It's been a while since I went hunting with my fellow Hellcats. There are severe down-sides to operating at the times of day I prefer, one of them being that the majority of my corp-mates are active later and we often miss each other by a matter of minutes. The last week or so has been filled mostly with catching up on the small pile of work that's built up, punctuated by bouts of roaming solo without being able to catch anything.
It's made me a bit sad to see members leaving my first corp, Under the Wings of Fury. The guys there taught me to fly, to fight, and to have fun doing it, but even a sound, solid corporation need to take a break. Many of the members have joined corps within Sc0rched Earth alliance; only a few remain in Atrocitas alliance, and they've moved into the same general area I've been doing my roaming in. I've not had the chance yet to fleet up with my old teachers, but Samma t'huk, my replacement as Sumatox's protege, joined me for a little roam the other day, during which we failed to find anything we could take on in our frigates. We still had fun, so it wasn't really a waste of time.
A couple days later, I was in the process of overseeing my crews fitting out a few ships that had just been brought in when someone greeted me on the local comms channel. A quick check showed Kyle Langdon, Nursultan, and Jyren's Rage and eMokiLLaH from Mayhem Bros. in Local. We chatted for a bit and then I realised I was sick of logistics for the day. Opening a private channel, I asked, 'You got any room in that gang for another?'
Which was how I ended up buzzing around first Auga, then Siseide and Egghelende in a cheap Incursus for several hours. We had several near-misses on a few missioners before moving on into Egghelende, which turned out to be a veritable goldmine, if we were only willing to be patient.
Patience, for a pirate, is the ultimate virtue.
It seemed it was a good day... for Thoraxes. One, two, three in a row, and their little pods, too. I'm really digging Number Two's fit; check that thing out, I'm amazed he could even kill his mission targets. He ran when we warped in on him, then came back almost immediately and just froze at the controls as we pounced. I felt a bit sorry for him. At some point in there, we lost Nur, and Helicity joined us when a missioning battleship showed up on scan, but we missed that by like half a second. The kills were interspersed with stretches of that Zen-like state one reaches when cycling the D-scanner to locate potential targets.
Eventually I started to feel tiredness creeping up on me and headed back to my new base for the night. Once docked, I checked to see what CONCORD had taken out of my standings for my actions that night, and was stunned to see that the capsules of the pilots I'd helped kill had lopped a whopping 18.5% each from my security status. Normally, a podkill only takes 12.5%, so this is rather a drastic change. I'm suspecting someone legislated in the change in order to make attacking innocent pilots less attractive... but when you're focussed on working your way to a perfect -10.0, this is actually a boon. Thanks, CONCORD!
Showing posts with label why i yarr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label why i yarr. Show all posts
Monday, 6 July 2009
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Lurking for Fun and Profit
You know... I'm not really certain how last night happened.
The corp has had a lot of recruits in the last couple weeks, bringing the Hellcats membership up to eighteen. We've come a long way in the eight months since I joined, but it means extra work for the Hellcats command staff -- Mynx and I had a chat the other day and we decided that Venom Orchid had earned the trust and responsibility of being a corp director. Not bad for a girl who joined after hearing I'd shot and downed her sister in a baiting attempt!
I was working away in my office making up for the time I'd lost on Saturday and listening in on voice comms when I heard 'sniping Abaddon in Las', 'mostly tackle, here' and 'need more dps'.
Without hesitation, I turned my transmission on. 'You guys want me out there in the Myrm?'
What followed was a bit confusing, but the sniping battleship seemed to disappear, there was a gang in Todifreauan we thought we could handle which suddenly decided to go somewhere else, and then there was a Dominix in a mission who had a scout sitting on his entrance-gate. We did pick up a load of free t2 heavy drones there, but it was a somewhat disappointing evening. Especially sitting in a battlecruiser: it means that all those targets you have to let pass you on the gates are suddenly viable because your tank can take the damage from the sentry guns.
Piracy is a very hit-or-miss profession: either you get it and go home with fat pockets or you go hungry another day.
I ended up on the Lasleinur gate waiting for the go to jump in and in the end a Caracal got tackled by Bastards recruits Jmarr and Happy San and the call was made to leave it to the smaller ships -- something I agreed with, because it feels just plain wrong to send against a target any amount of ships that total more than the target's hull-mass, a sentiment I picked up from Tical31 in Doom Armada. The Caracal ceased to exist, and then the pod was caught.
And then someone had the brilliant idea of seeing how long they could just hold the pod in space. I'm not certain what the point was; maybe just milking the smack cow, or maybe it was a personal challenge. In the end, someone got an itchy trigger and the pod popped after eleven minutes while we waited to see how many of his mates would come to the rescue. None arrived, however, and we returned to Evati.
I swapped to my Taranis. I've been loving flying interceptors lately; the size and agility make things fun, and at the end of the day, I've always been more of a small-ships pilot.
Flash decided it was time to range further afield in our search for a fight; he sent me out towards Otosela. I had a close encounter of the Blinky Thrasher kind on the Akkio gate in Todifrauan; not fancying my chances -- Thrashers, when properly set up, are fearsome frigate-killing platforms -- I jumped in and picked a safespot to warp to.
My spot just happened to be in line with the Tama gate, and it was clear the destroyer pilot did very much fancy his chances taking me out, because he warped to Tama, hung about at the gate for a bit, jumped in, then came back. By that point we had RoninData in Akkio too, with me playing bait on a planet for his Rapier, but the destroyer pilot I think knew trouble when he saw it and left.
Otosela, when I checked, didn't look like a very pirate-friendly environment: twenty in local, mostly members of Rote Kapelle alliance, several of whom were waiting out GCCs somewhere in the system. I may still be on speaking terms with members of Stimulus, but I know better than to test my luck.
Just about then, someone spotted a mission-running Rokh in Evati. The pilot had been drifting around for a few days, but this was the first time we had seen her actually doing anything -- and in such a juicy ride, too. The pilot entered and left the system a few times, with everyone desperately checking the nearby systems to find out where she was going, until one of our newer members who hasn't yet lost all her security status checked Anher and caught the Rokh returning.
The tankers huddled around Anher gate, awaiting the telltale flare of the returning battleship. When it finally appeared -- 35km from the camp! -- the pilot beat a blazing trail away... towards the top asteroid belt. The gatecamp split as pilots went to either the belt or the planet, just in case, and the rest of us waiting in Todifrauan jumped in and aligned.
