Wednesday, December 7, 2011

battle report- 12/6/2011

Sometimes I sneak into your room at night and play with your face like a puppet - Triksterism

sunday december 4th, 2011

warlord protagonist received intel that a player owned customs office (poco) that was attacked by some old acquaintances of ours was coming out of reinforced in a back-end system in molden heath. upon further investigation, it turned out that the defenders were HELM alliance, a long-time ally of sworn pirate enemies electus matari and dragoons. they were further partnered with broken chains alliance and some local terribads, g spot alliance

since this first reinforcement was set to come out squarely in our best EU/US tz overlap, we geared up to drop one of our strongest battalfleets on top of them: armor buffer bs w/heavy neuts supported by triage

the warlord's fleet formed up to respond with about 12 armor BS and a couple triage carriers prepped for action supporting the 10 or so THC2 guys in their shield bs

as we moved down the pipe, intel was coming in that HELM and their allies had both in-gates camped with substantial tackle. nothing we couldn't deal with, but it would prevent us from getting to the nugget we were lurching for: the BCA nuthugger repping the poco + his motley supporting fleet

alas, when we hit the gate the repping fleet legged it. our intel was splotchy at best about what they had in its entirety, but my best guess is about 25 sub caps including: 3 basilisks, 2 scimitars, a hyperion, at least one falcon, at least 2 sleipnirs, as well as several t3s

maybe we came on a bit strong~

no matter. they had repped the poco back over 50% and we came for a fight. the one kill we did get was never going to satisfy... so we reinforced the poco again. since our dps was a bit on the overwhelming side and our balls were swollen and blue we went ahead and reinforced two others as well

now with 3 fresh timers and our pimp hand shown, we waited and watched
----

tuesday, december 6th, 2011

pre-staging began at 1845. mid/close range armor buffer bs w/heavy neut + eccm was the order. fleet numbers up until about 1945 were anemic at best. no carrier pilots, 6 armor bs pilots... people were only trickling in

god damn this RF timer sucked

luckily, people were willing to travel great distances (looking at you triksterism and suleiman shouaa) and help bump up our numbers a bit

scouts reported a substantial number of anti-pirate coalition members congregating around unertek. scouting myself, unertek local was up to 60 or so without us in it. adjacent systems had as many as 15 more milling around, gearing up for the brawl. final number of pirates and alts in our fleet: 33

i decided to join up our fleet into one homogeneous blab in klingt, right next door to the hostile fleet. EM had obvious scouts attached to our movements, but i knew that would be the case anyway. coming in from klingt through a minmatar constellation gate (FUCKING HUGE~) would be messy, but messy is what i was going for. the idea was that the large gate could have let the bulk of our BS escape their meager tackle and warp to station for a better warp in on the poco where i wanted the fight to go down

it wasn't meant to be that way, unfortunately

the HELM/gspot/BCA gang was right on the first poco, happily repping it with 3 scimitars and 3 thanatos. they were covering these ships with a small attachment of sub bs ships: sleipnirs, lokis, tengus, recons, cynabals, 2 widows (drool) and at least one cloaked falcon. the EM LR alpha fleet was set up 50 or so km off the klingt gate with 9 maelstroms, 3 scorpions, 4 scimitars, 2 lokis, lachesis, vulture and a few odd interceptors

i chose to jump into them~

holding cloak and assessing our field position, i was hoping the maels and scorps didn't have much in the way of propulsion fit and we could burn for them while primarying something with scorch/barrage. that was the intention anyway. while we caught up with them pretty easily, our fleet because quite spread and the damage was evident. we dropped a scorpion, but we had started losing ships since i had ordered the thanatos on the field at the cyno ship furthest from the alpha fleet. while this kept pressure off the triage carrier itself, it was more to assist it in escape if that became and issue

the fleet quickly pulled range from the thanny (who triaged immediately) and kept taking heavy losses (relative to our smaller size) realizing rep range was going to be the issue here, i order krole to light his cyno and the archon to join the fray pretty much right in middle of the bottom portion of the EM fleet

right as i ordered the cyno lit, HELM alliance did something quite brash

they warped their fleet (including 2 widows and 3 thanatos) right to 0 on our triage thanny

realizing that now leaving the thanny so far from its dps support under 3 other carriers and a curse worth of neuting was a bad idea, i ordered all bs to hot burn back to manc in the thanatos and titus's archon to jump to the lower cyno, sacrificing krole's typhoon to the alpha gang

