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Doctor Who DVDs: The Infinite Quest
2007-09-11 14:11:11
Today, while I was poking at some Doctor Who DVDs on Amazon, I found a reference to a piece of (possible) continuity I'd never heard of before. The Infinite Quest was an animated piece, broadcast in a series of small segments in the kids' show Totally Doctor Who. It has the Tenth Doctor and Martha, so it's someplace in Season 3, if it's actually part of canon. And it has Anthony Head's voice as the bad guy. It hasn't yet been released on DVD - due out on the 5th of November - but when it's out, you can get it from Amazon here: The Infinite Quest ...
Doctor Quest

EVE: Shuttles for Tritanium
2007-09-10 14:11:18
Something in EVE that I've only recently come across is a bizarre economic quirk. Most of the EVE economy is based around mining; getting minerals from asteroid belts, which are then refined and built into just about everything else that's available in the game. This gives rise to a thriving, varying economy. One mineral, though - tritanium - has an unintended artificial price cap. The reason for this is that NPCs in just about every station sell shuttles, at a set price - small, fast ships which carry no more than the pilot and a tiny amount of cargo, and can't be enhanced in any way. They're intended for getting from point to point quickly, in order to pick up small, valuable cargoes - skill books, implants, and blueprints, for the most part - or for getting from one of your ships to another. They're available everywhere, as far as I can see, for the meta-game reason that it's incredibly boring to have to do a 20-jump run in a freighter to get back to your combat ship. But if you re ...

Torchwood Magazine from Titan
2007-09-05 09:36:16
Titan Magazines have a subscription page up for a Torchwood magazine. They say: Published every four weeks, the brand newTorchwood magazine will bring you the latest from the hit BBC show, with in-depth star interviews, exclusive reports behind the scenes and brilliant original fiction. A year's subscription gets you a special issue as well, and it's "coming in 2008". ...
Magazine

Doctor Who: Season 5, Gap Year
2007-09-04 14:57:55
The BBC have announced that Series 5 of Doctor Who will not appear in 2009 as expected, but will come out in 2010. Instead, there will be three "specials" in 2009. They'll all be written by Russell T. DaviesFurther: A spokeswoman for Doctor Who said she was unable to comment whether Tennant would return for the 2010 series. So, that's a pretty bleak bit of news. Presumably, Torchwood will, uh, carry the torch in the meantime, and there's Sarah Jane Adventures knocking around as well. I suppose confirmation of a fifth series is a good thing. I don't think a "gap year" is a good thing for the show, to be honest. It gives a lot of other properties a full year to grab that audience, and if they succeed and build momentum, they could overshadow Doctor Who. I know if I was in ITV, I'd be getting going around now on some kind of rival series. ...
Doctor

EVE: Ambulation and Economics
2007-09-04 09:36:03
I've just found two new items concerning EVE Online. The first is a dev blog by CCP's very own economist on the minerals market in EVE. It makes utterly fascinating reading, if you're interested in fictional economies. Second, there's an interview with the lead developer for EVE, Noah Ward, on TenTonHammer, concerning the walking-in-stations concept. Essentially, they're looking to add real avatars to EVE, along with in-station and even in-ship environments. And like everything else, a great deal of it will be player controlled, from clothing production to shop ownership and corporate office furnishing. If they get even half of what they want in, it's going to be absolutely fantastic. ...
Economics

EVE: Building The Myrmidon
2007-09-02 14:47:36
I've been assembling the goods for some days now to build my Myrmidon - a Gallente Battlecruiser that I consider to be pretty much the best-looking ship in the game. The BPC - Blueprint Copy - for it cost me three-quarters of a million ISK. The necessary minerals have, thus far, cost me about 8 million, and I still haven't assembled everything. I expect it to cost about another 10 million to get the rest. But that's better than the 30 million I'd pay for the ship on the market.It brings home how important specialisation is in the game. I went looking for the necessary minerals at lower prices, and found a good lot of tritanium selling in a 0.4 security system for about 7% better than anywhere else in two regions. So I bought a chunk of it, and went about making the runs up to collect it. This consisted of setting my hauler (an Iteron II) off on on a seven-jump autopilot run to the second-last system in the journey (0.5 security), and then doing the last hop into the system and into the ...
Building

