Eve News Now: Episode 13

Y'all know the drill: Enjoy.

http://www.evenews24.com/2011/02/27/video-hallan-turreks-eve-news-now-week-8/

Apathy. My Third Worst Enemy!

Oh, you poor dumb elf. Don't you get it?
Be a vampire, or a ghost, or an immortal with a
paint-by-numbers portrait in the rec room.
Hell, even a brain-in-a-jar, in a pinch.
Anything to avoid the Big Fire Below.
So what this tells me is you're channeling the
"raw unlimited energies" of two chumps who didn't
have the balls to stay in the game!

Xykon - The Order of the Stick

You're in a Rifter. I know, a strange way to start, but here we are. You come upon another Rifter in a belt, minding his own business. But this is low-sec, and you're not here to make friends. You lock him up, he locks you up, scrams and webs reach out and grab hold of each of you. This looks to be a good fight. Oh man, he's burning your shields down fast, and you're not scratching his. There goes half your armor, and he's not even below 75% shields. Oh well. I guess you should just quit. Right?

Aralis thinks so. Now, if this was the first time he's done that, I'd be much more inclined to let it slide. But it isn't. Not by a long shot. The next bit is going to be a summation of something that happened in a game Aralis played before he came to EVE, a game I played as one of his allies, and a game he also left citing "the administration" as his reasons.

Flashback to like 9 years ago, and a little game called TDZK, which was around before EVE. Imperial Dreams(yes, the name of the founding corp of CVA) was one of the strongest groups of players in the game at the time, and they were in a constant war with the other strongest group. Near the end of the round we had a planetary siege, which was a bit like system sieging in EVE really. The other guys were attacking ID, and my guys came in to help ID out. The battle lasted for many many hours, and when it was done, ID held the field. Only they'd done it with a little exploit they knew existed beforehand. The game owners were just a group of 3 admins, so they promptly reversed the results, handed the planet over, and that was the end of it.

Aralis and his kind went seven kinds of crazy, "If it wasn't part of the game mechanics you should've said something, rar rar rar. We quit,". And quit they did. They disappeared into EVE, and I didn't hear anything about them until I left that same game many years later to take up EVE for myself(after a year of WOW).

By the time I realized CVA was founded by a bunch of old friends of mine, I was already -10 and loving it. So it was unlikely I'd ever get back together with them. Time passed.

You all know the rest: CVA pisses off AAA, refuses to apologize, blames CCP's new mechanics for it's inability to hold it's space and vows to fight forever to regain Providence.

I blame society all the time, but I mean it as a joke.

Newsflash you giant retarded space flea, it's not CCP's fault they made worthless space not worthless. You're the only people in the game who could possibly complain about that. You'd spent a long time getting soft because you never had a real sovereignty threat to deal with, and when it came, you floundered around like a fish out of water.

You lost a war, and it wasn't because of the administration of anything other than your own alliance. You got soft, and this is what happens when you get soft. But anyone who thought that Aralis would stick it out for the long haul after this was sorely mistaken. He's a quitter, he'll always be a quitter, and he'll die a quitter.

Albeit technically, I think, everyone dies a quitter.

I digress. The ultimate point of this isn't an insult Aralis-a-thon, though lord knows(see what I did there?) I could do that all day. This goes out to each and every one of you quitting motherfuckers. You wanna quit cause you ain't got time? Fine. You wanna quit cause it's just not interesting anymore? Fine.

But you wanna quit cause you don't like the direction CCP is taking? Man the fuck up and run for the CSM. Or just accept your own inadequacies and stop blaming other people. If you run, win, and still feel like giving EVE up... that's cool.

You tried.

At least you goddamn tried.

Eve News Now: Episode 12

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoRQo6agztU

Here's the podcast:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Here's the transcript:

My Name is Hallan Turrek, and this is Eve News Now.

You're tired, tired of staring at the same rocks, every day.

And you're bored, bored of shooting at the same rats in missions and anomalies,

And you're better than this, but you can't break out of the rut.

