EVE Blog Banter #16: R.C.F.T.W.!

Welcome to the sixteenth 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 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 out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: “Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?”

Hmmm.... What do I wish someone had told me when I first started out?

RIGHT CLICK FOR THE WIN!

Now that that's out of the way, I'll go ahead and explain. You know how you get your first mission as a total noob, and they tell you to go to the mission site and kick some pirate hull?

When I first started playing, they didn't tell you how to get there. Sure, I managed to find the right star-system, and then spent ages flying around asteroid belts trying to find the 'mining camp' that these wretched pirates were infesting... Knowing to Right-Click on open space when flying would have really helped about then...

Right click on everything, and read all the options that pop up. If you have a question about something, right-click it, if that doesn't answer your question, THEN ask someone.

Many of the other fine bloggers out there have given great explanations for all the little things they wished they'd known. Like, 'don't bother with better ships till you can actually fly the one you're in' and 'fly cheap stuff and get used to getting blown up before you fly expensive stuff and rage-quit', so I'm going to leave this incredibly late entry short and sweet with my 1 pearl of wisdom.

Straight Fliers Right Click.

EVE Blog Banter: Special Edition - Why We Love EVE

Why They Hate EVE Online

Welcome to this special installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by myself, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week 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 me. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!


The Contest

Write an article letting us know why you love this game so much and get a chance to win one of these 10 amazing prizes courtesy of CCP Games!


•1st Place: $100 in EVE Store merchandise
•2nd Place: $50 in EVE Store merchandise
•3rd and 4th Place: $25 in EVE Store merchandise each
•5th through 10th Place: a 14-day EVE time pass each




The Prizes
$200 in EVE Online Store merchandise and six 2-week EVE time codes




The Rules
I'll be judging your articles based on their quality, structure, approach, originality. Other criteria are as follows:
•Contest is open from now until Sunday January 31st 11:59 PM EDT, 2010
•Submit your article (title and URL) in the comments below, before the contest expires. I will be using the date and time of your comment as the time stamp for the contest.
•No offensive or racist language will be allowed.
•You will need to link back to this post in your article introduction, as in typical EVE Blog Banter fashion.
•The winners will be announced on February 5th, 2010.

1. It takes so much time to get anything done right.
2. The game is so complicated.
3. There's no 'best ship' to learn to fly.
4. People can kill them wherever they go and if they do they lose all their stuff.
5. They can't possibly ever learn all the skills
6. It costs heaps of ISK to play the game for free.
7. There's nothing telling them what to do next.
8. The Universe is too big, they can't find anyone they know.

Why We Love EVE Online

1. This is not your casual throw-away-a-few-minutes MMO. This is an MMO you can breath, eat and sleep, and wake up in the morning without regrets. (Except for that one time with the Rapier....)

You can spend hours planning out your next steps, whether it be researching your manufacturing to make sure you make the most money or playing the EFT Warrior to ensure your next fight has the best chance of victory. This is an MMO you can IMMERSE yourself into, as opposed to a video game that sucks up a few minutes here and there and eventually leaves you bored.

2. As I may have mentioned before, studying the component charts and pricing out T3 production is a great example of how EVE is complicated. That very complexity means that I'm constantly learning something new in this game. Every day I log in, it seems, I find something I didn't know the day before. I have yet to encounter a pilot of any worth who has said they 'know it all' in EVE, and, in fact, have taught 'new' things to some 6-year Veterans. The day I know everything about EVE is the day I stop paying my accounts.

3. EVERY ship is a 'best ship' for something! From the humble Rifter, King of T1 Frigate Tackles, to the mightiest of Titans, every ship has it's strengths and its weaknesses. On top of that, the options that EVE allows you mean that YOUR Rifter doesn't have to be like everyone else's Rifter. The diversity of ships and roles and options means that every ship is a surprise and a delight.
I will never see a 'Best in Slot' list for an EVE Ship that doesn't have comments on it saying 'That's not BiS, this is!

4. Anywhere I go, I have to watch my back.

There is no 'non-agression city' where we all mingle with no consequences for our actions or words. There is no 'safe zone' where we can make our money without the constant possibility, however remote, of someone making us pay for our smacktalk the other night. CCP covers the griefers so that we don't have to deal with anything out of line, but they leave free reign for us to suffer our consequences, whether it's a consequence of our own actions, or a consequence of not being vigilant enough against others' choices. No holds barred in this game.

When I lose my ship, I LOSE my ship, and so does the other guy. PvP is not some mindless activity to kill time, it's something that gets your blood rushing and your hands shaking as you pit yourself against the other guy, who might be a friend tomorrow, or a deadly enemy 6 years from now.

5. I'll never have EVERY skill, and neither will anyone else. That seems like the most persistant of the 'oh but this sucks' of the EVE complaints above, but you know what, it's one of the BEST things about the game.

