What would be a better start for a Valentine's Day story than a happy woman with thoughts of personal affection on her mind? In that case Hegomir Torstan's personal assistant who prepares for the day that her employer is due to return to active duty in his laboratory.
Well, those of you who read any of my earlier stories will most likely expect that this can not last, especially with the Gallente spy Adrain Sourail still out there and preparing his next move.
Also in this episode the Awakened Industries capsuleers are finally united again and receive news of the situation in their home system.
Happy Valentine's Day.
Showing posts with label OOC Entries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OOC Entries. Show all posts
14 Feb 2015
2 Jan 2015
OOC Entry 112 - New Year Revival
It has been a long time since I wrote anything for my blog. Roughly half a year, enough for the usual blog to be considered dead and dropping off the radar. I had asked a friend to help me out and publish some stuff as well, but he went on to mostly write for Crossing Zebras. Not that I can hold it against him, who wouldn't like to write for a well respected news site.
I may have lost the few readers I had anyway, but still, after all this time, I decided to continue my story writing. Who knows, maybe I attract some attention or someone who is into EVE fan-fiction finds my story collection on the byways of the net.
So what took me so long anyway?
As a matter of fact, this episode has been waiting on my harddrive since a mere week after I wrote the first part of that story. I ended up not publishing it because of no particular reason and then I kept on forgetting about it. When I drop out of a routine, I tend to easily forget everything that relates to it. Not playing EVE and not seeing my co-writer and RL friend much in those last months did not help with that. We did run into eachother during new-years eve though, and he asked me about picking up where I left and so I did.
After so long, it feels weird publishing such a piece which is still building up the story and does not feature anything spectacular. I had to also remind myself where I was going with this but I think I mostly remember now.
In any case, the arc of the Gallente spy continues from his point-of-view and we learn about his abilities and the way he works. Finally, in the end it will be revealed who the mysterious fleet are that has been busy looking for a way to Awakened Industries wormhole settlement. As you might already have guessed, they are not nice guys, but things may turn out in unexpected ways.
Of course one swallow doesn't make a summer and I will have to take an effort to re-establish my publishing routine as flaky as it has sometimes been in the past.
If you have followed my writing before, then I welcome you back. If you happen to be new, then I greet you and suggest you start somewhere at the beginning otherwise nothing in that current story will make the slightest sense to you.
To all of you, happy 2015!
I may have lost the few readers I had anyway, but still, after all this time, I decided to continue my story writing. Who knows, maybe I attract some attention or someone who is into EVE fan-fiction finds my story collection on the byways of the net.
So what took me so long anyway?
As a matter of fact, this episode has been waiting on my harddrive since a mere week after I wrote the first part of that story. I ended up not publishing it because of no particular reason and then I kept on forgetting about it. When I drop out of a routine, I tend to easily forget everything that relates to it. Not playing EVE and not seeing my co-writer and RL friend much in those last months did not help with that. We did run into eachother during new-years eve though, and he asked me about picking up where I left and so I did.
After so long, it feels weird publishing such a piece which is still building up the story and does not feature anything spectacular. I had to also remind myself where I was going with this but I think I mostly remember now.
In any case, the arc of the Gallente spy continues from his point-of-view and we learn about his abilities and the way he works. Finally, in the end it will be revealed who the mysterious fleet are that has been busy looking for a way to Awakened Industries wormhole settlement. As you might already have guessed, they are not nice guys, but things may turn out in unexpected ways.
Of course one swallow doesn't make a summer and I will have to take an effort to re-establish my publishing routine as flaky as it has sometimes been in the past.
If you have followed my writing before, then I welcome you back. If you happen to be new, then I greet you and suggest you start somewhere at the beginning otherwise nothing in that current story will make the slightest sense to you.
To all of you, happy 2015!
16 Jul 2014
OOC Entry 111 - Titles
When I wrote in a comment that I will have my next chapter ready within the week, I should have written within a week. I wrote that comment exactly a week ago and so I would have just about kept my word.
You may not believe this, but I struggled most with the title of the story.
Everything I could come up with sounded like some EVE expansion or the name of some movie with Tom Cruise as the male lead, and I hate Tom Cruise. I have hated Tom Cruise since I saw Top Gun with my very first boyfriend and decided that Val Kilmer is definitely way sexier and should have been the guy who wins.
Well, at least I didn't have to endure seeing the female lead getting it on with Val Kilmer and was free to dream my young girl dreams about him. Sadly he turned rather fat later in life.
But I digress.
I have long wanted to write a story with Gallente antagonists, and now I finally saw the opening to do so. It will tie in with things that happened waaaay back in my stories. I find that rather suitable for a story set in New-Eden that things the protagonists did in the past catch up with them in a bad way.
For starters, this chapter will not feature any of my main protagonists, but I am bringing back my favourite obnoxious support character. I am not sure yet for how long I will stay on this track where I keep my main capsuleers out of the narrative, but I feel like it could go on like that for a bit.
I think it can create some extra tension when the story is about people who can actually die instead of being revived in a clone through some technological wizardry.
Not that I haven't brought a few of those poor capsuleers very close to true death.
Oh yes, and then there is the unsettling death of a bunch of scantily dressed girls in that interlude I wrote last.
Let's see what becomes of that particular thread.
But for now, the story begins with some nice food.
You may not believe this, but I struggled most with the title of the story.
Everything I could come up with sounded like some EVE expansion or the name of some movie with Tom Cruise as the male lead, and I hate Tom Cruise. I have hated Tom Cruise since I saw Top Gun with my very first boyfriend and decided that Val Kilmer is definitely way sexier and should have been the guy who wins.
Well, at least I didn't have to endure seeing the female lead getting it on with Val Kilmer and was free to dream my young girl dreams about him. Sadly he turned rather fat later in life.
But I digress.
I have long wanted to write a story with Gallente antagonists, and now I finally saw the opening to do so. It will tie in with things that happened waaaay back in my stories. I find that rather suitable for a story set in New-Eden that things the protagonists did in the past catch up with them in a bad way.
For starters, this chapter will not feature any of my main protagonists, but I am bringing back my favourite obnoxious support character. I am not sure yet for how long I will stay on this track where I keep my main capsuleers out of the narrative, but I feel like it could go on like that for a bit.
I think it can create some extra tension when the story is about people who can actually die instead of being revived in a clone through some technological wizardry.
Not that I haven't brought a few of those poor capsuleers very close to true death.
Oh yes, and then there is the unsettling death of a bunch of scantily dressed girls in that interlude I wrote last.
Let's see what becomes of that particular thread.
But for now, the story begins with some nice food.
11 Jun 2014
OOC Entry 110 - Back on the Battlefield
After an extended holiday I am back on the battlefield, and I mean this in more than one way. On the one hand I have returned to the scenery of devastation that I left behind at the end of my last story, on the other hand I return after a round of rather turbulent things have happened in the world of CCP Games.
Of course, if you are reading this blog I am pretty sure you already know about the cancellation of World of Darkness and the further layoffs that were more recent.
I would love to say I am surprised, but I am not.
It is my personal experience both from military and professional experience that many endeavours that are thought up by higher ups often work out not because their idea was so incredibly good, but because they manage to motivate those who need to do the actual work. Sometimes those people are motivated themselves, sometimes they are even demotivated by their leaders but they still keep going because of personal conviction, professionalism, dedication to a cause or any number of other personal reasons.
If the decisions of the leaders are wrong, then it is often the lower ranks who have to suffer. In wars they die, get injured or have to endure a lot, and in business they can lose their job.
I myself have long become a very cynical person with absolutely no trust in any leadership whatsoever. This is also the main reason why I have never become part of any nullsec alliance in EVE. I simply have nothing but a sour smirk left for all those people leading their space empires. How could I become enthusiastic about something in a game world which I feel disillusioned about in real life already?
I also never felt any loyalty to CCP. They make the game which I liked to play, and they created the universe I like to write fiction about. Apart from that I could not care less about who they are and what they do. Personally I am sure they have a lot of dedicated people there (there are numerous testimonies confirming that too) and I am equally sure that their senior management are a bunch of people who consider themselves to be more important than they are.
Nothing new there as far as I am concerned.
That general attitude was what attracted me to life in Wormhole Space and more specifically it kept me there when our celebrity leader left us and the man who took over mainly lead on paper but he was just one of us. Sticking to my friends, my lovers, my family, my comrades and colleagues, that is something I can live for.
I do wish that all the continuing players of EVE get the development they hope for. I hope that Valkyrie and Legion will not be unrealistic pipe dreams that get scrapped before they can develop properly so more people can enjoy an immersive gaming experience in that universe.
I myself will stay in my little corner over here and continue to write stories. Right now it is a quiet corner because my fellow blogger is moonlighting on Evenews24 and Crossing Zebras and now it is him who is on holiday.
Of course I had my moments of inspiration while travelling around, and there is enough to pick up. What happened at the end when the Nyx changed hands? Did they win against the Hive? Have they managed to transfer Sandrielle into a new clone? What will happen with Awakened Industries anyway now?
That's what I am going to deal with in the next few days when I write my next chapter.
Until then.
Of course, if you are reading this blog I am pretty sure you already know about the cancellation of World of Darkness and the further layoffs that were more recent.
I would love to say I am surprised, but I am not.
It is my personal experience both from military and professional experience that many endeavours that are thought up by higher ups often work out not because their idea was so incredibly good, but because they manage to motivate those who need to do the actual work. Sometimes those people are motivated themselves, sometimes they are even demotivated by their leaders but they still keep going because of personal conviction, professionalism, dedication to a cause or any number of other personal reasons.
If the decisions of the leaders are wrong, then it is often the lower ranks who have to suffer. In wars they die, get injured or have to endure a lot, and in business they can lose their job.
