We're sorry. (Updated with extra awesome)

Lo and behold, I am still alive and kicking out in the ThunderDelve. It's been pretty busy recently, and I have been having great fun, but I haven't really had much time to make posts so this page has been languishing in neglect.

However, one thing did catch my eye today on the Eve-O forums that I thought merited a bit of my time. Word travels fast so it's not likely news to anyone who reads this, but here's a copypasta:

(From CCP Pann, CCP community/PR manager)

Hi, everyone

Some of you who have been around for a while may remember me. I was the original community manager for EVE. These days, I oversee the PR and Community teams. While most of what I do happens behind the curtains, I am still aware of what’s going on front and center. I would be lying if I said that what’s happening now didn’t make me sad, but I’m not here to ask for your sympathy. To be perfectly honest, I’m here to buy time while we try to sort things out. No sense in lying about it so I'll call a spade a spade.

It’s clear that many of you are angry . There’s a lot happening, things are changing quickly and we haven’t been as forthcoming as you were used to in the past. I’m willing to step out front and take a lot of heat for that since I was the one who made the decision to hold off on responding for a while to see if things cooled down once the new wore off.

I was wrong to do that and I apologize. We should have said something much sooner. We should have done more to address your concerns and be forthcoming, even if we weren’t going to be able to immediately give you all of the answers you were looking for or the answer your questions in ways that will instantly turn those frowns upside down. To be even more candid, I cannot answer all of your questions, either, but I am working with the people who can to start getting those answers for you. Again, I know we’re doing this past the expiration date of your patience but I hope you’ll bear with me.

I know that, with very few exceptions, most of you don’t know me from Adam. I haven’t earned your trust or respect; therefore I have no right to ask anything of you – but I am going to try, anyway. Can I please count on at least some of you to help bring the pitchforks and torches down a few notches?

Like I said, I won’t be able to answer all of your questions tonight, but I promise we’ll start getting some info out tomorrow. As I see it, the chief complaint is regarding the high cost of goods in the Noble Market. Second, many people are unhappy about the Captain’s Quarters. Third, there are some performance issues with Incarna. I would appreciate it if you would confirm my observations or tell me what I’m missing, but I do ask that you do it in a productive way. I will remove posts without prejudice if they are counterproductive to the conversation I hope to have with you.

If you’ve read this much, thanks for staying with me. If you have something to say, I’d like very much to hear it.

Humbly yours,
~P~

(link: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1536065)

TLDR:

"Don't mind our blatant money grab, shitty FAMC (Forever Alone Minmatar Closet) feature, and generally wasting the last two years of development on shit that matters not fucking at all. We're super duper sorry. We aren't changing anything, of course, but we just want you to to know that we know you are pissed, and that's a bummer. We also want you to know we are working very hard on coming up with another canned PR-speak response to give you after we've made sure to wait until it is good and truly too little too late, or after we have managed to botch something else.

<3 <3, see you in WoD. BRING MONEY."

So basically, this:

-Vil

P.S. Credit due to RaZor Flash for reminding me of this *perfect* clip.

UPDATE:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=932

Instead of me just inferring they are telling us to fuck ourselves, they are now very directly saying "go fuck yourself, we think it's fine and aren't going to change it."

I hate to make this particular comparison, but let's look at Blizzard Entertainment. You can say what you will about Blizz and their subscriber base, but when they were about to go and make a big fucking PR mistake, the community stepped up and voiced their disapproval. Even Blizzard fucking checked themselves and did the right thing. Take a queue from the 800 pound gorilla here CCP and preserve your user base before desperately grasping at a new one (and going about it TOTALLY wrong).

Say hello to my little friend

So I killed a raven with my Jag last night, and it was good.

This may not have been entirely newsworthy, but it definitely made me smile when it happened, so I figured I'd share.

The cliffs notes version of this tomfoolery was I was in this guys mission doing my dirty buisness in the Jag when, after much hemming and hawing, he decided to take a shot. I pinned him down and was working on getting the orca in for a ship swap, but unfortunately the distance between the first warp gate and the 2nd in this mission is about 45km. I tried to fill the time by convoing him and trying to work out a ransom, but he wasn't willing to talk to me so I just sort sat there beating on him, expecting a good long wait.

However, I soon realized that his tank wasn't able to handle my itty bitty AF and the two mobs left in the mission that were shooting him. I could hardly believe it, but within a few minutes he succumed to the fury of my little black frigate that could and went all explody.

http://ucare.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9553919

I guess the moral of the story here is to never under(or over)estimate carebears or the power of a good resistance hole. :)

-Vil

Providence Down

It's been a busy week for uCARE, and slow at the same time. I recently changed shifts at work and I don't have the kind of time that I used to to play, so the news has been slow in the kill department.

