"EVE is a bad game"

The title is a commonly recited meme. I couldn't do much with it for long, it did not make much sense. I mean for someone who plays EVE it can't be that bad. The MMO and in general the gaming scene has so many options that you can always find something better to play with. This statement is a lie like "didn't want that ship/system anyway". Obviously if you didn't want it, you'd sell it long ago. You wanted it and lost it and now try to decrease the loss by acting like you don't care.

OK, "didn't want that ship/system anyway" is obvious but why would anyone lie "EVE is a bad game"? Is there anything to win by stating that? Obviously there is, otherwise people wouldn't keep telling it. OK, some of them are mindless meme-spammers who repeat any nonsense they heard to be cool, nowadays they are busy pouring milk on their own head, but most people are not such idiots.

"EVE is a bad game" is a clever way of kissing the butt of fellow players. It's a social declaration of love towards them. The full version is "EVE is a bad game but I keep playing it because of you". It's an obvious lie as being with the others could be done without suffering EVE: Facebook and the very chat and voice programs they already use to receive fleet calls and lead fleets are perfect to be with people without playing. If EVE would be bad, they would just exclude the client and enjoy being with friends on Mumble.

The truth is - just like with "didn't want that ship" - is the very opposite: EVE is a good game and they tolerate the others because of it. While I don't question that some people who met in game are really friends or even romantic partners of each other and would stay in touch if the game would disappear, the large social group of "friends" would dissolve in days and no one would miss it.

Of course EVE wouldn't be much of a game without other players. However it's more the PvP setting. Ask yourself: if every neutrals and reds (hostiles) would turn into bots and only the blues (friendlies) would remain players, would you keep playing?

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Fresh news from nullsec: Esoteria and Impass are clear from hostiles, the campaign is now complete!

Quick business tip: I spent 307M on broker fees last week, just in Jita, despite my Broker fee is 0.205%. Make sure that your Broker Relations skill is maxed and your rep with the hub corp and faction is high. Literally billions depend on that.

Now the people with way too much more ISK than brain:
Titans serve three purposes: to bridge fleets, to grind structures and to operate in a supercapital blob. If you use it alone, you are an idiot. Like this specimen who DD-ed down a random carrier.
Losing a 16M Stabber in lowsec is normal. Losing a 6B pod in it is not.
To lose a 8B freighter to war targets is bad, right? How about losing a 6B one to the same war targets on the same day?
The story of the tankless 5B Moroses never gets old!
This low-tank carrier had more than 3B in its cargohold when it died in a relatively large battle. Going to PvP with implants in your hangar is dumb!

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Newbie income IS the newbie experience

Jester often writes thought-provoking posts. Recently he wrote that inflation and the overall richness of the players should be controlled, but "they need to give new players good enough income sources to have a hope of catching up... without making those income sources so good that the vets jump on them".

I'm a relatively new player, 9 months old. I gathered the price of three titans. Spent one titan price on various nullsec projects, have one in cash and other one invested. Isn't that bad. You know which newbie income source I used? Neither. I did not run missions for anything else but standing, I did not mine, I never ratted, I only manufactured to learn it, started PI when I was already rich.

Instead of using any of the "newbie-friendly features", I jumped on the sandbox and interacted with players. Not socially, I never chatted with them or learned their names, just bought their stuff in Lonetrek and hauled them to Jita in my Badger II. The money I made back then was spare change for even an established ratter but a fortune for a newbie. I made the cost of my ship each trip. My income cannot be separated from my game experience and it's true for those who suffered those L2 missions in a T1 cruiser for L2 income.

Do you suggest that every young American should break up virgin land with hand tools and craft his home from rude logs like their forefathers? Of course not! They should go and flip burgers or sit babies if they want some income next to school. They born into an established society and should operate there instead of building their own version in the snowstorm uphill both ways.

The current newbie career agents don't prepare the players to enter the World. They prepare them to don't enter and play solo! These missions did not help me make money, I bought my attitude with me from WoW where I learned that a lvl5 newbie can pick copper ore and peacebloom and sell it to veterans for a few gold pieces which is pocket change to them but 100x more than a lvl5 quest reward. The agent paths shall be completely remade to prepare the new players to interact with others instead of interacting with rocks and L1 rats:

