EVE Online Gets Another New Player Experience and Skill Training Updates as a New Quadrant Arrives

The summer vacations are over and CCP is back with a new Quadrant.  The Foundation Quadrant is over and the Gateway Quadrant has arrived.

Didn’t we all get stuck out here after that gateway closed?

And with that CCP is focused again on its favorite obsession of the last few years, the new player experience.  This time the NPE has been rebuilt around a new NPC faction, the Association for Interdisciplinary Research which will introduce new players to EVE Online.   The highlights from the dev blog are:

• More immersive experiences and faster iteration
• More dynamic visuals
• Gradual UI reveal
• Improved UI highlighting
• An integrated intro video
• Beautiful visuals

To the cynic in me that works out to “pretty,” “pretty,” “working with the UI we already have,” “working with the UI we already have,” “pretty,” and “pretty.”

I mean, there is room in there for real improvements, and maybe it is a better NPE, but CCP has chosen to emphasize the superficial and that the UI is too much for new players in its own description.  What is that supposed to tell me?

The new NPE is also said to be story driven, but so was the NPE two iterations ago, which was going to be a big new thing until they quietly ditched it, because everything PvE had to go into The Agency…. and probably also because once you got done with the story the actual game is nothing like that, bait and switch not being a great idea for player retention.  I hope CCP learned something since last time and aren’t just jumping back on the same idea they previously axed.

Though the NPE has been through the wringer more than a few times, CCP has been especially adamant about new player retention being an issue since EVE North back in 2019 when they gave us this chart.

How many new players log back in as time passes

As I noted at the time, that seems pretty dismal without any context.  But the one publicly available study on the topic I found seemed to indicate that those retention numbers are pretty close to the industry average for MMORPGs with a free to play option.  Given EVE Online’s legendary difficulty, obtuse UI, and open world PvP, that CCP does so well is probably an achievement.

So while I get that CCP likes to keep reminding us that new players are the lifeblood of the game… and I hope this next revision of the NPE helps on that front… farming the installed player base, the lapsed veterans and such, is how games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft have revitalized their bottom lines.  Here is hoping that another investment in another new NPE pays off.

The NPE is also emphasized in the trailer for the new quadrant.

I feel like I saw that launch sequence in the EVE Valkyrie opening… but I guess all tube launches feel kind of the same.  I’ll have to find some time to give it a try.

So that is the first thing on the list.

Next on the update front is skill training with the introduction of skill plans and a revamp of the training system UI.  This feels like a feature that benefits both new and old players alike.  Players will be able to create plans for specific goals, with milestones to mark improvements for specific configurations, and even certified skill plans aimed at new players to help them decide what to train.

There is also a revamp of the skill training UI.  Being an old fart that has finally gotten used to the current setup, I immediately wondered how badly could they screw it up? This morning already saw calls for the old UI on r/eve, but they hate everything there.  But here is the new UI on day one.

The New Skill Window – The red arrow thing is not part of the UI

For openers, skills now have their own window, no doubt because the game UI doesn’t have enough independent windows floating around, and it defaults to the new training plan UI, which I won’t even delve into right now, but it feels too big and not all that helpful.

For those of us who just want to see our current skills and queue together, the second tab has that, with all the skill groups now in alphabetical order finally.  I know, there is outrage that Spaceship Command isn’t in the upper left, but whatever, and my brain wants to read left to right along rows first, then down columns, and the sorting is by columns, but I’ll get used to all of that.

The window seems bigger than it needs to be.  It defaults to full screen, which is obnoxiously large on my 34″ monitor, but even when I make it a window it remains too wide for my taste largely due to the black dead zone between skills and queue (marked with the red arrow in the screen show above) that cannot be sized down by itself. (The gap between skill names and their states seems pretty wide as well.)

Anyway, there is always EVE Mon still if I need a more compact view.  Oh, and your character sheet is different now, lacking all those skills… and I hope you remembered to put pants on your avatar.

All of this comes with a couple of big changes to skills queues:

• The current limit of 50 skill entries in the queue will be increased to 150 for both Alpha and Omega clones.
• The current restriction of the Alpha clone training queue allowing only the skills that would start training within the next 24h will also be removed.

