24 Weeks of World War Bee

We are at week 24 of the war proper, having started officially back on July 5th, but it has been a full six months since the invaders were caught out in their plans and the two week count down to the start began, so I am celebrating six months of writing about World War Bee.  Compare that to the Fountain War back in 2013, which covered just two months, or the Casino War, which started in earnest in February 2016, had us in Saranen by mid April, and in Delve come July.  And we’re not done yet.

This week saw an address by Progodlegend to Legacy and TEST where he both said the war was pretty much a foregone conclusion and that we will all soon begin to abandon the Imperium.  The Initiative attacking in Catch was held up as a prime example of the Imperium collapsing.  Once the war is over Legacy will lay claim to both its old territory, such Esoteria, which they previously said they were abandoning for Delve, as well as Delve, Querious, Period Basis.

Basically, all they need to do is wrap up the Imperium pockets in 1DQ1-A and E3OI-U and they’re done, the war is over.  Those will be the last big fights of the war.  The timeline for that, however, is fairly vague.  Progodlegend says the will come very soon at one point and maybe in  a couple more months elsewhere.  Goons being driven from the game is assumed in there somewhere.

Pandemic Horde had a town hall meeting last week as well, where they distanced themselves from the Vily message of driving Goons from the game.  They are just in it to damage the Imperium economically.  They seem less patient when it comes to assaulting 1DQ1-A and E3OI-U, suggesting if the current strategy wasn’t working in the first few weeks of December that they might try something different.  Also, the second pass on Fountain has been seen to be something of a wasted effort which will likely not continue.

On the comedy front, there was this 5.3 billion ISK Vince Draken pod that got caught trying to slip through Delve in a covert ops frigate.

Delve Front

The Delve front saw quite a bit of action.  Also, that metaliminal storm has found its way into NPC Delve, keeping people from cloaking in the systems marked around it.

Delve – Dec. 20, 2020

The Imperium strategy of retaking ihubs before the 35 timer runs down and allows PAPI to cyno jam the system has not been working out for us.  We were not able to retake the ihub for NOL-M9 as they were able to put many more people on the field to defend it that we would manage.  NOL-M9 now has a cyno jammer setup and the Keepstar there seems likely to be destroyed this week.

PAPI titans at the armor timer shoot

A similar fate seems likely for the Keepstar in D-W7F0, where PAPI also holds the ihub.

The strategy, or that aspect of it which I can see, appears to have moved to preventing enotsis ops on the ihubs that remain in our hands where Keepstars remain.  This had led to a number of fierce skirmishes, like the ones that have happened around 5-CQDA.

Battle Report Header

The other twist that has been coming up more recently is forcing PAPI to choose between objectives.  PAPI can put enough pilots in Delve to force an objective there, but a simultaneous timer elsewhere, like Catch, will be lost because they had to make the choice.

Catch Front

This week I am elevating the Catch region to have its own category as it remains the most active theater outside of Delve and is the place where Legacy is being forced to make choices.

Legacy came back and reinforced the staging Fortizar of The Initiative, but were distracted by a Delve objective that allowed The Initiative to put down a backup Fortizar in their staging in 0SHT-A.  The odd thing was that, when the final timer came up for the original Fortizar, Legacy started to commit to it, lost a bunch of ships to The Initiative, then stood down, losing both the objective and the ISK war.

That left The Initiative with two Fortizars in 0SHT-A after the fight.

Meanwhile, ihubs in Catch, and even next door in Immensea, have been falling.  We took the DY-P7Q ihub and then blew up the no longer operational Ansiblex jump gate and Pharolux cyno beacon on the grid with the Keepstar anchored there.

The Ansiblex blowing up, taking over a billion ISK in fuel with it

The Initiative now holds the ihub and TCU for HED-GP, the gateway system into the region from high sec.

And, as Progodlegend said, Imperium SIGs have been active in Catch as well.  Asher, accused of abandoning the war to hide in Catch, had gathered up the Reavers SIG to deploy out to 0SHT-A along with The Initiative, so I have been out there some myself.  We have been shooting structures… like the two above… as well as doing some of our own entosis work.  Not bad for a “30 man SIG.”  (We have Dawn Rhea of Theta Thursdays with us as well, so add at least one woman to the total.)

Popping a node during an entosis event

Things do not look so bad for Legacy when you look at the map of Catch right now.

