Words In Station: Incarna

There is an alternative universe somewhere in which Eve players are busy walking around in stations all day. One day the door opened on our Captain's Quarters and revealed all that lay beyond. Game rooms. Corporate Lounges. Hallways. And much more.

I took a trip there yesterday and trolled the forums a bit. I managed to get a great look at what our Bizarro World Avatars are up to and some of the slang they are using over there. I thought I'd bring some of those back with me to share with my dear readers. I must tell you up front, it is a strange land of weirdness over there.

AFZ, Or AFZombie, Stations are full of them! AFK players don't hide in a safe spot, they linger in corners, hallways, or other public spaces and stare blankly off into space. You can't do much with them, knock them over, or steal their clothes - but some players figured out a way to "shuffle" them into a wall or corner. In most stations this isn't a problem, but in Trade Hub stations forget about it! You can't go anywhere with all the AFZs around.

Jiggles - Thanks to CCP's recently implemented "link" feature (you can link your avatar to another player and follow them around station) a new "play" feature developed called Jiggling. Apparently dozens of players decide to link to some poor schmuck and follow him around everywhere he goes, all while jumping up and down as fast as their fat little fingers can hit the jump button. Women avatars are especially well-regarded and certain Twitch channels are dedicated to this activity. They are very popular from what I heard, I didn't look. Honest.

BAW Time, or Big Actual Windows - Yes, over in this alternative universe every station has windows. Real ones that look out into space! I know, I was very envious at first. Until I saw one for myself and spent the next two hours staring blankly at all the awesome planets, ships and whatnots outside. I wasn't the only one, in my station there were 47 other players standing next to me doing the same thing. Apparently this is called BAW Time and is an extremely powerful psychological response to being able to actually see out of a station!

Poke Her - The good news is that they do have game rooms in this alternative universe. The bad news is that these game rooms are havens for degenerates and scum-sucking nerd fantasies. I tried to join a game of Poker and soon found myself being bumped over and over again by a flock of Goons yelling "penis!" in chat. If you thought Jita local was bad, you should see the Jita Station Channel. My god.

Nag Rave - Ok, this one takes some explanation. From what I can gather several dozen players will bum rush a station all at once to generate some nice lag. If you have enough players and the situation is perfect, the servers will suddenly be unable to generate clothing. The word gets out quickly and more players pile into system to dock up. And suddenly you have a mass of naked avatars bumping and grinding in one of the large hallways or public spaces. I saw this happen once as several DUST players were trying to coordinate a planetary bombardment operation. It was pretty funny.

Unreal - The introduction of third-party widgets in the last expansion, known officially as "Gideon" but mostly as "Give Up",  there are a lot of alternative play-styles available in station. One of the most popular is the Unreal Tournament Widget, which I thought sounded pretty awesome until I downloaded and installed it. Instead of playing a Deathmatch in station, mostly it seems to result in small headed, or big headed people firing Redeemers as fast as possible. The results are funny, if not a bit silly.

I didn't have long in this alternative universe, temporal friction is real, even for me. It seemed as soon as I arrived that I was back in our world once more. An interesting place, the Incarna Universe, great to visit - but I wouldn't want to live there.

Oh, and no one undocks.