Corp supports n00b.

G'day all,

Just following up from my last post since I didn't want it to be a 4 page epic..

Logging into EVE tonight, I was ready to give it away. I was trying to think what other MMO's can I play? I've done World of Warcraft -sick of that. Maybe I can give Age of Conan another go since it's shaky launch (which promised to be something it wasn't yet). I looked at the clock, 8:30pm. Meh, by the time I install it, activate my account, download all the patches I'll have to go to bed for work in the morning. Can't be fucked.

I dicked around in EVE. (wow, that saying sounds so wrong, but I kind of like it.) not really sure what to do. I made the 38 jumps back with my Merlin, and sped past a few WT's that were flashing "IM RED AND WILL EAT YOUR BABIES FACES OFF". I got podded for the first time last night doing the same thing. I learned to be a bit more careful. Anyway, I mentioned doing this massive jump marathon to get a Merlin and people thought that was just crazy. So I was immediately showered with ISK and a ship.

I was trying to save up for a Caracal myself. I'd rather do the hard yards first, then be given gifts so I can appreciate them more. Remember back to your first car? Now, if that was bought for you, piss off. If you saved your arse off for it and bought it yourself, how much did you fucken care about that bastard!? Man, I was polishing my first car every weekend. Vacuuming it, washing it, driving it around showing it off. *whistles*. I appreciated the hell out of that car purely because I saved for it. Well, that's what I wanted to do in EVE.. but alas, EVE is a lot different to life. I was mailed ISK that I couldn't refuse, and the CEO private convo'd me and told me to ask for help, ISK or anything else I needed, and basically, I'm a mad prick for jumping 80 times for a Merlin.

The flood of support was awesome. I was about the PM the CEO and ask him to remove me from ANZA because I really didn't think I could go on in this game. It's slow, boring and totally overwhelming. He said to me to give EVE more time and with the ISK and stuff everyone has given me, that should make it easier.

How good is that? I'm not one to take things from people as I hate the stigma of a "beggar". I like to earn my keep, show respect for things and in time, I believe that pays for itself. I had to face the facts. This is a GAME. Get used to it. Accept  the help, accept the freebies and one day I can do unto others as I have had done to me. Did that last part make sense? Trying to be too smart for my own good.

As a corpie said.. It's a team effort. I'll get helped along to be a strong player and, in turn, I can then use my strength for the good of the corp. What goes around comes around and all that. Makes sense. That is all.

-Sile

My first OP, fail.

G'day all,

I was starting to hit an invisible brick wall lately. I'd log into EVE and not really know what to do. Many corpies are out killing WT's (war targets) and I'm doing L1 missions for isk. Some of those missions are hard that involve Angel Cartel and Blood Raiders (or something similar). I suspect it's because I'm using my dodgy Comorant destroyer and it probably isn't fitted out well at all.

I've got my alt character just learning skills atm. I haven't subscribed the account just yet. To be honest, I'm not sure if i'll be playing EVE much longer. I've been having thoughts doc, bad thoughts. I've been wanting to kill EVE, kill EVE and throw it in the boot of my car and drive it off a cliff. At least that would be an adrenaline rush, something that is missing for me with this game. These are tears of boredom, and I'm not even mining!

There was an op ( "operation" -corpies meet up and do something. ie: escort a ship, roam for enemies etc) last night and I thought it'd be cool to join a fleet for the first time. So I jump into TS, get an invite to the fleet and sit at the meet up spot in my Ibis. An Ibis is a small, cheap ship that you can't do much with. It's Caldari specific and we get them if you dock at a station in your pod. Basically, it's a free n00b ship.

So anyway, I'm there in my Ibis, which I was told to take by a corpie. We are told to call out our squad number in chat and post what ship you have. Firstly, I dunno how to tell what squad I'm in. So I wait for several people to call out their squad and I said I didn't know. The fleet comander says on teamspeak "Don't worry, I know where you are. Just type your ship up in chat". So I typed out Ibis. I'm sure everyone was saying.. "LOL WTF!!?" but only one bloke actually said "Are you serious?".. Well, I'm only doing what I was told right?

