EVE New Citizens Q&A

Thanks Shah, now I have to write up a full wall of text post and share all the horror stories about what I did in the last 3,5 years.

The issue with my write up is that it would be best to link a couple of my "stupid" losses as examples of the 'suck it up and continue playing' mindset.

*Screen blurres into a flashback style motion*
A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was me.

Argh, where to start, what to leave out and what to include. It's been 3.5 years since I started playing EVE Online. J'Poll is technically my 2nd character. I scrapped my first after about a month to reroll a proper specced character. Yes, back when I started, it did matter which race and bloodline you chose for your atrribute mapping.

So, off I went with my newly created character. Did run the tutorials, started the SoE arc but never finished it because it was just too hard for me. Okay, let me give you a bit of background on how I came to EVE. I've always been a fan of the X-series and when EVE went on sale on Steam I just dove in head first, as with X-series I wanted to become the industrial mogul that controlled the flow of products, so my initial training was purely focused on mining (because that would make you rich, boy was I wrong) and industry. So when the SoE rats handed my ass to me on a silver platter, I limped back to my Caldari base in Akiainavas.

At this point, after being fed up with the NPC corp chat and wanted to play the Multiplayer part of the MMO, I decided to join a corp. After doing a quick corp search using the in game corp search engine (or was it the Recruitment channel, I just can't remember) I joined a corp. Without doing any research on what they do and who they are or something like that (so, yet again a head first move). It looked all nice, until suddenly we were wardecced. Nobody in corp told me what that meand and what was the best way to minimize the risks. So I undocked, died, updated clone, undocked, died... Well, you can see the routine in that, after about 5 or 6 kills, one of the war targets camping my station contacted me. He explained what was happening, what a wardec was and thanked for the easy kills. He then noticed that I was a very new player and handed me some ISK to recover from the losses and the suggestion to stay in a NPC corp when you are still learning the very basics. So I did.

Only a couple of weeks later, I was happily mining in Umokka in my Badger (Yes, I know it's bad and inefficient now) and my Bantam (when it was still a mining frigate). Suddenly huge ships warp in (or at least, they looked huge at that time for me, they were mearly some mining barges and exhumers) accompanied with something that in my opinion was the size of a station (read: Orca). After some chats with them, I was invited in their public channel and not long after I joined that corp. All was well for a while, we mined the **** out of Umokka, did run some missions together and I even got my hand at my first recruiter position.

As a prime target of oppurtunity (all miners and mission runners) we of course had a couple of wardecs. When they staggered upon each other, me and another member decided to part ways and make our own corp. Keep in mind, we were both less than 6 months in game and hardly knew what WE were doing, let alone that we could help others. But, as usual, my heads first thing happened and suddenly we had our own corp. During which we moved around. First we went from Umokka (Lonetrek) to Itamo (The Forge). During our Itamo era, I made a stupid mistake (As killmails are prohibited, let me explain what happened: I undocked an untanked Badger from Jita, while this isn't the smartest thing in the first place. Let me list what was in my cargo: 4 x PLEX, 1 x Hulk, 1 x Covetor and a shitload of assorted skillbooks I needed). Given that ship and it's cargo, it's lifetime was just under 5 minutes after buying it, I exploded on the undock (and for the guy who killed me, the loot fairy was generous, as the 4 x PLEX dropped).

Not long after that happened, we got contacted by the GIMA (Greater Itamo Mafia Alliance). They ran an extortion ring in Itamo and the surrounding systems, you either paid them or you were wardecced. Me not wanting to deal with wars and also not wanting to pay some smug, we decided we were moving. A fellow member from day 1 suggested a relocation to Amarr space, it was quiet and for the miners even better because of the prices on Kernite at that point. So we did, we moved to Gensela (Kador) and lived there for a while. At this stage I also opened a 2nd account with my “second” main – Ace Menda.

