Eve Online: Querious

About a week ago, we finally moved out to a system in Querious, our new nullsec home. Of course I wasn't entirely clear about what to take with me, but a jumpfreigher service had been arranged so we could take plenty of stuff with us. But not everything: I had to fly my Drake battlecruiser there myself - 53 jumps - because it has a few rigs fitted. Fortunately most of the other nullsec systems along the way were deserted and I got my ship in one piece in our new home system. Corp member Dadellus was already there, and we quickly started ratting and running complexes.

But there's a lot of new stuff to get used to! For the first time I live in 'not blue, shoot it' space; anyone who's not explicitly your friend, is presumed an enemy and must be dealt with on sight. To facilitate the 'dealing with' part, all pilots must join the home fleet. In highsec you only join a fleet when you are planning on doing stuff together, but here it's a permanent.. Lots of new stuff to learn!

(forgot to publish this when I wrote it - sorry..)

New York!

Yesterday I wrote a short blog piece at Koinup about New York, which can be visited in Twinity as of today. Metaversum recreated a part of Manhattan, including parts of Central Park, Madison Avenue, 5th Avenue etcetera. It's a work in progress, but even so it's really worth a visit!

More snapshots - again - at Koinup.

Eve Online: changes coming

I've been in Eve Online for over two years. In most chat channels, that makes me a seasoned pilot - definitely not a n00b anymore. In these two years, I have mined, ran missions, fought a few PVP encounters, did some trading, did some diplomatic stuff.. and that's about it. And I have loved it! Yet, I wrote elsewhere:

"We are mission runners, miners and industrialists. We are carebears at heart, but still we're growing tired of the predictability of highsec. We have killed Kruul so many times we lost count; we probably looted enough of his DNA to rebuild him without using DNA sequencers. And having to bring that stupid damsel back time and time again.. it's getting a bit stale."

This is from a forum post, where we asked for a nice piece of quiet nullsec space to live. We were looking for change, excitement, nullsec ratting and plexing, high end mineral mining and exotic ores to mine! Even though we didn't get many usable offerhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs at the time, we now have found a new place.

A few members of the MPA alliance have joined to form a new corp (ticker: NOFAD) which has since joined the Saints amongst Sinners alliance (SAS), and we are currently packing our stuff for the long haul to Querious, where our new nullsec life awaits us.

The funny thing is - I'm feeling n00bish again! Nullsec ratting and pvp requires other ships and fits, other tactics. For the first time we are flying in an alliance that does *not* primarly consist of miners and industrialists. This really is a different experience, and I am anxious to see what will happen.


(before I forget - anyone interested in a 21-day free buddy Eve Online trial, contact me!)

Eve Online: if Bruce and Lance..

If Lance Armstrong and Bruce Willis were ever to have an illegitimate love child, it would look like this:



This is an example of a Gallente male, according to the new Eve Online character creation tool, which is available for public testing on CCP's Singularity test server. I am impressed with CCP's willingness to throw something so obviously in early beta stage to us, the wolves:

However, the assets and the technology is far from finished. Singularity is our test server. We put things there to see how they break. You will be able to play around with a total pre-release client full of temporary assets, clunky UI, strange behavior and slow loading. You will be able to create incredibly bad looking characters, dressed funny and posed silly. In a way it‘s a marketing faux pas, since the character creator on Singularity is far from being ready. This, however, is the way we roll. We publish unfinished stuff to our test server to allow you, the players to have a go at our new technology, to find defects, to have it tested on all kinds of different hardware configurations so that we in the end deliver a higher-quality product. With your feedback, we make the game better, but be warned, this is not the final product. Some avatars will look awful and ridiculous, with glaring visual artifacts and defects. Did I mention that some of them will look awful?

..And I'm sure the results will get better over time.

Eve Online: becoming more social

It must be about four years ago, that I first set foot in Second Life, to see for myself why IBM was making such a fuss about it. And while I have (obviously) enjoyed it, there was one thing bothering me: I didn't enjoy being in SL if I didn't have a clear goal. I need something to do, to see, to take care of.

Same with Twinity, which I first entered in early 2008. It is developing nicely, shaping up to be a nice social virtual world, but I need something to do. Chatting with Monica is always a good reason to be in Twinity, as are the mirrored cities and places. Those, and the community as a whole, keep me engaged.

