It has been sometime since my last post to the blog aside from a stray picture that might reveal a bit too much about my character in reality. Of course that is a lie in itself, my character is fully revealed by the fact that I (1) play eve and (2) write about it on the internet under the guise and protection of my character’s face. Like many of my fellow eve players we men sometimes find ourselves masked behind the guise of a female avatar, mind you this statement is not relevant to the post at hand but instead is a musing of the fact that so many of us find ourselves picking to play female characters over male ones. It started for me in Guild Wars: my roommate introduced me to Guild Wars in university and he played a few female characters. At the time I was appalled and pondered and demanded to know why he dared do such a thing. His reasoning was simple: There is a bias in the aesthetic of the female armor and equipment, simply put it was better looking than the male options, and this was true. A darker reason for it was female avatars were far more likely to receive random charity in new player areas from old players. (This one was more amusing than dark)

Since then I have typically preferred female avatars to male in gaming, what I tell my friends: “I’d rather stare at the rear of a pixel girl than a pixel boy. ” In eve it is at the moment irrelevant, but who knows what the future may hold.

Character Relations and Very Human Interaction

The character itself is part of what shapes my comfort zone. However, what really has come to define my eve experience is what I try to do while on eve: develop tactics for and participate in combat. PvP is the real thrill of eve, and I am sad to say I haven’t found myself in a position in the last month to really just sit down and grind it with my corp mates and get the kills or be killed by a superior group. I enjoy watching those elite pvp solo-videos that are well edited and selected fights by players typically in overwhelming odds pulling it up by their bootstraps and grabbing a victory against a superior number of pilots. (While typically not mentioning the price of their ship’s modules, their booster alts, drug use, and possible friends they hide from the public in some extreme cases) To me, whether the video is a pure solo-video or a video guises as a solo adventure with all the trappings and support mentioned in parenthesis above is a moot point. Simply: solo-pvp or the loose definition of it, is not within my comfort zone.

I take the concept of sandbox and MMO (with particular emphasis on the M and the other M too) to mean I should enjoy eve as a social enterprise. Eve offers me a unique opportunity to befriend perfect strangers from anywhere in the world, get to know them while playing a game we mutually enjoy and even possibly arranging meetups and drinking events with my new found friends. The 21st century is indeed a great social experiment for an advanced primate species as our own. Eve is basically a place I come to experience and encounter new people and share ideas about the game I love and about other things I think about (philosophy, politics, history etc). Simply and literally my primary goal on eve is to be social and friendly and to make new friends.

Meeting people and experiencing their conversation at any level could lead to a friendship or just a passing experience with a new person. The game is an engine for this interaction but with the caveat that nothing is personal in game, but the conversation could be cordial even while the pirate is terminating your ship and pod. I’ve made friends by blowing up people in eve before.

The Japanese expression that comes to mind is: 一期一会 or “treasure every encounter” (as it will never occur again)

The people I have recruited into The Nyan Cat Pirates have all joined for their own reasons and benefit to their gaming experience, for me it is the social stuff that I really enjoy. The pew pew we are planning is exciting and I want our corp (and in turn our alliance) to blossom and expand naturally, but the friendships and the conversations we enjoy on our mumble server are memorable to me as much as the engagements we come across in space.

The sandbox is players interacting with players and the game mechanics and atmosphere are brutal, but that doesn’t mean the humans/players truly need to brutalize anyone beyond the pixels. When we step off to the side and look at the players as players we should strive to be supportive and friendly. We shake hands at the end of a basketball game, we don’t stab each other in the throat because a guy fouled be in the second quarter or because we lost.

Atmosphere and play style

My choice of atmosphere and play style rests in the pvp mindset. As a result I like as much freedom and opportunity as possible for this play style, and that rules high sec out as an option. Also as a social creature who loves communicating and talking with people; the lack of a local update in WH space puts me off from it. Thus, my play style prefers the life of low and null sec. I spent my first year in the warm embrace of Empire Low Sec. It is everything everyone says it is (both supporters and critics). Low Sec is the wild west built on a slum and the skulls of the innocent who accidentally turned off their warnings and leaped into a relaxed gate camp to see his hauler or first mission battle cruiser splattered into space dust. (typically if they were very new, I’d give them isk and fitting advice and a pat on the back, I was always a terrible pirate because I had a conscious.) It was good at times, but low sec is dead a lot of the time I could be online (Japan resident), and I would enjoy the sight of nothing.

To change venues I tried Sov 0.0 and let’s just say it wasn’t for me, not yet. I watch with some amusement and anticipation at the possibility that a Japanese player alliance will find a means to take sov in a meaningful way.

My place of comfort in eve geographically is NPC Null. Small scale roams and pvp are everywhere and if I need to make isk there is places to do it. Simply put, it has everything I want at a level to my liking. As long as my corp members are happy, I am happy and everyone seems on board with our NPC null adventures. Small gangs of 5-6 guys will provide some interesting stories and fights, and if we’re lucky we can grow those over time to 10-20 man gangs. With numbers one can worry about losing that small gang experience so many people in eve search for, but I think if it is built into our core we will never lose it. Even with 500 members (a dream really) I feel that dozens of small wondering pvp gangs all over a few regions and time zones could be possible with the occasional big ops for a different level of fun.

We all have goals.

Tell me about your eve comfort zones and things you think are important to your experience. Feel free to comment.

Feel free to contact me in game.