Got Corp?

SoTF has opened its doors to new recruits so I thought I'd give them a little shout out here. If you like being drunk and shooting stuff in the face all night then they might just be what you are looking for :) >Eve-O thread here with more details<



In addition; to help with the recruitment drive I have put together a little promo vid... enjoy!




o/

Sand Cider and Spaceships – a new blog

Hello all. I hope Internet spaceships is going well for you.

I wanted to take a moment to introduce a new blog, written by my good pal and SoTF comrade Drackarn.

Drack is a carebear turned PvP addict and in real-life recently emigrated from the sleepy Westcountry, UK, to the Middle East. He has been entertaining us on the corp forums for some time with both his Eve musings and his tales of jumping headfirst in a completely alien culture.

I think starting a blog has been long over-due and his ponderments and battle reports may appeal to the people who were reading my blog.

There are already plenty of posts to read and his most recent one debates the question of sexism in Eve. Enjoy!

sandciderandspaceships

VandV Podcast Interview: Eelis Kiy

Hello all

There is a new Voices from the Void podcast up featuring yours truly. I talk a bit (a lot!) on Faction War and also why I left Eve.

www.voicesfromthevoid.net/2011/07/04/vandv-podcast-interview-eelis-kiy

This interview had been planned some time ago but it has taken a while to sit down and do it. So there was plenty of time to practice all the sensible coherent things I would say when it happened.

Then it happened... and I was quite nervous and it was way past my bed time, so I missed a lot of sensible stuff out and blabbered on a bit!

Nevertheless it was great fun and Arydanika is lovely to chat to.

Enjoy o/



ps - my twitter account is now twitter.com/KazzLenton

The wonderful offline community of Eve Online

I'll cut to the chase. I have decided to take a looong break from Eve. My sub ran out last week and I have no desire to renew it. I might be back in a few months, a year or maybe never.

I had a post all drawn out on my reasons for leaving but it was all mopey and depressing. In a nutshell, after 5 fun filled years of playing Eve Online it is time to move on.

Of course not playing Eve will make blogging about Eve pretty hard to do and so this is probably my last blog post on wtfims.

To that end, I thought I would share a few of WTFIMS's vital statistics from Google Analytics...

Total visits: 17,220
Page views: 29,006
Absolute Unique Visitors: 9,608


After the homepage, the most viewed individual blog post was: Confessions of a carebear with 1450 views (incidentally my own favourite post).


Most random search engine keywords that some how lead people to my site:

Qcats Eve Blog: 36 hits
eve online gay corp: 25 hits
carebear corps: 6 hits
grow some balls: 4 hits
eve online lexx: 2 hits (haha you have a stalker lexx!)
balls that grow in hands: - 1 hit (wtf...)

Most disappointed visitors have got to be these peeps:

eve online where is my ship: 6 hits
i can't see my ship eve: 3 hits
eve how to find my ship: 2 hits

Most disturbing statistic: 14% of visitors are still using Internet Explorer. C’mon now people, it’s time to let go..


People from over 60 different territories have found their way to my little site. I love that, mmos unite the world!

The top 5 countries for visitors were:
1. America
2. Great Britian
3. Australia
4. Canada
5. Germany

My fav location stat though is the "2 visitors" I get from United Arab Emeirates... my eve friend emigrated there a couple of years ago, so I'm guessing he's read my site at at work as well as at home haha!


Now then, onto the sort of point I am slowly trying to make here. Yes there is an actual point I promise.

65% of all my visitors have come via referring sites. After Eve-O, Google and my corp's forum the biggest referral sites were Life in lowsec, Crazy Kinuxs Musings, evebloggers.com and Antiquityinspace.

When I saw this I decided to count up the total number of referring sites that were fellow eve bloggers or player made websites – I gave up when I got to 100!

Eve Online has an absolutely fantastic offline community. When I first made this blog I did not anticipate how many people I would get to know or become friends with, just through blogging, and how this would greatly enhance my last 12 months in New Eden. I would encourage everyone to give it a go.

One thing I learned quickly was that the more you interact with others on the blog-o-sphere and the more generous you are with your own promotion of other people the more others will interact with you. And when this happens up go the number of people coming to see your site.


And so I'd like to say a HUMONGOUS THANK YOU to everyone who has enjoyed reading this site and to everyone who has pimped the blog or a particular post. Especially mucho thanks those who talked CK into adding me to the blog-pack. This was a huge honour for me, I hope I was worthy.

I would also like to send out some internet hugz to Laedy, Lexx, Drackarn, Mynxee, Crazy Kinux, Arrhidaeus, Kuan, Jarred, and CCP TonyG. Whether for pimping my posts, encouraging me to carry on, being generous with your comments/cross-linking or simply because you are a total Factional Warfare fanboi noob, like me - I thank you!


And last but not least - because she won't have access to my corp forum and I cannot drop an Eve mail now - Dian, I really enjoyed your company (thanks to the WGOE channel). I regret that we never got to fly together or have a 1v1. I think we could have had a right giggle noobing it up together. I enjoyed our little chats and I hope you continue to have fun in Eve, even if you are a dirty squid :P



If anyone would like to keep in touch I will still be hanging around on twitter.com/EelisKiy and you can always reach me at eeliskiy@googlemail.com


Fly wasted o/

Doing lots of Eve stuff, whilst not doing any Eve stuff o_0

Well that is the only title I could come up with. It's been a long day...

New blog project
I have been rather tied up of late with my new project; The Alliance website/blog for Shadow Wolves [.NET]

Just because we have a shit name doesn’t mean we have to have a shit website right? :D So here is the current look, the header is temporary (yes I know its w@nk) www.shadowwolves.net

It's been a while since I attempted anything with Wordpress but it is starting to take shape at last. Hopefully the site will become an interesting blog site as well as an Alliance info-site.


Clear Skies 3
If for some reason you didn't know this already, it's here, NOW!

Go get --> clearskiesthemovie.com


The Laedy speaks
The latest VandV podcast includes an interview with Laedy (interview starts around 31:00) which includes some info on the WGoE channel.





That’s it for now. Never know I might actually get some pewpew in to write about soon :P

What would Ratchman do?

Another new dawn for SoTF has commenced :)

Earlier this year we tried the 0.0/big established Alliance thing... and it didn’t work out. Well now we're trying it from a different angle.

We have teamed up with a like-minded corporation, of similar numbers, resources and experience, and started our own alliance from scratch. That corp is Wolfsbrigade, from the Caldari militia.

Read more >>

Goodbye

Eelis dropped the case onto her bed and flicked open both catches simultaneously. The lid lifted with a light hiss as compressed air escaped from inside.

She pushed the lid back into its resting position to reveal the spongy grey cushion that filled the entire inside of the case. Slowly and carefully Eelis began to pack her personal items, gently pushing them deep into the protective cushion, whilst wondering if everything would actually make it to its destination without getting damaged.

For a Gallentean she had a surprisingly sparse amount of possessions in her quarters but what was there tended to hold some deep personal relevance. Amongst the documents and clothing currently strewn across the bed were her Federation rank medals, a simple silver ring and an odd looking black fragment of metal, about the size of a fist, which had been collected from the gutted wreck of her first Ares loss. There was a holotape entitled "Conga", a glass bottle with a crude engraving of Empress Jamyl on the side, a small glinting badge in the shape of a 5 point star and a dusty trophy with a colourful skull-and-crossbones logo on its base.

