Opening Star Trek Online lockboxes for fun and profit

Looks like I’ve become the proud owner of a Xindi-Aquatic Narcine Dreadnought Carrier.

Whenever a new lockbox drops in Star Trek Online, I often use my lifetime stipend to buy 10 or 20 keys. This time, opening the new Xindi lockboxes, the ship dropped from the second box I opened.

I will be flying it for a while to get a review written for this starship and try to get that up on GameOgre and Vox Ex Machina. Recently, I’ve written one review for the T’varo Light Warbirrd Retrofit and the Undine Nicor Bio-Warship (the second one is still pending publication.)

I particularly enjoy flying carriers in STO and I have a Catian Atrox Carrier as well as a Tholian Recluse Carrier on different characters. So we’ll see where the Narcine stacks up—from the look of it, with a heavy Tactical loadout, it’s a battleship designed for front line fire-support. This is especially accentuated by the fact that it comes with two hangars of frigate pets.

The frigates are also minelayers, which is an unexpected pet capability.

Just an FYI, “narcine” is the scientific name of a family of electric rays, which the Narcine Dreadnought looks a little bit like from a dorsal profile. I named mine “Sepiida” which is the order that cuttlefish belong to (a mollusk closely related to squid, octopus, and nautulus.)

Upcoming covers for Black Hat Magick Kindle-edition short stories

I am slowly working on filling out my Kindle store with e-book editions of stories I’ve written. I have quite a few and from what I’ve heard, the critical mass is about 30. That might take me a while to reach.

So here’s a pair of covers to enjoy as I work towards getting them into the Kindle store.

Fish in trees arrived by comet

So, I just learned that Ray Comfort actually asked a geologist if fish hitched a ride on comets to Earth[1]. Apparently, this was part of a question series about why there is so much water on Earth and the geologist suggested that much of it could have come from cometary bodies during the formation of the planet.

Well, if fish arriving on comets explains fish to Ray Comfort; perhaps it would also explain why there are fish in the trees to Brother Jed Smock.

The latter point comes from something Brother Jed once said to thunderstruck listeners on ASU campus, saying something about how “fish don’t live in trees,” which shortly became a meme mocking him for whatever failed point he was attempting to make.

Those fish living in the trees arrived on comets.

---

[1] paulchartley, Noah Proving Bullshit Pays [Video file] , Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZeztc2rtIA

Interview: On Being a Captain in Star Trek Online

The folks over at MMO Anthropology had a chance to talk to a mutual friend of ours from Star Trek Online about what it’s like to be a captain in the game. Then I took a chance to write up an article about the interview over at SiliconANGLE. Be sure to watch the video and read the article to get a glimpse of some of what happens in STO and how it affects personal experience and expression In virtual worlds.

Reflections on chasing space bunnies: Epohh tagging in Star Trek Online

With the introduction of the Legacy of Romulus expansion in Star Trek Online, Romulan reputation became a thing—also, so did, chasing, petting, tagging, and fostering furry, antennaed, irradiated space bunnies called epohhs. The prolific and agile epohh tagger engages not just in a quaint little minigame (the chase and tag) but also research and a bit of animal husbandry and can generate up to 600 reputation marks as the result of along chain of duty officer missions.

I’ve been playing around with this system and I have some thoughts on how Cryptic has implemented it and the social phenomena that have emerged.

Epohh Tagging

To get the whole chain started, players head to Mol’Rihan (New Romulus) and transport themselves to the Epohh Fields. An aptly named area that’s filled with space bunnies and NPCs offering missions related to them.

Tagging involves rushing out into the field and using a tricorder on every epohh visible.

Some basic advice: Get used to the geography so that you can run between the areas that have a lot of epohhs, avoid going in when there’s too many other players already on the ground (competition lowers tagging opportunities), when tagging an epohh get an eye on the next target so you can get moving immediately.

The last part is extremely important so that you don’t accidentally chase the just-tagged epohh—which race off as if shot out of a cannon and vanish after a few yards of running.

While it’s possible to easily solo this mission (netting 2-3 tags easily) to get the maximum of 4 it’s necessary to grab a group. As a result, there’s numerous people in the area looking for FED or KDF teams who are doing tagging. Three people can easily get 4 every time.

Researching epohh tags

For every 4 tags it’s possible to run a duty officer mission that “researches tags.” Do this to generate Epohh Research—you need five of these to buy a space bunny kit (I mean an epohh pup.)

