The March to Burning Crusade Classic Begins

Blizzard announced this week that the anticipated beta for Burning Crusade Classic has begun.

Beta is now a thing

Of course, it was anticipated… there was a whole panel about it at BlizzCon Online… but while there is information out there, an actual timeline towards launch is just speculation and rumors at this point.  I don’t think we’re on track for that May 3rd/4th rumor from the beginning of the year, but early-to-mid summer still seems like a very viable window for launch.

Meanwhile, I haven’t said much about WoW or WoW Classic around here for a while.

Our group finished up Blackrock Depths back around mid-February and, since then, we have been wrapped up with Valheim, with WoW mostly falling by the wayside as we explored the viking afterlife.

I don’t think that means we’re done with WoW Classic.  But, after a year and a half of slowly working our way through the original content, I think a bit of a break to do something else might have been in order.  Valheim won’t go on forever… or at least not at the level of play time some of us have been putting into it.  We’re about ready for Moder, the fourth boss, and then it will be out into the plains to explore and gear ourselves up for the final challenge.

I suspect that we will wrap that up and still have a bit of time to do a couple more instance runs and get all our mains, and maybe an alt or two, up to level 60 before the Burning Crusade Classic pre-launch events kick-in.

When it does arrive, I think we’re all on board to move forward with the expansion.  I have enjoyed our time in WoW Classic, but I don’t think I need to leave any characters behind just to bum around in the old world.  The old world still exists after the portal to Outland opens, it is just the character classes that get a revamp.  And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

For us Burning Crusade Classic will mean a whole series of dungeons to run.  Both it and Wrath of the Lich King were something of a high point for single group content, which is our focus.  The raiding doesn’t mean much to me and the overland quest content doesn’t bring back a ton of fond memories.  Blizz decided to be more forthcoming with quests… so many critical quests in vanilla were on an easily missed NPC or required a drop to activate… by going all-in on the quest hub idea.

But a lot of the quests, especially in the first couple of zones, are just “kill x, collect x, or click on x” that are repeated over and over, simply substituting a new value for x with every iteration.  If it wasn’t for that early bombing run quest… which was so fresh and new at the time, though they have re-used it since multiple times per expansion… and some of the quirky Blizz quests later on, I might despair of the whole thing.  But I can get through Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh one more time.  I’ll be interested to see how much I remember.

As for the beta, I opted in… I was on their site opting in for the Diablo II remaster and it was just another click… but I am content to hang on until they get to the load tests and such.

Anyway, we have some time before the coming of Burning Crusade Classic.  But with beta going live, the reality of it is getting closer.

EVE Online gets Low Sec Love and the Frigate Escape Bay

A week back CCP announced that today they would unleash a load of changes and updates to help out arguably the most neglected region of New Eden, low security space.

Feeling the low sec love

The premier event of this update is likely the Champions of Low Sec contest that CCP announced this past Friday.

Who will be the banner bearer

The event runs for five days, starting as of downtime today and running until downtime on the 31st.  The rules are:

• The winner will be the alliance or independent corporation that accrues the highest ISK value of ship & pod kills during that period. Structure kills will not be counted.
• The alliance or independent corporation of whoever receives the final blow on the killmail will be credited with the full value of the kill.
• The ISK value credited will be equivalent to value of the hull and items destroyed on the killmail. Dropped items won’t be counted.
• Only kills made in low security space (0.1 to 0.4 systems) will count.
• Only kills of other players will count. NPC, CCP, ISD or GM kills will not be counted.
• All kills which adhere to these guidelines will count, regardless of the circumstances surrounding them.

The winning corporation or alliance will be declared the Champions of Lows Sec and   There will be medals and a tribute video to play on the in-game billboards and the alliance’s logo flag will be displayed at CCP’s new HQ. (CCP will help a winning group without a logo create one.)

So that is off and running.  I know nobody will try to cheese through to win.  That would never happen in New Eden.

In order to help that along and make things go in low sec, warp speed for all ships in Low Security system by 2AU/s through April 6th.  So your travel ‘ceptors will really zip through low.  Also, the Loot drop chance has been increased to 90% in Low Security space until April 6th as well, so wrecks will be a bounty.

