When in Rome Do as the Goons – Jita, Hulkageddon, and the EVE Economy

The order of upcoming cataclysmic player events in EVE Online looks to be coming in the following order:

1. Destroy Jita
2. Hulkageddon V
3. The Economic Aftermath

Or as Helicity put it...

The first two you have probably heard about one way or another.  The third might be news to you.

More after the cut since this whole thing became much longer than I anticipated.

Destroy Jita

Ah, Jita.  The central trading hub of the EVE universe.

Not sure where I got this picture...

The first event, the burning of Jita, is being cast as a “Free The Mittani” party and is scheduled to coincide with the lifting of his 30 day ban from the game on April 28th.

Anyway, this Jita event was originally scheduled as a celebration should The Mittani receive more than 10K votes in the CSM elections, but after he was banned, it became a welcome back event.  And a test.

The supposed test being to see who CCP will react to this sort of thing.  If it goes off without hindrance from CCP, EVE will be declared to be the same old EVE (for good or ill, depending on your point of view), while if CCP does step in to limit or otherwise block some or all of the event, it will be a sign that there is a new world order in EVE Online.

I do wonder what will happen if CCP “forgets” to lift his ban or if some “technical glitch” comes into play preventing his return on that date.  Will that be sign enough?

And while the pedantic will point out that no player group can literally “Destroy Jita,” there will certainly be a lot of ships blown up.

Of course, if you want to avoid the destruction in Jita, the Goons will happily sell you an Opt-Out pass for the event, which purports to put you on a “no shoot” list.

You can opt out, we swear!

And if they accidentally shoot you, you can apply for a full reimbursement.  And if you believe that, I have a Jita based jump bridge to sell you as well!

Hulkageddon V

And then there is the more traditional event, the periodic blowing up of mining ships in high sec space.  We have been waiting for this even for a while now.  But it now has a date… or an approximate date, anyway.

Coming Soon... for real!

It is slated to start as soon as the Jita event winds down.  I suspect that will mean April 29, depending on who or what gets targeted in Jita.  If the plan is for maximum destruction in the minimum amount of time, expect an early start.

The main difference this time around for Hulkageddon… and there has to be something new each time, or the event itself would get old… is that Goonswarm is sponsoring some of the prizes.

Prizes are a key part of the event.  Helicity is even now out getting prizes lined up.  These are for things like most kills, both overall and for given ship types or in a given area of space, and that sort of thing.   People do compete for them, but they are the “there can be only one” sort of prizes.  First place gets a Cadillac, second place gets steak knives.

To change this up, the Goons are offering a special bounty prize.  For every 10 Hulks or Mackinaws you destroy, you will get a 100 million ISK prize.  A skilled pilot, carefully using his supply of Catalyst destroyers, could turn that sort of bounty into a profitable enterprise.

And, even if it isn’t profitable, it seems like more people will get prizes this time around.  How democratic.

This has, of course, kicked off the usual amount of consternation both inside and outside of the EVE player community.

There is a certain amount of, “Oh no, not again” going around.  There was a call on the forums to ban all Goons for the duration of the Jita/Hulkageddon events, which few took seriously, but which focused a bit of the anti-event opinions.  These are countered with a set of rationalizations both meta, destroy bots and shaking things up, and in-game/in character (Helicty has a set posted), which all seems to converge on wanting to just blow some different stuff up for a bit.

Outside of the usual EVE hate, some people are asking legitimate question.

Stropp points to Ultima Online and other free for all environments and asks why there is no organized in-game opposition to this sort of event.  Where are the anti-ganking corps?

The answer is somewhat ironic in that it is CONCORD, the in-game police that keep high sec space “safe” that are the issue.  Since they will swoop in and blow up any aggressor’s ship pretty quickly, what would a anti-gank corp do?  They cannot shoot first, since CONCORD will blow them up.  And in the few seconds available before CONCORD steps in, what good can they beyond padding their own kill stats?  Maybe somebody has another strategy, but I haven’t seen it.

For anti-ganking efforts to really work, CCP would first have to make high sec space less well protected.  Player corps would have to own the protection of space… as is the case in null sec, where home defense fleets and such are the norm.  Odd how that works out.

The Economic Aftermath

What really will make the first two events really interesting are a couple of changes that CCP is planning to put in place at just about the time that Burn Jita is set to kick off.  Carebear 2.0 is currently slated for April 24 and has two aspects that will really mess with the markets.

First, it will remove mineral drops from rogue drones.  Rogue drones are the NPC rats in a chunk of null sec space.

Rather than having bounties on them, the way you make money ratting in the drone regions is collecting these mineral drops, refining them, and then selling them on the market.  Estimates are that drone based minerals make up a lot of the mineral market, keeping mineral prices low and thus suppressing player mining operations.  Why mine when minerals are so cheap?

This is, of course, a good thing in the long term.  Mining will be a more viable profession going forward, while people in the drone regions will get bounties for drones rather than mineral drops, which should make them happier as well.

Also coming in at the same time is the removal of all meta 0 and meta 1 drops from NPCs.  This will be a boost to those who want to go into production, as the market won’t be flooded with a glut of basic tech I ship components.  I know that during my own forays into production, I often found that I could make more money buying up drops people were trying to unload and reselling them than I could producing them myself.  For light missiles, I could get the price to produce down to 5 ISK each, but could buy them up for 1-3 ISK each in any given mission hub.  So why build?

So all that will change, and this is a good thing in the long term.  There will be opportunities for production.  You will be able to build and sell things.  Mission running players won’t be dumping that stuff on the market for less than your cost.

Mission running, or NPC hunting, players also won’t be reprocessing these drops for minerals, which it turns out is also a big source of minerals in the market place.  Another boost for miners!

Of course, all of these is slated to come in right before Hulkageddon when a pack of players will be out and actively hunting miners.  The economic impact could be huge.

Jester has a good look at this and some analysis in his System Shock post.  You should read that for a glimpse at the details of the changes and what may come to pass.

But whatever comes, it might be a good time to stock up on minerals.  It should be a sellers market for a while.

Or maybe join SynCaine in W-space.  Wormhole mining operations stand to become very profitable enterprises very shortly, and the Soviet Union showed that you can even make communism work if you can sell raw materials to the capitalists.

An Unrelated Aside

As for the title of this post, I am not sure if it quite gets to the right end.  I started with the Jita plan, went to the sack of Rome, then to a Vandals album, and finally ended up with the title.  But then I started thinking about what the Goons would do to Rome.

They would probably surround the place, the try and scam the Romans by selling them siege equipment and safe passage options.

Eventually Warchief Dabigredboat would finish his dinner and start to work up the troops by marching them around while talking about what he would like to do with their mothers.

When the attack was finally lined up, anybody who stepped ahead would get called a lemming.  Then the attack would swarm over the Romans, slowing everything down to 10% speed, but eventually sending the Romans into retreat.  The Goons would chase the Romans for a bit, then return to the battlefield to find that TEST had already looted it.

Or so I would imagine based on my own experience.