Learning About the On-Board Scanner the Hard Way

Sunday afternoon saw me now out in low security Derelik looking for some Sansha action.  The first order of business was scanning down some exploration sites to run, rather than simply ratting away in an exposed belt.  After all, even if some pirate group entered the system by the time they deployed probes and began to look for me, I would be long since docked up.  

The first site was cleared with little fan fare and I set a course for the second of the five sites that I had scanned down.  A player by the name of Djeepee entered the system just as I began to agro the spawns at the Sansha combat site.  Not concerning myself just yet, I finished up looting and salvaging with my alt on the first site, just as I took out the two battle ship and cruiser spawn that was the first wave of the second site.  

I brought in my alt and opened up the direction scanner and continued to hit the button every ten to fifteen seconds looking for the tell tale sign of scan probes.  At first nothing showed up and I was able to continue killing Sansha while looting and salvaging with the alt.  After I cleared the second spawn and began to work on the third, which was also a two battleship & two cruiser spawn, I now noticed an Ishtar showing up on the directional scanner.  I actually considered docking up for a moment, but again, with no probes in system and me safely tucked away in an anomaly and not exposed in the belt, I considered myself fairly safe. 

I even remember smiling to myself that he must think I am off in a nearby belt ratting and imagined how frustrated this would-be-pirate must be as he checked off nearby belts one by one only to be left empty handed.  There was just one Sansha in this wave left and still no probes.  Perhaps this would be my lucky site and I would get a nice faction spawn, maybe even one of those mythical officer spawns that I had heard so much about.  Visions of billion Isk modules danced in my head.  OMG THERE IS AN ISHTAR IN HERE AND HE’S TARGETING ME!!!!!!!!!!!

 

DONTPANICDONTPANIC

I hit my warp out button as the big heavy battle cruiser slowly spun around and got up to half speed.  I pleaded with the game and tabbed out to my alt to save her and her valuable salvage loot within her cargo hold.  Alas, the telltale warp scrambled broadcast across my screen and I knew my battle cruiser was tackled.  Local stayed with just the three of us as I set all of my drones on this Ishtar and directed fire off of the remaining Sansha BS and onto this foe.

He got in very VERY close and orbited me at 1000 meters.  Ogre II’s began to bite into my armor due to my extremely low resistance to explosive damage.  This fellow did his homework at least.  The Ishtar was down to half armor due to the drones and missile fire, but his armor repairer was coming alive and keeping up with the damage output of the ten small drones and heavy missiles. I highly doubt if my 650mm artillery II cannons ever connected due to the tackle he had on me.  My cap stable tank slowly but surely buckled under the fire and I went slowly from 80% armor down to 40% in just a minute.  I waited for enemy reinforcements that never came and switched my alt from DPS drones to armor rep drones as I tried to force a stalemate and perhaps a negotiation. 

Even with the medium armor drones helping out, my tank could not hold back against the DPS coming through an explosive hole in my tank.  I saw the last of my armor slip away and I fell into structure.  Armor still flashed as the repairer and drones strained to keep the ship alive.  But my attention now diverted to the millions in loot in my alt’s cargo hold.  I recalled her drones and got her out of there.  She was safely in warp by the time the Hurricane popped and I was able to get the pod out of there safely. 

The pirate gave me a nice GF in local and I responded in turn.  He now sat in his 15 minute “time-out” while the game shook its finger at him for attacking someone in low sec as gate guns and station guns would now shoot him on site due to his global criminal status.  As I safely docked my alt and unloaded her cargo, I spoke a bit with this player and he took the time to discuss my mistake with him and explain how the system scanner and directional scanner are used. 

I know it will make me look like a complete noob, but I had no clue that you could scan down anomalies by using your system scanner and visiting all of the planets to scan those areas of space individually.  The whole encounter also is going to help me out in future encounters as I fitted a remote armor repairer on my alt’s Vexor and have plans to get her into some ECM drones to be able to break another solo pirate’s lock onto my ship should the need arise. 

And of course the big question, how much did this little lesson cost me?

