Low Sec Lifestyle

A Look at the History of Expansions - The Series Previous Entry: Cold War There is an interesting blur effect across the Exodus and Cold War expansions that extends into Red Moon Rising. CCP has many plans and goals and they are often not able to meet them int he development cycle. They simply move these down, but that led to cries of missing features from Exodus even after Cold War was launched. They will have to juggle both the past, the present, and the future.

I suspect that I will write a history post for Wednesday. That is my current goal. My day was absorbed by my new motorcycle purchase. I shall share that this weekend when I go to pick him up. It has left me with less concentration than I like to have for Eve, but such is the side effect of exciting moments in life. I did however, make time to work on my markets. My markets, something I picked up to give a try, have become a huge part of my life. Right now, I am behind. The deployment that was whipped up happened so fast I wasn't able to get my mobile market into gear fast enough. I'm also on my work week that includes weekends. Oh, and burn Jita. A perfect storm that hit leaving me not time to organize myself as I want. Hence, I just keep forgetting and missing stuff, leaving my mobile market a shambling shade of what it should be at this juncture. I also need to tend TCS. I'm a bit frustrated. It isn't a bad thing outside of me whining some. One of the things I l

How many mining lasers does this venture happen to have? Or this yellow Orca(ish) flat thing. Hints from the new login screen for what we shall learn later this week. I have no idea but it's something to look at. Plus, thank god, its blue.

I've been waiting to write this particular post for quite a while now. Unlike every post before and every post after, this particular moment is very pure and allows me a unique opportunity for untinted honesty. It is not that I have not been honest. It is that voting is closed and the election will not be decided until next week. What I say now cannot be construed as an attempt to direct my election or a reflection of winning or losing. Thank you for voting for me. Thank you for considering me and putting me on your ballot even if you did not pick me as your first choice. I cannot express how honored I am at the trust put in me and I appreciate that people took the time to follow through with me. Next weekend my game life changes a bit. I either make it onto CSM9 and from thereon become a member of CSM9 or I do not make it and from thereon I become a person who failed their bid to CSM9. One way or another some will see everything that I say and do through that tinted piece of g

The actual story: It was a work night and I had logged in to spend a while discussing low sec with someone who wishes to dip their toes into it. I also had dinner to make and in general I was worn out. Floyde told me that he had some courier contracts from my high sec staging system that needed to come in. none of it was a big deal but it was the type of activity I could do while chatting and waiting for the next phase of dinner to finish. I jumped my Rhea to my low sec border system and docked. I never warp from jump. I am too paranoid for that. As I was docking someone came and sat on my cyno without shooting me. I figured they wanted to see if anything else was going to come in. Then a Harbinger warped in all red outlaw like, and stared at me as well. It is just my cyno Velator against a Stabber Fleet Issue and a Harbinger. The Stabber FI warps off and the Harbinger finally shoots me. I was sipping soup at the time and almost dropped it getting my pod out. I was slow and he di

This is a Goonswarm post. I figured that it would fit well during the weekend of Burn Jita. I don't discuss Goonswarm often. In fact, I tend to go out of my way to not discuss them even when the topic pertains to them. This is not because I have any particular love or hatred for Goonswarm. It is because their very name conjures a emotional hurricane that often clouds the topic. However, on a weekend of in game hurricanes I decided to indulge myself considering what happened and how amusing I found it to be. Before I start, let me put a plug in for plo and his freighter service  Galactic Hauling Solutions Incorporated . He used to work for Black Frog and let and started his own service for a 50 million flat free to do low sec jumps. We chatted when he'd be in space, lighting cynos. And on with the rest of my post... I was in Jita buying things for TCS when I received an eve-mail that left me in stitches. Often, in Jita it is random invites to channels. This time it was a

A Look at the History of Expansions - The Series Previous entry: Exodus I defined the end of the Exodus era well before the launch of Eve Online: Cold War. Part of this is the simple fact the arc of development and release of the expansion happens both before and after the true launch date. While Exodus laid out the foundations of a lot of Eve Online it was not a stopping point for CCP. In fact, a clear division of front line development and back-line hardware emerges along with a robust team that does things that are not related directly to code. Eve is steamrolling forward for CCP and they are starting to make enough noise that the greater community is watching them.

