Suguay Productions

Now when I get bored I go look for something new and interesting to try. Every time I look at the list of MMO’s I see this one there and I think it looks so silly, I don’t want to play that. It’s so cartoon looking. I know several people who play it and yet I just wasn’t interested. I don’t remember what changed my mind enough to even get me to consider it, something did. I don’t just jump into a new game. I usually read up on it for a while before I decide to play it. I’ll go through the website and maybe even a user forum. I like to know what I’m getting into, even with a game. It was no different with this one. And so on a weekend in December I start looking into the game that is so big and popular. I learn that it’s got a lot to offer and has pretty good solutions to some of the things that I’ve found lacking in some other games. It’s got lots of in world events that are anual occurances to add to the game play and give you something cool to look forward too. And then there’s the mail system and the bank system and all the different toons you can have, and I was seduced. I had to try it. So I downloaded the trial for 10 or 14 days and had a go at it. I bought the full game before the trial was over and made a new toon on the same server as a work mate and I was off.

I really like the mail system. You can send stuff to your other characters on the same server and same faction. You can leave stuff there for up to 30 days, you can send money or send stuff C.O.D. and you get either your auction cash or auction items back in the mail. How cool. Then there are the bags that you can have so you can carry more stuff. Oh and the amount of stuff you are carrying doesn’t seem to effect how fast you move. And if you don’t want to carry all that you get a bank with lots of slots to put stuff and the option to buy additional bag slots in case you run out of room. Very cool.

There is questing. In fact that’s a really good way to level up. I’ve done most of my leveling through quests. I’ve only done 5 or 6 dungeons or group things. There are some repeatable quests and some that are part of a chain that you have to do in a certain order. There are some that are part of the storyline as well. There are skills or professions. You get two main professions and then there are what they call the secondary professions. Things like first aid and cooking and fishing. Fishing is kind of fun. I like this profession though I have been neglecting my secondary professions lately. I have just about maxed out my primary gathering profession. Well, until the next expansion I suppose.

There is a guild system. This seems to be a little involved as far as creating a guild. I’m not for sure as I’ve not started one of my own. I was offered gold to sign a petition as a founding member of a guild and then a few days later I got an offer to join a bigger guild. Since I didn’t know anyone in either, I went with the bigger guild. This has turned out to have basically been a good move, though the person that invited me to join is not longer a part of it as a consequence of some interesting events. That’s for another article.

For transportation there are a the public systems of  the zeplins or ships, that are operated free of charge that operate between continents. And  there are the flight masters that will send you to another location on the same continent, provided you have already been there and got the flight path and have the cash to pay for the flight. As you level up you reach a point where you can train in riding and you can get your own personal mount so that going between places within the same region doesn’t take as long. Some regions are so large they have multiple flight paths, not all. Many locations when first starting out will only have one, maybe two flight paths you can take so having that mount can really cut down on travel time.

I forgot to mention the auction system. They have one. It’s the player market where you can put stuff up for sale and hope someone will buy it for more than you can sell it to a vendor. They auction works like the bank and the mail, it doesn’t cross factions. Opposing factions can’t even speak to each other, the words appear as gibberish. Still the auction works out well as long as you don’t deal with the goblins. They charge too much. So you pay a fee to put something on auction. If it doesn’t sell you get the item back and not the money. If it does sell you get the money you sold it for plus part of the auction fee.

Skill training is somewhat based on level. Skills aren’t open to you until you reach a certain level and then you have to pay to train them. Some come with the talent points you get and then you can improve on them with improvements from a trainer. The professions work a bit like this too. You can only make certain things based on how much skill you have in that profession then you have to purchase the pattern or plan or recipe or whatever for that new thing you want to make.

There are NPC vendors that will buy your stuff. It’s a good thing because some of it is down right useless. Some of it is good stuff that can be used to make other things and some of it is really good stuff that you just try to sell to other players so you can have the cash.

There are some cool in world events that really help to add to the experience. I like the winter one, that was fun. Snowballs and presents and all. I had meant to get into the summer festival however I haven’t really been on as much and so basically missed it. I was on for a couple of days of it. I wasn’t too into the Valentines’ festival or the children’s festival. I liked the lunar festival. I’m really looking forward to Halloween this year. There is a fishing contest each week that you can participate in and there is a wondering faire. I still haven’t done that one.

