[March 4 Update: Per The Mittani, Hulkageddon is on hold until Helicity gets back to playing EVE.]
[March 31 Update: Helicity is back and it looks like this might kick off in late April.]
[April 6 Update: Helicity speaks! Hulkageddon is on for April.]
The unholy union is the fact that the Goons are sponsoring the event.
The Mittani and Helicity Together
From the announcement thread on the EVE forums:
Conflict is the life blood of New Eden.
Conflict is in the heart and soul of the Capsuleer.
Created by the artifice of man we transcend the limits of mortality and walk amongst the stars like Gods.
But the bloodline of Gods is tainted by weakness. The generations that have followed us have grown soft and weak. They cling to the skirts of the oppressive Empires that gave birth to them, they toil like slaves in the Asteroid Fields, they hide under the watchful gaze of CONCORD.
The dilution of our sacred blood must be ended, those who fear conflict will never grow strong, those that cower in slavery to the Empires will never grow strong. While their pitiful state continues, we are diminished as a whole.
So come now, all the outcasts, all the disenfranchised. The Brave, The Cruel, The Few. Come now and arm yourselves and strike down that which weakens us, so we may grow stronger.
The Empires seek to make you weak. And for their hubris, we will burn them to the ground. For we are capsuleers, and our very words and thoughts command the engines of War. We are Capsuleers, and we are Free.
…And this time we are not alone, our brethren from the outer rim, the mighty Goons have pledged their support, backed by their vast financial power we will carve a hole in the hearts of the weak and reap a bloody harvest.
There can be no other Destiny. Let them all burn.
No date has yet been announced, but it will presumably start at some point after Skyrim has settled down a bit… and when The Mittani isn’t busy fleecing suckers. The guy in that last thread chose the name Admiral Thrawn and yet fell for that? Clearly a naming violation of some sort there. For those who want a more concise summary of that scan, you can find it here.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
Not surprising that Mittani went back to lame scams, after his massive fail to crash the Eve economy, via the Goon oxytope blunder. Probably needed the ISK to pay for all of those gank ships he lost…. lol.
LikeLike
I’m not sure he’d view it as a failure. They did successfully inject a fair amount of drama into the Eve universe, which is generally the point of anything Goonfleet does.
Exaggerating for effect is part of the process.
LikeLike
By the way, how did the gallente ice interdiction end up? Just started playing eve yesterday and been fascinated with the whole concept. You said it failed… can you point to a site with more details (curious)?
LikeLike
Anon said that the price went up some, maybe double, that most people just traded out their Gallante towers for another faction tower that used different ice.
So there was some price increase, it probably annoyed some people, but it did not exactly wreck the economy.
LikeLike
I think with well over 1k exhumers blown up and the relative price of ice products, it was a success. And as Aufero said, it was about having fun and generating some drama.
LikeLike
@steelhunt – Look at 3 month price history for Oxygen Isotopes. Oxytope prices went up, but demand went way down.
Gallente/Serpentis POS owners are running on existing reserves of oxytopes, hoping that the Goons will get bored and the price will drop. Many POS owners, who do not have sufficient oxytope reserves to wait for a price drop, have opted to switch to a different racial tower, which uses a different (ie. cheaper) ‘tope fuel. As folks in the first group run out of oxytopes, they are joining the second group, rather than purchase Goon-priced oxytopes – which is why overall demand for oxytopes is not recovering.
So, the Goons are sitting on a massive stockpile of oxytopes, which they have priced up in order to make a “killing”, but not many people are buying.
Eventually, they might sell all of this overstock, but it is going to take a very long time, esp. as demand continues to drop. In the meantime, in order to maintain the high price, they need to keep the interdiction going, or the ice miners will just make more oxytopes and undercut them, pushing the price back down again. However, suicide ganking of mining ships is not exactly profitable, and will become even less economically sound after the Winter Expansion, with no more insurance payments from Concord kills. The Goons and allies are losing ISK with each gank, not to mention the time spent repairing sec status. Low demand, long-term sell orders of oxytopes also tie up a large number of buy/sell order slots, which could be much better used, by even a mediocre market trader.
All in all, this was a pretty noob attempt in market manipulation. It happens quite often when someone attempts to create a monopoly by buying out all of the region orders of some item, and then puts it back up on market for 2-3 times (or higher) of the original price. In most cases, they fail because (a) they cannot limit the supply of the item and new sellers pop up immediately to undercut them, or (b) buyers can switch to an alternative cheaper item. In this particular case, the Goons accounted for (a) by ganking the ice miners, but failed to allow for (b), since POS owhers can simply switch to alternate towers.
