War’s End

It occurred to me, as I play through these two Betas – ok well one trial and one beta, that I hadn’t gotten around to telling you what happened to end our little war.

The day after that whole double cross went down, I logged back in, to do some mining and moneymaking so that I could restock my lost ships.  I was greeted with a host of corp mail that came as a bit of a shock.

 

The corp that had war dec’d us had withdrawn it – the war would actually be ending early.  On top of that, our corp leader had received mail from their corp leader:  they would be setting us to blue and had invited us to participate in pvp ops with their crew (we got invites into their fleet organizing channel a few days later as well).  With the mail came praise for our “coolness” and skills.  We had – impressed them.

In the days since then, though I have not been able to talk with the ones we battled that night to confirm this 100%, our understanding is that it was not a planned double cross.  It was more along the line of “OMG I’m going to lose my Faction-equipped Sleipnir to a bunch of noobs, come help quick!”  Yeah that Sleipnir out there, turns out it didn’t have anything on it that didn’t start with “Republic Fleet.”  They had clearly underestimated us, and it did not want to pay the price.  And…I can’t blame them really.  That Sleip had to have been worth over a billion ISK with the gear that was on it.  If that had been me, I would have been screaming for help too, deal or no deal!

In talking it was probably the best thing that could have happened.  Remember our corp goal?  Provide weapons and ships to low sec pirates – be a sort of black market arms dealer?  Well, with a little investment and a week of war, we have accomplished that with one of the bigger pirate corps in the area.  And as we do some pvp ops with them, that blue status will hopefully begin to spread.

To celebrate, we spent all day the day after the war closed mining and rebuilding.  My wallet is at pre-war levels, and the only thing I’ve lost in net is trading down from the Apoc to an Armageddon, and that was my choice, not because I couldn’t have had the Apoc.  Well, I still need to rig the Geddon as well, but still, a small price to pay.  The next step is to grab either an Assault Ship or an Interceptor and do some pvp ops.

The hesitation – and the downside of this?  We may find that its not a good thing to be the buddy of the biggest bully on the block…

What Drives Gamers Nuts

Follow, if you will, the sequence of events here, especially those highlighted in RED:

SilverElf4,You have been added as part of the last wave of Alganon beta testers before its launch on October 31, 2009. Your MyAlganon account “SilverElf4″ has been upgraded to have immediate beta access. You don’t even need a beta key! Simply login to your MyAlganon.com account and click the “Beta” button to get instructions on how to download the client. Once you are finished downloading, installing and patching the beta client use your MyAlganon login account name and password to login and play the Alganon beta.

******************************* 

Greetings,

 

I received my invitation to the last round of Beta testing before launch and was very excited.  I have downloaded the client from http://www.myalganon.com but when I run the client and put in my account name and password, it tells me that the information is invalid and will not download the installer.

 

I’m not sure what to do.  I used the same account name and password as I used to access the page with the beta client as supplied in the email.

******************************

Hi, 
 
In regards to your issue of not being able to download the client, we’d like for you do try and manually re-enter your beta key again on MyAlganon. To do this go to you profile page, scroll over My Account and select Enter Key. Right now, this will take you to a purchase page, so you need to click the “Already Purchased Alganon? Click Here to enter your game key” link found just about the Billing Information section. Enter you key and try downloading the installer again. Let us know if this works for you, and if not let us know and we’ll go from there. 
 
Regards, 
 
[censored]
CSGM 
Alganon 

 

Yeah…so I forwarded that original email.  That was about 30 hours ago…still no response.   Contrast this with Fallen Earth, who hit me up with multiple emails back and forth within 24 hours.  My issue is now resolved and I played the game last night (more on that in a later post).   Meanwhile, Alganon, who issued me this invite on Saturday, has emailed me once in 4 days, and has not resolved my issue, and indeed seems to have revealed a deeper issue. 

My only real question is – how does this happen?  Is this a case of game developer specific “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” syndrome?  Different departments not talking to each other, etc?  Does that also explain the poor response time as well?

Betas Galore!