I myself have long become a very cynical person with absolutely no trust in any leadership whatsoever. This is also the main reason why I have never become part of any nullsec alliance in EVE. I simply have nothing but a sour smirk left for all those people leading their space empires. How could I become enthusiastic about something in a game world which I feel disillusioned about in real life already?
I also never felt any loyalty to CCP. They make the game which I liked to play, and they created the universe I like to write fiction about. Apart from that I could not care less about who they are and what they do. Personally I am sure they have a lot of dedicated people there (there are numerous testimonies confirming that too) and I am equally sure that their senior management are a bunch of people who consider themselves to be more important than they are.
Nothing new there as far as I am concerned.
That general attitude was what attracted me to life in Wormhole Space and more specifically it kept me there when our celebrity leader left us and the man who took over mainly lead on paper but he was just one of us. Sticking to my friends, my lovers, my family, my comrades and colleagues, that is something I can live for.
I do wish that all the continuing players of EVE get the development they hope for. I hope that Valkyrie and Legion will not be unrealistic pipe dreams that get scrapped before they can develop properly so more people can enjoy an immersive gaming experience in that universe.
I myself will stay in my little corner over here and continue to write stories. Right now it is a quiet corner because my fellow blogger is moonlighting on Evenews24 and Crossing Zebras and now it is him who is on holiday.
Of course I had my moments of inspiration while travelling around, and there is enough to pick up. What happened at the end when the Nyx changed hands? Did they win against the Hive? Have they managed to transfer Sandrielle into a new clone? What will happen with Awakened Industries anyway now?
That's what I am going to deal with in the next few days when I write my next chapter.
Until then.
5 May 2014
OOC Entry 109 - Technomagic
One of the things that fascinates me most about technology is the strange realm where it almost begins to feel like magic. When it comes to EVE that feeling was always strongest for me in relation to the way capsuleers existed.
The skill system tells us of Infomorph Psychology. That's the thing you need to be familiar with to have multiple clones.
But what is that infomorph, and what sort of psychology applies to it? Like any good magic, such technology poses a lot of very intriguing questions, and I love those.
In my last chapter of the current story I make a bit of an attempt to explore that state of mind which makes a capsuleer something else than other humans. That consciousness which resides both in a brain but also in a computer. The part that can travel between machine and flesh in an instant and which is the actual immortal aspect of the capsuleer.
Such a mind can achieve great things when melded with a spaceship, but what else could it do immersed in an artificial system of complex machines?
Well, there is all that in the story but also some close combat in the corridors of a supercarrier and an escalating fleet fight still going on.
It's a bit of a longer read, but I hope you enjoy it.
I'm delivering this to you on the evening of my departure for two weeks of holidays. So next time I will actually have an excuse for taking longer to write something ;)
The skill system tells us of Infomorph Psychology. That's the thing you need to be familiar with to have multiple clones.
But what is that infomorph, and what sort of psychology applies to it? Like any good magic, such technology poses a lot of very intriguing questions, and I love those.
In my last chapter of the current story I make a bit of an attempt to explore that state of mind which makes a capsuleer something else than other humans. That consciousness which resides both in a brain but also in a computer. The part that can travel between machine and flesh in an instant and which is the actual immortal aspect of the capsuleer.
Such a mind can achieve great things when melded with a spaceship, but what else could it do immersed in an artificial system of complex machines?
Well, there is all that in the story but also some close combat in the corridors of a supercarrier and an escalating fleet fight still going on.
It's a bit of a longer read, but I hope you enjoy it.
I'm delivering this to you on the evening of my departure for two weeks of holidays. So next time I will actually have an excuse for taking longer to write something ;)
22 Apr 2014
OOC Entry 108 - Carriers and Mercs
The Easter weekend is behind us, and I used the opportunity of some time off to work on the next story chapter. This time I directly referred to the "Rooks & Kings Manual of Advanced Triage Carrier Tactics" for the way how Rasenzoku are using their carriers.
Like I said, this chapter also features some shipboard combat for which I have been browsing through quite some Dust514 informational material. As always I am dedicated to keeping things as close to game-lore as possible. I've never played the game myself, so I needed to get familiar with the weapons and armour that is being used by the infantry elite of New Eden.
It turns out, that I am still unable to bring the battle to a conclusion in this chapter, so you can look forward to yet another chapter full of excitement and action.
I think after this story I will have had enough for some time of large battles ;)
At some time my poor protagonists should be able to enjoy a moment of peace, don't you think?
Like I said, this chapter also features some shipboard combat for which I have been browsing through quite some Dust514 informational material. As always I am dedicated to keeping things as close to game-lore as possible. I've never played the game myself, so I needed to get familiar with the weapons and armour that is being used by the infantry elite of New Eden.
It turns out, that I am still unable to bring the battle to a conclusion in this chapter, so you can look forward to yet another chapter full of excitement and action.
I think after this story I will have had enough for some time of large battles ;)
At some time my poor protagonists should be able to enjoy a moment of peace, don't you think?
6 Apr 2014
OOC Entry 107 - Ok, that was hard.
It has been over a month since I managed to continue my latest story. I am not even sure how long exactly, but now I finally made it: I published the third chapter \o/
I would love to say it was only my daily life that kept me for so long, but if I'm honest, I have to admit I had a terribly hard time writing this. I wanted to have black-ops battleships and bombers and all kinds of other stuff in it. I never really did a hotdrop with black ops ships in-game, so I had to read about it and get some advice.
The credit goes to my fellow blogger Kamar Raimo for being an expert consultant and for providing a screenshot of a Widow. He tells me that one would rather use T3 ships than recons for such hotdrops, but I like Pilgrims and so I wanted to have Pilgrims in the story.
There needs to be some artistic license here!
I generally have little experience with the whole bridging business and cynos and all that. I have been in quite a few nullsec fights when I was with Noir and Black Legion, but nothing that I would call proper knowledge of all things involved in force projection through jump bridges. While this is a story and not everything has to reflect game mechanics 100%, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible.
All that made things complicated, and I find writing space battles difficult enough as it is. Then I also had to come up with some Rooks & Kings style elite PVP tactic that would actually make it possible for that smaller but more disciplined force to beat a much larger Hive fleet with a supercarrier as support. I developed new ideas all the time and then discarded them again.
I rewrote the whole thing from the ground up more than once, and I am still not sure whether it is really any good. I guess I let the readers judge. I just had to hit "publish" eventually or otherwise I'd go crazy with that story remaining unfinished in my head.
Originally I intended the battle to be just one chapter, but it turned out that it had to be two. Even as it is, this current episode is already four written pages long, and I always try to keep a single episode between two and three for ease of on-screen reading.
Well, at least you now get two episodes full of action. The second one will also feature some shipboard combat. I've never done that before, so I really wanted to give it a try.
I hope you have less of a hard time reading this chapter than I had writing it :D
I would love to say it was only my daily life that kept me for so long, but if I'm honest, I have to admit I had a terribly hard time writing this. I wanted to have black-ops battleships and bombers and all kinds of other stuff in it. I never really did a hotdrop with black ops ships in-game, so I had to read about it and get some advice.
The credit goes to my fellow blogger Kamar Raimo for being an expert consultant and for providing a screenshot of a Widow. He tells me that one would rather use T3 ships than recons for such hotdrops, but I like Pilgrims and so I wanted to have Pilgrims in the story.
There needs to be some artistic license here!
I generally have little experience with the whole bridging business and cynos and all that. I have been in quite a few nullsec fights when I was with Noir and Black Legion, but nothing that I would call proper knowledge of all things involved in force projection through jump bridges. While this is a story and not everything has to reflect game mechanics 100%, I wanted it to be as realistic as possible.
All that made things complicated, and I find writing space battles difficult enough as it is. Then I also had to come up with some Rooks & Kings style elite PVP tactic that would actually make it possible for that smaller but more disciplined force to beat a much larger Hive fleet with a supercarrier as support. I developed new ideas all the time and then discarded them again.
I rewrote the whole thing from the ground up more than once, and I am still not sure whether it is really any good. I guess I let the readers judge. I just had to hit "publish" eventually or otherwise I'd go crazy with that story remaining unfinished in my head.
Originally I intended the battle to be just one chapter, but it turned out that it had to be two. Even as it is, this current episode is already four written pages long, and I always try to keep a single episode between two and three for ease of on-screen reading.
Well, at least you now get two episodes full of action. The second one will also feature some shipboard combat. I've never done that before, so I really wanted to give it a try.
I hope you have less of a hard time reading this chapter than I had writing it :D
5 Feb 2014
OOC Entry 105 - To the rescue
As Keram hinted in the closing scene of Metamorphosis, Awakened Industries have a plan to get Sandrielle back from The Hive. With the actions of Shisei prior to the events of the previous chapter, this plan has been set in motion. Now the moment has arrived for the next step where the Rasenzoku get to do their part.
While this is going on, attentive readers will probably be able to piece together where those sophisticated infiltration nanites are coming from. After all, creations like that have appeared in the stories before.
The new chapter then closes with probably the most disturbing scene I have written since the beginning of this story arc, but since I have my official disclaimer in place I can go as far as I want. Not that I held back in the times before I put a warning on the blog that there is mature content inside which is sometimes not suitable for the squeamish. :)
Anyway, after all this building up, I actually feel like writing a proper space-battle again even though I find that really difficult. The next chapter will definitely feature one of a kind that hasn't been featured before in any of my stories. Something that I always wished to do in-game.
I hope that I can put it into words in a way that gets it across well.
While this is going on, attentive readers will probably be able to piece together where those sophisticated infiltration nanites are coming from. After all, creations like that have appeared in the stories before.
The new chapter then closes with probably the most disturbing scene I have written since the beginning of this story arc, but since I have my official disclaimer in place I can go as far as I want. Not that I held back in the times before I put a warning on the blog that there is mature content inside which is sometimes not suitable for the squeamish. :)
Anyway, after all this building up, I actually feel like writing a proper space-battle again even though I find that really difficult. The next chapter will definitely feature one of a kind that hasn't been featured before in any of my stories. Something that I always wished to do in-game.
I hope that I can put it into words in a way that gets it across well.
18 Jan 2014
OOC Entry 104 - The next chapter
I hoped I would be finished with the beginning of the next story before my overenthusiastic new blog partner came up with his next post, but he beat me to it by a few hours.
For the opening of this new story arc I decided to dedicate some time to Shisei, because he is one of my least used protagonists. The quiet types who have no serious drama surrounding them are always the most difficult to write about.
One of my long-time readers once commented that he found Shisei "too scientific" or something like that (I am too lazy to search for the comment.)
In my mind he is not like that at all. While he is of course a scientist and a Caldari Achura, I always thought of him as a deeply philosophical - even spiritual - sort of character.
In this opening episode I tried to work out that aspect of the character as he is seen through the eyes of a man who thinks capsuleers are basically a bunch of spoiled children with sociopathic tendencies.
The end of the episode then ties in with the larger narrative, and I am challenging every reader who has followed the story so far to get the hints and tell me what is going on there. To me it all flows from past stories and I am wondering how obvious I am being there.
In any case, if you are not the sort of reader who enjoys character expose, I can tell you that things are going to get interesting pretty quickly now.
For the opening of this new story arc I decided to dedicate some time to Shisei, because he is one of my least used protagonists. The quiet types who have no serious drama surrounding them are always the most difficult to write about.
One of my long-time readers once commented that he found Shisei "too scientific" or something like that (I am too lazy to search for the comment.)
In my mind he is not like that at all. While he is of course a scientist and a Caldari Achura, I always thought of him as a deeply philosophical - even spiritual - sort of character.
In this opening episode I tried to work out that aspect of the character as he is seen through the eyes of a man who thinks capsuleers are basically a bunch of spoiled children with sociopathic tendencies.
The end of the episode then ties in with the larger narrative, and I am challenging every reader who has followed the story so far to get the hints and tell me what is going on there. To me it all flows from past stories and I am wondering how obvious I am being there.
In any case, if you are not the sort of reader who enjoys character expose, I can tell you that things are going to get interesting pretty quickly now.
7 Jan 2014
TRS - An Introduction
The strict mistress of this here blog tells me I should find some sort of prefix for my posts because she wants them to be set apart from her own. What can I say, I'm a guest here.
The prefix I chose is an acronym for "The Reformed Spy" because that's what I am when it comes to EVE.
Let me introduce myself by starting my story with my life as an EVE noob. All you young folks out there in highsec, listen up, this is a story about someone just like you. I guess the old bittervets will also find it funny for nostalgic reasons.
By now it is almost six years ago that I started playing this game. I have not had any prior MMO experience, but I really liked the Homeworld series of computer games. I guess that was why modern adware somehow flagged me as someone who likes games with spaceships because I kept posting on Homeworld related forums about how to beat some level or other. Eventually I saw an ad for EVE online and it looked nice. I clicked it and ended up subscribing shortly after reading some stuff about the game.
My life in EVE began like that of many others. I did the tutorials, fitted my ships in horrible ways, mined and ran missions and ended up with some newbie carebear corp. One day that carebear corp got wardecced by griefers and that was when my EVE life took a turn that I would never even have considered possible.
Like all other poor noobs in highsec who are wardecced, we died and we cried and then died some more. Eventually the corp broke apart. Some people ragequit, others decided to strike out on their own. The CEO disbanded the corp. I was alone again, and since I had nowhere else to turn, I started a convo with one of the griefer guys when I saw him in system again a week or so after it had all ended. To my surprise, he seemed pretty decent and offered me to make other people cry rather than being a victim. I ended up joining with those guys and suddenly I was on the other side, killing people like my ex corpmates.
So began my time as an asshole in EVE. They taught me the basics on how to fit ships for ganking and PVP. We had fun and we harvested tears until one fateful day I had another lifechanging conversation. This time with a carebear target. As I had learned to, I delivered the line that we will leave them alone if they paid us 100mill ISK. I thought that was a decent amount back then in 2008, and we weren't going to let off anyway, even if they paid. Unexpectedly, that guy replied with something to the effect of "I'll triple that if you sell out your corpmates and deliver them on a platter to those mercenaries I'm going to hire to kill them instead."
I still remember that day like yesterday. While I was sitting there looking at the letters on my screen, something slowly dawned on me: I can make more money selling out my corpmates than I can by extracting carebear tears. I ended up saying yes.
What followed was some rather bumbling back and forth scheming that ended up with me leading that merry band of assholes into a trap with none the wiser. (TBH those griefers were not the sharpest knives in the drawer) I ended up getting my ISK, collected the loot from a few wrecks of my corpmates and "misplacing it" and - most interestingly - saw another form of tears flow: This time it was the griefers crying.
Like a good opportunist, I started talking to those mercs to ask them to take me in when the griefer corp blew up under the sustained fire of some real PVPers.. The mercs said, that they wouldn't take someone who was a spy and traitor. I hadn't even really thought about it in those serious terms, but when they put it like that I thought to myself "Maybe I can be a spy in this game?"
It was the time of the Red Swarm Federation's war against BoB, and I had read about spying. I always took it to be more of a metaphor, but I realized then, that there was actual spying going on. Taking hold of that thought, I replied to the mercs that I could be their spy, and to my surprise they actually accepted.
From then on, I started an illustrious career in EVE that lead me to nullsec and into the shadow war that went on behind the scenes of some of the major conflicts throughout the following four years. I ended up insinuating myself into corps, collecting and relaying intel and eventually becoming a member of a professional spy network.
It all ended during the last days of the war between Test Alliance and the CFC versus Against All Authorities and their southern allies. Without wanting to go into details, a few things happened then that made me realize what kind of twisted mindset I not only helped support, but had also developed myself. I realized that it really done my head in spending years with professionally lying to people.
At that point I decided that I want to put an end to it all. I extracted myself, made sure I had my ass covered and ended up stopping with EVE for some time.
At around that time yet another twist in my long story happened. There was that RL friend of mine - the woman who started this blog - whom I had convinced to start playing EVE. Other than me, she not only was a total straight arrow, but she also recognized long before me how fucked up things were in my EVE life. I had many interesting conversations with her about the subject. While I had once convinced her to start playing EVE, thinking that she may become an in-game ally, she ended up doing things very differently than I.
At the end of it all, she convinced me to return into the game and try to do things more her way this time.
I guess that, and the fact that she cajoled me to write on her blog, says something either about her strength of will or my inability to say no to her.
So now I have started playing EVE again with a clean slate, and it feels good.
For my future contribution here, I will tell you about my second life in EVE which involves very different things than what I have ever done before: Small-gang PVP, Faction Warfare and being a newbie again as far as skills are concerned.
The mistress will make sure I keep you entertained.
The prefix I chose is an acronym for "The Reformed Spy" because that's what I am when it comes to EVE.
Let me introduce myself by starting my story with my life as an EVE noob. All you young folks out there in highsec, listen up, this is a story about someone just like you. I guess the old bittervets will also find it funny for nostalgic reasons.
By now it is almost six years ago that I started playing this game. I have not had any prior MMO experience, but I really liked the Homeworld series of computer games. I guess that was why modern adware somehow flagged me as someone who likes games with spaceships because I kept posting on Homeworld related forums about how to beat some level or other. Eventually I saw an ad for EVE online and it looked nice. I clicked it and ended up subscribing shortly after reading some stuff about the game.
My life in EVE began like that of many others. I did the tutorials, fitted my ships in horrible ways, mined and ran missions and ended up with some newbie carebear corp. One day that carebear corp got wardecced by griefers and that was when my EVE life took a turn that I would never even have considered possible.
Like all other poor noobs in highsec who are wardecced, we died and we cried and then died some more. Eventually the corp broke apart. Some people ragequit, others decided to strike out on their own. The CEO disbanded the corp. I was alone again, and since I had nowhere else to turn, I started a convo with one of the griefer guys when I saw him in system again a week or so after it had all ended. To my surprise, he seemed pretty decent and offered me to make other people cry rather than being a victim. I ended up joining with those guys and suddenly I was on the other side, killing people like my ex corpmates.
So began my time as an asshole in EVE. They taught me the basics on how to fit ships for ganking and PVP. We had fun and we harvested tears until one fateful day I had another lifechanging conversation. This time with a carebear target. As I had learned to, I delivered the line that we will leave them alone if they paid us 100mill ISK. I thought that was a decent amount back then in 2008, and we weren't going to let off anyway, even if they paid. Unexpectedly, that guy replied with something to the effect of "I'll triple that if you sell out your corpmates and deliver them on a platter to those mercenaries I'm going to hire to kill them instead."
I still remember that day like yesterday. While I was sitting there looking at the letters on my screen, something slowly dawned on me: I can make more money selling out my corpmates than I can by extracting carebear tears. I ended up saying yes.
What followed was some rather bumbling back and forth scheming that ended up with me leading that merry band of assholes into a trap with none the wiser. (TBH those griefers were not the sharpest knives in the drawer) I ended up getting my ISK, collected the loot from a few wrecks of my corpmates and "misplacing it" and - most interestingly - saw another form of tears flow: This time it was the griefers crying.
Like a good opportunist, I started talking to those mercs to ask them to take me in when the griefer corp blew up under the sustained fire of some real PVPers.. The mercs said, that they wouldn't take someone who was a spy and traitor. I hadn't even really thought about it in those serious terms, but when they put it like that I thought to myself "Maybe I can be a spy in this game?"
