I downloaded the Left 4 Dead 2 Demo last night. It didn't work. I updated my drivers and reinstalled and nothing. I wasn't about to wipe Steam just for a demo... even if that Demo is Left 4 Dead 2. I didn't feel like fighting it anymore.
So I ended up playing Aion all night, which was fun. I got to do another run through The Training Grounds which is a level 25-30 instance in the Abyss.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Short Friday post
I have done 2 levels in the Abyss now. It feels a lot like Dark Age of Camelot Frontier’s. The experience points are very good and you also gain Abyss Points which can be used to be gear. You also have the consistent fear of being ganked, which I have been a few times. Not every time I get attacked do I lose though. Sometimes I’m able to fight them off and kill them and other times I am able to run away.
I know I’m only 2 levels into the Abyss but so far it’s very fun. The risk versus reward is there to make me want to be in the Abyss regardless of wanting to PvP. The other nice factor is that if I get to frustrated there I can always head back to the normal PvE area’s where the chances of being ganked are MUCH smaller.
I know I’m only 2 levels into the Abyss but so far it’s very fun. The risk versus reward is there to make me want to be in the Abyss regardless of wanting to PvP. The other nice factor is that if I get to frustrated there I can always head back to the normal PvE area’s where the chances of being ganked are MUCH smaller.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Everyone is prejudice against other MMO's
I’m going to vent. I have only written two sentences and I already know this post is going to turn into a QQ post. Never the less it has to be done. Last night I was in Ventrillo with all my friends that I have been gaming with since High School. Two of us in the channel play Aion and the other 4 play World of Warcraft.
As our nightly routine one of them asks how Aion is going, and I always explain what I’m doing and what is good or bad about it. Typically I’m always heaping praise on Aion though. Last night I told them I was enjoying crafting and making Kinah and one of my friends started making fun of my reasons for it.
First off he couldn’t understand WHY I wanted to make money. He didn’t grasp the idea that making ALOT of money in a game could be fun in its self. I told him a half truth and explained that I wanted a steady income set up before I actually needed one, which is partially true. I don’t want to wait until I need Kinah to try and make some. It would be too hard to invest Kinah at that point, so better to do it while it’s mainly trivial.
That was a semi acceptable answer by their standards… then I told them I also had fun crafting. Rather than asking me why crafting was fun they began to berate the game play and slow grind of the exp. I was told that the reason I liked crafting was because it was easier than leveling. Then one of my friends began to tell me how Aion was “failing” because all of his friends had already quit it. That didn’t make sense to me though because there were two of us in Vent who have been playing Aion for weeks and still enjoy it. I told them that a lot of people in the guild hadn’t got many levels over the weekend was due to a large portion of them rerolling to healers to help the guild and some PvP in the Abyss that took place.
I was told again that Aion was simply too grindy and it wasn’t going to last. How can people tell me a game is too grindy? They even went so far as to say the leveling was slower in Aion than EverQuest… really? How can any MMO veteran say that without bursting into flames? EQ literally took a YEAR on average to reach level 60.
I know my friends didn’t mean to offend me, but this goes to show the mindset of a lot of gamers. They immediately sought to find the bad in Aion, rather than the good.
At the end of our conversation I told them, as I do everytime they ask, that Aion will not steal players from World of Warcraft. It is however a place to go once you are done with WoW. Sure some people will go back when Blizzard releases new content, but I don’t think in the amount that most gamers expect.
The bottom line is Aion is arguably the highest quality MMO to be released SINCE World of Warcraft. Aion will truly be the test of whether or not another MMO can make a profit with A+ quality control.
As our nightly routine one of them asks how Aion is going, and I always explain what I’m doing and what is good or bad about it. Typically I’m always heaping praise on Aion though. Last night I told them I was enjoying crafting and making Kinah and one of my friends started making fun of my reasons for it.
First off he couldn’t understand WHY I wanted to make money. He didn’t grasp the idea that making ALOT of money in a game could be fun in its self. I told him a half truth and explained that I wanted a steady income set up before I actually needed one, which is partially true. I don’t want to wait until I need Kinah to try and make some. It would be too hard to invest Kinah at that point, so better to do it while it’s mainly trivial.
That was a semi acceptable answer by their standards… then I told them I also had fun crafting. Rather than asking me why crafting was fun they began to berate the game play and slow grind of the exp. I was told that the reason I liked crafting was because it was easier than leveling. Then one of my friends began to tell me how Aion was “failing” because all of his friends had already quit it. That didn’t make sense to me though because there were two of us in Vent who have been playing Aion for weeks and still enjoy it. I told them that a lot of people in the guild hadn’t got many levels over the weekend was due to a large portion of them rerolling to healers to help the guild and some PvP in the Abyss that took place.
