Monday, December 29, 2014

EVE is… Fun. =]

~or “Viam EVE…”

What is EVE? I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked that simple three word question… and it always left me standing there, waiting for the flies to just land in my open mouth… I never had a good short, to the point answer. Because EVE is not simple, short or to the point... whateverthehell it is.

It’s a game, right? Oh it’s a game alright… and it’s an MMO and an MMORPG too for some… it’s a persistent virtual world and a personal virtual life… it’s a gankers paradise and the haunt of risk adverse OCD miners and Industry spreadsheet geeks and Market mavens… It’s an experience that simply MUST be shared with friends and thousands more and a Hermit’s dream, it’s a single shard universe, and a lonely desolate wormhole system… it’s a Harsh Mistress and a Gentle Beauty… an exotic sheer bikini clad Lover, and a triple 1600mm Tritanium plated Bitch.

It is all this and so much more… but it is NOT easy nor is it simple… to play, to live in, to fly in and to die in, to define or to explain.

But, over the last few weeks, I have found my personal short-simple-to-the-point answer…
EVE is Fun… and as far as I am concerned, if it’s not fun for you… yer doing it wrong.

You see defining and or explaining EVE for many stems from a desire for our friends and family to understand this our collective hobby. We who enjoy it get so much out of it… partly because EVE IS horrendously complex and hard to learn. It is hard to explain a ‘game’ that can be so very extremely harsh and unforgiving. Those of us who love it do so BECAUSE it is ALL of the above… and one other thing… we have FUN doing all of it, even the boring, painful, shitty stuff.

This thought has been gelling in me since I read Wilhelm Arcturus’s post, This is EVE and EVE is Different over on The Ancient Gaming Noob. I don’t really follow TAGN ‘closely’ because he is a nullsec player and I could not care less about nullsuc, and his blog also covers a lot of WoW and such and so I have to pick and choose what to read over there… Please understand I’m not dissin’ his blog or playstyle, I’m just picky and I don’t play WoW so a lot of it means Na-da to me is all. But he is also an EVE player and very often has insights and a depth to our game that I would sorely hate to miss… so I do keep up with him.

Anyhoo… in this post which was his BB#61 - Origin State, post… he says a few things that really hit home with me… 

“EVE Online will not meet your expectations.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you’re going to come charging in with some ideas in mind and EVE just isn’t going to line up with them."

And…

“If you look at blogs from people playing EVE Online… …things can be quite different.  Sure, some days we are all talking about the same thing, like the latest expansion.  But there are times when we clearly aren’t just playing in different areas of the game, but it seems like we might be playing totally different games.

In no other MMO I know of or have heard of is this more true. … it seems like we might be playing totally different games…  because… we are and yet, we are all still playing EVE. This is the Dichotomy and the Duality, the Yin and Yang, the Male and Female, the Creation and Destruction that is EVE and that is a huge part of the human experience.

When all is said and done, I enjoy my time in EVE more than any other hobby I have ever had. I fly in EVE with my sons… we have a corp that is our own. We are currently flying with friends we have had for almost 4 years… and some we just met last week. I have my bad days… and sometimes I am the bad day others’ have… but everyday, bad to best, I look forward to it more, and have more sheer fun doing it, on par with anything else I have ever had as a hobby. Seeing the guys on TS, and in the POS… Endy, and ‘nipples’… Sov and his “About your fit…”, Tsra and his “Damn, I’m outta arsenic…”, AI and his ”….” (he’s kinda quiet…), Strigon and his “I just push F1…”… and all the other guys…

Over the last few weeks I have had wonderful wins! And amazing losses… we have run sites like Real Pros and we have run sites like we were drunken retards… we have had GFs and terribad fights, but always post ‘GF’ in local as we warp off… I have made a mountain of ISK… and spent damn near all of it… and I have had an absolute blast during all of it… Yea, EVE is a lot of things… but first and foremost it HAS to be…

All For the Fun…

When all is said and done,
the war over,
the battle lost or won,
when your ship has gone nova,
you understand then…

When you turn ponderously for home,
your Hulks laden with ore,
like a citizen of old Rome,
sweat and blood for the corp,
you understand then…

When the smoke clears,
and you’re back in the hole,
you see your greatest fears,
are not loss of control,
you understand then…

When you were scared and shaking,
webbed and pointed as you tried to run,
when you realized YOU weren’t breaking,
you understand now…

...that it is all for the fun.


