A bit of Eve Online news to talk about. Ahhhh yes….Eve Online. I’ve stopped playing that for a bit, which is typical of me…but I will return, which is again, typical. Turns out that Eve is having some fleet lag issues:

There are senior software engineers spending their evenings and weekends on Tranquility monitoring and measuring since we have not been able to see issues when testing because the sheer number of people required to trigger the problems and the specific ‘usage pattern’ of the game systems in question are outside what can currently be tested in the lab (although this is something that is being worked on).

What we are looking at now specifically is the fact that the performance of the sol nodes (the computers in the clusters handling the solar systems) appears to be worse than before. Even though CPU across the cluster has not increased with the Dominion expansion, each reinforced node is no longer able to handle the same number of people fighting as gracefully as it did before.

Interesting stuff…especially from the network side. I attended a talk they had at GDC regarding their infrastructure and it was just insane…but this doesn’t sound like an infrastructure problem. Sounds like they have a nasty software bug somewhere that is just eating up the network performance. Regardless, I’m sure they will squash it in no time.

In other news, Goonswarm has a a bit of a setback just recently:

Massively: Do you consider the alliance effectively hijacked or had this been planned for a while?

Darius: Firstly I don’t believe for a second it was “planned for a while”. The organizational structure of Goonfleet is such that the CEO wields supreme power. Therefore the CEO has the capability to choose to or not to disband at any time. Kartton was a terrible CEO. He made some bad decisions. Goons called him on those decisions and he chose to be a giant baby and “punish” them by disbanding the alliance.

Darius: Really there was a loss of assets, but the space had already been lost due to his lack of management ability. So the assets and corp name were in essence just water under the bridge that goons couldn’t access because he was an absentee. A withdrawal [from Delve] began the day the bills were not paid and the sov dropped, allowing IT to take major stations within 10 hours of the change in status.

If you read the rest of the article, it sounds like too much power was put into the hands of a person who didn’t deserve it…and in most cases like this, it exploded. It’s a very hard lesson to learn.

I’ve never encountered Goonfleet, but like most players in Eve I have heard of them. This will most likely bring a smile to a lot of peoples faces. Plenty have wanted to see these guys fall for quite a while. The article does caution those ill-wishers though since, out of the ashes, GoonWaffe is apparently forming…which consists of many, if not all, of the former Goonfleet members.

D out.

I don’t give a flying fuck or a rolling donut about the “100 free minutes” you just gave me via a text message. I don’t even use 10 minutes over a month, so wtf do I need 100 for?

Here’s an idea….how about not raping me in the ass for data?

Sincerely,
A Customer who really doesn’t have much of a choice but to get raped in the ass

Last night, I hit Lt. Cmdr which gives you access to the tier 2 ships. Now, I had bit of a decision to make as to which class of ship to go with…either a cruiser or an escort. Now, the escort I tried in beta and, really, I just didn’t like the look or feel of them. They didn’t look like a typical “trek ship”. They look more like a stubby flying saucer…and my impression of the damage output (…at least the way I had it set up in beta…) was not really good. The cruiser has the typical “trek” look with the two nacelles, the saucer etc etc….and it felt right to me in beta. Damage for the cruiser compared to the escort seemed to be comparable in my head, but I had no real facts to back that up. Typically, I like playing damage dealers in MMOs so I found myself wondering whether the STO damage dealer (…escort class…) would really be for me. I bit the bullet last night and decided on the escort class…my thought being that my impressions from beta were mistaken.

…turns out I was…mistaken.

Wanna know what the difference was? Bridge Officer selection. It makes a huuuuuge difference in both the damage output and the gameplay experience. With the tier 2 escort, you get two tactical officers, one engineer and one science. With the two tactical officers I have an ability to fire a high torpedo yield as well as increase the fire rate of my cannons. My science and engineer are equipped with shield recharge as well as an ability to jam the enemy’s weapons for about 10 seconds. What this translates to is a ship who is a small ball of death. I’m VERY happy with the damage output and as long as too many ships don’t notice me, I can survive toe-to-toe with some of the bigger battleships. I may still buy a cruiser later, but as for now I’m sold on the escort class.

What I’m not happy about right now is the fact that I’m really not understanding the choices I’m making for character development in STO. It’s not that it’s an overly complex system…it’s just that it seems a little vague. For example…when I put points in to Escort, the description as I’m putting these points in tells me that it increases the hull, maneuverability, etc, and there is a bar graph thingie below that choice with numbers. What’s missing is an explanation or translation on how that effects your character. I have no clue how it works. I would go to the forums, but like I said, it’s been taken over by douche-gags for the most part…so good information is hard to come by. Add to that…there are rumors that Cryptic will be putting in respecs as an RMT item. Again…RUMOR ONLY…which is based on their solution in Champions. So…not only do I not understand the choices I’m making, there is a possibility that I will literally be paying for my mistakes. Stay tuned on that one….

