Exodus is interesting because as the server has developed and players have come & gone, there has never really been one main marketplace established like on other Freedom servers. In the early days of the server, there was Exo-mart, a small, central marketplace close to Esert & the spawn point, but it was quickly eclipsed by Exodus Trading Post (ETP), a public market ran with an aggressive marketing campaign by a cartel of players that also provided bulk goods, horses, & just about any item imaginable. The biggest problem with ETP was that it was on the west side of the server, rather than being in a central location. Eventually, both of those deeds fell and the marketplaces were left in a state of disrepair.

Down south, South Exodus Crafters Market (SECM) was founded on a man-made island and quickly gained traction as many players with high crafting skills and high quality products were/are located in the south. To this day, it still exists as the oldest continuous and still active marketplace on Exodus. It’s located very close to the Celebration server border and gets a lot of cross-server traffic, but it’s location down south again limits the number of players from all areas of Exodus from using it to its fullest potential.

Back in central Exodus, two new markets popped up: White Pearl Market, a collection of roadside stalls run by the Pearls alliance, and New Market, a large marketplace for members of New Pineview to sell their wares. While both markets have great locations & merchandise, they’re also private markets or controlled by player alliances – not necessarily a bad thing, but Exodus was still missing a large public central marketplace accessible by both land and water.

Enter Madbananas and Zerobyte. They saw the need for this as well and established Exodus Central Market (ECM) along the main highway in between Esert and one of the main waterways to the east. ECM has a ton of market stalls that are available to the public, as well as a mailbox and an open-air pavilion with altars to all three gods.

My modest contribution to ECM has been teal-painted pointing signs guiding players there from Esert, as well as a shop sign at the market and landscaping along the highway in the area. The highway was originally messed up with odd angles and mismatched tiles, so I took the liberty of fixing the slopes, repaving the highway, and planting trees to make it attractive again. I have a merchant there as well, selling ropes, sails, and other random goods.

There are of course other small local markets on Exodus, as it should be, but over the past few weeks that its been open ECM has been gradually gaining new merchants and there is getting to be a really nice selection of wares there, which makes the trip to the market very worth it. If you’re traveling by water, the closest port is New Freeport to the east- just moor your boat and head west on the highway, you can’t miss it. If you’re at Esert, follow the teal signs to the market, it takes about 3 minutes to walk there and it’s a fairly safe trip.

Happy Wurming!

So! Gaming. I really don’t have time to play multiple games, so at this point I’m playing the one game that has ruined me on all other MMOs: Wurm Online. There’s always something else to do in Wurm, and I enjoy the freedom that it gives me to determine my own goals. Since I blogged last, Wurm 1.0 released along with all the updates it brought: multi-story buildings, animations, character customization, new graphics, etc. I’ve been super-impressed at just how much the Wurm team has improved the game with 1.0. Let’s take a look at how Avonlea Bay has changed since we spoke last…

The big story is multi-story, really. When 1.0 went live all our houses lost their auto-roofs and we were stuck with roofless buildings to work our magic on. Above is the workshop, which has an added second story and balcony… oh yes, balconies are now possible.

The new and improved Wild Boar Inn. I tried this time to make it more like a proper fantasy-style inn, with a meeting room and kitchen downstairs and the bedrooms upstairs. Balconies are a must, of course.

The new winery, which is what used to be a villager house. I really love the way it turned out, with the wood on top of stone – it looks like a proper estate winery.

Because I can’t leave well enough alone, and because Raamkozijin showed me a picture of his horse pen setup, I tore down part of some old farm fields and am in the process of building proper stables with attached horse pens and enchanted grass.

My husband decided to expand upon his ironworks building, which then turned into a treehouse, and then ended up turning into a compound. I think he’s still building on it. What you can’t see here is that there is actually a tower reaching up towards the sky – it’s very peaceful up there among the treetops.

I also managed to get a male chicken from my pal Fatboy. Chickens seem to be super-rare as they’re difficult to take care of, but I’m going to give it a shot. Eventually I want to get a hen as well and see if I can start a bit of egg production. These little chickens need a LOT of corn laying around to keep them fed – it’ll be interesting to see if I can keep up with their needs.

In addition to all the craziness on-deed, I’ve been working like a madwoman off-deed. I finished Dead Mans Highway, a 2-tile-wide road extending from our alliance region northwards, connecting the SE to the NE. My next big plan is extending the highway all the way to Esert -  I’m a glutton for punishment. I’ve also been making and planting signage to a new market in the Esert area, and doing some terraforming and landscaping along the highways around there.

