For those of you who are new to Eve Online, we, the older players, wish to properly welcome you. What you need to know is this:
Eve is a PVP game - when you undock, you might be blown out of the stars by anyone else, and they will laugh hysterically, and all of us will think it is hilarious. We will laugh even harder if you post how unfair it is, you did not want to PVP, people should be left alone, or anything like that.
If you are not OK with that, you are playing the wrong game. Eve Online was created by Icelanders descended from Vikings. The entire game is created to be a bloodbath in space. They love it that way. We love it that way. It’s going to stay that way.
High sec has some mechanics that make it complicated to blow up your ship, but it is not impossible. It will be blown up despite the appearance that there are police and a punishment system. There really is not. The police are corrupt and the punishment system is financially overcome by looting your wreck.
Eve is a game of space piracy. You can be a pirate, or you can be pirate’s prey. Those are your only choices.
Those of us who play alone or live in hi-sec and enjoy our gaming use the threat of other players attacking us to make the game more exciting. For myself, I enjoy shooting at rats in the game knowing that any second I could be ganked and my stuff stolen from me. It makes it more exciting. It’s incredibly boring to shoot at rats in empty systems with no threat of violence.
We counter the gankers by watching local, marking gank alliances red, parking alts on gates on the edge of the system we are in, scouting ahead, and watching for others to scan our ships to determine their worth. We sometimes switch up our fits to brick tanks so the gankers’ calculators fail them and their gank gives us loot to collect. We snoop around and follow people to see who they are. We mark our local friendlies so we clearly see new people arriving we don’t know. We never trust our local friendlies nor anyone else knowing they could be scouts and betray us.
We counter the scammers by not believing someone will double our ISK or that the hypernet auction is not rigged to steal our money. We don’t start talking with strangers and send them the fit of our ship when they ask.
We accept ship destruction and defeat with dignity and quite a lot of giggling.
That’s how this game is played. If you ask us to change that basic fact of Eve Online, you sound like someone asking for chess players to double the number of pawns or declare every other square a safe zone.
No. It will not happen. New Eden is like an African Savannah. There are lions over there. You can join them. Or you can play at Zebra. Eventually, everyone dies being eaten alive.
We know you are surprised at the ruthless, naked brutality of Eve Online and the lack of empathy and compassion we show for your losses. We don’t care. We were surprised as well. We got over it. Either get over it, or leave.
We are already hunting you. Your time is coming.
