This is much longer than I originally intended, but for all intents and purposes it is a story, rather than a short account. I have broken it up into two accounts (the second being more important) read both if your bored or a judge:O

Hmm how to begin my tales of woe and misery as you so aptly put it.

Part I

Ironically my tale of sorrow and misery begins with a bit of astonishing luck! I recently discovered a computer behind the dumpster of the housing projects where I currently reside. After removing the various stains that marred its beautiful beige frame I plugged it in and found that it had a working partition of windows 95 PLUS! Believing (and rather naively I might add) that this marked a momentous change of fortune in my otherwise grim life, I decided to go down to the local mall.

I headed straight to the electronic boutique so I could purchase a video game with what was left of my piddly savings. I looked through the various titles once then twice and finally for a third time, but they meant little to me. I had lived most of my life in and out of group homes - households devoid of electronic devices and therefore they did not have the familiarity to me as say a frozen homeless man would. Just when I thought it was hopeless, I spied a lonely little game in what appeared to be a previously owned box (not that it mattered to me as I had spent the first half of my life fishing peoples discarded cereal boxes out of garbage cans) that bear the name EVE online.

Suddenly I remembered a conversation I had overheard whilst working at one of my 3 jobs (this one happened to be late night at a pizza hut where I clean the grease traps). It dawned on me that I had heard the name eve before in reference to some kids talking about "l33t multiplayer goodness", whatever that meant. Having not recognized any other title I decided that this would be my choice for ultimate enjoyment.

I took the game home with the intention of installing it, however lacking basic air conditioning in my small apartment caused the computer to overheat and hence I was unable to install it until the ambient temperature dropped below 30 degrees centigrade. Once nightfall hit the computer was up and running and I was installing eve. The time seemed to just fly by and 3 hours later it was successfully installed on my win95 partition.

My joy would have been soured instantly if I knew that the time I spent installing eve, should have been spent scraping grease. But my newfound bliss rendered me seemingly omnipotent - until it came time to enter the cd key. After re-entering the cd key some 50 odd times or so, I was met with the same result - cd key invalid or already in use. I contacted the lovely people at CCP about this error and they informed me that they would investigate the matter.

Another three hours had passed and I finally received word from them that my cd key had been stolen by a "hacker" and used for "warez" purposes. Not being particularly well versed in computer terminology I had no idea what they were talking about, but apparently they had supplied me with a temporary key until the matter could be investigated in greater detail.

Now that the game was successfully installed and my temporary account activated it was time to enjoy this masterful piece of software. I spent at least an hour on the character creation - delving into each facet of the process with incredible enthusiasm and curiosity. In the end I arrived at a character with a metal plate in his face and a charisma total of 20. I decided that if I wanted to truly command the destiny of eve I would have to possess an overwhelming amount of charismatic qualities. My first few seconds upon looking at the market and browsing the skill information I realized that my faith in the charisma skill had been sorely misplaced.

Not one to be deterred by this minor setback I setout on my first few training missions. Having achieved limited success in operating my Ibis even my massive charisma was not enough to persuade the insurance agent to provide me more than basic coverage. Once again I was not about to let a lack of proper insurance taint my mission to rule the known universe.

Part 2

Over the course of the next few weeks, having lost all 3 of my jobs due to eve play, I came to a realization. No matter how bad the course of events that had taken place in my life had seemed, they paled in comparison to those I experienced in under a month in the world of eve. Here is a daily synopsis of the events as they unfolded.

Day 1: Already covered, but as I said I could not obtain adequate insurance for my ship, unfortunately this has not changed to this day and has cost me untold millions.

Day 2: After having asked in the Kisogo local chat ôwhats the best way to make money in this game?ö and having received a slew of responses, the overwhelming answer appeared to be ôMine like a Motherf****rö. I headed out to the first belt in my ibis equipped with 2 basic miners and preceded to chew on the first veldspar rock that I encountered. I noticed others transferring ore into their jettisoned canisters and I followed suit.

I quickly realized it would take enumerable trips to and from the station to haul this ore. I contracted a bestower to haul my massive quantities of veldspar and his cut was to be 50% of the profit. After a ten-hours straight session of destroying every veldspar rock within my sights I asked my partner in crime to transfer me my cut of the ore sales. All he said was ôROFLö. I was unsure what that meant exactly, but then I noticed my wallet flashing and my bank account was now at 1 isk.

I had no idea that the sell price of veldspar was so unbelievably low. Checking the market for myself I noticed that it was indeed 2 isk in several places and 4 in other systems. I evemailed my friend and told him that we should do it again sometime but in a system where its sell price was 2x what we had been given. I received no reply. I logged off with a sour taste in my mouth but with a renewed vigor from my newfound market knowledge.

Day 3: This day I would apply my vast knowledge of market prices to establish a trading empire stretching over the regions of forge, citadel and lonetrek. I noticed that polytextiles were fetching the enticing price of 444 isk in one of the systems and being sold in kisogo for 424. The problem is I did not have the start up capital for this endeavor and so I set out mine the precious ore known as scordite.

Upon undocking from the station I came across a sprawling convoy of ôretailersö. I locked onto several of the badger mk2Æs and proceeded to scan their cargo. The first two contained nothing I wanted superconductors, mega something and some other junk, but the third was hiding a shipment of 144 polytextiles. Giddy with excitement I whipped out a calculator and quickly realized my profit would be on the order of 63,000 isk! My palms dripping sweat, I moved into optimal range and began to open fire with my civilian rail gun on the unfortunate retailer. Much to my dismay my mighty ibis was stripped apart in seconds by the nearby sentry guns.

This gave me the name of podboy by the people who had witnessed this event unfold.
I returned to the station, greeted with my final ibis (as told to me by my insurance agent) and a kind evemail of encouragement from my lvl 1 agent. I immediately convoed him and he told me that he had work for me. Once again just when life had seemed hopeless, the winds of fortune had shifted in my favour.

Days 4-21: I was born anewà a company man, having completed nearly a hundred missions for the Suukvesta Corporation. The day before I had just been referred to one of their prestigious level 3 agents. My wallet was fat, my stomach was full (at least in the game) I was flying a real heavy-duty combat ship û a bantam. Life indeed was great û that is until I got greedy.

It was on my 21st day in eve that I decided to give courier missions a go. I looked through the available list of player created missions and saw one that fit the bill. It had a rather large collateral (3 million û a sizeable increase from the average 10k collateral required for most Suukvesta run missions) but a whopping 1 million payout, over 10x the top dollar amount IÆd earned in a level 3 mission.

I read the details of the mission: transport 20000 units of tritanium 1 jump in 3 hours. It would take a few runs in my bantam and I might be cutting it close with that time limit but I figured what the heck. Why should I not capitalize on some personÆs laziness? I traveled to the system where it was all supposed to go down, docked at the station and accepted the mission.

To my dismay a packaged bantam was kicked into my hangar. I went to the help channel and informed them of this tritanium manifesting itself as a bantam bug and they told me I was SOL û whatever that means. I figured that at least I could try and transport the bantam to the systemà maybe it would appear as tritanium there. Alas it was not to be; I could not fit all 20000 m3 of bantam into my 300m3 cargo hold. Three hours passed and I was out 3 million. Crap. At least I still had a good reputation within Suukvesta. I logged off and went to rummage through a near bye garbage dumpster for my dinner.

Day 22: I figured I would go back to the old tried and true system of agent missions. I asked my agent for work and he told me that indeed he had some. I was to transport 2000 units of carbonized lead 11 jumps away. The collateral required for this mission was a more manageable 100,000 isk (I had 121k isk in my wallet). The thing about carbonized lead is it weighs a god-damn lot, the mission would take me 2 trips for a total of 44 jumps. The clock on this mission expired in 6 hours so I wasnÆt worried, although if I could complete it in under an hour the agent would throw some from his own pocket in!!

I was still looking good after my first run, it had only taken me 20 minutes, it was in my second run that while traveling to a jumpgate I was attacked by some Guristas. They penetrated my shield and took off half my armour. I docked in the next system and got an estimate for the repairs on my hull. It would be 30k and I only had about 21k isk. I decided that the cheaper alternative would be to grab an armour repairer for 10k in the adjacent system of Jan.

Upon jumping into the Jan system, I noticed that the load times were a bit longer than usual. When the black screen was lifted, I was in a pod greeted by a dozen or so scorpions. I quickly warped to a station as I was determined to get my cargo back ASAP if I was to get my precious time bonus. I asked the chaps in local what had happened, and they replied with ôWe owned your noob assö. I asked them politely if I could have my cargo of carbonized lead back as it was vital for an ally of the Suukvesta Corporation to obtain this shipment within 6 hours. They said ôSureö so I proceeded to warp to their position in my new shiny new ibis. Suddenly their names all popped up in orange and I was being fired upon. They made short work of my Ibis and then my pod.

