2012 In EVE Online, The Year That Was

2012 in EVE Online will go down as a year in which I didn’t set any goals or had any real goals I was striving for! When the year started I didn’t set any goals. It can be really hard to play EVE Online without goals, without something to aim for, something to chase to measure your progress as life keeps evolving in EVE Online.

I really didn’t know how much I was going to really play EVE in 2012 when the year started. I was preparing for a semester at the university taking a few classes around my normal daily work schedule. I didn’t expect to really have a lot of time to play EVE for the first couple of months of the year. It was also likely that I would have taken a break from the game as well to focus on my classes. I really didn’t know how it would work out either. So already looking ahead, I didn’t set any goals for playing or accomplishing anything in EVE for the year. The first half of the year kinda went a bit slow with reduced EVE playing time overall as a result. Yet in the end it ended up I kept playing EVE Online and throughout the rest of the year, with a bit of break here and there.

The Year that was 2012 in New Eden

New Eden continue’s to be an interesting place and all its happenings and turmoil. Looking back, I can’t really remember all that was really that significant throughout the year. At least without having to re-read my blog. I’m still in the same Player Corp I was in the year before. That has been so now for the last 2 and half years almost and actually enjoy being in my Corp with a good bunch of folks. My trust and responsibilities have somewhat grown in the time being apart of my Corp as well.

Managing Divisional Assets

Earlier in the year my CEO asked if I could help based on my usual activities and gave me a side project to work at whenever I felt like. I took it as a challenge somewhat as well something else to do daily. So as a side responsibility I was in charge of managing and growing any asset that was apart of my newly created Corp Division (Market Trade/R&D) and Wallet Division in the Corp.

Starting with almost nothing, and continuously reinvestment of all that Wallet profits in Market & Trade items slowly growing that Wallet to over 4 Billion ISK. That was utilizing my own Trade Slots thus costing me the opportunity to not use those slots for personal and riskier trades. For a small side project I think that was a success in something to do to help my Corp in some other way. If I hadn’t made that ISK for the Corp that would have added to my own profits for the year.

The Rest of Things

There were no shiny ships bought. But the way it worked I usually build all my own ships to fly or use if I can help it. I’m just really not that into ships like most other players. I’m more into acquiring and growing assets, than more ships in general. My main character Ametius learned to fly a Caldari Freighter this year. That was more for the purpose of logistics if he needed to do so for Regional Trading. He never did acquire a Freighter though. Wasn’t really a need for one. After all his brother Alothos does most the Trading these days and most of the logistics when needed. Ametius did learn to fly some other new ships I’m sure, but they weren’t that important for me to even remember what they were this year. He did train up quite a few skills to lvl 4 for Spaceship Command in the latter part of 2012.

Alothos did learn to fly a Drake Battlecruiser working on R&D Agent Corp Standing in the beginning of the year.That was mostly missioning for the NPC Corp Lai Dai to up some Standing for Datacore Research for Invention. He did learn to fly an Orca, he even bought one which was purely for logistics purposes also. It barely ever get used. But that’s ok, it’s there for when it’s needed. So ships weren’t much of a priority in 2012.

Memorable Moment of the Year

I probably had the biggest Trading losses this year so far, probably the biggest ever. With more money to Invest in stuff, you also have more money to potentially loose as well if things go south. That occurred when high end Minerals and Morphite was way up in the spring of 2012. Jita Burning event occurred at the heights of the high end Minerals Bubble and Speculation. I was trading lots of Megacyte, Zydrine and Morphite at the time and making good profits. I also had the largest amount of Investments in high end Minerals ever to date at that time also. I lost somewhere in the ballpark of 3-5 Billion ISK with the long siege on Jita.

That market ripple ended up crashing the high end Mineral Market and my local regional market which turned out was being mass manipulated into a bubble by major Null Sec Alliances right up to Jita Burning. Those Null Sec Alliances made out big cashing out before the big market crash. And in the process I lost s few Billions of my own ISK and several Hundred Million ISK of Corp Wallet Fund I was managing as a small side project. So spent a few months making up for the losses. That was probably the biggest event of the year, chaotic in the market and was exciting times as well.

