BB 43: Drackarn's 2012 Eve Community Awards

Blog Banter 43: Celebrating the Nation of EVE

At the turn of the year in meatspace, award season starts to spin up. Across the general media, folk are encouraged to look to their peers and recognise excellence and inspiration from the previous year. For the past two years I have attempted to do the same for EVE by distributing imaginary Free Boot Awards to an eclectic assortment of community luminaries. This year I thought it might be nice to expand the concept.

For Blog Banter 43 I would like to invite every participant to nominate their peers for whatever awards you think they deserve. Let's celebrate the best and the worst of us, the funniest or the most bizarre, the most heroic of the most tragic of the past year. They could be corp mates, adversaries, bloggers, podcasters, developers, journalists or inanimate objects. Go nuts.

-o0o-

Well, I would like to proposed some "X's of the Year" for 2012 as my entry into this blog banter. These are chosen from my own experience and are very much Drackarn's choices. What I like is probably not the same as you and those active on the #tweetfleet are more likely to have grabbed my attention! But most of all, if you've made me smile or even better, laugh, in 2012, you're in with a chance!

Drackarn's Player of the Year

I flew with a great number of awesome players in 2012. There is the Chuck Norris of Eve, Loren Gallen who continues to choke up the space lanes with frozen corpses. There were the minds behind the PL titan gank and generally awesome FC's Tekitha, Lock and FG. There is my 2012 nemesis Quake590 who kept killing me in good fights until I finally beat him in December. There are in fact a metric shed-load of great players I have had the honour of flying with in 2012 and it would take me hours to list them all. 

So I'll award my player of the year to the death dealer of DnD, consistently in the top 3 on BattleClinic and who is, coincidently, one of the nicest guys you'll meet online! My honourable mention goes to the gentlemen who had provided me with good fights and blogging content in Black Rise for 2012.

Winner - Loren Gallen

Honourable Mention - Quake590

Drackarn's CCP'r of the Year

Well there are a few possibilities here. For me there are a few stand-outs at CCP that are heavily involved with the community. For me this is mostly Twitter as I'm not much a visitor to Troll-land aka the forums. CCP Manifest is on my list for the tireless work he puts in on the community side. CCP Guard gets a mention, well what can be said about him that cannot be said in one of his videos. CCP Diagoras made a good start ot the year, and was still alive at fanfest, he was on my table, but appears to have gone dark for the last 117 days. CCP Punkturis did great work on the UI and bounty office and is a constant pleasant presence on the Tweetfleet and we're all fingers crossed she doesn't go too dark when she goes on maternity leave soon (tm). I guess a lot will be thinking of CCP Fozzie and CCP Ytterbium for the teiricide which brought back T1 frigates and cruisers to the game. CCP Zulu deserves a mention simply for appearing in my faction war plex in Kedama minutes after me Tweeting about a bug on Inferno release day! 

However, as this is Drack's personal choice I'll go with the guy who made me smile the most in 2012 with a number of links and mentions (of course that is totally bloody biased). The honourable mention goes to a CCP'r who is extremely active on the Tweetfleet and always has time for the players.

Winner - CCP Manifest

Honourable Mention - CCP Punkturis

Drackarn's Alliance of the Year

I deal with very few alliances. Pandemic Legion deserve a mention for being such cool dudes after we ganked one of their Titans. Rare to be congratulated by the people you just blew up one of their Titans of. Plus they were good sports when I met some at Fanfest too. Continuing on FanFest those TEST guys like a drink! Goons are actually nice people in real life and Eve Uni are exactly how you'd expect them! The alliance I am in currently was formed at the end of 2012 so not really in the running even through Samurai Pizza Cats has a lot of awesome players in it. May be next year!

There is only one winner I can think of from Drack's point of view. I named it, was in it for the first 7 months of the year and are still on good terms with it even if they have gone a bit serious for my taste! The honourable mention goes to an alliance gracious in "defeat" (OK we only JUST won on ISK) and who I enjoyed a drink with in the Celtic Cross at Fanfest.

Winner - Drunk 'n' Disorderly

Honourable Mention - Pandemic Legion

Drackarn's Blog of the Year

I read a good few blogs. I cannot say I have read every Eve blog out there, but I have a decent number in my reading list. Sov Wars and @gamerchick42 are two faction war blogs I have in my list and always high on the first to read list when I fire up Google Reader. Evogander and Freebooted are up there with the best as well as Pointy Sticks, Random Average, Mabrick's Mumblings, Poetic Discourse, Through Newb Eyes, Jesters Trek, Tiger Ears, Malefactor and.... oh I think that is enough I'll be listing blogs all day long, there are still another dozen in my list! So who do I choose? 

Well that would be the one which makes me laugh regularly which IMHO is rather important. It features a good mix of interesting topics from flying and fitting to minor failings out with others but with minimal tinfoil-hattery, oh and makes me laugh (yes I know that I've said that twice but I think that's important). The honourable mention goes to a blog that obviously needs a lot of work done on it to produce posts like that. I have constantly enjoy reading it and is one of my favourites of 2012.

Winner - Eveogander by Rixx Javix

Honourable Mention - Through Newb Eyes by tgl3

Drackarn's Community Star of the Year

Now this is tough. So very, very tough. We've got some obvious ones. Rixx Javix and Seismic Stan are both obvious candidates. Mark726 is another good one, I didn't need to mention Eve Travel above as that should be taken as read! There are all the people at TMC (Marc and Baghi spring to mind) who have done a great job and a great website no matter what your opinion of the Goons is. 2012 was generally a poor, poor year for leg pictures, but her song parodies get Sindel Pellion in the running here. Due to restricted bandwidth allowance I don't listen to pod casts generally but if I am feeling flush I will turn on Eve Radio for DJ Wiggles. But who has constantly contributed most to the community as far as I am concerned? 