It was the time of the Red Swarm Federation's war against BoB, and I had read about spying. I always took it to be more of a metaphor, but I realized then, that there was actual spying going on. Taking hold of that thought, I replied to the mercs that I could be their spy, and to my surprise they actually accepted.
From then on, I started an illustrious career in EVE that lead me to nullsec and into the shadow war that went on behind the scenes of some of the major conflicts throughout the following four years. I ended up insinuating myself into corps, collecting and relaying intel and eventually becoming a member of a professional spy network.
It all ended during the last days of the war between Test Alliance and the CFC versus Against All Authorities and their southern allies. Without wanting to go into details, a few things happened then that made me realize what kind of twisted mindset I not only helped support, but had also developed myself. I realized that it really done my head in spending years with professionally lying to people.
At that point I decided that I want to put an end to it all. I extracted myself, made sure I had my ass covered and ended up stopping with EVE for some time.
At around that time yet another twist in my long story happened. There was that RL friend of mine - the woman who started this blog - whom I had convinced to start playing EVE. Other than me, she not only was a total straight arrow, but she also recognized long before me how fucked up things were in my EVE life. I had many interesting conversations with her about the subject. While I had once convinced her to start playing EVE, thinking that she may become an in-game ally, she ended up doing things very differently than I.
At the end of it all, she convinced me to return into the game and try to do things more her way this time.
I guess that, and the fact that she cajoled me to write on her blog, says something either about her strength of will or my inability to say no to her.
So now I have started playing EVE again with a clean slate, and it feels good.
For my future contribution here, I will tell you about my second life in EVE which involves very different things than what I have ever done before: Small-gang PVP, Faction Warfare and being a newbie again as far as skills are concerned.
The mistress will make sure I keep you entertained.
6 Jan 2014
OOC Entry 103 - The long neglect
Hello dear readers who are still out there and have not lost faith in me.
I can tell you with no little sense of relief that nothing horrible has happened to me this time.
I just drifted out of touch and have neglected my precious story blog that is so incredibly popular that by now hundreds of fans have committed suicide in desperation because my story did not continue.
I guess that brings me back down to an actual readership of three.
It was fun imagining having lots and lots of angsty fans for a moment there though. Then again, I reckon most EVE players would be more likely to throw themselves off a building if CCP nerfs their favourite ship rather than when some random fanfic writer goes AWOL :D
Anyway, here I am, back on the job and finally finishing the Metamorphosis story arc.
So by the end of that episode you will know how Sandrielle became who she is and what her connection with Rasenzoku (Or as they would call themselves: The Rasen Zoku) actually is.
At the end of this story, things will go back to the present day and there is a hint of things to come.
Now that I have recommitted to writing, I promptly proceeded to write myself into a corner where I have to come up with something really ingenious.
Well, let's see what I can come up with.
Also, at this late hour where insomnia and nervousness about my first day at work after nine months keep me awake, I have made a decision: I want to invite a friend to write blogposts about in-game stuff here while I keep writing fiction.
Since I am not playing EVE anymore, I feel a bit weird writing about the in-game experience. Since I am not as amazing as The Mittani and do not have hundreds of young men to do my bidding in-game while I never log in, I wont have that much to write about.
Then again, if I had that many young men at my command, I would have them massage my shoulders and shave my legs while I am reclining in a massive bathtub that they built for me, rather than force them to kill spacepixels.
I guess that's another difference between me and The Mittani.
Anyway, I have a poor bastard in mind who will be forced to fill this blog with non-fictional content while I shave my legs myself.
I hope I can convince him. If it works out, you should seen an introductory post by him soon.
Happy New Year!
I can tell you with no little sense of relief that nothing horrible has happened to me this time.
I just drifted out of touch and have neglected my precious story blog that is so incredibly popular that by now hundreds of fans have committed suicide in desperation because my story did not continue.
I guess that brings me back down to an actual readership of three.
It was fun imagining having lots and lots of angsty fans for a moment there though. Then again, I reckon most EVE players would be more likely to throw themselves off a building if CCP nerfs their favourite ship rather than when some random fanfic writer goes AWOL :D
Anyway, here I am, back on the job and finally finishing the Metamorphosis story arc.
So by the end of that episode you will know how Sandrielle became who she is and what her connection with Rasenzoku (Or as they would call themselves: The Rasen Zoku) actually is.
At the end of this story, things will go back to the present day and there is a hint of things to come.
Now that I have recommitted to writing, I promptly proceeded to write myself into a corner where I have to come up with something really ingenious.
Well, let's see what I can come up with.
Also, at this late hour where insomnia and nervousness about my first day at work after nine months keep me awake, I have made a decision: I want to invite a friend to write blogposts about in-game stuff here while I keep writing fiction.
Since I am not playing EVE anymore, I feel a bit weird writing about the in-game experience. Since I am not as amazing as The Mittani and do not have hundreds of young men to do my bidding in-game while I never log in, I wont have that much to write about.
Then again, if I had that many young men at my command, I would have them massage my shoulders and shave my legs while I am reclining in a massive bathtub that they built for me, rather than force them to kill spacepixels.
I guess that's another difference between me and The Mittani.
Anyway, I have a poor bastard in mind who will be forced to fill this blog with non-fictional content while I shave my legs myself.
I hope I can convince him. If it works out, you should seen an introductory post by him soon.
Happy New Year!
13 Nov 2013
OOC Entry 102 - Processing Power
Edit: It was pointed out to me on reddit that there is actually proof that CCP is using Windows HPC. That made a few changes to this blogpost necessary.
Edit 2: In the meantime I have been told by CCP Veritas that, despite what the video says, they have decided against Windows HPC. That means of course that my statements about that being a problem for performance do not apply. It's great to get new information and to learn from mistakes.
I recommend you to also read the exchange on reddit where CCP Veritas offers a few interesting insights.
In the last two weeks EVE Online saw the development of a major conflict which is now commonly called
the Halloween War. As usual with such events, there's lots of reporting, grandstanding and chestbeating so all involved parties can feel a bit better about losing close to a trillion ISK and staying up all night, playing a game in slow motion.
Most recently, this collective exercise in gaming masochism resulted in the inevitable node crash massive fleet fights tend to create whenever they do not happen on something that CCP calls a "Reinforced Node".
The consequence of the node crash is a lot of fingerpointing at CCP and all kinds of theories and myths arise about the Tranquility server's ability to cope with the growth of EVE.
On the first glance, the Tranquility server system looks pretty impressive. Both CCP and the gaming press also like to further bedazzle the audience with spectacular terms like "Military Grade Hardware" and staggering numbers like "2500GHz Processing Power".
Certainly, Tranquility is a high-performance system that can do a lot. So why does it not manage to sustain large fleet battles or Burn Jita scale events?
Personally I have some professional experience with High Performance Computing Systems, otherwise known under the more catchy term "Supercomputing Clusters". I have been a user and maintainer of such systems when I was with the military, and more recently I have actually built and installed systems like that as a job.
Under scrutiny, and when comparing it with other HPC systems, Tranquility becomes quite a bit less impressive, and therein lies a possible explanation why CCP is suffering from node crashes when there are massive conflicts.
Where to begin ...?
Processing Power
First of all, processing power is not measured in clock speed alone. The generally accepted baseline unit of measuring processing power is called FLOPS which is a combination of clock speed and processing cores available.
Not only is clock speed alone not a sufficient way of measuring processing power, it also doesn't quite add up in the way that you can say you have 2000 GHz of total speed just because you have 500 CPUs running at 4GHz each. For that to be remotely applicable as a statement, you would have to have all those CPUs doing exactly the same thing parallel in a multithreaded way, and here we hit another stumbling block in CCP's setup.
Bits and Threads
Multithreading - simply put - means that you can split the same operation among many processor cores at the same time so that they share their workload. CCP personnel rarely make statements about the specifics, but on the most recent Episode of "Shit on Kugu" (a fitting name for that terrible podcast) CCP Dolan re-iterated that "EVE can run on a single core" and that CCP are working on making EVE 64 bit so they can actually use multithreading. (It's at about 45min into the podcast)
There is a hidden piece of information there: There is one commonly used server system that is incapable of running 32 bit applications parallel multithreaded while making full use of a multicore architecture: Microsoft Windows. As a matter of fact, the Windows Server OS is limited by the codebase in the number of cores it can utilize.
I have once worked with a Windows Server HPC system (TBH "Windows HPC" sounds like an oxymoron to me to begin with) and I can tell you it was the worst performing HPC system I have ever seen. I wouldn't expect to run CFC vs. Everyone Else on such a system without lots of sleepless nights because of crashes.
Nodes and Resources
In standard HPC terminology, a node is a single hardware platform with it's standard setup (CPU, Memory, coprocessors etc. all on one motherboard). Generally, you would have one or more so called master nodes which schedule processing tasks for all the compute nodes which do the actual number crunching. This is done by means of a so called job scheduler and the applications are built to support running in parallel. The job scheduler looks everywhere on the cluster - according to parameters which you can set - where it can find free resources to process the given workload.
So let's say you have 500 Ishtars all launch Sentry Drones and fire at a target. That is a set of mathematical operations which have to be done by the cluster. Now the scheduler gets this submitted as a job and then it would look for cores and memory and clock cycles which are sufficient and optimal to finish those calculations. That is if your system and your software support multithreaded parallel computation on multiple cores.
CCP uses a bit of a different terminology. They call an instance of the game a node, and that instance can run anything from a dozen to a single star system with everything in it. That sounds a bit awkward as a model for resource allocation.
CCP Dolan mentions how great it would be if they could dynamically allocate resources without having to shut down a node. As it is now, they actually have to manually assign a solar system to something which they call a "Reinforced Node". What CCP means by that is, that they assign the computation of all tasks that happen for one game instance in one solar system onto a very powerful machine. I'd guess they do that during downtime because it seems from Dolan's statements that they actually have to take down that game instance and restart it on different hardware.
