Revisiting Azeroth: Day One

I'm at one of those dull points that comes up sometimes in Eve. Both my main characters are working on long skills that will open things up but don't provide any immediate excitement. I don't particularly feel like mining, even with mineral prices up to the point where it's kind of worthwhile. Grinding missions is even less appealing. I've been working on my Caldari Navy standings to get a better brokerage rate at Jita, and the agent I'm using isn't all that close to home. It's only worth going there if I'm going to grind all night. Hulkageddon would add some interest (what is a 5.0 security status for, if not to indulge in some suicide ganking), but Helicity seems to have disappeared. I've actually thought about getting into RvB, but my only combat capable character is Resivan. Since he's also my main researcher and builder, changing corps would really mess up my isk production.

It's been about a year since I quit playing World of Warcraft, and I've had one of the reactivation offers Blizzard sends out periodically burning a hole in my pocket. My tower is fueled and it won't hurt for my market orders to go untended for a little while. Logging in once a day to watch for wardecs, keep my lab queues full and reset my PI extractors won't take much time. All in all, this is a good time to see what's been happening in Azeroth.

My old guild is long gone. From what I can see in the Armory, only three of the people I used to play with are still around and they're all in a progression guild. If I was going to hang around for more than a week, then looking for a new guild would be a top priority. Since I don't plan to, Dizziet can live without a guild tag.

After I stopped playing I wiped all my WoW stuff to reclaim space. I downloaded the game client and all my favorite addons before reactivating. When I logged on, the first thing I need to do is build a UI. Next up was seeing what my gear options were. My shadow priest was in decent pre-raid gear when I quit, but that was a year ago. My maxed out Justice points bought me a Tier 12 chest and gloves; a cape and bracers were available on the market. With the new gear I could have queued for any dungeon, but since all my recent combat experience has involved railguns and drones I thought it would be a good idea to refresh my memory of how to shadow priest first.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing the pre-Zul'Gurub quest chain and the Firelands opening quests. The quests in Stranglethorn were a little tedious, especially tracking the panther, but they gave me a chance to relearn my rotation and field test the UI. I doubt that I'll bother doing the Firelands dailies, since it takes a month to open up all the vendors and I've only got a week. What I saw of their difficulty level was good. It's a target rich environment and the mobs take a bit of effort to kill, but because they default to attacking the NPCs you don't get swarmed.

That was enough for one day. Next, I plan to read up on the Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman 5-mans and give those a try.

The Little Stories

Back in September of last year, before CCP announced it's renewed commitment to Eve and spaceships, there was a thread on Failheap that sought to look at what made Eve worth playing despite CCP's failings. One comment by Killfalcon stuck with me:

When you go to Ogrimmar, the Zeppelin overhead is coded in. The shop keepers are scripts, and not even smart ones.

When you go to Jita, you sell to humans, you buy from humans, you are scammed by humans. There's a player flying that mile-long cargoship currently esclipsing the sun, and for that matter the other 17 giant fucking scifi transports dotted around your screen. 

It looks like something out of Babylon 5 or a Star Wars 'crowd shot', but none of it is staged. Everyone is there for their own reasons, and you might never know what it is.

I've been the player flying one of those freighters.

I play Eve because I like building things. I grind missions for the standings, do exploration when I'm in the mood, and sometimes I even mine. But most of my playing time is spent buying and moving ore, refining it, building things with the resulting minerals, and selling them. It's not the most exciting game in the world, and I'm usually playing while watching TV and browsing the web. Still, I find it satisfying.

Sometimes, I look at my transaction log and see the shadows of other players stories. This one bought five Herons and five T1 webs, no doubt to fit out cheap tacklers. That one bought four each of five different frigates. Is he stockpiling for himself or shopping for corpmates? Over the space of a minute, three players from the same corp each buy a Rifter. Are they planning a roam or a duel? This player bought a Bestower, then an hour later a Thorax with a point and web. Did he come back to fit out a new combat ship because he was done with his errand? Or because his hauler got ganked and he wanted revenge?

I'll never know the answer to those questions and to be honest I don't really care. My interaction with those players is limited to the market, but the interaction is still real.

It wouldn't matter much if I were to stop keeping the Agil market stocked with small ships. Prices might be a touch higher with one less player in the undercutting game, but my competitors would make the sales instead or, at worst, my customers might have to buy in Jita or Amarr. I enjoy my chosen role in Eve's economy, and by playing it I contribute to my fellow players enjoyment.