My thoughts of the game really changed after I did my research and got involved in it. I think the makers of this one really got it right for the most part. There are a few things that it doesn’t have that I would like, the ability to have more than two primary professions, the ability to have a home in the game,  and a bigger map to explore. Of course the map seems to get some bigger with each expansion. With that said, it still has it’s challenges and not every character combination is easy to play. There is room for a variety of different playing styles which is nice. I really do think the makers of this game have done a good job with it. I like it because for the most part it’s lite. It’s doesn’t require some of the deep involvement of some of the other games. You can play it very casually and really enjoy it or you can get way too involved and really enjoy it, or not. I prefer the casual approach.

For those that haven’t figured it out yet this particular game is WoW, World of Warcraft from Blizzard. As this is one of the games I am actively playing and I pay for the subscription to, you will be reading more about my adventures in WoW, as well as some of the other games I actively play. I’m still not a hardcore gamer person. I don’t get all the combos of stuff and I don’t spend hours researching my guild’s standings or the best of this or that to wear for this or that. I enjoy the games and go along to have fun.WoW has a big fun factor to it.

See you in the machine.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

Or as I was going to call it: my take on different online games, part…I don’t remember so lets talk about Eve. Eve Online is today’s topic.

I would say this is not the most difficult game out there, I’ve already established how complicated Anarchy Online is. It is however not the easiest game out there and I think this is a good thing. It’s also one of the few sci-fi based games that really has it’s own world and isn’t built on something else. It’s mostly based on the idea that whatever is left of humanity has moved out into space. We inhabit ships and fly from place to place using jumpgates and the occasional, newly introduced, wormhole. Oh, and as to be expected we are at war with someone or other and then there are the pirates and low security space.

You have the option in this to not play the full on fighter. It’s a little tough at first if you don’t at least do a little fighting. Or learn how to use drones so they can do the fighting for you. I personally like to mine. I am adverse to high repair bills. I also get tired of spending the hard earned cash on bullets, missiles and the like. So I mine. I have even made my own bullets. And then made excess to sell.

I’ve hinted at what have turned out to be some of the more interesting or frustrating parts on some games.

The skill system, crafting, and the market system. I don’t think Eve has an NPC market for purchasing stuff that gets looted. I think it does for supply of things like skills not for goods. It is otherwise a player driven market and prices on various commodities have risen and fallen and exploded and tanked over time. The folks at CCP who make Eve Online even have an Economist advisor to consult on the in game markets. This is part of what interested me to begin with. A feature that I really like is that you can download a file that contains your market transactions so you can load them in a spreadsheet or a database and figure out how you are doing in the game financially and what items are more profitable for you. You can also do this for your Corp. We’ll come back to the Corp.

The skill system I really like. You purchase your skill book, you right click it and train and you start learning it. Now when you log off, you continue to learn. So you log back on and you ‘skill training complete’ message comes through and you do the same thing with that skill or another. Yep, you learn your skills whether you are in game or not. Kind of cool since I’ve seen skills that take 24 days to train. In fact, when CCP gets ready to to a major expansion/upgrade they tell you to be sure to setup a nice long skill training.

Now the way the crafting works turns out to have similarities to the skill training. If you have the skill and the goods to make something and the blueprint then you can go to a staion that has manufacturing facilities. You rent a manufacturing bay, load in what you want to make and how many and then you get a cost quote and the amount of time it will take to make it. Go off now and do more mining or fighting or whatever. Come back and pick it up when it’s done.

In Eve Onine the player organizations are called Corps, as in corporations. The idea being that the universe is run by corporations and powerful financial people. Of course, they can afford the good ships and to own a space station and well you get the idea. Let’s face it, with the way things have been going in the real world it wouldn’t surprise most of us to find out it’s the corporations that run the world not the governments. Many of us are sure it isn’t just that way. I digress. It turns out that to create a player Corp is not that hard. It’s a little costly. Not hard. And you can have a Corp of One. I did it. I did it because I wanted to see what it would take and what all additional stuff there was the access to and the whizbangs.