All that would not be necessary if they had a more intelligent HPC system.
Now, don't get me wrong. I have great respect for game developers. If you look at the amazing graphics and concurrent operations they can squeeze out of a model like that, one can only be impressed. In most cases, a modern computer game has to be able to run on one PC or on one game console, and I can tell you, even your most pimped gaming rig will not outperform even a low-grade HPC compute node.
CCP are actually doing quite well considering what they have to make do with, but if I were one of the admins of that system, I'd wish for a special hell for the people who decided to build things that way in the first place.
So where does that leave us?
Maybe they do manage to make it happen that game instances can be transferred dynamically from one machine to another on the fly, but they would be much better off if all of EVE ran on all available machines as separate jobs that make efficient use of the resources.
So, until CCP actually builds another cluster and transfers all of EVE onto that new system, the big powers of New Eden will be stuck with TiDi and having to request a "Reinforced Node" if they know they want to have a massive fleet-fight in a particular system.
Or they could come up with a doctrine that doesn't require them to drop thousands of ships in one place to win, but for now that seems to be the path to victory, even if it is a slow grind of many hours.
28 Oct 2013
Blog Banter 50 - Countering Malcanis' Law
I'm a bit late for this month's Blog Banter, but well, the month is not over yet.
This time the net is cast pretty wide with a whole range of questions:
In other ways the company still retains it's adolescent behaviour as exemplified by the SOMERBlink PR disaster (links not necessary except if you lived under a rock), the latest episode of the ongoing Mintchip soap-opera or the messy handling of the TOS change, but in terms of game development things look promising as far as I am concerned.
Whichever way CCP wants to take the game, however, one of the most pressing issues that they will have to address in the future is how to expand their playerbase without changing the special nature of EVE Online lest they lose what makes their game unique in a world where ever more MMOs are appearing on the scene.
Others have written on the subject already, but I feel like it deserves to be mentioned again for emphasis: There is an inflation of accounts while the real growth of the playerbase appears to be a lot less significant.
Of course I do not have the numbers, but everything I hear and read indicates that this is the case. While on the bottom line, CCP keeps making more money, it also means that they make this money off of fewer people than they could and that this trend is ongoing. Most of those people exist at the high-end of the spectrum - long term players with lots of ISK and experience.
While player retention at this stage is generally good, those players are also the ones most likely to leave the game for longer periods of time due to burnout or real-life matters. An old bittervet who has seen it all will leave and take a lot more convincing to return than someone who tried the game a few months ago and might be reeled back in by some shiny new feature. In the case of an old player leaving, we are looking at anything up from two accounts that might be lost indefinitely.
New players will probably keep coming to the game in numbers for as long as the marketing department does it's work, but there is a lot of turnover there. I dare to speculate that not so many take the step from short-term interest to long term "brand loyalty".
I have the feeling that there might be a real danger that the departure of long-term multi-account players will eventually exceed the potential of new players to keep the game afloat with their coming and going.
To address this, I would propose an actual expansion of the possibilities in game.
EVE is already great in the way how it offers many ways to play the game. If one gets bored or burned out of one way, one can go down a different path. This is the aspect which should be expanded further.
As a central rule for this expansion drive I would propose a modified version of Malcanis Law which states:
What has to be central for any of this to work - and not become a fulfilment of Malcanis' Law instead - are possibilities for newer players and older ones alike to have fun and engage with eachother without introducing another mechanic that can be beaten by throwing excessive numbers at it whether that be ISK or amounts of players.
Right now, there are two aspects of EVE which more or less fulfil that criterion: Faction Warfare and Wormhole Space. In the former, there is clearly content which can be played by people in frigates and rather low skills. Numbers work to some extent, but by no means are they as effective or as necessary as in nullsec sovereignty. Wormhole Space has a bit of a higher entry threshold, but it also has a very effective built-in numbers cap through mass limits and the inability to use cynosural fields. Also in Wormhole Space there is a clear "level progression" that helps players to find the place that suits them best while taking away none of the sandbox aspect.
What EVE needs is more avenues to play the game in ways similar to that.
While I am not pleading for CCP to ignore and neglect the big players of nullsec, I would like to point out, that those player empires are pretty self-sufficient in creating content for themselves. They even have their own methods to attract and retain new players.
The assignment rather is, to engage and retain the ones who are not motivated in such a way. That applies whether they are new players without direction or old players who cringe at the thought of yet another operation to take down sov structures or run the same PVE site for the 1000th time.
I will not take the time here to write down every proposal I would be able to come up with for such mechanics, this post is long enough already. I have written down a few in the past, though. Whatever the measures or mechanics introduced, if they try their best to fulfil my rule above while not fulfilling Malcanis' Law, then the path into the future should be a promising one I would dare to say.
As a last thought, about what I would like to see revived from the past, I would say things like the Arek' Jalaan project. That was probably the most inspiring thing I have ever seen emerge from this game. The potential and it's realisation was just wonderful, and it was a sad thing when it was just left to die a quiet death. This mixture of in-game lore, metagame, player interaction and guiding influence from developers was a wonderful synergy that showcased how amazing the things are that can come out of this game.
This time the net is cast pretty wide with a whole range of questions:
In general, I have a good feeling about the future vision for EVE Online. In contrast to the last ten years, there seems to be a long-term plan on how to move ahead. CCP is becoming more mature in this way.With the Rubicon expansion being announced and the SOMER Blink scandals (or non-scandals depending on your point of view) that have erupted on the community at the same time, it truly feels like an age of EVE has passed and a new one is dawning.But which direction is it going? This blog banter can be about several different topics:- where do you think EVE is going? Is it a good or bad vision ahead?- if you were EVE's new Executive Producer, where would you take the game?- What comes (or should come) after Rubicon in terms of the mechanics and ship balancing we've seen? (CSM8 not allowed to answer this one!)- Is there anything in EVE's ten year past that should be resurrected? Or buried and forgotten?- What is the future of the community? What should or should not change?
In other ways the company still retains it's adolescent behaviour as exemplified by the SOMERBlink PR disaster (links not necessary except if you lived under a rock), the latest episode of the ongoing Mintchip soap-opera or the messy handling of the TOS change, but in terms of game development things look promising as far as I am concerned.
Whichever way CCP wants to take the game, however, one of the most pressing issues that they will have to address in the future is how to expand their playerbase without changing the special nature of EVE Online lest they lose what makes their game unique in a world where ever more MMOs are appearing on the scene.
Others have written on the subject already, but I feel like it deserves to be mentioned again for emphasis: There is an inflation of accounts while the real growth of the playerbase appears to be a lot less significant.
Of course I do not have the numbers, but everything I hear and read indicates that this is the case. While on the bottom line, CCP keeps making more money, it also means that they make this money off of fewer people than they could and that this trend is ongoing. Most of those people exist at the high-end of the spectrum - long term players with lots of ISK and experience.
While player retention at this stage is generally good, those players are also the ones most likely to leave the game for longer periods of time due to burnout or real-life matters. An old bittervet who has seen it all will leave and take a lot more convincing to return than someone who tried the game a few months ago and might be reeled back in by some shiny new feature. In the case of an old player leaving, we are looking at anything up from two accounts that might be lost indefinitely.
New players will probably keep coming to the game in numbers for as long as the marketing department does it's work, but there is a lot of turnover there. I dare to speculate that not so many take the step from short-term interest to long term "brand loyalty".
I have the feeling that there might be a real danger that the departure of long-term multi-account players will eventually exceed the potential of new players to keep the game afloat with their coming and going.
To address this, I would propose an actual expansion of the possibilities in game.
EVE is already great in the way how it offers many ways to play the game. If one gets bored or burned out of one way, one can go down a different path. This is the aspect which should be expanded further.
As a central rule for this expansion drive I would propose a modified version of Malcanis Law which states:
"Whenever a mechanics change is proposed on behalf of 'new players', that change is always to the overwhelming advantage of richer, older players."My proposed counter to this would be:
"Whatever measure that is introduced to keep the game fresh and exciting for the bittervets must also attract and retain new players"There are lots of possibilities to fulfil that statement: Make PVE something else than a repetitive quasi-afk activity that needs actual attention and interaction (How about finally fixing/reworking those COSMOS mission arcs or introducing more Incursion-style PVE?). Change sovereignty mechanics to be less of a mass-fleet grind into something deserving more intelligent maneuvering. (Lots of bloggers have offered opinions and advice on that subject over time.) Redesign the crafting system to make it more attractive and less buggy. Finally redesign the corporation management to make it look less like the badly designed interface for an unnecessarily complex machine. Open up new possibilities for in-game "professions" (Bounty-hunting and mercenary marketplace are still dead in the water, for example)
What has to be central for any of this to work - and not become a fulfilment of Malcanis' Law instead - are possibilities for newer players and older ones alike to have fun and engage with eachother without introducing another mechanic that can be beaten by throwing excessive numbers at it whether that be ISK or amounts of players.
Right now, there are two aspects of EVE which more or less fulfil that criterion: Faction Warfare and Wormhole Space. In the former, there is clearly content which can be played by people in frigates and rather low skills. Numbers work to some extent, but by no means are they as effective or as necessary as in nullsec sovereignty. Wormhole Space has a bit of a higher entry threshold, but it also has a very effective built-in numbers cap through mass limits and the inability to use cynosural fields. Also in Wormhole Space there is a clear "level progression" that helps players to find the place that suits them best while taking away none of the sandbox aspect.
What EVE needs is more avenues to play the game in ways similar to that.
While I am not pleading for CCP to ignore and neglect the big players of nullsec, I would like to point out, that those player empires are pretty self-sufficient in creating content for themselves. They even have their own methods to attract and retain new players.
