Eve Online: Hiding

For the last six months I've been hiding in Eve. And not just in game, I've deliberately maintained a low blogging profile too.

I've been living out in an obscure class 1 wormhole. Class 1 is the smallest class of wormhole: it has the weakest rats, the smallest entrances (hulks, orcas and battleships can't enter but frigates cruisers battlecruisers and haulers can).

I'm now winding down my operations in that hole to graduate to a higher level of wormhole play involving other people. However, like everything wormhole-related, even winding down is a major project that will take considerable time. I'm also going to relax my self-imposed restriction on blogging about it (as I don't want that hole anyway).

Soloing a wormhole has been a very interesting experience that has taught me a lot about the game. Over the next few weeks I'll be talking about hole security, scanning, exploring, raiding nullsec for mag and radar sites, ratting in wormholes, living arrangements and PI.

I'd like to explain a little now about the lack of blogging.

Eve is designed as a game where players destroy other players' stuff. Putting down a structure in space is a bit like building a sandcastle in a sandbox, you're inviting another kid to come kick it over.

So there are two rational ways to handle information when you place a structure in Eve - talk about it because you want to attract people so you can kill them. Or keep quiet so people don't come over and kick your stuff in.

Of course for some bloggers their blog is more important than their Eve assets. Mabrick for example has cheerfully invited the wrath of Goon death squads because it gives him lots of fun stuff to talk about. However I've seen people claim that no one would be deterred from writing simply because The Mittani announced a special operations group tasked with tracking down and trashing pesky writers. They're wrong - I am an example of someone who decided to be a lot more careful while my solo wormhole operation was ongoing. I certainly didn't want to be in a position where I'd have to watch what I said all the time while blogging.

The flipside though is that now that my operation is winding down I have a lot of things stored up. So expect a burst of Eve discussion here. Amongst other things I'll be talking about information security.