Internet Spaceships and You [OOC]

     I don't believe in superfluous introductions when it comes to blogs, and so I will endeavor to keep this introductory post succinct and to the point (despite my tendencies towards verbosity).  If you don't know me, I live (happily married) and work in the crazy city of Louisville, KY (where bars stay open till 4am, even on Sundays), and I work at Heine Bros. Coffee slinging lattes when I'm not writing or doing other relatively creative things.  This may seem rather mundane, as many of my generation have discovered the profession of the "creativity barista," be it as writers or musicians or artists; however, this blog is not about being a barista (or really even about being a writer, although it requires writing...), but rather about INTERNET SPACESHIPS or more commonly known as EVE Online.

     So, I play EVE Online.  Quite a bit, when I get the chance.  But what is unique about EVE is that it does not necessarily require you to actively play to further develop your character's abilities (ie grinding XP); thus, I can work and write and take care of my puppy, all while my pilot is training a skill IN REAL TIME.  The time to train each skill varies in accordance with the pilot's stats, complexity of skill learned, and prerequisite skills; thus training Battleship (a skill necessary to pilot battleship class spaceships) to Level 5 (the highest) will take me 33 days, 22 hours, and 16 minutes (around mid-April).  This is all to put into perspective what I am usually doing when playing EVE, and it has nothing to do with traditional MMO level grinds.

     What makes EVE truly unique is that it is not run on server-shards, and the universe is also not sharded (except for China, but that's only thanks to the Great Firewall, not CCP); what this means basically is that every single person who plays EVE plays in the SAME universe, thus 40-50,000 players (daily average) fight and die on the same server, at the same time, rather than 50,000 players spread across 500 server shards, each one an independent universe with perhaps 5-10,000 players per server.  Combine a singular universe with a truly player-driven economy (materials, ammo, ships, weapons, mods are all manufactured or mined by players), leave the player free to make his/her own choices, and you end up with the most ruthless, open-ended, virtual reality yet created.  I could go on for hours about why EVE is simply better than any other MMO other there on the market (although SWTOR certainly does take the gold for single-player narrative), about how awesome free expansions are, about how amazing the graphics look (even on lower-end machines), about how international (and active) the community is... But in the end, the only thing that I can say is snag the trial and see for yourself.

All that being said, most of the posts in this blog will (unless otherwise stated) be written in the form of short fiction, detailing the adventures of my capsuleer, Akai Kvaesir, as he works towards finding a place to belong in the harsh and unforgiving universe that is EVE Online.  Sentences, or even whole sections separated by [ ] will be written OOC (that means Out Of Character) when necessary; otherwise, if a post is not written in character it will be tagged in the title as [OOC], as this post is.

Warning: EVE requires you to learn and adapt.  It is not EZ-Mode entertainment, and the rewards scale with the risk.  Just as in life, there are lessons to be learned, and while it may seem confusing at first, there are plenty out there willing to help you learn the ropes.  Just don't forget EVE is a harsh place, and anyone can stab you in the back.