What you missed this week

Merry <insert your politically correct holiday event here> folks!

… You know what, fuck it, Merry Christmas you filthy animals, and may you find under the Christmas tree dank frags and gudfites to last you the whole of next year! I’ll try and keep this edition of ‘What you missed this week’ short so all you family-men and women can all have one less excuse to avoid your big-house family dinner with fathers and uncles and snotty brats.

For everyone else that is finding themselves alone for Christmas, just try and do one single Christmasy thing today; listen to a stupid jingle, receive some carol singers, hell, just go find some piece of pine or fir, stick it on a wall and put some glitter on it. Then chuckle stupidly to yourself and say Merry Christmas. ‘Cause it is Christmas, and you should enjoy it too.

That said let’s move on to this day’s WYMTW!

Jin’taan, CSM and all-around good guy, has announced that he is going to host a New Player Experience roundtable on January the 7th. Everyone that is part of an organization that is involved in dealing with new players and guiding them through the game can join in, after completing a short survey on the forums. A lot of people don’t really consider the CSM a useful tool, but i urge everyone that has that sentiment to send whatever’s on your mind to the CSM representative that’s most attuned to your complaint. Even if it helps to reinforce a point he’s been hearing about, it’s a great way to make sure your thoughts reach CCP in a very poignant way.

Speaking of the CSM, the campaigning has already started for some people. CapriSunKraftfoods has tossed his hat into the ring, running on the same platform of ‘a sounding board’ as last year, a connection to the beating heart of the community and a the ‘de facto’ way of how we work. We also have Erika Mizune, DJ and B4R volunteer, running on an industrial platform (lolpun) trying out again after narrowly almost getting on last year. As another returning candidate Borat Guereen has submitted his candidacy again, running on an anti-establishment platform, his niche being everyone that isn’t part of any of the ‘major blocks’, solo-ers, explorers and just people doing their own thing.

Closing up, in the spirit of wholesome political unaffiliation, we also have Jonn Duune, mikal Rotineque and Rapid Blue also putting threads up so far, and even if you have a preferred candidate, i recommend you check out everyone, you never know who can say something that sways you.

Coming off of last week’s genius prediction of them moving close to Curse, apparently TestCO has actually redeployed to Sendaya, as shown by EN24, as well as a very bad lossmail i recently got around that area a few days ago. Progodlegend gives the reason of TEST not having a ‘final escalation option’ as the reason for the imminent resource and shipbuilding efforts as well as choosing an area that’s outside of NCPanFam’s sphere of influence. Seems that ‘TEST has supers?’ will soon become an unfactual meme and given all the alliances currently buzzing around that area of space we may have another larger war sooner rather than later.

Things haven’t been quiet in lowsec either, with FW exploding as Vlillirier (fuck this name) falls, Caldari flags raising over it. If you have no idea of FW and significance, this is akin to the significance of a large null alliance losing their staging/capital. While this is more a morale loss rather than a strategic matter, due to Citadel proliferation, Galmil has held Vlillirier (if i have to write that name one more time), for seven bloody years. Soon Eha also fell, another Galmil bastion. While the big boys are playing in the ‘big leagues’, it seems the Amamil(?) and Minmil FW areas also are heating up after a good deal of stagnation. Keep your eyes on CZ, as we have a few FW writers that are itching to share more as the situation develops. 

Remaining in lowsec, Uedama had a fun night on Christmas’ Eve, Concord gathering around the fires of the freshly destroyed Nereuses and Hoarders, gankers which just had blown up this little thing. Project Mayhem and Snuff also had a fun time last night engaging with SpectreFleet leading to this great brawl. Systems in general were active all of last night, and it seems more than a few nerds finished up their tree decorating early and had time to blap spaceships. Good’un them.

CCP has not stood idle during this period it seems either. While not fully exposed to the front-end, new faction caps have hit TQ, even if they might not be seeded yet. People are pumped for even blingier options to their standard caps, while the other side winces at even MORE ship names that will confuse everyone. ‘What’s a Molok?’ 
We also are going to get more skins and then even more skins, past the Glacials which have been dropping in the daily pressies. We can expect a hell of a lot of these to start being pumped out soon as the technology for creating them finally finishes development.

