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?
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!
The Tournament Team would like to announce a live streamed Developer and EVE TV Commentator roam that will be occurring Wednesday July 31st, between the hours of 13:00 and 16:00 UTC.
Members of the CCP Tournament Team, along with our commentators, Apathetic Brent, Bacchanalian and Shadoo will be heading out through Black Rise and The Citadel to take in the sights and sounds of low security space with the intention of bringing a little of the tournament action to your doorstep.
So, if you’d like to shoot at your favourite EVE TV personalities, including CCP Fozzie, CCP Rise, CCP Dolan and many more members of the Tournament crew, feel free to keep your eyes on the areas mentioned above, and maybe you’ll even see us around hotspots such as Tama and Asakai.
Prepare your spaceships!
The above was a notice put out with very little fanfare by CCP, but enough people saw it that I decided to run a roam with the intention of killing the Commentary team and so Ganked: Dev Hunt Edition was organised. Wednesday rolled round and CCP extended DT for an hour, but that didn’t stop us we just sat on comms talking about bee’s, until suddenly the server was up and it was go time. Fleet formed and we had 50 guys raring to go, by the time we burned to the lowsec meet up, we had over 120. Along the way, fleet member Phiksus did this to a stupid tengu… Kind of apt when you consider that the local spam for the day was this:
While in Kinakka we exploded a Vagabond, and then invited his corpies to fleet, before the CCP stream got going and we moved off towards them. We swiftly burned through lowsec until we ran into CCP in Ostengele & Alperaute where much chaos ensued, and CCP’s obsession with Roigon began. We took down Dolan, Logibro, Loxy & Rise in Alperaute and over in Ostingele we got tackle on Fozzie & Bro as well as rolling over a Moon Warriors gang camping the Alperaute/Ostingele gate. And that was the end of the first CCP outing.
CCP then trolled our fleet by appearing in Tama, so we burned once again in that direction and when we arrived we doubled the local count, & found Mad Ani’s fleet there too!!! Tama itself turned into a clusterfuck of epic proportions, we fought CCP, we fought Ani’s fleet, we fought randoms and we even fought a small Urine Alliance fleet that showed up too. All in all we had a huge amount of fun in system fighting everyone we fought – or simply exploded – until CCP bailed to reship for round three.
And again they moved elsewhere, this time to Rakapas. Moving there we dropped a few blinkies that gate jumped with us, and then found ourselves chasing CCP around various FW Plexes in Rakapas while killing various gangs over and over. We were doing so well, that a Bombers Bar gang in system joined the Ganked fleet as it was the only way to get on kills! Eventually, after much warping and burning and fighting, CCP left the system died and that was that.
[ 2013.07.31 16:04:40 ] CCP Manifest > Thanks all for coming out!
Now I have to say, yesterday was really good fun. CCP doing any sort of roam in that timezone was excellent, we had many Crims & Kiwi’s in fleet who for once did not have to alarm clock for a Ganked roam, as well as many people from other TZ’s who got up early, or put off the gardening etc to come along and fly with us. Even better was the many new people who joined us thanks to the word of mouth about the roam, as well as Fozzie retweeting my tweet about it!
What made it really special for many of us, was actually being able to take part in something like this without the “big dogs” of EVE hotdropping the event or similar. In fact, it has been pointed out that WE were the big dog this time.
To see the CCP point of view of the afternoon, check out the archived stream on Twitch:
In closing I just want to thank CCP & the Commentators for doing the roam, especially Brent for inspiring our ship names, and to everyone we exploded for just inflating our scoreboard for this roam. We topped out at 300+ kills for 26.5 billion isk in damage done. Making this one of the most successful Ganked roams in our 2 year history.
Recently there has been some talk on the RvB forums about a website called Fleet-Up.com and whether it would be viable for a group like RvB to use it. Personally given the nature of how we operate I do not think so as frankly too few of the FC’s would use it, let alone the members. Also it’s a cost we really cannot afford in the long term if member uptake is low.
However, after having a look around the website, I thought that it could be something for Ganked to use, at least for the guest FC’s and more involved attendee’s. So I stumped for 4 months usage of the site for a group of up to 250 people.
The site allows you to create groups, set up “events”, upload fits and even add those fits to doctrines for group members to utilise. Additionally it can help you create fleets, track those fleets and even see how well those fleets do compared to previous roams and so on.