However, in my limited free time I negotiated the entry of uCARE into the illustrious Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service [TEARS] Alliance. All of us in uCARE are very excited to be part of one of, if not the original ninja alliance and are looking forward to much lulz to come because of this...

As luck would have it, I wouldn't have to wait long myself for said lulz...

The Victim:

The ninja pickins in Laah haven't been particularly good in the past few weeks, so I logged in today with the express intent of loading up the orca and moving my ninja operation back to Gallente space. I was about to leave when SN director Arden Elenduil issued a call to arms in alliance chat.

The mission was simple, kill something big. I don't think any of us knew exactly how big that kill was going to be today...

So I fleeted up, grabbed an arty apoc and headed out to Sivala.

Upon arrival we first tried to scout the traffic leading away from Jita, but unfortunately the pickins were extremely slim, so after a half hour or so, we moved the operation to a few hundred kilometers off of the Uedama gate. Our scouts went back to work, and we continued to wait.

Things were just starting to get boring when comms lit up and our scout said something along the lines of "Would Shadow Control towers be worth it?". There was a moment of discussion as value was tabulated and we figured out that they were worth a little over a billion isk each on contracts. Not bad indeed. There was a moment of confusion and then the scout clarified "No, there are 7 of them in this providence". Seven? Seven?!

Now in full battlestations mode, the scout reported that the Provi had jumped through into Uedama and had already warped off. There was a brief moment of panic while the fleet tried to locate the ship, as our scout thought that he may have logged off. Luckily, we soon got eyes back on him in Juunigaishi in warp to the Anttiri gate.

We all raced to get ahead of the ship and finally passed him up in Antiri on the outgate to Sirpaala. Landing just ahead of the target, we dropped drones and prepared. As soon as the ship appeared on grid, the order was given.

With 18 battleships, we all took our shots...

At first we thought it popped, but then as concord was killing our ships we realized that in this high of a security level, the concord ships jam. In fact, the ship survived with less than 1/5th hull.

At first we were fairly crushed, but as the freighter continued to slowboat on autopilot to the gate and jumped to the next system, we soon realized that all hope was not lost. We raced back to Jita to reshipped while we waited for our Global Criminal Countdown to drop.

I have to say, the next 15 minutes were nailbiting as we assembled our new ships, waiting through the painful minutes as the GCC was slowly ticking down. With less than 2 minutes left, our scout reported that the freighter was approaching the Jita gate from Perimiter and was about to jump through. In a last ditch effort, our scouts attempted to bump the freighter, but it wouldn't budge and ended up jumping on through. With 45 seconds left on the GCC at this point, we all held our breath.

One of several things was about to happen:

1) The freighter pilot would have a bot that would initiate warp to 4-4 and dock him. Then it would have been good game.

2) Another group of intrepid gankers would scan this guy, notice he had a sliver of hull left, and finish the job. Again, good game.

3) The freighter pilot would sit there afk like a lump and hold cloak, giving us enough time to get back and kill him.

Luckily, the EVE gods chose door number 3 for us. My GCC dropped and I immediately undocked and warped to the Perimeter gate. Several of us landed on grid just as the order was given to shoot as soon as possible. We opened up on him, and in a fantastic ball of fire he went pop.

To say that this was glorious is an understatement. This was, simply put, one of the most awesome and fun experiences I have had in EVE so far. The sheer scale of the kill was staggering. I've been in on 500 man supercarrier and titan dogpiles, but this was in every way better.

Let's take a look at the final tally, shall we?

Lolmails:

http://ucare.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9415732

http://y0ink.us/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11961

Just shy of 12 Billion Isk, with around 10.5 bil dropped. Split 18 or 19 ways thats around 550mil per person. Not bad at all for a Sunday afternoon, if I do say so myself.

Oh, and we had Suddenly Violence alts in tow to make sure to fully add insult to injury:

Good times.

-Vil.

"Universe, meet Bob. Bob, EAT universe."

The posting blitz continues with 3 posts in less than 24 hours. You'd think I was having fun in game or something.

Anyway, I hit a few milestones this weekend, but one in particular seemed worth sharing.

Meet Bob the Bhaalgorn:

I've always wanted a pirate battleship, and now I have one, thanks in part to the willingness of morons to give me their money/wrecks/loot.

I have to say, the practical application of this ship in my day-to-day ninja activities is going to be limited at first, as there are a few skills I want to brush up on a bit before I get ballsy with it. I have also gotten utterly spoiled by having an Orca on hand for ship swaps, and this tubby bastard is way too big for the ship maintenance bay.

