Zen and the Art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance

Well as many of you may know CrazyKinux runs a ring of EvE bloggers and every month they have one topic which many of the bloggers banter about. This month the banter topic was about what inspired the various bloggers.

“This month’s EVE Blog Banter idea comes to us by RocWieler of Roc’s Ramblings. Roc’s asks us to “write a story about a fellow EVE Blogger, or an EVE player whom has inspired you or affected you in some tangible way. After your story, describe why you chose them, and any Holiday wish you have specifically for them”.

Though I did not get in on the banter early enough I thought I would write a bit about what inspired me to blog as well as share one story about what has helped inspire me simply to keep being a pod pilot.

The story begins long ago in in 2006 when I was just starting out in New Eden. I had been initially drawn in by the sheer scale of the game, and I was simply amazed at the breadth of the in-game map. I had puttered about a bit in empire running missions etc, having not yet joined a player corp. With the desire to find some larger targets and having recently graduated to a cruiser class ship (an Exequror if I remember correctly) I naively thought it was time for me to test the waters in this fabled 0.0 territory I had heard so much about.

I’m no longer sure which region this may have been as it was so long ago but in any case I made it somehow. I was puttering about in whatever system it may have been and after some time I was convoed by another player who had showed up. The conversation was fairly short but centered around him asking me why I was out in 0.0 being as I was such a young pilot. The player conferred to me that he had recently been speaking with some of the devs on the topic of how to get more players to brave the risks of nullsec space. I responded that I felt you needed to take risks to make money (I honestly had no real idea of the risks back then)and we talked for a while more during which time the pilot even decloaked 20km from me showing me the wonders of cloaking technology. I had never seen the stuff before. After a bit we parted ways and the mystery pilot sent me an EvEmail with some links to new about him and his corp.

This player was Uuve Savisaalo, one of the main participants in the great Guiding Hand Social Club corp theft scandal. The EvEmail he sent me included links to the PC gamer article on the theft which even mentioned Uuve by name. I was blown away by this. I was so used to gaming being such a solo experience. Even in multiplayer in most games you are never given the chance to really stand out by any more than perhaps kill stats or number of points etc. In the GHSC scandal however I saw that the possibility to really make a name for yourself simply by being innovative and doing something new really did exist in EvE. The fact that real life magazines even reported on the scandal encouraged this feeling even more.

To this day I still have Uuve’s EvEmail in my inbox. I haven’t ever run into Uuve again and I would doubt that he would remember the encounter if he is even still playing but it was the kind of event for me that lent EvE the feeling of being more than just a game or even just another MMO.

Flash forward to 2007. I have become a much more experienced pilot and my EvE addiction has gotten to the point that I can’t help but try to fill my workday with EvE content. The solution?? Podcasts. Initially there were a few different podcasts but most didn’t last beyond a dozen episodes. Then after a period of drought in the EvE podcast market a newcomer arrives on the scene.

I was already familiar with Winterblink from his EvE-based comics but Warp Drive Active really had me hooked. The dialogue between Blinky and Urban was quite entertaining to listen to and often exposed new aspects or tactics for the game that I was previously unaware of. WDA became a favorite for myself, my fellow coworkers who play EvE and even for some of the non-gamers who work near me. Though WDA has seemed to sputter out a bit for the time being it will always hold a special place in my heart(buried deep within the amniotic fluid of my pod) and I eagerly await it’s triumphant return. WDA even inspired myself and some coworkers to make an eve podcast. Though this never got off the ground due to amount of work involved I think the need to publish something and emulate some of my EvE heroes is what has inspired me to start this blog.

So there you have it, two stories of what made me the pod-pilot and blogger I am today.

Other blog banter entries.

• CrazyKinux’s Musing: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
• The Wandering Druid of Tranquility: What will your verse be?…
• A Merry Life and A Short One: EVE Blog Banter #3: What Not To Do
• Mad Rant: My Hero
• The Ralpha Dogs: A Greeting Card
• Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: The Station
• Diving into Psyche Diver’s Psyche: CK’s Blog Banter #3: Praise and kudos
• Roc’s Ramblings: Blog Banter #3 – PyjamaSam
• Protosolus: EVE: Blog Banter 3 – A Piratical Legend
• Blogging from inside the Pod: The ‘Jita Incident’
• Achernar: Citizen Zhang
• Cosmik R5’s EVE Blog: Blog Banter: Tribute to an EVE player – Letrange
• Letrange’s EVE Blog: Is it December Banter time already?
• Life in Low Sec: EVE Blog Banter #3: Reverend Book
• Sweet Little Bad Girl: Blog Banter #3
• Votrian’s EVE Blog: EVE Blog Banter #3 – my influences
• A Mule in EVE: The reawakening
• Jinarre’s New Eden: Blog Banter: Inspiration
• The House Theodoulos: EVE Blog Banter #3
• Flashfresh – The Pirate: EVE Blog Banter #3