So the fleet commander says I can go and get something bigger. My Merlin is 38 jumps away and my only other ship is my Comorant destroyer which I'm using for missions. I can't afford to lose it as I have fuck all ISK, so I'm kinda in limbo here. Meanwhile, there's some English blokes talking on teamspeak, which I'm having a really hard time understanding one of their accents and the terminology being used. In fear of missing out on hearing an instruction, I'm listening intently to everything and kind of stalling. Another guy is trying to get me to dock and trade with him so he can give me a Caracal cruiser (which I was trying to save up for) and of course, that freaked me out because I didn't want to lose it, or owe anyone anything.

We were also asked, "does everyone have a bookmark?" .. *coughs* .. a what? o.0

It all came to a head for me. It's hard to explain, but there was far too much going on for my EVE ignorant mind to comprehend. I declined the trade, un-docked and asked in fleet chat to leave the op. I had thoughts of just leaving, but I thought I'd do the right thing. So with the go ahead, I left. (I would have left anyway, even If they said No.. lol who am I kidding?)

My first op was a failure.Not only that, but I felt like a dickhead. Of course, I couldn't be persuaded to join back up.. /sigh.. the shame of it all. It was just too much all at once. I need to swim out to the deep end with this game, not be dropped into the ocean, naked, with my legs dipped in pigs blood.

-Sile

N00B UI colour tip!

G'day,

After staring at a computer screen all at work my eyes must become a bit tired. That, or I just have trouble reading the EVE UI. Man it would be nice to change fonts in EVE.

Anyway, white text on black is just damn hard to read for me. The white all just tends to blur together and I find myself getting closer to the screen.

I found some colour options in the main menu under the 'General Tab'. Have a play around, you can change the colours of the background which makes the contrast a bit softer. Much easier to read things.

Also, another little n00b tip: You can increase the font in the chat windows my clicking the small letter "A" in the top left of your chat windows. There's 2 actually, one increases and the other decreases the font size. This was especially helpful. One font size bigger is great.

I've sent a buddy invite to my alt for some free playing time. I basically want to run 2 instances of EVE so I can mine on the alt and whatever else on the main. Unfortunately, I ran into problems. Apparently you can't run 2 demo's on the one computer, or for that matter, 2 paid copies. I chucked a copy on my laptop, and though it meets the minimum requirements, EVE doesn't run. Bleh..

However, there is a solution! EVE - Multiple Clients It's a link to a wiki explaining how to do it. I've also read that you cannot have 1 paid & 1 trial running so they both have to be paid copies. I'm running EVE through Steam, so hopefully I can get something working using both sources of info.

Well, that's about it. No in-game updates per se.

-Sile

Home sweet home -again.

G'day,

After 38 jumps, I finally made it to ANZA HQ. The flight was good. I had half a dozen windows open, configuring bits and pieces whilst warping, and the time went pretty quick. Not really knowing the war status of ANZA yet, I made to I checked each system for "red flashies" and also quickly looked in local. Anyway, the move went well.

I left a Merlin at another station which I'll have to go back for, but I'm not in a rush at the moment. At first, I wasn't going to bother. I checked the price of the Merlin on the market and it was something ridiculously cheap. When I reached my destination 38 jumps later, I jumped onto the market to buy one and found quite a considerable difference. It appears I have more to learn about the market and the different systems.

ANZA has been great. It feels far more active that E-Uni. Tonight, someone got podded in 0.8sec and apparently that's not normal. The talk of sending ships out to pop caps in arses got the blood boiling and I got a taste of the excitement in the corp. I bet It's freakin' electric when a real fight is about to happen!

I have already had offers to run L4 missions and salvage the wrecks. I had a bit of mucking around to do tonight and settling into the corp, so I couldn't accept, but it's great knowing that opportunities like that exist for a n00b 1 day into a new corp. I think I'd still be docked in E-Uni, spinning my ship around.

I hadn't learned the Infomorph skill yet, required for Jump Clones, as It is a fair whack of ISK for me. I only had 1.9million ISK and the skill was worth 900k. E-Uni is great like that. Anything up to 1 mil ISK is given to you. Now, I have to fund these things myself, and that requires a job. I'm ok with this though. It's good to be forced into looking after yourself and also, ANZA is prepared to help out by running missions with me and I think they even have a mining group going. So I'm not totally alone. I'm learning the first few levels of Infomorph now and hopefully after that, I'll be able to join in on OP's.

Have a good one,
-Sile

My apology to ANZA

G'day,

I figured I'd create a new post for this. Probably not really funny or relevant to anyone else but me, so it's more for my own amusement.

