Steady's Gaming Blog

My Gaming Community the Combat Engineers is looking for more active gamers. So here is what what we are all about, and what we are looking for.

1. Mature, must be over the age of 18..

2. Respect. We do not do DRAMA, (let me repeat, we do not do DRAMA), fight over gear, taunt or harass. Profanity is not allowed. Any type of racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation, or political slurs are not allowed. Stealing from us will get you booted out of the group for sure.

3. Helpful. If you cannot be kind, and helpful to other players, this is not the place for you.

4. We are not in a hurry, if you are looking for farming or power leveling; you are most likely in the wrong place. I am not saying it does not take place in this group, I am just saying it is not the norm.

5. Have fun. We like to have fun. If we fail an instance, or a task force, it is not the end of the world. We will make every effort to complete a task, mission, instance or raid, but we are not going to do it at the expense of not having fun.

6. Able to function on a team. Each event or team will have a clear leader. All we ask is that you follow the direction of the team leader. If you have a suggestion, speaks up, just do it in the right way. The leader may or may not use you suggestion. If you have a better way to do something, sign up to be the leader for the next run.
7. Register for the forums. If you are a leader, list events and other thing there.

Where will you find us.

www.combatengineers.net is our main webpage

http://www.xfire.com/communities/moonb on xfire.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Combat-Engineers-Gaming-Community/248825615272 on Facebook

http://twitter.com/Steadycombateng to follow us on Twitter.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/combatengineers on Steam

Feel free to join any and all of these groups. I encourage all of our current active members to join these groups if they can.

What are we playing; more like what are we not playing.

City of Heroes- We have established SGs on the Freedom, Liberty, Justice, and Virtue Server. Freedom is the most popular. Liberty is dead, Justice and Virtue are very small.

City of Villains- Established VG on Freedom. It is dead, needs active members, willing to run teams and recruit.

Aion- Have a legion on the Kaisinel Server, Elyos. Have a some Asmodians on the Meslamtada Server. Needs leadership and active members.

World of Warcraft, we have a pretty active group, Alliance, Elune server. Running instances and leveling right now. Some day we would like to start running some 10 mans. Gear hounds, thief’s, immature people, need not apply.

Champions Online – semi established SG. Lacks leadership, nice for active players that would like to run an established SG.

Dungeons and Dragons Online – Old dead Guild on the Sarlona server. Needs active members, leadership.

Everquest II, on the Bazaar server, have a few active players. Do not have a guild yet, like to find more to start a guild.

Global Agenda- One man agency. Looking for leadership, and active members.

Star Trek Online- Yet another dead, one man fleet. Needs active members, and leadership.

Lord of the Rings- Two man kinship, is at the maxed out level. Needs active members and leadership.

Warhammer Online- No guilds, but we play Destruction on Badlands, and Order on Iron Rock. Looking for more to start a guild

All Points Bulletin – Have a group, just started playing, get in on the ground floor.

Games that we sometimes play and have teamed in are Team Fortress 2, Planetside, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Battlefield Heroes.

So if you are interested in joining the Combat Engineers, contact me at steady@combatengineers.net.

I have become addicted to twitter. That is pretty surprising, considering I have resisted social networking for the longest. I have no friends on Facebook, and I like it that way. The only reason I have an account was so I could make a page for the Combat Engineers.

A few things on my twitter roll I found very interesting today, so I thought I would share.

First, they are making a Battlestar Galactica MMOG. My heart be still, yet another game for the sci-fi geeks. I hope this game gets off the ground, and does not make me suffer like Stargate Worlds has. Yes, I still check the Stargate page once a week in hope of news that the game is actually going to launch. It looks like Battlestar is going to be a free browser game, so it looks pretty good.

Battlestar Galactica MMOG

Second, Warwitch, Melissa Bianco, from City of Heroes is raising money for Susan G Komen. Looks like she is going to walk 60 miles over three days in October to raise money for finding a cure for breast cancer. I never like to past up a chance to promote a good causes. Below is a link to her donation page.

Donate to Susan G Komen

So that is it todays Twitter roll. I think from time to time, when I see something of interest on Twitter; I will start posting a few of them here.