It was a failure, too, because the Goons would have made a lot more ISK and generated a lot more drama (and economic damage) by suicide ganking all of the freighters, industrials, and transport ships running through the bottleneck jump gates between high sec, low sec, and null sec regions – ie. attempting to interdict inter-regional trade. So, why waste so much effort on interdicting miners, when a single freighter can drop billions of ISK in goods? Bad call.
LikeLike
Welll, the ganking is still going on, and Weaselior was beating the forums just yesterday about the “post oxytope world”. But it isn’t as I immagined – I made a trial account over the weekend and rushed in a noob ship to some ice systems to see the show (I found this whole thing fascinating). I saw plenty of orcas and exhumers sucking everything in sight, and seen only a few traces of ganking, mostly failed attemps. So it’s not like they have a total lockdown, it seems there is plenty of ice slipping through. Of course, I don’t know how it used to look prior to the whole operation.
On a different note, there was an interesting forum post about removing insurance for concorded ships. It said this will not have much effect on large scale organised hisec ganking (such as the ice embargo, or the upcomming hulkageddon), as these big alliances are sitting on billions and billions of isk from their tech-moons and such, boredom, and great “for the evulz” ethos. It will mostly hurt small time, newb gankers, or people trying their hand at this new form of gameplay.
Here is the post: http://eve-search.com/thread/27598-1/page/4#120
LikeLike
I am happy about the proposed insurance change. I wouldn’t want CCP to change anything the game to stop suicide ganking, but I have always found it galling that the ship for the ganker was subsidized by the insurance plan.
I have seen some people saying that insurance doesn’t enter into it, but every guide I’ve seen on the subject includes a line about insuring your ship to reduce costs.
LikeLike
Obviously not taking free money would be stupid, regardless of how much it does or does not enter into it. I agree with you on a logical level. However, I do think Atrum has a point. Usually feels-right and sounds-good does not equal right and good, there’s those pesky unintended consequences and stuff. It may end up provoking the organized gankers into developing more organisation, creating new schemes, improving efficiency and actually lead to more ganking proliferation(drug laws, Formula 1 laws). Like it just did…
Of course you could say the goal is not to restrict ganking, but just to balance out/rearrange some internal mechanics, in which case it’s ok I guess.
LikeLike
@Steelhunt – I always have problems when people who are generally “EVE is a sandbox with landmines, deal with it” suddenly develop a burning need to protect the noobs who they would otherwise be mocking and attempting to scam any other day of the week, especially when one example is “two clueless noobs running a level 4 mission” and the other is, “poor noob cannot explore the joys of suicide ganking.”
And I do not think the goal is to restrict suicide ganking at all. People who are keen to do it will do it no matter what. There are plenty of loopholes left. There is no sanction against the guy driving the Orca full of gank fitted ships, nor against the fleet mate laying up to the exhumer you plan to warp to and kill, nor the source of the money helping to subsidize mass gank operations.
As for the general logic behind, “Making things more difficult for criminals makes crime more prevalent and leads to better criminals,” that way lies madness and anarchy.
LikeLike
“strike down that which weakens us”
where do they think the ships, modules, ammo, etc they buy off the market come from? goons are all fuckwits
LikeLike
Goons always upto some scam type. their fearful leader Mittani is supposibly a lawyer. explains alot about his moral fiber.
If you are Happy and you Know it
Pod a GOON!
If you cannot find AAA
Pod a GOON
If TEST is lookin too shifty
Morsus Mihi is too risky
pod a GOON!!!
LikeLike
Interesting to see all the people a month ago describing the Ice interdiction as a failure. In the end I was able to sell my stock of oxygen isotopes in jita at 2250 each – more than 5 times what I paid for it.
I’ve flipped the considerable profits into a pile of gallente control towers which have already appreciated in price.
It was all an economic play, and goons have profited handily from this.
LikeLike
So when does this useless event starts. I hear so much ppl trolling about but no organization or concrete dates have been setup.
LikeLike
Well, if the Goons are sponsoring, it will probably have to wait until their Winter War against White Noise concludes. So I would guess some time in February.
LikeLike
starting date still needet to be set. that way i still can see if i can train on or reequip the ships for it
LikeLike