I can tell this is not going to be a game that I can learn in 14 days! I went through the tutorial, and while it gave a lot of information, it skipped a few things...

like chat.
how to join a guild/corporation/whatever they're called.
how to exit the game.

That last one I had to fumble around through every menu option I could find, till I hit the escape key - oi! Another menu!

I'm going to stick with it, although I can see how it can be a timesink. 9 hours to train my first skill.

We'll see how well I survive

I've been playing Eve continuously for almost a year now. This is the second longest I've ever played a MMO (behind 18 consecutive months of SWG). My corporation has gone from four people to over ten and we recently joined an alliance.

So there we are the other night doing some mining. And as we're moving ore back and forth from the asteroid belt we keep coming across members of our alliance. I casually inspect them as I do everyone, checking what they fly, what their security rating is, and so on.

The first one has a slightly negative rating and a small bounty. Interesting, I think. But thats cool. I continue on. The next one has an even worse security rating and a bigger bounty. Huh, must be together I think and move on.

The third one has a bad security rating and a bounty of nearly 185,000,000 ISK (the currency of Eve). Thats a LOT!!!! I have had at most in my position maybe 60,000,000 ISK before and that was rare. The Exhumer I was in was scarcely worth more than that guy's bounty.

So I mention it to my corp-mates who also express surprise that many of the alliance members that have seen and inspected also had negative ratings and bounties.

Huh, I think to myself. We joined a pirate alliance. Does that mean we're pirates? Arr matey and all that jazz? Paint that ther' parrot on th' side o' me ship, for' ah keel-haul ye!

I haven't blown anyone up yet. And I haven't begun preying on other miners. So perhaps I'm not a pirate afterall. But I haven't been attacked recently so maybe being allied with the pirates is a good thing. A bonus. The silver lining, as it were. They probably blew up and scared off the competition.

Or maybe we sold our soul to the devils. Time will tell. Until then, maybe I'll keep one eye on the rocks, the other peeled for danger, and a loaded gun under my pillow... er, fitted, heated up and ready to fire.

So as I mentioned in my previous post I recently joined up with Lucky Hydra Corp (LHY) part of the SMASH alliance. Arriving out in TDE I didn't realize how interesting things were quickly going to get; here I was in 0.0 with only 10mil ISK, flying a T2 equipped ship that in a fleet would be declared Primary the minute we engaged (Scorpion). What can I say in my eagerness to get back in to the fight my pre-planning wasn't the best. It was after a couple of days that I realized that I needed to get some cash fast.

So whats a guy to do but take advantage of the situation I was in and Rat like I have never ratted before. I headed out to drone space to meet up with a few other LHY members. Getting out there was touch and go as I had to go though some fairly dangerous territory. Arriving out there we spent a few hours ratting for drones. I was surprised by two things first at how relaxing this turned out to be. Second I was surprised at how well my ship was holding up with it's minimal DPS. The Scorpion only has 4 launchers so it's fairly limited in it's DPS (I can't rat BS Spawns in regular 0.0 space as I can't break their tank.). However using T2 Paradise Cruise missiles I was able to generate enough damage that I was able take 1 and 2 BS Spawns in Drone Space. While there would be no way I could have done much solo due to the speed at which my cargo hold filed up. With an group and a nearby POS side we gained enough alloys and salvage to probably build a couple of new battleships.

One plus (and negative) of the night was that I had remembered to bring a salvager with me. For much of the Op I was the only one who could salvage much of my time was spent salvaging. During this time I began to think of how many of us spend hours cleaning up after missions. I couldn't help but think how awesome Salvaging drones would be. Think on it while you would be limited on what you could bring by drone space it's a choice between DPS and efficiency. The balance makes sense as well; you can take up drone space or high slots. While no It seems to be a bit of an over site by CCP after all there are drones for just about everything else why not salvage? I hope this is something that if they aren't considering they will in the future.

While I am able to much with the Scorpion, I was quickly realizing that other then a few situations it was of little use out in 0.0. I needed to start looking toward something else, which brings up the question of what? Do Where do I go, up till now I have primarily concentrated on Mission running and some small gang PvP. Fleet PvP is a new thing to me and I think It will bring me back to Ravens eventually I think. I have been looking at training up Amarr or Gallente ships to help add to my arsenal of ships I can use. Tomorrow is another day and we'll see what it brings...

It isn't often that an undersized battlecruiser can take on a battleship head-to-head, but last night in Eve I did exactly that. My corporation was engaging in a great battle in a Tier 4 mission and we were facing off against numerous battleships, battlecruisers, cruisers and frigates. Near the end of one of the battles I found myself facing down a lone battleship firing torpedos at me. With newly upgraded shields and skills, I was able to face down the beast and prevail with minimal damage to my shields.