Catch – Dec. 20, 2020

They have taken back some ihubs, including the one at 4-07MU, which connects to Querious.  But having lost them, they have to wait 35 days after restoring them before they can install Ansiblex jump gates to restore their easy travel routes.  Instead they either have to gate, use titan bridges, or jump clone between Delve and Catch.

Furthermore, rumor has it that The Watchmen alliance, which holds a large section of Catch for Legacy, is about to fold up shop and disband.  That would set quite a few systems back to the 35 day clock before they can be used for travel infrastructure.

Other Theaters

Despite Progodlegend declaring the Esoteria efforts a failure, citing The Initiative’s move to Catch as evidence, the groups remaining down there, The Bastion, Ferrata Victrix, and the Stain Russians who hate TEST, have continued to make a nuisance of themselves.  They have pushed back on The Army of Mango’s attempt to assert itself in the region and have expanded to hacking new systems.

NW Esoteria – Dec. 20, 2020

Then there is Querious, which is largely a dead zone as both sides have tired of planting new ihubs in the region.

Querious – Dec. 20, 2020

A range of systems remain empty while those still occupied by Brave continue to be assailed, meaning Brave has to deal with entosis events both here and in Catch.

And then in Fountain, as noted above, the PAPI invasion has pretty much ceased, with NCDot left holding a single ihub in LBGI-2 for now.

My Participation

I was able to jump in on a few ops, including two fights in 5-CQDA, including the one mentioned above.  I was also off on a few side missions over in Catch.  I ended up losing a few ships, including two Malediction interceptors that were used for burst jamming in one fight (the hostiles love that), a Scimitar in another fight, an Atron entosis frigate, and a Drake.

Probably the most amusing fight was in Catch on Saturday night when we landed on a gate with a Maller gang fit with smart bombs who were looking for ESS banks to rob.  We murdered them.

Murder report header

The one ship of ours they got was a Griffin ECM frigate.  Otherwise they were tackled and blown up.  In that quick clash I somehow managed to get the final blow on five of them with my sentry drones, which gave me a nice little line of five kill marks on my Ishtar.

5 orange kill marks in the upper left on my Blaze SKIN Ishtar

I do not think I have ever had a hull last long enough to earn five kill marks.

Anyway, my losses for the war so far now are as follows:

• Ares interceptor – 12
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 6
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Drake battle cruiser – 4
• Malediction interceptor – 4
• Ferox battle cruiser – 3
• Purifier stealth bomber – 2
• Guardian logi – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Scimitar logi – 2
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis battlecruiser – 1
• Bifrost command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

CCP did a Fireside Chat on Twitch with CCP Burger and CCP Hellmar where they mentioned, among other things, that more than 1.9 million new players had logged into EVE Online in 2020, a number greater than the previous three years combined.

That seems like amazing news, though the fact that the online numbers peaked back in April and have been slowly sliding down as the year has begun to fade suggests that CCP has not solved the player retention problem they brought up at EVE North back in 2019.

The CSM 14 summit meeting minutes had a list of priorities that were:

1. Stop the bleeding
2. Fix the stupid
3. Excite and teach
4. Incentivize return

It feels like they haven’t really addressed the first point yet as 1.9 million people have poured into the game this year and apparently right back out again.  This number of new players was so huge that I had to check to see if they were including EVE Echoes in their count, but EVE Echoes has claimed more than 2 million players on its own, so I couldn’t tell you where those 1.9 million went.

And that brings us to this week’s peak concurrent user number, which was down again.

• Day 1 – 38,838
• Week 1 – 37,034
• Week 2 – 34,799
• Week 3 – 34,692
• Week 4 – 35,583
• Week 5 – 35,479
• Week 6 – 34,974
• Week 7 – 38,299
• Week 8 – 35,650
• Week 9 – 35,075
• Week 10 – 35,812
• Week 11 – 35,165
• Week 12 – 36,671
• Week 13 – 35,618
• Week 14 – 39,681
• Week 15 – 40,359
• Week 16 – 36,642
• Week 17 – 37,695
• Week 18 – 36,632
• Week 19 – 35,816 (Saturday)
• Week 20 – 37,628 (Saturday)
• Week 21 – 34,888
• Week 22 – 33,264
• Week 23 – 33,149
• Week 24 – 32,807 (Saturday)

That is now the low water mark for the war, with even the holiday events and the Luminaire snowball fight failing to entice people into the game.

