This is my barrel.

There comes a time in every capsuleer's life where the start to find something that feels like their 'calling' or what they enjoy the most in EVE. Its a complicated game, there's lots to do, little time to do it, and often a daunting skill training plan that is constantly yanking you on the collar saying 'not so fast nublet'.

Over the past 9 years, on 11 different pilots, I've experienced what I thought was just about everything there was to experience in EVE (that interested me anyway). I started out much like everyone else, the budding mission runner (after they were introduced and we could stop belt ratting/mining for isk), flying my (then) merlin to glory, dying occasionally and marveling at the wonderment of battleships; even if their hefty price tags taunted me. I moved on after about a year or so, joined some little nullsec alliance called Maru`Kage and stayed in High Sec anyway (which is of course fortunate since they re-negged on Noir. and got annihilated, you know, back when Noir. was capable of such things).

I did the wormhole thing, I did the 'I'm gonna make ships and be a trillionaire' thing, I did the drug manufacturing thing, I did the High Sec Mercenary thing (for real) and then I joined the 0rphanage and did it for fake. I even did the RvB thing, where I learned what ships were capable of, how to FC and even managed to kill Lukka. I did the nullsec thing again, went back to high-sec again... The long and short of it is, I did just about everything new players want to aspire to (I didn't mention Industry and Market playing, because I still do that, on an alt; and my god does he make me filthy rich).

Then I discovered faction warfare. Back when I was 'thing' hopping I tried it for a week or two, granted I had no idea what I was doing, and capturing systems was completely dependent on what time zone you played in, and how bored you were at 4am on a non-workday. Now, its a completely different beast, its actually fun. Even though we are playing for the major underdog in the FW Arena, we are doing it nontheless, stacking up LP's from kills, plexing it up and taking systems when we can, and generally just having fun.

The discouraging things about Empire PvP was the abuse of out of corp alts, corp hopping, in space corp hopping and just about every other dirty trick you can think of. CCP has done a marvelous job completely destroying the war dec mechanics so that its a griefing griefers paradise, but those nobs all say 'they want pvp' anyway, so who knows.

The downside of nullsec pvp is that its all about numbers, numbers and fleet doctrines. While I was never one to turn down the possibility of a full scale fleet on fleet thunderdome; trying to do anything but was just a fools errand, heading out with a small gang you would eventually and inevitably run into something that you just could not kill, and could not get away from, and often times, these types had a full wing of ECM, Logistics, and enough EWAR to make your screen light up like the strip in Vegas.

So- I headed to lowsec (on an alt at first) to test the waters, pulling Xolve out of nullsec was no simple feat I could do on a whim, especially given my outlaw status, and multiple carrier loads full of ships, ammo, modules, etc., and as it turns out. LowSec is Amazing. Granted I am completely able to fund my PvP either on the corporate dime (we give out free ships) just swapping the occasional module here and there, or on my own (I have a pretty large collection of my own ships).

My new home affords me the opportunity to slug it out in a fleet of 50-100 nerds in Arty Thrashers ownzoning its way across the warzone, or even in a small gang of 5-7 duders taking the initiative only opportunists can love; to even simply heading out on my own in a Vagabond seeing what I can catch.

Faction Warfare has some flaws, and it's far from perfect; be either mechanics flaws or simply the other people (trolls and know-it-alls with their laughable opinions), but nothing in this game has given me the simple pleasures FW has up until this point.

Every fisherman has his 'spot'; well my friends the Minmatar/Amarr Faction Warfare area is my barrel, and my opponents seem to enjoy not only my presence, but the active roaming gangs and plexing fleets of Fweddit. Fight on friends, Fight on.