Quick Update

Been slightly inactive the past week or so, as I'm still without PC and not much to update/post about really.

But fear not! my housemate is roadtripping with me to pick up my shiny desktop on Wednesday, and by the end of the week i should be back online and making an internet fool of myself. Perfect!

I'll try to think of something inventive or interesting to say about eveland at some point tomorrow but for now just a speedy update (and i may see about adding this blog to the EVEBloggers site as it seems a good place to spread the love).

In other news Job hunting is officially a bastard, but i can only keep trying. Aparantly the Dominion expansion is seeming rather worse for wear every time a new dev blog comes out. And 8 sausages in a sausage sandwich is not only possible but very tasty (if a bit of a strugle to eat properly).

Fly safe and speak soon.

B.

Looking Forward

Second post! (now officially my most active blog ever!) Almost as hard to start as the first, but at least I don't have to make a bad (and looking back, barely even funny) joke. Now that's out of the way I thought I'd go on a bit about my plans and what I want to get out of this game.

The big problem with eve is the same thing that makes it so great. The giant space sandbox nature lends itself to player driven open play. At the same time, without any focus or goals to achieve, the open play can quickly become boring. It's a problem a lot of mmos face, but eve really gives the players control of it's world more so than any other online game i've played.

Finding a good corp is a big start to getting some focus. With RPS Holdings, the goal, to loosely quote Eben (our benevolent dictator, aka corp CEO), is to become a CORP not just a corp. Now by that he meant to become a fully independent, competent and many other good words ending in -ent. Basically leading to us not needing to rely on out of corp people and services. Of course this means running a full scale industrial operation that manufactures ships and components, all the way to a hardened battle ready group of combat specialists, able to react to any circumstance.

Personally this is my ideal way to play the game. While I shy away from mining, manufacturing and trade, having a corp with a good variety and balance gives us independence. With all credit to the veteran players in corp they're doing great things with organising but also giving the new players time to find their feet and figure out for themselves what they want to do. Of course everyone is expected to be combat able, for times when combat itself is unavoidable, but at the end of the day we're playing a game to have fun (and for the world domination but why not have fun while you're doing it!).

Now give me any game which gives you freedom in how you play and I'll find a way to turn it into Thief! Being sneaky has always been something I like. So the obvious choice for me is something in the covert ops department. Even though I've for a good few weeks of training before I'm even able to fly the ships, let alone pilot them effectively. Once i'm able to turn invisible I don't really care, I mean I'll be INVISIBLE!

Being invisible is quite literally the what makes or breaks a game for me. Oblivion was crap until I made an overpowered invis spell which would allow me to just vanish from sight and fantastically break the game's AI. Of course EVE does things a lil differently but it's the same effect. They can't see me, I can see them.

With this light bending equipment strapped to the hull of my space rocket it means I'll be heading towards a scouting role. Again something I enjoy. Being responsible for a whole enemy fleet's demise due to my actions will make me quite happy. Them only knowing it was me due to my name floating in local will make me very happy. Space will forever fear Benny Xiii turning up in a system, for it will be the sign of their Death In Fire!

This is all assuming I don't suck at it. In which case I'll be mining an asteroid being a carebear. Lets all hope that day never comes to pass.

Benny.

(p.s. I love you miners really <3)

And in the beginning there was darkness...

...and the lack of a PC.

Deciding how to begin is always a pain, so I figured a really bad joke would suffice. Kinda breaks the ice a bit. It was either that or a picture of a cat so be happy!

Anyway, ah yes! A blog! That's what I'm writing here. I decided, in my infinite wisdom and almighty prowess that I could write such literary works that they would become timeless pieces, honoured and remembered. Of course if you've already read the blurb on the side then you'll realise I was actually just bored. So without further ado, on with the show! (I'll get onto the PC bit later)

I'm Benny, an internet spaceship pilot making a journey through EVE in order to fill a blank void in my life that normal things like cake couldn't. A long term lurker, part time poster on the rockpapershotgun.com PC gaming blog, I've seen so many mentions of the wondrous adventures to be had in land that is EVE Online that have always left me wanting to get into the delicious juicy morsel. Sadly that mighty of all learning curves the dreaded 'Learning Cliff of EVE Online' reared it's ugly head, and with the lack of a corp to support me my few attempts at trials ended like most do, with a 14 day old character left collecting dust.

Then, one evening while browsing the RPS.com forums I discovered a thread refering to a group of RPS readers who've set-up a corp and were actively encouraging new players to join up. RPS Holdings was it's name and the idea was that with such a wealth of high-brow PC gamers and intellectuals, lavishly applied to a complex game such as EVE, would bring about tremendous things and celestial forces so great that even Jim Rossignol would be compelled to come back from hiatus and rejoin his space chums! Obviously it takes time to channel these forces or we'd destroy the entire universe and stuff, but from humble beginnings less roughly 3 months ago, it's come along way.

I joined up with RPS Holdings late September, along with real life (and in the game!) friend Tuppence. Both of us had trialled EVE at the same time, but even with one buddy, it's still a lonely game.

The difference was staggering (although looking back now seems like such a trivial thing, like a pie). Simply having people around, operations organised, fires to go and die in, made the experience so much better. I can still remember the feeling of my first fleet op, that giddy sense being like a kid, flying around with LOTS OF SPACESHIPS! It's the thing that makes those EVE screenshots so dramatic, yet barely sums up the feeling of actually being in the game. Twenty plus ships working in tandem, all varying sizes, shapes, styles. I could have flown about doing fleet manoeuvres for an hour and probably still enjoyed it. Of course that fleet was actually made up of a mix of veteran pilots and month old characters, and we were heading right out for our first official corp adventure into 0.0 space. And on the gates entering the nul-sec space, people were preparing their camp fires and making sure they had enough bbq sauce to go around. Our trial by Dying In A Fire was upon us.

If there's one thing we learnt from that day it's something about Drakes and pure hatred for them. As we were making our way around nul-sec one of the scouts discovered a Drake battlecruiser casually watching a gate, we aggressed and decided that 20+ of us were more than a match for one drake. Now the fact that the Drake did eventually die only cemented the fact that he single handedly broke pretty much everyone, and the ones he didn't kill were hunted down by his mates. A few got out, a few survived in pods but mostly fire and us were joined as one for a short period. That said, it's one of the best experiences I've had in this game. Making mistakes is the best way to learn, the fact we all worked together and inevitably died together, taught us much more than walking in as a rag tag group, killing someone, then running away before backup turns up. Being part of the group, working together, was the real fun and in general made it a successful op.

Anyway I've rambled on for quite a while (and I sense a recurring theme in later posts...) and I should really get back to the first thing I mentioned.

I'm currently about 80 miles away from my desktop PC, with only my tiny netbook with me while I job hunt. Which is probably the driving factor in my starting this blog, but I'm gona try and keep it up to date with random musings, stories I can remember and stuff I make up because I can't remember. And maybe some more bad jokes... or a cat.

Till next time, fly safe, keep the safety locks on your back seat car doors and smoke me a kipper, I hear they're quite tasty.

Benny.