As somebody who came from the “one skill at a time and make sure you start a long skill the night before the next patch update” era, these seem huge.  150 skills in the queue will let you build up a might skill plan… I’ve bumped into the 50 skill limit a few times since it became a thing… and the removal of the 24 hour queue limit will be huge for new players.

And old players.  I can even now see people rolling up a new alpha, sending it the ISK for skills, setting up the desired queue, then letting it run for however long it takes until that suicide gank character or whatever is on the shelf and ready to use.  There is no improvement that EVE players will fail to exploit.

There are a few other items with today’s update.  A new skill points for sale pack is in the store.  EVE Online will be available in the Epic Store come September 23rd.  And, in a nod to the promise to relax the economic starvation plan (now planned for November), there was this tidbit slipped in at the bottom of the announcement:

More ice has been brought back into New Eden with its availability having doubled, and the availability of Mercoxit has also increased.

I wonder if the ice availability got boosted due to the jump drive fuel crisis that hit the game when World War Bee ended and PAPI had to move home?  Anyway, there is alleged to be more ice now.

So that is the what has come with the launch of the new quadrant.  Here are the related dev posts for today’s update:

• Gateway – New Quadrant Starts Today
• Improved New Player Experience
• Updates to Skill Training

Ten Weeks of World War Bee

Here we are at the ten week mark and the war carries on.

On the Imperium side, the news of the week was probably the sounding of the Horn of Goondor, the email out to all of the lapsed members of the coalition top tell them that was is upon us and now is the time to come back and join the war.  The text of the email was posted over at INN because it isn’t something you keep secret if you want it to work.  I’m just surprised I haven’t seen the Goondor Calling video linked yet… so I guess I’ll link it.

There were a few immediate responses, like Mynnna donating a couple trillion ISK in cash and goods to the cause.  Of course, since the email went far and wide, those attacking us have declared that the Imperium is now desperate, on its last legs, or whatever.  Maybe they’ll attack Delve now.  Because the real risk of sounding the horn is that the attackers will continue to dither and people who came back for a war won’t get one.

Another items that has been discussed as part of the war is the Tranquility Trading Tower, part of the Tranquility Trading Consortium, a joint enterprise involving the Imperium, Legacy, and Pandemic Horde, who all get a cut of the profits, a total said to run north of a trillion ISK each month.

TTC Alliance Info… join their Discord server!

People have been wondering whether that deal will get broken, as both sides staying in business together seems more than a bit hypocritical given some of the rhetoric being tossed about.

However, all sides like ISK and nobody seems to want to interrupt the flow right now.

But some people like ISK more than others.  While the Imperium distributes the proceeds from the TTC agreement across alliances based on the number of members they have, word leaked that when it comes to Legacy coalition TEST keeps all of the proceeds.  When The Mittani brought this up on the Meta Show on Saturday, Vily explained in the chat that this covers the value that the other alliances in the coalition receive for being a member.  So there you have it.  Vily graciously uses the TTC  revenues to pay the membership dues of other members of Legacy coalition, to TEST.  Memes quickly followed.

So much for trivia from the field.

Northern Front

Fountain isn’t much of a front anymore.

With PandaFam moving out of Fountain, The Initiative took it upon themselves to reinforce every ihub in the region, even those in the metaliminal storm systems.  Then they won the timers and even started planting their own ihubs back in the region again.

Fountain ihub owership – Sept 13, 2020

They have also been doing the TCUs as well, so the whole region will soon look like it once did, at least on DOTLAN.

Of course, that isn’t going to replace all the structures that were lost, which by one count, tallied up to:

6 Keepstars
7 Sotiyos
15 Faction Forts
41 Fortizars
32 Tataras
14 Azbels
263 Athanors
18 Astras
41 Raitarus
25 Jump Gates
38 Cyno Beacons
108 TCUs
108 IHUBs

The is a lot of losses.  But INIT has also been out shooting the structures left behind by PandaFam, which have mostly been left to die.  They did make an exception for the Fortizar in I-CUVX, which they rushed back to save.  No doubt they have a lot of stuff still left to be moved there, and having a bunch of stuff go into asset safety would be a bit of a blow.

Southern Front

Having left Fountain, PandaFam has taken up position to begin attacking through Querious.  They now have a staging Fortizar in Kaira, in the Khanid region, to act as their base.

