The past few months have found my humble little faction warfare corporation under various spotlights at any given time; admittedly, not all attention is good attention- but for the vast swarm of people taking things a little to seriously, I can only sit here amused (and a little smug). A few issues have come up recently, and with all the other blog warfare going on, I felt it only rightfully fitting that I thrust my manhood into the flames.

Scandal, Lies, Treachery- all these things that add enjoyment to our little version of the game. It’s the spice of life

and the entertainment value these things bring (Roleplaying or Not) that make EVE the maelstrom of emotion, rage, and good hearty laughter that we all know and love. That being said- I’m going to touch on a few of the things I’ve found amusing (or gotten caught in the middle of).

The Story of Sir Hans, and why I don’t envy CSM Members.

First off, I want to say- that being a CSM member is no small task. Seriously, these people volunteer to communicate all the different wants and desires of all the diverse players to CCP Employees, in a vain attempt to transform EVE: Online (A Bad Game) into EVE: Online (A Progressively Better Game). This isn’t easy. There is no envy coming from this guy for the awkward position and scrutiny these gentlemen go through, I mean a quick peek at the features and ideas forum on EVE-O will show you that not all ideas are good ideas; sure it may appear that Marauders need a buff, BlackOps are unweildy, NullSec isn’t profitable, We need a cruiser that does exploration, mining, ratting, cloaking, and can muster extreme firepower, and all this other drivel from the annals of ‘bad ideas for video games’.

Criticizing the chosen few, that have to read all these ideas, and combine a small list of what they think the most important changes could be is no small task.

How many of you have had an idea about EVE?

How man of those ideas wern’t even thought through for the rest of the game?

Seriously think about it.

The biggest gap in EVE players understanding issues is- they only see the affect a change or proposed idea has on their version of the game. The way things behave in Empire, is not the way things behave in Low-Sec, the way things behave in Low-Sec is different from the way things behave in NullSec. So I understand the High-Sec mission runner that wants his super ratmobile buffed so he can clear rooms faster and maximize that ISK/Hour; but what he doesn’t see is the fleet of people trying to fight against 1,500 of those same ships and the uphill battle they will be fighting until yet another ship gets buffed, or another tactic is introduced.

All that being said, I don’t hold any judgement against Hans or the Minmatar Militia for using a ‘feature’ (since there hasn’t been a whisper from CCP about what it is ‘classified’ as) that essentially makes camping in-gates on acceleration gates a pointless and utterly fruitless activity; I do however maintain that denying entry into faction warfare complexes, and thus denying an opposing militia the oppurtunity to stop or control system contestation is a bad system. I think all sides of the faction warfare community would agree that this would be a beneficial tactic for holding systems. Even if it is something as simple as defending your fleet of offensive plexers, the theory behind the idea is sound.

For all the rage about this topic- I think the one comment, that one person made was viewed as a personal vendetta of many against one; and it wasn’t. We were just simply stating that aside from being denied kills (because they never exited warp) and the few times we did manage to get a scram on them, they could still hit the gate and thus got away.

People you want to shoot, getting away, is the single most frustrating thing in EVE.

The Whole ‘Susan Black’ thing.

(I don’t even understand why this is a ‘thing’)

Just a little background on me- I come from TEST, in TEST I come from a ~wulfpax~ type corporation that flew around in Cynabals and blew up literally everything we could (with absolutely no care about our ships actually living) and I have quite a firmly established foothold on a -nofucks- piloting behavior. Everything I could muster was a weapon, smack talk, convo bombing, mail taunting, forum trolling, invading their comms… you name it- if I could find a way to make someone frustrated and foolish, I would do it.

This well of depravity has absolutely no floor, it just keeps going further and further into the void.

All in All, it only works on foolish people to begin with- and even then, only the most foolish undock to try and fight a vastly more experienced and larger fleet. When I joined faction warfare I found myself absolutely surrounded by people that take EVE entirely too seriously; everything is literal and there is no grey area. Immediately I took advantage of this for my own personal amusement (as many of us Fweddit types have), because to some of us- continual tears from one action are quality entertainment when we can’t play EVE, or we are checking our evemail at work, or anything else; It creates a passe reminiscence for times we are too busy to actually play or are too bogged down doing ‘admin stuff’.

I still get EVEmail from people I suicide ganked, killed smartbombing the Dodixie undock, or sold a fake supercarrier to; even now, months after the actual happening. All that being said- I found Susan Black on some chance day, kicking around euphamisms and what-have-you’s about fweddit (before we even joined FW). Having killed her dozens of times, I never really though anything of her; and like many people I was gone for most of July, off on vacation- New Eden couldn’t have been further from my thoughts.

Then I came back, like many others and it was back to the old shenanigans when I stumbled upon a blog post that couldn’t be further from the truth. I took it in stride, made jokes about it in local- you can say I’m not the nicest person in the game, but I do tend to take just about everything in comedic stride. Hell- I explode into laughter when I get primaried, invariably make a mistake, and die in a glorious ball of T1 Thrasher doom.

In Susan’s defense, I’ve never actually seen her type anything at all in Local or any other channel for that matter; but at the same time, I won’t ‘leave her alone either’. Nothing makes me laugh harder than being told as a Diplomat I am unprofessional or even immature… by the hostile Militia. Outside of local, I’m a pretty friendly guy (I have a sharp tongue, but friendly just the same). Although Master Zeuth and I both approached her and offered to answer any questions she had about Fweddit to give her a better grasp on who we are as a corp, and even what our corp culture is all about- she denied it both times, saying she knew ‘exactly what we are about’. Hell I even gave her fitting advice in local, which she shrugged off as ‘bad’; so that being said- How many drakes have you lost Susan? Go see how many I’ve lost, sitting around lobbing missles with 0 velocity is most definitely ‘doing it wrong’.

Nothing makes me laugh harder, and forward things to my entire corp when you tell me I need to ‘control’ my corp members. For all of you that have said that- I don’t think you get what we are really about, and seriously I don’t want you to. You are the polar opposite of what we try to attract as a corp, and will probably never get along with our ‘views’.

If you want to get mad at someone in Fweddit, go for it.

If you want to get mad at Fweddit as a whole, go for it.

If you want to get mad at Fweddit and write a completely bullshit propaganda piece on your biased and opinionated blog, then don’t get surprised when 500 nerds start slinging mud at you from virtually every corner of EVE-Related CyberSpace. It will happen, and there are no fucking brakes on this train. Consider yourself warned.