Stumbling in to The Nexus

I haven't really done much in the way of instances in Northrend yet. This is because my small guild has been a little fragmented over the holidays, my taking time to level a death knight through Outlands and somehow perservering with her mining and blacksmithing skills, even before the recent changes to mining, and also because I am wary of pick-up groups. Being occupied with a death knight also means I probably missed the first wave of adventurers going in to the dungeons, as whenever I dared fire up the looking-for-group interface I wasn't able to get in to either The Nexus or Utgarde Keep.

I miss running instances, though. The scenery and mobs found in instances are often different enough to feel like a new zone and being in a group to take on bigger challenges than can be achieved individually appeals to me, despite my general shy nature towards people. I am curious enough about the potential of the new instances that when I fall down a hole in Dragonsblight and see that I am at the entrance to what turns to be the Azjol-Nerub instances I wander inside. I only go in to have a quick look, hoping that I won't get ambushed, and I am not disappointed. It looks like there are wondrous places hidden away from the already lush regions of Northrend, waiting to be revealed and conquered.

It would therefore have been rather witless of me, as I step out to continue my solo path, to ignore the whisper that asks if I would like to tank in The Nexus. The timing is perfect, where my yearning to run an instance is stronger than my aversion to strangers, and so I agree. I am still a little nervous about my ability to tank in front of strangers, but I am summoned to the instance and we all run in to start. The group comprises a shaman, unholy death knight, shadow priest and healing paladin, with myself as the tanking warrior.

There doesn't seem to be any hesitance on the part of any of my companions so I make the pulls fast and fluidly, checking between fights that the healer is okay for mana. There is no marking of the mobs, which makes it a little more awkward to know where to focus my threat generation, but as the biggest source of secondary threat is the plate-wearing death knight, who produces some impressive damage-dealing, the short periods of lost aggro pose few problems for our healer. For the most part, I am able to keep my aggro on all mobs high enough that they are attacking me, causing me on more than one occasion to reflect on how much I enjoy tanking. Even with many mobs, and a couple of patrol adds, it seems so easy and fun for me to tank that I have to wonder why I am ever worried about taking the role in a new group.

Each boss in The Nexus does something slightly different and I am given a quick one- or two-line instruction. This one throws us around and splits in to three, get the rifts when they open as the boss becomes immune, avoid the ice spikes, and keep jumping on the spot when attacking to avoid the debuff. Everything goes smoothly with no wipes, no deaths even, before the final boss, who kills me and two others moments before he falls himself. Our healer survives so we are all pulled back to life and celebrate our quick and enjoyable run through the instance. I should do this more often.

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Tags: mmorpg, northrend, sapphire, the nexus, world of warcraft

Changing course

Along with the ISK rewards and bounties for my recent level three missions I also pick up a whole bunch of looted modules along with plenty of salvaged parts. Rather than selling these on the market I will hold on to them. I could refine the looted modules in to minerals for future manufacturing, but I will have to look in to whether this is profitable or if it is more worth my selling them on the market and buying minerals directly. As for salvage, I understand this is used for some manufacturing too. Again, I need to work out whether it is more cost effective to sell the salvage now or to stockpile it for when it could be useful.

There is so much more to learn and it is nearly all something that I haven't had to think about in the past. It is not just a matter of knowing which skill books to buy and what level to train the skills to in order to be efficient. Although this is important and the certificate system can provide some guidance it is just one aspect of the knowledge that needs to be acquired. Whilst my character is training many skills that are new and more that are in need of improvement, there seems to be just as much that I need to learn.

Part of me wants to figure it out whilst in New Eden, maybe finding agents in a corporation who give me instructive and enlightening missions, or through trial and error. Other people must have had to figure it out in the past and been successful, so it must be something that can be achieved. On the other hand, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. If others have worked out how to be successful industrialists it would be wise to learn from them and their mistakes.

It is all part of finding a balance. I need to work some things out for myself simply to understand how the process works. If I follow guides or advice without understanding then I won't be able to improvise, or recover from problems. If I try to pick up everything myself then the process could be frustratingly slow and demoralising. I have learnt how to blow things up, I just need to work out how to stick them together in the first place.

