EVE Online TQ gets upgraded

It's been a while since I've played EVE, but one of the issues even since the beta was that certain systems were laggy. Jita springs to mind.

To combat it as much as possible the EVE team have used some cool and interesting tech over the years, but earlier today they announced what might be the biggest change in their hardware (that I've noticed). Being a massive nerd it's an interesting read, especially with further promises on more information. Whilst CCP are generally quite open it's great to see them continuing - which for a MMO is mightily unusual.

Gamers at Top Gear?

I've been mulling over whether or not this is blog worthy. Probably not, but it is geek related.

Whilst watching Top Gear Episode 6 of Series 13 one of my housemates (Phil) noticed a familiar sound. From fifty five seconds to one minute into this episode you can hear the same noise/siren that the viral detectors make in Prototype.

World server is down

I guess when a patch of this magnitude gets released for any hosted product, regardless of whether it's a game or business application, you should really expect disruption. Sadly most users won't really "get" that. As much planning can go ahead, but with a fundamental change and introduction of new features you can't really predict just how many of your user base will try to logon at once, and perhaps the financial backing isn't there to prepare for the worst case scenario.

If you're confused as to what I'm rambling on about, then I can safely assume you don't play World of Warcraft. Or if you do then you've not tried logging in today.

If you have, then undoubtedly you've managed to get the final major patch before Lich King drops on your front door mat, and you've also undoubtedly been receiving the "World server is down". If you managed to get into Stormwind, which is relatively busy at the best of times, then you'll probably know one of the few reasons why this is occuring. If you weren't lucky enough, then the following screenshot might help out a bit.

When you do manage to login you'll probably be a bit confused, especially if you've not read the patch notes. You really should skim the patch notes.

Anyway -

  • Mounts no longer take up space in your bags, you "use" them, and they get applied to a new area in your character screen
  • Your talent points have been reset, the reason being that there are fundamental changes to all classes
  • Inscriptions have been introduced, and you can buy the low level stuff from vendors, and higher level stuff from the AH
  • Don't like your character's appearance? Goto the Barber. As long as you don't want a new beard (ffs), you should be a-ok! Just try and avoid the mohawk. There are a lot of them about
  • Yes, the graphics have been overhauled a tad
  • BM hunters can get exotic pets. Two headed hellhounds? Awesome

I'm know there are loads of other things that I've missed, but these are the major things people are whining and asking about in general and trade as of now (only a few hours after the patch was released), and whilst I get few readers who are into WoW, you never know - google might throw them this way.

From a sysadmin point of view I'd absolutely love to see what's behind the World of Warcraft system, and understand just how it's architectured. It's undoubtedly a massive system and on that front I envy the techies behind it. However, I think if I saw the amount of moaning on the forums, my optimism and love for the job would probably be in jeopardy. I certainly know it is when I've been working for hours on a customer's system and they don't feel like things are being worked at fast enough, and my user base at work is tiny in comparison.

EVE: Where's the love?

It's no secret I'm a bit of a SciFi nut, thanks to my mother. For this reason I'd enjoyed playing EVE: Online, in the past. For reasons of health, and sanity, I've limited my play time over recent years. Over a month ago my 2 months worth of game time ran out and I didn't renew. Whilst EVE had been updated visually I felt that very little had really changed in the universe. Ok, so things like Can art were banned and scheduled for automated clean up (the poor EVE gate) and several new ship types for corp players, but very little for the privateer. Many gank points remained, Jove was inaccessible, the economy was rather high, and the lag points still existed (although I very much understand the technical challenges behind this, based on their infrastructure).

I had thought that maybe I was being unreasonable, but despite this I felt that something needed to change in the universe. To me it seemed stagnant. Maybe some sort of huge cataclysmic event to help shake things up.

It seems that CCP were aware that many people felt the same, so imagine my joy at coming across the feature site for the latest update; EVE: the Empyrean Age.

Before seeing this I wasn't planning on touching EVE for some time, but maybe I will again, once the Empyrean Age has been going for a few weeks. Funnily enough I do actually already have the accompanying novel on pre-order, although I wasn't aware that it was linked to a story line in-game as well.

Revisiting virtual worlds

It's no secret that I enjoy PC gaming, and several MMOs are part of this. However, keeping more than one on the go is pretty difficult as anyone will tell you, which is why I tend to only play one at once. This week I decided to go back to 2 worlds that I've barely stepped foot in for over a year; Second Life and EVE: Online.

I'll start with Second Life, for the good of my health. I never "got" it to start off with, so I was a little apprehensive of going back. Sadly it seems that things have not changed. It's still laggy, filled with people buying cocks, nipples and sexual movements. I was unable to find anywhere of reasonable non-mature locations, except for the zones owned by Sun, IBM, Microsoft, etc. which were in-fact pretty much abandoned.

I like the idea behind Second Life; the idea that you can do whatever you want and build whatever you want is something I thought would be awesome in the early 2000's, yet it just doesn't seem to have really carried off well. Perhaps the total lack of an end goal has caused this.

EVE: Online, on the other hand, was my first proper MMO; which is almost always the one you fall in love with. I love the fact that it's in space, I love that it's huge, I love that it's unsharded and I love that you almost always come across other people in both popular and "unpopular" areas. There's also the part of me that wishes I were in the future and that I could be that hard captain just trying to get by without submitting to a Corporation. I also believe that humanity should be exploring the stars more than we are now. There was an article a few weeks ago about a one way, solo trip to Mars - I'd seriously do that in a heart beat provided I had some sort of network connection back to home, which was stable. However, that's another discussion, so lets get back on topic.

There's no denying that EVE is bite-the-back-of-your-hand gorgeous. It was gorgeous in 2002-2003 when I was playing the final set of betas on a crappy Radeon 7200 or Geforce 4200Ti, it was improved up on by 2005. It's even more so now, with the improved hardware and time that they've clearly put into the game from GUI to environment to ships, as well as getting it to run on the major 3 platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac OSX) in some way, shape or form.

Yet despite this I just don't seem to be getting the same satisfaction. Maybe it's purely because it's now nearly been 2 whole years since I last played and that it's going to simply take more time to get back into it, because, lets face facts, it's a little more complex than WoW or TF2. But, some how I'm left wondering. I've got a month of game time, which I'm going to use to try and get back into stuff, so I'll soon see.

Sadly there are a few things about EVE that have not changed. Perhaps it was simply my timing (I rejoined as a new patch was deployed), but the lag in certain systems still exists, along with chat lag and a proliferation of gankers in certain systems. You can see that CCP have really tried to improve things, but it just looks like they've succeeded in moving the issue from one location to other; in the time I've been away you can see that old choke points are now simply a few jumps out.

As part of my reorientation I jumped in a shuttle (the smallest, fastest ship (by default)) to do some sightseeing. I hit the usual points including EVE Gate, City of God, several of the ruins, and so on. In doing so I was surprised to see that certain marks I've left on the universe are still there, including an anchored Sec-Can at EVE gate, which is still pretty far out.

This really made me appreciate what a battle CCP really have, and just how difficult maintaining their infrastructure must be. I really do have a renewed, great respect for this company.