Humans wouldn’t just exist in space, floating alone in some endless black starry void. They would live in human environments. Even if you were restricted to a ship or space station, it would still be a human environment. From a gleaming capitol station with shops and gardens, to floating rust buckets held together with wire and duct tape – you would still haveĀ  a place to work together, a bunk where you laid your head (probably decorated with pictures of family and pets and the odd religious symbol for luck), and a commissary where you ate together, got drunk, and bitched about your job. The sleeping quarters would smell of farts and the ghosts of food would haunt the mess hall. It would be real, not always pretty, and very human.

Give me a game where I can feel like a real person as well as a spacefarer or galactic warrior or whatever.

That is part of the reason why I loved Battlestar Galactica: the ongoing poker game in the common room, the ratty bar, the boxing ring where the aggressive would burn some testosterone. Yes, you would go out in your fighter, hopefully to return to life and friends and normal life. You didn’t exist only in a small box of instrumentation and endless vistas of stars. I would think that you’d go mad quite quickly if you were.

Give me this game, and I will be such a fan…it would be the game that I have been waiting for for a very long time.

I’ve been flying around to some of the bases in the area where I’m located, but none of the agents will now talk to me. Since I happened to have a pile of stuff at that base, I’m assuming that I was there for a reason (prior to turning to piracy), but I’m evidently the red-headed stepchild of that region of space. Perhaps it has something to do with being flagged as having a low security status – I’m not sure how to check. Perhaps it’s just been too long, and I need to start over again and do lower-level missions? No idea.

Plus, the game client isn’t running well since I reinstalled the game and updated. I seem to remember EVE always being rock-solid, but I commonly crash to desktop (once rebooting entirely, which was a rude surprise) and I have intermittent glitches such as not being able to open the Market tab or not being able to see what I have fitted to my ship (not that I would remember why I had all that stuff in the first place!). Very frustrating.

EVE (for me at least) totally isn’t a solo-friendly game. You really, really need to belong to a corporation. Mining bores me to tears, and there are only so many missions that you can do…it really helps to have people to talk to while you’re jumping through gate 11 out of 25. Zzzzzzzzz…

I’ll need to see what happens with Rift, and barring getting totally engrossed in that game, perhaps start looking around for a newb-friendly corporation.

The new character creation system is gorgeous…I should keep a slot free just so that I can play with it now and then. I love micro-managing faces and bodies, and this gives you an amazing amount of control to customise your character.

There was a severe lack of clothing choices, but I suppose that isn’t something that they will be spending any effort on prior to Incarna. And the hair! Oh, my goodness…the hair sways and moves almost naturally. I loved it.

This was the version of Kitsune that I came up with – she looks too old, but the hair and face are almost there:

Hmmmn…actually, perhaps not. That is not Kit. I shall have to keep working on this. :)

And do you want to know the really scary part about going back to EVE? The realisation that since I had been a member of Hellcats last time I played, my home base and all my worldly goods were in Evati. In 0.2 space. In a region where I no longer had any agreements with anyone, and no protection. Since I totally sucked at both pvp and at piracy, my two options were:

1. Go out in a blaze of glory and have a fly in 0.0 space, since I hadn’t actually done it. Seemed a bit silly to go to 0.1 but never into 0.0.

2. Sell off all the crap and replacement parts in my hangar, and sneak out in the wee hours like a scared little pussy.

What did I do? Well, this morning at 6:30 am I…

Yep, you guessed it. I’m a yellow-livered chickenhearted daughter of a weasel. But I did manage to keep my Harbinger intact, so there.

]]> http://www.ravven.com/blog/2011/01/eve-character-creation/feed/ 0 http://www.ravven.com/blog/2010/10/eve-online-incarna-character-creator/ http://www.ravven.com/blog/2010/10/eve-online-incarna-character-creator/#comments Sat, 09 Oct 2010 05:13:47 +0000 Ravven http://www.ravven.com/blog/?p=2563 Oh. My. God.

As someone who admits that they will spend ages creating the perfect looks for her characters if given a chance, I positively squeed when I saw this. Simply gorgeous, and customisable to the nth degree.

Excellent job, CCP. And may I say that I want World of Darkness RIGHT NOW?!?

Here’s a link to the Massively article showing both female and male character creators. I could actually play a male given a character creator like this! Very, very nicely done.

If it does actually get made, the World of Darkness MMO is going to be amazing. EVE will look great, as well, but as someone said (I’m sorry, I don’t remember which blog or site I saw this on), after playing Star Trek Online I’m much less excited about having my EVE characters walk around in the space stations.