Just a quick note. I’m doing Fallen Earth now, which while its technically not beta…it basically still is. And I got an invite on Saturday to participate in the last round of Alganon Betas before its launch.

And I’m sad to say, despite having had the FE client for 4 days, I’ve yet to be able to play the game. But kudos to theirs support team for their timely responses and aid, even if there is no end in sight to the bugs I’ve encountered.

Alganon on the other hand, needs to get its stuff together. As of this morning, I still can’t even download the client. And I haven’t heard back from their support team *at all*.

More on EVE and the ultimately bizarre and yet awesome conclusion of our first war dec later on.

Fallen Earth: What kind of game is this exactly?

One of these things is not like the others.

 

Snagged one of the free 15 day trial keys for Fallen Earth today.  My brother bought the game at the beginning of the week and has been loving it and gave me a head’s up.  As its been patching today I had a few minutes to skim the patch notes.  And I begin to wonder exactly what kind of game this is…

How exactly would one equip….nevermind, just…nevermind…

Double Cross

First off, an apology.  I didn’t get a single screenshot last night.  In my defense, I was too busy getting absolutely pummeled.  Basically, this is how last night went:

Basically, everything they did this week thus far was a lie, to get us to go to sleep so that they could issue a full fledged beat down.

We had a Sleipnir and Taranis off station, the usual camping duo, and had been working on fits to take them down.  We had it down on paper when they both logged.  We told them we were ready, but they demurred in the face of wife aggro (so they said).  We took the ships out, and our one T2 pilot brought his Sleipnir out and we tried out our tactics.  We were wrapping up and docking up for the night when the Taranis pilot reappeared.

She was impressed at how quickly we were adapting, and hovered just outside our range on station, so we knew she was calling in the troops.  We stayed close by to see what they would bring, eyes on the gate into system.  Sure enough, another Sleipnir appeared.  We all docked up except our newest pilot, in his brand new Hurricane, who somehow, and I’m still not clear how, got himself  aced and limped back in his pod (I *think* he had warped off and was trying to warp in at 100 to catch the Taranis, without telling us what he was doing, and arrived, unfortunately, about the same time the Sleipnir did).  That blew our setup to hell and we had to go back to the drawing board, all with them doing their usual friendly but still irritating smack talk.  Our new pilot (as in, less than a month old) asked if he could collect his loot.  Up until now this had not been a problem with them, but suddenly it was.  In addition, a Scimitar had shown up, and they were complaining it was five to three.   Our corp leader, being diplomatic and contining the friendly banter we had been engaged in all week, offered to fight 3v3 if they let our rookie have his gear back.  They dumped his gear just outside the dock and we took a minute to finalize our plan before we undocked in unison.

It was their Sleipnir, Scimitar, and Taranis vs. our Sleipnir, Megathron, and Prophecy.  I was going to bring my Apoc, but the truth is my skill set now lets me squeeze more DPS out of the Prophecy.  The strat was simple – the Sleipnir was fitted with its usual autocannon compliment – and three heavy neuters.  The Mega had its usual rails – and a hold full of ECM drones.  The Prophet had its usual pulse lasers - and  a tracking disruptor.

It worked like a charm.  The Taranis went down in a blaze of glory within 60 seconds.  She got enough of the ECM drones before she popped to allow the Sleip to lock onto me and start pounding.  We shifted to the Sleipnir, and his shields started dropping fast.  My Prophecy was in armor, but he was so locked down that he wasnt able to shoot at me again.  And thats when all hell broke loose.

