To PC or Not PC, That is the Question.

Well, not so much of a question really.  Around the start of June I basically stopped gaming on my PC completely, family and real life commitments don't afford me enough time to continue with games that require any time dedication.  Before I dropped off the radar I was still steady in EVE, Sid and Co. chugging along in their intergalactic lives (Sid is around 80mil SP now).  League of Legends occupied most of the rest of my gaming time and I also fiddled around a bit in the revamped APB.  Dropped that completely though after their decision on how to handle old accounts.  WoW had also gone onto the back burner, mainly due to running out of content/progression that was non-raid, and also my mates stopping playing as well.

Since then though, I have picked up a new Xbox 360 (my old one went RROD a few years back) and a whopping 17 (!!!!!) new games.  So yea, I've been steadily plowing through those, as well as re-visiting some of my old games, when time allows.  I've managed to get both Assassin's Creed 1 & 2 to 100% (including max GS from them) and am only missing the MP Achievements from Brotherhood.  There's loads of games that I haven't even put in the Xbox yet and looking forward to.  I'm one of those people that like to focus solidly on a game until I've done everything, it can be a bit infuriating, especially when there's titles sitting there I'd love to jump into, but feel that I need to finish off the game I'm currently on.

Speaking of which, right now I'm working through Fable 2 (Fable 3 might be next), which might contradict my previos statement a little, but I've found that playing MP on Live with all randoms is boring as hell and infuriating.  Need more friends on there to group up with really, bleh!

As said, PC gaming has basically been left behind by me now, though with the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic that may swiftly change.  I've always loved Bioware games and also the Star Wars universe, especially in this time setting.  The prospect of running around with a lightsaber in a world and story designed and written by Bioware is too good an opportunity to pass up I think.  We shall see.

 

Me, AWOL? No Sir!

Though I have been absent for some time, this was mainly caused by being a wee touch too busy with the real world.  Most recently I’ve been working not one, but two jobs (just like buses, you wait for ages for one and multiple come along at the same time) and of course the family.

Game wise I just haven’t had a whole lot of time.  I’ve managed to keep the old skill queue’s running, Sid is now a rather awesome Dramiel pilot (though I’m probably still a bit fail…) while Cav & Kal have been ever expanding in their Science and Industry roles.  Really want to find some good time to get a proper dabble in at Planetary stuffs, but I guess that can continue to wait a bit.  Oh, and the re-customisation was really nice, not too sure about Sid and Cav, but Kal certainly looks great, might have to go back at the other two soonish.

Also stuck my hand into WoW a little bit, more as it allowed me to just pick up something for a short time and have a little fun with no worries about what actually happened than anything else.  Other than that, I continued with a bit of awesomeness in League of Legends on the mighty Mordekaiser, as well as getting into the APB:Reloaded CB and being thoroughly disappointed with the lag.  Quite looking forward to finally getting on the EU servers there as hopefully that will allow me to actually perform properly.

In the near future I’m planning to upgrade my PC a little bit, new Mobo, CPU and RAM are in order, I can live with the GFX card I have though that may need a bump up at some point too.  But mainly my CPU is lagging behind at the moment.  That’s certainly something I want to take care of before Star Wars: The Old Republic comes along (really wish I could get into the Beta for that), I want those light sabers to look spangly!

Well, I’ll keep this short and sweet as I’ve got things to do, but hopefully I can find time to actually keep the blog up to date from now on, instead of squashing 4 months into a few paragraphs….

Back in Space

So, I've taken advantage of the rather handy offer CCP sent through to me, 5 days free activation for 2 of my accounts, though the third will require me paying something I guess, not sure when I'll be able to take care of that though really.

Annoyingly enough, it would appear that the account with most of my ISK on it is the one that hasn't received a free activation email though!  Damn and blast!  Both Sid and Cavindal are active though, so I can get some mining on as well as a bit of pewpew.  Well, actually the first thing Sid needs to take care of is getting the Carrier back up to Empire from Null as apparently the Alliance is disbanding and we're leaving that space by the end of the month.  I've been told that other plans are in the works though, so there should still be more than enough to do that is of interest (but when isn't there in EVE?).

I've also managed to procure a copy of Call of Duty Black Ops, though (typically) I'm one of those folks that is being plagued by a host of problems from "Connection Errors" to the game freezing for a few seconds whilst in menus or a match itself.  That is of course when I actually manage to get it to connect to a server as most of the time it just doesn't let me.  Not impressed in the slightest and I simply cannot believe that Treyarch and Activision have not only released it with such a major issue, but haven't already released a fix for it.

