My Eve Birthday, Or, Doldrums and the Cure



In a week, my main will turn two years old. I know this isn't a huge milestone, many people have played Eve far longer than me, and two years might be considered 'just getting started' to many, but it's worth some contemplation.

After two years, I am close to 60 million sp on my main, and 30 million on my main's support alt, and about 11 million on my hauler/industry alt. My support alt is training into combat links at the moment and after that I plan to start the long climb to cyno 5, so she can make for a better hunter. My main is well on his way to training for a capitol ship, with only a couple weeks remaining until his skill are up enough to fly it properly. After that he'll be working on a marauder.

Across my accounts I have around 16 billion in liquid isk, and close to twice that in assets. I have a bad habit of building fleets of ships, and then letting them gather dust in hangers, I have been thinking lately of liquidating some of those fits, and consolidating. My main reasoning for training into caps in the first place is to have a suitcase to move this stuff around, but the more I play Eve, the more I have found that a lot of these logistics are a time sink, and ultimately not necessary. I am starting to think some of my overpreperation robs me of content in the end, that a lot of my Eve game is preparing for something that never ends up happening. Maybe it's the boy scout in me, I don't know, but it Eve, it's easy to overdo, and I should stop doing that.

I've been in the dumps a little about Eve lately, an attitude that comes around with me once in a while. It's a never-ending game, and it's important to retain perspective on that. Whenever I find myself feeling like this, I try and shake things up. In the past, some of these off the cuff decisions have been the best things I have done for myself and my longevity. On the other hand, a lot of those stacks of ships scattered around the universe come from these same spur of the moment actions.

After 'growing up' as a pilot as it were, and leaving factional warfare to see what the universe had to offer some time ago, I have found I approach these points of frustration pretty quickly. Repeated attempts to find my way larger organizations have left me jaded to such groups. The more I experience these the more I realize that most corps that are super into recruiting are, for the most part, not any sort of group worth being a part of. Accepting that you are a solo pilot, even temporarily, is limiting but also freeing.

I have been living in Nennamaila, in the GalCal warzone, for quite some time. After the Minmater warzone died, it was a great place to get good fights and content. Being a solo pilot in a warzone affords you lots of opportunities to fight with both sides, and to use the assumptions of others to your advantage. When I moved into the area, this was a great staging area, as it was right in the middle of the wz, and easy to travel around. These qualities have not been lost upon my fellows though, and now Nennamaila is the thunderdome, within the larger Eve thunderdome of Black Rise. My station is hellcamped by caps so often that I have taken to logging off in space, and I can only travel in cloaky ships, forget getting anything bigger than a frigate out of the system. I am lucky enough to have a solid scout alt, but it's still very hard to avoid these giant camps.

It is easy to think of playing Eve and then to decide against it because it seems like too much work. Quick access to content only goes so far if more often than not you are the content. Even the best of us tires of the repetition of constant conflict. It begins to feel like there is no subtlety, and certainly no real accomplishment, as everyone who isn't kidding themselves is expecting to die shortly anyway.

I have been wandering around a lot when I log into Eve anymore, some nights making hundreds of jumps, trying to feel out different areas of space I haven't been to very often. I feel like it would be good to learn something new and incorporate it into my game. More options for content can only be a positive thing.

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