I am very disappointed with the blobbing and it seems most of the time it is so unnecessary it is almost not fair that those same people who blob make fun of hi-secers for being risk averse.

For instance, I was drunk playing EvE (again), so I carebeared the crap out of my ship (I will admit) by having a nullified Proteus with warp core stabs (!!!) because that day I just wanted to fly around and do exploration and generally not engage in high stress activities.

I was in a system that had one other person there, and I saw probes on d-scan but I wasn't too concerned because of the warp stabs. I must have spent 20 minutes doing different sites before the guy decloaked in his T3 and warp scrammed me. At that same time the local spiked like crazy - they were his friends.

Now I am wondering, why was the guy willing to sit for 20 minutes doing nothing but cloaking staring at my ship, and wasting the time of 20 people, when he clearly saw on my ship (1) the amount of turrets was so small it wouldn't kill a frig (2) cov ops subsystem (3) nullifier (4) scanning subsystem (5) I was doing sites, which meant I took up slots for analyzer mods ... this means my ship was gimped to heck, NO MATCH for his ship no matter how you look at it (even if he didnt know about warp stabs). Yet he waited for his buddies to show up, and wasted all of their times because obviously as soon as he scrammed me I warped away and jumped out.

Is this game nothing but blobbing anymore?

and how many of those players are actually the same person on main/alts?

I know of quite a few people with a half-dozen alts. A lot of PvP'ers keep an alt in the closet to get around their negative sec-status. I have an assistant account myself. It's so common, you can count on it.

so it's a bit more like 30k accounts, 15k players, and who knows how many are AFK and aren't really playing?

EVE is still a very niche community. So much so they started their own RMT system (plex). Only CCP knows how long new/returning players stick around before they cancel their subs.

CCP could go bankrupt if we cashed in all the PLEX they've flooded on the market (it's free money!).

I am very disappointed with the blobbing and it seems most of the time it is so unnecessary it is almost not fair that those same people who blob make fun of hi-secers for being risk averse.

For instance, I was drunk playing EvE (again), so I carebeared the crap out of my ship (I will admit) by having a nullified Proteus with warp core stabs (!!!) because that day I just wanted to fly around and do exploration and generally not engage in high stress activities.

I was in a system that had one other person there, and I saw probes on d-scan but I wasn't too concerned because of the warp stabs. I must have spent 20 minutes doing different sites before the guy decloaked in his T3 and warp scrammed me. At that same time the local spiked like crazy - they were his friends.

Now I am wondering, why was the guy willing to sit for 20 minutes doing nothing but cloaking staring at my ship, and wasting the time of 20 people, when he clearly saw on my ship (1) the amount of turrets was so small it wouldn't kill a frig (2) cov ops subsystem (3) nullifier (4) scanning subsystem (5) I was doing sites, which meant I took up slots for analyzer mods ... this means my ship was gimped to heck, NO MATCH for his ship no matter how you look at it (even if he didnt know about warp stabs). Yet he waited for his buddies to show up, and wasted all of their times because obviously as soon as he scrammed me I warped away and jumped out.

Is this game nothing but blobbing anymore?

Agreed, this creates a lack of progression.

In other games, you get those 3%, 5%, 1% upgrades to your character and 5 months later you pride yourself on having a 20-25% better character.

In short

Risk = death = more grind = misery = personal RL unhappyness = rage quit = 30k players logging on at prime time.

I hope this answers your question

Anybody who says Low-sec is dead hasn't been in FW. There are fights literally everywhere.

Dying in Eve is different because you lose all of your modules and your ship. Non-PvP'ers see this as a bad thing and don't even try to PvP because they get connected with their missioning/mining ships. PvPers know that their ships are already as good as dead.

Not being afraid to fly into danger is a skill you just have to learn. And many people don't even try. You just have to gain that association that the ship you are flying is disposable.

My problem with PVP is that it takes more time than running a mission.

Most of the time.

Gate games happen too fast.

Red vs Blue, PvP fleet form up to fight can take less than 20 minutes.

Because everything anything risky in thisgame (fun stuff) means you have to replace stuff with ISK which is MIND NUMBINGLY BORING to obtain in almost every way.

Once someone has ground enough to purchase say a capital or T3, they never want to have to do it again, or at least not as a regular occurence..

Why are people so averse to risk taking ?

Because they're saving up all their isk so they can buy a PLEX and play the game for free.

It's a cross contaminated carebear thing.

In the early days of EvE there were Care Bears and Pirates. Carebears lived in highsec and pirates lived in low and null. The pirates would pretty much attack anyone either alone or in groups. They were real Pirates. The Care Bears hated the pirates. They were real Care Bears.

Then a funny thing happened, some of the Carebears migrated to null sec (probably as a result of an incorrect waypoint setting during a MoO holiday combined with autopilot). And just like most cancers they multiplied.

At first when other Carebears came into their areas they would dock up and wait while their precious bistot, gneiss and npc's were 'stolen' but then one day, one particularly greedy bear lost the plot undocked his entire fleet of 20 mining Apocs and unleashed a rain of (initially miner IIs) combat drones on that stealer of rocks.

This was the first null bear. The word spread and alliances and coalitions were formed.

You should stop kicking TEST when they're down. Not cool

I heard sirmolle joined ncdot

So now he is in the coalition that exists to destroy GSF

However, his alliance in reality will come to fight if it's virtually the only place there is action so