Avatars United - Vegeta's blog

Podded & Back Again, Part 5, 6 & 7

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:23:10 -0000

This story was written at the end of 2004 and portrays the first two years of my time playing Eve-Online. Over the course of a few weeks, I intend to post the story in its entirety, as well as expand and write more. Please remember that as I was quite young when this was written, the quality of the work is not on par with what you might see me produce today.

Part 5: My Switch

I switched, I went from CEO to member, I loved it. The burden was no longer on my shoulders. I had no more members telling me they died or asking if I could lend them money to buy a new ship. I had no more recruitment conversations to go through and no more corporation obligations to do. That was gone.

What happened in the beginning of October is that m0o corporation came back to the game. All the old players who were so well known for camping the Lonetrek region were back to playing the game. I spoke to The Reverend, CEO of m0o corporation, presented my offer to him and got an immediate 'yes'.

On November 21st 2003 TLBC split up, I selected twelve of our best people to come join m0o corporation, we were allied with the CA fighting against the SA. This was deffinently one of the best decisions I ever made in Eve. Joining m0o was going to take me places I had never dreamed of. We were the elite, we were rich, we had skills and nobody could defy us. The SA were crushed like little bugs, we killed so many of their ships while barely losing any, it was just amazing.

The best catch, the kill I'm most proud of in Eve, ever, happened on December 1st 2003. It was stortly after the Amarr Championships and luckily for us, the winners of those championships had been members of MASS, a SA corporation. Grikls Imperial Apocalypse went down in battle just above the station in DSS-EZ, I respect him greatly for taking that ship into battle.

This lasted for about a month, by then we got bored with the Stain Alliance. Our next target would be the Coalition of Free Stars. This would be one of the biggest gankfests that have ever taken place in Eve. We came, we saw and we beat the **** out of CFS. They never stood a chance. We absolutely raped the whole alliance just by camping their chokepoint, A2-V27. We must have killed over 20 battleships in our first night there.

By this time the m0o kill list was created, a way for the public to see what we were upto, a way for everybody to see the destruction we were creating. Regrettably the first week of our CFS trip is not recorded on the kill list. Our alliance crushing continued. Stain came first, CFS was number two and third was The Fountain Alliance, this is deffinently the best alliance-crushing I have ever taken part in.

FA looked tough, they looked strong, they even built us a 30-40 ship blockade to stop us from getting into their region. It didn't last long though, everybody has to log off sometimes and when they did, we snuck through into their key system, YZ-LQL. As was to be expected, a lot of fighting took place in this system in the next two months or so.

This was the same story, FA got raped. We utterly crushed the alliance. m0o had grown significantly in the past months and was upto about 50-60 members. Even with only such numbers we crushed the alliance. We discovered safe spots, we won every fleet battle we entered into, we beat them in every perspective. Those kills make up a good portion of the m0o kill list. In the FA days I flew a scorpion, I was one of the target jammers, cycling between targets and rendering a portion of the enemies ineffective.

Part 6: My Other Self

Like most people in Eve, I have two accounts. I had a friend who quit the game back in the days of Atlantic and he gave me his account, since then I have maintained two accounts. My second account has always been my money making character, a way for me to fund my fighting character.

Recently though, I created a corporation for my second character and started recruiting. He is now the CEO of a 60 member corporation operating in 0.0 space, mining precious ore for profits. Throughout the months I have gathered a lot of wealth and possess seven battleship original blueprints, all but the Megathron, which I will buy soon.

When I say 'My other self' though, I'm not talking about my alt. I'm talking about my friend Paddyman. We've been through everything together. We first met in FOA, we then moved on to Atlantic, TLBC and then we joined m0o. Everything that I have I share with Paddy, I wouldn't have it without his help. We've struggled through hard times, we've taken some good and bad decisions. We have traveled, fought, ran, attacked and defended together for the past 16 months. If it wasn't for him I probably wouldn't be playing Eve anymore.

