Return to Hellfire Ramparts

After some time away from the game and then some mucking around in old Azeroth in search of a guild tabard and some epic mounts, we finally had to get back to the business waiting for us in Outland.  It was time to go back and finish Hellfire Ramparts.

I wasn’t sure faster mounts were really going to help us, but we did get a level each in our wanderings since the last attempt on the instance.  A couple in some cases.  Our group for the venture was:

• Ula – level 62 gnome mage
• Beanpole – level 63 gnome warlock
• Wilhelm – level 62 human paladin (protection)
• Fergorin – level 62 human paladin (holy)

And even after our warm ups in various Azeroth dungeons, getting back into Ramparts was going to be a bit of a chore for us.  If nothing else we were going to have to get used to having a somewhat larger aggro radius.  So we got ourselves to Honor Hold and rode on out to the instance.

Our fate lay beyond the instance swirl

Once in and buffed up we were able to take out the first few groups without too much problem.  Another residual issue from doing Azeroth instances was the amount of sloppiness we could endure.  Pull a few extra mobs?  No problem!  Here, the aggro radius and the mobs more geared to our level meant when we managed to aggro not one but two additional groups, it was a race to the zone line when the tank went down.

Beanpole almost made it. Warlocks don’t have blink

The comedy of errors continued as we towards the first boss, Watchkeeper Gargolmar.

Even there, a boss we had brought down twice before without incident, we ran afoul of aggro radius, taking him on before clearing all the way around, and thus managing to bring two groups of guests to the fight.

Dead again in Ramparts

I think Ula made it out of the instance, or got close at least.  But the rest of us had to get a ress.  Fortunately we had the soul stone handy.

After that we decided to be a bit more thorough.  We pulled everything around the boss, so when we got him the next time it was just him and his two minions.  The minions went down quick, so when he called for healing there was none coming.

Watchkeeper Gargolmar getting his now

After that we started doing better.  The high point after that was the group of five at the top of the ramp which we have managed to wipe on every time.  As we got ready for that fight, I looked at my exp bar and realized I would level after we killed two or three of the group, so when we pulled them around the corner I did not hold back on mana.  I kept consecrate going and anything else I could throw at them.

Just as the third one was about to die I announced that I was out of mana… then he died, I leveled up, and was suddenly full again.  We had not problem that time around.

Win at the top of the ramp

We then managed to clear the mobs ahead of us until we had a choice.  We could go do Omor the Unscarred, who is generally the second boss, or we could just go straight for the final bosses, the duo we had yet to defeat, Nazan and Vazruden.

We went for the big boss pair.

This duo again

And we came close on the first fight.  A slip up on my part… late on a health stone… and I was dead, leading to a wipe.

The soul stone got us back in action again and we went right at them once more… and wiped again.  This was not going to plan.

We took a break to refresh drinks and feed cats, during which time we read up on the fight.  We were getting close, but we had been close before.  I was staying under Nazan’s snout to avoid as much of his fire breath as I could and we were burning down Vazruden pretty easily before turning on Nazan.  And then it came out of the guide.  Vazruden wasn’t really a threat.  We needed to focus all fire on Nazan as early as possible.  Ranged attacks and DOTs on him while he was still in flight, then all in when he landed.

With that bit of info we changed up our tactics and… won the fight at last.

Victory in Hellfire Ramparts

After looting the chest and posing for a screen shot, we ran around the corner and gave Omor the Unscarred a shot.  He went down very easy when compared to previous fights.  A couple levels and some gear upgrades will do that.

And the run helped us with a few more gear upgrades.  There was something for everybody along the way, and even more with the quest turn ins back at Honor Hold.

One instance down, many still to go.  We’ll see how far we get as a group of four.

The next target is the Blood Furnace.

Diablo II Act One

As I mentioned, for the 20th anniversary of the game last month I downloaded it and set up to play a bit, just to remind myself of what it was back in the day.

It has been a long time

I did try to run down mods that were alleged to help with screen resolution.  The problem with Diablo II is that the base game runs at 640×480, with the Lord of Destruction expansion boosting that to a big 800×600.  However, I did not have much luck on that front.  A lot of stuff I ran across was out of date.  20 years will do that.  So I opted to just go with 800×600 and rough it.