The assignment rather is, to engage and retain the ones who are not motivated in such a way. That applies whether they are new players without direction or old players who cringe at the thought of yet another operation to take down sov structures or run the same PVE site for the 1000th time.
I will not take the time here to write down every proposal I would be able to come up with for such mechanics, this post is long enough already. I have written down a few in the past, though. Whatever the measures or mechanics introduced, if they try their best to fulfil my rule above while not fulfilling Malcanis' Law, then the path into the future should be a promising one I would dare to say.
As a last thought, about what I would like to see revived from the past, I would say things like the Arek' Jalaan project. That was probably the most inspiring thing I have ever seen emerge from this game. The potential and it's realisation was just wonderful, and it was a sad thing when it was just left to die a quiet death. This mixture of in-game lore, metagame, player interaction and guiding influence from developers was a wonderful synergy that showcased how amazing the things are that can come out of this game.
7 Oct 2013
OOC Entry 101 - Fictional Expansion
I am only going to write a short post to give a shout-out to two fellow EVE Fiction enthusiasts.
The first is Zendane of the Eve Reader Podcast. He got some exposure through an EVE Community Spotlight which I managed to miss completely. Seeing as it was in June, I am not surprised. Back then I was still more concerned with my physical and mental recovery than much else.
No, I encountered this man's work because of the High Drag Podcast and I was immediately star-struck with the man's voice and presentation of EVE Chronicles in audiobook form. Very beautiful. I recommend it.
The Second is Drackarn of Sand Cider and Spaceships. He has recently finished his undertaking of writing a longer EVE fiction story which you can download for free here. I have only noticed today that he published that story and downloaded it immediately.
Drackarn has a style that is not always my thing, but he captures the atmosphere of the classic pulp fiction style and moulds it against the background of New Eden very entertainingly. I have often laughed with enjoyment while reading his stories. Never more so than with his fabulous entry for an EVE fiction Contest.
I have not started reading his story yet, but I sure will do so soon. I am curious how he does his thing when having more words to develop a plot. If he is true to his style, then I expect sinister bad guys, film-noir antiheroes, unexpected twists, sultry maidens, sex and drugs and death (sometimes all at the same time) and all the other tropes that Drackarn likes to invoke in his delightfully unashamed way.
Keep up the good work and all the best to both of you.
The first is Zendane of the Eve Reader Podcast. He got some exposure through an EVE Community Spotlight which I managed to miss completely. Seeing as it was in June, I am not surprised. Back then I was still more concerned with my physical and mental recovery than much else.
No, I encountered this man's work because of the High Drag Podcast and I was immediately star-struck with the man's voice and presentation of EVE Chronicles in audiobook form. Very beautiful. I recommend it.
The Second is Drackarn of Sand Cider and Spaceships. He has recently finished his undertaking of writing a longer EVE fiction story which you can download for free here. I have only noticed today that he published that story and downloaded it immediately.
Drackarn has a style that is not always my thing, but he captures the atmosphere of the classic pulp fiction style and moulds it against the background of New Eden very entertainingly. I have often laughed with enjoyment while reading his stories. Never more so than with his fabulous entry for an EVE fiction Contest.
I have not started reading his story yet, but I sure will do so soon. I am curious how he does his thing when having more words to develop a plot. If he is true to his style, then I expect sinister bad guys, film-noir antiheroes, unexpected twists, sultry maidens, sex and drugs and death (sometimes all at the same time) and all the other tropes that Drackarn likes to invoke in his delightfully unashamed way.
Keep up the good work and all the best to both of you.
2 Oct 2013
OOC Entry 100 - Bloc Level Economic Warfare in Highsec
The story so far
Recently we saw a great analysis of the Caldari Ice Interdiction. Before that there had been a Gallente Ice Interdiction. Both had somewhat different goals but one common aspect: The goals of both operations were based on a doctrine of economic warfare that targets goods produced in highsec with the intention to gain an advantage over opposing forces. This is achieved by both market manipulation for financial gain and market manipulation for the purpose of creating scarcity in resources that are necessary for the logistics of warfare.
As stated, the Caldari Ice Interdiction leaned much more towards the side of financial gain. It did have the potential, though, to influence the price of T2 goods which in turn would make ship replacements more expensive. In the light of the Fountain War where the continued financial pressure on Test Alliance SRP was a major factor, this operation could have resulted in an even more accelerated depletion of the TEST SRP funds.
The Gallente Ice Interdiction - on the other hand - leaned more toward the logistics disruption side of things. Apart from all financial gains, an increase in price for Gallente ice products would also drive up the cost of jump fuel for Gallente (super)capital ships. Since the Nyx, the Thanatos and the Moros are very commonly used in offensive capital-ship fleets, this had the potential to put the opponents of the CFC at a disadvantage when it came to capship supremacy.
The Future?
Rubicon will introduce Player Owned Customs Offices (POCOs) in high security space. This could present a new point of leverage for economic warfare strategies, market manipulation and a new stream of passive income.
Passive Income
Planetary Interaction (PI) has become a very widely used method for passive income generation. For those living in high security space, a high blanket tax rate has been a reality for some time now. A POCO operator can easily go below that and still make a profit over time, and both parties will be better off.
Alliances who can place (and protect) POCOs in highsec at a large scale will have the possibility to open another passive income stream for themselves.
Of course, goods can still be freely exported from a planet while bypassing the POCO, but they can not be imported. Since especially the more lucrative PI products require materials from at least two different planets and then often yet another planet purely for manufacturing, there is still enough potential for tax revenue.
Market Manipulation and Economic Warfare
The possibility to tax "highsec carebears" and then build ships from that money which are used for ganking the same players will put a gleefully evil grin on many faces for sure. But that is nothing when compared with the possibilities for strategic market manipulation through POCOs.
The wide range of goods that are produced by means of PI is a useful tool in the hands those who want to reap speculation profit and create scarcity both.
PI materials are components for POS fuel, T2 production, starbase structures, sovereignty structures, nanite repair paste and station components. When you consider the uses for those end-products, it is obvious that a "PI Interdiction" can have severe wide ranging consequences when planned properly and executed at the right time.
Interbus NPC owned COs can be shot at freely. Under a declaration of war POCOs can be destroyed without CONCORD intervention. Even a medium-sized fleet can then destroy one quite quickly. A sufficiently large alliance can sweep through whole constellations in a matter of a few days and completely disrupt the flow of PI products from there.
Tying it all together
Even more powerful is the combination of both approaches.
If an Alliance manages to control a significant number of POCOs, they can directly affect the supply and price of goods through the POCO tax rate while at the same time destroying those of others.
Many producers will elect to halt their production or increase the price accordingly. The holders of a large number of POCOs will see both increased profit and create higher expenses for their opponents this way.
If one controls the POCOs in a system or even a constellation, it is an easy thing to place traders nearby who will stockpile materials one plans to make more expensive and/or scarce. Those traders can even make sure that they can buy at a lower price ahead of time by keeping taxes low.
There is certainly a lot of potential for market PVP there.
In conclusion
Many nullsec alliances have the numbers and the level of organisation to play this game against eachother on a battlefield which has been mostly neglected by them so far.
The Ice Interdictions by the CFC were special events in the past which were planned to have an indirect impact on nullsec conflicts. Now the possibilities of economic warfare created by highsec POCOs could make such operations a more common thing.
In fact, a nullsec alliance or powerbloc engaging in a large-scale conflict against another one over sovereignty would be well advised to make use of those possibilities, otherwise they will find that staging POSes, T2 modules and ammunition, nanite paste etc. become prohibitively expensive while their enemy has a logistical and financial advantage that will be hard to overcome.
Interesting times ahead.
OOC Entry 99 - A woman's touch?
Before some people reading what is to come in a way that results in defensive knee-jerk reactions, let me make a few things clear:
Ok, with that out of the way, I am going to look at Rubicon and what it tells us about CCPs new direction.
With CCP Seagull as senior producer, it looks like things have changed significantly from what we all know about the development history of EVE Online.
Here we have a person who is not intending to drop major "Jesus Features" with every expansion. Nor do we have someone who relegates herself to a program of just fixing things and polishing the game.
CCP Seagull is the first senior producer to ever present a long-term vision for where EVE-Online expansions should take the game eventually.
Rubicon is the first expansion that has been developed fully while she was at the helm. Odyssey came out when she already had the job, but much of the planning and conceptualization for it definitely happened before her term began.
The name is very well chosen to reflect what is supposed to happen: The first step is taken on a journey that will fundamentally change the game world of New Eden. Other than all her predecessors, CCP Seagull plans to set a course for that change which will progress gradually but with a definitive end-goal in mind. At the end of this process - which could (and probably will) take years - you should find yourself in a very different New Eden.
Since this approach is so different from anything that came before, it makes me wonder whether that has anything to do with her gender.
Men - not because of their born-in qualities, but because of their upbringing - tend to favour short-term goals. They are very often encouraged to be "doers" and to compete for the fast achievement of easily quantifiable goals. Women often have a tendency to think more long-term.
That whole thing might have a basis in the way how procreation works.
On the most basic level, the goal of procreation for the man is getting the female pregnant. For the woman it means having the support and nourishment that is necessary to get through pregnancy and then to feed the child while it is still dependent on mother's milk. That requires a bit of a longer perspective.
Of course modern societies have made this very simplified relation much more complex, but in terms of development we are not so far away from a time when this was still how things worked. I would propose that we haven't quite overcome those behavioural patterns.
Even today, tasks like child-care and child-rearing are mostly seen as the responsibility of the woman. That is the case even in the most equal societies with the most blurred gender roles. Very often women themselves will voluntarily take that role. Sometimes they might even say men can't really do that properly, and that's why they have to do it.
I'm not saying men cannot be committed to their children, but it is not as deeply ingrained with them, or expected to the same degree, as it is with women.
