Over the last while with the stagnation of the current iteration of wow and people playing the MMO as a solo garrison simulation there has been a lot of talk and discussion about wow's early day's.
For me I recall a deep emotion on my early journey. It felt like a journey. Running the full length of Darkshore back and forth to do quests and handin's was a pain. Nothing was fast or easy and getting a drop from a dungeon even if it was green was epic. A few of my early characters were casters and getting the staff from Deadmines was a thing to behold. Never mind having to travel to the dungeon location and actually type in local chat responding to a person LF1M dps.
There is a lot of nostalgia involved of course. But the game seemed more meaningful. It was a journey and I was an adventurer. The world was bigger than me and the sheer scale was awe inspiring.
I dont' know what Blizzard can do to remedy the player base they currently have but a server option for a past "vanilla" wow sounds good even if they wont or can't do it. Legion will tell a lot about what Blizz thinks it's players should do.
I only got to view a small portion of day 2 and none of day 3's stream. I wasn't bothered with not seeing what was happening "live".
Overall there wasn't all that much Eve news I wanted to see. Even with the universal changes coming to capital ships, taxes and the changes to bring in citadels. I only see those changes as being somewhat on the periphery of my gameplay.
Well maybe not the taxes. I don't have any contact with capital ships. But only time will tell how the new tax levels work out. And as for citadels I really don't know what that will do. I think it will take some time for the game to level out once there are enough of them in the universe.
I can't see myself trying to seek out a citadel with lower prices than Jita. A player run citadel market in Jita will be of interest but I guess that will be a hotspot for groups looking to take that hotspot for themselves. Jita 4-4 could be the quiet and sensible trade hub station. One thing is for sure, it opens up a lot of potential interest in gameplay.
So before all the changes come in I took some advantage of the current market's to buy a few ships and ammo types that I use the most. The markets have had some items cheaper than they have been in the last six month's.
For now I see the introduction of citadels in the same light as when Poco's came out and then got taxed. I screamed and shouted but in the end today I still do two things : I still use them and despite the varying levels of taxation I still pay the taxes (and still make a profit). Space life goes on.
Bringing new players to the game is something that CCP says they are doing but with half of those players quiting after a few hours I think CCP Ghost is a person that can provoke CCP to change the new player experience for the better.
CCP Rattati talking on the twitch stream:
I thought it was interesting to see the Fanfest store. Interesting because of the first item it shows.
Once I saw that they are actively selling the second decade collectors edition again I felt my blood pressure pop my head off. The collectors edition mystery code..... I've ranted on about it before but it's a thing that CCP has really dropped that ball with.
"This is just the beginning of what the Mystery Code will unlock. In
the future, whenever we have big things happening—not just across the
EVE Universe but across all CCP games—you will find a Mystery Code
element to enjoy.
There’s much more planned we can’t discuss right now, but you can rest
assured that as we continue our journey into the Second Decade with you,
the Mystery Code will be your perfect traveling companion."
Urge to rant rising.....
I was glad to see that they did a video for the CCP Permaband music used in the citadel trailer:
So what did fanfest this year mean for me:
- Game quality of life updates not only to graphics/sound/ui but also to the ongoing development (like the NPE) are ongoing and well worth it. I long for the day there are double the number of players online.
- CSM farce in the elections means I hope that the CSM process will change for the better in the future.
- CCP pissing me off again with the collectors edition. The longer you have it the more worthless it becomes.
- Capsuleer day on May 6th, free stuff(s?). CCP late to the party again but I only see this as a marketing tool to sell pod SKIN's in the store.
- Eve Mobile app when it's ready.
- Eve FPS take 2 when it's ready.
Nothing I'm holding my breath for.
But there was one thing I did listen to in Day 2's art panel. They said they had implement the new shader technology and that they were looking to introduce (at some point) the ship customisation that was shown in fanfest 2014. That is once they created the same tools for the new shaders. That got my attention. Maybe I heard of took him up wrong.
