The Lathspell of Mithrandir

Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: “Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?”

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Two weeks of waiting for a ship to be flown in has given me time to reflect on my life as a capsuleer.  It didn’t start out easy – there were the looming questions What was I going to do?  Where was I going to be?  Was I going to get involved in battles?  With those questions facing me, I guess I just needed three foundational seeds of knowledge to be able to grow in this universe known as New Eden.

The first seed of knowledge was simple:  Money makes the ‘verse go round.  As much as anyone would like to believe, and I know I tried to for a long time, you’ve got to work to make money.  Whether it be in the form of missioning, mining, trading, manufacturing, or pirating, you’ve got to make money.  You can’t buy a ship if you don’t have ISK in your wallet.

The second seed of knowledge is:  Get in with a good group of people.  Now I know that I started my own corporation and Tiph’arah is not the largest corp in the system we are based in; however, knowing that every single one of our members is loyal and ready to come to the aid of someone in trouble has given us the confidence to stand up for ourselves, not allow would-be pirates to grief us, and encourage us to stretch outside of our comfort zones at times and work on projects that we might not have done on our own.

The third seed of knowledge is one that I think I’ve found to be the hardest:  Your ship is not a one-of-a-kind.  Unlike the mythical Millennium Falcon, from the epic stories passed to us through the ages before New Eden, there is no single ship that can take on all ships.  Your ship may be beautiful.  She may seem so “alive” when you are in your pod and your very thought seems to change her course.  You might have the best supplementary crew, but all of this doesn’t mean that your ship is indestructible.  Now, I’m not saying to baby her, because she will get you out of bad spots more times that you can imagine.  Just remember, she’s a ship made of metals and alloys; circuitry and software.

“Mister Stormcrow, your ship has come in.” a voice said over the comm, “It’s waiting for you in hanger 1418.”

“Thank you, I’m on my way.”

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To hear more Banter:

1. CrazyKinux: The Three Pillars of Wisdom
2. The Elitist: Helping the new guy/gal
3. Hands Off, My Loots: Nothing Needed
4. Rantuket: Blog Banter 16
5. EVE Opportunist: Nooby Cluey
6. Into the Unknown With Gun and Camera: EVE University
7. Zero Kelvin: We’re the young ones!
8. I am Keith Neilson: Set Your Destination
9. Prano’s Journey: Just Like the Very First Time
10. A Merry Life and a Short One: No Seriously
11. Yarrbear Tales: Nublet 101
12. A Mule In EVE: If I only knew
13. The Planet Risk Show: Dared to be Bold
14. Diary of a Space Jockey: WTH did I get myself into?!
15. EVOGANDA: Why?
16. A Memoir From Space: 16th Blog Banter
17. Death’s Sweetest Kiss: Who What When Where Why How??
18. Freebooted: Beyond the Shortcuts
19. Learning to Fly: Noobing
20. Caldari Outcast: My First Blog Banter Post!
21. Roc’s Ramblings: Financial Survival
22. Diary of a Pod Pilot: Free Knowledge Inside
23. Nullsec Carebear: I could’ve been less of an idiot
24. Facepalm’s Ramblings: Something Smells Fishy
25. Kirith Darkblade: Do you wish to know more?
26. Autopilot Disabled: I’m still starting…
27. Finders & Keepers: Relax
28. Confounded Capsuleer: What have you got to loose?
29. Clan Oriana: Sixteen
30. Flashfresh: EVE Blog Banter #16
31. Rettic’s The Chronofile: You Make EVE
32. Diary of a Bored Spaceman: Past Imperfect
33. Chocolate Heaven: Known Unknowns
34. Victoria Aut Mors: Blog Banter #16
35. Where the frack is my ship: If I knew then what I know now…
36. The Lathspell of Mithrandir: Hindsight is 20/20
37. Adventures in Mission Running: Words of Wisdom Add comments

So here’s the deal – when I saw everyone’s command centers, I was a bit intimidated.  My wife encouraged me to take pics of our desk and post our EVESpace.  Yes, I said “our”.  I’ve been playing EVE for a little over a year and a half and she’s been playing for a few months.  At first it was a challenge because she gets motion sick rather easily, but after a few tweaks of the settings she can fly around and do the trading she likes to do.

Anyway, here’s our desk:

and her control center:

and my control center:

The laptop on the right is for work – I have to support this habit somehow.  And yes, I play EVE on a laptop. 8~)  For those of you who think I am a fool, let me give you the stats.

