First impressions and a big milestone

so we've been out in 0.0 for a week or so now and I've finally had the pleasure of a few fleets in my limited online time. It's been fun learning about bubbles and bombs as well as playing with giant rats though the system names are an utter PITA. Never again will I bemoan someone’s mispronunciation of Vlillirier.

We've also had time to get to know our new associates which has been both interesting and frustrating. I-RED have a completely different mind-set and playstyle to ourselves and I am not sure how our "gung-ho-kill-everything-or-die-trying" attitude is going down. I have heard that we are having a positive effect but I cannot help but feel like the crazy drunk relative who has reluctantly been invited to stay.

Our priority as a corp has always been 100% pvp focussed and our entire corp structure has grown up around this priority. We log on, we kill stuff, we go to bed. Any isk making or logistical efforts are simply thrown in to help us achieve our desire for internet explosions. We also live surrounded by corporations with exactly the same attitude and if the call goes up in a shared intel channel, the x's quickly flow in from all our trusted Gallente Militia allies.

But I-RED is an Alliance with complex goals and strong focus on roleplay and storyline expansion. To put the two together and see our corp against a different background has been interesting. The differences in priorities and pilot attitudes are quickly apparent. They call for patience whilst we scream for more fleet members so that we can get out and get on with it.




One thing I have accidently learned all about from our time with I-RED is the RP history behind their alliance and it's relationship with the Gallente militia. Even though we had a previous war with them relating to the same issues I had not previously paid much attention to the story that was going on. This week I found myself having a history lesson whilst in conversation with wivers from I-RED on the subject of an RP post for the eve-O forums. Can't say this crazy drunken pilot is going to become an intense RP player any time soon but it has been quite a learning experience and I was a little embarrased at my ignorance on the whole affair! Perhaps both sides have something to teach the other in this somewhat unlikely pact.

Overall the experience seems to be going down well for us. There is a new lease of life in the corp and a lot more people to shoot at. It was certainly the right decision to bite the bullet and give it a go.


Cane-tastic

I've used the change of scene as a chance to get out of my Ares and into my first Hurricane. All I can really say is OH MY GOD ITS SO AWESOME WHY DIDN'T I TRAIN THIS SIX MONTHS AGO. It's quite a new experience to be doing actual real dps and not sitting on the bottom of all the kill mails with my warp disruptor...

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7949745

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7949900

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7949703


Those kills were from quite a messy fight. Out gunned at the time, as we lacked the battleship numbers to meet them head on, we ended up hopping to difference distances off the gates in the hope of popping a few ships before they got a warp-in on us. Perfect chance to test my arti-cane out, it was a lot of fun though pretty intense.

SOTF Milestone
This week we passed 1 trillion damage done. Not too shabby for a bunch of FW nublets! :)

Faction War Interview: BacardiDesire

I actually arranged this one with my crazy Dutch friend sometime ago but due to real-life had been unable to follow it up. So tyvm BacardiDesire for still agreeing to take part, even though we are now at war!

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Blog Banter 22: Home is where the heart is

Welcome to the twenty-second instalment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux.

This months topic is brought to us by L'Dene Bean of Nitpickin's who asks: Why and how did you pick your corporation? Is your loyalty solid or just until a better placed organization "recruits" you. The shorter version: Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why?

I first discovered MMO's back in 2004 with Star Wars Galaxies and a few weeks into the game I was invited to join my first ever player guild; STORM.

STORM truly gave me a baptism of fire into the social delights that are possible with online gaming. At its height the guild numbered around 200 members, its underlying ethos was to have fun and be helpful (and arguably to be drunk and filthy at all times). I was absolutely hooked.

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Fun stuff I totally missed out on...

NibbleTek have ended their campaign in the Caldari militia and moved out of Nisuwa. The final stats do not look too shabby for us at all, being down on kills but up on isk destroyed. This was no doubt assisted by the carrier kill, apparently Nibbles first ever Carrier loss. Kudos to the QCats and go us! Well I say us, but that doesn't actually include myself, having been tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle and lots of aspirin for much of the past fortnight.

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In which I try to be all artyfarty

From the distinctive designs of Rixx Javix to the comical delights of Sassy B there are some truly amazing Eve Online artists out there. Just taking a look through the entries for the Eve Online: Create a Starship Contest it is pretty hard not to feel completely in awe of the talents of those blessed with creatively awakened brains.

Then there are people like me; People who have Photoshop and too much time on our hands but not much in the way of talent. Usually the result of such a combination is "art" like this or this or hmm yes this.

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New targets!

Last week a rather formidable pvp corp, NibbleTek, joined the Caldari militia and moved into our home station in Nisuwa. On the back of this many other Caldari corporations are now growing a few balls and the result has been more entertainment than we've had in a loooonnng time (and ship losses lol). Nibble presents quite a challenge for us and one we are going to have to work hard to face up to, but my gawd it makes a nice change from chasing cloaky Hurricanes and camping dead gates in oversized fleets.

In addition, war appears to be kicking off with The 8th Order (who re-formed recently). I swear it's like waiting for a bus round here, you wait for 1 and then 10 come along at once.

However, even with this new upsurge in mutual explosions, as a corp. we've had to face up to the fact that Faction War has largely been dead for us for far too long. Our member activity picked up as expected in September but our Caldari foe appear to have largely lost their momentum of earlier in the year. It's all been quite disappointing.

After the loss of one prominent member (who no longer considered us enough of a pvp corp, it was a fair point) we opened the discussion on other directions we could take together. Should we go pirate? Move away? Change our tactics?

Change can be good of course, but it can also be a corporation’s death knell. All of our members are united in their addiction to Faction War and there will always be some people who don't ever want to do anything else. But the facts are plain and simple; there is not enough pvp round here to sustain our interest. We either shed more members or we start putting eggs in new baskets. So even with the recent developments in Nisuwa I expect to see the corp taking tentative steps into new directions.



In other news that has no particular title:

- SOTF pilot Lunara Yoshi has a very detailed drone guide featured in this months EON Magazine. I can’t buy the bloody thing but I hear it’s a very good guide! Part 2 of the guide will be in next months issue.

- I will be running a Christmas lottery during December. Prizes will have a Faction War theme and hopefully there will be a few little surprises in the prize pot also… cryptic I know!

- 11 days and I’m in a Hurricane, woowoo!


o/

SISI: Character Creation

After reading a few posts from fellow bloggers on the Character Creation testing, currently available on SISI, I decided to give it a go. Certainly been a nice distraction from the lack of pvp going on in Black Rise lately.

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