I have declared that from this day forth... Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games shall no longer be referred to by the unpronouncable acronymn "MMORPG", but rather by "MMORG" in the proper sense and "morg" in common vernacular.
I mean if we can tolerate "pwnd" and "lolcatz" then why on earth do we have to stay saddled to MMORPG? Morg, I say!
I love morgs! Long live the morg! Hug your morg today!
Game On!
(morg!)
Monday, July 6, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
Clear Skies
Fan fiction has been around probably longer than copyright. While most of it is bad and some of it is really bad, every once in a great while you come across a really good bit. Ian Chisholm has created two episodes of a show called Clear Skies based on the MMORPG, Eve Online. The story takes some liberties with Eve cannon, but delivers where it counts--a great story.
I have no idea how long Ian and crew spent working on this fan project, but the results are worth watching even if you're not an Eve fan. The basic plot is simple, the characters are entertaining and considering it was all "filmed" with in game graphics between Eve Online and Half-Life 2 (Eve has no human avatars or hallway environments), it's pretty awesome!
The files are too big for me to post. But here's a link to the Eve Online forum post that has the links to download and the mirrors.
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=783871
You can find all the bits of each 40 minute episode on YouTube, but Warner Brothers forced YouTube to audio silence the conclusion of Part 5 / Episode 2 for copyright infringement. So skip youtube and just download off the mirrors. The quality is better and you get to see the whole thing. You'll like it if you just like Sci-Fi. You'll love it if you know Eve Online.
Enjoy! Game On!
I have no idea how long Ian and crew spent working on this fan project, but the results are worth watching even if you're not an Eve fan. The basic plot is simple, the characters are entertaining and considering it was all "filmed" with in game graphics between Eve Online and Half-Life 2 (Eve has no human avatars or hallway environments), it's pretty awesome!
The files are too big for me to post. But here's a link to the Eve Online forum post that has the links to download and the mirrors.
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=783871
You can find all the bits of each 40 minute episode on YouTube, but Warner Brothers forced YouTube to audio silence the conclusion of Part 5 / Episode 2 for copyright infringement. So skip youtube and just download off the mirrors. The quality is better and you get to see the whole thing. You'll like it if you just like Sci-Fi. You'll love it if you know Eve Online.
Enjoy! Game On!
Monday, May 18, 2009
Battlestar Galactica: the Boardgame
So at DoG I got to play my first session of Battlestar Galactica. I bought this game a few weeks ago and I've had my eye on it for long time. Search Google/Youtube for video reviews of the game, there are many and they will probably give you a better idea of the game. I wanted to talk about this specific game session on the blog. In a nutshell, I loved it.
.
Players select characters to play at start up. I went with Giaus Baltar. I was 4th pick. Giaus' special ability is to draw a skill card of any type during a "crisis". This is handy as it guarantees that during my turn I can at least help a little (or hurt). The crisis phase of each player turn is really where all the action is and makes or breaks the final victory. One per game, Giaus can look at any player's loyalty cards to see if they are a Cylon. Giaus gets two of these cards, but in this session, I was not a Cylon.
Players select characters to play at start up. I went with Giaus Baltar. I was 4th pick. Giaus' special ability is to draw a skill card of any type during a "crisis". This is handy as it guarantees that during my turn I can at least help a little (or hurt). The crisis phase of each player turn is really where all the action is and makes or breaks the final victory. One per game, Giaus can look at any player's loyalty cards to see if they are a Cylon. Giaus gets two of these cards, but in this session, I was not a Cylon.
.
The game was wicked cool and did a lot to capture the feel of the series. The pilots kicked cylon butt in space. The other characters threw in support in most respects just like their counter-parts in the series would. I even ended up in the Brig for while. The Cylon attacks were probably the most gripping. Attacks don't end at the end of that player's turn. So the next player draws a new crisis that must be dealt with in the midst of the attack. Sometimes second attacks occur on top of the first. The intensity starts to build. The Humans struggle even in the most cooperative game.
