Friday, February 25, 2011

EVE Online

Most of you have heard that I had stopped playing EVE Online for a couple of reasons. I found myself not enjoying the game and getting incredibly frustrated with it. As I have stated to my girls, on a number of occasions, games are supposed to be fun. When they are not fun, you should stop playing them. The final action that just made me down right mad was.. I just bought a new fancy shield for my Battleship. It was the most expensive piece of equipment (as expensive as the battleship itself). It took me over of month of quests and mining to get that much isk. I am just coming out of the space station, in Jita, and some ass pops me… That was the last straw. The other issue I have is that mission areas are not instances, like in other MMOs. It is one big universe and you can go anywhere, even if someone is mission running. I don’t like this aspect, since I like doing my own thing, being in a mission and having some ass come in a pop me when I am already engaged with NPCs. Most of the time, I am not able to bug-out.. So.. I get blown out of the sky. There is no safe spot, where you can just hang out and recharge the shields for a bit. You are always under constant threat of attack by players. If there was a specific PvP area or an area (like low sec) that PvP was allowed, it would be totally different game. But, the fact that you can attack someone (PvP) in high sec, outside a space station, with the space police right there.. is.. just wrong!

There are some aspects of the game that I do like. Skill Training is real-time.. meaning, if it says it is 11 hours to complete, it is 11 hours, either when you are online or offline. There is no grinding for XP or a specific skill. I like that a lot.

And, we have to deal with the me Issue. I have a strange sense of needing to have value if I pay money for something. So, if I am forking out cold hard cash, I want to feel like I am getting my monies worth. So, when I am playing EVE, I have to play EVE. This is wrong, since I ignore everyone around me. I at least have to have fun with the game and be so incredibly pissed off at it all the time!

Also, there is no End-Game. There is no master purpose or Quest for the holy grail.

I guess I am tired of the constant unprovoked attacks.

Monday, January 17, 2011

New XBox in the house!

Well.. My Gen1 White 8gb XBox360 finally gave up the ghost. It started not being able to read the DVDs, neither game nor movie. But, then it failed all together. I thought something was up, so I did transfer most of my game profiles, saves, and themes to a 4gb usb drive. So, I guess I am not out that much...

Went to BestBuy and bought a new Black XBox360 with a 250gb drive. Hooked it up and started downloading all of the content that I had before... waiting.. waiting.. waiting.. after several hours, I decided to go to sleep.. There were still about 25 items in the "pending download" state. I guess having it for so long, I acquired lots of stuff.

On a side note, I do have to rant about BestBuy for a second. I have been a big supporter of BestBuy for a long time. Have purchased many many many things there over the many years. So, on Sunday, my family and I went in and we were greeted by the door guard, but no one else. Even though, there were many employees there. I rushed back to the XBox section, grabbed an XBox from the shelf. There were 3 employees there, just standing and chatting. They did not say anything to me or even break their conversation. Did not really need their help, but, it would have been nice to be acknowledged. At the check out area, there was one guy, who was apparently buying the store. The guy was purchasing several large items, so it was going to take him a while. So, I stood, holding my XBox... and waited.. and waited.. I saw the girls wandering around looking at stuff, while I continued to wait. Another BestBuy employee wandered the area, cleaned up some papers from a register and then wandered off. And.. I waited.. Finally, the guy finished up his transaction and I was up. I was seriously thinking about putting it on her counter and walking out. I was pissed off by this.. it was just frustrating.. It is not like I could not get this somewhere else or they had such a good price on it. It was a standard Microsoft price, $299.. I mean, I could have easily have ordered it from Amazon, with free shipping. It just means that I would have not been able to play that day. Looking back on it, it would have been a small price to pay for the level of frustration that I felt inside that store.

My point is.. Customer Service.. If you are in a service industry, you need to own it - breath it - live it - Do it! I will think twice about shopping there again.