Hello Eve Uni 2.0, Welcome to Molden Heath

Eve Uni visits Molden Heath 2.0 will hopefully be a much better experience then version 1.0 was.

My blog started going up in traffic back in May or so and sparked up in June when Molden Heath went to war with Eve Uni.  I was still new and confused and pretty upset that Eve Uni had decided that it was going to move its low sec camp into Molden Heath and clean out and evict the pirates.  I wrote a lot of words, Poet posted them on Reddit, I received a lot of insults. I received a lot of in game abuse as well.  It seems that I am scared of PvP.

It was an interesting time and the first time I had to handle a lot of negativity in my writing. I came out a better person and more importantly, I made a lot of good friends out of that incident.

The Eve Uni vs Molden Heath war was one of those small events in Eve.  Molden Heath is mostly a chunk of pirate infested low sec.  Eve Uni was doing a lot of roams and getting fights from the locals.  Gunpoint was  very active at the time and lived in Bosena, one of the entry systems.  Heild still had its 2/10 complex and R1fta swarmed the stars with frigates and destroyers.  Further down groups like THC2 and TEXN lived along with a handful of other corps I don't personally know because we only shot at each other and the smaller pirate groups of only a handful of people.  It was the first time that I met Team Liquid as a group.

The members of the low sec camp for reasons we do not understand moved into Heild and once they did that they moved into the very same station that R1fta lived out of. It started a snow ball that turned into an avalanche.

I wrote words about it as the war decs started to hit.

Keada wrote words about what was going on.

The forums were in flames.

What could have been a very good situation where Eve Uni established a low sec base and got a lot of good PvP with the local, experienced and entrenched pirate groups turned into a complete and total cluster fuck.  Team Liquid moved back in and the war decs started to fly as small pirate gangs used the tools of the game to even the playing field.  A pack of new players is vicious in numbers and a swarm of 30+ frigates/destroyers/cruisers will still kill people.  Egos got in the way of things and the situation exploded.

To state the obvious the perspective of Eve Uni and the perspective of the average Pirate corporation are very, very different things.  Eve Uni has to deal with a lot of war decs.  To them the war decs meant people wanted to have an easy chance to kill new players.  To the pirates, dealing with large blobs that would not shoot first (we're talking about -10 people here) who were taking over an inhabited station in a system with several stations to chose from did not mesh well.

I'm also not sure that anyone not from the MH area understood the culture that lives there.  I read on their forums someone wondering why we didn't just leave corp and wait out the situation. Most of the corporations get along while continuing to kill each other.  Not all.  It is far from a perfect society full of piracy and explosions.  But it is a true community and it continues to thrive despite itself.  But a certain bond grows when people spend that much time killing and talking to each other and that is what caused the corporations to combine and face the Uni in an organized front.  

I've long suspected that people assume that low sec corporations are nothing more than a confused mass.  Well, I more than suspect it. I know.  I have read the conversations and been in the chats where low sec corporations are called failures who cannot make it in null sec.  For some reason many people are deeply attached to the progression of High Sec to Low Sec to Null Sec.  They refuse to take into account the fact that many, many, many of the residents in low sec live in low sec because they want to live in low sec.  It has nothing to do with failure and everything to do with enjoying the lifestyle of that space.

The thing about the war is that the reasons got lost in the knee jerk reaction.  It was not about going and killing newbie players because we are evil pirates.  It was about a group coming into an area and attempting to evict the residents.  The residents resisted eviction.  Diplomacy disintegrated and it turned into a mess.  Because people did not expect the pirates to do anything but scatter like the bullies they were assumed to be it got worse before it got better.  Also, people got angry.  Not at the random new players following their corp but at the people that allowed the policies to happen.  That is why Team Liquid war deced Eve Uni for the next six months.

No one really wants that to happen again.  If Eve Uni members want to move into the area to explore low sec and null sec they are welcome to do so. Most of the people I talked to were disappointed when Eve Uni left instead os simply establishing their low sec camp in one of the many unoccupied systems. While the move is not their low sec camp again it is, hopefully, a step forward in members integrating with the locals and getting their feet wet beyond station camping war dec games as they explore things to do in Eve.

It is things like not setting people -10 to where they are not 'allowed' to talk.  Sure, there is smack talk but if people cannot hold their tongue without a little red icon I have little hope for them. From others there is help and assistance.  Many 'pirates' are all too happy to help people PvP better.  I have one guy in my chat room that the boys kill a lot.  We discuss fits we tweak his and show him why.  He asks for fits and we give him the standard things and tell him why. He is improving and has learned that we honor 1v1s and he can get good fights.  

Ship explosions do not have to be followed by bitterness.  For some, it always will be.  For others they will take advantage of the possibilities.  I know there are a lot of jerks in the game who will find it funny to give people crappy fits and make them easier targets.  That is not everyone.  There are people who want nothing more than to share their game with other people and help people improve.  Killing things is fun but killing things can also be disheartening.  Eve is a game that is taught as much as it is learned.  One of the most frustrating things about the entire war was that Eve Uni was not allowed to talk to us.  Everyone wanted to talk to them and not just smack talk.  The smack came later and it was out of frustration   So much communication and opportunity was lost.

The situation has a lot of potential if it pans out.  I hope it goes as smoothly as living in low sec ever goes for anyone.  The random gate camps of ECM blobs are supposed to no longer blot out the sun.  It is a few people that want to go do some things. They can undock and play Eve. The communication with the locals is a welcome attempt to intercept assumptions that might cause a repeat of last year.  The area is the same and changed as the tide and flow of Eve is what it is.

Hopefully it will bring more game play for everyone around.

P.S.

As for me, an idle aside, seeing the fear and determination and frustration in my own post amuses me.  Those are the moments where I realize how far I have come.  I will say that was the most comments I had ever gotten in one post.  People were quite unhappy with me.  I only deleted one comment and that was so full of nasty, sexist cursing I was a bit put off.