The New Eden Banter: EVE Blog Banter returns (2026 reboot)

Some traditions deserve a reboot.

Back in 2008, I kicked off something called the EVE Blog Banter—with a monthly email that invited bloggers to write, reflect, argue, and occasionally confess their in-game sins. The format was simple: one shared topic, many voices, and a roundup so everyone could discover each other.

I ran it for two and a half years (26 editions), then passed it to other EVE bloggers who kept it going. By the time I wrote my last entry—#68, back in October 2015—the community had produced almost 70 banters worth of arguments, stories, and insights.

Fast-forward to 2026. The platforms changed. The "blogging is dead" takes have multiplied. And yet... here we are. A few of us are still writing about EVE. Still sharing our virtual lives. 

Still building corners of the internet worth visiting.

So I'm bringing it back. 

EVE Blog Banter returns as: The New Eden Banter (NEB).

The mirage of a safe place and a taste for revenge

This short story was inspired by real events in New Eden. Names and star systems have been changed to protect the anonymity of the pilots involved. What follows is sort of fiction — and another attempt (not my first) at writing.

*************

Suspended in gel and wired into the ship’s nervous system, a capsuleer’s thoughts were translated by implants into clean data—synthetic voice, clipped text-bursts, or raw intent—riding laser-tight comms hull-to-hull, between star systems, across the void of New Eden — threading light through the dark like a needle through black silk. Replies didn’t reach ears. They arrived inside the pod-feed as overlays and sensations, as natural as breathing used to be.

“Natural,” in the same way a scar eventually became part of your skin.

The corp channel drifted under everything: under route calculations, under market pings, under the soft lies stations told. It was always there, a cold thread woven through the skull.

A presence joined.

ROOK VEYLAN: Greetings...

His salute didn’t make a sound. Instead, it bloomed as a bright glyph at the edge of vision, paired with a faint pulse of recognition—comradeship translated into harmless bytes on a hyperdata-stream.

Another presence flared immediately after—hot, ragged, too fast for the smoothing routines to hide.

SABLE WRAITH: Guys. Quick question.

A hitch in the feed—hesitation rendered as a fraction of delay.

SABLE WRAITH: If someone attacks and my drones kill them… I can strip the wreck, right?

Two replies snapped back almost at once. Clean, low-emotion packets—the kind veterans used when they already knew exactly where this was going.

HASK MEREV: Yes.

IRON KADE: Yes. If you’re still on grid.

Sable Wraith’s signal surged again, spilling context like a cracked seal.

Getting dropped into a Fallout TTRPG mid-campaign? Obviously I picked the glitchy murder-maid robot!

It's mid-evening earlier this week, and I get a message from my favourite DM, who's been running D&D campaigns I occasionally play with a few former work mates and their buddies.

He tells me they're running this cool Fallout campaign and are down a player. Would I consider joining them even though they're already four game sessions in?

My answer: you had my YES at hello!

So I'm basically getting dropped into an ongoing TTRPG campaign mid-season, come Monday evening. And suddenly I'm doing the narrative version of jumping onto a moving train.

No slow “meet the party in a tavern” intro. More like “welcome to the wasteland, try not to freeze.”

EVE Online Glossary: Essential terms every capsuleer needs to know

As I've been putting together these EVE Online guides, I've been constantly stumbling over terms and abbreviations that left me completely lost.

Some terms I already knew from experience, playing back in 2004 through 2011. But for plenty of others? I've had to stop mid-draft, go digging, and find out what people actually mean when they say things like "brick tanked," "kite," or "burn back."

Sometimes the hardest part of EVE isn't fitting a ship or learning the UI—it's understanding what people are saying, or what the guides are telling you.

If you're new, returning after a decade or more, or just tired of feeling like everyone's speaking in encrypted abbreviations, this is your decoder ring.

This glossary gathers the terms you'll actually hear in corp chat, on comms, in local, and in the places where you'll find the info you need, but need a dictionary to make sense of it all. It's not a complete encyclopedia—it's meant to be useful: the words that pop up when you're hauling, exploring, joining fleets, or trying to figure out why everyone suddenly got quiet after someone said "combat probes."

Bookmark it. 

Keep it open on a second monitor. 

And when a guide starts sounding like a different language, come back here.

The Safe Spot is LIVE! (and I'm equal parts thrilled and mildly terrified)

Alright. We did the thing.

Rixx Javix and I have officially launched The Safe Spot "The Rixx & Kinux Show" — a bi-weekly EVE Online podcast — and I'm sitting here with that strange cocktail of feelings you get when you ship something you actually care about: excited, anxious, hopeful.

Excited because I'm back in New Eden after a long time away, and EVE still has that "you're never fully in control" living on the edge magic, and I get to talk about it with my good friend Rixx.