as the fleet closed with manc once again, damage all but stopped and we were able to put down a ludicrous amount of pain on the HELM fleet. dispatching their t2 cruisers, 2 scimitars, 2 widows and a sleipnir right off, we then started tearing apart the first thanatos

he went down like a taiwanese hooker

after that we mopped up a little more support and started closing with the other two carriers. one of them managed to warp as EM was motoring back into optimal for those big 1400s forcing off our tackle, the other decided he would triage to help his chances of survival

and that it did

we had lost enough dps and neuts that trying to stay on the triage thanny under shelling from the 1400s in the maels was going to be a problem. plus the constant jamming from the 2 remaining scorps (+1 widow that reshipped) was making it hard to fully apply what dps we had left... so i ordered us to pull out

both carriers went red on their triage while our fleet swatted back the tackle trying to pin them to the gate and they both warped off to station. this wasn't the best spot for us to lack any form of reps (sorry blise) but we deaggro'd and jumped into klingt, lumbering to the safety of the station

all said, it was an incredibly fun fight for everyone involved

EM believes that to be a resounding victory considering they killed 10 battleships and a battlecruiser and only lost one scorpion. we consider it a victory because we lost 10 battleships but slaughtered the fuck out of HELM to the tune of 6b worth of face-smashing damage on ludicrously fit ships. HELM considers it a victory because they held the field and got to smack titus in local for not undocking his archon to fight them further.... alone

i consider it a victory as we brawled face first into 2x our numbers with less logi, no ewar and little support and didn't derp as hard as we should have

had the HELM fleet not warped to 0 on our triage thanny, we would have lost more BS than we killed on the EM LR fleet and this would be a harsh lesson in important role ships for outnumbered fleet engagements. our bs didn't have enough webs to engage the prop fitted EM fleet the way i had intended. even if we had dropped the archon in the middle of their fleet, they would have continued to burn and pulled range until they pulled our ships off the archon, killed a few more and just warped off leaving us with two carriers on the gate for them to tackle and us to scramble to save

so, final numbers:
US-- 29: 24 battleships, 3 battlecruisers and 2 triage carriers
THEM-- 50: 18 battleships (including black ops), 11 battlecruisers (including command ships), 6 cruisers (including faction, HACs and recons), 5 frigates and destroyers, 7 total scimitars and 3 thanatos (of which at least one was triage)

thanks to: HELM for being terrible, sulei and trik for hauling balls to come down for the fight (extra thanks to sulei for baller t2 info link), finheri for taking over target calling when i started derping, THC2 for rf'ing this bitch in the first place, EM for bringing the gfs, titus and manc for triaging our asses (extra thanks to manc for armor links), everyone else for bootin' and suitin' to help kick some faces and pere madeline for leaving the fight early, allowing us to kill their thanatos

http://ransm.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=11816603

gf

Sunday, October 9, 2011

solo pvp or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the nanofiber

frogstomper > i was discussing you with some 9pool members the other day
frogstomper > you have been recorded in nothing but jaguars since 2007
frogstomper > except for one wolf and a stiletto
frogstomper > i presume this is accurate
frogstomper > though it begs the question
frogstomper > what skills are you training anymore? =P
Alex Medvedov > well your information is not quite true
Alex Medvedov > i have flown a once in combat thrasher in 2009

this is yet another post pulled straight from the moldenheath.net forums. one of our junior members started a thread called "the art of solo pvp" and i had to weigh in as many people were piping up with "SOLO PVP IN LOW SEC IS DEAD" "unless you have a scout/link/falcon alt, you're not EVER going to get gfs" etc. below is my take

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i solo all the time in the ghetto geddon (http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2453) and the lsb cyclone (http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2415)

ghetto geddon:
http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2371
this guy was with 3 drakes and a rupture. i landed on the gate with them in aedald. the arazu jumped through and everything else aggressed me. i jumped into mutto to go for the arazu with them all aggressed on the other side. i burned back to the gate (slowboat, obviously) and the arazu went for me. the instant he did, i dropped garde iis and lit him up. he damped me till i could only lock to 15km and he was holding around 16.7

i let my drones chew on him as i approached the gate and lo and behold he came within lock range. i locked him, hit him with the heavy neut and a face full of lazers and he was like WHOA~~

he didn't manage to damp me again (force recons have shitty cap reserves so damp kiting once heavy neuted is ~REALLY~ hard) and died nobly on the field as his mates jumped in

