Nine Days

"As a reminder, we would like to state there are no skill changes planned for the winter expansion - your Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills are safe for now, as we are not adjusting spaceship command skill trees until we are done with the Battlecruiser class."

CCP Ytterbium, September 2012

I know that I still have a lot of time to take advantage of the training changes coming with CCP's tiericide efforts but with the latest dev blog discussing battlecruiser and battleship changes I figure I need to take care of business before I forget.

• Breaking Destroyers and Battlecruisers skills into four racial versions with an identical training multiplier (thus making it four times harder to get all races trained)
• Changing skill requirements for Racial Cruisers from Racial Frigates 4 to Racial Destroyers 4
• Changing skill requirements for Racial Battleships from Racial Cruisers 4 to Racial Battlecruisers 4
• Changing skill requirements for capital ships from Racial Battleships 5 to 4, but introducing or increasing other skills to keep the same overall training time requirements

Up until now both of my main pilots have exclusively flown Minmatar and ORE ships.  As such both have trained both Destroyers and Battlecruisers to V.  If the implementation of racial Destroyers and racial Battlecruisers occurred today, I would only receive Minmatar Destroyers V and Minmatar Battlecruisers V.  So what would I need to do to get all of the racial Destroyers and racial Battlecruisers to V?  Here is what CCP Ytterbium wrote:

"Let us repeat again: if you could fly it before, you will be able to do so after the change. Technically it means if you are able to fly an Oracle by having Amarr Cruisers 3 and Battlecruisers 3, we will remove the Battlecruisers skill from your character and give you Amarr Battlecruisers at 3. If you had Battlecruisers at 3 and Caldari Cruisers 3 instead, you would not receive Amarr Battlecruisers but the Caldari Battlecruisers skill at 3 instead. The same principle work with the Destroyers skill."

CCP Fozzie clarified further in the comments thread for the dev blog when answering a question:

Antoine Jordan:  "So if I have Battlecruisers V and Amarr Cruiser III, after the patch I'll have Amarr Battlecruiser V, right? So that I can fly them to the same effectiveness I could before the patch."

CCP Fozzie:  "This is correct."

So all I need to do is train the three racial Cruiser skills I don't have to III and I will have Battlecruisers V for all races.  As a byproduct of the requirement to train the racial Frigate skills to IV before beginning Cruiser training, I'll also have Destroyers trained to V as well.  The nicest part is how long the training takes for me.  Even with my attributes not min/max'd each of my pilots will finish in under nine days.

Nine days.  Yes, I know that I still have to learn the gunnery skills to fly the ships properly (well, except for the Caldari missile boats).  But for the eventual payoff I think I can divert nine days of training for support skills on both my pilots to have a big payoff down the line.  I can't wait for the spring expansion.

Back To Low Sec

I set a goal for my week of vacation to work on my scanning and finish setting up a second base in low sec.  With three days to go I'm doing pretty well and just need to bookmark the new constellation I'm moving to.  As simple as this sounds I've had a bit of an adventure over the past few days.

My first task was to acquire a set of Sisters' scanning gear.  I had already run the level 4 missions to get the loyalty points and all I needed to do was purchase them.  But purchasing the gear required having the base versions of the equipment.  No problem right?  All I have to do is go to a trade hub, buy the stuff and bing, bang, boom I'm done.  The only problem was I wanted to manufacture my own gear as much as possible.

Making the items isn't really difficult.  I just needed to go and purchase the blueprint originals from an NPC and then put the items in a factory.  I had all the minerals mined and refined that I needed already except for some strontium clathrates I needed to make the combat and deep space probes.  Easy right?  Just go out and mine some dark glitter, get about 7 or 8 cycles and I'm done.

Did I forget to mention that the Minmatar Republic only has one ice belt containing dark glitter?  But I decided to go for the challenge and mine dark glitter instead of going off to a more remote system and mine glare crust.  So I loaded up a Procurer I hadn't unpacked yet, picked up some ice mining modules and Wandering Rose headed off to Todifrauan in my Prowler accompanied by Rosewalker in his Hound.

Things went well and I mined three units of dark glitter before a German player in a Hurricane decided to try to gank Wandering Rose.  She got away easily and with Rosewalker keeping an eye on the ice belt watched the Hurricane warp off.  I saw the pilot leave local, waited a few minutes and then tried to begin mining again.  The Hurricane came back and once again I warped off.  I don't think the Hurricane pilot realized I was watching him.  I decided to take the ice I had already mined and started manufacturing a batch of combat probes.