On top of all that, we’ve been playing musical deeds in our region, reshuffling deeds around. I disbanded Medway Plantation so that my pal Xalorum could deed a smaller tract of it close to the coast. He in turn disbanded his deed, which was right on the highway path, so that project could be completed. Revnik deeded a large tract of coastline to the east of us, which used to be part of a deed that dropped a while back.  I bought Jewelspar from Mayrin, restored it to nature, and it has now been renamed Cherryglade Hill, after my old independence deed. And to top it all off, I deeded a tract of land just to the north of Avonlea Bay and Trueknight Haven to act as a forest sanctuary extension to those two deeds.

Phew!

A big welcome to new Brawler Delerium who now resides at Hannibal Retreat in our region as well. Always nice to have a new Brawla!

For now though, it’s time to get back to building fences!

]]> http://wildboarinn.net/2012/09/01/quote-of-the-da/feed/ 4 moxiedoodle wurm.quote http://wildboarinn.net/2012/08/31/fare-thee-well-heroes/ http://wildboarinn.net/2012/08/31/fare-thee-well-heroes/#comments Sat, 01 Sep 2012 01:46:34 +0000 Moxie http://wildboarinn.net/?p=1981 Continue reading →]]> This afternoon, we heard the news this afternoon that City of Heroes will be closing. I’m greatly saddened, because it was the very first MMO I ever played and the game that got me back into gaming in general. It was newbie-friendly, easy to play, difficult to master at times. It was the place where I participated in my first raid (the Hamidon) and played in my first small-group “heroic”, the impressive Terra Volta trial. It was where I joined my first guild, a wonderful group of guys that I stay in contact with to this day.

Back to the start: My husband (a huge superhero geek) picked up a copy of the game on launch day. He had never played a MMO before, but thought the game looked interesting. At that point the only online “game” I was playing was Neopets (for real!), but that night I watched as he configured the character creator for an hour before ending up with his character, a Storm/Illusion controller named Spector Storm.

Spector Storm and his “monkeys”

After he finished playing for the night, I took over his account for a little while and came up with my character – named, I kid you not, Cyber Chick. She was an Empathy/Energy defender, primarily a healer, with a funky cyber-punk style and hot pink spiky hair that looked like she stuck a finger in an electrical socket. Interestingly, even with that name, she was never propositioned in-game. Whether that’s due to the overall decent community that CoH had or due to the hair, I’m still not sure.

Pew pew laser BEAMS!

The next day I bought my copy of the game and created my account, and it totally sucked me into MMOs. Within 2 or 3 days, we joined a guild called Liberty Force, which had been started by a former hardcore EQ (me: “what’s EQ?”) and ex-military player who decided that CoH would be where he would attempt to play more casually. He was still a hardass at times: we weren’t allowed to be in any other guilds on our alts, we had weekly supergroup meetings that were required attendance if we were online, and if you missed an event that you signed up for, well, you were sure to hear about it in no uncertain terms. Still, when all was said and done, he was fiercely protective of his guildies, understood when we had to take extended breaks due to life stuff, and encouraged us all to be not just a chat channel, but a tightly-knit and active group of players that eventually became able to take out just about every encounter in the game. He taught me everything I know about guild leadership, and while I’m generally nowhere near as strict a guild officer as he was, he was an excellent teacher for a complete newb.

My absolute favorite thing about CoH were the villain groups they came up with. My favorite were the Freakshow, a bunch of cybernetic-enhanced street punk anarchists that were usually surprisingly hard to defeat. Other favorites were the corrupt circus Carnival of Shadows, the highly-annoying Clockwork, the occult sorcerers of the Circle of Thorns, and the morbid Doctor Vhazilok, who creates patchwork abominations out of citizens and criminals alike. I’ll never forget rolling through the maze of Perez Park, having no idea where I was and being chased by Circle of Thorns guys into a group of Hellion gang members, jumping into a lake to get away and running into the Kraken. Good times.

We played City of Heroes for almost a year, until we got into the beta-test for a new hot game called World of Warcraft. After that we returned to the game a few times short-term, but really we were on to other things, though we still had very fond memories of City of Heroes. Ultimately, while CoH was (and still is) a great game, it hasn’t aged so well. I sort of lost interest after City of Villains was released, but still, hearing that they’re actually shutting the doors down is a surprise. We didn’t hear a word about CoH being in trouble or having issues, so it’s likely a safe assumption that they just simply weren’t profitable enough for NCsoft.