Regional Trading

I’m not a Jita Trader or any the other three big Market Hub Trader. The year began doing Regional Trading across 5 major regions of High Sec Space including Domain, Kador, Kor-Azor, Khanid, Tash-Murkon. It ended with Regional Trading across 6 major regions of High Sec Space picking up Trade in The Citadel Region (Caldari Space). And the truth is Regional Trading is a lot of work! Its more work to me than Station Trading where you sit in station all day mostly or login session and just trade like a Day Trader, never leaving the station. Kinda like  some Jita Traders. I just find it more fun to travel around the regions and see whats needed or in short supply wherever and intimately learn some of the trade dynamics and economics of a region.

I’m not fond of being stuck in a station trading. However covering 6 major regions doing Regional Trading you can imagine is a lot of Star Gate jumps involved and allot more jumps if you actually had to visit specific stations in those regions delivering something to that system station. That’s part of the fun for me. But in 2013 it might be good to be able to do less of it as it’s a lot of work and time spent warping all over the place through all those regions.

Skill Training in 2012

Ametius: 46951449 Skill Points.

Alothos: 42061719 Skill Points.

For Ametius the year started still training lots of Advance Science skills pertaining to R&D and Invention skills (T2), and are they a lot of them. Got all those skills to lvl 4 at minimum which allows being able to do Invention & Production across all 4 empire items on everything that can be T2 Invented. That finished up somewhere around spring time 2012. Spent some time training some Capital Construction skills for a while as well. Then for a few months trained even more R&D skills yet again for T3  Reverse Engineering & Production. So at this point can do all Reverse Engineering of Sleeper Technology Artifacts. I think still need some 25 days or so of training for something else before can do the final assembly to build any of the T3 Hulls.

It can be a juggling act with training needed skills! Spent rest of year patching up lots of potholes in various amount of skills that had been neglected for some time in the time it took to train so many Advance Science skills. Patched up lots of training in Gunnery skills to use T2 S/M/L Laser Turrets and T2 Laser Crystals. As well train up Missile Skills to be able to use various T2 Launchers and T2 Missiles. What remained of the rest of year was spent training Spaceship Command skills including Battlecruiser 5 and Destroyer 5 to take advantage of the planned changes by CCP coming soon to those skills. As well some other Spaceship Command skills trained to lvl 4 as well.

Alothos spent the early part of 2012 training and gaining Standing to use NPC R&D Agents for Datacore Research for T2 Invention use. That was way before Faction Warfare changed and had its impact on the Datacore Market in the Summer of 2012. Since then he’s been training up numerous amount of skills for Industry, Manufacturing, R&D and various amount of Spaceship Command skills. And though he now by far makes the majority of all the T2 items he’s not quite as capable of actually Inventing all those same items as his older brother Ametius. Nor can he quite make everything as well either as yet. But I guess the plan eventually is for him to eventually be able to handle all T2 R&D & Invention as the prime T2 producer.

Faction & Empire Standing

That’s the standing of my Trader Alothos with Empire since his brother Ametius has much higher Standing with Empire and various NPC Corps overall.

Only time Alothos had really done Missions was for raising Standing with NPC Corp Lai Dai to raise Standing to access NPC R&D Agents to lvl 4 to gain access to Datacore Research for use in T2 Invention. And that was more the purpose of it all. And since then haven’t ever done any more NPC Missions to affect Standing with Empire or NPC Corps.

Yet though most players don’t really think about it where NPC Standing again comes into play is with Taxes. Both characters have max skills at lvl 5 for Accounting which affect Sales Tax and Broker Relations which affect market related costs by NPC Broker. Taxes add up! Taxes add up even more when you’re doing hundreds of millions and more in market transactions.

Taxes, who like Taxes…

And the only way available to pay even lower Broker Taxes is to have reasonable high Standing with Faction/Corp which affect Broker Taxes across the board to all NPC Corps in Empire who’s station you may trade. Or you may have High Standing with more specific NPC Corps who’s standing you affect directly and thus they allow you lower Broker Taxes on Market Transaction Trades at their stations. Not something most players seem to worry about or take note of unless your a Trader. But the bigger and complex your web of Market Trades get, Taxes eat into your Profit Margin big time and it adds up to allot of Taxes paid.

So one the things I’d like to do is likely increase standing for Alothos who still pays reasonably high Broker Taxes. Lower those Broker Taxes a bit across the board to below 0.5% at the select NPC Stations most of his Trades occurs. Be great if can get it to 0.4% for Broker Taxes at the station he trades.

Right now at best he’s paying 0.51% Taxes in Broker Taxes and that’s at one of the NPC Station he has the highest Standing. So for 2013 its something to try to work at to lower Broker Relation Taxes.