Looking at things from that viewpoint, it almost seems like CCP Seagull is like the mother who has dedicated herself to raising her child over the coming years, and in the case at hand the child is EVE Online.
Working together with her, she has a number of men who are also committed to see this child flourish. As the Senior Producer she is in the best position to give those men clear short-term goals which they can achieve. Things like "Balance that Ship Class" or "Come up with Deployable Structures".
Following my proposed model of explanation here, this would play to the strengths of all those guys while freeing them from the burden of having to think of a overarching plan.
When I was with the military, my commanding officer had that theory: He said, that he thinks women are better strategic commanders and men are better tactical commanders. His basis for saying this was exactly the thing about perspectives I wrote about earlier in this post.
I disagreed with him because I rejected the gender stereotyping that came with it. However, the approach of CCP Seagull and her team seems to fit the theory when compared to previous years of CCP development.
Makes me wonder whether the man had a point.
It may of course be very far-fetched to see evidence for a general theory in something incidental like CCP changing their course of expansion development, but at least it does not contradict the premise.
In the end, whether this change in development philosophy is something that has anything to do with the fact that CCP Seagull is a woman is not necessarily that important. I am just sharing thoughts here, moonlighting as an armchair gender studies expert ;)
I do have to say that I like it very much, and it sounds exciting. As for now I am confident that if I ever join the ranks of active EVE players again, I will be playing a very different game.
For that I want to give CCP Seagull a hug from one geek-girl to another.
I am a woman and I am supporting women's emancipation and their right to be considered equal in any possible way. I am, however, not claiming that women are naturally better at anything. I do not count myself as a feminist because I feel that this ideology is often stereotyping men in a way that I consider unfair. I will use language in the following post that might sound like I am favouring a female perspective - whatever that may be - but that is all supposed to be understood within the context of gender identity how it is usually defined these days. None of it is intended to mean that women or men are better or worse at anything.
Ok, with that out of the way, I am going to look at Rubicon and what it tells us about CCPs new direction.
With CCP Seagull as senior producer, it looks like things have changed significantly from what we all know about the development history of EVE Online.
Here we have a person who is not intending to drop major "Jesus Features" with every expansion. Nor do we have someone who relegates herself to a program of just fixing things and polishing the game.
CCP Seagull is the first senior producer to ever present a long-term vision for where EVE-Online expansions should take the game eventually.
Rubicon is the first expansion that has been developed fully while she was at the helm. Odyssey came out when she already had the job, but much of the planning and conceptualization for it definitely happened before her term began.
The name is very well chosen to reflect what is supposed to happen: The first step is taken on a journey that will fundamentally change the game world of New Eden. Other than all her predecessors, CCP Seagull plans to set a course for that change which will progress gradually but with a definitive end-goal in mind. At the end of this process - which could (and probably will) take years - you should find yourself in a very different New Eden.
Since this approach is so different from anything that came before, it makes me wonder whether that has anything to do with her gender.
Men - not because of their born-in qualities, but because of their upbringing - tend to favour short-term goals. They are very often encouraged to be "doers" and to compete for the fast achievement of easily quantifiable goals. Women often have a tendency to think more long-term.
That whole thing might have a basis in the way how procreation works.
On the most basic level, the goal of procreation for the man is getting the female pregnant. For the woman it means having the support and nourishment that is necessary to get through pregnancy and then to feed the child while it is still dependent on mother's milk. That requires a bit of a longer perspective.
Of course modern societies have made this very simplified relation much more complex, but in terms of development we are not so far away from a time when this was still how things worked. I would propose that we haven't quite overcome those behavioural patterns.
Even today, tasks like child-care and child-rearing are mostly seen as the responsibility of the woman. That is the case even in the most equal societies with the most blurred gender roles. Very often women themselves will voluntarily take that role. Sometimes they might even say men can't really do that properly, and that's why they have to do it.
I'm not saying men cannot be committed to their children, but it is not as deeply ingrained with them, or expected to the same degree, as it is with women.
Looking at things from that viewpoint, it almost seems like CCP Seagull is like the mother who has dedicated herself to raising her child over the coming years, and in the case at hand the child is EVE Online.
Working together with her, she has a number of men who are also committed to see this child flourish. As the Senior Producer she is in the best position to give those men clear short-term goals which they can achieve. Things like "Balance that Ship Class" or "Come up with Deployable Structures".
Following my proposed model of explanation here, this would play to the strengths of all those guys while freeing them from the burden of having to think of a overarching plan.
When I was with the military, my commanding officer had that theory: He said, that he thinks women are better strategic commanders and men are better tactical commanders. His basis for saying this was exactly the thing about perspectives I wrote about earlier in this post.
I disagreed with him because I rejected the gender stereotyping that came with it. However, the approach of CCP Seagull and her team seems to fit the theory when compared to previous years of CCP development.
Makes me wonder whether the man had a point.
It may of course be very far-fetched to see evidence for a general theory in something incidental like CCP changing their course of expansion development, but at least it does not contradict the premise.
In the end, whether this change in development philosophy is something that has anything to do with the fact that CCP Seagull is a woman is not necessarily that important. I am just sharing thoughts here, moonlighting as an armchair gender studies expert ;)
I do have to say that I like it very much, and it sounds exciting. As for now I am confident that if I ever join the ranks of active EVE players again, I will be playing a very different game.
For that I want to give CCP Seagull a hug from one geek-girl to another.
29 Sept 2013
OOC Entry 98 - Connecting the dots
Hello again dear readers.
I just woke up in the middle of the night.
Well, some would call it morning.
Anyway, I crawled out of my bed and proofread my latest story episode and published it. Since I am only half awake and didn't even have any coffee, it might be a bit flaky.
Nevertheless, the narrative stands. With great regret I have to inform one of my fans - Thf - that this episode will feature another flashback. But do not despair, the present day narrative also continues.
It will open a possibility on how to get Sandrielle out of The Hive and brings our wormhole capsuleers in contact with more of those crazy nullsec people.
I have to admit, I like portraying nullsec capsuleers as members of some obsessed and at least borderline sociopathic social group in my story. That's just because - if you look at the way nullsec alliances behave in the game - they would be totally sick dictatorships or fanatic sects if you actually thought it through.
Since there is some more flashback history stuff, you are going to learn more about the development of Sandrielle into who she was before she joined up with Awakened Industries.
I reckon there will be one more episode which describes that process, and after that the circle will be closed. This story is not called Metamorphosis for nothing. It is the story of the child which is abducted by The Hive, turned into one of them, and then changed into the woman you have come to know in the previous stories.
In the next episode, those two narratives will connect with each-other again and I will continue the present-day thread.
For now, I hope you enjoy this chapter.
I just woke up in the middle of the night.
Well, some would call it morning.
Anyway, I crawled out of my bed and proofread my latest story episode and published it. Since I am only half awake and didn't even have any coffee, it might be a bit flaky.
Nevertheless, the narrative stands. With great regret I have to inform one of my fans - Thf - that this episode will feature another flashback. But do not despair, the present day narrative also continues.
It will open a possibility on how to get Sandrielle out of The Hive and brings our wormhole capsuleers in contact with more of those crazy nullsec people.
I have to admit, I like portraying nullsec capsuleers as members of some obsessed and at least borderline sociopathic social group in my story. That's just because - if you look at the way nullsec alliances behave in the game - they would be totally sick dictatorships or fanatic sects if you actually thought it through.
Since there is some more flashback history stuff, you are going to learn more about the development of Sandrielle into who she was before she joined up with Awakened Industries.
I reckon there will be one more episode which describes that process, and after that the circle will be closed. This story is not called Metamorphosis for nothing. It is the story of the child which is abducted by The Hive, turned into one of them, and then changed into the woman you have come to know in the previous stories.
In the next episode, those two narratives will connect with each-other again and I will continue the present-day thread.
For now, I hope you enjoy this chapter.
22 Sept 2013
OOC Entry 97 - Character History
I have somewhat painted myself into a corner with my last story.
Sure, everyone is back. Keram is racing to return to Anoikis to see whether Alira is ok, Cedrien is doing his political games with Arclight alliance, Alira and Sylera have recovered from their coma and found that they are bonded by the experience, Shisei is catching up with his old friends in Caldari State.
The problem is, I had Sandrielle be returned to her old home: The Hive.
Nobody ever escapes from The Hive. They can not be bargained or reasoned with. They are the ultimately dedicated fanatics. Hell, Sansha Kuvakei looks nice in comparison to those guys.
So, apart from writing a character off or coming up with some extremely unrealistic deus ex machina, I have no idea how I could get Sandrielle out of that clinch.
So while I make up my mind and find some way for this situation to resolve itself, I am taking a break from the current narrative to deal a bit with the past.
Since we are on the subject, it's going to be Sandrielle's past.
The one that had always been shrouded in mystery.
Where does she come from. What happened between her and The Hive? How did she escape? Where did she get all that sophisticated martial arts training and her abilities to manipulate people?
Those are questions which never got answered so far, and I thought it would be fun to go down that road for a while.
So, there I go, shedding some light on to that character's history.
I hope you enjoy it.
Credit for the artwork goes to Lisa Liang
Sure, everyone is back. Keram is racing to return to Anoikis to see whether Alira is ok, Cedrien is doing his political games with Arclight alliance, Alira and Sylera have recovered from their coma and found that they are bonded by the experience, Shisei is catching up with his old friends in Caldari State.
The problem is, I had Sandrielle be returned to her old home: The Hive.
Nobody ever escapes from The Hive. They can not be bargained or reasoned with. They are the ultimately dedicated fanatics. Hell, Sansha Kuvakei looks nice in comparison to those guys.
So, apart from writing a character off or coming up with some extremely unrealistic deus ex machina, I have no idea how I could get Sandrielle out of that clinch.