PvPing is expensive, so doesn't it make sense to get paid to do it?

Join Cosmic Cimmerians, an Aussie Corp with a strong US timezone presence. They've got a 90% efficiency and are a part of Noir. Mercenary Group, a proven and elite group of PvPers. They want people from all timezones to come and be better than they are.

If you've got more than 20 million skill points contact The Mnemone in game and set up an interview. That's "The Mnemone".

And really, aren't you tired of settling for just good enough?

February 13th
In Fountain: Test Alliance Please Ignore has decided to fully move into the recently conquered Fountain territories. With this move, they leave behind significant holdings in Deklein, which will likely revert to Goon ownership.

In Geminate: Rebellion Alliance has disbanded, taking with it the sovereignty of over 20 systems. A back and forth battle has been taking place all day between members of the Drone Russian Federation, who cyno'd in at the very moment the sovereignty dropped, and members of the Northern Coalition. So far the result is undetermined.

February 14th

In Geminate: The Drone Russians have a bit more to show today for their trouble, with the ownership of 6 systems in hand and 3 more in contention. They've managed to take less than half of the systems that Rebellion Alliance abandoned, despite apparent previous knowledge of their disbanding.

February 15th

In The Forge: A massive battle today between the Drone Russians and the Northern Coalition ended in a huge loss for the NC. After making the questionable decision to jump into Uemon, a system the enemy was already organized at, a massive lag spike and titan losses are all that resulted. The NC lost 10 titans and 5 super carriers, while only killing 2 of each in return.

In Delve and Querious: Pandemic Legion has decided to abandon Pure Blind and turn an eye to taking sov in IT's old systems. PL has taken 5 stations and a total of 7systems.

February 17th

In Fountain: It has been reported that RUS, the corp held most responsible for the handover of Geminate system from Rebellion Alliance to the Drone Russians has been accepted as a new guest in Fountain. While no hard proof has been offered on this, it would be an odd turn of events.

February 18th

In Delve: The system of KFIE-Z heated up today when a mostly even fleet battle erupted between Pandemic Legion and Against All Authorities. Well, it started even, it ended with PL killing half of the enemy fleet. It seems like a battle royale in Delve and Querious, with people getting involved all across EVE.

Anyone want to take bets on who wins?

This has been Eve News Now.

You always want to be a part of something bigger. You remember back in grade school when you joined the Pen 15 club? They're back, and they're rocking local in style.

Sometimes, you just can't help but be elite. You roll in, you kill the enemy, you take his stuff, and you warp away. That's just how it is.

You wanna join the Pen 15 club? Fine, take a look at Muppet Factory, if you're good enough maybe they'll let you in.

Then again, maybe not. If it was easy, they wouldn't be elite.

Special Thanks to Eve News 24, to CCP, and to Dotlan.

Thanks for listening!

Everybody Hurts

Take a load off Fannie, take a load for free;

Take a load off Fannie, And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me.
The Band - The Weight

Lets take a look at the fleet fight notification form:

Please use the below form to notify CCP of any planned large fleet operations. The information submitted here will be kept in strictest confidence, and will only be visible to the Virtual World Operations team, Lead Game Masters and Internal Affairs. This form is intended for use as a guide to assist Virtual World Operations in predicting where the load will be on the cluster, and does not guarantee any form of service or boosting of nodes. Abuse of this system will be taken very seriously and may result in action against your user account.

This is intended for use for operations where the engagement is expected to go above 300 pilots, and notification must be submitted at least 24 hours in advance. If your operation is planned to span multiple systems, please submit a separate request for each.

So, we come to the why. Why must we do this? The answer is simple enough: The game cannot handle the playerbase it supports. CCP would tell you that it CAN handle the playerbase, but it cannot handle the extraordinary situations that arise when 500 to 2,000 players are in the same system fighting each other.