Do I want to 'hit level cap' and have nothing left to strive for? Heck no. On EVE I will always have another ship, another project, another support skill that I want to train up, and I'll never have enough time to do it, but each one will eventually fall before my implants and learning skills and I will exult and do my little dance, and start on the next one!

6. I CAN PLAY THIS GAME FOR FREE. Holy crap, how many quality MMO's out there can you imagine would offer you the chance to play the game for in-game currency? You think Blizzard is ever going to adopt that feature? HAH! So quit whining that it's expensive and you can't do it until you've got some experience under your belt and make it happen.

7. There's no-one telling me what to do. I can become a horrible Pirate, a frontier-settler, an explorer, a mercenary, a trader, a scammer, or anything else. The sandbox is open kids, and we can go play wherever we want in it, and build whatever kind of castle we feel like

8. There's only 1 'Universe'. Try finding your friends in WoW if they're on a different server, which is likely, given how many of them there are. The stories of what happens in one area of the game are things that can affect the markets where I am at, and ALL the stories pertain to the universe that I'm playing in. I read the Blogs of my fellow pilots and know that I could easily run into them one day or another, because they're all on 'my server'.

We love EVE Online, for all the reasons that people who don't get it, hate it. That's what makes EVE one of the few MMO's that continues to grow in popularity after its release, because it isn't like its competitors. The many things that attract us to EVE are things that we literally CANNOT get elsewhere.

Fly Straight, pilots, there's more to see and do.

Some other posts on this banter:
Manasi ~ http://manasi.eveplayer.net/?p=1226
Astral Dominix ~ http://eve-trial-by-fire.blogspot.com/
Mail Lite ~ http://thebeginningsofpiracy.blogspot.com/2010/01/eve-blog-banter-special-edition-why-we.html
Jager Da ~ http://www.jagerda.com/why-i-love-eve/
Logan Fyreite ~ http://eveopportunist.blogspot.com/2010/01/oh-opportunity-is-there-anything-so.html
Sered Woollahra ~ http://sered-sl.blogspot.com/2010/01/eve-online-whats-appeal.html
Mithrandir Stormcrow ~ http://thelathspell.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/eve-blog-banter-special-edition-why-we-love-eve-online/

EVE Blog Banter #14

Welcome to the fourteenth 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 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 out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of 2010 comes to us from the EVE Blog Father, CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves "What Now?" What will I attempt next? What haven't I done so far in EVE? Was it out fear, funds, or knowledge? Have I always wanted to start my own corporation, but have never dared doing so? Is there a fledgling mercenary waiting to come out of its shell? Or maybe an Industrialist? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?

Speaking as I often do for both myself, my alt, and my wife, here are our various goals (or inklings of goals, since we're somewhat undecided in some cases..) for 2010.

Minuit Soleil:
As my primary combat pilot, and all around 'main', I've got significant goals in terms of experiences.

Yesterday kicked that party off with my first FCing gig and I've got another scheduled soon. I want to get more experience as both a PvP pilot and FC, so that's definitely a major goal.

I want to see my wallet grow. The past few months have been very profitable, and despite a renewed interest in PvP, I want to continue to grow my wallet. By the end of 2010, I'd like to have 10 billion or more in our combined wallet.

Skill wise, I want to finish off the semi-long-term skills that have been plaguing the edges. Support skills that take several weeks each just to get that last bit of an edge. I also want to increase my training in Battleship sized weaponry and ships, so that hopefully I can give thought to Capital ships in 2011.

Leilani Belle:
As a newer character, Leilani's got a lot more skills to catch up on than Minuit. I'd like to see all the guns she can fire in their Tech II variant, as well as her drone skills optimized to their full potential. That will be her focus for most of the year, though sneaking her into a few specialized ships is definitely something I'm looking at.

KattraStarr:
Katt's not certain on her goals. This is nothing new, we often come up with what we're going to do next for her on the fly. Her primary goal, however, is to stay in Wormhole space and be as self-sufficient as possible! She's got a very close eye on our combined wallet, and has begun our foray into T3 production to help us reach our ISK goals.

Efficiency is always Katt's biggest motivator, so she's looking for newer and faster ways to clear sites with the skill set available to us (curse us all for not going Caldari!) to keep the ISK flowing.

And that's a wrap!

Fly straight, they'll never expect it.


Other Participants in Blog Banter #14:
A Merry Life and a Short One
A Mule in Eve
Life in Low Sec
My God, it's Full of Stars
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
Roc's Ramblings
Flashfresh The Pirate
Adventures in Mission Running
A Pirate's Life for Me!
Rettic's Log
CrazyKinux's Musings
Yarrbear Tales
The Wandering Druid of Tranquility
Kane Rizzel - a Pirates Perspective
K162 Space
Deafplasma's Eve Musings