How were you introduced to the criminal side of EVE?

Communications Center Crime & Punishment
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I’d love to hear the stories of fellow pirates and undesirables, especially how you started off your career.

(long story alert)

Personally i started with ganking some industrials, i was in need of a way to make money in significant amounts, however nothing like mining or PvE since i just found it to be extremely boring in comparison to PvP.

It made me a few billions and i was, however my pirate career really took off when i was introduced by a friend to a pirate named after the famous brass colored android from star wars. i spoke with him a bit, did some suspect baiting together, and after a short while he asked if i would be willing to help him kill a high value PvE battleship.

Of course i was interested, so i asked him how we were gonna do it, and he said it was someone in his own corp. When i heard that i was hesitant, i didn’t like the idea of betraying people since i myself had been betrayed many times.

However once he mentioned the cut i’d get if we succeeded, i was convinced, 400m for a few minutes work ? i couldn’t resist that kind of money.

Little did i know those few minutes became the most intresting minutes in my EVE career, once we managed to get the shiny battleship pilot on grid he had 3 options, 1: eject from the ship, 2: pay a ransom, 3: be destroyed. We got lucky, because the pilot chose to eject from the ship, meaning we got the full value of the target we were after.

After that was done, since i didn’t screw it up, he offered me to join up with him, said he’d teach me how to to pull the same tricks he did to earn money and gather tears. hesitantly convinced i accepted his offer.

And man, it was the best thing ive ever done in EVE, he taught me all the tricks, social and gameplay wise, to steal, ransom, pillage, plunder and wreck the dreams of others, and im profiting from it ever since.

Ive ran with this person for quite some time, and it was one of the best times ive had with someone in this game, especially the times we awoxed an awoxer, and kicked some small merc group off the jita undock were amazing, and his pirate wisdom went a long way for me, with a 6b RNI kill from someone that i convinced to join with my broken Russian crowning my trophy wall.

so yea that’s my story, id love to hear those from other undesirables !

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I started in 2009 and within a week or so, I had found the now defunct blogs of Aiden Mourn and Paul Clavet. Stealing people’s loot and salvage sure looked like a helluva lot more fun than ratting and so I began my career as a ninja salvager. Within 6-weeks or so I had joined Suddenly Ninjas/TEARS and began flying with the same people whose blogs had given me the idea to pursue that play style.

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I started because I heard there was a game where you ran a company of some kind and it involved spaceships :parrotmustache:

I started a corp, recruited some grebs and was repeatedly wardecced into the ground. Decided to try my hand at lowsec trade and did “ok” for a while shipping NPC commodities out of lowsec and selling them to the higher priced NPC buy orders in hisec. Throughout my time as a prey item I always found myself looking up to my murderer, imagining the further adventures he would enjoy as I crawled back to Jita to build another pinata.

Eventually I built a ■■■■ fit hurricane with a cloak on it and learned patience as I watched my bait loaded jetcan on whatever random gate. Killed a few unwary pilots and learned that unwarrented violence can be a great recruitment tool :ccpfalcon:

These days i’m trying to play the “actual pirate” role. I want to fund my PvP with PvP and make ransoms great again, while remembering what it felt like to be on the receiving end. You see if i hadn’t been owned all those times I likely would have quit out of boredom, instead of learning their ways and growing.

When i get home I’ll link a recent conversation I had that illustrates what i’m talking about. I ransomed a guy 50Mil for his T2 rigged Caracal and he told me it was the best experience he had ever had in EvE. That’s what got me hooked too :nyanparrot: and i hope he is encouraged to explore the dark side now. After all, any ransom is worth 100x more than any killmail (unless it’s bling fit and it drops :dealwithitparrot:).

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I did part of the introduction, strapped on my Velator and killed a pilot in the Duripant. Police came after me.

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My first introduction to the ‘criminal’ side of EVE was something that isn’t really criminal, I suppose. After taking a substantial break from the game, I popped back in and joined Marmite. I learned most of what I know about EVE while I was there, and the subsequent short stints in Complaints Department and I Know Right. While in Marmite I discovered CODE. and they inspired me to create my very own ganker. It is currently Alpha due to funding and time reasons, but I vow to start it back up again. I’m now experiencing a truly criminal, yet amazingly entertaining side of EVE. Baiting, catching, ransoming, stealing, and the like. Most fun and best ISK I’ve ever made.

