News
War Updates
written by Mirxa
Apologies for not updating what’s been happening in EVE for a while. Here’s a rundown of the last few weeks.
The Fall of D-GTMI:
In the end we never stood a chance here. The last battle for D-GTMI had the potential to be epic but ended up as a tragic farce. Our coalition managed to muster over 160 capital ships to fight, actually outnumbering the number of capital ships -A- had on the field. A mixture of poor command decisions, then an appalling game bug resulted in almost total loss for our side. -A- took the system, although it is more or less permanently camped by coalition forces at the moment.
The Evacuation of 9UY4-H::
Looking for a quick knockout blow, -A- greedily eyed up the core system of 9UY4-H. It was decided not to defend this system. We were still replacing capital loses from D-GTMI and wary that a repeat of the bug which destroyed us there might reoccur. Although 9UY4-H’s loss represented a blow to our pride, the effect on our operational efficiency was negligible. Everyone was able to relocate to nearby stations and continue the fight.
The Ushra’Khanisation of the War: :
Surprisingly, -A- chose not to take 9UY4-H for themselves but instead handed it to their junior allies Ushra’Khan. This seemed to mark a disengagement on -A-‘s part. They now only participate when U’K runs into trouble. Admittedly U’K run into trouble frequently as they are somewhat comically inept.
Current Situation::
The war has de-escalated to a smaller level. U’K seem to be unable to take systems on their own and have resorted to picking away at opportunities that occur. Fighting is currently situated in the Aegis Militia pocket of providence where a bizarre game bug has made it impossible to hold sovereignty in two of the systems.
Generally morale remains high on our side. It’s increasingly clear that this war is unlikely to end in our destruction. Time is on our side. Events elsewhere in the game have put strain on U’K’s coalition and we need merely to bide our time till it falls apart.
The Fall of D-GTMI:
In the end we never stood a chance here. The last battle for D-GTMI had the potential to be epic but ended up as a tragic farce. Our coalition managed to muster over 160 capital ships to fight, actually outnumbering the number of capital ships -A- had on the field. A mixture of poor command decisions, then an appalling game bug resulted in almost total loss for our side. -A- took the system, although it is more or less permanently camped by coalition forces at the moment.
The Evacuation of 9UY4-H::
Looking for a quick knockout blow, -A- greedily eyed up the core system of 9UY4-H. It was decided not to defend this system. We were still replacing capital loses from D-GTMI and wary that a repeat of the bug which destroyed us there might reoccur. Although 9UY4-H’s loss represented a blow to our pride, the effect on our operational efficiency was negligible. Everyone was able to relocate to nearby stations and continue the fight.
The Ushra’Khanisation of the War: :
Surprisingly, -A- chose not to take 9UY4-H for themselves but instead handed it to their junior allies Ushra’Khan. This seemed to mark a disengagement on -A-‘s part. They now only participate when U’K runs into trouble. Admittedly U’K run into trouble frequently as they are somewhat comically inept.
Current Situation::
The war has de-escalated to a smaller level. U’K seem to be unable to take systems on their own and have resorted to picking away at opportunities that occur. Fighting is currently situated in the Aegis Militia pocket of providence where a bizarre game bug has made it impossible to hold sovereignty in two of the systems.
Generally morale remains high on our side. It’s increasingly clear that this war is unlikely to end in our destruction. Time is on our side. Events elsewhere in the game have put strain on U’K’s coalition and we need merely to bide our time till it falls apart.
Catch Invasion – The Battle for D-GTMI
written by Mirxa
Our war in Catch has been raging fiercely for the last couple of weeks. Against All Authorities (-A-) initial counter attacks were relatively light and our allies (CVA) were able to hold onto most of our gains. Only SV5-8N fell during this period.
However, elsewhere in Eve, events were unfolding that would change the course of our war. -A-‘s attack into the Querious region had faltered with Goonswarm successfully defending their system. In Fountain region, the last remnants of Pandemic Legions resistance against IT Alliance collapsed. Composed of the former members of the closed Band of Brothers Alliance, IT turned their attention to their hated enemies Goonswarm. -A- in turn disengaged from Querious and began a new round of counter attacks against us.
The attacks hit hard. Deploying capital ships, super capital ships and calling in their allies, -A- sought to prevent us defending our newly gained territories. They successfully wrested control of 9KOE-A from our allies, as well as making significant progress in WD-VTV and F9E-KX.
Worse was to come. On Saturday, a large -A- battleship fleet crossed the Providence-Catch Border into D-GTMI. They incapacitated the Cynosural Field Jammer and immediately jumped in a significant capital fleet which included more than 10 titan class ships – the largest ship in the game. They immediately started laying waste to the system, including the crucial PAX Incendia Astrum station there.
