Buried Alive in the Sandbox

Note: I had originally planned this post as part of Blog Banter 42, but I kept getting dragged away from writing a review of EVE and into more of a review of the community. I figured I'd put it up anyway for people to read, and may still end up doing a BB42 entry.

Note 2: Apparently, Stan thinks that this should go into the Blog Banter anyway. Thanks Stan, you're a sweetheart!

Every time I see any sort of opportunity for the playerbase to review EVE, I immediately think I'm supposed to go into Bittervet Mode, as if there's an expectation of a long-standing "CCP vs. the players" antagonism. Instead, it comes out more like this XKCD comic.

Ever since the epic backpedalling following the Walking in Stations debacle, I've been pleased to note that at least in the broad strokes, CCP seems to be addressing concerns that players bring up. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely - but I'm not convinced that it's CCP's responsibility to make it happen.

YOU ARE A PIRATE

Big thanks to the lovely Arianne Stone for reminding me of this clip. "lol, limewire" indeed.

http://cristgaming.com/pirate.swf

Re-Blog: Welcome to Lowsec

Content? Who needs content? :P More to the point, in his most recent "Welcome to Lowsec" post, Azual has perfectly explained something that's influenced my PVP ever since the first time I shot another player in a spaceship. I've never been able to describe it beyond a vague feeling of "I'm a pirate, not a griefer", but fortunately, now I can just link people to his post instead of breaking keyboards with my head as I try. (I also have to admit that, with as many times as I've seen jokes about having to revoke Azual's pirate licence, his finally just going and doing it himself was hilarious to me.)

Seriously, it's a good read.

Tuskers Frigate Free For All - October 27 (Updated with Prize Link)

Awesome banner by Rixx Javix

EDIT: Though I'm a couple of days behind in updating this and I'd be surprised if anyone used only this site as their news source (flattered, but surprised), Sulei has posted a link to the list of prizes on the Tuskers public forum. Congrats to all the winners!

Thanks to everyone who helped make this event so much fun. I'm glad you all enjoyed the opportunity to kill ALL the things. For a more detailed look at the festivities, check out TG's write-up at Through Newb Eyes. I'll keep my own account brief:

At the time this screenshot was taken, 54 of the kills in the 24h total were unrelated to the Tuskers' event. Yes, only 54.

Blog Banter 40: Van Damme In Space?

While I'm not sure I'd call this a triumphant return to EVE blogging, the topic of the latest Blog Banter (BB40) caught my eye. Interstellar Blood Sports? Sounds like the everyday life of a lowsec pirate to me, I thought.

No, not THAT Bloodsport. Not even when you count that ECM drones are the blinding powder of EVE.

Upon reading further into the question, however, I quickly discovered that the commentary was intended to focus on tournaments and "eSports" in EVE Online. The next statement that popped into my head was, never mind, that's nothing like real PVP. Normally I'd have let the matter drop there with a smug return to my dinner, but on further reflection, the comment was so stuffed with my own assumptions and pre-conceptions that I couldn't resist poking at it to see what came out.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

I don't think four months is the longest I've ever gone without posting, but the time that's passed since I last wrote in May has managed to be both quiet and extremely eventful at the same time. I've been out of EVE completely more often than not over the past three months due to a slew of RL troubles, which have only recently begun stabilising. In the past couple of weeks, however, the relative malaise of my internet spaceships time has turned around significantly.

Catching Up

Huo Lung > Do you comment on like every other kill of yours? You need to just resume blogging. :P

Fine then, I WILL. :P

In fairness, it has been just about three months since I've posted anything updates of my own life in internet spaceships. In that time, we've had a ton of stuff happen in-game, a lot of which I don't even remember clearly enough to comment on. Thus, in lieu of a wordier post with all the things I normally include in my blog, I'll just list a few highlights of the past three months as a Black Rebel.

• March was a relatively slow month overall, thanks to some RL concerns I had come up for the first few weeks. March was also the beginning of R1FTA's holiday to my old stomping grounds of Citadel and Black Rise lowsec, the native habitat of the Caldari and Gallente militias. There wasn't a whole lot of activity for me thanks to my absence, but I did chalk up a kill during an engagement with a Crusader in my Thrasher, notable as my only solo kill of the month.
  
• April wasn't much more exciting than March in terms of the amount of PVP I engaged in, but it does stand out as being the first time I participated in a supercap kill. Full story is over at Dirty Protagonist's blog, ain't no sunshine. (Read it if you haven't already, it's funny.) Apparently Friday the 13th is bad luck after all...
  
• A few days before our Nyx kill, Peri Simone lead the weekly "Target Everyone, Somebody Fire" roam out of Heild on a Tuesday night. As we'd sort of expected, the trip ended with a skirmish with Gunpoint Diplomacy, and R1FTA didn't fare as well as we'd hoped. Spirits were somewhat low, but the Rebels were determined not to be outshone, and during a second round (in which Peri handed me the reins) we gave RANSM a GF. (Note: The battle report is kinda messed up because the two fights happened in the same system, despite being an hour apart. The final score for the second round was three Ruptures and a Thrasher killed, while losing two Ruptures, a Stabber Fleet Issue and a Jaguar.)
  
• The first two weeks of May opened with a couple of activities I don't normally avail myself of - Hulkageddon ganks and POS bashing. There was also a Jaguar which I hero-tackled with my Rifter (and survived!), an optimistic young player who engaged my Ishkur on a gate (and ended up being my first above-class solo kill), and a hilarious 2v2 guest-starring Naoru Kozan of the Tuskers (after which the Daredevil and Thrasher pilots refused to undock while we were in system). Of course, since this blog simply wouldn't be complete without one of my own fiery deaths, I'll include an account of my fourteen-minute frigate 1v1.

I do feel obligated to write a post about the upcoming FW changes at some point, since so much of my own PVP career has been as a member of the Caldari militia, but I'm quite frankly trying to avoid it - so much has already been said about FW in various venues that I'm not sure I can add anything new to it, and I feel a little too out-of-the-loop to be confident that I'd know what I was talking about. (Which I suppose has never stopped anyone in EVE before, but...) Still, I'm once again trying to renew my commitment to posting here regularly, so hopefully you'll see more out of me in the future.

In the meantime, fly dangerous! o/