Funny enough I ganked before I actually AG’d, but it was a bot Russian miner who kept on mining the same rocks as me and I failed the gank to boot. I think I started to AG mainly because I saw it as a easy way to make ISK and wanted to make it harder for them, but it was only a casual thing for me. For a large period of time I would go about my business but keep an eye on AG intel and when I saw something near me I would go try and help.
Because I did not want to get tied down into any commitments, I avoided contact with the leadership of AG it was only later on that I got to know a few more than casually. But I did get to know quite a few active AG players. As for the charge of being toxic, the only toxic AG players were the alts of gankers stirring up shite. I came across a fair few upset victims, who vented their ire somewhat, but that was just the heat of the moment stuff and nothing to get upset about as most calmed down and chilled about it. In fact the majority of people that were victims were quite chill about it.
The toxicity of the ganker community however was really bad, some I could talk to, but many were after emotional content and would try to pull peoples leavers to get an angry response. As I often played games where you make the opponent angry so they make a mistake I was sort of OK with it, but I knew it was damaging to player retention and at times I began to see a worrying focus on tears as being the main reason to gank by some…
Like many the tears from gankers when you blew them up or prevented the ganks were often pretty intense, though some were amazingly chill at being stopped or having their loot sniped.
All in all I think the main reason I did it was because it gave me some PvP content when I was in hisec, as soon as I went to nullsec I focussed on nullsec.
And another thing, successful AG often resulted in nothing happening, for example if you set up to prevent a gank on a miner and the gankers don’t go for it that is a win. Just being in system could stop a gank. parking a HIC to nab the looter often worked and when you managed to catch the looter full of loot it was glorious.
The miner AG activity for example, I hardly got any kills on Catalysts going after miners in belts as they did not attack when I was waiting for them. But real fun was intercepting them on gates, if anyone wants to do AG setting up to nab -10 gankers is funny as hell.
I did not enjoy repping because it was often a failure, but sometimes when you had a fleet it was great fun and worked well. Thotaman however does that really well, saves stuff that most can’t.