Jmarr hit the belt first, and there was the Rokh, sitting at 0 to the beacon, fresh out of warp and too slow to get away. Tackle was called, and we quickly surrounded the battleship, pinning it in place while the confused pilot was offered ransom terms. In the end, she had only 147 of the 150 million demanded, but this was considered an acceptable compromise.
Guess it was a fat-pockets day, after all!
The corp has had a lot of recruits in the last couple weeks, bringing the Hellcats membership up to eighteen. We've come a long way in the eight months since I joined, but it means extra work for the Hellcats command staff -- Mynx and I had a chat the other day and we decided that Venom Orchid had earned the trust and responsibility of being a corp director. Not bad for a girl who joined after hearing I'd shot and downed her sister in a baiting attempt!
I was working away in my office making up for the time I'd lost on Saturday and listening in on voice comms when I heard 'sniping Abaddon in Las', 'mostly tackle, here' and 'need more dps'.
Without hesitation, I turned my transmission on. 'You guys want me out there in the Myrm?'
What followed was a bit confusing, but the sniping battleship seemed to disappear, there was a gang in Todifreauan we thought we could handle which suddenly decided to go somewhere else, and then there was a Dominix in a mission who had a scout sitting on his entrance-gate. We did pick up a load of free t2 heavy drones there, but it was a somewhat disappointing evening. Especially sitting in a battlecruiser: it means that all those targets you have to let pass you on the gates are suddenly viable because your tank can take the damage from the sentry guns.
Piracy is a very hit-or-miss profession: either you get it and go home with fat pockets or you go hungry another day.
I ended up on the Lasleinur gate waiting for the go to jump in and in the end a Caracal got tackled by Bastards recruits Jmarr and Happy San and the call was made to leave it to the smaller ships -- something I agreed with, because it feels just plain wrong to send against a target any amount of ships that total more than the target's hull-mass, a sentiment I picked up from Tical31 in Doom Armada. The Caracal ceased to exist, and then the pod was caught.
And then someone had the brilliant idea of seeing how long they could just hold the pod in space. I'm not certain what the point was; maybe just milking the smack cow, or maybe it was a personal challenge. In the end, someone got an itchy trigger and the pod popped after eleven minutes while we waited to see how many of his mates would come to the rescue. None arrived, however, and we returned to Evati.
I swapped to my Taranis. I've been loving flying interceptors lately; the size and agility make things fun, and at the end of the day, I've always been more of a small-ships pilot.
Flash decided it was time to range further afield in our search for a fight; he sent me out towards Otosela. I had a close encounter of the Blinky Thrasher kind on the Akkio gate in Todifrauan; not fancying my chances -- Thrashers, when properly set up, are fearsome frigate-killing platforms -- I jumped in and picked a safespot to warp to.
My spot just happened to be in line with the Tama gate, and it was clear the destroyer pilot did very much fancy his chances taking me out, because he warped to Tama, hung about at the gate for a bit, jumped in, then came back. By that point we had RoninData in Akkio too, with me playing bait on a planet for his Rapier, but the destroyer pilot I think knew trouble when he saw it and left.
Otosela, when I checked, didn't look like a very pirate-friendly environment: twenty in local, mostly members of Rote Kapelle alliance, several of whom were waiting out GCCs somewhere in the system. I may still be on speaking terms with members of Stimulus, but I know better than to test my luck.
Just about then, someone spotted a mission-running Rokh in Evati. The pilot had been drifting around for a few days, but this was the first time we had seen her actually doing anything -- and in such a juicy ride, too. The pilot entered and left the system a few times, with everyone desperately checking the nearby systems to find out where she was going, until one of our newer members who hasn't yet lost all her security status checked Anher and caught the Rokh returning.
The tankers huddled around Anher gate, awaiting the telltale flare of the returning battleship. When it finally appeared -- 35km from the camp! -- the pilot beat a blazing trail away... towards the top asteroid belt. The gatecamp split as pilots went to either the belt or the planet, just in case, and the rest of us waiting in Todifrauan jumped in and aligned.
Jmarr hit the belt first, and there was the Rokh, sitting at 0 to the beacon, fresh out of warp and too slow to get away. Tackle was called, and we quickly surrounded the battleship, pinning it in place while the confused pilot was offered ransom terms. In the end, she had only 147 of the 150 million demanded, but this was considered an acceptable compromise.
Guess it was a fat-pockets day, after all!
Friday, 19 December 2008
God, I love my work...
You know you're in the right line of business when you walk into the alliance lounge in time to hear someone asking:
'Hey, you want to pay me for that hulk we stole over a month ago?'...and it gives you the warm fuzzies.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
We Did Warn You...
We may have paid ME4N a visit with intent to play a little off the station.
They may have decided to return to their base system to roll out the big guns.
We may have laid a little smackdown.
Yarr >=3
And BOOYAH! for my Ninjaperion kicking Annapolis off the station on the second run. Tha's fer jamming me t'other night! Get in!
They may have decided to return to their base system to roll out the big guns.
We may have laid a little smackdown.
Yarr >=3
And BOOYAH! for my Ninjaperion kicking Annapolis off the station on the second run. Tha's fer jamming me t'other night! Get in!
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Morning Messages
After a late night of tangling with a Southern Cross Alliance gang in nullsec (and what, my dears, were you doing in Warp To Desktop space, hmmm?), I allowed myself a luxurious lie-in this morning, enjoying the warmth and knowing there was nothing I had to do today. I rather missed Chu, but he'd finally been pressured into visiting his family for a week and it was doubtful I'd escape notice from the highsec planetary police for that long.
So I lay there a while, curled up and happy and lulled into a doze from the hum of the station around me. It was much better than yesterday, where a nightmare about being trapped in Yulai in my Taranis with CONCORD on my heels, the gates closed and the stations denying me docking rights, left me hauling myself groggily out of bed at insane o'clock and just going right to work because there was no way I could sleep after that. At last, the quiet grumblings of my caffeine addiction lured me out from under the duvet and into the kitchenette to make my morning coffee. As I waited for the Blessed Liquid to percolate, I fired up the computer and checked my messages.
My old alliance, Atrocitas, had gone to our industrialist mate's defense in wardeccing both the corporations -- hulks r us and Virtual Eclipse Industrial Technology -- who had laid claim to the system they'd been harassing him in. By their own admission, these miners have a reputation for griefing outsiders until they no longer want to stay in Kakki, and Atrox doesn't stand for that sort of highsec wanker nonsense. It warmed my heart to see my old mates, their sec cleaned up and highsec-capable once more, going right back into the habit of griefing the griefers. It's a small-time, unpaid sort of fresh start for them, but it'll be something fun to do while they get back into the swing of mercenary work after nearly a year outside of Empire space.
