Author: Morphisat

There are places I remember

There are places I remember all my life,
Though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain.

Thought I’d participate in the Internet Meme Kirth Kodachi started with his blog post The places I have been.

places

As you can see, I spend most of my time in Caldari HiSec and a bit of Sinq Liason. With an excursion every now and then to other places. The few red dots up north are interesting, apparently I spent some time there when I started out, I visited Torrino for the last time in December 2005 !

The bit of red in 0.0 is Wicked Creek where I spent a few months last year.

Quarterly Yearly Economic Report

It’s here again, the economic report ! Always an interesting read :).

EVE can teach world leaders how important
trade is for any society, and how valuable trust
is within them. EVE can teach all of us that
by working together there is no obstacle that
is too large for us to overcome – there are no
bridges we can´t build.

InsideMacGames
EveOnLine Devblog

This quote is interesting as well:

The top 10% of all characters in EVE (64,500 characters in total) hold more than 88% of all ISK in wallets at any given time.

Eve News

Just a simple post of some interesting news items:

  • Looks like CCP finally figured out it wouldn’t hurt to put in a few extra lvl 4 agents. They are announced at the new dev blog ! I might be looking into the new ones for the Corporate Police Force. Also industrialists might want to try to move some of their wares out there, so you can sell it for over inflated prices to the lazy mission runners ;).
  • Minmatar Millitia downed a carrier thursday night. Props to the carrier pilot, Jay Deah, though who dared to move his ship away from a station for a change ! You can read a Battle Report on the Intergallactic Summit.
  • Blog Banter #8 was a big success, over 30 blogger participated. Check out CK’s post  for a complete list !

Bhaalgorn Down !

“Everybody hold on the Amamake gate !” the FC said over the comms. Reports of pirate activity in Amamake had come down through the intel channels and a Minmatar assault force had gathered to take care of the problem.

A cloaking Hound was then set on the top belt to see what exactly the activity was. “I have a Bhaalgorn here, it’s a Bhaalgorn !” our scout excitedly shouted. A Bhaalgorn is a very rare sight. Only obtained on the black market for over a billion isk. Usually fitted with very expensive modules, that are usually obtained through the same channels as the ship, they originate from killing high ranked officers of pirate/outlaw nations like the Sansha’s.

“All fast tacklers go in ! All fast tacklers go in! Everybody else hold on the gate !”. The tacklers were able to get a warp scrambler on the Bhaalgorn. The rest of the ragtag minnie fleet came in and warped on top of the Bhaalgorn. The minmatar stealth bomber in the belt uncloacked and unleashed it’s torpedos, pounding on the Bhaalgorn’s shields and armor. Our ecm arrived at range on the battlefield and was able to scramble those that came to the Bhaalgorn’s aid. Slowly but surely the Bhaalgorn went down. It’s a very well tanked ship so it took what felt like ages. My Stabber rotated around the pirate’s battleship at 3000mtrs, pouring rounds and rounds of ammo into it’s armor.

“ECM is down ! Ecm IS down !”. I didn’t want to hear that over the comms ! Any moment now one of the enemy ships could target me, and rip my poor stabber to pieces. If I hadn’t been in my pod, I am sure the sweat would have poured over my face.

“He is down ! The Bhaalgorn went down !!!” some people shouted over the comms. But we held our composure and disposed of his helpers as well with minimal losses on our side. Certainly compared to the net worth of the Bhaalgorn.

Long after the fight when things had quieted down our pilots were still cheering over this great victory. Word spread amongst the other pilots in the militia and it strengthened our hearts and souls.

Succubus

Suc1

And here it is, the Succubus I won ! It’s a very nice looking frig, if you like odd spikes coming off the front end. It’s got a bit of a cockroach vibe going ;). I armed it with 2x medium pulses and a bit of a shield tank, with quite a bit of power and cpu to spare. It’s very powerful due to the bonuses. At least the few belt rats I tried it on (in hisec mind you) dropped like flies.

suc2

Sunday’s Frig Tournament

We had a sunday night of corp activities. It started of with the always fun Free For All in frigs and destroyers. Last time my kestrel got popped very fast, and the rifter in the second round only did a little bit better (at least I took someone with me). This time I decided to leave Morph at home and go with Belautis in a punisher. And this time I was more successful. Lasted a lot longer in the FFA, after taken two tristans and tanking a destroyer I finally went down.

Next up was a 6 vs 6 cruiser fight ! Our side won after a very nice battle. I used a tanked Arbitrator, which worked reasonably well, but I was a bit out of range for the start of the fight and had trouble to catch up. But it was enjoyable nevertheless.

The last part of the night was a ladder frigate tournament, with about 18 people, the other main corp in our alliance joined us. And surprisingly I made it to the final ;). The most intense fight was with a blaster fit incursus. It was a pretty fast fight, both speeding to the center and taking each other head on ! I made it with about 20% armor left.

The final unfortunately was a bit of a snoozefest for the spectators. It was punisher vs. punisher, and I couldn’t reach the other one, as I had a afterburner and he used an mdw (i assume). As I figured it would be fair to let him win, as I was the one who couldn’t reach him, I conceded and took the second price, a faction frig, the succubus !

All in all a very enjoyable evening. And thanks to the people in Hidden Agenda and Iniquitous Technologies for making it happen !

