I was disturbed to note on the weekend that this site was the WordPress EVE Online Tag featured blog. I am somewhat embarrassed that my prolific posting caused that, so I will try to cut back.
Work and RL have limited my EVE time for the last few days. Tonight however I have all three accounts logged in as I try to do some housekeeping. I seem to find myself with dozens of notes left all over my desk, reminding me to do this, that or the other in game. Most are inconsequential – but when you are trying to keep on top of 4 active characters, easy to forget. I had an implant purchased for one character by another, sit forgotten in an Interceptor’s hold for months. Another character had completed the prerequisites for a dozen different skills which I had neglected to actually buy. The list goes on and on. There really can be a lot of preparation required in this game.
It’s odd having all three accounts logged in together. I used to do it all the time when I was in 0.0 – a Neutral Cyno alt in low sec, a scout on the Cyno beacon in our home systems, and the capital pilot jumping between them. Moving up and down the empire pipes would usually involve two scouts being deployed. I’ve even gone to the length of having one toon NPC’ing, another toon watching an in-bound gate, and the last sitting cloaked in a Falcon to provide a get out of Jail free card if called upon. As I have said before, I tend to go out of my way to avoid nonconsensual PVP.
(I remember once uncloaking in the Falcon and jamming a red who was about to attack a hauler. He swore at me in local for using EW as it wasn’t real PVP. He didn’t seem to notice the irony in his own actions – which was to attack an Iteron V with a Vagabond.)
As useful as it is, it can take a bit to get used to running multiple accounts. I had lots of near misses or oops moments where I lost track of which system I was in or what account I was using. There were lots of ships left unattended on gates for minutes at a time, or even a hauler left on Autopilot through several 0.0 systems when I had mistakenly thought he had reached empire already. Less dangerous were when you forgot to log off your Neutral Alt, and inadvertently caused all sorts of reports in the Intel Channels.
In one hostile system I had a red Titan try to DD an alt assuming they were sitting cloaked on the gate (back when it was an area effect). I only realised this when I returned to the screen hours later and found a trail of agro in local from the red covert ops pilot who was inadvertently caught up in the DD fishing net. What the Titan Pilot did not realise was that I never park an alt AFK on the same grid as anything NPC rats visit. I don’t know if it still happens – but I found on rare but multiple occasions rat’s would slowly and unerringly cover hundreds of kilometers towards cloaked scouts on gates or within exploration sites.
I am reminded as I reminisce that for all its annoyances, instability, and problems, the stories you remember the most in game tend to happen in 0.0, and not in Empire.
Evehermit 