We actually know something about this.
First, as noted above, we know what happened in Serenity: Triglavian players didn’t take any systems there, but they still got Pochven.
Two, we know a CCP dev having said there were “failsafes” in case the invasions go too fast or too slow, in a “fireside” with Edencom players.
Three, there is an in-universe world news piece saying that the Triglavians were going for at least 21, at most 81 systems, which almost certainly corresponds to out-of-universe limits for the potential outcomes.
Last but not least, it would make zero sense whatsoever for CCP to put all the effort, art, programming, etc, that went into Pochven and then just throw it away because a player event did not work out the way they expected. It is not how game development works, and it is not how it should work.
As to “had EDENCOM tried harder and won”, here are the numbers:
During the event there were 215 invasion events total. In the end, Edencom held 40 Fortresses and 89 minor victories (not counting massive fortifications, which were not players doing). Triglavians held 27 Liminalities and 30 minor victories. (The rest of the invasions, most of them minor victory systems, timed out.) In the systems with a star we assume compatible for liminality, Edencom has 31 Fortresses, Triglavians have 27 Liminalities. 3 of these invasions timed out, usually because players manipulated for that outcome for strategic reasons. There were six systems players assumed were liminal capable but which did not go liminal on a Triglavian victory for unknown (to us) reasons. Since there were gross imbalances in the NPCs, to see how players did we can look only at systems in Minmatar and Gallente space, excluding Amarr and Caldari, where outcomes were largely defined by NPC forces. In this more or less balanced space, Edencom won 34 times (11 Fortresses), Triglavians won 14 times (7 Liminalities).
With those numbers, it is pretty clear it was not about who wins in a player-vs-player event, it was about what CCP wanted to happen in the story. But that is fine. It was a mostly scripted event where players could decide where exactly and how much Pochven happens, but not if it will. We knew we could not stop anything fully in June (as it follows from “you do not just throw away development effort like that”), and that’s not a problem. This thread is NOT a complaint about that new content of Pochven existing. New content is great!
The complaint is about excluding half of the participants in your story-event from the next chapter (and now also about the lack of further continuation content / lore in general).