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Tags: eve online, industry, mmorpg, penny ibramovic

Changes to mining

In the World of Warcraft patch notes for 3.0.8:

Mining veins and deposits no longer require multiple hits to receive all the ore. Players will receive around the same amount of ore, stone, and gems they would have received from multiple hits.

And it's about time! Other gathering professions allowed a single grab to get everything but mining persisted in making you hit the node several times, even though there was only the one chance in gaining a skill point.

The only adverse effect is that only one player can now mine from a node, whereas before two players could share a node to both gain a skill point.

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Tags: mining, mmorpg, professions, world of warcraft

Spending ISK to make ISK

Changing my direction from being a capsuleer only running PvE missions to industrialist requires some retraining. It couldn't come at a better time, having just been awarded the Elite Caldari Special Forces certificate, effectively completing my first career. I feel somewhat accomplished, particularly as I never made it past Deadly status in the original Elite. I am still missing some core competencies up to the standard certificate level but I will evaluate their utility amongst learning skills specific to industry.

I buy the more obvious skill books I will be needing from the market, as well as a +3 charisma implant after realising that charisma will be affecting some of my training times for trade-based skills. This completes my set of +3 implants in slots one to five that coupled with an armful of skill books sees my ISK balance over halve in value, inducing a touch of mild panic. It may be that ninety percent of new businesses fail in their first year, but I would quite like at least to get mine started.

To recoup some of my investment and enhance my calm I have a word with my level three agent, who is happy to throw some work my way. I pick up and complete a couple of missions, which gets me in to space and firing missiles in a way that is strangely relaxing. Neither mission is particularly notable, apart from the second one requiring me to drop a cargo container and make three trips just to carry all the loot and salvage back to base in my Cormorant. The missions net me around two million ISK from mission rewards and bonuses, as well as over three and a half million ISK from bounties. It has hardly filled my wallet up again but it is pushing my balance in the right direction at last and I feel happier about my recent purchases.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic

Finding my new focus

I have considered my options of a direction to take in EVE Online and am grateful for the feedback received.

I don't think I can participate in much active PvP, but this is not because I am nervous about losing my ship. Even though there is more of a time and cost penalty to losing a PvP fight than in other games it is still only virtual, recoverable. I am nervous about joining another corporation. I think I did well enough in my previous corporation but I am still surprisingly anxious about meeting and getting along with new people.

The compartmentalisation of missions and the vastness of space makes it far less likely to chance in to encounters with people—at least with people who don't want to blow you up—than with other games, which means I need to seach actively for a corporation. I work much better when I fall in to groups and become comfortable than when I have to initiate contact. I have been lucky in other games where friends have invited me in to good guilds and alliances within which I have been able to get settled and more gradually involved. Sadly, I don't know anyone in New Eden personally.

Even if I get in to a new corporation I doubt it can be orientated towards PvP because of voice comms. I can be terribly shy and occasionally have problems talking on voice comms to people I know in real life, and this is before any technical issues with voice comms software that is barely supported, or completely unsupported, on the Mac. The voice comms built-in to EVE Online works and I am happy to listen in, but I get the impression that PvP will require active participation using Teamspeak, which cannot happen for technical and personal reasons. I need to take one step at a time.

It is a shame that PvP is not an option for me, at least for now, because it is probably the core of EVE Online and an aspect I would ideally like to get involved in. Maybe one day. I could continue to run missions and improve my standings and wallet so that I can afford bigger and more advanced ships. Mission running is a little repetitive at times, although the occasional challenge is thrown my way that keeps me interested, and I can occasionally not feel involved enough with the rest of the galaxy. Whatever happens, I will still have the opportunity to run missions, either for profit, materials or just to blow something up every now and again.

The choice I have made is to become an industrialist. All of the ammunition and modules I buy from the market come from somewhere. I know that the smaller quantity items I buy are probably from looted wrecks from missions, but there are higher quantities available that people must be manufacturing. Not only that, but the ships themselves must come from somewhere. The idea of being able to build my own spaceship is quite appealing, however unlikely it is that I will be able to achieve this in the near future. I have a new direction and it will be interesting to learn how the manufacturing and invention processes work.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg

The Wire's fourth series

I've finished watching the fourth series of The Wire, after getting the DVD box set for Christmas. I greatly enjoyed the previous three series and was expecting more great drama from this one and I wasn't disappointed.

