Waiting, Cats and Magpies

Australian Magpie

I've been busy doing not much, but their has been much of it.

The corp and therefore the alliance is slowly coming back to life, Christmas and New Years just sucked the life from everybody involved, it has taken this long for those old batteries to finally gain enough charge to login for appreciable amounts of time once again.

However Downtime (DT) is just killing us.  It's such a shame the AU time zone is so impacted by the daily downtime.  Admittedly it's nowhere near as long as when I first started playing back in 2007, back then one hour was normal, these days ten minutes is quite common.  It still breaks up the momentum, people don't login, or they've lost the energy, the zest, the get up and go they had before DT.

People drift away to other games, bed, or heaven forbid their significant other.

Heh I'm kidding, we play Eve Online.

We have cats.

Talking about cats, as SFA is happening in game right now, mine has taken to attempting the theft of cheese from the Magpies we hand feed when they approach the front door.  I'd like to say this is voluntary but Magpies are rather aggressive and if I could speak their descended dinosaur language it probably goes something like this...

Magpie 1, "Gee it's a long way from your front door to the car all the way over there."

Magpie 2, "Yeah it would be shame if something attacked your head on the way there."

Baby Magpie, "I want food, give me food, will you give me food!  Is that food?"

So while waiting for things to move forward in Eve I'm sometimes feeding the local wildlife for a variety of reasons, self preservation being one of them.

My cat, essentially being a furry tube wrapped around a mouth and stomach, is quite interested in the cheese, and not so much in the three aggressive looking magpies who are not bothered by her at all even though they are within a metre away.  I think their "fuck you" stance is frankly confusing her.

With any luck the standings we've been waiting for will be done soon and I can get back to Eve Online stuff!

Dealing With Slow Rookies

The B-R5RB fight has been a boon for new player recruitment into Eve Online.

As you can see the right hand side of these graphs represent the days leading up to the third of February 2014.  It's easy to see where the news of the fight hit the media and the clear evidence of increased new player attraction.

So much so that...

Yup.  TiDi in a starter system.

Welcome to Eve Online newbies!

The B-R5RB Turkey Shoot Fallout

So the Eve Online fight on the 27th and 28th of January in B-R5RB was rather large.

How large?

Well the figures are pretty impressive.  As of this morning when I obtained my figures (which are likely to rise as more kills are discovered) this is what had happened...

Click to enlarge

4,651 ships or other deployable objects had been destroyed.

Of those 62 were Titans, 330 were Dreadnoughts, 546 were Interceptors, the numbers go on and on.

The ISK loss was 9.67 trillion ISK.

To put that another way it was 15,064 in game PLEX (current PLEX value 642 million).

As one PLEX can be bought for $19.95 of USD that means the ISK loss was worth just over three hundred thousand US dollars.

$300,519 USD.

Remarkable!

Interestingly the market warriors have already started as the volume of Tritanium traded in The Forge was double for both yesterday and today compared to the recent average.  I also expect other prices to rise as various replacements are made to the almost staggering amount of material that was lost by the involved parties.

Click for image to stay much the same size as this

What this does in the non Eve Online gaming world is create buzz.  Gaming sites will pick up the story, non gaming sites may follow suit, and it becomes an advertising god send for CCP.

I'm sure we will be seeing the fallout for days to come at least.

Some news links:

Washington Post

Fox News

Stuff.co.nz

CBSNEWS

It's rather interesting, or just lazy journalism, that the text is mostly just a copy paste from the same source, and is factually incorrect in several areas.

CCP have also posted a DEV Blog outlining the fight and some of final numbers.

Golden Nugget In GD

I don't read the forums very much, and in particular the General Discussion (GD) area as it just seems to be the same garbage posts, ideas, etc going around and around, quite depressing really.

However!

Every once in a while their is an initial post and response that is worth reading.

When that happens I'll let you know.

...

Right now!  

Da'iel Zehn posted the following the following;

"Hello there my beloved brethren and sisters,
So my question is... why so much secrecy about upcoming content and the direction of EvE? I really hate secrecy as we have to deal with it all the time out-of-pod in RL.

So much redaction in the CSM minutes. Made me a sad bear.

Is because of the "Rabble Rabble Rabble?" Or is it all the "I'm Leaving EvE" threads or something? Is it because the threat of people unsubscribing can become a reality? What happened to the HTFU mentality introduced in that CCP rap song?

I'm curious... things used to be way more open. It gave me something to look forward to. Something to keep me excited about EvE and keep me here (as I get really bored now)."

Only seven minutes after "his" post a response from Katrina Oniseki was unusually thoughtful and well written for GD.

"Because the things talked about in the CSM are subject to change and are more often than not simply vague ideas talked about and thrown around the room without any real development work having gone into them yet. It's called expectation management.
Players as a general demographic are incapable of understanding the concept of "we haven't even started working on it yet", so we run into issues where players rage about stuff they didn't even need to know about. Let's say CCP was talking about designing a new module that does a fancy thing.

Some players will rage about the fancy thing it does and call it OP before any stats are made.

Some players will rage about CCP designing something that isn't part of their gameplay instead of fixing [playstyle], before the final functionality is finished.

Some players will rage at CCP for nerfing their playstyle in favor of [Goons/N3/carebears/pirates], when CCP isn't even sure if they want it to be allowed at all in [game area].

Some players will use the advance information to figure out how best to make trillions off the introduction of it via market games or be perfectly trained for it, spend all their money/time on getting ready for its release, then rage when CCP changes how it will be produced/used.

Finally, when CCP decides they cannot feasibly work out the technical limitations of the module, some players will rage about the half-assed functionality or the cancellation of the whole idea. Because "CCP PROMISED US THIS MODULE".

It's almost always a bad idea to present your ideas to the customers in the MMO biz before you have something tangible and polished to show them."

I was very pleased I'd decided to wade through the murky and usually foetid waters of GD this morning.

I've also passed the four hundred post mark.

Research Agent Grand Prix

I collect and sell Data Cores (DC's).  They can also be collected for use but I prefer to collect and sell them and buy what I need.  The income is pretty low these days but one hundred million ISK per month would be quite handy to a player starting out.  As I've been asked how I go about this I thought it would be easier to chisel it here for the hordes of future players to view at their leisure.

I have three pilots that collect the DC's, lets call them A, B, and C.

They all visit the exact same research agents and purchase from the agent one or the other of two different DC's.

Pilot A travels around to all the agents in something small and fast, purchases the DC's and contracts them all at each location to pilot C.

Pilot B travels around to all the agents in something small and fast, purchases the DC's and contracts them all at each location to pilot C.

Pilot C travels around to all the agents in a fast hauler, purchases the DC's and collects the DC's contracted from pilot A and B,  Pilot C then travels to the trade hub of choice and puts them up for sale at a price that should sell in the next day or so.

Once another month has elapsed do this again.

The hardest part is the initial setup as each pilot must gain enough standing with the research agents corporation to access the DC's, once that is done it becomes a high, medium, or, low income stream depending on your situation.  As it currently stands however the research points that let you purchase the DC's accumulate while your account is active, so it's a very passive income.

Which could become handy if you lose everything.