The Hardware

In the interest of sharing, I suppose I ought to post a few pictures of what my gaming room setup is like as well.  Bear in mind one of my dreams that I want to fulfill someday is to have a setup like the guy in the Matrix movies, with a big rack of monitors in front of me like some sick mad scientist's dream!  HUZZAH!  So you may see a little bit of that shaping up already... >.<

Enjoy!  I know I sure do :)

Blogging

I have always faced a rather dubious conundrum with updating this blog.  It mostly centers around the fact that I am always so busy ingame.  Certainly too busy to update a blog more than once every week or less, as has been the case for about six months now, much to my chagrin.  However, that should be no excuse in some sense, because this blog is my outlet and podium to express the opinions, interests, developments, events, and stories that define my entertainment experiences in this game on a nightly basis.

I wish I could say that the energy required to post nightly is there, however.  To be honest, most nights in the past two months straight since we started our Northern Campaign and then returned once more to Providence, only to be expelled forcibly weeks later, I have spent sitting around, planning, thinking, contemplating, brooding.  It does not sound like much, but in reality, it is a constant nightmarish landscape of mental landmines, quagmires, paradoxes, loopholes, juxtapositions, and any other morbidly fascinating but overused social cliches one can think of.  It would not be that far from the truth though.

So, for my faithful audience, who still checks in every few weeks, to see if this mentally exhausted CEO has bothered to post a trick or two, I wanted to thank you.  I may not speak volumes, but there are always volumes waiting to be spoken.  Everyone has seemed to grow accustomed to my lengthy wall texts in our private corporate forums, in channels while logged into the game, and in their game mailers, so I guess, maybe in some sense, it is good that I do not also bombard a blog with the random ramblings of an overworked administrator who is trying to dig his way through the mile high stacks of paperwork, to make sure his corporation and alliance have every possible chance available to them, to succeed, flourish, and be entertained in a game rich with potential for growth and experience.

Thanks, to you, my relatively silent audience, for keeping up the faith.  I think I will change my New Year's Resolution to updating this blog at least every other day, from now on.  Ready for the wall text symphony?  I shall name it, Symphony R3 Opus no. 10 in E Minor, hidden pun intended.

Liquid Woes

Liquid Woes
Interminable ISK

Last week went by quick for me, partly because of my frequent and annoying jaw and muscle pain, but also because I've been somewhat floundering on what to do ingame from one moment to the next lately.

I need ISK, and I need it fast, but it seems like every time I go to burn some ol' rats at a belt there are a dozen others with the same idea, or complete a string of L4s only to find some week old rube looting and salvaging my wrecks, which results in a half an hour long private conversation about being careful who he freely loots from because certain alliances are rather bloodthirsty at this time and will use any excuse to open up the flood gates and unleash fiery hell upon others. I am proud of that fact, by the way, as an alliance should have brass balls and nerves of steel. Something we do very well.

But the main idea is I need money, and I needed it last month, let alone this month. How much do I need, you ask?

Well, the skillsheets for getting into a Thanatos cost around a billion. The skillsheets for getting into a Rorqual cost about a billion. The cost of getting both ships is about a billion or more a piece. I am also getting a Golem the first week of January to alleviate the problems listed above ^. I'd like to see the hyenas salvage my wrecks faster than I can when they cannot tractor them and are forced to occupy my grid while NPCs spawn. The Golem will cost a billion, btw. So that is what, oh around five or six billion ISK, no worries, I'll just open up my wal...*gasp* Holy Flappin' Mothras Batman, we have no ISK! Okay, okay, so I'm not exactly broke, but I'm getting to where I cannot afford to replace some of the ships I fly, and we all know what they say about that.

So, big deal right, everyone needs ISK to fund their gaming habit in EVE. Yes, it must be nice to rat 75% of the time, and PvP 25% when there are official gangs and I covet the fact that our corporation is set up so that people can do that if they so desire. There is much to be said about leading a relatively carefree gaming lifestyle and I work myself too hard to make sure others have that luxury. So I could do that too, or could I? Well it would be nice, for sure, but for me it will always be more 25% ratting/missions and 75% administrative. But I think mainly I need to just batten the hatches, cinch up my belt, and use these new casual days the way they were intended. So from now on, on casual days, I do literally nothing but personal stuff, like earn ISK. Sorry random PvP gangs. Sorry last minute manufacturing or administrative needs. Daddy needs a shiny new Golem, Thanatos, and Rorqual and there is only one way to do it beyond selling my left nut, aptly named Wrinkles, to science.

;)

So if it's a casual day and you find some reds who need pounding, please do not take it the wrong way when I say no thanks, I have priorities that I must meet.

Six billion in the next three months is quite a bill and I do not intend to skimp on the tip.

The Monk

The Monk
Stoic Philosophy


Well, rather than talk about the corporation, let's talk about me for a bit. Now I am certain that your interest is peaked, after all I am fascinating am I not? Hehe. Okay maybe not, but still, what am I all about?

As early as fifteen years old, I was thrown into situations where I had to lead, or be led. I was given the opportunity to work regularly as a technical stagehand at the theater in my high school which sat +1400 people and brought in such critically acclaimed acts as Marcel Marceau and others. Now, although there were seniors on hand to train me the first year, along with my boss of course, I quickly determined that my actual peers, were up for shenanigans more than experiences, so I took charge once the old guard had graduated. By the time I was a senior, I was the main student help, the stage manager for the fall musical, and pretty much the goto guy for all things student-worker related. The reason for this? Well, as I said, most of my peers just wanted to mess around rather than do honest work, so the only way it was going to get done properly is if I took charge.

During this time, having grown up on the original Nintendo console from the age of 8 and beyond, I got into my first MMO, the original Diablo. Almost at once I found myself gathering up people I met along the way, and protecting them from PKs, God Moders, Teleport hackers, and all other levels of household vermin. I found it was easier to define this group with a name and a website, something they could all feel a part of, so I formed my first social group online. I believe we were called the Shadow Knights. Once again, I was a leader. And you know, I think this is the point at which a trend started forming for me. Protecting people, so satisfying, no matter the cost to my personal life or well being, it was just the bee's knees to watch the fruit of my labors (the social group) frolic carelessly before me, having been freed from the burden of responsibility they would have otherwise had to bear alone and in silence.