.
In our game the President (Laura) and Starbuck turned out to be Cylons. I actually turned out to be a "Sympathizer" but since the Humans were already fairing poorly, the "sympathizer" doesn't have further negative effect. Having the President turn out to be a Cylon is a pretty rough blow to the Humans. But as it turned out, the Humans just barely squeeked out a victory. We lost a ton of population and morale, but we made the final jump.
.
In our game the President (Laura) and Starbuck turned out to be Cylons. I actually turned out to be a "Sympathizer" but since the Humans were already fairing poorly, the "sympathizer" doesn't have further negative effect. Having the President turn out to be a Cylon is a pretty rough blow to the Humans. But as it turned out, the Humans just barely squeeked out a victory. We lost a ton of population and morale, but we made the final jump.
.
We had 6 players in this session. I think the game would play best 4-5. But 6 is quite doable. Really I think you could do even more. 3 players would make it really hard on the Humans. The challenges don't get any easier with 3 and that means the total contribution each player makes must be higher.
.
The game complexity overall is not too bad. It is far less complex than say Axis and Allies, but certainly several steps above your average boardgame. Avid fans of the series may really like the game, but they will have to absorb some moderately complex rules. Game lovers should have no issue at all. It is a longish game--running 3-4 hours. But unlike other long games that seem "forgone" for the last 30% of the game, BSG is gripping right to the end.
.
For those Wellington readers... We should plan a game-my house--I may even provide pizza. Game On!
Day of Games (DoG) May 2009
I have several posts mentally queued up. But I'll get this one out first. I went to a mini-con in Wellington (Turnbull House) last Saturday simply dubbed "Day of Games" hosted by Sophie (on those blog links in the side bar).
The format of this con was simply to break up the day in multiple 2-hour sessions and lets players and GM's cut loose on anything they wanted to join. It seemed to work out pretty well. I was happy to show up and just go with it.
My first session was playing 3:16 with Sophie and 2 other americans--oddly enough. We had a good time with this simple format game. 3:16 contains about 5 game mechanics total and so plays very quickly, but still captures the feel of a good roleplay experience. I was Tech SGT "Wrench" Turner. We shot lizards in our first "deployment" and then played drug crazed soldiers in training for the 2nd deployment. It was a lot of fun.
In the second session I got to play the game that I really wanted to try, Battlestar Galactica (boardgame). I'll do a separate post on this game. It was very satisfying.
I also got to try another Final Flight game called "Cosmic Encounter". It was good to squeeze this one in to try it. It probably would not make it in to my collection, but I can see how it would have appeal for some play groups. The central theme of CE is negotiation between players. I would see this game being best played between folks that knew each other at least casually. We only had 3 players and that made the negotiation triangle not all that interesting. It would be best with about 5.
Overall, I think the event was a good success. I was happy to see the gamer crowd in Wellington again and happy to get table time with folks.
The format of this con was simply to break up the day in multiple 2-hour sessions and lets players and GM's cut loose on anything they wanted to join. It seemed to work out pretty well. I was happy to show up and just go with it.
My first session was playing 3:16 with Sophie and 2 other americans--oddly enough. We had a good time with this simple format game. 3:16 contains about 5 game mechanics total and so plays very quickly, but still captures the feel of a good roleplay experience. I was Tech SGT "Wrench" Turner. We shot lizards in our first "deployment" and then played drug crazed soldiers in training for the 2nd deployment. It was a lot of fun.
In the second session I got to play the game that I really wanted to try, Battlestar Galactica (boardgame). I'll do a separate post on this game. It was very satisfying.
I also got to try another Final Flight game called "Cosmic Encounter". It was good to squeeze this one in to try it. It probably would not make it in to my collection, but I can see how it would have appeal for some play groups. The central theme of CE is negotiation between players. I would see this game being best played between folks that knew each other at least casually. We only had 3 players and that made the negotiation triangle not all that interesting. It would be best with about 5.