I've tried a fair few that I've seen online, ranging from registry modifications, to editing a plethora of settings in the config file.  So far I haven't found anything that really works or even makes a noticeable difference.  If anyone can offer any pointers on that it would be immensely appreciated.  I really do hope this is something that's fixed pronto, for those of us that are being affected by these issues the entire game is effectively unplayable.

Duty Calling

Call of Duty Black Ops was released the other day and I simply have no chance of getting hold of it for the time being!  It's a really appalling state of affairs I know, and most definitely one that needs to be rectified soon.  All I hear on Vent at the moment is friends gleefully taking down people and chattering on about gameplay modes and map features that I have absolutely no clue about.  Sad panda indeed.

Whilst all that's going on and waiting, I'm still amusing myself in LoL with the mighty Master Yi.  It's getting quite amusing as I approach the higher tiers of play, more and more people are dismissing Yi and completely underestimating the damage he can churn out consistently.  In one match just this morning I was 4/0/0 within 5 minutes simply due to the opponents not expecting the high damage that his passive can apply with Wuju Style active + a quickly activated Alpha Strike.  It's niiiiice.

My account is only at the heady heights of Sorcerer level 17, taking me forever to get higher simply due to time factors.  I'll have to sort out posting something on here about my experiences with Master Yi and the game in general at some point, by that something I'm hoping it will be a legible guide from a (relatively) new player perspective.

The EVE Account reactivation will hopefully be happening soon, I just literally received an email allowing me to activate a couple of my accounts for free for 5 days.  As soon as this new apartment is more settled I'll be taking advantage of that and then chucking a PLEX on them with the funds I have available.  It should be enough unless my memory is completely failing in my dotage.  Quite looking forward to hopping back in my Legion and Archon!

PEWPEW!

Return of the Missing Llama

Long (loooooong) time no post.  As stated in my previous post I am no dead, however real-life issues have being doing their utmost to keep me away from the worlds of gaming and that which is online in general.

This most certainly includes the most recent of developments, which is moving apartment.  My wife and I have found a rather lovely place in the same district in which we currently live, but ever so slightly cheaper and (we hope) considerably cheaper on the energy front.  We shall see.  However we're in the middle of moving now and so that will knock me out of action for that little bit longer I imagine.

Gaming wise, not a whole lot has been going on, other than I have recently added the rather fabtastic League of Legends to my library, it's really good fun, strategic and best of all free to play!  I never really got into DoTa or games of this ilk, however kicking around in LoL as Master Yi is something I find more than slightly enjoyable, and a nice way to pass a good 30 minutes or so.  I've even taken the step of signing up to the ESL and the LoL 1on1 League, should be joining the 2on2 League soon as well, though I'm waiting until after the move to actually arrange any matches and so on.

I am sadly a bit fail at any using any Champion other than Yi, which is something I'm going to rectify in the near future by unlocking and practicing with others a bit more.  A bit less Wuju for me!

Once the move is complete I will be re-activating my EVE accounts (as they will of course pay for themselves with PLEX's) but this and other free to play titles have been sating my gaming needs most recently.

Anyways, I just wanted to make a very short post to indicate that I'm not really A.W.O.L., just....taking care of business.

See you in space soon!

Still Here

Yers, I’m not dead (yet).  Just been looking around at other games and having some conversations that are making me reconsider my previous stance.  It’s been pointed out to me, that when I was a GM for WoW, would I have been able to issue any form of reimbursement without sufficient evidence that proved the game/server was at fault?  The answer was quite definitely a no, but that still didn’t change the fact that I was shafted by the game and it is something I really can’t tolerate.

So what has changed, well, some conversations (including one with my dear old grandfather – though that wasn’t about the game) made me realise that I’d be giving up something, a hobby of mine, that I really enjoy because of my pride effectively.  I’ve had nasty losses and set backs before, and I’ve recovered from those, I’ve also technically recovered from this one with very little work as I now have everything I had before (including the Freighter on my alt) plus a few extra toys too.  Also, I can’t seem to find anything that offers me as much of what I want as EVE does…curses!

So yea, I’m using ISK at the moment to keep the accounts active, maybe I do drop completely, but for the time being at least I think I’ll retract my previous quittage and see if I can’t get over this properly and have some more good (and memorable) times in EVE.

On another note I did have a minute spare today which Kirith helped to use up:

80 words

Typing Test

Good Fight, Good Night!

Well, after rather extensive discussions, and plain old arguments with a GM and Senior GM I’ve been informed that “no fault can be verified by the logs” and thus I have to just suck it up.

Screw that.  As I said before, if it came to this then I would cancel the accounts and give up the game as there is no way I could continue to play with such a bitter taste left in my mouth.  I’ve already cancelled all 3 accounts, though there is about 30 days time left on each, so I’ll probably use that to do stupid things like blow up my Carrier with as much “ISK” inside it as possible.  I’ll be sure to record the event (will take me a while to get it sorted) and slap it up for the giggle.

