This thread brings up an interesting point, but a point that’s made moot by a few things:
- The Sandbox nature of EVE’s design.
- The ability for player action and reaction to have both a positive and negative effect on gameplay.
- The prevalence of emergent gameplay experiences in EVE that causes these effects.
- The need for CCP to allow these experiences to persist, to preserve the sandbox nature of New Eden.
My opinion on this goes back to the days before I came to CCP, when I was actually fighting in Providence for a while, so I do have a bit of a personal take on what you’re saying here.
Bear in mind that this is of course personal opinion, and doesn’t reflect the opinion of our design team.
You can read about when I was fighting here. We’re talking about 2006 though, this was a long time ago.
I used to run a subcap focused pirate corporation. At the time we were very well known for what we did. We teamed up with The Establishment et al, and the idea was to take UNITY Station in 9UY and turn into New Eden’s first completely open, pirate controlled freeport.
A futuristic Tortuga if you will.
We fought for weeks. We killed and lost tens of billions, which back then was substantially more than it is now.
You know what happened?
Bigger boys joined the party.
Boys with a lot more supers than us, boys with a lot more people than us.
We numbered around 600. The force against us was in excess of 12,000.
We held out for another couple of weeks, but eventually we lost.
We walked away, and our plan was never to be.
To this day, I’m incredibly proud of how long we held on.
To this day, I still regard Rawthorm as one of the calmest and most skilled tacticians I’ve ever flown alongside in EVE. He has my endless respect for what we achieved in Providence.
Despite the fact that I put over 100bn of my own ISK into the fight, when 100bn was worth far more than it is now (500 PLEX was <500m at that time for reference), my corporation is hardly ever mentioned in that fight, despite all that we did.
Why? Because history is written by the winners. In the end, we got nothing out of that engagement other than the experience and a big ass bill for resupply at the end of it all.
I can understand that you’re angry about not getting anything out of Providence, or whichever area of null you resided in, after putting so much into it. I was a bit pissed at the time when we didn’t get what we wanted out of the fight we had in 9UY.
The fact of the matter is though, New Eden is a vicious bitch when it comes to writing yourself into the history books.
You take the chance and roll the dice. Sometimes you win big, the rest of the time you lose.
When you choose to claim space, you put your chips down on a high stakes table, and if you don’t have solid tactics or a good poker face, you get cleaned out.
That’s a fact of life in New Eden, and you need to understand it before you place your bet. There are no safety nets here.
When you choose to claim space, you paint a bullseye on the back of your head for any opportunist that feels they can muscle you out.
You need to be prepared to handle this kind of heat, or you need to get the hell out of the kitchen.
That’s life in New Eden.
I watched CVA build an empire in Providence over the course of a decade and a half, right from the roots of their gentlemanly conflict with Ushra’Khan through to the more recent times with provibloc.
The legacy there is incredible. It’s a story in itself that’s worthy of books and a permanent narrative, and I’m incredibly thankful that even though I got my ass handed to me when I got involved, I got to write at least a paragraph in a page of that legacy.
Do I feel bitter about losing that fight now? Hell no, it was incredible fun to be part of something so cool.
The point of all this is that UNITY Station belonged to Ushra’Khan. It was their baby.
The Amarr bloc rolled in and kicked them out, because they were the bigger boys.
Now, someone bigger has rolled in and kicked the Amarr bloc out.
There’s always a bigger fish. Or there’s always someone richer, or more resourceful.
In New Eden, life goes on. In five years time, someone else will carve out a patch in nullsec where an old powerhouse used to stand.
EVE is not another MMO where you’re handed rewards on a silver platter. You work for your bread and you work to keep people from taking it away from you.
You succeed, or you starve to death.
That’s how it is.
Unscripted, visceral, brutal and unforgiving emergent experience is everything in EVE.
You should ride high when you’re on top, and trail low when you’re beaten down. That’s the only way you learn and grow here.
If New Eden ever became anything else, I would no longer wear a dev tag on these forums, because it’s not something I believe in.
EVE gives you something that no other virtual world can.
These organizations hold the space that they do because they’ve dragged themselves up by their bootstraps.
Every one of these pilots started out the same as you. In a shitty little corvette, with a bunch of dreams and aspirations.
The guys who lead these huge coalitions today started out alongside thousands of others who had the same dreams, but didn’t have the drive to see them through.
The guys who fleet command for these coalitions do so because they’ve demonstrated that they’re capable in the field, and that they can get the job done.
They’ve all been on a journey, and every one of them has proved their ability to be at the top.
Just look at the number of dead corporations and alliances in New Eden. It’s a political graveyard where tens of thousands have tried to achieve greatness, and all but a fraction of a percent have fallen.
This is the beauty, and legacy of player narrative in EVE.
All those stories, all those fallen flags, all those memories, and all those experiences.
Love them or loathe them, the people who’re in power right now within the political sphere of New Eden are there because they know how to lead.
Regardless of who they are and what colors they fly, these people share common qualities.
They can engage people.
They can inspire people.
They can give people direction, purpose, and a sense of unity.
For better or worse, they can lead.
It all goes back to a simple quote.
“Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.”
If you want your outposts back before June 5th, stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Get off the forums, fit a rack of weapons, get a fleet together and go take them back.