Who What When Where Why How??

I'm not really a part of the blog pack or the blog banter that many of you have seen on many of the other great blogs out there but this one I couldn't help writing a bit about myself and I'll tell you why in a moment. But here's the usual intro stuff:

Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by 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 crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: "Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?"

As I said, this one actually struck a chord with me. Recently, my roommate has finally torn himself away from his usual MMOs like WoW and Aion to give Eve a real try. It's not his first time, rather his second, but then I'm partially to blame for his first failure to really get caught up in it. A bit embarrassing but with him as well as a couple other friends being on WoW, they talked me into giving it a try instead. So I did, and just as I figured, I got a character to lvl 80, and then said, now what? Grinding for acheivements and gear was just horrendously boring and with nothing else really to offer other than to start a new character and grind that one to lvl 80, I soon just deactived my account. How people can play that game for years and never stop enjoying it I really don't get. After a while it really does become so insanely monotonous and repetitive, no matter what character you roll. My friends kept gettin annoyed with me the whole time too because I was always finding it much more entertaining to just go exploring than to work on leveling up my character. They kept tellin me it gets better when you reach the end game material. I did finally reach it.... and it didn't get better.

So anyways, as I was saying, I recently got him to try Eve out once again. I'm constantly telling him of all the action and events going on out in Nullsec and it's really peaked his interest. He's like me in that he loves stories of large fights and the strategy that goes into them. He loves hearing the latest news of who's fighting who and what led up to them fighting and so on so forth.

So once again, he's stepping out into the voids of space and seeing what treasures lie in wait. And of course, being his roommate, all you experienced players can only guess the number of times I've had to go sit with him and help him figure out this or that.

The thing I realized in doing this is the very answer to this the question posed by ChainTrap in this installment of the Blog Banter.

It comes down to one word, Corporation.

Something I don't think is emphasized enough anywhere really is the importance of finding a good corporation to join as early on in your Eve career as possible. And don't just do as I did and join the first corporation that sends you an evemail invitation. I'm not saying joining one that sends you a random invite is bad. I'm just saying that before you join, you should know what to look for in a corp.

I didn't really know anything about corporations when I joined my first. I just figured they were groups that joined up together to keep each other company. I didn't realize the benefits or the help that older members could offer to newer pilots. I didn't know what sort of things to look for such as forums, vent/teamspeak accessibility, ship replacement programs, and even timezone issues. My first corp was started and built by newbs. Every member in my first corporation was no more than a few months old and for the most part clueless about Eve. I mean, we got the jitters just from the idea of traveling through a 0.5 sec system because it's dot on the autopilot was yellow rather than green or blue.

So when my roommate started out and started getting random invites, I did my best to help him look at everything the corp had to offer and give my thoughts or opinions, pointing out the pros and cons I could see. In the end, I think he joined what appears to be a well put together group called Valor Inc. who I believe will be very beneficial in helping him learn and develop his skills in Eve. (and perhaps not bug me all the time for help and answers! :D)