I was told again that Aion was simply too grindy and it wasn’t going to last. How can people tell me a game is too grindy? They even went so far as to say the leveling was slower in Aion than EverQuest… really? How can any MMO veteran say that without bursting into flames? EQ literally took a YEAR on average to reach level 60.
I know my friends didn’t mean to offend me, but this goes to show the mindset of a lot of gamers. They immediately sought to find the bad in Aion, rather than the good.
At the end of our conversation I told them, as I do everytime they ask, that Aion will not steal players from World of Warcraft. It is however a place to go once you are done with WoW. Sure some people will go back when Blizzard releases new content, but I don’t think in the amount that most gamers expect.
The bottom line is Aion is arguably the highest quality MMO to be released SINCE World of Warcraft. Aion will truly be the test of whether or not another MMO can make a profit with A+ quality control.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Spreadsheets, calculators, and pocket protectors OH MY!
The last few days of Aion have been spent in the Sanctum running back and forth between my Warehouse (bank) the Broker (Auction House) and the crafting vendors. I'm far more addicted to making Kinah than I thought.
It has gotten so bad that I finally sat down Sunday night and made a spread sheet adding up the production cost of each potion I can currently make and the average going rate for those potions on the Broker. I now spend about 30 minutes a night doing Broker and Trade Skill related chores. The nice thing is that the amount of Kinah I’m making from this 30 minutes far exceeds the amount of Kinah I make in 3 or 4 hours of grinding.
I’m currently selling 3 types of potions, I’m going to do a cost benefit analysis tonight and decide if I want to pick up a 4th potion type. There are a few reasons for me selling more than one type of potion, and I want to explain them here
Supply: All of the items I make are subject to the amount of materials I can obtain to create them. They each consist of 3 items. One item is sold from a NPC so that supply and cost never changes. The second is sold from players on the Broker and is common and cheap thus I would consider it low demand. The last is the main ingredient, Fresh Lumesia, which can sky rocket in price if you are not careful.
So if I were only making 1 type of potion then when I start buying ingredients in bulk I would drive the demand up. With the new average price for Fresh Lumesia being so high all new listings would only undercut the current ones by a small margin. It then would take about 24 hours of undercutting for prices to come back down to my acceptable range and the market to reset it's self.
By spreading my purchases out from buying three types of ingredients rather than just one I retain the same amount of profit per potion while keeping the cost of my materials down. This helps me keep from driving my own prices up, and thus putting me out of business. I’m competing against the “I farmed it so it’s free people” here so remember that.
Market Presence: In Aion each character can only has 10 broker slots. The point of this is to keep people from flooding a market and driving out the competition, but also raises an interesting thought of opportunity cost per slot. Now this is good for me more than you think. I WANT to drive away my competition by having a strong market presence. Given that I only have 10 slots that would seem like a handicap but in fact it only makes it easier on me.
Most people are only listing with 1 character. So I only have to compete against 10 broker slots per competitor. I don’t know if all my competitors are the same person with 3 different characters that just happen to have random names or if they really are 3 random people. I have identified only 1 name as a consistent market presence though which leads me to believe they aren't trying to take over the market.
How this benefits me? I have decided that with a little up front time and effort, to level alts up. All my alts have similar spelt names. The point of that is so when I list items all of my competition KNOWS they are competing against 1 person, regardless of how many characters I have. I’m trying to do market intimidation.
The morons and slackers won’t take the time to level up a second character for the sole purpose of selling items. At the most they will have an abandoned alt who theyuse to help sell “extra” stuff. Now I’m sure a few other people will take on my strategy, but there are always more slackers than goblins in any MMO.
Conclusion: I’m currently pulling in 300,000 Kinah a listing from Alchemy with less than 30 minutes worth of work per listing. 15 of those 30 minutes are typically spent combing materials which thankfully I can queue up then go read, shower, brush, or do whatever. I do 2 listings a day, once in the morning and once in the evenings assuming materials are available.
Fun math! That translates into approximately 10,000 Kinah a minute. Thanks to Gevlon @ http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/
I have applied most of what I have read there to Aion and it seems to be working.
It has gotten so bad that I finally sat down Sunday night and made a spread sheet adding up the production cost of each potion I can currently make and the average going rate for those potions on the Broker. I now spend about 30 minutes a night doing Broker and Trade Skill related chores. The nice thing is that the amount of Kinah I’m making from this 30 minutes far exceeds the amount of Kinah I make in 3 or 4 hours of grinding.
I’m currently selling 3 types of potions, I’m going to do a cost benefit analysis tonight and decide if I want to pick up a 4th potion type. There are a few reasons for me selling more than one type of potion, and I want to explain them here
Supply: All of the items I make are subject to the amount of materials I can obtain to create them. They each consist of 3 items. One item is sold from a NPC so that supply and cost never changes. The second is sold from players on the Broker and is common and cheap thus I would consider it low demand. The last is the main ingredient, Fresh Lumesia, which can sky rocket in price if you are not careful.