Which, honestly, wasn’t all that bad.  When you first get into the game things look blocky and distorted as the 4:3 aspect ration maps itself onto a 16:10 screen.  Everything is a bit wider than one might like.  But I found that I got used to it pretty quickly and only really noticed it when I was looking at screen shots, which show up as 800×600 4:3 images.

The main problem with getting 800×600 is that the expansion added some things that were not in the base game.  While gems were always there, charms and jewels were expansion items, and I started getting those as drops pretty early on.  So not a real run at the experience of 20 years ago, but close enough I guess.

I went with a Paladin, which is sort of my default class in the game.  I like the aura and the tanky nature of the class.

You start out in the rogues camp and there is a quest waiting for you.

Oh look, a quest!

You can see how that quest marker might have evolved into the yellow exclamation point we know in WoW.

Diablo II drives the plot via quests, but it is not at all quest obsessed.  The quest UI only has space for 6 quests per act, and if I recall right, a couple of them are optional and the final act doesn’t even have the full six.

Quests are more central to the game than in the original Diablo, but not as rampant as they are in Diablo III, and they seem almost rare relative to how most MMORPGs in the last 15 years have handled them.

Things start off slow… though the pacing is never frantic save for in a few boss fights… as you are sent forth from the camp to find some bads in a den.  You need to slay them all, which starts you on what is my own obsession, exploring all corners of the map.  Eventually you’ll find that last little demon in a side path you missed and then return to camp for a reward… and a new task.

You gain the esteem of the rogues and get one to follow you around and assist.  I had forgotten about that, but quickly came up to speed.  The rogue assistant, who is a ranged player, is the best in the game.  I recall that in Act Two you get a melee helper who jumps in and gets themselves killed a lot, compare to the rogue who hangs back, pelts mobs with arrows, and lights them up with a target marking ability.

Lighting them up is important because the game is dark, and the play of light and dark and the shadows in between is still amazing 20 years down the road.  I have said this before, but I don’t think any game I have played has done this better.  I always use this video from Act Two as a sample.

But it is everywhere in the dark underground or indoor places in the game.  I was wandering around places just to see how the shadows moved around my light source, how places remained dark until I got up close.

(Also, you can see I have the Act One rogue helper there in Act Two.)

Eventually though you have to go find the narrative voice of the series, Deckard Cain of “Stay awhile and listen…” quote fame.  He is locked away on old Tristram, the setting of original Diablo, which has fallen to the forces of evil.

Cain locked up in Tristram

Once he is freed he portals back to the rogue camp… not sure how he knew where to go, but sure… and then he starts in on what he believes is really going on.

There is another quest along the way, but it takes you along the path to where you need to be.

Charsi lost her hammer

That gets you into the final area and gives you another preliminary boss to fight.

The Smith has the hammer, or course

This is where I want to point out how much I like the map system in the game.  It is an overlay, which has its pros and cons.  You can have it up while still seeing what is going on, which is a big plus.

The map in the barracks

I do find that it can be a distraction when up though.  I find myself looking at the map and not the tactical situation if I leave it up.  And, of course, it isn’t mapped to the M key by default.  The Tab key isn’t a bad choice, but habit keeps me pressing M over and over.

Once you have fulfilled Charsi’s quest, which has an excellent reward, you’re on to Cain’s mission.

Cain and his working theory

This is where the pacing of the game shows its patience.

One of the key features of the game is the waypoint system, little teleport pads that you find as you move further into each act.  There is one in the starting base, then eight more through each of the first three acts, and they allow you to basically pick up where you left off rather than having to camp in place or walk all the way back to the start of the act to turn in quests and get updates.

My general play style is to play through to the next waypoint.  They are good ways to dice up the content into more manageable pieces.

In Act One, Charsi’s quest gets you to the Outer Cloister.  The barracks is just beyond that.

The waypoint list

That done, the final battle, where you face Andariel, is a good three waypoints down the line.  In between are levels to explore, loot to find, and mini-bosses to slay, but nothing to advance the final quest, save getting closer to it.  I am not sure a more modern game would let you wander that far without a quest update cookie or, if it did, it would likely be accused of padding out the game needlessly.

Here, it is just a nice, extended dungeon crawl, part of the experience you’ve paid for.  It isn’t in the way of the game, it is the game.

Loot is, of course, everywhere.  Some named bosses along the way almost explode in a shower of loot.