A Look at the History of Expansions - The Series I was debating attaching this to part six. However, I feel that I have the right to create revisions and addendums as they are needed. The history project is growing at its own rate into its own shape. I am but the author. The other day, Michael asked me if I had seen this . This being a news letter that references Shiva. Well no, I had not found this particular resource. I'll dig in and see if I can find the other ones to touch in on this. This is Eve's first news letter written in February of 2004. I think it is quite interesting and it does mention Shiva. Resources: http://web.ccpgamescdn.com/eveonlineassets/newsletters/vol100/vol001.jpg

I've been back and forth about the industry impressions for a bit. I've been hoping that we would get some more Dev Blogs to finish the incomplete picture that we currently have. I do not like making prediction and guesses on inaccurate and complete information. My emotional and rational reactions are often quite different. I also suck at speculation. I'm a terrible guesser and I have no interest in gambling. I'm bad at these things. I now expect we might get one more dev blog before Fanfest but I am doubtful. Some of the CCP devs on twitter have already sounded as if they are in Fanfest prep more than anything else. That means the Dev blogs will come after Fanfest and I expect rapid fire with more of their details mentioned during the various Fanfest presentations. All of the cat's will be out of the bed and busy lounging on the steps waiting to trip the unwary.

[TL;DR: This is a sad post] Mustic: BoysIIMen - It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday Anthony, my newbie that I adopted back in February, logged in today to tell me that he was unsubbing. I was not surprised. He has not been on for the better part of a month. The signs are easy enough to read. He took the time to wait for my normal login time and write me an Eve mail in case he missed me. I thanked him for that. Many will just vanish. The reasons are simple enough. Life does not give everyone the time to cultivate internet spaceship gameplay. Like any MMO and more than many, Eve consumes a lot of time. It is not something that anyone has ever tried to hide. It is not a problem with the game. It is simply the truth and sometimes outside of this game in the world that truly controls what we do, one does not have the time to play. He apologized to me for wasting my time. I told him that it was never a waste of time. He was a cool dude and I had the pleasure of knowing him fo

I assign this under the TCS label of posts but it is not quite a TCS post. It is about markets however. When I write I try to write about both the good and the bad. It is easy to trim posts and filter events. But, I dislike that type of manipulation, even when it benefits me (In this case making me look like a market genius that never gets a thing wrong). I don't care for being wrong or unsuccessful but documenting my Eve life is going to have to include the bad with the good, silly, and random. My market is successful. However, after we returned from Nalvula I noticed an unexpected price of success. Last year I noticed that people had moved into Bosena and randomly sold stacks of things. Often high volume items like fuel and ammo, undercutting my sales. Not being a trader, I do not use many of the tools that are available to hunt down where items may sell. That is when I discovered that Bosena had become a large enough blip to attract some market hunters. What I discovered upo

I've never been good at forcing myself to do things that are not fun in Eve. In truth, I tend to become bitchy when I force myself into situations I don't want to be in. It is not a mood I enjoy being in. A cranky adult is an unpleasant experience. I should probably bve writing about the industry changes and some other stuff. I expect I'll work my way around to it. Right now, I'm distracted. You see, for reasons I cannot fathom Siuil and Vov decided to do a bunch of 4/10 and 5/10 DED sites that Siuil found pooled in a back system. On most days it would be an amazing situation with five sites piled one on top of another in one place. This time it was far from that because earlier in the afternoon an incursion had hit the system. Incursions are more than annoyances in low sec. People often move out of the area all together. Some groups do run these incursions to great results. But, when it comes to the day to day movement and activity they are, in my opinion, a nightm

A Look at the History of Expansions - The Series Previous Entry: The Launch of Exodus It is November, 17th 2004 and Exodus, the third expansion, has been launched. It is billed as an expansion of pure content. A year and a half after Eve Online's launch, CCP is ready to deliver major defining points to Eve ( 1 ) . Through the rough spots in 2004 Eve has begun to receive better reviews. Addictive, absorbing, and beautiful are often words used to describe it by both professional review sites and individuals who have played the game. Eve is not the game that we know of it today but much of the foundation is starting to set in. But Eve then and Eve now are not quite the same.