I ended up back in kisogo with a fresh clone. I received an email telling me that I had lost 50,000 skill points from Survey level 5, damn now it would take 4 seconds to survey an area instead of my usual 3.75. The second evemail was from my insurance company saying that I was no longer covered for ibis replacement and that this would be my absolute last Ibis.

I was shaken but not broken from my encounter with the brigands of Jan. I had to find another means of procuring the carbonized lead required for the mission. But this being Caldari space, it was an expensive commodity and I quickly came to the realization I would have to mine for the rest of the money I required. I looked at my ibis and it came equipped with no mining lasers û damn cheap insurance company. I pleaded in local for an inexpensive basic miner or miner 1 and after about 5 minutes I got a bite from a kind soul. He docked at the station I was in and opened the trade window and told me the cost would be 20,000 isk. In my haste I offered the money and clicked accept as soon as he had placed the item in there. Much to my horror the only item in my hangar besides a can of delicious quafe was 1 unit of veldspar re-named ôBasic Minerö. I tried to contact him about this error but he had already logged off.

It appeared that this was my breaking point, the final accumulation of rage that forced me into the thought process ôsuccess by any means necessaryö. Knowing that Kisogo was a starter system there had to be some fellow Ibis, mining the roids. Armed with only a civilian rail gun and the will to fight I flew up to the first mining ibis I happened upon. I convoed the poor soul and requested that he immediately jettison his mining lasers or be blown to smithereens. He replied with ôDude your ***, **** offö. I told him that making misinformed guesses about my sexual preference would not free him of his obligation to surrender his basic miners. Oblivious of my threats he continued to pick away the giant scordite. I proceeded to count backwards from ten. Still he did not flinch. When my timer expired, I unleashed the fury of my civilian rail gun upon his ship. After about 10 seconds I had him down to 50% shield. Yet still he remained, perhaps he knew something that I did not.

Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted a Concord vessel off my starboard bow. Strange I thought to myself, concord does not usually make appearances in asteroid fields. But it was me they were after, and about 5 seconds later my final Ibis had been destroyed.

I had no choice but to fly in my pod back to my mission station of Isikemi, where I had a spare shuttle. The trip was a lonely one, the only thing keeping me awake were the sounds of gunfire outside my window. Once at Isikemi I hopped in my shuttle and checked the map. Jackpot the system of Jan was now empty!

Having no other choice I was forced to check to see if my can full of carbonized lead was still intact. As if by a miracle the pirates had left it, apparently it was no use to them and took up too much cargo space. I had about 3 hours left on my mission and so I attempted to move it all 8 jumps from Jan, 10 cargo worth at a time. If I had been given another hour or two I believe I could have done it. But time as they sayà was not on my side this day, and I was out 100k isk worth of collateral. I logged off, the sounds of gunfire still ever-present.

Days 23-30: Obviously I have gone into quite some detail about my adventures in eve, however grim they may have been. In the interest of saving time all remaining accounts will be point form.

-After buying slaves from my agent for resale into Amarr space, my ship was destroyed by members of Oracle, shouting ôdeath to all slave trading scumö

-Destroyed by Gallente forces for carrying protein delicacies.

-Returned fire with a volley of light missles at some guristas near a gate, splash damage hit the gate and was promptly owned by the sentry guns.

-Driven from empire space by my low security status from having accidentally attacked gates

-Slingshot 100 million AU into the middle of nowhere and then not realizing until 2 days later I could petition my way out of it.

-Podded for entering Curse space without a pass

-Podded for entering Fountain space without a pass

-Podded by being in the midst of battle between above parties.

-Getting stuck on asteroids trying to warp away and then being destroyed by both npcs and players alike.

-Having my temporary cd-key cancelled after investigation turns up inconclusive results.

So basically Eve destroyed my life. I need the 25 million isk so that I can sell it on ebay and then use the funds gained to pay for my cancelled telephone bill. Naw just joking, in all seriousness I'm saving up for a BS and that would definately help, oh kind one:D


P.S the worst part is that my profile eve, when not in its full resolution glory looks like a smurf:P

SHiRaNÆTaL
Kagenin