In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move. (Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
I’ve been flying out here in the Great Black Beyond for over four years now (granted, with a few breaks in there), virtually all of that in nullsec – although my other character did quit nullsec a while ago to join up with an empire corp that wardecs and kills things for fun, profit, and epic lulz. I’ve spent my entire time in nullsec in Ars Caelestis and its successor, Ars ex Discordia, as we’ve progressed over the years through Huzzah Federation, ASCN, Curse, and finally GoonSwarm. The Ars guys are absolutely a terrific bunch to fly with.
But sadly, I find that nullsec is no longer any fun for me. When I first moved down to V2-VC2 in Catch on an ArsC hauler op, it was awesome. There was tons of fun small gang stuff going on – you could scream around in small gangs in frigate and cruisers and actually find things to kill – it wasn’t all massive blobs and boredom.
Then we moved on to ASCN, which was an interesting place to be. I still remember the absolutely epic operation to evacuate our remaining assets (and freighters) out of V2- right under the noses of –A-, and then to migrate onward to our new home in PMV. After five hours or so of a massive corp freighter escort op (complete with freighter bounces off stargates) we were all pretty strung out and I think we probably scared our new roommates in PMV a little bit.
Even in ASCN, it wasn’t all bad. There was more blobbing than before, but there were still good fights to be had – I had an awesome Crow on Crow duel with Creamster that I only just barely lost, and it left me with one hell of an adrenaline high.
But after ASCN fell, the game got less and less exciting for me. Too many huge fleets, too much emphasis on voice comms (I’m deaf, so that’s very difficult for me), too much… meh. I stayed with ArsC through their sojourn into Great Wildlands, but found my will to play steadily being sapped even as ArsC was reborn as Ars ex Discordia after the CEO turned out to be even more insane than we’d thought. Throughout our time in Goonswarm, I stayed because the people in ARSED are just that awesome, and I couldn’t imagine flying without them.
But no longer. I will always have nothing but the highest respect for my fellow pilots from ARSED – even though the supply of bitter veterans from the old days is now dwindling. But now, I must walk a different path. As of yesterday, I am now CEO of Unfortunate Incidents and along with a few friends from ArsC and ARSED, am dedicated to carrying out our new business model: handing out candy in lowsec. And by candy, I mean poddings. ;)
Why? Because more than anything else, I want to go back to my roots: screaming around in small, cheap ships where the hull costs less than my clone does. Some of the best times I’ve had in Eve were the devil-may-care, fly-around-like-a-madman small gangs and suicide operations. I miss that, and I can’t wait to do it again.
We’ll be hanging around in the same area as our good friend Kane Rizzel, and I for one can’t wait to get down to business.
