Trolled by CCP

Huzzah! My blog is a featured fansite! How exciting! I received an email about it the other day and quickly dismissed it as being a troll. Seriously. It was from a name I didn’t recognize, and when I get fansite emails it’s from this other guy, so I’m like, mmm, something is fishy here. Ignore.

I half thought it was The Grinch trying to steal Christmas again. If you aren’t familiar with that story, do click the link. It’s pretty much a classic tale of EVE. I thought maybe that guy was trolling me somehow. I’ve been a little antsy this holiday season wondering if he has finally moved on, or if he is plotting another dastardly thing. The paranoia is strong in EVE Online!

But apparently the email was real and I’m FEATURED (and oh so flattered!). I wish I would have had more time to prepare, I would have wrote a little more, spruced the blog up or something. Added more pictures maybe?

It almost reminds me of that time I said in corp chat, “I’ve never won a promo!” while we were all playing SOMERBlink. Instantly, I won two in a row. I write an article, “I’ll never be EVE famous” and a week later my blog is chosen for the featured fansite! Heh.  Trolled by CCP in a good way, yeah? (I’ve never won the lottery!!!! Putting that out there, you know, just in case! haha)

I feel like I should be taking this opportunity to write about some awesome FW battle or something, but really it’s been kind of quiet on our war-front lately. Of course I blame the holidays and end of semester for school, etc. We have a couple of corpies headed out of town right now, and some others who are just finishing up exams, or graduating (congrats to FallenDream!!!). This always happens at the end of the year so I’m not really stressing it or anything. We will be back in the swing of things after the New Years.

While things have been quiet, a few of us have been binging on Minecraft. We do this every five or six months. We will start a new map and obsessively build for a few weeks. It’s fun, and keeps the corp active doing something together, even if it’s not EVE. We even have our space freniemy, Susan Black, playing with us. Token Minmatar, lol.

I think it’s kind of funny, even when we play Minecraft we always incorporate some element of EVE into it. On our last server, Daisha made a huge Amarr sign and we had a bridge of brah (it’s a Fweddit thing). On this server, Ryven has built the Cerra Manor (an EVE rp thing for us) along with an Amarrian shuttle sitting on the landing pad beside the Manor. Lols, it’s awesome.

My other corpie, Raphael (you guys might know him, he writes for The Mittani), has been playing XCOM and doing some videos for it. He named the characters after people in our corp and has some of us doing the commentary for them. Do check them out here! (I’ll be doing the next commentary!!!)

I’d like to thank CCP for the feature, I’m just so, so appreciative, and thanks to all my new readers, you guys are awesome!

xoxo
Shalee Lianne

ps.  This FW site is amazing.

7 Reasons I’ll Never Be EVE Famous

Reasons I’ll never be EVE famous….

1. I’m not particularly good at EVE. Really, I’m not. Yes, I realize I’ve invested years into the game and by this point I should be able to really kick some ass, but the hard cold truth of the matter is...I suck. And really, I’m okay with that.

I have spent countless hours trying to learn all the things, I’ve been lectured about what goes on what ship and what can kill this and yada yada yada. But it’s just too much. My brain doesn’t want to absorb any of that technical stuff. And bless my corpies hearts, they try. They do. But there is just some fundamental part of me that refuses to learn some things. My eyes glaze over and I start to tune them out and I can’t help it!

Sure, I’m decent with some things. I do okay with Amarr ships, because of lasers. They are pretty simple. Long range, short range. And the green one. Got it. But when it comes to Minmatar ammo, I usually have a melt down if I have to choose on my own. I mean, really? There’s usually at least five options to choose from and I have to decide in combat based on what the other person is flying! And their ranges. Too much, no can do. If someone doesn’t tell me beforehand, I usually just end up firing away with whatever was already loaded. I know. I’m bad!

I’m so bad that when people link lol lossmails and everyone is having a great laugh over some noob/idiots fit, I usually have no idea what’s so funny. I do the fake laugh like, okay everyone else is laughing I probably should be too…

2. I’ll never be an FC, obviously. FCs know things. They know how to do things really well, leaders of men, etc. I can’t choose ammo lol, so I hardly think I can lead people into great glory! I marvel at Almity, one of the best FCs I’ve ever flown under. He knows exactly what to do at all times. He is confident and when I fly under him, I feel at ease. He isn’t going to welp the fleet for lols. He is mindful of so many things at once it truly amazes me. He is moving our fleet and keeping watch of the enemy fleet and organizing this and that. Meanwhile, I’m like, already forgetting what gate to warp to. Yeah.

Granted, I could possibly rally a fleet. I could get plenty of people to join it, but once it was all formed up, I’d be lost! lol My target calling would consist of ‘ok shoot that guy who is shooting me! Get him!’

3. I’m probably never going to leave FW. It’s home and I like it. I hear a lot ‘if you’ve never done anything else, then how do you really know?’ Well, I’ve heard enough stories to know that I wouldn’t ever make it in either High or Null. The ‘crafting’ side of EVE seems boring to me. I spend enough time on my alt moving stuff around for the corp to know that I couldn’t ever do that full time. Or anything else in High. I really love the thrill of PVP.

As for Null, honestly, Fweddit gives me enough of a taste to know that I couldn’t ever, ever survive in an alliance that big with that many kinds of personalities. I’d rather shove bamboo sticks underneath my fingernails than to have to listen to DurrHurrHurr types every single night. And the few times we get tidi in FW is enough for me. I can’t see how it could be fun trying to pvp in those big fights with everything in slow motion. Nor could I tolerate having to move around as much as they do. My Egghelende hangar is massive, I couldn’t imagine having to move all the things halfway across the universe to fight a new war.

So yeah, lots of ‘famous’ people come from Null and I will never live there!

4. Other ways people become famous is through blogging and forums. Sure, I have a blog, but I cannot write every single day like some people do. I’m in awe at some other bloggers who write massive amounts. They know things. And write about them. And previously stated, I know very little! It’s impressive how much people can write about EVE. I used to be in awe over Poe’s old blog. He’d write like, tons of stuff! And there are others who are really good at blogging. Me? Not so much.

And forums, ugh. I can’t do forums usually. There’s just so much of the forums, people write SO MUCH and I don’t have the time to keep up with it all. I marvel at others who can, but I cannot.

5. ‘Well, surely you can become a famous role player on EVE?’ you might say. Nope! Granted, I love rping on EVE. It is one of my favorite things to do (besides blowing up spaceships), but rping is a complicated thing. Role players are complicated people.

When I first started out, I’d rp my little heart out. I’d blog about it. A lot. But somewhere along the way one or two rpers completely and utterly trashed me in the RP community with nasty lies and it just became easier to withdraw from the community.

Sure, I still rp, but I don’t venture out that much. I rp with people I know. I don’t put myself out there like I used to because it isn’t much fun, knowing that many people have this preconceived idea about who I am.

6. ‘But you’re a girl!’ Sure. But if you haven’t noticed, not all females come to EVE for male attention. Yes, there are some who really play the guys online for all they’re worth. There are some girls who really need that attention and affirmation from internet men.

I’m not one of those. In fact, I’m pretty shy. Sorta, kinda, anyhow. If I know you of course I’ll talk your head off. But just straight up meeting people is a bit unnerving at times on the game because it is usually prefaced with ‘omg a gurl!’.

So yeah, I’m just not going to make videos chronicling my every little thought, nor am I going to take pics of my boobs and ass just to become e-famous (don’t think my guy would appreciate that anyhow lols).

7. The spy game, another way to become EVE famous. I’ve told this story before but in case you missed it the first time, here goes. I originally came to EVE because a friend of mine played it and he wanted me to come be a spy for his corporation. He linked something like this and I was intrigued. I had no idea what spying entailed really, only that I’d get to be a James Bond spy girl and it’d be all kinds of awesome. Also, I had thought it would be more roleplay spying.

