“Hi, I’m Troy McClure. You may remember me from such Eve Instructional Videos as ‘There’s a bug in my Pod’ and ‘Dude, where’s my fleet?’”

Man, if only he was writing this. It would be awesome.

ANYWAY.

The whole point of this post is to highlight a problem that I’ve seen far too many of you newer pilots doing lately. You can probably guess what that is from the post title – AFKing, or Away From Keyboard for the four people who don’t yet know what that acronym means. But more specifically, going AFK when you’re in low security space. If you’re docked in a station, fine, go AFK for as long as you want to grab a drink, make a sandwich, whatever. Being docked in a station is the ONLY truly safe place in the game, period. Anywhere else, you risk being shot. Shit, in low-sec space, that’s pretty much a guarentee.

Just take these two pilots for example. In both cases, they entered Lisbaetanne through the Aere gate… and then just sat there. In both cases, I was circling them for about 3 minutes in my Harpy trying to get them to shoot at me first. In both cases, I got bored and warped to a station to get my Drake – a process that took at least another minute. In both cases, I warped back and they were still there, and in both cases they died. Please, do not be like them!

Seriously, if you’re entering low-sec for any reason at all, even if it’s just one jump, DO NOT GO AFK. Even if you’re in a safe spot, DO NOT GO AFK – there’s always a chance someone will probe you out. Dock up in a station first or log off, whatever. Just be smart about it.