The days of Diablo and the online gaming environment it supported came and went after only a short while, maybe half a year or a little more, as during those days, hacking an MMO's gaming environment was as easy as logging onto the game, and turning on your trainer, downloaded straight from some public website. Duped items abounded, even in my own inventory. Those days, no one policed the hackers, and they ran rampant, so you were forced to hack the hackers. Thus the terms PK, PKK, AntiGod, Teleport Hacker, Punting, Flooding, Session Freezing, and the like were all born to a more mainstream audience in a discernibly frustrating way. The social group eventually went its own ways, as of course, being in high school and somewhat transient, I maintained only a loose and infrequent amalgam of hosted games and meetings with my new friends, who just simply stopped logging on one by one over the course of my time with the game.

Then came college, and through living with one of my best friends in a tiny dormitory without air conditioning, and being nervous as all get out about the vast unknown of adult life, we found ourselves playing as a total escape and arguably one of my first multiplayer FPS experiences ever, Rogue Spear. Oh the joy of those days when one would host a game online that you were in complete control of until the round started, sitting in some dark nook in the back of some special spot that you loved popping people off from, setting your fully automatic UMP20 with silencer on single shot, and picking off that hostile who leaned out a window for literally a split second. "Clak clak," goes the trigger on your small unimposing firearm, the only sound emanating from its silencer fit muzzle as it fires off a round. Head shot! Holy crap! And once again forming a player group, The §hadow Clan, my roomate and I valiantly played four to six hours of Rogue Spear a night for nearly half a year, until the hackers took over with their Vertigo and their Heartbeat Hacks, and Auto-Aims to which we had to bid an unfortunate and fond farewell to a game that was so extraordinarily ahead of its time and is so fondly remembered even today by what I am sure are many of its prior players.

Now, at this time, I had enough real life gaming friends, that most of my subsequent activities centered around doing fun stuff with them (as Varian had set out to do a few weeks ago when he and his real life friends left the AU-F to start their own shop). I played untold amounts of Unreal Tournament, Rune, Starcraft, Halo, and other competitive multiplayer online games until I was blue in the face, but I never started another player group. I had not really soured on the idea more than I got caught up with just having fun with real life friends and not being tied to anything in particular. This was college after all, that was kind of the point.

However, around the time I finished up college, got married, and moved into my first real apartment with a new fulltime job, I picked up a little known *snicker* game called Warcraft in the fall of '05 after hearing my new coworkers lauding its amazing gameplay and unimaginably fun content and social landscape for months on end while I was stuck with dial-up until we moved out of my in-law's house and into an apartment, the horror! Thus began a journey through hell in a hand basket, filled with laughter and tears, that is all too voluminous and inexplicably complicated to go into with just the amount of material I am discussing as it is in this post. What had previously been a pastime for me, to lead player groups, to protect them from hackers and other unscrupulous players, to help ensure they were entertained, had a good time, and were less concerned with the why of things and more with the fun itself, now become a part time job. Where I had led groups of a dozen or so to maybe fifty people at any given point, I now found myself within less than a year's time, in charge of almost three hundred people, a hundred active and anxious raiders, countless casuals, hangers on, friends, associates, and yes, some unsavory elements as well. I named the guild Ara Noctis (Are Uh Knock Tiss), which means The Altar Of Night. This. Was. Sparta. And I, and the officers I surrounded myself with, were the line between complete dissolution and unparalleled entertainment and enjoyment of content that at the time was still so revolutionary that everything else absolutely paled in comparison. The release of the AQ gates alone was something to which still mystifies me today, how so many people literally took a day off from their real lives, to participate in the grand opening on their particular server. Madness. Pillars littering the landscape in nearly every zone, spewing mobs with countless riches and treasures, for weeks on end, leading up to the grand opening of the gates, where towering mobs almost too direct to be an allusion to the god Anubis in Egyptian mythology spilled forth and began obliterating the unfortunate few who managed to aggro them in all the chaos and lag on the server, was just the most amazing thing I had seen in gaming up to that date. I found myself leading raids of forty people, almost a different mix every time, three nights a week, for months on end that seemed to stretch out into eternity. This was epic. But like every game that ever came before it, for me, the developers eventually ruined the atmosphere and ambiance of the gameplay experience by either ignoring or not resolving its shortcomings or inundating it with hooks, lines, sinkers, and fillers, to the point that the people themselves, so unable to really pursue alternatives (there were really none at the time) were being led hand and foot from one month's subscription fee to the next. A story for another time, but I burned out, and retired, passing the torch to a trusted friend and co-leader, and hanging up my sword for a year.

So, that leads me up until the early Spring of '08, having come back for a short while to Warcraft to visit with old friends, and unfortunately doing more harm than good when I saw that the game had warped everything I had held near and dear to me and had protected for more than a year with my blood and sweat, I found myself finally disillusioned with the whole MMO process and set adrift and alone in the gaming industry with no place to call home. What is this MMO phenomenon, that eats away at life's precious moments, and leaves you with this untold longing for more and more, even as you morbidly realize that you cannot take any of the pixels with you? Well, it's the people I met, and helped along the way. I do not lead groups because it makes me feel powerful. In fact, I hate power, and the only reason I gravitate towards it, is to secret it away so others cannot abuse or be abused by it, corrupted either willingly or unwillingly. Thus, much as in previous games, I formed the Aurelius Federation to provide one of our longest running members, Jacob (Kuroda Tsu) with a safe place where he could simply enjoy the game and be himself, without anyone breathing down his neck or trying to take advantage of him (like his CEO then was doing). Having found myself, absolutely and entirely without intention, in fact I purposefully came to EVE and fell for its spacey goodness, with the particular hope that it would be a wide and expansive enough gaming environment that I would not get stuck or tied down to any social strata, in charge of yet another player group, I ran with it, and have not looked back since.