When I started my 14-day trial, I had one corporation in mind that I wanted to join. That was ANZAC Alliance. Reason being was that they were Australian! So I jumped into their recruit channel as soon as I figured out how to do it. After reading through the usual "guff", I learned that you couldn't apply whilst on trial accounts. Fuck.

"Ok", I thought. "I'll bloody well sit in the channel until my trial is up, then I'll make a decision whether or not to subscribe".

They were recruiting at this stage and I still had about 13 days to go. Yipee. So I asked if recruitment was still going to be open in a couple weeks, thinking I'd just double check because knowing my luck, it will close just as I want to apply. The general consensus was yes, they would be. Excellent. Muhaha... Muhahahahaha... Muhahahahahaha... (*raises pinky finger to mouth Dr. Evil style*)

Sorry.

At about day 10, something happened with the ANZAC recruitment channel. It was changed to another name and I was told to move to the new channel. I didn't even know how, and felt like a right dickhead. Some kind chap helped me out though. Then I was told that ANZAC was trying to be known as ANZA. I do admit, I LOL'd in real life. In a world of abbreviations, I really didn't think 1 letter was a huge deal. Plus ANZAC is synonomous with our Aussies diggers (soldiers) and I just really couldn't understand why but, I accepted it.

Then my original fears were realised. "Recruitment: CLOSED". "What the fuck!?". "Those dirty rat bas..." (* a tirade of expletives can be heard trailing off into the distance*).

It was sheer disappointment. I didn't want anything more than to be in ANZA. To me, it was the only large Aussie corp worthy of being in. The corps name just oozed 'home'. Shattered, I went back to some forums where I tend to hang out and had my say (re: whinge). I knew a couple members that were on the forums were actually in ANZA, so i expected them to say a few things about it. I didn't expect other people to stick up for ANZA as well! Although I thought my point was valid, I did begin to see that I jumped in too hastily to condemn ANZA. Of course, it is the CEO's choice to open or close recruiting, no matter what other people tell you.

That's when I applied to E-Uni, knowing they took any decent honest n00b in.

So now, I'm eating humble pie it seems. Not only was I accepted into ANZA very quickly, but everyone was nice and welcoming. MmmMmm... humble pie tastes bitter sweet.

So to ANZA, I am sorry. Now let's shake hands and drink some beer!

-Sile.

ANZA Alliance

 G'day,

Looks like I have a 36 jump move to make! I'm now a member of ANZA! How awesome is that? The process only took 10 minutes once a recruiter was onto it. I'm a bit lucky in the fact that I had a referral. Recruitment is currently closed otherwise.

Once I got talking to the RO, I remembered I had seen his name on another forum. He then told me that he would have referred me through that forum! If only I had have known, I may never of applied to E-Uni at all.

I must set the record straight though. I'm not taking anything away from E-Uni. They are still brilliant at what they do and if you are a fellow n00b waiting to get in, I recommend sticking it out and seeing what they are all about.
For me, I was bored. Being in an Australian timezone doesn't work well with American timezones unfortunately. Our nights are their mornings, our Saturdays are their Fridays or some shit.. either way, it's not compatible.
E-Uni are war decced, which meant I was sitting in the dock. I was told there wouldn't really be much action at all until the weekend. I'm not prepared to sit around and do nothing all week when I could be learning new things.

My gaming time is done of a week night, not weekend nights. I need a corp that's active during week nights and organises things to do and people to blow up. Enter ANZA.

Well I'm talking ANZA up a bit, and I've been a member all of 30 mins, then it was time for server DT. I have a good feeling about ANZA though. I was introduced and was met with many welcomes. There were a lot online, and the great thing is most of them should be playing in the Australian timezone.Hopefully all goes well!
-Sile

Booorrriing!

G'day,

Eve just suddenly became very, very boring. Apparently not a lot of fleet action happens during the week. I wasn't aware of this, so I'm sitting around tonight in the dock, looking for any sign of something forming.

I've become a master of spinning my ship around in dock. I can get it to go really fast. Apparently in war time, if we un-dock and get ganked, we get wrapped across the knuckles. I checked local and there weren't any WT in chat, so I decided to fly to the next station as I wanted to buy a book. It was pretty exciting..