This assignment will always end in success so you can run it with any science DOFF, as a result, you can ignore the “success condition” trait on DOFFs and should instead aim for DOFFs with the critical traits of Efficient and Logical. Any DOFF with both would be superb.

Once you have an epohh pup you will then start running DOFF assignments to foster and care for them. The assignments grow epohhs through pups, to moppets, to adults, to elders. The same traits—Efficient and Logical—assist with criticals on the epohh fostering missions so keep those DOFFs in stable to run your farm.

The elders can be sold for 400 Romulan marks; or you can collect the various colors and have a nice Pokemon stable of space bunnies.

To discuss, read this thread on the Star Trek Online official forums.

Tagging Teams

Players seeking that lofty 4 tags from the tagging mission have started to band together to form tagging teams. Usually players can Pick Up Group (PUG) this and there’s usually some people all hours of the day seeking teams. It’s hard to tell so far how effective that is, but people seem to do well with it.

Fleets already provide a social infrastructure that many players use to put together tagging teams and it’s common to see similar Fleet names on players in the Epohh Field when I’ve been observing.

In 2012, an in-game channel was added called “Epohh Tag” similar to other social channels in the game to assist people in finding tagging teams.

That players can at-best get three (3) tags (and not the maximum) and even a group as small as two (2) players can get the maximum reward allows for a highly casual experience in the Epohh Fields for most players. However, it also provides strong encouragement to form groups and the presence of people seeking groups (and finding them) suggests a thriving grouping experience.

There is no epohh trade—this is because epohhs are bound-to-character and not tradable. The gotta-catch-em-all element of space bunnies could have made for a thriving epohh trade; but Cryptic’s decision to make the husbandry and fostering of space bunnnies part of Romulan reputation has probably caused the developers to segment epohh raising from the economy-at-large. 

City of Paradigm and Dr. Katherine Frase: How the Internet of Things Can Make Cities Smarter

I spoke with urban anthropologist Dr. Katherine Frase—also vested with the title of Chief Technology Officer, IBM Smarter Cities—about how the Internet of Things and sensor technology intersects with human efforts in metropolises and urban centers for my most recent article about smart cities at SiliconAngle.

You can go read the entire thing at “City of Paradigm: The Internet of Things.”

The article opens with an excerpt from a book that doesn’t exist (The City of Paradigm) but frames a narrative scene designed to show government officers and construction workers reacting to and acting on information from a sensor network and analysis of data therefrom.

Here’s some of what didn’t make it into the article but are still things we can all think about.

During our talk she spoke about some of the questions that arise from dealing with large groups of people who take part in a city infrastructure. One of the problems cities are facing is attempting to communicate information to people and doing so in a way that’s less likely to be misunderstood. Sensors can only go so far when attempting to manage traffic on the streets—they can tell us where the high congestion areas historically happen and help computer scientists model what happens when a particular core street is shut down.

However, getting traffic patterns to change is at its very crux a human communication problem. Telling people not to take a particular street (to reduce congestion) usually ends with a large number taking a specific side street, simply moving the congestion problem somewhere else. Actually easing congestion may take more than just modelling; but a communication solution that actively attempts to redirect humans to different traffic patterns. A radio broadcast or a simple message may not suffice.

Another interesting tidbit that she spoke about was how some utilities companies have been attempting to gamify their service to cause households to reduce costs. By allowing people to “compete” for better energy use they are hoping to pit house vs. house (or neighborhood vs. neighborhood) towards using less energy overall. By using gamification—comparison charts, badges, accolades, etc.—these utilities hope to use gamification theory to make better energy users out of customers.

If I have a chance, I might revisit these subjects in later editions of The City of Paradigm on SiliconAngle.

Star Trek Online: Solanae Dyson Science Destroyers

I noticed that a lot of people have been very interested in this new virtual items from Star Trek Online. These ships are a reward from participating in the 4th Anniversary Event in STO and bring a few new interesting mechanics into the game. As a result, the folks over at Vox Ex Machina sat down with a few players and looked at their Dyson science destroyers and wrote up a review.

Star Trek Online: Dyson Science Destroyer Review

Head over there and let them know what you think. There are two screenshots right now (from the Aves-class Romulan variant) but more screenshots are expected today.