I would like to give this a go on various Ganked’s over the next 4 months, and so would love it if many of you would join the site, and the RvB Ganked group using this link. I’ll give other FC’s full rights to create roams and doctrines, regular members the ability to upload fits – SENSIBLE FITS – and everyone else, just basic access. This is not a compulsory affair, but I would appreciate as much support from you all as possible.
AT XI kicks off in 12 days with the matches below making up the opening games of the first day of the tournament. Below you find my predictions for these matches – my chosen winners are highlighted in BOLD:
Circle-Of-Two vs SCUM. (The team with an AT pedigree v some lowsec gate-campers? No contest.)
Of Sound Mind vs YOUR VOTES DON’T COUNT (While I like SOUND, I have had many more good times with & against the waffles.)
Curatores Veritatis Alliance vs R.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N (T.O.O M.A.N.Y D.O.T.S. So I am favouring CVA, although will they form up before the match begins?)
THE R0NIN vs CAStabouts (Another team with AT Pedigree v ? Yeah.)
Goonswarm Federation vs Sleeper Social Club (I’d like to see Goons get far this year so I can take their scalp for the RvB scalp collection.)
Verge of Collapse vs Outbreak. (VoC riding a wave after last year, so totally favouring them.)
Wormhole Holders vs Rote Kapelle (I would love to face RK again this year, without them flying out of the arena.)
Perihelion Alliance vs The Fourth District (I like the 4th, and root for them every chance I get.)
D3vil’s Childr3n vs Late Night Alliance (Not a clue who either are, so I flipped a coin)
Clockwork Pineapple vs Rainbow Dash Friends (Ponies. Nuff said.)
RAZOR Alliance vs Babylon 5.. (I just finished a rewatch of B5)
Sicarius Draconis vs Test Alliance Please Ignore (Id like this scalp too)
Moist. vs Transmission Lost (Not a clue who either are, so I flipped a coin)
Surely You’re Joking vs Nulli Secunda (Scalps for the scalp throne)
Exiled Ones vs Choke Point (Not a clue who either are, so I flipped a coin)
JIHADASQUAD vs Exodus. (Exodus. seem like a pretty good group of small gangers, so I went with them.)
Noir. Mercenary Group vs Shadow Cartel (This was a hard call, both are good groups of pvpers, but in the end I also flipped a coin)
HUN Reloaded vs DarkSide. (HUN should do really well this year.)
Darkness of Despair vs Quebec United Legions (Lets see what these russians can do)
M.I.F vs Angeli Mortis (I have at least heard of Angeli, so I am going with them.)
Kill It With Fire vs Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork (Kill it could surprise me, but I know a few pilots in Ministry and totally will be rooting for them.)
The G0dfathers vs Urine Alliance (Urine are a scalp I want, and a group I want to do well, will they become Kings of Tourney space?)
SOLAR FLEET vs HYDRA RELOADED (Solar cant bot the tourney.)
End of Life vs Darkspawn. (Not a bloody clue.)
Heretic Initiative vs No Holes Barred (Fuck the franchise.)
WHY so Seri0Us vs RvB (Seriously, you expected anything else?)
W-Space vs Mildly Sober (Flipped a coin)
The Obsidian Front vs The Initiative. (Totally expect Initiative to take this.)
Confederation of xXPIZZAXx vs Dead Terrorists (Pizza will be great to watch I am sure.)
Sadistica Alliance vs Agony Empire (I like Agony, and know many of their pilots. Friendship, best ship.)
Pandemic Legion vs Synthetic Systems (Too easy a choice)
The Kadeshi vs Drunk ‘n’ Disorderly (The Kadeshi is a long term tourney participant, they should do this easily.)
If you have your own ideas, feel free to post them in the comments.
Not really too much to say on the CSM, except that the past 3 weeks or so have in my opinion been really good for our interactions with CCP, I cannot say on what subjects, but I have felt like I have been contributing a lot more. Additionally the summit dates are the 28th to 30th August, I will not be “live”, but I will be there remotely due to work commitments.
Also, please join me on the EUNI public mumble on the 13th as per this post on their website.
