New Horizons

Well, I'm finally here, not for a visit, but to stay. As of this moment, my little Caldari shuttle is parked in my new home station, out in the wilds of 0.0.  It's interesting...the most difficult thing about the trip was remembering to bookmark all the spots accurately. I'm not quite sure I got all those system designations right. It really is much easier when they have actual names, even if they're weird names.

I met a few members of my new corp in a system near where I'd applied and together we headed into 0.0. During the trip we chatted on Teamspeak and it seems I've clearly lucked out yet again as far as picking a corp. These guys are cool.

I'm also a member of a pretty big alliance now, which is kind of new for me. I was a member of a pretty big alliance when I was with Eve University but really it wasn't much of an alliance, if I remember correctly, because the vast majority of the alliance members were in the same corp, E-Uni. The few who were not were in the Graduates (I think that's what they called themselves), a corp of former E-Uni students. For the most part, it was exactly the same people in corp and alliance chats and emails lists. This time, I think it's going to be a little different.

Already I know I'm going to be doing a lot of PvP. I also know I have a lot to learn about doing PvP well and about surviving in 0.0. Basically, I know that I pretty much have to change almost everything about the way I play this game now...and that's ok, in fact, that's exactly what I'm looking for.

All in all, I'm pretty damned excited about the whole thing. Good game, good people, good times. It's been a long time since I was this excited about EvE, or about any game really. It really feels like the final frontier.

One thing I intend on doing pretty much immediately now is ordering one of those New Eden map books. Now that's I'm out of high-sec it's suddenly a lot more important that I plan my travels carefully and being able to sit a map on my lap, make notes, and verify system names will be a big help.

Now it's finally time for me to get serious about playing this game. Pew-pew, here I come.

Of The Future

As I run missions and wait for Hull Upgrades V to finish (a little less than two and half days left to go as I write this), I've been giving a lot of thought to what I want to do afterward. I do have some ideas in that regard and I'll begin exploring them in earnest.

I'm being intentionally obtuse about this for a few reasons. Right now I'm in what I call the "quiet research" phase. I google corps, I poke around on their websites, I see if I can find anything about them elsewhere about what they do and the kind of corp they are. Later, once I have a good idea of what I'm working with, I'll enter the "make a list" phase where I decide which of the corps I find most attractive really fit my style well. Then once I have that it's time to get serious about comparing pound for pound in terms of what's in my best interest in realizing my goals in the game.

It's definitely a tougher choice than I first imagined it would be. Since I went directly from an NPC corp to Eve University and then to Stonewall Interstellar, I don't really have much experience in changing corps or in looking for a new one. I totally lucked out on the first try with E-Uni, as well as with SI so this process isn't one I really have a lot of experience in.

I may do something completely unexpected...even by me. We'll see.

Now I'm Really Back

Why? Because you know you're not truly an EvE pilot until you've had a ship blown out from under you at least once.

I guess I got cocky. I'd been having no trouble with the level 3 mission I was doing other than having to warp out and run my reppers for a few minutes every so often as the damage I was taking became too much. I was holding my own as far as tanking goes, and then I think (I'm not certain, it's been a while) I was warp scrambled, which I was totally unprepared for. I had no idea how or if I could break free and went down pretty quickly after that.

Fortunately, I'd already earned enough with the 'Rax that along with the insurance payout it was a simple matter to put another one in space, but this time I went back to the blaster-rax configuration, and I'm going to stick with Level 2 missions for a while to build up some ISK. Once I have that, I'll start the process of fitting and insuring the Mrym.

While most of the basics of how to play EvE have come back to me quickly, I'm finding that I'm remembering and rediscovering combat strategies as they become useful. Sometimes, it's dumb stuff like remembering to load my weapons or buy ammo before I head into a combat zone, other times it's realizing during or after the fact that I should have played a certain scenario a different way or that there were relevant factors that I'd forgotten to take into account before engaging because it's been so long.

