WoW patch 3.1 goes live today

As far as patches go, 3.1 is one of the biggest I've seen in the four years I have been playing WoW. Thusly the patch notes are too big to post here I think, and the official site isn't updated with them yet (of course), so suffice to say that a lot of things have changed.

Of all the changes I think I like the addition of the Argent Tournament the best, with the addition of Ulduar a close second.

The Argent Tournament Begins!
- As the might of the Scourge wanes under the pressure of Azeroth’s
heroes, the Argent Crusade have taken a foothold in Arthas’s back
yard. Off the northeastern coast of Icecrown, the Argent Crusade
have sounded the call for the most bold and brave adventurers of the
Horde and Alliance to take part in the Argent Tournament.
Representatives of all ten faction capitols, from Undercity to
Exodar, have traveled to the tournament grounds to find champions
among their heroes who will prepare for the inevitable battle
against the enemy of all living beings, the Lich King.

This is especially good for achievement chasers and alt-a-holics like myself (and before you ask, yes I am playing WoW again -- more on this later) because running race quests from their starter areas was really super boring. Even if you could complete a given quest in 1.2 minutes, it ate up a lot of time with all the running around and you made no money while doing any of it. With the introduction of this tourney, you can not only now more easily become exalted with a given race, but you can make some money and gain access to new mounts, pets, and epic weapons. Not too shabby.

Ulduar is perhaps the most anticipated aspect of the patch by the majority of the player base. Six months of raiding Naax, the Eye of Eternity (which I still have never set foot in), and the Obsidian Sanctum people are more that ready for something new. I logged back into WoW on Friday and was greatly surprised at how empty WoW felt throughout the weekend. Easter I think had very little to do with it consider how busy WoW normally is on holidays. People were burned out and were probably off doing other things waiting for this patch. I talked to a friend on Friday and he said he wasn't expecting the patch for another couple of weeks, so I imagine we should be seeing a bunch of people logging back in today.

Next on the list of new and shiny is the dual-spec system, though without the promised new equipment switcher that was to come along with it. Many players will find this to be absolutely essential, but not all. I plan on using it for my Shaman (Elemental and Enhancement), my Death Knight (Unholy and Blood), and my Druid (Feral and Resto), which I've started playing again over the weekend.

On the down side there are a horrendous number of changes, and nerfs to the Death Knight class again. Six months and Blizzard is still wallowing through class change after class change chasing the mythical balance beast. It's beginning to look like a grail hunt to me. Seriously, look at the line items for the Death Knight, then look at all the other classes.

Out of combat mana regeneration took a huge 40% reduction as well. Strangely enough, in combat mana regeneration is staying the same however. Does that make any sense what so ever to anyone? Color me blind, but if Blizzard thought (and they have said as much) that mana regeneration had become too trivial, then someone explain what the heck mana regeneration out of combat has anything to do with anything. Isn't the mana regeneration you receive while fighting what is of primary importance? Of course this means different things to different classes. Healing classes will be affected by this more than offensive casters, which makes the situation even more odd. Yes Blizzard, lets beat on the players that are the most rare these days. Remember the "tank shortage" in Burning Crusade? Well welcome to the Wrath of the Lich king, here is your healer shortage.

In any event it's going to take me quite some time to absorb all the changes. So expect to hear more about this patch in the future.

Blizzard imposes new rules on mod makers update

I previously commented on this last month, but just saw that Blizzard is putting everyone on notice again today that the drop dead date for compliance is 19 May. I still think this is a horrible move for Blizzard and sends the wrong message to people they have more or less counted on the past four years to patch real usability to their lackluster UI.

Blizzard has no right to tell someone whether they can charge for work they do in their own home. Ignoring for a moment that they also are forbidding asking for donations in game, think about yourself as a mod-maker who might not even play WoW. To you this is a for-profit endeavor and you break no other rules or laws. Yet, here Blizzard is, now telling you what you are allowed to do within the confines of you own four walls. This is something that is entirely outrageous and should never be condoned.

If Blizzard wants to restrict asking for donations in game, such as many mods do right now with a quick textual message when you start up the mod, fine. It sucks, but you are in fact inside a world they alone control. But outside too?

And what happens if someone doesn't adhere to the new Blizzard policy? What happens if a mod-maker believes as I do that Blizzard has no right to impose their will on someone outside of WoW? I think we both know the answer to that.

Happy Easter everyone

Just wanted to pop on and say Happy East to everyone. Hope you all have a terrific day.

Bummer

I've been kind of bummed out about EVE the past week or so. EVE is a very unforgiving game, in that it takes forever to really get to a point where you can do anything serious. And because the game is centered around player created content (PVP, Diplomacy, seizing and holding territory, crafting/manufacture, and trading) you are really at the mercy of timing and placement. It's even worse in EVE than it is in WoW regarding being at the mercy of others for "end-game" enjoyment.

My two accounts are paid up through May 6th and I will continue to have skills in the skill queue, but I have been thinking I'm going to let my accounts expire and see about finding another game to play. I've even been thinking about picking WoW back up, which I think should indicate the level of my discontent with my current EVE experience right now. I've only been following the patch notes for WoW patch 3.1, but I liked very little of what I was reading before I left WoW back in February, and don't like much more of what I'm reading now.

I am not completely certain CCP intends EVE to ever be what I would consider to be a tier 1 MMO, with very broad appeal. Because it is very easy to see how the steep learning curve and long periods of training, ridiculous missioning system, and other brutal, non-forgiving aspects of the game keep many away that otherwise might have been interested in it.

So alas, for me, my EVE experience is about to have run it's course for a second time. perhaps I will be back again, but at this point I'm just not certain.

Empire: Total War

A friend of mine had been talking up Empire: Total War to me over the past couple days. I had originally gotten him into the series back when Rome: Total War hit the streets and he and I played it for quite some time. So I figured I should check out the new installment to see what was new.

The overall feel of the game is largely the same as previous games, though there are what I see as cosmetic changes here and there to make some aspects just different enough to warrant a new name. So sadly after only a day of playing I'm already kinda bored with it, though I must say the aspect I think I enjoyed the most is the new sea combat.

Sadly there wasn't an "American" option in the grand campaign. At least not to start with, though perhaps its something you "unlock" through playing other countries in the grand campaign. I know that was an option in Rome: Total War.

All in all I think I'd give the game a high C grade.

Looking for a new home

I had mentioned recently that I was mulling over looking for a new corporation in EVE for my two characters. Things really hadn't improved in my current corp, and in fact had gotten somewhat more quite with the number of active players taking an even further dip this week. Out of my own sense of personal morales I just didn't feel right looking around for a new corp while I remained in the old one, so I went ahead and took my characters out yesterday and actively began looking for a new home.

But the problem with low skill points on both of my characters is still there. So I had been giving some thought to playing something else while my characters skill up a bit. I might try out the new Empire: Total War game that a friend of mine told me about yesterday.

Be careful what you wish for

As I had mentioned yesterday, we had a "PVP op" scheduled for last night. And it was largely what I thought it would be. Initially we started trolling for opportunities by baiting in an asteroid belt with two of our miners jetcan mining. They had a few nibbles, but no one actually took the bait. So eventually we grew bored and started roaming a couple of low-sec systems nearby. That was also largely a waste of time as we had determined from our previous PVP op that we weren't going to fire first in order to avoid the loss of security status. And while we found a couple of people who might have offered a good fight, they both refused to fire first. Even when targeted. Probably because it would have been 3-v-1 had they been silly enough to fight it out.

