The Sack of Jita 4-4…

or~  “Mittens Fiddles (with the Market) While Jita Burns”…

So many wrecks... so little time. I was just a lurker at the Sack of Jita, dint really join in the fun so much as warp around watchin. I had an A-Lt in Jita and a Ninja Salvage Vigil and a Cloaky Hound. I logged in when I read, courtesy of Stabs at Stabbed Up, that it had kicked off 2 days earlier than announced and 1 day earlier than leaked… LOL.  'Goons' and 'honesty', 2 words used in conjunction only in jest.

 Fig. 1 – The Sack of Jita 4-4 Begins, the view from 400km out.

“What I Saw”…

Basically on kickoff night it was really something to see. I logged on my A-Lt, undocked  and from the Jita main trade hub at the Caldari Navy Assembly Plant at Jita Planet 4 Moon 4 (Jita 4-4) and spammed ‘warped to’ to an instawarp I have 2000Km out from the undock… and (1) instantly realized TiDi (Time Dilatation) was at 10% and working very well and (B) as I  s l o w l y  warped through a butt-ton of flashing bright orange ships at the undock (Fig. 1; I had not reset OV from my Null Neut set) and I landed, at 2000Km, at the end of an amazing string of ships that were strung out all the way back to the station.

I warped out to one of my overwatch BMs and started watching… I soon realized that:

1.      I could not see the station for the mass of ships. See ‘Fig. 1 & 2’…

2.      I did not see any CONCORD ships… I thought CCP had mebbe turned off CONCORD as there were no CONCORD or CalNav NPC ships visible… then I saw them in the OV at the same range as the mass of private ships…  huh? Turns out I could not see the police and Navy NPCs due to the MASS of private ships occluding the station!

Fig.2 – TiDi @ 14% / 2100+ players in system

Wow. Impressive to say the least… and this was with approx 2100+ players in local, which is about 600 over the rough norm of 1500 players in Jita at any given time. But I think, mebbe, there were moar players outside than docked which is far and away not the norm here.

I kept seeing muted and hidden hints of explosions in the mass of ships and every now and then a ship would pop outside of the mass in a bright clear flash of bluewhite death light... I hit ‘CTRL-F9’ and cleared my screens and HUD of all Nav and Tac displays and I was graced with a view few will ever see… keep in mind TiDi was running at an average of 10 to 15% so I was watching in slowmo as twere… but (Fig. 3)… the Jita 4-4 dock was on fire!

Fig.3 – The Dock is Afire!!

As you can see above, it was really something to see.

Then I got interested in mebbe doing a little salvaging… so I switched to my 'Salv Only' OV Tab and… OMG, the wrecks were appearing and disappearing (A) in a near continous ripple and (2) FAST (keep in mind TiDi is runnin at 15% ). The dock was a steady slow motion rippling flash of bluewhite death pulses… actually quite mesmerizing to watch.  =] Oh, BTW in Fig. 3 the blueflash you see at the dock is approx 3 ships exploding basically all at once.

I tried to estimate whether or not I could effectively warp in range and actually have a chance of salvaging but I decided it would be problematic even with TiDi working so well and TBH I was moar interested in the spectacle than profiting thereby. So I just flew around and watched, took some pix and chatted w/corpmates on TS.

The next day I logged on and saw the following, which some are taking as CCP trying to nerf the Sack of Jita…. dear scrod! The 'Advisory' was put up well AFTER the SoJ started fer krist’s sake you effin whinybears…   =P

As things sort settled down after the initial huge numbers of ships ganking etc. I did give salvaging a shot and with my skills and very fast ship and dual sebos I got about half the wrecks I was able to lock onto… considering the sheer numbers of salvagers in competition I was not unhappy with my performance.

I did get a very interesting inmail yesterday from a Goon who stated I could buy an 'Opt Out from Burn Jita' (on effin SUNDAY) for only 250M ISK… yes, right.  OH AND as Bur Jita was soooo very successful they have, “decided to continue to burn Jita for the entire month of May”…  uh, yea… right.  LOL

BEGIN QUOTE:

(my A-Lt),

Burn Jita keeps rolling, but you can still opt-out!

From: Zombie Donkey

Sent: 2012.04.30 05:44

To: (my A-Lt), 

Hello,

Don't let this happen to you!

This pilot gambled and lost a fortune!

Not even industrials are safe!

Whether 30b or 30k in the hold, no freighter is safe!

