Random acts of kindness

Later that night, I saved a poor chap in local who had gotten canflipped by a Merlin while mining, and thought it would be a good idea to return in a Raven only to learn a very harsh lesson about cruise missiles and frigates.  He was begging for help in local offering a whopping 5 million ISK for assistance.  Normally, I just ignore these things because there's usually not much you can do and these people deserve to die, however, today I decided to help him. Maybe I felt genuine pity, maybe I was feeling altruistic, maybe the appeal of taking away an easy kill from a griefer struck a chord in my own inner griefer, maybe it was all of the above.

My first plan was to drop him some ECM drones so I grabbed my Curse, headed over to his asteroid belt and dropped medium ECM drones for him to scoop...except he doesn't have ECM Drone Interfacing trained.  So I drop some Warrior II's, only to find that he can't use those either.  At this point I begin to wonder if this is an elaborate trap and i'm being setup, for a 2008 player, WTF was does this guy have trained?  I'm keeping him repped with my alt in a Scimitar, while I go to pickup some EC-300's for him and the ECM Drone Interfacing skillbook next door.  I seriously begin to wonder why i'm going through so much effort to save this guy, but i've come too far to go back now.  He tells me this plan won't work because you can't switch skill training queues while in space...

*facepalm*

 I really really begin to think this has to be some sort of troll, but drop the can off with some EC-300s, tell him he is wrong, and ask how long until he can train it to level 1.

48 minutes...

Fuck.

At this point i'm about to call it quits, since its been about 40 minutes, but decide to give it one last shot.  I grab a bump stabber on my alt...he tells me this won't work because he's webbed...

*facepalm*

I line him up with a station anyways, tell him to spam warp the second I make contact with him (I had to explain how to spam the warp button on an object to him...), and give her a go.  I'm able to bump him 30km off of the Merlin and perhaps 10 seconds later he goes into warp, saved successfully.  Woohoo for creative use of game mechanics!

Forty-five freakin' minutes later I finally save this guy.  He thanks me and gives me my promised 5 million ISK, leaving me to sit there perplexed as I reflect on what just happened.  I would like to think that such an experience would leave me feeling warm and fuzzy inside, but I couldn't help but feel like I betrayed Darwin somehow.

Part of me feels like this is because despite the fact that I saved this guy today, I got the impression that he didn't realize just how lucky he got, he didn't realize that most of the time people would just laugh at 5 million ISK and demand more, that most people would just laugh at him in local, that most people who would attempt to save him would actually trick him into giving them aggro and help kill themselves.  Maybe it irritates me that I feel like despite my best efforts, he isn't going to be a better player because he never really understood anything that happened around him today.  Still, this is what I love about the EVE and the sandbox aspect.  You can go from being a highsec PVPer, killing everything you come across and then help save a complete n00b from highsec PVPers an hour later.

At least I made a new friend right?

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