EVE Online Politics: A spy just screwed a few thousand players, years of work.

[Noseman26]

This definitely shows that EVE is deeper and on a whole other level compared to other MMO's.

Apparently no one in that corp knows the phrase, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". No way the corp should have given that much power to one man.

 

[Beowulf DW]

Did a little research on my own, and here are the conclusions I was able to draw from the information I found:

BoB was a very large, very powerful alliance in EVE. They were also once very powerful. However, starting maybe two years ago, they went into a kind of decline. They were once very good in PvP, but, either due to stagnation in their organization or noobs who joined for the reputation, they started going down hill. BoB started losing. They could hold their own ground (mostly due the Sov advantages and their truely massive fleet of Titans), but they just couldn't win on the offensive. They lost several Titans, and numerous capitol ships. At this point, some of their higher ranking members began to get disgusted with the organization and with the other higher-ups who were getting full of themselves.

At one point, a BoB director used a secondary account to get recruited into the Goons. From what I understand, his initial intention was to become a spy. However, he grew to like the Goons, and their attitude towards the game. Specifically, it seems that the Goons are much friendlier to their new recruits than BoB is. The would-be spy then revealed his position as a director to the Goons and offered to use his position to help them.

The rest, as they say, is history.

So what does all this mean? Well, BoB had it coming. They were going to fall eventually (especially if they gave that much to one guy). Empires can only go up so far before they come crashing down again. It also might teach the organization a much needed lesson in humility (some of those guys are sickeningly arrogant). Still, it's a sad way to go. Had to happen eventually, though. In the long run, Goonswarm may have done BoB a favor, because the un-dedicated members probably won't stick around, allowing the good core elements to emerge once more.

 

[killjoyfuly]

well i once had an eve online acount trial ftw
in the short space of 4 days id manged to set my self up as a theif without much dificulty all i had to do was fly my tiny ship into a mining zone with low sov and low and behold what did i find an abondoned minning ship just sitting with the keys in the ignition (also rubble ill assume some battle had gone on before hand) i left with the ship took it to station sold it and its cargo and bought my self a rather agressive frigate

so for a while i was having great fun hijacking small mining ships (alot just get left lying around) when all of a sudden i jump into a zone and right into the middle of a fight between some big massive ships lil old me got pod killed that day

*edit*
i have the sudden urge to start another acount and see how the worlds changed since i last entered

... how could you have the required skill to fly a mining ship after 4 days, I assume it was a cruiser. since you cannot train for any industrial ships on a trial account whatsoever...
just wondering, when were you on eve last? cuz it sounds like you started out doin pretty much the same thing as me(I went for frigate piloting/ecm skills first and was pretty much a pirate from day 1 fun stuff)
if you ever do get a new account or anything now's probably a good time to get involved again with BoB gone the level of oppertunity just spiked gonna be alotta fightin to be done and alotta winning

it had to have been at the best a cruiser but my guess it was probably just a large frig started playing another trial (multiple emails fwt) however this time i think im going to actualy get a sub

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I did think of something BoB could have done to prevent the betrayel.

They could have NOT been dicks.

 

[geldonyetich]

I did think of something BoB could have done to prevent the betrayel.

They could have NOT been dicks.

Maybe. Or maybe somebody else with the right permissions would have found a way to be horrendously dissatisfied with them anyway.

Either way, apparently you're not going to know until the Goons have disbanded your alliance.

The risk vs reward breaks down not in the specific instance, but rather in giving the players that kind of power.

At any point, someone can crack, and then it's goodbye alliance name, goodbye sovereignty over a massive stretch of space, goodbye treasured spoils of grinding done by hundreds of other people. Hello awesome spectacle.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

Anyone see what they did with urban dead? They killed the game for.. FUN.

No way! That's the one game I was thinking about as far as persistent role playing.

I came along too late to really have fun in that game, but, it was pretty cool to see what they did and read the history of the game.

That's another game with the character/player split. Remember the question of whether player killers were greifers, or if that was just really good role playing?

Yep, I came in right at the end of The Dead march thing.. I didn't have much fun, because most zombies dropped off the face of the earth after that.