 2009.10.12 01:49:00

Victim: Centuri Nova
Corp: Hand of Hermes
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Hurricane
System: Hasateem
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 30005

Involved parties:

Name: Centus Plague Lord / Sansha’s Nation
Damage Done: 17160

Name: djeepee (laid the final blow)
Security: -3.1
Corp: Ratio Decidendi
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Ishtar
Weapon: Ogre II
Damage Done: 12845

Destroyed items:

Proton M, Qty: 970 (Cargo)
650mm Artillery Cannon II, Qty: 4
Damage Control II
Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 2
EMP M, Qty: 1397 (Cargo)
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I
Medium Armor Repairer II
EMP M, Qty: 56
Thunderbolt Heavy Missile, Qty: 514 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Acolyte I (Drone Bay)
650mm Artillery Cannon II, Qty: 2
N-Type EM Hardener I
Gyrostabilizer II
Cap Recharger II, Qty: 3
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I
10MN Afterburner II
EMP M, Qty: 28
Armor Thermic Hardener I, Qty: 2 

I believe that it was a net loss of around 15 million ISK once you count out the insurance payout.  Certainly not crippling by any means and at least it was a well learned lesson in scanner usage that I won’t soon forget.

Cutting the Cord with Level Fours

Taking this a bit literal aren’t we?

I came to the realization this weekend that high security level four missions are becoming a crutch for me that must be cast off.  Too often, while engaging in other endeavors, I begin to compare the ISK per hour of that activity to running a decent level four mission.  Factor in the added safety and the risk of some sort of low security or null security activity is clearly playing second flute.  

Therefore they have to go.  For me at least; you can still run them if you want.  In the end it just was becoming more of a chore to run them as fast as possible, while looting and salvaging with my alt.  Pick off the frigates as they come in.  HACs go down next followed by the battle cruisers that always seem to take obscene amounts of damage from large turrets, finally begin to work on the battle ships.  Often by this point you are safe to tab out of the game and listen for the sound of the turrets to stop or the out of ammo warning.  Some have spawning waves that require me to be a bit more awake.  Others just have everything arranged nicely and neatly in groups for me to take out one at a time.  Everything is clearly mapped out in the available online and in game resources.  No mess no fuss. 

The spoon fed PVE content was interesting enough, but began to have more of a grind feel to it rather than a sense of adventure.  The EVE experience that I was having was starting to feel all too similar to other games that incorporated PVE grind into them, and this was not what I was looking for.  

The loyalty point rewards were interesting at first, but now with a full set of eight faction turrets, I feel wasteful spending the points and Amarr navy tags on faction fittings to increase my overall DPS by a few trivial points.  I am already nervous enough, at times, flying a ship with a net worth approaching 800 million ISK.  Investing a few hundred million more over the next few weeks from the loyalty points store would push the value of the ship and modules up above what I was comfortable in loosing.  

I had thought about making a push for level five missions with the corporation.  We would have three combat pilots and two logistics pilot, only able to fly tech I logistics for a few more weeks.  But the only corporation that I have high enough standings with is the Brutor tribe, and doing level five missions and bringing well fit battleships through Amamake and Auga just does not appear to be an intelligent decision.  

Someone in the rookie help channel the other week (I know horrible place for information but I am stuck in the channel on my alt for the time being) stated that it was possible to get a level five mission that sends you into high security space.  His statement was that the agent will pick a random direction to send you, and that if the system has a high sec border then perhaps he would send you there.   So I have spent a few evenings flying to Amamake and Auga to request and decline missions.  After about a dozen or so missions declined, I have yet to see one that sends me into high sec.  I had a feeling that this player was not being truthful, but no losses here other than a few minutes of flight time out to low security space.  I will make it a point to keep checking when I am passing through the area. 

Thus Saturday I once again found myself scouting around in low security space to setup a new base of operations.  The area that I selected was lower Derelik in and around the Hasateem system.  The area offered numerous NPC stations to dock at with exploration looking promising on my first pass through.  The system is only ten jumps from Rens and two jumps into low sec.  Thus resupply should not be an issue.  If I outgrow that area, then entrance into northern Providence is just three jumps away.  I had hopes that it would be far enough off of the grid that it would have low pirate traffic, and it seems to be one of those low security areas that CVA claims to patrol and police. 

As I moved assets out to the area (read a PVP frigate, Cov-ops scout, and a PVE anti-Sansha Hurricane) I knew that I had a lot to learn about permanently basing myself out of low sec and 0.0.  The only uncertainty in the whole equation was exactly how much all this much needed education was going to cost me.

Most Famous EVE Player?