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 24
• INN – Legacy Coalition Address by Progodlegend (transcript)
• INN – Analyzing the Legacy War Update (warning: into the Moomin zone)
• INN – Pandemic Horde Town Hall (Moomin again)
• INN – Where’s Asher? Oh, He’s Here!
• INN – Amber Alert! Legacy’s Report Premature
• INN – Personas, Propagandists, and Backstabbers
• INN – HD-JVQ Fight and the Aftermath (other theaters)
• New Eden Post – Keepstar in NOL-M9 Reinforced
• CCP – Twitch Fireside Chat

23 Weeks of World War Bee

We lost another Keepstar while trying to unanchor it.  This time we managed to unanchor the structure ourselves, so PAPI didn’t steal it, but the jump freighter that was sent to scoop it got popped and the Keepstar was destroyed with the ship.  Some day we’ll get one unachored successfully

Then we lost a second one down in Period Basis and the one in NOL-M9 looks to be in danger.   It was not a good week on the Keepstar front for us.

This has added up to a lot of low effort trolling in /r/eve about why Goons won’t admit they have lost the war.  That makes we want to pull out the quote from early in the war, which Vily has reiterated over and over with the full support of his alliance and coalition:

When we started this war, we knew that we were fighting this to the end,” Vily told Polygon. “For us, this is a war of extermination. This is a war to the death. We are aiming for the removal of Mittani and The Imperium from Eve Online. […] We are here to purge them.

-Vily, in an interview with Polygon about the war

Leaving aside the fact that so long as we are still in the game we haven’t lost according to Vily’s stated victory condition, there really isn’t another exit from the war for us.  If Mittens said we’ve lost, that wouldn’t stop the invasion.  If you don’t leave somebody an out then they have nothing to lose if they keep fighting.

You might think that some moderation may have entered the picture since that Polygon article, which ran back in September.  But you would be wrong.

IGN published an article about the war this past week which offers a good summary of what is going on.  But within it you will find Vily bringing up the same end goal.  The war of extermination is still on.  Vily has set the parameters of the war and we have no place better to be.  1DQ1-A is where most of our stuff is now, so that is where we’ll stay.

CCP has also turned its eye back to the war.  With the Triglavian event over they found time to write up a post about the battle at FWST-8, which renewed two Guinness World Records for the company back in early October.  Lots of charts and graphs.

On another front, Massively OP named World War Bee as the Best MMO Event of 2020.

And then there is the ongoing forgotten rigs meme, which hit Vily again this past week.  Madcows of Elitist Ops was nice enough to contract them back.

Available for pickup

We’ll see if he picks them up from our Keepstar in D-W7F0. (Which you can do, it would just be risky.)

Delve Front

The week opened with a bang.  Pretty much as my Week 22 summary post went live PAPI tried to break down the door to 1DQ1-A with their headshot plan to take out the cyno jammers and reinforce the ihub.  We managed to thwart their attempt, but it looked like it was finally going to be Game On.  They were finally going to come and get us.

On the ihub grid

This was what we were waiting for and people on our side were itching for a return bout.

And then everything went back to the slow skirmishes over ihubs and small structures and whatever in Delve.  Not much happened.  Some ihubs changed hands, we botched the Keepstar scoop, and Vily forgot to fit his rigs again.

Delve – Dec. 13, 2020

One environmental change occurred however.  That metaliminal storm I mentioned in Querious last week got on its bike and rode into Delve, landing in SVM-3K.  It is an electrical type storm, which is the one that disables the ability to cloak.  If that keeps moving into the region it could mean some fun times.

Other Theaters

The re-invasion of Fountain announced which I mentioned last week seems to have fallen flat, likely due to lack of interest.

Fountain – Dec. 13, 2020

NCDot had a dozen ihubs there last week, now they have three.  The Initiative, the alleged target, has deployed elsewhere, but somebody seems to be pushing back in their space time.

Also, the metaliminal storm in Fountain, unlike the one now in Delve, seemed content to just meander about its pocket.

Querious remains an entosis skirmish zone.  Systems sit with no ihubs installed as both sides seem tired of them changing hands.

Querious – Dec. 13, 2020

The metaliminal storm in Delve is still on the border with Querious, so its effects still spill into the region despite the distance that regional gate spans.  New Eden storm logic I guess.

In northwest Esoteria, while The Initiative has moved on The Bastion, Ferrata Victrix, and the Stain Russians continue to keep the region from being a safe spot in the Legacy backfield.

Northwest Esoteria – Dec. 13, 2020

And this week we have a new entry in the secondary fronts, which is Catch.  I mentioned this in a post on Saturday and indicated that it too would now have to be included on this list.

