I Can Haz Monocle? $70? Eve Online Riots!

The fury from monocle gate and Pay-2-Win has finally died down some with CCP doing some major damage control. In fact it got so bad I was expecting them to release in game T3 DCU's as all the design work appears to have been done!

For those who missed it, the release of Incarna coupled with a leaked internal CCP newsletter and email plus something a dev said when being interviewed the week before caused riots in game. Literally people were rioting in their spaceships. Locking hi-sec systems down by sheer numbers, raging on the forums and shooting in-game monuments. There was much rage logging, people cancelling accounts and CCP weilding the perma-ban hammer when people went too far in the forums. 

Damn Google! I wanted GEEKS rioting, not GREEKS!

The main issues were...

The prices in the NEX store - Really CCP. A shirt for your in-game Avatar that costs more real life money than... well a shirt for yourself! And then we have the $70 monocle....

Incarna graphics - Some people couldn't load the Client, some peoples graphics card just melted.

Bugs - Black screen of nothingness when undocking or jumping. Restart the Client, you're pointed and in 10% structure. Pop. GM - "Our logs show nothing." Me - "What a coincidence, that is same as 5 times a day on my screen when I undock or jump. Nothing"

Loss of the hanger - No ship spinning and not easy to see what ship you are in if hitting undock in a rush.

Pay-to-win - Now this wasn't in the release. A mix of the newsletter, the dev interview and the emails gave the Eve community the sence CCP was going down the pay-to-win micro transactions route. It was rumoured that the Ishkone Watch Scorpion could be bought with Aurum with no input from players. *puff* and a battleship appears from thin air. This got people the most worried.

Many people said "So what?". You can buy PLEX with rl money already, sell them for ISK and buy a wtfpwnage-ship-of-awesomesauce already. Isn't this the same.

No, and here is my view why.....

At least with PLEX, which is still real money trading technically, when you buy a shiny faction ship the following has to happen:-
 
Player 1 buys PLEX from CCP, sells PLEX for ISK, buys shiny faction ship. The End? Yes, but lets go back to the start.
 
Before Player 1 can buy that fancy faction ship off the contracts section, a lot has happened....
 
Player 2 gets LP's for running missions.
Player 2 buys a t1 hull from Player 3
Player 2 trades LP's and t1 hull in for faction ship
Player 2 puts up sale contract which is bought by PLEX selling Player 1.
 
But before that.....
 
Player 3 buys minerals from player 4.
Player 3 uses minerals to build t1 ship hull.
Player 3 hauls t1 hulls to trade hub in a freighter.
Player 3 sells t1 hull on market which is bought by Player 2.
 
But before that.....
 
Player 4 mines minerals to sell on market, bought eventually by Player 3, after buying new Hulk.
 
Player 4 had to buy new hulk as dirty piwat player 5 popped his last one :)
 
And where did that Hulk come from? Well... Player 6...... :)
 
And that's just the hull, now repeat that for modules, rigs, ammo and drones. Maybe some of them are T1 and were looted by Player 7. May be they are T2 and the BPC to make them came from a BPO owned by Player 8. Maybe that BPC came from an invention run from Player 9 who bought the datacores from Player 10. Where did the rigs come from? Well the salvage was sold by PvP player 11 who salvages both player tears and their ships in null-sec. 
 
And not just for player 1's ship..... player 2 needed a fitted missioning ship, player 3 needed a freighter, player 4 need the hulk, player 5 and 11 need PvP ships.......
 
Yes, Player 1 used real life money to buy and fit a ship of wtfpwnawesomesauce. But how many different people contributed to that one single fitted ship?
 
That is what make's Eve special, CCP even pointed this out in the butterfly effect promo video. Now they are going down the line of giving you a ship, mods, ammo and who knows what for just cash?

It's looking likely that CCP won't be going down this route now and will require a t1 Scorpion hull to be trade in along with Aurum. Anyway, lets all hope so.....

Arrrrrr! A Pirate's Life For Me?

Slightly old post, did this about a month ago for the Alliance website before it went tits up!

I'm a good guy. Not in real life, but online. I always do try and play the good guys.

This has always been the case. During my WoW days I was Alliance. During Star Wars Galaxies I was, erm, Alliance (Rebel). In fact, pretty much every game I've played when you can pick between the goodies and the baddies I go for the goodies. Only game I can remember playing the bad guy is that old classic, Dungeon Keeper, and to be honest, you really didn't really have a choice in that game did you?