What to do after EVE though?  I could slip back into WoW again, having worked for them previously my account is still exempt from subscription payments so that’s a bonus.  I know most of the guys I played with before are still there so that would be cool a bunch to kick about with.  Though I’m not sure I’d enjoy the game itself though.

There’s APB, though I’m really dubious about their subscription plans…fun game and the customisation is absolutely awesome, definitely looking forward to this Sunday’s playtest (if I can get on!),

And of course there’s SW:TOR coming up at some point, will have to keep my eyes on that I reckon.  But first things first, I’m going to pay off a couple of debts (in EVE) and then blow up some shinies!

Anyone got any other recommendations for MMO’s that are either out or in the works?

The CONCORD Suicide Prevention Plan

Suicide ganking, is it a problem that needs fixing?  Or an aspect of EVE that should remain in-game?  Considering my recent first-hand experience of it (couple with the client being an utter turd at the time) I definitely want to chuck out my 2 pennies on this subject.

We clearly have at least 3 trains of thought on it, those dead against it who would like to see it prevented, those that thrive on it and want it to remain and those that aren’t really affected by it and so don’t give it much more thought than “Whoa, there’s a lot of CONCORD here right now, what happened?”.  I definitely fell into the first group prior to my own experience of it and that view has only been reinforced since, so in this post I’m going to offer up what I think could be done to prevent it.  If you are pro-SG, then please feel free to leave a comment on why you think it should remain in EVE (or write your own post and leave a link here).

First up my reasons for being against it are quite simple.  As we all know, EVE is effectively divided into three areas, High-Sec, Low-Sec and Null-Sec.  Clearly each of these represents a differing level of safety and security, as well as (I think) an indication of willingness to participate in PvP.

Null-Sec, the place where the only protection you have is what you’ve brought with you, and who you get to call friend.  Effectively completely lawless it is space that is player run and as such is a full on, PvP at any time area, as well as the typical ground for large scale fleet battles.  Dangerous, but very rewarding.

Low-Sec, this separates Null from High, offering minimal security in the form of gate guns, it is still developed enough that most systems contain at least one station.  Players entering Low-Sec are making themselves available for some intense PvP, but with the benefit of being able to dock up at pretty much any time.  Still a very dangerous area to travel (or live!) in, most say the rewards do not equal the risks.

And then there’s High-Sec, being the most secure it offers the best protection with the presence of CONCORD ships patrolling on gates, as well as coming to the aid of vessels under attack unlawfully.  The majority of systems here are developed to a level that you can typically find multiple stations to park up in or even call home and PvP is effectively consensual, with war declarations being required in order to avoid CONCORDs wrath, which at least notifies players that they should be wary if they venture out amongst the stars.

And there lies my main reason for being against it, High-Sec is supposed to be “safe”, or at least where you know when threats may be nearby and that undocking would be a bit of a bad idea.  Here a few things that I think could be implemented to prevent suicide ganking, or at the least aid those should they become a victim of it:

• Implement cargo insurance, this could be done in the form of taking out an insurance policy once your ships cargo is loaded up (any changes void the policy or at least update it), to insuring individual items in a similar manner to that of ship insurance (with a considerably shorted duration of course).  Alternatively it could be implemented into the ship insurance itself as an additional option based upon the capacity (and type) of the ship.
• Allow us to purchase “membership” to some CONCORD assistance group or something (think roadside assistance in real world).  Offering different services depending on the level you subscribe to, from faster response times to them actually repairing your vessel, or even having them take the contents of your wreck and depositing them in the nearest station for you should the worst come to pass.
• Remove the profit from it by locking the wreck to the victim for a reasonable duration of time, preventing anyone else from accessing it.  Of course, this could lead to “wreck camping”.
• Give the “kill right” to the victims entire Corp (or even fleet) and not just the victim, most of the industrial characters that are taken out in this way are completely unable to enact any sort of vengeance anyway and the gankers know it.

Of course there are loads of other methods that could be implemented to make suicide ganking less desirable, to remove it completely or simply just to lower the massively negative effect it has on the victim, these are just a few that occurred to me whilst typing this up.

I also think that if this were prevented we would see more people moving out to, and living in, Low-Sec space.  This would obviously have many knock-on effects, the first being that certain over-populated High-Sec hubs would see a drop in permanent residents.  Also at the moment not many traders run the risk of supplying Low-Sec, but with even more people living out there the rewards would be increased further, tempting traders to run those routes.  This would also then provide these naughty pirates with more juicy targets.

