Running With Sharp Things - The Secret World

Nosy Gamer told me that there were free items in the Item Store for the Secret World.  On my way to starting it, finally this weekend (Eve really does keep me occupied) I saw the button on the launcher and decided to look.  It took me a moment to find the claim item button and see what was there.  A bunch of stuff, some clothing, a bird, a drink, and some supposedly awesome newbie weapons.

We shall see if I have a sword now. If not, I left the game last time having earned two skill points which should be enough to buy a starter sword from one of the shops. I think.  I haven't spent much time with the market concept.  I have broken items and I need to fix them.  I also really, really need to figure out how to heal myself or something.

I wound up logging in and running back to the start to get a sword.  When I made it back to the zombie town I have been working through I figured out how to get my free stuff in which there was a better sword.  Sigh.  Oh well.  I dumped some skill points and the AP things into some sword stuff and now I am a bad ass!

Okay, I almost died but look at all that dead stuff!  I'm still working through side missions.  I have learned that you can redo some of the simple and easy ones over and over again after their cool downs.  I picked up one of the very first ones when I ran back into town and dropped it off for free experience pretty much.  I'm not sure how I feel about that but if someone is more interested in things like experience then playing the game that might work for them.

I wound up doing two more quests.  One I again went to google for help instead of banging my head against a wall. It was for a code.  I need to do these quests less broken I think. I didn't remember from when I last played what the clues even where.  Breaking up quests or missions or whatever they are called like that is a bad idea for the future and I will resolve to do them on days when I have time.

I also did a gather quest which rendered me dead to firefighters again.  I am even on fire during the cut scenes.  It must be one of my fire skills. I still don't know why I ran around burning but I do.

I'm still engaging in a lot of group help. If someone is being mobbed by zombies I step in and assist.  People seem to do the same for me.  I've never yet talked to anyone but the mutual help thing seems to be working out.

I'm finding the cut scenes easier to deal with.  Now I know that I'm going to get one when I start someones mission string.  I'm not just walking into them every time I go close to a NPC.  This has allowed me to relax and focus on the story some more.  This one zone that I am in feels absolutely enormous with a lot to do.  The sound effects are also really good.  The zombies are pretty zombie acting and you don't have to just cut your way through things.  With cautious movement I can often achieve goals around zombies much stronger then I am.  I feel rewarded for thinking.

After I gathered everything and turned in this quest I had to go and kill things on Eve. That occupied the rest of my evening.  :P

The moral of the story is: Swords are good. I wish it had been more clear at the start that I could have picked multiple weapons.

The Quest for a Sword - The Secret World

My body, thankfully, wasn't trapped inside of the instance.  It was laying on top of the sewer when I ran back for it.  A discussion on Twitter with Nosy Gamer had me going to look for a bladed weapon to use since my magic wasn't cutting it.  I then found out that I needed skill points I didn't have so I ran back off to find some side missions to work on for skill points.

I need something to do!  I decided that because you are sent to the sheriff's office first that will be the best place to go to find some basic missions.  So far, they seem to be ranked normal, easy, hard and such things.  I assume that I will die to everything so I wandered around until I found one ranked normal.  The story is about defending the sheriff's office from the zombie attacks.  It seems that ritual sacrifice was pretty common in this town before the zombies.  What?  Okay.

I'm not sure that I understand the group instances. It seems that these events are shared but each person has a task.  So you can help people kill things but you also need to kill a certain amount in the help.  The game spawns tons so there is plenty for all.  The impression I get is that these are social but singular quests.  I'm not sure but it was helpful when someone ran up to assist me killing this big rainbow monster thing.

Thankfully someone random ran up and shot at it a lot with me.  It died and I finished that little mission string.  Phew.  I felt pretty good and now I had a skill point.  I needed two or three to go and buy a sword so I looked around and found a story chain to find missing people.

The first person was easy, he was hanging out in a church that seemed to be pretty anti-zombie.  The next ones were not hard but they were dead or zombies.  The one that really kicked my ass was the one at the firehouse.  Let me tell you, when firefighters become zombies they become ass kicking zombies with hatchets.  I died half a dozen times over the course of the quest to the firefighters.