EVE: The Need For Focus
2007-08-24 14:52:02
I'm going to have to settle down and focus on something in EVE, soon. At the moment, I'm trying to build up industry skills, build up my drone skills and buy new ones, build up ship skills and buy new ones to get a battlecruiser, build up the trade skills and buy new ones so I can manage my trading from one station instead of having to gallivant all over the galaxy to sell things, and get a research alt up and running. It's all a bit much to work on at once.The trouble, I suppose, is that I do want to do everything. My main income at the moment is mission-running and trading, so it would make sense to knuckle down to one or other of those to get enough cash to do the other things. Cash, generally speaking, is what's coming between me and the things I want to do. There's also training time, but in many cases, that's less of an issue; you can get many basic skills to IV before the time crunches really hit, and some can run to V in a few days if your attributes are right. So, thinking th ...

EVE Research Alt
2007-08-22 11:31:14
Research in EVE Online is a slow, awkward process. It's mainly slow because the research slots in NPC stations have projects queued for days, possibly months in advance. It's possible to get around this by renting research slots in player-owned stations (POS), or even by building your own. They're the only kinds of stations it's worth building in the higher security areas, really. Building a high-sec POS, however, requires excellent standings with the organisation who hold control of the system you want to build in, as well as a hell of a lot of ISK, both starting out and continuing. So that's going to have to wait, for me. However, to rent slots, there's often a necessity to be a member of at least the same alliance as the corp or player who owns the station. So my main character isn't going to do awfully well at that - but an alt who has their own, one-character corporation could do nicely. In that light, I sat down last night and created Q'eng Ho, a Caldari Achura who came out of t ...
Research

Doctor Who Children in Need 2007
2007-08-21 15:59:46
Spoilers concerning the Children in Need Doctor Who Special, to be aired on November 16th, follow:According to a post on Outpost Gallifrey, it looks like the Tenth Doctor is going to encounter the Fifth Doctor. Peter Davison last played the Doctor 23 years ago, so the makeup people are going to have their work cut out to make him look the right age! I'm also very pleased to see that Stephen Moffat is writing the segment. RTD wrote the first such segment, which aired for Children in Need in 2005, so this lends a little more credence to the rumours that Moffat is to take over. ...
Children Doctor

EVE Corporation Direction
2007-08-21 10:41:58
So there's a meeting of the Board of Directors of SierraTangoCorp [SITAC] this coming Saturday, and unusually for an EVE-Online corporation, we're meeting over burritos and beer in Ranelagh. At the moment, SITAC is composed entirely of people who have a connection through Irish gaming circles. We're meeting to talk about plans for what we want to do in EVE, and how the corp can best support those plans.At the moment, I'm engaged in trading, which is getting me some decent returns, some mission-running, and the occasional bout of rat-hunting in the local asteroid belts. I'm also skilling up in industry - 2 days, 13 hours left until I have Production Effiiciency IV, and I'll be going pretty directly into PE V after that. I have two real long-term goals; become as rich as possible from manufacturing, and get to the stage where I can fly a carrier. Manufacturing is an odd process; there's almost no point in starting it until you have high skills, and even then, you're going to en ...
Corporation Direction

D&D 4.0: Reactions
2007-08-17 12:07:02
On the Thursday of this year's Gencon, Wizards of the Coast announced the launch of the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The reactions, as ever on this topic, have been mixed. On one hand, there's a certain resentment of a new edition so close on the heels of the 3.5 rewrite, and on the other, many people are looking forward to the new, streamlined game.Not a huge amount is changing - at least, that's how it seems to me. It looks like the jump from 3.5 to 4 is not going to be nearly as big as the jump from 2 to 3 was. Here's a quick summary, gleaned from various sources (The WotC site, ENWorld, rpg.net, etc). Even where these are verified, they're subject to change before release anyway, so take them with a pinch of salt. Races: Some races will be dropped from the core rules, and tieflings may be added. I'm guessing the gnome and half-orc are for the chop. Levels: The level cap in the core rules will now be 30, not 20. Classes: Some classes are going to be dropped. Wizard, ...
Reactions

