Back from the dead

So finally the comatose antihero returns.

Indeed much has come to pass in the meantime.

Old enemies are gone, new have arisen, and even planets are now being harvested.

Small and big alliances alike still have their moments of glory and retire or failcascade at the end, only to ressurect as something not quite something else, but still not all of the same.

Still I could follow the events unfolding, when I bothered to or needed to, but really, why would I bother.

Of course, I have checked out the odd MMO, and the even one too, in the meantime, but still none can compare to the sandbox that is EVE.

Grind NPCs, repeat, manufacture stuff, repeat, act like nothing other than a machine and do the robotic routines of the gameworld; watch your experience bar rise.

In EVE, I don't do any of that which we call carebear stuff: I kill people. PCs. Human adversaries are what online gaming has always been all about to me.

I hate "experience levels". Not in any tabletop rpg, computer rpg nor MMORPG have I been a follower of such unrealistic abstractions.

Always was a fan of skill progression and gradual development in areas of personal design, not the railroad to glory in which character classes (where "individuals" are still the same as the rest of the people in the same class) have to follow the same path for the same rewards at the same steps, and it annoys me even writing about that, so I'll stop.

Character levels was something brought along by the first generation of RPGs, and mitigated by the second generation of RPGs (like Traveller, GURPS, CoC, T2K, and so on).

I enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies immensely, until the Combat Upgrade (which dumbed down the game to 1st Gen)...

I enjoy Elder Scrolls games, with their version of levelling through skill progression.

And I fucking love EVE! Wayward as I may have been travelling throughout the realms of several other online games, they have never been able to give me that same satisfaction, that same... Je ne sais quoi.

No matter how old you are, how long you have been playing this game, a noob can kill you in the right situation. There's no "level", only the ship you fly, and the situation in which shit happens.

No need to bother with any rats (NPCs); PVP can be everything if you want it to be, and prey is everywhere.

Arkons of Myth may be no more, Imperial Republic Of the North may be gone, R E D E M P T I O N may be an abandoned pack of IT pet noobs alone from all the old guard now, but still, even though the pilots of old are now scattered across the galaxy, retired, or dead, the legacy will live on in the hearts of those who were part of it, whereever they are. And whereever the path takes me now, I am on a journey to hunt you down because you play this game.

...And if you're not blue, I'll fucking kill you. ;)

Nosec 4 Life, bitches!

Off-Topic: St. Patrick's Day

Why do we celebrate St. Patrick's, some people wonder. Who was Patrick and what made him so special? Did he invent beer?
I will not elaborate too long on this, to minimize the impact on your short attention-spans, but jump to the important parts of his story, to his impact on history thereafter, and hasty conclusions.

He was originally a Welshman called Maewyn Succat and first came to Ireland after having been enslaved by Irish raiders, in the latter part of the 5th century. Working there guarding sheep (a profession sadly lost in these modern times, to the dismay of predator conservationists), he eventually escaped and returned to Wales, years of praying thereafter resulting in visions of a man coming from Ireland, bringing letters bearing "The Voice of the Irish".

This collective voice beckoned for his return, and he finally saw Irish shores again, working as a missionary, bringing forth from Providence the Holiest of Beverages, Beer.

He created the first ever pub, and had an untraditional way of baptising new believers by drenching them in beer. He never charged for any of the beer, and he never accepted donations.

The Irish mob, seeing the potential for profit with the Holy Beverage, saw to it that Patrick was tried for his heresy by disenchanted noblemen for economic disreptancy, and by means of the trial, secured ownership of his places of worship, the Pubs.

But the Irish people, now having to pay for what they had earlier accquired freely during Patrick's sermons, never forgot the pioneering he had contributed in making them all jolly green alcoholics.

Nowadays, March 17th is both the holiday of St. Patrick, and the international day of "No excuse not to have a beer today".

The Germans, of course, not wanting to be outclassed by some islanders in being champions of drunkenness, with their own type of beer having originated in the province of Bohemia (modern-day Czech republic), decided to dedicate an entire month (October, hence Oktoberfest) to the celebration of beer, and legislated the proper manufacture of beer in the Reinheitsgebot (the beer purity law) of 1516.

