The Goon war against highsec in general and Mittens-hostile bloggers in particular has not been going well for the Goons. Jade Constantine over at the Star Fraction alliance has turned things on their ear by making the war declared by 9,000 member Goonswarm alliance against his 100 person highsec alliance a mutual war, which prevents Goonswarm from withdrawing from the war at their discretion, and them inviting all comers to ally themselves against the aggressors.
Many corporations and alliances joined the war on Star Fraction alliance's side. Suddenly the worm has turned. Despite significantly outnumbering Star Fraction and company, the Goons find themselves aggressively hunted whenever they leave nullsec. Their losses, particularly near highsec market hubs, have begun to pile up as both carebears and pirates from high and lowsec combine to extract tears from a powerful nullsec alliance whose leader presently sits astride nullsec's Technetium throne.
For a moment it appeared as if the door of emergent game-play swung both ways. However, CCP could not allow this embarrassment of Goonswarm to stand.
CCP is moving quickly to restore the balance of power and make sure massive nullsec alliances are at no risk of peril of in highsec should they wardec a tiny carebear corporation. Because apparently that's just wrong. Jester does a nice summery of the wardec nerf and I won't repeat it here. However, as CCP leaps to Goonswarm's defense against the patchwork of high and lowsec entities allied against it, a few points do bear calling out.
The Goonwar against Jade Constantine was intended by the Goons as a forever war - the same sort of forever war the Goons object to being locked into against Jade's allies. The goal was to either drive him from Eve Online altogether or to shut him up through in-game griefing and intimidation. First they would wear down and destroy his highsec alliance through constant harassment. Subsequently they planned to isolate him in game by maintaining the Goon wardec on him and any Eve player corporation or alliance that would have him.
This is not game-play. This is harassment.
The same sort of harassment was applied to White Rose Conventicle who has since left game and shut down her blog. She was targeted for speaking out against The Mittani on her blog during the CSM election and the Alliance Panel debacle. Mabrick of Mabricks Mumblings and his four person corporation is likewise under a Goon wardec for having the temerity to give his opinions about The Mittani in an out-of-game blog.
Again, the goal in all these cases is not to acquire isk or territory, good fights or any other usual in-game reward, but to leverage Goonswarm's large membership and vast wealth to harass and bully targeted individuals.
As of this writing, the Jade's allies 'dogpiling' Goonswarm do not come close to matching Goonswarm's numbers. In fact, most of them have no presence in nullsec and are not a territorial threat to Goonswarm. What they have done is remove the presumption of safety from highsec for Goonswarm.
Given The Mittani's recent Ten Ton Hammer screed on that very subject, it is ironic that Jade Constantine is forcing the Goons to live out the Mittani's highsec vision; but from the point of view of the hunted rather than the hunter. Seems the Goons war on highsec assumed they'd be able to leverage the very presumption of safety Mitten's so recently decried.
Please point out where we once objected to the allies? We requested that we could turn off the "Ally has joined war" notifications. That's about it. The Mittani wants Highsec to be like 0.0 for goons. I don't understand how everyone is misinterpreting this so bad. Its like you ignore words on the screen and manufacture your own truths.
ReplyDeleteIf you'll walk down the responses to the original CCP forum post referenced by Ripard (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1456632&#post1456632) you'll see Goonswarm tears in abundance. Obviously, they do not reflect the official Goonswarm party line, but they do reflect the degree of discomfort felt by the Goonswam rank and file.
DeleteIf you'll quickly look at every article contained on this website: wikipedia.org , you'll find references that prove that the WRC was actually a goon-alt alliance collapsed to misdirect attention on this matter. I'd quote or link the direct references but I figured it would save me time to just ask you to read every article on that site.
DeleteI don't see any crying. I do see a goon complaining about the 3-4 ally joined war notifications that we get daily. I don't see any goonswarm tears whatsoever.
DeletePowers -
DeleteLots of tears to be found for those looking. I do understand, however, why you'd prefer to deny them.
As to your own tears elsewhere with regard to my allying myself with one of the bloggers you've targeted and moderating out 'all' your comments on this site:
The only comment of yours I have moderated out was a rather vulgar personal insult that contributed nothing to the discussion at hand.
You may troll on the forums and in Twitter. At "Fiddlers Edge" there is a slightly higher standard of intellectual discourse.
I am grieved that you feel silenced and repressed by my refusal to post your insult on my blog and intimidated by my one-person corporation. Alas, if Mittens had not undertaken to intimidate Eve bloggers, we should not have come to this unpleasant turn.