So while I make up my mind and find some way for this situation to resolve itself, I am taking a break from the current narrative to deal a bit with the past.
Since we are on the subject, it's going to be Sandrielle's past.
The one that had always been shrouded in mystery.
Where does she come from. What happened between her and The Hive? How did she escape? Where did she get all that sophisticated martial arts training and her abilities to manipulate people?
Those are questions which never got answered so far, and I thought it would be fun to go down that road for a while.
So, there I go, shedding some light on to that character's history.
I hope you enjoy it.
Credit for the artwork goes to Lisa Liang
15 Sept 2013
OOC Entry 96 - The Gallente as Bad Guys
What comes to mind first when you hear Gallente? Democracy? Multiculturalism? Hedonistic lifestyle? Organic-looking green spaceships? Exotic dancers?
Probably a few of those things and then some.
There wont be many people who will think of the Gallente as sinister, duplicitous and self-righteous to a level where they become relentless killers. However, since New Eden is a setting of Grey and Gray Morality there is of course a dark side to this mixture of US-American parliamentary democracy and French culture - in space.
The example that stands out most is the Gallente - Caldari war.
Not only would the Gallente not allow the Caldari to go their own way, they even initiated a massive bombing campaign of Caldari Prime. The reason, and justification, for this indiscriminate bombardment of a planet which the Caldari were trying to evacuate and leave anyway was a terrorist attack on the underwater city Nouvelle Rouvenor which was attributed to Caldari separatists. The whole operation served no actual military purpose. It was pure ideologically motivated retribution.
I am sure New Eden had (and has) it's own brand of "911Truth" conspiracy theorists who would suggest that the Nouvelle Rouvenor attack was a false flag operation to get popular support for the war. After all, the Gallente are not above duplicitous operations where they will even hire capsuleers to kill Federation Navy ships to get rid of a war monument where Caldari come to commemorate.
One of my own favourite examples of just how ruthlessly calculating the Gallente can be when it comes to violence is the Methods of Torture chronicle. Apart from the pretty nasty torture in the story, the implications of what they are doing it for are particularly chilling.
The anatomy of Gallente evil
Apart from providing a basis for enjoyably sinister plots and characters, one might wonder why the Gallente are particularly devious and covert about the bad things they do. I would propose it is exactly because of their otherwise very positive culture and image. A regime like the Amarr Empire would not have a reason to hide it's cruelty. Much of it would be conducted quite publicly as a deterrent against deviation and because the Amarr at least partially base their society on a divine mandate. There would be little reason for a faithful Amarrian to question harsh practices to punish deviants or enemies. Another example, the Caldari, are both highly militaristic and also very darwinistic in their outlook. While they would probably not stand for violent action that hurts the bottom line, they would generally be way too pragmatic to have ethics enter into the equation.
The Gallente, on the other hand, have a reason to uphold their positive image. The citizens of the Federation need to believe that their government - and by extension they themselves - are doing the right thing. Otherwise there would be no coordinated resistance against possible external threats. Also, the government, and the whole powerstructure that exists around it, would find itself without popular support if it were to deviate from it's role too much.
During the first Gallente-Caldari war, there was an extreme-right-wing government in power, but that only existed by the grace of the half-million dead of Nouvelle Rouvenor. Without that cause which supported the righteousness of action against the Caldari, most Gallente would very likely have returned to hanging out in fancy cafés and watching holoreels rather than going to war against their former brothers and sisters. That does show, however, that the Gallente are well prepared to set their high ideals aside for the sake of what they view as a way of defending them.
The carefully maintained positive self-image of the Gallente is exactly what enables them to commit extreme acts of violence against others. They feel justified by the "knowledge" that they are doing it for the "right reasons". They manage to rationalize and externalize any atrocities committed in the name of freedom. In the minds of the citizenship such extreme measures are only a temporary and necessary evil to overcome adversity, not a general state of affairs or part of their identity.
In the meantime the Gallente have been engaged in a second war with the Caldari (this time the Caldari actually shot first), have conducted operations of extreme prejudice against the Amarr, created a secret state agency specialized on black ops and are not even above retributive action against their Minmatar allies when they act with a typical lack of diplomatic finesse.
So things are far from love, peace and holoreels in the Gallente Federation.
Using the material
In my writings I like to play with stereotypes in many ways. Quite obviously Cedrien is the archetypical Good Guy Gallente who would choose exile rather than following orders and go against his ideals (which are after all the ones that the Federation is supposed to be founded on). Sandrielle represents the dark side of the Gallente although she has been shaped by a life among the capsuleers of null-security space which is arguably much harsher than life in the Gallente Federation would be. The way she conducts her dirty business, though, is still very Gallente. She is aware of the evil that she does and therefore tries to hide it as much as possible. In that way she is comparable to The Operative in Serenity (The Alliance in the Firefly world as a whole could actually be compared with the Gallente Federation).
In other works of fan-fiction, writers have used the theme of the dark side of the Gallente, so writers are definitely aware of it and like to play with it. This often makes for particularly interesting stories because it subverts the stereotype and shows an aspect of the world that is not commonplace.
It also serves to create a pleasurably chilling reading experience. After all, what good is there left in the world if even the Gallente who make the most popular softdrink, entertainment and food of New Eden are also evil bastards.
I was long planning to write a story in which the Gallente Federation are the main antagonist. So far the Amarr and the Minmatar were featured [*] Apart from the mercenary leader Commodore Sivaata and the conniving trader Mikkai Aluvetti I left the Caldari out so far, but they make great individual antagonists which - I feel - serves them well because they are a very single-minded lot in general.
One thing I know for sure: A story with Gallente antagonists will have to be sinister and unsettling to work properly. Nothing of the likes of the uncompromisingly self-righteous actions of the Amarr or the desperate measures of Republic Intelligence.
I will have to work hard to come up with a good one for that to make it a story which does the dark side of the Gallente justice.
***
[*] I really liked deconstructing the stereotype of the Minmatar as straightforward "warrior race" guys by having them use covert assets.
13 Aug 2013
OOC Entry 94 - GoonNews.com doesn't like me
I was never a "forum warrior". I think my total comments on EVE-O in the three years I have played the game can be counted on one hand. I hardly ever engaged in commenting on EN24 or TheMittani either. I think I might have written a handful of comments here or there.
Today I read a rather interesting article on TheMittani, and I wanted to ask there how the author got their nice maps together. To my surprise I got the message "You are not allowed to post in this thread."
Now, it is no secret that I am not a friend of the GSF, although I do have a certain grudging respect for them. Still, there are other people out there who have been much more offensive in their blogging and posting against the Goons. Are they all banned too?
I am operating a web-proxy through my IP, and I know of one person who plays EVE who makes use of it, but he actually likes the Goons and he's generally a rather nice guy who doesn't post very aggressively, so I doubt he would have posted anything on TheMittani which they could find offensive enough to ban this IP.
I know there are people out there who have all kinds of conspiracy theories about Goons and how they have a "secret police" and all that. While I am of the opinion that they are engaged in systematic internal brainwashing of eachother, I really doubt that they actually trace IP adresses of posters and bloggers who are agitating against them and then ban them from posting on TheMittani.
So, the whole thing is a great mystery to me.
I was considering to write an email to TheMittani staff to ask how that ban came to be, but some sort of (probably false) sense of dignity prevents me from doing that. The last thing I want to come across as is some person begging at TheMittani to be allowed to post at their site.
Maybe curiosity will win out eventually. Or maybe I just will stop caring (I did find out that everything works fine if I use my neighbour's open WiFi).
What I mostly would like to know is what it all means, and I don't know if anybody who reads the emails sent to TheMittani would even know, and if they do, maybe the reason really does have something to do with an actual worldwide Goon conspiracy.
If that were the case, I doubt they would tell me the truth :)
Then again, maybe someone has managed to go through my proxy and leave no traces while offending the moderators of TheMittani (actually the scariest thought of them all).
In any case, it's a conundrum, and I like those.
It also provided me with a reason for a rather random blog post.
Things could be worse :)
Today I read a rather interesting article on TheMittani, and I wanted to ask there how the author got their nice maps together. To my surprise I got the message "You are not allowed to post in this thread."
Now, it is no secret that I am not a friend of the GSF, although I do have a certain grudging respect for them. Still, there are other people out there who have been much more offensive in their blogging and posting against the Goons. Are they all banned too?
I am operating a web-proxy through my IP, and I know of one person who plays EVE who makes use of it, but he actually likes the Goons and he's generally a rather nice guy who doesn't post very aggressively, so I doubt he would have posted anything on TheMittani which they could find offensive enough to ban this IP.
I know there are people out there who have all kinds of conspiracy theories about Goons and how they have a "secret police" and all that. While I am of the opinion that they are engaged in systematic internal brainwashing of eachother, I really doubt that they actually trace IP adresses of posters and bloggers who are agitating against them and then ban them from posting on TheMittani.
So, the whole thing is a great mystery to me.
I was considering to write an email to TheMittani staff to ask how that ban came to be, but some sort of (probably false) sense of dignity prevents me from doing that. The last thing I want to come across as is some person begging at TheMittani to be allowed to post at their site.
Maybe curiosity will win out eventually. Or maybe I just will stop caring (I did find out that everything works fine if I use my neighbour's open WiFi).
What I mostly would like to know is what it all means, and I don't know if anybody who reads the emails sent to TheMittani would even know, and if they do, maybe the reason really does have something to do with an actual worldwide Goon conspiracy.
If that were the case, I doubt they would tell me the truth :)
Then again, maybe someone has managed to go through my proxy and leave no traces while offending the moderators of TheMittani (actually the scariest thought of them all).
In any case, it's a conundrum, and I like those.
It also provided me with a reason for a rather random blog post.
Things could be worse :)
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