So being new to the Faction Warfare scene, I wanted to take the time to get to know the fellow leaders in the militia. If an effort to do that, and to help the community get to know everyone as well, I’m going to be doing a few interviews!

This week we’ll be talking to Shalee Lianne of the Amarr militia. A big thanks to Shalee for her time and answers!

1. What got you interested in playing EVE Online?

The short answer is that a friend of mine wouldn’t shut up about it. He had been playing for a while and would tell me stories about it. What sold me on it was an article he linked about Istvaan Shogaatsu and the Guiding Hand Social Club heist. That intrigued me enough to try it. My friend was just starting up a merc corp and recruited me to be his spy girl. Our first contract was on the former Amarrian militia corp, PIE. I wrote about the whole experience on my blog here.

2. How long have you been playing? Have you always been in Faction Warfare?

I have been playing a little over three years now. All of it has been in FW except for a few weeks.

3. What brought you to Faction Warfare and Imperial Outlaws?

My spying contract brought me to FW. The friends I made kept me in FW, I decided I wasn’t cut out to be a spy. I really didn’t understand when signing up to do it that I would be severely fucking over people and lying, I thought it was going to be more about roleplaying but I really couldn’t justify it after I got into it.

As for Imperial Outlaws. My first corp was PIE, and I was there for around 9 months before leaving with Aldrith Shutaq to make KOTMC. Last year after some drama a few of us splintered off to make Imperial Outlaws. I think I grew away from what KOTMC was originally designed to be, a pure RP corp with RP values. I pretty much wanted to just shoot all the things without RP interfering with that. I still RP but it’s not my top priority any longer.

4. Do you have a favorite moment or story from your experiences in EVE/Faction Warfare?

Well, a couple of things come to mind. Istvaan Shogaatsu posted on my blog and I went all fangirl. I mean, he was the reason I came to EVE and he read my blog. Once, at least. /swoon

From FW? Hmmm. I think my first time in a huge militia fleet back when I was in PIE. It was the battle of Kamela and there were a gazillion people there. One whole fleet just for tackle on the gates to shut down the system. I had just trained for the retribution, I was so little! And it seemed like the most epic thing EVER. I got on a few killmails and was so smug, I was doing big things!

5. What got you started blogging about Faction Warfare?

I have two blogs, one RP and one for FW. I started the RP blog shortly after I started EVE, it has the stories of my character being in this deeply religious, nearly cult-like corporation, a corp that she was paid to infiltrate! So lots of drama and romance. (shaddup I’m a girl I heart the romance)

I started Sov Wars to write about the militias from an OOC perspective. At the time there weren’t a lot of people writing about FW (if any) and I wanted to bring some much needed attention to the FW scene. We were having so much fun in our little part of the sandbox but it seemed like no one else was even aware that FW still existed. My goal with the blog was to give attention to all the players of FW, so if someone said ‘interview me’ I would. If they had a story they wanted to share, I would post it. If someone asked me to write about something I’d do my best. The whole purpose of my Sov War blog was to get attention on FW players as a whole and to remind CCP that we were still there.

6. I’ve noticed you enjoy the role playing aspect of EVE, how active is that community? Is it mainly in the form of blogs and forum posts, or do others participate in game as well?

You have no idea how much of a loaded question this is!

I came into EVE with an RP mindset. My character would be a mixture of Starbuck and Caprica Six (Battlestar Galactica for those who don’t know what that means, but you should!) and she would have all of these epic experiences in space and the rp would be so epic because I was joining an RP corp and…

Once I got into PIE I realized most of the corp didn’t truly RP and didn’t really care about story arcs and character development and all of that. /shrug

Beyond PIE, there was a whole RP community that I was so eager to involve myself in. I would read their blogs and forum posts and knew that they had all of these fun pirate bar channels but I wasn’t really allowed to participate. If I would sneak into one of the RP channels I would get in trouble lol. I wasn’t allowed to even RP with them at all. If I found a loophole that would allow me to interact with them, PIE would create a new rule to stop me! I was constantly getting into trouble.

Once I left PIE, a whole new world awaited me. I could rp with whom I wanted, where I wanted, when I wanted. I went to a pirate bar with my new found freedom and met a really interesting character who later turned out to be a really bizarre person OOC (out of character). Basically the guy wanted to give me billions of ISK to treat him like a slave, both in character and out. Pretty weird, huh.

My experiences afterward would mirror that first encounter.

My rp stories became more interesting but that drama and intrigue came at a price. After some really fucked up OOC experiences that included being threatened and maliciously slandered by some of the players I just sort of withdrew into my own little world and stopped participating in RP community at large. There are some truly fucked up people who RP on EVE, but that’s true of the game at large. Lots of sociopaths lol. However, there are some really nice rpers too, I don’t mean to paint the whole community with the brush of a few twisted individuals.

So to answer your question, yes, there’s a big rp community out there but I’m really not a part of it, I think. I tend to RP with corp or militia pilots for the most part because it’s where I feel the safest.

7. What has I.Law’s role been in the war? What’s your role within I.Law?

Imperial Outlaws is a smallish corporation that is mostly active in the USA evening time zone. We have several FC’s (Almity, Eran Mintor, Daisha) within the corp who lead general militia fleets. Before Inferno, 90% of the night-time fleets were being lead by one of our guys. We have never been hardcore plexers but from time to time have concentrated our efforts on it. Since the launch of Inferno it’s become almost a necessity to plex, so we begrudgingly do so.

