Jade Constantine
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Posted - 2004.03.02 16:33:00 -
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Edited by: Jade Constantine on 02/03/2004 16:55:44
Yep excellent and insightful post, monsieur Kurdugal most definately "has a clue" ;)
I can only echo the thoughts of the other posters here: Eve is a very unique and special game that provides an unprecedented opportunity for mythologising conflict, promoting public image, and underscoring in-game actions with with cutting press release and insightful debate. And its totally true, a corp without forum warriors is mostly toothless in the big picture. Its irrelevent how much money you have, how many ships you have, how big and bad at pvp you might be: without the ability to tell your story in a bold, imaginative, sexy way then you are just part of the background radiation, and very easy to ignore.
Harsh but true. Eve exists in an environment of hyper-media saturation and public image is king. Reputation represents a consistant and hittable target. "X" corp may run and hide at safe spots in-game, afk ark mine for money, always be insured, run multi accounts and front corps, whatever? blah blah blah. At the end of the day their reputation has to stand up in the forums and take whatever is hurled at it. If the forum warriors are accomplished they will flourish, if not, the reputation dies and the corp will die afterwards.
The equation for this is pretty simple.
1) Turnover of manpower is relatively swift and maintaining an active player base is hard work.
2) Gaining isk and buying ships is much easier than keeping enthusiasm and dynamism in a corp.
3) Disrupting isk and ship replacement is hard work.
4) Blasting a corps reputation and self belief is much easier.
Hence the critical target location to be hit if you really want to kill a target organisation is their public image and eve reputation. Because once you destroy a corps will to continue, once you damage its self-respect, self-belief, courage, commitment, etc etc ... all else follows naturally. They will stop gaining recruits to replace natural manpower falloff, they will be less productive, less inclined to fight, and will ultimately die.
Sounds callous?
Not really, lets consider it in the perspect of modern psy-ops ... forum warriors are trying to kill the enemy's will to fight. Not specifically the enemy itself. In an ideal situation your target corp will fold, all the individuals will go elsewhere, re-form something different, find other ways to enjoy the game. For them its no-loss, a bad corp goes to the wall, individuals continue. But the objective is accomplished and its mission complete for the forum warrior.
As an aside, I still am absolutely amazed that this kind of philosophy of warfare can work, and does work so well in Eve. Its an amazing game, and amazing community, and a fabulous environment to play out these scenarios and games and strategums. Like a great sparkling simulation of meta-nationstatehood and the conflicts of politics and political ideologies.
It truly is an adult gamer's game.
And boy do i love it ;)
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