Before I watched an episode I wondered if this fourth series would be a 'bridge' series, much as I consider the second series to be. This isn't to say that the second series isn't self-contained, or that it suffers as a result. It is just that there were two threads that didn't really share any common points until later in the series and much of the plot involved the establishing or evolution of characters for future rôles. As such, when compared to the singular focus of the Barksdale stories of the first and third series, the second series feels more like it is setting the stage for a more complex story yet to be told than the first or third does. Not only is this quite audacious for a TV series to attempt but it is also successful in achieving a coherent story that leads in to something greater.

I get the same feeling when watching the fourth series of The Wire. Whilst there is a common theme, this time that of education, much of the programme seems to be developing characters and introducing changes that will become more important in the next series. Whilst the first and third series have definite conclusions the second and fourth leave me wanting more, in a good way. I am happy with the resolution of the individual threads presented, but there is the tantalising promise of greater stories to be told in the future. I am full of expectation for the fifth series.

Now that I have finished watching the fourth series I am left wondering what to do next. I could buy and watch the fifth series, rewatch the fourth series, watch the fourth series episodes that have audio commentaries, or watch the first four series back-to-back. It's probably not worth watching only the third and fourth series together for additional insight, and as the second series is, to me, a 'bridging' series I would have to go back to the beginning to see the whole picture. I think I would be better off waiting until I have all five series to enjoy before I do that, though.

The answer is to watch the fourth series again, but listening to the commentaries on the few episodes they are available. I'll get the fifth series later. I've watched the first three episodes again and it is surprising how fast-paced the plot moves on a second viewing. The Wire seems to be quite slow-paced in general, because of its long running time and rejection of contemporary commercial television structure, yet plot points and action that I would have placed much further in to the series have already occurred. This is a credit to the writing that manages to cram so much in to a series yet manages to keep a sustained dramatic tension. It also makes repeated viewings of The Wire enjoyable.

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Tags: dvd, the wire, tv

Battlecruiser vs. NPC battleship

Having interrupted a diplomatic exchange by blowing up one of the emissaries the two factions are rather aggravated. With one diplomatic vessel not even scratched during the attack the other faction is suspicious of their involvement. Now my agent tells me it is time to drive home the wedge between the two factions. We are to accomplish this by directly attacking the previously unscathed diplomat in an act that will in all probability be seen as one of revenge. There's only one problem, the diplomat is in a battleship, although it is the only battleship in the system.

This will be interesting, a battlecruiser versus a battleship. I no doubt need bigger missiles to inflict any significant damage on a battleship, but to fit them I'll also need a battleship myself because of power requirements. I think I will just go out and see what I am up against first, knowing that I am probably underprepared to start with.

Warping in to deadspace shows a handful of cruisers and frigates escorting the battleship. The smaller ships are obviously my first targets, as I will be able to destroy them in short order and reduce the number of threats and incoming damage hopefully to manageable levels. This doesn't stop the battleship from attacking, though, and its cruise missiles make awesome 'crackow' explosions on my shields. A few of frigates explode from my drone fire, as do a couple of cruisers under a barrage of missiles, and then I notice that the cruise missiles also make an awesome explosion when hitting my armour. I am running with thermal and kinetic shield hardeners but am unfamiliar with cruise missiles, so don't know what type of damage the Devastator missiles are inflicting. As I align to a station, and destroy one last frigate and cruiser before warping out, I pull a datasheet to find out that Devastator cruise missiles deal explosive damage.

Back in the station I swap out my thermal hardeners for explosive ones. I also fit a repair module temporarily and pop out of the station to repair the damage to my armour. I activate the hardeners whilst repairing and see I have around 88% explosive damage compensation on the shields, which should mitigate most of the damage from the Devastator missiles. With my armour repaired I swap the module out again before leaving dock and heading back in to deadspace, where the battleship awaits.

Destroying the remaining few escort ships is trivial, particularly now that the cruise missiles aren't bothering my shields. The bad news is that my heavy missiles are bouncing off the shields of the battleship, which is running an active shield tanking set-up. I try to close in with the battleship, hoping to gain some advantage, but it turns and manages to keep station, holding me at optimum range for its cannons. I need more speed.

