NOTE: All prices quoted in this article are in reference to the prices on the [EU] Perento Server’s Elyos Broker. Therefore they will not be totally accurate across all Aion’s servers.

Double Experience is almost always met with an outcry of glee from people that want to level alternate characters (or ‘alts’). It’s a quick fix to the grind in Aion, and the leveling curve feels right at that point; the classes don’t seem to come into their own at any level before 30. But when Double Experience starts, I also greet it with concern.

It’s not unknown that I am someone who enjoys the in-game economy as much as the game itself. I enjoy finding niches in the market and exploiting them for money. It’s part of what makes Aion enjoyable for me. But Double Experience shakes things up immensely.

When Double Experience begins, experience for everything apart from quests doubles. Killing monsters, gathering, Aether gathering and crafting. Everyone sees it as the perfect opportunity to level alts, or to level up the skills which take time to work. Aether gathering is often seen as particularly boring so people level that up. But if you’re low on Vitality gathering (gathering plants etc), it’s a perfect chance to level that up and make some money on the side. I’ve been doing exactly that with Knute; she has gone from level 12 to level 34 in 16 days. I’m not done though; I want to get her to 37 for one of the new pieces of content.

But several things become commonplace when Double Experience is turned on; Alts leveling, Gathering to level up, Aether gathering to level up, and crafting. But here is where things start getting messed up.

Alts leveling at twice the pace means that, in terms of probability, there are half the amount of drops; be it Armour, Weapons, Fluxes, and even Vendor Trash. This means that the lower level armours and weapons become more desirable, and thus go higher because of the extra demand and the strangled supply. The doubled leveling pace also means that Kinah is often diverted from main characters to alts to keep up with the pace. This takes Kinah out of the market and into nothing; the most common use for the diverted Kinah is to buy skillbooks. The last set at level 34 cost me about 200,000 Kinah; money that Knute just didn’t have. Vendor Trash also halves in amount, further strangling the Kinah that alts and low-level mains have. But Fluxes then drop in price because in real terms there are more available and people are more interested in doing repeatable Work Orders to level their crafting than making Armour and weapons. More supply, less demand, and ultimately more confusion for anyone trying to work the market.

Crafting experience doubles in two ways; the amount of crafts it takes to actually level up halves, and the amount of experience a craft gives doubles. This means that in relative terms, it takes half the amount of Kinah and time to level from 1 to 399 in Double EXP as it does without. Crafting isn’t just setting up a queue and leaving it; if you’re doing Work Orders it’s a repeatable quest which is often helped by macros selecting the NPC to speak to and ‘Attack’-ing it (in the language of the macro tools in Aion). You can make massive amounts of usable items (consumables), but when your objective is to level up you keep changing the item you craft to make sure you get the most experience points. The gatherers keep up the supply for this extra demand, and thus the cost of the items to make consumables do not chance much; they ebb and flow in small amounts. But the cost of the consumable itself just collapses. I’ve found the worst item the Perer Aether Jelly for this; it’s a 440 craft which makes it ultimately endgame (before 2.0), requires a lot of crafting to up the craft (mainly Alchemy or Cooking) to 449, and while the Recipe is more expensive on the broker, more people are grinding the monsters that drop it to level up their main characters the last stretch to the top level (50, soon to be 55). Thus more people actually get the recipe, and more people make the item. The cost before the merges was about 4,500 Kinah. After the merges it dropped to about 3,800 Kinah. Now the price is 2,800 Kinah with a fluctuation of about 300. On a particularly productive day, the price during double experience is just over half that of before the server merges. And if you’re using Work Orders (for the wearable-based crafts Armoursmithing, Weaponsmithing and Handicrafting) you’re sinking Kinah into them and getting nothing in return. This removes Kinah at an increased pace from the market which could be used to buy materials to craft, or to buy the end result, or a drop, or anything else.