Happy Halloween, Bloodmoon Rising, Hallows End, or Daemon Moon Rising. I read somewhere that Halloween is the second highest grossing holiday after Christmas. What a shame. I remember my best Halloween costume. My sister wrapped me in aluminum foil. We took an old cleaned out ice cream tub from Baskin Robbins, cut a square hole in it, and wrapped it in aluminum foil. I was a robot, boy those days are long gone. I feel it is my civic duty to provide a few Halloween jokes for the kids.

What do the skeletons say before eating? Bone appetite
What happens when two vampires meet? It was love at first bite!
What’s a Vampire’s least favorite song? Another one bites the dust!
Why was the mummy so tense? Because he was all wound up.
Why didn’t the skeleton go to see a scary movie? He didn’t have the guts.
What do you call two spiders that just got married? Newlywebbed
Why did the skeleton cross the road? To go to the body shop.
Who was the most famous ghost detective? Sherlock Moans.

Anyway, back to gaming.

The Combat Engineers Team Fortress 2 server, IP 69.12.111.20:27015, will be running the Halloween map all day today, so please join in on the fun.

Also remember what my good friend Linus from Charlie Brown says about Halloween.

“There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin.” – Linus from ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’

Everyone have a Happy Halloween, and please stay safe.

As I played games yesterday, I noticed a few things that just might be helpful.

1. If you are playing Aion, choose a west coast server. All the east coast servers are full all the time.

2. The fight club missions in Millennium City, really does need three people. It is a room full of bad guys, and a nasty super villain.

3. It is hard to get smashed during Brewfest, and find a place to fall 65 feet. Anyone knows of a good spot let me know.

4. Champions Online installed a new patch last night. Looks like it will be easier to earn resources.

5. This comic says it all. Zeros- “A Guide to Popularity”. I really like the caption “pretend you are colorblind.”

I have been playing Champions online for a few weeks not. So far the game is fine; it needs some work, but most MMO’s out of the box need a bit of work. I also think it lacks a bit of content, but again that is not usual for a new MMO. So here are some pointers that I think will help people playing Champions.

1. Download the champion’s builder. Plan your build. Try out all your powers in the powerhouse; find someone to duel with if you must. I think all the complaining about he costs of respecs is out of line. They should keep them high; I mean you get to try out the power before you leave the powerhouse. So plan ahead.

2. Do every quest you can find, skip nothing. If you skip anything, you will run out of quests. Use the Crime computer, check out all the contacts. I missed some level 8 quests, and now at level 12 I have to go back and pick them up.

3. Make some friends, join a Supergroup (combat engineers is looking, pst @steadyc). Some of the quests with super villains, just have to be done with a team. I like the public quests, but it seems that not many like to run them. They are a nice way to fill the gap, when you run out of missions to run.

Anyone else have any pointers, post away. Have a great gaming day.

Ok, will today is the day, Champions Online is here. I have been in the early start and have a few opening thoughts. I only have a character up to level 12, so I do not know everything.

The Good

1. I like the powerhouse. The fact that you can try out a power is awesome. I spent a few hours in there just checking out powers.

2. Some of the travel powers are just cool. I have to give the developers credit; they found a way to breathe new life into so old stand bys, like fly. The tunneling and swinging powers are just flat out fun.

3. Costume design, lots to choose from. I spent a good hour in costume design. If you can keep the king of the random costume button (me) interested in designing a costume for that long, it must be a pretty good feature. I have seen some really good costumes.

4. Classless characters. Nice to pick any power you want. A lot of them are the same, just a different look, like fire or ice. Let’s face it, only so many ways you can shoot and kill something. All of the power sets I have put to the test, worked pretty well. I don’t see myself getting all crazy and using like two powers from each set, but nice to know I can.

5. Pretty darn smooth launch. I have to give them credit, at least for the head start people; they got the game off the ground without any major trouble.

The Bad

1. The graphics, all that time in the costume design, and then I look like a cartoon character. I think this is a personal preference; I just don’t like this look. I am old, maybe it is just an old grumpy man thing.

2. Lack of free space. Spend too much time waiting around to kill something, because everyone else is standing around waiting to kill the same thing. Maybe this will fix itself; when people start leveling and get more spread out.

3. Those zone map, please, they are terrible, looks like something my four year old drew. Please fix them.

Overall, so far the game looks doable. It is not going to replace City of Heroes as my main game, but it is going to get some playing time. I am sure I will have more thoughts, as I play more of this game.