Gold spilled everywhere in the tower

But inventory space keeps you honest.  You need to carry potions and keys and scrolls and those charms you may have picked up that need to be in your inventory to work.  You cannot pick up everything, and anything good needs to be identified.  Once Cain shows up he will do it for free, but you have to portal or waypoint back to town for that.  Otherwise you have to keep identify scrolls on hand to asses the value of something.

And it often feels like feast or famine when you’re deep in a dungeon.  I will go from walking past some healing potions because I have too many in my bag and on my belt already, then get in a tough fight and suddenly I am scrambling to grab every healing potion I spot because I am running dry.

I did reach Andariel and defeated her without dying myself.  I made it through the whole of Act One without dying.  But it was a tough fight and I had run in and out of the area a lot.  I long ago learned to pull a fight like that back to the zone line so I could flee at need.  I lost my rogue helper at one point, so had to portal back to town to revive her.  But I always keep a town portal up for those fights as well.  And, after a few retreats to heal up, Andariel exploded as nicely as an ship in New Eden.

The loot fairy says yes!

Then there was the sorting through the drops.  There was a set item, which I think were also expansion things.  The problem is that once you get a piece of gold level gear, it is hard to find a replacement that scratches all the same itches.  I got a gold scepter early on, have to level up into it, and then used it for the full first act as nothing else I found came close.

And so Act One was done.  I moved on to Act II, arriving to the welcome in Lut Gholein.

Welcome to Act Two

Act Two is out in the desert, a bright and sunny landscape unlike that of Act One.  But there are still many dark, underground places to explore.  We shall see how far I get on that.

On the Eve of WoW Classic

Technically WoW Classic goes live on August 27th.  That is what the graphic says.

Classic is as Classic does

However, Blizzard is doing a world-wide-ish launch, so for the purposes of WoW Classic, the launch time is 00:01 Central European Summer Time (CEST) on August 27th.  That puts the launch at midnight in a time zone 9 hours ahead of my own, which means out here in California we get WoW Classic at 15:01 pm on August 26th.  That is just about 27 hours from when this post goes live.

Find your launch time here – for me it is 3pm

So for me at least, tonight is WoW Classic eve or something.

When I get home from work tomorrow the who affair will be live.  All the talk about faction, race, class, and server choices will be over.  It will be time to get in and play.

As we sit here in anticipation it is probably as good a time as any to reflect on what might come to pass tomorrow.  I’ve been through enough of these launches to have developed a list of possibilities that come to mind.  They are not exactly Bernard Pivot level of depth or insight, just a few things that might crop up.

• Servers Open Late – Very Unlikely

This is pretty much the norm with Daybreak, despite their having more experience launching this sort of thing than maybe any other studio.  But Blizzard isn’t Daybreak.  Blizz has the staff and the budget and the sense of corporate pride to not allow this.  If the servers are not all up and going by 00:15 CEST I will be shocked.  I honestly expect that the servers will open up early to start getting that first night surge handled.

• DDoS Attack Keeps People from Logging In – Very Small Chance

DDoS attacks only catch those not prepared for them.  Blizzard is a high profile company that likely faces this sort of thing more often that they would let on.  I expect that if somebody goes after WoW Classic that we won’t even notice.

• Login Queue Reporting  Waits over an Hour Long – Almost Assured

Once Blizz gets us logged in and shunted off to our own little layers in their new server architecture things will be fine.  But we’re all going to hit that login server like a crashing wave and getting everybody logged in, validated, sorted, and onto a server involves enough operations that things are just going to take some time.

• Login Server Crashes – Even Odds

I hope this won’t happen, but it happened on the stress tests a few times, so it remains a possibility.  Blizz saw it happen and has likely attempted to address whatever fell apart, but they also haven’t had to face the actual WoW Classic launch.

• Patching Problems – Low Probability

Blizz has been pushing out the WoW Classic updates for months now.  Those of us keen enough to join in a stress test or reserve a character name will be all set.  The late arrivals might see some slow down, but I suspect that will just help stagger the load on the login server.

• Starter Zone Crashes – Unlikely

The starter zones were subject to lots of load during the stress tests.  They let more people into the starter zones then than they plan to for the launch.  The whole layering tech they have is just to keep this from happening really. (Described here)  Still, the test is never like the real event, so who knows?

