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