EVE Search - I see the vision of James315 has yet to come to fruition.

Herzog Wolfhammer wrote:

The only reason why CODE. has been a "thing" is because nullsec was blue-balled to death. If one is compelled to wonder why there was no CODE. say as early as 2007-2008, it was because highsec was not as relevant before before 2011 as it is now.

Suicide ganks did happen back in the days of olde. But even in 2010 you could find miners in out of the way highsec systems who never heard of Hulkageddon.

Now that nullsec is on it's way to being less blue-balled, highsec is back on track to becoming irrelevant again. Add to this the citadels and (hopefully) nullsec production boosts that make Jita less relevant - though I doubt it will become the next Yulai - and things will not improve for the gankbears and hub-humpers.

I remember being told by a CODE. bumper that there was once a time when it seemed like a freighter went down at the end of every GCC expiration cycle. Now, not so much. Low-hanging-fruit indies have been driven out, but the hardcore guys are still around and they are rich enough to shrug off a loss (they factored it in already) and press on. You can still find pluralities of freighters AFK-ing through the Uedama-Niarja pipeline.

Is this all a good thing or a bad thing?

Well, as I have pointed out numerous times in the past, what's "wrong" with highsec is a direct result of everything that has become wrong with nullsec (and lowsec to some extent). The highsec "PVPers" are in highsec for the same reason the people they hunt are in highsec. As things change in the game things will change in highsec.

One thing that was keeping players in highsec for too long was the notion that one needed to have tens of millions of SP and billions of ISK. The end result was 2 years of grinding and getting up at 2AM to train up skills and eventually being bored out of the game.

And that was because after 2 years of grinding and SP building, the "end game" was blue-balled nullsec that was being sold on "safe farming opportunities'". Meaning, it was like highsec with as much chance of being taken out by a gank except in nullsec it'll be a hunter with a stealth bomber instead of a suicide ganker in a blaster cat. And that's only if you were not all docked up because AFK cloaker. Read: just as boring.

CCP has killed that with the long skill ques and FINALLY, new players are catching on that proper allocation of SP matters more than a raw total SP count, that a player with Master level 4 on his assault frigate is going to mop the floor with the other player in an AF with 4 times the SP but only at Mastery level 2. The new SOV (aka Fozzie SOV) also represent changes.

But let's not forget that CODE. proved one thing: nullsec is safer than highsec. Run the numbers on "ships destroyed". Highsec hugging for new players is dead. Highsec grinding as the only means of ISK is going to be dead. Nullsec is going to get titan spawns. Highsec being "safe" has long been dead.

Highsec is on it's way to becoming what it was born to be: an irrelevant noob starter zone, which is how we looked at highsec back in 2006 when I started. And CCP is doing it without (the much begged for by the Church of HFTU and the "We are out to ruin YOUR game" goons) actually nerfing highsec to death.

A day will come when nerfing highsec won't be noticed.

There will be people so attached to their highsec PVP "lifestyle" that change will be unwelcome. Not everybody in highsec is there because they are risk-averse carebears. The label of carebear only became more bothersome when it started to get used on people who were for the most part nullseccers and PVPers but found that lack of time and/or nullsec blue-balling drove them out. The label ALWAYS existed and it was valid at one time when there were less excuses to be in highsec.

Richard B. Riddick: You said it's all circling the drain, the whole universe. Right?