I have been busy, so busy, that I have had little time for writing as I would like.  I am still working on the Blade of Truth storyline, part four is finished and will go live on July 4th so do keep an eye out for that.  Yes, there is more of that storyline to tell and I am actively working on part five right now.

I have been spending a nice amount of time playing EVE with my fellow corpies.  General ‘yarring’ about has yielded kills, ransoms (both isk and jokes) and the odd carrier slaughter (http://nspta.net/lacon/?a=kill_related&kll_id=69143).

Our campaign against the ever failfest called United continues.  If they would spend more than five minutes outside a station, we might actually get a fight with them.  As it goes, their operations around the system known as Rancer have slowed considerable.  They do continue to camp the Crilere gate as they are infamously known for, but other than that, they are not very active.  They do come out every now and again, but the good ole “Control Q’s” kick in when we log on or even think of the system name Rancer.  Oh well, we expected nothing less.  The ‘Lords of Otou’ shall continue to rule with the strength and honor for which we have always wielded.

The OPML download has been growing for some time now and with the recently ended blogging promotion event between CCP and GameScribe, there are a number of blogs that are simply disappearing, mainly because they were created to participate in the contest.  Now that the promotion contest is over, some of those blogs are no longer in existence and as a result, they will be removed from the OPML download.  I do have some additions to make and an upcoming announcement post will be made this coming Friday.  The OPML us up to date as of this blog posting, so fee freel to download a fresh copy (http://www.eve-druid.com/opml-download).

CrazyKinux has yet again, provided wonderful inspiration for our blogging community.  He has a wonderful contest setup for the next EVE Blog Banter (http://www.crazykinux.com/2009/06/eve-blog-banter-contest.html).  I myself will be writing an article, however, I will not be among those entries being judged for the prizes.  Now before anyone gets worked up, you should know that this was MY idea.  I shall attempt to explain.

CK, James Egan and I do a lot of work together for the blogging community.  CK maintains the EVE blogroll, I maintain the EVE OPML download and James Egan keeps up to date on the EVE community from a variety of information resources, including both postings among the EVE Blogging community and tips that CK and I send to James. Needless to say, we are friends and we do have a decent amount of regular contact with each other.

I have full faith that CK, Zapatero and James could be objective when judging entries, but there are always people who will take relationships such as those I share with CK and James and create a context of impropriety.  Such people would claim that a contest was rigged.  We have all seen such claims on the EVE forums and honestly, it’s usually a bunch of garbage, but the creation of “threadnaughts’ and other related drama end up ruining an otherwise entertaining and fulfilling event.

Rather than leave such potential drama be something that can ruin the honest, open and honorable nature that the EVE Blogging Community holds itself accountable to, I deciced to stop it from happening, hence my decision to ask CK to remove my contribution to the upcoming blog banter from the judging.  Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t kept me from writing a post.  I had an idea and yes I am going to participate in the Blog Banter itself, just not the contest.

Yes, my blog banter post this time is a long read like my last one.  You have been warned. 

Anyway, that’s all I have for now, see you out there!!!

Related posts

• Updates (0)
• Summer time is a busy time (0)
• It’s been a while… (0)
• I am a horrible blogger (0)
• Getting back into the swing of things (0)

No, it’s not what you think…well, perhaps, if you are that twisted.

I have been busy as a beaver with writing projects, enjoying summer movies, recovering from vacation and of course, playing EVE.

For those of you who have followed the ongoing conflict between The United and The Neo Spartans I will say that the fight goes on.  For the latest stats, you can view the stats on the campaign, Ding Ding! Round 2! I missed a good portion of the combat as I was on vacation, but I had a chance to engage a volley or two.

Yes, there is a new look here.  I went over to Podlogs (http://podlogs.com) and downloaded the ‘Angry Amarr’  theme (http://podlogs.com/themes/?preview_theme=Angry%20Amarr).  It’s a nice theme and I like how it looks.

OPML update, I have an update post going live this Friday listing the recent additions.  If you have not already done so, please send me your requests to be added to the OPML no later than downtime on this coming Thursday.  Hopefully I will receive enough responses so that I don’t have to update the post multiple time after it’s gone live.

Speaking of new blogs, I have a few words on the concerns the blogging community have expressed.  As with all things, the more you have is not always better.  Our community recently hit a major milestone with a record number of 535 blogs.  This is a major achievement, however, with all things in nature, there is a balance between the positive and negative.

With the larger number of blogs comes increased administration on the part of myself and Crazy Kinux with regards to the OPML and the EVE Blogroll.  It is a bittersweet thing since both of use love to read the diverse postings of our community.

With all this growth, we must admit that there will be some ‘dead loss’.  CCP and GameScribe had a major promotion going on to get people to blog about the community.  Many blogs were created in that push and to be honest, I see some of those blogs simply dieing out as the promotion ends.  Rest assured, the EVE Blogroll and the OPML download will be revised to reflect those inactive AND inaccessible blogs.

The OPML download has always had blogs listed that were no longer active for the sole purpose of providing a ‘historical’ listing of those who had contributed to the EVE Blogging Community.  So please do not be concerned if the OPML download count of blogs varies from CrazyKinux’s EVE Blogroll.  Many of these older inactive blogs had a lot of good content that any new blogger and member of the EVE Online gaming community may find benefit.

See you out there!!!

Related posts

• Wow, that must have hurt…running into writer’s block (0)
• Roaming about, dieing a lot, having fun again (6)
• Oh, what a night… (0)
• About Me (0)
• UPDATED, He’s not afk (0)

Yeah.  I have been so busy with work, catching up on all the reading from the Quantum Rise patch, absorbing all the information from CK’s posts about Fanfest and various administrative items for my Corp. (Forums revamp, killboard upgrades, etc…).