The end is near. Voting ends on Tuesday and then a week and a half until CCP releases the results. People often ask me, “How are you doing?” I tell them that I don’t know. None of us know. There is no count. Every guess as to who will win one of the fourteen seats is a guess. Some guesses are more educated than others but they are all guesses. I am getting a steady trickle of traffic from the  CSM candidates page .  I also did a podcast episode with DaeHan Minhyok ( Click here to listen! ). He is starting up a low sec podcast he is calling Low Expectations and he invited me on to chat with him for about an hour. We met at the local VA/MD/DC meet last month where he suggested the idea. I’m always up to discuss low sec. I know everyone else must be too. :)  We will find out on May 3rd. I do have to say that CCP has not promoted this as I would like. I am very close to the election and it is a very large part of my game life right now. But we have had a few tweets for votematch, CCP

We have cast off our -10 (not that I ever had it but let's go with it) sec status. We have embraced the incursion that has hit our pocket! Forever shall the lurid green washed not really so red anymore Nebula of the Almur constellation focus our goals. Our hopes. Our dreams. It shall be the Guardian, Abaddon, Napoc, Tempest, Vindicator, and whatever else we can shake out of the station to dock up in our fleets. Forever shall the rep drones over power the combat drones. Let each red cross be tagged and bagged as its wreck shatters across the sky! The only gatecamps that matter are the ones that stand between us and our goal. ISK. No lure shall be held by the high sec, the war dec, because low sec is the best sec. What was that fleet op? Warp to that beacon. That glorious beacon. Upon it is the holy font of ISK. Of glorious, glorious ISK. Let not your attention be directed. The cyno? We shun that. Rat-a-tat-tat goes the guns. Isk! Glorious ISK! Let the sky sing!

Hullo Ishtar! It is nice to get out in space and stretch my ships. The change in priorities, if anything, have taught me to appreciate my time in fleet. I haven't forgotten what to do! The landscape of Molden Heath lately has been fairly active. When we returned from our Navaula deployment in the start of February we had planned to deploy again in a month or so. Often, when we've moved back to Molden Heath things have been bust for a bit and died down. This time, we had new neighbors to meet and lots of smaller corporation activities. Our new neighbors left but they where replaced with old neighbors when Kelts Alliance moved back in. Our Russian neighbors have been gone for quite a while but their return has made things interesting. On top of that, Dust groups roam space and many seem to have settled in to stay. When we headed out to a fight in Skarkon, I felt a big wave of homesickness for Klingt. It is like when you drive past a childhood home that you had good times i

[ TL:DR:Nature vs Nurture written at work lunch time ]

Blog Banter #55 Last Blog Banter we talked about heroes in EVE Online. The followup to that topic has been provided by Wilhelm aka The Ancient Gaming Noob : Write about somebody who is "space famous" and why you hate/admire them, somebody who isn't space famous but you think should be or will be, or discuss space fame in general, what it means, and how people end up so famous. I'd like to add another take on the subject, is there a cost of being famous in EVE and if so, is it worth the price? -  Kirith Kodachi Some people make interesting conversation pieces. I didn't think overly much about it until I put myself into a position to become the conversation piece of others. Seeing their opinions, thoughts, and reactions was strange. In a way, the way others react to you is a window into how you are seen. How one may present themselves and how that presentation is taken in can have startling differences. In Eve there are people who become space famous and t

There are some places I have never been. "I think about unsubbing like once a week. Isn't that how most Eve players are?" It was a joke with a serious edge in a conversation about losing motivation to play. I paid attention to it for a few reasons. For one, I never like when someone close to me starts running out of Eve fuel. For another, I've noticed it across a wide spectrum of players. It is a reverse spring fever and it happens every year. Some of it I feel is Eve's reverse population habits. The adult population we enjoy commenting about has a side effect of being adults. My boys were commenting on how empty space has been the last two days. I pointed out that in my area it is spring break and all the parents are occupied with children off of school. It was not unreasonable to believe that spread further than my local area and was affection ships in space. I do understand Eve burnout. I'm prone to withdrawing from my information consumption when

A Look at the History of Expansions - The Series Previous Entry - Shiva Almost a year and a half old and Eve is stuttering. The game is being plagued by hardware problems and outages. The third expansion, Shiva, has not arrived. Patch after patch is applied from Castor and content is coming in but the game itself is starting to outgrow its own hardware. It is August and Eve Online is not as physically healthy as CCP would like for it to be. There is lag and server outages. The strain of having thousands of players in the same world is starting to show.

