Crazy Kinux has finally become active after a long absence for the better part of a year and announced that he has decided to revamp the his Blog Pack. He announced that he was seeking submissions on who should be added to his blog pack and he would hold a vote.  He would then select the top 20 from that voting process and add his own blog to the mix for a total of 21 blogs.

I’ve read the comments and I want to thank everyone who has listed my blog as a potential inclusion for CK’s blog pack.  It’s gratifying to see that many people like my blog’s content and I am truly touched.

However, I am a bit torn by some of the discussion I am seeing on this topic and I too want to chime in here.

Roc of Roc’s Ramblings voiced some personal opinions concerning the elitist concept around the formation of a blog pack.  I posted my comments on his blog, but I have more to say and I didn’t want to cloud up the discussion.

I feel the need to point out that Casiella Truza posted a good response asking everyone to stop being all emo about this situation.  I need to quote my friend here because he has a great point:

But you know what really gets me madder than a sack of hornets? When a sense of ownership turns into a sense of entitlement. “The list is popular and therefore we should get to decide what’s in it, because otherwise I will be sad and left out and the community will die.” As much as I appreciate CK’s hard work, the EVE community won’t die based on what one single person does or doesn’t do. We’ve grown past that. I’ll keep writing what I write (and so will many of you) because of the people that read it, not because I want some badge of approval from one single person.

People feel like they are being excluded because they are not in CK’s blog pack not listed in Capsuleer and that’s why they are all acting emo.  I agree with Casiella and this is why.

You should really take a look at the many other things the community has down on it’s own without  CK taking the lead to help us all grow.  A few of them are listed here:

• I created an OPML file of EVE blogs well before I ever met CK, however he was one of the many bloggers who suggested make it public for everyone to use.
• 00sage00 created the tweetfleet.
• Alexia Morgan created The EVE Online Portal (evebloggers.com) for all EVE blogs to have a fair shot of exposure to the world.
• Eddie Gordo created PodLogs to provide a place for anyone who wanted to blog about EVE to be able to do so easily.
• Mandril created the “streamlined OPML download” based on my original work years before meeting CK.  Mandril is also working on a categorized directory for all the EVE blogs.

All these endeavors have done very well under the guidance of the EVE Blogging Community in general.  We all build and contribute to our community in such a way that is inclusive of everyone.  We don’t isolate those few from obtaining the traffic that they should be able to obtain.  We keep things fair and we have done so very well.  We always have and we always will.

And for a final note, no, you don’t have to be listed in CK’s Blog Pack to be in Capsuleer.  This discussion has come up before and it’s mentioned on their forums.  Head over  and simply ask to be included in the application.  Work Roc and Pyjamasam and see what your options are.  There is a lot of love that goes into developing Capsuleer, you should share in that effort and respect their time, an offer of  compensation for their work would be most welcome.

What would a post about our community discussing an issue without yet another shared Google Items page.  Yes, I am a Google Reader shared items whore and I am proud of it.

You can catch all the content I am aware on this issue at:  http://www.eve-druid.com/ckbpd.  If I’ve missed anyone, comment here and I will get you added into the page.

Tags: Blog Pack, Casiella Truza, Eddie Gordo, EVEbloggers.com, Google Reader, OPML Download, Podlogs, Response to other blog, Roc's Ramblings, The EVE Online Portal, Tweetfleet, Twitter

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Every time I write these Friday posts, they always seem to be a bit awkward to me. Well, the posting is not awkward, I just don’t want to leave the intro to the post something that is bland, the same thing each week. Bland posts every week lead to boredom for the reader and the writer.

So, what’s the stuff from this week?:

• There is a lot of news concerning the fall of the D-GTMI system pretty much all over the place. The EVE Forums, the EVE Blogging Community, Kugutsumen as well as many other places. There are even a few YouTube videos from the battle in D-GTMI. In a nutshell, Paxton Federation held the system for over three years and when it came time to defend it from -A-, they lost the fight. Many reasons were cited from server lag (which was very bad although the node the NOT crash) to poor FC work to inexperienced combatants on the field. As to what the future holds for D-GTMI and PXF, that remains to be seen. It should however, be interesting to watch unfold.
• Against All Authorities offered an olive branch to CVA after CVA’s failure to invade Catch as well as their loss of the D-GTMI system. CVA continued to be the arrogant aggressor and as a result -A- and it’s allies continue their response with an invasion of 9UY4-H. As of the writing of this blog post, 9UY4-H is under siege. There are both EVE forum posts and a few blogs posts on this battle so far and as always, I am more than willing to share what I find, enjoy!
• Nullsec space drama continues to unfold. On Wednesday, Goonswarm disbanded. Many say this was only the natural course as a problem with maintaining isk in the correct divisions of the executer corp’s wallet led to the loss of key systems in Delve. After listening to the recorded meeting that Goonswarm held and their internal declaration that they were moving back to Syndicate, I initially though this was part of their plan. In that meeting, you clearly hear that the main speaker called the current sov mechaincs (in beta). They seemed to make sense that they would pull out of 0.0 altogether, until you read the post from kartton, the alliance director responsible for the sov loss in the first place. His post titled ‘Dear Goonfleet’ pretty much sums up the Goonswarm mindset of “Frak it all” as he simply took what isk was left and ran. In EVE online, you “adapt or die“. Goonswarm had to adapt to the new sov mechanics as well as the changes to the Titan Doomsday weapon from being an area of effect, grid clearing weapon to a single target weapon. They simply could no longer win fights with large fleets holding people on a grid and using a Titan to ‘clear the board’. Adapt or die, they simply could not do this. Their attitude that the’ sov mechanics are in beta’ reflects this inability to change and thus the infighting must have grown within alliance leadership. Cal over at the Wild at Heart blog has a great post on what happened. As more information becomes available, you can catch the updates at yet another of my Google shared items,Goonsfall.
• Casiella over at Ecliptic Rift has started a Tumblr blog. So, being the social creatrue that I am, I caved to peer pressure and created one as well, http://eve-druid.tumblr.com. I plan to use my Tumblr blog in the same fashion as Casiella, to post things that don’t make it into my blog here or things that I can’t easily share with Google Reader.
• Akura kawanaka of Eve Monkey announced that Fan Fiction Blogfest #2 is underway. You can read all the posts in yes, yet another Google shared item (Google should send more advertising dollars my way for all the props they get from me!)
• One of my favorite sites, EVE Travel, moved to a new home this week. Head over to http://evetravel.wordpress.com and see why it’s a great site. Mark726 fly around New Eden and bring you photos of all the landmarks in game. It will take him a while, but it’s worth following the journey. The “Wanderer” in me just keeps bringing me back to the site.
• CCP announced that they have learned a lot from their testing for the lag in fleet battles. Be sure to read the ENTIRE dev blog as there are some very useful tips on how to deal with these lag situations. It’s a good read and should be something you stop right now and do. I especially liked this part of the dev blog in reference to the final battle in D-GTMI: “On Jan 28^th, we had a 1600 person fleet fight on Tranquility which our team monitored closely, keeping the node alive using methods that make our system admins faint. This was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, fleet fight ever in EVE (at least where the node survived the ordeal). This event allowed us to identify what was causing some of these glitches and deploy fixes live.” So, they finally listened to us, went to a system where the fleet fight request system was used for node reinforcement and actually monitored a live fleet fight 0n the production server. LO AND BEHOLD, THEY WERE ABLE TO IDENTIFY SOMETHING TO HELP THEM RESOLVE THIS ISSUE! Ahem…Well, finally they are listening to the stakeholders and we are again able to work together. Better late than never, thank you CCP. I for one am more than willing to continue to help resolve these issues, let’s keep that collaboration going!
• Manasi over at A Mule in EVE wrote a response to the CCP dev blog on lag and very accurately voiced a valid issue about some of the survival tips for fleet lag.  He feels that the concept of clicking a module to activate it once and wait 8 minutes for the time out is unreasonable.  I happen to agree with him.  Read the whole post and participate in the discussion.
• As always, update work for the blogs listed on The EVE Online Portal and the OPML download continues. I am continually amazed at the number of blogs that we have listed.

See you out there mates!

Tags: -A-, 9UY4-H, cva, D-GTMI, fan fiction blogfest, Google Reader, Goonswarm, Lag, OPML Download, The EVE Online Portal, tumblr, War

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Yup, it seems that Google Reader and I are quickly becoming good friends.  I’ve taken the time and created yet another shared items page.