as soon as the drakes started hitting me in earnest, i abandoned drones, overheated LAR and popped an exile while spamming jump on the gate

i made it through the gate@30% structure and warped to a station to rep up. once that was done, i warped BACK to the gate and jumped in without a second thought. the other drakes were all on the gate@0 and jumped back into aedald... except one. he was looting and salvaging the arazu wreck and was just sat with no velocity on the wreck. soooooo i hooked him and started whomping on him (http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2370) as he was dying and making no attempt to burn away or to the gate, titus jumped in and whored on like a faggot, but he was dead to rights

gf in cheap bs

lsb cyclone
http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2206
i had been out in a jaguar with shtang and he spotted this rapier along with an arazu, geddon, cane and rifter and told me about them. i had a lsb 'clone stashed in bos so went and swapped to it. after playing games on the gates for a while, the rapier and arazu made a play for me, trying to lock me down off a gate. since cloak delays are nasty, they didn't pin me but i got aggro on both of them

after jumping back and forth, tempting them to try it again, i managed to get the geddon to follow me and be huge and slow off the gate as i nimbly barrelled back to it. upon jumping through, the recons went for me again, but i decloaked 5km from the rapier. snagging him quick (he had aggression, remember?) i started brawling him. the arazu decloaked 40+ away from me and tried to damp me and pointed me and swarmed me with drones

the rapier popped pretty quickly. even double webbed, i was fast enough to keep up with the scrammed rapier. he died and i started burning for the arazu who still had me pointed. again, damped to <20km i was just trying to get in range to put pain on him. i got lock back as i closed and came within ~1.5km for landing my heated scram on him to nuke him when he warped in a fit of cowardice

at that point, the geddon and cane were back in, but i was tanking them at range just fine and had enough cap boosters to keep my tank and mwd running under the heavy neut and still pull range... so i did and peaced

another gf in a cheap ship
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

basically, there are some important things to remember in solo pvp:
- be familiar with your surroundings. know who people are aligned with, where their backup is at, how fast they can get to you, etc. that doesn't mean use a scout alt, just talk to people, pay attention to who you see as you roam and know how far between gates, etc. also know how many ways in and out of the system you're in has. having an escape that's NOT into a wall of ships is always a good idea

- split up hostile gangs. play games with aggression, know when to jump, pull range and kite out the tacklers, etc. even the most powerful ships in eve can't fight a gang of more than a couple in a toe to toe fight... and even if you CAN, in most situations you don't want to

- pick your targets. if you're in a cynabal, choosing a fight with a drake is a really bad idea. your range is almost guaranteed moot point, his dps to tank ratio is better than yours and if you get scrammed, you're fucked no matter what. you need to know what fights look like you have a chance of winning and which you should run from

- don't be greedy. when you're facing a group of ships, pick out the ones you can take and focus on them. pull them apart and brawl them down quickly... and get out. you don't need to be billy badass and try to take ALL of them if the situation isn't in your favor. i can't tell you how many times i've heard "i had the rapier down and i would have gotten out if i hadn't tried to go for the XXXXXX" (edit: not that i don't believe in killing as much as you can in every engagement, but the longer you fight an enemy, the more chance they have to call for back up, call in a counter for your tactic, warp in a falcon... etc)

- take into account every contingent you can and have a plan for dealing with certain situations (even if that plan is DIE WITH HONOURE~) if that means eccm, implants, cap booster, etc... just make the plan

- make loads of tactical safe spots. if you're truly solo, you need to be able to spy on gates and check grid and stuff. they're quick to make around your normal hunting grounds and well worth it

- get in the mindset. here's the thing- for every fight you get that's amazing and you perform as you should and your opponent bites it in a humiliating manner and you enter god mode, there's 20 where you welp, the faggots bring a falcon/swarm of ecm drones/logi/etc, you fuck up and burn out important modules (WELP~ point gone) or any number of things. so fuck the losses and go balls deep. take every fight as if it's the first one of your night and say a quick prayer to garmon as you wing in for the kill

when you do that, you're everything that's right in eve

Saturday, October 1, 2011

domi/typhoon op

ARIMAN > ariartus quit corp?
ARIMAN > can it lacked hard spanking?

