Controversy

If there's anything that inspires debate and brings traffic to your site, it's controversy. The past week has been great for the number of visitors coming to my site:


If you want more people to come visit your site, getting them angry works. :)

Thanks for the links from around the blogosphere, I really appreciate it!

What is a Carebear?

There's a huge debate in the blogosphere, which I'm happy to say was started by me. But I've learned Carebears are proud of being Carebears, but it seems they don't understand what a Carebear is.

So here's an explanation:

Carebears are:

• players who stay in CONCORD space and never venture into lowsec or 0.0 space
• players who detest PVP (player vs player) combat and whinge about how it ruins their gaming enjoyment
• players who are killed via PVP and then complain about player harassment or cheating
• players who focus gameplay only on non-PVP activities
• players are afraid of being attacked by other players
• players who ruin PVP games by whinging so much to the game developers that the game developers think they're the majority and change the game to suit the Carebears

The reason why people like me complain about Carebears is because our gaming enjoyment is spoiled by the changes these people demand to the game. They don't like being killed, so they demand the game developers make it harder to be killed. As a result, the 'killers' find their game play even harder.

Since Eve Online started - and continues - as a player vs player (PVP) game, every time someone whinges about how badly they've suffered at PVP, they're automatically a Carebear. Every time a Carebear wants the game changed to suit them, they're automatically loathed by every PVP player who's suffered at how the game changes around them to suit the Carebears.

So now you've been educated. And you're a Carebear if you whinge about people whinging about you. Yes, that applies to pirates too. :)

So when I say Carebears need to 'harden the fuck up', what I'm really saying is stop your whinging, and stop wanting this game to change to suit you. If you don't like it, go play something else.

Chat with other Eve Bloggers

There's a lot of Eve bloggers out there - over 400 of them - but during peak times there's usually only maybe a dozen bloggers in the Eve Bloggers chat channel in-game. We need more!

So if you're in-game and you're wondering what to do with yourself, join "eve-bloggers" and chat with other bloggers.

See you there!

Carebears need to harden the fuck up

One of my pet hates are carebears. We're never going to get rid of them and I understand that, because new ones always come in as the old ones leave or grow out of it. But I can help the carebears grow out of it by revisiting something I wrote in a previous life. Some of you might remember this, while for others, it will be brand new. But for the carebears reading this, you might get something from it...

One thing I've noticed, all across the galaxy, is that people are having a whinge, having a sook, having a cry about it. If our ancestors were around today, I reckon they'd be spewing. Carebears need to harden the fuck up.

This is Daniel. He owns a big, shiny, fancy fucking battleship. But he doesn't know how to change his low slots to tank anything. Harden the fuck up, Daniel.

This is Petros, and he's too scared to enter lowsec. "Ohh, look at me, I'm combat intolerant." Why don't you try a gate camp and harden the fuck up, Petros.

This is Theresa. Her kitten has a psychiatrist because it cries every time a Hulk is attacked. How about this, Theresa. Dr Black Claw prescribes that you harden the fuck up!

This is Mark. He doesn't approve of people swearing on blogs. Well how about you harden the fuck up, Mark.

This is some fool with a stupid name I can't care to type. Learn how to come up with decent names, fool, and harden the fuck up.

This is Yellow Rose. She won't join in on fleet action without taking half a dozen smartbombs with her. Harden the fuck up, Yellow!

This is Jad. He spends an hour a day trading on the stock market. He's also a DJ at a local nightclub. So why don't you ha-ha-ha-harden the fuck up, Jad.

This is Bevat. He owns every Tech 2 ship you can buy, sleeps with his blasters, has over a thousand kills to his name, and once cut off his own arm for a dare. Fucking spot on Bevat!

So come on, carebears. Take your skirt off, cancel your manicure, grow a mustache, and harden the fuck up.

UPDATE: Here's the original video for you all, which is what inspired me to come up with this back in the day.

The great cloaking debate

A number of people have been talking about cloaks lately, and there seems to be a lot of complaints about them. Interestingly, most of the suggestions for 'improving cloaking' are actually suggestions about how to make it easier to find someone who's cloaked, or to prevent a cloaked ship from actually doing anything.

So from this I can assume that the people who want cloaking changed are the people who have been hurt by cloaked ships, and they don't want to suffer any more.

I think this is just another case of the carebears' true colours coming to light.

The carebear tears

I have a friend who has been a pirate for quite a while. I've looked up to him as an inspiration to my own activities, and have spent some time learning from him.

He's the one who suggested I move to 0.0 space and do some ratting, so I can make some 'easy money' to afford to buy my Rapier. He's been active in 0.0 for quite a long time, so I listened to him, packed up and moved to 0.0 space.

A couple days ago he was ratting in the same area, when he was jumped by a small fleet of pilots in a NRDS (not red don't shoot) alliance. He wasn't red, but it seems his previous corp was. That's why they jumped him - not for what he was, but for what he used to be. This was in accordance with their rules. If he was once in a red corp, and then joined an NPC corp, he was still 'red' until he joined another player corp that wasn't red.

Now, he knew the rules that this alliance flew by, but he thought that they would at least give him a warning first, allowing him to leave the area. But they didn't warn him - they just attacked him instead, which was according to their rules of conduct in the area.

He just hoped they would do something different.

He cried.

In fact, he cried a lot.

I didn't realise how much of a carebear he was. I wanted to grab a vase to catch the carebear tears, but I couldn't find any around.

He said he's going to take his bat and ball and go home. No more pod time for him!

I gave him a tissue to wipe his tears.

It made me think.

How many of you expect other people to do something for you that they never do for anyone else, because that's what you'd prefer them to do?

Do you think you're entirely reasonable for expecting them to do something that they've never done before?

It reminds me of a quote from a famous scientist in ancient history:

"The greatest sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results." - Scooby Doo.