And so here we are, having this long discussion, about stuff that matters greatly to me, but with uncertainty to others, about what makes MMOs so captivating for people like us.

There are two things I live by in real life and in an online environment and they are:

[True power is in not having to use said power in order for its effects to be felt]

[...and they will respect a line in the sand more than forgiveness]

I champion your enjoyment and the entertainment value you get out of this and other games, because that is what matters to me. And after having lead groups for a decade now whether in real life or virtual reality, I have come to understand that the only thing we really ever remember or hold onto are the people we meet, and not a single pixel will ever shape our experiences the way the people around us will.

I am unmovable in this respect, like a monk, or Stoic philosopher, and will do whatever it takes to provide every suitable member of this corporation with a playing environment where they can truly enjoy themselves and more importantly feel free to be themselves. Simply a group of friends and nothing more.

So to you, I salute, because in ten years I will remember you, and not the Nighthawk of which I am so fond of.

Fly safe,
Your Friend

P.S. Edited with a WarcraftRealms link to the members who passed through the guild in the year and a half that I led it. Click on the Ex-Members link for a full list.

Anaz = Rasnow
Andolar = Mendolus
Strathelar = Naeisha
Candwe = Rasnow's Wife

That Mendolus Guy

That Mendolus Guy
And That Damned News Blotter
He Never Explains To Us!

Ok, so am I like the worst chief editor or what? I always post these updates in the This Week section of the blog and even my officers are uncertain from time to time what the French Toast I am talking about. And, I can only imagine your surprise, when I gain your undivided and entertained attention on my blog at long last, only to frustrate you with vague announcements and little explanation.

So, from now on, when I update the weekly blotter, I will also followup with a short synopsis of what the holy fubar I am getting on about, and why it should matter to you. Also from now on, the blotter will be known as In The News rather than This Week as it has been mostly comprised of past, present, and future events from the start anyways.

So, beginning with this weeks most dubiously cryptic announcements, the following summary is due:

• DUST 512 - What's up with this, an FPS tethered to my EVE? Say it ain't so CCP, say it ain't so. Who pays the price if the FPS flops? Yeah that's right, we do.
• August was a quiet month for the AU-F. A few upsets, a few welcome homecomings, and a pint of beer later, and it ends with rather little fanfare or momentous occasions.
• I haul for the corporation, as do many others, but the smattering of reds in and around all of low security space every night of the week lately has made it inconvenient for any reasonable haulers to do business outside of blockade runners.
• Kane Deckard, a real life friend of EldraNiColarus, joins the Aurelius Federation.
• Gertimus has been appointed a seat in the Aurelius Senate, an oligarchy of our most active and dedicated members who help us make decisions at the corporate level on general or all-encompassing goals, directives, and day to day operations.
• Sometime this week, we are going to undock, and there will be wrecks in 0.0 space, and they will not be ours nor will they be NPCs.
• Varian Knight (Chris) and his real life friends are homesick after experimenting with maintaining their own house, and finding that while fun and rewarding, they would much rather share those rewards with us than amongst themselves as it was a lot of hard work. Hey, let's face it, corporations are hard work, the more friends you have to help you throw the weight around, the more fun everyone can have as a whole. The Senate voted unanimously to reinstate all previous corporate members, a testament to their status as our friends and associates, wherever they fly in space and under whatever banner.
• Devin, officer, friend, and Skunkworks Commander, has started college courses again, with some night classes, and a lot of hard work ahead of him. As such, he may not be as active as we are used to, so please offer your time and assistance to him when able, should he ask you to participate in any activities he is sponsoring or involved in. It may be the one time every week that he has more than a few hours free, so it will mean a lot to him.
• Jay (Mia), the Capsuleer Formerly Known As Staigor, has a planned suicide gang this week to operate within inches of the CONCORD laws, hopefully to wreak bloody burning vengeance on our enemies, somewhere special, in Empire space. Check the corporate mailer for details.
• Public recruitment for PvP pilots is closed. For the time being, recruitment of PvP pilots is only available through invitation or sponsorship from an existing member of the Federation. Public recruitment for Industrial players remains open.
• The Senate voted unanimously a week or so ago to raise the SP limit for incoming recruits to 3,000,000 Skillpoints. Those excluded from this rule are so by invite or sponsorship only. This means, public recruitment of any kind, where an advert is placed, and responded to, can only let in people with 3,000,000 or more Skillpoints unless they are specifically scouted or sponsored by an existing Federation member.

So, that's last week and this week's comings and goings. Thanks for reading!

The Old Ways

The Old Ways
Merely Waiting, Not Dead


So, as most of the people who read this blog know, I have been working myself very hard for the past six months to get this corporation working like a well-oiled machine. And while I have been mostly successful, due in large part to the member's efforts themselves, we are still not at the point that I could log off, come back seven days later, and not be afraid that things were at a standstill without me. Not because people are incapable of progressing on their own but more because we are moving in too many directions at once, and without me laying down which thing we need to work on most week by week, no one knows what to do.

I have tried to make this corporation about big dreams and amazing fun for a long while, but I think in the process we have moved more into the realm of hard labor than fun and good times. As Jacob recently said to me, he wishes things were simpler, and could return to the way it was last fall before we were inexorably thrust into the grand scheme of the game mechanic by the sheer necessity of survival.

By virtue, I am a planner, mastermind, someone who loves an arduous challenge with impossible odds, so when given the opportunity I would rather pit myself with a few good friends against the rest of the world than be a nameless face in a sea of people united in a single cause.

This is how I view our corporation. A group of friends, united by their ideals about what online entertainment is supposed to mean to them, striking out on their own against insurmountable odds, taking the entire game and populous at large by the horns and wrestling with it in a game of total conquest. And while it is never going to be as important whether we reach the finish line or not, the mere fact that we are taking a journey together is all that matters to me. As they say, the journey is more important than the destination. And my friends, you and I, are in this together.

