Welcome to the twenty-first installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month topic comes to us from @ZoneGhost who a few month ago asked “Is Low Sec the forgotten part of EVE Online?” Is it? I’d like us to explore this even further. Is Low Sec being treated differently by CCP Games than Null Sec (Zero-Zero) or Empire space is? Can one successfully make a living in these unsecured systems where neither Alliance nor Concord roam to enforce their laws? What’s needed? Or is everything fine as it is?

This couldn’t have come at a better time as I can almost be counted as a full blown pirate know (Just a little bit remaining before -10).

Now is low-sec being treated differently, I’d say yes, but this is because there isn’t a whole lot of content in low-sec and it is the least populated region of EVE.

Yet this shouldn’t be taken as me defending CCP’s current activity regarding low-sec, see it as points of improvement.

I have had a lot of fun the way low-sec currently is, but the periods in between these fun moments are simply too large because of the lack of population, thus an increase of population would equal more fun.

Now what is needed to make it more exciting, I know these probably have been mentioned already but let’s go through them anyway:

• More reasons for the high-sec carebear to risk his ship in low-sec in search of profit
  • Fix the risk/reward ratio for missions
  • Add more exciting exploration sites (Well more rewarding)
• Pirate only items/services for the people that have a negative status
  • Items
  • Booster Production
  • Pirate Scripts (Possibly)

Mynxee has been pushing this with her Making Low Sec Matter Ideascale and Forums and they will push some ideas onto CCP, so let’s hope we will see some of this get implemented.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post even though it was a short one, and stay tuned for the next blog banter.

Xeross out.

Participants

• CrazyKinux’s Musing: The Lure of the Wild
• Banter 21: Low-sec- Chocolate Heaven
• Subs’ suds: Forever a noob in Eve: Low-Sec – the forgotten part of EVE Online
• Blog Banter XXI – Lo-sec = Low Priority? | I am Keith Neilson
• In the Ghetto | A Mule in EvE
• where the frack is my ship?: Blog Banter 21: What’s good for the goose…
• Blog Banter #21: Change? | Sarnel Binora’s Blog
• Low Sec = Wild West ~ Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
• a merry life and a short one: Low Sec: I Wanna Talk to You
• Low Sec = No Sec | Diary of a Garbageman
• EVEOGANDA: Blog Banter 21: Friggin’ Low Sec
• Drifting through the Stars: Blog Banter #21: Low-Sec – The Forgotten part of EVE Online
• Captain Serenity: Eve blog banter #21 – Low Sec, The Forgotten Part of Eve
• Low Sec: the Best part of EVE Online | Nitpickin’s
• Aeroxe’s Assault – “Is Low Sec the forgotten part of EVE Online?”
• Eve Blog Banter 21 | A Scientist’s Life in Eve
• Latro’s Bunker: Eve Blog Banter 21 – Low-sec
• A “CareBears” Journey » Blog Archive » EVE Blog Banter #21: The Low Sec Conundrum
• EVE Blog Banter 21: Low Security Space « The Nomadic Gamer
• EvE Blog Banter #21: Where Now?!? – EvE Blasphemy
• Low-security space is for people who care « EVE’s parity bit
• Blog Banter 21 – Fish Heads and Baby Ruths
• EVE on Real Life: Obsession with Lowsec
• Stand by to Repel Boarders (Blog Banter 21) | Interstellar Privateer
• EVE Blog Banter #21: Location, Location, Location « The Lathspell of Mithrandir
• Blog banter #21: Stuck in the middle with you « Diary of a Pod Pilot
• Persephone Astrid’s YarrJournal » Blog Archive » Living la Vida Lowsec
• Freebooted: BB21: Low-Sec – If it Ain’t Broke, Introduce a Law-man
• Flashfresh – The Pirate.: EVE Blog Banter #21 ‘Low Sec Needs Fixing? Yes but not too much…’
• Nashh Kadavr’s EVE Blog: EVE Blog Banter #21, low-sec love…
• New Eden History Student » Blog Archive » Blog Banter #21
• Blog Banter 21: No Man’s Land « Yarrbear Tales
• Omnis Arcanum of EVE: EVE Blog Banter #21: Is CCP indifferent to developing Low Sec??

The mass test began at 20:00 EVE Time (So 22:00 local time for me), we first rallied on the MHC-R3 gate in F67E-Q and after everyone arrived we jumped through to MHC-R3.