Corps can get large enough to own or rent space stations and have their own manufacturing facilities and all that. Given the profits the NPC stations must be making for rental and taxes, it seems like a pretty good thing to have. Of course, you have to have the player base and the equipment to defend it. And some Corps have people who just manufacture stuff for the corp and then the corp sells it. Usually large things like ships that take a lot of resources. With all this you can see where it would be nice to download all the Corp’s market transactions to keep track of them and to analyze them so you know if you are getting the highest profit margins. Or not paying too much for resources from other players.

As for aesthetics of the game…it’s a bit dark. It’s space, it’s going to be dark. It’s sci-fi. The only thing that is not easy to find in the interface is the quit/exit button. If you can get to the options you can figure out how to get out of the game.

Eve used to be a download only, at least in the US. They’ve come out with a retail version recently. If they are like some of the other manufacturers you get something extra if you buy the box. Though I don’t know that for sure. It is a monthly subscription game with the option to pay in multi-month chunks that gives you a little price break. You can also trade in game currency called ISK for game time codes, perfectly legally and within the terms of service.

For game play, there is a questing/mission system. As you get better standing you get better missions. Don’t decline too many of those missions that you ask for though, your standing will go down and you’ll start getting crappy missions. Either really hard or not a lot of pay out. There is in game chat windows with an area panel as well as corp panel that are automatic. I think there is voice as well though I admit, I don’t use it.

I like this one. I don’t play a lot because I really use the market data for some stuff like learning how to use and build databases and the like. I’m a geek what can I say. Still, I continue to pay my subscription and log on and check my skills periodically and once in a while I’ll log in and chat with my corp while I mine.

That’s my little bit on Eve. Go play it.

See you in the Machine.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

I seriously considered not doing Part 3 to this series. Then I looked at the list of games I haven’t covered yet and decided I had better do part 3. There will probably be a part 4 as well. There are a couple of games that I have quite a bit to say on them. And without further delay the games I expect to cover in this article are (where’s my drum roll….): eRepublik, Runescape, and TribalNations. There is a common theme here, they are all browser based games. Just as a way of clarification, a browser based game is one that you play from within a web browser and most of the time you do not need to download or install a seperate software.

TribalNations. I am an active player of this game.

I got an email to give it a try from Akklaim people because I have a 9Dragons account there. So I signed in and tried it out. It took some getting used to. The game was very new and I was a new citizen of a very small village. So the idea is that you are a native in MesoAmerica before the Europeans landed. You have to eat to stay alive. You have to work to get money. To advance you have to increase certain stats such as strength, intelligence and charisma. This is done through eating certain foods. If you fall below a certain health level you loose stats. So once you start getting those stats, better make sure you have a steady source of food. You can sell stuff on the market. Most of the time this is the way to sell stuff though once in a while you can sell stuff to the clan hall. You elect your clan chief. Once you have enough reputation and money you want to level to level one where you will want to choose your farm. You can grow different crops or raise animals.  At level one you will need to start raising those stats and more money. You will need much more money to reach level two. For one the food that gets you the stats, some of that is expensive and then you have to be dressed a certain way when you go to level up to level two and they are costly and that doesn’t include that you have to have much more money to level to level two.

TribalNations really is an easy game to play, at least the way I play it. What I like about it more than it being all in the browser is that it takes me about 10 minutes or less a day to play and I have advanced to level two so far. The game isn’t very fancy and you really don’t get to see yourself walking around and all. Still it’s kind of cool and doesn’t require the committment of time that some of the bigger standalone games require. I’m sure it could if I wanted to get involved in the government or running a tavern. Since I don’t, no big deal.

Runescape was the first browser based MMO that I came across. I thought the idea pretty cool as that meant I could play from any computer. It being based in Java was a thing I thought really cool too. I’m a bit on the geek side so strange things like that appeal. The game has a nice intro tutorial to show you how to do some basic things and get you started. I found the map a little troubling. And I have to admit I only did one or two quests. I got all stuck on one and then very frustrated with it. It’s not very sophisticated looking. I’m not a fan on the top down view that you get with this game. Still there’s only so much you can do in a browser based situation. There is leveling of a sort. You level the individual skills. Some contribute to your overall stats. You can learn to do a whole variety of things such as mining, cooking, crafting, farming, fighting, and I forget what else. You can learn magic.