I went over to take a peek

After weeks where Legacy made a big show, holding as many as 56 ihubs at one point, then losing almost all of them, PandaFam’s arrival has given them some backbone and the attackers are actually attacking in Querious again.  As of this writing, the attackers hold 51 of the ihubs in the region, though several are in play right this moment.

Skirmishes over ihubs are happening all over the eastern half of the region, often over systems that have traded hands multiple times at this point.  Both sides have racked up losses and kills over the week, leading Imperium FC John Hartley to post this picture of the expected arc of Jackdaw pricing.

The market looks bullish

PandaFam, however, has been more focused, driving along the series of systems that lead to NPC Delve.

Querious – Sep 13, 2020

NPC Delve, a cluster of 11 systems owned by the Blood Raiders NPC faction, each of which has an NPC station.  NPC Delve is one of the traditional invasion points, as you can dock up in an unassailable NPC station as a base.  The stations can also hold carriers and dreadnoughts and from 1DH-SX capitals are in jump range of most of Delve.  If they can get into that system and setup a Fortizar for tethering, or a Keepstar for docking, supers and titans can range across much of the region as well.

Systems with titan range of 1DH-SX

That still keeps them just out of super and titan range of our main staging in 1DQ1-A and all the Keepstars and Fortizars that I drew circles around last week.  They will have to get a foothold further into the region for that.

Meanwhile, getting a Fortizar or Keepstar set up in 1DH-SX is easier said that done.  Any attempt would no doubt lead to both sides swarming on the system.  And, while NPC Delve is known as an invasion route into the region, it has also been witness to ignominious defeats, with groups being camped into stations by fleets running from downtime to downtime.  I’ve been on some of those ops before.

319 Station, where Nulli Secunda was camped back in 2012

Still, with the likely invasion vector being set, the Imperium spent some time over the weekend consolidating its capital force, which had previously been scattered across four different staging locations.

Everybody landing at the new staging Keepstar

The war now seems to be headed towards a possible clash of titans as both sides get in position.  If the invaders come into NPC Delve a host of our capitals, supers, and titans are in range.

My Participation

I went on a few ops, though not so many as I would have liked.  A lot of the war has been taking place in Euro time, with things tapering off as the day rolls into my own prime time on the US west coast.  Still, I did get one kill mail when we shot yet another POS tower that the hostiles dropped.  This one was in 1DH-SX, which makes sense given the path the war has been taking.

Shooting another POS tower

I was also in a big fight yesterday, in both the Muninn fleet and driving my Apostle in the capital fleet.

My Scimi out in the fight

The caps were there to counter dread the hostiles were threatening to drop on the subcaps.  Along the way my Scimi got primaried off the field, so that is one more loss to add to my war total so far.

• Ares interceptor – 9
• Atron entosis frigate – 5
• Drake entosis battle cruiser – 3
• Guardian logi – 2
• Malediction interceptor – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Ferox battle cruiser – 2
• Scimitar logi – 1
• Bifrost entosis command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Purifier stealth bomber – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1

Coming Up

I suspect that the fighting will continue to be focused on Querious, with perhaps an attempt to setup a staging point within titan bridge range of NPC Delve.  At least a Fortizar would need to be anchored for that.  One set up in GOP-GE would give the attackers the ability to cover their route into Delve and set them up to project force in order to move into NPC Delve.

How quickly that will come to pass remains to be seen.  PandaFam, deployed far from home, seems to be focused on getting stuff done while TEST and their Legacy allies, who all still live at home… in game at least… seem in less of a hurry.  Vily has been talking about getting to 1DQ1-A by February, which would require keeping the war going for a full seven months.  We will see if things take that long, or if those deployed from the east have the stamina to keep going that long.

Addendum:

• INN – World War Bee: Week 10
• INN – Return of the Goon (Moomin is back)
• INN – The Art of War: WWB and PanFam

Null Sec Blackout to End on Monday

I woke up this morning to find some fresh news from the Chaos Era, though this time it seemed a bit counter-chaos.  CCP Cognac announced at the Berlin Fanfest that delayed local in null sec, the blackout, will be over after downtime on Monday.

CCP says Blackout

CCP had said previously that the blackout would be for an indefinite duration, but its introduction two months back came with quite a bit of warning, discussion, and even a setup via the in-game lore.  Has a new supply of Quantum-Entangled 4-Helium been secured?

