This Weekly Highlights posts is a bit different than my last ones because I have something to celebrate. I’ve been playing EVE Online as Ga’len for four years now.
Yup, 4 years….wow.
Five years ago my wife created a character in EVE online. I joined her in trying out EVE, but my attention at the time was with another MMORPG. That game fail cascaded in such a fashion that when someone utters the words, Star Wars Galaxies, well, if you don’t know, go Google it.
So, after that debacle, I had free time to spend and I thought I would give EVE a go again. That was four years ago and I tell ya, it’s been a fun ride. I’ve spent time as a carebear in Empire, fought in many Empire wars, been a solo pirate and merc, been a director of a pirate alliance, fought for a nullsec alliance and most recently, joined HellFleet for more Yarr-ing fun.
I can say that I’ve pretty much done it all. So, what do you do after four years? Well, I tell ya, I’ve spent all my time doing these things and it’s always been a surprise how things have gone. I’ll do what I always have done, just wander about and let things happen. That’s when you have the most fun, when you get pulled into something.
And now, here are some of the highlights for the week:
- Piracy fun with HellFleet is well underway. We took down a POS owned by an inactive corp. Much fun ensued, read the whole story over at Mynxee’s blog, The Measure of Success!
- ProviWar continues (http://www.eve-druid.com/ProviWar). I may no longer be fighting as a Warrior of the Ushra’Khan, but I can’t stop watching what’s going on. They are still my friends and I do hope they succeed in these operations. -A- continue their push into Providence, Sylph is no more (congratulations to Ushra’Khan) and things continue to progress as -A- takes sov in Y-MPWL and Ushra’Khan takes G-5EN2. This closed the connections from Providence to High Sec space in Tash-Murkon and NPC 0.0 in Derelik respectively. The only other high sec entrance/exit into Providence is now the R3-K7K/Misaba gate as all other systems high sec entrance/exit points have been taken. It is highly likely that this system will also fall by this weekend as I can see while I finish up this blog post on Thursday evening, CVA has lost sov there. With the only other logistical option being the use of jump freighters to get materials into the region and no guarantee of safely flying out said jump freighters, it will only be a matter of time before they regions completely falls. CVA and friends are very neatly boxed into their space.
- CCP released a very open and honest devblog concerning the server stability issues that have been plaguing the game since late November. I know I have been very critical of CCP for these issues in the past. I want to say, this devblog is a step in the right direction. The more technical information concerning these issues is communicated will lead to more of us who work with these technologies being able to provide help. Keep it coming CCP, we are here to help you and we are more than willing.
- CCP “Laser Focus” God Torfi was interview at Ten Ton Hammer on the upcoming Tyrannis Expansion, read all about the cool stuff they are going to do with Planetary Interaction.
- Silver Night has announced a fiction writing contest with some decent prizes, head over and get out those writing tools!
- The next EVE novel, EVE: The Burning Life, is available for pre-order on Amazon.com for less than the listing price. The novel should be released on March 30th as per the Amazon ordering page. Head over and order your copy today!
- More and more people are posting pictures of their “EVESpace”, you can read all about them.
- EVOGANDA has put together a little something for all us iPhone/iPod Touch users, some wallpapers! Check them out!
- As always, update work for the blogs listed on The EVE Online Portal and the OPML download files Mandrill and I maintain continues. Head over and see who we added this week!
Tags:
Character Birthday,
Dev Blog,
EVE: The Burning Life,
EVEbloggers.com,
EVESpace,
Mynxee,
OPML Download,
Piracy,
ProviWar,
star wars galaxies,
Sylph,
The EVE Online Portal,
The HellFleet Bloggers,
Ushra'khan,
Wandering
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Casiella Truza over at Ecliptic Rift wrote a great post on how to publicize your blog (http://rift.chromebits.net/2009/12/29/8-ways-to-publicize-your-eve-online-blog). I started to write a comment and it turned into something rather lengthy. So, rather than clutter up his blog with a TL;DR comment, I decided to write a post.
That brings me to one of his points be discusses, point number 8, comment on other people’s blogs. This is a great way to hold a discussion or in my case here, create inspiration for a blog post.
Some more tips to consider in no specific order:
- I have to point out Mynxee’s comment, then point to it again and again and again…It takes time to grow a following. Well written posts on a fairly consistent schedule will keep readers coming back. Many bloggers start out trying to write a post every day. Protip, don’t. Write at least two posts a week max when starting out. Don’t overdo it, you will burn out.