Burn Jita has been quite successful for Goonswarm Federation, both financially and as a morale booster.  Thus, rather than ending Burn Jita this weekend, we have decided to continue to burn Jita for the entire month of May.  However, if you'd rather not play, we understand - that's why we're giving pilots such as yourself a chance to opt-out!

Allowing select individuals to opt-out is our way of ensuring that we continue to have access to well-stocked markets in empire. You can read more about the opt-out program here For a one-time fee of 250M, you will be allowed free passage through Jita during the month of May. In the unlikely event you are accidentally targeted, you will be fully reimbursed for your loss.

As an official representative of the opt-out program, I would be happy to get your name on the list. Please send a payment of 250M to "List Processing Inc" [CLISP] with the reason "burn jita opt-out" from each pilot you wish to put on the list. Please, feel free to contact me in game if you have any questions.

END QUOTE.

Some Links:

EVE-KILL (Jita KB Stats)

Burn Jita - First Night at the 4-4 Undock  (YouTube)
Had to add this one! Thanx to Jester...
Nyx undocks in Jita!

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

So… When is the Next Freighter Out? =]

or~ “Living thru a Coup d'état”…

Things have been… weird, little scary but, on the whole, quite boring these last few days. You see… I live in The Vale of the Silent… ‘nough said huh?

The most prevalent media posts I can find on the recent goings on in the VotS are this EVE News 24 article and this section, RaidenDOT Collapses, of another EVE News 24 leak article, and this post by a mate of mine.

OK, as ervybody is postin on the metagame ramifications of the Coup d'état in the Vail of the Silent, Ima post on how all this personally affected a single renter corp member (me) who is: not a Director; is not “in the know” on the political machinations involved and; who does not give a rats RED arse about politics.

To sum up, it was… slightly unsettling. I know I have not posted a lot of positive stuff about my time in null. But my corp wanted to give it a try and we have known the guys in this corp for most of the time we have all been ingame and we all like flying together. Plus, my corp was getting a little stagnant in the C2 and we needed to move on and up. So we had decided to take a break and take advantage of our frens moving to null and go see what all the fuss was about.

So, as to the last few days… sorry to say yer prolly gonna be disappointed. Not all that much happened, at least to me personally, in our system.

I woke on the 25^th to warnings to “Be Careful, Things Are A Happening”. Uh… ok… huh? We were sorta on a ‘hmm it could be war’ footing so as I have POS Defense skills I went out to one of our POSes and manned the guns, JIC. While sittin with nuthin ta do I browsed up the “Leak: GSF CEO Update” (linked above) where in Mittens postulates the failscade of Raiden… hmmm.

After a while I started worryin that mebbe we could get locked out of “our” station so I moved all my ships to one of our POS’s then went back to sittin on the trigger on some POS guns. On a funny noob note, we had a corpmate drop a can and we took pot shots at it with the POS guns, then I locked up one of the POS’s Warp Disruption Battery, just to see if I could, one of ours of course… and in tryin to unlock it… I fired on it. LOL So we had a “moment” there where WE were under attack… from within!  Just like Raiden, only, not.  =]

It all ended up bein a waste of time (thank god) as nothing (else) happened in our system. A bit later that day we had a ‘blue’ pop insystem which we usually sorta ignore, I mean it’s a BLUE. But I took a gander and it was a NCDOT guy… huh? WTF? I dint say anything, and dint hear anyone else mention it as well, “Things Are Happening” right? We did get some notices of 2 TCUs getting attacked. I did a little cloaky scouting and checked out the 2 TCUs that had been fired on. No joy, just people randomly having some fun during the ‘troubles”.

Same same the next day, nothin goin on, not ‘safe’ to do ops and no ‘need’ to do anything defensewise so I logged onto my Jita A-Lt. to check training and do make some moar Sack of Jita BMs. I have several fast frigs setup for her, cloaky Hounds, Ninja Salvage Vigils, etc. I hope I might get some salvaging in but I am not going to risk her unskilled ass any moar than is really worth it. Mostly I expect to just warp around takin pix of the expected action on Fri, if there is any.

