But wait, you said something about PAX?

That’s right, my friends. Yours truly is attending PAX as press this year, representing SI Radio. I’m taking along a bunch of gear and going to be doing interviews out the wazoo with everyone from NCSoft to CCP.  And we’re currently slated for a live broadcast from PAX at 7 PM Pacific Saturday, September 4. You’re definitely going to want to tune in.

Hence, the reason for this blog entry! I want to know what you want to know. I’m going to be all over the place (see below for my full and current interview schedule), including an interview with CCP on Saturday.

If you could ask CCP a question, what would it be?

Imagine you’re sitting down for an interview with a CCP game designer or producer. You’ve got a microphone and a set of questions- what would you ask? Let me know what you’d like to hear about and I’ll see if I can get the answer. Post a comment below or email me at cyclometh@siradio.fm with your questions!

Some Rules (They’re really more like “Guidelines”)

• No stupid/troll questions. Don’t even bother. And yes, there are stupid questions, no matter what your 3rd grade teacher told you.
• Keep questions fairly focused. If it would take ten minutes to ask the question or twenty minutes to answer it, no.
• It must be civil. If you’ve got an ax to grind, go do it somewhere else. I don’t just want softballs but openly hostile or nakedly aggressive questions are not gonna fly.
• Keep it short and focused (yes, I said it twice). I’m going to be VERY busy trying to keep things moving and I’m simply not going to be able to handle anything that rambles on.

This is done with a microphone and recording setup, so you’ll be able to hear the interviews on my show.

If you’re interested in hearing from some of the other folks on my interview list, let me know that too! I’m currently drafting all my interview questions so now’s your chance to get yours on the list.

The Schedule

My current interview schedule is below. This is subject to change and any of these could be cancelled without notice, but these are the appointments I have. As you can see, the schedule is quite full- and there’s not a lot of time for messing about between slots, but as I have time I’ll be roaming the convention hall and grilling people about their experience at PAX.

Friday:

• 10 AM, TERA-Online- demo and interview.
• 11 AM, Guild Wars 2, demo and interview.
• 11:30 AM Aion (demo?) and interview.
• 2PM, Vindictus F2P MMO, demo and interview.
• 3 PM, Illfonic with Nexuiz
• 4 PM, Turbine (DDO/LOTRO) demo and interview.

Saturday:

• 9:00 AM, CCP Games
• 10 AM Telltale Games- Back to the Future
• 11 AM Portal 2/Valve
• 12:30 LEGO Universe
• 5 PM Tron/Disney
• 7-9 PM, Live Broadcast from PAX of the Declarations of War Broadcast!

Sunday:

• 11 AM: Tripwire Games (Heroes of Stalingrad)
• 1 PM: Muzzy Lane

• Opening/Intro/Shoutouts
• Hosts: Alekseyev Karrde, Jimer Lins, Great Larin and Special Guest Host: The PitBoss!
• Contract Wrapups: Interdiction of G-EURJ/X5-0EM, Pest Control Union, Wormhole POS Save, Pocket Lockdown, Electus Matari POS Takedown Attempt, a Freighter Escort, and CVA!
• EVE News: Alliance Tournament (:sadface:), Northern withdrawal/SC Resets, Paxton Federation booted from Providence, Opticon joins CVA, Vanguard leaves the NC, and the controversy surrounding a massive supercap fight.
• This Week in Mercs: Nightjester returns to Noir., Updates to the Merc Contracts Channel, R.E.P.O./Snatch Victory dramabomb, Privateers(!), and NMG. resets all of Providence.
• Closing/Outro: Jimer’s rant, and a rendition of “Poker Face” by Lady GaGa done by Jimer Lins.

Enjoy!

Direct Link: http://media.libsyn.com/media/declarewar/DeclarationsOfWarEpisode14.mp3

The in-browser player still seems to be on the fritz. I’ll bug the podlogs host about it. RSS feed is working and so is iTunes, though.

Dierdra Vaal, also of the CSM, in the forum thread dedicated to this event, said that whatever Ankhasentepemkah did, it was before CSM5, which is even more interesting to me.

More updates as the situation warrants.

Basically, nobody knows for sure what the reason is. It’s probably not what Larkonis Trassler got nailed for- insider trading on information he got from the CSM- but who knows? Consensus on Twitter seems to be that it wasn’t for leaking material via her blog.

So, as CSM Member TeaDaze42 said on Twitter, I hope CCP clarifies things, because otherwise it’s just rampant speculation until the end of time.

As many of you know, I have a show on Split Infinity Radio (http://www.siradio.fm). If you haven’t had a chance to give it a listen, I suggest you do. Great station with great people and music.

Yes, that's me

My current show format is music with me talking a bit from time to time. I often chatter a bit about EVE news or other gaming stuff, but it’s a music slot. My actual time varies slightly but it’s generally been in the last part of the week- Friday and Saturday evenings Pacific Time, which is early morning Saturday/Sunday EVE time.

One of my plans is to start a regular show called – get this – “The Declarations of War Broadcast”. See what I did there? The show will be talk on topics relating to PVP games; not just EVE Online, but any game with a multiplayer element and conflict involved. I also plan to introduce topics not specific to one game; one example is the influence of gaming on culture.

For the format of the show, think drive-time talk radio. Me discussing various topics, taking calls (via Skype) and having some conversations about the topic at hand. Also interviews and discussions. Expect the next CSM election candidates to get an invite.

So what does all this have to do with the topic of the post? Well, I’ll tell you. As part of ramping up for this show, I’m setting up some regular segments of my normal show on SI Radio. These are sort of proofs of concepts and allow me to get some ideas on what works well and what doesn’t and polish my skills for taking it from one segment in a three hour show to a full show.

