Blogbanter 39

Posted by splatus on

Some say a man’s home is his castle. For others it is wherever they lay their hat. The concept is just as nebulous in the New Eden sandbox.

In EVE Online, what does the concept of “home” mean to you?”

A theme close to my heart from Freebooted has been picked up by Drackarn and many others and I am wondering what else I could add to the chorus of excellent voices.
The blogs describe mostly the same feeling – that you make your home where your ships are, that home is a temporary feeling of belonging and that it induces also quite a protective streak – I defend my home against invaders.  Curious.
I mused about this before.  I have been living now in Wormhole space for over 1 year now which makes definition of home actually pretty clear.  The dynamics of wormholes, their transient nature, means that my hole truly is my castle and forms the focal point in my online world.  I added bookmarks, got used to the glare of this star and the arrangement of its planets.  There may be many like it, but this one is mine…  Add to this that we actually built it here and nowhere else means, that I have a personal stake in this system.  It was our team setting up the towers and defenses and we sweated bullets scouting in convoys of Orcas with Capital Ship components to build our Rorqual and other capital ships.  The more resource someone spends to build the home, the more they are likely to defend it.   And in EVE – like every other computer game – resources always boil down to “time”.
But before I lived in wormhole space, I had my tiny fleet way, way in some remote corner of New Eden, high security of course but dozens of jumps from the nearest trade hub.  It had very limited access and I chose it because it had virtually no traffic.  When logging in, 2 or 3 locals (one of them a bot to farm the single plex) was normal.  I was in a NPC corp and basically used EVE as a single-player game.  Other players meant trouble, flipped cans, scams and so on.  In this very remote area, I mined, ratted, learned how to scan, found my first wormhole and explored low security space and neighboring systems.
I spent about 3 months there total and when our wormhole spat me out right there the other day, I felt very nostalgic.  Yes, I spent a lot of time here, I did not build anything and there is nothing to defend but just having been here for this time made it “my own”.  I’d never claim Jita but this one is mine.  It was also there where I had an encounter with a random miner who took me into his fleet, showed me how to jet can, trusted me and even gave me some ISK to get me started.  I think it was this encounter that made me look for a new corporation formed by players with similar play styles and attitudes and after a few detours. I certainly have arrived.
So, “home” is a virtual representation of space – real or pixelated – that I spent resources to differentiate from others.  It also is a place where I can hang out with friends and share laughs and thoughts.

Blog Banter 39 (will update this) 

Champions of the Domicile