Blog of the Week

What a surprise - the podcast SUWT (which is the polite way to say Shut Up We’re Talking) has declared this blog of the week, for show #16.

I’m…… embarassed.   It’s always nice to be noticed.     Thanks folks !

Carbonite Cluster*#$!

Tezcatlipocca : Ding 76, 10% XP.     Got a better handle on the Kunzar Jungle quest lines.     Helped out a teenage Iksar, let him prove himself as a warrior, and then got to the point where he asked me to craft a trophy for him.

That doesn’t sound like a big deal at all does it ?    But to craft it, I needed two Deklium girdles, on sale for the low low price of 36gp each.    I surprised myself by buying them up.   Don’t want to get stuck in a quest line now do I ?

Also found myself helping multiple factions in Kunzar.    The City of Jinsk hates the villagers and the Sarnak.    The villagers hate the City of Jinsk.    The Sarnak hate the City of Jinsk.    Each step seems to require you to kill someone whom you are working on building up faction with.     So far, I’ve managed to stay non-KOS with everybody.

Completed two collection quests, and am looking for page 2 of the “We will be free again” book; it must be around Jinsk somewhere.     Was very pleased to get multiple items of two harvests needed for Kunark Expert.     If I ever seriously work on finishing that, I’ll need to harvest everything I’m sure.

No EQ2Players update.    Did I make #11 on quests ?    The suspense is killing me !

Chalchitlicue : Ding 30 tailor.     Got started again on the tradeskill project, and in short order (one writ) had # 1 of 3 alts up to level 30.     Shouldn’t be too hard to get another up to 30 now should it ?

Camaxtli : Ding 27 weaponsmith.     Jeez !    I had literally hundreds of carbonite clusters, and I still ran out of them before I even ran out of **VITALITY**.     Dev people, something is wrong there.    Very wrong.

So I checked the broker prices on all the T3 stuff I had, other than carbonite.     The results were encouraging for everything except for soft metals - rough agate is absolute junk, and gold clusters might sell for a little bit if around 100 of the cheaper ones get bought up first.    This meant it was time to start ignoring windswept stones and gather every other item.

Severed ash was a surprise - it sells highest of all other items, other than carbonite which is a plat maker.     Then again, I might need ash for my armorer; I don’t need it for my weaponsmith, that I’m sure of.

I’m actually at the point that I’d pay 1s per carbonite - that’s 2 gold for a full stack.     Doesn’t help me much, the low price is 15s, ie, 30 gold for a stack.      If it’s that expensive at T3, T4 must be a nightmare.

Time for Tlaloc to do some more gathering.

Merry Pirate Christmas

 

Looks like I’m commited now.

Christmas at the X household.    My boy got the Smash-Up cars, my daughter got Littlest Pets……… and I got the Pirates of the Burning Sea pre-order.     It was either that or LOTRO, or a new tie; and I just don’t see the time appearing to allow playing LOTRO.    I have plenty of ties too.

The techie gals out there will be underwhelmed, but I got my wife a wireless router.    She is really happy.    I don’t want or need wireless, but she wants nothing more than to do work while sitting on the living room couch, no desk nearby.    Now, she can - if she’s nice and I let her borrow my laptop.

Apparently I have to buy the full version of POTBS, then use multiple keys to get going.    January 7th, I can start the pre-boarding party, aka the “go-live day for people who buy preorders and other favorites of the Flying Labs developers”.     The pre-boarding party key, the landing party key, and finally a launch key will all be needed to get me started.   The included CD is audio only.

Pre-orders are kind of funny.    She got this at Fry’s for $5.     Now me getting into Fry’s is a difficult proposition, so I’m mostly thinking I will buy a digital download once it’s available and just consider the extra $5 lost money.     Waiting in a noontime Fry’s line, eating a twinkie instead of lunch, and still getting back to work late, is not worth $5 even for this cheapskate.     I just hope if I do that it’ll all work correctly.

Masters on RMT, and the Pirates Broker

Raph decides to lay it out for all of us about how and why we have RMT issues in games, and what to do about them, or even not to do. Also gives us a link to a presentation he attended in 2006 by a seriously smart economist who layed out a great economic primer on MMO’s - look at this.

There’s so much meat there I’m going to digest that for possible comment after Christmas.

One thing caught my eye that Tobold was tossing out there, in the midst of a tempest related to RMT; the double-blind auction house, a la Pirates of the Burning Sea. I did get a look at this when playing the beta, and eventually concluded that it was too complicated to mess with until the game was live.

The Pirates “broker” is not a game-wide system, it’s divided up among the three nations. Sellers do not list a price and wait for buyers like in EQ2. Instead, the system reminded me more of a stock market with bids and asks. I come in as a new player, wondering what I should be buying for my ship, and what kind of stuff do people want to buy from me. I do a search on the broker and end up thoroughly confused.