This past weekend Ganked 75 rolled over 120 talwars into space and scored over 120 kills. It was a strange roam, we had a quiet time in Syndicate, helped the blues of a fleet member defend a sieged POS, and got to Fountain were comms proceeded to break down enough that I got really annoyed and kicked everyone…
Now in my defence I had 2 guys giving varying intel, 1 guy rehashing a fight some slackers had just had, and a few other people continuing to sing – after an admittedly great fleet wide rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody – and someone else calling a cheetah on a gate as primary, just to see our own bubble go up as some bombers decloak while half the fleet is warping into our bubble and the other half is jumping away from the bombs, no wonder I was annoyed.
Anyway, I soon calmed down and we reformed around half the fleet in Stacmon – usual after a whelp – and went and fought an Agony Empire PVP Basics roam. Welcoming newbs to pvp always feels good.
We did have an array of Somer.Blink sponsored prizes too, and here are my winners for the night:
When the in game clock ticks over to 17.55 today, Mangala Solaris will have been a member of the amazing institution known as RvB for exactly 3 years.
Like many of you, I first joined RvB with an alt however in July 2010, not long after returning from the outside world, I found myself looking for a home with my main and so I signed up to Blue Republic with Mangala. Within hours I was whoring those mails and even getting the odd final blow. My favourite kill from those early days will always be this one, and people wonder why I like the unlimited combat area so much!
Somehow I started FCing – arranged fights, impromptu scraps, roams and so much more – and from there I helped out in Command a couple of times and slowly moved towards becoming the pimp for RvB I am today.
During my journey from eager RvB main to jaded & bitter RvB veteran I have seen & undertaken many things:
Four moves from Verge Vendor to Everyshore to Lonetrek and now The Forge;
Helped RvB pass 500,000 kills, kills which no matter how they were made all have a story behind them;
Several epic wars with those smelly layabouts over in EVE University, during which high sec saw what we still hold to be the largest battles between two entities it has ever seen;
Innumerable other third party wars, some fun ones, some not so fun – MATE;
An RvB directors’ wild idea go from a simple purple roam to become EVE’s premier public roam, with dear old me having FC’d over 50 of them;
Our Mass frigate FFA’s, a couple of which have given the server a severe RvB shaped headache;
And who could forget all the support & assistance RvB gave me during my successful campaign to become a CSM 8 Delegate.
After three wonderful years & nearly 6000 killmails that I have found my way on to, I feel more at home here than ever, and I know that this is down to all of you. This includes the people who cause me to get annoyed, the people who cannot read the rules, the people who make the rules, and especially the people who make it a joy to log in and (occasionally) undock. Keep doing what you do and I’ll still be here in another 3 years.
In a little under four weeks, RvB Ganked turns Two years old and I can look back on the past year with a smug grin on my face. The past year has seen Ganked get bigger & stronger than it was during its first year of being with many more people joining us regularly, including several new Guest FCs: Alphastarpilot, Combat Mink, Greygal, Lorkin Desal, MirrorGod & Roigon. Ganked has easily cemented it’s place as EVE’s Number One public roam.
Our average fleet is up to around 150 pilots every week – with the roam for Ganked 67: MAX PCU technically seeing us run a max fleet and end up with a secondary fleet running too!
We are killing much more on roams than we used to, although a Titan still remains elusive! When we turned One we had 2000 kills to our name and around 150 billion isk in damage done, now we are turning Two we have increased that to nearly 7000 kills and over 540 Billion ISK exploded.
The 45 roams held since Ganked turned One have been really good for all of us, I know I have a lifetimes worth of good memories from these roams, including:
Being THE roam for EVE’s 10th birthday;
Finding a group who likes to fight nearly as much as we do – Brave Newbies Inc;
Escorting a Charon into null-sec for fun;
Epic scrap with DPS boats with pets of -A- during Ganked 40;
Fighting Alphastars talwar gang in B-D at the start of Ganked 59;
Discovering I had the support of so many of you all when I announced that I would run for the 8th CSM;
and so many many more that were I to sit here listing them, I would be here for a year myself!
The past year (hell the past two years) would not have been possible without all of you who attend Ganked and take part in our weekly sebo fuelled shenanigans for spreading the tales of the roam, bringing your mates, suggesting themes and even occasionally listening to your FC’s. Additionally some thanks has to go to CCP for the wonderful rebalancing work they have undertaken this past year too, as that has given us so many more viable hulls to play with, adding some much needed variety to both our fleets and those we explode!