During that time, we received our first couple of wars and during 1 we actually joined an alliance. In that alliance, I got my first taste of PvP (although no shots were fired because we camped the guys who wardecced my corp in their station). It was fun, my hands were shaking the entire time due to the adrenaline rush but in the end, it wasn’t my cup of tea (or coffee / beer / whatever beverage you prefer)

Eventually, we grew a good couple of members but then we had some issues with activity. Basically, I and the guy who started the corp were getting burned out, the "older" members weren't active and those who did, did not want to run the corp. So we contacted the corp we had left in the first place and suggested a merger. This happened and with that merger I became a director (one of the 2 EU directors) in the corp, the fellow EU director was someone who actually got recruited by me back in the days.

Tutorials? Arc?

Kids these days.

Yeah Tau...wall of text...wall of text...wall of text.

All regulars should at least post their "EVE is real" / "I was there" stories.

After several attempts to post the wall-of-text, and being prevented even though the character count was <6000, you are only gonna get the abridged version.

Towards then end of my long WoW career (Death Knights and dual talents made my Paladin tank obsolete by the time we had downed all but the last boss in Ulduar-25), another co-worker was heavily lobbying me to play EVE. My friend had been playing EVE since beta. It seemed like a very strange game to me, so I resisted. My friend wouldn't relent though, and I eventually tried EVE. I signed-up for a full year subscription about an hour after logging in for the first time.

Why I joined EVE: I just wanted to mine.

My friend Aandaan (trivia: he's one day younger than Dr Caymus, the character with the most SP in EVE) thought I was insane, but I just wanted to mine like my old UO and WoW days. I had enough of rushing home from work three times a week to raid. I just wanted the monotony and OCD of mining again. I thought a Hulk was the coolest ship in EVE.

So upon starting EVE for the first time, I was greeted with a character creator. I chose Caldari because I heard they were awesome (best attributes and starting skills), and my friend was Caldari too. The next thing I had to do was assign 5 attribute points, with no more than 3 to a single attribute.



I had no idea what attributes were, and keep in mind that back then they could never be changed! I had that mapping for 3 years.

I was "born" into space in Todaki, in an ugly looking Ibis (it has been re-skinned since then), near an asteroid with a small orbiting red +

I figured I wasn't going to shoot anything until I knew what the consequences were. After a bit of fumbling, I figured out how to warp to a nearby station. Since I didn't know about bookmarks, I didn't bookmark where I was before I warped-off, so I could never return.

Thus ended the "tutorial" for me.

This was Feb 23, 2009. Apocrypha with the overhauled "New Player Experience" (NPE) was released March 10th. I did the SoE arc for the first time about a year ago to raise my Minmatar standing. I've never done the tutorials.


Shortly after that, I joined my friend Aandaan in w-space, and lived there for about 2.75 years, until everyone got bored and basically left EVE. I went to w-space to mine of course. Built my first Rorqual in a C2. Self-destructed it when we later moved. Later bought another Rorqual when we moved into a C5. I also got asked to train for a Chimera for capital escalations, as we had lots of Archon pilots, which sucked with Tengus.

During one of our w-space moves we ran into another corp. Our tower was anchoring when they came along. We offered to leave, and that lead to us unanchoring. That's a lot of time. We chatted, and decided to join their alliance. We shared the w-space system (we were more advanced than they were) until we left the system and alliance to move into a C5. Heck, _I_ was the one that saved their poorly defended medium tower when it was reinforced. My first PvP experiences and roams in lowsec were with that alliance.

Living in w-space taught us a lot, and added to my already large amount of naturally occurring paranoia. We also earned and lost many billions of ISK there.

I'm now living a quiet mostly solo hisec life. Every once in a while I get the urge to join a nulsec alliance where I can be an industrialist as well as PvP.

We're "bigwigs?"

Ok... Here's a fun one for you:

"real" piracy:

I always found the majority of EVE players claiming to be pirates to be flat out moronic. That epithet never fit for the definition I knew from the real world.

It was more like tossing a brick into a china shop then sifting through what remains rather than actually trying to earn from it. Many such "pirates" will talk about KB's being a joke, yet still follow the "blow it up" model of piracy - kb fluffing for fun more than making income.