As soon as Mittens ends his targeting of Eve bloggers I shall happily stand down. Then puppies and unicorns shall frolic and gambol happily in the meadows of New Eden, and Goons shall once again be safe from my righteous anger.
I'm really not that fussed by all the machismo posturing and my-gang-is-bigger-than-your-gang stuff, that's just another day in EVE as far as I'm concerned. Even in-game hounding of individuals is legitimate under the accepted 'undock and you're fair game' mechanic.
ReplyDeleteBut having just been to check out http://www.whiteroseconventicle.com/ I see that it has indeed been shut down. Was this as a direct result of Goon intervention? What could they possibly have done to lead to someone withdrawing their website. Do we know what methods they used? Was this just a case of "it's my ball and I'm going home" or were more sinister tactics afoot?
Stan - See my response to Harrigan (far) below.
DeleteStan it's a game. If someone is systematically making the game crap, people will go play something else.
DeleteThat's my problem with all this. Not that the Goons are picking on people - of course they can in a pvp sandbox. But that they're making the game less fun.
Thank you for saying it's harrassment.
ReplyDeleteI've never ever been opposed to the game mechanics until the Goon Idiots finally stepped over the line.
Helicity Boson is a model of how to be a truly great villian IN A GAME. Events are temporary, and there are just certain 'lines'.
The Mittani has no concept of 'lines'...or any kind of boundary for that matter. There is literally nothing to 'play against'. It's just a wave of conquer...and hate. Sorry, but don't need that kind of 'oh so Serious' in my GAME.
It is a GAME folks. The Mittani seems to have forgotten. But then alcohol does kill momory, but that's a whole other blog-o-sphere unto itself.
Oh, and you do have my sympathies.
ReplyDeleteThe Goons will War Dec you for even writing this.
I guarantee it.
So James, are you White Rose Conventicle? Exactly how were these lines and boundaries crossed?
DeleteJames - Thanks for the thought, but if you read my recent posts you'll note that I'm already in the fight.
Delete:D Not sure how I missed that part. But then the complexity of this is exponentially increasing with every second.
DeleteBTW, this does not just affect bloggers and writers. This has affected even those speaking out on the forums as I will attest.
Once you are on the 'Goon Record Books' you may as well never bothering to undock and they know that. So for now, I'm basically gone out of the game like White Rose.
That's $60 (to $80) a month for CCP from me personally that Mittens has ripped out of their hands.
But honestly there isn't really much anyone can do at this point except to watch and wait to see what action cCP takes.
Pathetic situation IMHO.
"Jade Constantine over at the Honda Accord alliance"
ReplyDeleteDon't let him hear you say that :p Jade has been in The Star Fraction for years now. 6 or 7 I think.
The Honda Accord is a different alliance the Goons decced, where exactly the same thing happened and hundreds of people piled into the war.
Thanks for the correction. I'll review my notes later today and correct the alliance name (with apologies to Jade) if I've made the wrong association.
Deleteand actually while I'm at it, although The Star Fraction certainly do operate in highsec, for the most part they are an NRDS low sec organisation, and are currently in the Minmatar Militia.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to have managed to take two different wars with similar outcomes, and merge them together into one event.
You are my hero Mord. But you already knew'd that. Keep the courage and keep up the good fight.
ReplyDeleteWell written. I had missed that Yuki had left the game. I wasn't his biggest fan, certainly, but he didn't deserve that.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mr Teg.
DeleteAs I wrote in 'Logoi', whether or not I agree with, or even like a the bloggers Mittens is trying to silence doesn't matter.
If Mittens is allowed to silence or drive out the Yukis, Jades and Mabricks of New Eden, who will stand up for Jester, Rixx, Marc Scarus and Mord Fiddle when he comes after us.
We bloggers stand together, or we'll fall separately.
It looks like it is always the same. A big party is silencing one of those who is against them and the others stand by and say "at least they aren't after me" until one day they are after you. Any player in Eve should be fighting goons by now but they don't. All those high sec gankers can do a good job by stopping all goon traffic.
ReplyDeleteBut to the topic of war declarations. Even if it looks like that those changes from CCP are not driven by goons but are necessary to balance the war system. But it still is not good balanced. At least a big group of high sec war declarers can assist there and join the war. As there are many other corps/alliances with wars declared from goons... pull corps out of the alliance, the war dec will follow. Every corp now can get its own ally and anyone who wants to fight goons can join. (Well maybe I miss understood the mechanic but I think it works that way)
It still is a pity that this overblown ego abuses this game for his out of game targets. Goons are encouraged to be bad. Guess you don't come in if you can't smack talk. But on the other hand their leader want to silence those who talk about his and his minions actions. Can't he live with the consequences bad habits have? Then he should stop doing so. But he still is an overblown ego and it is unlikely he will change.
