Day 72 : Where Familiarity Doesn't Breed Contempt

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately, running to catch up with the community while trying to figure out what everything means (what is a “whelp”?). One of the things I came across recently was the monthly Blog Banter. A topic is posted and bloggers who want to participate jump in with their posts on the topic and you get an interesting exchange of ideas and opinions. Is it only EVE where something like this could happen? The community seems so tightly knit. Though like any community it has its rivalries and conflict everyone appears to be headed in the same general direction. Sure, they all play the same game but that game has so many ways to be played and so many opportunities to foment hostility that you’d expect the community would be a text based version of 1990s Mogadishu.

I thought I’d never be able to get into the Blog Banter series since a diary format discusses what I’ve been doing, rather than a particular chosen topic. Interestingly though this months topic gels with what I thought about all day, and what I’ve been thinking about on and off since any time after the first week of playing (http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/day-41-fleet-action.html). Apologies if I do this wrong. The Blog Banter question that I'm about to pollute with my diary format?

"Some say a man's home is his castle. For others it is wherever they lay their hat. The concept is just as nebulous in the New Eden sandbox.

In EVE Online, what does the concept of "home" mean to you?"

http://freebooted.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/blog-banter-39-home.html

Today I’ll be going out in the evening, I’m curiously tired considering it is a holiday and I didn’t do much physically yesterday. Perhaps I’m worn out by laughing at myself over the gate gun incident. There is something I can do, I can do the exploration Career missions down in Clellinon. I’ve done the first four but wanted to save Exploration for a purpose. I’m rubbish at it and I want to compare it to other online resources that it doesn’t mention.

By the time I’ve completed the tutorial, I am starting to think that exploration isn’t for me, I find it annoying and difficult. Fortunately I am supremely bloody minded and no game mechanic is going to defeat me, I’ll be back. Until that point I am going home, set my industry jobs on the way, maybe chill out mining for a while and chat with the corp guys doing other stuff in system. Sure I can chat with them from here but oddly it isn’t the same when I know they are all up there. I get a pathetic sense of relief when Tengu Dude drifts through the system, says hi and wonders why I am there at all.

Unfortunately I’ve amassed a serious amount of junk doing the career missions. Most of it I reprocess down into minerals and stack into Serenitys' hold but I’m going to have to come back for the ships. That is a trip to Algo with the minerals, a trip back in the hauler, a keeping the fingertips crossed all the ships fit in it, another trip back to my industrial base in Algogille, and only then home with the ships I need to take there. This takes a while, and it is annoying me for some reason.

Finally, I emerge from the stargate into Caslemon. There is a palpable sense of relief at this point. Its nice to see the glare from the small blue sun, nice to see the familiar names in Local, nice to drift up to the FDU and hear “docking permission accepted”. I even sit back and sigh when I am finally docked, not even emptying the hold.

I’ve just altered my location in a game. I can’t even see it from where I am sat now. I’m in the station. What is it that provokes this sensation of home?

I know this place. I can fly here from Algogille without setting the destination beforehand. I know the names in Local even if we don’t chat much or at all. I know the belts, their relative merits, their scenery and when they are being used suspiciously. I've visited every moon in the system. I know the exits to the surrounding systems and the routes they open up. I’ve six cans set up in one of the belts, actual physical evidence of my effect on the system. I’ve changed the place in however small a way, I've made my mark upon it. Even now our youngest corp member is out there with the password using them to defy rats and can flippers. I've stocked most of my mission gear here, the only thing I don't do here is industry work. Who would want to live in their own factory? I left mine at Algogille for the rapid links to other regional markets. When we opened a corp office I placed it in the station that didn't have manufacturing capability even though I knew that made it of less use. It was the station I got the best refining rates at, so the station I always went to and so the place I habitually returned to.

Everything there is familiar. This is a comfort in EVE where so much of the universe can seem harsh and confrontational. All MY stuff is here. Much like my messy and small London flat which is frankly less than welcoming to others, it is familiar and because of it, comforting and a refuge from a harsher outside world. This engenders a sense of place above and beyond the anonymous name on a map, beyond the numeric underpinnings of planetary and orbital statistics. A Space Noob lives here. They say that familiarity breeds contempt. If that was the case then I would have never put a tank on my miner. This is where I chill out, plan, and return to from said disastrous plans. This is where in future I’ll try to anchor a POS that makes no economic sense. I’m home.

http://freebooted.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/blog-banter-39-home.html