Low Sec Lifestyle

A Look at the History of Expansions Previous Entry:  Intro to Incarna 2011 is a year of change. Eve is nearing its second decade and as an eight year old game it has to change things up a bit to keep in the running. The development pace of the last two years has been a frantic ride of features and additions to the universe. They are moving fast. Very fast. Incursion has just finished being released in January of 2011 due to the new developmental schedule which allows point releases. There is cleanup to be done but in truth, the entire focus of development switches to Incarna. The long awaited future of Eve Online. On Febuary 11th, 2011 CCP Zulu wraps up Incursion with a Producer's blog . He announces the introduction to Incarna with the first blog about the Captain's Quarters  written by CCP Chiliad, from the Alanta office in the United States. Eve Online has never had avatar gameplay. The player has always started in a ship or capsule. Their only interaction with their

Blog Banter #65 - Attributes and Skills Does Eve need attributes? It's been discussed a lot recently. Unlike other MMO's your characters attributes don't make a difference in day-to-day gameplay. They simply set how fast you train a skill. Is it time to remove attributes from the game or totally revamp their purpose? Do they add a level of complexity to the game that is not needed? If you really need to use a 3rd party application to get the most from it should it be in the game? Should they be repurposed with each attribute adding a modifier to your ship? Are attributes a relic from the past or are they an important part of Eve - You make your decision and deal with the consequences?  It is a worn out stick and a well beaten horse. Eve isn't a young game. Its twelve. That's a good thing. It is a fabulous thing. In a world where games barely make it into their third and fourth years it is a spectacular thing. Being unique is great. It keeps us in a game. It is fun

The problem with ISK in the wallet is that it does start to itch sometimes. I was looking at Eve Hermit's picture of his Astero and I could taste it a bit. Jealousy. Jealousy for his blue ship. I don't even like the Astero but turn a ship blue and my interest immediately changes. "Maybe the Astero isn't so bad," I found myself thinking. "Look how cute it is in blue. How can it be bad?" It can be bad by half a billion ISK is how.  Well, three hundred and eighty million at the lowest. It is the Stratios skin that hovers just under half a billion ISK. A few years ago that would have been a PLEX. With PLEX hovering just under a billion ISK, I can't use that excuse anymore. Still! My goodness. Cold water to my lust was that price check. I'm pretty sure my price is sub a hundred million and probably sub fifty million at that. I'm still a bit of an ISK miser. No blue Sleipnirs as of yet. I don't think that I'll be tempted into the val

Summer is here and CCP is very much out of the office. Sion made a good point in wondering why everyone leaves Iceland when it has its best weather. What it means is that all is mostly quiet on the dev blog front. There are some things happening but the dev blogs and news announcements have not yet happened. The skill points were delivered on Tuesday  so yay for unallocated skill points. Over in CSM chat, there has been a lot of back and forth about sov and measuring the impact and success of things so far. I can say that CCP and the CSM are watching it. The pros and cons are coming in pretty hot and heavy. Some are being looked at now. Some have to see how things are going and if and how the direction needs to be tweaked. In my corner, I'm starting to gather things together. The summit is in seven or so weeks. In between then and now I need to gather up my question list and write down a few topics of discussion. I'm starting now because I have personal vacation at the end

The nice thing about being free rolling is that my alts are no longer set up in strategic locations that will allow me to fall back upon a support cushion of my own creation. So, when twitter reported that Empress Jaymal was undocking in Amarr I decided to go and look at what was happening. I used Chella because I know she is set up in a cloaky ship. Quickly, I undocked her. She was only ten jumps from Amarr. Not a big deal for a blockade runner. I dropped into warp and flipped through my gates. On the way through Niarja I passed through a cataylst gank squad. I knew they were not there for me. I was warping off as they decloaked for their fleet warp to their victim. Through the next gate I hurtled through space at a pleasant rate and made my way for Amarr's undock. But, due to paranoia mostly, I dropped out of warp 10k from the undock and cloaked up. The side effect of this is that now I do have a use for a Dramiel. Warping through high sec to an event like this would be