But are they extraordinary? In a word: no. A huge battle takes place at least once a week, if not more often. They would take place MORE often if not for the lag we face. So we have to ask for a reinforced node, CCP has to see the request, deem it important enough to listen to, and then actually reinforce the node. And then it still might crash. Huge fleet battles are a way of life in this game, and if they somehow took place lag free, I guarantee you'd see more interest in this game.



The system is broken, and that's fine. CCP is working, tirelessly, to fix the lag problem, and I respect that. They've put out the dev blogs. And I believe them.

Yet, with all this work on "fixing" lag, and we're still no closer to an automated system to reinforce nodes. If the number of pilots entering a system reaches a certain amount, how difficult would it be to start turning off load inducing, but not gamebreaking features for those in that system?

I always come back to a simple question(because the server lag is secondary to client lag I have every day): Why can't I play with no models of any kind? None, zilch. Zero. I don't give a crap about the pretty flying spaceships if it lags my performance. Help me improve my client performance by giving me that option . I'll play with just the overview and brackets until I can actually enjoy the way ships look again. Why isn't this option available? CCP would probably tell me that I need to update my system so I have to look at the pretty graphics they've made.

In other completely missing the point news...

Then again, CCP has gotten it into their heads that the best way to fix any problem is to fix their players, not the game. CCP says the issue, you see, with lag, isn't allowing massive fleet battles on a scale that no other MMOG can match. CCP says the issue is that people are too friendly with each other. CCP wants to cut out jump bridges and make jump freighters impossible to use. That'll fix the problem right? No. This is why CCP got it wrong, and in a way I feel the CSM has failed.

There is nothing wrong with the epic scale of conflicts in eve. It is among the main draws, as a matter of fact.


If I want to build my castle bigger than yours, tough. Build yours bigger or go home. CCP has it in their heads that the thing to do is place a limit on the size of sandcastles. "Lets reduce the water available so they fall apart more easily,". I want a big castle, and even if I don't have one just yet, I want to build mine tall.


Why don't you let me have fun MY way, and stop assuming I'm doing it wrong? How many subscribers in eve right now? 4-500 thousand? How many people are members of coalitions that would be affected by any attempt to make logistics much harder? 100k? 200k? Does CCP really need to be pissing off that many people all at once?

It's not that I don't want some responsibility for improving things, it's that I'm tired of almost all of it being placed on the player.

CCP needs to pay careful attention to what the players actually want, as much as they need to fix things.

Please.

Eve News Now: Episode 11

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Transcript:

My Name is Hallan Turrek, and this is Eve News Now.

You're tired, tired of staring at the same rocks, every day.

And you're bored, bored of shooting at the same rats in missions and anomolies,

And you're better than this, but you can't break out of the rut.

PvPing is expensive, so doesn't it make sense to get paid to do it?

Join Cosmic Cimmerians, an Aussie Corp with a strong US timezone presence. They've got a 90% efficiency and are a part of Noir. Mercenary Group, a proven and elite group of PvPers. They want people from all timezones to come and be better than they are.

If you've got more than 20 million skill points contact The Mnemone in game and set up an interview. That's "The Mnemone".

And really, aren't you tired of settling for just good enough?

February 5th

In Fountain: Charlie Foxtrot and with a little help from the NC reinforced systems all over the region. IT put up no resistance to the fleet.

In Catch: In a strange turn of events, but not an unexpected one, CVA has taken some northern parts of the region, including the constellation NNLX-K, from The Initiative with the support of AAA. Evoke and NCDOT should be feeling a bit uneasy at a resurgent CVA, but so far appear to be ignoring the threat.

Of course they might not need to worry, with Destructive Influence, one of the largest corps from IT slated to join NCDOT. Adding almost 500 to an alliance of only 900 might cause some growing pains, but it will certainly shake up the Providence situation.

February 6th

Rage, Majesta and Rebellion alliance defeated yet another Drone Russian incursion in the systems T-YAU and EOA-ZC. Despite some assistance from Evoke and RaidenDOT, the DRF forces were defeated, and every SBU was destroyed. The NC forces killed over 100 enemy ships, while they only lost 50. This marks the third time in as many weeks that the Drone Russians have mounted a full invasion only to be routed and killed.

