Me too! Me too!

This is like filling out those questionnaire that fly all over social networking sites, but screw it. I’m sleep deprived and don’t really care. Blame Rivs (or whoever this person is if you want to follow the blame-chain). All you WoW bloggers look the same to me.

The Holidays

I’ve been back home with my family for four days officially today. It’s been an interesting three nights, with a baby who apparently has her nights and days mixed up right now, but it’s a fun adventure so far. Lots of diaper changes, bottoms wiped and bottles emptied. I haven’t been able to spend too much time playing anything at the moment, I’m discovering first hand why there are so few new parents in the gaming community, or why those who have children disappear for extended periods of time. Holding an infant and playing an MMO or console game is impossible. TV is the far prefered activity, due to its passive nature and (literally) hands-off interface. On the plus side, I’m getting to watch Season 7 of “24” and already made it through the first three episodes since yesterday.

Jack Bauer, you’re still my hero.

Newb

Last night my first child was born. It was a long and difficult labor of 12 hours for my wife, only to end in a cessarion section. Archer Gail Karstaedt came into the world at 1:53 AM, just shy of 7 pounds and 20 inches. Due to some minor complications, she is being observed in the NICU, but no serious problems are expected. I’m working on less than four hours of sleep and doing thus from my iPhone, so I’ll give you more when I can. Say hello to my daughter.

Eve: Day 8

Ezekeil Rage, Log Book, Day 8

If my life before now was as a miner, I don’t know how I got through it. It consisted of the most god-awful tedium I can imagine. Don’t get me wrong, the lead-up is interesting. Sending out probes to hunt a system for anomalies, adjusting their settings and repositioning them almost seems like an art form. Finding a myriad of results and chasing down the one I want feels like solving a puzzle. But then I arrive at the asteroid, and all conscious thought ceases.

I flip on my mining laser, open the cargo hold, and let the computer sort and pull in the bits of ore it deems fit.

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.