CCP gets kicked in the nuts... HARD.

CCP Zymurgist posted this on the EvE O forums.

The European Games Award is the first award exclusively for European games and
is now looking for votes from gamers for the best European video and computer
games. EVE Online has been nominated for best Online Game but needs your vote to
win the competition. Check out what games are being nominated for here and then
cast your vote for EVE Online for best online game!

If I'm totally honest I feel slightly sorry for Zymurgist as I feel he may of drawn the short straw when someone said that they needed that message posted on the EvE online forums.

However if he did it of his own free will... eh...

The first reply sort of showed where this thread was going to go

You're serious?

I bet within minutes the whole of CCP had there heads in their hand and where thinking 'Why the hell did we post that...'

Que 39 pages of 'Fix the fucking game and then we will see where the votes go' and the 'I'll vote for EvE online... in about 18 months!'

The 18 months bit comes from this recent Dev Blog which basically says that for the next 18 months teams will be focused on new features, Dust and Incarna rather than fixing fleet lag and Low Sec.

Of course gaming sites soon got wind the general outrage of EvE customers. Being asked to vote for a game which is putting new features and unwanted content to attract new subscribers in front of fixing the game as it is for loyal and somewhat obsessed fan base.

EVE Solicits Player Support, Players Solicit Lag Fix

Kotako

XBOX Center

BeginnerGammer

EVE players trash CCP in European Games Award thread

http://rockpapershotgun.com/rpsforum/topic.php?id=3151

Eve Online 'broken' by in-game lag

CVG

Size Doesn't Matter

No Prisoner No Mercy

Poor CCP, but maybe they will listen to the EvE customer base more now... We can but hope I guess...

Oh and yeah, the move went well. Internet is up and running and I will be back in game soon.

Fly Dangerous! o/

Mail

God damn it another one...

Read this.

No seriously, read this.

Back? Right then...

This is by far the best blog with the best writing style I have seen to so far come out of the The Guristas Associates bloggers to date.

I mean I would think it's easily better than mine. In comparison mine sucks. And NO I'M NOT BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY MR KHA, HE DOES NOT HAVE A GUN TO MY HEAD.

A quick list of all the Guristas associates blogs:

Jarek Kalensa, CEO of TBRA (Just restarted)
8agpuss, Director of Academy
Astral Dominix
My Kha
Yrielle Vandis
Cebits ramblings
A TWR blog by Lotrias
Durzo Smith

I think we now rival Pythons in the amount of active bloggers we have. This is a good thing.

Read through them all while I am moving house, I will be testing you all!

They are good blogs, all of them. And you won't find much repetition as everyone will have there own story or thoughts on the outcomes of fight, the way the have been reported and then there is the fact that not all of us are around for every fight!

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

A nice engagement!

Well ok then... thats was a fun night.

We were camping a local gate when 2 of our TBR boys, Ticks and Darkviron gave us intel that there was a large ish gang on the Klogori gate. 6 Battleships, 2 or 3 Battlecruisers and a couple of smaller things.

The two TBR boys came up with a daring plan. Get a gang together, get them to engage and then drop 2 of our carriers on them.

Fair enough.

So we put the call out on TS and in alliance and get a get result for a fleet. 20 or so answered the call and shipped up in whatever heavy hitter they could find in their hangers..

So we undock and with the MIGHTY TAR'EL acting as FC we fleet warp to one gate from where the enemy was reported. While we are warping our scouts in the frigs Cithilu and Nogusha are keeping tabs and keeping up with intel. Well done boys!

Then squad one, including me in the CYNO ship of death... A borrowed Brutix (Sorry 8agpuss), jumped through and waited for the main of their fleet to go red box. Then I dropped the Cyno, squad 2 jumped in and death insued.

Myself as the Cyno was primary and went down very quickly... but not before our 2 caps jumped in. Tar'el went down next followed very quickly by Apraxas and his Huginn.

The full engagement is here, take a look.

Yeah thats right, 2 Battlecruisers and a Recon lost in return for 5 battleships kills, 2 Battlecruisers and a Stealthbomber.

Thanks, We'll take that!

We seem to be having some nice engagements with this alliance, yesterday we had this one.

I make this now 'one all' in engagements... Bring on the next!

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

TBRA Frig Tourney

Now as you may or may not have read in other blogs, last night was the TBRA frigate tournament open to members of The Black Rabbits Academy (plus a guest appearence of a TBR member)

Rules were simple. T1 Frigates only. No faction Drones, Hulls or Modules (ammo was OK). No T2 Modules or Drones and No Rigs.

