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EVE Evolved: Losing yourself in EVE Online
Of all the things EVE Online has to offer, exploration is perhaps its most attractive lure. With around 7500 solar systems to visit and seven years of history enshrined amongst them, EVE offers players a very real and tangible universe to explore. There's something inherently attractive about getting lost in the depths of space and being absorbed into the stories woven around those thousands of little points of light on the map. While the official storyline of most MMOs can be seen all across their respective worlds, the sandbox nature of EVE adds significant player-determined influences to the usual developer-created storyline. In the colossal sandbox of New Eden, key battles and events have drenched areas of the game in a player-made lore that's ripe for discovery. In the past, several players have capitalised on EVE's potential for exploration in order to craft for themselves a truly unique gameplay experience. In 2006, a new player by the name of Innominate Nightmare went on a roaming tour of EVE's lawless nullsec regions. In his travels, he talked with the locals and reported on daily events as they unfolded. The intrepid explorer soon discovered a New Eden fraught with war but at the same time bonded by it. Every space station and alliance-claimed system held stories of the blood spilled over its liberation, the good times pilots had together there, and the monumental efforts alliances had undertaken to carve a home for themselves out of the void. In this week's EVE Evolved, I immerse myself in some of EVE's most unique exploration experiences and look at how you can become lost in New Eden's awesome sights and stories.
Unclutter your Dropbox (or any folder) with Cloak
The good thing about iOS text editors and other programs which can sync with Dropbox is that you don't have to use iTunes to back up the documents that you edit on your iPad or iPhone/iPod touch. The bad thing is that almost all of them save their files in a specific named folder in your Dropbox. This can lead to a lot of folders that you probably never use on your Mac, but end up looking at anytime you open your Dropbox. OS X gives you a way to hide those folders, but it usually involves the use of a command line utility called SetFile, which isn't included with Mac OS X unless you also install the developer tools. That's where Cloak (free, 611 KB .zip download) comes in. Cloak will let you hide or show any file, either by renaming the file to start with a period, or by setting the "Invisible" Finder Attribute. Renaming the file will cause problems with the aforementioned Dropbox syncing, so you want to use the Invisible Finder Attribute. Read on for the nitty gritty...
WAR celebrates second anniversary, offers vet rewards
Its hard to believe that Warhammer Online turns two this week, but at least Bioware-Mythic is rolling out the veteran rewards to ease the sting of getting older. While many things have changed in the course of the game's first two years (including Mythic's absorption by BioWare, the departure of head man Mark Jacobs, and the debut of the endless free trial), the WAAAGH! remains the same. In addition to the constant strains of battle, dedicated 24-month players can now make use of the Double Aegis which gives an experience bonus to surrounding players, much like the one-year anniversary WAR Aegis. Vets also receive a regenerating firework launcher which, unlike the majority of fluff fireworks in other games, never exhausts itself and can be used indefinitely. Finally, a celebratory veteran cloak is also available. Check out the details at the Warhammer Herald.
Invisibility cloak upgraded to bend infrared light, not to mention our minds
The fabled cloak of invisibility was once considered impossible for modern science, chilling out with perpetual motion up in the clouds, but these days scientists are tilting at blurry windmills with a modicum of success several times a year. The latest advance in theory comes to us from Michigan Tech, which says it can now cloak objects in the infrared spectrum. Previous attempts using metallic metamaterials could only bend microwave radiation, the study claims, but using tiny resonators made of chalcogenide glass arranged in spokes around the object (see diagram at left) researcher Elena Semouchkina and colleagues successfully hid a simulated metal cylinder from 3.5 terahertz waves. While it's hard to say when we might see similar solutions for visible light, even a practical application of infrared cloaking could put your night vision goggles to shame, or perhaps block covert objects from being detected by those newfangled terahertz x-rays.
3D invisibility cloak fashioned out of metamaterials
Those HDTV manufacturers did tell us that 3D was going to be everywhere this year, didn't they? Keeping up with the times, scientists investigating potential methods for rendering physical objects invisible to the human eye have now moved to the full three-dimensional realm. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has developed a photonic metamaterial that can make things disappear when viewed from all angles, advancing from previous light refraction methods that only worked in 2D. It sounds similar to what Berkeley researchers developed not too long ago, and just like Berkeley's findings, this is a method that's still at a very early stage of development and can only cover one micrometer-tall bumps. Theoretically unlimited, the so-called carpet cloak could eventually be expanded to "hide a house," but then who's to say we'll even be living in houses by that time?
Cataclysm: Stylish overcloaks!