Enjoy…

]]> http://www.ravven.com/blog/2010/02/eve-online-intro/feed/ 0 http://www.ravven.com/blog/2010/02/kitsune-rides-again/ http://www.ravven.com/blog/2010/02/kitsune-rides-again/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:30:06 +0000 Ravven http://www.ravven.com/blog/?p=2281 As I wrote in an earlier post, although I honestly have a lot of fun in Star Trek, it’s mainly been making me homesick for EVE. I freely admit that there won’t be any nice missions – it’s not really that kind of game. And yes, there will be a lot of reading while I travel from gate to gate. But there’s a lot that I haven’t seen, and am giving it another shot.

In part, I admit, because I really want to continue Kitsune & Kawaii, as that was just getting started and I had several more episodes half-done. I want to continue her adventures, and see who she turns into.

So, into the black again…hopefully as not such a terrible noob this time. :)

I’m still playing Star Trek Online, but have been logging on less than previously. It’s still fun, but it’s less immersive than I had hoped. That may be a factor of levelling alone, I don’t know…or just the fact that the really good questlines are outweighed by the “talk to enemy signal contact” type of quests. Will I subscribe when my free time is up?  At this point, I’m not sure. The main thing it makes me feel is homesick for EVE, and that makes me think about resubscribing there…although I do remember that EVE mainly consisted of small bursts of excitement (generally as I got blown up) and long, dreary expanses of dulldom, going from gate to gate, running missions and so on. It still tempts me, though. I may already have done it if it didn’t still kind of piss me off that EU subscribers pay so much more than US ones.

I’m looking forward to Allods Online, although I’m disappointed that I couldn’t talk my sisters into playing. I think that they would love it if they could try it. The game is polished and fun, and I think that we could have some silliness once a week while we had a chance to talk.

In Warcraft, my Pally is levelling slowly, and she just got her cold weather flying (basically a 1000 gold bribe to allow you to use your old flying mount again). I’ve decided that I will dual-spec her for retribution and healing. I’d thought about tanking with her, as I did really enjoy it in Aion, but I won’t for two reasons: the main one is that I have absolutely NO sense of direction, to the point where it’s like a birth defect or a learning disability or something. I can’t remember where to go. When we raided, and were doing wipe nights (I mean progression runs), each and every time I ran back after resurrecting, I was unsure where to go. Over and over again. I just can’t do it. The second thing is that I really hate doing runs with people who want speed runs – it’s not good for a newb tank to have the “GO! GO! GO!” guy ranting at you, or worse – pulling. In Aion, I had a “you pull it, you better tank it” mentality. :)

But again, as much as I will always love Warcraft, I still have an eye out for new and shiny MMOs. I can’t help it…I’m a tart. :)

Obviously, Kit was born of my experiences playing EVE Online. The two unfinished episodes that I have waiting for me to come back to are concerned with very EVE themes: resurrecting as a clone after being podkilled (Welcome to Your New Life) and one of the standard missions that you get over and over again, which are the birthday present/doll ones (The Birthday Doll). Her nemesis, Shan V’Zhou, is the agent that sends Kit on this mission and the doll arrives…well, let’s just say it’s modified in a manner that the original maker never intended.

Since there are both avatars and interiors in STO, it would be quite easy to use screenshots as the base for the artwork, and the strips would be a lot faster to do – given my slowness at actually drawing, I’d prefer to do storylines using screenshot art. But I would have to change her backstory quite a bit if I move her to a universe with a very limiting IP, so it poses problems.

So tempting, though, to keep following Kitsune and her kawaii to see where they go. Hmmmn, must think.

• 3-month sub: Beta access to The Secret World
• 6-month sub: Beta access + in-game helmet that boosts experience gain by 10%
• 12-month sub: Beta access + helmet + a free copy of Conan expansion Rise of the Godslayer

I would really, really like to be able to play in the beta of The Secret World.  But I’ve been thinking about resubbing to EVE, as well. What is a (poor) girl to do?  I’d play Dragon Age if I could wrest the game from P’s hands, but I would probably have to kill him and stick him underneath the floorboards in order to be able to have a turn.

Decisions, decisions…murder, going back to my Tempest of Set, or venturing back into New Eden.  Hmmmnnn….

EDIT:

Oh, my -  look what I just found in my spam folder:

Your level 41 , Dravven, awaits your return to Age of Conan!

Now you can play Age of Conan again for 14 days completely FREE of charge! This offer does not require any purchase as long as you act before November 27th, 2009. There are also some amazing rewards available to you if you purchase game time now!

I frickin’ love two-weeks-of-free-play offers.