The gatherers and Aether gatherers seem to get the best result out of it; their prices stay the same due to relative increase in both demand and supply, and they get their levels in half the amount of time so they can get the rarer drops, and possibly level up to 400 so they can get the item skins from Vitality gathering in Balaurea when the expansion hits. This gathering feeds the crafters, and the crafters saturate the broker with items and drive down prices. And with many people hitting the upper limits and thinking that it’s a great source of Kinah, you may think it’s good for the in-game economy.

It isn’t. This price drop is going to make people who buy the items and produce them on a mass scale at the old prices just stop. The price for the materials is the same, but we lose money when we sell at a cheaper price. At current prices, crafting to get 2 Perer Aether Jelly yields a profit of less than 1,000 Kinah. A stack of 100 Jellies will yield less tan 50,000 Kinah profit, and this pushes people out of the market. But those that gather all their items now that they have the skill levels high enough to do so will continue battling at such low prices. It’s great for the buyer, but remember that sellers are also buyers. More often than not, they will try to buy that high-priced Armour or Weapon drop that you won but can’t use. But since the market forced them out, they can’t buy it. You lost your sale because somebody undercut the prices again and again, paying no respect to the market they’re selling to.

I can only hope that when this Double Experience event ends, the push for leveling at normal pace to 55 will increase the demand for consumables beyond supply. Only then will the economy recover. Since the merges, the Boiling Balaur Blood Stains (the item often seen as the gauge for the end-game economy) have dropped in price by almost 60% after a few deliberate and calculated moves pre-merge by a few players (myself included) trying to keep the prices steady rather than rising up to 300,000 Kinah a piece, to 115,000 Kinah which is the current price today, supplemented by more players and more characters at BBBS collecting level. Now imagine the prices if every Balic mob, NTC, Sulfur/Siel-based or any other dropped this item, and you were selling them before this change as a level 50 at a responsible and still profitable price.

That thought is how I feel when I see the Broker today. Not nice, is it?

This is the fifth time I’ve tried writing this entry, and for no reason it just seems like it’s hard to do. I started out by wanting to apologise, like I used to do, for not writing in here in ages. But the fact is that I’m not sorry; nor will anyone talk me into being sorry over it. Why? Daevacast has been taking a lot of my time, and ultimately what little cognitive capacity I have. New ways to get people engaged, new content for the podcast etc. And all in all, it’s been taking all the spare time I have; that and Double Experience on Knute. I want to get her to the point where I can run Kromede’s Trial on the day that 2.0 comes out. And it’s going to be harder work now because of the upward curve in levelling. But I’ll at least get to Fire Temple level. That means I can just grind the instance and nothing else.

I also said a while ago that I would stop paying for Xbox Live; I was doing nothing but playing on the PC at the time and nothing was changing. But when server maintenance started or when I’m rendering something I find myself going back to the lumbering Release-360. I’ve been playing Burnout Paradise, and the pick-up speed is just so refreshing for a driving game, much less a sandbox one. Colour-coding the events to make them easier to see on the map was just genius, and even though I may only have ten minutes spare it’s enough time to get a few events done or just mess about and find some decent shortcuts. Soul Caliber IV is another one I’ve been pulling out for a few quick fights. But I always play that online. With the new Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC coming out soon too, I know I’m going to be on it for a while on the 7th when it hits. Even if I just go through it all in a day.

Finding a new job hasn’t exactly been easy, either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m employed already and I know I should be thankful for that in a world where jobs are at a premium in themselves, and many people don’t have one. Honestly, that’s exactly the reason why I’m searching for another job; I am not appreciating where I work, and who I work with/for. Thinking like that, it makes sense to just find somewhere else, get out, and let someone else have that job. Someone who will appreciate it more than I do. I’m not enjoying working on the till like I used to. I like the customers, I like most of the people I work with, but that buzz about it just isn’t there any more. I’m holding out for a job with Asda at the new Langley Mill store; it’s going 24-hours and they’re recruiting pretty much every job in there minus the heads of department, it seems. And seeing that they even have a policy on what you can or cannot say in a blog, that alone says to me that they have a modern mindset for a modern marketplace. I think I’d fit in much better there, although I’ll have to use public transport until I have my license and my own car. Small sacrifices, I think, when I could be doing a job that fits me much better.

