The family and I spend a bit of time playing Minecraft. One way we spend that time is on Testertopia, a realm server we can access via Switch, Windows 10, iPad, Android… whatever. Just lately, we found an ocean (finally), and after battling it out with some Guardians for control of an ancient ruin, we […]
Category Archives: MMO & Computers
Dungeon Raiding 101
Had a fun evening that ran a little later than expected, doing something I haven't done in a long time. Or ever, depending on how you look at it. I did a group dungeon run in an MMO. Haven't done that in a long time. I did it with two of my kids, so… yeah. […]
MMO I am Interested in: Project Gorgon
A few interesting bits: A video they did for a kickstarter, but NOT to make the game – to add stuff to the game that already exists – (The kickstarter is over – I just linked it because the video is funny.) Their page on Death Penalties. (Dying gives you special XP you can use […]
Random Update: What am I playing?
I’ve accidentally taken a fairly long break from gaming, whether you are talking about table top or computer games. The last thing I played with any kind of regularity was the Infinite Crisis MOBA, with Kaylee, over the summer. When that game’s cancellation was announced, it kind of took the wind out of my sails […]
Wildstar Tabletop Gaming, by way of FAE/Jadepunk
“You should do a Wildstar game,” opined my daughter. “Sorry?” Her comment confused me, both because Wildstar is an MMO and because I was distracted at the moment due to the fact that we were both playing Wildstar at that moment. “Like you did with DC Universe,” she explained. “A Fate version of Wildstar. That […]
Life in Eve: Pretty Good Weekend
Like most ten-year-olds, EVE celebrated its birthday on the nearest weekend (just past), rather than the actual date (today), in order to maximize the fun. I’m pretty glad they did. My mom-in-law’s in town, the kids had a cool brass concert to go to, I’m wrapping up a bunch of MFA projects at the moment, […]
Life in Eve: Illustrated Thought for the Day
Life in Eve: April Fools
April got off to a rocky start, so I wasn’t really sure how things would look as the month wrapped up. Let’s review. After a really, really excellent March, our hunger for good, challenging fun led us to take a lot of fights we probably should have avoided. Adrenaline withdrawal had set in, and the […]
Life in Eve: You Play How You Practice – Putting the Play into Practice (4/4)
Whew. Okay, let’s see if we can pull all this musing into some kind of coherent plan for missions. There’s a lot here, so let’s boil it down. Here are the parts of the topic already covered: Part 1 and Part 2 talked about the fundamentals of PvP in Eve (as broken down by Ripard […]
Eve Forever
I have trouble explaining to my non-Eve-playing gamer friends what it is about the game that I find so compelling. It’s everything. It’s one little thing. It’s that other little thing that I love, except when I hate it. It’s the people, because they’re awesome. It’s the people, because they’re horrible. It’s… complicated. I’ve been […]
Life in Eve: You Play How You Practice (3/4): Stages of a Mission
So let’s continue this conversation about how to create new PvE missions in Eve that are more engaging, interesting, and just generally “better” by applying the fundamental rules of PvP as explained by Ripard Teg over here. This is the last the of “mapping” posts; the final post will give examples of the kinds of […]
Life in Eve: You Play How You Practice (2.5/4) — Answering Questions and Comments
The last couple posts have attracted some good questions and feedback, and raise some points I want to address before I move forward. The questions came in from all over, however, so apologies if I don’t attribute the questions to the right speaker in all cases. Narol Decyg: I would personally LOVE for missions to […]
Life in Eve: You Play How You Practice (2/?)
So here’s the premise: PvE mission content in Eve comprises some of the weakest PvE content in any MMO, and is inarguably one of the weakest, least-fun parts of Eve itself. PvP in Eve is pulse-pounding, adrenaline-dumping, heart-beating-like-sneakers-in-a-clothes-dryer stuff. We can improve the PvE in Eve by adopting some of the fundamental guidelines of PvP, and in […]
Life in Eve: You Play How You Practice (1/?)
