ExookiZ, CEO of The Dark Space Initiative/Scary Wormhole People, and familiar to many from his presentation on wormholes and j-space history at Fanfest 2016 and associated attire, launched a new podcast series, A Game of Holes. Astonishingly, this podcast has already made it to FIVE EPISODES, surpassing the average lifespan of a new podcast by a factor of 3.14!
In the inaugural episode, A Game of Holes: New Podcast Detected—Episode 1, ExookiZ announces his new podcast, and his intention to
- Focus on the big news in wormhole PVP
- Take a look at corps that pop up, and those that left citadels as loot piñatas.
- Draw attention to smaller and lower-class wormhole corporations, and mock them for not moving to C5 space
ExookiZ makes a valiant attempt to introduce us to several guests, but, as is so often the case in J-space, the big question becomes “Is anyone here?” ExookiZ, accustomed to activating a cloak and not talking in local, mashes various buttons, silencing himself and the recording.
ExookiZ moves on to discuss T3 Cruisers with Foedus Latro of Hard Knocks Inc., and Steel Roamer of ShekelSquad. The conversation opens with a discussion that cocooning club is absolutely central to the HK identity. ExookiZ baits Foedus into leaking all his opsec doctrines, forcing Foedus to spill the beans on their “Calling B******t” fleet doctrine.
In A Game of Holes: A Change in Scenery—Episode 2, a much shorter episode, ExookiZ introduces Einstein-Rosen Brigade leadership: Emmalline Fera, CEO of Interstellar Expeditionary Group, and Vorew Vokimdra.
<ERB> recently celebrated their first capital kill, a ShekelSquad Moros. A ShekelSquad Nagalfar pilot escaped, but came back in his Astero to watch the fight. That’s what friends are for, right?
ExookiZ sits in stunned silence. Was that an actual female on comms? Talking about J-Space?
ExookiZ proceeds to inquire as to their plans to move to C5 space. Emmaline’s response? “What we’ve seen, certainly recently, is that NullSec is…a vicious, horrible place to live, where, based on personal rivalries that…mainline members know nothing about, you can lose all your s**t overnight, and be completely f***ed. If we can encourage more people to come into wormhole space…we can give them that same experience…”
Stymied again in his mission to get C4 corps to admit they’re secretly jonesing for C5 space, EzookiZ shifts the conversation to the topic of moving wormholes. Of Sound Mind’s Jacob Matthew Jansen and M Sully join the conversation.
SOUND recently moved from a C4, where they were a big fish in a small pond, to a C5. They are looking forward to fighting Hard Knocks and LazerHawks. “We haven’t beat them yet, and we look forward to it.” ExookiZ, the guy who will probably beat you, offers sage advice: “Don’t let the certainty of loss discourage you from taking the fight!”
In A Game of Holes: Episode 3 Wormhole Space is Like A Pond, ExookiZ welcomes guests whom your humble correspondent, as a member of a trash tier not-quite-wormhole corporation, has never met or even heard of prior to this episode.
ExookiZ welcomes:
- Ezekiel Amann, of Stryker Industries/Stryker Group, who likes to dip Oreo cookies in White Russians, and is therefore clearly a man of distinguished taste. Ezekiel steals talent from Hard Knocks, and farms for recruits on Facebook and Reddit, where he recycles memes and welcomes anyone who drinks beer. Spais take note: Ezekiel lets two-week newbros lead trillion ISK fleets, so if awox whelping fleets is your thing…
- Stevo Patriot of Stranger Danger/Almost Dangerous, where they swear it’s only pixels, nobody cares if you run around on fire, and the evil stranger in the candy van is just a meme, really. They’re a PvP corp, but may or may not also “bait” with mining fleets, which, as we know, means if you dunk their mining fleet, it’s ok, because the fleet was bait anyway, and they decided not to take the fight, but if you don’t, they…well…they process the ore.
- King Creator, a former F1 monkey with Out of Focus/Odin’s Call, who says they used to take fights, but never win, and they’ve paid enough tribute by whelping to big groups, so now they all hit the bed when any PvP corp rolls into them.
All of these guests come from light-hearted and low pressure corporations, who love having new neighbors every day. Ezekiel sums it all up: “Wormhole space is like a lovely pond with a monster hiding beneath…EVE is a game where risk is the reward.”
