Hello World! A (not so) brief history of my time in New Eden. (Part 1)

"Please allow me to introduce myself 
I'm a man of wealth and taste 
I've been around for a long, long year" 

- "Sympathy For The Devil", Rolling Stones 

Hello World!

This blog is about my adventures in the computer game, EVE Online. I will do my best to confine my posts to more or less related topics, but if you know me, you know I like to ramble on about various things and that I am very distract-able.

My character name is Kelleris. He is a Gallente pilot, who became a capsuleer in April 2009. If all goes as planned, after the Odyssey expansion, he should have about 73 Million Skill Points. Due to several changes in focus, the skillpoints are all over the map, but it could be a lot worse. At this point I can pretty much do what I want in game. I will be writing most of my posts as the player of this character and not "roleplaying".

I have several other characters, referred to as "alts". I don't plan to out them just yet, but it's not a state secret or anything.

A Brief History

This was not my first character. I started playing in 2004, on a Caldari pilot. I was so clueless when I began. I did the introductory missions and started running level 1 missions and mining in my bantam. For some reason, cruise missiles really appealed to me. That character has that skill trained. Probably because I had a real-life (RL) job where I could actually launch cruise missiles. However, he only had Caldari Cruiser level II (or III) trained, so I'm pretty sure he never launched a cruise missile. I joined a corp named Shattered Star Confederation at the invitation of Ronyo Dae Loki. It was a part of the Fountain Alliance. All I can say that I really remember was chasing people around Fountain while being on voice comms. I don't really remember what people flew back then. It was probably before T2 ships, but I can't say for sure. I have a bunch of really random, crappy modules and some ammo spread out all over NPC Fountain. I also have pods. I believe at the time when you boarded a ship you left a pod in your hangar. I can't say for sure. 

Unfortunately, I didn't take notes and record keeping was not as good back then. I am pretty sure I must have shot at something that died, but I can't find any kill-mails from that era. I really liked the concept of a character that trains (earns skill points) in real-time, regardless of whether you are playing or not. I liked the atmospheric music. What I did not like was the necessity of setting an alarm clock for 3 AM to start another skill training when the one you were working on finishes. Between that and work commitments, I quit. I started playing again in 2007, after a two and a half year break, but quit soon after. I can't remember why. After another two and a half years, I came back.

A New Beginning

Fast forward to 2009. I re-subscribed to EVE and I was overwhelmed at the mess my character had. Junk all over Caldari hisec space and NPC Fountain. Skill points everywhere. Since the character didn't have too many SPs, I decided to create a new one. I read on the forums that Gallente was the way to go (wow, was that ever wrong, at the time), I created a new Gallente character and named him Kelleris. I complete the much improved (from 2004) tutorial and struggled through the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc. 

My oldest screenshot (7/29/2009). I am shooting an NPC with a horribly fit catalyst.

Shortly thereafter, I met FreakishDude. He introduced me to SpaceMonkey's Alliance (SMA). We started out in Minmatar hisec, moving to lowsec there, and eventually, Black Rise lowsec. Here we had regular scraps with Balkan Express (BALEX) and ran some level 5 missions as a group (with me contributing minimally in a catalyst). Eventually, the siren song of null-sec lured us in. We moved into Pure Blind as a pet of Mostly Harmless (-42-), which was a part of the old NC. We were given the K-QUVW constellation. I could probably write a whole blog post about this time period, but I can't say my memory of it is clear enough to tell an interesting story. Due to an alliance reorganization (the alliance leader didnt want non-directors in the holding corp), I moved to B0AE corp. After a few months, B0AE moved from SMA to -42- and I moved with them. After a few months -42- split and formed LAWN. Then I got frustrated with 2 things. One was the crappy ship replacement program and the other (related gripe) was that the alliance leaders wanted foot soldiers to do all of their work for them, but didn't want to give them anything (plus there was a 10% refine tax, which pretty much killed my aspiration to manufacture stuff in null-sec, since this made mineral compression not very viable). Plus the dreaded Drone Russian Federation was marching towards us and everyone seemed to be in denial. My fondest memory of this time was the EC-P8R gate camps and other fleets where we regularly had to :commisar: Alphastarpilot for being an idiot. I left prior to the hammer falling because I thought the -42- leadership had their heads up their asses. Turns out I was right. All good things must come to an end.

Freighter Escort with SMA (10/28/2009)

SMA Out to start some trouble (10/28/2009)

(to be continued...)

Some Notes

I hope this was interesting for you to read. This post has definitely sparked a lot of memories. In fact, it has grown so long that I'm cutting it off right now and I will continue it later. I was originally planning a brief rundown of my EVE experience to date, but I have had more to say about that than I thought.
EVE looks pretty similar today to how it looked in 2004. Yes, a lot has changed, but I still have the same icons down the left side of the screen. I still right click to do most things and EVE still looks like some weird windows desktop with a spreadsheet (the overview) and pretty view of space as the backdrop.
Under the old API system, I was very proud of my 5 digit account number. Sadly, that was kind of lost when we transitioned to the new API.
I have kept at least 1 of every EVE anniversary presents I've received.
I presented the story here as best I can recall. I did some fact checking, but this is my personal blog and not a serious journalistic endeavor  so I reserve the right to bullshit. If any sees any errors, let me know and I will consider fixing it. I look forward to any comments or recollections anyone would like to post.