After they finished kicking my ass I finally discovered the last guy, died yet again and accepted another story line to find food.  This time I wound back up with the firefighters and died another two times before I collected everything from their fire station.  I am very good at running around dead now back to my poor body.  I did stumble across a woman's body with a message on a cellphone.  I was trying to figure out where I needed to find a keypad but got distracted with dinner and such things and work tomorrow.

I'll play some more this weekend.  Hopefully with a sword to supplement my inadequate magical abilities.

The Grey

The Grey by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers

The Grey - E-Book
The Grey - Movie

Genera - Current Fiction, Wilderness Survival

I was talking to Titus on Eve the other week about random things that spiraled into a conversation about my lack of connection to common popular culture.  Titus had been trying to explain something to me using movies.  I’d never seen any of the movies he kept referencing.  It made for an odd conversation because I couldn't understand any of his analogies.

Our discussion wandered to the movie The Grey.  I’d never seen it and he really felt that I should see it.  I do not really enjoy watching movies anymore.  I’m down to a visit to the theater once every other year or so.  I decided to offer a compromise and meet halfway.  I’d try to read the books to the movies he discussed if they had books.

I found the Grey on Amazon.  The original movie came from a short story.  The author then expanded the short story some.  Its not a long book by any means so I picked it up an gave it a try.
I will be unable to rate this book any higher then 3 stars (out of 5) and this is why.

The book itself isn't bad.  Its not my daily cup of tea but it’s a solid read and interesting in its approach.
What I do hate and what will never make me recommend the book to anyone else is the way that it portrays wolves.  In the story, the wolves are these death dealers that hunt the group down and pick them off.  It is glossed over as “This is their place and they don’t want us here.”  It is complete and total rubbish.  Wolves do not behave in the manner portrayed by this book.

Portrayals like this is why people hunt down and slaughter predatory animals like wolves and sharks (Jaws anyone?  The author deeply regrets writing the story as he did).  I’m actually disgusted by the blatant misrepresentation of wolf behavior in this book.  I ranted and ranted and ranted.  Titus will probably never recommend another book to me again.

I don’t think he means it.  In some ways, the wolves are probably some type of symbolism or the incarnation of the harshness of nature.  I don’t care.  It’s a terrible disservice to them.  I will say that the quality of the book is enough to have stopped me from raging and deleting it.  Plus I promised that I would read it, so I continued.

Its not a happy story.  There is no happy ending for everyone.  Its bleak, and stark and the people suffer a lot.  I could not relate to the main character.  He had issues before the story happened and he had issues during the course of the story.  Issues that I couldn't see myself having due to personality differences.

The writing style is first person current.  I find that one of the harder styles to slide into.  It gives the feeling of sharing the persons moment to moment.  If there is a disconnect between the reader and the character in the story it only heightens the disorientation of viewing things through someone else's eyes.

For the fact that I couldn't relate to the book and that I am enraged at the portrayal of wolves in the book I don't think it is a bad book.  I won't read it again.  I'm sure someone who is more interested in the symbolism of nature and futility represented by the wolves in the story may enjoy it much more then I did.  Also, someone who liked the movie will get more out of it then I.

Zombies and Dying and Puzzles - The Secret World

There was a patch today for the Secret World.  It took quite a while to download which is a them problem not a me problem.   Then once it downloaded the launcher errored   A relaunch fixed it and I was able to spend a little bit of time playing.

Eve, as always, just sucks up my time so I planned to start playing earlier in the day but I had so many things to do that I didn't get around to it till later.  Once I started, since I have gotten a hang of the quest log menus, I bounced right into the next stage of my mission which was finding some guy.  This had to do with the medical records that you read.  The map is very important at this point because the houses do not always have routes between them.

Looking at the map I also realized that the area I had to explore was much larger then I realized.  It wanders off in several different directions.  This is one zone and there is a lot to do here. I like that.  I hate when a world is not complete.  While it may not be Skyrim and I may not be hoarding all the woven baskets I pass, the world is very richly detailed and tactile.  I'm starting to recognize the streets I run around on.

I learned today that direction matters.  I almost died tot he zombies at one point because I wasn't facing them and I was trying to cast and I wasn't casting and I'm like WHY!

I need to find a healing spell or item or something.  I wound up assisting some people in a random mission that spawned in front of me.  The instances seem to be shared when it comes to doing things like damaging the NPCs.  Its kind of distracting when three people in the row spawn the same big bad ass looking creature if you were looking for the originality of it.