The Initiative has set up shop in the system of 0SHT-A (universally referred to as “Oh Shit!”) in the NPC null sec region of Curse, which puts them a single gate from the center of Catch and very close to Brave’s home, route to the war, and supply route from high sec.

Action in Catch

They have used this position to reinforce and kill structures, reinforce and take ihubs, gank the locals, and disrupt life for them behind the lines.

Catch – Dec. 13, 2020

While derided as another pin prick, Legacy Coalition is moving assets and setting jump clones to Catch in order to counter this new fire in their rear area.  This will degrade their efforts in Delve and generally make the war more effort for them to prosecute.

And, just to make things interesting, there is also a storm in Catch, a Gamma storm, which has a penalty to remote reps.  There is also a Winter Nexus event ice storm, but that has no penalties.

My Participation

I got into a few more fleets over the week than I had in the past couple.  I was lucky enough to get into the PAPI headshot fight in 1DQ1-A, so saw some actually fleet combat.  Otherwise I was mostly along for fleets out covering entosis or shooting people trying to entosis our stuff, though I may have spent some time in Catch.  But none of my ships exploded, so my losses for the war remain:

• Ares interceptor – 12
• Crusader interceptor – 5
• Rokh battleship – 5
• Atron entosis frigate – 5
• Ferox battle cruiser – 3
• Drake entosis battle cruiser – 3
• Purifier stealth bomber – 2
• Guardian logi – 2
• Malediction interceptor – 2
• Scalpel logi frigate – 2
• Raven battleship – 1
• Crucifier ECM frigate – 1
• Gnosis ratting battlecruiser – 1
• Scimitar logi – 1
• Bifrost entosis command destroyer – 1
• Cormorant destroyer – 1
• Hurricane battle cruiser – 1
• Sigil entosis industrial – 1
• Mobile Small Warp Disruptor I – 1

Other Items

CCP introduced some changes with the December patch last Tuesday, among the biggest was the change to PvE drone aggression.  Feedback… and the fact that it broke PvP drone functionality… got CCP to roll back the change.  We’ll see if they try this again once they have their code figured out.

They also un-fixed the fix that stopped people from setting their home stations in NPC stations without cloning services.  This bug was around so long that it became a feature.  The real question for me was why NPC stations don’t all have clone services at this point?

Unannounced in the patch notes, or anywhere else, was a new character generation process.  This only affects newly created accounts and there is already a forum thread complaining about it.  To me it feels like an attempt to simplify the character creation process to get people actually into the game without getting bogged down in avatar creation.  We’ll see how that plays out.

They also kicked off the holiday event, the Winter Nexus.

And this week CCP faced another foe; the launch of Cyberpunk 2077.  Given how many people are talking about this game… it shattered Blizzard’s claim that Shadowlands was the fastest selling PC game ever, moving 8 million pre-orders, including 4.7 million on PC… the PCU dipped only slightly on Sunday.

• Day 1 – 38,838
• Week 1 – 37,034
• Week 2 – 34,799
• Week 3 – 34,692
• Week 4 – 35,583
• Week 5 – 35,479
• Week 6 – 34,974
• Week 7 – 38,299
• Week 8 – 35,650
• Week 9 – 35,075
• Week 10 – 35,812
• Week 11 – 35,165
• Week 12 – 36,671
• Week 13 – 35,618
• Week 14 – 39,681
• Week 15 – 40,359
• Week 16 – 36,642
• Week 17 – 37,695
• Week 18 – 36,632
• Week 19 – 35,816 (Saturday)
• Week 20 – 37,628 (Saturday)
• Week 21 – 34,888
• Week 22 – 33,264
• Week 23 – 33,149

Of course, Legacy was supposed to be conducting that big move op in order to defend Catch, so that and the holiday event might have been enough to keep the numbers from tipping too far.  We’ll see how it goes next week.

Related

• INN – World War Bee: Week 23
• INN – PAPI Attacks 1DQ1-A
• INN – Fueling the War Machine: Mining
• New Eden Post – The Culture of War of Attrition (warning: unsupported assumptions)
• The Meta Show – The Initiative Goes to Catch (warning: PAPI says don’t watch this)
• IGN – How EVE Online’s Players Started a War That’s Cost $700K
• CCP – The Fury at FWST-8 Battle Report

Catch On Fire

…The Imperium has thrown their pets in Initiative to the wolves…

Shattered Armer, ping to Brave Collective

What we have here is a dramatic misunderstanding as to who the “wolves” are in this situation.

