I sat down to play Call of Duty 4 once, while a friend watched over my shoulder. He noticed I wasn’t having a hard time with it and he asked, jokingly, “What, is this on Easy mode or something.” I confirmed that yes, actually, I was playing on Easy Mode. He laughed for awhile and when he was done he had some negative things to say about playing on Easy Mode. His primary complaint was that challenge is what makes a video game interesting and that since Easy Mode isn’t challenging my abilities, I wasn’t getting anything out of the experience. I looked at him funny, asked him to stop talking (or he could leave), and went back to my game.

MMOs don’t have difficulty selectors. The closest they get are usually the “solo” classes, like the warlock in WoW, but really in MMO's gamers have had to give up something that we've had since before the days of "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, A, B, Start" - the cheat code.

MMO’s try to focus gameplay on what developers must think is the most compelling part of MMO’s; the massive amount of people playing. As if since 40,000 people are all playing the same game they should all be doing it together. What a crock of shit! I’d much rather have a solid single-player experience which I can compare with other player’s experience. I'd rather socialize when I want to and be excused from it when the people around me are not worth socializing with ("Wanna go harrass some noobs, ha ha? Want to help the Corp with a CTA? Wanna get on Vent and make funny nosies?!")

We, the cheaters, have decided to hell with your lack of vision, developers. I compeltely understand why cheats are not in multiplayer games like Call of Duty or Planetside - it would dramatically change the expierence if someone couldn't be killed, or couldn't miss. But what cost is associated with a cheat in an RPG? If you could hit a button and not die (to an NPC) what would the harm be? If you could buy anything you wanted, but didn't have to pay for it, why would that be a problem?

We already have players who are leveling FAR outside the expectations of developers. In WoW, there were level 80 players mere days, if not hours, after it was possible to be that level. Did that player understand the game better than anyone else? No; he just had time to devote to the game and a friend to help him.

The existance of cheats for games doesn't seem to have stopped people from playing Oblivion, or Fable 2. Somehow these games survive and even thrive, despite the ability for some people to play them in a way that the developer never intended.

Isn't that interesting?

The wife, and our life…

At the moment, I’m saving for a freighter. A freighter cost about 900 million ISK and I’m at about 300 million now. I’ve been talking (whining?) to my wife about how long this is taking and she said it reminds her of saving for a horse in WoW. We both played WoW for about a year or so before we quit because life was just too busy to compete or even enjoy it. We would get the game loaded up, leave town, figure out what we wanted to do for 20 minutes, and then realize all we wanted to do after 20 minutes of trying to figure out what to do, was to go watch TV.

WoW is the one game I never used an agent in because I really didn’t want to get that character banned and I wasn’t absolutely certain of my ability. There are just SO many WoW players that it's hard to not get seen in that game a lot. I was stuck in an asteroid field last night, unable to warp out because an asteroid was in my way, for the better part of 2 hours last night. In WoW I would have been banned for that; in EVE, I get a funny tell from someone in local but nothing more.

I wish I really did have the time to honestly play EVE but, I simply don’t. I have a wife, a kid, a middle-management job that expects me to work weekends (without pay, of course) a mortgage, a second job I work nights sometimes. It’s just exhausting and the last thing I could possibly do is come home and grind ISK in EVE. It’s nice to have this agent doing the work for me so that when I do have an hour to play I also have enough cash to make the play enjoyable.

My alt finally finished Miner 5 and I’ve got him training up learning skills now. I think I’m going to write a program for him to mine next so that I can have two incomes; that should help the ISK rise faster.

I’ve gotten a lot of new ideas about new features for my EVE Agent. I think I can determine whether an asteroid field is empty now, and if I’m close enough to an asteroid mine. I’ve also figured out how to determine if I’m warping or not so I can take that off of a timer.

Right now I’m staring at my ship. It’s sitting outside of a starbase after warping in. It’s asked to dock once, but for some reason it’s just sitting there. I found this problem a LONG time ago – sometimes you’ll tell your ship to dock and it will warp there just fine, but it won’t dock. A smile spreads over my face as I watch my agent realize what’s occurred and take an action to solve it – it asks to dock again. This is no macro; this is damned near an intelligent agent.

I’ve come a long way and even though I have a longer way to go, sometimes, it’s nice to stop and smell the roses. Or, in this case, millions of tons of Tritanium.