Why Amarr Dominate the Lore

One thing you may have noticed in EVE Online is the preponderance of chronicles and events and goings-on with the Amarr empire to the detriment of the other 3 major empires that players can be active parts of.

There is a good reason for this, and it has to do with the basic premises of the empires.

The Gallente are boring. Democracy is yucky and messy (reference the current US Presidential Election) but on grand operatic narratives it is tame and uninteresting. All the drama happens in backroom dealings and quiet assassinations (political or otherwise) and not from large scale combat and events that grab players and writers imaginations.

The Caldari have a similar problem, replacing political shenanigans with corporate shenanigans. They did have some interesting events with the rise of Tibus Heth and his fascist Caldari Providence Protectorate, a possible revolution of social structures in the State where the uber-capitalist society is replaced through fire and blood with a new communistic-socialist state much like the Russian revolution of the early 20th century... but then the curators of the lore walked back from that cliff, got rid of Heth, and returned to the boring cyber-punk corporate overlords status quo. Its a cool setting for individual storylines, but not grand scale epic arcs.

On the other hand, the basis of the Minmater Republic comes out of the box with tons of potential.
- A Tribal social structure which opens up opportunities for tensions between competing interests.
- A history of being enslaved and resistance and still having a significant portion of their population enslaved.
- Tensions with the Ammatar collaborators that worked with the enslavers against their own people, but secretly were working to prevent the elimination of the thought-to-be-lost Starkmanir tribe.
- The Thukker tribe who refuse to work with the other tribes and wander space in giant caravans.

So many elements that could come into play in interesting storylines, except for the fact that CCP seems unwilling to commit to developing them.

Why?

Because the Amarr storylines are just a little bit better. First off you have the whole religious empire that makes for easy hooks into motivations of the characters because its so relatable in our real world, coupled with the dark side of slavery existing in a sci-fi setting which is rare and visceral. Couple that with the Amarr being the largest and arguably the most powerful of the empires and you have a rich well with which to draw ideas from.

And on top of that firm base you mix in the Imperial politics around emperors and empresses, the tapestry of succession trials, the possibility of civil wars between the royal families (Hello Khanid), the insertion of the Other in Jamal Sarum's head and the involvement of the Drifters... Face it, the Amarr had a good starting position and then each stepping stone in the lore gave momentum to the next one.

The end result is a lore dominated by the Amarr empire.

The good news is that with the coronation of Empress Catiz there is a solid pause-point to change direction of the lore and revive the other empires with new storylines. Let's hope the curators of the lore at CCP take this opportunity.

So That's What You're Going With

I do not claim to speak on many things authoritatively but Warhammer 40K is something that I feel I'm qualified to speak to. After all, at one point in time I was obsessed with the game and its universe to the point of owning three massive armies of miniatures (Eldar, Chaos Marines, and Lost and the Damned), as well as a Battlefleet Gothic chaos fleet and Epic Chaos Marine army. I spent over 15 years deep in the hobby and lore behind it, wrote tomes of fan fiction and bought almost every publication I could get my hands on. I finally left the 40K world 8 years ago when my sons were born.

I was surprised when I saw The Mittani's post doubling-down on the Imperium analogy. At first glance it makes sense: an Imperium of Mankind surrounded by gibbering horrors of the warp, Xenos threats like Eldar and Tau and Tyranids, and the threat of rebellion from within, staunchly swearing eternal vigilance and forever-war on any that defy them.

But if you look at the analogy closer you start to wonder if The Mittani thought this through. After all, in the 40K universe the Imperium is ruled by the Emperor who is nothing more than a living corpse kept alive in a comatose state by the Golden Throne which itself requires the sacrifice of 100 psykers (humans with psychic powers) every day, swept up by Black Ships from all over the Imperium in a constant flood of uncaring murder. Actually ruling in the name of this husk on the throne is a secret all powerful cabal of tyrants that answer to no one, whose decisions carry the weight of a world of lives being snuffed out or saved by mindless hordes of soldiers and a few elite psychopaths called Space Marines. Meanwhile, the technology is stagnant as no one alive understands how it works anymore (except the priests of Mars and they barely get what's going on).

You know what? Maybe the analogy was thought out.

Except for one minor detail. In the 40K lore its quite clear once you get to know it that the Imperium of Mankind is losing. For every world saved or reclaimed, two are lost. Orks enslaved and kill, Tyranids strip planets of all biomatter, Tau build their empire bigger, and chaos continues to woo the disenfranchised, and the Imperium slips closer and closer to doom more and more every hour.

