…DARY!

It kind of feels like needing to take a leak for so long, and keeping your legs crossed because you just can’t.. not just yet at least, and then that moment comes where you finally make it to the loo and the release is just orgasmic. And this is pretty much how it felt during the Hellcats Party on Saturday the 24th… Orgasmic.

The preparation for all the little bits took almost 2 months. Setting up the details of the Celebrity Deathmatch with Nashh, arranging with Mynxee to tag along with Nashh, getting TeaDaze to film it and commentate, organizing the Hellcats party radio and blog side, performing the CDM, recording and editing the after-match interview,  promoting the Party, working on the video editing and effects with TeaDaze, bastardizing Lonely Island’s Jizz in my Pants, into Jizz in my Pod, Having the Party, releasing everything.. Damn.. Climax!

But let’s pick up things from where we left them… CDM #16 – Part 2

Quivering and I are on the verge of a breakdown. Excitement has taken a liquid form and it’s been leaking out of our ears into the pod’s goo with all other disgusting fluids (hey.. I had to include this somewhere). We’re sitting at 100 km from planet VIII, and we’re talking tactics, a few seconds before we have to actually warp in to the arena. Quiv and I have been playing together online since 1998, and even though we do have distinctive, totally different and in most cases incompatible play styles, this time the strategy came out naturally and in accord…

Who poses the biggest threat? Both actually. On the one hand, Mynxee is a seasoned pvp pilot who is specializing in small fleet warfare and sits inside a very tough pirate faction ship. On the other hand, Nashh is in a tough drone boat that can tank like a mean motherhacker, pack quite some blaster damage when in-range and our “meta-gaming” intel from reading Nashh’s blog had us convinced that he would be sporting some ECM. Both could pack some serious damage on us so we had to try and counter both’s damage output.

We decided to point both of our weapon disruptors on Mynxee and try to keep her optimal range short, while throwing our ECM drones over on Nashh. Being relatively safe from big damage outputs, Nashh’s ecm modules and possible ecm drones were the next thing that could destroy our game. It was clear that Nashh had to go down first.

I went FC as my old passion for an EOS had me train all of my leadership skills up to 5, and we both warped to 0. To our surprise, Mynxee was the one that chose to warp at point blank and Nashh in the distance. Apparently Mynxee decided against fitting artilleries. I almost shouted to Quiv to swap scripts for tracking disruption, just in time before TeaDaze gave the go signal.

We immediately put our planned strategy into motion. Both of our disruptors fell on Mynxee, and all of our drones on Nashh.  I fired up my MWD and in no time I fell upon Nashh’s Vexor like flies on steaming manure. Quiv opened the hatches of his missile bays, and his Caracal started spitting fire and brimstone totally devastating Nashh’s shields in a matter of seconds. At that point I was surprised to find out that there were no ECM drones out on my tail… to be precise, I had no drones at all on my tail! Nashh decided to sport sentry drones, and quite the expensive kind a fact that put a huge smile on my face. Having spent the last year using only drones as my offensive weapons I knew very well that sentry drones at such a close distance were destined to fail hitting anything for any decent amount of damage, not to mention of course that they had taken up all of Nashh’s drone bay.

I kept Nashh at point with the ECM drones and the webber and doing some light damage on him with my  small blasters and drones, while Quivering’s missiles were mercilessly punching holes into the Vexor’s plating. At that point Nashh went all out on my Vexor, getting it into armor, and at some point even managing to mute me using his ECM module, but it was already too late. It took only 90 seconds from the moment TeaDaze gave the go signal until a metallic clang was heard, followed by a hydraulic hiss when Nashh’s capsule got ejected to safety while his Vexor’s hull cracked and exploded into a fiery mass. I said to Quiv “Whoaa.. we might have a chance after all”.

In the meantime Quivering’s Caracal’s only stress signs were the ones in his missile bays from their use, otherwise it looked as shiny as it was when taken out of its box. Not a single shot had been fired upon it. With Nashh out of the way, it was high time to turn our weapons upon Mynxee. And at that point it’s where the excitement for the spectators suffered a horrible death.

Mynxee’s tank was just massive. We got her light ECM drones out of the way, and we threw everything we got upon her. Blasters, missiles, drones.. the damage output was massive, but so was her tank.  It took about 5 minutes of constant pounding to bring her tank down. At the same time Mynxee was throwing everything she had on me, but my armor resistances coupled with the medium repairer as well as the immense tracking disruption on her guns made it impossible for her to bring me down, up to the point where the continuous overloading burnt her guns down and she just waited for the inevitable.