Now I'm being forced to be a baddy in Eve Online! The .NET Alliance is going pie. Not apple, not cherry, not meat and potato, but -10, flashy, "if it moves kill it, if it doesn't move, kill it until it does move. AAARRRRRR!" type pie. Oh technically you still have a choice in the Alliance whether to go GCC, but with most corpies already sticking on the eye patch and shouting "yaaarrrrr" and "avast" at passers-by, we're all going to be nasty flashy pies within a few weeks whether I like it not. My sec status, which is usually 5.0 (I do go GCC on asshats that are "neutral" but helping the enemy), is just teetering on negative, 0.05 as I write this. For the first time in my three year Eve life I'm about to have a negative sec status as when I log in tonight I'll probably be looking for someone to pop. In fact I'd be minus now if it wasn't for the warning message popping up and the target already melting to other fleet members before I clicked yes, I really do want to do that (turned that fracking thing off now!).

So is it a big deal to be a pie? For me, yes.

Although if there were fellow pirates like this in Incarna I'd have less of an issue going -10......

I find it hard to explain why I don't like playing the bad guy online. Most movie actors say they have more fun playing the villain than the hero, and I know a lot of people who also agree to that online. In fact we've got some people in the Alliance who are Darth Vader to my Luke. Smeg, in fact we've got a couple in corp who would make the Emperor wince and say "Hang on mate, don't you think that's a bit harsh?". Do I go around hugging carebears and miners? No. But I do believe people should be able to enjoy the game. That's why my sec status is dropping slowly, especially when compared to others as I'm kersplatting people in low-sec where there is the expectation that there will be PvP and it is generally unsafe. Many others have gone to -10, gone directly to -10, did not pass go, did not collect 200 ISK by some hi-sec suicide ganking. That's just not how I play. Same with scamming. I know people who have alts in Jita making a fortune scamming noobs and stupid people of their ISK. Seriously guys, if something appears to good to be true, then it probably isn't. Personally I'd never do this. Again it's being the in-game baddy.

However,

Do I think scamming should be banned? No.

Do I have a problem with the guys who have alts that are scammers and griefers? No.

Do I dislike/have a problem the players in the alliance who are hi-sec suicide ganking the miners and carebears*? No.

It's an old chestnut, but without evil, there is no good. Eve is a harsh place and we need the suicide gankers, scammers, griefers, piwates and generally the inhabitants of the Mos Eisly Spaceport (and other wretched hives of scum and villainy) in game. However I'm on the other side of the fence from them. This is not Hello Kitty Online. It's one of the harshest most unforgiving games there is. However, we don't all need to be harsh, evil, and generally low-down and dirty.

Our CEO is looking more like this these days!

In faction war the good side and the bad side are just a matter of perspective. It's easy to justify you're on the "good" side and the others are the "baddies". With war dec's it's even more clear cut. But -10 flashy pies are the baddies of Eve. No one can really deny that. The reason we're going pie is the exact same reason we were in faction war. We want PvP. However, I still have trouble seeing past the "We're the bad guys now". I guess it's because in FW your targets have made the choice to "ask" for PvP. Now any carebear who wanders into the wrong system will be kersplatted with extreme prejudice.

When I joined SoTF we were generally anti-pie. If there were pies around we'd engage them and the corp was strict NRDS unless a specific order was given by a director, the CEO or very rarely a FC. And these very rare times where almost always due to the neut being eyes for war targets or doing some aggressive action like bumping someone off gate/station. KB's were regularly checked by the Directors for anyone in corp who was going pie and bollockings were handed out. Over the past six or so months as we're found ourselves short on war targets we've moved from NRDS to NBSI with a sec status cap of -1.9 and now to no sec status cap which is basically "garrrrrr, kill em all!".

So here I am, slowly working my way towards the dark side. My Luke is now more of a Han and I'm marching towards Anikan, Vader and may be even the Emperor in the end.

Oh well, as my fave weapon is cannon (Artillery) may be I can be a dirty piwate if I can just get my mind around the being a baddie bit....

* If you are a hi-sec missioning carebear and join a militia to avoid tax, then sorry you have entered PvP and when you are visited by a taxman in the form of Loren or S810 jr then you deserve to lose your faction fitted Marauder. If you don't want PvP**, don't join a militia.

 ** Please note Eve is a cruel universe and you still might get suicide ganked even when in a NPC corp. However when you lose your faction fitted Marauder that way, I'll feel a bit sorry for you, in the NPC Militia, you're a legitimate target and I will smile at your loss mail. Oh god! May be I am evil after all.....

Confessions of a FC'ing Hater

I don't like FC'ing! I really don't.

I play Eve Online for fun, and in Eve, people have different definitions of fun. Some take their serious internet spaceships way too seriously for me. I prefer the loose and fun approach and, whilst I can be serious when the need arises, I like to have a laugh and giggle in the game.