So I decided to fly a Rifter, no tank what so ever except for speed and artilary cannons for guns.

My reasons for this is that generally the TBRA guys all fly Punishers with AC's, Rifters with AC's and Incursus with Blasters. All close range fits so I went for a kiter. Unfotuantley so did many others.

My first fight saw me go up against a close range Punisher and I won that one. Getting my opponent into armor but not managing to complete it. I won by doing more damage than he could do to me.

Nice.

Here's my Rifter in action. Yes I fired off a rocket...





I then went up against the defending champion, Otto Jarvis, and made a mistake, I got in web range, double web range at that. And my Rifter melted. Bad.

So I was out.

Jarek, CEO went up against another Rifter and just manage to squeak through. I think it ended at 2% Shield 4% Armour and 9% Structure as seen below.



But you know what the main fun of the night actually was? It was sitting with friends, laughing, joking, betting and being general guys. I went into the fight with 25mil ISK and left with 30mil ISK due to doing some good bets but losing others. And i got to chat to some of the newer members of the Academy, got to know some of them and I can say with confidence that the current crop of TBRA is a good one.

The final went down to a 4 man BattleRoyal. Jarek Kalensa CEO of TBRA, 8agpuss the pussy cat of the alliance, Gratth the Jammy Griffin pilot and the defending champion who smushed yours truly, Otto.

It was a good fight, 8agpuss cover the fight well over at his blog, many props and a Guristas Worm goes to Otto Jarvis. Gratz mate, least I went down to the overall winner =D And made 10mil to break even after a night of betting.


Would just like to say congratulation to Astral Dominix for his 100th Blogpost. I sent him some spirits so he could celebrate!


And by the way, The Black Rabbits Academy are recruiting again so if anything I have written about has intrested you in a life of piracy some check us out.

Last thing, I am moving house in RL on Friday 23rd and I will be AFK while this happens and until the new service gets installed. No date for this as yet.

I will be back, and I might post before I leave if something fun happens.

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

A good night, fun times and Revenge

Huh,

I logged on last night not really feeling in the mood for much action and just wanting to read some EvE mails and play with some fittings etc.

I then get the call that a certain Dame Death is sitting outside our station in Auner in a Cynabal. I remind the new members of the academy not to engage on station and to ignore the local smack. Now Dame Death has been a member of The Black Rabbits Academy and was kicked for 'Accidently' engaging blues a number of times. He then was given the benefit of the doubt a couple of weeks later and was allowed to rejoin.

He then left again, joined a alliance that was red to TGA and started being a prat.

He then convinced Gilgamesh to let him back in. So he was back for a couple of weeks, then after a number of arguements between members of the alliance he again, left.

He then AGAIN rejoined the alliance, and after some unpleasentness left once again, this time with a life time ban on all his toons.

Dame disapeared from local and a Python Cartel member, Amanda sat on the station we call home at 0 in an Abbadon. So what do TGA do? Why we undock a couple of Battleships and a few Battlecruisers of course. We are just about to engage the Abbadon when it suddenly drops a Cyno field and Dame Death jumps in with the Archon and Nauticaa soon joins the party in a Thanatos.

Fail on their part, if they had waited a few more seconds we would of been engaged, as it was we all just went 'Meh' and docked up. We may be pirate but we ain't dump pirates...

A couple of minutes later a few of us undock in frigs and cruisers and insta warp out to hunt a couple of FW dude in a plex in Auner. Nice.

We ran around, playing cat and mouse with a Taranis, Punisher and Sabre. The Sabre pilot keeps bouncing around planets. When the call comes that the Sabre is off scan I decided to try warping to the only planet off scan from my position. At 0 at that.

Guess what? Yep, got him. I land less than 5000m away get point and web and keep him locked down. I pour on the damage and advise fleet that they can come in when they want.

Sabre Vs Ishkur 1v1 at the moment and I have to admit, it was close. I got him to about 10% structure before Stuart in his Rupture lands the 121 damage to end him.

As you can see... I got out in structure too! 34% to be exact. Good fight!

Anyway after waiting out the GCC I docked and repaired my Ishkur and Gilgamesh came online and said he wanted a number of heavy hitters. I accidently undocked in my shield Brutix and while I'm out I get locked up by Dame Death, now in an Abbadon with a TBR member as my back up in a Vulture.

Dame Death agresses me and after a couple of hits, Gilg tells me to engage and for eveyone in Auner station to undock and attack. My Brutix is going down quick but is doing a good amount of damage so I hold on and overheat as much as I dare.

