Hey, folks. Long time no Popo, I know. Been a bit busy with classes and work and running rescue, but lately I rediscovered an old flame of mine this week and I figured that, maybe, it was time to rekindle that fire. Yes, I'm talking about EVE Online.
Last you guys heard of me, I was living in Null Security space enjoying the adventure and danger of the "Wild West". Let's recap on things that have gone on since then.
First, I fried my computer. Second, I stopped playing EVE because I had no computer to play it on. When I finally landed a good computer that could play EVE, I couldn't play it half because classes had started and half because I was working too much to play reliably. Toss in a little bit of sadness over losing a large amount of stuff in EVE and I just haven't had the heart to pick it up until now.
Long story turned somewhat short, after my computer fried I found out that the alliance I had joined and, by extension, the corporation I was a part of wound up on the receiving end of a hostile incursion. Another alliance, one far larger and more wealthy than ours, slammed into the region and began snapping up our systems one by one. Being stuck offline indefinitely and with no way to communicate with my corpmates/alliance friends, I could only watch on dotlan (EVE's website to see a variety of star system stats such as sovereignty) as the little sector of Null I called home was taken over. With a bunch of stuff sealed away where I couldn't reach it and no way to safely get much of anything out, I stayed away. None of it was irreplaceable, I just didn't feel like tackling the daunting task of figuring out what to do about it all while simultaneously tackling school and a job I hated with a burning passion comparable to a thousand suns exploding at once.
Anyways.
This week I booted EVE up and hopped online. Turns out a lot has changed, some for the better and some not so much. My corp is dead, no one has been active for at least a month, possibly longer. The friends I had made on EVE were inactive and the old alliance I'd been involved with has changed so much that I only recognize the occasional name and even then only vaguely. So, with a dead corp, low funds, and no laid out path for myself... I decided it was time to forge a new one.
Thing is, so much has changed. EVE used to be solely a pay-to-play game. Now, its become a free-to-play game. Granted, free to play is fairly restricted, though not horridly so. You can't fly certain ships, for one, and some skills you can't max out (train up to level 5, in other words). You're limited, but EVE is ultimately a capitalism simulator as much as it is a starship simulator, which means that free-to-play is easily a gateway into making the in game credits (ISK) to pick up a few PLEXes and quickly turn an account to pay-to-play. All in all, fully approve of the change.
Backtracking a bit here, but about that forging a new path bit. I'm in an inactive corp with no goals, no direction, and I'm having to re-teach myself about.. well, everything. Plus, I'm having to learn all of the new stuff that's been added or changed. I kicked around the options I had for a few hours before coming to a decision. As much as the corporation I'd been in had done mainly PvP, I had been the industry director. The alliance? Mainly industry oriented. They were armed miners. Militia with assault rifles. Partisans with tanks. Irregulars with WMDs.
They were industrialists that had learned how to fight just well enough to hold their own, but that was it.
I'd sat in on too many debates on fleet compositions where "tried and true" tactics met the recent ship/fleet metas. Shield tanking over armor tanking. Missiles vs lasers. Kiting vs brawling. Should we hire mercenaries or go it alone. Take the fights or dock up and hide. As much as I enjoy building and mining and industry... That's all I really did. I fought, yeah, but at the end of the day where did I end up? A mining barge. I figured it was time for a change and so I decided to make a move to do something I'd never done before.
Fight for pay.
I decided that if I was going to be more than just an armed miner with half an idea on how to fight, it was time to go big or go home. I applied to a mercenary company with some solid reputation and despite my mining/industrial origins, the killmails I have under my belt caught their eye. Seems I was doing something right here and there along the way. No word yet, nothing said about my application status, but the recruiter seemed interested after a glance through my combat history. With luck, who knows? I might just wind up as Popo the Mercenary Hutt.
Last you guys heard of me, I was living in Null Security space enjoying the adventure and danger of the "Wild West". Let's recap on things that have gone on since then.
First, I fried my computer. Second, I stopped playing EVE because I had no computer to play it on. When I finally landed a good computer that could play EVE, I couldn't play it half because classes had started and half because I was working too much to play reliably. Toss in a little bit of sadness over losing a large amount of stuff in EVE and I just haven't had the heart to pick it up until now.
Long story turned somewhat short, after my computer fried I found out that the alliance I had joined and, by extension, the corporation I was a part of wound up on the receiving end of a hostile incursion. Another alliance, one far larger and more wealthy than ours, slammed into the region and began snapping up our systems one by one. Being stuck offline indefinitely and with no way to communicate with my corpmates/alliance friends, I could only watch on dotlan (EVE's website to see a variety of star system stats such as sovereignty) as the little sector of Null I called home was taken over. With a bunch of stuff sealed away where I couldn't reach it and no way to safely get much of anything out, I stayed away. None of it was irreplaceable, I just didn't feel like tackling the daunting task of figuring out what to do about it all while simultaneously tackling school and a job I hated with a burning passion comparable to a thousand suns exploding at once.
Anyways.
This week I booted EVE up and hopped online. Turns out a lot has changed, some for the better and some not so much. My corp is dead, no one has been active for at least a month, possibly longer. The friends I had made on EVE were inactive and the old alliance I'd been involved with has changed so much that I only recognize the occasional name and even then only vaguely. So, with a dead corp, low funds, and no laid out path for myself... I decided it was time to forge a new one.
Thing is, so much has changed. EVE used to be solely a pay-to-play game. Now, its become a free-to-play game. Granted, free to play is fairly restricted, though not horridly so. You can't fly certain ships, for one, and some skills you can't max out (train up to level 5, in other words). You're limited, but EVE is ultimately a capitalism simulator as much as it is a starship simulator, which means that free-to-play is easily a gateway into making the in game credits (ISK) to pick up a few PLEXes and quickly turn an account to pay-to-play. All in all, fully approve of the change.
Backtracking a bit here, but about that forging a new path bit. I'm in an inactive corp with no goals, no direction, and I'm having to re-teach myself about.. well, everything. Plus, I'm having to learn all of the new stuff that's been added or changed. I kicked around the options I had for a few hours before coming to a decision. As much as the corporation I'd been in had done mainly PvP, I had been the industry director. The alliance? Mainly industry oriented. They were armed miners. Militia with assault rifles. Partisans with tanks. Irregulars with WMDs.
They were industrialists that had learned how to fight just well enough to hold their own, but that was it.
I'd sat in on too many debates on fleet compositions where "tried and true" tactics met the recent ship/fleet metas. Shield tanking over armor tanking. Missiles vs lasers. Kiting vs brawling. Should we hire mercenaries or go it alone. Take the fights or dock up and hide. As much as I enjoy building and mining and industry... That's all I really did. I fought, yeah, but at the end of the day where did I end up? A mining barge. I figured it was time for a change and so I decided to make a move to do something I'd never done before.
Fight for pay.
I decided that if I was going to be more than just an armed miner with half an idea on how to fight, it was time to go big or go home. I applied to a mercenary company with some solid reputation and despite my mining/industrial origins, the killmails I have under my belt caught their eye. Seems I was doing something right here and there along the way. No word yet, nothing said about my application status, but the recruiter seemed interested after a glance through my combat history. With luck, who knows? I might just wind up as Popo the Mercenary Hutt.
