Mindful Visteen – Chapter 1

EVE Online is the last remaining computer game where the interaction between players actually matters.  Within EVE, the smaller and the more ambitious a group is, the more the actions of one man or woman impacts the success of the whole team.  Wormholes with their resource and mass limits attract smaller groups who relish the complexity of transient routes, danger running even the most mundane activities and the uncertainties that this lifestyle brings.  Wormholers are tight group, even by EVE standards for those reasons and many of us can not imagine anymore flying in the anonymity of a large k-space alliance.  And when corpmates become friends, the transition from “game” to “Real Life” is complete.

On December 30th 2018, our corpmate Mindful Visteen died while logged into EVE.  He was scanning an unknown signature when he suddenly disconnected and dropped off voice comms.  Nobody knew what happened, people attributed his sudden disappearance to a computer or network crash and only later we found out from a friend what happened.  It hit us like a sledgehammer.  Some of the information can be found here, some other details stay with us.

In the following weeks, one of us anchored a structure on the exact spot where Mindful Visteen had passed away.  It was a Raitaru in a C4, vulnerable, unarmed, low-power, small and open to anyone.   CCP doesn’t facilitate permanent memorials which is understandable but we hoped that the Raitaru would serve as one for as long as possible.

And for an few months this was the case.  The structure stood and reminded capsuleers that Mindful Visteen, the real person had been there before them.  Maybe someone docked up for second and read the bio, thinking about their friends, their family and what relationships between strangers on the internet mean to him.  We will never know how many have stopped by but we know that at least some people have found it and thought about what it meant.

But unfortunately, it didn’t last.  The small, low-power citadel attracted the attention of a passing crew who shot it into the first timer.  One of our directors reached out to them and told the story but it didn’t matter  – that group swatted the Raitaru out of the sky leaving nothing but a wreck and gaining nothing but a killmail.

 

 

Actually, the attackers did gain something.

They combined anger of Mindful’s Friends.

More of that in Chapter 2

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I shot the Myrm, but I did not kill the Dominix

As my last remaining reader may recall, I live in WH space, staging with NOMEX out of a C2.  And while fleet fights are awesome fun with our solid FCs, occasionally I get “wanderlust”, drift away with my two characters and deliberately go down chains with EOL holes.  When the last known connection expired, when the bookmarks become stale and old, I really get the old feeling of being totally isolated and alone.  Whether I engage hostiles or not, whether I live or die, win or lose is now all up to me, no excuses, no regrets.

And so I drifted from Wormhole to Wormhole over the weekend with my Legion and my Stratios, sniffing around dozens of holes, checking out citadels for activity, keeping a mental log of how many anomalies or gas sites should be there but are not (indicating recent PVE), checking if the POCOs are allied with the citadel owners, checking the citadel owner’s killboard and so on.  Much has changed (for the worse) in WH intel since POSes are gone but I just try to get a feel for each hole I travel to and get a mental image of the people who live there.

I bumble into a C1 with a static Low Sec connection.  Its a very large system (which is good, so I can make excellent safe spots to log off in) and I tend to like C1s.  In general, they are inhabited by PvE guys who seek riches from PI, hacking, mining (the anomalies are nearly worthless) and of course as manufacturing base.  I look around and see an Astrahus and 2 (!) Athanors pulling in rocks.  All owned by a 7 man corp (i.e. 1 guy with 3 accounts and 2 Jita trade toons).  A single POCO is being reinforced, comes out in 24 hours or so.  I shall sleep here tonight.

A Series of Fortunate Events

As my remaining two readers know, I spend my EVE life in Wormhole space, flying with Anomalous Existence (NOMEX) based out of a C2 hole.  However fun this is, between real life job(s), family and other stuff I barely can make 2 hour / week piloting work and consequently lost much of the “edge” that I used to have may have had .  Basically, I screw up a lot these days and while this is humorous occasionally and solo, in fleet operations it can put the whole fleet at risk.  And here follows the tale of the screw-ups that nearly ended badly:

Big picture. NOMEX lives in a C2 but had reasons to make an Astrahus in a C5 go away.  I have no idea why, don’t ask, don’t want to know but I like explosions, so of course I volunteer. As usual, the fleet combo is something like DPS+Scout+Logi and my always preferred roles for “Scout” were already taken.  The DPS fleet ships into “Leshaks”, these newfangled ships for which I have so far been too arrogant to train for and that leaves me with flying Logistics.  Actually, that works, I am reasonably confident that I know what I am doing and I certainly could use the practice.  But wait!  Why use a standard corp-approved Guardian if I could make things far more complicated and fly a T3 Cruiser?  Logi-Proteus is a “thing” these days, I already have a hull. Its expensive, risky and unnecessary, just what my corp didn’t ask for but the FC grudgingly approves. Someone smarter than me gives me a fit and I head to Jita with a song on my lips.  This is what I buy:

Endgame?

For most of us old EVE players, the metaverse of the game is as important as the game itself.  EVE would be nothing without the player-generated stories of evictions, slander, theft and good deeds, we have become a famed community not despite EVE itself is such a buggy work in progress but because of it.  And while blogs and news aggregators used to be our watering holes (EVE Forums have always been limited to new players who just didn’t know any better), the shift to r/eve is nearly complete.

Goodbye 2018

In December, it is customary among bloggers to recap the year and I nearly didn’t make it which is in itself indicative of my state of mind.  EVE and blogging are simply not as much in my thoughts as it used to be. There are a few obvious reasons that have (almost) nothing to do with the game itself and I’ll get into it.

Wormholes 2.0

If the eviction of Hard Knocks (HK) had just one positive effect, it was the reassessment of Wormhole space in today’s New Eden; the New Eden of Citadels, skill injectors and Rorqual Mining.

Where did all start? 

Wormholes were released in 2009 with the now famous “Apocrypha” expansion which also introduced T3 Cruisers and Sleepers with new behavior.  As legend goes, Wormholes had not been designed to be settled permanently but of course we all know that Player-operated-structures (POS) served as an uncomfortable hunting camp.  Wormhole exploration without corporate bookmarks and Pathfinder / Siggy was really painful and a niche game for some crazy masochists like yours truly.  The appeal was of course that the ISK could be excellent, en-par with Incursions but without the WoW-style politics and “gear score” mechanics that Incursions require.  Because Wormhole space was complicated, messy and harsh, it attracted few hardcore nerds into splintered corporations who – after a few years – all knew each other.  For quite some time, Wormhole space was considered to be the most balanced space in EVE and was largely left alone while CCP messed around with Faction War, Nullsec and to some extent High Sec (especially industry).

The Eviction of Hard Knocks and why it could be good for Wormhole space

As my last remaining loyal reader (hi Mum!) may recall, I bounced around in EVE but always come back to Wormhole Space (aka Anoikis). To me, the uncertainty of connections, resources and enemies, the excitement of working in small, highly skilled teams and the slow, cat-like scouting sessions are the most thrilling aspects of the game.  Wormholers in EVE are a little bit “different”, we used to have a fearsome but also slightly weird reputation.  I mean, who is nuts enough to stalk an enemy for weeks in order to get a single drop on a site running fleet?  We do.  Oh yes, we do.