• Industry agent: sort of OK, after all the players must learn the industrial UI. Mining, manufacturing is there. However BP copy, BP research are missing and should be included. Also PI.
• Business agent is horrible. It's practically a mixture of the industry agent, mining missions and distribution missions. How about missions like these:
  • Visit the nearest trade hub. Most new players don't even know about Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Hek or Rens. The school system agent just gives this one mission, the continuation is in the hub.
  • Buy items in the neighboring region and carry it to the hub. Players have to notice that the market is regional and there are price differences.
  • Haul something with suicide ganker NPCs around! Learn to tank your hauler
  • Station trade 1000 tritanium in your hub: set up buy order, update the order until it fills and sell the trit in the same station for more.
  • Accept and complete a courier contract for players (NPCs can create otherwise useless contracts so newbies always find one).
  • Set up an item exchange contract.
  • Calculate the profitability of manufacturing something: the agent gives the option of three BPCs with different material requirements and offer the same price for the products. Pick the one that is cheapest to make for highest profit.
  During these missions the text explains how this activity draw profit from other players while providing services for them.
• Military agent is OK, players have to learn the combat interface
• Advanced military agent is horrible, it practically teaches the PvP modules on NPCs and not at all prepare the player for his role in real PvP. How about these missions for the newbie caldaris:
  • Take your Condor fitted with AB, nanos and a warp scrambler and point the NPC battleship, orbiting under its guns until the Caldari Navy battleships arrive and destroy it
  • Sit on a gate and use the broadcast "enemy spotted" when the mission rat jumps in the gate
  • Jump in the gate with mission rats on the other side, gatecrash back, luring the rats to this side where the Caldari Navy set up a trap!
  • Go to a few jumps long "roam" with the Navy and in one of the systems the FC fleetwarps you to the Guristas gang
  • Shoot the fighters of the Guristas Carrier with your destroyer saving the Caldari Navy Dread shooting it
  • Participate in a battleship combat with your frig, the job is to watch the named Gurista who will warp off to one of the planets. Watch which planet it warps, warp to the same planet and tackle it
  • Put Civilian Covops Cloak to your frigate (that is only usable in newbie systems like Uitra), warp stealthed to the bookmark, sneak 5Km from the Guristas battleship, point and web it and use the broadcast to provide a warpin to the Caldari Navy
  • With your civilian cloaky frig sneak up on the Guristas dread destroying a mining colony control tower. Light your civilian cyno and watch a Caldari Navy Leviathan DD it down.
• Exploration agent: add a mission where you scan down something, copy the bookmark and provide the bookmark to your agent. Also, scan down a wormhole (a C0 wormhole with newbie system rules, linked only to school systems) enter this wormhole and watch the hole closing behind you! Inside find another agent at a POS giving you missions teaching wormhole life, and at the end of the chain scan yourself out! The outhole has 2/3 chance to lead to another Caldari school system!

The newbies shouldn't live like the first newbies and shouldn't try to earn ISK in the L1 versions of the veteran income. While Jita, the courier contracts and the carriers to point aren't provided by NPCs, they are still part of the World the newbie enters. They should participate in the existing economy as haulers, traders, contractors. Similarly they shouldn't prepare for 1v1 destroyer combat but to be useful scouts, tacklers, webbers of the existing PvP fleets. Such change would save the newbies from the "I'll never catch up" feeling that the L1 missions radiate and give the "I don't have to catch up, I'm useful with my Rifter or Badger II" attitude.

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While I'm not trying to turn into news site, this battle may missed you, despite it's important. The CFC broke into Cobalt Edge, getting themselves a bridgehead in the station system of HB-5L3.

In the meantime the following Darwin Award nominees put their mental capacity on display:
The first one tried to figure out how much stronger a shuttle become if you fly it with full slave and +6% hardwirings.
Not one, but two purple smarbombing faction battleships, for 10 and 13B. Probably the short bus broke down next to an internet cafe.
It's contagious! The third shield tanked Moros of the week, this time a purple one!
Warping to zero to a POS means you get bounced away. Don't do that or you get into the TV like this guy!
7B in a cloaky transport with no tank? Cloaky doesn't mean alpha-immune, especially at Jita where the huge traffic decloaks you.
5B tankless CCC Moros. (I don't know which is worse, the tankless or the shield one)
If one lost a 25B horrifit purple Machariel last month, you'd guess that he learns or he ragequits. But surely wouldn't guess that he flies the same 25B horrifit again.

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CFC: bad implementation of meritocracy

The new GSF update declares acts of meritocracy: "Mordus Angels was a useless shitpile, didn't deserve blue standings, and reset them without notice ... we showered Circle of Two and Legion of Death with love, space, and tech moons ... this coalition is a retributive meritocracy; the only thing that matters for an alliance in the Clusterfuck is showing up in strategic ops with doctrine-appropriate ships. Serve on the line and be rewarded, fail to do so and be flayed".