Overall, I think the event was a good success. I was happy to see the gamer crowd in Wellington again and happy to get table time with folks.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Free Willy
Okay, so my major game play has still been Eve Online the last few weeks. One thing that keeps pulling me back to Eve is that it is fairly easy to "play" even when you're not logged in. That is... you can do a lot of things with it offline... I shall dub this Eve Offline. What I'm talking about here are the things that happen with out much online involvement like selling goods, making goods, and skill training.
The market system in Eve is without equal. It easily rivals global economics. There are hundreds of individual markets spread across dozens of regions. Many players make all their in-game credits by simply buying and selling goods without ever moving them. Some buy bulk quantities in one region and then move them to another region at a mark-up.
All the player driven manufacturing is done from stations and complete over time. These "jobs" continue even while you're logged off. Often I'll assemby the materials for a multi-day job and then just kick it off to run. I can wait a couple of days and then go back and fetch the job. Presumably, I then post it on the market and wait for the ISK to roll in.
While I'm logged in for 5 minutes to fetch jobs and post goods to the market, I can also queue up skills to train. Thus while logged off, my characters can happily be making stuff, making ISK, and training for new ships or abilities. I can go off and play WoW or watch TV.
My latest achievement is the Orca. I bought one off a corp-mate who named it "Free Willy"--thus the name of this post. This is a relatively new ship in Eve--offically called an "Industrial Command Ship". It is not a combat vessel in any fashion, but it is a great toy for goofing around in Empire space. The mining bonuses it provides are exceptional. It's hauling capacity is second only to Freighters. But while a Freighter can do nothing beyond haul giant cargo's, the Orca can haul very, very large cargo's, fit various modules, loot cans/wrecks from space, contains a ship maintenance bay, and a corp hanger bay. I am extremely pleased with the ship. In fact, I'm fairly certain that CCP will have to do something to buff up the Freighter now since it is such a complete dog of a ship... dog ship, I say.
I think next I will work on getting better at dealing EM damage--probably T2 Praetor drones. This will allow me to cut through missions for Khanid Royal Navy quicker. Quicker missions means quicker ISK. After this I'm not sure. Maybe I'll work on T2 Rails for more direct damage dealing.
Game On!
The market system in Eve is without equal. It easily rivals global economics. There are hundreds of individual markets spread across dozens of regions. Many players make all their in-game credits by simply buying and selling goods without ever moving them. Some buy bulk quantities in one region and then move them to another region at a mark-up.
All the player driven manufacturing is done from stations and complete over time. These "jobs" continue even while you're logged off. Often I'll assemby the materials for a multi-day job and then just kick it off to run. I can wait a couple of days and then go back and fetch the job. Presumably, I then post it on the market and wait for the ISK to roll in.
While I'm logged in for 5 minutes to fetch jobs and post goods to the market, I can also queue up skills to train. Thus while logged off, my characters can happily be making stuff, making ISK, and training for new ships or abilities. I can go off and play WoW or watch TV.
My latest achievement is the Orca. I bought one off a corp-mate who named it "Free Willy"--thus the name of this post. This is a relatively new ship in Eve--offically called an "Industrial Command Ship". It is not a combat vessel in any fashion, but it is a great toy for goofing around in Empire space. The mining bonuses it provides are exceptional. It's hauling capacity is second only to Freighters. But while a Freighter can do nothing beyond haul giant cargo's, the Orca can haul very, very large cargo's, fit various modules, loot cans/wrecks from space, contains a ship maintenance bay, and a corp hanger bay. I am extremely pleased with the ship. In fact, I'm fairly certain that CCP will have to do something to buff up the Freighter now since it is such a complete dog of a ship... dog ship, I say.
I think next I will work on getting better at dealing EM damage--probably T2 Praetor drones. This will allow me to cut through missions for Khanid Royal Navy quicker. Quicker missions means quicker ISK. After this I'm not sure. Maybe I'll work on T2 Rails for more direct damage dealing.
