The Mittani Conflict

By now pretty much everyone in Eve has heard about the Mittani's off-color remarks at the Alliance Panel at Fanfest. As I said previously, I didn't catch much of Fanfest live since I was so busy last week, but Marc Scaurus (or Marcasaurus, which I love), posted a link to the video of the offense. To be honest, I watched the clip, waited a little while longer, and then replayed it back before I realized what all of the commotion was about. You can call me slow or desensitized, but I couldn't believe that all of the threadnaughts were about that one (albeit very poorly chosen) sentence.

Before everyone loses it, I'm no supporter of encouraging suicide or internet bullying. But let's be real. Mittani's comments were really in bad taste and he was way out of line, but there's no need to overreact to the situation. The Mittani apologized publicly, and the opinion shared by myself and many others is that that apology was sincere. I am perfectly willing to forgive and forget. I know I've said a few inappropriate things before, both under the influence of alcohol and sober. I would want those I have offended to forgive me, so I give the same opportunity to the Mittani. Please, let any saints post here in comments and I will give you full validation for continued hating on the Mittani.

In my opinion, the most indicative thing in this situation is the reaction of the pilot who has been "bullied." In Liang Nuren's post, the chat logs show that The Wis didn't even know that the Mittani spoke the way he did. He hardly seemed offended when Xeross155 informed him of the situation. Now, in a link posted on Jester's Trek, The Wis seemed a bit hurt by the situation, but was still taking on a respectable "I'm trying to ignore it" attitude. He also did accept almost 11 billion in isk from the Mittani as an apology. If the "victim" is handling the situation in this manner, who are we as the community to turn this into such a big deal?

To close, the Mittani was wrong. No question about it. There's no need to talk like that drunk or sober, but he did. But at this point, he's apologized, and besides perhaps reaching out more directly to The Wis (in addition to the isk he sent), I see nothing more he could or should do. Stepping down from the CSM is hardly necessary. Whether you like the Mittani or not, he is good for New Eden. If he really wants to step down from the chairman position, that is fine. This is especially fine given that the Chair is really only special in terms of perceived status; it has no extra weight in decision making. At the end of the day though, its time to move on. Let's get back to what makes this game great and talk about Fanfest, Inferno predictions/commentary, and stories about internet spaceships. Let's give Mittens his one bad screw-up and hope (for his sake) that nothing like this happens again.

Eve Blog a Day #021 - Vote Match

Question #021

Go over to Dierdra Vaal's Vote Match, fill out the questionnaire, then let the site tell you which candidates are most in line with your way of thinking about EVE Online. Which candidate is your highest vote match? Will that candidate be the candidate you're most likely to vote for?

My Response
I actually enjoyed this quite a bit. I took the survey last year as well, and I think its another example of how awesome the Eve community is.  The results for this one surprised me quite a bit, however. My number one match is Meissa Anunthiel at 66%. Meissa seems to be a very good candidate and is one of the longest standing CSM vets. I enjoyed listening to his points on the Lost in Eve debate #1, although I'm sure I would have enjoyed anyone pitted against Riverini in that one.

The pick that surprised me though, was Kelduum being #2, at 64%. I looked the issues, and it seemed that many of the points that we agreed upon were strongly held by one of us and not the other. Also, we agreed on many points in nullsec, despite the fact that neither one of us live there. Overall though, I suppose we still share a lot of similar points on issues. I'm not one to bash Kelduum just for the sake of bashing him, but hearing him on V&V really made me think that he was just the lucky benefactor of a large voting bloc as opposed to an intelligent candidate.

The only other "surprise" was where Alekseyev and Hans placed. I put surprise in quotes because they weren't that far from the top; I just figured they'd be higher. Alekseyev beat out Hans by 62% to 57%, respectively. I still find myself leaning towards one of these two, although Meissa is certainly not a bad choice either.

Lastly, who am I least like? Answer is Mu'ad Diib. This guy is either one hell of a troll or he's a bit deficient. He is clearly getting trolled by multiple Goons, and two current CSM members even drop by to give him questions/continue the trolling. I'm glad we're not too closely aligned as it makes me feel better about myself. This is an example of one of the candidates that proves this arbitrary "100 likes" threshold was setting the bar a little bit too low. If you feel like a good laugh, check out his election post in Jita Park here.

The Vote Match for CSM 7 app is great though. I think the best use out of it comes when candidates directly respond to questions (via the mouseover). Its a neat way to organize their thoughts on the issues in a very efficient way. Thanks to the creator Diedra Vaal and also to Poetic Stanziel for the topic once again.

Inferno Dev Blog Teaser

Just when it seemed like Dev Blogs had all but settled down, CCP Unifex posts one releasing the name and some core concepts for the summer expansion. Its mostly a lot of nothing, but he does hint at some interesting concepts.