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago I was going through my ships to look for something to solo roam with. I had notied that at the time there were no SoTF FC’s on and so far as I knew none of my new W-BR alliance mates that were online were big on FC-ing either. Of course there may have been some super-awesome-FC's-of-pwnage online. Or could all have been just like me; "FC'ing? Urrrghhhh. Can I quote Edmund Blackadder here with, I'd rather french kiss a skunk!"

So I'd just about sorted a solo ship when a pair of pirate hurricanes were reported camping a high to low sec entry gate 3 jumps from us. Seeing as I could jump in a Falcon with a full rack of Minmatar jammers I enquired what ship the guy who spotted them was in, a stealth bomber. Damn. But on a plus alliance chat suddenly woke up with people saying they could bring various ships.

I set up off the gate in my Falcon, watching all the X’s start to appear in Alliance chat.

They were just sat there… all those X’s… taunting me.

The reason they were taunting me goes back to the previous week and a "debate" I had had with my CEO regarding fleets formations. SoTF and WBR had been running some really amazing fleets of late. Fantastic composition with awesome FC's. However these fleets had consisted of very specific ship types with some serious ISK on the line etc.

But some of us still wanted a few cheap and fun fleets where there wouldn’t be hundreds of millions of ISK per person on the line.

I wonder if any of the non-FC's reading this have ever tried to explain why they don't like FC'ing to someone who does. It is a very difficult to get the point across. Professionally, I regularly get up in front of 200 to 300 people and will speak for 30 minutes. But to FC half a dozen corpies? Not my cup of tea! And when you cannot get across that message, it's difficult for you to counter the argument…

 "If you want a specific type of fleet run, run it yourself"

"But I hate FC'ing"

"Why? If you want those fleets step up and run them".

And so on.

So here we are, on a quiet Saturday morning, no FC's, and those fracking X's are staring at me in Alliance chat.

I moused over the first X and clicked "Form Fleet". Then I carried on and invited the others.

Just to make it official I also set a fleet advert up with the description; "Noob FC, you'll all die in a fire, seriously!" Unfortunately it didn't put anyone off.

By the time we were organised and ready, the two pie canes had warped off so our bait Mrym bounced around. Found one on a gate and aggressed.

The pie didn't aggress and he had a mate in a Nighthawk who warped in and aggressed our Mrym instead. So I called it, and the cavalry came charging in.

Cane jumped and Nighthawk was nano fit and came after me. Wht followed as a Benny Hill style situation with the Nighthawk chasing the FC in the Falcon around whilst the rest of the fleet chased after the Nighthawk. The cane came back and was quickly dispatched before the Nighthawk burnt away and warped off.

By the end of that every pie in the area had heard about our gang of half a dozen BC with ECM support. We tried to bait some more on the way back but, as it was so quiet, even a fleet of half a dozen turned out to be an unstoppable force at the time. So I took the fleet back home.

1 kill, no loses and slightly cyan balls (like blue balls, just lighter).

Some might say a successful short roam. A kill, no loses. Still I didn't like it, and for all you FC's thinking what am I on about, let me try and list it out.

1. What are they thinking about me?

I've done lots of small and large gang roaming. I'd say 99% of my 2000 kills are in gangs of 6 or more. So I should know what to do with all that practice. But I've been with poor FC's outside SoTF. I've been the one thinking "Wtf is this guy doing? What a numpty! Why would he do this? Why isn't he doing that?"

2. I cannot compare to X, Y or Z (or is it L, T and G?).

As already mentioned we've got some awesome FC's in the Alliance. I remember a great fleet not long ago when our HAC gang engaged a similar sized pirate BC gang. They lit a cyno and dropped 4 carriers on us. Now if I was FC'ing (hypothetically) I'd be ordering the Brave Sir Robin Manoeuvre. "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!" but no, the FC paused a few seconds and then gave primaries and secondaries. I thought we'd all die in a fire, we lost only a couple of ships and wiped most of their fleet including 3 of the 4 carriers. Now if people join my fleet I'm going to feel bad as I cannot compare to that. It's bad enough having regularly corpies in regard to point 1 of this list, when you have the uber FC's as members of your fleet the pressure is ten times worse.

3. ISK can be a bugger to earn for some and I'm about to do a space version of Leeroy Jenkins.

Keeping the wallet nice and healthy when you play Eve just for PvP is not always easy. For those without multiple accounts or rl cash to buy and sell PLEX it can be a grind to make your cash. Those BC's in your fleet could represent 2 to 3 hours of grinding missions for ISK. That's a lot of time to go down the drain when you mess it up! I know people who are ISK poor and losing a BC is a major thing to them. I know all the arguments about "don't fly what you cannot afford to lose" etc. But still, being responsible for other people’s losses is always in the back of my mind.