By Thur 27^th all was settling back down and I moved my ships back to the station and just ship spun and blogged. Then I saw Stab’s “Eve: it's kicked off at Jita!” post and logged onto my Jita A-Lt and… […well, it HAD all kicked off a day earlier than ‘leaked’… but all that’s for another post…]

One thing I did notice though, the timing of the Rollin coup d'état in the Vale took place just before the Sack of Jita, which has, to a degree, overshadowed the coup or at least diverted some of the attention, possibly making it a little easier to complete. So that’s about it. Things were normal, things got weird and a bit scary as re station access and our status etc., now things ‘seem’ to be settling back down, just under new management… we’ll see I guess, time will tell. I will add this, I do not like living at the sufferance of others.

I am entirely uncomfortable with the idea that someone I do not know or have any reason to trust can, with the click of a mouse, lock me (ok us) out of the station my (yea, our) ships, mods and Stuffs are in. That someone I do not know or have any reason to trust can, with the click of a mouse, change my status to ‘neut’ and put me at greater risk in null…

This is not carebear shit or whining for a ‘safe’ game. It is just an observation. But the situation is, to me, an unacceptable risk vs reward situation and I wonder how many hi and lo sec’ers would give null a try if there was a renter contract system that gave them a modicum of reasonable protection from betrayal. Nothing game changing, nuthing that nerfs griefing, just IF a corp or alliance enters into an agreement, a contract, there should be some recourse… a Betrayal Counter Measure if you will.

I realize scams, lying, cheating and betrayal are part and parcel of life in New Eden. Still, CCP and many players would like to find a way to get moar players interested in nullsec. I am not advocating CONCORD or making null itself safer, but maybe if there was an renter contract system (there is no contract system ATM) that did not leave the renters at the total whim of the renting corp/alliance. I dunt have any detailed idea’s on this… it just occurred to me.

All of this is just… ‘meh’ to me. My ‘game’ in EVE is not IN EVE at all… I am a wormholer at heart, by trade and training. I hate blobs, AFK cloakies, cyno alts, hotdrops, Sov and the damned politics… and strangely enough, I have not once, not ONE EFFIN day, felt nearly as in control of my own game as I did EVERY day we were in the hole… Now, this feeling, on the face of it, makes no sense whatsoever. I mean W-space is THE DEADLIEST SPACE IN EVE… right? It must be, says so right there on the label.

And yet… in the hole while your POS can be attacked and everystuff you have stored there… ships, mods, fuels, ores, etc., all your assets are at risk of being destroyed and lost yet… we were beholden TO NO ONE. It was OURS. The W-space system we lived in was OURS. In W-space you are sorta ‘separate’ from Empire due to wormhole spawning mechanics so how we lived, how we played the game was up to us and no one else.

Yes, we can be, and were, raided and attacked and ganked etc., etc. and we raided and attacked others too… but we were NEVER blobbed or hotdropped with a 30 man fleet, AFK Cloakies are just AFK as cynos dunt work in holes… I was happy in the hole. I am not ‘happy’ in null. But I am a corpman and I stick with my corpmates. This is our game and I’d rather fly with them in a space I dunt like than anywhere else in EVE.  =]

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

Do We Need to Draw a Line In da Sandbox?

or~ “Is New Eden a Gankers Paradise?”

Everyone agrees EVE is a Sandbox, but is it, or should it be, a PvP or NCPvP or a PvE Sandbox?

Just so we’re on the same page, a few Definitions:

PvP = Player vs. Player. To include Pirates, War Dec’ers, Faction Warfare, etc. All forms of ‘allowed’ or restricted adversarial player interaction and combat and including but not limited to: 1v1s, War Decs, SOV warfare, CTAs, Spying, Market PvP, etc., etc.

NCPvP = Non-Consensual Player vs. Player. Pirates, Gankers, Scammers, Spais, Infiltrators, and all forms of griefers. ALL forms of unrestricted adversarial player interaction and combat and including but not limited to: 1v1s, small gang, War Decs, suicide ganking, roams, hot drops, blob warfare, SOV warfare, CTAs, griefing, scamming, Spying, corp infiltration, grand theft, Market PvP, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

PvE = Player vs. Environment. Mission Runners, Miners, Industrials, Marketers… all types of carebears. All forms of player interaction with the NPC (Non-Player Corporation) entities in EVE including but not limited to: Missions, Market, Mining… meh who cares?  =]

My conclusion from the research I have done is that the consensus opinion is that EVE is a primarily NCPvP Sandbox with PvE Content designed to support the NCPvP. The mechanics, policies, rules and the almost 10 year History of EVE do seem to back this up. Browse through any random selection of EVE blogs or the gaming media on EVE and you will read moar about NCPvP than any other aspect of the game. One very concise write up of EVE style NCPvP and the Sandbox MMO is, The Devil's Advocate: FFA PVP and the Sandbox MMO.