However, when I made my account and got into the target corporation, I quickly realized that spying meant nothing more than lying out of character and tricking people. It had little to do with role play. I just couldn’t do it. So my spy-girl gig lasted all of two weeks. After the contract was up, I decided to stay in the corp I ‘infiltrated’ and ended up staying with them for over nine months. And after all these years, I still feel bad for spying!

So I’ll never be the next Istvaan Shogaatsu, Mintchip, or Chribba. I’ll never have hordes of people knowing I’m out there in their EVE, mucking around the space lanes blowing up Minmatar (or being blown up lol), but I’m okay with that.

Though I will never have space fame, I do have a great corporation to be extremely proud of. I have lots of truly wonderful friends that I would have never otherwise met unless I’d taken a chance on EVE. And though I’ll never be Spy Girl Extraordinaire, I’m very happy with where I am at in EVE….grunt # 53, you know, that girl who is almost not bad at pvp, if she could only choose the right ammo… 🙂

Making Content In FW

EVE has always been a game of no direction. Other MMOs start you out in a safe zone and gently usher you through levels, giving you rewards, loot, and achievements along the way. There is clearly an ending and a beginning.

In EVE, you are never safe, and there’s never really anything to accomplish unless you find something worthwhile that you want to do. There are countless directions you could go.

My direction has always been Factional Warfare. It gives you a taste of other parts of the game. You can PVP or you can mission. You can play the market or simply blow shit up. Pretty much, you can be the biggest carebear in all of EVE or the dirtiest of pirates. You can be noble and only shoot wartargets, or you can shoot anything that moves. Want to be a spy? We got those too. In FW, you can experience a lot.

Though FW is based on the idea that Amarr & Caldari shoot at the Minmatar & Gallente, what do you do when you simply cannot find any of those designated wartargets to shoot at?

You find someone else to blow up, of course. You make your own content. You don’t sit around and wait for the game to tell you what to do or where to do it. And that is exactly what we’ve been doing these last few weeks.

It started with a civil war within the Amarr Militia. Though old news by now, you can read about how it started here.

Our motivation had little to do with drama. Sure, tempers flared, but in the end, we wardecced for content. We wanted more people to shoot and more good fights.

After a few weeks we dropped the war and moved on to find someone else to trade blows with. A couple of our guys set up a semi-arranged fight with Brave Newbies Inc in Aulbres, Placid, which is about 19 jumps from our home system. It sounds far away (for us FW folk anyhow) but it isn’t too bad of a journey in shuttles. We jumped our ships down and handed them out.

The rules of engagement were pretty simple: We’d bring t1 frigs, no more than 70 in fleet, and would fight on a planet of their choice.

Other than that, it was down to business as usual.

In Exile and Fweddit have done this a couple of times now and it has been awesome! The first night I ended up doing frig logi, and I’ve never had quite a rush as I did trying to help keep everyone alive. Frigates are so fragile, it was such a challenge, but boy did it get the adrenaline rushing. It was exhilarating! However, I did end up losing my pod after getting off the field. I bounced to a gate and lagged out with a white screen of death. I just sat there watching helplessly through a translucent white screen as my pod ever-so-slowly died. I shrugged it off though, that pod lasted over two years.

In last night’s fight I got to fly dps (read, I whined to Almity til I got out of doing logi lol). The first go around I was in a merlin and we were tasked with getting the griffins off the field, and oh-my-god they had a heap of them. In round two I X’ed up for Rina’s new ‘super secret’ tristan doctrine. They worked out amazingly!

Our logi did a super job keeping everyone alive, we didn’t lose too many. I would assume the highlight for the BNI would be them probing down our boosting loki in a safe.

Good times all around, I think.

A battle report for last nights fight.