A New Protest In Jita

Yesterday, some Russian alliances decided to express their displeasure with the Aegis sovereignty changes (aka FozzieSov) in Jita. If the killmaill for a gank of an Obelisk is any indication, the effort was led by Legion of xXDEATHXx, with the Geminite-based Infinity Space. alliance performing a lot of ganking in the trade hub. Am I putting on my tinfoil hat saying that Legion of xXDEATHXx and its leader, UAxDEATH, is leading the effort. I don't think so.

On 31 July, UAxDEATH broke a three-year silence on the official EVE Online forums and posted a complaint about Aegis sov signed by many Russian (and one Imperium) alliances. I'll just post the conclusion here:

"Fozziesov is currently a long, exhausting and inconvenient sovereignty warfare model. Sovereignty is absolutely unprotected against sov trolling. This game mechanics stimulates unintended usage. This situation can no longer exist in its current state. We are highly determined and if all our demands and solutions are not addressed in a week's time, we reserve the right to fight back for our game time and fun, which we were stripped off by the new game mechanics."

Despite some valid complaints, I think the real sticking point is the fact that UAxDEATH is unable to hold as large of an area as he currently does as easily as before the introduction of the new capture mechanics in July. A rather surprising development considering UAxDEATH signed onto The Null Deal last September. The first point of The Null Deal addressed the need for occupancy-based sovereignty:

"We believe that ownership of territory should be reflected by alliance occupancy. Players should live in and utilize their space, and player infrastructure and activity should be reflected in an occupancy index. We believe this will significantly shrink the footprints of the current absentee empires, free up large sections of sov 0.0 for smaller entities, and remove the current need for vast coalitions."

Arguably, one of the absentee empires referred to in The Null Deal was Shadow of xXDEATHXx, Legion of xXDEATHXx's rental alliance. Controlling the sovereignty of 242 systems as of last night, X.W.X controls over a hundred more systems than the next largest alliance, the rental alliance Brothers of Tangra. Including Legion of xXDEATHXx's 90 systems, the alliance's 1739 pilots have to watch over 332 systems. Even including the renters, that only gives UAxDEATH 3500 pilots to not only defend, but build up the systems' indexes to aid in any defense. Considering that The Imperium seems to believe a population density of 100 is required to successfully hold space, UAxDEATH trying to maintain his empire with a population density of 10 seems like wishful thinking. Perhaps that is why 44 out of the 220 structures (20%) listed on timerboard.net as of midnight EVE time belonged to either X.W.X (40) or X.I.X (4).

As the situation stands, Russian forces stand poised to continue attacks and other protests (like shooting the Jita monument) until CCP does something to satisfy their demands. At least, that was the impression some gave last night. Naturally, I'm interested in the events due to the illicit RMT angle. As CCP revealed at Fanfest this year, the three alliances with the most accounts banned for illicit RMT activities were three well-known rental alliances. But with UAxDEATH stepping up to replace Gorga on the CSM, having the leader of the protests with access to NDA information should prove quite intriguing.