Friday, February 27, 2009

EVE Blog Banter #5: Leave what you know at the door please!



Welcome to the fifth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's topic comes to us from Mynxee of Life in Low Sec. She asks "Alts and Metagaming: Is playing two accounts who are logged in at the same time and work together (hauler/miner, explorer/combat associate, trade alts in trade hubs) a form of metagaming that is "ruining the game"?"



A very philosophical subject, we have here. Let's take a step back and understand what it is we're dealing with here. Wikipedia defines "metagaming" as a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. In simple terms, using out-of-game information, or resources, to affect one's in-game decisions.

Well, well! Look what we have here. If we take the definition above literally, then I guess we're all guilty of metagaming at one point or another. Think about it, we would need to forget most of what we know about the games political intrigue at the login screen, never mind all the information that's available to us outside EVE. And then there's Singularity, which gives a lot of the players that partake in the beta testing of future features at an advantage to those who are completely unaware about it. What? You think these folks can't start to plan ahead in terms of skill queues and ship fittings and what not. Of course they do.

Now getting back to the dual accounts working together and how it affect gameplay. My simple answer is, I don't think it has any real negative impact on the game. Au contraire, the opposite might be true.

I've never done this myself. My main character, Treenara, is the focus of my gameplay. But I can certainly appreciate how much more engaging the game could be, if she had a counterpart, controlled be me, to maximize my gameplay. It allows for so much possibilities, that it's something I might consider in the near future. Wow, writing this banter has actually made me consider getting a second account. Maybe I should ask Mynxee to subsidize part of the cost of that 2nd account.

Damn, now I'm really gonna need a second monitor!


Participants:

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

The Angel Cartel (Push Eject) - A fanmade video

After having watched KyokoSakoda's amazing "War Has Come To EVE" video, I started looking at the rest of his videos and came across this one. According to his YouTube notes, the one below is a "[r]ecruitment video prepared for the Ghost Festival corporation..." I don't about you, but this is one hell of a great HR video! I wonder what he could do for Phoenix Labs?

Monday, February 02, 2009

EVE Online Speedlinking for February 2nd, 2009


It's been over 5 weeks since my last Speedlinking post; a long wait for those of you who relied on these gatherings of EVE News. I apologize for the wait. Contrary to what some of you believed, Speedlinking is back, and is here to stay! Not only will I continue to cover EVE news, but I'll focus on covering what the EVE blogging community is writing and discussing. I'll still cover stories from our friends at Massively, Ten Ton Hammer or MMORPG.com, but the focus of the Speedlinking posts will be EVE Blogs, EVE podcasts and Dev Blogs.

Speaking of blogs, there's been an explosion of EVE Blogs over those 5 weeks. Nothing less than 20 new EVE blogs have be started. I'm still in the process of adding them to the EVE Blogroll, but in the mean time, please visit them using the links below!

The articles listed below only cover the last week or so. I couldn't list every interesting article publish over my absence, or else this post would have been 5 or 6 times longer. By focusing on the EVE Blogs, I'll be able to quickly put together these posts in order to have them done weekly. Thanks for your understanding.

I'm happy to be back with the Speedlinks and look forward to continue the EVE Blog coverage!

Enjoy!


New Blogs:


Podcasts:


Blogosphere:


From CCP Games Dev Blogs: