Oh opportunity, is there anything so fickle?

Welcome to this special installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by myself, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to me. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

When you've been roaming New Eden as long as I have, it almost feels like home. That's how familiar it has become over the last 5 years. Not that I have done everything or touched every aspect of this most amazing of virtual world, far from it, but it just feels as though it's always been there. And always will be.

Whether you've logged into the game every day since its launch in 2003, or you've taken one or several sabbaticals from your capsuleer career, you've always come back to New Eden don't you. Why is that?

We know the EVE Online Community is unique in so many ways, and that EVE Online is like no other MMORPG out there. But what makes the game special for you?

What is it that makes this particular virtual world so enticing, so mysterious and so alluring that we keep coming back for more. Why is EVE one of the very few MMOs to see a continuous growth in its subscriber.

To put it simply: Why do you love EVE Online so much?

------------------------------------

Man either he's been reading my old posts or I just got lucky!  But I plan on expanding on my previous post on this topic, my first post actually.

The name of my blog states it, but let me look into it more...  Eve-Opportunist.

I have Opportunist defined above as well, but I think CCP Abraxas put it very well in "The Mercenaries (Part Three)"

"This, to him, was the Minmatar lot. You saw an opportunity, no matter how unorthodox, and you did something with it. You went for it."

How crazy that quote comes along just as I start writing this blog.  To me this isn't just the Minmatar lot in eve this IS the spirit of "My Eve" that keeps me coming back.  Before I focus on opportunity, let's look at the phrase "My Eve."

My Eve is the Eve Online that I play, and everyone in Eve can have their version to play.  The miner, the industrialist on one side, the lowsec pirate and the nullsec pvper on the other and everywhere in between.  Eve isn't a straight line with PVPer on one side and PVEer on the other.  It is like a huge X,Y axis, with room for a Z and the elusive fourth dimension.  Sure some people's Eve look similar, close even, but that is the framework of the game.  It would be foolhardy to state any miner is like any other miner or any pvper is like any other...  Alt's aside there are no two "my eve's" that are word for word the same story.

How much of that can be said for other MMO's?  Wow comes to mind, WoW there has to be thousands of "heroes" completing the same quests, gaining the same professions(damn you mining), doing the same thing.  Missions in eve may be repetitive, as mining can be, but ship fitting, order to engage, finding your path, skilling, scouting, learning, now THAT is the simple essence of Eve that makes it so addicting.

It is like this butteryfly effect video...

Every choice you make in Eve puts you down a different path.  All the way down to two of the most basic parts of the game, meaning skills learnt/trained and modules fit on your ship.  A friend of mine can't pilot anything larger than a frigate but has 8 mil sp in trade related skills and plays just to manipulate the market, that is his Eve.  I have 256 sp in industry (mining 1) and 0 in trade, but can fly almost every combat ship in Eve.  The nice thing in eve being that if we wanted to, he could do what I do now and I could do what he does, it would just take some more skills.

Back to opportunity:

Oh opportunity, is there anything so fickle?

Eve allows you, want you, to take every opportunity and really do something with them, going out finding a opportunity and exploiting it for its worth.  There are no limitations set upon you, unless you do it yourself.  Combat proficient pilots can become traders, traders can be miners, miners can be combat pilots.  All it takes is different skills, a change in ships or fittings, and the opportunity to display those skills.  No classes, no subsets, just players.

Like the Eve addage "Don't undock what you can't afford to lose."

When you undock in that shiny faction ship, you are giving others the opportunity to come out of the woodwork to kill it.  Same when you undock in that noobship, though the threat may be slightly less!

Eve opportunity relies not only on the pilot but thousands  of other pilots, all doing their part in this dance with death or life.  The maker of the ship, the miner of the mats, the modules on the ship...  And of course YOU, do you undock that Taranis or the Navy Comet, or a Imp. Navy Slicer or a Crusader?  Daredevil?  Megathron?  Each provides different opportunity for you and for your opponents, and even your friends.  And you never know what ones surround you or fight with you.

Opportunity here means the chance to get a few kills without dying yourself, the chance to run that mission faster than before, I guess you could distill opportunity down to "the chance" to do whatever you want.  And Eve DELIVERS those chances, time and again.  Sure you died this time, but tomorrow, you live, or maybe you die, or maybe everyone lives and the roid dies.

Those who are truly into eve cannot get bored here for just that reason.  If one thing gets boring you just move onto something else, give it the chance to be your Eve for a while.  When that gets old, you keep moving.  By the time you "run out" of things to do, some of the old ones sound appealing again and you start the process over again... except for mining.......... ::smirk::

Add to that the people you meet, the conversations, the wars, and grudges.  The playerbase is amazing, and rightly awarded for being so.  Opinions differ, flames ensue, but when it comes down to it, the playerbase passion is to make the game better.  We may not always see eye to eye with CCP, and especially not with each other but at least occasionally... you have moments in this game that make your heart beat fast, throat dry, fingers tremble and lips smile, or grimace.

Opportunity, that is what keeps ME coming back to Eve.

Here is the final list of other Blogs on this topic, crossposted from CK's blog

1. A Mule in EvE
2. Astral's EVE Trial by fire
3. The beginnings of piracy
4. Guns Ablaze
5. The Midnight Sun
6. Eve Opportunist
7. Sered's Lives
8. The Lathspell of Mithrandir
9. The Light of the Stars
10. Dense Veldspar
11. Latro's Bunker
12. Yet Another Pilots Chronicles
13. Morphisat's Blog
14. EVE SOB
15. Zen and the Art of Nullsec
16. Tastes Like Chicken
17. EVE What?!
18. A Vasty Nothingness
19. Ally's Walkabout
20. Mark Mustang
21. Why do I love EVE Online
22. Bouli's Mind
23. Weynards EVE
24. Why do I Love Eve
25. An Extremely Complicated Survival Machine
26. Surviving within the void
27. Fua Consternation
28. Taxtro Grave
29. A Sebiestor Scholar
30. JugBlog
31. The Wolfs Den
32. Wench with a Wrench
33. Yarrbear Tales
34. EVEOGANDA
35. Kirith Darkblade
36. Vive Virtual
37. Adventures in Mission Running
38. Normandy's EvE Online Musings
39. Faint Resolution
40. Diary of a pod pilot
41. FlashFresh
42. The New Victoria in New Eden
43. Don't Fear the Mutant
44. Infinity and Doom
45. Event Horizons
46. acolite.eu
47. MushskiC's Marshmallow Mountain
48. Why We Love EVE
49. into the unknown with gun and camera
50. Lyeit Lair
51. Achernar
52. EVE Online Contest
53. Cogito Ergo Yarr
54. Jump on Contact
55. Ecliptic Rift
56. SpiderMonkey Express

And two more who didn't make the deadline but are worth reading anyways!

• Aggressive Tendencies
• Learning to Fly

He's got his hands full on this one!  56 entries is massive, nice work CK!

And here are the winners of the contest!

Congrats to you all!  Very good entries.

Here are your 10 winners!

1. 1st Prize - $100 in EVE Store merchandise: Wench with a Wrench
   
2. 2nd Prize - $50 in EVE Store merchandise: Don't Fear the Mutant
   
3. 3rd Prize- $25 in EVE Store merchandise: Into the unknown with gun and camera
   
4. 4th Prize - $25 in EVE Store merchandise: Sered's Lives
   
   And the following bloggers each win a 14 Day EVE Time Code:
   
5. FlashFresh
6. EVEOGANDA
7. Vive Virtual
8. Why do I love EVE Online
9. An Extremely Complicated Survival Machine
10. Ecliptic Rift

Very nice work!

My favorite was definately Flash's entry!  FlashFresh