PAPI has long been playing the concern troll card in an attempt to split The Initiative from the Imperium as part of Vily and Legacy Coalition’s oft repeated goal of driving Goons from the game because we are all bad people. (Pro tip: Calling The Initiative “pets” isn’t helping with that plan. That is a term you use to insult an alliance, not woo it.)  But this attempt takes the cake.

The Initiative likes do to its own thing and has that freedom within the Imperium.  They had previously joined The Bastion and Ferrata Victrix in Esoteria to harass TEST home space, taking ihubs, blowing up structures, snapping jump bridge networks, and dropping on the locals when they are careless.

They decided to change that up and moved to Curse, an NPC null sec region that is next door to Catch, home to several Legacy Coalition alliances, including Brace Collective.

Since arriving The Initiative has gone into Catch and carried on as they had been in Esoteria taking ihubs, blowing up structures, bringing down the jump bridge network, dropping on the locals, and even reinforcing a Keepstar.  They have been behaving as wolves do when the farm has been left unattended.

Another Ansiblex out of service

This has caused Brave to announce an about face in the war as they have sent out the call to return to Catch to defend their homeland, presumably pulling them out of the front line in the war.  They have a wolf problem to deal with.

But I think you can legitimately ask if they have ever really committed to the war.

One of the Imperium attempts to form a schism between our foes has been to point out that, for all the talking Vily does, he and Legacy Coalition have not been holding up their part in the war and that the PandaFam coalition (Pandemic Horde, Fraternity, NCDot, and Pandemic Legion) has been doing most of the heavy lifting.  The thing with this claim is that we have the receipts, the battle reports, to prove it.  PandaFam has put in the yeoman’s effort and the numbers bear out that claim.

A typical battle report from a large engagement since Fountain fell… because Legacy was largely absent from that campaign… tends to show Pandemic Horde with the most members on the field, usually by a large margin, followed by TEST, NCDot, and Fraternity.  Then there is a generally a sizeable number gap after which, fighting over fifth place, are usually Pandemic Legion and Brave, followed by all the other alliances.  Here is an example from one of the big fights in 319-3D:

Battle Report Header

Here is another from the fight at YZ9-F6.

Battle Report Header

So numbers in fights tend to rank like this:

1. Pandemic Horde
2. TEST
3. NCDot
4. Fraternity
5. Brave
6. Pandemic Legion

But if you look at the actual membership count of these alliances, they stack up like this:

1. Pandemic Horde – 23,418
2. TEST – 16,208
3. Fraternity – 15,237
4. Brave Collective – 12,383
5. NCDot – 3,737
6. Pandemic Legion – 2,238

Brave, the second largest alliance in the Legacy Coalition after TEST, is consistently and significantly out matched in participation by NCDot, an alliance that is less than a third their size, and they vie with Pandemic Legion for numbers, which is less than one fifth its size.

Brave lives in Catch, which is not a long drive from Delve, unlike Pandemic Horde, NCDot, and Pandemic Legion, who are staged far from their homes on the other side of null sec, and has most of its members in EU or US time zones, unlike the primarily Chinese Fraternity.

So where is Brave?  The ping I pulled that quote about wolves from also references the apocryphal Yamamoto quote about waking the sleeping giant.  That certainly implies that Brave hasn’t been pulling its weight if they cast themselves as being asleep.  After all, we’re coming up on six months of World War Bee.

Will they actually wake up now and show up to fight?  And if they pull back to Catch will they be able to handle The Initiative?  Facing an alliance almost half their size might be a challenge for Brave given their showing so far.  They might need help, which will pull more people from Delve.  Their allies certainly seem to think they won’t be able to manage it on their own, as Progodlegend seems to be announcing a Legacy-wide advance to the rear to fight The Initiative in Catch.  The move op to support that plan should give The Initiative a week or so to keep setting fires in peace.

And PandaFam will once again be left to do the heavy lifting on the main front.

Another region to report on in my weekly summary.

Losses in Fountain but a Win in Period Basis

Yesterday during EUTZ PandaFam continued its attacks into the Fountain region where a series of ihubs were set to be contested.  At the end of the cycle, they had added ten more ihubs to their total, bringing the number held as of this moment to 17, taking over the entirety of Taurus and Wyvern constellations, including the key gateway system of D4KU-5.

Taurus and Wyvern constellations

Without ihubs, no further Ansiblex jump gates can be deployed by The Initiative in those areas, hampering the ability to move forces there quickly.  This will also allow PandaFam to quickly deploy Fortizars into those area should they wish to move their staging out of Hophib and into the region, or at least set up Ansiblex jump gates of their own to facilitate the advance into the region.