The fleet undocks in an assortment of Battleships and Battlecruisers. My Brutix is now going down quick and I send out a broadcast for reps. I get a couple but it is not enough. The Abbadon goes down but with it's LAST SHOT it takes out my Brutix. We also manage to pod Dame Death. I like.

I swiftly reship and rejoin fleet as they start locking up Nauticaa in the Thanatos, and join in as we engage, but it docks back up.

I request to borrow another Brutix from a fleet member and manage to get another shield Brutix to take on a roam that Gilg has put together.

We have a scout in front and a tackle Vulture. We don't get any kills on the way down and when in Amamake we manage to get a Hurricane to engage our Drake and Vulture but is is very quick and motors away from the engagement.

We hang around for a minute but it's quite obvious we ain't going to get any kills here today so we start heading back. On the Dal gate from Amamake we run into this Thrasher who is on autopilot and quickly dispatch him and his pod.

On the way back we see a Back to Yarr fleet of 2 x Hurricanes, 2 x Drake and a Brutix. Fleet splits up on different sides of the same gate. One side has a Hurricane pointed and tries to pop it while the other side has a Brutix locked down.

The Hurricane manages to get back to gate and unfotunatley we have chased the Brutix to far off the gate to get point. However we do get the Brutix. Revenge for my Blackbird loss the day before! Yay!

So we arte back home and I call it a night. For someone who wasn't planning on doing much I seemed to have a damn good night.

One other thing... Cebit, an Academy graduate and now member of The Black Rabbits seems to have kept his blog a BIG secret and it's good, very good. So again, I suggest you go read.

I think we now have a TWR Blog, TBR Blog and 3 TBRA blogs. Not bad, not bad at all.

I think thats everything.

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

Jammy Bastard Down!

Hey all,

Just a quick one to let you know that my first Blackbird finally went down in flames last night due to a 'Back to Yarr' gatecamp. Fair play gentlemen.

I immediately went and purchased a new one as I got 10 kills to the 1 loss with the first and really enjoyed flying it.

Maybe I should get a Falcon? I'll think about it after the Arazu and Phobos training is complete.

Another thing, I found out today that a new member of the Academy is keeping a secret blog! Well it ain't secret anymore! It's actually quite good and I will be reading it and I suggest others do as well.

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

Guest spot: Volstrius, first fleet pod log.

I have decided to give a guest spot on this blog to a new member of The Guristas Associates, Volstruis.

He convo'd me and asked if I have ever done this before and I admitted I hadn't given it much thought before. He sent me a small IC piece and I decided it was really good, good enough to post for all to enjoy.

Excerpt taken from Volstruis ‘The Ostrich’ Nakajima’s Pod Log.

First Fleet

Get your shit together, get your ass to Auner and get involved. Great, from the Rabbit himself.

Truth be told high sec is no good for a capsuleer. Too much time schmoozing agents and too little time keeping your wits about you. Those high sec rats barely even put up a good fight. Maybe it was the third bottle of whisky or maybe it was the not so subtle truth behind his command but he was right. Playtime was over. It was time to get involved.

I fired up my personal communications platform and logged into the fleet finder. Cebit’s fleet. FC looking for personnel to help defend a nul-sec outpost. Good an opportunity as any I thought as the Thukker engineers were bringing the last my Incursus’ modules online and pod fluid started blurring my vision. Good number and mix of spaceships and clear, crisp leadership had me genuinely excited for the first time in a long time.

The journey was short and uneventful. We made our way to the last low-sec en route, docked up and waited for intel. We didn’t like what we heard. Our scouts painted a pretty bleak picture of the force we were up against and it was time to let discretion best enthusiasm. So we did what any sane group of pirates would in that situation. We roamed.

First couple of systems slipped by pretty uneventfully. Our cruiser pilots managed to grab a few targets on gates but I’ve learnt the hard way not to get involved that close to sentry guns in a frigate. I certainly didn’t want to make my back to Auner first day out in a capsule.

We reached our first waypoint. Gusandal. Pilots moved to safes and we started scanning. Just when we thought it was time to move on, two battleships chose to engage us. The word that comes to mind is foolish. As soon as the call came over the comms, he’s engaged us, the frigate wing warped in and we started our assault. The Drake popped quickly, the Mega docked up to lick his wounds, and the Black Rabbits were the only ones smiling after the encounter.

The whisky at the Thukker Bar back home in Auner was tasting sweeter by the day.!

If this gets a good reception I may ask other members of TBRA, TBR and TWR to contribute to this blog aswell. But for that to happen I would like to get some feed back. Comments please!

