Blog Banter 32: Non-Consensual Combat Restrictions

"This month's Blog Banter comes from Drackarn of Sand, Cider and Spaceships. He has foolishly chosen to poke the hornets' nest that is the non-consensual PvP debate. Whilst you read his question, I'll be finding a safe place to hide.

A quick view of the Eve Online forums can always find someone complaining about being suicide ganked, whining about some scam they fell for or other such tears. With the Goons' Ice Interdiction claiming a vast amount of mining ships there were calls for an "opt out of PvP" option. 

Should this happen? Should people be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve Online. Should CONCORD prevent crime rather than just handing out justice after the event? Or do the hi-sec population already have too much protection from the scum and villainy that inhabits the game?"

I do not ordinarily contribute to the Blog Banter. Mostly because I am a ball of hot gas. I mean what I say but with so many very intelligent and educated people writing I chose to keep my brand of writing on a leash and release it when I see fit. And this time I see fit to say a few words.

There is much I can rant about when it comes to the dweeb, head up the ass faggotry that is the carebear mentality. But Drackarn sums my thoughts up fairly well in his reply.

There is only, in my honest opinion, a bottom line to the argument of "opt out of PvP" in Eve-online. No fucking way! Eve online was based on player versus player. It is the quint essential to orange on a tangerine. One is nothing with out the other.

How dare tit suckling wimps bring their love of cradle to grave mentality to our beloved game of Eve-online. The world does not rotate around your cuntiness. Some may say that the world does not revolve around the "social butterfly" type of play that many of us love to partake of. Well sunshine, I can only tell you that your carebear mentality is a minority. And if it turned out to be a majority? Fuck you we'll blow up your shit and steal you blind anyhow. 

What does it say when bitter enemies can fight and fight and despise one another as far as political sides are concerned yet maintain a friendly, healthy, respectful and open relationship? Yet carebears absolutely despise the very DNA that Eve is made of and never stop crying for ultimate protection.

Such as in real life is such as in Eve online.There is no ultimate protection. To demand so is abominable. To give so is unforgiveable.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Most of the time I am like this:

I definitely agree with this type of reaction:

Many times life leaves us feeling like this:

Hopefully we don't end up like this:

As another year draws to a close I suspect many of us are not so different in that we may reflect upon the year we are about to exit as well as look forward to the new year about to begin.

Perhaps many lead a very good life. Perhaps many struggle to get by.
Perhaps many of us are like minded. Perhaps many of us differ in our thoughts and beliefs.
We may agree, disagree, or agree to disagree.
But at the end of the day, no matter where we stand on any issue we should try to remember that we are all of the same race.
There may, and often times will be, some that we will never be able to get along with
or compromise with or agree with. And that's ok. We're human.


I'd like to wish every one out there a very Merry Christmas and, safe, prosperous Happy New Year.
Be we in game friends or foe, out of game comrades, or a thorn in one another's side I raise a toast.

Cheers

Blog Banter 31: The Entire Wormhole That Eve Is

Welcome to the thirty-first EVE Blog Banter, a community conversation between anyone and everyone with an interest in discussing EVE Online. For more information on how this works, check out this link or for details of this edition's topic, read on.


As any games journalist would probably tell you, a true and complete review of a Massively Multiplayer Online game is impossible. MMOs are vast, forever evolving entities with too much content for a single reviewer to produce a fair and accurate review. However, a collection of dedicated bloggers and EVE players (past and present) with a wide range of experience in various aspects of the game might be able to pull it off.


This special 'End of Year' Blog Banter edition aims to be a crowd-sourced game review. Using your gaming knowledge and experience, join the community in writing a fair and qualified review of EVE Online: Crucible. This can be presented in any manner of your choosing, but will ideally include some kind of scoring system. 


With each Blog Banter participant reviewing the areas of EVE Online in which they specialise, the result should be a Metacritic-esque and accurate review by the people who know best. 
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I'm going to refer to Eve in its entirety as a wormhole. Let me try and explain.


I'm not going to give you my specialized area of Eve because Eve is my specialized area in terms of gaming. If not for Eve I would not, to this day, be playing any other game. 