While watching The Mittani’s interview over at Ten Ton Hammer I began to wonder, who is the most widely known player in the EVE universe?  Heroes and villains, CEOs to corporate turncoats, alliance leaders to low sec privateers.  Let’s let Google decide who the winner is!

CHRIBBA 739,000

THE MITTANI 52,000

CRAZY KINUX 41,900

ROC WIELER 33,500

KUNGUTSUMEN 30,400

JADE CONSTANTINE 24,200

SIR MOLLE 21,100

LETRANGE 16,800

MYNXEE 10,500

HAARGOTH AGAMAR 9,390

VUK LAU 4,770

DIERDRA VAAL 4,090

KIRITH KODACHI 3,990

WENSLEY 2,420

DARIUS JOHNSON 730 

A clear winner is Chribba, who maintains a huge online presence as the owner and operator of numerous EVE related websites including EVE-Files, EVE-Agents, and EVE-Search.  He also apparently has a Dreadnaught in the high security system of Amarr and can often be found mining veldspar in his “Veldnaut.”  Further reading will tell you that he is widely known as a player worthy of extreme trust and offers brokering services for the purchase of super capital ships including Titans.  I personally use his EVE-Search program on an almost daily basis to read the forums throughout the work day. 

The Mittani was also not a surprising second place.  He keeps a large internet presence with his regular featured articles on Ten Ton Hammer with his Sins of a Solar Spymaster series.  The Mittani can also be found almost daily on the CAOD forums at EVE-Online.  Assuming that you can trust what he says concerning the formation of the Goonfleet Intelligence Agency and his pioneering of the espionage meta-game within EVE, you would be extremely hard pressed to find another player who has had more influence over 0.0 politics in the game. 

I was very surprised to find Darius Johnson, former CEO of Goon Fleet, to be so low on the list.  Given his recent presentation at FanFest, you would assume he would have a higher ranking.  Perhaps he just does not maintain a large online presence outside of the private Goon Forums themselves.

Alternate Account

Every single member of my corporation now has a fully activated second account.  It really makes you wonder about the subscriber number that CCP tosses around in terms of how many of those 300k+ accounts are actual unique individuals.  Most interesting to me are the training paths that everyone is pursuing and how it parallels or supports their goals on the main account.  This seems to support the ongoing problem with EVE for newer players in that they can never approach the huge skill point pools of players that came before us, but with well trained alts, we can make surgical strikes into training paths and specialize in a few specific roles. 

My own second character is currently being trained up for mission running support.  I am not planning to even put this character into any tech II ships and she will simply have to stop in about 30 days, when I reach Battle Cruiser IV and complete the training path I have setup.  She is not going to be a main DPS or tanking character in PVE encounters, but will be a small-medium ship character offering logistical support with additional skills in looting and salvaging.  The next character I will make after her will be a dedicated hauler and POS gunner.  That should be about a thirty day plan as well.  

Perhaps one of them will see training for tech II frigates to function as a ready made covert ops scout.  Either way, I won’t have a second PC to run a separate client until Thanksgiving, which is November 26, 2009.  My computer is able to run two EVE clients simultaneously as of right now and function well enough to get the job done.  But there was some talk from CCP about increasing the minimum system reqs. come Dominion, which has now been set for release on December 1, 2009.  Thus, I will need to have other plans for then. 

The other, longer term goal, for the second account of mine will be access to pirate faction missions out in 0.0, should I ever find myself out there.  Unfortunately on my main, six months of life in Empire running missions and complexes has left him with very poor standings with all of these factions.  None of the larger 0.0 factions will even offer me missions any more.  Thus my new alt who loots and salvages for me as I go, will give me the needed standings to talk to those agents.  This is accomplished by having my alt warp to the mission area that I am doing in high security space and then leaving the fleet.  Thus she is free to loot and salvage without fear of loosing standings with the pirate faction I am currently engaged in with my main. 

This does still leave me with a third character slot to come back to on this alternate account.  Dedicated researcher?  Trader?  Producer?  Miner?

Best Pic From EVE 2009 Fanfest

And another reason that one server is better than multiple shards….

 

 

Shamelessly stolen from the Eve University forums.

War Update: He Closed His Corp!

One of the mining alts lost a Mackinaw.  That is all.  The one man army is now in an NPC corp.  His old corp is showing up as closed, but the war remains active.  Color me dissapointed.

Hopefully now we can get back to the ultra serious business of internet spaceships with minimal interuption.