One thing's for sure, once I'm ready to join a player-run corp again, maybe even before that, I'm going to want to refresh my combat skills a bit. There's a number of ways I could go with this.

I did take an Agony Unleashed PvP course a couple of years ago, and I know that their policy at the time was that any course taken which was paid for once can be retaken for free. If that's still their policy I think I'll be retaking that course and maybe even one or two more if I can afford them. I may not remember everything I learned after not using it for a couple of years, but I do remember it was a great experience and one I'm certainly interested in repeating.

There's also EvE University, my old alma mater. They offer some great classes including the basic basics, and the teachers and the students are awesome. I'll be proud to fly with them anytime, anywhere. Yet, at the same time, if my intent is to eventually head into 0.0 (and it is) that may not be the best way to go.

There are also many other corps which offer PvP and other training to their members. I'd expect that some are competent and reliable in doing so and some are not. The truth is I don't know. What I do know is my positive experience with the two corps above. One entails joining a corp perhaps earlier than I'd intended, and the other entails coming up with the needed ships and equipment (some of which I may still have from the last time I did the course), and possibly tuition in order to take the course.

I really don't know what I'm going to do just yet, but before I make that decision I want to be in better financial shape than I am now. I know I'll probably become antsy later, but right now I'm mainly just enjoying being back in EvE, reestablishing myself, and going through the process of fully getting back to where I was in this game in terms of understanding the finer points and how to use them to my advantage. Two years is a long time, and there's been some changes I have to get used to.

The way I'm doing that is by flying these missions, remembering and rediscovering exactly what I can and can't do in combat, what solution applies to what problem. Relearning how to fit my ships has been an adventure as well, but I'm quickly becoming better at it as time goes on. I recognize my mistakes quickly, and I'm rapidly relearning how to correct them. BattleClinic has been a help with this, but I've come to understand that it's caveat emptor with BC loadouts. Some are awesome, but others don't quite meet that standard. I got burned like that for a few thousand ISK by trying out a loadout that looked great in theory but didn't really cut it in actual combat.

I'm also finding where the holes are in my skill training and I've set about plugging them. There aren't a lot of places where I haven't already trained the skills to what I need for what I'm doing right now, but there are a few and more pop up on occasion as I experiment with different loadouts. Now that I'm able to log in again, my skill que is kept full at all times. Currently I'm training Propulsion Jamming IV, which I need in order to run a Tech II Stasis Webifier. This is something I need to do a lot more research on as far as figuring out what skills I should be training now over the long term. As I get more of these holes filled, more and more of the most useful still-trainable skills I have will require major lengths of time to train them to the next level.

Before that becomes a major issue, I want to have a plan, an outline at least, of what skills I want/need to invest time in training. There's still a little while to go before that will become critical, but if I keep that skill que filled 24/7 I don't think it'll be all that long.

And so, here we go again. I pick myself up, dust myself off, and head right back out there, hopefully with a better plan this time. This, in a nutshell, is EvE, and perhaps a big reason why so many of us can't help but keep on coming back for more.

Now I'm Seriously Jonesing

Hopefully, my PC will be ready tomorrow, Friday at the latest. In the meantime, I've been getting a lot of Empyrean Age read. I'm about 3/4 through it now, and it's still a great read. After getting into it a bit I decided not to read any of the news items posted at the site until I finish it as many seem to be relevant to the events in the book. What I'm curious about, and I haven't yet seen talked about anywhere (but could easily have missed it) is whether this novel is considered EvE canon, and what about the one due out next month? Not that I really expect it would change anything in-game much either way, but it would be useful to know.

I did a little research today and read everything I could find on the disbanding of BoB. Not surprising, but oh so typical in this game. Can't say I'm unhappy to see it happen, either, just kinda sorry I missed being around for it. I like the idea that things are at least a little more balanced in terms of political power in this game than they used to be.

I've also been thinking about which corp I may want to join once I've done my solo time. I really don't know yet, though I'm considering re-applying to EvE University. It never hurts to brush up on one's PvP skills when you haven't been playing a couple of years (and I didn't do a whole lot of PvP while I was playing in any case), and on top of that, they're some of the best people I've ever gamed with. I haven't made any hard and fast decisions, but that's definitely one thing I'm thinking about.

