September 2013 – Content, Content, Content

Mid 80s Weekend

Sep 252013

Ganked 84 & 85 both happened this past weekend and they were pretty good roams when all is said & done.

Rebbeca Neresh broke his Ganked FC cherry with a Thorax hull roam for Ganked 84. He took us over to Barlegeut to see Brave Newbies, along the way we steam rolled a gang lead by fellow CSM 8 delegate, Chitsa Jason. Was a fun, if intensely tidi’d fight. And I lived – surprising as I was in a Deimos (Rail Shield Kitey fit, but still…). BNI played a little – there was way more than that shows, but 1 we fail at points, 2 they got scared by Green suddenly appearing inside of warp range near them – but we did not hang around there too much. Syndicate was pretty quiet, except for PF, were we scored this Proteus kill, thanks to the pilot being dumb. Rest of the night was a quick stumble around Black Rise, with an eventual whelp into a Snuff gang, that could have been much different if people had been listening correctly.

Sunday came round and I took us out on Ganked 85, and to my huge surprise Geminate was damn busy! Makes sense I suppose when its ruskies who live there and Sunday afternoon is their prime. We killed a shiny in one system, then suddenly next door as we started free burning somewhere we run into an organised frig/cruiser gang that pretty much rolls us as we were split up, not really focused and what not. It happens. We went out again and ran into another large gang, a gang that felt the need to bring in twice our numbers via cyno & phone a friend or two. Oh well. Still at least I learned that Geminate is a fun place to go at the right time of day.

As usual we had sponsorship courtesy of Somer.Blink, the following people won prizes:

Ganked 84

Spots: Comet x5 – Bogdan Yassavi, Verse Askold, DocFloyd, Abriel Claire, Morgan Zarkov – You guys won for them final blows on certain kills or highest damage on those same kills.
Disctinction: Navy Brutix x2 – Kitty Baugh, Angelus Infirim
Excellence: Navy Mega – Daneel Trevize

Ganked 85

Spots: Fleet scythe x4 – Billius Zabub, tgl3, quinten sarn, bridg – You chaps won prizes for either avoiding church to fly with us, hero tackles or top damage on kills.
Distinction: Fleet Cane x2 – IgnasS, Andrew Butcher
Excellence: Fleet Phoon – Rick Silva

Crossing Zebra’s Community FFA

CSM8, EVE, Ganked, RVB 2 Responses »

Sep 242013

Xander Phoena, the host of Crossing Zebras, one of the foremost podcasts in EVE, came to me with a great idea. A community FFA featuring the CSM, the podcast community, bloggers and best of all YOU, the public! So join us on 5th October 2013 from 20.00 EVE in the system of Asakai. Bring frigates, destroyers or even cruisers and meet us at the Sun.

Do not miss out on a killmail of your favourite CSM members, or podcast hosts!

What we would love from you is people to stream the event live & in person, so if you use Twitch and stream ganked, or solo roams or indeed anything, drop by the system and get the coverage rolling.

We will have some prizes to offer, including random contracts of Slicers & Firetails from me, courtesy of Judontknowme a former RvB Ganked regular, as well as other items to be arranged between now and the 5th October.

Check this post out over on the Crossing Zebras site for more details, or to ask any questions join the ingame channel CZ Community FFA.

I’ll see you there!

Winter Expansion announcement – Watch with Mangala

CSM8, EVE 5 Responses »

Sep 222013

Thursday 26th September 2013 is the day that CCP will publicly announce details of the next EVE Online expansion. This will be live streamed on the CCP Twitch channel from 20.00 UTC, hosted by the excellent CCP Guard alongside the EVE Development team.

While you can watch this alone, discuss it on the forums, or even brave the stream chat channel, I invite you to join me on the RvB Ganked Mumble on the day to talk about the expansion & its features as they are announced by CCP. I shall be online from 19.00 UTC for those interested in watching the announcement with me. Additionally for those unable to use a mic, please join the RvB Ganked channel ingame to discuss the expansion at the same time.

I am hoping any available members of the CSM will be there as well.

I’ll see you all on Thursday.