Pentium Dual Core T4400 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache)
4GB DDR2 RAM
500GB SATA Hard Drive
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD4330 Video Card
17.3” HD+ WLED Screen

It’s a REALLY nice laptop and portable.  I can take EVE with me where ever I go…

1. Chocolate Heaven: EVESPACE
2. Life in Low Sec: OOC: What’s In Your EVESpace?
3. Rettic’s Log: Lots of Bloggers are posting their workspace
4. The Travels of Black Claw: What’s in your EveSpace?
5. K162Space: Blake’s EVE Machine
6. A Mule in EVE: Manasi’s rig
7. Wench with a Wrench: The Trinity Rig
8. Zen and the Art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance: Inside my Pod
9. Tales of a Low Sec Pirate: My EveSpace
10. I am Keith Neilson: My EVE Space
11. Sweet Little Bad Girl: Evespaces
12. Finders & Keepers: Eve And the Apple
13. Escape Velocity: My evespace
14. My Loot, Your Tears: What’s Your EVESpace like?
15. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: My workspace
16. Cogito Ergo Yarr: My EVE-Space? No. Just Space.
17. Yarrbear Tales: Evespace
18. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility: Weekly Highlights
19. EVEOGANDA: EveSpace: Home Away From Home
20. Learning to Fly: My Battlestation
21. A Ghost Blog: My EVE Space
22. @StMistaken‘s 2 and 1 monitor set-up
23. @webspaceships‘ simple yet elegant space
24. Nukes Thoughts: My Domain
25. CK’s lair: The BatCave
26. more?

Welcome to this special installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by myself, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to me. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

When you’ve been roaming New Eden as long as I have, it almost feels like home. That’s how familiar it has become over the last 5 years. Not that I have done everything or touched every aspect of this most amazing of virtual world, far from it, but it just feels as though it’s always been there. And always will be.

Whether you’ve logged into the game every day since its launch in 2003, or you’ve taken one or several sabbaticals from your capsuleer career, you’ve always come back to New Eden don’t you. Why is that?

We know the EVE Online Community is unique in so many ways, and that EVE Online is like no other MMORPG out there. But what makes the game special for you?

What is it that makes this particular virtual world so enticing, so mysterious and so alluring that we keep coming back for more. Why is EVE one of the very few MMOs to see a continuous growth in its subscriber.

To put it simply: Why do you love EVE Online so much?

The Contest

Write an article letting us know why you love this game so much and get a chance to win one of these 10 amazing prizes courtesy of CCP Games!

• 1st Place: $100 in EVE Store merchandise
• 2nd Place: $50 in EVE Store merchandise
• 3rd and 4th Place: $25 in EVE Store merchandise each
• 5th through 10th Place: a 14-day EVE time pass each

The Prizes

$200 in EVE Online Store merchandise and six 2-week EVE time codes

The Rules

I’ll be judging your articles based on their quality, structure, approach, originality. Other criteria are as follows:

• Contest is open from now until Sunday January 31st 11:59 PM EDT, 2010
• Submit your article (title and URL) in the comments below, before the contest expires. I will be using the date and time of your comment as the time stamp for the contest.
• No offensive or racist language will be allowed.
• You will need to link back to this post in your article introduction, as in typical EVE Blog Banter fashion.
• The winners will be announced on February 5th, 2010.

On the 6th day of May in the year 2008, Mithrandir Stormcrow was created in an MMORPG that was new to me.  I had played Fantasy MMOs such as Ultima Online, Runescape, Dark Age of Camelot, and even a little one called Dofus.  I was an avid pen and paper RPGer playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, Palladium’s Rifts and Robotech, and then my favorite Cyberpunk from R Talsorian Games.  This, however, really sparked my interest.

The first thing sparked my interest and was the fact that there was no Character Class.  It started with a Race then sub-Race and then we got to choose our school of expertise.  I loved the idea that my character’s attributes were not going to be the same as everyone else.  In recent upgrades, the attributes have been leveled (a bit of a bummer), but the skills have been set to “Newb” on new characters (very cool).  There is now a bonus for characters with Skill Points under 1.6 million – and that’s ALOT.  I am almost in an Assault Ship on a test New Character I have.

The second aspect of EVE, and it was the one that makes me really like it, was that there was no I need to be online so that I can run dungeons and level up.  We get Skill Books to unlock new ships, weapons, and things to do.  We get to make out character the way we want and they can be just about anything in New Eden.  The great benefit is that our characters can grow even when we’re not online.  The Skill queue is a stroke of genius for an ever-growing universe.

The aspect of EVE Online that keeps me coming back for more is the community.  Playing other games, this was the first that made me feel like I was back in the pen and paper days.  A bunch of friends hanging out having fun.  Here, we get to chat back and forth in game and out – telling storing of our exploits and helping other characters along.  I’ve been inspired by other players’ encouragement to keep plugging away at that next mission to reach the next level.  I’ve been given tips by characters that have taken out ships.  And I’ve found myself amongst a great group of pilots from a number of corps in a system that we consider home.

Of all the games I’ve ever played, EVE Online has a place in my heart.  I have found that I am respected, revered, immortal.  I am a Capsuleer.