We have started a Combat Engineers Super Group on Champions. Info is below, or contact me in-game @steadyc, and I will send you an invite. We have quite a few people playing the game, so we should have a pretty good presence in the game. Have a great gaming day.

Combat Engineers – Champions Online
Combat Engineers Champions Online Application

I am really on the fence this week with Champions Online. I really want to play this game. I was a big fan of the pen and paper game. It will be really cool to see the game system being used in an MMO. A few things really have me pissed off to the point where it is going to make me mad.

It all started with my 24 hour download, to get the game working. Then my first 30 minutes in the game, I did not have a curser. Have you every tried to exit a game with out a curser, it sucks. I got over that, I figured; will it is a beta, so I can live with that.

So I moved on, but some things are really starting to make me wonder about this game.
First problem is the head start that begins on Friday. I ordered my game from Direct 2 Drive, so I do not get to start early. That is lame. I know someone out there reading this is going to say “that is your fault you should have paid more attention to who you ordered it from.” I say that is a load of crap. I am the king of Beta’s, I have been in every beta I can find since Meridian 59. I have preordered a ton of games. Never once have I lost out on the early start, until now. If you do not purchase the pre-order from Gamestop, or Best Buy, you are out of luck, no early start. That is a big, fat, stinky load of crap. This is wrong on so many levels that I do not even know were to start. Why on earth would you want to give me nerd rage before I have even logged into your game. So now I am pissed, mad, and on Friday it is just going to grow in to something that is going to make me not want to play Champions Online at all.

How in the world do you expect to attract people to this game, if you exclude them from the early start, just because they did not order the game from a certain company? Do you not understand how gaming nerds are? We want to play the darn game, and now we can’t, while some other gaming nerds is getting a three day jump on us. Man this is a marketing blunder. Gaming nerds troll forums, blog, jump on our gaming community vents, and we spread the word. Champions Online is telling us where to buy our games from. Does the person in your marketing department understand what they have done? On top of that you cut off the six month and lifetime subscriptions. I am not even going to blog on that one, because that has the gaming nerds on a rampage as well. Those two blunders are going to cost you a lot of money. So on Friday morning, this gaming nerd is really going to be sad. I hope I have calmed down enough on Monday, to break out my credit card, and purchase a subscription to Champions. Right now I am not too sure if I will.

My monthly review of what we have done, and what we are going to do. We had one of the best months we have had in a long time. We had a very active Double XP weekend.

State of the Combat Engineers
Goals for the Month of August
Thank you’s for the Month of July

City of Heroes released some details about the next issue. Issue 16 will be called Power Spectrum. I am a big fan of City of Heroes, but I have to say, I am finding the details of this issue a bit disappointing.

The main feature will be power customization. So now a primary and secondary color can be chosen for each power. I know a lot of people have wanted this feature; also Champions Online is going to have this feature as well. Personally, I am not a costume person, so this feature is a non-issue for me. In simpler terms, I don’t care what color my powers are. Here is my main fear about this new feature, LAG. This past weekend, the Rikti invasions were in town. On some servers, in some zones, this event was full of lag. In fact on the freedom server, in Farmers (Atlas) Park, I would leave the zone. The event was a waste of time, the lag was so bad, it makes the event, non-playable. I have a pretty high end computer, so I am really wondering how the lower end computers are performing. Even on smaller servers, in Farmers (Atlas) Park, since the AE buildings have been put in, the lag during a Rikti invasion is getting bad. So what is going to happen when every character in the zone is using a different color set? I think we are going to sacrifice some game play speed. City of Heroes should stop chasing Champions, if someone wants red powers, let them go play champions. Better then a bunch of lag that makes the game unplayable.

The other features are Power proliferation. Which is fine, but that is getting a bit old as well. Personally, I would like to see some powers remain were they are. It is getting to the point were all the Archetypes are starting to look and play the same. The other feature is the ability to control the difficulty levels of missions. Really, this is just another feature to help the farmers. City of Heroes needs to put a stop to farming; it is going to kill off this game. I have several SG’s, so I talk to a lot of players. The number one complaint is that players cannot find a team that is playing the content of the game. People are leaving this game because of it. I see people leaving all the time. They will play for a week or so, become bored with the constant farming, and leave. They avoid AE, because the only team they can find, is exploiting it to run a farm. So now what do the developers do, allow you to control the size of the mob. Unbelievable, the worse feature that I have seen added to any game in a long time. On the upside, I will never be asked to fill again by those annoying farmers, so at least some good will come of it.

