Get it? I’m playing a pirate now? Yo ho and all that?

Okay, so humor isn’t my strong suit.

But I will tell you what is. Bringing good news to everyone who plays EVE!

If you don’t pay much attention to the news feeds, then you probably haven’t heard about the new expansion that’s coming out soon. As most of us know, CCP kicks out 2 expansions every year. This isn’t so much a “because we can thing” as a “we made a promise to players that we were going to do this so we have effectively cancelled all weekends until further notice” thing. Why they would set themselves up for that is beyond me, but they seem to be keeping their promise pretty darn well.

This time around they won’t be releasing the full expansion on schedule. Seems that there have been some technical difficulties and the QA department doesn’t feel that they should release the affected portions until they are completely sure that everything will go smoothly. I tend to agree with them. No sense dropping something to us before it’s ready then trying to clean up the mess later. Always makes me happier to have a completed and polished product a little later than something slipshod right away. I’m old fashioned that way, I guess.

In any case, a lot of the changes look to be strictly cosmetic. While anti-aliasing support is a nice thing, I usually don’t care. I can run the game and that’s all that matters to me. The new quests, on the other hand…

They’re talking 80 new story line quests for us to play through, and that means big opportunities to get ahead. Only downside is that it’s going to be really hard to do them if you’ve recently just had to dump all of your resources into repairing your fleet. *Nervous cough* Yeah, don’t know anyone who did that…

So, it’s off to eve online isk I go. Hopefully this time will not be as big a fiasco as I led us into previously. At least Toonstorm doesn’t keep me waiting on my goods. They’re still managing deliveries in under 5 minutes, and prices are holding low for now. May as well take advantage of that while I can. Won’t stay that way for long once Incursion starts.

I didn’t think it would take this long to get back on my feet again. After the drubbing I posted about last time we have really been hurting. Turns out our losses on that were in the several hundred million range. Not so pretty seeing as there was no easy way to make that back up.

Thankfully I was able to scratch up more than enough to cover our losses and even spring for some upgrades to keep it from happening again. If I had any team other than the one I do they would have wondered where that isk was coming from, but they already know. There’s no way we can bankroll the repairs we needed with what we had left. That’s the joy of buying eve online isk – it saves time and painstaking effort that you just shouldn’t have to spend.

And the best part was that I didn’t have to wait forever to get the amount I needed! There are plenty of sites with fast delivery, but Toonstorm tops them all. And I’m going to blog the whole experience for you lucky folks.

First things first, I logged into the site. I have this weird dislike of staying logged in on a site where I buy eve online isk. I’m not sure why. There’s no way for the EVE devs to get my login info or even know which sites I’m using unless I were to be foolish enough to tell them. But I still manually log in every single time. Call me crazy.

Anyway, I jump over to the Isk portion and buy 1 billion isk as quickly as I can. That is more than enough to cover everyone’s expenses on this one, and it only costs me $53. That’s a small price to pay for peace with my teammates.

From there I confirm all details and the sale with a rep in live chat. That’s just one of those convenience things that I would never do without. No waiting for phone calls or other nonsense. Just a quick “how ya doin?” sort of thing right there on the site and I’m done.

From there I hop out of IE and log in to EVE. Here is where Toonstorm really excels. I’m logged in for all of 3 minutes and I’m suddenly getting messages from the corporation delivering the isk. 3 minutes! I wouldn’t have had time to make a TV dinner!

Well, 10 minutes after that and I have distributed the isk to everyone so that they can get things underway. Yay for Toonstorm!

This is one of those things that you don’t learn until you’ve tried it. Since I scrapped my one account and started the pirates I’ve been having a good time with it. It was a little tricky at first, but once I got the hang of it I could easily swipe some good resources or isk from weaker opponents. It was all about choosing correctly and planning to best make use of your resources.

Since then I’ve really been moving up in the galaxy (made possible by buying eve online isk and reinvesting it prudently) and things have been moving along pretty smoothly all things considered. A few retreats here and there, but nothing that I couldn’t recover from.

Until last week.

Last week I met with something I never thought I’d see. True defeat.

