Mystic Worlds: EVE Online Trial Part II: The Devil Cashes in His Chips

It’s day four of my EVE Online (EO) trial. I have my Tristan tricked out and rolling along. I have two items in my hanger just waiting to be fitted once I complete the required skill training. The first puppy is a missile launcher. Knew nothing about them the first time I dabbled in EO. The second is a salvager that was recommended in corporation chat to all the noobs as a way of making some good cash on rat kills. Corp chat and our private noob lounge are fun and lively - lots of information sharing, tips, funny stories, hugs and waffles for people getting blown up (giving QQers waffles is a WOW forum thing) and the occasional sexually explicit commentary.

I had just returned to my local station after completing mission 9 of a 10 mission series. It was mission 8 that had gotten me blown up the day before. I was a bit anxious approaching the final task in my bright and shiny Tristan. Just as I’m about to accept the final mission, a spam goes out in corporation chat for all members to head to our Headquarters for a PVP Op. Some local pirate gang had just blown up and pod-killed four of our players and it was the last straw in a long line of aggressive behavior that must be stopped NOW. “Oh shit,” I think to my self. I am so not ready to PVP with these people. Some of us are noobs for goodness sake. What the hell is my Tristan going to do against the Battleships and Cruisers they are talking about that are amassing at the gate near our station???

I do not want to go. I really DO NOT want to go. But I felt obligated to go because for all intents and purposes, they’d actually paid for this shiny toy that I was now concerned about getting blown up. I’m panicking. Other noobs are panicking. Chat starts scrolling by at mock 5 as everyone is scrambling to figure out how the heck to even get to the HQ, which by the way, is in a .05 security zone. TeamSpeak information keeps spamming by. I don’t even know how to get to the damned HQ zone. No one is answering questions in chat. It’s just this huge chaotic mess.

It dawns on me to check the HQ listing tab, find my corporation’s name there and use that to set my destination point for auto pilot, all the while thinking, “Why is this happening, I DON’T WANT TO GO!” I undock my ship and check my flight plan which shows I’m 13 friggin’ jumps from the location. I watch more chat spam. I accept a fleet invite. Three new interface panels pop on my screen which I haven’t clue WTF they are for or how to use them.

Time passes and I’m three jumps from my destination when I notice, I’m out of ammo. “Lord no,” is the first thing that comes to mind. What a total noob-ass moment. No ammo. WTF! I say in chat that I have no ammo and of course in the scrolling stream of other conversations, no one responds with any advice. I decide to stop my auto pilot and head into the closest station to check. I do a search and, “Wah wah wah, no noob ammo here for you.” Of course, why would there be noob-grade ammo here. *Smacks head* I proceed to the next jump and check there, which produces the same result.

Now I have a decision to make. Do I just say screw it and head back to safety or I do allow the feeling of indebtedness, compel me to continue on to the front lines without ammo? The one million ISK gift won and I continued on. Before I actually made it to my final jump, they told everyone to wait and head back to a different gate because this gang – don’t know name, was grouping outside of HQ and popping people off as they undocked. Great, that’s exactly what I need to run into. As we formed outside the new gate location, they explained their stoplight command system. Red means align on the gate. Yellow means activate the gate. Green means warp out.

On TS the leader asks if everyone understands and is ready to go. I replied, “Got two drones and no ammo but I’m ready to die with my comrades!” I heard laughter and several good natured, “WTF noob” comments. A few people asked for my ammo type and then someone jettisoned a can of it for me to grab. Ammo locked and loaded, I was ready to face death. The red to green commands get shouted out. Some of the noobs don’t hear or read in chat the command to warp away on the other side too because the pirates were also waiting on the other side of the gate. While cloaked I see missiles flying, lasers pew-pewing and ships exploding.