Running battles are now constant in D-GTMI, with each side seeking to gain a crucial edge over the other ahead of the big set piece engagements that are happening on a near daily basis throughout the warzone. Yesterday saw over 1200 people in the system at on point – actually crashing the game sever because of the scale involved.
The fight continues even as I write this article. We have four days to save this vital system. Expect more news as it comes in…
However, elsewhere in Eve, events were unfolding that would change the course of our war. -A-‘s attack into the Querious region had faltered with Goonswarm successfully defending their system. In Fountain region, the last remnants of Pandemic Legions resistance against IT Alliance collapsed. Composed of the former members of the closed Band of Brothers Alliance, IT turned their attention to their hated enemies Goonswarm. -A- in turn disengaged from Querious and began a new round of counter attacks against us.
The attacks hit hard. Deploying capital ships, super capital ships and calling in their allies, -A- sought to prevent us defending our newly gained territories. They successfully wrested control of 9KOE-A from our allies, as well as making significant progress in WD-VTV and F9E-KX.
Worse was to come. On Saturday, a large -A- battleship fleet crossed the Providence-Catch Border into D-GTMI. They incapacitated the Cynosural Field Jammer and immediately jumped in a significant capital fleet which included more than 10 titan class ships – the largest ship in the game. They immediately started laying waste to the system, including the crucial PAX Incendia Astrum station there.
Running battles are now constant in D-GTMI, with each side seeking to gain a crucial edge over the other ahead of the big set piece engagements that are happening on a near daily basis throughout the warzone. Yesterday saw over 1200 people in the system at on point – actually crashing the game sever because of the scale involved.
The fight continues even as I write this article. We have four days to save this vital system. Expect more news as it comes in…
Happy New Year
written by Bloodwire
A couple of days ago I asked Azazzel whether he would write our new years post for the web-site, his reply was something along the lines of, 'Hell No! I did it last year!' So, I went back to our news archive and found out that I had written it last year, and the year before that and confirmed my suspicion that I've "always" done it, and here I am, again making another post wishing your all a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
When I look back at 2009, at least gaming wise, I feel there is a strong Deja-vu feeling about it all. The new games that we played this year, Darkfall and Aion, in many ways reflects the new games we played the year before, Warhammer and Age of Conan. Not only have those games been complete failures for us, but they also very much represent the same, Warhammer and Aion clearly drawing inspiration from WoW and EQ2, while Darkfall and Age of Conan tried to do something entirely different from those games. Meanwhile the old games we played last year, that is, EverQuest II, Eve Online and World of Warcraft, remains the backbone of our guild, either we just keep playing them or seem to always return to them after being disappointed by another product.
Why does this happen? We've had quite a few discussions around this, and it seems that it is something that occurs not because of one reason, but of many. Going back in history a few years, I think that MMORPGs hit their golden age around the time when our three flagships were released. What happened was that the corporate world noticed that particularly one of the games caught an insane amount of subscribers, fired up their spreadsheets and started dreaming about how to emulate their success. Others tried to do their own thing, making their product stand out and be different. I don't know if it has something to do with corporate greed or the fact that our older players are getting too old and our younglings are growing impatient, one fact remains though, we haven't stuck to a single product since those three were released and some of us are getting increasingly worried. Is the MMORPG scene dying out?
Despite the fact that the industry is failing us, our three main branches has remained strong doing really good this year. In Eve Online we are flying daily operations with our alliance, taking part in large fleet battles, protecting and securing the space that we own. The news stream of EverQuest II epic take downs has been a continuous pleasure to follow throughout the year. And, even though we are trying to leave World of Warcraft for good, we always seem to end up returning to that game, rebuilding and rediscovering ourselves.
What lies ahead? As you may have guessed from reading above, we will soon be shutting down the Aion branch. Also we are eagerly awaiting the anticipated new Star Wars MMORPG. The Old Republic are being written by people who at least seems to understand the industry and are quite capable of pushing out quality products. Let's cross our fingers and hope that someone get things right for once.
Our subscription on the Ventrilo server runs out in June. Ventrilo is a great tool for communication and we will be continuing to have a chat server service running but there is no guarantee that it will be Ventrilo. We will be looking at alternatives through May/June and announce any changes.
Our web-server tbh.org.uit.no is running on the University's web-server for students where I work. The University has recently merged with the local College, and as part of that merger we had an internal reorganization, I now work for the infrastructure department, which means that I no longer run student services and soon won't have much control of that machine. What I think we should do is probably get a dedicated server which I do have control of, and can do whatever we want with. This won't affect you guys much, except we can raise file upload quotas and play around a lot more on our own server.