So here’s what I need from you, loyal readers. I need a stable of experts I can call on to be on the air with me and discuss ship fits. I also need some people to send me fittings they’d like critiqued.

You! No, you- not you, the one - the one at the computer! Sheesh.

Ship Fitting Experts, I want YOU!

Think you’re a ship fitting master? Then here’s what you need:

• Skype. I use Skype for the “call-in” part of the show, so you need it installed and working.
• Ability to speak English clearly. Accents are fine, as long as it doesn’t make you unable to be understood.
• Availability. I hope to get a sizeable list of people that I can bring in, so don’t worry you’d have to be available every week. Probably more like every month or so, and you’ll know a week in advance. Expect the segment to be 30 to 45 minutes in the evenings Pacific Time (0200-0800 EVE time is where my slots usually fall).
• A quiet space to talk from. Can’t have noise in the background, screaming kids, music, etc. Also you’ve got to be relatively clear. If your system works with Vent, Teamspeak or EVE Voice, you’re probably OK, but if you come through sounding like you’re in a cave playing Metallica in the background, that’s not gonna work.
• Calm, polite, rational and fast on your feet. It’s a roundtable format so everyone will get a chance to weigh in on a given fitting, but you have to be able to speak your mind without being obnoxious or saying “um” every second word.

Here’s what it comes down to- if you’re able to provide constructive criticism in English without stumbling too much, you’re probably good to go.

Ship Fitting Noobs, I want YOU TOO!

What about the noobs? Thought you’d never ask. If you have a fitting idea, or a fitting you use and would like to see critqued, then I want it! Send it to me via ingame EVEMail (Jimer Lins) or to declarationsofwar@gmail.com. You can also contact me on Facebook as “DJ Cyclometh”, or on Twitter as DeclareWar.

If your fitting will be covered during a segment, I’ll let you know ahead of time. Here’s the basics:

• Fittings must be reasonable and at least useful for discussion. Trolling with a hulltanking Helios mining fit will just get you ignored- permanently.
• Tell me a bit about what you want to use it for- piracy, PVE, gatecamping, etc. What’s its raison d’etre?
• Your name won’t be used on the air. We’ll just discuss the fittting, not the player who sent it.
• Send as many as you want, but I’ll only use one fitting per player per session.
• We’ll try to cover 3-4 fittings per segment. Have to see how it goes.

That’s it. Free advice on your fittings from the best ship fitting experts I can scrounge up! Not a bad deal, eh?

Link to EVE Forums thread with all True Heroes download links.

Check forums.

Big fuckoff topic : EMERGENCY CONTRACT LOG THE HELL IN with bold and flashy bits. Oh, and they want shield ships, and my Gallente soul groans.

Oh well. Log in, get the Lach and the story: Basically, an indy corp in a Wormhole was being attacked by a group called Adhocracy, and their tower was being attacked. They allowed as to how they didn’t like this, we allowed as to how it would take a lot to make us step to on such short notice, and I guess they came up with a tolerably round number, hence the aforementioned post.

We all linked up and headed for the target system. Sadly, the WH was 50% finished and we couldn’t get our fleet through without having them split. So we collapsed it with some judicious jumpthroughs of heavy ships followed by small ones.

The static highsec wasn’t far, but was at less than 10% mass and camped, so the employer sacrified a BS to the targets to collapse it. The fleet then carried our happy ass halfway across EVE to the next system and FINALLY got in the wormhole.

We zipped to the friendly tower after popping an Exequeror trying to anchor bubbles on the new wormhole, and managed to snag a couple of ships. Their HIC had JUST dropped its bubble, allowing a bunch of them to escape to their own POS. We proceeded there and began the shooty-shooty.

Adhocracy had a bunch of ships inside and we looked at each other through the forcefield for a while. One guy, Porlis, was so close to the shield boundary I was mentally willing him and spending a lot of :effort: to force him out. They did come out en masse at one point in a well-executed maneuver that got a Rook. We managed to put a Raven in structure but didn’t quite get it. They didn’t repeat that and after a while the employer and our boss discussed the situation.

We came to an agreement- they’d leave and we’d rep their modules so they could unanchor them. They keep their stuff, the employer keeps his WH, we get a bunch of time back and everyone’s happy.

Maeve Trinity, one of the target corp members and a former Hellcats member, posted about the op on her blog, providing an amusing report from their end.

Adhocracy were quite good sports about the whole thing and were also much more pragmatic than most targets we run into, so props.

You can take a look at the Battle Report on the EVE site for Alek’s comments and an overview of the match. The video is not up at the time of this post.

Now, why is this post leading off with the phrase “SI Radio is Awesome!”, you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you. SI Radio, in addition to being a kickass internet radio station (http://www.siradio.fm) where yours truly is a DJ, is also a corp in EVE Online. They’ve been living down in our little pocket of Providence, doing T3 production, and doing it damn well I might add. And because they like us and we like them, they gave us some great discounts on the Tengus and the subsystems used in our most recent match against Indecisive Certainty.

Although we did not win the fight, Noir. Mercenary Group is extremely grateful to SI Radio for their assistance with the ships used in the Alliance Tournament. We also heartily endorse SI Radio as THE place to go for your T3 needs- contact Quivering Palm or Merinid Dormer in game and ask what they can do for YOUR T3 production needs.

My current timeslots are 7 PM to 10 PM Friday and Saturday nights Pacific Time. That’s 10 PM to 1 AM Friday and Saturday Eastern, and 0200-0500 Saturday and Sunday morning for the GMT types. In BST, it’s 0300-0600.

Expect lots of tunes, fun and some talk about both EVE and general geek/gaming news. If things work out long term, and I have no reason to think they won’t, I’m going to try for a regular “Declarations of War Broadcast”, which would be a talk-show version of the podcast! So… get loud, get mental at Split Infinity and enjoy!