Game On!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Apocrypha
Okay… another Eve post. About 2 weeks ago Eve released an update called “Apocrypha” which introduced many new game elements. The most exciting of these was the creation of wormholes. These holes potentially link any system to any other system with an uncontrolled 0.0 system in the middle. The concept is development brilliance. CCP can basically change the game rules inside a wormhole system to experiment with new game elements—more on this later. They also re-vamped Exploring (scan probes) to help find these wormholes. Lastly they introduce a new ship type called a “Strategic Cruiser” based on the lost technology now uncovered in the wormholes. Can you see the theme?
The wormhole systems are populated by new bad guys called Sleepers. The systems themselves are considered null security (no rules PvP), but they lack a Local channel. In Eve all “civilized” systems have a Local chat channel that you are forced to join that lets you chat with everyone in that system. PvP junkies complain that being forced in to Local gives away too much info to other pilots in the system. From the Local channel you can see who is in the system and check each pilot’s history and bio. While this gives no information about the ship the pilot may be flying or the location of said pilot, it does tell you when that pilot was created and what security status they are, and their work history. Since raw pilot potential is a function of time spent training skills, older pilots have more potential to be experienced and deadly. Security status tells you if they’ve been a bad boy. Killing other pilots drops your sec status and generally indicates you are a pirate. So the wormhole allows CCP to see what happens when you take local away. Now it used to be that scanning down a ship was very difficult, but read on…
Scan probes have been completely redone. It used to take a base of 10 minutes to deploy a probe to scan a system. So once you saw a bad guy in Local you knew you had a few minutes to hide, dock, or run. In addition, scanning was hard to do and only light combat ships could do it. But that’s all changed. Now any ship can effectively fit a Core Scanner. This won’t scan down a ship, but it will quickly scan down “cosmic anomalies”. These are what the game calls all the special hidden sights in a system and they are typically where you want to be if you are a non-PvP pilot. These spots will be hidden complexes, archaeology sites, or hidden asteroid belts. They are all places to find a profit. Now any ship and pilot can scan these down in seconds. If you happen to be there, you’re easy pickings. The new scan probes have a scan radius of 32 AU… far exceeding what your normal ship scanner can detect. In short, a bad guy can drop on you inside a cosmic anomaly at any time and you’ll have no warning (in a wormhole). This is less than ideal…
Lastly the bit I now the least about—Strategic Cruisers. Why don’t I know about them? Well, anything new in Eve hits the market at ridiculous prices. These cruisers are selling for about a billion ISK. The special feature of the ship is that they are modular with each containing 4 components. These each modify the appearance of the ship. Each race has its own model, thus we have 16 visual combinations per race. This is completely new flexibility for Eve which already has about 100 ships types. Other ships, however, are static in appearance—some ships are “copies” of other hulls with slightly different colour schemes. The new Strategic Cruisers are thus fairly exciting. But until they get cheaper, I won’t see many of them…
The wormhole systems are populated by new bad guys called Sleepers. The systems themselves are considered null security (no rules PvP), but they lack a Local channel. In Eve all “civilized” systems have a Local chat channel that you are forced to join that lets you chat with everyone in that system. PvP junkies complain that being forced in to Local gives away too much info to other pilots in the system. From the Local channel you can see who is in the system and check each pilot’s history and bio. While this gives no information about the ship the pilot may be flying or the location of said pilot, it does tell you when that pilot was created and what security status they are, and their work history. Since raw pilot potential is a function of time spent training skills, older pilots have more potential to be experienced and deadly. Security status tells you if they’ve been a bad boy. Killing other pilots drops your sec status and generally indicates you are a pirate. So the wormhole allows CCP to see what happens when you take local away. Now it used to be that scanning down a ship was very difficult, but read on…
