Immersed

"EVE Online is renowned for it's depth. Its backstory, gameplay and social aspects are all qualities that draw players in. What does immersion in EVE Online mean to you?"

Having spent so much time in TEST and Goon fleets, my idea of immersion with EVE is certainly warped.  I fully expect constant crazy links, bad trolls, and frontal assaults on local as part of any PVP activity.

I am one of the many multi account players who had to turn off Incarna to preserve performance, so my immersion is not related to identifying with a space Barbie or finding just the right pair of $75 virtual shoes.

For me, the reason I still play EVE is twofold.  Mainly, it is because I enjoy online hanging out with my corp.  Specifically, I enjoy the flow experience of PVP, from small gang to epic fleets.  When I am in the middle of a confrontation, my focus sharpens and I am in the zone monitoring the FC, yellow boxes, distance, tracking, asking for reps, and all the other battle minutia.  This mass PVP experience is so far not available in other games.  (Planetside 2 might really bring it.)  I greatly enjoy this intoxicating experience until I get distracted and my ship is exploded because of some silly mistake, or occasionally just bad luck.  Lag, of course, explains the vast majority of my losses.  When Time Dilation hits, I will hopefully develop a new excuse!

The side effect of playing multiple accounts is that you lose the identification with the individual characters.  The pilots exist only as vehicles to deliver an experience.  That experience is shooting at other ships.  The rest of the game is (fairly lame) filler that I have to slog through to keep ships fit and occasionally try to force myself to make some ISK so I can afford to fly and lose expensive ships.  I definitely never find PVE immersive, though I hear that incursions are a bit better in this regard.

I think for others like myself that play for PVP, CCP really hurt our feelings by dishing out Tyrannis and Incarna, while severely nerfing our ability to quickly farm up ISK in anomalies.  At this point I do not believe in CCP anymore, but they have me hanging around while I wait for something better to come along.  My sincere hope is that CCP can re-capture the vision before they destroy the game I have enjoyed for years.

Breaking news!

TEST and many members of the Clusterfuck Coalition are re-setting the NC. This should be great fun, most pilots agree there was too much NAP in 0.0 lately.

I think having the NC leave us blueballed with no communication over and over again when we tried to help them out in defense played a HUGE role in this decision. Having a huge fleet sit on a Titan ready to bridge for hours on multiple days without ever coordinating an attack is a lame way to treat your friends.

We will now get to shoot (ex-)Blues!

Happy Birthday, CCP!

Here's to the next 8 years of excellence interspersed with fail that is still better than any other game out there.

Nano gangs will enjoy the Quafe Zero, though it won't last long. Good thing I have a Vagabond ready to go!

Real life has been distracting and RMT mafia attacks on EVE News 24 have blocked my vicarious enjoyment of EVE drama. I think it will soon be time to jump back into things. My cap alt is only a week from crosstraining into a Revelation. Lazerz rock!

Fair is fair

In all fairness, after my last scathing complain-post, this does look pretty amazing:

Greyscale or Numskull?

CCP has smartly managed to reverse any positivity that might have been created by Fanfest by announcing CCP Greyscale's plan to ruin anomalies in huge tracts of nullsec so that there will be "more reasons to fight." Instead of the obvious path of boosting the better systems while leaving the current as baseline, CCP has decided to slash huge tracts of nullsec. They want to slice anomalies out of Providence and Cloud Ring, as well as many other regions. These examples are two regions with HUGE turnovers in occupation and serious war history since Dominion. The proposed reason for CCP's changes do not hold water.

This nerf, combined with the other recent anti-null sec rumblings from CCP have me very sad about the game. They somehow want us to play space barbie instead of shooting each other's spaceships. I have no problem with someone else playing space barbie all they want, but that is not why I log into EVE.

The proof will be in the end result. I think CCP realizes that the casual space barbie crowd will add subscriptions and make them more money. They are abandoning the soul of EVE, which is PVP. I could ramble on, but you can check the first few pages of the threadnaught for a good collection of reasons why a huge majority of us nullsec denizens hate this newest terrible move. (This probably was endorsed by the "excellent" current CSM who have already demonstrated their understanding and appreciation of nullsec life and PVP so clearly.)

I may sound mad, but I'm really not terribly upset because I have consulted the Oracle. She has given me a Black Prophecy about a Perpetuum of Knights from an Old Republic that exists a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Help us sensible Devs, you are our only hope.

Pandemic Contagion

Some of Pandemic Legion's spai alts have been published. If you are in a PVP corp, it would be worth checking the list to see if you have been infiltrated.

Here's a thread with more details and drama.

I am sure it will only take PL a few months to replicate their infiltration, but for the next few weeks they may have to engage on more uncertain terms.

Don't forget to vote for CSM! I am hoping to see more 0.0 representation in the next cycle, and voted correspondingly. TEST has endorsed White Tree. Goons are officially backing The Mittani and Vile Rat.