And the prices keep coming in, I won 1st place in the fanfiction contest, goddlesswanderer organized on his blog !

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

So goodbye yellow brick road 
Where the dogs of society howl
You can’t plant me in your penthouse
I’m going back to DalQ_small

It was late last year, when I got tired of war. Of killing. Of podpilots around me being killed. Of the life of a minmatar freedom fighter. I enlisted to help my people, and to be honest some part of me also was looking for recognition. Trying to make a name for myself.

After months of fighting though, I felt empty inside. We took over some systems, killed quite a few Amarr religious zealots, but still… It didn’t seem to make a difference.

It was then that I decided this wasn’t the life for me. I contemplated about going back to my old job, a mammoth freighter trucker. Maybe do some missions for the Republic Fleet every now and then and use my combat skills for at least a somewhat good cause.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but late in the fall of last year, that’s what I did. One day I silently left Dal, my war homebase and picked up my old trusty Mammoth in Rens and never looked back. Or at least that’s what I thought.

And that’s when it started, the nightmares. Visions even more horrible than what I ever saw in the war. Not sure how my mind came up with those ! It started with only one a week, but it got worse as time went slowly by.

Till it got to the point where I didn’t dare to go to sleep again. And during the day it was like there was a dark cloud over me. I couldn’t find any joy in whatever I did, and kept thinking of the friends I left behind. Roc Wieler, Angry Fist, Stoogie. What happened to them ? And how were they coping ? The thought that I let my people down, and betrayed my heritage kept popping up in my mind.

Then it struck me:

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way

This was not my purpose as a pod pilot ! I had to get back to Dal and back into the war.

And that’s what I did. And weird enough from the moment I signed on again, the nightmares were gone. Some sort of inner peace came over me inside the turmoil of the war. I found my destiny again, and hope I will never loose it.

Disclaimer: My first effort at fanfiction for Godlesswanderer’s contest, please be gentle :).

Amamake ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids

In Fact It’s Cold As Hell

Minmatar_republic The regular Eve Production life was getting a bit stale again, you can get excited about Hammerhead II sales only so many times. So to spice things up a bit I reactivated my Factional Warfare Character Q.

And I must say things have changed a bit since I left in the fall of last year. FW on the amarr – minmatar side is still pretty active. There certainly arent a lack of targets like when I left last year. The amarr put together a pretty large fleet Sunday night. It was amusing, as there were about three minnie fleets roaming around. But a few times we crossed paths and that’s when we were spotted I think. They must have thought that we were one big blob and decided to all group up.

Anyway I was in a few fights over the weekend, nothing spectacular, and dodged at least one camp in my vexor. I saw some old familiar faces and quite a few new ones. Learned some new terms (I am being yellowboxed was one of ‘em). And found out that battleships are more common in FW now.

Then it sort of struck me what a different game this is, compared to running a few missions and mining a few hours in an Orca. The fights are exciting. The banter on EveSpeak is amusing. Adrenaline rush when you jump into a camp and manage to loose ‘em. I am glad I took this step, it was fun to be back again, and hope it will stay that way ;).

Over 300.000 Subscribers

Thanks to a tweet from CK I found this article on yougamers.com. Apparently Eve Online has now passed the 300.000 subscriber mark ! Very remarkable for a 6 year old game (gratz to CCP !). CCP keeps reinventing Eve and added a new graphical engine by the end of 2007 with the Trinity expansion to keep current players busy and attract new players.

Now of all those 300k subs, how many actual players would that be ? A lot of people have more than one character/account. But it’s still a very impressive feat, as it’s battling against games from bigger companies, like Age of Connan and Warhammer. Although one could argue those try to target a different audience. And there must be plenty of players that can actually afford more than one game. Eve seems to have somewhat older players with a higher income than your average teenagers.

Eve Online Beats Warhammer Online Subscription Numbers

That would put EVE Online as the number two western MMO on the market when you count by the number of active monthly subscriptions. EVE Online is surpassed only by a couple of Asian titles (Lineage, Lineage II, Final Fantasy IX and Runescape) and, naturally, by World of Warcraft.

Eve Blog Banter #7 – Treading waters unknown

The eveblog banter couldn’t come at a better time. I felt like posting something the past few days but couldn’t come up with a proper subject to write about.

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!

This month’s topic comes to us from CrazyKinux, and he asks: “What 3 things haven’t you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?”

1) Flying capital ships. The Orca is the biggest one I can fly at the moment, and I don’t thin that will ever change. I almost exclusively live in Hisec, and have  no plans to change that soon, so I have no use for them at all. Also they are quite expensive, and so are the skills. I got isk, but can’t be bothered to spend that much on something I will probably never use.

2) Fleet warfare in 0.0. Which is probably just hanging around a lot, or jumping from system to system for hours, only to fight for about 5mins. No thanks.

3) Invent / produce something bigger than a T2 cruiser. I might do this someday, maybe invent and produce a marauder. Don’t have any immediate plans to do this at the moment, but I might some day :).

From what I read so far, no. 1 is pretty common, so is no. 2. Are there any bloggers actually involved in 0.0 wars ? Don’t read a lot about that, maybe the eve bloggers are a different kind :).

People participating in blog banter #7: