Spectoral Anomoly

No ticket-tape parades. No grand hero's welcome. No hordes of screaming fans storming the gates...

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all..."

It was the perfect score. Somebody else will get the credit for it, live trapped within it's fame and be burdened by the physical riches while me and my associates calmly walk away with it's true value...

...all fair and legally.

I'd like to thank my operatives who have taken this campaign seriously. I am already seeing ramifications of our actions sweeping across the cluster. Our efforts against the more enlightened groups within New Eden have put the future in our very hands!

Stand strong, fight proud, never give up

Offical Statement from Wii R

Fleet: Pot Heads  

As sovereign of new eden and CEO of Wii R, I hereby commission the corporation of Pot Heads into active service as a standing military fleet under my authority and working as part of the Wii R military wing in New Eden. 

As a PvP fleet, it is charged with assisting the growth of our empire's influence within New Eden, as well as ensuring the protection of the empire's interests.

Fly Dangerously

...

Da Dom
:)(:

Don't suffer with insanity. Enjoy it

Life is good, mainly because it's weird.

As one of New Eden's top ranked psychics, I have had the chance to meet many of the players and converse with them on many different levels. While the majority would not be aware of their interactions with me in the upper tiers of their consciousness, those that are more in tune with deep seeded nature of themselves instinctively know who and what I am behind the veil of Da Dom and tend to seek me out of their own accord.

Although I am quite happy to help them with things like the metaphysical understanding of their design potential, to more mundane things like my personal opinions concerning the CSM processes and other game related stuff, this is NOT why I joined the EVE online universe.

Even though I have spent many years refining my talents and being weighed down with many hardships to test and expand the limits of my abilities, I have not done this for the express purpose of helping others or becoming a beacon of light to the community. As a warrior, my efforts are focused purely on ensuring my own survival in the grand battlefield that is playing out in the drama of life.

To say that EVE Online is a separate part of this existence and means very little in the grand scheme of this drama and my training, would be a complete lie. The players of New Eden come in a variety of colours and each has their part to play in the story of my life. From the many people looking for advise and inspiration, to the raving mad lunatics seeking to utterly destroy me and assimilate my hard won abilities for themselves, there are forces at work within EVE (and indeed, the internet as a whole) that can not be separated from the fabric of this universe.

Of course, for the normal player with little understanding of the way this works, it's an unnecessary form of insanity that is generally disregarded so they may go about their daily lives...

"For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe"

To all the players I've met in EVE, friend and foe alike, thank you for helping me come to terms with the fact that mysticism is a major part of my life and cannot be completely discarded from my EVE online persona. Even though it is not the main reason I play, I shall remain available to all who are looking for friendly or competitive interaction on this level. To conclude, I will leave you with a nice little song to serve as both a bit of friendly advise, and a dire warning...

Till next we meet
Da Dom
:)(:

Holden 'em down

 

G'day peeps. 

First of all, this post was inspired by Blastradius1 who wrote an excellent post titled Ownership. In three sentences, he coaxed my imagination into going wild so I decided to post my thoughts for everybody's pleasure. Here is what got the ball rolling...

"Without fealty to the powers that control null sec, any corp trying to make a home there would be eradicated very quickly. CFC and HBC, like all the large entities before them, have proven that possession of space in null sec depends on two things; wealth and numbers. Ironically, wealth and numbers are both largely gained through possession of space in null sec and that wealth is growing at an exponential rate."

Personally, I don't believe he went far enough, and after thinking a lot about it while working today, I decided that it was imperative for me to expand on this topic a bit more and explain the reason I believe the Blue Doughnut exists.

TL;DR - CCP wants your cash, not your ISK

Null sec is where we can earn heaps and heaps of isk to fund our little spaceship business fetish, and from what I understand, we can pretty much earn enough ISK to pay for our monthly subscriptions and still have enough left to buy the toys we like. Very smart market traders in High sec can do the same. Unfortunately the majority of people and corporations in high would be unable to net this kind of cash without being in the upper tiers of the large high sec alliances.

This means that a majority of (high sec) players need to pay real money to buy subscriptions and plexes to compliment their wallets and be able to afford to have a bit of fun, without EVE turning into a full-time job. This, of course, is the most obvious cash cow CCP has.

What does this have to do with the Blue Doughnut? I'm sure all the leaders out in Null understand that if they all waged indiscriminate war on each other, A LOT of their profits would  flow down the battle sink and never been seen again. Being the intelligent, smart-arsed motherfrackers that they are, it would be safe to assume that they would see the benefit in plugging that drain with non aggression pacts and staged fights that are carefully designed avoid any excessive loss of profit. This would effectively allow them to play EVE Online without spending anything other than time, and denying CCP a large chunk of income.

