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.