Sigh....what I really want is my frakking PC back...

Does EvE Have A Soul?

Oh I don't mean it in the way you're probably thinking. It is, after all, a piece of software. It's also a lot more though, because without the community of people who play it, EvE as we know it could not exist. Even if it could exist, it would not the same. I tend to think that there is a community spirit in EvE that's like in no other game I've ever played.

I mean that's not to say that there isn't plenty of help and community available in other games, it's just that I've never seen it expressed so generously by so many people as frequently as I have in this game. I was reminded of this earlier tonight when I logged into EvE and discovered that an amazingly generous reader had apparently read of my financial woes and donated 50 million ISK to my wallet. Wow. That's the kind of thing you just don't see in most games. With that, I'll be able to put something decent in space and start making some real ISK. I'm not sure what I'm going to buy just yet, but I'll be giving that some serious thought tomorrow.

By the way, I've always made it a policy that unless I get an OK first or I already know it's not an issue I don't usually mention people who make those kind of donations by name in the blog. Not that I don't want to, but because I know that not everyone wants to be acknowledged publicly, so I like to always get an ok before I mention someone by name here.

It reminds me of EvE University, a massive corporation set up with the purpose of training noobs to play EvE. Pilots good enough at the game that they probably could be leading frontier battles in 0.0 are instead teaching noobs how to PvP. Think about it: In what other games do you see this much generosity and willingness to help others just because a need is noticed? Of course, I haven't played everything, but I've never seen anything else like it.

So yeah, I think EvE does have a soul, and it's a soul that can be as warm and soft as the environment it encompasses can be cold and hard. It's an interesting juxtaposition, but not an entirely surprising one when you think about it.

No matter who you are, what you do in-game, or how long you've been playing, everyone can agree on one thing: EvE is a tough game.

EvE has probably the steepest learning curve of any MMO out there. In addition, it also has probably the steepest cost of death as well. You fuck up in this game, you remember it, and you pay for it, maybe for a while.

In addition, this game has legitimized griefing and given it an in-game role as piracy. This sets EvE apart from pretty much any other game I've ever heard of. I used to have a big problem with this, but over time I've come to accept it as part of the game.

Given all this, with so much stacked against a new or returning player getting ahead, I guess it's not so surprising that a force has emerged in response to even things out a little. Just as there are those who enjoy preying upon and taking advantage of noobs, there are also those who enjoy helping others out. There are the folks who hear about someone like me who could use some ISK and just donate it. I don't know what to call it, "spontaneous generosity" maybe? Maybe but E-Uni's been around so long you could hardly call it spontaneous. No, I just think it's a natural outgrowth of the kind of players this game attracts, and a testament to the diversity of the playerbase. Not everyone wants to be a pirate, and in fact, while they may not be as interesting as the pirates and thieves and we may not hear about them as often, there's still a place for heroes in EvE.

I don't know what it is, but I do know that in my experience it's unique to EvE and part of what makes it special. Yes, EvE's rough edges are very sharp and dangerous but there's also a lot of comfortable places to be found within it.

Kind of feels like coming home.

E-Uni Blogger Coolness

As a former member of Eve University, I enjoy keeping up with what's going on with them, and it seems that two of their higher-ups, Director Dee Carson and Fleet Commander Silentbrick have started blogs of their own. I know Dee is a reader of this blog, and I'm enjoying the entries I've been reading on his. Silentbrick is also an interesting read as well. I highly recommend both, especially if you're an E-Uni member perhaps looking for a better picture of who these sometimes enigmatic corporation leader-types really are. I've also added links for both in the list.

Hmm, funny to see myself writing that, considering I'm now a corporate leader-type too, even if we currently don't have even 1/5oth the membership E-Uni does. We all start somewhere. I suppose even Goonswarm was a tiny corp once.

What's New?

