I want to share a perspective on the current drama based on my real life business experience. Before I start I want to make it clear that I in no way support CCP's flawed roll out of Incarna or Hilmar and Zulu's behavior. That being said...

When I was a younger man my passion was bodybuilding (yes, I am a muscle head that plays Eve, I admit I must look quite ridiculous), it was my passion.

At a certain point I decided to put my passion to work for me and opened a World Gym with some similar minded friends.

This was in the 90's when bodybuilding was the rage. Our gym did very well and we catered specifically to the "hard core" bodybuilding set. Getting big was SERIOUS BUSINESS to our customers.

They would:

wake up at 4 am to get to the gym

eat no calories during the day that did not advance their muscle growth

maybe they even crossed to the dark side and used "boosters" (never had any proof but some guys were just freakishly large)

I could go on but the point is that to our clientele this gym was their world; they suffered no fools. If you weren't serious GTFO.

We had a lot of clients start toward their goal of getting "huge" or even just fit every January, but come May most would be gone. This was expected and was factored into our business model. Getting fit is requires a level of discipline that most people cannot keep up year round. Looking like a magazine model is next to impossible. However we had enough people that wanted to try.

We were doing very well, but we noticed that other gyms were undercutting our prices dramatically. Along with their lower prices they were marketing fitness in a different way. "No need to try so hard"...."its not serious business"..."just pay us every month and you will feel and look better". The truth was they were just selling memberships expecting not to see their clients ever again. And the monthly rate was so low that people never canceled. They were raking in the dough and having less overhead and wear and tear on their equipment than we were. It became about volume...quantity over quality.

We were forced to adapt. Our "serious" clients were pissed! We weren't just changing a "gym" we were changing their "world". We sympathized...it was our world too...we were all working out next to them on our off hours. However, we also had bills to pay...

What does this have to do with Eve?!?!?

Eve as far as I understand it was started by a bunch of guys whose passion was FIS.

To Eve players FIS is SERIOUS BUSINESS...they will:

Wake up at any hour to log in their supers

Play with EFT for hours just to squeeze out a bit of extra performance from their ships

Hang on a POS for hours waiting for the call to jump during a CTA

Maybe they will even cross over to the dark side and bot

Hard core Eve players are disciplined and also suffer no fools in their midst.
With the introduction of Incarna, Eve doesn't seem to be catering to the "real" Eve player and the serious business guys are pissed.
Unfortunately, most people are, IMO, not capable or willing to devote the endless hours and exert the necessary diligence to be a successful Eve player.

This is were I think CCP finds itself...they created a fine world where hard core, serious individuals could prosper, yet the volume just isn't there. This has, IMO, caused them to switch gears to a different business model. It is now about volume and possibly catering to a more casual type of player.

I don't like it...no different than I like to see someone wasting their time on an "ab roller" but I understand it, at least from my anecdotal experience.

Thanks for reading

With respect to your point about equipment,look at it another way.

From CCP's standpoint it may make sense to have a certain portion of their player base in station at any given time. Less lag perhaps. Less wear and tear on the equipment, less demand for resources.( I don't say this with any certainty)

Remember,your hard core members are always going to be coming to you with their latest "need", I used to have guys come into my office with pictures of some exotic piece of equipment that they just had to have in order to reach their goal.

Casual members were just happy to have the basics; some cardio equipment and some light weights. Both types of members paid the same membership fee. From a business standpoint the casual member was more desirable. From a personal standpoint (remember we were bodybuilders ourselves) we loved to have the passionate clients in the gym.

In some ways it was a relief to have the more intense members leave especially if they were "bad mouthing" our business as we changed our business model, just from a stress stand point (we were only human), but in the long run it made sense for us to try to walk the fine line of keeping MOST of our clients happy. It wasn't easy and we had 1300 members at our peak to contend with.

With the numbers that CCP has to make happy it is infinitely harder.

What I learned is that as long as you keep things clean, fix broken equipment expeditiously, you are responsive, and you at least make a good faith effort to address everyone's needs (even if you tell them why you can't give them what they "need" at that moment) your more reasonable clients (which is most people IMO) will stay with you.