I guess it was inevitable that my alt Karen Sokarad would eventually get ‘ganked’ in high sec. The game had changed so much since I had played it previously. Ganking was always there but it had become a whole subculture in the game. I really had not been aware of that at the time and so when it happened I was mildly surprised and of course feeling a bit violated. I mean lets face it – the last thing you expect when eating a bowl of porridge and listening to the morning news is to see your ship melting.
It was though quite funny, the character in game was ‘Gay Pride Booooom’ (with five ‘o’s’ don’t settle for a poor copy) and his ganking was in effect part of his campaign to join the CSM. He eve mailed me a really funny message demanding that I explain myself. As you can see the message drips with irony and is very tongue in cheek if slightly ‘barmy’. This is Eve after all!
I looked through the links and was completely bewildered, where on earth did all of this stuff come from? Who on earth were CODE? And what were they doing? None of this made any sense to me at the time. I had a lot of learning to do and clearly the game had changed a lot since I was last playing. The link at the bottom of ‘Gay Pride Booooom’s’ email takes you into an in game channel. Where you can of course explain yourself and demand compensation. I actually didn’t bother posting in the channel – I was on my way to work. I simply filed the email and headed off for the day.
As an old player coming back to the game this was all a bit of a shock. and this is the thing about Eve online – the sandbox is more than simply what you can do in game. It is what others are doing in game around you that generates a very particular ecosystem. One that really does suck you in. The best way to describe it is that it is like a spider diagram. You follow one rabbit hole after another and start to see that what you are sitting in is really quite remarkable.
I was certainly frustrated and a little bit angry at the gank. But this is the game and you have to accept it can do this to you. The thing I wasn’t prepared for however was the degree to which this had become a part of the game META. When I delved into some of the initial posts I could see some merit in what the Gankers were saying, at least initially. For a start there was my fit.
No tank, and the doom module (Survey Scanner II) in place of any kind of shield. Just embarrassing. I mean this ship would struggle in a 0.5 system against NPCs, let alone against a ganker. I wasn’t usuing anything I had learned whilst playing Moriarity on Karen. Almost like I had assumed the game was different in high sec when really it isn’t. I did sit down at this point and start to think carefully about my training programme. I was focussing on Karen’s reprocessing skills and realised after a bit of looking around that she was going to need a much better tank than what she had. This meant adjusting her training queue to accommodate a proper tank.
Within less than a week Karen faced another gank attempt. This time she survived because she had a bit of a tank fitted. The ganker was a new player who had no idea what they were doing (thankfully). The effect of this second attempt was quite profound though. I knew that her tank was not yet complete and when I did the maths it was obvious she was vulnerable. I found myself reading local and constantly checking ‘D-Scan’ something I had learned to use when on Moriarity. This however really did impact on my enjoyment of the game, I couldn’t chill out whilst playing, it made it very difficult to write this blog and play at the same time.
It was at this precise moment that I received a recruitment message from COSMOS Industrial.
I was having a bit of a rough time. I knew that staying in Alakgur was not viable. It was too close to Hek and so was always going to be a bit jittery. Gone were the days when you would be able to just chill out and play casually whilst doing a bit of browsing. Eve had changed beyond recognition and as this message very sensibly indicated. There was a lot to be gained from joining a player corporation. So I joined their recruitment channel and from that point everything started to change once more.
So I rolled another Minmatar character of the name 
Everyday Eve 