That may be my biggest worry fort his game.  Its very interesting but the replayability seems to be very low.  I am someone that rereads books over and over again so it concerns me when I think that the replayability of the story may be an issue.

I was also smart enough to use my environment against a zombie today!  I shot him across the fence and blapped him as he tried to run around to get me.  The NPC is smart and he didn't just let me blap him to death from the safety of the fence.  Still, it was fun to actually use the fence.  Then it turned out I had killed the wrong NPC and the one I wanted was in the sewer.  And here I had thought I was a bad ass.  Now I had to follow what looked like spots of green vomit.

I guess this is horror genera stuff?  The interesting thing is that when I selected "yes, please let me go into the sewer cuz I'm not smart," it asked me if I wanted to enter a solo instance.  Okay, so I've been right about things being multiple instances.

So far my method of fighting is button jamming while backing away to try to make range. I thought I could maybe creep around the sewer and be sneaky instead of just balls to the walls about everything.  It didn't work as well as I hoped.  I wound up dying, somewhere down in the sewers and it was getting late so I had to head out for the night.  I might be over my head with the main storyline.  I think I'll side track for now and do some of the other stuff for a while.  I work this weekend so side quests should be a good way to work through content without a lot of dedication.

E-Books and Media Consumption

I was asked how I consume as many books as I average.

I started reading e-books as the bulk of my media consumption in 2007.  I was at a job with a lot of random downtime.  My supervisor decided to punish everyone by taking away our books.  We were allowed to watch television still, because she enjoyed watching television, but no reading. Just waiting for things to happen and television.

I don't watch television.  My books were banned. Magazines were okay but magazines don't hold my attention   They are to quickly consumed.  That is when I started reading ebooks.  I had a smartphone at the time. It was not a smart, smart phone but it was smart enough.  I could also read PDF documents through my work e-mail.

I got a few e-books and started to read.  Amazon had just released the first generation Kindle and I wondered if I wanted one.  I was an avid reader but I didn't want to spend several hundred dollars on a device I might not use.

A few months, and several hundred dollars in e-books later, I decided I did get one.  I only went back and forth about it for six months.  Then, my husband got me one as a surprise.  I think he was tired of my almost daily ponderings and musings over it.  That tends to mean I want something and haven't worked up the will to put the money down on it.  Once I had it in my hand my reading addiction became worse then it had ever been.

The Kindle uses e-ink which mimics the look and eyeball feel of paper.  For many who did not want the glare and energy consumption of the LCD screen, the Kindle and all e-ink readers were a godsend.  For the next few years I read on my Kindle when I had a choice and on my phone when I didn't.

What e-books in general did for me was increase the amount of media I could consume.  I've always been a fast reader.  Yet, ebooks allowed me to read while walking easier, read in the car smoother, not lose my place as often, and not turn pages.  You don't realize how much time you spend turning pages until you no longer have to turn pages.  I don't have a problem turning pages but little snatches of time add up over the course of a novel.

Later, once the tablet market began to stabilize I invested in a 10 inch (not apple) tablet.  This turned out to be a perfect PDF reader.  Last year I took the plunge and reduced to a 7 inch tablet.  This is an almost perfect transportable reader.  I'd not sit with it in my pocket but it fits into the front jean pocket for basic to and fro.  I also read on my smartphone still.  (I don't carry a purse).

I don't use them for videos.  I don't really use them for games.  I don't use them for pictures.  I use them for internet surfing and book consumption.  This also increases my energy consumption. There are times that a paper book is awkward.  One of those times is when I'm cooking and I am timing pots and stirring dishes but I have a free hand and spare attention. I fill those things and times with e-books.

Waiting at the doctors office, spare time at a training class, lunch breaks, car trips, plane travel and night time reading is all easier.  E-ink is superior for any lengthy project.  Tablets don't do a bad job but smartphones drain fast under heavy reading usage.  I do understand that some may not do as well with short reading sessions.  I've always been fine with it.  I can put a book down and later I can pick it back up and reengage immediately.

I often hear people say that they will not give up their regular books.  I haven't, completely   Yet, for day to day idle consumption I can not praise e-books and the various e-readers enough.  They improve the media consumption and don't remove from it.

