Go to the new blog!

Please note that this blog and character has been discontinued.

You can read the continuing adventures of my new character, Alexia Morgan, at the following blog:

PUNISHMENT

Thank you for your interest and loyalty, and please make sure to follow Alexia's blog.

7 facts about me

There's a meme going around, almost like a cold or flu... everyone's getting it faster than you can say "geezwhatwilltheythinkofnext..."

You can find my facts over here: 14 facts about me.

Enjoy.  :)

Into the future

It's taken me a long time to come to the decision I'm about to tell you, but I've ended up agreeing with myself that it will be the best thing I can do.

For quite a long time I was lost on a planet inhabited by dwarves, night elves, gnomes and all kinds of other odd creatures. It was a nightmare, and one which I'm yet to recover. For a year and a half I was there, trapped, unable to continue training the high-tech skills that my 2 and a half year old clone desperately needed.

Finally, when I escaped and managed to return to high-tech civilisation, I realised that my 2 and a half year old clone only had the skill points of a 1 year old. I thought to myself, what the heck! I'll make a go of it anyway.

However, over the past few months, I've come to realise that this has handicapped me in ways that I thought might happen, and which have turned out to be true.

The age of my clone, coupled with my career path, makes small children cry, grown adults run screaming inside their houses, and anti-pirates forming entire fleets to hunt me down.

The problem with this has been that I haven't been able to compete with the competition at my level of skills, and the competition has expected me to be much harder than I actually am. 

You should never bring a knife to a gun fight, and I'm often left feeling that all I have is a knife, while my enemies have heavy machine guns.

So I've decided to go undercover and start afresh. A new clone has been activated. Unlike me, this clone will be purely dedicated to combat, and will be working on all the skills needed to focus on being the best that they can be in ship-to-ship combat.  The mistakes that Black Claw has made during his life will help my new clone avoid them.

It wasn't an easy decision to make. It's like starting a new life, with all the trials and tribulations that will bring.

It was a bit of a shock sitting in the starter corp's chat channel, watching over a thousand people trying to get a word in.

I'll have to start my own corp, so I can silence their incredible noise.

You won't keep Black Claw silent though. He will continue writing articles, as that is what he enjoys. My new clone will also start their own blog shortly as well, continuing with an entirely new theme.  

A toast, if you will - to the future, and all its twists and turns.

Snapshot of Eve - 14 December 2008

Welcome to this week's snapshot of the major topics that people are discussing about in the Eve Online forums. To see other weekly snapshots, you can click on the 'snapshot' tag in the tag cloud to access them.

Warfare & Tactics

• Caldari militia > Gallente militia = No more Federation?
• Tracking nerf, frigate class and tracking disruptors..
  

Crime and Punishment

• Whos is garmon and why is he banned? that is all
• 10 Billion Isk! Largest single kill bounty in game history?
• scammed by goon recruiter

Eve General Discussion

• Your darkest eve secret
• March Expansion - We have to Pay for?

Features and Ideas Discussion

• A Way To Detect Cloaked Ships Without Destroying Cloaking Completely
• High-end moons - End the insanity - Introduce finite mineral amounts
• Sisters of ≡v≡ Updated 21st Oct, Fairy Art up, New Graph Up
• Mining Overhaul
• POSs: Flogging the Dead Horse
• New Ship Idea: Flagship (Tech 2 Battleships)

See you next week!

The starbase exploit

Everyone's talking about the starbase exploit that's resulted in 4 years' worth of free minerals for a number of players, resulting in the banning of 70 or so accounts this week.

I see bloggers screaming for blood.

I don't need to mention names, because we're all friends.  But screaming about this is not going to change what happened; neither will screaming for the banning of all accounts and all corps and all alliances that are associated with those initial banned accounts.

With all due respect to all those screaming for something to be done, it's wasting your time and energy going on such verbal rampages.

So a number of people exploited the system and got banned for it...  This is a game, after all, and the game has rules. And everyone knows 'rules are meant to be broken'.  People will break the rules for as long as they can, if they think they can get away with it.

So you've been hard done by because you purchased items that were cheap(ish) as a result of this exploit being used, and now that the bug has been found, suddenly the market has to readjust and prices start increasing due to supply not meeting demand.

Big. Frackin'. Deal.

It's a game. 

You've enjoyed playing it, even if you were ignorant of various exploits occurring without your knowledge.

Damn, people... move on already!  Get some tissues, dry your eyes, build a bridge, and get the frack over it!

