When I left Iceland following Fanfest back in April I didn't see much of a future writing about botting and RMT. Team Security had done a pretty good job containing the use of bots and I figured nothing exciting or of interest would really show up the rest of the year. I thought I'd write maybe one post a month. Ha! The last 2-3 months has seen a lot more posts than that. But I don't eat, drink, and breathe this stuff.
So what am I doing in the realm of something normal? Well, at least normal for a gamer? Currently I'm reading Nick Yee's new book, The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us -- And How They Don't. People may remember Dr. Yee from The Daedalus Project, which involved interviewing gamers. When I heard the book was out, I downloaded it onto my Kindle. I've only read the first couple of chapters but I plan on finishing it riding to and from work on the train. He has included the results of The Daedalus Project in the book and I look forward to reading the results of his work.
Over the weekend I also decided to download Star Wars: The Old Republic again. I had problems the first time I played, but between having a better computer and the game going free-to-play I figured maybe I'd give it another try. But when I went to create a character I couldn't find a class I wanted to play. I have the Darth Bane trilogy by Drew Karpyshyn on my bookshelf. Maybe reading that will get me in the mood.
One game I don't have to get in the mood to play is Tropico 4. The opening music just makes me feel happy and ready to play. I started playing the game before Fanfest but only got to the 11th scenario in the campaign before EVE took over my free time for a few months. I'm back to playing once a week and am now on the fourth game of the campaign. I really want to finish this time.
One game I'm surprised I'm playing is City of Steam: Arkadia. I read Blagpuss' initial impressions on the relaunch and then just had to take a look for myself. I took a Riven gunner up to level 7 and an Ostenian channeler up to level 6. The channeler is the healer class in CoS and I think I may stick with that. One thing I noticed is that I had a choice of three armors to choose from and I don't think a correct choice really exists. I'll have to play around more. Yes, I had fun running through the tutorial. Just don't expect help from a wiki.
Of course, I also played some EVE Online. I am now up to 285,000 loyalty points with the Sisters of EVE. My current goal is to buy 2 blueprint copies each for the Astero and Stratios plus 4 Sisters launchers and 4 sets of probes before going back to Minmatar space. So I'm 80,000 LP away from my goal. If I just sit down for an hour or so a night I can knock that out by Sunday.
So I have some things I might write about in the future that aren't related to RMT. I still have one more RMT-related post I've tried to write for a few months now, but with any luck I can get back to some regular gaming posts. Unless, of course, someone nukes some bots or illicit RMT sites. That I'll gladly write about.