My other character, Fenian, is the CEO of Aztec Industries. If you want to know more about Aztec, check out www.simnet.is/chase (in-game). The corporation members know that I also have a pirate character and they don't mind. We are currently recruiting so if you're interested in joining, let me know. We have a lot of experienced members aswell as new people, one thing I like doing in Eve is helping newbies get started, they are the meat of the future, if you know what I mean :)

Recently I would say Fenian has become the main and Vegeta the alt, as most of my time has been spent building up Aztec Industries along with some old friends, its a lot of fun.

Part 7: My Break

Back on track, m0o was in Fountain, killing literally hundreds of ships before finally getting bored and leaving the area. By this time I took a long break from Eve, I had exams and was pretty much bored, I wanted to try out other things. I picked up SWG, reached Jedi'hood, got bored, played Warcraft 3, got bored etc.

During my break m0o crushed the CA in frigates, they increased a lot in numbers and when I got back, I was very surpised to see that some of my former enemies had joined m0o. People who I had fought were now allies. I didnt really mind since they were all good fighters. A lot of my old friends are still playing and I try to keep relations with all of them. Also m0o was suddenly allied with Evolution which has been one of my enemies for a long time.

All in all, I think the break was good for my Eve-career. It helped me see that Eve truly is the best game out there. There is no game where you can be as free, no game where the market system is as complex while still being very comfortable in use and you only have one server which makes for an amazing playerbase and community. Of course the game still has some issues, but what game doesn't?

Podded & Back Again, Part 3 & 4

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:33:14 -0000

Part 3: My Change

My destination was Umokka. I had sold my Hoarder and almost all my assets. I was now heading towards Umokkas top station to sign up for my new corporation, The Federation of Assassins.
FOA for short was run by Tank CEO, this was his first corporation. Tank and his friends were pure pirates, they killed people for pleasure. I thought to myself oh what fun that would be, a bit of the 'ol Ultraviolence for you Kubrick fans.

Tank was impressed that I was about as rich as his 10-member corporation put together, he had plans for the future which interested me, so I decided I join him. Teaming up with friends I still have in Eve today, people like Paddyman, DrStrangelove, Shircrief, Tibor Ferenc, Merlin and many others. My playstyle might be ruthless but my biggest assets in Eve will always be the people I know, they are always what keep me playing the game.

Our goal was to get a Blackbird original blueprint. The cost was about 36,000,000 ISK. It took us roughly 2 weeks to get the blueprint, after we got it one of the most memorable things that ever happened to me in Eve took place:

I was on the trade channel, someone was selling around 5,000 megacyte and about 6,500 zydine (Those are the numbers I recall). I had this brilliant idea, back then something like this had never been done before, it was new and original. I tricked the person, I told him I would buy the minerals for more than he was asking under one condition, he would deliver.

Now, this was before the time of sentry guns, CONCORD was there but not really anything you had to be afraid of, if I remember correctly they only responded in systems that were .8 and above. What we did was ask the person to deliver to Umokka, which was our sort-of pirate haven. The person agreed, I think you already know what happened. The second he jumped in five of us, four rifters and Tank in an Osprey were on him, he died swiftly and we got all the minerals we would need for our Blackbird production.

Killing for me was pure ecstasy, destroying my enemies ships, flying towards that loot can and putting all his stuff in my cargo hold felt very good, I absolutely loved it. Finally I had found my calling in the game, I was a pirate. This deed would shape the rest of my Eve-career, I focused on finding ways to get rich fast and easily, although until much later, I had little success.

FOA was doing good, we were mining the 'roid belts in Kakakela dry, trying to get all of our members into Blackbirds. We had had the nicest fleet in the game for a 15-member corporation. Soon our goals were set higher, we aimed for a Moa original. We mined, sold blackbirds, mined some more and then we sold some more blackbirds. Soon we had a Moa original blueprint, by this time we were ready.

We decided to move, we went to a system called Tartoken, it's right below Pure Blind. We camped one of the best pirate systems in the game back then, 93PI-4. Those were good times, we would kill anyone coming through with the locals being capable of little as no resistance, those were the times of real piracy, when people were just getting into cruisers and nobody had even seen a battleship.

This was around the time when m0o was reigning over Mara and Passari, j0rt got the first battleship, medium guns could have a damage modifier of 16x and all your gunnery skills and damage mods stacked over and over again. It was before the time of highways, before we had the FA and CA and when SA was the only large alliance. These were the times when you could pirate without being afraid of a fleet of battleships coming after you and before we had billboards.

Our stay in Tartoken didn't last long, FOA changed places again. This time the destination was set for Curse. Tank had received an invitation from Smoked, the CEO of M3G4 to join their alliance. The alliance was to consist of three corporations, M3G4, FOA and Da-Dragons. Together the 3 corporations ruled over the Curse region, note that this was long before the time of the Curse Alliance, which came much later.

FOA was a good corporation with one weakness, Tank. Tank is a horrible leader, he might be a good PVP'er but in a leadership role, we might aswell have the Teletubbies. His ship-losing habit turned us into his personal miners, with only the goal of replacing his lost ships. I took a stand, I had done this before, how hard could it be the second time around?

Part 4: My Escape

One night I asked Tank for factory-access so I could make myself some ammo, in his stupidity he granted it to me. Knowing that the Moa original was being researched, the second Tank logged off I pulled the it out of the laboratory and placed it safely in my own hangar. I then proceeded into emptying the corporation hangars of all blueprints, minerals and modules.

That isn't the whole story though, I had already talked to several corporation members about this and they all agreed, it was something that had to be done. The two members who were mainly in it with me were Paddyman and Tibor Ferenc. Together we flew around 200 jumps across the galaxy to get away from Tank CEO. We started in Curse, our first destination was Venal. We went only through 0.0, remember this was back when traveling took twice as long due to lack of stargates.

In Venal we met TTI, they told us we could stay there although there wasn't much there for us. The region was pretty dead, there were only three of us with 150 million ISK in assets stored in my cargohold. We decided to leave Venal and continue our journey. We went South, through Pure Blind and Cloud Ring.

We arrived in Syndicate, this would be our haven for the next five months. Here we would build ourselves up and reach our goals. We formed The Atlantic Corporation, almost everyone in FOA besides Tank eventually became a part of it. We mined, we NPC hunted, we became rich. Here we would reach all our ultimate goal of getting a battleship original blueprint.

On August 6th, spending 3 weeks of non-stop NPC hunting we finally got the Scorpion original blueprint. We had used our Moa original to make copies and sell, that way we had been able to get the originals or the Rupture, Maller and Thorax. To be able to get the Scorpion BPO we had to sell all those along with all of our blueprint copies, most of our ships and my dear beloved scorpion, that I had gotten just about two weeks earlier.

The Atlantic Corporation was a success story, all the members were dedicated, we were all friends, we had a great bunch of twenty or so people who had just achieved a major goal in exactly three months of playing. There was only one key factor missing.

Player vs. Player.

Another change was needed, we had a strong financial background, experienced members, nothing could and would go wrong. The formed The Legitimate Businessmans Club. I was the CEO, Paddyman and Tibor Ferenc were the directors. We were a pirate corp, ruling over FD-MLJ just as m0o dissolved and Sinister left to form the Curse Alliance. It was awesome, we killed alot of ships per day, we had Syndicate all for ourselves. We knew the best hunting grounds (XZH and MJY) to get rarest modules.

We teamed up with two local corporations, Fatal Shadows and Space Wolves. We formed a small alliance with the purpose of looking out for eachothers best interest. We sometimes pvp'd together, hunted together. The alliance went on for a while, Fatal Shadows eventually left with the rest of Sinister to join CA and Space Wolves dissolved. We were back on our own.

TLBC made a name for itself. We earned the respect of our enemies and stuck fear into the hearts of most. We were known throughout the galaxy, people knew where we lived and they avoided the area, the time came though that we couldn't run TLBC anymore, many reasons were behind it.