OK, so EVE is an NCPvP game… Conflict, combat, destroying ships, mods and PODs, scamming, cheating, ganking, stealing, lying, etc., etc., ad nauseam is all by design and intent and is the basis and raison d’être for EVE. This, of course, is a very happy making thing for the PvP and NCPvP players… but…

If this is what EVE is about… why do we have all this whining, argument and butt hurt over it? I mean, it’s an NCPvP game right? If you don’t want NCPvP, why are you flying in a Gankers Paradise? There are so many games out there that keep you “safe”, that keep your Stuff “safe”. Why are you mining in New Eden during Hulkageddon??

Isn’t that the same as a 20something hottie wearing a microminiskirt, no panties, a haltertop 2 sizes too small without a bra and Eff-Me Pumps into a biker bar?  I mean, yer honor, she was askin for it!! Right? I mean she’d be far safer hanging out at the local Bath & Body Works? OK, okay, bad bad analogy… (and no she was not askin for it, but I think many would agree it would be a very bad couture choice for the postulated venue)… However, a pilot sittin inna Hulk inna belt in Pozirblant, mining Veld into a can while watchin “I Love Lucy” reruns on the TriD… yea, in an NCPvP MMO he IS asking for it...

I am not a ‘big’ gamer or MMO player with multiple accounts on multiple MMOs. In the early 90’s I started out playing PC FPS’s… Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom thru Quake III then tried many MMO’s over the years since then and never made it past the trials… just too damn boring and too many fairies, uh I mean, Elves…  =P  But when I was introduced to EVE I finally found a game with the complexity, depth, variety and FREEDOM that I craved… oh, and no fairi.. um , Elves. Even though I did not know in my guts how Harsh, Hard, Dark and Deadly EVE could be, I accepted the bad with the good from day one right up to today. I got ganked as a noob, I got podded and lost ships to stoopidity and the Pirates of EVE. But I never once felt the desire or need to go forumwhine about it.

OK, this is what I want to know… and I am asking the blogging community and those few who read my drivel… Why are you mining in Halo? By that I mean why are PvE ‘only’ gamers (IE carebears) interested in EVE as compared to any other safer MMO? Is the PvE content in EVE, the Missions, Mining, Market and Industry all alone that good? …that much fun? Really?

“What is it EVE PvE players really want?”  Do they want to Trammel on EVE?

As I stated, I am not an Old Bold MMO Gamer, but it seems some of us are… Thanx to Mabrick over at Mabrick’s Mumblings for posting a link to: Criticism of Ultima Online, about some highly controversial and very familiar sounding gameplay that took place in that ground breaking NCPvP MMO. As I read through the Griefing section, I was stunned at the similarities between what HAD happened in UO and what WAS happening today in EVE. Stabs over at Stabbed Up offered up his related: “Is Eve heading for a Trammel?” post back on Apr 4^th.

I was completely freaked out when I read this in the Criticism of UO:

“Eventually, the ongoing depredations of the 'red' community caused the creation of a separate, mirror world, called Trammel, where only mutually consented PvP and theft could occur, within or between player guilds that were in a state of war with each other.”

“…some players cited the introduction (of Trammel) as the downfall of the Ultima tradition of interesting and complex behavior…” “…almost all player activity moved to Trammel, and the old world (given the name Felucca) became practically abandoned.”

Stabs opined:

“I predict a Trammel for Eve in 2013. Areas where players are untouchable.”

This scares the crap outta me because without ANY knowledge of UO or Trammel, I stated near end of my post on the latest Blog Banter 35: “The Public Perception of EVE Online”:

“Maybe that’s the solution… Create a NEW single shard server, call it… what? “Fastidious”, copy EVE to it, edit this version to make it a carebear centric game…”

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Are all NCPvP MMOs bound to fail?

Will we live to see “The Decline and Fall of the New Eden Empires?”

Goonswarms Sack of Jita 4-4

Fly Safe and I hope to keep seeing you in the Sky  =/|)=

Blog Banter 35: The Public Perception of EVE Online

or~  “Eff  ‘em if They Can’t Take a Gank”

Now approaching its tenth year, the EVE Online player community has matured into an intricate and multi-faceted society viewed with envy by other game developers, but is frequently regarded with suspicion by the wider gaming community.

