Sunday Odds And Ends

Another Sunday, another collection of thoughts. The first is that it's nice to see Brent over at Virgin Worlds making an appearance again. Yes, he does a lot behind the scenes to keep Virgin Worlds up and running, but I've missed the Virgin Worlds podcast. His appearances on Gary Gannon's new video podcast GameBreakr at the Austin Game Developers' Conference were very welcome.

More Austin GDC coverage, at least of the Blizzard presentation, was discussed on The Instance #163. Randy also talked about getting into Eve Online and didn't like it too much. Here's a comment from the show thread from a listener named Pexxle:

"Great show over all, Completely agreed on the view of Eve Online, beautiful game-completely retarded. Being a PC gamer as well as Console, Eve caught my eye looking some thing akin to a “HomeWorld”…

During a WoW extended patch I began download which led to my 1rst experience of EO. It was like throwing a special-ed student into a calculus class. I think the UI is trash and overall control scheme is way too techy and wonky, Over kill…

So sad..

HomeWorld (”online”) it is not." (emphasis mine)

The only thing I'll say is that I'm enjoying my time in Eve, I'm starting to appreciate the UI as I continue to play with it, and that I didn't make that quote from a WoW player up.

Speaking of convention coverage, I'd been remiss in not listening to the post-apocalyptic coverage of this year's DragonCon on Through The Aftermath #19. At least Shaun was able to find out that the developers of Fallen Earth really aren't aliens.

From Channel Massive #105 came these words of wisdom from Mark on building a gaming computer:

"I get whatever I can to give me rock solid stability because at the end of the day I don't have a lot of time for gaming and I don't want to spend a lot of it sorting out technical problems.
...

If you become the definitive source for the latest NVIDIA GAGX 280 video card and all the problems that have ever occurred with it, you're probably not getting a lot of gaming time in. You should never be a definite source for any of this except for the games you're playing."

While the M Team was talking about building PCs, I also feel that way about games. If I hear I'm going to have to play around a lot with the settings, I'm probably not buying the game. Having to remember that I have to run EQ2 as administrator after I switched to Vista is about as technical as I want to get. I play techie at work; I play MMOs to get away from that world.

Speaking of EQ2, I'm still playing around with all the features that came with GU 53. I'm really liking the plastering of the heirloom tag on all those items and that some of the items that I had attuned and no longer use are now available to pass on to my alts. Next on the agenda is playing around with achievements and chronomagic.

On the guild front, our guild leaders appear to be happy in Aion. Reading Gordon's Aion post over at We Fly Spitfires gives me a little hope on reporting on the grind in the game, but the class archetype class progression that Gordon complains about would appeal to them. Also, they're Australian, so they probably haven't had to deal with the long queues I've heard others complain about. But I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope although we'll keep their characters in the guild just in case.

In Eve, I'm not playing as much as I'm really enjoying GU 53. I've done a couple more missions in tier 1 epic mission line available to new players after they complete the newbie missions. All I can say is I love my Rifter. The one thing I'm worrying about is that I am still in the NPC corporation. I don't know how long I can safely stay in the NPC corp without it looking strange. But I don't want to commit to a player-run corp with the guild situation the way it is in EQ2. Maybe I'll go ahead and join Eve University. While shooting things up in my Rifter is fun, I think I need to start thinking about setting up my industry now that I've got the skills to decently fly a Mammoth.

That's all for now. Have a great week everyone!