This is also why I cannot fault Varian for wanting to take his real life friends, some of whom he has known for more than a decade, and strike out into the vast unknown to tackle his own demons and wrestle them to the ground. After all, this is what we are already doing, you and I, we just lack the reality of being able to drive down the street, and toast a frosty one together. My only concern is that this is the same person who only six weeks ago had so much work, life, and game related stress that he was barely able to function on a day to day basis, was vomiting from stress to the point of exhaustion on a daily basis, and was under the impression that he would have to quit work, the game, and any and all excitable activities in order to get his stress under control. So be careful out there, my friend, while you were here I protected you from that as best as a caring and concerned friend was able to do so. As a new leader, no one is there to protect you anymore. And I cannot begin to describe to you the personal sacrifices leading a social group requires. While the officers in the corporation, the members, and the like do their best to protect me as well from this, to which I am eternally grateful, I am inevitably lead to sacrificing my entertainment and enjoyment of the game so that everyone else can have a good and worry-free time without having to trouble themselves with the millions of tiny little details, tasks, and daily chores that are required to administrate. Hell, I missed a T3 kill because I was fueling POS while everyone else was roaming around shooting at shit. Do not get me wrong though, nothing satisfies me more than knowing that others do not have to stress or worry about these kinds of things and they can just log on and undock for fun and good times. I hope you are prepared for this, my friend, logging on five out of seven nights a week, and toiling behind the scenes for half a dozen hours or so those same nights, every week, week after week, month after month. If not, we left the door open for you and friends, and your seat is still warm. I am sitting in it now, in fact.

We want to change this obviously, as even as stoic as I am, I have my own personal limits, and as we currently lack the manpower to change it through spreading the work itself around, the officers and I are going to get together Wednesday and discuss how to divvy up responsibility for various divisions such that they are not entirely intertwined and co-dependent on one another. Namely, for one, with certainty, I will be taking over the PvP operations entirely, and scaling them up not down, UP. Whatever we were doing before, we will be doing the same, but I will be taking us on roams outside of Providence, and frequently. Whatever I was doing before, such as fueling POS that I am not even really responsible for, will cease, and either certain member(s) will take up the responsibility if they so desire, or we will liquidate those services. Combat squadrons in EVE on average are half a dozen players, give or take a few, and we can easily field this every night of the week, and I plan to do so, two or three times a week.

The rest, is yet to be announced, and will depend on what we feel is necessary to maintain and what is not. What is clear however, is that we need more focus, and I need to give everyone who reads this blog a more goal oriented view of what we need from them, so they have an idea in sight, a finish line as it were, to work towards.

Do not get me wrong though, I live for this kind of entertainment, in fact, the harder it gets on me personally the more I feel that something is going well, because it means I have something worth the effort; you guys. If it did not feel as hard as it does sometimes, it would mean I did not care. Which is not the case. So thank you for that guys, this group has become near and dear to me since I started playing a year ago. I had a very close group in Warcraft as well but it was not quite like this, not quite as potent and meaningful, as really, how valuable can a purple be, compared to sovereignty, or the ships we fly, or the friends we are proud to fleet with that were earned with every sweat, blood, and toil we took upon ourselves to get there.

So, Wednesday, our main discussion will be centered around, making PvP our priority, and whether or not a select number of our members want to head up the Industry side and be wholly responsible for it.

I see simpler times ahead, as we scale back our grand designs to take on projects that are more readily within our grasp, and begin to enjoy the little things, like fleeting for some random care and/or scare bearing, or just to hang out, drink a pint, and share stories.

We who are about to die, salute you! Let fly the banner of war! Gremlin Squad is back in town. Yes, the boys are back in town.

The Soldier

The Soldier
At Heart And In Mind


What makes a person a soldier? What type of baseline personality leads to traits, qualities, actions, behaviors, and values that lead to a person who has the wherewithal to jump into the fray, guns blazing, cigar smoldering, and lips curled?

After Zee's recent exit from stage left, searching for something larger and greener than what we can provide in his eyes, am I curious to explore the notion of the soldier. What is this notion that human conflict, domination, and competition are somehow bred into people or born from the start? I am a philosopher, hell I am even majored in it, though the slip of paper means relatively little to me. The things I ponder when these questions come to mind lead me from one vast extreme to the other of the collective notion of human hubris and valor both.

What is a true soldier? I am a true soldier. Plying my secret trade in small, miniscule, and calculated steps one foot in front of the next, I am the epitome of one who by nature embodies the hunt. Though I may not seem it, the ultimate bloodsport to me is the hunt itself. The kill is a hollow easy thing. It is the anticipation, the hunt, the great divide between predator and prey. I am always calculating, everything I do ingame is a calculation, I even make mistakes on purpose, for my own reasons. Sure, no one is perfect, I mess up plenty, hell I never intended to get podded like I was, though I knew I was taking an action that had a higher degree of risk that I would be. I woefully assumed that my targets might have their overviews improperly setup. Wow, was I wrong. But I learned more. But some of my mistakes are an experiment of their own put into play for a reason. This is about learning, taking calculated risks, to better understand your opponent. Pushing the envelope.

What I am hunting though? Am I on LSD or something or is this some sort of sick joke? No.

I used to love the hunt in Warcraft. PvP in Warcraft was a dying art. You had to really search for it. The best PvP? Solo.

I would go to Stranglethorn Vale, stealth up, and just hunt. No, killing lowbies is easy, you are right. What is not easy, is hunting them, nurturing that animal in your breast that has thousands of years of hunter instinct built into its every fiber. Learning to channel that instinct is the key to nurturing an effective competitive spirit in nearly any virtual or real competition or actual conflict. Tapping into the understanding required to manage the fear, anticipation, apphrensive, situational decision making, critical thinking, and the like in sometimes ridiculously complex and dynamic situations where there are mere seconds to make the right choice. What do you think they do to train the Navy Seals? They train the instinct out of them, amplifying the fight response, and numbing the flight response. They train Navy Seals to manage or negate fear. And that is the key. Clear and critical thinking.

