The Defias Blog

So, being a noob sucks, right? And sucking pretty much sucks, y’know? Well, it’s why there haven’t been a lot of fun-to-read battle reports about skirmishes or me hunting in the red like the way I used to write about hunting lowsec in a Wolf (BEFORE the speed nerf/AF buff patch, aka Quantum Rise!). I know that I have the equipment to go out and do it, but I haven’t got the player experience to go with the equipment.

I’m like the noob who buys an account that can fly motherships and buys enough ISK to get an officer-fitted mothership and does not understand, for the life of him, how the hell he STILL got ganked in Amamake. Except I didn’t buy gold (or an account) and I’m not trying to sail the PotBS equivalent of an Aeon, I’m sailing what I suppose could be compared to a Vagabond (fast, maneuverable, doesn’t hit very hard but gets the job done… in the right hands). But there are two primary differences…
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Actually, they’re calling it a ‘Vision Statement.’ But the end result is the same: a clear definition of what sort of game experience the Flying Lab Software developers intend to create with Pirates of the Burning Sea. This sort of thing is what we begged CCP to give us for MONTHS with regard to EVE-Online but which, to the best of my knowledge, they still refuse to do. But to be fair, it’s easy to understand why a company would hesitate to make such a declaration.

Things change, after all. Markets shift. What is popular today may be anathema tomorrow and when you’re dealing with such a remarkably fickle (yet remarkably loyal at the same time) consumer base as MMO gamers, the risk of alienating one group or another is dangerous indeed! But FLS has delivered.
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I’m sure 90% of my readers are already subscribed to CrazyKinux’s Musing’s RSS feed, but if you aren’t check this out! Not much I can say other than WOW!

Thanks to CK for going all the way to Iceland to share these awesome previews from CCP with us less fortunate!

This afternoon, my attention was brought to an article posted at FOXNews.com, titled “Army Working on ‘Ghost’ Soldiers, Mind-Controlled Guns.” Normally, I wouldn’t find anything like that spectacular since I enjoy the show Future Weapons on the Military channel (check local listings, heh). This article, however, mentioned World of Warcraft! I had to read for myself what was going on here and overall, I think the whole thing is quite interesting.

Among the ideas being pursued by the US Army researchers are elf-regenerating body parts, intelligent “virtual soldiers,” mind-controlled weapons, brain “wipes” to purge traumatic memories, “quantum ghost imaging.” Now a lot of that sounds way beyond our time, certainly not possible within my lifetime; or is it? The Fox News article included a link to read the full story at Military.com’s DoD Buzz site. Military.com is a private military-oriented website, but they get their information directly from the source, citing such credible individuals as Dr. John Parmentola, the Army’s director for research and laboratory management.
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This is likely to be the last out-of-character chronicles post that I make regarding PotBS. I haven’t quite decided on how to go about writing Chronicles posts for Stephen MacKenna; I don’t know if I’m going to make it conversational the way I made the Havohej posts, third person like I were writing short stories or perhaps in the “Captain’s Log” format, which would be first-person but not conversational. I’ve yet to decide, and if anyone cares to offer your opinion you’re welcome to!

I’m also curious to see how many of my original readers will continue to follow this blog despite the dwindling amount of EVE-O related content. I just hope I can make the PotBS stuff at least as entertaining. I will definitely miss having killboards to link; in PotBS it truly is a matter of SSDH: “Screenshots or it Didn’t Happen”! And speaking of screenshots, with that invitation for input out of the way I’d like to share with you my first PvP experiences in PotBS.
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