Hello there - I’m your friendly neighborhood wormholerbtw Mark Resurrectus, CEO of the Holey Roamin’ Empire corp and Executor of the TURBOFEED OR GLORY Alliance. For the last year and change I’ve had the distinct pleasure of serving as one of the 10 individuals elected to last year’s CSM 17, alongside my colleagues from Nullsec and Lowsec. It has been a thrilling year of answering evemails, responding to DMs, sitting in meetings and having mulit-hour long discussions about the nuanced mechanics of a 20-year-old spaceship video game.
In order to make this announcement as efficient as possible, I’ve broken the rest of this post into a helpful Q&A I’ve had with myself that you can easily reference to your friends, loved ones, or hated rivals.
Who are you again?
See image above. I’m Mark Resurrectus - the wormhole representative on CSM 17 and once described by Brisc Rubal as “six foot eight and built like a Peterbilt”. I’ve been playing EVE since 2006, having taken that time to go from being an extremely casual youth, to an “involved” nullseccer in my mid-20s, to being more active in game than I’ve ever been before now that I’ve entered the twilight of my life in my early 30s. I’ve seen just about everything at this point - spent those early years mining and running high sec missions with my IRL homies, to then spending a year with TEST during the first Bee war, and then finally moving to wormhole space in 2019 where I’ve lived ever since. We founded our group in late 2019 and have been rolling ever since.
I ran for CSM 16 in 2021 and ended up 12th (and would’ve gotten onto the CSM if Suitonia had emerged from his cocoon and become CCP Kestrel a month sooner). Decided to give it another go and ran again last year - went on a lot of shows, talked to a lot of people, got doxxed by my mom on stream, and got on as the 9th elected member.
Why should wormholers vote for you?
Getting a wormhole on the CSM is difficult because we’re not nearly as organized as the larger blocs. The reason why nullblocs always seem to get a handful of candidates each onto the CSM is because they’re well organized - they pick their guys, vote for their guys, and don’t stray too far from the ticket. For other, smaller groups (like wormholers, poch lads, the nano people, etc) it’s more and more important to get out of the early rounds to you can start picking up those mid-ticket votes and have real staying power.
To that end, I’ve already proven I can get out of the early rounds - we were 6th in total votes in the first round last year before carryover votes (which matter, obviously, but still) and I’ve continued to work on traveling through space and bringing the Good Word to all people, furthering our exposure and making more people aware and interested in wormhole space. Aside from just being on the CSM, I’ve also hosted several Wormholer CSM Town Halls to gauge the temperature of the community and gather feedback from all the little wormbros, been the Co-Host of the Meta Show on INN alongside Brisc, and have spent countless hours shitposting on the wormholer discord to do my duty to my fellow capsuleer by bullying them through both in-game PVP and discord PVP in the ways of our forefathers, as is tradition.
All this to say, I have worked very hard to make myself a viable candidate that wormholers can trust to put at the top of their ballot - and that’s without even getting into the work we’ve managed to accomplish over the last few months. Just to name the highlights, some items I’ve had my hands on throughout this last term:
- Introduced a change to the life of frigate holes that, while not perfect, curbed the potential disruption that could be caused by a mechanic that even now still offers no counterplay
- Addressed an issue whereby marauder krabs were able to easily escape from would-be aggressors using command destroyers thanks to sleeper rats not scramming ships in bastion
- Worked to address the oppressive marauder meta and find creative solutions to bring them into balance without breaking them entirely as apex subcapital PVE ships
- This one probably wasn’t me but I did promise to get a new Eos skin in the game and they released Zydrine Burn during this term so you tell me who we should all be thanking for this
- Pushed for CCP to expand the Evermarks system to give people more ways of earning these aside from just the stupid station missions (this is a work in progress and I still think it’s stupid but it’s marginally better than it was)
- Kept CCP Psyche from nerfing blue loot (for now) using the power of friendship and intimidation
- Shook hands with CCP Helmar while wearing a bathrobe
And many others. There’s still a lot I really want to get done, including:
- Shift high-class PVE focus away from easily spammable marauders towards more stationary dreadnaughts to both help curve the runaway blue loot line on the MER (to ward off the aforementioned CCP Psyche) and give wormholers more, larger targets to shoot at. Dropping on paladins will never have the same appeal as dropping on dreads or rorqs (or other fleets).
- Find a way to bring either inject FAXes or combat refitting triage back into the game. The current FAX meta is restricted to groups who are able to spend a lot of money on triage because the more cost effective methods were lost with the Surgical Strike triage injector nerf. This needs to be done carefully because this really isn’t something that should see the light of K-space, but wormholers and k-spacers use FAXes very differently and they need to be balanced like that.