Well right now, as I have done every month more or less, I'm writing another blog banter! And the continued success of these is largely down the winners hard work! The honourable mention goes to the Tweetfleet songstress of "those" Eve parody songs we were treated to during 2012! In fact I'm listening to Makalu Cries right now as I needed to visit the page to get the link below. KILL THE RIFTER! KILL THE RIFTER! KILL THE RIFTER! KILL THE RIFTER! KILL THE RIFTER! KILL THE RIFTER! KILL THE RIFTER! 

Winner - Seismic Stan

Honourable Mention - Sindel Pellion

Drackarn's Scrap of the Year

There are a few notable kills I've been on this year. Some of my favourites have actually been nothing to write about. Winning a 5v1 was an awesome experience but not really anything to shout about. I've had a look back and smiled at some fights where I've been the underdog and come out on top. But again, who wants to hear about destroyer and assault ship fights? News worthy fights feature hundreds of pilots and billions of ISKs of tears. I've had more than a few of those in 2012. Obviously the PL titan gank, there have been several super carrier busting fleets, lots of carrier kills, a handful of dreadnought kills and some funny hotdrops.

But, well there can only be one winner for me. I've been part of many great kills and battles in 2012 but one rises above the rest. Even to such heights that you'll find it on many of the top 10 kills/events of 2012 from players who weren't even there. I walked past groups chatting about it at Fanfest. I am of course talking about the evening we faction warfare noobs hot-dropped and destroyed a PL Titan in their home system of Amamake! The Honourable Mention goes to the epic cluster-fuck that was Kedama when a fight with between DnD and Snuffbox escalated and caught the attention of other alliances.

Winner - Odda's Smart-Bombing Titan in Amamake

Honourable Mention - DnD vs Snuffbox vs X13 vs FA vs NC. in Kedama.

Drackarn's Cock-Up of the Year

There are a few cock-ups here that affected me directly. Faction war post Inferno was a definate cock-up with cash-in days and gunless stabbed speed tanking frigates taking over faction war. The timetable at Fanfest was poor with a total bun-fight at the obviously popular roundtables and talks. Also the PvP tournament timing meant that those who won a few matches missed important key-notes. But none got me tearing my hair out and yelling at the PC than the Eve-O launcher. I know that as far as numbers go, there were only about 6000 of us where the launcher said "NO!" in a Grumpy Cat style. But CCP's insistance that they would not release manual patches to help us was dumb imo. I suppose there was some logical reasoning, but did CCP expect us addicts to simply not play Eve? In the end we just had to get corp mates manually export each patch and upload it to a media sharing website.

So the winner is the 'feature' that made me want to kick someone in the nuts with the 'feature' that gave me months of chasing stabbed frigates getting an honourable (dishonourable?) mention.

Winner - The Eve Online (Failure to) Launcher

Honourable Mention - Faction War Post Inferno

Outstanding Contribution to Eve Geekery

I am a big fan of Sci-Fi. Whilst not a roleplayer in Eve, I love the backstory and the history and the geekyness that comes with that. There was a specific thing that happened in 2012 that I felt needed highlighting here but I couldn't fit it in to any of the categories above. So I made a new one. This award is for those in the community who have helped expand and increase awareness of the Eve lore and its background during a year where CCP appeared to take the first half of the year off from it.

The winner goes to the writer of 'that' lore guide. A fantastic publication which is a must read for anyone interested in getting up to speed with the Eve Universe without wanting to spend days trawling the Wiki's and the fiction portal. The honorable mention goes to the organiser of the Eve fiction contest at the end of last year who highlighted the works of us writers of New Eden.

Winner - Mark726 for his Lore Guide

Honourable Mention - Telegram Stan for organising the Pod and Planet fiction contest.

So those are my choices for 2012. I'm sure many of you won't agree, but if we all like the same thing in life, and Eve Online, they would be very boring! Really upset at my choices? See what the rest said....

43 Bottles of Beer on the wall! by TetraEtc @ Tetras Eve Blog
talking back to Makalu by Sered Woollahra at Sered's Lives
Drackarn's 2012 Eve Community Awards by Drackarn @ Sand, Cider and Spaceships
Awarding Those That Do Stuff by Orakkus @ 2nd Anomaly From the Left
On The Shoulders Of Giants by Helena Khan @ Aggressive Logistics
The Offbeat Award by Emergent Patroller
Your Winning Numbers Are... by Corelin @ Mad Haberdashers
Awards Ceremony by Kirith Kodachi @ Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
Celebrating the Nation by Ripard Teg @ Jester's Trek
Day 210: Just Gimme the Prize: BB43 by Cheradenine Harper at Dairies of a Space Noob
The Nosy Gamer Awards by NoizyGamer @ The Nosy Gamer
Da Herp De Derp Awards by Rixx Javix @ Eveoganda
The 2012 Heroes of New Eden by Logan Fyreite @ Eve Opportunist
The Golden Stems Awards by Sindel Pellion @ Sindel's Universe
The EVE Online Awards by Poetic Stanziel @ Poetic Discourse
Chickening Out by Mike Azariah @ A Missioneer in Eve
The One With The Awards by Marc Scaurus @ Malefactor
My Heroes by Splatus @ A journey through the mind
Some Random Awards by Morphisat @ Morphisat's Blog
The Zebro Awards by Xander Phoena @ Crossing Zebras
The New Eden Windowlickers by DJ Wiggles @ The Ramblings Of An Eve-Radio DJ
2012 Privateer Awards by Rhavas @ Interstellar Privateer