And so the blog begins!

Aside from a basic family blog I have, this is my first venture into the blogging world, so please bear with me! I'm not sure what direction I want this to head in yet, but I guess I'll be trying to detail my goings on with my character(s) in EVE over time as a starting point.

At the moment I've begun reading a few EVE blogs to get a feel and idea for what people do in these things.

Although I have a fairly long gaming history (to be detailed in another blog I'm planning on doing) I have just started playing EVE properly for the first time, so hopefully this blog will go hand in hand with it. So how did I end up playing EVE?

Well, here's a brief history of my MMO experience so you know what background I'm coming from :

I started playing MMO's around 2005 I think it was - when I first got the internet in my own place. I started with Star Wars Galaxies as a friend was playing it and recommended I join, I jumped at the chance and I guess like most people joining an MMO for the first time was both overwhelmed and amazed by the new virtual world presented before me. I unfortunately didn't have much time on SWG as my friend left for personal reasons and I had no idea what I was doing in game, which also led me to quit pretty quickly. I went back to "normal" gaming for a bit, but having had a taster of MMO life it wasn't long before I needed something to fill the gap.

I briefly read into WoW but was put off joining/doing a trial by the cartoony graphics. Guild Wars had not long been out and although technically it's not an MMO, it was good enough for me at the time and the non-subscription model suited me on a limited budget. I think I played that for around 6 months before eventually doing a WoW trial.

WoW is my longest played MMO to date, I think all in all it was around 3 and bit years I played, give or take a few months when I had breaks from the game. I thoroughly enjoyed the game for the most part, the most part being when I was in a good guild and had friendly help available to me but sadly due to many different reasons the guild I was in disbanded and although I formed up again with some friends, differences of opinion, server changes and general in game boredom made things disintegrate - I never really found another guild I could call "home" and had already payed for enough server changes in the previous year and didn't have the time/desire to do any more!

And, so not long after Wrath of the Lich King came out - I left. I sold my account on Ebay to be precise, not for the money as such, but so that I could never be tempted back to WoW again, at least not so easily. Over the top? Perhaps, but at the time I really had had enough of the game!

It was at this time I briefly got my first taste of EVE, from a trial I'd seen advertised online. Sadly I didn't give it hardly any time at all and probablly from being used to the same standard MMO model it didn't take long for me to die a few times and give up rather quickly.

So next in line was a brief stint on Warhammer Online, which I quite enjoyed but there was some kind of memory leak or something when doing PVP in big groups in keeps. This meant that I was reduced to a few frames a second, even though at the time I had the most powerful graphics card on the market (Radeon 4870x2). Regardless, the problem didn't seem to get fixed and a few other issues were arising with the social aspect of the game, so I decided to quit.

Shortly afterwards I moved house, so was offline for a couple of months waiting for phone lines to be installed at my new place. I was also totally broke after the move, so sold my gaming pc (somewhere around £800) to put towards things I needed for the new place - a sensible move on the one hand, but before long I started having withdrawals from both MMO's and gaming in general. I already had two Xbox 360's (One for my eldest son and one for me) so I decided that now the internet was installed, I'd use that for my gaming platform until I could afford a new pc. For a month or two I put up with (and to be fair enjoyed some) low res games games best suited to the console before I couldn't handle it any longer and began saving for a new pc. What seemed like an eternity passed and before long I had another pc, better than my last gaming rig.

Anyway, back on track. So the thirst for MMO's returned and I found myself scouring the internet for what to play and trying to find something that I would stick at. I tried Aion Online, having briefly played the Beta and been amazed at the graphics and details for an MMO I was very keen to play the retail when it arrived. Sadly it didn't live up to my expectations and in my opinion it's just far too grindy and although it has some nice touches (flying etc) I found the novelty wore off very quickly and the whole thing just submerged into one big grind fest. So I did some research online for my next MMO and thought I'd try out Lord of the Rings Online.

Lotro got some good ratings around the internet and I thought I would give it a go. I played for around 6 months and to be honest I really enjoyed most of my time on the game, people were pretty helpful, although I did have some issues getting groups at the earlier levels, but I suppose that's to be expected. I have since left the game for a couple of months, not out of choice but rather concentrating on real life issues had led me to unsubscibe. As well as EVE I will be playing Lotro also, it's a great MMO in my opinion - not sure if it's the setting or the fact it's a pretty "easy going" MMO or what, but I just found it pretty enjoyable.

Finally (and thanks for sticking with me so far), I was browsing Steam one day as I use Steam for 90% of my pc gaming these days. I have a fair amount of purchases on Steam (around 50) and was looking for something new to play - I saw the trial of EVE available and almost immediately disregarded it from the memories of my previous and brief encounter with the game. Something, I'm not entirely sure what it was, spurred me to read reviews of the game and more opinions on it. For the most part, time and time again I kept reading that it was such a unique MMO and that the learning curve was steep, but once your past that the game really opens up and you'll reap the benefits - that kind of thing.

I went on like this for a few days, reading reviews etc, before one evening a few weeks ago I decided "what the heck" and downloaded the trial again. I joined and made a character called "Letarious", which I will talk more about in my next blog post. Sorry for the big intro and thanks for reading!

- Matt