I personally have an Aves-class and I’ve been slowing grinding up the Dyson reputation so that I can grab the Experimental Proton Weapon for its front arc. I know that there’s a dearth of consoles that buff proton damage, but I’m intrigued by a weapon that can act as both a cannon and a beam.

I’m not a very good Romulan player at this point--I’ve noticed I’m a cruiser captain who doesn’t deal well with warbirds—but the hit-and-run tactics needed by a battle-cloaking science vessel with some escort-upbringing do make for exciting space battles.

Star Trek Online: Hirogen Hunter Heavy Escort?

With Star Trek Online providing a surprising venue to talk about the nature of virtual items—and the fact that I have a job that lets me report on the goings-on in free-to-play MMO games—I decided to try an experiment by having a player in STO who flies one of these ships give me notes to review it by.

The result, this badass virtual item spotlight on GameOgre about the Hirogen Hunter Heavy Escort lockbox ship.

The game mechanics have generated a layered culture of thought about equipment, strategy, and button-press abilities. This means that reviews of these virtual items (the starships) includes a lot of jargon that to an outsider sounds and looks a lot like gibberish—but with a little bit of context quickly makes a lot of sense.

I am especially intrigued by the proliferation of the understanding of the Aux2Bat (referring to an ability called “Auxiliary to Battery”) starship build. A methodology that takes advantage of synergies between STO game mechanics that allow a single ship-equippable ability (on a bridge officer) to significantly lower skill cooldowns. Since the concept of A2B is so popular in starship building it was important not to leave it out of the review of the Hirogen Hunter.

Keeping in mind how STO players relate to ships, builds, and other players when referring to game mechanics will make for better, in-depth, audience-centric reviews. In the past I’ve covered the Catian Atrox Carrier, the Tholian Recluse Carrier, and the Romulan Dreadnought Warbird.

Star Trek Online: The Art of the Build

I know that the analysis from the Star Trek Online Winter Event survey is not done yet (and this might take a while) so this is a poor time to develop a new project, but I have a great idea for an essay and video series: STO: The Art of the Build.

I came up with this shortly after talking about the Dyson Solanae Hybrid-Technology Romulan science-destroyer warbird being released in STO Season 8.5. It comes with a set of consoles, weapons, and even different ship-costume effects that have sparked a lot of discussion on how to “build” it and its variants.

The premise is, that similar to many RPGs, STO has paper-dolls for players’ equipment--but players can also captain starships. A starship isn’t just another piece of equipment, it’s almost another character/class all on its own and players must spend time thinking of how to build them.

Not only does this come down to a choice in ship—based on specs, opportunity, and play-style—but there’s also a great deal of thought that goes into building up bridge officers, training them, equipment for the ship—from weapon layout to console choice to support weapons and abilities.

All of this collapses together alongside a large number of ships available to every faction, a huge amount of choice also exists in aesthetic effect as well as game mechanics.

To this end, the playerbase continually digests and spins out configurations, resources, and communicates on how to approach particular goals in game for PvE, PvP, and ship costuming.

Star Trek Online: Dyson Solanae hybrid-technology science destroyer

I think that I just found the ship for my Romulan Star Trek Online character: the Dyson science destroyer.

STO must be beside-themselves in producing new content, including bringing back Tim Russ to reprise his role as Tuvok from Star Trek: Voyager to become Admiral Tuvok. It’s fun to hear his voice chastising the enemy as I blast them out of space.

Of course, my romulan character—one Simpronia—will be flying the Romulan warbird variant of the Dyson science destroyer. The lower shield capacity coupled with the battle-cloak makes this ship unstoppable and it will nicely synergize with her science career path.

The path to getting Sim a proper ship to fly has been a long and hard one. As romulan, she has a huge decision matrix to pick between Romulan faction ships and Federation faction ships—the Fed ship is tempting, but it has no cloak and ambushes with this ship seem exactly what I’d like to do.

Since this is a science-based destroyer I can still act as a second-line support in the beginning of battles by using debuffs and sensor confusion; but upon closing range, I can switch into tactical-mode, cloak, and then ambush craft trying to pick on my teammates in PvE.

While there’s a full-on Dyson set to be had, I am still considering going primarily with polaron-based weaponry and the Jem’Hadar set (or components thereof.) I might hybridize between damage capability and science-tanking but we’ll see.

I just love those purple beams and bolts.

City of Titans Interview: Project Lead Chris Hare and Lead of Composition William Strickland

MMO Anthropology interviews Chris Hare and William Strickland from City of Titans.

