The usual category I will post under
Unfortunately I arrived a little late at the party, but there was indeed an invasion at planet 4. Not quite sure what happened, but it cost the Sanshas quite a few battleships and other minor ones. Their operation did complete however.
Enjoy the few screenshots I managed to take.
There is a very interesting article over at massively.com that sums up the current CSM situation very well. You can also read about it on Mynxee’s blog and Keith Nelson’s amongst others.
Basically what it boils down to, is that CCP is allocating it’s resources to Dust and Incarna and Eve itself is on the backburner. This comes as no surprise as the last few expansions have been rather thin and fundamental fixes are rare these days. They are focusing on getting in new players with Incarna (walking in stations in case you didn’t know) instead of holding on to the current ones.
I don’t care too much for walking in stations, especially not when it will be released in a half hearted manner, like most of these new features. And I doubt it will really enhance our gameplay in any way. Sure it’ll be fun for ten minutes and corp meetings might be enjoyable, but it will appear to the average eve player as fluff I am afraid.
And they have been working on it for quite some time and dedicated a lot of graphic artists and coders to the project. Think of all the other stuff they could have done ! Maybe a more balanced approach would have been better. Dust and Incarna better be a success. Or perhaps once they’re out CCP can focus on spaceships again, which has so far been their strong suite !
Here it is, in all it’s glory. Visiting a Customs Office near of a Lava planet.
It’s a wonderful detailed model. The part just under the ‘cockpit’ moves around. It would make a nice dedicated salvager or exploration ship !
As it is now, with 100 m3 cargohold, 1000 m3 for planetary commodities (which fills up fast when you use p1 parts) and 1600 m3 for command centers, it’s not all that useful. Maybe for new players who don’t have hauler/industrial ship skills yet. A simple badger will be better than this one, but you won’t look as industrial as this ship does !
Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, 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 AT gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
For his latest "Blog Banter" Ck asks:
On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!
Ever since I started playing I’ve been a bit of a jack of all trades. Of course this gets easier as you get older and you get a wide range of skills. With over 60 mil of skill points in the bag, I can mine, scan and shoot guns and missiles with the best of ‘ em now !
Basically my Eve career has two parts or maybe three if you count the no man’s land in between. Also I’ve been on a break a few times. Lately I have been playing quite a bit again lately, somehow the eve bug always comes back.
The first part was (after the noob part and being in Eve Uni for a while) with Rakeriku. You can still read about it as I have blogged almost from the beginning. My posts got better over the years, though it’s still fun to read ‘Saving up for a caracal’, some of the earlier posts can be a bit embarrassing. The corp is now dormant, but we had loads of fun. In the days before the hulk we had 12hr mining ops clearing 2 belts (you can now do that solo with an alt and an orca in a couple of hours), and building our own battlecruisers (feroxes and the like, this was before the drake!) and gasp even a freighter.
I am still in touch with some people from that time, who still play. The corp bled dry after a couple of months in 0.0 space, Wicked Creek. That was also a nice experience, ratting and mining ark.
After spending a bit of time solo I joined Hidden Agenda, early last year. To be honest I still play a lot solo. Mining from time to time, inventing, exploring, missions and of course now PI, I don’t have any trouble keeping busy. I do attend the corporation events, and chat in the corp channel.
So what about PVP ? Well besides the odd war I have been in, I have spent quite some time on my alt in Factional Warfare on the Minmatar side. He is residing planet side at the moment (a retired General), but it certainly was an experience I wouldn’t have want to have missed. Especially when FW started, flying around in fleets of over 80 pilots was so much fun and the thrill of shooting Amarr was great.
That’s it in a nutshell !
Participants:
Yes I know it’s one of the worst ores to mine at the moment, but a bit of extra isogen never hurt anyone :). It took a while to find this large hidden field of omber, I kept hitting 99.9% on the scan, until I moved the probes just a little but more up. I guess scanning is 3d and my mind wasn’t for a moment.
Besides I was watching AT8 so you might as well use your time in game as well, sitting in an orca, instead of spinning your ship in station. And I got a nice screenshot out of it.
A new devblog appeared at the eve-o site ! This one is introducing the upcoming Landmarks in Tyrannis.
So, how does this affect me, the average EVE player? Well, not much. Nothing in the universe has been lost, but something has been gained. In creating these sites, we wanted to breathe more life into EVE and create more content for you to fool around with, offering a deeper backstory for EVE.