Normally, I don't bother with the news unless something catches my eye. Today's headline did. 'Mistake Costs Pilot Billions'. These are worth reading, sometimes, if only because you learn not to do what the other guy did. Oh, alright, you also get to laugh about the other guy's stupidity. A quote towards the end snagged in the back of my head, and I found myself saying, 'Wrong!' out loud.
The quote? 'Had the Obelisk been piloted by a BoB pilot, I would have helped him out and given all the items back without blinking ... you pick a side, even if you are not in the Big War.'
Maybe it's just me and the company I associate with, but had it been me nicking the loot, I'd not have given it back no matter which side they were on. Who says you have to pick a side? If I went into their space and they would shoot me without a second thought, then why should I support any of them? I've been shot at by PL, by Goons, by Snigg, BoB, Razor and RA; I've had friendly chats with people from all of them, too. As the saying goes, I'm not prejudiced: I'll shoot anyone, and save a few rare exceptions, it's never personal.
Why is it people feel they have to choose a side? I grumbled. Nobody is wholly in the right or the wrong, ever; what I understand of the conflict is that it's just a massive contest to see who can piss on the other's cake the most while still leaving an edible slice they can swipe afterward. Let them beat each other up until there's nobody left, while we play in their back gardens and steal their pies. It's all good.
Though that could just be because I'd not yet had my morning coffee.
So I lay there a while, curled up and happy and lulled into a doze from the hum of the station around me. It was much better than yesterday, where a nightmare about being trapped in Yulai in my Taranis with CONCORD on my heels, the gates closed and the stations denying me docking rights, left me hauling myself groggily out of bed at insane o'clock and just going right to work because there was no way I could sleep after that. At last, the quiet grumblings of my caffeine addiction lured me out from under the duvet and into the kitchenette to make my morning coffee. As I waited for the Blessed Liquid to percolate, I fired up the computer and checked my messages.
My old alliance, Atrocitas, had gone to our industrialist mate's defense in wardeccing both the corporations -- hulks r us and Virtual Eclipse Industrial Technology -- who had laid claim to the system they'd been harassing him in. By their own admission, these miners have a reputation for griefing outsiders until they no longer want to stay in Kakki, and Atrox doesn't stand for that sort of highsec wanker nonsense. It warmed my heart to see my old mates, their sec cleaned up and highsec-capable once more, going right back into the habit of griefing the griefers. It's a small-time, unpaid sort of fresh start for them, but it'll be something fun to do while they get back into the swing of mercenary work after nearly a year outside of Empire space.
Normally, I don't bother with the news unless something catches my eye. Today's headline did. 'Mistake Costs Pilot Billions'. These are worth reading, sometimes, if only because you learn not to do what the other guy did. Oh, alright, you also get to laugh about the other guy's stupidity. A quote towards the end snagged in the back of my head, and I found myself saying, 'Wrong!' out loud.
The quote? 'Had the Obelisk been piloted by a BoB pilot, I would have helped him out and given all the items back without blinking ... you pick a side, even if you are not in the Big War.'
Maybe it's just me and the company I associate with, but had it been me nicking the loot, I'd not have given it back no matter which side they were on. Who says you have to pick a side? If I went into their space and they would shoot me without a second thought, then why should I support any of them? I've been shot at by PL, by Goons, by Snigg, BoB, Razor and RA; I've had friendly chats with people from all of them, too. As the saying goes, I'm not prejudiced: I'll shoot anyone, and save a few rare exceptions, it's never personal.
Why is it people feel they have to choose a side? I grumbled. Nobody is wholly in the right or the wrong, ever; what I understand of the conflict is that it's just a massive contest to see who can piss on the other's cake the most while still leaving an edible slice they can swipe afterward. Let them beat each other up until there's nobody left, while we play in their back gardens and steal their pies. It's all good.
Though that could just be because I'd not yet had my morning coffee.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Tickled Red
I logged in a couple days ago, and in one of my channels two of my friends cracked up laughing.
Now, see, I like being neutral in the larger issues of Eve politics. No diplomatic stress, no land-grabbing POS wars. I mean no offense to anyone who does care about it, but the larger player-based issues mean little to me (except when I heard BoB pets had forced Atrocitas out of Arzi -- you used to be able to look at ship-kills for the past hour and that system glowed red, man, it was beautiful! And now it's dead... makes Shae a sad kitty) and anyone who wanders through is a potential target unless deliberately set to blue for us or the Bastards.
I love a good story, so I asked Sicks, our alliance CEO, what had happened:
I'm a nice girl, really...
Freyya > yay! shae's red now too :PIt seems the movement of Doom Armada to Derelik has opened up a whole new brand of targets; namely, CVA and friends.
Shae Tiann > what'd I do this time?
Tavon Wulfe > Hehe I find it amusing to see Freyya's alliance blue to KOR... and Shae's red to KOR
Now, see, I like being neutral in the larger issues of Eve politics. No diplomatic stress, no land-grabbing POS wars. I mean no offense to anyone who does care about it, but the larger player-based issues mean little to me (except when I heard BoB pets had forced Atrocitas out of Arzi -- you used to be able to look at ship-kills for the past hour and that system glowed red, man, it was beautiful! And now it's dead... makes Shae a sad kitty) and anyone who wanders through is a potential target unless deliberately set to blue for us or the Bastards.
I love a good story, so I asked Sicks, our alliance CEO, what had happened:
Shae Tiann > Sicks, Doom Armada is set red to CVA and friendsNo offense intended to CVA, but that attitude makes me want to stick a jumpclone out there and join the party. It's the same attitude that started the war in Arzi between Atrocitas and Mashen T'plak nearly a year ago. I don't know what it is, precisely. Maybe it's the assumption that everyone is there to play 'nice' and will gratefully join the happy little Barney & Friends troupe when given the option. It makes me want to shoot things. Their things, to be precise. Just for spite.
Shae Tiann > jsyk
Sicks > woohoo!
Sicks > that was quick
Shae Tiann > how long you been out there? a day?