I promise, I have something wonderful to write, something that will be worth reading.  As soon as I too am feeling better and inspiration revisits me, I will post.

In the mean time, take a look at our latest combat encounter with our war dec Roids’Are’Us.

http://www.nspta.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=15329

Related posts

• Roaming about, dieing a lot, having fun again (6)
• OMFG, it’s attack of the Space Beavers!!! (4)
• Oh, what a night… (0)
• About Me (0)
• UPDATED, He’s not afk (0)

EDITED FOR UPDATES, EVE FORUMS THREAD, ETC…

Well, it’s finally happened.  There is an open war in the pocket.  A number of us formed up in a fleet and engaged a group of lame pirates known as The Final Stand.

An intense battle ensued and there were losses on both sides, but ultimately we won, 16 kills, 17 losses, however, they lost more in isk value in modules and in ship values.  Some would say it is a draw, byt 880 mil isk lost to 580 mil on our side, makes it a close engagement, but a win for us.

Now, you may ask, why do I call them lame?  Well, how many pirate corps do you know LOCK their killboard on the night they take a beating from every kid on the block?  Not many, but apparently their’s is locked, take a look, http://eve.thefinalstand.com/?a=home.

So, you can’t see what they have done, both good nor bad.  No worries, you can learn all about the battle and the fights to come here.  It was great fun!!!

http://www.eve-druid.com/kb/?a=cc_detail&ctr_id=1

UPDATE

The thread about this blog post is getting interesting, check it out.  Don’t worry about the userid and password request from eve.thefinalstand.com that may pop up if you have images enabled on your EVE forums account, that comes up because TFS have locked up their killboard and their signatures cause that error.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=871990

Related posts

• Wow, that must have hurt…running into writer’s block (0)
• Web techie time… (0)
• Roaming about, dieing a lot, having fun again (6)
• OMFG, it’s attack of the Space Beavers!!! (4)
• About Me (0)

…with me in my new corp and I receive a request to take a merc contract. I am asked to “humble” a smack talking, annoying twit named Marshal Buckov.

Now it seems that the people in Pimebeka have been enduring this man’s inane babble for some time. He’s been seen taking people’s ore and loot.

So, he’s a pirate.

I am from time to time. What makes this so bad?

Well, he’s ticked off enough people that I was offered a large sum of isk, and I mean LARGE, to war dec this guy. The terms?

• War dec his corp
• Pop his pod and introduce his corpse to the vacuum of space
• Keep all the loot
• If a surrender fee is discussed, his popped pod is a requirement
• War dec fees will be paid for the duration of the war

I’ve seen similar terms before, especially for a large corporation war dec. His corp has 7 people in it. Is he that bad?

Normally, if someone is simply engaging in piracy, I will leave them alone. Birds of a feather so to speak.

The inane smack talk, the lying about having won fights when he lost them is pushing it a bit. The worst was not honoring accepted 1 v 1 engagements. He would get help from a gang mate/corp mate. Blobbing is a fact in EVE, but not honoring a 1 on 1 duel is just not right.

Pirates as a whole in EVE are an honest bunch. I know that it sounds weird, but it’s a necessary thing. We have a job to do and sometimes the job itself is hard enough with the way targets sometimes behave. There is no need to offer them any more tools for them to use against us. There is an honor code. When you break that code, you make all pirates in EVE look bad and this just simply will not do.

Now, normally I will not take people on their word when they claim such actions. I have heard such claims before to get mercs to take contracts. Most merc groups do what I do, get an alt into the affected area and observe what is going on. Gather intel on the problem, intel on the ships being flown, combat tactics, etc. In this case, I didn’t need to do that. I trust the people who asked for my help. That and I personally watched such events unfold while attempting to engage in simple jet can piracy my self.

So I accepted the contract, Marshal Buckov Corp was war dec’ed.

I would like to say that it was a glorious war with lots of battles and many explosions, but that would simply not be the case.

Most of his corp spent the past 7 days offline. It was in fact not until today that Marshal himself even ventured online. Must have been that ban for his postings in the COAD discussion on the EVE forums that held him offline. Seems that more than one corp war dec’ed him and he got upset about it. He posted about it. He postd and posted to the point that he was banned for the spam posting that was his new full time job.

He finally undocked after much inane babble in local and after I had blocked him for a bit as I had grown weary of it. He was in a shuttle. Not a wonderful kill, but a kill none the less. And as I had hoped for, his pod was mine too.

His frozen corpse? Given as a gift to one of the many nice people in Pimebeka, specifically the first one that asked for it as there were many requests. They have endured much, it was the least I could do.

The contract terms had been filled and the war is now over, but I will tell you, this guy had better keep himself clean here or I may be asked to come to the aid of the people of Pimebeka again. The next time I would be willing to do it for far less isk.

I want to thank everyone in that system for your words of encouragement and your help in locating which station he was in. In all my time in EVE, I have never seen so many people, even from corps that are actively warring with each other, come together to help one person pop another person.

Let this be a lesson to all you smack talkers out there. People are tired of seeing that crappy drama in local. People are so tired of it that they will band together and hire mercs to go after your sorry hide.

Play nice, pirate honorably and keep the game fun. That’s all WE all ask.

Related posts

• What to do about the guy in the Coercer… (0)
• Kainde Ahmeda, well, it goes on (3)
• Yarr-ing good times (0)
• Why do people do this (0)
• Wandering about and I find… (0)