Here’s to the next year, may we grow even bigger and better!
Please use the comments to discuss your memories, I shall pick my favourites to read out during the Birthday roam on 20th July and may even find a prize or two for those I like the best. For a refresher, check the videos of our roams, found here.
This past weekend, Ganked 73 was Guest FC’d by our dear friend and ender of evenings, Alphastarpilot, formerly of Thorn Syndicate, currently flying for Test Alliance.
Alpha’s chosen setup was T1 armour cruisers supported by logistics and ewar.
Yes you read that right, logistics.
On Ganked!
And boy did we ever get some logistics. We had over 35 logistics in fleet with us for this roam, together with some 20 damp boats and assorted other ewar platforms, and around 100 guys flying T1 ARMOUR HACS (this video never gets old).
Following form up we bounced into low and started heading towards Alpha’s chosen destination, B-DBYQ. On our journey there we discussed the new jump animation, how it affects traffic control and how it can cause neutral’s jumping in with us to die when they exit the animation, like this Curse & this Proteus. I wonder if they even expected it…
We soon reached B-D however CFC where slowly returning to the system after trying to kill a titan elsewhere, and so we moved into J5A-IX and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Just as we were getting ready to warp to a pos to bump a carrier out, LOCAL SPIKE!
And it was on. DPS & Ewar had anchored on the FC, our logis were anchored on an anchor of their own and the CFC had brought tacklers, HAM caracals & scythes. Their tackle started melting, bubblers exploded – in one case he came right back and exploded again – T3 snipers jumped in and died, however our logi anchor got caught by lag and fought hard to recover just as the CFC fleet started heading their way… That didn’t stop our logi though, no sir! They kept the reps coming as long as they could until they were overwhelmed, then the rest of us started to really feel the pain of fighting the numbers of the CFC next door to their staging system! And through it all fleet was damn well behaved!
By the end of it a couple of hundred ships had been destroyed between both sides. Our view & EVE-kills view – I tried to BRDoc it, but it breaks the site while I still have a third of the corps left to assign.
Following a short break we reshipped into talwars, and headed back to the area, running over this stupid tengu as we did so. The next hour and a half was some of the most fun I have had for a while, Alpha really showed off how well talwars can work to the fleet, and I picked up a few tricks for use with them too. The “doctrine” itself punches massively above its weight, especially on this proteus! During our time in B-D with these ships we got some 90 kills or so and had a riot doing it. Here is EVE-kill for that time as the Ganked killboard splits the battle into too little a timeframe for me to link properly.
All in all a really fun night was had, over 200 kills done, nearly 11 Billion isk exploded and a new guest FC inducted into our ranks! Personally, I and many others had some misgivings about Alpha FCing the roam, as we assumed that it was all a cunning plan to tarp us and ruin our fun, however this was not the case and I for one am happy to put my hands up and admit I was very much surprised!
As usual this RvB Ganked roam was sponsored by Somer Blink – who are also sponsoring the RvB AT XI team this year – and several people won sponsored prizes during the roam. These will be contracted to you by a representative of Somer Blink within the week. Congratulations to you all!
Ganked 69 was held this weekend, and it was a glorious 5 hours in Rahadalon fighting the forces of Brave Newbies Inc, TEST, CVA & Friends, and many others who I forget at this point. Suffice to say the system was rammed. I had plenty of prizes to award over the evening from both SomerBlink and the wonderful guys over at Angeli Mortis.
Exequror Navy x1 – Charlotte Winter (A none rep hull for an awesome repper!)
Deimos x1 – Xan Drakov (Because a man should care about the sanity of others)
Vigilant x1 – MirrorGod (BNI POS hates Mangala, so again he came to the fore!)
Navy Megathron x1 – Meirantean (Didn’t want that corp anyway)
The above will be contracted out by a rep of SomerBlink this week.
And now for the prizes generously donated by Angeli Mortis. (Who assure me they are always recruiting new members, so look into them if you are looking for a new home!):
Vulture & Aliastra Catalyst – John Hartley (Excellent Warp-ins)
Harpy & Aliastra Catalyst – Horus H’kaan (Fix Rails Mang!)