Many-a-City-of-Heroes-fan has been mourning the loss of our favorite game and it’s been quite a ride since NCSoft shut it down. Now, City of Titans promises to resurrect a spiritual successor worthy of that community.

Do not miss the Kickstarter (10 days left!) it has a lot of nice rewards for early participants and you’ll be part of something awesome-to-come.

And if you’re interested in a write-up of what was learned from the interview check out SiliconANGLE and GameOgre.

MMO Anthropology Livestream After Action Report, 2013 August 17-18

This week saw the MMORPG 2D brawler Elsword Online some attention—even though co-host Arienne Keith was waylaid with illness—although the players didn’t find the game very satisfactory. Then Minecraft brought the usual team back including Fyrewal from Star Trek Online.

Elsword, Friday 2013 August 17th After Action Report

Amerist, Nelson, and Rockandroll went in to experience the game Elsword Online—a 2D brawler (dubbed 2.5D due to a slight depth to some of the environments). Arienne Keith sat out of this session due to illness.

Everyone played new-ish characters with Amerist playing an Eve (an android who uses drones to fight), Nelson used Chung (as Nelson described, a “gender confused” cannon weilder; really a very bishōnen [美少年] boy with a big gun) and Rockandroll played Rena (an elvish archer/ranger character wielding a bow.)

The game is fairly straightforward in giving members quests from NPCs who hang out in towns—which act as social centers where players gather. In fact, the towns were quite crowded but the troop didn’t stay there for long. Amerist immediately drew the team into a dungeon to fight through a side-scrolling brawl.

The entire night went this way with dungeons being the mainstay of the game. These instances were selected from a “map” of the area and when moved into those the team of three often got a fourth member. While the new members were often competent—and fairly good at the game—none of them actually interacted or communicated beyond brawling. Although very little was done to attempt to engage them.

As is common to many games, it’s common for players to solo the world without communicating. Often this researcher would attempt to interact with them by speaking in chat—but with games such as Elsword the game itself works against this sort of interaction. The reason is that when in a dungeon instance people can be thrust into attention-grabbing combat immediately and have their hands full with brawling, which uses the keyboard, and as a result may not notice the message or may not be able to reply until there’s a pause.

The stream went on for 3 hours, consisted of almost 8 dungeons and three different areas of the game, two cities (gathering places.) The crew also examined a daily dungeon that involved an ever-increasing difficulty of fighting boss monsters room-to-room that seemed to be a way for players to receive higher tier gear and rank themselves up outside of the main storyline.

Minecraft, Friday 2013 August 18th After Action Report

The crew once again joined together at the chasm location now known as “The Devil’s Crack.”

Amid the joiners were William McCormick (ComputerPimp), Amerist, Nelson Williams, Arienne Keith, HV4C, TJ. (Others to be determined, a smaller number of other joiners came with but their names are currently not in the notes.)

Long-time viewer Fyrewall finally broke down and bought Minecraft to come and experience the world. As a result, the team took him along to see some of the sights including Arienne Keith’s “Funkytown” playing room that uses redstone to play music. Fyrewal ran into an issue with the game where when struck cats return to their owner when attempting to feed Arienne’s cats watermelon (which they do not eat.)

Fyrewal was given a bit of a grand tour of the world as the team knows it, including the Nether, and further tracks were laid to connect Devil’s Crack to the rest of the world. This included some showing off of structures in and around the spawn point.

The crew ended the night by showing off “The Golden Dong” (a giant phallus-like structure built by Kazz, Arienne Keith, and TJ) that also includes a fireworks launcher in the tip and a giant cat that hovers overhead. It’s often the site of many fireworks displays in the world due to its unique – and humorously vulgar – quality.

The players also introduced Fyrewal to the concept of the”Stripplers,” an inside joke in a cultural context for the small community that involves the evolution of the concept of a “stripping Hitler” that TJ and Kazz slowly built up into its own mythology. This includes “The Golden Strippler,” which is a Minecraft franchise building often built by Kazz and TJ to house a stipper pole. The “Hitler stripper” part is accompanied often by a Minecraft skin that has a Hitler moustache/hair as well as undergarments so that the Strippler can “stripple” or remove bits of armor to reveal the skin underneath.

The community joke is maintained primarily by Kazz and TJ as well as others introduced to the concept as a sort of ongoing meme.

