Rough Galaxy
Kind of enjoying my time off, been staying away from forums and DevART because they are shit. Lots of handymen have been round this week, fixing up our new conservatory. Kinda handy that I'm around to oversee stuff while my folks are working. We have an entire new room bolted onto our house, just about fully furnished now.
Torchwood
As entertaining as it is silly. This is throw-away pop trash, I think my enjoyment of this new Doctor Who spin-off would be compromised if I was forced to think of it as an "adult drama" (which is what its supposedly been marketed as), its just far too silly - and yes, that was Professor Moshimo from Robotboy who got half of his face transformed into a cyberman.
Eve online
(Mummy) Couldnt find it in the shops so I ended up downloading it from the official site. I dont even know why I even considered paying for the CDs. Really, I'm only playing this as a stop-gap until ST:O comes out in the year 2036 and to fill the void created by me becoming bored with Space Wank and that 3D thing I was doing.
Eve Online is a gankers paradise. A sort of space trading/combat game, (imagine Frontier: Elite II only as an MMORPG) the game caters to a variety of playing styles, whether you like to be a miner, explorer, bounty hunter, corporate CEO or whether you just like to fuck shit up for everyone else as much as possible.
I'm still finding my footing and learning stuff. Ive mined a few asteroid fields, flew a few mission and fought a whole load of NPCs but theres a whole bunch of other things I've yet to mess with: creating or joining a corporation, researching and manufacturing my own technology, it seems the sky's the limit. Strangely, I haven't actually had an in-game conversation with anyone. Theres IRC chatroom type thingies you can access in-game but I dont actually think you can fly up to someone and start talking to them with like, chat bubbles like in WOW. Of course, this doesnt matter - because everybody I have ever met in an online game apart from my bro and my cousin has been a worthless tosser.
Observez-vous les pics:
I took a few screenies of some of the baddies because their ships are cooler. Generally, baddies use the same ships that players can buy, only theyre darklyer coloured and have "eviler" glowy-bits. I think one of these pictures is upside-down, which goes to show how unconventional some of the ship design is. Windows/cockpits dont necessarily go on top of your spaceship anymore. For the most part, you'll be shooting at a little red cross waay off in the distance. The distances are so great you rarely get this close while fighting. The amazing graphics arent wasted though. You can zoom in on any selectable object and whizz the camera all around it. I'm still finding cool new stuff every day. I must mention how good the music is too. Its the kind of ambient synth stuff that suits this genre perfectly. (Some of it sounds a bit like Mesh.)
This is my current spaceship, kind of a cross between a jet engine and a B-wing fighter, pictured from the front. If there was some sort rulebook on how to design spaceships, these guys threw it away. Everything is asymmetrical, particularly the Gallentean stuff (my federation) This can be both good and bad - while the visuals refreshingly dont look like theyre copied off anything else, some of the ships are just downright fugly.
Combat is strictly stat based. There seems to be little need for maneuvering your ship as all weapons so far seem to have 360 degree firing arcs. You have an advantage if you can attack your enemy from outside the range of his own weapons, but that seems to be the only consideration you need to make with regards to flying. Its still the same old "your blaster does 16.3 damage" bullshit that we've seen time and time again and as skill training takes only time, rather than effort or skill, its the person who has played the longest that will generally come out on top. I'm still a newbie but I can already hold my own against NPCs classed as "extremely deadly" yet an experienced player kills me in one hit from 1000km away (approx 200 times the effective range of my weaponry). On the bright side, the time-based skill training means that my character can still be progressing when I'm not playing.
The economy is player maintained. When youre selling your asteroid chunks in the market, youre actually selling them to another player (someone who needs the resources but recognises how boring mining is) Im not too clued up, but I think that once youve worked your way up the corporate ladder you can just sit in your HQ all day maintaining your business, paying your lackeys to do the work and making money. (does this really constitute gameplay though?) New content is added all the time, If a new piece of technology is invented, the players then have to research it and manufacture it. (I think)
Piracy is interesting. If you want, you really can be a complete bastard and just kill everyone, rob and steal and live the pirate life. It looks like you can grind faction with the NPC pirate corps too if you want and theres a skill called "criminal connections" you can train. In high security (ie boring) areas, theres are armies of NPC police ships who will defend you if another player breaks the law by attacking you. In the low security areas though, anything goes. Ive seen pirates hanging around space stations so I assume that they can access the market and all the space station services like any other player - which is fucking stupid. If theyre known bad guys, how come they can just waltz into civilised space without the cops doing anything?
Rather than commit crimes that could benefit them in some way, (ie track a convey of valuable goods and ambush it, take over a poorly defended system) the main piracy tactic I've observed so far is to get the best ship with the biggest guns, form a gang with like-minded players with similar kit and camp next to a stargate, taking pot-shots at any noob who comes past before they have time to react. Because pirates are pussies. Strangely, I managed to warp through a pirate blockade unharmed but was shot down when I foolishly warped back to see what they were doing (thinking that I could lurk out of range and then get away if they threatened me) Hilariously, my ship was destroyed in one hit but three of the cunts couldnt catch my escape pod as it jetted back to base.
-And that brings me to dieing. Replacing lowbie ships is easy enough. You can buy insurance on them so you actually get a payout should you be shot down. You only lose stats if your escape pod is destroyed and your character killed, in which case he/she is reborn as a clone. You can buy clones whenever you want, more expensive clones retain more skill points when you die. I havent actually been "podded" yet, but monitoring the area where the pirate blockade was yesterday, it looks like a lot of unfortunate people were.
Other player will usually announce pirate activity on one of the channels, and you can monitor where players are being shot down on the map screen. As it turns out, I could have plotted an alternative course that would have avoided the pirates. That brings me to the horrendous travel times though. You can warp across systems in a flash, but traveling to other systems via the stargates takes forever and is suicide-inducingly dull (and mining is too). Unfortunately, with the threat of piracy, its best not to play in afk mode.
Its another one of those MMOs thats more like a job than a game. You have to persevere through so much unbearable crap to get any sort of reward. If you do become a renowned chracter, the rewards must be pretty great, because there is only one EVE server. The entire EVE community will know you, not just the portion who plays with you.
Just like real life, you only get out what you put in with EVE online, so if you dive in with both feet, absorb the games setting and intracasies and try to make a valuable and productive contribution to the gameworld with your friends, then EVE is the game for you. As the developers themselves say, you make the fun. They only provide the tools with which to do so. However, if youre a normal person, you probably wont get on with this.
* Disclaimer: The game is incredibly deep and complex and I am still learning it. Some of the assumptions and discriptions I have made may actually be innaccurate. Consider these my "first impressions" rather than a review or description of the game.
The daily (yes, daily) server maintainence happens to coincide with Billy and Mandy, so Ive been watching a lot of that lately. She loves Billy so much.