Giant Bomb Presents: What Drives a Man to Travel Thousands of Miles for a Game

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Also I wish I spoke Eve. I only know English, German and a little Japanese.

I traveled two clicks to get to this interview.

BACK THAT ICELANDIC THING UP

Space trucking?

Make sure your ship is insured before listening to this podcast.

Really enjoy the cold opens for these.

Fuck YEAH, Space Truckin!

Wait this isn't the bombcast...

The last few minutes of this interview reveal what is great about EVE. True PvP where losing means something. UO did that for me back in the day, death was something to be feared. You lost your shit and that was bad news. Nowadays it's a corpse run and a few hours xp grinding, if anything. Kids today got it easy!

BEEP BEEP ITS SPACE DUMPTRUCK TIME

Two kilometers? ;)

I don't understand anything anyone is saying, but I'm forcing myself to listen to it. Why, you ask? Babes. Smokin' hot babes.

i'm listening to this and i have no clue what any of the jargon means.Someone needs to transcribe and translate

@wait: Assume that any jargon you don't understand is just a dude/corp/alliance's name.

I love the interview dump truck even more each one i listen to

Zakn: "... and that's why it's called align to planet 1"

Patrick: "...haha"

@wait said:

CFC/HBC - Clusterfuck Coalition/Honey Badger Coalition, the two big supergroups in the game right now. (Coalitions of alliances are actually not supported in-game)

Spam local - trash talk, ASCII art spam, make local useless for intel gathering

FCing - Fleet Commander

Whelp - Whelp, can't do anything and lost

Roam - go out and look for fights

Hotdrop - ambush

local means local chat (a chat window for the star system you're in). People usually talk smack/taunt in local chat

gates are access points between star systems

he enumerats the fleet composition of his gang a bunch of times(specific ship names), it's really not that important

align is the action to get ready to warp between location (gates, planetes, moons, space stations need to be warped to because they're way to far appart and in ''different instances'')

I have no idea what most of this is. Perfect, that's what I want out of Eve coverage. Just a peek inside.

One more bit of jargon, bubbles are spheres that stop you form warping, either from starting a warp or dropping you out of one if you pass through it mid-warp, so it's harder for you to run way basically.

I didn't understand 90% of what this guy was talking about but yet I continue to love eve stories

Most of this is gibberish to me but I love it. One day I will fight for the CFC, and the Goonwaffe, one day.

That was awesome, hopefully theres a lot more where that comes from :)

Corporation: EVE's Guild

Alliance: Group of Corporations

Spam Local: Every solar system in EVE has a local chat for players in that area, that everyone in that system. Spamming help in local is very noobish and can give away who is in the local area, which in some places in EVE can be dangerous.

Nul Sec: Areas in the EVE space that are completely open to PVP, noted for having 0.0 security. areas ranging from 0.1 - 1.0 security, there is a punishment for attacking or killing players, the severity of that punishment ranges based on the security level of that Solar System.

a lot of the names he lists off are corporations or alliances. You'd have to google them to get an idea of how strong they are (I honestly haven't been much of a nul sec player, so I'm not sure of the current politics)

Titan: The largest and most powerful ships in the game that can take months to manufacture.

Maelstrom: A Battleship from the Minmatar race. It's a few steps down from a Titan for size, but the Maelstrom can get some MAJOR damage out quite quickly.

FC: Fleet commanding. Used to command groups of ships, such as other players in your fleet, to specific areas. Useful to avoid having people trickle into a fight one at a time, which would make them prime targets.

Rifter: A Frigate of the Minmatar race. Frigates are the smallest combat-capable ships in the game. Rifters are well known for being a very useful and flexible ship, and is very popular in the game.

Bubble: A term for a Warp Disruption field. It stops anyone within the field from engaging their warp drive, and, thus, running away.

Burn: using an Afterburner on your ship to speed up the ships base speed. In his story, that was to speed up and out of the "Bubble"

Probing: Players can use Scan Probes in a Solar System to scan for both randomized PVE elements as well as players, structures, ect. that are too small and out of range for your ships computer to scan and find automatically.

Gate: All sytems (With exception of a few, but I won't go into those :D) are accessible through a warp gate, which is used to travel between solar systems.