February 7th

In Khanid: IT alliance lost 5 freighters in Goudiyah while trying to evacuate assets from their Null-Sec Holdings. Highlights of the loss included a variety of battleships, frigates, faction items, supercap fittings, and finally a whole lot of tritanium.

February 8th

In Providence: The constellation of Q-6LG1 has been hit by a combined Polaris Syndicate and Ewoks fleet. With systems changing hands already, if CVA can't protect themselves against these very small entities, what happens when NCDOT and Evoke turn their full attention to them?

February 9th

In Querious: Saints Amongst Sinners has left their home system of B-7DFU and abandoned their allies IT. Reportedly in talks with Atlas., one imagines they were almost too late to get off IT's sinking boat.

In Pure Blind: There may be some more PL rage about armor hacs today, given the losses they've again suffered. After reinforcing and attempting to take another technetium moon in X47L-Q, PL were surprised by a 300 man NC fleet, coming to support the already active defense fleet. PL may need to try a new tactic, as the last 5 attempts have failed fairly spectacularly.

February 10th

It's finally over. While IT alliance structure will remain, each Corp is on its own with regard to direction and defense.

Pilots! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight we mine in Delve!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

This has been Eve News Now.


You always want to be a part of something bigger. You remember back in grade school when you joined the Pen 15 club? They're back, and they're rocking local in style.

Sometimes, you just can't help but be elite. You roll in, you kill the enemy, you take his stuff, and you warp away. That's just how it is.

You wanna join the Pen 15 club? Fine, take a look at Muppet Factory, if you're good enough maybe they'll let you in.

Then again, maybe not. If it was easy, they wouldn't be elite.

Special Thanks to Eve News 24, CCP, and to Dotlan.

Thanks for listening!

The One Where CCP Finally Does What I Want It To Do

From my last post: "CCP should dedicate an entire expansion to correcting past mistakes and fixing old problems, before it's too late."

Fuck Yeah.

Now of course I had nothing to do with that, although this is something I've been pushing for a long, long time. I'd just like to take a moment and thank CCP for listening to it's playerbase.

CSM6: Commitment to Excellence

Why don't they
Do what they say, say what they mean
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then one thing leads to another
The Fixx - One Thing Leads To Another

The candidacy for CSM6 is now open. I was seriously considering running for CSM6, but I left it to another year and another person. So, given that, lets examine why I thought it was important to run, and what I want in a candidate.

First of all, I think CCP is running headfirst in the wrong direction, and it scares me a bit. With Incarna and Dust, I believe that CCP has abandoned those of us that play Internet Spaceships. Incarna and Dust are not unworthy projects, but they should not be bigger priorities than ingame content.

Imagine the ingame landscape if very ounce of energy invested in Dust were to be invested instead in fixing the myriad of problems across all of eve(Assault Ships, Cloaking, Low Sec, Faction Warfare... this list could go on). Imagine the POS and Corp Director Interfaces got as much attention as the new character designer.

I believe wholeheartedly that this game can be improved, and in doing so we create a better environment for everyone. CCP should dedicate an entire expansion to correcting past mistakes and fixing old problems, before it's too late. Before there are too many problems to fix.

CCP has this fire and forget mindset, that I'm quite bothered by. They release new content, let the players figure it out and then forget about it. This is like throwing up a middle finger to loyal subscribers in order to go out and get more. This may sound childish: but it's also incredibly rude. We saw it with Faction Warfare and we'll see it again.

CSM5 has gone a long way to repair CCP's reputations for this. But there is still a long way to go, and we can't let the work done so far be for nothing. You'll see a number of candidates running for special interests, and that's fine. Someone needs to speak up for low-sec, for PvPers, for carebears, for non-traditional PvP, even for the Null Sec Coalitions. But on top of that, someone needs to speak up for the whole community.

