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.

The Rifter Story

This is my entry to the Inspired By Images Of Eve Competition 3. More details and links to all entrants can be found at Starfleet Comms.

This isn't really about a Rifter. It's a about a same-account alt who, naturally, doesn't realize that she's a same account alt. Based on a true story.

The Rifter Story

It was a Rifter that killed my Badger.

I can’t say it was unexpected. Nourbal is the first stop on my planetary materials collection route for a reason. It’s the one low sec system where I’m working a planet, so starting there minimizes the potential loss. It was still a shock at the time, since I’d been making my run every few days for close to a year without incident, and definitely a bit frustrating.

I think I need to back up a few steps for my groundside audience and explain that not all capsuleers are equal. In theory, maybe, and there’s that long list of things any of us can do that other people can’t. Potential  isn't always realized. In my case…let’s just say I wasn’t at the top of my class to begin with and I didn’t exactly set the galaxy on fire with my initial missions. After that, I spent some time relaying prices and got podded a few times scouting gates for people. Eventually I landed a gig handling planetary production for a small time mining and ship building concern in Khanid. Nothing too demanding, I just had to adjust extractor positions and reset timers once a day and then collect the output a couple of times a week. I got a fancy title and some space time, but basically I was office help. A step up from waiting tables at Jita 4-4, but not much of one.

The reason this matters to my story is that my job didn’t come with much of a training budget. I got the skills I had to have to fly my hauler and manage my planets, but that was about it for over a year. I’ve got to tell you, there’s nothing more aggravating than having your boss explain that he can’t spare the resources to give you any training time right before he impulse buys a fancy new Tech 2 ship and the skills to fly it. When I did get to do some training, it was just so I could run copy jobs at the corporate research starbase. Like I said, the office girl.

Which brings us back to my poor Badger. I got the ship as soon as I had the skills to fly it and before I’d really trained any of the skills to actually fit it. I did have a chance to learn some basic shield tanking and navigation, but somehow the boss never remembered to pass along any modules once I did have the skills. So when this Rifter showed up at the customs shed while I was doing my business there wasn’t much I could do.

Nourbal’s a fairly quiet system. Just the one gate, no stations. I sometimes see cyno fields active there but most of the traffic seems to be explorers and casual belt patrols. A lot of the time I’m the only one in the local comm channel. Still, it’s low sec so I’d worked out a minimum time routine for handling my one low sec planet early on. Jump in, warp to the customs office, have the goods sent up from the planet while in warp, transfer then to my cargo as soon as I was in range, and then warp back to the gate with my autopilot set to jump immediately.

It was just an ordinary day. I jumped in and saw one other pilot in local. Warped to the customs office as usual, made the transfers. As I moved the stuff into cargo, I saw a ship appear on my overview and instantly turn red.  I tried warping out, but the Rifter warp scrambled me before I could align and opened fire. My shields started to fail. Slowly. I had time to look up the pilot in the Concord database. From her age, it was quite possible she was even less skilled than I was. For a moment, I thought the Badger might be able to tank him even without any modules fitted, but no such luck. There was no way I was going to outrun her either. It was clear I wasn’t going to be getting out of this intact, but it wasn’t going to be over all that soon either. I thought about it. She was a young Amarr, flying a Minmatar frigate. It was highly unlikely that she could pilot a Caldari industrial. With that in mind, when she finally got me into armor, I ejected and warped my capsule to the gate. As I flew off, I broadcast a message that I was bored because she was taking so long to kill my ship. She responded with a frowning face and a promise to do better next time.

Once I was back in the relative safety of Keberz I reported in. The boss sent me off to Agil to buy a new Badger. He contracted me a couple of warp core stabilizers and the makings of a modest buffer tank. Told me to work on my situational awareness and that he’d see about getting me trained to fit shield resistance amplifiers “soon.”

I really need to find a new job.

Not all PvP involves guns

I wrote this short story a while back in response to CCP's I Was There trailer for EVE Online. I thought about doing something with it for their Eve Is Real contest, but video production is a skill set I don't have and don't have time to acquire.

Market Battle

We’d gotten word that a new alliance was getting ready to move into null sec, and that they were planning to use our home station as a jumping off point. It was an opportunity no small industrial corporation could afford to pass up.

We threw everything we had into getting ready. The station’s factories ran non-stop as we drew down our mineral reserves to build what we thought they’d need, and then hit the belts to mine more ore to feed the machines. If we weren’t mining, we were off on quick trading expeditions, selling off the few things we had extra to buy what we couldn’t mine, and the more esoteric goods we couldn’t just build.

We got the station’s market stocked just before the main body arrived. Initial sales were good. We’d picked the right lines to concentrate on. But we knew we couldn’t stop now.

My partner took off for Jita in her Badger to pick up more supplies. I got back in my Hulk and headed for one of the few nearby belts we hadn’t already stripped.

I had a new recruit with me. He has too green to be able to fly any kind of barge, or even an Itty Five. But he could fly a Mark Four, and that was enough to keep up with as long as he didn’t waste too much time in port.

We’d been at it for a couple of hours when he came back from the station with horrible news. An outsider had brought in a freighter full of modules and small ships and he was undercutting our most profitable lines. It was our nightmare scenario.

I couldn’t afford to stop mining. Our mineral stocks were already dangerously low. I was going to have to check all our open sale orders against the market and adjust the prices where we’d been underbid. All while continuing to creep through the belt and keeping my mining lasers running.

The kid couldn’t help. Even if he’d had the roles to modify corporate market orders, he didn’t have the skills to do it without sitting in station and I needed him to keep hauling. If he didn’t I’d be getting can flipped by bored pilots in ships we’d just sold them. A few of them had already been eyeballing me.

It took over an hour to run through our order list. When I was done, I started a second pass just to be safe. It soon became clear that our rival was still in the area. He’d matched my price cuts with his own. I was forced to make further cuts.

The price war waged for hours. I’d make a 0.01 ISK move match it. We mainly battled over the faster selling lines, but I couldn’t afford to let my other orders go unwatched. I was watching our profits get eaten up by broker fees, but I couldn’t give up the fight. If we didn’t get those sales we’d have a hard time paying the rent on our offices.

Finally the enemy cracked. An hour passed without a price change, then two. I relaxed a bit, but I knew I’d have to stay vigilant. He could come back any time to resume the fight.