With Runescape, though you can play for free, you do miss out on some skills and the ability to mine certain ores. You can pay to play and I think that is less than $10 a month. I have a co-worker who lets her son play. The game masters or designers are pretty good about keeping the foul language down. I couldn’t even type something close to foul. It got censored. While the general idea is pretty cool with it being a browser based game, I have to admit, I got frustrated with getting lost so often and not being able to get back to some places. Though the frustrations I had with the game were relatively small and with just a little more perseverence they would not have been an issue, I did not find the look of the game and the occasional crowding, and overall enjoyment compelling enough to continue to be an active player. I can’t remember the last time I logged on.

And finally eRepublik. I’ve been seeing this one advertised in the sidebar when I’m on TribalNations. That’s part of what prompted me to put in my two cents worth on it. To be fair to the developers of the game, when I was playing it was still in beta. I was so excited to get a chance to participate in a game before it went live. I had to sign up and then wait until they sent me an notice that they needed more eCitizens. I really thought this was going to be cool. It was billed as a sort of game and social networking thing in one. You had to work to earn money to buy food to eat. You could purchase money. You could, if you could get enough money, start a buisness and hire workers and produce goods. I never got this far. I was only a worker. You could have your own newspaper at no cost. It was much like a blog. The trick is that the topics were only supposed to be fiction or in game related. No commentary on Real World movies or goings ons. That was a challenge. I had a newspaper. You have probably noted how often I get articles up here so you can guess how well that went. I did get readers and a few comments. I was going along fairly happily in this game until the much anticipated v.1 came out. The look changed completely as well as a few fundementals to the game play and the place I was working didn’t have enough raw goods to make the final goods so most days I couldn’t work which stunk because you got a bonus for good work attendance. With that and not liking the new look of it, I gave up on it. I was mostly annoyed with the game and not willing to get past it. At the time it was not compelling enough to slog through. I have not been on it in many monthes. So once again, to be fair the the developers and the people who play this, it may be much better. I’m not likely to venture over and find out.

So that’s my fairly short take on these three games. I know this assessment isn’t quite the same as the previous ones. What can I say they aren’t the biggies. A few games that I have an even shorter take on: Planetside, this was and I think still is in development and when I was playing the server went down a lot. It seems like a fairly cool idea though. I didn’t get very far before not bothering anymore. Dark & Light was also still in beta/development at the time. There were server issues and some of the profession quests were broken so you really couldn’t advance in that area. I think I tried it for a weekend before deleting from the computer. Silkroad Online: this one I met someone else who played it and really liked it. I had trouble with it and I was very new to online games so I didn’t really give it a chance. I have considered trying it again. I haven’t yet.

That brings us to the next in this series. There are two games left that I’ll share my opinion on. If you’ve read some of the other articles you can probably guess at one of them. To find out for sure though, you will have to check back for part 4 in this series.

See you in the machine.

Games

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

So I thought I’d skip the Part 3 of my take on different games for this posting. Two of the games I play released updates this week or roughly there about. So we’re going to talk about them.

First, Entropia Universe – Planet Calypso, which I have written about in a previous article. I must confess a little frustration with the game/universe. It starts with the part where I feel like to enjoy the game I am always depositing into it and not getting nearly enough time enjoyment for my dollar. So what does that mean? Well, lets look at a regular subscription game. Most are about $14.95 for 30 days of play time. Depending on the method of deposit, that same $14.95 will get me between 100 and 149.50 PED (in game dollars or Project Entropia Dollars). I have a gun that uses 10 to 11 bullets per shot and each bullet cost 1 PEC (in game cent or Project Entropia Cents) so each shot cost 10 to 11 pec, that’s roughly 10 shots per PED. This doesn’t include the decay on the gun and the amplifier that I then have to pay the repairs on. That’s part of the issue.