Bit of a wall of text there, sorry about that, and also a bit late posting this as my overall schedule has been royally shafted this week.  Normal service resumes next week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday).

Moar Shinies

I was supposed to stick this up yesterday, but with the wife and kids returning from Romania things were more than a bit hectic so I didn’t really get a chance. Anyway, after the rather abysmal events last week, I’ve gone and got myself a couple more shiny things whilst waiting on a response from a Senior GM.  Not only to cheer myself up a little, but also for “practical” purposes.

First up I bought a couple of things for my Legion, namely a Federation Navy Stasis Webifier and also Ogdin’s Eye Coordination Enhancer (6% bonus to tracking speed).  The latter is not strictly for the Legion, and will help pretty much whatever ship I happen to be piloting when using that clone, but that is the main thing it was purchased for.  This should allow me to take care of any frigates that come in too close and web/scram me when I’m ratting and plexing, it’s quite annoying that prior to this I couldn’t do anything about them and had to wait on someone to come save me from the buggers.

I also nabbed myself a little Dramiel as I love flying small fast ships and this sucker looks awesome.  Been spending quite a lot of time recently piloting my Wolf and enjoying it thoroughly, and although the DPS is somewhat lower (about a 25% reduction) the Dramiel gives me considerably more choice in which fights I take part in, as well as being insanely fast (and therefore fun) for me to fly.

Sadly I’m missing a few key skills at their required levels to do this fit properly (Shield Upgrades 5 will bring the powergrid usage down and I need Astronautics Rigging 4 for the Tech II Rig), so although it’s there in the hangar, it will remain there until that’s taken care of (about 4 days from now).  Funnily enough though, I did take it out for a little spin and manage to bring down a Hulk war target within 30 minutes of owning it whilst collecting the MWD, nabbed his pod too.  And yes, the Gistii A-Type is quite possibly a bit over the top when a B-Type would do the job, but the fit simply cannot be made cap stable and that bumps it up quite considerably.

Also purchased, this time for Kal, was an Orca.  Yes yes, after that Legion business I am broke, having to sell off the Freighter and everything, but I borrowed a little from a mate in order to purchase this and bump up my mining operations with the alts a bit.  It also allows me to haul a load of the ore that I had stacking up (and then the minerals) in quite a lot less time than my Iteron V would allow.  Kal will return to trading soon (the money is too good to pass up) but for now him and Cav doing some nice, relaxed mining is well in order.

So there we have it, this week is looking a bit more positive, now I just need a good response from whichever Senior GM deals with me to at least get that loss of Kals restored, then I’ll be a happy bunny again.

A Proper GM Shafting

That’s what I appear to be getting right now.  For both petitions submitted (as the events took place on different characters) I’m being refused any sort of reimbursement.  Of course CCP are unable to verify that any error occurred in either case and so their view is that it’s tough luck and I just have to suck it up.

I am not impressed in the slightest to say the least.  Were I in a restaurant and the waiter dropped my food I’m pretty damn sure that I would not be paying for the replacement, but that is exactly what I’m being expected to do here.  I know what many will say, if CCP reimburse cases that cannot be verified then that means literally every single case would be reimbursed and the system would be taken advantage of.

I can very much see that myself, and quite honestly I’m not sure how I can prove my client was unresponsive other than with some in depth looking at my clients calls to the server during the time of the incident.  Of course, that’s assuming it was a problem actually with my client and not the communication between client and server, all I know is that my PC was running fine as was the other client running on it.

Regardless of this, I’ve requested that the petition be escalated to a Senior GM.  I would be willing to accept one loss in a day to a game error, but I outright refuse to accept two.  Should this not be resolved satisfactorily then I don’t really see any other choice than to quit the game.  I certainly do not agree with paying to be shafted by the game itself and the support, what happens because of the players is something else, but this is (for me) intolerable.

Especially as the day after these events (Saturday) the two weeks of remaining subscription time on my main account literally went missing.  I’d checked on my subscription status in the morning and so was positive on how much time remained, but for some reason not long after down time I received the message that the account was suspended due to their being no subscription time remaining.  Checking the website showed “0d 0h 0m” and I was understandably very angry about this.

Resolving that issue basically took the entire day, and the support could not offer me any explanation as to what had happened.  Clearly there was something seriously up with something that day, and yet the support doubt that I had major issues with the client the night before.

I have bought yet another Legion though, yes #3 at this moment has been bought, fitted, and is currently being employed to inflict some pain down in 0.0 on those nasty nasty NPC pirates.  Had to sell (temporarily at least) the my alts Freighter, but I really wanted to be flying one of these.  Total outlay at the moment for this, around 2.5bil, which will hopefully be lowered by some reimbursement….I can only pray..