When I first started playing Eve in earnest (which does not count the attempt some seven years ago) I went through all tutorials (this was only a few years ago, right after the new avatars, but before Incarna, so the tutorials weren’t as utterly terrible as they had once been), then did the Sister’s Epic […]
Life in Eve: Same War, Different Front
“So this is a done deal?” CB sprawled across my couch, watching an animated children’s show on the main display screen, the sound either muted or piped directly through his Aura VI interface. “Pretty much,” I sat at the desk, tapping my way through a briefing document that I should have sent out several days […]
Life in Eve: Junkies
March was a really, really good month for our corporation. By most any standard, it was the best month the corp has had since it was formed, and aside from the dry statistics, there’s the more interesting fact that we had gotten fairly well-known in the warzone. “Props to you and your guys, Ty,” […]
Life in Eve: Voting for CSM 8
The elections for the eighth Council of Stellar Management (the CSM: a group of players elected to represent player interests, face to face, with CCP) are coming up, and I wanted to talk about them a little bit; something I haven’t done with past CSMs. Does the CSM even matter? One of the common threads […]
Live in Eve: March in Review
So with March in the bag, I thought I’d look back and see how the corp did, both in terms of killboard statistics as well as the harder-to-track but far more useful non-metrics of mood, morale, and accomplishments. Corp Numbers Our ship losses for march were pretty much the same as February — just breaking […]
Life in Eve: Local is Fine, and Here’s How to Fix It.
First, a brief background, for the non-EvE players: Like most MMOs, Eve has a number of text-based chat channels built into its user interface. The ones likely to see the most use are whatever corporation and/or alliance you’re part of, any player-made channels created for specific purposes or interests… And Local. Now, to the outsider, […]
Life in Eve: Gambit Roulette
Regardless of the game, I’ve never been particularly drawn to stealth classes. Rogues, Burglars, Assassins… you know the type. The long setup. The slow creep. The careful maneuvering. The final violent burst of action that was, for all that, almost anticlimax to the preparation that got you there. I could do it well enough. I just […]
Life in Eve: Tys R Us, now open in Sinq Laison and all points East
So about a month ago, it became evident that the pilots in our corp would need to get into replacement ships often, and probably in a hurry. It also seemed as though, while all the pilots were pretty smart at building interesting ships, sometimes we didn’t need ‘interesting’ as much as we needed ‘good and […]
Life in Eve: In Like a Lion
I want to say the month really got going when we got the escape pod with a set of low-grade Slave implants. Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice surprise, but it’s not as though that was a particularly tough fight. It’s pretty hard to catch a pod in low-sec — the guy clearly […]
Life in Eve: Post-February Grab Bag
No time or inclination to put up an organized post, so instead you get a bunch of random stuff I’ve been meaning to share. February was our corp’s second-highest kill total since the corp was formed. Only December (when we were part of Ushra’Khan and involved in many fleets violently and constantly clashing over […]
Life in Eve: Jesus Wept
Tormentor, Inquisitor, Fed Navy Comet all in system. All in different complexes. All with the same ship name. Hmm. Tormentor’s complex is hell and gone away, so I warp over there, hit the gate, and engage. I figure I have time to respond if both his buddies come, and maybe just the inquisitor will come […]
Life in Eve: Losing While Winning
This is one of those blog posts that says “I haven’t been writing about playing Eve very much, because of how much I’ve been playing Eve.” So, yeah. Pretty much that. Despite Em being out of town and Shan being pretty busy and Dirk and me both dealing with the academic tsunami, the corp has […]
Eve Online: The Point of a Frigate
I don’t much care about my character’s (or my corp’s) killboard (the term for API-powered websites that list and analyze your PvP combat statistics in Eve). It is (and I hope always will be), something that’s inadvertently and unmindfully produced as a result of my play — just something that happens, not something I play […]
Life in Eve: Heavy Hangs the Head
This bit of reflection came out of a (sadly) half-finished conversation with Dave and Margie, where we were talking about my time with Faction Warfare in Eve, and their time playing Ingress. The Minmatar/Amarr faction war zone has been a little crazy the last few months. Amarr units have been on an organized tear, capturing […]
Life in Eve: I really should remember to buy insurance
I’ve been back for a couple weeks, but what with all the hijinx in the wormhole, and leaving our alliance, and rejoining faction warfare after leaving the alliance, and moving our assets around, and even doing a bit of recruiting, I really haven’t had time to actually… you know… fly around and do fun things. […]
Life in Eve: The Perfect Storm
“Okay guys,” I said over voice comms. “I’ll be back in ten days. Don’t lose Isbrabata while I’m gone.” I really should learn not to joke about things like that. Now, to be fair, when I got back from my residency, the Alliance had not lost Isbrabata… lots of people had done a lot of […]
Life in EvE: Year in Review
My actual anniversary with Eve doesn’t come for a few more weeks, but I’m going to be away from home and very very busy for most of January, so I thought I’d do this little retrospective now rather than much (much) later. January 2011 marked my return to EvE. I’d decided to give it another […]