• Starter Zones Denuded of Quest Mobs – Mais Oui!

Oh yeah.  This will be a big deal and you’ll hear a lot about it if you don’t turn off general chat.  Help out by grouping up for quests that just require kills and pray for the favor of the spawn table for quests that require drops.

• Somebody Gets to Level 60 in 12 Hours or Less – Not going to happen

I know that there are people out there with a plan.  They have been in the beta, they have charted out the path forward, they have friends ready to assist in the attempt, they have the addons, they’ve read all the guides, and they are set.

But this isn’t a WoW expansion with just ten levels and all your mythic raiding gear ready to carry you half way there.  This is the full level 1-60 event, with an exp table that laughs at the puny excuse for one that exists in WoW today as well as a whole lot of running to get everywhere.

In addition, there are the crowds with which to contend.  Anybody looking to get to max level first has to break away from the pack or spend forever competing for mobs and drops.  I suspect that they won’t be able to get clear of the mob for at least the first 20 levels.

So I am going to go with a hard no on max level achieved in that time frame.

• Somebody Gets to Level 60 in 24 Hours – Maybe

Everything still applies, but an extra dozen hours is a huge difference.  I still feel it will be a lot closer to the 24th hour than the 13th if it does happen, but I won’t rule it out.

• Somebody Gets to Level 60 in 48 Hours – Without a doubt

Double that time again and I think somebody will get there for sure.  More than one.  More than one per server, per region, per whatever.

• Calls in the forum for more servers due to crowds – Oh yes

Pretty much standard item from the checklist for this sort of server event.  It won’t matter how smoothly things go, somebody will be in there telling Blizz that they need more servers.

• Blizz actually rolling out more servers – Maybe?

Again, I have no clue how far the new Blizzard layering architecture can stretch, but my gut says that the low initial server count, and even the additional servers, reflects both the capability of the tech and some conservatism on the part of Blizzard.  Or J. Allen Brack telling everybody it is a mistake.

• No Crowds At All – Hahahahahaha… No

If we have learned anything over the last decade of this sort of thing… more than a decade, SOE did this back in 2007… it is that farming your installed base by playing the nostalgia card works pretty damn well.  It doesn’t always hold on, and I don’t expect there to be crowds or login server waits in six weeks, much less six months, but this was the most popular subscription MMORPG ever in the west, and the first such game for many, many people.  There will be a crowd.

• Drop in Population on Live Servers – Of Course

The problem with farming your installed base is that it includes your current subscribers.  I don’t know that it will have any lasting impact, but some people will drop Battle for Azeroth to go play WoW Classic.

• Complaints about the server in general chat – A Sure Thing

But at least they can’t complain that it isn’t WoW.

• Waiting for the Weekend and Being Happy Logging In – Seems Likely

This is almost always the best choice

What else might come to pass tomorrow when the servers finally go live and we’re allowed to pour into the starter zones to explore Azeroth of old?

Blaugust and Editorial Policy

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

–James Nicoll

Another Blaugust feature, but now I have completely parted ways with the suggested topics and am wandering aimlessly through strange locations.

Blaugust Reborn

For some reason I want to write about editorial policy.  But not in any particularly helpful way I am sure, which probably keeps this post in line with the editorial policy here at TAGN.

At one point the LEGO Group had issued a set of guidelines for anybody setting up a fan site on the web.  This was ages ago, in the late 90s if I recall right, when companies were still suspicious of the web and worried what letting a bunch of randos talk about their product might do to their ability to protect their trademarks and such.

The guidelines looked to be a variation on what was likely their internal brand guide, a sort of document that I have seen at many companies, that makes sure that the company name, logo, and products are all used in a consistent and appropriate manner.

So it was full of things like the fact that the name LEGO should always be in all caps and should have the registered trademark symbol after it in all cases and that the company logo should always use a certain set of colors and always be at the correct aspect ratio, never cropped or stretched, and that you should never refer to LEGO brand construction blocks as “LEGOs” and so forth.  It had a bit of a thuggish air about it, the implication that if you setup a LEGO fan site and did not comply with all of this that they might come shut you down.  And hell, Nintendo has done worse from time to time in the name of protecting their trademarks and such.