• "Reinvigorating Concord-sanctioned warfare" - Redesign of the War Dec mechanic, clearly. Should be interesting to see. This should have an interesting impact on CSM campaigns, especially Kelduum Revaan who has made this a key part of his platform. Given that it'll be done before he even could take office, that can't really be a major selling point anymore (besides revising it if CCP messes this one up). 
• "Looking to introduce many new things which will mix up all forms of combat in a way not seen for a long time" - If anyone has even the slightest clue what this means, please post in comments immediately.
• "Factional Warfare will be seeing changes to make it more relevant and fun by giving real reasons to fight for your faction" - This sounds somewhat encouraging. FW has been a growing interest of mine recently, and it sounds like it needs a boost pretty significantly. I hope Mittani hasn't convinced CCP to make Faction Warfare "Nullsec Lite" though.
• "Revealing more concrete steps in the link between Eve and DUST 514" - Pretty straight forward here. Just please don't mess up Eve too much.

 The Dev Blog mostly seems like a lot of nothing, and Unifex admits that. It definitely is intriguing however. It sounds like there will be a series of small releases over the coming months, and the full Inferno will be released in the May-June time frame ("Just before the summer"). I think the big positive to take away from this is that there doesn't seem to be much fluff. CCP is apparently still operating along the same general philosophy as Crucible, but with the increased time they can roll out some bigger features as well. Its going to be quite the spring season with the CSM elections and all of the hopefully awesome Dev Blogs coming out.

Weekend Review 2/20

Happy Monday, capsuleers! Sorry, I know that wasn't funny. Anyway, not too much going on here, but wanted to get an update out as a few minor things this weekend. First of all, the interview with Kelduum and Hans Jagerblitzen is now up on the Voices From the Void Podcast. I haven't had a chance to get to listen to it yet, as RL is fairly busy this week. I'm hoping to find some time for it tonight though. I'm particularly looking forward to hearing more from Hans; I hope the V and V crew gave him some tough ones.

Wasn't able to log on a ton this weekend, but I still managed to get a couple good fights. I hopped in fleet yesterday evening, and the Red fleet was pretty quiet. A Vexor jumped into our fleet that was sitting on the Hageken gate, and I managed to get the killing blow, which is always nice. Other than that, it was a lot of hurry up and wait. We did manage to get into a fight with some war targets though. A scout relayed that they had tried to take cover in a dead end system, so we camped them in for a while. A Harbinger came out, quickly followed by a Guardian. The Harbinger was humping the gate, and so he eventually disengaged and jumped, but we made pretty quick work of the heavily webbed Guardian, and he dropped almost instantly. Its a shame none of his faction mods dropped. No big deal though. As it turns out, my trade alt climbed over 10 billion isk over the weekend! I may have to take out some more shiny ships and have some fun. Or maybe a little birthday present to myself (early March, take note of course). Perhaps a pimped Daredevil or something? I'm certainly open to suggestions!

Look for a review of Kelduum and Hans as I get a chance to listen to the V&V podcast later. Fly safe everyone.

Hey Look! Jack Dant Fixed Lowsec!

Okay, if you haven't yet seen Jack Dant's proposal for lowsec changes, go read here. Don't worry, I'll wait.

I'm going to say it up front -- I think this proposal is damn near perfect. Right now, lowsec seems to be the heart of small gang and solo pvp. I'm hardly an expert on the area, but as I've traveled through, I rarely see gangs larger than 10-15 pilots. Its not hard to find solo pilots, or least smaller gangs of 2-4 pilots. I can't speak for all of New Eden, but I love the idea of having this part of the pvp spectrum available. Nullsec seems to be more of an "all-or-nothing" situation, where vast swathes are empty until you hit an alliance hub with greater than 200 in local. Low security space has small groupings of pilots who don't want anything to do with sovereignty or CTA's. These pilots just want their Fight Club, as Hans Jagerblitzen is describing it.

I love picturing lowsec as Fight Club, except with current mechanics, I'd be out of highsec pretty darn quick. I'm already sitting at -0.4 from the occasional Hulk or pod gank, so it wouldn't be long before I hit -2.0, where you first start getting locked out of highsec systems. This isn't super appealing to me. I love being able to travel freely in highsec, and being held out of trade hubs for blowing up a few unfortunate pilots in lowsec doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth. Like almost everyone else at this point, I have alts that could help run logistics, but it can just be a pain in the ass sometimes to go through the hoops for the ship you need that's only two jumps away in a 0.7 security system.

The Dant proposal allows the casual combatant to still maintain travel rights, so long as he doesn't pod (in lowsec or highsec) or gank people in highsec. Also, no GCC for aggression towards anyone with a negative sec status is beautiful. I'd still push for a lower GCC timer in general, but let's let pilots fight  denizens without any trouble. The other great part about the proposal is that anyone who wants to go full "-10" still has the option, and they should. I understand why people would want to go pirate, whether its RP or to just be a general bad ass, and there definitely should still be ways to do so. It's just not personally for me at this point because it seems like it would take too long to grind back up to even -5.0 security status, and its just not something I want to go through at this point.