I suggested a ransom in local just for shits and giggles, but even though I couldn’t see Quiv, I sensed the veins in his eyes almost popping due to the bloodlust =P  Shortly after, Mynxee’s Cynabal became part of the collective cosmic dust and the match was over. There was a moment of silence and then both Quiv and I burst into cheers. The adrenaline was still flowing, our hearts were still pumping.. we couldn’t believe we won the match.

I quickly flew and scooped the faction sentries into my cargo hold. “Mine” I yelled, and smiled, as Nashh exclaimed “To the victors go the spoils” in local. Corp chat spiked, as the spectators rejoiced. We were “playing home” after all. The fight seemed like it was action packed, full of thrills and awe inspiring dogfights, or at least that was the perception we had while fighting it. Alas, two weeks later after seeing the video TeaDaze took, it looked absolutely dull. I can’t even begin to fathom how TeaDaze found things to say while commentating those endless 5 minutes of armor chewing.

After the match, all five of us jumped into vent for an interview where we exchanged thoughts and gave each other (and now you as well) some behind the scenes info.

The  days before the party

The match was over, and we had two weeks time before the Hellcats Party to arrange everything. We so wanted to go out and let everyone know how the CDM came to pass, but we held back on those urges (crossing the legs thing remember?), and started working on the delivery. Soon after the match the first recounts of the story emerged. Nashh’s trip to Planet Risk proved to be far more exciting than the match itself, while Mynxee’s trip was relatively safe and uneventful. At the same time, Quivering had to leave for Dubai due to work and tried to stay in touch from afar.

I worked with TeaDaze to produce the video documentary of the fight. TeaDaze did all the editing on video and audio (on AlienHand’s excellent eve inspired pieces) and I worked on overlay visual effects and typography, resulting into a Teaser Trailer. The hype was growing, as more hints started to emerge about the things that would be released on the 24th.

During these two weeks we had set up a poll to gauge people’s thoughts on the outcome of the match.  Needless to say, less than 15% believed in us, and there were more people voting for the “went for beers instead of fighting” option rather than us getting it with a flawless victory. I find your lack of faith disturbing =P

The Party

And the day came, and the excitement kept growing. Mynxee sent me limericks that fans sent her to read out which along with 4 hours worth of music entered my playlist for the party. I logged in the game an hour before the party, and there were already over 150 people in the Hellcats Pub channel making the chat busier than Jita prostitutes. A while ago I received a call by Quivering who had just returned home from his two week trip abroad, tired beyond any recognition and sleepless for almost 48 hours straight. It was more than apparent that I’d have to tackle the party DJing alone.

I fired up a private convo with Mynxee and Quiv in game to exchange organizational information and went for a quick shower to cool down a bit. The clock ticked 20:00 and the party started. The next four hours were frantic. Intense music, limericks, tons of Rifter PVP in Evati, the Hellcats Pub channel spiked at a bit over 300 people, and billions of prizes were being given out every 10 minutes to lucky winners. We announced the outcome of the celebrity deathmatch, aired the interview, posted the link to the full video on YouTube, Nashh posted the second part of his recount on the CDM (and mind you it’s a very entertaining writeup) and released the brand new parody song by yours trully, Jizz in my pod. Everyone was ecstatic as the party proved to be the most fun someone could have without leaving home, while the turbo-mode chat proved once again why EVE is a thinking man’s (or woman’s) mmo. The amount and quality of humorous quotes was just amazing. Quivering Palm heroically stayed up for 2/5ths of the party before collapsing semi-dead on his keyboard.

The party was about to end but I still had plenty of music queued. And as at 4am Greece entered DST back into 3am, we extended the party for one more hour. (Actually DST kicked in an hour after the party, but shhh don’t tell anyone). At the end of the party, so much had happened that trying to recount it seemed like an impossible feat, however Mynxee gave it a shot… and you should probably read her recount to catch all the little details.

The aftermath…

Everyone fills full, tired and damn proud for this joint venture between Hellcats, CDM, Planet Risk, TeaDaze and Split Infinity Radio . Please do send us your feedback as we are really looking forward to doing this again, better, louder, larger!

Rest assure this wasn’t a one hit wonder.

PS: The Vexor Navy Issue that won the Celebrity Deathmatch was given out as a prize during the party to the first person who found his way to Planet Risk and yelled in Local. The Caracal Navy issue that Quivering flew is slated to be given to Nashh as a token of our appreciation.