I've wondered for a while if killmails create an escalated sense of violence in the universe, and what the game would be like if it instead just recorded a number of "kills" and "losses", without the elegant record of exactly what was lost.

Would miner ganking still be a big deal if there was no provable way of showing what someone had on them?
Would people take screenshots of wrecks and post them?

I'm not sure if killmails have always been in Eve, or if they were added at a later date?

I'm just curious how big of a roll killmails play in encouraging people to kill each other, and how much of it is isk/pew motivated.

I certainly don't want to see them go away. It's a neat feature. But if they weren't there, would things be different?

If kill mails didnt exist then the players who play this game would find little incentive to log in and play. Since the game is pretty much exclusively about PVP (or industry involved in creating ships for PVP) I suspect what little player base that seems to still exist in this game would dwindle even more should kill mails and kill boards dissappear.

Of course, since eve kill and zkill seem to work only about 3 hours a day lately.... perhaps they have dissappeared already.