So if I were only making 1 type of potion then when I start buying ingredients in bulk I would drive the demand up. With the new average price for Fresh Lumesia being so high all new listings would only undercut the current ones by a small margin. It then would take about 24 hours of undercutting for prices to come back down to my acceptable range and the market to reset it's self.
By spreading my purchases out from buying three types of ingredients rather than just one I retain the same amount of profit per potion while keeping the cost of my materials down. This helps me keep from driving my own prices up, and thus putting me out of business. I’m competing against the “I farmed it so it’s free people” here so remember that.
Market Presence: In Aion each character can only has 10 broker slots. The point of this is to keep people from flooding a market and driving out the competition, but also raises an interesting thought of opportunity cost per slot. Now this is good for me more than you think. I WANT to drive away my competition by having a strong market presence. Given that I only have 10 slots that would seem like a handicap but in fact it only makes it easier on me.
Most people are only listing with 1 character. So I only have to compete against 10 broker slots per competitor. I don’t know if all my competitors are the same person with 3 different characters that just happen to have random names or if they really are 3 random people. I have identified only 1 name as a consistent market presence though which leads me to believe they aren't trying to take over the market.
How this benefits me? I have decided that with a little up front time and effort, to level alts up. All my alts have similar spelt names. The point of that is so when I list items all of my competition KNOWS they are competing against 1 person, regardless of how many characters I have. I’m trying to do market intimidation.
The morons and slackers won’t take the time to level up a second character for the sole purpose of selling items. At the most they will have an abandoned alt who theyuse to help sell “extra” stuff. Now I’m sure a few other people will take on my strategy, but there are always more slackers than goblins in any MMO.
Conclusion: I’m currently pulling in 300,000 Kinah a listing from Alchemy with less than 30 minutes worth of work per listing. 15 of those 30 minutes are typically spent combing materials which thankfully I can queue up then go read, shower, brush, or do whatever. I do 2 listings a day, once in the morning and once in the evenings assuming materials are available.
Fun math! That translates into approximately 10,000 Kinah a minute. Thanks to Gevlon @ http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/
I have applied most of what I have read there to Aion and it seems to be working.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Kill the Soap Box
Other bloggers annoy me. Most seem to be caught up in their own little world where their opinion is the only right one. Now I understand that blogs are often times a place for people to stand on a soap box and shout their opinions… but what does it accomplish?
My favorite discussions to date have been with people of opposing views knowledgeable about the topic but open minded enough to consider other options. These people are very hard to come by. It’s the old thought process that if we are given the same information and you come to a different conclusion than I do, you must be stupid.
That’s not always the case though. People value different things. I hate to reference politics but I am a very liberal person, so as being of voting age in the USA you would think I would typically vote Democrat. Well you would be wrong, the things I value MOST are the things that Republicans tend to side with. So while I agree with more Democratic policies the ones that are most important to me are better fought for by the Republicans.
What does this matter? People are all biased. Everyone has their own agenda they are trying to bring to fruition. It is very rare that you get two people of opposing views in a room who will hear one another out and actually consider the others views.
This is the same in the video game industry, more specifically the MMO industry. If we both like MMO’s and have played the same ones, you MUST like the same one as I do or something is wrong with YOU. The fans of different MMO’s need to understand that compromise will make for a better gaming future then fanboy forum trolling.
Bloggers are just as bad though. We need to take away soap boxes and start sitting at round tables to discuss the pros and cons of games or we are doomed to keep making the same mistakes.
My favorite discussions to date have been with people of opposing views knowledgeable about the topic but open minded enough to consider other options. These people are very hard to come by. It’s the old thought process that if we are given the same information and you come to a different conclusion than I do, you must be stupid.
That’s not always the case though. People value different things. I hate to reference politics but I am a very liberal person, so as being of voting age in the USA you would think I would typically vote Democrat. Well you would be wrong, the things I value MOST are the things that Republicans tend to side with. So while I agree with more Democratic policies the ones that are most important to me are better fought for by the Republicans.
What does this matter? People are all biased. Everyone has their own agenda they are trying to bring to fruition. It is very rare that you get two people of opposing views in a room who will hear one another out and actually consider the others views.
This is the same in the video game industry, more specifically the MMO industry. If we both like MMO’s and have played the same ones, you MUST like the same one as I do or something is wrong with YOU. The fans of different MMO’s need to understand that compromise will make for a better gaming future then fanboy forum trolling.
Bloggers are just as bad though. We need to take away soap boxes and start sitting at round tables to discuss the pros and cons of games or we are doomed to keep making the same mistakes.
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