Fly Reckless and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

A Really REALLY Great Bad Idea…

~or “And a Spanking Ensued…”

Last night was about as good as EVE gets for me.  =]

OK, first off the last 2 weeks or so have been dull… deadly, gods damned dull. I have logged on most ervy day as usual, I have done PI, or not… and when in the mood scanned all-the-things, or not… and usually no one on but me. Oh occasionally we’d have a guy or two on TS… mebbe playing Warframe or some such… and a few times had some of our newer members on, but in Empire boofing around. I did get into a few nice TS sessions where I got to put on the Sensei robes and teach, or at least knowledgeably answer questions. I prefer to try to not just share info but to also encourage and share some of the wonder and love I have for our game.

Something personally fun, day afore yesterday I found my first Shattered Planet hole connecting to ours, N-Space or S-Space or whatevertehfuk it’s called… one of the New 101 (Anoikis like) systems… At first I was all WTF? While scanning and scouting I was also in Sensei mode teach PI… so after jumping in, BMing the return hole and spamming Dscan, I tried to do a quick scan of a planet to answer a current PI question and I was all ‘why in the hells can’t I look at a planet??’ Then I saw ‘no moons’… Hrm, lots of Sleeper Sites… no FF (Force Fields) which means no POSes… OH Hey!! I’m inna Shattered Planet Hole!!! Schweet!

Warped to see my first real shattered planet and…   it wasn’t. It was a nice clean round planet… with a huge amount of (untargetable) asteroids(?) in close orbit (IE at ‘0’ on the planet)… Well, disappointing to say the least. Also these new systems are not available to our mapping tool… huh.

But the point is I was on pretty much solo when I was for the last 2ish weeks… I did PI, scanned… and usually logged after a bit… EVE has become, for me, more a social game as I get older. Oh I still am ‘ok’ with being on solo, just vastly prefer company is all. Anyhoo, so last night there was a stirring on TS and corpmates were loggin on… some were playing Warframe but we all decided to actually try and run sites together.

Earlier in the day I had soloed 3 sites in my Vargur… scary as I had no backup if jumped, but it is Anoikis… and some days the scary for others is me so I just kept spammin Dscan and nom nommed the sites for 180m ISK… nice. Then people started loggin on and… we suddenly had hostiles in the hole. We made a stab at killing a ‘Stero that was running a data site… and missed. In the end there was enough neut/hostile activity to make us feel sites were not on safely the agenda for the evening… <sigh>…

Then Sov, out scanning and scouting as usual says… “Hey guys…” “I have an idea… a really, really BAD idea.” “I’m sure it is just a terrible idea…” and you can just hear him grinning… OH HELLS YES!!! Both Endy and I were all like “Cool, say no more, say no more…” and “What ship should I be in?” and “What? Where? How? Can we keel it? them?” Seems in the C2/Hi right next door we have a POS… defended by 6 Cruise Missile Batteries and… nothing else. Nothing? Nothing, no other defenses at all, huh, really? And an Orca, Itty, ‘Stero, Probe are just floating inside… and while the Orca is manned, it seems to be AFK.

Hmm. We discuss the potential DPS and such of 6 BS sized Cruise Missiles inna hole and decide to try it. First off Sov has me get a Med T2 bubble for the Hisec hole in the C2… At the hole, I align to the target POS and anchor it as close to the hole as bubble mechanics will allow… and the hole is nicely covered. So we have a cloaky scout, x2 DPS Ishtars and me inna Scimmy for logi. We jump in warp to and land, I start reps and the guys start in on the CM Batteries… and the CM Batteries start in on us… and… huh, nothing. I mean the barest, faintest scratch of red appears in shield, then gone to reps… after a minute Sov says, “Tur, drop reps.” So I do… that bare, faint scratch of red becomes a slightly more bold, faint scratch of red… and that’s it.