That leaves the Fountain situation looking like this at the moment.

Fountain – July 21, 2020

PandaFam now holds most of the systems in the area circled in red.  The critical transportation backbone for the Imperium runs between J5A-IX at the border of the Cloud Ring region and Y-2ANO, which is the gateway to Delve.  PandaFam’s position puts J5A-IX and C-4NOD at risk of attack.  Both systems have multiple structures, including Keepstars, but they are likely too distant to hope for Imperium titans and supers to save them.  These systems may be the first Keepstar fights of the war if PandaFam pushes that way.

If C-4NOD falls the region isn’t lost, but mobility in the north will be hindered and the long gate connection to KVN-36 will become the front line of the fight.  The fall back from there is Y-2ANO and Delve.  The connection from Fountain lands in ZXB-VC, which will be a tough nut to crack as that falls within a single jump of Imperium titans and supers.

We’re still a ways from that however.  But the first line of defense in Fountain has been well and truly cracked.

Less contentious was the ihub event down in Period Basis last night.  I wrote previously about how we had lost the ihub in XZ-SKZ to TEST, which gave them a potential foothold down in Period Basis.

Where the ihub was

It is on the boarder with Stain, an NPC null sec region with a bunch of Russians who enjoy nothing more than shooting TEST. (Including, it seems, a TEST Fortizar.)  Perhaps not the ideal invasion route, as their jump bridge network connects up to the Paragon Soul boarder and the combined Legacy and PandaFam titan and super fleets are said to be in the two Keepstars in FAT-6P, which is in the Catch region on the boarder with Querious.

We have failed to take the ihub back from TEST a few times, but Legacy hasn’t really done much to exploit the system either.  Their plan still seems to be to drop POS towers somewhere in our space to exploit.  So yesterday a Baltec fleet went up on Lazarus Telraven, famed FC of the Lazamo and the decision to go all-in at B-R5RB, just as I was finally done with work for the day.  I had a Megathron handy so logged in to go along.  We were once again headed for that ihub, which was about ready to be contested yet again.

ihub event in 22 minutes

We set up on the heavily bubbled CJF-1P to try and catch anybody slipping in from Stain to try and defend the ihub.

Parked at the CJF-1P gate

Lighter response fleets were also deployed and enotsis ships to take the nodes as they appeared.

However, Legacy declined to contest the event.  Aside from one Scimitar that had the bad luck to jump through the gate and into a hungry pack of Megathrons, they did not show.  (I am surprised I was quick enough to get on the kill and even applied some damage.)

The event went our way and we had little to do aside from sit around, help Grath Telkin figure out the GSF SRP system, and watch sumo wrestling on Twitch.  I understand that Asher is responsible for the current sumo obsession in the coalition.  It can be interesting to watch, though everything is in Japanese, so I am sure I am missing the subtleties.  (Though the commercials are anything but subtle. A window into a different culture in that I suppose.)

After the ihub was successfully destroyed and replaced, we headed for home.  We were back to the pre-war state in Period Basis for the most part.

Addendum: The New Eden Post has coverage of the changes in Fountain.

Brisc Rubal Exonerated

If we are radio silent [on] something you know it is quality drama.

-Aryth, CSM 13 member, announcing the CCP post

Previously on season 13 of our favorite show, CSM Drama, the real life politician Brisc Rubal had been accused by a fellow CSM member of sharing confidential information with his corp mates, allowing them to enrich themselves.  For this CCP threw Brisc off of the CSM and banned all of his EVE Online accounts for life.

Council of Silly Messaging

Brisc protested his innocence, and he had his share of supporters.  But he also faced many jeers from those who mocked his carefully worded response as something a politician would do.

That quieted down after a bit.  After all, CCP had spoken.  They certainly would not make such a public accusation with such a severe penalty if they had not done a thorough investigation and were absolutely sure of the facts.

And then, of course, we found out that they did not, in fact, do a thorough investigation and, upon further reflection, announced that they needed to review the facts.

I described this as the “nightmare scenario,” a dramatic public pronouncement that they had to walk back, a situation that would leave nobody satisfied.  An actual investigation into the events would now take place.

Naturally, this made some people happy, Brisc no doubt included.  Others complained loudly about CCP, the CSM, and the unfairness of the world, where high profile players get second chances.

Now we have the final statement… at least I hope it is the final statement, but I thought the first statement would be final as well… from CCP after having completed an actual investigation.

