Gone Fishin'

I'm on vacation next week so blogging will be nonexistent barring an update on the BMTHOKK3 event outcome. So have a Happy Canada Day in my absence!

Today! Get To Caldari Prime! (If You Can)

The past weeks and months saw an increased activity of all the four major factions in EVE Online. Most of these activities relate in one or the other way to the emergence of the new DUST mercenaries throughout the New Eden cluster. Players from both games, EVE Online and DUST 514, shape together – via various events – the history and ongoing background story of the EVE Universe. These events point all towards a culmination in the immediate future: The Battle for Caldari Prime!Caldari Prime is the home world of Caldari and is considered to be a part of the Caldari State, even though it is situated in a Gallente solar system. Gallente rebels as well as as Caldari State's Provist occupation force hired DUST mercenaries and as result we saw vicious fighting for every combat. Check CCP Zulu’s latest dev blog and prepare yourself to write history in EVE Online and the whole gaming industry with one of the largest events ever seen. This event will be also broadcasted via CCP’s twitch.tv channel.
Now you have the change to influence the living background story of the EVE Universe and write gaming history. We have set the battlefield, but the battle is always all yours!Mark down Friday, March 22^nd.

Be warned, the system is currently set at a cap of 1000 pilots that they plan to adjust as they watch server load. Also, faction navies are disabled in the system today but CONCORD is still active.

Given Where Due

On Monday I took the new TheMitanni.Com website to task for posting an opinion piece on Off Grid Leadership Boosting Ships for not presenting the other side of the argument. Well today I see they followed up with a post about The Case Against Boosters where author Grath gives some suggestions about how Tech 3 and Tech 2 command ships should altered.

I will point out that he skips the real issue, whether boosting should be off grid or on grid only, with a statement:

Yes, there are issues with grids and the like, but thats probably not something that can be easily fixed since I expect it's mired in the oldest code parts of EVE. I suspect that, as far as the gang system is concerned, CCP simply don't know (and cannot easily discover) what is on-grid with something else, anyway.

I don't accept that and I'm disappointed Grath does not even address this point as its the main thrust of the previous article, and in my opinion its the biggest problem currently with boosting ships (although I agree with Grath that command ships have been shafted by the Tech 3 ships).

P.S. Both of these articles could have come from syndicated blogs. Maybe they have the advantage of having editing staff to proof read and provide feedback prior to publishing but I can see no difference from anything I've read from numerous blogs for years. I'm just saying.

Massive Ego Finally Coalesces into Website

While I was on vacation a new news site was launched as a direct competitor to Evenews24.com: The Mittani Dot Com. Despite my little dig about the name of the site in the title of this post, apparently it was not The Mittani's (the Spaceship Politician) idea:

IS THIS A MITTANI VANITY SITE?
First off, the name. Nobody who knows much about Eve Online thinks that The Mittani himself is a shy or retiring individual who has to be coaxed into offering his opinion, nor one who is reluctant to step out of the shadows. As such, I imagine that there is a natural presumption that the site name was his decision, and that it is an example of the industrial-scale hubris that led to Goonswarm’s capital system being renamed “Mittaningrad”. In fact, I chose the name despite his concerns. Mittani himself wanted the site to be called something very worthy and descriptive like “Internet Spaceship News” or the like: dull enough that I genuinely can’t remember.

“The Mittani” has become a brand: one of the most recognisable and googled phrases or labels in Eve, it simply has recognition value that we would have struggled to create with anything else. I wanted us to profit from the better part of a decade of work and history that many new websites would give their right arm to possess. Although I admit that the would-be customers of, say, a travel site start-up might be a bit confused by the name. And the consequences of seeking to piggyback on that history for a sensitivity-training and human resources dotcom would be downright disastrous.

I remember reading, several years ago now, one of our enemies sagely informing his alliance that there was no “The Mittani”: that it was a shadowy group who used the fictional character of “The Mittani” as a nom de plume through which to speak to Goons and Eve. I think that we have all seen that gelled hair often enough now to know that he was wrong at the time, but in the end he wasn’t that far off

Also in that "About" post is this nice little paragraph about balance:

There are other news sites for Eve, too, but the level of quality tends to be awful. With a few exceptions, articles tend to be scrawled in a patois only vaguely related to any written language known to man, while desperation for content means that badly-disguised sock-puppet pieces explaining the links between Test Alliance and the Knights Templar appear with alarming regularity. Syndicated blogs tend to be of mixed quality at best, and bias is not just tolerated but celebrated.