I don't mistrust CCP, I just think that like any company getting a taste of success, it's a good thing to have people saying "No, this is what's important," every once in a while. Luckily they have the CSM to be that voice in their ear. While that's about as much influence as the CSM really has, if they're loud enough, things can change.

Lets hope this time around we see a good mixture of candidates, across all spectrums of interest. Because no one thing deserves to be left out, and the playerbase itself needs a voice.

We need to keep the commitment to excellence alive.

Eve News Now: Episode 10

Well here we are. I'm trying out a podbean account. This should solve most of my publishing problems. Just press play!

Youtube Video:



Transcript:

My Name is Hallan Turrek, and this is Eve News Now.

You're tired, tired of staring at the same rocks, every day.

And you're bored, bored of shooting at the same rats in missions and anomalies,

And you're better than this, but you can't break out of the rut.

PvPing is expensive, so doesn't it make sense to get paid to do it?

Join Cosmic Cimmerians, an Aussie Corp with a strong US timezone presence. They've got a 90% efficiency and are a part of Noir. Mercenary Group, a proven and elite group of PvPers. They want people from all timezones to come and be better than they are.

If you've got more than 20 million skillpoints contact The Mnemone ingame and set up an interview. That's "The Mnemone".

And really, aren't you tired of settling for just good enough?

January 29th

For a while it looked like the Mercenary coalition was back. After Cursed Inc., Body Count Inc. and Shade. left, the alliance is dead once again, and this time around it had hardly any effect on the greater landscape of EVE.

January 30th

In Fountain: IT has only one more chance to break the siege on 6VDT. The battle has been neither fierce nor intense. IT has simply lost many assets in the system in the form of towers as each timer has been burned through. Today the IHUB was destroyed, and the station was put into it's last timer. If IT cannot break this siege, they and their allies will have untold billions in assets trapped in a station they cannot access.

In Pure Blind: The Pandemic offensive has gotten off to a mixed start in R-2R0G, after taking a technetium moon from Get off My Lawn a few days ago. PL had the moon taken back by a combined NC and Pure Blind Residents action. If PL had trouble fighting the NC blob in Venal, one wonders if moving only a region away to do their work was a good idea.

In Period Basis: It's another game of musical chairs. Romanian Legion is about to take back Period Basis with the help of StainWagon, while IT and Systematic Chaos are occupied defending Fountain. It's dueling pets, and incredibly ironic, since Romanian Legion used to be IT pets, and Systematic-Chaos used to be StainWagon pets.

January 31st

In Fountain: 6VDT-H has been captured by the Charlie Foxtrot coalition. Test Alliance please ignore has taken the system, and dealt a major blow to IT and it's allies. No word on the amount of assets trapped, but one report from Systematic-Chaos indicates that only a week ago, they moved most of their assets there to help in the fight against Charlie Foxtrot. IT did attempt to evacuate some assets, and lost over 58 billion in ships. This could be the biggest win so far in this war.

Febuary 2nd

In Vale of the Silent: It wasn't a big battle, but it was incredibly one sided, in 0R-F2F Evoke killed 105 ships and achieved a 93.56% efficiency. Rage and Majesta pilots are surely hurting after this.

In Immensea: In WYF8-8 Red Citizens may have taken the reports of The Initiative's demise a bit too seriously, while the Sad Bunnies showed they're still a force to be reckoned with, killing 3 Supercarriers, 2 Dreadnoughts, 2 Carriers, and a golem worth two and a half billion.

Febuary 3rd

In Querious: A pet without the support of it's masters is it's own master. Nulli Secunda has announced a full reset of IT. Will this save their space?

In Pure Blind: Pandemic Legion lost 7 dreadnoughts today in a failed Titan gank. So far their gains in Pure Blind have been limited, and one wonders if the longstanding animosity with PL's employers, IT, is the root cause of their lackluster performance.

In Querious: Babylon 5 has called it quits, and are abandoning their nullsec systems. The constellation of 9NP-KR, their new new home after losing their fountain systems, was completely abandoned today. With IT's allies, pets, and renters falling all around them what is left to prop IT up?

