Scattered
My mind has not been terribly with me these last few weeks. I've got a good hold on the new direction I want Chosen II to go, but can't quite seem to generate the energy to consistently work on in. I'm sure this is at least partly the fault of Eve Online. I've stayed away from MMORPG every since I screwed up and let me Ultima Online account die (a good thing), but decided lately that some sort of online game would be a good distraction. Tried City of Villians and quickly discovered it was a complete waste of time. Decided there was no way in hell I'd join the global geek community on WOW, so I found Eve Online. This game is everything an SF game should be. Since Oz is such a major brownshirt, he'd probably dig this game. Tens of thousands of planets, only one massive server (the only MMORP to use a supercomputer), and hundreds of skills. The only thing it is missing to many of the MMORP crowd is a personal touch. You spend all your time in a ship and only ever see your characters face on the character sheet.
I've been playing a couple months and have varied between complete enjoyment and indifference. Suffice it to say I've like it enough to get two accounts so I could have to different types of characters. You can have three characters for each account, but you can only develope one at a time. One guy in the online corporation I belong to has six.
Anyway, there are two things that keep me coming back.
1) the utterly freeform play aspect. There are mission available and such, but you don't have to do any of them. There is money to be made by killing rats (npc pirates), kill pirates (pc pirates) for sometimes huge bountys, mining and refining, exploring, you name it. Fascinatingly libertarian world. There are even PCs running a weekly lottery.
2) player based economy. SWG could only dream of this level of player based economy. The system only provides base bpo (blue print originals), asteroids for raw materials, and rats to kill for some bounty money. Every other item and ship is researched, built, and sold by players!
Anyway, it's a huge waste of time but I'm hooked for now. Most nights its only a few minutes to log on and change skill development, but lately i've fallen in with a group that is trying to move into what is called 0.0 space, or the deadliest of the PVP (player versus player) zones. I've gotten a reputation as a devil-may-care type so I'm tasked with the exploration. I do have the knack of escaping and talking myself out of nasty situations, so what the hell. Anway, if you're interested, you can check it out at eve-online.com. The game is actually almost four years old and continues to grow. Client download is free, as is a two week trial account (the first taste is always free).
On the home front Patrick went back to school after 'winter break' finally. He was developing an attitude anyway. I love the hell out of that boy, but I dread the onset of hair and yelling. Joy continues to hate her job. She's in a zone of acceptance, but we've lately considered an option that might involve her being able to leave that sort of work for another. All I'm going to say is that it would involve a surgical procedure.
We bought a new trailer last weekend! We fell in love with our old pop-up trailer in Indiana. I got it for like $200 and rebuilt it myself (Joy helped with the canvas, of course), and was bummed when we left it behind in the move to Texas. Well, I got a super x-mas bonus from my job ($1500!!!! almost fell over) and found a similarly priced trailer in Austin. What better present for the family than camping fun?
So we went through a minor drama that ended up in my Wrangler having a trailer hitch and the turn signals no longer working (don't ask). The plan had been for Joy's Cherokee to be the primary towing vehicle, but she has a customized bumper and Uhaul got cold feet.
Anyway, we went down on Sunday last to check it out and was quite impressed. It's a 1996 Skamper pop-up. Its in excellent shape compared to our old one, but obviously a ten year old RV. We could camp in it now if we wanted to (a big improvement, it took me two months to make the old one usable). There are only three little areas of maintenance. A small hole in the canvas in the front, a broken door lock, and a missing hatch over the front storage compartment. All told its about two hours work on the weekend. Now I can't wait to go camping when the weather improves, which down here is about a month. Usually by mid February the weather is in the 60's to low 70's. Whoot!
Well, that's all that's going on. My new years resolution was to spend a little less time online, and a little more typing.
I've been playing a couple months and have varied between complete enjoyment and indifference. Suffice it to say I've like it enough to get two accounts so I could have to different types of characters. You can have three characters for each account, but you can only develope one at a time. One guy in the online corporation I belong to has six.
Anyway, there are two things that keep me coming back.
1) the utterly freeform play aspect. There are mission available and such, but you don't have to do any of them. There is money to be made by killing rats (npc pirates), kill pirates (pc pirates) for sometimes huge bountys, mining and refining, exploring, you name it. Fascinatingly libertarian world. There are even PCs running a weekly lottery.
2) player based economy. SWG could only dream of this level of player based economy. The system only provides base bpo (blue print originals), asteroids for raw materials, and rats to kill for some bounty money. Every other item and ship is researched, built, and sold by players!
Anyway, it's a huge waste of time but I'm hooked for now. Most nights its only a few minutes to log on and change skill development, but lately i've fallen in with a group that is trying to move into what is called 0.0 space, or the deadliest of the PVP (player versus player) zones. I've gotten a reputation as a devil-may-care type so I'm tasked with the exploration. I do have the knack of escaping and talking myself out of nasty situations, so what the hell. Anway, if you're interested, you can check it out at eve-online.com. The game is actually almost four years old and continues to grow. Client download is free, as is a two week trial account (the first taste is always free).
On the home front Patrick went back to school after 'winter break' finally. He was developing an attitude anyway. I love the hell out of that boy, but I dread the onset of hair and yelling. Joy continues to hate her job. She's in a zone of acceptance, but we've lately considered an option that might involve her being able to leave that sort of work for another. All I'm going to say is that it would involve a surgical procedure.
We bought a new trailer last weekend! We fell in love with our old pop-up trailer in Indiana. I got it for like $200 and rebuilt it myself (Joy helped with the canvas, of course), and was bummed when we left it behind in the move to Texas. Well, I got a super x-mas bonus from my job ($1500!!!! almost fell over) and found a similarly priced trailer in Austin. What better present for the family than camping fun?
So we went through a minor drama that ended up in my Wrangler having a trailer hitch and the turn signals no longer working (don't ask). The plan had been for Joy's Cherokee to be the primary towing vehicle, but she has a customized bumper and Uhaul got cold feet.
Anyway, we went down on Sunday last to check it out and was quite impressed. It's a 1996 Skamper pop-up. Its in excellent shape compared to our old one, but obviously a ten year old RV. We could camp in it now if we wanted to (a big improvement, it took me two months to make the old one usable). There are only three little areas of maintenance. A small hole in the canvas in the front, a broken door lock, and a missing hatch over the front storage compartment. All told its about two hours work on the weekend. Now I can't wait to go camping when the weather improves, which down here is about a month. Usually by mid February the weather is in the 60's to low 70's. Whoot!
Well, that's all that's going on. My new years resolution was to spend a little less time online, and a little more typing.
posted by Falconsword at 10:32 AM
1 Comments:
I actually played EVE Online for a bit. It has some interesting innovations, like the skill gain system. I probably didn't get hooked for the reason you mentioned, the lack of "personal" identity and interaction, plus when I tried it I was playing SWG also.
I've since kicked the MMO habit... though I am signed up for the Age of Conan and Lord of the Ring Online betas.
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