The Past Through Tomorrow

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

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 you 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!

. . .

Erbo Evans, speaking for the Ralpha Dogs–some of whom are still sleeping peacefully in cryostasis, but not for very much longer.  The preparations are almost complete; the hardware has been upgraded; the new software is installed; the only question left is that of timing.  But I digress.

When the Ralpha Dogs were formed, it was right at the tail end of the lifespan of the Trinity expansion; Empyrean Age was released less than a week later.  Our still-fledgling corporation saw no need to get involved in Faction Warfare, especially as we weren’t experienced in PvP combat.  (We still aren’t, really.  And six months or so of enforced sabbatical, what SF fans call “fafiation,” hasn’t helped matters.)  Instead, we started out mostly with what we’d been doing for Chilled Solutions: asteroid mining and mission-running.  We branched out some into manufacturing, to have something to do with all those refined materials, and the mission-running was like mission-running always is, even if it made for some entertaining blog entries.

We eagerly anticipated Quantum Rise, as that brought us a new toy to shoot for…the Orca industrial command ship (of which we have two now).  It’s proved to be the greatest boon to mining operations since the invention of the strip-mining beam…and comes in handy for shifting assets from place to place, as we are wont to do.  And we’ve made good use of the corporate medals, too.  But neither of those really affected our play style; we just kept getting better toys.

Apocrypha brought us wormholes and W-space, about which I was dubious at first.  But we went from wanting to steer clear of them, to training up scanning skills and checking them out, to knocking off Sleeper battleships.  (At least, a few of them, here and there.)  We even seriously started to consider a “field operation” in W-space, basing out of an Orca, or perhaps even a small POS tower setup.  Funny…we wouldn’t set foot in 0.0 space, but we were planning, at least temporarily, on setting up shop in some of the most hazardous 0.0 space there is.

Sadly, it wasn’t long after Dominion was released that we suffered the biggest possible change to our play style…with no job and, at best, severely-reduced income for an indefinite future, I had no choice but to suspend our accounts and put the Ralpha Dogs “on ice.” (EVE wasn’t the only thing I had to curtail; on the Second Life side, we sacrificed just as much, if not more.)  I actually got very, very lucky, and was able to find a new job relatively quickly, but I’ve spent the months since then getting used to a new way of doing things…which, without getting into details, is more involved than you might think, and involved plenty of “catch-up.”  We’ve also invested in some much-needed hardware and software upgrades, so when we do reactivate our EVE accounts, we’ll be able to experience the worlds of New Eden like never before.

. . .

But that is all the past; to quote Steely Dan, “Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.”  What about the future, and the new possibilities Tyrannis brings to the table?

It’s apparent to me that we’re going to come back into EVE at a huge disadvantage.  We’ve missed the Great Planetary Land Rush, for instance, and no doubt every planet everywhere has had command centers aplenty (or other things; I don’t know everything about the planetary resource mechanics yet) dropped on it by now.  As for wormhole systems, hell, we’d probably be lucky to find a Class 1 where we could clear a couple of cheap Sleeper installations and haul out the loot without getting ourselves stomped flat by the “rightful owners” of the system.  Our numbers are few, our skills are lacking (and probably pitifully rusty by this point), and our resources, while considerable, are unremarkable.  (And I still can’t even fly a damn battleship!)  We’ve kept out of most trouble, up to now, by “flying under the radar”…but that’s never a sure thing for the long run.

Our work is definitely cut out for us…but we shall persevere nonetheless.  For simply “giving up” is an exercise in futility.  None know that better than we do, from inside the cryostasis tubes where we, even now, await our reawakening.  Soon, though, the time shall come for us to arise…and the communications channels will once again ring with our words of defiance and hope:

Wrought in deepest Hell…our vengeance is freedom!

. . .

Participants:

1. CrazyKinux’s Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces
2. StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.
3. A Carebear’s Journey: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth
4. The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE
5. A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator
6. Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation
7. The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow
8. Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination
9. I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?
10. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me
11. EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time
12. Roc’s Ramblings: Things Change
13. Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards
14. EVE On Real Life: Haven’t you grown up yet?
15. The Fang: The path of the ninja
16. EVEOGANDA: Whoops Apocalypse!
17. EVE SOB: Learning to swim
18. The Life of a Dead Jester: My Time with EVE
19. Personal Files, Ciarente Roth: Personal Diary 18.6.112
20. Learning to Fly: Change is Good
21. Depths Unknown: Falling With Style
22. Morphisat’s Blog: Jack of all trades
23. Sarnelbinora’s Blog: Thoughts of EVE
24. Confessions of a Closet Carebear: It’s the yellow box, stupid…
25. Adventures in Mission Running: My path amongst the stars
26. When 11 Ninjas isn’t enough: First days in the North (continued)
27. Lost in New Eden: My EVE Life So Far
28. Life in my Hole: How My EVE Experience Has Evolved
29. The Lathspell of Mithrandir: EVE-olution
30. Chocolate Heaven: Recurring Themes
31. Diary of a Pod Pilot: The many sides of me
32. eve’s parity bit: Me; the perpetual student
33. Mike Azariah: When you look into the Past, the Past looks into you
34. Escoce – Eve Trader: I Have Always Been Escoce
35. More as they get published…