The Track Record

A little while back we had a little run in with EM. (Electus Matari) You can read about it here.

Needless to say we ran into them again last night while out roaming. Unfortunately (for them) many Minmatar corps are blue with them, so it posed a little problem, since I am not. They warped two frigates into our gang and immediate started shooting me. So, I started shooting back.

I was then informed in fleet that they were 'blue,' and that fleet shouldn't shoot them. Only one in my fleet GCCed to help me kill them. I was in an SFI so they weren't really a threat. If they were in larger ships and I had died while my fleet stood by and watched, heads would have been rolling.

Needless to say, the guy that helped me got into a little of trouble. His corp's diplomat was contacted, and the following, hilarious conversation ensued: (Please note that Tyrolen has -10.0 sec status.) I underlined my favorite parts.

Amarr Kick Members Who Die Repeatedly to Minmatar Over the Weekend

PVP on the militia warfront kicked butt this weekend. Friday night, a small LateNight gang prowled around for several hours, resulting in more than a full page of random kills on the front page of the killboard.

Several of the people we killed came back for seconds, and we ended up killing them again. And again. This led to some drama in a newer Amarr corporation, Ascetic Virtues as their efficiency on their killboards dropped by 10-15% in one evening.

As some of their leadership logged on to some of the channels I was in, I was amused as at least one of them completely flipped out after looking at the killboards and seeing the efficiency losses. Subsequently, several of the repeatedly dying parties were immediately kicked from the corporation, and several of us Minmatar amusedly watched as several previous wartargets turned neutral in local before our eyes.

Apparently, according to several members of the corporation, the kicked members were trolled to death in their corporation before being kicked, although the chat logs were unfortunately not provided.

A Love Letter from Undertovv

Written to a member of the Amarr militia. (Edited to keep it pg-13.)

"I know your probably not going to convo me about this, but I know that all of you all hate me and want to ruin my eve account. I also know that youve been hiding up in caldari space lately. You dont want me following you and flying with you. I know this.

 Everyone has made you not like me because Im just a f%&$@ killmail whore to you and a bunch of others. The point of me typing this to you is that you are at this point trying to avoid me but youre afraid to tell people the truth. Youre under the pressure of everyone else to HATE ME or everyone else in the militia will give you a hard time in eve.

I bet that guy catherine Laartii was one of the ones who made you dislike me. I wouldve told them all to f&$% off but you just cant do that. They are trying to ruin my eve account by making everyone hate me and thats why theyve made so many articles about me over the internet. Its not going to happen though because not everyone is going to join the bandwagon.

Only p&%$@ will round up a bunch of people to hate 1 person because they are too p&$%& to do anything by themselves. But you know what? Anybody who spends alot of time making articles about me is the one thats ROYALLY pissed! I guess I have the last laugh!"


Also, a soundboard of Tovvy quotes created by members of the Amarr militia.

Enjoy

Tales from the Minmatar Front Part 1: The Response

As many people probably already know, I have recently been writing about the Amarr/Minmatar conflict. This has generated a lot of interesting comments on several blog posts, as well as some ‘interesting’ mail.  (Related posts are linked below.)

Unfortunately for them, Sovereignty Wars, a blog I frequently refer to, has chosen to publish a rather scathing, ill-written rant by a somewhat hot-headed Amarrian FC. (Also linked below.) My LOLs follow:

10 Things You Probably Shouldn’t Say to Your FC (But Wish You Could)

Okay, I admit it. I probably have told an fc these things at one point or another.  However, it’s not recommended.

#1. Are you really going to sit here and wait 30 minutes for the scrub who is five jumps away trying to decide what to fit on his ship? Let’s get this show on the road.

#2. I can’t hear you over the sound of your ego.

#3. Is that why your wife left you?

Trading: Using Buyers’ Psychology to Your Advantage

In real life, marketers use psychology to get people to buy something. 7.99 sounds ‘cheaper’ then 8.00. Buy one get one free sounds like an amazing deal, even though the item is already highly marked up.

In Eve, you can also play into buyers’ psychology, although Eve buyers tend to react differently to things then people in real life. 

Tapping into Laziness

In Eve, you will find a lot of laziness. People don’t always want to travel to market hubs to get the best deal. People also don’t want to travel around to collect everything for one ship.

Panic

Paying attention to political changes in the area you trade in can greatly influence what you sell/buy. If there is some major hostilities going on, pvp ships and items can often go fast for unreasonable profits. People don’t care the cost, they just want to protect…whatever it is.

