How Eve Players Pulled Off the Biggest Betrayal in Its History

I started playing EVE just prior to the Trinity expansion release in 2008, and played up until 2013. During that time I was fortunate to watch the game evolve in so many fantastic ways (walking in stations aside). I owe an unbelievable amount of fond memories to the game, most of which involved treachery (albiet on a somewhat smaller scale).

That said, many of the changes in recent years have left a bad taste in my mouth. For example: Aurum, an in-game currency used to purchase items from the "New Eden Store", such as ship skins and clothing. Radical changes to character progression in the form of skill injectors. Radical changes to the PLEX system, as well as F2P. Innumerable changes to core game mechanics.

Not all of these changes are necessarily bad, but they do tend to foster almost a weird sense of alienation among long-time players, especially inactives. Nobody I know really plays anymore, and it's not because they lack the time. There's this mutual feeling that the game kind of lost its way some years back, and that the golden age is over. That its soul is gone, or at least waning.

I don't know how true that sentiment is, but it certainly feels that way. Of course, it's always possible we're just a bunch of really biased bittervets.

It is true that CCP has had an incredible amount of missteps in the past (walking in stations, Dust 514, vampire game), and that they've inevitably had a lot of turnover in their core talent. Despite all that, EVE is still alive, which in and of itself is impressive.

From a technology and art standpoint, the game is arguably better than ever right now. I just can't shake the feeling that it's stuck in an evolutionary treadmill of sorts, where things are changed just for the sake of change, and not pursuant to a strong overarching ideal or vision that was present in the earlier days of CCP.

On the bright side, at least Star Citizen has no hope of killing EVE. Things such as lifetime insurance are wholly antithetical to the ideal that EVE represents. Namely: you don't get an adrenaline rush flying something expensive if you know there's zero risk involved.

Elite: Dangerous (in my opinion) had the opportunity to kill both games, and failed only due to its unfortunate choice of core gameplay mechanics and P2P networking model. Four years ago it had the most advanced UI/UX of any game in existence, and arguably it still does today. Incredible artistic and technical production values unfortunately can't save a game if it has no soul.

For those not aware, Vile Rat, AKA Sean Smith [0], was one of the 4 Americans killed by terrorists in Benghazi, Libya on 09/11/2012.

This is an excerpt from a Kotaku piece on him (which has some good stories about his EVE exploits as well as real life stories [1]):

For the State Department, he was an Information Management Officer. He was an expert IT guy who signed up for postings in places both safe and dangerous. He was in Pretoria and Baghdad, Montreal and The Hague and then—for what was only supposed to be a few weeks—Benghazi, Libya. It is in that last place where he and three other Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to that country, were killed on September 11, 2012, by anti-American militants. It's there that his story was cut too short.

In Eve, Sean briefly was in the top echelon of the game's player-run government. His influence in the game actually grew for more than half a decade. He rose from ordinary player to master spy to diplomat for the mighty GoonSwarm alliance. He toppled rivals with the soft nudge of verbal persuasion. He helped his alliance win a war among player alliances that raged for three years. He even made peace with the Russians.

Again, there's a lot more about him in that Kotaku piece [1]. This [2] piece in Forbes might be worth a look too, to see his diplomatic skills being put to use on reddit (EVE-related).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Smith_(diplomat)

[1] https://kotaku.com/the-extraordinary-mischievous-too-short-l...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/09/13/a-look-at...

If you want the kind of rigid corp structure EVE offers but in a high-action game, I'd say look at some of the dedicated ArmA groups; particularly ShackTac.

The combat side of EVE is best played as more of a situation room. Sit and monitor comms and see what's going on over a wide area of space (read a book or do something engaging while you do this), then plan a surgical strike, execute and get out.

Edit: Actually I prefer this response: I think how true an EVE player finds the above statement is a good indicator of how effectively they played the game to begin with.