I see information about some thing that might interest me, let’s call it a +1 sail. The +1 sail sold for as little as 20 doubloons, and for as much as 200 doubloons. So this means……. what ? I’m not getting any useful info about how much I should be paying for the thing. I don’t know how much I can get away with selling it for either.

The concept apparently, is to reduce the amount of information about markets that a person can get by simply browsing the broker. Instead, information becomes a valuable commodity all by itself. Buyers in Georgetown will pay 200 doubloons for a +1 sail; while sellers in some other port are letting them go at 20. If I know that, I can buy up all the sails, make a run to Georgetown, and get a great profit based mainly on knowing what’s up.

I went ahead and put in some bids for the +1 sails. What the heck - let’s try one doubloon. Fairly quickly, the system comes back and tells me “I’m sorry but none are available at that price”. OK - now I’m establishing a floor for the price at least; but only in that single region, remember, the brokers are separated by nationality.

Maybe……. 10 doubloons ? “None available”. OK then - 100 doubloons ? “None available”. Eventually I gave up and didn’t buy anything. Either the 20 doubloon sail-maker got wise, or he needs to make more. I don’t want to be the sucker buying the sails for way more coin than needed either.

Another source of confusion for me was the raw materials. In EQ2 harvests are “free”, you just have to gather them. The time spent gathering is not insignificant. By contrast, in Pirates I can mine iron in the game after building a mine. But it costs me money to mine, and happens instantly. You can only mine so much until you have to wait for your stored labor to regenerate. Talk about turning things on their heads !

Add to that my lack of knowledge about how to sell iron, how much it can go for, and I found myself walking away from it saying “I’ll try that later”. And I plan to - I’ll use Tobolds plan of two characters, one a freetrader for money, and one a naval officer.

I’m going to have to play more to understand how it would work out in practice. I wonder, though, how successful the whole system could be. It seems too complicated for the masses; maybe even for me, the guy who claims to *want* a deep economic game. It probably will depend on whether a person can get some beginning idea of how much things are “worth” in a relatively short time. Maybe only a very few things. My experience was I couldn’t even get started.

I sell harvests and shinies on the EQ2 brokers. That’s basically it; crafted items (other than last weeks products) don’t ever sell for a profit. The crafting levels are considered intrinsically valuable and thus finished products cost less than materials. Have the Flying Labs boys come up with a better, more intelligent system ? Here’s hoping.

Harvest 1000 Ways

Spent an awful lot of time harvesting

Tlaloc : Ding 33.     Spent endless hours harvesting everything he could in that stretch of the Dead River from the docks over towards the griffin fields.    Despite avoiding every aggro mob possible, he still managed to knock off the 100 undead needed for the Axe From The Past hq.    Didn’t try to progress that further as the next step is a one-hour timed one.

He got a lot of stuff.     Over 200 of most of the resources, including, oddly enough, more carbonite clusters than loam.    That was welcome.     Finished Duggin’s quest around ten times (!) digging up all this stuff, which will surely have helped him in the race to ?53? provisioner.

Shuffled things around between alts and got ready for more tradeskilling, then it was Tez’s turn.

Tezcatlipocca : 50% XP.    I bit the bullet.    It was a quiet evening at the house and I wouldn’t get interrupted.    So I headed off to the Mines of Nurga and began the long slow crawl through to pick up the gems from the twelve boxes.

I got halfway through without incident.     Had a couple of trains run past me and I killed my pet to avoid any new incidents of “sudden aggro”.    But next thing I see is a group of five running in and tramping past me.    They went ahead and crawled into the room with Grizzik in it.

I’m thinking, this is great !     I’ll walk along behind them and pick up the last chests !    And I proceeded to do just that.    I mean, a group of five guys tear through that content.    And I don’t really care that they’re taking the mobs I was going to crawl through.

Ready to call out, I target the group leader and /bow.   Thanks for clearing the way for me.

Fuck you.

???????????????

Heh, whatever, I was serious.

Next time clear your own fucking path bitch.

Yeah, OK then.     You come in and ignore me, kill all the mobs I was working my way through, and throw that out at me.

I shouldn’t have let it bother me, but it did.    Haven’t seen a ruder player in my MMO career.     (Stargrace thought this guy was bad !)    Rude, stupid, anonymous, and sociopathic is no way to go through life pal.     I got a vindictively good feeling when I see him /shouting later “Spawn Already Bitch!”.     Guess whatever they were after didn’t show up for awhile.

After calling and doing banking etc, finished up the rest of the Burynai quests.     Got into a duo/trio while I was whacking Burynai - a bruiser with his healer in tow.     We spent an enjoyable time finishing up the last quests in Fens - other than the Burynai trading quest.   Apparently you need a 30,000 faction level to finish it, and the quests got me up to 6k or so.    That’s a lot of +500 faction quests or mobs to grind right there.

