I recently applied to join a SWTOR guild which my friend Faylon has joined. I filled out the template then they asked me to tell them more. I rather liked what I ended up writing, it turned out to be a nostalgic review of a life in gaming. The guild is Rising Darkness, we're European (if Brits are still allowed to say that) and the server we're on is Red Eclipse. Recruitment is closed but will open up again when the game goes Live.
OK, let me expand.
I started gaming with Chess when I was about 4 and graduated, in those pre-home computer days, to crawling over the carpet with a tape measure moving lead armies about.
When I was about 15 video games were starting to become popular. We were supposed to volunteer to garden for old ladies on Wednesday afternoon but often they cancelled or we managed to bunk off and head up to Victoria for the amusement arcade and the magic of Space Invaders. Swarming mob-handed into the arcade, our pockets bulging with 10p pieces, in our school uniforms with our shirts hanging out and our ties loosened and flipped over our shoulders we saved this planet from countless swarms of implacable alien invaders.
In due time much more sophisticated games came out such as Asteroids where you could spin your shooty thing and Galaxian which had more than one colour!
Later in the 80s I worked professionally for a play by mail game company where you could send your panzers into France and patiently wait 3 days to find out how they got on. I got an Atari ST which had sophisticated Dungeons & Dragons style games like Bard's Tale and Dungeon Master. I even logged on to my first MMO, a text mud. All I remember about that game is I met someone who was in frikkin New Zealand. How awesome was that?
In the 90s I stayed with someone who actually owned a proper computer and I fell in love with a game called Master of Magic. I had to have my own computer, life would not be complete without access to Civilisation, Populous, and UFO: Enemy Unknown.
I went on to play online games being quite a mean Homm3 player and a very sociable Diablo 2 player. By this time I'd picked up Faylon at some dingy roleplaying club and he became my partner in crime in D2, achieving the impossible and amazing the people we played with. He once had a character with every possible speed buff that was so fast no one else could control it. Only him. (Until he drove him into a wall and splatted).
After Diablo 2 Faylon, a Star Wars nut, persuaded me to follow him into the new Star Wars game coming out in 2003. I played every class I think, as did any SWG vet who remembers the godawful hologrind. I also ran a fashion armour line that was in high demand, ran a guild, and destroyed the top pvp guild on the server after one of them spat at me (with a little help from my friends).
We tried EQ2 for a few months then WoW which we really liked. We played twin Rogues and were pretty hardcore levelers - there were 6 of us who were ahead of everyone else until about 55 when we slightly burned out (ie reduced our playing times to about 12 hours a day). We managed this despite rushing off to Stranglethorn Vale once every 3 hours for a chest that spawned in the arena there. You needed to win it 12 times in free for all pvp which was enormous fun and utter carnage. Eventually the top Alliance guild focused full time on stopping us at which point we called in a few favours, stomped them and Faylon (Waz as he was known then) became the first Arena Grand Master on the server. I was the second.
We co-founded the top Horde guild and did some raiding in Molten Core. Then we had to stop for RL reasons, came back a bit later and joined another guild which we helped get at far as Broodlord Lashslayer in BWL. Raided on and off after that with several guilds seeing most raid content up to 5/6 Sunwell in TBC and 3/12 Ulduar in WotlLK.
I began playing Eve about 3 years ago too which I like for its crazy stunts and incremental gameplay. I've also dabbled in loads of other MMOs.
At the moment I'm mainly playing Eve but the nice thing about Eve is if you dont have time to play much it doesn't really matter. Skills go up, planets grow cows, datacores accumulate and orders sell. Best of all by not playing you manage to avoid getting blown up.
What I'm looking for in SWTOR is to experience the game to the full. I'll probably level reasonably fast although I'm no longer up for the 16 hour a day playstyle we did in 2005. I love crafting. I like posting on forums and theorycrafting. I'm a pretty good rogue and think I'll get a good handle on the Imperial Agent. I'll probably try alts out at some point. I'm quite prepared to be flexible and help out if the guild needs me to take a different spec, I'm a very experienced healer and a competent tank.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Eve Online: CCP Christmas gift, a tip
[Edited after CCP diddled about with how remaps work]
The best thing to pick is probably the bonus remap. Bonus Remaps now work separately from the standard ones so it can just sit there for years if you like. If at some stage you sell the character it will add value. It could also be valuable for an area of study like Drones (MEM/PER) which don't really match any other skill groups.