I reship to a Prophesy and we go to work on taking down the missile batteries and even though I get focus fire a few times, I never go deeper than 50% shields, and I’m armor fit… needless to say, the CM Batteries are incapped in relatively short order. With the meager LOLable defenses down, we go to work on the POS itself because Sov is of a mind that this thing (1) may have been just setup and (2) may have been setup by guys who just possibly may not have stronted it… we decide to shewtz it enough to see if it goes into reinforced and in the meantime see if we can get some kills or a fight outta these guys.

We continue ops… and the Probe suddenly warps out directly to the hisec hole, which is not in dscan range of the POS BTW… and he get caught in the bubble and Sov deals with it, killed and podded out. We continue ops. A few more guys join us over the course. After a while a Tengu logs in, lands in the POS… boofs around a bit and eventually warps off directly to the Hisec and like the Probe, gets trapped in the bubble, killed and podded out.

Now Sov calls for a bubble on the POS, I go get another Med T2 and drop in in line with the hisec hole and just behind our guys, the edge of the bubble was like 20km off the POS. Ok so the guy in the Orca wakes up and jumps into a Gnosis and eventually tries to escape with what could potentially be a neat trick. He warps off in the direction of the hisec hole and we follow… he lands 100km high from the bubble, drops a Mobile Warp Unit and starts anchoring…

Hmmm… we wonder if this will work, can the MWU warp him into the bubble deep enough to jump before we kill him? Or will he get stopped at the edge as any ship in warp does? Sov sends Endy to burn hard and sic his droans on it and kill the MWU before it can be activated… done and the Gnosis warps off… and gets trapped in the bubble back at the POS… we get tackle, those of us on the hole warp back and… he is killed and podded out.

The op continues and we finally hit reinforced. OK, so they did have stront and enough to give it a one day plus 17 hour timer… Now we are deciding whether or not to make it an actual op, not just a ToO (Target of Opportunity) and stay for the timer to see if (1) we get a fight and (b) if we take down the POS, what might drop… So we're going back n forth on this when...

Sov finally gets into a convo with these guys… seems they are Lithuanian… and no one present speaks Engrish. So Sov is doing a Google Translate convo in Lithuanian to poor English to incomprehensible Lithuanian… (gentle reader just imagine the hilarity…). To make a longish and LOL filled story short… we end up offering a 1.5b ISK ransom… and they accept… and they pay. OMG!!  And it is at this point that Endy says… “Now I feel dirty.” LOL!

So once we have the ISK, I start taking down the bubbles and we group up on our home hole and when Sov says we're good, we jump back, warp to the POS and start winding down. A little bit later we are all sitting around laughing and discussing the op when Endy calls out, “Astero on scan.” Sov replies that it’s one of the guys from the corp we just spanked… He gets the guy in TS and is talking him through what went wrong and why and how to avoid it in the future, and he invited them to come see our POS setup, all deathstarry n all (inna cloaky) and is sharing with them the Tao of Holes… this is how we roll.

So, why did we attack them? Well, one answer would be the EVE standard… “They was home.” The other would be, and is, because they needed it, and better us than some other group who would not have respected the ransom and who would not have stayed and helped them learn how to make their way, find their fortune and live and die in Anoikis.

My beloved Anoikis is a place of very high risk and equally high reward, a place of imminent danger where sometimes I have a really bad day… and sometimes… I am the really bad day that others have… =]


Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Randir...

~or "Wander Lust...”


We, and much of the MMO world have been rocked recently by the new EVE Trailer featuring ingame video set to real time player comms... a trailer that has captured the imagination of new players and set a new fire in the bellies of older vets. I laughed out loud and cheered the first time I watched it, and every time since.

And real life can be just as exciting it seems... Rixx Javix found this video short on Vimeo and shared it and well, it’s quite simply as amazing if not more so than our new EVE trailer, only this one is based on real life and all I gotta say is… as the EVE Player Trailer beckons to my heart, THIS beckons to my very soul…



Wanderers is a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available.

Without any apparent story, other than what you may fill in by yourself, the idea of the film is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds - and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there.
                Erik Wernquist

Let us pray, that one day, we will once again reach for the stars and get off this one lone rock...
And the human race will find adventure, again...
                Turamarth Elrandir

Fly Fearless and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

PS the title... "Randir" is elvish, the Quenya word for Wanderer... Gandalf was also know as Mithrandir, the Grey Wanderer... and hence my last name, Elrandir... or Star Wanderer.  =]

Sunday, November 23, 2014

It’s a Thing With me Now…

~or “Woof! Woof?"



