MMORPG

I've spent a reasonable portion of the weekend playing DAoC. On Saturday, some of my guild and a couple of allied high-level folk power-levelled Madoine (and a couple of others) from 19th level to 22nd. For those of you who haven't heard the term, it meant that they formed a group, consisting of two high-level folk and a few lower levels, took us into anotherwise lethally dangerous spot, and killed monsters there, with a few extra people along to heal them. Experience gets divided among the group, even if you're just standing there, so I got three levels for nothing more than being polite. I do feel faintly like it's cheating, but it's the way the game is played, and if I want to run a character from zero to fifty without power-levelling or the like, I can do so another time. Meantime, I'll be more use to my guild - and realm - with a high-level character.

Today (well, yesterday now), I soloed (played on my own) through the rest of level 22, reaching 23, and then went to check out the Realm versus Realm area of the game. There's RvR before this level, but it's not much used on the server I play on. It comes to life at 20th level. And how. The couple of hours I spent attempting to beat the Albion scum into submission was in some weird way the most relaxing thing I've done in months. Working with an impromptu group of other folk there, healing and buffing (increasing other characters power by means of spells) and occasionally hitting something myself, and knowing that I was playing against other people, not bits of code on a computer someplace, was really, really fun.

There's a new patch for the game coming out this week, containing improvements like faster levelling for those who are putting in effort, more experience from rarely beaten monsters, proper in-game mapping, and an on-screen clock. I'm looking forward to it all.

Insomnia

As to what I'm doing up at 01:45 on a work night, I think I relaxed too much. I'm very rested, and my mind is in full on, light-speed, hyperactive mode. Ideas sleeting in all over the place, and if I wasn't up writing them down, they'd be bouncing around inside my head going bzzzz.

Duke of Street

One of my non-resolutions for 2005 is to write more on The Wizard of Duke Street (confusingly given the same name as this LJ). Even if that results in three paragraph entries like this about Clive Barker and Diana Wynne Jones, I think it's better than no entries. I'll get to the original intent, the essays, when I can, but I don't like to leave it idle in the meantime.

Seeking Tech People

This has come down from on high here in work:

Swiftpay International, located in Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, is a well established player in the Internet payments sector, providing services to companies in the e-commerce arena.

Swiftpay provides technical and development services and delivers innovative targeted marketing solutions to online companies with a particular focus on the online gaming and sports betting sectors.

We are seeking a programming graduate with a degree or equivalent qualification and a proven track record of excellent academic achievement.

The candidate must have good knowledge of:

• Client-server technologies


• Web development environments


• Programming languages such as Cold Fusion or ASP


• Development methodologies and development life cycles

Also - knowledge of HTML, XML, Javascript and SQL would be a definite advantage.

The ideal candidate will have excellent teamwork and communication skills and will ideally have a minimum of one years experience in a similar role. Candidates with relevant college related work experience or placement work experience may be considered.

An attractive salary and benefits package, dependent on experience will be offered to the right candidate.

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In other words, if you're a tech looking for work, send me a CV. Address for this is ashiel at swiftpay dot com.