Final Statement On Brisc Rubal Follow Up Investigation
2019-04-25 – By CCP Grendel – EVE dev-blogs

Dear Citizens of New Eden,

Following on from our statement on April 17, we have completed our review of the Brisc Rubal investigation and determined that our initial findings were incorrect. Neither Brisc Rubal nor the other players implicated in this incident breached CCP’s confidentiality, the terms of the Non-Disclosure Agreement, or used privileged information to obtain an in-game advantage.

We made a mistake here and we offer our formal apologies. First, to Brisc Rubal and the two other players involved, both for making the allegations and for the disturbance and stress caused by the way in which we handled this situation. Second, for not collaborating with due care with the members of CSM 13, who have acted responsibly throughout. Lastly, we owe our sincere apology to the EVE community for this error. We take full responsibility for any confusion and mistrust caused by our initial assessment of the situation.

After reviewing our assessment of the information on which these allegations were based and having spoken repeatedly with everyone involved, it’s now clear that our initial actions were based on unsubstantiated assumptions. While we were motivated by a desire to protect the working relationship between the CSM and the EVE Development Team with all due speed, had we taken the time to review the information with greater scrutiny, this incident could have been resolved without the disruption that has since occurred.

We aim to make it up to all concerned. Right now, we are in the process of restoring access to the EVE Online accounts of all three affected players, returning any confiscated assets and providing rectification as appropriate. We will work to set this right and will be making changes to our procedures and policies to ensure this kind of situation does not reoccur.

Thank you for your understanding.

Basically, CCP was wrong, know they were wrong, admits they were wrong, and has announced that they were wrong.

I think any internal review of what happened… one hopes they have some internal feedback process, since the only way you learn from mistakes is to examine how they occurred and build in checks to ensure the don’t happen again… should focus on what happened that led to this phrase:

…it’s now clear that our initial actions were based on unsubstantiated assumptions.

Holy moly, they did all of that based on what now?  It sounds like they just took somebody’s word for it, not the way to go in a game where shading the truth and presenting points of view as fact are long standing aspects of the meta.

Naturally, the forum thread to discuss this final turn has much of what you would expect.  There are people at least mildly happy that CCP ended up with at the right decision, scorn for CCP jumping to conclusions, and an array of pundits wanting to know if everybody who got banned gets a review now.  The usual suspects preside.

In the end Brisc Rubal, whom CCP called out publicly, as well as Pandoralica and Dark Shines, the two unnamed alleged co-conspirators, have been cleared.  The “INIT 3” go free.  They get their account reactivated and their stuff back and probably some sort of “we’re sorry” gift for all of the trouble.

As for what Brisc will do now, he made a short statement on Twitter:

Since folks are asking, I've chosen to resign from the CSM. There's not much time left in the term, and I need a break after all of this. Maybe in the future I'll consider running again, but this has been tough for me and the fam and I could use the time off. #tweetfleet

— Brian W. Schoeneman (@BrianSchoeneman) April 25, 2019

And so it goes.

Brisc will be appearing on the Open Comms Show, which you can find on the INN Twitch channel, tomorrow night at 18:00 Pacific time, 21:00 Eastern time, or 02:00 New Eden time.  There he and Dirk MacGirk and the Open Comms Show team will no doubt have much to say on the topic and many memes to share.

Naturally, other people are covering this story as expressing their opinions, though probably not as many as covered the initial bans.  Bans are news, retractions are not, so guess which will dominate Google search results when you look up Brisc Rubal going forward?

Other coverage:

• PC Gamer
• Massively OP

Out of the Hole and Back to Delve

After the second Keepstar kill a lot of those not in the Initiative took move ops out of the J115405, the wormhole known as “Rage,” having gotten the show for which they came.

But looking at the kill mails, the second Keepstar wasn’t as popular as the first.  Close to 1,400 people managed to get on the first one, but the second time around the number fell below 900.

I guess a second act isn’t as big of a draw.

The word had come down that Reavers would be sticking around in the hole for a while longer to join in on the structures still remaining.  As pings came up about fleets leaving for Delve or other ways out of J115405, the question about what we were doing would show up in Jabber.  The response from people like Zed Starshine was always that we were staying.  That persisted until Sunday when Asher pinged that we should get back home by any reasonable method.

So I blame Zed for my late start.