Back a few months ago I decided to make a pilgrimage most of us, them as who love the Lore of New Eden that is, eventually make sooner or later… I travelled to the Eve Gate in the New Eden system. The Eve Gate, if you don’t know, is the genesis, the birthplace of the human race in New Eden.

~segue…
Our genesis story revolves around the Eve Gate, a naturally occurring wormhole that was discovered by our ancestors back on Earth and they used it to migrate out from our home system and colonize the rich new systems in the New Eden cluster… Then, after one hundred years of colonization and trade between Sol system and the fast growing and rich New Eden systems, the Eve Gate “…unexpectedly and seemingly unprovoked, collapsed in an apocalyptic catastrophe of a scale never before witnessed by the human race, ruining the New Eden system in the process.” 

And we were cut off, left in complete isolation. We regressed and for millennia thousands of the original colonies died off… only a handful survived. From them grew us, the five major Empires that arose from the long dead ashes of the Eve Gate Event… the Amarr Empire, the Gallente Federation, the Caldari State, the Minmatar Republic, and the Jovian Empire, and a number of smaller independent factions and states.


~end segue…

Back in April I made my own Pilgrimage to the New Eden system and the Eve Gate for the very first time, to see for myself the birthplace of humankind in New Eden… It was a moving experience for me. I am an avid SciFi reader and so the Lore of New Eden calls to my soul… I take to heart my Matarii roots and the stories and lore that surrounds my heritage in EVE just as I am also deeply interested in the Lore of Anoikis, my chosen home in EVE.

Interestingly enough, we who live in Anoikis get to experience EVE in a very different way than the huddled masses in Empire space… I call it Traveling without Moving… Every 24 hours at the very most our connections to Empire and other Anoikis systems changes… Imagine if you lived in Dodixie or Jita and on a 16 to 24 hour cycle all the gates randomly changed their connections… to systems anywhere in New Eden… anywhere… Hi, Low, NULL or even Anoikis…

For many this would be utter chaos bordering on madness… the disruption this would cause Empire players would create a Niagara Falls of tears… why Industrialists alone would cry the Grand Canyon full to its brim! But, for us, the few who are brave enough, and yes, crazy enough to make our very real homes out in the black of wormhole space… it is pure excitement.

Everyday bring new Anoikis and often Null systems to explore and raid, new Lowsec systems to hunt in, new Hisec systems to trade and shop in… I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to look forward, with anticipation, to Where Will We Be Today? And in Anoikis fleet comms you never hear, “Are we there yet?” said in anything other than purest of jest… for we know full well that our brethren in Null say it all the livelong day and in earnest too.

This little fact of the Tao of Anoikis impacted my Pilgrimage in an interesting way… When I set off, our stat lowsec was in Nasesharafa which was 38 hops from the New Eden system… so I used a Maladiction interceptor for the trip, due to ‘extremely fast’ and ‘immune to bubbles’. When I had finished my tour of the gate and connecting historical systems I turned for home and found that our old static had died and was now in Jeni, a mear 14 hops away… LOL. Gotta love Traveling without Moving!

So yesterday I was on alone early and I did the scan-down-all-the-things thing… and lo and behold, our new U210 static low was in Central Point… 2 hops from the New Eden system… well huh…


What the hey... so I trundled on over to the Gate… warped to the BM I had left on my first visit, the place where I had dropped a well named Mobile Depot… just like all the cans you see on scan and all with messages from those who came before.


As I sat there contemplating the gate, life, the universe and everything… I decided to once again leave my temporary mark as twere and drop the Depot I had with me… after I named it appropriately I then decided to leave something else behind.


They have some Spirits and a case of Quafe for mixer… and the hound, if they get hungry enough… I hear they are a bit gamey but you can get real hungry out there in the black… ya know?