The thing about our cloaks is that the ones that give us the most power for our characters aren't always the ones that look the best. Turns out that is about to change. Our friends over at MMO Champion have revealed a new Overcloak function. They're entirely cosmetic in appearance and allow you to slightly customize the look of your cloak. It appears there will be a toggle option of some sort for players who wish to display their cloak along with an overcloak. My guess is that these cloaks will be incentive rewards that come from reputation, limited seasonal drops or really rare drops (like mounts and companion pets). Ironforge represent!
The Queue: There's more than one way to skin a worgen
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today.So my thought process Monday morning goes like this. Kubien asks a question about skining worgens. My cat is next to me vying for my attention, and after headbutting me for a few minutes decides to pounce on my arm. Luckily I'm a fatty so all is good and he just bounces off harmlessly to the floor, but it makes me think for a minute about punishing him. Then I remember the old saying, "There's more than one way to skin a cat."And from cat, to lolcat, to lolwowcats.I'm sorry Warcraft community, I really am. But what's done is done. Let's just move on and go have some tea and crumpets.Kubien asked..."While killing Worgen in Silverpine Forest the other day, it occurred to me I can skin them. When Alliance play Worgen, can I skin them? Please!"
Take a voyage to... er, to the Discovery
Activate your holoemitters and prep your photonic crew, because the ship class that Star Trek: Voyager built is headed to sector near you. The Discovery is the next generation of long-range science vessels, and wow does its design shout it loudly. We're going to overlook the fact that, from the front, the ship looks a lot like a muffin due to its warp foils, and move right on ahead to how cool the rest of the ship looks from other angles.Although, with the ability to fully customize your ship, we suppose plenty of players will opt for a less bakery inspired frontal appearance purely through coincidence. Plus, there's also the yet-to-be-revealed Cochrane variant as well.Also, don't let the big blue deflector array fool you into thinking this ship is equipped with some kind of super weapon. Being a science vessel, the Discovery is much more adept at advanced tech, and as such can hone in on an enemies weakness right quick. Who needs heavy weapons when you've got an Achilles heel detector? Heck, this baby can even detect some cloaked ships -- take that, sorta, Klingons!
Video: simulated 'quiet zone' cloaking hides an object in 2-D
You don't have to be able to pick a Romulan out of a crowd of Vulcans to be intrigued by the idea of cloaking, and indeed many non-trekkers have tried to hide things in plain sight using electromagnetism, acoustic superlenses, or light-bending materials. The latest attempt relies on devices that emit cancelling waves of the sort anyone who's ever seen a Bose commercial should quite familiar with, combining to negate any external, incoming waves. What's different here is that they also recombine on the other side of the object being cloaked, as shown in the video below, meaning that incoming surge is then re-generated and continues on undisturbed -- potentially even reflecting back through the object again should it hit something on the far side. It's part of research at the University of Utah and, for now, only works in a theoretical two-dimensional world where triangles and squares are ruled by pentagons, hexagons, and priestly polygons. Optical camouflage is sadly not believed to be possible using this technique, but sonar and radar are likely implementations, as well as mechanisms to subvert earthquakes, tsunamis, and maybe even neighboring speed metal fans.
Crusader's Coliseum tribute rewards are ilvl 272
Patch 3.2 brought with it three new tiers of gear, corresponding to the various difficulty settings available for the Trial of the Crusader raid. The items coming out of the 25-man heroic version, at item level 258, are leaps and bounds above what was available in Ulduar -- and if you thought that those were pretty good, you're in for an even bigger surprise if you manage to complete the dungeon's tribute run. Boubouille, head of the Data Miners' Guild and captain of the starship MMO-Champion, pulled the full list of loot available in the raid from the official Armory site. Players who accomplish the feat of completing the full heroic 25-man dungeon without wiping once will receive a chest with one of several ilvl 272 cloaks in it. At ilvl 272, these cloaks are the best items in the game. Even ignoring their item level, they're extremely well-itemized, and offer something for even some oft-ignored specs ... even Elemental Shamans, thank God. And with the next-highest item level being 258, the cloaks are a full tier above the heroic 25-man's gear. To put that into perspective, moving from 10-man Ulduar to 25-man Ulduar is only a jump of 6 item levels. This also means that, if dungeon difficulties and item levels continue to progress in the same way they have been for the previous two content patches and no half-tier steps occur, we could be seeing the following approximate item levels in the Icecrown Citadel raid:Normal 10-Man: 258Heroic 10-Man/Normal 25-Man: 272Heroic 25-Man: 285, with probable level 298 super-rewards. Though Patch 3.3 is supposed to be WOTLK's last content patch, if it's not, we could see item levels bust 300 in this expansion. Crazy!
