In The News Vol. #3

In The News
Vol. #3

• Taking that big leap.

PvP. I know a lot of people will not PvP without a group to back them up. But it's been my impression that most kills outside of blob warfare stem from small groups of 1-3 players who band together to pound on another similarly small group that literally just entered their area. If you are still apprehensive about your knowledge base or experience in PvP game mechanics not measuring up you need to do one of two things. Get out there and do it, or get on the test server and let a veteran show you. Fear keeps us at bay, but knowledge and experience set us free. I want to see more groups of 1-3 members out there living it up gangsta style in the coming weeks, with or without an official AU-F or AOV Fleet Commander at the helm.

• Longevity, tough job.

There is a hurdle in this game, that most people reach about three or four months in which peaks at around twelve months. If you have ever seen that amusing diagram on the learning curves in popular MMOs, you are likely to know what I am talking about when I say that the cliff face is indeed as high as it seems. I would like to call this hurdle the T2 Slump. About three or four months in you start to think to yourself, "Learning skills, check. Core skills, check. Can fly up to battlecruiser, check. Stable income, check. Now what?"

Well, for some, you start looking at one of two things as I've described at length on the forums. You either go T2 in BC or lower, or you go hog wild in battleship or larger, and whether that means T2 or not depends on your choice in ship. But that Cruiser V, that stupid skill is +20 days! What maniacal bastard designed this game anyways? Okay, well in all honesty, let's look at it this way, what T2 cruiser are you going to be using in anything other than PvP? Maybe an Ishtar or Zealot for ratting, okay, or a Logistics ship in PLEXs or L5s, okay. Is there much else? Not really. So while you wait for that agonizing skill to complete, nothing much changes for you, and nothing much changes in some sense when you get it. So relax, do not dwell on what will be, enjoy the fact that you're still going to be lining your wallet just like you always have, and while you wait on being able to fly those pricey T2 ships, it is business as usual.

What happens when you get into that ship? You get to have more fun, that's about it. It won't make or break you ability to adequately participate in small to medium sized gang warfare, nor will it make you unstoppable, but it will be one more shiny ship you can be proud to fly and learn to utilize. Looking down the line you realize that a lot of ships are like this; one more shiny tool that goes on my belt, along with all the rest I already have. So when you get to the place, where you are like "Why am I spending months training all this junk? I could go play FPS and just find fancy stuff laying around, pick it up, and start blasting folks with it," just think to yourself, that all this training, does not MAKE the game more entertaining for you by somehow making you more capable than you were before. Only your perspective, stance, experience, and effort do.

• Diplomacy paramount.

We recently had a diplomatic incident with a friendly corporation who had been hanging out in our public channel for a week or two. Nice, personable, congenial people can still sometimes take things well out of context, however, as it seems they have done. For some reason, it appears that their sister corporation, built for combat, had a member who fired on blues down the pipe from the PN4 corporation and the Einherjar Alliance. Said corporation was then reported as hostile for the remainder of the day in the security channel. Our alliance executor thus set them red as a KOS was pending at the time.

Let me clarify at this point. That's his job. And he's very good at it. Maybe, maybe once every month or two I will report a red I see in local only to be rebuked for them actually being neutral. So our members take this at face value. If you're red, you're dead. Members of our alliance, other blues, and the Providence residents at large thus began actively hunting, eliminating, and podding our new friends because they were now considered hostiles. Suddenly I am logging onto the game to watch my public channel filled with griping for six hours straight, asking us "Why why why?" over and over. Not my responsibility. Nor the alliance executor's, nor the people who fired on those pilots. Neither do I want to be forced to turn blink off on my own corporation's public channel because it is nothing but complaining and questioning for something that is not even our responsibility. PN4, Einherjar, and said parties should have immediately presented their case in the CVA-Diplo channel and sorted it out right then and there.

Diplomacy is a gentleman's game, and it requires one of two things, transparency or erudition. Our alliance executor is a man of transparent motives. He will tell you to your face what the problem is, regardless of whether you spill your coffee in shock or not. This is transparency, diplomatic relations are immediately out in the open, and the problem is rooted out. I myself use erudition, the artful measure of learned knowledge to the extreme. I will kill you with the facts, and let you come to your own conclusions after you have already been burned beyond recognition in light of the public sphere. Combined, these diplomatic measures ensure A) We always have a clear voice and B) We always cover our asses while laying it on you thick like butter.