More substantial are the changes to the long neglected Faction Warfare aspect of the game.  These include:

• Faction Warfare complex Acceleration Gate will give a Suspect Flag if activated by non-Faction Warfare Capsuleer.
  • In such cases, the Safety setting must be to Partial or No Safety (orange or red) to activate the gate. When safety is Full (green) the gate cannot be activated.
  • FW participants will be able to activate the acceleration gates without penalty.
• Faction Warfare Acceleration Gates have an increased activation range allowing for activation at 90km radius
• Adding a new 5th tier of Faction Warfare sites, and renaming the ‘Large’ tier:
  • Large Compounds are now (Faction) Open Compounds
  • Large Strongholds are now (Faction) Open Strongholds
  • Added a new tier of sites. These sites have gate restrictions that allow only Battleship sized and smaller ships
  • The new Battleship Complexes are named (Faction) Large Outpost
  • The progression in tiers is now:
    • Novice (unchanged)
    • Small (unchanged)
    • Medium (unchanged)
    • Large (new Battleship tier)
    • Open (formerly “Large”)
• Loyalty Point payouts for Faction Warfare PVP kills have been given a fixed increase, and no longer linked to the warzone tier multiplier. The LP payout rate is now fixed at approximately the same level as it previously was when the attacker held tier 5 warzone control.
• Loyalty Point payouts for Faction Warfare missions have been reduced by approximately 30%

I am sure all of this means something… good or ill… but I haven’t touched Faction Warfare since it launched, so couldn’t tell you what.

Closer to home… for me at least… CCP is also launching the frigate escape bay feature.  This allows you to put a frigate of any time in a bay in your battleship, so if your battleship explodes, you will be ejected in the frigate rather than your pod.

I tinkered with this a bit on Singularity, the test server, and you do indeed get a bay with the capacity of one unit of frigate.  Size of frigate does not matter.

One frigate will fit nicely

Some experimentation showed that if you simply eject from your battleship you will end up in your frigate.  You do not even need to get all blown up.

Leaving the battleship behind

However, I couldn’t recommend that as once it is ejected you cannot stuff the frigate back in the battleship.  I wonder if we can get a “scoop frigate to frigate bay” option?  I am sure that would never be abused.

I am interested to see how doctrines out in null sec will evolve around this feature.

Also on the list were a couple of war dec changes:

• If a war ends because the attacking Corporation/Alliance fails to pay their War Declaration bill, a forced peace treaty for 14 days is triggered. This will prevent the attackers from re-declaring another war against the same target.
• Hull Reinforcement Duration for War Headquarters structures reduced to 24 hours (down from 4.5 days). This is intended to give defenders a realistic chance of taking down the HQ within 7 days.

Those seem non-controversial.

Anyway, the word is that the update has been deployed.  The March patch notes have been updated to include the new changes.  The servers are up and it is time to start blowing people up.

Celebrating Katia Sae

Consummatum Est!

–Katia Sae, March 9, 2019

Earlier this month Katia Sae announced in a blog post that she had finished her nearly decade long mission.  Starting from back in December 2008, and flying a variety of ships, she had successfully navigated into each and every one of the 7,805 player accessible systems in EVE Online without losing any of her rides. High sec, low sec, null sec, and wormhole space, she had visited them all.

Signal Cartel, her corporation, put out a press release immediately to help spread the news.

And word did spread as congratulations for her achievement came from all quarters of New Eden, including from CCP.

Last week CCP brought her to Polaris, the CCP home system in never unlocked Jove space, bringing her system count up to 7,806.

Bathed in the light of the Polaris system’s star

She also received recognition elsewhere.  Her achievement popped up at about the 3:15 mark in the ticker of a video from The Scope concerning the Triglavian takeover of CONCORD billboards in New Eden.

Sister’s of EVE Confirm Legitimacy of Katia Sae exploration claims…

She was also mentioned at about the 4:18 mark during the EVE Pulse episode of March 15 and was a guest on the March 10 episode of Talking in Stations.

But the big moment came at EVEsterdam when a new episode of The Scope was first aired.  The initial focus was again on the Triglavians and their message to New Eden, but follows on with Katia Sae at the 1:35 mark.