My thoughts go out to the current employees at Paragon Studios. Thank you for everything you’ve done over the years and for developing an amazing game – and I hope that you all find great places to land and keep doing what you do best – making us heroes.

How do gold sellers try to hack your account? Easy: they scrape fansites, guild websites, forums, social media, and in some cases have databases full of known MMO account emails and passwords. Fansites, guild websites, and forums don’t always have the best security – they’re not your bank or your workplace, so the likelihood that your email address and password is encrypted is usually fairly low. I’m not accusing those websites of being corrupted, but they can be easy targets. So if you’re using the same email and password for your game account as you use on game-related websites, Twitter, or Facebook, you’re setting yourself up to be compromised – in fact, you very possibly already are compromised.

Say your email address is gamer123@email.com and your password is 123456. You use that email account for your regular email, but you also have used it to sign up for your guild website and accounts on a few popular gaming sites. You also use this email for your WoW account, your Rift account, and your GW2 account.

It’s not difficult for a hacker to get your email address from one of the gaming websites, or a compromised game database, or from your blog. Then, all they have to do is start sending official-looking emails to your email account telling you that somebody is trying to change your password – and you need to click this link to verify your correct password! Needless to say, all this will do is give or verify your password to the hacker and they are in.

Don’t despair though! There are a few things you can do to strengthen the security on your accounts, courtesy of Mr. Moxie, a cyber-security engineer and ethical hacker:

1. Have a unique, fresh email address for every major game. Do not use these accounts anywhere else.

Quick anecdote: I have one email address I use for regular email, one email address I use for all gaming forums, guild websites, and other website junk, and then a unique email address for each major MMO that I’ve played. The passwords are all different (though I have a system so that I can easily remember them). I have never received a phishing email on the actual game email addresses. I have received plenty of phishing emails on the email address that I use for gaming sites and forums. Sneaky little bastards!

I can’t emphasize this enough – use different emails. Don’t use your game emails for anything else – ever.

2. Pick better passwords.

Some folks will tell you to pick a phrase like “Charlie Went To The Grocery Store For Pickled Herring 2 Go” and then use “CWTTGSFPH2G” for your password. That’s always confusing to me. The absolute best password you can have is at least 14 characters long, the longer the better. You can even use a combination of 4 or more words, such as “sunshinehairslowbrain”, which would take 4 trillion years for a desktop PC to crack. Adding numbers and symbols would be even better. If you want to test your password to see how secure it is, take a look at http://howsecureismypassword.net.
It’s a great resource that Mr. Moxie passed along to me a while back. Just make sure that you don’t pick words that would be easily guessed, like your kid’s names or your pet’s names!

3. If you get emails about your account status, never assume they are real.

Never click a link from an email to sign in to your game account. Always go straight to the game’s website and sign in that way. If you get emails saying that somebody is trying to change your password, don’t panic. Change the email address on the account.

4. Be careful about what gaming websites you visit and sign up for.

There’s a lot of sketchy gaming websites out there. Use Adblock Plus or other adblocking software in your browser. Don’t click advertisements, even if they seem innocuous. Don’t download mods or add-ons unless they come from a trusted and verified source.

5. Get an authenticator.

In the case of Guild Wars 2, we’re still waiting for the authenticator. While you can use the steps above to greatly minimize your chances of being hacked, authenticators ultimately are the best protection you can have. As soon as they are released, get one ASAP.

However, to support ArenaNet (who has absolutely blown our minds not just with an amazing game but with an outstanding connection to the community) we made our own “Collectors Edition” using the cash we saved by not buying the CEs.

GW2 Digital Download x2: $120

GW2 Full Soundtrack: $30

GW2 Limited Edition Strategy Guide and Map Stand: $30

Extra Character Slots: $40

Gems: $80

Total: $300, the same price as two GW2 CEs, and we’ll certainly get a lot more use out of the gems, slots, soundtrack, and guide than we would the figurine or the in-game items. I still don’t regret not buying the actual Collectors Edition, but we’re more than happy to support ArenaNet for the great experience and service they’ve provided so far.

By the way, that Limited Edition Strategy Guide and Map Stand just arrived today, and they are beautiful! Lots of color, high-quality, and fantastic artwork. Here’s a couple of (admittedly fuzzy) shots I snapped with my phone just a couple of minutes ago.

