As I write this the next expansion after Phoebe is due for release this evening, it is called Rhea.
December being what it is, and with the changes that came along with Phoebe, I wasn't terribly interested in blogging about anything to do with Eve Online. Finally I realised I'd better get something down before the next expansion lands as it may be stretching the friendship to talk about the previous expansion after the next one has been released.
However what this does is gives me a window into Phoebe, the time before release, during and afterwards. I'd also like to call this denial, acceptance, and depression.
The time before Phoebe was filled with much hysteria and misinformation. Finally the facts were able to burn through the myths but still a certain amount of smoke lingers in some quarters. I was, well not quite excited about the jump changes, but hopeful they would revitalise the game and help us move away from super blobs zapping around the universe to hot drop battle cruisers. The universe had become a small place in the time before Phoebe.
Phoebe is released and players rejoiced! I was pretty happy about it. I compared Phoebe to not quite a reboot of Eve but it was a massive change, hopefully one for the better, and I still think it is.
Before Phoebe we noticed the exodus of the renters from The Kalevala Expanse, then the region was sold to Russians, who didn't return any of our eve mails, it was time to leave also. We left, players and then corps left us, we settled in a low sec area while the debris from Phoebe settled, it was only for thirty days and this was made quite plain. We started receiving eve mails asking what's happening next after only a few days, more people left, more corps left. Pretty soon the alliance wasn't viable and it essentially shut down.
We were in denial before Phoebe, still trying to live the renter lifestyle, and then afterwards in acceptance as the reality of the new expansion sank in and we were forced to change our ways.
The rest of the month plays out, we enjoyed ourselves in low sec, made some new friends, some of the bad guys learned to respect us, but it's time to move on. We head back to null sec.
In null sec, as part of the Darkness alliance, the learning curve is steep, but we've accepted that. We, and I, are used to doing things our own way, but now we have this alliance dictating various things to us, which while expected is a little off putting, for me anyway.
We've gone from being an alliance built out of refugees from many other organisations, with one of our core building blocks, our foundation stone, is we do not have Call To Arms (CTA's).
Now we have CTA's, in fact we have several each day. This is taking some getting used to.
Our time in low sec space was pretty enjoyable, though I personally think the game in Eve is in null sec space, so we lose some more members, some really fucking good members who couldn't get that out of their veins.
Hence the depression.
