Just a super quick post tonight. There is a lot of serious business in Eve. Lots of serious topics, in game and out. We rage about the game, we rage about what people do in game. We rage about what people do out of game. We take everything so damn seriously.
Despite all the seriousness, two things have happened recently that I think highlight how positive the Eve community is despite all the negative press.
First, when I came back from about six months or so of complete absence from the game, I was a bit worried about what I would find waiting for me on the first log in. Much to my relief, I was still in my old corps on both accounts. When I logged in, instead of bitching about me be gone or having been kicked (a common occurrence of being gone for even a week in some other MMOs I have played), the players simply said hello and welcomed me back. No drama, no bullshit, just a few “Hey, welcome back!” posts.
Second, in the midst of some evemails with people who don’t know me from Adam, and who I have been hounding a little bit, I essentially had to say “Hey, I know I’ve been bugging you for a week solid about some stuff. Thanks for getting back to me. It turns out I am entering wife-birthday week, so I will now disappear after nagging at you.” Great people skills on my end.
The response was “Enjoy wife week!”
While there are some terrible things that go down in Eve, on the whole it has the most consistently decent people I have ever anonymously encountered. Considering the stakes of giving out even an iota of trust in Eve are much higher than almost any other game, I think this speaks volumes to the unheard majority of Eve players that just want to have fun, and understand that other people playing the game are people with lives and concerns that go beyond the little corner of a fictional galaxy we choose to spend our free time in.
So thanks, Eve community. You may get a lot of bad press, but you have an odd way of restoring my faith in the fact that most of you are pretty decent people.