As the title says, really. I’ve spent the bulk of my time this week job hunting without success; in a desperation bid I even went sniffing around at the local fast-food joints hoping to at least find something to tide me over. At one place, I was told they had too many people already and that nearly everyone was being cut to 2 days/week – that’s not even 20 hours!

My leisure time has been spent levelling a couple of nationals on Pirates of the Burning Sea’s Blackbeard server, mainly just to get a sense of that side of the game. My main character remains Stephen MacKenna, though – yarr!

I’m considering the 5-day EVE-Online Free Trial offer CCP e-mailed me the other day, sort of a ‘winback’ effort I guess. It talked about all the changes that came with Quantum Rise and offered me 5 free days with my existing account. I planned to resub for a few months after the new year (probably in February or March), but I might at least use the 5 days… haven’t decided yet.

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In another impressively candid forum post reminiscent of early CCP Dev forum activity, Flying Lab Software CEO Russell “Rusty” Williams described how the FLS development team behind Pirates of the Burning Sea set their priorities.

In recent weeks, ever since the AvCom overhaul was announced, there has been a flood of joyous praise for this change which is seen by many as a giant leap in the right direction but there has also been a tremendous backlash from PotBS players who believe Flying Lab Software’s development budget dollars would be better spent on other features such as the in-game economy, the much-anticipated (by some :P) Skirmish system or oft-teased about Port Governance just to name a few. Every time a change is announced that doesn’t have to do with one of the problems (both real and perceived) that players tend to consider “more important,” the rabble-rousers come out on the official forums in force.

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I love it how so many people in the MMO gaming community seem to think that they know the magic solution that every game should have in its design to make it the omgbestestevar game on the internet.

Sure, we all have our preferences. Each of us likes some aspects of every game and dislikes others; each of us has our opinions (for example, I’m not thrilled about the Skirmish system and I believe it will have detrimental effects on existing PvP in Pirates of the Burning Sea). But, the next time you should find yourself getting ready to say something about how stupid the developers of [insert game title here] are for doing or not doing [insert change implementation here], ask yourself this question:

Where is the MMO that YOU developed, got published and are supporting with personal investments bolstered by contributions from other investors and subscription fees. Don’t have one? Okay, well how about the one you have in BETA? No? Oh…

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This week at The Defias Blog, Garbad_the_Weak focuses on the ‘Cerberus’ Masterclass Frigate, a Level 34 Large Scout.

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Because I hate photobucket, imageshack fails and flickr… well, it’s freaking flickr for crying out loud, I will now be using Chribba’s MMO-Files.com almost exclusively. It’s like his eve-files, but with a more general focus spanning all games. I still don’t know how he manages to offer that sort of hosting service for free, but I’m not about to look a gift Veldnaught in the mouth! I’ll still be uploading to flickr just ’cause it’s sort of “what you do”, it seems, but when I link to a photo nine times out of ten it’ll be hosted at mmo-files.com.

Thanks Chribba, you’re a credit to gamers everywhere!

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