After taking a break we decided to give it one more shot in the low-sec systems. This time we got a bit more than we bargained for. We decided we were going to tempt one of the gate campers to attack us. And this time we were going to send a single person through and hope that someone would take the bait. It had been more than an hour since our previous romp through this system so we were hoping no one actually in the system would remember us from local. Still no joy at the gate so out bait ship decided to start warping through the asteroid belts looking for someone he might bait and would call us in should something happen. Didn't take very long at all before he was set upon by three opponents. he actually took one down into armor fairly quickly, but he was in trouble and called for us to hurry. By the time we got there he was already in pod and we were picked apart not only by the three that were already there, but their five buddies that came in just after we got there.

Not only did I lose my Myrmidon, but because I had neglected to create a jump clone, I ended up losing 79 million in implants as well.

What to do in EVE when there is nothing to do

I've been playing EVE Online now for about six weeks or so. In that time I've mostly concentrated on mining but have waffled back and forth in my skill training between mining skills and combat related skills. I can actually fly a fairly decent Battle Cruiser now and I'm working up into a second Battle Cruiser, which I should be able to fully fit by the end of next week. I enjoy mining during the day, but I have been desiring to stretch my legs a little. I want to shoot stuff!

I get some of that action by running missions in my Thorax (Cruiser) and Myrmidon (Battle Cruiser). But shooting dumb NPCs (the AI on the older generation of NPCs is truly horrible) can get rather boring. I want to gun for the tougher variety of game out there. Other players. The problem is my corporation is really an industrial corp, although it does have a small number of "combat" players that guard the mining fleet on mining operations. I've been pushing to get some regular PVP ops going in the evenings, but thus far we've ventured out three times. And only twice did we encounter anyone in the low sec space we patrolled. Both of those occasions were fights at gates in which we initiated the combat, so we ended up tanking the gate guns along with the opposing force. Neither occasion ended in what I would report as "well". The first instance ended up in me losing my Vexor cruiser to an Armageddon, along with another corp mate losing his ship too, and the other three players warping off. The second bit of action was last night and both the targets we opened fired on jumped through the gate to escape us. we're not very accomplished pirates it would seem.

That's fine, however what I found truly disturbing in all this is how much security status you lose. Even if you attack someone with a very low security status themselves, you lose quite a bit. I'm a noob and I lost 1% off my security status last night just firing on two players. That might not sound like a lot, but it takes forever to make that up running level 1 and level 2 missions. Occasionally I get to tag along with someone running a level 4 mission, and that's really where I make the lion share of my security status. If you aren't concerned about possible travel implications then it isn't that big of a deal. But it really wouldn't take me long to go to -5.1 the way we're currently operating. And I don't want that.

Instead I'd like to see us running wormhole ops and jumping people we find in those. But thus far there has been very little interest. They'd rather cruise gates instead. The plan for tonight is to try and lure people to attack us. Which I suspect will be an utterly boring and fruitless endeavor.

So lately I've been finding myself on the the official EVE recruitment board looking for a corp that might be operating in my region and runs gangs in lowsec/wormhole space. I've found plenty of corps looking for pilots, though only one in my region. But they all want people with a lot more skill points than I have at the moment. Sadly there isn't a thing I can do to make my skill points accumulate any faster than they already are. I've got just shy of 3 million skill points at the moment and it looks like I'm going to have to keep casting longing glances at the recruitment board for the foreseeable future.

Jumpgate Evolution

I've felt fairly liberated after quitting WoW back in February. I tried a short stint in WAR and found it to be as listless as I remembered it being from my previous stint last September. And I've been playing EVE Online for the past couple months as well. But I've also been paying attention to the other MMOs out there, as well as several up and comers. Including one that I was very interest in--Jumpgate Evolution.

At first I was poking around the JE website and had come to the opinion that it sounded remarkably like EVE Online, but seemingly better graphics and a different skill system. After reading Ten Ton Hammer's review this morning however I find out that it is much more akin to a FPS game in MMO guise, than EVE Online. I've never much liked FPS games so this game unfortunately would not appeal to me.

Luckily Star Teck Online is still in the queue! Hope that one turns out to be something to watch.

April Fools?

Am I the only one that does not particularly care for the annual silliness that ensues on April Fools?