Wired wrote an article about the whole thing and, on reading it I asked an acquaintance who worked there why they wrote out the company name as “Lego” when the company had, if not politely, at least made itself clear that they preferred “LEGO,” which was, if not an acronym, the conjunction of two words mashed together.  He told me, in not so many words, “Lego doesn’t write out editorial guidelines, so we’ll call them whatever we feel like.”

I don’t know why this little tales has stuck with me over the years.  That print media has editorial guidelines about usage is hardly news to me.  I had professors in college rant about correct usage.  I’ve witnessed holy wars between adherents of The Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook.

And “holy war” is the apt term, because either of those books, or any other pretender, is primarily a matter of belief as opposed to any objective fact.  The English language is chaotic and cannot be tamed.  But that chaos makes it a hell of a lot of fun at times.

So while this blog has a staff of exactly one person, that person fills all the roles.  I am writer, editor, publisher, and the person who empties the waste bin at night.  And as such I have, over the years, developed what I think of as my own set of editorial guidelines to which I attempt to adhere.

In the early days I wrote just to write and embraced the chaos.  But the accountant in me will ever show up and I began to organize a bit, working with categories and tags, because what is the use of writing something if you cannot find it again.

I also started in on what became recurring features, regular milestones on this journey through and around my video gaming life, the first of which was the month in review post.  That started as a whim but quickly evolved into a pillar of the site, at least for me.

My writing, the way I approach posts, evolved as well.  In the early days I wrote a lot of shorter posts.  In 2007 I wrote 490 posts that averaged 482 words each.  Last year I wrote 350 posts which had 932 words each on average.

I also started adopting some standards for how I refer to games.  At one point I decided that I needed to put game titles in italics.  Somewhere one of my English teachers probably sleeps a little more soundly.

I also decided to make sure that I wrote out the name of the game which I was writing about in full near the start of each post.  I have read many a post where the game in question is mentioned either as an unclear acronym or not mentioned at all, leaving me to wonder what the writer is going on about.  Sometimes I can guess from context, but not always, so I wanted to ensure that anybody who showed up here would not find themselves likewise vexed.

So I write out the full name, in italics, then use a short form after that, so World of Warcraft becomes WoW and EVE Online becomes EVE.

There are also bits of usage that are just because I like it that way.  I always capitalize EVE in EVE Online, mostly because that is the way CCP styles it.  On the other had Trion Worlds can spell out Rift in all caps from now until the end of time and I’ll never follow suit.  It just ain’t gonna happen.

And I always write out acronyms in all caps.  It irks me when the BBC writes out Nasa rather than NASA, like it was a word.

And none of it has to make any logical sense, as though much in the English language ever does.  It just has to please me.  And, likewise, what you do on your blog just has to please you, even if you don’t write out Nasa in all caps.

Home from Hakonen

The deployment to Hakonen was declared over earlier this week.  GSOL, the logistics masters who make deployments possible, quietly packed up their stuff first to go pave the way back to Delve. Then the official announcement came for caps and subcaps to start heading south for home.

A variety of reasons have come up to explain our return to Delve including Pandemic Horde deploying to attack the region, TEST moving in next door to Hakonen letting the north concentrate on both of us easily, the developing situation in the southwest of null sec, TEST deploying back home, the foreseeable break between TEST and CO2, or the fact that we only planned to hang out for about a month in Hakonen in any case.

Pick whatever narrative or combinations thereof you prefer.  Regardless of which you choose, we were told to come home.

My usual plan for moves is to get in the first subcap move op I see, because I rarely find a second one.  I wanted to get my Typhoon back to Delve.  I traveled light for the trip up to Lonetrek, but then bought ships, including the battleship, so my hangar had filled up.  Some of the ships I planned to just have an alt fly to Jita to disassemble and sell on the market, but the Typhoon had suddenly become special, having acquired kill marks in that last capital battle.  So I wanted to get that back home.

Two more orange dots on a hull with many orange dots… but they are special dots

Of course, I missed that first subcap move op… and a second one, which also appeared to be the last one for USTZ… so I was on my own to get stuff back to Delve.

Normally that would be no big deal.  The route back to Delve is mostly through high sec, but I had a couple of problems.

First, having spent time flying the ECM Burst Atron in low sec meant that my security status was bad, having dropped below the -5 threshold.  You can read up on security status here, but that meant I would be a flashing outlaw in everybody’s overview and the faction police in high sec would be calling out my name and shooting at me.  I wanted to fix that before I flew some ships back south, including the wallowing armor tanked Typhoon.

