head. Why does Blizzard take every opportunity to implement something new in the worst possible way? If there is even the slightest ability to implement something and make it just a little more difficult, trust that Blizzard will take that route rather than just do what everyone is clamoring for. Instead of just making a strait up system that allows everyone that wants to switch back and forth between specs (outside of combat), you will now have to make sure you have an inscriptor in the group. No word on what cool down will be introduced along with the new summonable Lexicon of Power either.

Blizzard, for the love of all that is holy. Just implement that damn system. Stop screwing around, and stop making my fun dependent on others. There is absolutely no reason why anyone should have to group up to change their specs, nor to travel back to a major city to do it either. Pull your head out please!

The Chicken or the Egg for Eve Online on Linux?

Sad news was released yesterday regarding CCP's discontinuation of development for a Linux client. Though I haven't played Eve Online in quite a while, I am a very enthusiastic Linux user. so whenever I hear about, or read about circumstance such as this it makes me a bit sad. I have felt for a long time that one of the greatest strengths in the Linux community is also one of its greatest weaknesses. Though Linus disagrees with me, recently stating multiple distributions were absolutely essential, I would rather see more people working on less, than more, open source technologies. In my view what has held back Linux from taking over the "desktop" is that we as a development community are too spread out. In a commercial company, like Microsoft, development is tightly controlled and directed. Not so in most open source projects, where developmental energy is fragmented across multiple duplicate projects.

While CCP will instead let Linux support come from Codeweavers, that is really a workaround and can never be as fast as a native client. It's why I play WoW on Windows, and leads to opinions in public at large that Linux is not a good alternative to Windows. It's a vicious circle that is true in a sense because clearly the development that is needed to truly make Linux a desktop rival to Microsoft Windows is not being done fast enough. Yet it's false in a sense because Linux is very much a better operating system than "Windows". CCP's announcement is just another admission that we as a development community are letting opportunities slip through our fingers.

Love is in the air

Yes folks, it's time for another world event full of achievements! Except this one is probably one of the more difficult meta achievements to complete because it requires several items that are "rare" drops, or items that can only be looted once every 60 minutes. Which means those who have less time to play than others are going to be at a severe disadvantage to those with more time to play. Despite some fairly loud complaints on the official Achievements board, all Blizzard did to rectify the situation was to remove the "Perma-Peddlefoot" achievement from the meta achievement, and called it a day.

Since this world event is only five and a half days long, I suggest that anyone wanting to complete all the individual achievements for the meta, and perhaps still get the Perma-Peddlefoot pet not wait too long to start. And when you do start, do not miss any opportunity to get the gifts of Adoration. Only from those--earnable only once per hour, can you loot the Perma-Peddlefoot, the black dress, and some of the other items needed for the other achievements.

For Blizzards part, they had ample opportunity to change these achievements so everyone had an equal chance at completing them, and in my view they have let a lot of people down.

Patch 3.0.9 released today

We got about a 24-hour notice from none other than MMO-Champion on this one, because Blizzard sure didn't say anything about it. in fact the official patch notes page on the official web site still shows the 3.0.8 patch notes as the most recent. I'd love to log in and test some things out but the lag is through the roof (as usual) and I'm a little over it. So here are the patch notes, I'm off to get some virtualization running on my Linux laptop.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.0.9

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
• Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

Pets

• Lava Breath now reduces the target's casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
• Poison Spit now reduces the target's casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.

Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Arcane Power now increases damage and mana cost by 10%, cooldown reduced to 1 minute. (Note: The spell is actually different in game and increases damage and mana costs by 20% with a 2 minutes cooldown. However it would probably be better to wait until servers are online to confirm that.)
• Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power causes a 15 second cooldown. Presence of Mind, once consumed, causes a 1.5 second cooldown.
• Arcane Flows now reduces the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility by 15/30%.
• Presence of Mind: The cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, (down from 3.)
• Slow (Arcane): now increases cast time by 30%, down from 60%.Glyphs
  

• Glyph of Arcane Missiles -- Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%. (Old - Increases the range of Arcane Missiles by 5 yards.)
• Glyph of Mana Gem -- Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 40%. (Up from 10%)
• Glyph of Arcane Blast -- Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%. (Down from 5%)

Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
• Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Sanctified Seals: This talent no longer affects dispel resistance, but continues to affect crit chance.Glyphs
  

• Glyph of Holy Light -- Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 8 yards of the initial target. (Down from 20 yards, Tooltip text fix, was already hotfixed to 8 yards in game)
• Glyph of Seal of Righteousness -- Increases the damage done by Seal of Righteousness by 10%. (Old - Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.)

Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Inner Fire duration has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.

Rogue (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
• Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
• Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
• Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Glyphs

• Glyph of Windfury Weapon -- Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. (Down from 5%)

Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

• Curse of Tongues: Now increases the casting time of all spells by 25% (Rank 1) and 30% (Rank 2), down from 50% and 60%.

Dungeons and Raids
The Obsidian Sanctum
Changed the color of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.
User Interface

• The “GM wishes to speak with you” alert/button, at the top of the screen, has been changed so that addons do not obscure it.
• A clickable chat message has been added that duplicates the GM alert/button.
• When a GM wishes to speak with you the Help Request minibar button will glow.
• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum .g Fixes
  

• Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell cooldowns.
• Fixed a software mouse cursor bug that was causing the mouse curser to disappear from view when over certain UI elements.
• Fixed a player movement error in which other players were appearing to move erratically when traveling beside them.

