Every year on or around January 19th I sit down to write an anniversary post about the time I started writing this blog. Eleven years ago now. Eleven years. That is a long time to do anything, much less write 2,500 posts about a video game and my adventures in that game and the community surrounding it. Honestly I've probably written more words about Eve Online than any other human being on the planet. This isn't the longest running Eve blog (I believe The Ancient Gaming Noob has me there, but he admittedly writes about other things than Eve), nor possibly the most popular (who knows and honestly who cares), or the most anything really. I'm my harshest critic and I am very difficult to please. All I know if that I enjoy writing about Eve and the adventures of Rixx. And I plan on continuing as long as that remains true.
Recently I learned that the The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation will be actively archiving Eveoganda to be included in their Ivy League University gaming research library. I have no idea what that really means, but students at Harvard and the other Ivy League schools will have access to my words if they want to learn about gaming, or Eve Online. So that's pretty amazing.
Goodness knows this past year has been incredibly challenging for all of us. Likewise here in these pages. I freely admit I am often stumped about what to write about when the world is going nuts around us. And yet I have played more Eve this past year than I have in ages. Covid certainly had a part in that. But changes in my own life have as well. We saw Fanfest get cancelled not only for last year, but for this year as well. And the dominoes fell for all other player gatherings, including our own. This was understandable given the continuing circumstances around the globe - but it still had a huge impact. And continues to have one.
In-game things continue to thrive. Stay Frosty and A Band Apart are more active and engaged than ever. Bi-weekly fleets continue and we are working hard to expand our capabilities as an organization in all sorts of new directions. Coming up on March 6th we will be holding our annual Frigate Free For All which last year saw us hand out almost 4,000 Frigates! (And my Marshall explode!) And in May Stay Frosty will be celebrating our eighth year anniversary. How amazing is that?
The biggest news of last year however was the opportunity to work with the people that run the Eve Store for CCP. And the subsequent launch of the Freaky Frigates Collection. I have no idea where this is going or if we will be doing anything else, but this was a landmark in a very long and convoluted journey. It happened and I'm proud of the work. And nothing exploded.
Mostly I appreciate all of you that read and support this little corner of the Eve universe. Thank you. I look forward to whatever the coming year has in store for us. And hopefully soon we can all get together in real life safely again and raise a toast to all our adventures.
Onward & Upward.