 

[geldonyetich]

It's good you didn't read this thread, especially considering a lot of it was me foolishly operating in "attack EVE" mode and reflecting everyone who equally foolishly set their brains to "defend EVE" mode before I noticed this and stopped ramming my head into brick walls. The part where I refer to myself as disliking EVE because I was a "gaming purist," practically inviting outrage through the ease of misinterpreting that, was particularly regrettable.

However, if your argument that BoB deserved what happened to them is, "every guild I've been is just a stupid pyramid scheme" then I have overwhelming sympathy for the makers EVE Online, as it was ever their dream to facilitate whole player-made empires in the void of space.

 

[jakefongloo]

WOW 11+ PAGES IF YOU READ THIS YOU HAVE NO LIFE lol

and yet life still goes on its funny when that happens

 

[TheMatt]

WOW 11+ PAGES IF YOU READ THIS YOU HAVE NO LIFE lol

and yet life still goes on its funny when that happens

Actually, your statement wasn't funny at all.

Pls, for the good of the colony, cease living.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

It's good you didn't read this thread, especially considering a lot of it was me foolishly operating in "attack EVE" mode and reflecting everyone who equally foolishly set their brains to "defend EVE" mode before I noticed this and stopped ramming my head into brick walls. The part where I refer to myself as disliking EVE because I was a "gaming purist," practically inviting outrage through the ease of misinterpreting that, was particularly regrettable.

However, if your argument that BoB deserved what happened to them is, "every guild I've been is just a stupid pyramid scheme" then I have overwhelming sympathy for the makers EVE Online, as it was ever their dream to facilitate whole player-made empires in the void of space.

It is kinda like CCP gives you a sandbox, and tell you to do what you want with it, but don't expect the other people in the box to play well.

 

[Ninetysixdelta]

I've noticed a lot of people talking about how boring EVE seems. It is boring, if you play it wrong, but that's already been touched upon. It's true that a lot of newbies don't make it past the initial part of EVE. It's a common thing among EVE players to call the learning curve a learning cliff, and it's certainly accurate. Jump into EVE all by your lonesome without someone to show you the ropes and you're liable to go "what's with all the spreadsheets, I'm outta here" a quarter of the way through your two-week trial.

The goons have been so successful because they have their own culture from which to draw fresh pilots. When you have a massive group of people with a preexisting point of common interest (SomethingAwful, in the goons' case), it becomes easy to incorporate that into a separate social setting (any MMO you like). Also, the goons are very helpful and generous to their newbies, which contrasts deeply with former-BoB's "elite pilots 15+ million skillpoints only"-type recruitment dogma, which effectively shuts out any incoming new players. BoB wanted corps and pilots who have already proven themselves; GoonSwarm takes a three-day newbie and throws him immediately into the front lines of PvP combat against the established "elite" PvP organizations.

What also happens with this is that the newbie is able to skip all of the mind-numbing spreadsheet-jockeying and low-risk-low-reward money grinding taking place in high-security space. To get back to my first point, this is what drives off the majority of the players who quit EVE early on.

The newbie learns how to fight and die and not care against an enemy obsessed with his kill:death ratio and keeping his expensive ship with equally-expensive fittings and ammo from being blown up. All members of GoonFleet get free fitted frigates, no matter how long they've been playing, and newbies get showered with ISK from the more veteran players so the fear of death is whittled away to almost nothing early on in the newbie's trial-by-fire. Even in defeat, goon morale stays impressively stable due to their focus on fun and inciting drama with people who take the game way more seriously than they do. I believe only a few of the other major corporations have been able to really "get" goon culture, but the semi-essays written on this have mostly been drowned out under a cacophony of GAAHH WE HATE GOONS (which the goons love, of course). Also, goon morale and loyalty is very difficult to shake (Haargoth was not the first player or to be won over by goon culture), though that's not to say goons haven't had to deal with a couple of significant betrayals of their own in the past. In EVE, it happens to everyone at some point.

I think the biggest hurdle for goons right now is the risk of becoming victims of their own success. Their main drive has always been to take the "elite" of any MMO down a few pegs and get some laughs along the way, but they've done it so well in EVE they're dangerously close to turning into what they hate. If former-BoB doesn't recover well in Delve (the region they used to hold almost completely), GoonSwarm will likely be close to, if not the new largest/most influential single alliance in EVE, and that would present a problem, as a lack of focus would probably do more damage to the goons than any bunch of internet spaceships ever could.