Originally by: Victor Merren

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I do not post much in this forum. As the game card said, after posting I feel unclean and feel the urge to take a shower - and I already had my shower for this month.

Anyway, to my all important and completely original post.

I am really intrigued by how this war will pan out for the side fighting Bob. I fought against Bob in two different corps during the ASCN war and I can tell you two things from the grunt's perspective:

1. Bob pilots fight very well and are by and large a nice bunch of people, even in local. DC cannot help himself but even he is polite in his own way.

2. Nodes crash very often and when you log in, Bob already has a gate camp set up, not just pilots in local. There are no friendlies. You will all be in a queue somewhere while Bob sets up tacklers and snipers waiting for you to spawn one at a time.

3. Unexplained or barely explainable things happen to your assets and POSes that Bob are assaulting.

Thus, Bob pilots can fight very well and odd things happen impacting on your overall war effort when you fight Bob that make their pilots seem even more effective.

Now we know for sure they had help from the developers. How much of their success could be attributed to that is unknown and it does not take away from the skill of Bob pilots - they are very good and their fleets are very disciplined.

However, I do wonder how much ISK and resources they obtained, how much otherwise impossible to obtain intelligence they gained, and how many strategic objectives they achieved through recently uncovered cheating.

Thus fighting Bob is like fighting the Matrix. Individuals within Bob are most likely not aware and not concerned with the corruption within, but Bob is rotten to the core and yes, they can despawn you at will, warp you back to the gate camp even if you successfully got away, they can offline your POSes and they can see your fleet movements.

So how do you fight this elite band of pilots and the immature band of developers that form Bob?

Eve warfare almost requires a third party auditor at this stage. Someone that answers the "Who will oversee the overseer" now that our confidence in CCP's ability for self audit has been shaken. To those that dismiss this problem remember: we pay for Eve, and we already PAID a lot for Eve. Unlike the rational economics dictates, the sunk cost rationale cannot be applied to something with emotional involvement which is what Eve is for us all, thus simply leaving Eve or forgetting about this issue is not possible.

Without the third party auditor or some major reassurances from CCP, I unfortunately foresee this war descending into a farce, especially if Bob starts winning. This would be bad for everyone and unfair to those elite Bob band of pilots that are now stuck in the middle of this mess.

V.

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