I'm probably the biggest fan of meritocracy: judging people after their performance. Yet this made me almost scream. HBC isn't that meritocratic: unless you cause trouble, you can stay around even if you are mostly useless. Yet HBC conquers regions much faster than CFC. I don't think that it's the glory of socialism: "effort according to ability, rewards according to needs" over meritocracy. The "leech" doesn't leech on anyone, he receives nothing from anyone, he is just an obstacle. It's the glory of live and let live over a bad implementation of meritocracy.

What do you need for a fleet? Pilots in doctrine-appropriate ships. Pilots, not corporation or alliances. The problem with the CFC implementation is that it doesn't motivate pilots at all. "To have a CEO in Illum and have a 'voice'" isn't motivating at all for the little guy. Seriously! You expect him to spend hours doing something he doesn't like just to get rewards for someone else, especially for someone he probably considers a bossy no-lifer nerd?!

The chance that his corp gets fired from the alliance may scare him, but still not motivating, simply because of the tragedy of commons: if there is a 100 man corp, I can increase the corp performance by 1% if I increase my performance by 100%. Even with doubling my efforts I can do little to avoid the scary end. On the other hand if I decrease my performance by 100%, turning into a total freeloader, the chance of being punished for it only increases by 1%, good trade.

The "meritocracy" model CFC uses is the outdated middle-management economic model: you reward/punish the boss and the boss makes his minions work. This model worked with blue collars and we can consider F1-spamming blue collar work, so it should work in EVE corps, right? No, because in the hierarchical setup of a standard sweatshop of the `50-es or the ones exist in developing countries are based on coercion and lack of options: you keep slaving or fired into starvation. The in-game small corporations on the other hand are "families", positive social circles. The members join as volunteers and they have positive social connections with each other, including some leadership members. The corp leader can't assume the position of the heartless boss with timecharts, kicking every slacker because he won't kick his friends and they know that. Also, the corp leader probably don't want to be a hated heartless boss and burn out quick if he is forced.

The proper implementation of meritocracy is an alliance-wide individual pilot evaluation. This case the demands come from above, your friends can't help you, there is no place for favoritism or excuses.

To point out another problem: what exactly do you measure? In the standard blue collar jobs you are hourly paid: you do X hours, you get X*Y salary. This allows people of different time schedule (part-time mom, full time guy, workaholic doing overtime) to work together. How do you implement this in EVE? If you demand X hours/month for every person, then two part-time workers (casual players) can't fill the same slot as one full-time despite the same results. Even worse: how do you define "salary", the benefit from membership that the member must reciprocate? ISK he makes in alliance space? He could do better in highsec! WoW guildmasters has it easy as the loot comes from raids. The only benefit of EVE alliance membership is fun and I doubt if you can make a proper measurement system for fun. My best guess: non-stratop PvP kills.

To make meritocracy work you must define the unit of fun, measure how many units an individual pilot got, set the expected amount of stratop-time/fun and check who worked too little for the fun he received. This is the only way. If you find this impossible to implement, then just go with the TEST way and don't punish anyone for slacking. And please never-ever evaluate corps or alliances, only pilots.


There was probably national holiday on the land of pants-on-head retards as only one 7B ratting Mach died on Wednesday and yet another shield tanked (rather non-tanked) Moros on Thursday.

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WoT, EVE and the Theory of Trade of Fun

Tuesday I introduced the Theory of Trade of Fun which says that the value add of the same content being an MMO and not single player game depends only on the freedom of the market of fun between players. EVE Online has a pretty dedicated but small playerbase despite performing perfectly on the freedom of trade of items. You can buy and sell everything in the game and you can buy game currency from other players via selling them game time (PLEX).

Since I said that the freedom of trade is the most important quality of the game it must be explained. The problem with EVE is that you can trade items but having items only relate to fun if you are skilled enough. You can grind or PLEX a purple Tengu but instead of the fun of owning something special, all you'll get is a loss report and some trolling. The average player is mediocre by definition and such person is not able to extract any fun from his items since he either keeps them safe in a station without interacting them or lose them. The problem is that grinding time or paid money has very little correlation to fun in EVE, while skill in the game has large. The trade is meaningless as the items are meaningless in the hands of an average player.