We don’t know.  Not yet anyway.  CCP did not say why they are bringing the blackout to an end, just that it is happening.  The announcement could charitably be called perfunctory.  Clip of the announcement, and I have seen several, run about 30 seconds.

Of course, there is quite a bit of speculation as to why it is happening.  You need only go over to cesspool of /r/eve to see various theories.  But /r/eve has been at war with itself over the Chaos Era since it started. (At war with itself more so than usual at least, likely because the Chaos Era has been focused on nerfing null sec, which has led to the usual tribal division who see somebody else getting hit as good for them.)  A leading candidate is the dropping concurrent player numbers, something I mentioned on Monday.  The count fell off noticeably with the end of the Season of Skills event and has been slowly falling ever since.  I was concerned to log in on a week night to find the online count under 15K, but this week I was on when it was around 12K.  18K used to seem like the low bar for my usual evening play time on the west coast.

There is even a post up over at Massively OP trying to sum up the various evidence and theories which, including the comments, range from summer vacations to WoW Classic to the core player base getting old and dying off.  But back in the EVE Online player base people are still denying there has been any decline at all.  So your mileage may vary.

Anyway, we shall see if the removal of the blackout has an impact on those numbers.  I do expect that AFK cloaky campers will soon be back in null sec space to keep the ratters and miners on their toes.

I am sure there will be plenty of hot takes and summaries of the blackout.  I might have a few additional words myself.  But the end of the Chaos Era hasn’t been announced, so expect humans to continue to behave like humans when faced with uncertainty.

Circle of Two Loses Another Keepstar

As I posted on Monday, the sights of the Imperium were set on the CO2 Keepstar in DW-T2I.  The destruction of this Keepstar has been an operational plan since July, when the first opportunity was thwarted by ignorance about cynojammers.

Lots of work since then led to the situation on Wednesday evening when the Keepstar, no longer under the protective umbrella of a cynojammer, came out of its final timer.

The question was whether or not there would be a fight.

Given that there was no defense of the previous timer and that the Imperium had picked off a number of jump freighters hauling cargo that smacked of an evacuation, it seemed likely that no defense would be offered.

But spies were also reporting that the north was trying to rally together a defense, with various organizations sending out pings looking for a maximum effort.  However, the north is not like the Imperium.  It does not have a unified communications and command structure.  So not every entity is on board with every plan.  And rumor had it that CO2 was not planning to defend the Keepstar.  Whether they saw it as a futile effort or because The GigX, the rumored return of the perma-banned GigX, was himself (or herself if you’re into the “Mrs. GigX” story) banned shortly before the CSM summit, it appeared that they were not going to show up.  And it is understandably hard to get motivated about defending something when the owners have given up.

We however were planning to show up in force.  In part that was to ensure if any defense operation managed to coalesced that it could be dealt with, but also because everybody wanted to get on the kill mail for the Keepstar.

There was actually a list of CO2 structures to destroy on Wednesday, with the Keepstar as the final course.  Operations opened with a pair of Baltec fleets forming up to run bridge out and take care of a pair of CO2 Fortizars.

Baltecs Bridging Out for the First Shoot

I managed to get online and into Apple Pear’s fleet in my Oneiros to go along for the ride, combat drones loaded to be sure I had a chance to get on the kill mails myself.

The initial ops were unopposed.  The Fortizars were empty and the shoots were quiet enough that one could focus on other thing in the long silences between Apple Pear’s instructions.  We were close enough that people packing drones were able to join in on the shoot.

Drone Dyson Sphere around the Fortizar

We hit both without incident or interference.

After the two of those down we went back to 6RCQ-V to stand down for a bit.

Aligned out as a Fortizar explodes

Not too long after that it was time to form up for the main op.  This saw over a thousand people logged into our staging before we started to head out.  Again I managed to find a spot in Apple Pear’s Baltec fleet with my Oneiros.  The fleet filled up and was sorted out in very short order at which point we were undocked and on our way.

We took a gate to meet up with our titan and were then bridged directly to the Fortizar on grid with the Keepstar in DW-T2I.

The Keepstar in the distance

The Keepstar still had more than an hour on its timer, but there were other activities planned for us.  There were three other structures coming out of their final timers in quick succession before the grand finale.

The first was an Azbel.

On the Azbel

Once that was down we moved on to wreck a Tatara mining platform that was already being hit.

Tatara wreck before being quickly salvaged

There was a pause after that to wait for the next target, a Sotiyo whose timer had a ways to go.

Circle of Two Sotiyo

Once that timer hit we warped over to it… all of these structures were on the same grid, so you could see them from our Fortizar perch… and commenced to bash that.

The Sotiyo was like some sort of pinata.  When it died almost 40 empty Magnate frigates spilled out or were destroyed… or both… as my kill board got credit for them.  40 more frigate kills for me and everybody else who was shooting the Sotiyo I guess.

The Sotiyo wreck

With the Sotiyo down the preliminaries were over and only the main even awaited us.  We perched back up, tethered on the Fortizar and watched the super carriers get themselves situated.

Fleets tethered up on the Fortizar

The plan was the same as it was the previous Saturday, with the super carriers launching fighters and sending them over to a command destroyer which formed the first of a chain of such ships that would AOE micro jump drive the ball of fighters to the Keepstar in 100km leaps.

This involved a lot of cajoling as controlling fighters isn’t completely intuitive and there is always somebody whose Nyx starts slowly trundling towards the target or whose fighters are headed off into space or end up inadvertently attacking somebody.  I feel for them.  I did the capital ops class on using fighters then forgot half of it within a day.  It is something you need to do a bunch for it to become second nature.

Still a lot of fighters ended up on the command destroyer.

Fighters swarming – Picture source unknown

That screen shot was linked in a ping.  I don’t know who took it, but it shows lots of fighters orbiting, ready for an MJD to take them closer to the Keepstar.

Fighters were in place when the Keepstar timer finally ran down.  The attack on the structure began as we all sat and watched.

The plan was to keep as many people away from the action until the last minute when everybody would jump in or warp to the Keepstar to get in their hit before it died.  So we just sat and watched, TiDi free, as the fighters chewed up the structure.  There were about a thousand people in local.

Then, as the Keepstar got down to 10% the word went out.  Cynos were lit.  We aligned to the target.  And about a thousand more ships landed in the system looking to get in their hit.  A host of titans jumped into our path as we slowly warped to the Keepstar, the tidi slamming down on the node, bringing us to 10% speed.

Titans blocking the view of the Keepstar

We flew on through the titans, and I spotted a Molok as we passed.  Things were slow enough for me to notice that.

That is a Molok, look at the paint job

We landed just 30km off the Keepstar.  I had prepared for this, loading up a sentry drone in my drone bay.  As I came to a stop I dropped the sentry drone, targeted the Keepstar, and engaged.  I saw a few hits recorded… and then my client crashed.  I hadn’t turned down my graphic settings and I am sure the client went beyond the 32-bit RAM allocation limit and terminated.  I was on grid and close proximity with a lot of ships.

All those ships, all visible

Fortunately this wasn’t as bad as some of the big fights.  I was able to log right back in and re-join the fleet.  I had not even warped off as I was still being warp scrambled by the Keepstar, something it does for 30 seconds when you start shooting it.

However, my Bouncer sentry drone was still in my drone bay, so something had gone out of sequence.  I dropped it again, locked up the Keepstar, and started shooting it again.

I also zoomed out my camera to maximum distance and turned it away from the fight in hopes of fending off another client crash before the Keepstar died.

I also did the control-shift-alt-M command to bring up the client monitor to see how my memory usage was doing.  I was riding on the edge there.

My memory numbers after logging back in

We had the order from Apple Pear to align back to the Fortizar, so I pulled the Bouncer.  However, I wasn’t sure if I had hit the Keepstar again after the re-log, so I launcher a Warrior II and sent it after it, willing to sacrifice a light drone in order to get on the kill mail.  Then I aligned and waited for things to go “Boom!”

The Keepstar was done very shortly thereafter.  I was even able to recover my Warrior II.  The Kill mail shows me… and a lot of people… having done zero damage.  But we got counted, which was what mattered.

And then began the unwind, the return to the Fortizar, the recovering of fighters, the capitals jumping out, and then finally the subcaps being bridged out.  Some impatient people decided to gate home and got caught by gate camps.  It was better to be patient.

So I managed to get on six structure kills in my Oneiros and never had to rep anybody.

