Ecliptic Rift

Yes, I’m still blogging about EVE. It’s just that not all of it shows up here.

I’ve started a new EVE podcast, Stationside, dealing with EVE fiction, roleplay, and social media (plus of course a bit of CCP news here and there). Episode 2 should go out later this week, and I’d love your feedback and suggestions.

And don’t forget my EVE tumblelog, where I link to interesting EVE-related content from all over. Occasionally, the stuff I’ll link won’t bear directly on EVE, but it’ll include stuff I think nearly the entire EVE community will enjoy. 99% of it has to do with EVE exclusively, though.

This blog hasn’t gone away, it’s just sort of spidering out.

via Laedy in Red

Second in an occasional series.

Obviously, other folks with far more experience and expertise have written before about related topics. I thought I’d collect together a few of the links that I find useful. Add more in the comments and I’ll link them up here (with attribution).

Blog posts

• EVE Evolved: Corporate Infiltration for fun and profit
• How to Infiltrate a Hostile Alliance – Sins of a Solar Spymaster #5
• Eve Blogging Question (EBQ) #1: Infiltration?!
• So Long Transfixion, and Thanks for all the Fish

Other information

• Social engineering (security)
• Social Engineering Fundamentals
• SANS InfoSec Reading Room – Social Engineering

Massively has a good review of the community backlash regarding the CSM. I know I wanted to stay away from this topic, but I at least thought I’d sum up my comments from the article here. For future reference, if any of you hang out on Massively, I’m “Darkdust” over there.

CCP assigns their developers to spend 20% of the time on bug fixes. This does not include design defects, situations in which balance issues and other game decisions come under review. Bugs are situations in which the actual implementation does not match the intended design.

Players may not like the answers they get through the CSM, but clearly the transparency (if not the accountability) has improved. This means a lot, since CCP formed the CSM explicitly as part of the response to the T20 in an attempt to increase transparency.

And I don’t understand the folks that complain that CCP focuses on the “vocal minority” of nullsec and lowsec PVPers. By the end of this year, three of the last four expansions (Apocrypha, Tyrannis (Planetville), and the “invasions” coming in the Winter 2011 expansion) will have had large PVE components. And I’d like to see what constitutes giving attention to lowsec. Just because 0.0 folks speak up more vocally doesn’t mean that’s what the CSM focuses on to the exclusion of all else. Read their minutes and issues and you’ll see that they take a broad view, because they understand that all aspects of EVE need to work for the game to flourish. Ankh had other problems beyond just preferring to engage in PVE, certainly.

EVE isn’t dying. It’s just going through a transition right now, and in the end I believe our “lifestyle” will have improved for it.

No, not me. I wish I had that problem these days! But miningzen over at K162space has a great list titled “You may play too much Eve if:”

My favorites:

8. You steal someone’s pencil, put it on your desk, and punch them when they take it back, claiming they’ve stolen it from you.

11. You lead excursions into hostile office space with interns scouting.

12. You know every possible fit for the Rifter but are often criticized for poor dress sense.

19. You have the conversion from UTC to your timezone memorized.

25. You keep five paper mache’ warrior IIs in your pocket at all times.

26. Local stores have banned you for grabbing shopping bags while yelling “FLIPPED”.

35. You know six Minmatar jokes but never tell them in public, because no-one but you laughs.

44. You walk away from explosions, not because it looks cool, but to decrease your sig radius.

46. Your phone calls to spies in other alliances have put you on a FBI list.

51. No-one’s noticed that your spreadsheets in the office have no bearing to what your company is working on.

Go check it out!

Several other bloggers ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]) have posted lists of the baddest-looking piracy ship models in EVE. While I generally don’t pirate in the sense that, say, Andrea Skye and Kirith Darkblade do, almost all of us have opinions about the best-looking combat ships in EVE. In the spirit of their posts, I focused on small (sub-capital) ships. Tomorrow, I will follow up with my favorite non-combat ships, because that’s how I roll.

My favorite combat ship models:

#5 Stiletto

The Minmatar “Stiletto” interceptor looks like what it is: fast and deadly. The Claw’s rounded leading surfaces make it look a little less interesting to me, even if it does have more high-power slots.

#4 Cyclone

I really like the “Cyclone” battlecruiser. While the overall shape looks like a hammer, the spotlight on the front adds a really nice touch.

#3 Crusader

I have never flown Amarrian ships, but their interceptor models really stand out. The “Crusader”, and its darker-skinned brother the “Malediction”, both communicate quite well through their design lines: you can’t escape the lightning of God’s wrath.

#2 Harbinger

Another exception to my general disdain for all things Amarrian, the “Harbinger” battlecruiser grabbed my attention during the recent Alliance Tournament VIII.

#1 Hurricane

My favorite by far. As soon as it arrives, the “Hurricane” battlecruiser promises to rock you.

Per CCP:

Today Eva “Ankhesentapemkah” Jobse was removed from the Council of Stellar Management due to a breach of the non-disclosure agreement (NDA). We are deeply saddened but feel that it was the only possible solution in order to protect the integrity of the Council of Stellar Management. As this is a matter regarding confidential data we do consider this to be a private issue between Eva and CCP, therefore we are unable to comment further.

Discussion thread available.

Obviously I don’t believe CCP removed her because she “stands up for the playerbase” or promotes “transparency” (for the record, I don’t believe she does the latter). I don’t know what they considered as the NDA breach, though I’m fairly confident it wasn’t her blog.

If anyone has any actual information (and not endless screeching for or against her), please let me know.

UPDATE: “I want to emphasise that the NDA breach was not related to CSM5, and happened well before Ank took office in CSM5.” (per Dierdra Vaal). Hmm.

UPDATE 2: Massively’s article by Brendan Drain has a statement from Ankh:

All I can say at the moment is that out of respect for the CSM, the players of EVE, as well as the good people at CCP, I cannot give any details besides my personal conviction that CCP’s statement is not in relation to any of my recent publications, and that I do not share CCP’s conclusion that there has in fact been an NDA breach. I am currently engaged in following up this situation with CCP.

Still working to get more info.

UPDATE 3: DV has edited the post I quoted, which now reads as follows: “This is an unfortunate occurance. Also this would make mazzilliu CSM member.” However, eve-search has the original.

UPDATE 4: Ankh has updated her website with the following: “Today, CCP has posted a publication announcing that I have been removed from the CSM. An update will be posted tomorrow. You are encouraged to contact me personally through the contact page on this website.”

So I haven’t done this here before, I don’t think, but I want to give up-and-coming bloggers (or perhaps those who’ve recently returned) a chance to get some publicity for their sites. In an effort to help those folks out, feel free to comment below on your EVE-related blog or site: give us a link and a little blurb about it. Don’t be rude about sites you don’t like and do NOT post about sites not related to EVE Online, because I will delete those posts.

Pimp your blog!

In a nod to my friend Rettic, please feel free to add me as a contact via my Spacebook profile, and I will reciprocate, for broadcast log purposes. Note that I will generally set you neutral unless we make other arrangements, since I specifically use blues for people I know will not shoot me (and reds for people that probably will).

Or, if you’d like to talk to me about something, EVEmail me here.

Fun stuff, no?

Nothing to do while CCP pushes Tyrannis onto the servers? Remember that my EVE tumblelog usually has lots of fun EVE stuff to read! Go subscribe!