Compare it to the stunning success of World of Tanks. It also has perfect trade (the game items are all buyable or grindable), but went the other way: playing skill has near-zero effect on your results. You can play with extraordinary prowess or intentionally suck, the game will keep your win ratio near 50% and your kill/death below 2 by properly balancing teams (putting useless crap next to good players) and by probably messing with penetration and damage numbers. In WoT everyone, completely regardless playing skill can fully enjoy their items. This of course turns down the competitive ones but the 99% can celebrate his imaginary awesomeness. While I left WoT in disgust, if I were a stockholder in the company, I'd support their choice.

Of course the veterans of EVE would be pretty upset for "dumbing down" the game even a bit. However I'd like to stress that it's the Theory of Trade of Fun and not of win. The "turn EVE to WoW" blame isn't true, especially as WoW top endgame needs lot of dancing skills. WoW devalues every item and achievement fast, but within the same patch the game is pretty hardcore. So no, it would not be necessary to provide extra safety or easy wins to bad players in EVE to be able to extract fun from their items.

The solution is to find ways to attach fun to items without changing the game mechanics. Walking in stations to show off clothing would be a great option, CCP got it right. The problem is that they tried to sell the items to players instead of letting them trade the items between themselves. Sleepers and officers could drop clothing items and those could be sold to bad but grinding or paying players. A score could be introduced that make the safely locked away treasure visible - therefore source of pride - without risking them.

Every faction, T3, T2-BS, rare-prize and capital ship; every faction, deadspace and officer module would have a score value and the sum of the score on the account could be made visible on the character screen by the player. Being in top 20% of the accounts would place a star at the end of the name of the guy visible in the overview and everywhere where the name is displayed, top 5% two stars, top 1% three stars, top 0.1% a diamond. The game would be exactly the same, the guy would still be a "highsec carebear" grinding all day, collecting ships and modules he'll never fly but he'd have fun while doing so and would remain a customer.

I'd like to emphasize the "Trade" part of the theory. The items the busy score-hunter would collect would be created by other players and by buying them up, the score-hunter would give these players ISK. From the ISK these players could skip grinding or get useful ships to have fun. The Theory of Trade of Fun is a win-win idea, exactly because "fun" is different for the different people.


Without this feature only the killboards can inform us if one has more ISK than sense: The Wis, the guy who was mentioned by Mittani on Alliance panel, leading to loss of his CSM seat is back, driving a green-purple 5B battleship into PvP with a 4B pod including mining foreman link
What is more stupid than driving a 5B+ freighter? Driving a 5+ freighter in a wardeccable corp. Can you beat that? How about a 5B+ freighter in a militia?
Finally a hilarious story. Lee Chanka, former lead FC of AAA left AAA with his corp and turned a mercenary. They were hired to kill AAA. And they are killing Makalu, again and again.

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WoW and the Theory of Trade of Fun

Yesterday I introduced the Theory of Trade of Fun which says that the value add of the same content being an MMO and not single player game depends only on the freedom of the market of fun between players. WoW lost lot of its appeal over the years and I think it can explained by this theory and fix it.

It's crucial to state that the theory do not address the content of the game. The problem with WoW isn't that it's too hard or too easy or too dancy or too grindy. There are different contents aimed at different people and all of them are valid as long as there are people who like that kind of content. The problem is that the current WoW isn't much different from an imaginary WoW which you play on a server where only you and your guild plays and your guildmates are all your clones: same gaming skill and time schedule. Adding more players to your imaginary clone-guild would not make any difference in your leveling, instance, scenario and raiding experience. Your clone-guildmates are just fillers for group content, you don't give or receive anything from them, they just do their job and pick their own loot.

Trade of Fun allows players of different skill, time and money to play together and enhance each others experience by mutually beneficial trade. In WoW such trade is near-impossible, everything relevant is bind on pickup, it must be farmed by yourself. If an item is grindable (for example a Klaxxi exalted one), you must spend countless hours to have it. No matter how rich or skillful you are, you won't have it. If an item must be taken from an extremely dancy boss, you must learn and perform the dance, you can't get it by putting in more time or money. Generally having more IRL money doesn't help you at all in WoW, even if you use illegal RMT as gold can't buy you anything worthy.

Don't mistake Trade of Fun for simple pay-to-win microtransactions where the developer sells you The One Ring. Here all items are acquired by players either by skillful play or by grinding a lot and they sell their item willingly. If you have 1 out of the 10 axe of ubernesses in the game and you choose to keep it, you'll still have 1 out of the 10 axe of ubernesses if the other 9 owners sell theirs.

