What happened to xzin? (Xzin: Details inside)

[Runiat]

WTB highly skilled and talented people who have desire to work on an early stage company but who lack funding and an idea. Must not suck or desire huge paychecks before the company is off the ground and must be VERY self directed. Experience with computers, networking, game engines and ability to solve problems a must.

I can start in 2012!

Freshman to MSc takes a couple of years...

[Steph]

...
Aerial combat has Trammelized world PvP.
...

Are you saying you used to play Ultima Online? =]

[Majestic_Clown]

if it was for a spam email going through work colleagues I wouldn't of been here multiboxing.

Fair well good luck in the future.

[Morganti]

I feel your pain Xzin. I'm back in DAoC simply because I have playable PvP toons there that are already setup and ready to go when I get online.

My priests destroyed all in PvP in WoW, but the thought of 5x 30 more levels was tough to swallow, especially with an expansion on the horizon raising the level cap (I really hate when games raise the level cap instead of being more creative with their expansions....it's the easy way out).

I also understand the call to do something that shows a profit in the end. PM me...I think I fit your candidate requirements. I'd be interested to hear your ideas.

[Xzin]

I loved UO. More than WoW and EQ combined. It was THAT good. If you didn't play it you missed out on something special.

Morg, PM me if you want to discuss details.

[TheStender]

WTB highly skilled and talented people who have desire to work on an early stage company but who lack funding and an idea. Must not suck or desire huge paychecks before the company is off the ground and must be VERY self directed. Experience with computers, networking, game engines and ability to solve problems a must.

If only my skills in those areas were actual skills and not just "I think I know what I'm doing." :P

Hopefully you can get some good people. Best of luck to you.

And post pictures of your setup.

[Rin]

I'm still grinding. I dreamed of doing this when I had a level 1 killing skellies in Nek Forest so Im having a great time.

I once figured out I killed like the equivilant of 100,000 french armor horses (forget what they called) in AOE, and Im sure Iv killed way more mobs then anyone in EQ. Its all about grinding ... kill dem mobs! Iv been 3 days right now (about 6 hours) just buying and meming spells, moving tiems around, finishing up the bear quests turn ins and doing tradeskills (making the spells for my wizzrds), not even killing mobs ... for 3 days heh.

I don't lag cause I play at 3 am pacific when the server dosnt even have 200 in the main channel. I usually have 50ms to the server on all 6 compouters, once I get to like 100ms I just log out cuase a lot of my play is based upon fast response and lag will wipe me.

Big edge to be done with rl stuff (I'm 54 now) and not worry about all that...

Just got a HD video camera so will be making some videos of my set up in the next few weeks.



For all the people who go to WoW instead of EQ you guys don't seem to enjoy it as much. Of course if you do look at it "well I can improve my pixils a bit or I can make $300 in the same time" of course you're going to go for da bucks. Im just at the point where I dont need more money...

Besides 1/10th of a second after yur dead everything you did was a waste of time anyways lolzors...

Xzin are you the mod / owner of this site? If you want to sell it or pass it on to someone who will take care of it for the long term then I'm yur man!

I don't think you've killed more mobs than me. Look up the Ynopi's (Fironia Vie server)- First Drakkins to 75 in EQ, all 6 of them - ended up getting them into the top 100 characters for each of their classes too and in one of the top 10 guilds on the server... :twisted: Got burned out and quit shortly after. Agro management in EQ is easy mode, plus the fights are a lot slower overall, as opposed to WoW... although the leveling in EQ is much, much, much more difficult.

Xzin made some very good points, and to tag onto that, I feel that eventually everyone here will grow tired of WoW (unless you're one of those diehards that will just play until Blizzard shuts the doors (not likely)) - especially once you reach the leveling cap and then are forced to repeat the cycle. It's a great business model for Blizzard though, as it keeps people playing (add content->give people incentives to play more->loop). For now, I'm enjoying WoW far more than I enjoyed EverQuest, and that's also in part of having one-control for everything. In EQ I actually ran 6 different sets of controls; it just takes much more focus to be able to react and respond properly when you are using 6 independent sets of keys.

To cover your other tangent; I don't play any of these games for money. Games are just that - games. While I'm not a venture capitalist like Xzin, I make very good money programming for corporations in Minneapolis. You invest money into "gaming" knowing that you're getting entertainment out of it - nothing more. Besides that, trying to be competetive in today's global market by selling Blizzard's Intellectual Propery is not the best way to earn an income - I mean really? You want to spend 150+ hours for a $400-500 turnaround, less initial gaming costs and monthly fees? If you're willing to work for those rates, let me know and I'll get you a job (seriously). I don't believe that any of the intelligent people on these forums are doing this to earn a living.