This is most likely the reason CCP have recently been making lower tier ships more powerful. More fights, more isk down the battle sink and less profit for null means that Null seccers may actually be dragged back into CCP's real money system.

Of course I could be wrong about that statement above, so I'll add an alternative scenerio...

(Puts on tinfoil hat)

It seems to me that the alliance and coalition forces in Null have successfully grabbed CCP by the balls and "gamed the makers." CCP is unable to bring them to heel and get them paying real money to play without destroying the very fabric of EVE, and the Coalitions can't squeeze any harder without breaking CCP's bank and destroying the game they love themselves. A compromise between them could involve the coalitions keeping the High sec dwellers, which are vast majority of players from what I understand, poor.

I'll forget about hulkageddon and burn jita scenerio and focus on a recent example. James 315. High Sec ice mining is a very profitable business and can net a lot of iskies for the miners, who would buy their fun and subscriptions with it. That is of course if all their profits were not being sunk into new ships that are needed to replace those that are destroyed buy the New Order. 

I could be wrong about that to, so I'll leave it there for you to investigate and form your own opinion.

TOTD: What part of EVE is best described by the video above?

Fly like a maniac

Da Dom

:)(:

I give you this day your daily bread

From my job as a late night baker straight into my other job as a CEO of an internet spaceship business, I'm quite fortunate if I can find in my busy schedule at least 5hrs worth of sleep per day. Lack of sleep and having a lot on my mind means that I often find my thoughts merge together as I mindlessly bake away while thinking about ideas for my corporation, or sit docked up in a station spinning my ship while thinking about what I need to bake tonight. The ability of the EVE Online universe to keep you involved in the game even when your not logged on and doing something else is one of it's major hooks.

With mobile devices and community websites like twitter and facebook, not to mention eve related sites like evemon and evegate, it is very easy for players to collaborate with their corpmates outside of the game and be constantly updated with info about their eve game at any time. This is a lot of time and effort to spent on a game, and I would wager that a vast majority of players waking hours (and for some, even their dreams) are spent thinking about eve.

This is the same with me, and as I have been spending a lot of time deciding on the direction of my corporation, I have noticed that I've spent quite a bit of money, roughly AU$1000 on Subscriptions plexes and other things for eve. Not that this is a bad thing of course, as I am poised and ready sculpt Wii R into a work of art. This will take take more time and effort, and a lot of thinking so I am predicting a lot more work added onto an already busy schedule and lot less sleep. Oh well, as they say, pain is inevitable, suffering is not...

Thought of the day: Life didn't promise to be wonderful.

Fly like a maniac
Da Dom
:)(:

"For a safe and secure society"

Null sec is not broken, the people of null sec are broken

Do you know how hard it is for a small corporation or a single player that is not part of the iron doughnut to explore the business potential of null sec? The policy of "Not blue, shoot it" is akin to an oppressive police state fitted with non-lethal weapons running on a "Shoot first, ask questions later" policy. This is not good for business and I think it's because all the major null sec alliances are way too comfortable in their positions and, frankly, if sites like eve news 24 are trying stir up some action, then you all need a massive shake up. And I mean more than a story that was created to satisfy eve new 24's lust for battle and drama, like the recent one that was feed to them of "The titan that accidentally clicked 'Jump" instead of "Bridge" and started an mass battle that was "supposed" to be started by his friends"

I try and explore planets and look for wormholes and other things in null sec when I can and I find that the low sec entrances are normally guarded by scouts and it usually turns into a mad chase through null if I'm lucky enough to escape all the bubbles in the first system. (I hate bubbles)

In all honesty, the risk for an independent organization to start a business in  null is far too high for the reward that is offered, which is getting stomped on by all the hotshots. Null already has a system that it is happy with. The alliances and coalitions are happy with their profit and power. Emergent content is being "manufactured" to keep people happy. And if those calling for high sec to be rebalanced really want that to happen, then we also need to look at the prison walls of null sec that are funneling all these new players into the much more profitable and less populated wormhole economy...

The politics of null sec remind me of the star wars story, and I think it's about time that the power of the blue doughnut's isk machine is disbanded...

Use the force
Da dom
:)(:

BB45: Psychological warfare

"In a socially-driven game environment such as EVE Online's, everyone has an agenda. CCP promotes its products and has an army of volunteers to do the same; corporations and alliances deliver entertaining recruitment drives, CSM election candidates solicit for voter favour, bloggers and podcasters opine to their audiences.

In this intricate web of communication, influence and control, what part does propaganda play in your game?"