An Ishkur undocked from the station, flown by one of their pilots, who apparently had docked it there beforehand when none of us were on, and he was waiting in a neutral alt for the signal.   He crapped all over the ECM drones in no time flat, and the double cross was on in force.  I called my brother out but their wasnt much the Rifter could do other than draw fire.  With the ECM off, the Sleipnir started pounding me again and I didn’t last long.  I docked up in a hurry, not certain how far the double cross was going to go (we had refrained from podding during the war by mutual agreement).  I was pissed as hell though, and the Apoc was undocking 30 seconds later, about the same time a T2 fitted Thorax from their corp joined the fray.  We pounded the Ishkur down, but we knew it was a lost cause and decided to bail.   The Mega went down finally and I couldnt quite finish off  the Ishkur before I died.  I tried to warp off, because we apparently had either confused or damaged their only remaining tackle device, but somehow I had drifted into the station itself, and battleships do not unstick easily.  I tried to dock but I was scrammed and webbed and for some reason, when I hit the docking button it gave me the “your being squeezed out, it will be another 30 seconds before you can dock again” – (thats twice now this week and EVE glitch cost me a ship).  It didn’t take long for my pod to go.

Just when we thought that maybe theiy weren’t griefers after all, just a corp that liked PvP, they taught us another invaluable lesson.  I’d warn you off, but even putting their name here would be too good for them.  Local chat was…difficult.  With griefers, if you complain too much, they get off on it, and then we get another week of war dec status.  If you say nothing, they get pissed, and you get another week of war dec status.  So we tried to be proud and gracious and not too sore about it.  But it was hard.

There were some bright spots though.  When I undocked the Apoc, I became the new primary, and so our corp leader’s Sleipnir managed to escape.  And both my ships were insured.  Don’t get me wrong though, it hurt.

My Apoc, Dead by Sunrise, was fully rigged, and no insurance payout will cover that.  And since I don’t have a JC, there went my +3 implants, all five of them.  But, we fought hard, and we did the best we could with what we had, and we made sure they understood that, because that will probably be the only thing that keeps us from getting griefed again.

The good thing about EVE though, is that unlike other PvP games I’ve played – trying to “be a hero” does have its rewards.  I didn’t have to undock with my pride and joy, and I was the only guy who lost two ships and got podded.  I went all in and laid it all out there for my corpmates, and they are saying thank you – the corp leader is building me a new Prophecy in return for saving his beloved command ship, and my buddy is giving me a spare set of +3’s that he had acquired from storyline missions, since he has a JC and uses +4’s these days in his non combat clone.

I’m still not sure what to make of the evening though, both tactically and just in terms of my feelings.  Alot of that may have to do with the fact that I laid it all out in another sense too – I’ve only had three and half hours of sleep.  So perspective may not be soon in coming, at least not until I get a chance to sack out.  On the bright side, I don’t really need to log in the next two nights until the war dec is (hopefully) over.   ‘Cuz I don’t really have any more ships to lose!

Mid War Update

Well I’d like to tell you about the glorious battles and all, but we haven’t had any you see.  Where to begin…

First of all, while some of the people in the corp may be griefers, the truth is we’ve gotten along well with a number of them, chatting in local and exchanging good fights and so on.  It became apparent on the first evening what a mismatch had been set up.  Your talking about a guild with 42 on its rolls  to our 15 (good rule of thumb I’ve learned for EVE – divide corp membership by two to determine how many active pilots are really there).  In addition, pretty much all of the one’s who have been blockading us in our home station can fly and equip T2 pvp craft.  That list for our corp includes two, and one of those is me, and while I can fly them,  I can’t (for the most part) fit T2 weaponry on them, so…

Been seeing alot of these lately? Chances are, you're at WAR!

So the first night, about 8 of them sat outside our station, complete with command ship, interceptor, and several battlecruisers and ECM type ships.   We fed them a few frigates and at least two battlecruisers, but it was clear how one sided it was.  Later that night though, my brother and I caught the interceptor pilot napping alone outside our station.  We undocked at the same time, side by side Rifter and Punisher to see what we could do, but I wigged out and redocked.  Why?  When I hit F1 for guns, nothing happened.  And when I looked bottom right on my screen…they werent there.  I panicked and docked, thinking I must not have put them back on from when I was playing with fits earlier and cursing myself for the mistake.  But they were on!  For some reason, the icon for the guns was buried on the second row of icons, three deep into it.  Shift-F3 basically.  I got back out just as my brother’s Rifter went out in a blaze of glory.  The interceptor pilot, seeing me emerge again, warped out.  Leaving his two T2 drones behind.  I had just finished dusting the second when he returned.  To his credit, he didn’t run but still went toe to toe with me.  To my credit, I had him to about 10% of his structure left when I popped.  I was webbed and scrammed next right next to the station though, and I docked my pod before he could complete the kill.