So for some, this might be a pretty good issue. Hey, anytime you get new features added to a game for free, that is a good thing. This issue just does not bring any thing to the table for me personally. One more point to make here. The number one complaint I see for most of these issues is, where is the new content. My number one response is why make new content when no one is playing the current content. Every team these days is farming. Go to a high level zone, and try to find a team. Good luck with that. I don’t blame the developers for not designing new content; no one is going to play. I blame them for not putting a stop to farming, so the game can be played the way it was designed to be played……….. Just my thoughts on the next issue for City of Heroes. Have a great gaming day, remember, have fun.

City of Heores Issue 16 Power Spectrum

As I often do, I was surfing the net, looking for info on new games, and you know just general gaming junkie stuff. I can across this very interesting article on Gamespot. It talks about how more people are playing games on-line then every before. One point that really jumped out at me was that, like the rest of the economy, the sale of retail games, was not good in 2008. However the number of people playing On-line games has risen to 87.1 million players in May of 2009, a jump of 22 percent from May of 2008. Wow this is a lot, and then I got to thinking, when is the last time I purchased a retail game that was not an MMO. You know what, it has been awhile. I do however subscribe to five or six MMO’s a month, as well as spend money in some of the free ones, like shot-online, and Cross fire, purchasing items that make the game easier to play. So I would say that 95% percent of my gaming budget goes to online games. Now do not ask me what that budget is, I think my wife reads this blog, and I do not want to ruin a good thing.

I just thought this article had a different take on the MMO world. Every game you are in these days, it seems like the sky is falling. City of Heroes is going to die out when Champions Online comes out. World of Warcraft is no longer for the hard-core gamer. It is going soft, and catering to the more casual player, which will be the death of the game. This article states that City of Heroes has had a 49 percent increase in players since May of 2008. Runescape has had a 41 percent increase. World of Warcraft saw a gain of 10 percent, and has broken the 11 million subscribers mark. I mean come on, 11 million people playing a silly game. So maybe the sky is not falling as bad as we think.

A few more points about this article need to be made. Most of these 87 million are playing free browser games; Yahoo games, GSN Games, and EA Online are getting most of these players. Still World of Warcraft has 2.2 million players logging in per day.

So why is online gaming becoming more popular.

1. Same reason more people are going to the movies. People are staying close to home, not traveling. The economy is in the tank, so people are looking for more value for their entertainment dollar. $14.99 a month for an MMO will buy you a lot of entertainment. Spend one hour in the World of Warcraft trade chat, and you will think you are watching an R-rated movie some where. MMO’s are just a good cheap form of entertainment. Some of these on-line games are free, so of course more people are going to start playing them.

2. They do not stay the same. MMO’s are always adding new content to the game. They are changing all the time. Look at City of Heroes five years ago, and look at it today. It is not even close to the same game it was then. So people feel that they are getting more value. Lets face it; you can run all the maps in a game like Call of Duty, then what, you wait for the next version of the game.

3. MMO’s are catering more to the casual gamer. I know that a lot of World of Warcrafters are not happy with some of the new changes. You will be able to get a mount earlier, and cheaper. Some of the Tier 9, really nice gear will be able to be purchased with badges from some of the heroic instances. I say, thank you. I avoided WOW, for a long time. One of the reasons was that that high end raiding community of WOW needs to get a life. I mean really it is just a stupid piece of gear. I can’t even tell you how many times I was ran out of raid, because I did not have the right gear, by some snotty gear hound running the darn raid. I am a good gamer, I understand how the game works, stupid to kick me out because of gear, or I have never been in this raid before. Also, is it really necessary for me to run all over the place for 30 levels, and then still not have enough gold to buy a mount. Don’t you think more people will play the game, if they can get a mount at level 20, and be able to afford it. So I like the changes most MMO’s are making to meet the needs of the casual gamer, even though I am as hard core (50 – 60 hours a week) as they come, I like to see people playing the games, and having fun.

So anyway I just found this article interesting, and had to voice my opinion. I hope the online gaming numbers continue to grow. I have linked to the articles on Gamespot below, take a look at them I you like.

87.1 Million Gamers
MMO’s revenue 2008