Basilisk & Aliastra Catalyst – Charlotte Winter (Love reps)
Sabre – PVDNS77
Wolf & Stabber Fleet Issue – Miss Snuggless
Vexor Navy Issue – TGL3
Keres – Equinox Starborn
Gnosis – Caterpil
Raptor & Taranis – Sascha Naskingar
Daredevil – Irodanis Maricadie
Dramiel – Miri Boirelle
Ishtar – Xallaxa
12 Rifters – VonSpaky (for asking if he won anything!)
In RvB news, we are at war with Brave Newbies Inc. Despite appearances to the contrary we have done this for fun, and boy has it been fun! The BNI guys really are mostly a great bunch and the fights I have had with them have been bloody good ones. We have a few days left in the current war period and I am hoping for even more explosions before it comes to an end, although it may not end – watch this space!
For those wondering, RvB are closing in on 2000 kills in 5 days, including a couple of freighters and a rather shiny strategic cruiser. Neither side has lost carriers yet despite RvB moving a couple over. I have hope for a sweeping capital engagement though!
Good thing about this war, I get to stop losing sec status from spending time in Rahadalon. Which is good as I am far too lazy to rat to get my sec back up. So roll on Odyssey!
As you will be aware, I have been a member of the 8th CSM for around 3 weeks now, and for the majority of that period I have spent a lot of time reading super sekrit CSM forums, getting to know both my fellow delegates (many of whom have vast knowledge on parts of the game I only have the most basic conceptual grasp!) & the members of CCP to whom we currently have access, and digesting much of the material released about the upcoming expansion than I normally would, especially anything relating to the changes and additions that I am not very confident on. I would sooner be able to represent you all by understanding how everything fits together than just spouting something because I feel a need to be seen to do “something”. All of this just ends up with a very quiet Mangala, not the person you are all used to I know. However, as time goes on I hope to become more vocal, especially if anything happens in the content area’s to which I have concerns or hopes for change.
While EVE is 10 today – the 6th May 2013 – Sunday the 5th May saw the highest Peak Concurrent User count in 2 years occur. 65,303 pilots logged into the game to mine, rat, ship spin, trade, scam, and most of all pvp. I myself like to think I encouraged some 250 of them to log in and attend the 67th Ganked. This was a frigate & destroyer hull themed roam that as well as rampaging all on its own, would be shooting a Nyx piloted by Marlona Sky.
As the system for the Nyx event was to be announced on the day, I had the roam form up in Rens, which turned out to be very fortuitous in that it was 8 jumps or so from the event system, so we changed plans slightly and moved a few hulls over to Floseswin to allow us to be better prepared for any losses suffered while helping take the Nyx down later. While moving ships we scored a few kills in the low sec systems along the way, and even backin Rens.
Following this, we roamed into null sec, not really getting any fun out of it at all. A few bombers that got some dudes, and in turn got killed as well but pretty much all we found was dead space. We then got word from CCP Foxfour that the Devs would be roaming and so we bounced back to Empire and waited.
CCP FoxFour > How big is your fleet and where is it?
CCP FoxFour > LETS DO THIS!
We did not have to wait for long. The Dev’s appeared in Brin, and so we moved out that way, tidi-ing every system we passed through severely, 180-200+ pilots will do that it seems in low sec. Watching the Devs stream we saw them bounce into Todifraun and so in we went, to find them already engaged by a MUCH smaller group of frigates. And so we joined the battle.
I called all our favourite Devs and one by one they were caught and they died. Then I did my usual and burned out of range, so House then Mirror and others stepped to the plate and called more of them too. Eventually CCP were overwhelmed by both us and the never ending “others” streaming into the system. I think we did damn well! Yes it shows kills only, and I think some randoms are missing, but thats how Ganked rolls. Also even evekill shows no losses!
Then it was time to head to Floseswin for the main event.
I can only really say “OH BOY”.
The system was crammed with over 2000 pilots. Most of whom wanted to shoot the Nyx, and others who wanted to shoot everyone else or even rep the Nyx. All rather interesting under 10% tidi. Eventually the frigate dps could not break the remote reps hitting the Nyx and Marlona set it to self destruct. 20 minutes later, we had twokillmails. Here are some images from the system by RvB member Zibbal:
Brave Newbies had been inviting all of Floseswin local to theirs for an afterparty, so around 80 of the Ganked fleet ran over and played around with them for a while until the day caught up with us and we needed sleep. All in all yet another awesome day, made even more spectacular by the fight with CCP, the excellent Nyx event and of course EVE being on the cusp of its 10th birthday.