Expect me to disappear from the 7th to the 17th of September; got time off work to play Assault on Balaurea, and just general chill-out time. Hell, I might end up actually getting something done.

There’s always a chance!

Well, I finally got it done; Daevacast is up and running. Thanks to Zach giving me a massive hand by letting me use some space on his multi-site account. I was able to miss the largest overhead and just buy the domain name and call-in numbers cost a total of $26.49. So I think I have done well. It was mostly about elbow e-grease and now things are up and running, I just have to add new polls and keep up the episodes. And of course the twitter account.

Also; I passed my Driving Theory Test! 46/50 on the multiple choice questions, and 62/75 on the hazard perception. The pass for the questions was 43 if I remember right, and I was scoring a little above and a little below so I was worried I wouldn’t get it done. But I did! Hazard Perception wasn’t really too much of a problem for me, and that showed. I finished the Theory test in 10 minutes though. No, I didn’t rush.

Finally got Train2Game back up and running as well. After running through Google Calendar again (a big push from Google Apps on Daevacast was the cause, to be honest), I’m setting time aside to make sure that I get it done. And it’s pretty much on any day I’m not working. There’s no excuses, and the only reason for me to stop working on it is when I have to wait for fresh resources/assessments to be marked. I really want to keep it moving along now; I wasted nearly 10 months doing nothing and that’s going to be obvious when 2012 rolls around.

The opportunity I kept mentioning on Twitter, just as an added off-hand, was to be a Train2Game blogger. Basically, to write articles on the game industry or regurgitate industry-centric press releases. I thought about it, and pursued it a little, but the people that were involved just broke off contact. Evidently they found someone more suited. In hindsight it was the right thing; I don’t want to spread myself too thin, and doing a meta-project when I’m not even that far involved in the project itself is never a good thing.

EDIT: Yeah, this post was meant to be put out a week ago, but I kept delaying it.

Razer has been my peripheral maker of choice for a while now; I bought a Diamondback Plasma LtdEd a couple of years ago and haven’t looked back. Since then I had to replace the Diamondback with a 3G upgrade; the thin cable was smashed up against a lip on the back of my desk, and the amount of stress on it just made it snap inside. It served me well though, and the replacement hasn’t died yet.

Aion has drawn me to replace the Diamondback 3G with something that is more suited to the task; the Razer Naga. I first saw it in September ’09 when it had just come out and was the talk of everyone I spoke to who had even the vaguest interest in MMORPGs. The Naga is the epitome of hotkeys; it has a dedicated 12-grid of them, plus a pair next to the left mouse button.

The Naga was meant to be easy to control and easily customisable; Razer touted that they had to rewrite all the Profiling software especially for the Naga, that it made you a better MMO player simply by giving you access to all your skills, as well as other claims that I have to admit I doubted. As a caster class (Spiritmaster), I find myself having to stand still for my skills to complete, with a few instant cast spells. But even with a limited scope for improvement, I felt it very quickly. I had to rebind all my important keys, and changed the skill keys to select marked mobs. It was a real challenge at first and spent a little while just doing repeatable quests to get used to the layout, but it was working. I only ever stopped moving to change target and to use skills that required me to stay still.

It feels like Razer have a lot more pride in the product than usual; more than say the Diamondback or the DeathAdder. The solution that Razer represents in the Naga is a lot more complete, with the ‘trainers’ (stickable bits of rubber to train your thumb to the button positions) and the enhanced manuals. But inversely, Razer has always had pride in their peripherals. I think the extra push in presentation is due to MMO players being the most discerning. Every peripheral we buy is not only a cool piece of kit to sit on our desk; it’s an investment and something we’ll be spending a lot of time using. Hand cramps and RSI show up a lot quicker with MMO gamers down to the sheer amount of time that we spend on our computers.