And so, with Fens complete and a willing partner, I headed off into the Kunzar Jungle and got a taste of the zone.     Not enough to get a real impression; I was being raced around by a level 78 who clearly knew exactly where to go, and must have been working it for the benefit of his autofollowed healer.    Everybody and everything hated me, and after hitting several heavy faction quests it was amazingly late and time to log off.

Saturday night’s the night for…. news

Exactly what I expected, and told yall would happen.     No RMT coming to non-exchange servers for EQ2.

Straight from tonight’s posting fool himself, John Smedley -

We aren’t going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement. If we catch people, we ban them and have been for a long time now. The truth of the matter is it’s very difficult to combat them, but we have people at SOE who fight the good fight each and every day. In the near future you’re going to see us becoming a lot more public about this then we ever have been. I think we’ve done a bad job at communicating just how seriously we take this fight.

We’re interested in working with LiveGamer because they are unique in the RMT world due to the fact that they are pledging (and are putting technology behind it) to not buy from farmers. Farmers are the bane of our existence at SOE. They cause us endless amounts of grief and do real financial damage in a meaningful way.

What do I mean by that?

Many of them use stolen credit cards, obtained by unsuspecting users who give them credit card #’s to purchase in-game gold. I’m not saying all of the RMT shops out there use stolen credit cards, but a LOT of them do. Your credit card is absolutely not safe in their hands.

In addition we recieve large scale (over $500k so far) fines for chargebacks that these scumbag farmers routinely do. They purchase a new account.. use it for a month and then call the credit card company to say “I never paid for this”. Over time, as the # of these incidents rise we get fined by the credit card companies. And it’s not just us, other large MMO companies are seeing exactly the same problem.

I can totally see Sony getting slapped with those kinds of fees and fines.   Sure would lend credence to the idea that they mostly want to get the whole thing under control, rather than find a way to profit off the trade.

Livegamer as a way to allow SOE to concentrate on games.    I like the sound of that.    The devil’s in the details as always though.

The most amazing story in MMO history. Except it’s false.

There’s a rumored acquisition starting of Sony Online Entertainment by, of all things, an INDIAN company.  Talk about your big news ! Problem is, it’s probably false - Smed claims the whole thing is wrong.

First, selected items from the rumored story -

NEW DELHI: Zapak Digital entertainment, the online gaming company promoted by Anil Ambani-led ADAG group, is all set to buy out Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) for around $300 million (Rs 1,200 crore).

Sony Online Entertainment is the game development and game publishing unit of Sony and posts revenue of around $ 150 million (the company doesn’t reveal the exact details for the division).

No idea if that’s accurate or not. Still, a sale price of twice yearly revenue ? Only makes sense if Sony is losing a ton of money for some reason. Shoot, if they’re for sale on those terms I want a piece of the action.

This acquisition is in line with the future plans of Zapak Digital, which is planning to enter the gaming space in China by early next year. “This makes perfect sense for us, as around 80% of content in the gaming industry is manufactured internationally. Buying out Sony, will not only give us access but also expand our reach in the global market,” said a senior Zapak Official.

The major expenses in the gaming industry is on content and marketing, and Zapak aims to reduce the cost of publishing a game by buying out those studios and relocating them to India. “This will reduce the cost drastically from $30 mn to $10mn, which will give us the advantage to channelise our funds towards marketing and other activities,” the official said.

In the recent past, Sony has aligned with Virgin Comics, a Bangalore-based collaboration of famed, self-help guru Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and Richard Branson of Virgin Group. After the proposed acquisition, Zapak plans to retain control over all the deals, which has been signed by Sony Online.

According to the latest IMRB report, there are about 2.8 million online gamers in India and the online gaming industry is worth Rs 21 crore. Zapak is one of the top players in the Indian gaming space.

A visit to Zapak.com reveals a company that gives out free online games, massively multiplayer in the same way Yahoo games are - chess, checkers, backgammon and the like. As I write I believe it’s 10am Sunday in India, and there are a massive 7 people playing chess, and 5 playing kancha.

I could be wrong, but this doesn’t sound like the kind of group to be buying up Sony.

The numbers in the article seem a little suspect. Would you pay rupees 1200 crore to get leverage and try to grow a market segment currently at rupees 21 crore ? I sure wouldn’t.

It appears that the Smedster has been in contact with Zapak, actually. But they want to partner with them related to MMO’s in India -

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has already short-listed probable local partners for a joint venture to set up a studio in Bangalore which will develop game content for the Indian markets.