Not the inspiring narrative I would have hitched my wagon to.

Death of a Capsuleer

CCP has been getting very George R.R. Martin with its in game characters lately. Minmatar ex-prime minister's assassination two years ago was unusual. But this past summer we've seen Hilen Tukoss reportedly killed and now Jamyl Sarum, the empress of the Amarr empire, is dead at the hands of the Drifters as well.

But what's really unusual besides CCP's slide into charactercide is that both of those individuals were not only capsuleers but were in ships in space when they died. As every player knows, if you die while in your capsule, an immediate brain scan occurs and your consciousness is transferred to a brand new medical clone so you live once more.

In the case of Hilen Tukoss, the investigation of the corpse that was found floating in space at the Drifter Hive showed that there were anomalies in the brain scan upon capsule rupture (thanks Hydrostatic Lore Panel!) so he did not go successfully to his medical clone as far as we know.

For the Empress, things are not so clear to me. Its possible that in order to keep up appearance of the Doctrine of Sacred Flesh, she did not have any known medical clone anywhere (although she might have another hidden one again) so they are announcing her death but really she is alive and well somewhere else, or its possible she really is dead.

Taken at face value, these two incidents represent a couple of the unique ways a capsuleer can die even while in a pod. We may be immortal, but we're not "Immortals".

Whatever Happened To Rogue Drones?

When I started EVE back in the dawn of time (2006 to be precise) I looked around the universe and thought to myself, "those rogue drones are sure going to be trouble down the road". When the Drone regions suddenly had stargates become active to make them open to capsuleers in the Revelations expansion a couple months later, I felt my suspicions were confirmed. "They," I thought, "are the Big bad of the future."

After all, with sites and structures like this floating around in space:

From Aeon's EVE blog.

And this:

From Interstellar Privateer blog

Not to mention the missions you come across in PvE, it certainly seemed at the time in 2006-2007 that Rogue Drones were going to grow in importance as a threat to all of New Eden.

And its a perfect trope for dytopian sci-fi space opera as well, a Frankenstine's Monster tale writ large across the stars, technology run amok and out of control of the power-mad scientists who dared to play god and try to create life, etc. They also would have made a perfect foil to players, a mirror of sorts, both capsuleers and rogue drones presenting a growing threat to the established empires, examples of technology that the empires sought and nurtured but that spun out of their control and threaten their very existence, the only threat to the growing power blocs being their dark mirror twin, and only one can survive in New Eden. One a conglomeration of soulless and heartless monsters that consume all resources and squeeze out all competition in their path for domination, the other an advanced drone AI that wants independence.

Read this for an example of the horror. *Shudder*

However, things did not go that way.

The Apocrypha expansion took the focus of the lore off New Eden and exposed us to the beginning of a larger and deeper world. Empyrean Age broke the stasis that the game had kept the empires in and started to lurch them shambling into the forefront. And the Rogue Drones took a step back as a result, the last meaningful part they played in the unfolding drama was a 5th business role in the chronicle "We Humans" where they are shown enslaved to unknown but definitely human masters. They manage to free themselves in that story (or at least be freed through destruction), but that is their send off note as they have retreated into stasis, their regions and missions and complexes and NPCs mere echos of a different game that EVE was in 2003-2008.

With Drifters taking centre stage in the lore as the unknowable and possibly inhuman menace to the empires and direct competition for capsuleers, there seems to be no need for our old foes with binary thoughts and electronic senses. I only hope that they are biding their time and waiting for the spotlight to come around to them again in the future.

Machines, after all, are nothing if not patient.

Lore Payoff

As excitement swirls around the ongoing story about Drifters, its worth commending CCP on the recent efforts in the past year to bring the background story to the foreground and make the universe feel more dramatic and dynamic. As I said in my post "The Lore is Important" in December:

Roleplayers or not, its easy to get excited about the background we engage each other in becoming more alive and vibrant. The game has always played second fiddle to player actions, but there is no reason for the background to be cardboard cutouts and completely hollow shells. The ride gets more exciting when there is more life to the animatronics.
And most importantly, the lore being dynamic and moving helps to bring players in and keep them engaged in those lulls when a player is between corporations or alliances. Hell, I want to go see Thera and I am fully engaged in Faction Warfare.

So good on CCP for continuing to build on the momentum with more mechanics, hooks, like Scope videos and the Drifter autopsy report, live events, and more wormhole systems being explored as I type this on Singularity.

However, I'm going take this moment to remind CCP that it can't all be Lore Hype, eventually there has to be a payoff in part or in full to justify the excitement and resolve storylines to make room for new storylines.

