Phreeze

Looking back on how long I've played this game, I've made two realizations.

The first is that if I had applied the exact same amount of time and money on a personal trainer and regimen, that I would look like King Leonidas, and the second is that some of my favorite moments in the game were during the first few months I played. This also translates to "when I had no idea what the hell I was doing."

I first played the EVE trial in 2006 for a grand total of about an hour and a half. I was looking for a replacement to the now defunct Star Wars Galaxies, and EVE seemed like it could be a good transition. It had the sci fi element that I enjoy in gaming, along with an open ended sandbox. There was only one catch however.

It was a fucking awful game.

At least it was to the eyes of a newbee trying to figure out why the tutorial was making him mine rocks for an hour, and how everything that he needed costed more than he could possibly think to make running missions in an ibis.

I promptly uninstalled the game and didn't think twice about calling it shit in the various MMO forums I frequented at the time (As an aside, does anyone still give a shit about MMORPG.com anymore?)

My second attempt at playing EVE was in 2007, when I learned that my brother and his roomate were both playing it and knew what they were doing. Since my initial experience had been dampened by being thrown into the deep end without a floaty, I figured I'd give it one more shot now that I had some friends to play with.

My first character was an odyssey to create. In SWG, I had played as a female character because by the time I had realized how gay it was, I had already grinded so many skills that restarting for the sake of a name change would be just completely silly, (Incidentally, I played as Natalya Ba-an, Master Armorsmith on the Intrepid server. Maybe someone remembers me). My first choice was unfortunately taken (Zapp Brannigan, I was going to name all my ships the Nimbus). After spending litterally two hours trying to decided what the hell to name myself, I noticed a news article on digg: Heath Ledger had overdosed/been poisoned by an Olsen twin. Bingo bango, the Caldari capsuleer Heath Ledger was born. (To those clever fellows who point out that I was looking for a non-gay name, and ended up with Brokeback Mountain... fuck you. Don't be such a smartass.)

Heath Ledger

My brother (character name Xicho, also the angry eyed fellow who has appeared in several pictures with me on this forum), lent me a mighty vessel that I was told to call a "Kestrel" and proceeded to to teach me how to run missions. He was flying a caracal, which seemed to dwarf my little frigate. After the first mission, (which went off without a hitch), Xicho undocked and began to rep my shields, since I had taken some damage inside the mission. Having autolock on, and just having completed a mission where things that pop up on your screen are targets, I immediately reacted to what I assumed was an imminent threat and fired a barrage of missiles. Instantly, CONCORD warped in and destroyed my little kestrel.... and Xicho's caracal for repairing a CONCORD violator.

Xicho began to yell and curse incessantly over and over again, while I desperately tried to explain what had just happened and how I didn't know what I was about to do. As he kept raging, I began to laugh, as I couldn't possibly understand how much a big deal his ten million or so isk for the ship had been.

Despite that incident, Xicho, myself, and his roomate (character name Emperor Salazar), flew together for a few weeks in high security space, gaining isk and knowledge on how to play this game. Together we would dash in and out of missions, Xicho (who eventually began to fly a raven), Emperor Salazar in a drake, and me in a brand spanking new caracal of my own. As we downed the NPC rats, the only thing I could think of is how cool it would be if these were actually players, and I was commanding our little flotilla.

I had finally started to enjoy the game, but decided to take a break due to some real life concerns. I left the game with a little under fifty million isk, a drake, and a desire to return one day and check out what some other missioners had told me was much more lucrative than the missioning hubs of the Caldari homesystems:

0.0 Security Space, and a region known as Providence.