*drums fingers on table*

I spoke to Luz and told him how bored I was. He told me to make an alt, which I had already done. It appears you can't have 2 characters learning skills >.> so, so lame. So Luz tells me to stop training skills on my main character for a couple days, and make a trade type alt. Apparently I can make a reasonable one in a couple days.

So this is war time. Jesus Christ. I think I'd get more of a rush pulling teeth.
It especially sucks since I really do not have time to play internet space ships on weekends. I realise that forming fleets can be a time consuming ordeal, having to organise everything. This isn't bound to happen on a weeknight and especially because when it's night time here in Australia, it's morning in America. <.<

I think the time has come to leave E-Uni and find a corp that assembles smaller PvP gangs that roams around on week nights. I'll let you know!

-Sile.

Merlin ready... and now I wait.

G'day,

So last night I had a mail waiting for me (amongst many others) informing me to check out the contract section and look for free tackle Merlins! w00t!

I followed the e-mails instructions as I had never even opened that section before. Turns out I can't accept any of the contracts. I asked a few questions in corp chat but didn't get any solutions so I had to turn to my trusty RO, Luz, for advice. I think I've officially adopted him as my mentor. Simply because he knows more than me and seems to be the only one truly helping me out. Sure, the others are helpful in corp chat... if you can get through some of the crap.

Luz got onto it straight away. Told him what I needed and he set off to get all the gear from the hanger. Took him all of 10 minutes. So now, I have a Merlin in my hanger awaiting It's first orders. That's where the first problem lies..

Unlike other MMO's, you can't just go out and grab a PUG (pick-up group) and smash some baddies. There doesn't appear to be a LFG channel anywhere. When you are in E-Uni, there are protocols to be followed when at WAR. Basically, I have to wait until a Fleet is formed. Then, I have to tell the fleet commander what roll I wish to fill. If he wants me, he takes me, If not, then I stay docked.

This is where your patience come into play. I'm so used to getting into the action quickly that it's paining me to have to sit around and wait for a "green light". I have the option of leaving E-Uni for the period of the war and then being let back in but to me, It's more of a hassle than anything else.

So I've created an alt. Not sure what I'm going to do with said alt but I'm sure I'll find something.

Cheers

E-Uni @ WAR

Privateer Alliance Declares War Against Ivy League
From: CONCORD
Sent: 2010.03.20 00:45

Privateer Alliance has declared war on Ivy League. Within 24 hours fighting can legally occur between those involved.
----

This will be my first taste of internet spaceship war. After being accepted into E-Uni, I haven't done much. The weekend is mostly spent with the missus and I'm finding I can't do much in 3 hours after work either. The time flies, funnily enough, just sitting in the dock watching chat or reading the corp forums. This is only due to me not knowing what the fuck is going on. I read up a bit on E-Uni before applying and one thing about new players and war that stood out was that new players are used as tacklers. Ok, sweet, where do I start?

I've gone from being frustrated (beginning EVE -no clue) to satisfied (getting interview & being accepted to E-Uni) to frustrated again (No idea what to do -no clue). It seems I have come full circle in 3 weeks.
I feel there will be many circles in my time with EVE.

So now, I have to scour through the E-Uni forums and website to make sure I haven't missed a post aptly named "WAR - What do I do now?". Sounds obvious, but that's how E-Uni roll. Their instructions are basic and easy to understand and the titles of their posts are the same. It's good but there is just so much stuff to read.

If/when I find said information, I'll begin the process of following protocol. Hopefully this leads me to getting a ship, fitting it out with all kinds of annoying mods and flying into space to brain fuck the enemies ship into thinking it's catatonic. Then, my colleagues with prepare to fire digital missiles and freakin' laser beams up said brain fucked enemies arse. Well, one can only hope.

-Sile

Blog changes

G'day,

When it comes to design, I am of course, my own biggest critic. When I design something, I'm not sure I'm ever truly happy with it. I can't remember a time when I've finished something and sat back and said "damn, that's fantastic". During the work day, I do what I must to get the job done. Usually it's to other peoples standards and not my own, but I'm getting paid and people are happy. Win. If it were up to me, I would probably never release anything because I always nit pick my stuff.

