Holy shit! Fan mail!

More like hatemail. I pissed of a scammer in Eve tonight. I wouldn't buy a week old char a 2 million ISK Faction Energized Plates. Claims he was on a trial account and couldn't buy it himself. I can't see a reason why a newb would need it. So here's the mail he sent me after I left the chat he opened.

sorry
From: Tracey Morgan
Sent: 2011.06.28 05:24
To: Persephone 66, 

go diddle urdikeself

How sweet.

So Incarna has gone live, so let's talk about it.

I may do a short youtube vid about this as well. That is if FRAPS wants to behave for me. I'm not sure if I can say all I want to say without doing a series of videos, but that's not a bad thing.

For starters, the new turrets and new effect are really nice. I am pleased to see mining, salvage and tractors were also updated. Added even. Very cool. The animations and effects look great. My strip miners look very cool. Bravo to CCP on this one.

The new agent finder was quite useful in my loyalty point whoring endeavours. Nice job there.

The Captain's Quarters is nice, though my laptop can't really handle it. It's not terribly useful. The 3 screens should be customisable or at least have some sort of a channel changer option. There's no advantage to using it over the existing NeoCom. It's cool that I can turn it off, but what I really want is an option to get out of my ship or have something like a “Fly-Thru Window” on the NPC stations. Getting in and out of my Hulk every time I drop off ore is very inefficient. It looks pretty as does my character. I think it's a good start on making walking on stations a reality.

The Noble Exchange has to be the biggest disappointment. It looked like there was more items on the test server. There's not many items, they don't look very nice and they are ridiculously expensive. Expensive to the point where the real money being spent on these items is close to the real money that would be spent on a real item. Spending 2, 3 even 4 PLEX (for a fucking cyber monocle! 12,000 aurum do the math!) is just insane. I think they really shit themselves on this one. Needless to say, my experiment is not going to happen.

Between this and some recent leaked communications and a dev blog that really doesn't clear anything up, I'm no longer happy with CCP and EVE Online. I'm at odds with cancelling my subscription or just staying on to see if they fix it. I guess I could always come back if I go the cancel route.

I've grown to the point where I don't mind leaving work late

But some days, I really do want to leave on time. Today was one of them.

I wanted to take the bus that leaves at 7:05. Instead, at 7:00 am I was checking in a guest that had just walked in. My relief was a few minutes late and by the time I was out the door, the bus came and went, 5 minutes ago.  Thanks, did me a real solid there. I need to get my bike fixed so I am not dependant on the bus and my co-workers arriving at work on time. That's not going to happen until Monday.

I wish that was all that's pissing me off, but at the time of writing this I'm on the Beach Trolley. It showed up a few minutes early. Which is cool but the driver seems to be under the misconception that he's driving a sports car on the Autobahn. Driving like a total maniac, tailgating other vehicles, speeding. Didn't even give me a chance to sit down before taking off. Looks like another complaint I'll be filing with PSTA. Getting really sick of this shit. In a way, it beats being late, but I don't like having the sensation of a roller-coaster ride on my commute either.

Let the muckraking begin.

Yes I said muckraking. I'm going to finally be embarking on something new and different, at least to me. While I will still be using this blog for written blogs, I'm also going to be making use of my youtube channel. My goal is to produce gaming related videos as well as rants that use the various games that I play as a backdrop. I think it will be cool. I've been threatening this for quite some time, but now I have taken a step toward making it happen. The headset and copy of FRAPS have been purchased. So now it's just a matter of making the videos. Hopefully people seem to like it.

So far EVE related videos are a definite. I like EVE. Though I have to say I might like it a little less when Incarna goes live, but I'll be getting to that. Actually that's what I plan to start with. Of course if anyone has suggestions, let me know.

My other intents for video blogs are more of the usual nonsense you see posted here. Politics, religion, news, general bitching, maybe even a storytime session where I talk about some of the crazier things that have happened in the experience that is being me.

So stay tuned.

Tune in, tune out, recline, practice being dead, this is Channel Hell.

Ladies, gentlemen, and the rest of you, please welcome my latest stalker

What the fuck is it with fundies? Why do the spew high levels of hatred toward a person, then go and stalk them? Previously, Adam Briggs (remember him?) went to my MySpace page and who knows where else he stalked me. Then Lighthouse reared his ugly head in my blog. And OK, maybe those two I more or less invited by talking about them here and instigating shit with them. Now lets take a look at this -

Let try his identity is wrapped up in attraction to men pretending to be pale skinned chicks. I've seen his facebook and the facebook of his 'girlfriend'.

Source.

And that rather creepy statement comes from someone who has described me as repulsive, repugnant, disgusting and claims to hate gays, lesbians and especially transgenders. And that just makes it more creepy, and a bit screwy. Why would anyone stalk someone they hate? And stalk their girlfriend?