One thing Eelis did have a lot of were holo stills; clipped and framed into small flat glass cases which had once adorned the wall above her dresser they were now littered around the bed. The largest was a formal SoTF corporation photographical shot and the rest records of a great deal of drunken revelry. As she packed them away the image from one particular "still" caused an involuntary grin. The miniature 3D picture of a rather worse for wears Caldari male came to life, hugging a bottle of Triple Z Minmatar Ale. Nasty stuff at the best of times. Poor Drack, he never did quite get over that dreadful evening she chuckled to herself, whilst burying the image into a free patch of cushion.

To anyone else these items would have been a worthless bunch of knickknacks but to Eelis they were all memories of her time in Black Rise over the last 3 years. Even during her corporations' recent foray into Vale she had continued to maintain her base in Nisuwa. This station had been home for such a long time now. It was hard to let go.

"So, when do you leave?”

She looked up, startled from her thoughts as Rashmika came into the room. Although officially he had moved his own stuff out some time ago he still stopped by from time to time.

“Hey you. Well if all goes to plan, just a couple more days.”

“You're definitely going then?”

Eelis sighed. “Well, I don't really see a choice right now. Besides it might actually be fun. I take it you've not changed your mind then?”

“Heh, I think it's better this way don't you?”

It wasn’t a question that required an answer but Eelis still felt a need to feign greater concentration in her packing.


When the last of her treasures and other belongings were safely sealed away she closed the clasps on the case and carried it over to the door where 3 other cases, of similar design but different shapes, already sat.

Hands on hips, she turned and studied the room. Just a dark shell now with its built in bed and cupboards. Simple, grey, practical. So dreadfully Caldari. The ever present planet outside looming in through the porthole. The only out of place item now was Rash, sitting cross-legged on the bed, lost in a holopad.

He didn't look up but seemed to sense her mood. "You going to miss it?”

“What’s to miss now? There’s nothing here anymore. Black Rise is not what it used to be. “

“Too many people moved on. The Governments don’t care. Capsuleers are wasted on this war now.” He replied, matter-of-factly.

“I guess so. So what about you?”

“I dunno honey. Come what may. There’s still plenty work for me in High-sec.” He sighed. “Hell, we’ll probably all be back in the Militia in a few months.”

“Yeah maybe!” she laughed. Though deep down she couldn’t escape the feeling of finality that surrounded this next move. Whatever the future held she knew that Nisuwa was a part of her past now. For a wistful moment her sentimentality got the better of her.

“So is this... you know..?”

Rash looked up now. Then stood and walked over. As he embraced her Eelis dropped her head on to his shoulder. She took a deep breath and relaxed.

“We’re never really that far far away you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” She replied wistfully “Maybe I could leave a clone behind here for you to visit when you’re bored”

“Hah! Now I like that idea.” So what were your plans for tonight anyway?

“Uhh, well. A bunch of unexpected alliance stuff, the last of my ships need sorting too. Oh and a bunch of mods to move out for trading…”

“I’ve got a better idea.” He interrupted

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“How ‘bout some final docking games instead?”

Eelis laughed and allowed herself to be lead onto the bed. As she lost herself in the moment her eyes glanced briefly up to the porthole. She couldn’t help wondering if this would be the last time they made love in front of Nisuwa VII.

Escalations, pvp style!

I've been meaning to write about this fight since it happened last Friday but rl and some new developments in corp have not allowed for much blogging lately. Lock out wrote a spiffing battle report on failheap so I've asked permission to plagiarise that instead:

----------------------------------------

[Posted by Lock out]

Ok, long story long on the Quam supers.

As FW is literally dead cos we know each others tricks too well after 2 years, SOTF has started roaming nullsec with our esteemed opponents from caldari militia, Wolfsbrigade. As we were forming up for a shield roam in to Syndicate, we got intel on a Quam gang of faction BS with only a couple of guardians. The smal number of logistics made it plain obvious that they had a hotdrop prepared, so we figured if we can escalate, we would get them to drop some supers, especially knowing that it doesn't take much encouragement for Quam to field some Nyxs ;)

We reshipped in to BS with logi, I hopped in a triage archon well knowing that if things go according to plan it will be a sacrificial lamb, got some HICs for good measure and proceeded to batphone Raiden. who were out bashing a station. As moving the supers in to jump range of Black Rise/Essence/Placid was gonna take a while, our BS fleet had to dance with Quam for a while, staying close enough to keep them interested but far enough so they are not forced in to a fight when we didn't have the backup in place yet.

As they were getting bored and heading towards Heyd , we got word that backup is in place, so we proceeded chasing. With them making best speed to Indregulle it was looking like they either figured that we took too long and we had a tarp or they just got bored and were heading home. Our scout was instructed to let them know in local that we will fight, and to our delight we instantly got reports of them holding on murethand gate in indregulle.

We primaried a Vindicator and lit the cyno, I jumped my archon in and triaged. Within the next 10 seconds they replied with a cyno of their own, but much to our disappointment, all that came in were 2 archons. Even bigger of a surprise (and bit of a mistake if I may say) was that both their archons triaged simultaneously. At this point in the fight we had the upper hand due to our superior numbers, the fact that we had 7-8 guardians in addition to the triage archon and not least the great work of our falcon pilot who kept the Bhaalgorn jammed, ensuring I stay cap happy. The only issue we had was that we could not break their reps either, the Vindi and the Navy Geddon we switched to at some point beeing repped up in no time. But that was all about to change within the next minute.

Reports came on comms that we managed to neut dry one of the 2 archons, so taking advantage of the fact that triage did not allow him to be remote repped and lack of cap prevented him from self repping, we proceeded to primary him. As he was entering structure, they decided that they should do the same to us, so they started shooting my archon. Fortunately, with a fat capacitor, I was able to rep till the end of the triage cycle, exiting triage afterwards and getting reps from our logis. Their archon exploded , probably seconds before finishing his triage cycle, and by now it was clear that they either escalate further or lose at least a second carrier if not some faction BS too. Our HIC pilots who waited a jump out are getting impatient due to missing carrier kills and are asking if they should come in, they are beeing told yes, then 2 seconds later are beeign told to hold, Raiden. are also getting impatient and would like to come in to at least get some kills, but are persuaded to wait some more, and indeed half a minute later everyone's patience pays off when 3 Nyxs pop up on our overviews. We light a new cyno, the Raiden. supers come in, my Archon has fulfilled it's purpose so it's now exploding to the Quam nyxs, those nyxs explode to Raiden Nyxs and everyone except for Quam has a happy friday night.

Mad props to Raiden. for forming up and moving so quickly and also for reimbursing the carrier loss, to SOTF and W-BR for making things go exactly as planned in the beginning and to Quam for going down fighting.

Original Post: http://failheap-challenge.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=256&p=57999#p57999

Slightly squiffy Battle report: (will update shortly when eve kill is back up)

----------------------------------------

And I'll add to that my own massive props to W-BR and our FC. It’s the first time I've been in a proper fleet lead by dirty squids. Whilst I've seen some fun pvp "escalations" before with baits, batphones, cynos and surprise buttsecks, I don't think I've ever seen such a fight put together and executed so quickly and perfectly before.

For my own part, I had been geared up for the originally planned shield fleet that night and when the call to ship to armour went out I was ill prepared. I think I had the only BC on the field when it first kicked off and despite sterling reps I of course did not last long. As I ran my pod next door to dock up I was chuffed to find an abandoned Vexor in the station hanger all ready to undock... yes of course I went back and ninjad, oh it was such joyful whoring.

Some purdy pics, albeit my graphics are down low at the moment:







Another escalation of sorts is about to kick off for me and my corp mates as SoTF will leave the Gallente Militia again in a few days. Off we go to our next adventure in our ongoing quest for glorious pewpew. I shall tell more of this soon (tm).

o/

Still alive. Now with added tweet.