Anxious because launching anything public is basically inviting the universe to throw tomatoes while you're still adjusting the mic stand (speaking of which, I'm still waiting for my Blue Yeti mic ordered this past Saturday, but stuck in some warehouse somewhere this side of the Hudson). 

Hopeful because this isn't some one-off "hey we made a thing" moment. This is a long-term project — something Rixx and I have been talking about, poking at, shaping, and slowly building for months.

Hauling safely in EVE Online: Hard-won lessons from high-sec gankers

After a few months back in New Eden, one major shift stands out from my time away since 2011: ganking in high-sec has gone from occasional chaos to predictable business. It's not random violence anymore—it's optimized, profit-driven hunting. Which means you need to stop thinking of high-sec as "mostly safe" and start thinking of it as "safe only if you're not worth killing."

This guide distills practical hauling wisdom I've been collecting as I rebuild my instincts. Most of it comes from watching experienced players review catastrophic losses—particularly MarkeeDragon's "Ganked Awards" killboard reviews, which are equal parts hilarious and educational.

If you're new to EVE, returning after years away, or just tired of losing ships you didn't need to lose, these rules will help.

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn—Owlcat's RPG looks like it actually gets it

I was about to restart The Expanse TV series for a full rewatch when I made a crazy choice: I cracked open Leviathan Wakes instead. As if I had time to dive into a new book series!

I'm barely past the opening, but it's already doing what the show did best—and it had me thinking about what an Expanse game actually needs to get right.

So when I finally caught the announcement trailer for The Expanse: Osiris Reborn in late 2025 (it dropped back in early June of last year, and I'd also seen it pop up on Kickstarter at some point), I hit play with that exact mindset: hopeful, cautious, braced for impact.

Detour into the unknown: My first steps into Exploration flying a Heron

I'm hitting pause on my Enforcer grind—and my eventual dive into PvP—to try something completely different: Exploration.

After months of security missions and getting my Merlin into proper fighting shape, I figured it was time to learn scanning, cloaking, and the art of sneaking around New Eden. You know, useful skills for not getting podded too quickly when I finally do jump into PvP.

Right now I'm sitting at 665 out of 750 Enforcer points (still not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds impressive). I could push through those last 85 points running the same missions over and over, but that familiar itch kicked in—the one that whispers, what if you did something else?

So I took the detour.

CCP's 2026 War Plan: Big promises, thin specifics (for now)

By now, you've almost certainly heard about CCP's plan for 2026. If not, there's plenty of coverage to catch up on — MassivelyOP, ShackNews, and MMORPG all have writeups, and fellow EVE bloggers like The Ancient Gaming Noob have already weighed in. But after spending a full hour watching the "Directors' Letter Chat: 2026 & Beyond," and then going over the news items, I wanted to add my own take to the pile. 

Fair warning: there's a mountain of content to unpack here, so settle in.

Announcing The Safe Spot: a new EVE podcast (first episode Feb 10!)

 

EVE Online has a funny way of sticking with you.

Even when you're away from the game for a long period of time, you still remember that first undock into the unknown... and getting instantly podded the moment you jumped into nullsec. That moment where you had to decide: am I done, or am I learning something here?

That's the spark behind The Safe Spot — a new podcast Rixx Javix and I are launching.

Why joining a corp changes everything in EVE Online (and how I landed in Quantshure)

I've officially joined Quantshure, part of Xagenic Freymvork (VAULT). I hadn't really planned for it this soon, but my NEOCOM Corporation tab kept blinking (or was it just lit up?), and that invitation sitting there was too tempting to ignore.

And yes, I did have a brief moment where I thought: "Well, clearly they saw something special in me if they invited me."

Then reality checked in: it was automated. 😉

Why EVE Online’s economy feels more real than most MMOs (REVISED)

Here's what makes EVE Online's economy different: destruction isn't a failure state—it's demand.

When a fleet of battleships explodes in null-sec space, that's not just content for a killboard. It's an industrial signal. 

Somewhere, a manufacturer needs to replace those hulls. A miner needs to harvest more ore. A hauler needs to move materials across hostile space. A trader sees opportunity in the price spike.

Most MMOs fake their economies the way movie sets fake cities—the storefronts look real until you try to open a door. EVE does the opposite. It builds a system where players are the economy, and then it designs that economy to consume what it produces. Loss drives replacement; replacement drives industry; industry drives logistics; logistics drives trade; trade funds the next round of chaos.

Rinse and repeat.

That's the hook in Economics Explained's “The Economy of EVE Online” video I'm sharing below. Though it's a tad outdated, it still captures this fundamental insight: EVE turns players into producers, movers, traders, and destroyers—because the economy only works if people do all of it.

This article unpacks why EVE's economy feels surprisingly real, even to people who study real economies for a living. I'll keep it as simple as possible.