I give in. My attempts at finding a new method of shipping my stuff has not worked out as well as I have hoped. Red Frog again has my ISK for freighting through high sec. TCS is doing very well and mixed with my new, somewhat more occupied schedule, I have had to rely on them a lot. I don't move much over a billion ISK. TCS often has three billion ISK worth of orders that I need to renew. That means one to two Red Frog contracts as well as another for myself. They must recognize my route by now. I am still doing some of my own shipping to compensate for the price changes. Being a space trucker is a good use of my distracted time. Still, it takes forever. And warp speed changes. How can I suffer so much for something I technically agree with. As much sense as it makes it sucks to live through. I cannot live like this. I cannot stand to shudder as I slip into my freighter. I have no more tears to cry as I slip out of warp over hundreds of KM. Warp speed of 1.37 AU a second. It

I was writing, as was common, on coms. Early in the morning for me is right into the EU time zone. Sugar, was settled in Bosena and I was slowly working through a cup of butternut squash soup with some tea on the side when someone saw a Fenrir warp from an Oddelulf station to the Istodard gate. Say what? Who does that?  "Go tackle him," I said and stopped paying attention since my corpmate must be crazy. And then the Fenrir jumped into Istodard and we were scrambling to get ships on the field. They wanted tackle so I picked my trusty armor Throax. It is duel web and I've had it for over a year now. I used to use it to web my freighter in and out of Bosena. Now my Throax was burning for Oddelulf and I was in space heading into battle! It was glorious. I haven't undocked much recently. The boys had locked down the freighter as it jumped into Istodard and they were bouncing to shake their gateguns. I landed and of course I am 30k away which is the perfect range to

A Look at the History of Expansions - The Series Previous Entry: Castor The second expansion, Castor landed with barely a ripple in the water of Eve space physics. Eve Online was launched in the days of Ultima Online . Ultima was at its peak in 2003. World of Warcraft would not enter the scene until 2004 and EverQuest was king. But Eve was a spaceship MMO and it was churning through a world of uneven reviews while hitting its first year. Currently, CCP is on a bi-yearly expansion schedule. However, there were eleven long months' between Castor's launch and the release of the next expansion: Exodus. Eleven months is a long time. Why so long? It turned out that the answer was not what I expected.

Welcome to the second month of my CSM9 run!  Five days ago voting opened. In nine days, voting will close. And in three weeks we will know the results. Nine more days my “Vote Sugar Kyle” logo will appear attached to my posts. I know that many of you have already voted and I thank everyone that has voted for me. However, this isn’t done until the polls close. There is no slowing down. There are no assumptions about results. I can take a day off on the 23rd.  Things have become busier since polls opened. I was not sure what to expect. Activity in my thread has calmed down over the days leading up to the election. Recommendation lists had started to come out. Both CSM members current and past as well as individuals made their recommendations on how their CSM ballet would look and why they feel the way that they do.  I recommend myself. However, there is a list of other ballots that also recommend me (and others) at the end of the post. I’ve been flattered by the things said about

Part of running a cult is the pleasure of initiating people into the inner circle. While that is one of the creepiest sentences I have ever written, I do amuse myself with my 'Cult of Reasonable Prices' concept. Instead of approaching the market from a pure business standpoint I approach it from a more social and interactive one. It may not surprise anyone that I've met a lot of people recently. Some have asked me about my market and I've settled down happy and begun the first steps of converting people to my method of thinking. My most recent conversion, evil PvPer of great skill was somewhat restiveness. When I tell people that they will giggle in glee within a few days they are doubtful. After all low sec? Pirate infested systems? Who will buy from them? The answer is, anyone. Right now, low sec is starving for stuff. I've experienced it on my own and now I am experiencing it through other people's efforts. There may be a day when I have become the Churc

In a scholarly mood from researching for my expansion history series, I caught an announcement in Eve Uni chat that Neville Smit was doing a class on T2 manufacturing. Eve University for anyone who has missed it is a teaching corporation. They are one of the unique, player made constructions that are created in Eve Online. A player corporation whos goal is to teach and educate other players about the game by and through playing the game and resources. And they've been doing it for ten years. T2 manufacturing is one of those things that is on my radar. My alt is training the skills for it at the moment. I know many people who make their ISK in this area. So far I've stuck to simpler forms of industry with boosters, capitals, and moon mining. I have my labs and have been building a steady stable of blueprints for the future. I do not have the time to set anything up now. Not with the potential future of the CSM on my plate. But, I do have the time to set up the ground work a

A Look at the History of Expansions - The Series Previous entry: Second Genesis Second Genesis is an interesting title for a first launch considering there was no Eve Online: Genesis. But, it spoke to Eve's backstory. Eve spend centuries in a type of dark ages where they had to rediscover interstellar flight. When Eve Online Launched it did not launch with the discovery of New Eden but millennium after the Eve Gate closed. The second expansion, Castor launched on December 18th, 2003, seven months after Second Genesis. It brought with it T2 items, outposts and deep space regions controlled by player alliances. That means for seven months Sov as we know it did not yet exist. Before I look at what came with Castor let us see what happened during the seven months after launch.