Shae Tiann > :p
Sicks > like 3
Sicks > but so far i've received like 4 or 5 mails about people wanting their ships refunded
Sicks > and last night some guy was yelling at mattu for 'performing an act of piracy, which is against CVA rules'
Sicks > he asked me to join a channel so i could see who we're allowed to shoot and who we're not allowed to shoot
Sicks > and when i told him we didnt give a shit about cva's rules he asked me to join a different channel so i could speak to a diplomat and get my standings sorted
Sicks > it was like, cmon buddy, i think you're missing the point
I'm a nice girl, really...
Monday, 10 November 2008
Who do you think we are?
About a week ago, I spent a day simply chilling out in Decon: not hunting, not even thinking of popping the odd pilot who passed through occasionally. I made safespots; I probed out a few of the clutches of lost and abandoned drones which litter the system; I lazed in space simply because it was quiet and I could.
Towards the end of the evening, as I was preparing to turn in for the night, a rookie pilot entered the system. I'd spotted her a bit earlier on the scanner: fresh out of the academy a couple days before, flying a Velator and spending long minutes in a belt. One thing I try not to do is attack raw rookies without being aggressed by them first -- for starters, it really isn't fair to them as they have so little in the first place. For another matter, losing ships so early to a callous bastard who really doesn't care that they've just destroyed another pilot's only possession of worth, can discourage a rookie into leaving the capsule permanently; at the very least, it can give them a jaundiced view of pirates.
So I left her alone to her mining or whatever. This time, though, she started speaking in the Local channels.
'Excuse me? Anyone here?'
Perhaps it's my mothering instincts, largely beaten into submission, which encourage me to help people -- I used to leave the Rookie Assistance comms channel open, paying careful attention to find the serious pilots whose genuine questions were being drowned out by the mewling masses. There weren't many people in Decon by that point, and since nobody else responded, I did.
The rookie wanted to know about mining, bless her. Mining in a Velator in lowsec... she said someone had told her to go there, and my first thought was You bastard, sending a newbie into a kill zone, though for all I knew, she could have been working with a gang of antipirates to try to draw the evil denizens of Decon out into a firefight. So I was honest. I told her she was welcome to try mining and advised she see about acquiring an Imicus frigate as soon as she could, but warned that I could make no guarantees for her safety, and explained why lowsec is called 'low-sec'.
At which point one of the randoms in Local suggested that I had a gang prepping in the next system, and didn't believe me when I honestly said they were all off duty.
This is what I mean by people having a jaundiced view of pirates. I'm speaking politely and being helpful, and someone suggests I'm trying to lull the rookie pilot into a false sense of security so my 'gang' can stomp on her with hobnailed boots!
Now, firstly, had I actually wanted to kill the rookie... I'd have done it myself, in something frigate-sized. Don't need a bloody gang for a two-day-old target in a Velator, and suggesting otherwise is insulting.
But what offended me more was the implication that I was the kind of cad who would stab someone in the back as soon as their guard was down. I may be a pirate, my security status may be nearly as far down as it can go, I may shoot freighters and take advantage of a combat-prepped opponent's moment of inattention and not have my conscience too bothered by it, but... deception is not my style. The few times I've been involved with someone who has used deception as a tactic, I've felt dirty for it. I'm a bastard, but an honest woman at the same time.
It's not the first time I've been accused of this, either. When I was in Atrocitas, for a few nights a friend and I went to another system to run missions, and someone there called us cowards, informed us that we would never survive in proper nullsec, then undocked a carrier on my friend's battleship whilst staying within dock-range. When I was in Tygris Alliance, one member of another corp mentioned that I had surprised him by 'not being another lame-ass pirate and resorting to smacktalk'; with Universal Securities, there were times I wasn't certain I could trust my own corpmates to not turn on me simply for my outlaw status.
Are other pirates truely so bad? Or is it an unjustly-earned reputation based upon the expectations of others?
In the experience I've had in the last year, since Atrocitas returned to piracy from their mercenary stint, I've received more verbal abuse and enmity from non-pirates and antipirates than from those who, like myself, make our living from successful ransomings and selling off loot. I do realise we are disliked and mistrusted for our means of survival, and that certainly there are pirates - both individuals and groups - who resort to deception and cowardly tactics to make their living. But on the whole, the pirates of my acquaintance have been a likeable lot, and honourable in that rogueish-highwayman sort of way which so many songs romanticise. They socialise, care for their corpmates and associates, and have as keen a grasp on Right vs Wrong as anyone else. Their approach to their work, illegal though it may be, is nonetheless professional and possessing of a certain level of decorum.
It's not the being hunted that I mind -- that part is to be expected, and is even welcomed, as it assures a regular stream of targets. It's the attitude with which we are approached which is disappointing, and based on my personal experiences, I have to wonder if we pirates have genuinely earned such vitriol, or if those who love to hate us are ascribing to us values -- or lack thereof -- which are not our own. It's refreshing to encounter an antipirate who is pleasant and has a good attitude towards his quarry: the fights are fun, genuine tests of a pilot's mettle, and we feel they can be trusted to honour a 1v1 challenge in the way a more bad-tempered hunter cannot.
Perhaps it's simply the basic human need to feel that one is better than another, a mindset responsible for millennia of conflict. Perhaps it is simply bad PR and the actions of the few tainting the reputations of the rest, or in a few cases, an issue of self-projection -- 'I would do that, therefore I believe you would, too, if given the chance'. Whatever the reason, it should be noted that pirates, like everyone else, will respond better when approached as human beings rather than wild animals.
...Although if someone does feel the need to vent their rage, such conversations can and will be saved off in pirates' logs, to be shared later over drinks with friends for a hearty laugh!
Towards the end of the evening, as I was preparing to turn in for the night, a rookie pilot entered the system. I'd spotted her a bit earlier on the scanner: fresh out of the academy a couple days before, flying a Velator and spending long minutes in a belt. One thing I try not to do is attack raw rookies without being aggressed by them first -- for starters, it really isn't fair to them as they have so little in the first place. For another matter, losing ships so early to a callous bastard who really doesn't care that they've just destroyed another pilot's only possession of worth, can discourage a rookie into leaving the capsule permanently; at the very least, it can give them a jaundiced view of pirates.
So I left her alone to her mining or whatever. This time, though, she started speaking in the Local channels.
'Excuse me? Anyone here?'
Perhaps it's my mothering instincts, largely beaten into submission, which encourage me to help people -- I used to leave the Rookie Assistance comms channel open, paying careful attention to find the serious pilots whose genuine questions were being drowned out by the mewling masses. There weren't many people in Decon by that point, and since nobody else responded, I did.