Tier 4 missions are currently the cream of the crop in Eve. They have great bounties, great payouts, and they often require a gang of friends to complete. Last night it took 3 battlecruisers from my corporation to win through the first two stages of the mission. We're holding off on stage 3 for another night (it was 12:30am when we finished stage 2). But so far we've made nearly 4 million ISK in bounties alone, which is quite a good haul.

Tier 4 missions are dangerous and require coordination as well as knowledge of your ship's capabilities and those of the other members of your gang. Voice chat helps, though it isn't required as we were able to make it through using just normal chat.

Wednesday should prove to be quite a good bit of fun as we try to close out the mission and face down a named pirate (worth 850k ISK alone!) and his numerous friends. Well, tats all for now. Back to the good fight!

Last night, Eve felt like work for me. I've been playing Eve for a while now (over a year off and on) and my corporation (all five of us) is working on saving up for a few ships including an Exhumer and a Command Cruiser.

A Command Cruiser is a super fancy ship that lets the pilot coordinate and buff others in the gang (group) while in combat. Its a great ship, but rather pricey (at 300 million ISK).

An Exhumer is an advanced mining ship. See, my corporation does a lot of mining and manufacturing for money (we do combat for missions and fun). So, being able to mine more ore, more quickly, is definitely one of our priorities. An exhumer, however, costs in the 150 million ISK range.

So, with only two of us on last night we ended up with one person mining and one person hauling the ore back to the nearby office (in the neighboring star system). It became a game after a while for me.

See, there's a lot of downtime in Eve, especially when travelling. So, I play in a window and browse the web, chat, and even watch movies. A higher end hauler can actually transport ore more quickly than a mining barge can mine it. So it became a game for me. Could I kill just enough time in-between runs to make it back as the ore available for me to transport was exactly what I can carry.

After a couple hours, I found that I could time it down to the second. Pretty neat! In a boring sort of way. Heh.

But, after a few hours of mining and hauling, we sold the ore and made a tidy 5.5 million ISK apiece. Only a few hundred million more to go... (I definitely enjoy the combat more!) Oh well, back to the mines!

I didn't expect to say that. Then I realized I couldn't even build up the urge to log in to update my skills.

"Wha' happened?!" you may ask, doing your best Fred Willard impression. Well, I'll tell you, in a nice list...

• The whole controversy that Fafnir posted about. It just subtly ate at me. I'm training up to fly the big ships, and seeing all that stuff bandied about...just kind of got to me.
• Related, at least one of my friends left the game due to that, giving away all his ships and something like half a bill in isk. I play MMOs to play with my friends, and I haven't seen any of them on recently.
• The slowness. I didn't mind the long skill learn times for a long time, but it's lately become a pain in the butt as I've gotten through some of the huge, multiday skills and tried to catch up with some of the smaller ones...but I can't bring myself to play the GAME itself because I know how long I'll be sucked into it.

Honestly, some of that last one is my general MMO burnout right now. WoW really took it out of me, and everything us suffered because of that. The only game I'm enjoying at all right now is Cthulhu Nation. But my MMO burnout has even made it hard for me to get into the mood to set times for me to play Xbox 360 games with my friends! So it's probably best for me to stop paying the $14.95 a month.

Here's hoping for Warhammer...

As you may have seen by Krist's post, the latest expansion is coming out. I really need to check it out, and to write up some interview questions for the CCP guys about it.

And...I haven't. I have massive MMO apathy right now, and I'm trying to figure out how to fix it. I'm not certain. I'm actually logged into EVE as we speak, but all I'm doing is training up the advanced attribute boosting skills right now so that I can have a skill that'll train all night (versus my current skill, which would've timed out around 3 AM).

I know I'm still completely burned out on WoW and EQ 2. I can't bring myself to log into AO. I can't bring myself to do anything in EVE other than change skills. Auto Assault is out of the question.

I think it's time to play more 360, or maybe re-install Dawn of War (since I just bought Winter Assault).

So last night a friend of ours had the level 4 Guristas Extravaganza. I'd finally finished picking up all the gear for Ferox, so I loaded up with ammo and missiles and flew the 9 jumps to meet them.

(One thing I realized, too, as to why not to play when drinking & tired: I looked at my items and saw I only had two of a module that I wanted three of. OH NOES, I thought, so I bought a third one, then flew the three or so jumps to get it and return to home. Then, last night, when I logged in, I realized the reason I hadn't bought the third one before was because I was going to take it off my Moa. Sigh.)

We ended up with two Ravens and three Feroxes. Overkill, really, but it was a ton of fun. The two Ravens would fly in first, and just tank the entire group that we'd be fighting, while we'd go and kill everything else running around.

It was the biggest battle I've been in yet. Missiles flying, drones swarming, explosions...uh...exploding...great times.

I got a bit of loot, shot off almost every single round and missile that I'd brought, plus the ones I found, and made a ton in bounties. Now to go drop off all this loot (I mostly took the low level loot), replenish my ammo stores, and see what I can do with this Ferox solo.