Reputation

Ever since I started this blog in mid-July 2013, I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten a lot more attention in-game. I’ve been pretty transparent about who my main is, and I’m willing to talk to anyone who convo’s me while I’m flying around. My wife jokes and says I’m space famous, even though I know I’m not. Far from it.

On one or two occasions, people have tried to use what they know about me against me, typically by trying to lure me into situations where they can blob me given my well-known dislike of links and hot-dropping. Fortunately, I’m usually pretty savvy in those situations and can typically smell a trap. It’s also ridiculously hard for one or two pilots to catch someone floating through low-sec – or even null-sec – if they think something’s fishy and don’t want to engage, even in a destroyer or cruiser.

More often than not, being well-known gets me more fights. People want to kill pilots they know. I admit – without shame – to thinking the same thing about Rixx Javix, again as a result of his easygoing nature and aversion to links.  It’s safe to say that being known for disliking links has more often given me more engagements than it’s cost me ships.

A lot of times, as I’m roaming, people will comment in local or convo me with opinions about Target Caller. Usually, it’s positive.  I’ve actually found that Eve players are quite courteous – if they don’t have anything nice to say, they just stay quiet, or mention that they recognize the name without any opinion about WHY they recognize it.

And that’s all well and good. I’m always happy to talk to folks, engage people in conversations, and hear their Eve stories.

Yesterday, though, something happened that I can honestly say I’ve never experienced before.

With the war happening mostly during AUTZ and Valeria in our staging to participate in fleets for me, I’ve been pretty free with what I can do with Talvorian. With the whole north a hot mess, I’ve had to shelve my whaling Stratios. There simply aren’t any pilots ratting outside the protective cocoon of Deklein for me to hunt.  It’ll probably be months until the new residents of the north begin farming actively and giving me some targets to kill.

The challenge for me is that the old Imperium space is just lousy with large gangs, which make it hard to solo roam through there. I mention “the old Imperium space” since Tribute, Tenal, and Fade are utterly lost, Pure Blind and Vale are behind the front and being savaged, and only half of Branch and Deklein truly remain.  It’s a convenient description, though I suppose I’ll need to start purely describing it as “the north” now.

So, as I look for action that allows me to “shoot my weight”, I find myself drawn to lowsec, both to attack pilots rushing to the front and those typical FW pilots who are conducting business as usual.

Some time ago, I moved most of my ships to Nisuwa, since it’s much more centrally located than Tamo, and my corp tends to roam in that direction more often than not (I abhorred the long travel back through lowsec to Tamo to reship). It was with glee that I undocked yesterday after having chosen a Harpy (yes, that Harpy) to find a Griffin Navy Issue attacking a Garmur about 30 km off my staging station.

Now, typically I wouldn’t risk attacking a Garmur with a Harpy, but I figured I stood a good chance of burning through it if I could get into scram range.  Plus, I suspected the Griffin’s jams would help me stay within range. I locked them both and saw the Griffin was at about half-armor.

But, I was able to successfully burn in on the Garmur and began to engage. Its shields were starting to diminish pretty quickly, and things looked good.

Suddenly… spaceships!

I noticed another ship warp in, but I was fixated on trying to take down the Garmur, and didn’t pay as much attention as I should have.  But, I noticed the Garmur was pulling range, despite me still running my MWD. Then the second ship warped in, and I looked more closely.

A Cynabal and Vigilant and joined the Garmur. The Vigilant’s webs were responsible for the Garmur pulling range. By the time I was able to switch to Null ammo, he was already out of my range. Suffice it to say, I died.

Now, all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. Two pirate cruisers and a pirate frig killed me.  That’s not the unique part of this. Nor is the fact of overkill support coming to kill a single T2 frigate. That’s all pretty commonplace.

But afterwards, someone actually tried to extract some tears from me… about being blobbed! They clearly knew me from the blog, but this was the first time anyone tried specifically to get a rise out of me after a fight. I’ve gotten “gf”s. I’ve gotten taunting. I’ve gotten folks who recognize me and chat about the fits we each used.

But I’ve never gotten someone who tried to elicit a rise out of me because they recognized me from the blog. That’s new. They were going for some blogger tears!

Thanatos Marathon > talvorian would never!



Bless your heart, Thanatos Marathon. I’m obviously doing something right! Thanks to the gang that killed me for a memorable experience!