Thursday, August 13, 2009

for Kane

In responding to Kane Rizzel’s latest blag post, I instigated a strong response from the old pirate. Since Kane did me the honors of expanding his response into the form of entirely new blag post, I’ll do the same. I’ll not attempt to cheapen his writing by picking it apart with quotes. Rather, I’ll reply by addressing the underlying theme behind his post: solo piracy.

EVE piracy to me is self sustained PvP at the expense of others, achieved through ransoms, player kills, assorted theft and griefing. Given every player’s experiences of solo activities in general, solo piracy must be a difficult task. Taken from a solo PvPer’s experiences, solo piracy is an amazing accomplishment. Borrowing finally from a pirate’s perspective, what Kane suggests he's accomplished with NovaKane is downright unbelievable: two and a half fucking years of solo piracy in Heimatar and beyond.

Kane, I think I safely state for the entirety of the EVE blagging community that we’re all impressed by your accomplishments and associated tales of victories and defeats over the past few years. Many pilots, including myself half a year ago have been inspired by you to break away from their fleets, and give solo PvP or piracy a go. Thanks in part to you, I founded a new corporation and have been running amok about Molden Heath and beyond causing havoc and grief at my leisure and others' expense. However, in responding to my comment, you fucked up. You decided to state that one can’t be a solo pirate while flying in a populated corporation or alliance. And I call bullshit.

So what if you’ve flown in your own corp for two and a half years; it doesn’t secure that your way is the only way for solo piracy. After bothering to check your personal KB for the past year of combat you’ve had, a solid half of your combat kills have other parties contributing to the mails. You know this, however you state that you’ve been doing your thing for years, without the option of backup? No. Just because your help comes from an organization outside your corporation or alliance doesn’t make your kills solitary accomplishments. It makes you the corp loner, the hermit that comes and goes as he damn well pleases: an approach to this game we all should take up and try out, honestly.

So I’m happy to see you making trails on the blag again, Kane. Even vacationing from posting & playing, your class act bests mine over here at Broadside. It’s not due to your stubborn approach to PvP, or your incredible feats as a solo pirate. By itself, you could writing could lose the ego, and I could care less about the quotes. However, combine everything: the attitude, the content, the (once) regularity of it, and you have a winning formula from the self proclaimed pirate dinosaur of EVE. The hat is off to you, sir.

Fly reckless Kane, and hopefully see you in space.