Amazon has recently put out an offer to trade old kindles in for a credit.  I'm tempted because my first gen is sitting on the shelf, unused for the last two years and unneeded.

Its about Puzzles - The Secret World

The Nosy Gamer explained that The Secret World is about puzzles.

Things make a bit more sense now and I am a lot happier.  I still haven't read the actual description of the game.  I find that they are often too full of the developers and advertisers dreams and not full enough of what the actual game consists of.

But I love puzzles.  A lot.  One of my things I do when I travel is buy a puzzle in the country that I traveled to.  I then put them together and use them as wall art.  Because, puzzles are amazing.

The Raven quest was a puzzle. I didn't get it at first.  Now, the entire thing makes a lot more sense to me.  The mission told me, "Find how to call the bad raven boss dude," and I was sitting there like "eh?"  It had been leading me by the hand and then it dropped my hand and I was sad.  I did figure it out on my own however.

So, what is next?

First, calming down.  As an Eve player one of the biggest adjustments to playing almost everything else is remembering that everyone isn't trying to kill me at any given time.  Except the zombies.

Running from zombies.  I'm getting better at it.

Anyway, I started a quest where I am trying to find pieces of paper.  Its helping me to learn how to orient myself with the location dials.  Basically, they drop you off in a circle that is green on your map and inside that circle, somewhere is the objective.  Only the objective looks like trash and there are zombies eating people everywhere.  That wasn't so bad but then I lost my HUD(or whatever it is called in non-eve games) and I couldn't actually do anything anymore or figure out how to get it back.  So I closed the game and reopened it and prayed that lost HUDs were not persistent.


It's my fault for being a button masher. I really am.  No grace or delicacy. I'm spamming my attacks while backing up and hoping for the best.

I also admit, I used Google to find out what the password to the computer was.  I kinda figured it out from the basics given but I'm terrible   My guesses were random.  Word guessing games like that are *not* my strong point.

I can shoot zombies thou!  Anyway, I picked up all of my pieces of paper and then went to crackle the riddle I couldn't crack.   I accomplished that ask which puts me on 5 of the 18 levels of the mission tier.  This is going to take me a while.

So far the multiplayer aspect has mostly been me shooting other peoples zombies when they are being chased by a hoard and other people shooting mine.  It feels like a busy solo game still.  I don't pay attention to the chats.  I'll probably wind up closing that window.

Oh, I also read the blurb on Amazon (Price is back up to 29.99) about the game.  I figured it was about time.

"Dark days are coming. All the myths, legends and conspiracies of the world are true. Three secret societies - the Illumunati, the Templar and the Dragon - are recruiting thousands of civilians from all over the world, civilians with extraordinary powers embedded in their DNA, to aid them in the war against darkness...and each other. "

That helps not at all. :P

Puzzles.  Okay.

Reef Song - Carol Severance

Name: Reef Song

Author: Carol Severance

Published: 1991

Amazon.Com: Paperback

Amazon.Com: Kindle Edition

Genre: Science Fiction (soft)
Type: Good vs Evil
Standalone

I first read this book when I was 12 or so.  I'd been systematically reading out my local library's science fiction and fantasy section.  I'd check out 10-20 books at a time and return them the next weekend when my mother had time to take me to the library.

Reefsong was about water.  I love and have always loved water world based books.  There are not enough of them in my opinion. Its an exotic environment and a beautiful one.  I picked up Reefsong just because it was about water.  I'm glad I did.  Sadly, I read it a few times over the next year or two and then lost track of it when I stopped going to the library every weekend.  

It was one of those books that always stood out to me.  I'd think about it now and then but I couldn't remember the name of the book.  When I returned home from college, my Library had cleared out 90% of its books and replaced them with Magazines and Newspapers and more modern things.

I mourned and it was not until years later that I found a science fiction form that had a section to help people find books.  I was able to write an almost verbatim description from the back of the book and two days later someone figured out what I was talking to.  I did a search on amazon and found out that a kindle version had become available only a few months before.

Reefsong is one of those books where the bad guy is the evil corporate power that seeks money over everything else.  The main character is a proud, honest, uncorruptible person who makes hard decisions.  The secondary characters are complex but filled with self motivations the reader can get behind and cheer for.    The good and the bad are not complex but they are pleasant.