Just my 2 cents.

[keyclone]

my opinion is that Blizzard will have to change their long term strategy for WoW in order to keep it a viable franchise and to increase its user base.

to that end, just adding 10 extra levels each year with a few more mobs to kill and some trinkets to gather just isn't a worthy enough reason to grind it out. (you killed all those mobs for what? to bank pose??)

they need to address the end game... my suggestion would be player built cities and to allow for sieges and city conquest (take over or destroy)... similar to shadowbane.

in SB, even though people had max'd out their characters, they were logging in, in order to help defend their city (or take over an enemy). this gives questing for the various items a meaning... you need them in order to perform better for your city.

just my US$0.02 worth....

[Ticks]

10 Boxing with shammys was also much more underwhelming than I thought it would have been

Hey Xzin, I've been wondering if you could elaborate a little on this. I'd imagine that burst damage in an arena setting for multiboxing is key. Could the shaman not deal out enough of it?

[Xzin]

I found myself frequently out of mana. Fears screwed me up (but macros could help that) and the damage was underwhelming even for 10 characters. Totems were tricky and heals were very hard.

Part of that was certainly due to the fact that well, I have never played shammys before. Part of it was because I had no macros setup to do advanced things. Some of it was a lack of thinking through the BEST ways to do things based on experience because well, I don't have any with shammys. For example: healing and damage with priest + 4 mages = easy. With shammys its trickier. It was more do damage OR heal. AoE healing was well, not there either. I missed the shields and the ability to be reactive rather than defensive about healing because shammy heals are slower and of course no shields.

I felt a lot of it was the lack of "oomph" that the mages have.

8x fireblasts = gibbed. I mean - almost nobody survives that. Instant cast so you can run and gun. In PvP (especially AV) you are CONSTANTLY moving. Always. Shammys are more of a hunker down kind of style. I didn't personally like that.

Lack of serious AOE hurt A LOT. When 3+ people get in your face, even with 10 shammys.... they start putting a hurt on you quickly. Range was less with shammys as well.

In large scale combat, mages just mow people down. The shammys.... felt more cumbersome and less able to take target after target after target.

Not to say they cannot or are not viable. I just don't know how best to play them. My personal belief though is that the 4 locks + 1 priest or 4 mages + 1 priest is stronger for my playing style and in my opinion, PvP.

Rin: I agree. I play(ed) for fun. Nothing more. I made good money selling gear and plat in EQ but that was a different time and that opportunity has passed. It is hard to compete against people willing to work for $100 a MONTH and consider that a modest wage. Especially considering games like WoW reward you so much more for time spent and have little to no penalties for death. Heck, I leveled up to 43 or so completely naked without any problems at all. In EQ you would NEVER have been able to do that. You needed gear (which was left behind when you died, meaning at times a rather time consuming corpse retrieval) and further - you LOST EXP when you died. A lot. Up to a day's worth, depending on your level (and assuming you could not drag a cleric out to where you were (which was often far away) and have him or her rez you. So if you were not good at playing your character (and were the right class as some could NOT solo) then you were very limited in your ability to solo. Grouping was possible but not always the best way to go and there was at times no telling how miserable your group was going to be. Mistakes cost you dearly.

The upside was I could sell a rubicite breastplate or efreeti boots for well over $500 cash and I could farm them all day and night (1 spawn point, 60 - 120 minute spawns and 4/5 or 6/7 times there was only a placeholder and not the boss mob). The boss also could drop rare or common loot and there was only a single spawn point for most items on the entire server - no instances. So when I was farming - nobody else was. There were a few other "always dropped" items that I had literally on timers - oracle robes and the like that spawned on a set time of about 8 hours and sold for nearly $100. My timers were accurate down to the second, barring a server reset, in which case it was an extra item.

This was a rather lucrative opportunity for somebody who was at the time in high school and had not yet set out to start something "serious". I made something in the five figures doing this for part of the summer before needing to finish up high school (so I could later go on to drop out of college). Amazing how that works but formal education does not always lead to success . Most of all though, I enjoyed EQ's market and how it all worked. WoW is so much.... easier and simpler. I guarantee you that if WoW were as hard as EQ 1 was to level up (and there were no dupes, etc) that the china farmer would be far, far less common and it would be MUCH more difficult to make what they are willing to accept as a living. Right now, anybody can bot up or level a hunter to 70 and farm away by sitting in front of a computer for hours a day and kill the same crap over and over. But my dissatisfaction with how easy WoW is is another post all together and a big reason why I play 5 or 10 characters at once.