Friday, September 18, 2009

showing us what the inside of our skulls look like

"please refresh my memory....did we dec privateers to actually kill shit....or to lose as many t2 ships as we can in the most failtastic way possible?" - pentinor

as of 9-12-2009, prons has been at war with the privateers. i think that Lies thought they would be a logical target to keep sharp on after we curbstomped repo. unfortunately, this has not been the case

instead of giving us little head on skirmishes, they're doing to us what we did to repo. hit and run guerrilla warfare taking out 1-3 ships at a time with overwhelming firepower then vanishing into the shadows

frankly, it's absolutely frustrating to be on the receiving end of such punishment

the losses we've taken at the hands of the privateers raise some obvious issues:

- we don't have the intelligence network necessary to fight guerrillas, even around our home systems. whenever we found ourselves in a trap, it was a complete surprise. that really shouldn't be the case
- our pilots are considerably overconfident in t2 hulls, resulting in rather large losses in rather embarrassing situations on the killboards
- when we start losing fights in embarrassing situations, pilots quit logging in, diminishing numbers leading us to lose even more fights

my hat's off to the privateers. before this war, i had no idea that they have such an effective organizational practice. basically, the executor corp provides and endless stream of wars while corporations come and go freely from the alliance to join in and step away from the carnage quite easily. this allows them an endlessly fresh band of guerrillas to unleash upon their targets who are typically 0.0 alliances and their squishy empire operations industrialists

while it can be argued that the privateers may have been a "bad war" to fight, i think the merits of showing us our weaknesses makes it one of the best wars... so long as we improve ourselves from it

Monday, September 14, 2009

the forums: popping your community bubble

"spigsnoggling, spafflewhacking bastards!" - infernal travesty

when it comes to any mmo, there are usually two distinct yet occasionally overlapping communities:

first is the community that any given player belongs to- his or her corporation, alliance and whatever friendlies he or she accumulates along the way. these relatively small collections of players form their own cultures, have their own relationships and operate in a fairly self contained manner. since trade and combat can be rather impersonal in eve, these communities are like tiny bubbles, isolated almost completely from each other by the vacuum of space

the might stay this way, if it wasn't for the forums

the forums are the second community in any mmo. they provide a means and location for these otherwise isolated communities to interact with each other in near (or not so near) real time. in theory, one could lead a happy, fun and complete game experience without ever visiting the forums... and many people do. however, those that choose to participate in the dialogue pass information and make and break friendships as well as reputations just by their contributions to the noise levels

my point in bring any of this junk up is simple: i've been reading the eve-o forum for pretty much the first time this week and whoa. i have learned a lot about the history of several organizations, game culture, and the doing and happenings of all sorts of eve celebrities... most of which i would have never heard of otherwise

at the end of the day, most mmo forums are full of garbage, ego stroking, propaganda campaigns and absolutely insane drivel in the form of "memes" which are usually just silly jokes that are made once and then repeated with impunity

i'm still trying to decide if i've been missing something by not reading and posting more, or if it's better for my psyche to have missed out on all the rabble

Sunday, September 13, 2009

kow killa: the legacy

"whoa. are these guys paying by the preposition?" - bryan havoc

few players in the game of eve have created as much legacy based on their legendary stupidity as kow killa. he is instantly trusting, mindnumbingly ignorant, and in possession of a comically over-inflated sense of competency. he gets taken advantage of and mocked ALL THE TIME, both in and out of game

our relationship with kow started some time back last year when a few guys in prons used their alts to convince kow and his "coalition" (there were two alliances involved in this scam) to give them their ships to move to 0.0. the details and amusing ventrilo recording from the revelation of this scam can be found in ten tron's video, the pod pilots' court

anyway, prons has made a pretty regular habit of checking up on him by dropping a war dec on whatever alliance he's in every so often. the results from last time were pretty stellar. the money that was destroyed in those bpos the rifter was carrying (yes, they were bpos) was enough to make it worth "checking up" on him again

within 8 hours of the new dec being announced, kow killa chose to disband his alliance and start trying to find another home in some other alliancesx for his corp, Three 6 MaFiA

as always, project nemesis wishes our friend kow the best of luck in his future endeavors and look forward to the prons rap that he has promised with excited anticipation

Saturday, September 12, 2009

late night memos and such

"at first i was like lol but then i didn't lol" - bromba

i'm out on assignment for RL work when i get a message from NoMo: the junta has given up fighting after a solid month of relentless pounding and it's time to find new targets... something with a little more bite this time

we talked briefly about a few possibilities and what they might bring to the table when lies had a "flash of brilliance". he joined the in-game mercenaries channel and threw down the gauntlet

i don't know the specifics but i imagine that his blood alcohol content combined with the boost to his epeen spanking repo provided spurred this brash decision. i'll admit, i'm pleased with both his technique and his results

the corp vote for the dec on a group called THE FINAL STAND is now up. honestly, i didn't know anything at all about these guys. from a first look at their killboard, i'll say they're pretty good. they have great numbers made from plenty of empire fighting along with a healthy sprinkle of 0.0 and low sec mixed in. quick intel shows that they enjoy their battleship fleets and took a righteous beating at the hands of eve university... not that losing to eve-uni is a bad thing, mind you. every high sec merc or griefer corp has to dec them and get their asses handed back to them at least once

while digging a little deeper for intel, the real treasure came to light in the form of forum posts

dear sweet baby jesus

NoMo went into this trying to find the "elite pvpers of high sec" and it certainly looks as though he found them

Friday, September 11, 2009

the warmup and first score

"you never know. some idiots are stupid" - major stallion

2009 started as a year for piracy in prons. the waste alliance was in full swing down in heimatar and metropolis low sec and life was good. unfortunately, summer time was not kind to our participation numbers. people quit logging in since they would rather spend their time on the beach oogling chicks (or dudes, as it may be) than in their basements being "antisocial losers"

with our diminished capacity, we decided that it might be time to return to high sec and regroup. now that it's september and the guys are getting back to school/sobering up/tending to their 2nd degree sunburns, they're starting to trickle back

we decided to brush the cobwebs off the old pewpew machinery by revisiting an old dec: the junta. the last time we fought the junta, they really stood out from all of our past war targets by actually undocking and fighting every single time a prons member showed up in local. this second time around, they didn't disappoint. bossdrum did a fantastic job with the video of this engagement

speaking of boss's video, you'll notice that we fought we fought a pair of small gangs at the beginning. that was REPO, renown high sec mercenaries. they were the second string of merc the junta hired to try and pry us off of their asses but to no avail. in the repo campaign we lost a navy mega, killed a navy mega, very nearly missed a chance to kill a bhaalgorn, frustrated their ecm pilots, killed a couple command ships and pretty much taught them how a guerrilla war is meant to be fought

o7 to repo and the junta for some great fights and for taking it on the chin like champs