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.

Fanfest 2012 -- Initial Impressions

Fanfest has come and gone at this point, and it certainly seemed like an experience. I was not able to go this year, and I actually had some difficulty even keeping up with the Twitter feed, let alone the live video from Eve TV. I had class Thursday, and I was on the shooting range all day Friday, so I missed a good deal of the coverage.

Here's what I picked up though. It seems like Fanfest is an awesome event for players. I think that CCP has done a great job creating an environment that gets players excited about the game and upcoming changes, and the Devs really reinforce this with such close interaction with the players. That said, I'm not sure I saw a ton of concrete information that I was excited about. I saw a lot of DUST coverage, which I expected. The game play does seem to be pretty cool, but I'm not sure its enough for me to run out and buy a PS3.

Other than the DUST link, the only things that I got to see directly were U/I and Art/Graphics coverage. Honestly, that doesn't do much for me. I play Eve on low settings to get the best possible performance. I don't need a pretty camera showing the ship I'm shooting. I understand that many people really do want the best possible graphics, and they should. I'm just saying its not a huge draw for me personally.

I'm eagerly awaiting CCP uploading all of the videos from Fanfest to YouTube. I still have a lot I want to review before giving a comprehensive breakdown of my thoughts. As it stands right now though, I'm a little underwhelmed. I've heard some murmurs of changes in Crime Watch and FW, and I'm not sure CCP is on track from what I understand. The jury is still out for me. As I said before, I think Fanfest is a great event for the players and the larger Eve community, I'm just not yet very excited about the actually changes to Eve that I saw out of it.

Fanfest Breakdown and Some Dust Concerns

Well Fanfest is rapidly approaching, and judging by the #tweetfleet, it looks like most people have arrived already. I'm thoroughly jealous at this point, but very happy for all who are able to attend. I was looking through the Fanfest Event Schedule, and here are some of the things that caught my eye:

• State of the Economy -- We're seeing a ton of inflation right now, and I'm not a big fan. I'm interested to see sources of the inflation (Incursions?) as well as CCP's plans to fix it (if there are any). Still wishing for those QENs to return.
• Ship Balancing -- This should be a very influential segment with Ytterbium's recent dev blog. I'd love to see what CCP has in mind for this role rebalancing, as well as if they make any reference to Titan rebalancing as well.
• Nullsec, FW, Starbases, Crime Watch, and Black Ops -- All cool topics, general interest in interesting things

And on the other side of the coin, there's plenty of things I have no interest in: Sound/Music, German/Russian Communities, Eve Uni, Virtual Goods, etc. No big deal, just not as high on my list.

The big thing that has drawn my attention is the huge focus on Dust 514 at Fanfest. I suppose its about time, given that the game is supposed to be rolled out by the end of the year, but I'm extremely leery. Now, I'm normally a pretty darn optimistic person, but I am very, very scared of Dust and its potential implications on Eve. I've been a console gamer. In fact, I've been a console gamer ever since  I picked up my Dad's Atari and Nintendo as a kid. Eve is my first and only MMO actually. I get console gamers to some extent.

What I'm getting at is that in all of my time playing console games, I've never hung onto a single game for more than a couple months. Recently, Call of Duty: Black Ops & MW2 have probably had the longest runs, being a few months, and Skyrim had a very intense 2 month run.  That's it. And that's the problem with console gamers. There is no commitment to a bigger end game like Eve players have. Playing first person shooters (FPS) is about firing up the system, shooting some baddies, and moving on. And Dust has to compete with all of the big names already out there. This seems like a world of trouble to me. We have a long-term commitment issue from players in a game that had a lot of its development resources cut in the year before it launched in a market already over-saturated with FPS games. Awesome.

The biggest question is how CCP intends to link the two games. If they are heavily co-dependent, this will be a crushing blow to Eve if/when the console players jump ship for the next great game. Think about a Nullsec where you can't get anything accomplished because there aren't enough Dust mercenaries to get the job done. Maybe CCP could press the reset button on the system and roll it back if it is extremely unsuccessful, but that seems really unlikely.

At the end of the day, I really hope CCP wows us with Dust and that they release it in continual expansions as they do with Eve to keep console players on board. The health of Eve as a game and CCP as a company both depend on it. I'd be more than happy to see CCP make me want to buy a PS3 to play Dust, but I'm just not sure that's the way its going to go right now. Another game of wait and see. I think its safe to say that everyone is intrigued to see what comes out of Fanfest. Enjoy it, my friends, and keep me posted.