EVE New Citizens Q&A

i like this idea. i'll see if i can remember to post my own story a little later.

if i don't, someone poke me

Nuuuuuuuuuuu... live dangerously! If I have learned anything as a veteran in EVE... it's that you learn tons more by putting yourself in "bad" situations and learning how to survive... then building on that.

*pulls up a chair*

Gather around kiddos... I'll tell you a story.

In 2003 I was playing another MMO, this game was called Earth and Beyond. I had been looking for a 'non run around kill crap with sticks level up game' one of my college buddies was playing EnB and was talking about it, so me and two other friends decided to play. We got one one server, and started, my buddy who got us to try the game goes 'oh no! i'm on orion, you need to change servers' so we did. The level system was an XP one but you could level up in trade, exploration, and combat. Anyway, I played it from around oct till they announced that EA was closing it, in march. I was really bumming, because thought the game was not perfect, it was better then evercrack. I was moping around in Guild chat, with one of my real life friends, and the Guild leader mentioned that he was jumping ship to this other game, called eve online (this was march 2004) I go 'EVE? whats that?' so he told me that the makers of eve were doing a special 15 day trial to old EnB members, and it was the first time they were ever doing tirals. So I took a look at eve's website, and three things immediately caught my attention.

1) Single server

2) the skill system (omg no killing crap with sticks?!?! what?!?!)

3) the open professtions (wait you mean if I pick race 1 but I want to fly race 2's stuff I can?!?! what?!?)

So I followed my two other IRL friends here.

Not comes the fun part. In the middle of march I made my first account. I had kinda liked mission running and npcing in ENB, it was a ton of fun, so I figured I would do that. I made my first char, who was Caldari, and started playing. By day 2 I decided that I HATED missions and npcing, it was boring and I was not very good at it. I tried pvp and barley got out in my little kessie. by day 4 I was thoroughly annoyed and wanted to quit. I like the skills system, I liked the open world, but if all I got to do was run around and shoot red crosses... no this sucks i'm done. I was complaining to my ex guild master and he gos 'well... why don't you try mining?' I went "mining? you can mine here? but that's so boring!" he laughe and said "well what do you got to lose? if you don't like it, your account expires in 10 days anyway..." So I sighed, jumped into a bantum tossed on a miner one, and warped to a belt. I found an ok sized veldspar roid and started mining... and fell instantly in love. I spent the rest of my trial learning all about mining and doing a few things with my friends.

My tiral account was almost up, and I wanted the eve CD. So I figured I could convert a cd code and active my account (I could with EnB, why not eve?) I went over to the local best buy and they looked at me like I was an idiot when I asked for an EvE cd. I went tot he virgin megastore in the local mall and found the very last copy they had of the cd. Came home... and nope, had to make a new account. So on April 1st, 2004 DaReaper was born.

That was my start in eve, mining got me hooked for about a year. Then running my own corp got me hooked for a few months, then I became an eve radio DJ and was hooked for a year, then I started talking into making an alliance, that took a year, then running the alliance... and before I knew it, year 10 had come.

The moral to all you noobs, is find something you love about eve and do it. Don't listen to what others say you should do, if mining is fun for you, do that. if being a ceo is, do that, if pvping is, do that. And always, always keep your eyes open for the next thing you may love when your current professtion gets stale. I have done virutually everything in eve, but the thing that makes me the calmest will always be mining. Tanks for reading. and Long Live EvE

I always wanted to be a veteran because I figured veterans would have better answers to the tough questions fcs tend to ask like:

Cearain, why did you just scram the star-gate with your merlin?

Cearain why did you ecm burst to save your merlin when we were trying to mop up?

Cearain why did you start shooting a neutral with positive sec status right by a station? Did you think your merlin would tank the station guns?

And even when I'm not doing pvp I do things that make me ask myself the tough questions.

Why didn't I double check the zeros to make sure I was selling 1000 cap booster for 100 thousand a piece instead of 100 million a piece?

Why did I target paint a friendly ship in my fancy 1 billion isk mission runner?

Why did I immediately click "no" when I noticed concord holding me up because I accidentally took an illegal booster with the rest of my 1 billion isk in cargo?

Why didn't I unstack the dominixes before I just dumped "a few" of them on the market for some fast isk?