The main reason for why we split up TLBC was that we had too many enemies. We had around 60 active members in the corporation but it was basically us against FA, which had probably atleast ten times our numbers. We won some fights, lost others. In the end it came down to myself to make the decision. I had two choices.

a) To be stuck in this endless struggle that had been going on for over a month.
b) Take the extremely interesting alternative, explained below.

Podded & Back Again, Part 1 & 2

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:36:16 -0000

Since I started playing this game back in May 2003 I've gone through a lot. I have met hundreds of memorable people, I have visited most of the regions, flown nearly all the ships and been in so many unpredictable situations that it is almost unthinkable. The odds of me being able to remember everything I've done since I started playing are about the same as me winning the lottery, and I never buy a ticket.

Part 1: Myself

My character, Vegeta, was created on the second day of Eve. I created my first character but didn't much like the Icelandic corporation RaiD Enterprises that she was a part of. I wanted to explore on my own, be my own boss and go my own ways. I'm not going to go much into the history of RaiD but their success after release was, well, limited.

Vegetas name came from the Japanese anime series Dragonball Z. Some might think it a childish name, I wont argue with you there. The character was created after watching all 266 episodes of Dragonball Z over a period of 8 days. Each episode is 20 minutes, I'll let you do the math on how many hours I spent infront of my computer. The character Vegeta is a strong, ruthless person who doesn't care much for others, as you read further you will see that I have played my character not much different from that, mostly looking out for my best interests.

Some take me as a pirate, others as an ******* but most as a griefer. That's what I am, I'm a griefer. My goal has always been to get richer, better and more powerful, I strife to be the best. I will go to any lengths to achieve my goals. I want to be at the top of the food chain.

Part 2: My beginning

Date of Birth: 2003.05.07 23:18:00

That's what my member details tell me, that's when my character was created and for me, where this whole experience began. Had my character been created a minute earlier or a minute later, I probably wouldn't be here today, had you convo'd or sent me an Eve-Mail yesterday I might not be here either.

I finished the tutorial in Ammold, I did a couple of agent missions for my starting agents, mined some scordite and refined it. It was immediately clear to me that this was not for me. I was bored out of my wits almost right away, there had to be more to this game than these extremely dull activities, back then I had no idea about what I was in for.

My first days were spent flying with a few real-life friends, we flew around, we explored, we mined and we did missions. We bought lots of modules to test them out, just to see what they did. This didn't last long, soon I was the only one left. My friends had all quit the game within their first week out of sheer boredom, I must say there wasn't really much to do for an Eve player in the first weeks of the game. We had no idea you could mine Arkonor and Bistot almost anywhere. No idea you could run trade runs and make millions in a few days, we were complete and utter newbies, we knew nothing and nobody.

This all changed when I found my first corporation, Massi (not MASS). Ninja mining was a skill that I learned quickly, in my Probe I could pull in several refines of Arkonor per day. Massi had mostly Icelanders in it, we worked together, mined Arkanor for a week or so and it was quite fun. This didn't last long though, the leaders got greedy and tried to take my profits, they would all be in for a shock when they would log on the next day.

The corporation had just recently gotten a Rifter original blueprint, I took it along with all the megacyte, all the zydrine and everything I could fit in my Hoarder. Then I set the course for Ammold, my starting system.

It felt so good, I was rich and I barely even had to lift a finger, I had a Rifter original blueprint, worth a lot of money this early into the game. I had enough megacyte and zydrine to build anything I wanted. It didn't take me long to decide what my next move would be.

Rifters don't take a lot of minerals to create. I had enough megacyte and zydrine to make about 30. I would AFK-Mine during night, sometimes setting my clock to wake up every 2 hours or so, just so I could haul it back to the station and start again, then go back to sleep. After doing this for about 3-4 days I had quite a nice sum of money in my wallet. I decided to move on and change directions.