On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who've been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has your gaming style evolved through the years or months since you've started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance - say manufacturing. Let's hear your story!
Let's say this - I don't roleplay in EVE. I did the roleplaying thing - I still have a set of the original paperback Dungeons & Dragons manuals in a box in my office. I play a harder, more aggressive version of myself in EVE, so RP isn't hard and isn't part of what I want to do. I respect those that do, and occasionally I'll dabble with it for enterainment, but it's not my style anymore.
I started playing EVE with the release of Trinity, in December 2007. I hadn't played games seriously in about 7 years, since I retired my old Windows 98 machine in 2008. I have had computers and consoles from Pong to XBox 360, but I have been a Mac guy for over 14 years. I was in the original beta test for Everquest on the Mac, and that really soured the flavor of modern MMOs for me. When Trinity came out, and I could play it on my beefy Mac Pro workstation, I thought I could finally get into EVE, a game I had read about for years. I was a part time dabbler in MegaWars back in the day, and space combat/MMO had a soft spot in my heart. EVE allowed me to re-enter that world in 2007. I am still driving my first character, and the distribution of skillpoints shows that fact. As I have about 35 million SP at the time, it would seem like I could be a PvP king, or an Industrial Baron, or a Trade Tycoon. Because of the winding road that is EVE, I am more a jack of all trades, master of none.
I flew my trusty Velator through the (then rudimentary) training sessions, and took it mining in the 1.0 system I started in. There were no rats in the belts up there, but back then the world was less crowded, and I often had little company mining Veldspar with the Civilian Mining Laser I got for free. Life was simple, I'd run Level 1 missions (and get lost every few missions, not mapping my way through the region I spawned in) or mine Veldspar, dreaming of ruling an empire in EVE, but having no idea how to start. After meeting the CCP promotions group at MacWorld 2008 (and coming home with an EVE: Concord T-Shirt) I realized I didn't really pay attention to the game I was paying to play. It was then I learned there was a skill-based system, and I needed to buy and train skills to fly other ships and items. Yes - I played EVE for almost two full months and never trained a skill. I flew a Velator through Level 1 missions (that was hard, by the way) and mined Veldspar and sold the raw stone on the local market. Then I started training skills, and got into a Navitas and Tristan. I flew nothing but those ships (and Level 1 missions) for another 3 months until my daughter was born in RL.
As with everyone in that position, my game time became a stolen moment here and there, so I trained up to a Retriever and strip miners, and became a full-time miner. Funny enough, after having run (literally) hundreds of L1 missions for Astral Mining, I had great refine rates with them, and made enough money to buy and fly a cruiser. I still ran missions, but had discovered that there were more levels of missions, and L2 missions were awfully hard to fly solo in a Rocket/Blaster Tristan, so I fit up my first Thorax with Dual 150mm Railguns and succeeded in completing L2 missions with ease, when I had more than a baby's nap to play (nap time = mining time). I took all of May 2008 to train both tiers of Learning skills to V, but never used more than +1 implants (since that's all you get in L1 missions). Funny enough, I tried out almost every module dropped in my missions, and learned how to use things that were useless in missions. I looted, I salvaged, but I never sold modules with names on them - they just didn't seem to have good price offers on the market compared to the Meta 0 items.
I introduced two co-workers to EVE that spring, one of them (Crescendar) turned into a PvP whore - and was the first person to call me a carebear to my face. It was insulting, no matter how true. At that point I'd lost two destroyers to pirates in Losec - and a mining cruiser to a corp with (what I know now) was an NBSI policy in their losec home. I hemmed and hawed, but didn't join a player corp for another year. With the Emyprian Age, I joined Faction War and ran the FW missions until I realized it was consensual PvP, and I didn't know how to fit or fight for PvP. I dropped Faction War quickly at that point, knowing it would cost me ships and isk to learn the hard way. With the release of Apocrypha, and wormholes, I became quite skilled at scanning, and hopped in and out of wormholes and anomalies in my quiet corner of the universe. I was even nice enough (early in Apocrypha days) to fleet up with folks who lost their way in wormholes and get them out into empire. That led to several invites for player corporations that I mulled over, but RL was coming up again, and a move across the country meant I wasn't going to commit to anything new in EVE for a while. I started working up through missions until I was about to do Level 4 missions for 3 different corporations, when I finally joined a PvP corp that was in Faction War.
Aurora Security has a long history in EVE, and the directors in that corp had experience in everything EVE had to offer. I saw a post from the CEO, Pierre Dumonte, in the recruiting forums, and it sounded like a good match. I evemailed him, and eventually got a convo from the industrial director at the time. They were happy to welcome me into their industrial wing, and I would work with them on POS maintenance, mining, missioning, more of the activities I'd done for the past 1.5 years in EVE. I explained I wanted to learn to PvP, and was passed to a combat director named Mr. Teu. Teu was a hardassed pilot from the U.S. southern states, and a great person to learn from. My 1.5 years in EVE had prepared me to be in fully T2 fitted T2 frigates, sometimes with better fitting skills than the experienced combat pilots in the corp. I learned how to fly a Covert Ops frigate first, then an Interceptor, then an Assault Frigate, and finally a Stealth Bomber while in A.SEC. I was in high damage and often top damage in frigate roams due to luck and my high skillpoint base.
A.SEC was filled with mostly mature pilots - people who were usually over 30 in RL, had families and other responsibilities, and knew EVE was a game, not a lifestyle. The common sense of humor and level of maturity in the group spoiled me - my first player corp was an adult experience, no kid gloves but no kid emorages either. Like many 0.0 corps, we bounced around a couple alliances where I met, flew with and learned from other great pilots. I will always be a member of A.SEC at heart, but when RL for a lot of pilots caused a significant change in the direction of the corp, I went where I was enjoying EVE the most - 0.0 PvP.
My current corp (and alliance) has a solid base in 0.0 PvP, and I continue to learn with them, now more about the medium sized ships (HACs, HICs and BCs). I can (like any decent 0.0 pilot) fit all the way up to a Sniper BS, but I don't like the battleship - too damn slow to align, target, and warp compared to a frigate, or even a HAC.
My history in EVE: Miner, Mission Runner, small-time Trader and now PvP pilot sounds like a lot of others who have wandered the spacelanes, and have found that combat against other people is truly the heart of this game.
Participants:
- CrazyKinux's Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces
- StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.
- A Carebear's Journeu: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth
- The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE
- A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator
- Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation
- The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow
- Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination
- I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?
- Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me
- EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time
- Roc's Ramblings: Things Change
- Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards
- EVE On Real Life: Haven't you grown up yet?
- The Fang: The path of the ninja
- EVEOGANDA: Whoops Apocalypse!
- EVE SOB: Learning to swim
- The Life of a Dead Jester: My Time with EVE
- Personal Files, Ciarente Roth: Personal Diary 18.6.112
- Learning to Fly: Change is Good
- Depths Unknown: Falling With Style
- Morphisat’s Blog: Jack of all trades
- Sarnelbinora's Blog: Thoughts of EVE
- More as they get published...
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