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2017 according to Tekkaa.
I've decided to do a retelling of my first serious year in Eve online as i feel it's helped me grow as a person and maybe overcome or at least try forget about some of the shortcomings of health and just my general bad luck in life.
My return to eve was in December 2016 when i learnt about the new alpha clones and i thought” awesome i can play for free” i played on and off since 2009 but never seriously. When i logged back in i found myself in Teonusude (minmatar space) got myself reacquainted with the mechanics and ran some missions in my hurricane i was in from last time, how boring, that quickly gave me the shits and i stopped playing yet again. After about a week or so i googled something along the lines of what to do in eve and i come across exploration I found a fit for a probe on eve wiki and watched a couple of how-to videos and undocked, i ran some hisec sites and decided “this is bad isk” so i dove directly into wormholes as you do. Did some really dumb things lost a couple of ships also made a lot of isk as well but the most important thing is i was having fun and learning.
A few months went by and i decided it was maybe time to join a corp so i looked up the forums ,a wretched hive of people saying the game is dying, not uncommon though any game I've ever gotten serious about the forums are filled with these types comes with the territory, i ended putting up a post something along the lines of ”Aussie player looking for corp”. To which i was bombarded with replies on the forum and in game mail. After sifting through them i joined a nullsec corp thinking this would be a great opportunity to earn my null wings it was good,at first, i was told to get an interceptor sell up most of me things and wait for an escort to help me make my way over, took a day or two for that to happen and when i arrived some nice fellows gave me some ships when i arrived from memory a “Talwar” and a “Hurricane”, a couple of days went passed and i got into some gate camps that proved to be quite fun. Then came the weekend usually when most people have some free-time to play games, especially the case for myself. I soon began to learn that nobody was on in my TZ and not knowing much in null isn't much fun so i ended up spending 2 weeks out in “catch” as it didn't get any better, maybe i could have hung out a little bit longer to see how things went but i decided to leave i contracted back the ships i was given and i set myself free from nullsec. I headed back Highsec and found another corp they had a Fortizar and seemed to have some more regular players on in my Timezone “success”. For a Time it was good they had orcas out for boosts regular mission fleets, call it a business model if you like they trained up and helped players get ISKED up and if you wanted ship you out to nullsec not a bad setup, some time passed yet again and like everything in EvE nothing happens overnight At first i thought wow look at all these players people to fly with but shortly realised they were mostly Americans nothing wrong with that but i'm an Aussie and i was yearning to be with other Aussies so i was growing bored and participation in comms become less and less soon though and maybe for the best for myself things came unhinged.
The problem that the corp was confronted with was they were full of NEW members. quite literally as they had recruiters going out to the start zones and grabbing whoever they could this is great to bolster numbers but not here, not in New Eden, more numbers meant absolutely NOTHING because those numbers had no weight in them. You could say Useless players and at no fault of their own it was just because they were new to the game.
Everything began to fall apart quite rapidly as the Alliance earned itself a wardec and Leadership didn’t communicate how things should be handled during “War Time” and the Corp being so new player top heavy lost ship after ship, after ship, this began an avalanche effect and other players and corps smelt blood so they polished there blasters and missile launchers and jumped in on the easy kills. People started leaving which obviously made ot harder to do anything and wardecs kept coming. I nearly got caught a couple of time by one pilot but he was always to slow, which brings me to part when i decided to pack my bags and leave this sinking ship.
Another fascinating part of EvE i like is, after i packed my bags and begun moving things the pilot who was causing the most grief for my now former corp noticed i was leaving and invited me to a private conversation and ask why i was leaving. The answer to that if you have been reading this and paying attention should be apparent. He mostly wanted to let me know that i was switched on because he never managed to kill me.We spoke for quite some time by text chat in game and he explained that his corp were mercenaries hired to wardec others turns out they were only hired for one round but kept deccing is because of the easy kills. Can't blame him really. Why is this fascinating Somebody who 24 hours ago was trying to blow me up has now become an acquaintance and we now say hello to each other from time to time.
Now corp less yet again i wasn't quite sure what to do and i had become sick of joining corps outside my timezone and my previous attempt to find an autz corp wasn't that good. So what to do, start my own? In a roundabout sort of way i did. I begun looking for aussies and aussies only to join my corpand roughly in april and got a few guys into the fold. Slowly but surely and some of them. Are still around and thanks for sticking with me if you're reading this o7… the recruitment wagon was going along ok and i was contacted by quite a few people wanting me to bring my corp to null and be the aussie director unfortunately that wasn't the direction i wanted to go. The exact details are fuzzy but i bumped into the League of grumpy old farts (LOGOF) and began talking of an alliance. Everything they had to offer was what i was chasing and 100% Australian players this was a dream come true and obviously i was what they were looking for as well. Quantumtech industries was now apart of the alliance. I never thought at the time of joining how long this would last but I'm still around 8 months down the road and enjoying every minute of it. i hope the feeling is mutual.
Upon joining the alliance i felt overwhelmed a little, these guys had been around a long time and knew so much, i was in awe. After some time i was invited to become part of the leadership, i never thought something like that would happen to lil ol me. i underrate myself but i must have been doing the right thing it wasn't a serious role more of a fly on the wall situation. Not long after that our ceo had to take a break from the game and the 2ic at the time took the helm. I would like to think i was helping our ceo but i was very green and i'm sure he had a lot of FFS moments from the questions i asked but i was beginning to take more of a serious part in leadership.
The months have gone by now and i feel like i've certainly grown as a player and a person, EvE has some valuable lessons to take away with you into real life and if you let it make you self judge yourself in a very deep way which i have noticed now more than ever since I've become a junior Fc.
The alliance has grown and expanded and our old CEO is back with us which makes our leadership strong with all our combined points of view and knowledge. This is all possible because calculated decisions are made to keep the alliance on a steady growth path and when the members follow the path things go well and when they don’t bad things happen but i guess every village has idiots and they either take themselves out the equation or we have to forcefully say goodbye in saying that we have had a lot of great people come on board and benefit the alliance greatly and work towards our common goals.
Before becoming part of leadership i never knew how much goes on behind the scenes of an alliance even just from my point of view . Even just the recruiting part for my corp can be very tiresome, i have had days while I'm on smoko or lunch at work put to-do lists in my phone for when i logged in that night only to be brushed to the side to chat with a potential recruit turning the game into more of a chat room or email simulator but well worth it as i have had some great people join the corp. I would like to thank the greater membership for being a part of my time in this game and leadership for putting up with me.
I have done many activities over that past 12 months from mining, manufacturing, DED sites, exploration and trading and have enjoyed doing all of them, over the Year i have been part of many pvp roams, ganks and gate camps and my most recent privilege as mentioned above is being a junior fleet commander this has been the most eye opening experience and in no other game have i ever had the full blown shakes before leaving for a roam, if you're familiar with eve you would know that you lose your ship and everything in it is gone so being at the head of a fleet can be nerve racking and every week so far i believe I've gotten better. afterwards self evaluation comes at its finest, i have asked for criticism and i'm glad my seniors are happy to be honest give it to me and as of late this has helped me grow in taking criticism in real life activities whether in my career or my marriage or as a parent.
2017 has been a great year for eve with the new alpha skill sets being introduced and hopefully in the coming year we see an exponential growth in the player base and i look forward to 2018 to see what the future brings i'm sure i could make this quite a lot longer but I'm sure each story could be told in the same amount of length as this. Maybe 2018 i might start my own blog.
One last thank you to all those who have been part of my eve experience and again bring on 2018…
Tekkaa o7