Sunday 28 October 2007

New beginnings

So, I decided to leave EVE University.

It was a tough decision and I will miss the friends I have there but it was time for me to go. I had a number of reasons for leaving:
  • I needed some time off from being a director of such an active corp
  • There was increasing friction among the directorship that I don't want to deal with
  • My real life workload has been increasing and I needed to reduce my required involvement with the game
  • I wanted to try something new

So, what am I going to do? Well, I've not decided properly as yet.

The first step has involved reactivating M.A.D. (an old corp of mine that stands for Muppets Armored Division) - and setting up a POS for myself. I've been shopping and have been buying a few (about 100) new blueprints to research to add to my collection.

The current plans are:

  • To research these blueprints
  • Possibly to go into BPC production. I'll probably sell blueprint sets (ie Heavy Missile sets etc) in the near future
  • I might offer research services and copy services to cover fuel costs after a while
  • I am also going to look at getting into Invention
  • I want to try some exploration

I'll need a few more skills and some new training (I recently hit 60mil skillpoints - yay).

Time to relax and explore some avenues, I guess.

Fin

Tuesday 11 September 2007

My current EVE plans

I recently (yesterday) achieved a long term goal in EVE when I got my first capital ship.

Having taken the plunge and buying the skills and ship - I was reminded today of how much fun it is to get into a new ship and fit it for the first time. Long term goals and targets are good and without these the game goes stale.

I can't figure out what to do next. I am only skill training at the moment so I guess any immediate targets need to be skill related. Those who know me will know I am Caldari/Gallente specialised and I am tempted to cross-train for Minmatar ships. I'd quite like to see what a Vagabond is like. >:)

Longer term, I have to confess that I am struggling. I've run my own corporation, done missions, mined, produced, run a POS and been to 0.0. Any suggestions are gratefully received.

In the meantime, I have skills to improve/train and chat channels to haunt. Oh, and a minmatar alt to get skilled up (starting from scratch and not transferring any isk to her, I am really enjoying that challenge and have been ratting in 0.3 with a thrasher recently, which is great fun!)

You can't have my stuff yet. :)

All the best

Fin

This is madness...we're doomed

Looks like a few of the EVE University directors have started regular blogs. Well, I am always one to follow the crowd so I figured I'd start my own too.

First off, please don't expect all too regular updates and also go easy on me as this is my first ever blog!

I am currently taking a break from EVE. Taking a break has turned into a lot of sitting in station whenever I get bored around the flat irl and chatting with the corp and directors. I've also been following events on the forums and sticking my oar in on directors forums where it comes to discussions on policy.

I hope that the membership see all these blogs as good step forwards. I know that I, personally, am stung when I read comments about aloof directors and snotty older players. I try my best to answer questions I feel that I can in corp chat and to pass information on. However I sometimes don't think people realise how much goes into running EVE Uni and how much time the directors, recruiters, instructors actually put into helping everyone out.

From personal experience, when I give a class, I spend an hour beforehand thinking about what I am going to cover and planning it, then I usually spend an hour or so on the class, plus a couple of hours afterwards editting the mp3 if I am uploading one. That's time well spent, in my opinion, and time that I hope benefits people. I enjoy it, so that's why I do it. Every positive comment I have had back as a result is appreciated and I know all the other instructors feel the same.

In terms of the directorship though, I can easily log on and spend three hours "discussing" with the other directors over an issue - on teamspeak, in chat channel or via forum posts - and at the end of it all, there is nothing to show for it. Someone like Kassie, who is chief director, spends an inordinate amount of time running and organising things. The membership often never hears of the time spent in making decisions as to whether we should or shouldn't take a specific action as a corp - they sometimes see the action itself if it goes ahead but for every decision ratified, there are two or three that pass by the wayside. Can we pass this on to the membership...well, not always no.

I'll give you an example. Let's consider the BoB conflict in it's infancy. It's a conflict that we haven't got involved in and we wouldn't get involved in - we are neutral and proud of that stance in the EVE universe and benefit from that standpoint as a teaching institution - but do you think we didn't discuss the issue in great detail? Obviously we did and that took a lot of time and heated debate. However we can never pass the details of that debate to the studentship as our decisions result in external policy and that's what we want the outside EVE community to see - that's what they must see.

I'll quote myself from an internal directors thread:

"With over 1,000 characters in corp, you are talking of making decisions that affect hundreds of people's gameplay…a sobering thought that I think every director ought to have at least once a week if they really want to do their roles proud!"

I think we do manage to do this, on the whole.

I guess what I am trying to say to those members of EVE University who read this is - please try and understand that we are really attempting to do our best and we are spending a lot of time to get things working and to nudge the uni in the right direction. As Silentbrick has said in his blog, the directors won't be posting inside secrets for you all to see in our blogs. What I hope we will be posting is our thoughts on the game and sharing our hopes for EVE University and for our own EVE experience.

I feel proud to be a director at EVE University. I feel it is an honour and privilege and - even though I am trying my best to take a break - it's a duty I wouldn't take lightly.


Fin