Yes I am still here but aside from one recent blob incident and one recent being blobbed incident (karma eh hehe!) I have not been doing much Eve-ing of late. This is largely down to my new job, which is awesomesauce but hurting the hell out of my puny brain and leaving me pretty knackered when I get home.

From what I have seen though Black Rise is as dead as it was before we left to join RAGE and SoTF has actually taken to roaming round 0.0 with one of our war-target corporations, Wolfsbrigade, rather than flying around looking for FW fights. Poor FW :(

Anyhoo. I thought I should let you know that you can now find me on Twitter tweeting randomly about Eelis and Eve. Previously I've had zero interest in tweeting or twitter in general but for educational purposes (have been working irl with social media a lot of late) I have now started an Eve related account.

So, if you'd like to hear all the latest info on how Eelis exploded, what she had for breakfast or how many poops she did today (I'm joking I promise) you can follow me at @eeliskiy.


BBS. Fly wasted o7

Blog Banter 26: Love at first sight

Welcome to the twenty-sixth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's topic was proposed by @KatiaSae of the much praised "To Boldly Go" blog. Katia asks: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As an astrophotographer, I've found it in the stars and planets of New Eden. Where have you found it? Perhaps you've found beauty in the ships we fly? Maybe it's the sight of profits being added to your bottom line? Or maybe it's the pilot portraits you see in the comm channels? Where ever you've found it, write about it and post an image." Don't be afraid go beyond the simple visual aspects of EVE as well. Is the EVE Community in itself a thing of beauty? What makes EVE the game, the world, the Community, so appealing to you?

Read more >>

Why SOTF left Vale/RAGE/The NC

I hope everyone had a super Easter break. I certainly did as it coincided with my 30th birthday celebrations! But having had my fill of chocolate, BBQs, booze and sunshine I felt it was time to crack on with this post.

It's a big one but I will try hard not to waffle on too much...

Read more >>

/peen

Forgive me a quick penis wave.

We noticed today that the new issue of EON magazine has listed the top corporations, Alliances and individuals based on kills/value of kills during December 2010 and February 2011.

Well SoTF made it to the number 9 spot for corporations. So I'd like to say YAAAY and go team FW noobs :)

Also congrats to Laedy who is at the number 18 spot for Individual pilots and Loren Gallen who is at number 19. Some other names I recognise are AshenSugar at number 6 and Jarowit at number 20. Kudos to all!!


/End penis waving :p

Killmail Ship Stats - What do yours say about you?

As you may have noticed SoTF has left RAGE and re-joined the Gallente Militia. I have a detailed post coming on this soon (tm) but suffice to say we are happy to be back in our old stomping grounds.

I was very much looking forward to joining in with the pewpew this evening however my PC is not enjoying the heat-wave as much as my tan is. So whilst my other-half tinkers with my melted CPU (well not quite that bad but almost) I've hopped onto his PC and written a little blog meme to pass the time...

Killmail ship stats
Most killboards have a stats page listing the ships and weapons you have used on all of your killmails. We got talking about our top numbers this evening during a fleet form-up and I thought it would make a fun blog post. I'm going to take a look at my numbers and see what they say about me. Feel free to join in.

Read more >>

The point of Eve?

I was having a read of some different blog posts today when I came across this one The Point of Eve from Sleepless in Space.

Whilst I quite enjoyed the read I just couldn't resist a little dig at the old "disregard females" slogan...

lol bombers

Just lol.

Bloody funny evening, our killboard is quite a mess this morning.

Looking forward to more practice at this. Perhaps next time a bit of sobriety would be in order o_0

Piercings...

...I haz them.

And tattoos too!

Grumpy cow writes a battle report

If I had an isk for every time someone has nagged me to do a new blog post I'd have at least 4.5 isks by now.

It's nice to be wanted, but in addition to being horrendously busy and hormonal as hell I confess that some aspects of my rl have been a little soul sapping of late which has killed both my desire to log into Eve and my ability to do anything remotely creative.

But OK, I feel a little guilty now for trying to take blog break. So I have cobbled together my memories of the fleet I was able to join last night and can present a battle report for your viewing pleasure.

But I apologise now if there is a hint of angry hormonal cow who needs a holiday, a litre of sangria and a big tub of Ben & Jerrys Phish Food to my post -.-

RAGE v DarkSide - 05/04/2011
My original plan had been to hop on and join a pre-planned corp shield fleet but by the time I actually sat down at my PC the fleet had morphed into a 50 strong, armour based, RAGE Home Defence operation. I pulled out my Rapier and hung about for 20mins whilst not paying much attention to Eve as I was watching Hollyoaks on TV (because Warren is FIT).

Off we eventually went to track down a DarkSide gang that was mooching about nearby causing the locals the drop their tea and cakes. After a few minutes of Benny Hill-ing around Vale we ended up all the way... next door to where we had first formed up. It was here we began a tricky but rather fun little scrap.

Here is the battle report: http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=9311110

Sooo, it doesn’t look too impressive on paper, and that's because it probably wasn't as far as stats go heh! I think it is fair to say that this is mostly Gallactica's fault for loosing 2 ships, one of which was a v expensive Proteus. You just can't get the staff these days eh? Feel free to boo at him in local, he won't mind at all.

DarkSide were in a speedy shield gang and quickly burned out to 100km+ from our fleet whilst we tried to close the gap and pick off any ships that we'd managed to web/scram. Round about now I realised my error in watching Hollyoaks and not keeping proper ears on our fleet forming coms because my Rapier was fitted with an AB and not a MWD. Thus I quickly burnt out all of my mid slots in my efforts to actually be useful with my webs. Tits :(

Overall our Logis were holding us up pretty well but despite a bit of chastising on coms our fleet did end up spread out like butter between the gate and the DarkSide fleet. The result was some folks finding themselves out of rep-range of our logis, which is not a nice place to be when faced with DarkSide's high alpha.

But even taking this into account, it was a pretty entertaining scrap. Coms was light and fluffy, just how we Shadows types like it, and we got some nice kills. Props to all the sharp eyed scramers/webbers slowing down the appropriate targets (whilst yours truly tried in vain to keep up).

In spite of my inappropriate fit I am generally quite enjoying flying the Rapier and last night I also got to experience the newish feature of broadcasted targets moving to the top of the overview. Yay for lazy primary finding (and for non-english speakers in fleet hehe). Now if only CCP would make the "I need armour" buttons detatchable so we could keep them somewhere handy on ones interface rather than squished at the bottom of the fleet window. I digress.

I have to give a virtual "Man of the Match" award to this Drake of doom (and his rr support) which took about 20 dog years die.

I am unfamiliar with the history of DarkSide and RAGE/NC but the general consensus coming over coms from our non-shadows attendees seemed to be yay for them actually engaging and that the engagement was fun, if not particularly graceful.

So, I declare this battle WIN and /up yours to the killboards.

DarkSide eventually left the field and we hopped home for a quick bio before heading out again for round 2, and again with DarkSide.

But sadly rl was about to fry my Eve-ing for the night. Quite literally. Just as the scrap kicked off my PC turned itself off -.-

I've been having a few issues with overheating lately and it appears my pewpew of the past hour had upset the temperature again. This time round DarkSide had reshipped and our plan had been to pop a few ships then GTFO. With that in mind, and the fact I was currently in a bubble, I knew I'd probably lost my Rapier.

I had a brief vision of our logis trying to save my sorry butt in the hope I would log back in soon (as has happened before) so I dropped a quick text to one of the Directors explaining that I would be gone for the night. The reply was somewhat akin to a Doctor-in-the-hospital-waiting-room giving the gravest news we did everything we could but in the end...