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Zkill not showing any velator ganks. That said you did lead me to search velator ganking, which brought up a funny video of a guy with a velator gank gang :parrotbeer:

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As promised earlier, this conversation took place a couple of nights ago immediately following a fight between myself in a Cyclone and Dominic in a Caracal. I ceased fire when he was approx 20% hull and initiated contact :

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He actually sent me 55M, one assumes as a gesture of good faith. We talked a bit about EvE and our shared hatred of CPU heat issues, since he had disconnected due to overheat almost instantly as he sent me the ISK (luckily). When he came back online to find his ship still floating in space next to mine he spoke of the adrenaline shakes he’d had during the fight and the following exchange and left me with this :

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That’s a guy who’s done a few things in EvE, yet the closest he got to really feeling a part of EvE was in hisec getting ransomed by a lowely pirate scumbag. There’s no need for smack or toxicity because we’re both playing a game which we understand to be that way.

+1 to that guy o7

@CCP_Falcon - Linking you in because great EvE experiences ^

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Well, it’s kind of a long story. It pretty much went like this: http://evemoontales.blogspot.com/2015/10/two-sides-to-every-story.html

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That. Was. Awesome.

These have all been just fantastic and I have enjoyed reading every single one. Keep em coming!

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I got into Eve because of Apocrypha. I saw the info on uncharted space and I declared I would make that my home. From the first minute I logged on that was what I began to work for. But until I had the funds and skills, I needed a place to hone my scanning, learn to PvP, and gain knowledge. Suddenly Ninjas took me in, and before long I was living the life of the thief. 6 months after I started playing Eve, I set up a POS in wspace and lived out there alone for a while. After the luster of the unknown wore off, and wspace became “mapped” and tamed, I returned to highsec and resumed a life of theft.

After crimewatch I took a long break, until I returned recently. I have plenty of stories I could tell, but the general trend has been that PvE content has gotten less exciting, while PvP and theft has remained equally fun(though increasingly difficult due to nerfs). It also helps that the Ninjas who taught me remain awesome to this day.

This thread is like a who’s who of the coolest thieves in Eve. Lotta great people posting so far. Hope we get more good stories here.

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I was in a corp and we got wardecced.

She came on our comms to discuss surrender and I fell in love. Her name was Brian, but her character was a female. I could see past that, the autotune in my head immediately changing her gruff IRL Lancashire accent into that of a Javanese maiden signing softly in a sylvan jungle glade.

Whilst she made her demands clear and my CEO busied himself with trying to sound tough whilst secretly passing around fits that even a Gallente schoolgirl wouldn’t use, I listened intentely and took note of how amazingly well she took charge of the situation. Within a few minutes several other corportations we were associated with had also been wardecced and the threat of permanent conflict was placed on the table.

My CEO, a consumate krab and consumer of many roids was fit to bust, but knowing that he wouldn’t be able to stroke rocks without relenting, he paid up.

Before she left comms I asked her if I could join her. There were many sharp intakes of breath and before I’d started explaining how I wanted to spread my wings and see the universe, I was summarily kicked from corp.

Taking pity on me, she immediately offered me a place in her squad, and in doing so, her heart.

Several days later we consummated the relationship. I’d left an alt in the corp that I rarely used and had my first taste of awoxing. My now ex-CEO threatened me with the might of nullsec if I ever showed my face in Penirgman again.

It tasted good.

Brian doesn’t play any more, but sometimes I think about her when I’m cleaning my ship.

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Brian sounds lovely :blush:

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Well, I did!

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Who was it?

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I was but a few days old in 2006 when my thrasher was killed by a thorax in otou while belt ratting, then I got wardecced and made some attempts to fight back. After that I just began indiscriminately murdering people in a typhoon and somehow ended up FCing gangs with my 800,000 sp and cluelessness - BUT! I got lucky long enough to git gud.

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I had been playing another mmo which happened to have open world pvp. It was alot of fun, but eventually the dev’s killed the game. So I was in the market for a new pvp game. I had heard that eve was supposed to be a really hard core open world pvp game and it sounded like that was exactly what I was looking for. I came and tried eve out - but it was terrible - a lot of fly here and orbit that red x and then fly there and orbit that red x. I couldnt understand what the excitement was about. There didnt seem to be any pvp at all - just alot of shooting x’s. So I went back to my old game and stayed there until it was completely devoid of players. Finally came back to eve and decided that this time I was going to figure out what was up - after all - those stories about eve pvp had to be based on something. I was futzing about doing the soe epic arc when I got to the end and realized that I couldn’t kill the last guy so I shouted out in local asking for help. Some vets took pity on me and helped me kill the rat and then we got to talking. I told them that I didnt understand what people were talking about as there didnt seem to be any pvp at all. Turned out that they were highsec war dec’ers and they asked me to join them, which I did. Well this was a little better, but it was mostly fly twenty jumps and find your targets docked up. After doing that for a while, I decided that there had to be something better. Did some research and came upon articles about can flipping and solo bomber pvp. I got myself into a bomber and started flipping every can I could. Boy was that fun. Love can flipping. Like eating potato chips - just cant stop. After that I was on the fast track to the dark side. Now I drop blops and capital ships. While it is fun - nothing will surpass the rush of my first kills as a solo bomber pilot - especially the time I nabbed my first orca. Now that was cool.

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For me it was a gradual thing, I spent so long in the gray area of non-piracy highsec pvp that I didn’t notice the transition until after I was already deep in bastard-land.

I fancied myself a “good guy” long after I’d departed the activities that go with being “good”.

I’m a relatively gentle bastard though.

I lost 24 ships before I decided to try pvp (I checked my kB). Some were killed by people, some npc’s.

Then, I decided I wanted to kill pirates. The two most dangerous systems in my area of space back then were Akiainavas and Tama. I took my every isk to Jita, made something, and flew it to one of those two destinations.

I managed to kill a geddon out of pure dumb luck in a Merlin while I was “fighting pirates”… he was trying to bait noobs so I was still a “good guy.” The guys who helped me do it were ex-Somali Coastguard.

Then I lost another 25 ships in Tama with almost no kills.

Then I went back to Akiainavas, and kept fighting pirates… but started making friends, learning stuff, and having fun. (And went from white to gray).

The fun was really what sent me downhill towards being a bastard.

The guys who were teaching me got in a fight one day against a guy who chose to rage very rudely in local. He was very nasty after a loss he clearly didn’t anticipate.

I talked my PvE Corp (Dark Adama) into declaring war on his corp for being so rude in local. The guys I was playing with taught us some stuff, and we sacked them hard (it was mostly miners, as I recall).

Then they (the miners we had just sacked) hired some small corp (mercs?) to wardec us. Then we taught the miners some stuff, made friends, and talked them into wardeccing the mercs they hired to wardec us.

I loved the chaos of it, I would say the feeling of absolute absurdity when I realized what a mess that war devolved into was was a high point in my time in this game.

I couldn’t guess what that “merc” thought was going on… but despite the absence of any true piracy components, that was probably the moment of inspiration.

By then, I was having so much fun and laughing it up that I could hardly get enough. I left my PvE corp and joined the hijinks in Akiainavas. I was flipping cans, mucking up other people’s fights, and extorting wardecs from then on…

Even still, I’m not about the tears or the isk. For me, it’s the chaos. It’s the shock and absurdity. I like taking a T1 frigate against a fleet. I like killing pvp players in a hauler. I like posting a POS kill in kestrels. I liked ganking bots… but inviting all the noobs to come watch and trying to get them to join in. I liked running a “clean moon project” where we inspired local PvE corps to help kill pos’s.

I like training PvE corps to break PvP aggressors.

Hell, I guess I just like surprises.

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I started out as an explorer. After getting ganked hacking relic sites in low sec a few times, I decided to copy my aggressors fits and try shooting my fellow explorers as well. Initially the plan was mostly to get a feel for what is required to hunt someone so I could defend against it, but I quickly developed a taste (and a talent) for stalking and killing unsuspecting hacking/ratting ships.

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Truth be told, Trevor, it’s also one of my favourite things to do.

Have you tried a cloaky smartbombing Proteus? It’s a right wheeze.

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When I started playing Eve I figured I wanted to be a mercenary, because I had read somewhere that’s something you can do in this game. But while I was still doing the tutorial missions I began browsing for articles for more fun ways to make isk than what I was doing. Stumbled upon an article about ninja salvaging/looting and figured I would try it out, as it sounded like a fun thing to do.

My first ninja run was an absolute disaster, so I decided to join the mercenary training corp like I planned from the start. Somehow I never felt quite like home there, and mercing didn’t feel like my thing after all, but I decided to give the ninja thing another try. And then another. And another. And another. Eventually I quit the merc training corp and been doing ninja salvaging and looting ever since, although lately I’ve been thinking of graduating into something more hardcore in the future. Near future, I hope.

But in the meanwhile, missionbears, run to the hills, and burn your damn wrecks! :stuck_out_tongue:

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