Unfortunately, this prolonged drunkenness led to, in an unfortunate turn of events, that a young artist from Austria named Adolf misinterpreted the whole thing and thought the Reinheitsgebot was about races. The results are common history.

For that reason, people have been cautious about this, and the consequences thereof is that most have no problem drinking on March 17th, but feel politically incorrect in being drunk throughout October.

The Reinheitsgebot was finally invalidated in 1987, Germany wanting to avoid misunderstandings of "purity" once more letting somebody find a legal precedence for eugenics, and cause the nation total embarassment yet again.

Final thoughts

What I could never figure out was how that thing worked.

OK, so maybe I was a bit out of place on a Caldari ship, but having received this great offer, I just had to jump on the deal. All the interfaces were somewhat familiar, although slightly different, but it took me little time to get used to how everything was set up in the cockpit.

Still, that one thing really puzzled me.

Never really flew Caldari ships before, you see.

The first years of my life, well, at least as long as memory serves me, I lived in Gallente space. Then I spent some time roaming around on my own, exploring the wonders and mysteries of our known systems, before I settled down in Amarr space, where I found a good corporation to fly with.

Those days are long gone now, nosec has made my life completely different from anything I ever imagined. Finally, I could look at carebears from the outside, and had I known then what I know now about this wilderness of systems outside of empire, I would surely have come here long time ago. There is no better place to be than on the battlefields.

(But what does that mysterious Caldari thing do?)

I've slowly progressed from my feeble attempts at fitting even the cheapest of frigates to where I am today.
You could say that I'm more of a self-made man than having been guided through this. Sure, I've spent lots of time studying, and many times over have I tried, and failed, and tried, and mostly failed again. That was my learning process after my first corporation suddenly shut down, and all its members scattered to the furthest corners of the galaxy.
From that day, solitude was my companion, and a strong one, giving me the first-hand experience of things not to do. Failure is the greatest teacher they say (and he definitely taught me well).
Even the greatest of talents have their limitations though, so I finally joined a group of people who had been more than just polite in being helpful, and rather than just finding new corpmates, I found friends I could rely on to have my back when I needed it. It was the start of years of commitment to a great corporate entity.

The workings of the great factions have never really bothered me. I've done work for them, sure, but my loyalty has always been to my brothers in arms. Perhaps, because of all my travelling to the corners of the galaxy and back, the fact that I never put my roots down anywhere, being granted the immortality of the pod pilots and finding people who did more to support me than the Federation or any other of the great factions ever did, perhaps this was the reason I bonded so strongly to these new wingmates of mine. We have seen eachother's ships and clones go down in balls of fire to the lament of other fleetmembers, but known that even though we failed to protect one another under these circumstances, we would do our best the next time around to improve on our tactics.

Strange Caldari instrument...

My lifelong ambition has come to fruitition; I am beyond the enforcement of CONCORD, out here, we lay down the law!
Oh how I can look back at the days of my failed ship setups and laugh at why I was so easily killed and podded. There is no forgiveness out here for doing it wrong. Caution, experience, a keen sense of observation; all are necessary to survive here, where all people not allied to you are your enemy and you have to kill them quickly; for they will surely get you first if they get the drop on you.

The thing about going back to hisec, is trying to forget that caution. Being in the shit for so long, you tend to forget that people can't just attack you at random where CONCORD keeps watch, and still you move carefully, suffering small episodes of angst when neutrals and reds appear in local. For all you empire carebears, just imagine what it's like being at war, if you've ever been at war. Nosec is war neverending, and that sticks to you; makes you edgy.
It's much more comfortable out in nosec, where you can kill anybody not your friend without cops around to grief you.

This happens everytime I'm primaried and know I'm going next; when I'm positive there's nothing I can do about it. Webbed, scrambled, neuted, and a gang of gatecampers emptying their entire arsenal at you, drones swarming you like some bizarre cloud of satellites in orbit around you; your whole life passes through your mind in a heartbeat.
Of course, soon I will wake up in a new clone, fresh out of the bank and ready to get my payback on, unless there is some hidden secret to these Caldari ships that I just started flying.

... Like this button I don't comprehend on the Rokh interface... maybe it makes the Rokh really rock? Can I turn the tide of battle even at this point?

I activate it...

Oh crap.

So that's what the Caldari eject button looks like.