Back to EVE

It's addictive but I just can't help it. I first signed up for this online multiplayer adventure a couple if weeks before Irfan was born. January 2006. Now coming up to the eighth anniversary and after seeing a posting from a former gang member on Facebook, I though about giving it a visit.

The game had been updated over the years and it seemed that I would have to download a new server - 6 GB of it - which took me about an hour at the apartment.

I still have the subscription ready, so I fired up the client both on the iMac and another on the MacBook Pro, signed up and I was back to fantasyland.

EVE is a virtual world set in the far future when mankind had explored another universe through a wormhole from Earth. After a period of exploration, the wormhole collapsed and connection to Earth was severed forever.

In the world of EVE, you explore. UK title galaxies, fight, built up corporations, make a fortune and basically all in a self-contained, open-ended environment. Fascinating stuff. You interact with real people, from other parts of the World - usually 30000 of them at any one point being logged on - just like on twitter or in conversation.

You could be as basic or as complex as you wanted to be. As a casual gamer, I just went with the flow. I just loved to explore. Occasionally, to make ends meet, you had to do chores and Mission, build your fleet of spaceships and mods. You can just do what you want. Some of the arwa worlds were prim and proper, while others were lawless. You take your pick....

I spent the morning exploring. As I usually do, until it was time for my ward round. Yes, real live could get in the way.....

Paging Mr Ender

The boys and some of their classmates spent the day at Kidzania today. They got back home late afternoon, and Idlan was so exhausted that he actually had a nap as soon as he arrived home.

As for the evening, it was Anita's and my turn to go out. We went out for dinner, and then watched a movie. Anita wanted to watch Diana but the timing was off. We ended up watching Ender's Game. It turned out to be better than we expected. And we wished that the boys came along to watch as well.

The movie was an adaptation of a 1985 novel be the same name, written by one of the film's producer Orson Scott Card. We thought it was fantasy fiction before we set down at the cinema. It turned out to be science fiction instead.

The story narrative was interesting and the main protagonist was a young boy. I was sure that my children would have been excited to watch this.

The story was about a gifted child, hand picked to lead the Earth Force against a swarm of aloe species following a failed invasion 50 years prior.

Humans decided to make a pre-emptive strike near the alien's home planet utilising the gift of this child, called Ender. It started off with his training, and through series of simulation built up into the final confrontation with the alien species.

There were twists and turns of course before the end, and it was pretty clear that it had sequels written all over. A quick check on Wikipedia showed there were plenty of books to come in the series. Anita wanted to watch the movie again, this time along with the boys. Highly recommended.