I would also like to quickly do a shout out to Kane Rizzel who, today, posted his intent to leave EvE. This will be a great loss not only to EvE but to the whole EvE Blog Network. Don't do it!

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

A new TGA Blog arrives...

So we have me and Astral blogging about the adventures of our maniacal and wicked pirate ways. And I'm sure you all love it!

But one corp has always been forgotten, sort of like the red haired step child of our alliance. The White Rabbits.

Well from today one of TWR's most skilled and interesting pilots decided to start a blog. I'm sure it will be a great read.

Next up, I posted a couple days ago about the recruitment drive for the Academy. Well we have a great response and, after accepting 12 new pilots and a couple still waiting for interviews, our new CEO decided to close recruitment for a couple of weeks.

This should help our newest pilots.get the training from our older and more experienced members.

If you looking to start a life of piracy keep your eye's on this Blog, Astrals' blog and the EvE-O forums as we will be taking a new influx of students in a couple of weeks.

I also enjoyed doing my Top Five 'Kickass Looking Pirate Ships' and think I may do a couple more Top Five lists in the coming weeks. Just need some idea's!

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

Best pirate ships in EvE?

Kirth Darkblade posted on his blog today about a question from one of his wingmen Kishin asked.

What is the best pirate ship in EvE?

Now Kirth went down the way of how the ship looks. I have to agree with Kirth that this is a very difficult question to answer as everyone has there own opinion and different ships are best for different engagements.

Personally I love Assault Ships, the Ishkur in particular, and am currently falling in love with the Blackbird as a ECM support ship. Those are two of my favorites.

However look wise, neither come close. So I decided to do what Kirth has done and select my top 5 best looking ships from a 'Kickass!' point of view.

Numer Five: Thrasher

Number Four: Megathron Navy Issue


Number Three: Taranis

Number Two: Pilgrim

Number One: Wolf

These are my personal favorites in the way of how they look. Whats about yours?

EDIT: Thanks to a reader for pointing out that I totaly fail and put a picture of a Kronos up instead of the Megathron Navy Issue. This has now been fixed. And to be honest I actually like ALL the Megathron Hulls, the Navy just being my Favorite due to the cool paint job.

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

Gilgamesh1980 is FREE!

Last night we got a large fleet together as we believed that we were going to war, in the end it turned out our services were not required but as we still had a large fleet we decided to take out out for a roam. Stuart killed a fail fit Purifier who decided to attack his Harbinger solo in a belt.

We had a fleet of tackle frigates supported by a number of battlecruisers and myself, again in the 'Jammy Bastard' Blackbird. We ran around Minmitar low sec and managed to kill this Drake on a gate. Followed by a Bestower.

We also managed to kill a station gaming Vagabond but unfortunatley the Stabber Fleet Issue and the Megathron docked before we could turn them into space dust.

We lost a Drake of our own who had tackled the Mega, Stabber and Vaga on station and got them to agress, A Rifter who had suicide tackled the Vaga when it had made speed away from the station and a Wolf belonging to the new CEO of The Black Rabbits Academy, Jarek Kalensa. Congratulations on your promotion Jarek, and a big thanks to Hattori Yasunaga, who has gone on to The Black Rabbits proper.

I think we came out on top ISK wise so thats all to the good.

But the main news of the night. Gilgamesh1980 suddenly logged on while we were on a Bio break. This caused something of a stir in Comms as you can imagine and Gilgamesh was bombarded by PM's to see if it was actually it was him, and it WAS!

Gilg has had all his accounts reactivated and the only thing that has been taken away is the Aeon. Apparently the petition was finally elevated past the low GM's and it percolated with Senior GM's and finally went all the way to CCP, who decided that it was a case of 'benefit of the doubt'.

I would like to thank all the people who supported Gilgamesh either through posting on this blog, making there own blog posts and contacting me ingame. Your support was appreciated and I believe it helped a great deal.

CCP finally did the right thing and Kudos to them. I believe the right outcome was achieved and would like to thank CCP for returning a good EvE player to the game.

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

A Pirate Roam

I have spent a few days running around with Defi4nt and I'm enjoying my time with them. I have made some nice Iskies and would actively promote Defi4nt to anyone looking for a relatively safe haven in 0.0 and a good, active and fun envioment to enjoy it.

That said, anyone looking to live the life of a rum soaked pirate should obviously join The Black Rabbits Academy or The Black Rabbits themselves depending on your SP and experience. We have a new recruitment drive open on the EvE-O forums found here.

So what will you be getting if you join The Guristas Associates? Well lets go through a typical evening with the rabbits.

