EVE

Keeping Up With The Gamers #MMORPG

If you’re one of those gamers who likes to taste a little bit of every game, this has probably been an expensive year for you. Whether you’re only interested in MMOs or if that extends to single player, it doesn’t much matter. There’s a lot of games out there and the costs can add up.

Right now I’m reading everyone’s excited squeals for Neverwinter, the ‘early’ release starts today – for people who decided to buy the $200 package. Needless to say, I simply can’t afford to spend that much on a game that I may or may not enjoy well into the future. At this moment I have been contemplating the $60 package, but I’m still not sure if it’s a game that I truly enjoy more than anything else I already have on my plate (that comes at a lower cost). So what is on my plate?

I did get my $60 out of Guild Wars 2, and even though I’m not actively playing that right this second I know it’s not going anywhere. I’ve dedicated more than $60 worth of hours to the game, and I’ve had a lot of fun. It will still be there when my interest leans that way again.

Wurm Online is $50 a year (until the price goes up in May). You rarely ever get MMOs for that price, and I’ve certainly got a lot of played time on my characters. I think my main is over 100 days played now. Plus you can play Wurm with in-game currency, which I do for my 2nd account. I just purchased a year of game time, wanting to get that settled before the price goes from $5 EU a month to $8 EU.

My EQ account is compensated, as are all of my SOE accounts. This makes them an easy go-to choice for many genres. I’m having a lot of fun in EQ, and I still dip into EQ2 and Vanguard. Me and SOE (the company, not the people) may have had some rocky times, but they’re a solid game choice for me and have been for many, many years.

Rift is active for 30 days. I haven’t poked in yet and I’m not really sure why. I just haven’t felt the urge, even after claiming the latest expansion and a handful of other goodies.

There are loads of other games on my desktop that I could technically pick up and play at any time, and haven’t felt an inkling to do so yet. There’s Wizard 101, Pirate 101, The Secret World, Star Trek Online (I have a life time subscription to that one), and of course EVE which I still have some unused PLEX for. These are just the MMO games. There’s a whole steam library of single player games that I haven’t beaten yet, and a few that have no ‘end’ like The Sims 3.

With such a selection it’s hard for me to justify spending even more money on a game that I know didn’t exactly call to me in the beta – but – so hard to resist because pretty much all of my friends are going to be playing it. I never want to be the one left out of all the fun. So for those who ARE going to be playing today – I look forward to living vicariously through your adventures!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Games I’m Currently Playing #EVEOnline #GW2 #WoW #WurmOnline

gw813I’ve got four games on my plate lately, and I can’t help thinking about what each one adds to my over all ‘wants’ out of an MMO.

First, I’m still playing Wurm Online. Sandbox game where you can shape the world around you, but the game requires a LOT of time and dedication and that time only rises if you incorporate things like animals into game play. See, animals need food. Grass eventually becomes packed, and thus animals can starve. Also everything in-game aside from your personal inventory can decay. If you take off for a week it’s not that big of a deal, but any longer and your virtual items in game are going to suffer. Lately this has been more and more of an issue for me, feeling ‘tied’ to a game is a good way to make me not want to play it. I shouldn’t feel like I’m going to lose my time investment if I have to step back from playing for a little while. Still, this game just reaches out to me and it’s held my attention far longer than I would have thought when I first started playing.

Second I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2. I think this game is fantastic, especially since it has no subscription in order to enjoy it. Buy the box, and play it like a single player game if that’s your preference. Of course then you get to level 80 and realize that there’s no way for you to do dungeons unless a mass of your friends are playing OR you PUG them. Plus these are not your typical dungeon where everyone has a role and can act on it. There are no tanks no healers you’re all just bodies and it can be a whole mass of confusion and a lot of deaths. It’s a game where (imo) there’s a lot of ‘go go go’ constantly happening. There’s very little relaxing I can do, if I want to harvest I’m going to have to engage in combat, there’s typically always a mob or event going on by every node I come across. Beautiful lands, with a lot of puzzles and vistas, and yes I could work on zone completion in the cities, but it’s still not the quiet I look for.

I’ve recently resubscribed to EVE Online using some plex I had stored up. EVE scratches my sandbox urges as well as the quiet time I look forward to, or exciting ‘go go go’ time if I feel like it via PvP and missions. It’s almost the perfect game for me, except as much as I love EVE I’m not a giant fan of science fiction – so I still prefer to have a fantasy genre game on my plate. Today I’m making a run out to my PI planets to collect all the goods I’ve been stock piling, and then I’m going to put a few more manufacturing jobs active before I begin doing some missions. I’m almost able to finally fit the heavy missiles on the Tengu that I want to use, but in the mean time it’s back to my old ship until those are ready.

Finally I’ve decided to resubscribe to World or Warcraft. I know, an odd choice when I’m playing two sandbox games and a non-subscription game, but WoW is like a comfortable sweater to me. It’s ultra causal and you’d never wear it out of the house, but it’s great for those sleepy cold days where you’re huddled down not doing much of anything. In other words it fits the ‘relaxed’ bill that I was looking for above. I can solo some dungeons if I feel inclined to do so, I can PUG dungeons and raids (which I frequently do), work on alts, craft or harvest, etc. It’s not new or innovative, but some times that’s just not what I want. Plus pet battles are just plain fun.