GF’s were exchanged in local, and I haven’t seen that pilot since.  I think he was thinking the same thing my brother and I were…if I hadn’t had a bizarred EVE malfunction, he would be dead, and we would had had some bragging rights for bagging him.

Since then, the station camping has been sporadic, and often in chatting with them, they will back off their T2 behemoths and fit out T1 frigates, cruisers, and battlecruisers, and we will go out and have 1v1 or 2v2 battles.  They’ve won more often than we have, but the experience for our corp, well, I’m not sure you can put a price tag on it, because it has been invaluable for us to begin to get live-fire pvp training. 

All of this has led me to a conclusion though – I badly need a jump clone if I wish to continue doing this.  I have +3 implants all around, which aren’t too bad to lose, but enough to make me wince.  My standings the current NPC corp we mission for hover around 5, and my next in game goal is to get them to 8 and get myself JC capable.  This is interesting for me because really its the first in game goal I’ve set for myself that didn’t involve money or flying a new ship.  That’s a refreshing change of pace…I like it.

Gearing Up for War

We got War Dec’d this weekend by the local griefers club. I’ll do what I can to keep you updated on the war effort, but I don’t want to give any free press to the griefers, or give anything away in our own efforts.

To clarify, anyone, including the group that war dec’d us, is welcome to play the game anyway they want to. And that includes me and how I’m going to be playing in the weeks to come…

The Ghost of a Game

One of the great oddities of MMO’s that we are perhaps only just now experiencing is this – what happens when an MMO dies?

SOE created a Matrix Online scrapbook of sorts in memoriarium.

The Shadowbane site is gone it seems, but the Wiki lives on, preserving the lore and information of the world.  (What a grand PnP RPG setting that would make!)

But one game I’ve come across several times now, and only just realized this week that it was dead.  Kaput.  Belly Up, Servers Down.

Dark and Light.

I don’t know much about the game other than what I have been able to glean from Wikipedia and some random news archives, but basically the game suffered from poor developer communication and in house business partner fighting, and was thus dead before it was really ever unveiled.

Of course, other games have suffered like this and yet still continue to stumble onwards.

Hello? Oh God, where is everyone? Everyone's lost but me...

But what is amazing about Dark and Light’s site is that there is no announcement, news release, or indication that the game is completely and totally dead.  You could navigate the site, read all about it, even download the client, only to find that it would repeatedly fail to connect.  And then you might check the forums and poke around a bit and then notice that its actually…you know, dead.

Apparently you can still play around solo in the demo world, but the game is so buggy even that might not happen.  I’m tempted to do it anyway though.  God knows why.  I mean, I like exploring, but that would be sick and twisted right.  To download a dead game’s client just to ride around in the dead world solo.  Alone.   Nobody in their right mind would do that right?  Right?

…I need some kind of an intervention don’t I?

WWII History Fail

A Real Life MMO

We were on vacation this weekend (kids on a two week fall break) and we took them to the revamped Stone Mountain Park  in Atlanta, GA.    This is probably going to be a long post so the tl;dr version is  this:  I spent time in a kid’s play area that was designed like an MMO, and it blew my mind.

A few years ago, Stone Mountain was taken over by the same company that runs Knott’s Berry Farm over in CA.  As a result, it took on less of a camping/refuge atmosphere and became more of a theme/amusement park area.  One of the things installed was the Great Barn.  Its a giant indoor funhouse, four stories up in the middle, with numerous different activities inside.  And as I sat and watched my kids and my neighbors kids (who had joined us on the mini-vacation) play, I began to see things with my trained gamer’s eye.   The whole blasted thing was one giant MMO.

Okay, we have four people but do we have all four gamer archetypes present?

