As I sit here reminiscing about my frequent breaks from a game with which I seem to have a more-love-than-hate relationship, I find that it was wormhole space (or W-space, as I learned to call it) that ultimately pulled me in. There’s been a lot to learn, especially for someone who primarily played outside of wormholes, in K-space. But wormholes are the most fun I’ve had in a game in a long time. From the thrill of scanning someone down who can wholeheartedly do it better than you, or finding that site in what seems like the perfect hole with all the blue loot you could ever want…the rush is endless.

“Did I do the warp-cloak trick right…?”

Those were pretty much my initial thoughts as I was coordinating my trip from Jita back to my wormhole, with plenty of blue loot sold and my blockade runner chock full of many other “goodies.”

Let’s rewind a little. Before this, I’d been in this wormhole for a lot longer than is probably healthy for any Eve player. And I was getting very anxious trying to unload all this stuff I camped for hours for. Usually the rule of thumb is not to haul or do anything significant down your static unless you’re a) in comms, b) in your corp’s standing fleet, and c) people are actually online to save you if things go wrong. For the most part my time in W-space seemed to line up with these expectations. Until I got greedy.

I waited days or weeks for a Jita connection, any kind of connection, where I could sell the 1.5 billion ISK in blue loot that I had collected in just two days. So there I was, loot properly sold, with no foxes given, on my way back with all my goodies on an alt character. It wasn’t until about the third jump in my bookmarks I noticed I had a tail. Someone recognized me. That’s weird, I thought; my tags were off, there was no way. I got to my hole safely and the pit in my stomach seemed to ease, but I was fairly sure, as I crossed into the red fluttering glow and hum of my c4, that I had been followed.

Then it hit me. The tail came from inside my static hole. They’d followed me to Jita and flagged me, knowing I’d be going back. I had a lot more cargo than I should have had – 793 million ISK worth, to be exact – and was under the false impression that I was safe because of my tough-as-nails Deep Space Transport (DST). One bubble went down, then two, three – pretty soon a whole fleet came in. I was scared the hole had too much mass and that even if I called for help it might close. I was screwed.

But even though help did eventually arrive I made a rookie mistake, even with my tanked-to-the-wall DST. I took the wrong exit. Instead of taking the high-sec route, which I came from, I went into another hole and that was all she wrote.

That’s what makes Eve beautiful. It’s such a vast, well, everything, and as long as you’re having some sort of fun with some sort of friends, mistakes turn into continuous laughing on your comms until everyone eventually forgets about it.