battle report- domi/phoon op 1/10/2011

sooooo formup was only 30 minutes late. almost everyone was present on-time and shipped up and everything. warlord protagonist was impressed

our first order of business was to go to ennur as planned and sit at a planet and then a belt practicing cap transferring each other. this was much butts

after we decided that this was too boring, we sent out scouts to try and find us a decent fight somewhere in the hot spots. on my way past akkio, i spotted a russian gang that headed back towards paala/lxq so we re-routed to go for them

apparently there's an incursion going on somewhere past lxq in drone space. these guys went one or two in and prompty turned around and headed back to us. we jumped lxq and there were two of them at a perch... while the rest came plowing down and into a sling bubble 30km off us

them: 8-10 assorted shield battlecruisers + zealot + 2 basilisks
us: 5 typhoons + 6 dominixes

our idiots were spread out all willy nilly on the gate. cref got primaried and burned back to the gate and jumped out in a fit of cowardice (twice in the end i think?) while the rest of us clustered up and started neuting/jamming one of the basilisks and blasting the fuck out of the other one. one basilisk died and the rest of the fags jumped

except one drake (who sat on the gate and let us murderize him)

during all of this, vanderie came back from afk and started blaring up from whatever butthole he docked in... and got attacked by a pair of recons. he murdered the falcon and the arazu was like "well fuck this shit" and bailed. we rejoined, burned back from molden heath and dp had to go afk to eat and vand took over

maybe vand can wrap this battal report because i wasn't there, but they fought EM and lost two domis

after this, i returned and we fought reverb in drakes. that didn't go well for them... or my domi. anyway, net win. falcon fitted like a twat, sard streamed the whole event, my children screamed the whole time and we murdered some intrepid crossing faggots in a decent toe-to-toe engagement w/logi

so i'm gonna call this a win for the domi/phoon op (even though the best fight happened in draeks)
\o//

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

fall update 2011

Plasma shields exist. Just because your on the outside of the know....doesnt make me a lunatic. -Titus Veridius

i am really having a hard time knuckling down and writing any kind of interesting or reasonable blog post, so here's some random news items, thoughts, incoherent words and phrases that are related to eve for your reading pleasure~

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~~tildes~~

god do i abuse them. i'm not really sure where i first saw them or how this mind-infection caught root in my system, but whenever i say something in a facetious or sarcastic manner (or even a jesting or amused manner~), i can't help but appending it with at least one definitive tilde

i've been told by several sources that this is a goon-specific behavior and perhaps it is but i don't typically hang out with any members of the goonswarm crowd.... that i know of. perhaps their metagame extends to "insignificant" and "irrelevant" low sec pirate crews, but somehow i doubt it

since when does one clique of people get to claim ownership of any meme or cliche?(~~~)

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molden heath is forever changing

from one year to the next, it's impossible to know who or what will be in the area at any given time for any amount of time. last year at this time, my molden heath pirate cooperative (trademark pending) was alive and actively using devoted intel channels for fighting the oppressive anti-pirate gangs that frequented the area. this year, there are very few pirate bands in the area, a couple decent sized dislocated nullsec type corporations, a horde of angry russians (which we have war dec'd because they don't have the honoure~ to go -10) and reaaaalllly crappy high sec "pirate hunter" corps that fail at even the overwhelming force (and ecm) tactics that neonxgreen and the em/dragoons guys used to employ

that said, i'm having a blast. people keep throwing themselves in front of my guns

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if you mine rocks or ice in teonusude, i suggest you contact me about purchasing a mining permit

we started hulk ganking in the high sec bordering molden heath low sec to alleviate bullet blue balls between fights, but the tears and aggression that it creates has made it a pretty staple pastime of ours. it also pays for itself many times over in insurance, drops, t2 salvage, drones, and loot

lately we've gotten a bit brash with our tactics, hitting one hulk and warping in on a second before concord has enough time to respond to the scene of the first crime. our current best is 2 hulks after the initial gank (that's 3 total) with 8 thrashers. i challenge anyone to do better

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i guess that's it for now. hopefully i can make some kind of in-depth informative post about something interesting soon

Thursday, April 28, 2011

carrier doooooowwwwwwn

our killboard even displays damage out to 11 decimal places so I can discern just how precisely I got my ass beat - Huo Lung

the life of a pirate can be an exciting one

the other night, i was on comms, lazily shooting the shit with laktos (a long time friend and one of our sexy new australian recruits) with my headset half cocked on my head munching easter m&ms. i'm telling laktos about who even knows and he's telling me about the various gangs he was bumping into about mh. being relatively late in my evening, i was winding down for bed and was just taking mental notes of the corporations that seemed to be out from bases in our area

as i peeked about our intel channels, it appeared that kwark uk and his merry band were trying in vain to fuck with eve-university on a station they've been apprently occupying in half. in the spirit of wanting to fuck the shit out of people i don't know who think they can live in molden heath, i let kwark know about the various gangs and their rough locations and let him do his thing

about 20 minutes after delivering the intel and thinking about whether or not i should go to sleep now or an hour ago, one of kwark's guys was in channel:

Caelum Terra > ARCHON IN SPACE AEDALD

apparently the 9pool gang had engaged one of the gate camping battlecruiser gangs that laktos had spotted and they had dropped an archon and nidhoggur about 100km off of a gate

after ascertaining that it was in fact tackled, we started spamming every channel we were in, trying to muster a cap killing fleet while getting ourselves into battleships and moving down the pipe to aedald. sadly, being the first battleship on the scene, i opted for an abaddon so i could try to maintain heavy tackle for the 9pool guys. this meant that i would be shitfucked the entire fight for capacitor, even though i wouldn't die

anyway, more people trickled in as time progressed. vanderie was close behind me to the event and took over managing the fleet from kwark (who apparently had never killed a carrier before), got us a triage archon on the field and we started whacking away at the carrier's meager support, some even choosing to return two and three times to the fight

in the end, vanderie managed to get a cyno up for 2 texn naglfars and chimera to add the dps we needed to break their spider tanking asshattery, though even two dreads wasn't enough dps to kill both of them before they managed to self-destruct in nerdrage

thankfully, the archon fell to our guns with 15 seconds left before he would have self-destructed. yaaay loot!

i'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who came and did such a fantastic job
-kwark uk- you are a faggot, but you make some good fun times in spaceships. i'm certain this is on accident, but i'm glad for it
-caelum terra- you did everyone a great service by taking the job of inviting people to halp kill a carrier while kwark managed your fleet. it was a little confusing, but you got the important details to both parties quick enough that we managed to pull this off
-the three curse pilots (gangris, gix tyrionn and kylathar)- you guys coming to the fight when you did probably helped us get the archon km. thanks for travelling as far as you did
-9pool drones- you guys were great at adapting to the situation and keeping those carriers pointed. riftersANDdraeks4ever
-texn- for responding so quickly and unquestioningly with dreadnaughts to what was obviously a clusterfuck
-vanderie- making sense of the chaos ftw
-every other random hero that popped falcons, got neuts, brought cap boosters for my pathetically cap dead brick and put the word out we needed help

that was pro

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

electus matari and dragoons- party your ass off!

Buttpoint Diplomacy best Diplomacy - Finheri


we received word that a TEXN pos was put into reinforced in Hegfunden and was coming out at 2200 eve time the next day. dragoons and their pet alliance electus matari had put it into reinforced, which is delicious. the initial report of their forces looked a little something like this

for those following along at home, that's 16 bs, one carrier, one command ship, two recons, five battlecruisers and an ares

since dragoons had no problem dropping a nuthugger on the boglyft (relative) swarm of caps, it was presumed that they would have their capital fleet ready to come back to the engagement and finish the job since they've done it before

in the hour up to the end of the reinforcement cycle, our scouts reported em/dragoons forming up in teon. while we didn't have exact eyes on their force, we had a rough idea of their numbers. initial reports were about 18 bs and 8-10 bc and below for support. obviously, they would be keeping their capitals in a system away from our eyes so we had no idea what to expect

10 minutes until the pos came out of RF, we started to consolidate our BS. almost all of the TEXN ships were in station in hegfunden waiting for orders to undock while the rest of the pirate forces spread between egbinger and oddelulf started moving into position. our scout reported seeing a smattering of hostile ships moving up the pipe between bosena and egbinger, all in various stages of warp. our fc took this as a sign that they could be a bit unorganized and pushed us to close the gap between us

by the time we were in egbinger, however, the hostile fleet had landed on the pos and had already begun shooting at the guns that TEXN had repaired and put back online. not wanting to lose too many guns in case we needed them for removing support (FALCANZ), we jumped aeditide as soon as we possibly could and finally had all of our rag-tag pirate crew together on the hegfunden gate

things got a little messy for us here. no one had discussed with the archon pilots what their triage order was going to be or what triage discipline we were going to use. we also had not sufficiently sorted an entry cyno even though two exits as well as an emergency exit had been prepared. quickly fixing that problem, the TEXN scout in hegfunden reported that the battleships had incapacitated two guns and were now warping off

mental groans went through the fleet. all this way for nothing. boo, hiss. mighty FC sard caid ordered a rifter scout to jump the gate and report on the other side. mael mael tempest hype... they had warped to the gate!

