h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

thunderbluff and darnassus are really the bastard cities of WoW, aren't they?

PvP in BG will be much more enjoyable for me when/if they ever impliment BG NPCs in Booty Bay or anywhere on Kalimdor for Alliance

going afk?

And what's this about queueing? You have to wait in line to join the game?

afk means the same as it does anywhere else, just that in some games this is a problem. a lot of the online games have a toggle so you won't be disconnected after x minutes of non-play (? sorry, odd word), however there's no such toggle in WoW.

i'm not sure how many servers WoW has in total, but it's quite a lot. over a hundred to be sure. each server has a set capacity, so if you create a new character you'll be delegated to a lesser-populated server. however, people can still choose which server they want to join if they like, and each new character you create is automatically put on your current server, unless you change that.

so that basically means that Blizzard (who runs WoW) has a set number of people they'll let on the server, but that number is entirely different than the number they'll allow to play online at one time. obviously some people have alts on a server, while other people will only play for a month and then quit, while others yet will only play for a few hours at a time. and they really count on that last bit. so, if the set number of people they'll allow online at one time is 4000 (i have a feeling that it's more around 2500), that means if you're 4503 you'll have to wait in a queue for other people to quit and the 500 ahead of you to log in.

i never experienced this in ffxi, but i believe that's mostly due to how their servers are set up. i believe they strain at around 9000 people online at a single time, though there are typically only 2300-3400 online at a time.

and speaking of ffxi, there's a new expansion coming out in ???? with a few new jobs, one of which, rather comically, is a corsair. you should hear the fighting that goes on, all the speculation on what they will or will not add. i myself have speculated, long time standing behind the fact that they'd add a blue mage job to the game, as that is a job that has been in a lot of the previous ffs. and of course, they did! but there weren't a lot of people who saw corsair coming to light of day, so it was a shock to all of us. for those familiar, this job will apparantly play more like a gambler job, like setzer in ffvi.

here's a picture of them. don't they look a bit... odd?

http://members.cox.net/ff2trans/corsair.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y73/iceorphen/vip185607.jpg

and blue mage, which i am looking forward to playing:

http://www.siliconera.com/news/ffxiaht/aht02.jpg
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/ahturhgan/job/imgs/blue_mage_01.jpg

my character will look like the second picture, when i get the AF (artifact armor, basically each job has a set of armor from levels 50-60 that provide boosts to many of the job's key characteristics).


WoW has a lot of elements i wish ffxi had, and vice versa. it's really an experience to play them both.

It's only on the RP servers that I've had to queue. Which is why I migrated my characters to the new one. Blizzard are constantly opening new servers it seems and I'm very impressed with their Customer Services, or Games Masters (GM) who are very quick to respond to problems.

I'm glad to know afk has a universal meaning. Now if only I knew what it was.

in all your chat experience you've never had an afk? it means 'away from keyboard'

and as for the GMs, i've had the exact opposite experience with them. i've had nothing but long waits (over 40 minutes) and of the 6 tickets i've placed (GM calls work in a queue, so you have a ticket that's put somewhere in the ether) all have had an automated response. excuse me while i find a stool to get up on this horse, but nothing is more disheartening than an automated response after a long wait. i would even prefer a human typing the words 'sorry, there's nothing we can do at this time.'

Sea, would you send it to a PO Box?

Seriously, though, I'm actually working on a set of online puzzle games to reveal my identity through. I'm designing it at a MUD made for IF game players. A google search for "A MUD Forever Voyaging" should bring it up (10 gamer points to the first to identify what that name is a reference to).

I've almost got it finished, and when I do I'll hide my name in those puzzle rooms for Salonistas to find.

Wow, so there IS going to be resolution to the quest. Here I was beginning to think that you were just going to leave us all hanging!

Would the reference be to this? http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/amfv.html

And sure. I'll do a PO Box. It has to be RELATIVELY close to you if you're going to pick it up.

Though I suppose you could set up a complicated set of PO Boxes with forwarding addresses if you REALLY wanted to screw with me. *sigh*

Yes, it's just a tricky bit of deciding which puzzles I like, and which puzzles are too complicated for my limited grasp of the language that you can build your world with at the IFMUD.

Regarding servers and problems with them - if I've understood it correctly, in Project Entropia a continent is divided so that each piece is located on a different server.

The reason I think this is the case is because on the very few ocassions that I've had any trouble with a server being down, I've had an error message saying that the specific server I'm trying to access is down when stepping into a transporter or when trying to access a different region walking/running/swimming.

What confuses me is that the society chat window will work all the time regardless on which region/server you are in/on. Is that possible? A cross-server chat?

Oh, and there are no queues in Entropia...

The chat function more than likely never goes to the servers you are on.

In a large installation you really want a specific server to only do one or two things at once. You don't want it doing a bunch of different things as that is not an efficient use of cycles.

Sporky, I don't have extensive chat experience.

oh? i used to see you on that msn chat thingy back in the day

Yes indeed. But I came on, talked to people, then exited. If people were away, there was an icon that said so. I was on MSN at the time, and later trillian. I now log on extremely rarely, especially since I strongly suspect that my id has been hijacked.

Anyway, I am impressed by the knowledge base and erudition y'all are displaying about these fantasy places.

A realm in WoW, is actually a cluster of servers, each holding the data for part of the realm or game world. Chat is over a seperate chat server and it amazes me that there isn't more lag/latency.

It's the same set up with Star Wars: Galaxies, which I am tempted to pick up playing again, just to have a change from WoW. Or perhaps MxO.

ffxi's game world and chat are on the same server, which i prefer. it's more annoying for me to not know that i'm experiencing game lag because i've been reading along with the chat.

Woo! I've just discovered an Escape Velocity game that's playable on Windows! Soon as I think I can risk the free time, I'm going to be downloading the Shareware version to try out, which'll probably eventually end with me paying the $30 for the game.

Now if only I could find the first Escape Velocity for Windows, my world would be perfect....ah, to once again evade the notorious Space Captain who keeps reminding me to update my game...

I spent quite a bit of this weekend playing WoW and feel like I have little to show for it. It was mostly frustrating playing time, as I was doing battle grounds most of the weekend. I'm pretty sure that come tuesday I'll have advanced a rank, from Sergeant Major to Knight, but I'm not sure how far I'll be into that rank. For the past few ranks I've been within 10% of the goal for the next rank by the week's end, but PvP felt so much like grinding this week, I doubt I'll have more than 24,000 honor points.

I did the lunar festival event too. This is the second game event I've participated in, the first being the frostvale/christmas event. I'm a bit... confused by it. I did the fireworks quest, I killed omen, I've got 7 (out of 50) coins so far, but... what's the point? The pantsuit that I got looks nice, sure, but what's the moonstone for? I guess I like rewards to be a little practical or fun, not just eye candy.