The true EVE experience

I've been flying around New Eden for almost 3 months now. During that time I did missions, vaporized some roids and explored some sites (including worm holes). This has been fun, specially the exploration, but last night for the first time I feel I experienced what EVE is all about... PVP!

As I joined the corp channel last night I found out that a fleet was forming in the Misaba system. I immediately asked if there was room for one more. Only requirement was to bring a cruiser. I immediately jumped into the Thorax and went on my way. Another corpmate who was in Mista with me offered to scout for me (thanks!). We both made it safe to Mamet where we joined other corpmates. From there we made it to Mista to join the rest of the fleet.

The group was a good size. After some people changed ship to provide a better variety our FC got us going. This wasn't going to be a gate camping group (which I hear can be extremely boring) we were roaming. We set course for R3-K7K, then to X-R3NM. After that I honestly have no idea where were we or which direction we were going.

Our scouts reported red activity in the following system and my heart started pumping. As we warped my CEO helped me setup my Overview properly for PVP. As we got there the group had warped. After a couple of more jumps and some more scouting our FC was under the impression that they were trying to flank us, so we kept moving until a particular gate where we laid our trap.

I have never seen the "bubble" that I read so much about in other blogs. It was impressive when we jump thru the gate to meet some friendly forces and they had a bubble up. A couple of minutes passed and our enemy jumped.

Targets were called and the shooting began. With my short range and slow AB I was never close enough to get in the action, but still manage to show up in the KB for the night. At the end four of their ships were bye-bye while we only lost one. We roam for a bit more, but no targets were found. It was late at that time, so the roaming got called and we all returned to our bases.

Overall was a very short engagement, but I can't even start to describe how much fun it was. The last time I enjoyed an MMO this much was during those initial Onyxia and MC raids when half the raid was still in blues. Except this was better. Here anything could happen. There was no scripted "second stage". These were all players. Completely unpredictable.

Lessons learned...

- I need to get something better than an AB. The problem is that MWD requires skills I don't have. Need to work on that.

- I need to remember to get my stupid drones OUT!!! ZOMG! I'm a gallente with 4 Hammerheads in the drone bay and not even one saw action. With all the excitement I just forgot. I know, I know... LAME!

- The Overview is very powerful and it has multiple tabs!! LOL. For the longest time I was using only one tab and just changing the view in it. You can actually enabled up to 5 tabs.

- Scouts are very important. Our guys did an amazing job.

- The thorax is a really good ship, but I wonder if I should replace the cap recharger from the mid slot for some warp tackle. I currently only use web for tackle.

Can't wait to do it again!