Is this perception deserved? Should "The Nation of EVE" be concerned by its public identity and if so how might that be improved? What influence will the integration of the DUST 514 community have on this culture in the future?

[Unrelated and random bonus question sponsored by EVE News 24: What single button would you recommend be included on an EVE-specific keyboard?]

==================================================

Lost In Space…

Being a blogger, I do research of course and the VAST majority of verbiage put out about EVE is in blogs like mine and the MMO gaming media, IE Massively, The Escapist, TenTonHammer etc., and not all of them either unless it’s a piece about how vicious and hard and harsh EVE is, or coverage of Player Riots or Chairman Faux pas, but…

In just one Googling of “EVE Online articles” I found the following… EVE is in 11 New York Times articles from ’05 to ‘11…  3 are about EVE, in the rest we are mentioned in part.

This article from June ‘07 discusses the creation of the CSM in response to the BoB scandal.

This article from June ’08 discusses the sandbox and BoB vs Goons.

This article from June ’08 discusses the newly created CSM.

We are mentioned here from Sept. ’09 in this telling quote which infers we are a niche MMO:

“Like WOW and almost every other massively-multiplayer online game besides Eve Online (which is science-fiction-based)…”

In this article from Oct.’11, we were mentioned in this quote:

“…the most powerful and important games are the persistent online dimensions like World of Warcraft and Eve Online. That is because they’re not really about the games; they are about the relationships players form within them.”

These are all fair, well written and non negative pieces. So there has been some occasional mention of us in the greater out there.

First, a Question, Where Do We Fit in, in the MMO World?

IMHO, EVE sells to a very unique niche market. It is like Theoretical Physics or Sasquatch Hunting or Alien Autopsy… notta lotta people dooin it but them as do are very passionate about it. And yea, +300K accounts seems like a lot, but…

I have found some very interesting statistics from the good people over at MMOData.Net… (and CCP is a contributor to this site) so with I offer for your edification…

Total MMO Subs & Accounts

PCU for Single Shard, Persistent Worlds

MMO Subs between 150K and 1M

MMO Market Share by Genre

OK… with over 22 million active subs listed on this site, EVE is 6.19% of the total. In the 150K to 1M account/subs range, EVE ranks 7^th of 15… middle spot in the middle market of MMOs.

Perception is Reality

So… where does this leave us? Simply as I stated, EVE is a Very Unique Niche MMO…

Even with the articles I googled up above, I can’t say I believe the Mass Market gaming community really knows a lot about us beyond, maybe, the following…

· EVE IS Harsh and Hard and Difficult and Deadly;

· Griefing IS allowed and even, to a degree, supported by CCP and a large segment of players;

· EVE Is NOT “safe”, your Stuff is NOT “safe”, YOU are not “safe”… not really, not anywhere at any time;

· Undock and you risk your ship, mods, cargo and even skills;

· Make friends, join a corp, join an Alliance and you risk everything, period;

· And, while EVE may or may not be Real, Loss IN EVE is very, very real.

Not exactly the kinda advertising that brings in droves of new players.

And in this is the crux of the matter and the truth in the larger perception… and why EVE will never be WoW, why EVE will never be a Main Stream Mass Market MMORPG written up in the glossy mags and chatted about extensively in the mass media… Not as long as EVE is allowed to remain the harsh, hard, deadly, costly and unsafe sandbox we all love so much.

The majority of gamers, young or old, want (lower case) excitement, most want (lower case) danger… They all want to be (all caps) Unbeatable Hero’s… and there is no such thing in EVE. Most gamers dunt mind (too much) when their toon ‘dies’ but under NO circumstances will they accept losing any of the Stuff they have worked so hard to collect. And most gamers will NOT accept griefing at all, much less anywhere near the scale that is accepted as normal game play in EVE.

In EVE we do not log on to relax, escape and while away a few hours in a situation where we are all Hero’s… We log on because it is a CHALLENGE to live in EVE, because it IS Hard, and Harsh and we know the VALUE that real loss can give to the hours we spend flying these deadly skies…

Which leaves me with my personal subjective summation…

Who in EVE cares what others think?

Think about it… OK, that said, now for a moar objective view…

Can we (IE CCP & the player base) improve this perception?

Well… in a word, no. Not if we want EVE to remain “EVE”. Allow it to change into something safer, softer, moar protected… then yes, you will see a version of EVE capable of courting the mass market... but you wunt see me in the skies of that EVE.