With the Apochrypha expansion came wormholes. Wormholes in Eve are, for lack of a better explanation, a world within a world. There are sleeper rats that can only be found inside a wormhole. There are influences perpetrated against or in favor of certain characteristics affecting, for example, ones ships resistances, targeting abilities, module effectiveness, etc... but to name a few possibilities. These unique features are found only in a wormhole. While my focus of this review is not about wormholes I need to provide some amount of information surrounding wormholes to set the stage. The fact that they are unique is to say the least. The fact that they are a world located within a world is undeniable.


Eve Online is a world located within a world. Hence making it a wormhole in and of itself.  I seek not to focus on one particular interest within the game. I seek to tell you, the reader, why Eve Online is, in my opinion the best "gaming experience" ever.


By nature I am not a gamer. I was born in 1968. An ordinary child for the times we played outside. We got in to trouble for being gone too long. We were never home. Never inside but to eat and sleep. 
-Enter Atari
Hey! Tanks and Pong were cool and all... but it held our attention only so long. Then there was the arcade game; Asteroids. Asteroids was that "not so pretty" spaceship game. But it held many laughs. Afterburning across the screen/off screen/on screen/off / and so on. But all this was filler for the brief down times we had between scaling the vertical walls of the cliff behind our house, throwing lawn darts that could pierce your skull like a hot knife through butter, and riding dirt bikes with wide open throttles and no helmet.


What the fuck does this have to do with Eve? You may be asking. 


Simple. All these decades gone by I did not fall in to nor adopt the "gamer" life. I was your average Joe. I was not embroiled in gamer life. I was embroiled in real life. I became a junior firefighter when I was 14 years old. I wasn't  LEEEEERRRRRROOOOOOYYYYYYYYY of Wow. I was Harri, the nobody junior firefighting teenager who could give a shit less about some fucking mind bending game. And just for your information: My real name isn't Harri. Or even Harrigan. Harrigan Vonstudly was the name of our AKC registered Basset hound when I was a child. A gift from my aunt. 


Decades later I met my "to become wife." When I met her she played Eve. Not being a gamer I had no clue what Eve was. Once she told me about Eve I used to make fun of her for playing a spaceship game on the internet. That was 2006. 


Two years later, two years of not paying attention to Eve Online and poking fun of her for playing such a game I decided to create an account and try it.
Following her direction, remember, she is a carebear, I set off training in to a Drake. 
Missions, standings, isk, L.P.
Second account for a miner
Third account for PvP because the above two sucked and are boring.


Eve pulled a non gamer in to its grasp.


From August of 2008 to November 2008 I had learned enough about Eve to know that what I was doing, PVE, sucked. PvP was where it was at. I found myself chomping at the bit to get home from work so as to log in to game. Lord help my soul if I knew that I had a skill training ending and needed to be there to "inject"  and /or start the next skill. 


Today I sit at the position of doing nothing but PvP in the game of Eve Online. What started out as the first undock, wow, look at this world. What in God's name is all out there? This is massive. Has become a more focused entity. Yet it has become a more widespread venture.


Eve is vast. Eve is huge. Eve is difficult. It's harsh, unbending, unforgiving. What Eve is not is much easier to describe than what it is. 


I tried PvE in terms of mission running. I tried mining. I tried research. PvP, the real design of Eve is where I ended up. It is where we all should end up. People looking for a guaranteed safe, risk-free opportunity need not apply.  You won't find it. Cry all you want. It's not going to happen. And should it ever find its way in to our beloved game, nay, lifestyle of Eve, may she burn in hell. 


Have you figured out why I rate Eve Online a 10 out of 10? Probably not. That's ok. You're slow. And I''ll try to speak a little slower for you.
The wormhole that Eve is is the fact that it takes real life people, as we all are, and allows us to become something, anything. Eve allows all of us to be what we want to be but maybe we are not able to be in any other medium. It allows some of us to be exactly what we are in the real life and carry it over to this universe. 


The wormhole in Eve, that is Eve, represents the unknown. It represents different. It represents new. It invents. It reinvents. It encompasses our real life in to a virtual life that may very easily be mixed up with and confused for what is real and what is not. This is what makes Eve the chart topper of any and all MMO's. Period!


Eve is Eve. You are Eve. Or you are not.


~Harri out

I Swore I Wouldn't Do It

I have stated in the past that I would never do it. That I would not fly a capital ship. There were more important, far more interesting skill sets to train for than an over priced sea lion out of water. But we all know what we say and what is reality are not always the same.

It's been a mere three years since my inception as a pod pilot. Three years. Christ, it seems just like yesterday. I actually forgot that my birth date was upon me. Now it's come and gone. 

