on PLEXes

http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2006/07/13/

I really hate PLEXes.

I mean I love them.

I mean…. Well, let’s go with I hate RMTing.

No, because I’m enjoying paying with PLEXes.

OK, I hate the PEOPLE who are on the other side of all the PLEX transactions I go through each month.

Only… I don’t hate them, I just think they’re idiots to the point that…… OK, I hate them.

Let’s start over. I’m working at a seasonal job in the service industry, and between using “sir” every other sentence and constantly smiling, I pulled in about 100$ for eight hours of labor on Sunday. That’s about what, 2.5 bil in PLEXes?

I really hate that. I hate that I press buttons, over and over, to make what can readily be compared to pennies in IRL cash while I am in fact actively making money to cover both the regular subscriptions of my accounts and enough PLEXes to fund my carriers come Christmas day. I’ve got a stigma, you see.

I started out Eve, as most players did a few years ago, completely effing lost. After about three weeks of stubbornly refusing to use the tutorial out of principle I manned up, read the three paragraphs it consisted of at that time (with lots of clicking in between sentences accompanied by “ooh, I can do that?”) and started mining. In a Navitas.

I mined, for a stupidly long time, with a few lasers and a frigate’s cargohold, until I could afford an Exequeror. I mined in that until I could afford a brutix, then till I could afford a retriever, covetor, and finally a hulk. The entire time I had been staring at those damn pieces of veldspar I’d be tabbed out, reading halada’s guide to mining and drooling over the hulk’s yield/hour and all the shiny things I could do to improve it.

It’s been about two years since then. I’ve lost a heck of a lot of hulks. As well as other ships. But, in any case, I lost them and worked to get them back, blood, sweat, gore, etcetera.

Now I’m to understand that someone can throw down 70 US dollars and have a hulk and a hulk pilot instantly in the char bazaar.

Now, what I hated about WoW was that mainly, you’d spend a month or five on the dungeon of the month, running it, dying it, and getting slightly shinier gear to run slightly harder dungeons.

Then, about once every three months, blizzard would hand everyone on the server the shiniest possible gear while simultaneously unveiling the next hardest dungeon which was doable using the gear that you had either spent the last three months, five hours every night obtaining and/or picked up off the street. It’s easy to parallel this to Eve and someone dropping five thousand dollars and getting a supercarrier for their troubles. I think the main reason that I tolerate this is that the Eve person isn’t someone playing in a parallel world that I can never touch, accepting the free hand up while I pound on the glass with bloody fists.

In Eve, that person? He’s a target. He’s used his money to get a leg up, but I can reach up with a hand crafted through sleepless nights of losses and kills (mostly losses), wrap around his neck and drag him back down.

It’s a nice feeling.

So hey, keep buying those plexes. I’ll be here, slowly paying my subs with isk and gaining friends and equipment. And when you try to cyno out of my interdictor or jump a gate in your rorqual?

You won’t be going anywhere.

*non-imaginary* friends.

Just as a quick recap, here’s the different wormhole classes:

C1: No BSs allowed, soloable by any ship with a reasonable tank.

C2: BSs and smaller allowed, sites can be done with RR cruisers/battlecruisers, drakes tanked moderatley, ect.

C3 BSs and smaller allowed, drake fully fit for tank, t3s, BSs can handle it.

C4 You need a RR chain or a stupidly tanked BS/t3 to run these.

C5: 4-5 RR BSs, T3s/t2 cruisers, anything smaller/bigger/less tanked typically goes pop.

C6: 10 perfect beings flying battleships/t3/t2 in perfect unison allotting RR before it is even needed.

You’ll notice that C4 and above generally have “RR” somewhere in their descriptions. This means, in general, that having friends to do these sites with is a requirement.

I know some of you will instantly think “Well I have alts that can rep me hur hur ur wrong” but shut it. Either you haven’t tried to use three accounts at once for logistical purposes, or you have and are better at it than I am, because I’ve been losing battleships left and damn right.

Another way people try to skid around the whole “having friends” bit is by spending stupid amounts of ISK on nice ships/modules. This either results in a very pretty/expensive killmail or a carrier in a WH anomaly. I’d just like to remind everyone that carriers in C4, C5 and C6 anomalies spawn multiple BSs which quickly alpha anyone silly enough to…..

Be in the general vicinity if you haven’t already cleared the site, I guess.

So, C4 or higher? Have friends. Considering this is W-space, a metaphorical equivalent to sitting with a few people next to an unlocked chest containing all of your and their possessions, make them good friends.

Oh, and make sure those people are at least semi-competent or you may get hit like these poor bastards:

Thanks to CCRES to the encounter and chatlogs.

CCRES, a WH ubercorp/alliance came across four carriers and an abaddon running a c6 site. Since it was four carriers, they could tank the damage and use fighters, drones and the one BS to kill the initial spawn as well as the 16 additional BSs spawned from the carriers warping on grid. Easy money.

Unfortunately the fighters kept getting alpha-ed and as such damage was low. They tried to warp in a scorpion and a nightmare to help with the BSs, but the sleepers didn’t take that too well and popped the scorp while almost killing the nightmare. Apparently these people took upwards of several hours to kill the first wave while tanking the 16 BSs, while CCRES sat in the sidelines patiently waiting to gank them.

For the first hour and a half or so… after that they used zephyrs and covops to steal all the wrecks and warp away laughing.

So, in general, have enough people to run the sites, and carriers are for once you’ve shown you’re good enough to run the sites without them.

Chat N SShots:
[ 2010.11.03 07:36:01 ] Bertilak Duvall > weak
[ 2010.11.03 07:36:23 ] Klann Schreck > most efficient way to run site EVER_ no ammo used
[ 2010.11.03 07:36:25 ] Jack Miton > you run sites like old people fuck
[ 2010.11.03 07:36:34 ] Lord Zaff > disabled parking spot amiright
[ 2010.11.03 07:36:37 ] Klann Schreck > slow and with broken parts?
[ 2010.11.03 07:36:47 ] Jack Miton > yup
[ 2010.11.03 07:37:00 ] Klann Schreck > I know you guys are running sites, and imma let you finish, but JESUS CHRIST we’ve been here for HOURS watching this shitshow
[ 2010.11.03 07:37:27 ] Bertilak Duvall > then go find something better to do
[ 2010.11.03 07:37:31 ] Klann Schreck > na
[ 2010.11.03 07:37:34 ] Uriel Kharan > But this is awesome
[ 2010.11.03 07:37:34 ] Klann Schreck > free blue tags
[ 2010.11.03 07:37:49 ] Bertilak Duvall > i know ya’ll need stuff after all that you lost
[ 2010.11.03 07:37:57 ] Klann Schreck > pffft
[ 2010.11.03 07:38:00 ] Klann Schreck > already replaced it lols
[ 2010.11.03 07:39:58 ] Uriel Kharan > So do you guys do this often?
[ 2010.11.03 07:40:05 ] Jack Miton > lol, i doubt it
[ 2010.11.03 07:42:00 ] EVE System > Subspace communication beacon unreachable. Channel list unavailable.
[ 2010.11.03 07:46:53 ] EVE System > Subspace communication beacon unreachable. Channel list unavailable.
[ 2010.11.03 07:47:09 ] Klann Schreck > hey guys! guess what! we jsut made 70 mill off those tags
[ 2010.11.03 07:47:12 ] Uriel Kharan > Should I come back periodically?
[ 2010.11.03 07:47:21 ] Klann Schreck > and dont mind us, we’re jsut gonna probe out your system, see if there’s anything good

P.S. In general CCRES doesn’t smack, but can you blame them?

Photos