BB26: Sometimes the sum of the parts …

Welcome to the twenty-sixth 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 or so 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 for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic was proposed by @KatiaSae of the much praised “To Boldly Go” blog. Katia asks: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As an astrophotographer, I’ve found it in the stars and planets of New Eden. Where have you found it? Perhaps you’ve found beauty in the ships we fly? Maybe it’s the sight of profits being added to your bottom line? Or maybe it’s the pilot portraits you see in the comm channels? Where ever you’ve found it, write about it and post an image.” Don’t be afraid go beyond the simple visual aspects of EVE as well. Is the EVE Community in itself a thing of beauty? What makes EVE the game, the world, the Community, so appealing to you?

This is a tough one ! Where to start ? I decided to pick three

First of all there is the graphics, just a pic here from a while ago which also appeared in one of the earlier episodes of EON. Don’t think I need to add more explanation :). It’s a joy to fly around in Eve.Manticore

Second of all is the community. Eve’s community is different from a lot of other MMOs. It’s difficulty and steep learning curve attracts different people. Yes we too have the forum warrior / whiners, but overall it’s a much more tight knit community. I don’t know of any MMO that has something comparable to #tweetfleet for example. Or just an active blog community. People might be fighting each other in game but still be very friendly outside of it.

Third of all is the progression you make. Although this sort of fades a bit when you have been playing for a long time, it’s just a joy when you can finally fly that ship you always wanted. Or to finally be able to do exploration properly, or use those tech II crystals (for the miners amongst  us). The time based skill system is very friendly to those who can’t spend 23/7 in the game. You always progress (as long as you keep paying), you don’t have to kill 10 space pirates.

Last but not least: all of the above (and many more) combined in one game. Sometimes the sum is more than it’s parts ! And that for me is the beauty of Eve.

Participants for Blog Banter #26 :

  • CrazyKinux’s Musing: Beyond nebulas and shiny ships
  • Freedom: the beauty in EvE » A Mule In EvE
  • Achernar: The bike and the barbecue
  • where the frack is my ship?: Blog Banter 26: Love at first sight
  • BlogBanter 26: EVE … beautiful … « One capsuleer against all
  • Blog Banter 26 « Mad Haberdashers
  • » Blog Banter 26: Beauty of EVE – To Boldly Go To Boldly Go
  • Down By Law: Blog Banter #26: “The Beauty of EVE” (OOC)
  • Blog Banter #26 – Beauty « Roc’s Ramblings
  • Banter #26: Beauty is in the eye of the markets | Diary of a Garbageman
  • Progression’s Horizon: Blog Banter 26- Carry It With Us, Or We Find It Not
  • Blog Banter 26: The Beauty of Eve « A Scientist’s Life in Eve
  • Freebooted: BB26: The Beauty Between the Lines
  • Eve Opportunist: EBB #26 : Beauty is destruction.
  • Blog banter #26: EVE shines, and not just visually « Diary of a Pod Pilot
  • Learning to Fly – Spinning ships since 2003
  • BB26: Beauty, in certain conditions | A Missioneer in Eve
  • Dying in Lowsec (One Hauler at a time)
  • EVE Blog Banter #26 – Beauty « Evehermit’s Blog
  • Eve Forum Gate

    This week the new forums went online. Apparently CCP uses a modified version of the asp.net Yet Another Forum software. According to the license (GPL) CCP should give back their modifications to the community (as you can read here on their forum), which should be interesting as we can see the authentication code in there. Somehow I doubt ccp intends to do this.

    Anyways, the old forums were uhm well, a bit outdated, but we were used to them and readability was ok. In these new forums, readability was worse. Especially the front page and the fonts / colors chosen were not so easy on the eyes. Also the new avatars are a little too big. To me they also seem sluggish. I don’t want to diss asp.net right away (why not create something new in asp.net mvc ? would have been a better choice imho), but snappy isn’t how I would describe them.

    On top of all this, through #tweetfleet yesterday came in reports (mainly by Helicity Boson) that the new forums also had several security holes. Pretty soon thereafter they were taken offline to fix those issues ! Let’s hope they also fix some of the readability issues and we’re set to go. Oh fix that like button too while you’re at it ;).

    If you really miss the old forum’s look you can use a plugin in firefox called stylish to make it look like the old one.

    Link: Eve24 news article

    Update: The new forums were taken down again, obviously the security issues are much broad than just the signature issue. For a good timeline of the events check out Jester’s Trek.

    Update II : Helicity Boson did a nice writeup in the day the forums died.

    Fanfast 2011

    CCP has put up the fanfest 2011 brochure at the fanfest website. Fanfest 2011 is only a week away ! I won’t be there, but for those that stay at home there is a live stream to follow the important keynote speeches. The HD stream is rather pricy at $20, especially compared to something like Gomtv’s GSL, which gives a load of content for $20,-. The recurring subs there are even only $15,-.

    Luckily CCP also offers a free stream though !

    What MMO

    There is a new site out there that can help you decide what other MMOs besides Eve you’d like to play. It’s called What MMORPG. It’s got a lot of mmorpgs (didn’t even know there were that many out there) sorted by all sorts of categories and whether they’re free to play or not. There is a short review and some indicators, like grind, crafting etc for each mmo.

    You can find the site at http://www.whatmmorpg.com/.

    Hidden Agenda Dibs Race

    On Sunday night we had a fun corp event, a dibs race around the galaxy in shuttles ! At each location there was a nice price to be had, of course you would only find out after winning the Dibs on a location. Clicking on a contract never was so much fun !

    The way it was set up, was that the 15 or so that participated undocked and sprinted to the nearest location. About half way a new location would be announced and shortly after that a third. There would be three active locations almost all the time. So you had to make the decision whether you kept on going to your original destination or change half way. A few times a destination was announced that everybody passed through a bit before, ensuing in lots of cursing in chat and vent !

    dibs_race

    It was quite hilarious when someone yelled DIBS as they arrived in a station as first, other people would go ‘omg I was 2j away !’ and so forth. Once DIBS was called you had to wait in the station for the second round. So everybody won something in the end. The last person in round 1 had to make 26j to Berta to claim a price which was extremely funny and left me plenty of time to get me some coffee !

    So how did I do ? I arrived first at Gelfiven IX and won me an Amarr transport ship. Which is nice as Belautis can almost fly it, only need amarr industrial V, and with the learning skill reset coming up that shouldn’t be too hard. For round 2 I just waited until a destination in Minmatar space was announced so I could be there fast. At Anstard VI I won a set of Battlecruiser blueprints, which is always good to have.

    Thanks to Ruffio and Cattis for setting this up and making this a fun corp event ! It must have been a lot of work preparing this, hope you enjoyed it as much as most of the corporation members who participated did Smile.

    Fifth Anniversary

    Exactly five years ago, Morphisat started his career as a pod pilot. Now 67 mil skill points and a few corporations later I am posting about his fifth anniversary. Lots has changed since when I started, we didn’t have drakes, hulks, but we had learning skills :). Speaking of skill points, I haven’t much of a clue what to spend them on these days, so I am doing level 5s of stuff like gunnery-related skills and invention skills. I guess this is the point where you start investing your skills into Capital ships, but since I will probably never use one it seems kind of pointless to go that route.

    I haven’t been playing much lately, I hope the upcoming Sansha’s invasions will be interesting enough to log on every now and then. I have a bit of a ‘been there, done that’ feeling towards Eve at the moment and only have the Morphisat account active.

    Starcraft II and Wow are keeping me busy, amongst other things right now. I am still following all the Eve news though, through twitter and blogs.

    ps. Incursion 1.0 is coming next tuesday !