The end of 2011 is nigh. Wow! What a year! Moving from faction war to 0.0 epic titan-killing-fests to low-sec pirating and back to faction war, we've done a lot! It certainly hasn't been boring. This blog post takes a look at what my my corp and I has been through this last year and some of my favorite battles.
The year started off with us in Nisuwa fighting the good fight for the Gallente Federation militia.
Although we had a few visits down to 0.0 in Syndicate, we were lacking targets. The Caldari have not been the same since 2009 when they were winning. With the formation on the MDP and the Gallente fight-back that happened, they have never really recovered.
In February time we got an offer to join CTRL-Q and the Northern Collation so we prepared to move up to the R-P area in Vale of the Silent.
Before we left, Lockouts birthday roam was organised. We went out in HACs and Recons looking for a good fight. We found a pirate battleship camp and thought, why not? As soon as the fight commenced they lit a cyno and dropped some carriers on us (four or five I think). We expected Lock to call bail given we were now fighting BS and multiple carriers with HACs but all we got was....
"Mmmmmmmmmm okay. Primary is........"
What a battle! And we screwed them over quite royally. It took a long time given we were lacking in DPS. In fact it was long enough for people to fly back to base and bring back something more appropriate like neuting ships. But we took them down eventually with only one carrier escaping.
Shortly after that we moved to the NC heartland and over the next few months we did the 0.0 sov holding thing. We thought that there would be lots of PvP.... but there wasn't. We ran Sanctums, we made ISK, we chased reds Benny Hill style and we took part in some massive battles.... which were generally very boring. However, for the first time we were taking part in areas that CCP were mentioning. O2O being their favorite data gathering system during the war on lag. We really were there!
Things like this in O2O were an experience - http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=9182680 - Seriously 800 BILLION of losses in one big fight!
But still, two hours staring at the arse of a Titan, someone shouting JUMP!, fire at the primary and hope to get a round off before he dies until you yourself get primaried by 200 Abbadons and die in an uber alpha strike. We did build our own outpost, that was pretty cool!
But by April time, after three months of this 0.0 thing, we were getting bored. Our top FC's were giving some good ideas but were shot down as "You are FW noobs and new to the alliance so don't know anything" but it would seem it was the other way around. We were also losing members as the PvP just wasn't what we wanted. So we sold the station and headed back up to Nisuwa to work out what to do next. Turns out we were bloody lucky. A few weeks later the Russians came stomping through that region and took everything.
May time saw us start to form an alliance with Wolfsbrigade. As we were still sorting the details we had some joint roams. These were interesting as we were both in our respective militias. During one such roam, we encountered a Quam fleet, who are well known as epic hot-droppers. Their fleet was nearly all faction battleships with minimal logistics. Obvious bait was obvious. So we got a bait carrier ready, good old Lock again, and we engaged. We initiated the "hotdrop" hoping they would drop their supers. This actually caused them to drop two normal carriers of their own. This isn't what we wanted. However they couldn't break our carriers reps and we were getting the upper hand in the battle. With their fleet dwindling and both their carriers pointed they were in trouble. We were about to drop a bait dreadnought thinking that would make them drop their supers. But before we could, to save their two carriers, they did the second hot-drop we had been waiting for. As they dropped three Nyx onto the "faction war noobs" we warped in a half a dozen HIC's that had been sat away at a deep-safe. As soon as they had point I dropped fleet along with another guy, joined another fleet and lit my Cyno. Yes we had multiple cyno's ready for them. Now THAT was "hotdrop o'clock" as a Raiden. supercap fleet appeared on field.
There had been a fair bit of smack talk in local up to that point. Suddenly it went silent. Oh how we laughed. I will admit our traps don't go to plan. Sometimes our epic plans result in us all flying back to Nisuwa in pods thinking "Well that didn't go to plan!". But this time, we sat back, lit cigars and pretended to be Hannable Smith.
The year started off with us in Nisuwa fighting the good fight for the Gallente Federation militia.
Although we had a few visits down to 0.0 in Syndicate, we were lacking targets. The Caldari have not been the same since 2009 when they were winning. With the formation on the MDP and the Gallente fight-back that happened, they have never really recovered.
In February time we got an offer to join CTRL-Q and the Northern Collation so we prepared to move up to the R-P area in Vale of the Silent.
Before we left, Lockouts birthday roam was organised. We went out in HACs and Recons looking for a good fight. We found a pirate battleship camp and thought, why not? As soon as the fight commenced they lit a cyno and dropped some carriers on us (four or five I think). We expected Lock to call bail given we were now fighting BS and multiple carriers with HACs but all we got was....
"Mmmmmmmmmm okay. Primary is........"
What a battle! And we screwed them over quite royally. It took a long time given we were lacking in DPS. In fact it was long enough for people to fly back to base and bring back something more appropriate like neuting ships. But we took them down eventually with only one carrier escaping.