In Period Basis: TPAR-G has fallen to Romanian-Legion, in what is probably the first of many systems taken off the hands of Systematic-Chaos. A token force of SyS-K tried to hold off the invading forces, but without IT's help it was quickly swept aside.

Pandemic Legion has lost an estimated 100 billion in ships and fittings to a corp theft. The fully fit carriers, dreadnoughts, and tech two ships were lifted by a disgruntled Sniggardly corp member. Already unhappy with the performance of PL against the NC, the breaking point was setting IT blue. He took the ships, and an additional 50 billion isk in cash. The total of 150 billion is a conservative estimate, but PL has claimed numerous times that they lost almost nothing.

Febuary 4th

More bad news for IT as one of their core members, Black Nova Corp has decided to leave and is now disbanding. None of this is unexpected, as most people believe that IT is on it's way out, but the question is... how long do they have left?

This has been Eve News Now.

You always want to be a part of something bigger. You remember back in grade school when you joined the Pen 15 club? They're back, and they're rocking local in style.

Sometimes, you just can't help but be elite. You roll in, you kill the enemy, you take his stuff, and you warp away. That's just how it is.

You wanna join the Pen 15 club? Fine, take a look at Muppet Factory, if you're good enough maybe they'll let you in.

Then again, maybe not. If it was easy, they wouldn't be elite.

Special Thanks to Eve News 24, CCP, to Dotlan, and to viewers like you.

Thanks for listening!

It's Your Game. Play It How You Want.

Are you tired, rundown, listless? Do you pop at parties? Are you unpoopular? (pauses) Well, are you?
Lucille Ball - I Love Lucy

I cannot tell you how many people I know that have quit this game, or talked about their excitement ebbing in regards to it. I can appreciate this, I've experienced an ebb in my interest many many times. There is a single reason why I've been able to enjoy this game as long as I have, and that's options. Here's a flowchart, go spend 20 minutes studying it and then come back.

How many of you have done everything on there? I haven't. You probably haven't. If you're bored, or unexcited, perhaps it's time to change professions.

There was a time when I was a solo'ing fiend. I'd take a rifter out any day of the week and get some kills, maybe a loss or two, but always hauling in more than I lost. Then they upgraded the graphics on EVE, and my sad sorry computer only barely kept up. Now it was a crapshoot, was the other side of the gate going to load, or was I just going to die before I saw anything. When I warped into the belt, was it going to take 10 seconds before I could start tackling, or would I be able to do so immediately? I took the good with the bad, but one day I decided I'd had enough of the bad, and I jumped to a new profession. Piracy was fun in an ideal world, but I don't live there.

So I dabbled in some 0.0, but the renting life wasn't for me, and I found my way into a mercenary corp, NOIR. To compensate for my lag problems, I flew a Stealth Bomber. Now if I lagged out when I landed on grid, I was safe, because I was stilled cloaked. Bam, problem solved, and for a while that was enough. Like all things, that got stale and boring, and I was going to move on again until the CEO offered me an officer role. I took it with gusto, because honestly, who doesn't enjoy bossing people around?

So that went on for a while, and I became a director of NOIR and a director of the people renting from us. Quite a turnaround from a year before, and quite enjoyable. But after a while, I felt that old tug again, and moved on.

I puttered around in low-sec again, flipped cans in high sec, ninja salvaged... nothing really felt right. But this is EVE, and if you're bored, that's on you. So I found a 0.0 alliance and again dived right the heck in. It's a completely new playstyle, and learning is my specialty. I'm still working on some of the finer details, but I've gotten the hang of it. Now I want to master it.

That's on top of the Eve News Now I'm doing, which is a completely separate but legitimate part of EVE. Interacting with the community all on it's own is a genuinely pleasing process, or why else would we blog?

Find something, master it, and find something else. It may be odd, but it's what you do. If you're bored, go find something not boring to do.

If you haven't done it yet, but you just assume it'll be boring, then you're probably going to stay bored.