Tag: EVE

Holiday Gaming Goodies

The holidays are finally rounding up, and with it hopefully a little more time to write here on MmoQuests as well as NomadicGamer. I’ve settled into a semi routine with my gaming and I’m happy for that. What am I up to at the end of 2010? Nothing all that exciting, but I’ll list it in any case.

Rift – Today the 3rd Rift beta starts and runs until the 31st of December. Chances are if I were participating in it a lot of my time will be spent there.

EVE Online – I’m also three days away from flying an Orca – my dream hauler. I can’t afford one quite yet but I know that will come with time. I can’t wait to fly one of these. Ever since I got my hulk and saw my friend David flying on I’ve wanted to be able to fly myself.

WoW – I haven’t been playing in the Cataclysm zones (80+) all that much. Both my priest and my warlock are at a comfortable 82 and I’ve been working on their crafting skills as well as playing lower level alts on the opposite faction. I have been having a great time with the new quests in “vanilla” WoW. I just finished Redridge mountains on my paladin and I thought it was really well done, gained a few levels even though the quests were gray and worked up my enchanting skill. I’ve been enjoying the slow walk towards 85 and I mean it’s more like a crawl than a walk. I’ll get there eventually. I’ve unlocked and completed two dungeons (Throne of Tides and the one in Blackrock) which were quite fun. Healing PUGs is always stressful but I’ve enjoyed the challenge.

Sims 3 – This game continues to hold my attention in a big way. I wish there were less bugs would be one of my major complaints. It feels like EA just likes to push expansion packs out the door and rarely fixes any of the issues that they come up with, so it’s all about me dealing with bugs from a few expansions and packs that they’ve sold. I really enjoy and appreciate the amount of options we’re given in game, and though at times it feels a little “too real” for a video game there is enough humor to keep me trucking along finding out what happens next.

Neverwinter Nights 2 – This game was on sale at Steam for $10 including two expansion packs. I own NWN but haven’t played in ages, and while I have heard there was a lot of bugs at launch for NWN2 I decided why not, and picked it up. Still a few hours left to go on the patcher, but it should be a few hours of fun none the less.

As pictured above I also got a brand new Logitech G700 gaming mouse for Christmas, and so far I’m really liking it. The fit of the mouse is perfect to my hands, and unlike my previous razor, I can very easily hit the buttons and what’s more important to me – feel the buttons while I game. I found with the razor it was impossible for me to hit the buttons because they didn’t exactly stand out to me. I don’t want to fumble along the mouse or have to look down in order to hit them. Fully programmable with different profiles, I’ve already set one up for WoW. My attempts at learning WASD are going alright. I’ve completely unbound the arrow keys as movement keys in all of my games so that is at least forcing me to use them. I own a Steelseries merc keyboard which has a special gaming pad section on the far left that emulates the WASD keys as well as a few others. It’s not something I’m used to quite yet, but my right wrist is MUCH happier with the new set up.

How about all of my wonderful readers, get anything new and shiny for Christmas? Any new games on your horizon? Let me know in comments!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Flying a Noctis, 8 days from an Orca #EVEOnline

I absolutely love the new Noctis I’ve been flying around the skies of New Eden. I spent some time fitting it with the following:

Salvager
Salvager
Salvager
Tractor
Tractor
Tractor
Tractor
Tractor
10mn micro
Large shield extender
Exp cargo hold
Exp cargo hold
Signal amp II to increase locking targets from 10 to 12.
Medium salvage tackle x3

It salvages like a dream, and even more exciting is that I’m only a few days away now from flying my dream ship, the Orca. I still can’t quite afford one yet but if I keep at it I should be able to shortly after I can fly one. I really miss having my 2nd account in times like this, so I can fly a mining barge around while my Orca hauls. I know I’ll get a lot of use out of it none the less, and as each day passes by I get more and more excited.

I still haven’t taken the Helios out for a ride yet, I have to be in the right mood for that one. I’ve been working on my manufacturing and invention on a daily basis, but I’ve been letting PI slack in the background. Spending so much time setting up my extractors each day and unloading my items (another reason I want the Orca, I tend to fill up quickly when I unload all my planets) is a little daunting, and I’d much rather spend my in-game time doing something else. Maybe I’ll get back into the mood for it, we’ll see.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Ok EVE, You Got Me #EVEOnline

I have been spending quite a bit of my game time playing World of Warcraft, mostly due to Cataclysm releasing and the majority of my friends heading out that way. On Thursday I received an email that was tempting me back into EVE Online – and by Friday I was hooked again. To start things off CCP removed the learning skills that players could obtain in game. These skills were a bit redundant they explained, spending time learning skills so that you could learn other skills. I never gave it too much thought but in the end it made sense. They reimbursed players for all of the skill points spent which in my case was 400,000 or so. Not exactly a huge amount compared to some long time players but still enough for me to get a little giddy over.

In that email it was also mentioned that I could activate my account for free for five days. Everyone loves free stuff, so why not. On top of that offer came a new ship, the Echelon which is also equipped with a Sansha Codebreaker, specifically for Incursion. Tempting me first with the return of skill points, then free days, and a free ship was concluded by offering me 60 days at $20, and by that point my will was broken.

Pictured above is my brand new Noctis. This ship is a bulk salvager and I spent some time yesterday fitting it and training the skill required to fly it. Then I took it out for a spin and I have to admit, I am LOVING this ship. It runs smooth, quickly, and it does its job incredibly well. I headed out to asteroid belts which are typically filled with trash from hulks passing through killing rats on their mining runs and made quick work of all the materials floating around in space. While some players may not care too much about salvaging I tend to pick up every piece that I can because they’re incredibly handy for making rigs.