If you don't need a neural remap, and are pretty sure you will never ever need one, pick the Aurum so long as you already have the 5500 free AU they've handed out over the last 6 months.
Aurums are quite a cunning choice. Analysis of the clothing market suggests that price tanks for anything that falls under the free AU threshhold (currently 5500). If you take your AU to 7500 and they introduce new stuff or give us more AU you will have access to things only a tiny handful of players can buy. That increases the value of your Aurum, not just the 2k you get as a Christmas present but all the other aurum too.
In other words it's very significant being 2k in front of the pack.
Suppose CCP give everyone 2000 AU at some future point. Going by the figures from this analysis, it would mean everyone else is able to cash in their AU for around 20 000 isk but you can cash in 9000 AU for 66k isk each by selling a Field Marshall Coat for 600k isk.
So you could pick random Christmas gift worth 60m + sell 7k aurum at 20k isk each for a total of 200m
Or you could sell a coat for 600m (slightly less perhaps as a few other will also pick AU as their gift diluting the market).
Still as CCP add more stuff to the store and particularly when DUST launches giving us a new market of players and a load of new stuff anything in the cash shop that is out of reach of the people who just accumulate the free points will sell at premium prices.
The best thing to pick is probably the bonus remap. Bonus Remaps now work separately from the standard ones so it can just sit there for years if you like. If at some stage you sell the character it will add value. It could also be valuable for an area of study like Drones (MEM/PER) which don't really match any other skill groups.
If you don't need a neural remap, and are pretty sure you will never ever need one, pick the Aurum so long as you already have the 5500 free AU they've handed out over the last 6 months.
Aurums are quite a cunning choice. Analysis of the clothing market suggests that price tanks for anything that falls under the free AU threshhold (currently 5500). If you take your AU to 7500 and they introduce new stuff or give us more AU you will have access to things only a tiny handful of players can buy. That increases the value of your Aurum, not just the 2k you get as a Christmas present but all the other aurum too.
In other words it's very significant being 2k in front of the pack.
Suppose CCP give everyone 2000 AU at some future point. Going by the figures from this analysis, it would mean everyone else is able to cash in their AU for around 20 000 isk but you can cash in 9000 AU for 66k isk each by selling a Field Marshall Coat for 600k isk.
So you could pick random Christmas gift worth 60m + sell 7k aurum at 20k isk each for a total of 200m
Or you could sell a coat for 600m (slightly less perhaps as a few other will also pick AU as their gift diluting the market).
Still as CCP add more stuff to the store and particularly when DUST launches giving us a new market of players and a load of new stuff anything in the cash shop that is out of reach of the people who just accumulate the free points will sell at premium prices.
Monday, 12 December 2011
Eve Online: poco wars, part 8
It's 11.24 in London. Which means my targets are tucked up in bed, 3.24 their time if they're around Moscow. Probably too cold to sit up in the small hours at least if their homes are as draughty as mine.
I go to work.
Step 1 is checking if they're on using my contacts list. One is. Not one of the industrial corp that live in the wormhole but one of their military friends. Talking to a Locator agent using my cheapskate tip reveals he's in w-space.
An internet search of killboards doesn't show him as having killed or lost in a different wormhole recently so he could be in mine. (Well, technically his mate's but I've decided now I own a stake in it).
I could be brave and scan down the exit and fly out to high sec to pass around bookmarks but there's no need to. My gameplan is to maximise their risk and minimise mine. If he's really good he'll be sitting by the exit with a drag bubble up and cans scattered around to decloak his opponents.
There's just no need to risk it.
So back to watching TV, as often in Eve the best move is not to move. I'll check again tomorrow night.
I go to work.
Step 1 is checking if they're on using my contacts list. One is. Not one of the industrial corp that live in the wormhole but one of their military friends. Talking to a Locator agent using my cheapskate tip reveals he's in w-space.