I have to give that Hurricane pilot credit for patience.  I played cat and mouse with him for maybe an hour until a birthday fleet of about 100 ships rolled into the system.  They were having so much fun spamming "happy birthday" that while the German docked up I sped out to the ice belt and mined six additional cycles.  I guess flying a cheap ship like the Procurer made me less risk adverse than the Hurricane pilot.  So with having more ice than I needed I finished making the last of my items.  Once made I went to the nearest Sisters of Eve station and purchased my goods.

My Inventory of Sisters Scanning Equipment

Of course once I had the good gear I had to go out exploring.  I found two wormholes and decided to enter my first wormholes since leaving Eve University.  The first wormhole I entered was populated with POCOs from a Russian corporation.  That explained why I see so many Russian pilots flying around my system.  In the second wormhole I entered I broke one of the cardinal rules of wormholes: I forgot to bookmark the wormhole before warping off.

I did want to use my new gear but I didn't really want to do so trying to find my way out of a wormhole.  I scanned down two wormholes pretty quickly.  The first wormhole I found led to Gallente low sec 22 jumps away.  I reentered the wormhole and went to the second one which led back home.

Exiting To Gallente Space

The second goal is to set up a second base in low sec.  The first part I needed to accomplish is to get the standings with the Republic Fleet for the station so I can have perfect refining.  During the standings grind all the storyline missions I did were for The Leisure Group and I wound up getting my standings up to 7.3 with that corporation in addition to standings of 6.7 with the Republic Fleet.

After finishing the grind I realized that I now have perfect refining in at least one station in every .1 and .2 security system in the Minmatar Republic except for Todifrauan.  To get that the easiest way is to grind faction with the Pator Tech School.  If I want to run level 4 missions I either have to go to high sec or go to a couple of places I really try to avoid: Amamake and Molden Heath.  Do I dare venture into the pirate stronghold of Molden Heath?  I might cheat and do the faction grind in high sec so I can explore wormholes in relative safety when I get tired of running missions.  I understand that high sec spawns class 1 and class 2 wormholes which should prove easier to operate solo in.

So all I really have left to do is bookmark the constellation where I plan to set up a second home.  I may not finish the entire constellation but I should manage to get enough bookmarks made to begin operations.

National Security Decision Making Game

As I was surfing the web last night I ran into an article on Kotaku discussing cuts at the National Defense University that would cut into the NDU's ability to conduct wargaming of potential real world scenarios.  That reminded me of a game I used to travel to game conventions to play many years ago, the National Security Decision Making Game.  I decided to see if the game was still up and running and I was glad to see an active Facebook page.

The game is quite interesting for those interested in current events.  Over the course of eight hours players are placed into different country cells in which they play national leaders, members of the legislature and representatives of various interest groups like business, dissidents and the media.  The cells are usually placed in separate rooms with the control staff (think D&D dungeon masters) in communication using short-range radio.  Some players are drafted to play what are in effect non-player countries and are known as facilitators and help the control staff move the scenario along.  Usually at the end of the day the scenario winds up with a major international crisis and sometimes the bullets fly.  Watching the procedure for the release of a country's nukes is always interesting, especially if a player loses the codes.  Yipes!

Eve Online, with its interstellar economic and military simulations combined with its diplomatic, intelligence and propaganda metagame is the closest I've come to the NSDMG outside of a convention.  Where the NSDMG control staff has to condense three or four years into an 8 hour session, conflict in Eve runs in real time and can last for months or even years.  I should add that in both games lying and backstabbing is not only encouraged but rewarded.  The other distinguishing feature of Eve compared to NSDMG is that Eve takes place in a fictional universe in pixel space.  NSDMG takes place in our world, although I see that since I've played that the staff has put together historical scenarios to run through.  The modern scenarios did start to get to me following 9/11 and combined with work led to me last playing at GenCon in 2003.  In fact, I hadn't attended another game convention until I traveled to Reykjavik for Fanfest back in March.

Thinking about all the good times I had makes me want to attend another convention and play again.  The schedule for 2013 isn't up but maybe the crew will set up for a 24th year and I can play again.

I Bought A PS3, Please Help

With stagflation, the fiscal cliff and a military intervention in Mali either here or on the horizon what did I do on Monday to prepare?  That's right, I bought a PS3.

Foolishly Rejected by the American people Tuesday

I've never owned a console system but I figured if I ever wanted one I better buy it before inflation really hits.  And yes, I do my own grocery shopping so I know inflation's here, I just expect it to get worse.  Like Jimmy Carter worse.