Thoughts on patch 3.0.8

As patch go Patch 3.0.8 was a little on the hefty side. Especially considering it added no new content to the game. What it did do was change a tremendous amount of talents, game mechanics, items, and instances. Most of which I think were very positive, but some are downright frustrating. Many of the changes to Death Knights are strictly PVP related, which is something I have always found to be quite onerous. I do not Arena, and I don't like changes that are Arena driven to force changes in my PVE play. I'm referring to the changes in the Anti-Magic shell and Gargoyle as examples of some of these.

Outside of a few of those instances I think Blizzard did fairly well. You can definitely see the trend of balancing similar abilities across class, like all taunts now having a 30-yard range and damage mitigation or avoidance abilities being equalized. From that we can see they haven't backed off their assertion regarding classes -- "Bring the player, not the class", though it still isn't quite correct. If you look at Rogues right now for example, they are no where near the top of the DPS hierarchy raid wise. Which is surprising considering where they were at the end of the Burning Crusade. As a raid leader, Rogues are probably the last DPS class I would want to bring now. So I think Blizz still has a little work cut out for them.

In summary, I think I'd give Blizzard an 8 out of 10 on this patch. Some very nice changes and additions, but I think they made a few that falling into the annoying category too.

Musings from the previous few weeks

Unfortunately I was just really busy, and sick the past few weeks and didn't get much of a chance to blog. So let me catch you up on what has been taking up the lions share of my time recently. I had commented previously that my guild had started to hit Naaxramus hard, however that started off somewhat rocky. Myself and a couple other friends then started a mostly static 10-man raiding group and we were actually the first group in the guild to clear Naax. And we continued to have good success raiding it twice a week.

It seems our little raiding group was the topic of considerable conversation in the guild amongst the officer corp however. And from what I had heard, none of it very good. It seems most of the officers didn't like what we were doing and were taking the opportunity to cast stones our way, unfortunately without realizing the irony in their opinions.

I had been in this guild for about three years, and had actually been the main tank (MT) on my Druid throughout most of the Burning Crusade (BC). Yet despite the effort and dedication that took I never really broke into the "clique". The guild had originally been formed by five family members and a few close friends. Its only natural that these people would be a little more close to one another than anyone else you just meet on the Internet. But others that came over from their previous guild and had close ties to them were also included in this "clique", though many of them are some of the nicest people one could imagine.

Decisions were made regarding raiding--everything from the DKP system, to who was queued to raids, to what was to be raided on a given week--were made by the "officers" without any input from the rest of the team. And people I had brought into the guild to fill holes the guild had were treated shabbily in my opinion. One of those was a tank that I worked with and was one of the tanks in a successful raiding guild on a PVP server. He actually transferred his Protection Warrior and hunter from that server to come raid with us when we were in desperate need for more tanks. Despite that knowledge, the guild ended up continuing to recruit more tanks and we ended up with a glut of tanks again. And my friend ended up getting the short end of that stick. And two other friends that I worked with who had joined the guild also were treated in a similar manner. None of them ever received a static or even semi-static raid spot. My tank friend was often asked to raid on Gruul, but only on the King fight for instance. Then he was asked to leave so a DPS could replace him. I can certainly sympathize because that entire dungeon was just badly planned, but to have to undergo this treatment week after week is inexcusable. Other tanks were not asked to rotate so that each of them would get a chance to actually complete the raid and get some gear. And ultimately he left the guild and transferred back to his old server in disgust. And frankly I was very upset about his treatment, as well as the treatment the others I had brought in were being given. Particularly when a small number of others that were recruited by key members of the "clique" were given static spots on the raid team after only being in the guild as short as two weeks.

You see that is just an example of how the guild has operated and been managed for the past three years, and those sorts of issues have greatly upset many people other than myself. And many people have left the guild including a handful of well known and liked people within the past few months. And when these things flare up, the officers act surprised and dumbfounded as to why people could possibly get upset enough to leave. Yet when the issues are clearly communicated to them they act indignant, deny the message, or gloss over the entire episode entirely.

And such is what we have been going through in the guild yet again for the past few weeks. There are a few 10-man raiding groups that are running--largely independent of one another for weeks now. But the guild started up active 25-man raiding a few weeks ago. Completely unsurprisingly most of the raid spots went to "clique" members, including to some who weren't even ready for raiding when it started. They ended up allowing others to fill those spots, and then displaced those people when the "clique" members were ready. Because we're a casual raiding guild, there are more people in the guild than available raiding spots, so outside of of the handful of spots that are open for people to apply for every week everyone is largely on their own for raiding. And so it was with our little 10-man group that was happily clearing Naax every week with no fuss, no muss, and absolutely no drama.

That was until it was decided by the majority of the group that they wanted to bump up to running 25-man content. I won't get into the nitty gritty details, but one of the members of our group took it upon himself to open up a line of communication with the Officers and began to "make sure the officers were on board" with it all. I have no idea what someone would feel it necessary to do this, because none of us felt we needed permission to raid on our own. But it opened the can of worms again and comments that we were causing problems in the guild were thrown around. How ironic.

Ultimately the Guild Master told us that we would not be allowed to run any 25-man content unless the officers were in control and we followed their rules. Needless to say we did not agree and our raid leader was asked to leave the guild. A bunch of us followed. In fact it was the largest exodus of people from the guild at one time I have witnessed in the three years I was there. Yet two days later one of the "clique" posts in the raid forum that "good things were happening (in the guild)". She painted a completely rosy picture of what just happened, and it illustrated precisely how out of touch they all are with the rank and file in the guild. Truly sad. We of course started our own guild and should be resuming 25-man raiding next week.

Outside of all that I have been very busy lately with achievement chasing. You'd never know my Death Knight is only two months old.