TEXN wasted no time warping to 0 on the aeditide gate, effectively sandwiching them between our forces. it was obvious that the hostile fc presumed we would be RR fit with our bs, so he ordered locks on the TEXN battleships and prepared to fight on their side of the gate, forcing us to jump into them

this was ok with us

TEXN kicked the show off by aggressing first. once they started redboxing, we piled into heg, primaries rolling from glorious fc sard caid's mouth as though from the golden tongue of an archangel. primaries started dropping as the TEXN entry cyno lit, archons plowing on to the field like mack trucks. we fully expected one of two things to happen. either they would light their own cyno and bring their cap slaying fleet out to play... or they'd deaggress and jump out. either way, it was either going to be really shitty or really boring

what happen next surprised everyone

the triage archon piloted by evelgrivion cyno'd into the gate and was rocketed off at 2000 m/s to the tune of about 80km

oops

as scary as it must have been for evel, it completely changed the course of the fight. apparently the hostile fc noticed this and ordered everyone to tackle and primary the renegade archon. not a terrible idea... if it hadn't been the first to go triage. evel happily tanked all of the incoming damage while maya and uther's archons took over non-triage fleet repping duties

primaries died quickly in spite of their 2-4 scimitars (numbers not verified. there were at least 2) since our anti-cap bs setups all sported a big assed heavy neut BITCHES! at one point, magnanimous fc sard caid was jammed, presumably by the falcon that showed up midway through the fight, followed by ineffable back up fc vanderie leaving the ever-so-eloquent warlord protagonist to BLRRRRRR his way through targets

final count of casualties is best represented by either the boglyft boards at the top or by the twisted inc killboard, since they got all the fucking mails

final status of the fight was:

friendly- 18 bs (mostly amarr), 3 bc, 3 triage archon, 1 hac, 1 lolhound
hostile- 14 bs (shield buffer/long range or arty fit), 6 bc, 2-4 scimitars (at least 2 confirmed), 3 recons, 1 hac, 1 cruiser, 1 lolhound, 1 interceptor

losses:
friendly- 3 bs (all TEXN before the archons arrived on the field)
hostile- 12 bs, 3 bc, 1 rapier (whoopsie!), 1 interceptor

gfgfgfgfgf

pity we didn't get a crack at their caps, but eh. maybe next time

Monday, March 21, 2011

customer support

we hunt kariberov - cbIpoK

as part of my quest to commit acts of violence against all things shitposting, i have a very excellent and personal example of the incredibly high-quality customer service that ccp provides

as i typed that line, i can already tell what my responses would be. initially, someone reading this might think i was being facetious or sarcastic. what, with calling ccp customer support or service high-quality, i must be high as hell, right? i can't possibly be serious. upon reading, however, i'll probably be accused of sucking someone's e-dick for some sort of benefit or another. i'd like to state that it is definitely the case and completely true as evidenced by the nice things that i say and have said. i got a whole bunch of faction gear, t3 hulls and subsystems as well as the ability to explode any ship i engage just by double clicking them in space

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now for a little backstory: i had let both of my accounts lapse around late october 2010. i wasn't able to play worth shit on skyblue(fucking worst net ever(tm)) and was just not up to trying to hack it out with the sometimes 6000ms latency to anything. on top of that, in december i found out that mrs. protagonist and i are expecting our second (omgwtflol) child

i know, right?

so eve kind of took a back seat to the hilarity that ensued. on february 7th, however, i received this very polite message:

Greetings from CCP!

We're reaching out to players that have recently canceled their subscription to EVE Online. We'd like to make a final attempt to address the reason you've decided to stop playing EVE if you'll allow us.

If you've had an unresolved billing problem, an issue with an unanswered petition or a petition you feel was improperly handled on our part, experienced an episode of harassment or been the victim of an exploit, or any other problem that resulted in your decision to leave EVE, please give us one more chance to address the problem to your satisfaction.

We also encourage you to visit our Expansions page and see what new features, fixes and updates have been added since you last played.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if you want to take another look at the game and we will gladly open your account for a few free days.

You can either answer this mail directly for a discussion with a senior customer service representative, or if you have a petition you would like us to further review, we would be happy to take another look and see if there is anything we can help you out with. We are always available at support@eveonline.com and will do our utmost to help you out with whatever problem you may have.