What happened was, I had been keeping my eye on a little outpost that someone had been working on with the intention of pillaging it for all it was worth. In fact, with proper planning, it would easily become a farm. All I would have to do is keep their resources low enough that they couldn’t effectively replace their defences. Then I just make regular visits and take what they’ve accrued and use it to beef myself up. Overall the plan was a good one, and things started really well. My first foray against them met with resounding success, netting me a good bit of isk and a lot of resources. My only mistake was that I hadn’t paid enough attention to research. If I had, I would have realized that this wasn’t some start up group of shmucks.

See, the next time I attacked, they were ready for me. It was almost like a scene out of Return of the Jedi, really. We dropped ourselves on their doorstep ready to engage a weakened foe, when suddenly we were completely surrounded by a truly nasty fleet. And to make matters worse, a Titan was hanging out just around the “corner” of the planet. I had enough time to scream “It’s a trap!” (sounding nowhere near as collected as Akbar) into my headset before they proceeded to tear us apart. I limped out just barely, and so did a few others, but there wasn’t much of our party left at that point.

Now they’re asking me to help foot the bill for repairs to the fleet, since it was my mistake for not doing proper research. Can’t blame them, but this is going to get expensive. I’m going to pop back over to Toonstorm since they have the best delivery times and save myself a little grief.

I never thought I’d hear myself say that, but it really is.

I had never actually tried it before, of course. I tend to go more for the noble empire building but good guy schtick. The only time I’ve ever really tried was playing Knights of the Old Republic, and I made a lousy Sith. I only ended up about halfway between light and dark so none of my powers were very useful. I gave up on the bad guy deal after that.

Until just recently, that is.

It turns out that it’s a little easier in eve online isk than in KotOR. All you have to do is get the right ship, the right people, and pick your targets carefully. The only problem with that is that making money actually tends to be faster when you’re doing it the legitimate way. The only way to get isk as a starting pirate is to farm a bunch of newbies who are just getting started. That’s slow going and tedious in my opinion. I decided to buy eve online isk instead. That gave me the edge I needed to build up a little band of buccaneers to go swashbuckling across the stars.

We’ve started making a bit of a name for ourselves out there, too. I won’t tell you what it is, simply because we’re trying to lay low and avoid too much attention. I don’t want the devs knowing just how I got things started, after all. Since I bought from Toonstorm I’m not really worried about having my tracks covered, but it never hurts to be cautious. Especially for space pirates.

The buy went surprisingly quickly, too. It never fails to impress me just how fast those guys can deliver even a large amount of isk. They start at 1 billion, but I went for 2. I’m high enough in levels that getting that much shouldn’t be cause for concern, especially since I have another active account. Plus, the 2 billion got me well on my way towards what I needed. Fast ships with good firepower aren’t cheap, but if you have enough isk in your pocket anything can happen.

The best part was that they had it ready for me in under 5 minutes. I’m not the patient type when it comes to my games, so that was truly handy. I was able to get my ship ready in record time and start making some runs against some higher profile targets. That means more isk in my pocket, and a great time getting it.

So I’ve gone and done something a little crazy recently.

I decided that I’ve been spending a little to much time simply farming a planet and all of the resources lately. I’m starting to get a little bored with just how things have been going down. I was lucky enough to have a great fleet built up prior to the capsuleering drop so I didn’t have much to worry about from pirates.

But it occurred to me the other day that not many people are that lucky. In fact, most of them are just barely holding on to the assets they’ve acquired. This brought out an urge in me that I’ve never quite felt before. The urge to plunder!

So I’ve started a new account and am building them up as a merc/pirate type. I plan on offering my services to the highest bidder as protection, guns for hire, and escorts. Between those sorts of jobs, I plan on raiding those poorly defended outposts that I keep seeing, and bleeding them dry! They won’t know what hit them.

Of course, this new venture is exceedingly expensive, and I’m going to need some serious firepower to make it work. This means it’s about time to buy eve online isk so that I get the resources I need.

I plan on heading over to Toonstorm. They have some really good prices right now, especially given the post-expansion spike, and I intend to take advantage of it. Plus, their delivery times are absolutely amazing!

My plan is to buy their base amount of 1 billion, currently $52.95, and use that to get the ball rolling. I didn’t want to get more than that, even though it’s cheaper that way. At my level it could get me noticed, so I’m playing it safe.