I didn't get the system just for playing games.  I already have a Hulu Plus account so I expect to use my PS3 to watch movies on my big screen tv instead of moving my laptop around.  And I've always wanted a Blue-Ray player.  Does this sound like excuse making for spending a lot of money on a game console?

I bought the Uncharted 3: Game of the Year Bundle that also has the DUST 514 content pack from Best Buy since my credit card is giving me 5% back on purchases from Best Buy this quarter.  I figure I need to get a first person shooter, which I never play, in order to prepare for DUST and not look like a total noob.  Because frankly that's what I am when it comes to console games.

That leads to another concern.  I need to learn how to use the controller if nothing else and playing games should help.  So what games should I look to buy?  Right now I'm looking for something I can play single player so I don't embarrass myself.  If anyone has any recommendations please send them my way.

And one more question.  How do I get a beta key for DUST?

EDIT: Just saw that Midway Arcade Origins was announced yesterday.  To give you an idea, those are among the most recent console games I've played.

The Digital Dozen: 6 November 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 4 November 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played	+/- %
1	1	World of Warcraft	46.2	42,173	-3.6
2	2	Guild Wars 2	24.6	22,442	-21.1
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	5.4	4,938	+10.9
4	9	The War Z (Alpha)	3.9	3,599	+142.9
5	5	Aion	3.8	3,491	+3.7
6	7	Eve Online	3.3	3,002	+4.5
7	4	Metin 2	3.1	2,805	-16.7
8	6	Lord of the Rings Online	3.0	2,723	-12.4
9	8	APB: Reloaded	2.2	2,032	-5.6
10	10	Planetside 2 (Beta)	1.7	1,583	+12.8
11	--	Maple Story	1.5	1,403	+14.7
12	11	Need For Speed World	1.3	1,179	-13.6

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 121,186  

The rate of decline in the time the Xfire community spends playing MMORPGs slowed Sunday with the time only dropping 3.6%.  The games with the biggest percentage gains were The War Z (+142.9%), Maple Story (+14.7%) and Planetside 2 (+12.8%).  The games experiencing the biggest declines were Vindictus (-22.1%), Guild Wars 2 (-21.2%) and Metin 2 (-16.7%).

Server Stability - This week two of the three games that gained the most play time percentage-wise were not officially released.  The War Z, which opened in alpha on 16 October to laggy servers due to massive interest by zombie hunters, expanded its server capacity and the players poured in.  From following Sony Online Entertainment CEO John Smedley's Twitter account, Planetside 2 is working on a lot of issues and the San Diego studio fixed a lot of bugs last week.

Bargin Buying - This week once again shows that the Xfire community loves a bargain.  Maple Story returned to The Digital Dozen after a six week absence as players learned last Tuesday that Wizet was taking away the ability to create six classes on 13 November combined with special pets available in the cash shop in honor of the U.S. presidential election.  On the downside, Metin 2 lost significant time played due to the expiration of an offer.  After rising to its highest ranking of #4 last week, Metin 2 fell three spots even though the cash shop promotion that began 26 October runs through tomorrow.  The declines following a promotion sometimes come after players have already taken advantage of a deal and doesn't wait until the offer actually expires.

Event Aftermath - Another trend is that following in-game events interest in a game tends to decline.  Two games that held in-game events on 28 October saw the Xfire community spend over 20% less time playing those games on Sunday.  Vindictus fell out of The Digital Dozen after a nine-week run with a 22.1% decline following the celebration of the Nexon game's second anniversary 27-28 October.  The second game, Guild Wars 2, experienced a 21.2% decline with the end of its Halloween event.

CCP's War On Bots: The Price Of ISK

With both Eve News 24 and TheMittani.com reporting that at least 20 pilots from Against ALL Authories banned for participating in the illicit ISK trade based on a leaked Eve mail on Eve Skunk, I decided to look for evidence that ISK selling web sites are feeling any shortages.  Getting information on the illicit trade in virtual currencies in MMORGPs is difficult.  In lieu of attempting to create my own database of sites I use MMOBUX to try to track the illicit ISK trade.

Over the past week the activity concerning Eve Online has increased.  Since last Sunday the median price of ISK sold by the companies listed on MMOBUX rose from $22.00 / 1 billion ISK to $22.50 / 1 billion ISK.  Overall 5 sites increased prices while one site lowered its price.  During the last seven days MMOBUX delisted six sites, including Igeve.com which apparently is out of business, while adding two new sellers, reducing the number of sites listed from 31 down to 27.

