Nov
29

Mommy! Someone took my ore!

So I want to get away from the wild and nutty posts to the ?huh? and ?wtf? type. If you haven’t listened to SUWT#14 then you probably don’t know that I got back into Eve Online last week. I blame it all on John this time and he?ll be known as the bane of my Eve existence this time around. John has been doing some excellent work over at his place with a captain’s log full of information on mining. I’m essentially using everything there as a guideline of what to do. See how I do that. I let him make all the mistakes first…it?s both educational and entertaining.

Now for the story of what happened to me about 2-3 days ago while mining some ore. So there I was, mining. I had Eve covering half my screen and a web browser on the other, reading John’s site on the next steps to take. I suddenly had to get a glass of wine, so downstairs I went. When I returned I noticed another ship closing in on where I was. He was yellow on my HUD, which makes me watch him a bit more closely. I get info on him etc etc. He might just be passing through like all of the other ships I?ve seen lately. I then see the “can” that I’m dropping my ore in go poof. For the Eve newbs out there, that means he put his hands in my cookie jar and stole my ore. He was now blinking red. You see, whenever you steal someone?s ore, that means that said someone can pound on you for the next 18 minutes or so. Fun times.

So, I type out in Local “Thanks for that.” and then warp back to base. I calmly walk into my Battle Cruiser (a Drake) and head back to the asteroid belt to administer a spanking. He’s still there. So I lock on and start bringing in the rain. He releases his drones and they start to lock onto me. At this point, I don’t think he realizes that he’s outclasses because by the time his drones are out, his shields are gone….that’s when his ass started to pucker I think. So, he calls in his drones and starts to move away…by that time, his hull is half gone. He warps out…I follow. I lock and start firing again. I get his structure down to half and he warps off again. I type in Local, “Next time, mine your own ore.” He types, “lol”.

We get into talking after it and apparently he does this all the time. He also told me that I’m the first that has ever fought back, which I found to be very surprising. He told me that since he now ?respects me? he won’t do it again and that I earned my ore back (….pfft, yeah, suuuuuure on both counts…). OK, he might give me my ore back, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve never had this kind of thing happen to me in Eve before. Sure, I’ve mined…but I’ve never had someone steal it from me. I’ve never had someone flag pvp because of stealing and I certainly can count the number of times I’ve fired on another player on one hand. Looking back, this was will probably be one of the more memorable moments in Eve for me. Good stuff.

On another Eve Online note. The long awaited Eve Online graphics upgrade is hitting the servers on Dec. 5th. No doubt that it will be a lag-tastic experience for about a week in Ev,e but I’m really looking forward to seeing the new paint job. If you haven’t seen what it looks like yet, look no further….here is the latest video showing it all off.

D out.

Posted in Eve Online
8 Comments Posted by Darren

StErroneous says:

November 29, 2007 at 9:02 am

Back before I joined my training alliance, I was pootling around in my little mining cruiser, crunching rocks, when a fast-moving ship swooped in, and flipped my jetcan. Can’t remember that he was flying, but it was something small and expensive. If I’d fought back, I’d have gone pop instantly – that character’s combat skills are appalling – and I was still in an NPC corporation at the time, so I had no back-up to call on. But, just for the fun of it, I targeted him back, even though I had no weapons mounted.

Suddenly, my shields were deep in the red, but I was surrounded by grey battleships and cruisers, and he was floating in his pod. He’d opened fire on me first, triggering Concord to warp in and blow up his expensive toy.

Lesson of the day: everyone’s a little bit stupid sometimes.

My alliance’s HQ is on a “pipe” between Jita and 0.0 space, so gets a fair amount of through-traffic, bringing with it a steady flow of bored people wanting to steal ore for fun. During alliance prime-time, the usual response to an active ore thief in-system used to be several battleships and a cluster of foaming-at-the-mouth newbie tacklers, but the thieves usually just run. We recently changed official policy after a small corp of professional thieves/griefers, very good at using aggression timers in their favour, ran rings around a bunch of usually level-headed corp people, and cost a bunch of people a lot of money.

We ignore thieves now and, because they know they won’t get the attention and giggles they want from us, they leave us alone. So, our solo miners may lose the odd jetcan of ore, but it’s encouraged people to mine together in groups, haul for each other, which gives security, entertainment, and nice mining bonuses, so everyone makes more ISK.

If this guy thinks he can provoke a response from you in future, he may come back with some bored friends interested in “helping” him. Fly safe.

Marcus V says:

November 29, 2007 at 12:32 pm

Darren, its these type experiences that make MMO play so much fun. I can appreciate the sweet revenge of the encounter. I was more of an Eve soloer myself which finally caused me to quit the game due to not being able to defend against griefer gangs. It really is a group necessary game.I also wanted to add that you discussion on Eve on the last SUWT we very good. Dont get me wrong Eve does what it does very well in my opinion it is just a little too harsh for my tastes.

I am somewhat surprised you can go back and forth within EVE, to most who play it they seem to take the time in game very seriously. Do you maintain your account and log to keep your skills advancing?

Darren says:

November 29, 2007 at 1:25 pm

Marcus. I take my time in Eve seriously, for sure….but not too seriously

During my last stint in Eve, yeah, I was mostly just logging in to update skills because I was still ramping up on the learning skill curve that is suggested for most players. Now that is done and I find myself playing Eve more than skilling up right now. Also, given the blog and the podcast, other MMOs come up and unfortunately Eve has to take a backseat while I look at those.

Main driver for Eve this time around is mostly due to the graphics update. I mentioned this in a blog post some time ago that I was interested in seeing the new models they put in.

Not too sure how long this run will last in Eve, but I’ll have fun with the ride.

Aaron says:

November 29, 2007 at 4:17 pm

My PvP experiences in other games have taught me that sometimes frustrating experiences make pleasant memories.

The first time my thief in Shadowbane got caught while trying to pickpocket another player, and had to run away frantically as the mage lit his pants on fire with a series of lightning bolts… and the mage ended up killing me and she stole my stuff — it was frustrating then, but that’s one of my favorite MMO memories now.

The Server is Down ? Bring Back that Risky Feeling says:

November 29, 2007 at 10:08 pm

[...] the most recent episode of SUWT, one of the stories brought up was about Darren’s recent experience in Eve. The guests on SUWT talked just briefly about how those types of “risky” [...]

yunk says:

November 30, 2007 at 9:23 am

In school when the bullies beat me up they also said “why don’t you fight back?” *punch* “we’ll stop if you fight back” *kick*, etc. Same thing. They want easy pickings not a fight and call it “respect” heh