EVE: ORE Capital Ship
2007-08-13 15:44:57
There's a CCP developer blog up on the topic of the forthcoming ORE Capital Ship. Now, realistically, I haven't a chance of running one of those anytime soon. I suspect that from my current skill set to the skills necessary to pilot one of those is probably on the order of a year's development. And my new corporation - SierraTangoCorp [SITAC] - isn't anywhere near big enough to support that kind of mining effort. That doesn't stop me from wanting one, though... I suppose I could work up toward an Obelisk. There are some fairly lucrative contracts to be got, hauling POS components and other big stuff down to 0.0 space, and if the contracting corp are willing to fly escort, it wouldn't even be that dangerous in these days of warp-to-zero. And from there to the ORE Capital wouldn't be such a big step. However, given that my current ship emphasis - I have an Indy for what hauling I need - is on drones, a smarter direction to aim would be a Nyx - except, of course, it's nowhere ...
Capital Ship

World of Warcraft Second Expansion
2007-08-04 13:17:41
So, Blizzard have announced the second expansion for World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. It's pretty much as expected, really.The main features they're touting at the moment are: The Death Knight hero class. Level cap raised to 80. "Spell augmentation" with the new Inscription profession. New continent of Northrend. Siege warfare, siege engines and destructible buildings. New character-customization options, including new hairstyles and dances New dungeons The Death Knight hero class is interesting, The notion is that you somehow "unlock" the class, in much the same way as console games allow you to unlock new features as you play. I like the concept, but I'd prefer if they brought in more than one hero class - bringing them in one at a time pretty much makes it certain that every player is going to have a Death Knight character, just like every player has a flying mount (or, by this point, an epic flying mount) in the current release. There will need to be some limitatio ...
Warcraft

Steven Moffat to Write Doctor Who?
2007-08-03 14:38:57
The Sun has a report that Steven Moffat may be replacing Russell Davies as the head honcho for Doctor Who. I'd love that to be the case, but the Sun aren't the most reliable.There's some discussion on the matter on the Guardian's Organ Grinder blog. Most of the attention there is being focussed on the matching rumour that the Doctor will be played by some bloke called James Nesbitt. While obviously the actor is a concern, my interest is pretty completely in the writing. Given the episodes Moffat has under his belt, he'd be absolutely fantastic as the lead writer. However, he's already a busy man, and heading up Doctor Who is a notoriously time-consuming task; even RTD has been heard to say it's a lot of work. We'll see what appears - the BBC are often slow to respond on this kind of rumour-mongering, though, so it may be a while. ...
Doctor

World of Warcraft in Russian?
2007-08-01 22:39:19
From the number of Russian speakers Blizzard want to employ, I'm wondering if there'll be a localised Russian release of World of Warcraft sometime soon. A fair number of Russians already play WoW on the European servers. ...
Warcraft

James Marsters: Buffy Meets Torchwood
2007-07-30 09:27:15
I'm very amused by the BBC article about James Marsters appearing in an episode of Torchwood, not least because of the picture on it of him and John Barrowman, which is pretty much made for fanfic writers. Apparently, Marsters is a fan of Torchwood: I am a huge fan of Doctor Who and Torchwood so it was me who knocked on their door. ...

On Economic Fantasy
2007-07-25 14:47:24
There's an excellent post up on SF Diplomat about economic fantasy. This is the kind of stuff I'd want to read, and it's why, of all the fantasy books I've ever read, Raymond E. Feist's Rise of a Merchant Prince is one of my absolute favourites. It's also, of course, why EVE Online is my favourite MMO, and a core theme of my ideal fantasy MMO. I tend to call it "sandbox fantasy", though. ...
Economic