I was one of the few that heard to warp away from the gate once you got to the other side. I’d also identified and had been watching our commander’s icon on the overview. So when he said warpped, I just followed him. With some of our fleet stuck just outside the gate and now some behind, those of us in the back went forward again to trap the pirates in the middle. Once again, I followed the rest and hoped that I had purchased a decent clone in case I was pod killed. I nervously fumbled with the mouse to launch my drone. I figured I should only attack something already being attacked, to have a better chance of doing anything significant or helpful. So that’s what I did. I set my drone on this ship that was surrounded, locked on him and unloaded while I orbited. He went down. Rinse repeat on a second target. Reinforcements show up for the bad guys and some of our folks people with very expensive ships start getting nervous that we’ll get surrounded and their big but slow ships will get iced since the fleet is mostly new players.

The Fleet Leader calls for a retreat but not back to the HQ in case that’s surrounded. I thank my lucky stars and set my destination point back to 1.0 space, grateful to have survived. I get back to relative safety in Duripant to find pirates self-destructing their ships outside the station and Concord blowing up pirates who are trying to orbit from a distance and cap noob ships near the station. All I can think is, “holy hell, the world is coming to an end and people have gone crazy.” I activated my shield booster, prayed for no lag and a crossed my fingers for a quick docking acceptance. All of which was granted and I docked safe and sound into the station.

The debriefing in chat listed (3) Battleships, (2) cruisers and (4) frigates destroyed. A few people were pod-killed too. Members who lost ships were told who to email in order to have their ships replaced. Not a bad deal and certainly didn’t know that they replaced lost ships before we headed out. It was quite the adrenaline rush but I’d had enough “fun” for the day. I said my goodbyes and logged out. Here are some pictures taken during day 3 and 4 of the trial.

Comments

Cool. That'd probably really be like it is. A rookie, new to the job, new to the ship, thrown into a space battle, worrying about the things you'd expect to be worrying about, and worrying about what "that" button does, and "that" one. Now I guess they can't take out a station. No Deathstar looming in another quadrant prepared to send a message or something. The graphics are really nice too.

Posted by: Kinless | January 10, 2008 at 12:42 PM

Haha, this story made me laugh out loud, thanks. Think all the newbies feel this way at their first fights though, but there really is nothing to worry about in just a frigate!

Posted by: Nuyan | January 10, 2008 at 01:32 PM

Fantastic writing.

I've been wanting to try Eve for a long time, and this post is stoking the little flame of interest to a bonfire. This looks like the kind of game my addictive, obsessive/compulsive self would really, really enjoy.

No time though. Must resist. It would help if you wrote poorly and your content was boring.

Posted by: Og | January 10, 2008 at 04:09 PM

Yep, sounds like a newbie diving in the deep end. I got luckier since the corp I joined was in an alliance that actually ran training ops. Spend an hour or two getting used to the idea, how to setup your overview. How not to shoot at your own side (trickier than you think if you still have auto target back on and are being supported by logistics ships). etc...

One trick you may want to try instead of "fly to the station and hope" has to do with setting the market panel (you can do this while in space) to show all the goods in a region. Then you simply search for your ammo using the search tab (faster than trying to traverse the list if you know exactly what you want) and in the details tab (once it shows up) you can sort by distance (if you're in a hurry - like trying to get to an op) or by price (if you want the best deal cuz you're buying in quantity). Then you can right click on an interesting proposition and select either set destination (if you're not in the same system as what you want to buy) or dock (if you're in the same system). You can even buy ahead of time and it'll be waiting for you when you get to the correct station to pick it up.

Don't hold it against people for failing to point this out to you earlier. Lord knows this is a complex game with more options and info than you can shake a stick at. Part of it is just learning where all the info is. Really brings home the "massive" part of MMO.

See you in game (and yes since there is only 1 server, we can run into each other) and fly safe :)

Posted by: Letrange | January 10, 2008 at 04:39 PM

Yes, it was quite the rush but I definitely had fun. It's the type of over the top experience that I crave in games. I have to admit that my hands were shaking a bit and I was more than happy the log the hell of afterward!

Thanks for the compliments and readership. If you think this was funny, what happened the next day well...I leave it for tha actual post. *wink*

Posted by: Saylah | January 10, 2008 at 05:28 PM