The rookie wanted to know about mining, bless her. Mining in a Velator in lowsec... she said someone had told her to go there, and my first thought was You bastard, sending a newbie into a kill zone, though for all I knew, she could have been working with a gang of antipirates to try to draw the evil denizens of Decon out into a firefight. So I was honest. I told her she was welcome to try mining and advised she see about acquiring an Imicus frigate as soon as she could, but warned that I could make no guarantees for her safety, and explained why lowsec is called 'low-sec'.
At which point one of the randoms in Local suggested that I had a gang prepping in the next system, and didn't believe me when I honestly said they were all off duty.
This is what I mean by people having a jaundiced view of pirates. I'm speaking politely and being helpful, and someone suggests I'm trying to lull the rookie pilot into a false sense of security so my 'gang' can stomp on her with hobnailed boots!
Now, firstly, had I actually wanted to kill the rookie... I'd have done it myself, in something frigate-sized. Don't need a bloody gang for a two-day-old target in a Velator, and suggesting otherwise is insulting.
But what offended me more was the implication that I was the kind of cad who would stab someone in the back as soon as their guard was down. I may be a pirate, my security status may be nearly as far down as it can go, I may shoot freighters and take advantage of a combat-prepped opponent's moment of inattention and not have my conscience too bothered by it, but... deception is not my style. The few times I've been involved with someone who has used deception as a tactic, I've felt dirty for it. I'm a bastard, but an honest woman at the same time.
It's not the first time I've been accused of this, either. When I was in Atrocitas, for a few nights a friend and I went to another system to run missions, and someone there called us cowards, informed us that we would never survive in proper nullsec, then undocked a carrier on my friend's battleship whilst staying within dock-range. When I was in Tygris Alliance, one member of another corp mentioned that I had surprised him by 'not being another lame-ass pirate and resorting to smacktalk'; with Universal Securities, there were times I wasn't certain I could trust my own corpmates to not turn on me simply for my outlaw status.
Are other pirates truely so bad? Or is it an unjustly-earned reputation based upon the expectations of others?
In the experience I've had in the last year, since Atrocitas returned to piracy from their mercenary stint, I've received more verbal abuse and enmity from non-pirates and antipirates than from those who, like myself, make our living from successful ransomings and selling off loot. I do realise we are disliked and mistrusted for our means of survival, and that certainly there are pirates - both individuals and groups - who resort to deception and cowardly tactics to make their living. But on the whole, the pirates of my acquaintance have been a likeable lot, and honourable in that rogueish-highwayman sort of way which so many songs romanticise. They socialise, care for their corpmates and associates, and have as keen a grasp on Right vs Wrong as anyone else. Their approach to their work, illegal though it may be, is nonetheless professional and possessing of a certain level of decorum.
It's not the being hunted that I mind -- that part is to be expected, and is even welcomed, as it assures a regular stream of targets. It's the attitude with which we are approached which is disappointing, and based on my personal experiences, I have to wonder if we pirates have genuinely earned such vitriol, or if those who love to hate us are ascribing to us values -- or lack thereof -- which are not our own. It's refreshing to encounter an antipirate who is pleasant and has a good attitude towards his quarry: the fights are fun, genuine tests of a pilot's mettle, and we feel they can be trusted to honour a 1v1 challenge in the way a more bad-tempered hunter cannot.
Perhaps it's simply the basic human need to feel that one is better than another, a mindset responsible for millennia of conflict. Perhaps it is simply bad PR and the actions of the few tainting the reputations of the rest, or in a few cases, an issue of self-projection -- 'I would do that, therefore I believe you would, too, if given the chance'. Whatever the reason, it should be noted that pirates, like everyone else, will respond better when approached as human beings rather than wild animals.
...Although if someone does feel the need to vent their rage, such conversations can and will be saved off in pirates' logs, to be shared later over drinks with friends for a hearty laugh!
Sunday, 28 September 2008
'You chose poverty when you chose piracy.'
My sec has been dropping like a rock snce I decided to spend some time chilling out in Decon. The guys are fun to hang out with, so even the slow times are fun. And my Combat Log isn't depressing me anymore. I took a look at it an hour ago and before the latest cluster of kills - including three podmails in a row, somehow - there is a long gap of inactivity spanning 127 days.
A hundred and twenty-seven days.
That's roughly four months. The most recent kill other than the Doom Armada series is from just before I left Atrocitas. Granted, three of the weeks I was in Righteous Indignation with Tygris Alliance, I was out of the country and lacking proper access to Eve (installed on my WoW-addict kid brother's computer so I could pop in to say 'hi' while my bro was at work). That still leaves over three months of relative inactivity.
I can correlate those four months to a few specifics ingame and in Life:
- The steady decrease in my wallet, as Tygris paid no recompense for losses, nor shared loot from kills equally (there being so many people on each kill that it wouldn't have made much of an impression, anyway).
- Loss of self-confidence in Real Life (depression and general head-fuckedness; it happens and it's over now, thank god)
- Not being with a group that made me feel confident about doing things ingame.
Whenever I would complain of not actually being able to afford to lose ships, the CEO of UnSec was fond of telling me that I'd chosen ingame poverty when I'd selected piracy as a profession. But I can look at the chart of my Eve lifetime and see that it's the reverse which is more accurate.
I'd had my share of losses, and I did pay for my first bs with a complex piece of artwork, but my time in Atrocitas was very good to me up until the end when the dynamic began to change and I was already well into my Real Life slump. You'll all get a chuckle out of this: I was in enough of a state, mentally, that I did agonise a bit over the moral implications of pirating - the reactions I started getting to my increasingly low sec status made me wonder why it was such a big deal to everyone else.
When I joined a nullsec alliance, I was under the impression that it would boost me up again, but instead everything slowly ground to a halt; I suffered some losses which were enormously expensive to me, with no compensation from corp or alliance, and eked by on selling rigs in highsec and the charity of some close friends. I was able to support myself a bit on Syndicate rats, but then Tygris policies changed, relegating the entire alliance to three systems for NPC-hunting, and that cut off both the meagre ISK flow and the slow sec-climb I'd been keen on at the time. The impression I got from my few forays into alliance ops was that we were nothing more than DPS sponges, to kill or be killed, and if we died then it was just too bad and we needed to have another combat-worthy ship ready to go immediately. There was no sense of group cohesion or caring for your wingman, no patience with the questions I asked as I attempted to settle in, and the result was that I had no confidence in the CEOs, the FCs, or the alliance and allies as a whole.
