Anyway

"We are all playing a completely different game in the same place."

One thing that affects us all but that we often take for granted is the lack of instances and separated servers in Eve. It becomes the normal state of things and as with anything that becomes the norm we tend to take it for granted. Yet, that environment is what makes the game such a fascinating place.

I had a lot of fun at my Eve meet last month. It was small, with seven of us in the end. I pushed down the nervous jitters and wound up deep in conversations about high sec, low sec, and all of our realities of Eve. The group contained high sec mercenaries who specialized in war decs, wormholers, and parts of low sec and I got to listen to people as excited about what they do every day in game as I am. Yet, we all had very different stories and very different views.

To one, probe scanners are part of life itself. To another, settling on a gate, waiting for war targets to make mistakes is a regular part of life. We all had our own stories and different adventures. If one where to listen to us it would not sound as if we where playing the same game. We fly different ships, we have different fights, we spend our time in different places. In a way it was fascinating listening to someone jump cloning to Dodixie to undock for a fight. Never would I think about jump cloning to Dodixie to PvP.

"It depends."

Often in Eve Uni chat someone enters with a question about what to use for a ship or a fit. They quickly find out that there is not a single answer. They get asked are they doing missions or PvP? What NPCs are they fighting? How are their skills? Shield or armor tanking? It is a list that says, "There isn't a single way to do these things."

I trained shield and armor tanking at the same time. I always thought it was what everyone did. I know better now. It does take longer to get into some fits but we have always flown depending on the mood or the task. It depends on who you are flying with for what you may wish to train. It depends on what you want to do for what you may wish to do. The two are not always the same in this game.

"Doing it right or wrong"

Everyone does their own thing. It depends on how they want to do it. But they are wrong because someone thinks it is a bad way to play and they are right because eceryone should play Eve however they wish to. It is an amusing number of signals sent out.

As mixed as the signals are they have a constant, coherent story. There are so many personal choices at each step of the game that what choices you decide to make or wind up needing to make will set you into a place where someone else may or may not be able to relate to your game play while playing the same game.

We play in worlds within worlds. Sometimes it is quite fun to peek into someone elses window.