Yesterday I published the beginning of this short story detailing Havohej’s return to action in New Eden. Here is the second part of the story, Out of Place. The third and final installment will be posted tomorrow. Enjoy!

The Trust Partners Warehouse in M-MD3B was a much more active place than Havohej expected it to be. The spaceport was crowded with open berths in short supply and there were people everywhere! Forced to push and shove past one another to get where they were going, literally thousands of Minmatar were conducting various types of business here along with a few scattered Gallente and Caldari traders. As soon as the passengers emerged from the airlock, there were no less than a dozen guides clamoring for their attention, promising the “lowest rates to be found this side of Egbinger!” As the crowd from their transport dispersed into the throng, Wisler and Havohej found each other.

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Because of the way the current blog theme is designed, there is an issue with page/sub-page functionality. So, for the sake of my own sanity, rather than have CrazyKinux.com’s EVE-Online Blog Pack listed here as a sub-page of the EVE Links page, I’m going to put it in the form of a post permalinked from the EVE Links page. When CK makes a change to the official blog pack, I’ll update this post. Here is the current EVE-Online Blog Pack as presented by CrazyKinux at CrazyKinux’s Musing:

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I decided a while back that when I returned to EVE I wanted to pursue the roleplay aspect of the game more than I had the first time around. As such, Havohej needed to be repurposed but without losing the core ideas I had for the character when I first created it in 2007. Given my experiences in the game so far (and of course that means Havohej’s experiences in the game so far also), I couldn’t very well jump right in to the ArPee pool without there being some sort of catalyst for Havohej’s IC change of direction.

So, deciding to incorporate my six-month-long RL break from EVE into Havohej’s story, I set out to write a (relatively) short bit of fiction describing the reason for his hiatus and the short series of events surrounding his return to action in New Eden’s capsuleer community. That short bit of fiction turned out to be pretty long! I wanted to keep it brief and readable, but at the same time I wanted to convey certain ideas about Havohej and the way he sees things — the way he thinks. For instance, the way he can feel sorry for the displaced refugees liberated from the Ammatar Mandate yet still place no value whatsoever on their actual lives. As it drew on, I decided to split it up.

I’ve been blogging off and on (mostly on) for a while now, some of which has been In Character and some of which hasn’t. However, this is the first time I’ve written something with the intention of having it be a short story or “fanfic.” Here is the first part of what will be a three post series. I hope you enjoy.

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As the title says, really. I’ve spent the bulk of my time this week job hunting without success; in a desperation bid I even went sniffing around at the local fast-food joints hoping to at least find something to tide me over. At one place, I was told they had too many people already and that nearly everyone was being cut to 2 days/week – that’s not even 20 hours!

My leisure time has been spent levelling a couple of nationals on Pirates of the Burning Sea’s Blackbeard server, mainly just to get a sense of that side of the game. My main character remains Stephen MacKenna, though – yarr!

I’m considering the 5-day EVE-Online Free Trial offer CCP e-mailed me the other day, sort of a ‘winback’ effort I guess. It talked about all the changes that came with Quantum Rise and offered me 5 free days with my existing account. I planned to resub for a few months after the new year (probably in February or March), but I might at least use the 5 days… haven’t decided yet.

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Actually, they’re calling it a ‘Vision Statement.’ But the end result is the same: a clear definition of what sort of game experience the Flying Lab Software developers intend to create with Pirates of the Burning Sea. This sort of thing is what we begged CCP to give us for MONTHS with regard to EVE-Online but which, to the best of my knowledge, they still refuse to do. But to be fair, it’s easy to understand why a company would hesitate to make such a declaration.

Things change, after all. Markets shift. What is popular today may be anathema tomorrow and when you’re dealing with such a remarkably fickle (yet remarkably loyal at the same time) consumer base as MMO gamers, the risk of alienating one group or another is dangerous indeed! But FLS has delivered.

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