Shortly after that we moved to the NC heartland and over the next few months we did the 0.0 sov holding thing. We thought that there would be lots of PvP.... but there wasn't. We ran Sanctums, we made ISK, we chased reds Benny Hill style and we took part in some massive battles.... which were generally very boring. However, for the first time we were taking part in areas that CCP were mentioning. O2O being their favorite data gathering system during the war on lag. We really were there!
Things like this in O2O were an experience - http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=9182680 - Seriously 800 BILLION of losses in one big fight!
But still, two hours staring at the arse of a Titan, someone shouting JUMP!, fire at the primary and hope to get a round off before he dies until you yourself get primaried by 200 Abbadons and die in an uber alpha strike. We did build our own outpost, that was pretty cool!
May time saw us start to form an alliance with Wolfsbrigade. As we were still sorting the details we had some joint roams. These were interesting as we were both in our respective militias. During one such roam, we encountered a Quam fleet, who are well known as epic hot-droppers. Their fleet was nearly all faction battleships with minimal logistics. Obvious bait was obvious. So we got a bait carrier ready, good old Lock again, and we engaged. We initiated the "hotdrop" hoping they would drop their supers. This actually caused them to drop two normal carriers of their own. This isn't what we wanted. However they couldn't break our carriers reps and we were getting the upper hand in the battle. With their fleet dwindling and both their carriers pointed they were in trouble. We were about to drop a bait dreadnought thinking that would make them drop their supers. But before we could, to save their two carriers, they did the second hot-drop we had been waiting for. As they dropped three Nyx onto the "faction war noobs" we warped in a half a dozen HIC's that had been sat away at a deep-safe. As soon as they had point I dropped fleet along with another guy, joined another fleet and lit my Cyno. Yes we had multiple cyno's ready for them. Now THAT was "hotdrop o'clock" as a Raiden. supercap fleet appeared on field.
There had been a fair bit of smack talk in local up to that point. Suddenly it went silent. Oh how we laughed. I will admit our traps don't go to plan. Sometimes our epic plans result in us all flying back to Nisuwa in pods thinking "Well that didn't go to plan!". But this time, we sat back, lit cigars and pretended to be Hannable Smith.
Anyway, we formed the alliance and move around a bit looking for a decent PvP area. Finally we settled in Kamela after trying Prov and Derelik. We fought around Amamake for a while and the PvP was OK, but GCC mechanics were a pain. As many of us rushed to -10 we lost a few more members who didn't want to be pirate.
Then Incarna was deployed and the brown smelly stuff hit the fan throughout New Eden. We had some people just give up citing CCP neglect of their area of the game and the direction the company was taking. Others just stopped as they couldn't stand the heat their graphics card churned out under Incarna. What ever the varied reasons, we lost some good people. Whilst the summer of unrest kicked off we continued NBSI until most of us were -10 flashy pirates.
At this point I think I must comment on the alliance name..... ShadowWolves.net [.NET]!!!! You know the fallout from Incarna? Well within SoTF it was similar. The CEO's loved the name, Wolfsbrigade apparently was OK with it, SoTF took the piss out of it constantly. I even named our pub quiz team in honor of the alliance name one night.... then had to explain the reason to a Frenchmen, an Iraqi, a Lebanese (is that what you call a guy from Lebanon?), a Scot and a lady from the Ukraine! The wife guessed what it was about anyway. Was fairly funny to hear the quiz master read the team name when we won a round!
June 2011 also saw me start this blog. It's had nearly 9,000 pageviews in the first 6 months which I find rather insane! So thank you all! Surprisingly, the most popular blog entry was one of my pieces of fan fiction about us returning to FW in the Autumn. It was linked on the Eve-O forum in the thread about SoTF returning so that's why I guess it got so many hits. Also the person Googling "Minmatar tits" please get some help!
By July cracks were forming in our Alliance. Wolfsbrigade's more business-like attitude was conflicting with Shadow's "Why make plans, lets get drunk and shoot stuff!" attitude.
By August we were doing our own thing, pirating around Amamake and enjoying frig-fry Fridays. Then the Goons kicked PL out of their home and they ended up in Amamake with their tail between their legs. They were also very bored as PL were dishonouring 1v1's with Titans! Things were a bit more difficult in that area.
September saw us return back to faction war and move back to Nisuwa. Thankfully, a lot of the good members we'd lost in our 9 months of "lets give this a go" came back to the fold. However we are still missing some, I'm looking at you Eelis Kiy (formally of Where the Frack is My Ship? fame and now can be found at The One That Writes)! Actually, where has Karen gone?
October and November were back to normal for us. We were battling squids, pirates and Loren was taxing the squid hi-sec mission runners in the Caldari Militia.
Early December saw a spike in activity as Crucible was released, but still no Eelis.
So my own personal stats for 2011 are:-
- I've killed 684 ships for a total of 157 billion ISK.
- I've lost 73 ships for a total of 6.47 billion ISK.
Happy New Year to you, thanks for reading my blog and I hope you have a great 2012 (whether your fighting with me or against me)!
Nice recap of the year for you guys.
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