The buy went smoothly as always. I completed the deal and jumped into chat to verify everything they’d need. After all the security checkpoints were passed, I logged in ASAP. One thing I love about these guys, delivery goes down within 5 minutes. No waiting and worrying about if it goes through or not. Just BAM! there’s your isk.

And they held true to that this time around. I barely had time to get settled in and read my mail when they dropped me a message. I made the pick up, flying casually the whole way, and from here I’m off to make a few purchases.

Wow.

Just… wow.

It’s been a while since an expansion has netted me so much good stuff. I mean, this whole concept of planetary exploitation has been a long time coming, but I’d never imagined they’d pull it off so well. Capsuleering just became available, and I’m already seeing the fruits of my labor. Good thing I decided to buy eve online isk early on so that I’d have some stores laid in for when this came down.

Of course, the costs aren’t going to stop right now, just because the expansion is out. Once you’ve picked your location and started the process of getting all of those lovely resources pulled out of it, you’re going to need to protect your assets. No easy job when you’re also trying to take care of your old supply runs and business dealings at the same time. That fleet will get stretched mighty thin in a hurry. The safest thing to do is to buy eve online isk again to make sure you have enough ships to take care of everything.

Now there are two things that I think everyone should keep in mind around expansion time.

The first is that there are going to be tons of scammers out there trying to make a quick buck on the excitement that the new content brings. They’re looking for easy marks, usually folks who have never bought isk before and have no idea what to look for. They’ll lure these newbies in and rip them off faster than you can say “show me the money”. Not kosher in the least. Sure, there will be some new sites hoping to make their splash right around now, but I always say wait it out and buy isk from safe sites that you’ve used before. The new legit sites will be left standing after the smoke clears, and then you should be okay to buy from them. Just take it easy until then.

Second is the simple principle of supply and demand. With all of the new mechanics out there, more and more people will be buying isk like mad. This means that the available stock is going to start to disappear rapidly. When that happens, as any good EVE player knows, the price is going to start to soar. Right now, places like Toonstorm.com are holding steady thanks to a well-established supply chain, but that can’t last forever. Better to get the isk early so you don’t miss out and end up paying way more.

Hey folks!

I’ve been so completely stoked about the Tyrannis expansion that I can hardly keep it in! I can’t wait to see just which planets open up, and I’m having a hard time picking which one I want to camp at so I can get my claim in fast enough.

In anticipation of all of the new stuff I’m going to have to upgrade, I’ve been planning to buy eve online isk, big time.

So, I’m going to walk you through another buy today. I’m afraid I’m not going for much variety at this point, though. I get really jittery around patches and expansions because the scammers start crawling up from the depths of the abyss whenever that sort of thing happens. Today, I’m sticking with Toonstorm.com. They’ve cleaned up a lot of problematic deliverers, and so I know they will take good care of me.

At about 4pm on 5/10 I placed the order. I’m getting 500 million, which will cost about $27. That’ll be enough to help with any costs I have coming up, while keeping me under the radar.

About 2 minutes later I got my confirmation call. After verifying everything, the rep let me know it would be about 24 hours before my isk was ready. I was expecting this, since they did the purge, and it’s all cool with me. At least I know I’m going to get it, and it isn’t going to get me banned.

From there I went about my daily business. I logged in early the next day (day off from work! Yay!) for a long day of gaming. About an hour in, I got a message that my order was ready. This surpised me, since I was only at the 18 hour mark. But sure enough, my isk was definitely ready!

From there it was a simple matter of tucking that away for the upcoming toy that I plan on stripmining. No muss, no fuss, and I’m soon to be rolling in isk. Maybe I’ll start thinking about building a titan to protect my new investment… Nah. Too much expense for not enough gain.

Anyway, got solid service from Toonstorm.com again, so I can’t complain. Catch you later!

Well, as most of you already know by now, the good folks over at EVE have been working, nay toiling, endlessly to get us some new content. Well, all of that hard work has finally paid off and on May 18th they will be delivering a massive and free(!) expansion that will give us untold opportunities for profit and conflict.

How are they doing this, you might ask? By opening up one of the final frontiers left available to us for resource harvesting: PLANETS. For as long as eve online isk has existed, those lovely floating orbs have been little more than signposts, or something that can inconveniently block your line of fire.