Now looking at the part where when I was playing more actively I put a considerable amount of money, at time in the game and managed to purchase that same gun which was a good gun and not what I would call cheap. In full repair it’s base value is 85PED (for those not wanting to do the math that is $8.50). I also bought some decent armor that I think all total cost me around 100PED ($10.00). As you can see, just in those purchases and before even buying ammo I’ve spent more than that $14.95. This wouldn’t be so bad if the stats on the equipment had remained relatively the same over subsequent updates. They do not appear to be that way. How utterly frustrating.

Where my armor was good armor and my gun was plenty powerful for what I hunt, now, I get hit and damaged much more quickly and worse than I had and my gun that at one time with an amplifier was dealing 70 to 100 damage fairly frequently, now I’m lucky to get a hit in of 50 damage. So for that 10-11 PEC I am not doing the damage that I had been, the value of each shot has gone down.

Now I do recognize that the company who produces the game, MindArk, has to make it’s money some way and it is through deposits, and the transaction fee for each one, as well as the purchase and repair bills. The major loot hauls happen less frequently because they don’t want to give away all the cash. Because you can just deposit all the loot back into the system and get paid base value for it and then walk away with the cash, since they have set it up that you can withdraw real world money from the game. So it can be a real challenge to gather enough goods to sell to just support ones game play. I’ve been struggling with this issue for a few months now.

As a consequence, though I got to join a very nice society in the game, I am not on it much. I have to say, that as I am on so infrequently I am always surprised to find I have not been kicked out of the Society. I was demoted one grade. Rightly so. I think to have higher rank it should go to the people who are on most and who know better what’s going on. I logged on the other day and in less than an hour I went though roughly 2000 bullets. What to do about it. I have thought once before that I would sell off all I had, play out the cash left and leave my self with just the clothes, armor and some base equipment. I am considering that once again.

So Eve Online, I haven’t really written about this one yet, just a little. This is one of the subscription games I play. In the game I mine for stuff and then sell of the raw ore or the refined minerals. I do this partly because I am not into it enough to learn all the stats and combos for configuring a good battle ship and partly because it can take much less time to mine than to run missions in the time allotted to get the completion bonus. And on top of that the repair bills when you get your tail kicked. There’s another reason I like the mining bit. This game lets me down load my transactional data. I can then load it into a spreadsheet or database and analyze my profits and costs and I can do it base on solar system even. Ok, I am a geek at times. What can I say.

Anyway, I was mining away and got an invite to join a player corporation. I looked and them, and their information, they looked at me and my skills. I said yes, they said yes. I was living and working in high security space, this means easier npc’s and lower rewards. I’ve been playing solo and I’ve lost a ship or two so, yeah, I play it safe. Well the new corp’s base of operations is in lower security space. I had to move for .9 security to .6 security. This bothered me just a bit at first. Moving out of the comfort zone and all. It’s turned out to be a good move for a few reasons. The other catch to this move though, is the part where it is 28 solar systems from my original base. This was a long trip. I have a few ships and some go faster than others. I chose not to move everything as I was ready to check out the new surroundings.

Lower security space turns out to be quite profitable in killing npc’s. They propagate more frequently and they bounty is higher. I’ve also found some better stuff to mine that when refined gives mean some of the more expensive minerals. So I’m hoping to start turning a tidy profit there. So far it’s been fun.

Then there is the new corp. This is looking to be pretty cool as well. They are not a fly by night group. They’ve been around a couple of years. They are organized and have all kinds of documentation, in game, not just on some external website. They have a whole system setup and you can mine and sell your goods to the corp. They have a system for that setup as well. The information on payment for the goods is provided to everyone in a general posting so there is no question. So far, I think it’s cool.

The only thing I’m running into with Eve now is that it seems to crash my laptop. It didn’t used to. They published an major update this week. I think it’s the change in the graphics. They added premium graphics and I think that might just be choking my laptop. It plays fine on my desktop, though the fan sure does get to cranking at certain points. I can play it on my laptop, just not for too long. So I guess that means I’ll no longer be able to mine in Eve and quest in WoW. Oh well.

So I’ll try to get to that part 3 article soon. Maybe I’ll cover Eve. Or maybe I’ll cover some of the games that I didn’t stay with long.

Until then….

See you in the machine.

Games

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.