Fly Fearless and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

Friday, November 14, 2014

Feature Fatigue…

~or “Patchspansion Overload…”

I have reached my limit, I can’t keep up, I’m simply overwhelmed… I was writing up a post and in the course of this and that saw that CSM Sugar Kyle had a new post up, “Test Server Adventures” and Von Keigai also had a new post, “New Wspace in Rhea” both were different takes and views on the new space, the 100 new star systems (call em T-Space, S-Space N-Space or even W-space… just don't call em Anoikis) and on the unique system, ‘Thera’. All of these are accessed only via wormholes and are coming to EVE in Rhea in Dec, from the Dev Blog “Thera and the Shattered Wormholes”… then tonight I came home ready and excited to tackle these New Features and devote some time to reading up, then considering and such then I wanted to get into writing up my reactions and thoughts…

Then I see a new post, “Sneaky CCP, Sneaky”, by my friend Helena Khan about the 2 NEW NEWER Dev Blogs… “Coming to EVE Online in the Rhea release on December 9th” by CCP Seagull and “Quick, give me manual control!” by CCP Nullarbor… OH FFS CCP!!!!!

I started reading the Dev Blogs even before I finished Von’s post and had Sugar’s and Helena’s posts up on my second screen… and I was half way through the Dev Blogs when I saw that Hermit (and thanks for the mention man… that was a hard & weird day for me…), Sugar (AGAIN!!), Helena (AGAIN!!!) had even newer posts up... as, it seems, does a majority of the bloggers on my must read list…

Then it hit me… I was overloaded. I stopped reading, closed all blog screens and logged onto EVE.

I wanted no moar to do with ANY reading about any of the NEWEST NEWER NEW STUFF coming in Rhea when I had not yet finished reading and absorbing all I wanted to on the OLDER NEWEST NEW STUFF that just came with Phoebe and the OLDEST NEW STUFF that came out with Crius… It was then that I realized CCP had sneaked in a new mechanic to the Metgame… “Feature Fatigue.” And I had pushed my timers too far… I needed a cool down period… and bad.
I’ll be back after the timers run out…. Sheesh.


Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Three Strike Rule...

~ “/sigh…”


Night before last was… well, one of those nights that give you reason to enjoy when things go right shall we say.

First, my wife had surgery last week. 3rd go ‘round on this particular operation and the 4th surgery in this exact same site… no matter how you do the math, this sucks.

So Lady Pain (I love her and she loves me, but he hates my mistress EVE…) is home and her convalescence is going well all thing considered, bringing with it the hope of full recovery. And it, of course, brings with it the caregiving she needs as she recovers, which I have no issue with… but it is damned hard to go through for all involved, most especially her.

She is, for the most part resting and recuperating… which means after homework, dinner, dishes and laundry and other such… I try and have a bit of a sit down for some me time, which now can, and does, get interrupted, often, very often, without warning… and I’d better be damn QUICK about answering too… She txts and expects, perfectly understandably, for me or Boo (dottir) to STOP whatever I/she/we doing and come right quick… and I do (notice I said “I”do)… but this can be, well, not good shall we say if one is say flyin Logi inna C5 site or mebbe, as I was night afore last, running C3 sites solo inna Vargur… or trying to respond to a ToO… (Target of Opportunity)…

My options are, of course, to simply not DO anything where a sudden txting, very similar to a DC, can leave everyone hanging… or I can just fly and pray… guess which I opt for? Yea… I fly man. Now let’s add to this winning formula for fun that there are simply times when no matter how hard you try, yer gonna fail. Nights when Bob, the God of Holes, deigns to take notice of you… and in the noticing notices that things have been going well for you… and decides that that’s simply gotta effin stop. And one has no choice but to accept the consequences… like this particular night…

I first logged on TurAdan and spent an inordinate, and yet quiet absorbing, amount of time working on his Forever-Q™. TurAdan is gonna be a UberScanner. He’s already inna ‘Stero, albeit a very poorly T1/Meta 4 fit ‘Stero, but skills are steadily clicking away in his now 80+ day Forever-Q™… I love being able to work my way down a fit or a role, dropping skills in in order of (1) importance to the fit/role and (b) by time to level… and then just close the skills screen and check notifications ervy now and again.