And setting another Ganked kill record too, 300+ kills over the course of the roam!
It was a day I am proud to say “I was there”
While all this was happening, over in “robe & wizard hat” territory, a SOCT representative was addressing CONCORD in Yulai about the past 10 years:
And so, with the strike of ten, it begins.
Children of New Eden. Welcome.
Ten years ago, a sudden advance in technological capabilty heralded a new dawn for the people of New Eden. It brought about a new age for the human race.
The result, was all of you.
Capsuleers. The Empyreans. The first generation of post-humans.
The Society of Conscious Thought has watched your development over the course of the last ten years.
We have watched you, the Empyreans, develop from a small group of promising individuals who sucessfully made the transition into posthumanism a decade ago, into a faction of your own.
A faction strong enough to create your own empires. A faction strong enough to govern and manage yourselves, albeit via methods through which the Society of Conscious Thought has not always approved.
However, in the same respect, the cluster has been witness to how the perception of life and death, and the value of such concepts, can become twisted by those whom become alienated from their grasp.
We have watched you create, build, and nurture, while at the same time we have watched you burn, crush and destroy the dreams of trillions.
The very existance of the capsuleer is a paradox.
You are those who no longer know the meaning of death, defeated in battle only to rise again, reborn.
For ten years, the Society of Conscious Thought has monitored your progress since the flood gates opened at the dawn of the Empyrean Age.
We watched as the immortal children of New Eden took their first steps into the void. We watched as you first spread your wings, and reached for the heavens.
We have watched you colonize, create, and grow, and at the same time we have watched you shatter entire worlds, tear down empires and crush those whom would oppose you.
The Society of Conscious Thought comes to you today with a message, and a gift.
Tomorrow, we will gift every capsuleer in New Eden a Gnosis-class Society of Conscious Thought designed battlecruiser, and with it, we relay the following message:
Our message to you is simple.
Tomorrow, the Second Decade of the Empyrean Age dawns.
Tomorrow, we embark on the next stage of our journey.
Children of New Eden, Empyreans… accept our gift, and realise your true potential.
Before I go into the many & varied prizes, I think you should all watch this video by delonewolf, it really is amazing and expresses so well how many of us feel about this game that has kept us engaged for so long:
And now, prizes.
First off we have the prizes provided by our regular sponsors – SomerBlink:
Scouting Distinction – Inty Pack (1 of each interceptor) x3 (Sarkis Udoka, William Hazard, Jamie Banks)
Most Pods – Purifier x2 (Val ona)
Spot Prizes – Worm x5 – 1 each (Thecla Elarik, Calbary, Zibbal, Cloudwolfe, Little George)
Combat Distinction – Gila x3 – 1 each (tgl3, alphastarpilot, Andre27) – Generally doing good things like stepping up or scramming CCP Rise!
Combat Excellence – Navy Megathron x1 (Macgyver 3rd) – highest of our fleet on the Nyx & Marlonas Pod!
These will be forthcoming from a representative of Somerblink this week.
Secondly we have the prizes donated by the Angeli Mortis alliance:
2 Navy Comets – 1 each (Fork Off, a1tra Ural) – Fork for being Persistant & a1tra for this image 2 Navy Vexors – 1 each (Calintor, Azula Kishtar) – Calintor for public contracts & Azula for top damage on Fozzie. 1 Navy Dominix (SaintCav) – Final Blow on Marlona’s pod
Finally, Ganked attendee Carathas donated 2 billion isk for prizes related to podding & being the MVP of the roam, here are my chosen winners roughly following Carathas’ conditions:
Quinten Sarn – 1 billion isk for getting the final blow on CCP Fozzie
Andrew Butcher – 750 million isk for the most kills during the roam
MirrorGod – 250 million isk for being pretty damn useful during the day!
FC’s Note:
We had over the course of yesterday some 350 people cycle in and out of the fleet, with maybe 150 of them being people new to RvB Ganked or even PVP in general, and I feel that they all enjoyed the time they spent with us. This is down to all of you who come to ganked regularly and make it what it is. Thanks.
Bigger thanks from me for making the past (nearly) 2 years of my EVE life something really special.
