Bronson Hughes
The Knights of the Blessed Mother of Acceleration
117
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Posted - 2014.07.07 15:36:00 -
[1] - Quote
I started playing EvE in 2006 with a handful of friends that I met playing WoW. (Don't hold it against me, once I got exposed to EvE, I dropped WoW like a bad habit.) We started off doing mostly missions and mining in Caldari space, typical carebear stuff, and we kept that up for about a year in our corporation Knights of the Wild (KOTW). I was the PITA who always did things his own way (like running missions in a pre-Drake Ferox and a shiny new Rokh right after they came out) and wanted to poke around in losec and nullsec, so I was the first of us to get any real PvP experience; needless to say, I was also the one who led to most of our early ship losses. Our first forays were into losec and nullsec were in Lonetrek and Tribute; as complete rookies, we got our butts handed to us.
Ever the trailblazer, I followed a major trade route from Jita down to Amarr, and spent some time running missions for Republic Security Services to balance out my standings from Caldari Navy misisons. During this time, we played around with anchoring POSes in hisec, running the old CONCORD escalation missions (my mission Rokh hame in handy as a tank), but our initial handful of members had dwindled down to 3-4 active players at any given time so we were mostly playing solo.
My next foray into losec/null came into Curse. Even though it was kind of a haul from Domain, it seemed like a good entry point since there were NPC stations all throughout the entry constellation. We moved some ships down there, did some 'ratting, suffered multiple losses, and had our first taste of PvP victory. After losing a string of battlecruisers, several of which were unfit (lost while moving), I decided to switch my focus to my newly-trained 'ceptors and 'dictors, and, to this day, they're still my favorite classes of ship to fly.
We caught the attention of a local alliance, Visions of Warfare (VoW) and they invited us on a few of their roaming fleets. Sortly after my first real PvP success, I bagged my first capital ship. KOTW eventually joined VoW and we had a great time roaming around Curse, and then moving on to an exceedingly fun empire war in Tash-Murkon. These fights were where I really learned PvP, and I flew in a few different roles (tackle, DPS, bait battleship, etc.) and got my first real solo kills in a 'ceptor.
After the Tash-Murkon war, several of the corps in Visions of Warfare got an offer to join Zenith Affinity (ZA), flying with Goonswarm out of Paragon Soul. The majority of my corpmates didn't want to join, so KOTW left VoW, and I joined The. Conspiracy (T.CON), and ZA.
I didn't stay long. I can't for the life of me recall why (this was 6+ years ago mind you), but I left T.CON after only a few fairly non-productive months and returned to KOTW back in hisec.
Again, I didn't stay for long. Looking for new places to roam for PvP, I stumbled on Naguton, a losec system 4 short jumps from Amarr, and part of Fua constellation that connected to both Kador and Sinq Laison. My first time in-system, I had my first successful 1v2 encounter, bagging a pair of cruisers in my gank Thorax (back before they had 4 mids). The CEO of the pilots contacted me after a few more kills in Naguton (which happened to be their home system) and invited me to join. Thus began my tenure with ADVANCED Combat and Engineering (ACE).
Over the next two-ish years, I racked up over 20 pages of kills, split between Fua and nullsec (ACE joined Axiom Empire shortly after I joined), with some action in Aridia and hisec as well, flying everything from 'ceptors to capitals. It was here that I FC'd my first roams, exchanged fire in my first battleship fleet fights, ganked my first POSes, and did some hot-dropping. All around, these two years were easily the best gaming experience I've ever had.
But alas, all good things come to an end. For various RL reasons, I had to walk away from EvE.
Fast forward five years: I'm now divorced, in my own place, and about to get married to a wonderful woman who works nights. I had an itch, and time to kill due to her schedule, so a few months ago I jumped back into EvE. Needless to say, I had a lot of catching up to do. (Tiericide? Attack Battlecrusiers? Micro Jump Drives and Bastion Modules? Oh my!) I'm playing in a much more casual manner, so it's highly unlikely that I'll ever be active in a corp with other players, let alone an alliance, so I've pulled some of my alts into my own personal corp as a way to pool resources, and continue doing things my own way in EvE. So far, I've gotten back into losec for some PvP, gotten into exploration, and enjoyed occasionally hunting bounties of CODE. members as they gank hapless freighters in Aufay. I sold off some of my capital assets and bought a Marauder (I figured it was time to try one out and I doubt I'll ever fly capitals again), trained up a trade alt to play the market (and to help sell off said capital assets), and am prepping to get into research and production (on a small scale) just to try it out.
My current goal is just to get out there and try things, my own way, just as it always has been.
Thanks for listening.
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