Operation Smile: First Time In Low-Sec

It is a common article of faith that 90% of players in Eve Online never leave high security space.  Now, I can understand the fear of going into low or null security space and losing your ship.  Unlike most other MMOs, if you lose your ship, you can really lose a lot, even if you purchased insurance.  I spend most of my time in high security space, although I tend to travel through low-sec about once a week or so.

Well, here is a video that might shame those who are too afraid to leave the nice comfy arms of CONCORD.  This is a video of a 5 year old and her first trip into low-sec.  If she can do it, then anyone can.  And the video is just so darn cute!

The Babes Of New Eden

In Eve Online, everything in-game gets taken out of game.  The new avatars are no exception.  At first, the character creator became the in-thing to post on YouTube, but after the 2nd or 3rd video, it got kind of old.  Well, someone came up with an idea to post female avatars on a site for people to judge.  Called Babes of New Eden, it is rather tastefully done.  I agree with CCP StevieSG that the site is rather addictive.  CCP is probably happy with the site, since it shows off all the variations possible with the character creator.  If anyone wants to point to what the character creator is capable of, this is the site that shows it off.

I won't be submitting Wandering Rose on the site, however.  She is a hard-working CEO too busy working at the controls of her blockade runner or, when needed, a Mammoth, to take the time to get a glamour shot made.  She only took the time to get a shot made because CONCORD is starting to require one.

Sansha and Hauling

When I read this little gem from the forums about the first Sansha invasions, I smiled a bit.

"Zimse is currently being gate camped by Sansha frigates.
Repeat, zimse is currently being gate camped by Sansha frigs, IN HIGH SEC"

I thought CCP would have Sansha do this and I wonder why anyone is surprised.  But even though I expected it, I still have things to do.  Running a hauling corporation isn't just moving things from point A to point B, you know.

The biggest thing I need to do is acquire a Mastodon.  I meant to get one, but I'm getting really close to having enough money saved up for an Orca so I've let that slide.  If I wasn't going to by one, I should have at least started research to make a BPC.  After all, I do own a BPO for a Mammoth.  Wandering Rose would have to fleet up with Rosewalker in order to take advantage of his leadership skills, but a Mastodon is just what I need to keep flying in those dangerous waters that high-sec systems may become.

Another thing I need to do is start bookmarking high-sec systems, because you never know where Sansha will strike next.  I guess I should say start bookmarking them again, because while I do have a couple of systems well bookmarked, I need to get the systems between my home systems and the trade hubs of Rens and Hek prepared.  Purchasing an interceptor like a Stiletto would speed the process up a great deal.  Buying one is relatively cheap and besides, one of my goals for the year is to aquire as many different ships as possible.  Throw in the fact that I already trained to fly interceptors and the question becomes "why don't I already have one?"

Finally, I really need to fill up the remaining 3 character slots I have.  I have a trade skill alt for Gallente space and I need one to watch Jita and Amarr as well.  The third alt could serve as a planetary interaction/hauling alt to build construction blocks for ship construction.  Now that the new character creator is out, I don't have any more excuses for not creating the alts.  I do need to research the best training path for the PI alt, since that training time will take away from Wandering Rose's education.


So much to do, and so little time to do it.

Avatar Pictures

I think every Eve blogger has done a post featuring pictures of their avatars. I understand why. The character creator is really cool. But I was a bit leery of it because in my characters' histories, Wandering Rose and Rosewalker are sister and brother. So I have to ask the question. Did I succeed in making them look like family?

Wandering Rose

Rosewalker

Interesting Times

"These are the interesting times I spoke to you of before, Captain Rourke"

- Mr. Smith, Clear Skies 2

Things are getting interesting in Eve Online.  In Fountain, TEST continues to roll while Against ALL Authorities reclaims their losses in Catch from the past 4 months.  IT saw two of its major corporations, x13 and FinFleet, leave the alliance, leaving questions about a possible failscade hanging in the air.

On top of all that comes today's patch to put the Incursion system into place.  Sunday's massive battle in Yulai saw the Peak Concurrent User record broken, with many players introduced to massive lag spatial distortions (it's a feature, don't you know) for the first time.

These are definitely interesting times.  But is that a good or a bad thing?  Only time will tell.

Why I Didn't Mission This Weekend

This past weekend I fully intended to run some missions in Eve Online.  I really did.  I have a nice new battleship and if I run a few more missions I'll finally have the proper standings with agents who regularly give out kill missions.  But some things just got in the way.

First was planetary interaction.  Friday night and Saturday mornings are when I usually do my weekly runs to trade hubs with my products.  Things slowed down a bit Friday night as I got caught up looking at the production graphs for my extractor heads.  Oooh, graphs!  I'm really interested in how production changes from day-to-day in my extraction programs.