I saw none of this in the public channel for hours which creates a sour taste in my mouth. If such a small relatively benign situation causes such upheaval, what of truly momentous events and disasters? If we are already at our peak for something so trivial as a common misunderstanding, how much more volatile can it get for when it really matters? Thankfully our members were gracious enough to explain that it was not our responsibility and if said corporation had diplomatic issues to raise them with the parties in question at the representative level, aka our executor, and the executor and/or CEO of the other corporation and alliance. Not our public channel where we relax and enjoy casual conversation and camaraderie. Do not barge into a poker game, waving a political flag crying foul on everyone in the room for something none of them were involved in while they are smoking cigars, drinking vodka, and dealing cards. You are likely to get shown the door very quick and in a less than gentle manner.

Where is the respect these days? I understand it is an online environment and people are free to mouth off all they want, but from a veteran CEO I would expect much more. I guess I am mistaken.

• Doing most by doing nothing.

Dominion. This expansion seems to be the greatest upheaval in game mechanics yet, so much so that I am not sure that the majority of the EVE gaming populace even has a solid opinion or has even had the chance to gasp yet at the idea that sovereignty will become much more solvent in a few short months.

However, while people begin to suffer egregiously from sovereignty fever the alliance executor and myself have deliberated on the subject and come to a firm conclusion. We are going to sit on the sidelines, not angle or negotiate for sovereignty of any kind, watch as the expansion drops, and we are going to protect CVA's interests first, and our own second. Why? Let's face it, every luxury, ISK, and good time we have had out in Providence has stemmed from CVA members who spent years cultivating, maintaining, and defending the space they worked so hard to conquer. My own gaming experience has been wonderful because they provided an open forum for me, the corporation, and people at large to grow on their own terms without the proverbial ball and chain to restrain us. So let us toast their blood and sweat with some of our own, and ensure that others who decide to try and take that which is not theirs, are stamped out, ever so quickly, when the Great Sovereignty Rush occurs. Trust me, it's in our best interests.

• A few good men.

While it may seem that we are vastly outnumbered when blobs of more than a dozen ships roam around Providence and we are floating around in half a squadron, I would like to point out that we are honing our combat skills to a fine degree, unlike those in large blobs who have the luxury of strength in numbers where whether one person or the next is as skilled as he can be matters little. Be proud of your combat experiences, as a skilled pilot is worth ten who are not.

• SiSi, your fine friend.

In line with the first topic in the news this week, I would like to encourage anyone who is unsure about the basic capabilities of their PvP ship and has not had as much experience testing that ship in real combat situations, to come onto the Singularity server, and test their mettle against any of my combat pilots. I can fly pretty much every ship type battleship or smaller except Logistics, so game on!

• Change is brewing.

Our format is working, we have 95% of our members living in low and null security on a daily basis now, and our combat fleets continue to excel in every encounter. However, we need to continue recruitment. We need combat pilots who are ready to help foster, acquire, and maintain sovereignty if and when we do find ourselves with it. We need 0.0 combat pilots, lots of them, just like the good people we have now who are rich in both skill and personality.

• AU-F Public goes stealth.

The Aurelius public channel has been set to Blocked operation which means it only admits those who have been manually entered into the Allowed list. A corporate mailer has been sent detailing the process to get your friends, our blues, or other miscellaneous people into the public channel.

• Jay (Mia) sells/looks for new char.

Jay is at it again! He has sold his Gallente character, Mia Dandoro, and is pursuing a set of characters with which to ensure he is able to maximize his limited time in the game. With a newborn only a few months old, even as he wraps up the harvest in the next week or two, he will have a baby in one hand, and a mouse in the other, on various occasions. Thus he is acquiring two Hulk pilots, and of course a combat pilot, and merging them onto one or two account. This way he can mine ore to fund his blood thirst, but will be able to simply walk away if his wife or son need his immediate attention. Look for him showing a new face in the next week or two. Let's hope his new character is named Inigo Montoya!

• Vacation nearing for Mendolus.

I am going AFK on October the 2nd and returning the 11th and I will likely not be taking a computer with me. However, the officers and managers know how to reach me in the event of a complete and catastrophic emergency such as Jacob nearly stepping on a bee and getting his junk stung when it flies up his pants in a fit of rage and burninates him.

• Providence space grows some.

Blobs. EVE Online: The Blobby Blob Age. Blobs. The slumbering beast has awoken in Providence, and fleets of dozens spring up everywhere in sight at the drop of a hat whenever there are reds inbound to an area. Providence residents are no longer content to play coy with our enemies and casually form up fleets to take them out as they have overstayed their welcome in the past few months. The fighters are scrambled the moment the blip hits the radar panel and I have seen some amazing response times in Providence in the past week or so. Blood for the blood god!

• War!

Well, we are at war. The reasons have been discussed at length both in private, public, and ventrilo, but suffice it to say, our war targets are carebears and scammers and we are not likely to get much of a fight out of them whatsoever. In fact, to my knowledge, not one of those muggles has logged on since the war went live. Shameful.