An internet search of killboards doesn't show him as having killed or lost in a different wormhole recently so he could be in mine. (Well, technically his mate's but I've decided now I own a stake in it).
I could be brave and scan down the exit and fly out to high sec to pass around bookmarks but there's no need to. My gameplan is to maximise their risk and minimise mine. If he's really good he'll be sitting by the exit with a drag bubble up and cans scattered around to decloak his opponents.
There's just no need to risk it.
So back to watching TV, as often in Eve the best move is not to move. I'll check again tomorrow night.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Eve Online: poco wars, part 7
Ah well, they didn't buy the negotiating in bad faith and destroyed my pocos. Which is a shame. They have, however, put up their own. Which is great.
You see, if the opponent is determined enough, these things aren't really defensible by small groups. I have these guys on contacts on watch list. If they all log off I'll put their pocos into reinforced. When the pocos come out of reinforced what will probably happen is about 10 of them wait for 2 hours to defend while I do something else (play SWTOR probably). Then the pocos will be ok. Until they all log off again and I put them back into reinforced.
So you see the only defence is having enough players that you always have someone online. They could possibly get me if they have characters I don't know about but my assault force is enough that they'll probably need at least 3 to win a fight and once they do that I add them to watch list. In other words they have to burn character names to beat me, once burned I'll never attack when that character is online while I only have to update my pods and get new ships if killed then I'll go back in with the same characters.
Eventually they'll stop defending them. At which point if they're online I'll still wait but someone else, passing through the system might think "hay I can kill this thing" and then do so. If the pocos are coming out of reinforced and these guys are offline then I'll blow them up.
This is the core of asymmetrical warfare. What I have to do is occasionally log on and if I can see my targets are undefended blow them up. What they have to do is always be online all the time forever. Asymmetrical.
Because my target is an industrial corporation who call in favours from friends when they need military power there's a definite limit on how long they can sustain a defensive campaign. Every time I put the pocos into reinforced they have to call in a favour and get their mates to drop what they're doing and come help, help consisting of 2 hours doing nothing.
On the other hand it means I may need to adjust my Eve play. What I've been doing is semi-afk missioning in high sec. However once I antagonise these guys I need to leave them no target. Possibly missioning will be ok, I don't know if it will be possible to suicide gank a battleship if I fit it to run missions while being hard to gank. It's probably best simply to avoid giving any target at all. I might focus on station trading in Eve and other games out of Eve.
Alternatively I could just walk away. But I think you have to do something in a game like Eve other than just farm money. And if I achieve the diplomatic result I want I'll be able to do PI in their wormhole in peace forever. And I can't see how they can stop me harassing them unless they get very lucky and I lose both of the cloaked ships I have in the wormhole as scanners.
You see, if the opponent is determined enough, these things aren't really defensible by small groups. I have these guys on contacts on watch list. If they all log off I'll put their pocos into reinforced. When the pocos come out of reinforced what will probably happen is about 10 of them wait for 2 hours to defend while I do something else (play SWTOR probably). Then the pocos will be ok. Until they all log off again and I put them back into reinforced.
So you see the only defence is having enough players that you always have someone online. They could possibly get me if they have characters I don't know about but my assault force is enough that they'll probably need at least 3 to win a fight and once they do that I add them to watch list. In other words they have to burn character names to beat me, once burned I'll never attack when that character is online while I only have to update my pods and get new ships if killed then I'll go back in with the same characters.
Eventually they'll stop defending them. At which point if they're online I'll still wait but someone else, passing through the system might think "hay I can kill this thing" and then do so. If the pocos are coming out of reinforced and these guys are offline then I'll blow them up.
This is the core of asymmetrical warfare. What I have to do is occasionally log on and if I can see my targets are undefended blow them up. What they have to do is always be online all the time forever. Asymmetrical.
Because my target is an industrial corporation who call in favours from friends when they need military power there's a definite limit on how long they can sustain a defensive campaign. Every time I put the pocos into reinforced they have to call in a favour and get their mates to drop what they're doing and come help, help consisting of 2 hours doing nothing.