It looks like nullsec representation is good in candidates, but we will see if the voting blocks are successful at overpowering the uncoordinated masses. If you don't vote, you can't complain when the NC/CF gets all the seats and pushes onward to universal blue status with NAPS in every dimension and soul crushing carebear stares from every POS.

CSM spins around again.

CSM is back again. Between White Tree and The Mittani himself, I am delighted at the excellent choices. Here is a promo video of General Windypops railing against the NC in his CSM ticket entry:



A fun CSM quote from EVEDreddit:

This is how the CSM works:

Winners of a popularity contest get free holiday in Iceland.

These people who have no understanding of software development or running a business speak with devs, demand that everything wrong with the game be fixed immediately.

CCP nods, smiles, gives murmurs of encouragement and waves them goodbye.

CCP then tout the CSM as an example of their responsiveness and transparency with the playerbase, before going back to do whatever it was they were going to do anyway.

Repeat.

CSM Drama - Millimeters

Winning a spot on the CSM and then rage-quitting because CCP didn't bend over for you in the way your fantasy played out is so lame it is hard to imagine.

If the CSM burned you out, the proper thing to do in respecting those who voted you in is to fade away without drama. Being narcissistic and whiney is beyond tacky, it is offensive to the people who voted you in.

So, to Teabagger, or Teaparty, or whatever your lame self answers to: good riddance.

I am glad Xystance will be a lot more fun for the next CSM. The depths of my anger at this situation can be measured in millimeters. My anticipation at TEST representing on the CSM can be measured in Trollimeters!

Clearing the path to prosperity.

(Thanks, Magni Farbauti, for the lovely image!)

Fountain!

Thanks Tez for making yet another awesome video!

Test is pushing into Fountain!

IT crumbling?

The cloakers in our systems in Fountain have assured me that we will soon be swept aside by a tidal wave of clowns. Imagine my surprise when I saw this!

It appears that IT may be selling off SOV in their impenetrable fortress Delve. While this may not be true (It hasn't even hit EVEnews24, the beacon of fair and balanced truth.), there was a story about IT losing moons due to inability to mount any defense today.

Having experienced the Atlas failcascade firsthand, I shouldn't be surprised that IT is so terrible. I can't help being shocked, though. IT was supposedly the biggest and most potent force in EVE. This has been conventional wisdom the entire time I have played the game, though IT was BoB back then. To see that the emperor has no clothes, and no defense ops, has been disappointing.

We needed Fountain more than IT, and we will put the space to good use for our pilots. Seeing another inflated SOV holder losing space that they didn't efficiently use is a very good sign. Why did IT need to hold 4 regions? They didn't. If they sell off Delve sov, they will now hold none, as Querious and Period Basis are also under assault with minimal defense by IT.

ELITE PVP!

I am elite PVP. For proof, you must hear my story of clown domination.

First, I have helped shoot four IT or pet stations in Fountain with my Mael, claiming them for the CF cause.

Secondly, I multibox with my carrier at the same time to whore killmails.

Yesterday, I was shooting a POS tower in Fountain with my main in a Mael and my alt in a carrier.

The red non-elite ClownHAC gang swept into the system. I panicked, and focused on getting my carrier to safety.

While this was going on, I absent-mindedly warped my Mael to the station to dock. I landed in a hostile bubble. With aggression! (I couldn't have docked no matter what because of the aggression timer...)

My Mael was sacrificed on the altar of fail. I felt it was fitting that my elite PVP prowess would be demonstrated by such a glowingly successful alliance as IT.

From the clown trolls in local, my act of fail has invigorated IT to such a frenzy that they will now sweep through Fountain and rout us back to Osmoden. I apologize to my great brethren in TEST and the CF for altering the course of our noble war due to my lack of attention to my poor battle-scarred Maelstrom!

TEST Diplo Map leaked!

/OpSec/

Get a backbone!

Here's a shout out to the awesome pilots who are working hard to build ships, fuel POS', ship capital fuel to the battlefront, and move ammo for the rest of us to shoot at clowns!

We are working hard to liberate a homeland for our intrepid industrialists to set up a hive of activity that will carry us forward to some future insanely funny fail!

Fountain Progress

TEST is pushing hard in Fountain. We are now showing on the map in Fountain:



Unless IT steps up their defense, I think we will see major sov changes over the next few weeks in Fountain. We are very happy to have taken the Chimera constellation to get things started. With 4 stations in Cluster control, it would be very hard for IT to kick us out of Fountain with US timers. We have consistently dominated in every timezone, and IT has tried both EURO and DT.

Next stop:


Lastly, Sir Molle was captured in a discussion with a PL diplo:

6VDT Station taken by TEST

We successfully claimed the 6VDT station. IT didn't try to fight us.

In 8 hours, the system will be taken if IT cannot bust our TCU protection squad.

Morale is high, momentum is building.

IT gets saved by CCP

We had several IT Titans and Supercaps bubbled before downtime this AM. Strangely, many of the bubbles around only the IT supercaps, but not the station or other POS that we had caged, disappeared when the servers came back up allowing the Titans to jump out.