WTB New Rapier.

Although on a plus when I logged in again at 2am (don’t ask) I got my pod home. In yo face DarkSide! (medical clones are getting expensive so yes I shall celebrate this small mercy).

So there you have it, a bit of action at last. Now stop nagging me to be fun whilst I am trying to be miserable and mopey -.-

o/

Downtime

Herro!

Just a quicky post to explain my current state of play (and blogging activity).

This month is a very busy one for me with work and other RL commitments. In addition my other-half's recent departure from SoTF and decision to take a bit of an Eve break is adding to my list of reasons to not be at the keyboard.

And there is one further issue hanging over my head at the moment. When I started my blog it was about Faction War and low-sec. This was something I knew about, enjoyed and an environment I was comfortable in.

But nullsec, its politics, it's history, mechanics and Alliances... well it might as well be a different game to me. It's not something I feel comfortable in writing about and that in turn makes me question whether or not I should continue with my blog.

So whilst I take a little downtime in Eve I'm going to take a break from blogging for a few weeks and see how things pan out.

o/

CSM Results are here!

Just a quicky - As so many bloggers are at Fan Fest I thought I would do a quick plug for the CSM Election results - Clicky Here

The chrysalis

A couple of nights ago my other-half found a moth chrysalis in the garden whilst having an argument with a Holly bush. We put it in a jar, in the kitchen, so that our 4 year old daughter could see the moth when it emerges. I sat with her yesterday, showing her the jar and trying to explain the process.

The caterpillar eats and eats until he is all grown up and ready to change. I explained.

Then he builds a cocoon around his body and he sits inside and turns into a butterfly (well, a moth in this case).

Now whilst she is very familiar with The Hungry Caterpillar story she couldn’t quite get her head around the idea that the change was not an instant process. We had an on-going debate for the rest of the afternoon with my daughter regularly insisting that it was time to go and “poke the cocoon to wake the butterfly up". I had quite a hard time explaining that it takes time to go through such a big change.

I cannot help but see the similarity between this and the current state of SoTF.



It seems to me that we are very much in a “chrysalis stage” right now. We are undergoing a huge state of change ; everything from where we live, to our allies, the pvp we take part in, our rules and ROE.

It takes time, debate, patience and hard work to move from where we came from to what we are becoming and some folks are certainly finding it harder than others. I really don't envy our leadership right now.

I consider myself to be a pretty sensible person in general but even in my own attitude I find resistance to these changes.

In my mind, I am a Shadows of The Federation pilot. These are the guys I've died and fought alongside, got drunk and giggled with, argued against and confided in for the past 2 years. They are my comrades and the respect I have for them is well earned. I'd do pretty much anything in game for them.

But now I find myself in an Alliance; a big pool of corporations, many of whom I'd never even heard of previously. Add to that the whole of the Northern Coalition which we now work alongside; that is quite a list of corps and pilots that we are suddenly expected to have some sort of allegiance to and play nice with. It is a hard pill to swallow sometimes.

And of course this works both ways and I know SoTF's FCs and leaders have done a lot of shouting of late, to make our views heard over a din of pre-conceived opinion.

Slowly, we are adjusting to our new way of life. But it is not easy.


We will shortly pass the one month marker since our move to Vale and I don’t think I’ve seen a more difficult 4 weeks in all my time with SoTF. We've had many ups and downs and for some members it has been too much and they have moved on to pastures new.

But we’ve also achieved a great many things in this month of change. Our 0.0 station is up, we've moved over 1400 ship from low-sec to null, our members are getting settled and we're slowly making the impression we want to within our new circle of allies. At the time of typing we are also in the top 10 corp killers for this month in RAGE.

We always knew this was a massive undertaking and that has not been an understatement. But with a little more hard work, a little more patience and a little bit of luck, that drunken butterfly will be on its way out very soon.

I missed the Titans... more wine please

So some clever idiot jumps back to Empire to do some hanger tidying and misses out on the best (and most laggy) CTA ever. Arse.

I do take some comfort in this lovely Thorax v Red Wine picture PSY CHO made for me though (and as a bonus it also looks a bit rude, get in).




PSY CHO's art seems to be getting a lot of attention at the moment, I've seen it popping up all over facebook and different blogs - But if you've not seen his website yet it is well worth a look.

Heroes v Villains

As previously explained, when I started out in Eve I was a total clueless carebear who ran missions in highsec for many years and avoided any form of pvp like it was the plague.

When my corporation eventually suffered the trauma of a high-sec war-dec, in which we were soundly thrashed, it never once occurred to me to think of the aggressors as griefers or bad people. I knew, and accepted, that this activity was a part of the game and I went on to learn many lessons about game-mechanics (albeit the hard way) thanks to that war. I may not have enjoyed the experience, but there was nothing wrong, bad or evil about it, no matter how much I hated having my pve ships exploded.

Sadly, amongst the wider carebear community, high-sec war-deccers are regularly accused of being griefers or people who simply don’t have any respect for the way others wish to play Eve. Of course you can add many other people to that list of so called villians; such as suicide gankers, ninja salvagers, corp thieves, scammers and so on.

Loren Gallen is one of the most decent gents you could possibly wish to meet in Eve Online. He is also very well known for blowing up mission running faction war-targets in their own high-sec. I remember Loren once sharing an eve-mail he had received from one such high-sec victim. It consisted of a pretty vile wall of offensive words and accusations. All that from an apparently peace loving individual who took great offence at having his carebearing activity so rudely interrupted.

But if this person had simply done a bit of homework on Factional Warfare before undocking his shiny in complete ignorance, then the whole situation would have been avoided. Exploitation and EULA breaking aside - the same thing could probably be said for most of the people who accuse others of so called griefer activity.

For example CCP have made it very clear, time and again and all over the forums, that salvage has no owner. Yet if you spend some time in any mission hub, you are soon guaranteed to see an argument in local over ninja-salvage activity. This is usually accompanied by accusations and abusive language flying in from the so called victims.

CCP doesn’t want you to log into Eve and feel safe. CCP doesn’t want you to be surrounded by serenity and peace. However so many people fail to understand this and simply expect mechanics to be bent around their own personal desire to keep themselves unhindered by other players.

The saddest part of this is that people who refuse to open their eyes to the full potential of Eve fail to see so many amazing things that are possible within the sandbox.


A few weeks ago my other half was docking up his alt in Dodixie when he drew my attention to something happening on his screen. I scooted over to watch the show on his computer. Here we had a freighter, from an NPC corp, tackled and being attacked by 2 light ships from a player corporation. We assumed they must have had kill rights on the neutral guy and giggled to ourselves as he desperately spammed local for remote reps whilst trying to burn back within docking range of the station.

A couple of people soon started bumping the freighter towards the station, whilst others bumped him away. Then 2 Dominix pilots answered the plea for aid and started remote repping him. The aggressors turned their attention to the Domis and blew them both up pretty quickly before returning their attention to the freighter. So now things start to look even more interesting than a simple case of “idiot about to lose a freighter”.

The freighter goes over half armour but a logistic ship, from a well-known tear-loving-corporation, now undocks, reps him back up and then docks again without being shot at. Then there was the mysterious Macherial pilot from the same corp as the aggressors who would bump the freighter, point it, then dock back up without bothering to shoot him. When questioned in local said he had mysteriously lost aggression rights. Hmm!

Speculation in local comes round to the idea that this is actually an elaborate scam to get people to remote rep the freighter so that they could be blown up. And as time goes on it certainly looks like this is indeed the case and several people fall for the whole thing whilst trying to save the fake freighter victim.