I can say that the Razer Naga has made me a better player, and for any class that has mostly instant skills (In Aion, it would be mostly the Melee classes) this should be an instant-buy. For Cast-classes, I would also say get it. The price is reasonable for it’s calibre of product, and it also keeps your eyes focussed more on the screen and less on the keyboard when you have a full set of 60 buttons (12 with 5 modifier keys). Plus, the natural position the hand takes when on the mouse is seriously comfortable. For someone with fat fingers, this was a surprise and a welcome one at that.

If I had stars, I would Five Star it. However, I will say that if you have any interest in MMO gaming and find yourself removing your fingers from the WASD position during combat, you need this mouse to take your gaming up a notch.

Note: The interface that fakesteve talks about in the video wasn’t one that I used in Aion. Because of Aion’s embedded Macro interface and skill-bar layout, there hasn’t been a need to make an Add-on specifically for Aion. You bind your Naga’s buttons to the skillbar hotkeys, then change the skills the keys execute directly.

Now almost everyone that I talk with knows that I have a problem with Digital Distribution. Despite being a younger gamer, I’m one of those that likes holding something physical, and will often buy the Special or Collectors’ Edition of a game to make sure that I get that tactile experience. I’m not one to look at manuals on the way home, but having a disc on my shelf is much more self-serving than an icon on the desktop, or a launch link on my Xbox 360. All the same, when the prices are as low as Steam’s were, you have to make an exception.

My Steam library has gone up by 5 games, and I spent just under £20 for the entire lot! I bought:

• Counterstrike: Source
• Deus Ex: GOTY Edition
• Deus Ex: Invisible War
• Killing Floor
• Defence Alliance 2 (Killing Floor Mod)
• Left 4 Dead 2

Since then, both Sam & Max 104 and Trackmania Nations Forever both for the awesome price of £0.00.

I would’ve posted day by day, but I would much rather you go to bitsofjoy and read that; I’m not a pure PC gamer and Dave is, and loves to be cost effective. :]

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to play some games.

For the last week, I’ve been playing with a new gadget. On my Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been using an iPod Touch. Having used it, I can say that some of the Apple magic has rubbed off on me. It feels so very polished, and the consistency of the applications that can be downloaded makes me appreciate the closed-market as much as dislike it.

As for Apps installed;

• Trillian - Having got the PC version of the application and loving it, I downloaded the App. The sync-on-start for all the linked accounts was a killer feature.
• Twitter – An obvious one. Not gonna say anymore.
• Remember the Milk – I’m getting too forgetful, and this App gives me a checklist of stuff to do each morning. If I can keep up with it and make sure that I add stuff either on the website or on the App regularly, then I can make the $25 yearly fee for the Pro account worth it.

iPod Touch + Bluetooth = iPhone - Dropped Calls =D

Also got Skype, Facebook, WordPress (do not download; a joke). And for games, I bought Mass Effect: Galaxy, Monkey Ball, SimCity, PuzzleQuest and Streets of Rage. I still have a few that I want to get, but I want to make sure that I pace myself and avoid splurging £30 at a time on the App Store; Apple’s instant buy feature by entering my password makes it so tempting to buy. With iOS 4 now effectively breaking some of the apps in the store, I’m going to let the developers update them before buying and raging at how it doesn’t work.

