That wasn't too bad for the time. In RL I had just become a dad, and my wife and daughter occupied most of my attention. A few months later though, I had introduced a couple of co-workers to EVE and they were already in a player corp, raking up kills and flying ships bigger than I did. I was accused of being a carebear, and it was true. I hemmed and hawed about joining a player corp, but just never found the right group, or came up with a new excuse why I needed to play alone in this game where at any given time almost 30 thousand other people were in the same universe. Then came expansion after expansion, and I still ran L1 missions in my destroyer, not looking at the bigger picture. I could hop in and out of game in short time that way, even though I never made a lot of isk, and I never got a bigger ship. I kept skilling up though, dabbling here and there, today a mission runner in a T1-fit Tristan, tomorrow mining in a Navitas. Slowly I trained skills for bigger ships and better items, which really paid off once I woke up and joined into EVE Online - the real game.
I played alone until the release of Apocrypha, when I immediately jumped on the scanning bandwagon and was in a wormhole within the first 24 hours, with acceptable scanning skills. I ran into a gang of pirates in that wormhole, and they were stuck, lost and needed help to get out. We chatted, I scanned them down an exit wormhole, they invited me to their corp but I wasn't ready to play with others, I was still a loner at heart. I started blogging with a contest promoted by CCP and a new EVE-bloggers website, which went great for all of 2 months until the guy hosting the website lost everything I'd written. I started up again, but was depressed at the loss of my work, and I stopped writing. It was appropriate, then that the site shut down shortly thereafter.
My life in EVE went on, I could fly mean, T2 fit battlecruisers in my missions, I could mine in various Exhumers, even fly Iteron IVs and had recently skilled to fit and fly an interceptor. But I was slowly burning out, a lone candle in the depths of space, with no-one to share the experience with. I was the ultimate failure of EVE, almost two years into the game and I had played alone the entire time, and was on the verge of quitting. That was July, 2009.
This blog is my third iteration, the third time I try to write about my life in EVE. Welcome to my wanderings in the darkness that is EVE Online...
"I was the ultimate failure of EVE almost two years into the game and I had played alone the entire time"
ReplyDeleteYou know this strikes me... though I'm not anywhere near quitting I'm in this exact boat now. I've been playing Eve now for just shy of two years and I've never left my newbie corporation of The University of Caille.
I've always been a bit of a loner when it comes to video games, multiplayer just hasn't ever struck me as something I needed to do. The only other real MMO I ever stuck with was Shadowbane and there I was a well respected member of one of the most powerful guilds on our server until its eventual collapse spreading our members into the wind. In EVE though I've just never had the urge to join a player corporation as much as I love the idea.
However, now two years later, I'm beginning to get restless. I'm a missioner in all respects but these days missions just don't hold the "awesome" they use to where before I could run missions all day and have a blast. I had so much fun, in fact, that I created a second account to be my "mission buddy" so I could blitz missions like a mad man. I also had a good friend who I use to run with who has since gone MIA. Now when I log on I'll run maybe one or two missions while mainly just focusing on chat and helping newbies. I've lost count of how many times I've assisted in the killing of Dagan. My alt has become a focused combat character who can fly nearly all races battlecruiser and below save Caldari. I hate Caldari. He now works on rounding out his core skills.
As a result of all this my income has dropped to nearly 0. I'm not a trader (though I made my first few million by doing so) so I cannot make ISK that way. While industry has never interested me much at all. My PI colony is bare basics producing only P2 items that I often forget to reset. R&D is looking as if it will be my main source of income though I've yet to train the exact skills.
I'm now at a point in my Eve career where I think I'm in a desperate need of a change. PvP calls to me from the depths of space yet taking that first leap is terrifying. So I roam in my AF looking for solo fights or attempting to gank miners...
I think my time as a University student is fast approaching its end...