So, right now you are thinking, okay so you went to a lowbie zone as a level 60 and hunted easy prey, this is the biggest slop of shit I have ever heard, how does that make you a hunter?

Did I not follow my prey for ten or fifteen minutes, observing their patterns of movement in a zone known for constant hostilities? Did I not kill them once in a situation where I could quickly dash behind objects to belay my actual presence and encourage them to lack a full understanding of what was going on? Did I not follow them again after they returned to their body, not killing them, but simply observing their next move, how far would they run, would they stay, would they hearth, would they call in help, would they stand and wait for my inevitable return? Again, and again, and again I tested them, learning how they reacted, putting a pattern to their behavior. And I did not do this just in lowbie zones, I did this everywhere. This is not the mind of a gamer, this is the mind of a hunter, slowly categorizing, profiling, and analyzing his intended prey to perfect the hunt. I used to wait in crypts, stealthed up, for a half an hour, just for the one lowbie who wandered down there solo, busting his way through 10-20 mobs that were 2-3 levels higher than him, finally getting to the bottom level, and then I would gank him, repeatedly, again and again until all the mobs respawned, then I would simply stealth up, leaving him abandoned, alone, deep inside a crypt with mobs that were too tough for him to begin with, just to see if he hearthed, or was emboldened by the conflict to fight his way back out. And you know, I would let him, all the way to the top, and I would not pursue him further. Yes, yes I was an ass, but I was learning, perfecting my understanding of what the average player would and would not do in the game, from the bottom to the top, from the lowest to highest level. I would even form packs with a few trusted friends and go into the starting zones where the lowbies were not flagged to us, just to see what we could accomplish. Just how many 60s would show up, how many lowbies would flag themselves, how many would run back to their town, how many guards would we be able to take on and for how long. How did they behave, what did they do, how could we most effectively dispatch them. We were hunters. The point was not to drive them out, or overpower them, that was easy and to be honest I consider it a base and lowly initiative to simply gank lowbies or defenseless players for the sake of it alone, without some driving force behind it. The point was to hunt, and perfect the hunt. To learn about our prey.

One time in particular comes back to me when I think about it.

"I'll never forget the one time that I convinced my friend Candwe to come out to STV to see this solo hunting I kept telling her about. I made her follow me while I stalked this lowbie for 15-20 minutes, just watching him quest and shit, no interaction whatsoever, but I went and I ganked 2-3 people right in his area, then I stealthed up again, and waited for the inevitable, someone reported in alliance local that a 60 was ganking, so this guy gets scared, and he runs back to the town right."

"I follow him there, and I sit there, and then I start /wave /greet /grin at him and stuff"

"he can't figure it out, he's like ???"

"finally after about five minutes of walking around the town trying to see who was waving at him, he musta realized he should do a /who, then he figured out it was me (because the opposing faction does not register with a /who), the 60 that was reported, so he runs into the inn really quick "

"I stealth into the inn, top level, and I gank his ass and dash out of the town and run off into the night"

"Candwe was o.O o.O o.O o.O o.O"

"I think I honestly scared her, she refused to go hunting with me anymore, lmao, I mean she thought it was hiliarious how the guy couldn't figure out who the hell was waving at him, but I think she was like 'oh wow this is too evil for me' HAHAHA"

So, yea, big deal right, again, I have a point I hope, you're thinking right?

Well, my point is, I'm tired of losing members every month or two because they think we do not have enough opportunity for competitive gameplay for them, or that the grass is greener somewhere else. I can assure you, you will find few people capable of the levels of depravity I am ingame concerning human conflict and PvP. You should have seen some of the sick things I did to people in Warcraft in the name of the hunt. There are a few people like this already in the alliance as it is, I am not unique in this respect. Uriella for one comes to mind, or Psyclone, Maximus, Logic, Varian, or Staigor. We are all depraved f*%ks who love to strike out on our own
randomly into the depths of space and just pound on a f&%ker because we can, and learn how to do it better the next time.

So, people want PvP, and I am going to give it to them, but this may be one of those be careful what you wish for situations, because up until now we have been fairly straight forward in our approach to PvP. We bring out a gang, we go out, we try to find a solitary or small group of hostiles that we either out match or are on the same level as and we give it our best, otherwise we make best speed in the opposite direction.

No more.

At least, not in my fleet, the Gremlin Squadron. Our fleets serve a very specific purpose that is critical to our residency in Providence space. We are the guard patrol that goes out at night, checking the fences and the tree lines, ensuring there are no lurkers in the bushes, and chasing out or destroying anyone who does make it across the fence. But this is not the entirety of the PvP experience, and far from it. And I am all for turning us more into a soldier's outfit than sentry duty at the fences or border cops.

You know all those reds that float around in Providence in small stealthy or swift boats that can easily escape a situation that goes south, slowly moving from one system to the next, waiting for just the right moment to strike, those are hunters. We are prey. Blobs in Providence are an anomaly of a broken mechanic. EVE was never intended to be nothing but a Primary Fest but it is. You join a large fleet, all you get is a numbers game. Who gets off the first few rounds of shots and knocks out half a dozen crucial ships before the other blob can. It's simple.

But the hunt, the hunt is not. And I am going to train hunters, not prey, nor cannon fodder. Big fleets are fun, but after awhile it dawns on you that big fleets are for big politics, and unless you have something at stake personally or within your organization beyond the principle of the matter like us, there is really no reason to participate.

Competition is a fickle unforgiving beast. One minute you are about to hammer the nail in the coffin and the next minute the coffin is laying on the ground with the lid busted off and you are dead in a pool of your own blood. This is the reason we hunt. To learn about our prey, perfect our mastery of an art that has been bred into our bones for millenia. This may all sound too abstract, too over the top, too tongue-in-cheek to you, but after I'm through training the Gremlin Squadron, you will be grateful for the experience it brings.

What does this all mean?

I have decided to help us both financially and structurally at least in respects to PvP as it continues to be a flash point for our corporation. The next member we lose will be because we have TOO much PvP, and not the other way around.

