"Making stories", "emergent content", "EVE is real" are important part of the marketing of EVE. I left WoW with the will to make some of these stories and to observe how these made. In WoW you play in your own instanced dungeons, isolated from others. Your performance affect nobody who choose not to group with you. EVE is different... theoretically. However I see that most players aren't making any stories, make no impact on the game world or other players. My position is vehemently opposed by many, most prominently by WH commenters and a certain spaceship-violating drug dealer.
Let me clarify my position. I do not claim that "size does matter", that a null battle of 1000 vs 1000 is more real or important than a 100v100 wormhole battle or a 10v10 clash between roaming gangs. You are just one pilot in either case and the fact that other people lose and kill ships around you doesn't affect your personal experience of killing, repping and losing ships. Your experience is no less valid in either case.
I clearly don't claim that media coverage would matter. If that would be true, Kim Kardashian (256M google hits) would be more important than Charles Darwin (44M hits). Just because no one else know what happened it happened still.
What I call story or impact is what changes the gameplay of other player.
What does a lowsec pirate do? Earns money some way and violate spaceships. If I blow his ship up or he blows up mine, he will still earn money some way and violate spaceships tomorrow. If you observe him, you can't tell if he lost or won yesterday. Sure he wishes to win and both his killboard and his wallet will feel the difference. A pirate that loses 2x more ships has to earn 2x more money. He'll have a worse killboard ratio. He might won't get into an "elite" corp. But at the end of the day, he'll be violencing spaceships and earning money. The same happens in WoW: if you lose in Arathi Basin, you get less honor point and no progress in your achievement. If you win, you get more honor, some valor and achievement progress. But at the end you are playing on the same battleground, experiencing the same game.
The same thing can be said for WH battles: while one might loses ships, pods, POS-es, maybe even see his corp failcascade over an eviction, but a few days or maximum weeks after, he'll be back doing what he was doing: rolling statics, scanning, grinding sleepers and dropping on sleeper-grinders.
I'm not saying that nullsec is automatically different. It's often not. It however has the chance to be different due to the permanent capturing of the limited amount of systems and defending it. -A- was evicted not from this or that system, but from nullsec as whole. They lost their renters, lost their ratting space, they live in lowsec. When Nulli Secunda lost Delve, they were also forced to change their life. They went to faction warfare to get Amarr ships and ISK. NC. lost their techmoons and while they got themselves new space, it doesn't have money print. They now have to rat like the rest. If the 49U fight ended with TEST defeat, they wouldn't lose just some systems, the trend would have turned and SoCo would end their independent dreams permanently: they had to crawl back defeated to VFK and now they wouldn't be any different from a random CFC alliance.
While the lowsec pirate wants to win the PvP, he doesn't need to win it to carry on with his life. Nullsec empires need to win their campaign or has to face serious consequences: losing their way of life. My experience in null felt pretty real, it was clearly more than pixels on the line. I don't even try to pull a "I didn't want that nullsec anyway". I miss the Foxcats, I miss checking the system changes on Dotlan and sometimes wonder if my crusade against the forum circle jerk worth losing them. However what I miss is not flying a guardian in the HBC blob. It was making impact.
Other events made such shifts too. Hulkageddon didn't just cost ships to miners. They can't play like before that. They used to AFK mine, converting low-activity time into ISK slowly but surely. Hulkageddon bought loss into their life and they weren't happy about it. Not at all. Their cries reached CCP and lead to the barge rebalance, providing the ungankable Skiff. Now James315 tries something on this front: instead of ganking just for sowing fear, he wants to force miners to be active and participate in local chat which is a clear change from the AFK-ing custom.
I hope I could clarify that changing the way of gaming instead of their gaming scores is what impact means. It's not exclusive to null, while most prevalent. A WH alliance creating "Not red do not shoot" wormholes or monopolize all C6s would indeed make stories. A pirate alliance effectively blockading a lowsec region by killing jump freightes detto.
Did I make any stories? Hard to tell. I clearly defeated some old beliefs, mostly that highsec is not profitable (it's the most profitable zone) or that nullsec alliances are rich beyond imagining (the kings of Tech make 80-90M/member/month). But did it affect peoples way of gaming? Did they started highsec trader alts abandoning ratting? I don't know. I also stirred up TEST alliance like no one did before, without even making an effort (exact words of the diplomat who once invited me and regretted it 100x). Does it change them in some way? Only time will tell.