In case anyone missed it, prominent MMO Blogger Tobold is now trying out Eve. It’s fun to read his perspective of the game as a newbie. If only he’d stop saying ‘I could sell a PLEX and play Eve offline’ ;).
Last night Hidden Agenda had their every so monthly – free for all, ‘last man standing’ tournament. These are always a lot of fun. For some people their first pvp experience, and even though they tend to die a little faster, they seem to enjoy it quite a bit.
Belautis entered for me, in her trusty punisher.
As you can see, I made a bit of a speed setup, as last time I couldn’t keep up with some people and got shot from a distance. Unfortunately it turned out I didn’t really need the speed. I disposed of one incursus but then got ZenGen on my back, also in a punisher. I couldn’t break his tank, but he slowly broke mine. At the end I had five people on me though, and even a punisher can’t take that much punishment.
Round two should have been a cruiser free for all, but we had to redo the frig one, as some people warped to the wrong place and started battling there ;). I still had an incursus in my hangar equipped with 125mm guns and a hobgob and decided to give that one a try. It lasted much longer than expected but I went down to two people, though I did take a rifter with me.
The punisher seemed to do very well do, I think 3 of the last 4 standing were flying one, especially due to it’s very well tanking capabilities.
The cruiser free for all didn’t last that long, my arbitrator couldn’t kill a maller fast enough, although it was a decent one on one fight. At least so I thought, there were a few other people on the killmail as well. Vexors did very well here as you can devote a lot of it’s power and cpu to tanking as they use drones for weapons.
All in all a fun thing to do for a corporation activity !
Morphisat never much pvped. Mainly carebearing in HiSec. But Friday night Hidden Agenda had a Low Sec Roam planned, I joined to finally get some pvp action with Morph.
Most of the fleet consisted of Ravens, with a few inties, and some other stuff (a thorax and a drake). There wasn’t much roaming down as on the second gate sat a flashy dreadnought ! Apparently it was in Siege mode, as it tanked very well.
But slowly his shields started to go down. A drake showed up (not quite sure why) that got blown up in the process. Then right on top of the gate we were fighting on, a Thanatos appeared ! We switched our focus on his, and he couldn’t tank all the torps coming in. Slowly but surely he went down. Especially the last few bits off his hull seem to take forever though. Some people had to warp out as they were shot at by fighters as well as the dreadnought, so damage output was starting to get a bit lower.
Later on we had another engagement with the dreadnought, but this time he got more help and it was a little bit much, though a support drake went down.
All in a successful op. ! We had a lot of fun. Didn’t expect to see any capitals at all, let alone blow one up ;).
Today (feb 9th) it’s exactly one year ago, that I joined Hidden Agenda. The corp I was in previously had slowly bled dry. I had been looking for a new corporation for some time on the forums and I might even have joined the recruitment channel a few times. But I didn’t find anything that I fancy. Finding a nice corp that you feel at home with, is pretty hard !
I made a post on this blog asking for suggestions, and I got some. Of those suggestions, there was only one corporation that actually had non-afk people in the public channel and a decent website, and that was Hidden Agenda. It’s things like that that make a good impression on potential members ! After a rigorous background check I was accepted into HA.
Although I haven’t been very active lately, I have had a very nice time in Hidden Agenda the past year. It seems to suit my semi-solo, but sometimes in-company gameplay very well. There are usually plenty of people on, willing to help each other if needed. There are group activities (mining ops, the odd frig tournament, lowsec security runs), but you’re not frowned upon when you do not attend, or miss one.
Hidden Agenda is one of the oldest corporations in Eve. I think the secret to it’s success is the mix of veterans and the influx of new people, who might even be only a few weeks old. Every now and then someone leaves or slowly fades away ofcourse, that’s inevitable. But the active recruitment by some members makes sure the corp keeps it’s freshness and does not slowly bleed to death. Without new players a corp slowly ends up with just a handful of core veterans, and it’s very hard to recruit people by then, because the newcomers will feel like outsiders, and it’s also hard to offer them something.
In Hidden Agenda, new players are offered a lot of advise, they can come along mining (there is bound to be someone out there in a hulk) and raise their mission standings quickly. Also some of the richers members have been known to hand out some goodies to newer or less fortunate corp members. There are a lot of industrialists in the corp, so chances are there is a good deal to be made when you need something.
Lately the corporation has also been exploring Wormholes. I still have to make my way to one of them, but I am sure one of these days I’ll put together a Drake and pay them a visit in unexplored space !
To finish off this post, I’d like to shout out to Ruffio and Cattis and everyone else in Hidden Agenda who made the past year in Eve a fun experience !