A Game of Holes; Episode 4 Supplying the War Machine takes a significantly different tack from Episode 3 , and by “a significantly different tack,” I’m not just talking about ExookiZ abusing the semicolon where a colon is more appropriate…what a monster! ExookiZ, welcomes big names to discuss the oh-so-serious topic of wormhole logistics: Ikslagor of Hard Knocks, Jadiii Tsurpalia of ShekelSquad, and Forget MyFace of Lazerhawks.
The conversation opens with a celebration that the first two Vehements to die in J-space have…died! One, embarrassingly, in an Azbel lost to a Tech 1 Cruiser fleet. This loss leads these J-space luminaries to a discussion on how they handle ship replacement in their corporations:
- ShekelSquad doesn’t trust members to fit their own ships. They fit blaster Hurricanes, and it’s just bad. Everyone flies pre-fit doctrine ships the leadership builds at a profit.
- Lazerhawks only give SRP for properly fit ships, and roasts members on comms if they’re fit poorly. As for replacement, they don’t need industry, since “people leave the corp all the time, and put their ships on contract when they go.”
- Hard Knocks expectation is “if you pass trial, you’re not retarded. There is no excuse not to fly a doctrine ship.” They copy LazerHawks SRP policy, and also roast any members who get blown up flying memes.
The consensus here is “when you’re playing the game at a certain level, you’re expected to be able to handle your own stuff.” None of us want to think about these gentlemen handling their stuff, so we’ll move on.
Jadiii humbly announces: “When I’ve never seen something in wormhole space, then it’s never happened.” The others agree, then generously assist in clarifying several myths about wormhole space. First, no data suggests that there’s any “really wobbly” wormhole. “It’s a bunch of s**t. People want to imagine that the wobblier the wormhole is the sooner it will collapse. I think we’d be giving CCP too much credit if the WH really got wobblier.”
Second, you can close a wormhole by launching bombs at it, and HK is proud to provide video proof (see form archive for context). Jamming, however, is no longer effective, despite CCP establishing this as a mechanic during early GM-run incursions. Finally, they put to rest misunderstandings about how wormhole spawning mechanics work, but not until mocking the people in their own super-serious corps who get on comms and debate how it work.
Having clarified wormhole and wormhole signature spawn mechanics, these veterans spend a few moments bemoaning the sad fact that wormhole space is far from mysterious, before celebrating that most people are idiots, and don’t read the patch notes. “The best thing about patch day is all the people who didn’t read the patch notes, so you can take advantage of them.”
In the Not-Yet-Named Episode 5, coming soon to YouTube, ExookiZ invites ShekelSquad’s Steel Roamer and No Vacancies’ Eisu to a dramatic shouting match, after NVACA drops five capitals on ShekelSquad’s three. Steel admits “It’s our fault we couldn’t get it in…we never played dirty with anyone in our home,” while Eisu admits “we were c***y…and cap blobbed out of excitement.”
All of this sounds quite salacious, and leads to a discussion of other W-Space taboos, which Steel enumerates as:
- Premature Cap Blobbing
- Being too big for the hole
- Closing the hole before everyone gets a chance
Eisu agrees “there’s s**t we all complain about, but he hit it.” ExookiZ asks Steel if it’s taboo to say you don’t have the staff to fight, then gank the rolling carrier? Steel finally admits “I was a d**k, and I just keep trying to spin this…I don’t know how to spin this.” Somehow, WiNGSPAN is involved in d**k spinning, but last time EVE Onion brought this up, their crack legal team took issue, so we won’t go there…
In the big news, both ShekelSquad and No Vacancies shock the community by aligning with NullSec in admitting they are now TERRIFIED OF CLOAKY CAMPERS as Alpha clones get access to pirate Battleships. “They are going to run all of the C5 sites…an army of alphas will evict Hard Knocks…Alphas will be logged off in every farmhole, and blap us while we run combat sites!”
All this, and much much more! We won’t leak all the content like Foedus leaked his doctrines, but we will say that ExookiZ promised some solo tongue action and graph porn later this week!
In the spirit of “Calling B******t”, ExookiZ does a fine job in these first five episodes of presenting relevant news and interesting guests from across J-Space. He has few new-podcast hiccups, welcomes well-spoken representatives from across the J-space spectrum, and treats them respectfully—even when he’s clearly puzzled by people who don’t understand that J-space is serious business, and C4s are low class space.
Keep an eye on the “A Game of Holes” YouTube channel, and follow Exooki on Twitch to catch him live!