Sincerely,
EVE Online Customer Support

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wasn't that sweet? i'm sure anyone else that had let their account go to shit got one just like it. i know that i'm not special. however, i was kind of in a good mood when i got that mail and decided to write a little response to the automated form letter i had received:

greetings!

i am just taking a moment to respond to this email for your benefit
i absolutely LOVE this game. for a while, i was at home being a stay-at-home father to a newborn infant and i was managing to play 40-60 hours a week. i lived in molden heath low sec and ran around with some notorious eve celebrity pirates, bloggers, scoundrels and roughnecks and it was the best gaming experience i have ever had
that said, i cannot maintain my account(s) currently as my wife and i are expecting our SECOND child and work/family is taking my top priority. perhaps in the near future i can return and enjoy the game as i once did, but for now, i simply cannot
i would still like to receive emailed newsletters so that i can keep abreast with official press releases, but there is little that can be done to get me to reinstate my account(s) at this time
thank you for making a great game!
xX REAL NAME HERE Xx
dirty protagonist

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in case you were wondering, yes. the brown stain did come off of my nose after about 30-45 minutes of scrubbing

i thought it was over at that point. i'm sure their email system was configured to sort the deluge of whinefuckery that an email like that was certain to generate and it made me feel a certain bit of smugness that i would be (in my head at least) the only one writing them back saying that they're doing a really fucking ace job and made a pretty nice game

imagine my surprise when i got this letter the next day:

Hello, GM Yuggoth here.

I can very well understand that you won’t be able to play a lot for now. It’s good to see that you have your priorities sorted out, because although we want people to play our game we certainly don’t want their real lives to suffer for it. I hope that you will join us again in the future when time permits. We’ve never removed any characters from our database to this point, and don’t plan to in the future, so you can rest assured that your characters will be waiting for your return.

Let me know if you have any further questions or if there’s something that we can help you with. Also, congratulations on your second child that’s on the way!

Best regards,

GM Yuggoth

The EVE Online Customer Support Team


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holy fucking shit! did yuggoth really just take the time to handwrite a response to my little bit of knobbery?! i think he did! holy shit!


joking aside, i was absolutely gobsmacked to get a response to what i thought was just a meaningless email fired off from my blackberry in the middle of the night into the black abyss that is an automated email system


this isn't really a huge deal, i know. it also certainly doesn't prove or disprove anything about the level of customer service that they provide... and maybe i'm easily impressed. i will say, however, that of the many (and it is a fucking lot) of online games i've played, i have never ever received a personal email or response to something insignificant as that before... and that really impressed me


i think that a lot of the eve community (certainly among my friends and the blogs/tweets i tend to read) people find that abusing ccp over everything from game design to their development schedules to their customer service is not just okay but an important thing to do. frankly, i think they need to shut the fuck up and shoot something already


jesus



Wednesday, March 16, 2011

shit posts

What is a overview setting? I just avoid the purple ones LOL xD - ReBeLSKuLL

no more shit posts!

after reading countless tweets, blog posts and articles, i have come to the conclusion that many of the good writers of eve blogs have abandoned their post (lawl) of writing good, quality eve shit and instead decided to focus on writing about shit that really isn't worth reading. like other games (wtf), what's wrong with the game... even sometimes what they're trying to do to fix it (blah csm)

so, instead of writing shit that (i think) is completely irrelevant to the game, i've decided to take up the pen (keyboard?) and start abusing the shit out of some parentheses. maybe write some good eve posts while i'm at it

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i guess the first thing of note i should point out is that i'm back!

that's right! i built a new "gaming on a budget" desktop that truly kicks ass. to be honest, i spent way more than i should have but the end result is pretty kick ass. i also got hooked up with a local WISP (who had such bad web/advertising presence that it took me the better part of 6 months to find them (fuck satellite internet)) and now enjoy a lag-free connection to the internet we all know and love

coming back to the same place after being gone for 6 months is kind of strange. there are, of course, the old standby people who were there when i left, but the scenery is nowhere close to the same. my hq station was filled with some really nasty former IT corp guys, there are several new small pirate corps in the area and there are a TON of new faces in the molden heath pirate intel channel

however shit changes, it still stays the same though. the welcome i've received has been truly fantastic