Then logged on as Tur(Amarth) and as usual I wanted to get PI runs out of the way first and while I am doing PI n shit we are all chatting in TS  as usual… Jor is setting up some PI alts, Sov is scanning somewhere, Tsra is… I dunno, I never know what Tsra is up to… and Endy is well, being Endy. After PI is done I’m agitating for us to GO SHEEWT something… anything… so I decide to try out my new Vargur. She is fit as a PocketDread for soloing C5 sites so C3 sites should be AFKable innit…

So I warp out to a site, where per SOP I am supposed to drop an MTU and BM the MTU for the Noctisising of the wrecks later. But, I am in my shiney new Vargur and I put off that step for a little bit as I start in on the site. I wanna try out Defensive Self-Tackling for a cycle or 2… Bastion Mode ya know… can’t move… be das bunker in space… but, the C3 Sleepers simply don’t put out the same DPS as C5 Sleepies do, so I just off Bastion and allow the Hardeners, Giant Repper and Giant Noses to do they thing… but I am all into my new ship… checking it out from different angles, F9ing the screen clear and taking pics, etc. all the while spamming Dscan and keeping up with chat etc.

2nd spawn arrives with Frigates… I turn on the Huge Smartbomb and all the little nasties nearby start bleeding… scheeet! I figure to speed up the taking down of them pesky frigs I’ll sick my droans on em too! Uh huh… ‘cept I really shoulda turned OFF the Huge Smartbomb first… but no, I dint… so I watch as my 5 Hobgob IIs lose all shields, armor and 50% of their hull HP on the first pulse… <facepalm1>… The Not-so-SmartPilot™ spams the Huge Smartbomb off and tries to recall droans in time but only gets to watch as the Sleepy frigs make easy scrap out of the poor near dead things… dear lord save me from myself…

OK, itsa derp, but not too bad, I treat Droans like what they are… smart bullets… they are expendable to a degree after all and I still have my PvP backup Droan… a lone Gecko! And that lil monster is a terror! So, dubble checking the Smartbomb is actually OFF, I launch the Gecko and sick him on the partially burnt up frigs and joyously watch as they melt afore his awesomeness…

Now I work my way through the site until all are steaming wrecks in the void and… oops, eems in my haste I fergot to bring the damn MTU… Ok, no prob, Recall droans! Align and warp back to POS to get an MTU… and… it’s only as I go to warp that I realized I had not yet BMed the site… <facepalm2>. I watch the lovely lovely wrecks, holding the approx. 35m ISK worth of Lewts and Slavage that this site is usually worth, rapidly disappear into the black off my stern while I am unable to stop my ship nor click a wreck or even open the places screen and grab a BM in space in time… and, of course, the site has despawed from the scanner window as I warped out. Oh fuk me.

I land in the POS and silently curse Bob the God of Holes… Well, what do you expect me to do? curse myself?? I KNOW it was ALL Bobs fault! He’s never liked me…  =\

Anyhoo… I finally buck up and tell the guys… I have to, the wrecks will be on scan for HOURS and someone will eventually put 2 and 4 together and get = Tur. They, my guys, my corpies, my good friends… supportive, caring, decent-to-a-fault guys that they are… of course LOL and rib me mercilessly… =P

Well, it is what it is and there are still sites in the sky and ISK to be made… So I BM the next site from the scan list (yea I BM everything now), grab an MTU and 5 new Hobgobs, then I swap out to my trusty ‘stero and head back to the site cloaked… I land and slowboat to a good spot well inside my Vargur’s range, make a Pounce BM, head back, reship to the Varg and head back out… And this time I do it by the numbers… Warp to the Pounce, drop MTU on the pounce, (dubblecheck that damned Huge Smartbomb is OFF) launch droans and start in on the site… NOW I feel confident this time things will go as they should…   yea   right.

OK, so I am running this site, into the second wave when Sov says…
Ventures on scan! In the hole I’m scanning, heading to a gas site, everybody reship NOW!!” …
Uh Sov, I’m running a site…” says I…
Don’t care, finish it later, 4 Ventures! Reship NOW!” says Sov…
So I kill the last Sleeper cruiser while scooping the lewts and MTU and recalling droans… I’m eager for the Pew Pew but disappointed at the same time… I just HATES leavin ISKies sittin in the sky but, !!PVP!!

So I warp to POS, ask what to wear, “Dictor.” Sov replies, so I jump into one of my Sabres and warp to the outbound hole. Sov is scout, NC1M in on the hole and Tsra joins up… Sov gets us a warp in and calls “Jump, Jump! Warp to Sov, warp to Sov.” We jump and as we enter warp Sov calls out… “Crap! sleepers just spawned, Ventures warping out, everyone warp out on landing.” “Crap.