Sword of the New World: Initial Impressions
2007-07-18 14:38:57
Sword of the New World is another translated-from-Korean game, now released in the West. You can download the client, and play the initial levels (1-20, out of 100) for free, after which it costs $8.95 a month - or you can stay at level 20. To summarise: the gameplay is very different, but interesting, and the game is astoundingly pretty.The prettiness really is the thing that strikes you first; the character generation screens are stunning. However, you're immediately also struck by some of the differences from the run of the mill MMOPRG. First and foremost, you create a family name before you do anything else, and all your characters will have this as a surname. Then, your character creation isn't so much creation as choice - you pick a gender, class and a costume, and create a name. There's no facial customising, no stat juggling, or anything else, and the characters looks and clothing do not change in play (at least, as far as I've been able to establish). This limitation does ...
Impressions Initial Sword

Heroes: Series One Retrospective
2007-07-16 18:33:36
I haven't said much about the NBC series Heroes here, mainly because I've been catching up. I saw the last episode of the first season yesterday, though, and I've some thoughts I'd like to set down about it. For next season, I'll probably be providing episode by episode commentary.The first is that between the careful maintenance of the "comics feel" and the huge interactivity of the official website, this is the first American series I've seen that's been carefully calculated for maximum appeal to fans. The BBC do this kind of thing well, and Lost made great strides in the right direction, but Heroes is superb in that respect. After that, I'm in considerable admiration of the way in which multiple plotlines and multiple characters were carefully drawn together over more than twenty episodes. There were plot swings I couldn't predict, which always please me, and there were characters you ended up liking, and disliking. And those likes and dislikes were not necessarily on the ...
Heroes Series

LotRO: Play A Chicken
2007-07-05 14:24:24
So there's a "sneak peek" on the Lord of the Rings Online site concerning a form of play in which you can play a chicken.No, I'm not joking, it's there. There will also be options to play as rangers, trolls, and other "NPCs". It's called "session play". They're not permanent characters, but if you finish out certain deeds, you can get items and destiny points for your main characters. I have to say that this is a truly brilliant idea. Not the chicken, per se, but the notion of playing an NPC for a bit. LotRO already seems a very casual friendly game, and this will give casual players another short-term, high-fun pursuit. It won't impact the hardcore folks in any negative way, and it adds options. What's not to like? Between this and the monster play option - which I've really only scratched the surface of - it looks like LotRO might have considerably more lasting power than WoW, simply because there's more to do than just levelling and then an endgame. ...
Chicken Lotro

Doctor Who Series 4, Catherine Tate
2007-07-04 09:26:04
Some comments on the casting for Series 4 of Doctor Who follow. I am, to say the least, not impressed.The BBC site says that the new companion for season four of Doctor Who is... Catherine Tate. I presume that she'll be playing Donna. Now, I'm willing to grant that her appearance in the Christmas Special was not as bad as I had feared, but... I still did not like the character. And it's yet another case of RTD's inability to leave closed doors closed - she said that no, she would not be travelling with the Doctor, and that should be that. I realise that people were not impressed with the casting of Billie Piper, back when things started again, and that Rose turned out to be one of the best characters the show has ever had (although I'm still expecting RTD to bring her back too). It's possible that Donna/Catherine will grow on me in the same way, but, being honest, I don't think so. What would be wrong with picking up one of the good characters, the ones everyone liked, from pr ...
Doctor Series

The Life and Times of Captain Jack Harkness
2007-06-21 15:57:01
I'm in two minds as to whether this post should go under the "Doctor Who" category, the "Torchwood" category, or even a brand new category of "Captain Jack". Anyway: contains spoilers.It strikes me that Jack Harkness is so very suitable for a spin-off series that he knocks Sarah-Jane, K9, the rest of Torchwood, and any other possibilities, into a cocked hat. We could see Jack: - be heroic and dashing right through a century and a half! - be involved in Torchwood from practically the very beginning! - avoid all previous (and future) incarnations of the Doctor, while still seeking out the right one! - try to avoid meeting himself , or the other himself, or the "real" Jack Harkness during World War II! - explain the lack of interaction between Torchwood and UNIT! - flirt with anything that can talk back! And of course, the fanfic possibilities are mind-boggling. ...
Life