I may be late to the party with getting my thoughts about day one onto the web but I've had better things to be doing. Not that I was unimpressed with Day 1. Even with it's tech difficulties and me hitting the mute button and doing other things with the bulk of the "show" but lately I've been very much in the mind of..... MMO's = Meh. I've been questioning the value of what I've been investing in across all my pure online games. It's not like I can do another blast from the past blog and fire up an MMO I play today. So that makes me question the value of the games. They are very current enjoyment in value but don't have an "always have" option. I'm sure there are the arguments like "Eve: Forever" but even in Eve's EULA CCP owns your account/characters and all items. Not that any MMO I've played will ever have an offline mode.... But I'll stop waffling on and get down to the real reason of this blog. Day 1 of Fanfest.
In no particular order:
I was surprised that they were talking about Eve Valkyrie as being a Beta game. I thought it was "done" and being packaged with devices as a "game" not a "in beta".
Hilmar yet again raised his dream link of the TQ and Serenity servers. I'm sure it's a nice pipe dream but I doubt the paranoid Chinese government will allow anything like it. Especially considering the propaganda they are currently promoting against red haired foreigners whisking state workers off their feet and getting secrets from them, “National Security Education Day” is real.
If this link does happen I think it would be a great alternate reality to see.
I was semi cursing CCP when Hilmar briefly mentioned a thanks to Dust 514 players etc and said that CCP had learned a lot. TO myself I was thinking yea thanks for being a guinea pig. But I was pleasantly surprised when Project Nova, Dust's 2.0 was announced. And from the footage that I've seen I am really amazed that it both looks great and feels and looks like the original game. That has lead me to thinking that my characters and gear may get transferred over yet! I can hope and dream. It really looks like Project Nova will deliver on being a dust upgrade but time will really tell. At least it will be free to play. Eve News 24 talks about it.
In the presentations I noticed a lot of the promo trailers/footage had the look and feel of Star Citizen's footage. Especially the way that the characters look out from the trailers in an awe inspired kind of way. But CCP I think did that on purpose so that the main trailer for Citadel would have a greater impact, It's the second half of that trailer that literally blows the Star Citizen out of the trailer and shows the real difference that Eve brings. I may be a casual PVE carebear but that second half of the trailer had be laughing my ass off.
The New CSM seems to be made up of the null groups. Pity there was a low turnout for voters. I dont' know what to expect from it but I do hope that CCP keeps a more considered and level head that both listens to focus groups as much as the CSM, if they listen at all.
Over all the last year had a lot of ups and downs for the outgoing CSM. Sugar Kyle has a good post up to semi finalise things. As a casual carebear at least with the last CSM I felt my interests were covered by a few of it's members, not so with this new group. Given the way CCP is taking Eve I doubt they will be so unhappy about that.
like most other MMO's Eve finally gets an proper in game birthday celebration. This year May 6th will see Eve Online turn 13 and players will get the usual gifts of firework launchers nad fireworks but also a new pod skin.... although they do say SKINs so being plural I can see the monetization of pod SKINs is here. Pity they don't do a per character gift....
CCP can have it's ups and downs both with content and technical issues (streaming, camera's and sound) but with Day two's stream just started I've already hit the mute button. And the stream looks to be having streaming issues.... roll on the big presentations as I'm hating the filler content.
With the new season and patch out for STO I did take a look at the new featured episode (mission). It's along the lines of what they usually present but it was much shorter and I think better for it.
It was a big patch
And the patch got patched
Having said that it is about time travel and that old chestnut is wearing thin as a story based mission series. It's been done far too much before and I really didn't want to see it again. The last featured episode was almost exactly the same thing. Travel in time, go to conference, catch bad guys. They could have done something else.
The main big thing for this patch was the redo of the skills system. And I'm glad to say that it's not as complex as I thought it would be. My character had enough points to take in a lot of Tactical skills (he is a tactical character) and some others to help with dps, shield and hull regen. But as its early day's I'm sure it will take a while to get a "perfect" build from the community. I did exchange some dilithium for Zen and bought a retrain skill token at the expansion promotional -40% price. I'll use that once there is a consensus on what skill builds are best.
The only think about the skill token is that it isnt' a token any more. Instead of having an item to use, it now only allows a skill reset button to be clickable. That can be misleading. If you were to buy two I don't think there is any way to hold a second one as there is no reset token counter.
My current Space skills
My current Ground skills
I've not touched on the specialisation points in either primary or secondary stats.
