Yesterday Stay Frosty scored our 200,000th kill in Eve Online. Ten years and seven months after I undocked from one station in Hevrice and set-up the corporation in another station. I never would have imagined that a decade later I'd be, not only celebrating this milestone, but still writing about it here in these pages. That is an average of 1,575 kills per month for slightly over a decade. Incredible.
It is a testament to all of the players who have flown in space with us over the past decade. Their tenacity, their courage, fortitude, and unwillingness to ever give up - despite often incredible odds. Powerful forces over the last ten years have sworn to destroy us all and drive us out of the game. The Mittani himself called us "Idiots of No Consequence" and vowed to drive us into the ground. And yet we flourish. And continue to YARRR across all of New Eden, undaunted, and unwavering in our fundamental belief that Eve is a game that should be played like one.
So yesterday was interesting. Back in mid-November I issued a challenge to all of our pilots to reach the 200k milestone before the end of the year. I offered prizes, skins, and awards for various milestones to be reached and watched as our team took the challenge to heart. As those numbers started ticking closer and closer a certain frenzy over took us. Myself included, heck I shot a shuttle on station yesterday! We were shooting everything we could find. It was nuts.
Unknown to me, certain elements within Stay Frosty had been planning something special for the 200th. For weeks Kalley and Ninouh had been hinting about a "special" fleet for the moment we started getting close. This made perfect sense to me. Let's all get into fleet and score that final kill together. But that is not what they were thinking. Unknown to me they planned to have their CEO be the 200th ship exploded!! So yesterday, while in fleet, everyone suddenly turned on me and exploded my Kikimora. We all had a good laugh about it on comms and sat watching zKill update its numbers. All while kills continued to be posted in corp chat.
In the end, the traitorous turn was not rewarded and it ended up being a few off from the final kill. That honor, once the dust had settled, ended up going to Darkon Chanlin for exploding a Confessor with his Crow down in Pure Blind.
Which, to be fair, is just the absolutely perfect way to encapsulate the spirit of Stay Frosty. So congratulations to Darkon, well done my friend.
And congratulations to all of the pilots in Stay Frosty, past and present, because every single kill along the way helped us reach this incredible goal. It was, after all, a team effort. Together. We did it.
We currently have 93,039 Solo kills - we need to get that to 100k!!
Stay Frosty my friends.