Fortunately for me, you can fix that.  Corrupt CONCORD lets you buy them off by just visiting one of their stations, and there is one just two gates from Hakonen in the system of Jan.  You don’t pay them off directly, instead giving them clone soldier tags for which they will wipe all that bad behavior off your record.  I am sure they resell those tags again and pocket the ISK.  People only join CONCORD for the corruption I am told.

The sec status cleaning interface

You can buy the tags on the market, and I had a neutral alt in Jita ready to buy some and run them over, but it turned out they are for sale in such abundance in the CONCORD station that the price is cheaper than Jita.  So I bought what I needed and was soon a citizen in good standing again.

My sec status repaired

I repaired my sec status because of the second problem.  In order to avoid gate guns and other issues that come from fighting a war in some place other than null sec, there had been a number of cross declarations of war between alliances.

Everybody loves a war!

War declarations mean you can freely shoot people from the other side in high sec space, making the run back to Delve, which is mostly through high sec, more risky.  I didn’t want to be tackled by somebody with a war dec on us and have the faction police come and finish the job for them.  That is what happened on this kill mail.  I’m bad enough at PvP without the NPCs coming in to assist.

So, all set, I started out with a couple of small ships, my alt flying a Purifier stealth bomber and Wilhelm flying a Jackdaw destroyer.

The station undock was camped, but we put an Astrahus citadel straight off the undock so you can insta-warp to it upon loading in space before anybody can lock and shoot you.  I landed at the citadel, then warped off to the first gate.  I opted to avoid the straight, obvious route out off Hakonen through Nalvula and Jan, as both those gates were camped as well at various times.  Instead I headed to Oimmo in high sec and then started navigating for home from there.  A slightly different path, and two extra gates, but much safer.

The Purifier, warping faster, ended up getting ahead, so I decided to see if he could take a Lucky Clash event site on his own.  They were scattered all over New Eden when I started the move.

A Lucky Clash casino station

The Purifier had no problem taking on the one Redtail Shark attacker by warping in at range and pelting him with torpedoes from a distance.

Purifier off to loot the wreck

Meanwhile, no war targets had appeared.  The thing about wars decs in high sec is that the hostiles tend to just sit in Jita assuming that you’ll go there.  That undock is hot if you have a war dec, but I flew past Jita, going through Sobaseki, and through Amarr, the next big trade hub, without any problem at all.

I even had the Jackdaw try its hand at a Lucky Clash site, which it handled without issue.

Jackdaw taking on a site

It was an uneventful journey home, save for a LowSechnaya Sholupen pilot sitting in a smart bombing battleship on one of the gates in Aridia, and he was out of position and only caught the Purifier with a single cycle which did almost no damage.  I think he was looting the wreck of a Pandemic Horde interceptor that had passed me along the way.  Either way, I was soon home and dry in Delve.

Jumping back to Hakonen with my main, I decided to bring out my Hurricane next.  Again, it was easy to warp past the camp on the undock and head out via the bypass into high sec space.  The Hurricane, moving more slowly than the last two ships, gave me some time to sight see in a way.

It had been interesting being up in Lonetrek again.  All of the battles took place just a few jumps from where I started playing EVE Online.  My first “home” system was Hageken and back in 2006 through 2007 I ranged from there, ran my first missions, started mining, and began playing market games.  Evidence of the latter still exists in the form of dozens of local stations showing up as having crap of mine stored in them.

Assets in Lonetrek, just the top of the list…

So as I flew the slower Hurricane through the region, I looked through the assets list and put things up for sale.  A lot of it I listed pretty cheap, but as some of it has been sitting around for a decade, cheap is relative and it is probably better to have a little ISK out of it than to let it sit even longer.  It was mostly missiles and expanded cargo holds and warp core stabilizers, all of which I was attempting to collect from mission hubs and sell.  There was one ship, a Moa, still sitting in Hageken that was probably the biggest ticket item.

Soon enough though I moved out of Lonetrek and left behind a still unexamined pile of items.

Again I ran into no war targets on my run and, again, I took a moment to run a Lucky Clash site just because.

Hurricane blapping the Lucky Clash intruder

That was it for the night.

