IC Announcement:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=239340&find=unreadAlright, there's a bit of a long post below, but first thing is first: I'll be having an IC event to celebrate Silver being a podder for 10 years. It will be on the 26th of May, from 18:00 Eve time until whenever it breaks up. Channel will be 'The Frenetic Evolution'.
Some thoughts on 10 years in Eve:
Back on 5/25/2003 I completed the character creation process for my first* Eve character, Silver Night. He is still my main now, occasional questionable training decisions (Barges 5?) and all. It has been a fascinating 10 years, seeing the game and the community it spawned grow and evolve. A refugee from Earth and Beyond, I washed up on the shores of Eve while it was still in Beta. I read and reread the 'peek of the week' features - precursors to today's chronicles (and still some of the best fiction, I think, for setting the tone of the universe), poured over the scientific articles, and watched the wars of words on the forum between organizations like Endless, Saboath, PIE, and Taggart Transdimensional. In the beta, nearly everyone was a roleplayer it seemed (at least of a sort), a necessity when 70% or more of your corporation might not even have access to the beta, and so interaction outside the game was the only choice.
After consuming the official fiction, I stumbled over fan fiction, both as a concept (I am startled at the things that the me of a decade ago was ignorant of) and the reality. The stuff that stands out as perhaps the best to my mind is the exploits of a certain booster-addled, scheming, slaver hound connoisseur in 'The Endless Saga'. Between that and the official peeks at the universe, I was hooked on the idea of Eve before I ever stepped foot in an internet spaceship.
My attempts to play the beta were not pretty - as unstable as the game was at launch, it was nothing compared to the beta. Among other issues, all of the text in the game appeared as a series of solid white rectangles. I persevered, at least enough to get a small idea of how the game worked, and a few weeks after it launched I bought the retail version (in a box, on a CD even) for myself. I had to go to 3 different retailers to find it. I got it installed, patched (and then reinstalled, repatched, until it worked) and logged in. It was glorious. I even had a machine it would run on, finally.
I mined myself from an Ibis to a Bantam, then a Merlin, and finally to an Osprey. I found a corporation, and they helped me get into a Moa - I organized a sightseeing trip to the Golgothan Fields and promptly got nuked by a Tachyon Scorpion, my first PvP loss of many - my cruise missiles were no match for it (and my totally clueless fitting didn't help). Sometime in 2004 (I think?) I joined the 'Caldari' channel. Back in the day, all the racial channels were player run. I started talking, and immediately had a can of Starsi thrown at me by a moderator (Jera, I think it was) for talking OOC. My immediate question was, naturally, 'What do you mean OOC?' That was my introduction to roleplaying, and roleplaying in MMOs, and roleplaying in Eve.
A lot has happened, since then. Some good, some bad. I think the RP community is as strong as it has ever been, even as it has faced challenges. I've met some extraordinary people, and made some incredible friends, and in both cases it wouldn't have happened without Eve. I've written pro-Sansha propaganda and a shocking (certainly to the person I was 10 years ago) amount of fan fiction. I've been part of wars and sneak attacks. I've seen plots artfully executed, and artfully foiled. I've conducted vicious, spreadsheetesque campaigns on the markets of Jita and emerged victorious. I've watched empires rise and fall. All of it in ways that no other online space can come even close to. I think that the future might be looking up, and I find myself with (cautiously) renewed confidence in the direction that CCP is taking us. I hope the next 10 years are as interesting and unique as the first 10. I look forward to finding out.
*excluding beta characters - the poor, stunted, barely functional bastards. At least on the machine I had at the time.
Author
Topic: An Anniversary: 10 years of Eve (Read 2607 times)