MMO BinA Geek's Look at Massively Multiplayer Online Games

One of the most common ships I use currently is my Cerberus, a small heavy assault cruiser that is good at spitting out damage, but not so great at staying alive in extended engagements. This ship isn’t a perfect fitting, but one that has been working rather well for me. I am sure EvE PvP experts will have something to say, especially when it comes to the few technology level one modules I have on board.

Gang Cerberus

High Slots:
5x Heavy Missile Launcher II

Mid Slots:
1x Cap Recharger II
1x Sensor Booster II with a Scan Resolution Script
1x 10MN MicroWarpdrive I
2x Invulnerability Field II

Low Slots:
1x Ballistic Control System II
1x Power Diagnostic System II
2x Capacitor Power Relay II

Rigs
1x Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
1x Capacitor Control Circuit I

According to the Eve Fitting Tool this gives my main character a ship with the following characteristics:

• 15,037 Effective HP
• Cap Stable at 55%
• 1596 dmg per volley
• Targeting range of 96km which allows me to lock a Battleship in 1.7 seconds
• 1376m/s maximum speed

Of course, without my MicroWarpdrive being enabled, my capacitor does much better than being stable at 55%, and if someone attacks me purely with EM damage, I won’t hold up very well, as my resistance is only 48%, but I have done fairly well with this set-up on a number of engagements. It could use some fine tuning, but I am open for that, so if you have any suggestions on what I can do to make this ship better, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.

One thing that CCP hasn’t gotten enough thanks for is the implementation of a skill queue in the EvE Online Apocrypha expansion. The skill queue, while it had a few glitches when it first came out, has been one of the most beneficial additions to the game for me since it came out.

While my main character, Daray II, has over forty-two million skill points, there were still a number of partially trained skills I wanted to train up, and I was able to complete many lower level skills, and partially trained skills in a way that I otherwise would not have been able to, due to being away from the computer and whatnot.

I don’t think enough people have thanked CCP for releasing this long requested feature, and so I wanted to take a second to do so, as I think it will revolutionize the way I train my skills. I already seem to be giving preferential treatment to those that can fit within the twenty-four hour queue, despite needing to train some longer skills to bump myself up to the next class of ships.

Has the skill queue changed the way you play EvE Online?

One of the things I enjoy the most about Left 4 Dead, other than the fast pace, is the ability to play as the Infected in online versus modes. What I don’t like, is how they force you to also play, as the survivors. I don’t want to play as the survivors anymore. I just want to play as the Infected, and it is a shame there is no option to do so. I also wish I could “select” which type of Infected I want to play, as I have little skill when it comes to using the Smoker.

I could see why some people would find it frustrating if there were always three Hunters or three Boomers, but if you did a “class limitation” like they currently have in place automatically, then everything would be fair. I would play on servers where I could consistently be the Boomer or the Hunter. They could also add regular Infected to the selection list, giving players that use it a lower re-spawn time, as they don’t have any special abilities, and die fairly easily.

My cousin and I, when we play Left 4 Dead together, and are on the same team, and play as Infected at the same time, are usually able to co-ordinate some pretty effective attacks, thus increasing the difficulty of the game, and exciting the most hard-core players. There should be some effective ranking and slotting system, that also allows people like me to focus on being the Infected, and raising the difficulty for those expert Survivor players looking for a new challenge.

It is a minor complaint about an otherwise fun game, and while I understand that they’d really like us all to focus on being a survivor and giving survivors the best chance to survive, I’d still rather play as the Infected constantly and consistently, at least until I get bored of it.

Note: I know this isn’t “massively multiplayer” in the traditional sense, but it is still an online game with a massive number of players online at any one time, and I enjoy it and think is worth talking about.

A long time ago, back in the mid-90’s, I was an avid player of online role playing games, and before there were high speed Internet connections in every home, a popular way to role play online was through text. This goes all the way back to the early days of the Internet with people playing on BBS’s and through the earliest forms of e-mail. IRC or Internet Relay Chat, made this all move at a faster place, with multiple people in a single room, all conversing in real time, we interacted with each other, creating whole worlds around our interests.

One of my early endeavors was a small RPG based around the Dragonball Z universe. I was a fan of the movies, and the television series and I enjoyed the idea of being a super powered individual. Brolly, a “bad” character from the eighth movie interested me the most. His split personality, and the ball energy attack that he could perform were right up my alley for role playing.

We created our characters, had game masters, and points that we could trade in for new skills, abilities, and power upgrades. We were given rewards both for winning a battle, and playing out a proper defeat. People that tried to become “gods” in the game were scolded, and sometimes asked to leave. It was a thriving community of friends, with strong checks and balances that provided me with hours of entertainment.

The game changed over time, as I got older, and more serious about my writing, I found the limitations of IRC stifling my ability to really convey strong story-like messages. I found that the newer characters, with their one line reactions, attacks, defenses, were boring, and I longed for a new, bigger, and better challenge.

IRC as a medium was great, but I believe that the websites we made surrounding the text-based game really brought it to life, and so I looked for other mediums to put my imagination and talents towards.

My name is David Peralty, and I am a fan of online multi-player games, and while some aren’t as massive as others, I thought it was time for me to express my interest on a blog, and interact with other fans of the games I play.

I won’t be diving too deep into World of Warcraft, Google knows there are already too many of those, and while I do have some experience in World of Warcraft, I will mostly be talking about why I didn’t keep playing that very popular MMO by Blizzard Entertainment.

For those following this blog already (how did you find me?), I will mainly be covering EvE Online, World of Warcraft, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, and some details surrounding Star Trek Online. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for any other games, and as you can see, they aren’t all part of the traditional role playing games that started the madness that is massively multi-player online games.

I hope you’ll enjoy MMO Bin, and if you have any questions, comments, concerns, please let me know in the comments below each post.