With the upcoming Dominion expansion and all the discussion/rage concerning proposed changes, changes on changes and various confusing information that has been put forth, I thought I’d create something helpful.

So, enjoy all the wonderful posts our beloved community has written.  As more posts are made, I’ll add them to this shared items page!

Dominion blog posts:  http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F03749674846786948488%2Flabel%2FDominion

Now, there have been some complaints that posts to various discussion threads concerning Dominion are missing from the EVE forums.  CCP is being accused of censorship.

People, remember this.  The forums are CCP’s property, they will moderate as they see fit and yes, there will be mistakes made by forums moderators.  Fear not, Chribba the All Powerful EVE Online God has a wonderful resource to combat this problem.  Head over to EVE-Search.com and you can read all the forum posts as they were originally posted.  You can’t respond to a post here, only read them.  So, head over there to read and post your responses on the EVE forums if you feel the need.

Here is the link to the EVE Information Portal section on the EVE-Search website:  http://eve-search.com/forum/3512.

So, enjoy your reading assignments, there is a lot to read!!!

Tags: censorship, Chribba, Dominion, EVE Forums, Expansion, Google Reader

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I’ve been spending the morning reading the new Dev blog on how CCP is fixing sovereignty.  I’ve also been reading the comments thread on the EVE forums (at 23 pages at the time of this blog entry) and I have to say, the majority  of the responses are not in favor of the changes.  Most people think it will break EVE Online to the point that no one will want to be in 0.0 space.

The TL;DR version is that a typical system will take roughly 2 billion isk a month to maintain once you have it fully developed.  Given all the upgrades to the space that you can add, you simply can not generate the needed income if you are an alliance that is considered small.  I have to agree with the sentiment on the EVE forums here, this simply will not work and all the thoughts that come into my head are already being spoken on the EVE forums and the EVE Blogging community.  The best response I’ve seen on the EVE forums sums everything up by Bobby Atlas and oddly enough, it’s been quoted in post number 666 (I’m not kidding), http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1210267&page=23#666.

Yes, our beloved EVE Blogging community, in a rare event, is agreeing with the sentiment on the EVE forums.  For ease of reading, I have setup a shared Google Reader page for those responses:  http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F03749674846786948488%2Flabel%2FSOV.  As more blogging articles are posted talking about the soverignity changes, I’ll add them to this shared page.

Everyone, keep reading, thinking and posting your thoughts as there are intelligent discussions going on both the EVE forums and the blogging community.

The debater in my heart is happy to see such discussion but by the same token, I am very concerned that the upcoming changes that caused this debate will simply break 0.0 in EVE.  One of two things will result.  People will simply not go to 0.0 as the risk exceedingly outweighs the rewards or many people will simply leave EVE as it’s becoming World of Warcraft in space with 0.0 becoming arenas.

Many people are claiming that these changes are going to have an NGE effect on EVE Online.  To refresh everyone’s memory, SWG:NGE was a bait and switch upgrade.  Buy the next expansion and change the game to a new game and not let anyone know about the change until after it happened.  I was there for that and let me tell you, it was not pretty.

The sovereignty changes to EVE are not another NGE.  We all can see the changes coming and that’s what makes this different.  The part of the NGE event where Sony did not listen to the players however, has the potential to happen here.  I’ve not seen such consensus of thought and discussion on the EVE forums since the proposed speed balancing.  We all remember what happened with that change, CCP listened to the players, modified what they planned and released a better patch to the game.

I hope the CCP listens to the players again and revises what they are planning on releasing on December 1.  As it stands now, they need to delay the expansion and make the changes that everyone on the EVE forums is calling for. People think it will be another NGE, I have to agree the the potential for an NGE event set of results is there.  We will have to simply wait and see.

Tags: CCP, Dev Blog, Dominion, EVE Blogging, EVE Forums, Google Reader, NGE Event, sovereignty, SWG:NGE

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I came across another widget for WordPress for Google reader shared items.  Check out this widget at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-reader-blogroll-widget/.  It’s easier to setup than my little sidebar javascript code and make the EVE Blog Pack look nicer.  I am using it right now, take a look at it in my sidebar.

Tags: Blog Pack, Blog Tools, Google Reader, Widgets, WordPress

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