I'm quite a new player so I have not had much experience in applying propaganda to my game in Eve, but I experience other peoples propaganda all the time in blogs, forums, mails, convos and local chat. 

A quick explanation of what I think two important forms of propaganda are:

1)Propaganda: can be described as form of communication that is aimed towards influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument.

2) Counter-propaganda: can be described as form of communication consisting of methods taken and messages relayed to oppose propaganda which seeks to influence action or perspectives among a targeted audience

 

While propaganda messages may not always be truthful, effective counter-propaganda generally only broadcasts the truth

So... why did I label the name of this post as psychological warfare? Because the U.S Department of defense defines psychological warfare as:

"The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives."

I'll keep the explanation short and leave it at that so you can decide for yourself. To end this post, I will attempt to use some propaganda to explain my character's mentality as he interacts with the universe of Eve Online...

Fly like a maniac

Da Dom

:)(:

 

Not so mystical

Well the Retribution 1.1 patch has been installed onto EVE online severs and I got to log on about 8 hrs after it landed. I haven't gone through all the features yet but I have read the patch notes and, although I am new player, I can understand the bulk of them.

I was slightly disappointed by the lack of AAR BPO's in every system I visited, including jita, but I know that within a few days I'll be able to add them to my collection. The dueling system also looks really kewl as I had passed through Hek on my travels and witnessed several blobs around the main Core complex. There where quite a few fights and a lot of people were there just watching what was going on, but for some reason there was jet-cans everywhere (and I mean far more than is normal for Hek) and I didn't really understand why. Consequently there are a lot more wrecks in space nowadays.

One thing I will say that is negative about the patch is that the routes in space, although they look awesome, are pointless as I already knew that the background was not just a static image. This addition seems to promote a VR feel of the background setting and slightly killed my sense of immersion. Although the CCP dev team have had it in their backlog for a few years, I didn't really like it and thought they could've added something better (not that this patch needed anything else as it was stocked full of goodies)

Mool, my brutix is far from fitted properly yet (lack of support skills) so the BC changes have nothing to do with me as Mool is the first BC I have owned and I get to learn about BC combat with the changes already in place. 

Fly it like you're death incarnate
Da Dom
:)(:

Doing ma time

Well, at the time of writing this, I finished work about 3 hrs ago and I have been reading evebloggers.com plus listening to some of the interviews for CSM8 candidates which aren't as bad as I first thought they would be. Most of the candidates seem pretty clear cut about their objectives and what they hope to achieve in their term should they be elected, but for me, I'm just happy I can put a voice to the characters that (reading between the lines here) are running around screaming "Pick me, PICK ME!!!"

I've also been following the story of what has happened in the Eve-University in the past week, mainly because when I had an alt in the E-Uni I had read quite a few of Kelduum's post and he always struck me as an honest and intelligent person. Shall I be commenting on this debacle? Hell no. What needed to be said, has been said and I enjoyed watching Kelduum try and hide his tears behind his intelligence, it was a true masterpiece.

Other than observing the EVE community, I haven't really been doing much in-game other than keeping my market orders current and adjusting the skill training of my characters. My basic goal with my skill set (because I'm only 4 moths old) is to train all certificates first to basic, then to standard and perhaps specialize a bit after that. The CORE certificates have really helped my survivability and I am a day or two off finishing all of my basic harvesting certificates, which will see me with perfect refine and all the specialized ore processing skills trained to lvl 4 which is pretty good considering my age. I really need to start focusing on combat skills after this though, as at this point time I can't do much significant DPS to swing any battle in my favor.

*Yawns* Well, doing 75 hr weeks for 3 weeks straight has taken a lot out of me so I'll end this post here and finish up by saying "Sweet Dreams peeps" (wicked, evil smile)
Da Dom
:)(:

Jita is a WHORE!

I don't normally go into Jita because it's a 20 minute trek from where I base myself. That said, the past few days have been really interesting as I have been paying more attention to the things happening around me in the hopes of finding things to blog about. I was not disappointed as a simple trip around high-sec provided more than enough craziness for  single blog. Let me start from the beginning...

I had just finished buying all projectile ammo BPO's from the Metropolis regional markets and was about to start picking them up and dropping them off at my warehouse when I noticed something strange in my asset list. I had 2 items in Jita. Now I was pretty sure that the last time I was there I had only left one item (because it was too much volume for me to transport) so I checked my stock to find 48 caldari destroyers that I had produced and placed a courier contract for had been delivered and were waiting for me to issue a sell order.

