Invasion Imminent

Some of this might be redundant from what I talked about in Blood Fields, but I have points that I want to expandon a bit further than what I went into their.

I reached Renown Rank 54 on my Knight last evening, and made some headway into 55. Invader gear is right around the corner, I just need to make talismans for it all now. I’ve been playing the Knight almost exclusively of late, and it has been incredible fun. There are most definitely times when I miss the relative killing power of my Shadow Warrior, but most of the time, I’m just happy to be alive, useful, and a more versatile tool.

Unlike most Knights, I don’t run around with a shield. I carry my claymore with pride, and my group is glad for it, because the extra damage I bring sometimes means that healer is going to drop, or that MDPS is going to need to pay attention to me. I said it elsewhere, but I wish that shields were more effective. I far and beyond prefer the apperance of the KotBS with a shield over a two-hander. The designs and looks of the kite shields are just incredible. Detailed and rendered in motifs of flames and skulls that really stand out above almost anything else I’ve seen in this game. I’d say, that the shield is probably a small reason I started playing one. If only they would get used in PvP…

Screenshots

I wanted to post up a series of screenshots taken from EVE. So, for visual stimulus, continue reading.

Eve: Day 3

Ezekeil Rage, Log Book, Day 3

The meeting turned out to be rather dull. Merely some mid-level commercial exec by the name of Unash, looking to hire another hand to do some probe reconnaissance for anomalies and maybe some mining. In particular, she had requested to speak with me due to the state in which my ship arrived, her excuse was that my condition made it clear I could come out of a tight situation, but the subtext was clear. I was in a bind, and needed to get any work I could if I wanted to have any hope at life. The little information she had gathered on me, she took from what she made clear had been garnered from the transmission codes my ship sent to the station upon seeking refuge. Maybe I’m too cautious, but there was no chance I was going to show my poor hand to a potential employer, so I accepted her deal, and left for my quarters to await repairs on my ship.

Too cool

Ever want to discover a worm-hole? Yeah, that’s one more reason why EVE is so freaking cool. On a plus side, it works out well that I chose exploration as my first career type, and CCP releases a new video on how to better explore with probes the day after. Someone up there must love me.

Content, who has it?

I’m going to edge in on a Friday blog fight to artificially inflate my traffic.

The long and short of this whole ordeal, is that Tobold doesn’t seem to count anything as content unless developers put it there, crafted by hand. Syncaine and evizaer seem to disagree. Syncaine uses the argument that Tobold said he would (for the most part), while eivzaer systematicaly counters the base assumptions and premise to refute Tobold’s claims.

EVE: Day 2

A bantam frigate

Edit: For some reason, my intro keeps getting deleted anytime I throw captions into an image and then edit my text later. It’s baffling me, and quickly approaching the level of pissing me off. 

In any matter, yesterday I continued my winding, treacherous route up the hill that we call the learning curve of EVE. After finishing the “crash course” tutorial, you’re given the option of talking with any of a set of agents who will give introductory missions on typical careers in the world of EVE. I went against the grain of my typical ways and chose exploration for my first lesson. The missions were definitely different, no combat, or enemies, no mining done as of yet. It was purely a go-see type of situation, with one where I grabbed some evidence. For all my “work” I was awarded with a low-end Tech 1 frigate, some isk, and some drones. I have a feeling that my next mission is going to have me getting my hands a bit dirty, in that I’ll actually launch some probes, seek out anomalies, and harvest the crap out of them. We’ll see, but it should be interesting. My plan is to do as many of these career tutorials as possible to build up a good starting fund of isk, and a strong handle on the game itself. 

Relatedy, I found a really cool app for my iPhone called Capsuleer. It lets me keep track of where I am, how my training is going, how much isk I have, and what my skills are. There’s a lot of other little features like server status, blog updates, and some buttons that are greyed out to me still. I imagine for bounties I take, or other similar thigns I have yet to experience. I can see it being a great tool for any player already, as I can see that the server must have gone down last night, and because of that, I’m no longer training any skills. 

Keg End 2009

The live event for Warhammer started yesterday. For those who were around this time last year, it will be familiar, as the celebrations and the holiday are the same. Keg End has returned, and brought with it all the drunken debauchery, frantic release of fireworks (which I’ve oddly not seen any yet), and inebriated, whole-sale slaughter of everything that you would expect from a holiday in the world of WAR. This years live event tasks seems particularly easy to achieve than previous events. Mostly it consists of a lot of /boast’ing to enemies (dead AND alive) and /toast’ing of allies. Of course there’s the requisite kill X numbers of the enemies, and a few side track missions to cross out the other bullet points required to get the event item.

Of course, maybe that’s why I feel a bit lackluster about this event, it’s been boiled down to overly simple tasks that most anyone could finish in just a few hours play time. Maybe that was the intent, to give all of us winter gamers an easily reachable goal in the hectic heart of the holidays. Intended or not though, it feels somewhat disappointing to me, as I was looking forward to an event as spectacular as the events we’ve had earlier this year. We didn’t need a repeat of assassin’s marks, or masks of awesomitude, but something on the same level would have been good. Still, I can’t complain too much, the refurbished Black Fire Basin has come back, and it’s freakin’ awesome how it is now, if you’re not camping the enemy spawn that is.

EVE: Day 1

This is what my first frigate looks like.

I’m going to try something mostly different for me. I’m thinking about writing my impressions of the days in EVE from the perspective of my character. A bit of roleplay, if you will. I know very little of the actual history of EvE (EVE? eVe? which is it!?), so I’m sure I’ll be way off in some bits of it, but it’s all in good fun. Maybe I’m just in a roleplay mood lately, what with my earlier letter to Sigmar and all that. I didn’t accomplish a whole lot yesterday, basically did the crash course all the way through, bought the “Learning” skill book, and queued up a lot of skills to plug away at. I’m hoping to get out there and do some missions tonight. I will say, the new tutorial is a lot more user friendly than it was even earlier this year, so props to CCP on that one.

Ezekeil Rage, Log book, Day 1

The first noise I remember hearing was an annoying, sharp beeping. It’s persistance and level was one that could not be ignored no matter how willfully my mind wished shut out the unwanted intrusion. With a soft groan, I rolled onto my stomach, palms flat against the deck of my ship. Exerting sore muscles, and protesting joints, I pushed myself up, and swung a knee forward to provide balance. As I lifted my head to look around the compartment, my still-blurry vision slowly registering the reality of my situation.

Underdog

Adam Gershowitz briefly explains the underdog system. As he says himself, it’s a simple system. I’ve remained mostly quiet on the system itself, not really having a fully realized opinion on the matter yet. It seems like it can be a good thing, but I can also see it being nothing more than a speed-bump for the dominating side, as opposed to an actual boon to the losers. Honestly though, I’m okay with that. If they could just get realm balance down, the underdog system would be far more beneficial I think. Anyway, have a read of it if you have somehow missed this news.

The Garden of EvE

Gorgeous.

I really, really, really want to play EvE. Like, for real-real. I gave it a go a while back, and it was fun, but the getting-to-know you part was massively involved. I was also completely besoten with WAR at the time, so giving any other game serious attention was outside of the picture for me. I want to play a SciFi game. I want a sandbox. I want PvP. All of these things are possible in EvE, and I never stuck it out because I was afraid of always being behind the curve, as well as fear of being a complete and utter noob all over again. Still, it’s a space based game…