November 24, 2011.Thanksgiving Day. 

How could I forget? I even had a holiday to be used as a reminder and I still forgot. 

Shoot me now.

But those three years, while they seem like just yesterday, seem like such a long time ago.

It's not what is important either.

What's important is that I am now going to do something that I said I would not do. And that bothers me. 

Now, I can just imagine what some of you out there think about me. From my in game chat comments, to my twitter feeds, to this blog... Yeah, I can imagine. Not like I really care. But I can imagine.

(I care a tad more than you think) Sssssshhhhhhhh

 And while I admit that I am a certain flavor that must be gotten used to before allowing in to your palate I do have honor and integrity. If I say I am going to do or not do something then I damn well better do or not do or I struggle with myself. Very badly I struggle.

Capital ship skill III is complete.

Amarr Carrier is queued up to level III

All supporting skills are purchased and injected.

Having lived in low sec for over a year and now living in null sec one of the greatest advantages one can give themselves is the ability of logistics. 

I have been lucky, in that, I have not had to do a lot of moving. That is until recently. Without rehashing water under the bridge moving has become an all too frequent past time. Even if it is once every six months. That's once every six months to fucking often.

If there is one thing about me, besides being a person of my word, it's that I hate, absolutely HATE asking any one for anything. If I can not do it for myself I will not ask. That doesn't mean I won't accept the offer of help. It means I refuse to initiate the request for assistance. It makes me feel like a burden. I'd sooner go without.

I can no longer continue in the life that I chose, null sec and/or low sec pvp and continue without a carrier. If for no other reason but to move my assets around in the event of deployment or relocation. Be it temporary or permanent. 

If there is nothing else any of you get out of life, be it in or out of game, please get one thing.

At the end of the day all we have left after everything else has been taken from us is our word.

If you can't keep your word to yourself, make damn sure there is a good enough reason to break it.

I think there is sufficient reason for me to break my word to myself. At least in this case.

Guest Podcasting

Last night I ran off for about 15 minutes to grab a bottle of scotch from the liquor store. Upon my return I had a tweet from Chyph3r over at AMP - Angry Monkey Podcast asking if I wanted to join the recording of the podcast episode 5 as a guest. Hell yeah.

Podcasting intrigues me. I am taken with the finished product of many of the Eve online podcasts. I listen to them all. I want to learn how it's done. Including the editing and overlaying. I want to know where the sound effects come from and what are the better programs to use. While I did not contribute greatly to the episode 5 podcast mostly because it was a new experience for me. It's kind of weird at first. Especially when you're hanging with people you've just met. But the AMP guys are awesome and I love their podcasts. 

I'd like to thank Chyph3r for the opportunity and thanks to all the guys over there. It was a great time for me. If ever the opportunity arises again I'm sure I'll be as thrilled as much as I was this time. Get on over to their site and listen. Now go. Go on. Git

Thanks again,

Harri out

So Dirty

There I was. Scotch in hand, iTunes up on the sound board, and all of New Eden to dangle the willy in to see what was happening. Our lovely home of 1DH seemed to be about the same as usual. Either fairly calm or 80, 100, 200 man gangs of neutral, orange, or reds running about. I heard on comms that a gang was landing on the 1DH gate from PR but was too large to take with what we had. Not a few minutes more a hostile cyno went up for a hot-drop-o'clock. Yeah, faggots who ruined the game with their blob drops still blob drop.

I can only listen to a runny nosed sounding window licking teenager on comms for so long before I have to go. Especially if I am irritated. Mute is always an option. But knowing my luck the one time there is intel from the otherwise nonsense babbling bucket of saliva it will be the intel that saves or destroys my ass. Depending on whether or not I have mute selected, of course. I try to be nice but I'm getting old. And, well, my tolerance is quite low now a days. You know how they say what's great about being in your 70's is that you don't give a fuck anymore? Yeah, I'm practicing that now in my 40's. Bite me!

Once in a great while I get the desire to try something different with my other character. At least to me it's different, such as mining, right Susan and Bel Amar?

So off I went to join the wife to mine. I had been wanting to train exhumers on this character just because. You never know when you might want to shoot some poor defenseless rocks. The Hulk requires exhumer skill III, I buy the book, set skill, badda boom badda bing.