I have not been playing much. I have not been trying to play. By play, I mean log in and run around with Sugar or an alt doing something directly in the game world. I log in to chat but I've been very busy outside of Eve doing Eve stuff. In fact, with my vacation coming in a Month and the summit two weeks after, I will start buckling down and coalescing the information I've been receiving so that I have it on hand. Today, however, is a day of computer stuff at home. We are starting the process of giving my husband the basement room as his work room. The first part is moving the server rack. It sounds easier then it is. He purchased a new rack a few months ago and we had to get that in the house. It is nice and tall with shelves and he is very happy with it. After that, hes had to drill a few holes in some walls and sit down and decide how he wants to rack all of the servers. We're also having a circuit run for the rack itself so that other house circuits don't trip it

Somewhere in my pondering stuff came the question of value of that stuff. The value that stuff has to me and that value that stuff has to others and what value should it have. That is the question of accessibility vs status. I've never played World of Warcraft. I understand, in a vague way from hearing other's discuss it that the gear you wear in World of Warcraft is super important. I know that in Diablo you are supposed to care about some high end gear that I've never cared about. Getting this gear is something that is brag worthy. In Eve it often translates into someone buying plex and making an officer fit Drake because in other games high value equipment improves you more than anything else does. Last year I worked to get escalations redone. This improved the number of escalations which caused an uptick in modules found by exploration. This brings more modules to the market and thus their price crashes. However, there are more of them so while the individual price

I stalled out on my moving efforts. Kind of like unloading your moving van only to realize you have to put it all away and going to lay down instead. I'm partially moved and I'm probably moved well enough to get things started but I had decided to get myself moved fully. But, I'm tired of writing contracts. I'm also tired of hauling things. I've developed this deep paranoia of being ganked in my freighter. I'm so damn helpless in the thing. I've also been waiting to get hit by inspiration for what I want to do. My backup plan is to spend some time grinding missions. It is something that I have never done so I'm somewhat fascinated by what it will be like. As for my freighter, if I lost it I'd just get another one. I don't over stuff it and none of the items I've been moving are of great value. I'm not moving through any of the common ganking chokepoints. My freighter pilot is in a NPC corp. Yet, I twitch and my heart rate increases wh

"When I grow up I want to be..." I never 'wanted to be' anything when I was a kid. I wanted things. Safety. Comfort. Books. Food. I was willing to do what was needed for those things which ment work. However, I didn't have a future goal for myself that I followed or failed at. Later, I started to develop interests and those interests led to things I wanted to pursue, do, and experience, but I've never had a title for what I wanted to be when I grow up. Eve is much the same way. I was chatting with Psinah the other day and he commented on how he enjoyed having mercenary contracts. They gave him goals for when he logged in and helped him set up what he wanted to do.  It made me realize that I don't have a goal in Eve. The closest I have come is wanting to make lots of ISK. I can't call that a goal. It is more a desire. I've done so little to support it. Hell, I dropped ISK making outside of TCS once I joined the CSM. Perhaps it is why I have do

Deployment hiccups anyone? The smoothness of Tuesday was good. To good it seems with the main hiccup being a confusion of sov bills  as Concord was displaced by the Secure Commerce Commission. No more paying the cops. On Wednesday Eve went down for just under twelve hours while a bug was hunted down and exterminated. CCP decided to gift the players with skill points for the inconvenience. This surprised me. I'm torn on it. It goes into my pool of reimbursed skillpoints I've managed to gather. I don't think it was necessary. I do know some groups lost their complete play time that day and some players displayed a level of rage that I consider grossly disappointing. I think it was a good move on CCP's part as a company but I'd not have been writing angry posts it if had not happened.  This is a wide, sweeping changes and brings with it bugs. Tower anchoring notifications in sovereign space vanishing is a bug. Sion pounced on it quickly and the bug was confirmed a

I noticed a Mazda CX-5 in traffic today. I noticed it because of the name. What is a CX-5? Is that a name that you remember? I have a Honda CR-Z and a Yamaha FZ-8. Whole my husband has a Toyota Sequoia and a Suzuki V-Strom. I've always wondered in that idle way where you don't care enough to look deeply into the question what made some cars get named alphabet and/or numeric soup and others a word for their name. It turns out, after a bit of time on google that it is a mixture of marketing and word choices. Eve has empire space and everything else. Save for Thera and Poitot , Eve tends to leave Empire space to have word names. Null sec has alphabet and letter soup and wormholes J numbers. I struggle with null sec names. I listen to people go on about a timer at DASDA492 and a battle at 24GD52 with a supple ease. I on the other hand am always stuck in null trying to remember if they said CDS or 3AD or TZ3? Ugh. I'm a visual type of person. I can read a map but I'll us