I resumed last night thinking that, after two milk runs, I would just roll the fat Typhoon home, passing through Lonetrek and listing more leftovers for sale.  So I jumped back to Hakonen, undocked, and hit the Astrahus again to align out for the same route as before.

Typhoon at the Astrahus and aligning

The slow moving Typhoon lumbered off into high sec space and meandered from gate as I paid more attention to listing things on the market than anything else.  One residual of my days as a trader is that I can list up to 241 items on the market and can do so from many jumps distance.

Eventually I moved out of Lonetrek, but as I did I noticed a war target, first in local, then on my overview.  He was in a frigate and so warped ahead of me as the Typhoon struggled to just align.

Now I am not a very aggressive pilot.  I see a war target in high sec, I am generally by myself and not on voice coms, so I just attempt to evade and escape.  I am not a threat.  But this chap was in Mercenary Coalition, a feisty organization, and headed away from home.  I wondered if he was on coms telling somebody that a fat target was wandering along by itself waiting to be shot.

Sure enough, as passed out a Niarja through the Madirmilire gate I found a Proteus waiting for me on the other side flown by one CJ Longstreet, the same guy in that kill mail I linked above, on the very same gate.  He hit me with a warp scrambler, which meant I couldn’t just use my MJD to jump away.  I figured he would surely web me and that I would never make it back to the gate, so I locked him in return and started shooting and neuting him.  I also headed for the gate, just in case.

As it turned out he did not have a web fit, or didn’t think to use it, because I was soon at the gate, and safety lay on the other side.  Instead, he was neuting me in return, which wasn’t doing very much as he was running a small energy neutralizer and the Typhoon is a passive fit.  Meanwhile,  I certainly wasn’t going to blow him up as the first chap, the one who spotted me a while back, arrived in an Oneiros to rep him and give him capacitor.

So there I was at the gate.  Of course, now I had a weapons timer, a two minute count down before I could jump through, so I stopped firing and watched the clock count down as he slowly chipped away at my layers of armor, hitting me for 300-500 points of damage every attack with his Heavy Electron Blaster IIs.

Waiting is the hardest part…

At one point he figured out what I was up to and stopped shooting, no doubt thinking to follow me through the gate.  But then he changed his mind and started shooting again.  I am not sure how much that respite helped, but it certainly didn’t hurt.  I was closing in on 10% armor when the timer finally ended and I was able to jump through the gate.  Hurray for 132K of EHP!

On the far side there were no hostiles.  There was, however, a selection of citadels open to the public.  So I headed to a nearby Fortizar and tethered up to repair.  I was safe for the moment.

Repairing quietly

Fortunately I have been past war target camps in Niarja.  While it is a bottleneck system on the route between Jita and Amarr, once you are in Niarja you have other options.  There were a few other routes home for me.  So I went to DOTLAN, found a likely looking choice, and headed out again.

I saw one MC pilot in local as I passed through Ashab, something of a bottleneck system as well, but I wasn’t going to or from either of the obvious gates.  And so I went through safely, made my way to Aridia and down into Delve, again without issue.

So all my stuff… well, all my important stuff… is back home in Delve.  There are a few cheap ships still up in Hakonen like the ECM Burst Atrons that I will let a neutral alt pick up and bring to Jita.

The deployment itself was a success for me, but my criteria isn’t likely to be the default for many people.  I saw some big fights, got some good screen shots, got a prestige kill mail, didn’t lose a ship, learned a few new things, got to fly around some old familiar space, and had fun along the way.  That is about all I could ask.

Now to see what is going on back at home.

The Battle at SH1-6P and Null Sec Ongoing

I wasn’t sure I was going to do a post about the fight at SH1-6P, seeing as I wasn’t there for it and I try to keep the blog to things I’ve seen and done.  That is the major premise of the whole effort here at TAGN.

On the flip side, over time one of the minor but valuable sub-notes in the disharmonious chord that is this blog has been the noting of events and milestones, such as game launches (and closures), expansion releases, and major events of note… like battles in EVE Online where titans get blown up.

A picture CCP used, maybe even from the battle…

So, there was a battle at SH1-6P, a system where CO2 had a POS with a capital ship assembly array, which PL and NCDot had previously put into a reinforced state.  When the reinforcement timer ended, the battle erupted between CO2 and its allies battled PL/NCDot and their allies.  Capitals, and then super capitals were dropped into the time dilated maelstrom around the POS.