I land, hit the warp-to for the return hole, my ship turns and starts accellerating and a bubble goes up... WhatTehFuk??? Sov, “Tur, you bubbled!” I look down and realize I had moved the mouse back down to the hub controls… and had inadvertently hit the bubbler… <facepalm3> oh godsdamnit!!! I turn on def and prop mods and try and burn out of the bubble knowing it is futile… having popped the bubble I am at the center and trapped with 2 Sleeper BSes… so it’s just a matter of time… and very little of that ‘til… Boom. Fuk… fuk fuk fuk fuk fuk fuk… I warp my POD out thru the hole and back to the POS.

I sit idly… thinking over the last few hours… and I realize, three strikes, yer out.

<facepalm1> Smartbomb my own droans…
<facepalm2> warp out of a completed yet unbookmarked site…
<facepalm3> bubble myself and get killed by Sleepers…

And not once… not even once did anything untoward happen due to what I had feared most, my wife calling me away. Nope, this night’s derping was mine and mine alone. I don’t rage, I don’t whine and I don’t cry… I simply thank everyone, say goodnight, log off and go to bed…

Mebbe tomorrow Bob will have mercy on me… mebbe not... Bob’s an ass that way.  =\


Fly Fearless, but smart… and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Thera Goes The Neighborhood…

~ “Highlights from the 2nd Episode of CCP’s “o7” Show”


OK this sucks… I JUST posted my Phoebeness Post and minutes later found myself reading Kirith Kodachi’s post, “Welcome to Thera” … Damn, damn damn damn… now I have NO CHOICE but to immediately write about this…  =\

I am a wormholer, and all things Anoikis are near and dear to my skeevy heart… and it seems CCP Fozzie dropped a bit of an Anoikis Bomb of a reveal in today’s 2nd Episode of the “o7” Show.

If you want to watch the whole thing, which I HIGHLY recommend you do, hit the link above but then immediately skip forward to 07:15… for some reason CCP has over SEVEN minutes of… nuthin but splash screen… they just don’t seem able to edit out.  =\   Ah hem…

OK on to the why I am posting a 2nd post just 2 hours after my last you ask? “Thera” is why, the First NAMED Anoikis Star System… an Anoikis system with NPC Stations… yup, STATIONS with an S… OMG.

OK you has linky to video, so Ima not go into much detail, I will however synopsize the most pertinent reveals below… To put it simply, (1) When you are podded, no moar skill loss, no moar upgrading clones and (2) New Space and New Systems in Anoikis…

“Thera will be the biggest system we have ever added to EVE”  -CCP Fozzie
The “o7” Show 2nd Episode reveals synopsis:

CCP Terminus on what’s coming in Rhea
Time stamp: 20:15 – 23:00

Clones step 1:
No skill loss/no moar clone grades/implant loss ONLY
This was done for primarily for Vets but has benefits for New Bros too…
No Hints about step 2 etc.

Anoikis Stuff:
CCP Fozzie on what’s coming in Rhea
Time stamp: 32:35 – 40:00
Moar New Space… a COLLECTION of new Wormhole Systems

CCP Fozzie Highlighted an Anoikis system called “Thera” (watch for this to be rolled out NEXT WEEK on Sisi…)

Thera is the first ‘named’ Anoikis system with Multiple Full Service NCP Stations. Thera is a very old Anoikis system, we are just discovering it now. Thera is deeply tied to the Anoikis/Empires lore-storyline… watch for new lore-storyline stuff to be coming out daily...

Details:
Thera will be in a new 5th type of space/no POSes/No Local/-1.0 sec/will have Sleeper Sites/most connections including statics will be to K-space/no statics to W-space/no Capitols allowed in/cannot build Capitols inside/unique system weather/new sun/newbula/a really Gigantic System/Stations very very far apart/largest system ever added/Landmark Sites everywhere…

Thera will be ‘Traveling Without Moving for Stations’… a Dark Jita without CONCORD…

OMG!

And… at the very end of the show I caught this did you?… 
Can we say NO MOAR CORP CANS!!!



Fly Fearless and see you in the Sky  =/|)=