- Continue to work towards finding new, interesting targets for wormhole groups to fight over. Anyone who has seen the slideshow from my summit presentation, this is what J-Hubs are all about. Go read more about it there!
- B A L A N C E, especially as it relates to command ships. Nighthawks are too far out of line with Sleipnirs, Absolutions, etc, and finding ways to bring those up to that level and make the meta more interesting would be a good place to start.
- C4 PVE sites still need to be fixed. They’re less bad because of Paladins but that’s not really a good excuse.
- Wormhole moons suck ass and if we’re supposed to just grin and bear it I’d like to at least find out another way we can make wormhole indy groups more interested in living here. There are almost none left and it blows.
And, of course, a lot of little ■■■■ here and there that needs to be addressed but doesn’t really warrant a line in this post (like getting the wormhole crit sound back, very high priority). These are all wormhole specific issues that most affect wormholers and their families, so if you live in K-space right now you might be asking yourself…
Why should everybody else vote for you?
First answer is sex appeal, obviously. Second is that I once threatened to wear Pando like a hat (I think it was Pando, might’ve been Jinx (also it may have been “like a scarf” but time does blur the memory as you grow old)) and you know Pando is a serious fellow so that must mean that I mean business. I’m also very tall, so if you need something off the top shelf I am your guy.
But moreover, I’m not an idealogue. My priority is wormhole space and all the good little wormchildren who inhabit it, but I’m not so naïve as to think that our problems are the only problems, or that I have any kind of silver bullet that will solve all of our woes. What you’re going to hear a lot of in the next few weeks is “I have the solution, I have the plan, you need me to do this for the game, nobody else can do this, etc”. These people are demagogues, and they’re either more interested in their own self-importance or ignorant of how the CSM works.
I’ll let you in on a little secret - as much as some of the more bitter among us would like to have you believe, going into the meetings with CCP spitting piss and vinegar isn’t going to accomplish anything other than making yourself look like an ape. There will be candidates who think that the only way to communicate with the devs is to grab them by the shirt, drag them outside, and give them a good shake until they comply. This just isn’t true, and it’s actively harmful to the relationship between the developers of the game and the playerbase. Our purpose is to provide perspective, and experience - not to bring in misconceptions that we have the magic potion that will heal the game and that anyone who stands in our way is the enemy. That’s not productive, and it’s not a healthy way to interact with other humans in general.
I have greatly enjoyed working with all of the other CSM this term, and feel like the work we’ve accomplished would not have been possible had it not been for the professionalism, patience, and honestly that was apparent whenever we met to discuss anything. Spaceship politics are what they are - within the confines of the CSM and, by extension, our relationship with the developers, you have to be able and willing to put aside your differences in order to foster creative cooperation. If you can’t do that, or don’t want to, you’re going to be a ■■■■ (this is the poop word in case the forum blanks it) CSM and your constituency would be better of voting for a less intolerable loaf of bread.
So, in summary:
That’s not really a question, but fair point - this has gone on long enough. The tl;dr: of this is that I’m a candidate who is eager to work for my guys, has spent the last year and change working to make the game better and more fun for our people, both the ones who are here and the ones who are thinking of coming back, and who has, I believe, proven himself capable of both working alongside my fellow CSM in whatever shape they take, and sharing the collective wisdom and experience of wormhole space with the developers so we can create a more compelling experience for everyone.
And, you know, if kind words and thoughtful engagement isn’t enough to get the devs to see reason, you just break out the partially open bathrobe and get it done that way. Really helps to move hearts and minds.
And now, in conclusion, some testimonials made by real wormholers about my character and quality as a CSM (note to self: go back over this section - some of these are not flattering)
- “Adequate.”
- “I thought you were gonna be yet another useless CSM, but you’re ok”
- “Noob was banned, and he was still the best whcsm you ever got.”
- “He situates his monitor in a vertical orientation, this signifies that he values vertical supremacy”
- “Better than the last guy”
- “I wouldnt want him in my hole”
- “Never flew a Paladin. Had the skills; just refused. Principled.”
- “at least 2 brain cells remaining, possibly terminal”
- “Understands how to handbrake a Naglfar before sieging.”
- “Known Brisc associate :monkaS:”
- “Keeps the WHbtw chair warm for a good WH csm”
- “All my corp mates hate mark, simple as”
- “goon csm with extra steps”
- “I personally very much like mark”
- “spends more time talking to some imperium stream than us :pepehands:”
- “Look mark said some nice things about us to me”
edit:
- “■■■■. We missed the obvious: “Head and shoulders above the rest.””
