Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back!

As my last remaining reader(s?) may recall, I recently took a break from EVE and played No Man’s Sky exclusively.  There was really no drama involved, “my” EVE (=low class Wormholes)  have not experienced any changes in years and the “blackout” or PvE content has not had any impact on my play style at all.  And the NOMEX team I fly with is awesome, nothing wrong there either.  I just felt like exploring something brand new, learn new skills, really discover something that I had never seen before and No Man’s Sky delivered every time I logged in.  New planets, new alien worlds, new stuff to see after every warp – its an incredible game when played solo and – so I heard – with others.  Last week, a massive update dropped, full with base-building, quality of life and multiplayer features that sounded incredible (one can tame and ride the weirdest critters now – and yes – milk them).  But for some reason, the same update patch turned my interest off entirely.  Its sort of like WoW for me in 2009 (or any game other than EVE since…), once I “get” it, I lose interest.  NMS has phenomenal breadth but very little depth, i.e. I can warp to a huge variety of planets but once landed, do pretty much the same thing.  Most players seem to go down the base-building path and painstakingly assemble gigantic, floating castles or go the team route which – thankfully in NMS – is quite controlled and allows small groups of RL friends to do quests together, sort of what Elderscrolls Online should have been instead of a WoW clone 10 years too late.  I am not into multiplayer (outside EVE) and never really got the “building” bug – not in EVE or Space Engineer (never tried Minecraft).  So, I logged into NMS the other day and realized that I’d really like to play EVE for a bit.

So, I logged into EVE after 2 (3?) months of absence. I felt just “at home” in my Legion and went scouting for things to look at, it was just like riding a bike.  There is something meditative about scanning and scouting, punctuated by little bursts of anxiety / anticipation when decloaking and jumping into a new hole, never quite know if there is the great “nothing” or 10 guys in T3Ds on the other side.  I scanned down a few valuable gas sites for my fleet mates who descended on them with a cloud of Prospects but unfortunately, got myself rolled out by a Hard Knocks Archon, and had to take a rather messy, long route via Low Sec back home.  It ended up with no kills, no loss, no ISK, no scary moments, no tall tales of near defeat or amazing victory.

I loved it.