EVE ONLINE
This has been an exciting week in EVE Online, as the Voltron Coalition has launched an all-out assault on the Imperium’s northern holdings. Voltron members have been heard commenting that their goals are nothing less than the utter destruction of the Imperium and of Goonswarm. These statements have largely been made in places like comment threads and twitch chat, though, so they should likely be taken with a grain of salt.
What cannot be denied, though, is that the Voltron forces are not simply skirmishing over an entosis timer or two. Voltron consists of perennial GSF foes like NCdot, Darkness, Evoke, and TEST (now with 100% more Progodlegend and Vily), frenemies like Pandemic Legion (supporting their NCdot allies), and an assortment of names both old and new like The Culture, OSS, TISHU, and the ironically named Leage of Unaligned Master Pilots. TMC will not speculate on preciseely which group forms the head, or whether this is the lion Voltron, or the one made out of dozens of cars and trucks which for some reason still work just fine in space or underwater.
The Voltron forces finished off last week with a crafty little display, as Pandemic Horde managed to ninja-freeport the C8-CHY station in Fade while their allies in nearby systems took a 52b-47b beating. Though the Imperium won the tactical engagement, PHorde hackers took advantage of the TiDi and distraction to win the timer. The station was retaken a few days later, but the move showed that PHorde and Voltron are capable of displaying pluck and misdirection to achieve their goals.
Voltron clearly wanted to follow-up on that success, but started off the week by standing down in the face of an early form-up by GSF FC and TMC Stream personality Lazarus Telraven. By mid-week, however, they were back for blood, taking down a SCAA with at least one titan in build and inflicting over 100 billion in losses to the assembled Imperium fleets. Included in the casualties was an entire Machariel fleet fielded by Circle-of-Two that self-destructed after extraction attempts proved ineffectual.
Here at TMC, Roland Cassidy has continued on with the fourth and fifth installments of his series I, Newbie. In part four, Roland explored the difficulty new players can find in PVP, from making enough money in FW to afford an endless supply of combat frigates to figuring out just how to make a fit work, and even looking into finding some friends to bum around with killing folks.
Part five goes on to discuss how to keep the game from becoming too stale too quickly. This can take the form of making sure you don’t limit yourself to only one type of gameplay, to just having an appreciation for the risks you’re taking as you pursue your chosen path. In the end, the game is what we make of it, even for newbies.
H1Z1
Over on the zombie-survival-but-really-all-about-killing-dudes-in-their-underwear side, Kabal, of the Imperium’s H1Z1 presence, brought us news of a new development. Not a move taken by the Daybreak devs, this was the opening of the Imperium’s private Whitelist server, Tranquility, to the general public. The decision to open up Tranquility to anyone who wants in was motivated by a desire the play the game against other players, not against hacks and bots, while still retaining the freedom of sandbox-interaction. We can’t tell if it will be a success or not, but at the very least, it’s another option for the H1Z1: Just Survive crowd.
That was it for this week – as space continues to heat up, we’ll be bringing you plenty of new material in the days and weeks to come.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Arrendis.