Maybe that’s the solution… Create a NEW single shard server, call it… what? “Fastidious”, copy EVE to it, edit this version to make it a carebear centric game and offer it F2P (like Dust) as “EVE Lite” or some such…?  Nawww... 

EVE’s getting Dusted

I have not spent much time pondering how Dust will affect EVE as I have heard that Dusters will probably not be deployed in W-Space… without Sov, why would they? So they may not impact my larger game all that much (yes I am in null ATM, but I dunt plan on living here forever, holes is my home)…

I am concerned about how deeply this ‘integration of the DUST 514’ community will go. As a F2P game Dusters will quite probably have a higher number younger players, quite possibly a substantially higher number… And I do not see the amount of Griefing and general “adult” level nonsense that goes on in EVE as being acceptable to Sony. CCP will have to tread very, very carefully on how things like the possibility of ‘Orbital Ganking’ and other Pilot on Duster Griefing tactics and similar emergent play are handled.

…I must to wait and see.

New button? How about [Enable Joystick]?

And no, I do not mean a “tactical flight view”, I mean enable joystick use for manual flight while retaining the current main view as is. I hate manual flight by carpleclicking all over the screen.

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

=============================================

"Blog Banters" are brought to you by the good folks at...

“Freebooted” by Seismic Stan 

“The brainchild of the Blogfather, Crazy Kinux, blog banters are single subjects discussed across the EVE blogging community. It encourages the sharing of ideas and cross-pollination of readership. All in all a healthy thing for a community.“

A Tale Full of Fail…

or~  “One Day This Idiot Joined Our Corp and…”

The few who follow this may have noticed that I aint blogged much lately… simply not much to blog about… Log on, fleet up, kill Guristas, salvage wrecks, log off… rinse & repeat. We haven’t even been really plagued by neuts nearly as much as usual, at least not when I have been awake (read online). Boring actually if one must be honest ‘bout it.

My Fail 

Biggest excitement I have had is a night when I lost both my Mael and my Loki to the effin Guristas… I was tryin’ out different tanking strategies and workin my way up the anomaly ladder…

 Guristas Anomalies by Difficulty

• Class 01 = Guristas Hideaway (easiest) [not in our system]

• Class 02 = Guristas Burrow [not in our system]

• Class 03 = Guristas Refuge [not in our system]

• Class 04 = Guristas Den

• Class 05 = Guristas Yard [not in our system]

• Class 06 = Guristas Rally Point

• Class 07 = Guristas Port

• Class 08 = Guristas Hub

• Class 09 = Guristas Haven [not in our system]

• Class 10 = Guristas Sanctum (hardest) [very rare]

• Level 01 = Guristas (Class X) (easiest)

• Level 02 = Guristas Hidden (Class X)

• Level 03 = Guristas Forsaken (Class X)

• Level 04 = Guristas Forlorn (Class X) (hardest)

IE:

(C04) Den = very easy

(L02/C05) Hidden Rally Point = hard

(L03/C07) Forsaken Port = much harder

(L04/C08) Forlorn Hub = hardest… and so on.

This means the Forlorn Hub and the Forsaken Hub are the hardest regular anomalies available in our system and therefore have the highest bounties… so S.O.P is to bounce between these two Hubs and try and complete them as quickly as possible… bounties are paid out by CONCORD every 20 minutes, this is the “Bounty Cycle”. The moar Red Crosses you can wreck in 20 mins, the higher the Bounty Cycle for everyone in fleet.

In fleet I have no tanking problems. The Guristas aggro switch so at most you might have to tank the whole incoming DPS for one spawn, but very rarely for the whole site. In my Mael or Loki I can solo the Dens, Rally Points & Hubs and so far some of the Hidden variants with impunity but not anything higher in difficulty without risking my ship. Oh, and in some of the sites…  the Cursed Foul Black Hearted Guristas web and scram… so you might see how I may have selected the wrong site to play in solo and BLAMMO! Lost my Mael… crap crap crap… OK, I figger I can pop in, in my Loki, grab the lewt from my dead Mael and warp out… uh… yea… right.

Sooooo… after losing my Loki I POD back to station, again, refit a Drake for max tank with tractors and salvagers and THEN I was able to get my loot AND salvage both lost ships while shruggin off the incoming DPS like a water off a…  (lol) duck’s back. But, other than that little bit ‘O foolishness it has been just the normal daily dull ISK grind.