I enjoy Eve Online because there's always something to do, but it's not a social world. It's a scifi themed sandbox universe, aimed at player versus player combat, player versus environment, industry, market manipulation. Large scale combat and politics between large player driven alliances color the eve online news. Yet the social connections are there, too; players meet in corporate and alliance chat channels or even in the local solar systems' channel. These connections are often quite meaningful, as corporations often have a core of seasoned players who've known each other for years.

But now space is about to become much more social, now that Incarna (also known as 'ambulation' and 'walking in stations' is finally announced for Eve Online's summer of 2011 expansion.

Finally, real avatars will be able to meet at a bar in a station and talk things over, do some games - it's not yet known what will be available in Incarna's initial release, but you get the idea. Especially in highsec trading hubs, I expect the social aspect of Eve Online to become more important.

A beautiful universe, with plenty to do and countless choices available - with meaningful, immersive, social structures in place. What's not to like!

Twinity update

At the Koinup blog, I have published a new update on Twinity. It's about real estate, shopping and gambling, as Twinity's first casino opened. Interesting times in the mirror world! Read about it here: Twinity: developing, shopping, gambling...

Eve Online: perspective is lagging

Much noise has been made, recently, over Eve Online and the way CCP deals with it's flagship product. One of the focal points of the emo rage directed at CCP, is the lag experienced in large fleet battles, which occur mostly in lowsec or nullsec space. This lag is a true issue as these kind of massive battles rank high amongst the features which make Eve Online an unique environment. Yet, what I'd like to point out, is that it's an issue that's not affecting everyone.

In my highsec industrialist corporation, I have not heard one single complaint about lag. It's simply not an issue we are confronted with, in our day to day gameplay - unless we visit Jita, which I try to avoid anyway. Part of our corp in in wormhole space, which is quiet by nature; some are mining in Gallente or Amarr space, where lag doesn't occur much either.

On page 14 of the recent Quarterly Economic Newsletter, we gather that most Eve Online pilots reside in highsec - over 88% actually. It is my guess that many of these players rarely, if ever, are affected by the much decried lag issues.

CCP should fix the lag issue (and they are working on it), as it is hurting one of their most important assets in terms of gameplay, and because it yields a lot of negative publicity at the moment. But in all the noise and bile directed at CCP, it wouldn't hurt to remind ourselves that for the majority of Eve pilots, fleet battle lag may not be 'the most pressing issue' after all.

Oh and while I'm on it: if you're technically inclined, do yourself a favor and read this Gamasutra article on sharding and the Eve Online infrastructure. A good read!

Eve Online: 500 pilots in local

Yesterday evening, CCP and more than 500 volunteers executed another mass test on the Eve Online test server Singularity. Participating was easy this time as no client patch was needed, just a copy of the current Eve Online client.

The test involved several phases, all in the Syndicate region. First, we gathered at the F6 jumpgate in MHC where the X and W fleets, each consisting of about 240 pilots, were formed; we jumped a few times, ending up in X-B, where we up a gatecamp. Finally, we had a few rounds of fleet battle. Between the test phases, CCP staff were busy tuning the system, testing certain fixes or settings, and evaluating the results as we went.

During the first mass test a few months ago, we couldn't even gather at the gate before crashing due to lag, but this time that went much better, although my corpmates reported an increase in lag upon the arrival of the Ragnarok.

Jumping to the next system with hundreds of pilots still yielded hilarious results, with pilots being stuck for minutes before they could jump. I, for instance, got a 2.38 mins waiting time warning from traffic control. And when we finally jumped, many ended up without anything on grid - or even completely off grid. Effectively I was unable to participate in any activity for about five minutes. It's frustrating to read the fleet chat about the battle raging around you, when all you see is a nice default starfield background..

Using drones in the fleet battles seemed to have a large negative impact as far as I'm concerned. Without drones but with 500+ pilots in system, I was able to participate in the fleet battle, even firing some shots at CCP staff member CCP Atlas. Unsurprisingly, the CCP's are among the hottest targets in fleet, and CCP Atlas quickly got relieved of his Abaddon battleship :)


A few minutes later we were all cleared to release and use drones, and that's when the lag really hit. Modules wouldn't cycle, guns wouldn't fire anymore, and for quite some time launching and using drones was virtually impossible too. By this time however, the number of pilots in local had dropped considerably - it was past midnight in Europe and many pilots got killed - so you would expect lag to lessen. But with drones out, it got significantly worse.

And then, suddenly, I got hit by something massive: I lost shields, armor and hull in one volley. Insurance email arrived, informing me that my Dominix had, unfortunately, been destroyed.. yet I still had my ship and modules on screen. The shields even started repairing themselves! Obviously some things were way out of sync by that time. Time to logoff and go to bed!

One thing I learned yesterday, is that large scale fleet battle is a unique activity in Eve Online, with it's own rules and language. Many volunteers - including me - were not that familiar with the ins and outs, leading to a lot of confusion, undisciplined behaviour (keep firing when the FC tells to CEASE &^%% FIR for instance) and general mayhem. It was a real chaos at times! But, a nice fleet battle practice run for pilots like me.

It will be interesting to see what CCP gets out of this test. I think they are making progress - and they really need to - so hopefully we'll see some improvements on Tranquility in the near future.

OpenSim: the kids love it

Back in September 2007, I installed my first OpenSim instance, and my kids - and their nieces - have been experimenting with it on and off ever since. With the release of OpenSim 0.7, I decided to upgrade my installation, and keep it online for a while. Frankly, it was the kids who triggered that: they asked me to start 'our Second Life' again because they wanted to play.

And playing they did! For the past two days, they have been hard at work on a new camping site - probably inspired by the summer vacation season - and I am, once again, impressed with what they've made. It has everything: a reception, a terrace, shop, sanitary facilities and cabins to stay in. The cabins are decorated to each owners' taste, too.


What really amazed me, is the quality of work these kids deliver, without any training. Sure, last year I tought them the basics, such as creating shapes from prims, linking them and using textures, but once they understood how that worked, they pretty much did the rest themselves. Today I got them started on using scripts, and that is again giving them a whole new area to play with. The first really usable chairs are appearing here and there, and my daughter is working on a revolving door! Of course they didn't write these scripts, they downloaded them from wikis, blogs and such. But, I am eager to see whether they'll get an interest in scripting in general.

Obviously, these are kids. There's plenty room for improvement in their work; especially aligning prims is sometimes hard to do. Frankly they often aren't that concerned when prim alignment is a bit off; for their play purpose it's usually good enough. Although my daughter deleted her entire shop today, as she wasn't satisfied with it anymore due to the walls and floors being aligned improperly!

I have never really worked with sculpted prims, and I'm not sure those render well in OpenSim - I think they do but I'm not sure. But after scripts, sculpties is probably the next thing I'll point them to. I wouldn't be surprised if they become more proficient with them than I was!

Many of my OpenSim snapshots at Koinup feature work created by this next generation of virtual world users. Take a look! OpenSim @ Koinup

Twinity: Miami

Today Metaversum presented me with the opportunity to visit their virtual rendering of Miami Beach in Twinity, in advance of tomorrow's official opening. Of course I accepted, and I must say I'm pretty impressed with what they've achieved. More on my visit to Miami Beach is at the Koinup blog, where I am the resident Twinity blogger. Of course I have a lot of screenshots, also to be found @ Koinup!

Eve Online: nullsec adventures

As mentioned on this blog before, I am currently an alliance diplomat for the MPA alliance in Eve Online. When we were offered a chance to travel to nullsec - the dangerous, lawless, but most rewarding space in Eve Online's New Eden universe - some of our corporation took it with both hands. Most of our corporation and alliance members reside in the more safe highsec areas; some live in wormhole space, but we rarely venture into nullsec. Yet for many of New Eden's pilots, nullsec is the place to be. This is where the big space holding alliances reign, where epic battles involving hundreds or even thousands of players are being fought, where campaigns lasting weeks or months are being executed. It's also the place where each and every move is potentially dangerous: there is no safety in nullsec. Theoretically the same goes for highsec and lowsec (empire space) but still, nullsec is a different story.

So after all diplomatic hurdles had been taken care of (a process which went more smoothly than I could hope for) some of us embarked on the long trip to a hospitable system in Providence.

This region had just been conquered by two alliances, Ushra'khan and Atlas Alliance, who defeated the previous owners CVA and their holder alliances in a campaign that lasted for several weeks. For many neutral pilots, CVA's loss was bad news, as CVA and their holders regularly allowed these neutral outsiders to reside in their space. The new owners, however, quickly restored some of CVA's hospitality. Ushra'khan (ticker: UK) themselves declared they were adopting a 'Not Red, Don't Shoot' policy (NRDS), essentially allowing neutrals into UK space, and some of their allies followed suit. It was this policy that allowed us to go there, and enjoy the thrills and rewards of nullsec.

From the start, however, it was clear that Providence was still in a lot of turmoil. Hostile fleets roamed the systems and blocked routes, even in Ushra'khan space; it seemed UK wasn't able or willing to enforce their 'NRDS' policy. We resided in another system, but suffered a lot from these roaming gangs of hostiles, and we lost several ships. Pretty soon, we started to feel the financial pain of these losses, and it started to look like the rewards were not enough to cover the costs anymore. So, we contemplated a retreat from Providence back to highsec, and wait for another - perhaps better - shot at nullsec space later.

While we were discussing this, news broke that the Ushra'khan alliance had been dealt a deadly blow. An undercover agent infiltrated Ushra'khan, slowly working his way up through the alliances' hierarchy; after one year of patient roleplaying and plotting, he rose to such a powerful administrative position he was able to dismantle the alliance from within, simply by ejecting most member corporations from the alliance - and steal a lot of stuff in the process, too. As this agent is now the only one left in the Ushra'khan alliance with any power - he removed all others- there's no way UK can be restored to it's previous incarnation. Whether you like Ushra'khan or not: you have to admire that kind of dedication! It's stuff like this that makes Eve Online unique, in my opinion.

As it is now, Ushra'khan still does exist, but it's no longer a meaningful entity. The corporations who used to make up Ushra'khan membership are still active and of course keep defending their space, but obviously they suffered a severe blow to morale and organization. As was to be expected, hostile alliances like Hydra Reloaded and Razor alliance are now trying to profit off the confusion, to gain sovereignty over parts of space currently owned by former Ushra'khan members. In other words: more battle, more turmoil.

Luckily I succeeded in getting my clone and most important gear (Drake battlecruiser, T2 drones, loot and some ammo) out of Providence, earlier today; it is now safe in highsec empire space. We will continue to watch the situation, which is highly interesting in itself. But it probably means we'll have to look for another, preferrably more peaceful part of nullsec to continue our exploration. A nice task for a diplomat..

Twinity update

Again, it's time for a Twinity update. Upon returning from holidays, I must say Twinity is developing rather fast these days. Concurrency numbers are clearly up, and the welcome areas have daily visitor numbers unheard of a few months ago. More on that in my Koinup blog entry: Twinity: busy in here.

Overdue

I've been neglecting this blog for far too long! Much has happened between the end of april and today. We've had some turbulent times in real life, which has taken a toll on gaming time. Yet, in those few hours I've had, significant stuff has happened.

As for Eve Online, I have become an alliance diplomat. Our alliance, MPA, has an invitation to join a few old friends in nullsec, which is great! But getting there is not as easy as flying through highsec, obviously; we need to work our way through several systems occupied by other alliances. So, our diplomatic team is assessing routes and neighbours, determining the best routes. The good news is: we need to cross Ushra'khan space, and UK has just declared a 'NRDS' policy: Not Red, Don't Shoot. This means that only enemies of UK will be shot at; others may freely pass (most of nullsec is 'NBSI': Not Blue, Shoot It, in which case only known friends are safe). This means at least one diplomatic obstacle removed, and we're working on the others.

Twinity is on the move. Lots of good stuff happening there, and I have written about that on the Koinup blog. Check it out, and give Twinity a try if you're not a member yet; the world can use the extra members.

Second Life is a bit of an enigma at the moment. Now that Linden labs is offering prefab houses to premium members, the rental market it taking a bit of a beating and my rentals are barely paying for themselves at the moment. Of course I'm not going to pull out, but a few extra renters would be welcome. Occupancy is too low at the moment!

Eve Online: Planetary Interaction

Yesterday evening, our alliance spent some time on the Eve Online test system Singularity to explore the upcoming feature Planetary Interaction. When the next Eve expansion, Tyrannis, is released in a few weeks time, planets will become an exploitable resource, containing all sorts of ore and raw materials, to be used in building goods. It's not yet clear what those goods will be, but stuff like POS fuel and skill books have been mentioned. Here's a short summary of what we learned yesterday.

Eve Online : Planets

With the release of the Dominion expansion in 2009, the planets of New Eden got a facelift. The next expansion, Tyrannis (eta may 2010) will turn them into valuable sources of raw materials, to be mined from space. And the new game Dust 514 will bring mercenaries to their surface, probably to fight over the installations and resources belonging to Eve pilots. For now I'll contend myself with a few snapshots every now and then.

Idly drifting near a planets' ring. The planet casts a shadow over the thin rings; you can even see the stars through them.


Come Tyrannis, the next Eve Online expansion, this planet may become a rich resource for the miners of New Eden. And come Dust 514, CCP's new game set in the same universe, it may even become the scene of fierce fights between Dust 514 mercenaries. But today, seen from space, it just looks inhospitable and cold.


This planet made me think of our own planet Mars. It probably doesn't have an atmosphere; it looks like it's been dead for a long while.

Eve Online: what's in my hangar

Eve Online pilots sometimes spend a lot of time to find the precise ship and fitting they need for a certain job, and as there are a lot of different jobs, most pilots tend to have a lot of ships. So Rixx Javix at Eveoaganda asks: what ships are in your hangar, and how are they named?

Looking around in my hangar I see a nice stack of Gallente ships: Incursus frigate (for doing small incursions into lowsec), a Helios covops (same), a Catalyst Destroyer used for running plexes, a Vexor cruiser (same), a Brutix battlecruiser for low level missions, and two battleships: the Dominix droneboat and the Megathron. And an Iteron mark III. Oh and the Zephyr of course! I once bought a Drake but it got destroyed at a lowsec gatecamp and I didn't buy a new one - yet.

My ships are all named after Dutch WWII era naval ships, such as the Flores and Soemba, who earned the nickname 'Terrible Twins from the British:

"Another British officer said: "These Dutchmen have the right fighting spirit. Nothing will stop them, and they won't cease firing. The only rest they had during the nights of unceasing bombardments was when they ran out of ammunition, and then they returned, reshelled and refuelled, and were off again. They will take on anything. [...] We could not make out where the firing came from until someone said 'It 's those damned Dutchmen again; you can't keep them out of anything!' And he was right."

I have attempted to find fitting names for each ship, meaning the Iteron is named after a freighter, the Dominix after one of our primitive aircraft carriers, the Incursus after a frigate etcetera. I like a sense of history and think such a naming scheme fits Eve Online just fine.

Twinity: skating!

Last week, Twinizens enjoyed the usage of an in world vehicle for the very first time, with the introduction of the skateboard. I've had a lot of fun with it already! It's way easier to explore cities and the potential for competetive fun is obvious.


For more on the Twinity skateboard, see my Koinup blog items: Twinity: Skateboard fun and Skateboarding through Twinity London.

Also fun to do: creating movies in Twinity using the Wegame utility, which is actually quite easy. This is one of the trial runs:



My Twinity Machinima - together with lots of others, often better than mine - can be found on the Twinity Koinup machinima page. Do pay a visit!

Eve Online: mass testing on Sisi

Ever since the Dominion expansion hit Eve Online, lag issues have been playing up. Especially during large fleet battles, the kind of battles that tend to take place in nullsec space between the larger space holding alliances, lag has been a real blight, even becoming a battle deciding factor at times. I am not living in nullsec space and not a member of such an alliance; in other words, I have never been in a large fleet battle, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to participate in one! Large scale nullsec warfare is completely different from my usual gameplay, as it includes ships and technology rarely (if ever) seen in highsec and employs radically different tactics. Stuff I'd like to see and experience!

Mass Test
So how does a lowly mission runner and parttime trader work his way into a massive fleet fight between the capital ships of New Eden? Simple, I participated in the March 20th mass test on Singularity, Eve Online's test environment! CCP is working hard to fix the lag issue infecting the currently deployed code, and they wanted to test some of the possible fixes on the test system Singularity (Sisi) first. So, yesterday evening, several hundreds of pilots logged on to Sisi instead of Tranquility (the 'normal' Eve Online game environment) in order to help CCP and, ultimately, themselves. For me it was not only a matter of helping, but also a chance to participate in such a fleet and see the cap ships in action.

Moveme
After logging in and fitting my Megathron battleship, I found myself a long way from where the test would be executed. On Singularity, there's an easy solution to that: I logged on to the in game Moveme channel, and got transported, in an instant, to a station in the FD-MLJ system in the Syndicate region. The testing was supposed to take place in the neighbouring system X-BV98; we would gather there and mass jump to Poitot (yet another neighbouring system) to see what would happen. There would be siege warfare and quite possible a nice battle to top things off. The good thing about battle on Singularity is, that any losses incurred are limited to the test environment and have no repercussions in the normal Eve Online environment. In other words: risk free battle!

Fleet, lag
After chatting a bit in the in game MassTesting channel, I joined CCP Stillman's fleet, left the station and set out for X-BV98, which would normally be one easy jump. The vast amounts of ships that had to move through the system, however, meant that there was indeed an enormous amount of lag. FPS (frames per second) dropped to 'average 0.1' at one time, effectively rendering the game unplayable. I decided to relog; that helped a lot and I was able to jump to X-BV98 and travel to the Poitot stargate, where an impressive fleet was gathering:



More pictures available: Mass Testing on Koinup.

Cyno beacons were lit, more and more ships arrived at the gate and I again joined the CCP Stillman fleet. The lag, however, became terrible again; joining a fleet seems to have a very negative impact on the performance.

Operation aborted
Unfortunately, this is where it stopped for me. Family duties interrupted unexpectedly; I had to log off. When I came back an hour later, battle was raging, but it was 17 jumps away. With no moveme channel available to drop me at the scene of the battle (and noticing many testers logging off) I parked my ship, left nullsec Singularity and headed for the less epic world of empire, high sec space on Tranquility. I missed my large fleet battle, but it was a good experience nonetheless. Next mass test I hope to be there again!

Twinity update

I just published an update on Twinity at the Koinup blog. Main topics: Therians welcome to Twinity, an expansion to virtual Berlin, a visit to the Pergamon museum and this mornings' new release.

The Pergamon Museum, Twinity Berlin:

Eve Online: arms dealer

In Eve Online, there's a never ending demand for stuff. Pilots need space ships, modules to fit them with, and ammunition - all the time, because ships get destroyed and ammo gets spent in an endless grind that only stops during downtime. Industrialists make a nice living based on this continuous demand, but they are not the only ones. There's also quite a bit of interregional trade going on, and for the past few weeks I have become involved in this part of Eve Online as well.

A while ago I needed a couple of 250mm Compressed Coil Guns: a type of medium sized rail guns which I often use on my mission running ships. On my way to a corp event a dozen jumps out of my home system, I crossed a region boundary, and while checking the local market prices I noticed these railguns were a lot cheaper here than in my home region. Immediately I saw an opportunity for making a profit, and so, on a whim, I became an arms dealer! In this neighbouring region, I bought almost all of these guns I could find for a very decent price, and started to sell them in my home region at a nice profit. After a while I ran out of cheap guns with prices in the neighbouring region rising as well, so I have had to travel further and further to get the guns at a worthwhile price.

Yesterday I found myself scouring through obscure systems, buying a few guns here and some there, creating a small stock to trade with, and that's when I realised this wasn't the way to go, I was wasting my time on petty trade! If I want to be a trader, even if it's a side job, I need to have ample supplies of the item I'm trying to profit off. I need more guns to sell! Yesterday evening, I decided to take my trusted Iteron transport vessel "Daf 95" to Jita and do some serious shopping there. Prices, while not as low as the initial stock I acquired in the neighbour system, are still favourable, so I stockpiled almost a thousand guns. I have since planted them here and there in regional trade hubs, spread over several regions. My prices are reasonable, but my profits still range from 50%-100% per gun if I succeed in selling them at these prices. The top left picture here shows, that this is definitely not a given.

Traveling to Jita, by the way, proved dangerous: on two occasions I was targeted by gate campers, in high sec no less. In both cases I was quick enough to get away before any of them could lock on to me. Afk travel to Jita is definitely not the way to go, that's for sure.. Jump through a gate, align to next gate, and warp away as fast as you can.

In the coming weeks it will become clear if I stand to profit from my first concerted effort at trade. It's a whole new game with new rules!