The world has some interesting aspects to it. There is space travel through wormholes, making the travel times fast.  There appear to be several inhabitable worlds out there.  A lot of time is not spent on dealing with technical details.  The science fiction is the setting for the story not the story itself.

The story is a bit of a mystery a bit of personal journey.   The main character  Angie is sent to the water planet Lesaat to find a biochemical formula that may end world hunger.  Along the way she deals with explorations of the native population, the environment, and herself by the evil entity of the company.

Carol Severance manages to hand the beauty of the world without slogging through the minutia of it.  You understand that Lesaat is beautiful and complex.  It is every beautiful beach you have ever seen.  It is unspoiled and pure and she only hits at the complex nature of the environmental   What really is the true nature of the world and what is the interpretation of the characters is muddled and I think she means for it to be.  There is a feeling of world worship and a leaning towards ancient gods and deities of the deep that may be imagination or may be sentient life on the planet itself.  She uses these are supports for her picture and not actual elements themselves.

It is a good, solid science fiction story.  There is genetic manipulation  altered people, different worlds, similar but different situations, gadgets and toys and all of the pieces that make the future seem so cool to us.  Its also an environmental tale.  The earth is over populated and struggling under its resources   People have given up nature to feed the furnace of humanity.  It speaks of a lack of morals fed by a thirst for power.

She does a good job of not being preachy about it.  Its the theme without a doubt but she, at least, doesn't have the character's going through page after page of ranting.  She won't pull you from the story, but those ideas and problems are deeply woven.  Its a bit of a heroes tail as well.  Her view points are open minded when it comes to gender and sexuality in the story.

Its a solid, good read.  Its a story about the story.  It answers its questions and leaves you full and satisfied  I've read it half a dozen times.  After rereading it earlier this weekend, I decided that it would be my anchor about books.

I'm on Fire - The Secret World

For some reason my character caught on fire and has stayed that way.  I'm guessing I did something to make it happen.  It doesn't appear to hurt her any.

So I've managed to do a quest or two and get killed by zombies.  The quests or missions or whatever they are have been a bit vague.  One of them tells me to, "Follow the Ravens" and I have to run around until I find them and then kinda head in the direction they flew off in.  Meanwhile I'm trying to kill the zombies chasing me and not lose my path through the woods at the same time.  Then I fight some random dude that was kicking my ass until other players showed up and shot at him.  Well worth it to me.  There was a riddle I had to kind of figure out.

I then learned that some NPCs have cool down timers for their missions.  In the midst of that I learned something about assembly.  That took a lot of Google searches and clicking on menus to figure out what the various screens were.  I then made a glymph, attached it to my 'focus' or weapon or whatever it was and then made a phone call for experience points. Once I figured that out (thank you Google)  I ran off to try to find someone else along the main mission path.  That's when I found out that sprinting through town with a massive crowd of zombies chasing you is not the right thing to do.

This is me dying to zombies.

I go back to my body cuz it seems you have to (I don't know what I lose when I die) and do a better job of Zombie management   Only this time someone else brings a wave of zombies in from behind me and I die again.

Third times a charm.  Zombies are all cleared out.  I crawl back into my corpse, things go from black and white to full color and I go find the chick that I saw on the map to talk to her and experience some cut scenes.  You don't even have to click on them.  As soon as you come up, cut scene starts.

This is how I look, every cut scene.

I'm not on fire anymore as well, which is nice.  Maybe it was bad?  At some point I gained more of the points for the skill system.  Not knowing what I am doing I randomly allot them to what interests me the most.  This is my classic build in a game.  "I like this, select."

So far this feels like a single player game with other people running around.  I guess Eve is like that at the start as well.  I wonder if I have money. People were trading things for 50million.  I assume they don't mean ISK as in Eve.  I'm used to the incredably high prices from Eve Online so I'm not sure if 50mil is a lot here or not.

So off I went on my next adventure where I promptly fell off the bridge that led to my goal and had to run through mutant and zombie infested waters to escape.

Back at my goal I attacked the Pirate Captain when he popped up.  Two other people ran over and proceeded to beat on him as well.  He died and the next part of the mission sent me back to the main sheriff's office.  I was also on fire again for a while. It seems to be a skill I cast sometimes(Maybe?).

Anyway, the grocery store interrupted me for a bit.