Included in the battle were a large number of third parties (battle report), including a fleet from GSF that flew across New Eden for a chance to kick CO2 in the nuts.

CO2 escalated the battle to a super cap conflict and came out the worse for the effort, with it and its allied losing around 1.2 trillion ISK, including six CO2 titans down, while inflicting less than 200 billion in damage on its foes.  That is a one trillion ISK damage deficit.

There are battle reports up at the usual competing sources.

• TMC
• EN24

I think TMC wins out on details and insight.

In addition, The Asher Hour podcast episode 23 followed up the battle with a show featuring Asher talking with Ron Mexxico, Killah Bee, and Doomchinchilla to get sense of how things went from the PL side of the battle.

The event itself now takes second place on the list of battles that involved titans being blown up.  The list, so far as I recall it:

• B-R5RB, January 2014 – 75 titans destroyed
• SH1-6P, August 2016 – 6 titans destroyed
• Okagaiken, July 2016 – 4 titans destroyed
• Asakai, January 2014 – 3 titans destroyed

As things settle down the usual post-fight posturing is taking place.  You can catch that in the comment threads of both articles linked above.

And then a blog post, styled as An Open Letter to CCP, by the pilot Capri Sun Kraftfoods (yes, that is his in-game name) started its own waves as it took CCP to task for generally going down a path away from such large scale fights with Fozzie sov.  This led to a threadnought on Reddit with over a thousand comments, a surprising amount of which were not complete shit, along with a post over at Crossing Zebras trying to sum things up.

Unfortunately, none of what came up was really new.  I couldn’t begin to count how many times people who have actually had to go out and take or defend sovereignty have called out the entosis mechanic as a bad idea.  The fact that citadels didn’t go with entosis seems to indicate that even CCP isn’t sold on the idea.  Better to just shoot things, give kill mails, produce explosions, and have some sort of damage cap to extend events if you want to keep things from being blapped too quickly.

Likewise, jump fatigue has been moaned about for ages.  We’re coming up on Phoebe’s second anniversary and some people are still angry about it.

ADMs seem to be the only widely approved of mechanic from Fozzie Sov, as they reward groups that live in their space.  Of course, “living” in null sec means mining and ratting, which the PvP purists tend to despise, but at least it gives them some targets I suppose.

Being, as I noted recently, something of a fatalist when it comes to game mechanics, I take what I am given and try to work with them.  And I do not see any indication that CCP is going to change any of the current sovereignty mechanics.  Despite complaints about CCP being focused on null sec, Fozzie Sov seems to be clearly in the rear view mirror when it comes to development.  Maybe we’ll get another pass in a few years.

But the whole thing, Fozzie Sov, citadels, big fights, and how CCP responds to things does seem worth note.  One certainly couldn’t look at the bigger picture and come away thinking CCP is unified in their vision for New Eden.

The duality of man. The Jungian thing.

On the one hand there is Fozzie Sov which, among its stated goals, sought to disperse fights across a constellation.  This seems like an attempt to reduce the size of sovereignty battles.  There have been some big battles over Fozzie Sov objectives.

Excuse me, that is the “Casino War” TYVM

But in my experience, sovereignty, when it is contested, tends to turn into a long slog with both sides chasing each other around in a constellation-wide game of competitive whack-a-mole.  Less big fights when you disperse targets.  Working as designed.

However, this contrasts with how readily CCP jumps on any big event to drive press coverage.  CCP loves big battles and grand events, from Burn Jita to B-R5RB to anything else that gets a huge number of players in close proximity and destroys a lot of ships.  CCP threw together (another) screen shot contest immediately after SH1-6P. (The first Keepstar citadel getting blown up drew little water from the company though.)

And well they might jump on such events, as they do get wider press coverage and represent some of the “exciting” bits of the game in a world where coverage of the game can often stray into how boring the game can seem to those on the outside.  Of course, the press coverage of the exciting bits also brings in new players, though with the state of the new player experience, that often seems like a wasted opportunity.  Even letting people have a go at New Eden for free on Steam generates a spike in new character creation, but no noticeable effect on PCU.

Basically, another day in New Eden, where the highs can be incredibly high, while the everyday operations can wear you down if you don’t see a payoff somewhere down the road.