So where does that leave us? Well I think it comes round about to the CSM 7 discussion again. I think at this point I'm becoming fairly certain that my vote is heading towards Hans Jagerblitzen. Hans has the Dant Proposal as part of his campaign platform, and in general, he seems to have a good head on his shoulders about all things empire. He wants to foster empire space in terms of casual pvp, and as a member of Autocannons Anonymous, he is a part of one of the better FW corporations for the Minmatar Republic. Overall, Hans is one of the better candidates out there, he's not from a power bloc, and he supports sensible changes to the areas I've flown in the most over the past year. I'm on board, and here's two votes for you Hans!

Eve Blog a Day Pair: CSM 7 Banter and My Eve Persona

I try to keep up with Eve Blogs as best I can (and as much as I'm interested, of course), but sadly most of that is done over my iPhone. I tend to read via the Leaky Capsule app, which maintains an outdated Eve Blog Pack that updates in application. As an aside, the Leaky Capsule app is awesome for iPhone users. Its not as clunky as iClone, and still gives you characters, skills training and a blog outlet. Anyway, I tend not to keep up with too much else outside of this as I'm not in front of a computer screen too much recently. I did manage to check in at Poetic Stanziel's blog today though, and I really like the concept of the Eve Blog a Day. I probably wont keep up with all of them, but the most recent two have interested me.

Eve Blog a Day #019: Who Are You Voting For?
Well I suppose I could (and probably will) write a whole post about this one. At the end of the day, I haven't quite decided yet though. The CSM elections are interesting because it is a small enough scale that your vote could actually matter. I still vote in elections in the US, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it seems a bit pointless sometimes. Regardless, this influences my CSM voting philosophy. For example, I think its pointless for me to vote for The Mittani. He's going to get elected regardless of my vote due to just how large GSF is. I personally think that Mittens has done a great job on the CSM, even if he can be a bit biased perhaps. He does seem to do quite a bit of posturing, but overall I think that he and the other CSM reps from CSM 6 have been great representatives of what the playerbase needed over the past year. Regardless though, I will not be voting for any representative of the major power blocks because I feel that that throws away a vote for one of the smaller scale candidates who stands a chance at getting in.

That said, I've still got plenty of research to do. I've got a few thoughts so far, but nothing is set in stone. Its easier for me to say who I don't like. Two quick ones are Kelduum Revaan and Riverini of Eve University and Eve News respectively. Both strike me as a bit disingenuous and self centered.

To me, Kelduum just seems a bit fake. In the recent RVB vs Eve Uni war, Kelduum couldn't undock with his troops. Now in all fairness, it seems like few of the current CSM 6 members have seen any pvp action on their main characters in a simliar time frame (The Mittani, Seleene, Two Step, Meissa, any of them really), but there's really no reason not fight RVB in this case at least. Both organizations are in favor of good, clean pvp even if it can be a bit blobby among other things.

Riverini is just terribad. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate EN24 to some extent, and at least by killboard stats, he seems to be a decent pilot. But anyone who has read EN24 for more than a week or so know its biased as hell, and that Riverini is the guy who at least considered bringing us the How To on Botting. Plus, the other thing is that I don't think you want the politicians running the news papers or vice versa. Overall, Riverini just doesn't seem to have much of a platform, and the bias and lack of direction makes me think that this is just an egotistical push at E-fame. I'll pass. Plus, there's now a thread of why not to like Riverini, although its mostly just for the lolz.

So anyway, I'm still searching, and I have a lot of research to do. A not-so-small part of me still wishes Ripard Teg would run for CSM 7. I think my only reservation would be that it would slow down his blogging/play time, and that would mean less enjoyment for all. Oh well, that's the way life is. Anyway, I'll keep everyone posted and update as I make a decision.

Eve Blog a Day #020: What's Your Eve Persona?
First of all, a quick kudos to the Eve team for the new website. As I said before, it makes Eve feel new again, and that is a great thing. I took the Personality test, and here's the result:

Pirate was followed by freedom fighter and bounty hunter respectively. So it sounds pretty clear that I should be in lowsec soon, right? Well, yes actually. I'm still very much enjoying RVB, and in fact this weekend was quite a busy one for me. At the end of the day though, RVB can still sometimes be too constructed, and too many are afraid to get off station or out of the 10-25 man standard fleet composition of frigates, cruisers and BCs. I'd really like to get more into lowsec pvp for a few reasons. For one, in generally seems less blob-oriented. There is a lot of solo and small gang pvp to be had from what I've seen. Also, the ease of mobility is a plus. I can run to or from high sec without much problem to reship/resupply and there are no bubbles or anything in the way. That's definitely appealing to me. So we'll see where it goes. My goals in Eve can change quite a bit, but I know its certainly aligned with some sort of pvp for the rest of my career. 

A big thanks to Poetic Stanziel for the Blog a Day initiative!