Although I spent Christmas in empire space, thanks to the magic of jump clones, packing up some stuff to be shipped out to null sec, I have been keeping an eye on communications and other bits of intel that find their way to me, usually via Gaff.
It seems that White Noise had a meeting of their own which, like the last State of the Goonion, shortly found its way to the web in audio form and is posted, along with a summary, over at EVE News 24.
Some of the key items from that:
- White Noise was “surprised” by the attack, despite The Mittani discussing everything short of a seating chart for the victory celebration to take place after the defeat of White Noise. Winter is Coming was more than a meme. Maybe White Noise only read the State of the Goonion summary over at EVE News 24, which was terse to the point of uselessness. (The subtitle for their post was “Too Long, Didn’t Listen.” I am told that EVE News 24 hates the Goons. But then the fill in the blank statement “_______ hates the Goons” has a lot of potential answers I suppose.)
- White Noise jumped straight to the Godwin’s Law moment and made the historical (hysterical?) comparison to Germany invading the Soviet Union in 1941. White Noise certainly fit the bill when it came to not being prepared despite obvious intel that the blow was coming. Can they trade systems for time until they get their act together is the real question.
- White Noise is getting their allies together and plans to start their counter offensive on January 1st. This includes borrowing forces from Red Alliance down in the south, which apparently has enough free time to ship pilots across the map just for a chance to kick the Goons in the nuts. (Because, of course, they hate the Goons.)
- White Noise says that the Deklein region will be cleared of Goon forces by February.
So, with that in mind, here is the sovereignty map for December 27th, borrowed from here:
Null Sec Sov. December 27
If things go as planned for White Noise, most of that big yellow splotch in the upper left corner should be gone. That little purple patch as well, which is where I live when I am in null sec.
We will have to see what the map looks like on February 1st.
Until then I have a bunch of mining equipment set to to be shipped out to Deklein. I need to start making some money somewhere along the line.
Though, I suppose if it came down to a desperate moment (it won’t), PLEX recently hit a new all-time peak price. According to the November EVE Price Index, PLEX was selling for nearly 500 million ISK per unit at one point before settling down a bit. Lots of ISK out there chasing PLEX I guess.
And the war, in which I played a very small part one night, goes on.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
We took some 30 plus systems now and 5 stations in Branch—influence map takes a while to update. Good fight today–the vaunted White Noise triage fleet made an appearance–with predictable results.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=11989631
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I tore myself away from SWTOR to get a Maelstrom out to Branch. Sadly, I only got a few structure kills, so far. WN seems to be building up reserves (hiding) and just ganking opportunistic targets with cloaky AFKers.
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@Gaff – Nice stats there. 11 carriers and 82 battleships killed for the loss of 25 battleships on our side. And the prices… 37 billion ISK in value lost compared to 6.5 billion on our side… nice kill ratio.
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That doesn’t have much to do with EVE (which, like many others, I love to read about, but loathe to play), but why is your gravatar the Earl Mountbatten of Burma?
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@Gaff
I apologize in advance if this sounds like trolling… but… “good fight”?
One side has practically twice the ships, with no terrain features (as far as I understand Eve which admittedly isn’t very much), and you call this “good fight”? It seems amazing to me that with this numbers disparity the other side managed to inflict noticeable losses.
Hmm, maybe that’s the point — they put up a good fight despite the foregone conclusion?
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Your definition of good fight is apparently a balanced one. Mine is where we win.
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Ah, good point :)
I don’t generally do PvP — aside from arena-type stuff like CS and WoT — and not much of that lately either.
So yeah, I generally look at things from the PvE PoV where it is important for me to have a challenging fight :)
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@Solf – Yeah, these battles aren’t about the battles, but part of a war of conquest to wrest territory from an old foe that will enrich us and provide us more opportunities.
Despite not being the PvP type myself, my experience is that anybody who says that all they want is a fair fight in PvP is either lying (often to themselves even) or was on the losing side.
The unfair fight is usually the rule in PvP. See my post about my Drake going boom. That was 10 to 1 against me, and that is just the way they planned it.
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@Wilhelm — Yeah, well, I kind of understand where they are coming from, but I guess I just don’t think on that ‘macro’ scale. It’s too… I guess… zergish :) Whoever has more zerg — wins (to an extent).
Oh, and about the fair fight — I dunno, you PvPed yourself in WoT. Did you prefer fights where you steamrolled opposition because some of them didn’t load and some maybe even went and team-killed? Or did you prefer those where you felt that both sides fought great, both sides had good shot at the victory, but your side / you played just that little bit better and won?
Or in NFSW — which races felt more fun? Close ones or those where winner was a foregone conclusion (regardless of whether that was you or somebody else)?
Or are you speaking specifically about FFA MMORPG PvP a la Eve/DF?
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“GF” in Eve generally means “You didn’t stand a chance, but I salute your decision not to bitch endlessly about it in local.”
