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"The Early
Bird Gets The Worm"
I can't think of a better quote to describe Eve Online's
trading system; the key to succeeding as a trader in Eve laid
in being one of the first to login to the newly reset server,
before all the trade routes became exhausted. With this in
mind, I set my alarm clock to 6:30 AM and woke up with a new
purpose in my day, to make as much virtual cash as possible. I
had already planned out some routes during the previous weeks,
so I hit the ground running. My first route involved bringing
computer hardware from the Amarr region into the Gallente
region; this would be about 16 jumps, or the real-time
equivalent of 25 minutes. I bought the hardware for
approximately 1100 credits per unit, and spent all 3 million
credits on it. This amounted to 2700 units of computer
hardware that I would need to sell. My heart pounded with
excitement at the prospect of actually making a real profit in
this God forsaken game.
Each space sector in Eve is assigned a security rating; this
rating, ranging from 0.0 all the way to 1.0, determines the
strength and speed with which the intergalactic police
respond. In 0.0 regions, there are no police, and pirates,
both PCs and NPCs, fly around freely, and in 1.0 regions,
security is tighter than Jessica Simpson's snatch. During this
first eventful trade flight of mine, I had to pass through a
0.3 region. At the time, I naively believed that anything
above 0.0 would be safe, because nobody would be ballsy enough
to dare provoke the wrath of the 5-0 in space. I turned out to
be wrong; not dead wrong, but pretty fucking close.
I knew that something was wrong when my ship started to beep
and a red target lock cursor appeared in the horizon with the
name "Dethbringer". The beeping accelerated and a red square
appeared around my ship. Since I hadn't even bothered trying
to fight a training pirate yet, I had no idea what the hell
was going on. He sent a message to me, "250k or die." I
responded to him, "okay", the sweat dripping down my armpits,
past my side, and accumulating in a little puddle at the edge
of my shirt. Five or more seconds must have passed as I
fumbled for the MWD hotkey, and just as they started to warm
up, the first missile slammed into my ship. The warpgate was
15,000 meters away, I had to be within 800 meters to pass
through it, and I was currently flying at about 300 meters per
second. A second missile exploded against the hull, bringing
down my shields and tearing apart my hull. I knew that if one
more missile hit me, my ship would be nothing more than space
debris, and this fucker who couldn't even spell "Death"
correctly would have access to all I had worked for. "COME ON
YOU FUCKING PIECES OF SHIT", I shouted at the monitor. My dog
started to bark in the background, but I could barely hear it.
The only thing that mattered was the gate, because I knew that
if I had lost that cargo, all my weeks of hard work and all my
finely tuned bullshit would be down the drain.
WHOOOOOOSH. I hadn't used the MWDs since the night before, and
forgot about just how powerful they were. I was now shooting
towards the warp gate at 3.5 kilometers/second, and all
Dethbringer had to account for his two expensive missiles was
a trail of dust. If you're reading this right now, Deth, I'd
like to give out a hearty Fuck You.
I arrived at the specified starbase in the Gallente region, my
ship battered and bruised, and my ego several sizes smaller. I
sold the computer hardware for a total of 3.7 million credits.
The hull repairs amounted to 100k. I felt my heart with my
left hand; it was still pulsing rapidly, and the realization
that I netted 600,000 credits in 25 minutes, along with a
healthy dose of action, sent it shooting up even further. I
did several more trade routes that morning, and by 9 AM, my
credit count read "5,780,000 credits". I knew that both Trazir
and HardHead were gonna cream their pants when they saw this,
but for now, I had to go to class.
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