At that point I had passed up at least two fleets heading back and wasn’t sure if the alternate plan was still available.  I might have to scan myself out, though that was why I dragged along my alt in an Astero.  Now that the word had been given to bug out, I cleaned out my hangar, loaded up my ships, and got ready to travel.  Anything I couldn’t carry I stuck on the Hound that I looted, which I insured and had my alt undock.  Then I set it to self destruct and shot it for good measure.

Insurance fraud on the undock

I wasn’t the only one doing insurance fraud.  The way out was being reserved for cruisers and smaller ships.  Battleships and battlecruisers were not being let through on the threat of being blown up.  If you had a big ship you would either have to wait until official move ops were done or blow it up for the insurance payout.

While I missed a couple of fleets, the Initiative had a ratline back to normal space setup to get people out on their own.  To us that they had a fleet setup with instructions in the channel MOTD.  You had to warp to a carrier guarding the current out hole.

The Nidhoggur guarding the hole

There you would get a set of bookmarks that would guide you from hole to hole until you got to normal space.  I grabbed the bookmarks with my alt.  At the time there were two routes home.  I took the shortest one, which dropped into low sec.

I then dropped the fleet and formed one with my two characters.  I figured I would warp in with my alt, then have my main warp to him.  So I jumped through the first hole, then realized I didn’t know what to do with the bookmarks.  I motored off the hole I just went through and cloaked up and I Googled how to use bookmarks in your cargo hold.

It turns out you just need to open up your people and places window, go to the places tab, and drag the bookmarks onto it.  Easy.

That done, I remained confused for a bit as the first of the two bookmarks didn’t show up.  I realized, once I dragged the second one that the first was for the hole we had just gone through.  So once the second was in my places, I warped my alt to that, found the hole, and warped Wilhelm there to go through.

The Guardian goes through first

On the far side of the hole I found myself in Aridia.  That is a handy place to be if you’re heading back to Delve.  I was just eleven jumps from 1-SMEB, the gateway system to the region.

Of course, if I had been paying attention, I would have noticed that I was also only four jumps from Fountain and a direct connection to the new jump bridge network.  I actually knew I was close to Fountain, but I was uncertain about the state of the new jump bridges and it wasn’t until I was well on my way home that somebody linked the updates jump bridge map that would have showed me how to get home that way.

I know that for next time I guess.

But the route home via gates in Aridia wasn’t exactly a tough alternative.  And I saw a few people who were clearly taking the same path.  My Astero went ahead to check the path as the Guardian plowed on behind.  But the path was clear.  There was word that Black Legion had been staging in Sakht, the system in Aridia that connects to 1-SMEB and Delve, but while I saw a couple of them there they were not out in force.  They certainly were not camping the gate, so it was through and into Delve and the jump bridge towards 1DQ1-A.

The jump bridge in 1-SMEB

From there it was just two gates to home, where I warped to the Keepstar, only to find I was on the wrong Keepstar.

On the wrong Keepstar

I wasn’t even aware that we had two Keepstars in 1DQ1-A.  That is what happens when you stay deployed in the north for almost a year.  Also, the Imperium has so many structures in the system that I am surprised I can find any specific structure I want.

And so ended the wormhole expedition with both of my ships back where they started, a few kill mails and paps on my record, and a bit of loot in my cargo hold.  It was kind of a strange time being in a wormhole for a week.

I wasn’t there long enough to get used to logging in and seeing nobody in local.  Well, at least I didn’t see an accurate, up to date count of players in system at the top of the local chat window.  Various members of the Imperium were talking in local at any given point of time.

I was, however, in the hole long enough to feel the sense of isolation.  One of the things I am used to in New Eden is the ability to just get up and go where you need to.  It isn’t always safe or wise, but you can just set your destination and take gates to where you want to be.  When you’re in a wormhole, life is not so simple.  You cannot just jump clone out and back as I understand it, and I am not even sure how people can find the same wormhole twice when scanning things down.  Definitely a different EVE Online lifestyle.

Anyway, a recap of the whole thing in my posts:

• Waiting for a Hole
• Fort Knocks Way Down in the Hole
• Sotiyo Boom
• A Keepstar Waits in the Hole
• The Other Keepstar Falls in Rage

And then what has been written elsewhere about it:

• INN – Attack on Fort Knocks
• EN24 – The Inevitable Fall of Fort Knocks
• The Nosy Gamer – The Death of Fort Knocks
• INN – Continuing Battle Coverage and Opinion
• INN – In Their Own Words (interviews with key leaders in the event)
• NER – The Initiative Leadership Update 
• Reddit – The above, but on Reddit with lots of salty responses
• CCP – The Scope video covers the event