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which brings me to my next thing

i'm sure people have noticed my new corp ticker by now... yes, i have joined gunpoint diplomacy. not that 520 is dead, mind, but that the rest of the roughnecks i flew with are still on other shit i figured i might as well fly with the people i spent 90% of my time in molden heath with anyway. so far, things have been great

i can't wait to see where this next season takes me

Friday, March 11, 2011

changing a babby diaper

the following is a post directly from the forums at moldenheath.net:

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this is a very serious topic so i'm going to be very serious with you all. i've thought long and hard about this strat and you'll do well to consider my points

first, any vet will tell you that this is not some undertaking to be taken mildly. you do not fucking embark on this journey on a whim. i will show you how this will not go:

Ramenfan1025 > hey I think I'm going to try my hand at changing a babby's diaper
Dirty Protagonist > WHOA HO HO HO HOLD THE FUCK ON BRO
Ramenfan1025 > seriously bro, how hard can it be?

and they never heard from him again. seriously, this actually happened. ask yourself- "how come that guy is like on all of 520's kms back in july/august then all of a sudden he's gone?"

really, it's fucking weird

you really don't want to end up like poor ramen, so here's a little how-to to help you survive this harrowing ordeal. i went ahead and broke it down into some easy to remember steps and handy mneumonic for you

read on to find out--

(A)sk yourself: am i fucking retarded? really. why are you thinking about changing a child's diaper? that is why god put women on the face of this planet- to wipe babby asses. i'm not even kidding. here is an exerpt from genesis 2:11-15 "and lo! god was like 'holy shit babbies make some nasty shit! i ought to make a woman who can both cook delicious sandwiches and also wipe this foul ass on the child i created. and so it came to pass." seriously, look it up

if you find yourself alone with a soiled child and there isn't a woman ANYWHERE nearby (this is an extremely unlikely event), your next course of action is to...

(W)rangle that child. i recommend a rope but a chain, steel cable, or even plastic zip-strips will do in a pinch. remember, if the child is moving, you are in for poomageddon and believe me, there are things in that diaper that can not be unseen. men have come back from such places as empty and charred husks of men

once fully restrained...

(A)rm yourself. you need the following equipment: a military grade flame thrower, an air tight vacuum sealing standard nuclear waste containment unit, a bucket of muriatic acid, some spill-magic(tm), and a standard issue diaper in the correct size for the child in question. god help you if you have one too big or too small

after you've armed yourself...

(R)emove the fasteners holding the diaper to the child. these are usually sticky snaps that somewhat resemble velcro though they can be as severe as u-locks for bicycles, carriage bolts or nautical rivets. this is a very sensitive step as any mistake you make at this point can result in the child thrashing and even restrained there is a serious risk of them flinging hazardous waste into an area it does not belong

once you're at this point, you're committed buddy...

(E)viscreate the entire area. you need to destroy any evidence of the toxic waste that might have been slathered or smeared around the child's emission nozzle. if you don't, its caustic ooze will devour the skin tissue on the child and cause even more thrashing. perhaps even tempestuous yelling and stomping. believe me, you don't want to be around for that, so do a good job

i know it takes a lot of heart, but stick with it until the job is done...

(T)oss that filthy rag in the container and run like hell. believe me, you don't want to be anywhere near that bomb when it hits atmosphere. it will melt you face while your children weep over your charred corpse

once you've handled cleaning and disposal....

(P)owder dat ass. seriously, if you don't use some kind of absorbent material such as kitty litter, spill magic or babby scented talcum powder you could have residual ooze creeping into places where it will do nothing but wreak mayhem. i knew a man once who neglected this aspect of "the change" and he was greeted at his next change by an army of raunchy scented warriors spawned in the dark crevaces of his child's ass-skin folds that hungered for brains and thirsted for blood. his family lives in a shelter for zombie victims and his child is haunted by those images probably for the rest of his life

if you've survived this far...

(W)rap that babby up. the new diaper should go on as quick as you can since the child will be bucking like a wyoming stud stallion in a corral. best case, you have about 2 seconds from lobbing your shit-grenade into the hazardous waste recepticle and letting the powder fly to when you need to have that emission nozzle contained unless you want a complete cluster fuck of shit flying all over you and everything you hold dear

at this point, you should consider yourself victorious. it's generally frowned upon to forget to untie the restrained child, so i strongly suggest that you not neglect this point

if you find yourself in a situation where you're faced with the aforementioned task, i hope you remember the mneumonic that i've taught you today: AWARETPW

awaretpw and stand strong, soldiers