The Old Guard Revisited

So I saw this in Twitter today:



Yes, I am one of the longest running Eve blogs. I did a check on this topic last year (The Old Guard) and I send the link to Chirality Tisteloin. Basically I used the Wayback Machine to look at the initial state of the Eve Blog Pack on Crazy Kinux's Musings blog and run down the list to see who was active. I think its pretty safe to say that of the 6 I identified as "active" that three more are moving to the inactive pile leaving The Ancient Gaming Noob and Morphisat's Eve Online Blog my only competition for longest continuously running Eve blog.

For the record, this is post 2325 and I've been blogging about Eve for over 6 years.

This brings up an interesting question: are blogs good sources for game history? As in to say, does the opinions and stories from a blogger like myself compiled over time in a single place like a blog provide an insight to "how things were" back in the day that might be forgotten or glossed over with nostalgia glasses?

Let's try it out. I picked a month in my archive at random and found this post: Nano Whining: Tears at the Speed of Light from July 29, 2008.

My god the ocean of tears will drown us all! 

The Nanowhores are in full swing on the forums, complaining bitterly that when the new changes become active that:
- Minmatar will be broken
- 2.4 billion isk Snake implants will be worthless
- Ships with 3 x Polycarbon Engine Housing rigs will be worthless
- speed tanking will be impossible
- blaster boats will not be viable
- Eve will die
To the people who think Minmatar will be broken and unplayable, I say give it time to see what the adaptors come up with. At worse they will be disadvantaged and sooner or later they will come on top again in a future change.

To the people complaining about having spent ISK on implants, ships, and rigs that will not be worth as much later I say GET A FUCKING CLUE. The devs clearly telegraphed this nerf for months in posts, blogs, and interviews. Anyone with half a brain knew something would be done about Ludicrous speeds and if you can't hack it, if you can't adapt, then leave. 

To the people saying speed tanking will be impossible I say good. Frigates are supposed to be the size of 747 Jumbo jets; seeing cruisers which are the sizes of massive skyscraper buildings moving at incredible speeds (not so bad) and having incredible physics-defying accleration and agility was immersion breaking for me. It screamed artifact of improperly trhought out game design and not artifact of universal background material. Give me slow pondering ships with real tanks where speed is used to get into better range and not hope and skip out of engagements like sparrows. 

To the people saying blasterboats will not be viable I say let's wait and see. The speed descreases affect all ships pretty much and the module changes are universal too. While a blaster boat's web may not stop his target, his target's web will not stop the blasterboat. It remains to be seen what the end result is and more testing is required. 

To the people who say Eve will die because of this I say bullshit. Nano pilots make up a small percentage of the playerbase. Even if every nanowhore quit the end result would be a mere blip on the screen. On the other side, so many players that cannot afford the implants and polycarbon rigs for speed setups can now sigh in relief that they have the options of using appropriate missiles and drones to combat fast ships that were basically invulnerable to them before. In addition, the fastest ships will still be damn fast and have some protection from weapons due to their speed; its just won't be invulnerability anymore. 

I hope this patch comes to Tranquility soon, I can't wait to see how it changes the game.

Ah yes, the infamous Nano age. You have to be there to appreciate the frustration. Most of my posts in the past are not very useful. It is, after all, a web log and not an official history of Eve. But there the occasional post that provides insight into the state of the game and mechanics at the time, like this one.

To be fair, the Great Speed Nerf did hurt blaster boats for a long time but fortunately the worm has turned again and blasters are something to be feared. The cycle continues... and I'm still here.

Now, how do I prevent Ripard from overtaking my post count? Oh I know! I'll work to get him elected to CSM. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!