What Happened During the Great Guild Wars 2 Ectoplasm Bug of 2013?

via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

MMO Anthropology Livestream After Action Report, 2013 August 9-10

This week the team wandered into Guild Wars 2 for events portrayed by that publisher into their virtual world. During the “Queen’s Jubilee,” which seems to have a lot of tiny events coordinated as well as some civil unrest occurring. It seems to be popular enough with many players running about to capture the achievements. Finally, on Saturday, Minecraft led the players with a special rule-based building and creativity session.

Guild Wars 2, Friday 2013 August 9th After Action Report

Guild Wars 2 has been a common mainstay of the group since it came out and since there’s a summer event and a few new elements to show off, it seemed like a good time to jump into the game. Once again  joined by Amerist (playing a human engineer named Helvetica), Nelson (playing a sylvari necromancer named Cherry Skinless), and Arienne Keith (playing an asura necromancer named Euclidia.)

First the game suggested visiting the Queen’s Jubilee which appeared to be taking place in Divinity’s Reach--the human city in the Guild Wars 2 virtual world. As the capital city, it’s a huge wheel-like construction, with battlements shattered during earthquakes and wars, and further overgrown with cheek-and-jowl residential buildings and the odd constructions. However, attention was drawn to a section of the city that used to be known as the “Great Collapse.”

Or better known to Amerist as “the skinkhole.”

That same hole has been replaced with a strange glass-and-iron bird covering the extent of the collapse, its wings spread in a predatory circle--closing up over a region below.

The team couldn’t quite figure out how to get in, except by leaping from the birds head, into the hole below, which interestingly didn’t kill them, but left them in the newly formed entertainment zone. The area beneath the bird (and open to the sky) housed a four-quartered region of different environments containing many different monsters from centaur, destroyers, bandits, and ogres. Achievements had been added to the game to encourage players to attack the various creatures and spawned boss monsters.

A few commanders had appeared to lead zergs around the region--large puddles of players all engaged in fights.

In the outside game, hot air balloons appeared with a few dynamic events tied to them. The trio sallyed forth across the countryside to encounter them, each with a treasure chest atop. However, the balloons themselves only stayed open for a short while and closed for dynamic events such as Aether pirate attacks, missing VIP passengers, and challenges from the Queen’s champions.

Minecraft, Saturday 2013 August 10th After Action Report

A large group gathered this time to take part in a build theme. Ordinarily four hours long, the community has found need to direct the activity that takes place and this time it was set to take over a chasm far away from the previous with one rule: all construction needed to take advantage of the walls, nothing could extend out and mar the countryside surrounding. Participants were asked to build only with the chasm in mind and try not to change the landscape elsewhere.

The game was briefly interrupted when Amerist broke a glass of Coke and the resulting glass shards (and spill) needed to be cleaned up.

However, during the play, numerous participants did an excellent job of clearing out constructions along the sides of the chasm. TheKingOfAllPie built a wooden room near one end, containing a resultant pattern of different types of wood along the floor, and decked walls. Near there Omnicynic (Nelson Williams) carved out a lengthy series of narrow corridors that slowly descended towards bedrock. ArienneKeith built a farm into one side that penetrated into yet-another-chasm (that did not break the surface.) And Rkou1 (TJ) opened up a “Golden Strippler” around a zombie spawner that he named “Frank the Zombie Strippler,” with its own farm in the background.

As the night wore on, more constructions appeared, but for the most part the rule was maintained.

Next week the group is expected to return to the same location and continue to expand.

MMO Anthropology Livestream After Action Report, 2013 August 2-3

These reports are notes from the MMO Anthropology livestream on Friday and Saturday night. Pirates of the Burning Seas is an MMO pirate game by FlyingLabs software and involves swashbuckling and some sailing; and Minecraft is a well-known creative sandbox virtual world.

Pirates of the Burning Seas, 2013 August 2nd After Action Report

I went into Pirates of the Burning Seas with my co-hosts, Nelson Williams and Arienne Keith. As is proper we all rolled pirates on the Antigua server and together, ran through the tutorial. As a game, we altogether moved through the tutorial pretty well learning how to fight on the deck and how to captain ships on the high seas. We’re pirates after all.

