Gandhi On The BoB/Goonswarm Wars

I read with great concern yesterday about the shortage of Sun Tzu quotes facing EVE Online.  So in an effort to help out, I thought I'd share a quote I first heard yesterday.  The quote is from an unexpected source, though.  Not Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, or even The Mittani.¹ No, this quote comes from Gandhi and I think is perhaps the ultimate TL,DR on the Band of Brothers/Goonswarm wars, at least from the Goonswarm perspective.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Now, some may dispute that Gandhi ever said this and attribute the quote to U.S. trade unionist Nicholas Klein.  But as yesterday was the anniversary of the assassination of Gandhi, I thought I'd give those who credit the Indian leader with the quote.  Besides, who's going to credit something intelligent to someone in an NPC corp? ²


NOTES:

1.  The text version is found here.

2.  Artistic license abused.

Sigmund Freud on Eve Online

"Sometimes a titan is just a titan."
- Sigmund Freud

Contrary to the popular myth, Sigmund Freud did not believe that sometimes a titan was just a titan.  Just a titan?  The titan is the biggest, baddest ship in New Eden.  Resembling mobile battlestations and armed with a doomsday device and the ability to form jump bridges, these ships are terrors on the battlefield.

Freud was one of the first to try to figure out exactly what makes capsuleers tick. He suggested that the desire to dominate the universe and bad posting on the Eve Online forums originated from unpleasant or traumatic events like mining or reading local in Jita early in a pilot's career that were suppressed or repressed from the conscious mind. He theorized that the unconscious mind communicated repressed thoughts and emotions by means of symbolism. Thus the popularity of titans among many alliances, especially those who do not hold space in null sec.

Through his experience with the life histories of many pilots, Freud came to believe that the primal drive to acquire isk was a powerful influence on unconscious behavior because of the way corporations force new capsuleers to hide their shiniest ships and repress their tears. Freud divided the development of pilots into three phases, the noob, the carebear and the low/null sec pvper. He believed neurotic behavior often reflected a regression to earlier stages of development. There is great irony in the fact that Freud was a titan pilot (a mental fixation on an isk substitute), and rage quit from Eve after his Avatar was bumped out of a POS by Pandemic Legion and destroyed. That said, the phrase "Sometimes a titan is just a titan," is often (perhaps apocryphally) attributed to Freud.

Stalin On Eve Online

"Chribba?  How many fleets has he got?"

- Joseph Stalin

With all the talk of the imminent invasion of Jita, death squads and a campaign of terror aimed at the innocent miners of New Eden, one could be excused for thinking that Eve Online is a dark, dangerous game full of sociopaths.  But that image hides the many good people whose influence comes not at the point of an autocannon or blaster but through their good works and integrity.  Perhaps the most famous example of the use of soft power in Eve is Chribba.

Chribba is the carebear's carebear, disdaining scamming and ganking for mining veldspar.  Instead of feasting on tears, he provides services like Eve Files, Eve Off-line and Eve Agents to the player base.  And his reputation for honesty has enabled him to run a 3rd-party service that facilitates major transactions like super-capital sales.  This reputation has enabled Chribba to become fabulously wealthy and, for a time, a sov holder in New Eden's cutthroat world of null sec politics.


How did a carebear in a one-man alliance wind up owning space in null sec?  When Ushra'Khan pulled out of Providence they didn't want to abandon Unity Station in 9UY4-H so they gave it to a neutral party: Chribba.  He actually managed to run the place for over a year as the occasional challenger for control would be run off by Chribba's fans and well-wishers.


This past November, however, the story came to its inevitable conclusion.  Test Alliance Please Ignore eventually decided that they wanted to remove Chribba from his station to avenge themselves against CCP for its banning of beloved pilot HurrDurrHurr.  If the rationale doesn't make sense, don't worry, we're talking about TEST.  Nothing they do has to make sense.  However, with Chribba offering coffee and kladdkaka to those who would stop by during the fighting, TEST delayed their attack.

