The first hurdle

It’s a freaking big one.

So my dream to turn the Minmatar into a single-minded Hive/borg/collective capable of crushing anything in its path has hit a sudden barrier.

Around two days ago, an alliance by the name of WINMATAR. rejoined our militia.

From what I know, the story goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a super strong Minmatar alliance aptly named WINMATAR. who, we’re very prominent in the FW scene. Suddenly, perhaps their power got to their heads, and they took it upon themselves to go appropriate friendly POSes, by force if necessary.
The other Minmatar alliances, I assume attempted diplomacy first, but ended up declaring unified war against WINMATAR. Civil war broke out, chaos reigned, atrocities were committed in the name of war and for the sake of victory, but eventually if the records I’ve read are true, WMTR were defeated and (dramatic tone) banished for eternity. So they did disappear for a while. Then they resurfaced, with the same alliance name, now oddly out of place on the Amarrian side of things. Many a Minmatar capsuleer were killed by their hands, and it’s hard to erase the bloodstains from the stars. I speculate sometimes about that reddish tinge in Minmatar space. Blood and rust. I digress. Where was I? Oh yes;

Now they’re back.

Curing burnout, refinding fun

The ultimate question all EVE players will eventually ask themselves:

“Can I be bothered playing anymore?” (known variations: “who should I give my ISK to?”, “should I create a forum thread to announce my departure to anyone who cares?” and of course, “should I just go ahead and win EVE?”)

My EVE playtime has been patchy recently at best, and these are the questions that have been floating around in my head, when last year I would’ve thought now would’ve been the most I’ve ever played. I mean, I’m sitting at 25m SP, I have most of the skills that constitute a solid foundation for PvP, and my goal of being a renowned solo PvPer only becomes easier to achieve.

Only yesterday I confronted the issue of why I wasn’t so interested anymore, and it wasn’t self-reflection but it was in the process of a conversation with some guy who somehow remembered my name from EDU, after months, contacted me when I logged in for the first time in a while, and offered me a corporation to join.

Earlier that day, I have to mention, as soon as I logged in, two old members of the alliance I failed to support (feel a little guilty, but what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger) contacted me and asked me whether I wanted to join them on their next chapter in their own EVE careers. They expressly told me they missed the roams I led.

These two events had a hand in reviving the spark that I feared I had accidentally extinguished by burning a little too brightly at the end of last year.

So much for that…

Well! That Minecraft category really took off… NOT. Just deleted it.

I’ll leave the one and only post on Minecraft there as a reminder never to try bite on something that will chew my face off. Lets just say I’m not a hard worker at all, despite what I’ve thought of myself. The challenge for me was trying to work with plugins, making them all work nicely with each other, have a MySQL database linked with the server, and a nice website which I skimped on with a shoddy subreddit, all whilst knowing nothing about how Minecraft plugins worked, knowing nothing about MySQL. Halfway through, I also realised why a subreddit just didn’t cut it as the sole out-of-game source of game information for the server.

Also, every minute I spent working on Minecraft, was a minute my urge to return to EVE grew.

So a few days ago, I dropped my pickaxe and re-entered my pod.

Why do we fight?

So people actually read the blog, it seems, and I can’t get away with saying whatever the hell I want anymore (without anyone noticing). That doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing whatever I’m thinking, though. I’m too far in now. 🙂

Anyway, one reader decided to discuss my last post with me, in particular, the insulted tone I layered on when I described the incoming enemy forces, when initially, we were planning on going after what we believed to be a lone Tengu with four men in the first place. Indeed, after he baited us into fighting, it would still seem we were not playing fair, and by that assumption, I could not say that his comment about us being cowards could be ignored because he was one, because we actually made a cowardly move trying to gank his Tengu.

Not even sure if that makes sense.

Testing our strength.

Today a wardec went active against our alliance. I was mildly surprised because I had never heard of the corporation before. Initially I felt somewhat… smug? Happy? Slightly amused? Anyway, I had a look at the killboard of the attacking corporation, and nothing seemed to point to them having a reason for wardeccing us, so I simply assumed it was an alt corp of someone we had managed to annoy. From the perspective of a pirate alliance, I suppose it’s an indication we’re doing well to have created enough ripples to cause something like this to happen.

However, research is your best friend when engaging wardec targets. And since it’s so easy to move around corporations, killmails and lossmails can be lost in a web that can only be traced by painstakingly following someone’s employment history; even then, the full picture isn’t always painted. You need to know who their friends are, first and foremost. You need to know the ships they bring to bear, the kinds of fights they get into. My research was inadequate, it seems.

Best frenemies.

Today was a haze of PvP. So many fights they’re blurring over one another in my head already, it’s dizzying. Suffice it to say that I had a ton of fun today (minus being smartbombed by a Tengu in my training clone), but I’ve had enough, so I’m docking up and settling in to write a post.

The cool thing about today’s roams was that we met a group we had never met before in the same space we roam, and fought them, lost to them, then fought with them. It’s incredible, the kinds of connections that can only be forged in the aftermath of conflict. Perhaps that can explain marriage. But I digress into an area I have little experience in.