I get to write about a popular topic of the day. What happens when the game goes down? I was fortunate. While today is my day off, my mother had already claimed the majority of my time.  I didn't get back home until 1600 my time and the server was still down. So, I talked to people on Tweetfleet slack and have spent some time writing things up and playing Minecraft. A few years ago I'd have been all fretful with my game addiction. I've reached the point that I can put Eve down fairly easily. I also had nothing planned which helped. Then, add on the skill queue changes and there is little need for me to log in today other than simple pleasure of logging in and chatting. It does remind me that I need to get back to resettling myself. I've somewhat learned not to play and I have to teach myself how to do so again. I've spent a long time docked up because it was safe from making mistakes that would get me ridiculed. Now, off on my own to wander around again it doe

For some reason the confusion over Sov bills made me image a stack of bills as alliance leadership ripped out their collective hair. Also, Concord has handed over their duties to the Secure Commerce C omission. I find that only fitting. For some reason we've been paying the police agency licensing fees for gates, local, and I guess the people staffing the stations? Unfortunately the handover was not smooth. Maybe Concord has been pocketing cash? If things are at an unrest in the empire their removal from this leaves one to wonder.

Tuesday was patch day with the first half of the July release. How do you like the NPC/Player/Friendly NPC changes?  The issues thread is up . It was a bit bumpy for a bit with skillbooks not populating and the new blueprints not showing up. Now, we have another release this Tuesday that will be the second half of the release and it will also bring us Sov. CCP Fozzie released two development blogs this weekend. One is a general discussion of transition and deployment . The second is an update on PvE and upgrade changes  for sovereign null. The entire null sec deployment has been a strange mix of whirlwind activity and hurry up and wait. I have no idea what to make of it. I hear a lot of fear and worry in the words of players who engage in this part of the game. There have been a lot of last minute tweaks to address various problems. Some have caused unhappiness and some conflict of opinion on what the change even means. Things feel tense and unhappy to me from the null sec CSMs. The

I've been productive today. Productive in a way that makes me chortle with delight. But, I'm also tired. So, after all the things that happened today I decided to take a break in rookie chat for a bit and help out. I don't get to go in as often as I'd like but I see that the helpers are still going strong. In one of my conversations a very new player, a few hours old, was trying to figure out Crimwatch and how to kill people. I answered his questions as they came in. Sometimes vague, sometimes with links, it all depends but I answered them because he asked. At one point someone pointed out to me that he was a few hours old and not strong enough to really kill anyone. I found that I did not care. I was more interested in answering his questions and letting him come to his own decision then discouraging him from trying to kill someone because he'd probably do a terrible job. It was because I did not feel that it was my place to discourage him. I was there to give

I could start by saying, "We all have that favorite battleship..." but that'd be a lie. I know plenty of people that can't stand the things. Besides, what is a favorite thing in Eve? For me, many of my favorite things are nothing but my appreciate of the way they look. For others, its all about stats. But this is about my weird tastes. The other day I discussed my liquidation efforts. They are going quite well. I'm narrowing down on just cleaning out items that I don't plan to ever use. I've also started decreasing what I have. I don't need 100 gyrostablizers. If I need more then the 30 I kept, I will get them. But, then I have things like my Bhaalgorn. It has no special story. Snuffbox created a Bhaalgorn doctrine and I greedily purchased one. I've never assembled it. I've never fi it. I'm not attached to it. I'm more excited to have it just to have it because I think its pretty. I've always found Bhaalgorn's stunning.

Today, CCP announced the tickets are opened for the Eve Vegas Pub Crawl . The Pub Crawl is one of those things that seems to change and mutate each year. The general idea is that people wander from bar to bar consuming some set number of drinks and socialize some how. I've attended this once for Eve Vegas 2013. It was different but I was bored, lonely, and my shoe broke so I got a cab and went home early. I didn't participate in 2014. Now, its 2015 and I had no intention of participating until the News Article today about the Pub Crawl. They are more having an open bar party down town at an arcade bar type thing. It will be exclusive to Eve Players for a three hour period with an open bar that looks like it will have juice and soda, not just alcohol. On one hand it is kind of like paying for an exclusive drinking party of Eve players. On the other hand, its an organized social time and that went very well last year and I had a lot of good CSM discussions with people. Unli