To fix WoW no content needs to be changed just all items turned into bind on equip and new "coins" must be introduced: coin of honor, of justice, of Klaxxi rep, of everything. A coin of honor costs 1.5X honor points, can be sold and the buyer can activate it gaining 1X honor. The rep coins needs you to be exalted (the after-exalted cap should be elevated from 999) so you can't upfeed with alts. Weekly caps should be removed. If grinding time needs to be limited to fight RMT-ers, bots or the bad press of idiot kids dying after 50 hours of non-stop farming, account weekly playtime should be limited and not any form of income.

Finally the EVE-like PLEX should be introduced: time cards that are purchased in the Blizzard store and sellable on the AH for gold. To have balanced markets maybe the AHs of the battlegroups should be linked (or servers merged) to have enough players using them. I consider the Diablo III real money trade overshoot as it allows professional game-farming. The time-card trade of EVE is perfect because you can't get out of anything from your gaming than ability to play the game for free or access merchandize.

With the Trade all three kind of players (time-rich grinders, skillful players, rich players) could access game items, so the mindless welfare epic shower can be toned down. The welfare shower became necessary to allow the average players access items. The average player doesn't have the skill to kill HM bosses or the time to grind out all reps exalted and valor capped every week. But with the trade the average player, having average time, skill and money could find "productive" aspects of his gameplay and trade his proceedings for items, gaining everything he wants.


PS: while I leave WoW as soon as my subscription runs out at the end of December, I still play when my girlfriend drags me in and I have to accept that Silvershard Mines is very well-made strategic map (strategic means that the enemy has 2x more kills and still loses with 3x less points).

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The theory of MMO Trade of Fun

The rule of entertainment industry is simple: you pay money, you get fun. You pay a ticket to see a movie or sport game, you buy a book or DVD and you enjoy these entertainment services. The video game industry isn't different: you pay the developer money and he gives you access to play the game.

So far, so good in case of single-player games. But what about MMOs? Why do developers do huge extra work to make the game playable in a common space instead of on several single-player instances? "Socializing is fun" is bad answer, otherwise Facebook could charge users. The "free" nature of Facebook is the clear proof that people are unwilling to pay money for internet socialization. They are ready to pay with their private data or their time though, but game developers can't really use that.

The multi-player aspect of MMOs indeed create special sources of fun. Take two pixel dragons. They have the same movement, shape and texture mask, their only difference is that one is blue and the other is red. For a non-player having access to ride these dragons are equally fun (or equally not). For a player the difference is huge: one of them is a baseline mount provided by questline everyone can complete, while the other drops from the hard mode of the endboss. That dragon is the ultimate proof of l33tness and those who have it are showing it off front of the bank of Stormwind. However there is a catch: the source of fun of that dragon is envy. The owner bathes in the feeling of being envied but other paying customers are feeling inferior. Same thing applies to PvP: "pwning n00bs" is considered awesome, but to do so, someone must be the "pwned n00b" and that someone is a paying customer too.

I had to play (and leave) WoW, had to get to the top10 in World of Tanks and leave it in disgust, had to gather 3 titans worth of pixel money in EVE in less than a year (and almost leave it several times) to figure out how these all connect with the above pwner-pwned situation. In MMOs the developer allow players to be co-entertainers, to sell other players fun for time or money. This isn't something that MMO developers know or plan, it often happens against their will (RMT) but still, this is what makes MMOs more successful than single-player games.

Grinding is a boring, not fun activity in a game. Single player games have no grinding, every part of the game is meant to be fun. Grinding was originally put to MMOs to give people something to do without developer resources used to create good content. However this clearly bad design should have failed. It didn't because grinding is the way that players can trade time for fun. Most MMO players are young, has lot of time but no money. The ability to pay not by money but by time for their fun is very important for them. Grinding creates rarity as you can't get the reward easily. Rare things (even if totally useless) are loved by social people. Those who pay for the reward (either to the developer or to other players) can get the reward without the grind. The point is that the same pixel item would not be fun if others wouldn't have to grind for it. Riding on your mount is fun because you see the non-payers on their foot.

This trade of fun probably more clear in World of Tanks which is totally play for free. You can fully experience every piece of game content without paying a penny. However if you are paying, you get your new tank equipped faster and you can buy gold ammo. This way you can enjoy pwning the non-payers in their sub-par tanks. You fund their gaming too, in turn they provide you extra fun by blowing up. Please note that the source of fun is not something the developer could provide. They could give you weak AI tanks to slaughter but that would be "meh grinding". It is the other player who sells you the fun of slaughtering. The deal is: you pay my subscription and I let you blow me up.

