Welcome to the seventh installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here.

This month’s topic comes to us from Ga’len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: “What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a ‘nerf this, boost my game play’ post like we see on the EVE forums.“

Those of you who know me in game know that I’ve been gone for a long time. I started playing in Beta and a few weeks ago was Ghenna’s 6th birthday in the EVE universe, but I took a bit of a leave of absence for several years, and coming back has been an experience. The game is different, the alliances are different, everything, it seems has changed, and despite my skill points (and the knowledge that Right-Click is the answer to 90% of EVE-related questions) I’m very much a newbie with respect to much of the game. So much has changed, been added, nerfed, tweaked or removed that it really does feel like a new experience… that being said…

“What the hell is that?” I sent the message over the fleet com channel. My systems were buzzing with feedback from the local anomaly, I couldn’t be sure the message went through. My executioner hung in space above a tear in reality.

“It’s a wormhole,” came the static-laden reply, “cropping up all over New Eden these days, though no one is quite sure why.”

I nudged my hull closer to the anomaly and sent my camera drones out wide to get a better look. “Where does it go?”

“This one’s a shortcut to Minmatar space, so nowhere interesting,” Maldred maneuvered her probe next to my hull as several of her scanner probes appeared on-grid and made their way back to her cargo bay. I had been flying with her on and off for the past few days, trying to get a handle on the ins and outs of exploration in New Eden.

“It’s a good find if you need to move something from here to there, will save you some serious time,” she said aligning her ship to the nearest station, “If you need it use it soon though, it won’t be around much longer.”

The hole rippled with energy, even to my untrained eye and without any reasonable scanning equipment I could tell it wasn’t stable.

“I’m going to go get a different ship and head over to another system, try and find one that goes somewhere exciting.”

“Like where?” I asked. I had learned not to worry about asking stupid questions around Maldred, particularly ones pertaining to her profession. She loved to talk.

“W-space, the great unknown. Nothing like being trillions of miles from any system that has a name,” her ship leapt into warp and I turned to follow her back to station, “If you’re excited about this stuff get in now,” she said, “there’s plenty out there that people think is valuable, and where there’s isk to be made nothing will remain unclaimed or unexplored for long. I give it two months before the empires start looking for a way to stabilize them, or God forbid, build jumpgates out there.”

“Given the distances involved that’d be a pretty big jumpgate,” I replied, the static filtering out of my com as my ship left the proximity of the wormhole.

“Yeah, pretty big disaster you mean. Been to the EVE gate lately?”

I hadn’t, though I had been meaning to since arriving back in The Empire. The idea was appealing though, more to me than to Maldred, obviously. I’d been trained as a soldier, and in my military excursions had managed to see a great deal of New Eden. It was the closest thing to exploring the unknown I had ever experienced, and while it would take years of training to get up to her level as an explorer, if the great empires decided to try to colonize this new, unexplored region of space they’d certainly need people in my particular area of expertise.

“If they do, I’ll be there,” I said as my ship eased into the magnetic docking cradle.

“I’m sure you will,” she replied, already undocking in her Helios, “Plying the age old ammunition trade business. Just remember we explorers will always be a couple systems ahead of you, and if you’ve got some spare ammo, don’t go shooting it at us, we’re not interested.”

The Helios swept out of the dock and seconds later was gone. Cloaked, or warped, or both. I couldn’t tell. My pod opened and I disengaged myself from the ship’s systems, but kept my link to the com.

“Don’t worry friend, I use lasers.”