But what we wanted to know was what kind of signs will he exhibit in order to log in? So we watched his alts carefully.” “It's all to understand what's going on in his mind,” says Quickload. PL's hunters had identified several alts used by this player and kept one eye on them while going about their normal business. He chose a system called Kamal.”Īnd then FomkA disappeared – or, to be more accurate, that one character disappeared. That would be a safe place to park your undockable ship. Like in lowsec, because you don't have to worry about bubbles or sovereignty changes while you're offline. “But when you have a capital ship like a Supercarrier or a Titan you need to park it somewhere safe. “That guy was taking a break, as many players do,” explains Quickload. But there was a reason for bringing a Titan into Low-security space. The big game hunters had narrowed down the field of potential Titan pilots – and one name, FomkA, looked like a match. Through that he found alts or other characters of this pilot, coming up with a shortlist of other candidates that turned out to be quite close. So our guy found and bookmarked that location, noted the name of the player, and then with others started doing some additional research. “He managed to save the cyno pilot's name, went to the cynosural field which you can warp to in space – which was in like a safe zone between planets, you can warp between planets and make a bookmark in-between. “So Cumadrin did the right thing and went to check it out and as he entered system he saw in Local, the list of players in the solar system, a pilot who promptly logged out.” Cumadrin had the name of the pilot who had set up the cynosural field – the means by which Titans jump – but didn't yet have the name of the Titan pilot. It was a system without stations and, if you don't know anything about EVE, seeing signs of a cyno field in a system without stations indicates a big thing is moving through that system – something that doesn't need to dock, because it can't, which usually means a Super Capital or a Titan.” “When we see signs of a hostile or neutral capital ship that is moving in our area we take interest in it, and in September 2012 one of my cohorts Cumadrin Kassin saw the signs of a cynosural field in a system next to our home. “Something like a non-capital ship my group generally don't care about.” “In EVE players seem to find their specialities, and niches within PvP fighting,” Quickload says. Among other things, PL is known for high-level PvP players, superb tactics, and big kills. Quickload is a member of the Sniggerdly corporation, part of one of EVE's most infamous alliances: Pandemic Legion. You have one of those? You've got our attention.” Our main interest is ships with a jump drive. “Pith helmet, blunderbuss, go out in the jungles. “The group I fly with, we kind of fashion ourselves as 'big game hunters,'” begins the capsuleer known as Quickload.

Fanfest 2014 was my chance to find out more. The outlines suggest so much – the obsession, the hunt, the skill, the devastating loss, and of course the mind-boggling timeframe. And when he eventually logged on, they bagged him. It's the tale of how a pilot flying a Ragnarok Titan, the biggest and most expensive ship class in the game, was inactive but tracked for years by a group of players. In the months I've been following EVE Online, one story stuck in my head more than any other.

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