Let me clarify my position. I do not claim that "size does matter", that a null battle of 1000 vs 1000 is more real or important than a 100v100 wormhole battle or a 10v10 clash between roaming gangs. You are just one pilot in either case and the fact that other people lose and kill ships around you doesn't affect your personal experience of killing, repping and losing ships. Your experience is no less valid in either case.
I clearly don't claim that media coverage would matter. If that would be true, Kim Kardashian (256M google hits) would be more important than Charles Darwin (44M hits). Just because no one else know what happened it happened still.
What I call story or impact is what changes the gameplay of other player.
What does a lowsec pirate do? Earns money some way and violate spaceships. If I blow his ship up or he blows up mine, he will still earn money some way and violate spaceships tomorrow. If you observe him, you can't tell if he lost or won yesterday. Sure he wishes to win and both his killboard and his wallet will feel the difference. A pirate that loses 2x more ships has to earn 2x more money. He'll have a worse killboard ratio. He might won't get into an "elite" corp. But at the end of the day, he'll be violencing spaceships and earning money. The same happens in WoW: if you lose in Arathi Basin, you get less honor point and no progress in your achievement. If you win, you get more honor, some valor and achievement progress. But at the end you are playing on the same battleground, experiencing the same game.
The same thing can be said for WH battles: while one might loses ships, pods, POS-es, maybe even see his corp failcascade over an eviction, but a few days or maximum weeks after, he'll be back doing what he was doing: rolling statics, scanning, grinding sleepers and dropping on sleeper-grinders.
I'm not saying that nullsec is automatically different. It's often not. It however has the chance to be different due to the permanent capturing of the limited amount of systems and defending it. -A- was evicted not from this or that system, but from nullsec as whole. They lost their renters, lost their ratting space, they live in lowsec. When Nulli Secunda lost Delve, they were also forced to change their life. They went to faction warfare to get Amarr ships and ISK. NC. lost their techmoons and while they got themselves new space, it doesn't have money print. They now have to rat like the rest. If the 49U fight ended with TEST defeat, they wouldn't lose just some systems, the trend would have turned and SoCo would end their independent dreams permanently: they had to crawl back defeated to VFK and now they wouldn't be any different from a random CFC alliance.
While the lowsec pirate wants to win the PvP, he doesn't need to win it to carry on with his life. Nullsec empires need to win their campaign or has to face serious consequences: losing their way of life. My experience in null felt pretty real, it was clearly more than pixels on the line. I don't even try to pull a "I didn't want that nullsec anyway". I miss the Foxcats, I miss checking the system changes on Dotlan and sometimes wonder if my crusade against the forum circle jerk worth losing them. However what I miss is not flying a guardian in the HBC blob. It was making impact.
Other events made such shifts too. Hulkageddon didn't just cost ships to miners. They can't play like before that. They used to AFK mine, converting low-activity time into ISK slowly but surely. Hulkageddon bought loss into their life and they weren't happy about it. Not at all. Their cries reached CCP and lead to the barge rebalance, providing the ungankable Skiff. Now James315 tries something on this front: instead of ganking just for sowing fear, he wants to force miners to be active and participate in local chat which is a clear change from the AFK-ing custom.
I hope I could clarify that changing the way of gaming instead of their gaming scores is what impact means. It's not exclusive to null, while most prevalent. A WH alliance creating "Not red do not shoot" wormholes or monopolize all C6s would indeed make stories. A pirate alliance effectively blockading a lowsec region by killing jump freightes detto.
Did I make any stories? Hard to tell. I clearly defeated some old beliefs, mostly that highsec is not profitable (it's the most profitable zone) or that nullsec alliances are rich beyond imagining (the kings of Tech make 80-90M/member/month). But did it affect peoples way of gaming? Did they started highsec trader alts abandoning ratting? I don't know. I also stirred up TEST alliance like no one did before, without even making an effort (exact words of the diplomat who once invited me and regretted it 100x). Does it change them in some way? Only time will tell.
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