We can apply that here:

"The greatest sign of insanity is knowing what someone will do, but then getting upset when they do it because you hoped they'd do something different…" - Alexia Morgan

Faction spawns and ratting

I think I've worked out a technique to getting faction / officer spawns while ratting in 0.0 space. I'll have to test it further before I discuss the technique, but I'm pretty excited about it!

That's all I wanted to say on that.

50 Fights

I've noticed a lot of pod pilots get very attached to their ships. It's almost as if their ship is a loved partner or something. They go through elaborate ceremonies with building, naming, and flying their beloved.

And then they lose it in act of violent destruction, and their life, for a brief moment, seems like it's come to an end.

They get angry, they grieve for their loss. Their beloved ship... gone! They don't know how to cope, or how to continue with their somewhat miserable life now that their beloved ship is destroyed.

They eventually get a new ship, and go through the same elaborate processes as before. They invest not only their ISK into the ship, but also their energy, their love. And so the cycle continues.

It disturbs me that these people have such an attachment to great lumps of metal. I know it's not really the ship that they love, it's what that ship allows them to do. The freedom, the prestige, the excitement... A ship gives them good feelings, and they love it for that.

The loss of a ship is equated to a loss of those good feelings, and so they grieve.

HARDEN THE FUCK UP!

Excuse the language, but... it's pathetic. It really is.

Do you mourn the loss of a broken screwdriver? Or a bolt? No, of course you don't. You get a new one when you need to, knowing it's just a tool. It doesn't even emotionally register with you.

A ship is a tool. That's all it is. This galaxy is harsh. Violence is a way of being, and with violence comes destruction. Particularly the destruction of ships.

If you have mourned the loss of a ship, and found yourself in misery, ask yourself - am I emotionally stable? Is this ship any more significant than that round of projectile ammo?

You'll be forced to conclude that no, you're not emotionally stable, and no, the ship is no more significant than ammo.

Your ship IS ammo, being used to kill your enemy before they kill you.

In the great struggle for survival, for the achievement of our goals, a starship is simply a tool for us to use to achieve those goals.

The next time I see someone cry and mourn the loss of their ship, that they took through many elaborate, emotionally-binding ceremonies, I'll wonder what kind of sick love affair they had with that lump of metal, and maybe their other tools too.

Are you in love with your ship? Will you mourn the loss of it?

If you find these thoughts as disturbing as I do, there's only one thing you should do.

Take a frigate into lowsec and look for a fight. Don't care about winning, because you're only caring about the fight. You actually WANT to lose your ship.

Do this 50 times. No, I kid you not. FIFTY TIMES. Lose your ship 50 times and you will realise it deserves as much emotional investment as your screwdriver.

I don't care if you're an industrial miner that's been sitting in Empire space for the past 4 years, and you've only lost your ship once to rats. I don't care if you've ventured into low sec and lost your ship from pirates and then woken crying in your new clone back in Empire space, vowing to never go back into the darkness. I really don't care.

You owe it to yourself to take lots of frigates into lowsec and look for fights. Sure, you don't have to initiate the fights if you don't want to be a pirate, but if you hang around, pirates will find you, and they'll help you understand how much of a tool your ship is as they destroy it for you.

50 fights. No less.

When you've had 50 fights, and you've lost your ship maybe 50 times (sometimes you might even win, depending on how you've fit your ship), then you'll be able to look back at your past and realise how much of a crybaby you were. And you'll never cry over a ship again.

Save the tears for when you lose your real loved ones. Don't waste them on tools.

The RSS Cloud

All blogs implement something called RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) that allows their content to be syndicated out to RSS feed readers (like Google Reader, etc). Last week Wordpress.com enabled something called RSSCloud.

What is it?

“RSSCloud is an element that’s always been present in the RSS 2.0 spec but has drawn new attention with the rise of interest in the Real-Time Web.”
- Read and Write Web

What this will do is make blog updates available to compatible feed readers as soon as the 'Publish' button is pressed.

It takes about an hour for a current feed reader to pick up new blog posts, which means RSSCloud will enable 'real-time blogging'. You'll be able to see new blog updates as they're published, rather than every 60 minutes.

As soon as I can, I'll be implementing this technology into www.evebloggers.com so that new posts from all the Eve bloggers will be displayed in real time, instead of every hour.

If you use Twitter or Facebook, you already see how real-time updates looks in their display of status updates.

Is anyone looking forward to this, or just me? :)

Is your blog listed in evebloggers.com ?

If you're reading this, then you're probably an Eve Online blogger. You're also probably listed in the Eve Bloggers Portal (www.evebloggers.com).

But if you're an Eve blogger and you don't think you're listed, then please follow these instructions:

1. add a comment to this post, or
   
2. add a comment over at Eve Bloggers: Do you have an Eve Online blog?

As soon as I know about your blog, I'll add it to the list so that every time you update your blog it will be shown in evebloggers.com as well. And then everyone can see what you're posting about! Pretty exciting, hey?

Galen has an OPML file he's been keeping up to date, which currently has 361 blogs. I regularly import that file into Eve Bloggers to add to the rest of the blogs that are being listed, and as I'm writing this I'm proud to say that the Eve Bloggers portal now lists:

628 464 blogs!

That's an incredible amount!

Obviously not all those blogs are active at the moment, but it's still impressive... If any of those blogs update a post, they'll be visible in Eve Bloggers.

So if you haven't got your blog listed, please follow the instructions above to get it listed now.

Update:

Thanks to Ga'len for pointing out that all the Gamescribe blogs need to be removed, so I got rid of 140 of them. And then I went through the list of the remaining 488 blogs and got rid of duplicate entries (those that were listed multiple times with different RSS feeds). The result? 464 blogs. Still pretty good.