The Fang

elcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!

Being quite a young pilot in the world of EVE online, having only been flying Internet spaceships for 6 months, my play style has been pretty steady so far. Though the journey has been short, its definitely been an interesting trip that brought me to Suddenly Ninjas and the career of tear extraction.

I started back in December 09 or thereabouts, with a toon named “Skjordr”, after a friend I’ve known nigh on half a dozen years suggested I take a look after my last MMO started to bore me. It wasn’t WoW, but I have been there, but never really got stuck into it, or any other mmo before EVE. I think what attracted me to eve was the Sandbox nature, and since I’m such an avid supporter of freedom and expression and all that jazz, it was great to see a game I didn’t just spend time going from encounter A – encounter B. I immediately knew that I wanted to delve into the piracy side of EVE, the “dark side”. I’ve always felt that these characters in movies and games have more depth to them than the goody goodies, and man, I just like being a bastard sometimes [ingame].

So, armed with a wealthy new toon [after my buddy dumped a few hundred mil on my head] I set out into the world of eve to shoot to learn how to fly these super awesome Internet spaceships. I started off by joining up with EVE university, as It seemed a good way to cut my teeth on the basics, and it was. To some extent. Not to knock the guys at EVE university, but they were a little too unforgiving rules wise for my tastes, so after a couple of weeks I dropped corp and finally saw the outside of a station! [I jest]

This is where my affair with piracy began, that -10 started to look like a badge of honour. So I fit what I could and headed out to low sec in a few frigs, which promptly turned to scrap throughout the solar systems…some because of mistimed GCC’s [gates hurt]. However, I was doing this on my own and it got rather boring at times logging into an empty dscanner for hours on end. I was also getting perturbed that my toon didnt have a second name, lame I know!

Thus was born the pilot I am today, Skjordr ‘Fang’ Longfang. Within a few days I had found the corp to join up with, through a pilot I had done some graphic work for previously. Quality Control. QC was a pvp training corp that recruited a lot of EVE university players, but was a lot more lax in player behaviour. They were loud mouthed and liked blowing shit up, my kind of bunch. QC is where I learned all the basics of fleet warfare, station games, and that frigs can kill big stuff. I also learnt how to blow incursi up at an alarming rate [my own!], thought that won me some iskies. QC was a lot of fun, and listening to the guys banter about random stuff over voice was damned entertaining. Sadly, for unknown reasons [possibly the move to null] the corp slowly drifted apart and fewer and fewer people were logging in.

Not to give up so easily, I entertained myself my whipping up a few alts. One was your basic trade alt, who has been recycled several times when I get bored of the name, the other was my first infiltration alt. Not to go into specifics, but after learning about GHSC and various other heists in eve, this alt eventually found its way into a nice little indy/pvp corp. Here was where I learnt that I bloody hated missions, and mining was soul destroying. I also learnt, that I am a terrible bastard in game, lying was incredibly easy. Long story short, I made off with about 2.5 bil worth of stuff in my second month of EVE. Since then I’ve been keeping tabs in the infiltration game, its an aspect that you wont find [that I know of] anywhere else than EVE.

After awhile I left QC in search of a corp more active in my timezone, turning to my aforementioned buddies corp, ADHC. Wormholes had interested me from the start, seemingly having the freedom of Null without all the drama. But, it was not to be. I got into the corp fine, but after a few days they bugged out and asked me to leave because they had found a blog post of me talking about my infiltration alt, and that my character had started the same day as I had regged on their forums.

*shrug*

Quite frankly, it was the best thing that happened to me in EVE. I say this because at this point I had the choice of either trying to get that blog post down, or going full bore towards total Internet “bad guy”. The path of the ninja was too strong, and I succumbed. After chat with Cyberin about the oodles of ISK I had, and once happy I wasn’t an ISK buyer I was welcomed into the growing shadow.

Suddenly Ninjas. The guys who brought ninja salvaging to a whole new level, there’s nothing quite like watching a swarm of vigils clear a field of loot in seconds, or watching a CNR concord himself on a pod. I just love this damn corp. The epic stories, the loot that can sometimes be in the billions. The awesome community that we have, and even Meccros’s trolling all make EVE worth logging into, even for a few minutes. I think best of all though, SN means I can play eve how I want to, when I want to, and still have a laugh with the corp when I do. EVE isn’t a job, I hate following orders and I like playing the “bad guy”, so SN is the perfect place for me.

So I’m a scammer, a griefer, a pirate and corp thief. Above all, I’m a Ninja. But what lies ahead?

I don’t see myself leaving SN anytime soon, I’m enjoying it too much. Thinking about getting into suicide ganking to make some serious iskies when the ninja salvaging is a bit quiet during the week, or maybe making a serious attempt to screw over an alliance through infiltration, just because I can. I also need to get back to doing some EVE artwork for some iskies, if anyone will trust me with their stuff now… and perhaps get stuck into some video editing.

At some point in the future I would like to try out the -10 piracy career, and set up shop in a wormhole at another point. I can’t say I’ll ever by found mining, or getting into blob warfare out in null. I’ve always preferred small squad or solo pvp, and thats where I am going to stay, besides they are the best ships to run on tears.

One things for sure though, I aim to misbehave.

-Fang

CrazyKinux’s Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces

StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.

A Carebear’s Journeu: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth

The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE

A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator

Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation

The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow

Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination

I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?

Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me

EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time

Roc’s Ramblings: Things Change

Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards

EVE On Real Life: Haven’t you grown up yet?

The Fang: The path of the ninja

EVEOGANDA: Whoops Apocalypse!

EVE SOB: Learning to swim

The Life of a Dead Jester: My Time with EVE

Personal Files, Ciarente Roth: Personal Diary 18.6.112

Learning to Fly: Change is Good

Depths Unknown: Falling With Style

Morphisat’s Blog: Jack of all trades

Sarnelbinora’s Blog: Thoughts of EVE

Confessions of a Closet Carebear: It’s the yellow box, stupid…

Adventures in Mission Running: My path amongst the stars

When 11 Ninjas isn’t enough: First days in the North (continued)

Lost in New Eden: My EVE Life So Far

Life in my Hole: How My EVE Experience Has Evolved

The Lathspell of Mithrandir: EVE-olution

Chocolate Heaven: Recurring Themes

Diary of a Pod Pilot: The many sides of me

eve’s parity bit: Me; the perpetual student

Mike Azariah: When you look into the Past, the Past looks into you

More as they get published…