I will be privately funding the fuel, operation, and progress of the manufacturing POS myself from now on. I will be using the Ark to ferry goods to and from low security space. I will be ratting. And I will be PvPing. That's it.

You are talking to the guy who when he made the decision to get into PvP the first thing he did was go straight to Syndicate 0.0, the shithole of the universe, and run around for a week, busting gatecamps, and following people around, observing how they operated and lived, learning about my future prey. I don't mess around.

Anyone who joins me, will be trained to be a hunter, and nothing else. You want to be a hunter, you come to me.

Where will the Gremlin Squadron go to train in the hunt? Where won't we go?

I am tired of hearing about PvP, so we are going to go find some. Better grab your sack and clench your teeth, because it will be a sleigh ride in hell. Just ask Jacob, I took him out there last summer, to Syndicate, he got podded. Heh.

Chris (Varian) once told me that he had never quite seen someone fly a ship like that in EVE when it came to our corporate tourney that we had in February; the one I won by the way with a Kestrel of all ships all the way to the last round when I had to sacrifice it to pop Varian, and then was forced to hop into my Caracal. He was being sincere, and though it is rather obscene of me to pander my own compliments or the fact that I won the tourney, if you have something to share, you should share it. And I have something to share with anyone who flies under my banner in PvP. I have been so long in the administrative role since I formed this corporation that sometimes I forget that I am a sonofabitch when it comes to PvP and I know a thing or two. Heh. Time for me to share. Hope you have a strong stomach.

Btw, we are going to start the tourney system up again, it'll happen every other weekend. The first tournament will be Saturday the 1st at 02:00 EVE on the test server.

See you there, prey.

:)

We Will Rise

The Culling

The Culling
A Time For Blood


I have given some serious thought in the past week to Providence space. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot fathom living in any other space. Why? I mean, these boundaries were founded on unsavory roleplaying terms of a storyline involving religious zealots who plied in human trade. How could I want so badly to live here? Let's be honest, EVE is a rich storyline, full of vast ever farther reaching and encompassing plots that are meant to entertain not preach morality. Much like any good novel, there is always a mixture of grays, and few true black and whites. By making our own way through this region, we are simply playing and entertaining ourselves, in a way we sit fit as well. Let Ushra'Khan and CVA roleplay as they desire, if they even still do so by majority (more by proxy now I am assuming from the evidence I have seen), we are here for our own reasons, and none of them involve roleplaying or storyline tales.

So, that being said, what does keep drawing me to Providence space? It is the NRDS, or at least, the semblance of it, given recent events that have given most of our veterans a rather sour taste in their mouths.

Nowhere in EVE can you exist in null security with relative freedom to grow and develop as you please, within a few mostly benign parameters, that the NRDS dictates, or as CVA doctrine says, concerning POS in 0.0 space and such.

Giving much credit to the irony of it all, CVA has provided a wonderful means by which alliances, corporations, and players such as ourselves can have the freedom to experience 0.0 space ourselves and make what we will of it. They want Providence to act as an extension of Empire space, only we the players, we are the CONCORD of Providence. We have a freedom here that is unique in a sense that we are not beholden to any particular power bloc. While UK may do their damnedest to convince Providence residents that they are merely pets to CVA, the reality of the situation is that so long as we do not have any sovereignty in this region, we are a free agent, answering to no one, except the NRDS itself. Isn't it grand? I think so. Ajax gets to do his research, HuffDaddy gets to do L4s in Mamet, Sarah Tuttle gets to mine sweet ice in 0.0, Rayth gets to utilize our PvP trained members to pursue a Wormhole project, Cmdr GAT gets to dabble in reactions, members get access to ME/PE research at no cost, members like William Amato get access to manufacture their own goods, we get to explore ratting, 0.0 combat, PLEXs, the wide expanse of player policed space, the deep roams into hostile regions where we are constantly on the verge of annihilation and pitched battle against overwhelming odds, where our members can both do missions in low security, bring out their new ships and test their mettle in PvP combat, and in general get to live as they please, experiencing every aspect of the game that they choose (besides piracy obviously). Isn't that great?

But what if anything is required of us in return for this grand scheme? That we protect it. And we shall.

So what is the point? Well the point is Providence is going to the dogs, the dogs of war, in particular guerilla warfare. There are reds, everywhere. Every night. And it does not seem to be getting any better. What are the reasons for this? I cannot say here, too many intelligence and security issues that I keep to myself to protect Providence. What can we do about it? A lot. And when I say a lot, I really mean it. What would we have to sacrifice in order to do this? We would have to begin relying more on each member's individual will to expand their gaming experience on their own two feet than what we have now which is a system based almost solely on collective efforts towards multiple goals. We would have to have one goal, that goal would be to clean up Providence. Will it come to this? Only time will tell. I can tell you that if Providence remains as blast oven hot as it has been for the past week or two, by the time I get my Ark, that we will likely have to make some tough decisions about what we want to do. I can guarantee you that the newly reawakened Gremlin squadron will get kills though, and frequently, but it will require some sacrifices. How will it get these kills, and how can I guarantee something when I so infrequently lead PvP gangs of my own? Trust me. I'm an old salt when it comes to leading operations. Been doing this since '97. I just do not make a big deal out of it because I like to see others excel and make their own way to the top without me hovering over them wagging my finger like a doting father.

There will be a culling, and it will either be us or them (the reds), and I am certain you can guess which one I am going to choose.

Is it not strange how for the first half of the year our PvP operations suffered greatly because we so rarely were able to find hostiles to engage on a nightly basis and now we cannot go two or three systems in any direction without finding hostiles bearing down upon us? My how times change. In a morbid sort of way, I hope this trend continues, Providence is much more entertaining when there is adversity and challenge than when we roam in fleets of half a dozen or more for hours only to find ice crystals of condensation and fading ion trails from hostiles who have long since moved onto other regions.

The first half of this year was so quiet you could hear a pin drop in most systems between 8-12 EST every night of the week. Things are so vastly different now. While the notion of driving these hostiles back to the rock they crawled out from amuses me, it will require a lot of focus and attention from alliances just like ours to do it.