I am all for the digs about other news sites and I agree that syndicating blogs can be a mixed bag as the writers of blog posts work for themselves and allow the syndication feed to use their content as filler as they see fit. Full disclosure: I am syndicated at Eve News 24 and I have no idea what posts Riverini or Bagehi will select from my feed. (UPDATE: bagehi is no longer an editor at EN24, but he was responsible in the past for syndicated article selection.) But the implication that TheMittaniDotCom's staff writers will be wonderfully all perfect writers and free from bias seems far fetched.

Take for example this post by writer Andski titled "The Off-Grid Boosting Argument". In it he explains the basic mechanics of off grid boosting and states that the "ability of a ship to give such powerful bonuses without being at risk is controversial" and then goes into his reasons why he thinks the mechanics should not be changed. This post is fine as it is but its obvious the author is a null sec pilot with little insight into low sec and/or small gang mechanics, as this line demonstrates:

For smaller engagements, the boosting ships would simply be on grid at a “safe” distance, keeping an eye out for probes and staying aligned - effectively preserving the status quo, even if a few poorly-flown T3s are blown up once in a blue moon.

Anyone who has been in smaller engagements would know that combat in low sec is a very fluid thing that flows from grid to grid as pilots warp to gates, jump through gates, fight in complexes, etc. A lot of choke points to grab and kill or drive off a boosting ship. And even if  boosting Tech IIIs only get killed "once in a blue moon" during combat that is far better than the current state of 'never'. But I'm not here to debate the author on this topic right now; what I want to point out is that this is a excellent jumping off point for the editors of the site to get another writer to compose a counter-point article to argue why off grid boosting should be changed. Otherwise they are just as biased and "mixed quality" as they rail against.

Finally, I've heard it stated that TheMittaniDotCom has 20 or more staff writers. During my time on the Eve Tribune it became obvious that writers have a quiver of article ideas that they are chomping at the bit to write. Some have a few, some have more, but either way once that quiver is empty the enthusiasm for writing articles week after week drops and the attrition rate of writers that stop writer is horrendously high. For the Tribune, a recruitment drive that brought in 5 new writers would see four of them done after 4 weeks. And the fifth writer that sticks for longer eventually gets taken out by boredom, real life, or quitting Eve.

This is one reason why Eve News 24 went with blog syndication. Since blog writers are typically writing for fun and have a common thread and purpose to keep writing, burnout rates are lower. Plus you can pick and choose which posts to pick up from a large pool instead of having a small pool that puts more pressure on staff writers. The trade off is the biases and quality control as stated earlier.

All in all, I'm happy to see another news site and I truly wish TheMittaniDotCom well on its venture. I also hope this shakes up Eve News 24 to improve and try to broaden its content and perhaps need fewer of Ripard Teg's posts as content. (Yes, I am jealous, why do you ask?)

I'll Take That In ISK Please

Passed on from a corpmate, we have some news that CCP paid its employees in foreign currecy during the economic instability:

CCP staff paid in foreign currency during economic meltdown

CCP Games, based in Iceland, took a number of measures during the country's economic meltdown at the end of last year/beginning of this year in order to help its staff through the events, including paying employees in a foreign currency.

Neat! Thanks Wygg.

Question: Does Eve ISK count as a foreign currency?

Eve News Wars

I've been writing for the Eve Tribune for well over 6 months now and I consider myself somewhat of a regular. Its been around for over 3 years and publishes weekly about 4-5 articles. As a side note, we are currently recruiting more writers.

Recently a newcomer to the Eve News scene has arisen called Eve Network News. Its tagline in the header reads: "Your #1 Source for Eve News, and Entertainment" which is quite the boast if you ask me. It too has advertised looking for writers to submit articles.

Also out there is Eve-Mag.com which claims to be "an independent Eve Ezine" (and I use the word 'claims' in a non-pejorative way here). And they also want writers to submit articles for payment.

All three have selected articles read in the weekly Fly Reckless podcast by fellow blogger Silicon Buddha.

While I have doubts three Eve news websites can thrive in a game with this smaller subscriber base, I applaud the owners of the respective sites for giving it the old college try. The community can only benefit from the competition.