When kids came in, they were stopped in an initial area where they could create their “farmer,” and get a special wristband that would track their progress in the different activities.  Can we say Achiever anyone?  In the center great room on the bottom floor, visible from just about everywhere, was an electronic sign proclaiming the top ten scoring farmers from each age group.  In that same great room, the “starter area” for the game, there are hundreds of balls (“fruit”) lying around in several different colors.  Farmers can spend time here gathering fruit for the activities, and the wise ones will grab a bag to extend their capacity (I didn’t get a chance to count the number of slots).  Farmers might also explore side rooms for additional fruit and bags, take them from other players, or perhaps speak with those leaving the game area to gather additional capacity.  Thus we complete the first echoes of Bartle underpinnings.

This fruit Economy as it were, is more complex than it might seem.  There are a finite number of fruits in the game, they are required for all the activities, save some of the explorer ones (ahem, slides, climbing nets, and side rooms).  Expended fruit, through a complex system of tubes, vacuums, and nets, are channeled back down to the bottom floor room out in the open and also in less visible caches around the side rooms.  Some of those side rooms are netted and hallwayed off from the main room, providing quiet areas for Socializing via benches and even through exchange of said caches to interested players.  Some Mini Games exist here in the form of small slides and riders for younger players or those who prefer to play alone for a while.  Killers can peg one another endlessly, as well as trying to defend themselves from the veteran players on the second Tier above.

But Dad, its hard to be an Achiever with all these Killers around!

Once one has completed the games and activities on the first floor, and gathered enough fruit for their liking, they may proceed to the second Tier of challenges and activities, either through Challenges such as climbing cargo nets, or via the Rapid Transport System..er stairs, at the back of the room, conecting to the Quest Hub (lobby) of each Tier (floor).  On the second floor, one engage Killer instincts by Bombing players on the first floor, completing Challenges involving expending various color combinations of fruit to gain Achievement points, or engage in the running gun battle with air guns that use the fruit as ammunition on two opposing sides above the open air great room below.  This second floor also allows for Socilization and Trading as farmers find that they need different fruit colors or different skills or even additional players (one challenge involves a crank system that requires cooperation) to play.  Some of the less assertive farmers simply go between the floors carrying loads of fruit for other players, especially those locked in battle (Crafting and Player Driven Economy at its best).  After completing a challenge, if you desire, just scan your bracelet, receiving the points and perhaps a prestigious place on the big board instantly.  Some of these challenges are again hidden in side rooms, requiring Explorers to hunt them down and use them or share their location with others.

On the third level, players are treated to a more hard core version of the PVP battles below, as it is harder to obtain ammunition, and there are less available guns for the players to utilize.  Moreover, slides dropping one down to the starter areas below are clogged not only with PvPers looking for more ammo, but also less hardcore players just looking to enjoy the ride!   Many community service managers are in attendence, regulating the flow on the slides to prevent jams and aiding players who are lost or have a problem.   There are also a few challenge type games here that can be played solo for the biggest point scores, but require more fruit and more complex expenditures of that fruit or more demanding hand-eye coordination to complete them.

A final, smaller area seemed to be available for those who wanted to complete their tour of the entire facility, but carrying my weighty bag of fruit and my one year old, I found that even since their was no Rapid Transport System to that level, I was not able to go there.   Thus it was completed – those with family obligations or too tied to their material goods would find themselves unable to participate in the true end game and…whatever it was that it had to offer.

My kids played for probably two hours in the area, finally giving up only when it closed down and we headed for the famous laser show.  Caretakers/Devs emerged to arrange the balls and bags in strategic positions, helping to reset the economy to accomodate the new batch of players that would arrive in the morning. 

Are we trapped?

As we left, and I continued to marvel at what I saw with a gamer’s eye, I had one  final terrifying thought…what if I had it all backwards.  What if, instead of building a play area for kids, designed like an MMO, instead the MMO’s that you and I played were designed like kids play areas.  Perhaps in the final say, we are not only being treated like children, but we love it so much, we keep coming back to the same Barns, day after day, not really expecting or hoping for improvement, content in the channeled reality with which we are presented.