So back in 2002 I started playing this game called Eve Online. I don’t have time for deep MMO experiences any more, but it was amazing while it lasted. Together with Will and Craig, we ran an in-game corproration called Taggart Transdimensional and we had a great time. We were, by far, the richest corp in the galaxy, the first to build cruisers, the first to build battleships, etc. We ran the corp from a different point of view and our corp attracted some of the best and brightest in the gaming world. In fact, that’s how I met Gustaf. He used to give the philosophy tests to incoming recruits (yes, we had essay tests requirements).

I was being interviewed for a magazine recently (EON) about all of this, and I found a bunch of old Eve pictures I have uploaded to Flickr. I had forgotten about some of the great art we made for the corp and some of the great experiences we had. Here is a little sampling:

First, here are a few pictures of the still secretive Jovians. Our corporate space station was visited by five Jovians that arrived in their behemoth battleships and they were calling for Ragnar (me) to come out. I actually spent 95% of my Eve-time in space stations controlling our corporation, treaties, alliances, trade, wars, etc.

These Jovians were actually all the guys at CCP that run the game. They were demanding a special item that I had come in posession of, an elite Mining Laser that I was sold. Apparently, this item had slipped into the game via a reporter, who sold it to some random guy, and that random guy came and found me because he knew I was the richest in the game. I paid a crazy price for the mining laser (about a billion ISK, which was a lot for the time), and then I promptly outfitted one TTI Apocalypse battleship with this mining laser and took an absurd screenshot of the entire fleet out sucking an asteroid belt dry of the most valuable ore. The new mining laser was INFO highlighted so everyone could see what TTI was using as our standard mining package, even though everyone else was using regular mining lasers. This caused amazing controversy, since they were sure we cheated to get these lasers… but I had no idea the origins of this mining laser. So rather than being jerks and just snatching it back, the CCP guys created an RP event and five of them appeared as Jovians outside our space station, asking for their property back.

They whisked me away and teleported me and my Raven battleship deep into Jovian space and negotiated a trade with me. I still can’t talk about the trade, but they ended up with their Jovian mining laser back. Here are a few pics of their battleships and some of the Jovians themselves I grabbed during the surprise event.

We also had a load of fun with all the propaganda and the wars with other corporations. There was one philosophically opposite corporation called Endless Corp headed by this guy HellGremlin. We ended up doing all sorts of great capers together. Here are some of the pictures I still have left over from the proaganda… Some of these caused a lot of controversy because they were Nazi-related, but it was all in good fun, just like the real Nazis.

We also had a big load of advertisements and promotional pictures. There is some very creative stuff in here.