The Time Has Come The Walrus Said

Exactly 4 years and 2 day ago, I stumbled up on a post on the Eve-O forums that changed everything I knew and would come to know about Eve. A player, a type I would come to fondly know as a “whiny bitch carebear” was blathering on about “ninja thieves” in his mission. Naturally, this sparked my curiosity; “Ninjas? In space? That sounds rad!” Google soon brought me to Kahega Amielden’s original “Ninja Salvaging Guide“, and my eyes were opened. I read the whole thing, twice, astounded at this new and exciting twist on game-mechanics, and immediately set out to scan down a mission.

One hour later (this is back when you had to manually drop probes in multiple locations around a system to scan it), I warped in on my first acceleration gate, which to me just seemed like finding buried treasure, hidden away in space. It was like opening up the “employee access only” door at Disney World and finding out what really goes on behind the scenes, complete with a sense of “I’m probably not supposed to be here”, and after that I was totally hooked. I came to Dodixie, spoke with Tchell Dahhn (our Glorious Founder) and Kahega, immediately put in my notice with my corp, and I haven’t looked back, ever.

From then on, Suddenly Ninjas has been my entire reason for playing Eve. At a time when I was ready to quit what appeared to be a mindless game of go-fetch, earning pennies running horribly boring level 1 missions, this new group brought me back and showed me a direction. They nurtured me from looting around in my Probe or Vigil and running and hiding when I got shot at, to learning how to man up and shoot back instead, and I’ve loved every minute of it.

In Suddenly Ninjas, I went from total noob to total noob with technically more skills, to Director, until one day my grand scheme of sleeping my way to the top paid off as I was asked to take over as CEO of SN and the TEARS Alliance. Make no mistake, this corp and this alliance set the benchmark and quite literally wrote the book on ninja salvaging and ganking; we’ve changed the face of highsec in this game severely and permanently, and I’m proud to have been along for this hell of a wild ride.

Nerfs, changes, and additions to the game have certainly altered things for our entire play-style. What was once a fringe group whose deeds and “magical dev-hax” use of game mechanics were the talk of legend, turned into one of the more well-know “get rich quick” schemes in Eve (I blame those assholes who couldn’t stop blogging about it…), and now, its started to cycle back to the beginning. Being a Ninja is hard again; the salvage/bait/gank game is becoming one for only the dedicated right now, and I love being able to say that the guys in SN and TEARS are proving that every day.

The past year has not been easy for me in terms of Eve; I’ve had a LOT of out-of-game responsibilities that have kept me from being nearly as active as I wanted to be, which initially is what prompted me to take a step down and pass on the torch as CEO over a year ago. That seems to be changing finally, and it looks like I’ll be having a bit more time for internet spaceships going forward, which is amazing.

That said however, I’ve decided I need a change. Though I’ll be able to get in to this wonderful world of spaceships more often now, I’ve lost a little steam in my desire to “bait” people into shooting me, and instead, I crave the adrenaline of full-on PvP. I also need the ability to log in and go shoot people rather than waiting on the poor decision making skills of someone else. After 4 years and 2 days in one corp, especially one that I ran for almost 2 years, I’m beginning to feel like that college senior that just won’t graduate so he can still “party like a senior”. I’ve had my time, and I’ve had a blast doing it, and yet though I really never thought I’d say this, the time has come for me to move on from SN.

So, what does this mean for this blog?

Nothing! This move in no conceivable way means that really anything will change around here, nor does it mean I’m done baiting, ganking, toying with and stealing from the foolish and ill-informed (or writing about it for that matter)! Though my original plan was to go full pirate off in low-sec (the first true ninja-pirate in Eve perhaps?), I decided that that was a bit of plunge into the deep end; after all, I’m actually quite terrible at this game. Instead, I’ve decided to join Quality Assurance a newer corp in the Marmite Collective Alliance, run by my two good buds and former SN directors Tuomas and Solomar with one goal: cause as much mischief, mayhem, and shenanigans as possible. QA is essentially Suddenly Ninjas with a million-and-a-half active war-decs, which sounds pretty damn good to me.

To Suddenly Ninjas, TEARS, and the greater Ninja Salvaging community, it has been an absolute honor, privilege, and quite honestly the best times I’ve ever had in a game flying with you all; please never stop doing what you’re doing. Its been a long-time coming, and this decision sucked to make, but I’m pretty excited for whats coming next. In a few hours, my roles in SN will drop (along with my Blink gambling habit corp wallet access, crap!), and I’ll be on my way to new horizons. To those faithful readers (the five of you), don’t go anywhere, because the fun is just getting started.

-Aiden

~ by Aiden Mourn on February 12, 2013.