Out of Pod Experience

Well, on the subject of that I do have a story but its a tad long.

It's back from when I used to play WoW (yes I know), and in my mates guild there was a really nice guy who played with his wife and his young lad. Anyway we were all noobs together, we met while leveling around the mid 20s or 30s I forget and we started leveling together. We managed to get him on vent and his mrs followed shortly after and we had a good time chatting to them. He worked from home and ran his own business so he had oodles of free time to do as he wishes and the wife was fine with that. On vent it was always a "back in a mo, loading dish washer" "back in a tick, helping the wife take in the washing" etc etc.

This all changed around the time we hit 60. My friends guild was just social, we did the odd 5 man instance (this was back in vanilla wow in 06) and BGs together but nothing serious. Most of us were university students or in their teens. After a while he started to push for us to do raiding, and get some good gear. We tried, and failed terribly. So he decided to leave and join one of the better guilds on the server. His mrs and lad stayed in our guild as she liked the community and his boy was about... 7 or 8 at the time I dont remember and he just enjoyed doing what we told him.

Pretty soon he caught the raiding bug, and as it happened the guild he joined also used our vent as well. Then the problems started, it was always "can't, boss fight" / "can't, got to do x y z" and the mrs would confide to us about it as they played in separate rooms.

Soon after his wife became more and more inactive, and in my friends list I barely ever saw a time when my mate would log off. On the times the wife would log, she would say in guild chat how he wasnt doing his work now, and customers were getting angry etc or deadlines coming up. Long story short on that, he lost some big contract he was doing and had to pay the penalty clause which was something like 35 grand and the mrs went mental on him. She had a kind of RL intervention for his raiding addiction (This was just when they'd added Naxx 1.0 before TBC) and told him it was her and the lad or WoW.

He actually chose WoW. The mrs moved out and quit shortly after. I know he sold his house and took his 50% and was living on that and basically giving his life to raiding. I dont know the end of the story as I quit shortly after I 70'd in TBC and decided WoW had lost its fun with arenas and so forth and the death of world pvp which is what I enjoyed most.

Not a happy tale, but a good warning I think.

Aye.

Shame too, they were a lovely couple. But I think deep down he had a highly addictive personality and WoW's press button, receive bacon nature appealed to him.

I always took it as a warning. But the thing is, could this happen in EvE? I mean.... I know the old MC raids would last 8-10+ hours. Is there anything comparable in EVE? I'm not sure how long pvp roams and so on are, or fleet fights. But I know how long incursions and plexs etc last and its not a terrible amount of time. I never do logi on my incursion alt so I have sneakily disappeared from my keyboard a few times when the mrs needs a hand and nothing has gone wrong.

Yes, it might have given the others more of a job quickly but family comes before games especially if its something either super important or something that will cause strife.

Now if I do something I tell the mrs in advance. "im going to be doing something for about an hour and a half in eve ok?" And she will give me her nod of approval as in "sure" or "can you help me with the washing in 10?" or something like that, to which I will oblige and get my uninterrupted time barring some kind of disaster.

Aye but thats the inherent beauty of eve. You can take long eve breaks and as long as you're subbed and your queue is set you keep progressing skill wise.

I do that a lot. I'll probably be doing that soonish myself. Got a marathon set of skills to train which always kind of suck my motivation and work is going to be hectic for me.

I used to aggro my ex BF a lot over playing consoles when we had perfectly good computers to play with.

Filthy console peasants...

Fleet fights can last hours - many, many hours. And if you're managing base logistics or participating in sales warfare, well, you can burn a LOT of hours, every day.

Frankly, Guild Wars was me at my worst, but even in EVE there are times and events where I have to block out six or ten hours at a go - I'm a corp director, and that sometimes means you've just got to spend the time. With three other people wanting the computer, well...

So, in sheer self-preservation (which means, among other things, preserving my relationships), I try to advance-warn everyone and schedule the large time blocks well in advance. We'll negotiate computer access - "You can have it from here until there, but then I get it from such until the other, and then the girl will have it for so long, before rotating it to the boy..." Solves fights, usually. Except when my wife fails to turn-over at her allotted point - She's notorious for that. Which results in three people staring at her, arms crossed and toes tapping, until she logs out.

But usually, the negotiations work. Sometimes peopel will negotiate chores in exchange for extended time: "I'll give you an extra hour of my time if you'll do the dishes."

Fights in Eve tend to be quick but the Call To Arms can last for half a day before you actually get to the fight. Assuming you do get there.

WoW never caused any trouble schedule wise. It was pretty well set when I raided, 19-23 was the raid time and that was it.

Just so.


Finances are kinda tight - and space is even more tight. I keep intending to install a wireless router, and simply haven't gotten that done. I *do* have a second box, but it will need substantial configuration. One of these days, I'll even get it done.
So, instead, we negotiate. It works. ;)

(plus, it gives me an excuse to kick my son outdoors to go play in the physical world with actual IRL friends - Always a benefit)

Ah, the old four computer household. I have one of those. "Dad, I can't print." "Dad, we don't have internet. We've been waiting all day for you to get home." "Dear, I can't get this DVD to play on my laptop." "Sam, this funny blue screen appeared and then my computer just died." And then there are the ipods, smart phones, kindles, and whatever else to keep connected and running in perfect order.

It's probably the same for you guys. They way our dads were always out working on the family car, we're always working on the family tech.

Only a two person household here so slightly smaller scale. I have my desktop which is my domain. Prior to this I used my ancient laptop that could run 1 eve client on lowest settings and it was just lucky that I do market trading since thats all it would let me do.

My laptop also served as our media centre, and my mrs is addicted to Ugly Betty and other western dramas / comedies meant she demanded the use of it almost constantly. This was back in early 2010 when I'd just started my current job and all money was going into support for our apartment with furniture etc etc. So a pc wasnt a high priority at the time.

Once work started picking up, (I work at a start up, so it was only 7 of us splitting whatever we made 7 ways at the time, quite literally hand to mouth existence) I started planning my beast of a PC. Since I had some money in my pocket I wanted to build a very nice PC and I did so, buying the parts in increments over several months and I was content and the old laptop went into dedicated media machine.

The Mrs herself still demanded a lot of attention as she didnt have much to do. I was on a full "oh my god ive missed games" binge and buying half of steam it felt like. The solution was to buy her a small netbook for skype to her mum and friends etc, and then for her birthday last year I got her the tablet for her to enjoy her reading and pre marital bliss has ensued mostly.

Now its usually me giving the aggro. In the form of our two glove puppets we have. When the mrs is REALLY focusing on her reading on the sofa there is nothing better than sneaking before the sofa and slowly bringing a cute Punch and Judy crocodile puppet into view. Sometimes shes gotten wise and doesnt react. Other times she is so focused when she sees a cute green crocodile on her peripheral vision she freaks out and it is wonderful!

Fortunately, the festival launcher is still operational!!