Anyway, these folks were a part of the A Band Apart. alliance, one I recognised due to my occasional forages into Rixx Javix’s blog, which I initially found thanks to someone telling me about his corporation’s public frigate FFA competitions.

Such a tenuous connection, but one nonetheless, and one that I noticed when I died to them. So I went ahead and mentioned it in local, something to the tune of “I’ve always wanted to die to ABA.”

One private conversation and a few minutes later, we were having a uproarious time with the guys in New Eden Renegades (forgive me if I got that slightly incorrect, just going off the top of my head), who have already taught me a thing or two about how to have even more fun in FW space than we already were. It’s really simple, how they’ve done it. So simple, it makes me beat myself over the head and wonder why I had not thought of it before. So elegant, so effective, and yet even a new player like me overlooked the possibilities of this path.

Blinded by ideals, honor, pride.

Accompanying my post today will be some awesome pictures of the HED-GP battle of 5/12/14, taken by some EVE player whose imgur username is halycon8.

I argued with the alliance leadership with how they ran things. They wanted us to be ruthless with our enemies. I wanted all our enemies to be frenemies.

Further pondering has revealed to me it just isn’t as simple as that. I play the white knight all I like, but I’ve realised that the way I play EVE, I’m just being a hypocrite.

I derive enjoyment from EVE by PvPing, more from winning but the occasional close loss is thrilling too. Recently, I’ve been leading fleets, and this means we have been dropping on single players with out fleets, demolishing them, and flying off after looting their wrecks. Naturally, my enjoyment comes at the expense of someone elses’, usually my victim.

I think I said somewhere (I can’t find the damn post, maybe I ended up not posting it…) that I will draw the line where my enjoyment encroaches on someone’s ability to play EVE. I said this because I want players we are shooting to still enjoy the game, not hate logging on because everyday they’re staring at our mean faces making life difficult for them.

I’ve come to realise that such a motive is extremely shallow and, hell, plain childish. It’s almost asking for a perfect world where I can still shoot people, and they will blow me love hearts, and I will do the same when they shoot me. No. After further thought, that’s not what I want at all.

Keyboard-happy.

New opportunity spotted: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5270806&_ga=1.54781224.2083470072.1386255114

Sounds like great fun! I’m no master video editor or filmmaker but once again, why the hell not?

So, what is ‘keyboard-happy’? Talkative. Letting mouths run regardless of the brain. Loose lips.

Silence is golden. Sometimes, nothing being said speaks volumes more than words could. Examples:

Exhibit A: “It should work… in theory.”

“We have it easy… because we’re getting help.”

“We could win this… or we could die horribly.”

Exhibit B: “I need to go eat… but I’ll be back soon so don’t worry about me I’ll warp you all to the safe okay you guys are in warp I need to eat so just chill at the safe take a break whatever look out for probes, d-scan make sure you d-scan I really need to go eat.”

Exhibit C: -push to talk clicks on after a joke- *laughter* -clicks off-

-clicks back on- *more laughter* -clicks off-

Exhibit D: -clicks on- Uhmmm… -clicks off-

-clicks on- Lalalla, what to do… -clicks off-

-clicks on- Brbllbbllblblb, brrrblblblblbl -clicks off-

-clicks on- if the fleet warped here… then there… then here… what would they do… –clicks off-

November Progress Report – Finding a Voice

Format has gone out the window this month. Previous Progress Reports have been goal-focused, but this month, I’ve found one unique theme has shone through everything else.

That is: the development of my voice in EVE.

What do I mean by voice? Well, two things, actually.

First, my actual voice. As most readers will know, in EVE Online, taking leadership positions (in my case, the position of an FC and alliance leader) requires frequent usage of your voice.

This has led to smoother speech, for one. Generally my thoughts hold me back; my brain intervenes when I’m mid-sentence because it figures out something better to say, or worse, it tells me there is a flaw in what I’m saying, and I try to change course right there and… well… it’s no good.

These days I find I am better at starting off my talking knowing what to say and how to say it. It’s less difficult to talk, in general. There isn’t significant improvement as in I haven’t gone from mute to the most arousing public speaker in the whole cluster, but it’s there, and I do notice it.

EVE has changed me. As nerdy as it may sound… it’s probably true.

Power creeps

Should be writing an entry for the Pod and Planet EVE Fiction Contest but I’m writing this post.

Today, I took part in an alliance cruiser fleet today.

We were beaten hard.

We had a 14-man Caracal fleet, including a Keres, Bellicose, 3 Scythes and an Executioner for support.

They had T3 battlecruisers (Talos), battlecruisers (Ferox, Drake, Gnosis), shield logistics and ECM (Rook, Falcon iirc).

One of their guys came into comms to apologise for bringing the ECM, and that act led to me writing this post.

Apologising for winning a fight? What the hell is going on there?

Actually, that’s not quite right. What really got me was that when one of our guys asked him what we could’ve done better, he only had one suggestion: we run next time.

That really hurt; it was the last thing I wanted my pilots to hear. It’s the easy way out, and that’s not how I roll.