I'm going to conduct an experiment when Incarna goes live

Here's how it is going to work. Prior to the release of Incarna, I'm going to buy a PLEX. Maybe with cash. Maybe with ISK. I have not decided yet. After the release I am going to convert that PLEX to Aurum, the new currency. Then I am going to buy items with Aurum and sell them on the market for ISK at a profit. I am going to calculate the projected cost of PLEX after a week, maybe 2 weeks, double it, then divide it by the number of items. This will give me the selling price for these items. After the items are sold and if my calculations are correct, I will be able to purchase 2 PLEX. I am going to repeat the same process with those and turn them to 4 PLEX. Then 8 and if I can keep it up, 16.

Now why would I do this? It's to prove that with the new currency in EVE, one can become an ISK generating machine, complete with a free account, with out having ever left a station or really even played the game. An initial investment of 1 PLEX can now easily not just multiply, but grow exponentially. It's to show CCP the error of their ways and how they may have ruined the in game economy if not the whole game. Not sure if they will care, but I may never have to pay for EVE again.

I'll post the results as they happen.

I hate riding the bus, fuck you PSTA.

I went back to riding my bike to save money, but not riding the bus is a great added benefit. Sadly, my bike needs a new tire tube and the one I purchased was defective. I ended up riding the bus home from work as well as going back to work as a result. Lets take a look at the complaints I felt necessary to file with PSTA.

The trip home-

This morning I ended up having to take the bus. I was once again reminded about why I try to avoid this. While waiting at the terminal to board, I noticed that it was 8:40 am, time for the bus to leave and the driver was still talking to someone. She then walked around, past the bus and spoke to another driver. It was not until 8:45 am before she finally started the bus and allowed passengers to board. The bus left the terminal at 8:48 am. 8 minutes late because the driver was socializing.

People rely on your service to get to where they need to be in a timely manner. Having drivers that are more concerned with gossip totally defeats that purpose.

And back to work-

The bus that was scheduled to be at (the stop) at 9:55pm did not arrive until 10:21pm. Due to this, I missed my connection to the Beach Trolley leaving the Park Street Terminal at 10:15 and instead had to take the one leaving at 10:40. This caused me to arrive at work 15 minutes late.

So now twice in the same day I have experienced lateness in your service. And the second time it caused me to be late for work. I made a decision a while back to ride a bicycle instead of taking the bus. Sadly, due to problems with my bike I am taking the bus. I feel I would have been better off walking. In total today I have spent $8. I did not foresee my need to ride the bus this evening. However, because of the stress and issues at my place of employment this has caused me, I feel it is only right that I be compensated by returning the $8 paid in to your service. In my line of work, refunds to the customer are the norm when the customer is affected by poor service.

I don't actually expect them to refund my money. Though I would like to see how they respond. i might post it here when they do.It would be nice if there was an alternative in public transportation.

I was excited about the Incarna expansion to EVE Online, now, not so much.

I've been playing EVE Online since 2007. I like EVE. The Incarna expansion was going to be the start of something that I have been waiting to see for quite some time. Finally, characters were going to be able to exit their ships. I played with and previewed Incarna on the test server, the new Captain's Quarters is every bit as cool as I heard and expected. I think it does a fine job of paving the way to the long time goal of walking in stations. I do have to say this, while it was slow and choppy (hopefully only because it was on the test server), it looked just top notch. Here's a few screenshots-

Now on to what I don't like, take a look at this recent dev blog.

Short version, they are adding a new store for "vanity items" and with it a new currency that is derived from PLEX.

I went on a bit of a rant in the EVE Forum.

Well if it has not been said, griefers are going to love this.

I was playing around with Incarna on duality. I like the Captain's Quarters, I really think CCP did a fine job. However, I did take a PLEX and convert it to Aurum. Let's take a look at a few things concerning that.

1 PLEX = 3500 Aurum

PLEX is currently selling for 406 million ISK in Dodixie.

406,000,000 / 3,500 = 116,000

I bought a pair of goggles in the store for my character in the store for 1 AUR. So I paid 116,000 ISK for a pair of goggles. That's a pretty average price for a pretty average frigate, making these one expensive pair of goggles.

Over the last month the price of PLEX on the market has been on an upward spike. If this trend continues, PLEX will be over 500 million ISK by the time Incarna goes live. I suspect after the release it will continue on more of an upward trend. This means the value of AUR and the items purchased with it will increase as well.

I don't think it is unreasonable to foresee a market value of store items going in to the millions of ISK. I also don't think it is unreasonable to foresee the market value of PLEX increasing as well, even approaching a billion ISK.

That being said, soon one can buy 2 PLEX and make a billion ISK without even really playing the game. In a few months, it will just take 1 PLEX. This will drive up the cost of everything on the market.

Thanks CCP, you did us a real solid.

And, getting back to what I opened with, the only way I see to put on your new clothing items is to go through the character customisation. Which means you have to take a new picture for the change to take. Which means if you buy anything that shows in the picture, you are advertising that you have expensive items on you that are going to be destroyed if you get podded. Makes it easier for greifers to know who to get the best ransoms from. Or the most tears.

I really feel CCP has totally ruined the market in EVE with this new currency. PLEX was a bad idea to begin with, Aurum has only made it worse.

Just my 0.02 ISK, the clothing items should be able to be produced by players using blueprints (patterns?) and resources from Planetary Interaction. Not only does this make more sense, it encourages more use of PI and does not greatly impact the market or the value of ISK.