Assets and ALL That Other Stuff

More Station Hangar Assets accumulated and more ISK was invested in 2012 in other Assets to facilitate Trade and Industrial activities across the board.

Lots was spent on Blueprints and Blueprint sets of all kinds and all that other stuff in 2012 that helped in some way to help to increase ISK and value of Assets overall. A huge amount of Blueprint (BPO) Research in 2012 resulted in the vast majority of those Blueprints completing ME/PE Research to acceptable levels to increase their production value. Compared to 2011, I’m not exactly sure what exactly I had in Assets but it was allot less than in 2012.

Many of those Blueprints were bought for the explicit purposes of Copying and making Blueprint Copies for use in Invention and producing T2 modules/ships. In the end most of them all completed ME/PE Research as well.

With the amount of R&D and resulting amount of T2 Invention activity that occurred through the year, the amount of  T2 BPC greatly increased. At the end of the year audit that resulted in about 791 T2 BPC’s that have yet to be produced. That represented many thousands of various Datacores that were obtained for both character from R&D Agents. And instead of being sold on the Market for profit, those Datacores were actually used in Invention Research for items intended for later production. Items likely will be produced 2013. But currently they represent locked up ISK value yet to be produced.

Research Agent Datacore Research

Some 190563 RP for Research Agent remains uncollected as of the end of 2012. That’s roughly 3811 Datacore’s. Since changes went into effect for Faction Warfare prior to Summer of 2012 Inferno Patch, no Datacores have been collected for T2 Invention use since. There was no point in doing so since there is currently still enough stock in hangar available to use. Yet there is also no great need for allot more T2 Invention either at this point. There is already more than enough T2 BPC that will need producing than I’m likely to produce. Datacores as well have greatly dropped in value since the Faction Warfare changes.

Overall Personal Assets end of 2012

Based on the Station Hangar price value that shows up when an item is in Hangar, I decided to do a rough Audit. And many and most items will be worth much more than that especially already researched Blueprints.

T1 BPC’s intended for Invention – 7828 Value Unknown

T2 Invented BPC’s – Value Unknown

Station Hangar Assets – About 14.5 Billion ISK

Market Sell Orders: 12 Billion ISK

Market Buy Orders: 0.0 ISK

Cash Asset: 38.7 Billion ISK

Total Assets: 65.2 Billion ISK (Rough Estimated Audit)

For now Ametius finishes out the year just trying out and get acquainted to living in WH Space for however long that is to last.

I’m not sure just how things will play out for 2013 in EVE Online, but overall in the big picture of things that’s how it played out in 2012.

40 Million Skill Points and moving on

So I ‘ve reached the 40 Million Skill Points milestone.

I guess I should drop in from the ether and finally update my blog on my absence and whats going on somewhat as things progress slowly in the cold depths of space. Actually I’m just enjoying blogging more when I feel like than the need to, than be like the daily press and have some opinion of everything. That can be to time consuming and daunting a task  in EVE Online where stuff happens all the time ongoing. I rather just spend more time playing the game. It just mean I have more time to play EVE, play other games or actually sleep more vs writing a blog that consumes a lot of time even for a hobby.

So some days ago this past week my main EVE character finally reached and surpassed the 40 Million Skill Point milestone in EVE Online. I think I was skill training some level of Armor Resistance Phasing at the time when that occurred. And I guess it’s somewhat good to look at my small amount of progress finally passing 40 Million Skill Points. I remember back in the beginning of EVE I’d read so many blogs, some blogs of other fellow EVE Online players in the community and be amazed at them reaching 20, 30, 40, 50, 90 Million Skill Points and so on when I had so little and it seemed to accumulate so slowly. I used to wonder if I’d ever make it to that point level let alone come up with some dumb excuse wondering if it can ever surpass them as veterans and decide not to play EVE instead. I guess if you keep training skills it all adds up slowly over time.

That’s a lot of Skill Training and long way to go yet..

Having now surpassed 40+ Million Skill Points with 239 skills trained to various degree, all it really means to me is that my character can do various amounts of things somewhat adequately though not everything effectively. From doing lvl 4 Missions in certain ships, Exploration Skills, Transport Logistics, Planetary Interaction, Mining, Market Trading & Selling, T1 Manufacturing, Refining, T2 Invention, T2 Manufacturing & Production. That’s how I play EVE, more like a character that can do various things that I find of interest to me. But those skills don’t mean I can fly a lot of the many various ship classes in EVE, far from it. The amount of ships I can fly are not all that many compared to the amount of ships in EVE Online. But I can fly all the ones to do the things I need to do on a daily basis. Yet on a daily basis of all the ships I can fly in my hangar which are few I only use about 2 of them about 98% the time on a constant daily basis.