World of Warcraft has playing time trade too: the hardcore player uses more server and developer resources for the same payment. It seems that casuals subsidize HCs. However the truth is that HCs provide fun to casuals. To get the best gear one must get valor points that comes from running random content with random players boosting them. So the deal is: I pay your subscription, you boost me. Again, if developers just hand these items out, they would be no-fun baseline items. Their "fun-value" comes from the fact that it is out of reach of the casual, a raid full of "casuals" would wipe even on LFR, yet the casuals gets these rewards via boosting.

Diablo III is clear money for time trade: the "fun items" are very rare and farmed by time-rich people who sell them to the money-rich ones, while Blizzard takes its cut. The PLEX trade in EVE online has similar but smaller effect as you can't get money out of the system legally.

To have a successful MMO, the game content itself must provide enough fun to make the free players or grinders to keep playing. This point is trivial: better content is better. For example a free-to-play punchbag player of World of Tanks still prefers playing World of Tanks as a punchbag than not playing at all. If the game content is dull or the free players can't access any fun at all, they'll quit and then no one will provide fun to the paying ones. Many games fail at this point. EVE Online is on the edge, being a miner/missioner-punchbag is so bad experience that most people rather not play at all than play this way for free. World of Warcraft excels here with various single-player activities. Solo-WoW would probably be a pretty successful game and wouldn't be much less profitable than MMO-WoW.

The the value add of the same content being an MMO and not single player game depends only on the freedom of the market of fun between players. World of Tanks and EVE Online are near-perfect here, you can play and access any item completely free if you spend enough time being a pounchbag and you can get instant pwnage-fun if you pay enough. While solo-WoT and solo EVE would be horrible failures, MMO-WoT and MMO-EVE are pretty successful. WoW is failing on this point and give little value add by being MMO over solo game and every patch decreases the freedom of trade. Please note that the trade must be between players! When the developer showers One Rings to everyone who cares to log in, it devalues it. The item/highscore must remain rare and valuable, the point is to allow players to buy from each other.

The third important point is win-ablity. "Winning" in an MMO can be defined as accessing fun without paying for it either by time or money, while losing is when you pay/grind and still end up with boredom or grief. In the first two criteria the bigger is always better: better solo content and more free market always increases revenues. However with win-ability there is some golden middle. World of Tanks is on the one extreme, totally non-winnable. The team-balancing equation is so perfect that the only source of difference between the results of two players is paying/grinding. No matter how good you are in playing WoT, your winrate and kill-death will be pushed near the average. Having no chance to improve your results via playing chases competitive players away. EVE Online is on the other extreme, very winnable. My in-game ISK income is around $25/hour, while the after-tax average hourly wage of my country is $3, so you can't really sell me ISK. Similarly the easiness of small-ship PvP allows a skilled player to have "pwning" fun without either paying real money to the "victim class" or having to spend significant time as grinder (member of the victim class). Having no chance to improve your results via paying (either money or time) chases away mediocre players and most people are mediocre by definition.

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About the WoW guild "The PuG"

For two years I ran a WoW guild "The PuG" to operate on a casual, yet non-boosting way. We clearly outperformed the social guilds, but failed to outperform the HC guilds, mostly because WoW slowly but surely changed from MMO to a jumping arcade game. Many old players left for other games, including me for EVE Online and I planned to close the WoW guild down, leave WoW completely.

Well, my girlfirend disagreed. She shares my resentment towards social people, without my curiosity and will to fix them. She just wants them out of her life. So she didn't follow me to EVE Online. Technically she did, she has a character, minds her skill queue and plays now and then for the game itself. But my "understand nullsec/win EVE" projects are out of her scope. She likes the single-player aspect of WoW, a game full of nice content, replaced often. She will keep on playing and carry on The PuG.

Her guild isn't a project trying to prove anything, merely an online escapism from the social people. There aren't goals to reach, points to prove, just a place to forget the social people who surround us with their nonsense, lolling, ape-grooming.

Therefore the permanent page of The PuG is back on my blog header and updated to the new situation.


I did some PvP in WoW, Silvershard mines weekend BG. The idiocy of the players was shocking. Not like idiocy is common in EVE too. But at least here they die:
79B freighter.
11B JF Nairja
5B freighter in lowsec
5B shield tanked Moros
3B Pod in a standard Drake in nullsec


Tomorrow comes a post that seriously has the chance of having revolutionary effect on MMO design and significant help to MMO groups to optimize their structure.

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