Thukk This: Day Two in The Great Wildlands

So where did I leave off?  Oh yes, docked up in low security space just a jump out of The Great Wildlands Region (GW from here on out).  I logged in to find myself in a low security system with six other players from assorted corporations and alliances.  Pulling up the handy dandy star chart I began to play with the display settings.  First I checked my flight path for ships and pods destroyed in the last few hours.  Negative on that front.  Then I went to pilots in space within the past thirty minutes.  Two jumps into 0.0 there was a system showing a dozen pilots active in space. 

Knowing that I should expect some sort of a reception, but naively confident in my cloaking frigate, I set off for the unknown for a second time.  So I guess it isn’t actually unknown as I had been there the day before and it appears on star charts, but it feels like setting off to some grand adventure.  Yes it was only a few jumps into a back woods 0.0 region.  Ok. 

The first system was deserted and I again warped to a safe spot scouted out the day prior and deployed probes.  A combat site and a hacking site were soon pinpointed and bookmarked.  Not that I could safely do either in my current setup, however the bookmarks would function as temporary safe spots.  They were not far enough off of the grid to be considered deep safe spots by any means. 

Next system was the one showing all of the activity.  No gate camp awaited me and I again warped to a safe spot set the day before.  I decided not to deploy probes so as to not expose my location in the least, nor did I want to antagonize the local powers that be should we ever want to make a diplomatic push for access to this region.  Numerous wrecks were appearing on the overview.  The players seemed to be running a plex as a grang, as the belts were all deserted save for their faithful Angel defenders.  Perhaps the 8/10 plex that I located the day before had respawned, and was now being cleared by these players. 

I again checked the star map for any activity and set my course for the system that was adjacent to the systems with the NPC stations.  The two closest NPC station systems were showing as 40 and 80 pilots online and active.  I had my doubts that any were friendly.  Two more empty systems greeted me with open arms.  I got my first view of a “Shattered” planet type that was fairly impressive and I soon arrived at my destination. 

This system was not empty.  One other player sat in the system with me and I was unable to pinpoint his location.  No wrecks were appearing in my directional scanner so I assumed he was not here ratting or running a complex of some type.  Taking out the combat scanner probes I soon covered the system in scans while I looked for the location of this elusive neighbor of mine.  Nothing.  Somewhat discouraged, I warped in at 100 clicks off of the gate to the more crowded NPC station and just sat there cloaked for a few minutes while I slowly moved away from the gate.  My goal was to set a bookmark around 160 km off of the gate for a quick warp in point.  

The gate fired.  Local chat added a third player to the system and my attention was focused on the gate while I waited for the player to warp off to some unknown destination.  A Drake came into sight and was aligning away from the gate.  Like clockwork, a Hound stealth bomber popped into existence between myself and the gate.  The Drake pilot was warp disrupted and taking damage faster than I had ever seen.  Both pilots opened fire on each other as the Drake was not going to back down.  The Drake went down extremely quickly under the fire of the bomber, the Hound pilot stood victorious and even managed to pop the guy’s pod.  Another round of torpedoes set out from the bomber and vaporized the wreck.  The Hound aligned out and warped towards a nearby planet, leaving only the frozen corpse of his victim as grim proof of the deadly brawl.  This pilot’s corporation description listed them as an NRDS corp.  Was the Drake truly an enemy or was the Hound pilot an opportunistic killer?  

Another hour of scanning went by and even more sites were identified and bookmarked for later use as safe spots.  I was highly impressed with the number of sites available out in GW.  No doubt the aggressiveness of the locals keeps the PVE population to a minimum.  Thus, I brought my small tour of upper GW to an end and set my course for home and went back the way that I came.  Again empty systems greeted with me with perceived safety, all the way until that one system with the gang in it that I had run through earlier. 

The star map still listed a decent number of folks online and in system.  Surely they would be done with their plex by now.  As it was a Sunday mid-day US time, it was more or less EU prime time and these players might be up to something.  I jumped into the system and found it clear of any camps on this side.  Warping to a safe spot, I again found nothing on my directional scanner on this side of the system.  

I warped in at 100 clicks from the outbound gate and was greeted by what I had long suspected; a 0.0 gate camp complete with a warp disruption bubble.  The bubble was positioned in direct alignment from the gate that I had entered the system through and the outbound system towards Empire.  Had I not warped to a safe spot and then to the gate, this story would have a different outcome.  As it were, I slowly made my way towards the gate over several agonizingly long minutes and jumped through.  