• Fortizar 1
• Fortizar 2
• Azbel
• Tatara
• Sotiyo
• Keepstar

Most Valuable Recent Kills

The Tatara was apparently significantly under valued.  A ping went out from Tuzy about the Tatara that explained how much the tech II rigs on it were actually worth:

I was just looking over the battle report today from all the structures we killed and I wanted to call this out to everyone. Take a look at this Tatara kill. https://zkillboard.com/kill/72384288/ I noticed it’s value was ~ 10b isk so I immediately looked at the rigs. Aha! But what did I discover? This was a 92 billion isk structure. Take a look at the rigs….both are T2. Zkillboard drastically undervalues them because these rigs are simply NOT sold anywhere in game. Anyone who needs these specific rigs are large, rich alliances – all of whom build them themselves. Go to https://eve-industry.org/calc/ and type in those rig names. That Reproc rig is 66 billion isk. That reactions rig is 15.9b isk. So you can add another 82 billion isk to this killmail to our tally for the day.

So we can add that to the value.

Through all of this, no defenders stood to.  There was a fleet of NCDot and other locals in interceptors hanging around, but they seemed as interested in getting on the kill mails as anything.

And now with that accomplished, with the Keepstar in CO2’s capital system destroyed, we get to ask, “What next?”  CO2 has other citadels in Fade.  Even another Keepstar.

We passed this while killing the Fortizars

But from what I am hearing CO2 is trying to pack up their citadels and it is now a race to see if we can blow them up before they get carried off.  Then there is the NCDot Keepstar in DO6H-Q.  The ihub has been cleared there, so that might be on the list of targets as well.

After that… well… Mittens says that we don’t want Fade, so we’re not going to take the sovereignty.  And we don’t have anybody lined up who wants to take it.  But we also don’t want CO2 to have it, so I suspect that we will stay deployed in 6RCQ-V until we’re sure that CO2 has moved elsewhere.

The destruction of this Keepstar took place on the anniversary of the last year’s betrayal of CO2 by The Judge which ended up with the Imperium buying the CO2 Keepstar in 68FT-6 from him, then turning around and selling it to TEST.

This is on top of the events of late 2016 when CO2 lost a Keepstar at M-OEE8 when NCDot and Pandemic Legion decided to take Tribute after the Casino War had ended.

As an alliance, they have not had great luck with Keepstars.  But their leadership made their bed, so they get to sleep in it.

Other coverage:

• INN

At the Camp in 68FT-6

Being the space tourist that I am, I had to get out to 68FT-6 to see the pilfered Keepstar, the hell camp, and the various warp disruption bubbles laid about the station.

The bubbles above the Keepstar

Pings were calling for more interdictors and I had a Flycatcher stashed not too far away, so I tried to get out to the scene, but fell victim to a gate camp.  It was a gate camp I should have expected, could have avoided, and likely could have escaped, but I managed to be dumb on all front at that point and got blown up instead.  Typical me.

That put me back in Delve where I grabbed a Sabre I had handy and started the flight out to 68FT-6 all over again.  The route from Delve to Impass was actually pretty safe thanks to the fact that we are temporarily blue with both TEST and Brave Newbies, so in my speedy ship it wasn’t too long before I was arriving at my destination.

First glimpse of the Keepstar name

I docked up, then undocked to join one of the fleets camping the Keepstar, waiting for any daring CO2 pilot to try and get away.

Hanging out in the bubbles near the undock

I hung out in the fleet, listened to coms, and generally only paid half attention at most to what was going on.  There wasn’t much.  Capsules and interceptors that undocked to try and slip out were quickly picked off by sensor boosted insta-lockers in the fleet.  There was little chance to get in on those kills unless you had drones assigned to one of those pilots.

I did luck out and get on one kill when an Apostle undocked to get blown up for insurance.

Apostle getting hit

I almost missed out on that.  I saw the Apostle appear on my overview and it took me a moment to process the fact that somebody had undocked and wasn’t almost instantly dead.  By the time I locked the ship up the damage was well into armor.  But I was close enough to get in a few hits with my tiny whore gun and was included on the kill mail.  Somebody gunning the Keepstar did most of the damage.