This was very very suspicious because we can't figure out why IT Titan pilots would even think to log into a known caged POS immediately after downtown with cynos ready since the stations should have been bubbled and jumps impossible to execute. This appears to be an inside job, I hope CCP internal affairs will investigate what happened in this case. If it is just a bug, it is a huge stretch that it only affected bubbles anchored around IT supercaps.

We are working very hard to lock-down IT's main system in Fountain, and letting those Titans get away because of either foul play by CCP employees or a bug is frustrating. Camping a system 24/7 isn't easy and we don't appreciate losing those Titan kills because the bubbles we anchored disappeared. We had scouts on the bubbles up until downtime, so there is no way an IT spy was able to offline them before the server went down.

Despite this setback, we are achieving our objective of holding the system. The final battle for the 6VDT station is this weekend. IT has hired Pandemic Legion, so we are expecting a massive hardcore fight! (From PL, IT seems to be out of steam.)

Clown Lockdown

This is how a null sec station looks when things get very serious. We have camped IT into their staging station, and the plan is to keep up 24/7 blockade until we own the station and system.

The Fountain war has been on for weeks now, with IT successfully halting our initial push but unable to take back their two lost stations. Setting up timers for downtime was a good strategy against the US heavy CF coalition. The brilliance of scheduling a secret massive op starting during the State of the Goonion address was a great move. We have managed to kill IT's attempts to break out of their station so far. While nothing is certain until we own the station, I am very happy that our tacticians came up with this plan.

Blockading a system like this is very good for participation. It is so easy to log out at a POS and then log back in and jump into the fleet at a moment's notice. There is no lag time finding a fleet, looking for a fight, etc. In this case, if IT doesn't bring a fight, we win their staging system. If they do bring it, we get to see who will win in a full on head to head battle. It ain't over till the fat lady loses her station.

Xystance loves IT

A heartfelt message from Xystance, TEST ex-military director and CSM hopeful, to IT.

Catching the boomerang

The proceedings in Catch provide hope that the Stain/Curse/-A- juggernaut may decide to put some pressure on IT after mopping up Catch. If IT is forced to fight on 2 fronts, we will likely see the war in Fountain shift into overdrive.

I am interested to see if -A- decide to keep pressing Init. completely out of nullsec. I doubt -A- want to control Immensea and Teneferis, but they may have allies looking for more space. Initiative is certainly not providing IT with support in Fountain at this point. I think -A-'s strategy of falling back and then hitting hard after revitalization has payed off well. I am really interested in how -A- views IT's assistance in taking over Catch several months ago. Payback can be a bitch.

Gratz CCP!

Best wishes to CCP at taking best MMO for a second year in a row. While we pressure them to work harder and focus on more excellence, CCP is still clearly cranking out the best virtual world/spreadsheet on Earth right now.

Here's to many more years of iteration and inspiration!

The Eye Strengthens

With the Goons' new station in B-DBYQ, the Eye of Terror grows even stronger. Placing a Gallente outpost was a smart move, as it allows many corps to set up offices there, easing the logistics of major war. Making it easy for pilots to gather on the edge of Fountain is the obvious culmination of the infamous Eye of Terror. Can a strengthening hold on western Fountain translate into further gains by Dek Co?

Fountain remains contested space, this weekend will show which way the locus of control is shifting. This war has now lasted months and time will show who wants Fountain more.

IT gets back in the game. [NSFW]

IT has indicated that they are back in the fight. The cloud ring assault led by the mole didn't materialize, but we are looking forward to many fights this weekend stimulated by our reinforcement-o-rama today.

In order to show my fair and balanced perspective, here is some fun IT propaganda:

Here's to the good fights and great ganks, endless trolling, and entertaining sandbox drama!

Unicorn manifest destiny = best destiny.

TEST Strategic plan leaked!

Thanks to Galtiner of [.MIA] for the image!

For the Pets

The big IT counteroffensive fizzled out today, we are reduced to shooting more IT infrastructure in Fountain. Hopefully, we will get some fight tomorrow!

Fountain Update

IT keeps dropping SBUs. We keep happily shooting them, tabulating the ISK they are wasting in the process, which is substantial. If we can take the station in 9R4-EJ, the Deklein coalition will be in control of the eastern 30% of Fountain. With luck, IT will spam SBUs in that system as well, giving us more easy killmails.

We haven't seen the IT Supercaps much, likely because the NC has had cap fleets organized to fight Pandemic Legion who could happily be diverted with a few jumps to kill IT capitals. BFF!

In addition to threatening to attack Goons at Fanfest in the flesh (classy move, IT), IT coms are full of complaints that they are fighting "ALL of EVE!!!" We are certainly glad that IT is fighting ALL of us.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to All of EVE from TEST!

Thanks to all for the good fights and the great ganks!

May your 2011 be filled with production, riches, and frequent and giant explosions.