From my point of view the grid loaded quite quickly, and after this we approached the gate for a second jump back into F67E-Q.

On this jump it seems that CCP intentionally enabled Traffic Control so everyone would jump simultaneously.

When the traffic control lifted grid loaded swiftly, seemingly faster than the last time.

After this we did some more warping and jumping tests, first warping test got us quite a bit of lag when jumping into the other fleet (Around 1-2 minutes before we loaded grid).

After this we did another test with some fix turned on and we loaded almost instantly after arrival.

Now after this it was time for the final battle I noticed a few things during this:

• Final battle
• Modules keep running after lock is lost
• Modules lock up (Keep running) for around 2-6 cycles after stop order
• Ranges on overview sometimes aren’t updating
• Lag is very manageable 2-5 seconds

Oh yes and we (Fleet X) won o/. Now I’ve also made some screenshots and a video.

Video (4 Parts)

Youtube Playlist | Download

Screenshots

So I recently stumbled upon this open beta of Final Fantasy XIV, another attempt to create a Final Fantasy MMO, I haven’t really followed the happenings around the first one so I can’t really compare it to that, well let’s get started.

Registration & Installation

So the first thing to do is register an account and apply for the beta (Even have to do that while it’s an open beta), this process goes smoothly, but after that we need to download and install the game.

After you register you download a small installer of about 110MB, however this is just the tip of the iceberg (And way too big for just the launcher in my opinion), so after downloading and installing this, you need to run this to install all the content. Well that’s the idea.

After executing the launcher the wait began, it seems that this game uses torrents to spread the updates, and the included torrenting library/program does a horrible job, I never even managed to get any kind of download going with it.

Fortunately the torrents can be found in “My Documents/My Games/FINAL FANTASY XIV Beta Version/downloads/ffxiv-beta/d96437e6/metainfo”. So after downloading them through uTorrent I placed them on the correct location and the game started to apply them.

So after another hour I could finally play this bringing the total install time to about 3 hours (On average after 2 installs).

Graphics

The graphics are simply astounding, they look great and the game has a good feel to it. However due to the graphics even my rig couldn’t run it, and it was last upgraded with almost top of the shelf equipment about 9 months ago.

So with all settings on low I was able to get around 25FPS on my rig, so though it looks good I hope this gets some improvement on the official release as I prefer playability over eye candy.

Sound

I haven’t paid too much attention to the sound, but the voices sound good, the sounds fit and the music does too, so not much to note here.

Gameplay

Now on to the actual gameplay. After creating your character you land in a forest, apparently you have jumped out of a plane. After walking around a bit you get attacked by a few wolfs or whatever they are to represent.

They are just there to get you to know the combat a bit and while I only tried one class the combat system works nice, not something astounding but nice.

Next to this 1 character can also be all classes, you can switch between them on the fly. Basically every class uses a specific weapon type, depending on the type you are wearing you will train that class.

You have both a physical level which can increase your attributes and a class level that can level the current class, granting new skills and other nifty things.

Character Customization

Your character is customizable however to a certain degree, no hundreds of sliders to adjust, just a few dropdowns with things to choose from.

Multiplayer

Haven’t explored this a lot either, so I can’t comment on it.

System Requirements

Conclusion

Even my rig couldn’t decently run this game, not even on its lowest settings. So I’m afraid that for most of the mainstream gamers this game will be out of reach.

I won’t update this any more until they improve the FPS or when I get a new gfx card as this is unplayable at the FPS I am getting.

• Graphics 5/5
• System Requirements 0/5
• Sounds 3/5
• Gameplay 4/5

So after I’ve left Fusion Death Inc. to join Goonswarm I kind of missed my old corp mates, so after deciding to leave Goonswarm and to join Hellfleet I decided I would make my alt (Yuuko Sozu) join Fusion Death once again.

I still need to get some ships to actually actively do anything in Null-Sec but at least I can hang out with my old corp mates again.

~Xeross

… well for my main that is. In the past weeks we’ve been actively roaming, camping and suicide ganking resulting in my security status being below -5 now (It’s below -7 actually).

And as it seems I always have to learn things the hard way. I had some loot I needed to sell in Jita and I completely forgot that I would get popped as soon as I entered high-sec with this as result.

One of my new corp mates also learned the hard way that you shouldn’t use an Ashimmu in a gate camp especially not when you are engaging a bait Maller.

Well that’s it again for this status update.

Xeross, out.