Break the power blocs down and they’ll only build themselves up again, he shrugs. It’s human nature.
The Mittani to EuroGamer, Inside EVE Online’s Game of Thrones
EuroGamer gets a good deal of deserved mocking from time to time due to their sacrificing quality/depth of reporting in order to keep up with the pace of news on the web and the need to be able to be first (example one and two), but they have a post up today about the EVE Online meta game titles Inside EVE Online’s Game of Thrones that makes up for some of their shortcomings.
Blocs Battling at 6VDT-H back in 2013
The article runs through some of the realities of the big null sec power blocs and is a decent read if the topic interests you (certainly more so than that article in The Atlantic that ran along as though the CSM was central to the meta game), though you have to remember that the focus is just on one aspect of EVE Online. Null sec is just a slice of the pie. And yes, there is some smugness to be had for CFC pilots as the article displays a tone of exasperation when it comes to our traditional foes like Black Legion and NCDot.
There are a couple of takeaways from the article that are important to remember. One is the social bonding aspect and how a lot of people run ops more for the people they play with than because EVE Online is full of fun and exciting game mechanics. (It is objectively a pretty poor game in the regard on many fronts.) That one comes out pretty clearly in the article.
The other one is stated less directly, but it is one I have brought up before. And that is, in any game where being organized and working together brings advantage, groups that can do so in the long term will tend to dominate in the long term. Such group will tend to adapt to change better and will continue to succeed, which leads to the quote at the top. Making the game more difficult for the organized groups will tend to harm the less organized groups even more so. History has born this out.
And if you’re dying for more on the topic, there is Sion’s presentation from Fanfest about diplomacy, coalitions, and the meta game, now up on YouTube.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
But power blocs do die – eg Bob.
Also the growth of huge superpowers has historically always eventually led to collapse, eg Rome.
I think the most interesting thing about this article is that The Mittani once again displays absolutely astonishing people manipulation skills. He’s fed this man some bullshit and the guy rushes off to preach the idea to everyone he can. Mittens has done this many times before and it’s his greatest strength – getting people to believe in him.
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@stabs – Well yes, Band of Brothers the alliance died. They no longer appear on the map.
However, the people that made up BoB are, by and large, still in the game. They have formed into different groups, but the same old corps like Fin Fleet are still playing the null sec game. There are not a lot of new entities on that null sec sovereignty map aside from Hero. There are some new names, like Absolution Alliance, but they are pretty much White Noise re-rolled, which was a post-BoB group. S2N and TEST have both been knocked off the map in the past, yet have reformed and have made it back since.
And yes, Rome fell. But how long did that take? And did Roman influence and the various peoples who made up the empire disappear, or did they carry on in their own way?
In EVE you cannot chase somebody down and extinguish them entirely as you could potentially attempt to do in the real world. Null sec entities simply retire to low sec, get themselves together or regroup into new entities, and jump back in.
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