Our web-page runs on Acolyte a system that I have pretty much coded from scratch. I have some ideas on how to develop it further, first of it needs a decent DKP system, at the moment we have two, one which were written and only working for the EQ2 branch a long time ago and the other one is not much more than a shell of a DKP system. This is something that has been brought up and promised for the past few years, but I am sure, sometime, this year, we will have a new DKP system. The feeling I have about this is pretty much the feeling you get when you have homework that doesn't need to be delivered until late next week, except there isn't a late next week. I could throw up some other hip features here: blogs, walls (Facebook functionality), skins, wiki, but I would be lying if I told you all of those will be made into Acolyte this year. All I am saying is, there is always room for improvements.
Finally I'd like to send a salute to those guildies gathering in Birmingham these days. We have 18 guildies there gathering to celebrate the New Years together. I'm sure Azazzel will have more pictures and info on how this went later.
Once again: HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!
When I look back at 2009, at least gaming wise, I feel there is a strong Deja-vu feeling about it all. The new games that we played this year, Darkfall and Aion, in many ways reflects the new games we played the year before, Warhammer and Age of Conan. Not only have those games been complete failures for us, but they also very much represent the same, Warhammer and Aion clearly drawing inspiration from WoW and EQ2, while Darkfall and Age of Conan tried to do something entirely different from those games. Meanwhile the old games we played last year, that is, EverQuest II, Eve Online and World of Warcraft, remains the backbone of our guild, either we just keep playing them or seem to always return to them after being disappointed by another product.
Why does this happen? We've had quite a few discussions around this, and it seems that it is something that occurs not because of one reason, but of many. Going back in history a few years, I think that MMORPGs hit their golden age around the time when our three flagships were released. What happened was that the corporate world noticed that particularly one of the games caught an insane amount of subscribers, fired up their spreadsheets and started dreaming about how to emulate their success. Others tried to do their own thing, making their product stand out and be different. I don't know if it has something to do with corporate greed or the fact that our older players are getting too old and our younglings are growing impatient, one fact remains though, we haven't stuck to a single product since those three were released and some of us are getting increasingly worried. Is the MMORPG scene dying out?
Despite the fact that the industry is failing us, our three main branches has remained strong doing really good this year. In Eve Online we are flying daily operations with our alliance, taking part in large fleet battles, protecting and securing the space that we own. The news stream of EverQuest II epic take downs has been a continuous pleasure to follow throughout the year. And, even though we are trying to leave World of Warcraft for good, we always seem to end up returning to that game, rebuilding and rediscovering ourselves.
What lies ahead? As you may have guessed from reading above, we will soon be shutting down the Aion branch. Also we are eagerly awaiting the anticipated new Star Wars MMORPG. The Old Republic are being written by people who at least seems to understand the industry and are quite capable of pushing out quality products. Let's cross our fingers and hope that someone get things right for once.
Our subscription on the Ventrilo server runs out in June. Ventrilo is a great tool for communication and we will be continuing to have a chat server service running but there is no guarantee that it will be Ventrilo. We will be looking at alternatives through May/June and announce any changes.
Our web-server tbh.org.uit.no is running on the University's web-server for students where I work. The University has recently merged with the local College, and as part of that merger we had an internal reorganization, I now work for the infrastructure department, which means that I no longer run student services and soon won't have much control of that machine. What I think we should do is probably get a dedicated server which I do have control of, and can do whatever we want with. This won't affect you guys much, except we can raise file upload quotas and play around a lot more on our own server.
Our web-page runs on Acolyte a system that I have pretty much coded from scratch. I have some ideas on how to develop it further, first of it needs a decent DKP system, at the moment we have two, one which were written and only working for the EQ2 branch a long time ago and the other one is not much more than a shell of a DKP system. This is something that has been brought up and promised for the past few years, but I am sure, sometime, this year, we will have a new DKP system. The feeling I have about this is pretty much the feeling you get when you have homework that doesn't need to be delivered until late next week, except there isn't a late next week. I could throw up some other hip features here: blogs, walls (Facebook functionality), skins, wiki, but I would be lying if I told you all of those will be made into Acolyte this year. All I am saying is, there is always room for improvements.
Finally I'd like to send a salute to those guildies gathering in Birmingham these days. We have 18 guildies there gathering to celebrate the New Years together. I'm sure Azazzel will have more pictures and info on how this went later.
Once again: HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!