Trinity was the expansion and I had tried the game several times on long forgotten characters. I loved the idea of EVE, the space, the expansiveness of it all. So I created this character, turned off what passed for a tutorial at the time, and decided I would forge my own path. I settled on the mining profession because there were awesome guides and .pdfs out there and I liked the idea of providing materials for the player-driven economy. I started the Bantam route and worked my way up to a Hulk, which was no small feat back then (I still have that Hulk). I actually stopped training once I was able to fly it too. After buying it, I could only afford to partially fit it yet still managed to survive three gank attempts. After the third attempt, one jump from Jita (what was I thinking?), I decided maybe it was time to head back to Gallente space. So I moved my ships, one by one, to Raneilles. The last of my belongings I packed into a badger, including a PLEX, and my journey ended in a bright flash in Uedama. Dumbfounded by what just happened, I asked others in chat and learned what I did wrong.

So I would mine in Raneilles, I never said I was smart, for nearly a year. I learned about can flipping mechanics and got my first pvp kill. I also learned a great deal about d-scan, local, and using the contacts feature (Thanks Tuskers o7). I had created several alts by now and one of them lost a retriever, back when they were cheap, and the Tusker responsible had a nice sense of humor about the whole thing. I used to enjoy the back and forth in local, the taunts, gf's, the rage, and other humorous comments. Eventually, I got a better understanding of where I was going and what I wanted to do in EVE and Raneilles was just too small and overpopulated for my goals. So I left Verge Vendor for Essence and settled on a system with lots of belts and low traffic. With jump clones becoming available, due to my standings grinding, my empire would stretch several regions. By this time, I was able to PLEX all of my accounts but I felt like I was missing something, and I was.

So I decided to check out low-sec, having survived several hulkageddons at this point. I checked the star map and dotlan, jumped in, and I didn't die in a flashy explosion. What?! Checked system, yep, this is low-sec. It was empty. Ok, this must be a fluke, because everyone knows that jumping into low-sec is instantaneous death, right? So I pushed on, with my trusty star map, dotlan, local, and d-scan as my guides. I found a system I thought I might like to call home, so I left something there to remind me and went back home. I survived my first trip into low-sec, so I went back again and again. Making safes and TACS along the way. I learned which way was better for entry and avoided the camped systems. Pretty soon, I was mining with all of my alts - in low-sec! Then I put all of that on the back burner.

I passed up invite after invite to join people in NPC Null, because, well, I'm not sure why. I told myself that I didn't like pvp but what I eventually came to realize was that EVE was more like a job. I was so busy trying to earn the next PLEX that I didn't have the time or isk to pvp. It took some time but I eventually took the plunge and went down there, learned a lot about pvp and actually had fun for the first time in years. After about a year of flying with them, on and off, I decided to move all of my assets out of high-sec with the exception of a few ships to move about items to ship down. As it turns out, blowing up ships is fun. Who knew?! Flying small gang, going on roams, and generally being available for fleet mates in need was fun. Although, while out on a roam, we encountered a group on a gate to low-sec. No one was interested in taking the fight if it happened in low-sec, and they refused to bring it to us. So we moved on, which got me to thinking about my interests in low-sec. I've always been fascinated by low-sec and so I revisited my old system. I ended up moving to a better system, in an adjoining region, several jumps away.

I've learned a great deal about the mechanics there already. Pvp in low-sec is definitely different than in NPC null, people play to win here. Cheap fits serve me well in small gang but I've learned that won't cut it for solo. In my experience, I am more likely to encounter 'solo' pvp'ers and get dropped here than in NPC null. Regardless, I give a "gf" in local and have met some really nice people. There are lots of asshats, sure, but they can be found everywhere. My story doesn't end here, it's just where I am at the moment. Will my grand "soloing low-sec" experiment pan out? I'm not sure, but it has definitely been a learning experience. Although, I can't seem to shake that dirty mining habit. I may need professional help with that. The one thing I know for certain, I am terrible at EVE. Fly safe o7.

I'm not that old a player myself.

I started right after Crucible was released. I don't know of a world without Attack Battle Cruisers and PvP was still battlecruisers online.

I had goals to become an industrialist and spent a lot of time mining. I joined a mining corp, realized the CEO was using the money to buy himself fancy L4 ships and wound up through a series of Events moving into low sec with a small PvP corporation. They found themselves with a month old newbie. I wound up salvaging level 5 missions in a Noctis and learning how to survive in low sec.

