As my remaining two readers may have noticed, the frequency and energy of my posts have declined over the last few months. I tried to keep a “2 posts / month” schedule and while I have largely been able to do this, I am not happy with the content – its sloppy, thin, not funny, badly edited and overall I am not satisfied. In part this is due to time constraints, I had changes in my real (work) life that were in some ways awesome (I get to run my own startup) in other words scary as hell (I get to run my own startup). Gaming in general isn’t in my head at the moment.
Add to this my disappointment with EVE, my only game of choice. I am not going to lament that EVE is dying, considering that the entire market for PC-based games is declining by 4% / year (too lazy to look up the reference), EVE is holding up pretty well. New players join up as alphas and within days sit fat and happy in Rorquals in Delve – EVE as CCP wants it to be. No, EVE isn’t dying, “my” EVE is dying. The game I enjoyed with friends, where owning a Wormhole was a team sport and not the case of one guy (me) with an alt corp (mine) just dump some Citadels down without worrying too much about fuel or evictions. That EVE is gone and gone for good. CCP decided a few years ago that nullsec is the only driver for revenue and have basically stopped all development anywhere else.
Blaming CCP for me not wanting to log in is a cheap and unfair way of describing whats going on. CCP makes a product and arguably has a marketing department that carefully analyzes the retention of new, paying customers. Maybe I am simply not in the core customer base right now, this happened to me before, in 2009 World of Warcraft changed from a multiplayer game to a single player game where all human interactions were superfluous. I had enough of the gear-score-driven LFG system and one day logged off and walked off. I feel like I am close to this situation in EVE right now.
Instead of throwing the towel and biomassing, I am taking a semi-official break until December (ish). I am not having any expectations that EVE Vegas will bring any features that would excite me to log back in but I will certainly watch where I can. I truly, honestly, hope that something will be announced where I can get my mojo back.
Until then, enjoy, blow stuff up and have fun without me!
A journey through the mind 
Hello good sir, i come to wonder, what brings you the thrills ?
I am not a long term reader of your blog nor a long term, but i think you might just need to meet new space friends, completely flip your lifestyle.
Maybe make yourself the bet to live with only 1 ship and a mobile depot anf come back to tell the tales.
Keep up and i hope we can cross eachothers in space. Drop me an evemail
It’s aphelyon *
It’s been a while, my friend. I guess I’ve been one of your mystery readers. It has been a real treat to read what you’ve been up to, even if I consider myself currently a non-active player atm. I’ve taken four long breaks from Eve myself; each over six months long, one being almost exactly a year. I’ve cut out all the rest of the meta I used to keep up with, podcasts, Eve news sites, the EveO forums. I really enjoyed myself on the forums. Not as bad as people make it out to be, really.
What did it for me? Citadels. I feel that they ruined the small part of Eve that I really enjoyed and where I had my niche. Their affect on warzone control was so overwhelming that system contestation really became a distraction, rather than the objective. A poke to start a fight and nothing more. The system had no value anymore. Geography (astrography?) no longer played a part in the strategy of what system you wanted to base in or begin a siege from. Whether the system or lanes had stations or not became irrelevant. In my opinion, unpopular now, I’m sure, as it ever was when they were announced: They are to powerful. They are over-qualified as a replacement to a moon anchored POS. They have no limit to how many can be deployed by system or owned. And most of all, their vulnerability was not in the spirit of Eve. Vulnerability windows were a joke, just like the sov wand that could be placed on an interdiction nullified interceptor. That was how I saw it. This was how I played and enjoyed Eve. Having a beer and chatting with militia buddies as we took systems and found ourselves fights, simply by being out there; It wasn’t always about spinning buttons, because, in the end, It led to content and some great memories. Another discussion about FW missions, stealth bombers and T3D’s might take a whole evening by itself!
I saw that I was taking Eve too much to heart. That the devs, and the players, preferred the transient treats over diversity. Having something ‘to do’ was better than a realization of an ideal, any goal, or grudge. The latter, to me, is what made Eve what she is. There was soul. The stars had a memory. These are real people, real hours invested. But I have discovered that the ideal, much as in life, is unlike the reality. People are slow with change, and what changes came would indulge and not test. For those who planned and dared there would meet with hindrances instead of an impetus to spur the chariot of strife and whirl the wheels of destinies. Safeguards and securities to coddle the disaffected and never afflicting the weak to expose them to what would make them strong.
If losing in Eve changes, so does winning in it. I’d rather my hands let her sink into the depths of memory, than see her slowly rot. Yet I still do not have the heart to let the fiery arrow send her to the dawn with a biomass.
Sorry – I forgot to comment on this.
“My EVE is dying”
That really resonated with me when I first read your post a month ago. I wrote it down in my own blog notes and was going to expand on it. But then – life.
Good luck with your start up. Sounds like un-scouted undocking without local.
Honestly, burn out and such is a thing but your group’s activity seems low overall. You’re probably better off going to join another group rather than try to salvage a dead one.
yep, I agree to some extent. EVE however is about the people and leaving them behind has not come up yet. Just in case, how are you guys doing? 🙂
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