It's all just pixels in the end

Our corp has a public channel (Mundens Bar) where totally random people can drop by and we can chat with them, either for recruiting or just socially. One of our more regular visitors said something the other day that got me thinking, and it's something I can't really explain.

We were discussing ships/funny kills and all the crap surrounding that. So therefore to a lesser extent we were also talking about losing those ships. iwinyoulost had lost (oh the irony) his Sentinel not an hour or so before, so obviously he piped up with:

iwinyoulost > I''m still mourning my sentinel :(
iwinyoulost > When it died it looked at me like "WHY!?" and i was like " D: "


Of course we had a bit of a laugh at that, and the conversation went on. But it stuck in my head for some reason, and I couldn't work out why until later in the day. Then it hit me.

Why do we care?


It might not be the earthshaking epiphanies that some people have, but it was enough to make me wonder about it, and by extension, write this blog post. Because frankly, when you get to the very heart of the matter, EVE players as a whole are getting emotional over what is essentially a sequence of numbers in a computer.

It's quite hard (in my opinion) to nail it down exactly. I guarantee if I said, "Think of your favourite ship" to any player who's been playing EVE for atleast a week or so, they could name their favourite ship. It might be because it looks cool, it may be because it's been with them for weeks/months/years and they haven't lost it, it could even be that they've had an awesome string of PvP victories in it and pulled through by the skin of their teeth. Everyone has their stories.

Whatever the reason behind it, we all have a favorite. Infact, mine isn't my Vengeance as you may expect. Infact it's this little beauty.

What? I can like industrials if I like...

Yeah I know, odd choice. But this ship is the oldest ship in my hangar, I've had it pretty much since I started playing EVE. It's a pretty weird story about how I got around to buying it actually (well ok not weird, but fairly interesting. Ok it's not even that interesting but whatever :P)

When I first started the game, I spent hours reading through the back stories of all the different factions, and the differences between them. One thing that seriously stood out to me was the fact that the Amarr used slaves. "Well hey" I thought to myself "Wouldn't it be cool if I could be a slave trader?". And so, exploiting the differences in slave prices between systems, I started earning ISK trading slaves. It wasn't much, but I was having stupid amounts of fun doing so. Then I realised I needed more space to carry more slaves and make more profit. Which meant a new ship.

A quick internet search told me the Iteron V was the biggest hauler, but I didn't want to train Gallente Industrial V, because even skills two days long were aeons for me, and I wanted a new ship now. Some more internet searching eventually led me to the Mammoth, with a short train of Minmatar Industrial IV. The irony wasn't lost on me that slaves (likely to be Minmatar) were being transported in one of their own ships, so I called my Mammoth "Traitor I".  But after a few weeks I realised that slave trading was worth pretty much nothing compared to missions, so "Traitor I" became the lovable "Chunky", and I hung up my slave trading boots for good.

All my other ships from this period are either exploded or sold, so my Mammoth is my "last link" to my days as a noob (though arguably I still am a noob). Therefore the reason I care is because of the memories it triggers, and that's why it's my favourite ship.

What makes you care about a ship?