Monday, November 29, 2010

New responsibilities

Well, as part of my plan to jump back into Eve with both feet, I have asked for extra responsibility in the corporation. As I have probably said, it is important for me to feel that I'm really contributing to the overall success of the corporation. As such, I'm very excited to be able to help out in keeping our POSs fueled and busy mining those sweet moon minerals.

I've done a little learning about this and will be talking to our current POS tender soon to make sure I fully understand this responsibility, and then I will be on my own.

Oh, and I'm sure those of you who have had to do this for your corps will tell me that it is a huge pain in the butt, and I'm sure that's true. However, it is something that is important for the corporation and I'm happy to help out.

BTW, feel free to ask me if I feel the same way six months from now...

I finally did it...

I have to interrupt my review of past activities to let you know that I finally did it: I created an alt on a second account. I guess I just wanted to be one of the cool kids!

Yesterday, I signed up for a second account, taking advantage of the 3 months for the price of 2 offer that CCP is running now. I created a new Caldari capsuleer named Tel Radic. Tel is busy running through the storyline missions for each of the professions and getting trained up on basic skills. My goal is to have him ready to fly a Badger Mark II by this evening so he can at least be a hauler alt. Other than that, I'm not sure exactly what this toon's function is going to be, so I'm open to suggestion.

So, readers: here is the question: Now that I have a second character, what the heck should I do with him?!

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Welcome Back, Part 2

In the previous installment, I explained how I got out of Eve for awhile. Now I'll explain how I got back into the game.

While I was out, I mentioned that I was playing a fair amount of WoW. In addition, I was trying out some new games, such as Pirates of the Burning Sea and Lord of the Rings Online. I really liked the concept of both games, and played them pretty extensively for a month or so each. LOTRO in particular was really cool in the way that it wove the game around the story of The Lord of the Rings, but each game left me feeling like something was missing. After awhile I just stopped playing PotBS, and really slowed down on LOTRO.

It was at this time I started getting the Eve itch again. Even with all the negative feelings I'd been having about the game when I stopped playing, there was something about it that made me want to come back. As I'm writing this I just realized what it is: teamwork.

The games that I love are those games that require teamwork, especially with the same group of people over the long haul. World of Warcraft has it in the endgame raiding content: you have to pull together once or twice a week with the same group of people to accomplish something that is hard to do, could not be done on your own, and requires teamwork. Eve Online is the same in that for most people, working with your corpmates is the way that you really get ahead in the game.

After being out of the game for several months, I decided to check out my corporation's forums to see what they were up to. I read up on the comings and goings of the various corp members and the activities that they were up to. Seeing that some of my corpmates were spending time with other folks out in 0.0 doing PvP, I decided that that was the itch that I needed to scratch. I reactivated my account, hopped in a shuttle and headed out to our 0.0 station.

Once I reached the station (which was quite exciting for me as I'd never really been out there before), I clone jumped back to high sec to pick up some skillbooks. While I was there, things changed dramatically (as they often do in Eve).

Basically, my alliance decided that being in 0.0 was not working out, and opted to vacate our null-sec station, which they did during a time when I was not logged in. Fortunately, I had nothing out in that station but a clone and an Amarr shuttle. By the time I logged on again, the station was vacated, and my poor clone was stranded in 0.0. I suppose at some point I might clone jump out there, hop in my shuttle and try to make it back to low sec. In the meantime, if you happen to see my clone in your station, say hi to him for me.

Anyway, I was now back in high-sec and getting back into the swing of things. I was out of the wormhole which was awesome, and I was running some missions for standing and chatting on corp chat and things were getting back to normal. In addition, the corporation decided to move its primary base of operations back into high sec for awhile which was great news for me.
Finally, we had some corp mining ops pop up and participating in those really helped cement things for me: I was officially back in Eve. I realize that mining might be the least exciting thing to do in the game, but there is something really cool about your whole corporation out there in a belt, tearing down asteroids in a mammoth mining operation.

And that's how I got back into Eve after my absence. In my final installment, I fill you in on what I've been doing recently...

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Welcome Back, Part 1

Wow, that was a long break! It's been forever since I posted here, but I'm back, at least for a while. My voluminous following must be wondering what I've been up to. Am I still playing Eve? Am I still in the same corporation? What have I been doing in game? Sit back and all your questions will soon be answered.

Long story long, here's what happened. Many months ago (maybe 10 or so), the corporation decided to make a big push into wormhole space. I went along, and got myself trained up to Amarr battleships to help kill sleepers. We had corp members that would scan down the various anomalies and we'd get together every so often to go kill sleepers every few days. That was pretty fun, because it required teamwork to bring down the sleepers. We'd also did a fair amount of mining in the wormhole which was very lucrative, and the corp was able to get into T3 production which was cool too.

The downside for me was that I spent most of my time stuck in the wormhole with not much to do most of the time. My scanning skills are not great, and I'm not very good at scanning to start with, so there were many nights where I was basically stranded in the WH, spinning in the POS. When we got together and mined or ran sites, it was great, but that was not often enough to keep my interest.

Compounding that was the nature of the WH exit. I was part of the build crew for the corp, so I needed to get out of the WH once a week to do my builds. But as you know, the WH exit jumps around, and I would often find myself coming out of the WH with 35 jumps to the system where we do our builds. Ugh!!! I spent significant time every week travelling to and from the wormhole which is not my idea of a fun gameplay style.

After a while of this, I began to hate the wormhole with a burning passion, but since that was where our corporation was operating, I felt I had to be in there. It was at this time that I started to lose interest in the game. After a while of this, I talked to one of the corp leaders that I was going to back off playing as much, and was going to take a pseudo-vacation from Eve. The plan was to move to our build station, and hop on once a week to update my skill queue and put in builds. I did this for about a month or so, and while I wasn't playing the game too much, I was still contributing to the corporation which I liked.

Around this time, I had gotten back into World of Warcraft more heavily, and started raiding Icecrown Citadel with my guild's 25 man group. I was enjoying this quite a bit, and was not missing Eve too much. When I had to cancel the credit card that was paying for my Eve subscription because of a little fraud situation (don't ask...), CCP couldn't get paid and my Eve account went inactive. I figured that since I wasn't really playing all that much, I'd just leave it as is, and it was the end of an era.

In my next post, I'll explain how I got back into Eve, and what I've been up to more recently.