A Look at the History of Expansions - The Series With my mind buzzing with CSM thoughts I sought the help of my chat room for non-CSM related topics to work over. I'm not quite the endless font of thoughts that I envision myself with. Things that I am highly vested in will consume my thought process. And while I'd like everyone to vote for me, I'd like not to only write about the CSM for the next two weeks. [13:03:58] Michael Harari > i think you should do a series on old eve expansions Michael made a very fine suggestion and one that will involve a lot of personal learning. I love history. I get caught up in the now because the now is what I play. I started right after Crucible was launched. But the past of Eve is also interesting. With the 20th Expansion (and its unannounced name) heading towards us, I think that I shall try to look at the history of Eve's expansions before the summer starts. And if I am very, very fortunate, I will get some vets to chip in

Today the polls for the CSM9 election open , and I'm so excited I can barely stand it! This is the spot where I need to ask for your votes, so here it comes: Please vote for me, Sugar Kyle, in the top spot on your ballot. Please do it for every account you own. I've worked hard to present a true and complete picture of who I am and what I believe in, and I think I've succeeded. So if my campaign platform and what I've said resonates with you, now is the time to help me win a seat on the Council of Stellar Management. This campaign is the first time I've ever done anything like this, so it's been a learn-as-I-go affair. It's a wonderful, stressful, tiring task. But It's also completely and incredibly worthwhile. I love Eve, and I want to see our game continue to prosper and grow. And I would very much appreciate your support. Internet spaceships are serious business. I bring a skillset to the table that ranges from my focus on all aspects of low

Contracts and their interfaces are up for attention. It is time to make your opinion seen. Special thanks to Foo for pointing this out . I've been buried in threads and didn't see this one advertised on twitter (where I pick up a lot of Dev threads). CCP SoniClover would like our feedback on the contract system on the forums. Hello Capsuleers. We're looking into what small improvements we can make to the contract system to make it more useful and trustworthy. We would love to hear any feedback from you guys on this. We're most interested in suggestions for UI/usability improvements and comments on pain points you encounter in using the system. The more constructive the feedback is the better; 'Get rid of the scammers' is for example not particularly helpful. The entire thread is worth a read. I decided to express my opinions before I read through all of the pages. I saw lots and lots of stuff that I agreed with post after post after post. "Sugar, what

A new layout for the start of the elections! Starting Tuesday and for the following two weeks the Vote Sugar Kyle CSM9 button will be in the upper corner of each post with a link to vote. I dislike being spammy and pushy but I am going to ask regular readers to bear with me for this time period. I spent a lot of April 3rd refreshing twitter and the forum and the community site looking for the announcement of the official candidate list. Then April 3rd left and there was no candidate list announced. There were different reactions and different ways to handle it. I decided to go back to working on Votematch . The actual selection is not yet live. I checked my application a half dozen times over the week and double checked that my passport went to the right spot. Tired of worrying, I decided to turn my energy in a bit more productive direction. Niden’s article went live on his Low Life column at Crossing Zebras . Seeing myself quoted is always strange. I think, “I wrote that!” Tryin

Vov invited me to a 5/10 Angel's Red Light District just as I got home from work the other day. I tiredly gave in and went to do it. I logged in Chella and told him, "Fleet us." "Fleet us." Beyond the vague questions of multiple personalities there is the fact that many of my PvE choices are tasks for multiple people. It just happens that I am the extra people as well. It was a matter of necessity. There was a time when I was very lonely. THC2 was a very small corporation and I was off time zone for most of the day. While I had a corporation of supporting, affectionate people I was still lonely. I was also very new and I learned that I needed to help myself if I wanted anything to be done. The relationship I have with Vov didn't exist then. I often had to beg and wheedle and entice people out of my corporation to do content with me. The cost was half of whatever dropped which was fine for they helped. But, I couldn't do things alone. I hated that and