I've been selling off stuff. For a long time I prided myself in always being prepared for fleets. I'd have at least two and often three ships for popular doctrines. For uncommon ones, I was comfortable with one. After all, if I fight went down I'd probably not have time to refit and come back. If I did, it would be in a support ship. My endless supply of those spoke to what my tastes were. And what were my tastes? My assault frigates and interceptors had been supplemented by a company of Cynabal and Vagabonds. I even had my dakka dakka Talos for those DPS calls because I wasn't into battleships. I was yelled at a few times for responding to calls for help in a Talos instead of a battleship but I kept it up because even though it has steps on its forehead, its a fine looking machine and it was agile enough that I didn't mind it much. Closing in lobbing null at something was always a lot of fun. I got battleships for fleets. My first battleship disaster as a mont

Tuesday is the first part of the July release. The patch notes , as always, should be read.There is a new ship, some new modules, and some changes. A few days ago I was wistfully asked if we'd see T2 SKINs and more skins. Yes says the patch notes. We often discuss skins, weigh in on colors and encourage large amounts of exotic and interesting skins to let a player personalize their stable. The wormhole spawn changes are coming in late. This has spawned from usage of wormholes to mitigate distances which is one of the most intricate and interesting uses of wormhole space. We even have corporations such as Signal Cartel dedicated to ease of access for general use. Power projection then becomes too easy/common/simple/accessible pick your theory. While this hits null sec spawning holes it also ripples back on the wormholers in general. They to use these exits and entrances. Plus, what will the change do for the rest of their exits? I am quite worried about untended side effects.

Yesterday, I opened up my Minecraft server to a few interested souls who'd like a quiet, casual place to build random things. Today, I was at work and in the course of a discussion had someone say that it is unnatural for someone to want to spend all of their free time on the computer. I don't fit many societal roles and I am okay with that. I don't feel a desire to fit in. I'd like to be accepted for who I am. That often drives me. But I'm not interested in giving up the things I enjoy, want to do, and find fascinating to fit into the group. I'm okay with being an outcast. I'm also not ashamed of what I do. I'm not ashamed of my gaming. I'm not embarrassed that I've met most of my friends on the internet. I still roll my eyes when people say that it is strange to meet people off the internet. Understand, I met my husband on the internet twelve years ago and I'm still pretty fond of him so I'm a bit opinionated in that direction. In O

I Minecraft on and off. It is something that I can do when I am doing other things in Eve, often reading. I have several large projects in Minecraft that simply require mining and not a lot of attention but a lot of time. Often times I play as I write because I find it mentally soothing enough that I can process things that I want to say. I can also check my stress level by how creative I feel at any given time. World map. At the moment I am building random structures that I am slowly linking into a greater complex. I have no idea what it will evolve into. Others make neatly planned out beautiful things. I have a habit of making everything asymmetrical and build organically as my fancy calls to me. Anyway, I like Minecraft. My server's been humming along in a vanilla version of the latest thing. I realized that it has been a while since I really commented on Minecrafting. Back then I had a few people interested but I was keeping things pretty close because of the crop. The

I made Vov an offer. He turned me down. It was a simple enough thing. He is sprawled atop a stack of Cynabal blueprints and hates to go through the process of building and liquidating. I don't mind the process of creating and selling. I offered to buy his recliner of blueprints but he has decided to lay upon his hoard for now. The value of stuff in Eve is one that has often caught my attention. I am an ISK lover. My wallet balance soothes my soul and my asset balance leaves me with a different type of comfort. Assets do not always go up, such as the story of pirate battleships. ISK stays the same and inflation and such changes its value some. When I started a PLEX was above 400 million ISK and wobbled around five hundred million. Now it is firmly entrenched at the bottom of nine. Eve is full of conversion processes. Moon goo has a value for instance but that value is often better spent reacting it into fancier products to build tech two ships. I've always been excited to fi

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is one of my favorite games. I've not played it in years but it is one of the few games I purchased and played from start to finish. It is early world open sandbox puzzle. The story lets you wander freely and you open more area as you continue on. You have to figure things out and remember what to do through a complex map. I learned that there were often secrets hidden in places that you assumed that you would die and I would often leap off of cliff faces because finding them was exciting. My husband would ask why I was leaping off of cliffs and I would tell him as I spied an intriguing ledge invisible to the safe area above. I've started to wonder where that player went. When did I become worried about trying things? Where did my boldness go? Who was I now that I held myself so close to caution for fear of repercussions? It is an unpleasant question to ask oneself. Often, we are far down a road before we realize that we are on it. And like