Also, if a corporation or alliance is getting forced out, they will often ‘dump’ on the market. It’s a great opportunities to peruse contracts, the mineral market, along with other things to see who’s trying to get rid of stuff fast. (Sometimes, you will need to hold on to things for a while and allow the region to stabilize before maximizing your profits from this, so you don’t want to invest to great a % of your trading isk into this.)

Them are Fighting Words

I shall take this moment to respond to some 'less than love' mail I've recently gotten as well as some fighting words posted in response to several blog posts of recent.

"I just read ur blob and its mostly bs."

lol...

" you guys honestly only fight when it is your prime time and when we have nobody on."

We fight in our prime time because that's when WE are online. Kinda hard to pvp when we're not online...
Also kinda hard to shoot you if you're not online so I'm sure SOME of you were online....

Another Drama Bomb

I always thought that the primary hotpsots for drama in Eve were in null sec, however I’m beginning to see that militia is rank with it as well. The events of the past week or so have definitely contributed to that feeling.
You can read a lot about the drama involving my corporation [K.POW] here. However, there are a few things that Shalee got wrong in her report.

First, the statement that “Diplomatic steps were taken by Galdornae, hoping to end the war without combat.” Is most definitely false. I know this not because I have some sort of secret, alternate information but because I’ve flown with Galdornae for a couple years and I know better. If he was involved in any ‘talks’ then what they perceived as ‘diplomacy’ was most definitely a troll. I believe that our beloved CEO Manos is more suited toward true diplomacy.

Also, the idea of Galdornae doing anything for the purpose of ceasing some sort of combat is laughable.

Secondly, I am under the impression that M0220h did not “quickly veto” the suggestion of the offending party being kicked from his corporation. The fact that in the last 48 hours he left [AUTOZ] for IFW suggestions he was quite against the actions of his corpmates.


However, if you are one of the many non faction war readers, you probably could care less about a little faction war drama. To be honest, I could care less myself. Except for shooting a militia member when asked to, (it isn’t hard to convince me to shooting anything;) I’ve stayed out of it for the most part. Needless to say I’ll defend my corpmates most heartily—and in the end, I’m always up for an excuse to pew pew.

Non-Eve Player's Perspective about CQ and CCP Leaked Document

As a developer in real life, I follow a lot of techie/programming blogs in addition to the gaming blogs I read. Imagine my surprise and amusement when one of these blogs spits out an article about Eve Online!

Written completely from a non-player point of view, this post was really interesting and went into some technical details about the recent player uprisings, as well providing a link to a supposed ‘leaked’ CCP internal document --"Greed is Good" that I had never heard of before.

Though I know vaguely of some of the protests that happened after Captain’s Quarters, I didn’t realize how involved some of the ‘revolt’ was. Forrest Smith states that “Players revolted by staging mass in-game protests flooding systems and attacking popular trade hubs.”

I’m not entirely sure how they pulled off attacking popular trade hubs successfully with CONCORD sniffing around, but I’m sure he’s referring to people smartbombing, or shuttle spamming.

Smith goes on to explain some game mechanics, though some of his information is a little old. For example, he states a titan as costing 120 billion ISK, when in reality you can get the hull for much, much cheaper now. (I suppose a complete, faction fit titan might cost that much, though I believe he was just referring to hulls in that portion of the article.)

Smith’s primary conclusion was that “CCP launched the vanity store too early.” This might be true, but I think there are some other things at stake. Smith does a good job of fleshing out the problems with the pricing of these ‘vanity items.’However, I think that the main issue was that CCP is trying to be like everyone else.

A lot of the people who play the game a lot, play because the game is NOT like all the other games. It’s more complicated, with a much higher learning curve. My personal opinion is that throwing in a ‘vanity’ store somewhat cheapens the content of the game. Unlike the addition of the tech 3 ship and wormholes, which added another level of complexity to the game, adding ‘vanity’ products is simply put: dumb and useless.

7 Steps Toward a Drama Free Corporation

Drama can completely ruin a corporation. I’m not talking about the drama involved in the thrills of a corporation op gone well, or the drama of 15 corpmates getting on Ventrillo and getting a little rowdy while playing Eve.

I’m talking about negative drama—the kind that smears a corporation’s reputation, causes panic or 

dissatisfaction, and can cause members to flee in droves.

The first thing that CEOs and other corporate leaders need to first understand, is that drama is not usually the problem. Drama is a symptom, or a direct result of other problems within your corporation. These problems are usually fixable, and are usually not your fault. However, if you try cutting down the drama without 

addressing the issues behind it, it will keep coming back.

Weeding out the problem is usually easy. Taking action can be very hard for some leaders. In any case, you must be willing to do what you have to do to achieve the result that you want.