Sep
15
Overestimating Your Own Importance
You see it all the time in real life – people that walk around with their chest puffed out, their ego swollen and their voice loud and obnoxious. They think they are the hottest shit since sliced bread. Without them, their company or organization or social network would utterly collapse. If they were to die tomorrow, their funeral would be attended by thousands, and hot chicks would weep across the nation for the opportunity they missed out on.
These people are tools. They often know less than nothing about what they think they do. They spout off uninformed diatribes in such a loud voice that you are faced with two options – nod in the hope that they will stfu, or walk away in disgust. They are often found in the employ of a certain news network named after a small furry animal. In the context of Eve, they can often be found in nullsec.
Nullsec residents often consider themselves the cream of the crop in Eve Online – their killboards list thousands of victims and they tote around shiny things like supercaps with feigned casualness. This is not to discredit all nullsec PVPers – some are very, very good at what they do. FCing quality in nullsec is without equal elsewhere (for reasons we won’t get into right now). But the vast majority of them don’t deserve a tenth of the credit they like to give themselves.
Mord Fiddle recently wrote a post on his (much more popular than mine) blog entitled ‘Making Low Sec Matter’. I am not a normal reader of his blog, as he is a nullsec resident and I could give two shits less about the things that happen in null sec, apart from my penchant for lighting Taranises on fire out there. However, the post title was a bit evocative as, not terribly long ago, I was involved in Mynxee’s ‘Making Low Sec Matter’ initiative, back before CCP ripped out her soul and lit it on fire while screaming ‘HTFU’ over and over again. Again, another matter.
I’m not sure what exactly I expected to find, clicking that link. I certainly didn’t expect (though this is probably due to the fact that I don’t often read Mord’s blog) what his take on Making Low Sec Matter would be. Which can be summed up thusly:
Lots of nullsec people got stomped by Russians and are now in low sec licking their wounds, thus making low sec matter for a small time because we are there now. When we leave, it will cease to matter, because Eve is nullsec and the people that play there.
As one might imagine, some people took issue with this – none more eloquently than Tsubutai of The Tuskers. His comment on the post is long, thorough, and efficiently demonstrates that Mord is (generally speaking) talking out of his ass. Here’s the direct link to the comment.
I wasn’t going to blog about this because Tsubutai pretty much handled the issue, pointing out the same things I had initially thought of when reading the blog post. However, as those silly political commentators on that Furry channel are wont to do, Mord proceeded to reply by discounting the argument as illegitimate and ignoring half the content of the comment. Well then. This simply will not do.
As someone who has lived in lowsec for the last three years, I can tell you this from my personal experience – lowsec in general has not changed. I still kill shit. I still avoid Amamake unless I want to die. Only now, it is PL doing the killing instead of BANE or whomever else has held residence there over the years. The threat of something lighting a cyno or bridging in a gang has not changed, because (surprise!) that shit was already happening. The fact that PL and other low sec bound alliances have hundreds of pilots means absolutely fuck all to my daily existence. Blobs are not an uncommon sight in lowsec – faction warfare kinda has the market covered on that one. The fact that the blobs rolling through on occasion might be PL or some other nullsec alliance don’t really affect my tactics or strategies in dealing with them.
Mord makes one point that is almost legitimate that I have to give him credit for. He states that the wise lowsec player would be keen to fight these new opponents and learn from the engagements. However, the wise lowsec player is always keen to fight new opponents and learn from them. Not to mention that many successful lowsec PVPers are in fact nullsec ‘retirees’ who got fed up with the bullshit and came out for a no-strings-attached, carefree, shoot ‘em up lifestyle. Also, we’ll leave out the bit where nullsec pvp and lowsec pvp differ on several small but fundamental concepts. Not all the nullsec warriors have to teach is even applicable to the run of the mill lowsec pirate.
Summary: just because you’ve been playing a long time, or have played in certain circumstances, or have an opinion doesn’t make you right, enlightened, or otherwise ‘better’ than other people. This applies as much in the real world as it does in Eve. Keep that in mind.
Fly Smart,
Marc
