To touch on something she said earlier, when she says that she left the Amarr Militia because she started a war, she is not joking.
This is her exposing a ceasefire-esque treaty between the Amarr Militia and the Minmatar Militia aimed at depriving the farmers of their LP by keeping their mission hubs occupied:
This is the right hand man of Lord Sarum telling the Amarr Militia players off and ordering them on a penitent crusade to reclaim the population of the fourth planet in the Floseswin system:
And this is what those two posts did for the killboard of this one random system in FW lowsec:
It was near the end of February when one of my friends, @Isha_Vuld, told me about this war. I started playing EVE because of it, on the 28th of February, 2020. Two days later, I was participating in fleets and smallgangs on a daily basis, and taking my first steps into solo. I learned more about combat from the beginning of March till the end of June than most people in highsec did in a decade.
If it hadn’t been for Arsia accidentally starting that war, I would never have installed EVE, because all you ever hear about when you don’t play the game is Nullsec, and the prospect of being an F1 monkey fighting over sandcastles didn’t really do it for me.
And if it hadn’t been for Arsia inviting me to EDENCOM fleets after the Floseswin war started, I would never have had a reason to upship from frigs. But she did. And whilst shooting NPCs non-stop was boring, I am glad that I got to do my part in saving systems from Pochven. (You’re welcome, Red Frog)
But the reason why I will be voting for Arsia is not just the fact that she is single-handedly responsible for getting me caught up in two wars which forced me to develop into a half-decent RP-PVPer. I will be voting for her because I agree with the policy changes she is suggesting whole-heartedly.
Firstly, regarding factional warfare. As far as I am concerned, FW is one of the best experiences a new player could hope for, and I highly recommend everyone spends a year there to get a grip on solo, smallgang and fleet, and maybe learn how to tell a brawler, scramkiter, kiter, tackler and longbow fit apart from one another in the process. However, it is not free of problems, nor immune to improvements. The ones Arsia has suggested would benefit it. Specifically, separating the PVE missions from the rest of Faction Wars, and creating a Frontline system which would only allow one side to attack a system if they own the one adjacent to it. These two changes would prevent the farmers from manipulating the warzone for personal gain by switching sides every six months. For those who do not understand why that is a thing, here’s an EVE player’s best friend. A spreadsheet:
Essentially, during the summer, they will all join the Amarr Militia, push Minmatar into Tier 1, create artificial scarcity of Republic Fleet goods by doing so, and sell all their Republic Fleet LP at maximum profit. During the winter, they do the reverse. Once they run out of systems to cap they simply do those godawful PVE missions in tier 5 and earn more LP than anyone who does not shoot other players has any right to. By doing so, they essentially take what should be an area where new players can take their first steps into PVP without tanking their sec status or investing a fortune (T1 frigates are a viable option here), and turn it into the equivalent of a Bitcoin hodlgang scheme.
Secondly, regarding the lore. In essence, @CCP_Delegate_Zero is to EVE what a Dungeon Master is to a game of Dungeons & Dragons. During my time here, he has DM’d numerous events such as the Floseswin war and the evacuation of Skarkon. However, because neither his events, nor the lore of EVE get sufficient attention, most people never learn about these events in time to participate, or how they tie into the game’s narrative. Worse yet, some of CCP is horribly out of touch with both the lore and the RP communities built around it. This is why they were genuinely surprised when people who had been RPing and PVPing for 10 to 17 years emerged from Lowsec to organize and lead the carebears under the EDENCOM banner. The CCP staff members who came before them put a lot of time and effort into writing all that lore, and it is a shame that only DZ ever does anything with it. By adding links to the lore on the launcher and in the game, they’d be giving all players the opportunity to learn about it and enjoy it as others do. I might as well drop a link to https://community.eveonline.com/backstory/chronicles/ and https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/world-news/ whilst I’m at it, to hopefully remind CCP that these things exist.
TLDR: Arsia is the candidate Lowsec and the lore deserve, and the candidate they need.