Now, however, these annoyingly solid obstacles have been converted into exploitable resources! That’s right, folks. You will now be able to land on, colonize, and strip mine the bejeesus out of 60,000 different planets. The potential profits to be made from this are absolutely staggering. This will, of course completely change the shape of the supply and material market, because we aren’t stuck with the arbitrary amount given to us by, well, what seems to be the supply fairy. Now things will be more directly in our control, meaning the market becomes more fluid and more realistic than ever before. The only thing I worry about with this is that it could mean a significant loss of profit for some groups until they can manage to establish control again. But then, competition is a great thing for the market and this will definitely shake things up a bit.

What this means to us is simple. We need to get on the ball and buy eve online isk like there’s no tomorrow so that we have all of the resources we’ll need to jump on this when it drops. It’s going to be a massive race to see who gets there first, and I for one refuse to be left out.

Another big thing that they announced was that EVE Gate would be operational. This will let us access our info and do some management from remote PCs, even if they don’t have EVE installed. I can see this being an awesome tool, but I think I’m going to wait on it until it’s been out for a bit so that we’re sure it’s completely stable.

That’s enough for this time. Stay tuned for the next round.

Hello again everyone! I hope everyone is having fun out there these days.

I also hope that all of you who took part in the testing of the new expansion portions had a good time. In my eyes, it’s a really unique thing for game devs to have their players take such an active role in the next phase of a games development. It’s a rare and beautiful thing that they want us to be involved in something that will affect us really closely in the upcoming months.

Of course, this has opened up a new round of speculation as to when the next chapters will be launching and what they will contain. People are buying up eve online isk left and right so that they can be prepared for whatever they need to buy. Or want to buy, for that matter.

That sort of run on isk starts making me nervous because it brings out all sorts of unpleasant types trying to make a quick buck ripping off players like us. We really need to be careful, because in the end we have no one to turn to if the whole thing goes sour. It’s not like the devs will be particularly sympathetic, after all.

One of the best pieces of advice that I can give right now would be to stick with the companies you know and have used before. EVE is all about competition, but you have to know when to take a risk and when to sit back and ride out the market on your tried and true suppliers. This would be the latter time in my opinion. I won’t buy eve online isk from anyone I don’t know around patches, testing, or expansion releases. Just one of those rules of thumb that I live by and it hasn’t failed me yet.

Now, once the noise around this has settled down a little bit the shady sites will start dropping out. They fade into the background thanks to careful buyers not using them and not-so-careful buyers reporting them and the ones that are left standing are worth trying out. It’s just a matter of patience. For now, I’m going to stick with Toonstorm since they’ve been really good to me.

Just keep this in mind and stay safe. Take care!

Welcome back everyone!

Well, I had hoped to have better news for you this time around, and thankfully, I do. A good friend of mine has been wanting to start building a titan of his own but business has been lackluster for him lately. I figured I’d introduce him to the finer points of “outside contracts”.

We started out by just shopping around. A basic google search gave us thousands upon thousands of hits, but after the first page or so they start looking more and more like scams. We scoped out a handful of sites at first, trying to find which one seemed to fit what he was looking for. One of the most important things when making your first buy is being comfortable with the site you’re using.

He was ready to just pick one, but I told him he should do a little independent research into the sites before making a decision. So, we picked the most likely candidates and then searched their URLs to see just what kinds of reviews came up. None were terribly flattering for the first two. Some good, some bad on the third. Outright terrible on the fourth. (On that one we found five different people who said that the security for them was so lax that it had gotten them banned.)

Finally we found one that came with some good feedback, and was thankfully familiar to me. So in the end he hopped on to Toonstorm.com and placed an order for 2 million eve online isk. He was bummed that it would take a little longer than usual for delivery, but since the reason was that they cleaned out a bunch of unsafe deliverers, he was okay with the wait.

He decided to use the live chat option for confirmation, and was told that his order was going to be ready in about two hours. He lined up some business for a while in game, then got a message about 90 minutes later to make the pickup.

So, overall a great experience for him. He got what he want, at a good price, safely, and half an hour earlier than expected. He was really pleased, and told me he would definetley buy eve online isk from them again.

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