I read a few of the articles, news items, and columns. It is definitely worth the time for anyone serious about Eve Online.

At the same time, it's rather depressing for a casual player or "Eve-born" as The Mittani would label me. The reason is that the quality of the articles and expressed opinions allows one to develop a clearer picture of the metagame, or so it seems to me.

I'll try to summarize the impression that I got from reading several of the articles and columns including "The Eve-Born", "Jita Burns", "Fear, Loathing and Exploding Stations", "120 Days and Counting: The South On Fire" and others.

There are many levels of struggle occurring in the Eve universe. While many of us see only the next fight, the next corp op, the next POS bash... etc., there is a larger battle being waged at the level of player populations. The articles outline macroeconomic manipulation of hi-sec populations (small corporations and alliances not affiliated with large null-sec power blocs) to the extent that a single player-bloc controls T2 production. They are exercising this control to attempt to establish lasting monopolies.

While lesser groups fight for territory, one group in the game wages a battle for overall dominance.

Why is this depressing? It allows one to better see the tight-rope of maintaining Eve.

In one sense, it is very like the real world where very large corporations or cartels make it nearly impossible for a small businesses to last because every field of endeavor is dominated by a large cartel. For playing Eve, it means that it is impossible for a single player, or small group of players to sign up and play at anywhere close to that level. The moment a small corp tries to play the economic game, they must face these massive blocs of players. Over time, it will be harder and harder to sustain player populations that do not include the community-born, as The Mittani labels them. Those players that came to Eve because they simply wanted to play a space-oriented MMO will move on to other games.

I suspect that CCP understand this at several levels and have been tugging the line back into place with the recent patches. The tight-rope they have to walk is stretched taught between alienation of these large power blocs and retention of Eve-born players.

While it is amazing to see the game of Eve played at such a level, it makes one mildly sad to think that such a level of play is therefore inaccessible to most. If that's the end game of Eve, very few of us will ever get to play it. This realization might cause people to leave the game, while too much disruption of the metagame could have the same effect.

tl;dr
Losing the feeling of being powerful, and making a difference, can lead to people going elsewhere for the experience.

PS: Please do not read this as a "Goon's ruined Eve" post, it isn't intended as such.