Zapak, which has played a key role in revolutionising the Indian online gaming segment, is all set to open its own development studio. Rohit Sharma, chief operating officer, Zapak Digital Entertainment, said: “For the 500 games that we have online, 80% of the content is outsourced. We intend to establish a full-service game development studio in India in a joint venture with an international firm.”

Although like SOE, Zapak, too, has not yet finalised a partner yet, but the idea is the same — combining local understanding of the market along with international expertise. This sort of heavy commitment from both the companies sounds like good news for the gaming industry.

Notice that “80% outsourced” thing in there a second time ?

It’s clear to me which story is more believable.

Dual Game Crafting

Began the evening in Vanguard, said a quick hello to Stargrace, and tried out some crafting.

Vanguard crafting appears to be heavily skill dependent.   I got a work order to make three clay plates, and promptly failed to make a single one.     Skill points increased like firecrackers going off - “Your skill in whatever-it-was increased to 2!” - so I went ahead and tried a second work order.

Better success this time - managed to make the three items with B, C and D grade.  Apparently you don’t get any XP for D grade work, but it does increase your skills and give you a tiny bit of coin.    I learned to make sure I had plenty of solvent available too, as I ran out on one recipe which meant I couldn’t finish.

I seem to remember that there was a way to switch toolbelts during crafting.    Your toolbelts hold needed tools for the crafting process, and if complications arise while crafting you use a variety of tools or consumables to keep the process on track.    But despite buying a group of tools and a second tool belt, I couldn’t switch my toolbelt.     So I ended up ignoring nearly every complication and just plowing ahead in crafting.

It seemed to work out - I took some quality hits but got the hang of things finally, making A and B grade items for several work orders and dinging level 5.     Maybe I just need to buy bigger toolbelts.   But why then, are there three slots for them ?

Logged off Vanguard for the night to do Everquest 2 crafting.     Chalchitlicue managed to ding 29 tailor, and put a bunch of armor up for sale.     She even sold a few pieces.    What a strange, strange thing - to actually **sell** the crafting processes results !     People really buy them !     I swear, absolutely nobody ever bought my potions, but tailor and carpenter items get purchased.     Also had Huehueteotl bang away, creating more boxes for the alt army and dinging 36 carpenter in the process.

With that, it was clear that my 300-point harvesting plan (had originally grabbed about that many of each harvest) was not going to be enough to level everyone to 30.    Even Chalchitlicue would be lucky to hit 30 given the low level of items left in the communal T3 storage box.    So, off went Tez to get another quest ding and bring in the stuff for his lowbie alts.

Duggin’s quest is very helpful at this stage, as I need no T3 food harvests with a 50-something provisioner.    He ran up and down that Dead River in the Thundering Steppes, picking up the quest ding easily and finishing two more rounds before sleep claimed me for the night.    Not nearly enough harvests either, so I’ll want to have either Tez or someone else continue the harvesting.

EQ2players updated partially - it’s a miracle !    Tezcatlipocca now has 1,940 quests completed.     He might have enough to hit #12 on the server, but I think it’s more likely that Borgman (whom I’m chasing) completed at least a few to hang onto his spot.    We’ll just have to see, when and if server boards update.     And this also gives me the motivation to keep the quest race alive …………….

Bonus XP Weekend

As per the inimitable Grimwell

In celebration of Frostfell coming to Norrath we will be holding a pair of 20% bonus experience weekends! During these weekends, all players of EverQuest II will enjoy a boost in experience gain to celebrate our Norrathian holiday!The first bonus experience weekend will begin Friday, December 21st at approximately 3:00 PM PST and last until approximately 10:00 AM PST on Monday, December 24th.

The second bonus experience weekend will begin Friday, December 28th at approximately 3:00 PM PST and last until approximately 10:00 AM PST on Monday, December 31st.

Happy questing and happy Frostfell!

Please note that this bonus will apply to both adventuring and tradeskill XP gain.

But….. where will I get my heartbreaking news from ?

Wow.   That’s sad.

I have been reading Courtv.com news for years.     They’ve been a great source of information about the notorious and sad, spectacularly awful and silly things happening in the world of criminal activity.     And apparently, they’ve gotten cancelled for not being in the core business of “getting people to watch the network”.

Something weird happened seven years ago, when my daughter was born.      I want to protect my kids so much, and I found myself drawn to all these heartbreaking stories of babies being killed by scumbags.    Partly you’re relieved your own kids are safe, when you read this stuff.    Partly, you want the low lifes to get what’s coming to them.    Partly, you’re sad that precious children who did things like your own kids do, are no longer around or are irreparably harmed.

Now I’m not going to get any of that anymore, and I’m pissed.    Fuck you to whatever dickhead executive made that decision.     You’ve got an absolutely unique and awesome website and you’re shutting it down ?     Rot in hell.   Merry Fucking Christmas.    God, I’m pissed.