I was surprised to see an old corp mate log back into the game. He'd not been back to it in years. He's got a career, a young family and of course real life comes first. But the game does tend to simmer on a low heat in the background of a gamers mind. Even if it's 'just' the idea of the game. Given that it was unusual for me to logon in the early morning and there's a 12 hour time difference between us it was luck that I saw him. A few chats, over the following days and some e-mails later we'd fully caught up on real life and in game shenanigans.
Time difference is hard in MMO's. With a 12 hour-ish difference it's either early mornings or late nights to try and group up. Come to think of it most of my old corp mates who I know in real life are now located around the pacific. Life might be trying to tell me something there; Then again I'm probably reading to much into it.
Anyway, with a friend on early mornings I tried to log in and help with gameplay/interactions/fun when I could. It doesn't help that he has no real gaming PC/laptop. What he does have can run Eve but the potato version of it. Just about. Harder to do these's days than previously(32 to 64 bit hampers things). Still it ran but not ideal for doing anything in game where you could get lag, disconnected and loose a ship.
Normal:
Potato:
Due to he potato situation I thought he was Mr. Risk Averse and was surprised on logging in one morning to see that he was in a wormhole. As he had an eye on his DScan, I had a limited convo with him. That is till he lost his ship in the site he was running. His lose mail was unremarkable and he had the sense to only loose what he could afford. Yet he was in a pod with some nice implants he didn't want to loose. The second corp mate to do something risky in a 'good clone' in as many weeks. This was only a problem because he discovered he no longer had an exit. He tried to warp to his bookmark to begin his exit chain but there was noting to jump to. Which is either a closed exit or he did something
After some enlightening chat with him he was left with 2 options, talking in local looking for 'charitable help' or self destruct. As there is no local in WH space there was no guarantee of a reply either way. Chatting with locals proved to be fruitless even though there didn't seem to be any. Eventually 2 inhabitants replied and were neither helpful nor unhelpful. Which is odd(free pod kill etc) to me but hey I can understand the 'drawn into a trap' mentality. From what he told me of his conversation with them they probably didn't speak English, or didn't feel the need to google translate. Pesky day-trippers.
He was on the verge of self destruct when I asked the question where did he enter WH space. As it turned out he did so only 4 jumps from the character I'd logged in on. Least I could do was go to that system and scan down the start of his WH chain; If it was still there(I was pretty sure it was still there) it could be possible to help him. He gave me some info on what he had done/scanned. I
fleeted up with him and found that the entry system still had two WH's on scan as he has described. I popped into the first, wrong system so I stayed cloaked and then jumped back out. The second proved to still be the same as the one he had entered. This brought the first real inkling that I might actually get him out. That this could work. The adrenaline actual started to flow then. Some more systems scanning/checking with no local interruptions proved to be good. I followed his bread crumb information on how he had got there, shared bookmarks and probe scanning till I got to the same WH he was in. I was actually amazed.
Once in and confirmed it was the same system, I blurted out that he should warp to me.
Then began the back tracking, he warped to me and I'd jump through, get to the next exit when he would jump into system and warp to me. Rinse and repeat till the last jump back into known space.
So in the end he got out, free and clear. Pod intact. I was surprised that it went so smoothly. In an almost anti climactic way. Not the longest chain to get through to rescue but still. Accomplishment.
A small minuscule act to some if not a drop in an ocean to most. Yet an unexpected adventure all the same, resulting in two happy pilots. Plus he owes me one now.... The convo while he was running that site was most certainly not the cause of his loss and the start of the whole situation. :)
In retrospect we were lucky, the right alignment of quiet time zones. No real local activity. It just worked out. Once out it felt great. Not further loses, adventure, adrenaline and a corp mate with his pod and implants intact. Best result that could have been. One we'll recall with some embellishment.
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