Actually, right now pretty much everything.

Yesterday, Nealla made me a Director in our corp, with the same authority level as he has. Pretty cool, though I really need to become more familiar my new abilities and how to use them. Nealla's also begun helping me learn the finer points of research and manufacturing. I really started out with pretty much zero experience in these, aside from one basic instructional mission I did a while back. We're also working together to decide the direction of the corp, and plenty of other related issues.

Of course, this is all totally new to me. The only actual grantable role I've ever held in this game before now was being approved in E-Uni for Freshman hangar access. Now, like Nealla, I've got controlling authority in every single aspect of our corp which can be had. I have a feeling this is going to be a hell of a lot of fun as we grow and really develop into something worthwhile.

I've also begun adjusting my own gameplay in light of my new role. I'm training skills I probably wouldn't have bothered with for a while otherwise, and I'm saving certain types of salvage and loot that will be useful in our manufacturing. I'm still running missions, of course. Right now, it's still the most effective way for me to make ISK and help the corp get off the ground.

As you might imagine, I'm having a blast doing it. As much as I liked being a member of E-Uni and interacting with the people there, I'd gotten into a bit of a rut in terms of just doing the same things over and over most of the time. One of the problems was that my standings are best with the Gallente Federation Navy, and when I tried to start operating from Korsiki I frequently found myself returning to Gallente space to run missions because I was able to make so much more ISK there that it just didn't make sense with the limited available playtime I've had in recent weeks to build my standings up in Caldari space to a similar level. I just didn't have the time to put into doing it in any sort of a timely manner. I've been looking for new things to do in this game, and in making this move, I've now got that in abundance.

In addition, it's the chance to put my RL values into practice in EvE that makes this adventure especially exciting to me. It's not very often such an opportunity presents itself. And again, it's also the newness of it all. In some ways, I'm now playing EvE in a completely new way, a way that makes it more interesting and involving and less monotonous than before. Not that I didn't enjoy it before, but it had been a while since I'd really explored something completely new and different about this game.

I'm trying to be careful because I don't want to imply any sort of real preference here, it's really far more about personality than sexuality, but it can sometimes be a lot more comfortable to interact with people who get it, who get you, those who you don't need to explain stuff to or watch what you say around for fear of possibly offending or of being offended. After having to be so careful in that way in so many aspects of our lives, it can really be nice to be able to just let your guard down and just speak from the heart sometimes without having to worry about how others might take it. That's something I find in GLBTA chat and nowhere else in-game right now. I'm hoping that when Stonewall Interstellar really finds its wings, we'll be able to boast a second place where that's true as well.

Anyway, I spent the better part of the day in-game yesterday, but I've got just too much stuff to do in order to do so today. Frankly, I'm amazed I managed to squeeze in the time to write this post. I'm hoping to be able to jump in for a while later tonight, though. Fingers crossed.

Ok, that's about all I've got time for right now...til next time, fly safe.

Late For Class...

...even though I didn't know I was going to be attending one until literally minutes before it happened.

I've had incredibly bad luck in terms of E-Uni class scheduling, but that's not the Uni's fault, it's my own personal fucked up schedule that's really the culprit. I just happened to be bitching about it in corp chat earlier and as luck would have it, a class I needed just happened to be about to start, a basic Tackling and Scouting 101 with Acacia Incana. While I do have some very minimal experience in these skills which I got during the class I took with Agony Unleashed a while back, this was something I really needed since so many other classes build on what's taught in this and other basic classes. The problem was that since the class was literally starting in just minutes, I had no time to pick up one of my tackling frigs. I ended up doing the class in my Thorax, and while it was great fun being a target and playing what amounted to "Interstellar Tag", I didn't get a chance to actually practice what was being taught. I learned what I needed to learn from this class, but because I was in the Thorax I really didn't a chance to actually practice it. Not a big deal, but I do think I'll retake it when I can.

