The Captains Log

The Captains Log: 28/6

Solarsystem: Amarr

Station: Emperor Family Academy

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!

Well those of you that follow my blog will have noticed that I have not been posting much lately, this has been due to end of semester exams at university and then about a week in which I played very little eve (spent most of it reading a book). Anyway enough of the excuses, it’s time for another post.

I started my career as a capsuleer of as a carebear blasting my way though Guristats Pirates out in Geminate, which was my only redeeming feature as I was 0.0 carbear and not a mission bear. In fact, I was such a carebear that I got a second account just to make carebearing easier and had no qualms leaving SMASH when if the times got tough (ie. GoonSwarm). I got turned off the whole PvP side of New Eden after I lost my Moa of doom, which was fitted with missile launchers, blasters and railguns (got to make sure you have all optimal ranges covered).

Despite this lack of enthusiasm towards PvP I did want to be involved in some of the epic fleet flights that occur when two alliances are nuking it out with each other so I set the long term goal of training a Sniper Rokh since it could shoot up 200km. Three years later I still can’t fit a T2 sniper Rokh, though I can now fit Sniper Apoc.

As my time in New Eden progressed I changed alliances, became a Co-CEO in a corp, helped precipitate a revolt in an alliance, formed a new alliance with other dissatisfied members, acted as a diplomat when our new alliance got kicked out of space we occupied, joined a new alliance and then managed to my corp kicked out of alliance. During this time I have flown in large sniper fleets and found that I prefer small gang PvP, one of the reasons I joined Noir. I now consider myself a PvP player who has given up his carebear ways. Instead of grinding it out with rats and missions I camp gates and roam the depths of enemy space, which is pretty much everyone.

This should be a lesson for all you carebears out there, it is not too late for you, turn away from your mining lasers and pick up your weapons. Get out there and fight and die; sweat and bleed it is good for you.

The Captains Log 28/7

Welcome to the tenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s banter leans a little, OK a lot, on the academic side. It comes to us from xiphos83 of A Misguided Adventurer, who asks the following: ” Victor Davis Hanson argues that western culture, comprising of ideals such as freedom, debate, capitalism, and consensual government, are what make western society so successful at waging war. These ideologies create a warrior who’s direct participation in government, ability to think freely, and desire to remain free, fights harder and is willing to suffer more than his conscripted foe. Though a military must remain a structured oligarchy to fight a war effectively, why in a world where military conflict is as familiar as breathing are there so few alliances that embrace these ideologies when governing their members?”

Well I have a can of coke, a bag chips and I’m sitting on top of my favourite Goonswarm POS waiting for a juicy hauler to come through, so ill bash out a response to this while I wait.

The Perfect Solider

Firstly, I find the whole premise of solider that comes from a country whose government is based on liberal ideals fights better then a solider from a different political structure is wrong. A soldier who fights for the ideals that his culture believes in (and that he believes in), whether they are liberal, socialist or religious will fight just as hard the other as these soldiers are all fighting to protect their homes, their families and their way of life from the enemy. An example of this is the Peloponnesian War between Athens, a true democracy (even though women and slaves could not vote), and Sparta, a militaristic oligarchy. (Any quotes from 300 will result in the beheading of the offender) Both nations fought long and hard but in the end it was Sparta that prevailed (thanks in part to Athens putting a lot of its military leaders on trial), only to be conquered latter on by Macedonia (definitely not democratic). In Eve though you have the extra layer of people wanting to fight ‘because it is fun’ and they will continue to fight no matter what the political ideology of their alliance or corp is. Also often what makes a military strong is not the ideology of the nation but the experience, numbers, resources and technology that that nation has. Again this is in Eve. A well equipped and experienced theocratic alliance will overcome the poorly equipped and unexperienced democratic alliance, no matter their ideals.

A true democracy?

 So that leaves the second part of the question, why are there no/very few democratic alliance or corps in eve? Ga’len and Manasi disagree with this and believe that a lot of alliances (or what they have seen) are democratic as the corps and alliances they have been part of or observed have been fairly democratic. I have to disagree with them, mainly as I believe what they describe are no democracies. *Disclaimer: I am not part of those alliance so forgive if I do not know all the internal workings of them.* Just because a alliance allows for free speech does not make them democratic, free speech is a part of democracy but is not democracy itself.  Any alliance that ignores the comments of its members is soon going to find that it has no members, so it is prudent for all alliances to allow free speech no matter its organisational structure. Also just because an alliance has a council in which the leaders of various corps discuss what the alliance is going to do does not make it a democracy. That is an oligarchy. Unless the members are directly voting on proposals for the alliance, or voting in representatives who make these decision for them (along with allowing free speech, freedom for members to what they want and grow) they are not a democracy.

So now we come to the question of why are there so few democracies in Eve. Firstly, because I think it is a hell of a lot easier to run a dictatorship or an oligarchy so long as the member base is willing to follow their leadership and the leadership is willing to listen to the concerns of the members. This is particularly true in the last alliance I was part of. We had a good experienced leader who knew how to run an alliance, but as the membership grew older and wanted to branch into new things the leader refused to change the alliances policy to suit the needs of its members. This resulted in a lot of people leaving the alliance (including my whole corp) and forming a new one. Secondly, you have the problem of participation. You can’t really have a democracy if only a quarter of the people vote. In today’s society there is a lot of apathy towards politics and government and people don’t really vote (unless you’re like me and live in Australia, which has compulsory voting), which I think is carried somewhat into Eve. We have this problem in my corp. We try to run it as democracy, with lots of discussion and votes, but it is always the same 20-30 people who participate (out of 142 say around 60-70 not including alts). The others people in the corp don’t really care what happens so long as they can build, rat, mine or shoot. Even though we allow people to vote on polices and discuss new policies the leaders of our corp and the alliance are chosen by the current leaders and I suspect this is true of most corps and alliances.

Anyway I’ll quit rambling now and go back to hunting Goons.