Scram: Warp Scrambler. Same idea as a warp disruption field, except instead of a field, it is individually targeted.

Popped: When your ship is destroyed. When it is lost, the player escapes through an escape pod which they can use to travel back to a safe destination, unless they are podded.

Podded: A player's escape pod is destroyed, killing the player. The player is then resurrected at the last place they set their clone to be.

About 15 minutes in he lists a LOT of ships, so I'll just stop here.

Im sure Patrick understand so much of whats being said.

Nice to be a Eve player and understand it all.

What language is he speaking in?

Awesome interview, Scoops. Didn't really understand it, but enjoyable nonetheless!

Corpse run? Nah, you rarely see that in MMORPGs anymore. That's one of the many reasons why most modern MMOs don't appeal to me. There's very little risk/reward (which can lead to bland gameplay) because everyone needs to be a winner!

Patrick should have found someone that would be willing to explain things and put them into context. Because WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS GUY TALKING ABOUT?!

As an off-and-on EVE Online player, I'm able to pick-up on what this guy is going on about. I still think it would have been much better if Patrick found someone that was better able to explain in layman's terms more about these great stories. How hard was it to say, "Oh, 'in local' mean talking in the chat channel for that area/system..."

Sorry for all the jargon. I had been nerding out on Eve hard for the last week before Patrick said come sit down for an interview, so Eve 101 wasn't something I was even thinking about. If you read some of the comments here, most of the jargon has been explained.

The only thing that I don't think has been explained so far are the differences between Block and Drag bubbles. Block Bubbles are set up short of somewhere you are warping to (hence block), and Drag Bubbles pull you past the object you are warping to (hence drag, and they confuse the heck out of you until you get used to them.

Sorry again for all the Jargon, I should have kept it a little more Eve 101, but it's Fanfest, everyone is super hard core there.

Again sorry for all the ships and fleet comp stuff, but thats what we talk about at Fanfest, so people want to know enemy gang comps, your comps. Sorry about that.

When conflict in a game world purely between players can grow to an extent that it will unironically get names like the "Tribute Wars", that's pretty great.

That was some hardcore gibberish, but very interesting anyways. EVE always has attracted me, but it's just so much to learn. Looking forward to the rest of your coverage patrick!

@beachthunder: Why oh why is this one of the only MMO's to still ask for a monthly sub. I've wanted to check this out for years but don't want to pay monthly doses of money for a game that require months and months of participation to even learn. Giant Bomb is the one and only piece of entertainment I will pay a monthly membership for.

I don't know that the fuck you just said little kid, but you special man!

They have talked about this. If they went f2p they would have to implement micro transactions to the game which they do not want.

@tfruit: Yeah, at the end of the day, the people who already play EVE are completely fine with it. I can't help feeling, though, that one of the reasons this game is so damned impenetrable is the monthly fee and how that slightly alienates people curious about this like me.

I can translate if needed. Not to German though, fuck that.

great interview, i didn't understand a word you were saying but i believed it all. It was like listening to the essence of sci-fi.

@luck702: Like I said in the interview, Commit to it for a year. Just say I'm going to do this. I'm going to read Eve Blogs, listen to Eve Podcasts, and really focus on getting into it and finding something in it I like to do.

The biggest thing I'd tell a newbie that didn't know anyone that played is don't be afraid to drop 35 bucks to buy a ETC and sell the two plex for isk, so you aren't just poor as hell and aren't stressing over money for new books and ship fits. Don't fall into the trap I did which was industry. It nearly made me quit.

Eve is an amazing thing, we need more EVE content! Thanks guys for doing this. Also, I bet the overlap between EVE players and Linux users is high. lol

I heard an EVE story on NPR one time that gave me goosebumps (it was some big ponzi scheme thing). I don't play the game but major events can be so dramatic and awesome to hear about (if explained in lamen's terms).

In space, no one can hear the dump truck beep

This really is parallel reality stuff. I could be minding my own business, drinking a glass of sweet tea, meanwhile a political scandal has erupted into full-blown galactic war, with lasting consequences for thousands of people across the planet. That freaks me out, in a good way.

Bork Bork Bork!

oh wait that's Sweden....carry on :3

I don't understand what he's saying but it sounds awesome :o

I think that he just made all of those words up.

The part where he quotes Blade Runner is fucking amazing.