For the last month to three months it’s just been a mix of continuing to patch up holes in combat ship training, training various skills to at least lvl 4 from wherever they were to continuing to train needed Industry skills that feel somewhat neglected. In the last three months that accounted to being able to use T2 Launchers, T2 Heavy Missiles, lots of Missile Skills, Large laser Specialization skills to lvl 4, T2 Strip Miners & Mining Barge Skills, train Caldari Freighter to lvl 4, Train all the T3 Invention/Production Skills to lvl 3 so far and patching up other trained skills. I guess the issue with being a character that’s training as an all around character  is that it can take a while to train a lot of things within some balance having to train various skills in different areas and not just to do one specific set of things like flying combat ships only. But that’s how I choose to play EVE!

On Everything Else

It can sometime seem like the same old stuff as a Trade Industrialist, not all that much out of the ordinary is happening. Except that material stuff have been bought, manufactured and sold, some BPC’s Invented/produced and sold and profits are up by Hundred of Millions and Billions of ISK. Losses are way down and well that’s all a good thing too. Since the Mining Barge changes, have been busy making lots of Mining Laser Upgrades, Ice Mining Harvester Upgrades, Ice Harvester Accelerator Units, Strip Miners as well as Drone Damage Amplifiers and Caldari Fuel Blocks.

Only just a few of the pre-patch manufactured Mining Barges have yet to sell, but I haven’t worried much about them as it’s only about 4 or so that haven’t sold among all the other market assets to sell. Still not much of either a full-time Inventor nor full-time manufacturer and yeah sometime my manufacturing slots go idle. But that s ok and ok with it as not a slave to either of those things in EVE to have to keep them filled.

Starting another year off in New Eden

Where I've been in New Eden as of January 1st 2012

Took a screenshot to document as of the beginning of the year where my main character have been so far in New Eden. I seem to travel allot all over Highsec Space. Well I’m primarily a Trader doing Regional Trade mostly. Though I do a bit of Industrial & Research activity as well.

As of the beginning my main character was at 28.1 Million Skill Points and started the year training Large Energy Turret 5 with another 20 days to go to complete training for using T2 Turrets and Laser Crystals. For my alt Trader I have him training Metallurgy 5 and somewhere around 25 Million Skill Points.

Wallet balance as of January 1st, 2012.

Started the year with a nice balance of 19 Billion ISK and will see what I can do with it in the year or maybe go broke maybe. Back in 2011 I had started the year at right around 3 Billion ISK. There is a total of about 7.58 Billion of Sell Orders across 7 Regions on the market and 900 M in Buy Orders across 2 Regions. For the most part Trade sales remain steady in growth and in investment.

Shiny ships don’t really motivate me all that much and my favorite ship that I fly daily remain my tiny Covert Ops Buzzard of which I have several and use almost exclusively daily. As well my Crane to move a few bigger things around that I can’t cram in the tiny frigate.

The Wardec continues and haven’t seen the enemy since the start of the Wardec, will see what happens over the next few days.

30 Days of Crucible

It has been almost 30 days since Crucible expansion has affected life all over New Eden. Life in highsec has been quite busy since as a Trade Industrialist and Research Scientist. Business has also been good as well for the past month. Sometime when your busy playing a game it can be hard to really devote time to blogging about it when your actually busy playing it. Yet blogging for me is an extension of playing the MMO games I play and chronicling life as such. And in a way I feel like I’ve been falling behind on things here on the blog and better catch up on things before I fall too far behind.

Hows Business?

Crucible has been exciting for business and generally exciting overall. In the almost 30 days since Crucible profits has increased by almost 9 Billion ISK and that so far makes it the best month for sales in my career in New Eden. Total Nav Wallet balance has increased to almost 20 Billion ISK mostly due to Trade and Industrial R&D production activity. There is still some 8 Billion or so in Sell Orders on the market across 7 regional markets and almost a Billion ISK in Buy Orders. Its taken some work but its been fun. Some people make much more ISK than that but to each their own and what they find fun.

I'm doing it Wrong? I guess I should be making more?