You have no choice but to adapt to circumstances.  Crying about it and screaming for hundreds, if not thousands, of accounts to be banned will not change the circumstances you're now in.

If you don't like the circumstances you're now in, quit.  But stop the damn crying, you're making me resent reading your blog posts and cluttering up my feed reader with them.

Seriously, it's all well and good to talk about this exploit in a matter of fact way, but calm the frack down!  You'll burst some blood vessels.

UPDATE: damn, I burst a blood vessel writing this...

Blogger Profiles #8 - Hallan Turrek

One of the things I enjoy about Hallan's blog is that he's a pirate - and a Star Trek fan. Just like me!  (Picard is the best captain, but DS9 is the best show!)  And I love reading the blogs of other pirates, 'cause you can learn from them as to how they engage in piracy. Whether you're a pirate too, or you want to avoid pirates, there's always something to learn.  Please enjoy.

PS. Don't forget to send me YOUR profile if you haven't already. The questions to answer are here. I look forward to hearing from you!

What is your character's name or handle?

I play by the name Hallan Turrek.

What is your blog's URL?

http://amerrylifeandashortone.blogspot.com/

How long have you been blogging?

Almost two and a half months ago. Never really been into blogging before that. I started blogging when I started pirating.

What region of EVE do you mostly operate in?

I range from Metropolis to Heimatar. If I want to play solo, I'll hang out in Eifer/Gusandall. If I want to do group piracy, I'll hang out closer to Evati.

When did you start playing EVE?

July of his year.

What do you enjoy about EVE?

The pure expansive universe. The ability to do anything you want. PVP is alot of fun, but I like the fact that should I choose, I can just go shoot rocks all day. Just flying is inspirational to me.

What is your playstyle?

You might have to ask my corpmates about that. I've been told I'm a bit crazy or reckless. "Hard on my ships." I have 120 fits and 80 something rifters, most of which are in one station that I base out of. I like to use my ships like ammo. Alot of people will never realize this, but there is actual utility in a fleet situation to losing your ship. Almost none of what you accomplish couldn't be done better by keeping the ship, mind you, but then again you might not risk it in something tougher but more expensive. 

I like to distract people, I like to get people out of formation and looting my wrecks. Sic those ECM drones on me cause I was first in, forget the Hurricane. As I've said in my blog before, it's something of a motto for me: "It ain't suicide if you live." Oh, and more importantly, I kill things. I like the image for the gunslinger in the eve personality test, but a little secret: It pegged me as a carebear.

Do you play any other games?

Not much. I used to play Nationstates as Douria. I'm pretty sure my nation's gone now, but the resolutions I passed are still in effect. 

What do you blog about, and why?

I blog about my piracy and some short stories. I recently did a new feature called Karaoke Corner, where I rewrite lyrics to songs in a comedic eve related way. Why do I do any of it? It's fun, I get to flex my writing muscles and more importantly I get to refine my writing style.

What are your other interests?

Politics. Economics. As much as they can be interests for me. I'm a rather educated un-educated fellah, at least I like to thinks so. I really enjoy astrophysics, quantum physics and science in general. 

I'm a huge fan of sci-fi, Star Trek and Star Wars more than others. I'm not a trekkie or whatever you'd call a star wars fanatic, but I don't forget much about anything so you could probably peg me as one if I went off on a tangent as to how whinyness seems to run in the Skywalker family or why Sisko was the best captain. Actually lets not.

What advice do you have for EVE players who are struggling to stay motivated?

Do something crazy. Stop caring about whatever it is you hold dear and just go. Get a cheap ship and try some different things. Don't plan it, don't scheme, just do whatever you want. That's the beauty of the game, you can do whatever you want. Don't let artificial restraints hold you down, there's enough of that in the real world. Or you could join The Bastards. We're always having fun.

Anything else to offer?

For December I'm doing a marathon of 31 posts in 31 days, I hope to bring in traffic with that, but who knows. I'm trying to get installed into the eve blog pack as well, and I'd like your votes for that. One more thing: Happy Holidays.

New blog on the scene

Jinarre's New Eden.

From Jinarre's blog:

So, welcome to New Eden as I see it, a new player. Eden is HUGE, and can be very hard to grasp in the first few days. So I will start with what I've learned in Eve so far.

All the best with your new adventure, and there certainly is plenty of resources to draw upon out here, as you've already found out.  Welcome to the Eve Blogosphere!