If you don’t know what i actually do in Eve, then GOOD, that means my sikrit identity is maintained. But i will say that i’ve done a bloody olimpic-stadium-load of exploration during my years of Eve. As such, seeing someone named K716 completing a full, fantastically-fleshed-out guide to Sleeper Caches manages to earn a lot of respect from me. It was a huge undertaking, one even i decided eventually not to pursue, as these are not exactly the simplest sites to explain, containing mechanics and timings not found anywhere else in Eve. While i am a bit sad to have this ‘out there’ now, like your favorite indie band striking big and stop being ‘underground’, Eve is such an obtuse game that it needs this help, and, well, i’ll always have my Drone data sites and Booster hacking combat sites that are still completely undocumented. *hint*
 

Art’s been slacking this week, so i’m just going to leave you with this cute Badger hauling gifts while being pulled by missiles, made by Cpt_Soban:

We also have this nice little completely-not-official wallpaper by New_Eden_Tourist:

CCP also got into the spirit and made some mini-Christmassy remixes of the popular songs:

And we also had this pretty great Skyfall parody made by KyleAnderson35 called “Vale Fall”:

Christmas is a beautiful time of the year. It reinforces the strong, strict, duality of an outdated ethical system. It’s the one time of the year you are thrown either in the ‘you’ve been bad‘ or the ‘you’ve been good‘ box. There is no middle ground, no gray area.

You are grouped up with some of the worst of the world, even if you just slightly messed up, and the reverse is applicable. You’re also given a shining medal of approval for the smallest things, put in the same category as some of the best examples of what can be achieved by us.

Merry socio-economic construct with philosophical implications!

We rarely get Reks with stories, but it’s great when we get them. This time, we have Condor Kaenald getting the jump on an Ares by trying to backstab his mates. It’s a good read, check it out.

Staying small, we also had this lucky kill by Amba Karamba flying a Proteus, killing a supposed travel-ceptor. Which wasn’t. And carried 22bil in BPCs.

This week on TV we had Signal Cartel making a pretty spiffy trailer for their corp:

Streamer tkdonut getting in over his head in his Hyperion, getting a Naglfar dropped on him, and escaping. And i just want to mention i really like streamers that play the game seriously instead of focusing on making it entertaining.

StitchK flies a blap Phoenix and loses it in glorious combat.

And closing up, i have two videos of Hotlink K162 being really active this week, initially with a scuffle in the Drone regions, aided by THERABOIS, and then flat out dunking five Rorquals. Enjoy.

As we all gather’round the virtual Christmas tree (i mean Jita), we have a chance to look back at the year. We’ve had Citadels, two great wars, some huge changes in the community and a reinvigoration of the CSM, Eve going semi-free-to-play topping them all. Our little game has gone through some huge changes this year, with a lot more to still come in the next year, and i ask everyone to take a step back from all the niggling things that make your life in space not as enjoyable.

Take a step back from the probe scanner dimmed results, take a step back from the Eve galaxy map, take a step back from Vexors and RLML Caracals, take a step back from Fozziesov and Phoebe, take a step back from wormhole suddenly disappearing and from calculus of isk/h per activities, of EC’s poorly replacing POSes and of FW still being unchanged. Take a step back from anything that you focus on for the entire year and try to really look at Eve.

At this large, sprawling, fantastically active and beautiful game we are shaping each day, at this unique community we choose to be part of and at this deeply rich universe we choose to immerse ourselves in. 

There isn’t any other online experience like Eve out there, in all its wholesome. So at the end of this year, i ask everyone, especially the hardened bittervets and too-caught-up and busy leaders to sit back and take a deep breath, and allow themselves to see what i see, even down to what a fresh Alpha clone sees.

This fantastic game. Our Eve Online.

~Cosmo

Thank you for reading this edition of ‘What you missed this week’. If you think we missed something, share it in the comments section, i’m sure a lot of people still want to check out more things. Also please leave any suggestions and ideas you may have in the comments as well, and as always, if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, please toss a nickle or an iskcent into our real or virtual wallets to keep this going with the same aplomb and quality.

PS: Remember to vote in this year’s shitpost of the year contest on Reddit!