After that it was more hanging out and listening to coms.  DBRB showed up for a bit and stirred people up.  After he left some new guy said he had heard about DBRB but now understood why people hated him.  I could only think, “You know nothing Jon Snow!”  That little visit was barely Boat at all.  I am very much on the pro-Boat side of things because nobody throws themselves into this game like he does and he has been leading fleets and getting kills for longer than any active FC I know.  But he is an acquired taste and a little Boat can go a long way.

Sitting around on the Keepstar

We also have the station in the system well covered.

Station bubbles? Check!

Being a tourist attraction, other fleets and individuals would show up from time to time just to look in on the event.  What looked to be a Spectre fleet showed up in Confessors and hung about for a bit, killing somebody being dumb in a Legion before heading off for greener pastures.

Confessors lurking well out of range

Not far off from the Keepstar, on the same grid, Legion of xXDEATHXx was dropping a Raitaru.

Raitaru online in seconds

I am not sure what Legion of xXDEATHXx has planned in the area, but TEST was about guarding the deployment, so they are clearly welcome in the area.

Legion of xXDEATHXx logo on the Raitaru

And then there were the CO2 members hanging out in the Keepstar looking for a way out.

I am not going to go Gevlon and claim there were no victims here, but the people in CO2 do have some options.  There is asset safety with citadels, so after some duration they can pay 15% of the assessed value of their stuff to have it delivered to a station in low sec.  That can add up quickly and  you’re still stuck in low sec and have to move your stuff around, but you can at least get your stuff… unless you have a super capital.  You can only dock a super in a citadel, not an NPC station, so some very expensive ships might be lost.

But even that can be worked around.  A number of alliances are taking in CO2 individuals and corporations.  TEST is very open and even the Imperium has picked up some members from CO2.  Back at the end of the Casino War I saw people leave the Imperium, join Pandemic Horde, rescue their stuff, then come back to the Imperium.  Some times you have to do what you have to do to get your stuff safe.

I wouldn’t want to trade places with them, but all is not lost.

While out on the camp the word came over coms that The Judge had joined Goonswarm.

The Judge

Like Haargoth Agamar before him (the guy who disbanded Band of Brothers) The Judge was take in by Goonswarm, but faces a future of relative obscurity.  As others have noted, and even Haargoth himself said before he pulled the trigger, after you do something like this it isn’t like you’re going to get a lot of positions of responsibility.  You’ve shown your colors and that is that.  He certainly won’t run for the CSM again.  He would be a distraction and would be more likely to get people to vote just to elect somebody else.  Some people have been asking if there is a way to recall him from the current CSM.

And then there is GigX.

He got himself perma banned for continuous, very public, often very specific threats to harm The Judge in real life either at his home or when he shows up in Iceland for the next CSM summit.  That goes well beyond “heat of the moment” to my mind.  He burned himself and good, though he might yet get himself reinstated with an appropriate apology and whatever amends might fit.  We shall see.

I’m somewhat pissed that he felt he had to loudly and publicly threaten The Judge and get himself banned.  It was both dumb and avoidable and it also hurt the game.

First, the end of the story was cut short.  And in null sec stories are what makes the place great.  You can blow people up anywhere, but you can only play space empires in null.  CO2 is done for now by default because GigX is gone.  We won’t know how things might have played out had he stayed in the game or what sort of recovery of might have occurred.  I wouldn’t bet against the determination of GigX, and despite some of the things he has done to his alliance, he has his share of supporters.

Second, and probably more importantly, his behavior changed the narrative in the news.  Rather than this being a story or intrigue and betrayal, it is becoming a tale about how a bad person in a bad game made real life threats and got banned.  Gamers remain horrible people as he managed to shit on all of us.  Thanks.

Welcome to the new cycle.

So I remain out on the camp, collecting participation links… I need some as I haven’t been on a fleet yet this month… and watch a lot of brand new TEST pilots undock and fly away.  I wonder what we’re going to do with the Keepstar once the temp blue situation is over?

Even Fat Bee is in a bubble

There is still work to be done, CO2 space to be carved up and conquered, new homes to be found, and a new balance of power to be sorted out.  But that will come and eventually things will settle down and events of the day will fade into memory just like the mocking bubbles spelling out LOL above the Keepstar.

Bubbles, like events, fade eventually

And yes, somebody made a giant penis out of warp disruption bubbles below the Keepstar.

Make no mistake, it is a dong

I think people… well, men… have been scrawling penises on things throughout history, so why not in this pretend dystopian future?