Spai Fail

As I have said, things were quiet ‘round our system… until this past weekend… and man oh man do I love it when a good griefin op goes so badly wrong.  =]

You see, we had a Spai infiltrate out corp. This guy, Surgeon42 (yea, I’m namein’ names but I aint drunk and he aint suicidal and this aint a Fanfest stage…) applied for membership, the Directorship did the usual vetting and he “seemed” OK on the surface. Keep in mind that in EVE, corp infiltration and spying can be actually quite easy what with each account having 3 toons all wayyy to easy to kill off and create anew… many griferbears keep 1 toon as their Main, and recycle the 2 alts.

So, we get an app, our guys do the std. vetting and find nothing obviously amiss, we accept him on the 9^th and on the 13^th he, and some friends, AWOXed this blinged out Golem… which caused us a smidge of trubble as we are renters ultimately of Raiden and Awoxing is a kicking offense. Note: definition of Awoxer, and where the term ‘Awox’ came from.

We felt this awoxing was possibly politically motivated due to this from him in our corp chat:



“Surgeon42 > Ill extend the offer i gave to accsis, i'll leave corp peacfully for 300m. Otherwise raiden. will not be pleased. Thats is my only offer, take it or leave it.”

The worry was that as long as he did not dock up we could not kick him from corp until, at the earliest, when the server came back up after downtime. If he was able to get logged on before our directors could get logged in and kick him, then he would have another day to continue working against us.

Here is where it gets interesting… this doofus for some reason then comes back down to our system… for the life of me I can’t possibly figure out why. I mean, we are obviously gonna wanna kill him, POD him, resuscitate his corpse, then Kill him again… and while we are primarily an Indy corp and we are not PL, or the Tuskers, we are also not totally clueless when it comes to PvP and there are quite a few of us to boot. We figured he was lookin to setup a hot drop… but, if that was what he wanted why not wait until we are rattin in fleet or until we have a big mining op going… why basically warn us by AWOXing and THEN coming back in system? I mean we were ready.

Everybody shipped up in PvP ships and we kicked him from TS. He warped around in system a bit, then went to the one POS where we have a SMA setup for general access so we can store ships outside of the station. He kicked out a Hound of mine and another frig, but they weren’t worth the effort to bump em out so he went to another POS where we did have an Orca with an AFK pilot undocked. He was in a Retribution and so dint really stand a chance of bumping an Orca all the way from the spike to the FF… especially as we were able to jam the Orca back up against the tower easy. He was smackin in local and corp, he convo’ed our CEO and tried to ransom (yea, right)… so he started orbiting inside the POS and doing… nothing. Then he dummied up and left the FF twice, both times he risked getting popped and he never had the upper hand, but he also never went so far out he couldn’t duck back in.

Then he got bored… he said so…

In local:
“Surgeon42 > Two quick points, what i did was nothing personal against you, or the corp.”

“Surgeon42 > And 2nd im docking now, so u can kick.” 

Then… he self destructed his Retribution and a few minutes later warped his pod to the station and docked up, whereupon our CEO kicked him with extreme satisfaction. As far as we know… he’s still hiding in there somewhere. Yup, ship-seppuku to keep it off our killboard… FAIL. Dint even try and warp to the unbubbled gate and make good his escape… a vastly moar Griefer-honorable tactic than asplodin yer ship, whining that you ‘dint mean it’ and dockin up in station SO you can get kicked…  FAIL.

Nothing personal huh… really? Well, I dunt know about him, but it was damned personal for all of us. That Awoxing cost us a bit. The corp had to replace the Golem (valued at 1.1Bil ISK) and paid a fine for the Awox to the Alliance plus the loss of ‘face’ even though our CEO did it right, immediately contacted the Alliance leadership, told em what was happening and made immediate restitution.So he got a blinged Golem kill on his board and cost us approx 1.6B ISK and put us on the Alliance’s KB as having Awoxed once… I still call it a major fail due to how badly he ended up using his membership in our corp. With a little thought and the willingness to spend some time, he could have hurt us so much worse than he did… I know there are those out there who will figure a 1.6 Bil hit and the loss of face moar than enough, I say they’re wrong.

If I was ever going to do something like this… I would plan very carefully and really maximize the DAMAGES… He squandered an opportunity and that is a fail in my book… and dunt get me wrong, I and my corp, are really, really glad he blew it like he did.  =]

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