A Great Ship is Sunk

My heartfelt condolences to our fearless CEO, Agmar. His magnificent Nyx was lost while he gallantly evacuated other friendly motherships as he stayed behind. The hull of the shining Gallentean flagship finally went up in flames to the merciless battering of missiles and gunfire from our enemies, Pandemic Legion. The Requiem capital fleet was ambushed by the enemy fleet as it was hotdropped onto our dreads and carriers as they came out from sieging enemy towers.


(Hey, I actually lost some sleep. Okay, maybe it was because of the jetlag too.)

Au Revoir, U.S.S. Jigsaw. Your glorious battles shall be remembered.

The Nano Nerf and Random Updates

The age of "ludicrous" speed is going out of vogue. Gallenteans, Caldarians, and Amarrians rejoice!


Morphisat has beaten me to the punch and has given his opinions on the EVE dev blog regarding the nerf to many T2 speed mods and the once-expensive polycarbon rigs, as well as the very intriguing addition of functionality to the once-useless warp scrambler: the ability to disable any microwarpdrives when activated on a ship in range. This makes the Gallente recons an absolute terror to nano ships when you consider their disruptor and scrambler range bonus, making them on par with the feared anti-nano Minmatar recon ships. The popular vagabonds may very well go out of fashion very quickly, as their only saving grace is the speed and dps that they can dish out at close range with autocannons. Beside escaping from webifying and energy-neutralizing recons, nano ships now have to be wary of web scrambling ones as well, making them an even bigger challenge to fly.

I'm happy that I've trained up Recon V on my Minmatar girl, since Rapiers and Huginns will likely remain powerful mid-range support ships. And I'm even more delighted with the stealth boost to missiles, since I bring mainly Caldari battleships and HACs into fleet battles. Heck, I might even consider training up for T2 heavy assault missiles and fit them on drakes, something that I've been rather hesitant to do previously.

These changes make speed slightly less fearsome and tanking/dps/range slightly more viable. A very well-thought out balancing by CCP indeed.

Of course, many of us can't help but chuckle at the resultant emo whinage on the forums from some alliances, who shall remain unnamed, who are notorious for their use of nano-fit ships. Most sane players would've expected the nano nerf to come!

Anyway, ingame changes aside, I'm pleased to report that Requiem has now completed its move from Curse into Fountain and taken some stations, after Pandemic Legion reset standings, moved to Syndicate/Geminate to fight the Goons, and left its pets stranded. My alliance mate has given an excellent summary of our rapid deployment to Fountain in his blog. My goal is to get the Thanatos or the Moros by the end of the year, and settling down in a rich region would certainly help with the cost of frontlining capital ships... Also, the recent addition of HAVOC has added many ex-FIX and ex-0utbreak (also some ex-Rule apparently..) faces into Requiem. Many eyes are on us!

In other news: BoB and its MAX campaign seems to be wavering between pwning big time (look at all those dread kills!) and being pwned big time up North. Also, been thinking about the Fanfest, but someone tell me how I'm supposed to tell everyone that I'm taking leave on a Thursday to go for a GAMING festival in Iceland?

[OOC] Will be moving this coming week, and family will be around so... Updates will be a bit more scarce in August.

Back at CAOD - The Drama Continues!

My apologies if you're not into alliance politics, since I'll have to hold off on my informative posts for a while to come. While I make no claims to be a neutral party, I've attempted to keep some objectiveness in my post.

So, days after The Requiem was featured on the front page of EVE ISD News, the ex-Tri corp leaders (oh sorry, they are Tri again! With the addition of the notorious Burn Eden, good luck...) issued an ultimatum for various emo reasons on Tri's part: 1) they wanted GAME to leave the alliance or they will leave because they didn't like us and our main FC, for reasons unbeknownst to many of us; and 2) they wanted to control and turn Requiem into Tri II and was affronted by the ascension of Seleene to alliance leader. Ok, so this is turning into old news and Tri reformed back in Venal...

Just as we *think* we're getting some peace and get down to serious business, Kar-BOOM! Our alliance forums got mauled from... who else... but a Tri member himself? Apparently, this time it was Karbowiak, the Dane who felt deeply wronged by the handling of the transfer of the forums and killboard. And hell hath no fury like a database admin spurned! Check out the old alliance forum site for yourself and see the screaming fit that was plastered there.

Consider, then, that I gave Karb the benefit of the doubt: that he truly paid for the domain and BDCI did not offer to pay for it but wanted the domain anyway. In that case, I am inclined to frown upon the person receiving the domain, but the subsequent SQL dump of the entire forum database on Scrapheap IRC, including any new and old RQM (yes, including Tri) members' emails and passwords, did not endear anyone to his opinion. If he had any sympathizers, he certainly had none left when the entire code was posted in a public forum. Flaming Yaay is one thing, but I believe this person completely lost his head in his righteous rage and did something that's deeply disliked and borderline illegal in the online world: releasing private contact details. You'd think a database admin would know better.

