Back at Blogging - About Atlas and AT8

Ever since my last post in 2008, I've gone through a lot in Eve. To summarize, I went inactive for about half a year (more, actually) in 2009 due to RL/getting stressed out, then got back into the game, culminating in becoming a commentator for the Eve Alliance Tournament 8 this past summer. Now that I'm no longer in Atlas, I feel a bit more motivated to blog about things in general. So please pardon the length of my post.

First of all, everyone has been asking me why I left Atlas. I am quite surprised at the number of people who had actually noticed this - after all, I've been trying to stay out of the limelight since AT8. I do not read or poast on Eve forums, unless I wanted a game time card. For those of you who aren't too familiar with 0.0 politics, Atlas alliance was a space-holding superpower who recently saw their fall from heaven in a rather spectacular and entertaining fashion. As I said, I was inactive in 2009, so did not know of the reasons why Atlas had acquired such a huge swath of Angel space, but when I returned I decided to join a corp (Phantom Squad) consisting of many ex-Insurgency members. I joined around the time of the Providence invasion with the expectation that I will be getting lots of sweet pew pew, but I was a bit disappointed with the quality of the fleet fights I was getting, and lag was not to blame then. Nothing quite like Insurgency... sigh...

In hindsight, the Atlas spirit had started to die, little by little, even at that time.

After Atlas deployed up north to help with iT Alliance's campaign against the Northern Coalition, someone lost a titan in battle and Atlas' leader, Bobby Atlas, recalled everyone back to home space. This was the beginning of the end. The better fleet commanders like Quesa left for greener pastures, which made pvp even more uninspiring than before. In fact, right as Pandemic Legion showed up in the Drone Regions, I stopped pvping with Atlas and started moving my assets out of the Atlas home system, 0-w778. You could say that I saw this coming months before it happened...

Long story short, the Russians hired PL to kick out Atlas, and they were so successful that I pondered briefly joining PL to take out the moronic, rich players in Atlas who were very careless with their supercapitals. My bf was absolutely aghast at this thought and told me I'd probably be trolled very hard in PL, which is most likely correct. By this time, I was so disgusted with the quality of pvp in Atlas that by this time, I roamed with only my dear friends (thank you NoTR and the ladies in WGOE!) and mostly avoided fighting with Atlas, choosing to return only to fatten my wallets via ratting. During this time, I also acquired an Archon very cheaply. One day, I was happily getting trolled by the gentlemen from BANE Alliance in Amamake, a famed low sec pirating system, when I suddenly realized that I had rather recklessly posted a bunch of killmails with a friend in Pandemic Legion on the Atlas killboard... So I left, since I was going to be branded a spy and did not want my corporation to get in trouble.

There you go. This is why I left the sinking ship. I have never felt any allegiance to it; I was in Atlas solely to farm their ratting space. Oh, and I was absolutely removed from Atlas' Alliance Tournament team, in case you were wondering.

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Some comments that I'd like to make about my experience in AT8...

Ever since I was invited to commentate on the Alliance Tournament, I had preferred to remain relatively unknown. Perhaps some people thrive when being put into the spotlight, but that kind of stuff really isn't meant for me. First of all, I could never measure up to the other commentators who participated: the veritable Verone and Kil2, who had a long and brilliant record of pvping; the enthusiastic and sometimes obnoxious Darius Johnson from Goonswarm; and the boy from DICE, AngelHun, who I admittedly didn't know much about. I was a nobody, really... I applied to the tournament because I thought it was really cool to get to go to CCP HQ, to meet the people who made this awesome game called Eve.

Now, everyone else except for me had either gone to Fanfest or something and had met CCP before, so the group quickly became very clique-ish. I was never one to act like a toady to get into a "cool" group, so I did not mix in with the group very well. I was not there to look for a job, and I paid for a lot of my own expenses (it was a very expensive trip for me), so I simply did my job and got out.

AT8 was fun in some sense - I met lots of devs at a party, saw some of Iceland, and was given tours around the CCP offices - but all the fawning quickly got to me and I wanted no part of it. I was very glad that I had my bf to hang out with me in Reykjavik, without whose support I'd probably have enjoyed the trip even less. But but but! I was most impressed by the very friendly devs like CCP Mindstar and Soundwave and all the down-to-earth backstage crew who worked very hard to make the show successful. These people were lovely and I wish I could've had more time to know them better. And of course, I have the utmost respect for the original people who designed and ran Eve - most notably, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Magnus Bergsson, the mastermind who came up with the Tournament and who will likely be spearheading future game releases from CCP, as someone who was passionate enough about Eve to make a guest appearance on the Tournament despite his busy schedule. I wish I met more devs like that...

(By the way, for all the grief that everyone gave me, please note that I put in more effort than any other commentator to memorize and analyze ALL of the matches from the qualifying rounds. I even made notecards for alliances, ship effects, and scores, something that I noticed no one else really bothered to do. I did this because I didn't want to make a fool of myself. Perhaps everyone else has photographic memory? Who knows.)

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Anyway, I've just joined Reikoku again, and our first op today in Syndicate was a blasty blast. Since we are not allowed to post in local, I'd like to say GF! to the brave Ev0ke/CH/Dead Terrorists pilots who weren't afraid to take up a challenge in low sec. I was surprised that my zealot lived through the fight, during which I couldn't do much due to lag. Props to the iT logistics pilots!

http://www.killboard.it/?a=kill_related&kll_id=197749