Judging by the facts of the campaign, TEST, consisting of thousands of players, was extremely weary of attacking a single player who refuses to fight other players in space.  First, the attack was delayed until Chribba had flown off to the U.S. to visit Mintchip.  Next, when the attack did go in, it was spearheaded by a Pandemic Legion super-cap fleet led by Shadoo.  When a response fleet attempted to halt the attack, Pandemic Legion stopped them with ease.

Pandemic Legion against Chribba may seem a bit lopsided.  After all, how many fleets does Chribba control?  The problem for attackers is: they don't know.  Chribba's military power is based on those who wish to come and help him.  That works against smaller opponents, but when a major null sec power wanted his system they took it.  Of course, Chribba had already signaled he wouldn't mind losing the system.  He also had already stated he would not hold any attacks against alliances who wished to purchase super-capitals using his 3rd party service.  So Chribba really didn't wield the full extent of his accumulated soft power.  A smart move as now anyone thinking about moving against Chribba still has that worry about how many fleets he can summon.

Napoleon Bonaparte on Eve Online

"When pilots have been baptized in the fire of time dilation, they have all one rank in my eyes."

Napoleon Bonaparte

In addition to scams, espionage and political maneuvering, Eve Online is know for its epic wars and epic battles.  How epic?  Fights involving 1,000 players are not uncommon in 0.0 space and fights of up to 2,000 players are playable.  How does CCP do that?  Time dilation.  When the servers start to become overloaded and begins to lag, time slows down in order to allow the servers to catch up with the requests.  The result?  Lovelocke gave an example in his battle report on a battle in 92D-OI on 21 January:

"We carried on fighting, many of us died and we killed many. But do you know what was most remarkable about this fight? The lag was barely noticeable. 1400+ in local, super capitals with fighter bombers swarming, doomsdays, Drake missiles, etc, yet with TiDi in full force there were no crashes, no unresponsive modules, no MWD’s that wouldn’t turn off. Astonishing. I still don’t fully understand what TiDi is, its explanation far too technical for my fragile little mind, but whatever it is CCP have certainly struck gold. This was by far a huge improvement over even smaller battles I’ve encountered in the past."

Many pilots shower disdain on the "blob" warfare in 0.0, preferring smaller fights in wormholes or low sec.  Others shy away from combat altogether.  In Eve Online, players have a choice of how they want to play.  But to my knowledge, no other MMORPG offers the scale of combat and war that Eve players take as a normal part of day to day life.

Winston Churchill On Eve Online

"Many MMORPGs have been created and will be created in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that Eve Online is perfect. Indeed, it has been said that Eve Online is the worst MMORPG ever published except for all those other games that have been tried from time to time."

- Sir Winston Churchill

A lot of people hate Eve Online.  Sure, the UI needs some work and the physics reminds people more of submarines than of space.  And there is the rather boring PvE combat that grows old after awhile.  Did I mention mining?  Many players say that you don't win at Eve unless you are not playing the game.

So what accounts for Eve's success?  Why do so many people follow the game even though they do not play?  The game takes the term "Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game" seriously.  Do you want massive?  Look on Sundays when Eve routinely sees over 50,000 accounts logged into the same shard at the same time.  Fleet fights occur involving up to 2,000 ships that are playable due to time dilation technology.

Do you want the necessity of interacting with others?  To reach even the middle level of success usually involves joining player-run corporations.  Those individuals who are highly successful outside that structure usually wind up interacting with a lot of other players.  And it is that social interaction which creates different stories for each player in the game.

Do you want role-playing?  Every player who logs in engages in it to some extent, from space truck drivers to space despots who rule empires of thousands of other players.  Even The Mittani publicly admitted to the difference between himself and his in-game persona.

In the wake of the success of World of Warcraft, companies made MMORPGs that can be played as a single-player game until the level cap and then demand players become social and play together.  Sure, some of those games are more popular, at least for a time, than Eve.  But that formula for success has never matched that of WoW.  Eve is different in that the developers want players to join together as much as possible even in an environment that discourages giving trust to others without care.  In most other MMOs, the developers create the story and the players follow the yellow brick road to the pot of gold.  In Eve, the players are the story and nothing is guaranteed.  I think a game is better that way.