The forums are going into meltdown as players demand an answer for the leaked PDF:

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1536065

Meh.

It’s OK. I logged in for a short while last night to take a look, and promptly turned CQ off. Not my cup of tea, really – as a lot of others within the Eve community have mentioned, it breaks immersion a little bit, and I really can’t be arsed to learn a new UI when the previous one was fine. It’s slower to get around, fiddly, and my toon looks a bit disabled.

I’ll stick with the static picture of a door, thanks.

CCP have definitely done a few graphical tweaks though – the game (once undocked) looks better, lighter somehow, with better textures. Not sure if it’s me projecting my wishlist onto the game, but I like it.

Aurum… pffft. Doesn’t affect me, I don’t have RL money to spunk away on optical implants. They’re very expensive, which I think is kind of the point – they’re vanity items, if everyone could afford one, I think they’d become a bit irrelevant (a lot like the see-through horse and flying lion in the MMO-That-Shall-Not-Be-Mentioned). If people have RL cash or plenty of in-game ISK to spend though, then why not?

Reactions

I was quite alarmed by the reaction of the community during the downtime as the patch was applied. I’d been led to believe that the community was a little more mature than in other MMOs, but if anything, the uproar over the downtime was worse than anything I’ve ever seen on the WoW forums. Foot-stamping, “I want free SP/ISK/Blowjob” threads, people bitching about CQ (just turn the fucking thing off), bitching about Aurum (don’t fucking buy it)… that sort of behaviour really puts me off.

Personally, I think CCP have done a fine job with Incarna. So there.

Me

In other news, I’ve sorted my skill plans and… wait for it… joined a corp! The corp is Among the Shadows, they seem like a lovely bunch, based in Caldari space. The tax is a bit high at 10% but they have a profit sharing scheme, and are scheduling weekly Ops/Roams (which will be nice once I’m ready for such things). I’ve been based in Arnon for a while, but have discovered that I have access to level 2 missions in Caldari space, so I’ll be moving some of my crap very shortly.

I have a couple of skill plans to follow set up in EveMON.

The first one is getting myself able to fly my Carcaral – almost done with this, got about 6 days left. I don’t just want the basic skills, I want to be able to fly and fit it properly without being blown to fuck on my first mission.

Second up, I’m going to finish my training for my Osprey and dabble in a bit of mining. Yes, for fun. Sounds a bit foolish, perhaps, but I want to have a stab at it, and maybe progress onto manufacturing or PI – we’ll see.

Lastly, I’m going to get my skills up properly and get a Rifter. I fancy a bit of PvP, and advice around the net recommends this ship for a bit of fun.

I decided to move the Cormorant first. I’ve fitted this out as a salvager – I intend to use it to hop into encounters after missions, as I’ve read this can match, if not out-do, the mission rewards. Being a complete arse, I forgot to stuff it full of the crap I’ve managed to gather in my first week of playing, so I took it the 15 jumps to Arnon completely empty.

Now I have a 15 jump return journey in a shuttle, before moving the Merlin across. I’m not sure if I’ve fitted this properly, but I hope it’ll be OK. A couple of 150mm railguns with Antimatter charges, two standard missile launchers in the high-slots. The mid-slots feature a small shield extender, small shield booster, and two cap rechargers (Is, not IIs). In the low slots, I’ve put two Power Diagnostic System I’s in. As you probably guessed, trying to keep my cap from discharging too quickly.

The merlin is a bitch to fit. When I get enough ISK, I’ll probably switch to a Kestrel whilst I skill up to (probably) a Caracal. For now though, I’m hovering around the 3.5mil mark and need to make ISK quick.

Wish me luck…

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and scrub my eyes out after reading some of the comments placed on CCP’s announcement on Facebook. I mean, I thought this game had a fairly mature user base, but some of the dicks on there shrieking for free SPs / ISK…

A bit of background (you can skip this bit)… I’ve always had a fascination for science fiction, but have never been much of a gamer. I’m not into FPS, platformers, anything like that. The first game I really took a fancy too was Elite on my old BBC Model B, followed by Frontier on my Amiga 1200. This was followed by the buggy-but-brilliant First Encounters on my first PC.

Work got in the way, and I didn’t play another computer game until early 2000, which was Egosoft’s X: Beyond the Frontier, which was rather spiffing though bloody hard to get into.

And that was it, really. Got married, had kids, played the odd single player game. Until EVE, which I started playing last Tuesday.

Why Eve?

I’ve been meaning to pick it up for a while, but I’d read stuff around the ‘net about the learning curve, and how noob-unfriendly it was, which scared me right off. But after an awful lot of reading about Eve, last week I thought, sod it, and took the plunge, downloading the 14-day trial. Installed, logged in…

O.M.F.Stars!

To demonstrate just how impressed I was… I subscribed the next day. It’s got everything I could want in a game:

a) It’s in space.
b) I get to shoot things
c) I get to not shoot things if I fancy a break
d) I get to shoot other players if I ever become brave
e) Lots, lots more

So, my character is called Isis Tavore. I was going to make a he-toon, but then I decided to make a she-toon that I didn’t mind looking at too much.

She’s Caldari – I like the idea of shooting at things from a long way away, and Caldari seem to be very fond of missiles. I’d go for up close exciting combat, but close-combat in Eve isn’t like Tie-Fighter.

I’ve done the tutorial missions, and all the career agents (except for the exploration ones – scanning and probing really doesn’t do it for me, the second mission almost made me quit the game after trying to get those sodding probes to pick up the gravimetric anomaly, so I quit the mission and the agent has nothing more for me). I’ve done the first chapter of the Sisters of Eve epic mission arc, which was fun. I’ve had

At the moment, I have a paltry 5m ISK, a few ships and that’s about it. I’m currently flying a Condor, reasonably well fitted, doing missions in Arnon for CBD corporation to make some ISKs. All my other stuff is back at the Caldari starting system, 15 jumps away, so I’m going to have to do quite a bit of travelling if I’m going to be around this neck of the woods for a while.

What I have planned for the very near future…

Fit out my Merlin and use that to run level 1 missions.

Fit out my Cormorant and use that for salvaging after the above missions have been completed.

From what I’ve read, I should be able to make a fair bit of ISK this way, just enough to be comfortable. I’m also tempted to fit out my Bantam with some Giant Secured Containers and go mining, too…

All in all, it’s a massive game, and I haven’t even scratched the surface. I’ve learned a lot in a week, but I’m still a foundering noob with no proper clue as to what’s going on. Yes, I’m always training skills. They’re probably all wrong, mind. I use EFT to play around with ship fittings, and EVEMon for character development.

No, I haven’t considered joining a Corp as yet, although I’m becoming increasingly tempted.

I like the way I can dip into Eve when my toddler gives me a bit of free time. Just to top up my skill queue, or run a couple of missions. It’s extremely immersive, but when you’re not playing, at least you know you’re toon isn’t just idling.

I think this could be the start of a beautiful relationship.