So with both ground and space skills set on a loose new understanding of the system I've found my character a lot more powerful in space and on ground. The featured episode was on par with what I've seen from youtubers that tried the mission with their "main" characters with paid items. If it is the great levelling of the play field then I'm all for it. If I was a paid user of STO then I'd be feeling cheated. Maybe I'm reading more into that than there really is.
Even with spending to buy Zen my character is still in my view wealthy. More than ever before.
I'm still doing the daily duty officer missions as well as the admiralty fleet missions, including the new Romulan set. So between them and the Exchange (auction house), they are the real money makers for me. I might see about spending time to finish off the last mission chain and have them all marked as "complete".
In reshuffling stats etc I found a ground crew member that had the ability to get gold-pressed latinum from killing npc characters in missions. So I used him to fill an empty gap in the ground roster, better than nothing.
STO has a lot to offer and the game is getting better.
"Perhaps
where CCP has fallen down is how it uses that cash on other projects -
and 2013 and 2014 was all about cleaning up that mess (including raising
new equity in 2015) - and therefore its lack of revenue growth. Eve
Online revenues are back to below 2010 levels. In summary, CCP has been cleaned up and has plenty of cash to invest in new projects (fingers crossed!)." A
key debate will be if CCP can put Eve Online back onto a growth path,
what is CCP going to be spending its cash on and how will Valkyrie do." What reading that part of the article leaves me with asking the same question of Eve online as I ask about the "new" FPS they are planning. That question is, can they compete with other products of the FPS genre. Or more precisely can it competitive and profitable. Take the FPS, can CCP produce a first person shooter that can compete and be profitable with competition the likes of Overwatch, Battlefield series and the Call of Duty series. Heck even if they make if a free to play game (It most certainly will be), then the main competition will be Planetside 2. Can CCP make a Planetside 2 killer game. I'll wait on that judgement till I see what they produce at fanfest. At fanfest this year we will get to see what is really up their sleeve. One thing I hope is that right from the get go they make the game 100% involved with Eve Online. It's the only hook they have to make them "special". And unlike poor Dist 514 I hope the new game has player trading and access to the Eve market and contract system as a whole from the start. Not that Eve online's life is going to be easy. No man's sky and what I consider to be the real Eve killer Star Citizen. Both have the potential to take away a lot from Ev online. Time will tell.
There has been a lot of down feelings on the direction of Eve Online. The best way of reading that in posts and better than I can describe are better read from these posts: http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2016/03/hi-there.html https://evehermit.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/toxicity/ CCP are trying some new things to get people to log in daily and like most of things CCP does with Eve Online, better late than never. Only when CCP does things that other games do, CCP always does it in a different way that seems to negate teh reason for doing the thing in the first place. Eve Online dailies: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=476516 All sounds good in the dev post but if I can't be arsed to do level 4's then I doubt I can be arsed to go find an npc to kill. When implemented I'll take a spin and go kill one npc and one npc only lol. Thanks for putting more of a grind into he most non fun grindy game online CCP. Hint hint I log in every day CCP not need to make me work for that privilege. And there I was thinking I was paying for the game. I would insert more sarcasm but I can't be bothered.
I've not had much interest in the game itself. But I had to laugh at some of the video's that were produced over the Tracer-gate incident from the Overwatch community.
I think these three sum it up well.
Usually my blast from the past posts detail a game I played many moons ago.
This time round I had access to my still existing and working Windows'98 pc. The last time I had gotten it working was to see that it did actually work.
It had originally shipped to me just after windows 95 had launched and was a new Pentium 133.
I recall considering 486 pc's and what dx, sx chip I needed. And when multimedia kits for pc's included a CD drive, sound card and speakers. When multimedia was a new thing. Don't even get me started on working with windows 3.11 for workgroups.
Geebus I'm feeling old now.
I remember getting, Sim City 2000 and Command & Conquer (DOS version) as my first games for the pc.
But back on track and while doing work back in my mam's house a while ago I stayed over and got to unmothball the old faithful semi upgraded win'98 pc.
I had pre-prepared for this and had downloaded a lot of updated (as can be for win 98) software that I burned onto CD.
And it all went well. Software updated and hard drive cleared up. The old girl still had soul.
Starting it up and listening to the noises brought back a lot of memories. Hitting escape to see the messages that might pop up behind the boot banner for windows, happened to me through muscle memory. That surprised me.