Maybe I’m probably doing it all wrong? Not everyone who does Trade and Industry do the exact same thing, trade the same way or whatever else. But at least in the things I do it’s what I choose to do and have fun doing things my way. So things has been good in business for the last 30 days. I haven’t had to scam anyone in New Eden (yet) to try to get ahead either, so a bit a myth that everyone in EVE is a scammer.

Much of last month Trade business I can probably attribute to production sales of the new BC’s (Tornado & Oracle), Invention Production sales of new T2 modules, new Fuel Blocks & Blueprints, Ice Products, Mineral Speculation, PI P4 products and other general sales items across the various regions of trade.

Sales of some of the PI P4 products didn’t quite work out as expected. Expectations was that POCO’s was going to be in high demand for production and thus a huge demand for PI P4 products. Generally I usually produced PI P4 products on a routine basis for production of Starbase Structures from various Blueprints in my asset collection. So I usually produced PI P4 materials anyway. However most the P4 items produced was intended for market for use in POCO upgrade from the Gantry once deployed. Roughly just over 440 units of 4 different kind of PI P4 items was produced for market in anticipation for demand in making POCO’s from general PI material stock I was sitting on.

I’ve managed to sell roughly about half my entire stock. However it seemed a lot of other capsuleer’s had the same idea and massive amounts of P4 ended up on the market. As well it seem demand for making POCO’s haven’t materialized as was fully expected and demand for P4 have been quite low it seemed in my region. At least thats how I see it. With the low demand for P4 in my region stuff just seem to sit on the market with prices slowly dropping and erratic. At this point I’ve chosen to do nothing much at all and probably let the item sit unless maybe I find a better deal somewhere else like in Amarr.

Missioning

I can’t remember the last time I ever ran a Mission at this point as its been a long time. But generally running Missions for me is for the overall purpose of raising NPC standing to lower my Brokerage Taxes on Trade orders. Traders like paying lower Brokerage fees as it mean higher margin profits on Trades at various stations.

Planetary Interaction

Really haven’t done anything all that different with PI since the patch other than paying higher Export and Import Taxes. Did make some change to one of my planets due to it not being as productive on extraction vs extracting something else.

On another note, before the patch did speculate and buy up some amount of PI material cheap on the market on Buy Orders. And so far I’m still sitting on most of all that PI P1 material. Currently sitting on 4.6 M units combined of all the PI P1 material. The plan is to sell it for higher profits and I have yet to sell it all. I’ve figured based on an average value of PI P1 material its roughly worth somewhere around 2.2 Billion ISK in PI material. Right now I’m just sitting on it for now.

Manufacturing and Production

Manufacturing and Production mostly for T2 has been chaotic for the last several weeks. Since Crucible I’ve been mostly unable to work out of my regular hanger with any regularity for Invention and T2 Production. Manufacturing activities has been greatly increased in my system. So much so most of all the manufacturing slots in my station hanger remain locked down and in use for days on end often up to an entire week. Invention slots often remained full and occupied for days.

During the recent production of the new BC’s none was ever produced in my own station hanger. All was produced in another system temporarily moving all the needed materials ahead of time to a lesser utilized system for manufacturing. And since that time I have yet to fully move back to my main hanger of operations.

Thus its been somewhat chaotic to manufacture various things, components always missing some material, mineral or needing to go back and forth to main hanger to get some needed material or component. It was a bit of a pain really. Invention as well has had similar issues always needing to invent at different facility stations since main hanger facility slots remain occupied and in use by other capsuleers. Running out of Minerals was a constant issue and having to buy and haul minerals for T2 and component production. As well the constant need to keep buying Mexallon for manufacturing for odd reasons as the price of the mineral kept going up.

Invention R & D

Copying Blueprints and Invention has mostly been an almost daily activity to various degree. For someone who does R &D in highsec without the advantage of a POS it does have its drawbacks and many inconveniences. However despite that I’ve been able to get numerous amount of Blueprint Copying done with long-range planning at a nearby Copying Facility. At this point there are somewhere over 2500 copies of numerous blueprints intended for Invention use. I’m not sure if I can or will get to use them all for Invention.

For the last several months I’ve been doing various amounts of Invention for T2 on a routine basis. There was some amount of time where I just did Inventions consuming the increasing supply of blueprint copies and not as much T2 Production. On each successful Invention run that produced a T2 BPC the amount of T2 BPC’s just continue to accumulate intended for later T2 Production. As of recently there are just short of almost 1000 T2 BPC’s of numerous amounts of Modules, Ammo and smaller Ship BPC’s.