On the other hand it means I may need to adjust my Eve play. What I've been doing is semi-afk missioning in high sec. However once I antagonise these guys I need to leave them no target. Possibly missioning will be ok, I don't know if it will be possible to suicide gank a battleship if I fit it to run missions while being hard to gank. It's probably best simply to avoid giving any target at all. I might focus on station trading in Eve and other games out of Eve.
Alternatively I could just walk away. But I think you have to do something in a game like Eve other than just farm money. And if I achieve the diplomatic result I want I'll be able to do PI in their wormhole in peace forever. And I can't see how they can stop me harassing them unless they get very lucky and I lose both of the cloaked ships I have in the wormhole as scanners.
Eve Online: locator agent tip for cheapskates
One thing I've picked up in the recent poco wars is a way to get intel on someone's whereabouts without paying.
Normally Locator agents charge 25k isk. However if the target is in a wormhole the agent tells you he won't be able to trace him before you pay the money.
So if you're in conflict with players and you want to know which of them are in W-space you can do so for free using a Locator agent. Just cancel if he offers to find them for you in return for payment - because that means they're not in a wormhole.
Normally Locator agents charge 25k isk. However if the target is in a wormhole the agent tells you he won't be able to trace him before you pay the money.
So if you're in conflict with players and you want to know which of them are in W-space you can do so for free using a Locator agent. Just cancel if he offers to find them for you in return for payment - because that means they're not in a wormhole.
Eve Online: poco wars, part 6
3 hours to go until my pocos come out of reinforced and I'm scouting the wormhole. The static to high sec has a tengu and a tornado sitting on it with a medium warp bubble. The bubble is just to hold people coming through the hole, it's not a trap for cov ops like the last guys laid. So not as professional a bunch. (If they had caught my cov ops there would have been a realistic chance that I wouldn't be able to find the hole again.)
Still it's a problem. The names of these two pilots are different from the pilots who attacked my pocos the day before last. So there are now at least 6 players involved. It's too many to fight alone.
So I adjust my strategy. It's diplomacy time.
I got talking to them and eventually the guy I convoed managed to communicate I should use Google translate. I did and fired off random Russian. They dont want to put up their own pocos. I offered them 50m for the chance to take my pocos down.
While waiting for their responses (they were very slow) I did some research. The corp that lives there is almost completely pacifist, they have not killed anyone in the last 3 months despite some actions in their own wormhole. Their friends do their combat for them. The friends (the guy I was talking to was ex-Stain, a fairly strong nullsec pvp corp) have taken down 2 poses in the last 3 months and killed a few people. They're certainly out of my league.
However they only defend. Which means that potentially I could just close my PI facilities on the 2 planets I put pocos up at, open new ones at planets that still have the Interbus offices available and continue to ninja PI. I'd have to pay 17% tax but that's still 83% profit assuming average prices for my product. Also these guys won't allow anyone else to move in, effectively protecting me. Tourists are always a danger in a class 1 with a high sec static but no one will live there except some pure pacifists. Also I have all of them as contacts on watch list. So I can fly my PI stuff out when they're not on.
15 minutes to shut down and the conversation has stalled again. Did I mention they've VERY slow at responding. However that may work in my favour. After downtime they'll have to decide whether to kill my pocos or continue the negotiations.
Ah - they've offered 50m for each office. I've agreed. However I expect they'll want paying first which I won't agree to. (Because they'll just keep the money and nuke them anyway, well at least that's what I would do). And if they let the offices go out of reinforced I'll take them down and not pay.
9 minutes to shut down. I've agreed a deal with them and they haven't said anything about wanting the money now. If nothing else is said I think there's a good chance they won't demolish them after downtime. Well 50/50. Which is better than what it was an hour ago. If they demand money now I might try the "wait I need to sell something at jita first" stall.
I'm due to go out anyway in about an hour so no need to log on. They'll have a decision to make - do they kill the pocos or do they trust me to send 100m when I take them down if they leave them?
Ah, trust, there's not enough of it about.....
3 minutes to downtime and he just typed "waiting for the money". I told him "I need to sell something at Jita, on my way."
49 secs to downtime, he just told me "Hurry up". I replied "I don't think I'll get there before downtime".