Katia Sae featured on The Scope

There it was announced that the Acura Stargazer Society had commissioned a statue of her to be raised in her home system of Saisio at the Abagawa gate, where the first jump of her journey took place.

Katia Sai Monument

During the presentation by CCP Fozzie at day one of EVEsterdam he stated that the monument was approximately the size Mount Everest, making it bigger than the gate near which it will reside.  He also pointed out that the solar system in Katia’s upraised hand has a just visible cloaked Astero in amongst the planets, a nod to one of the ships she used during the journey.

Solar System in her hand

The inscription on the monument will read as follows.

Katia Sae Monument Inscription

The monument should appear on the test server soon and will be live on Tranquility with the April update.

I am given to understand that this will get Mark762 to add a new entry to his EVE Travel blog.

So there it is, somebody setting off on their own in the sandbox with a goal and a dream being recognized.  Congratulations to Katia Sae.  I just wonder if CCP updated her Activity Tracker, since that only counts system visits since November of last year.  If not, there is room for somebody to complete that.  I don’t think you’ll get a monument, but maybe you’ll get a shout out.

Honest Game Trailers – Fortnite

Honest Trailers did a video about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds months back, just when it was starting to rise in popularity, taking over the market briefly held by the now officially released (and suddenly free) H1Z1 soon thereafter.  But I skipped past that back then because the game hadn’t really hit its stride yet as a dominate player.

But now Honest Trailers has a video about Fortnite, the one-time co-op game that showed up to totally eat PUBG’s lunch, according to SuperData, for specific definitions of “lunch.”

The building part of Fortnite, even in its battle royale mode, does look interesting.

The Coming of Refineries in New Eden

Upwell structures continue to take over New Eden.  CCP put up a dev blog about the current state of citadels and engineering complexes with some informational tidbits such as:

• Over 7800 different player corporations have at least one Upwell Structure in space right now.
• Four player alliances have active home citadels with more traffic and trade volume than any NPC stations except for the big four trade hubs and the newbie systems. The busiest of them has also surpassed Rens in trade volume.
• The top 100 most active industry facilities in EVE (measured by industry job output value) so far in 2017 consist of 13 NPC stations, one Outpost, one Starbase array, one Citadel and 84 Engineering Complexes.

The new structures have definitely been embraced by a swathe of the community.

Keepstars are the new centerpiece of player empires

As a follow up to this, CCP also posted a dev blog about the next Upwell branded structures they expect to release, Refineries. (There is also a survey to gauge how you feel about these structures.)

Refineries will replace player owned starbases in the role of moon mining, and the act of moon mining will go from passive act (or passive aggressive according to Kirith Kodachi) to a much more active process, where chunks of the moon will be displaced into space to be collected manually.

Everybody’s current favorite moon chunk picture

According to the follow up questions and answer post, this will mean the end of siphons.  Since harvesting from moons will be a more active process, stealing the moon bounty will also become something you have to get out there in a ship and do directly.

There is still no time frame for when Refineries will be coming to the game.  I suspect that we will hear a lot more about this at Fan Fest, which is coming up in less than two weeks now.  Over at INN there is word that CCP Fozzie will be appearing on the Talking in Stations podcast with Matterall to discuss what has been announced.

This means one less activity for player owned starbases, the familiar old POS that has dotted New Eden for many years now.  With moon mining operations gone, the purpose of the POS will be as a place for jump bridges, cyno beacons, and cyno jammers.

When the POS finally disappears, it will be the end of an era.  I have spent a lot of time in game “shooting the stick” and forming up in the protective force field that surrounds the central tower of a POS.  My first ever fleet op in null sec involved shooting a POS.

Modules blowing up back in 2011

In the new world of structures, with their vulnerability timers that let you control when you have to fight, I have no doubt there will be some nostalgia for the old POS once it finally disappears.  You could go and shoot one to reinforce it whenever you wanted.

Why yes, I will shoot this POS

And nothing will replace the giddy feeling when the shield hit points drop below 25% on a tower you expected to just reinforce.  A boring old POS shoot suddenly becomes a kill mail.  Those days will soon be behind us.