Hundreds if not thousands of Datacores have been consumed in the constant process of blueprint Invention. An expensive amount of Datacores have been consumed in countless Invention runs. With a backlog of now almost 1000 T2 BPC’s of various sorts its pointless to just keep doing daily Invention to continue to increase the supply of T2 BPC’s and consuming an expensive amount of Datacores daily.

So I send word to the guys at the R&D lab that Invention tinkering was going to slow down dramatically if not fully come to a halt. Currently there are several sets of blueprint in the Copying Facility for Invention Copying. Its the last sets of blueprints to be copied at this time. Copying and Invention activity will be slowing down. Inventions will now be done as needed if needed.

In the last several weeks due to increase amount of Inventions, have had to buy and increasing amount of Datacores and visit R&D Agents more frequently to collect my supply of Researched Datacores. So it will be good for a while to not need to buy and consume Datacores for Invention. With the current stock of hundreds of Datacores in hanger I’ll probably eventually decide to sell most the current supply for some extra profit.

So for the last several days the Invention tinkering lab has been idle. T2 production has Increased and pretty much so for last 30 days. Without the need of having to do daily Inventions or worry about what to attempt to Invent there is just more focus time to just work at producing T2 items and components.

Corporate/Alliance Wardec

We’ve had a War! Right before and leading up to Crucible Corp/Alliance had a string of Wardec’s. In the last week we had another Wardec by one the same Corp/Alliance that Wardec’d us only a few short weeks ago. Needless to say it was a quiet War as it occurred over the Holidays and most people were gone for the holidays and we hardly even saw the Corp/Alliance that Wardec us. Word was that they were a Merc Alliance hired again by another Corp for the Wardec. So goes life as usual in highsec and Wardec’s.

So the War is now over, having ended just a day or so ago its now back to business as usual.

Neural Training

On my main character after almost a year of Science related skills for T2 its been somewhat a shift to training of ship skills to use T2 Turrets and Laser Crystals. In about a day or so complete Medium Energy Turret V. Will be a while longer before getting to Large Energy Turret V and able to use Large T2 Turrets and T2 Laser Crystals. Currently have around 27.6 M SP.

On my Trader alt he recently completed training for piloting a Hulk almost 30 days ago. Bought him a Hulk, fitted it out  and don’t think he been mining 3 times since for any great length of time. Completed training the various mineral mining skills to lvl 4 and recently completed Refining 5. Currently have the the trader alt at 24.8 M SP training Metallurgy V since he usually does blueprint copying activity. That will help to finally get that Prototype Cloaking Device I Blueprint which have been in my collection for quite some time finally researched which does require Metallurgy V.

Overall its been a good and busy 30 days.

EVE Online: My first year space odyssey

Where I've been for my first year in EVE

Just past that point a few days ago. As it was just over a year ago on April 23rd 2010 my character Ametius started playing EVE for the very first time on a trial account. At this point last year I looking for a more Interesting MMO game to play, maybe something a bit different, something with depth and something quite interesting to pickup and learn to play. Maybe a game I could get lost in learning how to play. And though I had always somehow kept seeing and reading about EVE Online as a new game to try out I had always kept putting it off somehow. So a year ago I finally decided to give it a go.

This is probably the longest blog post I’ve tried to write. For over a week now that I just couldn’t decide what to write for this post and even when I did write I kept deleting and re-writing the post. When I wrote I  was still at odds what to write about. And the longer I’m stuck trying to figure out how or what to write the further I get behind in everything else and the more time it consumes. Even this post has drastically been reduced. Sometimes just hard to decide what to write. So at this point I just want to get the post over with I guess.

But I’d heard about EVE Online for years and never gave it a look, yet I had no clue what it was really about either. I remember reading about EVE Online launch way back in 2003 on some game sites back then and just never quite understood the game and instead decided to play another online game. It just wasn’t my time to play EVE and never understood the game back then. So one year ago I decided it was finally time to give the game a decent shot and not just a whirl. After three days playing on trial account I knew It was my kind of game. I learned enough of something and found the game quite interesting with allot to learn and all kind of things to learn about and do. EVE to me is what you make of the choices you have and the life you wish to live in New Eden.