Looking closer into the numbers shows something interesting.  Most of the activity took place amongst the sites selling ISK the cheapest.  Looking at the thirteen web sites offering the lowest prices, 5 sites raised prices and 4 sites were delisted.  The five sites raised prices an average of 7.1%.  I don't think the rise in prices is necessarily a result of the increase in the price of buying ISK using CCP-approved PLEX.  Over the past week the decline in the price of PLEX resulted in a rise in the approved trading of ISK¹ from $30.17 up to $30.35.

So is the price hike due to the actions of CCP against alliances engaged in the RMT trade?  If so, this week's rise in price should be the first of many to come.  Due to the low price of ISK by purchasing PLEX through CCP compared to the prices charged by the illicit ISK sellers I doubt we will see a near tripling of the illicit ISK price as happened followed Unholy Rage.  That means that another successful attack on the illicit ISK network in Eve could see a reduction in companies selling ISK.


1.  Price determined using average price of PLEX in The Forge and purchasing 2 PLEX ($34.99).

Thoughts Before Vacation

Next week I'm taking time off from work to rest and recuperate.  I might even take a day or two off from blogging if I get involved in something interesting.  Or I might blog more if Team Security becomes more active.  But before I go off and lose myself in the world of relaxation I have a few thoughts.

CCP Stillman Unleashed?  I thought the ban wave for illicit RMT activities would wait until CCP Sreegs returned from paternity leave.  Apparently not, because both TheMittani.com and Eve News 24 are reporting that Team Security has pushed the button, with Against ALL Authorities forced to cancel a CTA due to the ban of 20 logistics pilots for engaging in the illicit RMT trade.  Looks like I need to step up my game, although my weakest area of coverage on The War on Bots™ is null sec.

The MSM catches up to TheMittani.com -  Those of us in the Eve community knew about Sean "Vile Rat" Smith's observations that the bad guys were scouting out the embassy in Benghazi from reading TheMittani.com.  Now Foreign Policy is reporting that those concerns were reported to the authorities at the time.  CBS also came out with a scathing story about the Obama administration's reaction to the Benghazi attack.   First Fast and Furious, now Benghazi; the president must really hate Sharyl Attkisson right now. 

Eve Online - Next week I get some quality playtime and I'm going to work on my scanning and finish up my prep work to set up a second base in low security space.

Guild Wars 2 - I'm finally past the human starting area into Kessex Hills.  Gathering the materials to get to 75 for my crafting skills was a pain, but I liked the discovery process in which I got my crafting recipes.  I was reminded of opening packs of Magic: The Gathering Cards back in the day, except with no addictive new card smell.  I'm at level 24.5 now.  Maybe I can make level 30 by the end of the week.

Reamde - I'm behind on my reading but have picked up Neal Stephenson's Reamde and hope to finish it next week.  I first heard about the book from a post by Rutgers law professor Greg Lastowka on Terra Nova.  A book in which real money trading in incorporated as a main part of the plot?  Sounds interesting.

That's all for today.  People may actually see me in game and know that I'm not a unicorn.

Illicit ISK Price During Unholy Rage

I usually consider CCP's War On Bots™ as beginning in March 2011 with CCP Sreegs' security presentation at Fanfest 2011.  But the Icelandic game company has battled botters and the illicit RMT trade long before CCP Sreegs arrived on the scene.  While doing some research on illicit RMT I ran across and article on MMOBUX discussing the jump in price of illicit ISK in the aftermath of Unholy Rage in June 2009. 

The article states that the price of illicit ISK rose from $25 / 1 billion ISK to $65 / 1 billion ISK as a result of Unholy Rage as illicit ISK selling sites were ravaged by the operation.  The interesting bit of information was the speculation surrounding how CCP uncovered so many illicit ISK operations at once: the EBank scandal.

"One potential cause for this massive strike against ISK farmers could be the recent case of a player defrauding an in-game bank which he ran. The according to the game-rules 'legally' embezzled amount was valued at roughly 5000 USD. It is possible that this highly publicized case lead the Iceland-based developers of the game on the trail of major currency trading operations.

"Ricdic, as the former CEO-gone-rogue of the bank called himself in the game, acquired a currency amount probably too large to sell to any single company alone. In the process of getting rid of his hot goods and transferring them in return for real USD, he probably revealed several large currency trading networks."