Nelson and Arienne decided that we would run with fancy hats so I went with a flared purple tricorn and Arienne wore a tophat. The tutorial was solo so it doesn’t reveal much about team play or how the community of the game might come together, so we moved quickly onto the mainland which was a sort of Pitcairn Island pirate hideaway replete with cheek-and-jowl shanty houses, dirt streets, the (virtual) smell of salty air, and the call of seagulls.

It took us a little while to get into the first quests of the game because we spent so much time exploring the town itself. Not a very large map, but filled with all sorts of interesting details including a thumping, burbling brewery connected to a bar. A seagull standing on a dead man’s chest (maybe he was asleep.) Even a random pirate NPC who appears to be eternally toting around a woman in a fireman’s carry…

We saw a few other players in the town but the population seemed rather minimal, there might have been a bit of phasing, but the game has apparently lost a bit of its popularity recently. Other pirates seemed interesting enough and many had Russian names written in Cyrillic letters—no doubt there’s a bit of a Russian population in the game.

We discovered quickly that during quests dialogue options can be superseded by teammates. The bloodthirsty pirate she is, Arienne interrupted some dialogue we were having while investigating a “mysterious artifact” to choose an option apparently labeled “shoot him in the face.” Since, while I was reading the quest-text, her character up and shot an interloper in the face. Needless to say, this action precipitated some mayhem.

Not a bad start.

We went on to sail the high seas together and used our combined knowledge of sailing to waylay other pirates right outside the port. Arienne and I are poorly trained on piracy simulators, but Nelson is an expert at waylaying unsuspecting boats on open water and he put gunpowder and steel to good work against the pirates. In the end, with teamwork, determination, and no small amount of hilarity we managed to scuttle on the order of nine vessels. Not a bad day’s work.

Although we tried to chat with other pirates, very few responded to us. Sadly the night was to take a dreadful turn.

The next step of the story quest turned out to be a solo mission. Each of us ended up in our own solo instance with an NPC ship, flew our banners high, and were required to use pirate cunning, back steel, and barbed wit to kill three skips all on our own. While I managed to send the scurvy knaves to Davey Jone’s—Arienne and Nelson found themselves obliterated (although it sounds in an unexpected single shot in both cases.)

To keep up with them, and because solo in an MMO is anathema to all that we hold dear, I quit the mission prematurely even after finishing all the objectives to join them.

We ended the night amidst the jaunty tunes of the pirate port, talked about our experience, and the interesting mixture of gameplay elements. PoTBS has both the swordplay fighting and the seamanship to its name. It’s a fitting pirate game although it may do better if players were able to keep their parties together throughout.

Minecraft Saturday, 2013 August 6th After Action Report

Due to recent dental surgery, and my talking too much during the previous stream, I spent less time speaking and more time listening. The group rezzed into the Minecraft world where we left off with the lodge at the top of a narrow chasm, and we began to look at the world from there. With us came rkou1 (TJ), Kazz5000000001 (Kazz), ArienneKeith, Omnicynic (Nelson Williams), JChristFollower (Jay), TheKingOfAllPie, bm1_ (HV4C), as well as Cynicman,

During the call a few new people joined us including 241s (241)—who spoke with a confabulated accent for most of the call and traded wit with Nelson—and one of his friends who had a Chewbacca avatar.

Instead of building much, I went around checking on other people to see what they were working on. During the stream HV4C showed off his underground workings that incorporated some of the chasm itself that included a room designed to be a forest, containing a cow, sheep, and pig. As well as a waterfall.

TJ and Kazz went out into the desert prominence right next to the island and made a deep hole in the ground (quite wide, its dimensions are unknown to me but a diameter of at least 20 blocks.) Originally named the “Strippler Hole” due to who made it, and it eventually came to receive a glass ceiling so that people would not fall into it.

As the night wore on, the participants spoke about their week and what games they’d played as well as interests in general. Nelson also had begun building a tower with extending platforms cropping up starting at the higher floors that extended like wings and contained grass-covered dirt. It became a target for flaming arrow barrages by playful Creative mode players (to no deleterious effect as flaming arrows cannot hurt buildings or players.)

Near the end of the night TheKingOfAllPie revealed some of his megastructure work. Work that he’d been able to do on the server without the assistance of Creative mode. The first megastructure was an extremely large, finely built, wheel at around 100 blocks up and perhaps 100 blocks wide. While the center of the flat disk was empty, five blocks of the edge were filled as well as four spokes at 90 degrees (following the compass directions.)