UnSec was, at the start, a refreshing change - back to lowsec and freedom to profit from others' losses, with the intention to guerrilla-warfare a bunch of nearby-nullsec blobbers in our spare time... but nobody was ever on in the right places, at the right times. We can blame Summer Slump for this, in part. But it never improved, the CEO went a bit batshit when the Dev Blog regarding speed nerfs went out, and over time everything just slowly dribbled halfheartedly through the rotors in a semi-liquid slurry.
And now? Now, I can think about buying a certain tech-2 cruiser I've been eyeing up, and the skillbooks to go with her. I can fly my battleship without worrying if I can afford to replace her, and the idea of taking on larger ships with a gang of cruisers doesn't leave me asking what our chances are. I haven't lost a single ship since I joined Hellcats and returned to what I know best, where I started.
Perhaps my former CEO wasn't so successful with piracy; perhaps he was just expressing his feelings in that black-or-white way of his, where everything is in extremes and absolutes. If it wasn't so easy to live off of piracy in Eve, it wouldn't be an ingame career choice to begin with, nor so common an occurrence.
A hundred and twenty-seven days.
That's roughly four months. The most recent kill other than the Doom Armada series is from just before I left Atrocitas. Granted, three of the weeks I was in Righteous Indignation with Tygris Alliance, I was out of the country and lacking proper access to Eve (installed on my WoW-addict kid brother's computer so I could pop in to say 'hi' while my bro was at work). That still leaves over three months of relative inactivity.
I can correlate those four months to a few specifics ingame and in Life:
- The steady decrease in my wallet, as Tygris paid no recompense for losses, nor shared loot from kills equally (there being so many people on each kill that it wouldn't have made much of an impression, anyway).
- Loss of self-confidence in Real Life (depression and general head-fuckedness; it happens and it's over now, thank god)
- Not being with a group that made me feel confident about doing things ingame.
Whenever I would complain of not actually being able to afford to lose ships, the CEO of UnSec was fond of telling me that I'd chosen ingame poverty when I'd selected piracy as a profession. But I can look at the chart of my Eve lifetime and see that it's the reverse which is more accurate.
I'd had my share of losses, and I did pay for my first bs with a complex piece of artwork, but my time in Atrocitas was very good to me up until the end when the dynamic began to change and I was already well into my Real Life slump. You'll all get a chuckle out of this: I was in enough of a state, mentally, that I did agonise a bit over the moral implications of pirating - the reactions I started getting to my increasingly low sec status made me wonder why it was such a big deal to everyone else.
When I joined a nullsec alliance, I was under the impression that it would boost me up again, but instead everything slowly ground to a halt; I suffered some losses which were enormously expensive to me, with no compensation from corp or alliance, and eked by on selling rigs in highsec and the charity of some close friends. I was able to support myself a bit on Syndicate rats, but then Tygris policies changed, relegating the entire alliance to three systems for NPC-hunting, and that cut off both the meagre ISK flow and the slow sec-climb I'd been keen on at the time. The impression I got from my few forays into alliance ops was that we were nothing more than DPS sponges, to kill or be killed, and if we died then it was just too bad and we needed to have another combat-worthy ship ready to go immediately. There was no sense of group cohesion or caring for your wingman, no patience with the questions I asked as I attempted to settle in, and the result was that I had no confidence in the CEOs, the FCs, or the alliance and allies as a whole.
UnSec was, at the start, a refreshing change - back to lowsec and freedom to profit from others' losses, with the intention to guerrilla-warfare a bunch of nearby-nullsec blobbers in our spare time... but nobody was ever on in the right places, at the right times. We can blame Summer Slump for this, in part. But it never improved, the CEO went a bit batshit when the Dev Blog regarding speed nerfs went out, and over time everything just slowly dribbled halfheartedly through the rotors in a semi-liquid slurry.
And now? Now, I can think about buying a certain tech-2 cruiser I've been eyeing up, and the skillbooks to go with her. I can fly my battleship without worrying if I can afford to replace her, and the idea of taking on larger ships with a gang of cruisers doesn't leave me asking what our chances are. I haven't lost a single ship since I joined Hellcats and returned to what I know best, where I started.
Perhaps my former CEO wasn't so successful with piracy; perhaps he was just expressing his feelings in that black-or-white way of his, where everything is in extremes and absolutes. If it wasn't so easy to live off of piracy in Eve, it wouldn't be an ingame career choice to begin with, nor so common an occurrence.
Thursday, 25 September 2008
The kind of stuff they would arrest people for in the Real World
Earlier today, someone attempted to invite me to a fleet whilst I was afk. I couldn't place the name, but I knew I'd seen the corp around somewhere in the last week or so. I asked around, but nobody knew.
I should have checked our killboards.
He convo'd me again later this evening.
Yes, that would indeed be the second hate-convo (not hate-mail, mind you; nobody's ever sent me hate-mail) I have ever received. It is also the first ingame death-threat I've ever been issued.
\o/
I feel like I've passed some sort of benchmark test of Eve Online bastardry. He lost an Omen that night for sitting out in a belt in lowsec with known pirates at large in the system. Now he states a desire to avenge his own idiocy, and I sat there and laughed my arse off for ten minutes.
Scyrus, m' dear, in all sincerity, I wish you the best of luck. Come visit Decon when you feel up to it. You have all the time in the world: your killrights are only valid for a limited time, but I'm an outlaw. Just make certain you ask for 1v1 before jumping in, or you'll lose that shiny battleship before you get your chance for revenge.
(Oh, btw, it's spelled 'Abaddon')
I should have checked our killboards.
He convo'd me again later this evening.
[ 2008.09.25 21:48:54 ] Shae Tiann > Hello?
[ 2008.09.25 21:48:56 ] Scyrusx > hello
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:07 ] Scyrusx > im not sure how i ended up talking to you lol
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:23 ] Shae Tiann > you tried to invite me to a fleet earlier when I was afk ^_^
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:40 ] Scyrusx > oh thats because you podded me u crazy sob
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:43 ] Scyrusx > lol
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:45 ] Shae Tiann > what?
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:47 ] Scyrusx > im gonna kill you
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:50 ] Scyrusx > for podding me
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:51 ] Shae Tiann > lol
[ 2008.09.25 21:49:54 ] Scyrusx > yyeeeeaaa
[ 2008.09.25 21:50:06 ] Shae Tiann > not podded someone in ages...