"SKILL TRAINING COMPLETE"! Level I in the bag. Hey, I'll fly this Mackinaw the woman lent me. Oh no I won't. That requires exhumer II. Well fuck. Guess this was a bad idea. By the time level II finishes I won't be interested anymore.

Open market/Retriever/purchase/ wtf am I doing? I undock in the retriever and away I go. I feel so dirty. Although I would never, and could never, even if I so desired to do this with Harrigan, I felt so dirty flying the retriever. But I did. And I mined for about two hours before I could take no more.

I can see where it would be productive if you have something else to occupy your time. Luckily I had twitter, forums, Google +, etc... What made the mining bad was I went at it like unprotected sex. No shield mods. No cargo hold expanders. Just two mining laser I's. Every cycle of just one laser put just over half of the available m3 in my hold. That meant dumping it in to a, yep you guessed it, a cargo can. Ha ha ha.
Hey! I had to make it more challenging and dangerous somehow. Also out of habit I continuously mashed the scan button for the D-scanner. Jesus mining sucks.

Hey honey. What do I get out of all that ore? Free ships to blow up in balls of glorious fire and smoke? Oh God I hope so.

The End of an Era

"Recently I realized that any desire to return to Eve or remain engaged in its peripheral community venues (like Twitter, Skype, or FHC) has been inexorably trumped by the things in real life that now occupy my attention."

An icon in the game of Eve has finally bid her last and final farewell to the universe as Mynxee.

I first met Mynxee when I was but only a few months in to playing Eve on a different character than this one. Just shy of two years time spent teasing my now wife for playing an internet spaceship game I decided to create a character and give it a try myself. She was already in a player run corp., knew the ropes as she had been playing for a few years, and helped me out immensely when I took that first leap in to New Eden.

It wasn't but a few short months after beginning to play that the corp. we were in decided they were moving to null space. The real trigger to leave was one of the members of the corp . was a complete asshole towards my wife. I had zero experience in pvp, and no interest in that at all. Neither did my wife. She was a carebear after all. And with the news of a null sec move we decided we were out of there.

By now I was reading as much as I could about Eve. Not the back story fiction crap. But forums, and information about the game anywhere and everywhere I could. I did the research in to corps. to join and talked to the various contacts myself. My wife trusted me. 

We ended up joining a corp that caught our eye and this is where we met Mynxee. But we didn't meet Mynxee as Mynxee. We met Mynx as an alt. A high sec carebear mission running/logistics alt. Of course this was all laid out in the open prior to us joining. There was no secret being kept about Sey's real identity. They had no agenda to hide.

This is when we learned more about Mynxee, such as being a real life female creating a corporation for only real life female Eve players to join. Such as reading her blog. It's Mynxee that really got me reading Eve blogs. 

But being new to the game I worried at times when my wife would say something in corp. chat. Whether it was about assets she had or isk I can recall telling her at times to shhhhhusssshhh "don't tell them that. They're going to kill us and rob us blind." 

We had joined a corporation that was the corp. for low sec pirate alts to earn isk running missions, mining, logistics, market dealing, etc... "Oi vey. What did I get us in to". I genuinely was worried. But we talked about it and the wife and I decided "fuck it". What's the worse thing that can happen? Lose everything and die horribly and repeatedly? Even though we knew this before joining and we still chose to join there was always that "what if" factor. It created an excitement. The not knowing kind of excitement. Even though you know, you don't know.

Looking back now I laugh like hell about that. What a noob stance. But I didn't know any better. Eve seemed so big back then. So vast with a rich history of all kinds of shady and mixed dealings, scams, and treachery. 

Let this be a lesson to new players and older players alike. And by older I'm looking at you you sniffling, whiny, arrogant, high sec bears. Just because people are pirates doesn't mean that they are bad people. I had no clue. I was a couple of months old. My wife, well, she's still a carebear. She wasn't sure either about what may happen to us in game. But we stepped out of our comfort zone and did it anyhow.

Turns out all of them were great people. We got along very well with them. The only reason I left was because I eventually created Harrigan and was wanting to be up to no good in the game and did not want to draw unwanted attention to the corp. It was for carebearing only.

 This is my story how I met Mynxee.

We're gonna miss you Mynxee. The game isn't going to be the same without you. Please keep in touch on G+. If we may be so humble to continue with you there and watch your inspiring real life work and career take shape and fly it would be greatly appreciated. I love your work and hope to partake of more images from your awesome collection.

♥ Mynxee

Harrigan signing off

O7