If you want people to believe in you, write with flair and logic like me or Seleene (told you the schmoozing begins now) - nerd rages don't get anyone far in life and make that person look like a typical forlorn gamer dude who doesn't have a life or any semblance of intelligence. That's why I waste little time posting in CAOD, because sinking into the quagmire makes one look rather witless. The drama, however, beats Desperate Housewives and makes fantastic lunch-time reading. Well... at least to a gamer chick like myself.

Some people really need to get a life away from Eve. Touché!

(I swear, the next entry will be something meaningful for once, unless another drama bomb hits!)

In other news around the Galaxy: MAX just got pwned in Round 1 vs the North.

O CAOD, The Soap Opera Channel!

After Batolemeus' comments on my last entry I rethought my stance on Requiem. I was being optimistic as usual and some incidents developed which involved a GAME FC and his ops being ridiculed and spurned by some ex-Tri corps. Some spitting and hissing must have gone on within the leadership level because just a few days ago, D00M, Cora, 0men decided to leave the alliance. Rionnag Alba remains, as of the moment, undecided. All this resulted from a clash of egos and the belief that Triumvirate's method of nano-flying is superior over any other method, wich has been disproved when CVA brought in a sniper fleet to the field. Yes, Tri was a powerful alliance while it lasted, but even the most powerful fall and it's high time to put that to rest, seeing how some ex-Tri members refuse to do so. While those players in D00M, Cora, and 0men were great pvpers, the same cannot be said of the emotional quotience of their FCs and leaders and I am not truly upset to see them depart. Best of luck wherever they go.

And of course how could this drama escape from the ever watchful tinfoil eyes of CAOD? Look here for some entertainment, while remember that this is pure tinfoil hattery.

My apologies Bato, good thing I didn't put down any money with my word.

[OOC] Traveling in Thailand atm, and it's HOT (like, hot hot) here. Also, my birthday today! Thanks for all the bday wishes. :)[/OOC]

P.S.: I heartily welcome Seleene as our overlord of the alliance! Some schmoozing is soon required.

The Defining of A Phoenix

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them."

[OOC] To my dear readers: the lack of update was due to a sudden influx of actual work at work, resulting in a mad scramble to finish a technical presentation and report... But of course it all went well... A most satisfying big bang to end my internship on, despite some moments of dullness in between. Blog updates will be sporadic in the months of July and August due to travel and relocation, but expect another post to come in a few days - a rather opinionated topic that I've been wanting to write about for ages but just did not have the time for. [/OOC]

Aye, a lot has happened over the past few weeks in Curse indeed. First of all, The Requiem alliance has formed with the following corps: Game-Over, Corp 1 Allstars, Celestial Apocalypse (ex-Insurgency), Body Count Inc. (ex-Mercernary Coalition), D00M, Rionnag Alba, and Coracao Ardente (ex-Triumvirate). Greetings to Mr Winterblink of Warp Drive Active (update your podcast pls), bloggers, reporters like Yalson, and Seleene of BDCI, who has a lovely magnetic radio voice!

Anyone not unfamiliar with alliance politics can easily see that these are the cream of the crop from powerful alliances that had fallen to hard times - entities that once ruled over large swathes of Eve: INSRG in Branch against the Northern Coalition, MC in Branch vs the NC and forming Tortuga in Period Basis, and Tri in Deklein steamrolling everything in their nano ships of doom. Acceptances to these corps are by invitation only, and most of them can field more capitals than a small alliance. I feel honored to be flying with all of them.

A ferocious war machine when you combine the power of all these pvpers, more powerful than all three ex-alliances combined... The potential to become the next fearsome superpower...

Except that thus far, the road has been a rocky and expensive one. Just yesterday Game-Over lost her titan to Tau Ceti Federation and Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate, the one that I so proudly pictured in my previous post. I was there on the battlefield when the Ragnarok went down to TCF capitals sieging a POS due to a borked cyno and good baiting on their part. A very sad day for the alliance, but it has only served to deepen my commitment to Game-Over. And just a few days before this, I got my first carrier kill on F0undation alliance, except that an argument between fleet commanders and overzealous hotdrops resulted in 4 friendly carriers being lost. Despite these losses, the Triumvirate presence is significant and I've already gotten over 50 kills in this alliance, which pales in comparison to the daily diet of some other more active players. And organization is starting to get better within leadership, which as we all know is the basis on which a solid alliance is based.

But this is just the beginning. Who knows what the future will bring? How long will we remain in Curse, the home of the ArchAngels? Will we implode from a clash of egos? How many warzones will our campaigns create on the sovereignty map? The phoenix has risen and you can be certain that it does not have peace on its mind...