[ 2008.09.25 21:50:11 ] Scyrusx > lol
[ 2008.09.25 21:50:22 ] Shae Tiann > I'm an innocent lil carebear, me...
[ 2008.09.25 21:50:32 ] Scyrusx >2008.09.23 23:45:00[ 2008.09.25 21:50:39 ] Scyrusx > a crew member of yours
Victim: Scyrusx
Corp: Manufact Co.
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Capsule
System: Siseide
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 398
Involved parties:
Name: Mynxee (laid the final blow)...
[ 2008.09.25 21:50:43 ] Shae Tiann > oh, was that you? ^__^
[ 2008.09.25 21:50:51 ] Shae Tiann > that's my ceo
[ 2008.09.25 21:51:00 ] Scyrusx > lol
[ 2008.09.25 21:51:07 ] Scyrusx > for some reason i have kill rights on you
[ 2008.09.25 21:51:27 ] Shae Tiann > yeah, I had a warp scram on you
[ 2008.09.25 21:51:45 ] Shae Tiann > :>
[ 2008.09.25 21:51:46 ] Scyrusx > oh, well if you see my abbadon just be worried :)
[ 2008.09.25 21:51:54 ] Scyrusx > ttfn
[ 2008.09.25 21:51:57 ] Shae Tiann > fair enough :)
Yes, that would indeed be the second hate-convo (not hate-mail, mind you; nobody's ever sent me hate-mail) I have ever received. It is also the first ingame death-threat I've ever been issued.
\o/
I feel like I've passed some sort of benchmark test of Eve Online bastardry. He lost an Omen that night for sitting out in a belt in lowsec with known pirates at large in the system. Now he states a desire to avenge his own idiocy, and I sat there and laughed my arse off for ten minutes.
Scyrus, m' dear, in all sincerity, I wish you the best of luck. Come visit Decon when you feel up to it. You have all the time in the world: your killrights are only valid for a limited time, but I'm an outlaw. Just make certain you ask for 1v1 before jumping in, or you'll lose that shiny battleship before you get your chance for revenge.
(Oh, btw, it's spelled 'Abaddon')
Fun with Capital Ships
'IAC and ex-Etheral Dawn in here? Man, we're gonna have to scrub the system down.'I was semi-afk working on an art commission and doing my standard semi-afk thing of listening to comms and checking out the neutrals in Local. My bio contains the line 'While you're reading my bio, I'm checking out your standings and employment history', and it's true. I'd spotted the aforementioned characters at a glance - I have friends who left IAC, and my earliest encounter with other players was being insulted by Yal XianKun, ceo of AIAA. Not that I would need an excuse to shoot someone, but the ex-ED guy would have been the icing.
It was a slowish night, after the excitement of the previous night's run. I'd logged in just as the guys had decided to surprise a freighter friend with their carriers, then scored a tasty kill as a Fleet Issue Mega jumped through after the hauler (there's some debate about whether it had been intending to try for the freighter, or just happened to be coming through at the same time). The ex-ED guy disappeared from the system, and the IAC pilot docked up in something small and logged as well. The guys were goofing around outside the station shooting each other.
'Hey Shae, undock! Bring your hyperion out!'I went back to my artwork, grumbling about nu-metallers who couldn't appreciate Courtney Love references in advertising. The silliness outside continued until I saw the IAC pilot log in, then leave the station.
'Whyyyyyyyyyy?'
'I wanna test my damage.'
'What are you flying?'
'I'm flying a Phoenix. ...It's an interceptor.'
'You lie like a rug.'
'Oceandragon's undocked, guys, he's undocked.'Vent flooded with laughter and comments about how seriously, seriously bad the guy's timing had been. I dropped my graphics tablet, brought Uninvited Ghost online and skipped outside to join the party. The carrier was still in line from the undock as I locked him up, spun up the blasters and dropped my own point. I glanced at the sentry guns, then thought, Fuck it, and released the drones, too.
'Ohhh, come on, baby... YES!! Oh my god, he's in a Nidhoggur! Get it!'
'He's still under invuln. Come on, come on, come onnn... Point!'
'Point!'
'Ohhh, baby!'
'Bump him, Shae!'Hurr, hurr, hurr, kinkeh. The Hyperion's drive chugged up with agonising deliberation as I aimed for the carrier's broad side; it smacked against the Nidhoggur's hull at just shy of top speed, bouncing the larger ship further out of dock-range. I slapped a web on the target and watched as the carrier's armour and then hull melted in little more than a minute.
We missed the pod - not for lack of trying - and he wasn't actually carrying much, but the whole thing had been Darwinian Law in action. He couldn't have missed that most of the people in the system were undocked; we speculated that he must have been kicking himself for not having an instawarp point, or maybe he'd just frozen in shock when he'd seen what was outside the station. Who knows?
Nothing personal, Oceandragon, but you just happen to look good on our killboards ^_^
Oh, yeah: I didn't lose a single drone to sentry fire, either.
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Eve Midlife Crisis
I've got two pale hands up against the windowpane
I'm shaking with the heat of my need again
Starts in my feet, reverbs up to my brain
There's nothing I can do to revert the gain.
Eve has gone offline for an 'upgrade' to what I shall henceforth be referring to as 'Carebear Eve'. Why? Because it appears the new generation of devs are attempting to crack down on the behaviour (i.e. griefing, camping, suiciding, all other forms of potential ingame bastardry) that the first generation wholeheartedly encouraged. I'm not going into the nanonerf issue, since I only recently started flying inties. My own issue is with the rest of it. I had intended for a while to try to bring my sec back up, but under the new rules, that will be even more difficult than it was before. Not only that, but the consequences of - heaven forbid - having fun are becoming far more serious than the situation warrants. Soon, the threat of someone petitioning a griefer may actually be taken seriously.
So I'm saying Fuck it.
My sec was wrecked months ago by killing isk farmers and backing up alliance-mates (well alright, there were more than a few gatecamps and a couple runs against Omega Alliance, Nex Eternus and Glauxian Brothers in there, too). If such activity will now be penalised more than ever, then I'm going to just let it drop. After a few chats with Mynxee and Sicks, I've decided to join the Hellcats. In preparation, I have my best friend setting up a bunch of waster pirating cruisers which she'll bring down for me once I'm settled in my new home.
