New Eden Banter Prompt (NEB #1): EVE Online's longevity

 

EVE Online is old. Not "two expansions ago" old, rather over-two-decades old.

In MMORPG years, that's basically ancient history. Some games from that era are gone. Others are technically "alive" in the same way a half-dead station light is alive: still on, but… you know.

And yet EVE is still here. Still evolving. Still producing war stories, betrayals, spreadsheets, friendships, grudges, and moments that feel uniquely New Eden.

So let's kick off the launch of the New Eden Banter with a big one:

This month's prompt

EVE Online is now more than two decades old—older than some of its players. In a genre where most MMORPGs fade or shut down, EVE has kept evolving. What do you think is the secret behind its longevity? Why is EVE still here—and still feeling alive—when so many of its contemporaries have declined or disappeared?

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. 😉