This was good news as I really wanted to get rid of these destroyers. In the month or so that they had been up for offer in Metropolis I had sold 2 compared to the 150 odd Thrashers I had sold in the same time-frame and region. So I was on my way to Jita to handle my business then return to consolidate my investment of ammo BPO's into one place, or so I had thought.

I've done the trip a few times before, but this time I was paying more attention to what was going on in the systems I was passing through. This frame of mind pretty much kicked in a few systems out of my base when I passed through 2 Sansha incursions which I rarely see, so I stopped a while to take stock of what was going on. The first system I went through only had 9 people and the control bar wasn't moving at all, but the second system had about 20 people in it and the gate I entered from was filled with wrecks. A quick glance at the control bar told me that Sansha was not only beating these capsuleers, but he was handing them their arses on a silver platter!

I didn't want to stick around to let Sansha's forces get a shot at me, so I continued my journey while enjoying the usual local chat. At one stage I apparently caught up to and was flying with a convoy of large freighters and their contingent of security ships. Seeing a large group moving around was new to me, so I enjoyed the sight even as my trusty little thrasher "Goose" overtook them and left them eating my stardust!

Jita was about as busy as it normally is when I'm there. About 1500 peeps doing their thing. I put my ships on the market and created a courier contract to transport my other item back to base. For some reason I decided to check out what kind of BPO's there was here. That's when I saw it. Something I have been  looking for for a while but could never find. An Orca BPO! I was stoked! I bought it instantly as I saw it as a good investment and now I am a bit more valuable to my corp. I had also brought BPO's for the Retriever mining barge (This is the kind of ship I mine in and I refuse to buy ships if I can build them myself) and the entire range of missiles and launchers.

It seems like every time I go to Jita I leave with a empty wallet and a giant smile on my face... and that's why I love her

Thank you Jita o/
Da Dom
:)(:

Best left unsaid

I really don't know why I am posting anything again. I don't really have much to say. Not that it makes any difference though, as one thing I have learnt about bloggers is that they can turn nothing into anything. Blogging seems to be about giving your perspective to the larger community and saying "to hell with the consequences" so saying anything is usually good enough, as long as you make it interesting for your audience. Plus it gives me the chance to iron the kinks out of my writing style that at the moment is, and I'll quote Homer Simspon here. "It sounds good in my brain my mouth creates words that are not good as such... formally"

Anyway, I've been thinking alot about my corporation lately and I realized that Wii R is nothing more than a flag at the moment. With only 84M isk, no assets and a small monthly bill for office rental, the only real claim to fame it has is me, yours truly, multi billionaire industrialist *bows* I believe that for now it is best to keep it that way, and organize it more like a community hub for players.

I hope to set Wii R up as a small managerial/political forum for client corporations that will focus on, for the first few years, human resource management with it's main long term goal being the creation of interesting content for all of it's constituents. I plan on making Wii R a major node in a lager entity, but that is many steps ahead and it will take a lot of time to get to that point, so I'll slowly work up to that.

All that being said, Wii R hiring. All types of players are welcome. New recruits should expect that after API and security checks, there will be a 3 month probation period as we get to know you and find or created good content for you based on your play style. I need good managers who like to juggle the political meta-game as well. Wii R is a small "build from scratch" corporation that I will be investing heavily in, and all that I ask from members is that they show the same initiative in investing their time,effort and isk into growing this corporation into something that will benifit all it's members and have a lasting impact in EVE Online

Fly dangerously
Da Dom
:)(:

Next on the agenda

G'day o/

This is like the 3rd time I have created a blog and I hope that it doesn't turn into something I barely post in or forget about a year from now. But I don't think that it will because this time I have neat little framework to build upon, and that is EVE Online (thanks CCP) The creative freedom that the player has in how they play and protray themselves in game is really kewl , and I intend to use it as fuel to accomplish one of my new years resolutions, which was write.

Anyway, this blog site will mainly contain my attemps at roleplay and as CEO of an EVE corporation, official statements and public announcements. Anything else (and there will most likely be a lot) will be filed away in to out of character ramblings. In between RL work, playing and studying EVE, lazily constructing a website for my corp/ideas and trying to expand Wii R's potential, I am having a lot of fun, and would die happy if CCP keep this game in business for my entire life.

That said I know EVE is a harsh game. I was mauled in the first 2 days by a vet at one off those noob training hubs. I learnt my lessons and moved on. How would I define EVE? That's not really a question. It's hard enough to decide how to interact with EVE, but in trying to keep this post short (and being and old-fashioned space nerd) I will mystically and mysteriously mystify you with a video/song/fight between an alien and robot that describes my feelings about several aspects of EVE online that keep me playing.



Keep up the good work CCP, and all you players out there
Da Dom
:)(: