June 21st, 2010
As we were debating the pros and cons of the massive space battle focus coming out of the E3 reviews, fellow guildie and coworker Bevil and I finally came to a rather profound conclusion:
We didn’t know enough to argue about very much.
The analogy I used was that we were trying to imagine what WoW would be like by watching the cinematic trailer, 5 mins of gameplay video from the Orc starting area, and a few screenshots of lvl45 game play. (I’m using WoW as an analogy many folks will recognize, but insert your favorite game if it offends you that much… 
) Point is, there’s a helluva lot we don’t know, and it’s the nuances of a particular implementation that will make you love or hate a game.
We need more information, and now that the iron curtain is falling maybe we’ll continue to get updates.
It’s likely that I’ll start here again “soon” with comics as funny things hit me. No due dates yet, but wanted to at least start posting again.
Posted in Zoxe | Comments Off
June 13th, 2010
Whoa, it seems there’s life out there after all.
After Lance’s post this week and a flurry of forum activity (including a revamp/wipe) in preparation for E3, it seems JGE is suddenly back on the map. This weeks promises to end the drought of information that we’ve all endured for the past ~9 months.
I’m still pretty bitter. I think the “media blackout” was the dumbest thing since the snugee and sham-wow. The fans following the game pre-beta are your hardcore devout players, and ignoring them for months at a stretch is just a kick in the nuts.
But I promised myself that I wouldn’t rant here, so I’ll just stop there…
In any event, I’m just posting here to let you know that:
1. I’m still here. The move to the new house went well, and the wireless connection (usually) works as well as my old cable modem.
2. I’ll decide what to do with ZLE once we’ve seen the changes promised at this week’s E3. I may pick up where I left off, I may abandon the game entirely, or I may reboot the site since that seems to be the trendy thing to do.
Posted in Zoxe | Comments Off
February 12th, 2010
It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone that things are going pretty slowly here at ZLE. Used to be, I’d get referrals from the forums or from the JGE official sitelist, or occasionally from another MMO blog or JGE fansite. Nowadays, my traffic patterns to the site are predominantly google searches for people looking for “space wallpaper,” or Russian mafia spambots.
Part of that is my fault. The lack of content updates here, of course, causes people not to check back so often.
Part of that is NetDevil’s fault. The lack of content updates there, of course, cause people to go do other non-JGE things. I’ve done a couple half hearted comics over the past few weeks, but without new content to harpoon, lampoon, or praise, it’s really tough to get inspired.
In the mean time, I’ve been up to a few other things:
- “Finishing” the Orc game that everyone loves to hate. If it weren’t for my friends and guildies there, I’d be done until at least Cataclysm, if not forever.
- GlobalAgenda beta and launch. I pondered a separate post on GA but never got around to it. It’s a great foundation of a twitch shooter game. The devs chose to focus on a core feature/engine set and then launch before the laundry list of “gotta have” MMO features. I have rambled on in weeks past about why I thought ND was crazy for trying to cater to everyone, and it’s been refreshing to see another dev house do things right. The core game is fun, it’s just not very deep. Now the struggle will be expanding the content and justifying the eventual monthly sub.
- Real Life stuff like switching jobs, traveling for the new job, and digging ourselves out of snow.
- Taking a creative writing class with Mrs. Zoxe through the local university. It’s been nice to get out of the house and actually talk to people (non-coworkers) face to face.
- Having been inspired by the above bullet, I’ve also been working on my novel. It’s a sci-fi shooter. Go figure.
- Attempting to buy a new home. After ~10 years in our “starter home” in the subdivision, Mrs. Zoxe and I are moving to a 10 acre country lot. With luck, we’ll close this afternoon.
So while it’s a dead time for JGE (assuming it even still launches at this point; stranger things have happened), the timing is good for me. I’d have no hope of committing any significant time to to the game right now.
Bottom line, though, is that ZLE is going to go on the shelf until something breaks loose in the JGE world and/or Zoxe’s real empire.
It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone that things are going pretty slowly here at ZLE. When my traffic patterns to the site are predominantly google searches for people looking for “space wallpaper,”
Posted in Editorial, Zoxe | 3 Comments »
January 29th, 2010
I’ve often wondered what it was like behind the great NDA firewall for the folks lucky enough to be testing now.