I'm looking down to the street below
There's nothing in the way they move to show
They, too, know what I know
They, too, hunger for the beast below
This is rather a large step for me. I'm fond of saying I couldn't solo my way out of a wet paper sack, and normally I steer clear of fights where I'm outclassed. Why? Hell if I know. I used to be a lot ballsier, when I was a nubbin; logging in and yelling 'Wait for meeee!' if there was an op starting up. And even a few months ago in Atrocitas, before everything began to quiet down for the summer, I had a grand old time shooting people up. It's like I've hit Eve Middle-Age early or something; I've not been on a killmail since my first week with Tygris. I think part of that I can chalk up to the people I was flying with being generally poor company. Atrocitas was largely a joy to fly in, and having the right people in a gang could mean the best night out on the constellation for a week, even if nothing died and the antipirates chased us out of their territory. Tygris, alongside Huzzah and ExM, were much more a raw collection of strangers, and the fun was missing.
Where'd the happy laughing pirate go to? I've just been feeling so tired with it all the last few months; there were days when I just didn't feel like logging in at all and wondered why I bothered.
I'm going to start soloing. I have open in EFT just now a gankrax setup proposed to me by a friend. Maybe I could take something down before it takes me down - there's no armour-repper on this baby, whom I'm naming Sugar. If I teamed up with another cruiser pirate, I could run a slight variation which I'm fitting to a second gankrax I'll be naming Spice. I want my damn game back, and the only way to find it is to go back to basics. No t2. No reppers. I had an amazing efficiency with Atrocitas because I was flying whatever a 1.5-mil SP Gallente pilot can fit and jumping in headfirst into situations I really shouldn't have, without losing very much. Time to try again, and be prepared to die.
Listening to the radio, I feel so out of place
There's a certain something missing that the treble can't erase
I know you can tell just by looking at my face
A word about my weakness: I'm totally addicted to bass
- Puretone
Addendum
Just been watching a vid of one of the older fights in Irmalin. Brings good memories of when Atrox took the fight there along with former Ground Zeero peeps... good times.
Monday, 25 August 2008
Ribbon-Cutting
Tbh, I didn't really consider using Blogger this way until Mynxee showed up in Antem tonight and I took a peek at her bio (because let's face it, I'm curious about the others who play Eve, and sometimes you can make some cool friends that way), followed a link and discovered other people who like to record their experiences in the game. And it makes sense - in its own way the game is as real as anything in RL. It affects us the way RL events affect us. Who hasn't ragelogged at least once after a severely crappy shiploss? if it wasn't 'real', wouldn't it be easier to laugh off? Just as people blog about their daily lives, one can blog about experiences in a virtual world totally unconnected to our own... though there are significantly fewer people who can sympathise :p
I've had a LiveJournal account for years, but recently I ran into a minor problem: namely, that while my friends like keeping up with how things are going, they don't necessarily want to hear about my adventures in gaming, particularly in Eve, since it means little to them. I had to vent about a situation I found myself in about a month and a half ago, so I used my LJ for it. Unsurprisingly, it was greeted with a collective eye-rolling and a comment that perhaps I ought to shut the computer off and do something productive.
When your production in Real Life also involves the computer (Photoshop and word-processing), this isn't the most helpful comment to recieve.
I put up a few other Eve-related posts, more for my own benefit than anything else. Reaction: rinse and repeat. It was time to create a separate blog, where I can geek about and hopefully connect with people who will understand what I mean when I say I hate bubbles with a passion and take great pleasure in slipping through camped gates and stations and scouting friends safely through dangerous territory.
Hi. My name's Shae Tiann. I've had positive sec status for all of three weeks since I started playing Eve a year and one week ago. Then I joined a merc corp, Under the Wings of Fury, and the descent towards outlaw began.
Starting pvp as a highsec mercenary and gatecamping MHC - Harroule during the down-times was probably the best way I could have chosen to get into it. It's not like I could have found mining interesting, or stayed with pve, never to fit a warp disruptor: I started gaming by headshotting my way through rounds of CounterStrike (no h4x necessary :p) and causing havoc in multiplayer Worms and Unreal Tournament. Now I play Eve Online and dabble in City of Villains (trying the hero route was annoying).
At the same time, I try to 'play nice' - when I was with Atrocitas, we made a reputation based on professionalism and a certain level of honour, and I like to maintain that now that I've 'left home', so to speak. I help newbies (the ones who genuinely need help), I'll scout former blues as they move their stuff out of the region, I've helped carebears learn to pvp. There are situations where I'll leap in, drones out and turrets hot, and times when I'll sit back and say, 'You're on your own'.
I guess that's the difference between being an antisocial cock... and simply wanting to have fun ^_^
I've had a LiveJournal account for years, but recently I ran into a minor problem: namely, that while my friends like keeping up with how things are going, they don't necessarily want to hear about my adventures in gaming, particularly in Eve, since it means little to them. I had to vent about a situation I found myself in about a month and a half ago, so I used my LJ for it. Unsurprisingly, it was greeted with a collective eye-rolling and a comment that perhaps I ought to shut the computer off and do something productive.
When your production in Real Life also involves the computer (Photoshop and word-processing), this isn't the most helpful comment to recieve.
I put up a few other Eve-related posts, more for my own benefit than anything else. Reaction: rinse and repeat. It was time to create a separate blog, where I can geek about and hopefully connect with people who will understand what I mean when I say I hate bubbles with a passion and take great pleasure in slipping through camped gates and stations and scouting friends safely through dangerous territory.
Hi. My name's Shae Tiann. I've had positive sec status for all of three weeks since I started playing Eve a year and one week ago. Then I joined a merc corp, Under the Wings of Fury, and the descent towards outlaw began.
Starting pvp as a highsec mercenary and gatecamping MHC - Harroule during the down-times was probably the best way I could have chosen to get into it. It's not like I could have found mining interesting, or stayed with pve, never to fit a warp disruptor: I started gaming by headshotting my way through rounds of CounterStrike (no h4x necessary :p) and causing havoc in multiplayer Worms and Unreal Tournament. Now I play Eve Online and dabble in City of Villains (trying the hero route was annoying).
At the same time, I try to 'play nice' - when I was with Atrocitas, we made a reputation based on professionalism and a certain level of honour, and I like to maintain that now that I've 'left home', so to speak. I help newbies (the ones who genuinely need help), I'll scout former blues as they move their stuff out of the region, I've helped carebears learn to pvp. There are situations where I'll leap in, drones out and turrets hot, and times when I'll sit back and say, 'You're on your own'.
I guess that's the difference between being an antisocial cock... and simply wanting to have fun ^_^
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