What you missed this week

Hey there, and welcome to a slightly delayed issue of ‘What you missed this week’, THE Eve-centric weekly summary of the beating heart and soul of the Eve community over this past seven days! The game is enraptured in war and the first stages, as well as the first bloody noses, took place this week. So let’s right into it shall we?

Starting off, i was going to post a shattering bit of news related to Vily leaving TEST, but apparently it was just a cunning ruse effected under the cover of darkness by rogues and rascals. Quality dissimulation blokes, chip, chip, cheerio.

In truer news, we have Commander Aze tossing his hat in the CSM contender ring. He’s been trying for the last three years and that’s not stopping him, as his platform seems pretty sharp and on point. He’s focused on new player adoption and training, an industrialist at heart with a corp that does public fleets, small incursions and some wormhole combat mixed in around that. Really, the quality of the campaign is fantastic, and if last year is an example showing, he’ll be quite engaging and active during. If you’re in the air about who to vote for, do give him a read.

Also NoobMan is hosting a Wormhole townhall on the 21st of January, trying to untangle some of the mess Ascension made while also focusing on priority issues to deliver to CCP regarding spookyspace. Check out the full details here, and if you think you have something to say, come and join, it’s the best way to get involved minus being a CSM yourself.

Wecome to war. As per on schedule, if that schedule involved a turbonerd-tier, 1st of January, 4000 player and 9 hour engagement, the first major offensive of the brewing southern war was executed. Goonswarm and Stain Wagon struck at two forward operating bases in the shape of Fortizars that were getting set up by Circle of Two and TEST as beach-heads in the coming invasion.

The battle of F4R2-Q saw roughly 1500 ships destroyed, with the Goonwagon forces losing half a trillion in assets, including super assets. The defenders saw just shy over 200 bil in loses by comparison. Goonwagon forces did succeed, taking down both Fortizars, but it sounds like a hallow victory, hard won, given that Co2 and TEST still managed to successfuly set up two other forward bases a bit earlier and are now operating out of them, just two-three systems off of the ones they lost.

Coming off of the facts, the salt and memery following this engagement was worth the almost one trillion in damages. This memetani thread sums it up quite well.

Still, that was not the only engagement over the week, we saw capitals fighting in Kourmonen in a four-way on New Year’s Eve, with almost the same sides meeting just a few days later, with Lazerhawks in tow for a little k-space fight over a Did he say Jump tower. That was not all, as again a few days later they met again over an Azbel EC, seeing Did he say Jump again in defense, this time against Waffles. Speaking of defenses, LowSechnaya also battled The-Culture over their final Fortizar timer. Thanks to Salivan Harddin for the roundups, and you can check all the detailed battle reports of those battles over on EN24.

Bovril, famous old BRAVE corp that had a lot of positive reputation as bloodthirsty miners, apparently is having issues deciding on a path for their membership as plans to join the southern war for Catch fell sideways due to ‘diplomatic incidents’. It’s interesting to see how a corp can fall from grace after jumping quite a few alliances and losing the reputation they built up. A few years ago, ‘blood for the bloodgod’ post swarmed both /r/bravenewbies and /r/eve and were met with chargrin appreciation. Today, they’re not enjoying the same reception.

There’s also some hassle that’s been going around highsec for a while now. While the New Eden Trade Network is getting press, a lot of other players are having a silent war in the mostly-peaceful plains of highsec, and Perimeter in specific. While not concerted, and certainly less flashy than some big fight in nullsec, there is a cutthroat war happening over various single-digit percentages and even a ‘rule of law’. Stories of bullying to increase taxes on trade Citadels and pushing out anyone that doesn’t comply reminds me of the mafias that used to rule farmer’s markets and stalls. I just wish more people would come out and tell these stories, since they’re as interesting and core to Eve as any element that hits the big news. If you have something to say on this matter, poke me on discord or on reddit at /u/CosmoCZ and maybe we can hammer out a piece.

Moving on to CCP news, we’re getting a tiny patch on Tuesday which, while mostly un-brow-rising, does bring about the finality of putting ESS’s as well as any mobile deployables, in range of Citadels and ECs. It was a scummy tactic to begin with, but i’m not sure i like the alternative of putting ESS’s in fully spawned anoms much better either. Why doesn’t CCP just instill fixed, deadspace, locations for these? Would save a lot of grief and issues with gridbending and gridcontrol.

