Fossils T-Shirt

Update: As the Anonymous (silent, kind, resourceful, exquisite, enchanting, gentle) friend remarked, you can also get Animal Fossils by trading in Plant Fossils. So you don't really need so many runs. Thanx for the input, Anonymous <3

I've just run into this guy!! Today - and let me remind you that today is (only) the 15th of September!

This t-shirt, also known as "I Can Hear Only U", is one of the Fossil Event award.

1. In order to get this t-shirt, you need 20 Animal Fossils.
2. Each group gets 1 Animal Fossil from the last boss of each instance.

And now for the maths:

• Assuming that this guy is as lucky as anyone, he will get one Animal Fossil, every six runs. 
• Thus in order to get 20 of those, you need 120 runs. 
• Allowing for Eso, which can be 3maned, we can even be optimistic and deduce that you need 100 runs to gather 20 fossils.

The event has started on September the 7th, ie 8 days ago. Even if we assume that on the 14th, because of the maintenance, you can do the same run twice, it is still difficult to understand..

HOW ON EARTH DID HE MANAGE TO DO 100 INSTANCES IN 8 DAYS??

Online life attacks real life

So much on-line drama, sneaking into real life. And that makes me stressed in both my lives! Maybe all three of them (well we have real life, virtual life A' and virtual life B' - so three lives in total).

A co-player summarised it well:

"Less QQ - More pew pew"

In Wings Over Atreia there is a related article published, analysing the different kinds of emotional battles arising everyday in our online world. There is of course the obvious breaking up stuff, but my favourite one is the Custody Battle!

"Custody battle:  So when a Templar and a Cleric part gaming ways, who gets to keep the Chanter?"

Corollary: When a Templar and a Cleric part gaming ways, how should they treat the kid? And how will they protect him from the awkward position of having to choose one over the other?

 

The past days I am really sad and anxious because a game-friend, who has become a real-life friend even if we have never met face to face, is in hospital after being hit by a car. Or so we are told. By a cousin who logs into his skype account. We called the hospital, he is not there. We searched the local news, he is not there. Where is he?

Money for nothin'

There has recently been a lot of discussion on the new item which will be featured at the NCSoft store:

Manastone supplements which guarantee 100% socketing rate. Bought with real life money ($$$).

According to Nyx's announcement:

Yes, it is true that we will be running a promotion in late September to sell the supplements [..] offered on a limited time basis, and then we will evaluate whether they are items that we want to offer permanently based on player feedback and sales.

It is interesting to note that this announcement follows Blizzard's announcement about Diablo 3 which offers a  similar 'legal' way to trade items from one player to the other, with real life money.

Comic from nerfnow.com

I am not going to argue if this is a positive or not move for Aion. What I do want to discuss, is how one handles the situation. Especially one who can afford paying and at the same time does not play as much as others.

The obvious choice? Buy supplements and take advantage of them.

Second thought?  This way you encourage the pay-2-win model - i am against that. Do not buy supplements!

Is this one of those cases that acting by the rules of the system (legally buy) is against the system (ruins game balance)?! I do not know what to do in these cases ><

Comic from pvponline.com (when Diablo 2 was announced - a long time ago). Btw it seems that i might classify as generation X - damn! I always felt Y!

Stupid Bacon!

I am talking to you, Poppy!

After having fed you the most delicious snack, you gave me 10 lesser elemental stones. Not even major elemental stones. Not even 15! You eat the snack and your produce the stupid-iest gift.

Do you know how easy it is, to turn you from Poppy-on-the-Run to Poppy-on-the-Grill???

Dear male friends,

Please allow me to point out that the chances of a girl looking like this on a swimming suite

are roughly the same with the chances of a man looking like that on his swimming suite

.. or at least this is what NCSoft developers believe.

No wait. Or at least that's what NCSoft developers believe that you believe.

What others see - what we see

 What others see..



 What we see..

Naughty naught naughty

I see all those beautiful clothes/skins we get ingame - armours, dresses and gowns!

Some design art for the next patch (2.7) demonstrates what to expect - check what my cleric will be getting.

2.7 Chain Set (Concept Art) 

I love changing my look, don't you? , So many new dresses and gowns and leathers and straps. Leathers.. straps.. I think there is a twist from the usual over-sexified style towards BDSM - but then again it might just be me.

Powerful

Check these girls here - I am sure you know them, they are all famous Disney princesses.

Now let's see how they would look if we allowed them to skin their armours to better looking designs.

"Naughty Princesses" by Kyriazis

So beware dear friends out there. I see new gloves (see below) and belts (see below) coming up soon.

I will not get into the preferences eastern people seem to have. I trust NC to keep the looks of the game close to our .. aesthetics!

Runaway New Pet

Note: This article has been corrected - August 10th

A new pet, The Runaway Poppy, will allow its owners to gain extra Platinum Medals.

That's at patch 2.6, starting August 3rd.

There is a small chance of obtaining Platinum Medals from the gifts that the pet gives in response to feeding.

It eats snacks that drop in Crucible Challenge, when you successfully complete stage 2 (bonus round). Each time you will get either "Snack Food" or "Tasty Snack Food" or "Nutritious Snack Pet Food". These will you give a minor, normal or major bundle respectively.

You only have to feed your pet one poppy treat. There is a chance to get a platinum medal each time you feed it a poppy treat. There is a maximum of 40 times you may feed the pet before having to buy another runaway poppy, which costs around 2010 Crucible Insignia.

... now does this mean that people with good gear will start joining us for EC? Please? o:-)

Moods

Today I borrowed some images from another favourite comic, called Looking For Group, to help demonstrate my mood(s).

That's the initial strip (click on the picture to enlarge it):

Now check how is everything included:

• Most of the time: "I will see, I will learn, what no other scholar has ever dreamed of."
• Rarely: "I'll be able to get them off my back."
• When I am happy: "I will fulfill my true destiny."

 

Based on same comic, here is a visualisation of the basic cleric mechanism:

OK maybe sometimes other thoughts and feelings are there as well :)

However there are few days, very special days, like today, that..

You didn't know I like to kill things? Seriously?

StDev(friends) = 11

You two gentlemen are too young to be my friends!

Hmmm most of you are too young to be my friends!

..and yet you are. Good friends.

Playing MMOs for some years, I found out that a/s/l* is not that important in game cooperation. Yesterday I realised that my closest Aion friends are quite younger than me. Except one who is older. I should have expected that, since I am myself older than the average player. But it made me feel like a cougar!

Being a scientist, I calculated the average age of my closest aion friends (16 ppl) and the standard deviation (σ) of their ages. The results were expected:

• Average age: a bit over 30
• Standard deviation: 11

In case you are wondering what "standard deviation" means - it is a measure of how much the data varies from the average. In the graph above, it varies a lot.

Well after all this extensive statistical analysis, it is now possible to deduce one result:
I don't care about your age. It's you I want.





* a/s/l stands for age / sex / location. Used primarily as a question in chat rooms and other virtual environments,  to request info from the other person.