July 2008 Entries
Another bumper session of thrills and spills yesterday with the start of the TNC Survivor Challenge, which basically does exactly what it says on the tin. After the usual early meetup and nattering session, a large proportion of the guild all went and rolled up brand new characters in the Nightfall Campaign, entering themselves into what promises to be a gruelling and lengthy elimination gameshow of sorts; our very own version of Survivor!
Wing Commander of the Zeitgeist that I am, I actually had to go and look up what that actually was on Wikipedia. Ho hum. Our little event...
Better late than never, as they say, and after a curious and frankly improbable turn of events during which not just one, but two Macs met an untimely and explosive end, (taking one attempt at show 11 with them), alternative arrangements were finally arrived at! The Van Hemlock Light Programme for the Colonies and the Home Counties!: Ep11, in which The Making Fun of the News Bit and the What We're Playing Bit cavort on the vanquished corpse of the Topics Bit, which should return soon enough. Exhibitions, Conspiracies, Inadequacies, Killer Magnet-Eating Mould on the Rampage,...
The Isle of Solitude, or at least our Isle of Solitude anyway, is usually such a tranquil place, languid under a Elonan afternoon sun. Blue turquoise and gold trim, white stone and ornamental fans; one of the more soothing places to lounge about of a Tuesday, waiting for folks to show up before heading off in to any number of outland wildernesses, in search of Adventure, and we'll often stand about chatting there, catching up on the week, swapping stories from all the other MMOs our diverse band occupy the rest of the week with, and so on. ...
Its a good job I don't read the Internet really; if I did, I might get quite dispirited about Age of Conan's apparent and universal failure to make anyone happy at all! There's probably a Wordpress template some place you can download which fills in the bulk of the now commonplace 'I am quitting AoC and Here is Why' post, and even traditional contrarian that I am, I start to get bizarre mental images in which I'm a eager naive country rat, struggling with a suitcase and politely trying to fight my way up a cruise liner gangplank, against...
Bit of a moment of realisation this weekend; I may not be Minmatar Tribal Liberation Army material. EVE Online's Factional Warfare expansion, the Empyrean Age, is getting on for a couple of months old now, and I've certainly given it a shot. I don't say my best shot mind you, and have been giving a go as effectively, a brand new player; a fresh out of creation newbie alt; 800,000SP, a 20 million isk bung from my main, and as it turned out, massively unrealistic expectations of starfighter glory! Its certainly been an interesting month or...
The day I was silently dreading arrived this Tuesday. The Tuesday Noob Club has been slowly growing over the last few weeks, with various folks getting in touch and joining us on our weekly excursions. Mostly seems to be long-time or abandoned soloing folks, looking to play with Other People who don't use F-bombs in place of adjectives, or indeed, words and sentences. A surprisingly good selling point, as it turns out, and quite by accident, I seem to have become a Guild Leader. An entirely new kind of MMO experience for me, and typically, when I even...
Onward with Age of Conan then! I'm not sure what I was expecting to be honest, and find myself in a somewhat unique position, playing an MMO that I didn't really choose myself. Oh, certainly, I picked up the box, and plonked down the credit card details, but as noted previous, I'm mostly there to keep in touch with friends. I'm finding it gives me a strangely detached view on the game itself; neither fanboy, nor hater. My expectations can't be crushed, or confirmed, simply because I didn't have any in the first place; I did no...
A different kind of Tuesday last week, with two new faces in the Tuesday N00b Club, which was frankly two more than I was expecting after what is currently being referred to as my 'Call to Arms' on the last podcast. I'm not sure I'd couch it quite like that mind you; makes me sound like some kind of power-mad tyrant hell bent on world domination, which is absolutely not the case! It was more of a general invitation aimed at those folks who like the game, but are fed up soloing it all, and yet can't stand...
Demonstrating my typical innate ability to identify popular trends, and then jump completely the wrong way, (and months late at that!) just when what seems to be most of the MMO-o-Sphere is busy unsubscribing from Age of Conan in disgust, and then writing lengthy posts on how bad it is to warn others, I've signed up! Its a long story, some of which is to do with a coincidental burn-out and unsubsciption of my own, with Tabula Rasa, noted previously. Some of it is to do with my own ongoing psychosis. I think I'm close to inviting...
Oh dear, its that time again, and another in an increasingly long line of Exit Surveys. I like to share these with the whole internet, partly because its an interesting insight into what a game company thinks might be the problem with their own game; a set of questions that typically provide information in themselves, and partly, its an easy blog post to write! This time its Tabula Rasa. For you, Van Hemlock, ze war is over... Podcast listeners will have already heard about my difficulties with Maligo Base Grouping, P'reo Das Mission Troubles and my increasing...
Is it really ten episodes? Frankly, I'd have expected us to podfade and burn out months ago. I must admit, being a fortnightly thing does help a lot; lots can happen in fourteen days, and some of it is bound to be interesting! No signs of burnout just yet anyway, and here some more rambling: An Afternoon With Van Hemlock And Co; Ep 10: In which the What We're Playing Bit gets out of hand, Yet Again, but the Being Snarky About The News Section struggles to make a valiant comeback, and even a Feature gets...
Some more Factional Warstories here. On the whole its going somewhat less well than I'd hoped, but perhaps a little better than I expected. My self-imposed stockpile of ships and equipment isn't faring too badly, for the amount of time I've been out there, and I'm down four ships out of the twelve I'd brought to the firefight. Mind you, on the other hand, I've managed a grand total of zero killmails so far, which is a bit discouraging.
Of course the odds are stacked immensely against me; I'm a newbie alt with about 1.2 million SP, I'm only...