He also took members of the server into The End—the space of the Minecraft server where the Ender Dragon was fought and defeated—to show off a megastructure best called a “contraption” that was designed to farm Endermen (an NPC foe that spawns in The End.) The structure was built off the primary land mass of The End so that Endermen would be forced to spawn in it. To reach the megastructure, we had to walk down a long corridor overflowing with water and only 2 blocks high—this design prevented Endermen from entering (as they’re 3 blocks high) and since they’re damaged by water, they would be forced to teleport away.

The megastructure itself was an ever-rising series of stone rectangles with a hollow center (which will be explained below) that went almost to the full block height of The End. The upper tiers were 3 blocks apart to allow Endermen to spawn on them, but also covered with water causing them to teleport elsewhere. Teleporting therefore would cause them to teleport onto pressure plates that would trigger a piston and shove the Enderman into the center, causing them to fall. One section of the rectangles contained vines along the sides so that the falling Endermen would slow and resume falling at a very particular height, this height would cause them to hit the bottom (or killing chamber) with only ½ heart.

A redstone-powered piston system in the killing chamber could allow the floor to recede just far enough to kill Endermen on impact; or raise the floor enough that they could be slaughtered with a single punch or swing of the sword.

In this way, TheKingOfAllPie constructed what Nelson dubbed “a genocide machine,” that could net TheKingOfAllPie almost infinite experience (used for enchanting items in the Minecraft virtual world) and Ender pearls (an item used for various items).

MMO Anthropology Livestream After Action Report, 2013 July 19-20

As a regular participant and observer of the MMO Anthropology live stream on Friday and Saturdays I figured that I could write up my notes of the events that transpire during them. This weekend, the group played two different MMO games: NEStalgia and Minecraft. The game of NEStalgia is a strange 8-bit MMO that had altogether about 25-30 total online at the same time; and Minecraft is a well-known creative sandbox virtual world.

NEStalgia:

I played a Cleric, Arienne went with a Ranger, and Nelson played a Wizard. Much fine was had by wall in the region of Balzakia (with a lot of terrible jokes involved.) NEStalgia is a weird little 8-bit MMO and we didn't see many other players, except those invited to watch the stream, but we did manage a few quests together.

It feels a lot like old Dragon Warrior, right down to the 8-bit music and the way that combat works. Arienne's ranger Nirrti would strike with electrical zaps; and Nelson had multi-target spells that swirled around them with gusts of wind; whereas I usually tossed green sparkles at party members to keep them healthy and happy. All low level stuff, but still an interesting experience.

The largest issue is that party size was limited to 3 at a time.

We did manage to get wiped out as a party once or twice -- although I am a support cleric I couldn't manage to keep everyone healed against insurmountable odds. We had a few viewers state that they'd be interested in the game in the future.

GameOgre NEStalgia review, http://www.gameogre.com/mmoblog/nestalgia-review

Minecraft Saturday:

The previous village of Devil's Crossroads has been expanded slightly, and we started to build an actual crossroad. Namely it was situated around one of Arienne Keith's (ArienneKeith) previous "beacon" towers and then roads made out of smooth stone and stone brick were constructed to lead out in four directions. One of those directions went far away from the major colonies on the server so we decided to proceed that way.

Two new users joined the call to talk about their experiences Jay (JChristFollower) and TheKingofAllPie (who joined us in the previous Saturday to do work in Minecraft, an astute and effective builder-of-things.) During the stream he showed off a house he built near the Devil’s Crossroads, a structure that included a chimney with a lit fire (and redstone apparatus to extinguish/light it.)

Nelson Williams (Omnicynic) led a scouting party across a vast ocean and road builders followed—an extremely long bridge, potentially about one thousand (1,000) blocks in length, was formed to cross that ocean. Arienne followed behind the builders and constructed a railway for fast travel across; donkeys and horses were used to deliver supplies across the bridge as well until it was finally (partially) completed to give access to the new continent.

Eventually a new continent was discovered and in the last half of the stream we began to colonize. There are now four/five houses on that beach and now it's slowly being tamed. TJ (rkou1) built a house that descended one level into the ocean with lots of glass involved. William McCormick (ComputerPimp) made a two-story house and although he was very tired stayed with the group for the full four hours.

Cynicman (Cynicman) joined us on the surface in an uncommon appearance above ground and assisted with the delivery of cobblestone and smooth stone for the construction of roads and bridges. Dracul Dragon (Dracul6) assisted with general road construction and spoke with lively gusto on the call.