There are other games I still dive into here and there, like Vanguard, but I’m not currently playing them on a steady basis, so I didn’t count them in this post. There’s also a bunch of single player games I’ve been enjoying such as Sim City (March 5th can’t get here fast enough!), The Sims 3, Triple Town (a cute puzzle game from Steam), and Skyrim. Of course there are always a handful of games I wish I were devoting more time to, too. Those include The Secret World, Pirate 101, and Lord of the Rings Online. Sadly, there are just not enough hours in the day to play them all.

What games are you playing lately? Share below in comments! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Tengu Flying #EVEOnline

2013.02.16.00.44.35A few months back I decided I was going to work towards flying a Tengu for PvE missions. I had more than enough funds to purchase the ship, and just needed time to train for it. Right when I finally achieved that goal I set the game aside and moved on to Guild Wars 2. So of course I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic as of late, and I remembered I had some PLEX stored up. Before I knew it I had resubscribed again and was out and about in the beautiful Tengu.

I can’t quite finish fitting it the way I want, I need some more training, but that will (of course) come with time.

The rest of my visit back so far has been spent getting familiar with what I was previously working on. I checked out my PI productions, the market, and took inventory of my current ships (I’m up to 15). I also noticed I had a lot of festival items in my claim window, so I loaded up on a bunch of fire works and snowballs. I have no idea what they’re actually for, but hey free stuff is free stuff!

It’s nice to be back. I’m looking forward to raising my factions and getting some missions under my belt although I’m not sure which faction I want to work on next. I was doing mining and working towards earning loyalty points with a few places but I’m not really sure what in specific I was after.

In any case, it’s great to be back.

Training Towards a Tengu #EVEOnline

As much as I love playing video games, I still haven’t found “The One” and don’t believe it exists yet. Wurm Online was probably the closest. As such, I play numerous games and will continue to do so – because guess what, they’re ALL fun, and each game (IMO) has a little unique feature to it that I greatly enjoy. My three ‘active’ games at the moment are GW2 (no subscription which is a fantastic thing for my nomadic gaming habits), WoW, and EVE Online. I still dip into other games but I would call those three my steadies.

In EVE Online I’m currently training towards a Tengu, and in between still working on my industry. I have a load of items to sell in Jita, so I’ll be planning a trip out that way some time soon. My R&D agents probably forgot who I even was when I showed up at their base today to request a mission (and of course to spend all that RP I had gained) because it has been a while since I popped my head into game, but things were just as I had left them, which I like.

EVE is still the most relaxing game that I play, even when I’m doing missions or traveling through NullSec. I wonder if it’s because I don’t see physical avatars running around from quest hub to quest hub, or because the idea of ‘space’ feels bigger than ‘a world’ that my character is adventuring on. Whatever the reason, it’s a great way for me to relax in the mornings with a warm mug of coffee, going through my daily ‘chores’ in-game. That mostly involves setting up my PI runs, checking my copy processes, manufacturing, and industry. Running missions for my R&D agents, and then a mission or two for loyalty points if I happen to be in the right area. Lately I’ve been running missions for a mining company in order to make some faction purchases, but I may branch out once I fit my newest ship: a fancy new Drake. We’ll see how it goes.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Learning, Exploring, and Learning Some More #EVEOnline

Yesterday and today were glorious days for me in EVE Online, and I’m learning a bit more about the language of the game and how to operate. I managed to bring my Helios to the wurmhole my corp is set up in without dying, that was step one. Wurmholes are awesome, and scary, and awesome. I’ve been in a few on my own and you have to remember some pretty important things. First of all, bookmark, bookmark, bookmark. Also checking to see when a wurmhole is about to collapse is pretty important. In fact the more information you can learn about the wurmhole the better.

So I made it in one piece, and started getting myself familiar with it. The helios is a perfect little ship for this type of operation. I’ve actually never seen a POS before, and had no idea how they worked. For example, I learned you don’t actually dock at them like you do regular stations. You log out within the shield and a minute later you’ll leave the world. Interesting.

This morning came my new challenge, finding the way out. Preferably to some place that wasn’t going to eat me when I left. Probing is getting much easier the more familiar I get with it, and inside of an hour I had located an exit that lead to highsec (you can right click on a wurmhole and get information from it, it will tell you in vague terms whether the hole leads to highsec or some place dangerous and unknown). Found my way out, and back to my ‘home’ in highsec without any issues.

For those who are familiar and comfortable constantly living on the edge in EVE Online, it’s probably not that big of a deal but for me personally, it was an amazing accomplishment and I was quite proud of myself. Next I’ll be trying to bring some POS bits over to the corp for them to use, in specific all those consumer electronics I’ve been producing in my PI routine which are then used in robotics. I went and read through the huge wiki on POS to try to learn exactly what goes into one and how much work they are, confusing, but I’m grasping it.

So far I’ve still not reached out into the pvp side of living in a WH, but I’ll get there. I still prefer invention / manufacturing / PI to the sound of lasers across the sky, and I doubt I’ll ever really be the bloodthirsty sort, but one never knows!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Nomadic Gamer