The campers were setup about 15-20 km from the gate with interceptor support.  They could pursue if they choose.  On the other side was a lesser gate camp with the same group.  There was a Hurricane battle cruiser with a Stiletto interceptor.  The Stiletto was orbiting EXTREMELY close to where I had arrived in system.  He was within 5 km from me and changing distance and approaches rapidly.  Much too close for my comfort as he only needed to come within 2 km from me to drop my cloak and introduce my hull to his auto cannons.  

I found a moon in the system that was nearly dead center in front of me.  My align time with this frigate coupled with the cloaking device should make me difficult to catch.  I hit warp to 50 km and then slammed the cloak button as soon as my ship began to drop my warp in cloak.  Somehow the Stiletto never even targeted me. One jump later and I was back to the relative safety of Empire.

It’s On! Our First Corporation War Dec!

Ok, so we are not exactly a big deal with four members and 7 accounts.  And no we aren’t a major industrial or research corporation supporting some large player entity from the shadows.   But clearly we must have attracted the attention of someone!  Perhaps some vanquished and bitter foe from faction warfare wanted revenge.  Maybe some xenophobic territorial power was irked by my recent forays into their claimed 0.0 space.

We soon set off to find out who this mysterious corporation was and what their membership was capable of.  Quickly we learned that this one man corporation must mean business.  We located the CEO and sole member and had everyone add him to their friends list.  An out of corp alt was parked in the station that the locator agent placed him at.  We didn’t have any other ideas to keep an eye on this guy.  Three out of four of our members were briefed and some plans were formulated for whenever this one man army would log back in.

But still the question remained.  What could have brought down such a horrid wrath upon us?

Well in my corporation members’ defense I was told the full story and this other player did instigate the confrontation.  The friend of mine that mines with two hulks was out in a belt when this player warped next to one of his hulks in a cruiser.  This wonder player then stole the ore from the floating canister near one of the hulks and placed it into a can of his own.  He then blew up the can in a showing up utmost strength and maturity.  I am sure some words were said in local.

The two hulks of my corp member were about 30km away from each other.  So my guy sends in his drones from the Hulk further away from the aggressor and begins to attack.   The genius in the cruiser was apparently only fitted for short range combat and did not have an MWD.  So he begins to slowboat towards the far away Hulk and as soon as he moves about 10 clicks away from the first Hulk, that Hulk’s drones open up on him as well.  The cruiser pilot had to warp out in structure due to his failure while attacking two mining ships.

The very next day my friend ran into this would be assailant mining in a nearby belt and periodically can flipped him throughout the day.  The end result is the war declaration that Concord handed to us.  Should be fun if this guy actually logs on and presents himself as a target.

Weekend with the Thukkers: Day One

Somewhat discouraged by my previous outing to Providence, I was apprehensive about scouting out an obscure corner of The Great Wildands.  But as with all things EVE, without risk there is no reward, other than level four missions of course.  And thus I found myself once again braving the cut throat world of 0.0 in EVE. 

The trip out to the region through Molden Heath(sp) was very uneventful.  Actually the trip into the region on Friday afternoon was very uneventful.  I was pleasantly surprised to find empty systems or just one or two others in local and set about on my task of surveying the area.  Unlike Providence, The Great Wildlands is not an open region with promises of friendly patrols to chase off aggressive forces and griefers. Rather my reading had told me that the area is controlled by aggressive forces and griefers who have all set standings to positive with each other and shoot any neutrals in the area. 

The Great Wildlands is setup like four fingered hand with all of the fingers converging on a little cluster of four systems.  These four systems are where the NPC stations are setup as this region is NPC space held by the Thukker Tribe.  I would have liked to check out these systems and visit some of the other “fingers,” unfortunately these hub systems were always heavily populated with 40-80 players showing as logged in.  I knew better than to try and risk running through a bubbled gate camp and stuck to putting about my little corner on the north west of the region map. 

In each and every system I found something with the scan probes.  My entire survey area was eight systems, which puts the exploration opportunities here hugely ahead of those found in Providence.  I spent about two hours that afternoon flying around and making bookmarks.  Sadly my little cov-ops frigate could not even dream to tank the spawns at the hacking site that I uncovered, and the combat sites that were found were even more out of reach. 

