It’s been a fun ride so far, and one that I’m not planning to get off of any time soon.

In my travels I’ve been snapping screens left and right, and I’ve collected some of the best for you here. Enjoy!

The strangest part of this video is that they are so caught up in the mockery that they completely neglect to tell us anything the game they’re trying to promote. Take a trip to the video page on the WoT website you’ll find another brainless video, this time taking a shot at fantasy games because apparently if you play fantasy–ZOMGROFFLETANKS!!!11!

It turns out they do in fact have a gameplay video sandwiched in there which confirms suspicions. This really is just a brainless tank-on-tank shoot-em-up. At least we can say we never saw such a game before.

Revolutionary tank-on-tank shoot-em-up action!

They mention tank modifications, but the game is set in the WWII era and everything is so low-tech that I can’t imagine how upgrades can be even remotely interesting. Trading up those cast-iron track rollers for the newfangled steel ones? Replacing the thick heavy armor plates with still thicker and heavier armor plates? Yawn… I only hope for their sake their first expansion includes modern tanks which consist of a bit more than a giant gun bolted to a pile of steel.

At any rate, I thank Wargaming for the fair warning. Without their dimwitted marketing campaign to tell us “Our game, by design, is a mindless, empty shell and consequently the complete opposite of the kind of thing you would like”, I might have made the mistake of investing some small amount of time or money on the thing.

P.S. I’m back

Time to go relearn how to fly…

I awoke one morning in August with a bad headache, $60 of charges on the credit card, and a deep-seated feeling of regret. The confirmation emails confirmed the horror: at some point during the previous night’s inebriation I had flipped the switch on my WoW account and transferred servers to play with my buddies. I said I might as well get my money’s worth and ended up going in for another 3 months of instance grind. And with all the grinding, EvE was neglected and eventually the subscription was cut because I just wasn’t spending time playing the game. FML.

Good thing for me, CCP is quite forgiving. So here we are, hours away from the highfalutin’ newfangled Dominion expansion–subscription engaged.

Dominion features I’m personally looking forward to:

• Pretty Planets. I saw the screens. Those babies look good.
• Chromium-based in-game-browser. That old IGB was a motherfucker. I use Google Chrome every day because it’s faster than a cheetah on speed, and I look forward to much of the same.
• Revamped Mail System. When I was in E-Uni, I’d spend an hour a day sifting through mail. No fun, sir.

There’s also massive sweeping changes to Sovereignty. This is big, I guess. I’m still a noob flying solo in hi-sec. Perhaps soon I’ll see about joining a halfway decent corp.

“All I can say, is that [the expansion] is focused on sovereignty and you will not be able to walk in it.”

Most of us have spent more time than we care to admit customizing the look and the personas of our in-game selves. After that, though, we’ve grown accustomed to an occasional glimpse at a thumbnail sized portrait as we cruise around New Eden in our ships. With all there is to do and experience in EvE, do we really need the addition of a glorified chatroom?

Do you think the addition of purely social features is a worthwhile venture, or do you believe that CCP would best serve us utilizing all their resources to improve and build upon the meat n’ potatoes of what makes EvE such a great game in the first place?

Now I’m pretty new to EvE. I’ve never been scammed or attempted to scam anyone else. I’ve never even attempted to create or accept a freeform contract. I shouldn’t give a damn about this at all. So why is it bugging me?

Forget the fact that EvE is about space ships. Forget the huge fleet battles, the wormhole exploration, and the economy. In my opinion, one of the greatest things about EvE is that it does very little to protect players from their own stupidity.

In order to succeed in EvE, you have to be smart. The constant threat of others trying to outsmart and take advantage of you is part of what makes the game exciting. Staying one step ahead of these people is what makes the game rewarding.

The removal of an avenue for potential trouble is the removal of an avenue for risk and excitement. It is the removal of a challenge and the gratification one recieves when he or she has risen above it. This time I believe CCP took a step in a very bad direction, I truly hope this is the last we see of this type of thing.

Projectile Ammo

Projectile Ammo comes in small, medium, large, and extra large sizes. You must use the size appropriate for the projectile turrets fitted on your ship. Projectile ammo types all affect your optimal range, so unless you have a really good reason to do otherwise, I would recommend sticking with the same ammo type in all your turrets.

• EMP – Electromagnetic
• Fusion – Explosive
• Phased Plasma – Thermal
• Titanium Sabot – Kinetic

Hybrid Ammo

Coming Soon

Laser Crystals

Coming Soon

Missiles

Coming Soon

What Damage Type Should I Use?

The NPCs in each mission usually have weaknesses to a particular damage type and as as you start working your way up to more difficult missions, it will make your day a lot easier if you take advantage of this fact.

Something most new players miss is that the NPC faction you’ll encounter is given to you in the mission dialog. Clicking on the icon will bring up the info display for the faction. This particular mission will take me up against the Gallente Federation.

Once you know the faction, you can use a resource such as Evelopedia to look up each faction’s strengths and weaknesses. You are likely to find some gaps, holes, and inconsistencies here, so an even better idea would be to look up your particular mission in a mission database such as EveSurvival.org’s offering. I’ve set EveSurvival as the default homepage in my in-game browser, which is very handy.

Many missions on EveSurvival are listed multiple times for different mission levels and NPC types. Just use the NPC Faction info in the mission discription to aid you in your selection.

Note: These resources will also tell you what damage type you can expect to be used against you. This allows you to fit damage-specific shield or armor hardeners, making you much tougher to kill.

Doing my homework lets me know that I should use ammo which deals kinetic and thermal damage . Additionally, I should set up my tank to resist kinetic and thermal. Incoming and outgoing damage types are quite often different, so make sure you look up both.