Rocknroll (rocknroll) was unable to join due to computer problems.

Recent GameOgre Minecraft news, http://www.gameogre.com/mmoblog/minecraft-patch-1-6-arrives-theres-horses-in-it

Arienne Keith’s Minecraft Creations

via MMO Anthropology on YouTube.

A letter to an embarrassment of a TSA agent: “Back off and shut up.”

This morning, a TSA officer at LAX humiliated and shamed my 15-year-old daughter. She is traveling with a group of high school students on a college tour and we were not with her when he verbally abused her.

Here's what happened, as my daughter described it in text messages to us: she was at the station where the TSA checks IDs. She said the officer was "glaring" at her and mumbling. She said, "Excuse me?" and he said, "You're only 15, COVER YOURSELF!" in a hostile tone. She said she was shaken up by his abusive manner.

To the security guard who got the above written about him on BoingBoing:

Mister, this is where I, and every other rational person, calls you a pervert and means it. And why not? You seem to think that your opinion of what a minor child should wear entitled you to make an authoritarian command to someone else’s child so obviously you accept that everyone else thinks you’re a perverted creep.

You wanted to shame her for doing something that only you are embarrassed by? Shame on you.

There’s a reason why your behavior is being called “creepy” by people who have commented on this situation. It’s not your place to tell someone else’s child how to dress, and it’s certainly not your place to ogle children who pass through your checkpoint to judge and assess their clothing. You are not a judge in a beauty pageant; from what I understand, you’re supposedly a security professional.

What you did, in essence, was a sexist catcall. No better than some asshole whistling at women walking down the street and just as uncalled-for.

Women are targeted with a lot of sexist and controlling language in our culture in ways unheard of by men; and furthermore your decision to target a minor-teen makes what you said even more creepypasta. This wasn’t appropriate on the street and it certainly wasn’t appropriate at your job.

What you did was embarrassing to you, to the security profession, and the TSA, and the American people for whom you work.

Next time, if you cannot restrain yourself from sexist thoughts, at least show enough self-control to keep them to yourself.

E3 2013: And the era of the new ‘Multiplayer intruding into singleplayer’ paradigm

via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

Guild Wars 2: The road to a legendary (or two)

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 for a while now and talking to several guilds about their gaming experience. Aside from the stunningly visual nature of the game and the interesting stories that can be sussed out of NPCs, ambient conversation, or just from general exploration there’s also a great deal of gamification. I mention the stories because many of my guildmates come from Guild Wars and they sometimes to back because of the story.

I would love to delve further into that to see how people from GW tend to view and interact with GW2, especially those who took their guilds out of GW into GW2 and now interact and run the game with members who only know GW2.

One of the things that GW2 does to keep people playing and focus on not just story but also the gamification is the construction of legendary weapons—a truly hardcore experience.

As a result, I’m going to try to get one (or two.)

Part 1: The Gift of Battle

Guild Wars 2 has two particularly annoying elements to it that I strongly dislike: open PvP and jumping puzzle. These two elements are tired directly together with an important component of crafting a legendary called “The Gift of Battle.” This gift requires 500 Badges of Honor—earned only from a jumping puzzle in the open PvP area (aka World vs. World vs. World, or WvWvW, or WvW) or from killing people there. Of course, the drop rate of badges from kills is absurdly low, and it’s possible to receive no badges from a kill.

It will require 500 badges for me to make a Gift of Battle for one legendary weapon.

Now, since WvW fighting can be extremely slow for earning badges and I have no time to do this, I find myself needing to bow my head and do the jumping puzzles through which I can earn 3-6 badges for each run. A run can last between 10-30 minutes each.

The normal solution to this is that people run it with all of their alts, daily, gaining 3-6 badges per alt per day. I have about eight alts (could be nine if I felt like it) but I don’t know that I want to suffer through this nine times a day.

There’s also another, more treacherous, jumping puzzle in the middle of the WvW instances (called the Eternal Battlegrounds) that gives on average 15 badges a day per account.

This is going to be a very slow, frustrating process that will involve something that I don’t like about this game. So far, it has caused me to seriously hate jumping puzzles; and worse, trying to get badges has taken all the joy I had about WvW out of the process entirely.

I already have 100 badges from this week alone.

I’ll update everyone as this continues to unfold.