The idea of having to wait out the session timer in the station to swap ships is fairly abhorrent to me at this point, so I think I am going to have to ween myself off using the Orca slowly. I will no doubt miss a few kills because I didn't get back to the potential victim fast enough, however any missed opportunities will be worth it when I finally get to warp this fucker in on top of some unsuspecting shlub and watch him shit bricks.

Yarr!

-Vil

You're Doing It Wrong

I am going to keep this one brief. Instead of lengthy storytelling, I've prepared a serious of clever slides to convey the point of this post.

Wait, what? But, wha... why?!

It get's better...

I won't even bother discussing the mid slots. I've said enough.

In summation:

Carebears are literally retarded. Killmail.

-Vil (is dissapoint)

Back in Buisness

"Human nature is such that people are born with a love of profit. If they follow these inclinations, they will struggle and snatch from each other, and inclinations to defer or yield will die. "

- Xun Zi

After a bit of a dry spell in the sucker department, I had a fairly good weekend all told. I bagged my first (two) faction battleships, and one of them was kind enough to fit himself with some faction loot for me. What a sweetheart, right?

The Victim:

It started at the end. I had been scanning down missioners all day on Sunday and I was just about to log off when I happened upon two Drakes and a Navy Issue Scorpion doing a Damsel in Distress mission. I ship scanned all three and saw that one of the two drakes was obviously higher SP and had a very decent fit, and the scorp had very nice selection of faction mods on it. Hoping they would bite, I went to work.

Now I both love and hate the folks who run missions in a posse, because they are far more likely to shoot at you, but it is always an iffy situation with that many ships. You have to make sure that none of the ships has a point or anything, as ninja traps are common in situations like these, and you have to make sure you can tank the damage that they are able to put out. I am confident with the tank on my Sleipnir, but even drakes can burn me down if there are enough of them and they are fit correctly.

Combine that with the fact that I usually end up missing out on the expensive ships, and it's doubly iffy. The majority of time I end up fighting tooth and nail and end up just killing a battlecruiser or something because the bigger ships will bail as soon as they take a shot.

Anyway, so I flew around this mission for a while in my vigil, looting and salvaging what I could, which if you have ever done this mission, isn't much (as the wrecks all salvage into heavy metal parts). I had pretty much decided that no one was going to shoot me after a few minutes so I figured I'd make the best of this and grab my super-duper ninja stabber to properly loot and pillage this usually fairly lucrative mission.

Turns out, a cruiser was a juicer target than a frigate, and the three stooges almost instantly shot at me.

I burned back to the orca, grabbed Steve (the sleip) and was back just in time to see one of the drakes warp off. The Navy Scorp however, was right on top of me. I locked him up, pointed him, and began to unload. I noticed that between the remaining drake and the scorp my shields were dropping really fast and I was barely able to keep up pulsing my x-large booster and burning through cap booster 800 charges. I had considered trying to get in range of the drake to put some pressure on him to make him leave, but he was almost 50km away, and I didn't want to risk having the point on the battleship drop.

So I gritted my teeth, overheated my guns, and kept shooting. Around the time I managed to get him through shields, the third friend reappeared in a Republic Fleet Firetail. My heart lurched when he popped up on my overview. Luckily though, he stupidly warped to his drake friend (40ish km out) rather than the scorp. If he had warped to the scorp he would have been close enough to establish a fast orbit and I could have been in trouble. After landing, he burned straight at me (transversal is hard) so I stopped shooting the scorp and turned the guns on the firetail. One volley got him to half armor, but the 2nd missed as he was close enough to start orbiting at close range. Luckily however, that first volley really hurt him, and I had small drones out. So I put the drones on him, and with no armor left he pretty much completely panicked and warped off.

At this point I put the guns back on the scorp and around the time he hit structure, the drake warped out. The fight was over at this point.

I tried for a ransom, admittedly aiming a bit high.

Oh well, perhaps 250 was a bit overzealous. Can't win em all.

And with a boom and a LOL, he went all explody. Killmail

All told I made about 150mil off of his loot, and the 840 mil value of his ship padded my killboard nicely. This was my most valuable kill to date, and was a mighty fine end to my recent dry spell.

Oh, and not to forget... when I was looting his wreck I couldn't help but notice that, luckily, the damsel had survived:

The random militants, ship's crew, and various other male denizens of the SuperFun Concetration Daycamp hangar were *very* enthusiastic about the new guest.

Good times.

-Vil

Hakai Ginma is a cold-blooded killer

I just wanted to toss up a quick note to commemorate my friend Hakai Ginma's very first solo kill. I made sure to swing by in my Tengu to take a picture for posterity:

The kill was *way* overkill, just like we like it in uCARE. The fairer the fight, the less interested we are in it, so today Hakai, you did us proud.

Killmail