Warping back to the station I buy and fit a reheat to my Drake, surely giving me enough pace to catch a battleship. Sure enough, back in deadspace with my reheat active I can close in tight with the battleship. I am fast enough that its cannons cannot track me and close enough that its defender missiles cannot destroy the incoming fire. The battleship's shields are slowly but surely being depleted. Running the reheat permanently is chewing through my capacitor, though. Even though I am gradually blasting my way through the shields I cannot sustain reheat for what will be the duration of the battle, and if I deactivate the reheat the battleship will pull away from me, giving its defender missiles the range to work again to reduce my damage and the shield will be boosted back beyond my means to destroy it.

I warp back to the station again, this time to fit a medium energy drain module. I have a spare high slot and although I need to take a shield extender off-line to power the new module my shield has been holding out fine. The cruise missiles are doing minimal damage now I have the appropriate hardeners fitted and the cannons will only trouble me until I get close and fast enough that they can no longer track my ship.

Back in deadspace and thrusting my way on full reheat to the battleship I put the energy drain module to use. It is perfect. The energy being drained from the battleship and added to my own capacitor is more than enough to balance the drain the reheat is putting on my systems, allowing me to sustain this configuration as long as required. Now I just need to get the shields down.

In a brief moment of hope a crack appears in the battleship's armour! The shields were knocked out for the shortest time but it makes me think I can win. But just as soon as the shields are depleted they get boosted back up again and don't look like they will drop a second time. I think it is worth trying different approaches. I load Widowmaker heavy missiles instead of Scourge, but the thermal damage inflicted is considerably less than the kinetic damage of the Scourge.

I wonder if heavy assault missiles would be better, with lesser damage but a higher rate of fire. I buy a set of launchers and some ammunition and when my power plant cannot cope with all seven assault launchers installed I rememeber why I haven't tried them in an active fitting before. I take my second shield extender off-line, but even with six heavy assault launchers and one standard heavy launcher the damage to the battleship's shields is still not enough.

I try Thunderbolt heavy missiles. Even if my intelligence suggests the battleship's armour is resistant to EM damage I only need to get and keep the shields down. An active shield tank won't also be an armour tank, so as long as the shields are down I can take as long as I like chipping away at the armour. It's a good idea, but Thunderbolt missiles do even less damage than Widowmakers. Having already been back-and-forth to the station enough times that the wrecks of the frigates and cruisers have disintegrated I think I may as well try Havoc heavy missiles.

The explosive warheads on the Havoc missiles deal about 10% more damage than my Scourge missiles were doing to the battleship, a good positive change. Having breached the shields already with Scourge I am hopeful that the Havoc missiles will enable me to finish my mission. It takes a while to knock the shields down, but on the second full load of Havoc missiles in my launchers I am hitting the battleship's armour again. This time, the shields stay down, the armour is ablated with little delay and missiles are striking the structure!

The battleship's structure is paper thin in comparison to its shields or armour and barely lasts a couple of salvos. I ready my ship's on-board cameras to capture the impressive moment of my first battleship kill, only to see the most disappointing explosion yet. It was more of a disintegration with no flames at all. But after a long fight and much experimentation I have finally completed my objective: the battleship is destroyed.

Warping my way back to the station I work out my accounts. I spent about 900,000 ISK on modules and ammunition in my defeat of the battleship and stand to make 1.3 million ISK from my agent as a mission reward. That's not too bad and at least I get to keep all the equipment I bought. It also furthers the Caldari agenda, hopefully firmly driving a wedge between the two factions and preventing them from becoming too strong together.

Before I head out of dock again I am going to put a little battleship insignia on my Drake, alongside all the frigate and cruiser marks. This Drake is not to be messed with.

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Tags: deadspace, drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic

Driving an initial wedge

I call on my agent and he has some work for me. 'Cadet Ibramovic, would you do us a favour and blow up a diplomat?' Sure thing. Wait, what? It's as if he's been eavesdropping on my thoughts, as I've been looking for something a little more exciting. I hope my new implants aren't bugged. I can't really say much more about the mission because of the Caldari Secrets Act, I'll just say that my agent's bosses have a plan to stir up inter-faction distrust to work in our favour. A job's a job, and I've taken on both Republic and Federation ships before. Oops, what a give away!

