I’ve played Eve-Online for since October of 2004 – my only character in that time has been Redick and I’ve been a complete and utter Carebear (someone who doesn’t care for Player versus Player Combat – see Eve Lexicon). I played quite actively for the first year – working within Taggart Transidimensional. I was even a Director within the corporation in charge of Human Resources, particularly focused on recruiting.

After a year of play, work and life got to the point that I couldn’t invest a lot of time in the game and I simply allowed my account to go inactive. This past spring, I re-enabled my account and began playing again. Initially, I looked to join back up with the guys at Taggart; however, the old guard was gone and the new faces weren’t quite the same. After talking with the Directors for a while I decided that they were no longer a company I particularly wanted to associate myself with.

I headed off to the recruiting boards and looked for a new company in game, and Freelancing Corp quickly rose to the top of my preferred list. For a number of reasons:

• Old Corporation founded in 2003
• Founder of a Large Active Alliance (Confederation of Independent Corporations)
• Active Null (0.0) Space Operations

See, I’ve always desired to get into the massive Player vs. Player combat of Eve; yet never quite managed to. After a thorough recruitment process, the Freelancing guys hired me on. For the past nine months, I’ve been slaving away in space running missions for the Minmatar Republic Fleet. I obtained access to Level 4 missions with them a month or so back, and shortly thereafter – Jump Clones!

Well, with Jump Clone access, I decided I could leave the safety of my Empire Carebear ways and join the majority of the Corporation out in Delve. Over my Christmas holidays, I determined to do just such a thing. A couple of things happened – first, I convinced Tommy to give the game a try – and second, I realized that I really lacked the necessary skills to engage in 0.0 with any effectiveness.

The fact that Tommy started playing convinced me to start up another character to play alongside my best friend – and leave me the option of taking Redick out into deep space. I ran my first PvP operation last Friday night, and it was a blast! I even managed to get the killing blows on two battleships – whoot! I’m officially addicted to PvP in Eve.

I still need to level up some battle cruiser skills to effectively participate in the fleet warefare – but that is just a matter of time, durring which I can focus on gathering the funds necessary to pay for the ships and equipment I’ll take to war. My new character is currently in Empire space, in an NPC Corp, running missions for Republic Fleet with Tommy. However, I’m thinking I’ll soon enlist in a company that is actively engaged in the Factional Warfare so I can get my PvP kicks in empire too!