Finally cleared out my room of the junk that had slowly accumulated. Once again, I had a box of nothing but wires and connectors for stuff that I didn’t even use anymore; I even had a memory card reader that hooked up PS1 memory cards to my PC (via an LPT port – retro!) and books on HTML3. Obviously, a lot of these are now sitting in the recycling boxes or in the bin outside. It was, frankly, a lot of crap that had been hoarded. I’m surprised I managed to get it done during the day. It’s so hot here that I have a fan, both windows open and I’m still thinking ‘I can’t go outside; it’s boiling’. Of course I have to walk to work, and that leaves me with the most uncomfortable half an hour of each day when I get in. But nobody has said anything about it so I’m happy somewhat. Could be colder. =[

With Aion now starting to pick up pace now (had a few PvP encounters and I’m hopefully going to start trying to rift in a legion group), I’m thinking of starting up a podcast again for Aion. I used to listen to The Abyss, and it provided a lot of information as well as just something to listen to. It disappeared into total obscurity, including it’s hosts, and left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth for both myself and Zach. There’s no other podcast that services the game anymore; they’re all dead. The latest one had it’s most recent episode in February and with 2.0 on the way it only makes sense to get things moving and cover 2.0 as a pace-setting exercise.

Might sleep on it. Got a driving lesson tomorrow and  I don’t want to be sleepy when I’m going through Sutton; that place is just terrible if you’ve not got your wits about you.

Well, it’s been plenty of see, just none of the typing. After what happened with the whole Dark Nature theme, I just became apathetic to the whole idea of blogging. It was the same old stuff; and I just got bored with it. I looked at working with the lifestream idea as the main part of my site again, as the fruits can be seen at /swtcron, but I like having a blog. I might go back to Sweetcron when I have a little more time to devote to tailoring the themes and working with a new piece of software.

Since it’s E3 time, I may as well say that I’m not really interested in anything this year. The 3DS looks like a good sell because it doesn’t use any sort of glasses, but at the same time I’m happy with my DS Lite and the games I have for it now; I just don’t play it enough to warrant keeping up with the times. The new Xbox 360 will obviously be a purchase when my release-day 360 dies again, this time outside of RRoD warranty. The 250Gb Hard Disk as standard is a plus, and even though I don’t use Wireless for gaming, it’d make sense to have it for downloading DLC, demos etc, and the odd occasion when I play it downstairs to keep an eye on the dog. But aesthetically, it looks a mess. The gloss is going to be a fingerprint magnet, and the lines on it are taken straight from Alienware. The whole reason my 360 looks as looked after as it does is because it’s a nice, matte finish with a hard plastic. It looks like it has been out of the box for a week, never mind a few years.

…Feels good to rant again.

I’ll keep this as K2 for now, and I’m going to have to spend a while going through all my old entries. A lot of them are fluff; so I’ll kill them. But the few good ones I’ll keep. Later all.

…OSHI-

After a talk with Lauren, I’ve been told that (at least) two people have contacted her even before she clicked the relaunched site that it was similar. This says two things:

1. I may have unknowingly disturbed a slumbering beast
2. Lauren and I have several common twitter followers (thanks to twitter’s ‘new’ @reply API which hides non-common followers)

So I’m going to address it. Feel free to flame me in my comments. I only ever delete spam, and I intend on keeping it that way. Call me an expletive? Fine. Sell Viagra? Buh-bye.

I’ve changed themes in-sync with Lauren on 3 occasions. The first was a carbon copy; I’ll admit to that; I was an idiot for doing so. She went for Lifestyle from Studiopress, I went for Church from Studiopress. The only difference was the colour; hell, I even offered her the 3.0 files from Church because they would work with Lifestyle. The second was when she switched to an Envato theme (I can’t remember the name). This time I went for something completely different, and I went with Irresistible from WooThemes, because I wanted a frontpage rather than a blog page. The video side of it was totally screwed up, and eventually I went back to K2 from that because I didn’t like it anymore. This time she went for another Envato theme, and so did I: I thought the marketplace was so vast that I wouldn’t have to deal with anything too similar.