Ratting - The Good Life

So I spent a few hours ratting tonight, and to be honest, it was the best. I have been so overwhelmed with administrative stuff lately even after the Logistics wing took a ton of the pressure off, that it has been nearly four or five weeks since I did some serious ratting. It could not have come any sooner.

There is nothing like hopping in a battleship, undocking, zipping from belt to belt, and melting rats for juicy bounties. What did I make, probably twenty million almost in an hour or two just from bounties? Another can or two filled with loot and salvage, a True Sansha Battleship rat that had a whopping bounty but lousy loot, and a few laughs and good times with my ratting buddies, and I feel like I am on top of the world!

This is the life man, we have a whole region of 0.0 space as our personal playground, and no one is out there telling us when to jump and how high, unless we break the few rules there are, namely the NRDS. Who could ask for more? We get to play as we see fit, set our own goals, and leisurely rat in the deep recesses of null security where there are no can flippers, ninja salvagers, empire griefers, scammers, and other various forms of vermin to pester us incessantly. Just a few stray reds now and then and nothing but adventure and the vastness of space between one belt and the next. This is the life.

Am I Evil?

Plotting the slow, subtle, and yet egregious demise of our new friend and former corpsmate I find myself wondering, have I developed a pathological lust for destruction, harm, and foul play in MMOs over the course of the past decade since I began playing them?

The short answer: Yes.
The long answer: Well, here goes.


So, what is it about the internet that makes it the great equalizer while at the same time creating a vacuous hole with which every vermin in society can roam almost entirely free with wild abandon, able to reap undue harm unto others in ways that would get them locked away in real life?

In most MMOs with intangible and permanent artifacts, one finds oneself immersed in a static and perpetually stale world where intransitive material goods are just waiting to be seized at some opportune time through social interaction, timing, chance, perseverance, and a little greed. This is true of most realms in the virtual world where there are no real consequences for lewd, outlandish, or otherwise civally disobedient behavior that would typically result in stiff citations or small claims in real life. The closest we come is for blatantly seditious or malevolent behavior that is universally criminal in nature and immediately acted upon by whatever authorities have jurisdiction at the time.

However, in an MMO like EVE or others which have transitive materials that can easily exchange hands or simply cease to exist through various actions taken upon or received from them, the rules change in a subtle but fundamentally extreme way.

Knowing this, where does this put a person like me, who has spent years as a social group leader off and on for a decade now, largely helpless to enact tangible reprimands or punishments for the kinds of rampant misbehavior, greed, and userism that so opaquely colors everything around us?

It puts me in the unique position of planning, manipulating, coaxing, and enacting every tiny little evil thing I have ever dreamed about doing to people for a decade, when I have thus far been mostly helpless to do so.

What does this all mean? Well besides alerting you that I may have a college degree in Philosophy, which I do, or that I am an avid philosopher period, which I am, it lets you know that there are no limits to the depths of subtle, manipulative, heinous, and maniacal things to which I will do to those who cross our social group and attempt to do harm, within the limits of the game mechanic and EULA of course.

So if you were wondering, do I have an evil side, the answer is, you do not want to know.

One Ship To Rule Them All

In a game defined largely by material assets such as ships, at least on the surface, there are often ships that stand out amongst others. For me, it was the Nighthawk. While on the one hand a lot of us are here in the AU-F because we enjoy meeting new and interesting people who we can enjoy the online entertainment industry with, we all maintain a secret guilty pleasure; our precioussssss ships. Everyone loves some good booty... er, I should say loot, and there are quite a few ways we all indulge ourselves whether it be Varian's drooling obsession with T3, Kuroda's abhorrent desire to fit everything with faction modules, or my own sick passion for collecting frozen corpses.


Summer of '08

Having never really experienced real PvP I found myself in an L4 last summer, with a few friends, scowling at a Heron that had warped into our mission, flipped our loot, and was blinking menacingly. Our friend Troy, who was hotheaded enough already, decided that he could not stand for this, and began firing on the frigate. Caught up in the heat of the moment I too assigned my drones to attack in attempt to eradicate this pest from the mission pocket.

Of course, the more experienced of you will realize, this was our first mistake. No sooner had we begun firing on the Heron, than it warped out, and a gang of T2 ships warped into the pocket on top of us, all blinking, locking us down with all the rage and fury of a Viking invasion. Here I was, fresh into a Hyperion that I had spent my last dime on a week earlier, being target locked by you guessed it, a Nighthawk. Oh the humanity! Missile after missile pounded my armor from what seemed like a million kilometers away, which was in reality maybe 50km. My armor, melting before my eyes, my ship worth more than the family jewels, pelted by death from afar, sent me trembling towards my warp button, as I headed for the nearest station. As I begin to align for warp I fired a few rounds off at him with my rail guns. The rounds hit, but there was not a scratch, he was totally unfazed. I was outclassed in every way. It was time to get out of Dodge. Much to my dismay, shortly after escaping certain doom, one of our pilots in a Harbinger was scrambled and made into little tiny pieces of space debris.

Even though everyone else managed to make it to safety somehow, the lesson had been taught. Nothing is ever as it seems in the dangerous world of EVE Online, and the dark seedy underbelly you find in most major cities in real life, is just a warp away in this MMO.

Having made a lasting impression on me, this Nighthawk pilot in fact did me a favor. Now I had witnessed just how devastating a substantial ship divide can be for a newer, inexperienced, or unprepared player. This Nighthawk, was the epitome of prowess and danger to me now, forming my outlook and sense of the game for months down the road.





Back to the present...

So ok, sure, everyone has had this kind of experience at one point in this game. It is the new player experience. It is no different than when we logged onto Warcraft for the first few weeks and see people in raiding purples, nor when undocking in a rookie ship after a few days of playing the game and suddenly find ourselves straddling a Freighter or Tier 3 battleship which seems to go on forever into space compared to our seemingly tiny gnat of a ship.

Now that I have the Nighthawk, have battle tested it in a real PvE scenario, and am preparing to usher it into PvP in the next few days, what are my impressions of how far I have come since last summer, and whether the long wait was worth it? After all, it took me nearly ten months of training to get to the point where I was ready to train to a ship that costs 250,000,000.00 ISK just to purchase let alone fit and rig.

Well, I am here to say, it was worth every second. Not only is this ship fun to pilot, but it gives you a sense that, well, your time in game has produced tangible results beyond the social aspect that keeps you coming back. Sure, I warn everyone to avoid acquiring more and more ships just for the sake of acquiring them, but given a positive outlook on the game that focuses on building relationships with other players online, I can indulge guilt free in such things as a shiny new 400,000,000.00 ISK Command Ship that I will gingerly take onto roaming gangs while I get a feel for its capabilities.

What does this say for the young character in the game, still focusing on leveling off those core skills, those battlecruisers, those first few T2 ships, and whatnot? Well, it says, hang in there! This game is about patience, not luck. When you set to train something, you wait, you do not hope. It will come! Those 45 day training regimens you ponder endlessly while staring at EVEMon and just wishing you could, "Fly that T2 ship already!", are worth every second. Because it happens, eventually, given time. No competing with people for drops, no worrying that everyone else will see your prized item drop whenever you are not present in the raid, no frustration when you accidentally spend too much DKP and you cannot even enter the running for it the one time it does drop, none of that.

We have quite a few former Warcraft raiders in this corporation, and I think they can all attest to the fact that in EVE everything comes with patience, which is such a wild change from relying so heavily on luck and perseverance.

In EVE, if you want it, you can have it. And I got it. My preciousssssss.







*Note: If you are interested in how I fit the Nighthawk for missions presently here is the build that I use. In the future, I am going to use a T2 Large Shield Transporter on Mithos which will allow me to boost the Nighthawk's DPS while maintaing a more than sufficient tank for any and all mission types.

Recent L4s

As the week has seemed to drag on for some of us through turmoil after turmoil in real life, there has been an ongoing and most fruitful campaign to host L4s. Devin, Fogwlker, Psycronex, and myself have been hosting L4s for a few days now, and they seem to be going extremely well.

Now, while everyone is getting accustomed to these L4 missions, I highly suggest that you seek out Huffdaddy as well in the near future, to do these same missions in the Mamet area on quiet nights when the environment permits.

The reason for this? Well it's simple, we need more people to be on standby for fun and good times, and while Nakri is a great mission hub, it's out of the way and kind of separates our forces, so to speak. Not only that, but you will be eligible to use free frigates or insured cruisers at your leisure, for those of you still in those ships! Eventually, should you devote enough time to low and null security endeavors, you will become eligible for insured battlecruisers as well, and that's just some win right there.

I may also bite the bullet once more and hop on Mithos to finish my own Zoar And Sons standings grind as I got to L2s a month or two ago but then POS administration kind of took precedence overnight.

But for now, ISK is ISK, fun is fun, and I am very pleased to see that L4s and money making ventures in general are being led by our veteran members. Good stuff!

Frozen In Time

So, I collect corpses. Yes, those frozen bodies floating through space, the glint of ice as the sun catches a sharp angle while it slowly spins aimlessly through the void, this all fascinates me. Why, however? Do I also torture small woodland animals, and delight in other similarly heinous behaviors? No, not really. It all kind of stems from a fascination with dead stuff like most guys have especially at a young age (Yes, you know who you are, poking a dead bird in the eye with a stick at such a tender age, that was you!) but also for me a throwback to the Diablo days when it was all the rave to PKK fools and steal their ears, making a sinister collection of grotesque trophies to show off to your friends.

In EVE, this could not be more true for me, as every corpse I collect only encourages me to collect more. Granted, a lot of the corpses I have now (+100) I have merely scooped from some random point outside a station or stargate, or had generously contracted to me by a fellow member, but some of them, yes those precious few, I have either caused myself, or been within a jump or two and inbound, attempting to stake my claim on the finer art of pod killing.

What is the reason I carry them around in all my ships though? Surely this must be a sign that I am a decrepit hermit who babbles and drools while stumbling around like a drunk baboon. No, there is a reason for this too, and I think this is the best part of it all, as follows below.

I fly mostly covert ships that can warp while cloaked, and ... though I try not to claim such things often, I am very good at it. How many times has Mendolus lost a covert ship or been podded? ... 0. So the thing about corpses is, they are unlike any other material goods in the game, when you go to jettison them in space, rather than appear in a can a few meters from your ship they instead randomly spew out up to 15km from your ship and begin their aimless frozen journey through space once more, unfettered by a can or other similar container.

So the way I figure it, I have such a wonderful track record with living in low and null security for eight months and having never been caught by hostiles in a covert ship, that if they do in fact pop me, I'd like to give them a little surprise.

Can you imagine it?

Pirate A: Helios uncloaked! Point! *his Ares nimbly acquires a target lock and scramble*
Pirate B: Engaging! *KABLAMMO, the Helios goes down in flames with little effort*
Pirate A: WTF? There's a corpse out here, but we haven't podded him yet?
Pirate B: O-M-G *screams giddily like a schoolgirl* Residual podding! I heard about this in nooblet training! He's dead!
Pirate A: No, no look he's still on grid in his pod! *forgets in his haste to point out that the corpse name does not match the pilot they engaged*
Pirate B: That's a bug you stupid cu#@... wait wtf it just warped away, AHHH!!! Mothatrucka!
Mendolus: Mwuahhahahha! *evil rumbling laughter echoes through the comms on the pirate's ship panels*


Ah yes, sweet sweet victory, you drooling sacks of pirate monkey sweat, you may take my ship, but I haz... the last laugh!






Ok, so it's obvious I have quite the imagination, but really, how awesome would it be to give someone a good start after they actually manage to snag the kill of all kills, a covert ops ship, only to see some poor hapless corpse shoot off into space like a greased turd out of the smoldering wreck. Even better, I tend to carry three or four corpses at a time in most of my covert ships.

Ah yes, most excellent *rubs hands together*.