What is "rich" in EVE? Is it simply having more ISK than most everyone else, is it measured in raw numbers of some other ethereal quality? Can you actually be poor? Have you ever lost nearly everything and had to claw your way back? If you are rich, how do you know and how did you get rich?Let’s tackle these in reverse order.
“If I am rich, how do you I know, and how did I get rich?”
I’m not rich. I’m not sure I would consider even 10 B isk in liquid assets to be ‘rich’ in Eve. To me, that’s fairly middle class. If pressed, I’d put rich at 100 Billion isk.
How I got my wealth and keep it coming in is a mixture of techniques, because I believe, that like in life, Eve wealth comes from having the right mindset, and that mindset includes as one of its primary features as pursuing multiple streams of income. To that end, I have mined, missioned, manufactured, ratted, traded, gone into PI, harvested Wormhole isk, and run incursions. Some of these I still do (trading, manufacturing, PI and incursions) while some (ratting mining and missions) I don’t do any longer, due to boredom with those activities.
“Have you ever lost nearly everything and had to claw your way back.”
Yes. Several times in Eve, I’ve ‘lost everything’. Numerous times in my early career, I’d lose a battleship without having the funds to replace it. Fortunately for me, I’d often be able to get a loan from a friend to get me back into the game quickly.
The worst of these was the first time I moved into a wormhole. Bad security procedures and a corp thief combined to divest me of half a billion isk worth of ships, a fleet I had spent years casually putting together. I was down to a single hurricane and a mammoth, and the worst of it was that I was accused of the theft. The real thief later revealed himself to us, but I tell you, when I got accused of stealing my own stuff, I nearly quit Eve for good.
The first time it happened to me, it wasn’t really about isk at all. My introduction to EVE was through some RL friends, buddy invite and all, and being local and friends, we had a great time in Eve. Until our friend, the CEO of our corp, lost his life to a drunk driver. The rest of my friends abandoned Eve in a mass exodus, but.. I hung on for some reason.
I don’t really know why, but I eventually joined a null alliance, and went on to great adventures. I was flying with ASCN, and assisted with building the first Titan in Eve, mining one day in seven for the corp to pay for it. Then there was the giant failcascade at Bob’s hands, and all of a sudden, I was out of a home, locked out from my most expensive ships and unable to do anything about getting them back. To this day I still have a Tempest out in the AZN station, with a bit of armor damage preventing it from getting contracted to anyone.
I stuck with the corp though, when they moved to Stain and had a lot of laughs with them over the years. Until my FC’s character got corrupted somehow and CCP was unable or unwilling to fix it for him, and then my FC vanished into the ether. My interest in the corp and interest in Eve waned until they kicked me for inactivity. Not so strangely, I still have ships out in Stain waiting for pickup (and a lonely jumpclone).
Fast forward a bit, then came the first Wormhole Debacle (covered above) and then the second Wormhole Debacle (this probably shouldn’t be mentioned as I lost nothing in assets, just our Wormhole) and I was back in the Empire, grinding out money via missions.
But I’m stubborn, and kept clawing my way back into wormholes, and spent over a year with my most recent corp in one. That venture got off to a rocky start (Oh how I hate you, Frulegur) because I wound up selling a lot of assets to get the doctrine T3 they required, and ill-advisedly jumped into low-sec without a scout and got popped. I was broke at that point, but not out of assets. But I was out of assets I was willing to part with, so, yeah… I admit it…. I Plexed myself a new T3 to get back into the game there. It’s been the one time I’ve bought a Plex and traded it for isk to get back into the game. Not my proudest moment in Eve, but certainly not the worst.
After the ‘first wormhole fiasco’ I never again put all my eggs in one basket like that, and as a consequence, I don’t think I’ll ever be back down to ‘nothing’, in Eve. I do recall one time between wormholes losing my mission maelstrom, and playing EOH poker until I could afford a new ship. It’s a risky way to make isk, but I’ve pulled a lot of isk out of their tournaments and would do so again. At this point, I have a ‘backup missioning battleship’, an incursion running battleship, and too many smaller ships to count.
I’ve recently started making t2 ships and modules for the market, and with these tools, I’ll be able to fund my Eve habit for a long time to come, as well as running incursions when I feel I need a ‘quick cash injection’.
“Can you actually be poor?”
Yes, people can become poor in Eve, but they’ll get very little sympathy from me, as you can see, I’ve been burned enough times in game to be quite hardened to loss, mine and especially others. I figure anyone telling a sob story about how they lost everything and ‘just need a little help’ is a scammer or lazy or lacking in friends that trust them.
My circle of friends, while not ‘wealthy’ by my personal definition of it, are all comfortably middle class. If all of my ships somehow vanished overnight, it would take me an evemail or two and I’d be right back in the game because I have friends who are willing to lend me billions of isk on just a request, no justification, no ‘when will you pay me back’ basis, because I’ve earned that trust over the years, enough to easily borrow enough to get me ‘back’.
There’s no actual way I could put a price tag on this particular asset. Without friends, Eve is a dark, forbidding place.
“What is "rich" in EVE? Is it simply having more ISK than most everyone else, is it measured in raw numbers of some other ethereal quality?”
Rich in Eve is a variable and personal thing, and gets defined for each pilot in their own way. Some people feel rich with a handful of frigates and the mods and ammo to fly them. Some look at a certain point in the wallet and say that makes them rich. When I first started flying (and for many years after) I felt when I had 100 Million isk in the wallet and the ships I needed, then I wasn’t poor. It didn’t feel rich, certainly, but that was my personal benchmark for a lot of years.
Then, about two years ago, I cleared a billion for the first time in my Eve career. And when that happened… 100 Million became, well not a drop in the bucket, but barely a splash. And then I had my successful run in WH space and then decided to try out incursions, dropping half a billion on a deadspace module became no big deal.
Now if I don’t have a billion in the wallet I feel ‘broke’ again, even though I have billions in assets across two accounts. The idea of Plexing my account no longer becomes the hard choice between ‘game time’ and ‘ships to deploy’ but rather ‘do I want to plex this account or do I want to dual plex this account?’
I once read a quote that defines wealth as the number of days forward that one would be able to feed oneself (I’d like to say it was Buckminster Fuller, but I can’t find it attributed to him). I like that definition of wealth, but applying it to Eve means the number of days forward that one can fit ships to fly. Some people are wealthy enough in Eve that they’d never be able to spend their isk (sensibly that is, anyone can do an idiot thing like carry 90 plexes in a frigate on autopilot). But that’s the definition I use… when I have ships to fly and ammo, I’m rich. If it ever happens that I don’t… well, I’ll only have one person to blame for that condition.
Until next time:
FLY BETTER THAN YOUR ENEMIES!