So I'd chatted with a few folks in the corp early on and we discussed this stuff a bit. They pointed out how you can't trust *ANYONE* in EVE so real piracy (hijacking someone then extorting funds to release them) doesn't work. Too many don't honor ransoms for it to function but, being the stubborn type I am, I kept to the idea and brought it up in "piracy career" discussions.

Well, as happened in the Uni in those days, a batch of members left at the same time and formed up a small corporation of their own. We'd discussed the topic a few times and they'd been intrigued by what I described. I'd been training for exploration covert ops and they asked me about my idea on piracy and if I might be interested in helping them try it out. I figured what the hell - theory vs practical - so I helped.

I practiced for a few days before agreeing and became really fast at locking down signals to 100% with the old scanning system. I'd help by finding and getting a lock on a good target, warp to it and let the crew know. They'd arrive at the warp-in I provided while I moved out a bit - I'd redeploy 1 probe per gate and "watch" those gates as they tackled the target and negotiated for ransom.

We didn't make a lot and still ended up popping several but it was 100% "PvP" based income. All risk, all interaction, guns pointed at and used on the targets, then negotiations... Just no KB entries when it worked.

It was mass "fun" seeing if we could do it. No it wasn't "getting rich" by EVE definitions (around 1 bill a month each - a big chunk of that from a JF we nailed) but actually being pirates by a true "real" definition. That was neat stuff to actually prove as being possible.

The problem - well, they didn't blame me for it but I blamed myself and stopped doing it: I missed a local spike as negotiations started.

For me, there was little worse than sitting in a cloaked covert ops frigate watching as my crew was taken apart by another gang. They laughed about it but I took the responsibility of "eyes" for targets & safety more seriously. I'd messed up and they lost their ships for my error. After thinking about the whole thing - I called it quits. This was as much due to my corp and situation as it was due to my foul-up.

"Technically" it wasn't against Uni rules but if I'd been discovered being involved, I'd have been told to stop -- I never demanded anything from others (ransom negotiations) nor was I shooting nor otherwise being directly hostile - I was just invisible eyes but the theme of the Uni back then was against such things and I knew this.

Oh and another fun thing I looked at back then was stealing bubbles from sloppy gate campers in nullsec. Sadly, you can't unanchor someone else's bubble (that was a fun "oh sh**!!!" education - I'd practiced timing and distances on SiSi with my own bubbles first... Someone else deploying them? I hadn't checked on that. *snicker*). This would have been a fun thing to do for very trivial income. IMO income isn't everything - it's having fun at what you do in a game. Most base their 'fun" on isk values, who gains and/or who loses more, a few others don't. That's a personal decision.

The key to this is just because others tell you something won't work, that it can't be done or isn't worth doing doesn't mean that they are always right nor that their way of valuing their game time will match yours.

Remember to keep thinking for yourself and TRY things. The worst that can happen is you get popped and lose some stuff but you might find a way to have fun in the game that few others ever thought possible.

HA! I found my old "blog" posts on EVE-Search. Gawd I was a n00b.

Neckbone Search (my old posts)

It's been a long time since I started this game.Maybe I'm not among the first to set foot in New Eden but I'm still old enough to participate in this topic.

My story starts in late 2007 when I was still playing WoW at my favourite net cafe.These were the days when Band of Brothers was still supreme....One day I saw one of the admins who was on his break,playing a spaceship simulation game.The graphics were alluring and I always loved sci-fi.So I asked him: "What is this?".He replied "EVE".At that moment I remembered an article from a recent edition of a gaming magazine called "Level" where they were telling about the story of a corporation(Guiding Hand Social Club) which was robbed for trillions of ingame currency of "ISK" in a game EVE Online.Then I sat down beside him and asked dozens of questions,then more and more.He suddenly said: "Why don't you try it out?".He sent me a buddy trial and I accepted.I remember very well the character creation screen.It was more simple than it is now but it was still fun to create.I chose the race Amarr because my new friend told me about the superiority and the simplicity of playing the race.I created a hooded character and selected the occupation of Special Forces.Then when it came to selecting the stats my friend decided it would be better to have attributes for ship training so I could explore the variety of ships more quickly.This was made as a trial/error but I loved playing Amarr.The idea of playing with lazers was so attractive...