Most folks know that going into GW2 I was completely torn on what characters to play. There are so many great classes and since I took care not to play too much in the BWEs, I didn’t have a specific class that really grabbed me the way that some games in the past have done. However, after a few days of playing and experimenting with different races & classes, I finally settled on my first three characters.

The Main: Bette Starke, Norn Engineer

Y’all, I have never, ever had a desire to play any sort of engineer-ish class in an MMO, much less an engineer as my main. I primarily picked the engineer because they use both rifles and pistols, but as I’ve been leveling her up I’ve fallen in love with the kits. The flamethrower is my absolute favorite thing right now, and the grenades are the bomb-diggety. There’s nothing like wading into a DE while blasting fire, throwing AoE napalm, pelting the mobs with AoE grenades and explosions, and then detonating some turrets. So much fun. She’s currently level 15ish (told you I wasn’t in a hurry) and rocking through Wayfarer Foothills.

Alt #1: Moxie, Asura Elementalist

I originally planned on rolling an Asura Necro and Thief much, much later, but I decided to just go Elementalist instead. I think she’s the cutest little Asura ever, and I adore her animations.

Alt #2: Riley Mcghee, Human Ranger

During my short stint in GW1 I played a human ranger named Riley Mcghee, so this character is her spiritual successor. I’m hoping to get her a pink flamingo pet at some point.

So far I’m totally enthralled with GW2. My favorite thing to do at the moment is running gathering routes around the various zones, which is really, really, strange, but is also nice because I typically jump into whatever dynamic events are going on for added XP and loot. I’m also finding a lot of fun in answering questions in the beginner zones – it seems like the main thing I keep hearing is “How do I level?”. The hearts and dynamic events aren’t exactly the most intuitive system starting out, but once you get used to it, you’re golden.

AUGUST 27TH 2012 – The Gaiscioch Family would cordially like to invite everyone who knew, loved, shared a memory with, or was touched by his story to join us in celebration of Roger “Oldroar” Rall’s life and achievements.

The memorial will be staged in Guild Wars 2 at Shaemoor Garrison in Queensdale on Sanctum of Rall and on any shard that wishes to participate and honor this fallen hero. Proceedings will take place on September 5th 2012 at 6PM PST. All are encouraged to join us on RaidCall to listen in on this event. All are welcome to join.

Please plan to be there early as Queensdale will fill up quickly. In the event of overflows please gather at Shaemoor Garrison on whatever destination you land on and welcome everyone from that server to join in the festivities as well. Our RaidCall is open to everyone for the duration of this event – even those who do not play Guild Wars 2.

There will be a short video launched after the memorial recapping the events for those who are unable to attend recapping all that transpired.

Join us on RaidCall on September 5th at 6PM PST:

1. Download Raidcall at: http://www.RaidCall.com/download.php
2. Create an Account
3. Search for group: 4995970
4. After joining right click on your name in the channel and “Edit Membership Name” to include your [GUILDTAG] Character Name.

RaidCall supports up to 10,000 users so you shouldn’t have a problem being able to attend.

We look forward to sharing this moment in Guild Wars 2 history with you!

For more information, please visit the Gaiscioch website.

About Roger “Oldroar” Rall:

Roger was a key player in the Gaiscioch Social Gaming Community both as a event leader and as a father figure. His devotion towards helping people impacted thousands and after his passing, ArenaNet not only named a server in his honor but they also put an NPC in game that tells the story of Rall Oldroar, a Charr hero. Roger’s passing came suddenly and without warning and sent a shockwave through the MMO community. He was known for his leadership in the Battle for Badlands Public Community Events in Warhammer Online and through those who he came in contact with. His voice was unforgettable.

Folks, he’s there. And he tells the grand tale of Rall Oldroar, a great Charr hero and mentor.

The real Oldroar wanted to play a Charr, and now his voice, his leadership abilities, and his love for teaching others has been immortalized in-game. This, along with the Sanctum of Rall server name, and now Syp’s daughter being given an NPC in the game just goes to show how much heart and passion that ArenaNet has for their community. Thank you ArenaNet for everything that you have done for us fans throughout the development of Guild Wars 2. We are wishing you a FANTASTIC headstart and launch, and much success afterwards. You totally deserve it!

Thanks to my new dancing pal Tyr Fidulgen [BRLY] for showing me how to sync the dancing up! The command is /dance * for anybody that wants to experiment with synced dancing.

Also, Tyr, sorry for cutting out so soon after we stopped – I had a computer crash. :)