I was also struck and drawn in by the beauty of the game and all ships and objects in space. Yeah many the ships in EVE do look quite odd to me but I was drawn in by the beauty of the game as well as the opportunity to choose your own path in career. In time I found other things of interest beyond the beauty of space. But it didn’t take long to decide to make a new life in New Eden as a capsuleer. And I guess I haven’t regretted it as one year later I’m still playing, learning, having fun and continuing my journey as it continue to evolve in EVE Online. I’ve found many things in the game over time interesting to do or for a career. To me EVE is a journey and how you live the life and progress on the path of that journey in the huge universe that is EVE. So many new players never make it pass their first week on trial in EVE or their first month let alone make it pass their first year. The great myth is that EVE is not that hard to learn, it take time & patience and it does take effort to learn vs been spoon fed all the answers easily.

With just passing 1 year of playing EVE this also makes my 775 blog post about playing MMO games. 80 of those blog post were about EVE Online in the last year. Some weeks I blog more often than others. But I guess I should blog more. But I guess if your busy playing the game its hard to be just as busy writing about it. As well I don’t really consider myself a EVE blogger, as I think of myself as a MMO gamer that happens to play EVE the most. Yet it’s also nice to have been accepted into the EVE Community as a one of the more junior members of The EVE Blog Pack. I just usually blog about whatever game I’m playing and EVE Online is the game I played the most in the last year. It’s just one of two MMO games I happen to be playing.

I’ve thought about what to maybe write about but i just couldn’t really decide as really writing a perspective on one’s experience and thoughts of one year in EVE is not as easy as it seems to write about and quite time-consuming. How one measure ones progress in EVE can seem to have a few answers from my perspective in Skill Points trained, assets acquired and probably all the things you learn over that time doing things which is allot and invaluable to learn. So maybe a snapshot.

Skill Points

Corporation Management – 3 skills: 8750

Drones – 15 skills: 199795

Electronics – 16 skills: 1288798

Engineering – 14 skills: 504849

Gunnery – 13 skills: 1106510

Industry – 16 skills: 1633680

Leadership – 6 skills: 3915

Mechanic – 21 skills: 1171824

Missile Launcher Operation – 12 skills: 213255

Navigation – 7 skills: 213422

Planet Management – 5 skills: 732080

Science – 33 skills: 4972163

Social – 8 skills: 664295

Spaceship Command – 18 skills: 3041339

Trade – 12 skills: 1114555

Total Skill Points after exactly 1 year – 199 skills: 17869230

How much ISK spent on learning all those skills? Have not the slightest exact idea, but I know it’s a heck of a lot of ISK in training skills. like several hundred million ISK if not close to a Billion ISK just about invested in subliminal skill training continuously for a year.

I fly mostly Amarr/Caldari ships. Though I can fly more Amarrian ships than Caldari. Biggest ship can fly being a Amarr Battleship. Though the ship I enjoy flying the most is my tiny Covert Ops Buzzard as a high-speed shuttle. For my trader alt he can fly Industrials, Caldari Transport ship (Crane) and a Freighter which he owns.

My first player Corp in EVE was a small corp which changed names three times in the three months or so I was a member. About half of the corp back then were newbies including myself and the other half including the CEO did missions, and high-sec pirating. Somehow we used to get wardec every week almost for some reasons I never used to understand. Over time most the new members quit EVE slowly and eventually over time the CEO played less and less. Eventually barely anyone was left active in the corp and corp fell apart. I learned allot in that whole process. And so I moved on to finding my 2nd player Corp. I found a much better player Corp and so have been a member of my present Corp for the last eight plus months. Out of being in my first Corp I guess found what eventually became one my best friends in EVE as we remained friends though we are in different Corps. Through it all I realize finding a good player Corp is really important.

In short my career occupation in EVE is pretty much as a Trader making most my ISK from market activities. However also do Industrial Production, Planetary Interaction, Research, Invention and T2 Production. I do find Exploration an interesting activity as well. Once in a while I visit a mission agent to keep working at lowering my brokerage taxes. It sometime feel odd as a EVE blogger where the vast majority of EVE bloggers are pirates of one form or another or wormhole pirates.

After a year in New Eden the game is still quite fun, with so much to learn and yet so much to still do. I never though when I started in EVE that I would be here a year later. If I knew what I knew now years back, I would have picked up the game years earlier. It’s also not as hard as most new players think the game is to learn. I guess that’s a myth. It’s a shame so many new players quit the game in their first month without having the patience to really try to learn the game and the various ways they can choose to play it.