This leads me to this blog. I can see now that I will change this thing over and over and over again. Anyone who ever follows this will more than likely give up because of the number of changes it will receive.
Whenever I make colour changes or layout changes, a few days later it looks wrong and then I have to change it. I've just redone the blogs layout and colour scheme in accordance with E-Uni's forums (albeit loosely). This is more to get me in the mood of being in the corp. I just slightly modified it to suit my own personal taste. Hopefully I'll work something out with the banner image and I'll be happy for a while. Maybe I'll just leave it like it is with a plain text title instead?

EVE University is where I hang my boots

G'day all,

So after waiting in the queue for roughly 17hours in total, I got my interview!

Let me elaborate for the new player.

EVE University  is probably the biggest and most well known in-game Corporations for new players there is. In all of my research, I never read a bad word about E-Uni. I read a lot too. I wanted to make sure I got off to the right start with EVE because I want the game to be enjoyable. There are many horror stories of people (n00bs and experienced players alike) getting scammed and people quitting after a few days and I didn't want to be one of those people. This is not because those people are stupid, it's because they were naive. (ok, ok, or stupid :P)

So, to combat this, the best thing to do is join the biggest and the best n00b loving corp known to man!
After you decide to apply to E-Uni there is a system in place to make this a dream come true. However, don't expect to just whisper a recruitment officer and and be "in like Flynn.." Oh no, you have to queue farm!

Personally, I found the whole waiting in the queue a bit ridiculous... initially. I've been in all kinds of guilds, clans, teams etc in many other different games. The longest I have had to wait was a week but that was ok because I was told "at the end of the week". Waiting in the E-Uni queue gives you a false sense of progress. You have your number in the queue displayed and that's it. Now, like anyone, I would expect this number to go down, and stay down. The most disheartening thing is to watch your #10 go down to a #8, then a #7, then back up to a #12 as more people log into the queue who have racked up more hours than your good self.

The queue works by selecting the person who has spent the most time waiting. So if you have been waiting for 10 hours, and you're position #1/20, then 5 people log in with with MORE than 10 hours, you will be pushed back to #6 until they have all been interviewed. Make no mistake fellow EVE n00bs, this is a very frustrating process. I'm not a very patient man but in the end, if you want to be a part of the best learning corporation there is, you have to pull some patience out of your arse.


Now that I am a member of E-Uni, I can understand why the interview process is so long a drawn out. My recruitment officer was a nice bloke. They do their homework on you and know about you before they start. The interview lasts for between 30 - 45 mins. In my case a bit longer because I had trouble with forum sign-ups >.< The RO was patient and nice to me though. There was no sign of arrogance and we even shared some jokes. Overall it was a good experience. Something I WANT to have when trying to get into a tough game. There's plenty of time for being an arsehole later on, IF that's what you want.

There is a plethora of information once inside E-Uni. It's more overwhelming than the game itself. The forums are just information overload, but, there's the typical "are you new? read this" forum posts. That's where I am starting from and I'll work my way around by following the n00b signs. ;)


My advice: Apply to E-Uni, exercise some patience, expect to spend about 15hours in the queue (3hours a night for me) and be nice. So far, it;s been worth the wait.

Cheers!
-Sile

"Sittin' in the dock of a spacestation, waaaassssting TiiiIIIIIiiiIIIIIiiiiimeee"

*whistles*

Finally home and back in the E-Uni queue. I'm currently #1/17 applicants. Tonight's the night I hopefully become an E-Uni member. Looking forward to chewing the fat with like minded noobs.

It's great being able to blog in the EVE browser, but I can't seem to customise my blog due to it needing to open a new window. I would have thought it would open a new tab.. I guess not!

-Sile

Why?

G'day.

Firstly, Why?
 

I have a confession.

I am a Virgin... an EVE virgin.

This blog will hopefully follow my journey through EVE for as long as that journey lasts. I have never done this before so it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.

I am in the stages of waiting in line for my interview with EVE University (E-Uni from now on). I’ve been waiting since Sunday night ( 14/3/10) at about 3 hours per night. That’s 15 hours of queue farming so far, and when I get home from work tonight, have dinner and a shower, I plan on waiting for at least 3 more hours. 

Last night, I was in #4 position out of 10+ applicants before server DT (downtime). After server DT, I was #1 out of 9, then just as i was thinking “I should probably go to bed now” my position went up to #2. I went to bed.

So hopefully tonight, I get the interview and a position within E-Uni.

I’ll keep you posted.

-Sile