I could really waffle on for a long time about all my nostalgia but better I post some pics instead.
Suffice it to say that I've worked on virtual 95/98 machines since but there is really nothing like working on the real thing.
19 years since the last defrag.....
Civ 2's install option.... ON
215MB is a LARGE install....
335MB is GIGANTIC!!!!....
Bethesda only considered 450MB as HUGE....
The CRT monitor was as big as the 120 refresh rate.... :)
While in our local Gamestop my wife spotted a game on the bargain shelf, nudged me and laughed as she pointed to it. I made the silly comment of "I'd get that for the sheer randomness of getting it.". The shopping went on and when we got home she left that game on my keyboard. I was surprised.
The back story to that little tale revolves around my viewing a lot of game streamers of late. Gamers playing games that I wouldn't necessarily be interested in playing myself but are in themselves entertaining viewing, mainly due to the people playing them.
The game as you can tell by the title of this post is Euro Truck Simulator 2.
The streamer I had been watching in the game was Unit Lost.
I think the last time I played a dedicated simulation was form a disk I picked up in the early 90's from a car boot sale that held a game called Southern Belle. A train simulation for the commodore 64. I don't think I played it more than once......
ETS2 is a much better game. I've played the game for a few "trips" and I've enjoyed it. It's
completely random from what I normally play and that in itself is
refreshing. I don't know how much longer I'll play if but I know that
I'll probably get more enjoyment from it.
There seems to be no better truck sim out there, here are some 2013 review's:
I've constantly had Star Citizen on my mind for what seems like years now. And it has been years.
With each new patch or update there is always, at least for me and friends I talk to about it, a whole new slew of problems with the game. I've not tried the latest patch even after downloading it as the last
time I tried my character he fell out of the cockpit of his ship. It seems that when they tweak something they break something else.
Yes it is in a pre-release state. I can appreciate that but it shows a constant lack of small progress. I've moaned and drones on about it a lot before.
Having said all that again I am still filled with awe and wonder on what Star Citizen promises to deliver. I hope that it can deliver those things sooner rather than later. If the 10 for the chairman questions are a gauge on what is being done, worked on and a measure on when things are going to be released, there should be a lot more on show for this year.
I have hopped for more before but I really hope there are stable releases this year.
I've said this before but SC has the potential to kick the ass of everything else out there that is even remotely related to the space genre. For the first time I've really stopped and considered cancelling my Eve subs due to the potential of SC. I really may invest some more in SC.
I've not changed much since I last posted about STO. I'm doing the usual daily officer and fleet missions. Selling some stuff on the exchange and amassing both EC and Dilithium.
Last week saw First contact day marked with a free duty officer for all characters to claim. I love freebies. I just wish there was a more in my face way of letting me know there was free stuff to claim. I've missed out of stuff in the past. I'm just glad I spotted it before the time was up.
Tomorrow see's the release of the next mid season expansion. I'm glad that they have gone for the twice a year release. It allows them to freshen the game in a major way. The new season really does change a lot for the better. Least of which is the new revamp of the skill system.
That new system on top of the usual new episode to play and get rewards from is what tops my immediate list.
Full expansion details are listed on the official site, and a good video was done by Brent Justice about the expansion, it's details and talking about the changes, well worth a watch.
The trailer for the expansion answers and provokes questions as to what is ahead, with luck some of those questions will be answered.
That blog title has thankfully nothing to do with real life, it is often quoted back to me by my wife and a good friend when I suggest a new game to try. You see I got them hooked into warcraft for years with that one little line. "Go on, the trial is free. Give it a go, whats the worst that could happen....".
One game I can't get any friends to play (and stay in game) has been Eve Online. No matter what I try. Even suggesting to split or fully give the recruitment reward (PLEX) I would get. One or two may try the trial but never admit to it.... Maybe I'm pushing it to hard.
Anyway as part of the hard sell intro to Eve Online and explaining about the game I usually get to link a few or the official trailers and video's.
There are lots of good ones in my opinion, even if the vets and gamers of Eve would trash almost all of them. But these are the ones I really enjoy. Some may have dated graphics but the essence of Eve is true in them. And even if I have waffled on about them in other posts I thought I'd whittle down some of the best to repost....