Our corp is run by a directorship of four (Myself, Almity, Phione, and Ryven). My duties include recruitment and a little diplomacy. I also help with cyno-duty, fitting corp ships, forums, etc. Basically whatever is needed that I can do, I do. Oh, and being the corp Princess 🙂

8. What’s your favorite change or update that Inferno has brought to Faction Warfare? Why?

My favorite changes include the new militia tab that shows occupancy and the percentage of being contested. Pre-Inferno we would have to travel to each and every starsystem to check occupancy, so needless to say a lot of backwater systems fell because no one was flying through them.

I love the influx of new people that Inferno has brought.

Also, LP for pvp is really nice.

9. Least favorite? Why?

I loathe the station lockouts, still. It’s a pain in the ass and I hate it passionately. I feel like if we didn’t have station lock outs the warzone would open up more. It seems that most of the pvp is congested into 4 or 5 systems for the most part due to docking and the ability to quickly reship. Plexing is a chore when you start to spread out because each plex size has ship limitations. That means there’s a lot of travel time to reship and then there’s a lot of danger involved while traveling. For a lot of people it’s just not worth the effort.

And of course the LP payout ratio is still very, very stupid. There has been so much written about this already that I wont bother reiterating it. But it sucks ass.

I think my least favorite part of all is the fact that for years FW had many broken mechanics, like plex glitching and NPC imbalances. Those things heavily dictated the outcome of the war when Inferno was launched, leaving Amarr to suffer heavily. I think those broken mechanics should have been addressed and corrected BEFORE heaping on all the new changes for FW.

We went into Inferno horrendously handicapped, not because we weren’t ‘organized’ or because we simply ‘didn’t care’, it was mainly due to the fact that we were severely outnumbered and when we did try to plex, the actions of one single Minmatar player glitching a plex would throw off the plexing respawning for the entire night. You can’t capture a system without plexes.

Those things were brought up time and time again on the forums and were ignored for literal years.

I asked for a system reset because that would have been the fair thing to do, to which CCP responded with something akin to saying they weren’t interested in being fair. /shrug

So yeah, the launch of Inferno rewarded the Minmatar greatly for being on the winning side. They were bathing in ISK faucets while the Amarr were being locked out of stations and given LP worth 1/16th the price of the Mims. And then we were told to ‘stop whining and suck it up. Try harder’.

10. What do you think of Fweddit and their presence in Faction Warfare? What about the effect they’ve had on the Amarr militia?

To be perfectly honest, when I heard about Fweddit I think I cringed a little bit. From what I understood, it was going to be nothing but TEST alts, and up until that point my only experience with TEST was being forced to share a system in Otosella back during the winter. I.LAW had moved up there to get away from the heart of FW for a little while and play on the fringe systems to do a little pirating and catch unsuspecting WTs.

Within weeks of us moving in, TEST picked the system to stage out of for one of their campaigns and holy fuck, I had never experienced anything like it. Until then I had only been exposed to FW, which are pretty much chill guys, even if we were fighting each other we were still ‘bro’s. Smack talking was usually kept to a minimum so I wasn’t used to the non-stop blinking local chatter. They were douches and I hated them lol.

So when I heard that TEST alts were joining Amarr, I felt like the EVE Gods must be punishing me! Of all the people in all the world, why did they have to join FW! Why! I secretly considered quitting FW seriously because I wasn’t sure how much of that I could tolerate again. It’s not like I could just blink off local and ignore them, I would be forced to work with them. I was dreading it more than the station lock outs.

The actuality was far different. The night before the launch of Inferno, we were going at Kamela hard core to save it and Fweddit brought in a fleet to help out. They weren’t officially in FW yet but they wanted the FW experience and to help. It was awesome.

Since then I’ve met a lot of Fweddit players and have fallen in love with most of them. They are really great guys and I absolutely love having them in Amarr.

In fleets with Fweddit I’ve had nothing but positive experiences. Even when I’m out solo plexing I’ll randomly run into Fweddit guys and they are nothing but helpful and nice.

I believe that Fweddit is a force to be reckoned with. They have the numbers and once they grow up a bit skill wise, the Minmatar are going to be severely fucked. /dreamy sigh

Fweddit is my fwiend and I love them! BIG HUGZ (oh and Fweddit gave me my new BFF, Xolve)

11. What’s your favorite ship to fly?

Mmm. That’s hard to say, I guess it depends on the fleet. I have a preference for laser boats. I love my slicer, I love the nomen, and I love the harbi. The abaddon is pure sex and omg I love my rev. I can’t pick a favorite! I’m really not one for blingy ships outside of my rev. I get fancy ships for gifts but I rarely fly any of them, they just sit around and take up space in my hangars. I prefer something I can actually fly on any given night.

12. What’s your favorite activity other than Faction Warfare?

There are things outside of FW!? lol. Really that’s all I’ve ever done outside of my brief time as a ‘spy’. I love FW, it’s my heart and soul! I’m not interested in anything else really.

13. Any short or long term goals you have for yourself in game?

I would like to become a falcon pilot like my corpmate Phione. He is absolutely amazing in that ship and I wish I could be just like him!

In theory I would love to FC, I greatly admire all the guys who do it, though in reality I don’t think I’ll ever be to that point, to be comfortable enough to actually do it. I don’t have the focus that they do, they amaze me with their ability to micromanage everything, I’m far too much of a scatterbrain to be able to keep up with scouts and enemy movements and all that. I think I’m a better follower than leader.

Some of my game-related goals are to write more for both my FW blog and my RP blog. Also my corpmate, Almity, and I are working on some ideas for an FW podcast! I’m really excited about that.