Thinking back to 2002′s Beta7 of EVE, I recall churning in the public forums with the rest of the EVE fanbase waiting for a chance to play. Then the beta invite came and with it access to the super secret beta forums. Holy cow, was there a big difference in the tone and content of the posts. This week’s comic is an artists’ rendition of what the difference might look like for JGE.
Posted in Comics | Comments Off
January 15th, 2010
Yah, it’s been awhile. For those keeping track, the ZLE mainframe has been replaced with a Win7 box, Photoshop reinstalled and my old hard drive is now a slave in a USB enclosure attached to the new machine.
I don’t think we’ve missed much in the JGE world, though. Which is unfortunate. Hopefully the JGE devs are back from their Holidaze and are back at the keyboard crunching out content and bugfixes.
Anyway, someone mentioned this week that this should be the “Year we make contact.” Yah, I remember seeing 2010 in the theatres back in the mid-80s and watching the movie again on VHS a few years later. I never really got into 2001 even though it was supposed to be a “classic.” Too many dancing monkeys or something. But 2010, that was a MUCH better cinematic option when you’re 12.
So, here’s hoping that 2010 is the year we make contact … with beta.
Posted in Comics | 1 Comment »
November 17th, 2009
Gremlins. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
When a simple vidcard upgrade results in every light in your house dimming when you reapply power, I have to blame something. I’ve changed dozens of vidcards over the years, but something entirely hokey happened with this one, leaving my desktop in “paperweight mode.” It’s a very tired Alienware, circa 2006, and worthy of replacing.
But with the job switch (see below), I was without a paycheck. Sure, I was technically still going to the office every day, and I had money in the bank, but if by some accounting oddity I failed to receive a paycheck, I didn’t want Mr. Visa getting angry at me. So I was forced to wait. And wait. And wait.
Fast forward a couple weeks. I’ve now been paid, the only real way to confirm that the bean counters got my direct deposit entered correctly. A new Dell XPS is on order, due sometime after Thanksgiving. And the USB hard drive enclosure I needed to make my old HD portable arrived today. This will allow me to pick up ZLE and my other random projects pretty much where I left off. In the mean time, I simply don’t have a home for Photoshop at the moment. The laptop I’m typing on right now is ok for web surfing, but it giggles a little bit if I wave the Photoshop install disk in its direction.
But rest assured that ZLE will continue in the coming weeks. And you can join me in blaming the Gremlins.
Posted in Zoxe | Comments Off
October 15th, 2009
Well, I’ve been away from the JGE world for a little bit, and I figured that some things had changed. But after browsing the forums a little bit, I decided it was time to try something new! Hey, how about a nice game of Forum Bingo?
Posted in Comics | Comments Off
October 14th, 2009
… and now on with the show!
Although I don’t have a new comic to post right this second, I do expect to be spooling back up at ZLE very soon. September and October have been a blur, and not in a good way. During September, I was at my desk for something like 5 working days, and not consecutively.
I visited two different customer sites for a week each, and spent close to two weeks (again, not consecutively) at a vendor site. In between, I drove through 9 different states.
On the plus side, I negotiated a “new” job (I’ll no longer be a slimy contractor) and will officially hand in my badge this Friday, only to return to the same desk, to do the same work, for higher pay, with a different badge once I get back from vacation next week.
Anyway, the point of this post is simple: Zoxe is still here, and a comic is forthcoming.
Posted in Zoxe | Comments Off
September 6th, 2009
The dreaded real life is currently kicking my butt. I will be on business travel for 3 of the next 4 weeks and it appears that it may be Thanksgiving before things settle down again. Unfortunately, ZLE needs to go on hiatus until there are fewer things competing for my time.
Posted in Zoxe | 4 Comments »
August 26th, 2009
For the most part, we try to keep this blog and the comic reasonably positive. There’s many places people can go around the web to get a dose of negativity concerning JGE, and to be just another rant amongst the angry voices doesn’t really serve any useful purpose. To an extent we feel like it’s our obligation to be an equal opportunity offender, and make a bit of fun at the expense of the “forum elites” while calling for ND/Codemasters to present their best face to us.
This week treads towards the negative, and is certainly one of those times when we poke ND/Codemasters in the ribs a bit.
The momentum behind JGE seems to be winding down. While I hate empty marketing hype, the bits of information flowing from ND has slowed once again. As someone pointed out on the US forums, the posts with the highest read-count tend to be the “goodbye” messages from forum-ites heading elsewhere while they wait for JGE. That’s a little scary.
Posted in Comics | Comments Off