Stuff like this is the gold-dust of New Eden. Hilarious, deceptive and full of mischief. And more importantly – it is good! This is exactly what Eve is all about and the people who don’t get this need to educate themselves and embrace the art of getting even, not the art of whining about their failures.




So, who are the real bad guys in New Eden?

Well even amongst the pvp minded in Eve there are many levels of acceptance on what others deem appropriate or “right” in terms of game play, for example honouring 1v1s.

There are a couple of recent blog posts that illustrate this point further. First would be Laedy’s description of how she has many good friends in-game, but would not hesitate to shoot them in the face if they presented themselves as a target - and how some people cannot quite stomach the idea of this. The second is a post from Helicity Boson on piracy and honouring ransoms, and how some people simply detest being asked to pay one so much they would rather deny the aggressors a pod mail than save their expensive implants.

Another example comes from my own personal experience. SOTF started out as a very “clean” pvp corp, strictly shooting only war targets and flashy pirates. Anything else would have gone against our “good guy” nature. However as time went on shooting neutrals not only became necessary but also more acceptable. We were a pvp corp after all, why should we not be engaging whomever we wish in our low-sec stomping grounds?

As our corp grew in numbers and experience we also began charging local industrial corporations to keep their POSs up in our home systems and even charged several corps for blue status with us. This is something we would not have dreamed of doing 2 years ago; now it simply made a lot more sense and we enjoyed trying out such ideas.

Our perception of the game, and what was “right” for us changed. But through all of this we held true to a certain code of honour. We would always keep our word and stay true to anything we had agreed on. Others may disagree but for us this was how we now defined ourselves as “good guys” rather than the specific mechanics by which we played the game.

So, are we villains because we popped a few neutrals and threw our weight around? Or are we heroes for embracing the potential of what we could actually achieve in Eve?

Spying and Corp infiltration certainly bring the whole grey area of what is good and what is bad into focus. At first I loathed all spies, having seen how it contributed to the downfall of Faction War. But as I learned more, particularly when hearing stories about players engaged in long-term Corp and Alliance infiltration, I realised that this is actually a fascinating area of game play and one which is quite unique to Eve.

CCP clearly wants Eve to be a “grey area” game, with no straight forward right or wrong – simply the choices a player chooses to make on his journey through New Eden.

Mazzilliu of Pandemic Legion recently took part in an Interview (and thanks again to Laedy for highlighting this) in which she discusses griefing and meta-gaming types of activity. She really hit the nail on the head for me when she talked of how much richer our environment is because of this type of game-play. There is no other MMO where such activity is as much a part of the game as the actual in-game mechanics, and we all have a much more diverse and interesting game environment because of it.

So for me the true heroes of New Even are the boundary pushers, the people who think outside the box and the people who are not afraid to upset the applecart in order to pull off something daring, incredible or hilarious.

And the villains? Well they are the ignorant players who expect mechanics to change to shield them from the rest of the community. They are the carebears who don’t prepare for the inevitable. They are the idiots who expect reward with no risk. The villains are the people who fail to understand the sandbox and all that is really possible in Eve.

Historic moment for SoTF

Today our very own station, Z'ha'dum, hatched from it's egg and for the first time in SoTF history we have sov on the map. Go team fac-war noobs! \o/

This has come about after a hell of a lot of work during the last few weeks. Finally our move is complete. Now on with the pewpew!

Apart from for me that is as I am feeling too rough to even log in and take screenies of my new home. Bleh :(

o7

Live Dev Blog: Fiction & Content (zomg FacWar)

Casiella over at Ecliptic Rift has written up some notes on the Live Dev Blog: Fiction & Content. There are some interesting tid-bits on Tibus Heth and Faction War.

Might be of interest to some of my followers so I thought it worthy of a quick plug.

>>Clicky Here<<

Trawling through the CSM candidates

CSM4 was the first year I voted. I gave my vote to someone spamming local with loads of false promises, then realised what a mistake this was when they got elected. Doh.

When CSM5 came up I took a bit more time to considering where I should put my vote, but it was pretty much a no-brainer that it would go to Mynxee, someone I admire and respect in the Eve community.

But for CSM6 there is no one who automatically stands out for me. So today I have had the mammoth task of considering all FIFTYSEVEN candidates.

I've been through the entire list from the Eve website and looked at all the campaign links that were available as well.

And now I have a headache.



I am quite surprised at the apparent lack of effort a lot of people have put into their campaign material and with such a long list to consider I soon found myself quickly disregarding anyone who just didn't feel up to scratch or turned me off for one reason or another.

My own top 10 candidate turn offs were:

- candidates who hate CCP and appear to want to take over the company

- candidates who hate a specific section of the Eve community and use it as a base for their campaign

- candidates who don't know what HTFU means

- candidates with no website/blog

- candidates with only a flamey forum thread as their website link

- candidates who have not discovered the spellchecker or had someone proof read their material before posting it up

- campaign websites with huge walls of texts or underlying images that make it hard to read

- candidates that dedicate long paragraphs talking about themselves but offer little on what they offer you

- candidates who write lots of text about, well, nothing. I need clear info not wishy-washy political spin

- candidates with questionable knowledge of game mechanics and fantastical promises for the future (despite having "done everything in game")


Fortunately they are not all painful on the eyes/intellect, indeed there are a lot of very interesting candidates with well thought out material also.

My own top three potential vote recipients are:

Arden Elenduil
I have a secret love of ninja types and it would be great to see someone from this style of game-play on the CSM. Adren brings up many issues I would love to see addressed but also proposes many changes that I disagree with entirely. Either way I liked his attitude and am tempted to give him my vote to get someone with a "ninja frame of mind" onto the CSM.

Trebor Daehdoow
Well presented info, solid background, proven experience and talks of many issues that I can realistically see him having an input in fixing.

Seleen
I like his blog, I like what he says, I believe what he says and I think he could do good work. He makes a lot of sense. I will probably vote for Seleen.


In addition, two others that stood out for me but didn't feel quite right for my vote, for one reason or another, were Helen Highwater and Meissa Anunthiel.



On a related note - I understand Vote Match should be up and running again soon for CSM6. Whilst I’d still encourage you to do further research on your preferred candidates it could certainly help you short list a few candidates.

o/






(p.s. - I think I saw 3 mentions of Factional Warfare out of all of the material I've read this morning. You all suck!)

A new home, Banter #25 and stepping down.

A new home

Earlier this week SoTF joined R.A.G.E alliance and moved into its new home in Vale of the Silent. After 5 years of playing Eve I now find myself in sov-held 0.0 for the very first time.

First impressions are pretty good. I loathe change and have had to really pull my finger out of my backside to get to grips with all the new channels/vents/forums and everything else that comes with being part of such a big alliance and coalition. I’ve also always had a strong aversion to 0.0 and it never really held any appeal for me - so I’m surprised to say I am already starting to feel quite at home.

2 days ago I made my way out to join my corp-mates, using a jump bridge for the first time. Whoa, how neat are those! Since then I’ve been on my first CTA (no combat though) and have done a lot of nosing about whilst taking about a zillion screenshots.






I feel a little like I’ve started Eve all over again; So much to learn, see and do (and read, ugh) but the people I’ve encountered so far seem pleasant enough (more so than I expected) and I am glad to be sharing this experience with my fellow Shadows pilots, who appear to be settling in nicely.



It is early days of course, but it seems that there is much here for us to do, and much we can offer also. Time will tell.




Blog banter 25# - Sovereignty

Oh the Irony. I join the NC and a banter comes along bemoaning power blocs.