First they came for the communists,
ReplyDeleteand I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
No, I am not comparing Goons to any historical political organization. Just saying that if we are silent as the bloggers are isolated and 'come for' . . .
m
The issue with the Goons is they deny such comparisons and metaphors by stating that you are saying that they ARE those things.....and not 'alluding to' for camparative debate.
DeleteIt truly is the death of discourse.
I don't know that i agree with calling it harassment. The meta game of Eve is as deep and far reaching and involved as the in game play. War dec'ing someone for whatever reason and creating conflict for whatever reason is a valid tactic. I look at harassment more as someone(s) spamming some one else's e mail or the like. When I was a merc we would be hired to war dec someone and do what we nneeded to to fulfill the client's wishes. If that meant camping them in a station all week so they couldn't play at all that's what we did. That could be construed as harassment but it isn't.
ReplyDeleteGood blogging mate. Cheers
Harrigan -
DeleteThe difference here is one of intent and degree. I agree that non-consensual PvP is part of the game.
However in this case the goal of the wardec is to drive another individual from the game altogether by keeping them under perpetual war dec and using vastly superior in-game wealth and numbers to isolate and endlessly harass the target until they withdraw from the game by either terminating their account or otherwise removing themselves from play.
As per the Eve Eula: "At our discretion, players who are found to be consistently maliciously interfering with the game experience for others may receive a warning, temporary suspension or permanent banning of his account."
CCP is clear that wardecs do not constitute, in and of themselves, grief-play. However, I hold that the way Mittens is employing the wardec system to persecute his out-of-game critics and drive them from Eve Online constitutes unreasonable harassment of the targeted individuals.
Having said that, it will apparently take a signed suicide note to compel CCP to take action.
Small minds engaged in harassment will always try to minimize the scope and definition of harassment, especially if that's how they get their lols. Harassment is harassment and it isn't left to the bully to make the final decision, it's up to the person on the receiving end. Unfortunately, it's also up to CCP and they aren't going to do anything about it if it will get them some more player press. It's hard to imagine how they are interested in protecting anyone but large null alliances when they allow large alliances to grief dec small ones, yet instantly remove the ability for a small corp to ally up and turn the tables on the griefers. Not looking too hard for conspiracies but it's interesting how fast they changed the dec (even though it's still a typically poorly thought out mechanic) after mittens started whining about it. I think CCP maybe still feels bad they "had to" ban their favorite retarded son for a month.
ReplyDeleteWhy I Quit EVE
ReplyDeleteI have read a number of posts and tweets suggesting, as Poetic Stanziel did the other day, that I "left the game in a huff after Goonswarm wardecced" my corporation The White Rose Conventicle.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
On 25/May/2012:18:04:36 PST, a massive Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS) was launched against my EVE corp website www.whiteroseconventicle.com, taking out the entire colo facility and affecting local ATT network service for a number of hours.
This was not "meta-gaming," nothing done "ironically" or "just in play." It was a criminal act; one for which I hold CCP not directly but indirectly responsible.
CCP's gross negligence in failing to restrain and, arguably, fostering over a period of years the growth of a virulent "Lord of the Flies" culture of crowing bullies in EVE Online has succeeded in creating a manifestly unsafe online environment for its paying subscribers and, indirectly, for Internet users beyond the game.
As an IT professional, I saw little alternative but to quit EVE, which I have enjoyed playing on and off since 2007, and to take down and keep down a website I very much enjoyed making and running. I cannot justify further risking a game that CCP has so irresponsibly allowed a relatively few players to make such a rhetorically vicious and, thereby, genuinely dangerous environment. Sadly, it has come to such a pass that EVE Crime is "Real," too.
You who are still free to enjoy EVE, who have not yet been put at real-life risk by being individually targeted to be punished and silenced for speaking your mind, must demand that CCP put a halt to this poisoning of EVE, by whatever means necessary.
CCP must assume its responsibility to the paying subscribers it exposes to an online environment that CCP, not some other entity, creates and manages. CCP must cease to pad its bottom-line by shirking necessary player-behavior management expenses under the convenient pretense that all it provides are "tools which players are free to use as they please." In sum, CCP must face up to its duty to all its subscribers to promote a safe, congenial online environment and to lessen the chance that what happened to me ever happens to you or to any other EVE player.