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@Aufero – Exactly!
@Solf – I meant more of the open world PvP where a win means something beyond that moment. Arena stuff is a bit different. There are no long term objectives. The match will be over and all that will remain is your record.
Still, winning is the best salve. In games that count kills or wins and display them to the public, I’ll take any win I can get. That is the meta competition.
I mind losing less when it is close. Winning against the odds is also satisfying. So killing the Lowe with my Type-59 is good. But frankly, potting the scout in a Stuart with one shot is also a good time.
And in WoT, winning by a large margin usually means your team worked well together, which is satisfying in and of itself. This is especially so because, in theory, the teams are balanced for each game. The other side was never at a disadvantage theoretically.
Likewise, in NFSW, beating a Porshe in my VW is satisfying, while beating some poor schmoe by a minute is less so. But the latter is rarely ever the case. Finding the right track where everybody is competing that night (the real trick to the game) means almost never facing a roll-over.
So, I would say that any game where each and every fight was an easy win would quickly become boring, as it would in PvE. In WoW, Wintergrasp is boring now because it is usually 5 alliance and 2 horde players, so alliance always wins. But it used to be huge fun, even when one side was clearly not coming together.
But do I feel like it wasn’t a “good” fight or race because it went my way too easy? No. I am going to have hundreds of fights and races. Big wins now and again are exciting of their own accord. Do you never feel good after you smoked the other side by a long shot?
I mean, how many sports fans cry when their team stomps the other side? Who in MW3 gets sad because the got to headshot the noob who stood still in the open for too long. We like to win. We like to feel that things were fair, but when is that ever the case? No two teams… no two players… are ever perfectly matched.
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@Wilhelm — don’t generalize :) Or what is the value of ‘we’ that you use? :) I am reasonably sure that not everyone is like this. But I do see where you’re coming from, thanks for clarifying. It just doesn’t seem like my cup of tea. Although hard to be 100% sure without trying — but I doubt I’ll ever raise enough interest to go back to Eve and to 0.0 (not to mention that my character is probably not ‘good enough’ financially).
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@Solf – “We” is everybody. I do not know anybody who likes to lose, so in my experience liking to win is one of the few fair generalizations and I defy you to argue otherwise and not be disingenuous.
Do you LIKE to lose? Be honest.
As for “we like to think things are fair,” well, that is the point you were arguing for, so if you’re going to call me on that one, I don’t know what to say other than that “we” is at least you and me.
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Meh, you’re right, I’ll just claim a general reading comprehension failure on my part here, sorry.
Somehow this:
“But do I feel like it wasn’t a “good” fight or race because it went my way too easy? No. I am going to have hundreds of fights and races…”
sticks in my head as “I’m going to enjoy winning hundreds of easy wins before it becomes unfun”.
I know this is not what it says, but it takes serious conscious effort on my part to stop interpreting it like that. On my first quick read-through I guess I lumped that with the last paragraph using ‘we’ and kind of jumped to a wrong conclusion.
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And kind of just to be contrary — apologies for that — how about, say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_submission ?
Aren’t those people getting their kicks because they “lose”?
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@Solf – Yeah, I was trying to make the point of “all easy wins makes for no fun” with the Wintergrasp. I’ve played it maybe 10 times since Cataclysm. Alliance won each time, easily. I stopped playing.
Likewise, if every race in NFSW was an easy win, I’d stop pretty quickly as well. I am not denying the essence of challenge. But every race is different and some times I am going to blow people away and sometimes I am going to lose… and sometimes there will be a hacker in there whose care goes twice as fast as anybody else in the race.
And, to circle back to EVE, each battle in the war is like a battle in Risk. Some times you have six pieces and the other guy has one. Some times you have one and they have a few. (There were a rash of White Noise gank fleets infiltrating Deklein the other night, so they are trying to get their own in where they can.)
The real question is whether you care about the bigger game. Speaking as somebody who never finished a game of Risk before it was available on the computer, that is a tough question. At the moment I do, because it is a new experience. Big fleets and ships I have never seen before. Will our alliance getting a few more systems mean anything to me in the long term? I don’t know, except in the sense of security I suppose. The deeper we are in friendly territory, the safer we are I guess.
But I tend to get invested in small groups. The prime narrative on the site has been the instance group of 5-8 people. Raiding never enters into it. Alliances probably won’t either except in explaining my relationship to the world.
Life will remain, “Here is what I saw in space today” until I get tired of it.
As for your link… I think they just have their own definition of winning.
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@Flosch – Missed that question in all of this.
Like any avatar on the net, “why” can only truly be answer with “Why not?”
I did use if for my April Fool’s post. And, in a very flattering way, Lord Louis has a passing resemblance to my father at about that age. And since I look somewhat like my father, his picture is not more than a parsec distant from looking like me.
Plus he is one suave fuck in that picture.
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I agree and commend you on your choice! Besides, “viceroy” has such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? :D
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