I warp to the deadspace location and there are representatives of both factions in the area. A bit of open broadcast comms shows that I am quite unexpected and disavowed by both sides, who promptly try to exclude me from the diplomatic talks. That's okay, my launchers are loaded, targets are locked and I didn't come here to talk. I keep my distance from the cruisers, staying at a decent range for my missiles, and let my drones take out the incoming frigates.

With my shields staying strong I survey the battlefield with the help of my tactical overlay and notice two larger ships loitering at the back, not even trying to engage me. I haven't locked on to these targets yet because, apart from being out of range, they don't appear on my overview. A quick manual scan shows that they are diplomatic vessels, my mission target. I also learn something new about the UI, in that when I right-click on a object in space an option is available to add that type of object to my overview, in this case a mission industrial ship. Having done that, I just need to save the new overview's settings.

The diplomatic ships are not attacking, but neither are they retreating. The hostile frigates are quickly despatched by my drones and I turn my boat around to bear down on the diplomats, surging through the handful of cruisers remaining as my missiles continue to rain upon them. Seeing two diplomatic ships causes me to pause. I call up the mission briefing to check exactly what I am being paid to do. It's a good thing I check, as I am only supposed to be blowing up one of the diplomatic ships. Not just any diplomatic ship either, one belonging to a specific faction. Because of this I am not only glad that the two ships didn't appear immediately on my overview, lest I had targeted and destroyed them soon after warping in, but as my engines power me in to missile range I also check several more times just which of the two diplomatic ships is my target. I need to be sure.

One diplomatic ship explodes quickly, the other must be thankful to see me warp out. It is all part of a grander scheme, though. My agent is happy to read my report of a successful mission and hints that there may be a follow-up task soon. I am intrigued as to what I've got myself involved in.

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Tags: deadspace, drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic

Rock Band: Boy Band Edition

Zoso is a demon at Guitar Hero games, approximating a precision industrial machine when hammering the buttons on a fake plastic guitar. His awesome aptitude also carries over on to the drums in Rock Band. He's a bit scary in his ability. Over on Twitter he wrote that he would buy a Polka Hero game if it were released. When I asked if there was a version of Rock Band in a genre or instrument that he wouldn't purchase his companion blogger Melmoth joked that Zoso had already put down a deposit on the forthcoming Harmonix title Boy Band.

Now there's a thought! We've already had Dance Dance Revolution and Rock Band added microphones to sing in to, so let's combine the two. Each game would come with a decent DDR-style mat, specially designed for boy band dance moves, and a microphone for each player. You would need to sing along to songs whilst busting out some precisely choreographed moves on the dance mat. Get four players together and you can have one singing and tapping a foot at the front whilst three at the back add harmonies and jump all over the place, player positions being swapped occasionally as the song requires.

It's in the works, I'm sure.

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Tags: guitar hero, rock band

Pondering my options

I've been running a few level three missions in EVE Online, taking my Drake out for some explosive action and coincidentally earning back some of the thirty million ISK I paid for my new chip implants. Despite a slightly shaky return to level three missions my ship can take a whole lot of abuse, both from enemy missiles and my lack of skill.

The missions so far turn out to involve warping in to a cluster of red crosses in a deadspace pocket and blowing them all up, keeping an eye on my shields just in case they fall below 80% and I wonder when I should perhaps start to think about maybe aligning the Drake to a station. It doesn't seem like much of a challenge at the moment, particularly as I hadn't flown a level three mission in a few months.

I consider what options are available to me. I can gain some more faction reputation and ISK to get access to level four mission agents, but I imagine that will present an initial challenge and then settle down to business as usual. I have thought before at turning my hand to manufacturing, which is still a possibility. There is no doubt an awful lot to learn about industry and I hope I wouldn't have to mine too much.

At least the skill training system is keeping my attention and occasionally offering new areas of interest, like exploration and archaeology. I'll investigate my options further and stick to mission running for now. Blowing up spaceships and making a stack of ISK from it still has its appeal.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic