Market report, day 1.

Posted on July 22, 2008 by SynCaine

Day 1 marketing report:

Bought: 10,000 Large Antimatter rounds at 120 ISK per.

Sold: Nothing

The market was quiet… a little too quiet. Actually the above is only half true, I did sell some random stuff, but it was not off the new buy/sell orders I created for the market experiment. In all fairness, only about 20 of the possible 46 (I think) market orders are devoted to the new market, with the rest being old order I had set up in my previous location. As time goes on, those will either sell or I’ll just cancel them as I see fit. The goal is to have all available orders working the new market.

With all that said, the lack of action does raise a concern I may have picked a location with anemic traffic. Not going to change plans just yet, but it will be something to watch.

As for the actual details, as the market is in Amarr space, I have a buy order for each type of large crystal, as well as buy orders for small, medium, and large AM ammo. As seen above, the large AM ammo order has been filled, and the ammo placed back on the market at a system low price of 150 ISK per. I also have a buy order out for Paradise missiles, which are reportedly popular with mission runners. (I fly a Rohk myself, so don’t know the missile situation personally)

More to come!

Edit: I started with about 25 million ISK devoted to the marketing experiment, which limited me somewhat in what I could place buy orders for. Hopefully once this whole thing gets going, those limits won’t be a factor.

Posted in EVE Online | 8 Comments

Time to play the market, EVE-style.

Posted on July 21, 2008 by SynCaine

In the ever-changing ‘what do I want to do now’ world of EVE, I have a new goal for my miner, to become the greatest trader ever.

Or at least make some half decent ISK while learning about trading in EVE.

The reasoning for this is two-fold. One, I need ISK for that Hulk I want to buy but never have ISK for. Two, I think trading can be something that I can keep up with during those times I only have 30min to 1hr to play, too short a time span to complete a level 4 mission. It will also be a good way to stay active in EVE without having to always run missions or mine. Missions are still fun, especially when done with a fellow pilot, but I can’t grind them day in day out.

So it’s off to the market and to set up my trading empire. I did a quick Google search for trading guides, and it came up with some rather basic ones. If anyone knows of a good one, be sure to comment. My plan is to start slow and just get a feel for the local system, setting up a few basic orders and seeing how it goes. I believe with my current skills, I can set up something like 50 orders, so that should be enough to cover the ammo market at least. I’ll also have to see what fittings are popular and offer a decent margin. I’m sure plenty of mistakes will be made regardless, and hints or tips are appreciated!

Posted in EVE Online | 20 Comments

Tech II Large Hybrid Rails, coming soon to a Rohk near me.

Posted on July 18, 2008 by SynCaine

As my time in EVE continues, I’ve finally determined my next training goal, tech II large hybrid rails. With the price for high meta tech I rails being as crazy as they are, and with the price of tech II rails dropping, it makes a lot of sense financially. It will also be a nice DPS boost for my Rohk, which should make more level 4 missions solo-able, and increase the speed in which I finish the ones I can currently run.

With the recent addition of 3 CCC rigs to my Rohk, I finally feel comfortable with its shield tank (running a X-L tech II booster), and the 5 Vespa II drones are more than enough to deal with any frigates during missions. That combo means only the most severe situations could result in my ship being scrambled long enough to get blown up.

With the tank and anti-frigate handled, its time to focus on taking down the big stuff before they crack my tank, and tech II rails seem to be the answer. Sadly I’m still quite a few days away from being able to use them. Currently I’m training large hybrid rails V, with I believe 8 days left on that training. Then I have to buy the tech II med rails book and train that up, followed by training tech II large rails. I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me (no EVEMon at work), but when I last looked at it, I believe it was somewhere close to a month away. Not terrible, but not exactly right around the corner either. Hopefully all that training will be worth it however, and I’ll see a nice power increase for my Rohk.

Posted in EVE Online | 7 Comments

The man of a thousand links, Syp!

Posted on July 18, 2008 by SynCaine

A long overdue mention of waaagh.wordpress.com is needed today.

Syp does an amazing job with his blog, not the least of which is his weekly ‘da-newz’ post, quite possibly the most link-filled post on any blog, ever. If you ever miss a single Warhammer Online related post, Syp has you covered. Great job man, you are a valuable part of the WAR community, and a blog that is now on my daily hit list.

Posted in Site update, Warhammer Online | 3 Comments

The small stuff sometimes makes the biggest difference.

Posted on July 17, 2008 by SynCaine

As JoBildo accurately points out, the ‘open group’ feature of Warhammer is one of those ‘no one did this before?’ types of features that just seems so obvious, especially to anyone who has played MMO’s for any length of time.

Think about it, how many times are you doing a specific kill quest, and when you get to the area you see someone else already there. Now normally, if it’s a quick quest, you won’t bother asking them to group, as the whole ask/reply/group process takes longer than it would to simply kill the 10 whatevers you are killing. If however grouping was as simple as a right-click, people would do it out of habit all the time. After the initial quest, perhaps you stick around for a few others, including some elite quests, which all of a sudden don’t look quite as painful to gather some help for.

Now if we assume that the ‘open grouping’ feature will have as big an impact on questing/RvR as it looks like it will, will this be something all current and future MMOs add in a patch? Much like instances went from being a feature to a standard, will the same be said for open groups in a year or so?

Posted in MMO design, Warhammer Online | 10 Comments

Not the hardest shoes to fill…

Posted on July 14, 2008 by SynCaine

If you’re Horde, defending your Relief Hut, and make us spend 10-15 seconds trying to kill you, the rest of your team will be able to support and heal you. And if you do die, you’ll rez at the Relief Hut, fully healed.

If you’re Horde, defending your Relief Hut, and you Sprint away, you won’t do any damage to us – you’re as good as dead – and we’ll start killing your team’s healers. What sounds more tactically advantageous to you?

As Megs preaches: It’s not the Killing Blows that wins matches, it’s the implementation of sound strategy that does. In this battleground, that rogue should have stayed in place and allowed us try to kill him as many times as possible. If we’re killing him, we wouldn’t be nuking the Horde’s healers, which is our favorite thing to do.

The above is from BigRedKitty, a WoW hunter blog which I read even though I quit WoW a while back. Always quality writing with style over there, check it out.

The reason I picked up on that quote should be fairly obvious though. How f’ed up is WoW PvP? I know I’m not breaking any new ground here, but it’s this type of reminder that just so blatantly make WoW PvP look so bad, and leaves a gap a mile wide for Warhammer to fill. Sure taking on WoW as a whole is a tough job, but providing even semi-reasonable PvP should be a cakewalk compared to this.

Posted in MMO design, PvP, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 6 Comments

Roid rape goodness.

Posted on July 14, 2008 by SynCaine

Sorry, this will not be a post about a Friday night after a football game in high school, just not the type of content we provide here.

It is however a post about the damage my new Corp and I did to a series of asteroid belts on Sunday. You know the Corp means business when the time of the mining Op is ‘Sunday’, without a timeframe beyond that day. I logged on around 1pm EST with my recently neglected mining pilot and his lowly Retriever. He has been promised a Hulk for a long time now, but unfortunately all available funds have been going to the combat pilot and his Rohk. Still, the Retriever is decent enough when it comes to rock rape, and after a few jumps it’s two strip miner beams were getting down to business.

The first real surprise of the day was the actual size of the Op, both in length and in the number of pilots. We fluctuated between 18 and 22 pilots most of the day, which for me is a lot of people mining and hauling all for one cause. The Op went for a good 5-6 hours as well. The second surprise was just how organized everything was. They had a system for calling haulers, a system for which roid to mine, which belt to jump to next, how each group was organized for maximum bonuses, everything was covered and explained well. Just a very well run operation that resulted in everyone working as quickly and efficiently as possible. The final surprise was the end result, which was that all 16 fresh asteroid belts in the system were picked clean; not a single veldspar asteroid remained. I don’t know the totals in terms of minerals, but I can only imagine they must have been rather high.

Aside from making a good chunk of change during the Op (total also unknown, as the Corp bean counters were still working on payouts when I logged off), the best part of such an activity is that it leaves everyone with a ton of time to chat, making it the perfect opportunity to learn all about your new Corp. Mining is a slow, relaxing process, one that requires only minimal interaction with the game, leaving everyone free to type/chat away.

After all the mission running I’ve been doing lately, this Sunday’s mining Op was a great change of pace. Good times!

Posted in EVE Online | 5 Comments

The big Mythic announcement… big eh.

Posted on July 11, 2008 by SynCaine

So Mythic made the ‘big three’ announcement today, and it was two bad one meh stuff. Fewer classes, fewer capitals, and Punkbuster.

Fewer classes are a non-issue for me. They ‘removed’ something no one has played with outside of beta. So they took away from nothing, and we are still left with… right, nothing. And even with the removed classes, it’s not like WAR will be lacking in options for a character. I’ve long been a fan of cutting each race down to three, fitting the standard ‘holy trinity’ and giving all three some unique features.

