My prior post, For Whom the Bell Tolls, got a fair bit of off-line reaction. Most of the CVA (Curatores Veritatis Alliance) folks I've communicated with are admitting that their Reclaiming of Providence has downgraded from a short-term inevitability to a long term goal.
Since Bell was posted, CVA has shed another thirty pilots, taking them under the one thousand mark (986 as of this morning). They've been able to hold their corporation count but it's evident that, with their glory days gone and no reasonably secure null-sec space to offer, pilots are voting with their feet against CVA's current direction.
As I've said before, role-play or not, people don’t pay CCP every month for a bummer. They pay to have fun. Any corporation or alliance ignoring this basic fact, does so at their peril.
Happily for CVA, the incessant pressure from U'K and AAA (Against All Authorities) may be about to come off. AAA, has reset most of its blues, apparently discontent with having to slog so far from home for their pew-pew. Victory it seems, can be as hard on the winners as the losers. Without the threat of an enemy at the gates, friction develops among the troops, old grudges surface and cracks in alliance unity begin to show.
Rather than submit itself to the perils of peace and stability, AAA has reset the game.
If CVA had spent its time since the Great Eviction rebuilding and waiting for this opportunity, rather than alienating solid allies and grinding down its pilot base, it might have been well placed to take back some of it's old space it a week or so. However, a cascade of bad decisions haunts them. Their ship and pilots base is thin and battered. Their remaining systems in Providence are vulnerable to takeover by carebear renter alliances (TXK-II); the vassals of AAA's Providence vassals.
Even if AAA supplies the lumber, CVA appears to lack the tools needed to rebuild their house.
The fewer blues, the better. Or should I say, the more fun!
ReplyDeleteThink your reading way to much into the loss of 30 accounts in a 900-1000 man alliance. 30 "characters" could easily be alts being moved out of the alliance or a corp cleaning inactives. There are easily 200+ inactive characters within the alliance, many who have been inactive long before any of the Providence War stuff began.
ReplyDeleteTaken as a single event and out of context, you'd be correct.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in January CVA was a 1,400 to 1,500 man alliance. During the Great Eviction, that number dropped by about a third, stabilizing afterwords at about 1,060.
A slow drip of departing members since then, accompanied by the swap of a 70+ pilot corp for a 20+ corp in May kept CVA's corp count even, but dropped their player base to 1,016.
Taken in the context of CVA's failed "Reclaiming or Providence" campaign and its impact on pilot morale, on top of the larger demographic trend, this membership drop doesn't look like routine housekeeping.
Most of what your saying is correct, our recent additions, (Clan Shadow Wolf and Galactic Shipyards INC.) left in late February and early march. We have picked up some smaller corps from other Holder entities that have disintegrated or moved north (Renaissances and Aquilia Cohors Praetoria). Epitoth Fleet Yards is only a half loss as the corp left the alliance but its combat wing (Epitoth Guard) remains. Are largest loss was the downsizing of Celestial Janissaries which shed roughly 2/3 its size. That can be directly attributed to the "catch invasion." However attributing the loss of 30 members in a short span of time is a bit presumptuous.
ReplyDeleteI stand by my original response.
ReplyDeleteEach 10 to 70 player drop, taken as a stand-alone incident, is of little consequence. One can always make an excuse for such events, and I understand you have reasons you'd rather ignore the larger picture.
However, when you take them together and put them in context, it adds up to heap of trouble for CVA.