I did the tutorials.Then I did some missions.After few days I was confronted by another Amarr player which was older than me who asked whether I wanted to join his corporation or not.I said: "why not?".I joined his corp and it was very new.The player seemed so knowledgeable,explaining me many things before I even asked about them.The corp only had few players and most of them were inactive so I searched for another.While searching,my admin friend told me ways to earn much more ISK more easily.One of them was going to low security systems with my frigate and shooting at rats at the belts there.I was doing so well and earning so much money for the several hours I was there I was as happy as a stuffed pig.Then one moment I saw a red box on the overview,I lost my ship and lost my pod because I didn't know how to escape back then(I wasn't even warp scrambled! *giggles*).I was so furious of being ganked and being a player from WoW I asked my admin friend to take my revenge but he refused and told me that isn't how things work in EVE online.So he gave me some ISK and a new frigate and I moved back to doing missions.

I told my admin friend about my search for a new corp and he told me about the Turks living in null sec near Osmeden and they were many.I liked the idea of being protected and living by people who spoke the same language that I did.My friend prepared me to join the Turkish alliance and gave me a fitted Armageddon battleship while I only had 1-1.5 million skillpoints.I then joined the alliance's newbie corp and headed to null-sec.At the border of null-sec,my Armageddon got ganked.I was wiser now and escaped with my pod.It was a gate camp,a concept that I didn't know about at that time.I apologized to my admin friend and almost cried.I even thought to quit the game for good.My friend told me it was ok and no problem.My days at the Turkish alliance was jolly and fun.I was showered with items which was cheap but very expensive to me.I was even upgraded to the veteran corp and all was good until I was confronted by the alliance leader for my bad habit of paying ransoms.I got into an argument with him and I got kicked from the alliance.

I returned to my first corp and was greeted like this:image .I stayed a while and then the CEO decided to put the corp into stasis after some months.So I looked for another.

Something new called "Faction Warfare" was introduced and I wanted to try it out.I joined a FW corp and lost many ships.This didn't bother me because I was having a wonderful time and I was self-sufficient now.The people in the corp and the CEO were very helpful.They taught me the basics of PVP.I had my fun and decided to return to my first corp after seeing it was now active and thriving again.

Once I returned to my first corp again,I was amazed how much progress was made in a short time.The corp had 200 active members and was in a 0.0 alliance(Systematic-Chaos or En Garde,can't remember the name right now).I used the jump bridges which were and still are very easy way to travel in null-sec to get to the home system.While I was carrying my trivial stuff with a Bestower to null,I got alphaed(one shotted) by a stealth bomber before my warp completely ended to a jump bridge.I was impressed once again how dangerous null-sec in EVE could be.One day I took refuge in an alliance station while running away from some hostiles.Then I saw the local grow in the numbers of hostiles non-stop until it was 300 of them siegeing the station.The station was camped 2 days straight with me and some 50 others trapped in the station.We sent out distress calls to ally alliances and at the end of the second day,Against All Authorities' capital fleet came to our rescue.They shooed away the hostiles and stood outside the station.Imagine how ecstatic I felt when I undocked and saw them guarding the station!

I took a break from EVE and joined another 0.0 alliance when I returned back.I did stuff and occasionally got ganked by kamikaze squads.After that I took a 2 years break from EVE and I returned earlier in summer and now I peacefully do PVE in my one man corp.

That is my story so far,the point of my story is,the more you learn this game,the better you'll become and have more fun times.Maybe I was pampered at the beginning but I would still have fun if I wasn't.Who knows,maybe you too can become pampered if you are friendly enough to make friends?