Coming back to the New Years, Eve celebrated in classic style, with fireworks going off in Jita 4-4 like it was the last minutes of 2016. Because you know, they were. Have a video and some screenshots for all of you that were otherwise indisposed on the cusp between years.

Finishing up with some meta news, the winners of the 2016 /r/eve posts and comments were announced. Unsurprisingly, the shitpost of the year was awarded to the much-lauded  Be in NC. post, with the best post going, by Texas Law, to ‘that’ recording. I won’t go into too many details here, follow the link and click through some of the most ridiculous, sad, shitposty and horrible while also gorgeous and grand posts that the /r/eve community was able to summon over the year. It might have sucked for the world, but 2016 was alright by /r/eve’s standards.
 

Welcome to the bourgeois Art Corner where we look dapper while checking out the coolest Eve-Online-related works of art. Today i’ll start you off with this fantastic Keepstar “sketch” done by Geologister/”Nassius Gatlin”:

Razorien did it again with reporting by means of great virtual-photography, this time of the F4R-Q engagement. Check it out here. And if you want to see a different subject, you can also check out his set from the V-3YG7.

And Bibanan also is taking her skill in drawing character portraits for-sale, at 15$/750m ISK you can have a hand-drawn portrait/fullbody for your character. Pretty sweet deal. Here’s her work:

Change. 

Change for a better future, of no consequence but to yourself.

Change for a better future, while being mocked.

Change for a better future, a singular choice.

Change for a better future, under a leash.

Change.

I really wish i could stop posting these Rorqual losses, but holy shit are people retarded with them. I think miners just upgrade from their no-tanked Hulk to a Rorqual for those dank ore ticks and they have no idea how any of it works. As shown by this kill by DARKNESS.

But then you get to see something like this, someone just tossing ISK like it’s a gypsy wedding, with an unique asset to boot, and you can’t help but just glee and thank whatever social celebration brought it upon, as shown by this intentional loss by the Dodixie queen Rupee:

We’re gonna start this off with a plug of one of our in-house talent also known as the Editor in Cheif of CZ, Niden, as he remembers he also likes making videos. It features complete silliness in cloaky Machs oneshotting frigates.

Showing the fight from the other side of the fence, we have MrMailite putting up a long and action-filled video of low-sec frigate pew:

Sticking to frigates, if you thought the Rifter is dead, an old meme of a long forgotten age, Mantas Karlonas proves to us that that is certainly not the case, fighting some pretty grizzly battles in order to win out in his Rifter.

Moving just a tier up, steven0ise EVEONLINE has this fantastic video of his ridiculous Thrasher going up against anything and anyone.

INSRT Fury shows us a little of INSRT’s small gang activities featuring battlecruisers and battleships, with useful commentary and even mistakes to learn from.

And here’s a nostalgia video, from literally a few months after Eve was launched. It looks like Eve, sounds like Eve, but somehow it’s so off. I’ll just let you oogle and wonder the the hell that disc in the lower right is. 

We hear stories of Eve going too far. Some may be just phonies, like the famous line-cutting of power to an enemy FC’s house, but some, even through the veneer of the comic of the situation, of Alberta, do reveal things that went too far.

But what’s worrisome is when those stories don’t have any veneer, they don’t even pretend to be jokes. When those stories reveal hate, reveal horrible people with almost unfixable defects, the kind of people not only you don’t want to associate with, but that you didn’t even see coming. They are your friends. Were.

I read a story by pure accident this past week, a story that got rapidly buried under /r/eve’s constant outflow of various content and ideas. It was one of the most disturbing and frightening things that i read which concerned an online medium but also a very truthful stream of consciousness.

I’ll not try to hype it up but if you have an hour, do give it a read. It’s not something anyone can do anything on, except knowing that this exists and this happens, and can happen to you. And maybe we can be more prepared for it if we ever have such misfortune like Haile’s.

~Cosmo

Thank you for reading this edition of ‘What you missed this week’. If you think we missed something, share it in the comments section, i’m sure a lot of people still want to check out more things. Also please leave any suggestions and ideas you may have in the comments as well, and as always, if you enjoy the work we’re doing here, please toss a nickle or an iskcent into our real or virtual wallets to keep this going with the same aplomb and quality.

PS: How not to do propaganda.