Monday, March 24, 2008

piracy in EVE Online

So, I recently started playing EVE Online.

Despite the name of this post, I haven't resorted to piracy yet. I'm not sure that I will.

It strikes me as a terribly inefficient way to make money. I can make 10x as much money by being a 'carebear' than I can by taking it from other carebears. Missions are a decent source of income, but the real money is to be made in the market by capitalizing on the one thing that every MMO participant has plenty of - laziness.

MMOs are strange. They force a bunch of lazy fatassess to grind their way up a ladder for the purpose of bragging to other people climbing the same ladder about their position on the ladder and speed at which they reached it. In EVE, this is especially weird since one of the primary positions on this ladder is pure longevity. If you've been a subscriber for longer, you have more skills. Period. Full Stop. End of Statement.

There is seemingly no way to EVER match a character many months, let alone years older than you. Sure, choice of where to put your training time, intelligent choice of what to train (i.e. train the learning skills first people - but you should know that by now), and profession choice as you create your toon can make a big difference, but if I'm two months old and I'm in a battlecruiser, odds are pretty good that I'm dead at the fitting screen.

So, it would seem that unless I want to be a frigate pirate and max out the frigate skills, it'll be many, many months before I'm an effective PvP player. In fact, using the tools at my disposal, and knowing what I need to have to be an effective PvP player in, say, a Battlecruiser, I can say with no doubt at all that I'll need at least 71 days, 4 hours, 31 minutes and 25 seconds to complete this kind of training.

Granted, I started with a Trade build, and I can now conduct 57 simultaneous buy/sell orders from anywhere within a region, which would probably take a pure PvP toon 71 days, 4 hours, 29 minutes, and 43 seconds to train into, but I still contend that I make way more money doing what I do than he does.

So - why should I be a pirate?

Well, the rush, that's why.

Monday, March 17, 2008

save me!

So... I was going to do a big rant about information leaking and how no one can keep their mouth shut, but that would be fruitless..

Someone either figured it out or let something loose and the company I work for has figured out that I'm looking to leave and they're trying to figure out how to save me.

I think they even know that I'm traveling to Iceland soon and the purpose of the visit, but they're not yet to the point of denying my travel, which is probably because they're afraid I'll just quit outright if they do, and they might be right.

However, today they began the effort to 'save me'. Last week one of the other managers here put in her notice. That created a void, and now there's an opportunity to do a whole new round of reorganizing. There's a place and a need for me in this new hierarchy, I'm told. Just sit tight and "don't do anything stupid" and I'll find out what it is soon.

I can't say that I'm really going to hold my breath.