All About A Saturday Night

It was a good day today. I was up early to help some relatives move some furniture around and I managed to catch part of the women's final at Wimbledon during the furniture shuffling. I was disappointed that Venus won the match as I'm one for the underdog to win. Here's hoping Nadal gets his grass groove into gear and whoops Federer tomorrow.

I also took in quite a bit of Live Earth throughout the day. There were some great performances, notably Foo Fighters, Madonna, Spinal Tap (with all the other group's bass players on stage with them), Eskimo Joe, Katie Melua, The Police, KT Tunstall, and Blue King Brown. There were some that I missed due to either being asleep or doing something else. I wanted to see Snow Patrol, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the much acclaimed duet from Damien Rice & David Gray. Oh well, I'm sure there will be a replay or, yes, even a DVD release eventually.

I don't know what other concert or music aficionados think but the Japanese concert was weird. There's something odd about seeing Asian musicians trying to emulate Western music styles such as metal and rap. And the performers that were singing in English need to find out what they are actually singing about. The words they were spitting out just didn't make any sense. It was like my visit to Hong Kong several years ago. I'd see people with logos on handbags or t-shirts that were "Americanized' yet didn't make any sense whatsoever. Such as handbag with "TOASTER" written on it in small fluorescent letters with some image of a bird or a bat in silhouette. But that pales in comparison to the performance of The Pussycat Dolls. How did this group ever get popular? How did the name 'Pussycat Dolls' get past the censors? A mystery to me.

I played a bit of EVE today. For those that don't know, EVE Online is a science fiction massively multiplayer online (MMO) set in space. Each player controls a pilot that can fly many different types of ships and advance in strength by training skills and buying better ships and hardware. It is a very deep game in complexity and the environment is freaking HUGE. It is space after all.
The goal of EVE can be different for each player as the game is open to any style of play that the individual player desires. At the core of EVE, however, is a principal element of economics and politics. Items are bought and sold on a mostly player driven market. Corporations and alliances are formed with the eventual goal of galaxy or universe domination. It is a player versus player (PvP) world that is intriguing and entertaining. EVE isn't for everyone but is a rewarding experience for those who like challenges and this particular genre. There is so much micromanaging involved that EVE can also be considered a giant Excel spreadsheet with pretty graphics. You can find out more about EVE Online on the official website.

I've been playing EVE for about two months. I started with the trial version, which is free for 15 days, and liked it so much I subscribed. Currently I'm flying around in high sector space in a cruiser (a Thorax) I just bought a week or so ago for the paltry sum of 6 million ISK (the in-game currency). In order to acquire that money I needed to complete some missions, mine some ore, nay- a LOT of ore, in asteroid belts, and once skills were trained salvaged wrecks from ships either I destroyed or other players did in combat. The game is open in however you want to go about achieving your goals. That's what I love about EVE. And the player community is great as well.

I also logged into WoW, a small upstart MMO with few players, but didn't really do much since my gaming/guild partner wasn't on. I spent an hour or so getting my level 48 human Paladin to an area in the world (Tanaris for those in the know) to start on some outstanding quests there. WoW doesn't have the same depth as EVE but it is a fun game, easy learning curve, and I like the Warcraft universe started in the original real-time strategy (RTS) games over the last decade. There's another difference between EVE and WoW. In WoW there is no recourse if your character dies. You turn into a ghost and can either be resurrected by a Spirit or you go back to your corpse and come back to life where you died in the first place. Simple. In Eve, you don't really die but you need to have things in place to make the death experience less painful. Firstly you're always in your ship. If your ship is destroyed during combat it means you've lost that ship for good. Items carried on the ship can be retrieved as long as you get back to the wreck in time. Ships can be insured but not the hardware associated with said ship such as weapons and other modules. As for your character, once the ship is destroyed there is a possibility you can get what's called "podded". This means your character dies but can come back as a clone. You, the player, need to make sure your clone is kept updated on a regular basis as to not lose skills trained. Characters can have implants (like cyborgs) which are expensive and they are lost if the character is podded. Clones also need to be positioned strategically based on the star system you tend to spend time in otherwise it can mean a very long time spent traveling (EVE term: Jumps) to get back to where you were. So as you can see, although death isn't really permanent, there is consequence in dying in EVE. An aspect that makes one think on strategy to survive.

I've lost a few ships in EVE already but haven't been podded yet. I'm still too noobish to venture in low sector space where laws are different and PvP is the way of life. Tonight I spent some time looking for a 0.5 (there are sectors ranging from 1.0, safe, to 0.0, lawless to explore) system to call home until I'm ready to dip a toe into 0.4 (getting dangerous) territory. Haven't found a good system yet so I'll keep exploring. I'm primarily salvaging in my cruiser which generally produces a good income of ISK flowing in. And I'm meeting other players in the process which is always good for group adventures (EVE term: gangs) and conversation.

It's getting late, actually early Sunday morning now, so I'm signing off. Tomorrow is another busy day but I hope to get some EVE in. There's always skill training to do. I'm also hoping to get some WoW quests in once my other Paladin friend signs in after doing RL stuff. And Wimbledon is a 7 a.m. start.

Peace.