The 8/10 Angel complex certainly looked promising, albeit it was already cleared up to the final room.  Not sure if those were respawns or if someone gave up after being dropped off literally on top of multiple hostiles by the incoming gate warp in point.  There was also a system with a LVL4Q20 agent sitting on a gate in a Rifter.  That was extremely unexpected.  If the area would see more mission runners, this would be an interesting place to setup camp. 

So I put myself in some dead end system in a safe spot and logged out for a couple of hours.  I returned later that evening (9:00 CST) with every intention of running the gauntlet through the hub systems with the NPC stations.  However, I logged back into a local with 18 other players in system.  I couldn’t tell what they were up too as not a single ship was showing up on scan sans a Maelstrom camping the only gate out of town.  Not wanting to attract too much attention I planned to quietly make my escape.  I warped to a nearby celestial and then warped to the gate at 100 km.  There was no bubble and still just the Maelstrom visible. 

I bounced back off the celestial and landed on the gate at 0 while mashing the jump too button.  If everything went right my little ship would barely flash on his overview and he would simply see the gate fire.  Well everything went exactly as I had hoped, except for the fact that he decided to jump after me.  Apparently this guy was feeling very brazen and hoped to tackle a covert ops frigate with his large battle ship.  I was probably no more than a blip on his overview as I jumped to a scanned down safe spot and instantly cloaked.  

The locals were either extremely xenophobic or just itching for some sort of a fight as local spiked to twelve players.  No scan probes were showing up on my directional scanner and within a few minutes they safely retreated back into the dead end system to resume their little operation.  I did take the time to look at their information and see who was in the area.  None of the names stood out to me except for a few members of Cult of War and Gentlemen’s Club Aliances.  Neither group seemed particularly friendly to neutrals from what I remembered, thus I remained in my safe spot and tabbed out of the game for a good ten minutes.  

Returning to the game I found myself in system with just one player, who was not showing up my directional scan.  However, several large wrecks were appearing.  Someone was not cleaning up after themselves while ratting in a belt. Through prodigious use of a directional scanner I soon located the wrecks and landed at 100 km from the belt in question.  The other player was not to be seen.  I bookmarked one of the wrecks and bounced off of a nearby planet and landed on top of two of them and got to work with my salvager.  This trip wouldn’t be a total bust after all! 

I began to feel more than a bit vulnerable without the safety of my cloak.  I salvaged the first wreck and left the loot behind.  I burned towards the next closest one and soon set to work on that one as well.  The third large wreck was just out of salvage range but easily reachable once I was done with the second.  I watched the directional scanner like a hawk for any sign of scan probes out in the area as local remained just myself and the other silent player.  After less than a minute uncloaked, local again shot up from two…six…nine and then finally ten.  Perhaps my location was uncovered by the pilot in system, or perhaps they were just passing through. 

Taking no chances I again blasted towards a safe spot and cloaked up before reaching my destination.  I waited a few minutes and local again was deserted for just myself and the silent watcher.  The wrecks were no longer appearing on my overview.  Perhaps they had simply despawned.  Maybe they were blown up by this silent gang after their aborted attempt at capture.

These were probably questions that were best left unanswered, less I invite them to set a trap for me in a nearby system with a cloaked tackler and a few inviting wreckages.  I can only imagine the facepalm I would give myself for loosing a 20 million Isk frigate for a few hundred thousand in salvage loot.  It was nearly midnight my time and with things settling down I made my way back to low security space through empty 0.0 systems and docked up for the night.

Tobold Blocked!

I have always wondered what algorithm my company uses for curtailing web browsing.  For some time I was able to safely browse internet gaming forums and even many official websites, and then slowly the company’s online watchdog would catch up to me.  First it was the official WoW site, and then it was the Elitist Jerks site.  I still remember the sadness I felt the day that my guild forums became blocked. 

There is no rhyme or reason to the manner or pace with which the company blocks sites.  There just seems to be a slow process of more popular sites slowly being added to the list.  Thus today I was greeted by the following screen when trying to get my morning dose of Tobold.  Thankfully, other Blogspot blogs are still fully accessible.  

 

Many of my EVE related sites remain fully accessible, other than pages on the official site.  Perhaps EVE-Search and other similar EVE sites just don’t have the online clout or presence to be on the radar just yet.   Heaven help me if they figure out a way to block Google Reader…they can’t block Google can they?