I really cannot contribute to this banter, having had no previous experience of sovereignty nor any understanding of how it all works (unless you want me to rant about FW Sov ofc!). But I wanted to plug the banter so here is CK’s submission which includes all of the other banter responses:

http://www.crazykinux.com/2011/02/eve-blog-banter-25-and-by-alliance-you.html



Standing down

Simply because I felt I wanted to record it on my blog somewhere - I have stepped down as a Director in SoTF.

This is purely a personal choice and for no in-game reason. I have much respect for the SoTF Dirs, who work bloody hard to keep everything running smoothly, often in ways unseen by everyone else, and am proud to have been a part of that team for the past 18months. I know Gall and the other Directors will be working very hard in the new trials that lay ahead and I wish them all the best. Love you guys! xx




o/

Moaning Murtles.

Wow what a weekend. Largely it consisted of:

- Being moaned at about leaving Faction War.

- Being moaned at about where we are going next.

- Moaning at my CEO for various things regarding our move.

- Being moaned at by corp members about moving their stuff.

- Moaning at people in corp for their inability to read corp mails and forums posts.

- Moaning at other-half for his indecision on whether or not he is actually coming with us.

- Moaning about having nothing to shoot.

- Moaning about being moaned at for being told to stop shooting neutrals.

- Being moaned at by neutrals.

- Being moaned at for drunken local smack.

- Being moaned at on my blog lol

Add to all of this a big bunch of tetchy, tired, bored and stressed out corpies who've been frantically packing up and cynoing their crap from all over the place into position for our big move.

OH MY GOD I had no idea moving home would be so much fun!

Gallactica summed it all up perfectly last night, when (whilst sounding quite fed up at the end of what's been a very long weekend during his onehundredmillionth cyno jump) he said "We're really not cut out for this kind of thing are we". He's right, the monotony of moving systems was certainly bringing out the worst in us all, although I have to say I was impressed at how everyone did pull together and get on with it (whilst moaning of course).

I think even if we hate our new home, we're going to stay there out of spite, because no one wants to move all their crap back again in a hurry!

Evolution

In the beginning 3 pvp noobs made a corp and joined the Gallente militia.

They had a lot of fun, flew with many different people, and even started recruiting new members. The corp was relaxed, laid back and full of drunk people. But they learned how to fly well and started making a name for themselves.

They set up their own forums, vent server and started FC'ing their own fleets. Over time they developed procedures and an official ROE to better establish themselves and direct their growing corp. They continued to take in new recruits, even merging a few smaller corps with their own.

As time went by they faced many adversaries and these came in various different guises. Some were within their own militia, some were Caldari targets, others were pirates or war-dec targets. As well as the daily battles there were also difficult decisions to make, "sides" to choose and constant consequences to consider. Friendlies came and went, allegiances and standings changed. This "politically free" environment was often much the opposite. But with each new challenge the corp continued to grow, evolve and learn.

The corp I am referring to is of course Shadows of The Federation.



As we approach our third birthday we've reached a point in Faction War where, quite frankly, we've totally out-grown it.

For every challenge presented we've changed our tactics and risen to face it and, without wishing to sound like an almightily cock waver, now we're now too good for our own good. The bulk of the Caldari militia cannot or will not fight our full strength fleets and there simply isn't enough pirate or war-dec activity to keep us busy.

This problem is not a new one, it's been coming up for many many months (years even) and we've had various discussion and ideas on how we should proceed, such as stopping new people joining, dumbing down our ships types or fleet sizes, changing our ROE to allow some GCC activity, staging out of different areas. But nothing really solved the problem. The problem is that we don't belong here anymore.

So where to next?

An opportunity has arisen. It is the right offer and it is the right time to try something new. So we are going for it.

SoTF has now left the Gallente Militia.

I still cannot quite believe that we're actually leaving, nor what we are about to do next. But I am happy in the knowledge that I'm doing it with a great bunch of people.

As for my blog, I have a few FW posts still to write, which I will carry on with and I am more than happy to plug any new FW bloggers getting started - just shout. But of course I hope to be sharing something of my new adventures soon also.



To the handful of corpies who are not coming with us, I wish you much pewpew and good times. There will always be a spot in SoTF for you if you change your minds.

To the Squids and pirates of Black Rise past and present, thank you for the pewpew o7

To our allies in the Gallente Militia, best wishes, and good luck. Who knows, we might be back with you in a month lol



As for what exactly we are up to next? Well it’s becoming the worlds worst kept secret but I will post more about this soon :)

Announcement posts:

ooc
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1474165

ic
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1473984

Wannabe Alliance v FW noobs

So they said to us, Do you really want a 1000 man alliance camping you in station?

And we replied with...

Shadows Of The Federation Declares War Against Petition This
From: CONCORD
Sent: 2011.02.16 14:09


Which was followed by...

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=cc_detail&ctr_id=9629


And then...

League of Gentlemen surrenders to Shadows Of The Federation
From: CONCORD
Sent: 2011.02.24 02:14

B4D W0LF surrenders to Shadows Of The Federation
From: CONCORD
Sent: 2011.02.20 06:42


*yawn*




That is the third so called "Alliance" to fail cascade against our little Faction War corp. Not that I enjoy bragging rights (there are plenty of tears and empty threats I could post if I really wanted to) but we arrive ready for pvp whilst they give us the "big boy talk" and then bugger off.

It is depressing.


I always believe that lesson 1 for any new corp in Eve is – no matter what direction you plan to take, you should prepare in some way for the inevitable pvp combat that will come and find you at some point. Either get good at it, or find folks good at it to pall up with.

How the hell do people make it to "Alliance creation" without learning this?



When people joked about 0.0 being full of carebears I didn't realise they were actually being serious :s

Interesting article on racism in Eve-Online

I came across this article on eve tribune (which I originally found through the repost on kuan yidas blog) about racism in Eve. Thought it was very well written and worth highlighting.

The article and some of the following comments got me thinking about my own behaviour online. Whilst I'm the most unprejudiced person you could expect to meet in the real world I do find myself using words in Eve that I would never dream of uttering in the real word. Somehow certain terms seem to become part of the fabric of the game and start to feel acceptable to use. Perhaps I should think more before I type?

I also realised that whilst I pretty much always petition racist chatter in public channels I have probably never petitioned anyone for a sexist, anti-religious or homophobic remark. In fact “gay” or “ghey” is a word I use quite often, even though I am aware this is sometimes being said in front of gay players. Crikey am I an evil closet homophobe?

But on the other foot, I myself am often the butt-end of sexist jokes or references. Usually it is from my corp mates and none of it ever bothers me in the slightest because it is said in jest and if anything I encourage it. That said I guess there would be a difference between a friend calling me a whore and some random in local spouting off abuse in a personal attack. But if that did ever happen I would probably print screen and repost it in various forums for the world to see what a twit that person was.

Part of me does find it hard to see how anyone could feel truly offended by a bit of typing by some ignorant unknown entity on a computer game. Perhaps some people just need to grow thicker skins?

Certainly a thought provoking subject!

Recent scraps and a couple of sigs

Most of SoTF are currently enjoying a little 0.0 campaign at the moment but for various reasons I haven't yet made it out to join them. On Sunday I found myself station spinning in Nisuwa and ended up fleeting with a small group of friendlies for a bit of camping in Tama.

The Gila was quite fun, we'd chased him around on and off for about 30mins before finally snagging him when he made the mistake of returning to a previously used off-gate safe. But he took it with good humour.

We also had an interesting 5 mins in Norvukaiken (Caldari High-sec) when we hopped in to try and pop a Tengu. Just as we jumped his mates all landed on the gate. Not good! There was a bit of panic but in the end we all made it back into Tama with no losses. To put the cherry on the cake the Caldari fleet then followed us into low-sec and we managed to pop a few of their ships before they turned back to Norv.

A little later, as our fleet was drifting home to Nis, one of our guys got caught by some targets in Kedama. Most of our fleet had logged by now or seemed to be AFK and as such we were a little messy in getting ourselves together - but we did, and ended up having a fun little scrap in Nisuwa.

It's a shame battle reports don't really convay the whole story of a fight because that does look one sided however I think it nearly went horribly wrong for us. I was very impressed with how the targets had flown and also that they had quite willingly engaged us in Nisuwa. Then I realised they were Amarr not Caldari. Well that would explain it!

--------------------------------

Earlier in the week I had a little "marital roam" with the other half (we SOOOOO nearly had that flippin Cerb) but that's about as much pvp as i've managed recently. That said it's been a busy few days just not in the pewpew sense. For example I spent 2 whole nights just sorting out overdue corp medals. That will teach me for not keeping more up-to-date with them :s

I've also spent a bit of time making sigs for corpies:








Other than this it's been a week of forum posting. On what? Well perhaps I can share with you soon...

The bitter sweet road to Incarna

The recent dev blog, Captains quarters and the road to Incarna, has certainly got everyone pondering the Incarna topic. Some are excited, many seem wary. I confess I am one of the latter.

When the talk of walking in stations first started I was very excited at the prospect and possibilities. But now I find these feelings are waning and instead I worry about where this is all going to go.

I was one of the people who longed for greater attachment to my avatar and it was certainly something I missed when I first came to Eve. But now that I have been here for a few years I realise that it is not necessary and I would much rather see current content given the love it deserves. I find myself wondering, will Incarna actually add to the game or take something away?

As a corpy of mine recently said on our forums, we want people flying in space for pewpew, not running around a station. Which I certainly agree with. Yes, I would love to embrace "Eve like" spaces with my avatar and discover a whole new level of the game. But not at the expense of the rest of it.

Another friend recently described her disappointment with CCP. She talked of how the dream of what Eve was going to be had changed over the years, how the company had grown and in doing so had diluted its original creativity and how nothing is ever finished properly before the next item of broken content is added. This was a private conversation so I hope she doesn't mind me quoting this sentance, which really struck a cord with me:

CCP used to be creative artists and EVE was their (love) child. Now they are businessmen and EVE is simply their product.

CCP want to create the first complete sci-fi mmo experience. But will this be to the detriment of the Eve that we currently know and love? Yup we’ve just heard of Team BFF’s efforts to tidy up lots of niggles and annoyances. This is great of course and no doubt to the credit of CSM5’s efforts. But why are the players having to nag CCP to death before they fix and tidy up their game? Surely this is wrong?

The recent character creator revamp really drummed home to me CCP’s sloppy attitude to its new content. Why did it take 2/3 fixes for us to get such simple user interface options as a back button and an “are you sure” box?

Eve to me was always "above" other online games. It stood out because it didn’t comply with the normal rules or pander to the masses. It was dark, evil, complex and endless. It was a niche game, not a mass market cash cow. Eve WILL be a success in the future, it would be naive to think otherwise. But unless CCP can find a way back to it’s original values I fear the player base is going to undergo some serious displacement in the years to come.

Of course, I sincerely hope that CCP pull off Incarna and I hope it is bloody amazing when it gets here. But I hope they listen to their current players and don't forget about the rest of their game.

Be all that you can be Aura once said to me. Well I am trying Aura, if only CCP would let me.


Some other reactions to this dev blog that I enjoyed reading:
http://scramweb.blogspot.com
http://teadaze.net/GalNet/?p=349
http://seleene4csm.blogspot.com/2011/02/incarna-will-history-repeat-itself.html
http://www.sobaseki.com/wordpress/2011/02/19/sims-in-space/


o/

The Love Roll

Happy Valentines Day!

There are several theories on who the original "Valentine" was but which ever story you subscribe to they all tend to end in death/execution/martyrdom, which all sounds very Eve-like to me. So how about a little Eve themed love "meme" to celebrate the day?



The Love-Roll is your personal list of individuals, corps, alliances or other groups of capsuleers who have had the greatest effect or influence on your time in Eve online. They are the people who challenged you the most, caused you to change your direction or simply made it all worth while.

Here be mine:


The Staunch
Actually I hate these guys. They war-deced my pve corp and blew the hell out of us in an epic tale of carebear tears and failfit explosions. It was messy but also the most important thing that happened to me during my pve days. Although I didn't know it at the time their war dec signalled the start of my journey towards full time pvp.


Mynxee & Laedy
I've not flown with either of these two nor spent any time with them in-game but discovering their blogs has been quite inspiring. I don’t want to get too hung up on the "girl gamer" thing but prior to my interest in Eve blogs I didn't really know much about the other females who pvp'd in Eve. Through the blogosphere I got to read about Mynxee the Hellcat CEO and then of her time in the CSM. Later I discovered Laedy, the roaming pirate nomad. I don't believe ones gender matters at all in Eve but I confess I have found it inspiring to read the adventures of these two women in what is largely a male dominated environment.


Mentally Unstable Enterprises, Wrath of Fenris, Euphoria Released
Whether through my association with SoTF or from the early days of Gallente Militia I've had the opportunity to fly alongside countless different corporations. Too many names and individuals to list but Mentl, E-R and Wolfy stand out for me as being the corporations I've learned the most from.


Annie Anomie
When I first made the decision to train for interceptors I started a conversation with Annie, a pilot I had come across through the Gallente militia, and picked his brains on how I should go about getting started as a fleet tackler. I don't know if he remembers the brief chat we had but Annie's blunt, no-nonsense advice put me on the right track. It was quite some time before I lost my first Ares, despite flying it almost exclusively for many months and still being quite a new pvper.. I feel quite privileged to now share the same corp ticker as Annie and he continues to be a font of, brutally honest, opinion and advice.


Gallactica
Gall is largely responsible for the merger of my old corp into SoTF. This in itself was a game changing experience for me however Galls place on this list is cemented for more personable reasons. He is a first class CEO, stands by his corp members and is certainly the glue that keeps us all together. He has great talent for diffusing difficult situations and whenever any sh!t hits the fan he is the person who does the cleaning up. This is something I had personal experience of when I accidently pointed a pirate who had positive standings with us (and who then lost their ship) due to an overview cock-up - which happened not long after I had joined SoTF. But aside from all of that Gall is one my favourite people to spend time with online and I am chuffed to have found someone in the world who drinks more red wine than I do, comes out with more filth that I do and sings worse than me also.


SoTF
My current corp and the place where I finally shook off my carebear roots (well most of them). I have learned a huge amount, met some interesting people and had bucket load of good times with this corp. Watching the corporation evolve and grow and being a part of this process as a Director has also been quite an educational experience.


Rashmika Clavain
Finally, my other half Rash. I am certain that my time in Eve has helped him to master the exasperated frown that he performs so well. In return I've had a real-life comrade whose in-depth understanding of the game has been invaluable to me from the start. I would have you know that I've never had a charity isk nor a free ship off him, but his advice and assistance as a fleet-mate has been an integral part of my journey through New Eden. We have our ups and downs and don't always see eye to eye but together have shared many years of adventure in New Eden. Missions, war, exploration, faction war, corp dramas and so much more. From Mirelene to Nisuwa, Rashmika has been my constant companion and no doubt will remain so for many adventures still to come.




So thank you Love-rollers. Here's a big virtual smoocheh from me o7


So, who's in your Love-Roll?

Why I hate my corp

First time in months the powers of babysitter, cash flow and company align in perfect harmony and I actually get to go out for a night down the pub.


>>And my mean corpies go and spend the night doing this<<


GJ guys. Sucks to be me!

Calling all Faction War noobies

Quick request.

I am doing some research related to Faction War and would like to get in touch with anyone who has tried it for first time during the last 12 months. Whether you stayed or not is not so important. It basically involves taking part in a short survey.

If you are interested in helping just drop me an Eve-mail or leave a comment here with your IG name.


o/

Operation: Grow Some Balls

I hate soloing. Partially because I very much enjoy the team work and banter of flying in gangs but mostly because I don't have the balls to go out on my own. Previous attempts have led to shaky hands, heart palpitations and physical paralysis. In short, I am a bit of a sissy.

But I'd like to be comfortable in doing it and after 2+ years flying around low-sec it’s probably time I got started. So I've decided to start "Operation: Grow Some Balls", a new project for my blog in which I will keep a record of my attempts at this solo stuff.

I should warn you now that as I bare my soul there will be plenty of fails, tears and words of self-loathing (and words of wisdom are ofc welcome). But by the end of it I shall emerge as a deadly, confident solo pilot terrorising all of Black Rise.

Failing that I will at least get my kill stats looking a bit more ballsy and less blobby.



Fight 1: Vexor v Sabre

On Thursday I got the rare chance to do some Eve playing during the afternoon. I'd been jumping around Black Rise for about 15 minutes in a heavily armour tanked Vexor when I reached Heydieles. There were the usual resident friendlies in local along with a couple of war-targets and flying around my in-gate was a Caldari militia Sabre flown by Madbuster73.

I sat there for a few seconds, under my jump cloak, thinking OK IDK wtf that is tbh and wondering whether or not I should give this a go. We don't see that many Interdictors in my neck of the woods and I didn't really have a clue on what it was likely to do but from what I could see it was smaller than me and I guessed I might have a job hitting it.

I broke my cloak and ambled slowly back to the gate whilst wondering a) if I should go for it and b) whether or not Madbuster would be up for it. As it turns out he starts orbiting me... then comes the yellow box... red box! PHEW I could safely jump and go home now!

But…must…grow…balls… ah frack it, why not.

The Sabre was, not surprisingly, faster than my Vexor and easily able to dictate the range of the fight. Luckily I wasn’t having too many issues with the distance as I had artillery fit instead of blasters (and God I'm so glad I didn’t go out with blasters, ty Rashmika for suggesting the swap) but Madbuster was still proving hard to hit and I was not able to close enough distance to use my webber.

I pulled out a flight of Warrior IIs and sent them to attack... a few seconds later I realise they are all gone. Pants. We are a short way off the gate by now and I wonder if he’s got a small smartbomb on the go.

Even so I have managed to make a nice dent in the Sabre's shield and it continues to slowly drop. I am now out of Warriors (doh) so I sent off a flight of Hammerheads instead but end up having to fluff about recalling and resending as they also start to take damage.

Once the Sabre reached 95% shields I decided I'd better point him up, you know, just in case he now tries to escape as I might actually break his tank soon! But no big hit on his armour ever materialises. Bleh. It crosses my mind that perhaps I am just not doing very well and he is actually armour tanked after all.

By now my own armour is over half way down and I have 4 injured Hammerhead II's left on the field which would probably contribute more if they sat on the side-lines waving supportive banners. My guns are also about to reload, so I decide this would be a good point to write this one off and GTFO.




I was pointed so de-agressed and burned to the gate before setting a 1000m orbit. I crossed my fingers and hoped that I’d left enough buffer in place to keep me alive before the aggression timer ran down and I could jump. It was getting veeery close. I could almost hear Madbuster willing me to explode... but I made it out, firing off a quick "gf" as I jumped.




I limped home, luckily not running into anyone else, and contemplated my first lesson in growing balls.


Result: DRAW

Notes to self for next time:

- Sabres are indeed hard to hit when you are flying a fat lump of rolled tungsten. Ugh.

- Examining the combat log afterwards I noticed that one of the Warriors in my drone bay was actually t1. I'm so ashamed. I hope no one noticed...

- ffs I forgot to overheat >_<



On a plus I appear to have conquered my shaky hand syndrome. Get in!

The past, the present and a challenge for the future.

The Past

Before I even started playing Eve I’d begun to garner some respect for the weird spaceship game that my other half kept raving about. Then I tried it, and dam I tried hard, but ended up quitting several times.

And yet, as I returned to the pretty lights of WoW and LOTRO, I still knew in my heart that Eve was probably the best MMO I had ever come across.

When I finally discovered pvp in New Eden I fell in love with Eve Online completely. This was the most grown up, interesting and intricate game I had ever played. I got to know Eve on a whole new level. I was even inspired to try my hand at writing a blog.


The Present

Then I grew up a bit.

The shiny wrapper started to wear off and I noticed new things about Eve and CCP. Not good things. Cracks, flaws, annoyances, empty promises, even lies. Things that never bugged me in the past were now pushed to the forefront of my attention. I started to get fed up with CCP.

I still loved playing Eve you understand, but the environment in a wider sense stopped enchanting me in the way it once did, in fact it started getting on my nerves somewhat. The result of this was that every time I sat down to write a blog post a whole bunch of angry diatribe would come out.

I hate reading rants, unless they are funny rants. But my rants were not funny and I did not want to litter the blogosphere with this banal crap. This, combined with an ever more demanding real-life, left me wondering, was it time to put down the proverbial pen and paper?

I've been soul searching on this subject for a while.


A Challenge

So today I am minding my own business checking some emails when I notice a new blog comment...

Welcome to the EVE Blog Pack. If you could write a little something about it, I'd appreciate! Cheers!

HOLY PANTS BATMAN I'M IN THE BLOG PACK! *cue heavenly music*

The blog pack, as you probably know, represents some of the finest and most active Eve bloggers out there. The hand-picked "short list" of 40-ish blogs is managed by blogging extraordinaire CrazyKinux and is filled with capsuleers writing entertaining and informative posts on all aspects of Eve. Pirates, ninjas, wormholers, scary hardcore 0.0 folks, industrialists... guides, stories, in-character tales, politics and opinions. It’s all in the blogpack.

...and now there is a little ole Faction War nublet on the list too.


The Future

Crikey CK you sure know how to pick your moments. What do I do now?

I returned my thoughts to the past, and why I decided to start blogging in the first place. I read through my early posts from last year and these two sentences stuck out and hit me in the face, like a big hitty sticky thing:

…here I am practicing some self-discipline…

and

…I finally began to feel I had something to give back to the community…

I wanted to be accountable to something. I wanted a personal exercise in sticking with something that I had started because I am terrible for giving up on things real life. If I stop now I’ll have failed again. My blog is not even 1 year old yet.

But I also wanted to help and entertain others along the way. And I still want to do this now.

So. I’ve made my mind up. And here is my promise to anyone reading this. I promise to HTFU, get on with it and stop being an emo. I shall continue to do what I’ve been doing here, and any whiney posts that need to come out I shall try and construct in a helpful and entertaining manner... or failing that I’ll put some rude pictures in the middle of it all.




Thanks very much to CK for putting me on the list. I hope I can entertain some new readers and fly the flag for FW noobs everywhere.

And many thank you's to whomever it was that requested my addition. I think Lexx and Laedy might have put a word in for me, so thanks a bunch you two now I can’t bloody quit! xx


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