…to give you a break from the “Darren and STO Show”, here is the trailer for Bioshock 2. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look as it is really well done:

D out.

The “Founders’ Dilemmas” course at Harvard Business School hosts a high-wattage visitor tomorrow: retired Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who’ll be talking about his videogame start-up, 38 Studios.

Founders’ Dilemmas, taught by Noam Wasserman, focuses on “the tough, early choices that founders face that have important, long-term implications for them and their ventures.” Wasserman recently published an amazing HBS case study on Schilling’s transition from the world of professional baseball to the start-up sphere. It focuses on Schilling’s decision to fund the Maynard company’s first several years of development himself, and his thus-far unsuccessful efforts to bring in other investors to help bankroll 38 Studios, which is developing a massively-multiplayer role-playing game code-named Project Copernicus. (I wrote about Schilling’s fund-raising efforts last July.)

The case study is astonishing for how much financial (and psychological) detail it shares about Schilling’s experience trying to get the business off the ground. From the opening paragraphs:

It was April 2009 and Schilling felt he had taken 38 Studios to the brink, extending himself and his family both financially and personally. …He admitted [while considering the acquisition of another gaming company, Big Huge Games], “I have put the majority of the money I’ve earned in my life on the table. If I make another financial investment, I will have crossed the point of no return from a personal investment and company standpoint.”

BaseballReference.com estimates Schilling’s career earnings at about $114 million. Want to guess how much it cost him to operate 38 Studios, a 65-employee company, in 2008?

…it gets better.

D out

On to Fallen Earth. I haven’t talked about this one for a while, but they recently published a state of the game letter. I think you need to be registered on the forums to see it…but just in case, you can see it here. They basically lay out their plans for the next three or four patches. Patch 1.5 will especially be interesting:

Version 1.5 soaks everything in blood. The Bankers capitalize on clones to turn a profit as they set up the Blood Sports league, pitting players against each other in arenas and head-to-head conflicts as they scrap for glory and chips. As players fight in Blood Sports, clans will be able to wage war on a global scale. If the PvP action isn’t enough to get your heart pumping, we are cranking up combat by evaluating animations, reactions, AI, and any area we think can improve the immersion and adrenaline during combat. Additionally, a deep Achievement system will allow players to chronicle and proudly display their feats in the apocalypse.

…so go check the game out if you haven’t already done so. Its probably the best indie MMO offering out there right now.

D out.

“Raid-i-sodes”

These are the high-end episodes you’ve been waiting for. Locked to 5-players, you’ll need every trick and every bit of teamwork to complete these challenges.
A Borg raid-i-sode series culminating in an encounter with the Borg queen is on its way. Expect a couple other “loose ends” to be addressed in the future, as well.
Available for both Klingon Generals and Starfleet Admirals, we’ll be releasing a new one of these every few weeks for the next three months.

First Update
We’re already working on it and it’ll be out before you know it.
The first update is going to have more PvP, Klingon exploration content, more ground fleet actions, more ship costume pieces, more playable species, and then some.

The usual promises to squish bugs as well as add more content are also in there as well.

The next bit of information might be a bit disappointing to you all out there, and it has to do with crafting in STO. From what I experienced in the beta, there really wasn’t much behind crafting beyond collecting things and then turning them in for upgrades. The article also makes a, what I think is, very loose connection between crafting and bridge officers…which I just don’t get at the moment.

For me, STO isn’t about crafting….or at least that shouldn’t be even close to a major focus. As fans, we’ve mostly experienced Star Trek universe as one of exploration, diplomacy and cool space battles. Like ground combat, not very much is known how StarFleet crafts stuff beyond saying “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot” and poof…it’s there. Cryptic is in a bit of a bind when it comes to this as they have to figure out how to include such an important MMO element in an IP where said element is not well defined. Crafting, is usually a very important part of the economic equation for an MMO and it makes you wonder if they’ve thought it through enough or will it be an afterthought much like CoH.

D out

You should all have it in your ears early next week…so stand by.

As a preview, I’m going to post the show notes that I just sent out to our guests and in the comments section, post a question or angle you’d like us to cover. This is kinda new, so hopefully I remember to look at the comments while we record…lol

Here are the notes…which are usually very rough and just meant as a guideline for discussion.

Shut Up! We’re Talking #57

Here’s the proposed agenda:
- Introductions
- Listener Mail/What we’re playing
- Upcoming MMO Platforms
- Discussing MMO Labels
- Blog of the Week

Upcoming MMO Platforms

Possible topic – The migration of MMOs to facebook (Metaplace and Ohai). Is this a flash in the pan or something serious?

http://brokentoys.org/2010/01/13/life-after-metaplace-somewhere-near-farmville/

…we can also talk about various other platforms, i.e. iPhone, consoles, etc

Here’s a good one….Facebook gaming = a fad

Discussing MMO Labels

Right from Michael…and he can lead off to give us the tone

“I was thinking perhaps a discussion of the different sub-genres of
MMOs? We could each talk about why we like/dislike themeparks and
sandboxes and maybe about how those labels are suitable or not
accurate. Something along those lines could be interesting.