From there I moved to exploration, booster making, mild industry, and eventually running a regional market. My corp folded into another one and I've lived for the most part in the same region with the occasional deployments to other places. My life is pretty much pure low sec with the occasional null sec visit. I am a space trucker for my market in high sec but I know little of that world.

Somewhere around the start I started blogging and somewhere towards the current day I dove face first into space politics.

Eve's a great game.

Well in 2009 I clicked on this add and my girlfriend has been pissed off ever since..

I'll never get to be a bittervet,,,I don't get bitter and I can't cure sick animals...

Just remembered I've never met you :D

I started with a trial account back during the Trinity expansion (or maybe just before it). Didn't like it. I remember I tried the couple starter missions, but I kept thinking the agents from one station were sending me to do jobs for agents at another station, and I just wound up traversing all of high-sec off these level 1 courier missions. I wanted to get into industry and research the heck out of some BPOs, so bought some missile blueprints and failed to start a research job because I didn't quite grasp the idea that everything needed to be in the station where the installation was. So, having failed miserably while confining myself to a solo experience, I let the trial lapse.

But something about the game kept gnawing at me, and I came back in 2008 with a new trial account. This time, I actually bothered to do some research before playing. I made Komi, a Caldari Achura because $%^& Charisma (to this date, I have not respec-ed her and she still has below minimum) and I set off on the exciting career of being an industrial miner! I based out of Halaima and had many friendly players try to introduce me to EVE by deploying jet cans, renaming them "Komi Toran," and then scramming them to trick me into thinking I was under attack. But I knew Eve was a tricksy place, so they were just a source of mild amusement. I met another new player who was also a miner, trained up some basic mining leadership skills, and started my first mining fleet with him. I was thrilled when I could fly a Procurer and rushed out and bought one, not even knowing that, at the time, an Osprey was still a much better mining ship.

However, I wanted to do something different, so I thought I'd be a space trucker. I trained up a Caldari industrial and started accepting courier contracts, which I would complete by auto-piloting across the galaxy. It worked out pretty well. Made my first couple million that way. Soon, I had 10 million ISK! Oh boy, that meant I could afford the 10 million ISK collateral for these contracts that had a 1 mill ISK payout. Money was going to just start flowing to me now. I just had to deliver this package to Miroitem, through this place called Rancer.

I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but somehow I managed to not only figure out that Rancer was gank-central before I auto-piloted through there, but I actually managed to complete the delivery through a back door. As my stats on Battleclinic will attest, this involved the loss of three badgers (I think I used them to scout? I have no idea either), a shuttle, and four pods, but this newbie trucker did make the delivery. Afterwards, I thought "No wonder they wanted someone else to move this; this place is dangerous!" It couldn't have been a scam, you see, because I don't fall for scams.

After that, with the stress of almost losing all my hard-earned ISK in a single contract, I backed off the space trucking, swore off low-sec, and decided to confine myself only to the complete safety of high-sec. Five days later I was podded by a Pandemic Legion Megathron randomly smart bombing by a gate.

WELCOME TO EVE

Returned to mining, but it wasn't long before I wanted the full multiplayer experience. I found a large mining corp based nearby in Sankkassen and struck up a convo. They were nice guys. I joined them. Of course, being a large mining corp so near Jita, they get war decced. They get war decced a lot. That's ok. Their security division is headed by a few chaps that seem to know what they're doing. When we blob up, war targets dock up. Cool. I listen to their advice, take notes, and learn from the mistakes of the other carebears.

My career with the Sankkasen Mining Conglomerate takes me to low sec, then Providence, and eventually Vale of the Silent. Somehow, I become in charge of the corp's industrial assets and the CFO of a 0.0 holding alliance (allbeit a pet of the NC). I even help build an outpost. But, SKMC still remained a carebear corp and the bulk of its members still had a high-sec mentality. The constant struggle to manage conflict between the NC and my corp members was soul crushing. Couple that with RL issues, and in 2010 I check out. I didn't bother to retrieve the billions in cap ship BPOs that I had worked so hard to build up. I don't even think I logged on to fill the skill queue after my training finished.

But, I'm back now, in my third or fourth week. Just needed a three and a half year vacation is all.