My first Cormorant: a practical PvE-to-PvP guide for first-time pilots

After running Level 1 missions along the Enforcer career path over the last few weeks*, I was awarded a ship I’d never personally flown before: the Cormorant. And it came with a SKIN. Sweet!

This was perfect timing because I’ve been sitting on SKINs for ages thinking “cool cool… how do I actually use these?” But couldn't figure it out! Turns out: this was the push I needed. And I had two AIs to guide me through the process of getting it on this new ship.

This post is basically my “new ship, new chapter” brain-dump. 

Making a living in EVE Online: Part 1 — Quick wins and survival habits (REVISED)

(Latest Revision - January 30, 2026)

Most new pilots hit the same moment: you finally have some ISK, you lose a ship, and suddenly you're doing mental math at every undock. This post is here to break that cycle. The goal isn't to get filthy rich on week one. Though THAT would be fun. Right?

The goal is simpler—and way more important: you learn to stop being broke forever.

That means you learn a couple of income loops that are predictable, and you adopt a few survival habits that keep your wallet alive even when your ship goes BOOM!!

Because it will.

For All Mankind Season 5 and the long promise of Mars colonization

The Season 5 teaser for For All Mankind was released earlier this week, and it reminded me why I keep coming back to this series.

At this point, the show isn’t really “alt-history space race” anymore. It’s closer to “what happens when space stops being a stunt and becomes a system.” The Moon base era, the push toward Mars, the slow shift from exploration to infrastructure — that’s the part I’ve been enjoying most, and it feels like Season 5 is going to lean into it even more so. That teaser definitely teases us about it!

Le Grand Mort: A Beautiful, unsettling journey between two worlds

I started reading Le Grand Mort years ago—back in 2016 or 2017—after picking up the first two volumes at the Montréal book fair (Le Salon du livre de Montréal). It was one of those “this looks gorgeous, I need this on my shelf” impulse buys… and honestly, it was a good one.

Then life did what life does. I kept collecting the series in the background, and Volume 8 eventually made its way into my stack around the COVID era… and then just sat there, unread, quietly judging me from the bookshelf.

This past Christmas break, I finally fixed that. I went back to the very start and read the whole thing series properly—from Volume 1 to the very last volume—so I could experience the story the way it’s meant to unfold, not as scattered memories separated by years.

(Warning: some spoilers ahead!)

And yeah: it was absolutely worth the reset.

A practical guide to staying current in EVE Online: Podcasts & Streamers

EVE Online podcasts and streamers that keep you up to date

If you want to stay in the know about what’s happening in New Eden—the shifting geopolitics, wars and alliances, the economy and trade meta, and the steady stream of “wait… when did that become a thing?” tips and tricks—having a few solid podcasts and shows in your rotation makes a big difference. They’re the easiest way to get both the headlines and the context, whether you fly every day or you’re coming back after a break.

This post is a curated list of currently active EVE Online podcasts, shows, and creators. Each entry includes what they cover, who it’s best for, and where to listen or watch—so you can find the right “keep me current” feed without digging around.

This list is a work in progress. It’s what I’ve been able to find and verify over the last few weeks, across audio podcasts and Twitch/YouTube shows. If you know other great EVE podcasts, shows, or creators—especially niche ones (wormholes, industry, abyssal deadspace , factional warfare, markets, exploration, etc.)—please share them in the comments and I’ll expand the list.

Crovan rebooted "The Drone Bay" and I’m weirdly emotional about it 🥹

I had one of those “wait… what year is it?!” moments this week: I discovered that my old podcast co-host, Crovan, has brought The Drone Bay back… on YouTube.

The Drone Bay... The Drone WHAT?!!!

Originally, The Drone Bay was one of the early EVE podcasts way back in spring 2008, and seeing it resurface in 2024 hit me right in the nostalgia module.

Resonance gives off cinematic sci-fi vibes and a whisper of mystery

 

That gameplay trailer for Resonance absolutely stopped my YouTube scroll.

There’s this immediate “okay, I need to know what this is” vibe: a lone alien explorer following a signal into the ruins of a dead (robotic) civilization… and then—because of course—waking up something colossal that really wasn’t asking to be disturbed. 

The tone feels quiet, mysterious, and big in that “ancient machines + lonely planet” kind of way.

The atmosphere is gorgeous. The visuals absolutely attention-grabbing.

Making a living in EVE Online: a blueprint series for earning ISK

EVE Online has this weird superpower: you can log in with a rusty frigate and no clue what “transversal” means… and still end up building a living. And do so fairly quickly.

Not a questline living. Not a “the game hands you gold for showing up” living (though there's a bit of that of course).

But a real one.

New Eden is one of the only game worlds where “making money” isn’t a side activity. It’s a whole ecosystem. You can be a scavenger, a prospector, a courier, a trader, an industrialist, a pirate, a soldier-for-hire… and the economy actually has room for all of it because other players create the demand (and the chaos).

