Thaddeus Brutor
24th Imperial Recon
1
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Posted - 2014.03.24 03:48:00 -
[1] - Quote
I don't know if I count as a veteran or not--my character is old but I've come and gone from EVE a lot over the years to play other games, growing board with whatever I was doing, or the last break was because I had a new job that just took up all my time as I got up to speed.
But I started playing in December 2006.
There weren't really any tutorials to speak of, but I loved the ships, fitting, and testing my fits in various missions. I used to keep a record of what I was doing and learning about here in this forum actually. One of my early goals was to run every L2 mission out of Rens using a Rifter (Human Cattle was a rough one). I got my first cruiser from a corporation that read my "blog" here, felt super-clever for mining in a Scythe while orbiting an Omber rock and dragging my jetcan behind me with a tractor beam.
I remember losing my first battlecruiser (Cyclone) in a L3 mission.
I remember trying to run every L3 mission in a Jaguar, making a forum signature with a shot of my Jaguar behind a L3 mission battlecruiser and the caption "Objects in mirror are deadlier than they appear." I remember when the Hurricane came out and I fell in love with it. Then I took a break from EVE around then.
I think AT3 came next, and I saw the Abaddon on the screen for the first time.
I resubbed, sold anything that wouldn't fit in my hauler, and flew over to Amarr space and started doing the Amarr tutorial missions that were added. I basically dropped everything Minmatar and have flown Amarr ships ever since.
I remember grinding through a low quality L2 agent to get access to a good L2 agent, which I used to get access to a ****** L3 agent, which got me to a good L3 agent, which I used to get to a crappy L4 agent, which got me to L4Q20 agent in hisec. (Yeah, I'm glad all agents are =Q20 now.) I bought an Abaddon with a loan from a long time friend in the game, and paid it back pretty quickly, then lost it in the next mission I did, borrowed money for the fittings and insurance, and then flew it for a long time. Still never really did any PVP.
I joined a few corporations over this time... but none of them really had a plan. They would talk about ship replacement programs and the direction of the corporation, then leave us high and dry when we lost our ships and had no income or plan to replace ships. After two corporations like that I just made my own corporation with a buddy and we tried out Faction Warfare and doing some nullsec ratting in Providence. FW was in it's infancy then, not really that organized, and the rewards were crappy--but we had some fun.
Then I joined PIE, but I had to make an Amarr character to do it. I had rationalized that with a much more focused approach I could get back to the same combat skills pretty quickly, but then I got a new job and ran out of time to play, and dropped that character and EVE for awhile.
Then the next AT came around, and I resubbed--my friend reluctantly joining me. This time we decided to venture out into Nullsec, and I got my first taste of null-life. It was a buffer alliance between lowsec and deep 0.0 space, boasting a robust ship replacement program and big opportunities to get into great fights.
I would ship up for every CTA that went out (and a LOT of them went out) and anytime I lost my ship when following my alliance FC's orders, it was crickets chirping on ship replacement. Then they announced we were deploying to go fight our neighbor who had three times the pilots and real ship replacement (as in pre-fitted ships handed to line-pilots for ops), and balked when we decided to insure our ships, blow them up, and head back to hisec in covert ops ships.
Oh yeah, we did some C5-C6 sleeper sites while there sometimes, but the money wasn't much better than just running L4s, because they didn't really enforce any fleet doctrine.
Okay, so back in hisec, I take another break from EVE.
Next Alliance Tournament comes along, and I begrudgingly resub, and immediately start looking for a nullsec group with ship replacement, GOOD income opportunities, and space they actually have a chance to control. I was also looking for work at the time, so I had a lot more free time.
I joined ATLAS, and probably had the most fun I've had in EVE for awhile--several months. I learned a lot about fleet fighting, got into a couple really big scraps that were fun, made this stupid video to spoof the "We Were There" trailer, and generally had a good time. Then I got the job I have now, and had no time to play anymore, and even when I did, it was for too brief a time to really enjoy myself. So I moved all my crap back to hisec, and trickled off my playtime till I took another break.
A little over a month ago, I read about B-R, and decided to play on a trial account for a few days, just to see what was new. Within a couple days, I resubbed, and I'm playing EVE again. I have a different friend that is trying it this time around, who I think "gets" EVE (the other guy ragequit a lot when he lost ships). Right now I'm really just running L4 missions, working on my PI setup, and building up a nestegg, while my friend gets a sustainable income set up.
Then I think we're going to join RvB and just have some goodfights. Down the road I think Faction Warfare will be a reality.
So I've been playing EVE a long time off and on, and I've tried doing a little bit of everything (except manufacturing). The last time I played was the most fun, and I'm actually really enjoying myself this go around. I feel like I have more of a plan than I did before, too. When I wear my EVE t-shirt at work and people ask about it I tell them, "It's a really interesting game... but... you probably wouldn't like it."
I don't want the blame for anyone that gets hooked on this punishment. |