- Write posts in advance. I take time every Sunday to sit down and read. I read the EVE forums, I read blog posts from other bloggers that I have starred in Google Reader and I decide what I am going to write. I write out a few different draft posts and touch them up over the following week.
- Mur Lafferty has a wonderful writing podcast, I Should Be Writing. She has a great quote and I can’t remember it verbatim, but this is the sentiment, “It’s okay to suck. Write and suck at writing. The only way you will get better is to write, suck at it and write some more.” Write that piece of fan fiction and let it bomb horribly. Need some examples of bad fan fiction, read my stories. They totally suck when compared to many of our talented fiction writers like Roc and Shae Tiann. It’s okay that my fiction sucks, it will get better in time and more importantly, I enjoy writing the stories.
- Don’t topic spam. This is a very hard one to do. With 500 blogs listed in our OPML file, the potential for posts that are on the same topic is very high. There is nothing wrong with people talking about the same topic, say an upcoming expansion, but when there are several posts with identical content, the general reader base may tend to skip over your post. Sometimes it’s better to keep that post as a draft and use it later, perhaps revise it with a different perspective after a day or two.
- In reference to point number 7, I found it useful state at the top of my bio about having auto-reject turned on and to in game mail me so that I don’t encounter an ill timed chat request. I also turned off my in game email charge so that people can contact me without having to pay isk. When someone does contact you in game, do try to respond to them.
- Tags. Use tags for your posts and try to use similar tags for similar topics. Search engines love organization and if you are consistently using tags and categories in your blog, you will increase traffic to older posts. Just because a post is not on the first page does not mean that someone will not read it. Remember, people add blogs to their RSS readers all the time. Your first post from 2 years ago may be brand new to people today.
- Spell check. Do it, your readers will thank you.
- Read your post aloud before you publish it. Things you write always seem to look fine when you read them in your mind, hearing the words in your ears helps to smooth out language. Again, your readers will thank you.
- Revisit old posts and write new ones. It’s funny, your perspective on something in game can change over time. You may have really hated warp bubbles in nullsec when you were trying to take a shortcut a year ago but you may really love them now as you may be a HIC pilot. Write a new post about how your perspective has changed and why.
- Publish your blog to the Kindle. I know, it sounds silly. Why subscribe to a blog on a Kindle when you can read it in a RSS reader or web browser. Well, some people like to subscribe to blogs and read them while traveling and while they are NOT connected to the online world. It’s another way to expand your reader base and best of all, it’s free!
- That’s all I can think of for right now. If you have some tips or tricks on blogging, do contribute to the discussion over on Casiella’s blog!
Tags:
Blogging,
Casiella Truza,
Discussion,
EVE Blogging,
Kindle,
Mynxee,
opml,
publicize,
Response to other blog
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We come to it again, Patch Day. This is the time where everyone in EVE Online spends an entire day sitting with clenched teeth and butterflies in their bellies.
IF YOU ARE READING THIS BLOG POST AT THE VERY MOMENT THAT IT WENT LIVE ON MY BLOG, GO SET A LONG SKILL THAT WILL TAKE MORE THAN 2 DAYS TO TRAIN NOW!!!!!
I always seems to come across a post on the EVE forums that someone complaining either before or after Patch Day that they forget to set a long skill or did not set a long skill to cover the extension to the Patch Day outage. We have also seen in the past that Patch Day will start early and we have see Patch Day be extended longer than planed, SO FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SACRED, GO SET THAT LONG SKILL RIGHT NOW!!
Ahem, sorry about that, it had to be said…..AGAIN!
While we are all waiting for the Dominion Expansion to be deployed and for our updated game clients to download and install, you have some free time. Go outside, breath the fresh air, clean the kitchen sink, do some laundry and when you come back, go do something else as watch Patch Day is like watching the kettle on the stove boil water. It will take longer than you think it will.
While you are waiting, here are some things to keep you occupied:
See you out there!!
Thanx to Seraphina Orina for the suggestion to listen to EVE Radio!
Tags:
Dominion,
EVE,
EVEbloggers.com,
Expansion,
Jinx,
Mynxee,
OPML Download,
Patch Day,
Patch Notes
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