Scan probes have been completely redone. It used to take a base of 10 minutes to deploy a probe to scan a system. So once you saw a bad guy in Local you knew you had a few minutes to hide, dock, or run. In addition, scanning was hard to do and only light combat ships could do it. But that’s all changed. Now any ship can effectively fit a Core Scanner. This won’t scan down a ship, but it will quickly scan down “cosmic anomalies”. These are what the game calls all the special hidden sights in a system and they are typically where you want to be if you are a non-PvP pilot. These spots will be hidden complexes, archaeology sites, or hidden asteroid belts. They are all places to find a profit. Now any ship and pilot can scan these down in seconds. If you happen to be there, you’re easy pickings. The new scan probes have a scan radius of 32 AU… far exceeding what your normal ship scanner can detect. In short, a bad guy can drop on you inside a cosmic anomaly at any time and you’ll have no warning (in a wormhole). This is less than ideal…
Lastly the bit I now the least about—Strategic Cruisers. Why don’t I know about them? Well, anything new in Eve hits the market at ridiculous prices. These cruisers are selling for about a billion ISK. The special feature of the ship is that they are modular with each containing 4 components. These each modify the appearance of the ship. Each race has its own model, thus we have 16 visual combinations per race. This is completely new flexibility for Eve which already has about 100 ships types. Other ships, however, are static in appearance—some ships are “copies” of other hulls with slightly different colour schemes. The new Strategic Cruisers are thus fairly exciting. But until they get cheaper, I won’t see many of them…
Monday, April 6, 2009
Armageddon Expo
Armageddon Expo was pretty cool. I got ample time to really check out all the booths several times and then make some strategic purchases. This was good for me as I often get to these things and either buy too much or nothing. I walked away with just two comic book volumes—Watchmen and Transmetropolitan.
Watchmen was an obvious pick as it was cheaper (only $40 NZD) than any where else I had found it. Transmetropolitan was an impulse pick as it dealt with advanced digital living and a very cyberpunk vibe. I’ve been looking for additional cyberpunk inspiration to help me write more on a 60k word project I stopped around Christmas. It was fun and I’m glad I picked it up, but no writing has occurred yet.
The Expo was very crowded. It was pretty much always elbow-to-elbow. I really do not like crowds like that. Many of the stalls were hard to even browse for the constant throng of folks in front of them. Many vendors didn’t mark their goods with prices and having to push up to the front and then shout over the crowd noise didn’t make the event more appealing.
I did walk away from some cool buys. I really wanted Ghost in the Shell 2nd Gig, but even at the bargain price of $95 NZD, I just couldn’t justify spending the money on DVD’s. I also passed over some cool tshirts with beat meter LED’s built in to them. I was particularly fond of the version that had Wi-Fi detection. But these were $50 each. Again… I limited my self to just the two purchases.
I like these types of events in Wellington, but I must say, I wish they’d pick a larger venue or organise the layouts better to have more room for the crowds.
Watchmen was an obvious pick as it was cheaper (only $40 NZD) than any where else I had found it. Transmetropolitan was an impulse pick as it dealt with advanced digital living and a very cyberpunk vibe. I’ve been looking for additional cyberpunk inspiration to help me write more on a 60k word project I stopped around Christmas. It was fun and I’m glad I picked it up, but no writing has occurred yet.
The Expo was very crowded. It was pretty much always elbow-to-elbow. I really do not like crowds like that. Many of the stalls were hard to even browse for the constant throng of folks in front of them. Many vendors didn’t mark their goods with prices and having to push up to the front and then shout over the crowd noise didn’t make the event more appealing.
I did walk away from some cool buys. I really wanted Ghost in the Shell 2nd Gig, but even at the bargain price of $95 NZD, I just couldn’t justify spending the money on DVD’s. I also passed over some cool tshirts with beat meter LED’s built in to them. I was particularly fond of the version that had Wi-Fi detection. But these were $50 each. Again… I limited my self to just the two purchases.
I like these types of events in Wellington, but I must say, I wish they’d pick a larger venue or organise the layouts better to have more room for the crowds.
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