Doctor Who Series 3 Finale
2007-06-20 10:44:05
So, we're now into the final three-part episode of season three with Utopia having screened on Saturday. I'd like to do some commenting and speculating about Utopia, as well as the two episodes yet to come, and Torchwood.First up, I liked Utopia. It didn't surpass Blink, which has shot straight to the top of my "best Doctor Who episodes ever" list, and given me some odd twitches around four in the morning, but it was still a good episode. I do have one or two nitpicks in the characterisation with regard to Jack and Martha. First, Jack goes from being brooding, angry Jack in Torchwood to being cheerful Jack in Doctor Who in pretty nearly no time flat. I know some of this is due to Doctor Who being pre-watershed and a different series and so on, but he really did seem to be proceeding on a basis that the Doctor could do no wrong, even when he abandoned Jack. I'm amused, though, by the notion that time travellers fear immortals, because that's a principle I've used myself elsewhere ...
Doctor Series

LotRO: First Impressions
2007-06-15 14:08:26
Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a post like this about World of Warcraft, in which I wasn't all that impressed, and saying I was pretty damn sure I'd stick with Dark Age of Camelot. Two years of playing WoW later, in this post, I shall be saying that while I am fairly impressed with Lord of the Rings Online, I'll probably stick with World of Warcraft. Note the less extreme positions: LotRO is a good game. The first thing that strikes me, coming in from World of Warcraft, is that the graphics are not cartoony. And, annoyingly, I'm not as pleased by this as I might be - I'm very much in favour of it in the landscape and objects, but character animations in particular look unnatural when they're aiming for realistic. The landscapes and towns look very fine, though, and I note that the Elven starting area looks rather like WoW's Blood Elf architecture, minus the floating bits. The lands of Men are perhaps a little dull in comparison to Elf and Dwarf areas, but that's somethin ...
First Impressions Impressions Lotro

WotC Moving Online
2007-06-12 15:01:04
So, Wizards of the Coast pulled back the Dragon, Dungeon and Dragonlance licences recently. Now I'm reading on Gamasutra that they're planning a "MySpace for gamers", under the rather odd name of Gleemax.At this point, I'm willing to hazard a guess that WotC are banking on their future being online. Whatever anyone can say about their games, or the interface between their games and their business, it's not a surprise to anyone that there are some very clever people working there. Those clever people are doing some very careful analysis of what their customers are doing. And what those customers are doing is being online - this is probably more true for WotC than any other sizable "offline" company in the world. The clever folks in there are probably looking at the current wave of PDF publications, particularly in the indie game scene, and also looking at the success they had themselves in selling out of print products as PDFs. And they're looking at discussion boards, and MySpace ...

MMO Crafting & Tradeskills Forum Sites
2007-06-11 15:03:00
Anyone who's dealt with me in an MMO knows I'm usually more interested in the crafting and tradeskills end of things than anything else, barring RP - and the tradeskills are something you can solo a lot better. So I'd like to draw some attention to two excellent crafting sites, one for World of Warcraft: Crafter's Tome, and one for Lord of the Rings Online: LoTRO Crafting. As might be evident from this, I'm currently on a seven-day trial of LoTRO, and I'll be reporting back on that soon. I'm rather impressed, but I don't know if it's enough to move me from WoW just yet. ...
Crafting Forum

Review: Glasshouse, by Charles Stross
2007-06-07 14:22:20
I do try to rein in the extremes of fanboyism that sometimes attack me. However, confronted with something like Glasshouse, there's really not a lot I can do; my resistance was blown away someplace around page 48. Here's an executive... ...
Review

Summer Glau (River Tam) as a Terminator
2007-06-06 09:33:51
Apparently, Summer Glau, who played River Tam in Firefly, is going to be starring as a Terminator in a TV show called The Sarah Connor Chronicles. How they're going to preserve any of the essential 80s feeling of the movies... ...
River Summer Terminator

Blizzcon 2007 Beta Key: SCII or WoW 3.0?
2007-06-05 17:13:43
Blizzard's Blizzcon 2007 site has mention of a beta key to an upcoming game for all attendees. The general speculation is that it'll be for Starcraft II, but since they're expected to announce the next World of Warcraft expansion there... ...
Beta Wow

Doctor Who Season Four Rumours
2007-06-05 15:13:18
There are a number of odd rumours being circulated concerning Doctor Who. I'd like to take a look at those.... ...
Doctor Rumours

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