Well, I could make up the time on Saturday morning, right?  Wrong.  I'm working on my real life physical fitness and decided I needed a better stairstepper.  So I went out and bought a small mini-stepper that has a lot more resistance than my old one.  However, the dance music I had been listening to when working out no longer worked.  That was not a problem, since I have One Night of Roc on my iPod.  But the time I spent looking took away playing in the morning.

While I was hauling my products to market I picked up courier contracts to make a little extra money.  I got just a little carried away and wound up in the Gallente Federation.  I hadn't flown around those regions since I left Eve University and I couldn't really enjoy the sights then because we were fighting the Privateers.  Let's just say that the contracts were a bit more generous in the Gallente Federation than in the Minmatar Republic and by the time I got back home I was 15 million ISK richer.  But I was having so much fun I lost track of time and it was Saturday night and time for bed.

Well, I could run missions Sunday, right?  Not really.  I have a blogging project going on for Clone Pundit and I spend the day installing SQL Express, writing code and watching the Bears lose to the Packers.  I still have to polish up the code, but I think I'll have some good posts up over at Clone Pundit.

So that's why I didn't run any missions.  I'm such a terribad carebear.

New Peak Concurrent User Mark For EVE Online

Incursion appears to be a smash with the player base of Eve Online as the EVE-Offline tracking site shows that a new Peak Concurrent User mark of 63,170 was reached today on Tranquility during the battle in Yulai.  The old mark of 60,453 was set 7 June 2010 during the time of Alliance Tournament VIII.

Looks like Chribba is going to have to rescale his graphs.

Operation Smile: Clear Skies 3 Teaser Trailer

The initial news reports I had heard mentioned a March 2011 release date for Clear Skies 3.  But a post from John Rourke on the Eve-O forums indicates that the release may be pushed back to April or May.  But we got a teaser video released, and how can that not produce a smile?

The Clone Pundit - Rosewalker's Blog

I love the world CCP created in Eve Online.  And with all the activities surrounding the game that players engage in, New Eden truly is a virtual world.  Heck, even assuming that each player has 2 accounts, New Eden has 4 times the population of my town and takes a lot more time to cross as well.

I also love reading about Eve.  Sometimes so much is going on that I can't experience in game that I spend my time reading about the game instead of playing.  I read the blogs and news sites and listen to podcasts.  When I travel overseas I also faithfully tune into Eve Radio to get my game fix.

With so much going on, I came up with the crazy idea to start another blog dedicated solely to Eve Online called Clone Pundit.  But I couldn't just start another blog; I had to come up with something to make it distinctive.  So I decided to emulate someone from the political blogosphere, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds and his blog, Instapundit.  Professor Reynolds makes a lot of short posts with no titles that links to a lot of sources.  He has a lot of memes running through his blog that he tells based on what others are writing or saying.  So I figured I could do the same.  It can't be that hard.

Well, it can if I put a few tweaks into the format.  I decided that to copy the Instapundit format that I need to find at least 6 Eve-related items to make posts about each day.  Not too tough as long as everyone is not too busy playing with the character creator.  Because Professor Reynolds posts constantly throughout the day (and I can't) I simulate the constant blogging by setting up my posts using Blogger's delayed posting feature.

Also, I decided that in order to try to get the feel of New Eden that I would write the blog as much as I could in-character.  So that led to Rosewalker writing his own blog.

Rosewalker, New Eden's Newest Blogger

Writing in a role-playing style does have some challenges.  For instance, how do you work in the patch notes for the expansion?  Or how about the upcoming live dev blogs using Eve Voice?  Or just dev blogs in general?  I think I'm getting the hang of it now.  And by writing in-character, I think the feel of Eve as a virtual world is starting to come through.

I started Clone Pundit last Sunday and am up to 42 posts as of the time I write this post.  With any luck, anyone who reads the blog will be curious enough to start clicking on the links to all the blogs, podcasts, news sites and forum posts that I've highlighted.  If you possibly may be interested in the events in New Eden, head on over and let me know what you think.

Preparing For Rift

I went and did it.  I pre-ordered Rift.  Perhaps not the smartest move, but I was able to lock in a $9.99 per month price for 6 months.  And I do want to see what the rifts and rift invasions are like.  I played Warhammer Online and hopefully the rifts will not be like public quests where once the initial wave of players passed through the world that the PQs became unplayable.  By getting in at the beginning I might get to experience the whole game.  Of course, since I won't be playing a lot, I'll probably fall behind anyway.

I do have to do a couple of things before March 1st.  I've already done the very important unsubscribe from World of Warcraft.  I know, how could I play that game?  Well, to tell you the truth, once I started playing Dragon Age, there was no reason to play World of Warcraft.

Mention of Dragon Age leads me to the second item of business I need to do before March 1st.  That's right, I need to finish the game.  I finished "The Landsmeet" on Monday and I only have to go through "The Final Onslaught" to finish the game.  Only?  I hear it is pretty tough.  But I really would like to only be playing 2 games at a time, so that gives me 5 weeks to finish.  And it may take me that long because I think I'll be playing Eve and I have a lot I want to do.