There's a meme going around CrazyKinux's blog pack asking why you play. Since he just said something very true on Twitter about what I'm currently doing I thought a blog post is in order to clarify it. Tonight is Friday night, and I am not playing because I'm busy coding something for my corporation website. It's something that not a lot of other games let you do, because it uses data from inside of Eve itself. Yes, Eve has an API. It all started with tools like EveMon. Applications that scraped HTML from the eve website and showed you what you...

Not long ago I thought that skill points don't matter. I have lots of skill points, and new players don't, but you only ever use as many points as you're currently using. Then I tried faction warfare with my first fresh alt in years. Ouch, being a newbie hurts. My first ship fit plan was scuppered by the reality that I didn't have the skills to use the equipment I needed, let alone have the skills to fit that gear if I could use it. Fitting is tight at the newbie end of life. So there I was in a frigate (rifter at...

I have a very big problem with Eve, and it’s not one that many of my readers have. I have a podcast, and Eve gets talked about a lot. It’s my main game, and it also generates the most interesting subjects to talk about. Warhammer has innovative PvP? Bit small isn’t it, why not have the scope of Eve. WoW is adding new tradeskills? What they really need is a proper player economy like Eve! Conan has a well developed first 20 levels of PvE content? Well Eve… OK, it breaks down there. My problem is that I can’t talk about...

Last time, as part of this insane post every day for a month challenge, I said that I need a break from the game but can’t do it and said that I would tell you why. The reason? I feel like part of the universe. There are wars going on, alliances rise and fall and although I’m not involved with most of them the fact that it’s all the same single universe means that I want to keep watching what happens, especially with our local alliances as if I drop out of contact for a while then I’ll never be...

As listeners to the podcast will know I’m a little burnt out on Eve. This has nothing to do with the game itself, I’m just burnt out and need a break. The problem is that I’m the CEO of a corporation and so have responsibilities. Eve is now 5 years old, but I’ve not played 100% of that time. I was there at the start though and for the last few years I’ve been playing all the time. This got me thinking: do I need a holiday? I have no idea what I want to do personally in Eve (I...

Is it just me, or does everybody get this result? Industrialist with teeth Take The EvE Personality Test today! Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator. You enjoy Eve's economic model and you find that the greatest challenge of the game lies in mastering the market. System security status is a matter of profit/no profit for you, and you always factor in the possibility/probability of PvP in your estimates. To you, Eve isn't a PvP or a PvE game. It's a simulation of capitalizm in its purest form, and a place where the savvy wins the day. I don't think that the test is...

So the last war ended without a shot being fired. Or us seeing the enemy. To be honest that's more disruptive than real war as it scares the hell out of the newbies. Lucky for us we have a new war! This is another small corp, but with double the members this time. So that means there are two of them! I suspect it's the same typical thing. Hotshot PvP pilot declares war against 100 man industrial corp who he thinks will be easy pickings, but since he's hanging around our highsec base I suspect he's not that keen to come find...

Our latest corp war has ended, and this time it was against a one man corp who never even came close to us. He declared on us, told us that he'll probably never follow up and attack us and we told him where to find us in case he felt in the mood. Still, he had good 0.0 experience and was very well represented on the killboards. My paranoia was screaming trap throughout all of it. But now the war is retracted and we've survived yet another conflict where we didn't even see the enemy in space. I never even...

It seems that all I've done over the last few days is roll alts in Eve. Alt for the factional warfare sister corp, alts to see what good base skills you can get with a pure noob and, finally, a new alt for actually experimenting with factional warfare. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but despite playing Eve for over five years now I'm utterly useless at PvP. Well that's what I think because I never actually do any except when I really can't avoid it. I think it's time that I did actually bother to learn, but since...

Although CCP or White Wolf haven't said anything about it recently I think it's probably time to call the Eve CCG dead. The last of the fan sites are shutting down and the official site was down for a couple of days seemingly without anybody noticing.  The last news was in April, and there was a big gap before that too. Most telling there's no moderation on the forums anymore, swearing doesn't seem to get you censored as you would expect. CCP/White Wolf have no visible interest in the game any more. Worse of all it's been far too long...