The article reveals a few interesting facts about the illicit ISK selling business back in 2009.  First, the price of ISK is down approximately 12% today as compared to 3 years ago.  The second is that no company was able to process 200 billion ISK, or at least that's the conclusion of someone who follows the illicit RMT trade.  Processing that much ISK put the entire business at risk.  Next is the point to which the price rose.  I'm pretty sure that the $65 / 1 billion ISK was near the official rate obtainable by purchasing the newly introduced PLEX.  And the final conclusion I can find is that reading the articles at MMOBUX can give me a head's up on what Team Security is up to.  The article on MMOBUX was published on 10 July 2009 while the official dev blog announcing Unholy Rage came out on 17 August.  I'm aware that Unholy Rage occurred before CCP Sreegs was hired but the War on Bots™ is a conflict taking place in the shadows so finding any regular sources of information is always a good thing.

CCP Stillman made a bold statement at Eve Vegas about ending the social acceptance of illicit RMT and CCP Sreegs doubled down on going after the two handfuls of alliances whose leadership is engaged in the trade.  We've seen what happened in 2009 to the price of illicit ISK.  I'm looking forward to observing what occurs in 2013.

Agnostic On Expansions

As CCP starts ramping up the publication of dev blogs in support of the launch of Eve Online's winter expansion Retribution, I came to the realization that I just don't care.  Not about all the changes coming on 4 December, just expansions.

I've played MMORPGs for over seven years now and I can only remember one expansion I was excited to see: EverQuest 2's The Shadow Odyssey.  I was looking forward to the tradeskill instances where groups of players worked together doing carebear-type crafting work in addition to a lot of cool crafting and harvesting items.  I was even able to get my own unicorn as a mount.  But long time readers of the blog will know that problems with the launch of The Shadow Odyssey combined with issues concerning the shard system caused the implosion of my guild and I left EQ2 and made Eve my main game. 

I don't want to say that CCP shouldn't put out expansions.  I like the different login screens every six months.  But the changes never really affected me and the way I play.  Retribution, with the changes to Crimewatch, will be different, but in a bad way.  I think traveling around low-sec is about to get a lot more dangerous, which means carebears like me will stay in high-sec.  The only reason I'm not going to go to high-sec at the expansion's launch is that I am not going to let CCP turn me back into a high-sec carebear without a fight.  That's right, I am not in low-sec looking for PvP.  I'm in low-sec engaged in some serious PvD (player vs. developer) action.  The fact that CCP is enlisting the help of hundreds, if not thousands, of players in their effort to drive me back into high-sec just makes the war to remain a low-sec carebear tougher.

So perhaps my lack of excitement about Retribution is a good thing.  I only tend to move when I get my hopes up.  Now I need to continue preparing for the upcoming war.

The Digital Dozen: 30 October 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 28 October 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played	+/- %
1	1	World of Warcraft	45.1	43,767	-13.1
2	2	Guild Wars 2	29.3	28,450	+8.3
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	4.6	4,451	-1.4
4	7	Metin 2	3.5	3,366	+15.0
5	4	Aion	3.5	3,365	-4.6
6	5	Lord of the Rings Online	3.2	3,108	-10.0
7	6	Eve Online	3.0	2,874	-9.8
8	8	APB: Reloaded	2.2	2,153	-0.7
9	--	The War Z (Alpha)	1.5	1,482	--
10	10	Planetside 2 (Beta)	1.4	1,403	-14.7
11	9	Need For Speed World	1.4	1,365	-24.6
12	12	Vindictus	1.3	1,266	+4.0

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 122,597  

The number of hours spent playing MMORPGs by the Xfire declined for the fourth consecutive week, declining Sunday by 4.8% compared to the previous Sunday.  Of the games not in alpha or beta the biggest gainers were Metin 2 (+15%) and Guild Wars 2 (+8.3%).  The games seeing the biggest drops percentage-wise were Need for Speed World (-24.6%), World of Warcraft (-13.1%) and Lord of the Rings Online (-10%).

The Expansion Crash - This week saw a typical example of what currently happens after an expansion.  For subscription games the big declines in player interest take place about 4 weeks after an expansion's launch as the first month ends and players begin to unsubscribe.  World of Warcraft followed that pattern with the number of hours played declining by 13.1% as the Mists of Pandaria reached the 30-day mark.  

The Zombie Apocalypse -  The zombie survival game The War Z is now available to play.  Xfire considers the game an MMORPG so the game makes the list.  The web site lists the game has having alpha support which makes the game the first alpha to make the Digital Dozen.

Metin 2 - Metin 2 is a free-to-play that has hung around the middle of the Digital Dozen since I created the list back in February.  This week saw the game reach the #4 position on the basis of a 20% bonus promotion when buying ZP, the cash shop currency.  The promotion lasts until 7 November so the 11th, the first Sunday after the promotion ends, will show if the promotion leads to a lasting player gain.