Ecliptic Rift

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!

Like most everybody, I’ve evolved my playstyle over time. In fact, I haven’t stopped evolving my playstyle.

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Due to various business and personnel reasons, the Back Alley Trading Company [BKAT] will close up shop and liquidate. This process has already begun and communication has been sent to all current employees.

At this point, most of the pilots have moved out to W-space as part of the Syndicate Special Operations Division [SSOD], a corporation within the same alliance (United Trade Syndicate, [TRAMP]) as the Company.

Why will the company close?

I won’t discuss every factor here, primarily because several of them have to do with the private and personal matters of other pilots. Out of respect for their privacy, then, I’ll set those aside, except to say that plans didn’t work out for them as well as they’d hoped, either.

But in general, when BKAT joined TRAMP, we split the combat wing and most exploration off to a new corp, SSOD, under the leadership of Chainer Cygnus and a team he assembled. As it turned out, most BKAT pilots went there, leaving only a few in this corp. Most of the remaining pilots have not had the opportunity to fly as much as they’d like, dealing with planetside issues. Rather than try to rebuild the corp in this particular state, then, I decided to close it. Only one other pilot owns shares, and he will receive an appropriate payout for their value.

I may write in the future about additional lessons learned, but not right now.

What does this mean for you?

I don’t have any intention to retire, certainly. I have short-term plans I will announce once BKAT fully closes, but I intend to remain in Republic space for now and will continue many of the same activities in which I have participated for some time. These plans do include continuing to fly with the United Trade Syndicate.

However, I do not intend to rebuild a new industrial corp right now and will fly solo (in the context of a corp). In the long run, who knows?

I count every single pilot who’s flown with BKAT as a friend and look forward to future operations with TRAMP pilots, including those in SSOD.

I got the happy news this morning that this blog has now joined the CrazyKinux Blog Pack! My promises to CK of fame, wealth, girls, and world domination worked as planned!¹

So now that CK has raptured us into EVE Blog Heaven, what will this mean for the blog, besides lots of boosters and exotic dancers? Hopefully more traffic, I suppose. I already frequently do most of the other todos for EVE Blog Pack members.

Congrats to everyone else who joined, particularly to my friends Chainer Cygnus and Myrhial Arkenath. Until recently, I had thought it already included Myrhial, so I believe that choice made the most sense of all.

1: No actual promises of fame, wealth, girls, or world domination were made.

Photo credit fdecomite via Flickr

I haven’t done one of these in some time but activity has picked up. After rejoining New Eden Research this week, we found that NER had a wardec ending. Evidently nobody had seen the war targets at all, so maybe next time. Chainer Cygnus and the security staff seem anxious to let fly at somebody.

I got a couple of rig research jobs going now that a number of the megacorps have shared the results of their research into more efficient ship modifications. Early results seem promising, some more than others, as the market demand for certain rigs well exceeds supply. As one of the Eifyr agents told me today, “it’s not war profiteering, it’s providing the financial stability for the Republic.” I took a shipment of contracted ore our miners had brought into Yrmori, then refined and sold it out of Eram.

Speaking of agent work, he sent me out on a mining run. I picked up a Retriever and a couple of strip miner modules, but I’ll never do that again if I can possibly avoid it. I took an hour or so to pick up something like 45k m³ of whatever odd ore they wanted. They did pay well, though, and I noticed more than a few of them looking at me with a little more respect afterward. Perhaps that ore had more importance than I realized.

Now they have me chasing down some Amarrian battlecruiser in Leurtmar. I fit a Dominix for the occasion, but the Imperials had more firepower on their side than I’d realized. I got the crew back to the local Thukker Mix station with the hull and crew intact, though I lost a Hammerhead drone in the fight. I may need to get some help before heading in there again.

Next, I need to make sure I have all the corporate roles set up properly so Arloeswr and Chainer can do their jobs properly. Arloeswr runs our Mining division, but I really must get him to focus. And I still haven’t gotten a good handle on how to give credit to pilots for taking care of assignments, research, and production for the corp.

The work of a CEO doesn’t really end, does it?

Photo credits Adulau and joegle via Flickr