BING
Server down!
Now I'll head on out for some lunch and to watch a game of football and come back later to see if the pocos survived. If the timers are bugged like last time there'll probably only be 30 minutes for them to be attacked, they may not manage to get it done even if they decide they want to kill them.
Still it's a problem. The names of these two pilots are different from the pilots who attacked my pocos the day before last. So there are now at least 6 players involved. It's too many to fight alone.
So I adjust my strategy. It's diplomacy time.
I got talking to them and eventually the guy I convoed managed to communicate I should use Google translate. I did and fired off random Russian. They dont want to put up their own pocos. I offered them 50m for the chance to take my pocos down.
While waiting for their responses (they were very slow) I did some research. The corp that lives there is almost completely pacifist, they have not killed anyone in the last 3 months despite some actions in their own wormhole. Their friends do their combat for them. The friends (the guy I was talking to was ex-Stain, a fairly strong nullsec pvp corp) have taken down 2 poses in the last 3 months and killed a few people. They're certainly out of my league.
However they only defend. Which means that potentially I could just close my PI facilities on the 2 planets I put pocos up at, open new ones at planets that still have the Interbus offices available and continue to ninja PI. I'd have to pay 17% tax but that's still 83% profit assuming average prices for my product. Also these guys won't allow anyone else to move in, effectively protecting me. Tourists are always a danger in a class 1 with a high sec static but no one will live there except some pure pacifists. Also I have all of them as contacts on watch list. So I can fly my PI stuff out when they're not on.
15 minutes to shut down and the conversation has stalled again. Did I mention they've VERY slow at responding. However that may work in my favour. After downtime they'll have to decide whether to kill my pocos or continue the negotiations.
Ah - they've offered 50m for each office. I've agreed. However I expect they'll want paying first which I won't agree to. (Because they'll just keep the money and nuke them anyway, well at least that's what I would do). And if they let the offices go out of reinforced I'll take them down and not pay.
9 minutes to shut down. I've agreed a deal with them and they haven't said anything about wanting the money now. If nothing else is said I think there's a good chance they won't demolish them after downtime. Well 50/50. Which is better than what it was an hour ago. If they demand money now I might try the "wait I need to sell something at jita first" stall.
I'm due to go out anyway in about an hour so no need to log on. They'll have a decision to make - do they kill the pocos or do they trust me to send 100m when I take them down if they leave them?
Ah, trust, there's not enough of it about.....
3 minutes to downtime and he just typed "waiting for the money". I told him "I need to sell something at Jita, on my way."
49 secs to downtime, he just told me "Hurry up". I replied "I don't think I'll get there before downtime".
BING
Server down!
Now I'll head on out for some lunch and to watch a game of football and come back later to see if the pocos survived. If the timers are bugged like last time there'll probably only be 30 minutes for them to be attacked, they may not manage to get it done even if they decide they want to kill them.
Friday, 9 December 2011
Eve Online: poco wars, part 5
These things were introduced into the game to promote conflict and they certainly seem to be doing that!
My pocos, after surviving the attentions of the high sec griefers, have now been attacked by the Russians who live in the wormhole. It took them more than 3 hours so they have about half the firepower of the other guys (who had 4 oracles). These lot do have a XL ship assembly array in the wormhole so they could potentially have very big ships available.
They wouldn't talk to me unfortunately. Requests for convos were ignored. Still the nice thing about the mails you get is that you get the first person to shoot each time and you get a lot of mails. So I got 4 names. Added to contact and watch list, allowing me to terrorise them when they're not online should they blow up my POCOs and put up their own.
My pocos, after surviving the attentions of the high sec griefers, have now been attacked by the Russians who live in the wormhole. It took them more than 3 hours so they have about half the firepower of the other guys (who had 4 oracles). These lot do have a XL ship assembly array in the wormhole so they could potentially have very big ships available.
They wouldn't talk to me unfortunately. Requests for convos were ignored. Still the nice thing about the mails you get is that you get the first person to shoot each time and you get a lot of mails. So I got 4 names. Added to contact and watch list, allowing me to terrorise them when they're not online should they blow up my POCOs and put up their own.
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