I went with Dark Nature, tweaked the settings, and put it out. And here we are. Let’s address the commonalities as they were when I removed Maintenance Mode:

• Frontpage Slider – Fair cop; A slider is something I’ve wanted on my website since Church; I tried to code one into Irresistible but it didn’t work. The buttons I didn’t even think about.
• Portfolio Page – This was an almost carbon copy of the version Viera uses. After seeing this, it was deleted. Don’t need it.
• Footer – A widgetised footer? I’ve been wanting one for ages; the sidebar goes too far down the page in less wall-of-text entries.
• New Font via Java – This is the only way that fonts can be used with a near-100% success rate; simply referring to it when visitors don’t have it installed means you end up with Times New Roman or Arial. Both look horrible in my opinion.
• Slider image to head the entry – This needs to change. Didn’t want it; it was just the default. I’ll be either getting rid of it or changing the formatting.

Changelist

• Remove Portfolio Page – Done.
• Reformat slider image on main blog entry, or remove if unable to change.
• Temporarily change the layout to the standard ‘blog’, and put Featured Content Gallery in the sidebar to see if it looks better.

If all else fails, delete and start over. Most of the work was in the back-end; WordPress was doing some weird stuff. And I had some credit with Envato anyway, so I was more willing to drop the cash. I’ll give it a month or so with the changelist done. If it doesn’t feel right, I’ll sort out another theme. I fell into the rut of using someone else’s theme as a template. You may now raeg at full force.

Some of the more recent entries have gone missing; this was WordPress messing up an export, and it wasn’t all that important. As the 4chan saying goes, “And nothing important was lost”. It was good to have a semi-clean slate; a lot of the install-rot that I had has gone, and I’m now using the Fantastico installation rather than doing it from the ground up. If you haven’t heard of Fantastico before, it means I can delete it, and make a new installation in about ten seconds. It means I don’t need to use the installation that WordPress already has, and edit the config files. Think of comparing a program installer to an extractable ZIP file and you’re not far off with the benefits.

I tried something like this theme with the Church Theme I used a while ago, but this one puts much more focus on entries that are promoted, and the blog of course.  Some things are going to get tweaked; I can’t say that it’s working at it’s best. I have to make a template for the front page scrollers and such, and work the sidebar properly. But until then, I’m taking a break.

This one was too much like hard work. D=

But having a look at the Google search just gave me a long-winded set of instructions centred around using a Mac, or manipulating your hosts file and hosting the file on a home server, or FTP location. But looking at the tags for Podcasts, I experimented, and I found a way for it to work.

To do this, you need a good piece of tag editing software. I used MP3TAG, which is a piece of free software.

1. To get this right, you need to have the file in the correct place already. Mine (being on Windows 7) had to be moved to:
   Libraries » Music » iTunes » iTunes Media » Podcasts » [PODCAST]
   Previous versions of Windows will have the Music folder as ‘My Music’ in your username folder.
2. Start MP3tag, and drag the file into the MP3tag window. Next, hit ALT + T. That’ll bring up the Extended Tag window. If ALT + T doesn’t work, it’s under View » Extended Tag.
3. Now, in the window that pops up, you need to add the following tags.
   • ‘ITUNESPODCAST’ with value ‘1? – This makes iTunes treat it as a podcast.
   • ‘ITUNESPODCASTURL’ – The field needs to be the feed link. Do not use the phobos link that hooks directly into iTunes. You want the feed link that is the RSS feed. If you’re stuck on this, refer to your other podcast episodes for the exact URL. This is what iTunes uses to group the podcasts together, so make sure it’s correct.
   • ‘RELEASETIME’ – This is the date that puts the episodes in order. It’s format is YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ. As an example, if I had a podcast on the 30th of November 2009, released at half past four in the afternoon ‘Zulu time’, the value would be 2009-11-30T16:30:00Z. The time is usually superfluous with most podcasts, but if it is necessary check the podcast before and after the one you’re adding to judge it correctly.
   • ‘TITLE’ – Simple one; the title of the podcast.

This will allow minimal working of the MP3 file. It will play in the podcast section of iTunes/your iPod, and it will be under the correct podcast with a title. Other functions, like Album Art and description are easily added through MP3tag so I won’t go into it. When you’re done, save your changes and drag the file into iTunes. It should show up immediately in the Podcast section as new/unwatched.

Job done.