My ship collection is growing by leaps and bounds and I couldn’t be happier. I am now 9 days away from flying an Orca, that’s what those skill points went towards. I’m still 100,000 ISK away from purchasing one of these enormous ships, but I’ll get there eventually, not to mention actually fitting one. This ship has been my ‘dream ship’ for a while now, and I get giddy thinking about how close I finally am.

The Dominix is my ship of choice for PvE encounters, and with the completion of some drone skills I’m ready to take on harder missions. I just need to find the time (and a mission giver some place close to me). With my ship collection so far including the Hulk (mining), Helios (scouting), Noctis (salvaging), and Dominix (PvE) I’m feeling pretty happy. There are always more skills to learn and that’s the point of a never-ending MMO cycle, but I feel as though over the last few months that I’ve played I’ve finally come to a ‘comfortable’ point in game. I enjoy crafting and invention as much as ever, and I think I’ve finally gotten a grasp on a little more than the game basics. Of course I say that and then read a “real” EVE post and get as confused as I did on day one, but it’s all in good fun.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

What Are We Waiting For #LotRO #W101 #WoW #EVE

It seems to be the time of year where we’re all waiting for things in our various games. The only exception (for me personally) at this time is EQ2, which has been abysmally quiet. The server merges have not taken place and aside from the push of the market place there wasn’t even a celebration in game for Thanksgiving. I suppose technically we are waiting on Frostfell to begin, but since this is a typical in game holiday I’m going to exclude it from the list. So. What are we waiting for?

LotRO – the November update which is (I believe) scheduled to take place today. This is going to introduce tasks, a whole slew of crafting changes (including farming), a barter wallet, class consumables, new mounts, new dye, and numerous other changes and goodies for players. Personally, I’m excited. I’m not a fan of the new shop window that will appear in the crafting panel and I’m not fond of how games are pushing their stores towards players who already pay the monthly subscription fee (it should be omitted if you have a subscription imo) but in F2P games this seems to be the new norm.

EVE – Incursion. While the really cool bits like the new character creator and sansha incursions won’t begin until January 2011, there are changes happening before then as well. (Scheduled at this time for November 30th). The learning skills are being removed and any points you’ve spent towards them are being reimbursed. There are new story line courier missions. There are numerous UI changes, camera changes, and ammo changes. New ships are being added. There is another patch coming just before Christmas which has very little details, and then the major incursion changes in January. Excited? Of course!

WoW – Cataclysm. Releasing December 7th we have already been privy to a whole bunch of changes. It would be impossible for me to list them all but a few that stand out are the class / race combo changes, hunters being able to tame foxes, lower level dungeons having the quest NPC’s added to the actual zones instead of you having to track them all down, of course there are the actual zone changes with the Shattering. Living through a cataclysm is great. It’s certainly not the first time one has taken place, but I do enjoy the entire world changing. There were new factions added and players have been busy dungeon grinding to raise them up. With those new factions came new mounts, and lets not forget the awesome Plants vs. Zombie tribute sunflower pet where you actually have to play a version of plants and zombies in game.

Wizard 101 – Gardening. Tipa has been posting her progress on the test server and I have to admit, it looks like fun. While I don’t play wizard 101 nearly as often as I’d like, I’m still a fan of the game and its unique combat style. I love seeing these types of updates, and I’m interested in diving right in and starting my own garden. I still haven’t even checked out Celestia, or any of the worlds after Krokotopia (Marleybone, Mooshu, Dragonspyre) but that is more of a lack of time then anything else.

The holidays are just around the corner and most of these games will also be adding some sort of winter update (including pretty much every single other MMO out there). I tend to avoid the real life holiday crowds as much as I can (I was diagnosed with  agoraphobia and it makes things difficult) and look forward to partaking in these virtual celebrations. Of course much of the month will also be taken up with family festivities so you may see a dip in posts, but I’ll do my best.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Keeping You All In Game #MMORPG

Krystalle made an interesting point to me a few days ago about EVE Online – the PI (planetary interaction) that I had been doing on a daily basis is the games way of keeping me logging in every day. I hadn’t even made the connection until she said something, but she’s absolutely right. I set my extractors once a day so that they’re mining on 24 hour rotations. It’s easier then checking every few hours (another option) or every three days (the longest option). Sure, I also have to log in to update my training queue but that could be anywhere from a one day update to a 25+ day update. It doesn’t require you to log in every single day. If I want to take advantage of PI (which I do, the money is just too good to pass up) I need to make sure I’m constantly working on it.

Typically I am not a fan of daily events. I dislike being ‘forced’ to play a game every day when I am perhaps not in the mood for it. WoW has these quests in spades with a limit of 25 ‘daily’ quests that you can complete (per day). EQ2 also has daily quests for mission zones (which require a group) as well as weekly and daily crafting quests. LotRO has daily faction quests (specifically crafting factions). These little things that pull players into the games on a regular basis can some times be so small that we barely even notice ourselves doing it, but they’re there.

What I’d like to see is more inventive ways of (for lack of a better term) coercing your players to log in every day. Sure, daily quests are great but they’re starting to get very old. Being obligated to log in is not how you want your players to view your game. You want them to be excited. On the flip side I do think that these daily quests work because I feel bad if I miss a day and I try to make sure I get my ’rounds’ done and if they didn’t work I doubt we’d see so many of them. Festivals are another method of grabbing the attention of players and enticing them to log in, as well as live events. If you add too many of these they become meaningless and players will just ignore the festivals.

Does anyone else have other suggestions or ideas of how games can entice players to log in on a daily basis without it feeling like an obligation?