Ganked 100, Capitals & You

EVE, Fcing, Ganked, RVB 38 Responses »

Sep 062013

Attentive Ganked folks will have noticed a small mention about Ganked 100 on the Autumn/Winter schedule and started wondering, this post is mostly for you guys; However, the rest of you should read along as well, as this may interest you.

Long story short is that in working on the schedule for the next few months I realised we would reach Ganked 100 in January 2014 – the 18th to be precise – and it got me thinking about making it something special. And somehow I decided it would feature capital ships – preferably carriers & dreadnaughts. Initially Ganked 100 was to be a roam, although I – and others (thanks Daneel!) – soon pooh-poohed that as it is A LOT of organisation, even for someone as anal as me. After a wee chat with Daneel – who also made a handy post on the idea over on Failheap – it is now going to be similar to the Flight of a Thousand Rifters event that we crashed back in May – see my write up of Ganked 67 – but instead of a solo Supercarrier taking part, it will hopefully be large number of carriers & dreadnaughts undocking in some random low-sec system (incursion locked or not…) and inviting the world to “COME AT US BRO”, while other Ganked attendee’s attempt to stop them/whore the capitals/shoot blinkies etc.

Which is were YOU guys come in.

If you would be willing to take part in this, then say so in the comments along with what you are or could be capable of fielding as far as Capital Ships are concerned. If you have ideas on the subject, wish to maybe help out with logistics nearer the time, basically anything related to this event, say so in the comments. Any pertinent ideas that do appear from comments, will be added in to this post.

I know I am over 4 months early for this, but an event with the potential that this has to escalate beyond our wildest dreams/nightmares demands it don’t you think?

CSM 8 & CCP Summer Summit

CSM8, EVE No Responses »

Sep 052013

August 28th through 30th saw the CSM8 Summer Summit with CCP.

7 members of CSM8 got to attend in person: Trebor Daehdoow, Ripard Teg, Ali Aras, Mynnna, Mike Azariah, James Arget & Korvin, with the rest of us being able to digitally attend thanks to the magic of technology. Before I go on it has to be said that Chitsa Jason was easily digital man of the summit, he was there for everything & even webcammed in too, unlike the rest of us who are shy and retiring.

Over the 3 days of the summit we took part in around 20 sessions with a VERY large number of teams from inside of CCP – see a rough line up here:

Overall it is my opinion that the sessions themselves were very positive with just one or two exceptions, however even those finished on a good note, thanks in part to fellow CSM members really plugging our role as stakeholders.

The standout sessions for me were as follows:

Economy: EyjoG was as ever well prepared with a serious amount of graph porn related to numerous financial statistics, all of which kept the small time financier in my head happy;
Art: What can I say I am a sucker for pretty pictures, and the Art team did not fail to deliver, including new looks for various in game items. I would go further, but I could be breaking my NDA and Dolan will hurt me if I do that;
5-0 sessions: 5-0 is the team of the moment at CCP – helps when you feature the likes of CCP Fozzie – and what they showed the CSM was very well received, and I know you all will enjoy the content to come in Winter & beyond from this team as much as we enjoyed hearing about it;
UI: Spoke with reps from several groups for this session, and I came away very much looking forward to what the connected teams have to offer in the near future.

Every session that I digitally attended – and there was a couple I was not present for due to real life getting in the way – were just as good as the above, but the standouts were the ones that really made ME sit up & take notice for my own reasons. Each of us on the CSM had sessions like that, for examples check Ripard Teg’s daily writeups over on his blog.

All in all it was an excellent Summit, even with a few technical niggles for those digitally attending – bad sound on day one & unable to be heard for half of day three – and I do look forward to being on the in-room version of this picture during the Winter:

As for the minutes, we have started the task of working on those this week, now that we have videos of the sessions available. We will be doing a two paragraph summary of each session, as well as more in-depth minutes for those people who REALLY want to read every word said. I cannot say with any certainty when these will be ready, just that with Ali shepherding us around, they will be ready sooner rather than later. And to the members of previous CSM’s who I may have offended when it came to comments on how long the minutes took to be publicised: I feel your pain now, I am sorry!