4. What in New Eden is THAT!

I know pretty much every Caldari ship no problem. I know the vast majority of Minmitar and Gallente (although which is which with the Ishtar/Ishkur). I know most Amarrian. However there are gaps in my knowledge. Apocalypse? Now is that the DPS BS or the tanky one? Call the wrong one primary and that might be what gets everyone killed.

OK So we've got 10 BC and they have... erm.... a giant mushroom....

5. I find FC'ing stressful.

There are more things in this list, such as FC'ing in my fave ECM/sniper boats is a bad choice, some people in the game are likely to emo-rage when losing a ship to a FC's mistake, etc. But going to cap it to 5 as they all lead to the same thing in the end, stress. At the start of this I said I play Eve for fun. And when I'm FC'ing I'm not having fun.

So there you are. I hope this helps shed some light on why some of us FC'ing haters don't like FC'ing to those that do and cannot understand why people won't step up.

When there's absolutely, positively no-one else, I'll step up...... I'll do it, but I ain't gonna like it!

An Introduction

Hello interweby thing o/

I've been doing blog type posts on my Eve Online Corporation forum, Shadows of the Federation, for some time.

I've never really though of doing a proper blog as Eelis Kiy, member of SoTF and real life girl with boobies and everything already did the awesomesauce blog - Where the Frack is my Ship. http://www.wtfims.blogspot.com/. A blog of such wtfpwn-awesomeness I didn't dare try to do a pale comparison. Anyway, she's taking an Eve break currently so you should all visit "Where the Frack is my Ship" at http://www.wtfims.blogspot.com/ and make some comment that she should come back to the game. She's got a super sexy voice and our Vent server is all the poorer in her absence!

Please note all of our corp aren't big on lipstick... well except the CEO when he's got that maids outfit on....

Anyway, I suppose the first post should be about who I am in game.

In Eve my main character is Drackarn, Director in the corporation "Shadows of the Federation" which is the founding member of the "Drunk 'n' Disorderly" Alliance [-FU-].

I started in Eve in July 2008 after buying a new PC. I'd seen Eve Online before in magazines but one thing always put me off. As skill training and advancement was time based, you could never catch up to the veteran players. However, in the end I gave it a go. I spent a few months as a missioning carebear in a Caldari NPC corp just shooting rats. A few months later I was chatting to an old mate on the net one day and I mentioned that I'd started playing Eve Online. He also was playing it and invited me over to join the corp he was in. So I packed up my stuff and moved over to Revelation Space -RS-. I was able to carebear to my hearts content with those guys and it was a great little corp with some great people. I'd already played online with many of them as I was also for a while in their SW:G guild before SOE spoilt the game and I left. There was one minor problem. Once a month -RS- would join the Gallente Militia for a weekend of PvP. I thought I'd join in.....

"Oooo what's going on here...." POP! "Oh I'm dead"

"That guys targetting...." POP! "Oh I'm dead again!"

My introduction to PvP was not the greatest. I warped in, died in a fire, warped my pod out. After a few goes at this I'd log off and do something else during the weekends -RS- was in FW. Didn't help that at that time (3 years ago) the Caldari were spanking the Gallente.

I tried again a month or two later. I don't know what, but something was different now. Was it I was flying a better class of ship, had I accumulated the right skills, was I more practiced in the game and it's mechanics? I don't know what had changed, but this time I was knocking the seven bells out of the Caldari rather than insta-popping myself. Suddenly PvP was FANTASTIC! I was even moaning to the corp directors for more time each month in FW. I'd gone from Carebear to Werebear.

This was also the time the Gallente FW corps we flew with in general militia decided to band together to create a Mutual Defense Pact. -RS- was interested but didn't have the numbers to make an effective member of the MDP. So after a lot of soul-searching the CEO gave people the oppertunity, after making the right arrangements, for any corp member to join Shadows of the Federation. The PvP'rs, including myself and the CEO, joined SoTF and became fulltime, 100% PvP'rs in game.

I loved it. We had some great fights with a great bunch of guys.

After a while I was made a director in SoTF and have never looked back. We've been through some interesting times. Looking back over the last two years in SoTF we've turned the tide in FW from Caldari dominance to Gallene dominance, spent some time in NPC 0.0 space, joined the NC bloc and did the 0.0 sov thang, back to FW, done low-sec war decs/NBSI with sec status cap and now currently low-sec pirates, NBSI, in fact shoot everything.

In real life, I'm Dave, 35 and a Brit expat living in the Middle East with my long suffering "Eve Widow" Debbie!

So that's the intro done. Now to catch up on posts.....