You see, EVE's background story is not like a movie or a series of movies; in those you are aiming for one massive final climax (the hero finally faces and defeats the villain or the group of survivors gets to permenent safety) that can leave the viewer with a sense of completion and satisfaction. EVE, however, is more like a long running TV series with several threads of storylines that wax and wane in importance and severity over time, but most importantly have a definite resolution.

Right now I would say there has not been any serious storyline resolution since Templar One in EVE's major backstory threads. Back then, we had the mystery of Sleepers, Jamyl Sarum's sudden return, what were the Templar / DUST soldiers, why did Admiral Noir crash a Nyx into the Ishukone station and the novel resolved those questions either fully or partially.

So I feel its high coming upon time for some serious storyline resolution of some or all of the ongoing threads as we approach the culmination of the Seagull Plan.

(I realize we have decent theories and pieced together stories for some of these, assembled carefully by hand by our lore enthusiasts with amazing diligence, but we need a big payoff for the larger audience.)

Specifically:

1. What's Up With Sansha's Nation? What are they doing with all the people they steal in their incursions (motto: we come for YOUR people)? How are they generating those incursion wormholes? What are they doing in the shattered wormhole? How do they relate to the other storylines?

2. What happened to the Jove? Were they all dead prior to Caroline's Star event or did that event do them in?

3. What exactly happened with Caroline's star anyways? We have some decent theories in the community but no confirmation.

4. What's going on with Jamyl Sarum? Is the presence of the Other completely in control now? Is she going to maintain control of the empire?

5. Who exactly are the Drifters? What are their goals / aims?

6. What happened in Thera and the other shattered wormholes?

7. What's going on with the Sleepers? Are they all dead too?

And that's just the major storylines!

Come on CCP, we need some resolution of some of these dangling threads!

More on Thera

The name Thera appears to come from the Island that the Minoan civilization was living during the Bronze age when they were wiped out by a colossal volcanic eruption:

The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: theMinoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred some 3600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization. The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of metres deep and may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, 110 km (68 mi) to the south, through a gigantic tsunami. Another popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis.[4]

In EVE, could the Thera system and the other new hybrid low sec systems being added be the remnants of some old civilization related to the Sleepers, or the Sleepers themselves?

Stargates

I've been thinking a lot about stargates recently. CCP's famous (or infamous depending on your point of view) image implies that at some point we will be able to build stargates.

With Crius the first arrow in that diagram has been mostly dealt with so we are getting closer.

However, I'm plagued with question less about the "Stargate construction & control" which will be years out still and we need to see how the other 3 sections pan out, but rather asking questions about why we are where we are now. In other words, why can players build (and destroy) stargates now?

I know the simple answer: because such a feature has not been implemented in game yet. And I know the more philosophical answer: because that much control to players could lead to unbalanced power equations and stale min-maxed game play (e.g. imagine every staging system was a dead end system with a single perma-camped and bubbled gate).

But what's the lore reason? I mean, its obvious that player alliances in null space are a power comparable to the major empires, they have basically urbanized most of null sec with outposts, jump bridge networks, cynosaural beacons and jammers. Yet slightly larger construction efforts like true station building and stargates have remained out of reach. Why?

The best possible answer I've come up with is that its more beneficial to the null sec alliances to NOT build such structures. Specifically, the protections all capsuleers enjoy due to the CONCORD agreements the empires signed have large benefits (such as freedom of movement between empires, freedom to dock anywhere, protection from asset seizures, not extradition to planetary governments, etc) that outweigh losing them for stations and new stargates (or destroying existing ones).

Although many null sec players live almost exclusively in null sec, their associated alt characters and business ventures rely heavily on empire resources and markets. Imagine what would happen to a null sec alliance if it was completely cut off from Jita's markets all of a sudden. So that seems like the most likely culprit.

Another possibility is that there is no other known places to build stargates, i.e. the current possible stargate network covers all possible locations. This seems unlikely and is easily contradicted by stargate connection changes in past expansions.

A third possibility is that the technology is tightly controlled by the empires. Again, seems very unlikely since null sec alliances have the jump drive tech and stargates use the same basic principles just  on a larger scale.

Perhaps the problem is simply cost. Maybe stations and stargates are so expensive to build that its out of reach for null sec alliance wallets. *Looks at massive titan fleet* Yeah, I don't think so. Unless the problem is not cost but rarity, perhaps both stations and stargates require some ultra rare material in their construction and thus this rarity limits their propagation.

Any thoughts?