o.O 3200+

For the edification of those unaware: o.O is an emoticon representing surprise (raised eyebrow).  3200+ in system and the node survived... wow...  As much as others will bitch about the lag, the truth is that this is like having most other game's entire server populations in the same zone at the same time.  It would melt most servers.  The impressive thing is that the node survived.  There were points in time (not too long ago really) where this would have resulted in horrible, horrible node death.  So the fight on lag and stuff like that at least has resulted in servers that don't up and die under extreme loads.

Shooting CCP Atlas who was trying to get some lag data? not so nice.  CCP Atlas putting his "expensive" instrumentation in an "BH Mega Cargo Ship"?  Duuuuuude...  Put it in a Polaris next time would you?  You'll probably still get primaried but at least you'll have a minimal chance that your ship will survive long enough to get some good data next time.

In other news, my primary alt account finally ran out of payed up time and went to sleep.  Just one more alt account to go and I'll be down to my main.

I've got 8 days left on Heavy Drone Operation V.

Ok, NOW EVE gate makes sense

As promised, I am keeping up on changes as well as skill flipping.  This one was important enough to immediately comment on.

First some light reading:  EVE Gate - Incursion and Beyond.  Go read it.  I'll wait...

Back?  Good.

OMG! Integrated voice with EVE Gate!!!!  Independent from the EVE Client!!!!  1024 contacts, organizing contacts... As an ex-alliance leader, I can not tell you how great this makes me feel.  About the only thing missing that would be nice would be integrated killboards and private corporation forums of some sort.  We'll see what the integrated forums they are talking about turn out to be.

The promise of EVE Gate may finally be bearing fruit.  Color me hopeful.

The separate client and integrated voice coms in the eve gate is the one that may seriously put the nail in the coffin for external voice clients in a lot of cases though.  Especially for smaller corporations and alliances.  There will be no need to go and get a ventrillo server who's main feature is that you can keep in contact when the client goes down when you can get an integrated audio channel with a separate client.

Torpedo Specialization IV

Just a quick pop in to note that I managed to get Torpedo Specialization IV polished off.  Once I get Tech II heavy drones finished (which should be in... 22 days), I should have all the skills necessary for a properly deadly Typhoon setup.  Oh don't get me wrong there will still be plenty of skills to get to 5 but all the major ones to IV will be done and it will be time to build myself a proper torp phoon.

Apart from that I observe with interest that we have some progress on the news front both for this update (which seems to nicely be some patches and lag fixes as well as the new character generator.  And news of when the first real iteration on Incarna will happen.

Just to keep my hands in EVE, I've decided to build myself a pair of Claws to mess around low sec in from time to time.  Don't want my ship handling skills to get too rusty.

Until the next update - fly safe - or not.

Pro Indy Tip Time

Reading the forums I suddenly realized that some people may not be aware of one of those useful tidbits of the typical industrialist in EVE.

You know that problem you have when you want to start a job at your favorite station and you have to scroll through all of them to find the ones that are free or with the lowest time until start?  Did you know you can reverse sort the list of slots by delivery date?  The slot interface will even remember the sort setting between calls.  That way when you hit the button to select which slot to start the job in, any free slots are listed first and if there are no free slots, the one that will be available soonest will be at the top.

Just saying.

Goodbye to Capsuleer

So I was saddened to read that Roc and co. are closing down Capsuleer.  On one hand it's sad.  On the other hand I can see why CCP doesn't want to treat them differently than any other 3'rd party developer.  It was fun while it lasted.

Fly safe.

Where you can find me

Although the alliance knew my plans, I'm not sure the rest of you did.  Sure you knew I'd be taking a break from EVE, but I'm not sure I mentioned where you'd be able to find me while I'm on break.  Now that the game went live it can be revealed:

You'll be able to find me on the Selbina server of Final Fantasy XIV.  For once I've started a blog on the first day of my new adventure:

Letrange's FFXIV Blog

...

Not horribly original but it works and it's fairly consistent with my EVE blog.  Any EVE related posts as I skill up and or see the need for commentary will of course still be posted here.  But the bulk of my posting activity will be over there for the time being.

Fly safe (or fly dangerously depending on your preference).

The quiet conspiracy

As I'm reading through various and assorted articles from non-CCP sources, one of the most frequent whine I see on comments about an EVE article is how all the articles glorify the negative. To a certain extent this is understandable. Positive articles don't generate as much reader interest as negative ones. And there are some ostentatiously negative articles about shenanigans in EVE.

I think I need to point out a few things here the casual reader might have missed. This is not just the media focusing on the "bad" stories. The truth is there is a lack of investigative reporting going on. The reason for that is that most gaming media relies on someone telling them what is going on. When someone gets his ass handed to him in spectacular fashion, either he or someone associated with the event usually screams the details of the event either on the EVE-O forums or some place like scrapheap challenge.

Then there is the secret to moderate success in EVE. RUN UNDER THE FRICKEN RADAR YOU NOOB! I'm not what could be considered massively successful by any means in EVE. But most of my endeavors have ended on positive notes with progress being made. You will note that I'm also one of the FEW blogging industrialists in EVE. I'm not much into the traditional routes to riches that the truly rich players follow. One of the major things I have noticed is that a lot of success can be had by keeping quiet and not attracting attention. There's a reason for the preponderance of pirate blogs vs any other type of blog. In this game, flying under the radar means you remove yourself from the "low hanging fruit" syndrome. Visible people get targeted by those aforementioned pirates. Opening your mouth and whining in public does nothing but paint a big "tears can be had here" sign in front of all your ships.

Letting gankers know just how successful you are means they will start to track your location within EVE and get intelligence on your operational procedures for a proper attack on your operations. So all the smart people learn early on to "fly under the wire". They also learn such things as "avoid the Saturday/Sunday gank fleets". "How to move things relatively safely". "How not to get lazy". There is satisfaction in operating successfully in a dangerous environment. But it's a quiet satisfaction. And since it depends on operational security, if you're not able to keep quiet about your successes, you won't be successful for long.

The corollary to all those insane blow up situations the news reports are thousands of successful operations that no one except one person or a few, tight lipped mature players know about. Because they are mature players, they don't feel the need to boast about it. So the successes keep coming. There's a reason EVE keeps growing. There's a reason the average age of EVE players is higher than a game like WoW. It's the quiet conspiracy.