Crazy, eh? I know!

That’s the hook for this series. I’m putting together a practical, blueprint-style set of posts that maps out the major ways capsuleers make ISK—from the stuff you can start doing today, to the systems that feel like you accidentally enrolled in an MBA program run by space criminals. 

No fluff. No “top 10 secrets.” No pretending there’s one “best” way. 

Just a ladder you can climb.

After Hours, Episode 3 (2016): Rixx Javix and I talk EVE Online, EVE blog banters, and community weirdness

The above is "After Hours Podcast – Episode 3", and it’s a nearly-decade-old (May 2016) chat between the infamous pirate Rixx Javix, and myself — looking back on the “golden age” of EVE blogging and how that whole scene shaped a lot of us.

I came across that old episode while researching for an upcoming project on EVE Online podcasts, past and present (more on that later).

The Time Masters: the weird, beautiful French sci-fi I’m finally revisiting

I first saw Time Masters (Les Maîtres du temps) in my early teen years, and it grabbed my attention immediately.

Not simply because of the visuals, or the title, but because it was different. Very different...

It looked nothing like the cartoons I’d grown up with on TV or in theaters. This was before I’d even stumbled into Akira, Nausicaä or Robotech—back when “animation” mostly meant one familiar lane: Disney, Warner Bros. or Hanna-Barbera. And then this showed up, looking like it came from a completely different universe.

So this past Christmas, I did what any reasonable middle-aged guy does when nostalgia starts tugging at his sleeve: I put it on my wish list. A few days ago, it finally landed in my hands. I wasn’t sure what I’d find. Was the magic just nostalgia doing its thing? Or was the film really as special as I remembered?

Either way, I hit play.

I wasn’t disappointed.

A beautiful Blender tribute to Homeworld intro: the Taiidan fleet arrives

Some games don’t just start — they announce themselves.

This sub-minute Blender tribute to the Homeworld opening sequence absolutely nails that feeling. The quiet dread. The impossible scale. That slow, inevitable moment when the Taiidan fleet drops out of hyperspace and you know things are about to go very wrong.

For me, this hits straight in the nostalgia cortex. Homeworld was one of the first PC games I played after jumping ship from Macs in the late ’90s, and that opening — paired with Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber — never really left my head. It wasn’t bombastic. It was solemn. Operatic. Like space history unfolding in real time.

This tribute gets why that intro worked. It’s not about flashy dogfights or camera gymnastics. It’s about weight. Fleets that feel ancient. An empire arriving not in a rush, but with absolute confidence. You don’t need dialogue when the music and motion already tell the story.

Huge props to Venture Pictures for capturing the soul of it so cleanly. 

This feels like a quiet reminder of why that original reveal mattered so damn much.

The joy of figuring it out: what the Merlin taught me about EVE Online

One of the things I’m genuinely enjoying right now is rediscovering how much of EVE Online lives outside the actual game play.

What?!! I hear you say. Bear with me a second...

In EVE, skills matter, obviously — but they’re only part of the equation. The real learning happens in the fit and in how a ship is meant to be flown. Lately, that’s been my trusty Merlin, and figuring out how to lean fully into its brawler nature instead of fighting it. Short-range blasters, afterburner over speed tricks, scram and web to keep fights close, and a solid shield buffer so it can sit in the pocket and trade blows. I’m training into the guns and support skills that make that setup work, and paying attention to why each module belongs there.

That process — reading, testing, undocking, exploding, tweaking — is where the fun is.

Seriously! That might sound like a chore to some, but it's allowing me to learn the game nice and slow. At my own rhythm.

In EVE, your ship doesn’t reach its potential just because your skills say it should. It does when the fit makes sense and you fly it the way it was designed to be flown. Now go back, and read that last sentence once again, cause it says a lot about the game.

I’m pulling all of this together into a more detailed post soon, in which I'll be digging into the Merlin itself, the modules and fittings I’m training toward, and how brawler and kiter tactics actually play out once you’re on grid.

But for now, I'm heading out 12 jumps, getting myself a new skill in order to use my new Tech II blasters!

Fly safe!

Avatar: Fire and Ash — stunning to look at, but falls flat (★★★☆☆)

Let’s get the rating out of the way first, because it frames everything else.

If Avatar was a 4.5/5, and Avatar: The Way of Water landed at a solid 4/5, then Avatar: Fire and Ash sits at a 3/5 for me.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad.

It does mean it didn’t stick with me.

And notably, my two teenagers were even more disappointed than I was. These are kids who watched the first film over and over again, and who happily went to see the second Avatar film twice on IMAX (they were much too young to see the first in theatres). 

This time, walking out of the theater, the reaction was basically: “Yeah… that was fine.” 

Which, for Avatar, feels telling.

**Warning: spoilers ahead!**