As for the capitals, it’s again a case of taking away something that we never had. And more so than the missing classes, it’s basically guaranteed those cities will eventually be in the game. So what if at launch, when we are all lowbies, we don’t have the OPTION to raid one of three cities. Given all the focus on the two that will be in the game, my guess is those will provide plenty of entertainment once we actually reach the endgame of WAR. I highly doubt they will be a case of ‘one and done’ content.

The Punkbuster thing is cool I guess, whatever it takes to limit the hackers/cheaters is a plus. Hopefully they nail down the compatibility and all that, and Punkbuster is something legit players never have to think or worry about.

What WAS disappointing about the announcement was no date for Open Beta or release. Not that I really expected them, but it would have been nice. But as others have pointed out, cutting features means holding firm on a release date, and I’ll gladly take WAR in October or November with four missing classes than in the summer of 2009.

Posted in Warhammer Online | 6 Comments

Power to the MMO people!

Posted on July 11, 2008 by SynCaine

/begin rant

A good game is one that you enjoy (or enjoyed) playing. You can ‘burn out’ on a good game. (see WoW)

It sounds so simple, yet lately I’ve been reading a whole lot of contradictions in both posts and comments. You don’t think AoC is a good game if you just quit. Point blank, you don’t. It’s too early to be burned out. You can say it has nice features, that you see the potential it has, that you find some aspects of it interesting, but if you stop playing the game, it was NOT a good game for you.

And if you don’t enjoy it (even if you can’t actually explain why), you SHOULD cancel. The only vote MMO gamers have is with the dollar. You vote ‘yes, I support what this company is doing’ whenever you pay a monthly sub, and vote ‘no, your product is not what I want right now’ whenever you don’t. No amount of forum posting, blog bitching (this site included), podcast ranting is going to send as clear a message to a company as you hitting ‘cancel’ on the account page.

Don’t support unfinished games, we are beyond that point now.

/end rant

Posted in Age of Conan, MMO design, Random, World of Warcraft | 11 Comments

The carebear and the ganker, best friends forever.

Posted on July 10, 2008 by SynCaine

In somewhat of a continuation from yesterday’s post, and with the idea sparked after reading MBP’s post here, today’s topic aims to examine why so many PvE ‘carebears’ play PvP-focused MMOs, using EVE Online as the example. Not since Ultima Online has a mass market MMO had as harsh a death penalty as EVE Online has, nor has the PvP been less consensual, as literally you could lose your ship at any moment. And yet with exactly that environment, why do some many PvE players exist in what on the surface looks like a hardcore PvP game?

To me it comes down to something rather simple, PvE players need PvP players, even if those very PvP players make life more difficult for them at times. Without the PvP players blowing each other up, making travel dangerous, limiting access to certain areas, and raising the demand of PvP-focused items, EVE’s economy would spiral into WoW territory, where a single mod does all the work for you, and were gold has lost 99% of its value. While it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact percentage of PvP players compared to PvE players in EVE, it’s a safe bet to say there are more ‘carebears’ than PvPers. Something that on the surface is rather surprising in a game that’s almost sole ‘end-game’ is massive PvP. But it goes deeper than just maintaining an interesting economy.

Crafting in most MMOs is a sideshow at best, and complete trash on average, yet in EVE it’s the basis for countless Corporations (guilds), and numerous pilots are almost exclusively focused on crafting. Not just one or two months of grinding out a crafting profession, I’m talking years of playing a character who does nothing but crafting-related activities. And the real kicker? Some of the most powerful individuals in EVE are crafters and other pure ‘carebear’ pilots, as their focus on wealth allows them to hire the best mercenaries to deal with any ‘issues’ that might arise, or makes them highly sought after by PvP-minded Corps/Pilots in need of supplies or production.

How many PvE players dream of becoming a market mogul, feared by killers due to the trading empire they have built from the ground up? PvP goes beyond just who does the most damage swinging a sword, yet in too many MMO’s that’s exactly the extent of it. In a game like EVE, the ‘carebears’ also engage in PvP, it’s just behind the scenes. They do battle with buy orders, finding rare spots to mine ore before someone else does, and undercutting the competition to force them out of your trading area. Rather than just mass selling all your drops to some NPC, the pilots in EVE must find the best possible place to sell their items, and those conditions are 100% player controlled. There are no NPC’s who stand around and accept all the useless junk you want to dump on them for some quick profit.

There are countless other factors that play into the equation, but the basis remains the same; in order to maintain a healthy, vibrant virtual world (not a hop on, go for an on-rails ride), you need to empower both the PvPer and the ‘carebear’. The smartest, most dedicated players should rise to the top, regardless if they focus on mining or ganking. Ignore one, and soon both sides suffer.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design, PvP, World of Warcraft | 14 Comments