I logged on last night at around 1730 ET and, after scouting through a friendly hauler, I started a fleet and spammed it in all the channels. I got 4 members of the Academy sign up (the rest watching the World Cup Semi Finals). Two of them flying Punishers, one flying an Enyo and myself flying a ECM 'Jammy Bastard' Blackbird.

We set our course for Amamake and off we went.

A few jumps in and we found a local we have killed before flying his favorite ship, the Jaguar. We know he fits it MWD and Artilery and loves kiting people. He does it well.

We tried to tempt him into a fight but he kept his range nicely so we sort of figured we would leave him to it and go on.

In Dal we were at a spot close to the Amamake gate and saw a Rifter on scan. He wasn't at the gate so we scanned round for a bit and locked him down to a belt.

Fleet warps in and he bugers off. Fair enough.

Astral Dominix (His Blog here) tells the rest of the fleet to piss off and we go back to our little safe spot and align back to the belt. The Rifter pilot comes back in and Astral gets point.

Fleet warps in and I notice that the Rifter is doing over 980m/s and getting away. I shout to our guys to close range and not to lose the kill. The Rifter is Perma Jammed by my 'Epic Blackbird of win (tm)' and I'm loosing Rockets out to it. Astral, using a MWD Punisher gets closer and sits on him till he pops. Pod got away.

Notice please the 400mm plate, the Armor Rig and nothing but the Afterburner II for speed mods. I would love to see that guys Navigation skills to get the Rifter to go that fast.

Anyway we waited out our GCC, a few other guys come in and join us, we now have a Thrasher, Dramiel and a 3rd Punisher and then we headed to Amamake, the local PVP/FW hub, and started scanning around.

After a few minutes I scanned a Stabber down to the sun and we warp in, get point and pop him. He must of been AFK as he didn't move or try and agress back. Looking at his fit he was obviously doing some exploration sites, to bad he didn't get anything nice for us to loot. Once we all had point on the pod I got a new boy, Cithilu to pop the pod and help him on his way to -10.00

With local up to 60+ we decide to head our fleet home, only to find every gate on the way back camped by interceptors, frigates, cruisers and battlecruisers. Not a problem for our newbies who have yet to get to -5.00 but for us reds it was a bit of a problem.

I managed to get most of the fleet home safe, but unfortunatley we lost our Enyo to a sensor boosted interceptor gang. Oh dear.

So, if your looking for fast moving low sec PVP, hit and run tactics, regular fleets and kills then think about dropping into Guristas Recruitment channel when in EvE and hitting someone up for a chat.

I enjoyed getting my Yarr on last night, especially now that I have a good source of income from Hannibal Vexor and Defi4nt.

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

A Defi4nt Bunny!

First of, don't worry! Mail Lite is still a pirate and still flying under the banner of The Black Rabbits Academy.

Hannibal Vexor however has split from The White Rabbits and joined Domini Umbrus, a member of Defi4nt.

I've been in Defi4nt 3 days now and I have to say, I'm loving it. I've been carebearing it up over the last couple of days, including running The Maze twice and have made some nice Iskies. I also have met some great people who keep inviting me to run amazing plexes with them and hopefully split some great loot.

The best so far was a 3 way split of a Rattlesnake BPC. So to all the guys I have run plexes with so far, Thank you!

I've decided that, due to now being out in 0.0 that a good DPS/Tank ship is called for, so I have started training for a Sentry Drone using Ishtar. These seem to be generaly acknowledged as one of the best PVE ships in the game and it's not a long skill plan to being able to fly it well. It's also sort of on the way to the Archon (Sentry Drones etc) so I'm not losing much time on that goal.

So far I have not been involved in any defence fleets or PVP out here in the north but I am kitted out for PVP if I want to (and I do) so thats definetly on the agenda. Get into a large NC fleet and pew pew.

Mail is currently training for a Sabre, not sure what the use of this ship will be but as it's so close to the Phobos in what is needed I thought 'hey, what the hell.' Plus I am sort of enjoying flying a Thrasher recently as evidenced the kills in Amamake of this Cyclone, the pod and then a Harpy. Unfortunately I then lost the Thrasher and we also lost a Taranis.

I will keep you updated with what happens in Defi4nt, I will also continue to pirate for your general enjoyment.

We have a corp frig duel comming up soon so I will try to get some pics of the gang fighting each other and will announce the winner here, with a full battle report of course ;-)

Though aparently my so called 'friends' in TGA are only joining the tournament so they get, and I quote, 'A chance to pop Mail!'

Bastards...

Fly Dangerous o/