The Secret World

The Nosy Gamer got me to try The Secret World.  It was on sale for $15 from Amazon after it went Free to Play.  Nosy is an enthusiastic Eve player but also tries a lot of other MMOs.  I'm not prone to trying that many MMOs due to my Eve Obsession.  I haven't logged onto Aion in months.

For $15 I'll give a game a try.  Its a month of Eve's subscription or a cheap meal or however one converts their money into time into entertainment.  I don't drink coffee or go to Starbucks so I can't use that as an evaluation.  He likes it and it seemed interesting so, sure, why not?

I probably should have read the "about".  I haven't even done it as I start to write this.  Because, why not?  I'm prone to just trying things to try them.  I know the game is not Eve and its not space and its not spaceships.  But I like Video games.

Anyone ever played Limbo?  Its a fantastic, fantastic spooky puzzle that is so simple and elegant that it has a surrealism that I can't even begin to explain.

Anyway, I got the game and waited until today to settle down and play it. The download servers were okay. I have a ridiculous connection recently upgraded to 300/70 FiOS by my husband.  It cheerfully tests out what download servers can do.  It still took a bit to download this game.  Not a big deal, but if your connection is slower, set it for over night or while out.

I started the game up.  The graphics are kind of hand drawn and kind of well rendered. I have directx 11 installed and the resolution cranked all the way up.  I can't say I am super impressed with the facial movements and such.  But its far from terrible.

There are different domains to choose.  I asked Nosy where he was and picked the same so that I can stalk him easier in the future.  You then pick one of the three factions.  I chose the Asian (Japanese(?)) one.  The character creator is simple but allows for enough customization to let you feel like a Special Snowflake in a Blizzard.

Once I entered the game it became the land of Endless Cut scenes.

I don't like visual movie/video media much.  I like games because I am controlling them.  Watching things doesn't do it for me.  The Secret World put me through many cut scenes.  Then my character had a lesbian encounter.  When the other chick crawled into her lap I was like, "Unexpected."

After the girl on girl action it gives a mild intro tutorial mode that is a memory.  Okay.  Once done with that the chick kicks you out without even a kiss and off you go to train your power.  This wasn't overly clear as well.  It turns out there are guns, hand(sword/punching/something) and magic powers.  I didn't notice the other two because the guns are right behind the contact.  Thankfully, I run around and quickly discovered magic.  I then learned that the doors leading you out tell you that there are other things to try.  Nice of them to realize that their layout is terrible.

I spent a minute fiddling with my powers.  It looks like you can remap your selections with ease.  I think.  I'm not really sure.  I decided on elemental magic.  I was leaning towards blood magic but the slurping pools of blood you throw got creepy pretty quickly.

So you run off, wind up finding some kind of secret magical portal area, have more cut scenes, and get sent off on your first... mission?  I really have no idea what is going on.  They've told me I'm special and stuff happens and I have to go deal with it cuz they told me to and they are more special.  That's what I understand so far.  I'm ready to gank them all and go explore.  None of them are overly interesting. I keep finding golden honey combs that tell me to press U to access and give some quote that I don't get that then vanish.  Collectibles or achievements or something?

Sliding down the tree was fun.  I ran off to my mission and got, yet another cut scene.  Sigh.  Then I decided to write this and was disconnected for being idle.  I'll keep chewing away at it for a while and see how it goes.

Edit to Add:

1. I have two Eve windows open on my other screen.  Hahahah, I'm way to addicted to not play and chat at all.
2. If you play a guy character do you get a homosexual cut scene instead of a lesbian one?

That Intro Post

It is always there, tucked away somewhere.  That post where the blogger first greets the reader and explains to them to point, or at least the intended point, of the blog.

This blog is an over flow blog. I'm an Eve Online Blogger.  I'm obsessed with the game.  But its not everyday.  Sometimes, I play other games.  Often, actually.  Sometimes I read books.  Actually, I read a lot of books.

So I'm trying out the over flow thing.  For those Non Eve-Online focused things that I want to talk about because I like to write things.  For a while I was going to cram it all in the same spot.  But my Eve blog is about Eve. It is crafted and designed around Eve. I don't want people to become frustrated wading through other things when they just want to read about Eve.

And maybe I'll talk about cooking sometimes.  I don't know.

But it is a fun side project.  We'll see how it goes.