There has been a bit of a row about innovation in MMOs among the MMO
blogverse. Psychochild and I have written posts about it, as well as
Keen and a few other bloggers worth noting, including the ubiquitous
Tobold. We may want to weigh in on the topic, not necessarily
discussing specific posts.”

D out.

This thread is about the merits of having a same-sex romance option in ME games.

Please refrain from general discussions about homosexuality and/or religion. Thank you.

I’m not going to go into the usual “I have no problems with homosexuality…BUT…” speech here cause I think that is really not the issue here (…and the conversation usually gets off track with it being about my views on the specific topic of sexuality in general…). I think the real issue when it comes to subjects like this is how much responsibility does the games industry have in reflecting social/political/religious/sexual topics within their games? Do they have a duty to represent every aspect of human existence…or at least the ones we care about now?

If there is a sex scene with a unmarried, handsome, athletic guy and a beautiful girl with a nice ass, then is seems we have all sorts of worms coming out:
- what about a girl and a girl? They can love too?
- what about a guy and a guy? They can love too?
- what about non-athletic, fat people? They’re hot too…
- what about ugly people? I know lots of heroes who are butt-ugly.
- what if they’re vegetarians…we should make sure they don’t eat steak after the steamy love scene.
- what about blind people…they can be heroes and get the girl too you know.
- why aren’t they in a wheel chairs to represent the fact that disabled people make contributions as well? Hey! Why doesn’t that set of stairs in the game have alternate access??!!!

Understood that sexuality is a very personal and hot topic that gets everyone’s panties in a knot, but do we really need to represent every single human condition within our games just to make a social point? It’s an interesting topic and ultimately I think the answer has to be “no”. If we insist that game designers start being socially conscious on every human condition, I think we’ll start really hating our gaming sessions. If we go by the theory that “games are art” (…/cringe…), then do we really want to tell the artist how they should create?

D out.

Red alert! Check your photon torpedo count, make sure your phaser banks are full and keep transporter room two warmed up… The Final Frontier’s first online Open Beta Test will remain operational until Tuesday, January 26 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific.
We’ve experienced such an incredible response to our Open Beta Test that we’ve decided to extend the play time by a full day as a thank you to our fans. If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to check it out, come give us a look. We’ve made impressive changes, improvements and additions to Star Trek Online and the infrastructure that maintains it over the past two weeks of Open Beta. We would love for you to experience it all before we engage at maximum warp and officially launch on February 2, 2010.
Of course, these extended Open Beta Test times will not impact the planned Head Start for our supportive pre-order customers.
See you in the Sirius Sector!

I played quite a bit over the weekend and I’m still having a great time with it. I think I’ve decided to concentrate on cruisers though. I don’t know…escort ships are nice and all, but cruisers feel more “Trek” to me. Lots of great posts over the blog-o-sphere regarding STO…including this one from John, which…ummm…makes me wonder about him .

Oh…before I go on about some small EQ2 thing, public service announcement: stay away from the STO forums. Large douche-bag ratio on that forum. Probably because of the Open Beta, but my gawd…good luck trying to find useful information there.

Small little SWTOR mention. The next “coming of Jesus” MMO, SWTOR, has been doing a great job prepping the ground work in regards to the story in little web episodes. Go check out the latest one over here as there are really well done. My only concern about SWTOR is…funny enough…the reason why I’m looking forward to it: it’s from Bioware. They tend to be a bit wordy with their games. Let’s hope we’re playing this MMO and not just watching and reading it.

D out.

Some of the notable improvements included a UI revamp, art assets, scanning revamp (…very cool…), stability improvements..etc…etc. Details here.

As I was playing last night, I started to like the game even more…especially when people started really working as a team in large fleet battles. You’ve felt this in other MMOs before when you get a group and things just start clicking. With STO, it seems even more rewarding because…well…it’s Star Trek. When everything is clicking, it seems like those large fleet battles I use to love watching on DS9. Before the beta and even a little bit before the patch, STO was a “safe buy”, now I’m starting to really feel good about the purchase.

One thing that was really annoying last night was the constant disconnects from the server. Given that the server is now always full, getting back in involved multiple attempts at clicking the “Log In” button and seeing that stupid “Disconnected from Server” message. On the bright side, I was frustrated because I couldn’t play the game. I really want to play…which is bad…cause its only beta.

The head start launch is next week and the only thing that could make this bad is my hunch that they don’t have the infrastructure in place to handle the load. The game itself still looks like it’s on a solid footing and it should be an interesting year for this title.

D out.