Your EVE Online story - Wall of Text Edition
For the longest time EVE Online was that weird space game my elder brother played, my oldest memory of the game is watching him brawling a battleship at zero outside of Jita 4-4. I don’t remember if he won or not, but we’ll pretend he did. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that I tried the game for myself, starting my first character as a typical Caldari. So many characters lost to time, being too young and stupid at the time to pay for a real account I was a serial trial-accounter. This first foray into EVE coming to an abrupt rage-quit after a friendly local invited me to try out level 4 missions in my prized drake. The guy did no more than warp me to the site, then immediately warp off while my terribly fit ship disintegrated.
Later, around late 2013, a friend invited me to try the game again. Being something resembling an adult, I could actually subscribe to the game and jumped in. Dropped into smaller alliance in the HERO coalition (think BRAVE and friends) I immediately set to typical newbie stuff. Zooming out of GE-8JV station after a fight to steal any dropped loot only to get slapped by a Pandemic Legion machariel 150km above the station. The occasional bit of attempting to rat in a caracal, and getting my venture blown up by roaming gangs. As it usually does, this got old fast, I needed something more interesting to do. And I wanted those space bucks.
Those that were in Catch around 2014 will remember the variety of buyback schemes at the time. Schemes that seemed very lucrative. I wanted in. So, I did no more than make a clone of Evepraisal, buy a snazzy domain name, and set up my own. GE-Buyback. It was me, a badger, and the jump bridge to HED-GP. I made a (relative) killing, and I got to feel like a Han Solo type smuggler at the same time, though I did have my fair share of accidents. Warping 50km off a 100 man gang in a paper thin badger doesn’t usually end well.
My experimenting with buyback schemes was to become my first foray into a love affair with 3rd party development for EVE. Leveraging my custom modified copy of Evepraisal I was able to factor in shipping costs. I even compared prices with my competitors to win over customers. Of course I’d eventually move onto bigger things, but it was a start.
After a while the group I was with left Catch, to dissolve as we struggled to find a new lifestyle. It was a shame to lose a group of friends. I spent the next few years trying a few of the different flavours EVE had to offer. I dipped my toes into a couple roleplay corporations, tried a PVP wormhole group, and tried to lend a guiding hand to numerous highsec newbie corporations. Inbetween bouncing between corporations, I’d set up my own alliance of alt-characters for my own trading experiments.
Unable to find something that resonated with me, I decided to take a few real-world friends and found a corporation of our own in late 2018. We started mining moons in a C1 wormhole to great success, our numbers swelled and our wallets grew fat. Eventually though, the change to wormhole rolling mechanics, and removal of ‘regular’ ores from moons put a stop to the party . Hunting for somewhere new to set up our industrial operation, we joined Provibloc.
Regrettably, our time in Provibloc was not to last. Trouble onboarding and a few faux pas on both sides brought the relationship to an end, and we found ourselves marooned in highsec. We setup mining ice and providing low tax structure services to the locals, something which we oddly enough enjoyed. Ever seeking a thicker paycheck though, we followed the lucrative EDENCOM victory sites into a highsec island. Our own private-ish utopia where we could mine valuable ore day and night. Though you may know, eventually the mineral rich rocks disappeared from these sites with the conclusion of this part of the triglavian story arc.
Starved of our once bountiful rocks, we turned to the local moons. Having enjoyed our time on the island, we’d decided to stay and put down roots. Bringing the story to current day, we’ve expanded into our own local market hub, industrial infrastructure, and a full rack of moons. Bigger and wealthier than ever, we’ve flourished in this new home.