In addition, I also learned a couple of important things that weren't in the class curriculum. For one thing, always check your overview settings after a patch. After the Revelations II patch, I lost all of my overview presets, and apparently after this latest one I lost about half of them, which I'd just painstakingly reconstructed about a week ago. Not only do I use the settings recommended in Romble's mp3 class, but I also keep the setting I learned in the readings for the AU class I took as well. The AU setup is slightly different from Romble's and I find it useful in certain situations. Just after the class began, I discovered that most of the Romble settings were gone, and certain settings from the AU setup had vanished as well. Fortuantely, I've now set these up from scratch a few times so I was able to fill the gaps as the class progressed by switching between the settings I still had and doing a few tweaks on the fly. Now, I know the first thing I have to do when I log in again is recreate these yet again. Ah well, I guess I can just think of it as practice.

The other thing I learned was something I should have known, that for me, someone who's done live radio online for over five years, should be filed under "Duh!". Of course, these classes require Teamspeak which I have and know how to use. At the beginning of the class I was having a lot of trouble hearing what was said clearly, and for some insane reason it didn't occur to me that the reason I was having so much trouble was because I wasn't using my headphones, I had the audio coming through my computer speakers. Normally this isn't much of a problem, but the room my computer is in is not the most effectively cooled by the AC, so I usually have a fan going when the weather is warm. The fan isn't really very loud, but it does make that "whooshing" sound fans do, creating a kind of low-level background "white noise". I'm so used to it I barely notice it most of the time, but it does effectively mask a certain amount of whatever audio I happen to be listening to. As a result, it was much harder to follow the conversation than it should have been, and silly me just chalked it up to less-than-optimum TS sound. This made perfect sense since Acacia's British accent led me to believe it was simply the distance that degraded the audio. Once I plugged in my headphones, though, it was like night and day, and I didn't have a problem again. DUH!

Pretty damn lame for my first class with the Uni, but despite the shaky start I'm looking forward to much more. One thing that kinda sucks is that I changed my email on the Ivy League message board and apparently my account has been put on inactive status for some reason. I think I'm supposed to get an email of some sort to reactivate it, but it hasn't arrived yet. If I don't get it by tomorrow when I check, I'll jump in-game and see if I can get someone in the Uni to help me get it working again. Until it is, I can't find out when the next classes I want to take will be held. I totally understand the need for security, but this is really a major pain. I'm getting notices about people posting in threads I'm tracking but I can't read them because until this is fixed I can't log in...grrrr...

Another interesting and cool thing I learned tonight is another of my Eve-Uni peeps is a reader of this blog (Hi Dee! :)). I also discovered that some of my classmates and Acacia didn't know I write one so I guess I'll have to post a link once I finally get back into the site. I do keep track of the amount of traffic this blog gets, and I've noticed that it's been slowly but steadily rising. Of course, like all bloggers, I love it when I see more people reading, and when I see people commenting here and in-game. It's a big reason why I spend as much time as I do on it, besides the fact that it combines two of my favorite pastimes, EvE and writing. Just knowing people are reading and enjoying it makes something that already gives me a great amount of pleasure and satisfaction even better.

Alright, enough for now. Til next time, fly safe.

Lockdown!

Basically there are just a few choices available: Members of E-Uni are currently under orders not to undock. One way to avoid this is to join TDROPS, the other is to go play on the test server. Not a great variety of alternatives.

It's understandable. One look at the killboard and you know why...these MENTL guys are having us for lunch. They've taken out sixteen of our ships and we've taken out exactly one of theirs. It's not surprising our commanders have ordered a lockdown...it seems that just about any encounter with these guys is going to ends up with a significant number of E-Uni ships blown up, so our commanders are simply waiting this out. Probably the most sensible strategy at this point, even if not the most fun to deal with.

I just wish there was something to do, because TDROPS is looking better and better right now, but in all honesty, I really don't wanna do that again this time...now that I've had at least some PvP training, it would feel like bailing out. Add to that the fact that I don't have the moral high horse to get on I did last time, and I'm really having a hard time rationalizing a move to TDROPS.

If only it wasn't so damn boring.